Broad church?

'Broad' means different things to different people. In Church terms it means a range of ideas embraced around set assertions about Jesus. 'High' churches enjoy incense and solemn liturgies, and 'low' church have lots of informality and just a nod to the requirements of the Prayer Book.  TV's 'Rev' is in the same organisatioas as somebody else's incense-fogged high mass, unbelievably. Christian worship also embraces low and high Roman Catholics, and in the 'free churches' these days almost anything goes,... lots of jollity, even 'messy church' for kids, and an hour of silence with the Quakers. Brought up a Congregationalist, son of a minister, and even for 30 years a minister myself, I love its dignified, scholarly tradition, great hymns, extempore prayers and Bible-centred worship. I am now told that all this is old fashioned, but I still love it. Change - that pestilent monster - is taking place in our tradition, presided over by a General Secretary who has been in post for 12 years - far too long. He is a very capable man, and it is probably not his fault that the denomination is sliding rapidly to the theological right and inevitable centralisation. Most 'Free Churches' now are far from broad in outlook. They offer the same thought-free fundamentalist theology, sing the same trite 'choruses' and are increasingly served by Baptist and Pentecostal leaders. It would help if the General Secretary was in post for only five years, to encourage a broader, more congregational approach. We might even have a liberal, progressive candidate, waiting in the wings, but the mood among our churches now would go for an Ira Sankey think-alike. 'Broad'? I don't think so.

Shale

Either the people who question policies on renewabale energy are wrong. Or they are right. If they are right we are all being led for no good reason up the most expensive garden path in the history of the universe. Christopher Booker provides extensive proof for his view that global warming is a 'scare' that is costing 'the most expensive set of proposals ever put forward.... requiring  such a dramatic change in the way of life for billions of people that it is hard to imagine how modern industrial civilisation could survive.'  (Global Warming Disaster, Continuum, '09) Matt Ridley says: 'To persist with a policy of subsidising renewable energy ... at a time when vast reserves of cheap low-carbon gas have suddenly become available is so perverse it borders on the insane'.  (Spectator October 15 '011). He referred to vast fields of 'shale gas' being tapped in America, and now being explored in Lancashire, which could provide immense reserves of  'green'energy. Drilling near Blackpool has located 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, 'enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. Objections by the big coal, gas and nuclear industries are, says Ridley 'almost comically fabricated or exaggerated.' We could access this stuff, long trapped in the earth's rocks, and resolve all our energy problems.  I took up this theme at a harvest sermon to 20 village chapel-goers  in October. (Little wonder it did not make international news!) I maintain that nature continues to provide the means by which life can be sustained. Shale gas and GM crops, are among the 'new things' Isaiah spoke about which are provided to take over from oil, coal and traditional farm technology. Hail, shale! Vested interest, anxious reactionaries and bureaucratic intertia must not stop you..

junkies

The British are news junkies. Is it fear of boredom? Something needs to be going on 'out there' and the more portentous or disgraceful it is the better. We can then lock the door, hide under the blanket and revel in our personal safety and innocence. We need news, even if it is only about a change in the weather - anything to up the tempo and help us to feel that life is happening. News should be 'new, true and interesting'. But can we rely on news makers, reporters and presenters being trustworthy? Does what we hear and read comply with all three of those criteria? A meeting to discuss this is to be held by Progressive Christianity Stoke on Sunday evening September 4 (7.15 at the Congregational Church Newcastle under Lyme.) There is a limit to the amount of good news that we can take. News of conflicts being settled and ended is less compelling than news of conflict starting and continuing. We feed on the exploits of baddies; Bill Sykes is much more interesting than Oliver Twist. How reliable is the media that feeds us every day? We are aghast at the way phones have been hacked to tease out private information, but salivate at what the likes of the News of the World was then able to reveal 'exclusively'. We think we have a right to personal privacy, but gloat over personal information about other people offered in the lurid press. How far shoud the media go to discover and expose the foibles of the famous? As newspaper sales decline and most people now get their news from TV and electronic gadgets will news reports become less reliable? Does it matter? Is society now being managed on sensational half-truths and lies? How much anyway do we really 'need' to know? It's worth discussing.