Chad Bird Christianity is not about a personal relationship with Jesus
Simon Butler ViaMedia.News Adjectival Insufficiency
12 CommentsAn interview by Pray Tell Blog with Fr Michael White and Evan Ponton, both of the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Md, USA Liturgy as Evangelization
Richard Peers Quodcumque Messy is the Mass: my experience of Messy Church
Richard Peers Quodcumque Meeting the risen Jesus at the National Gallery: Michelangelo and Sebastiano
Bosco Peters Liturgy Even Pagans are Losing Their Religion
3 CommentsDavid Walker ViaMedia.News Why Should the Devil Have All the Best Tunes (and Words)?
Adrian Harris, the Church of England’s head of digital communications, has been talking to Helen Dunne of CorpComms Magazine: How the Church of England is extending its congregation
Madeleine Davies Church Times Exporting the Brompton Way
“An HTB church-plant is now widely expected when a well-situated urban church’s numbers are low.”
Joanna Ruck The Guardian Easter Sunday around the world – in pictures
Nick Spencer The Telegraph Our politicians are more devout than ever – so it’s time we started taking their faith seriously
Melanie McDonagh The Spectator If you want to save the CofE, then get stuck in (and go to church)
a few Easter sermons
Archbishop of Dublin [There is a link to the full text at the end.]
Archbishop of Canterbury
Bishop of Chichester
Bishop of Durham
Bishop of Jarrow
Bishop of Leeds
Bishop of Lincoln
Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of York has messages in two newspapers: Yorkshire Post York Press
Bishop of Basingstoke
Bishop of Bath and Wells
Bishops of Blackburn, Burnley and Lancaster
Bishop of Chichester [3½ minute video]
Bishop of Coventry
Bishop of Dorking
Bishop of Dover
Bishop of Dudley
The Bishop of Durham has two different messages written message video message
Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe
Bishop of Leeds
The Bishop of Liverpool has two different messages written message video message
Bishop of Manchester
Bishop of Newcastle
Bishop of Norwich
Bishop of Oxford
Bishop of St Edmundsbury And Ipswich
Bishop of Sherborne
Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham [4 minute video]
Bishop of Warrington
Bishop of Worcester
Archbishops of Armagh
Archbishop of Dublin
Bishop of Down & Dromore
Bishop of Argyll and The Isles
Bishop of Bangor
Bishop of Monmouth
Bishop of St Asaph
Bishop of St Davids
Bishop of Swansea and Brecon
Presiding Bishop of the US-based Episcopal Church
Archbishop of Melbourne
Archbishop of Sydney
The Primates of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia
Moderator of the Church of South India
6 CommentsTwo pieces from The Spectator:
Rod Dreher The Benedict option “Believers must find new, more radical ways to practise their faith.”
and in response
Matthew Parris Why I admire the Church of England “Some disapprove of the church’s frequent accommodations with secular society. I do not.”
Paul Bayes ViaMedia.News A Moment in the Tangle
Two pieces from ABC Religion and Ethics:
Stanley Hauerwas Naming God: The Burning Bush, the Cross and the Hiddenness of the Revealed God
Richard B Hays What Is Handed Over: Maundy Thursday, Memory and the Gospel
Peter Ould looks at a recent ComRes poll poll for Psephizo Do Christians really not believe in the Resurrection?
Richard Coles New Statesman Brexiteers and Remainers alike could learn from the life of Jesus
Alison Ray British Library Medieval manuscripts blog A hunt for medieval Easter eggs — including a 15th-century recipe for an imitation egg
Harriet Sherwood The Guardian The modern pilgrims retracing Britain’s ancient routes
4 CommentsLouie Crew Clay Episcopal Café Sass and the Gospel
Nick Spencer Theos Looking down the well at the resurrection
Philip Jones Ecclesiastical Law The Easter Offering: Duty and Charity
Jenny Sinclair The Tablet Rebuilding the Broken Body
Kelvin Holdsworth Whither the Chrism Mass?
Anglican Memes Top novelist @fictionfox’s husband’s career change prompts Twitter gold
15 CommentsJ Barrett Lee Hopping Hadrian’s Wall Altar Calls: Discussing Liturgical Worship with Evangelicals
Nick Baines Diocese of Leeds Bishop Nick speaks on working with the media
N T Wright ABC Religion and Ethic Palm Sunday: Jesus Rides into the Perfect Storm
Kelvin Holdsworth Thurible Trolleys are for Supermarkets (and not for funerals).
Roger Bolton Church Times The BBC and religion: bad decisions, badly timed
“The Corporation lacks a strategy, and is dangerously out of touch with faith communities.”
Madeleine Davies Church Times Why big churches aren’t led by women
“Care for their families is a key reason hardly any women are incumbents of the Church’s largest churches, a new research paper from Ministry Division has concluded.”
The paper is here: Vocational pathways: Clergy leading large churches.
Updated Thursday evening, Friday morning
Patrick Cox Public Radio International ‘What a total God shot!’ Understand that? Then you speak Christianese.
The Guardian The Guardian view on funding heritage: save buildings if not beliefs
“The ancient churches and cathedrals of Britain are real national treasures, shared with unbelievers. They must be paid for.”
Nick Baines Diocese of Leeds Bishop Nick speaks on working with the media
Liz Graveling Ministry Development Larger Churches: Who leads them and where are all the women?
[Update: This article has been temporarily removed and will be reposted after Easter.]
Bosco Peters Liturgy Pope Francis to make Martin Luther a Saint on October 31
ABC Religion and Ethics published this piece by Michael Collett God and the problem of sincere disbelief followed by this reply from Michael Jensen Sincerity is not enough: the problem with the problem of sincere disbelief.
Archbishop Cranmer Women bishops: the desperate and disingenuous distinction in the Five Guiding Principles
Rhian Taylor pcn britain It’s a Man’s Church
Sam Charles Norton Elizaphanian Let my people go
Andrew Lightbown Theore0 Oxford, Sheffield, Llandaff etc
Mark Hart Church Times The C of E’s unsung success story
David Ison ViaMedia.News The Power of Feeling over Thinking
James Jones The Yorkshire Post House of God opens a door to the divine
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love How do we come into the presence of God?
and Prayer and the body
David Pocklington Law & Religion UK The Independent Reviewer and the Sheffield See “A Review on the Reviewer”
Archbishop Cranmer Bishop of Sheffield: Martyn Percy asked for bread; Sentamu and Welby give a stone
Sam Charles Norton Elizaphanian Do the five guiding principles commit the Church of England to lay presidency?
Paul Bayes The Huffington Post For Carol’s Sake, For Christ’s Sake, We Must Look After The Poor
32 CommentsBosco Peters Liturgy How Revealed Is Christianity?
Giles Fraser The Guardian Prayer is not wishful nonsense. It helps us to shut up and think
Jayne Ozanne ViaMedia.News Are We an Institutionally Homophobic Church?
Martin Saunders Christian Today In His Grip: A guide to Christian email sign-offs
Scott Gunn Seven whole days Getting your church building ready for guests
8 CommentsLinda Woodhead Modern Church The Philip North affair has exposed the theological weakness of ‘traditionalism’
Frances Coleman-Williams Metro Why I don’t tell people I’m Christian even though it’s a big part of my life
Nicky Tyrone Are chocolate companies “destroying Christianity”? I try and get the scoop
Archdruid Eileen The War on Easter
Andrew Lightbown Theore0 Becoming the best church we can be
Richard Coles has been taking to Katie Deighton of The Drum: Reverend Richard Coles: ‘The Church of England is spectacularly bad at handling the world of media and communications’.
22 CommentsJonathan Clatworthy Château Clâteau Are liberals illiberal about women priests?
Ryan Cook My perilous Journey to Anglican Ordination & Conflictual Love for the Church
Andrew Lightbown Theore0 Neither guides nor principles in the blame game
Kelvin Holdsworth St Eucalyptus and St Anaglypta revisited — Does the Eucharist exist in cyberspace?
Marcia Pally ABC Religion and Ethics Forgive Us Our Trespasses? The Economics of the Lord’s Prayer
Giles Fraser The Guardian As Songs of Praise viewers will find out, the market is bad at doing religion
Charlotte Bannister-Parker ViaMedia.News Learning From our Disagreements
8 CommentsChristina Beardsley OneBodyOneFaith On not throwing stones at the late Revd Carol Stone
Kimberly Bohan wonderful exchange theology & flourishing: Why do we send ordinands to theological college?
Martin Seeley ViaMedia.News A Tale of Two Shared Conversations
Sonya Doragh and Lizzie Lowrie Diocese of Liverpool ‘Mother’s Day Runaways’ will offer a safe space to find God’s presence on Mothering Sunday eve
Anonymous The Guardian What I’m really thinking: the gay Christian
David Pocklington Law & Religion UK The Stirrings in Sheffield: the next steps in the appointment of a bishop in the See of Sheffield.
John Davies looks at how to prevent clergy-PCC relationships’ becoming a tug of war Church Times A responsibility to co-operate
Stephen Cottrell Presidential Address to Chelmsford Diocesan Synod, 11 March 2017
[Harry Farley of Christian Today reports on this: Bishop Calls For ‘Thanksgiving’ Prayers For Gay Couples]
Mark Tanner Church Times How to run a perfect PCC
Andrew Lightbown Theore0 Episcopacy, sacramentality & identity
Archdruid Eileen The Church of England’s Prayer for Today
Colin Coward Something is dramatically wrong with the C of E
Andy Walton Christian Today Why The Future Of The Church Of England Is In The Balance After The Sheffield Debacle
This is one I missed earlier:
Colin Coward A tale of two bishops
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love A tale of two bishops
David Pocklington Law & Religion UK Lenten tips for choristers
Michael Perham Ash Wednesday Sermon 2017 Salisbury Cathedral
The diocese of Salisbury has this accompanying news item: A Moving Lenten Message: Bishop Michael Perham preaches final Ash Wednesday sermon at Salisbury Cathedral
Mark Tanner (the Church of England’s Northernmost Bishop) I’ve crafted myself a more comfortable cross…
5 CommentsLorraine Cavanagh Modern Church In our right minds
Lucy Gorman Synod Scoop Bishops, friends and radical inclusion.
Andy Bryant withthecollaroff Dethroning the mythology for a richer vision of marriage
Andrew Lightbown Theore0 Watershed moments
Theo Hobson The Spectator The Church of England should be agnostic towards homosexuality
Mark Woods Christian Today Why The Church Needs To Rethink Its Attitude To Marriage
Linda Woodhead Prospect The Church of England has reached a turning point on gay marriage
Scott Gunn Seven whole days Make great websites for cheap! (church websites, part 2)
How to kill your church by misusing the internet (church websites, part 3)
David Pocklington and Frank Cranmer Law & Religion UK Banns of marriage – their development and future
Chris Stokel-Walker BBC How smart phones and social media are changing Christianity
and in response: Archdruid Eileen The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley Atomised Bible for a Hyperconnected World
Kelvin Holdsworth What is really going on in the Church of England
Giles Fraser The Guardian The clergy has moved on. It’s the bishops who are out of touch
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love Double amber – proceed with extreme caution – unconditional love ahead
Erasmus The Economist As church and society diverge, so do Christianity’s liberals and hardliners
Josiah Atkins Idowu-Fearon The Living Church England and the Anglican Communion: Outward Moving Mission
[This is the full text of the Archbishop’s address to the General Synod on 16 February.]
Richard Peers Quodcumque Just do it! Grace before meals
Scott Gunn Seven whole days Thirteen Commandments for your website (church websites, part 1)
35 CommentsWe are pleased to publish this article from The Revd Dr Jennifer Strawbridge.
The Bishops’ Report and Scripture: A Missed Opportunity
Jennifer Strawbridge (Associate Professor of New Testament Studies & Caird Fellow in Theology, University of Oxford)
Proof-texting of Scripture is all too common in discussions of human sexuality, but its theological worth is rather limited. The more so, when it is done incorrectly. This is not what the recent publication by the House of Bishops – Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations – has done. In fact, this document makes explicit reference to Scripture only 5 times across its 19 pages of text. However, one of the Pauline passages used to introduce this report is based on an unfortunate misunderstanding of the Apostle. While this misunderstanding does not ultimately affect the content of the report, it does cast a shadow over what follows and represents a missed opportunity for how Scripture can be engaged in such conversations.
The first paragraph of the report states, “As St Paul writes, ‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me…’ (Galatians 2.19ff). For St Paul that meant setting aside even the wonderful privilege of Jewish identity and giving priority to the cross and resurrection of Christ. It is in this light that the Church of England has to consider the difficulties over human sexuality that have been a source of tension and division for many years.”
What this introduction misunderstands and misses is twofold. Firstly, in both his letters and in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is a Jew and identifies clearly as a Jew in the present tense. To state that Paul is “setting aside” his “Jewish identity” misunderstands Paul. Second, such misunderstanding in the very first paragraph means the report misses the nuance of Paul’s writings and the reality that he too is grappling with “tension and division” both within his communities and in terms of his own identity. To recognise such a nuance would make clear that questions of identity are not as simple as this report’s introduction suggests and that identity with Christ is not as simple as “setting aside” one’s identity at birth (which itself is a loaded and potentially harmful assumption in a report on sexuality and identity).
In Philippians 3.4-6, therefore, Paul writes that in terms of confidence “in the flesh”, he has more for he is: “a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews.” Even if these “gains” are now regarded by Paul “as loss because of Christ” (Phil 3.7) and as “rubbish” (3.8), Paul’s Jewish identity is not solely in his past. This is made clearer in Romans 11.1 where Paul states in his defence of God’s promises that “I myself am an Israelite, a descendent of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.” Paul’s testimony before the tribunal in Acts 21 is even more direct, demonstrating unambiguously what the Evangelist thinks of Paul’s identity. Paul begins his defence with the words, “I am a Jew” and then repeats this same claim “in the Hebrew language” in Acts 22 (“I am a Jew”) after which he immediately recounts in the past tense that he previously “persecuted this Way”. Moreover, returning to his letters, Paul counters Corinthian boasting with his own in 2 Corinthians 11.22: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? … I am a better one.”
And here we encounter first-hand the tension in Paul’s identity. Paul is still a Hebrew, an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, in other words, he is a Jew. But he is also a minister of Christ; he is also one who suffers for the sake of the gospel. Paul’s identity is inextricably wrapped up in both.
Furthermore, such tensions can be perceived not only in Paul’s own identity, but also in how he understands the spread of his gospel. Paul over and over again, as “apostle to the Gentiles”, gives priority to the Jews even though he is clear many of them do not recognise Christ as Messiah. In Romans 1.16, he observes that the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” And in Romans 2.9-10, Paul writes that God’s judgement and God’s glory fall on “the Jew first and also the Greek” for “God shows no partiality.” In fact, “both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin” (Rom 3.9), “for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to those who call on him” (Rom 10.12). This, of course, doesn’t mean that nothing happened to Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 26) or when Christ is revealed to him (1 Cor 15.8; Gal 1.15-17). Neither does it mean that Paul’s language about Jew and Gentile leads to a vision of humanity as “one overcooked stew where all the ingredients taste the same” as Beverly Gaventa clarifies. For “Paul recognizes distinct histories of Jews and Gentiles” (Gaventa 2014, 103). But noting only the division in Paul’s life, as the start of the Bishops’ Report does, is a problem and misses the nuance and the gift of Paul’s wrestling with identity. Paul clearly remains a Jew. Paul clearly identifies himself as Jewish. But Paul has also reconceived who the people of God are after his encounter with the risen Lord. And this is the dimension of Paul’s identity struggles which might be fruitfully engaged by the Bishops’ Report.
Paul’s own words preclude the simple statement that he has set aside his Jewish identity for Christ. Rather, we must see that Paul is trying very hard (and we must acknowledge that he is not always consistent across his letters) to hold together his Jewish identity with the reality that he has, indeed, “been crucified with Christ” and Christ now lives in and defines his life. This tension leads to questions that dominate the Pauline writings: how then do Jew and Gentile relate? What happens to the Law? Does this mean God has broken God’s promises with Israel? And most importantly for this Report: How does Paul hold together the tension that one dies “to the law through the body of Christ” (Rom 7.4) while at the same time claiming in almost the same breath that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Rom 7.12)? How can Paul identify himself both by Christ’s death and resurrection (Rom 6.5; Phil 3.10-11) and as a Hebrew, Israelite, and Jew?
This grappling with understanding of law and of identity that we find clearly in Paul’s letters is evident throughout the Bishops’ Report, phrased explicitly in the stated framework: “Interpreting the existing law and guidance to permit maximum freedom within it, without changes to the law, or the doctrine of the Church” (§1.22). However, by beginning with a misunderstanding of Paul and his identity, this report misses a great opportunity to draw on Paul’s own struggles in a document that is clearly trying to balance both the obvious and the not-so-evident struggles within our Church. Instead, this report has given us a new scriptural text to add to the ever-growing list of those proof-texted, intentionally or not, for the purposes of debate concerning human sexuality. More significantly, the Bishops’ Report divides doctrine from pastoral practice and misses both the chance to wrestle with the “tension and division” inherent in Paul’s mission and the opportunity to ground a statement on human sexuality in theology and more than that, in the depths of holy Scripture.
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