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The Simon Barrow Column

Reflecting on how Christian political imagination can help change society's agenda. Follow Simon on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/simonbarrow

  • 16 Nov 2011
    Lessons from the Church of Occupy?

    While attempts to 'Christianise' the Occupy movement from above are rightly being resisted within and without the protest outside St Paul's Cathedral, there are profound Christian lessons to be learned from 'the Church of Occupy', suggests Simon Barrow. The juxtaposition of movement and institution dramatises the questions and issues raised by the uneven transition from Christendom to post-Christendom.

  • 12 Nov 2011
    Tents that shake the establishment's complacency

    As with the leadership of the Church of England, the main Westminster parties have struggled to know how to respond to the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp, says Simon Barrow. He questions and deconstructs the idea that the tent protests have been 'unconstructive' politically and 'disastrous' religiously. Quite the reverse, he suggests.

  • 28 Oct 2011
    The party spirit is in trouble

    The Occupy protests, environmental movements and civic revolutions across the world are suggesting that there is a whole world of politics available outwith the narrow party perspectives that still dominate the electoral machinery of Western democracies, says Simon Barrow. Party posturing is looking increasingly irrelevant. A spirit of change is in the air.

  • 8 Oct 2011
    Desmond Tutu shows the way for Christianity

    The core to Archbishop Desmond Tutu's appeal, and to the opposition he has also elcited, lies in his sheer humanity as well as his fidelity to the core of the Christian message, says Simon Barrow. This is a pattern which holds out hope for the future of Christianity in dark times.

  • 6 Sep 2011
    A state of Scottish independence?

    The debate on Scottish independence in advance of a mooted 2016 referendum is only just beginning, but Simon Barrow suggests that the contours of a fresh agenda on both sides is already emerging in surprising comments from representatives of the Westminster parties north of the border.

  • 18 Aug 2011
    The world re-described

    Theology is ‘wrestling with the unfathomable mystery of God’, but to enlighten rather than to obscure, says Simon Barrow, paying tribute to two Mennonite scholars and pastors, Alan and Eleanor Kreider, as part of a festschrift entitled 'Forming Christian Habits in Post-Christendom'.

  • 5 Aug 2011
    Negotiating behind the scenes

    The prospects of settlements in some of the most intractable situations in the world today, as well as in domestic political wrangles over the health service, education and more, depend upon a host of unseen actors, says Simon Barrow. They create the conditions for the more formal political mechanisms to make progress.

  • 23 Jul 2011
    Norway's warning about xenophobic politics and religion

    The recent horrific terror attacks in Norway seem to have been occasioned in part by the rise of fearful far-right movements which use Christian language as part of their guise. The answer to these should not be accommodation, says Simon Barrow, but an attempt to build robust civic alliances for social justice and against racism and xenophobia.

  • 9 Jun 2011
    Government 'reforms' are starting to hit the reality wall

    The ‘Big Society’ is becoming a fresh political battleground over the summer, says Simon Barrow. Shrinking the state by galvanising more money and resources from private citizens through volunteering, delegating and contracting is central to the Prime Minister’s approach – both to running the country and to keeping his own party together. But the strategy is beset with disagreement, and a huge 'reality gap'.

  • 2 Jun 2011
    The Kirk faces a challenging future

    Where does the Church of Scotland – not the established church, but still a self-proclaimed ‘national’ one – now sit within a changing Scottish national settlement, following the formalities of its 2011 General Assembly? Simon Barrow looks at some of the issues.

  • 10 May 2011
    Football economics as if supporters (and Scotland) mattered

    Football is woven into the historical, cultural and social fabric of communities in Scotland and across Britain, but media attention to 'soccernomics' focuses heavily on the English Premier League, says Simon Barrow. There are some clear reasons for this, but we definitely need some fresh ideas about ‘football as if fans mattered’ which begin with the wider picture, rather than consigning the non-elite to our peripheral vision.

  • 6 May 2011
    Is Scotland charting a new political way after 5 May?

    Will the five different polls that took place on 5 May 2011 prove to be a watershed for politics in Britain? It depends where you see the axis for change and the key tipping points, says Simon Barrow. There are at least two distinct ways of narrating differential outcomes.

  • 29 Apr 2011
    The mytho-poetics of royalty

    Monarchy as an institution rooted in inherited wealth and pure eugenic privilege stands in contrast with, and contradiction to, the levelling Gospel of Jesus Christ, argues Simon Barrow. But a kind of mythology and ritualising in the popular imagination prevents both Christians and others from seeing what is really going on, and what is wrong with it.

  • 23 Apr 2011
    Living in the long, uncertain Saturday

    Good Friday is behind us, Easter Sunday ahead. In the meantime, says Simon Barrow, we must inhabit the long, uncertain Saturday. Indeed, we Christians may need considerable help from others to be able do this truthfully, such is the tendency to be pulled back a day or pushed forward one. For Saturday is an indelible and crucial part of the Easter story. Without Saturday, Friday has no end and Sunday has no beginning.

  • 23 Apr 2011
    What sense does it make to say 'Christ died for us'?

    How, we may ask on Good Friday, can wholeness, deliverance and healing possibly flow from a state execution resulting in the unjust violent death of a good person - one in whom his friends and followers felt they had met divine love at its most tangible and engaging? Simon Barrow explores the troubling mystery at the core of Christian belief, and looks at ways theology can address it intellectually, humanly and practically.