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.
Sticks and Stones
Whether politics is an art or a science may intrigue the academics, but for many of us in Northern Ireland it is a deeply dispiriting and often quite ugly spectacle. Let me balance that by saying unequivocally that our leaders deserve a great deal of respect and...
Does Reconciliation Require Joint Worship?
In her chapter in Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims: Irish “Religious” Conflict in Comparative Perspective Gladys Ganiel asks if churches in Northern Ireland can contribute to post-violence reconciliation and reconstruction. She cites the role of ECONI and, more...
Why Ireland Needs Answers
Notoriously, some generals have prepared to win the battles fought by the previous generation. British armies from 1939 to 1941 used the tactics of 1918. As a result, UK forces were routed by the Wermacht in the Battle of France. Two years later, General Percival...
Unfair Trade
(This article appeared on the blog PeoplePlanetProphet on 1 November 2014) Christians of all stripes should be concerned about the proposed free trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). In the book of Exodus we read of the...
Elections 2015: any hope for an elusive quality?
The Virgin airlines 747 pilot who this week had to make an emergency landing said he was just doing his job and had expressed a preference not to be named. When reporting this fact, one radio presenter commented in a tone of admiration that he was also “obviously a...
Cultivating Still, Small Voices
"After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper." (1 Kings 9:12) In October Mark Driscoll, the outspoken Pastor of the Mars Hill "Mega-Church" in Seattle, sensationally resigned following accusations of...
P.S. – Assumptions
As part of preparation for teaching a module on 'Faith and Contemporary Culture' I’ve been thinking about the myriad number of assumptions inherent within our Western ‘way of life’. By 'assumption' I mean an expectation of normalcy: something that has nothing...
Is being judgemental the deadliest sin?
I recently heard a sermon on Romans 14:1-10. The preacher spent most of the time giving examples of how judging others, very often for trivial matters, had harmful consequences for the persons judged. The sermon ended with a brief discussion of Romans 14:10,...
Meant to Mentor Men?
I once heard it said that there are two great learning institutions in Belfast: One being Queen’s University; the other Queen’s Island – the East Belfast shipyard megalith that built the likes of the “Olympic” and “Titanic”. However, if you are a young Protestant man,...
Who is my neighbour?
We are watching scenes of suffering, devastation and despair on our TVs, and in our living rooms. And we respond in different ways. We might switch off the horror or change channels (being spoilt for choice). Or we grow immune, moving into a “death with dinner” mode...
Sermons of the Great War: can we learn from reading what was said from wartime pulpits?
A journey through local newspapers during the years from 1914 to 1918 makes for interesting reading. Towards the end of the First World War an Anglican clergyman in Co Down, delivered a sermon which sounds reasonable to the modern ear. Aware that the bloody conflict...
Moving on: to love Ethnic Minorities and Muslim neighbours.
In light of recent events we are producing this PS Extra by Steve Stockman, minister of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church. It is taken from his Soul Surmise Blog (http://www.stocki.typepad.com) and is reprinted with permission. There has been a lot of talk in the Northern...