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St Denys Church |
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Copy date for August is 6th July Click here for Vicar's letter This is a monthly magazine produced jointly for St Denys and
St Philip's Copies can be collected from the table in church or delivered
by one of the regular distributors. It is also possible to have copies
posted to you (at an extra cost to cover the postage) The magazine costs 60p per issue or £7.00 annually If you would like to receive a sample copy of the magazine
please use the contact details below Format of the magazine is an A5 booklet with 32 pages.
It is packed full of useful information as well as the Vicar's monthly
letter, contributions from parishioners, poems, calendar, etc etc.
There are no commercial adverts, so no space is wasted. The diocesan leaflet 'News and Views' is inserted into each issue
when published. Contact: magazine@stdenys.org.uk Dear
Friends, In 1968 I wore flowers in my hair.
Lots of us did. It was a mid-teenage thing. If you couldn’t afford to go to
San Francisco then the next best option was to wear them at the town Disco
(the best one was held in a Catholic Church hall) which had just opened. The
lads wore wide ‘kipper’ ties and back-combed hair. It was our first rush of
rebellion in a bid to shock the parents. All very innocent and quite tame.
Binge-drinking had not yet been invented. During
May, 40 years on, there were lots of musings in the newspapers about the 1968
student uprisings in Paris and the unleashing of liberal attitudes generally
in the 1960s. One of the main reasons for the riots was protest against the
unwinnable war in Vietnam and the mounting body count. I remember ‘revolting
students’ in Grosvenor Square, London, outside the American Embassy. But
there was more to it. Cultural rebellion was in the air, and so was liberty.
Sexual freedom was celebrated with a pill for birth-control; a growing
anti-war movement, particularly anti-nuclear-war, was gaining followers;
conformity for its own sake was being questioned. Heady times. Now it all
seems like happy-land. The arms
trade has escalated; students are burdened with debt; professors write glibly
about a ‘clash of civilisations’ between ‘the West’ and ‘the Islamic
nations’. The
1960s was said to be a time of free love, drugs and rock ‘n roll. Perhaps it
was for a tiny few, but it passed most of us by. Actually it was also a
decade of violence on a massive scale. In addition to Vietnam, there was the
Chinese cultural revolution which killed thousands of citizens, one of the
worst atrocities of the 20th
century; there were assassinations (e.g. J. F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and
the Afro-American leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.); there were tragedies
because of drugs. Where
was the church in all this? Answer on the ground: just beginning the slide
into losses of cultural authority and regular Sunday attendance. But in terms
of its role in the nation the church was supportive of the liberalising mood.
For example, the legislation (1) to decriminalise homosexuality, (2) to allow
abortion under medical supervision, (3) to abolish hanging, were all passed
in Parliament because of support from the House of Bishops. I for one salute
them for that. Usually the church is cast as the one always dragging its feet
against change and being always on the side of repressive attitudes, but in
the 1960s it was not so. Yet
how times change. The picture now is much different. We have a church
leadership dragging its feet about ordaining gay people as bishops and
massively divided as a result, but we have also have a church which was one
of the main opposition voices over the war in Iraq. It is unpredictable which
way the church will jump. Still, my hunch is that on the whole we are back
with the cautious attitude (e.g. over permission for creating stem cells from
animal and human tissue for medical research). Perhaps a little caution is a
good thing. Each issue will need to be weighed on its merits. So,
no need to be nostalgic about the 1960s. But there was an energy in the air
back then, and ageing hippies, inside and outside the church, will remember
that. For now, I’ll enjoy the flowers growing in their natural habitat, the
earth. Besides, there’s little hair left to stick them in! Alan
Race
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