Bože! A Grace Catholic Project
Theology of Practice (praxis)
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
Are You Offended By Art Collectors?
The other day Menachem Wecker tweeted a fun question: question for my Catholic friends… would u be offended if non-Catholic collected rosaries (as religious art)? First – in playing with this question – lets put it into an Eastern rite Indie setting and replace rosary with chjotki. I think it is a similar swap – [...]
Hauerwas’ 10 Theses: Springboard For OC/IC Engagement & Reform?
Ekklesia has an interesting post today outlining Stanley Hauerwas’ Ten Theses about the church as social ethic; inviting reflection & engagement. Barrow observes that Haurwas’ theses assume that the ekklesia is a wholly voluntary community, and that its total independence from the state liberates Christians to best realise their vocation as believers.This is nothing new [...]
Hating God
I came across this essay by Bernard Schweizer, author of Hating God: The Untold Story of Miostheism in this morning’s trawl. In it he describes a little discussed category of what he calls “misotheism” or hating God. It is not Atheism – because as he points out an atheist cannot reasonably hate something that he [...]
Discipline, Structure, Leadership – An Indie Dilemma
It is not an earth shatteringly new “concept” or observation, but Bp. Alan’s note yesterday about leadership – in particular leadership in the context of Christian praxis is well worth playing with. At every level, including Primatial shenanigans among people who should know better, there is a profound gap between sincere faith with enthusiasm and [...]
Celebrating Initiation Into the Mystery
When you enlightened all things at the time of your manifestation, the sea of unbelief ebbed away and the Jordan reversed its course, flowing uphill and carrying us to Paradise. The feast of the Theophany is not just our celebration of the revelation of the Trinity, it is also a celebration of our initiation into [...]
Getting To Grips With The Bible
Not long ago I posted asking how we OC/IC types use the Bible – how does it fit into our praxis as individuals and as a community. This morning’s trawl uncovered this fun post at the Scriptorum which explored the little book “Mastering the English Bible” by James Gray. Gray was an early Dean of [...]
Nativity For The Digital Age
Last year (at least I think it was last year) this was my favoured, fun, Christmas vid. This year – Thanks to Maggie Dawn, we’ve got this clever, and quite amusing rendition of the Nativity story told in a very modern context. So (putting this in the context of theology) what effect do you find [...]
Theology of Shopping
How do you relate shopping and theology, particularly in the current “festive” season? How does living in a consumer society affect your understanding and practice of the faith?
Theology Of The Incarnation?
This essay by Giles Fraser of the Guardian was very enjoyable. Not only does he raise the interesting question about how people percieve the theology of the Incarnation, but he also draws in some interesting elements about current approaches to theology generally. As we are approaching the feast of the Nativity how do you understand [...]
What Jesus “Meant” Was . . .
I’m doing the morning news trawl for interesting items relating to theology and found this by American vetran journalist Dan Rather. It is an interesting article about the tug of war within the Roman church between the conservative and liberal wings. I’m not particularly interested in what is happening in other churches but Rather adds [...]
Does God-blogging Matter?
I unexpectedly fell into this post, which led me to this post and it made me stop and think for a moment. Does blogging matter? Should “every” Christian blog? I have been God-blogging now for four years (I have another non-theology blog too) and average just over 100 posts a year. I would like to [...]
Too Many “Monks”?
I continue to be puzzled by the large number of “monastic” groups within the Independent Catholic movement. I wonder if clinging on to this inherited model of “community” is stunting our development – holding us fast to out-dated 19th century models of what it means to “be church”? In short do these watered down expressions [...]
Turn The Coin Over – Body Screening From The Other Side
My two previous posts (here, and here) asking about the theological and ethical implications of the new full body screening used in American airports has lacked a key element – the voice of the TSA staff who have to perform the “enhanced pat down” on an increasingly angry travelling public. It was not that I [...]