Ian Rees's Blog, page 11

Managing on our own

Memorial in Newtown, Connecticut (guardian.co.uk)“This is just terrible,” said a friend one evening at our housegroup Bible study. “How can you read this?” We were studying the book of Judges and we had reached one of the many unsavoury descriptions it contains of the slaughter that went on during that period. “What is all that about?” he continued, “How can I get anything helpful from that?” He was still shaking his head in disbelief at the end of the evening, but if we were holding that stu...

Apocalypse now

21st century Chinese ark (telegraph.co.uk)Perhaps we ought to bring Christmas forward a week this year. There have been rumours that the world is going to end on Friday 21 December, so, just in case the world doesn't last until the 25th and the kids don't get to see what we have bought them, how about celebrating it next Thursday, 20 December? At least that way we would go out with a party.

When I walked down Oxford Street last Saturday the possible end of the world didn't seem to be on the mi...

Wilfully blind

I don't think I have seen the mainstream media so outraged about anything as when the Church of England synod failed to approve the measure to appoint women bishops. The moment Penny Marshall on ITV reported live to the 6.30 news it was evident that there was going to be no journalistic neutrality on this subject. Her tone was angry and the words “disaster” and “disastrous” kept appearing in her seemingly unscripted report, but she was just the first of many such tirades. There has been a ras...

A sure-fire vote winner

Angry old men - who wants their votes?George Osborne has recently indicated that the Conservative Party needs to learn the lessons of Mitt Romney's defeat in the US Presidential elections. Commentators have been quick to analyse the results from across the Atlantic and point out that Obama won because he got much more of the younger voters to side with him. This, they say, indicates that Obama's late announcement of being in favour of gay marriage served him well and that it was even a voter...

Who will be king?

The US presidential election has all but eclipsed news about China's “elections” which begin on Thursday 8 November. These will see a new President to replace Hu Jintao and put a man (probably, although there is one woman being given outside odds of taking the top spot) who is arguably more powerful than the supposed “most powerful man in the world”. At least he should have a united party behind him, if only because there is only one party. Whoever wins today in the US is likely to have the b...

How long?

Attack on a church in Nigeria (telegraph.co.uk)This weekend sees the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. It's not a day that features large in the nation's calendar, falling as it does this year between Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night, but it ought to. There is evidence that persecution of Christians has reached almost epidemic proportions around the world, with an estimated 200 million Christians facing severe discrimination or active persecution around the world (read a sobe...

Who am I?

Art Garfunkel in telegraph.co.ukWhen I was a pastor in the south west I heard of a local farmer who committed suicide because he had had a stroke which had left him unable to do the work he loved. I didn't know him other than to say hello at one of the many harvest services we used to attend that went on around the host of Exmoor chapels we knew and he was typical West Country farming stock. Red-faced, big hands, suspicious of modern trends and large towns (“I went to London once and I didn't...

When integrity disintegrates

Photos: guardian.co.ukSometimes I think that we live in such a cynical age that nothing will ever shock people, but recent revelations about Jimmy Savile's paedophile lifestyle and Lance Armstrong's drug taking schemes have revealed a level of public horror that we have not seen for some time. Both these characters were public figures with almost saint-like reputations who turned out to be deeply corrupted on the inside. In both cases these men stood out as icons of public charity and compass...

Old habits die hard

Papyrus with controversial text highlighted (from bbc.co.uk)Last week a Harvard scholar publicised what she said was a significant discovery in the world of New Testament studies: a fragment of papyrus that purports to show that early Christians believed Jesus had a wife. It was all over the news at the time (but has not featured since) and various sensationalist claims were made that this would turn the Christian world upside down with this new evidence that the church would not want to hear...

Faith and evidence

Tom Holland pictured in The GuardianMaking a programme about Islam is never going to be easy. There may be factions around the world that are slaughtering each other, but attack the foundations and they unite in angry protest. This is what historian Tom Holland has found with his programme Islam: The Untold Story that was broadcast last week on Channel 4. Although he has written a book about this (The Shadow of the Sword) which goes into far more detail (and which arguably ought to be more co...