tech scepticism

Christianity and Cargo Cults: Sermon Preached on 7th December 2025 (Second Sunday of Advent)

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Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Isaiah 11. 1-10; Matthew 3.1-12

“The wolf shall live with the lamb… and a little child shall lead them.”

A complex Vanuatu sand drawing made of continuous, looping lines traced into smooth sand. The design features symmetrical, interwoven curves that form leaf-like shapes, diamonds, and rounded patterns. The overall pattern looks precise and flowing, creating an intricate geometric–organic motif characteristic of traditional Vanuatu sand art.
Vanuatu sand drawing, recognised by UNESCO as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. © Philip Capper, 2 June 2006, used under CC-BY 2.0.

For the results of a school exam; for the results of a medical exam. For the interminable process of buying and selling a house to be completed. For the rhubarb to be ripe enough to pick. For the text message from you daughter telling you she’s safely home. Waiting is an unavoidable part of all of our lives.

Far off in the South Pacific, just over a thousand miles east of Australia, lies the island nation of Vanuatu, home to around 300,000 people. In the 1930s, the John Frum movement emerged on the islands, then known as the New Hebrides. It prophesied that an era of prosperity would soon arrive, thanks to American assistance, along with the removal of the European colonial rulers and the Christianity they promoted. Just a few years later, in 1942, the prophecies seemed to come true, when the New Hebrides became an enormous rear base area for America’s island-hopping war against Japan. Briefly, American troops outnumbered islanders, and gave them copious supplies of tents, clothing, and spam.

The John Frum movement, said to be a corruption of the phrase ‘John from America’, is the most famous of the Pacific islands’ cargo cults. After the war, followers of John Frum built symbolic landing strips to encourage American aeroplanes to return and bring them more ‘cargo’. While Vanuatu is nowadays an overwhelmingly Christian country, several hundred Ni-Vanuatu still await the return of John Frum after eighty years. When asked why, a village headman told a foreign journalist, “Eighty years? You Christians have been waiting for your Jesus to return for 2,000 years.”

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Live in Light: Sermon Preached on 30th November 2025 (Advent Sunday)

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Interior of a historic stone church bathed in warm golden-orange candlelight. A tall, vibrant stained-glass window dominates the upper half of the image, depicting multiple religious figures in rich blues, reds, golds, and greens, with halos and intricate leadwork. Below the window, a small side altar is set into the wall. On the altar stands a single tall white candle, its flame glowing brightly. The altar is draped in a dark fabric with a subtle white floral pattern and has a simple white cloth on top. To the right of the candle are two small pump bottles (likely hand sanitizer) and a donation box. A polished brass plaque with engraved text is mounted on the wall to the left of the altar. Carved stone details and part of a statue are visible on the far left, adding to the ancient, reverent atmosphere of the space.

Preached at Christ Church, Worton (Benefice Service)

Romans 13.11–14; Matthew 24.36–44

“Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light…’”

A warmly lit corner inside a Catholic church during Advent or Lent (indicated by the purple altar cloth). On the left stands a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, with a glowing red votive candle in a blue glass holder suspended by a chain in front of her. Below the statue, two white candles are lit on an ornate wrought-iron candelabrum. Behind and to the right, part of a side altar is visible with a purple frontal cloth and gold trim. Above are two colorful religious paintings in gilded frames: the left one depicts the Visitation (Mary visiting Elizabeth), and the right one shows two women in medieval-style dresses in a garden scene, possibly Mary and Martha or another biblical pair. The walls are of light-colored stone, giving the space a peaceful and reverent atmosphere.
Light in a gloomy advent afternoon, Old St Paul’s, Edinburgh. © Gerry Lynch, 14 December 2018.

I think to many of us, it feels like we are living in a dark time, doesn’t it? And that we just sort of stumbled into it without being aware of it?

When did you notice we were sleepwalking? When the Russians went into Ukraine? When Covid hit and it turned out we didn’t, in fact, have the second-best pandemic preparation plans in the world? Or was it another of the numerous other surprising crises or horrendous wars that have descended upon us in recent years?

In today’s first Bible reading, St Paul tells his readers to wake from sleep. The people he was writing to were a tiny Christian community of perhaps a few dozen souls, living in mighty Rome, which had recently become the first city in the world to reach a million inhabitants. How vulnerable they must have felt and how irrelevant they must have seemed even to the handful of people who had heard of them in that mighty metropolis of commerce and political power.

Yet Paul doesn’t tell them to be afraid, or to hide. He tells them to wake up, for God is on His way to rescue them. Their job, Paul writes, is to live honourably, and decently, and openly – ‘as in the day’ – even when things felt dark, because their hope was in God. Their hope was not in material things that seem secure one day but are gone the next, but in the eternal things. Paul knew that to live like that in a world that was sometimes dark, they would need God’s help. He uses a wonderful metaphor for doing that—that they should “put on the armour of light”.

When did things start seeming so dark in our world? It seems only a few years ago that we were living at a time of optimism: of low inflation, low interest rates, and cheap travel, when the Internet was making the economy stronger and bringing people together. How dramatically the mood has shifted in recent years as these material things have passed away!

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What To Do When We Feel Powerless

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A close-up view of a green circuit board with intricate white pathways and numerous small holes, used in electronic devices.

This article appeared in the July 2025 edition of village magazines in Potterne, Worton and Marston, Seend and Bulkington, and Poulshot

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling powerless in the face of a world where power and the will to abuse it seem to be spiralling out of control. I feel powerless in the face of the grim events in Ukraine and the Middle East, where human ingenuity is put to building ever more ingenious ways for people to kill other people.

A close-up view of a green circuit board with intricate white pathways and numerous small holes, used in electronic devices.
Image credit – Pixabay.

I often worry that the fruits of our intellect are outstripping our wisdom to use them well. Why is it that every couple of months, one of the pioneers of Artificial Intelligence research pops up in the news to tell us it could wipe out the human race? Most recently, it was Professor Yoshua Bengio from Canada, whose research is cited more often than any other computer scientist in the world, who left Faisal Islam visibly shocked when he told him bluntly on Newsnight that “the worst case scenario” from AI “is human extinction”.

I feel powerless in the face of not only of Artificial Intelligence galloping ahead but also Genetic Modification. I worry about why we feel driven to develop these very powerful technologies quickly, even when we know things as seemingly innocuous as social media and video streaming are driving some people crazy, partly thanks to smartphones that follow us everywhere, constantly buzzing and demanding attention.

Despite these problems, technology is often presented to us uncritically as good of itself. We live at a time when people seek truth in spreadsheets rather than sonnets. Yet human beings are more than rational creatures. We are made not for power, which often brings out the worst in us, but for beauty, truth, goodness, and love.

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Power and Glory (Trinity Sunday, 15th June 2025)

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A renaissance-style triptych; the central panel represents the Holy Trinity with the Father holding both hands of Christ being crucified, while the Holy Spirit flies out, i.e. proceeds, from them. The side panels show Judas betraying Christ, and John the Baptist in his loincloth of camel hair.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend

Readings – Romans 5. 1-5; John 16. 12-15

“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”

Why is it that every couple of months, one of the pioneers of Artificial Intelligence research pops up in the news, to tell us it could wipe out the human race?

Abstract painting featuring a surreal composition with a bird-like figure and a humanoid shape. The bird has a dark, feathered body with a red eye and outstretched wings, perched on a pedestal. The humanoid figure, with an orange and blue head, stands beside it. The background includes a cloudy sky and an orange base with abstract shapes.
Gethsemane by Mark Rothko (1944). In a private collection.

On Newsnight last week it was Yoshua Bengio, whose research is cited more often than any other computer scientist in the world. Sometimes called ‘one of the three godfathers of AI’, Professor Bengio told Faisal Islam bluntly that “the worst case scenario is human extinction”.  

It turns out that Bengio is based at the University of Montreal. Coincidentally, I had one of the most interestingconversations of my life on a bus to Montreal airport two years ago this month. I started talking to an American in his fifties, in town to attend an industry conference for people working in quantum computing, and a woman of about twenty who was studying computer science at one of the local universities. When he outlined that the first thing functioning quantum computing would do would be to instantly render all existing cybersecurity obsolete, the young woman was wide-eyed – and so was I. He smiled and shrugged and said, “It’s just like when the Iron Age arrived. Up until then, anyone who had bronze weapons and armour ruled the roost. Then all of a sudden they were obsolete and people needed steel. It’s just what human beings do; we advance.”

We advance—to restoring sight to the blind and killing one another with drones; to conquering cancer and poisoning the planet. In recent decades, technology that changes what it means to be human has started becoming especially problematic, whether creating machines smarter than we are, or viruses more dangerous than nature would produce, or simply driving ourselves crazy with smartphones that follow us everywhere, constantly buzzing and demanding attention.

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