Woman, know thy place!

While the world deals with war, famine, and flood, the Church of England asserted its grasp on relevance by announcing that it will remove several powers to woman bishops.  The rationale behind the decision was to keep the embittered organization alive through its current internal conflicts. That’s a relief — if they attempted to persuade [...]

King of Kabwe

We pray for raises and bonuses!

We pray for jobs and promotions!

We pray for dividends and surpluses!

The congregation cheers after each line as the prayer in Ebenezer Tabernacle works to a frenzy. Elated, the choir spontaneously launches into a song of praise. A sea of bodies cry and dance in response. It’s a demonstration of a victory they claim over poverty, claimed in faith each week in the developing town of Kabwe. As the song finishes, buckets are distributed among the thousand-strong crowd to collect their offering.

Killing in the name of

The whole God and violence thing has come and gone in the public limelight for a while now. Trouble is it’s not really covered off in any meaningful way in churches that I’ve visited. Either there’s an avoidance of the topic, or a more honest bewilderment that the faith church-goers profess has a [...]

Jesus is my homeboy

A while back I posted a wee vid to YouTube. It was from the opening of a Sunday service from mega-church Hillsong, in London. “Not exactly my cup of tea” was the throwaway comment I put on the post. And that was that.
Until of course, is04goe posted a response (sic, and plenty of it):
If [...]