September 2008

“There is a saying ascribed to Isidore the Priest warning that ‘of all evil suggestions, the most terrible is the prompting to follow your own heart.’ Once again, the modern reader will be taken aback. ‘Follow what your heart says’ is part of the standard popular wisdom of our day, like ‘following the [...]

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The bloggers’ ten commandments have created a little stir. Following The Times article there was also a piece in the Telegraph.
If you just went by the articles you might assume that these ‘commandments’ were the main focus and purpose of the gathering in London. (’Conference’ is far too grand a word) But they weren’t [...]

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Captain of Israel’s host, and guide
Of all who seek the land above,
Beneath thy shadow we abide,
The cloud of thy protecting love;
Our strength, thy grace; our rule, thy word;
Our end, the glory of the Lord.
By thine unerring Spirit led,
We shall not in the desert stray;
We shall not full direction need,
Nor miss our providential way;
As far from [...]

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Ruth Gledhill has the Ten Commandments of Blogging which sort of came out of the bloggers’ gathering the other day.
For what it’s worth, I don’t like them at all. And I don’t like the way they’ve been brought out. It was a good day in London, but I really don’t see how this has helped [...]

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Fair Trade has been one of the success stories of the past twenty years, making a significant contribution to the welfare of some of the world’s poorest communities. There were those who said it would never happen, that ‘free markets’ were all that was needed to lift the poor from their poverty. (And, of course, [...]

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“Christians who are conformed to the world introduce into the Church the value-judgments and concepts of the world. They believe in action. They want efficiency. They give first place to economics, and they think all means are good…. They are defined by their sociological milieu. The Protestant thinks to adopt the [...]

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Yesterday I attended a bloggers’ event organized by the Evangelical Alliance at their headquarters in London. There were about 25 of us there, many more men than women. Methodist blogging was represented by my good self, the estimable Mr John Cooper and the always delightful Olive Morgan. Everyone’s favourite cartoonist, Dave Walker was also there. [...]

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*Sigh*
Australians.
I mean, you can’t really blame them. They’re a young nation, after all and can’t be expected to have developed a truly civilized sensibility just yet. These things take time. And their cultural development has to have been somewhat stunted by the fact that they’re basically all the descendants of convicts. Not their fault, of [...]

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You’ve got to hand it to Carolina Academic Press. They have a really admirable range of material on offer. There’s David Waldron’s The Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival. The eagerly anticipated secons edition of ¿Qué le Duele? : Beginning Spanish for Healthcare Professionals. Not to mention the Admiralty and Maritime Law [...]

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GodBlogCon is no more.
Our friends in the US are packing it in.
…conference director Dustin Steeve announced that GodblogCon qua GodblogCon will be no more after this year. The first page of the attendee packet proclaims that “GodblogCon is coming to an end.” Indeed, “beginning October 2009, something new is coming….”
The Acton Institute
Is it just [...]

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Ouch.

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Give me the faith which can remove
And sink the mountain to a plain;
Give me the childlike praying love,
Which longs to build Thy house again;
Thy love, let it my heart overpower,
And all my simple soul devour.
I want an even strong desire,
I want a calmly fervent zeal,
To save poor souls out of the fire,
To snatch them from [...]

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As Joe Carter has shifted his priorities, there is an announcement on the Evangelical Outpost blog that it will now be managed by Torrey Honors Institute of the tax exempt religious school, Biola University. I think the Outpost, though sometimes raising my blood pressure, has been an excellent blog, and it has had the [...]

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Further to Kim’s quote from Kirkegaard, here’s a related quote from the blessed Mr Wesley
“Does it not seem (and yet this cannot be) that Christianity, true scriptural Christianity, has a tendency, in process of time, to undermine and destroy itself? For wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which, in the natural [...]

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Imagine this. Suppose that a coachman sees an absolutely and utterly faultless five-year-old horse, an ideal horse, snorting and as full of vigor as any he has seen, and he says, “Well, I cannot bid on this horse, nor can I afford it, and even if I could it is quite unsuitable for my [...]

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According to Stanley Hauerwas, “a book we can give a friend who asks, ‘What is all this Christian stuff about?’”
What is this, and what can it have to do with this ‘umble blog?
All will be revealed, my friends. Just watch this space.

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Apparently, some recently discovered fragments of hitherto lost NT manuscripts make a lot of things very clear
“We found these fragments with Jesus telling his disciples to grab some serious real estate, build it, and try to attract people to it,” the statement says. “He even throws around the term ‘250 billion bucks’, which corresponds [...]

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ASBO Jesus has been taking the Bible literally

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An extract from the fondly remembered satirical sketch show, ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’

(Reading this article on the SPG (Special Patrol Group) may help you with one of the punchlines)
Update: Locusts and Honey has been thinking along similar lines.

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