Fifty years on,God's still smiling

Abstract

Interviewed by the editor, the rector of St Bride’s, Fleet Street, reflects on the turbulent history of the church as it celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its rededication after suffering massive bomb damage in the Second World War. And he observes of the sometimes flimsy relationship between the newspaper industry and religion: “You might ask what this secular, sometimes pretty disreputable trade got to do with the Christian faith, but people working in the industry and working under pressure are stressed in their working lives and sometimes in their private lives sometimes. They need a spiritual anchor point. They need a place where they feel they can be absolutely themselves whatever else is going on and where they can come and feel understood, because I think although people see the public role of newspapers, they don’t understand all the internal pressures…they don’t always realise the cost of the end product in terms of stress and emotion. So newspapermen and women sometimes feel quite isolated. I feel the industry hugely values somewhere where they feel they belong, where they are understood and welcomed just as they are. And where God looks down on them with a smile. And on St Bride’s, too.”