Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG

Unitarians: Christians or heretics?

  This is the annual Unitarian gathering at a service at Chester cathdral that was, by all accounts, powerful and moving. It was an act of worship, led by a Unitarian minister. This year's service was booked for 22 April, the £250 fee ready to be paid to the cathedral, when the bishop, Dr Peter Forster, received a complaint about last year's event. The cathedral is not saying who complained, but it led to a review, the result of which was the exclusion of the Unitarians from the cathdral, as we report. They will now hold their gathering in the Molloy Hall at Chester university instead. There are just 6,500 Unitarians in Britain but they are not to be dismissed. The church has some powerful members. In the US, these include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventer of the World Wide Web.

Time to dress up, guys!

In gold duchess satin cope and red Prada shoes, the Pope is becoming a fashion icon. And it seems that clergy in the Church of England are now turning as one flock to the Roman Catholic church for lessons in sartorial eschatology.

Recently, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales set up a priesthood site. It is aimed at schoolchildren, partly to education and partly to encourage vocations. It had been receiving a modest 700 hits a month.

Bishops were baffled, then, when hits doubled overnight. More than 1500 have logged on in the last few days alone.

Caterpillar crisis continues

On the Church Times website, you can see last week's Question of the Week. Nearly twice as many people voted in favour of divesting from Caterpilliar as against. But against this depressing result, editor Paul Handley has written: 'We are aware that voting on this question is being manipulated and no conclusions can be safely drawn.' In our online business section today, there is an excellent article by Anglican priest Gill Jackson, explaining why this vote was essentially futile because the bulldozers are 'ethically neutral'. We've been running a lot of letters on this debate but one of the best so far has also gone in today.

Lenten reflection

As Lent approaches once more, the Christian mind turns to the ascetic demands of the season. After the frenetic indulgence of Christmas, the bleak weather, the fiscal repentance and the attempt to live for 40 days in Christian austerity bring the unique satisfaction of spiritual renewal. It's going to be a little harder for me this year because two-thirds of the way through I'm getting married. This sunflower, that I photographed in Kew Gardens in the summer in the field where I went in search of the opium poppies they had the year before, 'suns' up how I feel about it all.

Church wars loom over gay 'marriage' in Scotland

The Presbyterian church, the national church in Scotland, will become the first mainstream Christian denomination to authorise same-sex blessing services if its General Assembly approves the legal report recommending this step in May. The proposal is expected to provoke wide condemnation from conservatives. The Church of Scotland has a strong evangelical tradition and some insiders are quietly but deeply fearful of the possibly schismatic implications. One implication is that, if approved, it will dramatically increase pressure on the nation’s other established church, the Church of England, to afford similar recognition to the increasing numbers of gay couples taking advantage of the new civil partnerships legislation. This picture shows the Rev Christopher Wardale, 59, from Darlington, and retired Northumbria University lecturer Malcolm Macourt, 58, exchanging vows in Newcastle. In the US the shortlisting of not one but two gay clerics, a gay man and a lesbian woman, for an episcopal appointment in California, is likely to accelerate schism. See Kendall Harmon's blog here.

Education, education, religious education

Every evening I rush home anxiously to open the post. We local mums send fevered texts and emails. Every personal phone call from a friend ends with: “And have you heard yet…?”

Like thousands of mums and dads across the country, and hundreds in our local borough of Richmond, Surrey, we are nearing the end of the agonising long wait after applying for a place for our offspring in the local church school. In a few days, early March, we will hear. Our local Church of England primary, the Queen’s school, is simply one of the best primary schools in the country.

Divestment: Chief Rabbi on enemies and friends

The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, has written a hard-hitting article regarding the Church of England's divestment decision. The article is in tomorrow's Jewish Chronicle. It is reproduced here with their permission. As we ran Rowan Williams' letter in full, it is only fair to do the same for Sir Jonathan. At the end is the leader comment from Jeff Barak, JC managing editor, and after that more from Lord Carey, addressing the Three Faiths Forum.

Caterpillar: Rowan Williams writes to Chief Rabbi

Lambeth Palace SE1 7JU, Friday 10th February 2006

Dear Jonathan, There has been much adverse comment on the resolution passed last Monday by the Church of England Synod to review its investment in certain companies involved in the Palestinian territories, and much distress has been caused, especially to our Jewish friends and neighbours here and elsewhere.  This distress is a cause of deep regret; as one who was present, it may be helpful for me to clarify what this resolution did and did not say and, even more importantly, what it did and did not imply.

Superman to the rescue of Jesus

  The comic book hero Superman is to be used by religious education teachers in Britain to help youngsters understand the concept of Jesus Christ. School children will be told that Superman is like Jesus because both arrived on earth in usual circumstances after being sent here by their fathers, both move from relative obscurity as a child to a more prominent adulthood, both help the humans they are sent to live with and both struggle to stand up for truth against injustice and evil.
Superman is just one of among the Hollywood icons being enlisted to help children better understand their country’s majority religion of Christianity.

Caterpillar blog: Apologia Pro Ecclesia Sua

Some of those who have taken the trouble to comment on my previous blog have questioned whether my objectivity as a news journalist has been compromised by my taking Israel’s side against the action of the Church of England General Synod in backing disinvestment from Caterpillar. I would argue not. I have always been strongly pro-Israeli but as a news reporter it is easy* to leave those views “outside the door” when covering Middle East affairs. If anyone has suspected I carried that view in the past, they have never complained about it before.

*(Phil  Smith on his blog has taken me to task for this comment, rightly. No it is not always easy. But it is necessary. On the credit side, I've notched up praise from Starcourse.)

Church-Israel row looms as synod backs Caterpillar divestment

It is a decision that looks naive, to say the least, especially in the light of the Palestinian victory of Hamas, a terrorist organisation dedicated in its charter to the destruction of Israel. But General Synod has gone ahead and done it. The Church of England's established legislative body, which has the power to pass laws of equal status to those passed by the secular Parliament, has voted on a motion to divest from Caterpillar, the American tractor company that manufactures bulldozers used by both Israelis and Palestinians in land clearance and reconstruction projects in the occupied territories. As an Anglican myself, this decision provokes anger and shock in me, allied with shame and embarrassment. Have 2000 years of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the horrific death toll of suicide bombings in Israel taught us nothing?

Muslim Cartoon

On the satirical Christian Ship of Fools website there is a regular caption competition. It pokes fun at Christian icons, bishops and so on. My favourite entry so far to the latest competition is from Lawrence: "Fr. Smith was just adding fuel to the fire in his latest attempt to explain what he meant when he was overheard saying he was 'going to blow some hose'." Not only do Christians not protest at this sort of thing, but they positively relish it. Recently, ShipofFools also ran a contest to find the funniest and most offensive religious jokes that would fall foul of the unamended incitement to religious hatred legislation. Some Chrisians did find the resulting winners offensive when we ran the results in the newspaper. But the furthest they went in protesting were some miffed emails to me, or to the letters page editor. You can judge the jokes for yourself here.

Religious hatred and Muhammad cartoon

If the debate in the Commons had gone the Government's way, if the Chief Whip had not sent the Prime Minister off to Downing Street, I would not have accompanied this post with a picture of Zeus. Nor would I have used it If I was a "good" Christian and obeyed the Second Commandment against graven images and idolatry. Today I realise, with more fervour than usual, how blessed it is to be born into a religion where liberalism is possible and a country where democracy still works - just. 

As readers will by now be aware, due to the failure of the Prime Minister to vote, the Lords amendments on religious hatred were accepted by the Commons. The controversial Danish cartoons would have been caught by the unamended legislation. The law as it now stands will not catch them, according to defamation expert Michael Evans at US law firm Faegre & Benson.