Material for this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which takes place next week, will be available for the first time on smart phones, computers and tablets following a collaboration between the World Council of Churches and the developer of the YouVersion Bible app.
13 January 2016
Some 2.4 million people attended a C of E service at Christmas in 2014, a slight increase on the previous year; but overall, the latest attendance figures show that the number of people attending church services weekly has dipped below one million people for the first time, continuing a gradual year-on-year decrease of about one per cent.
13 January 2016
The Community of St Anselm, the new religious community of 36 young men and women from around the world, are in Canterbury this week to pray for the Primates of the Anglican Communion as they continue their deliberations.
13 January 2016
When the relatively new Bishop of Dudley, in the Church of England’s Diocese of Worcester, visited the newly ordained missionary bishops of Peru in the Church of South America this month, he was keen to pass on tips picked up from an international training course for new bishops.
12 January 2016
The Archbishops of Dublin and Jerusalem have signed an accord which will see the people of their respective dioceses “journey together as brothers and sisters in Christ on a common pilgrimage of faith and discipleship.” The Epiphany Agreement establishes an official link between the diocese of Jerusalem and the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough.
12 January 2016
A firefighter has been taken to hospital after being injured tackling a blaze at a church in the Dunmurry district of Belfast, Northern Ireland, this morning (Monday). The Rector of the Church was also taken to hospital to be treated for the effects of smoke inhalation. Neither was seriously injured; but the damage to the church is said to be “significant.”
11 January 2016
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said this morning that a formal schism in the Anglican Communion would be a failure; but he told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme that such a scenario “would not be a disaster” because “God is bigger than our failures.”
11 January 2016
God told Isaiah to “raise your voice like a trumpet” – it is an instruction that many clergy seek to follow; but one English vicar will take this a step further when he appears on the British version of television’s singing competition The Voice tomorrow night.
08 January 2016
To see the future of Christianity in Britain, go on a Sunday morning to an old Welsh Congregational chapel off the Pentonville Road in Islington. The building has been bought by a Pentecostal Ethiopian church; the congregation raises its hands in a show of unEnglish ecstasy to praise God in Amharic.
08 January 2016
The Anglican Alliance is looking to support Anglican Communion dioceses to use a different kind of tool to build peace and sustainable communities – football. Anglicans in central and eastern Africa are keen to use sports to improve education, empower young people, tackle gender inequality and resolve conflict.
07 January 2016