Hot takes, hobby horses, and misguided claims to the moral high ground
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Neither Here nor There
Driving from my parents’ home to mine takes me from a region known in Thomas Hardy novels as ‘Outer Wessex’ in the extreme west to one that is too far east to appear on his map. This distance which encompasses the entire landscape of 14 novels takes me a mere 2 and a quarter hours.…
On not knowing the songs
The Lord Jesus is a doctor to the sick, a friend to the outcast. His gospel is food to the hungry and life to the dead. Would the same Lord reserve the joy of singing for the happy and the contented and the certain?
Discovering the counties
Holidaying in various areas of the north of England this summer I realised how much of the country of my birth is just not at all familiar to me. Though I’ve lived here for 24 years in 6 different places, there’s so much here I’ve never seen. This isn’t quite a problem, but I do…
On being dark and cold
The sound of God in my ears is an occasion of great joy, which is for now ‘inexpressible’. There is blessing in the longing and the looking. We remember that at Advent too, but in Lent as we trace His footsteps through the desert and the parched land, we draw comfort in the confidence that…
We are not worthy of the potato
Like Mephibosheth, Christians will dine at the King’s table out of an overflow of his kindness. Every earthly meal is a mere foretaste.
The path less travelled by
Cultural institutions once beckoned ‘tolle, lege’; now, they wave ‘tl;dr’.
Home, rejoicing
Of course we rejoice to return there, but importantly home is also where (wherever?) others rejoice to receive us.
Birdsong and burgers
‘You see that very green field over there?’ she says, pointing at it with her finger. ‘I hate to point the finger, but that’s my neighbour’s field. It’s just rye grass, which makes it look a lovely colour, but it doesn’t support an insect population, which means the songbirds have nothing to eat.’
On Polemical Reading
Recently a friend lent me a book he knew I’d disagree with: Peter J. Leithart’s Defending Constantine. I enjoyed it a lot, not least because of Leithart’s vibrant and forceful prose. As I read, and wondered how much it should change my opinions, some thoughts I’ve had for a while began to solidify in my…
Timing the Reads?
What Augustine found in the Neoplatonists I have glimpsed in the New Statesman, but like him I do not find there anyone who says ‘Come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’
The nth greatest story ever told
H. Richard Niebuhr famously summarised liberal theology as describing how ‘a God without wrath brought men [sic] without sin into a kingdom without judgement by the ministration of a Christ without a cross.’ I have no interest in engaging in theological polemic here. I raise this rather because Flynn’s narrative arc is the other way…
Care, Ovaltine, and Multiplicity
Carl R. Trueman’s new book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, is a conservative thinker’s attempt to understand how western society’s attitudes towards sex have shifted so much, so quickly. Trueman is careful to avoid diatribe – this is not a book about how far ‘off-base’ modern society has drifted, or one prone…
Exhaust fumes, earwax, and ecclesiology
Who are you? More precisely, what is it that constitutes you? This is the question that lies behind Daisy Hildyard’s elegant and probing The Second Body, published by the stylishly minimalist Fitzcarraldo Editions. We’re generally pretty confident to call our physical bodies part of ourselves even though they’re inhabited by a huge array of micro-organisms,…
Angry Pragmatism
The Coronavirus crisis has elevated a range of things in the popular consciousness – that song from Tangled, professional football in Belarus (which was, for a while, the only live sport available), Rishi Sunak’s startling good looks, and, more seriously, social issues from unequal access to education to the disproportionate impact of the virus on…
Beyond preference: a response to Daniel Ooi
Daniel’s excellent blog is full of absolutely delightful reads and I can’t recommend them enough. It’s very refreshing to read reflections on economics of religion written by a fellow Christian economist. Daniel and I are on very different pages as far as economics goes, though, and there are a few things in particular on which…
No Such Thing as a Free Thinker
If Rory Stewart is remembered for one thing, it will be the effort he spent in disabusing people of the idea that a No Deal Brexit was a thing – an ‘Anglo-Saxon fact’. As an idea, he argued, it had gained a lot of traction as an ostensible solution to a keenly felt problem. But…
Male bias and female ‘otherness’ for (crash test) dummies
Who is the reigning Olympic 100m champion? I suspect that readers will know the answer immediately, even instinctively. There is, though, a second correct answer to this question – Elaine Thompson. This is more than just a snarky bit of pedantry. A question as simple as the one I posed above should obviously scream ‘two…
The Making of the Western Minds
Readers unconnected to the Twittersphere may be unaware that, in a recent furore around eugenics, hardened New Atheist Richard Dawkins concluded “we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it.” A quirk, perhaps, of language – Dawkins was hardly begging a God in whom he does…
Trade, Union, and Compatibility: A response to Silenus
https://silenus.home.blog/2020/02/03/the-philosophical-case-against-the-eu/?fbclid=IwAR0KU1TBvM9puY8oJHR6lF0QX5H025kE7UV_pfcRD6z4kBMLQU2FoJocqOQ In the article linked above, Jacob Anderson makes a fourfold philosophical case for leaving the EU. I respond here to each of his points in turn. 1. ‘I don’t want a united Europe’ Jacob’s argument here is very simple: the only thing that unites Europe is ‘the legacy of Christendom’. Other things divide it…
Offence and the Gospel
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I…
Welcome to Yikeiatry
After years of good intent with no fruit, I’ve decided finally to broadcast my inner thoughts to the world. I intend to keep this varied, so hopefully you’ll find all sorts of thoughts on Christian witness and practice, political economy, rave reviews of the New Statesman, cricket, music, and so on. If you have a…
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