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Blogging can often seem like a one way “broadcast”. The blogger writes up what interests him or her, posts it, and waits to see what happens. There are many posts, essays, books and articles out there advising bloggers on how to cultivate more engagement with their audience. I have even written a few posts encouraging [...]
“New” Indie Blogger: Vagrant Vicar
Check out Will Meyer’s new – well new to me – blog on the indie experience over at Vagrant Vicar. And if you know of other active indie bloggers you think we should be reading by all means drop a note in the comments. Tweet
The Church In Decline? Adapt Or Die
Decrying the decline of “christianity” in Britain has come from various angles over the past year or so. Church attendance is diminishing, its membership ageing. “Unbelief” appears to be growing. Though I would argue that it was always there and only now is it getting better, perhaps more accurate, press. Fifty percent of people living [...]
Indie Green: Eco-Theology In OC/IC Context
Have a look at these videos over at the Guardian. I thought it was a very well put together “intro” to Green-theology. Where would you start if you were to put together an Indie Green Manifesto? Tweet
Theophany & The Cloak of Noise
We live in a world of noise. We are surrounded by noise created, projected by others. We make and project our own noise. Years ago, when the Walkman was the iPod of the moment, I had an anthropology professor who talked about wanting to do a study on the effect of the Walkman. He wondered [...]
Error: Ritual Change Creates Uncertainty
Throughout Christian history, error is viewed with suspicion because it represents “novelty” and “innovation” challenging the unalterable “Tradition” and challenging revealed truth. Thus, error – and the “obstinate” maintenance of error – is treated as somehow being “impure” or “unfaithful” to Christian teaching and life. Obviously this makes the challenge of understanding and getting value [...]
Theology, Error & OC/IC Identity – I’ve Got Questions! How About You?
I recently read an article in the Guardian by Alok Jha which made a very good point regarding “error”. Mistakes, he says, happen “all day, every day”. I don’t think anyone can argue with this, it is “fact”. I’ve made a handful of mistakes already this morning and it is not even lunch time! The [...]
OC/IC Religious Culture, What Is Our Context?
What is “culture”? The dictionary definition describes it as “customs, institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people or group”. I have always tended to understand “culture” more along national or ethnic lines more than anything else. I don’t think I have ever consciously considered the idea of religious culture – even though, as any [...]
Disciplined Practice – Outside The Box
Those of you who also read along at Hour Of Scampering already know that for the past month I’ve been comitted to the 2011 NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to write a 50 thousand word piece of fiction. I vassilated about whether or not I would participate when I first discovered it. Which meant that when [...]
Cleansing & Our Sense of Morality?
What a curious article over at Big Think! The gist of it is that there is a psychological component to physical cleanliness. The examples are rather curious. Including one where as part of a study participants were asked to recall a personal immoral experience; as part of the session some were offered a cleansing wipe [...]
Shadows of Souls
If you’re not already a fan of Retronaut – I cannot recommend it to you enough – it is one of the most interesting, quirky sites on the net. In a recent edition are these pictures of an abandoned church in Buffalo, looking through them I started “feeling” a sense of loss, mourning even, for [...]
Codex Coolness – Dead Sea Scrolls Online
You may recall a few years ago I pointed you towards a project digitising the Codex Sinaiticus – now you can view a digitised version of the Dead Sea Scrolls as well. Tweet
A Celebration of Heresy
Today is the last day of the liturgical New Year. Throughout the year we celebrate and commemorate various holy-men and holy-women who through their example – whether it is through their teaching, or their praxis – encourage us in our own understanding of, and practice of the Christian sacramental tradition. Heresy brings another level of [...]
Corpse Disposal
The BBC has an interesting – if not slightly ghoulish – article about a new technology for disposing of corpses. Two methods are described. First is called alkyline hydrolysis – which basically turns the soft tissue into sludge, which is then sluiced away into the sewage system; the remaining bone and metal are sorted, and [...]
Kindle As Research Tool
I recently bought a Kindle. Yes by and large it was peer pressure – from one particular peer – but peer pressure all the same. There was also a practical reason for my purchase. I like to read what I call “fluffy” books before going to bed – after a day of reading nothing but [...]
Ocean As Desert
On my recent North Sea excursion to Norway and the Orkneys I often enjoyed standing on the outer decks looking out to sea. It struck me that the ocean is, or could be viewed as “the desert” in the same way that third and fourth century ascetics went out into the desert to master the [...]
The Incarnation & Active Christianity
“Don’t you think that Jesus is the solution to the problems in the Middle East – that it is only through him that peace will come to the region?” This is a question posed to me by a door-to-door evangelist a few years ago. It is a question that irritated me at the time, and [...]
End Of The World? Ummmm. . . .
I’ve been watching and reading with a mixture of fascination, pity, and even horror the various stories coming out of the US about the group predicting the arrival of the apocalypse on 21 May. Millenarian movements are fascinating, not new, and not limited to fringe Protestant groups – there was a serious millenarian movement in [...]
Abp. Matthew on Scripture
“The Holy Scriptures, instead of being the source or rule of faith, are . . . a record of the teaching of the Church in the first ages, a record confirmatory and corroborative of the faith, but one which was never intended to supplant the divine authority of the living voice of the Church.” – [...]
More On Free Will
I no sooner finished posting this – when I stumbled into this little video. By the way Dr. Kaku’s physics programes on TV in the UK are great viewing if you’ve never seen him before. The video overlaps with the New Scientist article & video discussed in the previous post, but adds a new twist [...]
Free Will?
Free will is a core belief in Christianity – that is of course unless you are of the Augustinian bent. Indeed fatalism (or to use a more appropriate contemporary term – determinism) is considered sinful by late antique Christian writers. Recent explorations in to the nature of free will have shown that when you undermine [...]
Social Media – A Reformation In Religious Participation?
A fascinating video from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly about how social media is changing the way we interact with our religious communities. What grabbed my attention was the comparison (towards the end) between the introduction of the printing press (a new technology), the reformation, and what might be happening in the life of Christian communities [...]
Japan: The Crisis Is Not Christian Nor Atheist But Human
The other day I saw a retweet of a tweet on twitter that urged people not to donate to Christian charities – for the relief effort in Japan needs “blankets and food, not boxes of bibles & Fundamentalist propaganda”. A little digging revealed that the author was a self-professed Atheist fundamentalist. I had to laugh. [...]
Independent Catholicism & The Problem of Niche Culture
I’ve been doing some research in preparation for a possible paper on Vilatte and have been struck by the regular appearance of ethnicity as a theme in the early history of the OC/IC movement. It has me wondering what – if any - is the legacy of “ethnicity” in the contemporary movement? When Vilatte was [...]