Maintaining a sense of perspective in the midst of the economic, ecological and political 'shaking processes' going on across the globe right now requires two things: a handle on the issues that is both practically sustainable and intellectually alert, and the ability to nurture hope and vision amidst a range of distractions and confusions.
 
The determination not to lose sight of the deeper challenges confronting people and planet is one of the characteristics of responses from development and environment organisations to the UK chancellor's 22 April budget, which is our Research Focus this week. It is about much more than minor fiscal adjustments. British based NGOs continue to work on the underlying issue of corporate tax avoidance, for example. This is the topic for a significant policy round table in London.
 
Meanwhile, there are important religious and theological dimensions to issues like broadcasting (see Sunny Hundal's article), the politics of the Middle East (Thinking in Action) and questions of nationalism, identity and the manipulations of the far right brought into focus by St George's Day (Media debate).
 
Our selected quotations this week reflect radical - but also, in the best sense, deeply traditional - thinking on the role of the church as a contrast community within the political order. This in turn depends on rectifying what Jim Wallis calls 'a historic Christian mistake': the alarming corruption of the Christian message by imperial assumptions. It means 'breaking the mould of Christendom', as David Clark expresses it in our book selection, by investing in new, liberating patterns of Christian engagement in a changing world - alongside others, not over and against them.