St Peter & St Paul's Church

Parts of our village church, the church of St Peter and St Paul, date from the thirteenth century and the church contain the tombs of three knights.

Our Rector is Canon Ian Tomlinson
The Rectory,
Ragged Appleshaw,
Andover
SP11 9HX
Telephone: 772414

Our Rector writes:

THE NATIONAL DEBATE about belief and the place of religion in modern life persists. Just when it was thought that the secular/scientific explanation of everything was all that was needed, along comes the realisation that faith has not gone away for a great number of inhabitants of the globe. Your own vicar has written before of how science and religion went hand in hand in his childhood, through the study of geology and fossils in the cliffs of his seaside upbringing.

He was also secretary of his Natural History Society at school and enjoyed the company of biologists and others who explored the world of birds,  insects, mammals and reptiles, the environment and ecology, before they were fashionable subjects of study. He had no difficulty in relating this to his experience of an enquiring contemporary Christian interpretation of living and regularly attending the eucharist in the beautiful pre-Raphaelite local parish church. Indeed, there seemed to be an intelligent congruence and an aesthetic expression of the divine and human elements in life.

So ideas of God, and talk about God (Theology) are not dead, as once supposed. They are expressed in a variety of ways nowadays. One person’s spirituality is another’s turn off. But we are not spoilt for choice. So why not choose the tradition to think about and practise that has kept the parish church going in the benefice: an Anglican version of the Christian Way?

This is what is on offer starting on Wednesday October 6th at 8pm at the Rectory for an hour and a half. I would like to gather a group of interested people together to read and think about a contemporary approach to faith, on the pattern of a book group. I would hope at that first gathering to work out an appropriate way of meeting and what sort of material to study and how often. Please let me know if you are interested.

Ian Tomlinson