World AIDS Day, observed on 1 December each year, is an important opportunity for national AIDS programmes, faith organisations, community organisations, individuals and governments around the world to focus attention on the global AIDS epidemic and to emphasise the critical need for a committed, meaningful and sustained response at all levels.

It was an honour for new Ekklesia Associate Director Jordan Tchilingirian - who is from an Armenian background - and for me to attend the 2010 Constantinople Lecture last week.

It's easy to enjoy the potty-humoured aspects of World Toilet Day, which took place on 19 November. Indeed the WTD promoters do that themselves. But there are very serious issues underlying the event, effecting billions of people.

Ekklesia's good friend Harry Hagopian is giving the Annual Constantinople Lecture on Thursday 25 November 2010. Its topic is “The Armenian Genocide: A Way Forward?”

When he was Minister of State for Borders and Immigration in the Home Office, Phil Woolas MP objected to asylum seekers pursuing justice through appeals to the courts. Unlike him, of course, they had not been found guilty of breaking the law. Unlike him also, they did not have influential friends to fund their legal appeals.

Yesterday the BBC made what the Independent newspaper called "a comprehensive and humiliating apology" for unfounded allegations made eight months ago that millions of pounds of Band Aid and Live Aid money intended for victims of the Ethiopian famine was diverted into arms sales.

Iraqi Christian communities in Britain have arranged a joint remembrance service for the worshippers killed at the Our Lady of Salvation Syrian Catholic Church in Baghdad last weekend.

On 3 November 2010, Anglicans commemorate the 410th anniversary of the death of Richard Hooker. Many are also using the occasion to launch a campaign (http://noanglicancovenant.org/) against a proposed Anglican Covenant which they believe could stifle or deny the originating gifts he brought to Anglicanism.

It was with a rather heavy heart that I got my first media call today about the annual "red poppy" dust-up - which usually revolves around attacks from the Daily Mail and its kindred spirits on broadcasters, public figures and politicians who don't wear the British Legion Appeal symbol or who raise questions about what the practice means.

Today and tomorrow, 27 & 28 October, are key dates in Christian history. Constantine's 'vision of the Cross' in 312, and his attribution of military victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge the next day to God, was the beginning of Christendom in Europe - an era which mixed civilisation with bloodshed, saints with militarism, and faith with often brutal sacralised-secular power.