Author Archives: admin

Disappointed with Jesus

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An episode of Premier Radio’s Unbelievable show (20th August 2011) featured a thoughtful and civilised discussion between Rebekah Bennetch & Sheridan Voysey.  (The show’s host, Justin Brierley, also played a major a role in the conversation).

Rebekah had offered to appear on the show in order to explain her ‘deconversion’ from Christianity to atheism.  She had been raised in a strongly Christian family, had attended two Bible colleges, taught in Sunday School, and served with her parents in the mission field.…

Brideshead Unvisited

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I’m not a huge movie buff, but, faced with a long rail journey, I settled down to watch Brideshead Revisited on the tiny but effective screen of my iPod.

I won’t attempt to re-tell the story here, but just to say that I was interested in the strong religious thread running through the plot.  The leading character, Charles Ryder, is presented as a level-headed, fair-minded atheist.  He comes into contact with an aristocratic family with a strong Roman Catholic tradition. …

Tom Wright for anyone?

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My attention has been drawn to this recent talk, followed by a Q and A session, by Stephen Kuhrt about his book ‘Tom Wright for Everyone’.

Stephen Kuhrt’s talk on ‘Tom Wright for Everyone’

Stephen is vicar of Christ Church, New Malden.  He is clearly an avid fan of Tom Wright and, as the subtitle of his book indicates, he is interested in ‘putting the theology of N.T. Wright into practice in the local church.’

Since I’m reasonably well acquainted with Wright’s more popular writings (but less so the big scholarly tomes), there wasn’t much in Stephen’s talk that was new to me. …

Micah 1-2 – What is God of the Old Testament really like? – sermon notes

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Micah – historical and geographical background

Let me read you the following quotation. “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

That’s from Richard Dawkins, shortly after he swallowed a dictionary.

But is God of the Old Testament really like that?…

The Minor Prophets as a football team

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If you want to memorise the names of the Minor Prophets in the right order, think of them as a football team:-

Hosea (HOS) is Head of Side

Joel is in goal

Amos and Obadiah (Alpha and Omega) are the two full-backs

Jonah, Micah and Nahum (the three five-letter prophets) are the half-backs

And finally, playing in an HZHZM formation are the five forwards – Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

I picked this up form the spoken ministry of Jonathan Fletcher. …

Evangelicals and child abuse (?)

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Peter Lewis writes in a recent edition of Evangelicals Now:-

A short while back, Bel Mooney interviewed Philip Pullman, author of the famous children’s books where the church is the evil power that abuses children and ‘God’ is a fake, an extremely old angel who came into existence as a throw-up of evolution, pretended to be ‘God’ and has to be preserved in a block of ice by other angels. The great deliverance is to be freed of the idea of God and then everyone is free to go on into non-existence when they die.

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“Sinners in the hands of an angry God”

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In this famous sermon – a negative icon of everything that people perceive to be wrong with Puritan evangelism – Jonathan Edwards describes the state of his hearers who are outside of Christ:-

That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.

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Five things science cannot account for

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It is, perhaps, the defining characteristic of ‘scientism’ to claim that all truth is susceptible to scientific enquiry, and that only truths discovered by the scientific method are true at all.

William Lane Craig, in a 1998 debate with atheist Peter Atkins, responded to this claim by listing five types of truth that are not scientifically demonstrable:-

1. Logical and mathematical reasoning;

2. Metaphysical truths, such as the existence of other minds, or that the external world is real, or that the past did not come into being five minutes ago;

3.…

The Bible is not a book

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In his review of Melvyn Bragg’s The Book of Books: the radical impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011, Philip Hensher writes:-

‘Considered as a book, the Bible is far too long. Its characterisation is not all it should be: its hero, God, seems totally inconsistent, varying from a prankster with a bizarre sense of humour (Job) to a sensible dispenser of advice. You can’t help feeling that it is really rather patchy in quality: some of it is wonderfully entertaining, such as the Acts of the Apostles and the two Books of Kings, but some of it doesn’t seem to be interested in entertaining the reader one bit.

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English Country Parsons

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Bill Bryson lives in an old rectory near Wymondham, just a few miles from my own home in Norwich.

He uses his present home as the starting-point for his fascinating study of domestic life, At Home.

There are, consequently, some interesting observations on English clergy in the period leading up to and around the time the rectory was built, in 1851.

In 1851 there were 17,621 Anglican clergy.  Going into the church was one of the two default occupations for the younger sons of the well-to-do (a military career being the other). …