So is it true?

Here's a few recommended links to blogs and websites which tackle the truthfulness and relevance of the Christian faith in the face of common challenges and modern ethical and spiritual issues. These were all pinged my way after asking for recommendations on a Facebook page, so I thought I'd post them in case anyone else found them useful

https://christianity.org.uk/  website with lots of links, topics and things to explore on spiritual questions.

https://www.rzim.org/watch  lectures on a range of different topics around faith, world religions, science, moral issues etc. Nabeel Qureshi (one of the speakers) is highly recommended

https://benjaminchangblog.com/  good blog by scientist and Christian by Benjamin Chang, with blogs, articles and videos on a range of topics

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings articles by William Lane Craig, who does lots of public debates and discussions on the Christian faith, the evidence for it, and some of the common challenges to it. Lots of videos and other materials on the website.

One that's been around for a bit longer is the L'Abri fellowship, founded by philosopher and evangelist Francis Schaeffer, and they have a vast online library of lectures and talks on modern thought, philosophy, psychology and Christianity. A real treasure trove http://labri-ideas-library.org/index.asp 

Christianity: Public Benefit, Personal Benefit

The contrast between the Christianity I see our culture belittle nightly, and the Christianity I see our country benefit from daily, could not be greater.

The reality of Christian mission in today’s churches is a story of thousands of quiet kindnesses. In many of our most disadvantaged communities it is the churches that provide warmth, food, friendship and support for individuals who have fallen on the worst of times. The homeless, those in the grip of alcoholism or drug addiction, individuals with undiagnosed mental health problems and those overwhelmed by multiple crises are all helped — in innumerable ways — by Christians....

...genuine Christian faith — far from making any individual more invincibly convinced of their own righteousness — makes us realise just how flawed and fallible we all are. I am selfish, lazy, greedy, hypocritical, confused, self-deceiving, impatient and weak. And that’s just on a good day. As the Book of Common Prayer puts it, ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…And there is no health in us.’

Christianity helps us recognise and confront those weaknesses with a resolution — albeit imperfect and fragile — to do better. But more importantly, it encourages us to feel a sense of empathy rather than superiority towards others because we recognise that we are as guilty of selfishness and open to temptation as anyone.

More than that, Christianity encourages us to see that, while all of us are prey to weakness, there is a potential for good in everyone. Every individual is precious

guess the author? It's worth reading the whole article. He probably has a slightly better grasp of the heart of Christian faith than his boss. 

Persecution Would Be Easier

60 years from the coronation and anointing of the Queen, head of the Church of England, in a national church, our Christian head of state no longer 'rules' over a Christian country. The long withdrawing roar of the sea of faith - or is it the voice of George Carey? - finds itself fighting, and losing, a series of battles over lost moral beachheads.

Persecution would be easier. In those countries where the state has set itself against the church and the gospel, it's easier to know who your enemies are, and in some ways it's an easier task to identify a Christian worldview within that setting, because it's so clearly not the worldview of the state and prevailing culture. In post-Christian Britain, with bishops in Parliament and vicars acting as state registrars in weddings, things aren't so cut and dried. As society drifts into uncharted waters, it's harder to discern what cultural changes are a drift away from Christian moorings, and what changes merely expose of idolatry, the conflation of class or cultural norms with Christian faith. Sea of Faith is a case in point, a 'Christian' movement that married the modernist spirit of the 20th century just as everyone else left it behind for something less reductionist. 

Gillan Scott puts it well:
whether we are willing to admit it or not we are in the last throes of Christendom in our country.  The religious foundations of our society are in places being replaced by a notional belief in equality for all where religion is put on an equal footing with a whole range of other elements of our society’s make-up.  Christian belief no longer defines the law, but instead is increasingly subject to it.  The problem inevitably now comes in how ‘equality’ is interpreted and who makes the final decision on it.

The hardest work is ahead of us. Moral positions we used to take for granted have to be argued for, and there are some that will simply not make sense to folk outside the church. Jesus says of the Holy Spirit 'the world can neither see him nor know him' (John 14) - some of God's wisdom is simply not available on human channels. So, for example, if marriage is a divine 'given', a calling and structure built into creation by God, which (despite its evolutions) remains at heart the lifelong commitment of a man and a woman and the best context for raising children, there will be a point at which non-Christians simply don't get what we're saying. If marriage it's God's design for sexuality and family life, the fact that it is God's design will cut no ice with people who don't believe in God. It will not make sense.

There are two sorts of intellectual laziness which we're in danger of. The first is the uncritical absorption of cultural values into the Christian faith, which comes from a failure to think through our faith properly and be clear about our theology and foundations. The second is the uncritical rejection of cultural values, excused by biblical proof texts about 'the world', and failure to think clearly, critically and well about life in all its dimensions. The world desperately needs a robust Christian critique and worldview of wealth, economics, war, politics, leadership, poverty, disability, human rights, luxury, justice, power, sexuality and creation. The danger is that people only hear us talking about sex. Here's an exercise: visit Thinking Anglicans. Despite a wide range of topics covered by  Simon and the blogging, team, commenters only seem to want to discuss one thing. Discuss.

British culture is ever more rapidly peeling away from Christian foundations, values and institutions, often leaving the institutions (the most visible signs) long after their foundations have been eroded. As a child I used to dig trenches and holes all the way down the beach as the tide withdrew, to try to keep the water as far up the beach as I could, even though the water source had receded. I think we're right to still do a bit of that, even as the tide goes out. It simply makes sense: if God has made us, loves us, and knows what's best for us, then it's best for us whether we believe in him or not. 

If we can do that without sounding like whining reactionaries, then that would be great, but I'm sure the media and blogosphere can make even the most moderate voice sound like a phobic bigot by taking things out of context. Maybe we will get both the tone and content of our apologetics right, and still it won't get a fair hearing. That's the reality of living in a fallen world.

Perspectives on Evil and Suffering: Wright, Bauckham, Ward

Great to find this collection of vids posted by St. Johns Nottingham, Tom Wright on the Resurrection, Richard Bauckham on how the NT was put together. It's a good day for online video resources (see previous post).

For a taster, here's the first of a two parter on evil and suffering, recently posted, featuring Keith Ward, Tom Wright and Richard Bauckham.



some of the blurb from the college:

As well as a number of the Extension Studies DVDs being showcased, featuring;
Tom Wright, Richard Burridge, James Dunn, Graham Stanton and Stephen Travis,
we also have extracts from a number of videos that will be used in our multimedia Interactive Timeline project. They feature Richard Bauckham, Karen Kilby, Anthony Thiselton, Larry Hurtado, Tim Hull and Ben Fulford, introducing Jurgen Moltmann Von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Paul Ricoeur , Wolfhart Pannenberg and Han Frei.

We are at this moment trying out a provisional web version of our timeline, that focuses on 20th and 21st century theology and modern thought, where you can see how some of the above videos are going to be used. This link will follow in due course.

Also soon to follow, we hope there will be extracts of videos, featuring Keith Ward discussing the problem of evil, William Lane Craig discussing Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and many more.

excellent. Watch this space.