Sylvia Longbridge looked out over the meadows which separate 'Bishop's Dingle', the Church Commissioners' recently constructed economy-conscious episcopal residence, from the Close and the majestic spire of Salchester Cathedral. In happier days, before Mad Cow Disease and Foot and Mouth, [...]

John Hunwicke asks some leading questions about liturgy and legality Clergy undertake to use liturgical rites authorized or allowed by Canon. Assuming that many of them are honourable men, they probably feel easier if they have a sense that there [...]

Anthea Jones continues her exploration Parishes became the means of governing the country but not the focus of all religious feeling Where parishes were very large, covering 100 square miles of more, like Whalley in Lancashire, Halifax in Yorkshire, Kendal [...]

The Editor of the Church Times (Paul Handley) reads New Directions we discover from the Guardian (where else?). That is good news. But ND is second only, in his list of preferred periodicals, to the quarterly magazine of the Christian [...]

THE FATHERS AND HOLY SCRIPTURE The Fathers of the Church were men of the Bible. For them, as for the apostles before them, our modern notion of Scripture and Tradition would have been unthinkable; nor would they have considered the [...]

A Most Important Date St Alban’s Abbey will, we know, be packed to the doors – standing room only – at 11.00 am on Saturday, 15 September, for our constituency’s farewell to the Bishop of Richborough. Bishop Edwin retires at [...]

GUESTS AT A WEDDING The first sign in John’s Gospel is the turning of water into wine at a wedding. The wedding at Cana (John 2.1–11) presents the reader with a vivid set of images that set out the saving [...]

Mark Burkill considers marriage and the young generation It is three years since I last took a marriage service. Thus far this year I have had one set of banns to read in our parish. There is a substantial Muslim [...]

A book to remember I WAS HONOURED. The editor of an inerrantly evangelical paper invited me to contribute to its series, ‘A Book that Changed my Life’. I reluctantly ruled out volumes on beetles, drawing, poetry or pacifism, and soon [...]

An appreciation of Brian Brindley – not an obituary by George Austin Once upon a time, I would always look at the Appointments column in the Church Times and expect to find in it a few names I knew, from [...]