Kester Brewin

“You don’t walk into a cake shop, stick your finger in the middle and take a bit. That’s bad manners.” Elvis Costello on the iPod generation. Technorati: Costello | Elvis | iPod

I’m in Ireland at the moment, finishing a novel, staying with a great friend who lives on the north coast. Yesterday evening we went surfing – one of those things I enjoy but do not well – and when I got back I’d had another email from a regal friend containing an article from Anne [...]

The graduate with a Mathematics degree asks, “Why does it work?” The graduate with a Science degree asks, “How does it work?” The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, “How does one build it?” The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, “How much will it cost?” The graduate with an Arts degree asks, “Do you [...]

We’ve been having school examinations the past week. I had to mark a bunch of scripts (the kids are 11/12 years old) of an RS paper on Christianity. Some of the answers were just priceless:   In a series of questions on parts of a church – what is an altar, what is a pulpit… [...]

In a great piece of polemic, Julian Gough has written in Prospect this month about the tendency for Western literature to express itself in the tragic, rather than the comic: “Two and a half thousand years ago, at the time of Aristophanes, the Greeks believed that comedy was superior to tragedy: tragedy was the merely [...]

“For most of us it’s a question of what authority we are prepared to recognise, and I think authority often comes from something endured, either by ourselves or someone else. Think of Nelson Mandela. Think also of Gee Walker, the mother of the murdered Liverpool teenager Anthony, who forgave her son’s killers. Suffering confers a [...]

A few of us have been reading Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful novel Gilead recently. I can’t recommend it highly enough. One episode jumped out at me last night. The trickster, the Prodigal perhaps, of the novel is debating faith with the protagonist, an old preacher, when he asks: ‘Do you ever wonder why American Christianity always [...]

I’ve always gawped in wonder at the bit in Acts 8 where "the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. Philip, however, appeared at Azotus". The only teleportation reference in the Bible? Anyway, seems like they’ve finally worked out how [...]

Interesting post here, via Steven Johnson. “Paul was wrong. Our faith is not foolish if Jesus is not literally and physically risen from the dead. We know our faith is true, because we know that death has not defeated him. As a humanist, I do not discard the rich legacy and richness of the Christian [...]

Great to see a fabulous line up for critiquing the Emerging movement. Eight. White. Men. “I hope that the movement or conversation in its present form will increasingly divide between those who deeply and intelligently desire to be faithful to Scripture while learning to communicate the gospel to a younger generation, and those who, whether [...]