Weekly Email – Trinity 3
Documents
Dear friends,
Our next online Zoom Theology seminar will take place next week on Tuesday 8th July at 7.00 pm. It will focus on a recently published book by biblical scholar Candida Moss entitled, “God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible.” The link to the Zoom seminar can be found here.
Once every two months, we organise an online theology seminar by Zoom to discuss a particular idea, theme or text. We aim to make discussion as approachable as possible, and to give people the space they need to express their thoughts and questions.
I will be leading next Tuesday’s seminar, which will seek to delve deeper into the question of who wrote the New Testament. We are used to thinking of the great names of the apostolic band as the authors of the gospels and epistles, but who actually put pen to paper, and in what sense can we say they “wrote” those texts?
Candida Moss’s opens up the fascinating topic of how literacy and text making operated in the Ancient world, what people understood “writing” and “reading” to be, and the various ways in which the dynamics of power, money, and status interact with those questions.
It becomes evident from her work just how extensive the work of enslaved or low-status scribes, readers, and writers was. Most of the literary or philosophical texts which survive from Antiquity will almost certainly have been dictated by individuals of high status to secretaries, most of whom were slaves. It is likely this pattern of literary production will also have characterised the production of many of the texts of the New Testament.
It becomes clear that the many icons, pictures, and statues we are used to seeing of an individual evangelist or apostle with pen in hand, writing a text alone are entirely false as a way of imagining how their letters and texts were produced.
Just as writing was rarely the activity of one person alone, so was reading and the distribution of texts around the Mediterranean world. Moss reveals to us how important the frequently enslaved messengers were who took letter from place to place and who were often required to read the texts out to audiences. In doing this, they made the intentions and ideas of the author present and embodied his voice.
A picture emerges in which “authorship” can be considered a group activity or collaboration in which a number of voices, individuals, secretaries, translators, interpreters, readers and messengers all contribute to the way in which meaning emerges from the texts that make up the New Testament.
This sheds helpful new light on some of the more tired and ossified arguments of New Testament scholarship concerning who wrote which New Testament texts. It also reveals the power of privilege, money, and status as this book seeks to reveal the forgotten voices and marginalised contributors without whose work the New Testament corpus would not exist.
It is true that Moss’s work makes a number of quite strident assertions about early Christianity collaborating in and enabling abusive systems of exploitation through the apparatus of Roman slavery. I personally would judge elements of her argument to be over blown. However, one doesn’t have to agree with every part of her work to find this book a very helpful and illuminating contribution to a topic which very much forms part of intellectual and political discourse at the moment.
I look forward to our seminar on Tuesday and hope many will join us to explore this fascinating subject.
Fr Peter
Congratulations, Fr Reg!
Fr Reg Bushau will be celebrating his 50th anniversary of ordination with a High Mass at All Saints’ at 3.00 pm tomorrow (5th July). Fr Reg is a good friend of our parish and frequently helps with cover of Low Masses during the week. All parishioners of All Saints’ are invited to join him for this celebration which will be followed by drinks in our courtyard. We offer him our warmest congratulations and many prayers on this important anniversary.
It was such a joy to welcome the Friends of St George’s Anglican Church, Paris to All Saints’ last Monday for their annual Mass and supper. It was a beautiful summer evening and such a delight to welcome and catch up with friends from London and Paris.
Visiting preacher this Sunday
Fr Matthew Olver will be preaching at the 11.00 am High Mass this Sunday. He is a priest of the Episcopal Church in America and is the Executive Director of Living Church. He is in England on a research trip and has kindly agreed to preach for us this weekend. He visited us last year when he worked on the staff at Nashotah House and was an excellent preacher. We look forward to hearing his words next Sunday.
Film night
There will be a film night with refreshments for our young adults at Fr Alan’s flat on 23 July at 7 pm. Please be in touch with Fr Alan if you wish to attend.
Dinner in our courtyard last Monday following the Friends of St George’s Anglican Church, Paris, Mass.
August Bible Study
Encouraged by the size and consistency of numbers at the Bible studies that took place after Holy Hour and the evening Mass on Wednesdays in August last year, there will be another series of Bible studies this year, centred on St Luke’s Gospel. Sessions will take place on 13, 20 and 27 August. There will be a rough limit of 25 per session and sign-up (free, of course) will be by Eventbrite, so that we fit comfortably into the Parish Room. There will be tea and coffee available. You can sign up for all the sessions, or just those you are able to make, here.
You can watch last Sunday’s High Mass for Ss. Peter and Paul here.
Parish Walks
Our next parish walk will be a nine mile walk from Amberley to Arundel on Saturday July 12th. We’ll get the 10.05 train from Victoria Station. Amberley is the stop before Arundel, so a return ticket will work. We will aim for the 17.14 train back at the latest, and so will be back in London before 7pm. Please email Fr Alan to sign up or for more details.
Dinner in our courtyard last Monday following the Friends of St George’s Anglican Church, Paris, Mass.
Assumptiontide celebrations 2025
Friday 15th August 2025
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm High Mass
Preacher: Fr Peter Anthony
Sunday 17th August 2025
6.00 pm Assumptiontide Evensong and Benediction with Procession of Our Lady down Oxford Street.
Preacher: The Revd Philip Corbett, Vicar of St Silas and Holy Trinity, Kentish Town.
Attendance last Sunday
Flowers
The flowers in front of Our Lady’s statue are given this week by Colin Symes in memory of his niece, Caroline Thorpe, whose 1st anniversary falls on 9th July.
If you would like to make a donation for flowers or the courtyard garden, please contact Shawn directly or via the office.
For your prayers
The Friends of All Saints
6th – Christopher Walsh, Philip Wayne, Fr Benjamin Weitzmann, Fr. Mats Wendt, Michael Westcott
7th – Sandra Wheen, Matthew Whittaker, Tim Widdowfield, David Wilcox, Samuel Wildy, T. Bradford Willis, Ian A. Wilson, Fr Michael Witcombe
8th – Martin Woods, The Rev’d John Wylam, William Yale, Michael Young
9th – Mark Allan, Martin Amherst-Lock, Robert Austen, Richard Ayling, James Babington Smith, Ruth Baker
10th – Stephen Baldwin, Stephen Barber, Nigel Beanland, Jonathan Beck, Dr William Benefield, William Bonnell, Charlotte Black, John Blackburn
11th – John Bristow, Paul Brough, Michael Brown, David Blunden, Fr Michael Bowie, Dr Graham Burns
12th – Derek Bussey, Katherine Butler, Maureen Cambrey, David Caplowe, Adrian Carlton-Oatley, Timothy Cassady, Norman and Zulette Catir, Kate Charles, Stuart Chillingworth, Sir Robert Chote, Sandy Christian
The sick
Biddy Baxter, Jean Castledine, David Craig, Fr Michael Gudgeon, Sheelagh Gudgeon, Elizabeth Lyon, Fr Harry Hodgetts, James Rodger, Fr Jim Rosenthal, Ingrid Slaughter, Juliet Wyndham
Anniversaries of death
6th – Philip Smith, Molly Mather
7th – Lucy Wentworth-Reeve, Wilfred Burling;
8th – Tom Sanders
9th – Doreen Davis, Grace Harrison, Pat Hunt
10th – Gordon Arthur, Aileen Buxton, David Botsford
11th – Mabel Pearce, Laurence Olivier
12th – Wilfred Stansfield, Cyril Ward
Services this week
Saturday 5 July – Feria
12pm Low Mass
3.00 pm High Mass – 50th Anniversary of Ordination to the Priesthood of Fr Reg Bushau
6.00 pm Confessions
6.30 pm Vigil Mass of Sunday
Sunday 6 July – TRINITY III
8.30 am Low Mass
11 am High Mass
5.15 pm Low Mass
6.00 pm Solemn Evensong and Benediction
Monday 7 July – Feria
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm Low Mass
Tuesday 8 July – Feria
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm Low Mass
Wednesday 9 July – Feria
12 noon Low Mass
5.30 Holy Hour
6.30 pm Low Mass
Thursday 10 July – Feria
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm Low Mass
Friday 11 July – St Benedict, Patron of Europe
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm Low Mass
Saturday 12 July – Feria
12pm Low Mass
6.00 pm Confessions
6.30 pm Vigil Mass of Sunday
Sunday 13 July – TRINITY IV
8.30 am Low Mass
11 am High Mass
5.15 pm Low Mass
6.00 pm Solemn Evensong and Benediction