Kester Brewin

The debate around hell and damnation continues apace. Rob Bell is about to launch Love Wins, and the arguments about whether he is apostate or a Universalist or worse (filth, as one commenter puts it, an egotistical heretic as another says) are making one thing for certain: His Publisher Wins. But one question keeps coming [...]

I’ve been thinking about Jeremy Rifkin’s talk on ‘The Empathetic Civilisation’ which he gave at the RSA last year. It sparked my interest because of this quote: “There is no empathy in heaven, because there is no mortality. There is no empathy in utopia, because there is no suffering.” This made think a little about [...]

Jeremy Rifkin’s talk about empathy leads us to some interesting conclusions about heaven. Because empathy is about engaging with those who are other, and experiencing some of their pain, heaven – as traditionally seen – must be a place where there is no empathy, because pain cannot be experienced. The typically Christian view of heaven [...]

A couple of times recently I’ve been in situations where people have said ‘let’s pray together.’ It’s struck me that there are some interesting group dynamics going on when we do that, which I thought would be good to air. Firstly, if God is God, then why do we need to pray aloud? The answer [...]

The political shake-up in the Middle East is going to have serious repercussions across the West too. A democratic system does not prevent those with extremist views coming to power by the will of the people, and there are many in the US and Israel who are concerned that releasing Mubarak’s stranglehold in Egypt will [...]

The times are always a-changing. No matter how much we would like the status quo to remain, it never does. The movements that are happening in the Arab world are testament to this. At a more benign level, Steve Jobs is going to die. It’s not a prediction based on his current health, just a [...]

I wanted to respond to a question that came through Twitter – always welcome, by the way – about the ‘two halves of life’ thesis I mention in Other. “I’ve just finished the section on ‘Loving the Other with the Self.’ Would you say that our lives are lived in two halves, and that these [...]

Although mathematically it turns out that this should be your worst day of the year, given that it’s Martin Luther King day in the US, I hope there’s some level of goodness in it that defeats the equations. I was reminded by Jay Bakker today that MLK once said, “I have decided to stick with [...]

Interesting piece by Damian Thompson in the Daily Telegraph (HT Dave Walker) about the perils of ‘sharing the peace.’ I particularly like ‘Spock Papist’s comment: I guess the idea is that you shake hands and show affection to your neighbour for 1 minute in the week. Then you can go back to being a right [...]

Showing a remarkable lack of judgement, or knowledge of the scorpion that is Facebook, Bishop Pete Broadbent had a pop at Prince William and Kate Middleton, and inviting all good republicans to a party in Calais while the royal wedding went ahead. Lots of people have come out in support of him, which I hope [...]