Dave K

@AaronBMacLean @TheFP I love your podcast btw From this side of the Atlantic, I've been thinking a good topic to cover soon would be the future of NATO (and maybe US alliances more generally). Ukraine, Greenland, Iran. All have put the alliance under enormous strain and raise doubts about the future.

Great to join @TheFP podcast!

@MrAshCunningham I agree, although I think people have different views on how you weigh the rights of employees verses rights of employers/complainants, often shaped by their own experiences. I think legally it is a 4 stage test for whether you can dismiss someone for misconduct:

I don’t know more than anyone else, but I’m surprised and alarmed at the number of serious people who are willing to pretend to think that behaviour has to be provably/prosecutably illegal in order to be a fireable offence.

@robwoollard_afp @RobDotHutton @DuncanWeldon new guest for the podcast!?

An absolute marmalade-dropper of an interview with Richard Keys in the Telegraph today. This is magnificent.

@thevicarswife @AP_Davison ...because your citizenship is in heaven, your politics doesn't fit into the world's categories.

@AP_Davison Although I don't think I fall into any of those categories *reformed and evangelical face*

As someone said, on assisted suicide and euthanasia, it’s socialists and high tories vs ‘progressives’ and neoliberals. I’m with the patricians and the comrades.

@SimoninSuffolk Looks like there is a bus (from Ripon to Newby Hall), albeit not frequent.

@DaveK48 Looks great. Unfortunately, I don't drive!

I'm back up north in a couple of weeks. Ripon, then Carlisle and Dumfries, and Hexham if there's time. I've never been to Ripon or Dumfries before. Apart from the obvious - Ripon and Carlisle Cathedrals, Fountains and Hexham Abbeys, Carlisle Castle - what shouldn't I miss?

@NJ_Timothy As a Christian I want to protect the right of Muslims to do this, so that we could also gather and proclaim "Jesus is Lord".

Too many are too polite to say this. But mass ritual prayer in public places is an act of domination. The adhan - which declares there is no god but allah and Muhammad is his messenger - is, when called in a public place, a declaration of domination. Perform these rituals in mosques if you wish. But they are not welcome in our public places and shared institutions. And given their explicit repudiation of Christianity they certainly do not belong in our churches and cathedrals. I am not suggesting everybody at Trafalgar Square last night is an Islamist. But the domination of public places is straight from the Islamist playbook. Trafalgar Square belongs to all of us. It is a national memorial to our independence and our salvation. Last night was not like a televised football match or a St Patrick’s Day celebration. It was an act of domination and therefore division. It shouldn’t happen again.

@zugzwanged @AdrienneRoyer But are they TRULY Reformed? 😉

@AdrienneRoyer I have one-to-one in person conversations with literally hundreds of Reformed people every year. I have spoken and taught in and for many Reformed institutions and churches. I have visited dozens of Reformed churches worldwide. I have a pretty good idea what I am talking about.

@DylanoA4 youtu.be/nA-UBVKQFM0?si…

Read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it. Our civilization is suffering profound wounds because of the wholesale abandonment of reading by contemporary society. — Werner Herzog

It is possible to return to the electric overflowing imagination you had as a child, classic literature is both the door and key

@SimoninSuffolk I really like that statue, and it's location. So many civic statues leave me cold, but that one is great. You could have a Statue Saturday one week!

The politician Harold Wilson was born in Huddersfield #OTD 11 March 1916. His statue in the town's St George's Square, photographed a few weeks ago. He hurries from the railway station reaching in his pocket for his familiar pipe, although he prefered to smoke cigars in private.

@ReshapersCIC Have you read the decision itself?

'Vexatious' = the desperate acts of survivors who have been wounded & crushed by decades of struggling to be heard, taken seriously & served justice & reparation. Clearly the President needs training in trauma. I offer my services.

@Saul_Sadka This is the style the Economist often writes it's obituaries - from the perspective of the deceased. I can't believe you are missing the in your face irony. I mean read the bit about him enriching himself!

The Economist, in its “fighting back the tears” obituary for Khamenei, salivates with true depravity over Trump’s future death in grisly, if ecstatic, terms: “...when Mr. Trump’s body was ashes, eaten by worms and ants.” It makes the Washington Post and its infamous “Austere Islamic Scholar” obituary for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seem very quaint indeed. But I read the whole thing so you don’t have to. The key takeaways: 1. The USA is the Great Satan—no scare quotes. 2. For readers who don’t know what “Israel” is, the Economist helpfully translates it in parentheses as “the little Satan.” 3. Khamenei, otherwise known as “God’s Dictator,” had “divine right on his side” and had “countless reasons to hate the West,” which is an America-led “phalanx of morally corrupt countries.” 4. Khamenei was a sainted and humble man, dragged to power against his will, selfless and “heroically flexible” and unassailable—a “humble cleric from Mashhad who inherited the earth.” 5. Honourable in life, but perfect in death: what could be sweeter than delicious martyrdom? What could be “more deserving of paradise-to-come than to drink the pure draught of a martyr’s end”?! 6. According to the Economist, “Freedom, human rights, dress codes for women” are “tiresome Western tropes.” Yes, really. 7. All his troubles were economic: he was tormented by the West and by foreign enemies. All the crimes he ordered—beatings, killings, and so on—were, naturally, merely “a response” to those Western crimes. 8. He “rules by divine authority,” and “his tongue could channel God.” 9. He was just a ”mild-mannered cleric” gazed benignly from billboards and was a great teacher of forgiveness”. We have now surely reached the apogee of the decay of the legacy media in the West. Surely it can't sink lower than this?

@AdamMerrivale I've just read this is 70s though, so can't have that one.

@AdamMerrivale youtu.be/qAkpN8eF7po?si…

SERMON HIVEMIND What are your favourite 80s/90s/00s UK advertising slogans or jingles?

@Jonathan_Black_ Some awful books on there though!

@Jonathan_Black_ I fully agree. That's what I meant by 'directly' influencing church today. I think the influence of most of the classics is indirect, through shaping the church of those who raised the generation that raised the generation that raised the writers of these books.

There are books that have had huge impact on the church, both around the world and in the UK. Most of them don’t make it anywhere near Premier magazine’s 100 Books That Changed the Church List.

@Jonathan_Black_ I think it is a interesting list of books that probably have directly shaped most UK evangelical Christians alive today. The sad fact is few old books (or books from outside UK/US) do shape UK evangelical Christians directly today. Obviously, the classics shape indirectly tho.

But what about Luther’s Freedom of a Christian or Galatians Commentary? Basil On the Holy Spirit? Greg Naz’s Theological Orations? Cyril Against Nestorius? BCP? Athanasius’ Life of Anthony? Thomas Charles’ Christian Instructor? These really did change the church!

@2D0XPS @Rgt71Robert Yes! A good example of Jesus' teaching on this subject is the parable of the wedding banquet. The religious insiders refuse the invitation, but the irreligious outsiders accept. The outsiders become the insiders. What matters is precisely that we do come in - to him.

@Rgt71Robert The difference is, Robert, you would have the Samaritan remain a religious outsider. You will not bring him the Good News that calls him to come in and know the Lord Jesus. The prayers of Muslims do not make me fearful or anxious. I am not threatened by their mosques.

Well, I have to say that my post here has really precipitated some quite dramatically my criticisms of my own faith. Well, I’m pretty much used to that. And what I think is really hard is that people do not actually read the scriptures more and displaced the Christ who has revealed in the Gospel with a God of their own making an idol… so here go: I have assented to the faith of the Church of England incomplete sincerity, but I certainly not “signed up” to a 16th-century culture war as expressed in the Articles of Religion. The Thirty-Nine Articles are historic formularies that bear witness to the faith; they are not a mandate for hostility toward our neighbours. Jesus himself models something deeper than fear. He says: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9.40). He heals the servant of a Roman centurion — a pagan occupier — and says: “I have not found such faith in Israel.” (Matthew 8.10) He tells a parable in which the hero is a religious outsider — the Samaritan. Christian confidence does not require civic panic. If a redundant church becomes a mosque, Christ is not diminished. The risen One is not threatened by bricks and mortar. Anglican faith is rooted in the Creeds, the Scriptures, and the generous Incarnation not in anxiety about who prays next door. In Kilburn, where Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and those of no faith live side by side, I choose the confidence of Christ over the fear of culture war.

@zugzwanged Fear of the in-laws can make you do extreme things!

I was recently interviewed while with in-laws in upstate New York. It was earlier morning, no one else was up, and I wasn't sure which rooms would be free and without interruptions, so recorded in the unheated enclosed porch in -10°C. My interviewer was in Australian summer heat!

@simplepastor For trauma survivors, but with plenty of read across to depression, I think 'Comfort in the Ashes Explorations in the Book of Job to Support Trauma Survivors' by Michelle Keener is very good.

Hey Christian Twitter, can you help? 👇 "Hey Phil! In all your reading, have you come across any good material (book, podcast, sermons) on depression and faith? Feeling a bit ill equipped to support some people & wanting some inspiration & helpful ways of thinking."