Andrew's Annotations and Anecdotes

Some people may have seen reports in the press of a Christian couple being prosecuted for defending the Christian faith in a conversation with Muslim guests in their hotel. If you haven't you can read about it here.

The following is a letter I have written to the DPP urging him to drop the prosecution. You may wish to find out more about the case. The best place to do so is the Christian Institute web site.



FAO Keir Starmer QC, The Director of Public Prosecutions

Dear Mr Starmer,

I am writing to express my deep reservations about the prosecution of Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang by Merseyside Police.

As a church pastor in Liverpool I would say that we enjoy excellent relationships with Muslims across the city and it seems to me that this ill considered prosecution is not only unjust on the facts of the case but also liable to destabilise relations between different religious and ethnic groups in our city. It is therefore neither, I feel, likely to result in a conviction or in the public interest

I would perhaps not have chosen to use the precise terms that the accused are reported as having said in the media (calling the prophet Mohammed a warlord for example). However it seems to me that their comments are arguably entirely accurate; so, for example, feminist academics have been arguing for decades over whether Muslim dress codes for women are oppressive putting people in bondage. I note that one of them seem to have been prosecuted.

I accept it is perfectly possible that the Muslim guests may have been offended by the comments. But I am not sure that this legislation was in any way intended to enshrine in law a right not to be offended! In fact it seems to me that it is the very essence of a free society that each person is entitled to hold and express views that others may find offensive. If this is not the case then it seems to me that the complainants in this case are in danger of falling foul of the law themselves as calling Jesus a 'minor prophet' is as offensive to Christians as calling Mohanned a 'warlord' would be to Muslims.

It seems to me that the law is being somewhat selectively applied in this case against people holding Christian views; such people seem to have considerably less freedom of speech than those who oppose Christian views. Richard Dawkins has written that Joshua, one of the heroes of the Jewish and Christian faiths, was responsible for a genocide in a multi-million selling book! The parallel with this case is unmistakable, but only one of them has resulted in a prosecution.

For the sake of freedom of speech and also of racial and religious harmony in our city I would urge the CPS to reconsider this ill advised prosecution.

Yours sincerely

Rev'd Andrew Evans MA (Cantab)
Minister
Christ Church Liverpool

The following is a list we put together for use at Christ Church. But I felt it deserved a wider audience! It is deliberately fairly "narrow" - a list of books I think will give helpful and accurate perspectives on a range of issues in Christian theology. Comments welcome - but it's limited to 100 so it you suggest a book to add you have to suggest one to take away too! The categories are, inevitably, a little bit overlaping.


Introductions to Christianity

The Prodigal God, Tim Keller (Hodder & Stoughton)

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis (Fount)

Basic Christianity, John Stott (IVP)

The Reason for God, Tim Keller (Hodder & Stoughton)

A fresh start, John Chapman (The Good Book Company)


The Bible and its Plotline

How to read the Bible for all it’s worth, Fee and Stuart (Zondervan)

God's Big Picture: Tracing the Story-line of the Bible, Vaughan Roberts (IVP)

The symphony of scripture, Mark Strom (P & R Publishing)

The Doctrine of the knowledge of God, John Frame (P & R Publishing)

Scripture and Truth, Carson and Woodbridge (Eds) (Fleming H. Revell)

He gave us stories, Richard Pratt (P & R Publishing)


Christian Truth

Know the Truth, Bruce Milne (IVP)

Doctrine of God, John Frame (P & R Publishing)

The Person of Christ, Donald Macleod (IVP)

Cross Examined, Mark Meynell (IVP)

The Cross of Christ, John Stott (IVP)

In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement, J. I. Packer & Mark Dever (IVP)

The evidence for the resurrection, Norman Anderson (IVP)

The message of the resurrection, Paul Beasley-Murray (IVP)

The Sovereignty of God, A W Pink (Fleming H. Revell)

18 Words: The Most Important Words You Will Ever Know, J. I. Packer (Christian Focus)

Knowing God, J.I. Packer (Hodder & Stoughton)

The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, D. A. Carson (IVP)

The Holy Spirit, Sinclair Ferguson (IVP)

Spirit of Truth, David Jackman (Christian Focus)


Evangelism

The Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Mark Dever (IVP)

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, J. I. Packer (IVP)

Know and Tell the Gospel, John Chapman (Matthias Media)


Evangelism – Mission

Let the Nations Be Glad, John Piper (Baker Academic)

Salvation to the ends of the earth, Andreas Kostenburger and Peter O’Brien (Apollos)

Operation World, OM (Authentic Lifestyle)


Church history

The Story of the Church, Renwick and Harman (IVP)

Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, Mark Noll (Baker Academic)

The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics, Kelly M. Kapic and Randall C. Gleason (Editors) (IVP)


Gender, Family and Sexuality

Shepherding a Child's Heart, Tedd Tripp (Shepherd Press)

Married for God, Christopher Ash (IVP)

God, Sex and Marriage, John Richardson (St Matthias Press)

Fatherhood, Tony Payne (Good Book Company)

Sex is not the problem (lust is), Joshua Harris (Multnomer Publishers)

Recovering biblical manhood and womanhood, John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Crossway Books)

Straight and Narrow, Thomas E. Schmidt (IVP)

Walking with gay friends, Alex Tylee (IVP)

Disciplines of a godly man/woman/family, Kent Hughes (Crossway Books)

The single issue, Al Hsu (IVP)

God's Design for Women: Biblical Womanhood for Today, Sharon James (Evangelical Press)


Classics

Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan (Penguin)

The Bondage of the Will, Martin Luther (Hendrickson Publishers)

The Screwtape Letters, C S Lewis (Fount)


Church

Stop Dating the Church: Fall in Love with the Family of God, Joshua Harris (Multnomah Press)

Nine marks of a healthy church, Mark Dever (Crossway Books)


Prayer

A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers, D.A. Carson (IVP)

Praying: Finding our Way Through Duty to Delight, J.I. Packer (IVP)

Prayer and the Voice of God , P Jensen & T Payne. (Matthias Media)

The message of prayer, Tim Chester (IVP)


Work

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, Andy Crouch (IVP)

Business for the Glory of God, Wayne Grudem (Crossway Books)

Thank God it’s Monday, Mark Greene (Scripture Union)


Suffering

Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Zondervan)

How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, D.A. Carson (IVP)

Lament for a son, Nicholas Walterstorff (William B Eerdmans Publishing)

The problem of pain, C S Lewis (Fount)


Culture

Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, Nancy Pearcey (IVP)

The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism, D.A. Carson (IVP)

Is there a meaning in this text? Kevin J Vanhoozer (Apollos)

Jesus in Disneyland, David Lyon (Polity Press)

Trilogy, Francis Schaeffer (Crossway Books)

Meltdown, Marcus Honeysett. (IVP)


Ministry

Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians, D. A. Carson (Baker Books)

One to One, Sophie De Witt (Authentic Lifestyle)

Speaking God’s Words, Peter Adam (Regent College Publishing)

Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands, Paul David Tripp (P & R Publishing)


Science

God’s undertaker, John Lennox (Lion Hudson)

Science and its limits, Del Ratzch (IVP)

The dawkins delusion, McGrath (SPCK Publishing)


Ethics

Issues facing Christians today (Zondervan)

Evangelical Ethics: Issues Facing the Church Today, John Jefferson Davis (P & R Publishing)

Good news to the poor, Tim Chester (IVP)

Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road, Tim Keller (P & R Publishing)

How to get really rich, Brian Rosner (IVP)

Neither Poverty Nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions (New Studies in Biblical Theology), Craig Blomberg (IVP)


Personal Spiritual growth

For the Love of God: Volumes One and two, D. A. Carson (IVP)

A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, J. I. Packer (Crossway Books)

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, John Piper (IVP)

True Spirituality, Francis Schaeffer (Tyndale House Publishers)

Enemy Within: Straight Talk About the Power and Defeat of Sin, Kris Lundgaard (P&R Publishing)

Mirror Mirror, Graham Beynon (IVP)

You Can Change , Tim Chester (IVP)

Holiness, J C Ryle (Hendrickson Publishers)

A Passion for Holiness, J Packer (Crossway Books)

Guidance and the Voice of God, P Jensen & T Payne (St Matthias Press)

Decision making and the will of God, Garry Friesen (Multnomah Publishers)

Living the Cross Centered Life, C J Mahaney (Multnomah Publishers)


Reference

Calvin’s institutes (Westminster John Knox Press)

Grudem systematic theology (IVP)

New Bible Commentary (IVP)

New Bible Dictionary (IVP)

Old Testament Commentary Survey, 4th ed, Tremper Longman III (Baker)

New Testament Commentary Survey, 6th ed. D.A. Carson (Baker)(IVP)

ESV Study Bible (Crossway Bibles)

I turn up to work almost every day at the CCL office in the Novas Comtemporary Urban Centre in Liverpool. And it all seems very normal - people running the cafe, getting on with their work and all the rest of it. But it seems that all has not been well at Novas recently - a good reminder to me that sin lurks in every corner of the world, and every corner of my own heart too.

Michael Wake: the charity chief, the wasted millions and the women employees - Telegraph

Carl Trueman (who is a professor of Theology at Westminster Seminary, not the main character in a Peter Weir movie) writes quite a lot of quirky books and articles. I've just finished "Minority Report". It's certainly an eclectic collection but it seemed to me that one of the (few) unifying themes was that quite a number of the articles were critical of what Trueman calls "Mere Christianity", the phrase taken from the title C S Lewis' famous book.

Trueman acknowledges the usefulness of what might be called minimalist doctrinal statements, those setting out only what somebody considers "essential". They are helpful for holding together groups of people from different churchmanship but who are united in their understandings of, say, the Scriptures, the doctrine of God and the atonement. The trouble is, Trueman argues, they often turn out not to exclude people that the founders of those doctrinal statements certainly would have wanted to exclude and, when applied in churches, can cause such an erosion of theological thinking that even the minimalist doctrinal statement itself comes under threat.

As someone with a very strong background in UCCF and Christian Unions I am, I guess, comfortable with the idea of evangelical essentials. But I also think that Trueman has a point when he says that: "the meaning and significance of such doctrinal bases is necessarily unstable precisely because they are so minimal... the isolation of a statement from a wider doctrinal matrix renders it a formula which is, if not contentless, at least vague and ill-defined."

Instead, Trueman argues, we should give thanks for and even celebrate the much greater level of detail in documents like the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Confession. For the devil, he argues, dwells not in the details but "in the rather large gaps that mere Christianity's fear of detail tends to leave behind."

All of which set me thinking about how, practically, one manages such things. It seems to me that we must accept that, to draw support from a wide range of evangelicals, organisations like UCCF, the North West Partnership or the FIEC, all of which I am personally involved with and supportive of, need to have relatively minimal doctrinal statements; or they will become very narrow or spend all their time arguing about what should and shouldn't be covered!

But any individual Christian, or indeed, any given local church, needs to understand that such organisations are therefore always particularly open to somebody or some group of people coming in from the outside and subverting the meaning of the doctrines while formally upholding them. We therefore mustn't mistake being "properly" evangelical with supporting any of the various pan-evangelical organisations that exist.

It could be objected that the Church of England has a much more detailed doctrinal statement than any of the organisations I have mentioned so far and is also in a much bigger theological mess than any of them! This is true. But the C of E is also in a very different situation. Precisely because the 39 articles are so detailed they have to be entirely abandoned by liberals (and some who call themselves evangelical) in the C of E; they cannot formally uphold them but mean something different.

In a local church whilst not, perhaps, insisting on very detailed doctrinal understanding for admission to membership it does seem that we need to have a comprehensive doctrinal framework, shared by the leaders who teach the church.

A real challenge to me then to know what I think about things, rather than just reckoning that if it's not absolutely central I can afford to be agnostic. I can't!

Wayne Grudem, author of the now ubiquitous "Systematic Theology" and its various slimmer offspring has recently written another volume - this time a very small book (90 pages) entitled Business to the Glory of God. It's a precursor to a longer tome that he is working on around the issue of Christians and business.

Christian churches in the UK have, historically, quite a mixed view of business. I think it would be fair to say that the Church of England, having strong roots in the landed classes, has probably historically thought that business is a bit vulgar and I suspect that view still holds in some quarters. The Brethren, by contrast, have produced many men of business - the result of the application of a protestant work ethic by intelligent men who often didn't have the then necessary social background to go to university.

Independent evangelical churches, I suspect, have probably for the most part thought that business isn't really spiritual enough and certainly doesn't compare to "ministry" or "the professions" for spiritual kudos.

Business to the Glory of God is a welcome break from such attitudes with Grudem commending ownership of property, productivity, employment, money, inequality of possessions, competition, borrowing, and lending as all being commendable in God's sight - and also, in each case, as capable of abuse and the possibility of sin.

For my money (ha ha!) though, it is the chapter of profit that is most interesting. Grudem argues that profit is good, demonstrating, I think helpfully, that the efficient use of resources to produce things that people need or want is best achieved through allowing individuals to make a profit on good or services they make and sell.

The place where his argument is inconclusive (at best) is when he talks about whether systems of profit are fair. Grudem acknowledges that great disparity in power of knowledge between the seller and the buyer can lead to the seller taking advantage of that and cheating someone.

But, he notes: "If profit is made in a system of voluntary exchange not distorted by monopoly power or dishonesty or greatly unequal knowledge, then when I earn a profit I also help you."

I think I agree with that - as far as it goes. The question is whether the systems of profit that we currently see operating in the western world actually ever meet those criteria. The sprawling global world of massive corporations and the huge banks and governments that work with them surely means that, to all intents and purposes, there is always massive disparity between seller and buyer?

It has turned out that in the world's biggest banks even most of the senior board members didn't have enough knowledge to stop themselves being exploited by people carrying out crazy transactions with credit default swaps. What hope for the rest of us?

It seems that the only people who have made a profit out of banks in the last few years are not shareholders, customers or staff but a very small number of senior managers and directors. I suspect that when I get my pension return this year I will discover that the only people who have made any money investing my money are the pension company staff investing it (and losing quite a lot of it)! These people know so much more than the rest of us that they can (largely) arrange things so that all the reward goes to them and all the risk remains with regular citizens.

Of course if I was a banker I'd probably be just the same - because the problem that they have is the same as my problem - a sinful, selfish heart.

It will be interesting to see how Grudem develops his thesis in the bigger volume when it arrives. But at present I can't help feeling that his conclusions show he believes that structural evil is more likely to reside in governments than in companys - and I can't accept that because I think the hearts of the people who make profits are just the same as the hearts of the people who pass legislation.

I've been thinking about doing good recently. Inspired by Julian Hardyman's excellent little book Glory Days I've been reflecting on what it means for Christians to do good and when and why we should do it.

What's that got to do with running? Well I ran a 10k recently (52:39 for those who are interested!) and loads of the people doing it were being sponsored for some charity or another. I've always been reluctant to do that kind of thing, for several reasons. Firstly because when somebody asks you to sponsor them I always fear it seems like a kind of emotional stranglehold - you can't really say no without drawing into question the value of your freindship! Secondly, no doubt, because I am tempramentally mean and like to keep my money for myself (another area for regular repentance!). But thirdly because I sometimes wonder what difference it can all make. So will my mate Jon's triathlon, raising money for Asylum Link, really enable asylum seekers to be treated properly, rather than in the terrible way our society does at present?

The refreshing answer from Julian Hardyman is that we don't have to think we can solve the world's problems to try and do something about them...

"Surely God is pleased that child mortality rates have dropped enormously in the UK over the last 150 years - and would be pleased if we could achieve the same for developing countries today? Surely if we could reduce the number of abortions in the western world that would be worth doing, even if there were still some that happened? We may not be able to "Christianise" society but we can make it better."

Here, here! So, with gratitude to Julian Hardyman, I'm going to do another 10k in September and try and raise some money for cancer research. Who knows what good it will do. But, in a fallen world that won't be sorted out till Jesus Christ returns, doing whatever good we can is clearly the way forward!

So... if you'd like to sponsor me click here. And I honestly won't think it undermines our friendship if you don't!

Now that it appears the Daily Telegraph have stopped serialising the MPs expenses soap opera ot might be possible to have some slightly more sober reflection on the issue. Here, for what they are worth, are my thoughts so far...

It seems to me that the vast majority of the cases "revealed" by the newspapers demonstrate administrative incompetency, forgetfulness or a lack of judgment as to how claims that were perfectly legitimate within the rules might be perceived by the public. those areas are matters for concern, of course, in a MP who one would hope would be administratively competent and, especially, have good judgment about the perceptions of the public. But they are a long way short of being dishonest or criminal. stupid, perhaps, but neither criminal or wicked.

Much has been made of the fact that it's not good enough for MPs to say that their claims were within the rules - because the rules themselves were flawed. I think that the rules certainly were flawed. But a few things are worth remembering:

• Yes, the MPs themselves did make the rules - but we were the people who elected them again and again after they had made them. So we, the electors, bear some responsibility for what those rules were along with the MPs.
  
• The reason the rules were set up as they were, mostly by the last Conservative government it should be remembered for those who may be into political point scoring, was that it was deemed politically unacceptable to pay MPs bigger salaries than they currently receive. These salaries are significantly less than you might earn as a secondary school head, a GP, a senior officer in a local council or in a senior role in almost any company. I think we do need to ask whether we really think it's the best plan to pay, let's say, the head who implements the law on education in one school less than the people who pass the laws on education for all schools
• The MPs who passed the rules in the first place account for only some of the current MPs. The newer MPs, in particular, were encouraged to see the allowances as a part of their salary. That might have been naieve on their part but I think most people in their first day in a new job, especially in a place as intimidating as the Palace of Westminster, would be inclined to accept the advice of the "experts" deployed to advise them.

None of this is to excuse the fact that almost all the claims showed a lack of political judgment, that many were venal and some positively selfish and maybe fraudulant. But I do think that as a Christian I need to take a perspective that acknowledges the universal sinfulness of people, including me, and therefore ask myself questions as to whether envy might lie behind my condemnation and assume.

Three final observations spring to mind.

The first is that, generally, countries get the kind of MPs that they deserve. So what does it say about our society that our many of our MPs, like many of our bankers, seem, for to be more interested in themselves than others?

The second is that I think we need to recognise that there are other people here with an agenda. The owners of the Daily Telegraph, in particular, are wealthy on a scale unknown to almost all MPs, and have recently been accused, with some legitimacy it seems, of trying to bully the electors of an entire country (Sark) into voting a particular way in an election. The paper they own sold more and more copies the worse the allegations seemed - so they had a clear interest to spin the story to make the abuses seem as bad as possible. The person who leaked the documents (which were shortly to be published in any case) made a lot of money out of it. No doubt many foreign governments in states with much less interest in democracy than ours and chief executives of FTSE 100 companies (whose pay increased to an average of around £4 million).

The third is that, whilst undoubedly MPs pay needs sorting out, you've got to ask whether it's really worth three weeks of front page news - global warming anyone? abortion? third world poverty? war in Afghanistan? the moral and spiritual decline of almost all of Europe?