Virtual Methodist

As I said yesterday I've stayed broadly silent for the past fortnight on the events in Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown Connecticut, first because I'm an outsider and second I don't believe that engaging in polemic in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy is helpful to anyone... But, as you may imagine, I am not devoid of opinions... So, let me put my cards on the table... Whilst I am commenting from a distance, I do live in a land which has known more than its fair share of gun related deaths, but have also witnessed the work of police and street-workers seeking to address gun-crime in gang-ridden Providence, RI , the adjacent state to Newtown. As such I cannot, for the life of me, understand why intelligent politicians cannot find a way of respecting the historic aims of the second amendment to the US Constitution (because God forbid you would want to change such a holy document), whilst protecting society at large, including children, from people having easy acce...

Today is the first of 3 days commemorating "The Massacre of the Innocents" (Matthew 2: 13-18) - today  the Syrian Church marks it, tomorrow the western church, and then on the 29th the Eastern orthodox churches do... and over the next few days there will doubtless be much blogging on the recent massacre in Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown Connecticut... I've stayed broadly silent on this subject on this blog over the past fortnight, largely because I believed that it would have been somewhat self-indulgent and crass to be commenting on a situation thousands of miles away, during a period of mourning and I remember my annoyance at American commentators pontificating from across the pond about our little local difficulties. But the parallels between the Biblical account of what happened to the children of Bethlehem and what happened in that smalltown school  are painfully obvious for all to see, right down to the fact that most estimates of the number of chil...

A couple of years ago I reposted a pair of Ben Myer's posts, one on sadness (that spoke profoundly to where I was at the time, and where many will be today - indeed I nearly reposted his prayer for Newtown Connecticut ),  and another on "Joy." As I said at the time I firmly believe in what Gerald Coates (always interesting, frequently bonkers) said at one time: "If the joy of the Lord is our strength, it's little wonder that the church in Britain has been so weak and ineffective." Gerald Coates (1984) But recently for some reason this repost has been appearing in the weekly top read list on my side bar, and I thought, in the light of yesterday's Advent Candle theme of "Joy" it was probably worth dusting off Ben's "12 Theses" on the subject. 1. As icons are painted on gold, so the lives of saints are written on a background of light. 2. Evelyn Underhill knew a saintly man, Father Wainwright. ‘He was an indifferent ...

The next in the series of candle liturgies that we will be using tomorrow in Dundonald Methodist. It has an extra poignancy in the light of the events in Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut yesterday evening. A number of people have been tweeting and facebooking Psalm 30:5 'weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning". I would doubt there is much joy in Newtown this morning, or for many mornings to come. But I think that a number of those posting are perhaps influenced by the scene in the West Wing where President Bartlett speaks spontaneously on this verse following a bombing in a college, talking not about retribution but about redeeming a chaotic society, where there is underinvestment in schools and a prevailing culture of violence. Those are words that are appropriate not only in the wake of the atrocity in Newtown, but the violence on our own streets in recent days. Over the past two weeks we have lit the first two candles, one for...