Forgive the tired saying, but responding to the Quran burning event in Florida is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. I often use mild sarcasm in this blog to make my point and I could so easily spread it as thick as butter on toast in addressing this issue. But as many are now warning, this is a serious issue and will almost undoubtedly draw violent reprisals in many parts of the world.

You’re probably aware of the st...

A few thoughts on resurrection today as I have a funeral to take tomorrow and I’ve been asked to preach. One of the readings chosen is the final section of the 15^th chapter in 1 Corinthians – it’s the chapter on resurrection and includes these powerful words, ‘O death, where is your victory’. I once challenged an atheist to say what hope he could provide a family in bereavement apart from the fact that the deceased had li...

It’s ‘Back to Church Sunday’ on 26 September – an initiative that aims to get those of us who are regulars in Sunday services to invite a friend who has not been to ‘church’ for a while to return to the fold. On the face of it, it’s an excellent idea.

I was present at a congregation yesterday where one of the resources prepared for the initiative was handed out to the regulars and there is no doubting the genui...

It’s nearly over. Autumn is cautiously creeping in and another mixed summer slips away. And with it goes Big Brother – that infuriatingly fascinating Channel 4 phenomenon. I think it would have been the second series that I watched all the way through but as the contestants became ever more weird I had given it a wide berth. Until this year that is when big Dave Vaughn, pseudo monk and rattler of religious cages, got installed ...

In a shock finding it seems that only 13% of the British population believe that politicians tell the truth. Well I never – I’m surprised the figure is so high! The poll was taken last October after the publishing of MP’s accounts by the Telegraph newspaper. More surprising, maybe, is that even in 1983 the figure only stood at 18% - though it had been as high as 23% in 1999.

71% find the clergy truthful – though this...

Twenty seven percent of British people believe that the Church of England should not have gay bishops and ten percent believe that they should not have female bishops. Whether the church should have gay women bishops was not asked but you and I could make a fair guess how the numbers would fall, right?

The Church, of course, has just had a rather tormented weekend away in York to discuss the issue of women bisho...

The news from Syria is interesting this week (oh yes it is!), for according to AsiaNews.it the government there has banned the wearing of the niqab by students and teachers in schools and colleges. They have done so, apparently, in order to counter the spread of ‘extremist ideas’.

Syria, of course, is ruled by a secular government that is keen to keep religious radicalism away from their young people. This o...

The temple in Jerusalem represented the six days of creation, with the Holy of Holies representing the first day, the veil representing the second and so on. This is one of the many new things I’ve learned from Margaret Barker in a book of hers that I’m reading at the moment – Temple Theology: An introduction (London, 2004).

She also says that there are basically two streams of thought in the Old Testament...

The story emerging from Afghanistan about three of our soldiers being killed by a ‘renegade’ Afghan soldier is tragic indeed. We are told that we are there in order to bring stability to the country and save our streets from terrorist attacks. To see an Afghan turn on British soldiers like this is therefore quite shocking.

Like many, I feel it is high time we brought our troops home. They have been there far too long. ...

Putting someone in prison can be an upsetting business but it can also feed the power-grabbing side of one’s personality. I faced these two contrasting emotions a couple of weeks back when I made a decision – with two other magistrates – to detain a 20 year old for 9 weeks.

The circumstances were simple enough – this young man had caused criminal damage to a number of cars and had been sentenced to a community order ...

Depending on what your poison may be, the Church of England’s General Synod starting today could the most interesting or the most boring event in York this weekend. If you’re an Anglican you’ll probably be following quite closely because the whole thorny issue of women bishops is to be discussed and the meetings are held in the context of the gay priest, Jeffrey John, once again being rejected as a potential bishop. T...

A quick update from the Big Brother House – Dave was not nominated by the housemates last night, so he’s probably safe for another week. In fact, not a single person chose him for eviction. This is such a reversal from previous weeks when he’s been up for eviction every time and clearly held in considerable suspicion by some. For those who haven’t followed the series or the fuss surrounding it, Dave is a charismatic Chris...

With Wimbledon over and the football world cup drawing to close, let me pose this question at the beginning of the week – will there be sport in ‘heaven’? Or to put it more precisely, will there be any competitive sport in ‘heaven’? I put the word heaven in quotation marks, of course, because I don’t believe that heaven will be our final destination; rather there will be a new heaven and a new earth and it is on...

It’s not a programme you would usually recommend Christians to follow but with Sloshfest’s Dave Vaughn being one of the housemates, Big Brother has become compulsive viewing in our house. Yes, the language is terrible; yes, the sight of scantily clad women is unhelpful; yes, the culture-meter is very low – but the interaction between the housemates makes this series fascinating.

In this post I want to reflect on how ...

Never have so many parrots been sickened for so little pleasure by so few inept footballers – or so Churchill may have said were he still alive today. The poor man must be spinning. But before we blame the players – maybe even instead of blaming them – we should consider the role inflexible leadership had in yesterday’s poor performance.

As the leader directly responsible for the England team, we should begin with ...

So the plans for securing the reestablishment of ancient Britain under Welsh rule are progressing well these days – though seeing a Barry born woman become the Aussies’ first female prime minister was a bit unexpected. She used to be minister for education – thus proving her Welsh origin – but she’s also described as a straight talker, so obviously her many years down under have given her extra skills. Being a rep...

Yesterday I was sent an email by some friends forwarding an email doing the rounds about a petition in the US calling for Christian broadcasting on television to be banned. The petition was, apparently, gaining much support with nearly 300,000 signatories and was calling for people like Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen to be silenced on the airwaves. The email encouraged recipients to sign a counter petition in order ...

Check out this excellent link on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It gives you an opportunity to ‘move’ the spill on Google maps and place it over a region you know well. I typed in Anglesey only to see that the spill would actually cover the whole of Wales and more. If one wasn’t aware of the enormity of the situation beforehand, then this map certainly presses the point home.

The thing that strikes m...

Taking offence is big business in this country. It would seem that someone somewhere can’t live a full life without taking offence at something. This is why the Advertising Standards Authority was set up many years ago because some advertisements apparently cause offence and the ASA exists so that concerned citizens can complain. Its’ annual report has just been released and makes fascinating reading. (Ok, â€...

I spent the weekend with some of the men from Pioneer People, Pensby, on their weekend away in the Conwy Valley. With the sun scorching hot and great landscape looking its best there was no doubt that we would have a very relaxing time together, and so it proved to be. What a great bunch of people they are and really going for something different as a church.

I was invited to join them in order to offer some teac...

Apologies for being such a lightweight on the blogging front recently. It’s been a busy period and this week is gearing up quite nicely too! Our trip to the US was cancelled due to the volcanic ash. (What is going on with this ash thing then?!) We did, however, manage some time away: a great week in a cottage in Dorset with the sun shining most days. Once we were back I was straight into the election campaign â...

On Monday night I watched the start of a short new series on ITV 1 called 'Wormwood Scrubs'. The Scrubs is one of the UK’s most infamous prisons with room for some 1,300 men. It was first built in the Victorian era and still has many of the original buildings – making it a striking feature in the urban landscape of London.

To critique a series after only one programme is surely a mistake, but critiquing the ...

Tomorrow we fly off to the United States (depending on the ash cloud!) to spend two weeks with our friends Ron and Lisa Fess. Though blogging may well be sporadic while we’re away, it will not disappear altogether. I have been fascinated by the US since my school days when I studied Geography for A level and that country was part of the curriculum. The other country outside the UK that was part of the study was...

Dealing with difficult memories must be one of the most challenging things we have to do as human beings. It can be really tough when past pain enters our present and affects the way we function today. On the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning there was a fascinating piece about this issue where two researchers presented their findings.

The first was a scientist from Oxford University who had come to the co...

I have to start today’s post with an apology for the ads that appeared with yesterday’s post about power and abuse in the church. They were wholly inappropriate for a Christian blog and especially for that particular post. I am very sorry it happened.

Regular readers will have noticed the ads supplied by Google – and the search engine to the right – that have appeared on my blog in the past couple of wee...

Were Jamie Bulger’s killers too young at 10 years to fully understand what they did? Maggie Atkinson, the Children’s Commissioner of England, believes they were and has called for the age of criminal responsibility to be set at 12 rather than 10. Her words – expressed in an interview with The Times at the weekend – come during a particularly difficult time for the family of Jamie Bulger, as Jon Venables h...

I was trawling through Facebook updates this morning when I came across the ‘Justice for James Bulger’ group and an application that invited me to ‘release a balloon’ in the child’s memory (if you don’t do Facebook, then you’re probably lost by now, but keep with me anyway). The introductory blurb to the application claims that the boy’s killers should never have been released from prison and that...

I see the Church of England is getting into a bit of a stew over gender issues again – the gender of its leaders that is, and whether women should be consecrated as bishops. Years have now passed since women were accepted into the ordained priesthood in the C of E – something I disagreed with then, since I don’t think men should be ordained into the priesthood either. We’re all priests in God’s eyes –...

There aren’t many Welsh speaking people in the world. There must be even fewer Welsh speakers who are blind. And we probably could count the number of blind Welsh speakers who are also Christians on the fingers of the hands of a typical Sunday afternoon Baptist chapel congregation in Llanfflewin. But however small that number they should still be able to read the Bible in their first language. This is why Cytun, the ecumenical body in Wales, has launched an appeal for the translation of the...