house group 9th May

Next meeting will be as above - we will be thinking about faith & politics, do they mix? should they mix? see Julia's original post below for more details. Thoughts links etc. can be added to comments of this post...

hg after this will be looking at "The Trap" documentary

Science& Faith

interesting article in guardian...

"The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2064897,00.html

/ link should work now if anyone has tried it before and had problems.

housegroup discussion material

Is it right for church leaders to make pronouncements about politics? Can it be classified as being 'prohetic'? When should they speak out and within what boundaries? This came out of an article I read in the Church Times a few weeks ago written by Canon Alan Billings who among other things is Director for Ethics and religion at Lancaster University. I quote a little at the end of his article :- ' The modernchurch seeks to make up for its loss of political power by being preachy and didactic. As long as it does that, it will give its members the impression that the real business of politics can be done somewhere other than through the practise of politics itself. Those who think they are being prophetic are contributing to the disillusion with politics'. He had started his article by commenting on Archbishop John Sentamu pitching his tent in the cathedral and making some comments on the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah in the Lebannon.

Rowan Williams - the church needs to listen properly to the bible

Rowan Williams gave a lecture on this topic in Canada recently, link to full text below. But I want to quote once section in particular speaking about scripture...

"... a written text requires re-reading; it is never read for the last time, and it continuously generates new events of interpretation. It is fruitful of renewed communication in a way that the spoken word alone cannot be. So to identify a written text as sacred is to claim that the continuous possibility of re-reading, the impossibility of reading for the last time, is a continuous openness to the intention of God to communicate".

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/070416.htm

Warning, it's pretty dense stuff :-)

house group 25th April 2007

Any thoughts on what anyone might want to do? please post a comment.

Huw

Rowan Williams sermon - slave trade

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/070327.htm

above is a link to the archbishop's sermon from the service that marked the 200 year anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. for those a the lent course this is the service that jean mentioned.

templeton prize acceptance speech

Maggi Dawn, always interesting, has a quote from Charles Taylor's speech on getting the Templeton Prize. Fits in with our dicsussions of the trouble with athisism, well worth a look...

http://maggidawn.typepad.com/maggidawn/2007/03/templeton_prize.html

Giving fundamentalism a secular boost | Ekklesia

Giving fundamentalism a secular boost | Ekklesia

"Media atheists of the narrower kind are fast becoming the new best friends of fundamentalist Christians. For every time they write about religion they are doing very effective PR for a fundamentalist worldview. Many of the propositions that fundamentalists are keen to sell the public are oft-repeated corner-stones of the media atheist's philosophy of religion."

He doesn't hold back here, but I think he has a point...

I really must get out more...

In an idle moment in the office, or rather, searching round to do anything to avoid 'phoning a particular client, I wondered with all the bad press the internet gets which is more of interest to people, love or hate?

A search in Google on each word gets 228 million hits for hate, but a decisive lead for love with 921 million.

Thinking Anglicans

Thanks for the link, I have not seen this site before, but I instantly knew from the name what flavour of opinion this would be! So the name worries me a bit, are we saying that those who won’t agree with this particular taste are unthinking? Seems a bit arrogant to me.

What do the rest of you think?

Mustard Seed Shavings: The God Delusion 8&9

This is an interesting post that links in with our discussion of "The Trouble with Atheism"

Mustard Seed Shavings: The God Delusion 8&9

How do I add a link at the side?

Where there is two links including the church's web site. Or can only managers do this?

Work Based EMail Group

Jonathan's Work Based EMail's are now managed as a google group. See the home page. I've added the emails Jonathan has sent out already. All new emails will go via the group.

See this page

You will get a formal invite soon. But in the interim see our wedding page.

Does evolution select for faster evolvers?

here is an interesting article about evolution

Does evolution select for faster evolvers?

Lets get started!

These are the links to Wikipedia articles on slavery I mentioned to Huw on Saturday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

An issue clearly not clear cut on whom to "lay the blame".

Hello from Jim

Test to see if I can post correctly.

This is an edit, to test adding a label.

This is a second edit

St John's Church

yet another test, this should be a link to our church website

Anti-Slavery - Anti-Slavery - Modern

this is more of a test to see how easy it is to post...

Anti-Slavery - Anti-Slavery - Modern

first post

well the idea here is that we can share ideas and continue discussions in between house groups...