This week’s articles in The Guardian’s Comment is free belief section include:
Mark Vernon Is Christianity compatible with wealth? “The Christian tradition is not anti-money. Rather, it is excess and luxury that pose the spiritual problems.”
Giles Fraser Bethlehem’s church of the punch-up. “The latest brawl between Armenian and Orthodox monks in Bethlehem is a product of Christianity’s romance with buildings.”
Pope Benedict XVI Europe’s crisis of faith “In hard times, Europe could learn much from Africa’s joyful passion for faith.”
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes in The Independent that Christianity deserves better worshippers.
“Too many are like Cameron, part-time Christians of convenience who use religion as a weapon.”
N T Wright writes for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about Suspending scepticism: History and the Virgin Birth and in response Andrew McGowan writes about Greeks Bearing (Christmas) Gifts.
I find little comfort in N.T. Wright’s ‘learned’ thesis on the unlikelihood of the Virgin Birth of Jesus. To speculate on the unreliability of the Gospel narrative of Matthew and Luke – because of the possibility of a tainting from the pagan/Greek culture – is to do precisely what he is accusing the writers of these gospel stories of doing: trying to explain a mystical reality; while, in Wright’s case, introducing rationalistic doubt. Quite a surprising supposition for such a noted Evangelical theologian. However, I suspect his dismissal of the traditional catholic view might be partly as a result of… Read more »
Now,after this, Tom Wright will be able to say that there are no biblical case against same-sex loving and relating.
If Africa gets much more joyfully passionate for faith, there’ll be no Africans left!
I’m not surprised, though, that Ratzinger would consider witch-hunts, mob violence, and political and tribal hostility to be valid expressions of Christian faith. They *are* at least as Christian as anything the Vatican has ever produced.