“During the 1939-45 War, in the darkest days of Russia when the German army was within a few miles of both Leningrad and Moscow, Stalin did a most extraordinary thing.
The Genius of your Church
Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time for everything under the sun.
Birth, death, planting, healing, mourning, dancing, etc.
There are times and seasons in our lives, and in the life of our church.
There are seasons for this or that.
A permanent this or that is never a good idea.
For ministry and mission can never be standardised and eternalised.
The Spirit blows where it wants to.
The Churches in Revelation all had their folly and foibles.
The genius of the Ephesus church was her patient endurance.
Its sublime rejection of all that is evil.
Its ability to test and consider those who are true or false. Etc.
That was their genius.
Uncle Frank Matcham
Below is an article from Famous Devon Figures on my great, great, great, great uncle Frank:
FRANK MATCHAM – Supreme in Theatre Design
Second of nine children of Elizabeth and Charles, was born at East Street, Newton Abbot on November 22, 1854.
His father, who was manager of the Torquay Brewery in Warren Place and the Malt House in Temperance(!) Street, Torquay, eventually moved the family to Torquay in 1864, after which Frank attended school at Babbacombe before leaving to become an office boy with a local architect.
It was Mrs Mary Bridgman, who owned many public houses in Torquay including the Maritime, the Steampacket, the Railway Inn and the Malt house, that first employed Charles Matcham.
Mary’s son, George Soudon Bridgman, ran a local architect’s and surveyor’s office in the town so perhaps it was not surprising that 14-year old Frank should find himself working at the Bridgman office.
Certainly this was where his interest in architecture was born. The young Bridgman, at only 23, was already leaving his mark on Paignton, having become involved with designs for the water supply, a school, many public buildings, and even the rebuilding of Teignmouth Pier.
Yes to Science; No to Scientism
There is a lot of confusion in the debate between science and religion (I use the term “religion” here as it relates to Christianity).
Science is a wonderful, glorious thing. But scientism is the troll under the bridge that just loves to prance around when it can. Science is a way of knowing the physical and natural world – observe, measure, hypothesise, experiment, drawing conclusions and verification of the conclusions – and has enormously enriched and refined our knowledge of the world. As Spandau Ballet so memorably sang in True, “I know, I know, I know this much is true.” And this is the point – science is a search; a search for what is true; it is a search for Truth itself. In this sense, it is, as G. K. Chesterton noted, “[Physical science] is either infallible or it is false.” He adds with his usual razor wit, to mix these up is to confuse the role of a medical doctor who tells us that this or that food will kill us; but it is for the philosopher to say whether I ought to be killed.
Scientism is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge, and this can take the forms of a strong or weak scientism. The “strong scientism” is seen no more clearly seen than in the current debates around religion and science, especially from the fiercest critics of religion – the “New Atheists” (of whom there is nothing new at all), and which Alistair McGrath reminds us, that scientism is not only alive and well, but has “become the official ideology of the movement.” John Crosby writes, “Scientism takes the paradigm for knowledge and truth to be the knowledge and truth gained by the natural sciences. To the extent that philosophy or literature or religion is not amenable to the methods of natural science, it is treated as a sub-standard form of knowledge” (A. J. Ayer and his ‘Vienna Circle’ pals in the 20’s and 30’s and their logical positivism are foundational to the present situation). It is quite perverse though how this has happened! It creates a false distinction, as though one has to choose between science and nonsense, which is nonsense! Scientism is a shame and a sham! Nothing but an epistemological reductionism masquerading as an enlightened, open-minded, free-thinking and progressive world-view.
This was exemplified in a 2019 science and religion debate between John Lennox and Peter Atkins over at Unbelievable? These two are extremely clever men, but one is a Christian (Lennox) and the other an atheist. The problem is that despite Lennox being a Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, Atkins, with quite staggering arrogance, still dismisses Lennox’s Christian faith as immature, telling him and all other Christian/religious people to “grow up!” It is this kind of allegiance to a scientific-only worldview (i.e. scientism) that even makes Richard Dawkins look sluggish. Atkins made some good and interesting points, but overall, he only served to prove one thing: that he is so deeply locked into an epistemological method of scientism, with its great reduction and dismissal of any other form of knowing, that he does, in fact, look silly. He betrays the almost universal consensus that there are non-scientific ways to knowing, as the famous atheist Bertrand Russell once admitted, in acknowledging that mathematics (of which Lennox is a professor!), is a doorway to religion and mysticism.
I do wish Atkins could argue properly with Lennox, rather like the early 20th century debates between Christian G. K. Chesterton and atheist George Bernard Shaw, who could properly argue but still hold a meaningful friendship. Atkins despises Lennox and all other Christians, and it is at this point the meaningfulness of debate breaks down. Once, when preparing for a debate, a rotund Chesterton said to a skinny Shaw, “To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in England!” Shaw replied, “And to look at you, anyone would think you caused it!” Sadly, this kind of banter born out of mature relating and friendship is lost to many who hold to scientism.
God of Violence Yesterday, God of Love Today? A review
This review in the Baptist Times of Helen Paynter‘s latest book is a comprehensive introduction for those new to the questions it explores; will bring new insights to those familiar with the subject:
Review by Peter King
Over the past few years I have become increasingly troubled by the violence in the Bible. Although this is a subject we don’t often talk about in our churches, I know from a number of informal conversations that many churchgoers (and others) have questions they would like to explore on these issues.
Jurgen Moltmann on Complexity, Compromise and Concession in Society
Three years ago I published a post as I reflected on British politics in light of the Brexit phenomena; how words are a power-play and how extreme caution and wisdom is needed to avoid what it turns out, we have not avoided – a fractured country and an advanced political system that doesn’t know what to do.
As I write this, the UK is holding European elections, elections we never thought we’d have to partake, in light of the Brexit referendum. I’m not interested in saying this or that about Brexit – good and true arguments can be made by both sides, but no-one is really listening to each other anymore, at least not in any substantive way.
What I am interested in, is not so much the specific thing that is a situational political event that our lives are living through, but a much wider fact of what it means to be a human being in a community/society like this:
I recently read these words of Jurgen Moltmann in his book ‘Man’ (p.96-97) where I was reminded that any human politics (Brexit included) form part of the much wider and deeper matrix and fabric of humanity:
The Depleted Self – how narcissism is linked to bureaucracy
I am currently continuing my reading on the writings of former Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary Donald Capps. I hope to write a more detailed review of the book ‘The Depleted Self – sin in a narcissistic age’, but want to write something here that struck me about his one of his comments on psychotherapeutic literature relating to narcissism.
Firstly, narcissism is far more than mere obsessional “self-love”, following Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection, leading to his own suicide. Capps very helpfully takes the reader through a maze of discovery drawing on contemporary theories, and critiques the Church for failing to distinguish between the old cultural value of guilt and the contemporary ones of shame, a cause itself of anxiety. Theologians and Churches have rather denounced “narcissistic behaviour” and being locked into a “guilt” framework have thus focused on moralistic remedies that address superficial behaviours, and not underlying ontological causes and conditions.
