Criminal Justice in Crisis?

I write this on the centenary of the House of Commons speech by Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, in which he famously said “ …The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the...

A Christian Response to Homelessness

“Homelessness” simply put is to have no home and from this perspective is an economic term.  Behind the term in Northern Ireland are some 18,000 people presenting themselves to the Northern Housing Executive as homeless. Only half of them are resettled.  While this...

‘It’s the economy, so it is.’

For many years Bill Clinton’s dictum ‘it’s the economy stupid’ was superseded in local politics by ‘it’s the constitution stupid’. The constitutional question in large part determined which party a voter chose. Thankfully that issue seems to have been settled,...

The Beast In Our Midst

In 2004 I was one of the representatives of  the Presbyterian Church in Ireland at the 24th General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Accra, Ghana. The Council felt a new confession of faith was necessary in the context of what was described as...