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Amazing Love: Theology for Understanding Discipleship, Sexuality and Mission. Ed. by Andrew Davison. Darton, Longman & Todd: London, 2016. 144pp. £8.99 I know Andrew Davison, and had enjoyed theological conversation with him in the past. I was planning to post a review of his short book (which was sent to all members of General Synod prior … Continue Reading
Peter Ould writes: The Sunday Times yesterday highlighted a service that took place on Saturday at St Agnes’ Church in North Reddish, Manchester. This was a service of “blessing” (as described on the church website) for the same-sex marriage of the now former vicar, Clive Larsen, one of the trustees of Changing Attitude. The piece in the … Continue Reading
Through a mixture of rain and shine, cool breezes and muggy stillness, General Synod spent three days engaged in ‘Shared Conversations’ about the Church and sexuality, the final event in a two-year process of conversations involving representatives from dioceses meeting to do the same around the country. Feedback from previous events had been somewhat mixed, and … Continue Reading
‘Gosh, I never realised….X’. ‘Really? I knew that ages ago—it’s pretty common knowledge you know!’
I wonder if you’ve ever had that kind of conversation—at work, or church, or amongst friends or family. You have assumed that things are as they were claimed to be, or presented, but all the time ‘everybody’ ‘knew’ that that wasn’t really the truth, and you were naive to assume it was. As I reflect back, I realised that it has
On today’s General Synod agenda, we were scheduled to discuss a report on ‘Nurturing and discerning senior leaders’. In the event, we ended up adding a debate on the EU Referendum and the consequences for our thinking about division in society, and the debate on leadership has been postponed (I am not entirely sure until … Continue Reading
This weekend, General Synod are having their own ‘Share Conversations’ on sexuality as the closing event of this process in the Church. I was a bit fed up to learn that members were going to be circulated with not one but two books advocating (in some way or other) for a change in the Church’s … Continue Reading
Last weekend I preached at the church where a good friend is curate, on the occasion of this person’s presiding at Communion for the first time. I am going to label this church as ‘liberal catholic’, since that is how the vicar described it when I asked him, though he did say that not all … Continue Reading
My post last week on whether ordination ‘makes you a priest’ provoked a good deal of discussion and debate. As part of that, I receive a long response from Simon Oliver, who is Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham. I got to know Simon when he was the highly respected head of … Continue Reading
This is the time of year when ordinations happen, traditionally on the weekend nearest to the festival remembering Peter (‘Petertide’ which fell yesterday) which is either the last weekend of June or the first weekend of July. (It would be much better if this happened in September, but that is the subject for another post.) … Continue Reading
I have been contributing to the Church’s Renewal and Reform stream on developing lay leadership, and one of the questions that has come up is: ‘What does the Church of England actually believe about the laity and lay leadership?’ I am not referring here to what some have called ‘ecclesial lay leadership’, that is, the … Continue Reading
In early July, a large part of the meeting of General Synod will be given over to the final stage of the Shared Conversations on sexuality. In the run up to this, there has been a flurry of publicity and publication. One of these was a short book called Journeys Into Grace and Truth, edited by … Continue Reading
Ian Paul: theologian, author, speaker, academic consultant. Associate Senior Research Fellow, Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology; Associate Minister, St Nic's, Nottingham; Managing Editor, Grove Books; member of General Synod and Archbishops' Council. Mac user; chocoholic. Tweets at @psephizo
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Gospel commentary index Lectionary Year A
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