Category: Uncategorized
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This is a speech I was able to give on Monday morning of General Synod: Thank you, chair. I warmly welcome this motion. When I became vicar of a parish in the wealthy New Forest eleven years ago, we fed no-one. Now we feed some fifty families a week. During the pandemic, the focus of…
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A General Synod speech I was unable to give. The debate was very powerful as people shared stories of their own struggles with disability, their experience of disability in the family and ways in which their churches have worked to include people with a disability. Thank you for calling me, chair, thank you Liverpool Diocese…
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I’m delighted by this motion [a motion asking for clergy to have up to 36 hours off a week in their terms of service]. I love the description of Archdeacon Grantly’s working day in Trollope’s The Warden. ‘On entering his sacred study he carefully opened the paper case on which he was wont to compose…
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GS 2123 For hundreds of years, the New Forest has had its own Romany community. In 1926, seven compounds were created to prevent members of the community roaming the Forest as they had always done. One of these compounds was in what it now my parish. Members of the community lived in Benders – simple…
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GS 2121 According the research published in From Anecdote to Evidence, 48% of our churches have fewer than 5 children worshipping on a Sunday. In my small village church, we have between 20 and 30 children most Sundays, at least 18 of whom are present every week. This is, of course, only a part of…
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The Ethics of Nuclear Weapons I wonder if you had like me a long journey to get here. I was entertained and thrilled by stories of secret liaisons and sexual politics. Not love island, but Mozart’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro. In the Marriage of Figaro, a randy Count uses everything in his power to…
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London/Truro Diocesan Synod Motion on Environmental Programmes My 11 and 13 year old sons have become a bit obsessed with a American infomercial on YouTube proclaiming the virtues of Flextape. Flex tape is super sticky, tough and waterproof, the host tells us. To demonstrate, he bisects a speedboat with an angle grinder and sticks it…
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And I’m back! In true blogger style, after a few months of commitment, this site was allowed to go fallow for nearly two years. Perhaps my return was inspired by this event: On Saturday the 16th June, some 20 or so former DPhil students of Prof John Barton met at Campion Hall, Oxford, for a…
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Whilst little Persephone had chicken pox on our lovely summer holiday in Tuscany last week, someone had to sit with her whilst she slept and the rest of the family went to the beach. It turned out to be a real gift of some extra time to write about something that has been on my…
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“In much postmodern discourse it has become usual to argue that the biblical text has many meanings (as many as there are interpreters). Benjamin Sargent shows, in this tightly argued book, that many readers in the past believed it had a single, determinate meaning. This is a book that will challenge many assumptions, on the…
Benjamin Sargent 