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.
Faith, Art and Community
In April of this year the Australian novelist Carrie Tiffany won the Stella prize for female writers and promptly shared a hefty chunk of her prize money with the remaining five shortlisted authors. Tiffany claimed it felt fantastic to share her winnings. She said it...
“Care home concerns …”
This headline about a supported living scheme for people with learning disability and challenging behaviour in a local newspaper recently drew my attention. Apparently a resident's clothes were ripped causing injury to his/her neck and an inspection found that...
What did Mrs Thatcher ever do for us?
‘She saved the country’. This was just some of the hyperbole evoked by David Cameron following the passing of Margaret Thatcher last month. Well I’m sorry, Mr Cameron, I must have missed that! Mrs Thatcher is largely remembered in Northern Ireland for her misjudged...
Horsegate – My Confession
The horseburger scandal started in Ireland and as a meat-eating Irishman I need to confess that I am at least partly responsible. The drama unfolded when the Food Safety Authority of Ireland tested a range of ready meals and beefburgers from a number of supermarkets....
Moral Purpose in Health Care?
The recent scandal about hospital care in the Stafford Hospital has not shown the NHS in a good light and, although not on such a systemic scale, there are recurring media reports about failures of care locally. Last week the Health Secretary (England and Wales) urged...
The Protestant Paradox
Not again! I thought we’d got beyond all that. Are we going back to the old days. Are the jobs going to disappear? Do they not realise what they’re doing? Day after day of protests, riots, stone throwing, petrol bombs, attacks on the police, illegal parades. It’s all...
To Cope With Hope
In Northern Ireland, there has been a big increase in suicides since the early-nineties, before the first ceasefire in 1994, rising particularly throughout the period after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Many are concerned about the trend, which is often seen when...
Can we have a civil society, please?
(Note: This article first appeared on www.eamonnmallie.com on 2 Dec 2012, and is distributed with the author's permission) Is it just me, or is there anyone else out there getting more and more dispirited about the quality of public discourse? Arguments on an ad...
Alcoholism and Dignity
I stood bedside a person paralytic on their sofa covered in blood and bodily fluids. The Emergency Service could not take this person to hospital as they became conscious and refused to go.Social Services could not work with them due to their addiction. I read the...
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...