Jonathan Sacks writes in The Times We must guard love in this world of easy pleasures.
Michael Wright writes in the Guardian about becoming a Quaker.
Diana Butler Bass writes at Beliefnet about The Real Decline of Churches.
Robin Gill wrote in last week’s Church Times about Turning from the slippery slope.
Giles Fraser writes in this week’ s Church Times If I have to push, I shall push.
All Giles Fraser’s piece demonstrates is that schools shouldn’t have any formal connection with Churches – the motives get confused on both sides.
Graham Shaw wrote in Time and Tide a chapter on his own movement to the Quakers, giving up his Anglican ministry if not orders, with a view that it encourages a more authentic discipline towards truth, and my own view is that the demands via apostolic expectation do distort and skew expressions of truthfulness to oneself and others. You end up with an orthodoxy game of appearances rather than a more rigorous if difficult truth seeking.
The Butler piece is quite interesting. Consistent with what I have been able to pick up anecdotally – generation gaps, intellectual changes. Two factors. One is the constant wear and tear on big tent communities of faith, as weaponized vigor exploits this or that hot button difference, usually in a bid for power. This most often does not successfully take over the community – just tears the big tent apart. In the case of the Southern Baptists USA, the take over did seem successful. Free thinking Southern Baptists who understood the baptist tradition to have leeway enough to include them,… Read more »
Kendall Harmon has written a critique of the piece by Diana Butler Bass here:
http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/24486/