Refugees – a poem by Brian Bilston

Posted on September 24, 2017 by

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

(now read from bottom to top)

Brian Bilston’s website

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How society and government policy facilitate sexual abuse – by Ruth Woodcraft

Posted on September 20, 2017 by

Photo: iStock

Newcastle joined an infamous list of UK cities in August with the conviction of 17 men and one woman for rape, supplying drugs and conspiracy to incite prostitution.

The media dissected events and the conclusions were critical of Northumbria Police. Early opportunities were missed to investigate the abuse, and thousands of pounds had been paid to a convicted paedophile to gain information.

But all the discussions missed one angle: the utter acceptance of under-age sex.

Normalised

Our society has so normalised underage sex that children are experiencing a kind of state sanctioned abuse which allows criminals to abuse them further.

That may well appear a startling statement, but an overview of the evidence supports it. Below are extracts from serious case reviews, or public enquiries into abuse that took place from 2013-16:

  • Torbay: the sexual health (service focused on) providing a confidential service with a view to preventing pregnancy
  • Liverpool: Child D was seen as….an adult making her own choices on issues such as…pregnancies
  • Rochdale: the drive to reduce teenage pregnancy…is believed to have contributed to a culture whereby professionals may have become inured to early sexual activity in young teenagers
  • Rotherham: children as young as 11 were deemed to be having consensual sexual intercourse
  • Thurrock: national and local policy agendas have driven practice…to have a stronger focus on sexual health and teenage pregnancy rather than on sexual abuse
  • Oxfordshire: a professional tolerance to knowing young teenagers were having sex with adults…developed
  • Hampshire: school staff made aware of sexual activity by GP, judged it to be consensual
  • Bristol 2016: a confused…stance in national policy about…sexual activity, leaves professionals…struggling to recognise and distinguish between sexual abuse, exploitation and/or underage sexual activity; this risks leaving some children at continued risk of exploitation in the mistaken belief they are involved in consensual activity

Our attitude to children and sex

Putting aside individual errors, and acknowledging that people bent on committing a crime will commit crimes, professionals reviewing abuse cases are repeatedly proving that our attitude to children and sex is a major factor in why children are not extracted from abusive situations.

In the Hampshire case, the school involved was one for children with learning needs and disabilities. The child’s sexual autonomy was held in such regard that abuse continued to take place despite school staff having been informed of the sex a pupil was having, as they deemed it ‘consensual’.

And many of the children involved in these cases were under local authority ‘care’. All were called ‘vulnerable’, regardless of whether they lived with their parents. In some instances, the views of parents were dismissed; concerns they raised were swept aside as teenage sex was just expected to occur.

Green light to dangerous sex

The Brook Sexual Behaviours Traffic Light Tool is a resource designed to help professionals make decisions about safeguarding, respond to sexual behaviour and distinguish the safe from the unsafe. A green light is given to ‘oral / penetrative sex with others of the same / opposite gender who are of similar age and developmental ability’.

Clearly, older men having sex with underage girls wouldn’t get a ‘green light’. But a child aged 13 could be given a ‘green light’ if engaging in sex with a 17 year-old. Models such as this show how easily dangerous sexual activity is seen as safe.

Playing into the hands of abusers

Contraception is routinely available to underage pupils in many schools in the UK, without the knowledge of their parents. In 2016, it was reported that rates of teenage pregnancy in the UK halved in the past two decades and are at their lowest levels since record-keeping began in the late 1960s. As non-barrier methods of contraception are widely used, STI rates have risen.  Chlamydia statistics show rates almost tripling in 10 years.

The reduction of teenage pregnancy rates by medicating girls may contribute to exposing children to conditions that could have other lifelong implications. Through the policies of schools and social services, an attitude is facilitated that plays into the hands of the abuser who preys on the vulnerable: the belief that underage sex is ‘normal’.

Ruth Woodcraft lives in South London. This first appeared in www.e-n.org.uk

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White supremacy is America’s original sin – by Shawn Bawulski

Posted on August 15, 2017 by

This is the text of a speech given by Shawn Bawulski at the Phoenix Black Lives Matter rally against hate this week. It is re-produced with permission.

I’m honoured to be speaking at this rally against hate.

I speak today as a Christian theologian: God’s love is pure. God’s love is on us all.  I love you all, and I can’t fully know what you’re experiencing right now, but I’ll never stop loving you all.

America’s original sin

First, I must say that white supremacy is sin. America’s original sin, in fact. It is an evil, a scourge. It is revolting. There’s no nuance to be struck here. There are not many sides. Polished manifestations of racism are still racism.

What we’ve seen this weekend is the latest harvest from a field that’s been around for a long time. It is recently been further empowered and validated, but it’s not new. It runs deep. It is sin.

Incompatible with Christianity

Second, America’s white supremacy is incompatible with the Christian faith. I’m a Christian theologian and I speak from my tradition. White supremacy is an idol. It is worshiped as a god, a provider of life, meaning, and deliverance.

It is, however, a mute statue, unable to save. It makes a mockery of the living God. I find it ironic that so many white supremacists claim Christianity, A FAITH WHERE WE WORSHIP A BROWN-SKINNED MAN AS GOD IN THE FLESH.

The gospel repudiates racism

The Christian message is that God has taken on human existence, and that leaves no aspect of human experience untouched. What God touches, God heals. God enters into our human relationships. Into our social structures. Into our history. An ancient theologian has said that “The unassumed is the unhealed”. The devastation of white supremacy can be healed because God has not left humanity to perish of its own devices. This gives me hope, and leads to my third point.

Third, I speak to Christians in particular for a moment, and especially to my white Christian brothers and sisters. I say this: the Christian gospel repudiates racism. Give a full-throated, unambiguous condemnation. Anything less is less than the gospel.

White or Christian?

Jim Wallis writes:

“If white Christians acted more Christian than white, black parents would have less to fear for their children.”

He’s not wrong. If white Christians acted more Christian than white, racist rallies would not be tolerated. If white Christians acted more Christian than white, domestic terrorism like we’ve seen recently would be called out for what it is. If white Christians acted more Christian than white, the idol of white supremacy would not be perpetuated under the banner of “I condemn all hate” or “all lives matter”.

God’s love is supreme

Finally, I turn to the words of Jesus. Warning the powerful religious leaders of his day, he says… “But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness…”

He’d say the same thing today. Dr. King captures this idea when he says that the white moderate is almost more dangerous than the Klansman. King writes,

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

White supremacy leaves everyone disfigured, not just people of color. This includes the white people who turn a blind eye and learn to live with the lie. This includes even the white supremacists marching.

God’s love is supreme. God’s love is towards all of us. The light of God’s love is brighter than a tiki torch of hatred.

Shawn Bawulski has a PhD from the University of St Andrews and has been a professor of theology at universities in Europe and in the States. For more see www.shawnbawulski.com 

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Abuse, collusion and cover-up in the C of E – by Stephen Kuhrt

Posted on June 23, 2017 by

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey

The Church of England and its senior leaders colluded with Peter Ball, the ex-Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, rather than seeking to help those he had harmed or assuring itself of the safety of others.

That is the damning conclusion of Dame Moira Gibb’s review of the church’s handling of the sexual abuse committed by the bishop between 1977 and 1992. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, is singled out for particular criticism through his failure to pass on letters that he received about Ball to the police.

Collusion

The most tragic aspect for me, as a Church of England Vicar, is my total lack of surprise at these findings. I’m a fervent believer in the Church of England and its mission to share God’s love with as many people within this country as possible. But none of this will count for anything until the Church of England reaches a proper clarity over safeguarding.

The review acknowledges that safeguarding procedure has improved within the Church of England over the last few years. But this is not enough. The only thing that will prevent such cases and institutional collusion with them reoccurring, will be a change of culture within the Church of England.

Keeping the institution safe

At the heart of this is the need to make a crystal clear distinction between keeping people safe and keeping the institution of the church safe.

Far too often on the safeguarding courses that clergy attend, no distinction is made between these goals. In fact I have experienced a level of annoyance when I have attempted to get the leaders on such courses to make this distinction.

Within my own diocese of Southwark, the safeguarding policy is called ‘A Safe Church’ perfectly illustrating this ambiguity. The problem here is that far and away the biggest motivation for hushing up sexual abuse is the misguided attempt to keep the institution safe. Whether it is the BBC turning a blind eye to Jimmy Savile or the Church of England colluding with Peter Ball, the fatal flaw is thinking, even for a moment, that the reputation or standing of the organisation should be factored in to the decision making.

Total openness

As soon as this happens, dealing with the issue is fatally compromised because people will always find excuses for hushing things up. At these points the Church, or any other responsible organisation needs to thinking purely about the safety of the victims and completely ignore any concerns about its own safety as an organisation. The dirty linen must be washed in public and with total openness if the linen is going to be washed at all.

The Church of England is right to apologise for the appalling actions of Peter Ball.

It is right to apologise for its collusion in its cover up.

It is right in the strenuous efforts that it is making to improve its safeguarding provision and training.

But the most crucial response is still needed.

The most urgent priority

Every single person with responsibility within the Church of England needs to become crystal clear upon the fundamental difference and frequent conflict between the aims of keeping individuals safe and keeping the institution safe.

The latter mustn’t matter a jot when it is dealing with horrendous abuses of trust – or indeed any other faults within the Church’s activities that it needs to address. Complete clarity over this is urgently needed and priority placed upon bringing this about. Policies with titles like ‘A Safe Church’ should be consigned to the bin as we become wiser to the factors that have caused the most awful crimes to be tolerated by an organisation that people should be able to trust completely.

Stephen Kuhrt is Vicar of Christ Church, New Malden

Posted in Ethics & Christian living | Tagged | 5 Comments

Doing To or Being With? Re-thinking Christian social engagement

Posted on June 13, 2017 by

This year marks 130 years since the founding of the West London Mission.

It was in October 1887 that WLM began its work to bring spiritual and practical hope to people affected by poverty. Back then in Victorian London we ran food depots, clothing stores, soup kitchens and even a job service for unemployed servants.

Of course, much has changed since those days. But there is also much continuity as today we empower positive change among people affected by homelessness, poverty, addiction and disadvantage.  For more about our work see http://www.wlm.org.uk

As part of our 130th celebrations, we invite you to an evening at Hinde Street Methodist Church on 11th July from 6.45pm.

The evening will include a talk given by the Rev’d Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College, London and author of the influential book A Nazareth Manifesto.

The evening will start with a buffet supper served in the basement at Hinde Street at 6.45pm with the talk commencing at 7.30pm in the church.

Tuesday 11th July at 2017: 6.45pm for buffet supper and 7.30pm for the talk 

Hinde Street Methodist Church, London W1U 2QJ (nearest tube Bond Street)

If you would like to come please contact Mark Palframan either via email mark.palframan@wlm.org.uk or by phone on 020 7569 5915 by the 1st July

www.wlm.org.uk

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‘This is for Allah’: overcoming denial about the deadly power of religion

Posted on June 6, 2017 by

Last night I was with a group of volunteers who have been running a night shelter for homeless people over the last eight months. They come from 13 different churches and a local synagogue in central London. As well as Christians and Jews, a significant number of volunteers are also Muslims.

Now in it’s seventh year, this scheme has helped 100s of homeless people come off the streets. And it has all been achieved without one penny of government funding. The whole enterprise has been faith-driven.

Faith which brings peace

Last night we started our meeting by reflecting on the words emblazoned on the ceiling of the church in which we met: ‘Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth Peace’. In light of recent events, the relationship between seeking to bring glory to God alongside peace on earth was worth reflecting on.

Only hours earlier, in the same city, violent extremists had shouted ‘This is for Allah’ whilst seeking to maim and kill as many people as they could on London Bridge and in Borough Market. Religious belief was expressed through crude and barbaric violence.

Denial

It is important to acknowledge what was proclaimed by the attackers while they stabbed their victims because there is a consistent desire among many to disconnect these acts of violent extremism from Islam.

Instead, many politicians and commentators seek a political, economic and sociological rationale. As a teacher in my son’s school said to his class yesterday:

‘The most important thing to remember is that this has nothing to do with Islam.’

Dangerous fallacy

I understand the good intentions behind this perspective – to not create further division or tar a whole religion with the same brush. But increasingly these denials make little sense. Actually, they block a true understanding of the problem we face and increase the dangers of Islamophobia and division.

Behind these views is a patronising misunderstanding that religion is something simply personal and inward. It is an expression of the post-modernism which wants to consider all sincerely-held beliefs to be equally true and valid – however incompatible – as long as they don’t affect anyone else.

But Islam cannot be domesticated like this. Like Christianity, it is a religion which claims its theology as public truth. It will always seek to have social and political influence.

Post-secular age

In our post-secular age, we are re-learning the raw power of religion. Just as it has the power to inspire people to go to great lengths to help others it also has the power to induce people to randomly kill.

Of course, religion never acts alone. All faith works within a social and political context. And at this time, radical Islamism is proving to be effective at attaching itself to people with social and political grievances. The combination of political extremism and the promise of a reward beyond the grave is incredibly potent. These men have clearly found, in a form of Islam, a cause powerful enough to motivate them to give up their lives.

Religious ambivalence 

We should be ambivalent about religion and not be too quick to defend it. The Bible contains many warnings about its dangers – prophets like Amos, Micah, Isaiah and John the Baptist all castigate the hypocrisy of religion which fuels injustice. And Jesus had virtually all his disputes with religious leaders.

And history tells us a deeply ambivalent story about what has been done in the name of God. Just as the US civil rights movement was fueled by the spirituality of black Christianity, it was a twisted form of theology which underpinned the racism of the southern US states. It makes no sense to say that groups like the Ku Klux Klan ‘had nothing to do with Christianity’ when so many of their members would be in white only Southern churches on Sundays listening to theology which supported their worldview.

Religion has provided resources for both oppressors and those fighting for peace and liberation.  It is not ‘good’ in itself but should always be judged by its fruit – what it produces. As Jesus said ‘Wisdom is proved right by her deeds.’ (Matthew 11:9)

The theological battle

So we must accept that the fight against extreme Islamism is in part a theological one. As Sara Khan wrote in today’s London Evening Standard:

‘We fail to understand the battle taking place among Britain’s Muslims between those who advocate for a pluralistic humanistic interpretation of Islam against those who subscribe to a supremacist, intolerant and anti-Western Islam.’

This is the battle that we must understand better. Rather than denying any link to Islam we should be supporting, in prayer and action, those Muslims who are fighting this theological and practical conflict. They are on the front-line in this vital struggle against destructive extremism.

Related on R&R: We cannot pretend this violence has nothing to do with religion

Posted in Ethics & Christian living | Tagged | 9 Comments

Is it the Church’s job to be the nation’s paramedic? – by Andy Flannagan

Posted on May 26, 2017 by

All over the UK the Church is doing an incredible job.

We are running food banks…mentoring teenagers at risk…counselling those in debt… befriending the elderly…sheltering the homeless…running parent-toddler groups… homework clubs…music and arts workshops…healing on the streets…sports camps… working with prisoners…community choirs…

It is wonderful, but there is a danger.

The church may spend the next fifty years being the nation’s paramedic, treating the victims of a flawed system but failing to bring righteousness and justice to the system itself.

So what can we do? Well the answer is that we need to show up in places where we can make a difference to the system itself. This is what politics is all about.

Have a watch of this short film from Christians in Politics and share it with others…

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Re-discovering Narnia and rinsing out stale thinking about Christianity

Posted on April 25, 2017 by

I grew up in a Christian home as the son of a vicar. In retrospect it gave me loads of things that I am grateful for, but in many ways I disliked being the ‘vicar’s son’ in a large church.

People treated you differently: Sunday school teachers really did say things like ‘I would have expected more from you Jonathan’ or ‘Honestly, what would your father say?’

I think for the children of church leaders it’s hard to separate out the difference between the church culture which we are so immersed in and the actual message of Christianity itself.

I felt church was boring and never allowed myself to be personally convicted by what I heard. ‘Church’ was just somewhere I had to spend time each week and I built defences about engaging with the message at the heart of it all.

A fresh environment

So one of the things I am MOST grateful for is that my parents could see the importance of me hearing the message in fresh and different environment. And when I was 16, a time when I was most disconnected from the church, my mum bent my arm to go to a CYFA youth camp in Devon.

It was here that I heard the message in a fresh way.  I had a great time but I spent most of the week still keeping the message at a distance. But on the last night of this camp, the defences I had built crumbled. I remember the very specific moment, the 22nd August 1988, when I felt my heart changed through the Holy Spirit.  I knew I was a Christian.

Re-discovering Narnia 

When I returned home from the camp that I re-discovered the set of Narnia books that were on my shelf. It was as a 16 year old that these books had a profound impact on me. Following the camp, my mum had bought me a Bible and in the back I wrote down various quotes which inspired me.

The first one I wrote was the end passage from the final Narnia book, The Last Battle:

‘The term is over, the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning…Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

To be part of ‘the Great Story’: this is what excited and inspired me.

A sense of adventure

I was captured by was the adventure of faith that the Narnia books portrayed. That following Jesus could be something like following Aslan and fighting his battles with him.

For a similar reason the Book of Acts became my favourite book of the Bible – as it shows how ordinary, fearful and flawed people are captured by faith in Jesus and risk everything for Him – and change the world. I think the theme of adventure was a key desire for me.

The point of Narnia

In his book on Narnia, the former Archbishop, Rowan Williams asks the question ‘What is the point of Narnia?’  His answer is:

‘Lewis is trying to re-create for the reader what it is like to encounter and believe in God…The point of Narnia is to help us rinse out what is stale in our thinking about Christianity – which is almost everything…the essential thing is this invitation to hear the story as if we have never heard it before.’

This is what it did for me. Alongside the summer camps, Narnia was a key way that my vision and imagination about what being a Christian was fed and nurtured – it rinsed out what had become stale in my understandings of the Christian faith.

Integrated in the everyday

Williams makes the point that there is no church in Narnia, no religion even – following Aslan is integrated within the everyday ‘something worked out in the routines of life itself’. And actually, this is how faith operates on summer camps – the idea of following Jesus runs as a thread through the whole day – very different to a Sunday religion. This is what makes camps magical and powerful.

We so need experiences which can rinse out what has become stale in our understandings of God. For our family, it is the key reason why we help run a youth camp at Lee Abbey every summer.  It gives us an experience of serving God and others which is real and powerful, utterly exhausting, but deeply renewing.

This post is taken from a sermon, Finding God in Narnia, preached at Christ Church New Malden in April 2017 as part of a series of seven talks on C.S. Lewis’  Narnia Chronicles. Click here to listen to an audio recording.

Posted in Ethics & Christian living, Recommended books | Tagged | 3 Comments

Inspirational but OTT: review of ‘Dirty Glory’ by Pete Greig

Posted on April 19, 2017 by

The ambition to ‘form a movement’ is one I have heard expressed by many leaders over the years. Movements are perceived as exciting, purposeful expressions of collective will and spiritual energy. They often stand in contrast to the more mundane task of managing an organisation.

Pete Greig is one of the few contemporary Christian leaders who can legitimately be credited with starting a movement. 24-7 Prayer has had a huge impact in fusing prayer, mission and justice, especially with younger people.

And it is easy to see the qualities that Greig has brought to the movement. He is an inspirational communicator, brim-full of stories, infectious energy and positivity. His exuberance is contagious.

Provocative teaching

This book, Dirty Glory is packed full of stories, provocative theology and challenging teaching. Take this as an example when he discusses ‘dirty glory’ of God’s incarnation in Jesus:

“We believe in the blasphemous glory of Immanuel; ‘infinity dwindled to infancy’, as the poet once said. We believe in omnipotence surrendering to incontinence, the name above every other name rumoured to be illegitimate…The creator of the Cosmos made tables and presumably he made them badly at first.” (p15)

Ancient wisdom

A key strength of the book is the way that Greig fuses the spiritual wisdom of previous ages with the energy of contemporary evangelicalism. Greig quotes Augustine, Teresa of Avila, John Donne, St Benedict, as well as Karl Barth and Oscar Romero, in a way younger people will be able to connect with and appreciate.

Another strength is the continual emphasis on the integration of prayer and action:

‘Prayer must outwork itself in action…it is about the saying of prayers for sure, but also the becoming of prayers in a thousand practical ways’ (p7)

And there is a strong challenge for anyone who wants an other-worldly spirituality which is detached from the struggle for justice:

‘Down the ages, it has always been the tendency of the rich to reduce salvation to a purely spiritual experience…the consequences of the gospel are profoundly structural as well as spiritual’ (p278-9)

In these ways, Dirty Glory expresses an inspirational form of radical orthodoxy – challenging readers to integrate spiritual practices with a vibrant and activist faith.

Story inflation

Greig is a brilliant story-teller. Lengthy expositions of the journeys of a handful of activists inspired by 24-7 Prayer make up a large chunk of the book.

But as I read these I could not get away from a nagging concern about whether the reality behind the stories truly measured up to the way they are presented. I tried hard not to be cynical but I could not ignore a growing hunch that the stories being told are over-done: that too much was being made of the events and activity described.

Stories are a like a currency. And for writers and speakers, they are a fundamental way of trading ideas and inspiration. But like financial currencies, stories can be liable to a being inflated beyond their true value. Stories can be injected with a significance that they cannot bear.

Over the top

I know one person who is referred to, so I got in touch with them to ask them about their view on how they are presented in the book. They replied as follows:

‘It is highly dramatized. Enough truth in it to remember it happening but quite a lot of OTT stuff. And a fact or two at variance with the truth. It has left me scratching my head a little.’

I think this sums up my main concern with Dirty Glory. I am not saying there is outright deceit but there is too much of what the essayist William Hazlitt defined as ‘cant’:

“Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of real sentiment.”

The curse of evangelical sub-culture

The ‘over-charging or prolongation’ of stories is the curse of evangelical sub-culture.  Too often, inspiration is valued over all-else.

Time and again I have seen the damage caused by the disconnection between the stories shared by inspiring leaders and what is actually done in reality. It is rooted in a dangerous temptation among charismatic communicators to over-hype what they are involved in. It is a key reason for the growth of disillusionment and cynicism within the church.

Honesty and humility

The best antidote to hype is the counter-cultural example that Jesus gives us. He went out of his way to downplay what he was doing, avoiding big crowds and consistently not doing what his supporters wanted him to. And the Bible is littered with commands for us to be humble.

We need to have faith that humility and honesty increase the power and integrity of our message. This is truly the dirty glory that Jesus has shown us and the life God calls us to.

Posted in Recommended books | Tagged | 11 Comments

‘I am neither an optimist or a pessimist’ – the hope of Easter

Posted on April 16, 2017 by

“Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact?

The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is more like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life giving.

The story of the empty tomb cannot be fitted into our contemporary worldview, or indeed any worldview except one of which it is the starting point. That is, indeed, the whole point….It is a boundary event…the beginning of a new creation – as mysterious to human reason as creation itself. But accepted in faith it becomes the starting point for a whole new way of understanding our human experience…”

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (p11 & p116)

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Also on R&R: Proper Confidence in the Gospel: the theology of Lesslie Newbigin

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