"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." I've no idea who said that, or if it has much merit, but it's eminently quotable. It also has the virtue of being an "idea", albeit a fairly pedestrian one.
But it prompts a conversation about celebrity culture and our global obsession with Michael Jackson. Perhaps one of the reasons why so many people are building "shrines" at locations related to Michael Jackson's story is that celebrity culture has taken the place that religion once had in our society. Celebrities are secular saints. Their deaths become moments of pseudo-religious intensity. People make pilgrimages to celebrity sites where once they travelled to Canterbury.
Celebrity is also a replacement for family and for a sense of community. Postmodern people live postmodern lives. Often separated, often isolated, they crave community through virtual connections. The common experience of a media-generated narrative becomes a unifying feature of their lives.
Is that why we're all talking about Michael Jackson so much?
The ethical dilemma of assistant suicide has rarely been out of the news in the past few years. That debate has been fueled by stories of people with incurable conditions traveling the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, where they are offered an assisted death. Critics call the facility a "death clinic"; defenders say its a humane response to the plight of people who wish to end their lives with dignity. In 2005, a select committee of the House of Lords visited the Dignitas clinic and reported on their findings . The Lords report includes evidence from Ludwig Minelli, the founder of the clinic.
Tomorrow on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4, a new play explores one of those stories from the inside. Dignity is a first play by one of my ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ colleagues in Belfast, Laura McDaid, and it's produced and directed by my good friend John Simpson, who recently produced In The Beginning, my 8-part series on the book of Genesis. The play is a semi-autobiographical piece about how Laura's partner, who had MS for a long time, chose to end his life in Zurich.
There's a moral in , somewhere, for all of us. St Mary's, Wimbledon, has been making a little money on the side, charging tennis fans £20 . Unfortunately, some drivers appear to have parked in "inappropriate places". The church has apologized for any offence caused. The accidental parking lots were graves from the 18th and 18th century, and the vicar, the Rev Mary Bide, says no descendants of those buried there were traceable.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of a religious phenomenon that helped to shape the character of modern Northern Ireland but which remains quite a mystery, even though it retains a near-mythical status within evangelical Protestantism in Ireland today.
In 1859, a religious revival broke out in the north of Ireland. It's said that the revival produced more than 100,000 people converts, and many new churches were built to house the growing religious population. There were reports of strange physical manifestions: people falling over in public meetings, crying aloud for help; people walking passed revival meetings were even said to have been struck down in the street; others claimed to see visions while under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Revival was in the air, and people at the time compared the phenomenon to an epidemic -- something you could "catch".
A pastor in Kentucky has told his congregation to bring their legally-held guns to church for . Pastor Ken Pagano told parishioners of New Bethel Church in Louisville, "For some reason, most people think that carrying guns is sinful. It's not. I think my life is worth protecting."
In case you've an impression of the congregation firing at the roof during hymns, the pastor instructed the church to bring only unloaded guns.
Since we've been talking about religious therapies to erase homosexuality, you might take a look at this video, posted online, which is . I warn you: this is a disturbing film.
reveals that six out of ten 10 children (59 per cent) believe that religion "has a negative influence on the world", 50 per cent of teenagers have never prayed and 16 per cent have never been to church. Penguin launched the research to mark the publication of Kevin Brooks's novel 'Killing God'.
Meanwhile, in , we learn that Jesus Christ is the 'dead person' Britons would most like to meet.
Perhaps every new TV show, book, film, or computer game should be marked by a new poll. That would keep a lot of social attitudes researchers in business during the recession. Shall we have a vote on that idea?
A Hindu family are tonight planning to leave their home at the in north Belfast because by a gang of youths. The family say they are too frightened to talk publicly about the incident at the moment, but we understand that the gang attacked the Centre while the wife of the community's priest was alone inside. Bidit Dey, office manager at the centre, says the police "did not actually stop by or call in to see her" after the attack. "This would have reassured them," he said.
Update: A police spokesperson has explained that a police unit patrolled the area in response to the reports but did not enter the building itself.
On today's Sunday Sequence, the CEO of UK responded to claims by one of the world's leading authorities on evolution that he was duped into appearing in an anti-Darwinian film.
Professor Peter Bowler, the author of and on the history of evolution, said he was interviewed for the without realising that the film was being made by a Creationist group.
Professor Bowler, who has spent most of his academic career at Queen's University, Belfast, researching Darwinism, says he is unhappy to be appearing in what he regards as an "anti-Darwinian" film which offers an historically distorted portrait of Darwin. He claims that the film's narrative implies that Darwin's theory led him towards racism, whereas recent historical work by James Moore and Adrian Desmond shows that Darwin's scientific work was partly motivated by the naturalist's passionate opposition to racism.
The American psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover is an intellectual iconoclast. He has challenged the status quo in various academic disciplines, not least in biblical and psychological studies. He argued, in two books, that the Hebrew text of the Old Testament .
Cathal O Searcaigh is widely regarded as one of Ireland's finest living poets; as a poet writing within the Irish language, he has few peers. Last year, literary Ireland was shocked by the screening of , a documentary film made by Neasa Ni Chianain, a former friend of the poet, which suggested that Cathal O Searcaigh had regularly travelled to Nepal to have sexual relationships with many young men.
We'll have a report on the the turmoil at Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle on tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, beginning at 8.30 am on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Ulster. So far, more than 600 comments have been added to our earlier report on Pastor James McConnell's dispute with his successor-in-waiting Pastor George McKim over the timing of Pastor McKim's appointment as senior pastor. That dispute culminated in Pastor McKim's departure from Whitewell and the establishment, last Sunday, of a new church, which had nearly 400 people in attendance for its first day of services. Now, current and former members of Whitewell are coming forward to ask serious questions about how the church manages its affairs. Listen tomorrow morning from 8.30 for the latest.
Update: Listen to Malachi O'Doherty's report on the split at Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer here. The report is the first item on this week's Sunday Sequence.
Update: On 28 June, The Peoples Church, Newtownabbey, the break-away church founded by George McKim, changed its venue to the Hilton Hotel, Templepatrick. Some reports suggest that the church has not outgrown its original venue at Corrs Corner Hotel.
The Belfast church that gave shelter to more than 100 Romanians, following racist attacks in the south of the city, says it has received a constant flow of enquiries from local people wishing to offer practical help to the families. says, "As a church we have received in financial gifts also, we feel it's appropriate that an agency handles this money instead of us and therefore with immeadiate effect we are passing on all financial donations on to , an organisation working soley with transient communites." Clothes have been passed onto those currently helping the Romanians at their secret location." They also say they are currently redirecting food to a project called Storehouse, which is run by the Vinyard Church in Belfast.
"Hopefully this will set a precedent. I hope no other journalist will find themselves hauled before the court." to the Belfast High Court's decision that she is not required to hand over her interview notes to the police. Judge Tom Burgess ruled that Suzanne Breen's right to life outweighed any other public interest and accepted that the Sunday Tribune's northern editor would be in grave danger from dissident Republicans if she were forced to hand over notes relating to Real IRA involvement in the murder of two British soldiers.
I've been listening to callers to radio shows using the term "foreigners" for two days now. "They don't belong here," we've been told. "They're taking our jobs," one caller said; "they're taking our benefits," said another. "They're taking our houses," yet more said. Apparently they are flooding in.
None of this stands up to . First, the flood. The non-local population of Northern Ireland is estimated at about 1 per cent -- just 45,000 people. Yet Northern Ireland is averaging 20 racist attacks every week. 90 per cent of racist attacks are in Loyalist areas. Next, the benefits. In fact, immigrants are not entitled to them when they arrive, as some have suggested. Jobs? In order to get a work permit for a migrant worker, evidence has to be produced that the job has been advertised to the indigenous workforce first. Housing? Those decisions are taken by councils and housing agencies on the basis of need, rather than political or religious identity.
If you were listening to Radio Ulster today at 1.30 p.m., you would have heard my documentary marking the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, the great Reformer often described as the father of Presbyterianism.
I travel to Geneva, the city most associated with Calvin's legend, to find out what kind of person he was, his key ideas, and the legacy of this extraordinary European intellectual.
You can hear the programme again on Thursday evening (or listen again in the iPlayer).
The programme considers Calvin's distinctive theological beliefs, and also examines his influence on modern political and economic issues.
I also re-tell the story of Calvin's role in the execution of the radical thinker Michael Servetus, and ask which contemporary religious leader would most share an affinity with John Calvin.
More about at you are looking for a guide to Calvin commemorative events, conferences and internet resources, you could do worse than start .
You can even take the Calvin Quiz and become a certified Calvin Scholar!
The kind of dispute about leadership succession that mired the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is apparently not limited to the world of politics.
The leader of one of Northern Ireland's best-known churches has appealed to his congregation to continue their support for his ministry following the resignation of the man named as his successor-in-waiting.
, pictured left, senior pastor of , addressed a special meeting of his congregation last night. He explained that the church's Associate Pastor, George McKim, pictured right, had left the pastoral staff of the church following a dispute over the date on which Pastor McKim was due to take over as senior pastor.
Peter Davies of the English Democrats, pictured right, the newly , is not likely to forget with Toby Foster, who hosts the breakfast show on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Sheffield.
This interview will leave you wondering which of the speakers is the politician and which is the comedian. Radio gold.
I'm not sure if the National Secular Society has given any thought to a possible liturgy to accompany. Perhaps something along the lines of: "I Debaptise you in the name of Dawkins, Dennet and Harris"? In any case, this is another media campaign to raise the profile of the secular humanist perspective. I'm not aware of any churches in Northern Ireland who've been approached by grown-up humanists wishing to have any documentation associated with their infant baptism removed from the church's records. But a few churches in England have been contacted, and a few stories have been written about this new controversy in the national press.
that could help us date some of the world's oldest rocks with greater precision.
They plan to collect and 250 rock samples from around the world, and use this information to learn more about the supercontinent which existed 300 million years ago.
Since they are particularly interested in ancient volcanic rock, perhaps they collect a sample from the Giant's Causeway.
Creationists have, for a long time, of rocks and fossils. I suspect it will not take very long before this new technique is similarly dispatched to a Creationist museum of lost causes. If you happen across any Creationist sites dealing with this new approach to dating, please publish the links in a comment below.
'A Catholic theologian has said where children were abused by what he called monsters. However, Fr Vincent Twomey also praised many other members of religious orders for caring for vulnerable people who had been abandoned for centuries by British administrations in the Republic', summarizing comments made on today's Sunday Sequence programme (listen here) by , whose PhD dissertation was supervised by the future Pope Benedict.
See for further coverage from Patsy McGarry in the Irish Times.
The Presbyterian General Assembly's 'debate' on the crisis in the Presbyterian Mutual Society yesterday began with a word of warning from the church's solicitor. Assembly members were reminded that their proceedings were not protected by 'privilege', and that they should speak carefully because, in the event of any future legal proceedings, comments made on the floor of the Assembly could be presented as evidence. They then heard from the Clerk of the General Assembly, Dr Donald Watts, who described this crisis as 'the most challenging in the recent history of our church'.
Last night, the new Presbyterian Moderator, , pictured, told a packed opening session of his church's that the Presbyterian Mutual Society crisis was a satanic attack on the unity of their church. I spoke to some of the Presbyterian protesters who picketed the opening session and they had other explanations, both for the collapse of the mutual and for the church's handling of the collapse. They regard the whole business as an example of human failure, and they were quite prepared to put names on the humans in question. They believe the church's initial response was legalistic, rather than pastoral; that there was an attempt to distance the denomination from the crisis; and that the church has failed to accept its moral responsibility to come to the aid of PMS savers. As for the Mutual Society itself, the Financial Services Authority
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"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." I've no idea who said that, or if it has much merit, but it's eminently quotable. It also has the virtue of being an "idea", albeit a fairly pedestrian one. 
