Listening as a spiritual scholarly discipline
Bruno Medeiros, a social psychologist at Cambridge, reflects on the importance of being deeply attentive to the world that we study.
Bruno Medeiros, a social psychologist at Cambridge, reflects on the importance of being deeply attentive to the world that we study.
For Christmas a year ago I was given a book called ‘Wisdom for thinkers: An introduction to Christian philosophy’. It’s not a very thick book – under 200 pages – but fairly dense. So, having just finished it, I thought I’d tell you about it.
Yesterday I delivered my Celebrity Culture and Human Trafficking conference to about 100 sixth formers in a school in Doncaster. I was delighted with how it went. I had a great conversation with a teacher who taught Classical Civilisation. I told her some rat stories, the Glenn Hoddle routine and we had a very enjoyable chat about the difference between Hindu teaching and the biblical hope in the resurrection of the body. She told me that she would really enjoy hearing my talk but she had to go and teach a class.
Reductionism is a key issue in many Christian critiques of other ideologies. Claims that the rich diversity of life as we know it can be explained by a single fundamental kind of reality often sound authoritative and sensational, but fundamental substances that are supposed to underlie what we experience are thereby attributed with a kind of occult power.
Summary of James Bond and the Great Commission: Creative Ways of Talking about Faith by Mark Roques, Thinking Faith Network, 2017
Why is it so easy to talk about James Bond but so hard to talk about God and Jesus? Is it possible to introduce the Christian faith to our friends and work colleagues in ways that aren’t cringeworthy and emotionally harrowing? Can we find a fresh, more imaginative and less embarrassing way of talking about the gospel? Can we rediscover boldness and confidence in our God-talk?