Religion that binds others with condemnation and superstition is far from the heart of the Gospel, says Simon Barrow. The church needs to face its arguments and seek to be a place of healing if it is to rediscover its global role.
Globalisation constructed as top-down control and the triumph of the powerful needs to be disrupted by a different and gentler logic, says Simon Barrow. But will we choose Pentecost or Babel?
Constant Christian claims of discrimination don't hold water, says Jonathan Bartley. They are used to excuse privilege, and evade the more demanding self-giving dynamic of the Gospel.
The notion and shape of 'the land' means many things to many people, as the contradictory responses to this 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel are showing. Simon Barrow looks at the relationship between rootedness and aspiration.
Gordon Brown's political appointees represent corporate influence and PR savvy, says Simon Barrow. But is all this smoothness good for the soul of politics?
The Gospel has been much talked about but practically sidelined under Christendom, says Jonathan Bartley. Rediscovering the radicalism of Jesus' message is vital to the recovery of a proper public role for Christian faith.
Britain counts itself as a mature democracy. But what really guarantees freedom and fairness, asks Simon Barrow, and how does the church relate to the will of the people in wider society?
The current media-propelled debates about God are mostly hopelessly out of touch with their own intense fallibility, says Simon Barrow. He tries to explain why God-talk will always be helpfully elusive if it is faithful to what it seeks to point to.
The church is running out of justifications for the various anomalies it clings onto, and it is just a matter of time before they go completely, says Jonathan Bartley. We cannot proclaim the message of God's liberating future by clinging to the past.
The modern temptation is to dismiss resurrection as fantasy or reduce it to spiritualised sophistry, says Simon Barrow. The shape of the core Christian hope is both more substantial and more subtle than that.
In Christian and biblical terms, good citizenship is not about flag-waving, says Simon Barrow. It is about the good practices and ways of organising our public lives which enable people to belong to one another across nation state boundaries.
Free market ideologues have used Fairtrade Fortnight to attack what they regard as counter-productive do-gooding, says Simon Barrow. But what does freedom mean in economic terms, and is fairness something to be left wholly to markets?
The annual Channel 4 Political Awards offer an entertaining entree to the world of parliamentary politics, says Simon Barrow. But an award to a controversial lobby group raises questions about how politics is conducted - not least by Christians.
The natural presumption of Establishment insulates the Church of England, says Simon Barrow. Even worse, it takes the opposite direction to Jesus, who rejected worldly power in the Temptation that Christians recall during Lent.
What would happen if just a small proportion of the £1.25 trillion in consumer debt we all owe on was defaulted upon or suddenly called in? Jonathan Bartley looks at economic revolutions, and revolutionizing economics from the standpoint of the Gospel.