Simon Says ...

So I did it:  All six books on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist have been read and reviewed.  The reading was fairly constant, the reviewing was a bit rushed towards the end! The reviews are here: Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain Healing Forgiveness Children in the Bible Unapologetic Dementia God's Presence I've thoroughly enjoyed it.  They are a set of excellent books, and not necessarily ones I would have read otherwise.  It leaves me in very good heart regarding the health of theology written in English. But on the Sunday of Greenbelt , one and only one of the books will be declared the winner.  So I thought I'd give it a go and pick the single title that I think should win. But first, something I have noticed from previous years shortlists.  For the past two shortlists, I have found bookmarks featuring all the shortlisted titles.  On both occasions, the book in the bottom left-hand place has won. This is 2011: ...

Review of Stephen Cherry, Healing Agony: Re-imagining Forgiveness (Continuum, 2012). The second of the shortlist for the Michael Ramsey Prize is Stephen Cherry’s Healing Agony .   This is a profound and hard won meditation on forgiveness.   The origins of the book are in his accompanying of a mother whose child had been murdered.   From this starting point, Cherry approaches a wide range of material on forgiveness.   Some is theological, some political, some psychological.   There are many stories of those who have faced the challenge of forgiveness.   Quite deliberately, Cherry sets out to bridge the experiential and the theoretical.   There are no simple and easy solutions on offer, as Cherry says ‘the truth about forgiveness is darker, more difficult and infinitely more agonizing than the myths about forgiveness which people, not least Christian people, prefer to promulgate’ (p. 179). Through the hard stories of ...