review: The post-Evangelical

The Post-Evangelical
Dave Tomlinson

This book is proof that I am the late emerger: it was published in

1995, long before I had begun to think about most of the topics it

discusses: but it sums up rather well the state of my thinking about

two years ago.  Tomlinson was a big cheese in the British House

Church/New Church movement, at its zenith in the late 80s and early

90s perhaps: this book represents his decisive move away from that way

of viewing things, into a new, more tentative, dare I say humble, way

of looking at the world and the gospel. 

With the benefit of 15 years' hindsight, much of the narrative is

dated now.  Those were the days in the UK of evangelical resurgance -

there was a strong sense that evangelical Christianity had seen off

its rivals and arrested the decline in church membership. Chapter two,

indeed, is called 'we've never had it so good'.  The Evangelical

Alliance was at the height of its powers, Spring Harvest was the place

to be, and the Charismatics were no longer a fringe - as evidenced by

widespread interest in the Toronto Blessing. 

How dated that all sounds now.  The counterveiling concern of the time

was the growing phenomenon of the New Age.  Where has that gone?  I

suppose the sillier bits have died a natural death, and the rest has

become mainstream.  

Tomlinson's thinking - radical at the time - has some way to go before

entering the mainstream, even now, I think: though it is very much in

line with several threads of the emerging church conversation: albeit

from a refreshingly British perspective.  He talks of how, even at the

height of that rosy glow of cosy evangelicals in the early 1990s,

people were beginning to see cracks and problems; a growing

dissociation between the rhetoric and the realities of life.  

He talks of a growing chasm between Evangelical 'culture' and that of

the rest of society. The former tend to assume that this is all the

fault of the latter - but there are so many ways in which this is not

so.  He talks of new understandings of personal intellectual

development, of the fear of becoming 'wooly liberals', the impact of

postmodernsim and a new appraisal of what truth is all about.  

That leads to a chapter on how we understand the bible - surely a

totemic Evangelical issue - with a rather wonderful swift dismissal of

inerrancy as a waste of time.  The account is, however, far from

negative, full of fresh vision (for the time) of how the message of

Christ can be relevant for many in the 21st century.  This hopefulness

is surely attractive.

I'm glad I bothered to read this book, 'old' as it is.  This is a

great reminder of the wide range of threads feedings the present

conversation: and my own late engagement with it.  

Tomlinson has a later book, which I've quoted from here, but not yet

reviewed.  Some relections on it will follow soon.

practical ethics

Sydney's CityRail staff are not selling or checking tickets today, as part of a labour dispute. Vending machines will still sell tickets, but barriers will, apparently, be open.

So should I buy a ticket?  Perhaps I should discover some socialist principles I never knew I had, and out of solidarity with the workers, go out of my way to ride the trains for free.  Or perhaps I should pay a just price for services rendered.  Or perhaps I should just be cheap.  Ah, dilemmas.

review: St James Church, Sydney

Ok. This isn't going to become a habit.  But, well, on the theme of visiting outside my normal experience, here's the highest service I've been to in many a long year.     (again h/t to The Mystery Worshipper, for the headings, with whom I have no affiliation). 


The church: St James, King Street,  Sydney  
Denomination:  Anglican Church of Australia. 
The building: This is the oldest church in Sydney, apparently. Built in 1824, in the style that was common at the time - a big rectangular box, tastefully decorated.  The chancel was separated from the rest of us by railings and substantial flower arrangements, which made for quite a barrier.  The organ was big enough to have pipes on both sides of the chancel
The church: Sydney's Anglicans tend to be a low church evangelical lot: St James is anything but.  This is Anglicanism at its most ritual, with not just a choir and processions, but incense too - I think the service would have been at least five minutes shorter if it weren't for having to pause to cense things.
The neighborhood: This is about as city centre as you can get - surrounded by banks and businesses, and the city's central Hyde Park.
The cast: It felt like a cast of thousands: Revd Dr John Beer (honorary associate priest) was preacher and celebrant; there were several other robed clergy, plus four or five robed servers, a choir of about eight voices, and a couple of laypeople who did the reading and led the intercessions.
The date & time: Sunday 8th August, 11am. 

What was the name of the service?
Choral Eucharist

How full was the building?
About 20% full, I'd say.  The congregation probably numbered 70 or so - plus the 15 or so in the chancel!
Did anyone welcome you personally?
Someone smilingly gave me the books/sheets I needed.  Many people greeted me at the peace.
Was your pew comfortable?
Fine - I didn't really notice, so it must have been, although a lot of the service was done standing up.  Standing for the confession seemed, well, odd.
How would you describe the pre-service atmosphere?

Quiet and reserved.

What were the exact opening words of the service?

Christ is the King, O friends rejoice - the processional hymn, which began without much warning besides a few chords from the organ.  The first spoken words were "Welcome to St James' church this morning"; the first liturgical words were "In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit".

What books did the congregation use during the service?

The English Hymnal (melody edition), a 'Eucharist at St James' booklet, and a pewsheet for the day, with the propers printed.

What musical instruments were played?
Organ.  Lots and lots of organ.  

Did anything distract you?
The organ.  

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

Full-on classic High Anglican. It'd be hard to get higher - save perhaps that the communion was in ordinary bread, and not a wafer: I don't know if that's a local decision or an imposition from the diocese.  The setting that the choir sang was in Latin - no concession to Reform here.  

Exactly how long was the sermon?
About 15 minutes, I'd say.
On a scale of 1-10, how good was the preacher?
Content: 8; delivery, hm,  unstructured.  4.

In a nutshell, what was the sermon about?

The gospel reading was about storing up treasure in heaven, and this was the point of departure for the sermon: contrasted with the spectre of Antiques Roadshow or Cash in the Attic.  What is the treasure? It is to reach out with God's love.   [I'm selling it short here - there were lots of good thoughts in the sermon; I just couldn't quite string together an argument or a narrative from them.]

Which part of the service was like being in heaven?
The contemplation and space which structured, unhurried liturgical worship allows: to focus your thoughts on the one you have come to worship.

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

The organ.   Really, I love organ music in its place.   But the communion setting was 'Plainsong: missa de Angelis, with Organ Alternatim'.  The latter involved long organ solos, interspersed with unremarkable music for the choir (the choir were rather good).  I say interspersed, but even when the choir were singing, the organ dominated (moreso in the Psalm than in the setting, actualy) .  Several of the pieces ended with particularly noisy, long, organ crescendos - just about plausible in the gloria, but truly out of place in the benedictus.

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

Shy old me, I took off quite quickly, with a brief genuflection (in contrast to the full bows that were around me).

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

That's a tough one.  I get the feeling that there is some genuine spiritual life at work there.  I could fit into the choir thing - if they'd have me.  Doing the liturgical thing properly has always struck me as making more sense than the half-hearted attempts of some who are lower down the candle.   But that service is pure theatre.  It's more like a living museum than a way to engage with the good people of Sydney in 2010.  The gospel procession, complete with incense, feels like something out of the middle ages (well, I suppose it probably is, quite literally).  I'm glad we can worship in continuity with our forebears,  but if we want to be missional, we need some point of connection.  So on the one hand, I'd say 7; but on the other - and the hand that would win - I'd say 2.

Did the service make you feel glad to be a Christian?
Yes; in the sense that we inhabit a big tent, and are in historical continuity with the church at rest.

What one thing will you remember about all this in seven days' time?
The memorial on the wall beside me, to a gentleman who was first a civil servant in the colony of New South Wales, and rose to become the first Speaker in the NSW legislative assembly.  And to his wife, who bore seventeen children, nine of whom survived to erect the memorial.  [Hm. Wikipedia thinks someone else was the first Speaker.  Oh well.]

what's in a name?

The issue of who is allowed to marry whom seems to keep rumbling round American politics - and other places too.  As far as I can tell - and I'm not hugely widely read on this - the issue in California comes down not to whether two men are allowed to tie the knot, but whether it's deemed 'marriage' or 'domestic partnership'.  Though I'm sure that matters very much to some of the people involved, it does strike me that there's a kind of law of diminishing returns setting in when you try to make a distinction.

In the UK, 'civil partnerships' carry just about all the same rights and privileges as marriages (there are some peculiarities about how they are enacted, and the permitted role of churches in those, but it looks like those will soon be resolved).  The result is that those entering civil partnerships seem invariably to call them weddings, and to use all the customary vocabulary thereafter.  That seems to make sense, and be unobjectionable: there are many official functions which are known colloquially by words other than the government term; here is another.  Conversely, if calling civil partnerships marriages would make their participants happier, then it doesn't seem as if society really has very much to lose by doing so.

Suggestions that making that equivalence undermines 'true' marriage seem quite unsustained by evidence: it's not as if people will confuse one for the other.  It's not even as if those partnerships/marriages form a significant part of the total, still less that their existence should in some way change the nature of a more traditional kind of marriage in some way.  Some will argue that whereas a civil partnership can be a matter of civil law, marriage is chiefly a religious notion.  I'd like to see the anthropological evidence for that - it seems most implausible to me.  Even from the Christian perspective, it's not as if the bible gives a thorough-going account of marriage: how one comes into being, and precisely what to do with all the unusual corner cases that arise.  It gives us instead pictures of love and mutual fidelity - and a picture of the church relating to Christ.

It seems to me - not that I'm an anthropologist either - that marriage doesn't 'belong' to the state or the church.  It is - rather self-evidently - a primitive notion that pre-dates either of those.  Marriage is what happens when two people come together - in the presence of their community - and commit themselves to each other.  Marriage is agreed in front of your friends, in front of your family, in front of the family friends who helped in your formative years.  It is cemented with prayer if prayer is important to you - and good wishes if they matter to you.  It is a time of happiness and rejoicing - because those being married are happy with each other.

There's a notion gaining popularity which says the civil union and the wedding should be separated - let the state do the first, and the church (or whatever gathered religious community you wish), if you wish, do the second.  That has a certain clarity to it, and it would surely let some politicians out of a tight spot in allowing that all and sundry can do the first, in whatever combination they wish, but that the second happens on whatever terms the church (or whatever...) chooses.   But it seems a cop-out to me.  It seems to concede that spiritual life is an optional extra, not inherent to life itself.  It seems like a retreat - as if the church wants to say to the wider society 'we have no interest in you, as long as we can keep our doctrine pure'.  It seems unwise and unhealthy.

What if history had been different.  What if we had taken Paul's words

"accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God."

seriously?  What if Christians were known  as those who brought good news to the poor; release for the oppressed; and all the rest?  I can dream.

information runs the world

I know I'm on a daily blogging roll - and it can't continue indefinitely. But today was rather interesting: despite being on holiday, I went to visit a colleague in one of Sydney's universities.

We fell to discussing some of the foundational theories of our discipline.  He reminded me of a perspective I've heard of but not studied: namely that the theory of information (best associated with Claude Shannon) is regarded by some as a better grand theory of the universe than particle physics.  A bit of googling tells me that this line of thought is known as digital physics (intrestingly, that wikipedia page doesn't, as I write, mention Shannon: proof that wikipedia is ever deficient).

Why is this of interest here?   Simply because this line of discussion led my interlocutor to invoke an information-theoretic notion of God.  As a young computer scientist, although I hed long recognised the hand of God in the beauty of mathematics, I never would have thought that my discipline would have anything of interest to say about theism.  It's all rather exciting.

There are two reasons not to go into details here.  One is that I don't understand them all.  The other is that I don't think that any of you, dear regular readers, are information scientists.  I'd be happy to continue the line of thought further, and clearly have some more reading to do.  The idea is not unrelated to something raised by John Lennox, which I mentioned when I reviewed his book: "an appeal to information theory and the Church-Turing thesis, to show that the initial creation of life itself necessarily breaks everything we know about computability." [Wow.  I don't think I've ever quoted myself before :) ].


This mathematical corner of philosophy is close to my heart.  I wouldn't want to over-claim, but the very notion that deep questions of metaphysics can arise in my professional life is rather exciting. That's all.

review: The Great Emergence

The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why
Phyllis Tickle

I should begin with a confession. When I first started reading about the emerging (emergent, etc.) church I saw the name of Phyllis Tickle, and kind-of imagined that she was some kind of spoof. British comedienne Caroline Ahern has a character Mrs Merton who hosts a saucy chat-show.  I quite thought that Phyllis was another Mrs Merton.  I couldn't be more wrong.

Tickle is written up as 'founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly':  there's no obvious academic credentials here, but the book is thoughtful and well-read.  It's a popular rather than scholarly book, yet is not simplistic in its treatment: it is easy to follow, but does not trivialize the subject material (I have no idea what a professional social historian might make of it).

For this is a broad-sweep social history Christianity: specifically, the branch which became Western Christianity.  I say 'social history' but it's mixed, really: there's an underlying philosophical thread, too.  The central idea is that every 500 years or so, the church has undergone profound change - and that we are in the middle of the latest one.  The sixteenth century saw the Great Reformation; the eleventh, the Great Schism, and the sixth, er, Gregory the Great, who was the final tipping point between the Roman Empire of antiquity, and the new shape of Christendom in the Dark Ages.  Yes, the last of those is a little arbitrary, and that slightly undermines the 500-year argument, but let's run with it anyway.

Those huge upheavals took, of course, about a century to work themselves through.  They coincided with changes in dominant philosophy, learning, science, technology.  This is not a simple story of progress,. a single narrative leading to specific goals: reformation was matched with counter-reformation, for example.  The Great Reformation gives Tickle her main template for studying the Great Emergence: discussion of the earlier upheavals (she calls them 'rummage sales') is quite limited.  The model and analogy works, though.

So the present rummage sale is portended by voices like Darwin and Freud; carried and discussed by mass communication technologies which have profoundly changed how individuals interact with centres of power, and so on.  Onto this canvas comes 20th century physics (and maths, which she overlooks) with deep profound uncertainty in its heart, technologies and emancipated lifestyles which have disrupted traditional families, and social movements like a-religious 'self help'.

Against that context, what is happening to the church?  There's a big movement to the centre - a loss of many traditional barriers among believers - and a counter-movement to cling to the certainties which distinguish one tribe from another: that centre surrounded by people at varying levels of emergence, from traditionalists through progressives to 'hyphenates'. The latter are the tongue-in-cheek epithets of Angl-imergents, Presby-mergents, and the rest who tend towards the new centre, but want to bring something of their heritage.    (Personally, I've .been disappointed never to come across any fellow Brethr-emergents).

The final chapter sets out 'The Way Ahead'.  I won't steal the plot by telling you what happens :) It's strangely ethereal: the book seems suddenly to run out of steam.  I kind-of expected a conclusion, a reflection on the shape of the Great Emergence, a discussion of how much further it has left to run.   There's a  little of this, but largely the reader is left to draw their own conclusions: this chapter is the most speculative, and the least satisfactory.


Over all, this is a great counterpart to  'The New Christians' which I reviewed recently: not dwelling on what emerging churches are up to, but exploring the context and reasons why such things are arising.  The notion that this is as big a shift in Christendom as the Reformation was is something which you can pick up in McLaren, also:  Tickle doesn't claim any originality for either the ideas or even the formulation she presents - there are extensive footnotes.  Of course, some have claimed that 'emergent' is running out of steam: Tickle's perspective, I think, and one I share, is that change is undoubtedly happening, and it will be far-reaching and has gone past the point of no return.   I don't think we can quite picture where it will land, where stability will arise, but there's no going back.

post-modern dominant narratives

Since I'm on a roll as regards blogging, here goes another...


I visited Australia's National Museum in Canberra this week. It's a curious place.

Constructed in the last decade, here is a museum of the current age. It is far from being constructed along 19th century lines, with separate galleries for natural history, technology, artifats from colonial days,and so on. Instead, there is a blended presentation, exhibits arranged according approximately to a time-line of Australian existence.  Many are presented alongside words from those for whom they were of particular significance: the whole impact is multi-voiced, with a sense of the rich diversity of cultural heritage.

And yet, there is unmistakably a single framing narrative.  The Story of Australia --- that time line --- is even set out at the beginning, in an expensively-produced multimedia presentation (complete with multiple screens and seats on a rotating dais).  Without any narration, it shows a series of images (many at once, on different
screens), but the totality is the single Australian Story.  [For those unfamiliar, The Story is one of a unique and diverse ecology, with the Aboriginal people living in harmony with it; European colonial settlers bring great dislocation and more than a little pain; eventually colonialism declines and Australia takes its place as a nation in an increasingly interconnected world; previous hurts are gradually diminished through reconciliation with the Aboriginal peoples. This is The Story; there is no other.]

There is essentially just one path through the museum: it follows The
Story. The perspective is almost entirely a social history: the
nautral history, for example, is presented through the narrative of
those who helped to understand it. We learn about the duck-billed
platypus from the tale of the fellow who established that though it is
a mammal, it does lay egges: he proved this extravagently by
collecting a thousand of them to study.

This presentation leaves little room for science, or anthropology, or,
indeed, much rigorous mind-stretching at all. I was reluctantly coping
with that lack, when I came upon a gallery devoted to the Aboriginal
Australians. Here, the over-arching story was The Dreaming: the
Aborignial mythical creation tale.  Here, we had a largely
uninterpreted presentation of Aboriginal myth and culture, including
the poentially surprising information that Aborginies have lived in
Australia "since time immemorial" (because that is how they conceive
of themselves).

Presenting that history is fine, but it did seem a little reminiscent
of what I've heard of being in the Creationist Museum. It's an
interesting story, but quite out of keeping with scientific - or even
historical - scholarship. There seems a missed opportunity here to
present - perhaps in a separate gallery - what we know about early
migration into this continent.  There was a tantalizing mention of
some cave paintings which date from the time "when the sea-level rose
150 metres and changed the whole landscape": but no mention of
time-scale (nor facsimiles of the paintings - I recall that
photographs of these are taboo).  An interpretation of the changes to
the landscape over millenia, illustrated by aboriginal artifacts,
would have been fascinating.

My point, and my fear, is that it is too easy to allow acceptance of
many voices to become a substitute for critical thought.  Mistreatment
of Aboriginal people has made their culture and history politically
sensitive, of course, but I fear that to refuse to ask rigorous
questions is a cop-out.  There were lots of children in the museum:
I'm pretty certain that they went away with The Story strongly
impressed upon them.  I'd be quite surprised if many went away
stimulated to think hard thoughts about how we know what we know as a
society, how to organise ideas, and how to make sense of the world we
live in.  That seems like a decadent waste of a museum; a true missed
opportunity.