[408.1] ON ROOTS AND ROUTES

What is radical about Christianity? Feb 19, 2007. Simon Barrow argues that living tradition is about change not fixity (Ekklesia).

"My experience of being a Christian is that of a surprising, continual and contested process of reformation and rediscovery. In the events and narratives concerning Jesus, which remain central to my life, everything I thought I knew about the world, myself, God and humanity turns out to be nothing like what I expected, and indeed finds itself in need of ongoing transformation.

"The social and political challenge of the Gospel flows, it seems to me, from its radical core. But ‘radical’ has become something of a dirty word, implying (for many) extremism, intolerance or violence; and (for others) an abandonment of historic commitments. These are distortions of its originating meaning.

"By radical (radix, from the Latin) I mean something like ‘rooted-to-be-routed’ – a personal, communal and intellectual re-exploration and re-expression of a deep tradition of reading, reasoning and responding to the world which propels us to its most risky frontiers. That is what is at the heart of Christianity.

"Whereas the conservative tends to be oriented to the past, and the liberal tends to regard tradition as baggage or inhibition, the radical seeks to live out of a wisdom which is malleable and resilient enough to go on changing without breaking, and which has a capacity to bring both surprise and coherence in a way that ‘starting from scratch’ cannot.

"...Call the approach I am taking a type of theological ressourcement, if you will." More.

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[407.1] GRACE IN ORDINARY

"It is not necessary that we should have any unexpected, extraordinary experiences in prayer and meditation. … Not only at the beginning, but repeatedly, there will be times when we feel a great spiritual dryness and apathy, an aversion, even an inability to meditate. We dare not be balked by such experiences… [W]e must not allow them to keep us from adhering to our meditation period with great patience and fidelity. ... It is here that our old vanity and our illicit claims upon God may creep in by a pious detour, as if it were our right to have nothing but elevating and fruitful experiences, and as if the discovery of our own inner poverty were quite beneath our dignity. With that attitude, we shall make no progress." ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

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Details here.

[406.1] MIGRATION NEEDS HUMANITY TO SHAPE LEGALITY

Ekklesia, along with representatives of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales (who commissioned it), is the first to respond to a vital new survey conducted by the Von Hugel Institute: Catholic report shows that migration is about need not numbers.
A university-based Catholic research body at the University of Cambridge has published a report which illustrates the shocking conditions endured by many migrant workers contributing to the economic life of the UK.

“This survey shows that exploitation in an unequal world is the true story of economic migration – not scaremongering about scroungers, which is what the press and politicians often latch onto”, commented Ekklesia co-director Simon Barrow. “These are people contributing to our wealth. They deserve fair shares, but instead they face discrimination.”

Ekklesia says that though the Catholic Church, because of its demography, is especially linked with workers from the EU accession countries and beyond, the human challenge migrants pose is one which humanitarian groups of all religious persuasions and none should face up to.

“The Von Hugel report should encourage politicians, journalists and policy makers to focus on needs rather than numbers in the debate about a just immigration policy”, said Simon Barrow.

Ekklesia is also commending the 'Strangers into Citizens' campaign, which is calling for a one-off “earned amnesty” for migrants (whether asylum seekers or economic migrants) who have made new lives in the UK. The campaign, initiated and backed by citizens groups and churches, argues that migrants who have been in the UK for four years or more should be admitted to a two-year "pathway to citizenship". Ekklesia is currently researching alternative approaches to migration based on global mutuality rather than narrow national interests. {Pic: Westminster Cathedral}

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[405.1] POLITICAL ADVICE

From Brian McLaren to US Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, on the God's Politics weblog (from BeliefNet and Sojourners):

Please don't lie to us. Please forego both the repulsive, deceptive, and twisted lies and also the flattering lies we like to hear. For example, I heard a fellow candidate recently trot out the tired old line, "America is the greatest country in the history of the world." This makes Americans feel good and gets applause. Maybe it wins votes. But it is a lie. Yes, we are the richest country. Yes, we have the most weapons. Yes, we dominate in many fields, from sports to pop music to movies to pornographic websites to resource consumption and waste production. But the seductive lie of superiority is bad for any nation, including ours. Any nation that keeps telling itself that it is the greatest will become a proud nation (if it isn't already), and pride, I have it on good authority, comes before a fall. Pride makes nations, asindividuals, unpleasant and ugly neighbors, and so candidates make a bad long-term decision when they seek to coddle pride in exchange for votes. If they win, they will preside over a country that their rhetoric has made more ugly and more likely to fall.

Instead of telling us this lie of American superiority, please tell us the truths that we need to hear. Tell us, as you just did in your campaign-launch speech, inconvenient truths – that we and our leaders have a habit of making mistakes and blaming others – whether it's in New Orleans or Baghdad. Tell us the truth about our past – from our own original genocide and ongoing apartheid regarding the Native peoples of this land, to our profoundly unacknowledged and unhealed legacy of slavery and racism, to our failure to care properly for this beautiful part of God's green earth, to our desperate and shameful violations of our own principles and ideals around the world, from Congo to Chile, and from Central America to the Middle East. Those who say, "Those things are in the past, we should just move on," would never say that about, say, September 11, 2001. More.

See also: Barack Obama's faith challenge, by Jerome Eric Copulsky. Official site: http://www.barackobama.com/

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[10.17.AM] Independent Jewish Voices today seek a fresh perpective on Israel-Palestine and raise the question of 'who speaks for whom?' - an important issues facing in many religiously defined or shaped communities. It has parallels with with the New Generation Network's stance, and the theological and political issues raised by Christians taking a post-Christendom perspective.

[404.1] USE AND ABUSE OF THE BIBLE

"Fundamentalism has suddenly become a matter of concern for everyone, whether or not they are personally religious. It affects education in science and history; it affects political elections in some countries, and through this it affects international relations; it may affect the question of whether [hu]mankind survives [far] into the twenty-first century. Therefore, if people want to understand the world in which they live, they may find it necessary to understand something about fundamentalism." ~ James Barr, former Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Scripture at the University of Oxford

"I have come to believe that the Bible's multiple voices, far from undermining its importance, actually help to justify its prominence in the Christian faith. For through them we discover the story of an authentic [dialogic] relationship between God and humanity." ~ Susannah Rudge, student leader

From 16-18 February 2007 the Student Christian Movement in the UK are holding their annual gathering near Kidderminster on the theme of 'reading the Bible' in plural and contested contexts. There are a number of significant theologians contributing - including Morna Hooker, Lisa Isherwood and John Vincent. Given both the growth of the fundamentalist mentality on campuses and the relative neglect of mature approaches to the the Bible in the mainstream culture and the churches, this is an important theme.

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[403.1] FROM RESENTMENT TO REDEMPTION

Giles Fraser has penned a trenchant review of a new book on US Christian fundamentalism for The New Statesman. Inter-alia, in the resulting article, Blind Faith, he touches on the important question of cathartic imagination (which is deeply embedded in both religious and cultural expression), noting:

'Nietzsche famously argued that Christianity is driven by hate. The experience of persecution and slavery incubated a deep hatred towards oppressors that came to be sublimated into the notion of the Judaeo-Christian concept of the divine. The Christian God thus became a vehicle for fantasies of violence. So, for example: Psalm 137 begins with the experience of oppression by the rivers of Babylon where "we sat down and wept". It concludes: "Happy shall be he who takes your children and dashes their heads against the rocks."

'As it happens, I think Christianity has deep resources for the containment of what Nietzsche came to call ressentiment. Indeed, theologians like René Girard argue that ressentiment is an unfortunate but unavoidable by-product of the Christian commitment not to answer violence with violence. For, in reality, turning the other cheek, and not indulging in the satisfaction of returning violence in kind, is always going to result in a world of emotional complexity, of nightly dreams of revenge. And bad dreams may be a price worth paying for a commitment to peacemaking. But Girardian theology is a world away from a fundamentalism that manipulates the explosive power of ressentiment. '

Quite. We should acknowledge, and not suppress, our dark fantasies. But we should also recognise them for what they are, as with the Book of Revelation (which I have always argued is part redemption-song and part revenge fantasy). And we should seek the collective moral and spiritual strength to think and act otherwise in the cold light of day - and in the disturbingly warm ray of divine love. {Pic: (c) New Statesman and Society}

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[402.1] GETTING DRENCHED

"Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and [water] tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's also holy, and absurd. It's about surrender, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched." ~ Anne Lamott, Travelling Mercies.

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[401.1] SUSTAINING COMMUNITIES

On the day the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its report on climate change and global sustainability, welcomed by the world churches, a reflection about the nourishment of Christian movement based on qulaity and relationship - rather than size and conquest. The same ground-up principles that feed the planet produce the kind of moral communities that make environmental action an urgent priority. The IPCC report chapter summary is here (*.PDF), incidentally.

"A church that is concerned about its own sustainability must have strategies other than the growth paradigm, which openly assess its impact and accountability in local and global terms. Sustainability thinking points us to the future; our action or inaction now has consequences for communities and congregations yet to come. Resilient communities are developed with a belief that our future patterns of life can be different if a distinct approach to change is initiated based on a renewed theological understanding of justice, stewardship, and inclusion." ~ Andrew Davey, Urban Christianity and Global Order: Theological Resources for an Urban Future

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[400.1] UNDERSTANDING FUNDAMENTALISM

This is a paper I prepared for a consultation convened by the Church of England, and conducted under Chatham House rules. It is now available on Ekklesia: Facing up to fundamentalism (Feb 01, 2007) ~ A description, analysis and response for the perplexed. The fact that ‘fundamentalism’ is used as a general, often indiscriminate and imprecise form of abuse, does not mean that there is not a real problem behind it. But getting to the nub of the issue in the context of media and public policy debate – where the desire for shorthand often overcomes the demands of clarity – is not easy. In this paper I am addressing primarily the phenomenon of Christian fundamentalism in Anglo-American contexts, but with an awareness of global concerns and plural/secular pressures. More.

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[399.1] MANCHESTER CASINO ROYALE?

“Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, religion, news, aesthetics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death” ~ Neil Postman

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[11.27 GMT] Wrong debate, wrong language. Ekklesia, Jan 31, 2007 Malcolm Duncan from Faithworks puts an evangelical case for adopting non-discrimination in the provision of public services. Also: Evangelical leader welcomes UK equalities legislation.

[398.2] ADOPTING A NEW CHURCH-STATE STANCE

Responding to comments from Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster and the most senior figure in the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the independent UK religious think-tank Ekklesia says it is a mistake automatically to conflate church-based initiatives in civil society with government-sponsored services.

The Cardinal has suggested that the government’s refusal to allow its publicly-funded adoption agencies to refuse gay adoptees poses a threat to the voluntary work carried out by all churches. Ekklesia says this is not so.

Instead it suggests that the “adjustment period” of 21 months creates a fresh opportunity for a “mature and careful reconsideration on both sides of the role of the churches in relation to the government, with its responsibility to provide for all, and civil society, where there is space for a number of actors and different contributions.”

The basis of this reconsideration, says Ekklesia, needs to be an acknowledgement that Britain is not a ‘Christian country’ but a plural society in which the great majority of the population are no longer regular Christian adherents.

The churches can therefore no longer assume that their definitions of what is right will be accepted by everybody, especially when public money is going into services intended for the whole community, it says. But this is an opportunity not a threat for the churches.

The think tank points out that discrimination against lesbian and gay people has been strongly opposed by a number of Christians on theological grounds, and that the churches need to acknowledge that they do not speak with one voice.

Ekklesia says that the argument about church and government is “deeply confused” when people ignore the crucial distinction between public provision and voluntary action.

“Some church reactions to the Equality Act, which most people see as a matter of consistency and fairness, hark back to the Christendom era when the action of government was based solely or largely on principles determined by the churches”, commented Ekklesia co-director Simon Barrow. “However, we are no longer in that era.”

Ekklesia argues that there is no general threat to church-based voluntary initiatives, but says that arguing against equal treatment in public services “is bound to cause hostility towards the church, with people questioning whether it is fit to be a state recognised provider.”

The think-tank says that instead of resisting change, the churches need to take a positive attitude to what the Cardinal described today as their "loss of power", since this gives them an opportunity to recover the dynamic of the Christian message as an identification with those at the margins of society.

The Cardinal made his remarks on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning (30 January 2007) following a statement from Downing Street yesterday.

See also: LGCM says children must come first in adoption matters (13.59 GMT)

Related resources: Redeeming Religion in the Public Square - a ground-breaking new approach to faith and politics from Ekklesia. Faith And Politics After Christendom - a timely reappraisal by Jonathan Bartley. Learning to love again - Simon Barrow on Guardian CIF: church agencies are turning against their own message. 'Defeat' at the hands of equality legislation may be the best spiritual outcome for them. Conscience and justice - Savitri Hensman unpacks the Christian pickle over discrimination. Christians must stand against discrimination - Giles Fraser says those who oppose equality do faith a disservice.


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[398.1] IMAGINING A SPACIOUS POLITICS

“The [public] imagination of faith refuses to be content with human arrangements—social, economic, political, urban, rural—that are not based on the practice of human freedom in the presence of God. That imagination will pertinently challenge those arrangements through envisioning alternatives, through prophetic speech and action, through the creation of communities that include, strengthen, and give integrity to those at the margins” ~ Andrew Davey, Urban Christianity and Global Order: Theological Resources for an Urban Future

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[20.26 GMT] Blair confirms that Catholic adoption agencies will not be able to discriminate Ekklesia, 29/01/07

[397.1] STRETCHING OUR CREDIBILITY

"Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. This is the achievement, the ‘work’ of faith: to recognize this absolute prius, which nothing else can surpass; to believe that there is such a thing as love, absolute love, and that there is nothing higher or greater than it; to believe against all the evidence of experience, against every ‘rational’ concept of God, which thinks of [God] in terms of impassibility or, at best, totally pure goodness, but not in terms of an inconceivable and senseless act of love."
~Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, pp.101-102.

Not of course that we can capture this love, or render it's 'senselessness' as prescriptive reasoning. The point, rather, is to seek ways of inhabiting it - and so to discover through repaired relations that love is not primarly "an emotion", but an intention of concerned dispossessiveness toward 'the other'. What Balthasar is pointing out is that God, having no need to compete within our world of objects and relations, is the wholly non-possessive Other. And therefore the unrestricted source of all possibilities of love.

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[396.1] THE TYRANNY OF KNOWING

The great majority of the worst crimes committed by human beings arise from their false claims to know things beyond doubt, whether in the name of God or in the name of any ideology (religious or otherwise) that abjures human frailty. Perhaps few perceived this more clearly, during the trials of the Nazi era we remember on Holocaust Memorial Day, and specifically the 'church struggle' against the embrace of totalitarianism, than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Railing against both arrogant positivism and the abandonment of truthfulness, he wrote:

"No good at all can come from acting before the world and one’s self as though we knew the truth, when in reality we do not. This truth is too important for that, and it would be a betrayal of this truth if the church were to hide itself behind resolutions and pious so-called Christian principles, when it is called to look the truth in the face and once and for all confess its guilt and ignorance. Indeed, such resolutions can have nothing complete, nothing clear about them unless the whole Christian truth, as the church knows it or confesses that it does not know it, stands behind them. Qualified silence might perhaps be more appropriate for the church today than talk which is very unqualified. That means protest against any form of the church which does not honour the question of truth above all things." [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, translated by Edwin Robertson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 160]

God's truth, in other words, is not the equivalent of our malignant fantasies about 'knowing' or 'ruling'. It is to be discovered, rather, by entering into the most vulnerable aspects of human life, and finding there a vocation of love which defies conquest. This is why, for Bonhoeffer, the greatest possible engagement with reality is to be found through engaging the suffering compassion of Christ - a commitment which led him to the gallows at Flossenburg.

See also: Stanley Hauerwas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Truth and Politics, Center for Theological Enquiry, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. The ambiguity and difficulty of Bonhoeffer's relation with the ingrained anti-Judaism of his theological inheritance is explored wisely and sensitively by Stephen R. Haynes in The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Post-Holocaust Perspectives (Fortress Press, 2006). More titles here.

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[395.1] NO TIME FOR COMPLACENCY


"Integration was not enough to save [the German Jews in wartime Germany]. Suspicion, prejudice and discrimination lay dormant, awaiting crisis. It was this deeply embedded anti-Semitism that the Nazis were able to unleash. Britain today has more complex fault lines than the straightforward Judeo-Christian duel played upon by the fascism of the 1930s. We are surrounded by a cacophony of cultures, of which we often know little. If hit hard with the ideology of hatred, our society would not split into two, it would shatter into a thousand pieces.

"The question is what do we really know about our neighbours? Did you wish your Muslim friend well over the fast of Ramadan, or chat to your Hindu friend about Diwali, or find out what Yom Kippur means to a Jew? Have you learned why your Polish colleague has left her child with a grandparent to come to work here, or found out the variety of degrees your East European office cleaners have between them? Have you ever spoken to an asylum seeker about why they are here and what they have left behind? Do you think of your colleague as disabled, or just the same but different? Are we actually speaking to each other or just passing by? This year's Holocaust Memorial Day (today) is trying to address some of these issues. " ~ Stephen Smith of HMD, writing on Guardian CIF. See also: Holocaust Memorial Day supporters warn against complacency, Ekklesia.

A recent YouGov UK poll conducted by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust suggested that 41% of us think that the Holocaust could happen again. Worryingly, 36% of us also think that if genocide were to happen most people would stand by and do nothing. The vast majority of us - 79% - do not realise that black people were also targets of the Nazis and nearly 50% had no idea that the Roma community, lesbians and gay men, and people with disabilities, were also persecuted.

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[00.01 GMT] Learning to love again. Simon Barrow, Guardian Comment-is-Free, Jan 26 07, 07:00pm: Church agencies are turning against their own message. 'Defeat' at the hands of equality legislation may be the best spiritual outcome for them.