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Clothing Shame
“I’m on the bus at the moment, can you call me back?” Mandy[1] was homeless and when she left a message on the clothing bank’s answer phone she was clearly desperate for help. It seemed strange then that she wanted now to postpone a conversation. The penny always seems to make the loudest noise when its drop is slowest. “Would you like to speak to Rebecca, one of our other volunteers?” I belatedly asked in an embarrassed fluster. “Oh yes please!” I handed the phone to Rebecca and retreated to the back of the chapel where all our clothing stock is stored. I started to sort some clothes donations into…
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Responding to the Cosmic Chorus: A Meditation on the Ecological Visions of Islamic and Hindu Theologies
Mortal dooms and dynasties are brief things, but beauty is indestructible and eternal, if its tabernacle be only a petal that is shed tomorrow…Inter arma silent flores [“In times of war, flowers fall silent”] is no truth; on the contrary, amid the crash of doom our sanity and survival more than ever depend on the strength with which we can listen to the still small voice that towers above the cannons, and cling to the little quiet things of life, the things that come and go and yet are always there, the inextinguishable lamps of God amid the disaster that man has made of his life. Reginald Farrer quoted in:…
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The Future of Democracy
In its 2019 annual Audit of Political Engagement, the Hansard Society asked if Britain ‘needs a strong ruler willing to break the rules.’ Whilst 54% of respondents said yes; only 23% said no.[1] Even given the long drawn-out stalemate over Brexit in that year – in which the “will of the people” seemed to be thwarted by parliament itself – this is a disturbing outcome. The nation promptly went ahead and elected a ruler willing to break a number of rules, before and during the pandemic. Democracy is not only under pressure in Britain. In 2020, the Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy warned that democracy worldwide is in ‘a…
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The Place of Colonial Terminology within Religious Studies – Sikhi, “Sikhism,” Sikhism, or Sikhi(sm)
[…] what I’ve often discovered, you know, plenty of the studies or books or courses and what-not will pay lip-service [emphasis mine] to the [project of decolonising] . . . they’ll say “Religion is a constructed category, bound up in colonial history and referring to Protestant Christianity.” And then, “Let’s just get on with using it, just like we would normally do.” That’s something that we should try and avoid! Malory Nye and Christopher R. Cotter, “Decolonizing the Study of Religion,” The Religious Studies Project (29/06/2020). This essay will focus on debates into whether the term “Sikhism” is sufficient and whether it is necessary, appropriate, and realistic to change the…
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Minifigures and Ministers: Formation in the Church of England
There was a time when a Lego figure was as simple as the plastic person you put in the house you’d built or sat in the car you’d made out of oblong and sloping bricks. There was a time when the great Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s description of a minister in the Church of England as a distinctively full time Christian, ‘the beacon of the church’s pastoral, prophetic and priestly concern’[1] was a fully adequate description. Today however, like Lego minifigures, ministers have evolved to be more diverse than Ramsey’s image. If Ramsey were to comment on ministers today, he would see much that he would recognise; some ministers are that…
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Mitzvah – Making the Place More Holy: The Ultimate in Practical Theology
The word “Mitzvah” is probably best known as part of a word that constitutes one of the main Jewish lifecycle events occurring when a child reaches the age of 13, the Bar Mitzvah (son) or Bat Mitzvah (daughter). But what is a mitzvah? Basically, the definitions are: a precept or commandment or a good deed done from religious duty. However in Judaism it is so much more about relationship than command. The beneficiary of the mitzvah is not the person receiving the good deed, but the person doing it. That is because doing mitzvah is to make this place, Earth, more holy, adding sparks to the universe. By following the precepts it is…
