Christianity
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When Queen Victoria was overruled by her local church
Cosmo Gordon Lang made his third visit to Queen Victoria in January 1899. She talked to him about her love of Balmoral and of her attachment to the Church of Scotland which was not diminished by an incident she...
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Christmas with Billy Graham
I should love to have been a fly on the wall when, in 1955, Rev John Stott, Rector of All Souls Church, next to the BBC in Langham Place, London, arranged a meeting between Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis, then a...
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Cosmo’s memories of Queen Victoria
Our present Queen was confirmed by Cosmo Gordon Lang in 1942 in one of his last acts as Archbishop of Canterbury. Maybe, during confirmation classes, Lang shared with the Queen his recollections of spending time with her great great grandmother,...
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The bishop and the calypso king
If you are as old as I am, you will remember the BBC satirical programme That Was The Week That Was, broadcast on Saturday evenings in 1962 and 1963. It was presented by David Frost and starred Millicent Martin,...
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Newman: One step enough for me
Last month I wrote about John Henry Newman’s love of the colours and scents of Devon. In December 1832, with his Devon friends Robert and Hurrell Froude, Newman set off from Falmouth on board the packet ship Hermes bound...
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The saint who loved the colours and scents of Devon
In the early church a common word applied to all believers in Christ was ‘saint’. So when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, he addressed it to ‘all those in Rome who are loved by God and called...
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Life as the sum of relationships
Has the lockdown made you reflect on the importance of friendship, our relationships to one another? One man who thought deeply about this was Mandell Creighton who succeeded Frederick Temple as Bishop of London in 1897. Temple said of...
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Should sermons be scripted?
Last month I wrote about G T Manley who, as a devout Christian, came top of the list of mathematics graduates at Cambridge in 1893, beating the atheist Bertrand Russell. Another very clever Christian was (my hero) Frederick Temple...
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Do very clever people believe in God?
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist and Nobel laureate. There is no doubt that he was very clever. So much so that he achieved the distinction, when the results of the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos were...
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St Helena’s search for the cross
Preparing to visit Jerusalem this Easter I have been fascinated to look into the life of St Helena. Born around the year 255, she became the wife of Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus, by whom she gave birth to Constantine...
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