Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

We live in an age where many people assume all the world’s religions are essentially the same. And this is especially true when it comes to the world’s two biggest religions, Christianity and Islam.

“Aren’t they both Abrahamic religions?” “Don’t Muslims and Christians both believe in one God?” are the kind of questions I often hear.

In my latest social media reel I take a 60 second look at this question and show how things aren’t nearly that simple …

You can find it on my YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@andygbannister

Want to dig deeper into this question? Check out my book, Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?, available in paperback, ebook, and on Audible. There’s also a short free e-book you might enjoy on the Solas website, here—along with lots of other resources on the topic of Islam and Christianity.

Is Christianity Dying?

Is Christianity dying? Is the Church in terminal decline? Or is there a bigger, more exciting story happening?

This was the topic for my latest social media reel; you can find it on my YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@andygbannister

An excellent book on this is Lamin Sanneh’s Whose Religion is Christianity? and I also have a longer video on this topic here.

Is There Good Evidence That God Exists?


I recently posted a short video on social video that took a whistle stop (60 seconds!) look at lots of arguments for the existence of God. Each of them has loads more detail behind them, so below there’s a list of further resources.

If you’d like to see the short videos on a wide range of topics I post every couple of days, simply subscribe to my new YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@andygbannister

The Smuggled Value Judgement

The English village of Hayle is typically picturesque, a small cluster of cottages set around a harbour, looking out to the tranquil waters of St. Ive’s bay. But like so much of England, layers of darker history lie beneath the pretty-as-a-postcard facade. Hidden behind the undergrowth in the garden of what was once the local youth hostel, yawns the mouth of a tunnel. Stoop to step inside its cool darkness and one can walk for hundreds of yards, eventually emerging beneath the cliffs on a nearby cove. Although dank and musty now, local legend identifies this as an ancient “Smuggler’s Tunnel”, once used for bringing illegal contraband ashore under cover of darkness.

The coastal towns and villages of England are full of tales of such tunnels, many dating back centuries to when smuggling was at its height. On moonless nights, sailing ships would pull quietly into bays like that at Hayle, offload their illicit cargo into smaller boats and bring it ashore. There the contraband would be hauled across the sands, carried through tunnels, or even manhandled up sheer cliff faces to a waiting line of locals who would spirit it away. Whole communities benefited from the smuggling trade and the customs men, whose job it was to thwart the black market trade, were often foiled by a stone wall of silence. As Rudyard Kipling, who grew up on the English coast and knew these stories well, wrote in his poem “A Smuggler’s Song”:

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.
Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark—
Brandy for the Parson,
‘Baccy for the Clerk;
Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by![1]

When you heard the sound of horses, or the whispers of voices late at night, you were supposed to look the other way, ask no questions, ‘watch the wall’, as the contraband was smuggled past.

horseToday, the smuggling business is alive and well, only it is not tobacco or brandy that are secreted past, but value judgements. You see, whenever a writer tells you that something is good and laudable, or that something is bad and condemnable, there is an important question you must ask before you consider whether or not to believe them. What worldview do they subscribe to and does that worldview support the value judgement they are making, or are they having to smuggle it in from outside, hoping that everybody will look the other way?

Have You Ever Wondered Why We Long For Justice?

Have you ever wondered why we long for justice? Why when we see or experience injustice or violence, our instinctive reaction is not to say “Ah, that’s just the survival of the fittest, isn’t it marvellous!” but to protest, to cry out for justice? Where does this universal urge come from — and is it a clue to the bigger story of us, life, and the universe?

This is also one of the big questions we explore in the best-selling book, Have You Ever Wondered? … Not got your copy yet? Check it out here.

Have You Ever Wondered Why We Long for Happiness?

We are a happiness obsessed culture. Every day, a million Westerners type “happiness” into Google. There are hundreds of books telling you how to find happiness, podcasts discussing it, movies and songs all about it. Coming of age in the 90s, I can still remember the cheerful bubble-gum flavoured lyrics of R.E.M.’s classic Shiny Happy People. Whilst more seriously, among the most popular programs ever run at Harvard University were Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s lectures on positive psychology, nicknamed “The Happiness Course”.

But have you ever wondered why we humans pursue happiness? After all, the rest of the animal kingdom usually seems pretty content with just the biological basics: survival and reproduction. But humans? We need so much more than merely the bare necessities of life: so what is going on here?

“Have You Ever Wondered?” has launched in the UK, Canada, and the USA

It’s out now! Have You Ever Wondered? is a gentle, engaging book that helps our friends begin to ask spiritual questions by starting with the things they already care about or are intrigued by: from beauty to justice, science to suffering, art to music to films.
Right now, our friends at 10ofthose.com have an AMAZING offer on. You can buy a copy of the book and they’ll send you a second copy TOTALLY FREE. That means you can keep one yourself, and give one away! (Or if you’re really keen and want to reach more friends, you can give both copies away).
If you live in Canada, you can order it via our friends at Apologetics Canada.
If you live in the USA, you can order it via 10ofThose USA.

Fire on the Mountain

The path through the trees was narrow and overgrown, meandering its way through birch, oak and elm, climbing gently as it wound its way up from the valley. A few minutes walking brought me to the ancient moss-laden wall that surrounded the forest, from which a wooden gate led out on the hillside. From there the track quickly steepened as it wound sinuously up toward the mountaintop. I paused every so often to catch my breath, turning to watch the cloud shadows chase one another across the flanks of the hills on the far side of the valley.

Onwards and upwards I climbed, as the first hints of dusk began to take hold and the shadows grew longer. I gained the summit ridge just as the westering sun was beginning to sink behind a bank of clouds hanging over the distant Langdale Pikes, among the most well known of Lakeland’s hills and loved by the poets, by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey.[1]

Suddenly, as the sun dropped completely behind the cloudbank, the whole sky turned the colour of burnished gold and the clouds themselves lit up as if on fire, a maelstrom of red, orange and ochre, with the occasional flash of silver. At that moment, through a gap in the clouds poured a great ray of sunshine, streaming into the valley below like a searchlight and throwing into stark relief the lines of fields, lanes and hedgerows.

Have You Ever Wondered?

Beauty. Justice. Identity. Love. Stories. Nature. Hope. These things intrigue us, move us and prompt us to ask big questions. Could there be clues in our deepest desires that point to life’s meaning?

Have You Ever Wondered? Finding the Everyday Clues to Meaning, Purpose and Spirituality is a fun, readable, and accessible book designed to gently start spiritual conversations. It’s one of the most exciting books it’s been my privilege to be involved with!

Richard Dawkins: Running Away from the Debate?

The New Atheism, the insanely popular movement that in the 2000s made celebrities of many atheists, has all but collapsed. Christopher Hitchens is dead. Sam Harris has become a figure of fun. Daniel Dennett has retreated behind his beard and his study door. Lesser-known figures like Ayaan Hirsi Ali now claim they’re Christian. And then there’s Richard Dawkins.