Queen’s University recently hosted the launch of a new book edited by Dr Katy Hayward (Queen’s) and Dr Mary Murphy (University College Cork), The Europeanization of Party Politics in Ireland: North and South (Routledge, 2010). At the launch, some of the academics who contributed to the volume presented their perspectives on the impact that the EU has had on political parties within Northern Ireland.
Ulster Unionist MEP Jim Nicholson was on hand to offer his thoughts on the proceedings. I was the author of the chapter on the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), and along with the others who had written on Northern parties, we were asked to address the question:
Continue reading ‘The Europeanization of Party Politics in Ireland, Book Launch – Has the EU Encouraged Reconciliatory Politics?’
Margaret Poloma and Ralph Hood’s recent book, Blood and Fire: Godly Love in a Pentecostal Emerging Church (NY University Press, 2008), left me feeling more than a little uncomfortable. Poloma and Hood offer a sociological account of a church that has ‘failed.’
By ‘failed’ I mean that Poloma and Hood’s research coincided with a time when the Atlanta-based congregation they were studying abandoned its downtown premises. The homeless they were trying to attract were seemingly forgotten about.
Continue reading ‘Poloma and Hood Book Review: Blood and Fire – Is this the Emerging Church?’
If you yearn for economic justice and human flourishing in the southern hemisphere, you may be plagued by the nagging suspicion that there is little that you can do to promote this. Sure, you can give to charity or even go on a short term volunteering mission, but still there’s a sense that these efforts are at best band-aid ‘solutions,’ or at worst, volun-‘tour’-ism for rich Westerners to salve their consciences.
Dr Aidan Donaldson confronts some of those doubts in his new book, Encountering God in the Margins: Reflections of a Justice Volunteer (Veritas, 2010). Donaldson is Assistant Head of Religious Education and Chaplain at St Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School in Belfast. He writes out of his experience of the Christian Brothers’ Developing World Immersion Programme and its work on Project Zambia.
Continue reading ‘Aidan Donaldson Book Review: Encountering God in the Margins’
If the Pope’s team of apostolic visitors want to prepare for their upcoming visit to Ireland, a good place to start would be a new book edited by John Littleton and Eamon Maher, The Dublin/Murphy Report: A Watershed for Irish Catholicism? (Columba, 2010)
The book gathers an impressive array of perspectives on the handling of the sexual abuse scandals, and the pressing questions facing the Irish Catholic Church today. Among those are the questions posed by the editors in the introduction (p. 10):
Continue reading ‘The Dublin/Murphy Report: A Watershed for Irish Catholicism?: Book Review’
In the West, where ‘institutionalised’ forms of Christianity seem more tired, creaky and discredited by the day, some people involved with ‘emergence Christianity’ or the ‘emerging church’ are advocating a ‘religionless’ approach to Christianity.
The term ‘religionless Christianity’ is associated with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler during the Second World War. Bonhoeffer’s ideas around religionless Christianity are somewhat fragmented, due no doubt to the conditions under which he wrote – in prison and awaiting execution in a context of extreme socio-political upheaval.
Continue reading ‘Are there any Christians in Religionless Christianity?’
Recently one of the students on my School’s Master’s in Reconciliation Studies programme told me that the most powerful book he had read during the year was Give a Boy a Gun: One Man’s Journey from Killing to Peace-Making, by Alistair Little (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2009). The book is the autobiography of a former UVF man, co-written with Ruth Scott, detailing his journey from paramilitary activity to conflict transformation and peacebuilding work.
Parts of Little’s story are relatively well-known. It was the basis of a BBC drama featuring Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, Five Minutes of Heaven. This film presented a fictionalised account of a proposed meeting between Little and the brother of the man he shot dead.
Continue reading ‘Alistair Little Book Review: Give a Boy a Gun’
There’s not much in Philip Pullman’s latest book, The Good Man Jesus & the Scoundrel Christ, which would be new to anyone familiar with the Gospels.
Sure, his story has two characters, Jesus and Christ, in the place of a singular ‘Jesus Christ’ figure. In Pullman’s story, Mary gives birth to twins: Jesus and Christ. Pullman sets up the Christ character as a foil to Jesus: Christ wants to build a controlling church institution, while Jesus wants to free people from the shackles of moralism and soul-destroying religious obligation.
Continue reading ‘Philip Pullman Book Review: The Good Man Jesus & the Scoundrel Christ’
What’s it like to be a priest in Ireland today? The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, raised that question in his recent ill-fated remarks about the Irish Catholic Church.
While Williams created the greatest stir by his comment that the Irish Catholic Church had lost all credibility, he also expressed empathy for the difficulties faced by the priests on the ground, telling the BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week,
Continue reading ‘Murchadh Ó Madagáin Book Review: By the Word of their Testimony’
I have a both a scholarly and a personal interest in emergence Christianity. It’s no secret that among those involved with emergence Christianity, criticism of church institutions is quite fashionable these days.
There are some within emergence Christianity who think that the churches have entirely missed the point about Jesus and his life on Earth. This is one of the central arguments of John Carroll’s The Existential Jesus (Counterpoint, 2007).
Continue reading ‘John Carroll Book Review: The Existential Jesus’
Queen’s University recently hosted the launch of a new book edited by Dr Katy Hayward (Queen’s) and Dr Mary Murphy (University College Cork), The Europeanization of Party Politics in Ireland: North and South (Routledge, 2010). At the launch, some of the academics who contributed to the volume presented their perspectives on the impact that the EU has had on political parties within Northern Ireland. 
Back in March, 
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