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Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Nov 2008

Whoever is at fault, and wherever the blame lies, the last few weeks in America have shaken many people’s confidence in the financial system.

You probably know the news as well as I do. What’s really important from an evangelical Christian point of view is the opportunity this crisis has created. We are being called to examine where our hopes lie and witness to a confidence not ultimately in the market but in our God and his Word.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2008

It is not the best of times, nor the worst of times. It is a time of uncertainty.

As President elect Barack Obama waits in the wings, the economy, in particular, appears to be on the verge of something akin to the ‘R-word’ (= R***ssion), if not, some fear, actual Depression. It could get worse. It could get better. It could be one thing. It could be another. People talk about it. People wonder. No one knows for sure. It is, in short, a time of uncertainty.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2008

Whatever you think of America, you can’t deny that its Presidential elections this year are fascinating.

There’s Barack Obama — first African-American candidate for the White House. Now there’s Sarah Palin — first female candidate for Vice-President. And, in between, there’s…what’s his name again?...oh, yes, John McCain.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Aug 2008

When we first arrived in America, some nine or so years ago now, petrol (‘gas’) cost a little over a dollar an American-size gallon. This summer gas registers at over $4 a gallon. That (for the mathematically challenged among you) means a price hike by a factor of four times. What’s more, much of that increase has happened within the last year. For a while beforehand gas prices had hovered more normally around the mid $2 range.

Of course, in England petrol remains far more expensive. But what matters for the impact on the culture is the differential. Petrol is still, when you calculate it all in terms of dollars to pound and gallons to litres, about twice as expensive in the UK as in the USA. But when we arrived the difference was far greater than that. Petrol in the UK was at least four times as expensive back in the late 1990s, if not rather more.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jul 2008

Obama has finally won the presumptive Democratic nomination for the next President of the United States. If it did not quite go down to the wire (or to the Convention) it came as close as could be. Hilary Clinton, apparently stunning even her close supporters, still did not resign her intentions immediately, but left a day or two before announcing that she accepts that Barack Obama has won.

It must be difficult for Hilary. She, we might guess, thought she had the market cornered on ‘firsts’, running as potentially the first woman President, only to be defeated by potentially the first African-American President. Even as late as this week, her supporters were claiming victory in the ‘popular vote’ (sounds familiar?), others suggesting that Clinton had been subtly disparaged by anti-feminist or misogynist sub-texts — how can you be both tough enough and likeable as a woman in power?

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jun 2008

The ubiquitous cry of children on a long journey (‘Are we nearly there yet?’) has often been at the back of my mind watching the off-again, on-again foray of the Clinton-Obama smack down.

Clinton’s donations receive a massive boost after one win — a million over the internet in 24 hours. Obama plays down the win. Clinton plays up the win. Next round, and this has been going on for month upon month already, and it’s two more states, one goes just barely to Clinton, the other easily to Obama. Played up by Obama, played down by Clinton. Clinton has less money. Obama has more. The pundits talk. The spin doctors spin. The voters vote. The talk show hosts talk. News item after news item. Yawn. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

C.S. Lewis once said that an atheist couldn’t be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere, according to George Herbert — ‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises; fine nets and stratagems’.

At the age of eight I wouldn’t have called myself an atheist, but God had certainly mapped out a strategy to call me to himself through my reading. The oldest in a rowdy family of five children, I sought solitude in books as soon as I could read. We lived in an outer borough of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a bit too rural at that time to warrant a public library, though we did rate a weekly visit from the bookmobile.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2008

‘Cussing’ is American slang for swearing and — yes — there is a preacher who has been given that nickname.

Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, has lots that would commend him to EN readers. He is theologically conservative. He is Reformed. He has grown a church from a plant in 1996 to around 5,000 or so today. And all this in Seattle, after New England the least churched and most secular region of America.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2008

After various senior Moslem and Christian clerics co-signed a document called ‘A Common Word’ in the New York Times, John Piper appeared on YouTube distancing himself from the document. More recently still, Yale University is calling a conference to further develop the ‘common word’ agenda. You can find details about that at http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24022

Here are some excerpts from a document some of our Yale students looked at recently as a response to these new ‘common word’ initiatives:

As I wondered what to call this piece, two ideas popped into my mind. One was the haunting KJV version of Acts 27.27, where we read that before the shipwreck ‘we were driven up and down in Adria [the Adriatic]’. The other was the equally haunting title from old Etonian, social critic, master satirist and beautiful writer George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London. Suddenly my own title was fully formed in my mind.

So, now, my story

My wife and I moved to Canada in 1979. Principal James Houston had recruited me to teach theology at Regent College, which I still do. God’s call was clear. Our only uncertainty was where we might find a spiritual home. New Westminster Diocese, of which Vancouver is the see city, was decidedly liberal, and its few evangelical clergy seemed to be keeping their heads down. But in 1978 my oldest friend among Canadian clergy, Harry Robinson, became rector of St. John’s Shaughnessy, nearby where God gave us a place to live. So that problem was solved. Called as I am to be a pastor, alongside my teaching duties, I became Harry’s honorary assistant. (For the record, I am now the longest serving clergyman in the St. John’s team.)

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Mar 2008

At the time of writing we have just been through ‘Super Tuesday’. It’s been a fascinating series of Presidential primaries, as the Democratic hopefuls for their party’s nomination dish out to each other, and the Republicans likewise. Mitt Romney has suspended his candidacy.

And so we have left in the field McCain, who appears at the moment to be certain to win, against Huckabee (R), and Clinton against Obama (D).

The radio work of Grace Baptist Mission (GBM) began in India 50 years ago. It was a cause for deep gratitude that the recommendation from Conference in India to the Mission Council in London asking permission to establish a radio ministry was unanimously accepted in the 1950s.

Not all Strict Baptists of that generation were happy about radio. Even in 1963, when in the UK on furlough, a missionary was told by one pastor that, ‘Radio is the devil’s instrument’.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jan 2008

‘Evangelical Elite’ – can those two words really go together? Apparently they can, and increasingly they do, according to Michael Lindsay’s new book, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. You can read a full and fascinating interview with Lindsay about his new book in Christianity Today at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/november/33.35.html.

Lindsay has conducted an astonishingly wide-ranging and penetrating research into the ‘elite evangelicals’ who function in small cabals at the top of the greasy pole of such institutions as Harvard, Hollywood, Fortune 500 companies, and Washington DC. He finds that they are consistently orthodox in their faith, by his definitions, despite being exposed to such a high level of the power that corrupts. Frequently they encourage one another in invitation-only small groups that meet once a month, like the Boston First Tuesday group convened by Tom Philips, former CEO of Raytheon.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Feb 2008

As long as it’s not Clinton (and at this stage it still could well be), America will have someone in the Oval office whose name is not Bush or Clinton for the first time in five terms. First there was Bush Sr., then there was Clinton, then Clinton again, then Bush Jr., then Bush Jr. again. Now — well, if Hilary gets it that will make six Presidents in a row coming from two families. Whoever said America doesn’t have ruling elite?

Intriguingly, though, it could be someone different. Huckabee is an ex-Southern Baptist pastor, who, despite his relatively unsophisticated sounding educational or professional background, is gathering a reputation for impressive speaking abilities. Obama — wouldn’t it be something for America to have a President called ‘Obama’? That would certainly strike against those who caricature the current global war on terror, if it be such, as simplistically cultural, or religious, though Obama, of course, seems to be a church attendee of some sort. (Mind you, it’s hard to get anywhere in current American politics unless at some point you say something about your ‘faith’.)