‘Faith in the World’ Competition

I recently received a letter from Baroness Warsi, a Minister at the Cabinet Office, regarding a new competition which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is organising.  The competition is called ‘Faith in the World’, and aims to encourage young people to consider the role that faith does or does not have in the world today.

Applicants are invited to write an essay, which will be judged by Archbishop Rowan, Baroness Warsi, and three others.  The competition is open to all young people aged 13-21, whatever their beliefs.  It is open from now until 11 March 2011.  The winners will be awarded a prize, ranging from £250 to £500, at Lambeth Palace in London.

Further details about how to enter, including a list of essay questions, can be found on the Archbishop’s web-site here.

Communion and choir

A spiritual experience at either end of the day. I don’t always get to the monthly communion service at St Margaret’s, the “church of Parliament” next door to Westminster Abbey but I’m always glad when I do.  The service is said according to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Although the language is old and sometimes sounds dated, it was written to be read alopud. You can hear the music in its cadences and I think that no-one has yet come up with a more beautiful or inspiring liturgy.

Afterwards we have breakfast together in the Speaker’s State Apartments and listen to a speaker for about 10 minutes. It is a cross-party occasion amnd involves both MPs and Peers. Today the speaker was Sir Patrick Cormack MP (South Staffordshire) one of the founders of the Communion/breakfast gathering. Patrick has served in Parliament since 1970 and is retiring at this coming election, so in a kind of farewell address he reflected on the place of Christianity in parliament and on the importance of politicians of differing views respecting each other’s integrity and opinions. His advice to the new MPs who will be elected in May was pretty good: ” Never believe that any single political party has a monopoly of wisdom”.

This evening I took part in the Parliament Choir’s 10th anniversary concert in the splendid surroundings of Westminster Hall. The choir is not just a cross-party institution (I normally find myself in the tenor row next to Alan Beith (Lib Dem) and Alun Michael (Labour)) but brings togther members of both Houses, police officers, doorkeepers, catering staff, secretaries, clerks, even a journalist or two – the entire Westminster village.

This evening’s programme was Mozart’s Requiem, a piece that I have adored since I first sang it at school when I was seventeen, and a new setting by our accompanist Nick O’Neill of the prayer used at the beginning of each parliamentary day: Of All Persons and Estates.

The audience seemed to enjoy it all but since it is due to be broadcast on Classic FM tomorrow evening (John Brunning’s programme, starting at 9pm), you will be able to judge for yourself.

Christianity and the Environment

Saturday afternoon and to Great Missenden to take part in the Living Hope Environmental Conference run by St Peter and St Paul Parish Church and Great Missenden CE Combined School.

A lot of hard work and planning had clearly gone into an ambitious programme that included sessions on fair trade, Christian Aid, working with children, spirituality and the environment and reflecting concern for the planet in forms of worship. It was good to see that well over 100 people from all over the Oxford diocese had come to take part.

My own short session on the theme “What Can Politicians Do to Reduce Environmental Impact” sparked a range of questions from the more philosophical – how should we engage with climate change sceptics- to the very down-to-earth – would I support a campaign  to help churches get through the tangle of red tape (from diocesan faculty to local authority planners to English Heritage) that prevents or delays the installation of solar panels and other energy saving additions to the church fabric. Answer- yes I will!

One questioner asked how people should go about lobbying their member of Parliament. My answer was that people often underestimate the attention that MPs of all political parties pay to personal representations from their own constituents. In  my view, twenty individual letters, each personally worded, are much more effective than a petition signed by 200 people. Even better is a request to ask the MP for a meeting in the constituency, at a mutually convenient time, when you can talk things through in detail. If a campaign can mobilise opinion at the grass roots in this way, it can start to influence national policy ( the best examples in recent years have been the Jubilee 2000 and Trade Justice campaigns). Members of Parliament do talk to one another and if we find thast we have all been getting a lot of letters or emails on a particular subject, that tells us that that cause is becoming important to a lot of people. We will write to Ministers about the issue (and because we have to vote in person, we get to bend the ear of Ministers when their officials are not around). The civil servants find that they are having to draft a lot of replies and the Minister finds that he is having to sign a lot of letters to colleagues. A kind of political osmosis begins to work and change does happen.

Incidentally, my visit to Missenden meant that for two Sundays running I found myself in church with the Bishop of Buckingham. (Last week it was for the County Council Chairman’s civic service, where Bishop Alan delivered a suitably prophetic sermon. Imagine Elijah giving a mild dressing down to a recalcitrant King of Judah and you get the picture). By the way, the Bishop’s blog is well worth dipping into.