A Church in Bavaria Everything bends to re-enact the poem lived, lived, not written, the poem spoken by Christ, who never wrote a word, saboteur of received ideas who rebuilt Rome with the words he never wrote; whether sacred, whether human, himself a sunrise of love enlarged, of love, enlarged William Plomer
Cosmo Gordon Lang: Archbishop in War and Crisis Robert Beaken (I B Tauris, £25), This was a hasty buy helped by a book token that I had been trying to use for ages and (frankly) a rather interesting set of photographs! I was not disappointed…. It has gained a little publicity in relation to the role of Lang in the abdication of Edward VIII – it is a well researched book and provided all kinds of unsuspected parallels with todays conflicted Church…
It is the role of the contemporary conflicts of theology to expose the idolatries to which we Christians are prone; and the exorcism of them is necessary for the renewal of faith and for the convincing communication of faith to the world. Idolatry for Christians wears many guises. It arises when the service of God becomes so ‘religionized’ that people become blind to the challenges of God in everyday episodes; but it can arise also when the service of God becomes…
The truth of God’s transcendence still stands. God is near, but God is different. God is here, but man is dependent. God’s otherness is the otherness of Creator to creature, of Saviour to sinner; and it is for the creature still to worship the Creator and for the sinner still to ask for the Saviour’s grace. Without this the new Christianity of the secular city will lose its identity as Christianity and will deceive itself and mislead its citizens. And,…
“Her intellectual temper,” W H Auden said, “is summed up in a remark by one of her bishops, ‘Orthodoxy is reticence” Auden believed that “at its best,” Anglican piety “shows spiritual good manners, a quality no less valuable in the religious life than in social life, though, of course, not the ultimate criterion in either, reverence without religiosity, and humour (in which last trait it resembles Jewish piety).” “Like all styles of piety,” he said, “it becomes detestable when the fire…
Never let yourself think that because God has given you many things to do for Him — pressing routine jobs, a life full up with duties and demands of a very practical sort — that all these need separate you from communion with Him. God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament; however unexpected its outward form may be receive Him in every sight and…
I’m not, I think, a signer up to campaigns! I think there is an activist streak to me – as I hope there is to many of my friends and colleagues – but perhaps early middle age has brought both a wider (and perhaps even wiser) perspective combined worryingly with a pinch of complacency.I really do wonder which battles are worth fighting for and what is the best use of energy in order to effect difference.I have been much sobered…
Church of Nigeria reacts to Archbishop of Canterbury’s Resignation The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd and Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Williams took over the leadership of the Anglican Communion in 2002 when it was a happy family. Unfortunately, he is leaving behind a Communion in tatters: highly polarized, bitterly factionalized, with issues of revisionist interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and human sexuality as stumbling blocks to oneness, evangelism and mission all around the Anglican world. It might not have…
The Study of scripture is at the heart of theology. Scripture truthfully tells the story of God’s action of creating, judging and saving the world. It is to be read and reread above all for the sake of God and God’s purposes; hear it as God the Creator, Judge and Saviour crying out to humanity; respond to it, in cries, worship, life and thought, with love for God and for the world God loves.
“Lord teach us how to pray aright … for we perish if we cease to pray.” Lent calls us to repentance and repentance involves a change of heart. Help me to realise Lord that to change my life without changing my heart is like cutting weeds and leaving roots in the soil. Give me the grace to turn away from evil and to do what is pleasing to you. We pray for those for whom fasting is a permanent condition…
In a way that seems to be more and more crucial to the modern quest for the spiritual, cathedrals can offer a transforming experience. If religion appeals to duty, it seems spirituality must deliver a tangible personal intuition – ‘the tug of silver’.Cathedrals welcome the visitor, whether as worshipper, wanderer or the indifferent perplexed, and they deliver an experience. That experience may be about height, depth, colour, sound, scale, space, history or story. The sheer scale of things, the beauty…
I thought this well worth pondering from Katharine Jefferts Schori ( the Presiding Bishop of Episcopal Church in the United States of America. She is the first woman elected primate in the Anglican Communion) There’s an institution in New York City called the Doe Fund. Its motto is Ready, Willing and Able. Early in the morning, trucks bearing that logo can be found on the streets of Manhattan, and out of those trucks come workers with garbage cans, brooms, and…
I thought this profile worth sharing – as we continue to pray for all our Church leaders….. The last time the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spoke to the New Statesman, it was at the end of 2008, a year that our writer, James Macintyre, described as “one of the most difficult for Anglicanism since the Reformation”. The Lambeth Conference, the assembly of bishops from the worldwide Anglican Communion that meets every ten years, had begun amid what even the…
I thought it worth drawing your attention to these helpful comments by the Bishop of Gloucester? I think there are some things here we need to explore sensitively together. In doing so I want to acknowledge the honesty and courage of my friend, James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool, who has publicly told his own story of moving his position on the issue of homosexuality over recent years and urged the Church not to allow this issue to divide us…
Clergy in the Church of England are being asked to cut their cloth to suit the economic times and to prepare for mergers and staff cuts that could drastically reduce pastoral care and worship. A report on finances has found that a quarter of all 44 dioceses are running deficits and plundering reserves to pay stipends and pensions. A similar proportion has liquid reserves to last them one month or less. High staffing levels of clegy and laity are highlighted….
The sign-giving does not aim to take us back to the first century; the eucharist is not a time machine. Rather, it catches us into the stream of God’s continuing and liberating activity. It goes without saying that only the signs, rather than the symbols, can do this. The signs speak of a God who is humiliated, cursed and spat upon. They take us into the heart of the darkness of the gospel, the folly which is wisdom and the…
In this reflection I share the surprise of joy I experienced within a moment of spiritual awareness at an Easter Vigil. This forms part of a conviction that Easter Christians always entertain the possibility of joy when being open to the new. It is Easter morning 1984. I have journeyed through part of Lent and Holy Week and listened and prayed a familiar story. We gathered in a convent Chapel set in acres of Kent countryside in the darkness to…
The Bishop of Liverpool is to be congratulated for his moderate and heartfelt plea to get some of the Churches disagreements into a wiser perspective. See this report from the Diocese of Liverpools web page – and all the better coming from an evangelical! Perhaps this image of reconciliation might challenges us? The Bishop of Liverpool, The Rt Reverend James Jones has used his presidential address to the March synod of the Diocese of Liverpool to call for Anglicans to “accept the…
The Church of England has taken a pounding from critics, but Rowan Williams has reasons to be cheerful as Christmas approaches, says a leading Anglican historian and commentator,Diarmaid MacCulloch ( printed in the The Observer Sunday 20 December 2009) I thought this letter worth pondering? Dear Archbishop Rowan, Even though I’m not sending Christmas cards this year – ran out of time – you are not going to escape my seasonal circular letter. It is filled not with the record…
Isaac Watts – (1674-1748), English hymn writer Watts was born July 17, 1674 at Southampton, England, the eldest of nine children. His father was a Dissenter from the Anglican Church and on at least one occasion was thrown in jail for not following the Church of England. Isaac followed his father’s strongly biblical faith. Isaac was a very intelligent child who loved books and learned to read early. He began learning Latin at age four and went on to learn Greek,…