Reconciliation is not an event; it is a process taking generations. In 1945, Europe was a hopeless and bankrupt slaughterhouse of hatred and cruelty. Today, there are huge struggles, but the only place we ever truly express rivalry and hunger for victory is on the football field. And France is remarkably successful.

Reconciliation requires human participation. It happens through the brilliance of leadership, de Gasperi, Adenauer, Monnet, Schumann, de Gaulle, Churchill, General Marshall. Defying the bloodshed of the past, it beats swords into ploughshares. Reconciliation means history that is true. It means healing past hurts and admitting wrongs.

Reconciliation is not only agreement, although agreement is necessary; reconciliation is the transformation of destructive conflict into creative rivalry underpinned by mutual acceptance and love. It is a cycle of peace, justice, and mercy, building up a structure shining in the love of God. A moment of peace opens the way to truth telling. Truth telling sows the seeds of relationships. They allow a gram more of peace. In this thin soil of peace, justice can be sown. Amidst justice a fragile confidence appears. From confidence the next and better circle can begin.

But the foundation of it all is prayer, for in prayer we commit ourselves to partnership with God.

Read it all.

In a world of conflict, we must imagine peace – and that begins by partnering with God in prayer.

It was a great privilege to address the #SantEgidio International Meeting for Peace in Paris today.

You can read my address here: https://t.co/wker09gmcy #PeaceIsPossible pic.twitter.com/9MBNzjGmb7

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) September 22, 2024

….he believes that there are good reasons to challenge simplistic accounts of Christianity’s rise and fall. For a start, it is enjoying significant numerical growth globally and, closer to home, the crises engulfing organised religion do not necessarily translate into an equivalent embrace of atheism or wholesale rejection of Christian beliefs and values. The contribution made by Christian agencies to aid and development work around the world is immense even if seldom acknowledged. He robustly challenges secularisation theories prevalent among sociologists since the 1960s. He maintains that we are “metaphysical animals . . . unlikely to abandon age-old quests for a fundamental and inclusive context of meaning”.

Nevertheless, “mainstream European culture is hurtling forward largely without the fuel that Christianity has historically supplied”. This has disturbing consequences acknowledged even by avowed atheists. But the question remains whether Christianity’s credal credentials can enable it to fuel a sustainable culture into a future threatened by complex existential crises facing humanity and the environment.

Shortt responds to such a challenge, first, with an exposition of just how shallow and insipid so much atheist polemic has been of late. He eloquently defends both the meaning and the mystery of Christian beliefs founded upon scripture and tradition as objectively credible even if, as the biblical critics and liberal theologians for whom he has little affection attest, it is ultimately unfathomable. Shortt entitled one of his books The Hardest Problem and tackled head-on the problem of evil with appropriate humility. while confident that it does not hole Christianity below the water line — a case that he succinctly summarises here.

Read it all (subscription or registration).

"He believes that there are good reasons to challenge simplistic accounts of Christianity’s rise and fall."

John Saxbee reviews The Eclipse of Christianity: And why it matters by Rupert Shortt https://t.co/oRYQTpKpas

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 21, 2024

Proposals to reform the CNC should have included its current members, and imputations about the unfairness of the process were off the mark, some observers of Wednesday’s House of Bishops meeting said (News, 18 September).

On Thursday, the longest-serving central member of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), Christina Baron, criticised the bishops for not consulting CNC members before drawing up proposals.

“The way in which these proposals came forward without any consultation, without even any notice, has made all the elected members of the CNC very angry,” Ms Baron said.

The message to CNC members seemed to be, she said, that their work “is not respected, is not valued, that we are not taken seriously”.

Read it all.

Proposals to reform the CNC should have included its current members, and imputations about the unfairness of the process were off the mark, some observers of Wednesday’s House of Bishops meeting saidhttps://t.co/iUbX4Efinp

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 20, 2024

The bells of St Wendreda’s church have not rung for almost two years after a piece of metal fell to the spire floor in 2023. Now, its vicar fears that the church, famous for its ‘heavenly host’ ceiling, could be put on an at-risk list unless £250,000 is raised to pay for its repairs.

Rev Ruth Clay discovered that metal bars in the spire of St Wendreda’s, Cambridgeshire, were corroding. Engineers estimate the damages and scaffolding needed will cost £250,000.  

The church is unique – firstly in its stunning ceiling of carved angels, dating over 500 years.  It is also the only church to be named after St Wendreda, an Anglo-Saxon nun. Thought to be the daughter of King Anna of the East Angles, Wendreda used her knowledge of herbs to help heal sick people and animals.

Read it all.

Today I fulfilled a 20-yr-long wish & went to see the double-hammer-beam roof of St Wendreda’s Church in March.

118 oak angels soar aloft in it, carved in the early 1500s, their wing feathers modelled on those of the Marsh Harriers that wd have been abundant there 500 yrs ago… pic.twitter.com/MDThOOQy55

— Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) April 16, 2023

The economic, social, and public benefits provided by universities are “threatened by the financial crisis” in higher education, the Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, has warned.

Contributing to a two-hour debate on the subject in the House of Lords last week, Dr Wilcox said that, in his diocese, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University “support more than 19,500 jobs and generate more than £1 billion annually for the local economy. What is true in Sheffield is true across the country: universities are generally hugely beneficial to the communities within which they are situated.”

The Church of England believed that higher education should serve the common good, he said. The universities mentioned did this in a variety of ways, including private investment, and volunteer and work placements across health, social care, the law, and other areas.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

The economic, social, and public benefits provided by universities are “threatened by the financial crisis” in higher education, the Bishop of Sheffield @PeteWilcox1564 has warned https://t.co/Jx29BNFPf0

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 17, 2024

The Rev. John Parks was taking his first sabbatical in 40 years of ministry when he got a call from his church’s accountant with some bad news.

Church Mutual, the church’s insurance company, had dropped them.

“This does not make sense,” Parks, the pastor of Ashford Community Church in Houston, recalls thinking at the time. “We’ve never filed a claim.”

Five months and 13 insurance companies later, the church finally found replacement coverage for $80,000 per year, up from the $23,000 they had been paying.

“It’s been an adventure,” said the 69-year-old Parks from his home in Houston, where the power was out after Hurricane Beryl. “That’s putting it politely.”

Parks and his congregation are not alone. An ongoing wave of disasters — Gulf Coast hurricanes, wildfires in California, severe thunderstorms and flooding in the Midwest — along with skyrocketing construction costs post-COVID have left the insurance industry reeling.

Read it all.

The same factors that have caused a crisis in the homeowner's insurance market are also affecting churches, who have to choose between paying for insurance or running programs.https://t.co/EZuQfur4d8

— RNS (@RNS) July 10, 2024

The secret ballot by which diocesan bishops are nominated could be removed under changes intended to restore trust in the processes of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC).

In the wake of the failure of the CNC to appoint on two occasions in the past nine months, faith in the process has deteriorated to the extent that candidates across a range traditions are refusing to have their names added to longlists, a paper by the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, warns.

Others are “openly questioning the integrity of the process”, while “allegations of politicking in the Vacancy in See process are commonplace”.

Read it all.

The secret ballot by which diocesan bishops are nominated could be removed under changes intended to restore trust in the processes of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) https://t.co/2RtEht4aQB

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 12, 2024

The British biologist J. B. S. Haldane once quipped that “there is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god”. The concept of “playing God” is a well-known cultural trope. For most people the phrase implies Promethean hubris, an arrogant overextension of human capabilities and ambitions beyond what is appropriate, potentially leading to unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences. But who decides what humanity’s “proper” limits might be? Might the quest for a deeper understanding of our world be an act of service, aimed at safeguarding our world on the one hand and promoting human flourishing on the other?

Playing God: Science, religion and the future of humanity by Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite offers an engaging and helpful overview of the contemporary debates on these themes. Both writers are associated with the London-based Theos think tank, which hosts public debates, discussions and lectures about religion and society. Although the theme of “playing God” is emphasized in the work’s main title, its focus is better seen as an exploration of the interaction of science and religion in discussing a series of questions raised, but not answered, by technological advance.

Read it all.

'The question shifts from whether we should play at being God to how we should do this.'

Alister McGrath (@alisteremcgrath) on what theology might teach us about technological hubris
https://t.co/KsRh8JBYti

— The TLS (@TheTLS) August 23, 2024

Annapolis historian Janice Hayes-Williams remembers visiting this graveyard with her uncle, George Phelps Jr., in 2001. As they wandered through it that day, he keptmuttering to himself. “Jesus. … Jesus. … Jesus.”

“It was overwhelming to my uncle and me,” Hayes-Williams, 67, recalled on a hot July morning as she walked past the numbered markers. “The word that came to mind was ‘disposable.’”

“We both kept saying, ‘A cemetery of patients and no names? No names?’ It was more than unbelievable,” she said. “This is not how you treat human beings.”

Read it all.

Their graves were marked only by numbers. She fought to find their names. https://t.co/vFukMCQVze

— Joe Heim (@JoeHeim) August 31, 2024

Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said: “For the first time ever, the number of those affirming versus swearing an oath has come close to reflecting the beliefs of the population as a whole. We’ve known for a while that the UK is one of the least religious countries in the world. We now have one of the least religious national parliaments in the world, too.”

About 53 per cent of people in Britain say they belong to no religion, and 42 per cent do not believe in a god.

Chine McDonald, director of the Theos religion think tank, said: “What we see reflected here is a falling away of cultural, nostalgic Christianity and a rise in the number of options available in an increasingly diverse and multi-religious society. It’s no surprise that a younger and less conservative group of parliamentarians might be less wedded to cultural Christianity, yet there are still a good number with a vibrant and active faith.”

Read it all (requires subscription).

Record number of MPs chose to take non-religious affirmation rather than swear on a Bible or other holy text this week

Up to 40% from 24% in 2019:https://t.co/3jlvKWTYpz

— Kaya Burgess (@kayaburgess) July 12, 2024

Proposals to remove impediments on the use of new blessings for same-sex couples in stand-alone services, along with the provision of delegated episcopal ministry for those who oppose the changes, were shown a pale green light from the General Synod on Monday afternoon….

A notable opponent of the motion was the Bishop of Bath & Wells, Dr Michael Beasley, who has previously voted for LLF motions and supported an amendment in November last year calling for stand-alone services to be trialled (News, 17 November 2023).

He was voting against the motion this time, he said, because he felt that it was necessary to do more work on questions about whether doctrine was being changed by the introduction of services that some feared would resemble weddings.

Read it all.

Here in the Diocese of York, we call our response to the Church of England’s Vision and Strategy and its invitation to be a Christ-centred and a Jesus Christ shaped Church, Living Christ’s story. We imagine and envisage our life of missionary discipleship to be as if, led by the Spirit, we are writing the next chapter in the Acts of the Apostles, the chapter for this bit of Yorkshire in this day and for the people and communities we serve. And when Jesus says at the end of St John’s Gospel, ‘As the Father sent me, I am sending you’ (John 20: 21); and when at the end of Matthew’s gospel, he says ‘Go into all the world and make disciples’ (Matthew 28: 19); and when St Paul says to the church in Corinth that they are a ‘letter from Christ… written by the Spirit of the living God’ (2 Cor. 3: 3), it is as if God is handing us the pen, entrusting to us his mission of love to the world and asking us, imploring us, to be his presence in the world. And of course, the foundation and the inspiration for this is the living word of God that bursts forth from the pages of scripture and lodges in our hearts and minds, changing them and shaping them so that we, indeed, become that love letter from God. But for this address, knowing that it is scripture, but also the way that scripture shapes and is shaping the lives of so many others who then become these love letters from God, there are two other books I want to mention as well.

When I first went to see my parish priest, Fr Ernie Stroud, one time member of this Synod, and spoke with him, aged about 20, about a possible vocation to the priesthood, he gave me two books to read. First Iremonger’s Life of William Temple; and second Kenneth Ingram’s biography of the slum priest, Basil Jellicoe.

I read these books when I was about 20 years old and they have made a mark on my life and groove in my ministry that has never gone away, that has laid down tracks upon which I believe I am still seeking to live and minister today.

William Temple gave me – and I believe still gives to the Church – a profound vision of how Christian Faith shapes and orders society; and since we are gathering the day after a General Election, it is especially relevant for us not only to pray for our new Prime Minister and government, but also to think afresh how Christian Faith and Christian values can shape and order the world.

Read it all.

The living word of God bursts forth from the pages of scripture and lodges in our hearts and minds, changing them and shaping them.

I begin my presidential address for the opening of Church of England @synod. pic.twitter.com/PJ8BNWn1nK

— Archbishop of York (@CottrellStephen) July 5, 2024

The Heiliggeistkirche, in the Baroque German city of Heidelberg, is a 15th-century Gothic jewel of a church. Beneath its vaulted roof, worship has been offered for centuries, with music ranging from Gregorian chant to Lutheran hymns. Even at the church’s time of greatest turmoil, when it was consecrated and reconsecrated by different factions during the wars of religion, nothing, perhaps, will have been quite so surprising as the music that resounded through its nave in May.

“The buttons of my coat were tangled in my hair. In doctor’s-office-lighting, I didn’t tell you I was scared. That was the first time we were there. Holy orange bottles, each night I pray to you. Desperate people find faith, so now I pray to Jesus, too” — these are the words of Taylor Swift’s quietly tragic song “Soon You’ll Get Better”, dedicated to her mother after a cancer diagnosis. It was one of the chief musical items in an entire service inspired by the American pop star.

Under the title “Anti-Hero” (a track from Swift’s 2022 album Midnights), the service at the Heiliggeistkirche featured a local singer and professor of popular church music at HfK Heidelberg, Tiene Wiechmann, who sang six of Swift’s songs. These were interspersed with reflections on Swift’s lyrics, life, and philosophy from the (now Protestant) parish’s Pastor, Vincenzo Petracca.

Read it all.

The £5.2m Demonstrator Churches project from the Church of England’s Net Zero Programme aims to help 114 churches in 2024 and 2025 pay for items such as solar panels, heat pumps, insulation, secondary glazing, LED lighting and infrared heating systems.

As work progresses, the network of Demonstrator Churches – representing many different types of community and situations – will share what they have learned more widely with dioceses and parishes so that all Church of England churches can learn from their experiences.

Abi Hiscock, Project and Grants Manager for the Church of England’s Net Zero Demonstrator Churches Project, said: “Ultimately, we want to demonstrate that with the right support and infrastructure, churches from diverse settings and facing a variety of challenges can reach net zero by 2030.

“By the end of this project, we will have over 100 case studies on what to do and when, and what not to do. Along the way, the supported churches are all required to act as champions to other churches in their dioceses or geographically near to them, or simply to other churches working from similar baselines to them, so that the learnings from these projects engage, influence and support this vision.”

Read it all.

@StPeterMancroft is 1st of over 100 churches 2 receive part of the £5.2M Demonstrator Churches project from the Church of England’s Net Zero Programme.

Watch our journey towards net zero in the full video on the Diocese website. Here's a snippet…https://t.co/dsrNh10sAr

— VergerStPeterMancroft (@verger_st) July 4, 2024

 …we face an extraordinarily challenging mission field. Our Bible teacher this morning, Bishop Rennis Ponniah of Singapore, gave us a teaching on 2 Timothy, which addressed the question of how we spread the Gospel in a culture like Timothy faced, where the forces of darkness were unleashed on the Church, externally through persecution and internally through false teaching. It’s a context not unlike what we face today.

Bishop Rennis reminded us that, like Timothy, it’s easy to become timid and to have our spiritual fire burning low in our own communities. The answer is to stir up the gifts and the power God already gave us through the Holy Spirit. Bishop Rennis reminded us that there are three dimensions to the power of the Spirit: first, the accomplishing power that abolishes death, annihilation, and judgment, and gives to us eternal life through Jesus Christ (2 Tim 1:9-10); second, the safe-keeping power that guards both the integrity of the Gospel and its messenger, so that we finish well and keep both the message and the messenger flourishing (2 Tim 1:11-12); and finally, there is the enabling power of God, the power of the Holy Spirit that enables us to follow the pattern of the sound Word we received through the Scriptures (2 Tim 1:13-14). For those of us facing challenges in missional contexts, it was an inspiring and hopeful message.

When I left off yesterday in my video on Provincial Council, we were in the middle of robust fellowship on new canonical amendments that place the burden of safe-guarding, both children and adults, on the bishop and the diocese. There was language in the canonical amendment (Title 1; Canon 5; New Sections 8 and 9) that said it is the duty of the bishop “and not the province” to bear this burden. An eloquent objection was raised that it is both morally and spiritually wrong for the Church, and the Province in particular, to avoid responsibility for legal reasons. Another delegate moved to table the motion over lunch so that drafters and objectors could meet together and hammer out a compromise. When we returned after lunch, a new preface was added to both Sections 8 and 9 that stated it is the “moral responsibility of the Church (the province, the diocese, the congregation, and ministries) to care for the flock of Christ and protect them from abuse and misconduct.” At the same time, it was noted that where this takes place most effectively was “in the diocese rather than the province”. This compromise seemed to satisfy Provincial Council, which represents the whole Church. It was passed unanimously and stands as an excellent example of how the synod engages governance in a conciliar way and without wordsmithing from the floor.

Read it all.

Abp.@FoleyBeach gives thanks for his years of service, and expresses his gratitude for those who served alongside him in @The_ACNA. pic.twitter.com/BzxjfEjfh2

— American Anglican (@AnglicanCouncil) June 27, 2024

The CRC does have a process for those who believe something in its confessions contradicts Scripture. CRC leaders sign three Reformed confessions—the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort—and in 2022, the denomination clarified in a footnote that the Heidelberg Catechism’s teaching that “God condemns all unchastity” includes homosexual sex, as well as adultery, premarital sex, extramarital sex, polyamory, and pornography.

At least 18 churches publicized their disagreement by declaring themselves “in protest” of that teaching. They argued the CRC should allow differences in biblical interpretation of unchastity.

Last week, however, the synod decided that churches who adopted the “in protest” status would also fall under the discipline process and be required to comply with the confessions.

“It’s okay to send a protest. The issue is when you say our whole church, our whole council, is going to take exception to the confessions,” said Cedric Parsels, reporting from the synod for the Abide Project, a group that upholds the CRC’s historic view on sexuality. “‘We are going to put an asterisk next to our name of CRC. We can only be CRC basically on our terms .’ That’s a significantly different approach.”

Read it all.

Two years ago, the Christian Reformed Church in North America clarified its stance against homosexuality.

Last week, the denomination clarified its expectations for churches whose LGBTQ-affirming teachings contradict that stance.https://t.co/xltKDkUBGn

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) June 28, 2024

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has been one of the success stories in recent American church history. Most denominations in the U.S. are in decline, but ACNA, founded just 15 years ago, has grown to more than 1,000 congregations and a membership of 120,000.

It began as a movement of conservative Episcopalians frustrated with the liberal drift of that denomination. Today, though, most members of ACNA are not former Episcopalians. They (we, as I am a member) are new converts or — in many cases — refugees from other mainline and evangelical denominations nourished by ACNA’s combination of Reformed theology and adherence to biblical authority, its evangelical vibrancy, and the beauty of its ancient, incarnational liturgy. As I have written elsewhere, Anglicanism has the potential to breathe new life into the evangelical movement.

But the denomination is experiencing growing pains. Its growth has flattened, and there is growing discontent in the denomination about its inability (or unwillingness) to address head-on some vital issues.

The denomination holds a national conference every five years, and the next one is…[finishing up today] in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and the delegates to the conference face some important issues that need action.

Read it all.

(ANALYSIS/@WarrenColeSmith) The Anglican Church in North America has been one of the success stories in recent American church history. But its growth has flattened, and there is growing discontent about its inability to address some vital issues.https://t.co/kkEXLJf7iM

— Religion Unplugged (@ReligionMag) June 21, 2024

What’s been most interesting to me about Shuttlesworth is how he personified the mixture of Christian orthodoxy and freedom fighting that characterized the primary stream of the Black church’s social action tradition. As a pastor and leader, he called himself a biblicist and an actionist, meaning he had a devout faith in the authority of Scripture while believing right doctrine compelled the Christian into social action.

In February, I preached one of the Black History Month sermons at Zion Baptist Church, a traditional Black church in Cincinnati. After the service, Judge Cheryl Grant, a longtime congregant, thanked me for delving into the legacy of civil rights advocate Fred Shuttlesworth.

Grant had been very close with the Shuttlesworth family after they moved from Birmingham to Cincinnati in 1961, and she was working on a documentary about him with filmmaker Mark Vikram Purushotham and biographer Andrew M. Manis. Her personal testimony about Shuttlesworth and his story of redemptive action has been more than inspiring for me, and now I’d like to share his story with a wider audience.

Shuttlesworth is an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. A cofounder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he faced and ultimately outwitted Birmingham’s infamous commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, to advance racial justice in one of America’s most obstinately segregated environments.

What’s been most interesting to me about Shuttlesworth is how he personified the mixture of Christian orthodoxy and freedom fighting that characterized the primary stream of the Black church’s social action tradition. As a pastor and leader, he called himself a biblicist and an actionist, meaning he had a devout faith in the authority of Scripture while believing right doctrine compelled the Christian into social action.

Read it all.

“The American church’s sins regarding race are a product of its failure to follow the Bible’s mandates, not the consequence of following them too closely.”@JustinEGiboney this Juneteenth: https://t.co/2qk8JhX4QW

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) June 19, 2024

On the ninth anniversary of the Emanuel AME Church shooting, congregants and community members are honoring the nine victims and five survivors while looking to the future to ensure their story isn’t forgotten.

A self-avowed white supremacist joined a Bible study the night of June 17, 2015, at the historic Calhoun Street church. He opened fire in the fellowship hall, murdering a group of Black parishioners.

Family members appeared at the killer’s bond hearing two days later. Several stood up to speak as a magistrate called out the names of their loved ones. Some told the gunman they forgave him.

Their words reverberated across the globe, transforming an act of pure evil into a story of grace, resistance and strength.

Read it all.

On the 9th anniversary of the Charleston Emanuel AME Church mass shooting, congregants & community members are honoring the 9 victims & 5 survivors while looking to the future to ensure their story isn’t forgotten. #EmanuelAME https://t.co/Q67zu0VQuf

— Flo McAfee (@soukieg) June 17, 2024

The composer and choral director John Rutter has been appointed a Knight Bachelor in the King’s Birthday Honours list, published late on Friday evening.

Sir John, who is 78, has composed hundreds of choral anthems, carols, and extended compositions, including opera and orchestral pieces. He has conducted orchestras around the world (Interview, 9 September 2005).

He is a vice-president of the Joyful Company of Singers, president of the Bach Choir, and president of the Association of British Choral Directors (ABCD).

Sir John was educated at Highgate School, where he was a chorister. He read music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was also a choir member, and as an undergraduate had his first compositions published. He served as director of music at Clare from 1975 to 1979. In 1981, he founded the Cambridge Singers, which he conducts, and with whom he has made several recordings of sacred choral repertoire, including his own works.

Read it all.

The composer and choral director John Rutter has been appointed a Knight Bachelor in the King’s Birthday Honours list, published late on Friday evening https://t.co/hID4df2HsL

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 14, 2024

“When you look back at the history of Premier, you can see the various times in which Peter’s energy and his drive were the defining things that either kept Premier going or helped it go to the next level,” said Premier’s deputy CEO Kevin Bennett, who has been acting as CEO since Peter went on sick leave. Bennett led the tributes that have poured in from Premier’s friends, supporters, readers and listeners. 

“I hope Peter will be remembered as a man who was utterly committed to the task that God set before him; a man who never looked back for one moment after putting his hands to the plough and pressed on continuously, relentlessly, with the singular goal to reach as many people as possible with the good news of Jesus. For all the things he’s done; for all the things he’s achieved, I hope he’s remembered for his heart, his mission and his ministry above all else.” 

“Peter has been a brave and outspoken advocate for many, and his legacy is one that will continue to impact the life of the Church across Britain and farther afield for many years to come,” said His Eminence Archbishop Angaelos OBE, Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London and Papal Legate to the UK. “His infectious enthusiasm and uncontrollable energy have been an inspiration to many and he will continue to live in our hearts and in our memories.” 

Peter Kerridge transformed a small start-up radio station into one of the most significant Christian media networks in the world. He will be remembered as a vis…

Source: Premier Christianity https://t.co/WvInFSBgC1

— Paul Bakibinga (@PabloBach) June 9, 2024

I, too, had dismissed No Country as another affected, self-consciously “cinematic” Coen brothers’ dead end, but Holloway’s careful reading converted me. The mistake is to see No Country as being about the bad guy. Instead, it’s about a traditional Hollywood good guy, the local sheriff, Bell (Tommy Lee Jones): “a kind of traditionalist conservative, … a lifetime lawman, a proud member of a line of lawmen.” But when this old-fashioned guy is confronted with radical evil in the person of Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who possesses not “an inordinate attachment to some real good” but a sadistic need to show everyone who crosses his path the utter worthlessness of their existence, Bell is lost.

Why? The lawman is unable to contend with Chigurh’s perverse brand of lawbreaking because he fears God has abandoned him and that “he may somehow be drawn into this evil.” In the end, Bell “quits” the fight because a “low estimate of himself arises from a vain aspiration to self-sufficiency.” When you believe you’re in a fight against the odds all by yourself, that you’ve lost God as your backup, what else is there to do but turn tail and run? (Contrast this with Franz Jäggerstätter’s exemplary fortitude, ably explicated in Thomistic turns by Jennifer Frey in her essay on A Hidden Life, a more-or-less true-life story of an Austrian farmer’s steadfast resistance to pledging allegiance to Adolf Hitler.)

As I hope I’ve conveyed, Film and Faith is smart but never obtuse, entertaining but never frivolous, and thorough but never overstuffed. It will leave the reader, religious or not, with an enhanced critical vocabulary, better able to espy the spiritual depths even of those films that on first viewing appear to be thoroughly secular.

Hollywood's shift from classic religious portrayals to exploring deeper, sometimes critical themes of faith reflects a changing societal engagement with spirituality in cinema.

On the harrowing of Hollywood with @amsacramonehttps://t.co/llwRGVIEb5

— Law & Liberty (@LawLiberty) May 31, 2024

Prior to joining T. Rowe Price, Poppy Allonby spent more than twenty years at Blackrock, predominately in equity investment roles and latterly as Managing Director, Head of Global Product Group, EMEA & APAC. Between 2014 and 2022, she was on the Church Commissioners’ Board of Trustees and a member of its Assets Committee.

“I am delighted and honoured to join the Church Commissioners as its CIO, an organisation globally recognised as a leader in sustainable investment,” said Poppy Allonby. “My focus will be on delivering strong, consistent returns to meet the Commissioners’ core purpose, which is to support the mission and ministry of the Church of England – and to do so in an ethical, sustainable way.”

The Church Commissioners has provided the Church with over £3.5bn in funding since 2009, with £1.2bn to be distributed during the current 2023-2025 triennium – a 30% increase on the previous triennium, thanks in large part to the excellent investment returns generated by the Commissioners’ Investment team. The fund has delivered 14 years of positive returns, while building a reputation as a global leader in responsible investment.

Exciting news @ccsforengland! Poppy Allonby is their new #endowment CIO. Poppy brings +21 years of expertise to the #CIO role. @Matttoledo1 @ChiefInvOfficerhttps://t.co/XCcQDVITtG#alts #privatemarkets #energytransition #duediligence #compliance #ESG #Vidriofinancial

— Vidrio Financial (@VidrioFinancial) May 31, 2024

Reviewing the development of Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) reveals that it demonstrates an even more serious ‘PLF’ problem, one that is evident in other areas of church life as well: Persistent Leadership Failure. It first traces this failure back to the rushed origins of PLF in late 2022 and early 2023.

These resulted in further failures leading to an instability and incoherence which is traced from early 2023 to the present in relation to repeated changes in:

• For whom the prayers are being proposed;
• The theological and legal basis of the prayers;
• The relationship to the church’s supposedly unchanged doctrine where, contrary to the February 2023 Synod motion and the bishops’ original plan, PLF are now acknowledged to be “indicative of a departure from the Church’s doctrine”; and
• The canonical route by which the original proposed PLF are to be introduced. Here nine different stages favouring multiple different paths are summarised culminating in the latest reported “emerging proposal” to introduce standalone services by commending them for use for an experimental period under Canon B5.

This latest proposal has a certain logic as the prohibition on standalone services was an abuse of the House’s power and did not make canonical sense once the substance of the prayers were commended by the bishops for use under Canon B5.

However, there are ten problems with this route, some new but some previously recognised and given as reasons to reject commendation….

Read it all.

In the Church of England's 'Prayers of Love and Faith', does PLF actually stand for Persistent Leadership Failure? Where did the process go so badly wrong, and what are the numerous problems with the current proposals? @simonsarmiento @theologyethics1 https://t.co/P6uq2M6mEF

— Dr Ian Paul (@Psephizo) May 29, 2024

An independent agency, Race Equality First, has been commissioned to investigate racist incidents in the Church of England.

The C of E’s director of racial justice, the Revd Guy Hewitt, said on Thursday: “Sadly, anecdotal evidence suggested that such occurrences are more common than appreciated.”

“For our GMH/UKME communities [Global Majority Heritage/UK Minoritised Ethnic], being stereotyped, overlooked, or excluded, or facing harassment, hostile comments or microaggression are an all-too-common experience. Leaving such behaviours unchallenged or brushed under the carpet is seriously damaging both to individuals and our faith community.”

The report of the Archbishops’ anti-racism task force From Lament To Action (News, 22 April 2021) recommended the setting up of a robust, independent system for handling complaints.

An independent agency, Race Equality First, has been commissioned to investigate racist incidents in the Church of England https://t.co/8ffLuvlLSd

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) May 25, 2024

In another investigation, [Marshall] Allen reported that Dignity Health, a large religious health system that described itself as carrying on “the healing ministry of Jesus,” had refused to cover the medical expenses of an employee’s three-month-premature baby. Dignity claimed the woman hadn’t filled out the necessary paperwork and that she bore sole responsibility for a nearly $1 million hospital bill, though she had enrolled her baby with the insurer from the NICU.

After Allen called the company with questions, Dignity reversed its decision and retroactively covered the baby, who survived.

“Some people might think that Christians are supposed to be soft and acquiescent rather than muckrakers who hold the powerful to account,” he wrote in The New York Times. “But what I do as an investigative reporter is consistent with what the Bible teaches.”

Allen argued that the Bible “teaches that people are made in the image of God and that each human life holds incredible value.”

A Christian journalist, he said, should be comforted by God to be a comfort to others. A Christian journalist should rebuke deception and unfair practices. A Christian journalist should get all sides of the story, in line with Proverbs’ call for hearing multiple witnesses. And a Christian journalist should admit and correct mistakes with humility. He also shared this vision of Christian journalism in lectures to journalism students at The King’s College.

“He saw this work as redemptive and Christian in nature,” said Paul Glader, a friend of Allen’s and a former journalism professor at King’s. “He did amazing work investigating the health care bureaucracy and bullies, seeking out answers and truth for the little guy—all of us consumers.”

Marshall Allen, a Christian muckraker who held the health care industry accountable, has died at age 52.

His obituary from @emlybelz:https://t.co/jKrQA3nle3

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) May 23, 2024

So we are celebrating being one-fifth smaller as a church (in terms of attendance) than we were in 2019.

These kinds of figures are always easier to grasp in visual form, so this is what the graphs look like:

(These graphs are from the papers for the Archbishops’ Council in January, when the first figures were known. I am not sure why the information has been released now, four months later, when the figures have not changed much if at all. The release seem to coincide with communication from the meeting of the House of Bishops, in which encouraging stories of growth were shared; this provides important context for that.)

In terms of the goals of the Church to see decline turned around and become growth, this is not very encouraging news. It means that not only have we not seen overall growth, we have not seen an end to decline. In fact, the rate of decline has not yet slowed, and is perhaps getting faster.

It could be argued that this is almost all the result of Covid lockdown losses, and we are still to see the full recovery. But I think that is now quite hard to sustain: this is now the third year since lockdown; other institutions seem to have made any recovery they expected; and other churches seem to have already fully bounced back (this is certainly the case here in my city). The awkward question remains about the national Church’s response, and in particular the comments of the Archbishops, which closed church buildings unnecessarily, and appeared to communicate that in-person attendance was not essential anyway. It appears as though many Anglicans have taken this seriously, and the habit of church attendance has been lost.

Once more: whither the Church of England? | Psephizo https://t.co/BnPfhGT5ke

— Simon Sarmiento (@simonsarmiento) May 22, 2024

Attendance figures are assembled each year and published in the Statistics for Mission report in the following autumn. This year, however, preliminary figures were released by Church House on Monday. They provide “a snapshot of the overall picture”, and are based on returns from more than 11,000 churches, a statement said. “The totals could be revised as further figures come in and checks continue.”

The returns received so far suggest that average all-age weekly attendance, which includes Sunday and midweek services, increased from 654,000 people in 2022 to 685,000 in 2023: a rise of 4.7 per cent. The number of children (defined as anyone under the age of 16) attending weekly rose from 87,000 in 2022 to 92,000 in 2023: an increase of 5.7 per cent.

In 2021, average all-age weekly attendance was 605,000 people, compared with 345,000 people in 2020 (when churches were closed during periods of national lockdown), and 854,000 people in 2019….

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Archbishops take comfort from small signs of growth in church attendance https://t.co/bHTPyymClZ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) May 20, 2024

Then, as now, the majority of global Anglicans believed that apostolic teaching calls for those engaging in sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage to be loved by the church and called to repent. Without repentance, such a person cannot be considered a “true shepherd” and therefore should be precluded from ordination or consecration. It was, therefore, TEC’s willingness to consecrate a man in a same-sex relationship which tore “the fabric of [the] communion at its deepest level.”

Returning to the events of Saturday 11th May 2024, Bishop Jill Duff told Anglican Futures that she was asked to attend the consecration of Bishop David Morris as a representative of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York…. She was very clear that it was in that capacity, rather than as an honorary assistant bishop in the Church in Wales, that she did so .

This raises a number of issues of national and international significance:

First, this means a bishop of the Church of England was involved in the consecration of a man whose conduct would prevent him from being consecrated as a bishop in the Church of England.

Read it all.

When @AnglicanFutures publishes a piece like this it quickly becomes obvious that the only real sin for @churchofengland bishops is to dissent from the idea that truth is best regarded as being plural. Nearly 3,000 reads shows how wrong that is. https://t.co/Z5hLAuYA8D

— Dan Leafe (@DanLeafe1) May 19, 2024