• A new climate for theology

    IBTS Environment Month is drawing to a close, the last activity being this week’s time for campus cleaning which we have (tongue-in-cheek) termed ‘subotnik,’ alluding to the legacy of the communist times when people were ‘forcefully volunteering’ to work (for free) for the betterment of the environment. The term, I think, is unknown in the English-speaking word except as a surname, but here’s an interesting description in German. Well, we hope that our volunteering here won’t be forced! The idea is that the time offered for cleaning will be the folk’s free contribution of their work hours which we can then direct to some good purpose (via Christian Aid) for…

  • ‘McClendon and me’

    For our IBTS Community Blog readers today we have a ‘confessional piece’  of our precious colleague, IBTS Senior Research Fellow, Ian M Randall. Enjoy! Since 1999, when I first started teaching at IBTS, I have regarded the enthusiasm of some of my colleagues for the thinking of James Wm. McClendon, Jr. as something that was fine for them. But I did not see McClendon as having any particular significance for me in my historical work. Three things this year have caused me to change my mind. In each case I was preparing a paper for a conference. The first conference was in April 2008 and was organised by the Center of Global…