Church of england

What a clash of the titans we witnessed at the weekend. The Lionesses vs Divine Worship on a Sunday morning. An unfortunate conflict of timings meant that just as the England women’s football team were limbering up to kick the first ball in Australia, church services in England were launching into their first hymn. The Church of England knew which side it was on. ‘I know lots of people will want to watch the match live. That is fine from the Church of England’s point of view. Others will prefer to go to church and avoid knowing the score until they can watch the match on catch-up, and that is

Calling God ‘Father’ may be ‘problematic’, pronounced the Archbishop of York at Friday’s formal opening of the General Synod. Watching the live stream, I did a double take and had to rewind a few seconds to play it back. Did he really just say this? Archbishop Stephen Cottrell explained his reasoning: ‘For all of us who have laboured too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life…’ Who is the ‘us’ here? Is it too personal to ask what in Cottrell’s history has been oppressive? Can he really claim to have laboured under the patriarchy? The calculation is that there needs to be a revolution so that the unchurched masses, especially

King Charles III began his first speech as monarch by recalling the pledge made by his mother on her 21st birthday in 1947. Speaking from Cape Town on the occasion of her 21st birthday, Princess Elizabeth declared ‘before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family’. She ended by saying: ‘God help me to make good my vow and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.’ We know now that the Queen was given a long life during which the world, as it was when she was

Some years ago there was a study at Harvard that tried to find out what people did when they held an incorrect opinion. Not an opinion of the kind that the era happens to deem incorrect, but one that is actually, provably not the case. The study looked at what happened when that factually incorrect view was introduced to the evidence that it was wrong. We might hope that the results would be clear: man holding wrong view meets the right view, immediately throws up his hands and asks himself how he could have been such a dolt. Alas, as anyone who has ever been married will know, people do

This week has been Passiontide, which means lots of wonderful plainsong in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral as my predecessors sleep. Holy Week began on Sunday in the shadow of war, suffering, loss and pain. How do we celebrate the promise of everlasting life in such darkness? Good Friday is ‘good’ because on the cross we see the goodness of God in the middle of the mess of our own creation. Jesus refuses to answer his accusers on their terms, to use his own power to overcome by force, or to see others hurt – even those who hurt him. Jesus lays down his life for the sake of others.

A health-care disaster Sir: Kate Andrews’s piece on who really controls the NHS (‘Waiting game’, 12 February) gives us a flavour of how things have come to this: an unaccountable health service with a government attached. We are about to enter a new phase, with additional taxation in the form of increased NI based on promises which are already looking hollow — waiting lists will continue to rise. There is no sign that the 100,000 key workers who are needed are going to be found any time soon. The truth of the matter is that the people have been fed a number of lies for decades: that health care in

The Church of England has always been clever at producing theology to suit itself. If we don’t start protesting, we may never get communion wine back again. Too many risk-averse clergy have discovered how efficient, hygienic and cheap it is just to give us a wafer each. They explain it away by reminding us that ‘Christ is sacramentally and equally present in both the bread and the wine, so if you receive only one, nothing is lacking’. ‘But it’s so unfair,’ I want to hiss at the presiding priest when I see him or her having a sip of wine ‘on behalf of the congregation’. ‘It’s one rule for you,

Take care Sir: Your editorial (‘Counting the costs’, 8 January) makes valid points regarding the funding of social care. The good people of the north in the red-wall seats will be rightly appalled. A couple who have worked hard and made their own way onto the property ladder must wonder what they have voted for. They sit on a property worth £100,000 to £200,000. If they need a care home, they will see their children’s legacy disappear into the hole of care costs while knowing that they are subsidising the same care costs of millionaires. This is deeply unfair and, I daresay, anti-Conservative. There should be no care costs on

Two years ago the Church of England decided to delay any public discussion of its deepest division, over homosexuality, until 2022. So this might be the year in which an already troubled institution has a dramatic public meltdown. Or it might be the year in which the Church of England sorts itself out a bit. Yes, really. Stranger miracles have happened. There are grounds for hope, and not just on the gay issue. The Church has a core strength that it could draw on, and a core identity that could stand it in good stead, though one it is weirdly shy to assert. First let’s admit that things haven’t been

The interregnum between incumbents is a well-known and often elongated process in the Church of England. I have recently witnessed this one because my wife is churchwarden of one of the three churches (we Catholics operate under a different system) in the benefice. Interregnums are arduous for all church volunteers and tend to erode parish life. It is remarkable how much there is for churchwardens to do. Dioceses tend to demand and obstruct rather than ease and encourage. Luckily, we are blessed with an excellent archdeacon who cherishes parish life and has declared there will be no more closures of churches in the district; but the bureaucratic flow of dos

Hard to reconcile Sir: Although not an Anglican, I appreciate Michael Nazir-Ali’s dilemma (‘A change of mind and heart’, 23 October) and know many Anglicans whose loyalty to the C of E is being severely tested. But insofar as his theology is classically Protestant and evangelical, it is difficult to see how the former bishop can reconcile it with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on the sacraments, the office of the Pope, the role of Mary, purgatory and justification, to name but a few contentious issues. He speaks of how ‘what Anglicanism in its classical form has held most dear is being fulfilled in the progression of the

By now, almost everyone who’s remotely interested will know that Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, a man once tipped to become Archbishop of Canterbury, has converted to Catholicism. Dr Nazir-Ali is the second senior Anglican cleric to jump ship this year, which makes church gossip sound pleasingly Shakespearean: ‘Ebbsfleet has fallen… what and Rochester too?’ But it’s also sad. It’s as if the Church of England is exploding in slow motion, all its constituent pieces — bishops, buildings, parishioners — drifting off for want of a centre to hold them. When I went to meet Dr Nazir-Ali this week, I expected to find him full of vim. As Bishop

Parish problems Sir: Emma Thompson draws attention to a serious problem in the Church of England (‘Power to the parish’, 25 September). Why are they trying to make it easier to close down parishes when the parish is where the people are to whom the church must minister? The parish is also the major funder of the C of E through the generosity of its many local donors. If you take away the incumbent, you take away a major portion of the income for both parish and diocese. One reason many parishes struggle to pay their parish share is because it has been swelled by the diocese to pay for the ever-growing

Over the past few months, the Archbishops of York and Canterbury have repeatedly assured us that they love parishes and parish churches. ‘I am passionate that the parish is essential,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury told the Church Times recently. The Archbishop of York went so far as to describe the parish as ‘the beating heart of community life in England’. So why are they supporting a change to church law to make it easier to close parish churches? The paper which proposes the change is at stage one of a three-stage approval process. It has the unsexy name GS 2222, so I call it the ‘Church Closers’ Charter’. Its introduction