Reignite

I've got to the stage when I'm really tired of the negativity of liberal religion, defining itself over and against conservative religion. It often feels to me like liberal religion has got nothing to say apart from saying that it is not conservative religion, and that conservative religion is wrong. For a while this is refreshing. When you move from conservative religion to liberal religion you feel reassured by this. I moved from, well let's say orthodox religion, not necessarily conservative, to liberalism and I needed to be affirmed in that movement.  But after years (or decades) of this, you look around and ask, "Yeah, but is there anything more to say? To learn? To do? To grow into?" This came to my mind recently when I was listening to a liberal religious podcast. Someone had written in to say, "I didn't really grow up with any religion. My question is - how can I get to know God?" And the answer of the podcasters was, "Well conservative...

Obviously there's not been much public activism in the last few months in lockdown. But I'm beginning now to think a bit more about Extinction Rebellion, what I think about it, how I relate to it, and where it's going. I think a lot about this article that states the tactics of Extinction Rebellion are flawed. Since the 2019 election that seems clearer than ever to me. The social science behind XR's strategy is that if enough disruption is caused, if enough nonviolent direct action happens, it changes government policy. But that article shows how that is just not true. The social science research supposedly behind XR's tactics show what mass nonviolent movements can and cannot achieve. They can  achieve the downfall of dictators. They can achieve change in one particular area of government policy if governments become embarrassed that the public mood has gone against them. This means that the current Black Lives Matter protests in the States do have a good...

"This was the attraction, the power, which inwardly affected me, to desire reward for my preaching, in these last days of great tribulation. And my reward is this: that each father and mother of a family, with all the children and domestics, may devote an hour of every day to the Lord our God, in assembling in stillness, side by side, as in the presence of God, and in humility waiting on the inward illumination of the spirit of grace in their hearts." George de Benneville (1703-1793) We often ask, "are church buildings necessary?" and in 2020 we have been given a definite answer: no, they are not. At least in extreme circumstances, they are not. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all churches would be better off without buildings, I'm saying it is very clear today that the core of faith practice is something other than "going to church" because we haven't "gone to church" in four months and we're still "doing faith...

(Edited on 30th July 2020 to add Newsnight video) What's becoming clearer and clearer to me is that we're being led by a UK government which has a deadly ideology. Of course that was always true because of the government's criminal inaction on the climate crisis, but the corona virus pandemic has shown it to be true on a smaller scale of this particular crisis. I think this video of an interview with government adviser John Edmunds is really instructive. I think the key part of the interview is from about minute 9. At 13.40 he says, "It is hard to imagine we would do that [take restrictive measures] here in the UK.... I don't think anybody looked at it [lockdown]... it was difficult to imagine just how easy the lockdown was ... that people actually would go along with it." In other words we didn't go into lockdown as early as we should have done (which most people seem to be saying now would have cut our death toll by a half, if not three quart...

If we want to decolonise the world, we must decolonise our nations. If we want to decolonise the nations, we must decolonise our cities. If we want to decolonise the cities, we must decolonise our neighbourhoods. If we want to decolonise our neighbourhoods, we must decolonise our homes. If we want to decolonise our homes, we must decolonise our hearts. (With apologies to Lau Tzu's (apparent) words)

This time is devastating. In the last few months we've seen at least 40,000 people, and probably closer to 60,000 killed by a deadly virus in the UK. Sixty thousand grieving families. Lives torn from this earth. And those who are mourning are unable to receive a comforting hand on a shoulder, unable to have a hug in their grief. This is awful. But what is almost as awful is the ludicrously blasé, flippant attitude through all this that has come from government, media, and (by extension, it feels) society in general. Where is our grief? Where are out rituals of mourning? Where are our sackcloth and ashes? The Prime Minister should be appearing on TV every night beating his chest and saying, "This is terrible, I'm so so sorry." Instead throughout all of this we've had this "ra ra, cheer up, let's get the pubs open" bullshit from the beginning from this UK government. It's totally sickening. It's a total denial of an unfolding tragedy ...

Christianity started as a Jewish sect. Despite this, or in some ways because of this, there is a strongly anti-Jewish message very early on in Christian history. What started as a debate between different Jewish communities became something different as Christianity became Gentile, and then became an imperial religion with considerably power. How Christianity shaped European antisemitism is something that Christians needed to seriously address after the Holocaust, and to a certain extent have done, though not nearly enough. In looking at this many Christians have noted how the Gospel of John has particularly troublesome phrases. There's constant negative references to "the Jews". Even though Jesus and the disciples are Jewish, the phrase "the Jews" always refers to those against Jesus. As I say, this insight is in no way original to me. But I think I've come to the view that the problem is much much worse than most Christians want to admit, because t...