Homophobia

I find there is a serious misunderstanding of the way liberal thinkers use the term homophobia. This is that the word means some sort of sin or evil inclination on the part of the homophobe. In fact the proper meaning of a phobia is an irrational (and probably morbid) fear of something. [...]

Reverence for the Planet

Some time in the 1970s, Bishop Hugh Montefiore produced a book called The Question Mark – the End of Homo Sapiens? Now, over 30 years later (and perhaps too late) the world is waking up to the message of that book, in which climate change and the exhaustion of the world’s [...]

Reverence

Silent worship, about which I wrote last month is a special form of reverence, which perhaps needs a bit more attention because to-day’s culture seems to have just about lost the idea completely. The American constitution has a preamble stating that it is self-evident that all men are born equal in the sight of [...]

*Behind the Christmas Stories*

Most of us know that the Bible’s stories about the birth of Jesus
Christ have little if anything to do with historical facts. They were
written to show what an extraordinary and supernatural event was the
coming into the world of him who claimed to be the Son of God. Similar
stories abound [...]

The Word of the Lord

In our Church, as in many others, we are bidden, after reading a passage from the Bible, to say:”This is the Word of the Lord”. I vividly remember a gathering of clergy at a worship service in which some rather odd bit of our Old Testament was read; it might [...]

(Editorial note: I’d be VERRRY interested to see what my mother and uncles think of this column in particular)

Points of View

On Sunday mornings on Radio 4, just after the Act of Worship, there is usually a ten minute programme called “A Point of View”. I find it invariably interesting and am always sorry if [...]

 Couples Gay and Straight

Our Vicar Karen's letter in our last month was a splendid piece of praise for Church Weddings  I hope you haven't thrown it away because I want to make some  comments on it.  She told us that the General Synod of the Church of England had decided to make it easier for [...]

Positive and Negative

Long ago I met for the first time a woman who tried to persuade me to join one of those chain letter scams which promise great wealth to the participants for a very small outlay. For a time I despised her because of this; but she taught me how wrong I was [...]

On the Boundary

As I write this I am somewhat pre-occupied with Test Cricket. In many amateur matches cricket is played without boundaries: perhaps if the ball is hit into a hedge or a road that’s good enough to count as a four or six; but in the real game you have to have boundaries. [...]

Here and There

For a short time, long ago, I was chaplain to a psychiatric hospital. There, I used to take services in the hospital chapel, and they were for me exciting and enjoyable occasions, partly because I never knew what was going to happen next. I am told, though I don’t remember it, [...]