In many parts of the world, religious violence always seems to be just around the corner, and amidst the hearts and flowers of St Valentine’s Day it is worth remembering that the festival seems to have its origins in the religous conflict of early medieval Rome. Valentine himself is remembered as a presbyter living in […]
This will be a historic week for English women thanks to the Church of England’s General Synod (which will run from Monday 10 February to Wednesday 12 February). The most controversial item on the agenda for discussion is a fast-track scheme which could make it possible to begin appointing female bishops as early as November of this […]
Earlier this month, in what I am sure will remain as one of the outstanding whimsical moments of 2014, I found myself wandering around in the dark one evening in the village of Woughton on the Green near Milton Keynes with a group of colleagues. We were trying to find a ‘dark spot’ away from the street-lamps in […]
Blackburn Cathedral and Corpus Christi College, Oxford have many things in common, I’m sure, but the most important thing at the moment is that in January they are both hosting events that will shed light on the distinctiveness of Christian and Muslim approaches to faith, belief, and belonging. First up is Corpus Christi, which is hosting […]
When Wiltshire market towns appear in the British national press, it is usually because their sports teams have done unusually well or a photographer has captured a striking photo of the local children or wildlife. But this year, Canon Simon Tatton-Brown, Vicar of St Andrew’s Church in Chippenham, made national headlines by telling a group of […]
Today is my mother’s birthday – the second since she died – and I am still new at the task of finding a way to mark the day now that she isn’t here to be fussed over. But yesterday, a happy thought came to me: today would be as good a day with any to […]
I was on my way a few days ago to do a reading at a college bookstore, and I had the loveliest supper with some of my North Carolina cousins before we all headed over to the reading itself. Our hosts – my cousins Fran and Stuart – live in an impossibly charming and quirky […]
