The Bishop of London was speaking as guidance was issued by the Church of England to help churches prepare for stage 4 of the Government's roadmap for the lifting of restrictions.Bishop Sarah Mullally, who chairs the Church of England's Recovery Group, said: “The relaxation of restrictions on Monday is only possible because of the vaccination programme which has reduced the percentage of those with Covid who become seriously ill or die."We are indebted to all who have developed and administered the vaccines and we encourage anyone who has not yet done so to take advantage of the protection they offer. “Many will welcome the possibilities now before us, not least increased numbers at life events and a long awaited return of congregational and amateur choir singing.“However, this is a difficult point in the course of the pandemic. Despite vaccination rates, cases are up, hospital admissions are up and long covid remains an ongoing concern. Therefore our approach needs to be cautious and careful. “Taking personal responsibility means responsibility for our neighbour, not just for ourselves, and taking precautions to protect those more vulnerable than we consider ourselves to be. Local church leaders know their communities and their own circumstances, and we will support them making local decisions to keep themselves and their community safe. We would ask everyone to support those making local decisions and respect risk assessments, which are in place to protect everyone as we enter the next phase.“
The Bishop of Truro, who critiqued the then-Foreign Office’s support for persecuted Christians, has emphasised the need for all 22 of his recommendations to be put into practice.The Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen (see photo) was speaking at a webinar to mark the second anniversary of his independent review for the Foreign Secretary of FCO support for persecuted Christians, which was commissioned by the then-Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.During his remarks, Bishop Mounstephen repeatedly stated the need for all 22 of the review’s recommendations to be implemented by next summer, as the government has promised.The Tablet understands that there are concerns about the government’s commitment, although a government spokesperson has insisted that it is confident that it will meet its target.At last Thursday’s webinar, Bishop Mounstephen noted steps the government has taken to engage with Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). He welcomed a decision by the UK government to host an international ministerial conference on FoRB in London next year, and a decision by the government in early 2020 to become a founder member of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance when it was set up in February 2020.Fiona Bruce MP, the government’s special envoy on FoRB – a role created in response to the review – outlined other steps the government has taken. She said that FoRB “was included in the recent integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, and is a key part of the Foreign Secretary’s Force for Good agenda”. She added that last month FoRB was mentioned in the G7 leaders’ communique´ for the first time.However, Coptic Archbishop Angaelos of London criticised the government’s cuts to the foreign aid budget. He said aid given to the most vulnerable “empowers them ... against those who persecute them”.Meanwhile, Bishop Mounstephen restated his criticism of the government’s long-held mantra that aid should be distributed on the basis of “need not creed ... Because that mantra fails to recognise how creed, or indeed not having a creed, creates very significant need. Being faith-blind means we can simply be blind to injustice, and that is not good enough.”
BEFORE the pandemic, about one third of church leaders across the denominations had never used email or newsletters to communicate with their congregation, and most had never used Zoom, a new survey suggests.Half had never used the phone to keep in touch with their flock before the national lockdown forced churches to close.The online survey of 1132 respondents from Anglican (508), Baptist (147), Independent (114), Methodist (110), and Roman Catholic (39) churches, among others, was carried out by the Bible Society in May. It was commissioned by the church insurers Ecclesiastical and seen by the <em>Church Times</em> this week.More than 90 per cent of respondents (1059) said that they had used at least one way of communicating with their congregations which they had not used before March 2020 — most commonly: Zoom (986), phone calls (505), Facebook or Facebook live (364/272), email (443), and a physical or electronic newsletter (422).Other methods of communicating adopted by churches during the pandemic included meeting in-person from a safe distance (266), video chat (142), Twitter (48), and Instagram (35).Most of these channels of communication were used for the first time between March and June 2020, when churches were closed to worshippers and the public (News, 23 March 2020). A small proportion were introduced during the second or third lockdowns (between November 2020 and April 2021) when new rules permitted church buildings to reopen for worship (News, 23 June 2020).The Rector of St Edmund’s, Taverham, in Norfolk, the Revd Paul Seabrook, has been live-streaming informal worship and communion services since 22 March 2020. He said on Tuesday: “At the height of the pandemic, we were getting over 100 visits to our Facebook page a day, ten times as many as beforehand. We’ve had people tuning in from all over the country and even as far away as Arizona.“By using social media, we’ve been able to reach many more people than ever came through the actual church door each week; so it’s definitely something we’re looking to continue offering.”Out of the 1108 people who responded to a question on the impact of these new methods on service attendance, 172 said that they had seen a significant increase; 310 had seen a slight increase; 217 had seen no difference; and 186 did not know what the impact had been.Mr Seabrook has also used Zoom to host weekly coffee mornings and Bible-study sessions, besides providing for people without internet access through printed orders of service. “We’ve seen how effective online services can be, and we’ve invested in some new equipment to help is offer a higher-quality experience for everyone tuning in — but we haven’t lost sight of the fact that our church is for everyone, and not everyone can access the internet.”More than half the respondents (599) had invested money in implementing new forms of communication: for most, this was spent on live-streaming technology (358), cameras (325), or sound equipment (298). Most (738) said that the equipment would continue to be used when the restrictions ended; 87 said that it wouldn’t; and 315 said that they hadn’t thought about it.Most people who said that they would continue to use the technology would do so to stream live services (705); of the 105 who said the opposite, most (59) said that this was because the congregation wanted to resume in-person worship.Out of a set list of activities, which did not include live-streaming services, the newly adopted technology had mainly been used to hold PCC meetings (918 out of 993 responses). Other popular uses listed included hosting public events such as carol services (388), remote choir practice (141), or fund-raising activities (129).Of the 57 people who said that they had not adopted any new forms of communication during the pandemic, 16 gave a lack of expertise as a reason. Others reported a lack of experience (15) and equipment (11), and having a congregation that was not “tech-savvy” (19).The church-operations director at Ecclesiastical Insurance, Michael Angell, said: “Even though many churches are now open again, it is encouraging to see that they plan to continue with these new channels and in doing so welcome their audiences, both new and old, back into their churches.”
Every morning during the 1966 World Cup campaign, Norbert Peter Patrick Paul “Nobby” Stiles would rise early and walk the short distance from the England team hotel in Hendon to St Edward the Confessor’s church in Golder’s Green to attend mass. It’s said that on the morning of the final itself he made his Confession and was therefore in a state of grace before locking horns with Wolfgang Overath and Franz Beckenbauer on the hallowed turf of Wembley.Stiles was a product of the working-class Irish suburbs of Manchester, and became a fixture in the great United teams managed by Sir Matt Busby – another daily Massgoer and son of the Irish diaspora (who held a Papal Knighthood alongside the “K” he received from Queen Elizabeth). There were several more players of Irish extraction in England’s 1966 squad: Gerry Byrne, John Connelly and Ian Callaghan (not to mention Peter Bonetti, whose family were Swiss Italians) and the Irish immigrant backgrounds of many of the current England team are striking: Kalvin Phillips’ mum is Irish and Harry Kane’s dad is from Galway, Harry Maguire’s grandparents come from Northern Ireland, while Declan Rice’s come from Cork – and not only did Jack Grealish (like Rice) represent Ireland in his youth, but he was a talented childhood GAA player too.If anything, Stiles’ religiosity was more unusual for a footballer then than it is now (although Jack Charlton seemed to offer up thanks at the final whistle, and his boss at Leeds, Don Revie, would surprise his roommates by kneeling in prayer at bedtime). For not only have football matches become increasingly liturgical – barely a week goes by without a minute’s silence, or a minute’s applause, black armbands, rainbow laces and compulsory poppies, and now the players actually genuflect before every game – but the faith of the players themselves is more obvious too.Raheem Sterling, Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford are all practising Christians – recalling a time when muscular Christianity sprouted football teams across the country, including Everton, Southampton, Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers; and in Rashford’s case his effective campaign to provide free school meals had echoes of the <em>Poor Children’s Dinner Table</em>, a charity in Glasgow founded by an Irish Marist brother, which became Glasgow Celtic FC.Both Rashford and Raheem Sterling have spoken movingly about the grinding childhood poverty that shaped them. Sterling’s experiences were almost Dickensian, for after his father was murdered in Jamaica, his mother brought the family to England to find a better life. This entailed working several jobs simultaneously to make extra money to pay for her degree, and the England midfielder has written that “I’ll never forget waking up at five in the morning before school and helping her clean the toilets at the hotel in Stonebridge. I’d be arguing with my sister, like, “No! No! You got the toilets this time. I got the bed sheets.”But the boys of 1966 were no stranger to hardship: Martin Peters had been evacuated from the East End of London during the Blitz; Ray Wilson had “Egypt never again” tattooed on his arm after an unhappy spell in the army in the 1950s; and Gordon Banks’ brother was mugged and killed when he was a child, and Banks himself built his upper strength through the hard graft of coal-heaving and hod-carrying before he turned professional.It’s noticeable that the geographical spread of English footballing talent is now more evenly spread than it was 55 years ago (eight of the starting 11 in 1966 had been born in the North; compared to six northerners in the 2021 final side), but I’ve been pleased to see that the Great Northern Coalfield is still represented, as it always is in great England teams: in 1966 it was via the Charlton brothers from Northumberland, and in 2021 we have two Jordans from Sunderland, Pickford and Henderson (with the ‘Gateshead Guardiola’, Graeme Jones, pulling the strings on the training ground).Although the class profile of football supporters has changed a lot since the 1960s, the team itself seems as resolutely working-class as it ever was – there was no space in the squad for the genuinely posh Patrick Bamford of Leeds United (of the JCB digger dynasty), a public school footballer in the mould of Frank Lampard – whose A* in Latin GCSE probably made him the most accomplished Latinist to play for England since C. B. Fry.Class still marks out the parameters of English sport in a way that doesn’t pertain in the rest of Europe. (Indeed, appearing in the Italian dugout on Sunday night was Gianluca Vialli, a man who grew up in the Castello di Belgioioso, a 60-room palace outside Cremona.) And this brings us to the England managers of 1966 and 2021. Both Alf Ramsey and Gareth Southgate are the products of new towns in the suburban South East, growing up in the modest suburbia of Dagenham and Crawley respectively. Alf Ramsey was famously up-tight about class signifiers: taking elocution lessons, and digging out a bowler hat for the visit of the Queen to Ipswich Town when he was manager there.Gareth Southgate seems more comfortable in his own skin, and has handled the task of managing England amid an all-consuming culture war with rare adroitness. It’s hard to imagine what Sir Alf would have thought about taking the knee, although Southgate was careful to cite his grandfather “a fierce patriot and a proud military man, who served during World War II” – just like Quartermaster Sergeant Ramsey himself in fact – as the wellspring of his values.As well as their obvious patriotism, both men share a talent for meticulous man-management that have moulded great loyalty and fondness among their players, even if Southgate’s side were unable to win their final. For Ramsey was far from the aloof and detached figure of caricature, in fact, many of his players spoke of the respect and even love they felt for Sir Alf. This generation of England players and fans have found a figurehead who inspires similar esteem and affection – a man who may yet become Sir Gareth, and who all England fans hope will go the final step at next year’s World Cup in Qatar, and bring it home again.
