The Thought for the Day producer on the Today Programme surpassed him/herself by scouring the country to find the only vicar who thinks it was perfectly OK for the producers of Coronation Street to remove a cross from the church altar for the wedding of Molly and Tyrone in case seeing it might "upset" people. She thought it was a row about nothing. Which just about says it all about the modern day Church of England which seems to have little idea of the meaning of the words 'conviction' or 'belief'.
Perhaps I misunderstood what she was saying - I was in the shower at the time [too much info - ed] - but I think not.
6 comments:
Iain,
You should read this about Thought for the Day - Christians and atheists should unite to kill off 'Thought for the Day' - it's spot on.
I thought what she actually said is that as an ex-TV producer she could understand why they would hide the brass cross because it would obscure the vicar and cause reflections in the camera because of the brass.
You might be being unfair. Her concluding point seemed to be that Christians should be illustrating the Cross through their lives as much as anything else, and that it is not good to get worked up over a mere representation of the cross. After all, it is not physical relics or representations of physical things that form the heart of the Christian message - it is the living reality of the Cross and its effect.
And it's all very well getting worked up about whether a symbol is or is not shown on television. Christianity isn't declining because of a lack of symbols. It is declining because the Church is less and less confident of its gospel message, and consequently fewer and fewer people are hearing about the salvation of Christ's death on the cross, and fewer and fewer church communities are modelling Christ's grace through their own actions. There, that's more than you probably expected!! Sorry. I'm no theologian - perhaps Cranmer has something to say on this?
In polite circles, an altar is normally spelt with two 'A's.
This may be rather a storm in a tea-cup. For one, it's important to point out that many Christians - particularly in the Calvinist, Scottish Presbyterian/Dutch Reformned tradition - deplore physical symbols of any kind and our churches are quite devoid of crosses, crucifixes, stained-glass images of Christ and 'saints' etc. If you're brought up in that tradition the sight of an altar-cross of this sort is genuinely disturbing.
It is also possible that the Coronation Street request actually reflected sensitivity to Christian feeling. Even today, TV drama is very loathe actually to show, for instance, an actor dispensing a sacrament - I don't think the Dawn French character in The Vicar of Dibley was ever portrayed baptising an infant or celebrating Holy Communion, as the Anglicans call it.
Much as enjoy your blog, you are at times a complete twit, so twitter away - this was a first class thought for the day from one of the best daily thinkers.
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