here I stand? part 4: mission

I'm blogging about things I might believe differently now than I once did.  The introduction is the place to start.  This post follows on from the discussion of gospel and salvation, to ask of the implication for mission.




If walking in the way of Christ is what the gospel is all about, what is the implication for mission?


There's a curious tension in much Christian mission activity.  On the one hand it sees that the scripture is full of a rich picture of what it is to walk in the light of God - tales of creation, liberation, and reconciliation, as MacLaren would have it.  On the other, the objective seems often simply to be to bring people under conviction of sin, to repent and pray a prayer of commitment. The question to be asked about strangers (or an organisation or group) is not to ask whether they display the fruit of the spirit, but are they "committed Christians".  This appears to me an absurd parody of salvation - indeed, if we wanted to talk Reformation language, it seems to re-instate a salvation by works, the main work being that repentance and commitment.


The gospels do call us to repentance - but then into a rich, holistic, joined-up life.  How can we have taken Jesus' teaching and decided that the most important part was what written by Paul - say Romans 3:23 (even forgetting verse 24 very often)?  I liked the premiss of Kimball's They Like Jesus, but not the Church for this very reason.  Jesus, and what he is reported as saying and doing, is altogether wonderful, radical, and life-changing.  His teaching is as fresh and relevant today as ever.   


But we get hung up on our own sense of morality and forget to love our neighbour as ourselves.

Because we have buildings to maintain and salaries to pay, we easily see mission as the means of ensuring that our particular activity is still running tomorrow, and next year.

We buy into some pre-scientific weird metaphysics and imagine it needs to be a central message for people today.


We are so busy being righteous that we forget that Jesus kept company with prostitutes, extortionists, and rebels.


In a Europe obsessed with a particular view of human rights, we are increasingly keen to stand on ours, rather than standing up for those without a voice.


There are a lot of shouty people out there who want to say that faith is over, that the state and society must be aggressively atheist (or at least, secular), that (paradoxically) in order to protect people's religious beliefs we must de-privilege religious narratives.  And there are other people telling us that atheism is actually in decline, that faith matters more now than it has for decades - centuries perhaps, and this is seen in endless court cases, religious leaders in the media, and many, many high-profile politicians with faith of one sort and another.


And alongside that hubbub, we have the meek man of Galilee who said "Love your neighbour as yourself".  If that were the basis for mission, how happy we'd be.

review: Misquoting Jesus

Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the bible and why
Bart D. Ehrman

In our age of first ubiquitous printed material and latterly instant text-based communications, we tend to assume that a text is fixed and immutable, that we can know what somebody said, and we can enquire as to whether they stand by it.  Writing is a big part of my professional life, and any writer knows the frustration and surprise which comes from having someone else edit one's words - even if the editing leads to an over-all improvement. Yet I also know that for all the ease of transmission, many of the papers I work with appear in a number of versions, conference and journal variants, as well as invited book chapters and technical reports and all the rest.  One just tends to assume that similar papers say similar things - even if one goes to great lengths to eliminate flaws in later versions of one's own work.

We easily forget that it was not always thus: that there was a time when all manuscripts were copies; when variants arose and got copied, and the variant readings became dominant.  The variations in copies of my own work are as nothing compared to the variations in the many manuscripts we have of the new testament.

This book is a systematic account of the reason we have so many manuscripts, and how they differ, and what the church has done about it.  Here, Ehrman tells the story of how variations came about (very largely through copying by amateur scribes in the earliest years of Christainity), why they came about (through mistakes, and through well-meaning attempts to improve the text), and where they are to be found in the New Testament (in changes great and small).

The account is very accessible - bordering on the patronizing at times perhaps: I get the impression that this is a popularized version of some of his more scholarly writing.  Surely most of us have noticed the footnotes that tell us to beware the last few verses of Mark's gospel, or the account of the woman taken in adultery.  Perhaps, too, we have noticed the occasional footnotes in, say, the NIV, which give variant readings for all manner of passages.  Ehrman seems to assume we have ignored all of those - but then goes on to paint a fulsome picture of the reasons for and significance of a number of those alternatives, so I can forgive him for treating me like an incurious naive reader.  Although he dwells on a handful of examples (no doubt the more juicy ones), he observes that the collection of manuscripts known to us displays literally thousands of variant readings.  The methods for trying to guess what the original may have been are indeed like a detective story.

The book is topped and tailed with accounts of Ehrman's own faith - or, rather, how he began biblical studies with a strong evangelical notion of inerrancy as a 'born again Christian' but arrived at a point of "seeing the bible as a very human book, with very human points of view". As I understand it, he would no longer describe himself as a Christian at all.  The introduction surveys the steps in this process; the conclusion looks at the philosophy and hermeneutics which flow from the scholarship surveyed in the book.  What sense is there in believing in inerrancy of the original text if that text is now lost to us?  Worse, why would the Almighty go the trouble of providing inerrant scriptures and then not preserve them for our reading?

The standard evangelical response to the textual variations is to say that none of them touch upon important matters of doctrine.  Ehrman challenges this, observing that some significant, well-known stories are in doubt. And if you set great store by that "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful ..." line, well, how can you decide which are the unimportant bits?

I guess - though I haven't really delved into it - that as a former Evangelical who became an ex-Christian largely through studying the bible, Ehrman is something of a bogey-man in your average bible college.  If we are to take scholarship seriously and receive the bible without a naive simplicity (which it doesn't deserve), then voices like his must be listened to with care: I find much of what he says very persuasive.  I shall read more of what he has to say.

not-so new international version

This is a little depressing, though a few little searches on biblegateway.com suggests that at least some of the TNIV's readings have been retained.

here I stand? part 3: gospel and salvation

I'm blogging about things I might believe differently now than I once did.  The introduction is the place to start.  This is an essay on how I'm trying to understand what being saved is all about.


One day, when I was a graduate student, one of my friends put me on the spot and forced me to explain the gospel, as if to a dying man. I think he wanted to check that I was 'sound'.  At the time, I demurred, arguing that I wasn't fond of the hypothetical and that any real discussion would have a context.  But eventually I think I passed the test: I successfully explained the evangelical gospel.


For it is, surely, a sectarian idea of the gospel which gets propounded in the churches of my acquaintance.  Perhaps you could point to a broad sweep of reformation thinking and say that there is a protestant gospel, but even within  that picture you would find nuanced accounts.  Whether its the TULIPs of Calvinisim or the tongues of Pentecostalism, or, in classic opposition to the first, the wider doors of Arminianism.  I've heard it said that the chief ongoing dispute between Protestants and Catholics stems from differing definitions of the term 'justification' - the former seeing it as a one-off; the latter having it encompass what the former would call 'sanctification'.  I don't know if that's a fair characterization, but it sounds plausible.  And then, at opposite extremes you have gospels of universalism on the one hand and a very particular elect (144,000) for the JWs - many would deny that either of these is a Christian doctrine, I guess.


Presumably, all of this matters very much.  Is the objective of evangelism that those outside the church should come to understand that they are sinners, alienated from God, that Jesus died for their sins, and that they need to pray the sinner's prayer?  Or is that born of a mis-reading of Paul's response to the Philippian gaoler's question "What must I do to be saved?"  For that man and a great number of others in the New Testament, baptism followed immediately - are we propounding a New Testament faith if we do otherwise?  Is mental assent to a series of propositional truths the essence of salvation, anyway?


Though we get some of this sense from Paul's sermons, you can't really - with integrity - describe the whole evangelical gospel from a single passage of scripture.  Your handy tract on "Two ways to live" or "Journey into life" or "The bridge" or whatever, draws on proof texts from all over the new testament.  If there was a single way to describe the gospel, wouldn't you expect to find it all together somewhere? Preferably in the teaching of Jesus?  


I skated over the line above "Jesus died for their sins" above, but similarly, in the doctrine of the atonement we have a great many pictures on offer in the bible.  And too easily, I think, we impose our particular favourites onto proof texts that could mean all sorts of other things.  So penal substitutionary atonement has its firm proponents and trenchant critics, both arguing from scripture and both arguing that the other's perspective is nonsensical and unbiblical.  [hm.  my spell-checker didn't like 'unbiblical' and suggested 'Republican' instead. LOL].  These are not unimportant peripheral topics, they go to the heart of what Christian faith is all about.  So it bothers me that I sincerely doubt that most sitting in our churches - our evangelical churches - could explain more than one, or at most two, pictures of what the atonement is all about, and the extent to which the pictures support and reinforce one another.  


Perhaps I'm pessimistic in the preceding paragraph, but my preacher's experience, and my experience of bible study groups doesn't fill me with confidence.  My fear is that we spend too long defining the gospel in terms of propositions that must be believed, and too little defining it in terms of living lives characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Is that a retreat from a gospel of salvation by grace, through faith, not by works?  Not at all, but I'll settle for mustard-seed-sized faith.  


Walking with  God doesn't, surely, depend on being able to explain Christus Victor any more than it means being able to draw the pictures of two ways to live.  It does mean following in the way of the risen Christ.  Isn't that what the gospel is all about?

here I stand? part 2: scripture

I'm blogging about things I might believe differently now than I once did.  The introduction is the place to start.  This is an essay on where the bible fits in to that way of thinking.


First off, I think we can safely ignore the position which speaks of plenary literal verbal inspiration, and connects this with a strong notion of inerrancy.  I've never believed that, and find it very unsatisfactory.  Not least because all but the oddest of its adherents ascribe those characteristics only to "scripture as originally given" - something which is lost to us through the hands of scribes and copyists - so that the whole issue becomes rather a hypothetical one.  And that's not even touching on the question of how the canon came about.  However, it is worth lingering near that inerrancy idea for two reasons: firstly, because other watered-down notions of infallibility sometimes sail very close to the strong position (and do themselves an injury in the process), and second because those who want to knock down scripture as useless will often set up an inerrant straw man to knock down.  So we must beware that we stand where we mean to stand.


Of course, that choice is a crucial one: the way that we receive the scripture affects so much.  I came across a conservative Evangelical (sorry, I forget who it was) who remarked that by looking at what someone believes about women's ministry we learn all we need to about their attitude to scripture.  I think he may well be right.  I've written before about how that issue essentially re-moulded my thinking on how to read and interpret the bible.  I respect those who think that you can take a somewhat conservative position and yet reach an inclusive opinion, but I admit that deep-down that seems like what Orwell called double-think.  To summarise my earlier post: however you look at the details, Paul doesn't seem to anticipate men and women playing interchangeable roles in the church, as many of us assume today - but that doesn't mean that we, in our context, have to agree with him.


So I want to receive scripture with care and with great respect - but without the sometimes naive reading which says "the bible says it so I must do it". Far too much interpretation goes into the reading for that to be allowable.  Far too often we do lip-service to interpretation in context, but then proceed to make the most egregious leaps in proof-texting.  Too often, there is a cursory acknowledgement that there are different kinds of literature in the bible - and then suddenly an attempt to "prove" something by reference to a piece of poetry.  I find it rather refreshing that emerging church writers don't tend to litter their work with footnotes and bible references - not because they want to propound something heterodox (necessarily!) simply because they assume a grown-up reader who can weigh the whole of a passage, or book, or biblical theme.  


McLaren has a nice take on this in his A New Kind of Christianity. There he contrasts receiving the "bible as constitution", with the "bible as library". I think that's rather a good summary of the shift.  It's no less reverent, no less inclined to ask the Holy Spirit to speak to us through the text, but much less likely to have us say "God says it, I believe it, that settles it."  


I've referred, too, to the quote from Tomlinson: "Only the doggedly rationalist mind imagines that truth is equated solely with fact."   A large number of Christians receive certain parts of the bible as myth: the first eleven chapters of Genesis particularly so, or the book of Jonah; maybe the book of Job.  Saying that they're not set out as historical fact does not diminish them or their message; it doesn't imply that any writer set out to deceive or mislead us.  It just reminds us that there are lots of different kinds of literature contained within the pages of scripture.  To how many other parts of the text might we apply the same analysis?  Well, there, Evangelicals quickly part company with others - even if evidence for the Exodus is scant, archaeological ties to King David hard to find, and so on.   Faced with overwhelming evidence, many have rejected a 'literal' reading of Genesis (not that such a reading was completely pervasive in antiquity, it seems), but have been unwilling to go further and compare what they read in the bible with the best available evidence outside.It the historicity of these things necessary? Is it likely?What should be our working assumption?  Or, is the point of the virgin birth supposed to be a historical fact, or principally a useful picture?  As I said when I reviewed Tomlinson's book, he quietly dissuaded me from the former.


It is naive, though, to imagine that we can easily undertake this shift, or do so without significant consequences.  The author of the first chapters of Genesis - even if separated by a millennium or more from the events described - gave us all those genealogies to tie them onto the more historical-sounding material.  Even if we assume a certain latitude in the meaning of 'beget', that link is still made.  Jesus could speak of the apocalypse coming "as it was in Noah's day" - should we read that as meaning he believed in Noah (and does that mean we should?) or can we read it rather like "as Banquo said to Macbeth".   When Paul said that in Adam all die, was he speaking literally or figuratively?  I don't think it is satisfactory to fudge these things - though we need humility to admit when we don't have the answer.  My answer, consistent with the stuff higher up, is to say that Paul may have believed in Adam as a historical fact, but that doesn't mean that we must.


So, I think there are two shifts in my thinking.  First is to say that although the bible is true (countless generations have proven this in their experience), there are many, many things in it which are not to be received as facts: including many things which I would previously have seen that way.   The second is more subtle, but eventually much more profound: it's that library vs constitution thing.  I don't think this diminishes the authority of scripture, but others may differ: I'll certainly agree that it changes profoundly our practice in interpreting it.  I say 'our', but of course I'm thinking mostly of Evangelicals, or more broadly Protestants.  Those standing in other Christian traditions have long received the scripture in different ways anyway.  Casting our eyes wider, to the methods and exegesis of other scholars seems like rather a good idea.

here I stand ?

Well, James suggested that after a while of saying I didn't feel like an Evangelical any more, it was time to try to nail what the issue (or issues) is (or are).  I tend to be rather conciliatory when speaking face-to-face, and rather naturally slot into Evangelical language which is so deeply ingrained on my psyche.  So maybe a blog post will help.

The first problem of definition arises because a lot of the changes I've seen in how I believe are not so much rejections of old things as embracing of the new.  And where I do think I've stopped holding to the former things, it's often not so much an out-and-out repudiation, as a shift of emphasis.  Although I've realised in a few stark ways that people I once regarded as fellow-travellers I now regard with great suspicion, far more often I just want to replace a hand which holds tightly to some doctrine to one which has a looser grip.  Often I want to say "isn't there another way to look at this", or I'm just happy to replace certainty with doubt.

Doing such things doesn't immediately lead you to give up entirely on former understandings.  It's more about a way of believing than a set of beliefs.  And yet, for all that Evangelicals (and a wider Protestant church) have tended to define themselves by propositional statements and nice black-and-white answers, it is the way of believing which is just as important.  So I can tick all the boxes, and still not believe like an Evangelical, because I no longer have the same approach to what believing is all about.  Periodically I go and re-read the doctrinal basis of the Evangelical Alliance, to see if it's time to resign my membership.  I'm finding some of the clauses a bit shaky, but I don't actually disbelieve any yet - or didn't, last time I seriously considered it.  I just wouldn't sum up the faith that way.

I've never been entirely enamoured with such doctrinal statements: I remember my great amusement as an undergraduate at the DB being read aloud prior to the installation of a new OICCU president: the words seemed to be treated with more reverence than scripture.  And I was very enamoured of Rob Bell's illustration that doing theology ought not to be like defending a wall (made from bricks of systematic theology) but rather like jumping on a trampoline, and inviting others to jump too (the springs being capable of being taken out - in small number - and flexed, stretched, and investigated, without making the whole thing collapse).

I'm not likely to get thrown out of the church for stretching a few springs, but you might have guessed that I think there's more going on than that.  So, over the next few posts - which could take some time - I want to explore some totemic issues where my thinking has developed.  I think the list might be something like this (but this isn't necessarily a table of contents for the next few blog posts):

• the bible
• the gospel and salvation 
• prayer (perhaps a reprise of this post)
• belief (perhaps a reprise of several recent posts)
• existence
• spiritual formation
• the gathered life of the church
• sexuality

I feel as if this could be an awfully big adventure.  Perhaps there's a lot riding - for me, and my role in Northway Church - on what I say next.  But perhaps the time has come to start saying it and see what happens.

Reformed Boot Camp

This raises so many questions for me.

I know I regularly vow never to comment on the Driscoll stuff, and then I fail.

The info on the Facebook page also sets me off.  The first sentence gives me chills.

God is moving and creating a resurgence of young reformed church planting movements. Time magazine recently called this movement the third most world-changing idea in America. This conference will bring in a handful of the movement's leaders to connect what is happening today to what has happened in the past and to give a solid biblical theology of the Spirit and his work.

The third most world-changing idea in America?  For just $150.  Plus a $9.24 booking fee.  Wow.

review: Christ Church, Oxford Cathedral

The church: Christ Church, Oxford Cathedral
Denomination:  Church of England (Anglican)
The building: The building is impressive and eclectic. It is part of Christ Church, and wholly surrounded by the college.  
The church: This is the cathedral church of the diocese of Oxford, and also the college chapel.  Somehow it manages this split personality: but I'm not sure it makes for a close-knit congregation.  By its nature, it has several distinct sub-communities.
The neighborhood: City-centre Oxford; the heart of the University.
The cast: About five clergy (I didn't see any names); a verger in a cassock covered by a curious (i.e. not Oxford) black gown; a choir of around 10 men and 10 boys.
The date & time: Sunday 17th October, 6.00pm Christ Church time (which is 6.05pm British Summer Time).


I haven't been to Christ Church for years - I'm guessing, about 15.  On a whim, I thought I'd drop in to Evensong, and see what's what.  I remembered a fairly low-church austere set-up, with no announcements or concession to those unfamiliar with the service.  I found an even lower set-up (all the genuflection has disappeared! and the odd bows in the Gloria patri, and no one making the sign of the cross at 'the resurrection of the body' in the creed), and a few interruptions to the liturgy of the 'now turn to page 45, paragraph 2' kind - which disappointed me a little.

What was the name of the service?
Choral Evensong
How full was the building?
Probably about 25% - but it has many parts, so it's hard to say.
Did anyone welcome you personally?
Someone handed me a service booklet; I'm not sure that they actually spoke.
Was your pew comfortable?
Not bad.  
How would you describe the pre-service atmosphere?
Quiet and reserved.

What were the exact opening words of the service?

Welcome to Christ Church.

What books did the congregation use during the service?

A booklet set out the liturgy for the service; the hymn book (a new one on me; I forget the name) was needed for the two hymns; the prayer book was used for the psalm; and another booklet listed the psalms, hymns, and music chosen for the day.

What musical instruments were played?
Organ.  And the choir - is the choir an instrument?  They played a big role in the service.

Did anything distract you?
Not much.  The chap sitting in front of me elected not to kneel for the prayers.  He didn't even adopt a 'non-conformist crouch', preferring to sit bolt upright, so I found myself breathing down his neck, quite literally.

Was the worship stiff-upper-lip, happy clappy, or what?

Low and Liturgical. Cathedral worship in the finest Anglican tradition.  The choir is probably still being broken in, as it were, it being the start of a new academic year. There was nothing wrong with the music, but nothing really stood out, save a curious emphasis/intonation in the psalm.

Exactly how long was the sermon?

Sermon? This was evening prayer.  No sermon.
On a scale of 1-10, how good was the preacher?
Who needs a preacher?

Which part of the service was like being in heaven?

A sense of peace, of measured, dignified worship.

And which part was like being in... er... the other place?

Kneeling with my nose in someone else's back.

What happened when you hung around after the service looking lost?

Oh, I don't think you do that at the cathedral.

How would you feel about making this church your regular (where 10 = ecstatic, 0 = terminal)?

Oh, I don't think you do that at the cathedral.  Well, I suppose some people do. But that would be a 0 for me.

Did the service make you feel glad to be a Christian?

Yes.

What one thing will you remember about all this in seven days' time?

The great familiarity of the liturgy (I gave up on the booklet half-way through the first page), and the surprise at not having any genuflecting to do.

Post-script: the organ voluntary was some kind of variations of the theme of the Westminster Chimes.  Truly Bizarre.  A glance at wikipedia suggests to me it was probably by Vierne.  It was certainly in his style.

do you believe?

Do you believe in ghosts?  Do you believe in miracles?  Do you believe in the supernatural?  In spirits?  In life after death?  In literal plenary inspiration?  In the Virgin Birth?

Christianity seems to be based on most of those (spot the odd one out!).  And to those of a modern mind-set, they are concepts from the pre-scientific age.  They are best dismissed as fantasy or mistakes, as neat ideas which turn out to be unsupported by evidence: like alchemy, the ether, or scientific determinism.  Healing - like homoeopathy - is readily explained by the placebo effect; some other miracles by the human propensity to see patterns where none exist.  As far as we can tell, the laws of physics (and other branches of science; indeed the laws of information theory which some now think make a better foundational theory than particle physics) are uniform and immutable across time and space - albeit with special perturbations near singularities and the big bang.

The last bit is, I fear, code for saying 'we're still working that bit out'.  Since we plainly do not know everything yet - and some have begun to say that actually we never will; that the enlightenment itself is running out of steam - it is a little surprising that some will go so far as to say 'there is no such thing as ...', or even perhaps 'I don't believe in ...".   It's a reasonable short-hand, but we can hardly say it's an accurate, scientifically supported statement: it's hard, after all, to prove a negative.

So, I think I'd rather prefer a different kind of dialogue.  If we offer a Christianity based on miracles ("they happen today") we alienate a lot of scientifically-minded people.  If we major on bizarre bits of the supernatural, we are liable to persuade people - at least the kind of people I mix with daily - that we are nutters.  So let's not do it.

I'm not going to go so far as to say there are no miracles: we have much too much to learn about the world to say that there are no mechanisms which suspend the regular laws of physics.  But I don't think it's very helpful to talk about them.  If we're going to read biblical accounts of impossible things, I'd certainly rather dwell on the message and the point, rather than on their historicity.    Does that defame the God of scripture?  Is it dishonest?

the other point of view

I saw something recently - I forget where, sorry - that in days of yore when people studied rhetoric, prior to the start of any debate, each antagonist was required to state the argument of the other.  They had to satisfy each other that they understood the main points of the other's point of view, before trying to persuade anyone against it.

I don't know if that's a true characterization, but it's an attractive thought.  Of course, in any dialectic one seeks to nullify each argument of the opponent, but too often we fail to grasp what's really on the mind of those we disagree with.  Politicians seem to be particularly bad at this - the objective observer can see them scoring points against each other (all too often ad hominem, or against infelicities in the presentation) instead of  engaging with the argument itself.  This is either naive small-mindedness, or wilful misrepresentation.  Neither is very attractive.

Sadly, the same thing seems to be all over the blogosphere in the 'Christian' blogs.  The amount of bile poured out upon those perceived as somewhat heterodox sometimes takes my breath away.  So much of it seems to come from those who don't want  to see the other's point of view. I looked earlier today for some emerging church commentary/perspective on the Alpha course.  Instead - as is the nature of a google search - I found endless blogs denouncing both as the anti-Christ.  (Incidentally, one of the best, most balanced commentaries that I found on Alpha came from an atheist Nature editor, in the Guardian.)

Would that we had grace to understand properly the things that others would have us believe.  And would that they too would engage and grasp that with which they would argue.  Too much apologetics is quite introspective, built upon successive evangelical arguments, rather than being tested by real engagement with those who would wish to dismiss it all - which, in turn, makes it easy to dismiss because its content is rubbish.  That doesn't honour the gospel; that doesn't direct people to the wonderful person of Christ - and that's the real shame.

faith and doubt and scholarship (part 2)

A very different perspective on the previous questions occurs to me.

A friendly theologian explained to a member of the housegroup the difference between the assumptions made by scholarship and the assumptions made by faith.  Hence, the confessing student approaches the text with the general assumption of truth; the unbelieving - or sceptical - mind-set requires proof.  

And that in turn reminded me of a contrast someone made between the Oxford Theology Faculty - which sets out to be academic and objective - and the confessing faculties  of some Universities, particularly (when mentioned) those in Switzerland.  In the latter, we would find a generally very different approach to these questions.  Indeed, the point was made that in the Oxford faculty, the question "how would the Catholics approach this" is a good one; in the Protestant confessing faculty in Geneva, the same question would be inadmissible and irrelevant.

And I'm left wondering which actually makes for better scholarship.  The scientist in me says that the approach which is sceptical and aspires to be objective is best.  But I wonder if that extends generally.  Let us leave aside silly arguments about scepticism in the study of anthropogenic climate change.  I wonder how many non-socialists you find studying Marxist economic theory.    I wonder how many misogynists you find in women's' studies.   I wonder how many Platonists you find studying intuitionistic logic.  And so much else besides.

I may be mistaken, but we tend to assume that people are allowed to hold worldviews consistent with the research they undertake.  But for students of religion it's not so good.  Or is it?

oh my

I used to have a lot of respect for Gerald Coates - whacky house church/'new churches' leader as he was.  I haven't heard anything of him for years.  Then I saw this (h/t The Register) which, I'm afraid, is too bizarre by half.  Even if the newspaper story is half made up, as most seem to be, it doesn't sound good.

faith and doubt and scholarship

At our homegroup last week, we watched a lecture about the Old Testament, by a Dr Amy-Jill Levine.  This was the introduction to a long series - which we may or may not watch - so she was setting out her whole perspective.  This involved discussing the various kinds of literature in the OT, and briefly touching on their literary influences and historical/archaeological evidence.

In one sense, it was unremarkable stuff.  A little dated in places, but nothing you wouldn't hear in a run-of-the-mill theological college.  Even though she advanced her own opinion that King David didn't necessarily exist as a real historical figure, I'd say that her perspective wasn't really more radical than you'd hear even in a fairly evangelical school (but I may be wrong, because I don't tend to hang out in theological colleges).

But those are things you don't hear from the pulpit in an evangelical church.  Describing the early chapters of Genesis as 'myth' is a bit of a red rag to people accustomed to thinking that believing the bible is God's word means believing that everything which seems like it might be history is ... well, a forensic account worthy of Simon Schama, or Lord Dacre, or whoever your favourite historian might be.  Suggesting that it might not have been written down until the time of the Exile, that as a result its account of events a thousand or more years earlier might be patchy, is liable to evince harrumphs and bristly responses.   Suggesting that the early chapters of Genesis have material in common with the myths of Babylon, and the former might have been written in knowledge of the latter, is tantamount to some awful crime.

Where did it all go wrong?  How did receiving the bible as God's word come to mean leaving hold of our critical faculties?  If there's scant extra-biblical evidence for the Exodus, does it really destroy our faith to say so?  Can you really read the book of Judges as if it were written according to the literary conventions of enlightenment Europe?  Would it be so bad to fess up and say that Job and Jonah have more in common (in terms of historicity) with Falstaff or King Arthur than Queen Victoria or Winston Churchill?

Is that kind of doubt destructive?  I don't think so.  In fact, I think it's essential.   Creation versus evolution has become the totemic issue for scholarship versus 'literal' biblical interpretation, but the same kind of issues arise over and over again.  That's not to say that the scholarship should be accepted uncritically  - a lack of archaeological evidence is not at all the same thing as a 'proof that it never happened'.  But if Christian piety remains detached - and divergent - from the best high-quality thinking about its own core text, then it can only be impoverished, naive, and irrelevant.  Can't it?

Is There a Future for Evangelicalism?

Jonathan D. Fitzgerald asks this question over the Huffington Post.  It's a shame he has an almost entirely US-centric answer - it half-defeats the point of the question, I'd say.

review: Enemies of Reason

Review: Enemies of Reason / Slaves to Superstition
More 4/Richard Dawkins


Channel 4 has a series in homage to, and presented by, Richard Dawkins. I think some or all of it is repeated, but I didn't see it first time around.  Earlier episodes featured his now-familiar criticism of religion, and Christianity in particular.

Now, I'm watching a recording of a later episode on Slaves to Superstition.  He's been chasing down and ridiculing horoscopes, spiritualism, dowsing, conspiracy theorists, and more, with his familiar blend of scepticism and scientism.  He explains the benefit of believing verifiable evidence over private feeling.

And I'm inclined to agree with him.  Every bit.  Science offers us strong, valuable insight into our world's systems.  It has advanced medicine beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors.  All this random spiritualism is largely flim-flam, with no substance and no real benefit - no impact beyond what you'd expect from random processes.  Indeed, this line came from the middle of the programme:

Even in the 21st century, despite all that science has revealed about the indifferent vastness of the universe, the human mind remains a wanton story-teller, creating intention in the randomness of reality.

The whole thing is a bit of a hymn to rationalist enlightenment thinking,without a hint of any cracks in the edifice.  His calm rational interviews of spiritualists, exposing their bizarre nonsense, is of course amusing.  That their ways of thinking may give comfort and help is discarded: founded on nothing at all, their influence can only be malign.  I think I agree.

And so two things bother me:

• for what good reason do I think that Christian faith is any different?
• is Richard going to be intellectually honest enough to ask whether the same purblindness afflicts the scientific community?  It's much easier to build a theory based on the convenient data, and discard that which doesn't seem to fit.  I don't suggest that a major scientific calumny is being committed - but I have to wonder whether it is more of a common human trait to discard the evidence that doesn't fit.

review: Re-enchanting Christianity

Re-enchanting Christianity: faith in an emerging culture
Dave Tomlinson

I love this book.  So much of the serious thinking about emerging things has come from a USA context.  Most of the UK contribution has been around the alt.worship perspective, rather than creative thinking about understanding the faith itself in the 21st century (I over-generalize, of course).  However, Tomlinson is decidedly British, and writes a very engaging account - in a popular theology sort of way - of a constructive but genuinely up-to-date way to understand following Christ today.

If I carry on my generalized sweeping statements, his book  The Post-Evangelical was about things that were going wrong with the evangelical church; this book is the counterpart describing where we might go instead.   The writing is approachable: theological, but grounded on Tomlinson's own experience, and showing the wisdom which comes from his own pastoral ministry.  Of course, this isn't a work of deep theology - I struggle with those - but here you will find lots of references to Moltman, Crossan, Borg, Ward, Wink, and others.  Tomlinson has done his homework.

I quoted previously two stand-out quotes from the book.  They do give quite a good sense of the kind of narrative you should expect.  That seems to have been a long time ago: I needed to revisit the book after the first read, before reflecting on it.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted.  Those who are new to asking difficult questions about Evangelical faith will either dismiss it as liberal nonsense or will find their minds well and truly blown.  As for me, I believed in the historicity of the Virgin Birth when I started the book, and now, meh, I rather doubt it.  It just kind-of evaporated, as I read Tomlinson's discussion of how we might hold on to the mystery through metaphor rather than through historical interpretation.

And the key is that here we are not presented with some nihilist deconstruction of all that we have held dear, but rather something which is overwhelmingly constructive - as the title suggests.  Tomlinson is looking for ways that historical texts - and the Spirit of God - can speak to our present era, remaining true to both.  His final paragraph is this:

Christian mission in the twenty-first century requires kingdom-oriented communities, places of radical inclusion and empowerment, which say: You are welcome - whatever your ethnic or cultural background, however you look or dress, whether you are a man or a woman, gay or straight, whether you earn a pittance or you're worth a fortune, whether you have kids, can't have kids, don't want to have kids, whether you are full of faith or riddled with doubts, whether you feel hopeful or fearful.  Gregarious or withdrawn - YOU ARE WELCOME.

That's as good a summary as any of the church - the kingdom values - he's been describing in the book.  It's all rather wonderful.

review: The Joneses

Review: The Joneses

Flying from Sydney to London offers lots of opportunities for watching in-flight movies (over and over again): so here's a film I wouldn't otherwise have watched...

[mild spoilers apply: don't read on if you're easily upset about learning movie plots before seeing the movie; having said that, I'm not really giving all that much away]

The Jones are a model family: we first meet them moving into an idyllic community and getting to know their neighbours.  All seems a little too good for a while: but we quickly learn that this veneer is not all it seems: the Jones are actually unrelated to each other; they are a 'family' manufactured by a marketing company in order to promote products to their unsuspecting neighbours.  They work by product placement, by encouraging others to push their products, through exquisite parties, through always having the latest and best stuff.

Here, then, is a 'family' at the apogee of consumerism: driven by nothing whatsoever except conspicuous consumption designed to engineer jealousy - and sales.  All goes well for a while, then tensions mount
and, as befits a black comedy, the consequences spiral out of control. Tragic events lead some of the characters to reconsider what's important in life - without really concluding that consumption is of itself problematic - as befits a Holywood movie.

The plain 'message' is thought-provoking enough, though falling short of any sort of call to radical action.  The mischevious thought that occurs to me, though, relates to the similarities we might see between the Jones's lifestyle marketing, and what some have called lifestyle evangelism.  The Jones become apparent friends with many, look out for people of power and influence, and hold memorable parties with the intention of showing off all that's glitzy and expensive in their marketer-designed home.

That really doesn't sound so different to some 'evangelism strategies' we might encounter.  Ok, churches don't go to the lengths of manufacturing fake families to achieve this (why bother, when you can be in the business of helping create the real thing), and would indeed eschew falsehood.  Well, officially false testimony is out of the question, but there are all kinds of things which tread that line pretty close: whether friendships purely made with ulterior motives, or a variety of 'bait and switch' techniques like 'questionnaire evangelism'.

The Joneses are living the dream - till 'Mr Jones', at least, wakes up from it.  May we live the truth, instead.

Australian churches: reflection

So, as I sit on the plane ready to go home (flat bed in business class - thank you, frequent flyer points), some reflection on my church reviews seems in order.

First, a caveat: all my 'reviews' were based on truly limited data.  A church doesn't consist solely (or perhaps even chiefly) of its gathered life in its principal worship service: there is so much more to it than that.  The visitor cannot really know what else is going on behind the scenes.  But, for most churches, much of the time, the public worship is an indication of something: it contributes quite significantly to the shared story which the church members tell one another.

The script I borrowed for my reviews asked the question about how happy you would be to make this church a regular part of your life: it's an interesting gut reaction, really.  Crave MCC got a low score, and yet, putting those three side-by-side, it would surely be the only one I'd seriously consider: with hindsight and reflection I think a significantly higher score would be accurate.

One reason for this is the following observation: for most of my life, I have tended to be quite a few years younger than the average age of congregations and prayer meetings I've attended.  As I get older, that seems more and more anomalous: in particular, aged 42, I'd hope to see lots and lots of people around who are younger than me.  And two of those churches just didn't come close to that.  I'm really not ready to hang out exclusively with grey-haired folk just yet.

Do those churches - and countless others with similar demographics have a future?  No doubt some do: some churches just work out well for an older community, and re-invent themselves for each age of retirees. But statistics tell us that the entire church in the west is ageing, and that congregations continue to close at quite a rate.  Some of that closure is offset by new church plants.  I don't know if the trend is still downwards, but I have a hunch that it is.

Surely it's difficult for an ageing fellowship to re-invent itself. Human nature doesn't lend itself to that, and churches tend to be among the most conservative organisations out there, designed quite carefully to resist change.  By God's grace, change does happen: the church I formerly belonged to in Oxford faced certain closure, a little over 20 years ago, but instead a string of good things has happened, and for the last 15 years or so, it has been full of young families, with new births happening seemingly every week.

Prediction is difficult, (especially where the future is concerned, as the President of my College used to say).  But in the UK and in Australia, it seems, the church as a whole has a lot of ageing congregations: my own church included. 20 years from now, things are going to look very different.  Without some changes in our
demographics, not only are we going to dwindle, I'm going to be heading for retirement and finding the church empty when I get there.

It would be wrong to confuse demographics with rightness, or even relevance.  Some churches of a historically very conservative disposition are thriving and 'relevant' - Driscoll's Mars Hill, for example, or another I read of recently in LA, Reality.  Liberal churches haven't tended to be the kind of place packed to the doors.  But there are many shades and different mixes - sometimes with counter-intuitive matches of membership and outlook.  Many emerging churches have eschewed the everlasting search for numbers in place of trying to live intentionally as a community.

The simple conclusion is just to say that the big shift we've seen in church-going in the last 60 years or so hasn't really finished running its course yet. That's kind-of scary for us all, but particularly for those stuck in a kind of demographic cul de sac.  Undoubtedly, some of those who offer a certain evangelical certainty are thriving: I wish them well, and hope it's not an unstable kind of life.  The emerging model seems much more organic: it may not be taking the world by storm, it may go under many names, it may not be a model or a movement at all.  But as an idea, it works for me.

blog management: comments

After being spam-free for years, this blog has attracted spam almost daily for the last week or so.

To avoid this, I've added the captcha option to the comments form - where you have to type in the words you see, before your comment is posted.  Comments are very welcome; encouraged, even: sorry that there's this extra hoop to jump through now.

review: Christ Church, Lavender Bay

Here's the final review of my trip.     (again h/t to The Mystery Worshipper, with whom I have no affiliation, for the headings). 


The church: Christ Church, Lavender Bay,  Sydney  
Denomination:  Anglican Church of Australia. 
The building: The building celebrated its centenary on the preceding Sunday.  It's a fairly straightforward late 19th/early 20th century Anglican church.  Probably seats about 250 people, I'd guess.  
The church: The church is, I think, on reasonable terms with the wider evangelically-minded diocese of Sydney Anglicans, but would shy away from the more fundamentalist elements of that mindset.  The congregation reflects its neighbourhood - see below - though skewed, I'd say, towards the upper age range of that demographic.
The neighborhood: Sydney's north shore is home to well-heeled professionals - a former Prime Minister of Australia lives nearby and attends the church.
The cast: Rector, Patrick Collins, associate minister Ross McDonald (I think; he didn't have a speaking part); and a a choir of five; plus two people who read lessons and one who led prayers.
The date & time: Sunday 15th August, 10am.

What was the name of the service?
Holy Communion
How full was the building?
Maybe 40-50%.Did anyone welcome you personally?
Yes.  I was with a friend, and so we had many greetings and introductions.Was your pew comfortable?
Not too bad, really.
How would you describe the pre-service atmosphere?
Quiet and reserved.

What were the exact opening words of the service?

Welcome to Christ Church, Lavender Bay.

What books did the congregation use during the service?

A service sheet contained the hymns; the liturgy was in the Anglican Church of Australia prayer book (an interesting reversal from last week!)

What musical instruments were played?
Organ.  

Did anything distract you?
Not a great deal, besides sitting under an enormous electric fire, blasting infra-red at me as if I needed toasting.

Was the worship stiff-upper-lip, happy clappy, or what?

Low and Liturgical.  Four traditional-style hymns; spoken liturgy, with all the main bits included but none of the theatrical flights of fancy some are wont to indulge.  A distinctive and rather endearing feature of the church's worship is that at the very end of the service, all are invited to share prayer requests - generally by going forward for prayer - and after a little quiet discussion, the Rector prays aloud for each, with as much or as little detail as is appropriate.

Exactly how long was the sermon?

Around 20 minutes. Maybe a little more.
On a scale of 1-10, how good was the preacher?
5, perhaps.

In a nutshell, what was the sermon about?

It was a bible study on the Psalm set for the day, Psalm 92.  Praising God for who he is; regardless of adversity.  Nothing earth-shattering; perhaps naive in places; but good devotional stuff.

Which part of the service was like being in heaven?

hmm.  That's a toughie.

And which part was like being in... er... the other place?

Being roasted by the heater above me.  It's not as if the weather was cold.  These Sydney folks don't know when they have it good...

What happened when you hung around after the service looking lost?

Being with friends, I had plenty of people to talk to.

How would you feel about making this church your regular (where 10 = ecstatic, 0 = terminal)?

Probably under 5.  There's nothing offensive here, but no edge, either.  I'd be 10 years younger than the average age, at least, and that would bother me.

Did the service make you feel glad to be a Christian?

Yes, in a light, middle-class sort of way.

What one thing will you remember about all this in seven days' time?

Going to communion with the ex Prime Minister of Australia.