Houses of worship are often shelters after the storm. Yet, as climate change fuels natural disasters and communities increasingly rely on congregations during disaster recovery, are houses of worship ready to be houses of refuge? Examining clergy influence, does a higher concern about climate change by clergy result in improved congregational disaster readiness? Data for the study come from a 2019 nationwide survey of clergy. The survey includes measures of congregational disaster preparedness along with one of the first applications of the SASSY climate concern measure to clergy. Results show that clergy have mixed opinions about climate change and that congregations led by high climate-concern clergy are no more prepared for disasters than those led by unconcerned clergy. While seemingly a null result, understanding the relationship between leaders, climate change, and disaster preparedness benefits the study of leader influence on organizations, religion and climate change, and the politics of disaster resilience.

An account of human subjectivity is built up from an analysis of the fundamental human desire for God. In conversation with Karl Rahner and Blaise Pascal, it is argued that this desire does not have any conceivable conditions of satisfiability. This leads to an account of human beings as fundamentally distractible, fragmented, opaque to themselves and non-self-identical; however, none of these are viewed as essentially problematic, arising instead out of the basic human–God relation rather than from a fallen condition. A range of implications for ethics and social criticism are briefly suggested.

This article examines the theology of Katherine Parr, sixth and surviving wife of Henry VIII, through a close reading of her mature work, The Lamentation of a Sinner. In particular, I treat Parr’s theological use of the epistle to the Romans to inform and structure her doctrine of the work of Christ within The Lamentation. I argue that Parr follows the structure of Romans in her opening lament over sin, her central discussion of the cross of Christ, and her application of this theology to the Christian lives of the people of England’s church. I also posit Parr’s use of several overlapping motifs for Christ’s work within The Lamentation’s treatment of the atonement and its relationship to the Protestant understanding of justification by faith.

Thomas Aquinas argues that ‘Old Law’, comprised of the precepts found in the Hebrew Bible, should be divided into three types: moral, ceremonial and judicial. His system is meant to be instructive for Christian ethics, distinguishing between eternally, universally binding precepts relevant to Christians and other irrelevant or even forbidden ones. But Aquinas derives this threefold division from a mistranslated Vulgate passage from Deuteronomy where a singular noun, mitzvah, is translated as a plural noun: praecepta. Based on the original Hebrew, the verse actually supports a twofold division, not a threefold one. Aquinas’ system also runs into issues when it comes to sorting the precepts. To fix the sorting, retain the instructive benefit, and shed the biblical tension, we ought to keep Aquinas’ understanding of ‘moral law’, but discard the judicial and ceremonial categories in favour of one ‘cultural law’ category, in line with the popular Jewish philosophical division between chukim and mishpatim.