Faith

“Religion poisons everything.  As well as a menace to civilization, it has become a threat to human survival … As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won attainments [I am touching upon].  Religion poisons everything.”

Thus Christopher Hitchens, the British-born commentator and polemicist, in his immensely readable and provocative book published last year entitled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.  What are we to make of such a trenchant claim?  Are we to put it down to the nature of the polemicist’s art, staking out the most extreme opposing ground possible and slug it out from there?  Or should we take him at his word?  Is he right?  I want to start by suggesting that he is not right, obviously.  Religion, like sex or food, can be used or abused.  We don’t find anyone in Austria calling for the state to legislate its way into the bedroom because one of its deranged citizens sexually assaulted his own daughter.  We don’t ban fish and chip shops just because some fanatics of the fat-fry choose to carry out suicide strikes on their own bodies. 

Hello and a very warm welcome to you!

As you may have gathered from my name, I am German – and if you’d be speaking with me, I’d probably have already corrected your pronunciation of my name. Hehehe! (more like 'Ungelika' or 'ahn-GE-lee-kah').  I’m a minister of the Gospel and live in London, UK.

"Ringing alarm bells, traffic and weather reports
hurriedly pursue the eating of breakfast
and rush to begin the day.
No gentle shaking or slow awakening in this
sanctuary thats become a reminder that
time does not stand still.
Four walls and a bed for troubled sleep.
          All ash - with a diamond just flung in.

sitting in the sun listening to www.rivertribe.com (my favourite world music fusion band) ... I had an epiphany of sorts ... 

Ash Wednesday...

Last night I went to an Ash Wednesday service and ended up staying up till about midnight writing the following...

I don't ever really remember what Ash Wednesday is about and what the significance of the ashen cross on the forehead is all about .  I thought it was a bold proclamation of the fact that you are christian without having to ever say the actual words.  Well - only to those who may have managed to get a glimpse of it as you slink back home in the shadows...

I have just been away on a church weekend and I found it really hard.  A lot of it!  ( I had originally written - ALL of it but there are some good friends of mine who I love dearly and got to share time with as well - that was good!)



The preaching was on the book of Philippians and it was really quite hard to take it all in.  This is the thing....

I was recently sent an invite to join a Facebook group called 'Anglican Bloggers'.  On clicking on the group, I was struck by the logo the group uses, and wrote this piece on the discussion board:


A friend sent me an invite to this group, and I was struck by the logo. I am, by upbringing, an Anglican - my father was an Anglican clergyman until he died in 1982. However, having lived in S. Wales for much of the past 20+ years, and in a village where the Anglican church is little better than a social club with a spirituual gloss, we actually attend a Baptist church in a local town which is outward-looking, mission-minded and child-friendly - 3 things that the local Church in Wales church wasn't and still isn't.

Well, happy new year to all reading this. I.pray yours began in a really different way to mine.  I went to the prayer party at HTB and it was good.  I put on a happy face, praised the Lord and attempted to try and supercede the pain and confusion that was really beneath the brave exterior.  This got me thinking.

I thought how it was so easy to pretend that everything was ok.  How easy it was to believe that by closing your eyes and focusing on God, your freshly shattered world would all be ok again when your eyes reopened.  You know what , for a moment it was.  For a moment it was just Him and me and everyone interceding for the year ahead and taking it by force... then it was over.

So what do you think is going on here?
What questions do you have?
What leaps out at you?
What is Mark tryiing to tell us?

Read on and reply...!

christian designers, architects in church and life

this is a bit of response to the text written by hongkongsnelly, but its lying on my heart now for quite some years... We all are more or less comfy with having creative arts, music and drama in our (emergent) churches and worship services, we all seeing them in different forms...some kind of band is quite the normality,, from time to time we´re seeing some kind of drama or even a (worship)-dance....