Not what I'd been planning!

I haven't posted much this year and I tell myself this is because there is a time to reflect and a time to get on and do...

But then suddenly the urge to re-engage with the thinking comes barging back in - this time in the form of a radio broadcast caught on the way in to work today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00jsw51/Twin_Sisters_Two_Faiths

I think this program expresses brilliantly the complex set of 'issues' that, for people of faith, create inordinate amounts of anxiety and self-doubt.

As this post is 'an initial reaction' rather than a considered commentary I only feel able to recommend it to you as a thought prevokiong listen.

If one of many 'throw away' comments stood out for me, it was inevitably one that showed again the fault line within the current cultural expression of Christianity; the sister's mother said...

'...I felt that Christianity would be a phase they would just go thorugh, and indeed Elizabeth did just go thorugh it - she became quite a radical teenager, both socially and poitically, and gave up the church...'

If studying Jesus leads us to any conclusion about the founder of the Christian faith at all, it's surely that he intended those who identified themslves as his followers, to be socially and politically radical - or at the very least engaged!

If our local expression of 'Christian' faith is leaving young people or any people cold, we need to take a long, hard look at what Jesus said and did with regards to the cultural, political and social set-up within which he found himself. Then, in the best way we can, start to rediscover what our faith has to say about our relations with each other, our neighbours and the communal constructs around us.

I shall brave returning to the 'two faiths' element at a later date - happy listening!!