BROWN'S ADVISORS AND THE BEEB'S SHAME

Who knows what PM Gordon Brown's confidants [See my Brown keeps politics in the family, Ekklesia, 1 May 08] will be saying this morning, following a truly appalling set of local government results across England and Wales. He'll be hanging on to see if Boris Johnson can cross the line in his clown costume at County Hall this evening, in order to confirm it was all a bad dream, I suppose. Meanwhile, the BBC's election night TV coverage was a comedy of errors and embarrassment for everyone concerned.

What was worse, I wonder. The silly 'Stalin or Mr Bean?' schtick for the PM (which even high profile Tory blogger Ian Dale told them probably crossed the line of political comment), the childish 'Wild West' set (with presenter Jeremy Vine operating in a complete dignity vacuum, apparently!), or the bafflingly inane "homo electus" theme (pictured)? It was so insulting to the intelligence, it beggared belief. And without even the redeeming feature of being remotely funny or witty. Ed Pearce (terrible photo, nice guy) sums it up perfectly.

RIGHTS, RITES AND PLAIN WRONGS

More from me at the Wardman Wire e-zine on Papal authority and human rights (01 May 08). Whether the overbearing, centralist and often impersonal form of power wielded by many of those who now run the Holy See is 'traditional' (as Matt's standfirst suggests) depends, of course, on which bits of the tradition are being read by whom, to what ends. I'd argue that a very different kind of approach is warranted by the shape, form and style of the company Jesus gathered in his movement to free people from the type of religion and politics that claims a monopoly of divine grace, truth, justice and wisdom.

WORKING UP SOME ENTHUSIASM

If democracy is going to work anywhere, it ought to do so closest to where people live, through involvement in vibrant neighbourhoods and communities. But central government wants to retain control for itself, the voting system is skewed against pluralism, grassroots talent has been siphoned off, and the poundingly unimaginative local party machines do their best to keep voters badly informed, frustrated or just plain bored. (See my polling day reflections, Leafleting us into submission, LibCon, 01 May 08). 'Your search - "renewing local democracy" - did not match any documents', Google News has just helpfully informed me. No good moaning, though. Better get stuck in. I shall vote for positivity over world weariness. Meanwhile, an anonymous local government worker has it about right here.

DOWN TO EARTH

"The world is overcome not through destruction, but through reconciliation. Not ideals, nor programmes, nor conscience, nor duty, nor responsibility, nor virtue, but only God's perfect love can encounter reality and overcome it. Nor is it some universal idea of love, but rather the love of God [made known] in Jesus Christ, a love genuinely lived, that does this." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditations on the Cross

TAKE HEART

"Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair." -- Rollo May

RELATION NOT OBJECTIFICATION

(This one was prompted by yet another infuriating radio programme.) Since the recent rash of media-fuelled 'debate' about the reality or otherwise of God takes it for granted that the argument concerns the existence or non-existence of a 'thing' or 'being' that is part of a category of things or beings called 'gods' (about which non-sense, see section two of What difference does God make today?), it is worth being reminded that earlier thinkers worth their salt, like the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, spent a good deal of time patiently explaining why this is not plausible, let a lone desirable:

God is not an object beside objects and hence cannot be reached by renunciation of objects. God, indeed, is not the cosmos, but far less is God 'being minus cosmos'. God is not to be found by subtraction and not to be loved by reduction...[] God is to be discovered, if at all, in relation."

Wading through the internet, it becomes rapidly apparent that the loudest voices for or against 'religion' and its supposed 'object' are invariably ignorant of the long and subtle discussions of the past on such topics, or contemptuous of them (without necessarily knowing what they are contemptuous of), and that there is an automatic assumption that we know what we are talking about when we start to throw around such terms in relation to the divine. Which, invariably, we don't.

All of which reminds me of the comment attributed to irascible theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas (I paraphrase, but I think it might be in Dispatches From the Front) and directed to his new students at Duke. "Welcome to my class. This is a liberal arts university, which means that someone will have already told you that you are here to make up your mind. I'm here to remind you that until you have spent time carefully listening to all the people and arguments I've been following for years, you haven't got a mind worth making up!"

This is profoundly true, but not popularly so in an environment where we assume that we know more than those who came before us, and where the conditions of debate are those we take as read. How I wish someone had said that to me 32 years ago. It might have made my journey from ignorance to very-slightly-less-ignorant a lot quicker.

THE PATH TOWARDS HOPE?

There are a number of interesting aspects to Rowan Williams' recent talk on The spiritual and the religious - is the territory changing? A ever, he has some creative things to say. But much more attention needs to be paid, I feel, to why 'organised religion' has so often veered in the opposite direction to the one that Williams (rightly) feels is more truthfully inherent in the claims of the Gospel, certainly. I know I would say this, but the missing element in the picture he gives is a clear commitment to a post-Christendom vision - one which envisages the church in theological and practical distinction from the kind of power games that it has played in the past and is still playing. He wants the benefits of this without looking at the institutional contradiction of his position.

It is hard for the head of an Established Church to do more than move around the edges of the post-Christendom argument it seems. As a friend astutely commented to me recently: "In contrasting religion at its best with more mediocre forms of spirituality, it seems to me that he is making the same mistake – albeit in a more nuanced form – as the militant atheists who write or comment on blogs [and] in the newspapers. Above all, he avoids confronting the issue of the power in faith communities." This includes the confrontation within such communities between liberating and constraining imaginations of what 'religion' and 'spirituality' (neither of which are my favourite words) mean, and how to relate to others - including those who are conceiving a journey of hope in a variety of post-religious terms. Hoped-for generosity is not enough.

Some of this will come up in the discussion I have this afternoon with the Fellowship of Reconciliation council in Oxford, I imagine, which is looking at peacemaking beyond Christendom. Here's a key part of Williams' argument, which I'd like to be true, but which needs considerably more work (as I have no doubt he is aware):

The better we understand the distinctiveness of religious claims, the better we understand the centrality within them of non-violence. That is to say, the religious claim, to the extent that it defines itself as radically different from mere local or transitory political strategies, is more or less bound to turn away from the defence or propagation of the claims by routinely violent methods, as if the truth we were talking about depended on the capacity of the speaker to silence all others by force. Granted that this is how classical communal religion has all too regularly behaved; but the point is that it has always contained a self-critique on this point. And that growing self-awareness about religious identity, which has been one paradoxical consequence of the social and intellectual movement away from such an identity, makes it harder and harder to reconcile faith in an invulnerable and abiding truth with violent anxiety as to how it is to be defended.

In short, as religion – corporate, sacramental and ultimately doctrinal religion – settles into this kind of awareness, it becomes one of the most potent allies possible for genuine pluralism – that is, for a social and political culture that is consistently against coercion and institutionalised inequality and is committed to serious public debate about common good. Spiritual capital alone, in the sense of a heightened acknowledgement especially among politicians, businessmen and administrators of dimensions to human flourishing beyond profit and material security, is helpful but is not well equipped to ask the most basic questions about the legitimacy of various aspects of the prevailing global system. The traditional forms of religious affiliations, in proposing an 'imagined society', realised in some fashion in the practices of faith, are better resourced for such questions. They lose their integrity when they attempt to enforce their answers; and one of the most significant lessons to be learned from the great shift towards post-religious spiritual sensibility is how deeply the coercive and impersonal ethos of a good deal of traditional religion has alienated the culture at large.

DARING TO DISSENT

A bit more on England and St George... an attempt to see what the reaction might be to a series of cultural and campaigning events next year exploring the Saint as subversive.

THE LONDON NON-CONNECTION

Watching BBC TV's Question Time special on the London Mayoral election last night was a depressing experience (See my new LibCon column, Paddick stations? - which the Guardian kindly picked out in its 'best of the blogs' section). For a start, the Beeb decided that we didn't need to see the Green candidate, Sian Berry, who stands for a different set of values, and whose second preferences may well decide the final outcome. Then the whole thing was an adversarial charade: much sound and fury signifying little. This is modern media-driven politics. If I had a vote it would probably be Berry one and Ken Livingstone two. Boris Johnson is beyond a joke. [Fab YouTube clip alert]

Lest anyone think I am being unduly hard on the Lib Dems, I have an interview with their leader, Nick Clegg, in the May edition of the revamped Third Way magazine ("Christian comment on culture"), in which I think he comes out rather favourably. The TW 'high profile' slot aims to probe behind the public persona of a well-known figure and look at more personal influences, underlying convictions and so on. Inter alia, Clegg makes it clear that, contrary to press speculation, he's more of an agnostic than an outright atheist, and has respect for religious conviction oriented towards fairness and freedom. It's not available online, I'm afraid. But excerpts and out-takes will appear in due course, when I have cleared my permissions.

Talking of electoral politics. I used to be Labour at heart, but these days my vote floats between whichever candidate I think might inject a degree of principle and freshness into things, based on some practical notion of social justice and sustainability. Not voting has a place, too. The degeneration of the whole political system needs challenging in as many ways as possible - through alliances, associational and independent politics, participatory (rather than purely 'representational') forms of democracy, principled abstention, pressure from without, dialogue across the boundaries, and the strengthening of civil society... plus churches injecting a bit of redemption by acting as contrast societies, not conformist lumps or self-interest groups, please.

The electoral arena cannot be ignored, but it is not one in which I find deep convictions convincingly represented any more.

THE MARKET MENTALITY

"Quite apart from the problems of the Christian church in contemporary Britain, the almost insoluble challenge for many charities [and NGOs] these days, competing as they have to for support, is how to persuade people by what are essentially market methods that they should take up a very non-market-minded position of committed involvement." - Rowan Williams

TAKING OFFENCE RIGHTLY

"To be human is to be in conflict, to offend and be offended. To be human in the light of the gospel is to face conflict in redemptive dialogue." -- John Howard Yoder

CONFRONTING PAPAL BULL?

Today in 2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was inaugurated as 265th pontiff, head of the 1.2 billion strong Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Benedict XVI. For what it's worth, my own assessment of the man remains in line with what I wrote at the time in After Absolutism: The world, the church and the papacy, partly in response to a none-too-flattering TV documentary called God's Rottweiler. Around the time of the Regensberg controversy in September 2006 I also wrote Christendom remains the Pope's real fallibility.

The other day there was a brief discussion of Benedict's profile and work so far, on BBC Radio 4. Author and broadcaster Joanna Bogle offered an almost euphoric defence of the man, and Lavinia Byrne, former sister of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, remained sceptical. Lavinia has every reason to balk at those (including Radical Orthodoxy-type Anglicans) who romanticise Benedict, or focus on certain aspects of his philosophy abstracted from his actual actions.

Ratzinger, as was, headed up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - John Paul II's 'theological enforcer' - when Lavinia's book Women at the Altar appeared. The 'disciplinary process' that followed was truly appalling, and all for the crime of thinking about women's ordination - something Benedict wishes to put off limits. Lavinia, who I followed in an editorial post at Heythrop College, and later at CTBI, never even got an audience with her inquisitor, nor a proper chance to put her case. Her book was subsequently pulped in the USA, after the Catholic publisher was ordered to do so.

Similar bullying has been meted out over the years to numerous scholars and writers who have raised critical issues arising from Catholic doctrine - including liberation theologian Leonardo Boff (for his fine book Church, Charism and Power), Hans Kung (Infallibility?), Sri Lankan priest and human rights advocate Tissa Balasuriya (Mary and Human Liberation). Jon Sobrino (Christology at the Crossroads), the late Jacques Dupuis (who wrote superbly on the theology of religions) and Roger Haight (Jesus Symbol of God). And that's just off the top of my head. Dupuis, a deeply faithful scholar, died a broken man a a result of the way he was treated.

This suppression of thought is inexcusable and deeply disturbing. It reflects a model of church and of ecclesial leadership which I believe is wholly at odds with the kind of practice needed in a Gospel community. We need to be accountable to one another, to the spirit of free enquiry and to the riches of the tradition. But not subject to threats and censorship. Without exception, all those I have mentioned are people with a passionate concern for the Christian message in the contemporary world, and some of them (Dupuis, Haight and Kung) are among the finest intellectuals of their time.

Jon Sobrino, who I had the honour of meeting briefly in the 1980s, has stared death in the face in El Salvador, and his work is thoroughly grounded in biblical thought and action. His accusers, by contrast, seem to have little grasp of the painful world out of which he writes - or, indeed, of what he has written.

PERFECTLY RESTRAINED

“People ask me how I got to be a pacifist in the church. That’s easy. It’s so there are people around who can stop me killing other people when I’d like to. Which is quite often.” – Stanley Hauerwas, during a question and answer session.

CRY ENGLAND AND ST GEORGE?

It's that time of year again. The one where those of us living south of a certain border, and west of another one, think about the complex weave of myth and history that shapes our national story. Or not, as the case may be.

This time last year I found myself in deep water with the Daily Mail after Ekklesia published a report, largely written by me, suggesting that the stories built up around the largely (possibly wholly) legendary figure of St George around the time of the Crusades were not the only ones - indeed, St George, who was probably Turkish, and is patron saint of many nations and regions other than England, was first known as a Christian citizen who laid down his arms to challenge the Roman Emperor's persecution of believers and others.

Not exactly a militarist of nationally exclusive icon, more a universal symbol of noble dissent, we suggested. Unsurprisingly, tabloid commentator Richard Littlejohn strongly disagreed, though there was no sign that he had read, let alone thought about, the issues. That's one of the things that happens with the stories we tell about our national inheritance. They become emotional ballast to suppress, rather than encourage, more difficult reflection.

This year artist Scott Norwood Witts has unveiled a thoughtful and moving painting called 'St George and the Dead Soldier' at the Catholic Cathedral in Southwark - where there is a week-long festival going on, as well as remembrance of William Shakespeare (whose day this also is) at the Anglican cathedral which was the bard's parish church of St Mary.

Norwood Witts says that ‘St George and Dead Soldier’ was stimulated by the current deployment of British forces overseas and also by the historical misrepresentation of St George. He comments: “The patron saint of soldiers and England is shown battle weary, identifying another fatality of war - exploding the contrived mythical identity developed during The Crusades, to reveal a man in mourning.”

The artist has previously exhibited at the American Church in London and the Carmelite Friary in Kent. Other commissions have included altarpieces at Dover Castle and the Royal Garrison Church at British Army HQ, Aldershot.

REAL TIME OBSERVATION

"A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity." -- Soren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855.

TURKISH DELIGHT?

The stand-off between hard-line religionists and hard-line secularists in Turkey is yet another example of an essentially phony war between two sets of ideologists unhelpfully claiming a monopoly over both their own traditions and one another, rather than seeking a pluralist path. The message that needs to be heard loud and clear is "it doesn't have to be this way". Adrian Pabst, who teaches theology and politics at the University of Nottingham, and collaborates with John Milbank and Philip Blond in developing the provocative Radical Orthodoxy line of approach to Christianity in public life, has written a very good piece for The National analysing Turkey's plight and signalling the alternative to non-productive confrontation.

The Kemalists are wrong to treat religion as a purely private phenomenon with no public import. They must recognise that all belief systems and social practices are political. They should look to the best traditions of secularism that separate state and mosque without divorcing religion from politics. In a modern Turkey that they purport to defend, rival values should be debated freely. Judicial or military intervention will merely push religion underground and contribute to the rise of fundamentalism — in that case, a repeat of Algeria’s bloody experience would be a distinct possibility.

For its part, the AKP cannot simply proceed with fundamental constitutional reforms that are seen as an assault on secularism. Erdogan and his allies are right to reconsider the legal provisions on insulting “Turkishness” that saw the Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk prosecuted in 2007. Likewise, the AKP must tackle discriminatory policies against the Alevi, Kurds and Armenians and work towards their full integration into Turkish society.

RADICAL EX-BISHOP TOPS THE POLL

Like the thousands who are out celebrating as I write, I am absolutely delighted that ex-bishop Fernando Lugo (pictured) has won the general election in Paraguay, his centre-left coalition terminating sixty years of corruption and elite dominance by the Colarado Party which once propped up General Alfredo Stroessner's systematically brutal dictatorship. What the victory will mean in terms of the immediate social and economic prospects of the very poorest, and of regional negotiations about a fairer deal for the country, has yet to be seen. There's a good, critical analysis here.

The task facing Lugo is indeed mountainous, given the grip of the wealthy and their political and military surrogates on Paraguay, the fragile and disparate coalition the president-elect heads, and the hugely raised expectations of indigenous people and those pushed to the margins for many years. But their new leader is a man of principle and determination, if not great experience in the tough arena of governance. Whether he will be able to resist or re-channel the economic and political constraints he faces is yet to be seen. There is a mixture of hope and cynicism in the air right now.

The response of the Catholic hierarchy, both inside the country and in the Vatican, has been predictably unpleasant. Lugo decided that he would have to leave his priestly role to pursue political change in favour of the poorest, but he did so out of deep commitment arising from the gospel. None of this has been acknowledged by conservative Church leaders, who have covertly sided with Colarado and have denounced Lugo for "abandoning Catholicism". He has been pointedly denied the laicisation he sought. It seems that Rome wishes to eliminate any sign of progressive or radical leanings within its leadership.

The treatment of Lugo calls to mind Pope John Paul II's finger-wagging condemnation of Fr Ernesto Cardenal, who took up a post as culture minister in the first Sandinista government in Nicaragua from 1979-90. By contrast, Church figures have been tolerated in their support for, or collaboration with, Latin American dictators. One priest even took charge of a section of the army in Colombia in the 1960s. But as soon as an alliance is forged between grassroots people's movements and clerics, the Vatican stamps down vigorously.

It's all very sad. Lugo was right to set aside his priestly ministry to follow a political vocation, and should be allowed to do so with honour. Many will see the continual thread of ordination in his move; namely his vocation to serve the poor (which is one of the vows a bishop makes).

As Andrew Nickson comments: "Lugo clearly represents a serious challenge to the status quo of Paraguay's traditional non-programmatic political culture, supported by powerful vested interests that arose during the Stroessner dictatorship and that have consolidated their privileges in the subsequent democratic transition." But he will need more than will power to bring about change.

A FLICKERING LIGHT

"Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination will come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth."
-- Hannah Arendt, Jewish political and moral philosopher

A BIT OF A TWITTERER?

Twittering politically. Simon Barrow, LiberalConspiracy, 19 Apr 08.

You thought Facebook was hip? Nah. The latest communications buzz, as of, like, weeks and weeks ago, is a web-based tool that uses instant messaging, SMS or a web interface to exchange quick, frequent updates on what you're up to. Or someone else, for that matter. With Gordon Brown’s PR people as the latest converts on his high profile US visit, the mainstream media is suddenly banging on endlessly about Twitter. But does instant info about who’s where, doing what, have any political significance? Or is it just so much digitized hot air? (See also Aaron Heath's comment.)

THIS YEAR'S MODEL

It's not every issue that Jesus appears on the cover of the historic left-wing weekly paper (now a magazine format) Tribune, whose famous past editors include Michael Foot. Indeed it has probably never happened before. But it did occur on 11 April 2008. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the cover in question - featuring a famous portrait of the cleansing of the Temple. The latest issue has the much less appealing visage of one Boris Johnson adorning it. Many of us sincerely hope that la Boris will not be the next elected Mayor of London come 1 May 2008. Sadly, I don't have a vote in that one, though I do regularly inhabit a room in the capital. However, I got taken off the electoral register due to not being there enough to count as resident. My landlord while I am away from Exeter is actually a candidate in the May local authority elections, so it was self-sacrificial of him to have me removed. Or perhaps he just doesn't trust me. But I digress. The Tribune topic which occasioned this unexpected visual delving into the New Testament was about the global credit crunch and capitalist crash-landings. Concerning all of which, in a tangential way, see Patrick Hynes' article on alternative finance and the estimable Oikocredit.

[Pic: Bernardino Mei, (c) Getty Center, Los Angeles, USA]

CONSTITUTIONALLY UNWELL?

Power to which people, exactly? Simon Barrow column on Ekklesia, 16 Apr 08.
In Britain, the primary instruments of defence against tyranny are the framework of checks and balances embodied in an unwritten set of legal arrangements, the independence of the Judiciary and Executive and the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights into British Law. However, in recent weeks and months abrogation of many safeguards seems at least to have been contemplated by parliament. Some would say the problem goes much further. And there are theological resonances, too. Continued. [See also: Unlock Democracy]

UNTIL WE HAVE FACES

My latest 'thinking aloud' piece for The Wardman Wire reflects on conflict and confusion in the world today, and suggests that the place to focus is on the human beings in the middle - and on working outwards from there. It also includes comment on ex-US president Jimmy Carter's pledge to talk to Hamas as part of his current humanitarian visit to Israel-Palestine, and suggests that even in the most bitter confrontation the problem has a face. One that cannot be reduced purely to politics, ideology, religion or non-religion.

THE NAKED TRUTH

"In order to swim you must take off all your clothes. In order to aspire to the truth you must undress in a far more inward sense, divest yourself of all your inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness. Only then are you sufficiently naked." -- Søren Kierkegaard

THE CONSTANT GARNERER

"What is constant [in the relations made possible by God]... is a love that can be called 'ecstatic.' * We must take leave of ourselves in order to approach the other and all the more so in order to welcome the other. The more spiritual the encounter with the other, the more complete the 'ecstasy'. By that, Christian faith means that 'God is love.' Of course God is infinite being, but only insofar as God totally gives away the divine being within Godself. Here is the most profound justification for the Trinitarian faith, a faith that confesses that the 'infinite' is 'exchange.' Moreover, not only is God 'self-exchange,' but God has willed a communication outside Godself (if one is permitted to speak this way). This communication can only be the offer of a covenant such that what exists between God and humanity will be the realization of what already exists in God." - Ghislain Lafont, A Theological Journey

"The call to renounce * doesn't negate the value of flourishing; it is rather a call to centre everything on God, even if it be at the cost of sustaining this unsubstitutable good; and the fruit of this forgoing is that it become on one level the source of flourishing for others, and on another level, a collaboration with the restoration of a fuller flourishing by God." - Charles Taylor, A Secular Age

These wonderful reflections come from Artur Rosman's florilegium on T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding - IV, which I cited the other day. A couple of further comments. First, I think Lafont means by 'ecstasy' (life beyond stasis) what Taylor means by 'the call to renounce' (reminding us of Jesus' challenging dictum that those who grasp at life will lose it, and only those who abandon such grasping will gain it - as gift). In this sense ecstasy, which like love is a condition of relation, not a "feeling" (as our superficially emotive culture designates it), also requires - or, rather, evokes - 'eccentricity', the capacity for existence beyond self-centredness. All of these things, Lafont points out, are embraced in the life of God, which is life-beyond-life creating the conditions for the liberation of our own living. This is what is at stake in a Christian theological account of God grounded in generative love, reciprocal love and disruptive love. Divine vocation is in this sense the action of calling into relationship that which resists, wounds or defies it, the hidden work of the 'constant garnerer'.

Second, I think it is more helpful (in the sense of 'less inaccurate'!) to talk of God as 'beyond being' (in the spirit of Jean Luc Marion's hors texte and Merlod Westphal's 'Divine Excess: The God Who Comes After' than it is to talk of God as 'infinite being', as if infinitising one of our most expansive categories gives us a handle on the divine. In this sense, to invoke God in prayer and action (which is all we humans can do, since we have no theory powerful enough to get anywhere near God, however much ardent believers and equally ardent disbelievers may wish otherwise) is to receive the reverberation of the transcendent in the midst (John V. Taylor). This reverberation looks 'for all the world' like unmerited grace, sacrificial love, unplanned forgiveness and life beyond measure - in case you were wondering. It is an overflowing, an excess of excesses. "God totally gives away the divine being within Godself [and beyond]" as Lafont puts it. This is what the Gospel of Jesus' undergoing God, at the point where we might go under, is all about.

[Pic: Mat Stapleton, 'paintbrush in cheek': A Slightly Transcendent Moment]

A TOUGH KIND OF LOVE

"Sometimes it's easier to feel guilty than to feel forgiven." (The chaplain in ER ).

I'm not an ER watcher myself, but the 'Atonement' episode was being watched in my household while I was writing an article. It involves a Catholic patient infected with inconsolable guilt for his past involvement in administering lethal injections at state executions. He has a row with a consolingly inclusive post-denominational chaplain; or, rather, he bawls her out because she has nothing to say to what he is confronting. It's very poignant. Neither the accumulated self-loathing of a certain kind of 'traditional' religiosity nor the morally evasive balm of spiritual self-therapy quite cuts it when the wounding is so deep. What is needed is redemption, which along with forgiveness is neither bargainable nor humanly manufacturable. It is a matter of a grace that is anything but cheap or easy, as the chaplain does realise underneath the protective veil of rhetoric. It also stands and falls by the reality or otherwise of the God beyond manipulative deity, which she doesn't, apparently. Her creed is her instincts. So is his, unfortunately. No one wins. Not that its about 'winning', mind.

(Apparently this clip has produced a bit of debate in certain church circles, albeit a rather bogus one, as Steve Knight points out.)

RITUAL, MEANING AND MEMORIES

There's a good 'Face to faith' article in the Guardian today, by the estimable Sunny Hundal (of Pickled Politics and Liberal Conspiracy, to which I contribute periodically) on Sikhism, ritual and the power of symbolic meaning. That opens up a whole fascinating topic ... but it also brings back specific memories. Sunny lives in Southall, which I've re-visited a couple of times lately. I lived there for nigh on six years in the 1980s. It was a very difficult phase of life for me, but the place is somewhere I love deeply.

The Sri Guru Gobind Singh Sabha gurdwara in Havelock Road (pictured) was a relatively modest converted dairy when I knew it, lying immediately opposite the back entrance of the Anglican church I used to attend, St John's. It was dramatically redeveloped, re-opened - as it happens - on my birthday in 2003 (30 March), and is now the largest Sikh temple outside India. It was fascinating to go there again and witness the dramatic changes first-hand. Extraordinarily, there were some people I knew working in the kitchen at St John's, too. The church itself is being refurbished.

I also visited old eating haunts, including a snack at Rita's Samosa Centre and veggie lunch at Sagoo and Takhar, still my favourite. I used to go there regularly to pick up some stuffed veg parathas on my way to see Southall FC at their old ground in Western Road. Now they are at Dormers Wells Leisure Centre, after huge problems which saw them drop back into a very minor football league and go into geographical exile. I watched them in the comparative glory days of the Isthmian League.

Oh yes. I also picked up some excellent marsala tea when I was in Southall (Indian food shopping is a wonder at the various emporia and small holdings), and Carla is now addicted!

THE UNFAMILIAR NAME

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

-- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding - IV

A VICTORY FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE

Tremendous news today that the High Court has ruled that the Serious Fraud Office acted unlawfully in halting a corruption investigation into BAE Systems' arms deals with Saudi Arabia. The judgement is categorical and tough in condemning the SFO and the government for caving in to alleged threats from the Saudi regime that they would halt security cooperation if the probe and the threat of criminal proceedings went ahead. The judges described the SFO director's action on 14 December 2006 as a "successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom". You can't get much stronger than that.

The judicial review was brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House - to whom great credit is due for persistence in the face of massive corporate and international interests. Development agencies and the Christian network SPEAK have also been involved in work on BAE and arms trade issues. No doubt the government will, overtly or covertly, seek to resist calls for the re-opening of the SFO investigation, so the struggle goes on. But it is a landmark judgement, and attempts at an appeal look perilous.

Symon Hill of CAAT gave a good interview with Radio 4 this evening, but the BBC has not covered itself in glory with its initial reporting. Earlier this morning, before the verdict was handed down, it allowed defence industry apologist Francis Tusa (who happens to be son of John Tusa, managing director of BBC World Service from 1986-92) free rein to rubbish the idea that anything was at stake in the case. Extraordinarily, given what has been revealed in court, he auto-suggested that the SFO had to drop the case for lack of evidence and mocked the idea that BAE's reputation could be harmed because "business is booming" in the USA.

This didn't sound like proper journalism or 'analysis', as it was touted, but a pre-emptive PR effort towards damage limitation, blatantly taking advantage of the fact that the legal protocol barred CAAT or Corner House from doing interviews themselves before the judgment. After the High Court pronounced, both BAE and the SFO refused to comment, and Symon finally got his word. Tusa was also replaced by another commentator. The BBC has covered the case under the 'business' rubric and its online report provided a link to BAE and the Ministry of Defence, but not CAAT. A link to Corner House, which supports democratic and community movements for environmental and social justice, was subsequently provided, but its site was struggling to cope with the traffic by mid-evening. The Beeb's news website has also relegated the story, regarding a domestic interest rate cut as more newsworthy than the government capitulating to a foreign power over military and security issues.

I should declare an interest of my own here. Though I've had nothing to do with the BAE case (other than reporting it), I served on the Campaign Against Arms Trade national steering committee from 1978-1987 and was a volunteer in the late '70s, following on from research and writing on arms trade and development issues for a variety of outlets, including Middle East Magazine and the Latin America Bureau. I also attended several official military export exhibitions as a journalist in the 1980s, uncovering details of the British government's military collusion with regimes involved in major human rights abuses - including Iraq. CAAT does a great job, usually with little publicity. It is testimony to the importance and effectiveness of civic action in calling companies and governments to proper account.

THE COST OF POLITICAL WITNESS

Today, my late father's birthday, is also the 63rd anniversary of the execution of pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer by the Nazis. As Uwe Siemon-Netto, a veteran foreign correspondent and academic, comments: '[E]ven some of his fellow Lutherans did not realize at first how consistently Bonhoeffer lived out his creed. Immediately after World War II, pastors in Bielefeld opposed plans to have a street named after him. Bavaria’s Lutheran bishop Hans Meiser, himself a prominent anti-Nazi cleric, protested vigorously against a proposal to install a plaque commemorating Bonhoeffer as a “witness to Jesus Christ among his brethren” at Flossenbürg concentration camp where he was put to death only days before it was liberated by US forces. In Meiser’s opinion, Bonhoeffer’s resistance was “political, not religious”.'

I disagree with a number of aspects of Siemon-Netto's reading of Bonhoeffer, but he highlights very precisely the fault-line in the Christendom attempt to drive a false wedge between the spiritual and the secular; one that imperils the path of costly discipleship which Bonhoeffer mapped out in his forcibly fragmented life as much as in his necessarily fragmentary writings.

FINDING THE RIGHT WAY OF SPEAKING

In my latest Wardman Wire column, I look at the style and tenor of church engagement with public life and the realm of politics - arguing that Flexing the faith muscle in an overbearing way ends up being profoundly counter-productive. Truthful strength is not measured by the ability to shout the loudest, to demand attention, to moralise, or to seek special treatment. It resides instead in lived integrity, honesty within as well as without, seeking faithfulness ahead of 'success', and a hopeful realism about the place of the Christian community in wider society. None of this is easy. Which is why we need intellectual rigour, prayerfulness and each other.

BLAIR'S SUPERPOWER THEOLOGY

From my latest article on OpenDemocracy's OurKingdom: "[W]hat kind of religion, what kind of mission and what kind of peace is [Tony Blair] really basing his aspirations on? Behind emollient words against extremism lies the chaos of Iraq, the ideology of “liberal interventionism” (which turns love of neighbour into bombing people to make them good) and a theology of superpower convenience." Continued here.

OPENING UP PARLIAMENT

The recent row over 'free votes' (or not) on 'conscience issues' like the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill is in danger of obscuring the general need for a more open parliamentary system at Westminster; one that is less beholden to the whips and the party machines, and more amenable to independent, associational and dissenting political contributions. This is something I have raised in my latest contribution to OpenDemocracy's OurKingdom debate.

CIRCUMVENTIONS

"Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light." (anon)

"One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night." (Germaine Greer)

"Don't take life too seriously; you'll never get out of it alive." (Elbert Hubbard)

BELIEVING IN SOCIAL CHANGE

A quick broadsheet newspaper round-up as I head for colder climes. First, a good Guardian piece from Seamus Milne (Religion is now a potential ally of radical social change), and a predictable set of uncomprehending responses. See also theologian Philip Blond (who is about to publish a book intriguingly called Red Tory) on The end of capitalism as we know it? in The Independent. Meanwhile, the Times has a story about an odd evangelical Christian financial service that "does not 'draw the ethical line'," but rather seeks to promote the party line. Then again, the Telegraph illustrates the unsustainable nature of a frankly unjust Act of Settlement in Britain, but somehow suggests that the nation's "fragile unity" depends upon it. Go figure. (Last but not least, a vicar finds a big financial hole in Channel 4 TV game show 'Deal or No Deal'.)

THE ELUSIVENESS OF GOD

[After completing this piece, which started out as something much shorter, I decided to cross-publish it on Ekklesia while retaining a big chunk of the original, with links here. This is something I don't usually do - though I do cross-reference and elaborate, obviously. I'm about to be taking a break from this blog and the rest of my work until early April, so it seemed a good place to draw a temporary line, among other things.]

To paraphrase Augustine, and subsequently John Caputo, "what is it that we love when we love our God?" I'm constantly amazed by what some people, both non-religious and religious, assume I must be committing myself to in order to "believe in God" (as I do, though not in the way they are thinking). Six intangible things before brunch, I guess - before resuming my near approximation to "life as normal".

So what lies behind this presumption, a clearly growing one, about the inherent incongruity of bothering with God? (God being a notion which more than a few people in my cultural orbit think less interesting or relevant than porridge, frankly. I don't blame them for that, given what I'm about to say).

Much of the agitated and high profile media to-ing and fro-ing about whether God is 'great, or not' presupposes the most astonishingly naive and positivistic forms of theological or anti-theological realism. Viewed one way, it is mind-boggling that someone as intelligent as Stephen Hawking can dismiss, as he recently appeared to, all philosophy and theology as essentially valueless. But for some it is becoming par for the course.

In a sense, this is not Hawking's fault. In the modern environment it is common for people to use a form of thought developed to accomplish one set of things in order to try to accomplish quite another set of things -- without noticing that this is what they are doing, that it may entail some very basic category mistakes (like thinking of God as a 'thing', for instance), that there are other ways of proceeding, and that we may lack the tools (which are philosophical) to diagnose and posit alternatives to the thought disorders that emerge as a result of our misplaced reductionisms.

Moreover, near ignorance as a basis for commentary on such matters as theology and religious stidies (a set of intra- and extra-disciplinary tools for reasoning about belief) has become almost a symbol of intellectual virility in some virtuously anti-God circles. As a consequence of this, and of the corresponding dominance of religious discourse by neo-fundamentalisms of various kinds, what is reckoned to be a debate about the plausibility or otherwise of the divine, hogged by the so called new atheists and their conservative religious polar attractants, is in fact nowhere near it. It is much nearer to nowhere, in fact.

In his sometimes astute and sometimes patchy New Guide to the Debate about God (SCM, 1992), following on to a certain extent from David E. Jenkins' 1966 Guide in the aftermath of John Robinson's Honest to God, Martin Prozesky made a very important point which has largely been overlooked recently. In the aftermath of Heidegger, Nietzsche et al, it is popularly supposed, he pointed out, that the post-Enlightenment world has pretty much reached the end of God-talk. In reality, however, we may be only just scrabbling to get out of the kindergarten.

If that were so - and the incapacity of much reasoning about matters of belief and rationality suggests it is - then the estimate of the whole situation about how we are trying to tackle 'religion' and its cognates changes significantly. Following falteringly in the footsteps of the the remarkable Nicholas Lash, I tried in 2007 to offer some semi-technical and semi-popular reflections on What difference does God make today? In the same vein, here is a further excerpt from another paper, What is radical about Christianity?, which was originally conceived in relation to a constructive series of discussions between humanists and religionists (it is of course possible to be both). It sums up where I am at on 'the God question', and why I don't think the present vituperation between a certain kind of non-believer and a certain kind of believer is very useful.... [continued here]

[Pic: Apophosis, (c) TheGroovyDude over at Renderosity]

RELIGION IN EDUCATION

At some stage tomorrow, OurKingdom (OpenDemocracy) will publish my piece 'Taking it on faith?', responding to the National Union of Teachers' proposal, as part of its policy on moving toward universal access standards in publicly-funded schools, to trade off an injection of confessionally-based religious instruction for pupils from different faith communities against the continued perpetuation of single-faith schools. In my view this is swapping one problem for another.

My own preference would be for a plural approach (1) recognising spiritual needs (both religious and non-religious) as part of the civic responsibility of schools, (2) replacing the provisions of the 1944 Education act on predominantly Christian RE with curriculum content about understanding the variety of beliefs and life stances shaping society as a whole, and (3) replacing its demand for 'collective worship' with civic assemblies. The basic point, acknowledged in different ways by the Church of England as well as the British Humanist Association, is that it is the job of schools to teach about beliefs and the job of communities of conviction (not just religious ones, incidentally) to propagate them. Confusing these two is a dangerous path from everybody's point of view and dilutes the distinctive roles of different kinds of institutions - one publicly-funded, the other voluntary.

From a Christian point of view, the point is that it is not the job of publicly-funded community-wide schools to 'be Christian' for us or to acting as our recruiting agents. On the other hand, it is a pedagogic responsibility of seats of learning to ensure that pupils go out into the world with an understanding about how religion and belief, as well as culture, social formation, politics, economics and the human and natural sciences, influence the way we think, act and behave.

PLAYING POLITICS WITH LIFE

Beyond embryonic politics, Simon Barrow, 26 Mar 08, on OurKingdom - an OpenDemocracy project. See also this on Networking democracy.

"All Christians, and all people of good will, want to revere and develop life. Whether ongoing decisions in [the] area [of the biosciences] can be taken by an appeal to human preference alone, framed purely by the language of rights and without a broader sense of ethical possibilities and restraints, is a fraught and contested question. Whether one answer to such questions is possible, framed independently of any particular tradition of moral reasoning, is even more tricky. Secular liberal ethics is in as much difficulty here as religiously grounded ethics, probably more so.

"But moral progress, in concert with the proper encouragement and regulation of scientific endeavour (together with its protection from voracious commercial interests), will not be made by shouting, seeking to pull rank, political manipulation or throwing the weight of our different lobby groups - religious or otherwise - around. We need to develop less confrontational political mechanisms and more serious civic ones to keep the conversation going." More here.

GRATEFUL REMEMBERING

There are a number of reasons why 25 March always stands out from the calendar each year. And they go on being added to. On that day in 1807, the Slave Trade Act became law, as it happens, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire. Toscani, Bartok and A.J.P. Taylor were among those born on what has been known as Lady Day. Primarily, however, I recall this day with affection because it is my later mother's birthday. Belle Padday (later Barrow), a very dedicated nursing sister who trained at "the old Guy's Hospital", died in 1978 aged 63. I have lived the majority of my life (and nearly all my adult life) without her, but she is often in my thoughts. The 25th was also the birthday of a dear friend and colleague, Ann Stricklen, who died aged 61 getting on for ten years ago. How time rushes by.

Ann Stricklen was community development adviser in Southwark Anglican Diocese while I was adult education and training officer there (1991-96). We did a huge amount of work together, including material for a Parish Profile Pack, which later became Planning Projects. Though her name is not as well acknowledged as some others in the field, she did pioneering work in the area of community ministry over many years - not least during her time in Sheffield. I am pleased that Trinity House, the diocesan HQ, has a meeting room named after Ann. When she fell ill I cajoled her into letting me re-write some excellent notes she had put together for a chapter in my book Expanding Horizons: Learning to Be the Church in the World (BCS, 1995).

Ann was forthright, loyal, had a great sense of humour, a mind as sharp as a knife and was pretty much what the word 'indefatigable' was invented for. Bearing the coffin at her funeral at St Faith's, North Dulwich, was a tremendous honour - and something that, along with many other matters great and small, she had planned from her hospital deathbed.

More happily, I have also discovered that my friend Stephen Brown in Geneva, who does a great job with Ecumenical News International, passed the age of 50 five days ahead of me yesterday, too. I told him to let me know if it was any good, so that I could make other plans if necessary. Last but certainly not least, March 25 is typically celebrated within the Christian tradition as the day of the Annunciation so long as it does not fall on a Sunday or during Holy Week or Easter Week - something I came to observe in a different way on account of my parish church in Brighton (1998-2003). Also, my good friend Henry Morgan is involved in an excellent 'spiritual direction' venture called The Annunciation Trust. I cannot recommend him, and them, highly enough.

[Pic: Fra Angelico, The Annunciation]

EMBODIED MYSTERY, TANGIBLE HOPE

Here's a good article by Gerard J Hughes (former head of the philosophy department at Heythrop College, University of London, currently tutor in philosophy at Campion Hall, Oxford) on the relation between the many questions which the Gospel accounts of 'the risen Jesus' leave unanswered, and contemporary issues in philosophy and the sciences concerning materiality, embodiment and consciousness. He comes to a position which is similar to my own. See also Hughes' books Aristotle on Ethics (Routledge, 2001) and Is God to Blame? (Veritas, 2007).

SEEKING ANOTHER WAY

This is an excellent piece by Rowan Williams, and of course I very much value the work of Rene Girard. It is sad that some respondents, whatever their religious or (mostly) non-religious background, cannot even countenance the slightest possibility of learning something from this article... Our culture truly is a dialogue of the deaf (who of course have better ears than the self-regarding 'hearing'). The dear archbishop still hopes for 'a place' for the church within society, of course. From my perspective it would be better to look at how a 'society' (a different kind of social order) can be cultivated by a different performance of 'church' and offered in exemplary ways through partnerships, conversations, and yes, sometimes, confrontations. But not from a position of power or privilege, which contradicts the hope of which he speaks so eloquently. [Pic (c) Peacemala]

BY-PASSING GOD?

Starting from a non-religious viewpoint, Guy Rundle's piece, A question of humanity, is a good counterbalance to the marginalisation of core bioethical questions in some secular circles via an over-excitement about religious interventions. I don't agree with what he considers to be an adequate and unavoidable dismissal of the God-question, though this is par for the course among 'cultured despisers'. Even when the importance of conscience is recognised.

The work of Ian Markham might give an essentially Kantian rationalist pause for thought in this area, not least because he is close enough to that tradition as a Christian theologian to pose the questions and issues in ways which might be felt. Especially in Plurality and Christian Ethics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; revised edition November 1999, SevenBridgesPress) and Truth and the Reality of God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). But the tenor of Rundle is a huge improvement on some of what's out there, and indicative of the fact that a reasoned conversation can be had.

Markham makes the point that, even if one eschews absolutism or any sense that we human beings can access the absolute, the issue of whether ethics can be rendered coherent without recourse to the the transcendent (I would prefer to say with Westphal, 'the gift') is one which, contrary to the casual optimism of many non-religious thinkers, cannot be dismissed. Finally I don't think it can, though that isn't to deny that the non-religious can and do behave morally and the religious (all too frequently) immorally. The difference made by God and the failure of those who name God to comprehend or respond ethically to that difference are not identical issues ontologically, but not finally separable practically either.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor (who I always though was a decent man when I knew him a little in ecumenical circles, though no deep thinker) shows humanity in his article 'We are made for more'. But, of course, he lets his own church off an absolutely enormous hook (its whole reductionist and morally one-sided stance toward bioethics), is seen to be trying to blame-shift towards atheists, and therefore has no chance of getting through with any of the rightful issues he may wish to raise. This is a good example of the fact that Church representatives need a wholesale re-think of their Christendom assumptions in both formulating and communicating their concerns.

TO SEE AS OTHERS SEE US
















(c) Guardian newspapers.

ETHICS, HUMILITY AND HECTORING

This morning I was on BBC Radio Scotland's news programme at an unearthly hour (for a Public Holiday!), discussing why the style, assumptions and content of Church's heavy lobbying on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill leaves a bad taste in the mouth, even if you thinking an open vote and proceeding with caution are needed. I found myself in broad agreement on this with the president of the National Secular Society, who I was glad to hear did think the religious voices should be heard on such issues, even though he rightly objected to the Catholic Church throwing it's heavy institutional weight around. I have published a number of articles around this theme. There will be one on OpenDemocracy's OurKingdom (picking up the nature and trickiness of ethical debate, in particular) later today. I have done a piece angled towards the religion-and-politics dimension for LiberalConspiracy. More needs to be said about the theological issues concerning the life sciences, which I will probably pursue on Ekklesia, time permitting. Earlier today this appeared on CIF:

Cardinal vices and virtues Simon Barrow Guardian Comment-is-Free, Mar 24 08, 10:30am: Humility not hectoring is the religious virtue needed to tackle the sensitive and complex issues of embryo research.

"Without doubt the biosciences, including molecular and cellular research, embryology and reproductive technologies, pose the deepest possible questions about what it means to be human, how responsibly to use the power that is coming into our hands, where we fit in the web of the natural world, and how to receive the gift of life.

Equally, there will be different estimates and different approaches to these questions, not just between the "religious" and the "non-religious", but within and across those (rather crudely drawn) constituencies, too. [...] Of course there can be arrogance and hubris, but there is also challenge and debate - as with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), whose 18 members encompass a wide range of expertise - including the thoughtful contributions of Lord Richard Harries of Pentregarth, a theologian and former Anglican Bishop of Oxford, who has has backed the government's bill calling for the regulation of scientific research in [the area] ... All of which casts the kind of intervention kick-started by Cardinal Keith O'Brien in a curious light..." Continued in full.

Some of the avowedly non-religious responses on the thread give an indication of the extent to which emotivism and irrationalism are not just religious problems: the judgement of Richard Harries without the faintest interest in the evidence of what he has said, how he has said it, and what his processes of reasoning entail, for example. Of course people who simply pigeonhole and throw insults, from whatever quarter, will do so whatever is said by those they have already decided are mad, bad or stupid; and thankfully, people who behave like that are a minority in the populace (albeit a vocal and influential one buttressed by the tabloidization of debate). But it does illustrate the need to up the discourse stakes massively, and that can only really happen when people meet as human beings and reflect on what is being said, not what they assume others think or want them to think (so that "we" are right). This just isn't the way politics or the media works right now, so you have to try and go against the flow of effluent.

The ethos of speech underlies any other attempt to be ethical, or indeed the refusal even to countenance an ethics coming from a tradition of thought other than our own.

EASTER APPEARANCES

At the heart of the Easter Gospel are a variety of New Testament texts which speak vividly but unevenly, and often to our eyes and ears confusingly, of the experiences of the Risen Christ which became a core part of the experience, message and life of the earliest Christian communities - and have resonated down the ages in narrative, liturgy, word, song, formulation, prayer and performance. They have obviously been subject to endless scholarship, dissection, analysis, reconstruction, and speculation concerning the intertwining of history and myth. But they keep bounding back to provoke and interrogate our affirmations and uncertainties. In the media this week, two renditions stand out, one on the radio and the other in print.

BBC Radio 4 presented Good Friday Liturgy: Daughters of Jerusalem. The words of Carol Ann Duffy, winner of the T.S. Eliot prize for poetry in 2006, were used to tell the story of the crucifixion from the perspective of the women who witnessed Christ's Passion. The narrative is recounted imaginatively, as if Mary Magdalene follows the whole sequence of events, including the trial, when she hears from Pilate's wife (whom she knows personally) her advice to her husband. An interlude with Veronica recalls the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Duffy is a good choice, because of the quality of her work, her critical relationship to the Catholic Church on account of her sexuality, and her characterfulness. Deirdre Good reproduces her poem Prayer here.

Then there is a good overview and thoughtfully generous interpretation of the NT resurrection appearance narratives from Brian Purfield, Head of Theological Education at Mount Street Jesuit Centre, on Thinking Faith. His approach is broadly consistent with my theological account, I think. Or vice versa. Purfield concludes: "Clearly each writer tries to affirm that Jesus’ bodilyness had very different qualities to ours. These qualities made Jesus unrecognisable in the first moments of his appearances and allowed him the freedom to move easily through, in, and out of space and time without restriction. Each evangelist affirms that the disciples do come to recognise the risen Lord in these appearances but only as Jesus addresses them in some way."

Incidentally, Sean the Baptist has been 'going some' on his blog over Easter. Here's a commendation from him: "Alan Lewis' Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday is one of the most profound and poignant theological works that I know. "

TALKING ACROSS THE SPECTRUM

Occasionally, Ekklesia faces the charge of being The Guardian at prayer - perhaps from those who have not quite noticed the disdain directed at some of our associates on Comment-is-Free, or who have not registered our constant attempts to re-frame the standard 'liberal -v- conservative' standoff. Anyway, Jonathan Bartley and I have rather different political backgrounds, and I've made a conscious decision to do bits of commentary in the centre (OpenDemocracy) and on the centre-right (Wardman Wire). But when the splendid Sunny Hundal of Pickled Politics started up LiberalConspiracy, launched last year at the offices of Demos, I couldn't resist. My first piece, a long time coming because of other commitments is Manipulating politics through religion. I also entered the following caveat on my contributor's profile: "Simon has a particular interest in inclusive models of secular life, and in uncovering subversive and pluralistic strands within religious thought. He values liberality but isn’t sure about liberalism as an ideology." And, of course, for me the theological underpinning and shape of what I'm doing and thinking is central and determinative, though never anything but fallible (because it is mediated by me).

The question of how one develops and conveys theologically grounded convictions in an environment in which they are not readily understood and may often be contested remains a crucial one, of course. My basic outlook is that rationality, the ability to 'make sense' in a variety of ways, is tradition specific - but that traditions of reasoning, both religious and non-religious, overlap and coincide in persons and communities, as well as clashing and missing each other. This mean that there is communicability (an assumption of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, too), but more through heuristic and phenomenological means rather than systematic ones. There is no guarantee of translatability, nor a meta-language that we can all deploy or access. There are only attempts to live and codify the truth together; narratives that shape, explain, critique and create those attempts; and the Holy Spirit operative ("disturbing the comfortable; comforting the disturbed') within and beyond the community that recognises itself caught up in the ongoing process of Christian discernment. That is, the Gospel narrative / dynamic, understood from the 'underside' of history, where the Christ to whom it points is located. This paragraph, I suppose you could say, amounts to my hermeneutic, understood as a revisable working hypothesis.