Religion

Professor Bailey V. Gillespie, from La Sierra University's Department of Theology and Christian Character in California, impressed me with both the diversity of his interests and his prestigious achievements, particularly in the field of young people's religious experience.

During the COVID-19 lockdown last year, I lived with some messy people. I’d moved into a house that I shared with a wonderful couple of brothers. They were almost everything you could ask for in a set of housemates. Friendly, funny, respectful of your privacy . . . genuinely great people in almost every respect.

“There are no other two churches in the world today that are so similar yet, at the same time, so opposite as the Eastern, or Greek, and the Western, or Roman Church” (Philip Schaff).

I still remember it like it was yesterday: the brightness of the sun on my skin, the chill of the water, the crowds of cheering people. We had gathered that Saturday afternoon on the shores of Lake Jindabyne, a half-hour drive from Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s tallest mountain.

To know God is an aspiration inherent in the rational being who recognises His existence.

Broken blade. Shaking hands. Clouded mind. “I could have killed him.”

As soon as the tourists leave the land of the silent agony of Gethsemane, their lives return to normal, and the garden where the Son of God sobbed in indescribable pain, misunderstood and unsupported even by His closest disciples, sinks back into oblivion.

Some expectations dissolve into routine or turn into despair, while others invigorate life. The former are measured in deeds and desires, while the latter are measured in faithfulness and beliefs.

It is no coincidence that the first Baptist church in the United States, the first synagogue, and the first Quaker assembly house are all located in the small American state of Rhode Island. Their existence is due to the influence of Roger Williams, who resolutely upheld the principle of freedom of conscience more than 100 years before it was invoked in the First...

"When I was little, I felt that God was with me, but now I feel so lonely! I wonder if God really was with me back then".

Life is a stage that we enter without a script, although we are constantly influenced by forces of varying visibility: social, educational, religious, economic, and political.

Dr Kendra Haloviak-Valentine, Professor of New Testament Studies at La Sierra University in Redlands, California, comes from a family with a tradition of theology and research.

To understand the love of God, we are encouraged to look at the Cross. The unnatural position of the Son, nailed to a non-existent guilt, raises a storm of questions in the other children of God. The most disturbing of them, I think, would be: What kind of love is this?

A movement so alive and distinct from the imperial cults, as Christianity was, could not fail to attract the attention of temple servants, intellectuals, and officials.

No other court in the world can judge a person as effectively as their own conscience. Before and immediately after a wrong has been committed, the "merciless" trial begins.