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General Synod
You can find coverage of the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church on twitter at http://twitter.com/secsynod (It is me who is tweeting). Questions welcome either to that account or to me on @thurible. There are details of how to follow the synod over on http://www.scotland.anglican.org including details of the live audio feed.
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Turning Up
There are a number of reasons why church statistics make for depressing reading these days. One reason that I’m not sure we give nearly enough attention to is how often people come to church. I find myself regularly in conversation with people who seem to believe that they come to St Mary’s far more often…
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The Forum with Michael Bawtree
We had a good Forum meeting after the 10.30 am service yesterday. This time I was interviewing Michael Bawtree. Michael is an international musicial and conductor based in Glasgow but frequently travelling the world. Some of the things we talked about were: Can you tell a musician’s faith by the music they make? What is…
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Statistics and the Church
There’s a reasonably prominent article in the Sunday Times today on page 4 in Scotland highlighting the numerical decline of the Scottish Episcopal Church over the last five years. There’s quite a few quotes from what they expect the Primus to say when he opens this week’s General Synod and there’s an old recycled quote…
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Last night’s joy
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We’ve a feast on our hands
We’ve a feast on our hands today at St Mary’s. Today is a day set apart in the calendar of our church on which Christians may give especial thanks for the institution of Holy Communion. It is the very last of the festivals whose date changes according to Easter. Because Easter was early this year,…
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The Forum – John Curtice
We were very lucky yesterday to have a special forum meeting at St Mary’s with John Curtice. Prof John Curtice is a member of St Mary’s and the Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University. He is a public opinion guru – constantly analysing figures, opinion polls and election results. In his forum presentation yesterday he…
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Coping with horror
I don’t mean how does the country deal with terror attacks. I mean how do we cope with news coming onto our screens that contains horrific events. There have been a number of news items this week which have just been horrible. The suicide of a right-wing activist next to the altar of Notre-Dame Cathedral…
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Where does the Church of Scotland stand?
It has been a pretty confusing 24 hours for the Church of Scotland. My prediction yesterday morning that the news would be reported inaccurately was bang on. There have been very many reports in the media about the Church of Scotland that have been inaccurate. And you know what? The media are not the ones…
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Church of Scotland Debate
I’ve spent much of today listening to the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly debating their Special Theological Commission that had been set up a couple of years ago to report on the way forward for that church with regard to the possibility of gay people to be ordained and inducted and to have their partnerships…