If God prevents wars and disasters happening, we never get to know (because they don’t happen), and so God gets no credit. If God allows such events to happen, then God gets blamed, generally by people who don’t even believe in God. Divine catch-22?

Peter Nuttall, Letters, The Guardian, 13 March

One thing that might be said in response to Patriarch Kirill is that neighbours have to be loved, not terrorised into resentful silence — a matter on which the God first acknowledged in Kyiv in 988 had a good deal to say

Rowan Williams, The New Statesman, 16 March

I was told many, many times, “We’re going to get you home.” That never happened. . . I mean, how many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five?

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, press conference, 21 March

The reason why “faith and belief” was the last component of Diversity and Inclusion to have a champion [was] because the Civil Service is profoundly uncomfortable about talking about faith and belief [because of] the anxiety that it will be heard as saying people of faith . . . make better policy

Clare Moriarty, chief executive of Citizens Advice and former Civil Service “faith and belief” champion, The Archbishop Interviews, Radio 4, 20 March

Acknowledging what we are thankful for may reverse what psychologists call our “negative bias” — that negative events tend to have a greater impact on our brains than positive ones. Practising gratitude is good for us

Ruth Jackson, “Why I’ve given up moaning this Lent”, The Times, 19 March

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