[105.2] NEW THINKING PROVES VERY DIFFICULT

It's always fascinating to look at what really causes a stir on Ekklesia. Right now we have stories up about oppression in Zimbabwe and brave Archbishop Tutu; world poverty and how to end it; Christians working against nuclear weapons; Christian-Muslim cooperation on nonviolent change in Iraq; anti-Catholicism, and Christian social vision. (You can always consult the news archive if it has moved on by the time you read this.)

However, what is really making people click away at the moment is the monumental question over ... what the Evangelical Alliance has to say about how naughty Charles and Camilla have been. Yes, that's right: more people are apparently exercised about this than all of these other issues put together.

Now don't get me wrong. Adultery matters. And what the EA says is not insignificant, because it represents a big swathe of opinion, whatever we think of it. Ekklesia reports, it doesn't just comment. Moreover people surf in for particular stories, so the direct comparison may not be entirely fair. But even taking these factors into account, the capacity for a bit of Royal nothingery to dominate our consciousness is truly amazing.

Or perhaps not. Maybe the magic word is 'evangelical'. Either way, the idea that 'a new way of thinking' (let alone a new way of behaving) is any easier for Christians than for others doesn't wash. We all feed from the same trough, and we all fall short of the same glory. This is one reason why easy moralism about Chuck and Cammie's second chance should remain circumspect about its own interests. Moats, beams, that kind of stuff.

Anyway, following on from my acerbic comments yesterday (for which I feel some penitence, but not too much), here are links to previous articles about liberating the church in England from monarchical illusions, the question of disestablishment, and more on the Royal bug.

The review of Ian Bradley's book is a lot more even-tempered than the comment below, by the way. But these issues do, I think, cut deep -- and the wound is barely noticed (to re-employ another metaphor-of-the-moment on this weblog). So maybe the odd prod with a sharp stick isn't out of place.

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[105.1] FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION

A 'Called to be Peacemakers' event was due to be held over the next few days. It's been postponed until October. Further information from FoR. I still think the poster is worth looking at as a focus for Lenten prayer...



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[104.1] RICH BLOKE MARRIES POSH BIRD AS NATION GOES MAD

I refer, of course, to the engagement of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles. It is dumbfounding to see exactly how much airtime and newspaper space is spent analysing and dissecting this event. As if there weren't important things to worry about.

Monarchy is some kind of polite but persistent psychosis, I think. Or perhaps an unwitting psychological contract whereby people project their own expectations and unfulfilled longings onto a small group of self-selecting people -- whose continuation is a matter of pure eugenic priviledge. This is about as far removed from the Gospel of God's special love for the last, the least and the lost as you could plan to get, at least in terms of constitutional routine.

All of which makes the Church of England's continued involvement with it a horrid mess. To put the ekklesia at the disposal of the Crown isn't just inappropriate, it's wrong. But no-one seems to be noticing this massive political and theological issue lurking in the corner of the latest Royal Soap episode.

Though a staunch republican, I wish the Windsors well in their marriage -- even if the means by which events led up to it involved a lot of pain and wrong. But I still can't help concurring with the radical poet Adrian Mitchell, who I recently discovered lives in the same road as me when I'm staying in London. Mistakenly written to by the Daily Telegraph, which was seeking wordsmiths to offer homage to Charles on the anniversary of his investiture as Prince of Wales some years ago, Mitchell wrote back as follows:

For HRH Prince Charles: Monarchy is an illness. Get well soon.

Or words to that effect. (The 'poem' is, as the Dinsdale Brothers might have put it in that Monty Python sketch, "vicious... but fair".)

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[103.2] INTO LENT ... BINDING AND FREEING

Of course I should have noticed much more quickly the link between the previous post, the fact of Shrove Tuesday, and a hidden element in my article for the Bruderhof. For this is the day we celebrate the gifts of life before a period of reflection and discipline involving (in a world where the word seems only to carry a threat at the moment) abstinence.

Bread is, indeed, for sharing, and thus becomes a spiritual matter in material form. A few years ago I wrote some IBRA biblical cameos on precisely this theme. This is the first part. The second part is here.

The other Lent link is in the Does Christianity kill or cure? article. When I first quoted Dennis Potter I remembered what he said incorrectly as "God is the wound, not the bandage." I think that's true in it's own right. But what he actually said in his moving final interview with Melvyn Bragg, as he was dying and swigging morphine to quell the pain of cancer, was "religion is the wound, not the bandage."

That is even more knowing. Potter remembered what many of us forget, which is that the word 'religion' comes from the root religio, meaning "to bind". Of course religion can be, in the colloquial use of that term, "a bind". It can be a source of oppression rather than liberation, slavery rather than salvation. This is why theologians such as Karl Barth have often -- if a little too easily -- tried to distinguish and separate 'religion' and 'Christianity'.

But Lent reminds us of the true meaning of religio. In being freed from things that really do ensnare and bind our lives, like money and possessions, we are freed to be 'bound' to God -- but by the ties of love freely entered into and expressed, not the compulsions of possession or the need to be 'right'. This is St Paul's paradox: his discovery that servanthood turns out to be perfect freedom, as Christ showed.

That isn't something you neatly work out in your head. It is a discovery of the heart and a work of life. And, of course, it is a gift which can be corrupted -- as when people use Christian faith to bind others or themselves to things less glorious than God, but often (ab)using the name of God. This is why religion can be a terrible thing. Lent is a time when we can resolve that it shall be, instead, Good (though not undemanding) News.

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[103.1] BREAD AS A PRAYER

Interesting. I was always sure that this quotation was from Leo Tolstoy. But it turns out to be Jacques Maritain. Excellent either way.

Christianity has all too often meant withdrawal and the unwillingness to share the common suffering of humankind. But the world has rightly risen in protest against such piety... The care of another - even material, bodily care - is spiritual in essence. Bread for myself is a material question; bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.

Thanks to the Bruderhof 'Daily Dig' for this. They have also kindly included my article Does Christianity kill or cure? in their archive.

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[102.1] EXTENDING THE TABLE

In the course of my regular searches to update the tsunami prayer pages I maintain on my main site and for Ekklesia, I came across a superb maintained weblog by Rick Lord, World of Your Making, which is certainly worth checking out. He's something of a fan of N T Wright, and I gravitate rather more towards Marcus Borg (they wrote a very useful discussion book together, The Meaning of Jesus), but that's all part of enriching the conversation.

It was also good to hear from an old colleague, Tom Allen, who I haven't seen for years. His enjoyable BigBulkyAnglican log contains "thoughts, ideas, questions and ramblings about music, faith and youth work from Pennine Yorkshire." I think we connected via Dan Walters, by the way, Tom. Amusing to be linked by his post to Pulp (though you won't find them on my NewFrontEars music blog...yet).

Meanwhile, I have done a further overhaul of (and additions to) my general links on this blog. You'll find some new categories - thinkLinks, ecuLinks, and actionLinks - for a start. I continue to resist alphebeticisation (makes searching less lazy and more intuitive, he says didactically) and the "mapping the arena of debate" policy remains.

You'll discover some new campaigns and altChurch offerings, not least St Mark's and St Peter's in the UK and New Zealand. On the 'stimulating theologians' front you'll now find Denys Turner (see also this piece about his stake in the apophatic theology conversation from Peter Kugler), Alan Kreider and Gordon Kaufman (very different kinds of Mennonite voices) side-by-side, and a few others.

Please note that my tendency is to link people from their academic pages. In some cases this means that the resource links aren't as good as they could or should be. In which case Google will do the trick for you. Enjoy.

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[101.1] WHOSE ARE WE?

Not a point that contradicts Giles Fraser's valid insight (FinS yesterday) that over-easy identification with the victim can be spiritually dangerous, I think -- but here is Jean Vanier's counterpoint comment about why it is also important. We worship, after all, a God who became tortured (as well as living and risen) flesh.

Vanier wrote: Is not one of our problems today that we have separated ourselves from the wounded and the suffering? We have too much time to discuss and theorize and have lost the yearning for God which comes when we are faced with the sufferings of people.

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[100.1] ANTI-SEMITISM, CHRISTIANITY AND TRUTHFULNESS

BBC Radio 4's long running Thought for the Day varies enormously in content and quality. Aside from the battles over the division of air-time between Christians, other faith communities and secular / a-theistic perspectives (which are in my view wrongly excluded at the moment), some see the three-minute reflection as an exercise in cloying piety, while others push the boat out a bit more.

Giles Fraser did the latter this morning. His 'thought' is essential reading in the light of the recent Holocaust memorial events.

"Sixty years after the holocaust, the greatest crime of the twentieth century, the curse of anti-Semitism continues to haunt us.

"Christians often engage with the holocaust by celebrating the courage of other Christians who resisted the Nazis: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller, Edith Stein. But the truth is, they were rare exceptions.

"For centuries, many Christians have stoked the fires of anti-Semitism with lies and slander. Jews were blamed for the death of Christ. Some believed that Jews practiced child sacrifice. The 4th century saint and theologian Gregory of Nyssa called the Jews 'companions of the devil, accursed, detested, enemies of all that is beautiful'.

"Martin Luther went even further: 'We are at fault in not slaying them,' he said 'Rather we allow them to live freely in our midst despite all their murdering, cursing, blaspheming, lying.' He went on to advise Christians to 'set fire to their synagogues and schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn.'

"These days, Christians are ashamed by such words. But it's still terribly important to remember them. " See the full text.

Giles is vicar of Putney, lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford, a Christian convert from a Jewish background, a columnist for the Guardian, the Church Times and Ekklesia, a co-founder of Inclusive Church.Net, author of a very fine book on Nietzsche... and one of the best theologically equipped commentators and writers the Church of England has (but doesn't own).

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[99.1] BECOMING PART OF THE SOLUTION

The apostle Paul starts many of his letters with the phrase 'grace and peace', but most Christians are perhaps more familiar with grace than peace.

One of Ekklesia’s partners, the Anabaptist Network has produced a study guide for churches that explores what it would mean to take peace as seriously as grace - in worship, church life, work, witness and engagement with social issues.

This is not a booklet about pacifism but about the call of Jesus to be people of peace. What would it mean to become 'peace churches?' What resources might such churches offer a violent world that struggles with conflict?

The guide accompanies a booklet Becoming a Peace Church, which the network recently published, and is one of a number of short courses for local churches that have been developed by the Anabaptist Network.

You can view the study guide in a pdf format by clicking here and download or print off your own copy.

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[98.2] A CALL TO FAITHFULNESS

This from Margaret Killingray in the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity newsletter:

"Because Auschwitz was liberated 60 years ago [this] week, we are asked to remember how an urbane, civilised, Christian, European nation murdered intentionally, with planned and systematic efficiency, millions upon millions of men women and children. It is a haunting memory that raises many tormenting questions.

"But for Christians one important and significant question has to be why the large and influential churches of 1930s Germany, both protestant and Catholic, did not play a far more dramatic role in opposing the plainly evil programmes that were enacted. In an article in the Church Times in April 1995, Professor John Conway of the University of British Columbia, attempted to answer this question.

"He mentioned the pervasive sense of fear, the over-developed habit of social control that led to a deep reluctance to oppose authority. He showed that the churches were overwhelmingly swept up by the expectation of national renewal and deeply anti-Semitic.

"However, his main contention was that ‘the German churches did not possess the kinds of theology adequate to sustain any critical attack on the actions of their political rulers’. It may be wishful thinking to believe that the churches could have forced Hitler to act differently, but if only they had tried.

"That failure and other 20th century failures that have shamed Christians (Rwanda, racism in the USA, apartheid in South Africa) have made our witness that much more difficult. To ensure that such things are not repeated, we, the church of Christ, have a deep responsibility to make our voice heard and to stand up to inhumanity and racism from any kind of power, including the state.

"Above all, we need a profound understanding of the gospel. At the cross Jesus was crushed for our iniquities and there is no evil that humans can do that cannot be forgiven. However, those who have been forgiven in Christ are called to challenge wickedness in his name, and that can be very costly as those who did challenge Hitler found."

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[98.1] JUSTICE AND MERCY SHALL EMBRACE

Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy…

William Shakespeare
from The Merchant of Venice

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[97.2] SANCTITY, SECULARITY AND FREE THOUGHT

One recent correspondent expressed surprise "that a theologian should link to the news reporting of the National Secular Society." I can't think why. It's a rich source of material. Why NSS were even decent enough to plug my Jerry Springer piece a couple of weeks ago. And I'm content to stand with others against "the stifling censors of the religious right", even if their reasons for doing so are differently-shaped to mine.

Of course I know some 'secularists' behave as if they had a vested interest in portraying all religious thought as irrational, and faith as an irretrievable antonym of reason. Frankly I don't think they do themselves any favours when they do this. But it's their call. And I can well sympathise with the anger and frustration that religion can cause, because I've experienced it myself. It's still more productive and honest to challenge each other in our best guises rather than our worst, though I know how easy that is to say and how difficult to do.

But none of our problems in hearing each other as we would like to be heard should be allowed to detract from the fact that a serious, well-tempered conversation between thoughtful Christians and thoughtful humanists can only be enriching, though not easy -- given the politics of religion and public life and the way it encourages us to stack our arguments in 'opposing camps'.

Much the same applies in terms of theology and atheism, it seems to me, where the people keenest to bang on in the God-Notgod 'debate' are usually people in some odd time warp of analytical philosophy and pre-Heideggerian metaphysics. They're either blissfully unaware of how things have moved on in philosophy through phenomenology and narrative/linguistic thinking, or they hate "continental thought" because it doesn't allow them to 'win' in the way they think they ought to.

Meanwhile, free-thinkers on all sides who prefer an exchange-of-difference to a war-of-position can go on thinking freely. And, I’d suggest, working together to take on those who seem to want to take the responsibility of freedom away. But for this we will need something a lot tougher than 'tolerance'. Do we have the courage and willingness to talk about it?

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[97.1] CREATING A COMMUNITY OF LEARNING

People sometimes ask me what criteria I use for including something in my links. Usually the question comes when someone who knows me finds a comment on a page pointed from this site that they think I won't agree with. Well, so be it. Thankfully (if painfully, on occasions) the net is difficult to police for ideological purity.

Mainly I enjoy passing on to readers of FaithInSociety websites, blogs, places and portals that I've found stimulating. Which is anything "worth arguing with", not just stuff that makes me feel cosy... though there's plenty of that, naturally... ;-)

At their best, weblogs reflect and create a micro community of learning -- a zone of commitment, debate and dialogue within which faith can be reasoned, reason can be faithed, and the search for Good News and for a just peace can be continued. I find that neighbours who share this task, this conversation and this quest wear different labels and none.

Generally, I do like to link to people who are generous enough to link to me. Sometimes I forget. Often, in fact. This has been the case until recently with Dan Walters, whose site includes valuable musings on the Gospel and justice, emergent church, post-evangelicalism and more. Also Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Texas. And others you'll discover if you trawl a bit. Incidentally, Dan has a good links section himself.

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[96.1] REAPING THE WHIRLWIND

Recently I went to see the English National Opera staged version of Michael Tippett's haunting oratorio, A Child Of Our Time. For those who don't know it, it is based on the events leading up to Kristallnacht during the Nazi terror. In place of the traditional Bachian chorales there sit five Africa-American Spirituals, wonderfully orchestrated into a piece of Western art music that pays more than lipservice to vernacular forms.

Tippett was not a Christian in any conventional sense. He was a Jungian-influenced humanist mystic, you might say; someone of humanity, courage, humour, faith and hope -- politically committed to the dispossessed, a pacifist imprisoned for his concientious objection, and a person of extravagent and intense artistic vision.

From such people we often get far more profound theological remarks than from those of self-regarding piety. An article by Dennis Marks in the ENO programme (see also my music weblog, NewFrontEars) drew my attention to an incredibly powerful comment Tippett made to his friend David Ayerst shortly before the completion of Child.

I have of course not the slightest idea where healing will come [from] because the moment of complete dereliction for the Christian civilization has probably not been reached and so the moment of God's voice from the whirlwind has not come. Though perhaps the whirlwind has come! And that is the only kernel of truth I see - that God will be found in the refuse bin as of old - the stone that has been thrown away.

Goodness. I am considering the possibility of a book on 'God After Christendom'. This will certainly be its opening quotation. Strong echoes of Bonhoeffer, among others.

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[95.1] NO-ONE IS AN ISLAND

Via St Matthews-in-the-City in Auckland, New Zealand, I recently discovered Tui Motu magazine, an independent Catholic publication with ecumenical instincts. Its editor is Michael Hill.

It describes itself thus: "Tui Motu is an exciting and challenging journal. We invite readers to question, debate and reflect on spiritual and social issues in the light of gospel values with the aim of creating a more just and peaceful society. 'Tui Motu' is a Maori phrase meaning 'stitching the islands together'... bringing different races, faiths and opinions into relationship."

Unfortunately only the leading article is available on-line at the moment. Perhaps it will in future consider offering back-material to web viewers in order to meet an international audience -- in keeping with its fine ethos.

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[94.1] TSUNAMI AND RELIGIOUS BLATHER

As well as news about heroic deeds and passionate pleas, there has been some dreadful material on the tsunami up on the web from many religious quarters. Some tunnel-visioned Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others are eager to portray the tragic events as a divine judgment, or to seek religious capital for some of their more outrageous doctrinal claims.

How sad this is. I've ventured into the field myself, with an article about the theological questions (Is God A Disaster?), a comment on Christ and suffering, a news statement on behalf of CCOM about exploitative proselytism, and, of course the tsunami prayer page - which seeks to pull together a range of the good resources that are out there in cyberspace.

I was much cheered yesterday by a fine, forthright journalistic piece from the pen of E. Allen Campbell, Tsunami theology for dummies. This rightly lacerates the 'theological gobbledygook' that's around on the subject. I hope my stuff doesn't count for that, but I'm happy and willing to stand corrected.

Anyway, Campbell, whose entertaining Wolverton Mountain articles I'm linking under my 'godBlogs' section (hope this isn't too much of a misnomer), says this, inter alia:

"In spite of cutting across all religious beliefs, the truly dumbest theological statement that I heard in the wake of the tsunami was made by a white, American woman in her mid-twenties who avoided being counted with the tens of thousands less fortunate. Upon her return to the States, she ascribed her escaping the fate of so many others to her God saving her.

"While we don't normally make the soundest theological statements having just avoided such a traumatic event, she and her listeners need nonetheless to reexamine her theology. It is way off the mark.

"Think about how that statement sounds. Here is a young, white Christian, affluent, American tourist, who believes that God hovered over the raging tower of cascading water, spotted her amongst the hundreds of thousands facing drowning, and intervened on her behalf to rescue her. What is wrong with that belief? Do you really think that God selected this one gal for rescue? I'd like to know what she did or believed to have this special deus ex machina treatment from God.

"What does that theological picture paint for us? God rescues someone who can afford to vacation in some Asian paradise and allows tens of thousands of others to perish- mothers who couldn't save their children or fathers who couldn't protect their families already on the lowest rung of the poverty ladder. Get real."

Absolutely. See also Giles Fraser on this subject.

Archbishop Rowan Williams' attempts at straightforward communication about things like the tsunami are often said to be 'above the heads' of people in the pews. If that's so it is surely a terrible commentary on the illiteracy that passes for Christian learning in many of our churches, not least those where people who are apparently capable of erudition in their professional fields suddenly turn to intellectual jelly when it comes to their faith.

What a huge challenge this is.

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[93.1] CHARTING SOME THEOLOGICAL INSPIRATIONS

From time to time people ask me what theologians I'm inspired by or interested in. I'm tempted to say that it depends on what I'm reading at the time! But there are some voices that reach me regularly and consistently. From the past that has to include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the much-missed John Howard Yoder, and the revolutionary-philosopher-Christian mystic Simone Weil.

These days it would be voices as diverse as Rowan Williams, Sharon Ringe, John D. Caputo, Walter Brueggemann, Merlod Westphal, Jean-Luc Marion, Stanley Hauerwas, Charles Winquist, Alasdair MacIntyre, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Douglas John Hall and Keith Ward.

This set me thinking. I should include some permanent links to these people. So here they are (see left). I've also included some friends and colleagues - Nick Adams, Chris Rowland, Giles Fraser, Bert Hoedemaker and Peter Selby... but sadly others (like Ruth Page, Martyn Atkins and Ken Leech) don't have a centrifugal web presence yet, in spite of their significance.

Three obvious reflections: First, there's no dominant 'school' in any of this. I'm moved by creative biblical theologians, by unsystematic-systematisers and by writers operating on the borders of theology and continental philosophy. Second, a number of these people would find it difficult to agree on many things if they were in the same room! Third, women and non-Western writers are underepresented: though actually that's not true in my library overall, thankfully.

I've stuck with the discipline of including only writers whose work I've read pretty widely... and who seem to me to have something distinctive and important to say in contemporary debates.

As for the diversity: well, the divine economy is indeed broad, rich, stimulating and challenging. Deo gracia.

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[92.1] CELEBRITY, RIVALRY AND DEATH

As the ineluctable appeal of the car-crash reality TV that is Channel 4's 'Celebrity Big Brother' traces itself across our screens, an acute comment (below) from Andrew J. McKenna from a fabulous review article on Derrida and Barth. It's about the fake transcendence that resides at the heart of "amusing ourselves to death" (Neil Postgate). Not nearly as fusty as the curious journal First Things can be, either. Thank goodness.

Incidentally, I was hooked by CBB during the glorious five days when, astonishingly, feminist theorist and critic Germaine Greer appeared on it -- only to attempt a failed revolution and then disappear from the ether.

Now Greer is no Susan Sontag (as someone uncharitably but accurately pointed out on BBC2's 'Newsnight Review'), but I still love her for her passion, wit, obstinacy and angularity. As she rightly said to critics of the Big Brother phenomenon: "It isn't the end of the world, it is the world."

Germaine hasn't got anything like as firm a grasp on the true meaning of the "churning shod" of modern cultural detritus as someone like Charlie Brooker (his Screen Burn: TV with its face torn off, Faber/Guardian Books, 2005 is quite the most excruciatingly funny read you'll ever come across) ... but she messed up the BB agenda for a bit. Which was fun.

Anyway, back to McKenna...

"Nietzsche may have had philosophical reasons for rejecting belief in God, but the relentless shrillness of his references to Christianity and Judaism does not derive from philosophical reason. By the time Nietzsche wrote at the end of the nineteenth century, it was no big deal to sneer at God and his churches (though Baudelaire had regarded it as a churlish audacity only a generation earlier). But those who celebrate God's death are left with a purely worldly transcendence. And this worldly transcendence - expressed in the unforgiving competition for public recognition and celebrity - has no antidote to rivalry, precisely because rivalry is its operating principle. Signing himself "the crucified" in his final correspondence, Nietzsche was at last drawn into an insane attempt at rivalry with Jesus and the Gospels."

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[91.2] THE PHILEMON GROUP

This from Roy Dorey of Heythrop College, University of London, about the Philemon Group. It was wonderful to connect with Roy again after a number of years -- at the British Liberating Theologies Now gathering in Crewe last year. Also Bruce Stokes of Brandon Baptist Church.

"The letter to Philemon is one of the most radical books in the New Testament. It is about changing attitudes and changing behaviour. Philemon, through his experience was having to face up to being a Christian in his world. This website is committed to that same radical way of looking at things. All change is difficult and the Christian faith demands changes that can be very difficult indeed. We believe that God not only demands this of us, but gives us the help and the grace to make it all possible."

The first meeting took place on Friday 13 September 2002 at Queen's College, Oxford, hosted by Professor Christopher Rowland, who is a specialist in liberation theology and Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford. The next meeting will be on Friday 22 April 2005.

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[91.1] FROM PITY TO COMPASSION

The advent of Martin Luther King Day creates the opportunity of this apposite quotation:

"We are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside. But one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

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[90.2] PRAYERS FOR TSUNAMI

This resource page added to my site. Hope it's useful.

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[90.1] A SOBER NEW YEAR

This, from Bob Edgar of the National Council of Churches USA, just about sums up the mood.

"We are deeply shocked and grieved at the unprecedented death and destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunamis in South and Southeast Asia. Our hearts are with those whose loved ones perished, homes were destroyed, and futures left in a precarious balance.

"Despite the horror of the events, we remind ourselves that we are in the season of Christmas when we are particularly aware of the peace of the Christ-child. In that spirit we extend ourselves to our sisters and brothers in Asia and seek to stand in solidarity during this time of great tragedy."

One heartening factor is the massive response from the churches and other agencies of other faith and good faith.

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[89.1] EARTHQUAKE IS A CLASS-QUAKE

It's not too good to quote yourself, but Ekklesia has just put this out (Tsunami: justice as well as relief needed, say Christians) on the appalling tragedy in South Asia and East Africa --emphasising that the long-term solutions are down to politics not charity.

Having said that, the emergency need is enormous. I'm sure you've already donated, but here's another route: Christian Aid on 08080 004 004.

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[88.1] CHRISTMAS PERSPECTIVES

This from David Wood at Grace Anglican Church, Joondalup, Australia - an excerpt from his wonderful Christmas Homily:

"[T]he flesh-taking of God in Jesus tonight shows us the eternal truth about God, truth to counter all [ ] lies.

"God turns out not to be some celestial monster, the task-master demanding satisfaction or the judge dispensing rough justice, the God of too much human imagination. To the acute disappointment of wowserish religious leaders, God does not, after all, specialize in pouring buckets of cold water on people having fun. God is not that prissy creature who disapproves of human love unless it conforms to a set of very tight rules.

"It is us, not God, who condemns young lovers, scowls at single mothers, worries over the supposed attack on the institution of marriage, and refuses to bless same-sex unions. God is not that maniac who sometimes appears at funerals, who “calls” us from this life before we are ready, who swallows up real human tragedy by somehow “taking” small children to heaven.

"To believe and trust in the only true God for half a minute, is to do away with all this accumulated junk."

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[87.1] ATONEMENT AND VIOLENCE

It is a painful and inescapable fact that distorted and unhealthy ideas about God, of which there are very many, often dovetail with human attempts to legitimate violence and oppression. One does not have to subscribe to some over-simple notion that religion (peculiar among life-stances) is the root of all evil in order to see that this is so.

The difficulty is perhaps particularly acute among the 'revealed religions' - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - where attempts to point this out often fall against the rock of an unyielding interpretation of some Scriptural text or inherited doctrine.

What lies behind this is usually a naive, solepcistic, partial or ideological reading of the text, commonly justified on the basis that it it the 'only', 'true' or 'traditional' one. On further examination such claims usually turn out to be untrue, but the weight of a view that buttresses our sanctity and dams our enemies proves massively appealing and 'convincing'.

Such is the case in the current intra-evangelical argument about 'atonement theory', the question about how the death of Christ is linked to God's offer of freedom and forgiveness in the teaching and imagination of the church - and the life (and death) of the world.

The recent stir has been occasioned by a book called The Lost Message of Jesus, published by Zondervan, 2004, written by Steve Chalke, a gifted Baptist preacher and social activist.

By most standards its contents are theologically unremarkable, reflecting a broad swathe of development in what we might call 'liberatory Christianity', consistent with the work of people like Sharon Ringe, Walter Brueggemann and Walter Wink - and at the more conservative end of the spectrum, N. T. Wright, the New Testament scholar who is now Anglican Bishop of Durham.

Chalke's message, essentially, is that Jesus was a social subversive, and that his call for radical transformation in the light of the coming realm of God embraces the political as well as the personal. Not much cause for complaint there, you might think - except that it challenges the complaisant and raises social justice as an inherent dimension of ekklesia and basilea.

The rub, however, is that Chalke has dared to criticise, inter-alia, the classical evangelical doctrine of penal substitution, the idea that God soehow required an innocent Jesus to 'pay the price' for human sin by violent death.

He was impolite enough to (accurately) describe the crude version of this doctrine as tantamount to 'cosmic child abuse', and to mention its links to the history of violence and domination sanctioned, tragically, in the name of Jesus Christ.

This is when the brown stuff hit the fan. On 7 October the Evangelical Alliance in the UK organised a 'debate' on Chalke's views: one which many felt was more like a heresy trial.

Subsequently the EA has publicly criticised Chalke and asked him to retract his comments, which sit clearly within the mainstream of Christian faith. A blow-by-blow account is available on Ekklesia, for the long-suffering.

None of the church's historic creeds have ever required a single view of atonement, and the biblical texts so often used in its favour can just as readily (and much more redeemingly) be understood in a strongly anti-sacrificial way, as Rene Girard and others have shown.

Still, the argument rumbles on. Its form, to those of us not part of the evangelical tribe, seems arcane and not a little unforgiving. But the issues are important.

At the moment I'm working with Jonathan Bartley on a collection of essays about atonement called Consuming Passion, which will be published in 2005 by Darton, Longman and Todd.

In the meantime, Stuart Murray-Williams gave a fine, succinct summary of the background to the debate in his contribution to the EA event, which can be found at the Anabaptist Network site. Important reading in its own right.

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[86.1] DEVELOPING THE VISION OF EKKLESIA

You may have noted that that this weblog has been rather sparodic recently. That's because such spare time as I have at the moment has mostly been given to the Ekklesia site, for which I have been a research associate since May this year.

Besides my sort-of-regular column, I've also been contributing news stories curated here.

Ekklesia was really the brainchild of Jonathan Bartley, whose interests in faith and politics moved in an increasingly radical direction in the 1990s. His own leanings are set out in 'The Subversive Manifesto' (BRF, 2003) - a popular booked aimed at local churches of a more conservative persuasion.

The site's values are linked to those of a mumber of partner organisations in the Anabaptist Network UK, a body which has also attracted dissenting, left-wing Anglicans like myself and Chris Rowland, who teaches New Testament at Oxford.

Ekklesia aims to be a radical Christian think-tank, but of late the news service has had a massive response. There are plans to split the site in two soon, one focussing on research and campaigns, the other on news.

One of the important roles Ekklesia can play, I think, is to mess up the 'liberal' and 'conservative' stereotypes that often bedevil attempts to talk about faith and politics in the media.

As it happens, Jonathan is from good evangelical stock - but has been courageous in supporting causes upopular in that constituency, such as Inclusive Church.

On the other hand I have a certain ecumenical pedigree, but have become increasingly convinced that an open, radical Christianity needs the nourishment of its biblical and 'traditional' roots.

That's something Ekklesia can help to get across. To the 'conservatives' we can say, "actually the Gospel is very radical", and to the 'liberals' we can say, "true liberality needs foundations."

As Bishop Peter Selby once put it, when the going gets tough "liberalism is not enough to support liberalism."

On the other hand, a conservatism which mistakes inflexibility for tradition or reaction for orthodoxy has misunderstood the true catholicity of the movement out of which it arises.

Jesus's agenda was not to shore up the fortress of exclusive religion, but to bring it crumbling down in favour of a new heaven and a new earth.

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[85.1] ADVENT CALLING

Advent is the time of promise; it is not yet the time of fulfillment. We are still in the midst of everything and in the logical inexorability and relentlessness of destiny. To eyes that do not see, it still seems as though the final dice are being cast down here in these valleys, on these battlefields, in these camps and prisons and bomb shelters. Those who are awake sense the working of the other powers and can await the coming of their hour.

Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernable as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today.

Read the rest of this piece by Alfred Delp, who wrote it in a Nazi prison shortly before he was hanged for "treason."

(with grateful acknowledgment to Daily Dig, from Bruderhof.com)

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[84.1] FLESH AND SPIRIT

Charles Henderson from CrossCurrents, the excellent journal of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life (USA), writes:

'Given spam filters that ruthlessly monitor content with a real of imagined relationship to the topic of our Fall issue, I hesitate to describe what lies in wait for those visiting our website or opening the pages of our latest issue. If you are interested either in the relationship between religion and sexuality in general, or the current state of the debate about this topic in religious communities or academic circles worldwide, our essays are essential reading.

'As editor Catherine Madsen puts it in her strong editorial: "When religion looks at sex from a distance, purging the erotic from its speech or explaining it away as tame allegory, it forfeits a measure of its civilizing power. The line in the old Anglican marriage service—long gone, of course, from the new one—was "with my body I thee worship." Worship meant something parallel to honor or adore in those days, not yet something exclusively religious, but the very shift in meaning underlines the validity of the instinct; if we cannot worship our lovers whom we can see, how shall we worship God whom we cannot? A language of adoration cannot be a language of inexperience, real or feigned. It can only be a language of experience, in which spirit is at home in flesh."

'Looking at sex from a distance, purging it from our pages, or explaining it away, is definitely not what we are up to in our Fall issue.'

The full index of text-available feature articles from CrossCurrents back issues is certainly worth checking out, too.

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[83.1] RETURNING FROM CHINA

I have been away for the past fortnight in China, taking part in an official British and Irish church leaders' visit to China Christian Council (Protestant) and Catholic churches and seminaries under the auspices of CTBI. Further news and reflection will follow. In the meantime, by a happy coincidence, the Guardian newspaper in Britain has begun a weeklong series of articles on the country, written by a 15-strong team of top-notch journalists. The special reports are here.

The first set (today) included a very brief reference to Taoism. It will be interesting to see if there is mention of the impact of the two fastest growing religious movements in the new China, Christianity and Buddhism. Following the (lamentable) impact of religion in the US presidential elections, the secular media here has woken up again -- in another periodic fit -- to the importance of religious belief in public life across the world. But I wouldn't be surprised if it is substantially overlooked in its latest coverage of the Pacific rim.

Old habits of ignoring things die hard...

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[82.2] WINDSOR REPORT SEEKS CALM IN THE STORM

After weeks of speculation, the Anglican Communion Report drafted at Windsor under the guidance of the evucular Archbishop Robin Eames was finally published today. It looks like a genuine attempt, in impossible circumstances, to keep the argument going - that is, to encourage Christians of widely different cultures and temperaments to engage in jaw-jaw rather than war-war.

Of course it won't please everybody. But by disavowing expulsions, compulsions, censures and suspensions, Eames seems broadly to have set its face against institutional attempts to curb painful but necessary debate.

Nevertheless there is an acknowledgement that the overall balance of understanding of Scripture and Tradition across the Communion is decidedly conservative, and an invitation to those affirming of lesbian and gay people not to go on rocking the boat until a 'fresh consensus' becomes possible.

However, by inviting ECUSA to 'explain' their actions in consecrating the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire 'with reference to Scripture', the report has also given those who think there are legitimate theological reasons for changing the Church's mind on sexuality to show precisely why this makes hermeneutical sense.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, amidst a sea of comment, has asked people not to leap to conclusions about Windsor too quickly. But spin-merchants are already having their way.

The BBC reported that "the Anglican Church has urged US church leaders to apologise for ordaining a gay priest as bishop". However, paragraph 134 of the report actually suggests that the Episcopal Church be invited to express only its regret "that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached in the events surrounding the election and consecration" and "that such an expression of regret would represent the desire of the Episcopal Church (USA) to remain within the Communion."

A thoughtfully worded statement of "regret" has already been issued by the Primate of the Episcopal Church USA, Frank Griswold.

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[82.1] TERRORISM, GLOBAL CAPITALISM & THE FACE OF CHRIST

While immersed in a frantic schedule and facing abominable insults from self-apppointed guardians of 'right thought' in the church, Archbishop Rowan Williams still seems to make time for some stalwart contributions to public debate.

This via Jonathan Petre:

'The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, yesterday urged America to recognise that terrorists can "have serious moral goals".

'He said that while terrorism must always be condemned, it was wrong to assume its perpetrators were devoid of political rationality. "It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is shared by those who would not dream of acting in the same way, an aim that is intelligible or desirable."

'He said that in ignoring this, in its criticism of al-Qa'eda, America "loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential morality." ' [Full article]

Meanwhile Williams has contributed to a series of discussions about governance, global capitalism, the environment and humanum studies through the St Paul's Institute. The conversations are available online on *pdf format.

As if that's not enough, there's the first of a series of lectures honouring a predecessor at Canterbury, Archbishop Michael Ramsey. It's called Theology in the Face of Christ. Just what's needed.

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[81.2] DERRIDA'S ENDURING LEGACY

Controversial French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who died on 8 October 2004, has been justifiably defended against his (often proudly un-knowledgeable) critics by literary theorist Terry Eagleton, writing in The Guardian.

The Daily Telegraph, not known for its natural sympathies towards left-leaning wordsmiths, also provided a reasonably accurate and balanced assessment - albeit confusing some of its structuralists and post-structuralists!

It commented: 'Derrida was the embodiment of the philosopher-rebel, admired for his explosive critique of the authoritarian values latent in orthodox approaches to literature and philosophy.

'The most popular misconception about him, Derrida said, was that he was "a sceptical nihilist who doesn't believe in anything, who thinks nothing has meaning, and text has no meaning. That's stupid," he protested, "and utterly wrong." '

In recent years Derrida turned increasingly towards God-talk and religion as sources of corrigibility pointing towards 'the impossible', and towards the lesions of thought and language which illustrate the failure of all human attempts at 'closure'. For him this was a profoundly ethical task. Desconstruction, the critical movement most strongly identified with him, is not about destruction - it is, rather, the antidote to totalitarianism.

Derrida's works on identity, death and forgiveness are among his most profound and persuasive. Particularly towards what turned out to be the end of his life (a script which, he would be the first to say, cannot finalised, let alone by his own account), he developed a creative dialogue with Christian and Jewish philosophers and theologians.

This from The Chronicle of Higher Education:

' "He acquired a whole new life in the academy in the last 15 years or so," said John D. Caputo, a professor of religion and humanities at Syracuse University, and the author of The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Indiana University Press, 1997). "He began to talk about what he called 'the undeconstructible.'

'When Derrida was in vogue among literary theorists, you would not have heard that expression. The idea that deconstruction could be carried out in the name of something undeconstructible -- you just didn't hear from literary folks. But in his later work, he began to talk about the undeconstructibility of justice, of democracy, of friendship, of hospitality."

'Some scholars have referred to "the ethico-political turn" in Derrida's work during the 1990s. Interest in his writings increased among philosophers, and also among those in religious studies.
In earlier years, some commentators on Derrida's work had wondered whether his exacting attention to texts might not make him, in effect, a secular practitioner of the reading skills cultivated by centuries of Talmudic scholars. (Indeed, Derrida had hinted as much himself: His book Writing and Difference closes with a quotation attributed to a rabbi named Derrisa.)

'In interviews and autobiographical texts from his final decade, he began to speak about growing up as a Jew in Algeria during the Vichy period. More and more of his writing began to take the form of an overt dialogue with the work of Emmanuel Levinas, a French Jewish thinker who worked at the intersection of Heideggerian philosophy, ethical reflection, and biblical commentary.

' "The idea of something of unconditional value begins to emerge in Derrida's work -- something that makes an unconditional claim on us," said Mr. Caputo. "So the deconstruction of this or that begins to look a little bit like the critique of idols in Jewish theology."

'In 2002 Derrida gave the keynote address at the convention of the American Academy of Religion, held in Toronto. Speaking to a crowded auditorium, the philosopher said, "I rightly pass for an atheist" -- a puzzling formulation, by any measure.

' Mr Caputo recalled that other scholars asked Derrida, "Why don't you just say, 'Je suis. I am an atheist'?" Derrida replied, "Because I don't know. Maybe I'm not an atheist."

' "He meant that, I think, the name of God was important for him," said Mr Caputo, "even if, by the standards of the local pastor or rabbi, he was an atheist. The name of God was tremendously important because it was one of the ways that we could name the unconditional, the undeconstructible." '

Jacques Derrida's work was a major boost for those who believe that linguistic and phenomenological philosophy takes us much further in our understanding of the ecstasy and rationality of faith than traditional metaphysics and epistemology.

He was undoubtedly one of the great public intellectuals of the twentieth century. I believe his legacy to theology, even to biblical theology, will turn out to be immense. See, for example, Caputo's extraordinary piece of the experience of God and the axiology of the impossible.

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[81.1] CONTINUING TRAGEDY IN IRAQ

As the local and global politics around the aftermath of the war in Iraq grow evermore difficult, five churches have been bombed in Baghdad. Before the conflict began, Christian communities with relationships to the historic churches inside the country warned the Bush-Blair alliance of the dire consequences of ill-considered intervention. Their concerns were politely pushed aside in the interests of what was believed to be realpolitik. Tragically the consequences of this mess are being visited on those with least power to influence events.

I am now contributing regular news pieces like this to Ekklesia, by the way. My site index of these is to be found here.

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[80.1] LONGING FOR THE LONGING

"The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love; but if the soul cannot yet feel this longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God." - Meister Eckhart

And in this context, as Latin American theologian Leonardo Boff has eloquently pointed out, the refined biblical usage of 'soul' denotes the whole person -- what these days we call a psychosomatic unity -- re-oriented towards that fullness of life that is the gift of God, not some disembodied component of (or addendum to) a physical being.

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[79.1] DAMNING DANGEROUS TALK

Radical film-maker Ken Loach (whose Kes is one of my favourite movies) has a new picture out. Ae Fond Kiss is an account of a Muslim falling in love with a Catholic in Glasgow. The backdrop is one of racial and cultural tension, stoked both by the media and politicians on issues such as asylum.

This from Loach on the British Home Secretary, who is, perhaps surprisingly these days, still a member of the Christian Socialist Movement:

"You get people like David Blunkett saying that Asian families should speak English at home. I wonder if he says that to the Brits who buy second homes in Spain. Do they have to speak Spanish? How about his Labour friends in Tuscany? Do they speak Italian? The man has no sense of history and proportion. He's a political thug and people like that inadvertently end up promoting racism." (London Metro).

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[78.1] SUFFERING MAY BE FACED, BUT NOT EFFACED

Once they told Rabbi Pinhas of the great misery among the needy. He listened, sunk in grief. Then he raised his head. “Let us draw God into the world,” he cried, “and all need will be quenched.” God’s grace consists precisely in this, that God wants to .. be won by humanity, placing Godself, so to speak, into human hands. God wants to come to the world, but to come to it through men and women. This is the mystery of our existence, the superhuman chance of humankind.
(Martin Buber).

Writing from the depths of Judaism, Buber and Pinhas remind us that the One who Christians meet in Christ is not a God whose incarnation begins and ends with the history of Jesus. This is the deep truth that traditional Christian language seeks to capture by picturing for us the 'pre-existence' of the logos and the gift of resurrection.

Rendered 'metaphysically', those concepts may cause us moderns no end of problems. Understood as encounter-beyond-words they call forth that God-with-usness which gazes right back at us in Jesus, even down to his demanding non-recognition (Matthew 25).

Picking up on this Jewish and Christian experience, theologian Ruth Page has suggested that 'pansyntheism' (God-with-all) may be a better descriptor for 'the incarnate God' than either stand-alone theism or panentheism (God-in-all, as favoured by process thinkers). The former is too aloof; the latter blurs the respective freedoms of God and creation while seeking their rightful congruence.

Meanwhile, what sticks out like a (very) sore thumb in Pinhas's prose is his near-suggestion that suffering itself may be quenched. I can't swallow that. The risen Christ is imaged with the wounds of crucifixion still impressed upon him. In a universe where love's possibility involves the lesions of contingency, suffering cannot be effaced. Nor, mostly, can the painful need it causes be satisfied. But even so, those who suffer can be faced, given worth and hope.

For this, as Bonhoeffer put it - and we shall have to live with the anthropomorphism - "only a suffering God will do." Not a God who denies, inflicts or disowns suffering, but a God who embraces it (and its victims) through unquenchable love.

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[77.1] ON TRUE TOGETHERNESS

Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?
Or by an agreement on paper?
Or by arms?
Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing will so cohere.
Only those who love each other shall become indivisible.
(Walt Whitman)

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[76.2] LATEST CROSS CURRENTS

Charles Henderson writes in with news about CrossCurrents, one of the most interesting journals in the field of religion and applied theology across the spectrum:

'As we normally do, we reach beyond the news of the day to explore the currents that lie beneath the surface. For example, behind today's debate about the war in Iraq lies the long history of US foreign policy and how it has been influenced by various strains within American civil religion. Gary Dorrien's "Imperial Designs" traces that history up to the present, and lays out the options for the future.

'Likewise, beyond the present debate about gay marriage lies the under-reported story of polygyny. Debra Mubashshir Majeed explores the possible connections between the two. Similarly, ahead of politicized debate about strengthening education systems lies the untapped potential of service learning.

'Angela Leonard reports from the front lines of change and innovation. Many of the articles in the summer issue have been contributed by the scholars who attended our 20th anniversary research colloquium last year. Contributing editor, Stephanie Mitchem, frames the conversation in her Anniversary of Ideas.

'If you like what you find in this issue, but have not yet taken advantage of our offer of up to six complimentary back issues, why not subscribe now?'

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[76.1] CHURCHES BACK INTERNATIONAL PEACE DAY - TODAY

Christian leaders from across the world have supplied short, broadcast messages for a website (www.overcomingviolence.org/peace2004) to promote the International Day of Prayer for Peace, which takes place today.

Millions of Christians from all traditions – evangelical, ecumenical, Pentecostal and Catholic – will join in, says the World Council of Churches, which is coordinating the event.

"God weeps over God's world, aching because of conflict in Darfur, in Beslan, in Harare, in Colombia, in Jerusalem, in Belfast," says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his personal message. He adds: "God - Emmanuel, God with us, with you - has no one but you to help God make this world hospitable to peace and justice."

The inspiring two-minute video messages are also an affirmation of the churches' and faith communities' work for change in the midst of the world’s current turmoil. They are in both webcast and broadcast quality.

This WCC initiative links to the International Day of Peace declared by the United Nations General Assembly, a world-wide effort intended as a day of global cease-fire and non-violence, and as an opportunity for education and raising public awareness on the issues involved. (From Ekklesia)

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[75.2] WOMEN AT THE ALTAR & BEYOND

Arriving home late from London last night, I found myself leafing through the September '04 newsletter of Catholic Womens Ordination. (Carla Roth - my wife - and I joined a few years ago, partly through personal contacts, and partly to express some Anglican/Mennonite support.)

And, lo and behold, we discovered from the 'members update' section that our immediate next door neighbours, Liz and Diana, are involved too! Looked at another way, it's alarming what you still don't dicover for almost a year...

It also reminds me to add CWO to my permanent links.

Catholic Womens Ordination is a movement campaigning within the Roman Catholic Church for inclusivity and for the radical transformation of kyriarchal institutional Church structures. It calls for women's perspectives to enrich the Church's thinking and for women's gifts to enrich its ministry and mission.

Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, the American biblical scholar, uses the word kyriarchy taken from the Greek kyros, denoting 'master', to express the interlocking of oppressions within a hierachical system (racism, sexism, classism, etc.) in contrast to the liberating dynamic of the Gospel.

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[75.1] U.S. RIGHT'S ‘BIBLE BAN’ NONSENSE

US election campaign mail with a return address for the Republican National Committee in Washington DC has been issued in West Virginia warning voters that the Bible will be prohibited if liberal candidates win in November.

The Democrats are not named and there is no direct reference to Presidential candidate John Kerry, but the implication seems clear.

The literature shows a Bible with the word "banned" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "allowed." The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and to defeat the "liberal agenda."

Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie would neither confirm nor deny the origins of the mailing when he was interviewed by the Associated Press agency which broke the story.

The tactic has been condemned as “scare mongering” by lobby groups and moderate church leaders.

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[74.2] GOD AFTER BESLAN

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was interviewed by John Humphreys on the BBC Radio 4 'Today' programme recently, following the terrorist killing of around 350 people, mostly children, in Beslan.

He faced sharp questions on the meaning of belief in God in the light of such horrors. These excerpts were reproduced by the Church Times:

Where was God yesterday morning?
Where was God? Where was God in the Aberfan disaster? Where was God on 9/11? The short answer is that God is where God always is, that is, with those who are trying to comfort and bring light in any such situation. I would guess in such a situation - and how could one begin to imagine the nightmare in the school - there must have been older children putting arms around younger children. You might see God there.

But, in a world in which human decisions are free - even free for the most appalling evil like this - God does not dictate and intervene.

I suppose we all have the sense that some kind of line has been crossed here: that people can not only calculate that the death of children will serve their purpose, but actually sit with suffering children for days, watching in a calculating way. That is the kind of decision which, yes, you have to call evil.

[On the question of freedom of choice] Freedom is a word thrown around. It is a word that has big and dramatic resonances, but it often means very, very small things, a very small gesture.

But choice is denied to people who are victims?
That is what it is to be a victim: your choice is restricted; you are imprisoned.

That is what God allows; so he doesn't give us a choice, does he?
It is a fact that people exercise different levels of freedom. One person's freedom interferes with another's. That is why I do not believe that freedom is the essence of Christianity. It is one of those crucial aspects of it, but I would still come back to the question: what is it, in a situation of this dreadful captivity, that an ordinary child can still do with mind and heart?

Does the Church not preach that God is merciful?
Of course, this is nothing to do with God's mercy, it has to do with the kind of reality that the created world is in, which we make our futures in relation to God.

God calls us to co-operate with what he longs for; what he wishes to see, which is justice, which is love, and we are free to resist. Sometimes people resist violently and horribly, as in this case.

So what do you say to people who say: 'I simply can't believe any longer; this is not a good world.'
What I want to ask is: what is it that makes you find the torture and death of children so appalling? What is it that makes you value human beings?The faith that Christians hold, and other religious people, is that each person has that absolute value in the eyes of God, which means that it is impossible to treat them as a means to your own ends. It requires of us the most self-forgetful respect, the most generous, the most outgoing engagement with other persons.

If there is no eternal love focused on each and every individual, including the most vulnerable, including the most unimportant, then it is possible for persons to be used as tools, as objects. More.

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[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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