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Sermon for Advent 1 – 29 November 2015
Here’s the sermon I preached yesterday You can’t beat a good quiz on the internet. Two minutes completing a set of multiple choice questions and some computer somewhere out there gives a verdict on what kind of person you are. Thus is was that this week I followed a facebook link and found myself…
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Making Scotland’s Sex Trade Safer
The recent death of Cynthia Payne provides a helpful reminder of the two-faced attitude to prostitution that we often hold. Ms Payne managed to cultivate a populist and almost comic Carry on Whoring image. She invited the great and the good to her home in Streatham and offered sandwiches and “services” merely in exchange for…
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This ain’t persecution
Getting a religious ad “banned” by a company that doesn’t show religious advertisements is evidence not of religious persecution but of the idiocy of the Church of England’s press office. We should be thanking God that religious (and political) ads are banned in cinemas.
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Wars and rumours of wars
The message coming from France is reasonably predicatable – France is at war. However, I am unconvinced that states can win a war against ideas. Although Isis is very much a real body of people intent on doing harm through wicked acts, Isis is not so much a group of people as a group of…
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For Baghdad, for Beiruit, for Paris
On the day of the 9/11 attacks, I was in Paris. At just about the time of the 9/11 attacks I was in the Louvre, looking at this icon. I had specifically flown there to see it on a very short overnight stay in the first madness of cheap Ryanair flights when you could just…
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Isn’t it time to stop teaching sport to children?
Isn’t it time to stop teaching children sport? It is drug-addled, corrupt, nationalistic, sectarian, sexist, homophobic and brings out the very worst in people. Why on earth do we presume it is something suitable for children to participate in? From time to time I am asked to comment on calls from one secularist group or…
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Sermon preached on 8 November 2015
We stood at the top of the top of the hill looking down the Clyde looking past Bowling and on towards Dumbarton. No ships. No boats. The slight eeriness of the empty estuary. “And that’s where the fire was” she said. “The VE day fire”. And over there – behind the house, that must be…
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All Souls
All Souls Day is a rehearsal for my own funeral. I realised this a few years ago when someone commented that the All Souls Requiem at St Mary’s seemed to be a particularly important time of the year and was appealing to more people than it used to. When I sat and thought about it,…
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The speech Bishop Rachel Treweek might have made
This is the speech that I would have liked the Rt Rev Rachel Treweek to have made this week on entering the House of Lords. My Lords – I am overwhelmed by your generosity in welcoming me to this house. Your warm and unprecedented applause as I was introduced to this house contrasted so strongly…
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Sermon at the Salvation Army in Clydebank
Here’s what I said yesterday at the centenary celebrations for Clydebank Singing Company at Clydebank Citadel of the Salvation Army. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Major, I wonder whether you’d mind me starting with a confession.…