Centre for Public Christianity (February 2026)

Among other items, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a ‘Life and Faith’ podcast here on ‘The Year of Getting Off Your Phone’, looking at ‘the forces at work when it comes to our digital habits, why we might choose to reduce our phone use, and how’.

Centre for Public Christianity (June 2024)

Among other items, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a ‘Life and Faith’ interview (here) with Elizabeth Oldfield on her book, Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times.

‘In this interview with Life & Faith, Elizabeth talks about “steadiness of soul” in an increasingly chaotic world and what it means to live in a small, intentional community or “micro monastery” that can fit 18 people around the dinner table. The conversation also covers how Elizabeth has managed to cultivate a space for profound chats across social divides in the podcast The Sacred, and what it meant for Elizabeth to flout careerist dogma and quit her stable, secure job to rest and lean into a different way of life.’

Lausanne Global Analysis 13, 1 (January 2024)

The latest issue of Lausanne Global Analysis, from The Lausanne Movement, is available online from here, including pdfs of individual articles as below:

The summaries are taken from the Issue Overview by Michael Soderling.

Florence Muindi

The Church and Whole-Person Care: Why the Church Should Have an Impact

Florence Muindi inspires us… with her own story of how her view of the calling of the church to ministries of health, healing, and wholeness evolved through difficult situations. While she was occupying herself with many ministry activities, her heart was broken by the sight of young shivering homeless children going through trash trying to eke out an existence on the street just blocks from her mission house. After much mental struggle, instead of starting an orphanage with a feeding program to minister to those suffering, she resolved to help the local church understand and embrace her calling to care for the whole person. 

Karen Bomilcar

Mental Health and the Christian Community: Towards Interdisciplinary and Integral Health

Karen Bomilcar brings a holistic perspective to the role of the church in addressing mental health issues… Karen appropriately points out the ever-present challenge of a dualistic mindset that continues to plague the church. Humans are embodied souls and need to have their health problems addressed as such. For too long mental health issues have been ignored by the church with a common view that you cannot suffer from mental health issues if you believe in Jesus. To be depressed has been considered by many to represent  a lack of faith. Karen helps us see how the church can be a true partner in addressing mental health issues in our fellowships using an interdisciplinary approach.

Nyalpi Nungarai

The Changing Face of Healthcare Missions: Opportunities and Challenges in the 21st Century

The world in which ‘traditional medical missions’ is being conducted has been changing rapidly. And we must acknowledge that old paradigms of what constitutes medical missions may no longer apply in most regions of the world… A shift is occurring – the incidence of suffering from the well-known infectious diseases is declining while the rate of diseases of affluence is increasing dramatically. The author offers helpful suggestions as to how we can be most effective in our healthcare efforts to our neighbors and concludes by affirming the key role we all can play in solving the complex health problems facing the world today. 

Jason Lee

Untold Stories: The Intersection of Physical and Spiritual Health among Frontier Peoples

Recognizing the positive effect of the introduction of a Biblical worldview on human wellbeing, [Jason Lee] calls the church in our efforts to reach FPGs Frontier People Groups] to look for niches in these contexts, where we can shift to incarnational forms of outreach that emulate Jesus’ model of whole person care. Jason suggests: ‘Existing proximate groups or churches of disciples should become hubs of development and health, not necessarily by hiring health professionals or adding dispensaries, but by modelling Jesus’ paradigm of intertwining spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, and social health into disciples’ daily lives, at a level that local disciples can reproduce and sustain.’

Theos Report on Religion and Well-Being

The latest report from Theos has recently been published:

Nick Spencer, Gillian Madden, Clare Purtill, and Joseph Ewing, Religion and Well-being: Assessing the Evidence (London: Theos, 2015).

Here’s the summary blurb:

‘The relationship between religion and wellbeing is widely and frequently reported. Academic studies published in peer-reviewed journals regularly confirm the widespread belief that “religion” is good for “well-being”.

‘But what do we mean by “religion” and what do we mean by “well-being”? Neither term is exactly self-explanatory.

‘This report evaluates the evidence from nearly 140 academic studies conducted over the last three decades examining the relationship between religion and well-being in a wide range of countries and contexts.

It clarifies the key terms, showing how “religion” has been used to cover a multitude of subtly different concepts (e.g. religious affiliation, subjective religiosity, religious belief, religious group participation, and religious personal participation), as has “well-being” (e.g. subjective well-being, mental health, physical health, and health supporting behaviours).

‘By doing so the report not only clarifies the extent to which religion is good for well-being, but begins to explain what this means, adding detail to the big familiar picture.

‘Ultimately it confirms that big picture – religion is indeed good for well-being – but by showing the nuances of that relationship, Religion and Well-being hopes to inform the debate about how society should capitalise on this important resource.’

A pdf of the full report is available here.

Happiness, Happiness...

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. It’s similar to one I wrote a few years ago, but thought the issues were worth giving another airing.

Last week saw the International Day of Happiness, launched by the United Nations in 2012 to give happiness, described as ‘a fundamental human goal’, a greater priority. And this week, the Office for National Statistics published a report, ‘Measuring National Well-being: Life in the UK, 2015’, providing a snapshot of life across 1o domains of national well-being.

All this is part of an ongoing attempt to measure not just GDP, but GWB (general well-being) or GNH (gross national happiness). To some extent, it takes its lead from economists, but it’s also part of a larger trend to broaden our understanding of well-being beyond economic growth to embrace several areas – health, family, work, community, environment – all supported by an ever-increasing output in ‘happiness studies’.

Inevitably, not everyone holds the various factors to be of equal value, and it’s still not entirely clear how one measures and compares largely subjective indicators of happiness. Even so, this feels like a significant path to pursue, not least because all indications are that healthy relationships are a vital factor in human flourishing.

And that will come as no surprise to Christians. After all, we worship the three-in-one Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we believe that humans were created for relationship with one another and their surrounding environment; we follow the one who summed up God’s design for life in terms of love of God and neighbour. And – lest that becomes a measurement of performance – we know the call to love comes only because God himself has restored the most fractured relationship of all, that between himself and humanity, with all the implications for renewed relationships with each other that come about as a result.

Happiness too, in the sense of wholeness and well-being, goes back to God’s original intention for creation – not, perhaps, as the end of a search but as the by-product of a yet higher end. From a Christian perspective, happiness ultimately comes down to what and who we love. Our problem is that left to ourselves we attach love to things in disordered ways, leaving God out of the reckoning. When God acts to save us, he reorders our loves and affections, such that true happiness – far from being a pursuit of self-fulfilment – is rooted in a restored relationship with God and others.

Centre for Public Christianity (February 2015)

Among other items, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a video interview with Hugh Mackay on ‘The Art of Belonging’, discussing his new book about the appeal of ‘village’ living, and how to cultivate real community wherever we live.

Also posted is a video interview with Mark Bilton on ‘Monday Matters’, exploring the role of faith in the workplace.

Brent A. Strawn et al. on the Bible and Happiness

Brent A. Strawn (ed.), The Bible and the Pursuit of Happiness: What the Old and New Testaments Teach Us about the Good Life (Oxford: OUP, 2012), 368 pp., ISBN 9780199795741.

Having something of an abiding interest in so-called ‘happiness studies’, I was delighted to see this full and substantive collection of essays appear late last year.

The OUP blurb and the contents are listed below.

‘Scholars of the social sciences have devoted increasing attention of late to the concept of human happiness, mainly from sociological and psychological perspectives. This groundbreaking volume, which includes twelve essays from scholars of the New Testament, the Old Testament, systematic theology, practical theology, and counseling psychology – along with an extensive introduction and epilogue by the editor – poses a new and exciting question: what is happiness according to the Bible? Informed by developments in positive psychology, the contributions explore representations of happiness throughout the Bible and demonstrate the ways in which they impinge upon both religious and secular understandings of happiness.’

Brent A. Strawn

Introduction: The Bible and... Happiness?

Part I. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Terence E. Fretheim

God, Creation, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Nathan MacDonald

Is There Happiness in the Torah?

Jacqueline Lapsley

A Happy Blend: Isaiah’s Vision of Happiness (and Beyond)

William P. Brown

Happiness and Its Discontents in the Psalms

Carol A. Newsom

Positive Psychology and Ancient Israelite Wisdom

Part II. New Testament

Carl R. Holladay

The Beatitudes: Happiness and the Kingdom of God

Joel B. Green

‘We Had to Celebrate and Rejoice!’ Happiness in the Topsy-Turvy World of Luke-Acts

Colleen Shantz

‘I Have Learned to Be Content?’: Happiness according to St. Paul

Greg Carey

Finding Happiness in Apocalyptic Literature

Part III. Beyond the Bible: Continuing the Conversation into Other Disciplines

Ellen T. Charry

The Necessity of Divine Happiness: A Response from Systematic Theology

Thomas G. Long

A Constructed Happiness: A Response from Practical Theology

Steven J. Sandage

The Transformation of Happiness: A Response from Counseling Psychology

Brent A. Strawn

Epilogue: The Triumph of Life: Towards a Biblical Theology of Happiness

Michael J. Chan

Appendix: A Biblical Lexicon of Happiness

Ross Gittins on the Economics of a Meaningful Life

Simon Smart of the Centre for Public Christianity talks here (in a 8:10 minute video) to Ross Gittins, economics editor for The Sydney Morning Herald. Their discussion takes its cue from the work of Michael Schluter on the fundamental significance of relationships for economic policy, moving towards wider issues of spirituality and wellbeing.

Mark Vernon on Faith and Well-Being

The latest issue of The Tablet contains an interesting piece by Mark Vernon (available online here) on ‘why religion is good for you’.

After presenting some of the well-known indicators of this, he says that ‘the evidence becomes more complicated when a further, crucial question is asked. Just why is it that religion has positive effects?’, noting that ‘a range of possibilities are mooted, and hotly contested’.

A first possibility he explores is ‘the proscriptive character of religion’, adding that proscriptions work ‘not when they are perceived as persecutory commandments but rather when they are perceived as charting a path to a new way of life’, perhaps especially combined when an individual’s well-being ‘is boosted by the social support provided in groups’. Another possibility, via Richard Layard, is emotional habits, where ‘religious practices train individuals to control their feelings’.

Vernon (who has a book due out soon – The Big Questions: God) writes that ‘many of the researchers in the positive psychology field are searching for ways of reformulating such religious attitudes for a secular age’, exhibiting a desire ‘to raid religious traditions for their wisdom, while removing the theological scaffolding that has traditionally supported them’ (Alain de Botton is a well-known recent example of this).

But, if I have understood him correctly, Vernon wonders whether such researchers have overlooked... God, noting that, for believers, goodwill and well-being ‘are happy by-products of the main task, which is not actually to have a successful life. It is to come to know God’.

As he concludes:

‘It is striking that atheistic writers and researchers are coming to a new appreciation of religion. Going are the days when faith could simply be written off. Nonetheless, I suspect that their ideas will flounder because a basic and obvious question is being avoided... Might human well-being actually have something to do with God?’

Walking Back to Happiness

[I contributed today’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, where I seek to be gainfully employed.]

‘It's time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB – general well-being... Improving our society’s sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times.’

So said David Cameron back in 2006, and so it is that starting next week the Office of National Statistics will be producing measures to assess citizens’ happiness, yielding data which will inform government policy.

To some extent, this has been inspired by economists, but it’s also part of a larger trend to broaden our understanding of wellbeing beyond economic growth to embrace a number of domains – health, family, work, community, environment – all supported by a blossoming literature in ‘happiness studies’.

Inevitably, not everyone will hold these factors to be of equal value, and it’s not entirely clear how one measures and compares largely subjective indicators of happiness. Even so, this feels like a significant path to pursue, not least because all indications are that healthy relationships are a vital factor in human flourishing.

And that will come as no surprise to Christians. After all, we worship the perfect-in-communion Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we understand that humans were created for relationship with one another and their surrounding environment; we serve the one who summed up God’s design for life in terms of love of God and neighbour. And – lest that becomes a measurement of performance – we know the call to love comes only because God himself has restored the most fractured relationship of all, that between himself and humanity, with all the implications for renewed relationships with each other that come about as a result.

Happiness too, in the sense of wholeness and wellbeing, goes back to God’s original intention for creation – not, perhaps, as the end of a search but as the by-product of a yet higher end. As Christian philosopher David Naugle points out, happiness ultimately comes down to what we love. Our problem is that left to ourselves we attach love to things in disordered ways, leaving God out of the reckoning. When God acts to save us, he reorders our loves and affections, such that true happiness – far from being a pursuit of self-fulfilment – is rooted in a restored relationship with God and others.

•••

See the BBC News report from 22 May 2006 – ‘Make people happier, says Cameron’.

Read The Guardian article from 14 November 2010 – ‘Happiness index to gauge Britain’s national mood’.

Explore more about happiness here.

‘Wholly Living: A New Perspective on International Development’ is the title of a report published by Theos in partnership with CAFOD and Tearfund, contending that our obsession with money, freedom and choice ‘has resulted in a radical devaluation of the social, cultural and environmental relationships that form us and that enable us to flourish as human beings’. Click here for a copy of the report.

The following books explore this topic in more detail from different perspectives:

Derek Bok, The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

Mark Vernon, Wellbeing, The Art of Living Series (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2008).

David K. Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

Wholly Living: A New Perspective on International Development

This is the title of a new report, just published by Theos in partnership with CAFOD and Tearfund, and kindly available in full here.

The October 2010 Newsletter from Theos notes:

‘The report examines human wellbeing in the context of both the UK and international development. It invites the UK government and citizens to enter the debate on how best to create an environment in which to engender human flourishing. Examples taken from the UK and the developing world indicate that people are most fulfilled when they are productive, creative and have strong relationships with others.

Wholly Living calls for a holistic approach that recognises that economic growth is an important – but not the only – driver towards human fulfilment and that unless growth is sustainable, it can do more harm than good. It argues that people flourish most when they are able to fulfil their potential and live in healthy relationships with others. Drawing on academic and theological understandings of flourishing, it calls for the UK government to consider a range of policy ideas in the areas of economics, environment and governance.’