The Revd Marcus Walker is Rector of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, London.
When the Roman Emperor Justinian finished building the Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople in 537 he compared it to the great temple in Jerusalem. ‘Solomon, I have surpassed thee,’ he declared. Some 400 years later, as visiting ambassadors from Kyiv were led into the same ethereal structure, they remarked: ‘We did not know if we
What a clash of the titans we witnessed at the weekend. The Lionesses vs Divine Worship on a Sunday morning. An unfortunate conflict of timings meant that just as the England women’s football team were limbering up to kick the first ball in Australia, church services in England were launching into their first hymn. The
‘And girls in slacks remember Dad, And oafish louts remember Mum, And sleepless children’s hearts are glad. And Christmas-morning bells say “Come!” Even to shining ones who dwell Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.’ ‘Christmas’. This poem by Betjeman conjures the magic of the season; conveys in its beat the sense of summons to the place
Thursday was a curious day for us all. Anyone watching the news was treated to the complexity of commentators trying desperately hard not to say the thing that everyone watching knew was happening: that the Queen was dying, and was possibly already dead. The black ties around the presenters’ necks, the emergency flights from London
Bishops are in the news at the moment. They have outraged No. 10 with their opposition to the policy of deporting potential asylum seekers and other migrants to Rwanda. Government ministers are said to be muttering darkly about evicting the Bishops from the House of Lords, effectively disestablishing the Church of England in revenge. This
I am a key limiting factor. That’s a new one for a clergyman of the Church of England. We’ve traded under parson, cleric, priest, minister, padre and even pie-and-liquor, but never before have I heard us described as ‘key limiting factors’. That this phrase was used during the announcement of a new C of E-endorsed scheme —
This has been a tough year for everyone. Death, mental collapse, grief, unemployment. In my church we’ve lost people to Covid — one of the earliest victims was a regular at our 9 a.m. Communion. We’ve lost people to mental health — one of the homeless men who came to our services, and who used
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. This Remembrance Sunday will be like no other, but one thing will stay constant: these lines, by Laurence Binyon,
That the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. There are few clauses of Magna Carta that are still in force today. Most have been whittled away by the stultifying hands of generations of bureaucrats. But one clause still stands in its in 800-year-old majesty: that
‘So when did your family convert to Christianity?’ asked an American General early on in the occupation of Iraq. ‘About two thousand years ago,’ replied the Iraqi. The Middle Eastern culture and context of Christ is something that the Western Church seems happy to forget. That Jesus was very specifically a Jew is something we
