In the Hebrew Scriptures there are two (at least) contrasting images of what Israel could be. The first is in chapter 23 of the Book of Exodus: I will send swarms of hornets in front of you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them…
Author: The Meeting Place
First Thursday October 5th 2023
In his book “Value(s): Building a Better World for all” (published by William Collin in 2021, and in paperback in 2022), Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, argues that “the embrace of markets and their ‘subjective’ valuations has led to a society that has been robbed of its capacity to express…
First Thursday September 7th 2023
The collapse of the Soviet system in 1990 created a vacuum filled with illusions of Western “victory”. “Liberal democracy” (with free-market capitalism) was now “the only game in town”. The Russian economy was re-organised under Yegor Gaidar (and western “support”), with drastic consequences, including oligarchs buying up formerly state-owned industries. But the present century has…
First Thursday August 3rd 2023
Rishi Sunak’s proposal to grant more licenses for oil and gas development, in the light of all the debate about Global Warming and Fossil Fuels, was our first topic of discussion. The world demand for oil and gas is higher now than it was half a century ago- production was nearly 2.5 million tons in…
First Thursday July 6th 2023
One of the Kirchentag Bible studies asked “When is the Kingdom of God coming?” (Luke 17:20). Does God work only through people, or in other ways? (At least we should perhaps be grateful it is not only through us as members of the Church!). In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says that the Kingdom is…
German Protestant Kirchentag, June 7th to 11th 2023, Nuremberg
These are the sessions we attended- a small selection of the many available in the Kirchentag (Church Congress). These Protestant meetings happen every two years, alternating with Catholic Congresses, with joint ecumenical meetings every few years. ACT OF REMEMBRANCE, Wednesday 14.00 to 15.00 at the Charterhouse Tower Ten murders were committed between September 2000 and April…
First Thursday May 4th summary
Artificial Intelligence (AI) had been in the news every morning before the First Thursday. Monday: AI scans were used at Royal Marsden Hospital and Imperial College- algorithms used to diagnose cancer had proved super-effective, more efficient than any current methods. Tuesday: Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of AI quits Google and warns of its danger-…
First Thursday April 6th 2023
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 the Wesley Church Centre in Chester has opened its doors on Saturday afternoons offering a place of welcome to some of the many Ukrainian refugees, mainly women and children, hosted by families in the area through the government supported schemes. Two Ukrainian women already resident in the…
First Thursday March 2nd 2023
Summary of the discussion The destructiveness and death toll of the recent Turkey/Syria earthquake contrasts with some other earthquakes, eg in Japan, where the severity was as high (or higher) but the building collapse and death toll were far less. The evidence appears to be that however good Turkish building regulations were, the monitoring and…
First Thursday January 5th 2023
Church attendances, as we know, have declined over the last half a century or more- in fact they had been failing to keep pace with population growth since soon after 1900. The temptation for the Church is either to try to be “up-to-date” (forgetting that “if you marry the Spirit of the Age you become…