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Why Do We Like to Tell Stories

I was baptized as an infant and I was taught from my earliest years to say my prayers. But as a family we did not normally go to church—probably because my father was Roman Catholic and my mother Church of England, and in those days neither denomination looked kindly on mixed marriages. But for some reason, as I grew older, I did decide to go to church, and certainly my parents made no objection. I do not know quite what it was that led me first as a child to that strange pseudo-gothic edifice at the end of Gloucester Terrace, and later as a teenager to confirmation classes conducted by Father Walter Cole at Saint Mark’s, Marylebone Road. Nor do I remember much about the classes, save that we seemed to spend a lot of time talking about the atom bomb. Of course I believe that on one level my being drawn to the church was a work of the Holy Spirit, but that does not alter the oddness of it all on the merely human level.

The Ascension

On Good Friday we contemplated a Christ so helpless, so in thrall to the powers of this age, that we might easily have forgotten that God was in him and with him.  And therein lay danger of a serious misunderstanding: for if we had been...

Lent and Beginnings

Another Ash Wednesday arrives.  Another beginning to Lent.  Again we receive the ashes on our foreheads and begin to sing the Lenten hymns.  Again we are called to fasting, penance, and self-examination.  What shall we find?  Very probably the same sins as last year, unless,...

A Christmas Reflection

The Meaning of Christmas What is the meaning of Christmas in the year of Our Lord 2013? How do we explain it? I am suspicious of theologians or biblical scholars who purport to answer those questions. Saint Paul does not tell us what Christmas means, nor does he try...

(Editorial) “9/11, Ten Years’ Later”

The following was originally published in the Sewanee Theological Review for September, 2011.  It remains the copyright of the author and The University of the South. It is ten years since the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, the attack on the Pentagon,...

C. S Lewis as an Interpreter of Scripture

The following is based in part on an article on C. S. Lewis’s attitude to biblical scholarship that I wrote for A Sewanee Companion to “The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis.”[i] It remains the © of The University of the South and the author.   C. S....

Left Behind and All That

“Left Behind and All That” is owned by the author and the University of the South, which originally published a version of it in the Sewanee Theological Review. “Left Behind and All That” may not be reproduced without the permission of the copyright holders, except...

Reviewing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

A version of this note was originally published in the Sewanee Theological Review: it remains the copyright 2003 © of the author and The University of the South

  The publication of the fifth of J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” books is perhaps a suitable moment for a glance at them in the Sewanee Theological Review, since they have, as a series, caused a degree of fluttering in some theological dovecotes. In case there is anyone left in the western world who does not know who Harry Potter is, let me begin by saying that he is a boy who discovers that he has magical powers, and who is therefore able to attend Hogwarts, a school for boys and girls who, like himself, have magical powers. The five books so far published describe the life and adventures of Potter and his friends and enemies at the school.