By Muthuraj Swamy

Luke 4:16-30

I Corinthians 1: 10-18

In March 2017, Bishop Graham Kings and I were in Jerusalem for a conference. Bishop Kings was a Mission Theologian in the Anglican Communion, based at the Lambeth Palace, and is now a retired Church of England bishop, and a Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide. While in Jerusalem, on one day, we both together with a local friend, were travelling from Jerusalem to Nazareth. As we approached Nazareth, a city on a small hill, our local friend pointed us towards the city. As we saw the hill, Bishop Kings said, oh, this is the hill from which some people in Nazareth tried to push Jesus down!

Luke chapter 4: 16-30 is a text I have returned to several times since my student days in theological colleges. Especially Jesus’ reading of the Isaiah text, which is generally known as Nazareth Manifesto, is a key passage in theological studies because of the powerful redemptive message of God it conveys. Nevertheless, rarely I used to reflect on why some people in Nazareth were trying to kill Jesus in Nazareth.

But during the last few years I have returned to reflect on this question quite often, as it offers a number of insights and lessons for our current context – filled with tensions, divisions, conflicts, and violence in our immediate communities and wider societies.

In this text we see that people are joyful when Jesus announces the message of God’s liberation to them. We read, ‘all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth’. Gracious words. Yet in a few verses down they are enraged to kill Jesus. What then happens? What happens between the gracious words they had heard from Jesus and then trying to kill him after a little while?

After reading the passage from the book of Isaiah, Jesus talks about how prophets are not usually honoured in their hometowns. It might have irritated the people, but what really enrages them is something that follows. Jesus then moves to talk about how God had dealt with the Gentiles, clearly communicating that the gracious words they just had heard were not exclusively for the people claiming to be chosen by God, but are open to everyone as per God’s plan. Jesus says:

“the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land. Yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

This enrages those who were around.

The problem was that they saw God’s grace was available only for themselves, and not for others. They saw that God was dealing with them alone, and not with anyone else. They were not willing to see and accept that God was extending God’s grace to others too. A vision and faith lacking to see God on the other side. In other words, a lack of openness to others that shorten the vision and faith one has about God.

This Sunday is the week of prayer for Christian unity, from 18th to 25th January. All over the world numerous efforts are made to overcome divisions and conflicts in our churches and to stay united in witnessing to God revealed in Jesus Christ. However, we continue to face many obstacles in staying together. One of the obstacles is a lack of openness to differences and an unwillingness to journey into otherness, which our Gospel text today highlights.

I often think that the entire story of Christianity, both in the Bible from the book of Genesis, and in its 2000 years history, is a story of journey into otherness. Creation is God allowing a different other to come into life and existence, and God making covenants with them. Incarnation in the New Testament is God coming into the world taking the form of human, a different experience for God. Salvation is not simply redemption from personal sin, but the whole process involves a journey into otherness – from individual to church community, from belonging to the self to belonging to Christ, from narrow mindedness and isolation to seeing God in places where we may not want to see.

During the last three years, my time in Cambridge has been very good and enriching. Coming from another country, the acts of welcoming and friendship and the huge support my family and I have received from friends, colleagues and church communities has been very helpful. Working at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, Cambridge Theological Federation, and at St John the Evangelist church Hills Road, is a great experience for me to learn in a different context to my own. When reflecting on otherness, often I recollect a version of blessing a former curate at St John the Evangelist church, Chris Campbell, often used to use at the end of a worship service: ‘Grace, love and fellowship of God be with you all, with all those who you love, and with those who you find hard to love.’ ‘With those you find hard to love’ are the words that invite us to journey into otherness. To see God’s grace to even those we may not like. It doesn’t matter how close to Jesus we are and how close he is to us, we do not have control on God’s grace freely available to others.

During this week of Christian unity, an invitation to journey into otherness is also about how we work for better unity in our churches. In our Epistle reading we see Paul writing to a divided church in Corinth. He writes to them, ‘I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.’ He asks them a powerful question: ‘Is Christ divided?’

Today it is not just our wider societies are divided nationally, culturally, ethnically and so on. Our churches too are divided, and this on one hand reflect the divisions in our wider societies, and on the other hand, divisions in our churches also contribute to the conflicts in our societies, directly or indirectly.

In this regard, I would like to say something about what we do at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, which I direct, and how we understand and practice Christian mission as connections and a journey into otherness. One important aspect of Christian mission that is not seldom addressed is how we as Christians need to stay connected among ourselves. Christian mission for centuries has been strictly about reaching the unreached, reaching non-Christians. But to do that effectively, Christians to stay connected and care for each other is important. Reading St Paul carefully shows that his missionary journeys were not strictly about reaching the non-Christians and establishing churches, but also inviting the established churches to stay and connected together – as he does about the church in Corinth – and to care for and support each other. Our annual World Christianity Summer Institute in my Cambridge Centre tries to create a platform for Christians from diverse backgrounds to come together, learn from each other, and stay connected, so that we can witness to the Gospel effectively.

Let me say a prayer, from the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland resource for this year which has come with a title, Be-longing.

You made us, God,

in your own image,

and then became one of us,

proud of those you have made.

Make us proud of being part of that

worldwide family,

and eager to discover and celebrate

your image

in every person, every culture,

every nation

that we are privileged to encounter. Amen.

Ian Randall, Mutharaj Swamy and Graham Kings

This timely book was published by The Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide in 2022, over twenty years after the Henry Martyn Library became the Henry Martyn Centre. It was later re-named the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.

The Centre is the fruit of the amalgamation of two Trusts established in Cambridge by Evangelical Anglicans in the 19th century– the Henry Martyn Trust in 1881 and the Henry Martyn Library Trust in 1898. Both Trusts were to encourage members of the University to offer to serve the Church overseas, in response to the visit of David Livingstone in 1857 to Cambridge, and his challenge to the universities delivered in the Senate House, to respond to his call to mission abroad. This call had led to the establishment of the University’s Church Missionary Union, of which John Barton was the Secretary. He later became the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church in the city after 20 years serving with the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society in India. The piece of land found for the establishment of a venue for the work happened to be next to that Church. The Henry Martyn Hall, opened there in 1887, was in memory of the outstanding 18th century missionary priest and Fellow of St John’s College, Henry Martyn. He had been curate of Holy Trinity Church, when the great Charles Simeon, co-founder of CMS, was Vicar. The Hall was dedicated to the support of world mission and ‘Christian converse and counsel’.  The library was to complement it, providing suitable background reading about world mission for potential missionary candidates. This again complemented the foundation in 1877 of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU), mostly for Evangelical students of different denominations, which used the Hall from its inception. The book traces the developing wide use of the Hall and the Library, their amalgamation in 1934, and the eventual move of the Library to Westminster College in 1996. Later there was the development on that College site of a customized home for the project. It was re-named the CCCW in 2014. The book is also valuable as it traces many religious developments in Cambridge University and city from the 19th century to the present day, and the way in which the Centre has contributed to the academic and practical study of Christian mission from an ecumenical point of view. It has also given encouragement to candidates for mission, and to Christians from abroad coming to study in Cambridge. I wish, however, that it had an index, as so many key people in the religious and academic world are mentioned in the text!

Written by Canon Brian Macdonald-Milne (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge), Formerly missionary priest in the Pacific, Trustee and then Archivist of The Melanesian Mission UK

Speaker

Dr Hannah (Briscoe) Mollallegn

Abstract: This paper is a generational analysis of missionary children in the development and impact of the Ruanda Mission from before its foundation in 1922 through the East African Revival and the first few decades of Kabale Preparatory School (KPS). It not only examines how missionary children experienced these events and changes, but also investigates how the Ruanda Mission itself was shaped by these children. It explores the influence of an earlier generation of British Evangelical networks, including Keswick and the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU), in creating the conditions in which the Ruanda Mission was established. It then highlights the strategic role of two missionary children in the founding of the Ruanda Mission—Algie Stanley Smith (co-founder of the Mission) and Handley Hooper (friend and incoming Africa Secretary for CMS)—and their diplomatic influence during a fragile time of theological upheaval and post-war financial hardship. The analysis then widens out from this friendship to a larger relational network and explores the particular “family” identity of the Ruanda Mission. It argues that the establishment of KPS was a significant component to the mission’s family-identity and longevity and examines the significance of KPS in the lives of the children. This paper is an investigation of the flow of knowledge and values between these generations and argues that the Ruanda Mission was uniquely shaped by missionary children in ways that are distinct from the CMS more generally.

Click here for further information.

CCCW Day Seminar online and in-person

Speaker

Revd Dr Thomas John Hastings

Abstract: After touching on Kagawa’s traumatic childhood, conversion under the influence of American Presbyterian missionaries, decision to live and work in Kobe’s worst slum, and activities as an evangelist, social reformer, writer, and peace advocate, I will address the “Kagawa Phenomenon” in the West with special reference to his whirlwind 1936 speaking tour across the United States. Finally, I will explore the multiple dimensions of Kagawa’s witness and thought and consider his continuing relevance for our time.

Click for more info.

Dear Friends,

As an exciting and full year for the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide draws to a close, we thank God for His leading and provision. We also want to thank you for your support and interest through the last twelve months, the first full year for a while when we have all been able to be present and productive.

In conjunction with the Divinity Faculty, this year, we have run a full complement of seminars on some significant topics, and many more are planned. It was a great joy to have some “in person” events and we will build on these in the coming months. Having said this, one benefit of the “blended” approach allows Summer Institute participants, and others not in Cambridge, to connect with us.

Our February Friends’ Get Together incorporated the launch of Bishop Graham Kings’ book Nourishing Mission with an illustrious panel of responders. Then in April, the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Cambridge Theological Federation was very special. Ian Randall co-authored the celebratory edition of their history. The launch of its “twin”, our own history book From Henry Martyn to World Christianity: Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, on 25 May in the Woolf Institute was another wonderful occasion, and we were delighted with the crowd of “historic” friends who joined us in person and online for that! Ian Randall (co-author) gave a great talk about the fascinating life of John Barton, who was instrumental in setting up the Henry Martyn Trust and building the Henry Martyn Hall.

The long-awaited inaugural World Christianity Summer Institute took place in The Henry Martyn Hall during the July heatwave on a wave of fantastic support. More than 50 people participated in one way or another, and we enjoyed some wonderful partnerships, including with The Rose Castle Foundation and Theological Education in the Anglican Communion. The post-pandemic visa delays prevented several participants from joining us, but nonetheless, it was a tremendously encouraging week. Thanks again to all who helped in a vast multitude of ways. Next year’s Summer Institute takes place at Westminster College, 2-7 July, with the title “The Bible: Everywhere in Everyday Life”. We would be grateful if you would please circulate the details on our website to anyone you think may be interested in this unique learning week.

https://www.cccw.cam.ac.uk/summer-institute/21998-2/

Director Muthuraj Swamy has been cultivating some new connections and collaborations this year. To mention to: Prof Paul Williams, CEO of the British and Foreign Bible Society, was our speaker at the inaugural Henry Martyn Day seminar in October and Revd Dr Risto Jukko, Director of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, visited the Centre in November. Muthuraj also enjoyed his attendance at the Lambeth Conference in July, for which he co-edited three Preparing for Lambeth books, after which, together with his family, he was able to enjoy a long-awaited return to his homeland. More recently, he delivered a keynote lecture at the annual interfaith conference at the University of Wales Trinity St David; and presented an Anglican Communion Office Seminar at Durham University.

In July, we all gathered in Rachel’s garden for a team social when we said a grateful farewell to Dr Jenny Leith as she prepared to move to Westcott House after two years with us in various roles. Dr Pavlína Kašparová was appointed as her successor and started in September. Pavlina has strong connections to several of the other houses in the CTF. She takes care of our students and Research Associates, and the aim is for more face-to-face opportunities in future, building a stronger sense of community and support. Pavlina is also taking on responsibility for the website, including new pages for our USA Friends.

Our Archivist, Dr Philip Saunders, has had a successful year working on the archival collections – old and new – and has welcomed a number of new visitors to the Centre this year. He is more than willing to help with research projects that require access to CCCW’s archives.

In September, Ruth MacLean represented ABTAPL (Association of British Theological and Philosophical Libraries) at the BETH (European Theological Libraries) conference in The Netherlands. This was a just reward for her chapter on our library in their 50th Anniversary Festschrift Theological Libraries and Library Associations in Europe (Brill, 2022). We hope this will not be the end of her writing career! Since then, her work has focused on cataloguing many new and donated books, and these have been flying onto the shelves. We encourage you to pop in and see these for yourselves! She is happy to help you locate books in our library relating to your research.

This year we have welcomed four new Trustees, Prof. David Fergusson, Revd Stuart Browning (ex officio), and Ms Lakshmi Piette and Revd Rana Youab Khan. It is fitting to put on record our enormous thanks to our Honorary Treasurer, Jonathan Giles, who is retiring from this work. He has worked tirelessly, keeping tabs on our finances (and more!) for the last 13 years. His shoes are proving very hard to fill, so please do let us know if you have any ideas/names to suggest for a successor.

We want to wish you all the blessings of this wonderful Christmas season and many joys in the year ahead. Thank you again for your company on the journey.

A sermon preached by Peter S Heslam at St John the Evangelist Church, Hills Road, Cambridge, on Bible Sunday (23^rd October 2022).

Readings: Psalm 119.129-136 and Luke 4.16-24.

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

‘The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple. With open mouth I pant, because I long for your commandments’, words from our reading from Psalm 119.130-131).

The Bible Society conducted a survey recently, in which it asked randomly selected people what they thought was the world’s bestselling book. Responses included The Lord of the Rings, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Da Vinci Code, and the Harry Potter novels.

Some of the people involved in the survey had agreed to be filmed when the correct answer was put to them. In this film, respondents were visibly shocked on hearing the correct answer. Would one of our younger members like to suggest what is the correct answer?

Yes, that’s correct – the Bible!

In fact, the Bible has been the world’s bestselling book ever since it was first printed in English by Cambridge University Press around 400 years ago.

Because of this, it has deeply affected our daily language – words like ‘busy-body’, ‘beautiful’, even ‘sex’. And phrases such as ‘by the skin of your teeth’ and ‘eat, drink and be merry’. Many of us get our names from bible characters.

The Bible has also shaped our calendars, seasons, and holidays. We say that we are in the 21^st century. Surely that depends on at what point you start counting the centuries, as there have of course been many more centuries than twenty-one. This is the 21 century because it is twenty-one centuries since the birth of the central character in the Bible – Jesus.

How about music? The Bible has inspired some of the world’s most famous composers and performers. This includes classical maestros like Bach, Handel and Mozart, but also more contemporary figures like U2, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Katy Perry, Eric Clapton, Elvis Presley, The Spice Girls, Leonard Cohen, Mumford & Sons, and Stormzy.

We could go on to note the impact of the Bible on sport, film, theatre, healthcare, business and banking, politics, and protest movements – such as the abolitionist movement against slavery; the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement against racial segregation; and the feminist movement against various forms of patriarchy.

When I worked in central London, I was reminded when I went to meet with MPs, that inscribed in the stone floor of the Central Lobby of our Houses of Parliament are the words ‘Except the Lord build the House, they labour in vain that build it’ (Psalm 127:1). And when I met with bankers, I often passed by the Royal Exchange. It has these words inscribed in stone above the grand portico entrance: ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof’ (Psalm 24.1).

Words from the Bible are embedded and inscribed in the very fabric of our so-called ‘secular’ society.

Less remarkable is that words from scripture are also inscribed in our great cathedrals. During my London years, I would also frequently pass by St Paul’s Cathedral. And this cathedral can help us think about the relationship between God and the Bible. So, here’s another question: who built St Paul’s Cathedral?

True – it was Sir Christopher Wren. But, did he really build it? Did he help to lift those massive stones on top of each other? As far as we know, he did not lift a finger to move any of its stones. It took dozens of labourers around three and a half decades to build the cathedral.

Likewise, the Bible was not actually written by God – even though we call it ‘God’s word’, or ‘the Holy Bible’. As with St Paul’s Cathedral, dozens of people were involved. It is actually a collection of sixty-six books, written over around 1500 years by a wide range of authors living in different places and circumstances. But God is the ‘architect’ of the bible – he inspired it. As the person after whom St Paul’s Cathedral is named wrote to Timothy, ‘All scripture is God-breathed’ (2 Tim 3.16a).

As a multi-authored God-breathed book that has had deep impact on the fabric of societies all over the world, I hope I have said enough this morning to convince us that the Bible is worth hearing, reading, knowing, studying and living – when we are together like we are this morning, and when we are dispersed in the world throughout the week.

But I want to suggest that Psalm 119 can teach us something even more important. The fact that it is the longest Psalm, and the Bible’s longest chapter, should perhaps indicate that this Psalm has a crucial message.

I think we can learn from this Psalm that the Bible is certainly to be heard, read, known, studied and lived. But above all, the bible is to be loved.

Just listen to some examples from Psalm 119 of the Psalmist’s love God’s word:

I find my delight in your commandments
    because I love them;

I revere your commandments, which I love,
    and I will meditate on your statutes (v. 47-8).

Oh, how I love your law!
    It is my meditation all day long (v. 97).

Truly I love your commandments
    more than gold, more than fine gold (v. 127).

Your promise is well tried,
    and your servant loves it (v. 140).

I hate and abhor falsehood,
    but I love your law (v. 163).

Great peace have those who love your law (v. 165).

My soul keeps your decrees;
    I love them exceedingly (v. 167).

That love of the Psalmist for God’s word is not just love for a book, which in those days would of course have been scrolls. It is a love for the God who is speaking to the Psalmist, and transforming his thoughts and actions, through the book. That is why the Bible can and should be an object of our love. In loving the Bible, we love God. And in loving God, we grow in our love for the Bible.

I think this may explain why, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, sales of the Bible in Ukraine have risen sharply. The people’s acute awareness of their need for God in the face of destruction and terror has driven them to the Bible. Just think what comfort, Jesus’ words in our gospel reading, would mean to Ukrainian people made poor and oppressed by their aggressive Russian invaders:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me (…)
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives (…)
        to set free those who are oppressed (Luke 4.18-19).

When I read these words while imagining I am a Ukrainian who has been bereaved, made homeless, jobless, and violated in every other way by my oppressors, I feel a love rising within me – a love like that of the Psalmist for the life-giving, faith-inspiring, hope-infusing scriptures. I find that rising love urging me to go beyond the way I often come to scripture, which is shaped by rational academic study. I find myself wanting to read it more like a lover reads their beloved.

Let me end with words from the seventeenth century poet George Herbert, from two of his poems. For me his poem ‘The Holy Scriptures’ echoes in a very similar way to Psalm 119 the poet’s ardent love for God’s word. Some of its language and imagery (and spelling) is antiquated and obscure. And it is unusual to hear someone to speak to scripture, rather than to speak about scripture. But hear the passionate love with which Herbert speaks to the Bible:

Oh Book! infinite sweetnesse! let my heart

             Suck ev’ry letter, and a hony gain,

             Precious for any grief in any part;

To cleare the breast, to mollifie all pain.

Thou art all health (…) thou art a masse

             Of strange delights (…)

Who can indeare Thy praise too much?

(From ‘The Holy Scriptures’, in The Temple (1633), by George Herbert)

This is not a love for the Bible that goes beyond love for God. It is true that Herbert speaks to the Bible almost as if he is addressing God. But Herbert would not be the wonderful Christian poet that he is if his love of scripture exceeded his love for God – as can be true as much for atheists and agnostics as for fundamentalists. Herbert understood, I think, that God and God’s word cannot be separated if the Bible really is God breathed; and if Christ is the ultimate fulfilment and meaning (‘hermeneutic’) of scripture; and if Christ is, in Christ’s self, the very Word of God.

The second Herbert poem, which we sang this morning, demonstrates that his love for the Bible does not supersede his love for the God of the Bible:

King of Glorie, King of Peace,

                I will love thee (…)

Wherefore with my utmost art

                I will sing thee,

And the cream of all my heart

                I will bring thee.

We only need to look a little further in this poem/hymn to see what loving scripture and loving the God of scripture means for living scripture in ordinary everyday life:

Sev’n whole dayes, not one in seven,

                I will praise thee.

So I want to conclude that living the Bible every day – not just on Sundays – only really happens if and when we love the bible. As we know from the lives of many of the people around is, human beings can live reasonably upright lives without loving the Bible. But humans cannot live for God in their ordinary everyday lives in response to the good news of God’s loving liberation from sin without loving the bible. Human lives are shaped by human loves. Our ‘essential self’ emerges and evolves throughout our lives in keeping with where we place our affections.

We need to hear the Bible, read the Bible, know the Bible, study the Bible, and live the Bible. But all of that springs from love for the Bible – a love for the Bible that is one and the same as our love for the God of the Bible, supremely revealed in Jesus Christ, who in his very essence is the Word of God.

May we say with the Psalmist on this Bible Sunday, ‘The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple. With open mouth I pant, because I long for your commandments’ (Psalm 119.130-131).

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Yesterday (3 Nov 2022), CCCW was delighted to welcome Dr Naomi Richman, JRF in Anthropology at Trinity College, to discuss her ethnographic research amongst the Nigerian Pentecostals. The talk was hybrid and Naomi spoke to a full room in Cambridge, as well as others joining from across the world.

In her talk, Naomi explored how Nigerian Pentecostal Christians seek repair and renewal in their lives, after their efforts to rupture with the past and become born again. She considered the ways that a group of Nigerian Pentecostals who belong to a deliverance church re‐narrativise their lives by constructing and entering into new timelines of history after their attempts to break with the past. She argued that this tells us something about the theological way these Christians reframe their role in history, including how their understanding of a collective past shapes their vision of who they are in the present and will be in the future. In conclusion, Naomi argued that more attention needs to be given to processes of repair, repositioning and realignment in discussions about how conversion to Pentecostalism can generate efforts to break away from what becomes conceptualised as ‘the past’.

This fascinating talk prompted a plethora of questions, ranging from discussions of diverse understandings of ‘the past’ and ‘rupture’, to how deliverance churches understand the role of the spiritual and physical realm in their medical engagement.

Naomi’s research on rupture and repair is explored in her recently released article for The Australian Journal of Anthropology (TAJA), which is part of a forthcoming special issue called ‘Anthropologies of Religious Change’ that she has co-edited with Derrick Lemons.

The article can be found here: Richman, N. (2022). After rupture: Visions of history, African spirituality and theological repair in Nigerian Pentecostalism. Australian Journal of Anthropology.

Following Naomi’s talk, the CCCW looks forward to the next seminar talk in the series, which will be given by the Centre’s own, Dr Pavlina Kasparova, on ‘Art Practice as Interfaith Dialogue’ at 4pm (GMT) on the 30^th of November.

Written by Susie Triffitt

Just two weeks earlier than his official “slot” in the Anglican Lectionary (19^th October), right at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term, here at CCCW in Cambridge, UK, we launched our inaugural Henry Martyn Day celebration with an inspiring seminar, “in conversation” and reception. It seemed so fitting to have Professor Paul Williams, CEO of the British and Foreign Bible Society talking about the distinctive mission of the Bible Society; how the pioneering spirit of the 18^th Century is being transformed and actualised in the technologically driven 21^st Century. The Bible Society’s brief has always been taking the words of scripture from the page, to the mind, to the heart, to the life transformed! The connection between the search for truth in our postmodern world and the Bible is as relevant as ever even if the ways of doing that have to change.

Emeritus Regius Professor of Divinity, David Ford (himself a Vice President of the Bible Society Board) then engaged his friend Paul in a wonderfully rich and far-ranging conversation drawing out more themes and ideas.  You can watch it all on our Youtube channel. Link here:

The Collect for 19 October is this:

O God of the nations, who gave to your servant Henry Martyn a longing to share your Gospel with all peoples; Inspire the church in our own day with that said desire, that we may be eager to commit both life and talents to you who gave them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

One of the texts for the day is from Isaiah 49:6

“The Lord says, ‘Is it too small a thing for you to be my servant

To restore the tribes of Jacob

And bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,

That you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth’

It was indeed a smashing event and it was wonderful to connect meaningfully with many of our local supporters.  Paul and his wife Sarah (from Oxford) seemed to really appreciate the stimulating fellowship and scholarship of the centre and of those they met. I admit I have a wonderful new appreciation of Henry Martyn and his faith.

Almost 30 people joined us in person and 50 more online and my prayer is that they were as challenged and inspired as I was by all that I heard about “God and All Reality” and that maybe some will follow in Martyn’s footsteps (or encourage others to) in the expansion of the Kingdom of God…?

Queen Elizabeth II, 1926-2022

The Cambridge Centre for Christianity is deeply saddened to hear of the death of Her Majesty The Queen.

An Anthem

‘Elizabeth the Gracious’

You set a crown of pure gold on her head.

She asked for life of you 

and you gave her long life.

You shall give her

everlasting felicity

and make her glad 

with the joy of your countenance.

(Written by Rt Revd Dr Graham Kings, Research Associate at CCCW, and Honorary Assistant Bishop, Diocese of Ely. Music by Tristan Latchford. The world premiere of the anthem is on Sunday 18 Sept at the 5pm Vigil Service at St Bartholomew-the-Great, London).

Here is the link to the live stream of the Vigil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYArGJR7248

)