Britain’s black communities have still to throw off the mentality of slavery and need to invest in the future of its young people and rediscover their self-confidence, leading US civil rights campaigner the Rev Jesse Jackson says.

Religiously constructed rows over sorcery, metaphor and meaning in Harry Potter are hardly new, as Simon Barrow has personal reason to know. He suggests we all chill out and finding meaning not menace in the narrative.

The head of the World Council of Churches will visit churches, faith initiatives and ecumenical bodies in Britain and Ireland in April-May. He will meet both enthusiasm and the struggle of post-Christendom.

Bishop Dr Joe Aldred, chair of the Council of Black-led Churches and the Rev Nezlin Sterling, chair of the African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance and a president of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, are among the Christian leaders backing Black Mental Health UK's call for the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) to examine the Department of Health's handling of the race review in the government's new Mental Health Bill.