St Francis of Bournville

Bournville is a beautiful place, a model village designed by the Cadbury family for the labour force required by its chocolate factories. It feels like an idealised English settlement with spacious parks, architecturally interesting buildings and plentiful schools and amenities. When I first saw the Church of St Francis of Assisi, its dedication and Italian ‘basilica’ design, it persuaded me that it was Roman Catholic, but its favoured designation of Bournville Parish Church gave away its Anglican status. It has a thoughtful and comprehensive website, as though it were to match the spirit of its idealised and perfect physical location. The online pictures show full congregations of various, beautifully crafted furnishings and photos of smiling, white-haired old ladies carrying a processional cross down the aisle. An ideal church in an idealised setting.

On its homepage are the ‘Eco Church’ and ‘Inclusive Church’ emblems, which will also be considered further proof that this is a church with its finger on the cultural pulse, dynamic and relevant. But what if the latter’s various campaigns to redefine Christian marriage, to blur the male-female distinction and remould British Christianity in a new mould is anathema to God, and Bournville’s support for this stuff equally opprobrious to an unchanging, timeless One? Unfashionable, I know, but it means that this idyllic religious organisation is not so ideal after all. No, give me a tumbledown shack in a rundown town populated by rough folk who seek to be faithful to scripture even when it is unfashionable, and I’ll be closer to God than I ever would be in Chocolate Town.

The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever. Psalm 119:160

A. D