word | spirit | world | church
I’m towards the end (he says, hopefully) of a research degree. It’s Masters level rather than a terminal degree, but nevertheless requires true academic research. I’ve found adapting to it an uphill struggle. Most of the forms of writing I’ve trained myself in—the sermon, the blog post, and the article—are foreign to the academic world.… Continue reading Research and Pastoring
It’s common in evangelical circles for people to talk about ‘going to heaven when they die.’ It’s common in slightly different evangelical circles to politely scoff at that phrase and remind people that the great hope of the Christian faith is the resurrection of the body. The scoffing isn’t particularly helpful, neither is NT Wright’s… Continue reading Resurrection and the theology of the body
One thing is for certain: it’s neither quiet, nor a revival. The term is now everywhere in the Christian discourse, the UK Bible Society released a report from some research they’d conducted that claims there has been a notable uptick in the number of young people, especially Gen Z men, attending church. That data has… Continue reading What is the ‘Quiet Revival’?
Character matters. I suspect everyone agrees on that much. We say when appointing pastors that character is the thing that matters most—whether we follow through on that is a good question, of course—and we say the same thing about what matters in the Christian life. It’s vitally important. Jesus wants us to grow up into… Continue reading Restor(y)ing Character
Chris Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory has been much lauded in evangelical circles over the past year. Because I clearly suffer from extreme FOMO I decided to read it too. No, that’s not fair at all, it’s lauded by people I respect greatly so I hoped that it would be a useful and beneficial read. I… Continue reading Biblical Critical Theory: A (Modestly) Critical Review
We live in what Charles Taylor calls a ‘culture of Authenticity,’ one where the primary values are autonomy, individuality, authenticity, and freedom. Which, since some churches talk about freedom a lot, can be confusing, because I’m not sure we mean the same thing. The freedom our churches talk about is the kind where you get… Continue reading Finding freedom from freedom
We live in a world that tells a story about itself: we learn the story as children in school and we imbibe it in our cups as we go about the day. It’s whispered to us by automobiles and tarmac and concrete pillars and we receive it intravenously by the tap our smartphones have placed… Continue reading Individualism in the Machine
I’ve been reading Charles Taylor’s famous magnum opus, A Secular Age. It’s a monumental achievement that I’ve been chewing over slowly for approaching a year now, though its sheer scope and breadth makes summarising (or critiquing) the argument a challenge. Taylor wants to tell a story about why, five hundred years ago, not believing in… Continue reading Stories and the meaning crisis
We think of time in a very distinctive way, which many of our forebears did not. We think it’s linear, we think it’s homogenous—progressing in ordered sections we call days or years or hours—and we think it’s largely ‘empty,’ a container that is indifferent to what we fill it with. I’ve been reading Charles Taylor’s… Continue reading Time and the Table
One of the features of Charles Taylor’s argument in his great (in every sense!) work A Secular Age is that we are a people who are disenchanted. We no longer readily believe in magic, or that hobs sour the milk. We find supernatural claims extraordinary, and all of us—even believers—find that our ‘social imaginary’ means… Continue reading The Myth of Disenchantment
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