Giles Fraser writes for the Church Times about When us-and-them can seem unwelcome.
Matt J Rossano writes for The Huffington Post about The Christian Revolution.
Graham Kings has preached the Richard Johnson annual sermon at St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London: Moral Journalism.
The Archbishop of York has written this article for the Yorkshire Post: Tackling Poverty, Wherever It Occurs.
The pick of the bunch on this thread may yet again be the reflections of Canon Giles Fraser. How apt his story is about church ‘greeters’ – when we try our best to make everyone seem welcome, we may just at the same time seem to be ‘thanking them for coming’ – in such a way as to imply that they are doing us (and God) a favour! Heartiness at the entrance to the Church perhaps ought to be kept to a minimum. A welcome? Yes, by all means – but not as if we were all about to become… Read more »
Regarding Matt Rossano’s review of Bentley Hart’s book, I am reminded of a Jewish acquaintance of mine. We would listen to the radio, and someone would talk about Western Civilization’s Judeo-Christian heritage. My friend would opine “leave us Judeos out of it” as the speaker made a Christian reference. Hart has apparently left “us Judeos” out of his apologia, and I think wrongly so. In Thomas Cahill’s “The Gifts of the Jews”, he makes strikingly similar points that Hart does, but Cahill talks about the compassionately civilizing force as coming from Judaism. Cahill makes similar points about the brutality and… Read more »
I have to say a “yes, but” to Fr Giles. Having spent – through a combination of choice and fate – most of my life in a variety of cathedral congregations, I heartily agree that cathedral life is “a different way of being church”. But in treading a precarious line between museum, tourist attraction and christian community, I don’t think it’s entirely true to say that the parish model “cannot work”. The trick is to minister equally to those for whom a Cathedral is home for an hour as to those for whom it is a much longer resting place.… Read more »
I wish I’d had the sense to do cathedral. Parish church wasn’t for me–the endless friendliness and women’s groups, the depressing realization that for others church was a community center, and the Sunday service was just another one of the community activities, on all fours with rummage sales, concerts and youth group projects.
That’s not what I was there for. And the Church’s endless harangue that that’s what I should be there for–“community”–drove me away.