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Doubting Thomas was only following the best principles of journalism when he demanded proof for the biggest story of all time. But it's not just about believing the story, it's about how we tell it...
In the last week of Jesus's life, the true authority of the Christ emerges. But we'd do well to listen in the silences to what he doesn't say, as well as to what he does...
The BBC's latest version of the Passion story aims to be human and accessible. It succeeds. But, paradoxically, in doing so it reveals the greatest miracle of all...
The Festival of the Massacre of the Innocents, just after Christmas, serves to show us a God who is bound up bodily in the horrors of the world - which is the only way he can find to save human lives...
Laurence Binyon wrote some awful poetry, but he also wrote four lines that have achieved immortality in our liturgy of remembrance. They not only teach us to remember the dead, they show us how to live our lives...
Christianity is entwined with the traditions of paganism, superstition and the supernatural. But it is also uniquely different, grounded in our flesh-and-blood, human experience...
It's not always better to give than to receive. When it comes to the business of prophecy - interpreting the will of God - it is as well to pay attention to strangers and to see what they might have for you...
George Pitcher traces the extraordinary financial performance of the Church of England since its Commissioners were formed in 1948
Habbakuk by Donatello
"Justification by faith alone" was the principle on which the Reformation was fought. But some so-called reformers today want to ditch it in favour of a new "Covenant", a contract that Christians will be required to sign in order to be allowed into our Church. George Pitcher argues that these efforts fly in the face of Anglicanism, but are not supported by scripture....
The 50-word version: The doctrine of the Trinity is bloody hard. But let's not be literal. There's a dark side to humanity (obviously). What if Jesus Christ is the dark side of God? That puts nothing beyond the reach of the divine. Oh, and it makes us asylum-seekers in heaven. Trinity nerds, read on...
William Lewis
Editor, Daily Telegraph
Emily Bell
Editor, Guardian Unlimited
It's a common form of attack when people discover I'm an Anglican priest. But it's not always clear what form this leadership is meant to take.
George Pitcher reflects on the theology that underpins opposition to the death penalty and revisits a piece he wrote after becoming involved with an execution in Texas in 2003.
Someone said to me the other day that Reprieve, the human-rights charity that campaigns for people on Death Row, was an odd choice of cause to support during our Miserere Festival of Music & Drama during Lent. She said we might be more concerned about the victims of terrible murders, rather than their perpetrators. This made me reflect on my opposition, in all circumstances, to the death penalty - why, I wondered, do I feel capital punishment is inconsistent with Christian faith?
My children have a shorthand for sermons they don't like - "God is Love". It sums up what they think is banal and predictable about the standard Anglican sermon: What was the sermon like? "Oh, y'know - God is Love". It's obvious, they say. And quite boring: "God is Love. Like Duh!"
Of many abiding memories from the Jethro Tull Christmas Concert, there's a vignette that set me thinking about the nature of prayer. Two unreconstructed old hippies had just cleared our state-of-the-art ticketing desk and slick security and were blinking around them at St Bride's opulent interior. 1st UROH: "Looks like a bloody church." 2nd UROH: "That's cos it is a church, you idiot." In that exchange is what personnel officers called "managed expectations". Churches do prayer and worship. Rock bands don't go there.
It's been a disappointing decade for liberals. It promised so much - in May 1997, Tony Blair and New Labour were swept to power by an electorate committed to a spring-clean for the Augean stables of 18 years of Tory government. Then, rather more recently in 2003, Dr Rowan Williams was enthroned as 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, against the early odds and against the desires and aspirations of the forces of evangelical conservatism, which had been gaining ground in the Anglican Communion.
I was invited on BBC radio recently and introduced as a "former leading PR expert". As a former expert (and current ignoramus), my view was being sought on the collapse of Swindon-based Farepak, a Christmas-hamper operation that had gone down the pan along with the Christmas aspirations of some 150,000 savers.
Sacha Baron Cohen has followed his rude-boi Ali G spoof with a new character, Borat Sagdiyev, a foul-mouthed TV reporter from Kazakhstan, who tours America "promoting" his home country with a stream of sexist, homophobic and anti-semitic views. The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is outraged and has commissioned a $40m movie celebrating Kazakhstan's noble history to counter Cohen's pastiche and has complained to President George Bush about Cohen's portrayal in a recent visit to the States.
I was listening vaguely to the radio at my desk on 10th August 2006 when President George Bush called the putative Heathrow bombers "Islamic fascists". Ten minutes later, I was called by an old friend at the Church of England Press Office, who asked if I'd be prepared to go on Club Asia. This turned out not to be an exotic travel operator offering priestly perks in the sub-continent, but one of the short-wave specialist radio stations.
The Act of Remembrance is a difficult one for those of us born since the last World War. Not just emotionally difficult - how do we engage emotionally with events from before we were born? But practically difficult too. To focus on the sheer scale of the lives lost to war is meaningless - we can't comprehend the scale of the loss and the suffering. But to concentrate on an individual might be invidious - a single person's story misses the collective narrative...that is, how among the many thousands who fought and died, the individual becomes truly selfless. Nevertheless, it is the latter path that I choose to take.
David Smith, better known as Dave or Smithie to his colleagues, is the verger of St Bride's. He's also been licensed as a lay reader in the Diocese of London. He greets visitors to the church and is a man of not a few words; a man for whom conversation is not so much an art as an obsession. Perhaps that's how they make them in Derbyshire. Why tell an anecdote when an entire history of Derbyshire will do?
Not being a particularly scripturally-based Christian, I tend to miss the subtleties in Bible stories, the little phrases and grace notes that make the texts real and human. One such is the John's gospel account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, a miracle narrative that has lots of iconic moments - the loaves and fishes, the baskets left over - that eclipse one little opening order from the tired Jesus of Nazareth to his burly bodyguards and associates, as he faces a large, hungry and potentially hostile crowd: "Make the men sit down". It's a peaceful, ameliorating, hospitable, even feminine, injunction and speaks against the male grandeur of the Judaic tradition.
The internet has memorably been described as "garbage at the speed of light". We have instant access to almost limitless rubbish as never before. But it seems to me that this offers two encouraging implications. First, low standards are a symptom of healthy pluralism - there's a lot of rubbish in our newspapers too, but that's because we have a free and competitive press serving all parts of the market and that's better than the alternatives. Second, blogs like this can only be as good as their content and contributors. As the spiritual home of journalists, St Bride's ought to be a forum for a high quality of dialectic among its dispersed congregation - and for many more besides.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed in 'Pitch A Comment' do not necessarily reflect those of St Bride's Church.
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