Elizaphanian

Coming very soon

2012-01-16T16:00:00.000Z

"We live in a time of escalating crises and environmental disasters – how should the church understand them, and how should the church respond to them? In this short, readable and punchy book, Sam Charles Norton argues that the fundamental problem of our time is a spiritual one – that we have forgotten what it means to be wise – and that the path for the faithful through this time of crisis is to re-establish the priority of worship. Only by becoming more distinctively Christian can we engage constructively with the collapse of our culture."

So that was 2011

2011-12-31T16:11:00.000Z

2011 was a year of extremes, highs and lows.

Some of the lows:
Ollie snapped the ligaments in both knees
My therapist and spiritual director died of a sudden heart attack
The voices finally succeeded in getting under my skin
Sold the boat

Some of the highs:
Taking my eldest to Greenbelt
Giving up therapy(!)
Recognising how much I have to be thankful for, and starting to just enjoy them all
Holiday with friends
Developing some iron in the soul, and making some core decisions
Seeing some clear fruit from long-term work in the parish
Starting up the Learning Church sequence again after a two year break, and receiving some of the most positive feedback ever
Christmas - one of the best ever (personally!)
Sold the boat, and bought a dinghy
Went Primal - diet first, exercise next - which is really suiting me
Haven't mentioned the book - I expect that to figure for 2012, from January onwards ;)
Previous years: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

Priestly priorities: ordination, orders and the permanent diaconate

2011-12-24T12:53:00.000Z

Whilst I'm happy with the three-fold understanding of leadership mentioned in my last post in this sequence - good character, sound doctrine, ability to teach - I think that more needs to be said. Most especially, I think that there is something essential to the priestly role which comes about through ordination. Here my Anglo-Catholic nature asserts itself!

As I understand it, one of the essential elements of ordination is that a person is being entrusted with authority by the wider church, and therefore carries that authority into their work within the local church. It is this authority - derived from the authority and nature of the Bishop's work - which makes the difference between a congregational church and an episcopal church. Note - it is this and nothing about how people are paid (eg parish share or not) that makes the difference.

Furthermore, this authority carries over into sacramental worship; that is, sacramental worship - most especially our communion - is only rightly ordered when it is not simply a communion of a gathered congregation but the communion of that congregation with the wider church. This is why lay presidency is anathema and would destroy Anglicanism as an episcopal church. I see this 'bearing of authority' as an essential element of the work of the stipendiary priest, and it carries over into the nature of the work that they do.

This is why we need to be careful in considering 'good character' a prerequisite of ministry. There is an undoubted sense in which a church leader needs to embody the doctrine which they teach, and 'notorious and unrepentant sinners' are by that measure disqualified from acting in leadership. Yet sometimes the priest needs to stand over-against a particular congregation - or group within a congregation - for perfectly holy reasons, and it is through resting in that episcopally-derived authority that this becomes possible. This is an element of the Anglican patrimony that I think is quite precious. (I think there is also an aspect of priestly ministry as it relates to communion bound up with a healthy understanding of the New Temple and sacrifice - but this isn't the post for that, I'm just putting down a marker!)

Having said the above about ordination, I would want to emphasise that priests are not the only 'orders' in the church. Most especially I would argue that a recovered understanding of the diaconal ministry is essential for meeting the needs that we now face, and, moreover, such a diaconal ministry needs to be based on Acts 6: "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word."

Doug said some good things on this here, and it is a subject dear to my own heart. I believe that one of the things that we are presently being called to do is to simultaneously a) call many, many more people to ministry for the church and b) become much clearer about the specific vocations to each order, and the differences between them. Then, perhaps, all the different parts of the body might be enabled to work together, for the greater glory of God.

An Alternative Carol Service

2011-12-24T11:44:00.000Z

The Order of Service for a Carol Service that we had last week; this is what I wrote in the pew sheet: "I've been asked what 'An Alternative Carol Service' is. It is a traditional Carol Service in terms of its format (bidding prayer, readings and carols) but using one of the alternative themes and patterns of readings suggested in Common Worship - 'Good News for the Poor'. The carols have been chosen to fit that theme, many of them simply alternative words to familiar tunes. The aim is to bring out an element of the Christmas story that I believe is often missed: 'the meaning of the manger'. For those who want the more customary 'Nine Lessons' style Carol Service, Peldon's service is at 6pm tonight (18th), and East Mersea has a traditional candle-lit service at 6.30 on Christmas Eve. There is also the Friends traditional Carol concert on Tuesday evening and our own two Carol services on Christmas Eve, as well as a wholly traditional Midnight Mass. Given the scale of the provision here and across the benefice as a whole I felt that there was room to explore something just a little different. There will be mulled wine and mince pies available after the service and I do hope people will come and join us for what I am sure will be an enjoyable and meaningful service."

The service provoked some very strong reactions, both positive and negative, which I'm still digesting, and I suspect we won't do it in the same way next year. I wasn't going to post it, but reading Giles Fraser I thought that people might find it of some interest. (By the way, I think this research is relevant!!)

~~

Carol: It came upon the midnight clear (323)

Bidding Prayer and Lord's Prayer (trad)

Reading: Micah 5.2-5a

Carol: When God Almighty came to earth (sheet)

Reading: Isaiah 35

Carol: The aye carol (sheet)

Reading: Jeremiah 22.13-17; 23.5,6

Carol: Inspired by Love and Anger (317)

Reading: Isaiah 11.1-9

Carol: Join the song of praise and protest (363)

Reading: Isaiah 40.1-10

Carol: God bless us and disturb us (sheet)

Reading: Philippians 2.5-11

Carol: Once in Judah's least known city (sheet)

Reading: Luke 2.1-20

Carol: When our God came to earth (729)

Solemn Blessing

Left behind by lemmings

2011-12-24T10:29:00.000Z

My latest Courier article.

I take a break from talking about the bad news on the energy resources front to return to talking about the bad news on the financial crisis front – most especially the delightful effect of David Cameron's 'No' at the European summit. Is British politics about to become interesting again?

What I mean by that is that for the last few decades more and more of the significant decisions that affect our lives have been taken at a level above that of the British parliamentary system. Yes, we are 'represented at the table', but I'm sure I'm not the only one to believe that the influence flowing from that position is over-rated (and to find some of the recent fretting a touch comical. It's not 'Where's Wally?' it's 'Where's Clegg?'). Yet with this 'No' it would seem possible – and I mean simply 'possible', not 'likely' or 'probable' – that some measure of autonomy might return to our national life.

What is the crucial thing to understand about this recent crisis? Well, I thought this picture summed it up rather well:

The language being used is of establishing a 'fiscal union' – that is, that there is some form of common governmental budget-setting, to be enforced by some central authority yet to be precisely defined – in order to establish the financial bona fides of each government, thereby allowing them to continue to borrow at rates that will not cripple their economies, with the hope, thereby, that the financial crisis can be eased. Now there are so many elements wrong with this vision that it is difficult to know where to start, but let us focus on Germany, for the German political system has made very clear that there can be no joint-liability for government debt. According to the German constitutional court “No permanent treaty mechanisms shall be established that leads to liability for the decisions of other states, especially if they entail incalculable consequences...” In other words, whatever it is that Merkel and Sarkozy have been trying to put together, Germany will not be accountable for the debts of Greece.

This is where the problem lies. In order for Greece, say, to be able to function economically, it has to be able to cover the cost of its debt – and this cost is seen in the interest rate of Greek government bonds. When that rate is low – say around 2% - then the sums add up. When that rate starts to get higher – and the danger rate is thought to be around 6% or so – then the sums do not add up. Now one way out of that problem, for a government like Greece, would be for there to be genuine 'Eurobonds', backed by a common European government and drawing on the credibility of the Eurozone as a whole. This, however, is what the German courts have forbidden. Instead, what has to happen is that the local government has to either raise taxes, or cut spending, or both. This is just about possible when the relevant government is enabled to make that decision itself, although even then it is politically extremely difficult. What is being proposed, however, is that the local governments will no longer have autonomy over these decisions, and instead some Eurocratic institution is going to enforce these judgements. So instead of a Greek government choosing to balance its books – and perhaps, gaining the authority to pursue that path through a referendum – the Greek government is simply going to be an administrative arm of the European government, which is where the decisions will be made – and who, rather pointedly, have forbidden such a referendum from taking place.

This is not a long-term solution to the crisis; in fact, it is a recipe for increasing short-term disaster. Imposing technocratic governments upon the allegedly “insolvent” nations of Italy and Greece is simply increasing the perceived illegitimacy of each government. It won't be long before there is bloody revolution – and a large part of the problem is that this will be seen as a German desire for control, built upon a basis of German hypocrisy. Ponder the fact that the German economy has been benefiting hugely from an undervalued currency – possibly as much as 30% less than where an independent Deutschmark would be – and that this undervaluation is what has enabled the German economy to perform as well as it has, and for German government bonds to be obtained as cheaply as they have. In other words, it is not simply that the German approach is 'virtuous' it is that – to put it starkly – the southern European countries have effectively been subsidising the northern. The honourable course – and the one with the only prospect of preserving a functioning Eurozone – would be to go all out for a comprehensive fiscal union for the countries that use the Euro, and to establish a common taxation and budgeting system; in effect, a single government. This is what enables the United States to function with a single currency. Yet this is exactly what is impossible for Europe.

So the proposed solutions will not work – and I haven't even touched on the fact that the sums of money being discussed are trivial compared to the size of the debts, nor the way in which the government debt problems interact with the wider banking debt problems, nor the fact that, frankly, it is all too little, too late. What we are witnessing is the spectacle of a generation of politicians committed to a particular path whose only response to a crisis is to say 'further and faster'. Sadly, reality has changed, and the further and faster simply means going further and faster over the cliff, with all the destruction and devastation that follows. If Britain is being left behind then we are being left behind by lemmings, and that is not a bad place to be.

Priestly priorities: inside out?

2011-12-23T12:26:00.001Z

I want to engage with Kathryn's comment on my 'doomed' post. Kathryn writes: "I'm just wondering what, under the "membership" model of church, happens to those who don't see themselves as members anywhere, but who clearly value and engage with the ministry of their vicar. Far more of my time, & by far the most fruitful spiritual encounters here are with those outside the church, who see me as "their vicar" because they have a strong sense of local community. I totally understand that we have passed the point of no return with the current situation - but I cling to the idea that I am here above all to serve those who are not members of the church."

This provokes several thoughts from me. Firstly I very much agree with Tim that "in New Testament Christianity the entity which is supposed to serve the whole community is the church, not the vicar" - in other words, it is the common vocation of all Christians to carry out such service, not the separate vocation of the ordained.

I don't believe that it is possible to understand the role of the priest separately from that of the mission of the church as a whole, and specifically the function of the laity within the world. To understand the priestly role distinct from that of the laity is like trying to understand the purpose of a shoe without considering the sole, that which actually makes contact with the ground. I think this is a problem with many of the discussions about 'models of ministry' (including some of my own thoughts).

What then is the priority of the priest? Inside or out? By which I mean, should the work of the priest be centred upon those who gather for worship and teaching, or on those who have yet to hear the message? Not so long ago, within a culture which still assumed and shared much of the teaching of Christianity it was possible to do both - and this is reflected in the ordinal. Yet in the present context it is radically destructive to pretend that the ordained can carry out the same tasks in the same way as before. We need to choose, and to choose wisely.

According to Scripture (mediated here) the Biblical model for leadership involves three things, and three things only: being of good character, maintaining sound doctrine, and having the ability to teach. I believe that the church is suffering from a lack of focus on these elements, and that the poverty of sound teaching is one of the principal reasons for the withering away of faith.

Perhaps the point is to discriminate between those who are called to work within a church to ensure that the members are formed for discipleship, and those who are called to work outside the church as missionaries and evangelists. Both sorts might be priests, but let us call the first 'pastors' and the second 'missionaries'. This ministry might overlap on occasion, but there are different gifts needed for each, and continuing to expect the one person to excel in all areas is likely to continue to contribute to our decline.

There is another element to be pondered here, which is the cost of such work. For how long should a particular congregation be expected to pay for work to be done outside of the church at the expense of work inside the church, if this means that the church itself is shrinking? (I take shrinkage to be the natural consequence of either insufficient or inappropriate pastoring.) Of course, the church must engage in missionary work - and such work is especially essential in England at this time - but missionary work is a sign and product of a spiritually healthy community, and the decline of the Church is eloquent testimony that such a description does not apply.

I would want to argue that the most effective missionary work is done on a small scale, from a Christian to a non-Christian, person by person. Such work can be fostered and encouraged by the right sort of leadership, but it cannot be carried out by them. It is when each individual Christian is given all joy and hope in believing the gospel that the gospel is inevitably shared and allowed to grow. I would see that as the expected consequence of a healthy 'pastor' type ministry, and that is why I would want to argue that the principal focus of the stipendiary priest of the Church of England needs to be internal work with the "membership" rather than external work into the community.

Taking forward the logic of this, however, causes much pain.

The statistics of decline

2011-12-23T10:48:00.000Z

I wanted to grab together a handful of statistics that give substance to the notion that the Church of England is declining, if not 'doomed'. I accept the criticism that the the figures I linked to in my last post on this are flawed, but I believe the main point still stands. I'm not going to talk about what needs to be done in this context - that is what I'm exploring in my other posts.

These are the figures quoted by David Keen

This data from the Church Society (source) also seems useful:

And this one confirms it:

We can add to this the expected rapid decline in clergy numbers over the next ten years (as the baby boomers retire and aren't replaced) and the way that this links in with the increasing age profile of attenders (and what this means in terms of a sudden drop for actuarial reasons). See also David Keen's post on Diocesan growth here.

"One of our problems may be that decline is so slow and imperceptible that we don’t really see it coming clearly enough. I have seen large companies perfectly and impeccably manage themselves into failure. Every step along the road has been well done. Every account is neatly signed off... I sometimes feel the Church is a bit like that. I wish that all of us would have a sense of real crisis about this."

(Andreas Whittam Smith)

The Lord being my helper I expect to be working for the church ~~until my family dies~~ until 2040 or so. If things don't change, I may outlast the good old CofE...

Is the Church of England doomed?

2011-12-20T11:32:00.000Z

As someone who is persuaded of themerits of the 'Limits to Growth' argument – and who believes thatwe missed the opportunity to change course back in the 1970's andthat therefore our industrial growth culture is over – I havebecome very familiar with the language of 'doom' and the way in whichit can be misused. Just because something can be misused, however,does not mean that it is always false. The core argument of theLimits to Growth, after all, was that if present trends continued,then we would end up arriving where we were headed – and, indeed,we have now arrived there. Can the same analysis not be applied tothe Church of England?

After all, it is fairly unambiguouswhere we are headed – by the mid 21^st Century there willbe less than 100,000 members (sourcehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/21/anglicanism-religion). It is not as if the trend has been hidden and come upon usunawares – it has been the unpleasant background music for severaldecades now. Clearly, unless something changes, the Church of Englandas it has been known and understood for several centuries is going todie within the next generation or so (the institution will collapseunder its own weight well before we get to 2050). Perhaps the historyof the Church will be described as resting between the two Elizabeths– the first pulled it together, and the second watched it pullitself apart.

Let me at once clarify two things. Thefirst is that this anticipated fate of the Church of England needs tobe separated out from the expected fate of Christianity within theworld as a whole. I expect that well before 2050 disciples ofChristianity will pass beyond 50% of the world's population. Key tothis will be the continued growth of Christianity in China, whichalready has more practising Christians than Western Europe, as wellas all the other places where the faith is being spread. The gates ofHades will not prevail against the church, and I am confident thatone day, at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow.

The second point to make is that theChurch of England is not the be all and end all of Christianity inEngland. Whatever the merits of Catholic Emancipation – and Isuspect the Church has still not caught up with what it meant – theconsequence is that there are now more practising Christians inEngland outside the Church of England than in it. Whereas it hashistorically been the definitive form of English Christianity – asepitomised by its establishment status, and (in many ways) in itsongoing self-understanding – it has become, to all intents andpurposes, merely another sect. Theologically the status quo isuntenable, and the Church of England has to either fight that fate orembrace it.

Now an objection might easily come tomind: what if there was a revival? For sure, a major revival mightwell stop the Church of England declining so much – and I'm surethat evangelisation is one of God's priorities – but we have beenneeding such a revival for some time now. I am persuaded that thetide of faith has turned, the Spirit is moving; I am convinced thatthe bombast of atheistic secularism is the last gasp of a dyingideology, and the potential for growth is immense – but might itnot be the case – and I say this with all due humility – that Goddoesn't want the Church of England to continue? I'm sure God wantsChristianity to continue, but the Church of England, in its presentform? Of that I am not so sure.

How might the Church of England respondin a timely fashion to the circumstances within which it findsitself? Well, here is one proposal, made with a modicum of hopethat God does not want Anglican witness to be extinguished within thecountry that gave it birth. At the heart of what I am arguing for isa sense that the local church must be set free. Put differently, whatI believe is that the Bishops in a properly episcopal church arecalled to exercise oversight rather than control, and that this canonly be properly rooted when they exercise faith rather than fear.What might this mean?

First and foremost, I believe that theparish system should be abolished. The idea that everyone living inthe country had their own parson, to whom they might turn when inneed, was a noble one – and yet it is an increasingly untrue piety.I believe that this needs to be recognised – and what this means isthat the Church needs to genuinely recognise the reality of theChristian ministry undertaken by other churches. Of course there aretheological differences – some of them I would view as ratherimportant! - but in the context of what is shared, especially incontrast to the surrounding culture, they are mostly trivial. Theconsequence of this is that the Church of England accepts that it isa 'sect' – that is, it is a Church which has a particularinheritance of faith. It is the distinctive theology which suppliesthe identity of the Church, not the establishment ecclesiology. Inmany ways all I am arguing for here is that an existing reality isaffirmed rather than denied and that the inheritance ofestablishment, which assumes an equivalence between 'resident of theparish' and 'member of the church', is done away with. Canon law mustbe changed, most especially with regard to the occasional offices.

What this would mean is that eachexisting church is allowed to pursue its own sense of mission andvocation. Much of the substance of this would end up being financial.The existing system of parish share has very few defenders. BobJackson puts it well:

"In conclusion, the whole chaos ofquota, parish share, or common fund systems is simply not serving thechurch well.

1 It is inconceivable that everydiocese, with its own unique system changing every few years, hascurrently found the best possible one, or even a good one;

2 Systems risk provoking conflict anddishonesty. They can lead to more serious division;

3 They do not provide a secure andstable framework in which churches can do long-term planning;

4. They fail to provide the fairnesstheir architects desire;

5. They absorb the best energy, timeand expertise of diocesan leaders and officials. They divert peopleat every level from concentrating on the real ministry and mission ofChristian churches;

6. They asset-strip the large churchesand tax away the growth of growing churches. They encourage thedeclining and sleepy in their ways;

7. They encourage false judgements tobe made of clergy and endanger the future provision of dynamic seniorleadership;

8. They cannot cater for freshexpressions of church;

9. They fail even to maintain thecurrent levels of parochial staffing, let alone to produce theresources for growing the new sorts of expression without which theChurch may wither away."

Jackson recommends a solutionincorporating the following elements:

1. Churches pay the costs of their ownministers

2. Fee income stays with the localchurch

3. Diocesan costs are shared by localchurches

4. The total bill (1&3) ispresented to each church each year, and published in the churchaccounts.

Essentially what Jackson proposes is away of a) localising the process; b) making the system completelytransparent (and therefore much more defensible); and c) restoringthe relationship between those who give and those who receive. Ithink this is the way forward, and I would add that responsibilityfor clergy housing should also be passed down to the parishes.

What might this mean for the centralauthorities of the Church? Well, rather than Bishops being concernedwith ensuring that a parish pays its quota, they might be set free toensure that those clergy who are licensed by them are exercisingtheir ministry in an appropriate way – most especially that theyare orthodox (I touched on this in my Spanish Train post). In otherwords, the core function of the Bishop becomes less administrativeand financial than about preserving the truths of the faith andexercising pastoral care and leadership of the clergy. I have a sensethat this is what Bishops are supposed to do...

This is likely to provoke great fearand concern – what about the poor parishes? What about our need formission? Well, what about them? Aren't they precisely the naturalconcerns of Christians – so why wouldn't the Church seek to pursuesuch priorities, even if there wasn't a central system to enforce it?Put differently, if we do not do the right thing because we areafraid that our people will not act as Christians then we are alreadydoomed. Which does perhaps raise what is the most central issuefacing the Church of England: not that the model of ministry for thepriest has to change – although it must – but that thedistinctive Anglican patrimony has to cash out in a distinctiveministry of the laity. I'll have to write more about that anothertime, as this post is long enough.

The blunt truth is this: the Church ofEngland is at death's door. All I'm arguing for here is that I'drather that we went out fighting for the gospel rather than trying tosave a particular historically conditioned administrative patternwhich has turned the cornerstone of our faith into the proverbialmillstone around our neck.

David Cameron's Christianity, or: why conservatives can support the Occupy movement

2011-12-17T11:33:00.002Z

Much twittering about David Cameron's speech, accusing him of hypocrisy - after all, how on earth can a Conservative be a Christian? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? Well, no. It's perfectly possible to be a Conservative and be committed to, inter alia, social justice; 'conservative' does not equate to 'apologist for an abusive status quo' - although, obviously, in some cases that is accurate.

To bring out what I am describing, ponder the Occupy movement. Some 'conservatives' might criticise it for being a petulant protest, an army seeking to destroy the goose which lays the golden egg of prosperity. That's just shallow. On the other side, of course, there are elements in the protest which are indeed, childish and irresponsible (and gross). Yet it seems to me that the core of the protest is an assertion of moral values, most especially a rebellion against the idolatry of greed and an idea that justice must be done, that criminals should be punished, and that subsidising the wicked is no way to run an economy. Which seems exactly what a conservative would support - so long as the conservatism was thought through, and not simply tribal. I suspect that tribal criticisms from the left are not the best way to bring conservatives to such a realisation though...

Does the church need more cheese?

2011-12-15T15:29:00.000Z

A question I started to ponder when I came across this video (via Facebook):This is a very attractive vision - people being accepted for who they are, and being celebrated for the same - which surely has something to do with what Jesus was wanting to show. Yes, I know, we need to talk about the reality of sin, and yes, we need to have a mind to only offering up to God the very best of which we are capable, and yes, we need to make sure that what we do is genuinely worshipful and centred on God and not just about celebrating the fluff found in our navels... but even so. I suspect that this is what (some) 'happy clappy' worship captures, and to that extent it is holy, and of God. A place of acceptance and peace which is in stark contradistinction to the surrounding culture; a sign of the Kingdom.I wonder whether the intellectual and sacramental has started to obscure the simply joyful, rather than being a servant of it. Which is a way of saying - our cynicism is a sin. Mea culpa.

Numbers

2011-12-10T11:58:00.001Z

Sometime in the last few weeks I went past 200k total hits on this blog. Which I suppose has some significance. Of more interest is the fact that I have over 150 committed and regular readers - and I am very grateful to you all.

Of Strategy, Smallbone and the Spanish Train

2011-11-30T12:12:00.001Z

There's a Spanish train that runs between Guadalquivir and old Seville,
And at dead of night the whistle blows, and people hear she's running still...
And then they hush their children back to sleep, lock the doors, upstairs they creep,
For it is said that the souls of the dead fill that train - ten thousand deep!!

Well a railwayman lay dying with his people by his side,
His family were crying, knelt in prayer before he died,
But above his bed, just a-waiting for the dead, was the Devil with a twinkle in his eye,
"Well God's not around and look what I've found - this one's mine!!"

Just then the Lord himself appeared in a blinding flash of light,
And shouted at the Devil, "Get thee hence to endless night!"
But the Devil just grinned and said "I may have sinned but there's no need to push me around,
I got him first so you can do your worst – he's going underground!"

~~

Having been a strong Chris de Burgh fan in my innocent youth (don't snigger) and then given up on him around the time that 'Lady in Red' became so popular, I recently rediscovered his early songs, which are actually rather fun – and this is one. I played the album on the way to Greenbelt and concluded that the title song was enjoyable but very bad theology. Yet there is more to it than that – the bad theology reflects a certain understanding of the nature of Christ – and therefore it says something significant about the Christian church which exists to tell people about Christ. I had those thoughts bubbling away in the back of my mind when a number of themes that I have been wrestling with for some time crystallised together, triggered by looking at David Keen's very interesting figures:

The Church of England is dying, although it is not yet dead. Essentially fewer people are giving more, and whilst the latter side of that equation is a sign of spiritual vitality, the process cannot continue for ever. There is, of course, no reason to believe that the CofE will keep going in perpetuity. Establishment acts as a bulwark against any precipitate collapse, but that simply means that the butter gets spread ever more thinly. It is not impossible that the centralised (and centralising) forces associated with Church House collapse, and that the thousands of different parish churches are simply left to go their own way. Some will thrive on their independence, some will simply close, others will get handed over to the local Friends organisations and be turned to other useful purpose. The overall structure will revert to that existing before twentieth-century statism, and possibly even to that existing before the implementation of the parish structure, so we would have Minster churches, who send out clergy to serve local congregations. The several different denominations will work together (good thing) and eventually merge on cost grounds, whilst various 'plums' get picked off by the predatory. This isn't to say that Christianity hasn't a future in England, just that it may need to die a proper death before revival and resurrection.

What is it that has killed – is killing – the Church of England, and Christianity in England more generally? Well, here I want to talk about the Rev Adam Smallbone. I think Rev is an incredibly good programme, but it shares in some of the theological mistakes that Chris de Burgh articulates in his song, and I think it cuts right to the heart of where our problem lies. That is, there is no real sense of God in the programme, and no sense of the gospel – and in this, it is a faithful reflection of the wider culture. It gives, I believe, a very important insight as to what the church has lost, and why the church is dying.

Consider this clip:

I believe that our wider culture sees two types of Christian. The first is an aggressive evangelical, full of overwhelming bonhomie about “good news”, who comes across to the wider culture as part of the Borg - resistance is futile and you will become a part of us – equal parts insane and malevolent. This is often the target of New Atheist criticism. Whilst there are often apparent stories of 'success' from such projects I cannot help but believe that there is a limit to how far such activity can really reach into our wider society. The other type of Christian, however, is the woolly liberal do-gooder, who means well, and understands and moves within the wider society rather easily – and therefore isn't bonkers – but has no passion or strength – they are just, in Hauerwas' words, “asking the culture at large to be a little less racist, a little less promiscuous, a little less violent”. This is not a new problem: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity”

Watching the most recent episode of Rev (2.3) the moment that encapsulated the problem for me – amongst several possible examples – was when Smallbone swigs from the bottle containing 'Holy Water'. This Rev is completely irreverent, and, as a result, is completely irrelevant. Compare and contrast Smallbone – and the evangelical opposition – to the church as described in Acts, which was very highly regarded even though people were very afraid. Why afraid? Because the Pentecostal fire had made these men holy – and holiness is an aweful thing. There is very little holiness in Rev, and this is because the wider culture sees no holiness in the Church of England. This is our problem.

~~

"But I think I'll give you one more chance" said the Devil with a smile,
"So throw away that stupid lance it's really not your style,
"Joker is the name, Poker is the game, we'll play right here on this bed,
And then we'll bet for the biggest stakes yet: the souls of the dead!!"

And I said "Look out, Lord, He's going to win, The sun is down and the night is riding in,
That train is dead on time, many souls are on the line, Oh Lord, He's going to win!.."

Well the railwayman he cut the cards and he dealt them each a hand of five,
And for the Lord he was praying hard for that train he'd have to drive.
Well the Devil he had three aces and a king, and the Lord, he was running for a straight,
He had the queen and the knave and nine and ten of spades, all he needed was the eight...

~~

I've recently read John Richardson's 'A Strategy that Changes the Denomination' which I thought was rather good. John quotes from a 1945 Church Report called 'Towards the Conversion of England' and it makes fascinating reading: “We cannot expect to get far with evangelism until three facts are faced. First, the vast majority of English people need to be converted to Christianity. Secondly, a large number of Church people also require to be converted, in the sense of their possessing that personal knowledge of Christ which can be ours only by the dedication of the whole self, whatever the cost. Thirdly, such personal knowledge of Christ is the only satisfactory basis for testimony to others. It will thus be realised that the really daunting feature of modern evangelism is not the masses of the population to be converted, but that most of the worshipping community are only half-converted. The aim of evangelism must be to appeal to all, within as well as without the Church, for that decision for Christ which shall make the state of salvation we call conversion the usual experience of the normal Christian.”

I think this is right (although I would enter a caveat about the use of the non-Scriptural term 'personal knowledge' which is an importation of Enlightenment-era categories of thought, and a frequent tool for the enemy). I most especially like the passage which John quotes after this: “Above all, the Church has become confused and uncertain in the proclamation of its message, and its life has ceased to reflect clearly the truth of the Gospel. It is for the Church, in this day of God, by a rededication of itself to its Lord, to receive from Him that baptism of Holy Ghost and of fire which will empower it to sound the call and give the awaited lead.” I find it remarkable that this was written sixty-five years ago. Is it something that will remain eternally true, or is it possible to actually live up to our faith? I wonder what difference it would make if we took John's argument and at each point changed the word 'evangelical' to the word 'Christian' – because it seems to me that what is needed is for all the believers to take the faith seriously, and live up to it. From John's conclusion: “...we must shift our primary goal from either seeking to preserve the institution from others or seeking to make it more comfortable for ourselves. Instead, we must look to the Church's true task: to seek people's conversion through the proclamation of the gospel. And in the light of this we must seek the transformation of the Church for gospel proclamation.”

This requires, of course, that we believe the faith ourselves, that we have indeed been cut to the quick, and repented, and experienced the breaking of our hearts of stone and their new creation as hearts of flesh. It is this and this alone that can fuel mission. It is the absence of this that has killed the Church of England in particular, and Christianity in England more generally. Why? Well, there is a long story about atheism here – I'll be able to tell it properly one day – but a very large part of it is that we have lost confidence in the faith. The atheistic criticisms have been internalised and we have lost our confidence, and this has undermined everything else. Now we are simply regarded as a good works club – alright if that's your thing but please don't take it out on me. Our holy fire has been extinguished.

I wonder what John Robinson would say about it now? In some ways he became a poster child for the disbelieving Bishop, inaccurate though that might have been, but I do think that this element of intellectual confidence is what has been lost, and the fish rots from the head down. The other messes can be traced back to this. We no longer inhabit the world distinctively because our beliefs are no longer distinct, and we cannot have the one without the other. We will not be gospel people unless we have a gospel to proclaim, rather than just a gospel to mumble about hesitantly, half-hoping that nobody notices.

~~

Well the railwayman he cut the cards And he dealt them each a hand of five,
And for the Lord he was praying hard for that train he'd have to drive.
Well the Devil he had three aces and a king, and the Lord, he was running for a straight,
He had the queen and the knave and nine and ten of spades, all he needed was the eight...

And then the Lord he called for one more card but he drew the diamond eight,
And the Devil said to the Son of God, "I believe you've got it straight,
So deal me one for the time has come to see who'll be the king of this place,
But as he spoke, from beneath his cloak, he slipped another ace...

Ten thousand souls was the opening bid, it soon went up to fifty-nine,
But the Lord didn't see what the Devil did and he said "that suits me fine",
"I'll raise you high to a hundred and five and forever put an end to your sins",
But the Devil let out a mighty shout, "My hand wins!!"

~~

It is, historically, surely quite an odd place to be inhabiting, to be an English Christian in these early years of the twenty-first century. There often seems to be a background sense of 'we tried that and found it false'. We're no longer even strong enough to be worth fighting against. We're like an old family dog who is gently declining, and needs to use the back garden rather than long vigorous walks, but for whom the owner still holds some tenderness, and so their last years will be made as comfortable as possible, until the pain is too much. How has the gospel been reduced to this?

The entertaining heresy in Spanish Train is the posed equivalence between Christ and Satan – that Satan might actually be able to trick and manipulate the Lord and thereby win the souls of the dead. Whilst this does have some cultural resonance it is in truth a complete nonsense. There is no comparison between creature and Creator – were Jesus actually to command 'Get thee hence to endless night!' then the effect would be accomplished by the speech, it wouldn't even require Satan's consent to go along with it. So what is missing in the presentation of the Lord here, and why it is heretical, is any sense of the immense power and overwhelming strength of the Lord. It is yet another presentation of Jesus as milksop, recipient of abuse. It is an echo of Nietzche's characterisation of Christianity as slave morality. I like the word thumos, which is the Greek word for 'spiritedness', the precursor for courage and manliness. Put bluntly, the trouble with this presentation of Jesus is that he is no longer a mensch, he is no longer a centre of life, he is no longer a progenitor – he has no thumos but is instead simply a patsy for other character's actions and desires. He does not stand for anything beyond a weak-willed wish to do good. It is surely no accident that the lead character in Rev is called Smallbone, and perhaps part of the problem is that our wider culture has dictated to the Church that only women are allowed to have balls.

I wonder whether a part of the root issue at stake in all of our arguments about women priests and women bishops is in fact an inchoate sense that the Church has become emasculated. Perhaps it is rooted in a reaction to the first half of the twentieth century, which scarred men so deeply that they wished to withdraw. Yet even that may be because the church had already failed to be the church. In the Medieval era returning warriors had a particular form and ritual for re-engaging with society, which recognised that the taking of life was sinful – and therefore rendered the warrior unfit for sharing in Holy Communion – and so the church made provision for the warrior to become reintegrated with wider society. It did not repudiate their manliness but integrated it into a larger whole. Now the very notion that there is something healthy about manliness, and that it needs to be nurtured and cultivated, is laughable. Yet this is also why our society is so fractured. There is something essential here that has been lost sight of – it is as if we are in a boat without a rudder, the boat is still sea-worthy and we seem to be moving, we're just at the mercy of larger forces – and for the church in particular, we are being dashed upon the rocks.

There is a particular flavour of holiness which is associated with manliness. This isn't an argument that only men can be priests – although I think that there are some very non-trivial arguments making that case, alongside a great many very trivial arguments (“justice!”) that argue against it. God will call whomsoever he chooses, and it is the character of the individual that counts, not her biological composition (another Enlightenment-era heresy). Yet for fear of offending women we have ended up denying men – and we need to repent of that sin. In particular, the form of caring that seems to have become determinative in the training of clergy is (forgive me) a more classically female understanding – the showing of compassion and solidarity, the alleviation of immediate hurts. Being a spiritual nurse, for want of a better description. The idea that the sharing of truth is also pastoral, that the proclaiming of the gospel is the foundational spiritual medicine – this is what we have lost sight of. And so we do not care to train the clergy in the right understanding of doctrine, nor do we seek to hold our clergy to account for the doctrines that they proclaim. So long as they are nice to people, keep their heads down and don't cause a fuss then they can keep doing what they are doing. This is not good enough.

It is as if we think that all we need for an engine to work is the generous application of oil to lubricate the parts. The hard work of hammering the metal into shape and then organising the parts into a right form is no longer a consideration. So we are left with an oily and sticky mess and we are not getting anywhere. We are dying, drowning in the oil of our gentle compassion.

If this is to be addressed, it is no good simply looking at our structures and the allocation of resources – important though those things are. We need to recover our sense of the awefull awesomeness of Christ our God. “Jesus is my girlfriend” - no, Jesus is Almighty God and Creator so fall to your feet in awe and worship! I believe that this is what we lack, and it is tied up to our failure to understand and appreciate what it is to be a man. Of course, this can only finally be demonstrated by actions, not by words.

~~

And I said "Lord, oh Lord, you let him win, the sun is down and the night is riding in,
That train is dead on time, many souls are on the line, oh Lord, don't let him win..."

Well that Spanish train still runs between Guadalquivir and old Seville,
And at dead of night the whistle blows and people fear she's running still...
And far away in some recess the Lord and the Devil are now playing chess,
The Devil still cheats and wins more souls and as for the Lord, well, he's just doing his best...

~~

It is not enough to 'do our best'. We need to do what is right, and to cleave with our Old Testament Hearts to the truth of the gospel. In the context of the overwhelming decline of the Church of England that may well seem an impossible task – but then, that's the sort of thing that appeals to men of sufficient thumos, to men of sufficient faith. It's our mission, should we choose to accept it...

UPDATE: these statistics are interesting: "Its not that men are not interested in spiritual things. There is no gender gap in Islam, Buddhism, Judaism or Hinduism, nor is it a feature of the Eastern Orthodox Church." If it is true that a family follows the faith of the father, then what I'm talking about here is even more important than I thought...

When you go home, tell them

2011-11-14T10:52:00.001Z

We have gathered together today to remember before God those who have gone before us, who gave their lives in war in order that those whom they loved would be saved, and be enabled to flourish in their lives and homes in peace. This year we especially mark the passage of 90 years since the foundation of the Royal British Legion. How can we best honour those who gave their lives for us?

Well, in a simple sense, we can honour them by what we do today – simply by remembering them, and naming them. Anything beyond that runs the risk of being superfluous – but I would run that risk today. Clearly it is in living out our lives freely, making the most of the gift that we have received as a result of their sacrifice, that we do honour them. A straightforward example will demonstrate this point: in Afghanistan today there are girls being educated who would not be were it not for the courage and sacrifice of those men and women serving there. For those schoolgirls to honour those soldiers simply requires them to take advantage of their education, to have and to enjoy better lives. That is enough of a purpose and an honour. Sadly, what seems straightforward thousands of miles away seems much less clear closer to home. For what does it mean in this country to enjoy such better lives? What might it mean for us to enjoy the freedom that has been so expensively bought? How can we here, today, best honour those who have given their lives for us?

Earlier this week, as part of his homework assignment from Mersea school, my eldest son has been tasked with learning something about the First World War, most specifically about the trenches. Now the trenches were a barrier, there was the enemy in front, and there was the home to be protected behind. I expect to be going through his homework with him this afternoon, and what I am wanting to teach my son is that the place for battle, the place for military excellence, for courage and skill, is on that front line. But the most important thing is that those virtues are placed in service of something larger – something larger than any one soldier's own interests or personal advantage. This is what makes the difference between the heroes and the villains in all the stories that he has become familiar with. For example, my son greatly enjoys the Harry Potter stories – Harry Potter fights on behalf of a community and, in the end, he accepts his own death in order that they might flourish. His enemy, Voldemort, is simply pursuing his own immortality, and he is quite willing to dispose of his closest allies if it allows him to get closer to his wish. What I want to do is tie together what he has been learning through reading such fictional stories, with what actually has happened, and does happen, in our world.

It is this sense of serving something larger than our own desires that makes the difference between the hero and the villain, and it is this sense of something larger that I think our society has been forgetting for several decades now. It has become unfashionable to say that there are objective values, that some things are definitely right, and some things are definitely wrong – irrespective of what anyone might actually think about them. It is because our society has been so corroded by this moral relativism that we have the spectacle of young men hanging from the Cenotaph in London during the student protests last December, whose defence was that they didn't realise the significance of what they were doing. They hadn't been told the stories, their community hadn't insisted on the importance of telling them the stories, of saying – this matters.

I asked earlier what it might mean for us to enjoy the freedom that has been so expensively bought – and that is Christian language. As Christians we claim that in Jesus is our fullest and truest freedom – and that it is in so far as those who laid down their lives for us did so in resemblance to Jesus laying down his life for us that we honour them, and we remember them. What that means is that their stories find their meaning and purpose through being a part of the larger true story, the story of the creation of the world in love, the breaking of that world through our own sinful mistakes, and then the ongoing healing of that world through a loving sacrifice. As Christians we insist that there are values that are independent of our own judgement or preference, values that are woven into the fabric of this world by the one through whom it was all created, and it is by tuning in to those values and aligning ourselves with them that we start to touch the real and genuine freedom which is God's intention for us. Freedom is not license, the ability to do whatever pleases us. True freedom comes from recognising the nature of the world and aligning ourselves with it: the truth shall set us free. This is the overall story that binds us together and within which all our own individual stories find their meaning. This is the story that gives us the fabric of our common life – and it is that fabric that has been unstitched over several decades by those with no awareness of the havoc that they have caused – Father forgive them for they know not what they do.

I asked at the beginning of these words what is it that we can do to best honour those who have given their lives for us. I believe that I can now offer you an answer: the answer is simple, but very hard to live up to. We honour them best by telling their stories, and we give those stories meaning by embedding it within the larger story which gives it sense and purpose. We honour our heroes – those who fought for something larger, something bigger than themselves – by also telling the story that is bigger than them themselves. It is this bigger story which allows us as a community to live together and to enjoy the fruits of a hard-earned peace. This is our common story, within which the stories of the veterans and fallen take their place and within which they find their meaning – and we honour them by continuing to tell all of those stories, from the stories of Jesus in the gospels through all the different stories of those who at different times in different places have given their lives and health that we might enjoy our lives and health. As the Kohima declaration has it: when you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow, we gave our today. That is the essential thing, to best honour those who have given their lives for us: keep the story which structures our lives alive. So today, when you go home, tell them.

In Memoriam

2011-11-11T11:47:00.001Z

BDN 23.3.46 - 11.11.01

TBTE20111109

2011-11-09T16:43:00.001Z

Some initial thoughts on 'Transforming Presence'

2011-11-09T14:39:00.000Z

On the whole I'm very impressed with 'Transforming Presence' and am very excited about the possibilities that are going to open up. I want to say a few things about item 4 in the paper, about ministry - that being a topic which is particularly close to my heart! But first, here is a fuller extract for consideration rather than just the KGH part:

"Here are some basic principles which, with our agreement, could form the basis of a more radical forward thinking look at the ministry of God’s church in our diocese –
> Ministry belongs to the whole people of God. Every person, because of their baptism, has a ministry. We must nurture an expectation that every Christian gives expression to this ministry in their daily life and in their participation in the life of the Church.
> Ordained stipendiary ministers will be thinner on the ground in the future. We need to agree what figure we are working to, communicate that figure effectively to the deaneries, and then give each of them a target to work to. If at the same time we allocate a number of stipendiary posts (say five to ten in each Episcopal Area) as Mission posts, this can give strategic flexibility at a bigger level, allow new initiatives to flourish and ease situations of painful transition.
> These stipendiary priests will need to be more episcopal in the way they understand and express their ministry. This is not new. As the Institution Service reminds us, the Church of England has always believed that the Incumbent in the parish has a share with the bishop in the ministry “which is yours and mine”. Now they will become much more obviously those who have oversight of the ministry of the church in a cluster of rural communities, or in a town or suburb. Their role will be to lead and facilitate ministry in that area, not provide all that ministry themselves. They will, of course, be involved; but their main task will be to animate the ministry of the whole church.
> For this to work, there also needs to be a huge flourishing of authorised lay ministry (especially youth and children’s workers, authorised preachers, catechists, pastors and evangelists) and ordained self-supporting ministry. And of course we already have many Readers. Alongside some priests being more episcopal we need many others who will be more diaconal, taking on a pastoral, catechetical and evangelistic ministry at the local level. Each local church needs to have some sort of ministry team and, preferably, some minister to whom they identify as the worship leader and pastor of that community. Sometimes this will be a lay person, such as a Reader, and we should encourage lay led worship and ministry in many of our churches. In many cases I hope it will be an ordained self-supporting minister, so that the sacramental life of our church continues to flourish. But where there are lay led services of the Word it will still be possible within the cluster of communities under the oversight of the (probably) stipendiary priest, for there to be regular Sunday by Sunday Eucharistic provision. Some SSM priests will themselves be the leaders (‘episcopal’ priests) in these benefices."
"We need an end to that debilitating and depressing approach to ministry where it feels like an endless game of knock out whist: every time the cards are dealt there is one less. We must transcend this situation, by looking slightly further ahead and developing a bold ministry plan that is based on sustainability and growth. We must stop spreading diminishing resources more thinly. This has been a disaster for clergy morale and a massive disincentive to giving."

Initial overlapping questions and thoughts:
1. There is a lot of practical thinking about models of ministry to be done putting flesh on the bones of this vision.
2. This must be shared with the laity as it is principally their expectations which will not be met.
3. Knowing where we will likely be in fifteen years time (in terms of clergy numbers) would be a great help, and would allow us to actively work towards a particular outcome.
4. Nothing has been said here about what incumbents will be expected to do vis-a-vis fabric questions, including church yard management and so on. I would want to see this brought out into the open with a view to passing these on to church wardens.
5. Are incumbents meant to be managers, pastors or missioners? Or all three?
6. If the role of the incumbent is to 'animate the ministry of the whole church' then the focus for allocating those resources must surely be the size of the congregations (ignoring specified mission priests who are supplementary) not the size of the population within which a particular church is placed. (This is a particular grouse of mine)
7. I don't think that we can push effectively in this direction unless we also tackle the question of parish share and accept a different model.
8. We need to have a good hard look at the occasional offices and clarify what is expected and who is going to do that ministry.
9. How we train the ordained is going to have to change to fit with the answers discerned to all of the above.

I'm sure there will be other thoughts as time goes on, but at the moment my strongest sense is one of relief. I feel that I have been banging my head against a door that has been firmly closed against me for many years, and suddenly it has swung open. Thanks be to God.

A short story about small parish growth

2011-11-07T14:45:00.000Z

Peldon is a small village of some 600people situated to the south of Colchester. The regular congregationof the parish church has seen growth of around 50% over the lastthree or four years – from around 10-12 and declining, to around 18and increasing (often in the mid-20s now). This has had a greatlypositive effect in all sorts of ways, from simply increasing moraleand generating momentum to finally paying our full parish share, froma position of only paying around 50% five years ago. I thought thatit might be helpful to put some thoughts down about what has enabledthis growth to take place. There is no one 'magic bullet' that can beapplied without care in other parishes, but hopefully there might besome encouragement to be drawn from our story. Having said that, theone essential component in my view has been the dynamic layleadership within the parish, in the form of a very active churchwarden, who has given much of the energy and impetus for the workcarried out. I am certain that without this the outlook for thechurch in Peldon would have been very bleak.

I would pick out the following, in noparticular order, as contributing to the growth of the church:

consistency of Sunday worship pattern, with all Sunday services rationalised to 11am and a service at that time every week. Normally there are enough ministers available (through access to benefice resources) to ensure that there is a licensed minister leading the worship, but sometimes the services have been lay led;
an overhaul of the fabric of the church, most especially including the removal of the pews. The pews were of no historical or architectural merit and had become a decrepit hazard to worshippers (one collapsed just before a funeral). Their removal has energised the space within the church and enabled a much more flexible approach to worship;
the launch of a Friends organisation, which has had two major positive consequences – financial assistance with the cost of fabric repairs, and a generally positive engagement with the members of the community who do not attend worship but who have good will towards the church;
hosting special events on a regular basis, such as quiz nights, suppers, history lectures and so on. This has helped to raise the profile of the church within the village and made it easier for those unfamiliar with the church to cross the threshold;
running a simple 'mission' to the parish, which involved gathering a small team together to knock on every door in the parish, asking a few simple questions and advertising the Alpha course, which ran subsequently;
a particular funeral, of a young man who had grown up in the village, and to which the great majority of the village came. I believe that this put the church back on the 'mental map' of the community.

I view growth as the outcome of ahealthy church, and believe that if our priorities are right then theinherent attraction of the gospel will draw people in. We haven'tdone anything particularly novel, we have simply tried to follow thebest practice seen elsewhere (I've been particularly helped by BobJackson's research). The conclusion that I draw is simply this: itworks.

Killing George Herbert is now the official policy of Chelmsford Diocese

2011-11-07T14:02:00.001Z

Diocesan Synod last Saturday affirmed the paper 'Transforming Presence' which includes the following:

"...stipendiary priests will need to be more episcopal in the way they understand and express their ministry... they will become much more obviously those who have oversight of the ministry of the church in a cluster of rural communities, or in a town or suburb. Their role will be to lead and facilitate ministry in that area, not provide all that ministry themselves. They will, of course, be involved; but their main task will be to animate the ministry of the whole church."

It's been a while, but I'm glad we've got there in the end. Full paper here.

Occupy London, St Paul's and the Rebel

2011-10-25T11:18:00.001+01:00

One of my formative philosophical influences - and I can say that without being pretentious because I was about 17 when I read it, and pretention is expected at that age - was Albert Camus' 'The Rebel', most especially the first few pages. These describe the reaction of a slave who has simply taken too much abuse and turns round to say 'No'. From that refusal comes a sense of value and a sense of self - and these are the building blocks for creating something new. This is the primal reaction from which all else comes. Camus writes "An awakening of conscience, no matter how confused it may be, develops from any act of rebellion and is represented by the sudden realisation that something exists with which the rebel can identify himself..."

I've been pondering this whilst following the events outside St Paul's. There has been much criticism of the Occupy movement for not having 'clear goals' (on which see this great cartoon). That is immediately to try and force the rebellion to conform to the dominant discourse, to be co-opted into the patterns that pose no threat to the establishment. Specific claims will, I do not doubt, follow in due course. For now, however, it is enough for there to be the protest, the rebellion - the saying 'No' to manifest injustice, arrogance, ignorance and greed.

So what of St Paul's at this time? I can't be the only one who is dubious about the 'Health and Safety' rationale for closing the cathedral, not least because those grounds have not been clearly communicated to the Occupiers, who are therefore prevented from being able to take action in response to allay the concerns. Clearly it is a way of trying to bring moral pressure upon the protesters to get them to move along and not cause such bother. Yet if I'm right about the rebellion being the 'awakening of conscience' then the cathedral authorities are lining up on the wrong side of the divide - their moral pressure is simply an expression of convention rather than a receptivity to the right. In Camus' terms they are embodying the abuser, metaphorically and literally. What I find most intriguing is that the Occupy actions have inadvertently put the spotlight onto the national church, rather than causing immediate difficulties to the financial institutions. What are the real values that guide the Church of England? With whom shall we stand? At the moment, sadly, it looks as if the Church is simply another element of the governing class, an Erastian placeholder cavilling at those protesting wickedness because it is simply not the done thing. Will the Church ever get to a point where it can say to the establishment 'thus far and no further'? It would return to the Church that sense of value and sense of self which is conspicuous by its absence. I believe that it is what the people of this country are in fact looking for - the Occupiers not least among them.

(In the meantime plaudits and kudos to Kathryn Rose for following where the Spirit leads!)

A few more thoughts about faculties

2011-10-24T17:43:00.001+01:00

Tim commented on my post last week that he didn't know what the faculty process was. The faculty process is essentially the church equivalent of gaining planning consent. If you want to build an extension on the back of your house (in the UK) then you need to get approval for that from the planning department. If you don't get that consent (which can be voted on by the council) then the council has the power to remove such an extension (this was the principal issue at stake at Dale Farm).

In principle, the faculty process does make sense. There are some 'de minimis' regulations which mean that minor changes don't need a faculty, and there is, in theory, a clear procedure set out for how to obtain a faculty that is sought. My gripes about the faculty process flow from the following two thoughts:
1. it is very centralising and undercuts local autonomy. The planning process, which the faculty process reflects, is very much a modern creation, part and parcel of a modern Western state.
2. it is highly politicised, in that, if you get English Heritage on side, and you are on good terms with the hierarchy and so on, it is more straightforward to get consent for what you are trying to do. Of course, English Heritage, as their name suggest, have a vested interest in preserving historic buildings and that interest does not necessarily coincide with the interests of an on-going church community.

Now, just as the over-centralised state doesn't have much of a future in the context of Transition and all that that involves, nor does the centralised structure of the church, of which the faculty process is one example. I can envisage a time - indeed, I know of colleagues' situations where this has in fact happened - when a church community simply says to English Heritage 'If you want to keep it like it is, fine, here are the keys, we're off to rent the School Hall' (EH backed down on that one).

Put simply, the faculty process is a dinosaur in the time after the comet has hit. In order to prosper, the church must become much smaller and more nimble - the mice that became men, rather than the dinosaurs entering into history. How might that happen? Well... I'd need to do more study to really thrash it out but it would involve a) a massive expansion of the 'de minimis' provisions, b) provision of a democratic (parish resident) process to establish consent, replacing the standard DAC/Chancellor system and c) a structural bias in favour of approval vis-a-vis English Heritage, so that they would have to formally object and take a parish to court if they wanted to stop a development, rather than, at present, simply indicating that 'it wouldn't be quite right'.

My belief is that this would liberate the church communities to shape their buildings around their worship and life, rather than having to shape the latter to the former in Procrustean fashion.

The Sandman's Ruby

2011-10-24T12:26:00.000+01:00

I thought it would be worth reposting this - it is still how I think... (first published 29/6/2006)

I have been meaning to write this up for ages. There is much theological ore waiting to be mined in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman sequence; this may be the first of a number of posts (but don’t expect any more any time soon – the most important will be one about the nature of story and narrative identity).

The Sandman, also known as Morpheus or Dream, is one of the Endless – seven ‘beings’ or ‘anthropomorphic representations’ of aspects of creation. The story sequence begins with Dream being mistakenly captured by an Aleister Crowley type character, and the initial seven issues of the comic describe the immediate consequences of the capture – Dream’s escape and pursuit of the valuable objects taken from him – his helm, his ruby, and his pouch of sand.

The ruby eventually ends up in the hands of a madman named Doctor Destiny, who uses it to perform diabolical acts, and then to fight Dream himself. Dr Destiny drains Dream of all his power, and then destroys the Ruby, thinking that in doing so he will destroy Dream. In fact the reverse happens – all of Dream’s power and identity that had been vested in the Ruby is returned to him, and he is ‘recalled to himself’, thence easily able to overcome Dr Destiny, and return him to Arkham Asylum.

What struck me on originally reading this passage is that it is a parable for the church and the Bible.

The Church is formed by the Spirit descending at Pentecost; the community gathers for prayer and fellowship, the apostle’s teaching and the breaking of bread; it grows and strengthens around the world. Eventually it creates an object, a tool, which allows it to pursue its ministry – what we call the New Testament.

That New Testament is then taken away from the living church community (which is the only place wherein it is able to be used properly) and diabolical consequences result. In particular, the Bible is taken into the academic community, and is used to make dark materials which are destructive of the church. The academic community has now, in effect, destroyed the Bible that it originally took from the church.

Yet it seems that what is now opening up is a possibility of the church being able to return to its divine origins, to allow the Bible to be what it always was – the principal tool of the church, not something of divine origin in and of itself – the Bible can return to what it is, and the church can return to what it is: the Body of Christ in the world.

[Mad Priest’s Pre-Biblical Movement prompted me to put this up.]

Happy incumbents

2011-10-18T11:22:00.000+01:00

Reading Lesley's blog reminded me that I wanted to write something on this.

First a lengthy quotation from Rowan's remarks:

"On the humanity of priesthood and episcopacy, it does seem to me that, if we have an ordained ministry in the Church, and if part of the function of any ordained ministry is to help the Church be the Church, and if the Church truly is the Church when it is the human community that is Christ’s body among us (and you can add lots more ifs), then the ordained person — deacon, priest, or bishop — is not exempt from modelling the new humanity.

The ordained person does not just talk to other people about how they become better human beings or more effective parts of the Body of Christ. The ordained person is a part of the Body of Christ, and therefore involved in modelling the new humanity.

So if we ask whether this or that form of ordained ministry models a humanity that looks full or joyful or renewed, maybe that is the crucial question. And frequently the answer is no, for men and for women.

When looking at challenges such as employment practice, work patterns, couples in ministry, and a whole range of issues, we might ask whether this human ministry looks as though it stands for an attractive, a transforming and transformed, new humanity. Because if it doesn’t, we are actually not doing what we are supposed to do, and we are treating ordained ministry as if it were something other than the life of the Body of Christ. So it is all right for a congregation to flourish and a priest to be crushed? I don’t think it is all right.

We all know how the pain and the cost of ordained ministry can feed the life of a community. And I think that is what St Paul is talking about in a great deal of 2 Corinthians.

But we can’t leave it there, because that both dehumanises and super-humanises the ordained ministry. It dehumanises because it says it doesn’t really matter what happens to these particular persons that God loves in Jesus Christ. That is dehumanising.

These particular persons in Jesus Christ, who have collars round their necks and various coloured shirts, are the ones who do the work for the Body of Christ, including the sacrificial suffering. And everybody else sort of freewheels on it."

Now two quotations from David Hare's 'Racing Demon', which I read a little while back and which (the play as a whole) has been haunting me:

+Southwark to an incumbent: "In any other job you'd have been fired years ago. You're a joke, Lionel. You stand in the centre of the parish like some great fat wobbly girl's blouse. Crying for humanity. And doing absolutely nothing at all... you are the reason the whole church is dying. Immobile. Wracked. Turned inward. Caught in a cycle of decline. Your personal integrity your only concern. Incapable of reaching out. A great vacillating pea-green half-set jelly... It truly offends me, the idea that people need authority, and every time they come to ask what does the church think then they are hit in the face by a spurt of lukewarm water from a rugby bladder. And I simply will not allow it to go on."

and especially this one, where the incumbent's experienced colleagues (Harry and Streaky) are discussing him with the new curate (Tony):
Harry: He's tired.
Tony: Yes. He's tired. Exactly. Lionel is tired because he gets no strength from the gospel. That's my whole point. He's tired because he isn't getting anything back.
Harry: (shaking his head, disbelieving) You can't say that. How dare you? You can't say that of any priest.
Tony: Of course I can say it.
Harry: Who are you to judge?
Tony: Have you seen him? Going down the street? In Brixton? His forehead is knotted. He gives off one message: 'Keep away. I carry the cares of the world.' It's true. People don't go near him. He reeks of personal failure. And anguish. Like so much of the church."

Now regular readers will be aware that this is a theme I have pondered a lot. A little while back I commented that I didn't know any happy incumbents and was taken to task for this. So I changed it to 'many' rather than 'any' - my rule of thumb being that you have to be a moderate evangelical called Tim in order to be a happy incumbent in the Church of England today (grin). As it happens, speaking personally, I'm in quite a happy place at the moment - I might even qualify as a happy incumbent, although it might also simply be that I've found a more comfortable position on my own personal cross - but the 'going around with a knotted forehead' would, I think, be a reasonably accurate description of me in the last few years! Not good, and I hope that I'm eliminating it.

The general problem remains, however. The nature of the ministry than a priest is called to, in the way that Rowan articulates, is - to generalise hugely - a ministry that will become rarer and rarer in the Church of England today, and that means that there is something profoundly wrong somewhere. So what is to be done? How are we to cultivate an ordained ministry that enables a witness to the full humanity that is the inheritance of every member of the Kingdom? I'm starting to wonder if it's possible, or whether there needs to be a massively more traumatic shift in the Church of England in order to enable it. As I said to one group the other day, the church on Mersea - understood as a community - has been gathered together for a good 1400 years, only the last 450 or so of which have been under the auspices of the Church of England. It may well be that the present institutional arrangements have to break down comprehensively before something new can be released.

What might that look like? Well how about these proposals as food for thought: the abolition of the parish system and parish boundaries, the abolition of parish share, leaving each congregation to pay for its own minister(s), the abolition of Church House and all the financial arrangements there, and the abolition (or, realistically, the massive simplification) of the faculty process. Most of the disagreements I've come across to such proposals take the form of saying 'the Church of England has to be in every place' (which is a good ideal that I support, although we ought to be realistic and say a) we don't achieve that now and b) why can't we be ecumenical about it and say, eg, 'here the Methodists are the Body of Christ' in this place?) or, what would happen to the poor churches that can't afford their own minister? Well that latter assumes that Christians don't wish to exercise Christian charity - a very telling assumption - and ignores the pre-20th century history of, for example, all the work done in the East End by the slum priests. This is not congregationalism - after all, the financial and faculty elements to be removed haven't been in place for very long - a hundred years, if that. What I'm advocating is a radical shift in power away from twentieth century centralisation and back towards the local autonomy that has, for most of our history, characterised the English church.

I just have a suspicion that, in the environment into which we are moving, with more and more incumbents having to stretch across large multi-parish benefices (see eg here - it is highly likely that the Mersea patch will be expanded by yet more parishes in the next few years), the institutional side needs to become much more streamlined and simplified. I think that would make for happier incumbents.

NB I'm aware that I haven't talked about the underlying spiritualities in this post - I think they are even more important, but one thing at a time, and for a flavour of what I think is needed to make incumbents happier, see this recent post. The larger point is about what it means to be a servant of institutional Christianity when both institutions and Christianity are generally regarded with scorn, scepticism and pity - but I'll talk more about that some other time.)

Why I wouldn't take Rooney to Euro 2012

2011-10-15T12:38:00.001+01:00

He's not the Messiah he's a very naughty boy...

So Fabio is being put on the spot by Rooney's suspension (and why were people surprised that it was for three matches?) and now there is the question of whether to take him to the Euro's at all. The argument for taking him goes something like: he's our best player, he can turn a match around, he'll be fresh and raring to go if we make it through the group stage.

I think it would be a very bad idea to take Rooney. To begin with it would cast a shadow over building a team with the capacity to get through the group stage. That by itself we could probably live with, but let us just pursue what might happen. I think there are three possible outcomes:

1. We don't get through the group stages - in which case taking Rooney has wasted one space in the squad, a space which might conceivably have given Fabio another option to respond to dire circumstances.
2. We sail through the group stages in great comfort - in which case adding Rooney in would mean disrupting a team that has successfully gelled without him.
3. We struggle through the group stages and look to Rooney to raise us up to a higher level - in which case the pressure upon Rooney to perform becomes all the greater.

The first two outcomes argue against taking Rooney, but it is the third which I think is in fact the most problematic, simply because Rooney has repeatedly demonstrated his inability to cope with intense mental pressure. This would be the worst environment in which to pitch a volatile player. If English football is ever to get the best from his immense talent then perhaps the salutary lesson of not being taken to Euro 2012, and the experience of watching from the sidelines, is the best opportunity for him to conquer his demons.

I think Fabio should build a team without him, and leave the task of integrating Rooney to his successor. A front four (in a 4231) of Young-Gerrard-Sturridge, with Bent converting the chances, should surely be enough to get us to the traditional quarter-final elimination, and there are other options around too who could cover for injuries in that quartet. We need to stop relying on talented individuals, and start building a proper team, and a proper system.

A short sermon about music (West Mersea Civic Service 2011)

2011-10-09T16:43:00.000+01:00

Those of you who read my Courier articles will know that I have a favourite philosopher, who has had a profound influence on how I understand the world – Ludwig Wittgenstein. He was raised in an extremely musical environment as his parents house in Imperial Vienna was one of the most important musical salons in that city; Brahms, Schumann and Mahler were regular house guests, Richard Strauss would play duets on the piano with Wittgenstein's brother – this is the context for Wittgenstein to write, after finishing his greatest philosophical work 'it has been impossible for me to write one word in my book about all that music has meant to me in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?'

Perhaps I should stop there... After all, what can be said in a sermon about music? It is rather like trying to talk about God in some ways – every attempt is bound to fall short of the reality, and yet sometimes we cannot but speak and the words have to stumble out of our mouths. Even shipwrecks have their uses.

Our first reading described the musician David with King Saul; here David can play music to soothe the troubled breast of the king – and this is certainly one element of music, as something which can soothe our spiritual aches and pains – bringing harmony out of discord – and yet, there is so much more to music than this.

In the context of this civic service, where we are dedicating ourselves to the welfare of all, we might perhaps call to mind the wider context at the moment. The financial crisis that has been running for a few years now but has not yet run its full course; the environmental and resource crises that are starting to bite as we start to run up against the Limits to Growth; the frankly frightening world context where violent militancy is on the rise. These are so many deep bass notes in a minor key, and we cannot overcome them with a blithe and bland melody. Yet there are ways to harmonise with those movements in a way that makes the music overall something that can be listened to, something which reflects who we are, something which might, perhaps, even heal. There are things which we can do even in this disquieting context.

For even though I don't have much confidence that our governing classes have much idea about what is going on – one might say that their range of hearing doesn't go down as far as basso profundo, or perhaps it's just that they're distracted by the sound of cats – my trust in God is still intact. In the end it is not for us to be in control – we are not the composer, we are not even the conductor, we're not even the first violin – I suspect there is a good Trinitarian image there for Father Son and Holy Spirit – but we do have our own parts to play. We do not have to worry about the overall composition, it is not for us to know how the main themes and contradictions will be creatively resolved, we simply have to play our own part as best we can, confident that the creator can redeem any mistakes that we might make – as those marvellous words of Leonard Cohen have it 'and even though it all went wrong I'll stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah...' For where there is no dissonance the music is in the end bland and boring and, most of all, unreal – and surely the complexity is real, the mournful notes are real – and in the end it is from the real deep well of our suffering that we will draw the refreshing water of joy. That is the trust with which we simply have to press on with the tasks that we have been given to do. And we have been told what we need to do: we are to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before our God.

So may we commit ourselves this day to making real music together, in the service of our community, following the composition of, allowing ourselves to be conducted by, and being led in our playing by, the One in whom all things are harmonious, the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Exceptional or Imperial? Sarah Palin and the choice facing the United States

2011-10-07T11:29:00.000+01:00

Note: this was first posted to my now-defunct political blog Gandalf's Hope on 4th February 2011

How is the US exceptional? I would say it is an exceptional nation because it is based upon an idea, the idea that all men are created equal. Of course, the United States has gone through tumult on its way to fully learning, embracing and embodying that idea but nonetheless, the extent to which the US pursues that vision, and the way in which the consequences of that vision such as individual freedoms and democracy are embedded deeply into United States culture do in my opinion make the US an exceptional nation (and, indeed, one to which I often consider emigrating).

How is the US imperial? Well, the simplest way to demonstrate that is to ponder a handful of facts. The US maintains 730 army bases in 50 nations around the world (some would say it is higher). It operates (for now) the global default currency, and thereby enables a transfer 'rent' from the rest of the world. It dominates a number of client states and has intervened explicitly or tacitly throughout the world (most notoriously in Iran). Most explicitly, the US with around 4% of the world's population enjoys something like 25% of the world's natural resources, most especially oil. We might have a long academic debate about just how the US qualifies as an 'Empire' but if we avoid the semantic quicksand the essential point seems unassailable.

It seems to me that discussions of the worth or otherwise of the United States is often bedevilled by a failure to distinguish between these two aspects of US polity. Real life is of course much greyer than any binary definition can allow for. Those who defend the exceptional nature of the US are often hard-pressed when faced with evidence of US government complicity in torture and other systemic abuse. On the other hand, those who are most convinced that the US is the Great Satan and an evil empire are hard-pressed when presented with the strong evidence available that the US is often a force for good in the world, not least in terms of the highest values embodied in the constitution and the sheer grace and decency of so many individual citizens.

There is, inevitably, a tension between these two strands of current US life, and because the world is going through a process of upheaval the world has an interest in seeing which way the US will choose to go. For the truth is that the Imperial structure established by the US, most especially since the end of WW2, is now breaking down. The US is going to go through a process of relative weakening. Instead of being the overwhelmingly dominant nation, within the next thirty years the US will become more of a 'primus inter pares' - still very strong, but with several other strong nations alongside it: China, India and Brazil are the most obvious three, possibly accompanied by an EU, but not accompanied by either Russia or South Africa, the other two nations often suggested as potential major states.

In this context, the US governing class is faced with a choice. Does it seek to preserve imperial power and control for as long as possible? Or does it seek - in accordance with its own exceptional highest values - to enable a peaceful transition into a different world order?

The way that governing classes think is often preserved at an institutional level. By that I mean that, in order to become a member of the governing elite one has to adopt the values of the institutions into which one becomes trained as a member. In order to gain power within the system, the bona fides of acceptance of the system have to be demonstrated. When all is well this provides a cohesive strength and stability and is a prerequisite for long-term stable government. However, what this process does not prepare for is an existential crisis when the fundamental basis of the establishment is called into question. In such a situation the perpetuation of group-think leads the governing class to become more and more detached from the emerging reality, with the inevitable consequence of collapse or revolution.

It seems clear to me that this is what is happening in the United States at the moment. The present occupant of the White House - in my oh-so-humble opinion - is a corporate shill who lacks the character required to be anything other than a front for the governing class. As a man who has made a habit of pleasing people and being as inoffensive as possible, and without the moral hinterland required to recognise the crises engulfing the world at this time, he operates as a teleprompter operator articulating the assumptions and preferences of those who have benefited most from the imperial system, and who are acting with increasing desperation to preserve that system from collapse. This can be seen from the healthcare system designed by pharmaceutical and insurance corporations through to the bailouts given to the wealthiest banks (at the expense of the middle class) and the way in which the revolving-door culture between Wall Street and Washington is repeatedly renewed and affirmed.

If there is to be any hope of a benign transition to a different world order, one in which the US can take an esteemed place alongside other powerful nations and continue a 'soft-power' revolution to slowly transform the world, then there must be a change of leadership. The world is crying out for a US that lives out the exceptional path, not the imperial path. This needs a leader that embodies that higher path and is able to call the United States to its own highest values and ideals. This needs a leader with proven courage in standing up against vested interests. This needs a leader with grounded attachment to moral high ground, most especially in a faith which enables a discrimination between the true light of the world and worldly pretenders to that light.

There is, of course, one person who fits that bill. The imperial system, the governing class, recognises that existential threat and is thereby doing its damnedest to destroy that threat, through a consistent and co-ordinated campaign to defame and demean Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska. This does not mean that Palin is perfect and without flaws and weaknesses. It does mean that here we have someone who may just possibly be the last best hope for US exceptionalism.

This is not a Democrat vs Republican challenge. The governing class would be perfectly content with Mitt Romney or any of the other seven dwarves that may be contending for the GOP nomination. No, this is about the possibility of a creative renewal of the United States enabling it to work for the highest possible outcome. The stakes are very real, up to and including another US civil war or (more likely) a more global war, if the governing class sees that as the only way in which to preserve its power. The only way in which a higher path might be taken is if the governing class itself is detached from its hold on the levers of US power, and the US enabled to return to its own best values and practices. Of course I may be wrong, but I do see Palin as the one contender who might possibly be able to do that.

Addition for October 2012: I respect Palin's decision not to run, but I still believe that she is the right person for this time of crisis.

Trigger's Broom and Living Traditions

2011-09-29T11:48:00.001+01:00

In one episode of 'Only Fools and Horses' Trigger is boasting about having received an award from the local council for having used the same broom for twenty years – and he then reveals that in that twenty years the broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles. Is it the same broom?

This is actually a new form of an ancient philosophical argument, first written down by Plutarch in the first century, where he discusses 'The Ship of Theseus' – a ship where all the different planks and masts and so on have been replaced over time, so that not one original piece of timber has remained. Is it still the same ship?

This is one of those questions that occupies philosophers for a very great deal of time, and I don't plan to get very technical in this column (I have been known to learn a lesson. On rare occasions). The reason why I mention it is because it cuts right to the heart of the various changes that are going on in and around Mersea at the moment. Is it still the same Island?

My view is that Trigger's Broom, and Theseus' Ship, are the same, despite the changes. That is because there has been a continuity of use over time. Trigger has been using a broom to do his work in a consistent fashion for over twenty years, and each day he has taken the broom from the same place, and at the end of the day he has put it back in that place. The fact that on several occasions parts of the broom have changed has not affected the identity of the Broom – at any one point, people could have pointed to the one object and truthfully said 'That is Trigger's Broom'. In a similar fashion, there was a sailing vessel crewed by a community of sailors that achieved certain travels under the command of Theseus – and at any point people could have pointed to that vessel and truthfully said 'that is Theseus' Ship'. In other words, the identity of the object (the broom or the ship) rested as much in the continuous use by the community as in the continuity of any particular physical element.

This is a debate that often comes up when considering churches. The parish church here in West Mersea has seen vast changes in its history. The origins of the Christian community there are likely from the early seventh century, and the importance of that community (as what was then called a Minster church) was such that the King of Essex, Saint Sebbi, built the Strood in order to gain regular access to it. Almost nothing physical from that time now remains (there is one very small Anglo-Saxon carving in the church and that's it) but I would argue that the church now is the same as the church then, simply because there has been a continuity of use on the site ever since. Similarly, the various physical changes to the church – building the tower using old Roman Tiles, the expansion of the different aisles, the massive re-ordering through the Reformation period, and more recently the installation of memorial pews and so on – all these things are simply like replacing the decking on Theseus' ship. For some 1400 years the 'sailors' in the church have continued to share bread and wine while telling the story of Jesus. It is that which gives identity to the church, rather than any one particular configuration of the church fabric.

In the same way, when we are considering the various things about Mersea which may or may not be changing in the future, we need to remember that what gives Mersea its identity is not any one particular physical feature so much as the nature of the community that lives here – and that too has seen many great changes over time. The issue is perhaps not so much 'we need to preserve that particular set of decking' as 'will this help us to keep sailing'? So in the context of Mersea, the questions are – what will best enable the population to flourish fully? That includes the environmental and historical questions; it also includes questions of employment and local amenities. Judging the balance between these elements is a complex task and I don't envy those who have the responsibility for making the final decisions. I do however believe that decisions are best made at the level closest to those affected – which means, for many issues, that decisions need to be made by the Mersea community and not in Colchester.

What I am trying to describe here is the reality of a living tradition. When a tradition and a culture is alive then it is open to ongoing evolution and development in response to different circumstances – in other words the ship is kept seaworthy. It is when a tradition has begun to die that different elements from that tradition get broken off and held up as totems, the ship is only good for salvage value. At that point there is no longer a living tradition, there is a museum full of relics – and museums are wonderful and important places, they can tell us the story of where we come from and therefore help us to know where we are – but I wouldn't want to live in one, or on one.

Priesthood and pastoral care

2011-09-26T15:17:00.000+01:00

This is something I've been pondering anew since Graham reminded me of something Eugene Peterson wrote: "Most pastoral work actually erodes prayer. The reason is obvious: people are not comfortable with God in their lives."

What is the specific duty of pastoral care laid upon a priest?

It seems to me that there is a general duty of pastoral care laid upon every Christian. After all, it is every Christian who is to obey the command to love their neighbour as themselves; to pray for their enemies and to practice forgiveness; to share the faith - and so on.

Clearly the priest is not to be any less obedient to those commands than other Christians - possibly they are to be more so - but is that 'more so' the distinctive nature of the pastoral care offered by a priest? I would say not.

If you go to a Doctor, and you find that they have what might euphemistically be called a 'deficient bed-side manner' you might still walk away content if you know that you have received the right medication for your ailments, and have confidence that where once you were ill, now you are on the path of becoming well.

The cure of souls should surely be the same. However good at being straightforwardly pastoral the priest may be - that is, in being generally, kind, caring, solicitous and so on - that is not the central feature of their pastoral ministry. The priest is given the cure of souls within a parish. That means that the priest is called to cultivate and exercise spiritual discernment, in order to 'feed the sheep' appropriately. More and more I think St Benedict's Abbot is a good model to have in mind, as he is called to "so temper all things that the strong may have something to long after, and the weak may not draw back in alarm."

This is not a matter of being simply kind and compassionate - although those things are in short enough supply. Rather, as with the doctor who has no social grace, it is still possible to receive cure if the person administering is competent. So the question is: in what does this competence consist?

I would suggest the following. The priest is first and foremost one in whom the conversation with God is being conducted religiously, for whom the relationship with the divine is living and active, and who is therefore able, in some small way, to bring others into that same conversation. So the priest has to be a person of prayer, and to put that life of prayer before all other duties. Secondly, the priest has to be orthodox, and have the ability to share that orthodoxy with the flock. Doctrine is pastoral; poor doctrine is at the root of a very great deal - possibly the majority - of the suffering within the churches. The role of the priest is to share a right understanding of the faith - and therefore a right understanding of how we are in the world - with those who come to them in distress. The priest is one who understands and takes seriously the nature of spiritual warfare, and who has the most effective tools with which to further that combat. Lastly, and following on from this, the priest's ministry is necessarily sacramental as the sacramental tools are the principal means of spiritual combat. The proper use of sacramental ministry is the summation of pastoral doctrine, which achieves what it teaches. And when the priest is sufficiently advanced in the faith, then they begin to share in the nature of the sacrament themselves.

We have forgotten what priesthood is for. This is the logical consequence of losing confidence in the faith more generally. If you take the faith seriously, then you take the ability to teach the faith - and share the fruits of the faith - very seriously. If you no longer have confidence in the faith then you scratch around for more or less acceptable substitutes - priest as social worker; priest as nice person; priest as politician; priest as the entertainment package on the cruise liner. Then, slowly, the whole edifice begins to drift, and starve, and succumb to the blandishments of the world. It is because we have failed at being a Christian community that we no longer have a distinctive sense of the ministry of the priest. They are simply to be the representative 'nice person', and heaven help the one who fails in that most solemn of Anglican duties.

If this is truly the nature of the priesthood, how then are we to find such people? How are we to train them? The training of a priest becomes not so much a matter of choosing nice people, those with a particular gift of smal talk making them more compassionate - although one would hope and expect that to be a natural byproduct - but one of deepening an understanding of the faith, equipping them with the capacity to share that faith with those in their charge, so that the sheep are fed and ministered to. This is not an academic exercise - a filling of the mind with theory and grammar - but the conscious guiding and shaping of a person's soul, 'spiritual formation'. How can one hope to be a priest - and therefore seek to help form the souls of a flock - unless that process of formation has been undergone in one's own life?

Training, therefore is not a matter of abstract academics, even less is it a matter of learning a better bedside manner. All the various elements taken over from modern management and counselling theory are at best icing on a cake, at worst they are the idolatrous substitutes that we use to try to fill the void where a living faith once was. And the church will reap what it has sown. (See John Richardson for a related thought on this from the evangelical perspective).

The situation in the Church of England regarding the training of clergy is, at the moment, very fluid, but if I were to be given some dictatorial powers I would like to see a structure which made all those approved by the Bishops' Advisory Panels full-time employees, based in a parish, from the start, with all the housing and other benefits that a curate would normally receive. This curacy would be for a period of seven years, and during those seven years the candidate would pursue a rigorous course of theological study on a part-time (50%) basis. I would provide that theological education from a non-University setting, to avoid the Babylonian captivity of atheist academia. This would give much greater economic security to candidates - and probably to the various colleges - and would enable a much more rooted form of training.

Yet none of this would be of any benefit if the core vision of priesthood remains deficient. Until and unless we regain a sense of the nature of our faith we shall continue in our managed decline, and repeatedly sacrifice ministers and vocations to the domestic gods of the English middle class.

Bad sign

2011-09-26T14:12:00.000+01:00

Leaving aside all the ways in which this wobbly, decrepit and fading sign is in need of renewal (agreed by PCC and in hand) - why on earth was it ever considered sensible to make such a point of conveying the identity of the Rector? It is George Herbert syndrome embodied in wood and pigment.

Ollie

2011-09-25T14:57:00.001+01:00

He's recovering, slowly.

Why shouldn't we let the bankrupt go bust?

2011-09-14T10:40:00.003+01:00

A genuine question, and I'm trying to work out the answer (so here I'm thinking out loud).

If Greece defaults - which looks very likely very soon - then there are banks which have made loans to the Greek government which will then not have those loans repaid. This is on such a scale that it is likely that many banks would themselves become insolvent. There is thus great pressure on governments to ensure either that Greece does not default (they've lost that one) or, if it does, that the banks are 'ring fenced' from the consequences of their actions.

This doesn't seem right to me.

Assuming Greece defaults (or the other PIIGS) why shouldn't we let the banks go bust in consequence? After all, it is their decision making which such a fault would put to the test. What would be the malign consequences?

Well, for the 'average person' probably not very much. In the UK - and I guess elsewhere - there is deposit insurance, which means that most people's bank accounts are protected. If one bank goes bust then their customer base is an asset which is then sold on by the auditors who are trying to maximise the asset value from the bankruptcy proceedings. So that side of things is covered.

Those who are richer will get a more or less severe financial haircut, in several ways. Firstly, there is a threshold to the deposit insurance, so deposits above that level would be lost. Second, those who have shareholdings in the bank will - largely - see that investment be destroyed. Thirdly, those who have pensions may be at risk of seeing those pensions lose value if those funds are invested in insolvent institutions.

The thing is, those latter malign consequences I do not see as being anybody else's business. That is the nature of the free market. If you invest in a company that makes bad decisions then you will likely lose your money. What I most object to is a systemic bias towards privatising gains whilst socialising losses. Or, to put that more simply, I believe that it is shockingly immoral for general taxation to be used to subsidise incompetence and greed. To use an admirable politician's latest catchphrase, this is simply crony capitalism, and it is corrupt.

At this point the spectre of 'systemic risk' is raised. If we don't stop the banks going bust then civilisation will collapse - I paraphrase, but that is normally the gist. Civilisation is collapsing anyway - and not least because we have ignored the moral foundations of our communities and societies. My view, therefore, is that destroying the notion of moral hazard, making the rich invulnerable to the consequences of their own misjudgements, is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

So I say - let the bankrupt go bust. If we no longer bail out the venal and the incompetent then perhaps there will be a little bit of money left over to look after those in genuine need.

Make sense?

De Anima

2011-09-09T12:28:00.000+01:00

The anima (like the shadow) also has a benevolent aspect in taking on the role of guide, or mediator, to the world within and to the Self. As femme inspiratrice she may serve as muse, inspiring his artistic or spiritual development, and putting him in touch with correct inner values and hidden depths of his personality. Jung said that if we deny these contrasexual figures in the unconscious, reject or ignore them, they turn against us and show their negative faces. It is only by accepting, understanding and forming a conscious relationship with the anima or animus that the positive side appears and becomes available for conscious awareness.

Perhaps Lisbeth can be my Beatrice, "La gloriosa donna della mia mente", and guide me on.

Church

2011-09-09T12:19:00.001+01:00

State of present thinking is: Church is that community of people with whom you are serious about your discipleship of Christ.

What I'm exploring is something which doesn't focus upon the various activities (worship, service, meetings etc) which end up being debated about and divided over in endless fashion. Rather, I'm wanting to emphasise what those things are for (formation in discipleship) and that this is necessarily a corporate and not an individual activity.

So, being serious about your discipleship of Christ necessarily entails: sacramental worship, mutual accountability, pastoral care, shared study and service and all the rest of it. Church is simply that group of people with whom you do this. In one sense I'm describing a 'house church' in that doing this properly can only be done in small numbers - but I don't see a need to erect a barrier between small groups and the gathered assembly.

Another thing I'm pondering - I'm not sure I'm a member of one. I'm also not sure the role of 'Church of England Rector' is compatible with church membership, in the sense that I've described it here. All the elements are present in my life, but they are disparate and spread across a number of different groups. That's not how it is meant to work.

I think the key barrier is one of authority. In what way can a Rector be vulnerable to members of their own congregation? It would mean setting aside the 'role' in order to be a Christian brother, which is tremendously attractive. I just can't see a natural way in which to do that in my present context. Yet I'm more aware than I have been in a while that I need to do this, for my own spiritual health - and, probably, for the health of those communities in my care. Which throws up an interesting line of investigation into what the priest is for in a community - and whether the authority 'role' is compatible with what the priest is for.

Still much to think about on this one. It is a work in progress, as are we all.

I want to learn surfing

2011-09-07T08:28:00.000+01:00

After all, it would be a shame to let a mid-life crisis go completely to waste

(grin)

We are responsible for our own feelings

2011-09-06T09:20:00.000+01:00

This is a line of thought following Sunday's sermon (Mt 18.15-20), in which I said:

"When was the last time that one Christian in this church admonished another for sinning against them, for falling short of Christian standards? Note this isn't a passage about one person saying to another 'you're not being good enough' in any particular public way – it is about one person sinning against another. So all the fuss that the church ties itself up about, for example, homosexuality – that largely falls outside of this conversation. No, this is about one person hurting another, and the hurt person saying, not simply 'you hurt me' – which I am sure is a complaint that is often heard, but 'you hurt me because you are sinning and failing in your faith' – in other words, embedding the pain in a larger context and understanding. Because it is that larger context and understanding that enables transformation to take place, that stops the conversation being simply 'you hurt me', 'you hurt me first', 'biff, bash, pow!' If a community is to mature it needs to be have individuals within it who are strong enough to put aside their own feelings – their feelings of hurt, or betrayal, or broken trust – and see the bigger picture. It is only that larger context that allows God into the conversation."

So often I see hurt feelings being used as a stick with which to beat other people into submission - we can't do this because it will hurt so-and-so's feelings. This is infantile. The spiritual path is about taking control of our feelings - or, better, letting God take charge and shape our feelings. We set aside our own inner responses in order to pursue a larger picture.

A while ago we had an evening reading (we use this great book) which was about our anger. It talked about a situation that provoked a disciple to anger, and then pointed out that in similar situations in the past, the disciple had not been provoked to anger. What had changed was not the external circumstances, but the internal spiritual state of the disciple. In such a situation the Christian response is to thank the person for making us aware of our own internal spiritual disorder, and resolve to improve matters.

This is why we are to use the language of sin, which presumes a shared faith. It means that we can put aside our feelings - that great oceanic and abyssal chaos - and instead set our minds on things above, things which are good, true and beautiful. This is the way in which we cultivate the gifts of the spirit - of love, peace, gentleness, self-control and all the rest. It makes all the sense in the world to point out when someone has sinned against us - for really, with a right understanding of sin, you are pointing out where someone is stabbing themselves in the eye. The escalation to the wider community is not really about establishing matters of justice so much as about establishing the correct diagnosis of what has gone wrong. It is not about blame - for we are not to judge one another - but about healing and transformation. This is why those who reject the community's judgement are to be 'pagan and tax-collector' - in other words, people who are no longer a part of the community. This is a matter of logic, not jurisprudence.

So if people reject the community, and they reject the theology and discernment of the community, then there is no longer a shared language with which to share a common life. To reject that judgement is to reject the faith. I think this is what is meant by 'what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven...'

Greenbelt 2011

2011-08-30T15:44:00.000+01:00

I really like Greenbelt, even though I feel I'm 'in the closet' a lot of the time (politically, not otherwise!). A very different experience this year as I took my eldest, and saw a different and very positive side to the festival (not least that the portaloos are kept to a much cleaner standard in early curfew as compared to general camping!). Also: the TTT should be renamed the Pricy Tea Tent - £2 for hot water and a teabag!! Xn Aid tent was £1.50 YMCA was £1.... Best bits were people-related, and a particular moment in Soul Space with Ignatian prayer - more on that another time.

Some piccies:

Next year all the family will be coming :)

Voices

2011-08-25T12:05:00.000+01:00

So I had a good holiday – not very restful, but definitely a healthy change of horizon – and one that provided a lot of context, and managed to get me out of the spiritual fug in which I had enmeshed myself.

Let me describe what I am talking about. I had problems with my passport so was not able to journey out with the rest of my family – my wife and children had to drive off to the Loire leaving me behind, which was good neither for them nor for me. Why? Three weeks before the due departure date I had dutifully filled out all the forms for my passport and for three children's passports, and paid for the expedited applications through the Post Office. Two days before we were due to travel the children's passports arrived but mine didn't. On telephoning the passport service I discover that my application had been 'flagged for review' as my previous (out of date) passport had not been included in the application – and my forms had then sat in someone's in-tray for two weeks, as this was 'the busy period'. When I explained my context, my forms were pulled to the top and the application went through, and I flew out to join the rest of my family on the Wednesday.

~~

So what is the spiritual fug? Listen to the voice of the accuser: why didn't you sort out the passports sooner? Why did you leave it to the last-minute? You have let your family down and ensured that your wife and children have a much more stressful journey without you. You're not very good at this parenting lark are you? You're not very responsible at all really. It was your laziness that was the problem, that and your lack of attention to detail, your general carelessness. You just don't care enough. Frankly you're not a very nice person at all. Why don't you pull yourself together and make more of an effort? It's like what's happened with your ministry on Mersea. They don't like you any more, you know that don't you? People feel so let down by you, that's why they don't come to the services that you take any more. Why don't you give up on being a parish priest, it's clearly not what you're any good at, and go and find something academic to do instead? Or if you can't do that, because you've been such a failure academically, just get a job somewhere else, somewhere other than Mersea. Because you're crap, you've been a disaster. And if you can't get a job somewhere else because you're generally useless, find some other method to get out of our way. Abandon everything. Abandon your family – you're a pretty poor husband and father anyway. Just go. If all else fails, you could always kill yourself. The world will be better off without you taking up space.

This is spiritual warfare, no more, no less. This is what it is to struggle with the demons. Thanks be to God, I do have some gifting in this. And the unexpected separation from my family and freedom from work gave the freedom for this struggle to come out into the open – and the enemy overplayed his hand. He always does in the end. The Father of Lies cannot stop spinning the web of lies and in the end, even the more stubborn and obtuse of pilgrims realises the truth, and is then set free.

~~

It happened that Abba Moses the Ethiopian was struggling with the temptation of fornication. Unable to stay any longer in the cell, he went and told Abba Isidore. The old man exhorted him to return to his cell. But he refused, saying, "Abba, I cannot." Then Abba Isidore took Moses out onto the terrace and said to him, "Look towards the west." He looked and saw hordes of demons flying about and making a noise before launching an attack. Then Abba Isidore said to him, "Look towards the east." He turned and saw an innumerable multitude of holy angels shining with glory. Abba Isidore said, "See, these are sent by the Lord to the saints to bring them help, while those in the west fight against them. Those who are with us are more in number than they are." Then Abba Moses gave thanks to God, plucked up his courage, and returned to his cell.

~~

I had a very remarkable dream on holiday. It was in several parts, and even though I woke up in the middle of it, I was able to resume it quite easily, until it reached a natural conclusion.

The first part of the dream was based around the Yacht Club on Mersea. There was some sort of Boat Show going on, and there was a remarkable new motoryacht on display (I can remember the design very clearly – it was more of a spaceship than a yacht and it was not very seaworthy). I joined a queue of people who had lined up to see it, and realised that I was standing behind John Richardson.

~~

Several people have said to me – in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Sir Humphrey Appleby – that they see me as brave for being as open as I am on this blog. I can understand why they say that. It is indeed a risk – but a risk of what?

There is a cult of misplaced manliness that has hollowed out leadership into an empty shell. The formalities of the stiff-upper lip had much to commend them – but that was because in a living and sophisticated culture there were ways of signalling the underlying passion, without overwhelming the decencies. Now we live in a sodden flood-plain of disordered emotions, with several vessels washed up on the grass. The task is to make those stiff vessels sea-worthy again, which means wrestling those passions into submission. This is spiritual warfare, no more, no less.

We are enjoined to take the good shepherd as the pattern of our calling. He wept at the death of his friend. I believe that the disciples were helped by this.

~~

I suppose that writing these things is a way of helping me to take off the clothes of social respectability. I become naked.

And the weaver said, Speak to us of Clothes.
And he answered:
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment, for the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
Some of you say, "It is the north wind who has woven the clothes we wear."
And I say, Aye, it was the north wind, But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.
And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.
Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

~~

I found myself in the Palace of Westminster. I was in the commons chamber, sat next to a friend from University who is now an MP. I then moved into one of the halls in the Palace where I was queuing with an ex-girlfriend waiting to go into a black-tie/ball gown event. This rather rapidly segued into a scene in a dormitory, which was at one and the same time still in Westminster and also one of the dormitories I slept in at boarding school. There was a couple from Mersea in the dormitory at the same time. I realised that I didn't belong there, and I left.

~~

One of the blessings of not going on holiday in a timely fashion was that I was able to attend the funeral of my friend, mentor and therapist. That was good on many levels, one of which was simply to receive a good solid dose of Anglo-Catholic devotion, something which I feel short of.

In one of our last conversations we had talked about stopping therapy, and reverting to spiritual direction. Therapy is a very good thing, but it is no substitute for the hard spiritual labour which is the prerequisite for personal growth. I am feeling the need to concentrate more on that. I said to him that I felt therapy was starting to feel constraining – a requirement to navel-gaze when what I feel the need to do now is look outwards and engage. He said 'therapy could help with that!' - but I wasn't convinced.

The Lord has taken that decision out of our hands. I'm not going to seek another therapist. I am going to seek a new spiritual director, someone to walk with me on the way.

~~

I walked out of Westminster and found myself on the Hard – which is the harbour area near the Yacht club. The place was crowded, it was like the Regatta, and there was a game of football going on. I joined in with the football, but when I kicked the ball I discovered that it was a papier-mache sculpture (possibly a skull), and in kicking it I had damaged it. I am now very unpopular with the crowd, and I leave.

~~

The story is told that at the Monastery of St. George the Abbot was blessed with monks who did not have beautiful voices. The annual pilgrimage on the feast day of St. George was not very impressive with the rather awful sounds coming from the choir. So the Abbot called together all the monks and said, "Look, this year I am going to invite the famous choir from the cathedral for the feast." Word went out and thousands of people came to the Monastery of St. George for the feast day, and it was a glorious event. The famous choir from the cathedral was in superb form and used its best voices. The Abbot was thrilled and even the humble monks who were not allowed to sing that day were thrilled. Following the day's festivities the monks went off to sleep, and the Abbot was soon sound asleep after all the excitement of the day. While he was sleeping, St. George came to him and said, "Father, I think you missed my feast day! Today is my feast day and here you are, you didn't do anything. Have I not blessed you this past year?" And the Abbot said, "O, Saint George, I do not know where you were, but we had a glorious feast today. How could you not be here?" St. George said, "I was in the church and I saw a great multitude of people, but I heard nothing."

~~

The holiday was thoroughly restorative, not least because I was with people who had known me for a long time, for whom my recent angst and troubles meant very little – they were simply a few paragraphs in one chapter of a long story. I need my friends, and I need to make more time to see them. They help me to remember who I am.

~~

I find myself in an odd, dark church, and meet my training incumbent there. I make a slightly cynical remark about Archdiaconal duties and receive a frosty stare. I turn and see a small group of clergy kneeling at the altar sharing communion. I receive alongside them – but then the president starts to recite the prayer of consecration, having forgotten to do this earlier.

~~

“To uproot sin and the evil that is so embedded in our sinning can be done only by divine power, for it is impossible and outside man's competence to uproot sin. To struggle, yes, to continue to fight, to inflict blows, and to receive setbacks is in your power. To uproot, however, belongs to God alone. If you could have done it on your own, what would have been the need for the coming of the Lord? For just as an eye cannot see without light, nor can one speak without a tongue, nor hear without ears, nor walk without feet, nor carry on works without hands, so you cannot be saved without Jesus nor enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” St, Macarius, Homily 3.4

~~

I watched 'The Rite' recently - very good - but I loved this bit of dialogue from Anthony Hopkins: "At times I've experienced total loss of faith—day, months when I don't know what the hell I believe in—God or the devil, Santa Claus or Tinker Bell. Yet there's something that keeps digging and scraping away inside of me. Seems like God's fingernail. And finally, I can take no more of the pain and I get shoved out from the darkness into the light."

~~

One of the things that I have been working on most, in therapy and privately, is overcoming my fear of social disapproval. I've got the theology sorted, it's letting the lessons sink into the crevices of the heart which is difficult, and which takes time. I have no doubt that I am making progress, but like an old war-wound it occasionally flares up and I am plunged into old anger and darkness. This is spiritual warfare, no more, no less. This is the nature of the spiritual quest – to take our stony hearts and allow God to break them into flesh. It is not a simple or linear process. Then again, nor are trees – and they are beautiful in all their gnarled and weather-beaten complexity.

~~

The demons "are treacherous, and are ready to change themselves into all forms and assume all appearances. Very often also without appearing they imitate the music of harp and voice, and recall the words of Scripture. Sometimes, too, while we are reading they immediately repeat many times, like an echo, what is read. They arouse us from our sleep to prayers; and this constantly, hardly allowing us to sleep at all. At another time they assume the appearance of monks and feign the speech of holy men, that by their similarity they may deceive and thus drag their victims where they will. But no heed must be paid them even if they arouse to prayer, even if they counsel us not to eat at all even though they seem to accuse and cast shame upon us for those things which once they allowed. For they do this not for the sake of piety or truth, but that they may carry off the simple to despair; and that they may say the discipline is useless, and make men loathe the solitary life as a trouble and burden, and hinder those who in spite of them walk in it." (Athanasius)

~~

I have a bad habit of often withdrawing in the face of hostility, of avoiding conflict. That might seem false to those who only see the combative side of my character, but it is true nonetheless. “Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself! I am large, I contain multitudes.” I am coming to see that this is a significant root to one of the key challenges I face in the parish, and that deafness and introversion are contributory factors, not the determining ones.

The naming of demons is the first step in casting them out. In other words, there are things that I can do about this, and things that I will enjoy doing about this.

As for the combative side – it is somewhat exhausted now, and is resolved to rest for a while.

~~

I find myself being shown around a possible Rectory. It is in a poor area of Manchester, near where I spent a few months on placement. It is a flat, on the first and second floor. In talking to the parish representatives I feel full of enthusiasm for what can be done to grow the church and yet, as I walk around the flat, I realise that it would be impossible to make it a home for our family. I realise that the parish is not right for me.

~~

I have been restless and exploring my options but what is becoming ever clearer to me is that it is the accuser who seeks to drive me out. God, St Benedict and Eugene Peterson are unanimous in calling me to stabilitas. I think my family want that too.

Abba Isaiah said, "A beginner who goes from one monastery to another is like an animal who jumps this way and that, for fear of the halter."

~~

On holiday, I had one of my sleepless nights – one where I wake up in the small hours and find my brain processing at high speed. I am pondering Robert the Bruce's spider. The story is told to show how are to emulate the Bruce, and not be downcast at failure but simply to pick ourselves up, cast off the dust from our feet and move on. Yet I ponder the spider at the heart of the story. In truth, the spider doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. It has no capacity for changing its nature, and so it will simply keep on casting the web until it either succeeds or dies.

I take a lesson from this. We human beings are confused in our self-understandings. We think that our natures are infinitely malleable according to the pressures of our ego or wider society. We have not that creativity or strength. We are as God has made us and called us, from beginning to end.

I sometimes think that what I have been trying to be is a bird, because people have wanted me to build a nest out of twigs and leaves, somewhere in which cuckoos can be comfortable. This is difficult, because I am a spider, weaving a web of fine strands liable to be blown apart by a single flap of a bird's wing. The web is a fragile structure, and yet it can catch flies – even the Lord of the Flies. To be a spider and pretend to be a bird – I have a suspicion that this is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I need to reverence God's intentions more than I have been doing.

In other words, I need to concentrate on spinning the web, until I either succeed or die.

~~

John Barrowman, what a fine looking man.

~~

I have come to a place of much greater equanimity and spiritual calm. That is not to say that there are no longer any weeds in my spiritual garden – it is to say that after the thunderstorm and the rain the sun has come out, and it is time for me to start weeding and tending the flowers.

At previous times in my life, when I have been in a similar place, I would have said 'a new start!' 'new plans!' but now – I can't. I am realising that I am a passenger in my own life and I have no capacity to determine the course. My dream was all about vanities, and I believe those vanities have run their course. For now.

~~

In the last part of the dream, I am walking down a street in South London trying to find a funeral. A friend from school is giving me advice on a mobile phone, and promises to come and get me in his taxi if need be. But I find the church and go in. It is a calm and clean place. There are candles and incense. I realise that the deceased is my training incumbent, and the service is being taken by the Bishop of Colchester. The service is simple and traditional and I feel 'this is it' – this is what church must be. I leave the service feeling both satisfied but also wounded from two sudden bereavements.

~~

In all my wanderings through the spiritual darkness I have not felt separated from God. For most of my life I enjoy what could be called an 'HDTV' access to Him – guidance for the way forward has often been very clear and intimate. Yet through this recent darkness it is as if the connection has been by telegram – much reduced in information, yet still clear and understandable.

And what has God's message to me been, consistently through all this time. What has the voice of God been to me?

“Trust me.”

~~

~~

Captain America, remembering to be righteous

2011-08-19T11:18:00.000+01:00

Took my eldest to watch Cap the other day, I thought it was rather good.

As is often the case, I feel that popular culture is often more revealing than high culture of the moods and currents currently flowing in our civilisation.Captain America represents old values, things that we have forgotten.

This is the struggle that we face. An attempt to restore forgotten virtues in a culture that has become corrupted.From the 'ur-text' of "After Virtue":

...if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness that constitutes part of our predicament.

The reason why I like popular culture such as this is because here they are at least conscious of the problem, and seem able to explore it freely. (See here for an article about the riots, see here for a bit more on the mythology of Cap)

What is church?

2011-08-17T08:50:00.001+01:00

Stolen shamelessly from David Keen.

Models of the church (after Dulles)

2011-08-11T11:43:00.002+01:00

One of the surprises and delights of having a blog is making contact with people around the world. In particular, one very kind person in the United States sent me - some two years ago!! - a copy of Avery Dulles' "Models of the Church". To my shame I haven't finished reading it yet (about 1/4 left - which is how it has been for a while; now is clearly the time to finish it off) but I have grasped the main models. I thought it would be worth sharing them, as I want to pursue the discussion generated by yesterday's post in some detail.

Dulles outlines five ways of understanding what church is:

1 - the institution, which in practice means the officers and legal apparatus. This form identifies the actions of the Holy Spirit with the actions of the visible institution.
2 - mystical communion, an invisible but recognisable presence of the Holy Spirit, which unites the true church across denominational boundaries (and beyond).
3 - a sacrament, the outward sign of the inward grace, a principal means by which God's grace is made manifest in the world.
4 - a herald, the place where the gospel is proclaimed and the world is called to repentance, and a community is formed in response.
5 - a servant community, found wherever sacrificial love is acted out in places of need.

Each one of these ways of understanding the church contains important elements of what church needs to be; the issue is which one is given primacy in order to integrate the different elements.For me (and I think this is the way Dulles is going) the important element is the third - the sacramental model. I think this provides a proper balance between the first two, is dependent on the fourth in order to be valid (ie the gospel is rightly preached) and necessarily has the fifth as an outcome.

If the first is given priority you get sterile legalism, if the second is given priority you get lukewarm sentimentalism, if the fourth is given priority you get 'the ten thousand things' and if the fifth is given priority you get a renamed social services. If the generating impetus for the church is the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus then the nature of the church that he established has to reflect those realities. To my mind, this means that the sacramental understanding of the church - which is the only model which takes the incarnation seriously - has to have primacy.

This will underlie my other posts, forthcoming.

Do you need to attend church to be a Christian?

2011-08-10T14:06:00.001+01:00

Yes.

Unless, of course, you are more holy than Jesus. Jesus attended synagogue and the Temple rituals 'customarily' (Luke 4.16), so if it was worth it for him, then it's worth it for us.

This is not to say that we are forced to attend a church that spiritually murders us, it is to say that we need to be a little stricter about discriminating between spiritual murder and spiritual inconvenience. It is not possible to get to heaven by giving in to our own desires so often especially when such desires are, frankly, incredibly shallow.

What is church? Church is where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments duly administered. And yes, in order to be a Christian, you need to have a regular sacramental life. You need to be baptised, you need to share the bread and wine with your brothers and sisters in the name of Jesus.

Church is the gathering of believers for the particular purpose of renewing and refreshing their faith, which is accomplished by centreing our attention upon God and offering up to him the very best of ourselves, acknowledging that we are merely returning his original investment in us.

Christianity is not a solitary and private act. It is public and corporate. Fellowship is not an optional extra, it is constitutive. You cannot learn to love your enemies unless you take time to get to know them first.

Jesus had synagogue and the Temple. I'm coming to see house-groups (or equivalent) as the former, and Sunday morning as the latter. So many of the arguments and controversies we struggle with would be eased if we didn't try to make the Temple into the synagogue, or vice versa.

Being a Christian is not the same as being saved. It is not for us to put boundaries around the grace of God. But joining in with other people on the pilgrimage and path of faith, this is not an optional extra, this is of the very essence of the faith.

Football predictions

2011-08-08T15:03:00.001+01:00

Time for my annual speculation, in the form of a table with added notes

1. ManU [1]
2. Chelsea [2]
3. Man C
4. Liverpool [3]
5. Arsenal
6. Spurs
7. Everton [4]
8. Fulham
9. Sunderland
10. Villa
11. WBA
12. Newcastle
13. Bolton
14. Stoke
15. Naarwich [5]
16. Wolves
17. Wigan
18. Blackburn [6]
19. Swansea
20. QPR

Didn't do too badly last year - I thought that Hodgson would be more successful at Liverpool, and I didn't expect WHam to be such a disaster, but reasonable. Anyhow:

[1] They are the team to beat - by some distance. I hope SAF retires soon.
[2] Blind optimism.
[3] Highly dependent on Andy Carroll being injury-free.
[4] Not much to choose, as always, between the next several teams.
[5] Paul Lambert is obviously an excellent manager, simple as that.
[6] More blind optimism.

A different place

2011-08-07T13:43:00.000+01:00

Back from holiday, and feeling that, having been in one place, I have very much now travelled to a different one. Which is good. A handful of self-referential links:

My satnav and my God - this morning's sermon, which was more joyfully received than usual :)

Honi Soit qui Mal y Pense - me on phone-hacking, and the triumph of prurience.

How do we fight for what we believe in? - a slightly more considered reflection on Breivik.

There might be something long and ruminative later this week. On holiday I was completely without screens, I couldn't read books, I was with people that I loved and who loved me, and I had time to think and dream. It has done me the very world of good.

Anders Breivik's "Christianity"

2011-07-25T16:18:00.001+01:00

In his own words:

If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.

European Christendom isn’t just about having a personal relationship with Jesus or God. It is so much more. Christendom is identity, moral, laws and codexes which has produced the greatest civilisation the world has ever witnessed.

I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie. I’ve always been very pragmatic and influenced by my secular surroundings and environment.

As a cultural Christian, I believe Christendom is essential for cultural reasons. After all, Christianity is the ONLY cultural platform that can unite all Europeans, which will be needed in the coming period during the third expulsion of the Muslims.

As this is a cultural war, our definition of being a Christian does not necessarily constitute that you are required to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus. Being a Christian can mean many things: - That you believe in and want to protect Europe’s Christian cultural heritage. The European cultural heritage, our norms (moral codes and social structures included), our traditions and our modern political systems are based on Christianity - Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and the legacy of the European enlightenment (reason is the primary source and legitimacy for authority). It is not required that you have a personal relationship with God or Jesus in order to fight for our Christian cultural heritage and the European way. In many ways, our modern societies and European secularism is a result of European Christendom and the enlightenment. It is therefore essential to understand the difference between a “Christian fundamentalist theocracy” (everything we do not want) and a secular European society based on our Christian cultural heritage (what we do want). So no, you don’t need to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus to fight for our Christian cultural heritage. It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)). The PCCTS, Knights Templar is therefore not a religious organisation but rather a Christian “culturalist” military order.

There's lots more in the same vein.

I'm about to go away on holiday. I might have more to say about all this when I return, but it will be on my other more political blog - Gandalf's Hope.

Motive

2011-07-23T17:38:00.000+01:00

If it turns out that he's "a right-wing Christian fundamentalist" and those doctrines provided a motive for his behaviour then such doctrines need to be denounced and combatted. In just the same way that the doctrines that give rise to terrorists shouting 'Allahu Ackbar' also need to be denounced and combatted. Of course, that would expose a contradiction at the heart of our society - or, perhaps more accurately, a self-hatred. Muslims etc are victims of the oppressive West, therefore they are on the side of the angels. This Norwegian nutter is an expression of the oppressive West, therefore he is on the side of the devils.

Perhaps there are all sorts of mitigating circumstances and doubtless we will come up with all sorts of explanations but in the end evil is as evil does and he is responsible to the Almighty for what he has done.

Why, O LORD, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak,
who are caught in the schemes he devises.
He boasts of the cravings of his heart;
he blesses the greedy and reviles the LORD.
In his pride the wicked does not seek him;
in all his thoughts there is no room for God.
His ways are always prosperous;
he is haughty and your laws are far from him;
he sneers at all his enemies.
He says to himself, Nothing will shake me;
I'll always be happy and never have trouble.
His mouth is full of curses and lies and threats;
trouble and evil are under his tongue.
He lies in wait near the villages;
from ambush he murders the innocent, watching in secret for his victims.
He lies in wait like a lion in cover;
he lies in wait to catch the helpless;
he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net.
His victims are crushed, they collapse;
they fall under his strength.
He says to himself, God has forgotten;
he covers his face and never sees.
Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself, He won't call me to account?
But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;
call him to account for his wickedness that would not be found out.
The LORD is King for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his land.
You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.

Psalm 10, NIV

(NB for a flavour of what I'm guessing is part of his motivation, do some research on Fjordman and read his writings. They are very interesting and have been very influential.)

Have you ever Googled yourself?

2011-07-23T00:00:00.003+01:00

... and discovered something really very interesting?

Strangers from Sam Norton on Vimeo.

More here.

A dinner party meme

2011-07-20T17:33:00.004+01:00

Haven't seen any memes for a while, so I thought I'd start one: have a dinner party!

Rules: you have to have 12 people, including yourself. Of those there need to be at least four men, at least four women, at least four known to you personally and at least four who are "famous". You're not allowed anyone who has passed on to the great hereafter - that would be a rather different sort of party. It needs to be one that might plausibly 'work' (ie don't just pile people together). You also need to choose a place/ style of food.

Here's my starter (in a manner of speaking)

Me
My wife
My best man
His wife

Matt Burrows

Liz Burrows

Rowan Williams
Jane Williams
Jonathan Ross
Jane Goldman
Neil Gaiman
Catherine Tate

And we'd eat at Rules, and we'd have some stonkingly wonderful Burgundy.

And I tag - anyone who wants to join in. Which, given the state of the blogosphere at the moment, is likely to be a very small number....

The sin of grumbling

2011-07-19T08:00:00.000+01:00

So having resolved to stop complaining, I confess to regressing in recent days.

Complaining is a sin. Perhaps not a major one like pride or greed but it is probably worse than lust which is what much of our Anglican Communion kerfuffles revolve around. It's born ultimately from two things: a frustrated sense of entitlement, and a lack of faith.

The frustrated sense of entitlement is triggered when reality and expectation start to diverge in a significant manner. It is 'My God My God why have you forsaken me?' Yet we are not promised an easy life, we are in fact promised the opposite: "God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers." Christians have no grounds for a sense of entitlement. It's all grace, it's all gift, and the appropriate response is thanksgiving and the counting of blessings. I resolve to improve, and my penance is to say the General Thanksgiving every morning until my heart is turned.

The lack of faith is even deeper. Faith and doubt are not opposites, faith and fear are opposites, and grumbling and complaining are centred in a fear of not achieving our heart's desires, a lack of trust in God's goodness and provision for us. It is the desire to achieve our own ends, and not surrender to God's intentions for us. It is the Israelites running from the Egyptians and not listening to Moses saying 'The Lord shall fight for you and ye shall hold your peace'. I resolve to improve, and my penance is to sing this hymn each morning until my heart is turned:

Forth in thy Name, O Lord, I go,
my daily labor to pursue;
thee, only thee, resolved to know
in all I think or speak or do.

The task thy wisdom hath assigned,
O let me cheerfully fulfill;
in all my works thy presence find,
and prove thy good and perfect will.

Thee may I set at my right hand,
whose eyes mine inmost substance see,
and labor on at thy command,
and offer all my works to thee.

Give me to bear thy easy yoke,
and every moment watch and pray,
and still to things eternal look,
and hasten to thy glorious day.

For thee delightfully employ
whate'er thy bounteous grace hath given;
and run my course with even joy,
and closely walk with thee to heav'n.

(Wesley. Of course)

Alive and kicking

2011-07-18T14:19:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know, there is more to a good blog that just continually posting YouTube videos but in the words of a good book recommended to me by my dear departed friend F**k it

You lift me up to the crucial top, so I can see
Oh you lead me on, till the feelings come
And the lights that shine on
But if that don't mean nothing
Like if someday it should fall through
You'll take me home where the magic's from
And I'll be with you

Pray for the Church of England

2011-07-17T16:31:00.003+01:00

I'm feeling a bit sad this afternoon.

A fellow priest, close to me, and very important to me, dropped dead of a heart attack last Thursday. I discovered this a few minutes before taking a 9.30 Communion service this morning. In God's strange provision I had material on hand for offering up an intention for the mass, which I found tremendously helpful

Everlasting God, our maker and redeemer,
grant us, with all the faithful departed,
the sure beneﬁts of your Son’s saving passion and glorious resurrection,
that, in the last day, when you gather up all things in Christ,
we may with them enjoy the fullness of your promises;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen

Life is so short and so precious, and poised to end at any moment. It really is a frightening waste and blasphemy to spend our time on anything other than what God is calling us to do. And yet - doing just that is hardly straightforward.

I think it's called carrying our cross.

It's also called working for the church.

We are called to love the church, and I believe that completely - but it needs to be a clear-sighted love, for only such love might resource the cleansing of blemishes and the enabling of holy work. It is not 'my country right or wrong' - for if we are destined to judge the angels surely we can exercise some form of discrimination with regard to our own internal life?

At General Synod we hear that by 2020 the Church will be dead (good analysis of underlying trajectory here, the Synod story contains all sorts of assumptions). We have lots of schemes and ideas and we run around chasing our tails because we have lost sight of the one thing needful. We're in a complete funk about sexuality - whether it's homosexuality or the gender of the episcopate - a subject on which Jesus said very little. We forget this, because we're not sat at his feet. When we do respond to promptings of the Spirit we don't follow through on them. I believe that the Church of England is living through a period of chastisement - that we are being pruned in order that we might become more fruitful - but I am less and less confident that the established CofE is a part of the fruitful future (whereas I AM convinced that Anglican theology is part of that future).

It is the response to the pruning which is so dispiriting. We spill our blood keeping the show on the road, when God is more and more clearly asking us to change the show (not the content but the form). If we are to be the Church of England we need to recognise that England is not what it was, in so many diverse and mutually contradictory ways. I think there is a reason why I don't know many happy incumbents, for incumbency drives out priesthood - we are the shamanic cruise directors on the proverbial sinking ship. The church - this beloved institution - has become monstrously abusive and doesn't even realise it.

Father forgive her, for she knows not what she does.

We no longer know what we are here for. We don't know what we are doing or why we are doing it. We have become entangled in the worship of Mammon and are choking. With you is my contention O Priest!!!

What I want is to know the gladness and sadness of the gospel and to share the conversation of God with others and for others. Please pray for the Church of England, that she might be recalled to her vocation, that she might remember her beauty in the sight of God.

And pray for me, a sinner too.

In the meantime, I shall listen to Mr Mumford:

Because I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it's meant to be

And I will hold on hope
And I won't let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again

On the reassurance of Angelina Jolie

2011-07-17T08:41:00.000+01:00

Ok, let's start with a controversial thesis: Angelina Jolie is gorgeous

Next part of the argument: her father isn't so much

But the family resemblance is clearly there.

This is something I've noticed - daughters can often resemble their fathers, whilst still being gorgeous.

I call this 'the reassurance of Angelina Jolie'.

Priesthood

2011-07-14T17:10:00.000+01:00

Some good stuff here (via Justin)

"Mission Priests don’t confuse faith in the Gospel with a soft assent to its social principles or moral utility. Rather, they know the veracity of the Gospel through first-hand experience. For many, faith was strengthened when they changed careers and entered seminary. Enduring the patronizing and petty atmosphere of “theological school” clarified the eyes of their soul. Facing down and even defeating parish antagonists and persecutors revealed the strength of the Gospel and cemented their conviction once and for all...
"Mission Priests are fearful. They fear losing their communion with God by being caught up in the things of this world. They worry about losing their courage in the coercion and compromise of ecclesiastical politics...

"Finally, the Mission Priest refuses to conform to false expectations of a priestly personality type imposed by others. God has called him — not the Parish Council, not a benefactor, not his boyhood parish priest, not even the Bishop. And God made us different. Each priest has a distinct role and service in the Church. In the end, only God may judge his faithfulness."

I also liked this reminder of one of my favourite books (and the writer could have written the above):
"Most pastoral work actually erodes prayer. The reason is obvious: people are not comfortable with God in their lives’...‘And so pastors, instead of practicing prayer, which brings people into the presence of God, enter into the practice of messiah: we will do the work of God for God, fix people up, tell them what to do, conspire in finding the shortcuts by which the long journey to the Cross can be bypassed since we all have such crowded schedules right now. People love us when we do this..."

The Collar

2011-07-09T08:45:00.001+01:00

I struck the board, and cried, "No more;

I will abroad!

What? shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free, free as the road,

Loose as the wind, as large as store.

Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me blood, and not restore

What I have lost with cordial fruit?

Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn

Before my tears did drown it.

Is the year only lost to me?

Have I no bays to crown it,

No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?

All wasted?

Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,

And thou hast hands.

Recover all thy sigh-blown age

On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute

Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,

Thy rope of sands,

Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee

Good cable, to enforce and draw,

And be thy law,

While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.

Away! take heed;

I will abroad.

Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;

He that forbears

To suit and serve his need

Deserves his load."

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild

At every word,

Methought I heard one calling, Child!

And I replied My Lord.

(George Herbert - found via here)

Evil suffers a (small) setback

2011-07-07T17:16:00.000+01:00

This is going to be a bit of a rant, and I'll probably wish I hadn't written it tomorrow... BUT

I'm glad the News of the World is shutting down. I generally see the tabloid newspapers as being a physical embodiment of many of the worst aspects of human nature (and not just because I've been bitten by them, it long predates that). To put that in a less wordy fashion, I think the tabloids are evil. I think they serve the Enemy. And now, for one brief and no-doubt temporary moment, the bright white light of public scrutiny has been turned on to those who have caused or colluded in wickedness and we are revolted by what we see. Thank God we still have some moral substance in us.

No doubt there were good and conscientious Germans who worked hard for the Nazi regime and never personally murdered a Jew, but who were out of a job when the camps shut down. Yes, an extreme analogy, but the difference is only one of scale. Never forget that the Nazis were enabled to pursue their policies because they had first whipped up the scapegoating process, and it is precisely that evil scapegoating process that the tabloids specialise in.

So I am glad of heart. I don't care that this will be cynically manipulated by Murdoch and that we will soon have the Sun seven days a week. For one brief moment evil has suffered a setback. Today is a good day.

Contrary to Scripture?

2011-07-07T09:21:00.000+01:00

John Richardson left a comment on my Jeffrey John post arguing that JJ "teaches a position contrary to Scripture". I don't believe this to be true - or, rather, I believe that this way of characterising the debate begs the question at issue.

Take the eating of shellfish, which is described as an abomination in Leviticus 11. This prohibition is overturned in the New Testament, most especially through Peter's vision and the subsequent discussion in Jerusalem (Acts 11).

Does this change represent a change of detail or a change of method? That is, is this simply a case of amending a law code, leaving everything else as it stands - and, therefore, the 'structure of righteousness' as it stands? Or is this a demonstration of a new kind of authority, ie accepting 'it seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us' as of higher authority than the written law? So the gathered church has the authority to determine what is acceptable to God and what is not?

To say that JJ's teaching is 'contrary to Scripture' is to assume the first to be the case. That is, at the very least, a debatable point - but what I want to emphasise here is that arguing in the way that JJ does is NOT 'contrary to Scripture', it is to interpret Scripture in a different way, one which is at least as grounded in the long Christian tradition as the post-Reformation emphases. Does anyone else find it odd that the Christian tradition that has most emphasised 'sola gratia' is the one that is most insistent on a legalistic understanding of Scripture in this debate?

Jeffrey John

2011-07-05T13:06:00.001+01:00

Came across this picture at Ruth Gledhill's blog, and thought it very striking.

I greatly admire Jeffrey John. He is someone who has immense gifts which he has given to the church in loving service. In return he has been betrayed, abused and calumnied - and he has not given up. He continues to serve the church with loyalty, grace and dignity. He's an example to all of us, and a bit of a hero for me. I hope that one day the CofE can get over itself sufficiently to let him exercise a greater degree of leadership.

I read this yesterday, and I suspect it lies behind John's approach -

"I'm sure there are ministers who are treated abominably by churches, just as I am sure that there are churches that are treated abominably by ministers, but the former, at least, has never been my experience. We have so many continuing and precious friendships from both these churches and, indeed, from so many other churches that in less prominent ways have been part of our story. I have little patience with ministers who moan about churches: Jesus loved the Church and gave himself up on the Cross for the Church (Eph 5.25); the Church is precious to him and the Church should always be precious to us." (John Colwell, 'Why have you forsaken me?')

TBTM20110704

2011-07-04T11:52:00.002+01:00

Well it's been a while.

Music

2011-07-04T09:25:00.000+01:00

Thinking a great deal about music at the moment, under many different aspects, and came across this poem in a wonderful collection given to me by a friend. This is by Rabia of Basra, translated by Daniel Ladinsky:

IT ACTS LIKE LOVE

It acts like love - music,

it reaches towards the face, touches it, and tries to let you know

His promise: that all will be okay.

It acts like love - music, and

tells the feet, "You do not have to be so burdened."

My body is covered with wounds

this world made,

but I still longed to kiss Him, even when God said,

"Could you also kiss the hand that caused

each scar,

for you will not find me until

you do."

It does that - music - helps us

to forgive.

I'm still standing

2011-07-04T09:15:00.001+01:00

Various bloggers taking a break.

My plans are the opposite.

I have various thoughts about where I want to take this main blog: it will continue on the autobiographical/ ministerial/ theological ramblings, but is likely to be a little sharper and (from September) more regular. I feel as if I've been retreating for quite some time, and now discover that my back is to the wall. So the only way is forwards. Onwards and up 'em.

My political stuff - which needs cordoning off in order to preserve polite relations with my friends - is here, and my plan is to write something considered once a week, most probably on Friday mornings.

My published articles (still Courier for now) are archived here - updated approximately once a fortnight.

Sermons and other talks will be posted here episodically.

They all have RSS feeds, please do subscribe...

Jack Reacher

2011-07-02T18:11:00.000+01:00

Have just read the first two Jack Reacher novels. They're good. They're readable. The writer likes short sentences. He has to keep things moving. There will be gunfights. The hero will fall in love. And the hero moves on in the end.

Rocks and beer

2011-07-02T15:59:00.002+01:00

This was chosen by a family at a funeral I took recently. Hadn't come across it before, but I thought it was worth sharing...

A philosophy professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, rocks about 2" in diameter.

He then asked the students if the jar was full? They agreed that it was.
So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He then asked once more if the jar was full. This time the students were sure and they responded with a unanimous "YES!"

The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and proceeded to pour their entire contents into the jar -- effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things - your family, your partner, your health, your children, things that, if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car".

The sand is everything else. The small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued "there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you".

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. Do something for the community. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal.

"Take care of the rocks first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers."

Film notes

2011-07-02T15:58:00.000+01:00

This covers two months

Prince Of Persia - 3/5 Fun
The Sorceror's Apprentice - 3/5 Better than expected
Aliens in the Attic 3/5
The King's Speech - 5/5 A better balanced and more thoroughly excellent film than I thought it might be; a little bit more than oscar-bait
The Time Traveller's Wife - 3/5 - now I know where Russell Davies got his ideas from
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - 5/5 - wonderful and memorable. I liked it so much that I bought (and read) the trilogy it was based on. The next two are on order from LoveFilm.
Machete - 3/5 Silly
Race to Witch Mountain 3/5
Tamara Drewe 3/5 I want to give it more as there were some lovely moments but...
The Green Hornet 4/5 Did it for me
Monsters 5/5 One of the best sf/horror type films I've ever seen. Not perfect but a stunning achievement for $15k. We are the monsters - not an original idea but incredibly well executed. The only flaw was the occasional longueur, but I'm sure it will be one of my films of the year.
X-Men: First Class 4/5 Good, solid Marvel. Interplay between Eric and Charles gives it the extra point.
The Green Lantern 3/5 Competent, but it was DC...

The act, not the object

2011-06-23T19:05:00.000+01:00

I can't let Corpus Christi go by without my annual rant.

We worship a God who is known in relationship, who is within himself, relational.

Wouldn't the principal form of worship of said God therefore, surely, be relational too?

That is - we meet God, we come into the real presence of Jesus Christ, through the re-enactment of certain sorts of behaviour, within which reconciliation and adoration are combined?

So as we are welcomed to share in the bread and wine, so we are welcomed to the taste of heaven?

So Jesus is met in the action of a shared meal - not in the object of a piece of bread.

Jesus is not a commodity.

Jesus is not produced at our command.

That is the spirituality of western consumerism.

That is the spirituality that has ravaged the world and despises the poor.

That is the symbol of all that has gone wrong in our faith.

Grrrr.....

Let us be human - book draft available, comments invited

2011-06-22T18:22:00.001+01:00

For the last several years I've been working - in whatever gaps from the daily grind I can find! - on a book exploring the resource crisis from a Christian point of view. More precisely, what I'm trying to do is understand what is going on, and why, and trace the origins of the crisis to particular theological shifts - and therefore recommending certain theological (ie worship) solutions. So it's not a 'use less petrol' sort of book, more a 'pray more to God' sort of book, even though it opens with Peak Oil and the Limits to Growth.

I would benefit from a sustained conversation with a professional editor but I haven't been able to get a UK publisher interested - popular theology isn't really a commercial proposition in the UK. I thought it might be of interest to people here.

Anyhow, enough preamble send me an e-mail if you want to read it! (I've taken down the direct link so that I can do some more work)

I'd be delighted if anyone actually read it and commented :) I've had very useful and constructive criticism from some friends already and I'm hoping to have the time to incorporate responses to their insights in the summer.

I am the one who is very blessed

2011-06-22T13:53:00.001+01:00

Thinking realistically...

I am 40 years old - many don't live that long.
I have been married for 13 years and I still love my wife - many marriages don't last.
I have four healthy and happy children - many can't have children, many lose their children.
I have a safe and comfortable home - many are homeless.
I am financially secure - many are overwhelmed by financial problems.
I have a job which, despite problems, I basically love - many cannot find any work, let alone something so vocational.
I have faith in God, which enables a profound engagement with life - many find their lives meaningless.
I have hope for the future - many know only despair.

I believe that there are kings in previous centuries who would be envious of my life.

Surely, I am the one who is very blessed.

(So stop complaining Sam!)

I am the one who is very hopeful

2011-06-20T08:46:00.000+01:00

Why do you complain, Jacob?
   Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD;
   my cause is disregarded by my God”?
Do you not know?
   Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
   and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
   and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.

Hallelujah...

2011-06-20T08:41:00.002+01:00

A taste of our very successful Friends concert from Saturday night.

You were always on my mind (confessions of an introvert parish priest)

2011-06-16T17:13:00.000+01:00

One way in which it is possible to discern truth is that it is something that sets you free. The peacock just can't be kept down forever...

So I was listening to this song, shortly after a particular conversation about my ministry, and I thought 'this is it!'

Maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I never took the time
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind

Long term readers of this blog will know that I have struggled much with the nature of parish ministry. I think there are problems associated with the nature of the work itself; and then there are problems that are peculiar to me.

The problems that are associated with the nature of the work itself have been thoroughly considered elsewhere, and, really, that book needs to be read by anyone interested in the topic.

So this is about me. There are some things I'm good at, and there are some things I'm definitely not good at - and something I'm becoming comfortable accepting is that one of the things that I'm not good at is something close to being essential in a parish priest.

What is the difference between having a conversation with someone in the Rectory, who has come to discuss something important, and having that same conversation with someone in their own home? Well, one I find straightforward, I enjoy doing it (I think I'm reasonably good at it) and the other - well, there's the rub. I find it difficult to go out and be with people in their own homes.

I realise that in order to go out I need an excuse and a structure. So, for example, I find it straightforward to take Holy Communion to the housebound. I enjoy that, I find it a very fulfilling element of my ministry, there's never any 'issue' with this - because I have an excuse for going there, and there is a structure for what to do when I'm there. It's as if I need a comfort blanket, something to fend off all the shyness and insecurity and fear of rejection. Something to hide behind.

Now this is a bit of a problem when you're the parish priest and people have a natural expectation that the priest will be happy to just call in and talk. I wonder whether the George Herbert stuff was (in part) just a smoke screen - I couldn't quite articulate what the deepest problems were and fastened on a superficial explanation as an interim place to stand.

It has given rise to some problems, and I'm sure it's why there has been an "incredibly vicious campaign" against me in the town (not my words, although I don't doubt the truth).

You always wanted me to be something I wasn't
You always wanted too much, oh, oh
Now I can do what I want to - forever
How am I gonna get through?
How am I gonna get through?

I think if I was more of a natural people-person, someone who was able to press the flesh and talk the small talk and socialise and schmooze then many of the problems would have been dealt with more readily. I just can't do that - even just thinking about it is exhausting, and I have enough of an issue with tiredness as it is. The fundamental issue is one of introversion (this is quite a good article if you're unfamiliar with that jargon. Though I disagree that hell is other people. Hell is the school playground when you're waiting for your children to emerge). I used to think it was deafness, and how that links in I'm not sure - whether one came first or whether they were formed together, I don't know. I am quite profoundly introverted and... I'm OK with that. This is how God made me. What it means, however, is that there are always going to be times when the shoe pinches. Times when the expectations and desires clash rather strongly. Or to put it differently, I'm coming to accept that the answer to this question that I posed is 'No'.

And there are implications to that acceptance.

And that's alright.

I want to run, I want to hide
I want to break down the walls that hold me inside
I want to reach out, and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

(By the way, the use of Pet Shop Boys videos is by way of extending a middle finger in the direction of a certain unmentionably awful tabloid newspaper that got caught up in the campaign and who thought that liking the Pet Shop Boys was conclusive proof of my general inadequacy. As one kind person put it 'anyone who has been monstered by the Daily [Flail] is alright by me....')

I am the one who is very tired

2011-06-10T10:47:00.002+01:00

Absolutely brilliant poem about being a vicar here. Do go and read it.

Tubthumping

2011-06-01T15:48:00.000+01:00

The whale has vomited me on to the beach. Time to head for Nineveh.

Is it possible to both be a Bishop and to tell the truth?

2011-05-30T15:56:00.000+01:00

A genuine question, in the light of what has been revealed about the Southwark process. (NB I think the leak says as much about Colin Slee's agenda as about anything else, and I happen to have great admiration and affection for the man eventually appointed, but my question remains.)

If it be your will

2011-05-30T14:39:00.000+01:00

I randomly picked up a Vanity Fair the other day, to discover celebrated atheist Christopher Hitchens talking about 'If it be your will'.

There is a slight irony there. It is at least a possibility that Hitch is unaware of it...

It's a song I'm finding comforting at the moment:

If it be your will

That I speak no more

And my voice be still

As it was before

I will speak no more

I shall abide until

I am spoken for

If it be your will

That a voice be true

From this broken hill

I will sing to you

From this broken hill

All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will

To let me sing

From this broken hill

All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will

To let me sing

There are reasons for my lack of posting recently.

Some time soon I'll talk about them.

Short thoughts 3 - "New Atheism"

2011-05-10T10:48:00.000+01:00

UPDATE: this is starting on Saturday; if any Mersea people want to join in there are a few places left - just let me know.

This is just a plug - I've agreed to do a course, spread across two Saturdays next May, exploring the "New Atheism" - what it is, where it's from, what's wrong with it, how Christians should respond to it, etc etc.

It will run 10-4 on Saturdays 14th and 21st May, at West Mersea Church Hall.

Details:

PURPOSE / AIM of module:
To familiarise students with the main arguments and methods of the “New Atheists”, to understand where they stand in intellectual history, and to have renewed understanding of - and confidence in - the classical Christian intellectual tradition.

General - including COURSE CONTENT
Six main teaching sessions spread over the two Saturdays, plus time for small groups and plenary discussions. The six teaching sessions are expected to cover:
Introduction/Overview, with especial attention to Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion'
Philosophical roots 1: Hume and Logical Positivism
Philosophical roots 2: Locke and the ethics of religious belief
Theological roots: the Christian origins of atheism
Different types of theism: classical and personal
How should a Christian respond to an atheist?

TARGET GROUP – including prior experience needed etc.
No prior philosophical expertise will be assumed for this course, just an interest in the subject matter to be covered – all technical terms will be fully explained. It would be helpful if participants had read Dawkins' 'God Delusion' or a similar book before coming on the course.

For a flavour of my approach to these questions, have a look at my 'Reasonable Atheism' series of posts, which are listed here.

Chauffeur or Mechanic?

2011-05-09T12:11:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about ministry, and what sorts of ministry are possible in different circumstances, and came up with this analogy:

Some parishes are like well-conditioned cars. The fundamentals are in place and working, and what is needed from an incumbent is to keep the parish moving in an established direction, making sure that the passengers are comfortable and looked after ('feed my sheep'). Call this the 'chauffeur'.

Other parishes are like cars that have broken down. They need someone to come in and examine the engine - possibly taking it apart and putting it back together again - in order that the parish can then get back to forward motion - which is, after all, what the car is for. Call this the 'mechanic'.

If a chauffeur is appointed to a parish needing a mechanic, then the incumbent will be criticised for drift and inertia, for letting things slide.

If a mechanic is appointed to a parish needing a chauffeur, then the incumbent will be criticised for reckless meddling and needless controversy.

A bad chauffeur will keep the show on the road at the expense of necessary maintenance, storing up problems for the long run.

A bad mechanic will perpetually tear up the plant by its roots and prevent long-term growth in both numbers and knowledge of God.

Of course, both parishes and incumbents are mixtures, but I think the contrast can do helpful work.

For myself, I think I am temperamentally more of a mechanic than a chauffeur, although I can do both (and the church which seems to be most healthy at the moment is the one where I have hardly had to do any mechanical work at all). I think I've done some good mechanical work here - despite the occasional engine blow-up - and whilst there are definitely some mechanical issues remaining, my sense is that the chauffeur skills are going to be needed more in the future.

(Question - what is the engine in a church? and what are the other essential bits, like the transmission and the exhaust...)

Of course, the Church of England as a whole is - in my ever so humble opinion - a broken down car at the moment, however effective it seemed to be at that wedding the other day...

Well that was woeful

2011-05-09T11:49:00.000+01:00

One the one hand, it's great that Chelsea have climbed back as far as they have - on the other, that was a scarily poor performance. Chelsea didn't lose the title yesterday, they lost it back in the autumn. We are very much in transition.

- I hope Ancelotti stays, even though I think he is culpable for some of what has gone wrong. I just don't see yet more upheaval as being beneficial in the long run.
- We need to sell Drogba, not because of any inherent fault or weakness in him, but because we now have Torres and lots of other players who can play in a similar fashion (eg Sturridge, even Anelka) - in other words, we can make the team independent of any single player, however good they are. That seems to be ManU's distinctive strength - and certainly what has enabled them to claim the title this year.
- We need someone to generate spark in the final third (doesn't every team?). So as my final thought, why don't we ring up our old boss and say 'would you accept Drogba plus a large wodge of cash for Kaka?'

Film Notes

2011-05-04T13:00:00.000+01:00

Significantly fewer films this last month - partly due to general busyness, aka Easter, partly because I've been playing Dragon Age: Origins, which is remarkable (and thanks to blog-reader The Observer for recommending it, if memory serves me right) - it is due a long post of its own, once I have properly grokked it.

Silent Hill 3/5 had its moments
Secretariat 3/5 good family stuff
Piranha 2/5 Oh Elizabeth Shue, what has become of you?
Port of Call: New Orleans 3/5 I might have missed the point of this one
The Sorceror's Apprentice 4/5 above average
Source Code 4/5 very interesting sf
Thor 4/5 right up my street :)

George Monbiot is still in techno-thrall

2011-05-04T11:50:00.000+01:00

A moderately interesting article from George Monbiot arguing that "The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal...."

This is daft, on several levels. Monbiot ignores:
- the problem of EROEI, meaning that substituting in tar sands and shale gas etc delivers less net energy than light, sweet oil;
- the problem of infrastructure - all the existing petrol stations, internal combustion engines and (to a lesser extent) highways that are geared around the easy availability of light, sweet oil, which can't be rapidly altered;
- the financial meltdown, making long-term finance much more problematic;
- the export-land problem, meaning that exports of oil will decline much more rapidly than production;
- he assumes that the further alternatives he mentions are technologically, politically and financially feasible within a fairly short time-frame;
- he ignores the political melt-down and wars that will be sparked by the inequitable division of resources;
and so on.

I agree that poor people will chop down trees if they have nothing else to go on. Sadly, we're all going to end up with 'nothing else to go on' - in a sense, the future of the environment depends upon how quickly men kill other men as compared to how quickly men kill the trees and the fish.

It's a very weird feeling to have given lectures describing all these consequences several years ago (insights not original to me, for the most part), and to watch things now taking place in the way expected, and to still have people denying the situation. This is why our civilisation is breaking down - it's still too insulated from reality.

Respecting grim satisfaction

2011-05-03T10:51:00.000+01:00

Osama Bin Laden is dead, and there seems to be rejoicing at that fact, a sort of 'ha, he got what was coming to him!' I can understand the idea that this is not Christian - the rejoicing in the death of any human being seems incompatible with Christianity. Yet I don't see an incompatibility between accepting that and also accepting that the death of OBL was something to be pursued. It ties in with the wider pacifism/ Christendom arguments, on which topic I am someone who accepts the theology of 'just war' (and accept that this is a language that has often been abused to justify the unjustifiable). The core issue, for me, is about how to live in a fallen world. I accept the need for some to witness to the higher truth of pacifism as a specific calling (eg the Quakers), but for the general order of humanity I don't see a problem in accepting violence, in specific contexts, as a lesser sin than the alternative. In a fallen world there are situations where no right choice is possible, as with Sophie's Choice. As my ethics tutor at university so memorably put it 'Hitler had to be stopped'. Quite so. Grim satisfaction seems the appropriate response.

The most important thing for a Christian, as I see it, is not to become persuaded of 'righteous violence', in other words, to still see the resort to violence as sin and in need of forgiveness and redemption. The tightrope might appear absurd, but it really is possible to walk on it.

4613

2011-04-24T09:34:00.001+01:00

I have 4613 unread posts on my feed-reader (the Flock sidebar). I gave up my feed-reader, along with Twitter and Facebook, for Lent. My mind is boggled by how much stuff I was reading before! That's well over a hundred posts a day. It's been a good break - not a total break from reading every blog, just about 95% of them - although it would have been even better if life hadn't been so busy. Had the strangest holy week ever - but that is a story for another time.

4613!! (blooming 'eck, I didn't quite say)

UPDATE: I thought I'd say a bit more on this, following a Facebook question from Archdruid Eileen about how much time it takes up. Bear in mind that a) I read very fast, b) I skim-read vast swathes of posts and c) some of it I only access on my day off. So my concern about it wasn't about the amount of time it was taking up (maybe an hour a day) it was more about the 'crowding out' effect, which I mean in two senses. The first is that by consuming so much information, I wasn't digesting what I was reading, and I felt that this was unbalanced. The second, linked point is that the time that I was reading blogs was time that I wasn't reading books. In other words, I don't think that my time reading adjusted very much between discovering a feed-reader and not, it's just that what I was reading shifted - away from books and towards the internet. I feel that this is a lower quality diet, so I'm going to change my reading habits - and a great number of blogs (a lot of them church-related) I'm going to quietly drop...

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T06:39:00.000+01:00

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!

Music in worship: consumption or conversation?

2011-04-19T13:02:00.000+01:00

From the May 2011 edition of Third Way magazine:

"...I went on going to church and I think I had the same values, only no longer quite with belief behind them. I went on with church music, which I liked a lot. Religious music still moves me, in a way that I suppose it shouldn't, if you like. It's not something that a Christian would think of as religion, but it's a substitute." (Professor John Carey)

I think Professor Carey articulates something very important to understand: that it is possible to appreciate religious music (or art or whatever) in such a way as to gain some benefit from it, even spiritual benefit - but this is not the same as worship. I think I would want to describe the difference as being between a consumer of religiously flavoured produce and being engaged in a conversation with something other than our own desires and perspectives. It is the latter that counts as worship, not the former.

Seminary obituary?

2011-04-19T11:53:00.000+01:00

Several people have linked to this interesting article, asking whether seminary education has a future. I haven't got time to write a full response - maybe after Easter - but I want to point out three sources of tension:

- there is a tension between forming priests and training theological academics. The latter has a part to play in the former but if the distinction is ever obscured then it is the training for the priesthood which comes off worse;

- there is a tension between academic theology and mystical theology, between an intellectual enterprise that can be pursued by people of any faith and of none, and the intellectual enterprise which is pursued within a self-reflective community of faith. It is essential for priests to be thoroughly trained in the latter, the former is much less essential;

- there is a tension between the residential formation of priests, allowing for the overview and shaping of a whole person, and the non-residential training of priests which, by default, must end up concentrating on what can be assessed at a distance. The latter is not the same as the former.

As with many things, I can't help but feel that the CofE suffers from confused thinking, backing into situations that it hasn't planned for and then becoming bewildered by the consequences.

More anon.

Poor Ollie

2011-04-11T13:40:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago Ollie managed to snap the cruciate ligament in his right knee, and had surgery to correct it. Unfortunately he then managed to tear the sutures inside the wound, which meant that his kneecap started wandering around. He had a second operation last Friday to correct this, and has since been in this heavy bandage and confined, not just to the house, but often to a cage in my study, to inhibit exercise. Please send up some thoughts or prayers for him, he's getting lots of love for all of us, but he's still a poor sorry beastie!

Film Notes

2011-04-09T08:52:00.000+01:00

The Disappearance of Alice Creed 5/5 marvellous demonstration of what can be achieved on a small budget, very clever
Cop Out - 3/5 Bruce Willis was miscast
The Blind Side - 5/5 very good
The Other Guys - 3/5 meh
Easy A - 5/5 very well written, and as I'm a massive John Hughes fan, I loved the references...
Four Lions - 4/5 agreed with what + Alan said (and I keep thinking I've reviewed some of these already)
Daybreakers 4/5 above average
Planet 51 - 3/5 OK
Date Night - 4/5 funny
Stranger than Fiction - 5/5 had me thinking for ages about the character of God
All the boys love Mandy Lane - 3/5 meh
The Expendables - 4/5 looking forward to the sequel
How to train your dragon - 4/5 good fun
Nine Songs - 4/5 a worthy attempt
You only live twice - 4/5 I'm going through the old Bonds in order with my boys, oh what joy :)

From wrath to apocalypse (5)

2011-04-09T08:07:00.001+01:00

The fundamental claim that roots all of Christian life and behaviour is that the Kingdom has begun. Everything in Christian life is rooted in the Easter morning event. This is the good news, the evangel, that there is a new King (the original evangelists were the heralds sent out after a battle to proclaim that a battle has taken place, there has been a victory, and now there is a new King. Paul takes up this language and uses it to talk about Jesus). The whole point of being a Christian is to live under this new King, for the Kingdom is breaking into the world here and now. It is not something that will be accomplished all at once at the end of time (that is apocalypse), it is something which is beginning, and now we are engaged in this process of starting to live by the rules of the Kingdom.

That is what the Church is called to be. The Church is that community which lives by the rules of the Kingdom. The Church consists of all those who accept that Jesus is Lord – that God is in charge, that His purposes will be accomplished. It is not up to us to achieve the salvation of the world, for the world already has been saved. We do not have to save the world, but we do have to live in the belief that it has been saved. We are resident aliens, immigrants within the secular world, who have ways of life which don’t belong to the world but which belong to the Kingdom, which is coming but not fully here yet. So our ways of life, our hearts, are set upon a different Kingdom, which we long for and which we hope for. The crucial thing about Christian hope is that it is rooted in a decision, a settled will. It is not that we feel hopeful. Christian hope is not a feeling, it doesn’t rest upon our emotional make-up. It is a decision to act according to this information about the new King. It is a decision and a way of life. It is not an internal emotional state.

John Chapter 3 verses 14 –21. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life, for God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict. Light has come into the world but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

We are all working in the darkness, and before we know about Christ we do not really know whether our work is good or not. Once the light starts to dawn we can see the nature of the lives we are embedded in, and once we can see the crisis comes. That is when we have a choice to make. Do we stay trapped in the works of darkness or do we go towards the light? “They will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” What is that fear? It is the fear of judgement. It is the fear of being condemned. It is the removal of that fear of condemnation which enables the walking into the light. The whole point about the good news it is that the process of judgement doesn’t have to apply. However, if you believe that you are going to be judged and condemned for what you have been doing, then you will resist what is coming. If, instead, you trust in God being benign, you are enabled to walk into the light. That is the kernel of Christian hope: we can change from how we have been. We can turn towards the light.

The Christian imagination is not about imagining the apocalypse – that is the worldly vision. The Christian imagination is instead rooted in love. The revelation, the light which is coming in, is about the truth of who we are as created human beings. It is to say “it doesn’t have to be like this, this world is not set up in the way that God intends us to live, this is not God’s intention”. Instead, the light which is dawning is revealing what God’s intention is, and it exposes the truth about who we are and how we live and therefore it sets us free from these processes. We now have a choice. When Jesus says “I come not to bring peace but a sword”, this is what He is describing. There is a peace in the darkness but now that the light has come there is a necessity of choice. The choice can be painful. There will be a clash between those who turn towards the light and those who stay in the darkness, between those who move towards the light and those who don’t want people to go to the light, because it threatens their comfortable darkness. This is why those who turn to the light will be persecuted. That is the way of the cross.

This is profoundly political in implication. It is about how we live, the choices that we make from day to day. We are called to repent of our present ways, changing our hearts, setting our hearts on the light, turning our hearts away from the darkness and turning to the light. This is why Jesus begins his teaching with these words: “The time has come, the Kingdom of God is near, turn your hearts around and believe in the Good News.”

Delivered

2011-04-09T08:03:00.000+01:00

With thanks to Pat K for the photo

George Monbiot's nuclear conversion

2011-04-05T10:47:00.000+01:00

See here.

Once upon a time I worked for the government on assessing the safety of nuclear power stations, and I was involved at the highest level when a significant decision was made about the future of Sellafield (the THORP plant) - I even received a congratulatory message from John Major about the quality of my briefing for his PM Questions (boast!). One of the take-away facts from then is that most people are incredibly superstitious about radiation. The truth is that we are exposed to radiation all the time and, without it, there would be much less evolution over time. If memory serves, the UK regulatory system was much tougher on the nuclear industry than it was on, eg, the coal and fertiliser industries which also generated significant quantities of radiation - indeed, I remember being told that more radioactivity in the Irish Sea came from a fertiliser plant in Cumbria than actually came from Sellafield!

Which is not to say that nuclear power is the answer to all our problems. The principal case against it is economic, both in the medium term (it needs to be subsidised during operations) and especially in the longer term (what to do with nuclear waste). It also locks us into a centralised structure of power generation, which is much less resilient than a dispersed and localised pattern of power generation which I suspect is our future. I think there are interesting possibilities for some measure of nuclear power - eg the Thorium cycle and pebble-bed reactors - but it is probably too late now, not least because after Fukushima - in many ways an incredible testimony to the SAFETY of nuclear power! - the bar of public opinion is set so much higher.

Monbiot seems to have finally grasped two things - that radiation is nowhere near as dangerous as it is often made out to be (see this excellent graphic by xkcd), and also that much of the advocacy in the green movement is driven by emotion and superstition. I look forward to him seeing the light on SOME aspects of agw...

Busy

2011-04-02T14:32:00.000+01:00

Just to say that things are very busy at the moment - Lenten stuff, annual meetings, all the usual

- but joy of joys, my daughter is being baptised tomorrow morning, and I am just going to be playing the part of Dad - and that means that I don't have to write a sermon this afternoon - I can put up a blog post instead! At least, until the wedding couple arrive...

(beach photo taken on the 20th January, and only just uploaded from the camera. Busy busy busy!)

From wrath to apocalypse (4)

2011-04-02T14:26:00.000+01:00

So what is the nature of Christian imagination? There can in our lives be a temptation to long for an apocalypse in the gnostic and dualist sense, i.e. to see all the bad people go to hell. It is rooted in a hatred of the present system and a desire for judgement. It is a very human response that those who are suffering, or those who care about those who are suffering, long for God to act, for there to be same cataclysm and to say “destroy it because it is causing so much pain”. That is the psychological root of the desire for apocalypse. It is closely tied in to a sense of judgement and discrimination. It doesn’t even have to be “I am innocent”, so much as “they are guilty, God destroy them, God damn them!”

This is not the Christian perspective. We are taught ever so clearly and directly that we are not to judge. What this means isn’t just “I’m not going to blame someone for something”, it is a call for Christians to let go of the whole game and business of judging, of blaming, completely. That language and grammar is what drives apocalypse and we are to abandon that language and grammar. We are not called to let go of discrimination, of seeking to discern what the will of God is, but we are called to stop playing the game of “this lot are the righteous, we keep the rules, we keep the law, and that lot are not”. It is to accept that everyone is in the same boat, that we are all sinners, we are all liable to judgement, and therefore giving up on judgement as a whole. So we do not just give up judgement of other people, but also of ourselves – and by doing this we are set free from “the curse of the law”.

Jesus says we must be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect and He gives a wonderful image of what that perfection is, saying that the Father sends the rain on the just and the unjust. There is no judgement in the rain, it is not that the wicked have a dark cloud above them pouring down rain and thunder and lightning! There is something much more generous and open-hearted about the perfection which we are called to follow. This is the heart of the Christian way, that we let go of the process of judgement, of seeking to separate out the good and the evil. Think of what original sin is, when you bite the fruit you get the knowledge of good and evil, and what Jesus is doing is overcoming that original sin, He is taking away the consequences of that knowledge of good and evil and therefore “I’m good, you’re evil”, or even “I’m evil and you’re good” are both of them a long way from the Christian point of view.

We must let go of this process, and the spiritual root of that letting go is a settled acceptance of the Father’s will. This is the Gethsemane moment: “Not my will but thine be done” and allowing God to be in charge of all judgement. Obedience, therefore, is more central to what it means to be a Christian than “being good”. To be obedient is to have our imaginations shaped by who Christ is and what He shows, to follow in the steps that He has laid out for us. It is about how we hope.

From wrath to apocalypse (3)

2011-03-24T14:29:00.000Z

One way of describing it is to say that Jesus shifts our perspective from apocalyptic to eschatology. (Eschatology is simply the study of the last things; the 'eschaton' is the end, the full stop at the end of time). Christians are called to live in the light of the end of the world, in the light of the last judgement.

Now when Jesus is talking about this, he uses images that are sudden. They will come like a thief in the night. Or think about the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, or the story about looking after your house, he emphasises suddenness, the immediate nature of it and so we are called to live as if it is about to happen. There is a phrase which Christian theology uses to talk about this perspective and its called a realised eschatology. What that means is that the end of the world in breaking in an applicable way now, and so we live in the light of it now. It is not something that is happening in the future to which we need not pay any attention.

Think of a bus driving along a mountain pass, and imagine that the driver has absolute certainty and conviction that he will get to his destination safely, that if for example he should go off the edge of the mountain, there are these wonderful angels who will lift the bus back on to the road. That bus driver will view things rather differently than the bus driver who does not have that certainty but expects something dangerous to be possible and therefore pays attention to that present moment and lives consciously and attentively to ensure that he drives properly and does not go off the edge of the cliff. Apocalyptic is the perspective of the first bus driver who has got a certainty about where things are going and therefore does not worry too much about what happens in the meantime. That is the 'left behind' understanding; that is the understanding that says, “Yes let's have a war between Israel and the Arabs because that will bring about the Second Coming.” Realised eschatology, in contrast, is the second bus driver. This is the perspective that Jesus is teaching, saying that we have to concentrate and live in the light of the end of the world now. We actually have to pay very close attention to each moment in time because the judgement could be just around the corner. The normal Christian way of describing this is to talk about 'living in the Kingdom'. A great deal of standard Christian language and doctrine has its roots in this perspective. It is the vision which structures Christian ways of thought, which was inaugurated on Easter morning, and which shapes and conditions the way that we live here and now.

Fun

2011-03-23T09:09:00.000Z

It's always fun to discover what old school friends have been up to (bad language warning, but it's very funny)

From wrath to apocalypse (2)

2011-03-14T09:21:00.000Z

This [apocalyptic] thinking has a common shape: i) the world is wicked; ii) God's wrath is coming to destroy it through doom and apocalypse; iii) the righteous will be redeemed and the wicked will be punished; and then iv) there is a new creation. There are many contemporary examples of this. So for Peak Oil, the perspective would read: i) we are reckless in our consumption of oil; ii) Peak Oil will cause a never-ending recession; iii) those who are unprepared will suffer; iv) those who have prepared will manage. Global Warming is another: i) we are reckless in our production of carbon dioxide; ii) this will cause runaway climate change; iii) there will be tremendous suffering; iv)... There are also some remarkably sub-Christian forms, possibly the most prominent being the 'Left Behind' series, which is based on some rather dubious nineteenth century Biblical speculation (the perfect example of 'doctrines of men'). It is the common shape which is important to grasp, for this is not the Christian vision.

“The commonly held understanding of hell [i.e. this punishment of the wicked] remains trapped within the apocalyptic imagination, that is, it is the result of a violent separation between the good and the evil worked by a vengeful God. It seems to me that if hell is understood thus we have quite simply not understood the Christian faith.” James Alison

The trouble with apocalyptic, what you might call 'the doomer perspective', it that it is dualist. It is all about making divisions, and there are three primary splits:
- a split between the righteous and the unrighteous;
- a split between heaven and earth; and
- a split in time between now and the future.

What does Jesus say about the end of the world? He was living in the midst of the time when this language was prevalent. When everyone accepted this apocalyptic framework, that was the common language of his time, but Jesus subverts it. He is doing something different with it, for Jesus' ministry is centred upon an overcoming of all these dualisms. With respect to the first He comes to sinners, not to the righteous; He spends his time having meals with the prostitutes and the tax-collectors and the religious authorities criticise him for it. He is trying to overcome the division between those who are pure, who keep all the purity laws, and those who get excluded for various reasons, because they have not got the right number of limbs, or they cannot walk. Jesus spends his time with those who are wounded, not with those who are righteous.

The second split, the great division between the realm of heaven and the realm of earth, is symbolised by the curtain in the temple which gets torn in two. The heart of Christian faith is that Jesus is God Incarnate, that the barriers between heaven and earth have been overcome. Jesus' very existence is a refutation of this second split. The one word rejection of that is incarnation, and you cannot get more fundamental to the Christian belief.

Yet it is the third split which is most important for our purposes here, for what Jesus is doing is bringing “the end of the world” to bear on how people live in the present moment... to be continued

Giles Fraser's Thought for the Day, and the Christian hope of conquering death

2011-03-11T08:45:00.001Z

Giles Fraser gave the Thought for the Day on Ash Wednesday. I have had two people ask me what I thought about it! The transcript is here.

What Fraser actually says - so far as it goes - I would actually largely agree with, ie I also don't "subscribe to Platonic ideas about the immortality of the soul. When you die, you die", and also, "When theologians... speak of entering eternity they mean something altogether different from this: for eternity is outside of time". So far so good (nb great weight on 'Platonic ideas' about immortality, not immortality per se). Where Fraser goes against orthodoxy, so far as I can tell, is that he stops there. What he has missed out is the rather central teaching about resurrection!! Orthodoxy doesn't teach a disembodied future, it teaches that there will be a general resurrection, wherein we will each experience in the future what Jesus experienced in the past. If I am right in how I read him, I have to say I have difficulty understanding how he can do what he does. Without some sort of anchoring in this non-symbolic conquering of death I think Christianity loses its point, and becomes just another form of feel-good therapy.

For a good summing up of orthodoxy see Byron's recent post here and listen to this:

UPDATE: a little more from Giles Fraser here, which would suggest that he does accept the resurrection! Well that's alright then :)

From wrath to apocalypse (1)

2011-03-11T08:21:00.000Z

What is apocalypse? It is a genre of writing. The best examples in the Bible are the book of Daniel in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation in the New Testament. It was a very influential genre between around 200 BC to 200 AD and it had its roots in political events going on at that time, in particular the rule of the Roman Empire in the Promised Land, and the sense within the Hebrew people that things were not going as they had been promised. Apocalypse as a genre has different forms. There are frequently visions involving specific symbolism, for example beasts with heads and horns, but these are political allegories: the beasts are normally gentile kingdoms, and the horns coming out of the beasts are the rulers of the different gentile kingdoms. Much of the symbolic language in the book of Revelation can be mapped on to the political environment of the first century.

A useful distinction between different forms of apocalyptic is that they can be vertical or horizontal. Vertical apocalypses are where someone is lifted up into the realm of the angels, into the cosmic heaven and they are enabled to see the truth. Gnostic apocalypses are like this, for gnosticism is all about gaining access to the heavenly realm through understanding the truth and leaving this world behind. Alternatively there is also a horizontal realm of apocalypse which is much more biblical; for example, Isaiah 24, where God brings the present structures of the world to destruction in order to accomplish his purposes within the world. Vertical apocalypses, then, are about leaving this world behind, whereas horizontal apocalypses are about the change and reform of this world. The vertical involves travelling up and beyond; the horizontal are about travelling through time.

The language of horizontal apocalyptic is that history is coming to a close: there is a cosmic cataclysm and a consummation of God's purposes, and then a recreation, and this has its roots in the prophetic criticisms of the status quo. Isaiah 24 to 26 is a good example. Biblically, apocalyptic is concerned with criticising unjust political arrangements and seeing God's activity as breaking into the world to act to bring about His purposes. It is not about leaving the world behind and being lifted up into the heavens.

“...within the mainline Jewish writings of this period, covering a wide range of styles, genres, political persuasions and theological perspectives, there is virtually no evidence that Jews were expecting the end of the space time universe. There is abundant evidence that they knew a good metaphor when they saw one, and used cosmic imagery to bring out the full theological significance of cataclysmic socio-political events”. (Tom Wright)

There are many different ways in which elements within our society fasten onto something which leads them to say "this is why we are doomed", "no this is why we're doomed", or add them all together and "this is why we are doomed!". This is simply echoing the cultural legacy of apocalyptic. Even if we are not aware of it, we are interpreting events and information through the lens of apocalypse. Someone might say "Hang on I cannot be influenced by apocalyptic because I'm not a Christian, I do not believe in it". This is a little bit like saying, "I've never read any Greek literature, I've never read Plato, therefore my thinking is not shaped by it." These thought forms are diffused throughout our civilisation. They are the bedrock of our thinking, the river bed through which our thinking flows like the water, and apocalyptic is very influential in the way that our culture understands the world. There is an historical memory of this promise that the world is going to come to an end, and so, inevitably, part of our community fastens on to alarming portents and starts to replay this process of apocalyptic.
to be continued

The Wrath of God (5)

2011-03-08T15:16:00.000Z

last part
Jesus said that He was going to abolish the temple and create it again in three days. The empty tomb now corresponds to the Holy of Holies: God has come out from the place of sacrifice and we are sprinkled clean, but instead of the goat’s blood, we have Christ’s blood, which makes us clean and reconciled with God. The two angels at the empty tomb correspond to the two cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant which was placed in the Holy of Holies. The site of the resurrection is the new mercy seat, and so, if you accept the resurrection then you have received reconciliation with God. It is the revealing of this truth through the story of crucifixion and resurrection that sets us free from being trapped in the process of natural and human wrath. This isn’t separable from either the crucifixion or the Last Supper, the three things together, hang together and cannot be separated out. “This is my blood of the New Covenant shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” This is the sacrifice which we are called to share in. We are washed clean by the blood of the Lamb.

Jesus is the second Adam, for in Adam humanity goes off the right path and disorder follows, whereas in Christ, humanity is put back on the right path. In so far as we share in and participate in Christ's life, then we are on the right path, and we are taking part in the restoration of the world. What goes wrong is put right: as in Adam all die so in Christ shall all be made alive. This is the New Covenant: it is written on people's hearts, it is not simply about a passive obedience, it is actually about being wholly committed to it. God will take away the hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh. The right relationship with God, the right relationship with each other. What this process is about is aligning ourselves with Christ. Christ is the one through whom the world was created and in so far as we are aligned with Christ we thereby keep the law. If we pursue the New Covenant, if we share the New Covenant then we have right relationships with the world, so the creation is put right.

The Eucharistic liturgy begins with the exchange of peace, and that is very important because that is what stops the scapegoating, the human wrath, that you are at peace with your neighbour. We are not at peace because we are both righteous, we come to it as sinners, as people in need of forgiveness. We cannot get that forgiveness by our own merit, we are relying on that benign God coming out to us, and therefore because we don’t have any righteousness of our own, we are not expelling anyone else who is unrighteous, because we are none of us righteous. This is a core element of sharing the bread and wine, that we don’t expel beforehand. This is what Jesus is accomplishing, this new Covenant. It begins with the exchange of peace and so we receive the forgiveness and we give thanks for it.

So what is the wrath that is to come? We are in a situation where we have been profoundly transgressing both the natural laws and the revealed laws. Because we have been transgressing those laws, breaching the limits, then wrath is descending upon us. In Rwanda for example, the slaughter was worse where the population was most dense. They weren’t able to feed themselves and they slaughtered each other and whilst there was much scapegoating (human wrath) between the Hutus and Tutsis a major factor was simply where the population was most dense. That was wrath, and it was a foretaste of what is to come.

So are we entering into the apocalypse? No. Our imaginations, how we understand God, who we understand God to be, whether we picture in our hearts and minds God as someone angry, seeking to punish and chastise, or whether we see God as someone loving and merciful, seeking to bring us into life – this is where our real spiritual work needs to be done. Our imaginations need to be renewed in the light of Christ.

Do CofE parishes want - can they cope - with introvert incumbents?

2011-03-08T12:20:00.000Z

Thinking out loud...

Interesting moment in my therapy this morning, when we got to talking about introversion (lest there be any doubt, "My name is Sam and I am an introvert" [grin]). Did a quick Google search when I got back and was reminded of this interesting article from The Atlantic.

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? [...] Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing.

I was recently reminded of my first thinking about Killing George Herbert, and what parishes actually want. For one way of describing what is wanted - at least, what people tell me that they want, ie 'this is what we would like you to do'(!) - is to say 'the parish wants an extrovert'. Someone who is comfortable - no, someone who is enthused and inspired by the social whirl, who will happily be active in seeking conversations, in 'being visible' - and, therefore, someone who gains energy from such things. Which is, of course, a possible description of hell for the introvert.

My therapist commented that this was a particularly CofE difficulty. In the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches it is much more straightforward to serve as an introvert, not least because the expectation is that a person will seek the priest, not that the priest will seek the people. Introverts can be brilliant when a person knocks at the door and seeks specific and particular help (presumably that's why so many introverts are called to the ministry) but when the dynamic is the other way around (eg "visiting") then it runs quite strongly against the grain. It's also why - at least for me - I find liturgy so essential. It's probably an exaggeration to say evangelical = extrovert, anglo-catholic = introvert, but there's _something_ there!

I had thought that my deafness was a large part of why I find socialising so draining - which is probably one factor - but I have now come across half-deaf people who don't worry about group gatherings half so much, so personality does have a lot to do with it.

One final thought - in chatting to some old friends from my curacy at the weekend (I was in London for a big do) - the comment was made that all a parish needs is to know that they are loved. I think that's true - and certainly something to aspire to - but it does run both ways. There is something here about parishes becoming big enough (in every sense) to be able to accommodate the diversity of priests that pass through, cultivating a flexibility of expectation and valuing the good things about a priest, putting up with the bad. Truth be told, Mersea is pretty good at that... but I know of many colleagues where that hasn't been true.

More anon.

The Wrath of God (4)

2011-03-07T11:18:00.000Z

So how do we understand Christ in this context? Well, how do Christians describe him? We say things like: Jesus is Lord, Jesus is the Son of the Most High God, “He is a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek.” These are titles for the High Priests in the first temple. They were not created from scratch in order to respond to Jesus himself. There was an existing theological vocabulary which was then applied to Christ and this is what Jesus is carrying through: Jesus is accomplishing the Day of Atonement once and for all. We often think of atonement as something that 'covers over' sin or 'puts away' our sin with regard to God. That is not the way in which it was understood in the first temple period. Atonement rather was mending something that was broken, or repairing something that was torn, it is something being fixed.

Atonement is all about renewing the creation. If we keep to God's commands then he will allow the land to flourish. God structured the world and it has certain characteristics and principles reflecting his creating of it. If we keep to those principles, if we abide by those strictures and rules then we will be in harmony with God's creation, we will be in harmony with the creator and there will be righteousness and peace. There will be Shalom. Shalom comes from being in right relationship with God, and that gives right relationships with the world and the world flourishes. Shalom is not simply the absence of people fighting, it is a concept with much broader, richer sense, it is the whole creation flourishing.

Then what was Jesus doing? God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God – Jesus is the one enacting the atonement, this reconciliation between humanity and God, healing the creation and bringing an environment, a society, which is in disorder, corrupted by idolatry, back into the right relationship with God. Jesus is the answer to idolatry. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, so in him we see what these orders and strictures and laws and rules are all about, they are all tending and pointing towards Jesus, they are all teaching us about what it is to be human. This is what life is focused on, all things were created through him, so there is nothing in creation where Jesus is not present, where Jesus is not that which will heal and put creation right. And how do we do this? to be concluded

The Wrath of God (3)

2011-03-04T09:46:00.000Z

Another sense in which wrath can be described is in human terms. In the ritual from the Day of Atonement there was a role for a scapegoat – upon which all the sins of the nation were laid. A human society – if it isn’t rooted in God, in right worship, in right relationships with self and neighbour – will fixate on to something else around which to form an identity. This will become an idol, and then this idol will require sacrifices in the pagan sense in order to keep the society together. The perfect example is 1930’s Germany and the scapegoating of the Jews. A society which was under tremendous stress sought to preserve a sense of identity by worshipping the idol of racial purity; this meant picking upon a scapegoat, and there was then a unity amongst the majority through denying and expelling the minority. This is a fact of human nature. If we are not centred on God then we will be centred on something else and that something else becomes an idol. If the governing idol is Mammon, then the scapegoated minority will be the poor, who will be described as deserving their poverty due to some moral failing, such as laziness. If the governing idol is sexuality then the scapegoated minority will be the fat and the ugly, who will be described as deserving their unhappiness due to some moral failing, such as a lack of self-control. This scapegoating process, always present, becomes dominant during times of crisis. In our time it is no longer the Jews who are most vulnerable to being rejected, now it is the Muslim community. We are still unredeemed, and we are therefore prone to violence and anger and slaughter and sacrifice. This is a path that can only end in war. In such circumstances there is still a sense of pagan sacrifice, there is still a dynamic whereby there is an angry deity present – but the angry deity is not God. We are the angry deity. What the ritual of the Day of Atonement shows us is God acting to try and overcome our wrath. To reveal it to us and to set us free from it. We are the ones being revealed as the pagans who require sacrifice in order to maintain our sense of identity and social processes, we are the angry ones.

This, then is the second way in which the language of wrath can be used. Wrath is first and foremost about when we go against the natural order and suffer as a consequence, but it is also about the nature of who we are as a human society when we are fallen. If we do not focus our human society on the Living God then we will end up having this process of scapegoating and sacrifice repeating itself for ever.

The Wrath of God (2)

2011-03-03T15:03:00.000Z

So if God is not wrathful in the sense of a pagan angry deity what does the language of wrath in Scripture refer to? For it is certainly saturated throughout the Old Testament, nor is it absent from the New Testament. The answer is that Scripture testifies to a developing understanding of the nature of God and wrath. In Paul for example, it is a theme in Paul’s writings, but there tends to be “wrath” rather than “the wrath of God”. Of some twenty to twenty five references to wrath, only two or three are to the wrath of God. Mostly Paul refers to wrath as a concept.

Julian of Norwich – who lived at the time of the Black Death and saw immense suffering in her lifetime – understood that God is not concerned with punishment. The understanding of God in Christian faith is not a pagan one, whereby we have to appease someone who is angry or else, but rather that God is supremely love. Julian of Norwich talks about a courteous love, that God is loving to the exclusion of all other attributes. This does not mean that what is described as the wrath of God or vengeance or punishment in the Old Testament is not describing something real. It is to say that the presentation there has more to do with how the Old Testament peoples understood wrath than it has to do with the nature of God as revealed in Christ himself. After all, a wrathful, punishing God would not get involved in this process of allowing himself to be sacrificed in order to heal. Jesus rarely refers to the Old Testament directly, but there is one passage in Hosea which he quotes twice and it is this: “Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy not sacrifice.” God is eternally consistent in acting from love.

So what is a properly Christian understanding of wrath? Wrath is when we experience the consequences of our own sin. In medieval theology it was accepted that there were two ways of understanding God – there was the book of nature (creation) and there was the book of revelation (the Bible) – and both books allowed the reader to discern the nature of God. In particular, contemplating the creation can lead you to affirm the Creator. It can’t lead you to affirm Christ, that’s the realm of revelation, but you can through natural reason come to the conclusion that God exists. Corresponding to this, I think there are two ways to understand wrath, one referring to a natural process, one referring to a human process.

As Christians we understand that the world is made through Christ, that the world is consistent, that it can be understood, and that is what we call the logos. This is one of the foundations for the development of science in the Western world: because you can trust the maker of the world to be consistent, therefore you can apply scientific method to discern truth. The scientific method depends upon these prior theological assumptions, for where you have got a panoply of gods intervening arbitrarily then it is impossible to obtain consistent, reliable and repeatable data.

So natural theology perceives that the world is consistent and bound by laws that we can see and understand, and these laws reveal the nature of the Creator. If the world is consistent and bound by laws then that means that the transgression of those laws has particular consequences. If you put your hand in fire you will get burnt. There is no monitoring entity saying 'you've broken the rules by putting your hand in the fire! Now I've got to punish you by burning your hand!' No, there is simply a hand being placed in the fire and being burnt as a result. This is the first sense in which the language of wrath can be applied: wrath is when we experience the consequences of our actions.

to be continued...

The Wrath of God (1)

2011-03-02T13:19:00.000Z

There are two things that I believe about wrath: that the phrase “the wrath of God” refers to something real but also that, as Julian of Norwich taught, “there is no wrath in God”.

The film “Clash of the Titans” (either version) contains a good demonstration of the pagan understanding of sacrifice. Andromeda is a princess of Ethiopia, and her mother has offended the gods by saying that Andromeda is so beautiful. Disaster descends upon the city in the form of a famine, and in order to work out why there is a famine, they go to the oracle and the oracle says, 'It is because you have offended the gods by describing Andromeda as being so beautiful. Therefore you have to sacrifice Andromeda to the gods, then all your troubles will be over.” This is what happens – Andromeda is chained to the rock so that the Kraken can consume her. Of course if you’ve seen the film, you’ve got Perseus coming along with the head of the Medusa which turns the Kraken to stone...

This is what Scripture sees as the pagan understanding of sacrifice: there is an angry god who has been offended and needs to be appeased, the people therefore have to give up something precious in order to appease that angry god. This is not the Hebrew understanding of sacrifice. The Hebrew understanding can best be understood by going through the ritual of the Day of Atonement as it happened in the first temple period.

The Day of Atonement can be understood as the moment when the people were reconciled with God and their sins were wiped away. At the centre of the religious devotion was a particular ritual which the High Priest carried out which expressed and accomplished that reconciliation. To begin, the High Priest entered the Temple and sacrificed an ox as propitiation for his sins. Having made that sacrifice the High Priest is regarded as ritually pure and cleansed of sin. To signify this change of state, the High Priest then put on a bright white robe, because he was adopting the persona of God, of YHWH. In effect, the High Priest 'became' YHWH for the remainder of the ritual: he acts in the name of the Lord, becoming an angelic figure also called “the Son of God”. The High Priest then took two goats, and by process of lot, i.e. chance selection, one was chosen to represent the demons (Azazael) and the other one represented God – so the two goats represented the holy and the sinful. The High Priest then sacrificed the 'God' goat over the 'mercy seat', the central part of the Ark in the Holy of Holies. This was the most sacred area of the temple and represented God in his essence – beyond space and time, beyond creation.

After this the High Priest came out from the Holy of Holies past the curtain which divided the Temple area in two. This represented God engaging with the creation, so when the High Priest came out he was wrapped in a robe made out of the same material as the curtain. At this point the High Priest is no longer representing God in His purity but God engaging with creation, God incarnate. The High Priest then sprinkled the blood of the goat around this area and around the people gathered there, and this signified both the healing of creation and the cleansing of the sins of the people. Once this is done, the High Priest and the other Priests lay hands on the second goat, the scapegoat, and they drive that goat out from the Temple area into the desert. This represented the sins being driven out from the community, restoring the people to a healthy relationship with God.

The essential contrast to grasp is that, in the pagan understanding, the motion is from sinners towards a god, that the sinners do something to appease the god. In contrast, in the Hebrew understanding, it is God who is active, who moves towards the sinners. God takes the responsibility to overcome sin and estrangement in the world. That may seem simple, but it makes all the difference in the world. When the High Priest goes through this journey, this ritual enactment of God’s activity in reaching out towards creation, he goes into the Holy of Holies, which represents God in himself, and it is God’s initiative that is being carried out. In other words, God is benign, God is not angry, God is the one actively reaching out in love. This is where our understanding of Christ’s sacrifice comes from, because this is what Jesus is doing. Jesus is the great High Priest who is acting in the stead of God, He is doing this work and rather than sacrificing a goat at the beginning of the process, He is himself the sacrifice.

So if God is not wrathful in the sense of a pagan angry deity what does the language of wrath in Scripture refer to? to be continued...

Seeking a Christian England

2011-03-01T12:16:00.000Z

So - we live in a secular society, not a Christian one. Nice to have it laid out so clearly by the judiciary. It grates that these judgements are so philosophically ill-grounded - but I've discussed that in more detail before.

"...if such a thing should be, the crimes of that nation will probably begin in infringement on Apostolical Rights ; she will end in persecuting the true Church ; and in the several stages of her melancholy career, she will continually be led on from bad to worse by vain endeavours at accommodation and compromise with evil."

Should Christians be worried about this? Given that the church was (arguably) at its healthiest when working within the avowedly pagan Roman Empire, one would suspect not. Yet surely it is understandable for a Christian to want not to suffer so much? In a way, it will make Christian witness rather clearer. This isn't a point about homosexuality so much as a broader point about how a distinctive Christian life is possible in a secular society. For example, take issues at the beginning and end of life. At what point will a Christian doctor be disbarred, or restricted from practicing in certain areas, if they, eg, refuse to terminate a baby's life, or refuse to administer euthanasia? Will Christians be allowed to teach differently to the secular world-view? Will parents be forbidden from teaching Christian doctrine in those areas where it clashes with secular assumptions? "That'll never happen!" Right.

"How may a man best reconcile his allegiance to God and his Church with his duty to his country, that country, which now, by the supposition, is fast becoming hostile to the Church, and cannot therefore long be the friend of God?"

I think what's really running around my mind is whether it is legitimate to seek to make England a Christian nation (I leave off the possible 'once again' as it begs too many questions). There are, of course, all sorts of potential idolatries here - I have read my Hauerwas - but there is also an idolatry in quietism. If we, as Christians, are inevitably committed to questions of social justice then we are also inevitably political creatures - which, logically, and under God with all due humility, must mean seeking to so order our political arrangements in such a way that abundant life can flourish - and that "abundant life" is irreducibly Christian in character, not secular. We are therefore in necessary tension with any secular state.

There are several threads that I want to knit together:

- the internal collapse of the Church of England, culturally and theologically (symbolised by the abandonment of the BCP, however sensible that step was);
- the death of England more broadly;
- the on going threat of Islamisation, and the sometimes unhealthy political reaction to it;
- the way in which the Anglican Communion will split, and how TEC may be a better vehicle for the Anglican theological spirit than a Covenantised CofE; and finally
- the unhealthy nature of Anglo-Catholicism within the CofE (reactionaries contending with liberals), compared to the initial flowering of Anglo-Catholicism sparked by a political controversy.

I just wonder if there is a 'sweet spot' lurking here that would mean the project of seeking a Christian England would be blessed. Watch this space.

"What are the symptoms, by which one may judge most fairly, whether or no a nation, as such, is becoming alienated from God and Christ?
And what are the particular duties of sincere Christians, whose lot is cast by Divine Providence in a time of such dire calamity?"