Phill Sacre

Tag: christianity

  • Responding to false teaching: Lessons from 2 Peter

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    Phill Sacre
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    I’ve noticed a disturbing trend amongst evangelicals recently. I encountered it most recently in this blog post by Baptist minister and theologian Steve Holmes. This is how he puts it (you’ll have to read the full blog for the whole context): No, I know Megan and Bill, I know that they call people to believe in…

  • Brexit. Trump. Where do we go now?

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    Phill Sacre
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    Isn’t it strange that over the last six months or so, the nations of the USA and the UK have both had major votes which have exposed massive rifts within the country? I don’t want to draw the comparison between Brexit and the American election too closely, but the parallels are fascinating. In both cases…

  • The trouble with contemplative prayer…

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    Phill Sacre
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    A few months ago, at one of my regular curate review meetings, someone asked me about my ‘spirituality’ and asked me what sort of thing I did – “such as contemplative prayer”. Up until a few years ago I’d never heard of contemplative prayer, but when I was at college I did a course on…

  • Islam, extremism and political correctness

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    I’ve had a growing sense of frustration over the last few weeks and months. A lot of airtime has been devoted to the “so-called Islamic State” (as the BBC always says) and the many acts of terrorism which have been so much in the news. My frustration stems from the fact that so often politicians and…

  • Brexit, politics, and counterfeit gods

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    Every so often I am asked to contribute a short piece to end our local spoken news service – the Tendring Talking Times. This was my contribution for this week. It seems like the world is going mad at the moment. The Brexit vote a few weeks ago triggered an avalanche of bad feeling in…

  • The Bible and (same-sex) marriage: Cutting through to the root issue

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    Phill Sacre
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    Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have blogged quite a few times about marriage, and in particular same-sex marriage. You can see my previous posts under the “marriage” tag. Anyway, it seems we are still talking about marriage: the debate has simply moved from society – where same-sex marriage is now a…

  • Brexit and the decline of Christian understanding

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    Phill Sacre
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    The last few days I have felt particularly ashamed to be British. Not because the country voted to leave the EU, but because of the backlash following it. I appreciate that many people felt deeply unhappy with the result – it’s natural and understandable. Many people believed that leaving the EU was the wrong decision.…

  • Cathy Warwick and Pro-Choice Logic

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    Cathy Warwick has been in the news lately – she signed the Royal College of Midwives up to support a legal campaign for the removal of abortion limits in the UK. (Currently, if a woman undergoes an abortion outside of the law, it is a criminal offence.) This would effectively allow abortion to happen up until…

  • Hymnology: And can it be – ‘My chains fell off…’

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    Last weekend I travelled down to High Leigh for a residential weekend with my fellow curates in the Chelmsford Diocese. On Friday evening we sang ‘And can it be’, one of my favourite hymns and one of Charles Wesley’s finest (in my opinion). The hymn tells the story of salvation from a first person perspective…

  • Bigotry and legalism in our culture

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    Three years ago, I lamented the use of the word “bigot” especially in the context of same-sex marriage. In the last week or so, I’ve read a couple of other things which have really said what I wanted to say much better. Firstly, Brendan O’Neill writes about “The New Bigots” as he considers the treatment…