Few visitors to a cathedral would expect to see a 26 metre long dinosaur in the nave – but that is just what has been pulling in the crowds keen to see the much loved 'Dippy the Diplodocus' from the Natural History Museum, London.Canon Andy Bryant of Norwich Cathedral explained that the Natural History Museum had sent “Dippy” the dinosaur on a national tour, with the emphasis on education, after it had been removed from its original hall due to a reorganisation."The Bishop of Norwich is the Church of England lead for environmental issues. We put in a bid as the venue for the Eastern region on a three-fold basis – the relationship between faith and science, climate change and issues of food sustainability.”Dippy (see photo) has been dominating the cathedral's nave all summer. Thousands of people have visited him, including more than 7,000 school children as part of an integrated schools programme. Visitors are encouraged to consider and engage with the issues surrounding Dippy - with giant dinosaur footprints and adjacent displays opening doors to further discussions - and there have also been reflective talks focusing on climate change and spiritual theology. Visitors have also been encouraged to make pledges for the planet and, to date, nearly 10,000 pledges have been made. One of the most striking is a specially commissioned walk through sculpture of a giant wave shimmering with fish designed to encourage reflection on the regenerative power of the sea, and our dependence on healthy waters. Every part of the sculpture will eventually be recycled, with the fish being sold in aid of the Cathedral. The base of the sculpture leads visitors from a polluted seabed through to pristine prehistoric sands – school children have had to be stopped from removing the rubbish because they thought it shouldn’t be there. Visitors have been moved to tears. Access to Dippy has been made as extensive as possible within the wider community, encouraging everyone to visit the cathedral. “Our aim has been to extend the demographics of those who come to the cathedral," said Canon Andy Bryant. "We have had visually impaired groups, intergenerational sessions involving care homes and children at the same time, autism friendly sessions. We have built links with these groups and we intend to build on those links in future."As Dippy’s departure from Norwich looms, the cathedral is intent on maximising community involvement.“We are aiming to make our farewell to Dippy a big bang, attracting as many people as possible," said Canon Bryant. "People who have been here before, people who have not seen him yet, and people who can see him in new ways. We are planning to illuminate Dippy imaginatively in blue lights every evening during his last week.”
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has urged Christians and Muslims to work together in the cause of peace, acknowledging that, at times in the past, Christians had failed to live up to the ideals of their faith in encounters with Islam.Archbishop Welby’s call came in a sermon at All Saints’ Cathedral, Cairo, during a service of thanksgiving for the new Anglican/Episcopal Province of Alexandria.“Christians are to be part of a Church that is told to conquer with love and peace,” he said. “Never, never with a sword, a bomb, or a plot. Either Christians demonstrate the truth of God or they demonstrate nothing by the quality of their lives.“And I say to our dear friends from the Islamic community: how often have Christians got this wrong. Our history is one of the tragic sin of force. Let us be people of peace together.”The new Province of Alexandria, Archbishop Welby said, “covers a huge area, from the waves of the Atlantic to the beaches of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. It has a history of learning, looks south into Africa and east to the Holy Lands, north to Europe. A thousand years ago, this area preserved medicine and learning. Today, Egypt has again found its historic place as a place of meeting, of refuge.”The Archbishop of Alexandria, Dr Samy Fawzy, was installed earlier this year; the service for the launch of the Province was postponed because of the pandemic. The Province of Alexandria, headed by Egypt, incorporates nine other countries: Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia.Archbishop Welby said that the diversity in the new Province reflected that of the Anglican Church as a whole, and went on: “We are to be a Church that is full of difference. In this Province, you are to be united from the villages of Gambella to the apartments and towns of Cairo and Egypt, to the luxurious hotels on the Mediterranean coast. We are to be one, with our differences.”On his arrival in Egypt, Archbishop Welby visited the ancient monastery of St Macarius, in Wadi Natrun, 60 miles north-west of Cairo. He wrote on Twitter that it was inspiring to begin his visit at a monastery “founded in 360 AD. Very moving to pray in this ancient place. . . Excellent spiritual conversation with the monks here.”The Archbishop then visited the Harpur Memorial Hospital, in Menouf, which was founded in 1910 by an Irish missionary, Dr Frank Harpur. The Archbishop opened a new wing for the pre-term-infants nursery. In a speech, he referred to the fact that, before the founding of the hospital, Dr Harpur had treated poor Egyptians from a boat on the Nile — “a beautiful symbol that reminds us of stories from the Bible such as Noah’s Ark and the story of Moses.”“The diocese of Egypt runs this excellent hospital,” he wrote on Twitter, “and it’s an example of the role that Anglicans play in healthcare in many countries. Christ’s love in action.”During his four-day visit to Egypt, Archbishop Welby had meetings with a range of religious leaders, including the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria. He wrote on Twitter that he was “very glad to have this time of conversation and prayer with him today. We give thanks for our beloved brothers and sisters in the Coptic Church and their faithful witness to Jesus Christ.”Accompanied by Dr Fawzy, Archbishop Welby had talks with the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Shawky Allam, and Ahmed al-Tayeb, Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, the main seat of Sunni Islamic scholarship. “At this time of great crises in our world,” the Archbishop wrote after the meeting, “it’s especially important that we keep building bridges of friendship across different faiths. Grateful for the Grand Imam of al-Azhar’s deep commitment to this vision.”During a press conference at All Saints’ Cathedral, Archbishop Welby was asked about a developing crisis between Egypt and Ethiopia over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile (News, 6 August). Egyptians fear that the dam could threaten the flow of Nile water into Egypt on which the country is overwhelmingly reliant. Talks involving Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan have failed to resolve differences on this issue.Archbishop Welby said that water resources were not the sole property of individual countries, and he appealed “to the Ethiopian government to show that they will use the dam responsibly, caring for their neighbours downstream. Please show that this dam is not a reason to worry.”
The Bishop of Durham has called for the government to reinstate the universal credit uplift, saying it would be a "right and proper thing to do".It follows the withdrawal of the £20-a-week increase that had been brought in to help people during the pandemic.The Right Reverend Paul Butler (see photo) says the impact will be severe, plunging more people into debt and poverty.A government spokesperson said the increase was always going to be a "temporary measure".Bishop Butler said: "The uplift has been so significant for many families... and families are facing bigger gas, food and electricity bills."Simply, families tell us they've only been able to make ends meet due to the extra £20, it needs to stay in place otherwise they risk going back into poverty."There were particular worries about the impact on children's health and wellbeing, he added.Along with 13 other senior North East church and faith leaders, he has signed an open letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer appealing for the uplift to continue. <span style="font-size: 1rem;">Downing Street said the universal credit top-up, which has cost £6bn, was always a "temporary measure".</span>A government spokesperson said the focus was now on "helping people back into high-quality, well-paid jobs", and "universal credit will continue to provide vital support".
I came late to church-crawling. While my Seventies Catholic upbringing in Liverpool placed a very high premium on what felt like constant attendance at the local parish church, the bland 1960s building itself hardly spoke to me of history or wider context in any obvious way.Fast forward, though, to a family holiday in north Norfolk in 2006. Within a stone’s throw of where we were staying was the most exquisite 15th-century church. Inside I discovered angels floating on the ceiling, a medieval rood screen was probably the oldest thing I had ever touched, and I encountered my first-ever 500-year-old wine-glass pulpit.Like the angels, I have since spread my church-crawling wings, and now take any opportunity when away to wander into a local country church to find out what it can tell me — about its history, and that of those who have worshipped there for centuries.It was the fittings and fixtures that initially kept drawing me back, but soon I found myself also trying to assemble in my head a bigger picture that placed each church and what it contained in a timeline of both ecclesiastical and national history.St Faith’s at Bacton in Herefordshire, a beautiful but simple 13th-century building, is at first glance as far removed from the turmoil of the Reformation and the royal court blood-letting that accompanied it as can be imagined. Yet it contains a rare and intriguing treasure in the first-known depiction of Elizabeth I as Gloriana, symbol of her nation.It is part of a monument commissioned for her own eventual burial by the locally born Blanche Parry, chief gentlewoman of the privy chamber to the Queen and her close confidant. Parry composed the epitaph, which includes the words, “with maiden queen a maid did end her life”, suggesting that Elizabeth was indeed a “virgin queen”, a claim not often heard in present historical orthodoxy.We may no longer be a nation that in practice defines itself in terms of faith, but faith has nonetheless shaped our history, for better or worse. And in the churches where that faith has been practised for hundreds of years is a treasury of real-time history, tangible evidence that sits in our midst, largely unused, often unheralded, in buildings that are ancient and modern, cathedrals and chapels, grand and humble, ruined and thriving.There is very likely one within a church crawl of you right now. And if it is so long since you’ve been in a church that turning up unannounced feels slightly intimidating, don’t be put off. There are plenty of churches that tell the history of where we come from that are now so little used, or even known, that you will most likely have them all to yourself.They offer more than a tale of popes and bishops, dogma and ritual. It is a human story, our story, about the how and the where and the why of the faith of the people over two millennia who have used these buildings, and the ways in which the uses of those buildings reflected the lives and the societies to be found beyond their walls.For example, St Andrew’s (see photo), deep in the Essex countryside at Greensted, is the world’s oldest wooden church dating back to the end of the tenth century, where a peep-hole in the north wall is thought to have been a means of spotting the approach of marauding Vikings, who at the time were coming ashore deep into Essex to plunder and burn.Small details can tell big stories. Being places that have always opened their doors to (almost) all, churches have a rare power to connect us in a tangible way, even in our secular and sceptical times, to the everyday flow of history, and to ask questions about our future. What, for example, will future generations of church-crawlers go to see, touch and know the story of belief in the 21st century?It’s too soon to know, obviously, but here’s a thought. What about an outdoor church, something that is not a building at all in the conventional sense. There is a flourishing theological debate around Christianity’s Bible-derived duty to “stewardship of creation” in the age of climate change. Meanwhile, a small but growing number of believers who reject formal institutional ties instead join with other like-minded individuals at informal, open-ended gatherings that seek the sacred in the natural world, via movements like “Forest Church”.Stranger things have, after all, happened over the past 2,000 years. To learn from them and other less strange aspects of Christian history in the past two millennia is simultaneously to consider where that past has led us to now, as individuals, as congregations or as fairly agnostic but still spiritually curious folk bearing the residual hallmarks of Christianity. And there is no better way of pondering that right now than a church crawl.Peter Stanford’s book If These Stones Could Talk: The History of Christianity in Britain and Ireland through Twenty Buildings is published by Hodder on October 14
