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Welcoming Muslims into church
There’s currently a bit of a fuss going on in London because a vicar invited a group to have Muslim prayers inside his church. This is a fuss blown out of all proportion. What the Rev Giles Goddard, the vicar of St John’s Waterloo has done is unremarkable and the trouble seems to be coming…
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A moratorium on mission?
My introduction to irony came when I was but 7 years old, in the form of the title of the television programme. It was called: Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead? It seems to me that this title allows us a way in…
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Jesus – the Angry Religious Man
Here’s what I said in the pulpit yesterday for Lent 3 Sermon preached by Kelvin Holdsworth on 8 March 2015 from St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow on Vimeo. The door opened. That door at the back, with its annoying squeak. And I looked up and immediately I was afraid. I saw someone come in and knew…
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The Opera Project – Purcell and Poulenc
The Opera Project was a double bill of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. This review appeared originally at Opera Britannia. Rating: At first sight, the pairing of Dido and Aeneas with Poulenc’s surrealist piece Les Mamelles de Tirésias seems to make little sense at…
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News from around the Scottish Episcopal Church – March 2015
United Lent Appeal The College of Bishops has launched a Lent Appeal to raise funds for the Scottish Episcopal Institute, the new body that is the successor to the troubled Theological Institute of the Scottish Episcopal Church. The Lent Appeal is to raise funds to enable full-time training for younger ordinands. The following prayer has…
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Silence is Golden
Forum on Silence from St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow on Vimeo. Somehow I managed to forget to publish this video on the blog but it is worth taking a look. It came from a forum conversation that I had with the Vice Provost, Cedric Blakey the other week. The point of this was to have a…
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The Archbishop, the gays and their sins
One of the things that we’ve learned about Archbishop Justin Welby in recent weeks is that he gets upset about what people write about him on social media. He wrote at some length about how what gets written online is upsetting and he’d just prefer to have personal contact with him rather than sounding off…
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Review: Orfeo ed Euridice, Scottish Opera
This review originally appeared for Opera Britannia. Scottish Opera have managed to produce another underwhelming show that, though visually arresting, leaves one with more questions than answers. There are things to praise about Ashley Page’s directorial debut for Scottish Opera: his ballet background clearly has given him an intense sense of theatrical spectacle that was…
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Unlikely alliances – sermon preached as farewell to Fr Chucks
Here’s what I had to say to my Nigerian colleague Chucks who is moving away from St Mary’s to go and work down south. God be with you, Chucks – we are looking to you to sort out the Church of England. Sermon preached by Kelvin Holdsworth on 15 February 2015 from Kelvin Holdsworth on…
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10 Tips on How to Date a Priest
Valentine’s Day being upon us and my being an expert witness in the matter, I feel it incumbent upon me to share my best wisdom in the small matter of how to date a priest. Firstly, accept that clergy are people, just like everyone else. I’ve met people who believed that when they were ordained,…