Churches

Back to schools Sir: I share Lucy Kellaway’s enthusiasm for seeing school-life return and inequality gaps closed (‘A class apart’, 20 June). I was also glad that she debunked the myth that teachers have been on holiday during lockdown. It doesn’t feel like a holiday to me, as I sit contemplating a set of essays, the second set of predicted grades of the year and my annual Ucas references, not to mention daily work postings, live sessions on Microsoft Teams, Zoom staff meetings and a long list of emails. Where we depart is at Lucy’s call for a return to school at all costs, rather than the ‘blended learning’ approach

During these months of inertia, I confess to having on occasion made illicit trips to churches in the English countryside. Enjoying the frisson that surely accompanies all law-breaking, I have often gone so far as the church door, there to examine not only the locks and bolts but also the laminated notices which adorn so many buildings of the Church of England. The other week I visited a 12th-century church whose laminated instructions were an especially fine example of their kind. These signs informed the visitor that the church was closed due to the Covid crisis and that God can of course be worshipped anywhere, but (and this part was

The grumbling of high church clergy should now lessen a bit. They were complaining, in some cases furiously, about the Chuch of England’s decision to go further than the law required when it came to the lockdown, telling clergy not to open their churches at all, and not to broadcast services from them. Some were threatening to re-fight the Reformation over the issue, saying that low-church Welby would really rather preach from his own kitchen than admit that churches are a necessary site of authentic sacramental worship. The Church has now relaxed its rules, allowing vicars to pray in their churches and broadcast services from them. And the Church has started

Last night, when the Prime Minister made his address to the nation he declared that places of worship would be closed – thereby putting churches on the same basis as outdoor gyms. Today a statement from the Ministry for Communities clarified that churches should stay open, for private prayer. All good, Catholics like me thought. We can sit at the back of the church, in the presence of the sacrament, and say a few prayers. Yesterday I dropped into my parish church and I found one other person there, a young man kneeling before the altar, as I’d found him the day before – an oddly moving sight. On Sunday there