Category Archives: Politics and sociology

Towards critical thinking on Charismatic theology (2)

Posted on 21/03/2024 by Jon Garvey

If you’re a member of one of the hyper-charismatic megachurches, the very idea of applying critical thinking to the theology around spiritual gifts and related matters is anathema, as it implies a lack of the faith that enables believers to heal any and every disease as Jesus did – except that they never can. Even the super-apostles have to fake leg lengthening on an industrial scale to inflate the numbers.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 5 Comments

Towards critical thinking on Charismatic theology (1)

Posted on 19/03/2024 by Jon Garvey

Not long ago, an elderly friend of mine prayed that his church would, in the future, begin to “move in the spiritual gifts” of 1 Corinthians. And I began to think that, since he became a Christian as a teenager, maybe 65 years ago, at the very start of the “Charismatic Renewal” in Britain, and has always been in churches that were open to this movement, it was an odd kind of prayer to have to make.

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Divided we stand

Posted on 09/03/2024 by Jon Garvey

I’ve not written much about the Israel-Gaza conflict, my excuse being that it’s a complicated matter. But that is really an excuse – the real reason is that unlike most of the other components of the Omnicrisis, this issue has divided people along rather different fault-lines, and it has been confusing to see people whose opinions one generally trusts taking diametrically opposite tacks from each other. I find this uniqueness significant.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 7 Comments

The Pauli Principle

Posted on 08/03/2024 by Jon Garvey

In this case I’m referring to the British Principle Trial of Ivermectin, which was pauli planned, pauli executed and pauli applied. Excuse my spell checker.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | Leave a comment

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…

Posted on 23/02/2024 by Jon Garvey

… mais ceci n’est pas une pipe. The Daily Mail accused Tucker Carlson of not issuing a statement on the death of Alexei Navalny, thus proving conclusively (although he was obliviously on a plane home at the time) that Carlson is a Putin stooge. This is the exact reason Boris Johnson gave for turning down an interview with Carlson, and not that Carlson declined to pay him £1m for the interview that Putin gave for free.

Posted in Politics and sociology | 1 Comment

Spot the clots

Posted on 19/02/2024 by Jon Garvey

Dr John Campbell has been doing a series of videos on the mysterious post-mortem white clots that embalmers have been finding in bodies since around 2021 (search YouTube for “John Campbell white clots). It’s not often that undertakers get to do front-line research, and even less often that they are cancelled for it. But that’s the world we’re in nowadays.

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Take me to your leader, if you know who he is

Posted on 11/02/2024 by Jon Garvey

When George III went mad, his son was appointed as Prince Regent. The thing was complicated by party politics, and by the fact that George became sane again, for a while, before the relevant formalities were done. Two centuries earlier, when Edward VI was too young to rule, he too had an appointed substitute, so that whether they like or hate policies during Edward’s early reign, historians know they must look to the Duke of Somerset’s position rather than Edward’s own.

Posted in Politics and sociology | 2 Comments

The one who states his case first seems right…

Posted on 07/02/2024 by Jon Garvey

…until the other asks the right questions (Proverbs 18:17) There is a furore over journalist Tucker Carlson’s as yet unaired interview with Vladimir Putin, though you may be unaware of it given its low profile on MSM. Yet social media is full of it, and the Telegraph online had a video of him filmed with a hidden camera by an obvious stooge in Moscow, Project Veritas fashion, as if there were anything secret about the trip. But Carlson expressed a wish to interview Putin back in his Fox News days, and the fact that it was blocked then is sufficient explanation for his determination to do so now he is … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and sociology | 7 Comments

How academic groupthink always impedes progress

Posted on 27/01/2024 by Jon Garvey

Gary Habermas has just published the first 1100 page volume of his magnum opus on the Resurrection of Jesus, with four more volumes to come. That may seem overkill, but in the scheme of things it is not, because without the bodily Resurrection, Christianity is just another successful world religion – but with it, Christianity is the historical foundation on which the universe is built.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

An object lesson in testing the spirits

Posted on 22/01/2024 by Jon Garvey

There’s a discussion on YouTube (no great benefit in linking to it) between a conservative Evangelical and a gay pastor also claiming the “Evangelical” label. As you might already have anticipated, the discussion is on the biblical basis for their opposite positions; on the one side that homosexual relationships are universally discountenanced by Scripture, and on the other that loving, monogamous homosexuality has the Bible’s blessing. Those familiar with me will know that I judge the first to be the case (and I start the pastoral aspect from there, which is a topic for another day, perhaps). I will add that what I’m about to describe has more general application … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments