Happy New Year!

By Rod Benson Happy New Year to all our listeners!  On this first Sunday of 2013, hereโ€™s a prayer from one of the worldโ€™s great Christian leaders, the Reverend Billy Graham, published in The Saturday Evening Post: Our Father and our God, as we stand at the beginning of this new year we confess our need …

The moral case for sustainability

By Rod Benson A recent study has found that encouraging people to adopt ecologically sustainable behaviours based on the moral rather than economic case may be more effective. The Guardian newspaper reports that in an experiment conducted at a Dutch petrol station, researchers compared two messages aimed at persuading people to get their tyre pressure checked …

Why theological method matters

Stanley J. Grenz, around the time of his appointment to Baylor University's Truett Seminary in 2002. Review of Brian Harris, "Why method matters: Insights from the theological method of Stanley J. Grenz," Crucible 2 (1), Nov 2009. Available here. Harris claims that evangelical Christians often view theological method as "the death of spiritual passion, and …

Reflections on theological formation (part 1)

Gospel Hall, 14 Lindsay Street, Bundamba, Ipswich, 1991. I was baptised here in 1985. I grew up in close proximity to fundamentalist and conservative evangelical churches; my primary theological degree is from a conservative evangelical theological college; and I have been employed since 1994 by Baptist churches embracing a conservative evangelical identity.  So it goes …

The Labyrinth of the World

Labyrinth beach art, Scotland. John Comenius (1592-1670) was a renowned Czech educator, and author of one of the most significant works of Czech literature, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart (1623), republished in the series โ€œClassics of Western Spirituality.โ€[1]  Its themes are fellowship of the believer with Christ, and the …