Dr Paul Allen

“That you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9b). In Judges 18, we see the idolatry begun by Micah take root among the people of the colony established by the Danites on Israel’s northern frontier. Doing what was right in their own eyes, they veered away from the true worship of the God of Israel and fell into apostasy. We might say they established their own “cult.” Nowadays, there is vast disagreement over what is true about God and how He is to be worshipped. To make matters worse, the various groups that weigh in on spiritual matters often classify themselves as “the one true church” and their opponents as cults.  How can we tell the difference between an orthodox church and a cult? What makes a cult a cult? What are some of the significant cults today?  The word cult comes from the Latin cultus, which means “to care for” or “to take care of.” The word cult initially referred to a group of people who had sim...

The Welsh Government is poised to oust religious education and ban Christianity from schools to “rise to the challenge of community cohesion” and “extremism.” Welsh Minister for Education and Skills Huw Lewis, told Senedd, The Welsh Parliament: “My contention would be that we rename the [religious education] curriculum and transform it into the religion, philosophy and ethics element of the curriculum – where there is an explicit commitment to allowing children to ponder ideas around ethics and citizenship and what it means to be a citizen of a free country.” He argued that the Welsh government must “rise to the challenge of community cohesion” through reforming religious education. At the end of June an “ Independent review of curriculum and assessment arrangements in Wales” by Professor Graham Donaldson, a former chief inspector of schools in the principality, urged that pupils in Welsh schools should be “ethical, informed citizens of the world.” Earlier in the month, a report...