Michael Docker is a Baptist minister in Bristol, who generously served as poet in residence during our Launch Workshop on 4th June. This is one of the poems he read, written in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. Guest blogs are invited to stimulate thought and comment. They do
Domestic Violence, Divorce and Malachi. I am currently writing a book on the use of the Bible in situations of domestic violence. I’m interested in – and very disturbed by – the way that the Bible is used — by abusers, and by churches — to try to manipulate the
I first met Natalie Collins last summer, when I heard her speak at a conference I was attending. Her presentation on the violent and abusive nature of modern pornography was hard-hitting and deeply unsettling, but insightful and provocative. So when I learned that she had written a book on domestic
L.E. is a survivor of domestic violence whose trauma was compounded by the way that her church handled her situation. In this poem she describes her experience when she tried to obtain help from her church. Guest blogs are invited to stimulate thought and comment. They do not necessarily reflect
Greg Boyd begins his magnum opus by explaining the conundrum of Old Testament violence that drove him to write it. ‘I am […] caught between the Scylla of Jesus’ affirmation of the OT as divinely inspired and the Charybdis of his nonviolent revelation of God’ (p.xxix). He is motivated by
Chris Anthony is a journalist and doctoral researcher within the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at the University of Birmingham. He blogs at http://onewaypublishing.co.uk/ This blog post was first published on that site and is here reproduced by kind permission of the author. Guest blogs are invited to stimulate
As someone who reads and marks a lot of student assignments on the Bible, and also reads a lot of academic papers, there are certain category errors that I encounter again and again – mainly in student papers, of course, but also sometimes in academic ones. These errors fall under
Edgar Allen Poe once, famously, wrote that ‘the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.’ These words hint at the dark side of his character, a man who wrote disturbingly sinister novels, and married his 13 year-old cousin. Unfortunately, as the sales of
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion p.31. One
Bad theology can make people kill each other. In fact, bad theology – and bad biblical interpretation – can cause people to do all sorts of appalling actions in the name of God. Here are some examples I have seen in the past year: On 2nd April, Chuck Baldwin, a
