Stewart Weaver

ST. PHILIP’S E-NEWSLETTER
2 JULY 2010

COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR

A bit later than usual today.
Your editor had to take his BBQ for a walk down the prom.  Don’t ask..

 DON’T FORGET:
9.30AM       Communion      
10.30AM    Service

 THOUGHT 

Don Cupitt is a theologian known for his radical views and his attempts to reconcile the modern world view and Christianity.  In a book written in 2008, The Meaning of the West: An Apologia for Secular Christianity, he writes the following:

 For many years I laboured to reconcile Church-Christianity and the modern world.  I now see that the critics were right, and it cannot be done.  Church-Christianity is gradually becoming more and more counter-cultural (a euphemism for ‘irrational’)… click here to read more

Why didn’t God create a better world?

A question posed by a member of the congregation.  Tempting as it is to respond with a Gallic shrug and say, ‘Ask God’, a response (not an answer!  too presumptuous!) is required.

Let’s look at the texts for the day.  A description of the Fall in Genesis 3.  Adam and Eve want to be like God: knowing good and evil, eternal life.  They take the fruit and eat.  Then, banishment from Eden and so much that follows stems from that fateful decision.  Original sin often is mentioned and sin is often seen as the focus on the self, cutting oneself off from God.  The middle letter in ‘sin’ is ‘I’.  Me first.

Genesis… click here to read more

Who made God?

Thus asked a member of the congregation and I wasn’t quite sure how to take it.  Was it serious?  Was it a bit flippant or tongue-in-cheek?

Let’s assume in the first instance that the person was serious.  In Christian theology God is unmade.  God simply is.  God existed before anything was and will be there when all things draw to a close.  Something like Aristotle’s unmoved mover. 

The question may have been an expression of perplexity.  We cannot conceive of anything like this.  We cannot imagine something, a being, an essence, God which exists for all time and all eternity.  Something that jut is.  It goes beyond one of my favourite illustrations.  The Hubble telescope has sent… click here to read more

ST. PHILIP’S E-NEWSLETTER

4 JUNE 2010 

COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR

Your weekly (well, most weeks) newsletter (well, more than news and far less than gossip) zooming (at least arriving) into your intray (metaphorically, of course) for information and fun and enjoyment (or at least one out of three). 

THOUGHT

Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher whose thinking on the conception of the self in the modern world and on secularity is both insightful and challenging.  He is a practising Catholic who is at home in the post-modern world, searching for ways of thinking through the depths of our faith and cultural heritages.  Here he has been talking about links across boundaries based ‘not on kinship but on the kind of… click here to read more

ST. PHILIP’S E-NEWSLETTER

21 MAY 2010 

COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR

Your editor caught a few bits of the opening ceremony of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Lots of pomp and circumstance.
Now that that’s over, there’s some work to do.
And lots of decisions to be made about ministers and buildings.

Perhaps we should combine the two: sell the ministers?

But who would buy them?

THOUGHT

Whilst visiting the General Assembly your editor succumbed to the clarion call of the book shop. 

However, your editor managed to limit purchases (retail therapy?) to one book.  It’s a new one by Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian priest in the US known for excellent sermons, and it caught… click here to read more

Can we balance Genesis and Darwin?

We continue our series in which the congregation poses questions for the minister and the minister attempts to respond.  The congregation quite clearly enjoy hearing the gears in the minister’s brain grinding.  Not to a halt, I hope.

However, the question posed above is merely the shorthand for the actual question posed by a member of St. Philip’s.  The actual question was this:

Could you marry the first Genesis with Darwin’s theory and second Genesis when God entered the hearts and souls and lives of his people?

‘Genre’ comes to mind immediately.  In what sense does Genesis pretend that it is scientific in the sense that we would define it?  Certainly those who wrote… click here to read more

ST. PHILIP’S E-NEWSLETTER

14 MAY 2010

COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR

Your editor wondered if this e-newsletter should be coloured red, yellow or blue this week.  What do you get when you mix a bit of yellow with blue?  Apart from a coalition cabinet, something a bit green.

A green revolution?

THOUGHT 

Your editor read something recently by a woman named Grace Davie, a sociologist who has done extensive work on religion in the contemporary European and North American context.  Within her work are such useful concepts as ‘believing without belonging’ (and for our Scandinavian friends, ‘belonging without believing’); vicarious religion, felt by many in Europe; and the shift from a culture of obligation to a culture of consumption.  Within a… click here to read more

The question posed by a member of the congregation this week:

What relevance does Christianity have in 2010?

Worldwide: one could suggest that worldwide it has huge relevance.  Christianity is the largest religion with the most adherents.  It is prominent in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the US.  World leaders have Christian backgrounds: Obama, Gordon Brown (son of the manse) and Tony Blair as immediate examples.  Charities such as Christian Aid, TearFund or Cafod do fantastic work around the world.  We could point to present day saints: Tutu, Bishop Romero to name a couple.

Let’s focus the question a bit more:

What relevance does Christianity have in Scotland and Western Europe in 2010?

A very fair question.  Recently the Church… click here to read more

ST. PHILIP’S E-NEWSLETTER

COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR

Your editor was up late collating the election results, cheering for the Liberal Conservative Democrats Labouring in Green Scottish Nationalist Socialist Fields, and though it was tempting to rest, it was thought best to send.

After all, it is better to send than receive.

Who voted this editor into office?

THOUGHT

Politics and religion are often uneasy partners.  And so it should be: part of our faith is speaking truth to power.  One of the most articulate exponents is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and your editor has always appreciated his comments.  Even if questioned or, more likely, only partially understood, they require thought.  Because education is an essential part of this… click here to read more