Love is not a zero sum game which uses all our energy and exhausts us. Love creates energy and makes new possibilities. It knows how to give and receive. We are not here just to be consumers and gain us many things and experiences as we can buy. We are here as co-creators with God and one another and our to use our intelligence is to be used to make life better, to make an even better world. We are made for goodness.

So am I hopeful as we enter 2018? Yes, of course, and I don’t just mean I am optimistic. Hope is much more deeply rooted. It’s much more the sort of hope spoken by the survivors of Grenfell Tower after the memorial service at St Paul’s cathedral. They said that what they wanted is “truth and justice”. They didn’t think it especially complicated and said nothing about our living in a post-truth society with alternative facts. Their hope is that we will take the trouble to be a society that is about the truth. That is enduring and brings hope.

The prayer I often use as we enter the new year which was written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the dark years of Apartheid in South Africa.

Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.

Desmond Tutu (An African Prayer Book Hodder and Stoughton 1995)

Read it all.

A protest against the “divisive” and “disrespectful” election of Canon Anne Dyer as Bishop of Aberdeen & Orkney (News, 11 November) has been published by priests and lay people in the diocese.

An open letter to Canon Dyer, the first woman bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church, and the four bishops who elected her, was released on Friday, signed by seven priests. The date fixed for Canon Dyer’s consecration in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, is Thursday 1 March.

The open letter accuses the Bishops of having made an appointment “which directly goes against the established wishes of the Diocese on the views it would hope that our new Bishop would hold, and minister to us from the perspective of them”.

An accompanying press release says that the letter “should not be ‘spun’ in any way which makes it seem to be about women as Bishops or same sex-marriage”.

Read it all.

If you work for the Church of England in any capacity, from Archbishop of Canterbury to parish flower-arranger, how do you deal with the distressing statistics that in the past 20 years, average Sunday attendance has plummeted to 780,000 and is going down by a rate of about 20,000 a year?

Do you pretend it’s not happening and just tell everyone about the spike in your numbers at Christmas, or accept that it might be happening but believe that God’s grace will deal with the problem in its own good time? Or do you throw your weight behind a vast national marketing initiative, hurling millions of pounds at the problem?

Are you, in short, a denier or a panicker? We must thank Bishop Humphrey Southern, principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon, for coming up with those two words to describe the people on opposite sides of the debate, which isn’t really a debate because the people on opposite sides are hardly speaking to each other. In the nicest, most prayerful Christian way, they can’t stand each other and will do their best to avoid each other at synodical events. The panickers think the deniers are steering the Church towards oblivion; and the deniers think the panickers are eroding and cheapening the Church’s whole character.

Read it all.

From here:

Twitter now seems to be the preferred method of communication for at least one of our world leaders.

With a limit of 280 characters–it is difficult to say much–let alone explain anything complex. Who knows what might happen if the leader of another country takes something the wrong way?

God’s communication with us–the Bible–stretches to more than three and a half million characters.

But what would that be if we tweeted it? Let me try.

God creates the world We rebel God sends his Son Jesus into our world to be born in a stable + grow up to die on a cross but that’s not the end He defeats death + is raised to life offering every1 freedom from death. In short—a baby born in a shed saves the world #canyoubelieveit

That’s the sweetest tweet you’ll ever hear—but this Christmas, why not get the full picture by reading the Gospel of Luke in a modern version of the Bible. It won’t take you long.

Happy Christmas!

Dr Glenn N Davies
Archbishop of Sydney

The Reverend Matthew Stafford is based at Holy Trinity Church in picturesque Much Wenlock.

He and the ministry team will be in the spotlight when the ups and downs of four vicars are aired in a new reality show.

Mr Stafford is taking part in the six-part religion series that goes behind the scenes of the lives of vicars in the heart of the countryside covered by Hereford Diocese, which takes in parts of Shropshire.

From opening summer fairs to taking wedding ceremonies for residents, vicars are knitted into the fabric of country life, also providing a pillar of support in times of crisis and personal sorrow. Mr Stafford previously served at Telford’s Wrockwardine Wood and Oakengates parish.

Read it all.

For the next ten minutes, I want to say a few words about each of those two scenes in turn. I want to ask, first of all, what the manger might’ve meant to Mary and Joseph; and then secondly, what it might have meant to the shepherds. I hope that by the end we may glimpse what that manger can mean to you and me as well.

Read it all.

The nature of God who has all power, and from whom all power comes, is to lay it aside for love’s sake and thus without fear, force or manipulation to offer true freedom for every human being. God is showing all truth in its completest form, all love in its purest aspect, the true light of freedom all wrapped up in the baby in Bethlehem.

The light needed witnesses at the beginning and needs them to this day. It is the calling of every Christian to be a witness to the light, in word and deed, in all circumstances.

In Coventry Cathedral is one of my favourite pictures, the Stalingrad Madonna. It was drawn on paper in charcoal on Christmas Day 1942, 75 years ago, by a German medical officer under siege from the advancing Russian armies near Stalingrad. It shows Mary huddled against the terrible cold, holding Jesus, sheltered, to her cheek. Round her are the words “Licht, leben, Liebe” (Light, Life, love). Christ offers life of true freedom in love, in the darkest places his light shines. Every human being is invited to share that life and freedom. Christians are its witnesses.

Read it all.

A survey of the broadcasts made during her 65-year reign reveals that for most of the time the Queen has spoken only in passing of the religious significance of Christmas. There have been references to presents linking contemporary Christmas to the three wise men, for instance, alongside trips to Commonwealth countries, family events such as weddings and funerals, and there were observations about contemporary society. In 1966, for example, she spoke of the progress of women, and in 1972, she commented on Britain joining the European Community in language that would make any Remainer proud.

But for the past 17 years, her messages have taken on a different tone, with the Queen explaining her own personal faith – “the anchor in my life”, as she described it in 2014.

Last year she said: “Billions of people now follow Christ’s teaching and find in him the guiding light for their lives. I am one of them because Christ’s example helps me see the value of doing small things with great love, whoever does them and whatever they themselves believe.”

The turning point in the content of the broadcasts was the millennium. Her broadcast in 2000 was devoted to an account of Christ’s life and teaching which, she said, “provide a framework in which I try to lead my life”.

Read it all.

How the Queen – the ‘last Christian monarch’ – has made faith her message https://t.co/xzz75Hu7OD #uk #religion #christianity #politics

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) December 24, 2017

The Church of England has apologised for its handling of the allegations of abuse by Bishop George Bell, who died in 1958, but resisted a key recommendation in the review it requested.

The leading barrister and former MP Lord Carlile of Berriew was asked by the Diocese of Chichester to review its handling of the accusation by ‘Carol’.

Although he accepted that the diocese had acted in ‘good faith’, one of his key recommendations was that there should be a confidentiality provision, at least where cases are settled without admission of liability, as in this case.

Lord Carlile was not asked to decide on the veracity of the claims, which ‘Carol’ asserted happened when she was a child. These events date back to the 1940s and 1950s. The terms of his review were solely on how the Church handled these.

But on this point he was damning. While acknowledging that the Church’s actions were informed by history, in which the Church has been seen to be slow to acknowledge abuse by its clergy, or even turning a blind eye, he concluded: “The process followed by the Church in this case was deficient in a number of respects.”

Read it all (requires subscription).

England’s churches must become vibrant hubs at the centre of communities, offering local people a range of activities and services beyond a place to worship, if they are to be sustainable, according to an independent review.

Churches are “heritage assets”, but their care, maintenance and repair represents an enormous task, according to the Taylor review of the sustainability of English churches and cathedrals.

The report urges congregations to involve more local people to use and care for churches, citing examples where “enterprising clergy, PCCs [parish councils] and volunteers have developed their churches into vibrant hubs at the centre of their wider communities”.

Read it all.

The BBC’s review of its religion and ethics output “feels like the beginning of a new era” the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham James, has said.

Bishop James, who is the C of E’s lead bishop on media issues, said on Wednesday that BBC had produced “the most promising review of religion and ethics at the BBC that I have seen for a generation… It is very promising all round.”

Earlier on Wednesday, the BBC published plans for reforming its religion and ethics output. These include the establishment of a religion editor for news, a global team of specialist reporters, a greater focus on religious festivals, and creating a “Year of Belief” in 2019.

Bishop James said he was hopeful that the proposals would be implemented, and that they would have an impact on religious programming.

“I’m confident that at the highest level [in the BBC] this is now being taking seriously, at a level I have not seen before.”

Read it all.

The cynic in me wonders whether there were any PR machinations involved in the fact that the publication of Lord Carlile’s review was sandwiched between the fawning and ingratiating visit of Radio 4’s Today programme to Lambeth Palace last week and the joyous announcement of Sarah Mullally’s appointment to London.

Surely not? But in my opinion, the Church of England has become a place where appearances matter more than the reality. Friday is, after all, a good day for burying bad news.

I do not think, however, that the debacle over George Bell will be easily forgotten, not least because to use the words of Lord Carlile, Church of England leaders have been less than ‘adroit’ in their reaction to his excoriating report.

Lord Carlile’s report is a model of brevity and propriety. It is a line-by-line study of something approaching a slow-motion train wreck. The story told is one in which hapless leaders believed positively ancient allegations with little understanding of the principles at stake and then did little or nothing to investigate the veracity of allegations. To compound their errors they were too concerned about the reputation of the Church and gave almost no consideration to the reputation of a long-dead man (and there was absolutely no thought given to surviving members of the Bell family). The minutiae of the mess is to be found in the unprofessional and bungled composition and process of the so-called Core Group.

But it is the Church of England’s response to the report that is most disappointing. Having appointed one of the most distinguished lawyers in the land, the Church of England failed to understand his key recommendation, which is also a basic principle of British justice, that a person is innocent until proven guilty. The Archbishop of Canterbury hides behind the Church of England’s recent conversion to transparency to reject Carlile’s central recommendation that, in certain cases where liability cannot be proven and is not accepted, the Church of England should explore a confidentiality agreement to preserve the anonymity of the accused.

But senior leaders of the Church of England demonstrate that they do not understand basic principles of justice in rejecting this recommendation out-of-hand, and they certainly have not understood Lord Carlile’s report.

The Church of England should have refused to name George Bell because the allegations against him couldn’t meet even a lower threshold of a civil standard of proof. That is primarily because even a deceased person should have a defence and the Church of England gave no dignity to Bell by refusing to recognise this.

I fear that the Church of England at its highest level lacks leaders who understand basic principles of justice.

But the serious problem is the Church of England has now badly handled all of its recent reviews, especially the Elliott review. Additionally, I have no doubt that it will not be long before the Gibb review will be found to be inadequate when IICSA looks into the Diocese of Chichester next March and Peter Ball next July.

The House of Bishops is currently responsible for safeguarding but there is an urgent case for the involvement of an independent safeguarding body. Members of General Synod are agitating for a serious debate on the ongoing problems of the Church on safeguarding, but action must begin before the February sessions.

My personal hope is that the Church of England’s senior leaders wake up to the problem, which is driven by a culture of fear, rather than a proper culture of compassion and justice. In particular, the Church’s longest-standing leaders, especially the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, a former high court judge who suffered under Idi Amin because of his stand for justice, must step up to the plate. A way must be found to bring all interested parties together– including victims and complainants, those falsely-accused, Church leaders, lawyers, politicians and representatives of clergy and laity in General Synod — in a serious attempt to bring about change in the Church of England before the Independent Inquiry introduces its own possibly unwelcome, unwanted, intrusive and even misguided reforms.

–The Church of England Newspaper, December 22/29 1017 edition; subsriptions are encouraged

I have worked for a number of years with persecuted Christians and those of other faiths, especially in the Middle East and South Asia.Sometimes I am asked about those who feel they are ‘persecuted’ nearer home, in the UK. At one level the comparison is only superficial; Christian faith in the UK does not usually mean putting your life or liberty at risk.

Yet.

I find, though, that persecution begins with exclusion and discrimination. What is being dismissed from your post for your Christian views on marriage if not persecution? Or being refused as an applicant for adopting or fostering children if not persecution? Or being suspended as a teacher because of your Christian beliefs? Or losing your job for praying with a patient, if not persecution? So many examples can be given.

The family has been under sustained attack in this country for the last 50years. The family is the basis of a stable society.Yet our country has just abandoned the biblical teaching of marriage in public law.These attacks will not stop there.

First, divorce is becoming ever easier with further proposals for no-fault divorce. Marriage is no longer a covenant or contract.There is no accountability for people who abandon a marriage for no good reason.Family patterns are being reinvented and we are being told that fathers are not necessary. Yet all the research shows that fathers are very important for the proper maturing of children.

Read it all (subscription required).

Since the publication of the Carlile Report, the Archbishop, Church of England National Safeguarding Team and the Bishop of Chichester have all been defensive. They recognise that there are criticisms. But they continue to speak and behave as though they got the right result – merely via a flawed methodology. I am reminded of the quote from Alan Partridge: ‘You know, a lot of people forget that for the first three days, the cruise on The Titanic was a really enjoyable experience.’

On the October 21, 2015, I had been rung by the then Secretary-General of the Archbishops’ Council and of the General Synod of the Church of England, Sir William Fittall. It was Fittall who told me, over the phone, that a ‘thorough investigation’ had implicated Bishop George Bell in an historic sex-abuse case, and that the Church had ‘paid compensation to the victim’. Fittall added that he was tipping me off, as he knew we had an altar in the Cathedral dedicated to Bell, and that Bell was a distinguished former member of Christ Church.

Fittall asked what we would do, in the light of the forthcoming media announcements. I explained that Christ Church is an academic institution, and we tend to make decisions based on evidence, having first weighed and considered its quality. Fittall replied that the evidence was ‘compelling and convincing’, and that the investigation into George Bell has been ‘lengthy, professional and robust’. I asked for details, as I said I could not possibly make a judgement without sight of such evidence. I was told that such evidence could not be released. So, Christ Church kept faith with Bell, and the altar, named after him, remains in exactly the same spot it has occupied for over fifteen years, when it was first carved.

What we now learn from Independent Review of the Bishop George Bell Case is that evidence against Bell is, at best, flimsy….

Read it all.

When you end up apologising to both the Accused and the Complainant for your institutional incompetence, it is time for a fundamental debate about what is wrong at the highest levels of the Church of England.

Yet now we see our Bishops picking a fight with Lord Carlile on the applicability of transparency in special cases. One is bound to suggest that he is not the one who needs lectures on the subject, and that our church leadership is not perhaps best placed to deliver them. I am all for the zeal of the convert, but there are many within Church House and Lambeth Palace who need such instruction more urgently than does one of the country’s leading lawyers, who is simply but patiently explaining why and where they are wrong. Victims of abuse will see these expressions of concern for transparency to be expedient rather than heartfelt. Turning that culture around is a significant burden of work, but one which each and every member of the General Synod of the Church of England must now shoulder in order to ensure greater truth and a better justice.

To adapt the words of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer: ‘Rend your hearts, not your policy documents.’

Read it all.

Mr Husain then asked how she would vote if she were able to vote. To which the newly appointed bishop said.

“What we have to remember is that this is about people, and, [pause], the church seeks to demonstrate love to all, because it reflects the God of love, who loves everybody, and obviously this issue isn’t just an issue for London, not just for us in the Church of England, but also the Anglican Community, [pause] and at the moment the church is taking a period to reflect, there is work that is going on, [pause], and I’m involved in that, and, [pause], for me that is important that we take a time of reflection, whilst, you know, standing on the traditions of the Church of England…”.

The interviewer interrupted her at that point and asked whether she would bless a same-sex marriage. To which the new Bishop of London responded that “At the moment there is no provision to do that.”

The interviewer rephrased his question, asking if Bishop Mullally would welcome a change. “Would you like there to be that provision,” he asked.

Bishop Mullally declined to answer, stating: “As I said there is a period of reflection that is going on at the moment, and I am part of that…”.

Mr. Husain came back to the issue, asking a direct question of the bishop. “Have you not decided how you feel about blessing a same sex marriage?”

She again refused to be drawn and refused to answer the question….

Read it all.

The organisation

The Church of England is the state church of England, headquartered in Westminster. It has around 25 million members, and its churches are visited by an estimated 35 to 50 million tourists every year. The organisation is led by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and 106 other bishops, while the Queen is the supreme governor with the responsibility to appoint archbishops, bishops and deans of cathedrals on the advice of the prime minister.

The problem

At Christmas many of us choose to visit a church to pray, sing and give thanks. But how many of these people have ever considered that they could find a fulfilling career in the church? Hannah Foster, director of HR at the National Church Institutions of the Church of England, says recruitment has often been a stumbling block for the organisation. “People just don’t realise the breadth of jobs available in the Church of England,” she tells HRmagazine. “Everybody knows we have priests – that much is obvious, and we do have fabulous people doing that work – but we also have marketing people, HR teams, project managers, and so on.

“The roles could be ordained, or at governance level, or even voluntary. We have a huge number of opportunities, but they seemed to be getting lost at an organisational level.”

In an increasingly digital world Foster knew the Church could find a way to reach people who were not spotting opportunities advertised in the traditional manner. “We needed to reach the person in an office 10 miles away, who might like to work for us but didn’t know there was a job available because they don’t look at the parish noticeboard,” she says. “We had a lot of people who joined us over the years who have said they didn’t think of us as a place to work because we simply weren’t on their radar – but they were glad they had found us. Our job was to make those roles more visible.”

Read it all.

Very much in the mould then of another evangelical, the Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s also a former Chief Nursing Officer who worked in the Department of Health for five years and was educated in a comprehensive (the last, a very good thing). So, a far cry then from Richard Chartres, her bearded predecessor, who is both theologically learned and with a profound knowledge of Orthodox Christianity. I don’t think Prince Charles is going to be best friends with Sarah in quite the same way, somehow.

Very prudently, she refused to take sides on the fraught question of whether homosexual couples can marry in Church; she is, as it happens involved in the deliberations that the CofE is undertaking on the matter. As she said: ‘I am clear about teaching of the church…but I also want to reflect an inclusive response to this issue. I’m chairing one of the committees which is reflecting on our teaching and tradition on this issue, the aspect of it dealing with social and biological sciences. I can’t give a sense where this reflection is going to go, but it’s important to stress that everybody is loved by God.’ I got a strong sense from this cautiously worded response that she would be taking the discussion in the direction of liberalising gay marriage. Let’s see.

Read it all.

Read it all.

The Archbishop said:

“Bishop Sarah brings to this remarkable ministry in this great city an extraordinary experience and profound gifts which are guided by her faith in Jesus Christ, who is the foundation of all that she is.

“In her calling as a Bishop she has demonstrated that she is a shepherd of God’s people, a guardian of the Christian faith and someone with a passion for sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with others through her teaching and her actions.

Read it all.

Let me start with an admission: I am delighted but, yes, slightly terrified to be the next Bishop of London.
I have spent 32 years of my life in London so, for me, this will be returning home.

London is a world-facing city – multi-cultural and multi-faith.

It is a city of energy and diversity. London is open to all.

But it is also a city of inequality and deprivation. A typical woman in Tower Hamlets in east London will live 30 years in poor health, compared to only 12 for a man in Enfield further north.

Read it all.

The next Bishop of London will be the Rt Rev Sarah Mullally DBE, currently Bishop of Crediton, 10 Downing Street has announced today.
Bishop Sarah will succeed the Rt Rev and Right Hon Richard Chartres KCVO, who retired as Bishop of London earlier this year. She will be installed as the 133rd Bishop of London at St Paul’s Cathedral in the new year.

Bishop Sarah was a senior civil servant in the Department of Health before ordination. A trained nurse, she became Chief Nursing Officer for England in 1999, the youngest person to be appointed to the post. She was ordained in 2001 and served her curacy in St Saviour’s Battersea Fields, initially as a self-supporting minister, before leaving her Government post in 2004, subsequently taking up full-time ministry in the London Borough of Sutton.

Read it all.

Sarah Mullally Announced as Next Bishop of #London https://t.co/cNzjq2H4AJ #anglican #religion #uk #urbanlife pic.twitter.com/H1IacuNB4h

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) December 18, 2017

In the early afternoon of Christmas Eve, 2016, Chad Geis, chair of the pastoral council at the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qu’Appelle, Sask., arrived at the church he had known since his childhood to get things ready for the Christmas morning mass.

From the moment he stepped in, it was clear something was amiss. It was oddly cold inside. The thermometer read -5° C. Christmas services ended up being cancelled at the church while Geis tried to find out what was wrong with the boiler.

Two and a half blocks away, at St. Peter’s Anglican Church, there were no Christmas services planned either. Its congregation of eight to 10 active members receives sacramental ministry once a month from a retired priest who also ministers to other churches, and they wanted to offer the priest the option of putting on a service at a larger church with more children, says warden Jean Kurbis. So Kurbis and some other parishioners had made plans to attend the Christmas service at the Roman Catholic church instead. When they arrived on Christmas Day, they were surprised to see a sign bearing the words “Closed until further notice” on the door.

Read it all.

Two former Anglican ministers are to be ordained as priests after joining the Catholic Church when Scottish Anglicans voted to embrace gay marriage.

The Rev Simon Beveridge, who lives in Whithorn, Dumfries and Galloway and Rev Cameron Macdonald, who lives in Nairn, were made deacons in June just days after the Scottish Episcopal Church voted overwhelmingly to allow same sex couples to marry in church.

They joined the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, set up in 2011 by Pope Benedict to provide a home for disaffected former members of the…[Episcopal] and Anglican clergy within the Catholic Church.

Read it all.

We recognise the courage and strength of the survivors in giving testimony to the Commission. We are glad their painful stories will be preserved as a testament and a warning that such things should never have happened, and should not happen again. Anglican Church apologies, before and during the time of the Commission, can never adequately express the ongoing regret that these appalling acts should have been perpetrated on vulnerable children.

We also recognise the arduous and distressing task it has been for the Commissioners and staff to hear so many horrific stories of sexual abuse in institutions across the country.

Read it all.

The occasion marked six months to the day since a fire all but destroyed the residential building in White City, west London, killing 53 adults and 18 children, including an unborn baby (News, 15 June). A public inquiry, led by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, into the causes, building standards, and the Government’s response to the tragedy, is ongoing.

The families and friends of the victims, survivors, their families, and other community members most closely affected by the tragedy, were seated beneath the dome. Representatives of the faith communities, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, were seated together on a dais installed at the front of the cathedral.

In his address, the Bishop of Kensington, Dr Graham Tomlin, hoped that justice would be given to the community. “Today we ask why warnings were not heeded; why a community was left feeling neglected, uncared for, not listened to.

“Today we hold out hope that the public inquiry will get to the truth of all that led up to the fire at Grenfell Tower; that it will listen to the hopes, fears, and questions of those most directly affected by it; and we trust that the truth will bring justice, and that justice will enable true reconciliation and the eventual healing of the divides in our life together that this tragedy has revealed.”

Read it all.

The review, commissioned by the NST on the recommendation of the Bishop of Chichester, was carried out by Lord Carlile of Berriew. As he writes in the introduction, his purpose was not to determine the truthfulness of the woman referred to as Carol in the report, nor the guilt or innocence of Bishop Bell, but to examine the procedures followed by the Church of England. The objectives of the review included “ensuring that survivors are listened to and taken seriously”, and that recommendations are made to help the Church embed best practice in safeguarding in the future.

The report made 15 recommendations and concluded that the Church acted throughout in good faith while highlighting that the process was deficient in a number of respects.

Read it all.

I had occasion to spend 10 days in the USA before Advent. I learnt that in Oregon you can buy rifles in a supermarket and in Texas church ushers and sometimes the preacher may be wearing a pistol. I learnt that the Episcopal Church is not obsessed with finding a solution to the debate about same sex marriages. ‘Never mind sex’ I was told, ‘what about people in poverty? Economic issues are far more important’. America is not the land of mega churches: 75% of Americans worship in churches of less than 100. These churches are not full of Donald Trump supporters. People that I met were both embarrassed and hostile towards their President.

I was in Oregon for the launch of Professor Roger Newell [2017] new book Keine Gewalt! No Violence! The book outlines how the role played by the German Church in the 1940’s laid down the foundations for her part in the ending of the Cold War in the 1980’s. In the first half of the century the German church withdrew into pietism and individual spirituality leaving the political area to the Nazis. In the second half of the century the German church actively engaged in the civil society leading to the peaceful overthrow of Communism.

The underlying question in Roger’s book is how the Church relates to society. This question is especially relevant in the UK and USA with the Trump phenomenon on one side of the Atlantic and Brexit on the other. Being anti American is seen as the last acceptable form of racism but it is the American policies with which we disagree and not the people. The people are warm-hearted and, when I was there, asked me no end of times about whether I was having a ‘nice day’.

Read it all.

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

On Monday 11th and Tuesday 12th December the House of Bishops met at Lambeth Palace.

There was a varied agenda, including items on safeguarding, the importance of Black and Minority Ethnic clergy inclusion and representation, church planting, lessons learned from the appointment of the See of Sheffield, a review of the Crown Nominations Commission’s practices and the Anglican-Methodist Covenant.

Dame Moira Gibb and Sir Roger Singleton led a discussion on safeguarding that focused on survivors’ needs, with Q&As followed by group discussions. Dame Moira chaired the independent review into the Bishop Peter Ball case and Sir Roger, former Government adviser on Safeguarding, is currently working with the National Team.

Read it all.

But today, according to Farron, that doctrine of liberalism has become dominant, and like state-sponsored Christianity, instead of being ‘emancipationist’, has become oppressive. Liberalism has today become like the ‘established church’ of Constantinian or post-Reformation times, wanting a monopoly of power, no longer a philosophy which challenges the human tendency to lord it over others. For Farron, the foundation of liberalism is Christianity (and particularly non-conformist evangelicalism), not political correctness masquerading as a kind of self-evident ‘liberalism’. “Secularism is a totalising creed that reduces everyone down to either consumer or regulatory units”, he says, and cannot be a basis for ‘shared values’.

At the same time, Christianity must be ‘liberal’, sticking to the Bible’s teaching, but not seeking to impose this on society in such a way as to restrict freedom of thought and action within the law. Farron isn’t saying, as some evangelicals do, that Christians should just focus on the local church, and be indifferent to the lives and choices of society outside the Christian community and those being evangelised on the fringe. As he said: “God will judge…it is not unloving or judgmental for Christians to point that out”. But he warns against the kind of close association of church and state:

“That in Britain we have a church trapped as part of the furniture of the state is a waste of a church.  A boat in the water is good.  Water in the boat, is bad.  A church in the state is good, the state in the church is bad.  Really bad.  It pollutes the message of that church.  It compromises it.  Weakens its witness.”

This serious criticism of the Church of England’s basic DNA, which Tim Farron did not develop in his argument, puts a finger on a key issue for thinking about the future of Anglicanism in Britain. Bible believing Christians in the C of E have always argued that Establishment ensures a place for influence at the high table, and an open door into communities at the grassroots. But if Farron is right, and the state is no longer Christian-liberal, and instead has become increasingly secular-authoritarian, then the state church no longer influences positively for Christianity. It must conform to secularism in order to stay at the high table – and in doing so must of necessity shed much of its Christian character, and collude in the persecution of orthodox Christianity.

Read it all.