Monthly Archives: October 2008

Random thoughts on Obama

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Firstly, something via Kyle:

That’s all.

God and human rights

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Andrew Brown has a new blog on the Guardian. Go and discuss this with him:
“if there is no God, then we cannot be made in his image, and we cannot be his children: in that case there is nothing which it is wrong to do to a human being simply because they are a human being. Note: this isn’t a claim that no atheists can believe in human rights. That would be absurd. It is a claim that the atheist who believes in human rights must believe that they are no more than a socially constructed reality and that if no one believed in them, they would not exist. Otherwise, Rowan would say, if you reach to some standard of humanity independent of actual humans, you are reaching for something that makes sense of a lot of talk about God.”
(He’s channelling Rowan)

Five influences

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As tagged by Steve, I need “to list five people, living or dead, who influenced my spiritual path in a positive way.” I’ll ignore family in this and, like Steve, include someone I only know from their writings.

1. David Dixon, a teacher when I was at sixth form, also a lay reader in the CofE, who first made me question my atheism;
2. Trevor Williams, chaplain at my Oxford College, who really did the dismantling and helped me to feel intellectually comfortable with the faith;
3. Brother Bernard SSF, who was my spiritual director for many years and really sorted me out and set me on the right path;
4. Wittgenstein – understanding him allowed my rational and faith sides to integrate more or less successfully; and
5. The various evangelicals in the Mersea benefice (it would be invidious to pick out only one) as I have definitely ‘broadened out’ in my theology since arriving here. I don’t think I’ve abandoned anything I previously believed – I’m still basically an Anglo-Catholic sacramentalist – but I’m much more comfortable with evangelical language than I ever expected to be. And that’s a good thing.

I tag: Jon, Paul, Philip, Tom, Joe, Byron, John, Tim A, Tim C and Tim G.

Meme on ‘why do clergy blog?’

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Via Jon.

1. Why do you blog?
Answered here.

2. What do you blog?
Photos of the beach; various theological topics – presently arguing with atheists; indulging my Sarah Palin obsession; short film reviews, lots of random stuff especially if it involves general geekery.

3. When do you blog? (Is it every day, once a month etc)
I tend to post a picture of the beach every morning, and then something else whenever I get the chance.

4. Where do you blog? (From home, office, anywhere)
From my study.

5. Who are you blogging for? (Your intended audience)
See #1.

6. Do you publicise your blogs?
Not really. There’s a link from the parish website.

7. Do you check your blogs for comments? if yes – do you find the comments helpful?
Don’t really understand this question – comments get sent directly to my e-mail account, so I ‘check’ them whenever I check my e-mail. And I find all comments wonderful, even the ones that call me rude names.

8. By blogging Sermons etc – do you feel that this makes the time spent in preparation more worthwhile by being able to reproduce it and hopefully to wider audience?
I have blogged a few sermons, when I’ve felt there was a particular point in them worth sharing, but I’ve gone off the idea as I don’t feel sermons translate very well into the different medium of blogging. These days I’d just tend to extract whatever I thought the interesting idea was and write it up differently. This may happen more in future as we have changed how we are doing house groups in the parish, and I plan to produce more detailed notes. Haven’t had a chance to do much of that yet…