thedeepchurchproject

Consider the words of Metropolitan Kirill one of the Patriarchs of Russia which came out of the November 2017 joint meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury in Moscow.   “There is an expulsion of God from human life, ignoring the Divine moral law. And especially devastating is the fact that ignoring the Divine moral law is clothed in the form of state law. This is a very dangerous trend. If people force the state law to try to commit a sin or to associate themselves with sin, then we will enter into some kind of apocalyptic reality.”  This 'Apocalyptic reality' was strangely absent from the official Anglican press releases on the visit.  Were the Patriarch's strong words of concern not deemed politically correct for our home readership?  The battle lines are ideological when it comes to secularisation (Ephesians 6.12). It is a battle of ideas, a fight for the base code of what it means to be human and to exist in Christian civilization. ...

Last week at the Gospel Choir evensong I said in my short talk, "In the end, we are all Republicans - really," I hold to this, even for the most ardent of fans of our British monarchy.  And so, having left you all in suspense here is my development of that idea... As modern people who take pride in our independence, we are all allergic to kings and do not want anyone to 'long reign over us.' I defy anybody who wants to be subject to an autocratic rule. Are we not after all democrats where the people, rather than the accidents of a medieval bloodline, are sovereign? A constitutional monarchy is a wonderful compromise and does not really impose its will upon us. Our last instance of autocracy is given in the lyrics of a Monty Python song: The most interesting thing about King Charles the First  is that he was 5 foot 6 inches tall at the start of his reign,  but only 4 foot 8 inches tall at the end of it. Of course, this is not simply to focus on Charles the Fi...

For once I find myself in theological agreement with John Humphries - Radio 4's TFTD is mostly boring. I know, I know, there are some great religious minds that go on the show and I do not want to demean them BUT I find myself using its regular 7.50am prompt to switch off the radio and go and get dressed.  It's just so annoyingly anodyne and the biased toward nice liberal progressive speakers who seem to say nothing more than shouldn't we all just be nice to each other. Now, there is nothing wrong with saying that live on radio - but really it's so bland and samey. It feels as if almost every broadcast begins with some drippingly earnest antiphon like "In the UN today....". The portrayal of religion is therefore not much more than a sort of top-up for life, like having chocolate sprinkles on your cappuccino. A nice extra option but not too demanding.  This "progressive" theological voice buys into the myth behind modernism. Every society...