By ANDREW BROWN'S BLOG - GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Added: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 UTC

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/dec/04/bishop-peterborough-islam-truth

On behalf of religious writers everywhere I think should welcome the choice of Donald Allister to be the next Bishop of Peterborough. He will be good for business. In his youth, as a curate, he had plenty of time to write for the Church Society, the Calvinist cadre of the Church of England. In particular, he wrote in 1993, as part of a jeremiad against liberalism, that

The scriptures are completely true, reliable and trustworthy in all that they affirm. What the Bible teaches us about history or geography, men and women, the thoughts, words and deeds of God – all this is to be believed and obeyed without reservation

So I rang him up, and asked him what exactly he meant. Did he believe, for example, that God had in fact caused the sun to stand still so that Joshua could continue to slaughter the Amorites, as recounted in the book of Joshua. There are some fundies who claim this really happened. The new bishop is more cautious. "I wasn't there", he told me. "It isn't something that couldn't have happened because science says it couldn't have happened. I'm not saying it did happen, but if we say it couldn't have happened, we're not doing justice to the text."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/dec/04/bishop-peterborough-islam-truth

TAGGED: COMMENTARY, INTERVIEWS, RELIGION

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