more in sorrow

I've always had this love/hate thing with the Mark Driscoll phenomenon of Mars Hill in Seattle, and have blogged about this here, here, here (I even visited for myself), here, and probably several more. Often, my perspective has been one of wry amusement and bewilderment - and I keep resolving to avoid paying any more attention to what sometimes seems like a bizarre self-parody.

But lately, there's been a slew of rather more disturbing blogs, including

• Joyful Exiles  (the latest, and rather alarming, on several levels)
• Mars Hill Refuge (a whole collection of tales, rather too many to dismiss as the ramblings of malcontents)
• UnReformed (one man's experience, and aftermath)
• ... and countless media stories.

Mars Hill has also issued a Call for Reconciliation.

I suppose the latter is helpful, but, wait: how many churches of a few thousand members (or tens of thousands of members, is it now?) have sown so much discontent that they need to issue such a call?  Perhaps theirs is a righteous prophetic ministry, and the dissenters just can't handle it.  Perhaps not.

To this outsider, it seems like a change of phase, that the end game is on its way.  An organisation with this many structural tensions doesn't end well, unless you work very actively to resolve those tensions.  Driscoll has many followers, and I assume has strengthened the faith of many. Explosive fallings-out would have much fall-out. May the whole thing get unwound gently and with grace.  Lord, have mercy.

a matter of choice

The competing concerns of various kinds of rights seem to be seldom out of the news at the moment.  This is not least because of the government's consultation on marriage equality, and the fear of certain churchpeople that this is somehow (despite being explicitly not related to religious weddings) an attack on faith (if not civilization itself).  I've blogged on that topic before, and will try to do so again soon.

British law on equality protects against discrimination on the grounds of a number of protected characteristics.  These include age, sex, orientation, religion or belief.  I've seen quite a few comments suggesting that this is uneven, because many of these are innate, whereas religion is a matter of choice - and so religious discrimination is more forgiveable (or its protection a lower class of right) than, say, discrimination on the grounds of age or sex (or, at the most politically charged point, sexual orientation).  If religion is a choice - on a par with choosing MacDonald's over Burger King, or Mazda over Honda, or real ale over lager - then it is plainly not as worthy of respect as some other protected characteristics.

But is faith a matter of choice?

I can't speak for everyone, nor every kind of faith.  In our society which celebrates consumer choice, shopping for a religion, eventually choosing the Marks and Spencer version, seems to make sense.   But is it really like that?

It strikes me that if you believe in God - for whatever reason - it is very hard simply to choose to stop. You could announce that you no longer believe - but that could easily be a lie.  Belief strikes me as a deep-down - possibly irrational - confidence in something, which is hard to shake.  Perhaps the gulf between people of faith and those with none is that either struggles to comprehend the state of mind of the other.

Lots of people believe things on the basis of flimsy evidence, or indeed, believe in a counter-factual kind of way.  Decades (centuries?) of science teaching have failed to persuade large numbers of people that heavy and light objects fall at the same speed [ok; they fall with the same acceleration, to be more precise].  Belief is hard to shake - whether based on truth or falsehood, or something else.

I assume that this isn't a new thought: presumably the framers of statements of human rights gave status to belief alongside race and sex and the rest for higher reasons than being afraid of the religionists.  And yet it seems to be being missed by a lot of well-meaning but rather shrill people.  

I'm not for a moment arguing that people of faith should be able to ride roughshod over the sensibilities of gay people - but the converse is also problematic.  The way of Christ seems altogether a better account of how to bear with each other:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
(Philippians 2:3,4, NIV)

when is a religious ceremony necessarily non-religious?

Rather a lot of heat has been generated over the regulations to allow religious premises to be used for conducting Civil Partnership ceremonies, which come in to force this week, I think.

The gist of the so-called 'Ali Amendment' (named after Lord Ali, who proposed it), is that Civil Partnerships can be conducted in religious premises, if the couple in question wishes it, and the relevant faith community allows it.  The new regulations implement this law.

However, this is ill thought out, because the law also determines that a Civil Partnership cannot be conducted within the context of a religious service (just as, at a Civil Wedding, prayers and mentions of God are strictly regulated, and generally prohibited unless in a very vague sense in a poem, etc.).  By some oversight, that provision didn't get repealed.

Various groups - such as the Quakers - are overjoyed at this provision.  Others, much less so.  They are particularly concerned that the option of hosting these non-religious religious ceremonies might get turned into an obligation by equality legislation.  The Anglican lawyers think they're off the hook because the arrangements under which the CofE conducts weddings are very far removed from Civil Marriage - so no dint of inequality arises, because there is no direct comparison anyway.  [This seems to dwell on the letter, rather than the spirit of the law!].

Other churches feel themselves in a more vulnerable position, because both their ability to conduct weddings and the new opportunity to conduct Civil Partnerships (albeit without a religious service while the Registrar is present) are both licenced in the same way with the local Registrar's office (albeit via separate applications).  Though they couldn't be compelled to do something for which they are not licenced, it might be discriminatory for them not to apply for a licence, I guess.

All this seems Pharisaically hypothetical to me. The idea that two people are going to launch a lawsuit to enable them to host the 'happiest day of their lives' in premises where they are manifestly unwelcome seems remarkably far-fetched.  I suppose that after being turned down, some particularly vindictive person might seek damages - but to what end?

Perhaps it would be better to spend time not seeking safeguards, but in looking at what sort of damage this kind of argument does to the message of the gospel.  Jesus pronounced a lot of woe on religious leaders trying to uphold their legal system: to the rest of the population, not so much.  "Love your neighbour" he said - and who is my neighbour?

literally

Nice ::  (h/t Karl Hand).

disappointed

Wycliffe Hall is next door to my College.  Its Principal gives a surprisingly candid interview.  I'm disappointed, but not surprised, by much of what he says.  I'm uncertain as to why he is proud that Wycliffe Hall is a part of the University of Oxford, given that he rather clearly doesn't share the University's present values, on a range of topics.

A wise man said that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.  I wonder if that's relevant here?

blogger gone crazy

blogger is screwing up my blog layout.  I don't know why.  Sorry for the inconvenience.


[edit]

I think it's now fixed.   Please let me know if there are still problems with comments.

Review: Fall to Grace

Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self, and Society
Jay Bakker with Martin Edlund


Amazon tells me I bought this book in January, so the fact that I've just finished reading it is a matter of some embarrassment, but that seems to be my common complaint - too many books on my 'to read' pile.  So perhaps I'm missing the boat with this review - many others reviewed the book long ago.  But it's a good book, so here goes.

Bakker's surname will perhaps ring bells: his parents Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Televangelists in the name of "Praise the Lord (PTL) Ministries".  Probably more wholesome than some, the whole thing collapsed in the late 1980s, with stories (well-founded, sending Jim to jail) of financial irregularity, and stories (well-founded) of marital infidelity.  Jay was 13 at the time, went proverbially "off the rails" - meeting his dad out of prison, he describes himself as "eighteen, pierced, and a raging alcoholic".  His dad tried to help him reform - but instead he found himself digging a deeper hole.

Perhaps he over-plays that fall - I guess others have fallen further - and yet, it is an essential part of his tale.  Through the patient help of a friend or two, and the help of a "twelve-step program", he not only cleaned up his life, he discovered a real revelation of God's grace.  In place of the Christianity he thought he had received (despite some insightful pastoral wisdom from his mother, described later) founded on sin, guilt, and judgement, he learned instead a story of grace, of love, of acceptance.

Following this autobiographical introduction, he explores in rather more detail this theme of grace, tracing it through Paul and other biblical authors.  With the zeal of a convert, he describes both the theology and the way it's worked out in his experience.  He explores the ways in which the message of grace embodies the gospel so much better than the preaching of morality.  In one sense, it's pedestrian stuff - but so often it isn't lived, it's just theory.   Bakker puts this grace-laden gospel into practice, in the Christian community he now helps to lead, which meets in a bar and ministers to many on the fringes of polite society - precisely the kind of people that Jesus hung out with.

Besides this general interplay of theory and practice, of theology and a lived-out gospel, he spends a few later chapters exploring the outworking of this line of thinking in a few more detailed topics.  In particular, he revisits the way that the church has treated gay people.  Not only exploring the theology, he describes experiences in a national mission/conversation attempting to dispel fears and misconceptions (and his disappointment at the way Rick Warren and Saddleback church treated them).  He describes how and why the church he serves - Revolution Church - is gay-affirming.  He describes how this approach makes a difference for individual Christians.

This book is on the one hand an immensely personal book - the story of Jay Bakker's journey into understanding God's grace (I'm sure he wouldn't claim to have arrived yet).  And on the other, it is a gentle tour of one of the absolutely central themes of the gospel - one that too often we overlook because somehow it is too generous, too outrageous, too loving, too much at odds with our cold hearts.  His penultimate paragraph is this, it sums up the book rather well:

Grace is all about acceptance.  By accepting grace we accept God, we accept ourselves, we accept each other.

You probably gathered that I rather liked this book.  It's all about God's grace.  What's not to like?