Modern Believing
From the current issue (July 2008):
The genius of Anglicanism has always been its capacity to hold together in one Church people with a wide variety of different perspectives. It has also greatly benefited from finding the means to adapt itself to new learning and to make changes in response to new situations. A classic presentation of this in relation to liturgical change can be seen in the Preface to the 1662 Prayer Book: It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England , ever since the first compiling of her publick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it.
In a foreword to a recent book on the philosophy of religion, Professor William Abraham comments that when he arrived in Oxford as a graduate student in 1973 he little knew that he was ‘at the beginning of a golden period in the philosophy of religion' in which believers could ‘take a lead and create the intellectual space in which Christian belief could be taken seriously once again. The outcome over the last forty years, as seen in the wealth of material that has been published has been startling in its originality and depth.' (The Agnostic Inquirer ,
Michigan: Eerdmans, 2007)
Has the theological thinking applied in Ministry in Secular Employment, any relevance for the retired Minister in Secular Employment (MSE)? The MSE works by certain theological principles. These are applied to work, the organisation (or system) and the society in its widest sense, in which that organisation functions. For me, these principles were honed over many years. Over those years they changed their nature from the desire to work as well as I could – in George Herbert's words
‘to do it as for God' – to wondering, questioning, not just the work itself but the rationale for it and its theology.
Americans like to be loved. Contrary to the popular perception of the American as arrogant, indifferent to the rest of the world, and assertive, many Americans (especially those in the Episcopal Church) are sensitive, globally aware, and if anything, rather diffident. Since the controversy around the consecration of Gene Robinson as the first openly gay Bishop in the Communion, the Episcopal Church has worked hard to assuage the reaction within the communion. However, over the last six months, there is a palpable change of mood, which this article will now document.
Beyond the Cold War, there were three global issues that were emerging as likely determinants of international insecurity and violence - the weapons proliferation legacy of the Cold War, global environmental constraints and increasingly bitter socio-economic divisions. By the turn of the century, the key issue was whether the elite states of the world could respond to such problems in order to promote greater security and stability. This was further accentuated by the impact of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington and President Bush's subsequent ‘war on terror'.
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