A WELCOME BREAK

"The sudden assertion of human criteria within a de-humanising framework of political manipulation can be like a flash of lightning illuminating a dark landscape" - Vaclav Havel , writer, philosopher, activist and ex-politician

"Respect for the people’s word need not mean approval for whatever they say. Any criticism becomes constructive when based on a fundamental attitude of respect and listening." - Clodovis Boff, Brazilian theologian

CLEAR-HEADED, HUMAN AND HOPEFUL

Among the books I have been reading for intellectual and spiritual refreshment over the summer is Theology for Pilgrims, by Nicholas Lash (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008), which collects together more stimulating essays from the former Norris Hulse Professor of Theology at the University of Cambridge. This includes perhaps the best response so far to the philosophical and forensic confusions of Richard Dawkins' thinking about God and religion, and many other gems. I will do a full appraisal at some point, but I am glad that Robin Ward has flagged up the book in a short review published this week in the Church Times.

He declares: "These essays intrigue, illuminate, and convince with their watchful, waspish eye for imprecise thinking and tendentious assumptions. Whether you are a curial cardinal, an atheist evolutionary biologist, or a complacently establishment dean, make sure you verify your references: if you don’t, be sure Professor Lash will." This is true, but there's also a warmth, humanity and thirst for hope here, and in all Lash's writing, which elevates the soul as well as challenging the intellect.

One of Nicholas Lash's major themes is that we fall at first base if we try to think about the reality of God in terms of some kind of "object" within or attached to the universe, something which many polemicists seeking to "prove" or "disprove" God simply take for granted. The transcendent God who grounds all being and becoming cannot meaningfully be conceived of as a member of a category of things called "gods", he explains. I have unpacked this in my paper What difference does God make today?, and more briefly in The God elusion and in Three ways to make sense of one God - which is partly in debt to Lash's earlier thinking about the fabric of historic Trinitarian formulations.

Theology for Pilgrims "exposes the crisis in our thinking about God which is at the root of our misunderstandings and mistakes about science and politics, ethics and economics, life and death" says the blurb on the back. It does just that. And it has some great stuff on Diderot, Foucault and Joseph Conrad.

CHANGING THE AGENDA

Here 's my piece on OpenDemocracy's 'Our Kingdom' ("a conversation on the future of the United Kingdom") website: Changing the agenda on faith schools. It seeks to show why Accord is not simply "more of the same", as some of our pre-emptive critics are suggesting, but a new direction in the debate and in the practical possibilities. There's also an article from me on Guardian Comment-is-Free, more on the immediate need for change ("Granting privileges and exemptions to any one group builds barriers rather than bridges in the education system").

MOVING TOWARDS ACCORD

During the summer break, I was involved with others in developing the launch of a new coalition, Accord, which is seeking to help change the character of the public debate around faith schools -- to focus on the case for community-wide rather than selective schooling, and to move away from overheated rhetoric towards attention to specific policy proposals on admissions, employment, curriculum, inspections and assemblies.

It all began to hit the media on Friday, after the Jewish Chronicle decided not to honour the embargo. There have been some interesting responses, and some extraordinary. The official Accord launch press conference is in London today. Unfortunately, I can't be there to speak in person as I am still recovering from a fever and viral infection. Among those contributing will be Adam Hart-Davis, the scientist, author, photographer, historian and broadcaster, and Alison Ryan from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), which has a very good position paper on the issue.

You might not think that arguing for non-discrimination is controversial, but it is. I am being published on Guardian CIF (where a debate has been set up), OpenDemocracy, Liberal Conspiracy and Wardman Wire (covering the main political bases). On Ekklesia I have written A Christian case for Accord. There are also statements from clergy and others, plus some documentation. After the initial flurry, I will largely cover this on my work blog on Ekklesia, when that gets going again later tomorrow.

LIFE PAINTING LIFE

"Love is the prime force in the creation of art; and love is not a work." - Stanley Spencer

Faith In The Frame is a new 10 part series for ITV1, and sees Melvyn Bragg chair lively 30 minute discussions on the themes and relevance of ten of the world’s most fascinating religious pictures. The works chosen are, rightly, far from easy or comforting. In programme one, tonight, the panel discussed The Resurrection, Cookham by Stanley Spencer: This is a highly individual vision of 'heaven on earth', painted between 1924-27, and set in Spencer’s local Cookham churchyard where he had played when young, ostensibly the perfect English idyll. The panelists were Howard Jacobson, novelist; Tim Marlow, art writer and broadcaster; and Richard Harries, former Anglican bishop of Oxford. [Picture courtesy ofwww.artcyclopedia.com]

AN OVERDUE VERDICT

I was very pleased to hear that Barry George has finally been cleared of the awful Jill Dando street murder eight years ago. Right from the outset a number of us had argued that the original 'guilty' verdict, resting on discredited forensic claims, was a travesty of the evidence presented. It required us to believe that a severely disturbed man who found it difficult to think straight in the simplest of circumstances could have carried out a 'hit' requiring great sophistication and split second timing. The police have said they are "disappointed" at the exoneration. Why, for goodness' sake? Would they prefer an innocent man to be locked up? It is tragic for Ms Dando's relatives that her killer is still at large, but they have not been served well by celebrity allies like Nick Ross who constantly objected to a re-trial, even though the case for it was overwhelming. When 'closure' means a miscarriage of justice it does no-one any good.

BEYOND PAX ANGLICANA

Peacemaking after Christendom, Simon Barrow, Ekklesia, 13.07.08

[excerpt] After Christendom there is both fresh hope and fresh challenge for Christian peacemaking. The core question is: “how is peace written into the fabric our lives and our Christian commitment?”, not “OK, I’m a Christian. Now, what sort shall I decide to be, a pacifist or a just warrior?”

If 'just war' means “just another war”, the defence of “Christian Empire” or the overwhelming conformity of the church to an ethic promulgated by the modern delegates of Caesar, then it is the wrong path.

If, however, it is a way of moving away from violence ... a kind of Christian equivalent to the lex talionis (the Jewish law for limiting retribution), then it has a role to play. Not as an end in itself, but as part of a journey whose destiny is the shalom, the just-peace, that is ... shaped by Jesus and the great Hebrew prophets.

The point is this: the Body of Christ is a broken body offered unconditional life by God, not life grabbed at the expense of entrapping others in death. To be baptised into this body is to share a life in Christ that is brought about by grace not guns. More here.

MORE THAN HALF FULL

"Only when the well has dried up, do we realise the value of water." -- Benjamin Franklin

TO HAVE OR TO BE (WITH)

"[I]n our highly competitive and greedy world [..] we often live as if our happiness depended on having. But I don't know anyone who is really happy because of what he or she has. True joy, happiness and inner peace come from the giving of ourselves to others. A happy life is a life for others." -- Henri Nouwen

CHURCH AS SPECTACLE

Times religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill has been maintaining an admirably informative 'live blog' from the Church of England's general Synod, as the decision on women bishops is taken. Dave Walker has been doing a good job, too.

Viewed from the outside, these proceedings can seem rather bizarre. This is something the C of E has partly brought upon itself by pompously setting up its central body as a quasi-parliament. That means living in the blinking headlines of a constant media culture, so that moments of decision and emotion which might previously have been conducted with public eyes averted are now available for all to stare at -- often uncomprehendingly, since mere sight does not necessarily equal understanding of what is viewed. The distinction between privacy and secrecy is also lost. I'm in favour of public scrutiny, especially when power which otherwise might be unaccountable is being deployed. But there are losses, too, in terms of human and spiritual process.

Last night, for example, Jeremy Paxman (on BBC2's Newsnight) heaped ridicule on the idea that Synod had passed a motion without full resolution of all the details - as if the notion of going through a dispute process was inherently absurd. The idea of trying to accommodate rather than crush dissent is thereby portrayed as weakness and vacillation. It can be, of course. But compromise based on principle rather than expediency, where this is possible, is not to be despised and can make a real difference. It's difficult to get at when every move is being politicised, however.

That said, I am nervous about the word "statutory" attached to the 'code of conduct' idea. The Church having decided, at long last, to consecrate women as bishops, the purpose of pastoral measures should be to aid reception with sensitivity, not to set up road blocks or assist those who wish to do so. That is a crucial distinction. In the long run, those who cannot recognise women in positions of authority cannot expect (or be expected) to live in permanent ecclesiastical "no fly zones", and it is cruel as well as unhelpful to pretend otherwise. That is not conflict transformation, it's the institutionalisation of incurable pain - to everyone's harm, as the disastrous Act of Synod preceding the ordination of women in 1994 has demonstrated.

WOMEN BISHOPS IT IS

The good news from the Church of England (for once) is just emerging (22.53 GMT). But watch out for the small print... this on Ekklesia: Church of England makes historic decision for women bishops (23.34 GMT).

A SACRAMENT OF HOPE

I have just been watching a very moving C4 documentary, The Miracle of Carriage 346, on the aftermath of the London bombings on 7 July 2005. The term "miracle" is often misused (by religious believers and non-believers alike) as a synonym for arbitrary magic. A better definition would be "a potent sign of life". This programme used it with dignity - not positing a deus ex machina protecting some and ignoring others in the midst of tragedy, but highlighting the life-giving and death-defying significance, as Gill Hicks put it, of "every person who touched me and who I touched that day." Gill, the last person to be rescued alive from the train carriage in which 26 died, has gone on to be a vigorous advocate for the excellent NGO Peace Direct, and talks of her post 7/7 existence as "my second life" which she will use to work for humanity because "it did not come without preconditions": a sense of responsibility she has willingly embraced through and beyond her disfigurement.

COSTLY GRACE

"[The] love of God for the world does not withdraw from a reality into noble souls detached from it, but experiences and suffers the reality of the world in the harshest possible fashion. The world takes out its rage on the body of Jesus Christ. But he, tormented, forgives the world its sins. Thus does reconciliation come about." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A TABLED RESOLUTION

It being Church of England Synod and all that...

"Becoming Christ-like swings on keeping close to Christ himself, being part of his living body. This means constantly coming close to his bread-body lying on the table as his breathing-body standing around the table. The table of Christ demands that we grow up, and growing up means learning to live with those we find awkward and uncongenial as well as those we warm to naturally. It means living in a community where we don't always get our own way." -- David Wood, writing in Fear or Freedom?

[The picture is the former mural from Santa Maria de Los Angeles, Managua, Nicaragua.]

A VOICE FOR TRUTH

I'm really sad to hear of the death of veteran correspondent Charles Wheeler - though, as they say, he had "a good innings", and contributed more to the integrity of reporting and journalism than almost anyone else in Britain over the past six decades. That his demise became news on 4 July, given his long years in Washington, seems strangely appropriate. BBC Radio 4 will be paying tribute with a special 45-minute programme, Charles Wheeler In His Own Words at 1100 BST on Saturday, 5 July 2008 or afterwards for a week at the Listen Again page.

ACTING IN GOOD FAITH

Responding to the broader concern attached to a high court judgement issued on 2 July 2008 ('Faith Schools judgment fails to consider human rights angle'), Simon Barrow, co-director of the religion and society think-tank Ekklesia, commented: "It is time that both religious communities and government were more direct in tackling the issue of discrimination in admissions and employment in faith schools, with a view to eliminating such practices." Our concern about this is theologically grounded. What message does this kind of thing send out to people looking for integrity, love and fairness from Christians and other people of faith?

LIMITS TO 'THE POLITICAL'

Without doubt, I am a 'political animal'. Always have been. But political processes can easily become overbearing, distorting, disconnected and over-determining of the many features of life that they touch upon. In my latest Wardman Wire 'Thinking Aloud' column, which I have entitled 'The Limits of Politics' , I explore how and why the church might play some role in generating alternatives in this area. There's also an anecdote about Nelson Mandela at the 9th WCC Assembly in Harare ten years ago, illustrating my point that "grace as well as power is needed to triumph over injustice, and to hold on to the vulnerable dream that a different world is possible."

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

Deep disagreements between followers of Christ over the nature and mission of the church are not new. In fact the recent goings on in Jerusalem may remind us of the Council that Acts of the Apostles records as the first in the early Christian movement's history. It came up with a classic Anglican-style fudge (which was at the same time rather radical), unlike the Anglican one held last week, ironically enough. Here is my recent sermon tackling these issues for the Feast of St Peter and St Paul: Whose mission is it anyway?

MEET THE COTTAGERS

Meanwhile, the nascent Fellowship of Confressing Anglicans hasn't quite made its acronym stick on the net yet. If you Google FOCA you get a whole variety of intriguing alternative possibilities, including cuddly seals (very, very cute and quite unschismatic-looking), an appealing holiday destination in France, and the Federation of Cottagers' Associations in Ontario, which to those who believe that Canadian Anglicanism has now been irreversibly taken over by a "gay mafia" may sound rather more sinister than it actually is.

WILL WILLIAMS HEAD FOCA OFF?

Sorry, couldn't resist that one. Nor could Andrew Brown, I see. I am travelling at the moment, and so only logging in fitfully (yes, it does happen), but I see that Riazat Butt writing on the front page of the Guardian this morning, no less, reports an "unusually robust" response from Lambeth to the declaration from GAFCON - one that Theo Hobson describes as more of a coup than a schism: an observation which is both politically true and theologically literate... it seems that most people who use the latter term have nary a clue as to what it really means, assuming it just to be a synonym for 'split', when historically it has referred to a major uprooting of the tradition, not simply a division within a denomination (which, in the case of Anglicanism, has never claimed the kind of permanency that would be necessary to make sense of this kind of description).

That said, there are many evangelicals (including some quite conservative ones) who are unhappy with the attempted putsch, so while Theo is right on one paradigm, he is in danger of succumbing to another mistaken one. Anyway, it is all rather unpleasant and diversionary to the major challenge Christianity faces in an era where a top-down, institutional version of church is being threatened as never before. In all this, a certain kind of bogus anti-colonialism has arisen, where the abuse of power and attempts to impose a new version of the old imperial order is disguised with guilt-tripping rhetoric about liberation. About which more, later.