Yesterday I went to a lecture-workshop led by Professor Traugott Roser , Professor of Practical Theology at the University of Munster. It was entitled, "Sexuality and Intimacy in a time of severe illness and death". The lecture at the beginning told us about research conducted with a cohort of terminally ill patients and their spouses …
Continue reading Sexuality and Intimacy: are we thinking straight?
Why the House of Bishops' new guidance needs a lot more work if it is going to be listened to.
When I was a boy, there was no such thing as sharing the peace. The 1662 Prayer Book Communion service is a liturgy that resolutely maintains the sense of the individual amidst the corporate. Charles Willams's poem, At the "Ye that do truly" expresses the sense of separation of one Christian from another in this …
A propos the priesthood, Giles Fraser writes in praise of Incompetence in his latest Unherd blog. He talks movingly and rightly of the dangers of any priest ever pretending that they are “successful”. And of how the grace and love of God uses the unlikely, the odd, the incompetent to advance the cause of God’s …
The Church of England likes to portray itself as the friend of civil partnerships for LGBT+ people. This is notwithstanding the fact that when the legislation was passing through the House of Lords in 2004 the majority of its 26 bishops in the British upper chamber of parliament voted for an amendment that was widely …
Continue reading How will the Church of England respond to heterosexual civil partnerships?
March 12 marks the 25th anniversary of the ordination of women priests within the Church of England. Yet while today marks one milestone, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people remain second-class citizens. Next year the Anglican bishops from around the world will meet for the Lambeth Conference. Except that a tranche of them, mostly from …
Continue reading The Church of England must break its toxic colonial legacy
From The Quire 