Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

German Luftwaffe bombers virtually destroyed the city of Coventry – including its medieval cathedral – 80 years ago this month, on 14th November 1940. Coventry was targeted by ‘Operation Moonlight Sonata’ as an industrial city, but more than 4300 homes were destroyed and about two-thirds of the city’s buildings were damaged. There were many direct...

Women are more genetically predisposed to giving you a hug than a man is. According to a recent study at Arizona University, about 45 per cent of a woman’s desire for affection is hereditary, while the remaining 55 per cent is due to environmental factors. In comparison, men’s ‘skin hunger’ is due to entirely environmental...

We Will Remember – 80 years on From the Vicar Psalm 122 and Advent Why should you bother to pray? 80 years on, we still need courage and endurance When life goes wrong for us Why do we need Advent? Lord, prop us up! The Soldier’s Prayer ** Editor:  Canon Paul Hardingham considers how we...

Not many people have heard of Illtud, but perhaps we should make him the patron saint of all Christian NGOs (Non-Government Organisations) who work in emergency and famine relief. Illtud did not set out to be an action hero – he was a gentle and learned abbot heading up a monastery in Glamorgan.  Illtud spent...

The Church will emerge “renewed and changed” from the crisis of the global coronavirus pandemic, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have said. In a recent joint address to members of the Church of England’s General Synod, Archbishops Justin Welby and Stephen Cottrell said that amid a time of trauma, loss and struggle in this...

The Church has a vital role to play in offering hope and comfort to the nation as we face an expected second wave of the coronavirus, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have said. In a joint letter to the bishops of the Church of England, Archbishops Justin Welby and Stephen Cottrell set out a...

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”   The early Church Father Tertullian wrote that in the second century, but he could have been writing about Vietnam from 1745 onwards.  For, during the first 200 years of Christianity in Vietnam/Indo-China, a staggering 100,000 Christians are believed to have been martyred for their...

No one likes to talk about death. Especially during a pandemic that’s impacting everyone on the planet. And yet for some people, death is their life’s work. It’s their vocation. In fact, helping bereaved families and friends say a personal goodbye to their loved ones is what motivates them, day after day. They are the...

It was 60 years ago, on 2nd November 1960, that a British jury cleared Penguin Books of obscenity for publishing D H Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  This is often considered the beginning of the permissive society in Britain. The book had been published before, though not in this country. But the law had changed...

Here’s an unexpected outcome of Covid-19: it has inspired more of us to get engaged. Engagement rings sales have risen this year, in some firms by up to 73 per cent, a survey of various jewellery firms has discovered. When, at the beginning of lockdown, Dr Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, suggested that...

This year we’ve been remembering the Battle of Britain, described by Winston Churchill in August 1940 as ‘one of the decisive battles of the war… never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ It was a dramatic turning point in the history of the Second World...

Did you know that the Netherlands first learned Christianity from a Yorkshireman?  Willibrord (658 – 739) was born to devout parents, and joined the Benedictines.  In 678 he went Ireland to study at the Abbey of Rathmelsigi (a centre of European learning in the 7th century).  12 years later, in 690, Willibrord felt God had...