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Review of Frances Young, God’s Presence: A Contemporary Recapitulation of Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The final book on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist for 2016 is a work of systematic theology.   Frances Young is a very distinguished theologian.   Her writing on the New Testament and early Christian theology is well known and is part of a corpus of writing that dates back to the 1970s.   This book is an integration of all the different concerns of her theological life, as an academic, a theologian of both the New Testament and the early church, a Methodist, a preacher and the mother of a profoundly disabled child, Arthur.   All of these different aspects to Young’s work and writing inform and shape this book. That theme of integration is also the way in which Young approaches the topics of her theology in this book.   In each chapter she offers a prelude of snapshots, showing the way the subjec...

Review of John Swinton, Dementia: Living in the Memories of God (SCM, 2012). I confess that I approached this book with trepidation.   What I feared was a well-meaning but dull account of the symptoms and basic pastoral needs of those with dementia – worthy, but not very interesting.   What I found was quite different.   This book is a mixture of deep theological accounts of what it means to be human, and important reflections on love and living.   All of this is explored and brought to the surface in Swinton’s reflections on dementia.   All has repercussions far beyond caring for those with that illness.   This is another truly excellent book on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist. Swinton starts with a question of identity.   He wants to be loved and cared for, just for who he is.   So the question becomes who is he?   This is, of course, compounded by issues around dementia, where people lose memories, a...

--> Review of Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense (Faber and Faber, 2012). This is the only book on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist that I had already read.   In the spirit of the enterprise, I re-read it so that I could review it alongside its fellow nominees.   I enjoyed it as much on the second read as I had on the first. This is, quite simply, an excellent book.   It is very well written, by turns profound, insightful, irreverent and funny.   Spufford’s conceit is to write a book to explain why he is weird enough to go to church.   In order to do that, he offers an account of faith that draws on and speaks to contemporary culture.   There are lots of references to popular culture in here.   Don’t skip the footnotes, they are where some of his best, funniest and most barbed comments are to be found.   Take this one as an example: ‘Everyone...

Review of Anne Richards, Children in the Bible: A Fresh Approach (SPCK, 2013). This is the third of the shortlist for the Michael RamseyPrize , and wants to provide a new approach to working with children in the church.   She starts by reproducing a child’s question about God – ‘Who invented you?’   It’s an excellent question, which begs very deep and complex philosophical and theological issues.   Richards also offer’s the reply given by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.   She commends Williams for his ‘simplicity, generosity and directness’ (p. ix).   That the Archbishop takes the child’s question so seriously, is important.   That he tried to respond in a way that the child could engage with is equally important. Richard’s contention is that ‘children are worth God’s special attention and … are deeply woven into God’s purposes’ (p. xi).   In particular, she finds that God finds children ‘worthy o...

Review of Sarah Coakley, The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God (Bloomsbury, 2015). This is the best and most challenging book I read in the whole of 2015 (at the time of writing there are 16 days left in which I might read something better!).   It is not always easy to read, but that is not a reflection on the excellent writing.   Rather it is because the subject matter is important, and because it makes the reader engage with things within their own lives.   It tackles issues that are dividing the church with a spiritual seriousness and depth that is all too often lacking.   Whilst it will, inevitably, be read as a contribution to the debates that afflict the church, it should be read as a significant work of spiritual theology in its own right.   In her Introduction, Coakley tells us that she wants to retrieve asceticism as a vital part of Christian life and theology.   This has implications for the...

Yesterday was Human Rights Day (and the computer swallowed my post) so here is a Friday Five on human rights. Human Rights are rooted for me in Genesis 1.27 which proclaims that all are made in the image of God.  It is a remarkable insight - Jewish slaves in exile proclaiming that all people (including their persecutors) are to be valued just because they are human.              Amnesty International has been part of my life since I was 15.  Their simple but personal way of writing on behalf of prisoners of conscience is an amazing thing to do.  Why not take a simple action today? Human Rights are inconvenient, but only in so far as human beings are inconvenient.  Those who want to be exempt from them because they are inconvenient should be watched closely.  That includes the Church of England, and the Conservative Government. Human Rights came home even more strongly to me as the second G...

A Sermon for Trinity 12. Matthew 18.15-20 Let me start with a little quiz.   It’s very easy, simply try and tell whether these statements are true or false.   1.      Christianity is about following the teaching of Jesus. 2.      Christianity is based on God’s love for us, seen in Jesus, overflowing into how we treat other people. 3.      For the whole history of Christianity, Christians have never disagreed with one another. I’m glad you laughed! Christians do, in fact, disagree.   They have done since the very beginning of the Church.   The first major disagreement comes at the beginning of the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, although there are lies creeping already at the beginning of the fifth chapter.   And of course, there are many stories in the Gospels of the 12 disciples, the pillars of the church, disagreeing with one another (normally about...

A sermon for Trinity 1. Jeremiah 20.7-13 ; Matthew 10.24-39 Meet Jeremiah.   Jeremiah comes from Jerusalem and he is a prophet.   He was called as a prophet when he was a boy, or at least a young man.   As his calling, Jeremiah speaks God’s word to the people of Israel, whether they want to hear it or not.   Mostly they don’t.   That’s probably because mostly Jeremiah’s message is one of doom and destruction.   He warns the people that they need to change their ways and return to God’s ways, and if they don’t then God will bring destruction on Jerusalem.   Jeremiah is not popular.   And today, Jeremiah is fed up.   He knows that he is hated.   He doesn’t particularly like speaking words of destruction and doom.   So today Jeremiah is fed up, perhaps a little depressed – after all, speaking doom and destruction at all times has to have some effect?   This is the effect of his calling. Jere...

A Sermon for Evensong   Proverbs 8.1,22-31 ; Revelation 4 Some words from our second Lesson this evening: “Day and night without ceasing they sing”. In the parish church I served before coming here, we hosted a day for the Royal School of Church Music.   It was a great deal of fun, and a good lot of singing went on.   At the end of the day, perusing the visitors book, I found that one of the children attending the day had written “this is a beautiful church and a very good place to sin”.   Perhaps this is a good point to say to our visiting choir that we’ve enjoyed having you very much and we hope that you have found this to be a good place to sin g !   If you’ve found it to be a good place for anything else, then so much the better.             Singing is a very important part of Christian life.   There are very few places in our society that we come together...

Doctor Who at 50.   A celebration at Evensong.   “It all started out as a mild curiosity in the junkyard, and now it’s turned out to be quite a spirit of adventure.” [1]   Such was the verdict of the First Doctor on his travels.   And the Doctor has travelled a long way since then.   On Saturday 23 rd November, 1963 a new television programme began.   The first regular programming after the disruptions to schedules caused by the assassination of President John F Kennedy.   Designed to fill the space between the football results and the evening’s entertainment it tried to engage the whole family.   As such, although it has always been written with children in mind, it has always been produced by the BBC’s adult drama department.   That show is of course Doctor Who, and this week it marks its Golden anniversary with a feature length story, simulcast around the world. The best place to watch it in Derby will be at ...