My usual New Year resolutions are goofy; put my belt through all the loops, remember where I park my car. But this year, I have come out of a prolonged and painful wilderness experience. I have recovered a neglected lesson from my past to approach and find resolution for the New Year.

Most people, including scholars, think the story of Cain and Abel is about two brothers one who was a farmer and the other a shepherd but this is not the case.

Following a week of turmoil for the Church of England and those who were hoping for justice to come in the shape of full human equality through all tiers of the CofE, we are left not only in shock but a state of corporate rage at the lost vote for women bishops.

​I’ve laboured for most of my long life with questions – often unspoken. Mostly doubts about the Church’s interpretations of scripture and highly improbable doctrines of faith. Years back I was scared to question things which seemed set in stone for many Christians - scared of God’s retribution.

​I was giving a lecture last year, with about 200 people in the audience. Part of my talk was devoted to an overview of the scholarship that has knocked the foundation out of a belief in Jesus as the “only begotten Son of God” and the sacrifice for the sins of the world.

​The Christmas gospel readings report wonderful, fantastic events. A virgin, visited by an angel, is told she will be impregnated by the Holy Spirit, and give birth to a son. Believe it or not - she agrees to this. When the boy is born, a choir of heavenly angels sing joyful melodies in the heavens. Shepherds on night duty leave their flocks untended as they hasten to pay their respects.

Sonya Brown has been a trustee of PCN Britain since 2010. Follow the link to view the video. Alongside the video there are a number of comments from other listeners.

http://www.4thought.tv/themes/should-britain-remain-a-christian-nation/sonya-brown

​This gathering proved to be an amazing transforming experience in so many ways. Perhaps it was not what the participants were expecting. When PCN groups gather around the country the discussions are mainly cerebral. As one participant put it after the first session on the first evening, ‘This is not what I came for. I expected to have deep theological ideas poured into my head.’ Afterwards she wrote, ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and have come home inspired and refreshed....’

​Being familiar with the gospels can lead us into thinking that we know Jesus and his teaching very well. Then when you read a book by a writer who has steeped himself in the text, and the context in which the author was writing, new perspectives dawn.

John Churcher is such a writer. He brings to the surface all sorts of nuggets of information, analysis, many of which I have not seen before. Dying to Live draws lessons from Mark’s gospel. It is a successor to his work on lessons from Luke’s gospel in Setting Jesus Free. His style is easy to read for the non-specialist. It is a very valuable aid to those who have to teach and preach. It will bring some of us up short with the challenge and the insight he offers...

​This was surely one of the muddiest Greenbelts on record. The rain fell in torrents on Saturday afternoon. Run-off flooded the marquees and the lush grass of Cheltenham Racecourse was soon mashed by the passage of feet into a mud bath. Six-year old mud larks found delight in testing for the areas of deepest ooze. Shod in bright wellies they were human lighthouses warning us more sober folk of the areas we needed most to avoid.

​The experience was on a national scale: the Olympics, both ‘warm-up’ and Paralympics, were experienced by many as ‘amazing, fantastic, unbelievable’. Competitors and crowd alike constantly described their experiences like this. Those were the ‘in’ words. Challenges went out to the sporting world especially that of football to take note. What could we all learn, the Church too?

“The world is wracked by suffering, and the threat of war. Many face intense poverty, even in rich countries, and social exclusion affects various minorities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. Ecological damage could bring an end to many forms of life on this planet entrusted by God to our care. But some senior clergy in the UK seem more passionate about whether same-sex marriage will be legally recognised.

​A number of MPs have thrown the cat amongst the pigeons by asking churches to discuss and report back their responses to the proposed change to the law concerning gay marriage. It is an emotive issue for some Christians but there are very few foundational texts stating clearly that homosexuality is wrong. Genesis 19 is often referenced but a careful reading of the text will show that it is gang rape not homosexuality that is being condemned. What is worse, same sex relations or Lot offering his two virgin daughters to be gang raped in place of the two angels sent to warn Lot to leave the city?

​It is with real sadness that I need to pass on to you the news of the death of John Hick. John was of the most influential philosophers of religion in the English speaking world and arguably the most significant English theologian of the last 50 years, certainly in the Reformed Tradition. He trained for the Presbyterian ministry at Westminster College where he became part of a great tradition of Presbyterian scholarship going back to John Oman and H. H. Farmer. He was a classic liberal who will be remembered, among other things, for his openness towards other religious faiths, his continuation to the problem of evil and his splendid book on Jesus “The metaphor of God Incarnate”. I often find myself Quoting John’s statement on the relation of Jesus to God:

“The heavenly father was utterly real to him – as real as the men and women with whom he interacted every day or the Galilean hills among which he lived. God was evidently so real to Jesus that in his presence the heavenly father became real to many of his hearers”.

​For many people who tread a humanist path, there is often a history of a traumatic and initially disenfranchising break from the religion of their upbringing. For many others, and myself there is one man who either eased the break somewhat or gave their faith a stay of execution. So it is with sadness and fondness that I reflect on the influence of John Hick who passed away yesterday.

You must not get caught up in the wishy-washy liberal view along the lines that as the bourgeois revolution was focused on helping the middle-classes find life in the teeth of some pretty awful oppression so the socialist revolution was focused on helping the proletarian classes and likewise the marginal revolution will be focused on helping the marginals. Such an understanding misrepresents not just the Bible but also the modern class revolutionary battles as well...

Christianity and Judaism are nearly always associated in people’s minds with charitable works and pity for the poor. Because of this I found it interesting to discover that neither Jesus nor the revolutionary Hebrew writers considered charity as the object of the exercise they were involved in which was ‘world salvation’ or as we would put it ‘the transformation of human civilisation’...

​Progressive Christianity has lost another important guide and encourager with the death of James Rowe Adams on 13th September, 2011. Jim established the first progressive Christianity organisation [The Center for Progressive Christianity] in 1994 while he was Rector at St Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.