Christian
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Bigoted, Homophobic… and proud?!
Thought that title would catch your attention! One thing which annoys me about the whole furore surrounding the government’s proposals to redefine marriage (which I’ve blogged about before) is the careless way people use words like ‘bigoted’ and ‘homophobic’. Particularly the first one: these days, if you are opposed to anything which society in general…
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Sermon: 2 Thessalonians 1 – Persecution and God’s righteous judgement
This morning I preached a sermon on 2 Thessalonians 1. At college this term I’ve been learning about Homiletics, and as part of the assessment for that I had to deliver a sermon – which involved doing lots of diagrams as part of the preparation process (it’s Chris Green’s 12-step process for doing sermons). To…
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God’s Image and Women Bishops
A few days ago I had a leaflet in my pigeon-hole at college entitled “Male & Female in God’s Image“. It was published by Reform, and (strangely enough) written by my placement supervisor. (He didn’t specifically give it to me, by the way; it was given to all students at Oak Hill). The main claim…
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Some adverts are controversial. Get over it.
Once again, it falls to me to leap into the quagmire of misinformation and correct it with my iron sword of reason and moderation. (Everyone should have a sword of reason and moderation. They’re all rage these days.) In case you hadn’t heard, a bus advert has been banned: a group called Core Issues Trust,…
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Reverse Missionaries
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been watching a mini-series on the BBC called “Reverse Missionaries”. Unfortunately it seems to have disappeared from the iPlayer, but the basic premise was that three people from countries which were influenced by British missionaries (Jamaica, Malawi, and India) have returned to the places where those respective missionaries were…
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Love Lustres at Calvary
Easter Saturday is a slightly odd day, I find. It falls in between Good Friday, which is a very sombre day looking at the cross, and Easter Sunday which is joyfully looking at the resurrection. I find it’s not really a special day but it’s not a normal day either. Given that I didn’t post…
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What it means to follow Jesus: Sermon on Mark 8:31-38
This is the text of a sermon I preached yesterday morning at at the 9:00 communion service at St Thomas’ Kidsgrove. It was the last day of their ‘week of events’ or mission which I mentioned in my post last week. (The week went well, by the way, thanks for asking.) The passage is Mark…
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New Scientist: “The God Issue”
Yesterday Mrs Phil bought me a copy of the latest New Scientist magazine, “The God Issue”, because it looked interesting. I’ve had a chance to read through it now – or at least the relevant articles – and I thought I’d post up a quick review. Know Your Enemy The introduction, ‘Know your enemy’, starts…
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Gay Marriage and other lighthearted topics
Honestly. It feels like the news has gone a bit crazy recently, what with the ASA ruling that God cannot heal people, then the whole fracas about ‘militant secularism’, and now this: people going a bit crazy over whether the definition of marriage should be changed to include same-sex marriages. It seemed to kick off…
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Post-script to Secularism
My last post has generated a fair bit of controversy – I don’t think I’ve ever made a blog post which has attracted so many comments! I’d just like to write a very brief postscript to that with a link to a blog post about after-birth abortion: two doctors have written in the Journal of Medical…