Moynihan’s Law: The better things get, the worse they seem
Andrew Wilson: ‘”The amount of violations of human rights in a country,” argued Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.” In other words: the better things get, the worse they seem. It holds true in numerous areas with significance for today’s church.’
The other side of the coin
Eddie Arthur: ‘when I look at the spiritual needs of the UK, I see a need for the spiritually vibrant, expectant Christianity that is more typical of Africa than the UK.’
The core of the Qur’anic worldview
This is a helpful look at three things that centre the worldview of most Muslims. It helps us to understand how to better engage with our Muslim friends and neighbours.
Thinking critically about Critical Race Theory
Lots of people like to bandy around terms like ‘cultural marxism’ and ‘critical theory’ without showing much evidence they really know what those words mean. The Stand to Reason blog offers this on CRT and asks whether it is compatible with a Christian worldview.
No, racism isn’t a ‘creation of white people’
On a similar note, David Abulafia reminds us in this article that racism wasn’t invented by white people nor is it the specific product of whiteness. Sadly, racism is a human problem, with a long and insalubrious history across the globe.
Helping protect your pastor from death by suicide
As someone who has tried (and obviously failed) to commit suicide, and still suffers periodically from suicidal ideation when in a depressive episode – planning such things and whatnot – and having spoken to several pastors just this week who suffer similarly and are in the midst of such things, draw a circle round this one.
From the archive: A response to the ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ letters
‘For several weeks now, there has been a flurry of fear spreading through our area of Glodwick. Our area is predominantly South Asian and is home to a significant number of Muslim people. The largest mosque in the borough of Oldham lies a few hundred yards behind our church building. The worry concerns some nasty, vindictive and downright horrible letters doing the rounds with the title ‘Punish a Muslims day’. I had one Bangladeshi gentleman produce a copy of the letter at our English Class to ask me whether he had any cause to worry about it. It seems the letters have been circulating around the South Asian community and has, understandably, caused very real concern.’