‘Long lay the world in sin and error pining,Till He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.’ I’ve remarked in previous posts how much I love Christmas; though it is nowhere near Christmastime, I was reminded Read more
On 4 and 11 June, Richard will be delivering a 2-part webinar series as part of the All of Life Redeemed initiative. Bruce Wearne gives a personal reflection on the article addressed by this webinar. “The Secularization of Science” is a lecture given by Herman Dooyeweerd in 1953. It offers a remarkably insightful Read more
Like many who are not schoolteachers, NHS staff or other key workers, in these recent weeks I have been getting used to spending most of my time at home, getting very acquainted with Zoom and the various tools we are using for online teaching at the university where I work. Read more
Just over a week ago I submitted my doctoral thesis. One of the most enjoyable parts of the final few weeks of this process was writing the acknowledgements. Before sitting down to do this, I had thought to myself: “I’m not going to be one of those people who writes Read more
George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a Scottish clergyman and writer who profoundly influenced the fiction and non-fiction works of C.S. Lewis. One of Lewis’s lesser-known publications is an edited collection of MacDonald’s writings: the book can be hard to find in print now, but a dear friend gifted my a copy Read more
The Territories of Science and Religion by Peter Harrison (2015) is one of the most illuminating books I’ve read recently. I’d like to enthuse with you about a book that gave me much food for thought regarding Christianity as a ‘religion’ as well as the nature of ‘science’. The book’s opening gambit beautifully Read more
Like many of you, I spent yesterday morning, not at church, where I would usually be, but sitting on my sofa at home in front of a laptop, watching a livestream of my pastor preaching to an empty building. In just a week, it seems, everything has changed. The Covid-19 Read more
For the early academic, the rallying cry is ‘publish or die’! In an over-saturated job market, we are trained to focus on publication, believing—because we are more or less told—that we are only as good as our publishing record. I have long dreaded the publication process. The stakes seem so Read more
I want to share some experiences from inviting Christian friends to contribute to a course on “the values of nature”, and my own shifting position on one of the major ethical issues of our age. Until recently I tried to steer clear of academic treatment of ethics and values. I was Read more
I’ve written before on FiSch, as well as elsewhere, about my research on prayer. Today I want to look at a particular idea which jumped out at me recently, speaking to my own life and practice as well as to the medieval recluses it was meant for. This is the simple statement in Ancrene Read more