Thinking Anglicans

opinions as the clocks spring forward

Jonathan Sacks writes in The Times that Darwin pointed the way to an unselfish evolution.

Oliver Rafferty writes in the Guardian that: The ideas that led to George Tyrrell’s excommunication still confront Christianity.

For extra measure, Catherine Robinson writes in the same paper that Tim Berners-Lee’s invention symbolises Unitarian desire to foster communication.

In the Church Times John Packer argues in The West needs to understand faith that there is a dangerous ignorance of religion in the West’s foreign policy.

Giles Fraser writes there about Philip Blond, in Behind the allure of the Red Tory.

The best comment I saw about the parliamentary debate yesterday on the Royal Marriages and Succession to the Crown (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2008-09 was the Channel 4 News interview with David Starkey. There is a link to the video clip from this page. (For the best background briefing paper see this – H/T Ruth Gledhill.)

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MJ
MJ
15 years ago

Giles Fraser: “Behind this Red Toryism is the unmistakable hand of the theological movement Radical Orthodoxy, associated with people such as John Milbank and Rowan Williams.” Milbank and Williams would be more to the ‘left’ than Blond, and it would be unfair to lump the whole RO movement with Blond’s Red Toryism. Some, such as Milbank, would prefer to be regarded as ‘Blue’ or traditionalist Socialists. Indeed he has always regarded himself as a Christian Socialist. What is being attempted is the creation of a new politics, disillusioned as people are with New Labour and free-market Conservatism (and indeed Blond… Read more »

Pluralist
14 years ago

Well, due to accidental opportunity, I am taking the Easter Day service in a Unitarian church, and I have to say I feel more comfortable doing such than I might in an Anglican church, simply because I can discuss the Easter events without having to come to the right conclusion. My intention is to weave into the whole service something of Darwin, that death is a means to new and better life. I don’t like speculating into unsupported positives, and history and science, and their methods, won’t allow Easter to be any other than a myth. The Archbishop of Canterbury… Read more »

Pluralist
14 years ago

Here was a fairly realistic encounter with a Unitarian church, also in The Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/mar/16/religion-unitarian

JCF
JCF
14 years ago

You’re of course welcome to your opinions, and religious-affiliation, Pluralist.

I just can’t understand why anyone would be obsessed w/ whether Jesus’s “bones … reconstitute[d] themselves”, or not (addressing both you AND Rowan).

To me, it’s a question that ceased to be compelling, “Year 33: Ascension Day Plus One.”

I believe that Jesus is at the Right Hand of God—Triunely, IS God. My Christian faith simply doesn’t hinge solely on those 40 days after the crucifixion.

JCF
JCF
14 years ago

Oh, one more thing, re “as the clocks spring forward”: Stateside, that was 3 weeks ago! ;-/

David |Dah•veed|
David |Dah•veed|
14 years ago

But JCF, there are many of us in the world who still recognize the one true time, given once for all. None of this radical temporal revisionism! At least a few more weeks anyway.

Malcolm+
14 years ago

Clocks springing forward and back is entirely unnatural.

Pluralist
14 years ago

Just for the record, seeing as I have been addressed on this matter. I am not obsessed about reconstituted bones. I don’t care. The matter is beyond access, as is ‘the resurrection’, or indeed the triune God and all that. The issue is presented and I address it, that’s all. It is a form of circular talk. I’m in a sort of in between condition at the moment. Clearly we have packages and roadways and ways to get places, but I’m coming around to more direct talk. Religious myth is becoming uninteresting; ritual of sorts still functions: myth has to… Read more »

peterpi
peterpi
14 years ago

One of my favorite heretical Episcopal bishops is +John Shelby Spong. I enjoy his books. In one of them, he gives an example of biblical literalism in a modern understanding of the physical world. If Jesus ascended physically and bodily, +Spong wrote, he would have passed through the troposphere, stratosphere, etc., into outer space and gone into orbit around the Sun! It’s an image forever in my mind. When I read that, I thought “My God! How has he avoided burning at the stake in an auto da fe?” I have met Christian ministers who insisted that Joshua made the… Read more »

choirboyfromhell
choirboyfromhell
14 years ago

“Oh, one more thing, re “as the clocks spring forward”: Stateside, that was 3 weeks ago! ;-/”

Yes, we in the U.S. can blame the ex-moron in chief for getting us up in the dark cold of the night (‘to save energy’??!) three weeks earlier, so we can turn on the furnaces in colder weather so his energy buddies can save more dollars.

Jay Vos
14 years ago

I posted Simon’s explanation & links referring the parliamentary debate re Royal Marriages and Succession over at the British Royals Message Board, which has also started a discussion on this. http://members3.boardhost.com/Warholm/msg/1238118767.html And the comments after I posted were mainly about David Starkey’s video. I used to like Starkey (and Schama), but I think he’s just become another acceptable media culture/history talking head, way too big for his gaiters. A commenter at the BRMB writes that he “forgets,however,that the Anglican Church was fully complicit in the persecutions of Catholics and Protestant Dissenters down the centuries.It was not slow either in lending… Read more »

john
john
14 years ago

Am I the only one here who thinks that J Sacks’ meditation was rather good? Hard to think of many Anglican thinkers (aside from the usual suspects -Ward, Polkinghorne, maybe McGrath) who could do as well.

Cynthia Gilliatt
Cynthia Gilliatt
14 years ago

“Yes, we in the U.S. can blame the ex-moron in chief for getting us up in the dark cold of the night (‘to save energy’??!) three weeks earlier, so we can turn on the furnaces in colder weather so his energy buddies can save more dollars.”

Abd here I thought it was to extend twilight later in the fall so that more kids would go trick or treating and more candy would be sold.

Cheryl Va.
14 years ago

Yes John. Sacks’ article is quite good. At one point he wrote: “It was Darwin’s greatness that he saw the answer, even though it contradicted his general thesis. Natural selection operates at the level of the individual. It is as individual men and women that we pass on our genes to the next generation. But civilisation works at the level of the group.” Exodus for 40 years was about creating a culture, a group dynamic, a collective understanding. It was not sufficient to have Moses, his siblings and their offspring have insight and wisdom. There needed to be a race,… Read more »

john
john
14 years ago

Cheryl,

Thanks,

John.

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