After exactly 4 years, about 1200 published posts (and hundreds more still unpublished that I never got around to finishing), zillions of visitors and several sexual perverts who arrived here from Google, I've decided to pull the plug on my blogging career.

 I'll understand if you all want to hurl yourselves off the nearest cliff and wear nought but sackcloth and eat nought but ashes for the next 40 days but after much reflection I've decided to call time on my blogging adventures. I don't really have the time to write decent blog posts anymore and barely have time to read let alone write anything (I've only read one theology book this year would you believe), and so now blogging feels a bit like I ought to be writing something just for the sake of it and the whole enterprise becomes rather dull. Facebook is now a much better way to share the odd photo and let you know what I'm up to (if you're really that interested) and so that's the main reason I've decided to discontinue my blog.

There's also a slight professional dilemma. My new career means there are a lot more restrictions on my private life, and there are limits to the public opinions that I can and can't express. I don't recall anything particularly bad or unprofessional that I've written over the last few years but there are thousands of ill thought out rants and ravings on this site that it might be prudent to withdraw from public view so at the end of this week I'll remove all my archived posts as well as the blog frontpage.

I've really enjoyed blogging and have made contact with lots of great people, as well as lots of weird ones who like to send me equally weird e-mails about the Rapture. Writing an article and then finding that people have not only read it but also commented on it and linked to it on their own website is tremendously rewarding and I'll miss it. I have toyed with idea of starting an anonymous blog or writing under a pseudonym but I haven't started anything definite yet. I'd also like to showcase some of the website designs that I've concocted but that won't be happening anytime soon. Maybe if I really want to write about something, I'll pester you to let me write a guest post on your blog but it's unlikely for the time being. My sole internet presence will now be on Facebook, feel free to add me.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, commenting, linking, and discussing things. It's been a blast.

Dear Chris,

I realise that in the last 24 hours I have written not one but TWO posts (here and here) that were mildly critical of N T Wright (peace be upon him).

I can only beg that when the time comes when the Tilling Caliphate is established, you will be merciful unto me and my kin.

Cranmer highlights an open letter recently sent by N T Wright discussing the alarming growth in support for the British National Party. Wright says:

Dear Friends,

With local elections coming up, we face again the unwelcome news of the BNP making potential inroads in our region. Splendid work has been done to counter this by several clergy working with local community leaders, for instance in distributing the pamphlet, ‘Hope Not Hate’. I want to urge all of you to get involved in this effort in whatever local sphere you can.
However, we should also be aware that the reason the BNP can even gain a foothold in people’s affections is because many people in our region feel so disaffected after the last thirty years of national politics that they are in danger of giving up hope in our regular main parties. This isn’t anybody’s fault in particular. But when a party like the BNP seems to be gaining ground we should all ask the question: ‘Why is there a vacuum there that the other parties aren’t filling?’. What frustrations are there that the BNP are exploiting, and what are the wise ways of reacting to, or even meeting, those needs?

It is one thing to point out, as many have already done, the neo-Nazi tendencies of the BNP, and to warn with a shudder against our society even taking a small step in any such direction. It is another to say, How can we drain the swamp so that this kind of ideology won’t breed again?
None of us (in other words) can be complacent. Opposing the BNP isn’t simply a matter of saying ‘the status quo is working fine, so please reject these idiots’. It should be a matter of saying, ‘What does a healthy society look like and how can we make it clear to our whole population that we are working in the best ways towards that goal?’ Part of the calling of the churches, following Jesus in his work of bringing God’s kingdom, must be to help communities ask that question and to work with them towards finding robust and positive answers.

Warm greetings and good wishes,

Bishop Tom
The Bishop of Durham, Auckland Castle.

There's the best and worst of the senior Anglican bishops in this letter. I think it is extremely important that articulate and intelligent speakers like N T Wright refuse to accept the conventional wisdom that religion and politics don't mix and are willing to speak out openly and honestly about what Christians believe and why the resurrection of Jesus matters in political, economic, and social issues. Yet at the same time there are still traces of the irritating Anglican traits of being fluffy and non-commital. Suggesting that the rise of the BNP is nobody's fault inparticular and that the role of the church is to "help communities to find robust and positive answers" to the questions that the BNP raises is not only vague but also evasive. After all it is somewhat awkward and inconvenient if you want to speak up for the poor, only to find that the poor are saying something that you find to be theologically and politically unpalatable.

What every politician (and bishop) knows is that the reasons that the BNP is likely to make a strong showing in the London and local elections on May 1st is nothing so general as "disillusionment with the three main political parties" but rather a specific response to the fears and concerns of the white working classes, particularly as regards the massive immigration that has transformed the face of Britain's cities in the last decade, coupled with the hostility that many working class voters feel towards Islam. There is a sense in which white English people feel disenfranchised and alienated by the political drive towards the multiculturalism which has radically altered the social makeup of the UK but that has taken place with no popular consultation or consent. It is inevitable that many voters will support the BNP on May 1st purely and simply because they feel marginalised.



N T Wright is only half-correct in identifying widespread disillusionment with the mainstream political parties as being the reason for this trend. Labour's longstanding claim to be able to deliver a sound economy has been shown to be hollow. The Tories are popular chiefly because they are not Labour and Cameron is a little more than Blair-lite. As for the Lib Dems, I follow politics closely and still have no idea what their policies or big ideas are. Yet disappointment with the three main parties by itself does not explain why people are increasingly willing to support the BNP. Why, for example, aren't the Socialist Workers' Party or the Greens enjoying a similar growth in support? The answer of course lies questions that Wright hopes the church will help communities to "robustly" answer, but they are the questions that neither he nor any other leaders in the political mainstream are willing to ask out loud, namely difficult questions about immigration, multiculturalism, and the perceived rise of Islam.

I don't like the BNP, they're stupid and racist. Even if you get beyond the racist element of their policies, their ideas on economics, welfare, and everything else cannot be described as being anything other than moronic. Yet while the BNP is never likely to get close to Parliament, their gain in popularity should force mainstream parties to ask the awkward and embarassing questions that urban working class voters have already answered by opting to vote for the BNP. Cranmer summarises quite neatly:

When [young working class people] hear Gordon Brown promise ‘British jobs for British workers’, their ears prick up and they wait in hope. And they wait, and wait, and wait. And then they hear that he cannot deliver on his pledge, and so they turn to a party that promises the same – the BNP. And they then hear that the BNP is no longer really racist, but just mildly nationalist, with pride in English culture and heritage. And they are really promising British jobs for British workers, and explaining how they intend to do it. And because these young people desperately want a job, they are tempted to vote for the BNP, as Bishop Tom observes, but he has no compassion for or understanding of the journey these young people have travelled to get to where they are. It is not that they are pro-BNP: it is simply that they want a job; they want to feel kinship with their neighbours; they want to live in safe communities and bring up their families; and they want the same for their children, and their children’s children.

[...]

And this, dear Bishop, is indeed someone’s fault in particular, and there is no sin in apportioning blame. Perhaps you might focus on this in your next epistle."

Wright is only half-right in what he says in his letter. The problem lies in what he does not say. Broadly speaking, white working class people do not like immigration and they do not like Islam, and that's why they're going to vote for the BNP. This is not the answer that Wright or any of the mainstream political leaders wants to hear from the electorate, and that is almost certainly why they are not publicly asking the question.

I have to give a special mention to Jonny Opinion. We've always been quick to hurl gratuitous friendly banter/personal abuse at each other ever since we were about 12 years old, and the advent of the text message has made this even easier. However the speed at which yesterday afternoon's events moved was quick even for Jonny:

14:52 Receive call from Police making me an offer of employment.
15:19 Inform Jonny of this via text message.
15:47 Receive following text from Jonny: "Pig filth. Bring any of that on to my estate and I'll saw off your eyelids."

Important news time...

After almost 10 months in the application process, today I received an official offer of employment from Greater Manchester Police and at the end of May I shall begin my career as a Police Officer. I haven't mentioned it on my blog until now, and I do not intent to blog about anything I do in the Police. There are plenty of good police blogs out there to read (see the right hand sidebar) but this won't be one of them. I still intend to carry on blogging, but there'll be nothing on here about life in the Police, for a wide number of reasons (most of them legal).

It's marked digression from my original intention to pursue an academic career in theology and/or biblical studies and not one that I came to easily, but in the last 18 months or so I have not been able to convince myself that I ought to try and become a lifelong academic. There are practical considerations like having just got married, having a mortgage to pay, and the possibility of having to relocate in order to study, but the main reason I'm not pursuing the academic route is - how can I say this without offending most of the people that read this blog? - I'm not convinced that full-time theological and biblical studies is really all that important. That probably sounded rude, but please don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say.

What I mean is, I could have gone off to pursue Ph.D studies and spent three years researching to my heart's content about (for example) what Paul meant by sarx in his letter to the Romans, but then there's a significant part of me that thinks "well, so what?". I'm not being dismissive of the idea of academic theological studies or of those who choose to pursue them (I think I still might one day), but in the two years since ending my studies I've become less sure that what the world really needs is another book plotting the narrative substucture of Q or a three-day conference discussing Post-feminist readings of the Corinthian Correspondence. I'm not saying that these things are not important but increasingly I find myself agreeing with Ecclesiastes - that of the making (and reading) of books there is no end, and that so often a great deal of it becomes meaningless. Does anyone else ever think this? Or am I the only one?

I hope no one thinks I'm criticising their choice to pursue careers in academic theology, I really am not. My decision not to follow this path is grounded in the fact that when I ask myself if I really want to spend the greater portion of my life reading, writing, and studying, I know that I don't really want to. I doubt the real importance of it. At the root of this is the genuine struggle I have in convincing myself that so much theology is not in fact done simply for its own sake and that the extensive and everlasting debates about theological and biblical minutae that I'd spend my life agonising over really do matter on the big scale of things. Until I am genuinely sure that I could and write a Ph.D thesis that really, truly mattered, I'm not going to be a theologian.

I'm going to be a policeman.

police, theology, ecclesiastes

The social bookmarking tags at the bottom of each entry now work correctly, although the Facebook one doesn't quite do what I'd wanted it to, but then nothing on Facebook does.

You can now easily share entries from this blog on Digg!, Del.icio.us, Facebook, Technorati favourites and Stumbleupon. How very Web 2.0.

Update 2: The transparent graphics used on the site now display correctly in IE6 and lower. The rest of the page doesn't though as IE6 does not understand min-width and max-width properties. I'll fix it later but in the meantime:

IF YOU ARE USING INTERNET EXPLORER 6 OR LOWER THEN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD UPDATE YOUR BROWSER. YOU PEOPLE.

I cannot stress that enough. Get Firefox, or Opera, or even Internet Explorer 7. Make your own browser out of old newspapers and glue if you have to, just stop destroying the internet by using IE6. Pleeeeeeeeease.

Update 3

The centre column now displays correctly in Internet Explorer 7 so that the blog itself is actually readable for IE users. That was my mistake. There's still about another 30 changes I need to make but for now the blog actually functions properly. It still won't work properly in IE6. That's not my mistake.

Ruth Gledhill reports on a lecture given last weekend by N T Wright in which he suggested that Rowan Williams had written to all Anglican leaders who were not in agreement with the Windsor Report to suggest that they might "absent themselves" from this year's forthcoming Lambeth conference.

In plain terms that would mean that the Archbishop of Canterbury was in effect telling Anglican bishops who were opposed to the implications of the Windsor report (which was strongly against the consecration of homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex unions) that they shouldn't attend this year's Lambeth conference. The only trouble was that it emerged that contrary to what Bishop Tom had said, Rowan Williams hadn't actually yet done any such thing, and when pressed about it his press staff were only able to say that 'No letters have yet been sent. As for when and whether they will be, we are not in a position to say.' Hmm.

So has N T Wright dropped a bit of a clanger? At any rate it seems that there has been a little bit of poor communication at Anglican HQ. That said I would welcome such an assertive decision from Williams (if in fact he has made it) as the Anglican controversy over homosexual clergy has gone on far too long and become far too destructive. Interesting times ahead.

Read Ruth Gledhill's full article here.

Tags: N T Wright, Rowan Williams, Anglicanism, homosexuality

I became so thoroughly bored of my plain old black and white blog that I've decided to completely redesign it to make it altogether more shiny and colourful. It's not finished yet but is a complete improvement on the old look. It's entirely homemade and should display on all browsers correctly at any screen resolution, although having said that it won't work properly on IE6 or lower because IE6 gets confused by transparent graphics. The layout is also (mostly) elastic and should still look right regardless of whether you're viewing it on your Granny's tiny old 15" monitor with a 640x320 resolution or whether you're a smug Mac user (spits) gawping at the web on your 400 foot wide shiny flat smug-box.

There are lots of things to fix, including:

1. A few CSS tweaks to smarten up the column content and some of the text styles.

2. The social networking bookmarks at the bottom of each entry don't work yet, and neither do the links to the "About" or "Contact" pages.

3. There's not much in the way of a footer yet. That said I'm increasingly convinced that footers on web pages (particularly blogs) are superfluous. I mean what do you use it for apart from to say "back to top?" ;)

4. The tag cloud isn't working properly yet.

5. A separate stylesheet for IE6 and earlier to get around the inability of IE6 to understand up-to-date CSS. If you're using IE6 or lower then either upgrade to IE7 (it's free, so no excuse), Firefox, or Opera. If not then please unplug your computer, put it back in the box, and lock it away in the attic until such a time as you are willing to do so. IE6 is 7 years old which is a BILLION years in internet-world and the time is fast approaching when people who make web pages will no longer cater to your technological backwardness and instead they will come to your house in the middle of the night while you sleep, put your hand in a glass of lukewarm water so that you pee yourself, photograph it, and then send a copy of the photo to your boss and all your friends. It's the least you deserve.

6. Please let me know if you encounter any other problems.

That said, there is lots of new STUFF and GIMMICKS...

1. A tag cloud. When this works properly, it will display the most commonly blogged about themes on this blog. You click on a tag (e.g. "N T Wright") and - hey presto - it takes you to all the posts that there are on that subject.

2. Twitter! Twitter is what trendy online journalists assure us is a "social networking phenomenon". It might be, but the most important thing is that it is basically Facebook without all the annoying people inviting you to take a quiz to see which member of the Beatles you are. Twitter essentially functions as a mini-blog where you can post about whatever it is you want to post about, but in no more than 140 characters. Even better, you can post to Twitter by text message from your mobile phone. I freely admit that I post messages on Twitter during my extended afternoon work toilet breaks. You'll find Twitter in the left-hand column.

3. Del.icio.us Another useful and addictive way of sharing your favourite internet findings with your friends. Tired of the effort of writing a blog post telling everyone that so-and-so has written such-and-such? Well with Del.icio.us all you have to do is tag a particular webpage that you want to link to and it automatically becomes one of your Del.icio.us favourites. My Del.icio.us bookmarks are to be found in the right hand column.

4. Blogroll. Blogrolls are, like, so 2005. That said I realised that for the 5 months I had my old blog design up I had no links to anyone else's blog, which is nothing if not terribly rude. I have now corrected this oversight and the links to my most regularly-read blogs are on the right hand side.

blog, CSS, design

Someone just said the word "penis" live on Radio 4.

This is quite possibly the most outrageous and destablising thing in the history of Britain since Charles the First was beheaded in 1649.

His Holiness Pius Chris Benedict Peter Paul Tilling the First launches a bid for world domination.

Ekaputra has penned an interesting post on recent scandals in Pentecostalism.

Russian woman gives birth to 17.5lb baby. Even more amazing, the baby is her twelfth and all her previous babies have weighed at least 11lbs.

The Daily Telegraph has an extensive interview with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams here.

No really, look here.

A report published in the British Medical Journal concludes that abstinence-only sex education initiatives do not reduce sexual activity or STDs. (HT: Progressive Involvement)

From the BBC:

"Hundreds of university "non-courses" should be abolished as a waste of public money, a group campaigning for lower taxes has said [...] The training they offered would be better learned on the job, it suggested."

Excellent idea. Read the full article here.