Thinking about the meaning of Ramadan has made me a better Christian, says Chris Chivers in the Guardian’s Face to Faith column.
Reconciliation offers greater rewards than revenge writes Roderick Strange in the Credo column of The Times.
Christopher Howse says Jews fast, Muslims fast, so should Christians in the Daily Telegraph.
Giles Fraser writes about New York, where all our compulsions meet in the Church Times.
In the Washington Post Mary Jordan writes that In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly Vocal. (The article is in fact mostly about Europe and in particular the UK.)
Update
In today’s Guardian there is a book review, under the headline Holy Order, by Jonathan Bartley of Stephen Bates’ latest work, God’s Own Country: Tales from the Bible Belt.
_we were encouraged to have breakfast on Sunday only after communion. How many Christians nowadays break fast in this way?_ in The Guardian.
I do. It allows me to get up slightly later.
Thanks for adding Bartley’s review. I would comment there are traits that are not a peculiarly US e.g. “…the idea held by some Evangelicals that the world must get progressively worse until apocalyptic disaster strikes and Jesus returns in terrible judgment helps to explain the US’s previous unwillingness to address climate change.” On of my frustrations from the 1990s was that there was an apathy about caring for the environment, solving massive poverty in Africa, resolving conflicts and ending tyranny. Whenever I raised questions or concerns, I was given spiel along such lines. There was a paradigm that everything is… Read more »
Isn’t this so much more important that Anglican machinations:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2170244,00.html
It is the Archbishop of York telling the British government to get on with it regarding Zimbabwe. Quite so, and South Africa has been a dismal, pathetic failure in this sheer unfolding misery.
(By the way my earlier comment wasn’t about The Guardian piece but the Telegraph)
Hi Pluralist
I liked both the Telegraph and Guardian pieces, and your breakfast comment made me smile 🙂
we were encouraged to have breakfast on Sunday only after communion. How many Christians nowadays break fast in this way? Very few, I suspect.
…it’s hard enough to keep two small children under control through mass without doing it on an empty stomach! Indeed, a supply of raisins, fruit sticks and cereal bars in my wife’s bag is normally called on during the Eucharistic Prayer itself (with the kids having returned to the main congregation during the Peace).
Mr. Ward,
Even during Ramadan there are allowances made for the ill and infirm, young children, and pregnant women. I suppose the bag of snacks would easily be seen as a pastoral necessity for the greater peace.
Talking about those on the edge (well not quite secularist and non-believers) I am giving a talk to Sea of Faith Yorkshire in Bradford on Saturday and its probably not final draft can be viewed – best to go via the blog and its summary, and links there to the big one –
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/09/liberal-groups.html
This time the cartoon is of me.
Hi Pluralist Ekklesia reports that the liberal democrats are also trying to tease these things out http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5718 The stereotyping and arbitrariness of stating that if you believe in Jesus you must then be “…” or you are “…” are falling over. There’s been enough discussion for souls to realise that they are alike in some ways and yet profoundly different in others, and yet all function as whole human beings. There’s also a realisation that autocratic imposition and organisational structures are creating some of our worst problems, but souls are grappling with how do we do things so that we… Read more »