Author Archives: revjmorris

            It has been said by many people well placed to know, that Austin Farrer (1904-1968) was probably the finest Anglican theologian of the twentieth century.  I find it very hard to disagree with that.  He has even been called ‘the one true genius’ of the Church of England in that century.  But recognition ofContinue reading “Revisiting Anglican Classics 9: Austin Farrer’s Crown of the Year”

A number of people have asked me if I could describe something of what I observed when, early in October, I travelled in the Caucasus with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in particular what we saw of the unfolding crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh – or rather, its implications for Armenia, since it was of course impossibleContinue reading “Another forgotten war, another forgotten people?”

Never much interested in religious news, unless it also concerns money or sex, the British press showed barely any interest in what was happening in Rome last month.  But it was momentous, and all church people should take note.  It was an extraordinary opening-up of process and consultation in the Catholic Church.   It may beContinue reading “Are the winds of change blowing through the Catholic Church?”

            Barbara Pym’s writing is probably something of an acquired taste.  Her well-observed, delicate, deceptively light and funny novels are steeped in the world of the churchgoing middle class she knew so well.  You can read them just as a gentle sending up of that world, almost like a comedy of manners.  Very little reallyContinue reading “Revisiting Anglican Classics 8: Barbara Pym”

This is probably going to be one of the more contentious posts in this series.  That’s not because there’s much dispute about the importance of The Kingdom of Christ in Anglican theological history – there’s some, but generally scholars recognize this is a significant book – but because most people trying to read it seemContinue reading “Revisiting Anglican Classics 7: F.D. Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ”

For most of us, Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), bishop successively of Chichester, Ely and Winchester, is not much more than a name, famed for his great learning, and celebrated by T.S. Eliot, whose poem ‘Journey of the Magi’ draws on sermons, and whose essays For Lancelot Andrewes (1928) contain his public affirmation as a royalist andContinue reading “Revisiting Anglican Classics 6: Lancelot Andrewes’s Preces Privatae”

            I returned a couple of days ago from accompanying the Archbishop of Canterbury to Kyiv, to meet church leaders and learn something of what they and their people have experienced this year.  It would be extremely presumptuous of me – foolhardy even – to go on to pretend that I have anything more thanContinue reading “Ukraine: defining and redefining Orthodoxy”

            Like most people who have spent their whole lives under her reign, I have been numbed by the death of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.  It is as if part of the sky has fallen in.  Somehow everything looks different now.  I did not ever meet her, and so I can only speakContinue reading “On monarchy”