Should clergy have Christmas day off?

Angela Tilby, Canon Emeritus of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, managed to upset just about everyone with her recent column on Christmas ‘family-olatry’ in the Church Times. Christmas’s falling on a Sunday this year is bound to be awash with family services. I have heard of clergy cancelling the regular eight o’clock, on the grounds that they … Continue Reading

What did humour in sermons ever do for us?

As part of its publicity, the Christian Resources Exhibition is running a ‘Sermon of the Year’ award. (The reporter, Ruth Gledhill, must be pleased, since 20 years ago she ran The Times Sermon of the Year competition, which featured yours truly!). To promote this it commissioned research on what people look for in sermons, and … Continue Reading

Do we walk in the footsteps of Judas?

On Good Friday morning, at 9 am, Kate Bottley (known as the Gogglebox vicar) presented a new angle on the Easter story—told from the perspective of Judas. I have to admit to having some misgivings about the approach, mostly because of the Telegraph’s promotional pre-article. There has been a consistent trend in scholarship to prioritise … Continue Reading

Can we address God as ‘She’?

A little storm brewed up over the weekend on the question of whether we can address God as ‘she’ and use female images to describe God. It arose from some comments made at the Faith Debate on the difference that women bishops might make. (I think it rather unhelpful that this debate was an inter-faith … Continue Reading

Ministry and Media: an interview

Kate Bottley is Vicar of the churches of Blyth, Scrooby and Ranskill and Chaplain to North Notts College. She trained at St John’s, Nottingham and served her curacy in Skegby, in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. She hit the headlines in 2013 when she led a ‘flashmob’ dance at a wedding that she had conducted went … Continue Reading