Advent Reflection: Post-Christian Britain now needs a Christian minority fuelled by the audacious hope of the gospel

The recent revelation that the 2021 census revealed Christians to be a minority for the first time really should not have been met with the flurry of news headlines that it was.

Why Jordan Peterson is not about to become a Christian

I was made aware over the weekend of a video that has been made, chronicling the faith journey from 2017 to 2021 of Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and unlikely intellectual phenomenon. The video is 22 minutes in length and so is a serious commitment – a highly able occupational psychologist told me once that people can’t passively listen for more than 15 minutes at a time and I have always stuck to this advice even when it’s proved a nuisance to my plans.

The video features a selection of clips, culminating in a now-viral clip in which, at a time of great personal crisis, Peterson breaks down discussing the resurrection of Christ.

Advent Reflection: grief and the Christmas story

Last Sunday was the third Sunday in Advent, known within the church as Gaudete Sunday (rejoice Sunday).

In the chosen reading from Philippians chapter 4 (4-7), Paul writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Advent Reflection: saying yes to God

When we read through the Christmas story, what is striking throughout the narrative, pulled together from the gospel accounts of Luke and Matthew, is the constant theme of men and women chosen to play an integral part in the story, saying yes to God, affirming their trust in him.

Advent Reflection: hope in fearful times

This reflection for the first week of Advent will invite you to consider 3 important questions: In what do I hope? On what do I depend? What do I love most?

Living Christian: responding to things our non-religious friends say

 

In this first article exploring the challenges of living our Christian faith today, I want to look at the things our non-religious friends say.

Easter Reflection: the metaphor of light

Written for LinkedIn: view the original here.

 If these were ordinary times, tonight for many Christians would be the Easter vigil service. This takes place between sunset and sunrise the next day, and is the service of anticipation of the resurrection of Christ.

My challenge to Christians this year is this: have a holy and thoroughly worldly Christmas

A post in one of the Christian Facebook groups I belong to really got my back up this week. It read thus: “Jesus gave us Good Friday. The world gives us Black Friday. Take your pick!” That quote could easily be substituted with these words: “The Bible gives us the Christ child. The world gives us Santa. Take your pick!”

Noah and the great flood: the story of an evil god?

A friend of mine, firm and devout in her Christian faith, asked my view on a tricky moral dilemma, relating to the biblical story of Noah and the great flood.

I found the question so fascinating, and indeed hard to answer myself, that I’ve decided I would rather share it, and the answers I’ve come up with, for anyone interested in Christianity, or simply debates and arguments about religion.

Letter on Sunday: learning from an adulterous woman

This Sunday’s readings are:
Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:8-14, and the Gospel of John 8:1-11.

Dear Reader,
We all know the story in today's reading from John's gospel, of the woman caught committing adultery, in which Jesus invites whoever is without the first sin to cast the first stone, thereby setting the condemned woman free.

Look beyond the whinging: we don't need straight civil partnerships

Civil partnerships for the heterosexual? I ask you! But yes, this couple with too much time on their hands are going to court to try and get one.

It's right to challenge Christian ideas of purity but wrong to deny the virgin birth

Some years ago, the BBC chose Christmas time to create a documentary arguing that Jesus was the result of Mary being raped. They did not bother to clarify the sources and only did so when responding to my indignant letter of complaint that, at the one time of year our faith takes centre stage, they felt it appropriate to question some of the most fundamental areas of belief for us – that Jesus, born in human flesh in the brutal and humiliating setting of a lowly stable, was the son of God, born to Mary as a miraculous intervention by almighty God above, beyond and outside of the norms of nature.
The BBC argued to me that, if Jesus were the son of a Roman soldier, or indeed the son of St Joseph, it didn’t necessarily alter his fully divine nature. Except, of course, that it would have, for as St John’s Gospel reminds us during the Christmas lectionary, he came about through the will of God, not the will of the flesh.

Fast forward over a decade, and it’s not the BBC airing such insensitive nonsense, but a man of the cloth: Rev. DR. Giles Fraser, who wrote a robust attack on the virgin birth narrative in his Guardian column this Christmas.

Cinema ban on Lord's Prayer advert is deeply offensive – here's why

I’m just trying to imagine what it might say and who might indeed have written the letter of complaint that the Digital Cinema Media agency expected to receive when it decided to ban in all major cinema groups the screening of a 60-second advert from the Church of England, showing groups of people in different circumstances, praying the Lord’s Prayer – a prayer that believers and non-believers alike will, undoubtedly, know so well from their school days.

Home Mission Sunday: we've forgotten that our lives our our most powerful witness

It was 5 years ago this weekend that the Pope made his visit to Britain and was jubilantly received by British Catholics. Today, it’s Home Mission Sunday – a day to remember the evangelising mission at home in England and Wales. It is my sincere belief that our country is one of the battlegrounds for faith and secularisation, even more than France and other countries you might think of. It’s Britain that is one of the most challenging arenas for the Christian mission.