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christendom

  • February 8, 2011

    Whether you find him inspiring or exasperating (and I sometimes find him both!), the work of US theologian Stanley Hauerwas provides a challenging alternative vision of church as subversive, exemplary community - rather than the cement or glue of society, as in the top-down Christendom model.

  • February 4, 2011

    Armed forces chaplains play a crucial role in providing pastoral support to people who face danger and death on a daily basis. But chaplains' independence is compromised by the fact that they are members of the forces themselves. Churches that take a stand on wider issues of peace and war are rarely willing to question the ethics of the armed forces. Why has this situation arisen? And how can we change it?

  • January 11, 2011

    If we are fixated upon privilege or special treatment, we will miss the Gospel message that transformational relationships are at the heart of the faith of Jesus, says Jill Segger

  • January 5, 2011

    At the beginning of the first volume of Selena Axelrod Winsnes' English translation of Danish sources on West African history, originally published from 1697 to 1822, there is a reproduction of the opening text from a slave ship captain's log. It records the commencing of a journey "In the Name of Jesus."

  • January 2, 2011

    The current ills of the Western church are more to be found in sickness within than in threats without, suggests Simon Barrow, echoing a recent landmark comment from the Pope. Likewise the way forward is through radical reformation not fearful reaction.

  • December 13, 2010

    Theologian John Milbank's endorsement of British Prime Minister David Cameron's 'Big Society' project, and his attempt to baptise it with pro-Christendom rhetoric has more to do with timid conformity than 'Radical Orthodoxy, suggests fellow academic Steven Shakespeare - one of the founders of the Common Wealth network of Christians for economic and social justice.

  • November 21, 2010

    Today is the Feast of Christ the King. After days of wall-to-wall media coverage about royalty, churches across Britain have today celebrated Jesus Christ as the true king. This is a truly subversive claim.

  • November 18, 2010

    "Sex and violence" is a hot-button phrase that if often used without thinking. But what do sex and violence really have to do with one another? Christians should be untangling the connection between them, but instead we seem to be contributing to the confusion.

  • October 27, 2010

    Today and tomorrow, 27 & 28 October, are key dates in Christian history. Constantine's 'vision of the Cross' in 312, and his attribution of military victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge the next day to God, was the beginning of Christendom in Europe - an era which mixed civilisation with bloodshed, saints with militarism, and faith with often brutal sacralised-secular power.

  • October 21, 2010

    The problem for Christians today is not primarily 'aggressive secularism', but the confusion of Christianity with power, says Simon Barrow. That and the the distortion of public debate about religiosity and secularity into a false dichotomy between dominating belief or privatised belief. A better way is needed - based on living by example, not the lust for control.