What does it mean to be a questing church? That idea can sound like saying that there are no truths, so that any and all beliefs are OK, spawning some sort of dull, relativist quagmire which has nothing much to offer its members, let alone anyone outside. It can feel a little as though the […]
It’s been a little while since I worked on my apologia pro vita sua thread – more than time to return to it. I had a bash at this article over the weekend, and ultimately didn’t like it much, which is why this is a bit later than usual – I’d rather be late with […]
Advent is about waiting. It is the time between the “now” and the “not yet”, the darkness before dawn, the grain of wheat in the dark, silent earth. The night voyage. It is a time of waiting on the promises of God. One of my favourite stories is Jonah and his giant fish and how […]
So, there I was. Grief, loss, suffering: a reasonable stab at Frankl’s Tragic Triad. But, as I’ve previously said, I don’t want to stop there. I don’t trust theology – or indeed people – who jump right to the happy ending without the journey. But what is the journey? Do I have to do it […]
A couple of weeks ago, before life intervened, I began a little series trying to lay out the building blocks of my own, personal pre-theological understanding/journey. If I’m going to criticise thinkers, I felt I should present my own position. So, this is the second one. The topic? The role of suffering, and how a […]
One of my issues with the liberalism of someone like Peter Rollins is that I feel like it doesn’t create anything positive. Doubt is a powerful solvent, which is good and right, and some things need to be dissolved. The whiteboard needs to be wiped clean before something new can be created. But something new […]
I originally entitled this article “Why Peter Rollins Gets On My Nerves” (actually, my original title was even less polite than that, but in deference to the delicate sensibilities of my gentle readers, I restrained myself.) It’s still a kind of unofficial subtitle, but I think what I want to write about goes deeper than […]
One of the most helpful books I have read to explain what I am observing in Cafechurch is A Churchless Faith, by Alan Jamieson. I think it is a really helpful model of what happens to people as they come out of what he calls EPC (Evangelical, Pentecostal, Charismatic) churches. It is interesting, not just […]
Last week I posted about the situation of the Christian churches in the West as I see it. I posed the question “What does Christianity have to do with real life?” I, rather rashly, promised to share my thoughts about What Is To Be Done this week. All my thoughts are based on reflecting on […]
I had a really interesting conversation yesterday, with a friend who comes from a very conservative Christian background, from which she has escaped. I have a lot of friends like this, but she put the issue in a very striking way: What has Christianity got to do with the real world? Out there in the […]
Alister Pate