NEWS
At the Annual Meeting of Parishioners on 18th April Diana stood down as churchwarden and was thanked for her outstanding contribution to the running of the church. In Diana’s place Cheryl was elected for a second stint as churchwarden. At the APCM David Ulph was elected and welcomed to the PCC, and he also becomes assistant treasurer.
Palm Crosses were distributed to the congregation on Palm Sunday. The altar was stripped for Good Friday and dressings restored for Easter Day, when beautiful floral displays returned to the church once more.
On the day of the Equinox 14 visitors witnessed a half-hearted display from the sinking sun. Some, including a group from the Henley Mothers’ Union near Ipswich stayed for a ‘walk and talk’ around the church.
Cheryl welcomes additional participants for her walk around Barsham on Sunday 28th April with the Hempnall Walking Group. Meet at the church at 2pm for 4-5 miles walk, finishing back at the church for tea at 4pm.
Thanks to a number of generous donations, Dominique can go ahead with the installation of swift boxes in the belfry. A Bluetooth speaker is needed to transmit swift calls to attract the birds: if anyone has an unused Bluetooth speaker they can lend for the early summer, please contact Dominique (07766 337247).
The sales table organised by Jenny raised a goodly £90.00.
259 items were gratefully received by the Food Bank in March. We have been asked to focus our donations for now on tinned meats, beans & sausages, tinned fruit, biscuits, breakfast cereals, dog & cat food, coffee, and small packs of sugar.
FORWARD PLANNING
Sunday service will start at 11.15am on 19th May and 16th June.
The Revd Josh is to be instituted and inducted as Rector at Holy Trinity Bungay on Sunday 16th June. Details to follow.
The annual Summer Lunch at St Bartholomew’s Shipmeadow will take place on Wednesday 17th July by kind invitation of Nick and Jenny Caddick.
SNIPPETS – Some Reflections on Cricket & the Church
The 2024 cricket season commenced on 5th April, and it was fitting that on the following Sunday we sang a hymn by J R Peacey (1896-1971), one of many clergymen who have played first-class cricket. The Rev Canon John Peacey played cricket for Sussex in the early 1920s, before becoming a missionary in India and Headmaster of Bishop’s College, Calcutta. His contemporary the Rev Canon Howard Gaunt (1902-1983), whose hymns also appear in our hymnal, was another clergyman-schoolmaster and a Warwickshire cricketer. Gaunt’s Warwickshire team-mate, the Revd Canon Jack Parsons MC (1890-1981), was a fine batsman who scored 17,969 runs (including 38 centuries) for the county between 1910 and 1934. The Revd Canon Frank Gillingham (1875-1953) was another long-serving county cricketer, playing 181 matches for Essex in a career that spanned a quarter of a century. In 1927 he delivered the first ever ball-by-ball cricket commentary on BBC radio and went on to be chaplain to both George VI and Elizabeth II. The record for the oldest cricketer to play in the County Championship is held by another clergyman, the Rev Reginald Moss (1868-1956) who represented Worcestershire at the age of 57.
A select band of clergymen played Test cricket. Vernon Royle (1854-1929) played in the third ever Test in Australia in 1878/9 and was ordained not long after. Charles Studd (1860-1931) played in the 1882 Test against Australia that became the origin of the Ashes, and shortly afterwards became a missionary. Tom Killick (1907-1953) played in two Tests in 1929, was then ordained but died young during an inter-diocesan cricket match. The only clergyman to play Test cricket whilst ordained was David Sheppard (1929-2005), who played for Sussex and England and captained England in the 1954 Tests against Pakistan. He later became Bishop of Woolwich, Bishop of Liverpool and a life peer.
Whilst cricket is not in itself a specifically Christian activity, cricket and the Church have rubbed shoulders in various ways down the years and the Church of England undoubtedly played a strong role in the development of the game. Approximately a third of all Oxford and Cambridge cricket blues between 1860 and 1900 were later ordained to the clergy, and no other team sport has attracted the active participation of so many clergymen. Indeed, the Victorian clergy saw cricket as a game with a high moral code, capable of developing a player's character. In his 1982 essay Cricket and the Victorians, Keith Sandiford argued that the Victorian clergy gave cricket their unqualified blessing. Cricket became a vehicle for interaction between the Church and society and was used in some contexts to encourage church attendance. By the early 20th century, church cricket teams, drawn from church congregations and Sunday schools, were common. In 1920s Lancashire, church cricket teams accounted for 70 of 134 teams in and around Bolton, and for 107 of the 129 teams in Burnley. In 1922 there were 83 teams in the Burnley and District Sunday Schools League. In his 1999 book Cricket and England, 1919-1939, Jack Williams explains that ‘most Sunday school leagues and most church clubs had rules insisting that all players attended church or Sunday school regularly’.
From the mid-19th century, in many people’s minds cricket became synonymous with Christian values. In Victorian literature cricket was sometimes used as a form of allegory for the Christian life. In Henry Drummond’s story Baxter’s Second Innings (Hodder, 1892), for instance, the bowler is called ‘Temptation’ and the batsman has three stumps to defend - truth, honour and purity. In Thomas Waugh’s The Cricket Field of the Christian Life (1910), the Christian life is described figuratively through cricketing terminology, life being a spiritual battle, ‘the Test match of all Test matches’ between Christ’s team and the Devil’s.
The Victorian notion of ‘Muscular Christianity’, with its emphasis on the moral and religious value of sport, was promoted by churches and schools. St Paul, after all, had used sporting metaphors in his Epistles to describe the discipline of the Christian life: ‘If anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules’ (2 Timothy 2:5); ‘I have fought the good fight; I have finished the course; I have kept the faith’ (2 Timothy 4:7). Until well into the 20th century the majority of public and grammar schools were run by ordained headmasters, many of whom promoted the ethos of Muscular Christianity and with it the game of cricket, which became a central pillar of school sporting culture. It should not go unmentioned then, that we have in our own congregation a former first-class cricketer and schoolmaster in Vincent Cushing, who as an Oxford blue was invited to play for Lancashire. He retains a fund of entertaining anecdotes from his cricketing days well worth hearing.
MAY DIARY
Sunday 5th May – Sixth Sunday of Easter. 11am Sung Eucharist (BCP). Revd Jonathan Olanczuk.
Sunday 12th May – Seventh Sunday of Easter. 11am Sung Eucharist (BCP). Revd Canon John Fellows.
Sunday 19th May – Pentecost. 11.15am Sung Eucharist (BCP). Revd Desmond Banister.
Sunday 26th May – Trinity Sunday, Patronal Festival. 11am Sung Eucharist (BCP). Revd Josh Bailey & 6.30pm Patronal Evensong. Revd Josh Bailey.
Wednesdays at 8.45am – Matins at Barsham, but not on 1st May.