The notion and shape of 'the land' means many things to many people, as the contradictory responses to this 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel are showing. Simon Barrow looks at the relationship between rootedness and aspiration.
Constant Christian claims of discrimination don't hold water, says Joanthan Bartley. They are used to excuse privilege, and evade the more demanding self-giving dynamic of the Gospel.
The struggle between good religion and bad religion is at a crucial juncture on te domestic and global stage, says Giles Fraser. He believes the Quilliam Foundation, a new Muslim think tank, can make a positive contribution.
The struggle between good religion and bad religion is at a crucial juncture on te domestic and global stage, says Giles Fraser. He believes the Quilliam Foundation, a new Muslim think tank, can make a positive contribution.
Constant Christian claims of discrimination don't hold water, says Joanthan Bartley. They are used to excuse privilege, and evade the more demanding self-giving dynamic of the Gospel.
The notion and shape of 'the land' means many things to many people, as the contradictory responses to this 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel are showing. Simon Barrow looks at the relationship between rootedness and aspiration.
Gordon Brown's political appointees represent corporate influence and PR savvy, says Simon Barrow. But is all this smoothness good for the soul of politics?
The Gospel has been much talked about but practically sidelined under Christendom, says Jonathan Bartley. Rediscovering the radicalism of Jesus' message is vital to the recovery of a proper public role for Christian faith.
Fundamentalism is a 20th-century invention, in many ways a response to the rapid social change brought about by modernity and global capitalism, says Giles Fraser. It is a perversion of religion, and in no way the real thing, let alone its 'heartbeat'.
Britain counts itself as a mature democracy. But what really guarantees freedom and fairness, asks Simon Barrow, and how does the church relate to the will of the people in wider society?
The current media-propelled debates about God are mostly hopelessly out of touch with their own intense fallibility, says Simon Barrow. He tries to explain why God-talk will always be helpfully elusive if it is faithful to what it seeks to point to.
Easter is not about some nasty death cult where a blood sacrifice must be paid to appease an angry God, says Giles Fraser. The crucifixion reveals human death-dealing at its worst and the resurrection offers a new start, refusing the logic of scapegoating.
The church is running out of justifications for the various anomalies it clings onto, and it is just a matter of time before they go completely, says Jonathan Bartley. We cannot proclaim the message of God's liberating future by clinging to the past.
"Know that you are dust and to dust you shall return", the church says in its liturgy. Where else do we speak of such things in public? asks Giles Fraser, reflecting on our cultural habit of shrinking from the reality of death.
The modern temptation is to dismiss resurrection as fantasy or reduce it to spiritualised sophistry, says Simon Barrow. The shape of the core Christian hope is both more substantial and more subtle than that.
In Christian and biblical terms, good citizenship is not about flag-waving, says Simon Barrow. It is about the good practices and ways of organising our public lives which enable people to belong to one another across nation state boundaries.
Free market ideologues have used Fairtrade Fortnight to attack what they regard as counter-productive do-gooding, says Simon Barrow. But what does freedom mean in economic terms, and is fairness something to be left wholly to markets?
Talk of 'moral' foreign policy has led to 'liberal interventionism', notes Giles Fraser. And along that path of good intention has lain disaster, as with some 'just war' thinking.