William Sitwell questions the Church’s rules which makes vicars retire at 70 if they don’t want to. As Job puts it (12.12 King James Version, 1611, ): “With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.”
Churches are as important as key workers in a pandemic Covid-19 has highlighted the vital role churches play in community life, yet they face a crisis in funding. Sixteen years…
Jonathan Baird asks why if, as David Lamming points out, the Patronage (Benefices) Measure of 1986 allows bishops to start looking for a new priest, do dioceses insist on a…
Julian Mann points out that clergy cuts and the 26 bishops in Parliament may not go together once more MPs become of aware of how the hierarchy of the Church…
Community and answers to life’s deepest questions draw people to church. Some of us prefer to gather in a church erected by the people who inhabited this place before us, rather than a converted warehouse or cinema. Judge this not as mossy traditionalism. The historical continuum of place (and ministry) inspires the reassuring feeling of each generation’s being moored to something precious. Despite society’s secularisation, there is some hope that the baton of faith can be passed on. One-third of this country’s schools are church schools.
Sir James Burnell-Nugent writes in The Times this week of his hopes that the Crown Nomination for the next Archbishop of Canterbury will be pro-parish.
Bishop of Croydon on alternative uses for church buildings, not least for after school clubs. A lively debate between Chris Loder MP and Dominic Grieve, an erstwhile Attorney-General at about 35…