Stephen Tomkins is giving up Christmas for Advent, read the Guardian’s Face to Faith column.
In The Times Geza Vermes writes about The real Christmas story and Peter Townley writes about Ted Whickham in Sowing the seeds of mission on stony urban soil.
Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about church architecture, Ionic, Doric and Catholic.
The Church Times had this leader about the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope: Why they must keep talking.
The Geza Vermes comments are fairly standard, but elsewhere in the Church Times is an absence of Christmas spirit, whether that spirit comes from its story or more probably by critical historical approaches. It is this article that gives rise for great concern: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=29834 St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust (SSG), an Eastern Orthodox charity, is censoring by exclusion some books that SPCK used to sell, including the Qur’an. It regards Islam as part of the opposition, along with secularism. One wonders which parts of Christianity will be censored out as this process goes along. We already have evangelical Christian… Read more »
Yes Pluralist it is cause for great concern.
It seems to spell the end of sPCK as I have known it.
Theological narrowing down seems to be tacking root all around in the ‘mainstream’ Churches. How ironic and deeply sad that the champions of orthordoxy and Conservatism of various hues, should be seeking to destroy the spirituality of real people ‘on the street’.
One shouldn’t lament over much about SPCK at one level — I remember years ago they refused to stock the Christmas Comic Relief book on the grounds that its contents might offend. I pointed out to the manager of the York shop that perhaps the large volume entitled ‘Modern Warplanes of the World’ conspicuously on display in the ‘vox pop’ section might have contents which some might find offensive, but was met by a corporate ‘company policy’ reply…..