Oxford

Will you pray with me?
Let us pray.

1

God, we pray for the world.

The prayer cycle of the World Council of Churches
reminds us to pray today for the peoples of
Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

We thank you for
the freedom for Christians to worship in Mauritania
even though it is an Islamic country.
We thank you for
those who depend on nomadic ways of life and
continue to retain their ethnic heritage.
We thank you for
those who plant trees to counter the spread of the desert.

We pray for stability in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
We pray for an end to slavery in Mauritania.
We pray for an end to civil war in Chad.

Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
Read the rest of this entry »

Will you pray with me?
Let us pray.

1

God, we pray for the world.

The prayer cycle of the World Council of Churches
reminds us to pray today for the peoples of
Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Equatorial Guinea.
We also pray at this time
for the Democratic Republic of Congo and for Rwanda,
for those people displaced from their homes due to the conflict,
for the peacekeepers and diplomats
working in a difficult situation.

Today we remember all the road traffic victims,
on the day designated for this remembrance.

Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew 25:14–30 (≈ Luke 19:12–27)

I walk down High Street and I see a sign: ‘Good news! Your debts paid – free of charge.’ If I see it in a bank window, I might well think of alerting the Financial Services Authority and the Advertising Standards Authority. But if it says ‘Jesus pays for my debt, and yours too! Come in for the Good News!’ in a church window like ours, I might not think twice. Well, maybe it is time to think twice! Maybe such statements need to be considered not just metaphorically, but literally. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently the Archbishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, Malkhaz Songulashvili, came to Oxford for a study-leave. By Georgia, I mean the one with Saakashvili and Stalin (alas), rather than the one with Jimmy Carter and CNN. That might answer your obvious question…. Further, as to why there is an Archbishop in a Baptist church, please read the church’s website. As to how to address a Baptist Archbishop in the correct style: pass. In any case: sadly, it was during his visit that the Russia–Georgia conflict broke out.
Read the rest of this entry »

Gentle readers will recall that about half a year ago, Barack Obama got into some trouble because of his pastor from a congregation of the United Church of Christ. (Around the same time I also visited a United Church of Christ congregation which was “more liberal than I”.)

Since then, I have attended the United Reformed Church’s General Assembly in which the Reverend Roberta Rominger was inducted as General Secretary of the Britain-wide denomination. I have also attended two induction services (on neighbouring Saturdays): of the Reverend Tanya Stormo Rasmussen to the chaplaincy of Mansfield College, Oxford, a college historically related to the United Reformed Church; and of the Reverend Carla Grosch-Miller to my own church Saint Columba’s. A pattern emerged: all three of them are from the United Church of Christ!

So, gentle readers west of the Atlantic: if in a month’s time you feel an eerie urge to move hitherward, you know where you are sure to find a welcome. But for now, work hard to make yourself comfortable at home for the next few years!

On Saturday, I went to the autumn conference of the Green Party of England and Wales. Not as many hugs as previous ones, but after 35 years, we finally elected our first leader, Caroline Lucas: yay! I also got my copy of the new book Making poverty: a history signed by the author, my friend Tom Lines.

I saw there fellow blogger Jim Jepps of The Daily (Maybe), who (gentle readers will recall) not only mentioned this blog in the Guide to Political Blogging in the UK last year, but also said that we were “extra-respectable”. (Thanks, Jim!) This year we were not mentioned in the text, but remain in the listing of political blogs.

In other news, thanks to the efforts of Jim and other Green blogging-activists, a Green Party bloggers home was launched at the conference! My little bit of contribution was to buy the domain name….

Non-political news: If our gentle western-Atlantic readers ever visit our humble town of Oxford, be sure to visit the café Vaults and Gardens next to the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, run by local entrepreneur Will Pouget of French aristocratic stock. Most of the food there is local, organic, and/or Fairtrade, and there will always be a vegetarian/vegan option. His newest venture is a healthy “kebab van”, which has already been reported locally in the Oxford Times and nationally in the Daily Telegraph.

Cutting greenhouse emissions by…
20 % by 2020 (30 % if global pact): European Union
30 % by 2020; 60 % to 80 % by 2050 at 1 % global GDP: Stern Report
60 % by 2050: Climate Change Bill (United Kingdom) (as it stands)
80 % by 2050: Stop Climate Chaos, Barack Obama
90 % by 2030: Operation Noah, Green Party of England and Wales
100 % by 2027: Zero Carbon Britain
(Thanks to Peter Lornie and Martin Hodson for discussions at the John Ray Initiative online forum.)

Comparing road fatalities and homicides
in the Thames Valley Police area

(Thanks for Lynda Boodell at Thames Valley Police for researching this Freedom of Information request.)

P&C contributor Kaihsu Tai had a letter in yesterday’s Guardian:

Don Touhig and the Co-operative party’s People’s Rail campaign (Letters, June 25) has no credibility. The party is the junior partner in government with Labour, which has already had a decade to sort out the railways by reversing privatisation. As taxpayers, the citizens are already “shareholding members” of Network Rail. Adding another layer of membership is not going to make it a “mutual” - any more than an NHS trust becoming a foundation trust (with nominal, non-shareholding membership). The Co-op needs to break from its electoral pact with Labour and cooperate with voices for real collective change.
Kaihsu Tai, Janet Warren, Sid Phelps
Oxfordshire Green party

As usual with British politics, I have no idea what is going on.

On 19 June, a plaque commemorating the Oxfordshire martyrs of the Reformation, both Catholic and Protestant, was unveiled in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, by the Chancellor of the University, Lord Patten of Barnes. The names were researched by Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch.

That evening was the launch of the Oxford Council of Faiths. I did not attend, because it clashed with the monthly business meeting of the Oxfordshire Green Party.

On Saturday 7 June, I marched with many Zimbabweans in Oxford before the extraordinary provincial meeting of the Movement for Democratic Change (United Kingdom and Ireland). Please pray for the presidential run-off in Zimbabwe on Friday 27 June, and help in any way you see appropriate.