2009/12/15

more dissonance

I was a little taken aback to read that Peter Rollins was in Seattle visiting Mars Hill Graduate School. Pete Rollins and Mark Driscoll are both cool in their own way, but theologically they surely have as much in common as ... some very unlike things. I understand a lot more of Driscoll than I understand of Rollins. But I like much more of the latter than the former. Perhaps there's a reason for this.

But evidently Mars Hill Graduate School, despite being in Seattle, seems to have nothing to do with Seattle's Mars Hill Church. So that's all right then.

I'm not surprised Evangelical Christianity is on the rise

Ooh. Now, this is scary. But it doesn't seem to be backed by any hard facts. So perhaps we can ignore it.

I'm not surprised Evangelical Christianity is on the rise

2009/12/05

Review: A History of Christianity

The BBC is running a series at the moment on the history of Christianity. It's got a very different approach from last year's Channel 4 series, which impressed me greatly although many critics slammed it.

I wish there were transcripts available online, because the script has lots of lines dripping with nuance, deserving to be discussed. But I cannot find any. So we must settle for a quote from the website describing this week's epsiode:

Diarmaid MacCulluch traces the growth of an exuberant expression of faith that has spread across the globe - Evangelical Protestantism.

Today, it is associated with conservative politics, but the whole story is distinctly more unexpected. It is easily forgotten that the Evangelical explosion has been driven by a concern for social justice and the claim that one could stand in a direct emotional relationship with God.

It allowed the Protestant faith to burst its boundaries from its homeland in Europe. In America, its preachers marketed Christianity with all the flair and swashbuckling enterprise of American commerce. In Africa, it converted much of the continent by adapting to local traditions, and now it is expanding into Asia. But is Korean Pentecostalism and its message of prosperity in the here and now an adaptation too far?

He introduced the segment about Pentecostalism (and the prosperity message) by asking if some forms of Evangelicalism have wandered too far from the message of Jesus. It's an interesting question - and are the prosperity gospel folks the right ones to pick on as outliers? As he toured one or two African indigenous churches, the thought occurred to me: just how wide is the Christian family?

It seems an unanswerable question. His recurring theme in the series is that the strength of Christianity has been its willingness to adapt to local circumstances. Doubtless, that's true. But where does truth end and heresy begin? Is that, indeed, a sensible question?

Everyone tends to describe the answer by looking at their neighbours, and those they come into contact with. Some are 'in' and some are 'out'. But of course, if you look at their opinions of their 'in' neigbours, and so on, you will eventually get to places where you wouldn't be so comfortable. (I think there's an analogy to be made with inter-breeding bird species around the North Pole, but I can't find a reference).

It's tempting to think that we know what the faith truly is. But perhaps it isn't so. We tend to construct it in terms of its unchanging truth: but maybe, just maybe, it is its adaptability which is a much better way to look at it. Somehow that feels really unsettling.

2009/11/25

the summary

Having hashed out the argument of my previous post on my facebook status, I think I've come to a much more succinct statement of my point of view: the rich irony is that the British Humanist Society presumes itself able to set a privileged metanarrative for the whole of society. How absurd.

2009/11/22

Christian Children

The British Humanist Association is running an advertising campaign "Please don't label me", inspired by a quote from Richard Dawkins:

There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents. ... Catholic child? Flinch. Protestant child? Squirm. Muslim child? Shudder. Everybody's consciousness should be raised to this level.

[amusingly, the children featured in the pictures belong to a family of Evangelicals, and just happen to have found their way into a photo library]

Many Christians would agree that people have to find their own way, and come to their own "faith decision" at an appropriate time. Many would say that there are a whole series of faith decisions to be made, perhaps (why else did Christ talk of taking up one's cross daily?)

But it seems stunningly naive to suggest that we need our consciousness raised to the point where we realise that children are blank canvasses, and that "religion" is something which may or may not be foisted upon them. Never mind whether it's desirable, is it possible to step outside our own prejudices and give the next generation an unfettered, un-nuanced choice?

Of course not. The child raised by socialists will look at the world differently from the neighbour raised by aspiring middle-class entrepreneurs. The child raised by vegans will make different life choices from the one who starts boxing lessons at the age of four (ok; those are not quite mutually exclusive, but I'm thinking that the overlap is tiny). The child raised by atheists will view the world differently from the ones who are active, philosophically-inquisitive agnostics. These points of view do not necessarily give rise to a simple causation (vegan parents means life-long vegan child) but they are undoubtedly affecting.

There is no "neutral" position. There are many possible beliefs and practices. The stuff that society generally agrees on is pretty slender. "Stealing is bad, and violence is only possible as a last resort, and perhaps not even then" might seem a common credo, but I'd wager plenty of people would want to qualify that slightly before instilling it in their child. The assumption that "no religion" is a better default than this faith system or that seems equally arbitrary - especially when the majority of the population has an explicit faith of some kind (and a significant proportion of the rest will hold onto some intangible, unprovable mystic beliefs of some sort or another).

People have tried interfering with what may or may not be taught to the young before. It seldom ends well. There will always be extremes that society decides are too damaging - and I wouldn't rule out evangelicalism some day receiving that label -but the diversity of society arises precisely because families, extended families, and communities all have an influence on the way children grow up. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is not just a good thing, it's essential.

2009/11/20

immortality for all

Nick tagged me for a comment on his blog on immortality. It's an interesting set of thoughts.

As an academic, much of my professional life is defined by my publication record (that list of papers isn't up to date...hey ho). The point of publishing in journals of record (and, in my discipline, in rigorous peer-reviewed conferences) is that your writing is archived in the world's academic libraries forever. Undoubtedly, this is immortality in a way achieved by none of my ancestors: they persist only in occasional birth certificates, marriage records, census returns, tomb stones. There's some kudos to it. My thoughts will not die with me: they could have influence upon untold people as yet unborn (or maybe not :-) ).

But, of course, this blog will probably live forever, too. As will any comments that you, dear reader, care to contribute. There's perhaps less of a guarantee about that than about academic writing being successfully archived: but communication is cheap, and digital storage is cheaper. Someone may well be born in the next decade whose every spoken word is archived (and indexed) forever. It is very likely that by the time I reach my dotage, if problems with human memory have not been resolved, I shall at least have a ready record of everything I say and hear, and see. Unless aggressive privacy laws supervene, all of that record will probably last forever.

It was once fashionable to scare people by talking of the day of judgement, when the righteous judge would open a record of everything you had ever done, ever failed to do, and even everything you had thought about. The first is now easy; the second is perhaps ambiguous, but great strides are being made towards the third. And along the way, there's my online search history, my browsing history, and my email archive. Maybe it will be shouted from the rooftops - or at least made available on Google (or Bing :-) ).

If immortality actually means everything being laid bare, I wonder whether I will like that or not. But it's not really up to me. I suspect it's going to happen anyway. Welcome to the 21st century, the age of the immortals.

2009/11/18

getting over evangelicalism

I don't seem to have blogged much lately. And when I do, it often seems to be a quote from elsewhere. I guess that's in the spirit of some blogs, but not something I want to do too much of. However, this article rather struck a chord (h/t Tony Jones, who gave a h/t to Rick Bennett).

The medium is Patrol Magazine. The article starts like this:

Get Over It

The current obsession with definition is too late to save evangelicalism.

HOWEVER LONG it may take to relinquish its hold on American culture, evangelicalism in the United States—still probably best defined by the British historian David Bebbington as a movement whose members adhere to conversionism, Biblicism, activism and crucicentrism—faces near-certain extinction. It has been blinded by its symbiotic relationship with the Enlightenment, and has perpetually failed to see beyond its hopelessly Western perceptions. Confined to the paramaters of liberal rationalism, it has mounted no challenge to the present political order and offered no intellectually acceptable explanation for how one is to live and think in the postmodern world. As this magazine has chronicled, its brightest children are throwing up their hands in record numbers, defecting heavy-heartedly to less temporal churches, or to no church at all.


The angry tone continues through the article. I can't really speak to the American situation - though if American Evangelicalism is in terminal decline, it still looks quite healthy from the outside, in many places. Nor am I sure that I have a particularly good overview of British Evangelicalism: but the centre of gravity of the Evangelical Alliance doesn't seem all that unhealthy, nor as dogmatic as that described above.

And yet this way of thinking does chime with some impressions I share.


The fight to define evangelicalism in its latter days also operates on the mistaken premise that an imagined theological purity or conformance to a “lost” orthodoxy, rather than an emphasis on ethics, spiritual discipline and mystery, will revive the power of the Christian church. It is astonishing that so many intelligent Christians seem to believe there is a deficit in emphasis on evangelism and scriptural literalism, and that, if the hatches are just battened down on a more solid “worldview,” evangelicalism can resume explaining the universe to new generations of believers.


I can empathize with senior members of our local church who bemoan a lost era when things were different. But that era is lost. And we're not going back there. If we pray for the Holy Spirit to bring revival, we must know that it will be unsettling, challenging, firey. I don't want to revive the 1950s - or the 1850s or the 1750s. Rationalist enlightenment values just don't stack up today. And that, I think, means that what we have understood to be evangelicalism is over.



2009/11/14

Experimental Theology: Breast Implants and the Bible

Richard Beck writes a great blog. Today's post is no exception: Experimental Theology: Breast Implants and the Bible. He quotes:

Christianity Today:
You wrote that you don't regret getting breast implants. Have you ever wondered whether it might be incompatible with your Christian faith?


Have you ever wondered whether we might be asking the wrong questions?

2009/10/29

Experimental Theology: Aliens at Roswell, NM

Richard Beck blogs today about Experimental Theology: Aliens at Roswell, NM. He describes a family trip to New Mexico, but includes a gem from a group called Alien Resistance:

Question:
Does invoking the name of JESUS CHRIST to stop an Abduction experience work for everyone that uses it?

Answer:
No it does not. It is not a magic word. For those who have accepted JESUS CHRIST as their LORD and Master and have made a personal relationship with him it does work.


Well, that's reassuring for some. The Alien Resistance web site is fascinating: I try not to link to some kinds of things, but Google will find it for you quickly enough.

Beck observes that this is but an example of how a community/culture makes truth for themselves. We all know of examples: some are more extreme than others.

What bothers me, of course, is that it's hard to see this kind of stuff from the inside. We inhabit such communities of belief in all kinds of spheres: but most particularly in our church contexts. How do you know when you are creating a reality for yourself which diverges from the normality experienced by the rest of humanity? Or, come to that, loses touch with the evidence available. It may not matter. But Christians tend to the point of view that they have a better grasp of truth - God's truth - than most. And if it ain't necessarily so, well, we have a problem.

2009/10/23

Review: Love is an Orientation



Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community

Andrew Marin




Andrew Marin may be my namesake by all but one letter, but he has had a rather different life. He's a rather remarkable fellow, and has written a very thoughtful book. I was alerted to the book by Andrew Goddard's review, and refer you there for a lengthy and helpful review.

Marin recounts how, as a young adult, three of his closest friends came out to him as gay in the space of a month or so. He is, in one sense, a mainstream/conservative Evangelical, and describes his own reactions of confusion, revulsion, and much else besides. But his considered response wasn't to flee, but to demonstrate his real friendship by immersing himself - a decidedly straight person - in gay culture. There he found many things that surprised him - and many people desperately seeking connection, lasting relationship, acceptance.

So he has devoted his life to loving and serving that community. He's made his home in Chicago's Boystown district ["the first officially recognized gay village in the United States" - Wikipedia], and established a distinctively Evangelical ministry there.

Well, the approach is distinctively Evangelical, and yet no matter how long you wait, the book doesn't "take sides". You will look in vain for condemnation of GLBT people - as he prefers to have it - and equally fail to find a denouncement of those whose theology places them in tune with what is euphemistically called "traditional teaching on morality". If there is criticism - and most of that is tangential or implied - it is of those who fail to love, fail to care, fail to support, of those who assume they know what it is like to be different.

And there is the play on words of the title: Love is an orientation. He's not making an argument about sexual orientation, but about Christ-like love and the way it affects the whole of life: how it transforms, rescues, renews a whole range of broken and hurting people.

There are probably sub-texts in the book if you go looking for them: if you bring prejudices you may find them challenged; you may find them reinforced (it depends on whether you want them challenged or not). My hunch - which he does nothing to confirm or deny, as far as I can see - is that Marin remains in his heart more conservative than, say, Tony Jones: but that isn't the point. Perhaps it's hard to build a constructive dialogue without taking some intermediate steps. It's a good book, and an important book. It has much to say to conservative Evangelicals, no matter how hard-line (or not) they might see themselves. It's a confronting book, and will, I think, challenge the preconceptions of the majority of its readers. I heartily recommend it.

2009/10/16

burning

Book burning seldom ends well, it seems to me.

A North Carolina Church plans to burn modern bible translations on Halloween - only the KJV is inspired it seems, and that is, moreover, both inerrant and infalible, at least for the English-speaking world. They're going to burn books by other authors, too. The words of well-known heretics like Billy Graham and Rick Warren will be surrendered to the flames (barbeque to follow). And even, it seems, Mark Driskol (sic) comes under a firey sentence. Aw, c'mon: Confessions of a Reformission Rev wasn't that bad.

2009/10/13

signs and ...

I feel as if I need to say more about belief ... but meanwhile, the Telegraph has a long-running collection of amusing signs. This week they have a special religous collection. Enjoy.

2009/10/07

belief

Peter Rollins writes some pretty challenging stuff: challenging to understand, and then more, too.

His recent post One day I hope to believe in God… is no exception. He reports that a BBC interviewer asked whether he believed in God, and his response is/was to deconstruct the question. The deconstruction is challenging to follow, for those of us not well-versed in philosophical linguistics (and a goodly proportion of the blog commenters are all at sea, it seems).

And I'm torn: on the one hand, I have much sympathy with the approach: 'I believe in God' is a hugely nuanced statement, and not one against which I simply want to put a tick. I believe in a great many things. And the extent to which those beliefs has an effect varies hugely.

But on the other hand, this feels like splitting hairs: Bill Clinton attempted to make an argument based on a question about what the meaning of 'is' is: and everyone laughed. Most people imagine they understand what 'Do you believe in God?' means: and would expect it to allow a yes/no answer. Is it arrogant, elitist, or gnostic, to suggest otherwise? Is doing so a sign of great insight, or a sign of philosophical study having disappeared up its own rear end?

cognitive dissonance

2 Timothy 3:16,17 TNIV

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people a may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.


Judges 21:20-23

So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, “Go and hide in the vineyards and watch. When the young women of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, then rush from the vineyards and each of you seize a wife from the young women of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin. When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we will say to them, ‘Do us a kindness by helping them, because we did not get wives for them during the war, and you are innocent, since you did not give your daughters to them.’ ”
So that is what the Benjamites did. While the young women were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them.

2009/09/23

The Condomization of the Church

Fulcrum is a curious confection. It arose, as I recall, when Anglicans were at their most bitterly divisive over the proposed episcopal ordination of Jeffrey John. It's not the home of the most strident conservative evangelical Anglicans; but its evangelical-ness is quite strong. There is some thoughtful and rigorous thinking there - typified by writings of Andrew Goddard: his review of Andrew Marin's, Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community is by turns careful, sensitive, and wise. I probably agree with Andrew (Goddard) less than when we were both students, but his contributions are excellent.

I reproduced the title of a recent article as my title here. It's not a term you expect to find in an Evangelical journal, especially not with the article complaining at some length about a phenomeon the author calls "floaters". The thesis of the article, I think, is that people are not committed any more, like they once were. Just as condoms promote apparently consequence-free sex, so consumerism has infected our perception of the norms of doing church, leading to a self-centred attitude to church as a mere supplier of religious services.

The thing is, despite the arresting title, that doesn't seem a very startling or striking conclusion. Isn't this the whole "Generation X" story? It's a problem if you are running an institution. He says it's a problem because it denies the gospel:

Our condomized culture has learned to think of its relationships and commitments to core values as disposable. Of course, it’s impossible to reconcile such a value system with the demands of the gospel. So, while I appreciate my friend’s worry about the Church’s ability to satisfy the demands of the floating generation, I am confident that the solution does not consist of the Church adapting to the culture in areas where it is the culture itself that is sick.

Rather, the vocation of the Church is to be that alternative community that embodies Christ in its common life, even when that life may seem archaic, exclusive, and unloving to the world.
I can't help thinking that he just has a mind-set-mismatch. Despite having an exceptionally conventional career path (two plus years on the other side of the world notwithstanding), and being typically a stable and static individual, the GenX thing speaks to me: life just isn't so fixed any more. Things are different. People are different. This is both good and bad: but hand-wringing and saying we wish people would behave a little more like they used to, really isn't going to get us anywhere.

The jury still seems to be out (and probably will be for the rest of my life) on how big a sea-change we are seeing in the western church right now: if we overlook the argument that no decent English word should have more than four syllables, who's to say whether or not condomization is a good thing - or maybe we have just to look at a bigger picture.

2009/09/20

faithfulness

So, we're studying Judges, as I mentioned.

One of its recurring themes is that the Israelites kept forgetting God and being unfaithful - and he kept sending leaders to bring them back to the truth. The "obvious" application is that we too must beware being unfaithful to the truth. I made that conclusion dissolve in my Powerpoint, replaced by a caption saying "we are not Bronze-age hill-fort dwellers". But it deserves attention.

And yet, what does faithfulness entail? Behaving with 50s morality? Holding Victorian attitudes? Is faithfulness all about condemning stuff? The Israelites were condemned for adopting the lifestyle - including the worship - of those around them. And elsewhere we read that
friendship with the world means enmity against God
The call to faithfulness is a call to distinctiveness.

But that's simplistic. Where's the Christlike-ness in condemning people whom you haven't tried to understand? In which ways should we be distinctive? With poor poetry and worse music? With an isolationist stance which spreads neither salt nor light in our communities? By ignoring research in history, archeology, biology, psychology? By saying that the old ways were better?

No, of course not. The Israelites' failure to be faithful was expressed in the fact that they did evil in the sight of God. How do we tell good from evil? By its fruit, perhaps? What kind of fruit does God look for? Good news for the poor? Freedom for the prisoners? Recovery of sight for the blind? Release for the oppressed? The proclamation of the Lord's favour? The idea of putting this into practice seems alarmingly alien to Christian ears, if I'm honest.

God is faithful: how are we doing with the faithfulness thing?

2009/09/14

RYT: Bart Campolo

I've been really impressed with the short videos at Recycle Your Faith (h/t: Nick). In production values, they are reminiscent of Nooma: contemporary, sharp, and high quality. They're much shorter than Rob Bell's insights - and without quite the range of visuals or music.

Today's video is by Bert Campolo. It's well worth a look: it's not quite as radical (to evangelical ears) as it first appears, but is certainly right on the edge. I'm not sure I'd put my name to every word he says in the clip ... but I think I'm starting to come close.

2009/09/11

9/11

I introduced Spaf as a speaker at a conference, earlier this year: I remarked that he is one of the few people known to a whole community (Computer Science folk; security experts) by a single syllable.

He writes thoughtfully, reflecting on 9/11 [which, incidentally, some Brits really think happened on the 9th of November].

2009/09/08

Worship-shaped or mission-shaped?

Jonny Baker reports an interesting little idea. Maybe it's a big idea.

I think it's thought-provoking, anyway.

It might be a completely false dichotomy: the Brethren have undoubtedly been a worship-shaped community, but also deeply engaged in mission, historically.

2009/09/07

violence

What does God think of violence?

I ask, because I am to speak on the early chapters of Judges next Sunday. And, of course, it's bloody stuff - from Ehud the left-handed Benjamite and his short sword which buried itself in Eglon's folds of fat, to Jael and the tent-peg she drove through Sisera's temple, pinning him to the ground. Along the way, we hear of Shamgar (he had an ox-goad, remember? what is an ox-goad?) - who killed six hundred Philistines.

How would we greet news of a latter-day Shamgar who had killed six hundred Taliban?

Only a few months ago, I had to speak on the one who said
But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

What, then, is the consistent exegesis? I recall that Rob Bell has said some useful things about this, but I haven't managed to find a transcript yet. Woe is me.

2009/08/23

mercy, compassion, justice, and leniency

It was interesting to be able to watch the news of the compassionate release of the floridly-named Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, while I was visiting the US this week. I managed to avoid my morbid fascination with Fox, and watch the coverage on CBS instead. They seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that the decision was being taken by a judge, whereas in fact Mr Kenny MacAskill is a politician, a member of the Scottish Executive, the Justice Secretary.

I was struck more, though, by the on-screen caption CBS used: it spoke of "leniency", whereas the British news outlets took the official line, that this was an issue of compassion and mercy. Do the two amount to the same thing? For al Megrahi, they seem to; for the people celebrating on the streets of Tripoli, they seem to; for the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, ...

Al Megrahi is guilty before the law. That's not the same thing as saying that he did it: a subsequent appeal might have concluded that he did not. But the due process of the law, to date, finds him guilty. The Scottish Executive would argue that they have followed their own due process - a separate process of compassion - and decided that on the grounds of his imminent demise due to cancer, he should be released.

This creates two tensions: firstly, the British conception of justice may be divergent from the American one: had he been tried under an American jurisdiction, he might well have faced the death penalty. Our conceptions of what constitutes just punishment may differ, and the grounds for early release are certainly different: so it is unsurprising that this release comes as an unpleasant shock to grieving relatives. Secondly, there is a tendency among a significant proportion of the British people to take a more "American" view (in that sense) of justice, which can be at odds with that of our political leaders (though I don't know of any explicit test of public opinion in this particular case).

So where does the path of justice, accompanied by mercy, lie? There is much speculation about political (or trade) expediency surrounding the decision to release this man - but the politicians have denied it, so let us take that at face value for now. The notion of a justice system whose judgement is tempered with mercy seems a good one to retain: after all, whether you follow the God and Father of Jesus Christ, or a set of humanist values, unless you have an excessively relativist outlook, you will tend to believe that a just society is better than the ideal of those who would seem to win through violence. Mercy is lacking in those who would send 270 people to an unexpected death: all the more reason for it to be demonstrated towards those who perpetrate the terror.

But that's easy for me to say: it was not my mother, my daughter, my sister who was murdered. In some Islamic states those who represent the wronged party are able to influence the sentencing and the processes of clemency. That is a tempting notion - but I'm pretty certain al Megrahi would still be in prison if the decision had been in the hands of the victims' relatives. Though sentencing should take account of the victims' distress, it is eventually a function of the community, of the state: if it is a legitimized lynch mob, then we have a problem. [I need to look for a biblical principle here, I think.]

All in all, this is a long-winded way of saying I'm ambivalent about this decision: but the notion of justice tinged with mercy is undoubtedly one to hang on to - for it is divine.

2009/08/13

how much money is a life worth?

Some mischief-makers wanting to de-rail Mr Obama's healthcare plan have made much of the fact that there is a tariff placed on healthcare by the UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence - the ironically-named NICE. It's true that in deciding if a particular intervention is going to be cost-effective they value a year's reasonably healthy life at around £30,000.

[It's more nuanced than that. And their role is to set minimum standards, not to deny treatments to any particular patient. But I digress. Oh, I am still laughing about the epic fail of "Investor's Business Daily" suggesting that Prof. Stephen Hawking wouldn't be alive if he were in the tender care of the NHS - except that he is, and he is. :-) But I digress.]

That seems a particular disingenuous argument, because plainly American Insurance companies must make a similar calculation. They may have different numbers, and come out with a higher value, but given finite resources, they are bound to have a calculation. But I don't imagine that they announce the figure...

And every industry that deals with life-or-death issues must have a similar calculation. Whether they deal with dangerous industrial processes, or road safety, or railways, or aviation, every risk assessment needs a number. The curious thing is the wide difference in the numbers used in different sectors: the railways spent tens of millions retrofitting locks to prevent doors opening on high speed trains (when travelling at high speed) - an incident which consistently cost about eight lives per year. Investing a proportionately similar amount in road safety would have saved many more lives (or so I've been told).

Oxford is in the process of replacing an urban speed limit of 30mph with one of 20mph, on the grounds that doing so will save lives. Plainly, a speed limit of 10mph (or 5mph) would save more. But the latter is regarded as an absurd notion, citing perhaps a law of diminishing returns. But who is to decide how to balance cost and convenience with life-saving?

I struggle to find a spiritual principle to hang onto in this. But I'm pretty confident that one thing we must do is to avoid acting in such a way as to make the lives of the poor worth less than the lives of the rich. Universal health care is a part of that. Are there other examples?

2009/08/07

idolatry

Dissing other people's blogs isn't polite, so I'll just quote Mark Driscoll without comment. It did make me laugh, though.

I sat down for about 30 minutes with Terry Moran and we talked about how idolatry underlies all sin, how it is rooted on the false promise of happiness, how it ultimately destroys, how it is often the result of turning a good thing into an ultimate thing, and how it shows itself in our culture in how we idolize celebrities, athletes, food, family, sex, money, relationships, and achievement – or rather, what we call American culture.



We also took a drive in my Jeep with the top off [...]



2009/08/03

wedding

I went to my niece's wedding at the weekend: a very happy occasion.

What struck me afresh was the primitive and fundamental nature of marriage: people have been marrying and giving in marriage for millennia without count. Christians are wont to call it a "creation ordinance" thanks to Genesis 2:24:

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

No doubt anthropologists would have something to say about the place of marriage in most or all human societies, from the most primitive times, too.

However we look at it, I want to argue, marriage primarily "belongs" to the community. It isn't tied to a church or a liturgy, and it certainly isn't the property or prerogative of the state. It's about getting your family - even the distant parts, whenever possible - together, and bringing your friends along, and some of those miscellaneous people who have played a part in your growing up, and indeed representatives of every sphere of your life. And having all those people witness that you want to be committed to another person. Marriage belongs to the community: to your community.

Now, faith overlays a set of norms on this. And the state has an interest - both because the stability of families is undoubtedly a social good, and, of course, because of the impact of marriage upon taxation. All of these come later, though: they are overlays upon something much more primitive, much more basic, much more important.

I suppose that the multiple layers of meaning and importance overlaid onto marriage are the reason why changes to it have caused so much angst - in the US in particular. As I blogged before, the British experience of civil partnerships has certainly proven that they do not cause the sky to fall - but are able to make a few people very happy indeed, and are regarded by most as marriage no matter what the legal name for them may be. Not that the churches have worked out what to do about them.

Some will say that the approach taken in many northern european countries is the right path to follow: if you want to be married in the sight of the state, you go to the town hall (or wherever) and contract a civil marriage. If you want to be married in the sight of your (faith) community, you go to the church/temple/synagogue/ash grove/stone circle/old chateau and make whatever vows you like, there. Most people doing the latter will do the former, in quick succession.

That has a certain elegant simplicity to it. But it would strike me as an unwanted retreat: churches have been marrying people for longer than the state has. Why should they want to give up that prerogative? After all, although we may have many spheres of life, they are not disconnected: we would regard things as disordered if you were married to one person in the eyes of the state, and another in the eyes of your church/community. [ok; I guess the understanding that catholics (and others) have of divorce can lead you into that situation, but I think they'd still view it as disordered].

So, insofar as it's possible without anarchy setting in, I'm wondering if we should say that we should allow many norms. Marriage should mean ... whatever your community wishes. Does that extend to polygamy? polyandry? I'm still wondering.

2009/07/26

hatched and matched

The big church news of the week has been the Church of England publishing a liturgy for a combined wedding-and-baptism service. And it's not the couple getting married who are to be baptised, it is their children.

Now, my own prejudice is to think that baptism is best reserved for those able to answer for themselves, but let us leave that on one side for now.

Reactions to the news have been mixed: some have said that it is yet another nail in the coffin of the church's teaching; that it is one thing to marry those who have been "living in sin", it is quite another to endorse their lifestyle by enshrining in liturgy a mis-ordered family where the birth of the children precedes the wedding. Others have said that it is a good pragmatic response to modern realities: that given the Church of England's role as the established church, open to all comers, it is better to welcome people in all conditions of life, rather than to turn them away. Still others have said that it is in fact a great celebration of God's grace: that it is never too late to regularize one's family relationships, and that it is most excellent to celebrate and affirm those who wish to do so.

I confess sympathy for all of these positions. Pragmatism gets you a very long way - and so does grace. And yet, you have to look at the message being given, as well as the impact on individuals. There is, surely, value in bringing children into the world in a stable relationship, rather than stabilizing it later: and if you preach that, but make plans for other patterns of family life, you surely seem to present a mixed message.

But life is mixed and messy. I don't doubt that this liturgy has arisen from genuine pastoral need. And so I must assume that it will be a significant and valuable part of a faith journey for some families. The promises made at an Anglican baptism involve the sponsors answering for themselves and for the children (whatever that means :-) ) and saying that they turn to Christ, and renounce evil. That's something to celebrate, however it comes about.

2009/07/11

just when I thought life was wierd enough

Our church uses a common cup for communion. Each person wipes it before passing it to the next person. The alcohol in the wine is said to act as a mild antiseptic: I have no idea if that is true.

With the spectre of swine flu sweeping the nation, government advice is to avoid common cups and plates. So we have to think about 'going Baptist' and using individual cups. I think we may be using miniature medicine cups tomorrow: but I've been googling around to see what else might be on offer at a reasonable price.

Some of the more bizarre offers I've found include:
  • Portable communion sets. Would you like yours in silver or Pewter? In a leather case? Old English style, or Georgian?
  • Or perhaps you'd like pre-filled cups with wafers. "Our prefilled communion cups and wafers include both the wafer and grape juice in one sanitary, single-serving sanitary container." I confess that this one has me giggling uncontrollably. The word "incongruous" is just insufficient to cover it.
  • A helpful Time article explains some of the trials of military chaplains, overcome with paper communion cups (enough to make a real presence adherent shudder a great deal, I wager).
It all seems a far cry from
On the night before he died,
he came to supper with his friends
and, taking bread, he gave you thanks.
The Eucharist is a mystery. Looking too closely at it makes it mundane, to be sure. I guess we have to, from time to time. But let us worship with thankfulness, too.
Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?

2009/06/28

*rolls eyes*

Ken Pagano, pastor of New Bethel Church in Louisville, Kentucky
Pastor Ken Pagano says he wants to show that gun owners are law-abiding

A pastor in the US state of Kentucky has told his flock to bring handguns to church in what he says is an effort to promote safe gun ownership.

Pastor Ken Pagano told parishioners to bring their unloaded guns to New Bethel Church in Louisville for a service celebrating the right to bear arms.

He said he acted after church members voiced fears the Obama administration could tighten gun control laws.

2009/06/22

Church blesses Fathers with beer

Rather lovely.


[The bishop]
argued that the free beer was intended to be symbolic of "the generosity of God".

2009/06/13

what about the heretics?

A colleague of mine is a Mormon. That's prompted me to do a bit of reading. If Evangelicals can be weird at times, Mormons are sure weirder. I suppose that distrusting/disliking/fearing "the cults" has long been an article of faith for Evangelical-me: what is that going to mean for post-Evangelical me?

[Well, I learn that Glenn Beck is apparently a Mormon (apologies if I'm wrong: I have no wish to defame Mormons needlessly). That's not a good advert.]

I suppose that my point is that deciding that it's time to hold onto truth a little less tightly; deciding that a whole lot of things I've previously assumed are actually a whole lot more fluid than I might have admitted; deciding that just because St. Paul believed something doesn't mean that I have to; deciding these things doesn't mean being willing to accept just anything as reasonable.

That's sort-of obvious, of course. It doesn't make sense to replace one set of weird dogmas with a weirder set. But perhaps it needs saying anyway. And of course, it begs a question about how one decides.

2009/05/25

sometimes, you just sigh

There are whacky people out there. The linked story describes a renegade 'priest' who is offering - for a fee - 'consecrated' communion by post. (Only the bread/wafers... I guess wine would be a whole lot more complicated).

I guess we'll always have such curiosities. The man's charges are not high, so I guess he's doing it from pure motives, not to make money.

But the really weird bit is the chatter of blog responses - from apparently faithful Catholics who are discussing whether, through a series of exceptions and loopholes, the items received through the post are really transubstantiated flesh. Who needs Dan Brown when you have this stuff? Come to that, who needs role-playing games with bizarre rules, when you have an ongoing disucssion about Old Catholic Orders and the mispronounciation of the Tridentine Mass?

Now, I suspect that my own spirituality (changing as it is) would also look absurd if pressed to extremes and held up to skeptical analysis. But I'd like for it not to be (absurd, that is). The gospel is counter-intuitive (foolishness, even): the last, first; others before yourself; things that don't come easily. But that's a far cry from making up crazy, arbitrary rules, surely?

2009/05/17

Love Oxford: mixed feelings again

This year, Love Oxford moved out of the city centre to South Park (no guffaws, thank you). I confess to being fearful that the move - combined with poor weather - would leave the event a bit of a damp squib. But I'd say that around 2000 people were there (maybe a few more than that), probably a similar number to last year. And they seemed to be enjoying themselves.


As I remarked last year, the event leaves me with slightly mixed feelings. On the whole, it's pretty inclusive and positive. An event whose core organisation mixes some of the strongest charismatics in the city with some of the most vehemently reformed souls could hardly be otherwise. I didn't get there in time for the "introduce the pastors" slot, so I don't know if the Roman Catholics were well-represented, but it seems not. Nor, I think, were the more liberal-minded churches in evidence. The black-led churches certainly were - a reminder in itself that we have some way to go in developing an integrated faith community in our city.

The cost of staging the event - £30,000 - leaves me a little staggered: particularly as I've never seen any accounts published. For readers from afar, that's significantly more than the national average salary; worked out at cost-per-head, it's approaching the price of two movie tickets - or five pints of beer. Is that a lot? Well, it seems so to me - but perhaps I'm just too frugal about such things.

The sermon managed to put penal substitution in a positive light, but was a little on the vehment side. The representative of the students' Christian Union prayed against intellectualism in the University, which left me wondering slightly why he is (presumably) reading for a degree. The band was suitably loud, the dancing appropriately enthusiastic, and the offering (to cover the £15,000 budget shortfall) collected in awfully large buckets.

I probably sound rather cynical: for which I'm sorry. A while ago, I would truly have loved it: a great jamboree for all; an opportunity to share with other Christians; a chance to say that there are lots of people in our city who want to bring the kingdom in this place. And part of me still does: but part of me is awfully bothered by the detail, the language, some of the underlying assumptions of what's said from the front. Mention was made of the western European church being in rapid decline, on the point of being wiped out - or becoming a tiny rump. That's a real fear. Did I see anything today to suggest there's a real dynamic life-changing Spirit-filled life that's going to buck that trend? Not sure.

2009/05/16

where did it all go wrong?

I paid a little over £3 for a pint of beer, in Edinburgh this week.

I paid £3 for a pair of garden shears in Tesco today. I reasoned with myself that if they were not much good, they could be disposed of at the end of the season - but on reflection, for the price of a pint, they could be disposed of at the end of the day.

But I already have a pair of garden shears. They belonged to my grandfather. He almost certainly used them for several decades. Perhaps they are of better quality - but I wouldn't bank on it.

Of course, there are many other similar examples. The supermarket sells jeans for a similar price, as does Primark. And so on. T-shirts for £1 each are not unknown - even if designer T-shirts can cost £100.

Is beer too expensive? Probably! A large part of the purchase price is tax, after all. But, of course, the real issue is that the raw materials for the shears are really cheap, and they were no doubt manufactured in a country where labour is really cheap (perhaps we could go further and say "where life is cheap" - but that may be to over-simplify the economics). In principle, we could manufacture beer in those places, too, and reduce its price - but we'd struggle to make that work satisfactorily, I suspect.

I wonder if there's a "perfect" price ratio between garden shears and pints of beer: my intuition says it should be about 10:1. When we get prices out of kilter - due to over-supply, or due to exploitation of those far away - is there are moral impact? Economics will tell us that the price of anything is all a matter of market forces, but it strikes me that a globalized market has huge potential to skew our sense of values. I don't know what the eventual hazard there might be, but it seems problematic to me.

2009/05/06

vintage faith?

I'm reading An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches (expect a review eventually). It's good so far, but the author keeps referring to "vintage" faith/theology/etc. He says he draws inspiration from Dan Kimball's Vintage Faith (as well as drawing inspiration from MacLaren ... interesting). In turn, I see that Driscoll is blogging about Vintage Church. I think maybe they're confusing "vintage" with "classic".

Maybe the problem is nascent puritanism, maybe it's living in a benighted continent where weak beer is too common; I don't know. People, "vintage" refers to the year in which a wine was produced. Average wines have a vintage every year; special wines (e.g. port --- mmmm port) only have a vintage in a year when the grapes are exceptional. Pleasant as it is to contemplate fine wines (more pleasant still, to consume them), I have absolutely no idea what these folks are trying to convey by using the word.

2009/05/03

myths?

We thought about fasting today. The speaker said that satanists were fasting and praying for the break-up of Christian marriages. I must have first heard that about 25 years ago. Is it true? I don't know what to make of this one.

2009/04/26

the cat's out of the bag

We published this note in our church news-sheet today:
Members of the Leadership Team have met on three occasions with leaders of Headington Baptist Church (HBC), to discuss possible forms of partnership between their church and ours.

We have been warmly received at these meetings, and we shared a common vision for strengthening our mission as a church in this part of Oxford. This could evolve over the next year or so to take several forms, from HBC people coming to help in or lead activities here, to some HBC members choosing to come and join us on a permanent basis.

As a next step, Headington Baptist will discuss this partnership initially at a members' meeting on 5th May, and we hope to explain some possibilities for developing a covenant relationship, at our church meeting on 7th June. In the meantime, please feel free to discuss these matters with members of the Leadership Team if you would like to.
Aside from being highly nuanced, and the subject of too much committee drafting, the central importance is to report a "Macedonian call" issued to a nearby church to come and help us. We've been 'in decline' on various measures for quite some time, and, as leaders discussed back before Christmas the prospect of the church passing a "point of no return". We decided that we needed to do something about it.

Admitting that you're in a hole and need some help takes some doing. It would be so much easier just to carry on. You can say that you will trust in God's providence. But we all know of fellowships which have declined to the point of non-existence. That's personally traumatic for those involved, but perhaps more importantly, we're most aware that there is a mission to be undertaken. People in our church's vicinity need the gospel of the kingdom. We might not be very good at being missional. But we do believe in it.

The future is certainly uncharted. We found that Headington Baptist has almost an opposite problem: too many people, too many gifts, not enough opportunities for service. The prospects for what we can do together are quite breathtaking: divine timing, in one way of telling it, is awesome.

And where does that leave me? I'm unsure. I have a responsibility to make this evolution happen. But I don't know where it leads. And I don't know to what extent I still share an evangelical perspective: perhaps the fellowship's perspective will move on, too. Time will tell.

2009/04/24

They dropped the O

Happily, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans seems to be abbreviating itself FCA. There's a relief.

2009/04/13

Review: Alternative Worship



Alternative Worship
Jonny Baker and Doug Gay with Jenny Brown

I suppose I've never really moved in truly alt.worship circles - my spirituality has never been expressed through the Conga; I've never participated in worship by drawing a picture; the whole church-as-nightclub/nightclub-as-church thing never quite suited my style. On the other hand I did introduce open participation communion services in the Brethren style to the Anglican church I used to belong to... and liturgical worship to Brethren and Baptists. I have appreciated a 'praise up' at Spring Harvest before now, as well as choral evensong at some of England's finest cathedrals. So worship in a variety of styles is far from alien to me.

Alternative Worship is mainly a book of resources, but also carries some theological reflections, in passing. The introduction links this movement of alternative worship with the notion of "emerging church", and explores what it means - in terms of corporate worship - to be post-Charismatic or post-Evangelical. Most of the book is organised into four themes, reflecting four major seasons of the church calendar - Advent/Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. Each carries resources - liturgical material, readings, prayers, and the like - and also rituals - ideas about how to act and what to do; old and new ways to embed and develop spiritual practice. A CD contains some music, pictures, and other additional material.

The whole collection comes across as being well-grounded in reality: the authors are describing stuff they have done. They encourage the reader to take the ideas and make them their own; to adapt them to local circumstances. That's a good job, because many of them really, really, wouldn't work in my church context right now. It is a great set of resources, though, which has both given me ideas, and also helped me to think more creatively about worship, even in quite a conventional context.

Some people, trying to make sense of the emerging church stuff, have seen it as mainly about different ways to express church together. That would be a mistake. Also a mistake, though, is to concentrate on theology and its outworking in practical action, without paying enough attention to the idea of worship: a need to worship seems deeply embedded in human-kind.

This book is a great mix of reflection and practice. I think I will be dipping into it, and adopting/adapting its ideas for quite a while to come.

2009/04/02

oh my word

Sometimes, just for a laugh, I put on Fox News to get a different perspective on what is going on. I thought it might be funny to see what they were making of the G20 summit.

Well, my flabber has well and truly been ghasted. I thought I'd seen it all. But the Glenn Beck program really, really takes the biscuit. "The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment". Ha! Who's he kidding.

Wait! Is it April 1st? Could this be a spoof? Surely no one who commands an audience in the millions is this stupid? Oh, it's April 2nd. Perhaps it's a repeat. I can dream.

Sorry for an incoherent posting. I really am shocked. And scared.

2009/03/21

whither ethics?

There's something very attractive about moral absolutes. We like to say that they are biblical. Maybe some are. But sometimes they seem just to be an avoidance of the real complexities of life, of the inherent ambiguity in some situations, and the downright confusing pace of medical advances.

Two such hard cases arose recently: firstly, the heartbreaking case of baby OT, whose parents wanted kept alive, and whose doctors said that it was kinder to cease the interventions keeping the child alive. In other contexts, perhaps the latter would have been confused with issues of cost, but the provision of the British Health Service meant that both parties could concentrate on what they thought best for baby OT. We'd probably agree that there are times when it's best to stop invasively striving to keep someone alive - but it's hard to come to that conclusion when you are close to the situation.

Secondly, there have been calls lately for an end to the criminalization of helping someone to commit suicide - at least in the context of facilitating travel to the so-called Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. Those cases are so hard: it's difficult to want to stop someone from deciding to end their own suffering, but it's near impossible too to address the danger of unwanted, subtle, unwitting even, pressure being applied to someone in a vulnerable state. For myself, I think the law has it about right at the moment: helping someone to die is illegal, but most people escape prosecution. I'd rather each case be considered on its merits, with a legal presumption that driving someone to their grave (almost literally!) is generally illegal.

And then there are increasingly complex issues which arise from in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research, frozen embryos, and so, so many more. Not only does black and white thinking fail to lead to obviously ethical answers, it certainly does not give helpful advice to people who find themselves in complex situations. [When a couple created some frozen embryos, and then split, if the man withdraws consent for their implantation, what happens next? Does it matter if the woman is now infertile? For example. Or what if you consented to the creation of hundreds of embryos, but subsequently decide that the destruction of the surplus ones is unethical? And so on.]

In these hard issues - particularly at the beginning and end of life - it strikes me that we need a new ethic. One that values the image of the creator found in each person - old or young. One that takes account of the immense pain felt by people who find themselves in hard places. One that can celebrate advances in medical science, rather than finding each one a challenge and an evil to be resisted.

I wouldn't pretend that this is easy. But we are faced by a lot of questions that a previous generation was not. And they will continue to get more and more complex. Reducing them to simpler questions will make them easier to answer, but I truly doubt that doing so will really give satisfactory answers, answers that embody love and compassion, answers that meet people where they are, answers that really embody Kingdom values.

2009/03/18

de-baptism

Someone wants to be de-baptised. Or should that be dis-baptised. Or un-baptized? Can you be un-indoctrinated? Can you remove consent to have been photographed as a baby? How about un-learning your mother tongue? Could you be de-washed? Or un-fed that meat, having decided to become a life-long vegetarian? Can you be dis-educated if you never wanted to know any calculus after all?

I've never been much of a fan of paedo-baptism, but, really, if you want to disavow all that mumbo-jumbo (in the Anglican case, renouncing evil, etc. and making promises, all through the lips of your god-parents/sponsors), why is there more to it than that ? If you believe that baptism is effective ex officio opera, then I suppose it is; if you don't, then surely it isn't?

2009/03/15

Review: Cool It

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
Bjørn Lomborg

Everyone hates Lomborg, as far as I can tell. The true believers in the climate change lobby don't like him; the true skeptics don't like him either. The former are alarmed by the way that he takes the IPCC predictions as accurate, but then suggests responses which challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. The latter, well, think the IPCC are a bunch of scare-mongers, and so have no time for someone who believes the statistics in the 4th Assessment Report.

Lomborg argues, for example, that although it has been accurately argued that global warming will give rise to many additional heat-related deaths, most overlook the fact that the self-same warming would mean many, many fewer cold-related deaths. He argues similarly for water stress, and food production. He argues that the predicted rise in sea levels is best addressed through improved sea defences. And so on.

The book, published in 2007, is of course already out of date. [It's a little repetitive, too, but we'll overlook that.] The chief criticism of it that I've come across is that he assumes largely linear, continuous variations in impacts, rather than allowing for "tipping points" and sudden, catastrophic change. I think that slightly unfair: he uses, rigorously, the IPCC data and its scenarios. Some argue already that the IPCC predictions are in fact too conservative, and that the real out-turn will be even worse. But the point of having an IPCC is to ensure careful, balanced, measured assessments.

Out-of-date or not, the methodology is interesting. What is the moral response to these concerns? It is certainly true that the targets of the Kyoto treaty deliver almost no benefits by 2100, on the orthodox models. And the Kyoto signatories are struggling to deliver on its targets. To make a material difference to CO2 levels in the atmosphere requires a restructuring of Western society on a scale we can barely imagine. And it means depriving the developing world of the benefits of the industrial revolution.

All this is bound up with complex questions of economics. Although the statistics relating to planning for a hundred years hence trip off the tongue easily, it is salutatory to consider just how much of life today could have been predicted by the politicians and economists of 1909. The IPCC expectations of development, for example, mean that by 2100 Bangladesh should enjoy the standard of living of present-day Denmark. That is rather hard to imagine. But 100 years is a long time.

So Lomborg talks of the cost of implementing a massive reduction in CO2 emissions. And the relative benefit, compared to the cost of preventing the spread of malaria, say, or of providing clean drinking water for the whole world. And so on. This is a debate we don't seem to be having.

Or take the thought experiment a little further. If we are, as James Lovelock says, past the point of no return as regards run-away climate change, what is the moral response. Should we eat, drink, and be merry? Should we spend money on reducing emissions, or spend it on improving the lot of the world's poorest?

The whole debate seems to come down to a sterile is/isn't game. I think we can do better. Love him or loathe him, Lomborg is certainly a part of doing that.

Andrew Martin dead (apparently)

Ooops, didn't mean to shock anyone...

My namesake is dead. Perhaps he'll stop beating me on the Google search pages now. (Hm. I was first once, now various impostors seem to be getting in the way.)

2009/03/01

friends

When your friends give you birthday cards with a recurring theme, you begin to wonder...

There was one which quoted Benjamin Franklin,
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
and another from a Dave Berry
Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly so well with pizza.
and another with pictures of rugby and beer. And then there was a mat/coaster bearing the text Beer only. No silly soft drinks. Ever. Folks, are you trying to tell me something?

There was also a copy of An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches, which may or may not mix well with beer (it looks like it needs a clear head). There's also How to get things really flat, by, er, Andrew Martin. A good name for an author, if ever there was one: I wonder just how many of us there are...

future?

The last part of Christianity: A History today was presented by Cherie Blair - wife of the former Prime Minister, Roman Catholic, and leading human rights lawyer. Like the others, it was really frustrating, but also challenging.

First, she painted a picture of the church in the UK (and the rest of Western Europe) as being in sharp, and continuing decline. Her perspective was decidedly Catholic - as was her concern about the reasons why the church is seen as being out of touch with society - but I guess that many similar issues apply to the rest of us. The largely unspoken question at this stage was to ask whether the church has a future.

Despite a couple of references to the continued growth of the church in the developing world, she took as her counterpoint the church in the USA. We were treated to some interviews with very inclusive Methodists in Chicago, a chat with Laura Bush ("of course George and Tony didn't pray together when they met for summits" Hmm? why "of course"? If you share faith, and believe in its transforming power, why not bring it into professional life? I grant that I've so far largely failed to put that into practice myself, but I do have it as a goal), and an extended visit to Willow Creek, interviews with Bill Hybels, and the rest. Oh, there was an interview with Jessie Jackson, too.

Her point, then, was that the American church is going strong, and this is not least because it adapts its style and practice to the prevailing culture in a way that the British church has failed to manage. She argued, at some length, that there is no crisis of faith, but a crisis in the way it is practiced. This seems, well, naive and simplistic.

I'm not well-placed to know whether her analysis of the American church is right, but everything I read suggests that it is heading in the same direction as the western European church, just a couple of decades later. That's not to say that there are not encouraging signs (signs of emergence?), just that they do not necessarily point where she thinks. I have this awful fear that people of her generation (even if she's only about 15 years older than me) don't quite grasp how far things have diverged.

Of course, I'd have loved for there to be a final episode after this one, with interviews with McLaren, Bell, Driscoll, Kimball, Jones (x2), and so on. It seems as if there's a great deal more to be said. But perhaps that would be premature.

A way of believing is perhaps only ever one generation away from extinction. There is something quite alarming about the way the practice of Christian faith has collapsed in Western Europe. Even in the face of an age when more people on the planet own the name of Christ than ever before, is there something about social, economic, and cultural development that makes eventual decline inevitable?


[Oops! I lost this post: I wrote it weeks ago, but forgot to publish it! Here goes...Oh. Blogger inserted it at the date I wrote it. Will anyone see it?]

2009/02/25

lent?

Fasting - whether a total abstinence from food, or some other form of self-denial - has much to commend it. It's not commonly a part of Evangelical spirituality - which is odd, somehow, when it is clearly a New Testament practice. But a wise man once said "When you fast, do it in secret" (my paraphrase).

During my "Anglican Period" in my 20's (born of my locality, and the evident life of the Anglican church near me, rather than any particular theological bent) the more ready acceptance of fasting (in the most general sense, anyway, even among the more evangelical Anglicans) struck me all the more because it is so lacking in the traditions I'm more familiar with. Probably the majority were giving up something for Lent - half-heartedly, or with gusto.

But it surprised me, too: very often, there was an underlying assumption, and not necessarily a hidden one either, that someone would be a better person for giving up alcohol temporarily, or that God would love them more if they ate no chocolate until Easter. Now that, undoubtedly, is at odds with even the mildest of reformed theologies. How odd it was to hear it from evangelical lips.

Orwell called this doublethink. It was a prized trait in the world of "Nineteen Eighty-Four". It seems to be a necessary precursor to understanding modern theology. Should we embrace it, or denounce it?

2009/02/22

science and faith

I missed out on blogging about last week's Christianity: A History. It addressed colonialism - presented by a descendant of West Indian (formerly West African) slaves - again, thought-provoking and challenging.

This week, Prof. Colin Blakemore presented on science and faith: the impact of the enlightenment and beyond - via the peculiarities of the scientific creationists, ultimately to the question of whether science will make faith redundant. I suppose I should describe Blakemore as my colleague, since we both work for the same division of the University of Oxford. He's been subject to personal attacks by animal rights activists, on account of his experimental methods: and this is, in the genius of this series, his qualification to present this topic, since it deals in large part with the persecution (and execution!) of those whose science displeased those with power.

The breadth of the interation of science and faith today was rather striking. Two of the interviewees were an exceedingly sane astronomer-monk (who gave atheist Blakemore a run for his money) and an exceedingly fundamentalist astrophysicist at the Creation Museum in Ohio (whose position was essentially that scripture always trumps all other evidence). The latter - for all his learning - can't really be said to be following the scientific method, methinks.

But therein lies the problem. This is profoundly a modern argument. Blakemore says "as a scientist today, I'm free to put forward any argument, provided I can back it up with evidence" - by contrast with, say, poor Gallileo. But we all know that is simplistic. There are lots of things you're simply not allowed to study today. But he avoided that territory. He went to see the LHC, where they're looking for the Higgs Boson, the misleadingly-named "God particle", as if understanding the first microsecond (or nanosecond, or whatever it is) of the life of the universe will complete the jigsaw of understanding the wonders of creation.

In fairness, he did go and talk to an Anglican priest of the Sea of Faith connection, but I don't think he could see the point. (Not that I'm entirely sure I do, but perhaps for different reasons). But he really did seem keen on setting up the classical dichotomy - science versus God. And he didn't once ask the question about what proof would look like. The argument is absurdly circular: scientific method assumes that we can create evidence for things; that everything has an explanation if only we can find it; and that if our existing explanations do not explain everything, we must go and refine those explanations, testing them against the evidence. There's no room in that method for God, so it's hardly surprising that there is no scientific evidence to bring to bear on his existence (and so, according to Occam's rasor, no reason to suppose that existence). It seems dishonest to argue from a lack of evidence, when no evidence is possible.

But he ended with what I do take as a challenging thought-expriment: science is telling us more and more, not just about how we are made, but also about how our minds work - it's entirely plausible that in future it will be able to tell us, reliably, why we think as we do, and why we believe things. Then what happens?



[unrelated aside: just watching the first HD episode of The Simpsons. HD rocks.]

2009/02/15

genuis

The BBC often annoys me, and particularly the religion department. In this week of Darwin's bicentenary, one might have feared a tired debate between Dawkins and some creationist.

Insead, this morning's service on Radio 4 was rather wonderful: it came from the chapel of St. John's College, Cambridge, and was a service of thanksgiving for the life of Charles Darwin. The preacher was the Cambridge professor of evolutionary paleobiology (whose science would not, of course, embarrass Professor Dawkins, but who has more to say besides).

Creative response? Yes, we can do that. Genius.

2009/02/12

applied ethics gets complex

So, it might be possible (albeit a long-shot) to produce, via cloning, a real-life Neanderthal man. Wow. Where do you begin with that one?

Is it like cloning an ape: possibly reasonable for scientific purposes? Or like cloning a man: possibly also allowable in future, but only for very carefully prescribed reasons, fully respectful of the life thereby created. And theologically, is he a descendant of Adam?: I speak metaphorically, because we could discuss at length whether Adam is a person or an idea. Put another way, would he have a soul? And could you know in advance, or would you have to wait until he'd been called into being? by which time it would be a little late to decide you'd behaved unethically.

I pose those questions as a thought experiment. And yet, they may not be hypothetical, they could easily be real questions within my lifetime. And if not those, then similar ones. And because they seem imponderable, perhaps they are the wrong questions to ask. But does that suggest a poverty of understanding about the whole business of being made in the image of God?


[Here we are on Darwin's 200th birthday. If you reject that man and his wisdom; if you believe the world is less than 10,000 years old, I guess those questions will be easier to answer. But I'm afraid as far as I'm concerned, that's like saying "if the moon is made of blue cheese, do dogs go to heaven". Not an interesting conundrum.]

2009/02/08

was the reformation a ghastly mistake?

Christianity: a History continues to be challenging. Tonight, Anne Widdecombe, a high-ranking politician who converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, presented an account of the Reformation. She talked of Luther and his 95 theses, but concentrated on the impact of the English reformation - and, for contrast, the French Huegenots and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

I was fascinated by the way that much of the presentation was (as befits a politician) on geo-politics, rather than theology. And how she drew the lasting legacy of those events, not in the theology of protestant, reformed, evangelical churches, but in the bizarre effigy-burning of Lewes in Sussex, and, worse, in the strife in Northern Ireland. It is salutary indeed to contemplate afresh how this potential high-spot of Christian piety - this celebration of justification by faith - is in fact so totally mired in political scheming, and grotesque, extreme violence.

According to my "that was then, this is now" theology, it won't do to try to place today's values onto yesterday. But you have to consider how much of the reformation was about understanding Christian truth, and how much was about ruthless politics. And whether it's good to celebrate it today, or to move on. [Aside: one of my formative moments was an overnight train trip from Rome to Geneva, aged 21. Rome, for all its beauty is profoundly depressing because it is full of so much controlling superstition, spiritual darkness. Geneva, by contrast, the home of Calvin's version of reformed thought, seemed a city of truth, rationality, and grace. Or so it seemed at the time.]

Perhaps it's deep in our make-up that we need an enemy, a means to unite the community by being opposed to something or someone. Christian Europe was divided upon itself, and Protestant and Catholic were at each other's throats. As Europe has drifted towards a secular world-view, the things uniting Christians have begun to seem stronger than the internecine divisions. And with an "enemy" like Islam, who needs to hate Papists?

That's almost certainly simplistic. But in an obscure little post-evangelical corner where there are mainstream evangelicals, and emergents, and a love-hate relationship with Driscoll and all his works, it make you pause for thought.

2009/02/07

faith in public

The British news has been abuzz this week with news of a nurse who was suspended from work after offering to pray with one of her patients, and having the offer declined. Evidently, the patient wasn't upset by the offer, but did mention it to the nurse's superiors, who responded with the kind of over-reaction that only middle-managers can summon.

It's a storm in a tea-cup, seemingly, and the nurse is now back at work without a reprimand. It proved to be a cue for some militant folks to argue loudly that faith should be kept to the private sphere, and should not intervene in public life, still less in professional work. That argument seems to be founded on two falacies.

One suggestion is that faith is just a personal thing, and shouldn't spread too widely. Of course, quite the opposite message comes from just about every faith community: faith is to affect the whole of one's life, to have an impact on all kinds of interpersonal relationships and professional standards too. Indeed, faith is manifestly a communal thing: all of the large world faiths impact not just homes, but schools, hospitals, charities, voluntary groups, hospices, and much else beside. Not only would society be the poorer without those things, it would also be considerably more grey. Tony Blair complained that he could not be seen to make a big thing of his faith while he was in office, for fear of being branded a nutter. What a retreat.

But it's worth than that. If you take this view that religious faith should not be privileged - indeed, should be actively suppressed in certain fields - then you have to decide what kind of belief might be involved. Should one mention one's vegetarianism in public? One's socialism? One's commitment to free trade? Some things are religiously coded, but need not be: plenty are "pro life" without offering a divine reason; should they keep that quiet? Should no one ever let on, in a professional context, which political party they may vote for?

The problem seems to be that we have allowed the creation of something we call "secular society", and unthinkingly allowed a certain set of things, attitudes, words, to be included within it, and many other things be excluded. I have the sense that American society has, in some ways, travelled much less far down this road than we have seen in Britain (or Europe?).

The trouble is, of course, that such an approach does not lead to an absence of ideology from the public sphere, but instead leaves room for others to define it. The age of a privileged narrative may be over, but that is no excuse to abdicate all responsibility for offering a narrative to every part of life. That, it strikes me, is what Jesus would do :-).

2009/02/05

oh dear

So, miffed by the Atheist bus advert campaign, several 'Christian' groups have decided to fight back with their own advertising campaign. A thoughtful, tangential response - maybe using biblical quotes in modern English (such as "Put your neighbour ahead of yourself") - might have been constructive. But instead, if the Telegraph is to be believed, we are to get:
  • "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God."
  • "There definitely is a God. So join The Christian Party and enjoy your life."
  • "There is God. Don't Worry. Enjoy your life!"
That just strikes me as a really childish, probably counter-productive response. And it sounds like a waste of money, calculated to salve injured pride and to boast about the size of the believers' budget. Oh dear. What would Jesus do? :-)

2009/02/01

Review: Christianity, a history

Channel 4, the channel which blights British TV screens with the nonsense of Big Brother, is in the middle of a documentary series Christianity, A History. It's growing on me.

Part of its genius - and I'm gradually coming to the point of view that it really is genius - is in the choice of presenters (who each clearly wrote the episode they present). Howard Jacobson, a British Jew, presented "Jesus the Jew", wherein he reviewed Jesus' Jewishness, and how paradoxically this turned into Christian anti-semitism. Michael Portillo, a politician and agnostic, described Constantine's conversion, and the subsequent marriage of church and state. And so on.

Today's episode was presented by Rageh Omaar, a British Muslim. He talked about the Crusades, and how the West has largely forgotten them, save as a historical footnote. And how the Muslim world, by contrast, sees them as a present reality (all the more when George Dubya actually described his "War on Terror" as a crusade. Sack the speech-writer!). As an aside, I wrote down a sentence from his introduction to the programme, when he described Jerusalem:

The site of Jesus Christ's resurrection, and of the Prophet Mohammed's ascension into heaven.

What a gloriously paradoxical sentence!

Next week's episode is on the Reformation, presented by an ex-Protestant Catholic convert. I'm looking forward to it! Besides the thought-provoking presentations (in itself quite a challenging thing to do, when you have to deliver rather basic historical facts and interpret them) the high-def video presentation is stunning, and very attractive. A huge amount of on-location filming around the Mediterranean has gone into this series.

Certainly, I disagree with many of the presenters' perspectives and conclusions. But it's rather good to see these things discussed from a distance, by someone who doesn't share my point of view, and isn't simply an even-handed academic, either. The research seems good - and plenty of good quality academics are wheeled in to give soundbites - but the over-all effect is really quite compelling. I thorougly recommend the series.




2009/01/31

prayer and technology

In my line of work, people often hold teleconferences: either entirely virtual meetings, where everybody phones in, or hybrid meetings, where some people sit in a room with a speakerphone, and those who can't be there in person dial in. This has become a very inexpensive way to talk. How did our church fellowships come to miss out on this kind of thing? Some are apparently very good at video-casting the preacher, but what about providing for those who are away from home: why shouldn't they dial into the prayer meeting, or the home fellowship group?

It could be that I'm just ahead of the curve here, but I don't think so. It could be that the cost, though low, is still too great for our average fellowship. Or it could be that we don't really value meeting together quite as much as we say we do. If we did, of course, we could go one stage further and provide such facilities for those who are too infirm to leave their own house. Sure, there are technical hurdles to be overcome, but if they can use a phone, they can join a teleconference. Do we value everyone in The Fellowship, or do we just say that we do?

A different take on a similar topic comes in this news article from a rather incredulous BBC reporter. A New York church offers a prayer ministry via the world-wide web: send in your prayer request, and they will pray. How neat! The reporter is keen to point out that prayer has not been scientifically verified (and I have to say that some kinds of intercessory prayer do make me most uneasy; very confused about how we understand prayer) but that does not seem to be an unreasonable problem: those who do not believe, do not need to participate (as pray-ers, or prayer-requesters; I guess they may be the subject of prayers, but if they don't believe prayer has any power, I presume they won't mind).

Communications technology is really transforming the world. Are we ever going to dare to let it transform church, or is church going to be forever stuck in the 16th century?

2009/01/11

profane


Some liturgical churches use wafers for communion, stamped with crosses or other devotional signs.

Our communion bread today came from ... Asda (the UK subsidiary of Wal-Mart). You can tell this because the loaf has ASDA stamped along the side.



Ah. Such profound things separate us.

alarmed

I watched a documentary on the National Geographic Channel yesterday. It reported a trip of an eye surgeon (German, perhaps?) to North Korea, to carry out 1000 cataract operations. The programme provided much background information about North Korea - which I will take at face value - but also afforded the Doctor's team to see a little stage-managed view of life in North Korea.

One element which received quite a bit of coverage was the devotion of the North Korean people to their leader, Kim Jong-Il. One woman, interviewed before her operation, was heard to say that the saddest thing about having cataracts was that she could never look at (pictures of) the great leader. This is the same leader who has signally failed to feed his people (the cataracts are in no small part due to malnutrition; the inability to treat them with local medicine in stark contrast to the nuclear weapons programme); this is the same leader whose borders are absurdly fortified to prevent people from escaping; this is the same leader who condemns entire extended families to brutal prison camps if any member of the family fails to express suitable praise to the leader.

The climax of the film was the day when everybody's bandages were taken off, and they were asked if they could see. Many were truly healed. There was much clapping and rejoicing. And the centrepiece of each person's experience, as soon as the bandages were removed, was to rush to the picture of the leader, to bow, to prostrate themselves, and to say how happy they were that the great leader had enabled them to be healed. The great leader got all the kudos - the film editor didn't show us anyone thanking the surgeon, or even acknowledging him. The great leader had done this and it was marvellous in their eyes (somewhat literally).

That made me feel sick. But it alarmed me too, because it paralleled so closely the discourse some people will engage in when attributing things to God. Found a parking space? Thank God. Nice weather? Thank God. Cure for cancer? Thank God.

Now, you might say that the North Korean people have been brainwashed (or frightened) into replacing reverence for the living God with reverence for their great leader; that a natural trait in humanity has been perverted and misdirected by the North Korean regime. But an observer outside both communities might tell it differently. Is the thanksgiving which overflows to God a piece of conditioning, born of "God is good" "All the time" dialogues, or is it the truth flowing from deep within us?