‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Jesus answered the lawyer’s question with what is, in [...]

Depression Andy Hawes is Warden of Edenham Retreat House What a glum month February is! (I say this even though we have family birthdays in February.) Winter can have its last and most enveloping gasp in February. The dark nights, [...]

When the question is 'Whodunnit?' the answer is often obvious. Alan Edwards on the dramatic stereotype of the murderous vicar If you have ever played Cluedo, you will know that you’re faced with a one in six possibility that Rev [...]

The afterlife is a subject that many people, Christians included, would rather avoid, but it is much to important to be ignored. Paul Griffin suggests some ways of understanding life after death It is entirely reasonable that human beings should [...]

Mark Stevens sketches some of the problems arising from General Synod's seeming reliance on models of parliamentary democracy, pointing out that paradoxically it undermines the authority of Synod itself If only women’s ordination were only about the ordination of women! [...]

John Hunwicke looks first at the Rochester Report and its commendation of the corporate nature of a bishop's office, and then at the Guildford Report with its apparent complete denial of this important truth Perhaps the strongest part of Rochester [...]

Thomas Lindsay insists that we need to make it clear we would rather leave the CofE than abandon the Catholic faith I wonder if I might offer some reflections on David Nicholl’s article Stop Dithering! last month? There is much [...]

Gerry O'Brien – a lay member of the Standing Committee of General Synod The Church does seem to have an alarming capacity for inflicting self-harm, but this is nothing new. The last two thousand years have seen innumerable issues which [...]

Nigel Elbourne is not hurrying to leave the Church of England but wants to sit tight and be obstructive to the church of his birth I read the article Stop dithering! with mixed feelings. David Nicholl pricked my somewhat tender [...]

In 2002 I was invited to look at some vacant rural parishes. I decided to visit the churches and quietly pray in them. I found my way to St Katharine’s church in Little Bardfield, Essex. The door opened with a [...]