The bells at Christ Church Anglican Meaford (Boucher Street East) will be rung 60 times at noon each day ending Sunday June 21 – a total of 1320 times, to honour and remember missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada and to draw attention to the need for an inquiry. The first day for the ringing was May 31.

The Bishop of Huron, the Right Reverend Robert Bennett has endorsed and invited the faith communities of Huron to respond to the call by Archbishop Fred Hiltz (Primate of all Canada) and Bishop Mark MacDonald (National Indigenous Anglican Bishop) for the Anglican Church of Canada to enter into 22 Days of prayer and renewal beginning on May 31 (the closing ceremony of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission) and ending 22 days later on June 21 (National Aboriginal Day of Prayer).

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The Church of England is urging vicars to broadcast their Sunday services live on the internet because some people find it too “scary” to attend in person.

Official advice from the CofE’s Church House headquarters in London encourages parishes to take advantage of new technology making it possible to broadcast through a mobile phone as a new way of “spreading the word”.

It recommends trying out new streaming services as a means of catering for those unable to attend because of ill health or travelling abroad as well as to reach those who might be curious but wary of publicly joining in services.

The advice, written by Tallie Proud, the Church’s digital media officer, provides basic tips on everything from taking a steady shot to remembering to keep their mobile phone battery charged while streaming.

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Women And The Church (known as ”˜Watch’), the pressure group calling for the use of ”˜female language’ to describe God, know that such a change would lead to bitter rows in vestries and thunderous denunciations in the General Synod, the Church of England parliament.

But they are ready for battle. Watch ran ”” and won ”” the campaign for women bishops.

They are not to be confused with the loopy Christian feminists who danced in circles, clutching ”˜healing crystals’, in the Seventies. No one listened when that lot demanded that God be called ”˜She’, as they did incessantly.

Watch, in contrast, is led by a group of politically savvy networkers. These women are embedded in the ancient structures of the Church.
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Watch’s members love to point out that the Bible uses feminine imagery: God is compared to ”˜a woman in labour’ in the Book of Isaiah.

But throughout the Gospels Jesus constantly refers to God as ”˜Father’ ”” most famously in the Lord’s Prayer.

Referring to God as ”˜Mother’ drives a horse and cart through Scripture. Such an innovation is guaranteed to split the C of E as never before.

And much of the anger would come from Christians whom feminists are desperately anxious not to upset ”” women from immigrant backgrounds. African, West Indian and Asian Anglicans ”” who keep many inner-city British parishes alive ”” think feminised worship is tainted by paganism.

For many of them, referring to God as a woman is, indeed, a form of goddess worship, something they have fought against in their countries of origin.

We should also ask why this particular question has arisen now. One influence is the fashion for rewriting history to highlight the role of women in biblical times.

Much of this is based on bad scholarship and wishful thinking. Several books portray Mary Magdalene as the real leader of the Apostles. They are about as plausible as The Da Vinci Code.
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The Church of England is not good at telling the difference between necessary modernisation of its practices and secular fads. Nothing has done more damage than its embarrassing attempts to be ”˜relevant’.

In some parishes, every other sermon is about climate change, on which the vicar poses as an expert even though he’s done no more than skim-read The Guardian.

And do you remember those hideous cathedral youth events billed as ”˜raves in the nave’?

Despite weighty theological arguments, the ”˜God as She’ proposal falls clearly into the category of gimmick.

Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has warned us that the Church could be extinct in 25 years’ time unless services become more spiritually fulfilling.

Calling God ”˜She’ will not achieve that fulfilment. The proposed twist of language will do nothing to stop the decline of Christian faith in this country.
On the contrary, it will make worshippers squirm. And nothing empties pews faster than that.

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“My mom and dad didn’t tell us why they were putting us on the train. I thought they were coming with us,” said Clara Fergus, a Cree woman from northern Manitoba to a sharing circle on the morning of June 1, at the beginning of the final event of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). “They put us on the train, and then we noticed they didn’t come with us.”

The train took Fergus all the way to the United Church of Canada-run Brandon Indian Residential School, where she would spend the rest of her childhood having her language, culture and identity stripped from her while suffering “all forms of abuse” at the hands of teachers and staff.

“Being away from your brothers and sisters, being away from your grandparents,” said Fergus. “It’s the love that we missed. The hugs. The nurturing”¦I can’t imagine”¦if I sent my kids there, and they had to go through that”¦”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has spent the last six years documenting stories like Fergus’s, stories of how the Indian residential school system was set up to enact what Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin recently called “an attempt at cultural genocide.”

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I’m not sure that the reason millions of Brits are staying away from church is that they’ve explored the case for Christianity and found it wanting. Rather, most don’t know enough about Christianity to know whether they’re Anglican or not. What passes for religious education in schools is a joke; more comparative anthropology than anything, with Buddhism getting about as much space as Christianity. Sunday schools are no more. Whenever I’ve met secular university audiences I’ve been struck by the extent to which really bright young people know next to nothing about Christian doctrine.

The loss of faith has all sorts of repercussions. It was affecting the way the FA crowd on Saturday sang Abide With Me, that poignant expression of Christianity: hymn singing is one of the things young males don’t do any more.

But the losses go further. Yale professor David Brooks has written a much-discussed book, The Road to Character, in which he laments the way his students no longer have the language, the concepts, to talk about things like the common good, altruism, virtue. (They may of course do so in terms of evolutionary self-interest instead.)

One thing religion does is enable you to talk about these things; it’s more or less what Christianity is about. Even those of us who aren’t Anglican should be wishing Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, well in his bid to re-evangelise England. If the CofE dies, an awful lot of good will die with it.

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How typically hypocritical of today’s Church of England leadership to preach one thing but do the opposite.

During the election campaign, Anglican bishops made the highly political move of issuing a 52-page letter urging Christians to resist the power of big business.

Their call for an end to the free-market ideas embodied by Margaret Thatcher, which they claimed were ”˜entrenching inequality’ between rich and poor, infuriated the Tory Party.

Yet just a few weeks later, Church leaders now appear to be happily embracing big-business values.

For the latest report by the Church Commissioners, who handle the C of E’s investments, reveals that they awarded a £75,000 pay rise to their director of investments.

The 18 per cent increase, at a time when the Government has imposed a public sector pay freeze, brings Tom Joy’s total salary package to £409,000.

Of course, the Church has to employ the best financial brains to look after its investments, but such a large amount of money will shock many parishioners working hard to raise funds.

Indeed, Mr Joy is not the only person being well-rewarded by the Church. Ten of the commission’s 229 staff earn more than £100,000 a year.

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Membership of the Church of England has dropped sharply in Britain in the last two years while the number of Muslims has grown, a new survey has revealed.

The British Social Attitudes survey found that the proportion of British adults describing themselves as Anglican has fallen from 21 per cent in 2012 to 17 per cent in 2014, a loss of around 1.7 million. That brings the number of Anglicans in Britain to 8.6 million people.

The proportion of Catholics remained roughly stable at 8 per cent, or just over 4 million, as did that of “other” Christians, including Methodists, Presbyterians and non-denominational Christians.

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The Department for Education have today announced that the Church of England will be running one of the projects funded by the Character Education Grant.

The project will pilot ‘What If Learning’, a cross-curricular model developed by an international partnership of educators. It aims to equip teachers with a practical approach to promoting the development of positive virtues and character traits in the classroom, which lead to success in learning and increased engagement in community and voluntary activities. The model will be piloted in 20 schools across 4 dioceses. The approach will be independently evaluated and resources will be made available to teachers across the country.

The project will be delivered by a collaborative partnership between the Church of England Education Office, the Dioceses of Chester, Derby, Exeter and Peterborough, Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of St Mark and St John, Plymouth.

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God is neither “she” nor “he” says Watch, a group which represents women in the church.

The organisation has been accused of trying to “rewrite” Christian doctrine by encouraging people to use the female pronoun when talking about God.

Rev Jody Stowell, vicar at St Michael & All Angels Church in Harrow, says she was “dismayed” by recent reports.

“This is not about making God a woman. This is about creating those proper, Biblical images of God,” she explains.

The ideas surrounding which pronouns to use when talking about God were discussed at a committee meeting in Lambeth Palace, according to Hilary Cotton, chair of Watch.

The former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe, who left the Anglican Church following the decision to ordain women priests, said a plan to use female pronouns was “plain silly” and “the work of lunatics”.

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I am always amazed and reassured that Jesus never apologised for the God of the Old Testament ”“ his father! This includes being unashamed of the Genesis account of creation, especially: ”˜So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them’ [Genesis 1:27, NIV 1984, italics mine]. The modern redefinition of marriage reflects a disdain for God’s plan in making us male and female. I thank God for those who have resisted this trend, and hold to a biblical definition of traditional marriage.

References to the inspiration of scripture in the New Testament include the 39 books of the Old Testament. If we affirm the New Testament it means we affirm the Old Testament too. I accept there are things in the Old Testament that are hard to swallow. Yes. But this is true with the New Testament too. Part of bearing the stigma for Christ is the willingness to look like fools in the eyes the world.

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Passionate but peaceful protesters gathered outside St. George’s Anglican Church in downtown Guelph on Sunday morning to send a message to the church’s bishop.

As parishioners filed into the Woolwich Street church, roughly 25 members of two south end community groups handed out literature and marched on the sidewalk with signs critical of Bishop Michael Bird of the Anglican Diocese of Niagara.

While the protesters made it clear they have no issue with St. George’s Church itself, they felt it was another way to try to pressure Bishop Bird to meet with them and discuss the sale of property on Kortright Road that is the home of the former St. Matthias Anglican Church.
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“I think the bishop should meet with the people. Jesus met with everybody, sinners and non-sinners, so why would the bishop not meet with the people,” said Bruce Taylor of Citizens for Community.

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A different tradition is that of the Eastern Orthodox church, which I mentioned in chapter 12. There the “Jesus prayer” has been rightly popular: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” (There are variations, but this is perhaps the best known.) This, like the Jewish Shema, is designed to be said over and over again, until it becomes part of the act of breathing, embedding a sense of the love of Jesus deep within the personality. This prayer, again like the Shema, begins with a confession of faith, but here it is a form of address. And instead of commandments to keep, it focuses on the mercy that the living God extends through his Son to all who will seek it. This prayer has been much beloved by many in the Orthodox and other traditions, who have found that when they did not know what else to pray, this prayer would rise, by habit, to their mind and heart, providing a vehicle and focus for whatever concern they wished to bring into the Father’s presence.

I have a great admiration for this tradition, but I have always felt a certain uneasiness about it. For a start, it seems to me inadequate to address Jesus only. The Orthodox, of course, have cherished the trinitarian faith, and it has stood them in good stead over the course of many difficult years. It is true that the prayer contains an implicit doctrine of the Trinity: Jesus is invoked as the Son of the living God, and Christians believe that prayer addressed to this God is itself called forth by the Spirit. But the prayer does not seem to me to embody a fully trinitarian theology as clearly as it might. In addition, although people more familiar than I with the use of this prayer have spoken of its unfolding to embrace the whole world, in its actual words it is focused very clearly on the person praying, as an individual. Vital though that is, as the private core of the Christian faith without which all else is more or less worthless, it seems to me urgent that our praying should also reflect, more explicitly, the wider concerns with which we have been dealing.

I therefore suggest that we might use a prayer that, though keeping a similar form to that of the Orthodox Jesus Prayer, expands it into a trinitarian mode:

Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:

Set up your kingdom in our midst.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:

Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Holy Spirit, breath of the living God:

Renew me and all the world.

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The Right Rev. and Right Hon. George Carey includes among his passions his wife, Eileen; the Barclays Premier League football club Arsenal; and “certain things such as a peaceful world,” he told The Blade during an interview at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Detroit.

The former archbishop of Canterbury elaborated on obstacles to peace that he sees.

“I really do feel very worried about” what is happening to Christians in the Middle East at the hands of the Islamic State, Lord Carey said. “I think we’re now living in a world more dangerous than ever.”

He said that “our biggest enemy now is [ISIS] and Islamic fundamentalism, which now exists in America in all those Muslim families that you have graciously invited and said, following the Statue of Liberty, ”˜Come and make your home here.’

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A leading witch and herbalist shared a Church of England platform last night with other women religious leaders including the Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church and Gogglebox tv vicar Rev Kate Bottley.

Helene Mobius, who heads the prison chaplain ministry of the Pagan Federation, challenged stereotypes of women at the event, the latest in the Westminster Faith Debates series at London’s liberal flagship church, St James’s Piccadilly.

The Pagan Federation and the Druid Network have recently become fully-fledged members of Britain’s religious establishment, having been voted into the Inter Faith Network UK as a body representative of its community.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

As a boy I was fascinated with space travel. Perhaps it was growing up during the so-called ”˜space-race’ when the USSR competed with the USA to send a human into space or land a man on the moon. Although the Soviets won the initial stage with the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin they were soon eclipsed by the Americans, 12 of whom stepped onto the lunar surface.

My reading material reflected this fascination as I went through a series of library books with such gripping titles as Mission to Mercury, Voyage to Venus and Journey to Jupiter. At around that time, it must have been in the second half of junior school, I was introduced to the concept of infinity. The universe itself was presented as infinite and I can remember lying in bed thinking about the vastness of space and finding myself feeling afraid, pulling the bed covers over me as if that would make a difference!

Scientists do not now regard our universe as infinite, though the notion of ”˜multiverses’ ”“ the theory there may be an infinite number of other possible universes ”“ keeps the thought alive. Yet even if our universe may have bounds, its immensity is truly overwhelming and intimidating.

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Where do Irish Christians go from here? Ireland is spiritually and morally bankrupt, at war with itself, and Hell-bent, detesting the idea of Christianity – at least the version of it that has been presented to it by the Roman Catholic church. But in one sense, nothing has changed. We know already from the Scriptures that Jesus said: ”˜wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14). This is and will always remain true no matter what decisions nations and individuals take.

So, where do we go from here? Well, like the Apostle Paul, our ambition in Ireland is simply to preach the Gospel where Christ is not known (Romans 15:20). In Ireland, the vast majority ”˜know’ Christ as only a swear word, or as a distant, cold stone statue figure at best. But our ambition, as Irish Christians, as Evangelicals, is to bring the Gospel afresh to this generation of Irish to know Him as their loving Lord and Saviour. To preach the Gospel, was ”˜always’ Paul’s ambition in life, and this ambition should grip every Evangelical and every Evangelical church in Ireland.

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A liturgy to “mark a person’s gender transition” should be devised to help the Church welcome and affirm transgender people, a motion from the diocese of Blackburn suggests. The motion was sent for consideration to the General Synod last month, after being carried by the diocesan synod.

Its origins lie in a service led last year by the Vicar of St Mary’s, Lancaster, the Revd Chris Newlands, after a young man had asked to be “rebaptised”, explaining that he had been baptised as a girl.

“He said: ‘I don’t think God knows me; so I would like to be introduced to God as a man,'” Mr Newlands recalled on Tuesday. A liturgy was devised, drawing on the initiation service, which enabled the man to reaffirm his baptismal vows.

“It was just a very simple pastoral response to something which came out of the blue,” Mr Newlands said. “It was really moving, as he felt he was in a proper relationship with God. He just wanted God to know his new name.”

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The chimes atop St. John’s Cathedral in Saskatoon will ring out this week in honour of Canada’s missing and murdered aboriginal women.

As part of national initiative by the Anglican Church of Canada, the bells in Saskatoon will ring 1,017 times ”” one chime for each aboriginal women and girls murdered between 1980 and 2012, according to a press release by the church.

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The 4,130 square metre Brown Street property housed the city’s successive Anglican bishops until current bishop Greg Thompson chose to reside elsewhere.

The seven bedroom, four bathroom 1929 Bishopscourt is not heritage listed but parts of its grounds are.

Last year, the Anglican Synod gave the greenlight for the Newcastle sale to be considered. At the time Bishop Greg Thompson asked the Synod to consider “the economics of having this property, the suitability of it as the home of the Bishop and family, and the historic sentiment of previous bishops who lived within it.”

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Alice Hargreaves, nee Liddell died in 1934 aged 82 and is buried at Lyndhurst, Hants.

She inspired the author ”“ a friend of her family ”“ to write about a girl who fell down a rabbit hole to entertain her and her sisters when she was a child.

The book, which has since been published in more than 170 languages and adapted for the big screen, first came about on a rowing trip they all took together.

Ann Rogers, warden at St Michael and All Angels Church where the grave is, said: “We get lots of visitors to see Alice’s grave – every day there’s a family struggling to find it in the church grounds….”

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Just over a year ago Lichfield diocese agreed to pilot a fresh approach. 60 people, lay and ordained, gathered one morning in Stafford to think about how to get people talking about death, dying and funerals. They went away to try out a new concept: GraveTalk, with 35 parishes setting up café-style events. Each event involves setting up a space to look like a café, where refreshments are served. People gather in small groups at tables. Conversations are started through a pack of 52 specially written questions covering a wide range of topics, ranging from attitudes to death to personal experiences.

There are no answers, just a space to talk. Facilitators, lay or ordained, make sure the event is running smoothly ”“ and there is always ”˜tea and cake’. The trial was researched in partnership with the University of Staffordshire, and the results were overwhelmingly positive: when we make the time and the space, people will talk.

One vicar who piloted GraveTalk said:

“I gave it to them and I went and made coffee while they started discussing it. And I just couldn’t shut them up. When I came to draw them to a conclusion, they wanted to carry on. They thought it was absolutely brilliant. I was really surprised.”

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The archbishops and bishops of the Church of Ireland wish to affirm that the people of the Republic of Ireland, in deciding by referendum to alter the State’s legal definition of marriage, have of course acted fully within their rights.

The Church of Ireland, however, defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and the result of this referendum does not alter this.

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O Lord our God, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thine apostles and send them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless thy holy name for thy servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating thy Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom thou dost call and send may do thy will, and bide thy time, and see thy glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Anglican war chaplains saw terrible things on the Western Front in the First World War and many were hailed as heroes for ministering to dying men amid the shell fire and machinegun bullets in no man’s land. They returned to their pulpits with a righteous anger to change their church and British society.

Linda Parker’s wide-ranging book, Shellshocked Prophets: Former Anglican Army Chaplains in Interwar Britain, tells the story of this brave band of Anglican clergyman ”” who were awarded around 250 Military Crosses between them ”” and then helped to transform the church. “Given the changes that occurred in the Church of England institutionally, liturgically and in its attitudes to a rapidly changing society, it is important that the role of former chaplains should be examined and their significance analysed,” says Dr Parker, herself the daughter of a former Territorial Army chaplain.

A harbinger of social change in the church was the Industrial Christian Fellowship founded by the Rev Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, MC,in 1919 to encourage Christians to relate their faith to their working lives. As chief “missioner”, Studdert Kennedy travelled the country evangelising in factories, mines and canteens, and gathered about him a team of other ex-war chaplains.

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With Victorian-style public lectures now a rarity, listening to anyone speak to a crowd, for most of us above school age, occurs only when the best man tells stories of the groom’s indiscretions. “Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking” is as much a case of “unaccustomed as I am to public listening”.

Pity the preacher then, who, as well as the regular Sunday gig, is drafted in for school assemblies, the Women’s Institute and the odd Rotary dinner.

The vicar is charged with delivering something memorable, neither too long nor too short, and not just once in a while, but week in week out. For me, the Sunday sermon looms large enough to make many a Saturday night sleepless. As I step nervously up the pulpit steps I worry that my waffling will leave them uninspired or, worse still, asleep. But while preaching is culturally alien to many, and being “preached at” unappealing to most, it is similar to something we are more used to seeing: standup comedy.

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Kota Kinabalu: The Anglican church here will not allow same-sex marriages to take place on its pre­mises, said newly installed Anglican bishop Melter Jiki.

The 50-year-old bishop, who is the first native Kadazan chosen to lead the 90,000-strong Anglican community in the state, said this when asked about the church’s policies and what to expect during his tenure.

“We are totally against the so-called same-sex marriage. We will not allow it in the church,” said the father of four who was installed as the sixth Anglican bishop in Sabah on Tuesday.

Some Anglican churches in European countries have accepted gay marriages and even performed the ceremony in their churches.

Bishop Melter said while other Anglican dioceses and provinces decided to ordain women to the priesthood, South-East Asia had not taken the step yet.

“We are not ready for such a move.

“We are also not sure whether we will be open to the idea any time soon,” he said.

Bishop Melter was appointed bishop of the diocese on Feb 20, replacing the late Bishop Albert Vun who passed away on July 15 last year.

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Faith groups are now filling a “huge gap” in British life occupied by the state until the financial crisis and onset of austerity forced a rethink, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Most Rev Justin Welby said churches, mosques, temples synagogues and other religious organisations had stepped in “in a most extraordinary way” over the past seven years.

He was speaking as a detailed national “audit” of faith groups was published calculating that their members give more than £3 billion worth of time a year on volunteer social action projects.

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The public view of religion among young people, according to a YouGov poll – well, alright it’s a poll, but ”¦ [laughter] the reputation of religion among young people is actually more negative than neutral: 41% ”“ this was a poll in 2013, when they still got them right ”“ 41% of 18-24 year olds agreed that “religion is more often the cause of evil in the world” and only 14% say it is a cause for good.

The Faith Action Audit reveals something different. It shows the breadth of commitment across the country, the depth of commitment, and above all the strength of experience and good practice. Thanks to Cinnamon [Network] and other bodies like it, this is not mere do-goodery. It is seeking to find best practice and put it into action in the most professional way that can be imagined.

We’ve heard some of the figures, but just a reminder: the faith sector collectively is delivering, according to the audit ”“ I’ll round it ”“ 220,000 social action projects, from which 47 million people benefit.

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Dr Williams also presented a long service certificate to Sue Beales, who has been big supporter of the Children in Need charity.

He then went on to speak to 80 people in the Boathouse on his personal journey.

Mr [Sean] Finlay said: “He was able to hold us spellbound for 45 minutes.

“Rowan is very engaging and spoke about how he started as a Presbyterian in Wales before progressing into the Anglican church.”

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Exeter Cathedral is fighting for its future after it failed to secure multi-million pound funding to uncover the city’s Roman baths.

The £8.7m Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) bid would have seen the first century bath house, buried under the Cathedral Green, excavated and opened to the public.

But the ambitious plans to create a worldwide tourist attraction were dealt a major blow when the funding body decided not to support the project.

Read it all from the Exeter Express and Echo.