The blessedness of 'inefficiency'
Matt Waldock
Date posted: 4 Apr 2026
In secular leadership circles, the holy grail of self-development is the attainment of a "highly productive life".
In this world, productivity is typically measured in terms of how many plates one can keep spinning without everything crashing down.
faith and life
What is good, anyway?
Jonnie Green
Date posted: 4 Apr 2026
Recently I was going through the new Uncover resource with a Hindu friend. During the conversation he stated that ultimately all religions are the same, because all religions are trying to create good.
There was a sense in which I agreed with him. Yes, there is something about us as humanity which loves to try and distinguish between good/bad, clean/unclean, honourable/shameful. Often these become formalised into religious philosophies. There is something wonderfully uniting about humanity and its quest for the “good”: we set boundaries, create laws, promote some behaviours, outlaw others.
What did Jesus accomplish on the cross?
Wallace Benn
Date posted: 3 Apr 2026
As Christians mark Good Friday, Wallace Benn reflects from John 19v16-42 on what Jesus accomplished on the cross.
1 - HE CREATED A COMMUNITY OF LOVE: "WOMAN BEHOLD YOUR SON! / BEHOLD YOUR MOTHER!" (JOHN 12v27)
There is a very moving scene at the foot of the cross, described for us by John who was himself present (19v25-27). Jesus' selfless care for others is on full display. Despite his own intense suffering, he is concerned for those standing faithfully by him. Mary especially must have felt devastated. There is nothing worse for a parent than to see their child die in front of their eyes, and before their own death. Jesus, whom she had carried and cared for as a child, her very special and unique son, whose birth and life had been so full of hope and joy, now crucified and dying a horrible death. Aware of her pain, and knowing now how much she would need care, Jesus says to her, "Woman behold your son!" and to his "beloved disciple" (John), "Behold your mother".
Communion from the hands of the tailored and the track-suited
Jason Roach
Date posted: 2 Apr 2026
There was a glint in his eye. I couldn’t quite tell if it was a tear or a smile. He grinned, put his coffee down on the table and said: “As a teenager, it was the most special thing about church every Sunday.”
We’d been talking about life on estate churches.
AI’s assault on the press
Jenny Taylor
Date posted: 2 Apr 2026
My father had a saying, an old Suffolk “saw”: “While fools go prating far and wide, we stops at ’ome, my dog and I.”
There is a certain truth in that. The world seems to be getting more “foolish”, and I am less convinced that prating far and wide – a public life of activism for its own sake, be it political or journalistic – makes much difference to the betterment of the human condition. And anything with “global” in its name makes me run for the hills.
Artemis astronaut's Christian faith
en staff
Date posted: 1 Apr 2026
The pilot of the pioneering space mission Artemis II is a committed Christian.
Victor J Glover is a member of the Church of Christ, a grouping of conservative Protestant congregations mostly found in the USA.
everyday evangelism
Do you lack confidence in evangelism?
Gavin Matthews
Date posted: 1 Apr 2026
We prayed, read Scripture, gathered leaflets, and were sent off in twos. It was my first experience of evangelism and I was terrified! Ken, the mission leader, paired me with Sue – whose enormous confidence and relish at the thought of the task ahead compensated for my distinct lack of both.
We stepped out into the rainy Cardiff streets, with a list of doors to knock and people to invite to the church film night, youth event, and guest service. At the third door we knocked, a lovely Muslim lady invited us in to discuss questions of faith and how the Bible answered them differently than the Qur’an. It was hard.
history
Martyrdom and schism
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Apr 2026
Tertullian (c.160/170–c.220) had a genuine knack for pithy sayings that stick in the mind. For instance, there is his well-known take on the antithesis between ancient philosophy and Christianity: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Or the equally famous quip: “The blood of the martyrs is seed.”
Later generations expanded this to “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”, which may well bring out what the North African theologian originally had in mind. Tertullian, who was an advocate for never fleeing from persecution or seeking to evade arrest for one’s faith, here pictures the church flourishing through her martyrs.
Explainer: Is Päivi's conviction misunderstood?
en staff
Date posted: 31 Mar 2026
Remind me what the Päivi case is all about...
It's about Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish Christian politician who has just been convicted by the country's Supreme Court after expressing traditional, Biblical views on sexuality.
That sounds pretty terrible, and a real blow to the freedom to express Christian views on these matters...
That's certainly how many have interpreted it. No less an august institution than The Washington Post described it as "a free speech farce" in an editorial. "Finland is often ranked as the happiest country on Earth, but that's only if you like cold winters and harsh limitations on freedom of expression," it thundered. "If Finland is able to do this to a sitting member of its legislature and a clergyman [Päivi's co-defendant, Lutheran bishop Juhana Pohjola] who chairs an international organisation with millions of members, no less notable person can feel comfortable expressing similar views in public."
everyday theology
Where is your hope today?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 31 Mar 2026
At the very end of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian looks back from the Celestial City and sees a man called Ignorance approaching the gate.
Ignorance began to knock, supposing that entrance should have been quickly administered to him; but he was asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate: “Whence came you, and what would you have?” He answered: “I have eat and drank in the presence of the King, and he has taught in our streets.” Then they asked him for his certificate, that they might go in and show it to the King; so he fumbled in his bosom for one, and found none.
en's 40th: Thanking God
en staff
Date posted: 30 Mar 2026
Evangelicals Now was first published in July 1986 and so, from Easter for the rest of this year, we will be celebrating the paper’s 40th anniversary with a series of events to mark the occasion.
It’s an excellent opportunity for regular readers to thank God for sustaining the publication for so long, to take stock of en’s current situation and assess future plans. You might say that this article is about Evangelicals Then, Evangelicals Now and Evangelicals to Come.
YouGov - you what? The 'quiet revival' apology explained
en staff
Date posted: 26 Mar 2026
What just happened?
YouGov’s Chief Executive Officer Stephan Shakespeare has personally apologised to the Bible Society after it emerged that the 2024 survey sample on which its report The Quiet Revival was based was, in fact, faulty.
Remind me what this was all about...
The Church Times summarises it succinctly: "When it was published last April, the report suggested that churchgoing among young people, particularly men, in England and Wales was growing, but not in the Church of England (News, 8 April, 2025)."
The link between 'right living' and joy in the Spirit
James Burnett
Date posted: 26 Mar 2026
It’s marathon season. Could long-distance running get your life back on track with God? The Apostle Paul writes, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4v7).
Let’s start by exploring a link between method acting and Christians who run.
AI: A new front in the spiritual battle?
John Wyatt
Date posted: 25 Mar 2026
“Social media with no humans allowed”. “AI just created its own religion”. “The world’s first AI-only social media platform is seriously weird”.
The headlines were striking – are we entering a dystopian future in which autonomous AI systems are taking over the internet? The click-bait headlines are pointers to the rapidly growing capabilities of "AI agents" – software apps built on the power of large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. But AI agents are capable of taking autonomous actions – sending emails and blog posts, booking reservations, engaging in online shopping, even creating their own software and AI sub-agents.
What the mysteries of the universe teach us about God
Seth Lewis
Date posted: 24 Mar 2026
Every so often I run across a news article about new discoveries that could reshape our understanding of the universe or how some scientists are proposing new ways of thinking about the questions that continue to confound our best efforts of explanation.
As our knowledge grows and our scientific theories continually shift in response, it’s obvious that our experts are still out of their depth in the mysteries of creation. It often seems that the more we find out about the universe, the more questions we end up having about it.
The missionary mouse: How God used a pest for His purposes
Josh Williamson
Date posted: 23 Mar 2026
It was the end of a long day. As the night deepened, all members of the family were tucked up in bed. Then my wife decided to go and get a drink of water from the kitchen. As I lay in bed, drifting off, I heard a scream – a scream that spoke of an intruder in the house: an intruder with a long tail, little ears, whiskers, and a small nose… a mouse!
At the time, I didn’t know this late-night visitor would set off an evangelistic encounter. All I could think about was, "How do I get rid of this mouse?"
culture watch
Talking Tourette’s
Rebecca Chapman
Date posted: 22 Mar 2026
We live in a noisy world, where the demands on our time and attention from social media, culture, the press are myriad, even if much of it can feel like “sound and fury, signifying nothing” when stories often come and go quickly.
Yet the fallout from the recent British Academy Film Awards has stuck around. This star-studded annual event celebrates the best of the year’s big-screen films. The film expected to pick up multiple awards was Hamnet, a powerful depiction of grief loosely crafted around Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In one of the night’s biggest surprises, the Leading Actor award (and the Rising Star Award, the only one voted for by the public) didn’t go to anyone from that film, but to Robert Aramayo for playing Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson in I Swear.
Foreign aid: An open letter to David Lammy
James Burnett
Date posted: 21 Mar 2026
Dear David, I trust you are well. I am writing to you about foreign aid cuts.
Red Nose Day, 2019
In response to Stacy Dooley’s visit to Uganda in 2019, you sought to redress the Red Nose Day narrative which, in your words, promoted a “white saviour” colonial attitude to Africa. You opined on the Victoria Derbyshire show: “Comic Relief is a 20-year-old formula that asks comedians to perform and sends celebrities – most often white – out to Africa, and that image evokes for lots of ethnic minorities in Britain a colonial image of a white beautiful heroine holding a black child, with no agency, no parents in sight.”
