Author Archives: Jonathan Clatworthy

About Jonathan Clatworthy

Retired Church of England parish priest, university chaplain & tutor in philosophy & ethics. I help run Modern Church, which promotes liberal theology, and write books.

Bread and circuses

At the bottom end of the socio-economic scale, what is happening in Britain today is what my generation thought would never happen. We had the welfare state. Anyway we were too civilised to allow it. How wrong we were. Starvation, … Continue reading

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The definition of marriage

I was caught out. On Thursday I was giving a talk on homosexuality to a church deanery readers’ group. I expected differences of opinion, but the big sticking-point was not what I expected. Nobody argued that intimate same-sex partnerships were … Continue reading

Posted in Churches, Ethics, Religion, Sexuality | 1 Comment

Does the Church still need parishes?

For churchgoers, yet another fascinating YouGov survey by Linda Woodhead for the Westminster Faith Debates. This one is about the views of Anglican clergy. Anthony Woollard comments here. In this post I focus on the finding that 83% want to … Continue reading

Posted in Churches, Religion | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Assisted dying and medical technology

This is the third of a series of three posts on assisted dying. The first discussed the sanctity of life, the second the spookiness of death. This one is about the role of medical technology. As in the other two, … Continue reading

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Assisted dying and the spookiness of death

This is the second of three posts on the struggle we have to know what to do about assisted dying. The first addressed the sanctity of life. This one is about death. The third will be on technology. On the … Continue reading

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Assisted dying and the sanctity of life

This is another attempt to address the issue of the sanctity of life in the context of proposed changes to the law on assisted dying. An earlier post is here. The trouble with assisted dying is that the arguments on … Continue reading

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Wealth, generosity and the labourers in the vineyard

This post is based on Jesus’ parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16), as I am preaching on it on Sunday. If you think it reads like a sermon, that’s because it is one. It draws on a … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Economics, Ethics, God, Inequality, Jesus, Work | Tagged | 1 Comment

Old age: what next?

My wife Marguerite retired a few weeks ago. She was looking forward to it, but just as it happened we had a succession of funerals to attend. It was as though we were given a reminder: with retirement, death approaches. … Continue reading

Posted in Ethics, Religion | Tagged | 4 Comments

Downs syndrome abortion

Richard Dawkins has achieved another piece of self-publicity. A woman said she would face a real ethical dilemma if she became pregnant with a baby with Down’s syndrome. He replied ‘Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to … Continue reading

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Humanity and nature: who is in control?

In a recent post I mentioned the fact that the study of anthropology began with nineteenth century atheists who struggled to understand why our hunter-gatherer ancestors all over the world made the same crazy mistake of imagining the existence of … Continue reading

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