How often should we be fasting?

As we being the season of Lent, traditionally a period of discipline and denial, the subject of fasting naturally comes up. But before we think about fasting for ourselves, we need to ask: How often did Jesus and the first generation of his followers fast? Was it an occasional thing, focused on specific events or …

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Lambeth invitations and the Communion’s future

Andrew Goddard writes: In January I raised a number of concerns about the invitation policy for the 2020 Lambeth Conference.  The issue hit the headlines again in February following further developments – the election of a same-sex married priest to be Bishop of Maine and the February 15th message from the Secretary General of the Anglican …

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What are the issues in ministerial training?

In the modern era there have been three major reviews of ordination training in the Church of England. All three have tried to address some important structural issues; all three have been controversial and have been (to some extent) ideologically driven; all three have had unfortunate unintended consequences. The first was the imaginatively named ACCM …

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Seeing ourselves in Revelation 14

There is no denying that, for any modern reader, the Book of Revelation is a strange text; we will not learn from it by pretending that it does not present challenges. It does reveal things (as the name suggests), but that can simply make life more complicated and confusing. Many of us feel the same …

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