P.S.
PS is an email and web-based blog format issued regularly by Contemporary Christianity. The format provides an online space for writers toexplore issues relating to church, culture and life in Northern Ireland, seeking to understand the times through insights from Scripture, theology, reason and the observations that flow from lived experience.
PS will never claim to have all the answers, but we hope to prompt questions that leave our readers a little closer to the answer at the end of the piece than they were at the beginning.
Our writers range from well-known names in academia and full-time ministry, to professionals with particular subject matter expertise, to lay people with passion for a subject and a gift for writing.
You can get involved in conversations by posting comments in the threads below the blogs, and if you’re interested in writing for us, you can get in touch by emailing info@contemporarychristianity.net.
Thursday: The Spaces Between
Harold Wilson once said 'a week is a long time in politics'. On this basis it seems like the Reformation happened almost an eternity ago, yet we live daily in its wake. While the Reformation began in the cloisters and the Church its spirit quickly spread into the...
Wednesday: Surveying the Landscape
Evangelicalism is my family – it always has been. Along the way I’ve been part of a couple of Brethren churches, I’ve spent seventeen years leading a non-denominational, evangelical international church in Switzerland, and I pastored a Northern Irish Baptist Church...
Tuesday: What does the Gospel have to say to Power?
In 2017, post-modern distrust of authority is well-acknowledged and understood. All that lies between those who wield power and their destruction at the guillotine of public opinion is the capacity of social media to channel rebellion into Tweets and Facebook shares,...
Monday: Are we part of the solution or part of the problem?
‘Churches’, says Phyllis Tickle, the American theologian of Emergent Church, ‘go through a rummage sale every five hundred years or so’. I love that image. So, five hundred years ago, in 1517, we saw the tipping point in the great rummage sale of the...
Reformation 500 – A Week of Reflections
As 2017 draws to an end it will be remembered for many reasons. It has been a rollercoaster year; with turbulence in current affairs of a level that many of us feel has been unprecedented in our life times. Passions run deep as arguments bounce back and forth, wafting...
Would Jesus drive a diesel?
I was asked to reflect on this interesting question. Maybe a better question is: ‘Would Jesus drive any car if he were living in our world today?’ Or would he campaign for more public transport and a consideration of the poorest members of the community, for whom any...
Mortgages, Mammon and Buy to Let
Many years ago, as a teenager, I recall talking to an elder in my local church, prior to the 1987 General Election. Pondering on the choice the UK had, his outlook seemed driven by naked self-interest: “I really don’t care who gets in, so long as I don’t have to pay...
Good Marx, Bad Marx
About 15 years ago I did a clear out of my books about Marxism. These were not quite consigned to the dustbin of history but rather the attic or the charity shop. I now see that I had made a mistake. Marxism remains the official “creed” of the world’s biggest nation...
The Moving Goal Posts of Retirement
First the good news: you will probably live longer than your grandparents. Now the bad news: if you are of working age, the Government is requiring you to work for more years before you can have a state pension. Recent announcements make it clear that teenagers and...
Creation care and following Jesus
‘… give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:18 The theological and Biblical arguments for Creation Care are strong and are now being clearly communicated within the Evangelical Community. For example...
A CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIANITY BOARD MEMBER WRITES…
I will never forget this day one year ago. Friday 24th June 2016 was a day of shellshock in my office – much more so, in actual fact than 9/11 fifteen years before it. But as we’ve since been told many times ‘Brexit means Brexit’, and for good or ill, that which...
A EUROPEAN LIVING IN NORTHERN IRELAND WRITES…
The first time I stepped foot on Northern Irish soil was a few days after our wedding almost 25 years ago. We had spent some days in London after getting married in my native Sweden, and having previously lived in London, I thought Belfast couldn't be that different....