Culture watching
Billie Eilish: pop queen for an anxious age
Sarah Allen
Date posted: 1 Apr 2020
You still might not have heard of Billie Eilish, so let me enlighten you. She is an eighteen-year-old from Los Angeles who has been making music with her brother in her bedroom.
About four years ago they put out a song on social media. About a year ago her first album was released. Since then she has won five Grammy awards (including Song of the Year; Album of the Year and Best New Artist – the first time anyone has had this haul since 1981) and has released (together with her brother) her latest song – the new James Bond theme. Right now, her YouTube channel has 27.3million subscribers (for comparison, John Piper’s Desiring God channel has under half a million). So, at the stage most teenagers are wondering what to pack for their first term at university, Billie Eilish is negotiating with designer labels which want to clothe her and magazines which want to feature her. And, as this is the 21st century, she’s also facing all kinds of social media ‘trolls’ who want to attack her.
J.I. Packer 1926 – 2020
Leland Ryken
Date posted: 1 Sep 2020
A man who influenced Christendom.
James Innell Packer, better known to many as J.I. Packer, was one of the most famous and influential evangelical leaders of our time. He died on Friday 17 July, at age 93.
New ministry refreshment network launched online
Paul Coulter
Date posted: 1 Sep 2020
We’re tired. Zoom fatigue, confinement, and heightened awareness of death, on top of personal needs, have wearied us.
Christian leaders have faced additional challenges. Lockdown forced an urgent development of new forms of church gatherings and pastoral connections. Emerging from lockdown with social distancing means another rethink, while no one knows yet what the ‘new normal’ for church will be. This is a time of rebuilding.
The modern war on truth
Chris Wright
Date posted: 1 Jan 2020
Chris Wright discusses the ramifications of living in a society where lying is the norm
‘What is truth?’ asked Pontius Pilate. Jesus had just said: ‘Everyone who is on the side of truth listens to me’ (John 18:37-38).
defending our faith
Persuasive, not just loud
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 1 Jun 2020
While many churches have been engaging with social media and establishing an online presence, others among us have felt less enthusiastic for Facebook and Twitter. Such platforms have felt either intrusive or superficial and the concept of virtual church a contradiction in terms.
But all such thoughts are now pre-Covid. Since the virus, even the most technophobe among us have been mastering virtual backgrounds in Zoom and exchanging comments on Facebook Live. For better or worse, the church has fully embraced the Internet age. At Moorlands College we have shifted all our teaching online and my local church now has two Internet Sunday services along with a daily prayer meeting and weekly homegroups. Things will change again as the lockdown unwinds, but ministry will never be pre-Covid again.
AS FEAR GOES VIRAL…
Chris Wright
Date posted: 1 May 2020
‘If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never spent a sleepless night with a single mosquito.’ So runs a saying we learned while living in India. Tiny things punch way above their weight. And a virus is a lot smaller than a mosquito.
In fact, viruses are among the smallest life forms on our planet. Somewhere between 20–400 nanometres, 100 times smaller than bacteria, and too small to see even with a normal microscope. You’ll need an electron microscope to spot a coronavirus, or Covid-19, as we must now call it, like somebody out of Star Wars. But what an impact that infinitesimally small organism has made!
Culture watching
Resilient world?
Sarah Allen
Date posted: 1 Sep 2019
Climate change, zero-hours contracts, student debt, sexualised society, social-media dependence, housing crisis, Brexit. There’s no doubt that we are living in an era of great uncertainty and so it’s no surprise that rates of mental ill health, especially in young people, are rising.
A fragile world makes for fragile hearts. 2015 UK data has shown that the proportion of university students who identify themselves as having mental health problems doubled between 2008–09 and 2013–14.
Discipline and the limits of authority
Andrew Carter
Date posted: 1 Apr 2020
Andrew Carter discusses smacking, abuse, power and liberty in modern society
In October of last year, it became a criminal offence in Scotland for a parent to smack their naughty child. The Welsh Assembly has recently voted for a similar ban and legislation will come into effect in Wales in 2022. In England, the law still allows a parent to smack their child providing they don’t use an implement or leave a mark.
Culture watching
The war on plastic
Sarah Allen
Date posted: 1 Aug 2019
A rubbish lorry pulls up at sea wall and its container slowly tips. As its jaws start to open a tangled mass of bags and packaging begins to slide towards the sea. You know there must be some camera trick going on, but it’s still hard not to shout at the TV: ‘Stop! Don’t do it!’
This is the shock opening to BBC’s documentary series, War on Plastic, (aired in June, now available on iPlayer). In this programme, following David Attenborough’s exposé of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Anita Rani ride the wave of environmental concern, exploring our problem with plastic use and waste.
Atheism, gender & self-harm
JEB
Date posted: 1 Dec 2018
Aspects of a very 21st-century tragedy from a biblical point of view
Many young males are committing suicide.
Facing reality
John Steley
Date posted: 1 Jun 2016
Book Review
HOPE IN AN AGE OF DESPAIR
The Gospel and the Future of Life on Earth
Read review
What’s wrong?
Revd Ian S. McNaughton
Date posted: 1 Jul 2018
Book Review
THE DEATH OF WESTERN CHRISTIANITY
Drinking from the poisoned wells of the cultural
revolution
Read review
Abortion 50 years on
Dr Mark Houghton
Date posted: 1 Apr 2018
Dr Mark Houghton surveys the situation
I have an important opening remark.
news in brief
Smacking Poll
A ComRes poll of 1,000 Welsh adults
released
in mid-July showed
that
three
quarters oppose making smacking a criminal offence.
The poll, commissioned by The Christian
Institute, also found that eight in ten say
parents, not
the
state,
should be
left
to
decide on smacking.
The missing Sola?
Clive Every-Clayton
Date posted: 1 Feb 2018
Clive Every-Clayton on universal Truth for a post-modern age
We still bask in the memory of the great work of God 500 years ago.
Conversion therapy
Dr Peter May
Date posted: 1 Sep 2017
Dr Peter May helps us to understand the main debate at the recent General Synod of the Church of England
Did anyone understand it?
WHAT ABOUT THIS WEATHER?
Dr. Tim Bruton
Date posted: 1 Mar 2014
Everyone seems to be talking about the weather as never before.
After 2013 saw the coldest spring in the UK since 1891 and December 2013 was the stormiest since records began in 1869, 2014 opened with the wettest January in southern UK since 1988, and the fifth wettest ever.
Crossing the Culture
Culture & #LoveTrumpsHate
Angeline Liles
Date posted: 1 Mar 2017
It shook thousands of people out of their homes and onto the streets in protest.
The executive order, signed by the newly inaugurated President Trump on 27 January, immediately suspended the settlement of Syrian refugees for an undefined period of time. It also stopped the resettlement of all other refugees for four months.
Nigeria: who will help us?
World Watch Monitor
Date posted: 1 Feb 2017
Christians in the south of Nigeria are failing to help their persecuted compatriots in the north, according to a veteran humanitarian campaigner, it was reported in late December.
Baroness Caroline Cox, who has made numerous aid missions to the country said: ‘My personal view is that many of those churches are immensely wealthy and I would hope they could do more to help those who are suffering in the north, particularly the internally displaced people who are left. They could work with churches [in the north] who know the needs to reach those most in need. From a Christian point of view, St Paul said that where one part of the Body of Christ suffers, we all suffer. There is an obligation to help our Christian brothers and sisters.’
Niger: YWAM kidnap
World Watch Monitor
Date posted: 1 Dec 2016
The kidnap of a pioneering American missionary on 14 October is a ‘terrible tragedy’ for
the communities he served for 24 years,
according to the local mayor, and it has
raised security concerns among the country’s missionary community.
Jeff Woodke, 55, who worked for a branch
of the US-based Youth With a Mission, was
abducted by unknown assailants from the
town of Abalak
in northern Niger. They
killed two guards and he was taken to eastern Mali where Mujao – a radical Islamic
group – have a stronghold.
Last Word: Extinction
Two triangles merge to make the symbol of an hourglass – the end is nigh! From New York to Paris the chants and banners herald an ‘inconvenient truth’. An Australian protester speaks with passion and reason: ‘We are simply telling people what to expect. Our politicians are asleep at the wheel. We need to tell the truth.’
Yet, as I watched the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in my own city, I couldn’t shift the overriding emotion – ‘Have these people just taken my job?’ For if we are Christians, we are those who know that the end is nigh. This end will not arise because of any increasing ocean acidification or glacial retreat, but rather because the Judge is at the door (James 5:9). The message of climate change is vital (we are to be good stewards of creation), but it cannot be equated with the immanent and glorious return of Christ. And it is this inconvenient truth that really is the grounds for waking up those are asleep at the wheel.