Christianity
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Avatar Discipleship – Who am I engaging with the avatar or the person?
How do you disciple Christians in the metaverse? Is it possible to disciple a person represented by an avatar? Who are you discipling, the avatar or the invisible person it represents? Who are we really engaging with? These are questions often discussed in the church I work with in Virtual Reality (VR). These aren’t just questions that are relevant to VR. According to recent statistics in America[1] over 25 million attend church online. People use the description ‘in person’ for those who attend onsite church, but if we are ‘online’ are we not present ‘in person’ as well? If I attend church via Zoom or YouTube then the experience may…
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People-Centred Beliefs: Interviewing Individuals to Understand Religious Identities
Over the last few years, I have seen the difference it makes when individuals are provided opportunities to speak about their histories, traditions and practices and how it can change outsider perspectives on these aspects of humanity. During my Masters, I began studying aspects of individualized, syncretic beliefs through the vernacular religions of divination practitioners with backgrounds in Christianity, I found that my contributors had very personal connections to their practices and that they were keen to share their beliefs in the hopes that it would ease the tenuous relationship that many people perceive to be between organized religion and modern spirituality. To me, this understanding is the embodiment of…
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“Infesting the Herd”: The Arian Heresy in the Philippines
As a newbie worker in the church, there are some things that I have observed in the ministry. One of which is the cycle of wrong teachings that was already proven to be errant long ago. I often assume that the indolence to learn is the reason for ignorance about the dangerous doctrines that once infested the early congregations of saints. While I am blessed that a Trinitarian religious group once conquered my country, there is still a historical controversy that alarmingly grows at present. The music of the Philippines is one of the subjects I studied at graduate school level. I presented on the first chapter of D.R.M. Irving’s…
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What Leviticus can teach the Church about Autism
Inspired by Mike Bird’s recent article, and the podcast Autism and Theology. As someone living in a family full of neurodiversity and a daughter with a beautifully spicy brain, we are in the trenches, and so I felt compelled to write a response. Michael F. Bird, Autism and the Image of God. Today I am a heartbroken Dad. Yesterday, my daughter told me she doesn’t want to come to church anymore. I stood there in her room, vainly trying to convince her that coming to church is better than the Minecraft videos she was watching on YouTube. You see, my daughter lives with Autism and ADHD. She is what professionals…
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Who do you say that I am?
Words don’t come easily – like sorry…. [and] forgive me, forgive me. Tracy Chapman Some years ago I was with a group of Christians and Jews travelling to Israel and Palestine at the invitation of the Council of Christians and Jews. The hope was that by visiting together, each of us carrying our incomplete understanding of the situation in the Holy Land, including of course unconscious cultural, religious and political biases, would see things through others’ eyes and return partially enlightened: gifted with a more nuanced understanding and greater openness to other readings of a notoriously complex situation. In Jericho, an ancient and predominantly Muslim Palestinian city which, nevertheless, for people…
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Learning to ask questions of the Status Quo
As I write, the Church of England is engaged in the meeting of its General Synod, deeply immersed in the latest round of conversation and decision-making about its ‘Living in Love and Faith’ process. Understandably, feelings are running high, and the challenge of how the state church can hold together different ways of grappling with theological understanding is inevitably a key strand of these discussions. Estate-based priest and theologian Rev. Al Barrett wrote thoughtfully ahead of this week, ‘It’s important, I think, in these conversations for each of us to try hard to locate ourselves a little – to resist the temptation to speak from an imagined (and illusory) abstract, objective or…
