Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60113. Spiritual not religious has become the standard British answer to a question about faith, and you will hear it at work, at the school gate and at funerals. It signals openness to something beyond the material world combined with a firm distaste for institutions, doctrines and anyone telling you what to believe. I…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60077. Peter tells us to be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in us, and I suspect that verse has produced more guilt in ordinary Christians than almost any other. We read it and picture a debate we would lose. But look at…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60073. The Turning revival began in Reading in 2016 and for a while it was the most talked about thing in British evangelicalism. Reports of hundreds and then thousands of people praying to receive Jesus on the streets travelled quickly, and churches across the country wanted to know how to get it. I want…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60051. Are Islam and Christianity compatible? The question is asked in several different senses, and a great deal of confusion comes from answering one sense while the questioner meant another. Sometimes it means whether Muslims and Christians can live peaceably as neighbours, which is a social question. Sometimes it means whether the two faiths…
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 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 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: 6 minutesQuestion 60007. What about other religions is rarely a neutral enquiry. Behind it usually stands a colleague, a neighbour, a daughter in law, somebody sincere and kind who believes something else, and the real question is whether I am prepared to say that person is wrong. So let me answer it honestly and without the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60001. Nobody teaches most of us how to defend the faith. We learn to pray, we learn to find Habakkuk without the contents page, and then one day a colleague says something about the Bible being edited by emperors and we discover we have nothing to say. Scripture is not vague about this. It…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60000. Christian apologetics sounds like something you do when you have offended somebody. It is one of those words that has drifted, because the English apology now means an expression of regret, whereas the Greek behind it means nothing of the sort. So let me clear the ground. Christian apologetics is the work of…