Ever felt you didn’t fit in?

Everything is spiritual -in its own way?

Everything –according to Rob Bell- is spiritual. And of course he’s completely right. It’s just a question of whether its bad spiritual or good spiritual.

And the wisdom to know the difference.

So can you help me here? Let me run some things by you and you decide which part of the good/bad spectrum they belong…. Treat it like a News Quiz with a moral twist.

Last week (31/1) the Telegraph reported on a Romanian Orthodox ex-priest, Daniel Corogeanu. He was convicted last year, freed pending appeal, and now jailed for seven years for the murder by crucifixion of a young nun who had symptoms of schizophrenia. She had been bound and chained to a cross and denied water for some days in a long-drawn-out ‘exorcism’ ritual. Corogeanu said that she was beyond salvation and claimed his action was justified.

Now I’m pretty sure that that’s bad.

But –bearing in mind the importance of us all getting along, and “doing the hard work of putting up with each other” (as The Message puts it somewhere)- how do you rate this new development in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: For the first time in its 100-year history the WPCU has concluded with a service in St Paul Outside the Walls, Rome with Pope Benedict XVI taking part with World Council of Churches general secretary Revd Dr Samuel Kobia, as well as about 30 other leaders of Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant churches. The week started in Graymoor, New York in January 1908 under the title ‘Octave of Prayer for Church Unity’. (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6657).

Good, bad or indifferent?

Or Dr John Sentamu having a pint with the pope? (Well, not exactly). When Tony Blair had an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, he gave him a gift, as is customary, a painting of Catholic convert Cardinal Newman. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, was more down to earth. On his first trip to Rome to celebrate the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the Archbishop presented His Holiness with a special beer brewed for the occasion at Masham, North Yorks. The Pope, a Bavarian by birth, is said to prefer beer to wine and water. (The Guardian (29/1)

Or Rowan Williams expostulating on the Blasphemy laws? (I’m not even convinced that in our day and age blasphemy is an issue that can be dealt with by legislation). Delivering the James Callaghan Memorial Lecture in the House of Lords this week, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said the current blasphemy legislation was unworkable and should be repealed. Whatever replaced it should clearly signal what was acceptable, and have the effect of stigmatising and punishing the extreme behaviours, and cruel forms of speaking and acting, that silence argument. Church Times (1/2)

I guess it’s good  (but I’ll wait for your comments to be sure) to see two senior Catholic leaders, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Bishop Crispian Hollis, arriving in Zimbabwe earlier this week as guests of the Zimbabwean Catholic Bishops’ Conference following a visit to South Africa. They stressed the pastoral, rather than political, nature of their visit which nevertheless comes at a time when opposition within the country to the dictatorial regime of Robert Mugabe is mobilising.

And the Revd Charlie Cleverley, Rector of St Aldate’s, a thriving charismatic evangelical church in the heart of Oxford, is claiming  non-Muslim residents will be driven away by the thrice-daily loudspeaker calls to prayer over the eastern part of the city proposed by leaders of a new mosque there. Mr Cleverley, who previously led a church in a Muslim area of Paris, said the ‘azan’ minaret call to prayer was ‘un-English’ and risked ‘ghettoisation’ of the area in years to come.  Source: The Times (30/1) .

So how do you vote? Cleverley or uncleverly? Does this “getting along” business include people outside the Church. I suspect so.

A group of evangelical C of E bishops has urged wavering delegates to be willing to attend the 10-year Lambeth Conference, which has been threatened by divisions over appointments of practising homosexual priests and bishops. They are urging support for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Windsor Process in working towards resolution and unity. Church of England Newspaper (31/1).

Bad spiritual or good spiritual? What does God think of the Lambeth Conference striving for unity as the expense of doctrine? Help me out here.

I was interested to read of The Black Christian Leaders Forum’s (BCLF) appeal following a meeting last week with the Department for Children, Schools and Families for more black men to come forward to train as teachers who will be effective role models and mentors. Wale Hudson-Roberts, racial justice co-ordinator for the Baptist Union of Great Britain, agreed with the call but added that the profession needed more black teachers in senior positions to effect a change, and that teachers generally required training to better understand black culture, where assertiveness was often mistaken for aggression.  Baptist Times (31/1).

I vote a tentative good.

And finally, Respondents to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2008, which questioned over 3,000 people, concluded that marriage is fairly irrelevant, although stable relationships are important. The majority considered that there was no difference between being married and cohabiting, even when raising children, and two-thirds believed that divorce could be a positive step. This flies in the face of David Cameron’s affirmation of marriage and desire to halt the disintegration of the family as the key to mending what he describes as our broken society. Sources: The Times (29/1).

Strange to find myself with David Cameron on this one.

Outgrowing Christianity?/ Eyeballs in the sky

In days gone by simple village folk might have discussed the mysterious beings that lived beyond their own realm of experience. The edge of the forest was a dark and fearful place, where all manner of monsters concealed themselves. Today, however, we have a tool, which in theory at least, has mapped out not just the forest, or merely the great oceans, but the entire universe to the very edges of space-time. Empirical (sensory experience based) science has shown that far from there being mysterious powers lurking around every dark corner, that there is an extraordinary uniformity to the way the whole universe behaves. There are regular laws of gravity and motion which describe both the fall of an apple and the movements of the stars. It was as if Isaac Newton had in a moment of brilliance switched on the lights in the universe.

Dawkins/McGrath: The “Is God?” Debate

God exists…or perhaps not?: The Dawkins/McGrath debate

Check out the video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6474278760369344626