The story of how The Salvation Army became conservative is a complicated one, but one which needs to be understood. It is the story of how one of the world’s biggest social service providers left behind its radical roots. Setting the Scene The Salvation Army began with a radical commitment to evangelising the people who…
You, I, and everyone else in the world have a vocation. But what is a vocation? I’m not talking about some kind of preordained task that everyone has to fulfil. Instead, what I mean is that everyone has something they can do. Each person has a way they can be human that uniquely participates in…
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Bees and Honey are a theme for salvation which run throughout the Bible. There are over 60 references to them. At times they symbolise the bounty and blessing of God, at other times they are a warning of God’s judgement. Ultimately, they are a reminder of the sweetness of God’s kingdom. Judgemental Wasps The first…
I think we sometimes understand our Christian faith as a battle rather than a relationship. Our language and songs often emphasise our ongoing battle against temptation, to overcome sin, and to fight onwards to reach our destination. But sometimes, we emphasise the combative elements of our faith at the expense of the roots of our…
The Bible as we know it today was not written by the original authors. The words are the same, subject to translation and transmission, but the way we read them is very different. When the Bible was written, it was not collected into one book. The individual books of the Bible did not have chapters…
A question that Christians have been asking for two thousand years is to what degree a Christian must obey the government. There has not been a consistent answer, and there is still a broad disagreement over the question. But of course, like everything in life, the question itself is not actually as simple as it…
What does it mean to ‘render unto Caesar’? Is it more than just whether a Christian should pay their taxes? Aside from the King James language, the phrase has often been taken to mean all kinds of different things which, I suggest, are not in the original meaning. This blog post is trying to get…
Christianity is always political. It should be separated from political parties, and the church’s leaders should not also be the state’s leaders, nor should the state lead the church. But, at no point is Christianity apolitical. The Church, and it’s representatives, must and should hold political power to account. The sermon given by Bishop Budde…
In Luke 19, we find the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, the tax collector. This is one of those stories that many of us learned as children. Zacchaeus is a short man who wants to see Jesus, and so climbs a tree. Jesus sees him, calls to him, has dinner with the little reprobate, and…