Forthcoming publication

We are facing, within this present season of our society, huge challenges. These challenges are not simply due to Brexit and geopolitical fractures and fissures across the world, let alone an increasing secularisation of society at large. I refer, rather, to challenges within the church in dealing with issues for which I feel she is poorly prepared, especially in dealing with issues of sexual and gender identity and practice, but also bearing wider implications.

In a paper that I am presently writing, I will seek to highlight considerations which I have looked for yet found to be absent in current debate,  as convictions and practices, integrally part of historic Christianity, confront the fast changing social mores and expectations around us. Convictions and practices which had been held as precious for two millennia are now being challenged and questioned with a rigour that is hard to deal with when Christians are not always clear of the bases on which they might find, form and articulate a response that is both righteous and just.

While I personally come with a perspective that is firmly rooted in these historic, biblical convictions and practices, I would want to disassociate myself from both aggressive and acrimonious polemics. Rather, I seek to make a contribution that invites a conversation among biblical, baptistic disciples that fosters responsible evaluation of and engagement with moral and ethical challenges that are hugely important to people, precious and loved and cared for both by ourselves and, more intensely, by God.

I am concerned with an absence, in both debate and literature, of certain theological and ethical considerations that are deeply embedded in my own understanding of Christian life and discipleship. These, profoundly biblical and integral to an inherited Christian tradition, seem to me as necessary and essential components to any mature and genuine debate. I would like to see these introduced into discussions. I believe this would be helpful to all concerned and therefore I offer them to you now.

These considerations are sixfold:

• Faith is allegiance
• Grace is costly
• Discipleship is cruciform
• Church needs to be real community
• Christians are countercultural (resident aliens)
• We contend agains powers and principalities, not flesh and blood

Notice of the completed publication will follow in due course.