The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity - Greene on...

Playing God

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 13:51:47 +0000

- Mark Greene on Black & White

Fools rush in where angels and techno-geeks fear to tread.

Two weeks ago my idea of a computer game was a few hands of solitaire on a laptop. Admittedly, I would occasionally get on the Playstation and clumsily pinball a careening Corvette or a McLaren Mercedes from crash barrier to crash barrier, but the truth is that I am to computer games what Mike Tyson is to ballet – just not programmed that way.

Harry Potter : Magic in the Air?

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 16:12:41 +0000

- by Mark Greene

My first encounter with the now extremely famous Harry Potter was swifter than a lizard’s lick.

I had gone out in search of a gift for my god-daughter and found myself, as I often do on such occasions, in a place filled with treasures and glossy delights, in an Aladdin’s cave in my very own high street - in short, my local bookshop.

Enter the Master...

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 16:08:05 +0000

Mark Greene is stunned by The Lord of the Rings. And gripped by the questions it poses.

Excellence sometimes stuns.

It silences the cynic. It punctures the windbag. It is bigger than the categories the critic wants to limit it to - remember the grim soldierettes of technique that were Soviet bloc women gymnasts before Olga-the-pixie-Korbut elevated the sport, momentarily at least, into an art-form fit to express the joy and exuberance of a teenager.

Pullman’s Purpose

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 16:07:08 +0000

- by Mark Greene

This year's Whitbread prize-winner Philip Pullman is, as you might expect, a fine writer and he's a fine writer with a cause. His cause, as he himself has made clear, is to destroy Christianity, and to liberate the world from any faith in a personal God.

The Amber Spyglass, the first children's novel to win the award, is the final volume in his hugely popular trilogy, His Dark Materials. It's a collection that ironically seems to have assured him a place in the pantheon of childrens' authors alongside C S Lewis and Tolkien, writers whose Christian faith he views as both misplaced and corrosive. Indeed, he regards the Narnia books with intense loathing:

Keswick 2005

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 16:03:27 +0000

- Mark Greene on the state of the Church in 2005

What's the state of the Church in 2005? Moving forward? Or backwards?

Mark Greene delivered the Week 2 'Keswick Lecture' this year, noting a number of positive trends but also exploring two barriers: first, the theological impact of the sacred-secular divide in Christian mission and Christian living; and second, what happens to evangelism and personal transformation when we neglect the art of disciple-making.

Anita Roddick

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:51:48 +0000

If you want to change the world - and who doesn't - then Anita Roddick's book Business as Unusual is a high octane, fast-paced inspiration to do just that.

Passionately and persuasively, Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, demonstrates how values can shape business, rather than the other way round, how a great cause can be preserved despite commercial pressures and how someone's core individuality can remained uncompromised in the often character-corroding crucible of intense competition. All that and everything you ever wanted to know about Ghanaian shea nut butter.

Harry Potter

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:46:03 +0000

My first encounter with the now extremely famous Harry Potter was swifter than a lizard's lick.

I had gone out in search of a gift for my god-daughter and found myself, as I often do on such occasions, in a place filled with treasures and glossy delights, in an Aladdin's cave in my very own high street - in short, my local bookshop.

Greene on John Humphrys

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:11:09 +0000

It’s time to get angry. And it’s John Humphrys ironically titled Devil’s Advocate that has got my blood boiling. Not at him, but with him.
Imagine this common enough scene.

Your five year old son/ daughter/ nephew/ niece/ god-son/ god-daughter falls over in a school play ground and cuts his knee. His teacher arrives. The child is crying. The child needs a hug or at least an arm round the shoulder... Well, forget that. No teacher in Britain is going to give your son/daughter/nephew/niece/god-son/god-daughter a hug, and certainly not in private, because it’s as close to illegal as makes no difference. And there’s a big chance they might get done under the Children’s Act. And that’s because some teachers have been paedophiles and because some teachers are paedophiles. In today’s Britain we protect our children from evil by legislating against love and compassion and common or garden empathy. Or at least what used to be common or garden empathy but which is in fact as becoming as rare as an iguana at the South Pole.

Greene on John Lennon

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:07:30 +0000

Suddenly it felt alarmingly like the 60s again.

At the turn of the millennium there was a Beatles song at the top of the charts, Paul McCartney was singing on a chat show, and young boy-band pretenders were being interviewed on kids’ TV and telling viewers that their favourite bands were, yes, the Beatles and the Stones. They say you’re getting old when all the songs sound like the Beatles, so how old are you when all the songs are Beatles songs? And to cap it all, for those like me, with splendid but very young children and a family struck down by ‘that’ flu and no party to go to on Millennium Eve and nothing but TV broadcasts from every major capital on earth to amuse us, plus all the fun of the Dome, what do we get to sing? The people’s choice, yup, the Beatles ‘All you need is love.’ The times are a-changing but when we need to sing a song everyone knows, eat your heart out Westlife, Rule Britannia sinks beneath the waves, the Fab Four remain No 1. And that was not all.

McBeal Appeal

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:06:15 +0000

- by Mark Greene

She looks like a goldfish.

A not terribly well fed goldfish at that.

McBeal, whose mouth often opens and closes without emitting any sounds, is played by the improbably named Calista Flockhart – can this be her real name or did she steal it from some character in a Dickens novel that escaped my notice? Anyway McBeal is intelligent and usually well dressed, as you’d expect of a highly paid lawyer with an office the size of a bank. She is also somewhat ditzy, occasionally downright odd, often dense and not particularly sexy. This doesn’t look a recioe for Emmy-winning success but the show is driven by one very old and very appealing idea – the pursuit of le grand amour. With a twist. What is different about the pursuit in McBeal is firstly that you’re not sure that she’s ever going to find it and secondly that the terms under which she pursues this great love mix old-fashioned restraint with occasional rushes into sixties flings. But old-fashioned restraint wins...

Greene on Rembrandt

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:04:47 +0000

- by Mark Greene

Rembrandt is without doubt one of the greatest pictorial dramatisers of the word of God in the history of exposition. And from him we have immense amounts to learn, as Simon Schama’s recent magnum opus vividly demonstrates. But more of that anon.

There’s a lot of opinion vented about communication these days. Particularly in the British church. And that’s primarily because we hardly have anyone who really knows anything about it – at least not yet in positions of influence. Hence the perennial fiascos of church advertising campaigns which cause controversy for all the wrong reasons – not because people are scandalised by the Gospel but because you can always find a church leader somewhere who thinks the campaign is wrong for some reason or another.