Faith. Rebuilt
Did Jesus mean it to come to this? How much does modern western christianity come from Jesus, and how much comes from somewhere else? A few weeks back I introduced the theme of Did Jesus mean it to come to this?, in which I want to examine the modern western church, and muse on how […]
More than two billion people in the world today identify as followers of Jesus. This includes a fair percentage of inhabitants of the USA, currently the world’s most powerful nation, its most influential via film, TV, social media and popular music, and home of some of the world’s richest people. My country, Australia, still has […]
It hasn’t always been comfortable being a man during these #metoo days. Men we might have thought could be trusted have been accused, and often admitted to, all manner of unacceptable, sexually predatory and abusive behaviour, mostly against women. For me, it became most pointed when this last weekend I read a long article in […]
Predictions are a dime a dozen, and predictions about the church in the western world can be awfully generalised. Nevertheless, I found some predictions and warnings by Carey Nieuwhof were worth considering. The predictions clearly relate to the North American church (Carey is Canadian), so a few probably won’t apply to countries like Australia and […]
Child sexual abuse is a terrible crime and rightly loathed by most people. And churches have, tragically, been home to some of the worst offenders. The Australian Government set up a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse almost 5 years ago. (A Royal Commission is a judicial process that has wide powers, […]
Christianity began as a minority group within Judaism and within the Roman Empire. But from the time Constantine made it acceptable, christianity became the dominant religion, and Christendom was generally the dominant social force, in Europe and colonies in Africa, the Americas and the Pacific. Christianity was often the state religion, most people were nominally […]
We all know that the world is a very unequal place. Anyone reading this is probably not doing too badly, but billions struggle to make a living. But you may not be aware that, by some measures at least, inequality is increasing.
Photo: Slaves Waiting to be sold in Richmond, Virginia, painted in 1861 from an 1853 sketch. Wikipedia. The world has changed enormously in my lifetime. One thing that I never knew as a child but which seems to characterise the present age, is international terrorism. Terrorism, via car bomb, motor vehicle driven into crowds, gun […]
Difficult issues series This has been perhaps the most difficult post I have written. I’ve avoided writing about this issue because it is so divisive, and because I wasn’t sure I had anything worthwhile to say. But while I don’t pretend to have a solution to the argument between the traditionalists and the progressives, I […]
Have you ever wondered how christians, who believe more or less the same things about Jesus and God, believe widely divergent things about politics and public morality? Specifically, if you are more conservative politically, do you wonder how more liberal christians can possibly think and vote as they do? And if you are more liberal […]