In Depth:  Liam Goligher

Every parent, grandparent and youth worker knows the gnawing sense of anxiety they feel when someone they know first goes up to university or college. Especially if they’ve had the experience themselves, they know the full-on impact of those first few days and weeks as a fresher.

The bewildering numbers of new faces and names and choices; deciding what clubs to join and sports to pursue; managing the laundry and working out how to survive on a student loan; and, of course, learning to negotiate the campus and the timetable! The freedom and the options that university or college life inevitably offer can be a heady mixture. So many parties and so little time! Life back home, especially life in the church youth group, can seem so tame and restrained and, oh, so far away. For a Christian young person there is the challenge of finding a good church, making new Christian friends, and not abusing their newfound freedoms.

Bethel

An abbreviated chapter from the Keswick Year Book 2007.

Has anyone come here to escape their past? Perhaps, underneath it all, you’re trying to get away from God. Perhaps you think people can hide from him. If that’s so, I have bad news for you, and the story of Jacob underlines it. There is no-where: no depths so low, no height so high, no place so distant and secluded, that you can escape God.

Wounded for me

The 2006 Boston University in London annual lecture was given by Professor Peter Hawkins, the Professor of Religion and Literature there. He commented that many who come to study the Bible at Boston assume they know what it means. He cited evangelicals — sure they know what the Bible means — though they have never read it.

Then he went on to describe the different gospels that are gaining currency: for instance, the prosperity gospel, the self-esteem gospel and the therapeutic gospel. Commenting on the prosperity gospel, he said that the idea that following Jesus leads to success and triumph cannot be sustained from Jesus’s own teaching. If success is the criterion for heroism, then Jesus doesn’t qualify.

First the novel, then the movie; the Da Vinci phenomenon continues to grow and gross millions for its author.

It has all the ingredients that appeal to us. As Dan Brown himself writes, “Everybody loves a conspiracy theory”. We are fascinated by the alternative stories of famous people.