The Church Mouse asks Is Harvest Festival now redundant?
This prompted Kevin Holdsworth to write But when is Harvest? Please, please, when is it?
Giles Fraser writes in the Telegraph that Blessed are the children – as long as they keep it down. “The young often make a racket in church, but that’s no reason to kick them out”, he argues.
Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer profiles Karen Armstrong: The compassionate face of religion. “The former nun’s writing and theories about God and belief upset some, but she numbers the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu among her fans.”
Alan Wilson continues his series in The Guardian: The Book of Common Prayer, part 7: The joy of being a miserable sinner. “The gloomy prayers of the BCP are simply a communal stare over the precipice into an abyss, but from a place of grace.”
Mark Vernon writes in The Guardian about John Henry Newman’s last act of friendship. “Why the beatified cardinal wanted to be buried with Ambrose St John is disputed, but for me this was an act of ‘sworn brothers’.”
Graham Tomlin writes in the Church of England Newspaper about The End of the Pew? (He is in favour of getting rid of them.)
Giles Fraser writes in the Church Times about Looking at the fearful, insular US.
Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about Gauguin’s day to wrestle with God. “The most surprising thing about Gauguin is his interest in religion.”
Blessed JHN never celebrates love between man and woman or married love, as far as I know, in the entire course of his vast literary output; though he does express disgust at sexual misbehavior between the sexes (which some use as evidence of heterosexuality). Affectively he was given to passionate devotion to his own sex (the airbrushed Hurrell Froude being the most intense case).
I think Giles Fraser is well tuned in to the current noise of American politics. I live in a conservative part of Virginia, and the tone of anger in letters to the local newspaper, as well as the editorials and op ed pieces, has become markedly harsher in the last two years. Because we host one of Virginia’s refugee resettlement offices, we are a far more ethnically diverse community than you might expect, with a Muslim population large enough to support a mosque. In the last year or so a group of Jews, Christians and Muslims has started meeting once… Read more »
Giles Fraser’s piece on the Tea Party is spot on. IMHO, the Tea Party is all about fear. Both from people who are fearful and from those who want to exploit fear. It’s also about making some people more American than others. And I agree with those sources that Giles Fraser paraphrases about the real anger among some white males that there is a non-white male in the White House. I find it more than strange that many of the conditions that Fraser cites for fueling the existence of the Tea Party existed under the former President Bush, and there… Read more »
“Giles Fraser writes in the Church Times about Looking at the fearful, insular US.” Have fun shooting fish in a barrel, eh Giles? But amidst the six paragraphs of “Duh (Try living through it!)”, there’s this: “The instinct for economic protectionism against the economic threat of China is growing steadily. It is remarkable how quickly the US is prepared to abandon its apparent commitment to the free market.” 1) Whatever the “Tea Party” stands for (do they know?), one thing I’ve NEVER heard from it, is economic protectionism. (“Buy American”? Maybe. “Put tariffs on foreign goods”? Nuh-uh. Their “astro-turf” overlords… Read more »
Oh yikes – haste made some grammatical errors in my post. Mea culpa!
“At the heart of Augustine’s doctrinal complexity is a simple conviction that we attain blessedness not by navigation, but by love. Grace is the means by which this becomes real, and its aim is not damnation, but hope and renewal.” – Alan wilson in The Guardian – Whether this is truly ‘Augustinian’ or not, this statement is surely at the heart of the wonder of our redemption. If only the Global South clergy & prelates – and all who are opposed to open-ness in the Church about our common human sinfulness -could reflect on the fact that ‘Jesus Christ came… Read more »
“Newman’s advocacy of friendship is hard to make when, on the one hand, there are those who would use him as a gay icon and, on the other, there are others who would make him a comfortable, conservative saint.” – Mark Vernon, The Guardian – Maybe we will never know – this side of paradise -what precisely motivated John Henry Newman’s decision to be buried in the same grave as his beloved companion. One wonders, though, what ‘The Church’ thought about this at the time of his burial – especially considering the fact that the whole idea of ‘Special Friendships’… Read more »
As an open minded Roman Catholic, I appreciated the story about “the end of the pew”. Why? Just becouse in my humble opinion, the problem of secularism in our societies is not only concerning social justice in society, but even and in large due to the methodology of the Churches. In fact we have to be innovative and first of all, approach to the usual people of our current cities. I certainly recommend this report to all the clergy and all the people!…
“Was Cardinal Newman intent on overturning current thinking in the Catholic Church about the value of the bond of friendship between two clerics who worked together?” I think his gesture was part of a broader project. There is an emotional wound at the root of Newman’s personality (study the cold relationship to his mother, the extreme narcissistic introspection) and he worked hard, as if to compensate, to build up warm affectivity, using his heart, in many relationships — encouraged in this by the ethos of friendship in Oxford and in the Fathers (which he highlights in an essay on Basil… Read more »
Pews can inhibit and many churches are overpewed. But some sorts of chairs ( esp on carpet) can kill atmosphere. When we restored St George’s Bloomsbury we took out the pews ( a controversial move) but had Luke Hughes’s Pew Benches 9 all sponsored). They are movable and stackable and opened St G’s up for concerts / lectures / drama etc…giving a small parish financial viability with no loss of the sense of sacred space in a glorious Hawkesmoor Grade 1 Listed Building. http://www.stgeorgesbloomsbury.org.uk
Absolutely bang on Giles Fraser for making such a cleanly written and accurately descriptive essay on the “tea-baggers” (as they are derisively known to us here in the U.S.).
I cannot say this enough, the climate in the USA at present cannot be far away from what feelings and tensions where in pre-WWII Germany. It is as Cynthia Gilliatt put it, chilling.
I have always liked the Russian approach to pews, which is not to have them. Or chairs, except a few around the perimeter for the use of the aged, the ill, or the lazy (like myself).
In re Giles Fraser’s essay:
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/148413/the_family:_secretive_christian_group_of_conservative_lawmakers_building_a_%27god-led%27_government/
Pews or deck-chairs ? Is the ship cruising or heading for the rocks ?
The mate on watch is obsessing about chart corrections, the wheelsman is grumbling about what course to steer while not watching the gyrocompass and the old man is entertaining his buddy from Rome down in the Officer’s ward.
Giles Fraser’s assessment of the Tea Party is little more than European prejudices recycled. The Tea Party Movement represents legitimate Americans’ concerns about the explosive growth of our Federal Government (and yes, Giles, many of us were horrified by Mr. Bush’s excesses, but are absolutely mortified by the profligacy of Mr. Obama). We have watched the rule of law be subjugated to the whims of a self-righteous, self-important elite who think they know what is best for those of us who are “clinging bitterly to guns and religion.” For example, those who invested in bonds in at least one of… Read more »