It’s cool to be Christian again
I’ve seen various comments along the lines of “It’s cool to be Christian again”, pointing to recent statements by the Roman Pope and retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
There seemed to be something missing there, however, because the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury made some statements that were just as newsworthy, and just as widely reported, it seems, but were not, apparently, seen to be cool by the current arbiters of “cool”.
Here, for the record, are some of the blog posts and comments on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statements.
- Justin Welby pleases both left and right with clever Wonga comments (blogs.spectator.co.uk)
- The Separation of Church and State (politicsfromthemiddle.com)
- British government asks church to take over thousands of state schools (religionnews.com)
- On the Claim that Separation Strengthens Religion (clrforum.org)
- Does “Separation of Church and State” mean “Separation of God and Government?” (christianlibertynews.wordpress.com)
- Wonga-bashing won’t save the Church of England (oup.com)
- The Archbishop, loansharks, and the media (khanya.wordpress.com)
- Archbishop of Canterbury, Wonga and Credit Unions (jochamberlain.wordpress.com)
- Condescension to Church shows sad state of Independent | Notepad on Life: Condescension to Church shows sad state of Independent
- Religion and politics | Nick Baines’s Blog
- Word changes | Nick Baines’s Blog
I suppose it depends on how you define “cool”.
Notes from underground 
Cool post Steve!
I’m not sure how to take that 🙂
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. 🙂
Cool is one of those words that are totally superfluous ( outside of a thermal sense ) that make no sense to me and couldn’t see myself ever using it.
And when I see it used within the context of church, especially with respect to ‘yoof’ I just cringe and die a little inside.
Doesn’t help that the more I think about pronouncing ‘cool’ that the more I have trouble saying it.
“Cool”, in the metaphorical sense, was superseded by “laid back”, and then in turn replaced “awesome” with a different meaning, so that it now means almost the opposite. So to know what “cool” means in any given passage, you need to know
(1) When it was written.
(2) The age of the person who wrote it.
See Coolness and dispassion | Khanya on my other blog.
Steve, it does indeed depend on how “cool” is defined.