‘Grace to Share our Bread’ lecture at Ripon Cathedral

A free lecture taking place at Ripon Cathedral will address some interesting issues surrounding community when Dr Kathy Galloway opens the latest series of St Wilfrid Lectures with ‘Grace to Share our Bread: Expressions of 21st Century Community’ on Thursday 28 February.

In welcoming Dr Galloway to the St Wilfred series, the Dean of Ripon commented: “This year’s St Wilfrid Lectures focus on the theme of community and the broad issue of ‘Who Is My Neighbour?’. It is with great pleasure that we welcome Kathy Galloway, a renowned writer and broadcaster, to open the series for us. Kathy describes herself as a practical theologian and has a passion for issues of social justice and peace. Her passion has worked itself out in many ways. She is a former leader of the Iona Community and is now head of Christian Aid in Scotland. In her lecture entitled ‘Grace to Share our Bread’, she will give her vision of what good 21^st century community should look like.  We look forward to the challenge she will bring.”

The 2013 St Wilfrid Lectures will bring together an exciting range of speakers who will challenge those attending to think about the issues of community cohesion, multi-culturalism, inter-religious dialogue, school communities, lessons learnt from living ‘in community’, the European experiment and the voluntary sector.

The Dean of Ripon added: “In recent years there have been negative and positive images of our regional, national and international communities: urban riots, the Olympics, business and banking meltdown, the Golden Jubilee, sexual predators, the Arab Spring, and European uncertainties. Politicians have foregrounded the notion of community in terms like The Big Society, Community Cohesion, so clearly ‘community’ is high on the agenda. How then are we to understand the place of community and to respond to ideas of neighbourliness, of looking out for and needing to understand the other?”

The annual St Wilfrid lectures, named in honour of Ripon Cathedral’s founder, have been running since 2009.  They are jointly organised and sponsored by York St John University, Ripon Cathedral, the Methodist District of York and Hull, and Ripon and Leeds Diocese.  Previous lectures have ranged widely over questions of faith and public life, with high profile speakers including the Most Revd and Rt Hon Dr John Sentamu, Lord Inderjit Singh, Ruth Gledhill, Baroness Estelle Morris, Professor Terry Eagleton, and Professor Mona Siddiqui.