Simon Says ...

This reflection is occasioned by the recent decision of the House of Bishops of the Church of England to amend the legislation regarding ordaining women as Bishops that is due to come before the General Synod in July.  The changes are here .  The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have issued an explanatory statement . The ‘ Groupof Six ’ officers of the General Synod agreed (but only by a majority) that the Bishop’s amendments were not enough to require the legislation to be returned to the Dioceses, who had passed the legislation overwhelmingly.    There are good blog posts stating that this is an amendment too far , makes no change and is hurtful .  Forward in Faith and Reform have issues press releases saying it is not enough. Women and the Church (WATCH) have issued a (helpful) discussion paper .  That WATCH have not responded with a clear position is an indication of how difficult the bishops’ intervention makes the situation. Th...

Two sets of lectures are now online. The first is the Eric Symes Abbott Lecture , given at Westminster Abbey by Peter Selby.  It is about Mis-establishment.  But anything by Selby is worth a look. The second set is Sarah Coakley's Gifford Lectures .  This is a very prestigious series, and normally one has to wait and buy the book.  I remember Sarah Coakley's lectures on feminist theology from Oxford days,  What impressed me then was the way that prayer formed an important part of what she was teaching. H/Ts to @paulbayes and Faith and Theology

Today we celebrate the feast of St Matthias, who was chosen to complete the number of the Twelve after Judas, who betrayed Jesus, had committed suicide. Just as an aside, I think it is because Judas was dead that the Eleven decided to add Matthias to their number, not because Judas had acted so badly in betraying Jesus.  After all, the others didn't do so well - Peter denied Jesus and all the rest abandoned him.  If there were points for behaviour, then it would only be Mary Magdalene and some of the other women who followed Jesus who counted as apostles. But let's look a little bit more at Matthias.  First of all, he wasn't the obvious choice.  There are two candidates, Matthias and Justus.  Whilst both fulfill the criteria of having been with Jesus from the beginning and being a witness to the Resurrection, neither is just appointed.  They draw lots and Matthias is added to the number of the Twelve.  So, according to the story from the A...

Walter Wink died on 10th May .  He was a great scholar of the New Testament, but more than that he helped others to read the Bible and to model their lives upon it. I was fortunate enough to hear Walter Wink at the Greenbelt Festival in the early 1990s.  He spoke about the powers and about how Christians should read the Bible.  He offered his party piece Bible study on the sermon on the mount, involving someone stripping down to their shorts, was a powerful demonstration that the Bible has a social context and a radical meaning.  I bought the first two books on the Powers at that Greenbelt and devoured them.  Sometime later, I bought a copy of Engaging the Powers , and found a superbly written synthesis of biblical theology informed by a massive range of sources. Wink was often misunderstood.  His audience at Greenbelt halved, once some realised that he wasn't speaking of the Powers in a way that accorded with the Frank Peretti school of de...

Review – Stanley Hauerwas, Learning to Speak Christian (SPCK, 2011) The title alone makes this book worthy of attention.  For Hauerwas, Christianity is not something that comes naturally to us.  To “speak Christian”, to use Christian language about the world needs to be learned, and it is learned above all in worship, in reading Scripture, and in belonging to the church.  “To learn to be a Christian …” says Hauerwas, “ is learning another language” (p. 87).  This makes Christianity difficult, and Hauerwas is quite upfront about this “I do not want to make Christianity easy.  I want to make it hard” (p. 116).             For those already familiar with Hauerwas’ work, this is full of familiar joys.  There is a marvelous, and beautifully simple, demolition of Jonathan Glover’s Humanity (it lacks an account of human good).  And, of course, Hauerwas is the master of the outrageous turn of...

@RupertMyers has this fantastic, and not entirely untrue, account of how to write a Thought for the Day.  Not how I ever approached it (though I only reached the dizzying heights of BBC Radio Bristol), but it has made me thing about how I did go about it!

Apparently, the Deans of Derby and Durham Cathedrals agree on five words/phrases that encapsulate most of their ministry... 1. Welcome 2. Thank you 3. Please 4. Sorry 5. We have it in mind ... Some wisdom in there, I think.