This article dates from 1996 but may be of interest
Andrew Brown Prospect The unholy mess
Savi Hensman ViaMedia.News Secularism – A Force for Good?
Angharad Woolcott Church Times ‘As a survivor, I believe that by talking out, I may be able to help others’
“A survivor of clergy abuse reflects on the BBC2 documentary Exposed: The Church’s darkest secret, on the serial sex-offender and former bishop Peter Ball”
Richard Harries Church Times What it feels like to believe
“Richard Harries argues in the last in his series that, in a sceptical age, an appeal to personal experience remains paramount”
Outstanding article, Savi.
Thanks to the incessant confusion of secularism with atheism, I’m obliged to keep reminding people that secularism’s merely the separation of church and state, no more atheist than it is Christian, Muslim or Hindu.
It speaks volumes that its origins lie not amongst deists or other Enlightenment thinkers, but dissenting Christians sick of being persecuted by their supposed co-religionists.
Union with the church invariably corrupts her and her message. Anyone who values bold and uncompromising Christianity should advocate vigorously that she set free.
Secularism has its different varieties. Certainly French secularism seems aggressively anti-religious, far more so than American “separation of Church and state”.
@Jo B, I think there’s a difference between the French concept of laicite and what we commonly call secularism. There are times when the Church of England would benefit from a dose of how France deals with the relationship between church and state.
Interesting article from Andrew Brown in 1996. Looks like Carey’s agenda then is very similar to Welby’s today!
I recall the Crockford Affair, and I spent an idle hour yesterday researching it and confirming my memory. The Brown article, which I don’t recall reading at the time it was published, adds more post-Crockford scandal to the pile; the account of the actions and personnel of the SPCK was new to me. Sadly, Brown’s article is now touchingly naive, even as it dissects the appalling behaviour of bad people. History has made a nonsense of it. Its argument at the time was basically that a lot of very bad things, mostly directly or indirectly connected with closeted homosexuality, happened… Read more »