Always Hope

In another century, many years ago (let's just say "20 or more"), I was young, confident, and impetuous. Like so many young people in any age, I wanted to change the world and I was sure I knew how to do it. I had drifted into a place at Bristol University without much idea of what to do with life. But the summer before, I had, as we used to say, "made a commitment" at a youth camp. I decided that I was going to be a Christian. When I arrived at Bristol, confronted at once with the full range of excitements and opportunities that University life offers, it dawned on me that this decision was going to have implications.  Gradually during my first year, something that had previously compelled me intellectually began to convict me at a more visceral level: following Christ was something to be done 100%, or not at all.  I threw myself into all things Christian, did my best to live out my faith in practice, and in the process became more and more involved in the evan...

Apparently US Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann is a card-carrying "submissive wife", an irony which is examined in this thought-provoking report , well worth a quick read for the issues it raises. The backlash against feminism is one of the defining features of contemporary evangelical Christianity. For those on the conservative end, it has become almost a point of honour to say that you are not a feminist.  Some readers may be tempted to see this as a purely American phenomenon, but it remains a hot potato for the church in this country too. Even the Church of England is affected, as conservative evangelicals join the resistance to women bishops.  The difference between here and the States is that the public clout of US evangelicals brings the debate into the main political arena. The resistance has been organised around the label of  "Complementarianism", a new label which describes a old belief. Complementarians, led by Wayne Grudem and the redoubtabl...

Alan Wilson (Bishop of Buckingham) had a piece in the Guardian's Comment is Free yesterday . I've never encountered Bishop Alan in the non-digital world, but I have a lot of respect for his online persona, especially what he says on his blog . But this time I have to say he's hit a wrong note. Alan's theme is the future of evangelicalism, inspired by last's week's Lausanne Conference in Cape Town (see the previous post). As we'd expect, there's good stuff there, and some useful critical questions to challenge any thinking evangelical. But the piece is still horribly generic, adopting a tone too familiar to anyone of my background who follows Anglican affairs in the media: "those funny evangelicals". In the space of a short article, Bishop Alan suggests that evangelicals are culturally uptight, they don't like gay people very much (although they could if they tried hard enough), and although he is careful to say that he doesn't reall...

Today, courtesy of the perennially marvellous Ship of Fools , Always Hope brings you the curious case of wecanknow.com and the Latter Rain. This seems so incredible that I can't decide whether it is really what it seems, or some kind of elaborate hoax, so judge for yourselves by looking at this website , or this one , where you will find everything you never knew (and probably didn't want to) about the imminent judgement day. Of course, confident predictions of the end of the world are nothing new - the Jehovah's witnesses have predicted it many times, with zero percent success so far, but usually the door is at least left ajar for the possibility that God may have alternative plans. "We Can Know", however, takes apocalyptic certainty to new levels. So many things about this are bizarre, that it's difficult to know where to start. What I find most perplexing, though, is that this comes out of the stable of "Bible-based" Christianity, that we know ov...

Today I want to clarify something I wrote yesterday. I firmly believe that, with God, there is always a future for the church. But I didn't say anything about the Church of England. I don't think God holds a brief for any particular denomination more than another. The letter to the Ephesian church in Revelation has something to say here - a church that was once thriving can have the candle taken away. The Church of England, that curious 16th century innovation, has proved satisfyingly durable. It has survived purges, political interference, nominalism, vigorous nonconformity, the excesses of establishment and theological malaise. Throughout all this, its survival has been a remarkable testimony to God's ability to revive his church from the ashes. Yet this cannot be taken for granted in perpetuity. Over the last few years big cracks have opened in the edifice. This in itself is nothing new, but at the same time, the foundations have been eroding fast. If it's true tha...

Today I came across this post on Cranmers Curate , a fascinating critique of the rhetoric of Mark Driscoll . Mr Driscoll has become something of a totemic figure, attracting loads of criticism from those who you would expect to dislike him, but increasingly popular within the world of reformed Christianity and, over here, conservative evangelicalism. This is the first critical opinion I have seen from within, as it were, and is all the more potent for that. I don't think I've seen enough of Driscoll to confirm Julian's view, but it rings true with what little I have seen, and more strongly for me, with my experience in evangelicalism generally. [Now please understand, reader, that when I write of evangelicals I do so from within. I was born and raised (in the spiritual sense) within that fold, and remain there to this day. I am not post-, or ex-, or any other sick note excusing me from doing evangelicalism any more. But that doesn't mean I can't have a grumble...