“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” | Politicians | Environment

Nick Clegg – Deputy Prime Minister – has travelled to Pakistan to ‘see for himself’ the horrific destruction that the recent flooding has caused. It annoys me that politicians always feel the need to do this, especially when environmental issues are involved. Everyone has to fly off and see the melting polar ice caps for [...]

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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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I Was Blind, But Now I See…

Absolutely fascinating programme on BBC Radio 4, looking at the cases of Sidney Bradford and Mike May, both of whom lost their sight very early in life, and were then lucky enough to be able to have it restored years later. What is it like to grow up blind, and then be able to see [...]

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Police, Government, Church: Violence and Cover-Ups in Northern Ireland

The report into the horrific bombings in the village of Claudy in 1972 – in which 9 people were killed – has been published today. It appears to make sickening reading: The Police Ombudsman found talks between the Catholic Church, the police and the government led to a priest suspected of involvement in the attack [...]

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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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Original Pirate Material…

Being in that part of the UK for holiday, and hearing on the grapevine that a few people are interested in exploring the thinking I’ve been doing around Hakim Bey’s work on pirates and TAZ, I thought I’d round up a few things here… Firstly, the series of posts I did on ‘A Plea for [...]

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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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Christian Armed Robber Talked Down By Christian Shop Assistant

Extraordinary story on the BBC site today. An armed robber who raided a mobile phone shop in Florida was talked down from his robbery by a shop assistant who ‘spoke to him about Jesus.’ The man said he was a Christian and was “embarrassed” to be doing what he was doing but that he needed [...]

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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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