In The Times Luis Rodriguez who is an Anglican priest writes that the Church will find a special place for its scapegoats — again.
In the Daily Telegraph Christopher Howse asks How did the death of Jesus save us?
In the Guardian Nicholas Buxton, an ordinand at Stephen’s House, writes the Face to Faith column.
Giles Fraser wrote in the Church Times about The great thanksgiving at sunrise.
There is an excellent article in The New Yorker by Jane Kramer on The Pope and Islam.
Luis Rodriguez’ beautifully written piece is a model of clear thinking and analysis. Scape-goating is indeed the key to current Anglican events, which otherwise would be inexplicable to us. Those who baulk at the Enlightenment and find its intellectual and spiritual demands on them personally, too painful, too traumatic should not in truth, be in charge of the whole religious enterprise. To go on believing the same thing, in a different age, is to believe something different. Alas, there can be no standing still. ‘The faith once delivered’ looks and is different in the 21st century, and cannot ‘speak to… Read more »
Beautiful meditation by Giles Fraser—one that very much makes me wish I could visit London again! (As I did once, long ago…)
No matter: HE IS RISEN just as much in my rustbelt town in the American Midwest, as “on the bosom of the silver Thames”. Alleluia! 😀
Thanks Simon, they are a nice set of articles. I confess to the Pope article being a bit too long for me. Partly because I think that Jane is correct that it is two peas in a pod trying to be the king pea. Sibling rivalry, which is where I think some evangelicals might have gone off the rails. They are looking at strong authoritative structures and covetting it for themselves. This is a tragedy, we need to understand that peas knocking each other off (with either words or weapons) risks the all the crops not reaching fruition. The skills… Read more »
What the New Yorker does not say is what happens after a big figure has been in religious leadership, one who has taken authority into his person and inevitably does some shortcuts going about the leadership business. Inevitably charsimatic authority is replaced by traditional and even rational, and this is what this Pope has done. Those (like me) who have looked at the development of the Bahai faith as a model of understanding how religions develop see how a charismatic leader called Abdul Baha (and who also travelled all over) was replaced in essence by a bureaucrat and someone who… Read more »
Yes – Fr. Rodriguez is correct about scapegoating, though the article could have done without what seems to me a naive and gratuitous introduction of the roll call of honour – Gore, Temple and Ramsey. Such a GCSE approach simply detracts from what is essentially a good and simple point.
Pluralist, I agree with you. A couple of my postings this morning parallel your thinking. I would have modified them to refer to your posting, if I had seen it first 🙂