HAPPY NEW YEAR! Wishing all Q readers a very good 2019! Sacred Treasure Phil Whittall has done a remarkable job amassing various links under several banners. Here is his trio of Church and Gender articles, plus a whole load of…
It hardly needs saying, but spying did not stop with the collapse of Communism. But if spying continued, it naturally follows that so did betrayal. The haunting question provoked by every betrayal is, “Why?” Perhaps it was easier to understand during the Cold War. The globe’s ideological map was drawn all too clearly. However flawed the enemy might be, believing in their ideological stance always made it forgiving those flaws much easier. But what about today? (more…)
A real gem this week. It’s on display in the painting studio at Chartwell, Churchill’s much-loved home in Kent. I couldn’t resist getting downhis points verbatim when we paid a return visit over the summer.
It came as a shock when this was first pointed out to me. Or rather, to be more accurate, it was a shock when I first realised how true it was of me. For a pastor friend was pointing out how perfectly capable we all are of justifying any action to ourselves; and worse, how perfectly capable we all are of justifying any action in specifically spiritual terms. (more…)
Just 3 nights in Istanbul hasn’t given a huge amount of time to see sights but I’ve had a few hours in between meetings. Managed to get to the old Chora Monastery (the most important remaining Byzantine church in the city, after the Hagia Sophia) and the vast Basilica Cisterns. (more…)
Was in Istanbul last week doing some Langham training each evening. Which meant that I never got back to my B&B until quite late. Which also meant that I was able to pass some of the great sights after dark…
Following on from yesterday's post, Lewis offers a very helpful articulation of how the Western and Islamic worlds diverged so drastically over the last 500 years. From a situation of great and proud cultural preeminence, the Middle East seems to…
I'd not really appreciated before quite how controversial Bernard Lewis (left) is seen in some circles (perhaps especially because he was regularly consulted by the Bush administration - though others had before him). But one of the foremost western scholars of…
Some good friends have been involved in this great project, a 30 minute documentary called The Jesus Accounts. Filmed in Istanbul and in the UK, it is designed to help those who are sceptical about the NT documents (especially those…
There is a play on words that gets lost in translation from Turkish into English. I am by no means a Turkish speaker (as if), and I only discovered it when looking up information about the town in which Orhan Pamuk’s celebrated 2002 book is set. Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006 and the citation said that he:
in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.