Andrew Brown writes in The Guardian about The Church of England’s unglamorous, local future.
This article prompted these letters to the editor.
A N Wilson writs in The Telegraph that It’s the Gospel truth – so take it or leave it.
Ken Howard writes for Paradoxical Thoughts about Non-Proselytizing Evangelism: Returning To The Roots Of Anglican-Episcopal Tradition and the Incarnational Heart Of Christianity. [originally published in the e-magazine Witness6.7]
Malcolm Brown, the Director of the CofE’s Mission and Public Affairs Division, writes in The Observer that Without morality, the market economy will destroy itself.
Giles Fraser asks in The Guardian: Can you be too religious?
Peter Ormerod writes in The Guardian that Children’s nativity plays could have been invented by Satan.
Oh dear, hardly words of comfort and joy from the pens of Andrew Brown and A N Wilson about disestablishment and the fading influence of the C of E. Yet we’ve heard it all before, for as long ago as 1867 Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach was writing of the Sea of Faith’s ” melancholy, long withdrawing roar”. More recently Michael Hampson gave us the “Last Rites” in ” The End of the Church of England” . Coming right up to date George Carey has gloomily predicted in a Scrooge like manner that we are just one generation away from… Read more »
I wonder how much ecclesiastical light shone for David Kato, Daniel Zamudio, and Fanny Ann Eddy.
Perhaps the problem with the church is that it has been part of the darkness for too long.
Father David; quite wonderfully enunciated! I, too, am puzzled at the likes of George Carey and Co., reiterating their doom and gloom scenario. Perhaps it is because of a sense of their own self-righteousness that religious functionaries are sometimes tempted to emit harrumphs of dissatisfaction, at what they see as the world’s imminent demise. However, we can all take heart that, even in the days of Jesus, the Scribes and Pharisees were known to fulminate against the sins of the great unwashed. That’s why he was so unpopular to them. Jesus wanted to replace the penalty of the Law with… Read more »
Fr. Giles Fraser hits the nail on the head – yet again. When Christians put more emphasis on the words in The Book than in the Word-made-flesh in the context of a worship activity, the balance becomes precarious. The guide-book can never take the place of experience of the treasures it points to:
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; and we have seen His glory – the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”
Speaking for myself, it’s being part of the Church of England that opens doors for me in and around our town. When I’m asked and my reply is that I’m a minister in the C of E, you can almost hear an audible sigh of relief. So, brothers and sisters, despair not, the good old Church of England (although reeling and rocking on its foundations) is still recognised as sound and central to Society by those who really need us. And in the words of Tiny Tim “May God bless us every one” in 2014.
The poetry of John doesn’t change a consistent, long-term decline in attendance. Neither do packed churches at Christmas.
And Father Ron, do you really go in for old, utterly-discredited sport of Pharisee-bashing? I’d have hoped that here, of all places, would have a good word to say for the predecessors of the rabbinate.