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.

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.

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.

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.

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?