The Communities First Association (CFA), a fast-growing inter-church movement based in the United States, has been formally launched at the beginning of July 2009.

Public life demands ‘tough’ corporate attributes rather than what it labels ‘soft’ personal ones – like love and gratitude. Simon Barrow argues that the communal cultivation of loving relation is needed to help redirect the official anonymity of the social order.

The best charity gifts help develop the independence and sustainability of struggling economies. In the hands of local people, a small business can be a powerful weapon in the fight against poverty.

The campaigning group Black Mental Health UK has condemned the rapid rise in the number of suicides in prison over the past 12 months, and is seeking the backing of community and faith groups in its call for urgent government action.

Our parliamentary politics is about mediating different interests in a society of strangers, says Simon Barrow. But bioethical decisions confront us with the need to move beyond accommodation and confrontation to moral community.