"May they all be one..."

Saturday was the day for the annual Sponsored Ride (or walk) in aid of Gloucestershire Historic Churches Trust, and a beautiful day it was too! After all the rain we have had, many prayers were no doubt offered - and they were answered.

At about 12.30, Fr. Tom Smith and I set off from home (Tom on Caroline's bike), and by the time we returned at 4, we had notched up 21 local church buildings on our list. (I have made a photographic record for my sponsors - see here). There are of course many more than that in Cheltenham, altogether. Ten of those we visited were locked, and there was a wedding at Christ Church, but we were able to see inside the other ten.

Very interesting it was. A huge amount of love is lavished on our churches - not to mention money; but to what end? Today, society in general is Godless. Children are not taught to pray. The Ten Commandments? How many can name them all, or even a few?

"See how these Christians love one another," pagans would say in the early days; but how can we love one another if we don't so much as acknowledge that we are part of the same faith-based community? Are we not spending too much time conserving our historic church properties, at the expense of the Christian mission, "Go and teach all nations"?

I echo the words written following a visit to Rome more than fifty years ago by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, in a letter to the subsequent pope, Paul VI, "I am sure that such personal contacts as we enjoyed during this visit are the best way of creating that spirit of love and understanding between members of different theological traditions which is a prerequisite for closer unity in the future."

Concert at St Gregory's, Cheltenham

Sussex Voiceworks performed in my church yesterday afternoon - a varied (and interesting) programme including Bob Chilcott's Little Jazz Mass and excerpts from Karl Jenkins' disturbing millennial work, The Armed Man.

I thought the best part of the event was hearing in St Gregory's - as a building, pretty much a bastion of pre-Vatican Catholicism - music of another, close-to-home ("sorella chiesa" in the words of Paul VI in 1966) Christian tradition, all composed in the 150 years since our beautiful church was built, and indicating an aesthetic vibrancy in Anglicanism that we are almost entirely lacking in our happy-clappy-if-anything Catholic church. Sitting with my Anglican wife, I was grateful for this introduction to a way of approaching God via some (to me) unfamiliar routes.

It was good too to hear the music of two Gloucestershire-born composers, Gurney and Vaughan Williams. And to see that another - Howard Goodall - had a new work premiered at last week's Chipping Campden festival.

Finally, what a great acoustic St Greg's has!