A Happy New Year to all our readers. This is the 130th report from the Anglican Communion News Service. This is a weekly service which covers news stories received by the Anglican Communion Office in London and a list of the most recent episcopal appointments. Please credit ACNS when you reproduce items from this service.
12 January 1998
It's been quite a year, hasn't it? It's been a year of big changes and of deep emotions. As I look back over 1997, I think there's a new mood emerging of a wistful longing for a better world.
06 January 1998
Samuel Beckett's mysterious play Waiting for Godot was running again recently at the Old Vic. It is not a play greatly renowned for its action; just two tramps sitting on a bench waiting. Waiting for what? It transpires that the waiting has something to do with God. It also transpires that both men are troubled by universal questions like the meaning of life and death.
05 January 1998
Episcopal appointments from around the Communion.
23 December 1997
There follows below the text of the Archbishop of Canterbury's response to Bishop John Spong of Newark's letter to the Primate of the Anglican Communion.
25 November 1997
Episcopal appointments from around the Communion.
25 November 1997
One of my all time favourite Christmas stories is Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. You will know it so well that it is hardly necessary to repeat the story. It is a real heart-tugger as the selfish old skinflint, Scrooge, is shown the truth about how so much of humanity lives with suffering and discovers the joy of sharing his wealth. It would be a mistake, however, to see it only as Scrooge learning to give. The story is also about him learning to receive.
10 November 1997
Episcopal appointments from around the Communion.
31 October 1997
An international Church-backed campaign to write off unpayable Third World debts in the year 2000 is planning to confront the political leaders of the world's richest countries with a "vast human chain" when they arrive in Birmingham, England, for their annual meeting next year in May.
31 October 1997
In less than a thousand days we shall celebrate the beginning of the year 2000 AD. That event will no doubt be marked by many different moods and emotions; but its true significance, and the reason for our celebrations, lies in the letters `AD', Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. In that brief phrase the story of a remarkable man called Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, is made the hinge of history.
21 October 1997