Simon Says ...

The BBC website has a timely article on Halloween . As well as suggesting that demands for money with menaces ('trick or treat') is a dubious activity, and the dangers to children of going around the streets at night, it has some interesting and well balanced things to say about Christian difficulties with Halloween. (Sadly it doesn't state the truth that the rise of Halloween to the universally observed festival that it now is has much to do with American card companies!) It notes that "for some Christians, Halloween is a danger because it flirts with the powers of darkness, and encourages children to explore the occult". It's an argument that one hears quite a lot, and which has had a new emphasis in the light of the Harry Potter phenomenon and the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm not convinced that children fail to distinguish truth and fiction, especially in Harry Potter. I do think that there is a danger that they will search the inter...

I'm trying to write some prayers to bless some new vestments for use on one of our churches. The only 'pre-written' prayers I can find are exceedingly sacerdotal, speaking of 'Levitical' garments. I'm not comfortable with this sort of language, as I'm pretty sure that Christian priesthood is not the same sort of thing as the levitical priesthood. Also, I happen to believe in the Anglican doctrine which says that vestments are of no theological importance to the celebration of the sacraments. I think they're appropriate, and that they aid worship, but I don't think they are necessary . I've just found a quotation from Martyn Percy, a good friend, who writes that "To bless people or things is to raise them to their proper status before God, enabling fuller praise to be returned through the very thing that is blessed". This helps enormously. The vestments need to be seen to be raised to their proper status, part of the whole creat...

I've been reading Thomas Keneally's The Office of Innocence . It's a great novel, which says some very honest things about the illusions and fantasies of being in ministry. One phrase from the conclusion stood out: the main character is said to be "depending on the spaciousness of Christ". It's a beautiful phrase that rang so many bells for me. I suspect that Christ is more spacious than we give often think. But to depend on that spaciousness is to know that we are on the edge of ordinary religiosity. This is not a safe place ...

Christina Odone's Tyndale Lecture , reported on Radio 4 this morning and in the Guardian , is interesting. Her main thesis is that Christians are 'persecuted' by the chattering classes. On the whole it's rather too much of a conspiracy theory. In fact, I think Christians rather deserve (and may even deliberately provoke) some of the opposition from the secular world. There are times when we need to be reminded that God works throughout the world, whether we like that or not. Where she does say something interesting is about authority. Christians, she says, "believe in authority". This is the most subversive thing that they do. Thus what we do, say and are is determined by this authority, and not simply by our own desires. That is why Christians argue about sex, because we are people who believe that there is an authority about sex other than our own fancies and libido. She is, of course, right. All Christian argument about sex, whatever conclu...

I was at a meeting tonight about moving forward into the future with members of one of the churches I serve. There was lots of thought about where the church had been in the past, and much about the challenges facing all churches in the present. But how to move forward ... that's the million dollar question. My own thoughts on this (most of which I didn't share in the meeting) begin with the observation that a great deal of the rhetoric coming from church leaders emphasizes the need to connect with young people, yet most of the congregations that I minister to are not young. I even heard Pete Ward at Greenbelt say that congregations that are past their sell by date should just be left to die. I beg to differ. We live in a culture that is very youth orientated, and even invites older people to participate in the rather ridiculous task of trying to maintain (or regain) their youth. The church should not follow the culture in this respect. Rather it should value the peo...

On telly the other night there was a programme called Does Prayer Work . Basically some American researchers have done some trials in which under controlled conditions the effects of being prayed for were measured. The pilot trial had suggested that prayer might have a measurable effect, but the full study found no difference as to whether someone had been prayed for or not (which should have those who made a noise about the pilot study eating some humble pie!). Interestingly there was a reference to this recently on the West Wing. Opinions as to why the result should be negative, ranging from the relatively sane (Tom Wright saying that prayer is not a slot machine) to the less so (it was because there were Muslims praying that no results were achieved). I had heard of the research before the programme, and had felt rather ambivalent about it. On the one hand if prayer did make a difference it raised all sorts of theological problems for me largely to do with the specifics ...

I found this quotation from Thomas Traherne: 'O the wickedness of Ignorant Zealots! who contemn thy mercies and Despise the union the Beautifull union of my Nationall church! every way thou art provoked to Anger, by Open profaness and Spirituall wickedness. And by the Ignorance of both' ( Select Meditations I.85). I suspect that both sides in the current dispute would claim this sentiment as their own. The 'Ignorance of both'??

My Reaction to Statement by the Archbishops is now up on the MCU website. It's a very initial reaction - I wrote it on the evening of the statement being produced. I would stand by most of it, especially the last bit, although maybe I'd now be a bit more critical of the statement itself.