Virtual Methodist

For a few months there has been a story bubbling away concerning Papisse Cisse the Senegalese striker who was refusing to wear his club Newcastle's strip with the name of its sponsor Wonga emblazoned on it because of his Muslim beliefs, which strictly forbid the charging of interest. Not all Muslims take such a strict approach, and indeed Cisse's Muslim team-mates Cheick Tiote, Moussa Sissoko, Massaido Haidara and Hatem Ben Arfa didn't seem to have a problem with wearing the shirt (although early reports did suggest that Tiote had some reservations ). Cisse received a lot of unsavoury abuse for his stand ... although many suggested that it was more to do with engineering a lucrative transfer away from Tyneside than any religious scruples. This seemed even more the case when photographs appeared of Cisse gambling in a casino (also against strict Islamic law), and in the wake of the exposure of such seeming hypocrisy, it was predictable that he came to an agreement with Ne...

I've just finished reading the Hunger Games Trilogy of books, and, if you are interested you can read my views on them over at Goodreads, ( here , here and here ). There is a slight case of the law of diminishing returns with them... but I was so impressed with the first one that the second and third instalments had an extremely hard act to follow. Some reviewers have been a little condescending about the central premise of the first book, which has the children of conquered districts of a post-apocalyptic America (or Panem) taking part in what is effectively televised gladiatorial combat. This is not a novel idea... But it well textured and well told, especially given that it is essentially a piece of teen fiction, with appropriate parallels to contemporary TV "talent/reality" shows as well as to ancient Rome. It may be centred around the violence of the eponymous "Hunger Games" but nowhere does it buy into the myth of redemptive violence that is so all-perv...

This morning's Thought for the Day offering... Well today the back pages of the newspapers have been filled with stories of my beloved Liverpool's all-too-late thrashing of a weakened Chelsea side . As  Jimmy Greaves used to say of to erstwhile Liverpool player Ian St. John, “It’s a funny old game, Saint…”  And throughout this season it has been just that… Though funny in the sense of strange, rather than “ha-ha”. It has been on the front page of the newspapers as much as on the back… Allegations of racist language being used by high profile premiership players caused huge repercussions, not only to  Liverpool, where it may have contributed to their lacklustre season, but also to the English national team, necessitating the  appointment of a new England manager,  leading in turn to controversy about misjudged jokes in the press about the speech impediment of appointee Roy Hodgson … We also had the seeming suicide of Welsh national manager Gary Speed , ...

My post today is not in any way unique... Similar comments are all over the front, back and editorial pages of most UK newspapers, it has been the subject of at least 3 "Pause for Thought"-type meditations on radio that I have heard, including one by my Methodist colleague George Loane on Radio Ulster ( 24 and 84 minutes in to todays Good Morning Ulster ), and will doubtless feature on many blogs over the next few days... Saturday was a day I had been looking forward to for a while... It was St. Patrick's Day and the culmination of the 6 Nations Rugby when Ireland were going to put England in their place... I had to juggle a lot of work to carve out time to watch the matches... And frankly, at the end of it all I wondered why I had bothered. Scotland were abject in the wooden spoon clash with Italy (putting my Scottish wife in a really good mood for the day ahead). The Wales/France showdown was dull as dishwater... with Wales claiming the championship and grand slam...

One of the great stories offering a glimpse of what Christmas is really about is the oft-told tale of British and German soldiers playing football in no-man's land on the Western Front on Christmas Day 1914. What is less often told is that the next day many of those who participated in that impromptu game refused to shoot at the "enemy" the next day, and had to be disciplined and re-deployed, with the respective high commands making sure there would be no repeat performances in 1915 and subsequent years. This is not just a story about Christmas, but also the transformative power of sport... Although given some of the Boxing Day football matches I've taken part in over the years, they were more likely to cause hostilities to break out! I enjoy playing sport, particularly competitive sport. I'm not very good at it but there is something about it that helps me to switch off and let-off steam in a controlled way. As a young guy I really enjoyed rugby, but my knees got...

We've had a good, if busy, week at church. But after all the activities of Holy Week and particularly the intensity of the various Good Friday services and events, we, along with most of the Christian world, take a liturgical breather, on what is variously called Holy, Low, Black, White, Silent, Still or Great Saturday. My professional activities this week have meant that I have not had much time to devote to much else, including this blog, or watching football, which, in the case of the midweek debacle between Liverpool and Chelski was a mercy. But today, even as I type the football commentary in on the radio in the background... (And Torres has just scored for the second time)... But there was a strange juxtaposition between 2 football stories I read this morning. One focusing on the ire of Aston Churches Working Together towards the Premier league, because of the scheduling of the Aston Villa v Everton fixture tomorrow, at a time which may disrupt local church services, and hark...

My morning routine once I hit my desk is, check mail, check email, schedule tasks for the day, then run my eye over the news on my internet homepage, and any blogs that I have bookmarked, an eclectic mixture of sport, politics and religion. It isn't often that the news stories in my varied strands overlap, but this morning a story was flagged up on both my football gossip column, and religious world news, and that is that BBC pundit and former Chelsea and Newcastle midfielder Gavin Peacock is moving to Canada after he has done his stint commenting on the Euro 2008 finals, to do further theological study in preparation for a career in the church. Not being into "celebrity Christians", I didn't actually know that he was one, but he's already done his stint as a "Songs of Praise" presenter... although these days you only have to have been to church once for a flower festival to be touted as a regular church-goer by the BBC. But Gavin has apparently been a C...

The football season is coming to an end... Wednesday saw the two English teams I hate most competing for a cup in the middle of the night in Moscow... and I am afraid I found myself supporting Scum Utd... I felt dirty after it... But better them than Chelski buying the cup. Then tonight saw Rangers lose to Aberdeen and thus hand the Scottish Premier league to their arch rivals Celtic... And as I watched it out of the corner of my eye with friends in East Belfast, I breathed a sigh of relief, because I knew that in West Belfast, where my previous charge was, local Protestant and Catholic youths would be using this as an excuse to vent their frustrations on each other, and the interfaces would be littered with bricks, bottles and stones. And sure enough, when I came home and checked the internet, it turned out that there had been an outbreak of violence on at least one Northwest Belfast interface... And so the football season gives way to the season of recreational rioting... I thank God...

A few weeks ago I went to Old Trafford to watch the Scum (sorry, Manchester Utd) annihilate Middlesborough. The football played by Ronaldo, Tevez, Nani and Shrek etc was (and this is difficult for a Liverpool fan to admit) awesome, but the atmosphere around the so-called "Theatre of Dreams" was curiously flat. The banter for which British football crowds are rightly famous was muted, and there were only 3 chants of real note. The first related to Solskjaer, a player who has retired (maybe the Man. Utd fans are so slow-witted they haven't noticed that yet!). The second was an affectionate tribute Nemanja Vidic, their Serbian defender suggesting that being from Serbia he's likely to "f*****g murder ya!" The final one was directed at the small knot of Middlesborough fans in the corner of the ground below where I was sitting. In it the Man. Utd fans suggested that their opponents were from "the worst place in Britain." Now I wouldn't have expected...