28 July 2026 Jan-Emmanuel De Neve is an economist and behavioural scientist at Oxford University. He is also the editor of the ‘World Happiness Report’ which has just published its findings. Once again, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world. It has retained this position for the past nine years! De Neve gives several reasons for their quality of life. Firstly, they have high levels of economic productivity but their wealth is more evenly distributed. Wealth inequality is much lower and as De Neve says, ‘Greater income inequality is associated with worse well-being’. Secondly, money gets distributed through a welfare state. Thirdly, there’s a healthy life expectancy. Fourthly, and most importantly, there are strong social ties in Finland. This relates to the number of shared meals and the number of friends you can rely on. Fifthly, the people in Finland have high levels of social trust. ‘If you lost your wallet what is the likelihood that you think you w...
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27 July 2026 On Wednesday, the Glasgow School of Art Board informed the public that the most prized building in Scotland would not be rebuilt in its original form. They were talking about the iconic Mackintosh building which was seriously damaged by two fires in 2014 and 2018. There has been a long running dispute with the insurers which had just been settled. Whilst the amount of the settlement was not disclosed, Ann Priest, the Chair of the School’s Board of Governors, told the press that £265M was required to reinstate it and they didn’t have the funds available. ‘It is a national disgrace what has happened here. Nothing less than an authentic recreation of what Mackintosh left Glasgow and the world will do.’ said Lachlan Goudie, painter and writer. ‘The Scottish Government need to be saying this is vital to our national character – we had architectural crown jewels left to us.’ It is certainly a different response to President Macron’s immediate intervention when Notr...
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26 July 2026 ‘Living Stones: English Cathedrals as Sacred Spaces in Changing times’ is a report produced by Theos, a think tank for understanding the Christian faith. It was based on a YouGov Poll of 1,300 cathedral visitors and qualitative fieldwork done across six Anglican cathedrals including Derby, Rochester and St. Albans. 75% of adults in England have visited a cathedral at least once in the last three years. This compares favourably with those who have attended a sporting event (30%) or engaged with a museum or gallery (41%). However, this doesn’t extend to a sense of responsibility for sustaining cathedrals. One of the most interesting statistics refers to what are known as Nones, people with no religious affiliation. One in three cathedral-visiting Nones say they experience God through the calm and quiet. Spiritual experiences are mediated through art, music and the building itself which is also a work of art. In the last fifteen years, there have b...
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25 July 2026 At various times in its history, the Church has taken a dislike to religious art and art of any form within the worship space. Hence the two great iconoclasms in the eighth century Orthodox Church and in the sixteenth century Reformation. Objections to religious art all stem from the prohibition enshrined in the Ten Commandments. The first four are about God and the second reads, ‘You shall not make for yourself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it.’ The commandment has encouraged people to think that they shouldn’t make any representation of God nor Jesus but the point of the commandment is not to prohibit a celebration of God and his works in art but the displacement of God by works of art!
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24 July 2026 When Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, God also told him how to design, furnish and adorn the Tabernacle. It was to be full of representational art and it had to extend to the liturgical garments worn by the priests. In particular, Aaron’s liturgical robes were to be decorated in a very colourful and surprising way. There were to be golden bells attached to the lower hem. Can you imagine them ringing from a Kirk minister’s Geneva gown? In addition, there w ere to be homemade ‘pomegranates of blue, purple and crimson yarns’. The liturgical artists were to have a field day for these robes were not only colourful but imaginative! Where have you ever seen blue pomegranates? Purple and crimson – yes! But blue – no! In this instruction, God was saying that the artists should be free to use their imagination and make blue pomegranates. They would create a frisson of excitement and cause a stir. Questions would be asked, imaginations ...
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23 July 2026 At the moment, I am doing some pastoral work for another congregation. On one of my visits, I was conversing with an older woman who asked, ‘Who is it who does funerals now?’ In a former day, the answer would have been, ‘The Parish Minister’ but not today. She was searching for ‘The Celebrant’. When I was a child growing up in Ardrishaig, all the funerals were held in the church. It didn’t matter whether you were a member or not, everyone had their funeral in the church. That never happened in any of my four parishes. Even as a child, I knew that his was very hospitable. In the village of Forth, funerals were generally held in the home of the deceased. Often crowds of men had to stand outside in the garden and in the rain if the house was too small. A church funeral was reserved for an elder or active member. The funeral service used to be followed by a burial or a cremation. This was the normal pattern. Nowadays, some people prefer to have the ...
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22 July 2026 God is good! God is truth! God is beauty! Praise him! These are the last three lines in the refrain of Percy Dearmer’s famous hymn, ‘God is love: his the care’. Jesus came to show him. We find him in others. He saves us by the truth. His love is our pattern, showing God in beauty. In 1919, Percy Dearmer reflected on the fact that fewer people came to church after the First World War than attended its services before. Although we do not have the trauma and barbarity of a First World War to excuse us, attendances now are much smaller than they were ten years ago. Dearmer’s remedy is worth pursuing. ‘Yet our course is clear and simple. It is to serve God for his own sake: to serve him in spirit and in truth, to worship him in the beauty of holiness, and in the holiness of beauty: to give up all that is unreal and insincere, ugly or depressing, tedious, artificial, or mawkish, unsocial, narrow, quarrelsome …’ he wrote. Where is t...