Thought for the week: Churches should become more active in the corridors of power
One of the foremost Bible teachers to my generation was the late William Barclay. Thankfully, his daily Study Bible is still being published.
Google his name and it will demonstrate better than I can the scope and depth of his understanding of the Bible, the environment in which its different components were shaped, and maybe more importantly how they could be implemented with integrity towards God and our neighbours in our society and world.
Barclay had a maxim which influenced me. He said preachers should prepare their sermons with a Bible in one hand and a good quality newspaper in the other. I still buy three daily newspapers thanks to an iPad.
But the business of living as a Christian in the real world demands more than being a consumer who simply absorbs radio or television news presentations. That is not a criticism of electronic media. I have a select cadre of journalists both locally and internationally whom I met via television and whose articles on the web are quality.
Reading the incoming news, reflecting on your Biblical reading, shaping your prayers and listening to our Maker are non-avoidable if one is to witness with credibility in our world.
I am writing at the end of a week in which the new United States regime has certainly upset many in Europe, not least in the Ukraine. Such events re-awaken my main under-graduate specialism in the geography department at Queen's University in Belfast under the leadership and inspiration of Professor Eystn Evans and his hand-picked core of lecturer practitioners.
The specialism was political geography. Two years of in-depth case study after case study exploring places and identifying what was holding that society together and what might drive it apart. I have lived to see too many of these places ending up in conflict internally or internationally.
I am still confronted by the predictability of conflict and the inability of humanity to prevent it. Thank heaven our churches are brilliant at gathering funds to help the afflicted. However, I would like to see churches being more pro-active in the corridors of parliaments and in the media, influencing these situations before life on the scale of Ukraine and Russia is taken and inevitably having consequences for us all.