Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

Easter eggs. We like them. So much so, that about 80 million are sold in the UK each year. They go on sale early: major supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, and Waitrose launched Easter-themed confectionery ranges as early as January. Tesco had them on the shelves by 30th December 2022. On average, children in the...

The Saint of an English Army before he was Patron Saint of England, St George may have been a soldier, but he was no Englishman. Some stories say that he was an officer in the Roman army under Diocletian, who refused to abandon his faith during the Terror, and was martyred at Lydda in Palestine...

The Church of England’s General Synod has recently welcomed proposals which would enable same-sex couples to come to church after a civil marriage or civil partnership to give thanks, dedicate their relationship to God and receive God’s blessing. Synod members also voted to “lament and repent” of the failure of the Church to welcome LGBTQI+...

In England in the 1600s, singing in church was confined to simple melodies attached to the words of the psalms. Each line would be sung in turn by a precentor, and the congregation would follow. This was a slow, stilted and rather uninspiring process! When Isaac Watts was 15 years old, he complained to his...

Have you seen the film How to Train your Dragon? It’s set in a Viking village under attack from dragons, who steal livestock and burn down houses. Hiccup, the village Chief’s son, invents a machine to capture dragons. However, when he catches one of the most dangerous dragons, he cannot kill it, when he sees...

“We are not divided but we disagree, and that is very painful. And I will use again the words close to those I used to the Bishops gathered at the Lambeth Conference on a very similar debate. “For some, to question the inherited teaching damages witness and is sinful: you point out that in many provinces across...

It was 90 years ago, on 3rd April 1933, that the first flight over Mount Everest took place. British pilots the Marquis of Clydesdale and Donald McIntyre flew two biplanes over the summit. The two Scots were financed by the striking and rather eccentric Lady Houston, who started life as a chorus girl but through...

If you are exposed to air pollution over a period of many years, you may suffer from depression in later life. Such are the findings of a recent study carried out by a team at Harvard University. It found a correlation between the risk of developing a mental health problem and the amount of time...

Church leaders in Ukraine are being singled out for persecution by Russian forces in occupied areas. Some pastors have been arrested, interrogated, tortured, and even expelled from their towns by the Russian military and their supporters. Occupying forces have confiscated church buildings and Christians have received harsher treatment at Russian military checkpoints, say partners of...

– disciple, apostle, writer of the second gospel  Mark, whose home in Jerusalem became a place of rest for Jesus and His 12 apostles, is considered the traditional author of the second gospel. He is also usually identified as the young man, described in Mark 14:51, who followed Christ after his arrest and then escaped...

“I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me though he were dead yet shall he live” John 11:25 It would have been hard on Good Friday for anyone to imagine the glory that was coming on Sunday morning. On Friday the situation seemed hopeless: Peter denied Christ three times; Judas committed suicide; the...

Seventy years ago, on 16th April 1953, Queen Elizabeth II launched the Royal Yacht Britannia. It was decommissioned in 1997. The Royal Family no longer owns a royal yacht. Britannia was the 83rd such vessel since King Charles II acceded to the throne in 1660, but the first Royal Yacht to be built with complete...