Challenging the neo-liberal paradigm

In a provocative short article in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, Phillip Blond, who has long been associated with the Cambridge-originated group of scholars exploring a post-modern ‘radical orthodoxy’ school of Christian thought and practice, argues that...

Seeking political hope beyond money and influence

Christmas and New Year may be a time for giving, but in the political world there’s little room for sentiment, and it has been taking that’s featured on the agenda in recent weeks. Given the noted commitment of party fixers to ‘risk management’, you’d have thought...

Christ is an unwanted gift for the religious

Romans 1.1-7; Psalm 80.1-8, 18-20; Matthew 1.18 – 25. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place this way… to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which...

Mundane politics, moral time bombs

At this time of year those of us who are Christians come to focus on the meaning of a particular birth, and in so doing find ourselves drawn further into the deep mystery, pain and possibility of living and dying on this beautiful but naked planet. Yet most of the...

Open secularism meets open religion

This is the text of a speech at an RSA lecture meeting in response to a new booklet from the Humanist Philosophers’ Group, The Case for Secularism: A Neutral State in an Open Society. ——————- As the director of a Christian...