Worship
Worship is in decline across the western world. There are all sorts of reasons we give for this; abuse scandals, leadership fails, judgemental faith – and there is merit to each of these. PICTURE: Jantanee Rungpranomkorn/iStockphoto A new book called The Great Dechurching found that the real reason churches are shrinking is because Westerners are abandoning […]
Personal pronouns
There’s a debate going on in the Twittersphere about personal pronouns that is out of all proportion to reality. ILLUSTRATION: PeterSnow/iStockphoto. We’re reacting to people choosing their own labels like it’s never happened before, but we seem to have forgotten about honorific titles – you know; Dr, professor, sir, madam, your honour, even Mr and Mrs. […]
Essay: Edmund Burke wouldn’t recognise evangelicals’ vaccine resistance as conservatism
In an article first published on Religion News Service, STEPHANIE A MARTIN, author of ‘Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J Trump’, looks at how conservatism has changed in the US – particularly among Christians…
Destructive or constructive?
In life it’s much easier to be destructive, than constructive. Are your conversations destructive or constructive? PICTURE: Etienne Boulanger/Unsplash Everyone’s a critic. We delight in pulling something apart. In fact, it makes us feel bigger and superior than the thing we dismiss. But few movie critics go on to be make critically acclaimed movies. It’s […]
INVENTING THE INDIVIDUAL
I’ve been reading Larry Siedentop’s amazing book – Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. Individually valuable. PICTURE: Jacek Dylag/Unsplash In it he documents how we owe our liberal values to the life of Jesus of Nazareth and His interpreters – St Paul, Augustine and others. It is fascinating how the ideas of Jesus have […]
SIGHT-SEEING: HOW OUR CULTURE BREEDS ADDICTION
NILS VON KALM writes about the pervasive issue of addiction, why it will never lead to happiness and how following Jesus can make all the difference…
SIGHT-SEEING: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY OF OUR WORSHIP
Lamenting the self-focus found in some approaches to worship, NILS VON KALM calls for a shift in focus from the individual to the corporate…