Apologies for being lax yesterday. Normal transmission can now be resumed. I'm hoping to be daily but it's funny how busy things are even during this extended home assignment! Today I'm going to read some poems from someone who is…
R. S. Thomas, I imagine, would not necessarily have had much time for me. I don't really know why I think that (and I'm probably committing a gross calumny), but there's a severity and pointedness to his writing which suggests…
Regulars will know that John Stott is a frequent focus here. I've just finished reading Alister Chapman's excellent, scholarly engagement with John Stott's legacy: Godly Ambition. A fuller review may come in time... But I will say this. Having spent 12…
STOP PRESS: It is now available here from Langham Literature, and will be on all usual distributors soon. It came as a complete surprise to him, thankfully. But under the guise of a Langham supporters' evening, a number of us…
So here’s the 3rd Q Combination. I don’t know how well known these two geniuses are beyond British shores – but they are true 20th Century greats. In their different ways, both articulate a deeply earthy, incarnated spirituality. (more…)
No one expected it.Few believed it. Even when they had it on good authority. Even when they’d been forewarned and forearmed (see Mark 8:31; 9:30-32; 10:32-34).
But still it didn’t sink in. Not immediately. And it wouldn’t, would it. After all, dead men simply don’t rise. They just DON’T. OK? (more…)
At last year’s launch of veteran travel writer Dervla Murphy’s remarkable book, A Month by the Sea – Encounters in Gaza, she made a simple but telling point. “The Palestinians’ predicament is that they are the victims’ victims”. Of course, in Faith in the Face of Empire, an equally remarkable book by a Palestinian Christian pastor, victimhood (despite its postmodern attractions) is a dangerous mantle. (more…)
Elizabeth Berridge, until very recently, was the youngest woman in the House of Lords, the UK’s upper house in Parliament. Raised to the peerage in the 2011, she was before that a barrister and then in 2006 became Executive Director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship which exists to bring together Conservative Party voting Christians of all denominations. She describes herself as a classic Tory ‘wet’, as opposed to the ‘Dry’ Thatcherite end of the party’s spectrum. If that terminology is rather meaningless to you (oreven sounds mildly offensive!) then listen in! (more…)
Again as part of our Uncover apologetics series, I looked at the issue of God and suffering on Sunday (my previous in the series was on the historicity of the gospels). For many, this really is the big one today. Belief in the divine seems palpably absurd in a suffering, chaotic, apparently uncontrollable world of forces, reactions and atoms. (more…)
Just back from doing the All Souls week away in Bath – my first major thing for work since I was off from 1st Jan. All seemed to go smoothly and happily, which was rather a relief for all concerned. The focus this year was the grace-freedom we have in Christ – which Paul expounds so superbly through Galatians (more…)