Blogs

Five years ago the Diocese of Exeter submitted plans to construct six small-scale wind turbines on its land in three different parishes in north Devon.

These were part of an overall strategy for the Church of England in Devon to reduce its Greenhouse Gas carbon emissions. In the event the planning applications were withdrawn amidst an ambience of acrimony and unpleasantness.

In retrospect, it was agreed the process could have been better handled and there were lessons to be learned. However, the continuing legacy of the whole process was to release dubious forces of...

Probably one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is‘who we think we really are’. Our self-identity is an issue that runs through human history and is found in the works of poets, artists, theologians and psychologists – to name but a few. Who we believe we are is of course influenced by people around us – the names they use to describe us, how others relate to us, and the familiar, social, tribal and faith groups we belong to. Even Jesus raises the matter when he says to Peter, ‘who do people say I am’. He then later personalises the issue by re-phrasing the question –‘who...

The journalist Jeremy Seabrook once researched how people felt about social change in their life time. ‘Had life generally improved or worsened during their lives’, he asked. His conclusion was that people felt things had got better but people had got worse!

Looking back over history we now talk about the ‘Dark Ages’, ‘Middle Ages’, ‘Reformation’, Time of Enlightenment? So how will future generations view and label our own era?

Sadly, one candidate could be ‘An Age of Loss’.

There is much to suggest our contemporary society has no direction or purpose. Some...

In recent years politicians and decision makers around the world have been drawn to appealing to the human emotions of fear and hatred for their backing and support. It is clear that motivations such as ‘tribalism’ (expressed in prejudicial racism, sexism, nationalism, etc.) and ‘desire’ (culminating in global consumerism) have been woven into political discourse in ways maybe not so generally seen since the 1920s.

This rhetoric has coincided with enormous austerity cuts to welfare services, lower wages and also widespread deregulation of rules governing corporate economic...