Andy Hill Metro I’m an atheist who goes to church – here’s why you should too
Scott Cowdell ABC Religion and Ethics Gender and Identity: Freeing the Bible from Modern Western Anxieties
Tony Payne ABC Religion and Ethics Is There Moral Truth Out There? A Response to Scott Cowdell on Gender and Identity
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love ‘Feeling’ and ‘knowing’ – David Jenkins’ Guide to the Debate about God
Alister McGrath ABC Religion and Ethics Is God a Figment of Our Imagination? On Certainty, Scepticism and the Limits of Proof
[Professor McGrath is giving a public lecture, C. S. Lewis for Today: Making Sense of Faith and Culture, in Liverpool on 25 October 2017. Details are here.]
Ive often thought re people like Andy Hills we would have done better to have had a decade of pre evangelism before we launched into anything else.
Perry, I have a very close friend who moved a few years ago from being an atheist to being an agnostic. He never darkens the doors of a church, but he has told me several times that all his best friends are Christians and they are the best people he knows. I think that definitely counts as ‘pre-evangelism’.
I went to the ‘Lost Church’ conference at St Paul’s Chichester last Saturday and have just started to read the book by the main speaker Alan Billings. His theme is exactly that of the article by Andy Hill in Metro: that we ignore those who have a relationship with church but who don’t necessarily ‘believe’ at our peril. The Church of England is in danger of abandoning its role serving the whole community through the parish system, substituting for it gathered congregations of the likeminded, planted from elsewhere. These congregations by their very nature are exclusive and excluding. They appeal… Read more »
‘If their ethos and culture only attract the young who will not only mature but will also find the certainties offered simple and increasingly unsatisfying, where do they go next? ‘ Richard, you ask some thoughtful questions. I was a curate at St. Michael-le-Belfrey when the two services became three, aimed at different age groups. The area groups, which had catered for everyone within a particular geographical area of York, were broken up and new ones formed which were linked to the three congregations. Result: singles, young professionals and older people (9.15 service) missed out on contact with families and… Read more »
Apologies, there’s a mistake in the penultimate line of the middle paragraph. It should read ‘…where success is measured…’
Thanks
Richard