Kester Brewin

Still working my way through The Monstrosity of Christ, a dual between Zizek (Marxist-Atheist) and Milbank (Radical Orthodox) in which the atheist rather brilliantly claims to be a far better Christian that the orthodox theologian. One passage I’ve been very struck by in Zizek’s opening salvo as he discusses religion in general: Christianity is the [...]

I went to see Charlie Kaufman’s latest piece last night – Synecdoche, New York. I highly recommend it. For those familiar with his work, Kaufman continues to explore the problems of consciousness, and, in particular, the problem of mediating what is in our heads to those around us. He has mined the seam of the [...]

From BBC News: Justice minister Shahid Malik has gone on the offensive after becoming the latest MP to be singled out by The Daily Telegraph over expenses claims. Mr Malik insists he stuck “a million per cent by the rules“ Perhaps it is not surprising these idiots have been caught fiddling the books and inflating [...]

Nic and I have been having some good exchanges recently around issues of our relationship with technology. It’s something that’s prominent in the forthcoming book, but I wanted to introduce a few of the ideas here and hopefully provoke some debate to sharpen my own thoughts. My view is that while we do create tools, [...]

Pure genius from Steve Bell today.

Following a recent visit to Israel and Palestine to meet peacemakers from all sides and faiths, I was struck by just how important Europe is to the situation. Yes, the US has a major role in brokering peace, especially given their high levels of support of all kinds for Israel, and yes the other Middle [...]

[ Bad Faith 1 ] [ Bad Faith 2 ] [ Bad Faith 3 ] I ended the previous post with the question of what we might mean by our decisions to denominate ourselves as ‘Christian’ or otherwise. Before I can answer that though, I think it is worth noting just how infatuated we are [...]

The events of the two Champions League semi finals this week seem to be perhaps the best sermon on Romans I’ve heard for a long time. For those who didn’t see or simply don’t care, Darren Fletcher was sent off for a challenge that turned out on the replays to be perfectly legal. In the [...]

[ Bad Faith 1 ]  [ Bad Faith 2 ] In the previous two posts I have attempted to outline something of Satre’s position on ‘bad faith.’ As an existentialist, Satre is convinced that we are utterly free; he is also aware that who we are as human beings is suspended in the paradox of [...]

In the previous post I began to explore some of Satre’s thoughts about ‘bad faith’, and we saw that in the case of the waiter, his role as a waiter appeared to be putting an obligation on him: he feels he ought to be acting like a waiter ought to act. He is thus denying [...]