Category: Theology
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‘The Referee’s a W*nker!’ | Sport and Divine Violence
April is the cruelest month… Easter always coincides with the culmination of the football season in Europe, and a number of things have been leading me to think about the nature of sports and games and their connection to aggression and violence. Enlightened religion is very big on peace and harmony, but I’ve begun to question…
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Religion as Theatre :: A Willing Suspension of Disbelief
I’m reading Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare at the moment. It’s a brilliant book, grounding the often mythic character of the bard into his real world of Elizabethan London. I’d highly recommend it. One quote that jumped out at me the other day in within a discussion of Anthony and…
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Happy New Year you fools! | Dirt and Regeneration
Happy new year? Well, only if you’re from the Middle Ages, when the traditional time to celebrate new year was from around 25th March for a week. It’s thought that this might be the background to April Fool’s Day: when ‘modern’ types started celebrating new year according to the Julian calendar, they made fun of…
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If you don’t die to self, then Heaven will be Hell
I’ve just finished reading Rob Bell’s book Love Wins – and will be reviewing it for Third Way magazine (ie, buy that too, it’s not this post, I promise). It’s a really great book; I highly recommend it. It’s very very readable – which, for some, may be read as a euphemism for ‘dumbed down’…
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The Moon is the Beginning of all Religion
On Saturday evening the moon was the fullest and closest it has been for twenty years. We got lucky in London – the sky was perfectly clear and the colours were quite incredible. Someone got a fabulous shot at Glastonbury Tor too, which has been doing the rounds. I have a hunch that the moon…
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Crushed Testicles | Living in Theological Fear
I’ve just been reading a post by Frank Viola over on his blog, where he’s put up an interview with Paul Copan, author of ‘Is God a Moral Monster.‘ Part of it really made me sit up and think: Question: Deuteronomy 23:1 says, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut…