The quiet dignity of the Anglican funeral long ago gave way to the dreary shuffle through the crematorium with its ghastly musak and the brief and unedifying fabrication of the deceased’s supposed virtues by a rented priest. Curious, I thought, [...]

Christopher Idle is one of them In their eagerness to turn over to 30 Days, the Letters Page and George Austin, some ND readers may have become blase about the New Directions masthead which reads (you may check back here) [...]

Hugh Baker on multicultural mayhem I remember Birmingham as it was, and I prefer Birmingham as it is now. As it was, it was the city of a thousand dying trades: slowly decaying factories, large and small, inexorably descending into [...]

Lent is early this year, and there is a good chance that it will catch some of us unawares! That would be a pity! Lent is a fantastic time to get down to some serious work on our Spiritual lives. [...]

George Austin on the changing financial lot of the clergy Three hundred years ago, in 1704, Queen Anne created what became known as Queen Anne’s Bounty to help the Church face the grave problems of clerical poverty. In the commemorative [...]

Father Peter on a spiritual phenomenon Vassula Ryden is a Greek Orthodox laywoman who has been receiving messages from God for almost twenty years. She is a married woman, the mother of two sons, now adult, who until the age [...]

Andy Hawes on the mourning after With a month’s hindsight it is very hard to recreate the sense of shock and outrage that coursed through the national consciousness as the news of the Tsunami broke upon homes and communities in [...]

Nicholas Turner takes the conspiracy theorists' perspective The principal objection to the Civil Partnership Act 2004, as it now stands, is that it will undermine the institution of marriage. It would have been possible to introduce a simpler, more modest [...]

This month the General Synod will begin its consideration of the Rochester Report on the possibility and consequences of women bishops in the Church of England. Beginning with that debate, and stretching over the next eighteen months, the synod has [...]