In the latest edition of Reform magazine, four commentators explore whether things are getting better for women – in a religious context, in the wake of the #MeToo movement and equal pay scandal.

‘Women have made a lot of progress but there’s lots more to do,’ says Dawn Butler MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Equalities. ‘And some women have made much more progress than others. We can’t answer the general question of whether the experience of women has changed for the better without reflecting on the persistent inequalities relating to class and ethnicity as well as gender … women who are disabled, working class or from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background will not simply wait for their turn.’

I have always found problematic the notion that animals do not have souls.

No animal on earth can be as nasty as a nasty human. And yet, if we are to believe it, God made us the caretakers. Odd.

A Dog is a Small Shred of God

A dog is a small shred of God.
And cats and frogs are shreds of God.
And you too, Love, however odd,
are one sharp, shattered, shard of God.
And all of us however odd,
are smallish fragment-bits of God.

I like dogs more,
cats more, frogs more;
it isn’t really very odd
to find them easier to like
than splintered, human bits of God.

©LucyBerry

Lucy Berry is a poet, a mum, and a minister of the United Reformed Church. Her website is at www.lucyberry.com and she's available to perform, preach and lead workshops.

Thirty-one organisations, including the United Reformed Church, wrote to Boris Johnson MP, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on 16 April 2018 to urge the UK government to use the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) held between 23 April and 4 May 2018 at the United Nations Office in Geneva, to recognise and act upon the UK's international obligation to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.

The letter also encourages the government to participate in the UN High Level International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, scheduled to take place between 14 and 16 May in New York, and to use the opportunity to develop relations with non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) and make progress on the UK's disarmament obligations.