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Birds have wings; humans have books. One of the great delights of my job is having the time to read books, the privilege of being sent plenty to review, and the budget to buy others.I generally read in four different parts of the day. In the early morning, when my daughter is awake and I wish I didn’t have to be, I read history. In my devotional times, I read biblical commentaries or (occasionally) theology. In the evenings, as I am about to fall asleep, I read fiction. Everything else - books on culture, pastoral ministry, leadership, money, church history, or anything I am researching for a writing project or conference - is read during the working day, often in afternoons when my metabolism dips. Horses for courses, I guess. Here are five recommendations from each category. History and Biography Frederic Morton, A Nervous Splendour: Vienna 1888/1889. Dominic Sandbrook said this was one of the books that most influenced his writing, and I can see why: a haunting and beautifully narrated tale of a traumatic year in Viennese history, which also contains the seeds of much twentieth century history. And what an ending. David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. An utterly gripping true story about an eighteenth century shipwreck, that richly deserves all the plaudits it has received. The best sort of adventure yarn. Ian Leslie, John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs. It is hard to say anything new about The Beatles, but this is such a clever way of doing it, exploring the relationship between the two protagonists through the lyrics of the songs they wrote together. Neil Price, The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings. The Vikings are so much stranger to us than we think, and that makes them unsettling, even frightening. The best account of them I have read yet, which goes beyond the battles and the boats to the way they imagined the world. Helen Castor, The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. A story in which you know the ending, and which has previously been told by plenty of writers including Shakespeare, has no business being this narratively tense, psychologically interesting and historically absorbing. Brilliant. Bible and Theology Christopher Ash, Psalms: A Christ-Centred Commentary. Admittedly I haven’t read the fourth volume yet, but the first three are so good that I’m happy to call it as one of the outstanding books of the year. My wife and I have both disappeared into it in our devotions for weeks at a time - a wonderful gift to the church. Michael Morales, Numbers. A two volume deep dive on one of Scripture’s most difficult and misunderstood books. The format does not always help, but there are abundant insights here on passages that have always been a mystery to me, from the structure of the Israelite camp to the prophecies of Balaam and the puzzling last few chapters. Magisterial. Danielle Treweek, Single Ever After. A really impressive piece of work, as I explained here. Tim Keller, What Is Wrong With the World? It is not easy to write a compelling, heartwarming, devotional book on sin. It is even harder after you have died. The fact that Tim Keller has done both is testimony to his remarkable preaching ministry, and to the skill with which his wife Kathy has presented it. Patrick Schreiner, The Transfiguration of Christ. The best sort of doctrinal study: biblically illuminating, devotionally satisfying, theologically compelling and stylistically readable. The best book I’ve read on the transfiguration, and better than most books on other things as well. Culture and Ideas Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. You wouldn’t think that a book about how animals perceive the world would be captivating, but this really is. I’ve thought about it and quoted it numerous times since I finished. An eye-opener. Tom McTague, Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution, 1945-2016. This is basically a long history of Brexit, from the end of the Second World War to today, but it sheds a remarkable amount of light on many aspects of contemporary Britain, and makes a very convincing case that Brexit was near-inevitable for decades before it happened. A great read. Matt Smethurst, Tim Keller on the Christian Life. The secret sauce here is the choice of topics. Each of the book’s eight chapters takes a theme on which Keller regularly wrote and preached during his ministry, and synthesises his teaching into a theologically coherent and pastorally instructive whole. Musa al-Gharbi, We Have Never Been Woke. Book of the Year. A fresh, incisive, iconoclastic and well-written take on the rise of symbolic capitalists and the illusion of wokeness. You can read my longer review here. Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed. A short, rich, honest, moving and yet hope-filled book about living with depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, by a man who seems incapable of writing a boring book about anything. Fiction Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost. This murder mystery (or is it?), told by four unreliable narrators and set in mid seventeenth century Oxford, is up there with the very best novels I have ever read. Gripping, twisty, and utterly ingenious. Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere. I finally got around to this and can completely see what all the fuss is about. Such believable characters, and a plot that manages to be both surprising and inevitable at the same time. Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies. Another book that everyone was reading a few years ago and I only just have. For an exciting book, the characters and themes are great; for a book with interesting themes, it’s wonderfully exciting. Seicho Matsumoto, Tokyo Express. This train-based detective story in post-war Japan was first published in 1958, and the world it evokes is both fascinating and intriguing, but it was recently retranslated and published as a Penguin Classic. Short, tense and really satisfying. Stephen King, 11.22.63. A man goes back in time to stop the JFK assassination, but life intervenes in all kinds of ways. Massive, taut and absorbing. My first experience of Stephen King, and hopefully not the last.

“Pastor fired for preaching sermons written by ChatGPT.”That headline might not actually have appeared yet but it almost certainly will. Clearly AI can perform tasks which assist sermon preparation, but the temptation to simply let AI write a sermon is high. And why not, if AI is your friend? The way in which many people are forming companionship with AI raises numerous ethical and practical questions. An assumption increasingly heard is that these relationships are largely because contemporary society makes ‘real’ friendships difficult. If you struggle to make human friends, AI offers an immediate virtual shoulder to cry on. But is it only sad and solitary people who are reaching out for artificial companionship? My flesh-and-blood friend, Richard Stamp, has been thinking long and hard about Christian discipleship in a technological age. He suggests more is going on – that even those who have lots of fulfilling human relationships can be drawn to AI companionship. The issue, as he sees it, is that (like it or not) AI provides: A different kind of friendship. Difference intrigues us and novelty excites us. AI feels and sounds different to other relationships. A wise kind of friendship. AI affirms your questions and its ‘wisdom’ is limitless. It has an answer to everything. A sexual kind of friendship. AI is like porn and prostitution: you can switch it on off at will, and it is always responsive to your feelings and desires. To use an overused term, it always responds to our most narcissistic tendencies but is unlikely to ever accuse us of narcissism. A patient kind of friendship. AI listens to whatever you want to drone on about in a non-judgemental way, without ever giving you an eyeroll or looking for an excuse to find someone more interesting to talk to. A discreet kind of friendship. You can tell AI the depths of your heart without shame and it won’t gossip your secrets to anyone else. (Although someone somewhere is surely collecting all that lovely data!) For these reasons the companionship of AI can feel more attractive, certainly easier, than dealing with people – with all their own needs and desires and quirks and foibles. This isn’t only the case for the lonely. We might have a rich social life but then enjoy unwinding with our therapeutic AI friend – and then ask ‘him’ to write a sermon for us while we’re at it. AI isn’t going away, so the issues raised by all this will only become more pronounced. The trick we’re going to need to pull off is learning to use AI in a way that maximises its advantages while remaining crystal clear that it is only a tool. There are other tools we might value and enjoy very highly – a particular kitchen knife, a favourite hammer, a car – but we would not blur this value and enjoyment with friendship. Because AI gives the illusion of really knowing and responding to us it is much harder to avoid the blur. Richard says, “I still think that we need to help people to be better at human friendship (fun, sagacity, intimacy, patience, safety, discretion), so that we keep synthetic ‘companions’ in their right place, but ultimately what we’re looking for and love with AI is to be found in God.” AI can be useful, fun even, but it really isn’t your friend. It certainly isn’t your saviour. And – please – don’t ask it to write your sermons.

We've been doing a series of devotional videos out of Mark's Gospel this term, and the other day it finished unexpectedly: with me explaining why I don't think Mark 16:9-20 was the original ending of the Gospel. Here is my five minute explanation, along with where I think the material comes from, and what I think it means for reading, preaching and reflecting on the passage.

Jean Twenge’s new book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World came out last month and is the latest in a recent stream of titles calling out the threat of smartphones and social media for young people. I welcome the news that Australia is hoping to ban social media for under 16s, and am praying that our government does likewise. Twenge’s book contains plenty of research, charts and data that might provide some motivation for major societal change in this regard: “In recent years, 40% of high school seniors (17-18yrs olds) have not read a single book in the last year that wasn’t assigned for school. Back in the early 1980s, that was true of only 15% of high school seniors.” “11-17 years olds get an average of 237 notifications a day from their phones” “College students who used devices for an hour before bed were 59% more likely to have symptoms of insomnia and slept 24 minutes less than those who didn’t use devices before bed.” “In 2008, when few teens had smartphones, 45% of 8th graders (13-14yr olds) said they were often bored. By 2023, it was 61%. Devices filled with bite-size videos were supposed to mean we were never bored, but instead more teens than ever are filled with ennui.” “Meta’s internal research found that 13% of British teen users and 6% of American teen users who had suicidal thoughts said their desire to kill themselves traced back to Instagram.” All of which goes some way to explain the title of tech entrepreneur Jaron Lanier’s 2018 book Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now and the reason Sharon and Richard Pursey’s team are being celebrated for creating the first phone with inbuilt anti-nudity technology designed to keep children safe online. It’s obviously true that smartphones have transformed how we live, something that Jonathan Haidt describes as ‘the Great Rewiring,’ resulting in an end to the traditional play based childhood and the advent of the phone based one. In a world like this, one where more than twenty-four thousand minutes of new user video is uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day, how can the church ensure we’re doing what we can to disciple our young people? Here’s two things every parent, pastor and youth worker needs to know, followed by one opportunity not to be missed: 1) Boys and Girls Are Different Generally speaking phones and social media are affecting boys and girls differently. Already by 2015 we were seeing evidence of the impact that social media was having on girls as distinct from boys. In a study from that year one in five teenage girls said they had experienced a major depressive episode in the last year. Rates of clinical-depression among girls recently peaked at 29% compared to 11% among boys. Among children who spend more than five hours a day on social media, 38% of girls compared to 14% of boys suffer from depression as a result. The reasons for this are well documented as well but stem in large part from algorithms and beauty filters built into the apps young girls are using. Jonathan Haidt believes this is exactly what we would expect to find given the particular social dynamics among girls and the way social media amplifies them. In The Coddling of the America Mind he writes: If we were to put a handgun in the hand of every testosterone filled teenage boy we’d inevitably see a rise in the amount of homicides. If we were to put a device in the hands of our girls that created social comparison and anxiety we’d likely see a rise in the amount of suicides and mental health disorders. Boys, by comparison are spending more time playing video games and getting stuck in the quagmire of porn addiction. According to author John Gray, the reason for this is because a child’s brain on a video game, or a male brain looking at nude images of women, reacts almost identically to a brain on class A drugs. We also know that the presence of testosterone in boys slows down brain development whereas oestrogen in girls speeds it up. In the book Brain Rules, molecular biologist John Medina shares a particularly memorable contrast about the sexes from watching girls and boys at play. Two girls are together, one throws a ball into the air and catches it, the other says ‘me too’ and then does the same thing. Two boys are together and do the same thing but the second boy rather than saying ‘me too’ instead says ‘I can throw it higher.’ Consequently, healthy competition and challenges in discipling boys is perhaps more important to think about than when discipling girls. 2) Parents Matter To disciple young people well we need to do more to engage and equip parents for the task. In her book How the West Really Lost God, sociologist Mary Eberstadt studies trends in religiosity across time and finds a correlation between that and the strength of the family. When the traditional family is weak (or treated as an oppressive institution as has been the case in recent times) church attendance is low but, she says, revival of religion and renewal of the domestic family have often gone hand in hand. Eberstadt calls ‘Christianity’ and ‘the family’ twin columns of a society’s DNA helix that rise and fall together. When one is strong (church attendance say) the other is also strong (committed marriages and strong families), but when one is weak the other is weak also. Generally churches know this, which is why we run baby and toddler groups. But it’s also important to consider when thinking about how we can disciple young people. The first chapter in Twenge’s latest book is for parents: You’re in Charge. Twenge argues for the importance of what she calls ‘authoritative’ parenting as opposed to ‘helicopter’ parenting (hovering over kids), ‘snowplow’ parenting (removing all of the obstacles in their way), ‘gentle’ parenting (never saying no), or ‘lighthouse’ parenting (being a source for insight but not interfering too much). Clinical psychologist and parenting expert Becky Kennedy calls authoritative parenting “Sturdy Leadership”— it’s a combination of validating feelings but also holding boundaries. She suggests parents should respond to kids pushing back on rules with something like this: “One of my main jobs is to make decisions that I think are good for you, even when you’re upset with me. This is one of those times. I get that you’re upset, I really do.” Play the long game. “Your job is not to make your kids happy at every moment. It’s to raise competent adults who will be happy in the long term. Your most important job as a parent is giving your children experiences that help them grow.” Building on what we said above about rates of brain development, author Scott Galloway, who has two teenage sons, says that since the brain’s prefrontal cortex (the part in charge of self-control and decision-making) doesn’t fully develop until the mid 20s, he says: “my job as their dad is to be their prefrontal cortex until it shows up.” That’s a good way of thinking about why parents must not disengage from their children’s tech use. In 2014 Sociologist Christian Smith conducted more than 230 in-depth interviews, and studied data from three nationally representative surveys leading to one significant headline and a number of other important secondary findings. The headline was: the single, most powerful causal influence on the religious lives of American teenagers and young adults is the religious lives of their parents. Not their peers, not the media, not their youth group leaders or clergy, not their religious schoolteachers, not Sunday School, not mission trips or service projects or summer camp… but parents. Church leadership teams who want to disciple young people, need to be trying to equip their parents to live out their faith more in the home. Deuteronomy 6:7 says this: “you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise.” We must be aware, in the words of Tony Reinke, that “in a world dominated by the image instead of the word, interior life gives way to exterior show. Substance gives way to simulation.” Pastors need to help parents and youth leaders work on their interior life so that we might push back against the dominant spirit of our age, not smartphones but performative culture. The Opportunity So those are two things we must be aware of. If you’re concerned about this and wanting to think more about what we can do, consider this. On Saturday 7th February 2026, Newday presents Youth Culture, a conference aimed at equipping parents, professionals, pastors and youth leaders to engage with the biggest issues facing a generation. We’ll be praying for change, sharing ideas and workshopping together about how the church might disciple a generation. For more information and to sign up, click here.    

There is something about Revelation 4-5 that seems to bamboozle certain songwriters. Preachers and commentators on this passage, and most readers in my experience, can see that the One seated on the throne in chapter 4 is God - surrounded by the sevenfold Spirit, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders - and that in chapter 5, the Lamb enters the scene and takes the scroll. The songs of chapter 4 ("Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty" and "Worthy are you, our Lord and God ...") are sung to the One seated on the throne: in Trinitarian terms, God the Father. The songs of chapter 5 ("Worthy are you to take the scroll ..." and "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain ...") are sung to the Lamb: in Trinitarian terms, God the Son. Chapter 5 concludes with both Father and Son being distinctly addressed as clearly as they are anywhere in Scripture: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!" (5:13). But a number of modern songs get in a bit of a muddle about this. In my most recent Christianity Today column I mentioned an obvious example: Bethel Music’s “No One Like the Lord” begins: “There is one on the throne / Jesus, holy.” It continues: Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain and seated on the throne … And the elders, creatures bow, Giving praise to him and him alone The song is powerful, sweeping, and melodic. I am confident the songwriters believe in the Trinity and are trying to reference the glory due to God. The problem is that Revelation 4–5 say something quite different. There is indeed one who is seated on the throne, but he is clearly distinct from the Lamb who was slain (5:7). The elders and living creatures bow down and praise the one on the throne as worthy (4:9–11), and they also bow before the Lamb (5:8–14). But the two persons are not identical. This is vital to our view of God. We do not praise the Lamb “alone”; we praise Father, Son and Spirit. Revelation chapter 5 concludes with all creation saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever!” (v. 13, emphasis added). When songs are doing the liturgical heavy lifting—as they often are in low-church evangelicalism—this is a problem. This is not an isolated instance. Admittedly, you could read the chorus of “Who Else is Worthy?” as referring to Jesus’s worthiness to open the scroll, as opposed to his worthiness to receive worship—although I’m not sure most people singing it think that’s what they’re declaring. But you get something similar in “Worthy of It All,” which has one of my favourite choruses introduced by a puzzling line: All the saints and angels bow before your throne All the elders cast their crowns before the Lamb of God and sing: You are worthy of it all You are worthy of it all For from you are all things And to you are all things You deserve the glory The problem is that they don’t. The elders cast their crowns and sing worthy to the One seated on the throne (4:10-11), well before the Lamb has even entered the picture (5:6). To which you might well say: who cares? Surely the members of the Trinity are not jostling between them over who gets sung to by whom? Presumably not. But it does not help us worship our Trinitarian God if we so freely confuse the persons of God and Lamb, Father and Son. Nor does it help us understand Revelation 4-5. Nor does it help us defend against Oneness theology when it pops up (as it occasionally does, and increasingly will if distinctions like this are lost in a fog of congregational confusion). And it misses out on the extraordinary Christ-exalting drama of the moment when the Lamb receives worship along with the One on the throne (5:13-14), and is then seen at the centre of the throne, shepherding his people as the Father wipes away their tears (7:17). We don’t have to sing hymns every week (although at the moment, in or church, we do). We don’t even have to mention all the members of the Trinity each week (although I think we probably should). But as long as our songs are doing the liturgical heavy lifting in our churches - which I suspect they are for most readers (see Sacrament, Spirit and) - we should try and get the Trinity right. Here is how I concluded my column: To some this will all sound insufferably pedantic, if not mean. To others it will sound indefensibly sloppy, if not heretical. I hope it is neither. I have no doubt that these songwriters believe in the Trinity. Yet their lyrics unintentionally undercut that belief in ways that will confuse those who sing them. And the more popular the song, the more that matters.

Matthew Syed's book Black Box Thinking is a fascinating exploration of why failure is your friend. In this passage he considers the common practice of brainstorming, whereby everyone throws out ideas and nobody is allowed to criticise them. Counterintuitively, the data suggests this hinders rather than enhances creativity:Without a problem, without a failure, without a flaw, without a frustration, innovation has nothing to latch on to. It loses its pivot. As [James] Dyson puts it: ‘Creativity should be thought of as a dialogue. You have to have a problem before you can have the game-changing riposte.’ Perhaps the most graphic way to glimpse the responsive nature of creativity is to consider an experiment by Charlan Nemeth, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues. She took female undergraduates and randomly divided them into five-person teams. Each team was given the same task: to come up with ideas about how to reduce traffic congestion in the San Francisco Bay Area. These five-person teams were then assigned to one of three ways of working. The first group were given the instruction to brainstorm. This is one of the most influential creativity techniques in history, and it is based on the mystical conception of how creativity happens: through contemplation and the free flow of ideas. In brainstorming the entire approach is to remove obstacles. It is to minimise challenges. People are warned not to criticise each other, or point out the difficulties in each other’s suggestions. Blockages are bad. Negative feedback is a sin. As Alex Faickney Osborn, an advertising executive who wrote a series of bestselling books on brainstorming in the 1940s and 1950s, put it: ‘Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud.’ The second group were given no guidelines at all: they were allowed to come up with ideas in any way they thought best. But the third group were actively encouraged to point out the flaws in each other’s ideas. Their instructions read: ‘Most research and advice suggests that the best way to come up with good solutions is to come up with many solutions. Free-wheeling is welcome; don’t be afraid to say anything that comes to mind. However, in addition, most studies suggest that you should debate and even criticise each other’s ideas.’ The results were remarkable. The groups with the dissent and criticise guidelines generated 25 per cent more ideas than those who were brainstorming (or who had no instructions). Just as striking, when individuals were later asked to come up with more solutions for the traffic problem, those with the dissent guidelines generated twice as many new ideas as the brainstormers. Further studies have shown that those who dissent rather than brainstorm produce not just more ideas, but more productive and imaginative ideas. As Nemeth put it: ‘The basic finding is that the encouragement of debate – and even criticism if warranted – appears to stimulate more creative ideas. And cultures that permit and even encourage such expression of differing viewpoints may stimulate the most innovation.’ The reason is not difficult to identify. The problem with brainstorming is not its insistence on free-wheeling or quick association. Rather, it is that when these ideas are not checked by the feedback of criticism, they have nothing to respond to. Criticism surfaces problems. It brings difficulties to light. This forces us to think afresh. When our assumptions are violated we are nudged into a new relationship with reality. Removing failure from innovation is like removing oxygen from a fire ... Imagination is not fragile. It feeds off flaws, difficulties and problems. Insulating ourselves from failures – whether via brainstorming guidelines, the familiar cultural taboo on criticism or the influence of cognitive dissonance – is to rob one of our most valuable mental faculties of fuel … Failure and epiphany are inextricably linked.

Ideally, a good translation of the word authenteō in 1 Timothy 2:12 – “I do not permit a woman to teach or have/exercise/assume/take/usurp authority over a man” - would provide satisfying answers to four related questions. In order of importance:1. Contextually, does this translation make sense within the flow of Paul’s argument about men and women, Adam and Eve, learning, teaching and quietness? 2. Lexically, does it fit with the way authenteō is used in other Greek literature of the period? 3. Translationally, does it make sense of the ways that the early church fathers and subsequent translators rendered and understood authenteō in their own languages? 4. Etymologically, does it shed any light on the ways that subsequent words (like “authority” and “authenticity”) have derived from it? So here’s my suggestion: what about stepping away from “authority” language for a moment – which is where almost all of the debate, online and in print, is focused – and think in terms of “mastery” instead? That would leave us with this: “I do not permit a woman to teach or master a man; she must remain quiet.” Contextually it fits, but then most of the options do. Despite the lengthy online exchanges over whether the word is “positive” or “negative” (like here and here), in this context at least, Paul clearly thinks of it “negatively” enough to prohibit women from doing it, but not so negatively as to prohibit everyone from doing it. (That is why the recent NIV went for the more neutral “assume authority”, which could go either way.) “Mastery” could be good or bad, depending on the context. Lexically, it fits very well with the way authenteō is used elsewhere. (The first example below involves someone celebrating their “mastery”, and the third involves someone decrying it, which is why none of the “authority”-based translations can make sense of all three texts.) Try these on for size: I was surprised that there was no argument. And since I had mastered him, within the hour he agreed to secure for Calatytis the boatman at the same fare. (Letter from Tryphon to Asclepiades) If Saturn alone is ruler of the body and masters Mercury and the moon, if he has a dignified position with reference to the universe and angels, he makes his subjects lovers of the body. (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos) Masters will master their servants savagely, and servants will assume an unruly demeanor towards their masters. (Hippolytus, On the End of the World) Translationally, it helps too. Plenty of writers have pointed to Jerome’s use of dominari to translate authenteō into Latin - which, if you are interested, was later changed by Erasmus to the stronger usurpare, hence the King James’s choice of “usurp authority.” “Mastery” language shows clearly how you get from authenteō to dominari, given that a dominus was a master or lord, and from there to the more negative connotations of English terms like “domineer” or “lord it over.” (When you see those terms in an English Bible today, as in Mark 10:42 and 1 Peter 5:3, they translate a quite different word, katakurieuō). The most surprising payoff may be the least important, namely the etymological one. How on earth, we might wonder, does the same Greek word give rise to the words “authority” and “authenticity,” which sound so very different? Again, think about mastery. Clearly, a “master” is an authority figure. But it is also the word we give to the “master copy,” the authentic and original version of something, the one from which other versions derive both their “authority” and their “authenticity.” No doubt there is a broader point to be made here about the way Western people (wrongly) see “authenticity” precisely as a rejection of “authority,” but that’s for another day. So that’s my translation suggestion for the day. Any takers?

I have always regarded (and defended) the BBC as impressively neutral. My general rule of thumb is that when you hear people complaining about the national broadcaster being biased in favour of something, you can usually tell more about the person complaining than you can about the BBC. But clearly that is not true in every case. This week's resignations in the wake of the Panorama affair have brought them under the spotlight again, and these comments from Matthew Syed's column in The Times (which I came across via the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore) are well worth considering:This is why I’d argue (perhaps optimistically) that this week offers a window of opportunity for the BBC. The courageous move would be to acknowledge Prescott’s findings, perhaps even to admit what is, I think, undeniable: that the corporation suffers from institutional bias. I mean, it is not as if it is alone in this. A survey last month by Electoral Calculus showed that 75 per cent of what it called “the establishment” voted for left-of-centre parties at the general election. The think tank More in Common found that many institutions are dominated by “progressive activists” who constitute just 13 per cent of the population. And it is worth briefly noting how we got here. Perhaps the original sin was the progressive march through our universities: since the 1960s the ratio of left-wing to right-wing academics has shifted from 3:1 to 8:1. This has not just tilted young, often impressionable minds in a decisively more liberal direction but had further consequences too. It is striking, for example, that graduates today migrate in huge numbers to metropolitan areas (nearly 40 per cent of Russell Group graduates with firsts and 2:1s are living in London within six months of leaving uni), where they join narrow friendship networks connected to the institutions at which they work, creating a double whammy of social convergence. This is why ensuring true diversity of views at an elite institution like the BBC is about far more than diversity of colour, class or gender. It is about appointing senior editors who (wait for it) are sympathetic to Reform UK; hiring many more who are super-bright but didn’t go to university; constantly encouraging new recruits to express their opinions rather than converge on the predominant ones; perhaps above all, recognising that impartiality is not a destination but an orientation requiring a disciplined awareness of one’s limitations and an insistence on transparency, method and the humility to constantly test assumptions against alternative ones. The BBC will instinctively feel defensive this week and may be tempted to argue that it has all the necessary policies in place. I’d humbly retort (as a friend) that this would be a terrible strategic error. The role of the BBC has never been more important and it is not too late to preserve it from those who wish to bring it down. But all executives should remember that while a liberal world-view predominates within the walls of the organisation, a majority of licence fee payers believe in the following heresies (ie, common sense): national borders matter; love of nation is admirable; biological males shouldn’t compete in women’s sport; people should be judged on merit, not colour; western history is broadly admirable, not shaming. Indeed, how about reading out the previous paragraph at the outset of every editorial meeting? It might help mitigate the otherwise irresistible tendency towards elite groupthink.

Tim Suffield thinks that the modern version of Christian Nationalism is coming to the UK, and I think he's right. Until recently it could be understood as an essentially American phenomenon, which British readers could dismiss as the sort of thing you would expect from people who own guns and oppose state healthcare. But that appears to be changing. I say that for all sorts of reasons, some of which are international in scope (the vibe shift online, Trump II, the collapse of the centre in many European countries, the combination of economic stagnation and global migration, the gender split whereby young women lean left and young men lean right), and some of which are more distinctly British (flags, marches, boats, hotels, the poll lead of Reform, and the response of the other parties to this new reality). Christian Nationalism: coming soon to a church near you.This, as Tim points out, is going to catch a lot of British pastors unawares. Most of us are not comfortable with political theology, let alone adept at it. We may occasionally address political issues - especially when they relate to the Ten Commandments (life, marriage, etc) - but we are mostly untrained in political thought and unused to political conflicts within our congregations. In a world where political discourse operates symbolically more than logically, and online more than in person, this may prove tricky. “When everything is symbolic, but we don’t share the same key to understanding the world, reading other people’s behaviour becomes difficult,” Tim explains. “When the keys we are given to the world through a variety of media that are themselves fractured and polarising, we are inclined to read those who are different to us in the worst possible light.” We are indeed. So one thing we need to get clear on is what we actually mean by the term “Christian Nationalism.” Tim argues that it could (and sometimes does) refer to any of at least fifteen different things, ranging from the self-evidently good to the totally unacceptable. Six of them, it seems to me, are biblical-theological in nature, differing over the extent to which we should expect to see God’s ways taught, lived out or even legislated for in the current age. They form a kind of spectrum, ranging from innocuous, kingdom-not-yet amillennialism to muscular, kingdom-now postmillennialism: 1) Christians who think that God’s word contains wisdom for running a nation 2) Christians who think that churches should be able to preach God’s wisdom for the nation to the nation 3) Those who think it’s appropriate to consider what the political theology of a Christian nation would look like, though they might expect this to be brought into being through conversion or revival 4) Those who want a “Christian nation” to be formed (presumably, whether its citizens have converted or not) 5) Those who want “Christendom” back 6) Theonomists, who think a nation’s laws should look like the Bible’s law code Another six are practical-political in nature, differing over the extent to which “nations” - cohesive, self-governing and usually ethnically related groups with shared history, that are larger than a tribe and smaller than an empire - are natural, biblical, beneficial and in need of defending from globalist mush. (The remaining three, as I read them, are essentially common misunderstandings of the term.) Again, these six form a spectrum, with patriots at one end and downright racists at the other: A) Those who are patriotic and love their nation and are Christians B) Nationalists, in the broad sense of ‘anti-empire,’ who are Christians C) Nationalists in the much tighter, protectionist sense, who are Christians D) Those who are democratic post-liberals (or ecclesiocentric ones) E) Those who are anti-democratic post-liberals F) People who think a Christian nation means a white nation of ‘Anglo-Saxons’ Needless to say, most people (though not all) who think of Christian Nationalism in terms of 1A will probably be favourable towards it. Most people (though not all) who think of it in terms of 6F will probably be hostile towards it. And those of us who do not make any of these distinctions, and use the “Christian Nationalist” label indiscriminately of G. K. Chesterton, Viktor Orban, Danny Kruger, apartheid South Africa, Charlie Kirk, T. S. Eliot, Vladimir Putin, C. S. Lewis, Queen Elizabeth II and the KKK, will find ourselves either baffled or enraged (or both) by what is coming. More to follow, I suspect.

Five years ago today England went into the second full covid lockdown. This was a truly significant event, the repercussions of which on work patterns, the economy, education and mental health are still reverberating. But this is an anniversary that seems to be passing entirely unremarked.Given the impacts of lockdown it is extraordinary that it has been so effectively erased from the national narrative. There are no headlines on the BBC website commemorating the date and analysing the consequences of the decision. There is endless comment and speculation about the measures Rachel Reeves may or may not introduce in the forthcoming budget, but barely a nod to how our current financial predicament is linked to lockdown. The amnesia is really quite weird. November the fifth has long been a date to remember. Sadly, now rather overtaken by the nonsense of Halloween, November fifth is a key date in our national history. Even if people are shaky on the details, Guy Fawkes and the attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament are part of our story. Stories matter. They locate us in space and time, giving a sense of identity and defining culture. (Which is why the flags have the significance they do.) The people of God have stories that help locate who we are, where we have come from, and what our mission is. If we are to know these things we need to know the stories. Amnesia about scripture and church history leaves us scrabbling to understand who we are and what our purpose is. In his excellent book on the role of the Holy Spirit in the ministry of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Philip Eveson highlights the significance ‘the doctor’ placed on knowing our story. For instance, the 1859 revival loomed large in Lloyd-Jones’ thinking and was seen by him as, Similar to the supernatural activity of God at the river Jordan, when Israel crossed over dry-shod into the land of Canaan. Telling future generations of what happened in Church History was like answering the question ‘What mean these stones?’, stones which God had commanded to be taken from the middle of Jordan and set up in Gilgal (Josh. 4:21-24). He taught his congregation the importance of monuments and reminders of the great things God has done and that Christians are called to consider historical facts, ‘significant and miraculous facts.’ We see another example of this intentional memory in the longest prayer in the Bible, that of Nehemiah 9. In this prayer the Levites bring to memory the ‘stones’ of God’s acting among them: His work as creator, the covenant with Abraham, the story of the Exodus, the conquest of the land, and God’s constant forgiving of His peoples frequent rebellion. It is these memorial stones that provide a sense of identity, the certainty of hope, and the scope of mission for God’s people. These stones are our story too. We need to know the Bible story. We need to know church history. We need memorial stones to help guide our steps into the future. We should not forget. Six days after Guy Fawkes Day comes Armistice Day: Lest we forget. The slogan stands as a warning – forgetfulness is not simply failing to remember; it is losing a part of who we are. Forgetting lockdown makes it harder to understand our current social woes and more likely we will repeat the mistakes of 2020. Forgetting Guy Fawkes separates us from our national identity and culture. Forgetting the memorial stones of scripture’s story and church history leaves us blowing in the wind of every kind of teaching and deceitful scheming. Remember, remember, the fifth of November.