The Hubert Walter interfaith award From Dr Bijan Omrani Madam, — It was kind of Andrew Brown (Comment, 25 September) to describe me as “normally shrewd”. I am, therefore, sorry to have fallen below my normal standards of shrewdness in suggesting ...

BISHOPS have a right to challenge political parties’ policies and the Conservative Party in opposition must “listen to churches up and down our country” in preparing for government, the parliamentary director of the Conservative Christian Fellowsh...

A MAN who completed a two-week pilgrimage from Winchester to Canterbury to raise funds for, and awareness of, vulnerable children across the UK said that he had been motivated by seeing “the struggles that some children go through”. Alexander Adam...

BISHOPS across the Anglican Communion are “figures of unity”, called to be “people of peace”, and are key to building understanding and friendship in a socially and politically polarised world, the Archbishop of Canterbury told the Episcopal Churc...

THE Online Faculty System (OFS) — a digital system for managing all faculty applications relating to works on churches, their contents, and churchyards — was suspended on Wednesday, to be replaced by a new Building Management Portal (BMP). The new...

THE independent Executive Chair of the Safeguarding Structures Programme Board, Dame Christine Ryan, is to step down after only a year in post, it was announced on Tuesday. Dame Christine took up the post last October having been chair of Ofsted f...

Kenyan Churches back changes to tobacco laws THE National Council of Churches of Kenya has backed proposed changes to the country’s tobacco laws, the Kenya Times reports. Its General Secretary, Canon Chris Kinyanjui, spoke at the National Assembl...

“THE purpose of this systematics”, Ralph McMichael writes, “is to re-imagine all of theology from within the Eucharist.” The promise of the project is stimulating, even if the execution proves frustrating. Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth consider th...

Malcolm Alexander writes: TREVOR TUTU, who died on 15 June, aged 70, was fiercely independent, with a wicked sense of humour, and the son of Archbishop Desmond. Trevor Tutu returned to live in South Africa in 1980, at the height of apartheid. By t...

IS 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic still regarded as the worst-ever movie? David Kittredge’s Boorman and The Devil (Cert.15) invites a spiritual rethink. The original Exorcist became one of cinema’s highest-grossing films, notorious for graphicall...

IF I had to give up all forms of media but one, I would stick to weekly or monthly magazines. The rhythm that they impose on writers demands thought: what you say has to be worth reading four days or four weeks after you’ve said it, and either tim...

ON THE podcast What Now? with Trevor Noah, in the episode “Jimmy Carr: My mom’s depression made me funny”, the conversation between the presenter and the comedian Jimmy Carr ranges across fatherhood, the British economy, comedy, and what it means ...

THE authors of this book are co-founders of a training organisation, Pioneering Parishes, which promotes pioneering practices within a firm commitment to the parish system. Into All the Parish presents their principles and experience. They applaud...

ONE of the most significant treasures in the library of St Paul’s Cathedral is a small, unassuming book: a copy of the New Testament produced 500 years ago by the priest and scholar William Tyndale. In this volume, Tyndale published for the first ...

THE ministry of diocesan retirement officers is needed more than ever. Nearly one in five people in the UK are now aged over 65, and it is anticipated that this will increase to one in four by 2050. Demographic change is affecting the Church of En...

“AT LAST, when all the mysteries were fulfilled in him and that most holy soul was released from the flesh and absorbed into the abyss of the divine glory, the blessed man fell asleep in the Lord.” The 13th-century theologian St Bonaventure’s acco...

AROUND 2,000 members of the Mothers’ Union and the Archbishop of Canterbury met in Durban, South Africa, last week in a global gathering to celebrate the movement’s 150th anniversary. On Saturday, the Archbishop preached at St Paul’s, Durban, at t...

A MOTION setting out the Green Party’s opposition to Zionism felt for Jews “uncomfortably close to support for Hamas”, the Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, said this week. The party adopted the motion at its conference in Brighton ...

CHURCH leaders in Ireland held an ecumenical meeting last week on the shores of Lough Neagh. The largest freshwater lake in Northern Ireland, it is the focus of an action plan to address its long-term ecological decline. Unprecedented quantities o...

PHYLLIS TRIBLE’s Texts of Terror was one of the great discoveries of my theological education; so, a special episode of Beyond Belief with that very title (Radio 4, Tuesday 29 September), compèred by Canon Giles Fraser at the festival Contains Str...

THIS family have been eagerly awaiting all summer the return of Celebrity Traitors (BBC1, Thursdays and Fridays). I highly recommend finding a teenager or two to watch with: they will bring you up to speed on the content creators, and you can expl...

ALMOST 1,000 years after its making at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, the Bayeux Tapestry has returned to these shores. Tickets for the British Museum blockbuster (Arts, 11 September) are selling out within hours of going on sale. The public fa...

HENRI NOUWEN died 30 years ago. His spiritual and literary legacy still very much lives on, perhaps more in the United States and Canada than in the UK. But few Anglicans will have not heard in sermons or spiritual addresses references to Nouwen’s...

“THERE’s something about the fact that maybe we have flaws, in a sense, by design, so that the light of Christ may shine out,” the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, reflecting on Dyslexia Awareness Week. The focus of the week, which runs until 11...

CHURCHES seeking to develop their own mentoring programme have been invited to apply for a bursary worth £1,040. The bursary will reduce the cost of a place on the Build Your Own Mentoring Programme training to £25 a month. Nicodemus, the mentorin...

BISHOPS of the US state of Tennessee have appealed for “restraint, human dignity, and mercy” in the case of the botched execution of Christa Pike, who is on life support in hospital. Pike, 50, survived two attempts to kill her by lethal injection ...

CHRIS BRAIN, the founder of the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS) in Sheffield, has been found guilty of one count of rape and four counts of indecent assault, after a second trial. Mr Brain, 69, previously of Wilmslow, Cheshire, was found guilty last ye...

Grants for Sheffield spire and Kendal tower TWO churches in the north of England have received substantial grants from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF). St John’s, Ranmoor, has been awarded £250,000 to preserve its historic spire, which i...

DOES anyone remember the name of Shani Louk? She was the 23-year-old German-Israeli who became a symbol of the 7 October 2023 music-festival massacre when her injured, half-naked body was driven through the streets of Gaza to cries of “Allahu Akba...

IT IS hard to do justice to the BFI London Film Festival (7-18 October), crammed as it is with religious and spiritual features. Repairing broken hearts figures prominently. Fatherland covers Thomas Mann’s literary tour across a divided post-war G...

AS NEURODIVERGENT ministers and educators, we are commited to helping and supporting those who are training for ministry and are also neurodivergent. In our research, we spoke to 41 participants who were either training for ministry or currently i...

“From your garden? It really was a hot summer”

Across 1 Biblical symbol of peace encouraging agricultural collaboration? (11) 9 Reluctant nephew of Abraham linked to the end of Gomorrah (4) 10 Sadly going deaf, involving ear’s end? Prayerfully optimistic (10) 11 High-class US ...

Between the lines I WAS delighted to be asked to speak at the Festival of Preaching again. The days of the preacher asking if everyone can hear at the back and someone replying “Yes, but I don’t mind swapping with someone who can’t” are, it seems,...

WITH the arrival of October, many parishes will be keeping their Harvest Festival. How this is achieved meaningfully, given the modern disconnect between food producers and consumers, is a perennial question — but that chasm makes it all the more ...

TERRY MARTIN has written Animals in Heaven? A Catholic pastoral response to questions about animals (Wipf & Stock, £18 (£16.20); 979-8-3852-2675-7), which has a foreword by Andrew Linzey. The author is a priest of the diocese of Arundel & ...

OLD SEFTON is a mere hamlet. Its church has famous medieval screens; there are a busy, foodie pub, a venerable crown-green bowling club (I peered over the hedge and was offered a cup of tea) the site of an old mill, and a cul-de-sac of new-build h...

IT WOULD seem that there can be no suggestion so fantastic and no proposal so extravagant that it will not attract support from some clerk in Holy Orders. The clergyman who waved a Fascist flag in his church in Liverpool may be dismissed as being ...

Learning from Other Religions by David Brown (Cambridge University Press, £22.99 (£20.69); 978-1-009-36768-4). New in paperback “One common argument against taking the notion of divine revelation seriously is the extraordinrary diversity which exi...

THE Sandford St Martin Trust has urged the BBC to “maintain meaningful local coverage of religion and belief across England”. It was responding to reports that the corporation might reduce the number of Sunday-morning religious program...

IT IS a simple idea, but a powerful opportunity. Across the UK, our communities are under strain. Loneliness is growing. Mistrust and fear seem louder than they once were. Too many people feel unseen, unsafe, or simply forgotten. Yet, another stor...

A CHURCH in Liverpool has had a multi-sensory calm zone installed for neurodiverse people who find the noise of services difficult. It is part of the “Inclusive without exception” vision of St John’s, Knotty Ash. The zone, a converted room in the ...

THE World Council of Churches (WCC) has deplored a rise in sexual violence by combatants during the war in Ukraine, after a United Nations report gave details of hundreds of cases since the invasion in February 2022. “Such acts are a sin, a war cr...

DURING the six months since her installation, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been on an Africa charm offensive. As most demographers agree, the future direction of Anglicanism lies with Africa, which accounts for at least 65 per cent of Anglican...

THE incumbent of a church in south London which is attended by members of the far-Right group Patriot Platform has spoken of his commitment to keeping its doors “open to everyone — full stop”. The Team Rector of Morden Team Paris...

Bishop visits refugee supper club in Islington THE Area Bishop of Stepney, in London diocese, the Rt Revd Rod Green, has said that a refugee supper club that he visited should be a “blueprint” for churches across the city. Bishop Green, who was re...