What is your hope? Fr Peter cswg The fading colours of autumn presage the oncoming season from Advent to Epiphany. The celebration of the coming of Christ into our midst at Christmas brings with it the expectation of his coming [...]

To the point Our parish is currently without a priest, the vicar having retired. The PCC wished to advertise the vacancy, but the diocesan bishop, who is also the patron, refused, and instead presented his own candidate. This person was [...]

Childlike Christmas Andy Hawes is Warden of Edenham Regional Retreat House 'Christmas is for children' is the chorus we will no doubt hear in the coming weeks. It is definitely true that the presence of children keeps alive the wonder [...]

In his book Sins of the Saints Fr Rosenthal maintained that 'the sin which doth so easily beset us' [Hebrews 12.2 KJV] is a misleading translation. The adjective eu-peristatos occurs nowhere else in the Bible or classical literature. His preferred [...]

Three hundred years after Charles Wesley's birth, Alan Edwards looks at his life and the sources of inspiration for some of his best-known hymns Even in an increasingly secularized (and in some areas Islam -ized) Britain, Charles Wesley's 'Hark the [...]

Geoffrey Kirk weighs up the evidence for the existence of women Apostles in the early Church There are, of course, apostles and Apostles. The Twelve whom Jesus chose (after a night in prayer to the Father, as Luke tells us), [...]

Hugh Bates explains that mercy and kindness are interchangeable, and that we have an obligation to help our neighbours through practical means, such as almsgiving God is merciful. On this point there is total interfaith consensus. Allah is 'the merciful, [...]

Ernest Skublics extols the great privilege of a sacrament too little considered and too little used in our day In his new book on the priesthood, Diener der Freude - a Celebration of Priestly Ministry, Cardinal Kasper recalls the deep [...]

Julian Mann Christmas was the come-back kid last year in Booty Bridge. We definitely had more folk at our services than in previous years. We were boosted by a parish-wide distribution of invitation cards to our Christmas services. The Outreach [...]

John Shepley is worried by the liberal denial of those who brought us the faith 'If God, as they say, is homophobic I wouldn't worship that God,' exclaimed Desmond Tutu, in one of those outbursts to which, as a Nobel [...]