Category - hope

Moving religion from harm to healing

Simon Barrow — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:40:43 +0100

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.

Hearing hope through the babble

Simon Barrow — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:47:31 +0100

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?

Land of hope and glory?

Simon Barrow — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:03:19 +0100

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.

Accounting for the hope within

Simon Barrow — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:04:21 +0000

Ekklesia's friends and associates are a varied bunch - Anabaptist, Catholic, Evangelical, liberal, Protestant, radical and more. Here Theo Hobson tells it like it is for him.

Resurrection is no Easter conjuring trick

Simon Barrow — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:41:09 +0000

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.

Being on the side of the crucified

Savi Hensman — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:25:47 +0000

In a reflection on faith and human rights for Easter, Savi Hensman argues that issues of life and death and the question about whether Christians are on the side of the powerful or the powerless go to the heart of the Gospel story.

On possibly being a political junkie

Johan Maurer — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:14:59 +0000

Actual sea changes in politics come rarely, but they do come, so don't let cynicism make you a functional reactionary, says Johan Maurer, who particularly wishes that the evangelical Christian community would be released from hero-worship and grasped by a biblical vision of social justice.

Baghdad bishop highlights plight of minorities in battered Iraq

Stephen Brown — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:50:12 +0000

Christians are fleeing Iraq and Christianity risks disappearing from the country, says a senior Baghdad archbishop, reiterating appeals made recently to Western churches to intercede with their governments about the Iraqis' plight.

Struggle, surprise and sainthood

Simon Barrow — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:58:07 +0000

Christian faith is about sustaining faith in face of the knowledge and reality of death, says Simon Barrow. The feasts of All Saints and All Souls put us in solidarity with a host of people who have struggled to see right prevail.

Tutu wants social division and injustice to burger off

staff writers — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:05:18 +0100

Getting together round the fire and having a good nosh and natter is a great way to combat prejudice and social division, reckons ex-Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has just become patron of South Africa's Barbecue (Braai) Day.