A 2003 survey found that 42% of Anglican clergy and 35% of laity favoured a complete severance of constitutional ties between the Church of England and the state. Whatever the comparable figures today, it is reasonable to assume that a substantial minority of English Anglicans continue to harbour significant doubts about the church’s established status. … Continue Reading
Much has been written about Henry Martyn. The Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide (CCCW) Library has a range of books by different authors, for example David Bentley-Taylor, C. D. Bell, Jim Cromarty, Barbara Eaton, Kellsye Finnie, John Martyn, Constance Padwick, Jesse Page, John Sargent, George Smith and Vivienne Stacey. A number of these focus on … Continue Reading
False narratives and the Rustat Memorial judgment On 23 March 2022, the judge in the Rustat Memorial case declined to grant Jesus College a faculty to remove a memorial to a known slave trader from the chapel to another part of the College. Key to the decision is the finding that it was a “false … Continue Reading
An important collection of papers of the St Julian’s Community, Coolham (West Sussex), including material about the life of the founder, Florence Allshorn (1887-1950), is held in the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide (CCCW) Archive. Work has been done on Florence Allshorn and the Community, the most comprehensive being by J.H. Oldham, Florence Allshorn and the … Continue Reading
Ahead of COP26, and in light of the current and ongoing climate emergency, Fulcrum will be posting a series of articles exploring climate change, theology and our ethical response during September and October. This is the first in this series: a lecture given at Christ Church Oxford Summer School 2018. Do you recall the … Continue Reading
Introduction The first religious experience that I can remember is getting under the nursery table to pray that the dancing mistress might be dead before we got to her dancing class. This is how Gwen Raverat begins her chapter on Religion, in Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood (p. 210). Thankfully, her prayer was not answered. In this witty, autobiographical … Continue Reading
Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring the bells of Easter Day over land, over sea, over all the earth. Bring the clang of nature’s joy up from earth, to the skies, midst the furthest stars: ‘Christ is Risen from the tomb’ sounds the call of the tow’rs to the rising gulls. ‘He is Risen, death is … Continue Reading
Introduction 2021 is the Silver Jubilee of the official opening of the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide (CCCW) at Westminster College, Cambridge, which took place on January 22, 1996. The Centre was then known as the Henry Martyn Library for mission studies and world Christianity. These 25 years have seen extraordinary growth. The doyen of 20th-century scholars of Christian-Muslim … Continue Reading
My intention in writing this article is to explore long-standing legal principles of marriage and their scriptural endorsement as a means of delineating the over-arching public reason for marriage. I will also provide examples that demonstrate how this public reason is being undermined by the re-definition of marriage. The repeated and inevitable result is that … Continue Reading
Quarrels about words? In my years involved in dialogue and debate relating to sexuality, some of the most depressing moments have been when those who broadly share my views concerning biblical and church teaching speak and act in ways that I find really unhelpful, even damaging, and impossible to support. Reading the Pastoral Statement on … Continue Reading