Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG

Widespread ...... Brown & stuff

I had unpublished this post, but have now republished but deleted the content and substituted this in order to get the original off Google cache. See David Ould and Adrian Monck for some of the background. Once the cache has disappeared, as according to this it should shortly, then I might delete this post as well. Or not.

(Update: In Andrew Brown's Church Times column today: 'The same day, the front page of The Times had been entirely taken up with a straightforward and perfectly true Ruth Gledhill exclusive about the Von Hugel Instritute's report on the place of Christianity in British public life.' Is it just me, or do I detect a perfectly-formed tongue-in-a-cheek in that sentence?)

'Bring back Jonathan Petre' says Guardian relig corr

Nazir-Ali certainly has a way of getting them all going. Coverage of his recent interventions, which you can read in full over at the 'Stinking Anglicans' as mischievous friends of mine refer to it, has provoked an unexpected broadside against The Daily Telegraph's new religion editor, Father George Pitcher, who doubles up as a curate at St Bride's . The startling thing about this is the origin of the attack. It is the Guardian's new religion correspondent, Riazat Butt, a Muslim who succeeded Stephen Bates and who is herself an exceptional writer with a lovely and enviably light style. She says: 'I can't believe people are having a pop at my piece. Have you read George Pitcher's? It's execrable. I don't care if he sues me. It's a bloody awful piece of writing. It's so flawed on so many levels you'd need to deforest the Amazon to list the reasons why. Bring back Jonathan Petre.' 

Ata mefutar!

As we report, the Jewish Chronicle has today published its list of the top 100 people most influential on the Jewish Community. The omission of The Apprentice's Alan Sugar is surprising. But even more remarkable is the omission of Chelsea's Avram Grant, especially given Chelsea's deserved and amazing victory over Man United the other day. Oh how the Man U supporters in our house wept that night. How we secret Chelsea fans gloated. (You have to be a bit secretive about it if you dare to support Chelsea in the little enclave of liberalism where we live, even though it is technically our 'local'.) Read the list in full on the JC website here, here and here.

Come be 'baptised' with us sinnners at Lambeth

The first Lambeth Conference I attended, in 1988, was fantastic fun. Robert Runcie presided like a benign saint over proceedings that were
stimulating, enjoyable and productive for everyone. We in the media looked forward eagerly to the next one. But as far as the press operation was concerned, the last Lambeth Conference was a total disaster. At the start, everyone, bishops included, was handed badges. We got bright pink ones, the bishops purple, and everyone else yellow or some other anodyne colour. The bishops were assembled by the 'excommunications officers', as I was soon calling them, and told: 'Purple is safe, yellow is secure, pink means danger.' Things went abysmal from there.

(This is my latest CEN column.)

Telegraph appoints Anglican priest to write on religion

Not sure what I think about this. But at risk of publicising the opposition, I thought it merited drawing attention to. I still miss Jonathan.

Telegraph Media Group new appointments

Telegraph Media Group announces the following appointments:

'George Pitcher has been appointed Religion Editor for The Telegraph. He will be writing regularly for The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk. George is Curate at St Bride’s and was ordained a priest in 2006.  George is a former industrial editor of The Observer and has held a variety of posts as a commentator and columnist in newspapers and magazines. He co-founded the PR firm Luther Pendragon in which he sold his interest in 2005. 

Dear Victoria

This photograph shows Victoria Combe and me at the start of the 1998 Lambeth Conference. Victoria was then the churches correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and I still miss her company out there in the field. Her friend Bill came to the conference for a couple of days but as usual he didn't have eyes for me or even for Victoria. One of the most determinedly professional journalists I've ever met, all he was ever really interested in was 'the story'. One of the reasons he liked Victoria was because she helped him interpret the story for a new generation.

Addiction - a spiritual disease

This is Chimchar, my favourite character on Pokemon. He lives in a little red and white ball, and emerges on command to 'fight' the Pokemon of other trainers. A couple of days ago he 'evolved' into Montferno. 'Explorers of darkness' is what comes up if you go the website linked to above. This game is addictive.

I'ld like to buy a glass or two for whoever it was that first uttered the phrase, 'the demon drink'. We've moved on from Sharia this week, but one of the little-discussed aspects of Islamic law in this whole debate was the ban on alcohol. There are few Muslims who belong to Alcoholics Anonymous in the West. So could it be that Sharia works?

Small earthquake in Britain, none dead

If you look closely at this church, St Thomas' in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, you can see atop it a little stone cross. Well, the cross is there no more. It fell off during the little earthquake that hit Britain at about 1am today. The headline in the local press is: 'Massive earthquake hits Rasen.'

JPII in 'trip hop' trance video

A composer who began his career writing the scores for Italian horror movies has set the life of the late John Paul II to music. The result, as we report on our online faith page, is a DVD described as 'trippy' by the Guardian and the latest in the succession begun by John, Paul and Ringo in The Spectator. Composer Simon Boswell describes it as 'trip hop'. My own description would be 'ambient'. Here are a couple of clips:

Girl, 4, recites Psalm 23

This is one of the most-watched videos on GodTube, the godly version of YouTube.

Creative cuts to Sir David Attenborough

It is both alarming and amusing to watch this video and see how the Dutch evangelical boadcaster EO has removed all references to evidence of evolution, such as fossil dates, from Sir David Attenborough's 2002 documentary The Life of Mammals. I interviewed Sir David this afternoon and have reported the results.

Feeling a bit seasick

The satirical website Ship of Fools has an entire thread devoted to a discussion on whether my reporting is objective or not. A certain 'Pete' has come to my defence. Thank you Pete! (Update: And so has Heather, which means something, as she not a natural supporter.) This 'bling the bishop' video, featuring the Bishop of Maidstone, Graham Cray, is a real-life version of another suggestion on Ship of Fools. Read on to discover its relevance.

On message

Just come off the phone from the BBC's The Message, where I was one of the guests discussing The Big Questions, the new programme that will replace The Heaven and Earth Show. This is me in the ISDN studio today at The Times at Wapping. Also discussing this were Aaqil Ahmed, commissioning editor for religion at Channel 4, and Steve Anderson, creative director of Mentorn Television, who are making the new programme and also make Question Time.

Dr Who?

Is there some subversive Christian working behind the scenes at Dr Who?

Scientology vs Sweeney

This is the outburst that has made unlikely media fellows of The Church of Scientology and the BBC. It shows reporter, John Sweeney "losing it" at Tommy Davis, a representative of the church. The reporter was investigating claims that Scientology is a cult for the BBC's Panorama programme, when by his own admission he shouted "like a jet engine" at Mr Davis who accused him of giving a critic of the church an easy interview.

GodTube

By Joanna Sugden

It was Internet Evangelism Day yesterday and techy Christians were encouraged to use their own version of the video sharing site YouTube to spread the Word. But this video from the site looks more like Beadle's About does church.

BBC celebrates gay Mass

As we report today, the BBC's Sunday Service on Radio 4 tomorrow morning will be a “gay Mass” from San Francisco as part of Radio 4’s Sunday Worship programme. Anglican Mainstream is among those to condemn the broadcast, describing it as a broadcast that "will knowingly cause offence to the overwhelming majority of Christians." San Francisco is home to the renowned Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, two of whom are pictured here. (Update: a number of posters have understandably queried why I've included the infamous Sisters here. I should have explained in the original post and apologise for not doing so. It is because, according to the Mail report, until stopped by the Archbishop of SF, they regularly staged "lewd and irreverent bingo nights" on the Holy Redeemer church premises, handing out prizes of a "sexual" nature. More details also in this story, which makes it clear that the RC SF diocese has in no way endorsed the "Mass".rg)

Proud not to be 'part of the union'.

  How many readers of this blog are old enough, like me, to remember the Strawbs song, 'You can't get me I'm part of the Union'? This was released in 1973, just as I was starting to gear up for 'O' levels. By the time I was sitting mocks and other exams, through a series of cold winters, there were periods when we went for months with no heating in our draughty Staffordshire vicarage because there was no coal. We had little hot food or drink because there was no coke for the Rayburn. Stinking rubbish piled up, uncollected.

Eastmas 'Cons of Praise'

This is the Bishop of Lichfield, the Right Rev Jonathan Gledhill, who as we report has lifted the lid on the "truth" behind the BBC religion flagship Songs of Praise. The funny thing in writing this story was that his apparent criticisms about the Advent and Easter Day Songs of Praise being shot on two consecutive days in November came in a speech in which he was actually criticising media distortion and misrepresentation. He raised an exceedingly nice petard for us to do a hoist with there!