[74.1] NO SCIENCE WITHOUT SENSIBILITY

There was a slightly odd discussion about science and public policy on BBC Radio 4 this morning. In the wake of public health panics over matters such as the MMR triple-vaccine, the 'Today' programme asked how the confidence of the general public could be regained by the scientific community, which was sometimes seen to be too influenced by corporate and commercial interests.

This, of course, is an important and valid question. The marketisation of society, and with it of scientific endeavour, raises profoundly problematic moral issues. How can control and accountability be maintained in an era of weakening states and boundary-defiant technology?

Unfortunately, the axis of the exchange between Kathy Sykes, Collier Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Bristol, and Tracey Brown, spokesperson for the lobbying organisation Sense About Science, turned on a naive fact-value distinction - not helped by the interviewer, who seemed to think people wanted scientists to be "desiccated fact machines". It was as if Kantian and (more importantly) post-Kantian theory had never really happened.

In fairness, Sykes was well aware of this. But Brown's advocacy of evidence-based science as 'opinion free' seemed monological. Empiricism is an important tool, and rightly used can help guard against extending ideas beyond the explanatory territory where they first emerged. But wrongly used (that is, when it denies non-empirical factors) it can do the opposite. Seeing it as the only form of rationality is therefore dangerous. What we 'find' when we investigate analytically is conditioned by a range of social, cultural and political factors. One does not have to be a raving philosophical anti-realist to recognize this.

As Kathy Sykes rightly said, in the debate about the application of science and technology we need to hear from scientists about the evidence they are weighing, and also about how they see that evidence shaping (or being shaped by) wider public concerns. And we also need to engage with other perspectives on the same issues.

Mary Midgely has some thought-provoking and trenchant observations to make about over-reductive approaches to the public role of science in her new book The Myths We Live By. She has also made some useful interventions in the discussion about the different languages of religion and the social and material sciences, of course.

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[73.2] ACCEPTING EVANGELICALS

As the argument within the churches about human sexuality rages on, it is always good to see people who refuse to play 'the tribal game' and whose inclusivity is rooted in (no doubt painful) theological wrestling. I'm thinking of the recently formed Accepting Evangelicals who, along with Courage and the Evangelical Fellowship for Lesbian and Gay Christians, give the lie to the idea that this is some kind of simple war between 'liberals' and 'conservatives'.

Given the vituperative climate, AE are a brave bunch of people, too. But no-one who has worked with Benny Hazlehurst (as I was fortunate enough to do in Southwark Diocese in the mid-90s) could doubt his faith or integrity. Not being an evangelical I can't join. But I certainly send AE my best wishes and prayers. Their self-explanation is as follows:

Accepting Evangelicals is a new network of Evangelical Christians who believe that it is ok to be both Evangelical and open to accepting or affirming views on homosexuality.

It is both national and ecumenical and welcomes anyone who would call themselves an Evangelical. Among its founders are Benny Hazlehurst and Paul Roberts, both Anglican vicars & members of General Synod, and Jeremy & Bren Marks, founders of ‘Courage’.

"We want to create a space for Evangelicals to be able to sign up to an accepting or affirming position on the gay issue without having to stop being Evangelicals!” said Benny Hazlehurst. “We are passionate about the Gospel, and believe in the authority of Scripture, but are prepared to accept that there is more than one way to interpret the Bible on this issue.”

Accepting Evangelicals believe that many Evangelicals are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with some of the hard-line statements that are being issued on their behalf. The network also wants to engage constructively with those who are opposed to the acceptance of faithful, loving same-sex partnerships.

Membership of the network is free, and both people and churches can join up via the web site www.acceptingevangelicals.org/membership info.htm We need to break the myth that being a pro-gay Evangelical is a contradiction in terms so if you call yourself Evangelical, come and visit the web site, join up, and give us your feed back.”

My own musings on Christian faith and sexuality are here.

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[73.1] ON PROPERLY NOT FORGETTING

From Embodying Forgiveness, by L. Gregory Jones, published in 2002 by ECONI:

"Easter is not about un-crucifying Christ. It's not about forgetting the past. It's about redeeming the past. There is a crucial difference between worshipping Christ un-crucified and worshipping Christ crucified and risen. He comes bearing the mark of nails. The risen Christ returns with a judgment that does not condemn but offers grace, offers forgiveness, even to those who crucified him. And so it is that God's definitive word - even in the face of being rejected by humanity - is 'Yes'."

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[72.1] A VOICE FROM PORTLAND

It was a great pleasure to meet Johan Maurer earlier this year - both in Birmingham, where he was based at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre for a number of months, and briefly in Exeter, where I live. Johan has recently entered the blogosphere with Can you believe...?. I shall add him to my regular reads. His current research revolves around the important link between the Quaker testimonies and evangelism. We enjoyed some wonderful conversations about the state of the world, the nature of Christian belief and the centrality of peace witness to the Gospel.

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[71.1] CHALLENGING FAITH

Rowan Williams delivered a remarkable speech at the al-Azhar al-Sharif Mosque in Cairo last week. The full text is here and my Ekklesia news item includes excerpts. First, the Archbishop issued an unambiguous statement of the incompatibility between acts of violence and terror on the one hand, and the practice of true faith on the other. Second, and with great humility, he drew attention to the differences as well as the convergences between Christian and Muslim understandings of God, seeking to explain the significance of Trinitarian thought and to expound its deeper meaning in the context of the offence it occasions. In a climate in which Christian leaders are tempted towards either intemperance or avoidance, Williams' explicit but contextually (and humanly) sensitive approach provides a useful model for the congruence between testimony and dialogue in an otherwise dangerously polarised environment.

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[70.1] THE MESSAGE OF BESLAN

This from Bill Wiser in 'For the sake of the children' on the Bruderhof site:

"Beslan is a call to America to remember the candles, the flowers, and the grief that united us in the aftermath of 9/11. On this day, if we turn down the volume, our ears will catch an echo of that still, small voice once again. We may not know where the road will take us, but we owe it to the world’s children to return to the starting point before we have gone so far that we can’t turn back."

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[69.1] RACIAL JUSTICE SUNDAY

Hundreds of churches of all shapes and sizes have marked Racial Justice Sunday today, and initiative promoted and supported by the Churches' Commission for Racial Justice of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, the official ecumenical body.

The aim is to:

* raise awareness of each other's cultures and experiences
* understand ourselves, our own roots and identity
* understand the feelings of people from different cultures
* become more inclusive and outward-looking
* become more welcoming
* encourage all members to contribute to the service of the community
* remember that whatever our skin colour, ethnicity or culture we are all children of God
* deepen our understanding of being ‘one in Christ’
* face up to the challenge of living this out in practice
* tackle injustice, not ignore it

See also my news item about RJS on Ekklesia.

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[68.2] 2004 FUTURE CHURCH CONFERENCE IN UK

20-21 October 2004
High Leigh Conference Centre
Hoddesdon Herts EN11 8SG, UK

THEME: "Sharing Christian Faith & Values in a Post-Christendom Context"
with Dr Stuart Murray-Williams
Conference Accompanier: Dr Helen Cameron

* How do we share Christian faith in a post-Christian climate?
* How do we share faith respectfully and with integrity?
* How do we share faith with people of different and no faith?

The Conference is inter-active with speakers, accompanier reflections, question time and some buzz groups. Expect an inter-generational, multi-cultural approach with British and Irish input.

Further details here. Book early, says organiser Terry Tennens.

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[68.1] REMEMBERING 9/11

"Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself" remarks the poet Carol Ann Duffy. It's an echo of Paul's discourse in Romans 8, whereby the Spirit articulates the unarticulatable on our behalf. No doubt this is how many will be feeling today - both those effected by the terrible events in New York in 2001, and those throughout the world whose lives have been torn apart by the war and terror that has been its tragic continuation. Whatever the rhetoric of the White House and Downing Street to justify their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the world most certainly does not feel a safer place. The questions about where we are and where we are going as global societies only deepen. But we can continue to strive for justice amidst the mess. And we can remember and pray.

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[67.2] MAKING PEACE ON TERRORISM?

In the wake of the horrors of Beslan prayer and silence feels the best course... But as the tragedy unfolded I was working on a long-overdue column for the Ekklesia site. It's called 'Making peace on terrorism?'...

' “To clutch at everything or to throw away everything is the reaction of those who [whether they know it or not] believe fanatically in death.”

'So declared Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian who faced the horrors of Nazism without ducking or diving – and who paid the price with his life.

'Sadly, ‘clutching’ and ‘throwing’ seems almost all we are habituated to do as the latest example of the awful logic of terrorism stares cruelly out of our TV screens in those unforgiving scenes of carnage from Beslan.

'When upwards of 350 people, many children, are killed through a school hostage stand-off in a once obscure border town, no-one knows quite what to think anymore.

'The numbing heartlessness of tactics like this also anaesthetises rational thought among politicians and sensible debate in the popular media.' More here.

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[67.1] TEXTS OF TERROR

I Came across Maggi Dawn's superb weblog recently. And I noticed, inter alia, this moving poem by Rosie Mills. Some of you will recognise 'Texts of Terror' as the title of a marvellous book by biblical scholar Phylis Trible - published in the US by Fortress Press in the Overtures to Biblical Theology series, at the end of the 1980s IIRC...


For all the Godawful Bits of the Bible

(For Sara Maitland)

For the texts of terror:
For the rape and the pillage and the shame
Of these sanctified words;
For the whatthefuckdowedowiththis verses
That make no sense at all
To us, now;
For their endurance in our lives;
For the utter brokenness
Of God's human words;
For knowing how these words have
Prevented love,
Stifled life,
Stunted growth;
For still somehow reading on.

And yet,
In spite, or even because of all this,
There are theologies
Or irreverence and mischief
Winking their way into our lives;
Playful theologies of craft
Weaving the weft against the warp,
Shuttling untold designs
Into new patterns;
Theologies of art and lies
Telling us stories we never knew.

These painful words will endure,
Or maybe be forgotten.
How we inhabit their shadowIs no longer a question
For those who think they know,
But for the loving potters,
the waiting poets,
the holy clowns.

(c) Rosie Miles

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[66.1] A LONG HISTORY OF HORROR

The tragedy of Beslan is part of a long cycle of violence and horror. This from the London Free Press in an article yesterday:

'President Vladimir Putin faces the same dilemma that earlier led czars and Communist commissars to seek "solutions" to the Chechen problem that were as brutal as any in the annals of warfare. ...

'Gen. Mikhail Yermolov, who led Russian forces in a ruthless 30-year campaign to conquer the Caucasus region in the 19th century, called the Chechens "congenital rebels." ...

'Yermolov eventually subdued Chechnya by incinerating its forests to deny cover to the guerrillas, and by executing dozens of Chechen hostages for every Russian soldier he lost.

'In 1944 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin accused the Chechens of collaborating with the Nazis and had the entire nation -- half a million people -- deported to Central Asia. An estimated 150,000 Chechens died during the forced winter march.

' "Deportation and the exile that followed united the Chechens, in bitterness, sorrow and rage," says Vladimir Dimitryev, an expert with the Russian Institute of Ethnology. "We are reaping the harvest today." '

CTBI offers the following prayers from its new Remembrance material, Beyond Our Tears.

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[65.2] THE DEMANDS OF LOVE

"To love is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one…Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfish­ness…The only alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers, all the perturbations of love is hell." (C. S. Lewis)

I have a distinctly ambivalent relationship to C. S. Lewis. His children's novels passed me by, I confess. And his Christian writings mainly came upon me when I was working in adult theological education, trying gently to wean people off some of the faux apologetic strategies that seemed a by-product of their encounter with his brilliant but narrowly scholastic mind.

What is more remarkable about Lewis than his allegorical accounts of faith, in my fragile opinion, is the depth of insightful feeling that can emerge (in quotations like this) from one so evidently steeped in moralism. It's like a breaking free, much as Kierkegaard's disturbing inner repression gave rise to flights of hopeful imagination. God is no respecter of our constraints.

This quotation seems particularly apt in an age of obsessive consumption - the new moralism for the post-moral.

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[65.1] AFTER THE HIATUS

Sorry to have been away for so long. Other issues, other priorities. I aim to update the blog a couple of times a week from herein. We'll see how it goes.

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[64.1] TO DREAM AGAIN...

The National Council of Churches of Christ USA has forwarded copies of this flash movie to mark the anniversary of the birthday of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr., and to recall his inspiring legacy at another time of global turmoil and division.

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[63.1] WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY 2004

O God, Holy and Eternal Trinity,
We pray for your Church in all the world.
Sanctify its life;
Renew its worship;
Empower its witness;
Redeem its mission;
Heal its divisions;
Challenge its wrong doings;
Place it on the side of the excluded;
Make visible its true unity.

Through Christ, who was broken and restored. Amen.

Further daily resources here.

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[62.1] MAKING CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM CONVERSATION POSSIBLE

Post 9/11 there has been an unprecedented growth in interest in Islam among educated Westerners. But those sections of the church whose narrative is driven by fear and suspicion are growing in strength, too. Appalling (and woefully factually-deficient) books are emerging -- David Pawson's 'The Challenge of Islam to Christians', for example, has been selling in extraordinary numbers. Even mainstream religious publishers have put out titles perpetrating hugely simplistic theses on an unsuspecting public.

How refreshing then, to see a constructive and critical piece in the mainstream media from Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester: a Christian leader of orthodox and conservative temperament whose personal and episcopal background in Pakistan enhances the authority of his words. On the question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God, he says:

"The usual Muslim term for God, Allah, is pre-Islamic and related to both Jewish and Christian terms widely in use at the time. It is true that the Prophet Mohammed gave it a particular significance in his preaching of monotheism, but the term is still the ordinary word for God used by many Arab Christians.

"There is also social, as well as etymological, significance. In most parts of the Muslim world, language about God is common currency, used in greeting and thanking people, in praying for their welfare and so on. If Christians and Muslims were not referring to the same supreme being, daily conversation, let alone theological dialogue, would become impossible.

"[The Qur'an] claims continuity with the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and with the revelation given to the Hebrew prophets and to Jesus. If dialogue is even to begin, this claim must be taken at face value; the dialogue itself will reveal the extent of similarities and differences."


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[61.1] RESEARCHING FAITH AND SOCIETY IN EUROPE

The Centre for Multireligious Studies at the University of Aarhus in Denmark has applied for a European Union grant to link with 22 research institutions in different European countries examining the impact of the growth and development of religious affiliation (not least among Muslims) on attitudes in public life. Previous cross-national research has not analysed migration and its consequences for changes in the perception of religion, researchers at the University of Aarhus say.

Religion has become much more important in politics, declared the Centre's director, Viggo Mortensen. "It is not only about the three to seven per cent of Muslims living in Europe, but also about the majority's re-evaluation of their values regarding religion, due to the changes in society of which immigration is a part," he said recently. (Ecumenical News International)

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[59.1] MIXING RELIGION AND POLITICS

The use of Godly rhetoric by politicians tends to send a chill down my spine, even if I have some sympathy for the politician in question. I've written elsewhere about keeping the wrong kind of religion out of politics and vice versa. This is not the same thing at all as seeking to keep the two categories apart: it's a question of who speaks for whom, how, why and on what basis.

For example, the Christian community may rightly choose to be deeply engaged in critiquing the assumptions of faith language in the political domain. A prime example is President Bush's application of hymns and biblical phrases to name America -- when they come from contexts intending to denote something quite different: a community of all nations, not a vested national interest.

Nevertheless, the entwining of discourses in the public arena is not something that can simply be wished away. And as Amy Sullivan ('Do the Democrats have a prayer?', Washington Monthly) has pointed out, if the forthcoming election in the US will not be determined by religious issues it shows every sign of being swayed by them. She notes:

"Bush and his political guru Karl Rove understand something very important about the religious vote. The President has solidified his standing among highly committed evangelicals, who, though originally wary of his conservative credentials, have been rewarded with the appointment of such religious conservatives as John Ashcroft to top administration jobs as well as through grants distributed under the faith-based initiative. But Bush has maxed out his support with conservative evangelicals; 84 percent voted for him in the 2000 election. To win reelection, he will need to hold onto the votes of another group which supported him in 2000: religious moderates--one of the least-appreciated swing constituencies in the country, and one whose allegiance is more up for grabs than most people realize. They include Muslims, most Catholics, and a growing number of suburban evangelicals, all of whom are devout, but many of whom are uncomfortable with Bush's ties to the religious right, whose agenda--from banning abortion to converting Muslims--is deeply disconcerting to them. Many of these "swing faithful" have also begun to wonder if Bush's rhetoric of compassion and justice will be matched by policy substance."

For this reason, she suggests, Howard Dean will need to grasp 'the religious agenda' for the Democrats. By way of inspiration, she says:

"When the Rt Rev John Chane, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, took to the pulpit this March [2003], his sermon sounded like a blueprint for the sort of religiously minded critique of the Bush administration that Democrats might want to study. Imploring parishioners to take seriously their baptismal vows to "strive for justice" in the world, Bishop Chane raised the example of the Bush administration budget and found it wanting. "We are embarking on a draconian program of social welfare," he declared, highlighting cuts in services to protect the poor, the sick, and the young. "This is not at all what Jesus Christ meant when he said, 'Suffer the little children.'" At the end of the sermon, the congregation spontaneously burst into applause in a very un-Episcopalian response to the bishop's political call to arms."

However, it is important to understand that Chane's address was not intended to endorse a particular party or programe. The critique he offered is as applicable to Democrats as Republicans (though they may be found wanting in different ways and to different degrees). It was, if anything, a comment on the fruits of a political duopoly which has predominantly served corporate interests and excluded the marginalised. It was also designed specifically to galvanise Christians to act on the vision of justice which is meant to characterise church, the ekklesia. For it is only out of the distinctive practices of a peculiar, all-embracing community (one demandingly critiqued by the Gospel it conveys) that a faith-speaking politics might look as if it had integrity. This could have significant ramifications on the way people behave when they enter the ballot box, but it is not prescribable by the interests that vie within the existing political system.

(Thanks to the Religious Left mailing list for drawing this article to my attention.)

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[58.2] WE DO NOT OWN THE FUTURE

A prayer/poem that I return to again and again is one attributed to the late Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, who was murdered while celebrating mass in the Chapel of the Hospital de la Divina Providencia on 24 March 1980.

In Prophets Of A Future Not Our Own, Romero writes:

"This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

"We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest."

(See full prayer here)

The Religious Task Force on Central America notes:

"Every year, in celebrations throughout El Salvador, among Christian communities animated by catechists in the countryside, in local churches, at Romero's tomb in the cathedral, people recite his words once again from the homilies that gathered up for them and reflected back to them the truth of their situation. This was a remarkable thing for the poor of El Salvador -- to hear someone pronounce their reality, to name the causes of their suffering, to denounce the injustice, to speak to their hopes and help them believe that it was right and good to believe that these hopes should be realized in this world -- that indeed this was at the heart of the meaning of the incarnation of Jesus Christ."

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[57.1] SHOPPING FOR SPIRITUALITY

An interesting Washington Post piece on the media's treatment of American politicians' religious beliefs. The article is by Steven Waldman, former reporter and editor for Newsweek and US News & World Report, now editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.

In The Candidates' Spiritual Path he points out that "[t]wenty to 30 percent of Americans now practice a faith different from the one in which they were raised, according to sociologist Robert Wuthnow. And a much higher percentage have switched houses of worship. For 20 years now, sociologists have documented how Americans have become 'consumers' of spirituality. Changing faiths or churches could mean someone is flighty, but more often it means that they take their spiritual journey seriously enough to reassess it constantly. This is what baby boomers do. They shop. And serious shoppers are often quite intense."

This is true. Whether consumerism is a good model for spirituality, is, of course, another matter entirely -- and one which should not simply be conflated with change and development of convictions in an open culture. (See also Shopping for God, A Sceptic's Search for Value in the Spiritual Market Place by Rowland Howard.)

One of the circumstances that has sparked this debate is the scrutiny applied to Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Dean, who was raised Catholic, switched to the Episcopal Church, then linked with Congregationalism and is raising his child in the Jewish faith in accordance with his wife's tradition.

Waldman goes on: "Another misconception that has crept into the media analysis of the candidates' religious statements is the idea that Americans approach religion with the mind-set of theologians. Thus, Dean and [Wesley] Clark were maligned not only because they shifted a lot but because they seemed to do so for superficial reasons. Dean, it's often been noted, switched churches because of a dispute over building a bike path. Clark left the Catholic Church in anger over the anti-military rhetoric of a priest. Such trivial matters!"

Well, recycling your spirituality is one thing, perhaps. But a Christian leader standing out against militarism in this world climate? That's seriously encouraging. And to anything other than the shopping-basket mentality, very far from trivial.

[Thanks to Atrios/Eschaton for drawing my attention to this story]

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[56.1] THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

In a spare moment today (one of those occasions when you feel almost morally compelled to do something indisputably non-meaningful) I flicked through the style section of a well-known national newspaper. Usually I find this sort of thing depressing. For a start most of the ‘décor’ on display is invariably bereft of books. Not a good idea. This time, however, I was inspired to discover that mess is the new cool – the ‘busy, eclectic look’. Now I’ve never intended to be fashionable in my life. I just have loads of junk. Somewhere I have a self-help tape called How To Declutter Your Life, but it’s buried under a pile of papers and I can’t find it. Thankfully none of my family ever came out with that peculiar cliché about ‘cleanliness being next to Godliness’ (pretty much the opposite of Jesus’ famous observation about true purity, thankfully). But it does make me reflect that congenital untidiness obviously betokens a soul ill at ease with mere worldliness. That’ll be several steps closer to paradise for me then...

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[55.1] GIVING AND RECEIVING TRUST

"We talk about religious ‘faith’ – but what we mean in plain English is of course trust. A real person of faith isn’t necessarily a person full of a particular kind of religious certainty; it’s a person who has become trustworthy because they know that God is to be trusted and that God has trusted, loved and forgiven them.

"Each person’s life gives a message of one kind or another, a message about what kind of world this is. As the New Year starts, perhaps one of the biggest questions each of us could ask is - “what message does my life give”. Am I making the world a place where trust makes sense? And, deeper still, am I confident that even in my failings and my betrayals I am loved and trusted?" (Rowan Williams)

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[54.1] INTERPRETING EACH OTHER DIFFERENTLY

Controversies over 'overt and public expression of faith through appearance' (a quaint description in a recent continental newspaper) continue to rage in Europe; particularly in France, Germany and Turkey, where, to differing degrees, there are prohibitions on what might be seen as flamboyant religious symbols in schools and some other public places.

In the UK the interpretation of secularity in public life is more towards permissive pluralism than restrictive anti-clericalism. This sensible Epiphany observation is from the consistently excellent and reliably thoughtful Thinking Anglican:

"The gospel is written for [people within Jewish communities] who are being awakened to the challenge of bringing the Christian faith to other cultures. Jewish dietary laws and distinctive dress would not be sustained within a faith which sought to be universal. Perhaps also the threat of persecution under the Roman Empire might have made it inadvisable for believers to parade their faith too publicly by sporting distinctive clothes.

One legacy is that there is no distinctive Christian dress code required by all, akin to the Sikh turban, or the Jewish skull cap. Within Britain we can also point to the fact that for those who want to retain a dress code which identifies their faith, this is accommodated to the extent of allowing Sikh men on motorcycles to wear a turban in place of a crash helmet. The law clearly shows that although the majority see no necessity for a religious dress code, the wishes of those who find this an essential expression of their faith are respected."

Which is surely as it should be. The writer might also have mentioned Jesus' frowning upon ostentatious religious behaviour and the earlier prohibitions on images. There is debate within as well as without faith communities on these matters, as over the veiling of Muslim women for instance. Is it oppressive or protective? No one answer is likely to suffice.

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[53.1] BIBLICAL PLURALISM OR ABSOLUTISM?

Giles Fraser in this week's Church Times:

"The hopes and prayers of many of us for the New Year are focused on the work of the commission to explore the limits of diversity in the Anglican Communion.

"I suspect that, very quickly, the commission will have to face a question that is often at the heart of disagreements about value: is there some philosophical space between monism and relativism?

"The question is whether the Bible is capable of supporting different theological positions.

"I wonder whether the answer to our crisis lies in the unlikely work of Isaiah Berlin. Berlin argued for a value-pluralism that is neither absolutism nor relativism. The idea that giving up on the belief that there is one, and only one, way of reading the Bible leads to anything-goes relativism is irresponsible scaremongering."

See the full piece here.

It is good to see Berlin's voice being heard again in so many areas of public life. For too long he was written off as a derivative, anodyne pragmatist. But his 'agonistic' thought (often mis-translated by lazy sub-editors as 'agnostic') is vital for an age of pathos.

Incidentally, Giles Fraser has himself written an excellent theological account of Nietzche; a corrective both to religious romantics and anti-religious cynics.

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[52.1] CHRISTIAN PEACEMAKERS HIGHLIGHT IRAQ ABUSES

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has presented the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq with a dossier of statistical data compiled from seventy-two case studies of the treatment -- and mistreatment -- of Iraqi detainees, reports Ekklesia. This news item also made it onto BBC Radio 4's flagship 'Today' programme this morning. The full details are here. The CPT campaign for justice for detainees is seeking to work with the authorities to ensure implementation of human rights for all.

CPT is an action network born out of the witness of the historic peace churches (Mennonites, Quakers and others) in the USA. It has been working on the ground in the Middle East and other conflict zones since the mid-1980s.

On Tuesday 30 December 2003, at 8am, a grenade exploded on Karrada Street in Baghdad, two blocks from the CPT Iraq apartment, killing one Iraqi man and wounding two others. Said a spokesperson, "Team members saw the dead man's body lying on the edge of the street, covered with a large piece of cardboard. They watched as Iraqi men put the body in a simple wooden coffin. The men carried the coffin into the nearby mosque, before taking it away in a pick-up truck. Broken glass from shop windows littered the street and sidewalks along both sides of the street. People standing around in the crowd expressed grief and anger directed at both soldiers and those who had detonated the bomb."

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The return of FaithInSociety after the seasonal break (ah yes, happy New Year to you all!) has been hampered by some technical difficulties. Normal service is now resumed.

FaithInSociety will be fully operational once more in the New Year.

[51.1] THE WORK OF CHRISTMAS

When the song of the angels is stilled
When the star in the sky is gone
When the kings and princes are home
When the shepherds are back with their flocks
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner
To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among people
To make music in the heart.

© Howard Thurman, FoR USA.


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[50.1] DECLINE BUT NOT YET FALL

The Scottish writer, critic and historian William Dalrymple (whose latest book is White Mughals) has written pereceptively of the contradictions of religious life in modern Britain. Some of his data seems to have been drawn from Callum Brown's The Death of Christian Britain, but his judgements are more moderate. Not that they constitute grounds for complacency among firstline British church leaders, many of whom still seem not to have understood that the kind of faith that persists amidst the secularity of public life is not a likely antechamber for the return of their own verities. Dalrymple observes:

"It is usually assumed that Christianity in Britain was in decline from the mid-19th century on. In fact, church attendance figures reached an all-time high at the end of the 19th century, and dramatically revived again in the 1950s: this was the period, for example, when Billy Graham, the American evangelist, was able to draw crowds of more than 2 million to his open air services.

"The decline has taken place, at a quite startling rate, only since the mid-1960s. As late as the 1950s, nearly half the adult population went to church on a Sunday. By the 1990s the figure was down to 10%. During the 1960s, the decline was initially limited to the Anglican church, and both Roman Catholic and Jewish attendance figures held up well. But even there, decline set in towards the end of the 1970s and accelerated fast, so that by the late 1980s Catholicism and Judaism found themselves haemorrhaging faithful as Protestants had 20 years earlier.

"Today the decline is at its most severe in urban areas, and most severe of all in London: fewer than 3% of Londoners now attend church on Sundays. This is clearly a major change in the landscape, but it does not represent a universal decline. For while organised religion is ceasing to play a major role in the life of the white majority, there is no comparable decline in the religious life of Britain's ethnic minorities. Today in London, white Christians are already outnumbered by black ones. Black Pentecostal churches are flourishing and 51% of regular London churchgoers are now non-white.

"Likewise, the number of mosque-going Muslims is fast catching up with the number of church-going Christians, and Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras are also flourishing. Nor is there any obvious drop-off in the faith of second- or third-generation British Indians. The outlook remains uncertain, especially as regards mainstream white Christianity, but reports of the death of religion in these islands are premature."

See the full piece 'God in Peckham Rye' here.

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[51.1] MANIA FOR MEDIA

From Daniel Berrigan (see these resources on his life and witness). And, yes, he said it twenty years ago!

"The hunger for news eats people up, makes newsprint out of them.... People can become so bewildered with the mass of information and news brought down upon them that they're unable to move; they're paralysed. So the question of selecting, meditating, having an interior life of one's own in the midst of all this becomes crucial."

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[50.1] PAX EUROPA AND PAX CHRISTIANA

Earlier in the year I joined at Churches Together in Britain and Ireland staff visit to Brussels, home of the European institutions, to engage in exchanges with the CEC Church and Society Commission, COMECE - Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community, the EKD Brussels Office, the Orthodox, and an EU policy adviser on 'Dialogue with the religions, churches and humanisms'.

The churches continue to play a significant and constructive role in practical conversations about the evolution of European polity and society -- not least on issues of human rights, economic justice, religious / cultural freedom, bioethics and social dialogue.

Perhaps the most difficult discussions are about the function of religion itself in the new Europe. There are strong and divergent opinions over the extent to which churches and other faith communities should have anything approximating to an 'official role'.

My own view is that there should be a clear distinction between church and state, transparent and regular conversation about mutual rights and responsibilities, the vigorous participation of faith communities alongside others in the shared arenas of civil society, and space for the autonomy of different civic communities. But the co-extensivity of Christendom is (and should be) a thing of the past. It is incompatible with the plurality of modern societies and it is also enervating for faith communities.

One particular sticking point is the EU Constitution. Should religion (Christianity in particular) be mentioned in the pre-amble? Should God be mentioned? The Vatican has been advocating for both. Its approach is mediated by the statehood of the Holy See and its historic understanding of corpus Christianum.

My latest Ekklesia column, 'Should God get a name check?' offers a different perspective on this question, premmised on a post-Christendom viewpoint which says that Christian social and political praxis should be an orientation developed from the outwardly engaged community of faith, not from incorporation within the structures of governance.

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[49.1] WRITING BEYOND THE VEIL

For years The Guardian newspaper has been a robust organ of progressive opinion and critical reporting. It has also been avowedly sceptical, the home both of 'cultured despisers' and of secular commentators whose opinions about religion often (perhaps unbeknown to them) lack the rigour they expect in other fields. But there has been a sea change of late. In part the current editor's admiration for Archbishop Rowan Williams seems to have translated itself into a new willingness to treat the religious dimension of contemporary life more seriously. Correspondent Stephen Bates' hard and creative work has also played a significant role in realizing this aim -- at a time when religious reporting in Britain's national media is at its weakest for many years. The fruits can be seen in the religion index. Well worth trawling.

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[48.1] ON MORE THAN DIFFERING

Here's a thoughtful piece on the Fulcrum site from David Rucorn, on principles for discussing belief among those with whom we differ. Thanks to Simon Taylor for alerting me to this (not to mention the fabulously irrelevant church sign generator.) While on the argumentation business, Karen Johann has passed on this salutary quotation from Anne Lamott: "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

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[47.1] DANGEROUS FALLOUT, HOPEFUL WRITING

Christians are warning that tens of thousands of casualties may be the result of the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons by the USA. The details are in a report from the Ekklesia website -- the source of the news update column on the left-hand side of FaithInSociety. Ekklesia operates from an Anabaptist-style value base, but its reporting is from all quarters of the Christian community. Its hard-working director, Jonathan Bartley, has recently written The Subversive Manifesto: Lifting the Lid on God's Political Agenda, which partly charts his own journey from the religious right to a radical Christian commitment influenced by people such as Jim Wallis and the late John Howard Yoder.

For those long steeped in political theology this book may not contain a lot that's new, but it has three special merits. First it encapsulates the implications of the prophetic biblical tradition in direct and lively language. Second, it is media savvy. Third, it will reach into the evangelical and 'new church' constituency in a way that much of the literature in this field -- including the stuff I churn out -- never will. More strength to your elbow, Jonathan.

(I should declare an interest, by the way: I'm an Ekklesia columnist!)

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[46.1] TWO WOUNDED PEOPLES

Abuna Elias Chacour: "Either we stop claiming we are children of Abraham, or we act as brothers and try to reconcile."

Dr Denis MacEoin of Newcastle, writing in The Guardian:

"For years the left, which once admired Israeli socialism, has swung towards an uncritical support of the Palestinian cause. This has led the leftwing press to the point where it will never call Palestinian suicide bombers 'terrorists'; and where to express sympathy for the plight of the Israelis, surrounded for over 50 years by an ocean of vehement anti-semitism and calls for the destruction of their country, is to be branded as a traitor to liberal values.

"As a lifelong liberal, I have always supported Israel, because I believe its foundation was the proper response to the Holocaust. As an Arabist and Islamicist, I also hope that a fair and workable resolution can be found for the problems faced by the Palestinians. I just don't happen to think the two things are incompatible."

Fair comment, though he doesn't mention either a two-state or secular state 'resolution', so I'm unclear whether he supports full statehood for Palestinians, or only for Israelis.

To go to the guts of the matter rather more theologically, in the paraphrased words of Fr Elias Chacour, a Palestinian (Melkite) Christian and a Jewish citizen: it is vital that Jews and Palestinians stop regarding each other as mortal enemies and begin, instead, to recognise themselves in the wounds of the other. Only in the presence of the kind of suffering-transformed-into-hope made visible on the Cross (he says) can we begin to discover a new way of handling each other, the crimes that have been committed against us, and the sins we have perpetuated through cycles of hatred, denial and revenge. That means working across religious, political, cultural and social barriers to help each other to reconstruct our identities and out of that process slowly to discover a shared one.

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[45.1] FRESH LIGHT ON PAUL -- AND OURSELVES

Over the years I've had many reasons to be thankful for Chris Rowland, Professor of New Testament at the University of Oxford. He's been a courageous advocate for (and practitioner of) radical contextual theology. He's worked with grassroots organisations and parishes as well as operating as a creative academic. He's collaborated with adult educators like me. He's a dissenting Anglican involved in the UK Anabaptist Network. We both contributed to the Jubilee Group symposium on disestablishment, Setting the Church of England Free. So Chris is no ivory tower theologian. He sticks his neck out. His excellent 'Face to Faith' piece on 'Paul's Letter of Tolerance' is but one example. Here's a brief excerpt:

"Thanks to Paul, Christianity has never really been a religion that used the Bible as a code of law. In his Second Letter To The Corinthians, he writes: "The letter kills, the Spirit gives life." Throughout his writings, he tries to get at what the Bible means, with the central criterion being conformity to Christ. He pioneered an approach to the Bible which also applies to his words in the New Testament. We should not concentrate on the letter of the text, but try to get at the underlying point of his words.

"So, basing one's attitudes towards gay and lesbian people merely on two verses from Romans and Corinthians I runs the risk of ending up with a form of religion which is based on the letter of the text -- something Paul empathically opposes -- rather than on what a loving God is doing in transforming lives in the present. On the Damascus road, Saul's world was turned upside down. He encountered Christ in the outsiders, the heretics, the misfits and aliens, the very people whom he had been commissioned to round up. It was this experience that transformed his life. Such a turnaround was not the result of minute attention to text and precedent."

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[44.1] INCLUSIVITY BEYOND LABELS

Charles Walmsley from InclusiveChurch.Net (for which I'm on the steering group) had this letter published in The Church Times -- the main Church of England newspaper -- on Friday 28 November 2003:

"[T]hank you for your warm review of our website (Web News, 21st November). In her review, Sarah Meyrick describes Inclusive Church as 'the liberal group'. It is an easy mistake to make, but it is far from accurate. The huge upsurge of concern following the forced withdrawl of Canon Jeffrey John was not confined to 'liberals', and of the nearly eight thousand individuals who have currently signed our declaration of belief, many would describe themselves as Catholic or Evangelical. More than 90 Parochial Church Councils have signed so far, as have many organisations, including Cathedrals, Fransiscan orders, and entire deanery synods.

"Inclusive Church is not a single-issue pressure group. Rather, it is concerned to work and pray for an inclusive Anglicanism that is founded on a just ordering of our common life that 'opens the ministries of deacon, priest and bishop to those so called to serve by God, regardless of their sex, race or sexual orientation'.

"There will be debate within the Church about how this is to be achieved, and there will be many different theologies. But all those who wish to see our church life founded on a just order will be welcomed to contribute within Inclusive Church.net regardless of the labels others give them. We are already developing a network of support for a number of specific pressure groups who have been working long and hard over the years and who have achieved a great deal already, as well as a network of diocesan coordinators.

"There is a profound sea-change occurring within Anglicanism at the moment, and it is focussed not on the specific issues of women or sexuality. Rather, it is about the soul of Anglicanism itself. Many of us within Inclusive Church.net wish to work and pray for an Anglicanism that is open, inclusive and just. We do not believe that Anglicanism should be forced by power plays into a narrow sectarian framework.

"It is not a matter of biblical theology versus liberal freedom, but of a working and praying together to enrich our common life with a deeper understanding of God's love for his creation expressed in scripture, tradition, reason, and the experience of our common life in Christ. It is not going to be an easy task."

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[43.2] CHRISTMAS NOT BANNED SHOCK!

As usual the British national tabloids and some of the more gullible regional press in Britain have started their seasonal spreading of false or exaggerated rumours about evil secularist attempts to ban Christmas (or Easter, or whatever). Undoubtedly we live in a plural society where diplomacy to avoid offence often outweighs (rather inadvisedly, I suspect) the attempt actually to converse and communicate across communal and religious differences. Even so, there is no anti-religious plot. See this typical scare story relayed on Religious News Online -- to which I have replied, as you will see.

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[43.1] SEEKING 'THE AUTHENTIC JESUS'?

In her tough-minded book Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation, feminist scholar Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza astutely critiques various mainstream methodological approaches to 'the historical Jesus', and the intellectual hubris of much reconstruction per se. She scores some palpable points, but remains hopeful that the Spirit of the living Christ can break through our appropriations and conceits -- not least through the historical argument that is always part of faith: a reminder that God's in-breaking of human discourse is continually beyond our manipulation.

Fiorenza rightly says that it is those on the margins, those who do not have vested interests in the institutions that manage the narrative, who can best help us to re-discover it. For that reason -- and in spite of a title that will make her baulk yet again -- I am very much looking forward to reading the new book by Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford. The Authentic Gospel Of Jesus (Allen Lane) was published a few weeks ago. In a 'Face to Faith' article in The Guardian last Saturday ('What's sex got to do with it?'), Vermes says:

"The gospel of Jesus is still largely unperceived among church people: the message which the master from Nazareth -- not Paul, John or two millennia of Christianity -- formulated in his own language and teaching for his mostly uneducated Galilean Jewish audience."

Also worth a look: Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet, Jack Nelson-Pellmayer's controversial Jesus Against Christianity and South African Albert Nolan's Jesus Before Christianity.

A useful non-technical introduction to the import of 'Jesus studies' debates is Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright's The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions. I enjoy a good deal of Borg's work (though his panentheism is now strained -- see the recent pole of post-metaphysics ranging from Jean Luc Marion to David Tracy). Wright is conservative, but in a thoughtful and creative way.

Bart Ehrman offers a different kind of salutary warning about current modern and post-modern renderings of Jesus in his Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, which I have just finished. He's right to point out how the apocalyptic dimension of the Gospels is underplayed (for obvious reasons) by modern interpreters. However, there are different theological possibilities arising from the text than those he deploys -- which tend towards 'unrecoverability'.

So the jury remains out. But the calling of the Christian community is to go on telling and retelling the Jesus story, in the conviction that the God who defies our categories and expectations continues will be met in and through it. Usually when we least expect or deserve it. Strangely enough, this is -- as Vermes the Jew points out -- something that the churches are notably bad at. often because they wish to control the text for their own ends. There is real fear in this. Too much of what now is in institutional Christianity is threatened by its founding figure (thankfully).

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[42.1] CHRISTIANITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The Centre for Christianity and Inter-Religious Dialogue at Heythrop College and Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (through the Middle East Forum of the Churches' Commission on Mission) are jointly organizing a major symposium exploring the dilemmas facing Christian communities in the Middle East today.

‘Christianity in the Middle East: contemporary explorations in politics and theology’ takes place on Thursday 11 December from 10:30 to 18:30pm at Heythrop, which is part of the University of London. Places are limited and admission is by ticket only, price £20, available from the college in Kensington Square, London W8 5HQ; phone [+44 1] [0]20 7795 6600.

Speakers will include Anthony O’Mahony (Heythrop College, University of London), Sebastian Brock (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford), Peter Riddell, (London Bible College, Brunel University), John H.Watson, William Taylor (St John’s, Notting Hill), Harry Hagopian (Jerusalem Inter-Church Committee), Leon Menzies Racionzer, Revd Leonard Marsh.

The gathering will explore the political and theological dimensions of Christian presence in the Middle East today, surveying the challenges that face Christian communities in the region, including Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. Speakers will focus on issues of ecumenism, Christian-Muslim relations, Christian-Jewish relations, and Jerusalem.

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[41.2] ENTERING THE MELEE

An Advent reflection from Liz Walz, who founded Martha House, a Catholic Worker house in the Germantown section of Philadelphia in 1998. Shortly before that, she worked at Philadelphia's Four Seasons luxury hotel. She was imprisoned in Towson, Maryland, for direct action against the US military use of depleted uranium. This excerpt (c) TheOtherSide magazine. Liz is now the coordinator of Word and World: A People's School.

"Most of us try to protect our loved ones from pain. Is this loving? Or are we robbing them of their education, of access to wisdom? How can we acquire the tools for bearing pain, for enduring suffering, if we run and hide? How can we know God's love if we don't allow ourselves to need it?

"We have become numb. It takes the deaths of not one, not a score, not a hundred, but hundreds of thousands, even millions, to awaken us from our stupor--because we haven't learned to grieve the death of the one, to feel the pain. Who will confront the oppressors and say, "No, for God's sake!" What meaning does the birth of Christ have if not hope for those most oppressed?

"Pain is not the end of the story, nor is suffering. But to witness the end of the story, we must have courage to look with clarity at our situation. As the powers develop and deploy ever more sophisticated weapons, as the empire continues to starve children, our silence reveals us as complicit in the crucifixion of our brothers and sisters. Despair overwhelms us, and we'll try almost anything to stop the pain. But nothing works until we have the courage to walk into the melee. We must step into the line of fire, and love the squalling child lying in the muck of the feed trough, announcing to those who would kill her, "No! This is a holy child of God."

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[41.1] BEYOND DEADLY ILLUSIONS

This from weblogger Alvarny Windrider:

My friend asked, "Do you want to be Jesus Christ?"

And I shook my head and thought to myself, "He had the easy way out, all He was required to do was to die. I am required to stay alive and live the consequences."

It is, of course, the superficiality of much Christian thinking -- not to mention twisted, forsensic doctrines of the meaning of this paradigmatic death (see, by contrast, J Denny Weaver's The Nonviolent Atonement) -- which have led to the popular caricature of "the man born to die." What crucified Jesus was not his avoidance of life or divine sadism, but deep-seated fear of unrestricted life (and the uncontrollable God of Life) on on the part of those bound to religious and political authorities. Similarly, risen life is not the magical resolution or reversal of death, but the capacity to live fully in the face of it -- which is the gift of God. But Alvarny is absolutely right: life is tough, and death-as-a-virtue is no answer. Nor is it what the Gospel proposes.

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[40.1] CALCULATED ACTS OF KINDNESS

Mike Yaconelli's death diminishes us all. I didn't know him, so I can't say anything personal. But this is from the Greenbelt festival blog:

"I can't remember everybody's name; I often can't remember where I am! You don't have to have my gifts or skills - and I don't have to have yours. The most seemingly unimportant thing can make all the difference in the world. A teeny weeny act of kindness can make all the difference... That's what spirituality is -- simple kindness, the significance of the insignificant. When's the last time you wrote a little note to [someone] telling them you think they're great? Really. That says more than all the religious and Bible talk, and will mean a great deal to them. It's an act of kindness any of us can do."

(From 'Jerk-Free Christianity' in Yak Yak Yak, Marshall Pickering, 1991)


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[39.1] BLOGGING WITH RELIGION

Perhaps the doyen of all godblogs has to be Kathy Shaidle's Relapsed Catholic ("Where the religious rubber meets the pop culture road... a daily blog about religion: in the news, in the media, on the web, in the world.") It was established in 2000 (anyone remember weblogging back that far?) and it still sets the standards the rest of us follow. Kathy's lastest book is called God Rides a Yamaha, incidentally.

In terms of theological learning, the best loggy thing I've come across is Disseminary, which deserves a write-up in its own right, and will get one. See also the online culture magazine Transition, which includes religion in its wide-angled take on life -- and the wonderful Utne, which sometimes does.

Then there are more personalised sites, like PostModern Pilgrim, or the thoughts of (allegedly) confused Lutheran Chris Halverson --or, indeed, Salt, "notes from a 30-something, salsa dancing, irish fiddling, Keynesian, suburban Anglican Epicurean vicar." Way to go...

Last but not least (for now), I appreciate Gutless Pacifist, "A Place for Dialogue about Faith, Politics and Peace." And the title is not quite what you think. It's author declares: "I agree with John Howard Yoder - 'The church is called to be now what the world is called to be ultimately.' "

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38.1 CHURCHES' BLUEPRINT AGAINST RACISM

Doreen Lawrence, chair of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, wants Church leaders to use Churches Together in Britain and Ireland’s report on racism, Redeeming the Time, ‘like their Bible, they must keep it by them and refer to it.' The book was published in memory of her son, Stephen (who was killed on the streets of south-east London) and all whose lives have been cut short by racism. ‘The book will provide a blueprint for good practice and is a step in the right direction,’ she said.

‘I believe there is only one God and the difference is he or she answers to many different names… We need a lifestyle to combat racism. The Gospel affirms we are all one in Christ and that the Church is the Body of Christ. Black or white, we are one and there can be no tolerance of racism,’ Ms Lawrence added.

Redeeming the Time, drawn up by CTBI’s Commission for Racial Justice (CCRJ), includes readings which explain key ideas and concepts behind recent legislation in Great Britain, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the European Union. It seeks to acknowledge the lessons the churches were challenged to learn from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report.

Redeeming the Time acknowledges both the way Christians have colluded with the stereotyping of groups of people and the steps that have been taken to eradicate racism.

Other speakers at the launch included Dr Richard Stone (The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Panel), Gillian Kingston (Moderator of CTBI’s Church Representatives’ Meeting) and Naboth Muchopa (Secretary of the Racial Justice Committee of the Methodist Church).

Richard Stone, whio is also chair of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality, said he would be commending Redeeming the Time to Jewish communities.

The book (price £5.00 plus £1.50 p&p) is available from CTBI Publications at 4 John Wesley Road, Peterborough PE4 6ZP. Phone 01733 325002, fax 01733 384 180, or orders@ctbi.org.uk


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37.1 KEEPING THE FAITH WELL TEMPERED

It was some unsolicited kind words (not a mutual back-scratching pact, honest!) that first drew my attention to Karen Johann's very fine weblog Heretic's Corner. It's a healthy combination of observation, links, thoughtful reflections, personal stuff and -- yes! -- humour. I see Karen, who is a seminarian at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, also likes Ship of Fools ('the magazine of Christian unrest') -- whose creator I briefly overlapped with at college (school, as the Americans would say). I wonder if she, or you, also know of the fabulously scurrillous Landover Baptist site, originated by a couple of guys who were kicked out of Jerry Falwell's un-aptly named Liberty University. Without doubt the best parody of the religious right I've ever chanced upon.

Anyway, back to Karen's blog. Two posts that I enjoyed recently were What is marriage? (for those who deleriously think that 'being biblical' is a straightforward thing) and, more seriously, Reflections on Christ the King (the Feast, that is). Hang on. More serious? Well the abuse of the Bible to support mislabelled and miscreant 'pro family' policies is pretty gravitationally loaded... but the Festival is where the resistance is at, understood rightly.

Oh, and while we're about it, like Karen I also recommend the stimulating essayists on Killing the Buddha. And no, it's not an anti-Buddhist site. Read the manifesto.

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36.2 DILEMMAS OF MAJORITY RULE

The key question of course, is: who discerns, how, and on what basis?

"Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
‘Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, you’re straightaway dangerous,
And handled with a chain."

From Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems.

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36.1 RESPONDING TO RELIGIOUS TERRORISM

This from Oliver McTernan. Personally, I'd leave out the 'alone'. But wise words.

"The sooner we come to recognize that the war on a religiously motivated terrorism cannot be won on the battle field alone and that in our search for solutions we need to engage the religious and secular leadership in those communities that act as breeding grounds for discontent the greater will be our chance of finding solutions. Sadly, Turkey appears to be paying the price for its attempts to act as a bridge between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. Hopefully these recent atrocities will not deter it from continuing in this role, as dialogue is essential if we want to make our world more secure." (c) BBC

More on 'How to win the religious wars' from The Guardian here, and on Christian-Muslim perspectives on the international situation.

Much of the material in this Churches' Commission for Inter-faith Relations briefing (prepared at the time of the Iraq war) is still relevant, too.

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35.1 AN ALTERNATIVE POLICY PRESCRIPTION FROM ST HILDA

"Trade with the gifts God has given you.
Bend your minds to holy learning that you
may escape the fretting moth of littleness of
mind that would wear out your souls.
Brace your wills to action, that they may
not be the spoils of weak desires.

"Train your hearts and lips to song
which gives courage to the soul.
Being buffeted by trials, learn to laugh.
Being reproved, give thanks.
Having failed, determine to succeed."

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34.2 HEBREW SCRIPTURES AND JUSTICE FOR THE 'STRANGER'

The (hardly-radical but deeply humanitarian) scholar B Davie Napier (President of the Pacific School of Religion) on the values and principles of the ancinet Hebrew legal codes:

"The principle of sympathy and consideration for the weak is expressed with astonishing variety. There are numerous duplicate and some triplicate laws which buttress the rights of all dependent classes -- servants, slaves, captives, the defenseless, the maimed and the handicapped, and of course the poor. Widows, orphans and sojourners... are regarded in the law with full appreciation... This is best illustrated in one of the most remarkable single features of the law -- its prescribed treatment of the alien. The term in Hebrew, ger, certainly does not apply exclusively to the resident alien, the foreigner in permanent residence, although to be sure this is the sense of Exodus 23:9. Possibly, as Herbert G. May has recently reminded us, the term applies in postexilic times primarily to the resident alien or the proselyte. But that even then this was by no means exclusively the sense is attested by the parallelism of Job 3 1:32: "The ger has not lodged in the street; I have opened my doors to the wayfarer." The ger may be a foreigner in permanent or semi-permanent residence; but he (sic) is also any stranger who happens into the community on a peaceful, friendly and legitimate errand."

And of course the trajectory of the specifically prophetic narratives is towards the abolition of 'dependent classes' altogether, and in favour of communal justice. Worth reminding your local parliamentary representative about that.

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34.1 VICTIMIZING THE SOJOURNER

You couldn't make it up. The most right-wing Home Secretary in British parliamentary history, Michael Howard, has (rightly) criticised the Labour government for its "shameful" new proposals on asylum -- which deliberately seek to remove children from parents seeking asylum from persecution, in order to 'encourage' them to return without appeal.

This disgraceful policy, pandering to the most reactionary and racist elements in the tabloid media, goes alongside further moves to cut legal aid, block entry and remove social support from asylum seekers -- who, it seems, are assumed to be 'guilty' (that is, cheats) until proved innocent. And the bar of 'innocence' is, of course, moved ever higher.

Mind you, Howard, now leader of the Conservative Party (and apparently a somewhat reformed character), doesn't have much to crow about himself. His Tory government started the current wave of judicial and legislative victimization rolling. And his party's current 'enlightened' policy consists of isolating asylum seekers on container ships!

Serious political debate and alternative policy options have now more or less been ruled out of the public arena by this current rush in Westminster to adopt ever-more draconian policies. Even the Liberal Democrats can come up with little more than adherence to the status quo.

Moreover, Home Secretary David Blunkett will tomorrow trumpet his government's 'achievement' in halving the number of applicants to 4000 over the past year. The idea that the arbitration and appeal systems are actually there to give people a fair hearing and a fair process is being abandoned. They are there simply to 'keep 'em out'! This flagrantly violates international human rights instruments in regard to the treatment of refugees.

Behind the present dispicable trade in dehumanising policy lies a myth and a problem. The myth is that Britain is being 'swamped' by refugees and 'illegals'. The problem is that the asylum system is being used (unfairly) to handle a whole set of complex migration issues which policy makers want to avoid: namely the fact that, historically, most migration has been 'economic' anyway, and that in a world where boundaries to capital movement are dissolving it is unfeasible to seek to reduce people movements to a controlled trickle.

Meanwhile the churches in Britain and Ireland are among those speaking out most vociferously in favour of justice (rather than expediency) towards asylum seekers and refugees. And brave networks such as the Refugee Council and Bail For Immigration Detainees are seeking to stem the tide of bile in the media and among vote-hungry politicians.

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[33.2] A WELCOME FROM JOONDALUP

Today I chanced across the website of Grace Anglican Church Joondalup, Western Australia. Their banner: ""All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ." Amen to that. You will find some good sermons and other resources there. The parish priest is a valued friend, Dr David Wood, who I got to know in the process of publishing his acclaimed theological biography of Bishop John V. Taylor. Poet, Priest and Prophet (CTBI, 2002). It has a Foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury. David gives some background to how it came about here.

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[33.1] DARING TO DREAM

From Charles Moore on Bruderhof.com - and (c) them; quoted with kind acknowledgements:

"I believe now, more than ever, that being a part of a contrast-community, building a life that nurtures peace, is our only hope of ending war. True, there are many ways to effect peace in the world besides living in a community. But imagine what kind of resistance could be formed if we would cease to run our lives on the basis of career or income or certain standards of living that involve treating the rest of the world as one giant fuel pump? What if instead we spent our energies and resources building up a common life that needed less and gave more? What would happen if in sharing life together we did away with the usual distinctions that keep people apart and at odds with one another? What if we actually disengaged ourselves from the driving values of material security, professional achievement and social recognition—along with the lifestyle that reinforces them—to create a genuinely alternative existence?" (From Dog Eat Dog?)

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[32.3] THE POWER OF SILENCE

Denys Turner once remarked arrestingly on Jesus' silence before Pilate: it was, at a certain moment when God's person stood naked before power, the only possible response to a ruler who was actually a 'frivolous moraliser', he said. I'm still trying to summon the depths of that one. But it has echoes for me in this recent observation by Rowan Williams:

"Politics needs the challenge of silence as much as does the Church, especially when the language of public life is increasingly corrupted by an obsession with 'advantage' -- with all that means for the silencing of the other, the refusal to seek oneself in the other, the inattention and willful ignorance that more and more stifles political conversation. A political discourse corrupted in such ways is already on the road to the anti-language of totalitarianism...

"And what if theology in particular has become the victim of this political corruptness, and operates more and more in terms of advantage? It has to be taught in a different register, a different dialect, by writers who are more used to dealing in risk, perhaps."

From 'Bonhoeffer and the poets', in (ed. Elizabeth Templeton) Travelling With Resilience: Essays For Alastair Haggart (Scottish Episcopal Church, 2002), p216.

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[32.2] STRAW IN THE WIND

What an extraordinary performance from British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme this morning. He dismissed as 'nonsense' any attempt whatsoever to link the invasion and occupation of Iraq with the current upsurge in activity by Al Qaeda and similar networks. Whereas one of the pillars of the government's support for US military policy on Iraq was precisely the link between Saddam Hussein's regime and 'terror networks', now Mr Straw is not demurring from interviewer John Humphries' assertion that there is 'not a shred of evidence' for such connectivity. It is a breathtaking reversal which indicates just how non-plussed the Western powers are right now.

The line coming out of Downing Street today is that 'extremists need no excuse for their cowardly and inhuman actions' -- the old ploy of simply reducing one's adversary to sub-humanity and irretrievable irrationality. This is not politics, it is superstition. By contrast, writer and former Catholic priest Oliver McTernan gave another considered Thought For The Day, drawing upon his fine book Violence in God's Name: Religion In An Age Of Conflict, which maps out the cultural, societal, geo-poltical -- and, yes, religious -- disturbances which have to be faced if governments are to respond with understanding rather than simply self-justification to the new world disorder.

See also McTernan's response to US Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertion that Iran has ‘dragged the sacred garment of Islam into the political gutter.’

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[32.1] FORCE IS NOT SUFFICIENT

For the most part the protests in London yesterday went off in good humour. Other areas of the capital were like a ghost town, and the appalling news of the bombing of the British Consulate in Turkey cast another shadow over the ill-fated US Presidential visit to Britain. The targeting by extremists of a secular state with a moderate Muslim majority, increasing ties to the West and a history of relative harmony between different religious communities (notably Jews and Muslims) is a calculated act. The vile assaults on synagogues are another part of this scenario.

The temptation for the world's hyperpower and its satellites will be to retaliate further. But counter-terror does not deter those who are locked into the logic of confrontation, it mostly reinforces the cycle upon which they, too, are dependent. The politics of refusing aggression, strengthening international security through the UN, creating the conditions for democracy from the grassroots (rather than enforcing it by coercion) and giving priority to the 'war' on injustice, poverty and exclusion: such strategies will not reverse the spiral of hatred and revenge quickly or easily. But they are the only sustainable path away from the vortex of retribution which threatens to engulf our world.

To repay evil for evil is the road to destruction. Force can subjugate (for a time), but it has no power to transform. This is not 'a Beatitudinous platitude' (as I have heard it dismissed recently), it is the hardest form of realism. And it is a realism which also requires rigorous self-examination -- from those with an overabundance of power, for sure, but also for those seeking to restrain them.

For example: it felt right to join the demonstrations yesterday. But it wasn't comfortable. The atmosphere was one of mirrored anger and self-righteousness at times. And the plight of Iraqis can be as much a toy of anti-war activists as of those who use war as policy, if we are not too careful. We may be clear about what not to do. But no-one should pretend that there are simple alternative policy options readily to hand. And returning the simplistic 'evil empire' rhetoric of Bush on his own house does nothing to open up fresh perspectives on a messy reality.

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[31.3] PRE-EMPTING THE PRE-EMPTORS

To coincide with the current state visit of US President George Bush to the UK, Our World Our Say have organised the largest ever Virtual March on the US Embassy in London. Its purpose is to mobilise against the doctrine of pre-emptive force in global affairs. They write: "We have reached our target of 15,000 people. We are now aiming to double this and get 30,000 people to take part and bombard the Embassy with emails, faxes and phone calls. If you haven't already registered, please do so now at this site."

On the question of pre-emptivity from a 'just war' perspective, see some comments in SocialEdge.Com from Notre Dame theologian and Catholic priest, Michael Baxter. Evidently, those of us who believe that vocation of the Christian community is to resist evil without using its weapons would have a problem with the Bush doctrine on even more basic grounds. See, inter alia, the Fellowship of Reconciliation home page. A recent note from Chris Cole reminded me to link with them.

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