• Some snippets from Englandshire

    Here’s Bishop Alan Wilson on how the C of E bishops have been managing things:

    Bishops sat on the fence for the sake of unity in the name of even handedness, trying to slow everything down and keep order. The result was disunity, frustration and chaos.

    In reality there was no fence to sit on. In effect, doing nothing was siding with the decreasing majority who believe gay people are wicked, stunted, sick or disabled, or the one that believed women were made by God for non-leadership roles.

    Caroline Criado-Perez on gender representation on banknotes

    Make no mistake, the battle has not been won – and I am still prepared to go to court if I am not satisfied with their response. We have no guarantee, either that women will remain on banknotes, nor that the bank will commit to making future public decisions under the auspices of the Equality Act. I hope that when we meet next week the bank will acknowledge our actual concerns, rather than what they would like our concerns to be.

    Simon Sarmiento on my list of Unanswered Questions about Same-Sex Marriage

    Similar questions may also apply to members of the Church of England and the Church in Wales, in due course, but it seems very likely that the answers will not be the same as in Scotland.

7 responses to “The Antisemitism Notice”

  1. Gordon Avatar
    Gordon

    Helpful, thank you

    What is the concern with the reproaches? I’m not familiar with them

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      They can be interpreted as being directed at us the listeners. But they can also be interpreted as speaking to Jewish people as all the imagery is from the Hebrew Scriptures and doesn’t reference the experience of those who actually were around Jesus during his life on earth.

      For example:
      “I led you out of Egypt, having drowned Pharaoh in the Red Sea:
      and you have delivered me to the chief priests.”

      Who is being addressed here?

      1. Nick Drew Avatar
        Nick Drew

        That’s interesting, because whenever I have sung the Reproaches I have always felt them as being expressions of personal repentance rather than accusations thrown at the listener.

  2. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    I must admit I had always read the Reproaches as directed to the listener. That the Egypt from which we are delivered is the Egypt of the modern world, the slavery of ghastly jobs (I’ve had a few, in fact a lot) and the oppression of terrible political systems. But I come from a totally different thought world to that of most people today, and I absolutely see they wouldn’t commonly be read that way.
    But I think it would benefit everyone to find a way of expressing BOTH what faith can offer in terms of freedom AND the mess we do make of the world, and sitting with that tension.
    And I think the church as a whole urgently needs to find a compelling and deep reaching way of doing both.

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      You might be interested that we’re looking at Isaiah 59 as a helpful text for this year, given the current ways of the world.

    2. Christine McIntosh Avatar
      Christine McIntosh

      I’m of much the same mind. (A mind that is still blown away when I hear them sung)

  3. Dan Floyd Avatar
    Dan Floyd

    Thank you

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