A new crop of Jellicoe interns is emerging from the Crunch Time week in Oxford University. Past and present interns and clergy from their placement congregations spoke to over 800 students about the work – and in a couple of weeks, we will be holding interviews for the summer internship programme.

Our current interns (pictured above) are making important progress…
Ian Vijay Bhullar is helping E1 Community Church move towards membership of London Citizens, in partnership with St Mary’s Anglican Church, Cable Street.
Megan Dilhoff and Theodore Wold are beginning a year of partnership between Jellicoe interns and the Roman Catholic Parish of SS Mary and Michael, Limehouse – as the priest and congregation explore membership of London Citizens
Amma Asante is working with other students at the University of East London to sign up local businesses to be ‘CitySafe Havens’ – and her work as a Jellicoe Intern has helped her secure a part-time job at St Peter’s C of E School in Wapping

We wish Rachel Coleman well in her new role working for the Archbishop of Sudan!  She leaves St John’s Anglican Church in Hackney now in active membership of London Citizens.  The parish has raised money for a Community Worker who will be taking this work forward – in particular on the CitySafe campaign.

Pictured (left to right):
Back row – Theodore, Amma, Adam Atkinson (CTC’s Senior Tutor) and Ian
Front Row – Beatrice Piloya (local parishioner), Sr Josephine Canny (Community Chaplain) and Megan

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4075MEIOpw&hl=en_GB&fs=1&]

The man who resigned from the cabinet over Gordon Brown’s leadership urges him to learn from the “remarkable” work of London Citizens – in connecting local people with political debate.

On May 6th, Dr Rob Gilbert (Fellow of Magdalen) and Ian Vijay Bhullar (PPE, Keble, 2006-2009) will speak about the impact of community organising on the General Election.

Rob’s placement with the Contextual Theology Centre followed Citizens UK’s response to the credit crunch through the autumn – and as he speaks, the alliance has secured commitments from all three main parties on these issues.

Ian is currently a year-round Jellicoe intern, and his work on the Sanctuary Pledge will also be part of Citizens UK’s agenda at its forthcoming General Election Assembly in Westminster.

Book your place with the co-ordinator, Revd Angus Ritchie (firstname.secondname@magd.ox.ac.uk) and join us at 9pm in the New Rooms, Magdalen College – for free-flowing wine and discussion… After the seminar, there will be an opportunity to go to a nearby room and watch the results of the election as they begin to come in.

2010 is shaping up to be an eventful year for the Jellicoe Community.  As we head towards the General Election, London Citizens’ anti-usury campaign will reach a new level – and our Centre will be playing a key role in this work.  In Oxford, we are planning an exciting week of events on Christian faith and community organising – including the launch of a short film on the Jellicoe Community at an event at Keble College with the Bishop of Oxford.  You can follow this on our ‘Crunch Time’ blog.

Later in the year, we will be marking the 75th anniversary of the death of Fr Basil Jellicoe – about which more details will follow soon.

This YouTube video shows the police quizzing two senior Anglican clerics – one a Canon of Westminster Abbey, the other a world authority on St Nicholas.  Their offence?  To try and deliver presents to refugees detained at Yarl’s Wood, on behalf of Citizens for Sanctuary (the campaign on which Jellicoe Intern Ian Vijay Bhullar blogged earlier this month).

This will be the last Jellicoe blogpost until after Christmas… so it comes with our good wishes to you all!

Leading Anglican theologian Prof John Milbank is to give the 2010 CITIZENS UK Lecture on Catholic social teaching and the new politics – an event co-sponsored by the Contextual Theology Centre and its academic partners.

The event will be on Tuesday 23rd March  at 6.30pm, and will be followed by the launch of Faithful Citizens, a guide to community organising and Catholic social teaching by CTC Fellow Dr Austin Ivereigh. Full details will follow in the New Year.

UPDATE: This report has appeared in the Church Times today

The head of one of Europe’s largest hedges fund threw his weight behind calls for a 20% cap on interest rates. Paul Marshall was speaking at a conference on ‘Christian Responses to the Great Recession’, organised by St Mellitus College, King’s College London and the Contextual Theology Centre (CTC).

Marshall was one of a wide-ranging panel supporting the call for an anti-usury law. The call is being made by London Citizens – an alliance of over 150 religious and civic institutions – as part of a wider response to the credit crunch. Other proposals include the ‘London Living Wage’ which has already secured over £25 million for low-paid workers in the capital.

The panel was chaired by Dr Luke Bretherton, who played a key role in London Citizens’ recent assembly (Church Times, 4 December). At the event, he secured a commitment from the Conservative Treasury team to a cap on storecard interest rates, and a review of other ‘egregious’ financial products

Endorsing the call for an interest rate cap, economic commentator Andrew Dilnot urged church leaders to speak out more clearly on the issue. The conference heard testimony from individuals and churches affected by the credit crunch, including those trapped in loans with spiralling penalties and charges.

In a keynote lecture, Prof John Milbank that London Citizens’ measures were “only the start” of what was needed. Milbank argued that economics was gripped by a fundamentally mistaken view of the human person, as if they were “wholly driven by self-interest”. The truth, he claimed, was more complex: “we are created good, we are sinful, and we are capable of being perfected by the grace of Jesus Christ”.

The conference ended with a presentation by Phillip Blond. Blond recently launched the ResPublica think-tank, and its ‘red Tory’ philosophy is having a growing influence on David Cameron’s thinking. Blond argued that since the 1970s, the growing wealth in British society had failed to trickle down from rich to poor. He blamed this on the growth of both ‘monopoly capitalism’ and the welfare state – to the exclusion of the ‘Big Society’ for which Cameron is now calling.

Commenting on the day, CTC Director the Revd Angus Ritchie said “This event proves that Biblical teaching – on wealth in general and usury in particular – has huge relevance to today’s economy. Today, we heard of the impact this is already having on the political debate. If the church heeds this call to action, the impact could be even greater.”