Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
Andrew Goddard writes: Despite the College of Bishops being unable to meet as planned in September due to the death of the Queen, the Next Steps Group has confirmed that it is sticking to its original timetable for the discerning and deciding stages of the Living in Love and Faith journey. It will produce proposals for …
Peter Wyatt writes: According to Philip Larkin, ‘sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three’. Until today, this sexual revolution, brought about by more effective forms of contraception, has been hailed as an emancipation of human beings. No longer were we subject to the restraints of traditional morality as policed by religious faith, and family mores. Instead, …
A recent essay by Walter Brueggemann on the Bible and ‘homosexuality’ has received wide circulation (I put ‘homosexuality’ in inverted commas since, although it is included in the title to the essay, it is not a word I ever use in this discussion, since it is poorly defined.) Brueggemann sums up his argument in these …
I recently preached at a wedding celebration on the classic wedding text, 1 Cor 13.1–8a. The celebration was international, and as a result had been delayed for two years because of Covid. The couple were young professionals and, apart from parents and some friends and relations of a similar age, the congregation were also mostly …
Dear Richard I really enjoyed your honest reflections in The Times on Sunday April 17th in the light of your retirement this week. I felt as though I ought to respond in the second person, writing to you rather than writing about you, for several reasons. First, we are fellow clergy in the Church; we …
On Friday 3rd September, at 2.10 pm, I had a phone call from a number I did not recognise. When I answered, it turned out to be from a BBC researcher asking if I would appear on BBC1 on Sunday morning for a debate about the Church of England and same-sex marriage, in the light …
In my experience, there is a very broad range of answers to this question. Moral ‘conservatives’ have generally assumed that the answer is self-evidently ‘yes’; moral ‘liberals’ have generally assumed that it is ‘no’, since there does not appear to be any specific prohibition in Scripture. The massive changes in our culture around sex since …
This morning the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) have released a video entitled ‘The Beautiful Story’ which seeks to set out the case, in accessible terms, for the ‘traditional’ sexual ethic that sex belongs in marriage between one man and one woman, as currently taught in the doctrine of the Church of England. I …
On Wednesday last week, the House of Bishops issued a ‘pastoral statement’ on the status of Civil Partnerships, and it caused something of a stir. What was it about? Why was it needed? And why did it cause a commotion? The background to this discussion began in 2004. The Government passed the Civil Partnership Act, …
This Sunday’s lectionary reading, Third before Advent in Year C, is Luke 20.27-38. Once more, the lectionary makes an odd choice; it would be more natural to read on to verse 40 and complete the pericope. The narrative recounts an exchange between Jesus and the Sadducees, who do not believe in bodily resurrection, and so …
In recent debates about the meaning of marriage, one area of speculation has been whether our differentiated sex identity as male and female (this is biological sex identity, not ‘gender’ as it is often called, which, properly understood, is about social constructions of masculine and feminine identity) will persist into the new creation. Two people …
