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Continue reading →: Two ways of understanding church and state separationSome thoughts emerging from the Baptist Churches of NSW & ACT “Directions 2012” Conference. As baptists we all affirm the “separation of church and state”, but do we all mean the same thing by it? The two kingdoms model Some, following Luther and Calvin, understand the separation of church and…
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Continue reading →: Praying Through DepressionWhen prayer seems impossible, simple prayers can be the best. Do any of you struggle with depression? What prayers do you find helpful?
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Continue reading →: Two views on nonviolent actionFollowing are two views on nonviolent action, the first negative, the second positive. Both leaders were contemporaries of one another, speaking on the same issue. Before clicking through to discover ‘the who’, please consider ‘the what’ and where you yourself stand. “The concept of nonviolence is a false ideal. It presupposes the…
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Continue reading →: Radical, Moi?This morning I was labelled a radical. By a friend. Last week I was labelled an extremist. By another friend. I am taking this as a measure of theological acceptance given that, in years past, I used to be labelled a heretic with roughly the same frequency. Also because the comments…
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Continue reading →: 10 reasons why gay rights is a religious issue?Robyn Vestal drew my attention to an interesting article by Jay Michaelson from the San Francisco Sentinel, entitled Ten Reasons Why Gay Rights Is a Religious Issue. After arguing that “Civil rights movements that appeal to religion succeed. Those that do not, fail.” Michaelson proceeds to outline ten religious reasons…
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Continue reading →: Manufacturing Morality: Can Ethics Be Engineered Into AI?This evening I came across a provocative but thought provoking comment by Robotics ethicist Wendell Wallach which suggests that AI research has the potential to scientize ethics, by making ethics subject to experimental verification: Successfully building a moral machine, however we might do so, is no proof of how human…
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Continue reading →: Ethnic Diversity and Decision MakingHow should decisions be made in ethnically diverse churches? This is a question I’ve been wrestling with lately with our church being in leadership transition. The problem being, I’ve found that attitudes towards participation in congregational government seem to vary across ethnic lines. This article on Understanding Congregational Government in…
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Continue reading →: Mythology, Media and the Future of HinduismHuffington Post launched an interesting article on Mythology, Media and the Future of Hinduism yesterday. Here’s an extract: “At present, Hindu mythology is under strain from two opposite tendencies that are not entirely unrelated to broader debates about religion and politics in India and the diaspora. There seems to be a “didactic”…
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Continue reading →: How to pray with Christians from other backgroundsHave you ever tried to pray with Christians from other cultures and different denominational subcultures? It can be difficult sometimes, but also rewarding. There are a few occasions that particularly stand out for me. One was a prayer circle where we had a number of Aussies and an Indian guy.…
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Continue reading →: High-context cultures and Low-context culturesHaving expanded on what I mean by glocal Christianity, I would now like to explain the differences between high-context cultures and low-context cultures and explore what this means for discipleship in globalised locales. But first, what the heck are high-context and low-context cultures? The term comes from anthropologist Edward T.…
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