Monthly Archives: October 2025

Hitting the Books

Posted on 24/10/2025 by Jon Garvey

Part of my low output here recently (apart from a cold, driving my car into a ditch, and dealing with a broken washing machine) is down to transcribing the second volume of the proceedings book of my Baptist Church, 131 pages of hand-written entries from 1778-1904. It is generally in pretty legible copper-plate script compared to the mere 58 pages of Volume 1, from 1653, which are largely in the crabbed handwriting of that period and considerably more difficult for a modern transcriber.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

Theological sleight of hand

Posted on 16/10/2025 by Jon Garvey

I read some Bible study notes on Acts 3, the healing of the lame man by Peter and John. After wise words about not everyone being healed, and questions about how we might sense God calling us to some unusual action, the study urged Christians to be bolder in praying for miraculous healing on the following logic:

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 8 Comments

More on Christian politics for the times

Posted on 06/10/2025 by Jon Garvey

It’s astonishing how Scripture surprises you every time you read it, even after a lifetime of familiarity.

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Experiencing God

Posted on 02/10/2025 by Jon Garvey

I wrote before on Jonathan Edwards, work on Religious Affections. I observed how Edwards, the preacher at the heart of the Great Awakening in America, gives a very astute account of the difference between truly spiritual emotions (to use our modern parlance), and those associated with merely human passions, often associated with false conversions, and occasionally even with the demonic. Careful reading of his arguments dismisses much of what passes for direct experience of God in the Charismatic movement now. My own piece ended with a sobering assessment of just how high a proportion of Edwards’ own experience of “surprising conversions” was revival as a psycho-social phenomenon rather than a … Continue reading →

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