The Church Commissioners have reportedly funded a £40 million makeover for Lambeth Palace. Surely it is now their moral duty to set aside a similar sum to help parish churches with their repairs and modernisation
Tim Brown, letter in The Daily Telegraph, 5 July
To be the Archbishop of Canterbury is to put yourself into the meat grinder. You are asked to speak Christian truths to a nation that largely couldn’t care less what you say, unless you say something silly or too political. Then the press will chew you up. You are asked to take royal funerals and make speeches in the House of Lords, yet also to have the common touch, appealing to everyone
Giles Fraser, UnHerd, 8 July
So desperate is the hunt for names that the [Crown Nominations] commission is understood even to be looking at suffragans. . . “Yes, there are perhaps some suffragans,” says the well-placed cleric. “But what an extraordinary thing, to go from being a suffragan to Archbishop of Canterbury”
Ruth Gledhill, The Sunday Times, 6 July
What we need in an archbishop, regardless of gender or ethnicity, is someone who realises that to spread the Christian word we need to invest in vicars on the ground. No war was won without soldiers and no company succeeds without salesmen. By all means speak to the affairs of the nation, but better results will come from speaking to the people of the nation in the parishes
Mike Hodson, Bishops’ Council and member of Bath & Wells Diocesan Synod, letter in The Times, 7 July
Starmer’s an atheist and Alastair Campbell famously decreed religious Tony Blair didn’t do God in interviews, but maybe faith is all that’s left in No 10. Politics director Claire Reynolds . . . opened a meeting about growth by, I hear from a snout, praying for growth. Reynolds and Business Secretary hubby Jonathan are Christian socialists. The snout growled that attendees thought Mrs R was joking, but then were aghast as she appealed for divine economic intervention
Kevin Maguire, “Commons confidential”, The New Statesman, 2 July
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