The Anglican Bishop of Lancaster, Rt Rev. Geoff Pearson, has announced his retirement after nearly 43 years of ministry.

Bishop Geoff, 65, who has held the Suffragan Bishop role for more than a decade, said: “I have a mixture of feelings as this announcement is made. There is a real sadness about leaving colleagues and being part of the momentum that is building around the Diocesan Vision 2026. “It has been a huge privilege to work in Lancashire with many lovely clergy and people ”¦ but I still have six months left to focus particularly on the Vision agenda and mission opportunities.”

Read it all from the Lancaster Guardian.

This is just lovely!

Isabelle was licensed during the daily Eucharist service at Lambeth Palace, attended by staff as well as her family and friends. She was previously Tutor in Biblical Studies at St John’s College, Nottingham and Associate Priest in the parish of Edwalton.

Speaking at the time of her appointment in November last year, the Archbishop said: “I am delighted to welcome Isabelle to the team at Lambeth. The Chaplain is a central part of life here, supporting the Archbishop and the family, maintaining the rhythms of worship and prayer and providing pastoral support for the community who live and work here.”

“Isabelle comes to us highly commended by her diocese where she has served in several ministry roles, lay and ordained, in university, college and parish. She brings a pastoral heart, a spiritual richness and a rigorous theological understanding to what is a demanding role. We look forward to welcoming her, husband Paul and daughter Aelwen to London and life at Lambeth.”

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The Queen accompanied her nephew, David Armstrong-Jones, to church near her Sandringham Estate…[this past weekend], just days after his father, Lord Snowdon, died.

Braving wet and cold conditions, the royal party attended the morning service at St Mary the Virgin church in the village of Flitcham, Norfolk.

Read it all from the Telegraph and don’t miss the pictures.

Koran in the Cathedral – The Times. pic.twitter.com/xLf1vyH3EZ

— Gavin Ashenden (@gavinashenden) January 17, 2017

The head of the Scottish Episcopal Church says the Church is “deeply distressed” at the offence caused by the reading of a passage from the Koran in a Glasgow cathedral.
The comments of the Church Primus, the Most Rev David Chillingworth, follow criticism that Islamic verses were read during an Epiphany service.
In his blog, he also condemned the abuse received by St Mary’s Cathedral.
Police are investigating offensive online messages aimed at the church.

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O God, who by thy Holy Spirit didst enable thy servant Antony to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil: Give us grace, with pure hearts and minds, to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

~St.Antony~ #ChapelOfStJohn #Rhodos #face of a #saint #holy #icon #detail #art #Rodi #Greece #saint | #holidays pic.twitter.com/d0gwpJz44o

— sugar de santo (@sugar_de) May 25, 2016

O Thou, who givest to thy children liberally and upbraidest not: Preserve us from all envy at the good of our neighbour, and from every form of jealousy. Teach us to rejoice in what others have and we have not, to delight in what they achieve and we cannot accomplish, to be glad in all that they enjoy and we do not experience; and so fill us daily more completely with love; through him in whom thou hast promised to supply all our need, our Saviour Jesus Christ.

O LORD, I love the habitation of thy house, and the place where thy glory dwells.

–Psalm 26:8

[Michael] Gilbreath (a CT editor at large) hearkens back to the 1963 Birmingham civil rights campaign, to the world of Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, and other heroic Christian leaders. Today, we idolize these figures for leading a beleaguered people to the Promised Land. But as Birmingham Revolution makes clear, the civil rights movement was no slam dunk. Uncertainty, scarce resources, and outside hostility could have ground its progress to a halt.

The Birmingham campaign was pivotal. On the heels of defeat in Albany, Georgia, victory in Birmingham restored the movement’s momentum. Failure could have crippled it, by drying up funding, discrediting the nonviolent method, and validating fears that the leaders were””take your pick””extremists, rabble-rousers, too Christian, not Christian enough, too Southern, or insufficiently urban.
How””amid the noise and ambiguity, the internal struggles and self-doubts, the bone-deep weariness and constant fear of death””did the Birmingham leaders maintain their focus? And how might their example instruct the church today? Gilbreath gives four answers.

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We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

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