Authority in science and religion, with short reflections on climate change, creation science and house church

The popular challenge to climate change science raises interesting questions about authority, expertise and the gap between popular opinion and the ‘experts’.
For many scientists, academics and politicians, there isn’t a debate about the science – or there shouldn’t be. In The Australian a few months ago, at the time Ian Plimer’s climate change scepticism book [...]

Churches of reconciliation: the diverse church as good news for the world

Here’s the text version of the paper; the previous post offered a pdf version.
WA TEAR Conference 19 September 2009
As TEAR people, you already know that the good news is more than personal salvation after you die. You know that justice is an essential part of the kingdom of God. But have you ever heard the [...]

Churches of Reconciliation: the Diverse Church as Good News for the World

Here’s the paper I gave at the TEAR conference yesterday:
Churches of reconciliation
I shall tell you more about it later in the week, but I told people it would be up here, so I thought I’d better make good on that.

Consuming Jesus : A Review

Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church (Eerdmans, 2007) Available from Koorong for about $20
In this book, Metzger argues that evangelical churches are consumer orientated and this perpetuates the race and class divisions of the world. The gospel, he insists, is the good news that these divisions have been broken down [...]

My big brown Strong’s Exhaustative Concordance, or how I think the Bible is being read badly

(I’m going to sound grumpy, but I’m not, I’ve just been thinking a lot about the use of the Bible.)
It concerns me how badly the Bible is used by most evangelicals.  Much of it stems from a failure to understand what sort of book(s) the Bible is.
When I was nine, an elder in my Baptist [...]

2009 Anabaptist Conference : New Monasticism

I was at the Anabaptism and New Monasticism conference in Melbourne from 23-26 January. The speakers were all associated with intentional Christian communities and ‘New Monastic’ to lesser or greater extents; the term isn’t one any of the groups had consciously adopted.
I want to share my impressions of four Melbourne communites who spoke (there were [...]

Political engagement: embodying the change AND speaking truth to power

Wonderful article by Jim Kumfer discussed last night at the Newbigin Group. (We didn’t get there, having locked ourselves out of the car and house as we were about to leave. D’oh.)
Kumfer uses Yoder’s Body Politics to suggest that we need to combine the approach of Shane Claibourne and Jim Wallis. Shane Claibourne and his [...]

A radical church or a mixed one? (Am I being inconsistent?)

Thinking further about the need for radical Christianity to offer a church to believers, I’m struck by an inconsistency in my thinking.  I have been calling for diversity to be a key commitment of the church; surely that diversity should include radicals and conservatives and liberals too?  
Our Anabaptists Anonymous group did a simulation of a Roman [...]

Footwashing, rituals and the monarchy

12When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, [...]

Roman House Churches for Today

I’ve only just come across this book.  It was published last year and is written by Reta Finger, a Mennonite theologian who also wrote a significant book on common meals in the early church. I’m looking forward to reading this; here’s the publisher’s description as found on Koorong’s site:

Placing the biblical book of Romans in [...]