Popular posts from this blog
My Brush with Homelessness
I have just had an email from the Big Issue Foundation warning that Britain faces a homelessness crisis (even worse than usual) this autumn, and asking me to do three things. The first was to sign their petition asking for government reforms to prevent homelessness. I have now done this. Secondly, the email encouraged people to fundraise for the Big Issue Foundation, which I am already doing . My sponsored walk grew from 200 to 300 miles, and I have currently completed 291. But thirdly, when I clicked to sign the petition, the Big Issue Foundation asked whether I could take various actions to help them, including telling the story of my experience of coming close to homelessness. I am lucky enough never to have had to sleep on the streets. In 2013 I could have been at risk of homelessness, as, after four years of unemployment, I had started working on a zero-hours contract. This made my situation much more precarious than when I was unemployed, because I might have no
Red Letter Christianity?
When I first encountered Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo’s book Red Letter Christianity , I seized it in the hope that it might answer my questions. Over the previous few years, I had been finding it impossible to reconcile being a Christian (i.e. someone who believes Jesus is our saviour) with focusing on the ‘red letters’ (i.e. what the Bible records of the teachings of Jesus himself, which are printed in red letters in some editions of the Bible). Campolo and Claiborne had adopted the term ‘Red Letter Christianity’ to describe those who take the teachings of Jesus seriously and try to live up to them (for example, in loving their enemies, freeing the oppressed, sharing all their possessions, etc). They explained that they had done this because the term ‘Evangelical Christian’ had come, particularly in America, to imply Far Right, pro-gun-ownership, anti-environment, etc, none of which they were. To me, ‘evangelical’ had the much simpler meaning of ‘someone who beli
Comments
Post a Comment