Hayley Matthews ViaMedia.News For Grenfell – Where Were You?
Giles Fraser The Guardian After the Grenfell fire, the church got it right where the council failed
Andrew Brown The Guardian Collusion, cover-up and child abuse in the Church of England
Bosco Peters Liturgy Preaching – The Parable of the Internet
Church Projector Screens
Wonderful to read that the church was opened up and the lights turned on in the deeps of that terrible night. And serving breakfast by the morning. And, fundamentally, being there. Sharing life, being there. Listening, comforting… being there. “The people on the lowest incomes of this parish simply do not feel listened to, either this week or in previous years, by those in power.” But the simple truth is that the political system for decades has been geared up to protect the interests of “those who have”. Jesus Christ was “there”… sharing life, living among, ordinary people. Essential that… Read more »
I was abused as an eight-year-old child at boarding school. I ran away three times (proud of that), but was repeatedly sent back into the hands of my abuser (the head teacher). I gained insight about sexual abuse in my 20’s, when I worked as an Assistant Governor in the Prison Service, and was tasked to run a national centre for 120 serious sex offenders. I closely interviewed every single one and explored their profoundly selfish compulsions. Years later, when I had switched to education and was acting Head at a school for similar-aged pupils, I received a phone call… Read more »
@Susannah: I am very sorry indeed that you have had to live under that shadow. Thank you for your thoughts. Andrew Brown notes the striking similarities between the abuse perpetrated by Ball and that of the Bash camps. The other thing that connects the Smyth with the Ball is their rancid snobbery, in its own – if less repulsive way – a complete negation of the principles on which our faith is founded. A further reflection on the Gibb Report: I recently found myself re-reading Norman Dixon’s classic, ‘On the Psychology of Military Incompetence’ (1976), and wondered that if the… Read more »
‘We are an unsuccessful church’ – by the standards of so much of today’s Anglican machinery. But not by the standards of Jesus. Maybe General Synod – or, better, the House of Bishops – need to do some study of the letters to the 7 churches from the first chapters of Revelation. It’s not the self-satisfied large, rich church that does well in God’s eyes, but the small, struggling one under attack.