Monthly Archives: November 2007

Christianity is cross-cultural and cross-linguistic

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Blogger Iyov asks Why are Christians satisfied with English-only Bibles? He contrasts Christians with Jews, whose liturgical books almost always include the Hebrew original text as well as a translation, and with non-Arab Muslims, for whom the Qur’an usually includes the Arabic text as well as a translation.

There are various answers I could give to Iyov. For example, I could berate him for his intellectualism in assuming that ordinary Christians have the leisure time and interest to learn the original languages. Certainly most non-Arab Muslims don’t understand the Arabic text in their Qur’ans; if most American Jewish children actually learn Hebrew, that is an indication of the social situation of the American Jewish community. But I will concentrate here instead on another angle.

From its very start at the Day of Pentecost, Christianity has taken a different line from Judaism and Islam, to become a faith which crosses linguistic and cultural boundaries. Continue reading →

"What is at stake is the very nature of Anglicanism"

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I don’t often write here about the situation in the Anglican Communion, of which the Church of England to which I belong is a part. But the long and sorry saga of the last few years seems to be building up to a climax which can only be a split, at least in all but name. Here I give a rather simplified summary of the situation and my own reflections on it.

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This blog's reading level

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high school

And I’m proud of it. I want this blog to be accessible to most people, not just to geniuses (like John Hobbins’ blog and, more surprisingly, ElShaddai Edwards’) or postgrads (like Iyov’s). Hat tip to Suzanne.

UPDATE, 9th November: Suzanne has blogged further on this in response to various suggestions that this test is unreliable. She linked to a site offering better defined readability tests, which are probably also more reliable. That site rates this blog with a Fog Index of 8.89, which is in the range for most popular novels, and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade (corresponding to a school grade) of 5.56. I am happy with these results. But, as Suzanne suggests, the results may be affected by sidebars.

Mark Driscoll head to head with Joel Osteen

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Adrian Warnock has posted an interesting video (ten minutes long) of two well-known American preachers head to head. The video is basically part of a sermon by Mark Driscoll, but it includes a long clip from a sermon by Joel Osteen. Driscoll is one of Adrian’s favourites, and has had some generally not so favourable mention on this blog; nevertheless I respect him for his no-nonsense approach. Osteen is, I understand, well known in the USA for his prosperity teaching on TV and radio, but is not so well known here in the UK.

Adrian’s main point in posting this video is to present it as “a model of gracious rebuke”, of Osteen by Driscoll. And indeed it is this. If only Adrian and his other favourite speakers had treated Steve Chalke with this same grace, rather than accusing him of heresy! Then the whole atonement debate would have been a lot less bitter. I too need to take Driscoll as an example of how to show gentle wisdom over such issues.

But I want to look more at the different approaches represented here by Osteen and Driscoll. Continue reading →