“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”
One of the great gifts of the charismatic movement was to reintroduce to the church the need and the ability to ‘test the spirits’. Those who had been involved particularly in the ministry of deliverance in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church, had never lost the clarity that the human pilgrimage and the integrity of the church was primarily defined by a spiritual struggle.
Continue reading “Answering heresy amongst the bishops of the Church of England. © 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”