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Pneuma

EGGS, ETHICS AND ECONOMICS

Easter Sunday, and it’s a beautiful morning with a full church. The resurrection is celebrated, and we spill outside for the important business of the day: the Easter Egg hunt. Roughly 40 children, between the ages of two and twelve, and 250 (admittedly small) eggs. But how to proceed?...

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WHY THE BISHOPS ARE WRONG

Some of you will know that earlier this week, the House of Bishops issued what they called a Pastoral Statement on Civil Partnerships. It was issued on Wednesday, and got coverage the next day in almost all the mainstream media: The Telegraph, the Guardian, The Independent, The Evening Standard, The Daily Mail all covered it...

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A KIND REVOLUTION

From punk rock and the mod revival of The Jam in the 70s, through the soul and jazz fusion of The Style Council in the 80s, and a string of solo albums ever since, Paul Weller has proved one of the most interesting and enduring of singer song-writers...

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OUT OF THE SLIME

‘In the beginning were created only the germs or causes of the forms of life, which were afterwards to be developed in gradual course.’ So runs one account of the origins of life. But these are not the words of Charles Darwin or some modern biologist. They are the words of the great North African theologian and bishop, Saint Augustine, written sixteen hundred years ago...

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LIGHT INACCESSIBLE

When people complain that modern art could be painted by children, it’s often artists like Mark Rothko they are talking about. The plain rectangles of colour that characterize Rothko’s mature work are deceptively simple. But experience them first-hand, and you might feel differently...

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DEEDS NOT WORDS

On June 4th 1913, forty-year-old Emily Wilding Davison threw herself in front of a horse belonging to King George V at the Epsom Derby. Colliding directly with the horse, Davison suffered an immediate skull fracture, and died two days later in hospital....

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SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALITY

Push through the tourists in the Roman piazza, dodge the chaotic traffic, and duck inside the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, and there, in the Cornaro Chapel, you’ll see it: the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa...

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WHERE LUTHER WENT WRONG

At three inches high, a mini Martin Luther, complete with plastic quill, gown and tiny bible, has become Playmobil’s most popular figure ever. The first production run of 34,000 went in seventy-two hours, and hundreds of thousands have been sold since. I even have one myself, a present from German friends in Cologne...

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MANCHESTER    (in the aftermath of the Manchester bombing)

When I was 18, I left Scotland and headed south to Manchester. Home of New Order and the Haçienda, the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, Alex Ferguson (another Scottish ex-pat) and Manchester United. And my own home for fifteen formative years; the closest I have to a home in England...

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STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

When the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased old boxes of Isaac Newton’s unpublished papers at auction in 1936, he didn’t know what he’d find. For over two centuries, Newton had been hailed as the model of the modern scientist – an enlightenment rationalist who had freed scientific enquiry from the quagmire of religious superstition, and established it firmly on a non-sectarian basis. But the papers Keynes bought at auction painted a very different picture...

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WHEN LEADERSHIP FAILS

In his 1848 novel Yeast, socialist campaigner and Anglican priest Charles Kingsley launched a stinging attack on established leaders in the Church of England, for their obsession with irrelevant doctrine and failure to tackle social injustice. Three years later, Holman Hunt painted ‘The Hireling Shepherd’....

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WHY BELIEVE? BOOKS FOR THE CLAPHAM OMNIBUS

Every now and then, I’m asked if I can recommend a good book that answers the basic question: why be a religious believer today? Inevitably, it depends who’s asking. We all come with different levels of knowledge and interest...

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WHAT CHRISTIANITY DID FOR US

Historian and Sunday Times columnist Niall Ferguson is pretty up front about his atheism.  A ‘hard-shelled materialist’ is how he describes himself, citing Darwin, Newton and Adam Smith as his intellectual heroes. But he’s also a man concerned about the decline of Christianity in the west....

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WHY SCEPTICISM CAN BE GOOD FOR YOUR FAITH

When Martin Gardner came out as a believer in God, fans and colleagues were shocked. Author of more than a hundred books on maths and science, Gardner’s monthly column in Scientific American established him as one of the most influential science writers of the century...

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THE YELLOW CRUCIFIXION

In 1942, a small passenger boat called the Struma was torpedoed by submarine off the coast of Turkey. On board were almost eight hundred European Jews, including one hundred children, fleeing the horrors of the Holocaust...

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MURDER AT THE VICARAGE

An old-fashioned theology professor of mine once suggested that reading cheap detective novels is a sign of moral decay. When the parson is addicted to ‘whodunnits’, it’s evidence that spiritual rot has set in at the vicarage. But I beg to differ...

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WRESTLING WITH ANGELS

It’s the mass and sheer size of Epstein’s sculpture, currently on display at Tate Britain, that impresses at first. This is not the pale and ethereal heavenly messenger beloved of the pre-Raphaelites, nor the glittery tinsel-clad child of the school nativity. Epstein’s angel, seven foot tall even when crouching, is a muscular and dominating figure who wraps Jacob in his troll-like arms...

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A SHOT RINGS OUT IN THE MEMPHIS SKY

"Early morning, April 4, shot rings out in the Memphis sky,” proclaimed U2 in their tribute to Martin Luther King. “Free at last, they took your life. They could not take your pride.” The song – Pride (In the name of love) – was U2’s first single to break into the US charts, and took their album to number one in the UK. For those like myself growing up in the 1980s, it became a generational anthem...

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GOLDILOCKS, ET, AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

500 light years away, in the constellation of Cygnus, orbiting a dwarf star, lies the planet Kepler-186f. It’s too small to be seen by even the most powerful telescope. But every time it passes in front of the star it orbits, the planet dims the light from the star by a tiny amount...

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SUMMER READING

If you’re anything like me, stocking up on good books is an essential part of holiday preparation. So here’s twelve of my favourite novels on or about faith or religion, from serious and profound to escapist entertainment...

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WHY TIM FARRON IS WRONG ON GAY RELATIONSHIPS

When asked by Channel 4 News whether he thought gay sex was sinful, Tim Farron, an Evangelical Christian and leader of the Liberal Democrats, equivocated. ‘We are all sinners’ was his response. A less than whole-hearted endorsement of same-sex relationships...

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THE BANALITY OF EVIL

When Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was abducted from Argentina by the Israelis and brought to Jerusalem, the philosopher Hannah Arendt was commissioned by The New Yorker to cover his trial...

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THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS

The Victorian Christmas popularised by Charles Dickens may be a cliché, but it’s a seductive one. For those who like to indulge, The Man Who Invented Christmas (released in cinemas this week) provides ample opportunity, with an entertaining if rather nonsensical account of the story behind the creation of Dickens’ magical A Christmas Carol...

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HARD TIMES

He was a single man in late middle age. Let’s call him George. An occasional worshipper at church, I’d arranged to visit him at home, in his bedsit above the betting shops and fast food joints on the local high street. He’d recently started work as a casual labourer in a warehouse...

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DOING NOTHNG FOR LENT

A few years ago, I came across a little book with the fantastic title Do Nothing to Change Your Life. Finally, I thought. Someone who speaks my language. We live in culture which is obsessed with doing, working, and achieving...

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OPENING A CAN OF WORMS

Like many others, I have been following the unfolding and tragic saga of Mike Pilavachi and the abuse at Soul Survivor as it has been come to light over the last year: the coverage in the Telegraph, the Soul Survivors podcast from Premier Christianity, the video "Let there be Light" from Matt and Beth Redman, and online discussion on blogs and social media, as well as the official responses and investigation from the Church of England....

Read more at the Surviving Church website