GORDON BROWN AND FAITHSPEAK

Keeping Faith Simon Barrow Guardian Comment-is-Free Sep 25 07, 08:00pm: Labour 07: One of the more intriguing aspects of Gordon Brown's first Labour party conference speech as serving prime minister was his decision to use consciously biblical language as part of his argument against those employing religious rhetoric to oppose diversity and equality in family policy. [Cont'd]

This has led to an interesting point of discussion on the Ekklesia Facebook page [register to access] about whether Gordon Brown sees the enabling state as some kind of surrogate church. Which in turn raises a host of issues about the theology of statehood and the polity of ecclesial practice. But these were not at the forefront of my mind here. The point I was making in The Guardian was simply that, while it is desirable to have a clear distinction between religion and state, it is good to have the exclusionary rhetoric of the religious right challenged on its own terms - as part of the necessary willingness of those operating in the public square to countenance and deal with a plurality of moral languages emanating from different traditions. Rather than privileging one.

I don't think a PM can ever do proper justice to biblical language, however, because its alternative power - which looks very like powerlessness in a worldly context - resides in sources other than the kind of authority he (in this case) is properly mandated, able and willing to deploy in a democratic arena. By contrast, the vision of the kin-dom of God as an invitation to the politics of radical forgiveness, peacemaking and common life is what church needs to be about, in action not just rhetoric. I guess I should have made that point. But I stuck to the civic dimension, as I don't imagine CIF readers would care about the theological side of the equation (though many of them don't seem to care about diversity in civics either, preferring merely to wish for the elimination of what they don't want to hear, namely anything formed in proximity to 'religion').

As a footnote, I should add that back in May 2007, Johan Hari - who often displays a rather monochrome antipathy toward religion - wrote an interesting and balanced piece on Brown's God for The Independent. Likewise, Matthew Parris (the Times columnist, ex-Tory MP and secularist) appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, pointing out that the tenor and substance of GB's use of biblical phrases was quite different to that of Tony Blair - who often spoke them as if they were his own words, eliding the realm they came from with his own far too readily.

None of this, by the way, should be read as some uncritical endorsement of Brown - or an indication that I am uncynical about politicians quoting scripture for their own ends. I think GB is a definite improvement on TB. But that is not saying I favour New Labour, whose rise has been facilitated by an enseemly accommodation of the neoliberal agenda that has homogenized nearly all mainstream party politics in recent years.

TRANSFORMATIONAL DIPLOMACY

Yup, changing the terms of failed engagements, challenging over-vested interests and reaching out for new non-confrontational paradigms. That ought to be a desirable thing. And in this case I'm not just talking about Richard Dawkins and his acolytes, he says with a smile (I've been away for ten days, so those expecting comments and response on that one will have to wait a wee while longer - though they might read this, inter alia, in the meantime).

No, I'm thinking of Israel-Palestine. My friend Michael Marten, who is an extremely well-resourced academic and commentator in this area, has a good piece on this for Ekklesia - (Transformational diplomacy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) which has gone up in advance of next week's Quartet powers (UN, Russia, Europe and USA) meeting.

There is an increasing body of opinion voicing serious concern at government policy in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the International Crisis Group, several of the major churches, and the UK parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee. All are calling at different levels for a recognition that having urged the Palestinians to hold elections despite the ongoing occupation, it behoves the West to ‘urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements’ within Hamas (FASC).

Not communicating with those who do not share our world view will not lead to peaceful resolution of conflicts, but rather empower those who already feel that the West is neither trustworthy nor sincere in its desire for democratic and peaceful change.

The potential transformation of relationships that can come about through open and honest meetings with (supposed) opponents is something that many within the churches, involved for example with ecumenical and interfaith groups, will be able to bear witness to. It is the activities of ordinary people, involved in what are often extraordinary acts of rapprochement and reconciliation, that can be used as examples in exercising pressure on those in positions of authority, as demonstrated on a very public level by the recent involvement of South African and Northern Irish politicians in helping Iraqi politicians meet and discuss issues between them.

Those who take an interest in the situation in the Middle East should take heart from the fact that the renewed prominence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not due solely to weariness with the disastrous everyday toll of death and destruction emerging from Iraq, but is also due to the continued pressure from the countless people who are working hard to change attitudes to the conflict. Some of these actions, such as the growing boycott of Israeli goods, are almost certainly completely ineffective in direct power-political or economic terms, but are a tremendous tool for communicating the issues to those unaware of them, as well as empowering those involved.

Civil society can effect change – it is already doing so – and the churches need to continue to play their part in this. As non-party political participants in the wider political scene in this country they occupy an important role, but they do that often through the work, not of the church hierarchies, but through the engagement and dedication of ordinary members – the civil society of the churches, one might say.

Encouraging the government to listen to advice from regional experts rather than partisan envoys, engaging with ‘the enemy’ (as a certain Palestinian Jew encouraged us to do 2000 years ago), treating Occupier and Occupied as such and working towards enabling a just resolution of the conflict between them – these and more are things that the churches and its members, together with the other elements of our wider civil society (Muslim, secular and so on), can continue to pursue and involve others in.

Now that really would be ‘transformational diplomacy’.

TAKING DAWKINS AT HIS WORD

My friend Richard Skinner has written a thoughtful general piece on why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously, in spite of the deficiencies of many of his lines of reasoning on 'religion'. There's no doubt that The God Delusion has found a dedicated and often vociferous following. We live in an unsettled age where many people crave certainty. And if they can't find it in particular types of belief they will find it in particular types of non-belief which share an equal irritation with careful interpretation that recognises the unavoidability of ambiguity, plurality and complexity. As Richard Skinner says, this stuff may lack subtlety, but it is a rightful electric shock for the churches -- whose failure to take their intellectual task seriously has produced a culture (both within and without) which is radically ignorant of even the basic tools of intelligent discourse about religion. I'm also reading John Cornwell's playful and wry riposte, Darwin's Angel, at the moment. I'll be reviewing it in due course. Cornwell is director of the Science and the Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge. See also his Guardian article, The importance of doubt, which ends with this important comment:

''It was only to be expected that a bold thesis that condemned religion en masse would have profound socio-political implications. Dawkins is a brilliant natural historian, whose science books I have celebrated in a string of reviews. The God Delusion has been criticised for trespassing clumsily in the realms of theology; but my own objections are more in the ambit of socio-politics. Put bluntly, The God Delusion is liable to persuade religious fundamentalists that a pluralist secular society is every bit as hostile to the practice of faith as they ever thought it to be. By urging the elimination of religion in the name of all that civil society holds dear, Dawkins is inviting fundamentalists to be even more fundamentalist. His book, then, is a counsel of despair as well as an incitement to the very thing he deplores and seeks to remedy.''

PEACING THINGS TOGETHER

One would think that peace, a term that occurs as many as one hundred times in the New Testament alone, would enjoy a prominent place in theology and ethics textbooks. Yet it is surprisingly absent. (By contrast, three contested texts about same-sex relations - written out of the context of ancient pederasty, idolatry and cultic prostitution, rather than modern faithful partnerships, are used to divide whole churches these days.)

Leading Mennonite biblical scholar Willard Swartley’s superb Covenant of Peace remedies this deficiency, restoring to New Testament theology and ethics the peace that the great majority of evaulative and confessional works have missed. In this comprehensive yet accessible book Swartley explicates virtually all of the New Testament, relating peace — and the associated emphases of love for enemies and reconciliation — to core Christian theological themes such as soteriology, eschatology, Christology, and the reign of God. No other work in English makes such a contribution. Well worth an investment of time and money. Incidentally, Willard has also made some eirenic contributions to the sexuality debate himself. We don't quite see eye-to-eye on that one, but he lives out the peace he preaches and exposits in the way he converses.

WHAT WOULD JESUS DECONSTRUCT?

This is the wonderful and evocative title of the second volume in a series of books called The Church and Postmodern Culture (Baker Academic Press), edited by James K.A. Smith of Calvin College, an interesting philosopher writing from a Reformed Christian perspective. John D. Caputo's What Would Jesus Deconstruct (foreword by Brian McLaren), is due for release in the US on 1 November 2007. The first volume in the series, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, by Smith himself, was released in 2006. Conversation related to the series is available in blog form at Church and po-mo.

Planned forthcoming volumes include: Daniel M. Bell Jr. on desire and economy, featuring Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault; Carl Raschke on the impact of globalization on Christian practice and mission; and Merold Westphal on transcendence, community, interpretation in conversation with Kierkegaard and Levinas; Graham Ward on contextual theology and political discipleship; and Bruce Ellis Benson on improvisation as a paradigm for thinking about worship and the arts. Looks very promising, though some more women's voices are badly needed in the midst of this male pontificating.

As regular readers of FaithInSociety will know, I'm a definite appreciator of Caputo and Westphal's work. Also Graham Ward, who has been described by some as "the acceptable face of Radical Orthodoxy" - by which I think is meant "less prone to build huge trenches between his own stance and those of others" than some of the other Cambridge schooled RO thinkers.

Caputo, along with Richard Kearney, (whose The God Who May Be is fabulous) are the featured interlocutors at the 2007 Emergent Theological Philosophical Conversation, for which there's still time to register.

SEPTEMBER 11th IN HISTORY...

Today we remember the terrible events in New York and elsewhere in 2001. But also the bloody coup in Chile in 1973, earlier purges against the Jews in Europe, and myriad other examples of human waywardness - and the opportunity (some would say call) to move in new directions. The National Council of Churches USA hosted a communications commission meeting assessing the lasting legacy of 9/11 in terms of faith, media, and American society. Their guests included the prominent Muslim multimedia producer Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid (right), chair of the 400,000-member Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago; and John M. Buchanan (left), editor and publisher of The Christian Century and nationally-known pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. Michael Livingston, president of the National Council of Churches, was the moderator.

THE SPIRITED BUSINESS OF ETHICS

[From the Ekklesia press room] Simon Barrow, co-director of the Christian think tank Ekklesia, said today that the best way to honour the memory of Anita Roddick - who died on 10 September 2007 - was to take forward the case for corporate responsibility as a human obligation, not a luxury option.

"It is easy to be cynical and 'ethical business' now that it has become mainstream and trendy", he commented. "Of course there is a lot of hot air around it. But developing alternative practices for doing business as if people and the planet matters is a tough call. Roddick recognised that massive injustice in trade, corporate greed and unfair debt often confounded efforts to take the world in a different direction. But she wasn't daunted or deceived. Nor should we be."

Ekklesia has also praised Roddick for bringing people together from different belief and non-belief backgrounds to work for a better world in spite of their differences.

"She didn't feel easy with 'religion' and she was highly critical of a lot of established religious institutions", said Barrow. "But Anita Roddick also saw the value of spiritual development bringing about material change to the way we live and act - and she was surprised and delighted by her experience of the annual Greenbelt festival, commenting that its practical vitality and intellectual energy was far from the stereotypes of Christianity she had often met, and the stuffiness of the church she had personally encountered."

[Pic: Anita Roddick at Greenbelt in 2004]

TURNING THE TIDE IN IRAQ?

Getting Iraq’s war surge to trickle towards peace (Ekklesia, 10 September 2007) Talk of the efficacy or otherwise of the US 'surge' is a smokescreen, says Simon Barrow. There is no long-term military solution to Iraq’s nightmare. But behind the scenes viable alternatives are being sought within civil society - and in conversation with those who have faced the uphill tasks of peace and justice in Ireland and South Africa.

The Daily Star in Lebanon adds: Ironically, Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces some of the same dilemmas as coalition forces in Iraq, though there is certainly no moral equivalency between the two. Both are driven by ideologies that are for the most part alien particularly to Sunni tribal sheikhs. Neither advocates of Western-style democracy nor the champions of strict Islamic orthodoxy offer an appealing vision for Iraq's future. Both sides are led by foreigners and viewed by a majority of Iraqis as occupiers, not liberators. Both are condemned for what is viewed by locals as the indiscriminate killing and brutalization of a civilian population caught in the crossfire of a conflict over which they have little say. Both are well financed and view Iraq as the battlefield for a global struggle that leaves no room for compromise.

BLAME THE SURGEON, NOT THE SURGE

It's crunch time in Washington DC and Baghdad. On Monday 10 September 2007, General David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker will begin two days of testimony on Capitol Hill about the progress made by President Bush’s “surge” strategy in Iraq.

Nevertheless, in the quest to develop necessary alternatives to war as an instrument of policy, we should not delude ourselves about what is actually going on, as US Friends minister, commentator an writer Johan Maurer rightly argues. But then he adds, by way of exposition:

"[B]arring the use of wholesale slaughter and massive increases in imprisonment, the surge can, in the long run, only succeed in pushing opposition forces into a waiting mode. Even a new Iraqi military and police force will be no stronger or more stable than the political forces controlling them, and there is no guarantee that those forces will embrace values congenial to today's White House. In any case, that White House has not demonstrated:

• any willingness to be candid with us critics, or do anything other than talk down to us
• readiness to submit to public accountability for the disastrous deployment of precious national resources or the compromise of Constitutional values
• the capacity to assess conditions in Iraq competently or even to argue intelligently (depending for that mostly on pro-administration pundits);

and therefore, any continuation of the surge, or of the occupation generally, that depends on the President's good judgment, should be rejected.

"Don't blame the surge; blame the surgeon. (And all those who've abdicated civilian oversight of the military, congressional oversight over the executive, and the people's oversight over the whole show...)"

[Photo: Christian Peace Witness for Iraq]

ON DOLLARS AND DEBAUCHERY

"What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war." (Simone Weil)

"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love." (German proverb)

FROM CONCERN TO ACTION

Things can still only get better Simon Barrow Guardian Comment-is-Free, Sep 07 07, 12:00pm: Talk of moral decline shows that people still refuse to give up on the idea of a better world.

[I should point out that my original title did NOT have that 'only' in it (which is patently absurd -- things can get worse too, and nothing in my argument suggests otherwise). But that's modern headline writing for you. I requested at least a question mark, but it was rejected. Ah well. It chimes in on the that nauseating 1997 New Labour anthem, and therefore makes a catchy title. Who cares if it isn't at all what the author intends or means? See, things can't only get better... :) ]

A good footnote c/o Miskatonic University:

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." - Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

WITHERING THE PEOPLE?

This piece [below] will only appear on the Ekklesia front page for a short while, as it is really designed for the immediately upcoming issue of Third Way. I curate my TW articles here, usually a while after they have appeared in print form. But because of the topicality issue, I need to run concurrently on this one. At least it should prove that (astonishing) accusations that I'm Nu Labour as a result of my Guardian piece on Gordon Brown's dual messages are pretty far off the mark. Gosh, today is a bumper day, huh? And there's another Guardian article due at midday, responding to the 'moral decline' BBC opinion survey. Anyway, here it is:

Moving towards post-democracy? There is a growing disconnect with the aspirations of people whose concerns are not adequately mapped by the narrow economic, political and social assumptions of the main political parties, says Simon Barrow. Are we moving into a form of post-democracy?

FACING THE BIG QUESTIONS

My colleague Jonathan Bartley is commenting around the studios on the launch of the BBC's new belief and ethics TV programme, The Big Questions, which starts on Sunday 9 September. This morning (7 September 2007) Jonathan is due on: 6.20am BBC Breakfast TV News, 7-9.00 ten Regional Radio News programmes, 9.20 BBC News 24. Times may vary. He is also one of the panellists on the first show this weekend, talking (among other things) about the BBC-commissioned poll that indicates over 80 per cent of the population of Britain is concerned about declining moral values.

THE FAITH IMPETUS TOWARDS EQUALITY

[From the Ekklesia media centre] Responding to fears expressed by some faith groups that religious freedom is being undermined by the frameworks of law and regulation leading up to proposals for a Single Equality Bill, the independent Christian think tank Ekklesia has urged churches and others to embrace equal access and rights in the public sphere with greater enthusiasm - because it is consistent with the social justice content of their own Gospel message.

Simon Barrow, co-director of Ekklesia, commented: "The comprehensive and integrated equalities agenda across Britain's public institutions is no threat to freedom of religion, diversity or tolerance. On the contrary, equal treatment is a cornerstone of fair access and open expression for all - including people of faith and those of non-religious outlook."

He added: "It is sad that some faith organisations seem fearful of equal rights, especially when it applies to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons. But there is a clear distinction to be made between the moral stipulations of a community of commitment, and the obligation on public institutions to ensure far treatment. Religious bodies do not have to take public money, run schools and work in cooperation with community and public services. But if they do so, they need to occupy the same level playing field as others."

Ekklesia argues that the churches, in particular, need to pay more attention to the "radically egalitarian" strand of the Gospel message in developing their response to public policy, rather than defending their institutional interests over against others.

CONFRONTATION IS NOT THE ONLY WAY

Some months ago it looked as if costly and acrimonious legal action was going to be the outcome of a series of disputes between some evangelical Christian Unions and Student Unions across Britain's campuses. Exeter and Edinburgh were among those in the spotlight. Ekklesia's response was to seek to open up dialogue with both sides in the disputes - which was about freedom of speech, and who ran or had access to bodies using student society facilities and publicly funded university/college halls. Our report was called United We Stand. Now, thankfully, things have moved on - and the National Union of Students and the UCCF (which helps run Christian Unions) have reached a common set of guidelines - with the help of the Equality Challenge Unit (see: Student leaders and Christian Unions produce joint guidelines to end disputes). This is great news. And it has involved a lot of hard work for all the parties involved - which didn't include us, incidentally, so there's no trumpet-blowing in that remark. Sadly, the National Secular Society news service sniffily labelled the outcome in terms of "Christians cosy up to Student Unions." This seems unfair and unhelpful. The process by which the mutual guidance has come about is a victory for mediation over consultation, a boost to genuine pluralism (for both religious and non-religious students) and as NUS National President Gemma Tumelty says, "is in line with the law, university regulations, union regulations and the democratic principles of liberty, equality and respect for diversity." That ought, in fact, to be an example of what even-handed secularity, as distinct from an anti-religious variety, is about. My response on behalf of Ekklesia is here.

TRUTH AND DARE

"It always seems impossible until its done" - Nelson Mandela

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything" - Mark Twain

(Hat-tip to Gemma Tumelty)

REASONS TO BE SLIGHTLY CHEERFUL?

The PM's dual messages Simon Barrow Guardian Comment-is-Free, Sep 05 07, 09:00am: There may not be much to separate Brown from Blair, but his attempts to move ground in Iraq and unlock domestic democracy are reasons to be hopeful.

Here's a further comment on this, responding to the inevitable torrents of cynicism. It's not like I'm saying "in Gordon we trust" in some naive or straightforward way. More like: "here's a door, let's push".

GROWING THE CAPACITY TO RESPOND

People say, "What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?" They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them...

- Dorothy Day

from Loaves and Fishes
[via www.sojo.net]

CONTESTING CLUBBABLE CHRISTIANITY

At the end of a rather odd piece in the Guardian, complaining that the Church of England's decline is attributable to having more committed members and being prepared to question the social status quo (I would certainly have highlighted rather different issues!), David Self, editor of the Encyclopedia of Christianity published earlier this year by Lion Hudson, ends with an apposite comment on the decidedly ambiguous implications of our new Prime Minister's decision to partially release the C of E from his control:

Ironically, by giving it authority to appoint its own bishops, Gordon Brown has actually given [the Church of England] new authority to appoint unelected members of the House of Lords. Rather than increasing the power of this particular club, we should consider severing its automatic, official links with the establishment and with government in particular.

Quite. The new Church of Ireland Primate, Alan Harper, is also a real breath of fresh air on related issues of the church in public life.

MIGRATING FROM REALITY

Here, as promised, is the piece I have written for the Guardian Comment-is-Free website: Migration's real meaning - An obsessive focus on restricting migration bypasses global realities and prevents us from seeking a more positive approach to people's movement.

Predictably, respondents have begun to misunderstand the article in two obvious ways. First, it has been described as advocating "no immigration controls". One would have thought that the occurrence of the word "regulation" in the final paragraph would have been a clue that I'm not seeing things that simply, but no matter. Knee-jerk responses are the order of the day in this debate. That's what prompted me to write something in the first place. What I'm actually suggesting is that we are over-preoccupied with controlling borders, and under-concerned about the deeper changes that would actually stem the flow of forced migration (whether by political, criminal or economic displacement) and help us to move towards sustainable people movements in a shared context - rather than one where we simply use borders as barriers. It's a matter of trajectory. [Picture: deletetheborder]

Second, the accusation is rapidly raised that my argument accepts the premise of unfettered capitalism. No. What I'm saying is that so long as capital can move unfettered, it is unfeasible and unjust (in a world of dissolving borders) to think of clamping down on people as a solution to the disequilibrium caused by massive inequality and other consequences of the 'rights of capital'. The point is that expecting migration policy to solve all the other problems you wish to ignore is palpably unrealistic - contrary to the bleatings of the 'get tough' lobby. The fact that there are no simple paths from where we are now to where we need to be heading for is no excuse for ignoring this. A paradigm shift is what I'm advocating, not a legitimation of the current patterns of globalisation. Or a simplistic belief that unqualified borders can resolve things.

DESIRING FAR MORE THAN A BIG 'IT'

Here's a fabulous piece by the highly creative Catholic theologian James Alison [pictured] - God and Desire, presented to the 2007 Quest Conference, Sheffield (England), on 21 July 2007. No wonder he's one of Rowan Williams' favourites. I'm honoured that one of James' pieces appears in the book that I edited with Jonathan Bartley in 2005, Consuming Passion: Why the killing of Jesus really matters (DLT). James' main website is here. This piece draws on an interesting dramaturgical/operatic metaphor to make its point - inter alia illustrating the central reason for "the poverty of modern discourse about God, whether it be to deny God, à la Dawkins or Hitchens, or to affirm God, in the way that so many of our religious representatives do."

What I’m trying to do here is to bring out something odd about the difference between “a god” and “God”, since it is too easy, in discussions of “the advent of Hebrew monotheism” to find ourselves talking about different sorts of “it” – on the one hand gods, which are “its”, objects, projections of ours, or of our social groupings, slalom poles within our negotiation of the piste which is our universe; and on the other hand, “God” which is a much bigger and more definitive sort of “it”. One which sets everything up, gives rules to go by, and cannot be negotiated round. Well, the trouble here is that both the little “its” and the big “it” share in the same essential quality of “itness” – that is to say, they are objects which are, to some degree or other, within our ken.

However, the whole point of the advent of Hebrew monotheism is that it doesn’t fit into this picture at all: in fact it completely reverses it. What the advent of Hebrew monotheism looked like could, and can, only be detected in the radical reversal of desire which it produces. It is not that a new “It” begins to open up before our gaze, a gaze which has been brought into being by the relationships which have taught us who we are and shown us what we can see and desire. Instead, “I Am bringing everything to be” (Ex 3,14) starts to emerge as it were from behind our capacity for gaze, behind everything that is, by producing profound alterations of the patterns of desire which enable us to be “selves” at all, such that we find ourselves ceasing to be self-grasping “I”s who share in the creation of “its” by rivalry, defence, paranoia and projection.

So what it feels like to us to undergo “I Am bringing everything to be” is much more like a loss of all those sacred projections and “its” on whom we could depend and over which we could fight. And in their place, there is nothing at all in our gaze, no god at all. This is because the new pattern of desire which is calling us into being is without ambivalence, conflict, scarcity or danger and so the new “I”s, the new “selves” which will be the embodied symptoms of this new pattern of desire, rest peacefully upon their own given-ness by another. It is not what we see, but our capacity for gaze itself that is undergoing transformation as we find ourselves being given an equality of heart so that we see as we are seen, we know as we are known (1 Cor 13,12; Gal 4,9), without distortion, because “I AM” is enlivening us into being.

SEARCHING FOR AUTHENTICITY OF SPIRIT

Andrew Clitherow is a canon of Blackburn Cathedral, vicar of St Cuthbert's, Lytham, and the author of Creative Love in Tough Times. Last week he wrote a very good 'Face to Faith' piece for the Guardian - on releasing Christ from the cul-de-sac of formal religion. In it, he comments:

"[In authentic religion we learn to] make way for the Spirit of love to confront evolutionary-driven human behaviour. Instead of grabbing what we want at the expense of others, we discover that our humanity is fulfilled as we learn how to share what we have. Rather than stereotyping others by the roles we give them, we allow them to find their own way. Instead of excluding others simply because they are different from ourselves, we embrace the diversity of human life.

"Inauthentic religion, on the other hand, treats its followers like children and keeps them in an infantile relationship with God while inhibiting human development. It is a dangerous tool in the hands of those who have highly destructive weapons of technology at their fingertips. Utterly convinced they have God on their side, they might one day tear the world apart with a second big bang (de-creation by our own will rather than recreation by the will of God) that could lead to the end of us all.

"With so much at stake, it is sad that the church still largely conforms to patterns of genetically driven behaviour, inherited and proudly preserved through its traditions. Until people of good faith - both within the church and beyond its precious boundaries - can release the Nazarene Christ from the present cul-de-sac of formal religion, there is little chance that the church can give the postmodern mind any real hope for the future. For Christ belongs not to the church but to the universe, although to listen to the establishment you would think it was the other way around."

Good stuff, though once again some of the respondents on the website take the breath away with their ignorance and bile - proving that a profound sickness of spirit is not the monopoly of 'the religious', whatever the perils of religion - ones that Clitherow acknowledges in his argument in a way that his critics spectacularly fail to do in relation to their own (supposedly rational) world views.

UNSETTLING OUR JUDGEMENT

My friend Alison Goodlad has written a thoughtful review (here on Ekklesia) of Rowan Williams' fine book, Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement (London, Fount, 2000). In a world overrun by violence, accusation and leaping-to-judgement, it offers a salutary and mature response to our various attempts to vindicate ourselves at the expense of others.

"Pilate's questioning assumes that there is only one way to live – and that is in terms of power and territory, defended by violence. The idea that there can be a sort of authority derived from complete transparency to God, a living in truth, which is not concerned with territory, makes no sense to him."

CONFRONTING PREJUDICE ON ASYLUM

The reaction to Peter Tatchell's humane Guardian article about asylum seekers and refugees ('Figures of disgrace') is a depressing reflection of the current state of the 'debate' - which is now being rejoined by the Tories, sniffing a populist issue on which New Labour has moved so far to the right as to leave little room for manoeuvring toward more sensible policy terrain. In his radical (anti-apartheid) days, Peter Hain once remarked that the letters column of the Daily Telegraph was "a litmus paper for latent British fascism". I'm sure he would have said the same for Comment-is-Free if he had read some of the asylum ripostes; though nowadays he is more likely to be found nuzzling up to Home Office minister Tony McNulty.

Partly in response to all this, I have written a piece about re-framing migration as part of a reassessment of global concerns, which I hope will be up on the Guardian site in a day or so. I will post the link here. Like Peter T, I too have personal experience of these issues. In the past I have been part of the 'Bail Circle' established by the churches and NGOs - which aims to provide support and finance to vulnerable asylum seekers facing appeals that are often hugely stacked against them. This means that I have seen first-hand the Home Office trying to wriggle out of humanitarian and human rights obligations. It is a very distasteful thing to witness. To say the least.

Of the several asylum cases I supported, a couple were refused. But being a 'failed asylum seeker' no more means that your claim is unfounded than failing an exam means you wrote lies. The government, as Peter Tatchell {pictured} says, has "shamelessly rigged the asylum system to ensure the failure of as many applicants as possible.... Some are being sent back to countries where they are at risk of arrest, jail, torture, vigilante attacks, death squads and worse."

It is truly appalling. And it bears little relation to the real issues, as I hope to show.

CONTINUING TO HAVE A DREAM

Indefatigable human rights campaigner, rainbow politician and Baptist preacher the Rev Jesse Jackson has been making quite an impact on his UK visit, which has had two aims: to mobilise black communities into social action, and to mark the United Nations day for the remembrance of the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition. How much impact he will have on the outlook of some fast-growing but culturally and religiously conservative black churches remains to be seen. But he has been characteristically outspoken.

"Is the Bible a liberation manual, or does it teach you to adjust to oppressive conditions? Adjusting to oppression is unbiblical. Jesus leads us to the cross, not to the swimming pool"... "What made Dr Martin Luther King and Jesus and Moses most significant was not unity, because none achieved unity. Jesus killed at 33, Dr King killed at 39. But they were minorities with majority visions."

"Britain has been quite astute at covering up the lack of progress. Tony Blair said Colin Powell was a great guy. But if he believed that, why didn't he have a black secretary of state?"

On Monday, the anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, Jackson flies back to Washington DC, and his first task will be to lead a protest outside a suburban gun shop. Earlier this month he was in Chicago, where a black man died after being "subdued" by police in his own home using a Taser gun and pepper spray. Last month he was in San Francisco speaking at an anti-gun rally. The same month, he was also in Ghana calling for greater integration, and action in Dafur.

HOPES, WORRIES AND FROGS

I seem to be on the 'wise quotations' trail at the moment. Sometimes a pithy phrase can be worth a dozen insights and pages of analysis. This morning I stumbled across something from Jean Rostand (1894 - 1977), the biologist and philosopher. He wrote and studied very widely, and maintained a humanistic agnosticism which was suspicious of the claims of comfortable ideologists of all shapes and sizes. Son of the playwright Edmond Rostand and the poet Rosemonde Gérard, his brother was the writer Maurice Rostand. He campaigned vigorously against nuclear proliferation and the death penalty. Here are some bon mots, with the odd commentary from me. Some of them are as if Wilde had met Swift in a railway carriage on a foggy evening. Wonderful. The last one is beyond price.

"To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should." (from De l’amour des idées , 1926)

"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it." (They might be enough to remind us not to use it, however.)

"In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day."

"It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honours him [sic]".

"In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's."

"Kill one, and you are a murderer. Kill millions, and you are a conquerer. Kill everyone, and you are a god." (This is why good religion is about learning not to entertain the gods)

"A couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time."

"To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts." (Or not, in the case of much modern commentary)

"Theories pass. The frog remains." (Now there's a good theology of creation!)

ACTING AGAINST THE VIRTUES

"The conduct which disclaims the ordinary maxims of reason excites our suspicion and eludes our enquiry. Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity." — Edward Gibbon

See also Alasdair McIntyre's important book Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago, USA: Open Court, 1999).

(Hat-tip to Howard Ingham for the Gibbon quote)

DARKNESS CANNOT EXPEL DARKNESS

"Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." — Martin Luther King Jr.

BEATING OUT THE RHYTHM OF JUSTICE

Black America and the civil rights movement is joining music fans from across the globe tonight in mourning the death of Max Roach [pictured], the pioneer jazz drummer. He not only moved the percussive arts forward massively and helped jazz become recognised as a serious art form as well as a dance hall pastime, he also took his social responsibility seriously. As the BBC and othe obituarists have noted: "Roach also brought politics into his art, becoming one of jazz's loudest voices for civil rights. In 1960 he created We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, a seven-part movement that addressed slavery and racism in America." He and Martin Luther King Jr shared a mutual respect. More going up on NewFrontEars.

EKKLESIA SITE PROBLEMS

We have been experiencing a few problems on the Ekklesia site over the past 36 hours, and for a time it was down temporarily. Hopefully it will all be working fine by the time you read this. But it may be a day or so before more news and features go up. Sorry.

Footnote: Now sorted. Thanks to the good people at http://www.unitedhosting.co.uk/ and to Joe Baker at http://www.eleutheria.biz/ We recommend their services :)

BEYOND AUNT SALLY A/THEISM

At the end of last month I mentioned the dialogue between the late Marxist-humanist philosopher Ernst Bloch and the Christian theologian Jurgen Moltmann. On 11 August 2007, Peter Thompson [picture], who is lecturer in German politics at the University of Sheffield and is currently in the process of establishing a much-needed Centre for Ernst Bloch Studies, had a very good piece in the The Guardian, Religion is not a delusion but a quest for 'home'. Thompson writes as an atheist. Inter alia he noted:

According to Ernst Bloch, "only an atheist can be a good Christian and only a Christian can be a good atheist." Since Bloch's death in 1977, he has been largely forgotten as a significant contributor to the debate about the role of religion in society. But in an age when theism is constantly in the news, it is time for a more considered atheistic response to the reawakening of faith than those of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. What Bloch meant was that the Aunt Sally atheism as practised by those writers brings us no further in understanding either the historical or social roots of religion. For him it was not enough to posit religious belief as a delusion. The basis of belief, he said, rests in a social context.

The quotation from Bloch is actually from the Moltmann exchanges. Indeed, I think it might be Bloch who uttered the first phrase and Moltmann the second (at least according Jose Miguez Bonino, the Argentinian liberation theologian).

What characterised many past conversations between thoughtful non-believers and thoughtful believers (I am thinking about the progressive dialogues of the 1960s and '70s) was three things, it appears to me. First, a common commitment to building a better world. Second, a recognition that learning the distinctive language of the other was central to moving beyond unhelpful stereotypes and too-easy subsumptions. Third, a certain epistemic humility. These qualities are sadly lacking from the current 'debate' (at least the one the media and loud-mouthed activists foist upon us). We need more voices like Thompson's, and their equivalent among academicians of religion.

One key heir to the earlier ethos of seeking mutual enrichment rather than self-asserting approbation is Jurgen Habermas, whose work on structures and theories of rationality is formative within post-war European humanistic thought. It's noteworthy that while many of the atheistic headline-grabbers in today' s 'religion debate' (none of whom are specialists) start from a position of dismissiveness and contempt toward religion and its intellectual shaping within theology, Habermas has moved towards an ever-deeper engagement.

Eduardo Mendieta notes that, "[f]or Habermas, religion, as well as theology, is not only a precursor or prior stage of rationality, it is the very catalyst of rationalization." He is not a believer, but he understands that there is rationality to belief as to non-belief - and he recognises that it "is neither dead, nor completely taken over, [n]or supplanted, by philosophy. In fact, Habermas calls for their co-existence and fruitful dialogue. ...[He] goes a long way to show how religion continues to be generative for social solidarity (and unrest and enmity) and philosophical creativity" (Mendieta). Habermas's own primary dialogues have been with the Christian theologian Johannes Baptist Metz, with whom has had a long-term friendship, and with the Jewish theologian Gershom Scholem.

In English, see Habermas's recent essay 'Religion in the Public Sphere', European Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 14, No. 1 (2006): 1-25. An interesting critical take - which challenges Habermas' readings of Aquinas, Hobbes and Hegel on the way to an alternative, theologically fecund account of practical reason rooted in textuality - is Nick Adams' Habermas and Theology. Mendieta has written a critical appraisal of this in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Meanwhile, the book many eagerly await in translation is Herman Düringer's Universale Vernunft und partikularer Glaube: eine Theologische Ausweertung des Werkes von Jürgen Habermas.

THE PITY IN THE POETRY

"In the poetry for the Third Symphony, I included a line which I had been ‘forced’ to write: “My sibling is the torturer”. It is a frightening line, and I do not know that I understand what it means. And yet I know instinctively that it is something that we have got to face up to; there is some element, which we have not yet understood, about why people do things in this violent form. I am afraid that unless we make some definite effort to understand we shall not get ourselves round this corner. My emotional responses in favour of the victims of war and in opposition to notions of military heroism do not necessarily make me a better person than the ‘heroes’."

Composer and life-long pacifist Sir Michael Tippett, Individual Responsibility, Talk at PPU AGM. See also my occasional music weblog, NewFrontEars.

TRUTH HURTS. IN A GOOD WAY

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth" (Niels Bohr - courtesy of Huw Spanner)

"There are many, many possible readings of any given text. But some of them are still wrong." (Nick Adams)

"There is all the difference in the world between a point of scholarship and a matter of thought." (Mark C. Taylor)

‘A conversation cannot belong to one person the way a narrative can. [….] Conversation addresses the ‘free stranger’ in any interlocutor’ (PocketVisions)

RETHINKING CHRISTIANITY

This is the title of the latest in an energetic series of recent, semi-popular books which have poured forth from the pen of Keith Ward, Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London, and Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Oxford, over the past few years. I say "semi-popular" because these titles (God: A Guide for the Perplexed; Is Religion Dangerous?, What the Bible Really Teaches and Pascal's Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding) have their roots in careful, scholarly thought. But they are still crafted with a clarity and engagingness that ought to communicate to intelligent people who otherwise lack a grasp of much of the technical, historiographical, interpretative and conceptual vocabulary which needs to inform discussion of God and belief at the toughest level - that is, way beyond the pigeon-holing, point-scoring approach of both 'muscular religion' (in its many modern guises) and the new 'muscular atheism' (of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Grayling, Hitchens, et al).

Publishers OneWorld Books (Oxford, 2007) sum up the remit of Ward's new volume, made available in hardback on 30 March - which happens to be my birthday - as follows: "The Christian faith is often charged with being outmoded and anachronistic. [Subsisting in what is taken to be] a monolithic institution rooted in the past, many critics have claimed that it lacks the resources to adapt to modern society's needs and advances. In Re-thinking Christianity, popular Christian theologian Keith Ward sets out to challenge this view, arguing persuasively that it is not only uncharitable, but refuted by historical evidence.

"Mapping the evolution of six major beliefs, from the Hellenistic restatement to the challenge of evolutionary theory, Ward demonstrates that Christianity has always been expressed in constantly changing ways in response to new knowledge and understandings of the world. Controversial, liberal [in the sense of open and critical], and confronting the principal questions facing Christianity today, Ward uses this basis to support the construction of his own ground-breaking theology: a 'systematic theology' for the post-scientific age." [My interpolations added]

Full review article continued at: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5572

KEEPING UP THE PRESSURE

The campaign to get practical recognition of the vulnerability of Iraqi translators is having an impact. Now there's an entertaining and poignant campaign video (below), as well as the petition on the government's website - which is continuing beyond its assigned date. "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to offer asylum in the UK to the Iraqis who have been working as translators and in other capacities for the UK armed forces."



The code for including this clip on your own site via a more modest button is linked in this bloggerheads post. Sunny Hundal notes: "The Guardian is reporting today that in a case earlier this year the Home Office made special considerations for an Iraqi translator, and this precedence may have an impact on this campaign. There is no doubt now that this issue has ratcheted up the media agenda and the government may be forced to take action. Through gritted teeth, even Guido admits it." (Hat tip: Pickled Politics, again.)

THINKING OUT OF THE STORM

Two days ago I was discussing with a friend what might be an appropriate title for a new church study and reflection group here in Exeter. Soundings came to mind, because its maritime metaphor connotes both a commitment to unbounded intellectual curiosity, and the recognition that in order to plumb the depths we need some kind of anchorage in turbulent times - a hybrid notion which acts as a suitable antidote to two fashionable but misplaced intellectual trends.

The first is the idea that there can be such a thing as un-traditioned, wholly autonomous thought (this fails to recognise the true debts we owe when we try to think freshly, and the need to build a reflexive account of these into what we offer). The second is the idea that 'tradition' is inherently about fixity in method, scope, reference and interpretation (which fails to acknowledge the diversity and dynamism of what we inherit, build on and modify).

In terms of theology (the articulation and exploration of Christian hope in reasoned discourse) Ken Leech comments well on this in the fourth part of his Samuel Ferguson Lecture 2006 given at the University of Manchester on 19th October 2006 (The Soul and the City: Urban ministry and theology 1956-2006). Cultivating a constructive "abnormal discourse" - in the sense he evokes from Rorty - is certainly the kind of approach we are committed to on Ekklesia. Not least because the conventions surrounding the discussion of religion at the moment, both anti- and pro-, are so stiflingly inadequate and forgetful.

"Theology begins to change when the ground on which we stand begins to crumble, or, to change the metaphor, when we find ourselves in the midst of violent storms. This was how many Christians, not least in the urban areas, experienced the 1960s. The sense of turbulence in theology was expressed memorably by the Chicago-based theologian Langdon Gilkey in 1965.

The most significant recent theological development has been the steady dissolution of all those certainties, the washing away of the firm ground on which our generation believed we were safely standing. What we thought was solid earth has turned out to be shifting ice -- and in recent years, as the weather has grown steadily warmer, some of us have, in horror, found ourselves staring down into rushing depths of dark water. (Gilkey 1965).

"It was not surprising that a number of the influential writings of this period were inspired by Paul's navigational escapades recorded in Acts 27. Soundings, edited by Alec Vidler, was followed by Four Anchors from the Stern and Praying for Daylight, while the inimitable Eric Mascall contributed his Up and Down in Adria.

"However, this encounter with turbulence has led to new creativity, new approaches, new insights, new methods of working which have served to liberate, to break the mould, to challenge and subvert accepted ways of working.

"How does this occur? Clearly it is not inevitable. (Many Christians, confronted by storm, cry out, 'Hide me , O my Saviour, hide / Till the storm of life is past'!) A clue lies, I believe, in the notion of 'abnormal discourse' described by Richard Rorty in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Rorty argues that much discussion and thought runs along predictable lines, based on certain accepted conventions. Abnormal discourse is 'what happens when someone joins in the discussion who is ignorant of these conventions or who sets them aside. . .The product of abnormal discourse can be anything from nonsense to intellectual revolution, and there is no discipline which describes it, any more than there is a discipline devoted to the study of the unpredictable or of 'creativity' (Rorty 1980: 5, 320-1).

"I believe that much of the progress in recent urban theology has come from such abnormal discourse, supported by abnormal practice, which over time has become normal and common." [Pic: Kenneth Leech]

HELP SAVE IRAQI LIVES

Journalist and commentator Sunny Hundal of the excellent Pickled Politics newsblog writes: "I recently wrote of a blog-campaign to petition the government to help save Iraqis who helped the British military. As with other bloggers, I believe it is our moral obligation to help those who are most likely to face reprisals from the Al-Qaeda insurgents. Yesterday the campaign became bigger, with The Times making it a front-page story. The BBC is now reporting that Gordon Brown has said he will look into [the matter]. Good, but not good enough. Dan Hardie wants people to post responses from their MPs, so we can list supporters of this campaign and those who don’t care. Chickyog has a list so far... Please sign the Petition if you haven’t already."

SHARING BREAD, NOT CONSUMING LIFE

Just as early Christians were honorifically accused of atheism (because they refused to bow to the gods and graven images of the Roman Imperial pantheon), so they were also accused of cannibalism (because their rituals seemed to involve a claim to eat flesh and blood). The former accusation was, in a sense, true. As Nicholas Lash points out: Christians, Muslims and atheists have this in common, at least - they all disbelieve in 'gods'. The fact that much modern religious understanding and its corresponding refutation does not see it this way is a function, as Lash says, of the almost comprehensive ignorance of what could reasonably be called 'traditional Christian belief' in today's world. The Christendom settlement, in corrupting the Gospel message, has both rendered it harmless and neutered it intellectually.

Much of this is the fault of Christians, of course. And the history of our disputes about the sharing of bread and wine is a good example of this. While the early accusations of cannibalism were misinformed and childish (more poignantly, politically directed against subversives), the church that did a deal with empire soon came to live out the message about it proclaimed by its accusers. It began, indeed, to eat itself and other people, consuming flesh in the fires of mutual admonition and denying bread to the hungry - actually, not figuratively.

In this context, the simple Christian meal of bread and wine, by which the death of Jesus at the hands of overbearing religion and politics is remembered, and through which a vision of a life-giving alternative world is created, takes on a fresh and demanding significance. This is especially the case in an age where religious thought and ritual is so readily co-opted to a death-dealing agenda. But, as is often the case, the solution is not to be found in abandoning the tradition, but in rediscovering it in a fresh, life-affirming way, true to its radical roots.

In large measure this is what my article How the church should learn to eat itself is about - looking at the dynamics of 'communion' as lived experience and ritualised good behaviour, rather than arcane metaphysics. It is adapted from a sermon I was honoured to be asked to preach during my recent US vacation, at Hyattsville Mennonite Church in Maryland. This is a church which models inclusive community It is part of a living Christian tradition where 'Eucharistic practice' is often built into the weave of life, even if the Catholic theology that underpins it is not always emphasised, not least because of its past misuse. The original text can be found here (note: *.PDF - Adobe file).

UNVEILING THE ART OF ETERNITY

Though it has mysteriously decided not to release it on DVD, the BBC has thankfully been re-broadcasting (on BBC 2) its superb series on early Christian art - a rich mixture of the history of society and ideas, reflective spirituality, theological revisionism and artistic creativity. Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon sets out to unravel the mysteries of painting from the pre-perspective era - or rather from the era in which a decision was made to abandon mundane naturalism for a transcendent topography.

Tellingly, Raphael described the solidly representational Arch of Constantine as "brutal and primitive". This is a judgement which with hindsight we might share politically, if not artistically. The subsequent 'approved' Mosaic tradition accommodated Jesus to Apollo. Humility gave way to power. Meanwhile, Eastern Christian iconography sought to overcome the iconoclastic objection (you cannot and should not imprison the divine in an image) by creating images that are designed to be looked through, rather than at. They are windows onto a world without end.

The first programme in the Art of Eternity series (tonight) traces the beginnings of Christian art in the declining Roman Empire, Egypt and medieval France, and discusses the ideas which lay behind the transition from classical art to the first icons. Over the next two weeks, we move to Istanbul and the Byzantine Empire, then on to the evolutionary perspective of the Renaissance. Wonderful. Lux continua.

AN INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGE

Both Save The Children and the British Red Cross have launched appeals for the South Asia flood emergency, which has now claimed 500 lives and displaced 21 million people. Aid is going in, but the situation in many regions (especially Bihar in India) is pretty dire - and governments and multilateral agencies need to be doing much more.

Part of the problem is logistics. The BBC reports: "the UN's World Food Programme has been distributing emergency aid to flood-hit areas. The agency estimated that one million people had been directly affected and some were in need of urgent assistance. In Nepal, many roads in the flooded areas have been cut and bridges have been washed away. It is proving hard for aid agencies and the government to bring help. They have distributed food supplies to some communities, but many people who are still living in damaged mud and thatched homes complain it is not enough." More background on the monsoon can be found here, and accompanying this post is a map of the impacted region

A SCANDALOUS LACK OF PERSPECTIVE

As Bob Churchill commented [yesterday's post] regarding the South Asia flood tragedy - a massive monsoon which has displaced millions of people and will cause economic and social devastation in the region - the BBC broadcast news has given it relatively low prominence so far: though at least it was front page web news and made the headlines. Here is the US, it didn't make it into any of the TV news I saw yesterday. I have just scoured The Washington Post, a highly creditable paper. There is nothing on the front page and nothing on the international pages, where news stories with links to US interests (Iraq, Mexico, Afghanistan and France) are highlighted. Then on page 16 - that is, the back page of the front section - there is a column called World News In Brief' where the plight of millions of Indian, Bengali and Nepali citizens is dealt with in a column inch. I'd like to say that this beggars belief, but sadly it does not. It shows what an incredibly distorted view of the world the 'mainstream' media in the rich world still has.

SOUTH ASIA FLOOD EMERGENCY

The BBC reports that almost 20 million people have been displaced as some of the worst floods for years have hit a wide swathe of northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Roads have been washed away and hundreds of villages have been cut off by swollen rivers. NGOs and development agencies are acting swiftly. Donations can be made via Christian Aid, which operates with secular, multifaith and church partners - and promotes relief and development irrespective of creed.

ONGOING ADVENTURES OF ASBO JESUS

What a fantastic 'toon site by multimedia mirth maker Jon Birch. For non-British readers, an ASBO is an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. As Jon says: "… the courts here award them to people who are deemed to be constant trouble in their neighbourhoods… presumably according to their neighbours!" In some cases they bring liberation and in others oppression. Plus they blur the line between criminal and non-criminal behaviour in ways that human rights lawyers have deep suspicions about and many young people resent.