Opinion
S***hole countries: A lesson in geography
Travel broadens the mind, it's said. Well, perhaps: but it depends on how you travel, what you see and whom you meet.
Religion is not about data, and Artificial Intelligence is a cheap imitation of the God I worship
A recent model designed to prove how AI could even write its own scriptures testifies to the flawed understandings of religion.
Why Oprah's Golden Globes speech stands for the hope, hypocrisy and hubris of Hollywood
'What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.' It's nice soundbite for the TV news, but it's nonsense.
Why the great silence from our politicians over Iran?
I don't think I have ever met an Iranian who was not highly intelligent, good looking and sophisticated.
Why we should not legalise assisted suicide
The case for a more 'liberal' approach to assisted suicide was based on the argument that individual choice and radical individual isolationism trump the reality of human existence as set in families and communities, and within boundaries.
Solomon and the secret of happiness â wisdom from Ecclesiastes
ow are we to pursue happiness? That is the great quest for Solomon, who so far has tried, wine, women and song and yet found that the burden of eternity outweighs them all.
A time to die? Why I believe in the right to choose
Don't tell me that the time of someone's death is purely God's business. That at the moment when all a human soul wants is for it to end, God stands at the end of the bed and says: 'No my child, it is my will that you suffer just a few more days.'
If cannabis is legal, does that make it right?
Evangelical Christians, historically mouthpieces for the so-called 'war on drugs' in America since at least the Ronald Reagan administration, have gradually quietened down about cannabis as it becomes slowly legalised across the US.
These Muslims gave Christians a Christmas gift â and went to the heart of the gospel
Look back on 2017, and one of the most alarming things about it has been the rise of the far right.
A Christmas based just on Mark's Gospel â challenging, but it could be done
Back when I was in pastoral ministry I developed the habit of preaching through the Passion story using one Gospel at a time, and going all the way through Lent up to Easter.
Can the secular media ever understand religion? Why it's harder than it looks
What often seems to be lacking in how religion is spoken about in the secular media is any sense of how it's actually experienced in the lives of believers.
The politics of Christmas: How to listen to the unheard story
How you hear a story depends on what type of story you think you are hearing. You might also say that how you hear it depends on what you are looking for from the story.
Martyn Percy: Why the Church's response to the George Bell inquiry is so shocking
"If one imagines for a moment that Bishop Bell were one's own father, the point is clearly made. If a system is not good enough for our own fathers, then it is not good enough for anyone." (para. 46, p. 12, Bishop George Bell Independent Review).
Sarah Mullally, like Justin Welby, is no theologian. The CofE is losing its nerve
It could be argued that the appointments of Justin Welby, hailed for his experience in the oil industry but a bishop for less than two years when he was translated to Canterbury, and of Sarah Mullally, a former chief nursing officer who has been a suffragan bishop for two years before her translation to London, represent a failure of nerve in the Church of England.
Bishop Bell has been denied justice and the Church should admit it
Lord Carlile's review contains a damning catalogue of flawed practices and misjudgments which should be specifically addressed in the interests of integrity.
George Bell will be vindicated in spite of the Church of England
It is not a Macavity cat archbishop or a diocese struggling to escape a terrible reputation for failing to handle sex abuse that will vindicate Bell but history.