Church of england

‘You owe me an apology,’ Richard Dawkins informs me. It is a bright Oxford morning and we are sitting in his home. His wife has just made me coffee and I have met their new puppies. I am here to discuss a new book of his, but he is smarting from a disobliging reference to him in a recent one of mine. That, and an earlier encounter I wrote about here, have clearly rankled. I try a very limited apology. But it does strike me that Dawkins is more easily bruised than one might have imagined. I wonder if it has anything to do with the deluge of criticism he

The Church of England has had some surprisingly good press recently. Who knows how these things happen, but the media seems to have decided to stop attacking its homophobia, and to start praising its social vision. The change at Lambeth Palace seems to have prompted this shift, which is a bit ironic, as Justin Welby is far more involved in the sexually illiberal side of Anglicanism than Rowan Williams was, but never mind. It has also been prompted by persistently hard economic times: the Church’s involvement in deprived communities gradually wins it more attention. Maybe it has insights that normal political bodies lack. Would you believe it? Some of the

I’ve been in the pulpit again, this time to salute the centenary of the death of Charles Norris Gray, a formidable Victorian vicar of my Yorkshire town of Helmsley. Gray was a social activist with strong opinions on everything from sanitation to election candidates, and he did a great deal of good for his parish — so I’m not averse to the idea of churchmen intervening in worldly affairs, and I think Archbishop Justin Welby was right to highlight the parasitical nature of ‘payday lenders’ such as Wonga, even if he was subsequently embarrassed to discover that the Church of England was an indirect investor in it. But by his

Justin Welby is a clever man. His comments about payday loan companies in Total Politics have managed to please both the left and right, which is no mean feat on such a controversial issue. How has he managed to do it? Well, the Archbishop has identified a social problem, of people accessing high-cost credit that they can’t always afford to repay, and offered an intelligent solution, rather than that offered by politicians suffering from dosomethingitis, which is normally to ban stuff they don’t like. Welby clearly doesn’t like payday loan companies. They do charge high rates of APR, but only on short-term loans, which makes Wonga’s 5,853 per cent APR

You may have gathered from last week’s column that I’ve been cruising the Med in search of fresh subject matter. It’s the sort of cruise that includes a programme of lectures, and the star turn on that front has been the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, enjoying a change of pulpit after his much-praised sermon at Lady Thatcher’s funeral. I had been struck by a passage in that address about the ‘prior dispositions’ required for a healthy market economy: ‘the habits of truth-telling, mutual -sympathy and the capacity to co-operate’. So as we steamed across the Ionian Sea I sent a note to the bishop’s cabin asking whether he’d

Almost three thousand years ago the Prophet Amos asked ‘can two walk together except they be agreed?’ How can the Church of England, pragmatic and volunteer-led but with complex legal and cultural structures, stay meshed with its culturally incompatible overseas churches? What is its future? Theo Hobson argues in this week’s Spectator that the C of E needs to find a third way in order to survive, affirming gay partnerships whilst simultaneously rejecting equal marriage. Can this be done? If the deadlock Hobson describes arose from a frail incoherent compromise, Some Issues in Human Sexuality, how can more hand-wringing duplicity solve it? The world has moved radically on since 1991. Education,

It is a wearyingly obvious observation, but the Church of England remains crippled by the gay crisis. It is locked in disastrous self-opposition, alienated from its largely liberal nature. Maybe the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has a secret plan that will break the deadlock: there is no sign of it yet. The advent of gay marriage has made the situation look even more hopeless. It entrenches the church in its official conservatism, and it further radicalises the liberals. A few weeks ago the church issued a report clarifying its opposition to gay marriage, in which it ruled out the blessing of gay partnerships. This was not a hopeful

I couldn’t get Richard Dawkins to reply to Theo Hobson’s excellent article on ‘the new new atheists’. Probably, he didn’t see my message. Or maybe he thought it beneath him. Or maybe like God he just doesn’t respond to all our entreaties. There’s no doubt, though, that Theo’s piece touched a nerve among the godless trolls of the web — just look at the comments section. Theo must be on to something. The new atheist spring of the 2000s is wilting. Dawkins suddenly seems like a strange anachronism. In his place, a humbler and more honest atheism is emerging, led by brilliant minds like our very own Douglas Murray on one hand and Alain de Botton on the other. The

That’s that then. Marriage will change, one way or another. Progress has won. Cue lots of right-on politicians talking about how proud they are to have ushered in such a historic reform. But what about the losing side? What should those Christians who believe that marriage must by definition be a union of man and woman do now? Accept and move on, I suppose. The best response is surely not to bleat on about a sinister ‘Orwellian’ state. But there’s another way. Since the politicians have changed the meaning of a word for political gain, perhaps Christian leaders should play the same game. They could move the definitional posts again,

Welcome Rt Rev Justin Welby, who became the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury this morning at St Pauls. The Church of England’s first tweeting ABC has been a bit quiet online of late, but that hasn’t stopped us nosy parkers getting a glimpse into life behind the scenes of this most holy transition. If Welby’s twenty-something daughter Katherine is anything to go by the flaws in process have not gone unnoticed: ‘Off to St Paul’s today for the confirmation of election. Anywhere else in the world an ‘election’ that had only 1 candidate it was illegal to vote against would be called corruption.’ Well quite, but it’s not all self-flagellation. While

This being the Ephiphany, churchgoing Anglicans will be on the receiving end of any variety of sermons on the visit by the three kings to the infant Christ. There won’t, by and large, then, be much attention given to the whole issue of gay bishops. No attention at all, probably. You’d never think it, though, judging from the broadcast and press reaction to the news. On the Radio 4 Today programme yesterday, the presenter said sternly to one conservative Anglican, Norman Russell, the Archdeacon of Oxford, that the fuss over the issue of gay bishops just goes to show why people are turned off by the church: it can only

Douglas Murray makes a striking point on his Spectator blog about the violent persecution that many Christians face across the globe, while the Church of England fights over gay marriage and women bishops. Christians in this country do fear that they are being persecuted, too, with a case making the headlines at the weekend about a Baptist who had unsuccessfully sued her employers for forcing her to work Sundays. Actually, in Celestina Mba’s case, it does sound rather unfair that she came under pressure to work on Sundays when she had asked at the start of her employment to be exempted from doing so on the grounds of her religious belief.

Christmas is one of the few times of year when those unaccustomed to attending church feel prompted to join their local congregation for a few carols. But what will they find when they walk through those church doors? In the Christmas issue of the Spectator, Damian Thompson profiles Nicky Gumbel, vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton. HTB pioneered the Alpha Course, which has now been taken by 20 million people across the world, both in the Anglican and Catholic churches. Thompson also visits HTB, writing: At the 11.30 service at HTB last Sunday, the Christian rock anthems were performed by professional musicians. They sounded nothing like the disgusting racket of ‘folk