A couple of weeks ago, James Cary invited himself for lunch - and then we hooked up online with our old friend Barry Cooper (now living in Florida, for reasons best known to him and his new wife) for a…
I made the point last month (yikes - I have had a LOT on recently) that we are integrated beings and so inevitably, it is not always possible to draw clear distinctions between physical, sexual and psychological abuses of power.…
Happy New Year Y'all! Sacred Treasure Tim Keller wrote a helpfully argued piece for the New Yorker last month: Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump and Roy Moore. Chris Green has a good piece on sermon illustrations Ian Paul asks whether…
Sacred Treasure Former LibDem leader, Tim Farron has been saying some really important things in the last week about the state and nature of western liberalism. Here is his original Theos lecture: What Kind of Liberalism do we want? Then…
A few hours in Timothy Dudley-Smith’s company, through the medium of his recent A Functional Art: Reflections of a Hymn Writer, is extremely well spent. Now in his 90s, it is wonderful to find that his acuity, humanity and insight are…
We moved house this summer - so this poem is apt: the 'clocks and carpets and chairs on the lawn all day'. We moved to Maidenhead in Berkshire, so the painting is apt: Stanley Spencer lived and worked most of…
We are so much more aware of the sociological contexts for the public square, these days - or if we're not, we should be, because they will be pointed out soon enough! This means that the background of whoever is holding forth…
John Stott was scrupulous in attempting to do this. It was a key element of the respect that he garnered amongst those he debated or disagreed. He would unfailingly attempt to honour an opposing position by seeking to understand it from…
This post is not exactly in the heat of the moment. But because the site for which I wrote the article is no longer in action, I presumed that the world needed the benefit of its insights (hoho) and so thought I’d repost, albeit with the notes from the talk I’ve given a few times based on it. (more…)
For starters, I'm an unashamed fan. Orphan Black is fantastic TV. We've watched through the first 4 seasons now, but will have to wait until the release of the boxed set of 5 to see the conclusion of the matter…