In the five and a half years I have been blogging here, I have posted 360 times. Some of those posts are forgettable, some I think are quite important or innovative. (I like to think so anyway! 🙂 ) But a couple of recent comments suggest to me that one post is important enough to […]

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The Christmas story is known and loved by many people who wouldn’t call themselves “christians”. The details are well known: angels, a stable with straw and animals, shepherds, 3 wise men with gifts, etc, and in the centre a glowing mother and a perfectly formed baby. Historians are not so sure about all these details, […]

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This page in brief Did the Catholic Church invent Jesus, create legends about his life, write the New Testament which is more fiction than fact, and suppress the truth about the origins of christianity? Claims like these have been made in comments on this blog and elsewhere, but is there any historical basis to them? […]

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The biological theory of evolution has been the subject of argument ever since it was first proposed, especially from those christians who believe that the Bible teaches that the earth is not billions of years old, animals haven’t evolved from simple life forms, and thus evolutionary science must not only be wrong, but also evil. […]

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I’m all the time trying to make this website relevant and useful to christians looking to extend their understand and resolve difficult issues. (Whether I succeed is another matter!) I recently became aware that some people, mostly younger, tend to find some of the pages a little long, perhaps in part because they are reading […]

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Critical issues:I think this post raises a crucially important matter for christians today. It was mob violence, but at least it didn’t lead to a lynching. Jason and a few friends, converts of the apostle Paul, were dragged before the city officials and angry accusations were made: “These men [meaning Paul and company] …. are […]

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We are visiting family in the US right now, and the recent Presidential election is on everyone’s minds here. Reports are coming in that apparent white supremacists have been attacking, verbally or physically, people who belong to minorities such as blacks, Muslims and Latinos. Right wing christians are expressing relief that Hilary Clinton, who they […]

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Q: How many christians does it take to change a light bulb? A: Change? I think most people have an impression that christians are generally conservative, holding on to traditional values and truths and resistant to change. Is this true? And if so, is it a problem?

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I came across a blog post today that summed up what I think has become a significant movement within christianity. Learning from a “hippie heretic” The post was This Nameless Movement of God on Chuck McKnight’s blog Hippie Heretic, and it was based on just one premise (taken from fellow blogger Brian Zahnd): “God is […]

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I don’t believe the Bible is necessarily without error (i.e. inerrant). It doesn’t specifically claim to be, and I don’t think any of the arguments for inerrancy stand up to scrutiny. But I’m not going to argue about that here. Rather, I want to suggest ways that this doctrine, which I believe is not Biblical, […]

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