Immediately after his baptism, Jesus is led by the Spirit to re-enact Israel’s journey through the wilderness. He is not “tempted” by the “tempter” but “tested” (peirasthēnai) by the “tester” (ho peirazōn), just as God led Israel in the wilderness “so that he might distress you and test (ekpeirasēi) you and discern the things in your heart, whether you would keep his… (Read more...)

In their revision of Richard Hays’ formerly negative stance on same-sex relationships (see the chapter on homosexuality in The Moral Vision of the New Testament), Christopher Hays and his father claim to have found in scripture a progressive “widening” of the field of God’s mercy. “God repeatedly reveals an expansive mercy that embraces ever wider circles of people, including those… (Read more...)

Discussing Robert P. Jones’ book Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy, David Smith writes in the Guardian:Faced with shrinking numbers and cultural marginalisation, white evangelicalism embraced not spiritual renewal, but existential panic—creating fertile ground for Trump’s demagoguery.That’s probably true, one way or another, for a lot… (Read more...)

The little book Why Jesus? is part of the materials for the Alpha Course. In it, Nicky Gumbel writes:Jesus is the only man who has ever chosen to be born, and he is one of the few who has chosen to die. He said that the entire reason for his coming was to die for us. He came ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45).To say that Jesus is “the only man who has ever chosen to be… (Read more...)

Westbourne Grove Church, which I help to lead, is part of the Forge Sphere of churches in the south of England, which used to be part of Salt & Light, which is a network of “neocharismatic Evangelical” churches associated with the British New Church Movement.So no surprise that the Forge summer camp at beautiful Ashburnham Place in East Sussex had some serious charismatic energy to it,… (Read more...)