Minister’s Message – Christmas Day

I wonder how many of us watch the TV show “Who do you think you are?” If you’ve never seen it, let me tell you that it’s an ‘ancestry; programme in which celebrities examine their family histories. Not every episode is interesting but some are absolutely fascinating; I particularly remember one about Stephen Fry; he may appear to be a quintessential English gentleman but his maternal grandparents were Slovakian Jews who in 1927 were ‘head-hunted’ to come to Britain and run the new sugar factory in Bury St Edmunds. That saved their lives as many of their relatives later perished in the Nazi death camps. I wonder how many of us have traced back our own family histories and, if so, how far we’ve managed to get: a century, two centuries, or even more?

Minister’s Message – Christmas Eve

Over the last few years the “Songs of Praise” TV programme, the BBC Classical Music Magazine and the Classic FM radio station have all run opinion polls, trying to find out which Christmas carol is Britain’s favourite. I suspect that the outcome of these surveys has a lot to do with who’s being asked, but the results are surprisingly consistent. One carol that is always at, or near, the top of the list is “In the bleak midwinter”. And many of you will agree with one enthusiastic writer who asked, “Does any other carol get to the very heart of Christmas as understatedly but effectively as this?” and went on to declare that “Christina Rossetti’s poem is nigh-on perfect as a carol text”.

Minister’s Message – December 18, 2022

The news has been filled recently by what we might call small-scale tragedies. Among other sad happenings there were the fishermen who drowned when their boat collided with a ferry off the coast of Jersey and the would-be migrants who died when their dinghy capsized in the English Channel. The island of Jersey itself saw the devastating gas explosion which demolished a block of flats in the early hours of one morning and killed nine people. We heard about that house fire in Pembrokeshire where a husband and wife perished, of the two small boys apparently murdered in east London, and the revellers killed and injured in the concert crush in Brixton. And, of course, we were all shocked by the deaths of the children who fell through the ice on the lake in Solihull – an appalling story, albeit tinged with heroism.

Minister’s Message- December 4, 2022

“Voices in the wilderness”.

In autumn 1931 the great Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi visited Britain. His passion for independence, his advocacy of fair trade and support for the poor were already known, and the visit was a personal triumph, widely reported in the media. During Gandhi’s time in Britain he met national figures such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lloyd George and Charlie Chaplin, and visited centres of learning and culture such as Oxford, Cambridge and Eton. True to his ideals, he also went to poor places including London’s East End and the mill towns of Lancashire, still in the grip of Depression, where he was received with enthusiasm. The one person who refused to meet Gandhi was Winston Churchill, who sneeringly called him a “rebel fakir”.