Latest news with #StJohnsChurch
BBC News
05-08-2025
- General
- BBC News
Hale church on home stretch for crumbling tower repairs
Fundraising for urgent repairs to a crumbling 181-year-old church tower in Surrey is on the "home stretch", according to the John's Church, in Hale, near Farnham, needs a further £5,500 to fund repairs to its tower, having raised about £27,000 through donations, fundraising events and church said the work, to cost £32,000, was urgent and a stonemason was available in mid-September, so the final funds needed to be found in time to pay the Lexi Russell, rector of the Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale, of which St John's is a part, said the fundraising had been "an incredible effort from everyone involved". She said: "The community has come together with creative ways to raise the funds to repair the tower of our beautiful church."We are now on the home stretch, with one final push to reach our goal before mid-September."St John's has stood as a beacon of hope in Hale Road for generations, and with your continued support, we can ensure it remains so for generations to come."Curate Rev Stella Wiseman told BBC Radio Surrey that the state of the tower had meant a pause on campanology."There is a bell which we can't ring because we're worried about more coming off the tower. We haven't rung it for two or three years," she added that the problem was the use of clunch, chalk or limestone, previously used to speed up building and cut costs."They built it out of stone and put clunch round the outside, and that is crumbling. I don't think when they built it in 1844 they were thinking about 180 years later," she said. The parish has received grants from Farnham Town Council, the Church of England, Marshall's Charity, the Surrey Churches Preservation Trust and Benefact has also taken place including through a 'Pugs and Prejudice' event, a celebration of dogs in Jane Austen's work, a Land's End to John O-Groats ride on an exercise bike and through individual church opened in 1844 and was designed by Benjamin Ferrey, a pupil of Victorian Gothic architect Augustus was extended in 1897 to accommodate a growing congregation following the expansion of Aldershot as a garrison town.
Times
27-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
The summer of 2020 — when America went mad with rage
Of all the many strange moments I experienced as a correspondent in America, the last weekend of May 2020 was perhaps the oddest. On Friday, May 29, Mayor Muriel Bowser's pandemic 'stay-at-home' order for Washington expired. Yet by Sunday, May 31, we were ordered to stay in our homes once more, this time as part of a curfew being enacted across dozens of American cities to curb the violent protests that followed the death of George Floyd, who had been murdered by a Minneapolis cop that month. I began to wonder if I would ever leave the house freely again. That evening and the next, I went out anyway and watched in alarm as rubber bullets and tear gas were used on peaceful protesters to clear a path for President Trump (remember him?) to have a photo op with a Bible outside St John's Church, just opposite the White House. As those strange 48 hours demonstrated, the intensity of the George Floyd protests can't be separated from the claustrophobic mania of the pandemic. One midwifed the other into being. But they were also a reflection of a much older trauma that goes all the way back to America's birth in 1619: the unresolved legacy of slavery and its racist aftermath. Five years later, how should we reflect on that wave of protest that coursed through America and then the world? Was it a righteous revolution that ultimately fizzled out in the face of a reactionary backlash? Or was it a well-intentioned and sincere uprising that was co-opted, misdirected and ill-conceived, leading to counterproductive violence, ideological excess and an orgy of corporate arse-covering that did little to address the fundamentals of racial inequality in America? Thomas Chatterton Williams leans towards the latter position. Chatterton Williams is one of America's more interesting intellectuals. A 44-year-old academic, author and journalist of mixed race heritage, he has long sought to defend traditional liberal values — pluralism, free speech, a belief in progress — even as the American left and some of its leading black figures, writers such as Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X Kendi, have veered into pessimism, radicalism and intolerance, or what is colloquially known as 'wokeism'. As cancel culture reached its apogee in 2020, Chatterton Williams helped to organise and became the face of the Harper's Letter, a public statement published in Harper's Magazine by a group of writers ranging from Noam Chomsky to JK Rowling. The letter made a fairly uncontroversial defence of free speech, but such was the demented nature of public debate that year, it generated a wave of fury on the left and made Chatterton Williams an object of hate. In truth he's a more ambiguous and engaging figure than his caricaturists suggest. Chatterton Williams's three books to date have used his biography to delve into questions of colour in America, arguing that the entire concept of race is invented and black and white are meaningless, unscientific categories that can and should be transcended. • The anti-racism books everybody should read, from Malcolm X to Candice Carty-Williams This fourth book again uses memoir as a prism and builds on his previous positions, restating the case for liberalism (and against identity politics) in the wake of 2020's excesses. 'We must resist the mutually assured destruction of identitarianism,' he argues, 'even when it comes dressed up in the seductive guise of 'antiracism' — and really believe in the process of liberalism again, if we are ever to make our multiethnic societies hospitable to ourselves and to the future generations we hope will surpass us.' It's easy to forget just how bizarre some of the things that happened in the latter part of Trump's first term really were, but Chatterton Williams does an able job of reminding us. For those of us who follow digital discourse closely, there are some oddly nostalgic moments here: the Jussie Smollett hoax (the actor reported a hate crime that he had staged against himself), the Tom Cotton op-ed (a New York Times opinion piece that called for the use of the military against protesters), the Covington kids controversy and that time a University of Southern California professor nearly lost his job for using a common Chinese word that sounds like the n-word. For those of you who don't wallow daily in online melodrama, I envy you — but sadly this stuff matters anyway. Chatterton Williams rightly points out that not only did these flashpoints permanently reshape US public life, but that the rest of us in America's cultural imperium live inexorably downstream from them. Take the Covington kids controversy, for example, when much of the American media had a frothing meltdown over a clip of a confrontation between a Trump-supporting teenage boy appearing to intimidate a Native American drummer in Washington, only for more footage to emerge showing that the situation was vastly more complex. (Before the footage was taken, the teenagers had been taunted by a group of Black Hebrew Israelites.) That display of mindless partiality did incalculable damage to mainstream media credibility in America. And the leading beneficiary of this shattering? Donald Trump, of course. • Gen Z think UK is racist and would not fight for their country Covington, Chatterton Williams suggests, was just one egregious example of how 'basic liberal norms came to be jettisoned, first by the right and then — in reaction — increasingly by the left', as the Trump era unspooled. Being a liberal himself, Chatterton Williams tends to view the Trumpian right as irredeemable and instead mostly punches left, pleading with the social justice radicals to rediscover the art of nuance and reasonable debate. The alternative, he argues, is a kind of wilfully blind, morally incoherent partisanship that only energises the radicals on the other side. This mindset allows the US left to accuse the state of Georgia of conducting 'an experiment in human sacrifice' for reopening hair salons in April 2020, but also lets it demand that millions of people be allowed to gather and protest for racial justice in the middle of the pandemic because their cause was righteous. 'In the space of two weeks,' Chatterton Williams recalls, 'without really thinking it through, we went from shaming people for being in the street to shaming them for not being in the street.' This is a clever and compelling book that embraces complexity. Chatterton Williams's style is a touch rarefied for my taste, his language inflected by the stodge of academic jargon, but his thinking is dextrous and his insights are acute. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List I also admire his rejection of fashionable pessimism. For example, he shares the good news that America is actually less blighted by racial inequality than ever. According to the US Census Bureau, 'poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics reached historic lows in 2019'. Black high school completion rates, meanwhile, are now at 88 per cent, close to the national average and 'an enormous gain considering that in 1940, when the organisation began collecting data, only 7 per cent of blacks achieved a high school degree'. Of course, many chronic problems endure. But economically at least America is heading in the right direction. Or ought to be at least, Chatterton Williams argues, if it could just get out of its own way. However, tortured by its demons and unresolved divisions, America also seems to have forgotten the 'fragile blessings of the liberal society', instead 'deliberately swerving from the path of incremental improvement onto a Sisyphean cycle of exhaustion'. Trump is back, bigger than ever, and the madness of 2020 is infecting its public life once more. America may not have seen its last curfew. Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse by Thomas Chatterton Williams (Constable £25 pp272). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Church reopens after anti-social behaviour 'reset'
A churchyard in a town centre has reopened after it was forced to close for a month because of anti-social behaviour. St John's the Baptist's Church in the centre of Glastonbury, Somerset, stopped all church-related activities, other than Sunday services and funerals, during May for a "reset". David Smith, churchwarden said it was a "horrible" decision to close but added: "The raised gravestones were being used as shop counters for open drug dealing - that obviously is unacceptable." The decision split opinions in the town but Avon and Somerset Police said the closure was "challenging", but a "necessary" step to protect safety. More news stories for Somerset Listen to the latest news for Somerset The church say they're working with Glastonbury Town Council, local businesses and the Police as the churchyard reopens. Mr Smith continued: "I believe the closure was the reset we needed and we've had good feedback from the public as we reopened." Paul Manning is a town councillor and runs a business just off the High Street and said anti-social behaviour in the town is a "barrier" to tourists. He said: "The businesses at the top end of the High Street suffer because of anti-social behaviour. We need to all work together to address this." It comes after the BBC reported in January that some Glastonbury shop workers said more work needed to be done to crack down on crime and anti-social behaviour. A police spokesperson previously told the BBC: "We have been working closely with representatives from the church and the local authority to combat anti-social behaviour in and around Glastonbury." Dandelion Chalice runs a business in Glastonbury and said it was a "huge shame" to close the churchyard. He said: "I felt it was upsetting to shut a Christian place of worship. "But I understand it as the churchyard was much more peaceful when it was closed. "You can't have people fighting next to families having picnics." Follow BBC Somerset on Facebook and X. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630. Churchyard closes due to anti-social behaviour Calls for more action on crime, despite crackdown
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Community unites after fire damages historic church building
DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – Parishioners from the St. John the Baptist Church in Maria Stein went to mass this Sunday at the Precious Blood Church over in Chickasaw. The church community was invited to the nearby church because of a massive fire that heavily damaged the 135-year-old building on Thursday evening. 'A big loss': Church steeple, roof collapse in massive Maria Stein fire 2 NEWS spoke with two community members about the drastic change in their lives, Ted and Sarah Burgmen, who live close to St. John's. 'It's like our world changed,' said Sarah, 'we thought of all the baptisms, first communions, weddings and funerals which happened there. Over 135 years is quite a history of things that can't be replaced.' The pair spoke on how the community is looking forward. 'People will rebuild that church,' said Ted. 'The building's gone, but the people aren't.' 'The building is a building, but the church is our community,' said Sarah. The two churches have been closed before. When St. John's was being repainted, Precious Blood invited over their parish for four months. 'Everybody works with each other,' shared Ted. 'This is one great big community here.' Maria Stein community assesses damage after devastating church fire Dr. James 'Jim' Schwieterman spoke with 2 NEWS as he visited the fence outside of St. John. 'This is my community,' said Schwieterman. 'All the sacraments for me, my mother, my grandparents and my great grandparents, all started here at St. John's church. They say 'you try to make the unreal real' and so you come out here to process the loss.' He continued, speaking on rebuilding. 'I was asked, 'do you think they'll rebuild?' and I said I know they will. It's not an if, it's a when. The local community, Catholic and not alike, we band together. It's who we are, it's what we're about.' 2 NEWS will follow the St. John's community through these next steps. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
