Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return
Today many of us will have some ashes smudged on our heads, reminding us that we are going to die, and asking each one of us to turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ. How should you react? How should you react if someone were to say to you that you’re going to be turned to ashes, that you’re all going to die? And why does thinking about your eventual death help you to turn away from sin? I mean, if you are going to die, perhaps you should get some serious sinning under your belt, or maybe even some serious sinning below your belt!
So why the stress on death? Why does the Church want to remind you that you’re going to die? Isn’t the Church supposed to be spreading good news, emphasising new life in Christ, emphasising eternal life? Why death?
The simple answer is that Jesus emphasised it again and again. You’ll remember the saying, ‘If anyone saves his life, he will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will save it’. Or again, ‘If people try to make their life secure, they will lose it; but those who lose their life will keep it.’ Or, ‘Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ Our baptismal liturgy echoes much the same theme: in baptism we literally drown and are reborn — we die to sin and come to real life. And Jesus’ own life is very much the story of someone who had to let go of his own life for others. And for that reason, we are told, God raised him to new life. Had he clung to life, we wouldn’t be here today.
Given the radical centrality of this death-life connection, it’s a bit odd that Christians have kind of sidelined death — or at least they have sidelined it theologically — for several thousand years. Death, they said, was a result of sin, original sin. Prior to Adam’s and Eve’s sin, there apparently was no death. Prior to Adam’s and Eve’s sin, we’re told, no one died, no one had deadly diseases, no one hurt themselves when they fell off cliffs or high trees; no one was devoured by lions; deadly cancer didn’t exist; birth defects didn’t exist. Death only came into the world when sin entered the world — a teaching based not so much on Genesis, which is ambiguous on this point, but on Romans 5, which could (and probably should) be seen as St Paul’s using physical death as a symbol for spiritual, even eternal, death.
I must say that I took such an approach myself for quite a few years. I thought to myself that, if death were an evil (and it does seem pretty nasty), then God couldn’t be the cause of it. After all, God wouldn’t, God couldn’t, create anything that wasn’t good; therefore death couldn’t possibly be part of God’s original plan; it couldn’t be part of God’s original creation. Someone else must be to blame.
But that’s too easy. Human beings have always been finite, which is to say we are and never have been in-finite: we’re not and we’ve never been God. No doubt death has a lot to do with sin, with the evil we do to ourselves and to one another; and it is probably the perfect symbol for understanding what sin does to us; but death is an inherent part of our being finite creatures. Death is and always has been natural — as natural as living. If you’re biological, you will die. Physical death is not a punishment in and of itself. And our finitude, our being finite beings — this is a universal and good aspect of all of creation: it’s not an evil to be explained away. We don’t need to make excuses for God: God created a finite universe.
The thing is, because we wrote off death as something evil, we rarely bothered to ask whether there is anything good in death. We rarely asked why God made a universe where all living things inevitably die, where even non-living things — all of them — inevitably lose the battle against entropy and die out too. But what if death cannot be written off? If God created death, as it were, shouldn’t we be asking why? Could it be that, in being created in the image and likeness of God, our living and our dying are both — somehow — in the image and likeness of God? Could it be that there is something about our having to face death that reveals something about God?
If, like me, you’ve had family members who have died recently, then these questions are not just theoretical questions, but exquisitely painful questions, especially as you watch death slowly overtake the body of a loved one, as you wrestle with the God who created the universe, knowing full-well that people would invariably die — and die often in the most horrendous and painful circumstances, leaving the survivors to experience the soul-numbing pain of separation.
And yet Jesus realised that clinging on to life is futile: ‘If anyone tries to make his life secure, he will lose it; but those who lose their life will keep it.’
This is a huge paradox, but Jesus is surely right. If you consider your own death, as you are asked to do today, you can either descend into moroseness (or a whole range of neuroses) or you can discover an unusual kind of freedom. If we’re all going to die anyway, then perhaps nothing has any real meaning at all. That’s certainly one way of looking at things. But if we are going to die anyway, then we ultimately have nothing to lose: we can live life to the full, we can take real risks, we can live radically, love radically, risk courageously: you can even dare to love your enemy. And if that’s true for each of us, just imagine what a community of people who thought that way could accomplish.
All of this cuts to the very heart of Jesus’s teaching: God is so trustworthy that you can choose to do the right thing, you can dare to love sacrificially; because, in the end, you’re going to have to trust God anyway: death ensures that. And Jesus’s own death and resurrection — these are God’s way of assuring us that such trust is not in vain.
There is this strange sense that we do have to let go of life, let go of our fear of losing life, in order to live life. And that’s not just a nice, theoretical, paradoxical sort of maxim. No, we actually have to do it. We have to let go of life physically. I’m well in my fifties now, and I can already feel it happening bit by bit. We’re talking about real death here. We have to live life facing death. In the face of death, we discover that we can’t cause ourselves to continue to exist. We face the fact that we can’t save ourselves. We realise that we are creatures — finite creatures — not gods: we can’t even claim our own lives as our own. If we are to live again, as Christians hope and believe, then such a life is not something we can give to ourselves.
And what does this reveal about God? Well, it reveals that all love, even or especially divine love, involves a dying to self; it involves a giving of self. Love demands that we not cling to life and hoard it as some possession. In the Trinity, the Father gives of his very own life to the Son. The Father does not cling to life; instead he shares it completely. And the Son does not cling to his equality with God, but empties himself, as we can read in Philippians 2.5, and offers his life, his Spirit, back to the Father. And this shared Spirit is offered to us, not as something we can own, but only as something we can share. And that emptying, that embracing of death, even death on a cross, that sharing of life itself — that is the Christian image of the costliness of love: not just for Jesus, but for the Father as well … the Father who shares infinitely in the pain of his Son’s having to let go of life, and yet the Father who also knows that Jesus’s faith was well-placed, that God indeed is in fact ultimately trustworthy, that death is not the final word. Love is the final word.
As I alluded to earlier, I realise that some of us have faced and are facing the deaths of loved ones. No doubt you are already anticipating the pain of loss: Do you dare love him or her so much as she dies? Do you dare believe that love makes sense in the face of death? If not, then nothing would make any sense at all. Nothing would matter in the end. But we know that things matter, because we do love, and we choose love. That’s the choice. That’s what Jesus was asking us to do: choose life, choose love, choose God. And the power of that radical choice comes to the fore when we confront death, as we do symbolically in the ceremony of the sprinkling of ashes.
22 CommentsLenten campaigning
The Church of England has launched several initiatives as Lent approaches.
See the Love Life Live Lent website, and the CofE press release Church gives out ‘tweets’ for Lent. The Twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/c_of_e and for Facebook users, there is this.
Also see the Shrinking the Footprint website, and the CofE press release Cut the carbon this Lent, says Church of England.
And don’t forget the communion-wide campaign for Zimbabwe, see Anglican Communion joins Prayers for Zimbabwe on Ash Wednesday. Posters and fliers can be downloaded from USPG announces Archbishops’ Appeal for Zimbabwe. To donate online, go here.
16 Commentsopposition to discrimination?
Updated again Wednesday afternoon
A recent news item concerned the UK government’s banning members of the so-called Westboro Baptist Church from entering the country. Less widely reported was the joint statement issued by six Christian organisations, the day after government action, including the Evangelical Alliance, which said:
“We are dismayed that members of Westboro Baptist Church (based in Kansas, USA and not associated with the Baptist Union of Great Britain) might picket the performance of The Laramie Project in Basingstoke on Friday.
“We do not share their hatred of lesbian and gay people. We believe that God loves all, irrespective of sexual orientation, and we unreservedly stand against their message of hate toward those communities.
“Neither the style nor substance of their preaching expresses the historic, orthodox Christian faith. And we ask that the members of Westboro Baptist Church refrain from stirring up any more homophobic hatred in the UK or elsewhere.”
This prompted Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia to issue the following response:
“It is welcome that a number of churches and evangelical groups have made a public statement and joined the many others who are opposing Westboro’ Baptist church-style hate speech. But it is relatively easy to issue statements against extremists, distance oneself, and condemn them. It is more challenging, and uncomfortable, to acknowledge what one might have in common with those we find abhorrent. But that is what the message at the heart of the Christian faith requires.
“This is the real challenge that Westboro Baptist church presents. And among those who have condemned Westboro are some who preach rejection of faithful gay relationships, who deny their baptism and Christian ministry, and who refuse their wisdom. Some have attempted to negotiate opt-outs from equalities legislation so they can themselves discriminate against lesbian and gay people in employment and in the provision of goods and services. The Evangelical Alliance in particular removed the Courage Trust from its membership when the Trust made a Christian commitment to affirming lesbian and gay people.
“The six churches and groups have said with one voice: ‘We believe that God loves all, irrespective of sexual orientation’ We invite them to reflect these words in their actions.”
Ekklesia also issued a background report, Churches condemn Westboro hate speech, but challenge remains.
The other five organisations were: The Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Evangelical Alliance UK, Faithworks, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, the United Reformed Church and the Bible Society-funded thinktank Theos.
Update Monday
A further statement has now been issued by another group of Christian organisations:
…Accepting Evangelicals, Courage, the Network of Baptists Affirming Lesbian and Gay Christians, the Evangelical Fellowship for Lesbian & Gay Christians, and the Christian think-tank Ekklesia have issued a joint statement saying that opposition to the Westboro Baptist Church USA’s hate-stance towards gay people does not go far enough.
“The real challenge to evangelicals is to face the need for change themselves,” they say. “This means: engaging more fully and openly with lesbian and gay Christians and accepting them as equal under God; examining the way prejudice against gay people has distorted biblical understanding; prayerfully re-thinking church policies of exclusion and acknowledging the harm they cause; and recognising the growing number of evangelicals who have had a heart-change and now affirm faithful gay relationships.”
Ekklesia has the full statement at Evangelicals call for change of attitude on gays.
Update Wednesday
Simon Barrow has written about this at Comment is free Evangelicals who love their gay neighbours.
90 CommentsGeneral Synod – detailed Church Times reports
The Church Times publishes detailed reports on Synod debates. They are normally only available to subscribers for the first week. So far the ones below are generally available; there will be more next Friday.
WOMEN BISHOPS: Go extra mile, bishop pleads as Synod wrestles with women bishops
DR WILLIAMS’ ADDRESS: ‘Those who disagree won’t go away’
CONSTITUTION: New way of being Church House
BNP MEMBERSHIP: BNP support ‘incompatible’ with ordained ministry
CHURCH AS COMMUNION: Cardinal: ‘Division impoverishes us all’
8 Commentsopinions just before Lent
Updated Monday afternoon
Geoffrey Rowell writes in The Times that The synod is the place to challenge the unjust and evil.
Andrew Motion said in an interview with Janet Murray in the Guardian that “All children should be taught the Bible at school”. Theo Hobson in the Spectator was not impressed.
Sunny Hundal writes in the Guardian that It is worth having a healthy debate on the interaction between faith and violence.
Jonathan Bartley writes at Ekklesia about Hearing what children are saying.
At Comment is free Theo Hobson and Julian Baggini discuss Is Christianity a good influence on British culture?
On the BBC Radio 4 programme Today (Baroness) Sayeda Warsi argued that politicians are ‘ignoring’ polygamy. See Politicians ‘ignoring’ polygamy and also Happily married?
Update
Giles Fraser’s article in last week’s Church Times is now available, see Why is the Left so anti-Jewish.
General Synod – more electronic votes
For votes on women bishops, see previous item. Other votes in February are available as PDF files as follows:
Electronic voting results for Item 30 (Amendment to Item 11)
Electronic voting results for Item 11 (Membership of Organisations and Race Equality)
Electronic voting results for Item 14 (Church Water Bills)
Electronic voting results for Item 15 (Uniqueness of Christ) as amended by Item 45
Electronic voting results for Item 49 (Amendment to Item 18 (Human Trafficking))
Electronic voting results for Item 23 (Justice and Asylum Seekers) as amended by Items 54-57
Electronic voting results for Item 24 (Climate Change and the Church’s Property Transactions)
1 CommentGeneral Synod – votes on Women Bishops legislation
The detailed results of the voting on the women bishops legislation at General Synod last week are now available.
Electronic voting results for Item 507
‘That the Measure entitled “Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure” be considered for revision in committee.’
Electronic voting results for Item 508
‘That the Canon entitled “Amending Canon No 30” be considered for revision in committee.’
From these simple alphabetical lists I have worked out the voting figures in each house below. It will be seen that each house voted by more than a two-thirds majority in favour each motion. Of course, voting to send the legislation for revision is not the same as voting in favour of its content.
| item 507 (measure) |
item 508 (canon) |
|||||
| for | against | abst | for | against | abst | |
| bishops | 35 | 10 | 0 | 36 | 7 | 1 |
| clergy | 125 | 48 | 6 | 142 | 27 | 7 |
| laity | 121 | 56 | 7 | 131 | 45 | 6 |
| total | 281 | 114 | 13 | 309 | 79 | 14 |
I have also compiled tables of how each member of Synod voted (or abstained or was absent). These tables are available as a web page.
8 CommentsChurch of England attendance figures for 2007
Updated Friday morning
Provisional attendance figures for 2007 were released today.
The press release starts:
Figures from the Church of England released today show further evidence that, while some trends in churchgoing continue to change, the overall number of people regularly attending church has altered little since the turn of the millennium. The 2007 figures confirm that attending a Church of England church (including cathedrals) is part of a typical week for some 1.2 million people.
The full figures are available as a pdf file.
Some early press reports
Martin Beckford in the Telegraph Christmas church attendance falls by 11% in a year
Jenna Lyle in Christian Today New Church figures show attendance ‘stable’
Update
Bill Bowder in the Church Times More go to church when Christmas falls at weekend
7 CommentsGeneral Synod on BBC TV
The BBC Parliament Channel will show recordings of last week’s General Synod sessions on Friday 20 February. A schedule is available here.
BBC Parliament is shown on UK digital terrestrial television (Freeview) channel 81, on digital cable and on satellite at channel 504, as well as on the broadband media player. More information here.
0 CommentsACNA publishes statistics
The Anglican Church in North America has previously claimed:
“The movement unites 700 orthodox Anglican congregations, representing roughly 100,000 people…”
Today, a file entitled How many Anglicans are there in the Anglican Church in North America? has been published at this Fort Worth website.
How many Anglicans are there in the Anglican Church in North America?
On every Sunday morning, some 81,311 people worship at the 693 congregations of the Anglican Church in North America. These people and parishes are already outside of The Episcopal Church and The Anglican Church in Canada. The large majority are temporarily under the oversight of six separate Anglican provinces.
The Anglican Church in North America will unify the parishes and membership of a number of jurisdictions:
• The Anglican Mission in the Americas (Rwanda) reports an average Sunday attendance of 21,600 in 180 congregations (40 of which are churches in formation called “networks”).
• The Convocation of Anglicans in North America (Nigeria) has 69 congregations with a average Sunday attendance of 9,828.
• The Reformed Episcopal Church has 150 parishes and an average Sunday attendance of 13,000.
• There are 51 parishes under the temporary oversight of Uganda with an average Sunday attendance of 7,000.
• There are 55 parishes in The United States under the temporary oversight of the provinces of Kenya and the Southern Cone with an average Sunday attendance of 10,000.
• Four entire dioceses separating from The Episcopal Church, with a combined 163 parishes and an average Sunday attendance of 16,483 (The Episcopal Church congregations and members having been excluded from this count) are temporarily dioceses of the province of the Southern Cone.
• The Anglican Network in Canada (Southern Cone) is composed of 24 congregations with an average Sunday attendance of 3,400.
• One congregation is under the temporary oversight of West Africa.
Based on a firm Sunday attendance average of 81,311 people, it is reasonable to very conservatively project that more than 100,000 Anglicans in North America are active members of a congregation of the proposed province (In many cases, total membership often runs at two to three times average Sunday attendance. For instance, The Episcopal Church reports an average Sunday attendance of 768,476 in 2007 and an active baptized membership of 2,116,749.)
While each individual group is small, as a united body, the Anglican Church in North America stretches from one end of North America to the other and has as many or more (in some cases, significantly more) members than 12 of the Anglican Communion’s 38 provinces (Bangladesh, Brazil, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui, Indian Ocean, Japan, Jerusalem & Middle East, Korea, Mexico, Myanmar, Scotland, Southern Cone, Wales)
See the PDF file for further comparison of ACNA with numerous provincial statistics.
38 CommentsGeneral Synod – further reports
Updated Tuesday
The Church Times has two articles available without subscription. (There will be many more in the next two weeks as detailed reports become available to non-subscribers.)
Approval of women bishops clears its latest hurdle
Also, the Church Times blogger Dave Walker has some “behind the scenes” pictures.
Justin Brett now blogging as The Dodgy Liberal has written here about the debate on the Uniqueness of Christ last Wednesday.
Martin Beckford wrote at the Telegraph Synod: The temple of money and the altar of multi-faith dialogue.
George Pitcher at the Telegraph wrote Whittam Smith predicts Armageddon.
Tuesday updates
Justin Brett wrote a further article, see Synodical Ruminations Part 1 (Covenant) and see also the MCU document produced for this debate, at Briefing Paper for General Synod Members February 2009 (PDF).
And also another one on Synodical Ruminations Part 2 (BNP Etc.)
1 Commentmore about Jenny and Jasmine
In my Saturday roundup of opinion pieces I included the article that Archbishop Sentamu wrote in the Daily Mail. One of the cases that he referred to there was the case of Jenny Cain and her daughter. The Telegraph reported this under the headline Primary school receptionist ‘facing sack’ after daughter talks about Jesus to classmate.
This case has given rise to criticism of the school, for example, according to the Telegraph:
John Sentamu said it was an “affront to the sensibility” of Christians everywhere that Jennie Cain is being investigated for alleged professional misconduct after she sent a private email to 10 friends asking for prayer.
And there was also Christian school receptionist row: More bishops speak out in support of Jennie Cain.
George Pitcher followed up with an opinion piece headed Christians need protection in law.
Other reports of the incident give a rather different picture. See for example:
Exeter Express & Echo Girl, 5, told off at school for talking of God followed the next day by Parents back head’s stance in storm over ‘go to hell’ comment
BBC School row over pupil’s God talk
Ekklesia School defends stance on girl who told classmate she would “go to hell”
Simon Barrow has written this comment article at Ekklesia Scaring the hell out of kids?
29 Comments… Perhaps those Christians who object to the school wanting to maintain a non-threatening environment should ask themselves how they would feel if a son of theirs ended up crying after being told by an atheist pupil that religious people are nuts and should be locked up? Or if their daughter was upset by a Muslim telling her she would suffer eternally for not believing in Allah and his Messenger?
In both these cases, there would be an outcry if the school did nothing, or if it said that that their kids would have to put up with being frightened, because trying to stop this would amount to “not showing respect for beliefs”…
Pittsburgh: national church seeks intervention
Updated again Tuesday evening
Although there is no report of this as yet on Episcopal Life Online, nor at the The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) – which despite former claims to the contrary now appears to have slightly changed its name – there is now confirmation from the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of a report from Lionel Deimel that Episcopal Church Asks to Join Calvary Lawsuit.
The actual court filing can be seen here as a PDF.
Deimel wrote:
An objection that the defendants have raised more than once in the lawsuit filed by Calvary Church against now-deposed bishop Robert Duncan and other (now former) leaders of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh is that Calvary had no right to sue without The Episcopal Church’s being a party to the suit. Well, Archbishop-in-Waiting Duncan seems about to get his wish. Papers were filed today in the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas on behalf of Bishop John C. Buchanan, Retired Bishop of West Missouri and parliamentarian of the House of Bishops. In a “petition to intervene,” Buchanan, representing The Episcopal Church, asks the court to become a plaintiff in the case…
The diocese wrote:
Today, Friday, February 13, 2009, attorneys representing The Episcopal Church filed a Petition to Intervene in the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s Request to Special Master now pending in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County.
The following statement was issued by the Standing Committee, the current leaders of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh:
“We approve of and welcome The Episcopal Church joining our legal effort to regain control of diocesan assets that are still held by former diocesan leaders. Our request before the court is based on an agreement those former leaders made in court, namely, that diocesan property would unconditionally remain with a diocese that is defined as being part of The Episcopal Church of the United States. We believe the participation of The Episcopal Church in the case will help clarify beyond question who is and who is not rightfully the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh identified in that court agreement.”
Update
Lionel Deimel has published a second article, Further Analysis. In this he notes that the PDF document linked above contains two items. The second document, titled complaint-in-intervention, is analysed in detail by him. He summarises the concluding paragraph as follows:
In particular, The Episcopal Church asks that the court:
a. Declare that the people recognized by The Episcopal Church are the proper authorities to control the assets of the diocese.
b. Declare that property held by and for the Diocese of Pittsburgh may only be used for the mission of The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Pittsburgh, subject to the rules of each.
c. Order the defendants to relinquish all diocesan assets to the proper authorities of the diocese.
d. Require defendants to submit an accounting of all assets held on October 4, 2008,
e. Provide such further relief as may be proper.
Tuesday evening update
ENS now has a report, PITTSBURGH: Episcopal Church petitions to join property case, wants Duncan to vacate offices.
8 Commentsopinions to think about
I wrote recently about a Theos report on Rescuing Darwin. Andrew Brown has now written at Comment is free about Science vs superstition, not science vs religion.
Last week in the Church Times Andrew Davison wrote that The C of E should nurture theology. For more about the Returning to the Church conferences, go here.
Giles Fraser wrote about the Credit Crunch, see The crunch needs global resolution. And don’t miss the lucid explanation of the Credit Crunch by Andreas Whittam Smith in a synod paper, The Inernational Financial Crisis and the Recession.
Earlier this week, Jonathan West asked Should I worry about the church?
The Archbishop of York wrote in the Daily Mail The intolerance towards Christians in the public sector is an affront. Another copy is on the archbishop’s own website.
Jenny Taylor wrote in The Times Let us use chastity to channel the soul’s energy.
Elizabeth Gray-King wrote in the Guardian about Valentine’s Day.
33 CommentsGreen and Pleasant
The overnight snow has cleared, and I am sitting in the study, looking out on the rather scruffy greenery of the garden. As with many clergy houses, the surrounding garden is unusually large for the locality. It’s much admired by visitors, especially congregation members, not because it is in any sense a model of horticultural achievement but just because it is a green space. And a green space is defined as good, to be enjoyed, a source of spiritual solace.
Talking recently with someone who has moved from working in the inner city to a parish in the depths of rural Essex, we fell to wondering about the default position which gives a spiritual value to the ‘natural’ world, but not to that which is evidently made by human hands, or indeed, by machines designed by human brains. Go into a religious bookshop, and look at the shelves of popular devotional material: most will have covers which show flowers, sky, mountains, woods, sea, even deserts. Any human beings shown will be almost certainly be in rural settings, whether the domesticity of the English countryside or something wilder and apparently more challenging. A very few might be consciously grittier in their approach: urban spirituality, talking of God in the city, is rough, tough stuff, edgy, about stories of poverty and survival.
Intentionally or not, the visual code being used implies that the natural world is of God, and good, offering us an unmediated access to the divine, and that what is the product of human activity is and does none of these things. This of course ignores the fact that so much of the landscape in which we operate is shaped by human intervention: very little certainly of the English countryside is ‘natural’, a wilderness unspoiled by people’s demands upon it. More importantly for my purposes, working in an urban environment, is the implicit message that houses, roads, factories, shops, bridges, railways are always to be seen as second-rate in the spirituality stakes. And, by extension, the people of the city need to get into the green world of big skies and empty spaces, because there they can pray, reflect, contemplate, in ways which are otherwise closed to them.
Perhaps this is part of a peculiarly English cultural obsession with the countryside: just as, if you make sufficient money (or so it was in the past, when people did make money), you move to the country, whether to a stately home or a comfortable bungalow, so if you are spiritually successful, you seek out the fields, the forests, the mountains. But the Christian story famously begins in a garden and ends in a city, and yet we constantly hark back to Eden rather than look forward to Jerusalem. Why are we so unwilling to explore a sense of God amongst the cars, the bricks, the concrete, the bus stops, and the busyness? Why do we not honour as God-given the human creativity which gives us the North London Outfall Sewer, the exuberant decoration of late 19th century terraced housing, the entertainment of one of our local covered markets? And why, when we do try to do it, is the attempt so often disastrous? I recall with pain, many years ago, singing ‘God of concrete, God of steel…’
I can’t answer the questions, but I’m off to look for signs of the Kingdom on the London Underground.
13 CommentsGeneral Synod – reports on day five
The official report of Friday morning’s business is at General Synod – Summary of Business Conducted on Friday 13th February 2009 AM.
Press reports:
BBC Church call for asylum law change
Martin Beckford Telegraph Church of England General Synod calls asylum seeker amnesty
Ruth Gledhill General Synod Feb 09 Day Five
Nottingham Evening Post City priest’s call for asylum seeker rights
Alastair Cutting Asylum and Sanctuary
We will update this as more reports are published.
0 CommentsGeneral Synod – Asylum Seekers and Climate Change
The final morning (Friday) of Synod was devoted to two diocesan synod motions.
The first, from Southwell & Nottingham, was about Justice and Asylum Seekers. The Revd Ruth Worsley moved the motion:
That this Synod, continuing to affirm scriptural teaching about care for the vulnerable, welcome for strangers and foreigners, and the Church’s calling to reach out to the marginalized and persecuted, call upon Her Majesty’s Government:
(a) to ensure that the treatment of asylum seekers is just and compassionate, and to that end to consider:
(i) conferring a right to work on all asylum seekers, and
(ii) declaring an amnesty for so called ‘legacy cases’ that predate the Government’s New Asylum Model;(b) to find a practical and humane remedy to the intolerable situation of destitute ‘refused’ asylum seekers who are unable to return to their country of origin because of personal safety, health or family reasons.
This was amended, by changing some of the wording, and adding (iii) and (c) so that the substantive motion became
That this Synod, continuing to affirm scriptural teaching about care for vulnerable people, welcome for strangers and foreigners, and the Church’s calling to reach out to the marginalized and persecuted, call upon Her Majesty’s Government:
(a) to ensure that the treatment of asylum seekers is just and compassionate, and to that end to:
(i) confer a right to work on all asylum seekers,
(ii) declare an amnesty for so called ‘legacy cases’ that predate the Government’s New Asylum Model, and
(iii) bring to an end the practice of detaining children and families in Immigration Removal Centres;(b) to find a practical and humane remedy to the intolerable situation of destitute ‘refused’ asylum seekers who are unable to return to their country of origin because of personal safety, health or family reasons;
(c) to investigate and report publicly on the quality of the legal services provided to asylum seekers.
The amended motion was then carried by 242 votes to one against (with one recorded abstention).
The second motion, from Worcester, was about Climate Change and the Church’s Property Transactions and was proposed by the Bishop of Dudley:
That this Synod call on the Archbishops’ Council to conduct an urgent review of the Endowments and Glebe Measure and other relevant Church legislation, with a view to bringing forward at the earliest possible opportunity any amendments needed to enable diocesan bodies and PCCs lawfully to dispose of land on terms which give proper weight to environmental considerations as well as financial ones, and so enable the Church to give a stronger moral lead in achieving Her Majesty’s Government’s objectives in cutting carbon emissions.
After debate this motion was defeated. 83 members voted for the motion and 98 against. There were 18 recorded abstentions.
0 CommentsGeneral Synod – Retreat Houses
The final business at Synod this (Thursday) afternoon was a diocesan synod motion on the future of Church of England retreat houses.
The Ven Richard Atkinson (Leicester) moved on behalf of the Leicester Diocesan Synod:
That this Synod
(a) celebrate the contribution of the Diocesan Retreat Houses to the Retreat Movement, and to the mission of the Church and the spiritual well-being of the nation;
(b )in the light of the closure of several Diocesan Retreat Houses, invite the Archbishops’ Council to review and to make recommendations for the future sustainability and development of the remaining Diocesan Retreat Houses; and
(c) encourage the Archbishops’ Council and the other National Church Institutions, Dioceses, regional training partnerships and parishes to make full use of the Diocesan Retreat Houses for retreat, prayer, study, conferences and creative thinking for the future.
Mr Brian Newey (Oxford) moved as an amendment:
Leave out paragraph (b).
This amendment was carried on a show of hands so that the substantive motion became
That this Synod
(a) celebrate the contribution of the Diocesan Retreat Houses to the Retreat Movement, and to the mission of the Church and the spiritual well-being of the nation; and
(b) encourage the Archbishops’ Council and the other National Church Institutions, Dioceses, regional training partnerships and parishes to make full use of the Diocesan Retreat Houses for retreat, prayer, study, conferences and creative thinking for the future.
At the end of the debate the amended motion was carried nem con on a show of hands.
Background papers
from the Diocese of Leicester and the Diocese of Peterborough (GS Misc 907A)
by the Secretary General (GS Misc 907B)
The Ven Richard Atkinson proposing the motion
0 CommentsGeneral Synod – reports on day four
Updated Friday morning
The official summary of the morning’s business is at General Synod – Summary of Business Conducted on Thursday 12th February 2009 AM
And for the afternoon, there is General Synod – Summary of Business Conducted on Thursday 12th February 2009 PM
Martin Beckford in the Telegraph Workers who lose jobs will escape ‘Crackberry culture’
Ruth Gledhill in the Times Bishop of London says that redundancy is good for the soul
Avril Ormsby at Reuters ‘We are all to blame for financial crisis’ – archbishop
BBC Church leaders focus on recession
Further updates
ENS In England, Anglican covenant debate reveals mixed expectations by Matthew Davies
Ekklesia Global economy hits poorest hardest, archbishop tells Synod
Ruth Gledhill General Synod Feb 09 Day Four
Justin Brett In Praise of the Tom Wright Sound-Bite
Alastair Cutting A jar, an empty cupboard, and kissing the hand of the Queen
7 CommentsGeneral Synod – Inter Faith: Presence and Engagement
The second item of business this afternoon (Thursday) was a debate on the report Inter Faith: Presence and Engagement (GS 1720)
The motion, proposed by the Bishop of Bradford, was “That the Synod do take note of this report”. The motion was passed on a show of hands.
The Bishop of Bradford introducing the debate
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