Back from Greenbelt | Other

In conversation with… Kester Brewin from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo. Fantastic time at Greenbelt. Was brilliant to meet up with old friends and have some time to catch up. It was also really good to be able to speak about ‘Other’ and engage with people about the ideas that it throws up. I hope that [...]

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Stephen Fry on What Went Wrong with Christianity…

An imperfect argument, I’m sure. But some powerful words here that we’d all do well to heed. It’s 20 mins long, but well worth a listen – especially in his plea to see theological nonsenses like purgatory for what they are – unbiblical, manipulative crap. His conclusion that Jesus would be cast out of the [...]

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Catching Up | Greenbelt Talks preview…

Just got back from a couple of weeks holiday where I took a proper break from posting. Space to think about other stuff really, and ‘Devon’ and ‘Wireless Network’ are not immediately at home in the same sentence yet. This weekend I’ll be off to Greenbelt, where I’m doing two talks expanding on some of [...]

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Into Great Science | Solar Flares

Very interesting report today in the Telegraph that NASA have detected a large solar flare erupting from the sun – which is likely to cause some spectacular displays of the northern and southern lights. These ‘coronal mass injections’ are actually a source of immense worry for disaster planners, as the largest eruption could result in [...]

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Is Greenbelt a TAZ?

Interesting group of posts on TractrorGirl’s site, relating to Other, and the nature of TAZ, which Jonny has critiqued too, and I’ve responded to here. One thing in particular from TG’s site: the question about whether Greenbelt is a TAZ or not. In the book I use it as an example of one, based on [...]

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New Wine… Old Wineskins? | Steering Your Church to a New Place [2]

I promised some further thoughts following on from yesterday’s post… One of the most common questions I am asked is ‘how can I begin to get my church to change’, and while I’d never claim expertise, or that there was a simple answer to this, I thought it might be useful to note a few [...]

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New Wine… Old Wineskins? | Steering Your Church to a New Place [1]

Had a good time at my first visit to New Wine yesterday. I’d been asked to go and speak about the book, which I duly did, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Speaking at Greenbelt you’re pretty much already in a place where people are critiquing the forms and structures of faith, so it was very interesting [...]

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In Defence of TAZ – A Response to Jonny’s Review

Jonny has posted a very comprehensive review of ‘Other’ on his blog, which is well worth a read. He admits that he found it tricky to get right given the back-and-forth we’ve had recently over the issue of institutions, but I think he’s done a good job. It seems that the book is causing quite [...]

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David Harvey on What Next After Capitalism…

HT to Barry for putting me on to this animation of a short talk by Marx-expert David Harvey. Brilliant.

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The Fundamental Thing About Women That Means They CANNOT Be Bishops

I’ve been following the discussions that have been going on in the Church of England recently over the issue of whether women should be able to be bishops. It appears that the answer is going to be ‘no’. Or, at least, ‘not yet.’ What I’ve not quite been able to tease out is precisely why. [...]

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