Preaching to the choir

Jun 8, 2021 by

Preaching to the choir

by Marcus Walker, The Critic: The Church will soon hit a Hartlepool moment, when people who feel politically unwelcome go elsewhere. An institution led by a self-selecting elite obsessed with the hot topics of today’s culture war alienating increasing numbers of its supporters until they eventually vote with their feet, leaving the very survival of that institution in doubt. The Labour Party or the Church of England? Watching the slow motion self-destruction of the party that purports to speak...

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Freedom and Identity

Jun 7, 2021 by

Freedom and Identity

by John F Doherty, Public Discourse: The greatest enemy of our freedom, which we all must confront, whether we live under a totalitarian regime or in a free society, is our deep-seated tendency to create and cling to a simplistic, false notion of our identity. “There is no doubt,” Joseph Ratzinger has written, “the era we call modern times has been determined from the beginning by the theme of freedom.” Today, says writer Jacques Philippe, “freedom appears very nearly the only value about...

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Moving forward with Christ in a Post-Covid, Sleeping Beauty World

Jun 4, 2021 by

Moving forward with Christ in a Post-Covid, Sleeping Beauty World

by Melvin Tinker, Christ Church Newland: […] over the last few decades we have been creating in the West a ‘Sleeping Beauty culture’, where fear has been the dominant outlook, shaped by the creation of worse case scenarios with the result that maintaining safety becomes the paramount concern…  …This is the way the sociologist, Professor Frank Furedi, describes the situation, ‘We can see the deleterious impact of safetyism and worst-case thinking in the sphere of childhood. Indeed, childhood...

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Doubt, Deconstruction, and Patient Faith

May 20, 2021 by

Doubt, Deconstruction, and Patient Faith

by Jay Kim, The Gospel Coalition: Editors’ note:  This article is adapted from Jay Y. Kim’s forthcoming book, Analog Christian (IVP, 2022). Kim also contributed to TGC’s new book on deconstruction, Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the Church. Satoshi Kamiya is widely considered one of the greatest origami artists in the world. He’s best known for Ryujin 3.5, an impossibly intricate paper sculpture of a dragon. Origami artists sometimes share their crease patterns, which are...

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Unintended Consequences of the Protect Duty

May 20, 2021 by

Unintended Consequences of the Protect Duty

by Fr Luke Miller: A government consultation reveals some significant concerns for churches and places of worship.  As chair of the Faith Sector Panel of the London Resilience Forum I have a lot to do with London’s Faith Communities’ response to terrorism (see here for my role). So it was with interest that I heard that there was to be a consultation on a new “Protect Duty” to “make the public safer at publicly accessible locations.” The proposals follow campaigning by Figen Murray, whose son...

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BBC Newsnight: Ian Paisley says “Absolute cobblers to your programme”

May 17, 2021 by

BBC Newsnight: Ian Paisley says “Absolute cobblers to your programme”

by Archbishop Cranmer: The election of Edwin Poots to the DUP leadership has caused a slight ripple in the media, with journalists focusing not so much on his policies or plans for getting rid pf the Northern Ireland Protocol, but wondering from which Dickens novel he might have emanated, and scoffing at the fact that he is a ‘young earth’ creationist: that is, he believes the planet to be about 6,000 years old. This was the starting point of the BBC’s Newsnight on Friday 14th May, which...

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