students, A-levels, and more theology-for-beginners
congratulations, all A-level passers.
As from this morning Universities up and down the land are in a fever of processing stuff now the results are out. As you would hope from someone involved in University life, I like students. I enjoy walking with them from starting raw to developing into seriously good thinkers. I like it when they keep in touch and tell me what's happening five or ten years later.
This week I heard from two people whom I first met as students, both of them very bright and sparky theological thinkers. Marika did what the best students do – gobbled up every bit of available reading, and fearlessly asked every question that came to mind. (Students are often afraid to ask questions in case they "look stupid". But, as someone said to me, the only stupid question is the one you don't ask. ) Marika now has her own theology blog, and is very good at getting under the skin of big ideas while demystifying the theological language that often makes it seem inaccessible. For anyone following my "theology for beginners" series – add Marika to your blog roll
Danielle, meantime, came to pick my brains when she was researching girls in Choral music and I was the Chaplain of a venerable institution that didn't have any girls in the choir. Danielle has gone on to great things, but one of her side interests has suddenly taken off – Harry Potter and religion. Her own book on the subject is anticipated very soon, but meantime she has a chapter in this book:
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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You might be interested in this book, which looks with remarkable precision at different ‘ways of knowing’. It goes into far more detail than I had expected about how different approaches to truth have their own different logics.
(Disclosure: the editor is a relation of mine)
http://www.imprint.co.uk/books/chris_clarke.html