I am tired and morale is down 25-30% on the usual levels, so I am just posting links:

The Old Argued Cross
If you’ve enjoyed the posts here about Spring Harvest and UCCF and the like you might enjoy this song by John of Sprowston (posted in the comments below). Very good. Click the link and then click the picture. It is a bit under 2mb.

Noah’s Ark finished
The Dutch version. This is the website of it, mostly meaningless to me as I do not speak the language.

Blogs4God
Blogs4god was the main centre of Christian blogging back in the 2003-2005 sort of time or thereabouts. Dean is getting it going again – this is the story of why it failed and how it will be coming back.

Gospel Procession Video
Raspberry Rabbit of Scotland posted this. I gawped when I saw it. I suspect some of you may gawp too. There will be gawpers everywhere.

Posted by Dave at 10:27 pm on April 30, 2007 and filed under Saturday links.

11 Comments

The Catholic Church of England and Wales is using a cartoon campaign to encourage young people from 10 years old upwards to think about becoming a priest or a member of a religious order. The website, ‘calledtoday‘ was launched today and there are posters going to schools and churches and anyone else with wall space and blu-tack.

I can see why they are only targetting it at 10 year olds – 8 or 9 year olds just wouldn’t be suited to being in a religious order at all.

The cartoons are in a ‘manga’ style apparently. I don’t really ‘get’ manga, but then I don’t get lots of things because I am old. I have to say I like the stories of real people on the website, but the poster doesn’t really make me want to look at the website in the first place as it doesn’t give me any idea what it is about.

Anyhow, the blurb about all this is on the Catholic Church website here, and the Telegraph has reported about it here.

As an aside, the Catholic Church website in England and Wales must be the worst religious website in the UK. I can’t look at most of it because the menus quite simply don’t work. It might just be Firefox they don’t work in, but I’m not about to fire up Internet Explorer to find out in case I break something.

I’m sorry, but I’m not even going to consider becoming a Priest in a denomination whose website doesn’t work. Also I am married.

Posted by Dave at 10:08 pm on April 29, 2007 and filed under Cartooning, Ecumenical matters, Religion.

15 Comments

In recent days there have been complaints from certain circles that there is not enough religion on BBC Radio 1. This has mainly been from Bishops who, one assumes, have the radio on whilst on the way to do confirmations and ordinations the like.

The BBC Editors weblog has replied to Arun (a Cartoon Blog reader and occasional commenter) who contacted them on the subject. Their reply was that the Bishop’s Easter sermons were not interesting enough (or did not ‘cut the mustard’ to use the exact phrase) to make the news because there was some news happening at the same time.

Perhaps the Bishops need to come up with a new approach. Hence the cartoon.

In unrelated (but related) news, the BBC is to end the Heaven and Earth show. I have a friend that works on the show who I hope is being employed by the programmes that will replace it.

[This cartoon can be posted on your blog if you post a link back here. Thank you!]

Posted by Dave at 3:30 pm on April 29, 2007 and filed under Religion, TV.

8 Comments

Things that I’ve found on the internet over the last week which I haven’t managed an individual blog post about:

Picturedots: Make your own dot to dot puzzles
This looks really fun and will be very useful to somebody. I can’t quite think who at this moment.

A4 PAPER CUT (Found via the Cartoonist)
Sculptures froma sheet of A4 paper.

FlickrBlockrs: Say NO To Online Photos
How to remain anonymous on the internet.

Andertoons Cartoon Blog: Writing Gags
People always ask ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ Cartoonist Mark Anderson guides us through his thought processes.

Raspberry Rabbit: Bringing the orchestra back from the dead
Something a bit more profound from Raspberry Rabbit.

Posted by Dave at 10:39 pm on April 28, 2007 and filed under Saturday links.

2 Comments

…as if we should do things his way

[Sorry, evangelical worship song joke there.]

The Spring Harvest / Word Alive split was not all about Steve Chalke and the penal substitution issue, writes Bishop Pete Broadbent on the Ship of Fools forum website. Here is his post in full:

It’s quite hard to produce an understated response to UCCF’s propaganda. The Word Alive Committee had 3 partners; UCCF, Keswick, and Spring Harvest – though it was always SH’s event. There had been a 4th partner – Proclamation Trust – but they walked some time ago. There were also a number of independent members on the committee, one of whom was Wallace Benn, who chaired the committee.

It’s been an extraordinarily difficult relationship to sustain over a number of years. Keswick have always been easy to work with. UCCF and the independent members have been a constant source of arguments and disagreements – over the charismatic movement (Word Alive has been an event where the charismatic has been deliberately played down); over the nature of the Kingdom of God, where some of the partners were unhappy with anything other than a “spritual”/”Johannine” understanding of the KOG; over the understanding of the atonement; over the precise meaning of exclusivism/particularism in relation to interfaith issues; over whether the only way to do bible teaching is to preach through a book sequentially; over speakers who’ve wanted to produce their own “sound” notes, rather than use the Study Guide we produce and ask people to teach from. We’re talking several years of painful walking on eggshells to try to keep these guys on board and produce an event that would serve the breadth of evanglicalism.

In the end, we couldn’t sustain it, because it was too much like hard work. We had a formula for ending it well. We could have said much more about why, from the Spring Harvest side of fairly normal evangelicalism, it wasn’t working. We didn’t. We tried to end graciously. But they didn’t want to. The result has been gut-spilling all over the place. So be it. I’ve told them that if they continue to go public on their propaganda as to why it’s all about Steve, I’ll continue to go public in refutation of what they’re saying. But if they belt up, so will we.

All quite illuminating. UCCF really aren’t coming out of this looking great at the moment.

According to Tom (in the comments section below) UCCF are meeting to discuss their response to events on Monday. Bishop Pete (in the same comments section) notes that Spring harvest have not been invited to this meeting, and he hopes they will ‘cease the press releases and shut up‘. I think really they all need to sit down with a glass of fortified fruit juice and have a chat about it and hopefully sort the whole mess out.

To hear what the more conservative people are saying about these goings-on you could follow the links at this post. But only if you have been blessed with a bit too much spare time.

If you have only slightly too much free time you could see the preceding posts on the subject on my blog:
- Word Alive is no more
- More on the Spring Harvest / Word Alive kerfuffle
- Unusual Word Alive sightings: Women speakers and Steve Chalke books

Posted by Dave at 11:23 pm on April 27, 2007 and filed under Ecumenical matters, Religion.

5 Comments

A couple of months ago I posted about the cartoonist ‘Jim’ who we had previously featured on Wibsite.com and his new website. I’m sure you remember. Don’t you? I’m sure you do.

Anyhow, Jim (who we’ll call Brendan) very kindly sent me a copy of his cartoon book, entitled ‘Gone Astray’, and I have been reading it and looking at the pictures. There are a lot of samples available on his website to give you an idea of the sort of thing the book contains. Jim does cartoons about church things – similar subjects to me in fact, but in a different style. Quite a few puns, the one above being one I particularly enjoyed. Jim is coming from the liberal end of Christian goings-on, so people of a similar ilk are likely to particularly enjoy what he does. But I think people of most ilks will enjoy it actually.

The good news is that the book is now available to buy via his website. The cost including postage to the UK is a very reasonable 30 New Zealand dollars, which, according to Google is 11.1575322 British pounds.

[Please note that the cartoon above is not covered by my usual 'blog it for free' arrangement. Please get in touch with Jim (who we'll call Brendan) if you'd like to reuse his stuff.]

Posted by Dave at 9:04 am on April 27, 2007 and filed under Cartooning, Church, Links: cartoonists, Religion.

4 Comments

If you’re bored of my continual blathering about the Spring Harvest / Word Alive story feel free to click ‘next’ or ‘close’ or ‘no’ and be done with it. I probably wouldn’t have posted again on the subject had I not thought of a cartoon about it. [See 'Word Alive is no more' and 'More on the Spring Harvest / Word Alive kerfuffle' for my posts so far on the topic.]

I don’t normally link to forum posts, but this seems to be the only place that this information has been posted. Bishop Pete Broadbent on Ship of Fools:

I can tell you that:

1. Steve Chalke has never been proposed by the Spring Harvest Leadership Team as a speaker at Word Alive

2. Spring Harvest are not in partnership with Fusion.

3. UCCF have never allowed women speakers to speak on their own on the main stage at the Student Celebration, despite SH requiring it as policy

4. We never said we were putting “personality ahead of partnership”

5. We did not end the partnership over Steve Chalke, though it suits UCCF’s myth-making to pretend that we did

I have no idea why UCCF have released this press release. It looks very much like a piece of machismo propaganda to puff their new event.

Point 3 inspired the following brief scribble:

If you think I’m being unfair go and have a look at the endorsements page of the ‘Pierced for our Transgressions’ book and tell me how many of the 45 or so endorsers are women. (’Tremper’ and ‘Lindsay’ are both men’s names on this occasion. I’ve checked.)

On a (sort of) related note, I was intrigued by Graham’s post in my comments that Wesley Owen staff were forbidden from selling Steve Chalke’s books at Word Alive:

We were passing the Wesley Owen stand when some one asked if they could buy one of Steve’s books. The assistant told the enquirer that they were not allowed to put Steve’s books out at Word Alive.

It seems to me there might have been some money to be made by someone selling Steve Chalke books in brown paper wrapping to passers by, but I digress. I tend to think that attempting to silence the opposition’s point of view through censorship might not be a great strategy in the long run. Let both sides of the debate make their points and allow people to make their own minds up.

Posted by Dave at 10:56 am on April 26, 2007 and filed under Ecumenical matters, Religion.

22 Comments

There have been suggestions that wireless networks could be bad for us too.

Oh dear. The merits of living in the middle of a field somewhere in the Scottish Highlands are becoming clear.

I do not use my mobile telephone(s) very much at all, but I do have them turned on. I don’t know if that is as bad radiationwise.

If I stop posting coherently you will know I have been overcome by unseen technological waves.

Posted by Dave at 10:11 am on April 25, 2007 and filed under Cartoons, Technical.

11 Comments

Dear me. A lot is being written and said and it is a bit hard to keep up. I’m posting these without any in depth commentary as I have to get on with work today.

1) UCCF: Statement about the Word Alive situation (Update: original source)

It is basically saying that can’t work with those who don’t hold to ‘orthodox Christian teaching’ and that Spring Harvest ended the relationship.

2) Bishop of Durham, Dr N T Wright: Article on ‘Fulcrum’

Lengthy, but worthwhile article. It doesn’t address the specific Spring Harvest / Word Alive situation, but is talking about the theological whathaveyous behing it. He has harsh things to say to both Jeffrey John and the authors of a book ‘Pierced for Our Transgressions’, which is a conservative evangelical take on penal substitution by IVP and Oak Hill College types.

3) Bishop of Spring Harvest, Pete Broadbent: Statement about the Word Alive situation (Update: Bishop Pete has posted the statement in the comments of this blog too)

It’s terribly sad that UCCF are now coming out with an official statement that simply isn’t true to what actually took place. I don’t want to get into a public row with UCCF, whose ministry among students I support. But this is just simply to say that I dispute most of what is contained in the statement as being either misunderstanding (willful or otherwise) or total fabrication. I could hope that they would withdraw their statement and hold their peace.

Further update:
The ‘Pierced for our Transgressions’ authors respond to Bishop Tom Wright.

Posted by Dave at 7:55 am on April 24, 2007 and filed under Ecumenical matters, Religion.

10 Comments

The Chuch of England is offering a training course on blogging for those who’d like to learn how to blog Anglicanly.

The course is held at Church House in Westminster. The mild irony is that if you work at Church House and write a blog you could find yourself in a bit of a pickle.

But anyway, well done to the communications people for instigating such a thing. This may have been happening for a while without my being aware of it of course [Update: The course is running this year for the first time].

[Technical aside. You'll notice that I've coloured in a bit of the above cartoon. Lovely isn't it. Unfortunately the antiquated programme I use to do my cartoon editing does not make this very easy, so I probably will not be doing very much more of the same.]

Re-using this cartoon
You can post this cartoon on your blog – please save the image on your own webspace and post a link to this site. For any other uses please contact me.

Posted by Dave at 12:38 pm on April 23, 2007 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Blogging, Cartoons, Church, Religion.

10 Comments

This is a very good thing that I saw a while ago but hadn’t remembered to write about until I saw it on Kristen’s bus stop blog.

In summary, Kiva is a site that enables you to loan money to people who are running small businesses in developing countries. What a good idea. As Kristen points out, you can do a search and find people working in your area of interest. And you get your money back so that you can loan it again and again. Fantastic.

I think I’m going to give it a go, but not tonight as I’m on one of my late night ’should-have-done-it-earlier’ deadline dashes. Truly I am an idiot.

Posted by Dave at 11:03 pm on April 22, 2007 and filed under Make Poverty History, Starting a Business.

1 Comment

Today was a day for attending to the woeful state of the garden, which has been allowed to fall into rack, ruin and disrepair because because we have been busy with getting cats and doing all the travelling we could manage in the six weeks before getting cats.

I assembled a mini greenhouse. The above illustration is meant to give you a taste of the sort of complexities involved. It was not easy I tell you. I do not know how these things are designed and made, but it seems to me that there are no testing stages between a mini greenhouse design leaving the drawing board and the boxes being shipped off in bulk to Argos. They do not make them with the intention that you should actually be able to put them together.

We also went to the garden centre to buy some plants. I bought a melon seedling. It is very unlikely that we will successfully harvest very many melons given that everything we will grow will be in plastic pots in a mini greenhouse, but for 99 pence it is worth a try. Failure brings no shame, but success will mean I am the talk of the gardeners of Basildon. Such a prize is worth striving towards.

Oddly enough Katie on the Wibsite assembled a mini greenhouse today too. I’ll ask you the same question I asked her, which is as follows: Can the sun’s rays penetrate through the plastic cover of a mini greenhouse, or do I have to take the cover off every day? It is a seethough plastic, but quite thick as seethough plastic goes. If you can advise on this or anything else I would be grateful.

Posted by Dave at 10:59 pm on April 21, 2007 and filed under Environment, Essex Life, Household hints.

7 Comments