Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
This is the first of a series of guest posts, in which regular readers of this blog explaining why, from a Christian perspective, they intend to vote for a particular political party—or, in one case, why they intend to spoil their ballot paper. In this first one, Revd Iain McFarlane, who is Priest-in-Charge at Boyatt Wood, Eastleigh, …
By any account, the NHS is in crisis, and a crisis more acute this winter than we have seen before. Some have described the challenges facing the service as a ‘perfect storm’ of pressures, and whilst there is a debate about whether it is a question of quantity of funding or how that funding is …
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is starting today in Davos, Switzerland, attended by the leaders of the the wealthiest economies and the biggest corporations. And, in what has become something of an annual ritual, Oxfam has expressed its objection to the gross inequalities between rich and poor in the world. Eight billionaires …
The first dust has settled from the EU Leave vote, but it feels as if the earthquake has only just begun, and there is no telling what foundations it has yet to disturb. David Cameron has resigned; George Osbourne is likely to follow soon. Jeremy Corbyn faces a vote of no confidence, and already Nicola …
It is a well-known fact that membership of the EU has mired us in a quagmire of regulation created by faceless bureaucrats who impose their unelected agenda on poor British people, inhibiting our lives and business with absurd rules. The classic example comes in this analysis of the words in various documents: Lord’s Prayer – 66 …
It is often claimed that contemporary Christians ignore the biblical teaching that prohibits usury—usually interpreted to mean either lending at interest or lending at excessive interest. This is significant for three main reasons: The suggestion is then made that in other areas of ethical debate (sexuality, divorce, gender relations, the Sabbath principle, other areas of …
I am going to dip into a subject which is of extreme delicacy in the world of academic publishing. I am therefore going to avoid naming any particular parties in this issue, for two reasons. First, as a publisher myself, I don’t like people talking about what I do by name. Secondly, as a reviewer …
Having commented from time to time on politics and the elections, I found it fascinating to see the rather muted response to John McDonnell’s speech at the Labour party conference. Reaction to the appointment of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader has mostly focussed on things he said in the past and terrible things he would …
Commentators are still adjusting to the shock of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour party in a greater landslide than the one that brought Tony Blair to the same position in 1994. As Nick Palmer points out, opinion on Corbyn splits into three camps: People who agree with him People who quite like the …
With Jeremy Corbyn likely to be elected as the next Labour leader, there is a good chance that we will all be faced with a much clearer choice at the next election. For Christians, this will raise more acutely the question of how important care for the poor is in their voting decisions. (Whatever else …
At Lee Abbey last week and New Wine this, I have been leading a series of sessions on ‘Gods of Our Age’. (I did the teaching myself last week; this week I am hosting a series of contributors.) It struck me some time ago that the gods of the ancient world were not merely the …
