Thinking Anglicans

service announcement

We apologise to our users, and particularly those who comment, for the recent service disruption here. The articles posted since last Saturday have had to be restored manually. We regret however that it will not be possible to restore the comments made from last Saturday until this morning, including any made during that period to older articles.

4 Comments

Partaking or plotting?

Two weeks ago, the Church Times paper edition’s web page contained an article by Sarah Meyrick, about various new web-based British church organizations, which mentioned Thinking Anglicans. This is now on the CT website.
To read the whole article, follow this link and scroll down to Partaking or plotting?
The portion about Thinking Anglicans is reproduced below.
As Sarah concludes:

All these websites give people at the grassroots a chance to track events as they unfold, and to explore tricky issues with an audience far wider than could have been dreamt of in pre-web days. For the movers and shakers, they are a means of taking the temperature of the Anglican Church at a time of turmoil.
At its best, the internet provides a way of fostering community and broadening the horizons of its users; at its worst, it allows people to become narrower in outlook and to plot damage. I suspect the outcome in this case lies in how much – if at all – the different networks communicate with each other.

So here are links to the other sites she mentions:
www.inclusivechurch.net
www.anglican-mainstream.net
www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk
www.biblicalliberal.com

(more…)

3 Comments

About News reporting

I shall now revert to posting my near-daily News updates on my personal blog rather than here on TA.

The “really major events” of the primates meeting and the New Hampshire consecration have now passed, and the level of press activity is reducing rapidly.

Simon Sarmiento

1 Comment

About News reporting

Generally, I post near-daily News updates to my personal blog rather than on here. But really major events (NEAC was a recent example) are reported here on TA.
Clearly the upcoming Primates Meeting is also a really major event. So during this week, I will post about that on here, but any other routine news stories will still be on my personal blog.
Simon Sarmiento

0 Comments

Who we are

Thinking Anglicans was created and is run by three people: Simon Kershaw, Simon Sarmiento and Peter Owen.

Simon Kershaw is from Warwickshire, read Physics at Wadham College, Oxford, and worked for 40 years in the computer software industry for a variety of companies, retiring in 2023.
He is married with two adult children, and lives near Cambridge. He has contributed to or edited a number of liturgical publications, is a member of the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England, the Lay Chair of the Ely Diocesan Synod, and a lay Canon of Ely Cathedral.

Simon Sarmiento was born in Sheffield and graduated in Industrial Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is now retired from a major British software company, where he served for a decade as personnel director and later as head of internal IT.
Married with four grown-up children, he worked in the USA for a while, and lived in St Albans Hertfordshire from 1971 to 2014 where he worshipped at the Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint Alban. He is part of the team that publishes Anglicans Online and has been a consultant to Church House Publishing. He now lives in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire.

Peter Owen was born in Southend-on-Sea, read Mathematical Physics at Birmingham University and has a DPhil in Astrophysics from Sussex University. He taught mathematics in higher education for thirty years before taking early retirement in 2000.
He lives in the suburbs of Liverpool and is a worshipper at Liverpool Parish Church. He is part of the team that publishes Anglicans Online. Outside the church, he chaired an NHS Research Ethics Committee for seven years and was later a member of the Greater Manchester West Committee for ten years. He was a member of General Synod from 1995 to 2005.

 

13 Comments

Justice and Spirituality: proclaiming the kingdom of God

Thinking Anglicans is a website for thoughtful contributions to the proclamation of the gospel message. Here writers reflect on what it means to be a Christian, particularly in Britain today.

Thinking Anglicans will actively report news, events and documents that affect church people, and will comment on them from a liberal Christian perspective.

Thinking Anglicans proclaims a tolerant, progressive and compassionate Christian spirituality, in which justice is central to the proclamation of the good news of the kingdom of God. Our spirituality must engage with the world, and be consistent with the scientific and philosophical understanding on which our modern world is based. It must address the changes which science and technology have brought into our lives.

Thinking Anglicans takes the form of weblogs (or ‘blogs’) in which writers place their thoughts in public for all to read. We each take responsibility for our own words. There is no central definition or declaration of faith to which contributors must subscribe, although most of our writers are active Christians in communion with the see of Canterbury. Rather there is a range of opinions, which contributes to debate, and is legitimate diversity within the Christian faith. The site will be updated frequently, with regular contributions from our team of writers, commenting on news events and exploring wider issues and deeper meanings.

Thinking Anglicans is a focal point where you can find the words of informed contributors to the contemporary understanding of Christian faith, as well as the views of ordinary ‘Anglicans in the pew’. In a world where the voices of fundamentalism and conservatism are frequently heard, Thinking Anglicans is a place for a tolerant, thoughtful and understanding exploration of Christian faith. We hope this shared witness of the vision of God’s kingdom in the world will help and encourage both Christians and others.

14 Comments