Feb 12 2013
The best analysis I’ve seen of Pope Benedict is here: http://www.alternet.org/story/41920/pope_benedict%3A_the_first_year. Although it only deals with the first year of his reign, it is a solid analysis with lots of significant information.
Jan 07 2013
The media are reporting a change in the Church of England’s position on gay bishops. Gay clergy in civil partnerships are evidently already allowed, provided they promise to be celibate (!). The House of Bishops has now extended the same permission to bishops. Although this is really a millimeter shift in position compared with the kilometer shift needed to accept practicing gay men as clergy and bishops, it has triggered a howl of protest from the conservative wing of the church and initiated yet another round of controversy (remember the Lambeth Conference 1998). Continue Reading »
Oct 25 2012
On Wednesday, I ventured into the halls of academia to hear Douglas Pratt’s Fulbright Lecture on the “The Persistence and Problem of Religion.” I hadn’t seen him since about 1988 when we were both University Chaplains. It was good to see that he has made his way in the academic world and evidently feels at home in his role.
While secularisation theory predicted the inevitable decline and eventual end of religion, religion persists and may even be on the increase. Doug explored this continuing role of religion. NZ as a secular society did not intend to exclude religion. Rather, it aimed to have a level playing field for all religions, in a nominally Christian context. What we have today, however, is a tendency to airbrush religion out of things, not to acknowledge and understand that there is a religious aspect to major political events, or, worse, to crudely reject a religious value system. Continue Reading »
Feb 26 2012
A review by Laurie Chisholm.
In June 2011, Lloyd Geering gave a series of lectures on Jung at St Andrews on the Terrace in Wellington. These lectures are available on DVD from the St Andrew’s Trust (http://satrs.standrews.org.nz). The Christchurch group of the Sea of Faith has used two of them as the basis of meetings and found them helpful. The video quality is high and the PowerPoint slides that Lloyd used to accompany his words have been nicely edited in so that you have a clear and direct view of them.
Lloyd observed that his lectures on Jung have been the best-attended of all the topics he has handled, which I regard as evidence that people have a hunger for perspectives that enrich and deepen their spirituality and for a wise understanding of what it is to be a human being.
Apr 25 2010
The younger generation could be forgiven for thinking that “Christian music” is exclusively evangelical or charismatic. However, back in the 60s, when guitars and drums began to make their appearance in Church, there were musicians such as the English Quaker Sydney Carter, the Australian Anglican Jim Minchin, the German Roman Catholic Peter Janssens, and the American Lutheran John Ylvisaker, who had a liberal, provocative and questioning approach to religion. Continue Reading »