Erasmus

THERE are many reasons why sceptics might find fault with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, along with 169 associated targets, which the leaders of the world (including the pope) will adopt, with some fanfare, in New York this week. One problem, as a colleague has written, is that they are simply too numerous. As the French statesman Georges Clemenceau expostulated in 1919, when presented with Woodrow Wilson's "14 points" for a new world order, "le bon Dieu n'en a eu que dix", ten [commandments] were enough for the good Lord.

THE SENTENCING of Venezuela's opposition leader, Leopoldo López, to nearly 14 years in prison, on top of the 18 months he has already spent in mostly-solitary confinement, triggered a range of different reactions. Amnesty International, a global human-rights lobby, said of the verdict: “The charges against [him] were never adequately substantiated and the prison sentence against him is clearly politically motivated. His only ‘crime’ was being leader of an opposition party in Venezuela.”  Human Rights Watch, another international watch-dog, spoke of "egregious violations" of due process.

Updated, 4pm GMT: To include Pope Francis's call on all European parishioners.

HOW are the guardians of Europe's historically dominant faith reacting to the hundreds of thousands of people who are now trying to reach the continent's heart in search of relief from war or poverty? In two diametrically opposing ways. On one hand, European churches and religious charities have played a prominent role in succouring migrants and campaigning for them to be treated decently.

MAX WEBER, the great German theorist of religious influence on economics, seems to be gaining more followers by the day. The latest person to posit a religious explanation for the euro crisis (or rather, for the way the euro crisis is being handled) is Emmanuel Macron, France's economy minister.

Europe's fault-line, he told a conference in Berlin, was between different forms of Christianity. On one hand, there was the Protestant north, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a German pastor's daughter. This was a region where people believed in retribution, and hence took the view that: "Some people failed, some member states...didn't respect their commitments.

WHEN Pope Francis issued his 192-page encyclical on climate change and pollution, this was rightly hailed as a landmark in the history of the papacy, and of environmentalism. Now Islamic scholars have added their voice to a crescendo of spiritually-inspired cries for action to conserve the planet.

From a meeting in Istanbul attended by senior Muslims from Morocco to Bosnia to Indonesia (but relatively few from Islam's fossil-rich heartland) there came a passionate and impressively detailed appeal for a new global pact at the Paris climate summit in December.

CHRISTINA HOPPER, an officer in the American air force, attracts a lot of publicity, for several reasons. Having flown combat missions over Iraq, she has been hailed as the first African-American woman to pilot a fighter aircraft in an active war zone. She is also a passionate evangelical Christian, who believes that she had a divine vocation to become a pilot of war planes. Her nickname, and call-sign, is Thumper, which is short for Bible-thumper. 

As an article about her in Ebony magazine noted admiringly, she was the

...

BELFAST used to be one of the great industrial cities of the British Empire, sending ships, machinery and textiles to every corner of the globe. These days one of the city's main offerings to the world consists of legal test cases in which the freedom of one person or community is pitted against the sensibilities of other parties. Only a few months ago, in an internationally-watched saga, a bakery in Belfast was obliged to pay compensation after it refused, citing religious objections, to bake a cake with the words "Support Gay Marriage".