.... preachers as stand-up comics, cool video link-ups, and those omnipresent beautiful people? They are simply not entertaining enough. End of story.

The recent comments by kidnap/rape victim Elizabeth Smart on how her religious upbringing in an 'abstinence only' environment made her ordeal that much worse and also factored in to her inability to break free are worthy of pause for thought. A number of things come to mind. First, whatever one's...

I see the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch is in a spot of trouble. Seems he has been taking a bit too much advice from cutting-edge church planters and conference organisers .

An early draft of my recent review of Thomas Albert Howard's brilliant monograph on European perceptions of American religion contained a paragraph which I simply could not fold in to the whole in an elegant manner. As a result, I removed it; but, as it speaks to the status of a philosopher who...

Sadly, at my church we cannot offer the kind of culturally transforming ministry that is available elsewhere (as an aside, it is not the ink of the gentleman on the right which worries me; it is his earlobes. What on earth has happened to them? Did it, like some of the later music of The Clash ,...

Over at the increasingly promising and impressive online journal, Second Nature , there is a reprint of an article by Arthur Hunt on the influence of Neil Postman on evangelicals. The Alliance receives a thoughtful mention. Hunt differentiates between evangelicals broadly considered and a tiny...

After a depressing afternoon hearing about the upfront speaker-fee schedules of men with well-paying day jobs, along with the need to pay for their personal assistants/wives/whatever to travel with them when away from home for a couple of nights, it was good to go back home, feel appropriately...

Over at TeamPyro , Dan 'Dispo' Phillips and Frank 'Sollozzo' Turk have posted a couple of very good reflections on a recent post over at The Gospel Coalition on the indicative/imperative thing (and by inference sanctification). Their observations provoke two thoughts: First, this is not really a...

A few more odds and ends. Derek Thomas is interviewed on the latest Mortification of Spin , where he talks about potential family connections to Pelagius and Max Boyce and, on a more serious note, Calvin's sermons on Job, his own theology of preaching, and pastoring in the context of Northern Irish...

This month, I thought I would use this column to indulge in a little thought experiment. What, I wonder, if the conservative evangelical church world came to be dominated by a symbiotic network of high-profile and charismatic leaders (think more Weber than Wimber), media organisations, and big...

As Jeremy is currently back in the seventeenth century consulting with an apothecary about vocal elixirs for godly preachers and Paul has been sent away to learn English as a foreign language and take a TOEFL test before being allowed back, it falls to me to resurrect the blog this week.I hope to...

Yesterday I found myself in conversation with a student who is currently studying at an august Ivy League institution. This individual is one of the university's sportsmen who would probably acknowledge that, good as his grades at high school had been, he achieved his place because of physical...

James Bannerman is distinguished for two things. First, his lecture notes, published as The Church of Christ are the definitive work on ecclesiology. These have been helpfully digested by Ryan McGraw and are now available on Amazon for $1:50 but will be free between Thursday and Monday this week...

I confess complete ignorance of exactly what "M.M.A. fighting" is, though it seems safe to assume that (to use the idiom of my homeland) it just isn't cricket. Nevertheless, I appreciate having this news item brought to my attention by a student aficionado of the ethical anomalies of contemporary...

DelBoy, our esteemed, respected but silent editor, has been away this week in search of the perfect pair of skinny jeans to attractionalise his missionality (or missionalise his attractionality -- he will have to advise on proper usage). Trust me, Del, however skinny those jeans of yours and...

Having mocked Christopher Hill for his reaction to Mrs Thatcher's resignation, I find that he was actually moderate compared to some responses today. Reports on the blog of that right-on source of all world truth, The Guardian , describe scenes of widespread celebration at the death of a frail old...

"She is fallen! She is fallen! Babylon the Great is fallen!" These were the words shouted by historian, Christopher Hill, as he ran across the quad of his Oxford college in 1990, on hearing that Mrs. Thatcher had resigned. His studies of religious radicalism and his dialectical materialism exploded...

It is reported that a campaign is underway to remove from the campus of George Washington University a Roman Catholic priest who has had the temerity to..... uphold his church's teaching on homosexuality and abortion. The saga is recounted here . It would be relatively easy at this point to...

Manchester police have decided to categorise attacks on punks and goths as hate crimes . For anyone who thinks that identity politics has gone mad over recent years, this should come as a strong piece of counter-evidence. It is good to see the law once again recognising the need to support more...

This week's Spectator carries an interview with the distinguished Reformation scholar, Diarmaid MacCulloch. Professor MacCulloch is perhaps the greatest living historian of the English Reformation, if not Christianity as a whole ( pace the article, he is head and shoulders above David Starkey) and...

Don't miss Louis Markos' review of the new book of fiction by wordsmith, scourge of the new atheists and one of the most stimulating writers/theologians around, David Bentley Hart.

As a postscript to my previous post on the Archbishop of Westminster's view of the significance of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, here is a rather more perceptive Roman Catholic assessment from the pen of George Weigel: "[Tony] Blair's recounting of the death and funeral of Diana, Princess...

Second Nature is a new online journal, launched today, dedicated to critical thinking about the impact of modern media on habits of thought and behaviour, particularly in the religious sphere. The editorial board includes an encouragingly eclectic group of thinkers, including the inimitable...

A Ref21 reader has brought to my attention this story in which Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster, claims that the explosion of emotion surrounding the death in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, marked the moment at which the English Reformation died and...