Category Archives: Politics and sociology

Back on the Charismatic theology wagon, a podcast I did with John Collins of Leaving the Message is now out on YouTube, and seems to have mainly positive feedback so far. It’s here. I’m actually recording a follow-up in January, so we’ll see what that’s all about when we get there.

The Church Times’s downbeat report of the evangelistic carol service in Whitehall last Saturday, to which I’ve addressed the last two posts, quotes “the C of E’s co-lead bishop for racial justice, suffragan Bishop of Kirkstall Arun Arora”: Referring to Mr Robinson by his real name, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Bishop Arora said that he was “delighted” that he had “recently come to faith in prison”, but suggested that “having embraced and accepted God’s welcome he can’t now restrict it from others who may be equally lost.

And so on my return from a family gathering last Saturday, I flicked through the YouTube footage of the Whitehall Carol Concert, as organised by Tommy Robinson, real name unknown to all but himself since his conversion in prison (see Revelation 2:17).

In a comment on my most recent post reader Steve links to a reply to an open letter apparently signed by the entire religious Establishment of Britain, condemning “Christian nationalism” in the form of the spontaneous expressions of Christian faith at the Tommy Robinson rally a couple of months ago. Since my blog mentions the forthcoming mass carol concert in London, also organised by Robinson’s people, it’s worthy of further comment.

Continuing to explore the spread of Pentecostalism in British Christianity, after my revisiting of David Watson I have dipped into Jim Packer’s 1979 book, Keep in Step with the Spirit. Packer is generally sceptical about the Charismatic movement, whilst (from that chronological viewpoint) accepting not only that God had used it, but that the Charismatic Renewal had been the major thing God was doing in the Evangelical Church at that time.