Why has Joanna Penberthy still not been sacked? Back in May, the Bishop of St Davids, the most heavenly small cathedral in the world, wrote a post on Twitter about perceived threats to the Welsh Assembly from the Conservative Party: “They say that this is not true, but we know Read more…
“And if we’re going to promise to ‘Save the parish’, let’s use those ‘limiting factors’ as our banners: ‘a building and a stipend and long, costly college-based training for every leader of the church’. !at sounds like an ambition worth having — and a more plausible and desirable one than Read more…
“Secularisation is indeed a catastrophe for the churches. But we won’t outlast this period of history by being more business-like or by adopting slicker models of evangelistic marketing. We won’t be saved by panicky spread-sheet evangelists, Indeed, we must be more of what we have been called to be – Read more…
“Look at their actions over recent months and you could be forgiven for thinking that Anglican bishops are on a mission to alienate their flocks, run down their parishes and ultimately give up their special place in British public and spiritual life. How else to explain the actions of the Read more…
“It’s hard not to see this overzealous interpretation of Covid restrictions as emblematic of the problems the Church of England has got itself into over the past year in its response to the pandemic. When lockdown was first imposed, back in March 2020, communal worship was forbidden, but it was Read more…
This has been a tough year for everyone. Death, mental collapse, grief, unemployment. In my church we’ve lost people to Covid — one of the earliest victims was a regular at our 9 a.m. Communion. We’ve lost people to mental health — one of the homeless men who came to Read more…
A clergyman admitted to me that he’d recently burst into tears. He’d received an email from his diocese in this latest lockdown ‘strongly urging’ vicars to close their churches. He has an elderly working-class congregation in a poor area. Coming to church was ‘the one thing keeping them going’. Local Read more…
“The difficulties posed by the coronavirus crisis have exposed many fault lines and weaknesses in organisations around the country — and the Church of England is no exception.”