“A quiet but unmistakable rebellion is taking place within the Church of England, a groundswell of anger bubbling up from that most British of institutions: the Parish Church. And support for it shows no sign of waning.”
“There is, surely, a legitimate question to ask, about how the church reduces its expenditure on buildings and people to make itself sustainable, but the Church of England is not a supermarket chain, where mangers look at the profitability of Read more…
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: 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 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 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 Read more…
“From leading online worship to managing a booking system for sunrise services, multi-parish clergy face a daunting task at Easter”
“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 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 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 Read more…