Here goes...

The past few months have been a bruising one for our country. The debate over our continued membership of the EU has divided opinions significantly, just as it did in Scotland over the independence debate. The tone of the debate has been unpleasant, and will leave a damaged government, a fractious nation, and contribute to a dangerous trend of a more polarized world. While the USA flirts with a version of politics that threatens global stability, the last thing we need here is an angry Britain, with hurts that may take years to heal. The main lines of the debate have been gone over many times. Each side has its own stronger points – the economic arguments seem to lean towards the Remain campaign, with most financial analysts and commentators arguing for the merits of staying in. Immigration however remains a significant concern for many people, especially perhaps those whose wages might be undercut by immigrants from other European countries who are willing to work for a lower wag...

I have just been in on a series of fascinating discussions on the future of theology in Yale Divinity School in the USA. The premise we were there to discuss was that theology needs to re-think itself as the ‘secular’ world no longer listened to theologians (they don’t produce anything useful, scientifically verifiable or economically profitable) and church didn’t much either (churches being more interested in pragmatic leadership training and no longer read theological books). As a result, theology has tended to drift into the descriptive mode of ‘religious studies’ and lost interest in God. The suggestion was that theology should ultimately be about ‘articulating visions of human flourishing’. It was a fascinating 24 hours. Broadly speaking the thesis held up. Guilty as charged, the theological guild does often come over as talking to itself in ever-smaller circles about ever more abstruse subjects, and did need a new vision of itself and its purpose. The idea that we live in ...