Sam Wells wrote in last week’s Church Times on Why our culture won’t heed the Church on sex.
Jonathan Sacks writes in The Times this week that Scripture tells us that we hold the Earth in trust for future generations.
David Self writes in today’s Guardian about the Christian right and its support for Israel in Face to Faith.
Christopher Howse writes about The Rapture Index in his Telegraph column headed It’s not the end of the world – or is it?
Last Sunday’s Observer had this article by Robert Pape What we still don’t understand about Hizbollah.
I refer to none of the above articles but rather to this week’s belated Church of England Newspaper’s account of the recent US Network meeting in Pittsburgh, and particularly to the Moderator’s Address. I was particularly touched by this gloss provided by the reporter “Unlike its previous gatherings in Texas, the Network’s three-day annual council meeting in Pittsburgh eschewed sabre-rattling ……” !!! – yet perhaps the journalist is right! The threat Bishop Duncan threw down to the Archbishop of Canterbury to act as he demanded or be swept away was a thrust to the heart and not sabre-rattling at all,… Read more »
I like Jonathan Sacks, just do. His thinking parallels some personal ponderings of the last week, about Moses being kept out of the Holy Land because he struck the earth. I can not help but wonder if that too was not an ecological message. Do not smite thy footstool or Eden will remain hidden from you. Or in modern day parlance if you vandalise and cover something in filth, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t look attractive. Similarly, if you neglect a living system and don’t keep its channels clean, don’t be surprised if the system starts to wither and… Read more »
The linked articles here,for 12th August are very helpful. But my assumptions were particularly challenged by Robert PAPE’s piece. I had no idea of this take on it. I find him persuasive, and really want to read the research when his book comes out, shortly, I understand. It means I got both the politics wrong; and the religious dimension of it, which I thought was linked with Islam (albeit, ‘extreme’ forms). I did think of the Orange Lodges -esp. in the past, as a possible parallel. It seemed religoiusly motivated, but at the end of the day, I came to… Read more »
With regard to Robert Pape’s piece, does anyone remember if my own memory is correct: that bin Laden’s stated reason for the 9/11/2001 attacks on the U.S. A. was the Western/American presence in Saudi Arabia? Reading Pape caused this to pop into my head as though being dredged up from the forgotten, but I’m not positive I remember correctly.
Lois Keen
Pape’s piece makes uncomfortable sense: I always did wonder how Islam influenced the ‘suicide bombers’ of Dien Bien Phu.
It’s a rather Augustinian piece, I thought – there’s nothing which sin can’t corrupt and use in its cause, including politics and religious belief: a cautionary thought, perhaps, for those who believe their bit of the Church only ever errs when it is insufficiently rigorous.
Well the Pape article comes as small surprise to my way of thinking. I have never subscribed to the strategic notion that putting guns in peoples’ faces for their own alleged benefit (and, oh by the way, for my benefit, too) helps them change, deeply and warmly and lastingly, for the better. Any occupation of someone else’s country will inevitably have side effects, and if you are not willing to pay those prices, you will not get the gains. The other catch in the cost/benefit ratios we are all too often offered as remedies is that the gains to be… Read more »
Doing my daily trawl of for my website (see article: http://www.wombatwonderings.org/plugins/newsfeed.cgi?rm=content&plugin_data_id=14255 I can’t help continue thinking of God’s vision of peace for all the peoples of all the nations. Which is exacerbated when I come across another “coincidence” like this one noted by Rabbi Waskow: “This (2006) fall, the Muslim sacred month of Ramadan and the sacred Jewish month that includes Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot coincide. They join as well with the Worldwide Communion Sunday that Protestant and Orthodox Christians celebrate, and with the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, who opposed the Crusades and studied with… Read more »