A body born again
Book Review: Metanoia by Anna McGahan. Once I started reading this remarkable book I was hooked. I want to tell you why I think it is so worth reading.
Tag: Belief
Christianity, pluralism and truth
This challenging book was published 7 years ago, but I hadn’t come across it until I found it in a pop-up bookshop selling off remaindered books. I thought it would have something interesting to say to me, and I was right. It raises some important issues and I think it is worth sharing where it […]
How evangelical doctrine and Biblical inerrancy can distort the Bible and Jesus
Most christians have been taught to reverence the Bible. This has been especially true of Protestant christianity. The Reformation was built on the doctrine of sola scriptura (by scripture alone). And when conservative christianity felt threatened by evolution, liberal theology and modernist thinking in the 19th century, it developed a statement of “the fundamentals”, one […]
Losing my religion
The word “religion” can have different meanings. At its simplest, it means “belief in and worship of God or gods” (Oxford Dictionary). But more precisely, religion is often seen as a designated set of beliefs and rituals by which people relate to a god. Thus religion (implying dogma and restrictions) is often contrasted to spirituality […]
Evangelical, Liberal and Progressive Christianity – three diverging paths
There’s a lot of new, and sometimes scary, ideas flying around the christian scene these days. What are we to make of them?? Where is Protestant christianity heading? If you have doubts and questions about your form of christian belief, perhaps another form has something to offer. Check out a few ideas here.
Modern western evangelicalism – easy religion for comfortable christians?
I’ve been thinking for a while about modern western evangelical christianity. Not what some people may see as the worst of this belief system – televangelists, conservative politics and a focus on sexual ethics – but the mainstream. My initial christian experience was in this culture and belief, and while I have moved on in […]
Which Jesus did you worship this Christmas?
Jesus is such an important and admired character in world history and western culture that everyone seems to want to claim him for their tribe. So there are many different versions of Jesus for us to believe in. Shopping mall Jesus This is the most obvious Jesus, and the easiest to see through. Two months […]
Is this the most important thing you could do as a christian?
Thirty five years ago my life was changed after listening to a talk on prayer and spiritual warfare. I had been converted as a teen in a Presbyterian church where doctrine was regarded as the most important thing and God was known to be sovereign, ordaining everything according to his good purposes. But this doctrine […]
How a deep and growing divide is killing Protestant christianity – or maybe renewing it!
Right from the earliest days, there have always been disagreements within the christian community. Some are resolved, but some lead to major splits, new denominations or new doctrinal positions. I have the feeling that a major, and probably irreversible, divergence is brewing in the western Protestant church, between those we may label “evangelical” and those […]
500 years later – a new reformation
This post is a revised version of my 2014 post The new Reformation. Martin Luther is examined for heresy. 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door, and, it is often said, began the Protestant Reformation. 40 years ago I came to the conclusion that the church in the […]