I have just issued the following statement:
“I am delighted to hear that the Anglican Church in Brazil has just changed its marriage canon to allow same-sex couples to get married. As we have rejoiced in St Mary’s Cathedral Glasgow in recent months with couples who have waited years to be married in church, so we rejoice with couples doing the same thing in Brazil.
“All God’s children are equally beloved. We rejoice as greater equality comes to another part of the Anglican Communion”
You’ve missed out one that I know is important to you: a clear commitment to social justice, local, national and global. Sublime aesthetics are all very well but most Freshers are young people and they want to know what you stand for. Otherwise, saying, in a nutshell, ‘all is well’ rings rather hollow. So a church that doesn’t indulge in party politics but does for instance condemn the malevolent stupidity of attempting, again, to fight an anti-Western ideology with indiscriminate Western bombing would let Freshers know that this church at least is smart enough to read the signs of the times and apply relevant Gospel values. Rather than just be vaguely lovely when our government is getting away with murder.
These are wise comments Alan. Several decades ago when i was a fresher…the anti-Vietnam protests in Australia were in full flight.
I don’t think the church took a high enough profile, but many of us participated.
Then there were the anti-apartheid demonstrations, when South African Rugby visited…these too were important.
A wise Archbishop of Adelaide (later Australian Primate) Keith Rayner reminded us that one of the roles of young Christians is to pursue causes, be enthusiastic, and to challenge the church.
Having been a University Chaplain (University of Adelaide, South Australia), and now a priest in an inner city church of a University town (Adelaide, South Australia http://stmarymags125.blogspot.com.au/) I perceive much wisdom in your comments here
I also want to add another dimension, which is true both of our church (St Mary Magdalene’s Adelaide, & of the Cathedral Church of St Peter, Adelaide):
that social outreach is important.
A very Anglo Catholic principle.
Two decades or more ago a group of ‘earnest’ (quite the wrong word to describe the lovely kids who were uni students in the 80s) but genuine Christians ….sat around for weeks wondering about how they should put their faith into practice. Finally they just decided they needed to DO something. That something was putting on a slap-up meal on Saturday nights. That has continued for nearly thirty years. Diocesan parishes and schools volunteer every week.
Really looking forward to my first Christmas here, when the parish will outdo itself with a proper Christmas dinner for those who we are called to love.
I am impressed by the quality of University and young professional volunteers who staff this wonderful ministry.
It strikes me that most freshers get this as authentic Gospel…and so do I
We’ve been clearing some old documents out of the dank crypt this week and one or two interesting things have emerged. Not least a couple of photographs from 1962. We forget now that we photograph anything and everything all the time that in previous decades a photo was relatively rare. This one was taken at…
This review also appears on the Opera Britannia website Rating: Taking Alban Berg’s Lulu as a starting point, Scottish Opera at the Edinburgh International Festival present American Lulu – a new re-envisioned interpretation of this piece by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth, who re-orchestrates Berg’s original, attempts to set it within the context of the Civil Rights movement in America and provides a conclusion to compensate…
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