The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity - more by Nick Spencer

A vision of sustainable living

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:45:39 +0000

Nick Spencer paints a picture of what a relationally and environmentally sustainable society might look like today.

There is no obvious and incontrovertible vision of sustainable living to which we should aspire. There will be as many impressions of the genuinely sustainable society as there are people to advocate them.

Imagining a sustainable society does not demand a kind of eco-fascism that seeks to impose its vision of the future on all, threatening violence to recalcitrants and sceptics. What follows, therefore, is a vision, not a template, of what sustainable living might look like at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Thin morality

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:40:30 +0000

Nick Spencer explores a society with a weighty problem

I am one of those hateful people who can eat pretty much what he likes and never put on weight. Neither gym nor low fat foods appeal, and I have avoided both for many years. Yet, somehow, miraculously, I remain a svelte 11 stone.

I am, thus, singularly ill-qualified to write about obesity and its threat to our physical, emotional and financial health. Smug, self-satisfied and thin: you should take what I say with a (small) pinch of salt.

Is Christmas Dead?

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:36:59 +0000

Nick Spencer finds that the season of goodwill hasn’t yet passed its sell-by date

Christmas is like the NHS. Most of us have some, local contact with it, and most of us like what we get. But most of us remain convinced that the institution is endangered, pushed to the point of extinction by politically-correct town-hall councillors or the health-and-safety mafia.

The Value of Vengeance

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:29:33 +0000

Nick Spencer explores how punishment should fit the crime

“Comment is free,” wrote The Guardian’s famous editor, CP Scott, “but facts are sacred.”

Things, alas, are not so simple today. Postmodernism has cast its ominous shadow over Scott’s solid, sacred facts and, in the age of the blog, comment is not so much free as worthless.

Is there anybody out there?

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:20:00 +0000

Nick Spencer looks up at the sky and reflects on what we can learn from Creation.

‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.’ So wrote Immanuel Kant in the conclusion to his Critique of Practical Reason.

Kant may have been an ambiguous believer (to put it generously) himself, but his starry heavens have long been one of creation’s – thus Christians’ – greatest theistic arguments. At their simplest (and least convincing) they supposedly demonstrate God’s existence. At the more subtle (and more persuasive) they lift the human mind towards the possibility of the transcendent, the numinous, the ‘other’. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God,’ Psalm 19 declares, ‘the skies proclaim the work of his hands.’

It’s sympathy that counts

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:18:15 +0100

My wife was not getting on particularly well with people at work. This person just sort of stood out. She was different. My wife started to chat to her. “You seem different from the rest. Why is that?” she said. “Because I am a Christian and this is how we behave in the workplace,” and so on… It didn’t take much to persuade my wife to want to find out more’.

This is how we are told it should work. An individual practises the presence of God in a distinctive but unobtrusive way at work. The difference is noticed and asked about. He or she is open and unapologetic, without being pushy or appearing desperate. The colleague is intrigued and motivated to respond. Eventually, he or she makes a public profession of faith in Christ.

Do people come to faith this way, or is this just how the evangelism manuals say it should happen?

Reasonably Hopeful

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 09:28:35 +0000

Nick Spencer talks to Julian Baggini

Could you tell us a little about your upbringing and how it helped to shape your mental landscape as an adult?

Well, I grew up a nominal Christian, I would say – I was like most people, more or less believing what they are told about God and Jesus and all that kind of thing. I went to a Catholic primary school. Looking back on it, I don’t like the way in which I was indoctrinated, but it was a very pleasant environment.

Where do you think you are going?

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 09:24:28 +0000

Few issues better reveal our confused thinking today than the attitude we take to transport. We fear climate change yet build airports like they were going out of fashion. We idealise the British landscape yet slowly pave it with bypasses and housing estates. We complain about congestion yet fume when fuel duty increases.

When faced with such contradictions, we are liable to dissemble (aircraft emissions do not count towards the national carbon emissions figure), evade (Britain is still relatively green and pleasant), prevaricate (technology will clean up the fuels) or simply paper over the cracks with the apparently incontestable rhetoric of ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’. The truth is tougher and less palatable: we cannot have it both ways. Technological progress will be able to sweeten the pill of our ‘hypermobile culture’, to use a phrase popularised by the geographer John Adams, but it will not cure us of its consequences.

Reporting on the reporters

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:43:09 +0100

In today’s media jungle, Nick Spencer argues that the big beasts of our unfettered press would paradoxically benefit from some old-fashioned restraint and humility.

‘It’s in the public’s interest.’

For a number of years this has been the media’s ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card. No story, it seems, no matter how personal, sordid or utterly irrelevant to my existence is immune to this powerful argument. ‘Three-in-a-bed shame of overpaid footballer’s pet rottweiler’ – no problem: the public has a right to know.

Fully at Liberty

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:30:05 +0100

Nick Spencer talks to Shami Chakrabarti of the Human Rights Organisation Liberty

Can you begin by saying a bit about your family background and your personal history and how that has shaped you?

My parents came to this country from India in that wave of New Commonwealth immigration in the late Fifties. I was born in north-west London, where my parents still live, went to state schools and then on to the LSE. I trained as a barrister, but within a year of being called to the Bar I think I decided that maybe I wasn’t cut out for the tough life of a junior barrister – getting up at five in the morning to go and repossess somebody’s house in Folkestone, in the hope that one day you might do some great and noble human-rights case, or just something interesting.

Beyond Belief? Barriers and Bridges to Faith Today (booklet)

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:50:53 +0000

- by Nick Spencer

What stops people from hearing the Gospel? Why do some people dismiss Christianity out of hand? What are the main barriers to religious faith today? Are there any bridges to counterbalance them?

These were some of the questions LICC explored in our recent research project Beyond Belief?