Back in 2000, the United Nations (UN) agreed to the Millennium Development Goals, an audacious set of targets aiming to halve world poverty by 2015. That same year, a young Kenyan man named David was mourning the loss of his father in an overcrowded shack in Kangemi, one of Nairobi’s most notorious slums. His father [...]
By David Goodhew Cranmer Hall, Durham Sit down, breathe deeply – I have some shocking news to give you. The church in Britain is growing. Yes, I know this sounds mad. The TV and the newspapers routinely depict churches as half-empty and populated by geriatrics. Not a few church leaders and congregation members walk [...]
By David Holloway St Paul tells us that in the church there ought not only to be “requests, prayers [and] intercessions” for “kings”, but also “thanksgiving” (1 Tim 2:1). So how we should thank God for our Queen and Constitutional Monarchy that she so faithfully has embodied for 60 years. We, therefore, must first thank [...]
By Kairat Mami On May 30th-31st Kazakhstan will host the fourth Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Astana under the motto “Peace and harmony as the choice of mankind”. More than 70 delegations representing Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Taoism and other religions will participate in a dialogue aimed at [...]
By Donald McFadyen On Radio 4’s The Now Show recently comedian John Finnemore defended the Church of England, or rather said it didn’t need defending. He gently lampooned the member of Bideford Council who, as we all know, objected to saying prayers at its meeting because it infringed his human rights; and on the other [...]
By Graham Cray It is sometimes thought that fresh expressions of church are just for small, struggling or even failing churches. But the vision of a mixed-economy approach applies to all churches, even those which seem to be doing well. Archbishops’ Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions, Bishop Graham Cray, has been looking at [...]
By Graham Kings Richard Johnson, who bequeathed this annual sermon gave posterity its text: Vita Humana Bulla Est – Human Life is a Bubble. He died in 1795, tragically, at the early age of 38. Is journalistic life a free floating immoral bubble or is there such a thing as ‘moral journalism’, which is grounded [...]
Tom Wright’s controversial book For all the Saints in which he argues that the saints, like all the departed, are awaiting the resurrection at the end of time and are unable to join their petitions with ours, has been reissued by SPCK. Bishop Tom disagrees with some current liturgical practices surrounding All Saints’ Day and [...]
Unbroken An extraordinary true story of courage and survival Laura Hillenbrand Fourth Estate, hb, £20 This is the amazing story of Louie Zamperini. The younger son in a family of Italian immigrants in California, he was the terror of Torrance as a child, until his elder brother, Peter, noticed the speed with which he evaded [...]
By Colin Craston Divisions among evangelicals on the understanding and application of Scripture are not new. For a century the position affirmed by Warfield and Hodge in America that Scripture’s original documents, the autographa, were totally inerrant had a profound, and I believe, a misleading effect on the evangelical tradition. As Mark A Noll, an [...]
