ENCOUNTERING STUFF AND GOD

Three ways to make sense of one God (Ekklesia). To some the ancient and central doctrine of the Trinity looks to be modern Christianity's intellectual achilles heel in a rationalistic age, but Simon Barrow argues that rightly understood it points to the coherence of God-talk as well as the challenges the Gospel poses.

JESUS' SUBVERSIVE 'FAMILY VALUES'

This Thursday (31 May 2007) there is a unique chance to engage with Professor Deirdre Good about why the church may - ironically - be overlooking Jesus and the Gospel message of inclusive community in its increasingly anxious quest for 'family values'.

The event, sponsored by Ekklesia, and chaired by Fr Kevin Scully, will take place at St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace - a couple of minutes' walk away from Liverpool Street Station, from 11 AM - Midday. Refreshments, and interviews afterwards. Full details here: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5297.

Dr Good is Professor of New Testament at General Seminary in New York, USA. Her new book Jesus' Family Values is available now. It argues that Jesus replaced his family of origin with differently configured communities and households.

All welcome. Please pass this on to people you know in the London (UK) vicinity, if you see this before the event.

TREADING (BLOG) WATER

Apologies for the lack of updates here (and, indeed, on Ekklesia). Both my hard disc and I have been unwell of late - and we have had various contingencies 'in the office', too. Things should be getting back to normal from tomorrow...

TALKING SENSE ABOUT MOVING PEOPLE

In the UK tabloid media, migration is "an issue". Actually, it's about people - and often their great pain. This much is made clear by Christian Aid's splendid new report, which (inter alia) blows the lid on the paranoid fantasies of The Mail and The Express - who are always talking in lurid and threatening terms about 'economic migrants' (people disenfanchised by the institutional inequity of the global financial system), asylum seekers and refugees.

What Human Tide makes clear is that there is a migration crisis. But it is at its greatest in the South, not the North; and equally its causes lies in the kind of policies we try to protect with barriers, not in the vulnerable people we scapegoat for their plight or the consequences of their exploitation. Of course there is the sickness and corruption of the people-trafficking trade, too. But again, many media portrayals segue the victims into the perpetrators. They fail to point out that movement takes people 'out' as well as 'in' (part of the issue behind a sane migration policy for Europe is how to help people move as a result of choice not compulsion). They don't recognise that development and security are the things that help people take root rather than being displaced. And they ignore the fact that in a word of dissolving borders and transparency to instant capital movements, trying to cage people just doesn't work - apart from being based on immoral premises.

None of this makes solutions to the global crisis that Christian Aid describes easy, of course. But it does suggest that the parameters of a sane and humane conversation about migration will look radically different to the one we have now, where electorates are scared by papers hunting fear-fuelled profit, and politicians bow to the climate of prejudice - in spite of their denials - with a weather eye to their electoral fortunes.

There are all kinds of reasons why Christians should care about this: about people, as well as policies. Among them is the simple fact that Christianity itself is constituted by journeying - in mission, in pilgrimage, in hospitality, in aid, and in flight from mistreatment and oppression. It is our history and our desiny we are talking about - and a growing understanding that the 'we' is a human family, not a self-preoccupied tribe. The Gospel, rightly understood, is always about enlarging the circle of our love, and developing our habitual capacity to respond to a barrier-breaking welcome which goes beyond the limits of human specification and subjectivity. God's, in other words.

Meanwhile, you can download Christian Aid's report, Human Tide: The Real Migration crisis here: full graphic version) (2mb *.PDF- this file may take time to download) or low graphic version (748kb *.PDF).

INVESTING IN THE FUTURE

People are more and more wary of 'religious charities' these days, fearing that good-will can easily become a cover for proselytism or self-interest. No doubt collectors for Christian Aid Week 2007 will face this kind of suspicion in some quarters - but Christian Aid is one church-backed organisation that unequivocally works with those of all creeds and none, builds alliances for social justice, and supports some of the world's most effective NGOs in combatting poverty and inequality on the ground in five continents. It is also a leading campaigning organisation on debt, aid, trade, corporate accountability and global warming. I've seen its work first-hand and have no hesitation in commending it. This week Ekklesia will be specially highlighting the work of CA. You can donate online via this link. This year's Christian Aid education materials feature inspiring stories of how poor communities in El Salvador, Senegal and Afghanistan are growing a future in spite of seemingly impossible odds. With a bit more help they can make an even bigger impact.

MISSION IMPROBABLE

Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury made an important statement in Malaysia about the purpose of Christianity. “Our mission”, he declared, “is not to conquer the world, to subdue others… our mission is to draw people to the company of Jesus; new words to speak, new thoughts to think and new love rising in their hearts.”

If the church really did take that as its starting point, and if it fully recognised that Jesus was crucified by precisely the kind of religio-political system it has historically been tempted to impose, a huge amount could change in its life, and in the life of the world.

It isn't too much to ask. But it is still an awful lot.

KEEPING FAITH WITH THE SCHOOLS DEBATE

Earlier this month, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) decided to have a meeting on faith schools at its annual conference - following up on their constructively critical position paper (pictured below). I spoke at it, on behalf of Ekklesia. So did Andrew Copson from the British Humanist Association. The organiser tried hard to get speakers (especially an Anglican and a Catholic) who would put the view for advocates of religiously-affiliated schools.

When the Church Times reported this on 30 March 2007, they said there was "an 11th-hour invitation had been sent to the C of E and the RC Church to attend the ATL debate". That's funny, because I know from my own correspondence that the organiser was making approaches two weeks beforehand - and that the union got some, shall we say, "sniffy" responses in some quarters.

It has also been suggested to me that "the timing was wrong for the churches, because of the run-in to Holy Week". This is an interesting argument. First, having worked both for the C of E and ecumenical bodies, I know that, although it can be a busy period, people are available. If clergy can't be, there are many lay people with plenty of professional experience in the area.

Second, the complaint once again illustrates "the Christendom mindset". When the church and its message was fully ingrained in the culture and its institutions, it could be taken for granted that other people would know and fit in with the Church Calendar. But that is no longer the case. Indeed a couple of people who I chatted to after the ATL meeting had little or no idea what Holy Week was.

If Christians wish to engage with others, they can no longer assume that it will always be on terms which are convenient to them. The onus is on them to go out of the way (in a manner that Jesus described the priestly class as struggling to do in the parable of the Good Samaritan). And insofar as this represents a shift away from ecclesiastical presumption, it is a healthy spiritual state of affairs for the church, I'd say.

The ATL argues that publicly-funded educational institutions should be accountable and open to all, which is not the case when faith schools are almost wholly financed by the taxpayer but can turn down pupils and teachers because they have the wrong beliefs . On Ekklesia we go further. We think that privileging the interests of church-going parents and children over others goes against the Gospel message of favour-free love, and we think that a "Christian school" would be one that favoured those excluded or at the margins of society, not people who have the time, money or possibility of jumping church admission hoops.

The Church of England and the Roman Catholic hierarchies see things very differently. So there is a debate to be had, and it shouldn't just be conducted in the corridors of power or at the Athenaeum Club (where Jonathan Bartley and I were invited for one conversation some months ago). The defensive shields need to come down and the talking needs to get more positive on the part of those who run religiously-affiliated schools.

That's why I welcome the ATL's position. Not just because I agree with their concerns, but because they are trying to address them constructively. They also have a lot of Christians on their side, even if they are not official church spokespeople.

See also: Teaching union defends its calling of faith schools to account and Time to end discrimination by faith schools, says teaching union. ATL's position statement on faith schools can be accessed here.

A SOCIETY OF STUFF AND STRANGERS

As New Labour contemplates a degree of electoral meltdown on Thursday 3 May, the word from the camp is that its new idea is "progressive self-interest" - trying to make social justice more amenable by showing how everyone can benefit from a fairer society and will lose from a more divided one. That was, of course, the logic of the Brandt Report on world development in the 1980s - but the gravitational pull of market liberalisation, individualisation, game theory, organisational change and consumerism has been in the opposite direction, and democratic politics struggles to move to a different drum. The role of civil society initiatives and movements is vital in keeping alternative visions alive, and those who have lived within the constraints of Westminster politics know this too.

Turning to the bigger picture Clare Short (formerly Labour development secretary, now independent, MP) declared today: “You can’t take the evil of slavery out of the world and abolish it without making the world more just. You will never prevent people living in bonded labour or from getting caught up in sex trafficking while they are so desperate that they have no other choice but to sell themselves. As long as we in the West crave ever more excess, we conspire in their desperation, exploiting it and make ourselves sick in the process. We are well off, yet our society has never been more miserable. We suffer today from the disease of excess, from obesity, drug and alcohol abuse and resulting family breakdown. We must change the way we live, change the way the world is governed and create a new world order, both for ourselves and globally.”

She will, of course, be accused of miserablism for her initial judgment and damned for idealism with her last flourish. But the essence of Short's complaint (which is not invalidated by criticism of her own past performance, either) is based on stark realism, albeit of the kind we are ill-inclined to recognise. I'd put it this way. A society over-mesmerised by acquiring things has become more and more a collection of strangers who clash legally, struggle politically, by-pass socially, divide economically, narrowcast culturally, turn inwards spiritually and plunder environmentally.

You don't have to be a sandal-wearing Cassandra or a denier of the numerous benefits of modernity to see this downside, and to recognise that the most basic question we have to handle is what constitutes our common humanity over and above the technologies that mediate it. Given the magnitude of the forces that maintain us in our current materially-bound dilemma, steps in a different direction are going to seem small. But they are vital. And they will only be sustained by faith - not dogmatism or refusal of evidence, but reasoned trust in a greater future rooted in something that cannot simply be reduced to a function of what now-is and now-rules. This is what "undergoing God" (as James Alison delightfully puts it) is all about, and those who do not see that as a possibility have a responsibility for elucidating the grounds of hope, as much as those who do have a responsibility for elucidating the grounds of belief.

THINKING FOR THE DAY...

One of the trials of writing commentary for a wide audience is that you are always having to ask yourself, "how could this be misunderstood?" Then you try to be clearer. Then you have to face up to the fact that you still get it wrong. The onus of communication is on the communicator, but it's a two-way street... more than that, it's a multi-channel zone with loads of interference. Getting heard is a human privilege. Getting through is a grace.


All of which is a prelude to saying that, after some useful feedback, I changed the title of my latest Ekklesia column from Why we need to rid ourselves of 'God slots' to this one: Why we need to rid ourselves of the 'god of the slots'. The reason is this: given that there is a question in the air about 'Thought for the Day' on BBC Radio 4 (some of us want it open to people of different life stances, the churches and its producers only to "the religious"), it could have been construed as somehow anti-TFTD. This is far from the truth. Ekklesia - which has a stake in the programme, since Jonathan Bartley is a contributor - wants to see it as a slot for a wide range of takes on life, not a narrow "God slot" (as people like to call it). This article is, in a sense, a contribution to that debate, but its main concern is to show wht "the god of the slots" in culture is the equivalent of "the god of the gaps" in science -- a related, but distinct, issue.

As I've also added: "TFTD is an important space for looking at how beliefs-in-practice view the task of living, but it does not have to exclude those who do not fit a questionable definition of "religious". See some more detailed comments on: Losing our (radio) religion?

NOT EXPECTING SOCIETY TO DO GOD FOR US

Why we need to rid ourselves of 'the god of the slots' The church looking for ‘God slots’ in relation to culture is like religion seeking a ‘God of the gaps’ in relation to science: a huge mistake. The Gospel points us elsewhere.

In a post-Christendom era, Christians cannot expect the education system, government or the media to do their job for them or make other people Christians. If they do that they will be constantly disillusioned, they will be despised, and they will lose the capacity for independent thought and subversive action.

There are two sides to this: exercising freedom, and recognising limits. Rowan Williams put it well in his BBC Newsnight interview on Tuesday 24 April 2007. First, in response to the question about whether Bush and Blair had prayed over the Iraq war, he turned the issue on its head. Politicians are not there to pray. But if, by chance, these powerful individuals had prayed, maybe they would have opened themselves to a decision that went against their instincts and interests – maybe the Prince of Peace, whom they both name, would have convinced them not to put their trust in armies. Who knows?

Then Dr Williams said this: “I don't expect government to be talking religion. I do expect government to be giving space and opportunity for the kind of moral discussion informed by religion, as by many other strands of humanistic thought.”

That is both pluralistically defensible and theologically appropriate. Taking “religion” to mean, in this case, the life and testimony of a group of people (rather than the institutional abstraction I have criticized), the Archbishop seemed to be suggesting that both those of faith and those whose commitment to human flourishing is otherwise defined should be part of a conversation sustained by public space, but without expecting government to talk their language or do their work. (He then spoiled it all by defending bishops in the House of Lords, but no-one is perfect).

All of which makes me wonder… if Christians were to stop bleating on about protecting their preferential “slots”, and were instead to focus on what they had to offer in terms of peacemaking, hospitality, community-building, forgiveness, and many other gifts of the Gospel, people might just be interested in broadcasting them – not because of a “religious label”, but because they had something worthwhile (and a bit quirky) to say. More here.

BLOG ON EKKLESIA

I am splitting my endeavours between FinS and my Ekklesia weblog, which is here: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/blog/3

A SYMBOL OF FAITHFUL NON-CONFORMITY

Waiving the flag? Simon Barrow, Guardian Comment-is-Free, April 23, 2007 5:55 PM Printable version Despite the jingoism surrounding St George, his story has another side that goes well beyond narrow nationalism.

ON A MUCH LIGHTER NOTE

I never could resist a good lightbulb joke: on which note, see C of E lightens up. For followers of the UK political scene, the Gordon Brown and David Cameron ones came straight off the top of my head. Though that isn't saying someone else hasn't thought of them too. The 'freemarket' one I started as an anti-monetarist quip in 1981, and a year later it came back to me. Dozens of others probably had the same idea. Duff 'memes' theory is not needed for this kind of thing to happen. Btw, for real aficionados, how about: Q. How many David Milibands does it take to change a lightbulb? A.Gordon is the man for that job, without a shadow of a doubt. Footnote from Matt Foot. (Btw, Jonathan Bartley tells me the counsellors one is too old. But I still like it. Sorry, Jon. Shine on, you crazy diamond...)

HEADING FOR UNCHARTED DEPTHS

"Because we have not sought the safety of familiar, wide-buoyed waters, but claim a wide universe for our domain, we shall always find ourselves sailing towards continents of spice and treasure. We will be asking questions of import, for which there are no certain answers." --Anthropologist Frederica de Laguna (1906-2004).

Of course there was a bit of looting to complicate things in practice, but as a metaphor it works very well indeed.

Hat tip to Michael Marten... who tells me to thank Laurie King.

FALLIBILITY AND TRUTHFULNESS

"...The culture of thinly disguised nastiness [which we see in some religious communities] is also a more general feature of public life. We say we want politicians to admit errors and apologize (Des Browne being a recent example). But when they do so, we say they are weak and unfit for office – and we do so with little sense of irony or self-knowing. In the process any possibility of achieving common truthfulness is lost. Disagreement is an unavoidable part of human development. Argument is a good thing. Suspicion towards power is vital. But without a sense that we are held in love these things lose a sense of proportion and can spill over into contempt or even hatred."

See further: How these Christians hate one another.

(While I'm talking about apologies - please accept mine if you are annoyed by the intrusive 'pop ups' - iLead in particular - which seem to occur when visiting this site. They are planted by my stat counter, I think. I'll see if I can find another at some point)

RETHINKING ISLAM CHRISTIANLY AND HUMANLY

I have substantially redrafted and added to an earlier review article about Kenneth Cragg, including two of his more recent books, in the culture and review section of Ekklesia: Muslims, Christians and the global human challenge.

In addition to developing a fascinating Christian interpretation of Islam which he then offers back in friendship to Muslims, recognising both points of contact and significant differences, so Cragg has also tried to forge a new kind of relationship betwen 'the religious' and 'the secular' (to use two masively overgeneralised current categories).

"Just as he illustrates so tellingly how ideological secularism is (quite literally) incomprehensible from the perspective of Islam, so many secularists will want simply to reverse [the] sub-title [of one of his books] so as to render it ‘divine meaning in human question’, and thus dispose of God. The author is well aware of this challenge. What we do with the divine Name is crucial for him. His response, however, is not some unfeasible pan-religious apologetic. Nor is it over-accommodation to populist critiques of religion which have failed to take it seriously. Instead he concentrates on exposition of 'the good' (starting from particular traditions) on the one hand, and the allocation of different (but shared) ethical responsibilities, on the other. In the same way that Cragg has humbly walked with other religions and cultures in order to discover both common hope and divergence among them, so he courteously invites those to whom faith is anathema to reconsider how human beings and the world might be positively reconstrued by what they reject."

THE SHOCK OF THE NEW

Being stuck with a God who raises the dead (Ekklesia). Easter is awkward for the church, because its revolutionary message leaves it nowhere to hide religiously, politically or intellectually, argues Simon Barrow.

LIFE BEYOND THE WAR ZONE

Brian McLaren: Which Holy War? (SojoNet). "We've probably heard many people here in the US ask, 'Why aren't there more moderate Muslims speaking out against the violent extremists and calling for reform in Islam?' As I reflected on Roland Martin's editorial on Good Friday, 2007, I couldn't help but think, 'Maybe around the world, "behind our back," so to speak, people are asking a similar question about Christians in the US.' These reflections stayed with me over the weekend and were with me still on Easter Sunday. In Romans 8, St Paul says that the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in us. Those words challenged me to believe that the impossibility of resurrection is indeed possible ... not just in our individual lives, but also in our religious communities, if we are truly open to the life-giving, death-defying Spirit of God."

MAKING A TRIAL OUT OF CHRIST

This from an excellent article in the Observer by Richard Harries on the dilemmas faced by Rowan Williams - and, inter alia, on the difficult business of being a Christian in a culture (and that includes a church culture, sadly) marked by virulence and easy self-regard.

"[H]is style is hardly made for our simplistic, untruthful, soundbite culture. A good example is contained in his book, Christ on Trial. Rowan reflects on the silence of Christ, as recorded by Mark's Gospel. Jesus simply refused to answer the questions put to him about who he was and Rowan writes: 'What is said will take on the colour of the world's insanity; it will be another bid for the world's power, another identification with the unaccountable tyrannies that decide how things shall be. Jesus described in the words of this world, would be a competitor for space in it, part of its untruth.' Rowan will know, better than most of us, that anything he says will be part of the world's untruth and the more he conforms to the expectations of a headline culture, the more untruth there will be in it.

"One of the threads running through his writing is the idea that true religion always leads one to question oneself, rather than make claims over others. Jesus is not a possession or a badge of superiority, but the one before whom you stand, in gentle self-questioning."

Incidentally, the headline writer has, I fear, missed the point of this piece. It isn't a plea for the church to "ease the pain of Rowan's Passion" (except in the rather prosaic, though not unimportant, sense of "stopping being so nasty") -- rather, it's a plea to understand the issues he is wrestling with, and the way he is trying to wrestle with them, as part of a passion which isn't finally about "them and us", but concerns a new creation wrought from pain, difficulty and failure. In other words it is a call to stop casting stones and start listening to the Gospel. Something all-too-easily bypassed by institutional 'christianism' - a term I think we should use for the painful distortions of Christianity wrought in its name.

I can't recommend Christ on Trial highly enough, by the way. A superb book which, as the blurb says, "draws not only from the Bible, but also from contemporary fiction, film and theatre... [to] explore the ways society continues to put Christ on trial today. In fact, all Christians stand with him before a watching world. How we respond to this challenge is the focus of Christ on Trial. It increases our confidence in the faith we have received, and invites us to discover 'what we are and what we might be in God's sight'."

See also: Why Rowan Williams helps stem the drift to idiocracy.

CHURCHES PLEDGE TO MAKE PEACE HISTORIC

See here for details of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation.