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.

EXPLORATIONS INTO GOD TODAY

I have just published what I must admit is a fairly dense (though I hope not opaque) essay for Ekklesia entitled What difference does God make today? Let me introduce its purpose in this way: I recall that a number of years ago Peter Selby, then research professor in applied theology at the University of Durham, now Bishop of Worcester, commented to me that today - in an environment where the presumption is widespread that Christian belief as a serious intellectual proposition is finished - all theology needs to be, in a certain sense 'fundamental theology'.

The term has nothing to do with fundamentalism. It is derived from Catholic scholasticism and refers to our accounts of foundational elements of the Christian narrative - the identity and meaning of God, Christ, the Spirit, and so on. What Peter was saying is that people have mostly lost touch with a coherent way of speaking about such things. This is partly because they were assumed rather than argued for in civic 'Christendom culture', and partly because education within the churches has become so thin - at least when it comes to exploring core issues of belief. The upshot is that attempts to speak of Christian perspectives in the public arena have lost their moorings. Many people have ceased to have much of a clue what we in the churches are talking about. To them we speak in a code which they can no longer crack. This is our loss before it is theirs. The onus of communication is on the communicator. Indeed I think things are worse than this. It is frequently observed that communication is indivisible, and in that sense Christians struggle to speak to themselves too, as the appalling 'debates' about sexuality indicate. The Word has become silent, and not in a humbling and chastening way.

More than 60 years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognised this problem. He famously suggested in his prison diaries that it might now be necessary to find ways of expressing biblical ideas in non-biblical language for a post-religious age. His death at the hands of the Nazis tragically truncated his thinking on this and many other matters, but it is fairly plain that he was not talking about some superficial 'demythologisation' programme, or the evacuation of Christian meaning into a hollowed secular shell. Even as he wrote (knowingly) from the depths of Enlightenment culture, and out of one of the darkest hours of modernity, he remained a person sustained and resourced by the deep piety and theologia crucis of Lutheranism.

What he recognised, I think, was that in a world of evolving understanding and cultural autonomy, sustaining the core dynamism of Christian belief is not about building walls around inherited expressions, as if the fleshly Word really was words, but engaging in a process of continual re-expression -- finding ways, if you will, of digging fresh insight from ancient quarries, re-resourcing contemporary speech from the riches we have inherited. David E. Jenkins used to point out that this was, in itself, a biblical procedure. The living God of the Bible, in the words and events of Jesus and the prophets, is always to be encountered in the contemporary, not locked up in 'the biblical'. The language that speaks of a God beyond our grasp will always be fresh and new, and yet will - to those who recognise its resonances - simultaneously reverberate with what has been said and done and performed throughout the ages. (Something like that.)

Anyway, my essay is very far from achieving any of this, and its formulations are probably still too 'religious'. But it is an attempt, heavily indebted to the work of Nicholas Lash, and especially his book Holiness, Speech and Silence, to reconsider "the question of God today" in terms of contemporary philosophical challenges and the demanding call to discipleship - the following of Jesus through thick and thin. The key questions are 'who is God?', 'how do we speak of this God in a work of plurality, pain and darkness?' and 'what distinguishes God-talk that can claim vitality and aspire to truthfulness from the fantasy and non-sense of much religion?'

It's a stab, anyway. And it's based on my growing conviction that a durable theological language is not reductionist but subversively resourceful - in Walter Brueggemann's words, it "funds the postmodern imagination" out of a narrative stock and a grammar which connects us to the continuing liveliness of the God beyond our expectations and grasp - but who nevertheless touches us at the deepest, most vulnerable places of human longing and becoming.

[Apologies for the infelicities in the earlier version of this post - written late at night, and I was tired]

A CLASH OF TOTALISMS

In reading Terry Sanderson's Guardian article on the original sin of religion, and in responding to it (Resisting the polarizing mindset), I was brought back to some comments by Catheine Madsen, who is neither Christian nor atheist, from what I gather. She is, however, a wise woman:

[O]ur obligation to our fellow humans is to make our own point of view not unassailable but intelligible. She goes on (in Learning to converse like adults): [P]ainstaking thinkers of all cultures know each other intuitively across the boundaries of opposition. Totalitarians do not like them; indeed they are always at risk from the totalitarians in their own culture as well as those in the enemy's. In spite of this - or because of it- they are determined to construct a trustworthy language, a language dense and durable enough to resist the corruptions of politics.

TROUBLE IN THE TEXT DEPARTMENT

A couple of new review and culture articles from me on Ekklesia: Judas makes another comeback (The story about how Judas has been misrepresented in the Gospels and was mainly trying to rescue Jesus from false notions of messiahood has surfaced again - via a Jeffrey Archer 'novel'); and Endism is nigh, texts are tricky (responding to the apocalyptic non-sense purveyed by a good number of internet Bible sorcerers). There's also a lively debate on writer Dave Hill's excellent weblog Temperama about A. C. Grayling's less than nuanced into the debate about religion - An extended yawn. I normally try to keep clear of this kind of thing, but Dave's helpful post was too much to resist. And Lent is exactly the right time of year of re-negotiate with our temptations. Oh, I should also plug this, too: Current Research: Reconsidering the secular.

CHRISTIANITY WITH ATTITUDE

That's the title of a new book from my colleague and friend Giles Fraser, pubished by Canterbury press and available to order through the internet here (through Ekklesia's affiliate shop). There's a sample chapter ('Family Values') here, in *.PDF format. Much of the material is derived from columns in the Guardian and the Church Times, along with BBC Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day'. The blurb sums up the overall impact as follows: "Giles Fraser is one of the most passionate and outspoken figures in the church today, and a refreshing antidote to the bland and soggy language of much of modern Christianity - not least, he admits, of his own liberal tradition. Inspired by the fiery language of the Bible, whose writers believed in what they said as if their lives depended in it, here is a real prophet for our times who has the honesty and bottle to say what he believes without hesitation or qualification. In Christianity With Attitude he gets to theological grips with a wide range of subjects including the morality of war, the meaning of death, church committees, sex, atheism, giving up smoking, Bratz girls and why you can't trust Christian cowboys."

IS IT MAD TO CRY DISCRIMINATION?

Crackpots or cracked pots? (Guardian comment-is-free). Simon Barrow March 19 07, 12:30pm: Those who claim that Christians are being discriminated against are wrong, but not mad. We need careful argument rather than demonisation as the demise of Christendom generates change and uncertainty.

SURVEY SAYS... YOU HAVE MAIL

We are in for another row about public religion, after research commissioned by 'The Heaven and Earth Show' (BBC survey says Christians feel they are discriminated against, 18 Mar 2007) - and a debate being pushed by The Mail on Sunday.

Further responses from Ekkesia: UK Christians urged to be positive not negative about loss of status and Grounds for discrimination? Full press release: Crying 'discrimination' harms churches' message.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Various additions by Simon Barrow: The History of Christian Thought - Review; a feature article Lords and bishops go a-leaping (reform of the second chamber in the UK); and Current Research: Reconsidering the secular.

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FAMILY MEANS MAGNANIMITY

The contested nature and shape of 'the family' in contemporary Christian imagination and practice has been thrown up by many recent arguments in Britain: about the place of LGBT people in the church, in the Catholic adoption row, via the question of children at communion, and more. The careful and thoughtful argument about why magnanimity (rather than exclusion) is at the heart of an alternative vision of family, rooted in the dynamic of the gospels, is set out by Deirdre J. Good in her important new book, Jesus' Family Values. It's available (via the link) from Metanoia's bookshop. Today Ekklesia offers an introductory excerpt: Wrestling biblically with the changing shape of family.

"When I kneel side by side with someone whose construction of family looks radically different from mine, I witness to a God whose ways are not our ways, whose judgments cannot be limited by our finite understanding, whose generosity and creativity must not be circumscribed by our tiny hearts and minds." ...

"Reading ancient texts like the gospels or letters of Paul is hard work. It’s not just a question of investigating ancient sociological or literary contexts; it’s a question of asking critical questions about bringing ancient texts to bear on modern realities. Our interrogation of ancient texts, more often than not, lays bare not so much the texts as our own presuppositions. But our fidelity to these texts and their authority for us makes it imperative that we continue to do it in full awareness of the provisional character of our readings and applications."

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A CLIMATE OF DENIAL

Respected environmental author Bill McKibben on the US religious right's denial of human influence on climate change, and their attack on faith groups (especially mainstream evangelicals) who are taking up the issue: "[James] Dobson, [Jerry] Falwell, and their ilk are the voice of a Christianity so deeply compromised by its embrace of American materialism that it needs to treat as a threat our brothers and sisters in Christ who come bearing the news of physics and chemistry. Rich Cizik has been faithful in reading the signs of the times, and so it is unsurprising he is under attack. But one way or another, his moral clarity will prevail."

See: Drowning your neighbours? and Dobson and friends get personal on global warming.

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THE STATE AND FAITH COMMUNITIES

There are a number of models for how government, politicians and policy specialists can engage with people of different beliefs in modern Britain.

In thinking about these, the All-Parliamentary Humanist Group will be joined by Simon Barrow, co-director of the Christian think tank Ekklesia, and by a representative of the new organisation British Muslims for Secular Democracy on 14 March 2007, at the House of Commons.
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"Why has the government chosen to engage with ‘faith communities’ in the way that it has, privileging them as communities of identity, extending the right to run state-funded schools to them and encouraging their involvement in the provision of public services and in the formation of public policy? What alternative models for engagement are there?

"The situation here appears more complex than in other western countries, both because of the establishment of the Church of England and its consequences (not least our large number of state-funded Christian schools) and because of the great diversity of belief that exists in the UK today. Things have been further complicated by the difficulties posed by hard-line Islamism."

These and other issues will be explored.

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LIVING IN THE PRESENT MOMENT

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. ~ George Eliot (thanks to Maggi Dawn).

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GIBSON'S PASSION AND JESUS' ANGER

Two different angles from me on faith and rage: a note about the essays concerned with Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' in Consuming Passion (here), and a reflection on Jesus' assault on the Temple money system (Violent for peace?). Incidentally, in his Guardian review a few weeks ago, Giles Fraser described Gibson's latest film, 'Apocalypto', as a Mayan follow up to "a Christian snuff movie". Ouch.

THE DANGERS OF INNOCENCE

When I wrote this article (A land beyond our possession) I had a number of thoughts in mind - Lent, Jerusalem, and our very human struggles over identity and security, in particular. Given the focus, I naturally single out the difficult issues faced by Christians, Jews and Muslims, the three faith communities who share (or fail to share) what is supposed to be a Holy City, but is all-too-often a site of unholy conflict.

I wanted to add, but it didn't quite seem appropriate in this piece, that non-religious people and those of other faith traditions, in recognising the characteristic sins of the 'peoples of the book', should beware letting themselves off too lightly, either. None of us is sweetly innocent. The traumas of history in the Middle East and elsewhere are the fruit of malign secular politics as much as religious manipulation. Modern history is too complex to yield simple solutions and cosy attributions of blame.

One of the things that worries me about the 'religionists versus secularists' rhetorical battle right now, is that it conveniently lets everybody off the hook. Each 'side' can (and does) selectively blame the other for all the world's ill, using this to leave its own challenges un- or under-examined. The alternative route is to seek difficult relationship across the divides so that we can share responsibility rather than apportioning guilt. This seems much more productive.

When it made peace with established political order, Christianity forgot the history which produced it. It began in occupied Palestine. Its story involved displacement (exile), moving on (mission), sojourning (diaspora), settling (church planting) and journeying (pilgrimage).

Followers of Jesus are, as Stanley Hauerwas has observed, ‘resident aliens’, strangers in the land. They have ‘no abiding city’ and are constantly in search of ‘another country’, a territory free of domination, the New Jerusalem. A Cross marks the place where the contradiction between this freedom quest and the logic of religious and political order is seen at its most deadly.

What we should learn from this is that possession and conquest are not paths to security. Land alone is not hope or glory. To be at home is to be loved, not to be in control. It is in seeking mutual relationship that we learn a fruitful disposition toward each other and toward ‘the land’.

These are very hard lessons. Christians made a tragic mistake when some of them sought to end their early captivity not by exodus, but by buying into empire. They gained the world but lost their souls. And the Jews paid the price, among others.

Similarly, it is a tragedy that some Jewish people now seek to gain security for themselves not by sharing the land with their Semitic neighbours, but by occupying it and building walls.

Likewise, some Muslims seek to recover their dignity not by the spiritual struggle of the heart (which is what jihad truly means) but by a battle for possession involving fear and bombs.

This land, our land, your land, any land will not be made inhabitable if we seize it (by war), any more than it we neglect or despise it (by greed and ecological destruction). It will only bear fruit when we see it, and each other, as a gift to be cherished and shared. In the process that will involve recognizing each others wounds, not just our own.

Such a change of heart may seem unimaginable in a world darkened by the politics of aggressive counter-assertion. But it is what Lent, the willing embrace of the wilderness, is about. Only from a position of voluntary dispossession can we get a true picture of what is at stake in remaking the city as a land for all: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets … how often I have longed to gather your children together… but you were not willing.” (Jesus in Matthew 23)

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CHURCHES CALL FOR IRAQ DEMILITARIZATION

PUTTING VALUES INTO PRACTICE

As part of the development of the new Ekklesia website (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/) launched on 1 March 2007, we have put together and revised a values statement which spells out where the think-tank and news briefing is 'coming from', so-to-speak. Here it is...

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EKKLESIA is an independent public policy think-tank seeking to examine the role of religion in a creatively critical way. It is rooted in the Christian tradition, but not tied to any one denomination or major church body.

Through its commitment to an honest dialogue about faith and politics, Ekklesia is positive about finding common ground with people of other convictions (religious or otherwise), while simultaneously retaining its own distinctive outlook.

In the media Ekklesia has been variously described as ‘liberal’, ‘evangelical’, ‘catholic’, ‘protestant’, ‘left-wing’, 'traditional', 'progressive', and more. This is perhaps the best illustration that the stance it adopts does not fit conventional categories, trying instead to transform received labels.

Ekklesia’s approach to issues of religion in the public sphere is primarily shaped by a strong theological and political critique of ‘Christendom’ – the historic collusion of institutional churches with state power and vice versa.

Instead, through research, publishing and commentary, Ekklesia seeks to reinvigorate a different understanding of the church as an alternative-generating ‘contrast society’ within the wider civic order: one that is politically active, but not seeking dominance.

The Greek word ekklesia denotes a people's assembly within the public square. It is also a key New Testament term for ‘church’, summoning the followers of Jesus Christ to a fresh form of social existence based on mutuality rather than self-aggrandizement. Continued in full here.

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ALL CHANGE IN BLOGLAND

In case you wondered where I've disappeared to, there's been something of a hiatus on FaithInSociety while I reflect on the future of ths weblog in the light of develoipments on my main project, Ekklesia - which, at the beginning of this month, launched a completely new and redeveloped site. This is thanks in no small part to my amazing colleague Jonathan Bartley and to the formidable Joe Baker at http://eleutheria.biz/. Anyway, we have an opportunity on the transformed Ekklesia to run our own blogs, to link others, and to syndicate more. FinS is currently being run through an aggregator down the right-hand column of Ekklesia blogs, which is still in development. There are problems with this, as you will see -- namely the fact that the header formatting gets in the way. Which is why I have started to abandon it from this post, together with the rather arcane numbering system I adopted back in 2003. Also, I'm not sure how and whether the aggregator, which also picks up the Ekklesia MySpace blog [illustrated], needs prompting. - and, if so, how.

All of which is probably of little interest to you, dear reader -- except to say that it probably makes most sense to roll this venture into my Ekklesia blog. So that's the plan. But, as with many plans executed by the willing but not necessarily able, I'm not quite sure whether and how it will work. So I shall keep FinS alive in the meantime, not least while I figure out what to do with the archives. I will, as they say, keep you posted.

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[01.01 GMT] Rebels without a pause Feb 25, 2007, Ekklesia. Simon Barrow celebrates the role of parliamentary troublemakers.

[409.1] REDISCOVERING NON-VIOLENCE?

A seminar: The limits of violence and nonviolence: The moral use of force?

Wednesday 28 February 2007, 7.00-9.00 pm, at St Ethelburga's Centre, 78 Bishopsgate, London EC2N 4AG.

Speakers: Bishop David Smith, former Anglican Bishop to the British Armed Forces in conversation with Simon Barrow (Co-Director, Ekklesia) on the limitations and advantages of military force and the conditions in which it may be justified - or not.

Suggested donation £5. You can reserve a place here.

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[18.36 GMT] QUOTE OF THE WEEK. (I don't normally have one of these. But this one was too good to miss.) “There was a great saint who said God was evident when bishops are silent.” Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. Here is his full sermon on 'Amazing Grace'.

[408.2] ORIENTED FOR CHANGE

'Why Christianity is not homophobic' {MP3} - a popular talk focussing on some of the biblical material from Giles Fraser (vicar of Putney, lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College Oxford, founder of InclusiveChurch, Ekklesia associate) and another on 'Christians, equality and public provision' {MP3} by Malcolm Duncan (evangelical pastor, leader of the Faithworks movement) at this weekend's London conference on Faith, human rights and homophobia. This brought together Christians, trade unionists and NGO workers, humanists and non-believers, and a number of people from other faith traditions. Particularly moving was the talk by Ali Hilli, from the underground LGBT network in Iraq, where sexual minorities are being targetted for assassination. Thanks to LGCM for these links. The final statement from the conference is here.

[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.

[394.1] A CASE FOR REHABILITATION

"Can we find a way of transposing the remains of folk religion, other vestiges of a desire for a 'Christian nation', and the remaining opportunities of a paraochial system which still theoretically covers every area of the land, into the shape of an ecumenical church which can nonethless know and show that is stands for the universal concern of the universal God for the whole of humankind?" ~ David E. Jenkins, writing in God, Miracle and the Church of England (SCM Press, 1987).

A good question with which to mark the formal end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (*.PDF resources from the WCC for 2007). And with which to signal the question about how the 'inherited' and the 'emergent', in terms of Christian institutions, might engage in fruitful interaction. This is also, by extension, an inter-faith question. What is the community of Christ in a globalising, plural environment? As the early Christians asked in Acts of the Apostles, "Where are the ends of the earth?" {Image: St Bartholemew's, Dinard, France}

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[00.01 GMT] Adapting ourselves to adoptive grace. Ekklesia, 26/01/07. Simon Barrow asks why equality is such a trial for the institutional church... This piece is substantially, er, adapted (and supplemented) from by blogpost below. There's a bit about 'adoptive grace' in Ephesians as a defining charcteristic of the church near the end.

[393.2] ILLUMINATING DARKNESS

Meanwhile, it's still Epiphany - and Christ emerges in the shadows, not as a "blinding light", but more like a "ray of darkness", bringing surprising, incalculable redemptive possibility to what seems just mire and muck. Look again. This is a different kind of radiance to the sort that we can generate, attach to a switch, and position or point at will.

"God’s revelation in Christ is revelation in concealment, secrecy. All other so-called revelation is revelation in openness. But who then can see the revelation in concealment? .. Nobody [but those who see] God’s judgement and grace in the midst of human weakness, sin and death, where otherwise [humanity] can see only godlessess.’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Theology of Crisis

"Darkness... there is something about the context of darkness. Only in darkness can you see the light for what it is." (Thanks, Maggi Dawn)

"For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God." (Colossians 3.3)

The word epiphany comes from the Greek - epiphaneia - which denotes manifestation, a making-known. With the exception of Easter, it is the oldest season of the church year. In early Christian communities, it was a time when new converts were admitted to the ekklesia, the Christly body politic, after a period of exploration and preparation. {Pic: Eiphany icon of St Giles}

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[393.1] A NOT-TOO-MORAL MESS

It would appear that the most senior figures in the Catholic and Anglican churches have no real idea just how bad they look to a massive number of people right now. Living in an ecclesial cocoon, they express "shock" at the reaction to their determination to discriminate. I refer, of course, to the unseemly row over the Equality Act 2006 and Catholic adoption agencies. These bodies do a good job, and receive public funds in a variety of ways, including local authority fees. It is reasonable, therefore, that they comply with universal access regulations. But the church, which seems to be fixated on homosexuality at the moment (it counts for much more than baptismal identity in determining one’s standing, it seems), doesn't want to.

If you are an atheist, a Muslim, a lone parent, divorced and remarried, or cohabiting - all estates which put you outside the Catholic fold, or at least its teaching - you can adopt through one of 12 Catholic agencies, provided that you can show you are a good parent. But if you are gay and in a permanent, stable partnership, you can't - even if you are actively Christian. This will strike most people as odd, inconsistent and not a terribly good testimony to the love of God. It will also, from April 2007, contravene the UK law, which wants to give lesbian and gay people the same rights as black people, religious persons, and so on. The Cardinal Archbishop's response (backed by Canterbury and York) has been to threaten to close 'his' adoption agencies, while acknowledging that they assist the most vulnerable. This beggars belief.

In seeking compliance with SORs, no-one is requiring the church to change its teaching on homosexuality - though many of us feel that it can and should on perfectly mainstream, biblical, tradition-generated grounds. Evangelicals, too, are questioning the simplistic 'family values' agenda. No, what is being asked of the church as institution is that, in seeking the kudos and responsibility of sharing a role as a public service provider, it does so with fairness and equanimity. As government minister Harriet Harman says today, you can't be "a bit against discrimination". Overall this is another classic case of Christendom confusion. If the church wants to operate in the public arena (one it does not control, and where it will meet those with different values, moderated by an elected authority which has to make space for all) it has to face the consequences. If its conscience does not wish to do this, it has the option of withdrawing or establishing a private service. There is no threat to freedom of religion in this. Oh, and the C of E adoption agency, the Children's Society, has accepted gay couples as adoptees for the last eight years. And Vatican big-wig Cardinal Levada, when in California, allowed three such cases, too.

The sad thing is, overall the churches are patently not practicing the radical ekklesia of equals created by the Gospel of Christ (except in the breach of their own strictures), and those they are now fighting perhaps have something to show them of God's grace-drenched meaning, as they struggle with the full humanity of the homosexual minority. Meanwhile the scaremongering continues. It's tragic. And no way to promote ‘family’ to the last, the least and the lost. Suffer the little children, indeed. And Ruth Kelly. Update: Tony Blair gives personal backing to gay adoptions 25/01/07, 15:30.

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[392.1] A UNIVERSE OF LIVED MEANING

"Your weblog seems to jump back-and-forth between the politics of religion, social justice and peacemaking, heady theology, philosophy and spiritual nourishment", someone wrote to me recently. I took it as an affirmation. I think it was intended that way (!), though I realise that not everyone appreciates the whole dish. This one covers several of those topics in a particular, reflective way. It's a brief excerpt from Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, by Kathleen Norris {pictured} - a writer I have long appreciated. There's an interview with her here. ["A strange and remarkable book… Part memoir, part meditation, it is a remarkable piece of writing… If read with humility and attention, it becomes ‘lectio divina’ or holy reading. It works the earth of the heart.” — The Boston Globe]. Hat tip to Charletta Erb.

"The problem with theology is always to keep it within its bounds as an adjunct and a response to a lived faith. In the early Christian church, we can see how quickly the creeds, which began as simple statements of faith made at baptism, and were local in character until the early fourth century, became tests of orthodoxy as the church established itself as an institutions. And as such, they could be, and were, used to include or to exclude people from the Christian fold.

"Since the earliest days of the Christian church, there has been a curious tension between Semitic storytelling, which admits a remarkable diversity of voices, perspectives and experience into the canon, and Greek philosophy which seeks to define, distinguish, pare down. It is the latter most people think of when they hear the word "theology," because at least in the Christian West, it is that tendency that has prevailed. In her book, Image as Insight, the theologian Margaret Miles states that: 'The history of the western Christianity is littered with the silent figures of Christians who found themselves excluded by each increment in verbal theological precision.'

"As a poet, I am devoted to imprecision. That is, while I try to use words accurately, I do not seek the precision of the philosopher or theologian, who tend to proceed by excluding any other definitions but their own. A well-realized poem will evoke many meanings, and as many responses as there are readers. Like a ritual, a poem is meant to be an experience, and only as it becomes incarnated as experience does it reverberate with more meaning than intellectual categories could convey. This is what keeps both poetry and ritual alive.

"As for theology, it has to be content to tag along. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, commenting on John 14:6, wisely says, 'To me "I am the way" is a better statement than "I know the way".' "

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[08.41 GMT] "Jesus took the [injunction] to love our neighbour as we love ourselves, and pushed the definition of who is our neighbour, out, out, and still further out, until it reached to the ends of the earth and included all of humanity - all of God’s children." ~ Alvin Alexi Currier (courtesy of Sojo.net)

[391.2] DEVELOPING HOMEGROWN ANSWERS

On The Guardian Coment-is-Free: A household solution. Simon Barrow, Jan 23 07, 08:30am: Big Brother has shown us the banality of evil, but what about the domesticity of good? {Pic: Shilpa Shetty}. Further links to the reality TV racism media bruhaha-of-the-moment are in the article.

"What we haven't seen in Celebrity Big Brother, any more than in the rest of society, is people who are able to mediate conflict - better, transform it. Such skills exist. But they are low-key, require patient commitment in the face of provocation, and remain hugely under-resourced.

Conflict transformation isn't about imposing solutions by fiat or force. It involves developing human relationships beyond the place where insecurity translates into outwardly directed aggression, reshaping it instead towards personally resourced (but also deeply social and political) change. More. {This piece was selected as an 'editor's pick' today}

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