Categories
Reviews

Book of the Year 2011

I’m not one of those people who keeps a note of the books I read. This year, I’ve read a fair bit of fiction; my standard reading on when I’m travelling or relaxing, but less theology and serious reading than usual. My ‘books to read’ pile keeps getting bigger; one day, I’ll get it down […]

Categories
Bible & Mission Church: UK Church: World

Whither Evangelicalism?

I wonder how history will remember the year 2011? Will it be for the Arab Spring, the ongoing financial crisis, or perhaps the leadership transition in North Korea? It could be that history will reveal the most important event this year was something that didn’t even hit our news-screens at the time it happened, but […]

Categories
Controversies

Wrong Again (and again, and again, and…)

Let’s get one thing straight: just because people have been repeating an argument for 2,000 years or more doesn’t mean that they are right. It could simply mean that they haven’t learned by their mistakes. For example, speaking about the Jamaican Patois Bible Project,  Bishop Alvin Bailey, of the Portmore Holiness Church of God near […]

Categories
Observations

Top Ten Posts of the Year

A number of blogs are posting a list of their top ten posts of the year, and always desperate for ideas, I’ve decided to do the same thing. You can see the ranked list of our top posts below (I have not included visits to the home page). What is interesting in this list is […]

Categories
Do Not Use

Comment is Free

Yesterday, I found a message on my desk asking me to contact Andrew Brown, the belief editor on the Guardian’s Comment is Free Section. Over the last few days, Bible Translation has been in the news, thanks to the publicity that the Jamaican Patois translation has received. Mr Brown wanted to know whether I would […]

Categories
Church: UK Mission

Applying the Bible To the Whole of Life

This excellent talk by Roger Welch gets to the heart of why British Christians find it hard to engage with Scripture. It is well worth taking the forty minutes that it takes to listen. Applying the Bible to all of life View another webinar from Wycliffe Bible Translators

Categories
Church: World

Global Christianity

The Pew Foundation have just published a very thorough report on the size and distribution of the World’s Christian population. The full report, which I’ve not had time to work through weighs in at 17Mb and comes complete with graphs, charts and all sorts of other exciting things. I’m looking forward to getting to grips […]

Categories
Observations

Blog of the Year 2011

It’s that time of the year again; the time when I select what is, in my opinion, the best blog of the year. This eagerly awaited award is a bit of a poisoned chalice. Last year’s winner, Onesimus Online more or less went offline as soon as I gave it the award! I’m not sure […]

Categories
Church: UK Politics

The PM, The Bible and Cultural Christianity

This year has seen the four hundredth anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible marked with a good deal more publicity than ever attended its orignal publication. Yesterday, in a speech delivered to clergy in Oxford, the Prime Minister added his voice to the many who have spoken up over the last year (read […]

Categories
Observations

Some Thoughts on the Cross

This is an extract from my (much delayed) book on the story of the Bible and the Church: It is very important to recognise that it was Jesus who achieved all of this through his death on the cross. Human beings can be forgiven and reconciled to God because of what Jesus did. There is […]