Right now, people want to come to the UK. We’re being told that’s a problem. To me it’s saying, for all our faults, we must be getting something right. Do we want to become a country no one in their right mind would want to come to? And, as it happens, we need a lot of the things these people are bringing with them: energy, initiative, ambition, hope
Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the Fields, sermon preached on 23 March, published on the website ABC Religion & Ethics
If marriage had been invented in 1970s Scandinavia, it would be hailed as a progressive superweapon — the first, best and cheapest source of health, wealth and education. Anti-poverty activists should be sharing this more broadly. But somehow, being pro-family has ended up seen as moralistic, judgmental and old-fashioned
Fraser Nelson, The Times, 22 March
What we’re really seeing is the gradual loss of something profound — the traditional understanding of the cure of souls. Clergy are ordained to be shepherds, not bureaucrats; pastors, not managers. Yet increasingly, the modern Church has siphoned their energy towards tasks that pull them away from their true calling: the healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling of souls. They’ve become like doctors so consumed with keeping their clinics open that they’ve no time to practise medicine
Mark Clavier, Vicar of St Mary’s, Brecon, Substack, 25 March
We rarely get a chance to celebrate quinquennial inspections of churches by architects. But these, and countless small interventions to allow a warmer welcome accompanied by coffee and a toilet, are the things that enable church buildings not just to survive in our landscape but to reach out a hand to the society around them
Eleanor Young, The RIBA Journal, 24 March
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