Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

Churches were encouraged to offer a place of sanctuary for young people as part of efforts to combat knife crime and serious youth violence, in a key debate held at the General Synod last month. The Revd. Canon Dr Rosemarie Mallett, a priest in Angell Town, south London, urged parishes to consider opening their doors...

The ethnicity of churchgoers has been measured across thousands of churches in England in the English Church Censuses of 1998 and 2005, and numbers for other years can be estimated from these.  The proportion of White worshippers is declining, compared with the emphatic growth of many Black churches, especially in London.  In the year 2000...

Sunday trading was legalised in England and Wales 25 years ago, on 28th August 1994. Until then, under the Shops Act of 1950, the situation had been rather chaotic, and some of the rules laughable, but Sunday had been recognised as a ‘special’ day. The Shops Bill of 1984, which would have allowed widespread Sunday trading,...

Going on holiday with the parents this year?  If they are elderly, you might want to use the time to keep an eye out for any signs of depression or dementia. It is not a cheerful thing to do on holiday, but one which is recommended by NHS England’s national clinical director for dementia and...

Fair is her foot and smooth is her hand, And graceful her form upon the strand, Winsome her voice and gentle her speech, Stately her mien on the ocean beach, Warm doth she look, and mild is her face, While swelleth her lovely breast of grace Like black-headed seagull up and down On the gently...

More of us need more help.  Fewer of us are getting it.  The crisis in the social care system in England continues to grow.  Local council spending in real terms is now £700million below what it was in 2010/11. The findings come in a recent report from the King’s Fund think tank, which found a...

Spare a thought for John the Baptist: however rough your local sandwich bar may be, it probably doesn’t serve you locusts with a honey dip; you won’t be imprisoned for saying derogatory things about the local MP’s wife, and even the boss from hell is unlikely to have a daughter who wants to hip-hop about...

The Church of England’s lead bishop on healthcare issues, James Newcome, has backed experts’ calls for churches to promote gardening for mental wellbeing. A recent conference at Lambeth Palace to explore the links between mental health and gardening saw a fresh call for churches to use their green space to offer ‘therapeutic gardening’. Green Health...

Christians in Bulgaria are thankful for the turn-around by the government on proposals to restrict the freedoms of believers and the activities and funding of churches. The breakthrough came during parliamentary voting on the second reading of the amendments to the Religious Denominations Act 2002, when all the controversial changes were suddenly dropped. Church leaders,...

You have been speaking to me, Lord, about my children and grand-child.  You loaned them to me for a season.  Now I am to take my possessive, managing hands off – strictly off.  You will perfect them in your way and in your timing.  Years ago, you began this work. It is your business to...

The M6 has just achieved an unenviable status: it is now the worst road in Britain for delays. So says the recent analysis of government traffic and roadworks.  It found that motorists using the UK’s longest motorway (running from Rugby to Gretna) face delays on more than 210 million journeys during a three-year period of...

After the Bible, John Bunyan’s wonderful Christian allegory, the Pilgrim’s Progress, is one of the most celebrated and widely-read books in the English language.  It has been translated into more than one hundred languages around the world and keeps its place as a Christian classic. Names of people and places from its pages have been...