“The end is Nye.” Except that it is not. A few weeks ago, Mr Nye, a Church civil servant, stepped into the arguments about whether or not homosexual sex pleases God. His contribution is not the last word on the matter; though arguably, if he is taken to represent the C of E and its present positioning on moral matters, it may presage the end of the Church of England as we know it. Continue reading “The End is ‘Nye’….The culture war in the C of E. © Gavin Ashenden”
The thought of leaving Canterbury, spiritually or emotionally, breaks my heart. I grew up there. I spent five years in the school built around its cloisters. I sang from its tower on Ascension days. I sat for hours at the entrance to the cloisters where Thomas a Becket was struck down for refusing the demands of the secular over the sacred. I took the Eucharist there in the bowels of its undercroft before dawn in the mists of winter. I was confirmed there when the saintly prophetic Michael Ramsey was Archbishop. Continue reading “Leaving home – the future of the Christian faith in England.”
Democracy is at first sight a very frightening idea. Continue reading “Holiness lasts longer than politics-the limits of democracy. © Gavin Ashenden”
It was normal in serious Christianity that when you encountered Jesus and gave your life to him you would ask to be baptised.
In your dying to your old life and starting afresh with a new way of living and loving and being loved, you would take a new name – a Christian name. Perhaps the name of someone who had achieved great things for the kingdom of heaven. Continue reading “The Bishop of Grantham and the eroticisation of the Church of England. © Gavin Ashenden”
In the early 1980’s I became a smuggler. I smuggled bibles, history and theology books, as well as medicine, into the Soviet Union. I smuggled suitcases full of theological books into the Czeck Republic. I was helping to set up a secret seminary for the underground Catholic Church. Continue reading “Christ from the ashes of Communism. © Gavin Ashenden”