In Depth:  David Shepherd

David Shepherd

Notting Hill is still one of my favourite ‘rom coms’ ever. Memorably, it starred Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, and the late Emma Chambers (who tragically died a few years ago).

In the film, there is a dinner scene in which Emma Chambers’ character refuses the offer of a dish because she is fruitarian. When Hugh Grant’s character asks what that is, she says: ‘We believe that fruit and vegetables have feelings. So we think cooking is cruel. We only eat what has fallen from the tree or bush and that are, in fact, dead already.’

David Shepherd

Anglican evangelical groups, like the CEEC, must have been deeply dismayed at the disclosure by Dr Malcolm Brown (Director of Faith and Public Life for the Archbishops’ Council) that the College of Bishops was resistant to ‘the idea that structural differentiation should be a desired outcome’ of the ‘Living in Love and Faith’ implementation process.

After all, in late January this year, the CEEC had issued a press release in response to the Church’s intention to forge ahead with blessing services for same-sex married couples, known as Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF). The CEEC statement announced that they would ‘continue to advocate a settlement, without theological compromise, based on a permanent structural rearrangement resulting in visible differentiation’.

David Shepherd

Oliver O’Donovan is a widely respected Anglican minister, ethicist and academic. In 2013, O’Donovan wrote an incisive critique of the Church of England’s Report of the House of Bishops Working Group on Human Sexuality (The Pilling Report).

The concerns expressed in that critique also hold true for the pastoral letter from the House of Bishops that accompanied the draft version of Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) [same-sex couple blessings].

David Shepherd

In the light of the Church of England’s current situation, let us ask ourselves about the societal purpose of marriage.

When you think about it, the State does not regulate or require an official record any other type of personal relationship, except marriage. You’re not required to register yourself with the authorities as someone’s friend, or even as someone’s sibling. The latter is just inferred from the fact that two children have been born to the same couple.

David Shepherd

In 1982, at the tender age of 21 and shortly after converting to Christ, I began my journey towards becoming a fully-fledged card-carrying member of the Calvinist ‘club’.

At university, in St Augustine, Trinidad, several other members of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship baulked at the very idea of predestination. However, I was impressed by the overall cogency of Calvinism’s T.U.L.I.P acronym. Briefly, the letters stand for the following principles of Calvinism: Total depravity; Unconditional election; Limited atonement; Irresistible grace; Preservation and perseverance of saints.

David Shepherd

William P. Mackay, the Scottish doctor and Presbyterian minister, penned one of my favourite hymns.

It begins: ‘We praise thee, O God, for the Son of thy love’. However, it is the chorus’ anthemic appeal to God that most evangelicals probably remember, which goes:

David Shepherd

A little while ago, the Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts posted a captioned picture of herself on Facebook in response to the leak of the US Supreme Court’s draft opinion on Roe v Wade (the landmark 1973 decision that conferred a constitutional right to abortion).

She wrote: ‘Happy Mother’s Day. May we be mothers when we want, how we want and IF we want.’ [Mother’s Day in the US is on a different date to the UK.]

David Shepherd

The government has formally announced that it will enact a ban on conversion therapy.

The draft of the Conversion Therapy (Prohibition) Bill currently defines conversion therapy as: ‘any practice aimed at a person or group of people which demonstrates an assumption that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable and which has the predetermined purpose of attempting to – (a) change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, or (b) suppress a person’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity.’

David Shepherd

Earlier this year, Lord Paul Boateng addressed the Church of England’s General Synod as the newly appointed Chair of the Racial Justice Commission.

In that widely praised speech, he skilfully wove his lived experience and self-evident Christian principles into a rich oratorical tapestry that both encouraged and admonished in equal measure.

David Shepherd

Two recent court judgements have shown that, although the tide has not completely turned for hard-line LGBT advocacy groups, it may well have reached its high-water mark. Job 38:11 comes to mind: ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt?’

A little while ago, an employment tribunal ruled that a London NHS Trust had ‘directly discriminated against and harassed’ a Catholic nurse, Mary Onuoha, who was forced to resign after refusing to remove her necklace bearing a small cross.

David Shepherd

A few months ago, a group of Ghanaian MPs tabled a draft bill aimed at criminalising the ‘public show of amorous relations between or among persons of the same sex’ and ‘intentional cross-dressing … with intent to engage in an act prohibited under the act.’

That country’s Anglican archbishop, Cyril Kobina Ben Smith, joined several other prominent Ghanaian Christian leaders in endorsing the bill. He wrote: ‘The church does not condemn persons of homosexual tendencies, but absolutely condemns the sinful acts and activities they perform.’

David Shepherd

Recently, I have been struck by the parallels between the ever-louder pronouncements from the LGBT lobby and the influence of Gnosticism on the early church.

From the late first century, ‘fashionable’ Greek philosophy began to infiltrate the church. Gnosticism was one such philosophy that gained an early foothold. It was characterised by a dualism in which the entirety of physical existence was believed to be inherently deceptive and evil, while the unseen spirit world was believed to be inherently full of goodness and truth.

David Shepherd

It wasn’t long after deciding on the above title that I wondered if it would be assumed to contain a ‘typo’ and that I actually meant to write ‘evangelical effectiveness’.

Certainly, there is no lack of evangelical writing on effective leadership. For example, when you search Amazon.com using the phrase ‘evangelical effective’, you will see 35 books listed in the results. In contrast, the phrase ‘evangelical affective’ only yields a single result.

David Shepherd

Recently, I have been reading Acts chapter 6 in an effort to understand how the early church overcame ethnic tensions which would so easily have fractured our modern-day multi-ethnic communities.

The apostles’ approach, as described below, can still impart important wisdom which can inform modern methods of dealing with and dissipating racial tension.

David Shepherd

For some public commentators on religion, the moral to the recent court judgment that went against ex-magistrate Richard Page is that taking religious zeal into one’s secular occupation does no favours for the Christian cause.

At the Court of Appeal, Richard Page’s legal team failed to overturn the Employment Appeal Tribunal judgment that upheld his sacking for forthrightly contradicting the assertion in the social worker’s report for a same-sex adoption case that same-sex couples make better adoptive parents than straight couples.

David Shepherd

I know that we all have our crosses to bear, but can I ask for prayer on behalf of me and so many others involved in public ministry.

Even for lay members of the church, St Paul established a high bar of unimpeachable integrity when he wrote: ‘Giving no offence in anything, that the ministry be not blamed’ (2 Cor. 6:3). Therefore, how much higher are the moral standards required of ministers of the gospel.

David Shepherd

I have a great love for cities; especially London, where I was born and bred. However, despite their attractiveness as major centres of cultural and intellectual activity, when we consider the UK’s soaring urban crime rates and the relatively higher incidences of self-harm and suicide in our cities, it’s clear that something has gone seriously wrong. Last year, in our urban cities and towns, there were 34.7 recorded acts of violent crime per 1,000 population, compared to 6.8 in rural areas. Additionally, there were more than double the number of vehicle offences per 1,000 in predominantly urban areas, when compared to predominantly rural areas. While social scientists have discovered an exponential relationship between population density and both deprivation and the crime rate, unravelling the underlying causes – and, more importantly, potential cures – has proven far more difficult. Frederic Le Play was a celebrated 19th-century French sociologist, engineer and economist, who, in his twenties, was converted to Christ from atheism. He was also the first scholar to investigate shifts in family configurations systematically. His ability to speak five languages and understand eight facilitated his extensive surveys of working-class families in different European, North American, Asian, North-African and Asian countries. Although a pioneering technologist, one of the key findings from his 1855 publication ‘Les ouvriers européens’ (‘European workers’) was that, despite the benefits of industry and urban development, the major social upheaval that they caused had resulted in smaller nuclear families replacing traditional extended families. He also explained that the resultant loss of intergenerational ties (including moral and religious traditions) had led to moral decay.

Despite this evidence, Le Play’s findings were keenly contested by some of the 20th century’s leading sociologists, until his position was eventually vindicated by later studies.

David Shepherd

If you read the recent Spectator headline, ‘Let’s kick ‘gender identity’ out of school’, you would be forgiven for assuming that it was a guest post written by a staunchly conservative religious leader.

In fact, it was written by Debbie Hayton, a transgender teacher and journalist. Hayton came to national prominence last year as a result of incurring disciplinary action from the LGBT committee of the Trades Union Congress. To Hayton, a trans person, it must have felt like a cruel irony to be denounced as transphobic by so-called ‘cis-gendered’ (ie non-trans) members of that committee for doing little more than to don a T-shirt that bore the slogan: ‘Trans women are men. Get over it!’

David Shepherd

A few weeks ago, a group of 25 church leaders, supported by the Christian Legal Centre, filed a legal action challenging the government’s lockdown of churches as an unconstitutional invasion of church liberties.

In their pre-action letter, lawyers acting on behalf of the group cited Clause 1 of the Magna Carta as an unrevoked guarantee of religious freedom for the church: ‘that the Church of England shall be free and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable.’