Virtual Methodist

Last night I had the privilege of being at an event in the Waterfront Studio which was part of the Belfast Festival, but unlike other events I usually go to in this and other festivals it wasn't primarily an artistic one. There was a short, superb set by the Féile Women's Choir at the beginning, but despite the fact that my wife sings with them, that wasn't my main reason for going, rather it was to hear Professor Phil Scraton, one of the members of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, speak about the work of that panel, the tragedy that unfolded on 15th April 1989 and its aftermath, under the title of "Hillsborough: Speaking Truth to Power." This was an event not just for Liverpool fans or football fans, but for anyone interested in politics, power and the dignity of people in the face of injustice.  Whilst I was quite familiar with most of the material presented, to hear it all over the course of 90 minutes from a person intimately involved with the whole p...

Every Christian questions their faith at some time or another, unless they have a blind faith that refuses to engage with the world, a faith that is maintained in a sterile environment where questions cannot arise – but a sterile environment produces a sterile faith. It is perhaps this truth that Tennyson pointed to when he said that there is more faith in honest doubt than in all the creeds. There is nothing wrong with doubt as such, it is a question of what you do with it. As Roy Clements, whose book "Songs of Experience has broadly guided this short series says: “Doubt is to unbelief what temptation is to sin. A test, but not yet a surrender.” Indeed in the book of James the issues of temptation, trials, doubt and sin are all interlinked, and, in his eyes trials, temptations and doubts can be used to hone faith. In Psalm 73 the situation that has produced the seeds of doubt is the prosperity of the wicked and unscrupulous (vv2-12), a phenomenon that continues to the prese...