book review

Queer Holiness: A Review and Critique IV: Revelation, Scripture, and Science

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Joshua Penduck writes: In this long review, I have explored several critiques of Charlie Bell’s book Queer Holiness. In Part II, I looked out how despite all the merits of his book (some of which were outlined in Part I), his polemical rhetoric has led to problems of internal inconsistency, privilege, strawmanning, othering, a lack of … Continue Reading

Queer Holiness: A Review and Critique III: What has gone wrong?

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Joshua Penduck writes: Let’s review. Bell has argued that the Church of England must reach the point of accepting gay marriage as well as implying some kind of concordance with contemporary sexual ethics in the modern West (his suggestive reference to aggiornamento on p 159 is revealing). Although the Bible has a narrative function within this, … Continue Reading

Queer Holiness: A Review and Critique II: A (Very) Flawed Text

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Joshua Penduck writes: In Part I of this review of Charlie Bell’s book, Queer Holiness, after outlining his overall argument, I noted that the hints and implications of some of his arguments lead to a ‘sacralisation’ of contemporary Western norms for sexual ethics, that is, equating our current culture with divine revelation. As such, I proposed … Continue Reading

Queer Holiness: A Review and Critique I: Introduction

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Joshua Penduck writes: The following is a review and critique of Charlie Bell’s book Queer Holiness: The Gift of LGBTQI People to the Church. It will be divided into four blog posts (though a complete version of the review can be found here: Review-of-Charlie-Bell-Queer-Holiness).  The first part is an introduction to Queer Holiness, plus the beginnings of … Continue Reading

What is a Christian response to surveillance capitalism?

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Mark Ireland has just written a fascinating Grove booklet on Surveillance Capitalism and the Loving Gaze of God. He begins by noting both the positive and the negative aspects of the internet, both for living and for Christian discipleship and ministry. I love technology—the connectedness, the ready flow of information and ideas. When I was growing up, … Continue Reading

Should the Church of England disestablish?

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Jonathan Chaplin has just published Beyond Establishment: Resetting Church State Relations in England (SCM 2022)—which is available at 20% discount until the end of this month from the SCM website. I was able to interview Jonathan about this fascinating book. IP: I really enjoyed this book—your crisp and clear style, extremely well researched and informed, … Continue Reading

What does it mean to love our bodies?

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Paul Adams writes: Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality is a robust and compelling cultural apologetics text. The scope is large dealing with a range of highly controversial subjects such as abortion and infanticide (chapter 2), euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research, animal rights, genetic engineering, transhumanism (chapter 3), sexuality and … Continue Reading

Does God still perform miracles today?

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Dr Gary Burnett offers this review of Craig Keener’s recent book, Miracles Today: The Supernatural Work of God in the Modern World, Baker, 2021. Craig Keener is a significant and hugely respected New Testament scholar. If this book had been written by almost anyone else, I confess, I’m not sure what I would have made … Continue Reading