🌍 Christopher Irvine and Timothy Howles explain a significant recent innovation: ‘The idea of God’s creative work is deeply and intentionally woven into Christian liturgy: in our prayers and in eucharistic worship...’ #ChurchTimes #Faith

The creation of a festival

THE idea of God’s creative work is deeply and intentionally woven into Christian liturgy: in our prayers and in eucharistic worship, in the way we use material elements, and in the rhythm and structure of the church year itself. In recent years, h...

churchtimes.co.uk

New publication: "A Walk with Henry: Thoreau’s Engagement with the Christian Bible" by Lawrence L. Dieker Jr. wipfandstock.com/978160608158...

Has anyone read this? Recommend? John J. Ranieri “Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible”

“A Radical God: Theopoetics, Phenomenology, and the Future of Religion” John D. Caputo cup.columbia.edu/book/a-radic...

Happy 25th anniversary to this amazing show.

"Anonymity and Feminist Identity: Simone de Beauvoir’s Agon and Ours" Laura Hengehold edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-anonymi...

Eric Voegelin on the project of European union, writing in the 1950s: "If the attempt does not succeed this time, or if American backing is withdrawn as being hopeless and too expensive, then it requires no particular prophetic skill to predict the end of free European civilisational society".

Delighted to be one of the authors of this report - the Church of England's new theological response to the environmental crises: 'Hope for All Creation'. Read here: www.churchofengland.org/sites/defaul...

"The true dividing line in the contemporary crisis does not run between liberals and totalitarians, but between religious and philosophical transcendentalists on the one side, and liberal and totalitarian immanentist sectarians on the other." Eric Voegelin, 1953 essay, 'Origins of Totalitarianism'

1. René Girard’s “Achever Clausewitz” (2011) has been a very important text for me as I’ve thought about political theology & its relation to the concept of apocalypse.

"Nothing perhaps distinguishes modern masses as radicality from those of previous centuries as the loss of faith in a Last Judgment; the worst have lost their fear and the best have lost their hope". Hannah Arendt, 'The Origins of Totalitarianism', p.419

1. Joseph Conrad’s wonderful late novella, “The Shadow-Line”, written in 1915, is one of my favourites. A short thread on historical, psychologising and metaphysical readings of this important text.

"Recipes are not what we need, nor do we need to be reassured – our need is to escape from meaninglessness." ~ René Girard

Gaston Fessard's false ID, seized during WW2, when he was searched by Gestapo.

"I think it is because I strive to be apolitical that I become supremely political." French Jesuit Gaston Fessard, 1935.

This should be very good: "The Technocratic International: Experts and the Making of a World from Nowhere" Jan Eijking global.oup.com/academic/pro...

“I seriously believe that Christianity is the only foundation of Socialism, and that a true Socialism is the necessary result of a sound Christianity.” F. D. Maurice, Tract on Christian Socialism, 1850

If anyone is free in Oxford tomorrow, we have two places left for this lecture: "Bringing Rivers Back to Life: Indigenous Water Management in Mexico" - for those working in political ecology, geography, religion, ethics Let me know if you can make it. Register: lsri.campion.ox.ac.uk/events/rivers

Sikh religious practices and the kirpan (ceremonial knife) in relation to English law: A short and informative article by Jasjit Singh (University of Leeds). theconversation.com/who-can-carr...

Who can carry a kirpan in the UK? Religion, law and the question of risk

There is a widespread misunderstanding that all Sikhs are required to wear a kirpan.

theconversation.com

On completing his last essay, "Quod Deus Dicitur", on his death-bed in California: "According to his wife, Lissy, Voegelin said: 'At last I understand Christianity!' To which she responded: 'Yes, Eric, but you’re going to take that understanding with you!'” voegelinview.com/the-spirit-o...

My most precious G. M. Hopkins sonnet is “My own heart let me have more pity on”. I read it often. And sometimes in conjunction with W. B. Yeats’ "Dialogue of self and soul", which I think is a sort of commentary on it. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90507/...

“Muslim Theological Encounters with Science: Kaleidoscopes of Knowledge Over Time” www.cambridge.org/core/element...

"The Idea of the Instant in Descartes's Philosophy" Jean Wahl Edited and translated by Alan D. Schrift edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-ide...

"Reading A Thousand Plateaus: Adventures in Nomad Thought" Henry Somers-Hall edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-reading...

I think this is my favourite comedy sketch of all time. It entirely describes what it is like to be English in the modern world. (I would say this material is superior to anything from Gervais/ Merchant, of course, who basically stole the concept of The Office from it). youtu.be/kgi7W5hSoOs?...

The Day Today - The Office Skit, Extended Version (Steve Coogan, Chris Morris)

YouTube video by shiv2nite

youtu.be

Watched “The Matrix” again recently and thought how Wagnerian the score is. Alongside the techno, we have musical phases of harmonic tension leading to climaxes into “transcendence”. Parts of this scene for example are almost direct quotes of the Tristan “Liebesnacht”: youtu.be/WSRlJaFYC9U?...

The Oxford Handbook of Digital Theology (forthcoming): global.oup.com/academic/pro...

RIP J.H. Pryne (1936 - 22 April 2026) My supervisor used to say he was the greatest poet in the English language since Milton. I used to see him on his bicycle around Cambridge. "Lack spreads like snow back by the path to the iron pipe flaking and not succeeding"

Exciting to see this announced:

Art and Technology in Maurice Blanchot Holly Langstaff "Demonstrates Blanchot's ongoing importance for contemporary philosophical debate about technology, the post-human, and ecological thinking" edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-art-and...