Late last year we were confronted by news of the horrific shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, USA. The senseless massacre of six adults and twenty children quickly sparked calls for governments to consider reforms for gun control, so as to protect lives and prevent these tragedies from happening in the future. (more…)
Category Archives: Secularism
Freedom of religion and thought
Life, Sola Panel
The theologian and social critic David Wells suggests that we have seen a significant rise in the language of victimhood in both society and the church. He suggests ‘playing the victim’ comes from being overly sensitive to individual rights. We often excuse our behaviour by noticing every insult or injustice that comes from others. Wells warns that when everyone is a victim—as it seems many feel—it trivialises real victims. (more…)
Libertarian censorship
Life
Censorship was a debate most people thought was won (or lost) in the 1960’s. But it has been neither won nor lost—just changed—and that for the worse. (more…)
Does the future have a church?
Pastoral Ministry
Tim Thornborough offers here a rough guide to where Protestantism is in the UK, and a look at some particular indicators that suggest several major strategic directions that we need to consider for the future. (more…)
Biblical tolerance
Life
A biblical word for ‘tolerance’ is ‘patience’. Within the Bible, patience is not just ‘passively waiting’, but ‘enduring suffering without retaliation’. (more…)
Review: “Life of Jesus”
Review
Life of Jesus
Centre for Public Christianity, Sydney, 2009.
2 x DVDs (150 min total running time). Book: 200pp.
http://www.lifeofjesus.tv/
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All we like sheep have gone astray … from basic Bible literacy?
Life
All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.
So wrote GF Handel in the second chorus of Part II of his great oratorio Messiah. Keen readers may have spotted that this is not an original thought; Handel drew on Isaiah 53:4-6. In fact, Messiah is fundamentally a musical Bible study on the saving work of Jesus, and it is often performed at Easter, so get along if you can. (Here’s a performance for Sydney readers.) (more…)
Worldly passions, holy affections: How to cultivate a discerning mind
Life
In Briefing #366’s first feature article “Do not judge”, Stephen Liggins points out that while judging others is condemned in the Bible, discernment is encouraged. But how do we go about gaining it, and how can we encourage our fellow Christians to grow in it too? With a little help from Jonathan Edwards, Archie Poulos investigates. (more…)
Sunday school for Aussie atheists?
Couldn't Help Noticing
The Facebook of truth
In our churches and in our outreach, questions of ‘truth’ don’t seem so important any more. Is this is a loss, an irrelevance or an opportunity? Tony Payne reviews two significant books on this subject by David F Wells.
Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World, David F Wells, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2006, 339pp (more…)
Did Christianity really decline?
Review
The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding secularization 1800–2000
Callum G. Brown
Routledge, London and New York, 2001, 256pp.
It’s an ironic title, is it not? After all, Britain is still, obviously, a place where a mainstream publisher will take on a book which is entirely about the social significance of Christianity and which argues against the assumptions of secularist theory. Moreover, the first chapter, which describes “the Christian churches in crisis”, quotes,