Giles, I admire you very much indeed. You perfectly encapsulate what I love about many Anglican parishes and they, like your hall, are slipping away one by one – dying of neglect. A neglect of what really matters by the very people who should be tending the community and spirit of the parish – those at the centre of the CofE. We have enough trouble with the MSM’s portrayal without hostility within the ranks! Have a great Christmas and keep writing your prophetic pieces – you give me hope.
What a splendid seasonal present. To hear that parishes “are slipping away one by one – dying of neglect.” gives me renewed hope for the future. May the stone age hate culture of monotheism in all three forms slowly dissolve in its own self-created slime.
ian.komera
3 years ago
Thanks for a beautiful, moving but unsentimental account of what the incarnation means.
Micheal Thompson
3 years ago
Thank you for this beautiful and thoughtful piece. It helped me gain some much needed perspective. Happy Christmas to you and all your parish.
Teo
3 years ago
“All you lot want is money,” shouted an angry local. Maybe the angry local had a point that it will take more than money to rebuild the church from the rubble.
It will also take a great deal more than money. May God bless your ministry, Fr. Giles.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
‘Its back had been broken some years ago after a gang of bored local lads broke in and decided to start a fire.’
This is London, where there is more to do and more opportunity than almost any city in world history. There is no reason for anyone to be ‘bored’. I grew up in the middle of nowhere but we were never bored, and we didn’t go around burning down buildings. Actually, come to think of it I was in a band with someone who burned down part of the local high school. I guess these people are everywhere.
Tony Gerrard
3 years ago
Thank you, Giles. You always leave us with encouragement and hope.
Mark Gourley
3 years ago
Thank you, dear Father, for this great affirmation of our faith and tradition. A joy to read and an inspiration.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Your moving story brought to my mind an old, favorite poem: “Still Falls the Rain…”. Thank you.
Still falls the Rain”- Dark as the world of man, black as our loss”- Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the Cross.
Still falls the Rain With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb: Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.
Still falls the Rain At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross. Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us”- On Dives and on Lazarus: Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.
Still falls the Rain”- Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side: He bears in His Heart all wounds,”-those of the light that died, The last faint spark In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark, The wounds of the baited bear”- The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat On his helpless flesh”¦ the tears of the hunted hare.
Still falls the Rain”- Then”- O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune”- See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament: It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart That holds the fires of the world,”-dark-smirched with pain As Caesar’s laurel crown.
Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man Was once a child who among beasts has lain”- “Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.”
I believe that the Church of England is severely constrained because of its enormous portfolio of listed buildings. They are ruinously expensive to maintain and consume a lot of the energy of the dwindling congregations. It would be far more sensible if a separate body like a specialist National Trust only hopefully less woke looked after the real estate leaving the Church to save souls or something similar. I’m not suggesting chucking out the priests of congregations but simply making better use of the buildings as public spaces when they are not being used for worship. In many rural areas they are the only public buildings but they are locked up except for one Sunday in four. Freeing them from the control of Bishops would also bring more money in for maintenance.
Martin Terrell
3 years ago
Thank you very much for this thought provoking and optimistic reflection.
Claire D
3 years ago
Thank you Giles for such a great article at this time. Wishing you and your parish, and everyone else, all the very best this Christmas.
GA Woolley
3 years ago
The Reformation did not ‘sideline the idea of community’, it took away the power and control of the clerics, and the repressive and dictatorial regimes they acted for. Such ‘community’ as there was was organised purely to serve their interests, with poverty-ridden and subsistence societies handing over tithes and taxes under threat of eternal damnation.
The power of the clerics was merely transferred to the power of the state, which has had mixed results of its win over the last few centuries.
Swiveleyed Loon
3 years ago
The imprisonment of priests for opposing liturgical laws was a shoddy, demeaning episode in the history of the Church of England, and not really so very long ago. It is very little known these days. I only know of it because I have a contemporary account of the persecution of the vicar of Miles Platting.
Peter KE
3 years ago
Nice article.
David Brown
3 years ago
A minor point, but Bell’s (there is a possessive apostrophe on the label), being Scotch, is whisky. Whiskey is Irish, or American.
Michael Whittock
3 years ago
Hope is good, but hope for what? Isn’t vision necessary if hope is going anywhere? You mention Ecclesiastes and it’s frequent mention of joy. It says in Proverbs “without vision the people perish.” Vision gives substance to hope and fills the people with joyful motivation. Without vision hope will die and there will be a tendency, as we see in this article, to retreat into the rather romanticised memories of the past. One of the signs of a growing revival in the Church is the vision for reordering church buildings making them fit for purpose for worship, ministry and service to the community in the 21st. century and beyond. The parish I’m in is in the Welsh Marches. Unlike most villages in the area it is large and has a lot of rural poverty and neglect. In her second year with us our parish priest shared what she believed was a God given vision of a growing church housed in a reordered building. This vision was tested by consultation with the church and community. Now 4 years later work is going on to complete a renewed building with toilets, meeting room and worship area which can also be used for concerts, art exhibitions etc. It’s costing £130,000. All of it bar a couple of thousand has been raised without fund-raising events. We have prayed, given generously and sought some grant aid. Praise God the money has come in – the result of the joyful motivation His vision has given us. This is a tiny example of the spiritual renewal which is going on at the moment throughout the Church.Of course it’s never mentioned in the media and never acknowledged by the atheist, anti-Christian mafia some of whom populate these columns. You seem to make a distinction between the Evangelical emphasis on an individual’s relationship with God and a Catholic emphasis on a corporate experience of God. It is best to have both. I saw both being offered to very good effect in Evangelical parishes in inner city Liverpool when I was a priest in an Anglo-Catholic parish.
Mark Lilly
3 years ago
If undeveloped and uncritical minds – untroubled by the repressive and murderous deeds of the groups with which they are affiliated – find themselves enthralled by religious gibberish, a free society should not interfere. But Fraser is a serious social pest. He is everywhere across the media, including two major media outlets notorious for their outrageously unrepresentative encouragement of supernaturalism: the BBC and the Guardian. Giving him yet another slot – and especially here, where the ideal is to break new ground, not to encourage recruiters to a benighted stone age system – is too much. Basta!
I disagree 100% with your post but I totally believe you should be free to post it. Similarly, Giles is free to write when invited and you are equally free not to read it, if it offends you.
Of course he is free to write. I go out of my way to clarify that I abhor censorship. The quite separate point I am making is that he (particularly) and his point of view is disproportionately represented in the public domain. He is hogging the limelight.
Giles, I admire you very much indeed. You perfectly encapsulate what I love about many Anglican parishes and they, like your hall, are slipping away one by one – dying of neglect. A neglect of what really matters by the very people who should be tending the community and spirit of the parish – those at the centre of the CofE. We have enough trouble with the MSM’s portrayal without hostility within the ranks! Have a great Christmas and keep writing your prophetic pieces – you give me hope.
What a splendid seasonal present. To hear that parishes “are slipping away one by one – dying of neglect.” gives me renewed hope for the future. May the stone age hate culture of monotheism in all three forms slowly dissolve in its own self-created slime.
Thanks for a beautiful, moving but unsentimental account of what the incarnation means.
Thank you for this beautiful and thoughtful piece. It helped me gain some much needed perspective. Happy Christmas to you and all your parish.
“All you lot want is money,” shouted an angry local.
Maybe the angry local had a point that it will take more than money to rebuild the church from the rubble.
It will also take a great deal more than money. May God bless your ministry, Fr. Giles.
‘Its back had been broken some years ago after a gang of bored local lads broke in and decided to start a fire.’
This is London, where there is more to do and more opportunity than almost any city in world history. There is no reason for anyone to be ‘bored’. I grew up in the middle of nowhere but we were never bored, and we didn’t go around burning down buildings. Actually, come to think of it I was in a band with someone who burned down part of the local high school. I guess these people are everywhere.
Thank you, Giles. You always leave us with encouragement and hope.
Thank you, dear Father, for this great affirmation of our faith and tradition. A joy to read and an inspiration.
Your moving story brought to my mind an old, favorite poem: “Still Falls the Rain…”. Thank you.
Still falls the Rain”-
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss”-
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.
Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.
Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us”-
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.
Still falls the Rain”-
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,”-those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear”-
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh”¦ the tears of the hunted hare.
Still falls the Rain”-
Then”- O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune”-
See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,”-dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar’s laurel crown.
Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain”-
“Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.”
Edith Sitwell wrote this during the blitz.
Beautiful.
I believe that the Church of England is severely constrained because of its enormous portfolio of listed buildings. They are ruinously expensive to maintain and consume a lot of the energy of the dwindling congregations. It would be far more sensible if a separate body like a specialist National Trust only hopefully less woke looked after the real estate leaving the Church to save souls or something similar. I’m not suggesting chucking out the priests of congregations but simply making better use of the buildings as public spaces when they are not being used for worship. In many rural areas they are the only public buildings but they are locked up except for one Sunday in four. Freeing them from the control of Bishops would also bring more money in for maintenance.
Thank you very much for this thought provoking and optimistic reflection.
Thank you Giles for such a great article at this time.
Wishing you and your parish, and everyone else, all the very best this Christmas.
The Reformation did not ‘sideline the idea of community’, it took away the power and control of the clerics, and the repressive and dictatorial regimes they acted for. Such ‘community’ as there was was organised purely to serve their interests, with poverty-ridden and subsistence societies handing over tithes and taxes under threat of eternal damnation.
The power of the clerics was merely transferred to the power of the state, which has had mixed results of its win over the last few centuries.
The imprisonment of priests for opposing liturgical laws was a shoddy, demeaning episode in the history of the Church of England, and not really so very long ago. It is very little known these days. I only know of it because I have a contemporary account of the persecution of the vicar of Miles Platting.
Nice article.
A minor point, but Bell’s (there is a possessive apostrophe on the label), being Scotch, is whisky. Whiskey is Irish, or American.
Hope is good, but hope for what? Isn’t vision necessary if hope is going anywhere? You mention Ecclesiastes and it’s frequent mention of joy. It says in Proverbs “without vision the people perish.” Vision gives substance to hope and fills the people with joyful motivation. Without vision hope will die and there will be a tendency, as we see in this article, to retreat into the rather romanticised memories of the past.
One of the signs of a growing revival in the Church is the vision for reordering church buildings making them fit for purpose for worship, ministry and service to the community in the 21st. century and beyond. The parish I’m in is in the Welsh Marches. Unlike most villages in the area it is large and has a lot of rural poverty and neglect. In her second year with us our parish priest shared what she believed was a God given vision of a growing church housed in a reordered building. This vision was tested by consultation with the church and community. Now 4 years later work is going on to complete a renewed building with toilets, meeting room and worship area which can also be used for concerts, art exhibitions etc.
It’s costing £130,000. All of it bar a couple of thousand has been raised without fund-raising events. We have prayed, given generously and sought some grant aid. Praise God the money has come in – the result of the joyful motivation His vision has given us. This is a tiny example of the spiritual renewal which is going on at the moment throughout the Church.Of course it’s never mentioned in the media and never acknowledged by the atheist, anti-Christian mafia some of whom populate these columns.
You seem to make a distinction between the Evangelical emphasis on an individual’s relationship with God and a Catholic emphasis on a corporate experience of God. It is best to have both. I saw both being offered to very good effect in Evangelical parishes in inner city Liverpool when I was a priest in an Anglo-Catholic parish.
If undeveloped and uncritical minds – untroubled by the repressive and murderous deeds of the groups with which they are affiliated – find themselves enthralled by religious gibberish, a free society should not interfere. But Fraser is a serious social pest. He is everywhere across the media, including two major media outlets notorious for their outrageously unrepresentative encouragement of supernaturalism: the BBC and the Guardian. Giving him yet another slot – and especially here, where the ideal is to break new ground, not to encourage recruiters to a benighted stone age system – is too much. Basta!
You disagree, so it shouldn’t be permitted? Hmmm.
I disagree 100% with your post but I totally believe you should be free to post it. Similarly, Giles is free to write when invited and you are equally free not to read it, if it offends you.
Of course he is free to write. I go out of my way to clarify that I abhor censorship. The quite separate point I am making is that he (particularly) and his point of view is disproportionately represented in the public domain. He is hogging the limelight.