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Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2006

Halloween, just past, is an American institution, with its kid-friendly ‘Trick or Treat’ tradition, in a way beyond what we experience in England.

Some churches respond to what children’s books call ‘my favourite holiday’ by putting on alternative Halloween events, a Harvest Festival for instance, with sweets and games, where children dress up as they would at Halloween. Other churches, apparently, stage ‘Hell Houses’. These are similar to Haunted Houses but depict with frightening intensity the woes of sins like drugs or alcohol or extra-marital sex and the terminal destination with Lucifer.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2006

‘Jonathan Edwards is my homeboy’ may not carry quite the same ring as Sola Fide, but as a rallying cry for the faithful it blazoned on a recent front cover of Christianity Today. Inside, the leader told the story of an emerging network of young, restless and Reformed Christians. What’s going on?

For some while now, John Piper (http://www.desiringgod.org) has advocated a passionate return to Reformed principles through his now well-known mantra of ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him’. A self-styled ‘divine hedonist’, Piper has appealed to a whole new generation of evangelicals through the Passion conferences that stoke the flames of ardour for God, within a classically biblical (and Jonathan Edwards influenced) framework.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Nov 2006

On the one hand, it’s a small story. It only relates to 50 students or so. Other than a cameo appearance in Love Actually, Wisconsin is not a name brand state.

On the other hand, this is the third in a row. First it was Rutgers University in New Jersey. Then it was Georgetown University. Now the University of Wisconsin has ‘De-recognised’ the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship group. On October 2, IVCF filed suit.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Sep 2006

It was not that long ago — though it seems an age — when Yasser Arafat and Clinton and Co. were touting the latest round of peace initiatives.

With cosy pictures in print, editorials eagerly trumpeting a new day, it was appealing to believe that we were on the verge of a solution to the most troubled of troubled places on the earth. Since then the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has not only dragged on, it has flared into new entrenched hostilities. The ‘two-state’ solution to the area appears intractable. I’m reminded of a British Foreign Office report on the area from much earlier in the 20th century that simply calculated that no political solution was possible because the claims of the peoples were directly competitive.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jul 2006

I was recently alerted to a rather surprising clause in an application for missionary funding from a major denomination in the United States.

As all large sending agencies, this denomination admirably desires to ensure that its missionaries will be exemplary witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then there is the surprising clause.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Aug 2006

Several times now I have come across people in a pastoral context whose perception of their experience of God has become dangerously skewed. Some have even thought he was telling them not to eat.

Granted, the Bible does encourage us to fast occasionally. Nonetheless, when the supposed command from God not to eat is taken to a dangerous medical extreme, it is not only legitimate to wonder whether the spiritual experience is genuine, but it is imperative to seek professional help. I have come across other even weirder messages purportedly received from God. The psychological difference between people who think God is telling them to cut their wrists and those who think they are Napoleon is not as great as we might wish.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2006

Readers of a certain ilk may recognise the reference to an album from the aged rock group Supertramp: ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ The picture on that album ironically captured a man sunbathing with icons of industrial waste in the background.

For many today, the American establishment’s refusal to act on warnings of global warming has a similarly absurd, ostrich-like head in the sand feel. It would be funny if it were not so tragic.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2006

From an English perspective, American industrial might is something to be admired. But America’s giant carmaker General Motors (GM) is in serious trouble. A Peter Pan-like fantasy of forever extendable ‘financing’, or living on ‘the never never’, is taking its toll.

Detroit has long been the centre of the American auto industry; now, however, various factors are combining to make profitability in the Detroit area hard to find. One of the parts suppliers for GM, once itself a part of the GM group, is close to bankruptcy, an issue which will radically affect the profit margin of GM, through delayed or cancelled orders. In terms of business systems, several different issues seem to be involved. To begin with, the global economy, in particular cheap labour and parts from the East, are undercutting the American auto industry’s ability to maintain its market share. GM’s share of cars bought in the US has been slipping for sometime. Also, however, there appear to be archaic, and inevitably unprofitable, expectations in terms of salary from the workers. The much-vilified new president of the parts supplier quipped in one public speech that it was no longer economically feasible to pay $65 per hour for someone to mow the lawns.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Mar 2006

Each year 60,000 people cram into a stadium on a Sunday to watch the Super Bowl.

This year the Rolling Stones provided half time entertainment. Around the nation far more gather around the TV. There are ‘Super Bowl Parties’, events where friends gather to chomp on snacks and watch the game. Advertising for the commercial slots in between breaks in the game are at a premium. Companies pour millions of dollars into their few seconds of fame.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jun 2006

It is an interesting experience having lived for so long as a foreigner. Before coming to America, I lived for a year in the former Soviet Union, and before that for a year in Canada, but by and large most of my life was spent in England (a good ten years of it in Cambridge).

Having now lived for seven or so years in America, it’s becoming increasingly true that I feel the sense of being without home that, for the Christian, underlines the spiritual reality of this world not being our home but that we are ‘just a-passing through’.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jan 2006

A new list of the top ten highest paid Hollywood stars has recently been posted. Julia Roberts tops the bill earning a massive $10 million per film. Ex-Friends star Jennifer Aniston comes in last at a measly $9 million a movie (poor thing).

Statistics are notoriously unpredictable because their seeming precision belies a host of assumptions. Nonetheless these numbers above are pretty straightforward. They give me something of a shudder when I compare them to another statistic someone reported to me the other day: every minute 6,000 people die of hunger.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Feb 2006

Driving back over the Appalachians from a family wedding in Canada we passed Stockbridge. This town was the lesser-known base of operations for Jonathan Edwards’s missionary labours. More famously, Edwards resided in Northampton, the central location for the dramatic revivals of the Great Awakening in New England of the 18th century.

Being something of an Edwards aficionado I was aware of the Edwards Stockbridge connection. I wasn’t cognisant of the even less well-known relationship between Edwards and McDonalds until, as we hurtled by Stockbridge in our minivan, we decided that the time had come to eat. And there and behold we did what surely would have surprised the famous evangelical leader: we picked up a Drive-Thru McDonalds.