Friday's News & Ideas - 7/8/2022

Record number of people worldwide are moving toward starvation, U.N. warns
Associated Press: The spike in food, fuel and fertilizer prices sparked by the war in Ukraine is threatening to push countries around the world into famine, bringing “global destabilization, starvation and mass migration on an unprecedented scale,” a top U.N. official warned Wednesday.

Columbia Theological Seminary students object to firing of Black administrator
Religion News Service: Students say it’s the latest in a series of firings of faculty and administration of color since 2019.

Death of two Jesuit priests shines spotlight on growing threat in Mexico
The Guardian: The brazen murders highlight the risks the country’s priests face every day as they tend to their communities.

When religious freedom means freedom for religious violence
Religion Dispatches: At least since January 6th, some MAGA sectors have been dropping much of the pretense of religious freedom, while they appear to openly prepare their audiences for vigilante violence and religious war.

Papal, ecumenical diplomacy appears unable to affect Russia's war in Ukraine
National Catholic Reporter: When representatives of the World Council of Churches debated the war in Ukraine in late June, few expected the historic ecumenical organization to bow to demands for Russia’s Orthodox Church to be excluded over its support of President Vladimir Putin's bloody invasion.

The Spark

Codependency is a toxic myth in addiction recovery
The influence that the concept of codependency* has had on addiction treatment and policy has been toxic — and its tenets are not supported by data, The New York Times says.

*access is limited for nonsubscribers