New Blog - Lay Anglicana

Lay Anglicana

As promised, my first featured blog in this new thread which I devote to the promotion of new blogs. 

When I mentioned this last week, I received a very encouraging response and can fill new next month or two. Thank you to those who either approached my directly or who recommended new blogs of note. 

Lots of blogs are written the clerics. I am one of them, so won't judge - but this week's blog is not one such site. It's title gives it away, really. It's author, Laura Sykes is, and I hope that she will forgive me for so saying, of a demographic for whom social media is not perhaps first love or competance. She is a ready and welcome presence in the dialogue of Twitter and Facebook, and I commend her and her blog in those terms. Please give her a read, and maybe even click her 'Follow' button too.

In her own words ...

Laura Sykes served from 2005-2010 as a ‘lay worship leader’, one of about thirty in Andover Deanery (UK) taking services of the word after minimal training (eight evenings in successive weeks). Her experiences led her to start a website on this new species of fauna – ‘lay anglicana’ – where laity and clergy could exchange ideas on the role that the laity might play in the worship life of the church.

 Ideally, there would be a priest in every parish church. However, in the words of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, ‘if you want things to stay the same, everything will have to change’. The Church of England knows this, but is very resistant to change. For every two steps forward, there seems to be one step back. In the absence of any other forum for the laity freely to voice its opinion qua laity (the House of Laity being part of the establishment), Laura is highlighting some of the issues facing the Church, encouraging all that seems good while pointing out that ‘the Emperor has no clothes’ if and when it seems appropriate, eg over current developments in the Anglican Communion. 

Now a pensioner, she is at an advantage in being financially independent. She calculates that, so long as her polemics do not actually land her in the Tower of London, the expression of her trenchant opinions may be a catalyst for constructive change, as well as being a delightful occupation for her old age. The website discussion forum is at http://www.layanglicana.org/forum.php   and the blog is at http://layanglicana.blogspot.com