I want to be wrong

I have a deep sense of foreboding for the coming few years.

Perhaps it is an indication of the turmoil we have seen in the financial world in the last year or so that someone can recently be arrested for an alleged fraud to the value of $50bn. $50bn ! $50bn!! Surely a few more chickens will come home to roost before this settles down. And when it does, for good or ill, the shape of the whole finance sector is going to be changed for years to come.

For that and other reasons, a big recession seems to be taking hold. That's bad enough for those at the margins of western society - how will it affect people in India and China, and other places which have come to rely on rapid economic growth. Then, there's the impact of measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions: if they are to be effective, they are going to begin to bite hard - affecting, again, most profoundly, those at the bottom of the heap, who have the least choices. And - whether due to anthropogenic climate change or not - there seem to be many places suffering from drought.

Meanwhile, there seem to be ever more signs of society disintegrating. Whether it's young people rioting in Greece, or the rise and rise of extremest political parties across Europe, or tensions and instabilities in the European Union, or news of immigrant communities in Britain feeling disaffected and isolated from the wider community, the impact seems to be tension, and a threat of strife. Add to that a veiled threat of many nascent terrorist plots, with many experts predicting nuclear terrorism as a strong likelihood within a few years.

Not only do I fear these outcomes, especially as they will affect the weakest in society. I fear, too, what the general population's response will be, and what the political class will do. This will not be a re-run of 1930s fascism - there are too many people watching out for that, to defeat it on principle. But that does not mean it will not be brutal, violent, and profoundly illiberal.

Frankly, I'm scared. I'd love to be completely wrong. But the signs really don't look good. Let's not get all apocalyptic about this: WWII wasn't the end of the world, but it was a very very bad thing.

God give us grace to learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.

Lord, have mercy.

an excellent post

Here is a very thoughtful post: "So long, sola". Nic Paton argues that the modern way of holding the doctrine of "sola scriptura" is amiss. He says that it's at odds even with the intention of Luther and the rest who coined five "solas" as pillars of the Reformation, and he makes rather eloquently the point that the whole structure of the epistemology surrounding scripture is itself, er, unscriptural.

He mentions Wesley's "quadrilateral" in which truth is found in Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience; he even goes on to suggest that we might add to this Creation, intuition, and imagination. Wow.

I find these lines of thinking thrilling and liberating ... but also quite unsettling. It feels naughty, taboo, dangerous: am I really allowed to admit that the text of the bible, if taken as a single book (which it is not) has all manner of contradictions within it? Can I say that, rather than having to construct complex arguments about why it all means the same thing really? Can I happily repudiate those odd arguments that if two books, their authors separated by centuries and seas, use the same word in different contexts, they must be referring to the same thing? Is it ok to suggest, as I did last month, that "that was then; this is now"?

It feels like one is messing around with foundational ideas, with the fear that everything will come crashing down and nothing will be left. But as I write that, I'm reminded of Rob Bell's picture of doctrine not as the bricks in an edifice, but as a collection of springs surrounding a trampoline. Pulling out the one marked "scripture", and giving it a stretch to see what happens, seems like an excellent move.

formative influences (7?) : loving liturgy

A comment from Mike Morell, put me in mind of this:

Growing up in a decidedly non-liturgical fellowship, occasional tastes of liturgical worship seemed rather wonderful. Not particularly the theatrical aspects: costume, processions, colours, and the rest, but the prayers, the shared affirmations, the structure. Every-member ministry with extempore prayer can be uplifting but can be ... dire. Words that have been considered and weighed by many, over the centuries, carry nuance and force all of their own.

I blogged before about College Chapel: I loved the way that the creed always followed the sermon. No matter how weird, woolly, or distracting the sermon might be (or so I judged it at the time), everyone would afterward stand and declaim together some of the truths of the faith.

Likewise, when I belonged to an Anglican church, I really valued the unifying, normative effect of the liturgy: if there was an element in the service (perhaps the sermon, again) that I didn't value, I was brought to my senses again by the introduction to the Peace, right before Communion:

	Christ is our peace He has reconciled us to God
	in one body by the cross.
	We meet in his name and share his peace.

That was tremendously normalizing, uplifting, resetting, unifying. On the other hand, we held onto the liturgy very lightly in that church. Sections would be omitted on a whim, the vicar would have the whole congregation say parts supposed to be reserved to the priest, he let me lead much of the service, despite not being authorized by the Bishop, and so on. The liturgy was shared and subordinate to the people - not the other way around.

Moving away, and joining a Baptist church I missed much of this. I missed the structure, the meditative elements, the space to pause, the shape of the whole thing. When the church was due to celebrate a major anniversary, my new-found Anglican sensibilities expected that the main service would incorporate sharing communion - what could be more appropriate? Not a chance!

In that church and my current one, has been my privilage to lead worship from time to time. I value the opportunity to introduce liturgical prayers, shared affirmations and other elements. Everyone can participate in these, even those who cannot sing, or do not enjoy music. I'd hate to be hide-bound by these things, but as tools for us to use, they can be superb.

I think I missed it

From looking at jesuswantstosavechristians.blogspot.com, it seems that I missed a rather marvellous back-story to the Jesus wants to save Christians book that I reviewed a few weeks ago. Evidently, there is/was an "alternate reality game" centered around the creepy "Citizens of Virtue". That site is awesome in its awfulness, and all too plausible in places.

As far as I can see on a little bit of surfing, the game now seems to have played out, which is a shame indeed. I'd love to have joined in, and help save the Seven.

Brilliant stuff.

implications

Where does my last post lead?

1. I'm not sure. It leads me to a certain humble uncertaintly about a lot of things. In particular, on the proxmiate issue of "women's ministry", I think I can sympathize with just about every position taken by others - certainly the integrity of those who hold a particular point of view, even if I find a lot of those perspectives problematic.
2. More generally, it leaves me concerned. Can the methodology lead to anything other than a rather nihilistic subjective relativism? Is that not problematic? It might not be, but it takes work to integrate it into my understanding of truth and God. I haven't got there yet.
3. On the other hand, I know that it does fit into my broad understanding of God's truth: if people ask what is "allowed" and what is "commanded" by the New Testament, I always feel that they need to re-read Galatians. But I probably do, too :-).

how I learned to stop worring (long post)

This blog post has been a long time coming, but I must delay it no more. It should be in my "formative influences" series, but I've lost track of the numbers... I think it significant more for the methodological conclusions than from the particular matter at hand - but that is itself rather important, too.

So, what did I stop worrying about? Well, women. No, not like that. Women's ministry, if you want that phrase, is my topic here.

First, the context: I grew up, as I've said, in an Open Brethren church (assembly, ok). Hat-wearing was on the way out, but when it came to "open participation", of which we had lots, the women didn't get to say anything. Unless it was a home bible study. Like a good evangelical I wrestled with the new testament texts, weighing one against another, but struggled to work out how that position could make sense. Requiring women to wear hats seemed anachronistic, but was there in the text as plain as the "must keep slient" bit. (Yes, you could argue about the nature of the head-covering, but that's a cultural digression, really). I came to my own view that if we were to encultureize the one, we should do the same for the other. On the other hand, I kind-of agreed with Michael Green (I forget which book) that whatever the New Testament texts meant, they rather implied that women should not hold the ultimate authority - by which, I largely mean the normative teaching role - in the assembly.

I never saw that as a deeply profound or important position. I could see that it affected certain women rather strongly ( :-) ), but it wasn't going to cause me to make or break fellowship with anyone. When the church fellowship I belonged to as an undergraduate split over the issue of women participating in open worship, I took the default position, which was to stay with the "no" people. But soon afterwards, I joined fellowships which periodically had women in the pulpit, and, indeed, in leadership.

All in all, I guess you could say my position, on my reading of scripture, was a "weak complimentarian" position. Weak, on two counts: I saw no obstacle to women leading worship, prayer, and so forth, only to normative (doctrine-espousing) preaching and leadership, and secondly, weak in the sense that when encountering the latter I was going to generally grin and bear it - perhaps to the point of deciding not to listen to the sermon, rather than accidentally not doing so :-). With all my heart, I wanted to believe something different - namely that in the late 20th century men and women were all called together to the work of the kingdom, and we should make no distinction - but I couldn't, in honesty, find it in scriputre to believe that, so I lived with that tension.

That came to a head somewhat when I was invited to join the leadership of my local church. As a regular member, I didn't have to go along with everything the church did. But I felt that as a leader, I couldn't endorse the ministry of women preaching, nor among the leadership, so it seemed wise to decline.

But by the second time I was asked, I was in the middle of learning about this crazy band of people who might go under the banner of "emerging church", or variations on that theme. Not only was what they were doing culturally relevant, it also began to imply a very different kind of postmodern exegesis of scripture. Being an academic, that kind of line of thinking wasn't totally alien to me - though my part of science has yet to grasp hold of it entirely. But I began to see (and I think I am still only beginning) how to apply that thinking to the way I read scripture: not as a rejection of Evangelical principles, but a development of them.

That does mean placing more weight on the culture in and into which the original text was written. And, indeed, it means realising that we don't always know as much as we'd like about that culture. For that matter, it means realising that many of the cherished ways of interpreting things are a matter of tradition alone: oft repetition really doesn't make them true.

So, on the matter of women's ministry, here's where I've ended up. Would Paul, in his day, have been dismissive of women in leadership and preaching? Yes, it seems so, at least in some places, at some times. Would Paul expect his teaching to last for all time? Most probably, yes. Would he therefore be upset with the practice of [my group of] Christians today? More than likely. Would he be right about that? No. So, right now, here, is there any problem with men and women sharing equally in all Kingdom activity? None at all.

The fourth question and answer is the kicker, as far as evangelicalism is concerned. What reason have I to reach such a conclusion? Why, the whole revelation of God. Faith, reason, scripture. We do lip-service to the idea that the bible needs interpreting, isn't simply a rule-book, isn't akin to the ever-unchanging Koran. But too frequently we fail to embrace what that really means. The Evangelical custom has been to take the text and twist it until it means what we want it to, even to the point of making a reading which plainly wasn't in the mind of the original author. Of course, finding meaning which wasn't known to the writer is a valid interpretative method (it applies, after all, to much OT prophecy), but to go so far as to say that that meaning is normative seems, well, several steps too far. I'm much happier with a "that was then; this is now" argument, even though it feels more tentative and provisional; less grounded.

I could be wrong, I know. But I have peace. I haven't stopped seeking after truth, and I don't think I've properly grasped the extent and shape of this. But I have stopped worrying.

I'm a mechanic

So www.typealyzer.com says I'm a mechanic. My blog represents the independent, problem-solving type.

So there you are.