A memorial stone to writer and scholar CS Lewis is to be placed in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in 2013.
A service will take place on 22 November 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of his death.
Excellent news! We have exactly one year to wait for the big day – which I hope won’t be overshadowed by the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who the very next day. (Oh, and some President was assassinated, but will anyone remember that?) Thanks to Vernon White, Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey and an old friend from my Clare College, Cambridge (not sure if he will remember me!), for apparently being one of the driving forces behind this. Lewis well deserves his place among the greats of British literature.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
If we replace “gods” with the three persons of the Trinity, is this what is happening to the Church of England?
Certainly the church seems to have gone mad. Having decided in principle that it wants women as bishops, it has spent years going round in circles trying to find an acceptable formula for this, only to reject its chosen formula today, by a narrow margin. That is not the action of a sane and rational body. And it is a sad farewell for outgoing Archbishop Rowan Williams.
I’m not quite saying that today’s vote was irrational, because it may be that the proposed compromise with opponents was so insane that it was rational to reject it. Surely one can doubt the sanity of anyone who tries to push through a compromise which is completely rejected by one of the parties involved. But would that party have accepted any compromise?
It seems to me that the only way ahead now is the one suggested by Sam Norton in his post Please can we now do women bishops the right way? There is no future in trying to compromise between black and white. As the Apostle Paul asked, “what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14, NIV) Of course, each side will say that they are light and their opponents are darkness, but that just proves the point. So, just as on the first day of creation God “separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4), at this point there needs to be not a compromise but a separation. We just need to make sure that the kinds of procedures Sam outlines are followed. Then, unlike what has happened in The Episcopal Church in the USA, the separation can hopefully be an amicable one which does not lead to lawsuits and mutual anathemas.
Of course if the Trinity really wishes to destroy the Church of England, no human scheme will be able to preserve it. But it may not be too late for that body to repent, put its house in order, and find itself again under God’s blessing. Archbishop-elect Justin Welby looks like a good choice of leader for this difficult task. Today’s vote will have made the task harder, but the long term result just may be a cleaner and so stronger Church of England.
If not, read on! I am deliberately posting this just after the polls close here in Virginia (although they are still open further west) as I don’t want to seen as trying to influence the result. But I don’t yet know any results, or even any reliable predictions.
It is an interesting experience to observe an election here in the USA, and in one of the key swing states. Actually this is not for the first time – I was in North Carolina for my Bible translation work during the 2000 election. I don’t have a vote, as I am not a US citizen. But I do have an interest in the result, as a taxpayer and husband of a business owner in the USA.
If I had had a vote and had decided on the basis of self-interest, that might not have been what some would expect, as for better or for worse the economy of this region is highly dependent on federal government money. In fact I would have decided more on principle, but I don’t want to turn this post into a partisan one by explaining that further.
In this area the streets and country roads are, or until very recently were, lined with election posters. Not surprisingly, as this is a relatively conservative rural area, the majority of the signs have been for Romney. But there are also a good number of Obama supporters in this small city.
Meanwhile our home telephone, which we hardly use (but have to have to get home internet), has been ringing regularly with election calls. Most seem to have been from the Republicans. Indeed yesterday I put the phone down on Mitt Romney. This was partly because he called me “Jennifer”. Well, I guess it wasn’t really him, but a recording. I would have done the same if Barack Obama had called, but perhaps not quite so quickly!
I haven’t watched much TV, but the little I have seen has been punctuated with very regular political commercials. Also the TV channels are said to be highly politically polarized.
Today, election day, I have been shocked by the allegations of fraud and attempted manipulation of the polls. I suspect that these allegations, on both sides, have been exaggerated. I am also shocked by the threats of some that there will be violence if their favored candidate loses, but I would think these are also exaggerated – but we may see quite soon.
So all in all watching this election has been an interesting experience, but not really very different from a British one. I guess the real difference has been the sheer amount of money spent, largely on TV ads. I’m glad political ads are not allowed in the UK, and that the broadcast news media at least try to be politically neutral.
Finally, I would like to quote something I wrote in a comment here on the day President Obama was elected:
I consider an issue to be a real issue in an election when one or other of the candidates has made it a real issue and proposed specific action on it. As far as I can tell neither Obama nor McCain proposed any action which would have any definite effect on the number or wrongness of abortions in the USA. This was only an issue for those who chose to make it an issue, and were perhaps dreaming that VP Palin or supreme court judges whom McCain might have appointed might do something about abortion, which is in practice highly unlikely to have happened. Perhaps slightly more likely is that Obama’s social policies will have a side effect of reducing abortion, but for that we can only hope and pray. But I do consider it irresponsible that many Christians were deciding their vote largely on the abortion issue when in fact there was so little to distinguish the candidates on this issue.
It seems to me that exactly the same is true of this election, if you replace “McCain” with “Romney” and “Palin” with “Ryan”. So, I repeat, I consider it irresponsible that many Christians are deciding their vote largely on the abortion issue when in fact there is so little to distinguish the main candidates on this issue. Well, it is too late now – but a recent tweet suggesting that evangelicals in Virginia are staying at home may suggest that this factor is less important than it might have been.
The BBC reports that
