A month or so ago, I had the pleasure of attending the Christian Postgraduate Conference in Dovedale, Derbyshire, at which Edith Reitsma from L’Abri Fellowship England and Alister McGrath, writer of many books including The Dawkins Delusion, were speaking. I’m starting my masters in September, but might as well get started early in thinking about […]
I’ve been to the English L’Abri community a few times, and L’Abri has really helped me in thinking through different aspects of my faith. Back at their film festival in 2008, I heard that they were planning to put their vast library of talks online soon. Over a year later, the L’Abri Ideas Library is […]
Charlie Brooker, favourite misanthrope of Guardian readers everywhere (after David Simon, of course) yesterday claimed that Contemplating the scale of the universe makes a mockery of household chores. Funnily enough, the relationship between cosmos and chores was one of the topics I mentioned in my wedding speech, but I came to a rather different conclusion: […]
The Times has an interesting article titled When Feminism went nuts: How did it come to this? When the lads’ weekly magazines were launched five years ago where were the voices arguing that titles with 30 pairs of breasts an issue and a harsh misogynist tone — “Win your girlfriend a boob job” — were […]
Ship of Fools is carrying out a survey called Chapter and Worse asking for people’s “worst” Bible verses. Why? Because the Bible is probably the most important book ever, but it sometimes seems that the only people who care about it are rival gangs of fundamentalists, Christian and atheist, determined to beat it into the […]
No, not the kid in the cartoon strip with the toy tiger, but the great theologian whose writings set the course of much of Protestant theology, and as a result, Western culture. I think John Calvin was a very smart guy who got a lot of stuff right, but some of the interpretations of his […]
I know that lots of non-Brits think that Wales is in England, but the search result for new search engine Wolfram Alpha takes the biscuit – it thinks that Wales is near Sheffield. Further investigation shows that it only recognises Wales, the South Yorkshire village (population 6000), rather than Wales, the country (population 3 million). […]
There are a couple of colourful Calvinist characters who often find their way onto my mp3 player, both of whom have had articles about them in the New York Times. The first is Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church, Seattle. He’s the Top Gear of Christian preachers – blokeish, un-PC, and usually very entertaining. […]
Clubbing is one of those supposedly ubiquitous student activities along with drunken traffic cone antics, watching Neighbours and leaving all your work until the last minute, though I managed to largely avoid it. Personally, I prefer social activities where you can interact with people on a more meaningful level than bellowing over music while doing […]
Just saw this from the blog of Neil Gaiman, which made me laugh: I know that David Tennant’s Hamlet isn’t till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush… “To be, or […]