Virtual Methodist

Those on Facebook and/or Goodreads will already have read the guts of this post as it is largely a review of David F. Wells book "God in the Wasteland" Subtitled "The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams". You can imagine from that that it doesn't have many laughs in it, indeed as I posted on Facebook it is a tough read... I bought it nearly 10 years ago originally and it took me 3 or 4 false starts before I got through it. But it is worthwhile, because, again as I said on my facebook post about it, I believe when it was written nearly 20 years ago now, it was a prophetic word in the wilderness of contemporary evangelicalism... and one that has, sadly, largely gone unheeded... On Goodreads I gave it a 3/5 rating, which, for those uninitiated in that site means "I liked it" but it also reflects the fact that throughout the book I found myself agreeing with the author and being frustrated by him in roughly equal measures...  Dealing with the ...

Just incase anyone interested in the issue of chaplaincy missed the comment which Dr. Presswood appended to the post prompted by his appearance on the Today programme , you will find his comments on chaplaincy here. He protests loudly about not being anti-religious per-se but his tone is (as in the aforementioned Radio 4 appearance), patronising, using terms like "credulity", accusing chaplains roles as "morphing" while he portrays the attitudes of others in healthcare as "improving". His reference to scripture is not only extremely selective but misleading, both in terms of actual referencing (it is 2 John chapter 1 verse 7 rather than John chapter 2 verse 7, which would have been a reference to Jesus turning water into wine... which chaplains only rarely do...) but also emphasis, as the context of " John 1: 2  for example is not about heathens or non-believers but about "super-spiritual" individuals who regard physical existence as unimp...

I've written a couple of pieces on chaplaincy recently ( here and here ) and so it was interesting to have this piece on hospice chaplaincy brought to my attention by a former intern. Meanwhile, reflections on Fabrice Muamba and his ongoing recovery have continued in various corners of the interweb, but the most interesting for me was Kevin Hargaden's comments on the ill-conceived  challenge of a group of cross-party MPs to ASA ban on advertising faith-healing . Their particular crusade (and I use that word advisedly) is part of the developing war between conservative Christians and militant secularists... Hardly a day goes by without coming across a link concerning the "persecution" of Christians in secularist Britain, usually via the Daily Mail or the Christian Institute/Voice and featuring some quote or other by George Carey, or, on the other hand, some campaign by Dicky Dawkins and his merry band of fundamentalist atheists. Indeed I could include many of...

At the moment the ConDem Coalition are pushing for a change in the legal definition of marriage in the UK to include same-sex partnerships, which has produced a number of high profile objections by the church and has led a number of individuals and organisations, both from a faith perspective and not, to form a Coalition for Marriage arguing for the more traditional definition... Those coming from a Christian perspective on this tend to talk a lot about a "Biblical model of marriage" but as this contribution from John Byron's "Biblical World" reminds us, a Biblical perspective on marriage is a lot more complex than we might like to admit. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury has not been as vocal on this issue as his counterpart in York, but any suspicions that he might go quietly into his recently announced, and widely lamented, retirement  were roundly refuted with a very bullish statement on the wrong-headedness of the government and secularists ...

"B£##$y ministers! What's the f*?%!^g point of them around here!?" This was the profound question posed by one of the porters outside the chaplaincy office yesterday not realising that I could hear every word from inside, and could recognise his voice. If I hadn't been on the phone at the time I might have invited him in for a chat about his reservations on the role of chaplains in hospitals... I assume that is what he was referring to... Either that or the efficacy of our Health Minister Edwin Poots and his colleagues, and I'm not going to make any public comment on them here! It's not just porters who are asking that question however... The Humanist and Secular societies and their fellow travellers have understandably been asking it in various forms for some time. There was also a recent Freedom of Information Request concerning the amount of money spent on chaplains throughout the NHS in Northern Ireland by by MLA Conall McDevitt, which prompted a lot...

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...

Things are definitely changing. Certainly in East Belfast. The writing has literally been on the walls for years... The fabled gables of East Belfast have been changing… Instead of pictures of King Billy you have more recent "heroes": C.S. Lewis, George Best and David Ervine... And where victory is celebrated it is of Norn Irn beating England at football rather than King Billy beating his father in law at the Boyne (although the artists in question still have difficulties with faces.) Then this week I went out for lunch with a colleague, to a pub which was, until recently a paramilitary drinking den. It has now, however, gone up-market and you are more likely to meet a Church of Ireland Bishop, (as we did) than a UDA brigadier, unless of course the Bishop is meeting a brigadier, which is not inconceivable these days. But anyway the bill came to £16.90, and my colleague quipped that he would remember that easily enough, but the waitress looked at him with total incomprehension...

Just been to the last of umpteen Children's Christmas Shows that I've been attending this year, some in my role as a minister, and one as a father, and the good thing is that this year I haven't yet had to sing "Away in a manger" whereas in days gone by I would have sung it 14 times by December 3rd! Things really have moved on - instead of the same nativity story and the bog-standard carols of years gone by, now every year-group competes to find the show with the cleverest twist on the Christmas story, and the most upbeat songs - so we now have grumpy shepherds, silly sheep, singing stars and all manner of interpretations of what the word C.H.R.I.S.T.M.A.S. stands for. Of course, just like the old-style nativities, these new ones are enhanced in ways their authors never anticipated - by elves spending the entire performance with their finger up their nose; or by the Angel Gabriel tucking her wings into her knickers in the inevitable toilet stop immediately before ...