Kester Brewin

Last April, in the build-up to Easter, I posted a series of thoughts about Jesus and Paul’s journeys toward Jerusalem, and the very different attitudes they took when arrested there. I argued that in Paul’s ‘strategising’ to get himself to Rome, we see the conception of power-Christianity, which perhaps came to full birth with the [...]

“I’d rather be arrested for shoplifting than ever be an evangelical leader again. There was a certain basic and decent honesty about stealing pork chops that selling God had lacked.“ It’s only March, I know, but I’ll put a punt on Crazy for God still being one of my top 5 books of 2008 in [...]

Wired reported a couple of days ago on the conclusions of Google co-founder Larry Page’s working group on improving life on earth, and the list of ‘14 Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century‘. They included things like making solar energy affordable, reverse-engineering the brain and providing energy from fusion. Energy, quality of life, quantity [...]

Not the most romantic of movies, but we went to see There Will Be Blood last night. It’s a terrific movie. If you haven’t yet seen it, do. No matter how big your plasma screen, you’ll need to see this one on the big screen. Oil, Crude and Spiritual, are the two things two men [...]

As the Archbishop heads for Synod this afternoon to defend himself and, according to some exaggerated reports, save his job, I’ve been mulling over exactly why he has been under such pressure for his comments on Sharia Law. Even the shallowest examination of him as a man would reveal a hugely intelligent thinker and a [...]

Archbishop Rowan is getting huge amounts of flack for his comments on a selective use of some parts of Sharia law in certain communities in the UK. Typically, his arguments, based on some serious reading, have been caricatured and turned into shock headlines. Which suggests he was perhaps ill-advised – this sort of reaction was [...]

Power Religion [1] | Power Religion [2] | Power Religion [3] | Power Religion [4] So, how might we try to gather some of this together into a ritual, a performance, a remembering worthy of the rich tapestry of signs it suggests? I think, firstly, we have to humbly accept that we simply never will [...]

Power Religion [1] You might be wondering what the hell the last post was about, and where I’m going with this. Join the club. In the previous post, I outlined Diamond’s basic thesis in Guns, Germs and Steel, and retold the story of Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Emperor Atahuallpa. But what is the significance? [...]

It’s been out for about a decade now, but I finally got round to reading Jared Diamonds’ book Guns, Germs and Steel. I think it’s excellent. The basic thesis, for those who haven’t read it, is that humanity, having developed out of the same group of lucky apes a long time back, has obviously developed [...]

Andrew Jones posted yesterday about the imminent release of the first film of the Philip Pullman trilogy ‘His Dark Materials’. (Why the hell has is been re-named? Durrr…. ) In the post he leans to siding with Matt Barber, who has written that Pullman’s anti-theist stance is a strong theme, and thus Christians should avoid [...]