The ordination of women I’m trying to think through my position on women’s ordination, having tried to avoid the issue for years. Since I came to a living faith in my teens, t...
Why are we so obsessed with gender? It might not be overstating things to say that we find ourselves at a turning point in Western history. History is moving forwards at a considerable pac...
I’m not a person of faith There are two types of people: normal people, and everyone else. How you unpack that depends on what you think of as normal. So there are Brits and fo...
Faith at the ballot box: Greens Over on Thomas Creedy’s blog there has been a series of posts, in which Christians from various political parties answer a set of questions. I took part...
Coding for Christ? There was a post of mine on the Faith in Scholarship blog a couple of days ago. It begins as follows… While I was an academic astronomer, I probably...
General election Bible study I cobbled this Bible study together at the weekend. It is unrefined and untested, but I post it here in case it might be useful. The main inspiration is...
Trident dilemma What if… North Korea has nuked London. Trident is ready. You are in charge. Pyongyang will be destroyed. 2.5 million will die. Do you press the button?
On the (social capital) deficit Any who are concerned about the sharp decline in “social capital” over recent decades would do well to read Harvard professor Robert Putnam’s 2000 class...
Christianity and the Green Party A little flurry of online activity on this topic over the past few days. First, there was Gillan Scott’s post on Archbishop Cranmer, entitled Green Par...
A Christian guide to the General Election: Votewise 2015 If you’re a Christian thinking about how to vote (or whether to vote) in the 2015 General Election, and if you read just one short book on the topic, th...
Keep it in the ground Major new campaign from the Guardian, in partnership with 350.org. We’re heading for disaster if we burn the vast quantity of known fossil fuel reserves...
The first chapters of everything This recent (2014) book on Genesis 1-4 by Alasdair Paine (of St Andrew the Great in Cambridge) is a joy to read. The emphasis is on how the chapters mak...
On the Green Party’s policies A couple of people asked me what I made of the Telegraph’s recent article on Green Party policy, Drugs, brothels, al-Qaeda and the Beyonce tax: the Gree...
Christians in Politics: will you #ShowUp? In politics, it has been said, decisions are made by those who show up. Christians in Politics launched a new campaign today: The Show Up campaign ...
bundle open gem source I didn’t realise you could do this, from a Ruby or Rails project using bundler/Gemfile: bundle open activerecord
Christian same-sex marriage? I recently read one of the most prominent books of its kind: Jeffrey John’s Permanent, Faithful, Stable: Christian Same-sex Marriage. It’s the first suc...
Election 2015: Christian comment from KLICE The excellent Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics (KLICE) has a new page devoted to the 2015 (general) election. You can read all about it in th...
Steel Angels: the personal qualities of a priest The Church of England puts people forward for ordination based on nine criteria. Those criteria form the basis for this 2014 book by Magdalen Smith, who...
On feeling called to be ordained The most helpful parts of Francis Dewar’s book Called or Collared? are those dealing with the idea that you must believe that you are ‘inwardly moved by...
Ministry in Three Dimensions I’m writing this from the Bible Belt of the Netherlands: a strip running from the south west towards the east of the country, in which there are many co...
Do you feel called by God? You don’t need to! That’s the main point of Michael Bennett’s 2012 book, Do you feel called by God? (Matthias Media). From the back cover: When Mic...
God with us (in the lab) There’s a post of mine on the Faith in Scholarship blog this morning. It begins as follows… It’s hard to predict how I will feel at the end of the C...
On women bishops This week (in case you missed it) the Church of England announced its first ever female bishop: Libby Lane, to serve as the (suffragan) Bishop of Stockp...
Depot application with RSpec An excellent introduction to Ruby on Rails is Agile Web Development with Rails 4 by Sam Ruby. Around half of the book is devoted to building the “depot”...
Theological reflection: a theological reflection 1. Experience I wrote a theological reflection. You are reading it. 2. Exploration This seems so simple! 3. Reflection Are there any theological re...
Rails architecture Three thought-provoking talks about the architecture of a Rails application First, Bob Martin (2011) argues that Rails ought to be an irrelevant detail...
Models of the Church We live in an age of ecclesiastical chaos. Never before have so many wildly different kinds of churches existed side by side in the same towns and citie...
The Provocative Church A quick post, to remind you that I’m still here, and to draw your attention to an excellent little book about evangelism and the Church, The Provocative...
Too much Rails code? Put it in a gem! If you extract some of your Rails code into a gem, and test the gem separately, this will guarantee that the gem cannot depend on the rest of your appli...
The Lost World of Genesis One Continuing on the theme of creation/evolution-related books from around five years ago (1, 2), we now move across the pond to Wheaton College, Illinois,...
Weapons cause wars: Alan Storkey on the First World War I first heard Alan Storkey give a talk about the arms trade in 2010, at a WYSOCS event, and it had a deep effect on me. He made me realise something tha...
Astronomy through a Christian telescope There’s a post of mine on the Faith in Scholarship blog this morning. It begins as follows… One of the motivations for Faith in Scholarship is the c...
Debating Darwin Debating Darwin (Paternoster, 2009) is a multi-author book, seeking to debate Darwinism first on theological grounds, and then on scientific grounds. Ea...
On good disagreement and the future of the Church of England Live in harmony with one another. … If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:16,18). Make every effo...
Creation or evolution: do we have to keep getting nowhere? It is with some reluctance that I turn to the topic of creation and evolution. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot in years gone by, but I’ve tried ...
Morning Prayers From the Book of Common Prayer: O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose servi...
Creationist research in palaeontology Leonard Brand is a biologist and palaeontologist. He’s also a young-age creationist. He believes the world was deluged by a global flood just a few thou...
Church history lectures You can learn a huge amount by downloading lecture courses and listening to them while doing other bits and pieces. Specifically, over the space of seve...
Jekyll with Prose Jekyll is a beautifully lightweight alternative to the likes of WordPress. But the main disadvantage, for ‘normal’ users, is that you really need to be ...
David Powlison on being thankful David Powlison is a Christian counsellor. In the video below he talks about gratitude as an antidote to grumbling, and about the pastoral value of the G...
Why and how do we celebrate the Lord’s Supper? Whether our tradition is ‘liturgical’ or ‘non-liturgical’, it’s all too easy to simply go through the motions when sharing the Lord’s Supper. Whether we...
Anglicanism Anglicanism is certainly broad. But does it have only an organic nature, which may be stretched and remoulded without constraint? What are its limits?
Multi-site mega-churches and their bishops If you think of Anglican churches in terms of the diocese, they look like multi-site mega-churches.
The human being who rules the universe He has raised our human nature in the clouds to God’s right hand; there we sit in heavenly places, there with him in glory stand: Jesus reigns, adore...
The real environmental problems and how to solve them Just came across this quote1 by Gus Speth, a professor of law and former administrator of the UN Development Programme, in the latest issue of Tearfund’...
The Catholic Faith (of the Church of England) I sometimes wonder what it would have been like in the Church of England, in the days when the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) was universally used, and i...
Vote Green on 22 May! I haven’t had much time for blogging lately, but I interrupt my (non-)blog silence for a brief party political broadcast. I’ll be voting for the Green ...
What’s bothering me about Rails’s ActiveRecord class Product < ActiveRecord::Base # All of my attributes are public end I expect there are very good reasons to ditch the whole idea of encapsul...
What is ordained ministry? I was asked to write something about the difference between lay and ordained ministry, with particular reference to the Church of England. Here it is… ...
Government orders “lazy” population to get out of bed earlier The British population has been described as “lazy” and chided for “excessive lie-ins”, in a scathing attack by the Chancellor. “The reason the economy...
The life and work of a priest John Pritchard is Bishop of Oxford, and has spent many years either serving in parish ministry, training others to serve in parish ministry, or overseei...
When is a priest not a priest? Our English word priest comes from the Latin word presbyter, which itself comes from the Greek word presbuteros. When this Greek word appears in the Bib...
I’m a Christian and this is why I vote Green I’d love to write a post under this title, but, fortunately for me (and for you!), fellow Green Party member Stephen Gray has saved me the hard work! ...
Climate change is here now: an urgent call to action Harsh though it may sound, I’m glad that we are experiencing yet more crazy weather here in the West. Not glad for those people suffering real hardship,...
WordPress to Jekyll If either of you read my posts by actually visiting this site, rather than by using an RSS feed reader (such as feedly), then you may have noticed some ...
Why winds explain the warming hiatus There has been a lot of talk recently about a suppose “pause” in global warming. Well, a study led by Professor Matt England of the University of New So...
What is the mission of the church? Kevin DeYoung is very concerned about the church fulfilling its calling to proclaim the gospel. And rightly so: people’s greatest need is for a restored...
Links I've always had lots of links on this site ("always" as in "since before 2002"). Such a list was a good idea in the days before Google (BG). But now I t...
WordPress to Jekyll Change of plan: I'm moving this site not from WordPress to Rails, but from WordPress to Jekyll. It was kind of fun developing a blog from scratch in Rai...
Wirral wind power I seem to have found my way onto the letters page of this week's Wirral Globe. Here's the letter (title is editorial): Wind power debate is full of hot ...
How being Anglican deepens faith Todd Hunter, in the video below, is a bishop in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). Now, strictly speaking, ACNA is not (yet) part of the (offi...
Hope in an Age of Despair (review) I had this review published in the Winter 2013/2014 edition of Green Christian, the magazine of the Christian Ecology Link (CEL). It's now on their webs...
Monday Monteverdi A bit of Monteverdi to brighten up your Monday. One of my Christmas presents was the CD Monteverdi - Teatro D'Amore by L'Arpeggiata. Here's a video of o...
Genesis in 7 and 10 The book of Genesis has ten major sections, each beginning with "These are the generations of ..." (toledoth in Hebrew). Before the first of these secti...
On the visible universal church I (think) I used to hold to a view of the church which goes something like this: if you put your trust in Jesus, you become part of the invisible-univer...
They followed the Scriptures: Hugh Ross on the Christmas star Hugh Ross is an astrophysicist who is the president and founder of the science-faith think tank Reasons to Believe. He has some helpful short videos (am...
The party isn’t over It's not easy to party for twelve days. Our celebrations typically last for no more than a day. We have a great time, eating, drinking and dancing, and ...
Ecclesiocredopaedobaptism Over the past year-and-a-half, I've been thinking a lot about baptism. Prior to that, I was a fairly ordinary credo-baptist. You can follow my progress ...
How does the universe make you feel? Poll results Since 17 March 2009, I've had a poll on this site about the universe. The poll is now closed! Here is how it looked: Before I give you the results, I w...
Santa vs Jesus It's not been looking very Christmassy (sp?) around here. Time to rectify that... here's Santa vs Jesus by Glen Scrivener and Revival Media...
The Pilling Report in a nutshell (or a capsule) The Church of England has been thinking seriously about same-sex relationships. Very seriously, in fact, as is clear from the recently published Pilling...
Hymns of hope (8) God is working his purpose out One hymn that expresses really well the Christian hope for the future is Arthur Campbell Ainger’s 1894 hymn, God is working his purpose out. Each verse ...
Dupré: Variations sur un Noël Way back in 1999 (that's 14 years ago), I used to be not too bad on the organ. (I say "I", but all the atoms in my body have been replaced a couple of t...
The organ of St George’s Hall, Liverpool Liverpool is a great city for unleashing one's inner organ-geek. Two of the biggest and best pipe organs in the country are here. Liverpool Anglican Cat...
Peter Leithart on baptism The Bible seems to attribute an astonishing power to baptism. What are we to make of this? We could explain it away. Or we could do what presbyterian pa...
Paul Avis on the visibility of the Church I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Church. Why? I suppose I’m beginning to appreciate the importance of the Church as a visible community of peop...
Philippines: pray, give, act Pray: O loving Creator, bring healing and hope to those who, at this time, grieve, suffer pain, or who have been made homeless by the force of flood in ...
The environmental crisis (but don’t mention the warming) Some people remain unconvinced about anthropogenic global warming and climate change. I remain convinced that they are wrong, and that they have swallow...
Bible in a year with the C of E This Monday (4 November) is the start of a new year of Bible readings, and I'd love you to join me and many other people in reading the Bible together! ...
1 John: walk in the light! In John’s day, there were people who were departing from the church (and taking others with them), who claimed a deeper knowledge of the truth, who deni...
Is the Church of England full of non-believing clergy? Do "almost a half" of male clergy in the Church of England "not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus or in his bodily resurrection"? And do a significan...
Calvin on God Calvin isn’t bothered with idle speculation about the nature of God: Let us then willingly leave to God the knowledge of himself [which we shall do]...
WordPress to Rails (5) static pages WordPress lumps posts and static pages together in one database table, but they need to be handled quite differently. At least for the time being, I’m ...
WordPress to Rails (4) uploads WordPress allows you to upload files (such as images) and include them in posts. These end up in a location such as .../wp-content/uploads/2012/06/githu...
Does free will explain the fall? Have you ever read or heard anything like this? Freedom of choice means that temptations will occur. Robots with no free will are not tempted, they can ...
The Sundays of the church year OK, this is slightly boring and nerdy, but I've been trying to get my head round the Church of England Weekday Lectionary (2005/2010), and part of that ...
Money doesn’t get spent or saved Money is a funny thing. When you pay out some money (when you "spend" it), the money doesn't actually get spent. That is, nothing happens to the money. ...
An optical illusion for climate sceptics Sometimes appearances can be deceptive. Here's an image from the 2013 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5) (part of Figure...
WordPress to Rails (3) Bootstrap Rails is more about making web applications that actually do things than it is about making web sites that just look nice. But sooner or later, some att...
WordPress to Rails (2) permalinks Various changes since last time, such as adding user login authentication, with the following in the User model, which seems to mimic the WordPress auth...
WordPress to Rails (1) schema and scaffold I’m attempting to move this blog from WordPress to Rails. Why? Because I’m learning Rails!
I sing for joy at what your hands have done Recently I went to a church service in which I paid attention to the words we were singing (for a change). At the end, as far as I could recall, we hadn...
Hymns of hope (7) For all the saints William Walsham How’s classic hymn, For all the saints, helps us to look forward to two things. First, we look forward to being with the Lord when we di...
The letter to the Hebrews: outline The New Testament letter to the Hebrews is a richly structured book. The basic message of the letter is clear enough. The recipients of the letter were ...
Anglican infant baptism: credo-paedo-baptism? Baptism is slightly topical at the moment, with the Church of England putting an article on its website yesterday entitled Top 10 facts about Christenin...
Jesus as Israel in Matthew’s Gospel The first words of Matthew's Gospel are, "The book of Genesis". Perhaps this is meant to remind us of something? In addition, perhaps the final verses o...
Calvin on the knowledge of God and Scripture Calvin wrote his Institutes as “a key to open a way for all children of God into a good and right understanding of Holy Scripture” (p.7). So it is appro...
Sex without bodies: understanding LGBT(QIA) What is it that unites those people who identify as LGBT—or LGBTQIA? Andy Crouch answers, in an excellent Christianity Today editorial: There is really ...
Calvin’s Institutes I’ve started (again) to read John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Undoubtedly it’s one of the most important books of the sixteenth-centu...