BBC's Knee Jerk Sensationalism

The BBC lit upon a tiny fragment of what Rowan Williams said in his lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice. Preying on national anxieties about communal identity, the BBC chose to tell us that Rowan said Sharia law was unavoidable, a turn of phrase which the BBC itself first used in the question it put to the Archbishop. The word is wholly absent from the lecture, which is a thoughtful and carefully reasoned analysis of the rule of law as it bears on different communities within the nation. Anti-clericalism is one thing but misdirection of debate by trivialising from soundbites is thoroughly reprehensible. The BBC has displayed an anti-intellectual attitude wholly out of line with its charter. Is this because of poor journalism or is it because of mindless managers mandated to grab attention at any price ?
You can make a formal complaint to the BBC from the Radio section of the website.

greetings from Egham

This comes to all our friends at St Michael's, wishing you all best wishes in 2008. Kim, Reece, Brandon and I are settling into Egham and looking forward to seeing what God has in store for us in 2008.
God bless
Michael

what's with 2008?

When you visit this website you are asked whether 2008 will bring you closer to God. The answer of course is up to you; and might just affect how much of a HAPPY NEW YEAR it proves to be.

Now, a tough fact is that no-one's been blogging for far too long.

Just to see how really secluded this spot is, I'm offering a FIVE POUND note to the first person to upload a comment on this posting, provided of course it is a polite comment.

Barbara Bromley

We were saddened to hear that Barbara Bromley died today. Barbara was a long standing member of St Michael’s and played an illustrious part in its life whether in the Parish Office as administrator, preparing the monthly prayer calendar, helping out with tea, coffee and catering or being the life and soul of any group.

Barbara Bromley's Funeral will be held on Thursday 23rd August. The funeral arrangements are as follows. A very brief Committal Service for very close friends and family will be held at 10am at Hither Green Crematorium.

The Main Service of Thanksgiving and Praise for Barbara's life will be St Michael's at 11am. All welcome.

Barbara was one of those people who everyone warmed to and we will all have our treasure house of memories of her. One thing I will not forget is her wicked laughter. On one memorable occasion, I was travelling up to London with Barbara on a crowded rush hour train when Barbara worked for the Prince’s Trust. I was telling her of my exploits in Tanzania. She began laughing more and more until the rest of the carriage fell silent and everyone turned to see what was going on. Undeterred she urged me to carry on and her laughter continued unabated!

If you have your own memories of Barbara that you want to add to this blog, please feel free to do so. Contact the blog moderator using the link on the right if you need to register as a user of the blog before posting your memories.

Pete and Pam Moss add:

They say that laughter makes you live longer - in which case Barbara should have been 104 instead of 74 when she died. We have endless memories of Barbara bringing whole restaurants to a halt with her amazing screams of laughter. Once we were with Barbara visiting Durham Cathedral. People were moving about speaking in hushed tones when suddenly and quite unexpectedly we bumped into our friends Keith and Kathryn Rogers who, unkown to us, were also visiting the cathedral that day. A huge smile came over Barbara's face, her eyes began to water and she exploded into one of her loud, long laughs that set the whole cathedral echoing and re-echoing around. She smothered her face with her handkerchief and we all fled before the cathedral staff could reach us.

Barbara was generous with her time and money and although she had few relatives she had a very large family of friends across the country whom she regularly contacted and visited. She was kindness itself and always found good in everyone. We are missing her terribly.

Summer is icumen in

Yes, a week is forecast with very little rain and it might even become officially warm - good news for the pale who wish to brown up a bit. But what is the import of all the recent differences from average? We all rather favour stability and are fearful of weather changes which threaten to upset food production and distribution, water and power supplies, and aggravate the divisions in the world at large.
So far, haven't done anything to change my lifestyle. But through http://www.co2balance.com/ you can offset carbon emissions and I've at least done this for my travel in 2007 (including a very small amount of actual travel by steam!)
Other ideas please.

I thought Jean Marc made an interesting point in the comments after the sermon on Sunday when he said that business that promoted themselves as Christian are often very poor when it comes to applying Christian values. Certainly my experience has been that businesses which make a big deal of being Christian are often very difficult to deal with and often not at all Christian in practice, whereas those which don't say that they are Christian but are turn out to be are much better. I wonder why this is?

Moving In

First thought from a new member- it feels good but I need more company !
I haven't yet followed the good advice by email to hear the Reith lectures. Hope to catch up this week and maybe that will prompt a more substantial blog post from me.

More Men

Lots of talk about getting more males on board. Just over a third of the electoral roll is men With differential longevity, something around 45% male would quite probably represent equal participation.
So for every 3 men at present, we would need to add a fourth.
I feel a bit short of hard information. Do we have any counts of the gender split for typical services? Do we have any information by age bands or family circumstance? What's the make-up of homegroups? of the Church Council? of our regular organisers ?
Is it at heart a gender issue at all, or is it a function of complications of lifestyles at different stages of life? Maybe attendance is more affected by the conflicting demands for time based at home being greater for people who are away from home during the working day?
And actually it doesn't strike me as a priority matter, unless we have some good reason to believe there are men and boys out there who are on the margin of coming along, but are deterred by some specific omission in what we do.
And away from our own navel, how do we stack up vs other churches? Does the diocese have any analysis, and can it point to any similarly located churches which have increased men's involvement. And is there any information out there as to whether the gender ratio in church participation is affected by sexual orientation ?

Come and take part

Get in touch with Moderator Mike and become a member of our blog. Call Marion on 8852 1205 if you need Mike's contact details.

Use your membership to raise and respond to issues of interest to you about your faith, your doubts, your lifestyle, or even the agonies of supporting Charlton.

If you went to Ashburnham, provide some feedback on the blog (or email Sandy direct from the homepage of the website)

Moderator Steps on Board

Welcome from the new St Michael's Moderator. With only Chris and me signed up bloggers, it is a little lonely in here at the moment. Why not join up and add your views and comments.

LAUNCH NOW IMMINENT

This blog now has a Moderator, and the blog is about to come into active use.
See panel to right about becoming an author.

wearing a cross

obviously a cross on a chain round your neck could be just jewellery or could be jewellery with symbolic intent
does the presence of intent justify breaking a rule forbidding jewellery? if we say yes, would we nevertheless qualify that by requiring the intent to be acceptable? is a religious intent acceptable, but a political intent unacceptable?

Harvest Festival

The service lastSunday was really good. I always enjoy being reminded of our fundamental dependence on the basic natural cycle of growth and harvest, especially when we get nearly everything off shelves

GOING LIVE

This blog will soon be going live as members of the congregation are invited to become members of the blog, and they start posting their thoughts and ideas.
See right column to request an invitation.

Blog postings are made through www.blogger.com

Comments on postings may be made by anyone who has registered with www.blogger.com.

WAR

I read this on a website of a US army chaplain
' a churchman nearly a thousand years ago, when asked by a military commander on the battlefield for assistance in distinguishing between Christians and non-Christians replied, "Kill them all. God will know which are His." The latter half of the response may be theologically correct, but the first half is morally repugnant. It was however, fully accepted and acted upon as a "Christian response." Values have consequences. His did, and so do yours. What then, is your view of war? '

thoughts on the afterlife

if it's the real afterlife then it's presumably the before life as well

Can I post pictures?

yes
slowish
but does work

test

surely its ahrder than this