claudine_c

The bible is not a book that can be mastered. The great tragedy of the bible study is it has made the bible dull and boring. ... The bible is a book to be wrestled with. The bible is a dangerous, world-changing, life-altering text that is out to transform the reader.

Bethesda Katong Church, Singapore

This church is identified with the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative and very Protestant tradition. It was where my mother and her mother went, but when we moved to Australia, my parents didn't really settle down in any church. I'm the only one who became a regular church attender again, and that was after a gap of over ten years.

?St Andrew's, Glen Waverley (Melbourne)

I'm not completely certain that I have the correct name. This parish no longer exists; soon after I left, it merged with two other parishes in Glen Waverley and Mount Waverley. That combined parish might have become Glen Waverley Anglican Church, but I can't be sure as there isn't a `history' page on that website. Anyway, the Glen Waverley parish was evangelical Anglican, not that I knew what that meant at the time. It has a small but important place in my history: it was the first church I attended on my own; it gave me my first experience of a local parish community; it was where I was told to read the Bible in a modern translation (I had grown up on the Authorised/King James translation); and it was my introduction to the Anglican church, even though it was a very different part of the Anglican tradition from where I am now. I was there for about a year in my early twenties and participated in an Alpha course. Although it was a friendly parish and I wanted to belong somewhere, I didn't really `click' with people there, and I wasn't comfortable with the teachings in Alpha or other things I heard there, so I drifted away.

St Peter's Eastern Hill, Melbourne

Theologically and liturgically, this is at the opposite end of the Anglican spectrum (though I'm not sure that spectrum is the right word). St Peter's is a major exponent of Anglo-Catholicism and ritualism. I was baptised and confirmed here, became involved in many parish activities, and burnt out and ran away after four years. I've recently started repairing bridges; I can't deny that visiting St Peter's for the first time (ten years ago) was one of the great turning points in my life. For the first time, I was in a parish that took liturgy seriously and did it well (until then, I had no idea what `liturgy' meant or why it mattered), where not everybody was uniformly conservative, middle class and socially respectable, and where lay people were encouraged to think, ask difficult questions and argue with the clergy.

All Saints', Ainslie (Canberra)

I was only here for three months, while I was a visiting student at the Australian National University, but it was here that I encountered a style of Anglo-Catholicism that was more relaxed than at St Peter's.

St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne

When I was a child, my family occasionally visited St Paul's for Christmas and Easter. We didn't understand much of the liturgy but we had a sense of its beauty. After I ran away from St Peter's I crept into St Paul's and found a relaxed liturgy, friendly people and women priests. (I'd heard of women priests, I'd even met some in person, but I don't think I'd ever seen one actually celebrate the Eucharist until I went to St Paul's.) I've now been here six years, longer than anywhere else.

St John's, Camberwell (Melbourne)

I was living in Camberwell a few years ago and dropped in at St John's for a Taizé-style evensong, and found myself getting more involved until I was dividing my Sundays between two parishes. I left the parish when I moved out of the area, but I can't seem to get away from the parishioners. :-)

St Mary's, North Melbourne

I'm not really a member of this parish, but I attend morning prayer here several times a week. Sometimes it's just the vicar and me. It's a good way to start the day.