Focus on Social Justice Advent and Christmas News and Events Services and Music
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November / December 2015 £1.50 Focus on Social Justice Advent and Christmas News and Events Services and Music www.twitter.com/SalisburyCath Contents / Foreword Contents Foreword 2 – 3 Sudan Link Update 4 – 5 Amnesty International 5 News 6 – 7 Events 8 Reflections on the Refugee Crisis Cathedral Services and Music I – XI Music Highlights XII The situation facing refugees fleeing from Syria as well as other parts of the world and massing at News XII the borders of European countries over the past Events 21 – 22 months cannot fail to have moved and provoked News 23 you. The particular set of circumstances that Christmas Highlights 24 has brought this story to the very top of public consciousness has certainly caused us to ask as News and Events 25 – 27 individuals, as a cathedral community, and indeed as a nation and a global community, a number of ‘Magna Flora’ Flower Festival 28 – 29 hard questions about ourselves and about the way in which we treat one another. Friends Update 30 Events 30 The sermon that the Dean preached in the Cathedral on 13 September this year, and which is Contact and Subscriptions 31 available on our website, helped us to think about Christmas Tower Tours 31 some of the varying pressures which have come to bear upon us. We have been forced to think Events Back cover quite hard about what offering a proper Christian welcome might look like. We’ve been asked to think about how the community in Salisbury might respond positively and practically to the issues that we see unfolding on and beyond our borders. We have certainly been reminded to think of ourselves as part of a much larger community than a city, or county, or Diocese. The photograph of the boy washed up dead on Front Cover: Aerial view of last year’s the seashore has probably been the single most Christmas celebrations taken from the West prominent and emotive image of this crisis, but Window by Ash Mills Photography there have been many, many other images which 2 November/December 2015 SALISBURY CATHEDRAL NEWS www.facebook.com/salisburycathedral Jesus’ early life. Jesus’ mother Mary, in obedience to the calling of God upon her life, risked being cast out of her society by saying “yes” to the incarnation, and the first people to hear of the birth of Jesus were shepherds, amongst the lowest and most outcast of the working class of Palestine. Brushing aside the tinsel and the wrapping paper, what we find when we look closely at the stories of Christmas are the stories of humanity trying to Reflections on the Refugee Crisis work out who they are, stories not that very much different from those in our news today. The fear just as much reflect what happens when the and suspicion of the other is just as evident in the question of where certain human beings do or do pages of the New Testament as it is in the pages not belong is pushed to one possible and awful of our own newspapers. The need to recognise conclusion. that humanity is one family and that we belong together is just as evident too. I’m not sure that we have yet come to a conclusion about exactly what the most Praise God that we can also, when we discipline appropriate response to this crisis is. Certainly and quieten ourselves enough to really listen, hear the political world has not stopped debating it, the angel song of ‘peace on earth and goodwill to and neither have Christian communities. The all people’. Making that vision a reality is just as admirably fast reaction of charities such as certainly our responsibility as Christians as it ever Christian Aid and others has offered some hope. has been. Lifting up the lowly, the humble, and the We as individual Christians and as a Cathedral hungry were amongst the first things that Mary community have, I think, to be quite aware that thought about after being called by the angel to humanity is one family, and that the decisions we become the mother of God. make in one corner of the world have profound and lasting and potentially devastating effects May the lowly, the humble, and the hungry be at on what happens to our brothers and sisters in the forefront of our thinking, our praying, and our another part of the world. giving as we approach the manger this Christmas tide. We are drawing once again close to the festival of Christmas. The Christmas stories are of Tom Clammer course set, for the most part, in unstable, CanON PRecentOR dangerous, and persecutorial regimes. Jesus was born into a country which was occupied by Samuel 22.3 a conquering force. Within two years of his birth the child Jesus, with his mother and father, were ‘...my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, themselves driven from their home for fear of my shield and the horn of my salvation, persecution, and became refugees in the land my stronghold and my refuge, of Egypt, according to St Matthew’s account of my saviour; you save me from violence.’ www.twitter.com/SalisburyCath SALISBURY CATHEDRAL NEWS November/December 2015 3 Sudan Link Update Just about every Diocese in the Church of Independence from the UK and Egypt came along England has an overseas link in The Anglican in 1956 and after just a few years, civil war broke Communion. Our Diocesan partnership is unusual out, followed by a brief period of democracy, in that it is with what is now two countries and then another civil war that nominally ended with two provinces – Sudan (the North) and South independence for South Sudan in July 2011. This Sudan. Our relationship was founded almost 43 followed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, years ago upon a fellowship of mutual friendship, overseen by the UK, US and Norway and prayer and learning from each other travelling the monitored by the United Nations. Christian way of life. It is amongst the liveliest in the Anglican Communion. The world’s newest nation started with great hope and expectation but, after just two and Before the independence of the South in 2011 a half years of relative peace, ethnic and tribal Sudan was the biggest country in Africa with an fighting broke out around the Nile and spread in Arabic/Muslim and desert north and a Christian/ all directions. This has become another civil war Animist and fertile south. Christianity came to with some 10,000 deaths, one and a half million southern Sudan towards the end of the 19th people displaced and four million people out of a century with the spread of CMS missions from population of 11 million in danger of starvation. Uganda and Kenya and at about the time when it became a condominium of the UK and Egypt. A fragile ceasefire has been reluctantly signed The country is blessed with natural resources by the South and the ‘rebels’ under pressure including oil. Agriculturally, South Sudan could be from the UN and the regional Intergovernmental a breadbasket for much of Africa. Authority on Development (IGAD) but it is not 4 November/December 2015 SALISBURY CATHEDRAL NEWS www.facebook.com/salisburycathedral Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience effective. Murder, rape and pillage are used to settle old scores between tribes, and whole Narges Mohammadi communities continue to be destroyed. Denied Urgent Medical In all this the Churches, through their partners Treatment in the West, are providing humanitarian aid and Narges Mohammadi has been in Tehran’s Evin creating peace and reconciliation initiatives. Prison since 5 May. She faces national security We work with our Foreign and Commonwealth related charges based on her human rights Office and the Department for International activities, including campaigning against the Development (DFID) and our partner American death penalty, giving media interviews and Friends of the Episcopal Church of Sudan associating with other activists. (AFRECS) on advocacy and development opportunities. With Christian Aid we are She has a history of seizures and temporary supporting a number of humanitarian aid projects loss of vision. On 27 July she was taken to for displaced people. hospital after complaining of lung pains. Doctors suspected a possible blood clot, but she was Our Salisbury-Sudan partnership focuses on returned to prison without receiving treatment. education in schools and theological colleges. The next day prison officials refused to take her Our Medical Link provides primary health care to an appointment with a neurologist for a pre- with basic drugs and training nurses, dispensers existing condition of partial paralysis. and midwives. Fifteen of our 19 Deaneries are linked with Dioceses in the Sudans. These On 1 August she was taken to hospital after Deanery links are not prescriptive – they develop suffering partial paralysis. Doctors said she and flourish through mutual interests founded should be examined by a specialist but she was on prayer and fellowship and through exchange again denied the care she needed. Narges is not visits, and the valuing of many different cultures. allowed phone calls with her children, eight-year The present conflict makes some visits difficult old twins now living in France with their father and sometimes unsafe but the outcomes of these Taghi Rahmani. visits are always positive and life-enhancing. Call on Iranian authorities to release Narges Our Cathedral plays an important role in our immediately and unconditionally, and urge them Sudans Partnership. The Sudan Chapel within to grant immediate access to specialist medical the Morning Chapel in the North Choir aisle is a care outside prison, protect her from torture and permanent focus and reminder of what we share.