Virtual Methodist

Whilst the great and the good were round the corner in the Waterfront Hall rattling their jewellery in appreciation of Van the East Belfast Free Man, I was in the cosier surroundings of the MAC Theatre watching an uncomfortable play based in East Belfast... or at least the outer reaches of East Belfast, my former "parish" of Dundonald/Ballybeen. This isn't a review as such, since there is only one matinee and one evening performance left, although if you can get a ticket I would recommend that you should... it is an excellent production, with four very good performances. I would particularly recommend it if you aren or are considering becoming, a minister... Earlier in the run the blogger Alan Meban posted a perceptive review , and in conversation with his wife, fellow cleric Cheryl, the suggestion arose that perhaps theological training colleges should have taken out a block booking. I doubt that happened, but there were a small coterie of clerics in the audience last ...

Too much to do... too little time... So today's round-up of pages that have caught my eye is more rudimentary that usual... But hope your find it interesting/entertaining/challenging (delete as applicable)... A BIBLICAL APPROACH TO WALLOPING YOUR WOMAN? The media has been filled with the very public unravelling of the relationship of Nigella Lawson and Charles Saachi , raising questions of what constitutes domestic abuse. So it was against this background that I was slightly disconcerted to find this piece in the Huffington post that purports to point to a site which advocates Christian husbands spanking their wives to maintain a Biblical marriage... So that is why Evangelical Alliance and others are advocating a "Biblical approach to marriage" in the face of marriage equality legislation!? Now I know my Bible fairly well, while I have never read any of the "Forty Shades of Grey" books, but this seems to owe more to the latter than the former. I have not ...

The current news story concerning the abduction of April Jones from Machynlleth , in Wales is the nightmare of every right-thinking parent, and indeed upsetting to any right-thinking human being whether or not they have children. But the tsunami of emotions around this, and similar stories in the past, unsettles me almost as much as the event itself. In response to the murder of 8 year old Sarah Payne back in July 2000 her mother pressed for the introduction of "Sarah's Law" (a variation on the controversial "Megan's Laws" in the USA) backed by a name and shame campaign by that late unlamented arbiter of social rectitude "The News of the World", which seems to have contributed to a lynchmob mindset, resulting in innocent people being injured and a paediatrician's home being attacked . That same lynchmob mentality seems to be swinging into gear again. I've had friends on facebook calling for the man suspected of abducting and perhaps m...

There is a saying that today's news is tomorrow's fish and chip wrapping, and while in these health and hygiene obsessed days the origins of that is a little more obscure, the meaning is totally true... and a danger when you are writing a topical "Thought for the Day" piece for radio. I often go to bed having written one, and hoping that a bigger story doesn't arise during the hours of darkness. Today was a case in point... although the bigger story had arisen before I headed bedwards, and I only became aware of it as I drove into the studio... Anyway, this is the Thought for the Day as broadcast on Good Morning Ulster this morning at 6.55 and 7.55 am. Yesterday I awoke to hear that because of EU equality rules, pupils resident in Northern Ireland holding Irish passports may qualify for free university tuition in Scotland, just like Scottish residents. This may be very good news given that university fees are now rising to a maximum of £9000 per year… As someo...

Normally when I’m doing a review of the week’s news on Downtown Radio's "Dawn Reflections" I’ll use a story that has been grabbing all the headlines or something suitably quirky. This week I focussed on neither… but rather a disturbing piece that I read earlier in the week. It concerned child sacrifice in some areas of Uganda , and there is a suggestion that this problem has developed because of an unholy alliance between emerging capitalist prosperity there and unscrupulous supposed witch doctors willing to kill, mutilate or take blood from a child in order to bring others wealth and good health, by burying the resulting fetishes around the building sites of new developments. According to official police figures, there have been about 25-30 cases of child sacrifice per year recently, but local pastors suggest that the figures are actually in the hundreds, with more than 900 cases yet to be investigated by the police because of corruption and a lack of resources. T...

I do a monthly stint on Downtown Radio's Sunday morning religious magazine programme, "Dawn Reflections" where I take a look at the Sunday papers and then offer a reflection on the big news story/ies of the week from a Christian perspective. Normally I have to dig fairly deep in the papers to find any stories relating directly to faith in its broadest sense, but this week that was not the case, because apparently Britain has had a fairly significant state visitor this week… And, to the newspapers' delight, one that was not without controversy… Despite the fact that Northern Ireland was not on Pope Benedict's itinerary, there has been quite a kerfuffle over here regarding whether or not the Moderator of the Presbyterian church should or should not have shaken hands with the Pope, whilst Free Presbyterians and Orangemen from here joined in a veritable kaleidoscope of people going out of their way to protest against the Pope's visit: secular humanists, those obje...

I awoke this morning to the "news" that the Orange Order is objecting to the state visit of the Pope to the UK this coming September. I hardly expected them to be welcoming him with open arms given the history of tension between Orangism and Catholicism here in Ireland over the years, and the particular attitude of the Orange Order to the Papacy, which is an un-diluted 17th/18th century analysis of the person and position of the Pope both as "Anti-Christ/Man of Perdition" (a position which John Wesley himself espoused) and the head of a foreign state which actively sought the overthrow of the "Protestant" monarchy of Britain. However, given their recent attempts to "rebrand" Orangism as a cultural grouping which stands for religious tolerance, I might have expected their position to be a tad more nuanced. But then, over recent years the leadership of the Orange Order have never ceased to surprise me with their ineptitude in dealing with most thi...

Approximately once a month I toddle down to Newtownards at an unearthly hour on a Sunday morning to do a stint on their Sunday morning Christian magazine programme, Dawn Reflections, with Vanessa Jones. My role is to comment on the Sunday papers, from a faith perspective, and to do a pre-prepared 3 minute review of the key story or stories in the previous week's news. What follows is, broadly what I said in that review this morning. There are various rules, regulations and guidelines regarding what you can and cannot say that anyone broadcasting on radio has to observe, and all of us at Downtown have had to have training in them. There are also personal rules that I operate by for these reviews of the week’s news (rules that I generally carry over onto my blog)… I try not to focus on salacious stories no matter how dominant they are in media… and I tend not to comment on negative stories affecting other denominations… hence I left it to my Presbyterian colleague to comment on the ...