A paper summarising some recent interventions from faith bodies on the debate about economy, globally and locally. It also highlights the historic links between Christian thought/action and oikonomia (the management of the household), some different stances on markets, and Ekklesia's own research paper, Is God bankrupt? - a response to a British and Irish churches' report on 'prosperity with a purpose', published in 2005. A brief update has been included relating to the 2008 credit crunch / banking crisis.

To coincide with Ekklesia's involvement as a founding member of the Accord coalition, this paper contains a cross-section of documents and media articles from Ekklesia and other sources (2205-2008) to resource the ongoing debate about the reform of faith schools. These cover a range of issues concerning current policies of – and towards – religiously sponsored state-funded schools, in the light of the principles and practice of fully-inclusive schooling. They remain the copyright of their originators and contain the original link. We begin with the Accord principles and the case for them; then four documents from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) with whom we cooperated on their very helpful Faith Schools Position Paper; Populus polling data on the public and faith schools; then a selection of media articles and research (including LSE, Institute of Education and National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), in chronological order.

Media coverage of the 2008 Lambeth Conference has focused attention on divisions among Anglicans by portraying them as straightforward conflicts between ‘liberal’ Westerners and ‘traditionalists’ from other parts of the world. But the divisions are not so neat: ‘evangelicals’ and ‘Southerners’ can be found on both ‘sides’. Indeed, attempts by supposedly ‘conservative’ reformers to rid the Anglican Communion of what they regard as wrong ideas and practices hamper the quest for biblical faithfulness and undermine respect for the spiritual insights emerging from the South. This paper included a constructive critique of recent propositions from Canon Gregory Cameron, Deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion.

This paper, one of a series, complements the author’s contributions to the new book Fear or Freedom? Why a warring church must change, edited by Simon Barrow (Shoving Leopard / Ekklesia, 2008) – available in the UK from Metanoia Book Service, and elsewhere via Amazon.

This paper briefly sets out the religious, philosophical and political context of both the 2007 government guidelines on science teaching and the recent report and statement of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR), explaining why 'intelligent design' (ID), popular among some religious groups, is neither sound science nor good theology. It includes notes, an overview of 2005-7 Ekklesia comments on creationism and ID, and a select bibliography.

The global media are largely interpreting the current fissures within the worldwide Anglican Communion as a struggle between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘revisionists’, ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’, ‘evangelicals’ and modernists’. In this thoughtful paper, Savitri Hensman shows that these are unhelpful caricatures, and that what is at stake is something far larger than an argument within one denomination. It is about the nature of Christianity in a fast-changing contemporary world, the dangers of simplistic readings of the Bible, the historic threat of authoritarianism, the challenge of human rights, and the tension between the establishment instincts of many Christians institutions and its radical, transformative roots in the life-changing story and flesh of Jesus. This reading of the situation within Anglicanism and in a broader context will assist commentators, researchers, journalists, concerned observers of many stances, and all who are interested in how the relationship between religion and society is changing after Christendom. The paper complements the author’s contributions to the new book Fear or Freedom? Why a warring church must change, edited by Simon Barrow (Shoving Leopard / Ekklesia, 2008) – available in the UK from Metanoia Book Service, and elsewhere via Amazon.

The full document is available as a *.PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file here:

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/files/newanglicanism.pdf