The fiasco of St Sepulchre’s closing its doors to the musicians for whom the church is named has finally woken the public up to what is going on within the Church of England. If your measure of success is the sheer volume of worshippers you can attract, then of course you will prefer to prioritise the accommodation of the faithful rather than lend your buildings to those who are of more dubious and less manifest faith. Read More
As I mentioned on Radio 4 last week (starts at 38 minutes), I was highly delighted with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s embarrassment over the revelation that the Church Commissioners have inadvertently invested in Wonga. Adam Smith reckoned that the origin of morality was that we feel held in the gaze of the other. It is the risk of embarrassment – or that good old-fashioned word, shame – that keeps us on the straight and narrow. Read More
Lent Talk, St Luke’s Chelsea, Sunday 13 March 2011
My title for today is The Church on Capitalism. What would be really clever is if I were able to make lots of links to the reading about lost sheep or lost coins. But this is no ordinary sermon, it is the first talk of a series of ‘voices of the congregation,’ so I will not attempt to beat the clergy at their own game. Rather, I want to talk to you about why I have spent the last few years writing a book about theology and capitalism, and why I think you should care. Read More
Let’s face it, Jesus himself was no fan of regulation, continually clashing with the Pharisees over their legalism and replacing their red tape with the simple principle of love. And what got Luther cross, leading to the Protestant Reformation? His feeling that the brisk trade in Indulgences – religious securitisation – was evidence of the Church slipping back into something like this Pharisaic tradition: ‘justification by works’ when simple faith should suffice. What is terrifying about Luther, and about faith, is how risky it is. Read More
