Images from annual conferences and Lambeth 2008

Modern to be modern?

Jonathan Clatworthy

'Modern Churchpeople's Union' is not the most attractive name for an organisation.

We began in 1898 as The Churchmen's Union for the Advancement of Liberal Religious Thought. We owe the word 'modern' to an unlikely benefactor, Pope Pius X whose 1907 encyclical condemned as 'modernists' those Roman Catholics who developed their own ideas instead of just accepting what the Vatican taught. Many Anglican catholics were happy to call themselves modernists, and by way of including them we became The Modern Churchmen's Union in the 1920s. In 1987 'Churchmen' became 'Churchpeople', producing the name we have now ...

Read the article

The coup has already occurred

Paul Bagshaw from Not the same stream

One of the key objections to the Covenant was that it would lead to a concentration of power within the Communion and a centralising of decision making. That doesn't matter now. Concentration and centralisation have already happened: the coup has occurred and very few people seem to have noticed ...

The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion has become the executive body for the Communion and is in the process of arrogating more powers to itself. If the Covenant is passed it will become the governing body of the Anglican Communion ...

Read the article

Events for this month and next

Shifting Paradigms: Theology & Economics in the 21st Century

High Leigh Conference Centre Book now for the 2010 MCU annual conference. To be held in July at High Leigh (above) and chaired by Edmund Newell, speakers so far include Stephen Green, Philip Goodchild, Catherine Cowley, Michael Northcott, Valpy Fitzgerald and Kathryn Tanner.

From our quarterly publications

In the January editions:

Modern Believing

  • Liberal Theology in a Contemporary World
    Paul Badham introduces conference papers by John Saxbee, Geoffrey Rowell, Keith Ward, Brian Smith, Helen-Ann Hartley, Jonathan Clatworthy and Peter Selby.
  • Books reviewed
    by Martyn Percy, Ian Corbett, Geri Parlby, John Rees, Jenny Gaffin and Brian Mountford.

Signs of the Times

Featured books

Unwrapping the Sacred: Seeing God in the everyday No Faith in Religion By One Spirit: Reconciliation and Renewal in Anglican Life Liberal Faith in a Divided Church

The bookshop pages have details and purchase links for books from conference reading lists, that MCU people have written or contributed to, or that otherwise reflect liberal church interests.

In association with Amazon