I love the Church of England. I love its liturgy, I love its glorious parish churches, I love its lack of ideological fervour, I love the gentle and inclusive way that it is porous to those outside of the Church, …
Why Justin Welby had to go
I can still smell the fog of his disgusting cigars. And the sickly sweet tonic with which he slicked back his hair. I was seven when it started. I am 60 this month. It is more than half a century …
Why can’t the Church say ‘church’?
Remember Consignia — that disastrous rebrand of the Post Office? It sounded more like a sexually transmitted disease or an obscure Roman battle than a postal service. The name Royal Mail was apparently too redolent of posties, stamps and letters. …
And so, farewell conservatism
Conservatism has died, not from an assassin’s bullet, or even from old age or because it was run over by a bus. It has died because there is no call for it anymore. This isn’t to say that nobody wants …
Will the Church follow the Post Office?
Some years ago, Archbishop Justin Welby’s predecessor, Rowan Williams, was asked to name his favourite sound on Radio 4’s Today programme. He recorded the noise of gentle chatter in his local post office, that low hum of community interaction in …
Has the Church stopped working?
Ever since the Enlightenment — in fact, ever since the ancient philosophers complained about the young and their lack of morals — religion has feared for its future. So the front page of The Times yesterday was hardly a scoop.…
Why is the Church silencing victims?
My small children, being Hebrew speakers, call me abba. Originally Aramaic, the language of the Lord’s Prayer — “Our Father, which art in heaven” — abba is softer, more intimate than the English “father”. Perhaps slightly closer to “daddy”, though …
Justin Welby can’t read the room
Who’d be Archbishop of Canterbury? Not me. You have surprisingly little executive power and get blamed for pretty much everything: from earthquakes (you are God’s representative, after all), politics (too involved, not involved enough), and the petty disputes of your …
God has no gender
“Our parent, who art in heaven.” It has rather lost something, don’t you think? Father has gravitas. It speaks of intimacy, protection, nurture. Parent, on the other hand, is one of those cold, anonymous, bureaucratic words that the school uses …
My Prince Harry moment
I became a priest on a hot summer’s day at Lichfield Cathedral. I was as prepared as I thought I could be for the vows I was about to take. What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the whole paraphernalia …
Secularisation is leading Britain astray
In the middle of the night, I am often haunted by the thought of weeds and mould breaking through the parquet floor, of the roof falling in, or the space being populated by pigeons not parishioners. The creeping damp is …
Charles will be our Perennialist King
King Charles III has often been accused of heresy. As the Prince of Wales, his early support of environmental activism and his (tenuous) involvement in the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset marked him out as a dissenter who might break …
Why is the Church obsessed with gay sex?
Every ten years, bishops from all over the global Anglican Communion meet up in Canterbury to argue about gay sex. They are supposed to be talking about other things as well — after all, there are 90 million Anglicans worldwide …
Will bishops stop the Rwanda plan?
“Retribution, it appears, is coming,” says the journalist Tom Newton Dunn. He is referring to the bishops in the House of Lords who had the temerity to collectively criticise the Government’s Rwanda policy. It “shames Britain”, the bishops said. Tory …
The injustice of the Jubilee
The Archbishop of Canterbury has the worst job in the world because the better he does his job the less he is admired. This is especially true when it comes to talking about forgiveness. Forgiveness may not be unique to …