Question of Faith Video and Round-up

They’ve posted up the video of last week’s panel discussion.  Download video here. Original page here. (If you don’t have Windows Media Player (eg if you have a Mac) you can download VLC Player and paste in this URL: http://www.eastbournelive.org.uk/faithforum2010.wmv) We didn’t know the questions in advance and we were given 90 seconds each, so [...]

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Questions of Faith 8

And another thing… How do we avoid the dangers of religious extremists? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… Why should we worry about religious extremism?  What is dangerous about the phrase “religious extremism”?  The dangerous part is not the “extremism” – the danger lies in which religion we’re speaking of. No-one was afraid of the religious extremism of Mother Teresa.  [...]

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Kids song on Christmas theme

    MP3 Audio . Words and Guitar Tab below

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Bacon, Bible and the Boys 4 – United to the God of Love

Continued from here. AUDIO HERE. UNITED TO THE GOD OF LOVE INTRODUCTION Jesus is THE Revelation of God.  Not just the Best or the Final Revelation – THE Revelation. If we want to know God, we need to begin again with Jesus and let Him reshape our vision of God. When we do that we [...]

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Release Sherif Hassan

Sherif is a friend of a friend, a Christian Egyptian newly married at All Souls, Langham Place this summer.  He visited his native Egypt with his English wife two and a half weeks ago.  They were detained at the airport, his wife was deported and he was taken by police and has not been seen [...]

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A plastic, disposable body

From Emma’s blog: “Scripturally, sex is not whambamthankyouma’am. It’s a covenant promise, part of a total self-giving of which the body is the final handshake.  Where, within the safety of the marriage relationship, two people are emotionally, spiritually and finally, physically naked and – crucially, without shame.  Where men step out in strength and gentleness [...]

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Happy Friday

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Questions of Faith 7

More hindsight… How do we avoid war when the religions just can’t agree? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. There is a popular myth in our culture that religions are dangerous and full of extremists and that we must flee from faith claims into the warm and peaceful embrace of secularism.  Don’t believe the lie.  There’s nothing necessarily violent about [...]

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Questions of Faith 6

There’s nothing like hindsight.  Here’s how I wish I answered one of the questions… Does your faith community represent your faith well? ………………………………………………………………………………………….. No faith community represents themselves very well.  Just tune into Sky’s religious channels to see that! But for the Christian there’s a very easy test you can apply to see whether they’re [...]

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How to wait? [repost]

The Christian is expectant.  We wait for Christ our Bridegroom. But how do we wait?  Like this? I recently read Sam Harris quoting this statistic: 44% of Americans believe Jesus will ‘certainly’ or ‘probably’ return in the next 50 years.  That’s not 44% of American Christians.  That’s 44% of Americans! Now I think Jesus could [...]

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A Question of Faith – it all went so quickly…

Peter Owen Jones seems so at home with this newfangled technology called “”a camera””.  Must be all that BBC training.  I, on the other hand, seem utterly bemused by it all. So anyway, just come back from Question of Faith.  Thanks for all your help and prayers. Reflecting with an older wiser Christian afterwards, we [...]

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Not the god of philosophers

Today is the anniversary of Blaise Pascal’s night of fire.  He turned decisively from the god of the philosophers and found Jesus Christ, the true and living God: The year of grace 1654 Monday, 23 November. From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight.  Fire ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, [...]

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Questions of Faith 5

Continued from here. What common ground do you share with the other panelists? …………………………………………………………………………………….. Two years ago if anyone wanted to understand the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, they would never think of starting with their commonalities.  The best way to understand Conservatism is on its own terms, as a distinct entity.  And the [...]

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Questions of Faith 4

Thanks for comments so far.  I’ll get around to responding later on today or tonight. Continued from here. Can there be a place for Sharia law in our multi-cultural society? …………………………………………………………………………………….. Any provision of Sharia law within a multi-cultural western society would be extremely complicated, and not something I’m in any position to comment upon.  [...]

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Questions of Faith 3

Continued from here. Should there be blasphemy laws?  Who should they protect? ……………………………………………………………………………….. Sometimes when people find out I’m a clergyman halfway through our conversation they clap their hand to their face and say something like, “Sorry for the swearing.”  And honestly I don’t care one little bit if you’ve turned the air blue with [...]

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Questions of Faith 2

Following on from here. How should ‘faith schools’ be treated in a multi-cultural, multi-faith society? …………………………………………………………………………………… Every school is a faith school.  Every school will communicate an ethos, a grand vision of what makes for ‘the good life’, what is valuable, what is worthless, what we should aspire to, what we should reject.  Every school [...]

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Questions of Faith 1

Here are some thoughts regarding potential thorny questions I may be asked on Wednesday night: Is homosexuality wrong? What is your position on Gay Marriage? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Let me begin by saying that I have no interest whatsoever in getting non-Christians to live Christianly.  The good news of Jesus is not a set of rules about [...]

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I thank God my wife is not nice

From Emma’s blog: …This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a friend. We were discussing what it is we pray for and she suddenly dropped a conversational bombshell. ‘Every day’, she said, ‘I pray to be nice’. You might think, well, what’s wrong with that? But ‘nice’ to me… is what Kyrptonite [...]

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