Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60029. Every so often someone tells me that the historical Jesus never existed, that He was invented by the early church out of older myths, and that the whole thing is a construction. It circulates online, appears in popular books, and lands in the inbox of Christian students at university with an air of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60014. Buddhism and Christianity both begin by taking suffering seriously, which is more than most modern philosophies manage, and then they move in opposite directions. That shared starting point is why Buddhism appeals to thoughtful Westerners who have given up on church. It is also why the differences need stating clearly. A faith that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60046. Guns and borders occupy a place in the public witness of some American Christians that puzzles believers almost everywhere else in the world. I am writing as a British Baptist minister, and I want to be careful, because it is easy for an outsider to be superior about another country’s debates while being…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60028. Christian political involvement makes many believers uneasy, and the unease usually runs in one of two directions. Some feel that any engagement with public life is a distraction from the gospel and a step toward compromise. Others feel that a faith which never touches how a country is run is a private hobby…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60013. Hinduism and Christianity are often placed side by side as two religions, and the comparison misleads before it begins. Hinduism is not a single religion with a founder, a creed and a date. It is a family of traditions that grew over three thousand years in the Indian subcontinent. That makes generalisation risky,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60027. Bethel Church in Redding, California has been under sustained public scrutiny for several years now, and the questions have grown sharper rather than quieter. In January 2026 the apologist Mike Winger published a lengthy investigation setting out evidence that Shawn Bolz, a prominent figure closely associated with the movement, had fabricated prophetic words,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60045. Woke ideology is a term that generates more heat than light, partly because almost nobody who is called woke uses the word about themselves, and partly because it has become a general purpose insult for anything the speaker dislikes. So let me define what I mean before I go a step further, because…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60012. Islam and Christianity share a great deal of vocabulary and disagree about almost everything that vocabulary refers to. Both speak of one God, of prophets, of revelation, of Jesus, of judgement, and the overlap makes the differences harder to see rather than easier. I want to describe what Muslims actually believe, accurately enough…
Reading Time: 10 minutesQuestion 60042. The Western Wall stands in Jerusalem today, some fifty courses of ancient stone, and every year millions of people place prayers into its cracks. Sceptics point at it and ask a reasonable question. Jesus said that not one stone would be left upon another, so how is that wall still there? Either the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60026. Few questions divide thoughtful believers as quickly as this one, because modern worship music from Bethel, Elevation and Hillsong is everywhere. Their songs fill hymn projectors, playlists and youth events across the English speaking church, and a good many of them are genuinely singable, warm and biblically shaped in their language. I have…