Parish

Sabbatical problematical: give the Archbishop a break, for God’s sake

November 26, 2020
Archbishop Cranmer
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"Unlike the archbishop, Jesus could not retire to cultivate his personal spirituality because he was perpetually besieged by desperate people", writes Karen Armstrong in the Guardian's 'Comment is Free', objecting rather sourly to Justin Welby's decision to take a three-month…

Vicar: ‘If you don’t worship in the CofE (or only come at Christmas), don’t complain about what we do’

September 24, 2020
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The Rev'd Miranda Threlfall-Holmes had a premonition that her tweet would be unpopular, but still she shared her ecclesiology with the world: "People are only allowed to complain about the…

welby covid rule of six centralising centralisation

Covid-centralising Archbishop excoriates Government – for Covid centralising

September 16, 2020
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The Archbishop of Canterbury has excoriated the Government's 'Rule of Six', the latest anti-Covid-19 policy which restricts almost the whole of society to gatherings of no more than six. Writing…

Canon Simon Butler responds to Archbishop Cranmer & Fr Marcus Walker

April 22, 2020
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This is a guest post from Canon Simon Butler, vicar of St Mary's, Battersea. ____________ I’m grateful for being given a right of reply to the article about an exchange…

Is Mark Rylands the humblest bishop in the Church of England?

March 19, 2018
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The Rt Rev'd Mark Rylands is presently Bishop of Shrewsbury. He is well-known to readers of this blog for being a thoughtful and intelligent advocate for UK secession from the…

The Church of England's investment in social media is a major embarrassment

December 7, 2015
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Quite often when I attend a variety of events and conferences, I’ll end up in conversation with total strangers from all sorts of backgrounds talking about this blog. It’s…

The Church of England is not dying – it is regenerating

October 16, 2015
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It’s been well publicised this week that there are one or two Church of England congregations that aren’t exactly bursting at the seams. If you go to a Church…

Chartres' Lambeth Lecture: the Church must be "vision-led and not problem-led"

October 5, 2015
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While the Archbishop of Canterbury pored over the Blogosphere on his iPad (to which he is apparently rather attached), the Bishop of London psyched himself up for the latest…

Compassionate Conservatism and Social Justice – bedfellows or bugbears?

September 15, 2015
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Talk to most Labour supporters about 'compassionate conservatism', and they'll scoff at the very notion, as though the evil Tories had stolen the robe of Christ and were masquerading…

The last chance to save our rural churches

February 12, 2015
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There was a popular modern worship song that did the rounds a few years ago entitled 'God of this City'. The chorus went: For greater things have yet to…

Discerning the future of the Church is not an intellectual exercise

October 12, 2014
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When I was at university studying Architecture, we were given the hypothetical brief of designing a new chapel for the campus. Having looked forward to it initially, it actually became…