Christian
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Evangelicals and disagreement: What can we learn from the Arians?
If you haven’t seen the news recently, Christian worship leader and media commentator Vicky Beeching has come out as gay. (If you don’t know who she is, or any of the background, that link will hopefully explain). In a similar vein to Steve Chalke, who came out in support of same-sex marriage recently, Vicky wants
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The Spirituality of Deal or No Deal
Over the past week or two, I’ve been watching “Deal or No Deal”. It’s not a show I’ve ever watched before, but given that our former next-door-neighbour has been on it, I thought I’d watch to see her on TV. If you’re not familiar with the show, then I’m not going to explain it here
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Sermon: John the Baptist – Herald (Luke 3:1-6)
This evening, I preached my first sermon at St John’s. My first post-ordination sermon! To be honest it didn’t feel any different to preaching before ordination – it’s simply a great privilege to bring God’s word to God’s people. The passage was Luke 3:1-6, part of a series on John the Baptist. Unfortunately no audio
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The Victim Triangle and ‘Accepting’ Evangelicals
In a class at college recently, we looked at something called the “Victim Triangle”, or the Karpman Drama Triangle as it is more properly called. It’s a fascinating concept, partly because it’s so simple, and partly because once you’ve read about it you literally see it everywhere. Well, maybe not everywhere, but almost everywhere: it’s incredibly common. So, what is
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Review: Simply God
As I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog, over the past academic year I’ve been studying a course on the Doctrine of God. It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s one of the best courses I’ve done at college: the doctrine of God is fundamental to theology – it affects pretty much everything else (what else
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God’s Existence and Kalam
This academic year, I’ve been taking a class on the Doctrine of God. Last week we were studying God’s eternity, and as part of that we looked at the Kalam Cosmological Argument (William Lane Craig’s formulation of it – that link goes through to his website, where you can watch a short video on the Kalam which
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Sexuality: can’t Evangelicals just agree to disagree?
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. – Hebrews 10:26-27 A few days ago, the Evangelical Alliance UK (EAUK) discontinued the membership of the Oasis Trust. The
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The Trouble with Rev…
I have mixed feelings about the third series of BBC Rev, which finished last night. On the one hand, it made great TV: it’s a good story, well written, genuine characters, some touching and funny moments, and generally very watchable. It also – as the previous series have done – brought to the small screen some important
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David Cameron and the ‘Christian Country’
It seems that David Cameron can’t say or do anything right when it comes to faith. Either he’s not Christian enough, or too Christian, or gets faith involved in politics, or doesn’t get faith involved in politics – he seems to receive criticism from all quarters. Most recently, he’s been criticised in a letter to the
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Liberalism and the Church
I’ve just finished reading “Christianity and Liberalism” by J Gresham Machen. It was written nearly a century ago (1923) but it’s still an excellent book. He argues throughout the book (and, to my mind, demonstrates conclusively) that Liberalism – in the sense of liberal Christianity – is actually a different religion to Christianity. Given the age of