The Archbishop of Canterbury preached at Canterbury Cathedral.
It is … a new creation … [that] can be brought into being only in ‘flesh’: not by material force, not by brilliant negotiation but by making real in human affairs the depth of divine life and love; by showing ‘glory’ — the intensity and radiance of unqualified joy, eternal self-giving. Only in the heart of the ordinary vulnerability of human life can this be shown in such a way, so that we are saved from the terrible temptation of confusing it with earthly power and success.
Read the full sermon here.
The Archbishop of York referred to the economic situation in his sermon.
If I enrich myself at my poor neighbour’s expense, when they are in financial straits, I certainly have the wrong attitude on the matter. True charity repudiates the idea of personal gain as a result of lending money to make ruthless gain- usury – bringing about permanent disappropriation and enslavement. Clearly the way to come closer to God is to be generous and honest towards our fellow human beings.
Extracts from his sermon can be read here
1 CommentEach year in our town we seem to find more and more Christmas Concerts on the social calendar. One of their consistent themes is to try and answer the need to return to a sense of Christmas being a special feeling and, inevitably descends into sentimentality and schmaltz. This derives from the sagging momentum of the German-style Christmas imported by the Victorians and, behind that, an awe-and-wonder reading of the sacred texts of Christmas.
To rescue Christmas from this increasingly wearying regression, we need to look again at the sacred texts in a way that invites us to be partners rather than spectators. Spectators see stars and magi, prophecies from long ago, squadrons of angels in the heavens and at the centre, a birth which is miraculous because it did not require the conventional preliminaries. All we can do, in the face of stories like this, is to exclaim that God is clever. Faced with our own inability to recreate such signs of wonder, our faces are pressed against the window of supernatural pyrotechnics and we come away empty-handed.
The stories of the supernatural birth of Jesus take on a different light when we consider them as part of a literary genre of the ancient world. There were many and various such stories, none more famous than the story of Augustus Caesar, born to his mother Atia and the god Apollo. Typically such birth stories came at the conclusion of the telling of the great deeds of an individual which must have been conceived in no less than the heavens. Augustus had brought the end of civil war and the longest period of peace that could be remembered. Although the Pax Romana was only felt if you were Romana, leaving the peasant classes impoverished, nonetheless it did not stop him being entitled Prince of Peace, while the coins of the empire styled him Son of God. When his biographer, Suetonius, concluded the story of his life he appended the story of Apollo coming to Atia in the temple and impregnating her. Ten months later, Atia’s husband dreamt he saw the sun rise from her womb and indeed the new Caesar would be born of Atia and the God of Light and be proclaimed Light of the World.
At the end of Augustus’s reign, there began the life of another man whose followers felt his life was patterned after the way of the heavens, Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew. Not the heavens of the brute force of Rome, but the heaven of a God who had made a good earth and had promised a land to a nation in which all should enjoy its fruits. This man met violence with peace, met poverty by organising people to share food, and met sickness with healing. This, said his followers, must surely be what a god does. On the day this man rode into Jerusalem, to the acclaim of crowds, the Roman authorities took one look at him, decided he was trouble and executed him, in the manner where they put dissidents on public display to warn others what happens when you cross Rome’s rule.
But his followers continued to experience his presence and the movement spread. In time his story was written and, quite late on in the process, stories of his divine conception were told. His destiny was described in terms of heroes of the past, Matthew used the stories of Moses, Luke the story of Samuel, and the titles Lord, Son of God, Prince of Peace. In other words, these birth stories were treason; if you said Jesus was Lord, you were saying that Caesar wasn’t.
We need this view of divinity now, as never before. The majority of our world is malnourished, and since 1945 we have come to the end of being able to use violence as a solution; we need this view of the sacred which is non-violent before we go up in a nuclear flash.
Christmas is not about trying to explain wondrous events, as if they literally happened, in the vain hope they can be repeated in our own day. They are narrative aids, both to subvert the birth stories of the leaders of empire, and point to a much more important truth that the life of this man is the pattern for how humanity might shape itself to become like the realm in the heavens, the Kingdom of God on earth.
34 Commentsan imaginative meditation for Christmas Day
I wept the day I gave birth. In the middle of all the joy, I looked and I wept. What I had called into being, I had also called into pain. The nearest, dearest, first, who opened his eyes wide and flung out his arms, he would carry the worst of the suffering. I had longed so for joy and companionship, but looking, I could see I had made pain. I had made struggle, and growth. I had begotten a child in my own image. I had created pain, for without pain, no one could be my companion.
I rejoiced the day I gave birth. I looked and my heart was filled with pride and joy. Those tiny sparks, reflected flickering lights, were crammed with courage and joy despite the darkness which surrounded them. I saw them struggle to live and to love, and, miraculously, even to give birth and to create. I saw love reflected in a thousand ways, in a myriad of broken miniature mirrors, and to me each of the tiny reflections seemed more beautiful than the original, lived as it was in partial darkness and unknowing.
And as I looked I saw the first in all his glory. My heart stopped at the beauty and the courage of him, at the love which filled him to the core, such love that it pulsed out of him, and all the flickering lights grew stronger, and the reflection grew and dazzled until the darkness began to roll back.
His eyes sought mine, and he called out to me: ‘Father, glorify your name.’
I caught his meaning, and my heart broke and reformed and joy filled me, oozing up to cover the pain, bright and overmastering. I looked at true beauty in wonder, and the wonder was that all of this was my own image. ‘I have glorified my name, and I will glorify it again.’ I answered.
5 CommentsMy favourite Radio 3 programme is Late Junction. Last Thursday, on the last programme of the year, they played the Carter family singing “No Depression in heaven”. This song from 1936 is suddenly relevant again in our current economic gloom, and depicts the great depression as a sign of the end times and heaven as an alternative to hunger and want. The chorus goes:
I’m going where there’s no depression
To a lovely land that’s free from care.
I’ll leave this world of toil and trouble.
My home’s in heaven. I’m going there.
You can hear it in a number of places, including here.
Heaven, God’s space, is imagined as a glorious place where there is no recession, no investment scandals, no crisis in banking, no defaulting on loans, no large-scale redundancies. Heaven is shown as quite separate from all of this.
Though it is — in some way — a theological reflection on economic crisis, I suspect it is not the reality check that the Archbishop of Canterbury was looking for.
There is an otherness of heaven, but it doesn’t stay “out there”. The message of Christmas is that heaven comes here and enters in to our space. Heaven doesn’t remain apart from the toil and trouble. Rather God breaks in to all the mess and is born as a vulnerable baby in the middle of it all.
Heaven is what happens when we let God in. It’s not that God is going to wave a magic pantomime wand and sort out the problems, but God will stand with us in the misery, inspire us to help those who are in depression because of the Depression, and give us the tools for making the moral and economic choices for remaking our world.
We need to start again, with the baby in the manger.
7 CommentsThe Pope, speaking on issues of sexuality, argues from the position of an organisation which has a vested interested in preserving a traditional totally male hierarchy. It reflects a view, now not universally accepted, that women have no voice and no vote, where husbands take over the property and the rights of wives, and in which the woman is ceremonially handed over from her father to her husband at her wedding.
Women’s emancipation in society has been one of the chief causes of a serious rift between Church and State in many countries where the ministry of Churches has remained restricted to men. Even formerly Catholic countries now describe themselves as having a secular constitution, and signs of the rift are most noticeable in areas relating to human sexuality:
It would be difficult to cite any other area in which Church and State have been more out of step with each other.
This unfortunately gives the impression that the only morality of interest to the Church is sexual morality. Indeed, it would now appear that the last time the Church could ever claim to lead a moral crusade to promote human equality it was over the ending of slavery, some two centuries ago. Since then it has been the State which has been in the forefront of promoting the dignity and equality of all people, whilst the Church has maintained its traditional inequalities by arguing for an opt-out from national legislation.
Clearly Church and State perceive society very differently. The State sees all people as having an equal and valid contribution to make, whereas the Church, in preserving a traditional male hierarchy, has a structure which appears more primitive and tribal.
Homo sapiens evolved the capability of operating in larger units than any other large mammal. As this happened the pattern of a clan under the headship of a dominant male required some adjustment.
With children taking many years to come to maturity, grandparents became important in helping them acquire the skills they would need for survival. And it was no longer only the breeding couples of this largely monogamous species which held the fabric of society together. A significant contribution has always been made by those who did not marry. Those who did not have the constant responsibility of feeding and rearing their own children had time to develop skills and enrich the community in other ways which would make them valuable to the whole group.
Such people were not perceived as a threat to married couples. The man who did not covet his neighbour’s wife has always been less of a danger to society than the heterosexual man who might want to tempt her away. The reason for having strict marriage laws is not because of what gay people might do, but in order to protect couples from heterosexual predators. It would therefore appear that once again the Pope has shown that the Church is out of step with society in its understanding of human sexuality. There is no danger to the species from gay people whilst 90% of people are attracted to the opposite sex. Gay people have never posed any threat to those who wish to live as heterosexual couples. They simply accept this as a valid lifestyle for those who wish to enjoy it.
Society in Britain, North America, and much of Europe is happy with this situation and has framed legislation to protect the rights of all people. By contrast the Pope is the personification of a wrong human ecology; one which fails to give rights to all people. And people wonder, seeing the Church of England’s hesitation over the ordination of women to the episcopate, whether having an Established Church which retains such an outmoded view of women has anything to commend it.
92 CommentsAs Mary makes her weary way to Bethlehem the Christ within her is about to face one of the most dangerous moments of his existence. For both mother and child the journey from womb to outside world in first century Palestine comes with a high mortality risk; their fates entwined together, either might kill the other.
St Luke gives few insights into the unborn Christ, telling us briefly of how John the Baptist, himself yet unborn, leaps in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary visits. But that account, taken with the story of Gabriel’s visit, is enough to establish that the Son of God did not take on human form at any point later than conception. It’s not a point I’ve heard dwelt on by preachers and theologians, and liturgically it all gets lost in the joy of Christmas when we gaze in awe at the infant in the manger, yet the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy matter.
The Early Fathers had a knock down argument for the necessity of the incarnation; “What has not been assumed (by God) has not been saved”, they stated. The salvation of humanity could only be accomplished, and was fully accomplished, by true God becoming truly human. Christ became first a single vital cell, then a rapidly dividing clump of cells, then embryo and foetus. Just as the creed affirms that at Easter Christ descends to hell to save the dead, so, in these nine hidden months God works the salvation of the many that will never see the light of day: the miscarried; the aborted; the stillborn.
At the same time he himself is being fashioned both by God and Mary. A recent academic study found that human metabolism is fixed before birth, so that, inter alia, mothers who diet during pregnancy are more likely to have children with a lifelong tendency to obesity. How Mary has lived during these nine vital months will affect, indeed quite literally shape, her son for the whole of his life. She is no passive incubator of the divine child but fully part of his formation. He shares not just her genes but the consequences of her actions. We, who share her flesh, are both active in the drama of salvation and shapers of the living Christ that is revealed to the world.
In little over a couple of days the full joy of Christmas will be upon us; for today the task is to pause, and be with Mary in her pregnancy, and all that it means for us.
26 CommentsThe Archbishop of Canterbury has written a comment article in today’s Daily Telegraph. The article is then the subject of the front-page lead story, which puts a rather different slant on it. Read the Archbishop’s article first. Here’s a taster:
Christmas is supremely the story of a God who is not interested in telling us about principles. First comes the action — God beginning to live a human life. Then comes the appeal: do you love and trust what you see in this human life, the life of Jesus? Then the implication: everyone is capable of saying yes to this appeal, so no one is dispensable. You don’t and can’t know where the boundary will lie between people who belong and people who don’t belong.
The front page lead, on the other hand, is headlined ‘Archbishop of Canterbury warns recession Britain must learn lessons from Nazi Germany’:
Dr Rowan Williams risks causing a new controversy by inviting a comparison between Gordon Brown’s response to the economic downturn and the Third Reich.
14 CommentsIn an article for The Daily Telegraph, he claims Germany in the 1930s pursued a “principle” that worked consistently but only on the basis that “quite a lot of people that you might have thought mattered as human beings actually didn’t”.
Updated late Sunday night
The BBC reports that
A member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s staff has been sacked for insulting the Bishop of Rochester in an official document.
The worker wrote the obscenity next to the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali’s comments on a vicar’s job inquiry.
More details in the story Sacking over senior bishop insult.
Update
The Independent has a more detailed article: What did the aide say about the Bishop …?
34 CommentsBoth Guardian and The Times have columns about Hanukah, one from Howard Cooper, the other from Jonathan Sacks.
The Telegraph has Christopher Howse on The words that train the ear.
Giles Fraser in the Church Times has Celebrating where God gets real.
Comment is free asked What letter would you write to God? with answers so far from Julian Baggini, Mark Vernon, Francis Davis.
And for light relief, there is Andrew Brown saying that Science proves Anglicans smartest.
3 CommentsThe Fairfax County Circuit Court today issued its last rulings in the long-running property dispute between the Diocese of Virginia and the eleven congregations that seek to depart from The Episcopal Church but retain their parochial property. The Diocese of Virginia intends to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Virginia.
The actual court ruling (PDF)
Press release from Anglican District of Virginia NB This is very poorly formatted, an easier to read copy can be found here instead.
Statement by Bishop Martyn Minns
Press release from Diocese of Virginia
Press statement from Canon Charles Robertson, Canon to the Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop
ENS has VIRGINIA: Court ruling clears way for property-litigation appeal by Mary Frances Schjonberg
The archive of documents can be read here. Or alternatively over here.
28 CommentsOver the past week, I spent a few days in the United States of America. In America, they know how to do Christmas in style. Yes, I know, it’s not Christmastide and all that, but of course all the Christmas decorations are up, and every PA loudspeaker you encounter is belting out either Christmas carols (more likely than not as interpreted by Bing Crosby), or else 1950s Christmas-and-snowflakes-themed songs. And I don’t care whether that’s cool or not, but I like it, even a lot.
While in California I went to a local crafts market, and enjoyed the products on offer, and bought a few of them. But there was something that caught my eye in particular: a small business selling what I might call unusual greeting cards. The first one I saw had the following happy exclamation on the cover: “Here’s your f***ing Christmas card!” And the second continued with the theme: “Happy F***ing Holidays.”
Maybe I should have been scandalised, but in fact I burst out laughing and bought a few of both, already forming a plan as to who would be worthy recipients. At least one of them was a member of the clergy, by the way.
Of course I am not suggesting that we should move over to a rather coarser, or for that matter more cynical, view of the season of the Incarnation. But equally, the Incarnation is not some kind of celestial bubble wrap that protects us from the shocks and prods of “real life”. When God became man, God did not come into a world of sweet fairy tales, but into humanity as we know it with all its edginess.
Of course, we are now in Advent, a season in which to prepare and reflect. So whether your kind of Advent is the experience of quiet and penitential reflection, or the in-your-face call to repentance of John the Baptist, or joyful anticipation, it may be good to remember that the season that follows may have its harder edge for some people, and that our preparations should also anticipate that. I haven’t sent the cards after all, but as I write I am looking at one of them, and I find that it’s a useful aid to my spiritual life at this time of year. Just for once, at least.
36 CommentsThis morning, on the Today radio programme, John Humphrys interviewed the Archbishop of Canterbury. You can listen to the whole event, here.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has issued his Christmas message. In a wide-ranging interview, he gives his views on the economic downturn, the invasion of Iraq and the possibility of disestablishment of the Church of England.
This interview has also provoked a considerable volume of comment, including from the Prime Minister. Here’s some of the reporting:
BBC Economic crisis a ‘reality check’ by Robert Piggot
Guardian
Brown’s spending plans like ‘addict returning to the drug’, says archbishop and
Spin, Brown style: or how to bash the Tories with a bishop
Telegraph
Martin Beckford Archbishop of Canterbury: Gordon Brown’s recovery plan like ‘addict returning to drug’
James Kirkup and Martin Beckford Gordon Brown hits back over Rowan Williams’ economic attack
The Times
Philippe Naughton Archbishop of Canterbury welcomes credit crunch ‘reality check’ and
Brown slaps down Archbishop of Canterbury in credit crunch row
The Archbishop’s Christmas Message can be found here.
4 CommentsThe New Statesman has an interview, or rather a report on a series of interviews, with Rowan Williams in its latest issue.
See Interview: Rowan Williams by James Macintyre.
This interview has provoked quite a lot of comment in the Telegraph , The Times and the Guardian.
Telegraph Archbishop of Canterbury: Disestablishment would not be ‘end of the world’ by Martin Beckford.
The Times Archbishop: disestablishment of Church of England not ‘the end of the world by Ruth Gledhill and Archbishop of Canterbury: Not ‘end of world’ if Church disestablished on Ruth’s blog.
Guardian Riazat Butt Church and state could separate in UK, says Archbishop of Canterbury online yesterday afternoon, and Archbishop backs disestablishment (and the Muppets) in this morning’s newspaper. But today’s newspaper also has How Williams changed views on splitting church from state by Stephen Bates and Comment is free has Reading between Rowan’s lines by Giles Fraser.
23 CommentsAt TA we have just become aware of a new Church of England website Parish Resources “supporting stewardship in the local church”. To quote the site itself
We are stewards. Both individually and corporately, all that we have and all that we are comes from God – our time, our money, our skills and the environment. Christian stewardship relates to how we respond to God’s amazing generosity to us.
This site offers a wide range of resources to support all aspects of stewardship in the local church. There are pages for those who preach and teach about stewardship, for encouraging giving in the local church, for parish treasurers, Gift Aid secretaries and for those involved in seeking funding for major projects. Guidance on SORP2005 can be found here, as well as some statistics on giving and church finance.
Additional resources are provided for PCC members in their role as charity trustees, guidance on registering larger PCCs with the Charity Commission, a stewardship toolkit for rural churches, a good practice guide for managing parish reserves, and a number of activities for use in teaching stewardship topics to young people. We also have a sister site with resources on encouraging people to consider leaving a gift to the church in their wills.
All the resources are free.
Although some of the site is specific to Church of England parishes much of the information will be of wider interest.
0 CommentsThe Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church addressed the National Press Club, in Washington DC.
There is a transcript of her speech here.
There is an audio recording which also includes the extended Question and Answer session here.
A video recording of the event is over here.
13 CommentsTalking to a young Nigerian woman this week, I asked her what she thought of the approach to Christmas in our part of east London, and how British celebrations contrasted with those in her home country. ‘It’s very quiet,’ she said. ‘In Nigeria, there would be people out dancing and singing, wherever you go.’ There’s a climate issue here, of course. As I write, the rain pours down out of grey skies, and shoppers scurry along the high street, heads down under their umbrellas. Any carol singers, let alone dancers, aren’t going to receive much notice.
There’s also an underlying question about the balance of public and private in our observance of the festivities. We lead our public life in the run-up to Christmas (and in the days immediately afterwards) on the high streets and in shopping centres and retail parks. Those are our places of encounter with the stranger, with those who are in some way not ‘ours’. We all share in the queue for the till, we compete for the bargain or for access to the mirror, we mutter apologies as we take each other’s space. Occasionally we will pause together, our attention taken by some religious, civic, or commercial offering for general consumption: the Salvation Army band or a school choir if we are lucky, the mall grotto or recorded carols and a mechanical Father Christmas if we are not.
There are halfway houses between this public life and the privacy of the home. They are the places where we are part of an extended group, drawn together by common interest which takes us beyond the domestic circle. Parents and carers gather for the school nativity play; we still have very traditional nativity plays in multi-cultural East Ham. For those who work together, there is the office Christmas party, or its substitute. Every club, be it Rotary, bowls, line dancing or the Women’s Institute, will have its Christmas do.
When it comes to Christmas Day, however, the gears change. Just look at the TV advertisements: Christmas is a private event which happens in a purely domestic setting and is just for family, or at most for friends so close that they replace family. We close down, retire behind our front doors, and hide, safe from the threat of the unfamiliar. Even the pattern of churchgoing increasingly conforms. For all but the hard core, the religious bit of Christmas is something to be got out of the way before the day itself. Crib services and Christingles on Christmas Eve are the great growth area, especially for the very occasional or once a year churchgoers; and even for the faithful and observant, Midnight Mass means that church is done virtually before the feast day begins. We, too, have our ‘common interest’ event before the festival.
Does this domestication have its roots in the Reformation, with Luther’s reinvention of the family as the location of everyday holiness, and the loss of the Catholic tradition of the public and communal? Are we re-engaging with the domesticity of the Jewish Sabbath? Does it derive from the breakdown of shared culture in a post-industrial and multi-cultural society? Can we blame this, too, on late capitalist consumerism?
Whatever the underlying reasons for this pattern, it is worth noting that the most significant group for whom Christmas is experienced in public, as a time of consorting with strangers in a place not their own, are those who have no home, or for whom there is no family provision. The centres provided by Crisis, the church and charity Christmas lunches for the elderly and lonely, these are the places of the non-domestic, unprivatised Christmas.
When I get home after morning service on Christmas Day, like most clergy I shall shut the door with relief, and relax in the company of my family. But niggling somewhere will be a question about the contrast between that pleasurable experience and the story of good news announced noisily and very publicly with a choir of angels and a star, and a stable whose door seemed to be perpetually open to those who wanted to come and see.
40 CommentsUpdated Tuesday morning
Jonathan Wynne-Jones reports in the Telegraph that Bishop faces rebellion over women clergy.
On one side of the row is the Rt Rev John Hind, the Bishop of Chichester, who has a black belt in judo and a staunch opponent of the ordination of women.
In the opposing corner is a growing group of clergy and worshippers in his diocese, who are dismayed by the bishop’s intransigence.
Bishop Hind has told his diocesan synod that when he appoints a new junior bishop, they will not be permitted to ordain women…
The report also includes these statistics:
Out of its 393 parishes, only 65 have stated that they would not accept a woman as their incumbent.
and
Among 308 paid clergy in the Chichester diocese, only 20 are women.
The Telegraph report refers to a letter from the bishop to the Church Times.
The story began with this news report: No change for women by Ed Beavan.
That provoked this letter from Bishop John Hind Traditionalists and women’s ordination.
In turn, there followed another letter from Christina Rees, Sarah Lamming, and Charles Read: Juggling unsatisfactory outcomes after women vote (scroll down to the bottom for this letter).
And, though probably not finally, there is another letter, this time from Dr Brian Hanson, in this week’s Church Times, normally available only to subscribers for the first week, but already published elsewhere, so look at this: Chichester, Horsham & Fairness.
Tuesday morning update
George Pitcher at the Telegraph has also written about this, see Planet Chichester threatens to divide Church.
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87 CommentsUpdated Tuesday morning
From the diocese:
State Of The Diocese Report – The Rev. Dr. James B. Simons
Bishop Named For Pittsburgh Episcopalians
Greetings to the Special Convention from The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
From the newspapers:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Ann Rodgers Diocese names interim leader
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Debra Erdley Smaller Episcopal diocese rebuilds
Tuesday morning update
Episcopal News Service at last has a report, Pittsburgh Episcopalians reorganize diocese.
11 CommentsRevised on 19 December
The Church of England Newspaper has this article by George Conger Canterbury won’t block or bless new province:
The Archbishop of Canterbury will not block the creation of a third Anglican province in North America, sources familiar with Dr. Rowan Williams’ Dec 5 meeting with five traditionalist archbishops, tell The Church of England Newspaper.
However, the archbishop will not give it his endorsement either, arguing his office does not have the legal authority to make, or un-make, Anglicans.
On Dec 5, five members of the Gafcon primates council: Archbishops Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, and Henry Orombi of Uganda met with Dr. Williams in Canterbury for approximately five hours to discuss the current state of affairs within the Communion…
The Church Times has this article by Pat Ashworth New Anglican province comes into being in US together with a sidebar, Members of the Group (scroll down below the main article for this):
SOME members of the new Church began breaking away before the present crisis. One ACNA partner, the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), split from the Episcopal Church in the United States as long ago as 1873. The Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA), affiliated to Rwanda, was, in 2000, already moving towards establishing a separate province, after the irregular consecrations of Bishop John Rodgers and Bishop Chuck Murphy in Singapore. The AMiA had 23 parishes in 2000. Now it says it has 140, including 12 in Canada (who are members of the Anglican Coalition in Canada, its subsidiary)…
The Church Times also has an article by Bishop Duncan on its Comment pages, which is at present only now available to subscribers. This makes it harder possible to appreciate the Leader article A new Church in the United States which says:
13 CommentsWHETHER it is viewed with sympathy or suspicion, there is no doubt that the new Anglican Church in North America changes the Anglican map. To be more accurate, it lays a new map (a relief map, perhaps?) on top of the old one, so that in his otherwise factual article (See Comment ) the new Archbishop, the Most Revd Bob Duncan, can say artlessly that the charge of boundary-crossing, condemned by the Windsor report, “is most effectively and completely addressed by general acceptance of the new province”. Although territorial confusion matters less where a church is defined more by congregational membership than place of abode, the parish ideal is none the less strong…
The Dean of Perth (Western Australia), John Shepherd has written in The Times Salvation is not about who is in and who is out.
Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about Sister Wendy’s pictures of love.
David Peel writes about his battle with cancer in the Guardian’s Face to Faith.
Giles Fraser writes in the Church Times that One size of school can’t fit all values.
The Cif Belief Question this week is What should evangelicals believe? Answers come from John Richardson, Christina Rees, Justin Thacker and Graham Kings.
At Ekklesia Simon Barrow asks Which Jesus are we expecting?
19 Comments