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‘Let no one who is not eager for truth and peace enter here’ (Plato)

Articles on this site express varying points of view, to encourage mature thinking on serious issues. The assumption is that you will want to study a controversial topic from various angles before you arrive at a conclusion, rather than simply believe what someone told you when you were impressionable! (So some stuff here is ‘hot’. Proceed at your own risk!). See the Statement of Faith for John Mark Ministries' theological stance.

The Village Choir

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

being a parody of The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809-92 (from The Faber Book of Parodies) Half a bar, half a bar, Half a bar onward! Into an awful ditch Choir and precentor hitch, Into a mess of pitch They led the Old Hundred. Trebles to right of them Tenors […]

Contact – Our Favorite Martians

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey, rated PG HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVES UNDERSTAND there is more to the success of Independence Day and Men in Black than choosing the right special effects sub-contractor. UFO’s and the idea of life on other planets are heavy, ‘meaning loaded’ concepts in the wake of the last generation of modernist thought, […]

Preaching The Titanic

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Many believed Titanic, the most expensive film ever made, would sink like its namesake. But it hasn’t. Its combination of disaster and romance has captured a huge audience world wide. It’s the movie about which everyone is talking. I saw it with a male friend who commented immediately after, “Gee, it makes you love your […]

Forgiveness And Other Acts Of Love

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

The “Virtues ” of Stephanie Dowrick. by Stephanie Dowrick, Viking, 1997. RRP $22.95 IMAGINE ADVOCATING COURAGE, fidelity, restraint, generosity, tolerance and forgiveness to Australians at the end of this millennium! Courage might pass muster, but the topic might be expected to laud the deeds of war and glory. Forget fidelity and restraint; they even sound […]

Wise Quotes

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

=== SOME “PROFOUND NON-ADVICE” === In 1943 Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers!” Sarnoff of NBC said in the 1920s, “The wireless box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” Lord Kelvin, the President of […]

Book Review: Jonathan Kirsch, The Harlot By The Side Of The Road

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Jonathan Kirsch, The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible, London: Rider/Random House, 1997, 378 pages. Psssst… wanna hear a violent/dirty story – from the Bible??? Imagine you’re a trainee pastor/preacher, on a camp with others from your seminary. Your denominaton teaches that ‘all Scripture is [equally] inspired by God […]

Book Review: Macrina Wiederkehr, A Tree Full Of Angels, Harper Sanfrancisco, 1995.

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

If you attend Spiritual Retreats (and everyone should, at least once a year), or are reading some of the hundreds of books published each year on Spirituality (ditto a few times a year), these writers/titles will be familiar to you: Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Carlo Carretto, Anthony d’Mello, The Cloud of Unknowing, The Philokalia, John […]

Eugene H. Peterson, Subversive Spirituality

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

What grade would you give a parish minister who never attended one church committee meeting in 25 years, and got most of his pastoral inspiration from novels and secular poetry? Careful now, because Eugene Peterson is by common (pastoral) consent the best contemporary writer about parish ministry in the English-speaking world. Peterson is a biblical […]

Catholics And Sex

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Book Review/Essay: Uta Ranke-Heinemann, ‘Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church’ (Penguin, 1990). Here’s a provocative, formidably-researched critique of Catholic ‘bachelor theology’, addressing issues like sexual morality, contraception, abortion, priestly celibacy and the Virgin Birth, by German Catholicism’s first-appointed woman theologian. Here we can only provide a sample of excerpts, […]

An Introduction To Philosophy

By and others ⋅ January 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Book Review: Jostein Gaarder, ‘Sophie’s World’, London: Phoenix, 1994 (pb. 436 pp.) Who are you? Where did the world come from? A fourteen-year-old Norwegian schoolgirl, Sophie Amundsen, found these questions on a piece of paper in her mailbox. Enigmatic philosopher Albert Knox then takes her on a 400-page journey through 3000 years of Western philosophy. […]

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