Makes me slightly less irritated that I couldn’t go.

The strong defense by Boris seems unwise at best and the claims of political motivation are bizarre considering where the claims are coming from. This one’s going to run and run.

The same is true of any selective school. What Church schools {along with Synagogue and Mosque schools, I suppose} do is quite simple: middle class children are extracted from comprehensives and thus thrive as much as they would have done anyway while comprehensives crash and burn with the affluent children and their assertive parents removed.

There is talk of better ethoses (? Can that word be pluralised?) and so on but when it comes down to it faith schools get an academically better bunch to work with. In much the same way that grammar schools did and with basically the same results, really.

If it does exist it would be well worth replicating but I’ve yet to be convinced that it’s more than frantic track covering.

Best. Post. Evar.

The first issue of not is that those churches holding to “traditional” or “conservative” theology are actually those with higher turnout each Sunday, certainly in the UK. It is little wonder: their message is more than just an airy-fairy “be nice and happy”. In terms of basic theology, of course, they are right, because Christianity is not some new-age religion indistinguishable from Stonehenge on the solstice.

The schism (and that is too weak a term, if anything) is hugely important. It is a split in all but name and legality, because a formal divergence would have implications for property. The new Fellowship is designed to act just like a separate church, with its own theological training etc., while the rest of the Anglican Communion effectively becomes the body of people not in this new Fellowship.

I think, given the deep divisions between members of the huge Anglican Communion, a split was inevitable. This appears to be the most practicable solution to the crisis possible, and must be commended as such. The desire to split, however, cannot be good. The Church is at its strongest when it is moving in the same direction, and today it seems as if it has created two camps that will naturally want to pull in opposite directions for the sake of conflict. That’s never good.

Theologically, the “conservatives” are far closer to the fundamentals of the Reformation, but in the way they conduct themselves and treat others, the “liberals” are marginally closer to Christlikeness. Where do I sit? A little from column A, and a little from column B.

Let us not forget that the work of any female feminist can be at least matched by Mill’s On Women.

Almost all feminists would disagree with that.

Otherwise, a simply superb critique. And a pleasure to read.

Mount Rushmore, however, is perhaps a weaker bet…

Click on “random blog” on Livejournal. Chances are you’ll get someone female, because about 70% of the several million livejournallers are female. I’m one of them.