Christianity is quite simple in the end. I think it has two stages:
1. You are convicted of your sin;
2. You accept the grace of God.
The consequence of these two things is ‘love, joy, peace, gentleness, self-control…’ etc etc. In particular, judgement of one another is abandoned – it is left up to God.

And obviously these things are more or less embedded in us, and we make mistakes etc etc. But this is the ‘road map for holiness’.

Fundamentalism is formed when either of these two stages are ignored or belittled.

When 1. is put aside, then the self-righteous Pharisee is formed, and there are judgements left, right and centre.
When 2. is ignored, you get the fear-driven apocalypticism, like Left Behind, and you get the semi-fascist imposition of order, to prevent sin from happening.

For the last six weeks or so, one of my favourite blogs has seemed to be down (this one) – I just assumed the author was off doing some particularly intense research. Turns out it was just a computer bug of some sort, so I’ve just spent a little while catching up, and laughing out loud in long overdue fashion. I want to be Spider Jerusalem, but I think this man succeeds. See this one in particular…

Great book review here about ‘crunchy cons’:

Dreher spends a good portion of his book criticizing the holy reverence of the corporate-controlled “free market” that has hijacked modern conservatism, often at the expense of families, local communities, and the environment — three priorities conservatives like Russell Kirk, whom the author evokes as one of his biggest philosophical influences, used to place the foremost value on: “The fundamental difference between crunchy conservatives and mainstream conservatives has to do with the place of the free market in society. Crunchy cons believe in the free market as an imperfect but just and effective means to the good society. When the market harms the good society, it should be reined in.”

That’s exactly what last week’s Learning Church was arguing (not posted yet).

The weekend fisher has posted a very helpful list of Scriptural quotations, on a theme close to my heart: here.