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.
A Story Worth Living For
In a recent book, War and the American Difference*, Stanley Hauerwas explores why it is that Americans have a distinct lack of unease with war. War, he says, 'is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.'...
Justice for just us?
There was a hint of specks and planks (Matthew 7: 2-5) in recent statements in the Northern Ireland Assembly by unionist political representatives. Demanding apologies from the Irish government about their predecessors' undoubted ambivalence towards IRA activity in...
Ploughshares and pruning hooks – a relevant prophecy?
‘They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks’ Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3 Recently I heard it stated that ‘…creatives, artists, have responsibility to define the vision of the future (of what peace might look like in N Ireland), and...
Making the Reconciliation Journey.
Reconciliation is a gift and a task, a process and a destination, an experience and a hope. Already there is the sense that this is something big. In Northern Ireland we face the challenge of reconciliation in a society where the old divisions still threaten and where...
The ‘Twelfth’ 2012
In the days after the Twelfth this year a perusal of the different media gave a variety of different perspectives on how it had been. Unionist-leaning websites gave evidence of a happy family day out, in the sun, at Keady, Ballymena and elsewhere. More...
Scapegoats
Old ideas are endlessly recycled, as the author of Ecclesiastes observes: ‘Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time’. In our ceaseless search for the novel we may merely invent...
No More Them and Us
The following p.s. is issued as part of Community Relations Week 2012, which takes place from May 14 to May 20, organised by the Community Relations Council, with the theme ‘No More Them and Us?’ Over 150 events will take place across all local council areas making...
Shame on the Supermarkets?
Just before Christmas, a leading evangelical minister wrote on his blog about a Tesco executive who had reportedly backed gay marriage, also commenting on the supermarket chain’s sponsorship of the London gay pride festival. The article prompted some fine, heartfelt,...
The Redundant Church?
The church's services as chaplain to this democracy are no longer required. You've been given your P45; your severance pay is in the mail. This is roughly what Walter Brueggemann said to a Presbyterian audience in America.* It is perhaps how the church in the UK feels...
1912: Covenant or Contract
Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we...
Community Transformation
It was the evening of the 6th August 2011 when the London riots erupted. Two days before, the death of Mark Duggan had created significant anger which finally exploded into widespread civil unrest, rioting, arson and looting. Other towns and cities were affected as...
Lads’ Mags: the New Topsy&Tim?
In the light of a recent study conducted by the Universities of Surrey and Middlesex which found a disgustingly close resemblance between the material produced by lads’ mags and direct quotes from convicted rapists it is important to consider the implications of the...