Month: July 2018

Grace Dalton reflects on the increasing trend over the last few years for pop culture to regard the sexual use of religious imagery as ‘virtuous.’ I really shouldn’t check the Trending topics on Twitter, it is a horrendous waste of time. Recently, when I succumbed to curiosity, one trending hashtag was #GodIsAWoman. Well of course.

Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law, responsible for the suffering and deaths of many Christians and other religious minorities in the country, was highlighted on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme this week. Dr. Farzana Shaikh, a specialist on Pakistan at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, was being interviewed on the programme on Thursday

The BBC reported a news story at the weekend about an aspiring Ethiopian ‘prophet’ who had been arrested after failing to bring a dead man back to life. Whilst this is certainly a newsworthy and interesting story, it begs the question why does the BBC not also report on stories of miracles which do happen

This is the first of a number of short reflections on Gregory of Nyssa’s fifth (and final) sermon on the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:12-13). Gregory of Nyssa was a fourth-century Christian theologian and one

How do we know that/whether Jesus was born on 25th December? And are Christians really so dumb as to think he was born on that day? Grace Dalton considers. In a recent online debate over abortion, I was assailed with revelation that the 25th of December was originally Yule; and that “Easter” is from Oestre,

In Gregory of Nyssa’s fourth sermon on the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we consider Gregory’s view on what was meant by ‘daily bread,’ and whether in adopting his view he was merely following the third-century theologian Origen, whom he much admired. Gregory of Nyssa was a fourth-century Christian theologian and

The American drama series ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was recently cited several times as an argument in a House of Commons debate on abortion. What does it mean when Parliamentary debate on vital issues is carried out on the basis of fictional drama? Grace Dalton and Graham Harter consider the implications. We begin with Grace. Several

In the fourth of our reflections on Gregory of Nyssa’s third sermon on the Lord’s Prayer, we see that Gregory — in the late fourth century A.D. — had a most curious reading of Luke 11:2, “May your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us.” What are we to make of this, and could