Keller Centre dis-ease
Date posted: 1 Apr 2023
Dear Editor,
When I first caught sight of the launch of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, after a few moments of ‘surely that isn’t what I think it is?’, I realised it actually was what I thought it was (named after Tim Keller), and I felt deeply uneasy.
The value of older people
Date posted: 1 Dec 2023
Dear Editor,
Thank you for the delightful article by Milla Ling-Davies in the November issue of en. Her comments on the value of older people and the nonsense of judging people on how they look are heart-warming, as is the declaration of the Paris Fashion week 2023 that ‘ageing is now cool.’ But only if you are beautiful, it seems. Because ageism is based on more than how a person looks: it’s based on a ‘declinist’ view that perpetuates a whole raft of myths about older people.
letter from South
Africa: Called to the nations
Jordan Brown
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
This letter marks the last one I will write while still actually in South Africa. Our stay is coming to a close and my final letter in November will serve as a reflection on our time here.
This month, I will provide a few thoughts on how we have found our winding-down time – and on a recent trip.
politics & policy
Countdown to killer robots?
James Mildred
Date posted: 1 Jul 2023
In December last year, OpenAI launched Chat GPT-4. It’s the most advanced chatbot yet, employing cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI).
You can ask it any question and it will come up with an answer, because it has access to a colossal amount of data. This extends even to the finer points of Baptist covenant theology, as I discovered recently.
‘The car careered out of control’
Kicked out of college and hooked on drink and drugs, Pauline Hamilton drove recklessly towards a cliff near her home to end it all. At the last moment, her tyre blew out, leaving her stunned in the stationary car.
Pauline’s life changed forever. She turned at once to the God who had rescued her and, in grateful amazement, offered her whole life to Him. This dedication would eventually take her to China, where she would serve for over 30 adventure-packed years as a missionary. Through many trials Pauline never lost sight of the God who had promised never to let her go.
earth watch
Feather-brained folly?
Simon Marsh
Date posted: 1 May 2023
If you look round a typical Sunday congregation, I suspect you won’t see many women wearing hats.
Although you would never have seen my granny in church without a hat, with changing fashions, and perhaps a more relaxed interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11: 13, it’s a rare sight other than at weddings. But in the 1880s hats were de rigeur for women, and the latest millinery fashion that was storming polite society was hats with feathers. Feathers of birds like grebes and egrets, and in more extreme cases even whole birds, adorned voluminous headgear in late Victorian and Edwardian society.
history
Are evangelicals utterly ignorant of the Middle Ages?
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Mar 2023
A number of years ago I was invited to give two talks at a major Reformed conference in America.
I was thrilled by the invitation as I had enormous respect – and still do, I need to add – for the ministry behind the conference.
‘Mid toil and tribulation…’
In CS Lewis’ novel, The Magician’s Nephew, there is a description of a dying world towards the start of the book.
It is a land – Charn – which was once a great civilisation, but now is dead. As events unfold for the two children in the story, Polly and Digory, a terrible, tolling bell starts to chime, sounding over and over again, until ‘the air… was throbbing with it and they could feel the stone floor trembling under their feet…’ and the building around them begins to collapse.