Gower Street

Not dead yet...

2009-04-24T00:00:00.005+01:00

...although you would certainly be pardoned for thinking otherwise!

I am just now in the midst of trying to finish writing up my dissertation, hoping to submit in the summer. This autumn, I'm to begin a new teaching post, so I'm starting to prepare lectures and curriculum. We're getting ready for a transatlantic move. Oh, and did I mention we've just had our second child?

We've just had our second child.

She's Samantha Brigid Danielle; although she was a little over a month premature, she's flourishing and growing and doing well. But it does make for a bit more on the to do list.

So, I assure you, I'll be back some time in the future with witty observations, stentorian pronouncements and the occasional anguished soul searching - or whatever it is I do here, I haven't quite figured it out myself. Keep your bookmarks!

Also - Gower Street may undergo a slight format change, too: there's a possibility it might become a team blog. So (as they say): watch this space.

(BTW, I'm also over at Facebook, and I sometimes do something like blogging within the parameters of their format - so if you use Facebook as well, look me up!)

On worshiping the 'Big Jesus'

2008-10-03T22:46:00.005+01:00

Mark Driscoll is an evangelical and missional sort of Christian, and one of the founders of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. He is outspoken and brash in much of what he says; he isn't afraid of making hasty generalisations and seems particularly fond of false dischotomies. His rhetoric is sharp and he's not afraid of making enemies. Some have said that he has made a difference in their lives, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, but I'm not a fan of his and disagree sharply with him on a number of issues.

Last year, in the magazine 'Relevant', he was part of a seven-person panel of church leaders asked about where they see the church headed. One of the questions was as follows:

What do you see as the greatest challenge for young Christians in the next 10 years?

Mark Driscoll: There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.

[From:7 Big Questions; Seven Leaders on where the church is headed. 8/28/2007]

I think this has massive, serious problems with it. First, this shows a troubling tendency towards simplistic black-and-white thinking: either Jesus is a ‘limp-wrist hippie in a dress’ or ‘a pride fighter’. There is no sense that Jesus, whom we confess as being ‘fully God and fully man’ might be strong enough to genuinely elude our own neat and tidy categories. Moreover, Driscoll’s characterisation of Jesus, taken from Revelation 19, betrays a great selectivity. True, in this one passage in Revelation (although Jesus is not named, his identity seems clear from context) he is presented as wielding a sword ‘to strike down the nations’ (9.15). The sword is metaphorical – it comes ‘out of his mouth’ – but the author of Revelation thought it a fit metaphor for the act of God in Christ. This cannot be explained away and needs to be, somehow, incorporated into our language about Jesus – although in a manner that reflects this as one minor element in his overall character, since most of Scripture presents Christ otherwise.

The odd selectivity of Driscoll’s judgement can be shown in two ways. First, although he states that he can worship someone who is committed to ‘making someone bleed’ and ‘cannot worship a guy I can beat up’, he seems unaware that Revelation more often presents Jesus as the Lamb who was slain. This is purely a passive image, not that of a warrior or fighter, and relativises presenting Jesus as a warrior without reserve.

Moreover, and perhaps even more troubling to Driscoll, in the same chapter which presents Jesus as killing with a sword, presents the church, the saints, as the ‘bride’ of the lamb, who has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (19.7,8) The text makes clear that this language is just as metaphorical as Jesus as a warrior or a lamb, explaining that the linen represents the ‘righteous acts of the saints’ (19.8) Nevertheless, Driscoll and those like him who want to emphasise the (stereotypically) masculine characteristics of Jesus must explain why they pass over other images of Jesus (as slain lamb, for example).They also need to explain why they see Jesus’ stereotypically masculine characteristics as underwriting their embracing of the same, rather than, in the light of their identity as the saints of God, embracing (stereotypically) feminine characteristics. Otherwise, one seems justified in suspecting that Driscoll has simply co-opted Jesus into a project which he has arrived at by other means- to put it bluntly, idolatry.

There is also, just as troublingly, no sense that there might be a problem with allowing who one can ‘beat up’ to be a sure guide to who one may worship. It seems to me rather that (to borrow Driscoll’s polemical terms, which I do not accept) the power of the decaf-drinking ‘limp-wrist hippie’ is that he can change us, quite despite ourselves, into someone who no longer needs to worship only someone he can’t beat up, but is willing to worship God – who is both infinitely ‘bigger’ than us, yet can also, because he wants to, embrace radical vulnerability and contingency in the incarnation and cross. A God who loves the creation enough to act for its salvation, even though it is entirely his creation and has no being of its own apart from him. A God who is wrathful at our disobedience, sin and injustice, yet who has repented of and foresworn violence. A God whose power is not the simple power of force. A God who can take the humiliation of a cross and turn it into life for the world. A God whose ‘extraordinary power’ is entrusted to ‘clay jars’ such as us so that it is ‘made clear’ that the power isn’t our own. (2 Cor. 4.7) This is a gracious God whose glory and honour works itself out through honouring sinners such as ourselves with new life, making those who were his enemies adopted sons and daughters, and brothers of his only son, whom we killed. (Rom. 5) This is a God who graciously reveals himself, but loves us enough not to let us control him.

Despite all this, there is something right in what Driscoll says, although perhaps not in the way he intends: despite our best efforts otherwise, Jesus is not safe. That’s not to say that he is a violent hothead liable to be out looking to ‘make someone bleed’. It’s to say he cannot be captured and used to our purposes; he can’t be domesticated by our own expectations, whether of the ‘pithy Zen’ or the ‘big Jesus’ variety. And to the extent we insist that only one of those two varieties – or any one of the vast number of other varieties – and exclude anything else, we’ve missed out on the real Jesus.

More than that, he isn’t safe because he isn’t content to leave us alone and unchanged, either. If we dare to come to this Jesus, the real Jesus, then perhaps in the bargain we might be changed into someone who doesn’t need to beat up another but can allow the power of God to transform us into someone new – someone who, for his sake and by his word, might even be willing to suffer for the truth, or give his life on behalf of another.

(Just so that you know - and so that he knows that I know - Halden over at Inhabitatio Dei has also written on this, with much that I would endorse, but I felt the need to elaborate my own thoughts on the matter.)

Ricoeur Conference on Poetics and Religion

2008-09-27T21:55:00.003+01:00

It is killing me that I cannot go, but I felt I ought to mention here that there is an upcoming conference at Leuven on Paul Ricoeur with the theme poetics and religion. I would love to go, but simply cannot. Here is a description of the conference, pulled in its entirety from their website:

Theme

Paul Ricoeur’s investigations into the hermeneutics of text and human being, the poetic force of symbol, metaphor, and narrative are a continuous source of reflection. The hermeneutical paradigm of text and interpretation in From Text to Action, the ‘little ethics’ in Oneself as Another, the incomplete ontology with its vehemence to be completed, the recurring themes of liberty, hope, poetics, attestation, recognition… are challenging issues for theologians as well as philosophers, revealing numerous fruitful trajectories between philosophy, ethics and theology.

The international conference ‘Paul Ricoeur: Poetics and Religion’ wants to contribute to the course of interpretation that Ricoeur’s oeuvre has instigated. The conference will be dedicated to aspects of the intersection between motivation and argumentation, between conviction and critique. Our purpose is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue on Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy and its interaction with various theological disciplines.

The conference is organised around five general themes: the fundamental relation between theology and philosophy; textual, biblical and theological hermeneutics; metaphysics; ethics and morality; and practical theology.

No mention of a dealine, so I imagine there is still time to register.

If you go, tell me how it was - and if you like Ricoeur and good theology, spread the word. (Ben?)

on economics 2

2008-09-25T09:52:00.005+01:00

I've mentioned elsewhere the tendency to think of economics as more-or-less a set of natural laws (e.g. the free market), and this correlates with its being taught (usually) as more-or-less a science. Yet it is also, intrinsically, an arena of human activity - and so it is always also open to moral analysis. This isn't as clearly the case about other sciences such as physics. This leads us to a dilemma of how to characterise economics, and what the human response to it should be.

Is economics primarily to do with science, a matter of nature? If so, then because it is a realm of human endeavour, it needs restraints and regulations placed on it from outside.

Is economics primarily to do with the human, a human construction, and hence a matter of history rather than nature? Then there are presumably resources within economics - human, moral resources - which can place checks and balances on economic activity.

Or is economics (as I suspect) some third thing, incorporating both? Economics thus may be seen as a human, social construction, one with a history* and as any contingency, may be otherwise, and yet which also includes regularities about which general and mathematical observations may be made. In this case, as above, economics - whether the teaching of economics and its statistical analysis, or even the actual acts of trading and business-keeping - are not free from moral analysis and constraint, but ought to be expected to serve humanity (broadly construed).

There is certainly more to be said here, but this is another modest foray into thinking through a topic which is turning into an ongoing project for me.

* The specific economic arrangements- whether tending towards modern socialism or towards modern capitalism - are virtually unthinkable 200 years ago, and literally impossible 1000 years ago. There is nothing more necessary or self-evident or 'natural' about our current arrangements than there is about our driving automobiles.

Rowan Williams on Capitalism

2008-09-25T09:30:00.003+01:00

Yesterday an essay by the Archbishop of Canterbury was published by The Spectator.

It is a great essay, filled with human concern about the mythology which surrounds the market and the real damage it can do to people. A couple of quotations:

'We find ourselves talking about capital or the market almost as if they were individuals, with purposes and strategies, making choices, deliberating reasonably about how to achieve aims. We lose sight of the fact that they are things that we make. They are sets of practices, habits, agreements which have arisen through a mixture of choice and chance. Once we get used to speaking about any of them as if they had a life independent of actual human practices and relations, we fall into any number of destructive errors. We expect an abstraction called ‘the market’ to produce the common good or to regulate its potential excesses by a sort of natural innate prudence, like a physical organism or ecosystem. We appeal to ‘business’ to acquire public responsibility and moral vision. And so we lose sight of the fact that the market is not like a huge individual consciousness, that business is a practice carried on by persons who have to make decisions about priorities — not a machine governed by inexorable laws.'

...

'...ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry. What the present anxieties and disasters should be teaching us is to ‘keep ourselves from idols’, in the biblical phrase. The mythologies and abstractions, the pseudo-objects of much modern financial culture, are in urgent need of their own Dawkins or Hitchens. We need to be reacquainted with our own capacity to choose — which means acquiring some skills in discerning true faith from false, and re-learning some of the inescapable face-to-face dimensions of human trust.'

Read it all here.

But somewhat troubling is that the essay itself is entitled "Face it: Marx was partly right about capitalism". Now, I am assuming that, as with newspapers, the headline was not composed by the author but added in later by someone else. (I suspect but do not know - I am not a regular reader of the Spectator - that the deliberately provocative 'Face it:' is a regular feature, and that the specific headline follows the colon.) But the headline, whilst attention-getting, is not apposite to the essay. He does indeed mention Marx near the end, in a by-the-way fashion, but this is not his overarching concern, not the theme of the essay. As it stands, it might sound like a full-court-press defense of Karl Marx and Marxism, but this is far from the intent. In fact, he says of Marx, in the only mention of him in the essay:'Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else.' Hardly a ringing endorsement. And hardly a suitable headline for a passionate, thoughtful, and irenic essay.

plus ça change...

2008-09-24T20:50:00.003+01:00

I ran across the following recently in a discussion of political policy in one corner of the internet:

” … to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man …”

Was this a trenchant summary of America's recent foreign policy? Nope.
A retrospective indictment of American involvement in Viet Nam? No.
A historical condemnation of the conditions in Europe which led to World War I? Still, no.
A denunciation of Victorian hubris or Napoleonic vainglory? Again, no.

It could easily have stood in for these and much else of relatively recent vintage, but the fact is it is a quotation from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, a fourth century BC account of a late fifth century war.

plus ça change...
...plus la même.

Life, giving and tragedy

2008-09-16T14:08:00.003+01:00

An incredible, haunting, unsettling story from the Chicago Tribune today. Near Chesterton, Indiana, a 10 year old child fell into a surging river and was pulled into a metal drainage ditch (about 3 feet in diameter). His next door neighbor, Mark Thanos, a high school teacher and coach, jumped in to try to save him. After Mark began struggling, his father John jumped in to help.

In the event, the ten year old was pulled clear by the current, but the other two men died. The entire story is here.

In this one event, the selfless giving of one to save another costs him his life, and the selfless act of another seems to have been in vain. My thinking is not resolved on this - as I mentioned above, I find this haunting - but I think haunting is one of the things the Spirit does, so I'm not worried, just not through.

I think one intuition about this is that, in God, this is not lost. Yes, it can be allowed to be tragic - this is no eschatological quick fix to make everything alright - but maybe not finally or ultimately tragic.

Something else is that in these selfless but tragic acts, two families' lives, and the lives of three people not normally or necessarily connected, are now inextricably intertwined for the rest of their lives. Looked at in one way, how can the young boy who survived now live knowing what these other men gave him without his asking? How can that not haunt him every day?

Looked at in another way, how is this different - except perhaps in degree - from the whole of life as each of us knows it? And how can we be so blythe and dismissive?

Donald MacKinnon on John Hick (plus a bonus quotation)

2008-09-15T21:42:00.003+01:00

Professor David F. Ford, back in his early days as (I believe) an undergraduate was in a supervision at Cambridge with Professor Donald MacKinnon. Ford had been discussing John Hick and the sort of conceptual clarity that he brought to his work; MacKinnon was silent a moment and epigrammatically responded to Ford:

'Some thinkers strive for clarity at all costs, while others wrestle with reality at its darkest points.'

To that I would like to add a MacKinnon quotation on apologetics, cribbed shamelessly from Ben over at Faith and Theology:

“The philosopher is not an apologist; apologetic concern, as Karl Barth (the one living theologian of unquestionable genius) has rightly insisted, is the death of serious theologizing, and I would add, equally of serious work in the philosophy of religion.”

—Donald M. MacKinnon, The Borderlands of Theology: An Inaugural Lecture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1961), 28.

Unpromising Signs

2008-09-08T22:02:00.003+01:00

My wife recently conveyed to me a couple of nuggets that she heard from a particularly smug and windy pastor. He said that, as pastor and leader, he makes decisions and if anyone doesn't like them they can leave. Further on in the conversation, he rather pompously declared that in his sermons all he does is exegesis and historical background - no stories, no illustrations, no leading out the readings into life.

My only thought in response to this gasbag is that it is wonderful that one can be a preacher and not preach, and be a leader and be free of introspection - and think that the people you lead are optional and disposable. What's next? Let's see...

A pastor who refuses to provide pastoral care;
A trustee who can't be trusted;
A disciple who won't follow;
A Biblical scholar or theologian who doesn't pray or worship;

(Send in your own on a postcard, in care of this blog...)

How long, O Lord, will we be beset by this plague of idiots?

The only positive use I can find for such a 'pastor' is this: like the plagues in the Old Testament, he is a sign of God's judgement upon us, the church.

Back?

2008-09-08T21:59:00.001+01:00

I am shocked to realise it has been nearly two and a half months since I last posted...it seemed much longer than that.

I've been busy, and am likely to be much busier for the near future, but don't give up on old Gower Street, and I'll try to do the same.

(By the way, for those of you keeping score at home: This is post #501.)

on economics

2008-06-27T14:58:00.003+01:00

There are some who insist that supply and demand are equivalent to (or, indeed, are) laws of nature*, and if we try to function apart from them or work against them we invite disaster.

Which seems to me rather like saying that it is a crime against nature to keep my computer and books on my desk because it works against gravity.

My desk certainly accounts for gravity, but that is different than saying that gravity is an inviolable force, the full force of which I resist at my peril.

It seems to me that even if supply and demand are 'natural' - bearing in mind that supply and demand do not necessarily imply a free market, and a free market does not imply capitalism - it still describes an arena of human activity (and in that way less 'natural' than gravity) and hence subject to moral/ethical analysis. There might well be some things which, for the sake of humanity, we decide cannot be left to the vagaries of supply and demand: labour cost, for example, as in fair trade.

To make supply and demand - and more broadly, the market - out of the realm of moral/ethical analysis allows for a huge segment of human activity to be bracketed from thinking, which seems dangerous and irresponsible to me. Among other things, it allows profits, and the means of gaining them, to be considered amoral.

It is also interesting, by the way, that for most things, demand is a controllable variable (not, presumably, for the utter basics such as food, water, shelter - but that is a small percentage of overall production).

* Part of what this points out is the vacuity of (most) talk of the 'natural'.

On Sin 4

2008-06-17T15:51:00.004+01:00

Thanks to CR for raising the matter of the seven deadly sins in her comment. The 'Seven Deadlies' were not my primary concern in On Sin 3, but rather a characterisation or thematisation of sin as a whole (which, then, the seven deadly sins would seem to instantiate in various ways). Nevertheless, it got me thinking...

It is fascinating - and outrageous - that in numerous identifiable ways the seven deadly sins are now no longer considered sins as such, but rather are actually relied upon and positively encouraged as the basis of much of our society and (especially) economics, and in that sense has become the basis of our supposed security.

If we did not have envy, for example, we could not have fashion - the planned 'obsolescence' of otherwise serviceable clothing - and could not then have an industry and its resultant profits surrounding it. (Not that it is only envy, but it is at least that.)

One of the dilemmas of capitalism, historically, is how to create demand in order to sustain production. Recourse to (at least some of) the seven deadly sins has been one of the solutions.

Naturally, for Christians at least, any structure which relies on - rather than merely accounting for - the seven deadly sins must be held in some suspicion.

But turning to the seven deadly sins themselves, I wonder if there isn't actually a polarity or dualism within them? (I haven't done much work on these, so this is probably a banal observation.) That is to say, it seems relatively easy to get locked into an orientation which reacts against (say) lust, and assumes the opposite (say, anhedonia) to be the virtuous position. But to take this position - reacting against lust - actually incorporates lust into virtue, as virtue becomes a reaction against it, a rejection of it, rather than something which has gone beyond it. Getting beyond these dualisms seems increasingly important to me.

If we instead think of virtue as - well, not merely a mean between extremes, but rather something escaping or transcending the dualism, then we seem to get closer to what we are called to by God as humans.

Streetwise: Rowan Williams on the church's authority and obedience

2008-06-17T15:46:00.001+01:00

‘Theologically speaking, an appeal to the Church’s charter of foundation in the saving act of God, rooted in the eternal act of God, can never be made without the deepest moral ambiguities, unless it involves an awareness of the mode of that saving act as intrinsic to its authoritative quality and as requiring its own kind of obedience. That is to say, the God who works in disponibilité, vulnerability and mortality is not to be ‘obeyed’ by the exercise or the acceptance of an ecclesial authority that pretends to overcome these limits.’

Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, p. 239

A bad sign; an awful trend

2008-06-11T17:12:00.001+01:00

From today's Guardian:

Up. Up. Up. Child poverty, pensioner poverty, inequality
Gap between richest and poorest families wider despite government efforts

On Sin 3

2008-06-03T15:58:00.005+01:00

If sin may be primarily thematised under 'pride' - as it has been for millennia - then the appropriate response must be 'humility and obedience'.

But despite its seemingly strong pedigree, this also raises all sorts of questions.

One question which Matt Jenson raises in his book The Gravity of Sin*is, does this thematisation do justice to the actual experience of sin - does everyone suffer from simple pride, or might, say, women, or others, have a different wrestling with this? He responds that, yes, people actually do have different characteristic experiences of sin, that sin takes different shapes for them. Drawing on the work of Augustine, Luther, and Barth, Jenson paints an alternative picture of sin as homo incurvatus in se, using the Latin, or 'humanity curved in on itself', and therefore not able to be open to God or neighbour. I agree that this far better thematises the broad category of sin than simply 'pride'.

This also suggests - quite helpfully - that the 'solution' to sin is not force. If sin is primarily pride, with the appropriate stance being simply humility and obedience, then this implies that the problem is having a will - having a self - and one ought to get in line and do as one is told. It is a military-style solution intended to create identical repetition. It also - at least in effect - discourages thinking. Obedience in this sense is not to be considered, not to be interrogated; imagination has seemingly no role in such obedience; it is simply to be enacted.

There is a deep and disturbing finitude to this which seems not to do justice to the excessiveness of God's grace in Jesus Christ. Put another way, it is hard not to see legalism as the 'solution'** to sin as pride; and legalism and its attendent self-righteousness are, it must be said, godless foolishness.

But if sin - which might well be pride, yes, but is much broader than that - is more a matter of 'one being curved in on oneself', then the response is more a matter of 'opening oneself up', or 'being opened up'. One is opened up to who one is in God and in light of the neighbour; the problem is not one's will or self in themselves. These are themselves gifts of God, and for God's creation to be its fullest we must participate in it, rather than shrinking back from them, or using them for our own ends over others. We need to be healed, redeemed, reconciled, certainly: we should use these gifts appropriately rather than using them abusively, or failing to use them.

If our selves are brought into play in this way, then, it also means that we are also free to think. We are not to shelve ourselves and cease thinking: rather we are to embrace thinking - and acting - in their fullest ways. As I like to say, the life of faithfulness requires thinking and thinking about thinking. That is to say, when we hear - in Barth's terms - the command of God come to us, that command is itself always mediated through the human, whether ourselves or others. Since it is always mediated through the human, it is always already involved in thinking - language, judgement, and so on - and so it is only appropriate that we engage in thinking about thinking. We are not to be formed into a military-like obedience (sorry, Ignatius of Loyola), but rather a thinking faithfulness which is consonant with creativity, yet which is also able to self-interrogate.

I call this a 'light' hermeneutics (or, thinking about thinking) of suspicion. (I need a better expression!) With it, one is open to possibilities in God, perhaps surprising possibilities, for nonidentical yet faithful repetition of Christlikeness in our lives. But one is also open to the possibility of self-deception and ideology. This is meant to instill a vigilance as well as an eagerness to hear. And part of this vigilance is a vigilance against our own perfectionism - 'I must know everything before I can act' - as well as being able to interrogate our own interrogation - 'Am I suspicious of this just because I don't like it?' It is, in philosophical terms, a non-foundational hermeneutic; I mean it to be an ad hoc and ongoing practice rather than some sort of all-encompassing theory of understanding.

And so, in this way, perhaps we might see that the revelation of God to sinful humanity - to quote Rowan Williams, drawing on Paul Ricoeur - 'is addressed not so much to a will called upon to submit as to an imagination called upon to "open itself".' (from 'Trinity and Revelation' in On Christian Theology, p. 147.)

* I reviewed this work - mostly favourably - in International Journal of Systematic Theology. I am not sure if you will be able to access the review, but the link is here.

** How I despise thinking there is a 'solution' to sin! To say there is a solution to it implies that it is essentially something isolable to be managed, simply to be controlled. It not only seems not to do justice to the reality and scope of sin, it also seems to (even more!) domesticate grace, as perhaps some sort of 'strategy for living', an idea which can be plucked out of nowhere and adapted to whatever we're doing, rather than something elemental and awe-inspiring, which cannot be adapted to whatever we're doing, but transforms us in the deepest ways.

Theology in tight places...

2008-06-03T15:49:00.005+01:00

I had the pleasure and privilege of hearing Jürgen Moltmann speak in the faculty last Thursday on the topic of German theology since 1908. I was enlightening and exciting, not least because one of the greater figures in the last century of German theology was present giving the lecture.

As those familiar with Moltmann's theology will know, he was captured as a prisoner of war in World War II, and ~~interred~~ interned by the British for quite some time. At one point he was given the option of transferring to a prisoner of war camp near Nottingham, at which he could study the Bible and theology. It was that formative and moving experience which launched him into the field of theology, and both he and theology were never the same again.

It was at this point in the lecture where someone leaned over and said: 'A prison camp where you could study theology? It sounds like my old seminary!'

On Sin 2

2008-05-31T12:10:00.003+01:00

Crimson Rambler helped expand on the sense of what I was up to in On Sin, and it prompted the following thoughts, which I calculated as being worth a post of their own, even though they end up circling around the theme of the first post.

Since we are established by and in grace, we are also able to claim our sin as our own, even while we are confident in God that this is not the final word on who we are. So there is a sense in which, because of grace, we are freed to be blameworthy, to take responsibility for ourselves - and yet also because of grace, we are able to view ourselves as more than simply a problem to be solved or denied*, but established in and by God in the deepest love so that we may be both discontented and patient with sin: both our own and others'.

* 'Blame' can sound like scapegoating or a reduction of the mystery and extent of sin to something managed and finite: I'd want to avoid that.

On Sin

2008-05-25T15:09:00.005+01:00

We ought never to be content with our sin, for this denies the justice and righteousness of God and - what's more - the power of God to overcome our sin,to bring reconciliation, new life and transformation.

But we also ought not to be impatient with our sin, for this denies God's grace and decision that we are acceptable in Christ, substituting for it a notion of needing to 'make ourselves acceptable', which is to say, self-righteousness and legalism. It is only a short step from that to the autonomous 'self-made man'.

On learning

2008-05-24T20:25:00.003+01:00

If learning is genuinely a lifelong process, then the notion that we first receive an education and then when that is finished begin practicing is blown apart. In my own profession, ministry, there are some for whom that might be a surprise; we've too long been satisfied with the idea that one goes to seminary/theological college, 'receives' an education, then goes out to become a practitioner, to 'use' that education.

We are (properly) always learning and practicing; indeed, it seems that they are not actually discrete moments at all but merely different perspectives on the same moment. This suggests in part that the best formal education will be a matter of learning to learn (and being open to curiosity and wonder) rather than simply conveyance of information: it will encourage lifelong learning and sharing of that learning.

Streetwise: Paul Ricoeur on modernity

2008-05-21T16:49:00.004+01:00

"[Science and technology may serve and ideological function, rather than simply eclipsing the sacred.] That scientific ideal that earlier had served as an absolute measure for evaluating the overall progress of modernity has itself become problematic.

"We might cite as an example the arguments advanced by [Jurgen] Habermas that seek to tie empirical knowledge and the exploitation of nature to one limited interest, the interest in theoretically and practically controlling the human environment. Modernity then appears as the inordinate inflation of one interest at the expense of all others, especially of our interests for communication and emancipation. This leveling of the hierarchy of interests, and the one-dimensional person that results from it, are ideological phenomena to the extent that they serve to make every social agent accept the autonomous, devouring, and cancerous functioning of the industrial system given over to growth without limit or end beyond itself. Here is a consideration that may chill the zealots of modernity. And this same consideration ought to lead us to call into question the judgement modernity passes on what it makes appear as an archaism [i.e. 'the sacred']. This judgement in its turns has already begun to be judged itself. Modernity is neither a fact nor our destiny. It is henceforth an open question."

Paul Ricoeur, "Manifestation and Proclamation", in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. p. 63

On Enemies

2008-05-20T16:17:00.006+01:00

There has been a little talk about enemies going around recently, with President Bush raising questions about the value of diplomatic strategies - 'talking' - with America's 'enemies', likening this to appeasement, and invoking the (rather over-invoked) spectre of Chamberlain, Germany, and the Sudetenland.

But it seems worth asking just what an enemy is? Or more specifically, what makes someone an enemy? We live in a world of cause and effect, in which we can generally enquire as to why something or other might have happened or might be the case. Why is it that someone might set themselves to oppose us?* It seems that there are four general causes. I'll mention the first three first:

Ignorance: the other might simply not know the reasons for one's actions or understand the stance one has taken in the world. In this case, it would seem that informing the other of the genuine nature of things would alleviate the situation.

Insanity: the other might not be capable of knowing the genuine nature of things due to some defect of function.

Wickedness: the other might oppose one because he or she is wicked, perverted in such a way that he or she willfully refuses to acknowledge the genuine nature of things.

I'll be blunt: these three are rarely wholly and objectively the case with 'the other'. Moreover, it is easy to see how invoking them would serve ideological ends; that is, that they would be a way of lying to ourselves to avoid the truth of the matter.

The other cause is this:

Reasons: the other might oppose one because he or she has genuine reasons for doing so, reasons which might be more-or-less well formed or articulated but nevertheless represent the other's interests and person.

It is worth mentioning that, in the case of a dispute between parties, to call someone an enemy for one of the first three reasons locates the cause of their 'enemyhood' in the other; by implication, this allows oneself to escape scrutiny. The reason there is a dispute is because the other has bumbled into it (ignorance), isn't capable of anything better (insanity), or has deliberately and perversely chosen it (wickedness). The reason the other is opposing one is simply because of something within him or herself; any consideration of oneself as involved in the making of the dispute is out of bounds and improper.

But the fourth possible cause - because the enemy has a reason - brings one into a relationship, opening up the possibility of self-reflection, of exchange, of debate, of talk: also the possibility of repentence and conversion.

Because the enemy might have a reason - more-or-less well reasoned or articulated, correct or incorrect - allows the other to be seen as human. Yet the possibility of self-reflection, for considering how we are implicated in the other's 'enemy-ness' does not unmake the enemy, nor does it explain away or justify the more-or-less well reasoned or articulated, correct or incorrect reasons one has for considering the other an enemy.

Parties to a dispute, enemies, are involved in history - maybe for thousands of years - and there may well be reasons of various sorts over the span of time. Yet to acknowledge that there are reasons between the parties rather than simply within the other party is to open up a horizon within which a conversation (of some sort) might open.

This is not meant to be sunny or pollyanna-ish, just the opposite. To take a sober look at a situation, and allow ourselves to be a party in it - rather than simply a victim of the other - is at least to escape a dangerous and sinful delusion; or, to look at it from the other side, it is to come more fully to grasp the truth of the matter. It is seeing oneself only as an innocent victim and the other only as wicked perpetrator which is sunnily optimistic and out of touch with reality.

Rather, to see the relationship of enemies as mutually constituting constituted by various reasons is to allow both oneself and the other to be genuinely human, both implicated in the other's 'enemy-ness', both caught up in sin - which in various ways partially resembles ignorance, inanity and wickedness - and yet both presented with the possibility of repentance and reconciliation in the Spirit, through Christ.

As we are implicated in - and constituted by - our neighbour, so also are we by our enemy. It is in this way that we can begin to see some of the depth and wisdom in Christ's counsel to love one's enemy. (Mt 5.44)

[aphoristic addenda 20/05/08 21.30]
What I am trying to do, in part, is think a social/relational economy which is shaped by the gospel, recognises the mutual constitution of persons, and can do justice to enemies, sin and grace within this economy. This is intended to recognise the humanity of the other, and not to take his or her sin with greater seriousness than our own - and to recognise how we are ourselves implicated in his or her sin, while he or she is implicated in ours.

If we are mutually constituted as persons by others (and we constitute them) then we are constituted by both sin and grace. But the grace is prior, and elemental; at bottom, we are constituted by God's grace.

Sin is not (ultimately) subject to explanation, at least not in the sense of 'explaining away', as if it were merely a matter of information and not perversity. Barth was right that sin is the 'impossible impossibility'. Yet this perversity must never be allowed to allow sin to be self-evident or 'natural', and must never dampen thinking, attempts to trace and understand (if not explain) it.

This 'mutually constituting' is burden, responsibility, opportunity and delight. But it is not a task per se.

It is commonly enough the case that bad reasons may be offered for 'enemy-ship'. One common situation would be that x constitutes y as an enemy when the real grievance is with z. Yet the proper response would not be for y to respond to x by colouring him in the ways described above. (Actually, ignorance wouldn't be too far off the truth.) But this situation gives the opportunity for x and y and (hopefully) z to talk.

*Taking 'us' and 'them' in the most general terms possible: individual, social, national, and so forth.

Disasters in Burma and China, and human response

2008-05-17T12:08:00.002+01:00

The airwaves over the last two weeks have been beset by sights and sounds from the wreckage left by Cyclone Nargis in Burma and the earthquake in China. The destruction has been massive and widespread, and the suffering that this has led to has been profound. In both cases, the scale of the disaster has made rescue efforts incredibly difficult, complex and involved. In Burma, the political situation and the closed nature of the government have made relief efforts much harder, and have transformed a natural disaster into a human tragedy.

Last weekend, the Young(ish) Adults group from St. Mark's, Newnham, collected money to help with relief efforts in Burma. (We gave through dec.org.uk; I discovered them through an appeal on BBC Radio 4.) In all, we collected around £45: not a lot, but I know that people gave generously, and one feels rather like the 'widow' giving her mite as a foreign student on a student budget. We hope and trust that it will, in time, go to alleviate some of the suffering and help in the rebuilding in whatever small way it can. Thankfully, aid from foreign sources does seem to be slowly getting through at last.

Last night, whilst in a local pub having dinner, we saw some of the scenes of destruction from cities in China affected by the earthquake. According to the BBC, there are roughly 22,000 confirmed dead and many thousands missing or unaccounted for, so that figure is likely to skyrocket; there are also 4.5 million people homeless - 4.5 million! Of course, the most moving and haunting scenes were those of people being rescued from collapsed buildings, particularly children. You see such scenes and think of your own child. You can really identify with the loss and anxiety of parents, and this is a way of empathising (by analogy) with the broader situation of loss and suffering.

When confronted in this way, one wants to do something and not be simply a voyeur to suffering, not simply a romantic emotional parasite, turned in on oneself and not responding outwardly. In this day of the television, and even more of the internet, it is easy not only to be confronted with the images, but to respond in some way - primarily through giving money. This seems to me to be a really salutary effect of the internet and the ways we can be connected with it - not that it is everything, or gives us genuine knowledge of the other such as can be gained in a personal relationship, or that it overcomes the process of objectifying the other, not even that it might not be deeply ambiguous in some ways (it can certainly be used by emotional parasites or worse). But it does also open up other salutary opportunities which would not be had so easily otherwise.

Interestingly, I looked into donating to the relief efforts in China as well, and dec.org.uk mentioned that they are not collecting for them because the Chinese government has many resources at hand, and are responding in a competant and admirable (and open! this is somewhat new!) manner. (This is not to say that other reputable agencies are not also collecting for work in China: see, for example, Oxfam, British Red Cross or your local Red Cross agency.)

These are just some ruminations on the recent disasters and the opportunities we have at this particular historical moment, which we have not had in past and which will no doubt be transformed in unexpected ways in future.

Remembering the Soixante-huitards

2008-05-16T23:05:00.003+01:00

It just struck me today that we are this month marking the 40th anniversary of the 1968 student protests and general strike which took place in Paris (and subsequently throughout France) in Mai 1968. At one point, 10 million workers had joined together in the strike - 10 million! That's 2/3 of the entire workforce at the time.

On the one hand, the protests and the shocks they brought to the nation ushered in some notable changes at the time, not least substantial increases in wages. It was also a major shift in socio-moral attitudes, along the lines of the changes in America and elsewhere in the West at the time. Mai 68 (soixante huit) is still considered a major turning point in France.

On the other hand, as was the case with many student protests and much of the left wing activism in America at the time as well, the movement seemed to founder and sputter, in many cases quickly, and as the decades have worn on, the concerns which gave rise to protests have been set aside for more materialist and self-centred goals. If the 1960s were one sort of watershed, the 1980s were another -and I am more qualified to make that judgement of America than France.

It's rather striking how little genuine activism there is now as compared with then. One might suggest it is because everything is fine now, but I suspect we all know better than that. So what is it? Part of it, at least here in the UK, was the strategy adopted in the 1980s by the ascendent Tories of dividing and conquering labour. Labour was either domesticated or disenfranchised, in either case taking what little power there was out of the hands of the workers. But it is also more complex as nations have seen their manufacturing bases shift to third world nations, places where - mostly - workers don't have the right to organise and bargain collectively. And while wages might be higher than what was available before, and workers even grateful for the opportunity (there is all kinds of ambiguity here - the issues are complex), nevertheless it is also an exporting of labour from the West, with detrimental effects on the no-longer-employed. It will be fascinating to see in a generation or two what we are doing to find suitable cheap labour as workers become organised and/or better educated and can start demanding better wages; add this to the coming energy crisis, and it will be a markedly changed world.

It is also interesting right now to reflect on the student protests of the soixante-huitards and compare it with current-day street conflict. Last night there was widespread violence and rioting in Manchester in the wake of the UEFA cup football match. (video here, thanks to ubiquitous CCTV.) People were observed drinking as early as 7 in the morning in preparing for the match. This serves as quite a contrast with the Mai 1968 protests. Not that there was no drinking or thuggishness in 1968, but that the entire protest was undertaken for better conditions for students and workers. Manchester, on the other hand, was just stupid drunken football hooliganism.* We've come a long way, baby.

Now, in memory of the 68 protests, a couple of videos documenting different aspects of it. The first one is quite interesting, presenting some of the protest art which came out of the movement. Do watch it all the way through, to see the statement at the end. It is all the work of the Atelier Populaire, and although (with the music in the video, especially) it can seem almost whimsical, it is also deadly serious.

There also seem to be a lot of punk music videos set to pictures of the 68 protests, plus a four part series (en Francais) documenting the entire thing. (Begin the latter series here.) But here is one video - in French, I looked but couldn't find a decent English language one, sorry - that gives a little (photographic) overview, which is also an ad for a French company which makes available historical documentation of such things.

There is a fair amount more on YouTube and elsewhere giving a sense of what May 1968 was all about, but I thought I might at least offer a few little starting points, as well as point out some of the historical ironies - and sigh a bit that more isn't being done now.

*It probably should go without saying that the vast majority of the fans, whether supporters of St. Petersburg or Glasgow, were peaceful and funloving.

Say It Ain't Tso!

2008-05-13T15:39:00.003+01:00

I can't believe it - my favourite Chinese dish isn't Chinese at all.

Turns out General Tso's Chicken is American, not Chinese.

(I must admit, I was always curious when I called the local Chinese restaurant here in Cambridge and they didn't know what I was talking about.)

Although this is (apparently) common knowledge to all but me, Jennifer 8 Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, went a step further and dug up some historical information about the actual General Tso - or, better, General Zuo.

My favourite quotation from the article, which includes a picture of the man himself, is this:

What I discovered. In America, General Tso, like Colonel Sanders, is known for chicken and not war. In China, he is know for war and not chicken.

Oh, well. I still love General Tso, whether he cooked or not.

At least I've still got the genuine Italian goodness of Pizza Hut pizza. Oh, wait...

Streetwise: Rowan Williams on Suffering and God-Talk

2008-05-12T16:36:00.003+01:00

'The resolution of the sheer resistant particularity of suffering, past and present, into comfortable teleological patterns is bound to blunt the edge of particularity, and so to lie; and this lying resolution contains that kind of failure in attention that is itself a moral deficiency, a fearful self-protection. It is just this that fuels the fantasy that we can choose how the world and myself shall be.’

'The world is such - is, independently of our choice and our fabrication - that we cannot think away particulars into comprehensive explanatory systems; the world is such that attention to particularity is demanded of us. If we are to speak of God, can we do so in a way that does not amount to another evsion of the world? There is a way of talking about God that simply projects on to him what we cannot achieve - a systematic vision of the world as a necessarily inter-related whole. Trust in such a God is merely deferred confridence in the possibility of exhaustive explanation and justification; and deferred confidence of this sort is open to exactly the same moral and logical objection as any other confidence in systemic necessity of this kind in the world. A God who essential function is to negate the 'otherness' and discontinuity of historical experience, and so to provide for us an ideal locus standi, a perspective transcending or reconciling discontinuity into system, is clearly an idol, and an incoherent one at that...'

Rowan Williams, 'Trinity and Ontology', On Christian Theology, p. 155,6

Endless recursion: the bible, theology and anti-intellectualism

2008-05-07T23:12:00.005+01:00

AKMA linked to my previous post which combined some ruminations on anti-intellectualism and rates of biblical literacy. His comments and some time have given rise to the following thoughts:

+ Is there necessarily something about 'knowing' which discourages wonder, which mitigates against responding to what is there? We can get so wrapped up in systems and certainties and domestications that we miss the ways the Bible is fuzzy around the edges, the way it leaves some questions unanswered, the ways it is studiously unclear at points and resists our mastery and we miss the wonder and awe and surprise of it all - as well as the way it haunts and troubles. To put it another way, an interpretive scheme which purports to explain it all not only fails, but also places us at the centre - and the work of the Holy Spirit is one of de-centring. How may we be the church living with Scripture in such a way that we can both communicate what is known - communicate the gospel - and yet also not in such a way as to create a subculture of systemic certainty which supplants the Bible?

+ There is a deep, deep irony between (on the one hand) people who would identify themselves as fundamentalist, people who claim to love the Bible, not knowing it better than others, and in some cases worse, and (on the other) Christians of various stripes and non-Christians thinking they don't know it well, but being interested in it and wanting to know it better. The study is right - and what AKMA noticed but I failed to mention - that this is an amazing teaching moment, apparently for everyone. It makes the anti-intellectualism in the church just that much more scandalous.

+ I just finished reading and reviewing Virtue and the Voice of God by Daniel J. Treier, and one of the more helpful notions he suggests is that theology is an activity of every member, and not just the theological guild. The tasks of careful thinking about the gospel and the reality of God and creation are not reserved for a group apart from (or over against) the church, but are undertaken by everyone in many various ways - although it might be undertaken in specialised and exemplary ways by those who are called and gifted in this way as a service to the church; but this is a difference in degree and not kind. This would be the opposite of anti-intellectualism, if it were fulfilled.

+ Finally, for the sake of clarifying, while I do not wish to withdraw anything I said the other day about intellectual and other gifts, I do wish to expand a point slightly. Anti-intellectualism is particularly nefarious because, in fact, we are always thinking, always trying to make sense of the world around us, and often doing so in light of our faith. Anti-intellectualism serves either 1) to leave that thinking, dull, shallow or unchallenged when it could be sharp, deep and responsive or 2) to underwrite someone simply claiming 'God says thus and such; obey' which fairly ends the conversation and repels thinking - when in fact the claim (and the 'God saying') are themselves wrapped up in thinking. The first leaves life unquestioned and unredeemed and is faithless; the second leaves leaders unquestioned and communities untransformed and is idolatry. In either case, we must entertain the question: in whose interest is anti-intellectualism?

Wow - can't wait

2008-05-07T22:03:00.004+01:00

I'm not at all the first to discover Beth Rowley and her music - not even the first among those I know, I think Maggi was justly trumpeting her before I said boo.

But, wow, wow - this is great stuff.

I downloaded her free single from iTunes sometime last autumn. I usually download the free singles because, well, they're free. They most often turn out to be ~~rubbish~~ things I would not listen to and would never buy. But this one: one listen sold me. Here was a moving, rich singer attending to a traditional song. It was a cover of the old blues style standard Nobody's Fault But Mine, also done (originally?) by Nina Simone. Nary a day has gone by since downloading Ms. Rowley's version that I haven't listened to it at least once, often more. She also sang it on BBC Radio4's Loose Ends, another memorable performance - I would link to one of her live performances on YouTube, but they don't do her justice. (But you must - must! - listen to this brief excerpt from her website, it will give you an idea of the whole. Just amazing...wait a minute while I go listen to the whole thing again...)

...so where was I? Oh, right. First, apologies to American friends, because apparently she is being released here in the UK first (she's big in the Bristol and London scenes, I guess); I don't know if there are plans for the US, Canada, or elsewhere yet, but let's hope. But then just today I heard her new single (not yet released, but the video is out) and it's also great. I went to download it from iTunes, along with other choice selections only to find it is all due out officially later this month: hence the title of the post, wow - can't wait (for the album). But in the meantime, you can enjoy the official video and the tune via YouTube: So Sublime.

The moral of the story, if there has to be one, is this: listen to Loose Ends with Clive Anderson on BBC Radio 4 early Saturday evenings, because they have amazing musical acts along with fascinating interviews and (usually) a comedian; Clive has also introduced me to another favourite band of mine, the Canadian group Great Lake Swimmers.

Here and there around the blogosphere

2008-05-06T12:01:00.004+01:00

I've been crazy busy recently, but have also had the pleasure of running across a few interesting essays and posts that I thought I would share with you.

Stephanie Paulsell writes in the latest Christian Century about the importance - the proper importance - of a learned ministry. I heartily endorse what she is saying; in fact, I would have written a broadly similar essay if given the opportunity. The church suffers when it is anti-intellectual. The church also suffers when it is over-intellectual, although it is my sense that, on the whole, we have suffered more from the former than the latter recently. The key is loving to learn and using whatever intellectual gifts one has to love and serve others, not fancying that being a smarty pants makes you better than or above others - and not letting others put you down or marginalise you because you've got a lot of 'book' learning. (I've written more about this elsewhere.)

Being part of the 'body' of Christ means that we are each given gifts which are meant to be realised in serving and loving others; it also means that others have gifts which are meant to be realised in serving and loving others too, including oneself. There is no gift which puts us 'above' another, and there is no gift which puts us 'beneath' others. There is of course difference, genuine difference, but this is not a difference which exalts one and puts another down.

We should never nourish the conceit that we can 'go it alone', any more than we would look at a dismbodied hand lying in the street and say 'hey, good for it - it's finally decided to go its own way!' This is another way of acknowledging that whatever gifts we have also involve limitations and incompletions which can only be filled by others - and similarly that we may have something for them as well.

Also, Doug over at Metacatholic draws our attention to a survey which seems to bear out the intuition that self-identified fundamentalists don't know the Bible better than others. In light of the study's finding that there is no correlation between Biblical literacy and political orientation (i.e. conservative may be either biblically literate or illiterate, liberals the same), Doug makes the observation that: "If true, however, it may suggest very controversially that not only does “believing the Bible” function as a shibboleth rather than anything else, but that the scriptures may exercise very little power over the biblically literate and illiterate alike. If Bible reading and knowledge has no correlation with political affiliation, that would seem to be suggested."

That is one way of analysing the data, but not the only one. It may actually suggest that it is people who have ideologies and political orientations, and not texts - and so a broad range of people may know and love the Bible, but interpret it differently. Or, a different and less hermeneutical point would be this: perhaps the politics suggested by the Bible are not easily mapped onto present-day political syntheses, and so there are both continuities and discontinuities between Scripture and the present day, such that the Scriptures do form people when engaged thoroughly and with depth, and yet without dictating which of the present political syntheses on offer is most appropriate or faithful.

He does helpfully raise the question about the (potential) incorrigibility of our beliefs and practices, political and otherwise, which is a serious question, as well as the possibility of our failing to hear and not even realising our failing - a possibility which ought to haunt us.

Obama on race

2008-04-29T23:57:00.003+01:00

It's been a long time, I know...busy, busy, busy.

But here's the link to a transcript of Barack Obama's speech on race.

I know it's not timely, (it was deliveredMarch 18, 2008) but if you haven't read it, it is worth a look.

Compared with most political rhetoric we have heard over the last...generation, it seems, although I'm sure I'm forgetting someone...it is superlative: balanced and nuanced, it dares to speak truthfully about race in America while also allowing the fears and anxieties on all sides to portray all of us in our humanity - while also calling for us to move towards our best selves, which he places deeply in the American constitution. It is also deeply thoughtful and learned while being accessible and eminently readable/hearable, which is rare indeed.

It's not perfect. It doesn't say everything, perhaps, that needs saying. There are points at which bits of ideology surface which might be questioned. But hey - he's talking about race and racism; he's doing it honestly and clearly; he's not letting us think it is a 'non-issue' or something from the past; and he's calling us all to our 'better selves'. It's a great start.

Deconstructing the deconstruction of the church: further thoughts

2008-04-13T16:55:00.007+01:00

I had a few more thoughts in the wake of what I wrote last night on Jamie Smith's essay offering an appreciative critique of some of the elemental notions of John Caputo's book What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (Smith's blog is here.)

First, while I entirely agree with the notion that the church is the body of Christ, and more than simply a voluntary human institution among others, it is also true that it is, in fact, a human institution as well. (This is not a disagreement with Smith, but a slight expansion of my own ruminations.) Doing away with this dualism, owing to scruples surrounding 'purity' or a misunderstanding of 'holiness' is quite important. But this should never mitigate our own self-criticism, the honest searching for our idolatries and inhumanities, the ways we've hated and betrayed God and neighbour. In short, we should attune our ears to the judgement of God. The presence of the Lord is never undialectical, unambiguous - never, never a possession, nor a merit, never anything but the active gracious presence of the - to borrow Barth's terms - One who loves in freedom.

This doesn't give us a status or power over others - as if the status of the Empire were simply transposed onto the church - but it does give us (I think this is Paolo Frere's phrase) a power for, a status for others; or, even better, (Frere again) it gives us power with, status with others.

Second, while I disavow the idea that the church is simply a voluntary aggregate of like-minded individuals (or disavow that as a regulative ideal, anyway; that's not what we're meant to be), nevertheless, I feel strongly that there is a necessary element of (divine?) patience involved in the being of the church. That is to say, to affirm that it is an organic body isn't meant to imply that it is a closed body, nor that all those 'parts' (i.e. members) of that body should look alike. It is crucial, it seems to me, within the church, to make room for others and the ones they are, to come in at their own time, with their own gifts and concerns and sins and betrayals. This doesn't betray the elementally corporate nature of the Body of Christ, but elaborates on it. And it might cut against some of our most cherished practices and intuitions in the way that body is formed. It also means that the church is always an 'open' body, always receiving the ones that it needs (although it didn't know it), the organs and limbs it cannot live without and yet has for so long. This also means that we cannot make a final judgement on the shape or life of the church, for it is an emerging reality which will only be known eschatologically. (This doesn't at all mean that we cannot make sensible proximate and not-yet final judgements on it; I encourage just as much above from within, and the church needs to hear those judgements from without as well.) Moreover, if we are constituted by the other, then there is a sense in which our corporate and individual identities are opened out eschatologically by those who are not yet here.

All of this implies that, as I mentioned above, there is a quietness (if not a silence) and a patience at the heart of the church (or, again, there ought to be). I have begun wondering if this patience might not be a means of thematising time as ordered to the glory of God. By this I mean, in part, that to be patient is a renunciation of our own power, our own means of resolving everything (or anything), but rather to look in faith and hope to God: to, by the power of the Spirit, grow to embody - however imperfectly - the patience of God, a patience in God which is correlated with his wisdom (Barth again!). This wisdom is not ours, of course, and the patience cultivated in us by the Spirit is a patience which is not the same as God's, but responsive to it.

A subsidiary point about the church not being simply voluntary: to reject voluntarism takes some imagination. That is to say, we must be cautious in rejecting voluntarism and individualism not simply to affirm in some broad and uncritical way their polar opposites. This would be to let the entire individualist problematic to have the last word; we need something better, more faithful. What might that look like? I wonder if 'honouring the other as the one they are' begins to get at it; much more remains to be done here.

Third, while I cling to the notion that orthodoxy is the more radical (and more faithful) way, I mean to clarify that by this I don't mean 1) a closed, decided once for all system that's simply read off and answers all questions (or at least gets people to stop asking them) or 2) a club to beat others with. It seems to me that orthodoxy is established, emerging, and eschatological. That is to say, the basis and subject matter of orthodoxy is God and particularly God's revelation and act in the incarnation (taken to include the cross and resurrection). It's this and not something else, so it is established.*

Yet also it is emerging. It took decades** for John the Evangelist (and his community) to get to grips with the depth of who Jesus was as the Word of God - indeed, God. I take it that his gospel is different not because he needed more time to make up some good stuff, but because there is an endless depth and intensity to the identity of Jesus which simply cannot be 'read off'. Moreover, it is a question whether John would have endorsed the orthodox beliefs of the incarnation (wherein Jesus is fully human, fully divine) and the Trinity (wherein God is three and one) in just the way that they were encoded later in the church. That's not to say either that John was a heretic - not at all - nor to deny that his text served as an important basis for just those formulations. But again, given the intensity of the identity of Jesus, His Father, and the Spirit, it is not unexpected that this might not be recognised in toto in the first generation. More recent questions have to do with questions about God's suffering (and death?), the status of philosophical theism, and who may be (or is) included in the church and its ministry. Because there are strong - often vehement - sentiments on either side of these issues such that opponents may be dismissed out of hand does not in itself change the fact that these are emergent issues about which we are not yet settled; indeed, this kind of strong, heartfelt engagement just shows that we are not yet settled on them.

Finally, orthodoxy is eschatological. A true orthodoxy - to the extent it gestures towards or describes the real God - is always aware of its own incompleteness, for it does not, cannot, encompass or master God. It cannot be exhaustive or final; although it can manifest a measure of confidence in its confession of the Lord, the truth of that confession - indeed the constitution of the one so confessing - is entirely dependent on that same Lord. And being aware of our own sin, incompleteness, idolatry, ideology, and so forth, we ought to be deeply suspicious of a contentment that comes from a closed doctrinal system, or a confidence in ourselves as independent experts. As Paul says to the Corinthians, 'Now we see in a glass darkly (in all sorts of ways, not merely doctrinal), but then (eschatologically) we will know in full, even as we are known.' And so one of the attitudes of the orthodox (it seems to me) should be a certain sort of 'startled humility' (Barth, again): not that our truths are not true, but that they are not ours. I hope the connections here between these doctrinal affirmations and the practices of the church such as prayer, Eucharist, Scripture-reading, conversation, baptism and so forth are manifest.

*In fact, God doesn't need our orthodoxy: we do, for it names - and glorifies - the true Lord.

** That is, John is written several decades after the synoptic gospels; not that he was writing all that time, but that the author and the community had more time behind it between them and Christ.

Picture - Rembrandt's Christ At Emmaus, 1648

Oh yeah, well deconstruct this!

2008-04-12T23:35:00.002+01:00

It's been awhile since I've posted. Of all the habits of blogging, doing it consistently, regularly, has been the hardest for me. I'll get a streak of several posts within a week or so, and then be dark the next week as my 'real life' (ha ha) gets busy. All of which is not to say that I'm going to be better on this front, just that yes, I know...

Anyway, I ran across an article by Jamie Smith - who is usually assistant professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, but just now is overseeing their exchange program at York St. John's University - on The Incarnation as More Radical Hermeneutics. It is a critical yet appreciative review of John Caputo's What Would Jesus Deconstruct?

I like the sort of stuff that Smith does, and this is a good introduction to part of it. Part of his critique of Caputo is that his portrait of Jesus is (ironically) hard to tell from contemporary liberalism, and that the Jesus of the gospels - indeed, for those with ears to hear, of orthodoxy - is far more radical than that. One way this is so is that the scandal of the incarnation creates a body, an institution, which carries on in the Spirit down the ages, witnessing to the Word, the living God; this body is scandalous (to us) by not simply being a voluntary organisation of like-minded people, a benevolent organisation whose watchword is laissez-faire individualism. At least in this way, we are different from the world around us.

Or so we're supposed to be.

Go and have a read of Smith's essay, it's good. I've borrowed a couple of terms and intellectual moves from him for the above, which is an improvisation on one or two aspects of the essay.

I'm Dreaming of a White...

2008-03-23T15:20:00.003Z

...Easter. Or at least we were here in Cambridge. We woke up to an inch or so of snow, the only snow we've had here this entire year. It waited until the second day of spring, but we still got some!

Death is real; death is overcome. (Rowan Williams' Easter sermon)

2008-03-23T14:09:00.007Z

A typically fine Easter sermon today the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams. Two choice excerpts:

Easter is not about denying death, and the resurrection doesn't make the nightmare death on the cross unreal. Death is exactly what the artists and scientists and psychoanalysts say: it is a full stop to human growth and response, it is night falling on everything we value or understand or hope for. Fear is natural, and so is grief at the death of another (Jesus, remember, shed tears for the death of a friend). Don't attempt to avoid it or deny its seriousness. On the contrary, keep it in view; remind yourself of it. When the tradition of the Church proposes that you think daily about death and prepare for it, it isn't being morbid but realistic: get used to it and learn to live with the fear. And meanwhile - Shakespeare was being entirely Christian in this respect - get used to loving and valuing things and persons irrespective of the fact that they won't be there for ever. Love them now, and what you would want to do for them, do now. 'Night is coming when no-one can work', says Jesus. (John 9.4)

and further along:

...the overcoming of death - made clear to us in the only way it could be made clear, by the historical, tangible recreation of the life of Jesus, still recognizably who he always was, yet changed in ways we can't grasp in their fullness. Death is allowed to do its worst in him - not only in the form of physical pain and final extinction, but in the terror and desolation with which Jesus approaches it. He lets go of everything, even the hope that God will intervene to spare him. He descends into Hell, and is brought up again by the creative call of his Father. A true struggle, an agon as the Greeks said, an agony of conflict; and a victory - not a reversal or cancellation but a new thing, risen life, the new age begun.

And so when we proclaim all this today, we as Christians are charged to address ourselves to two different sorts of delusion. On the one hand: we face a culture in which the thought of death is too painful to manage. Individuals live in anxious and acquisitive ways, seizing what they can to provide a security that is bound to dissolve, because they are going to die. Societies or nations do the same. Whether it is the individual grabbing the things of this world in just the repetitive, frustrating sameness that we have seen to be already in fact the mark of an inner deadness, or the greed of societies that assume there will always be enough to meet their desires - enough oil, enough power, enough territory - the same fantasy is at work. We shan't really die - we as individuals can't contemplate an end to our acquiring, and we as a culture can't imagine that this civilization like all others will collapse and that what we take for granted about our comforts and luxuries simply can't be sustained indefinitely. To all this, the Church says, somberly, don't be deceived: night must fall.

On the other hand, this alone would only be to echo the not very helpful remark of John Maynard Keynes – 'In the long run, we are all dead'; not much of an Easter message! So the Church says: 'We shall die, we shall have no choice but to let go of all we cling to, but God remains. God's unshakeable love is untouched by death, and all we do and all we care about matters to him. He and he alone is free to make us afresh, to re-establish the world on the far side of every catastrophe.'

It isn't so much that Christians say, 'Death is not the end'. In an important sense, it is the end, and we must prepare for it as people of faith by daily seeking to let go of selfish, controlling, greedy habits, so that our naked souls are left face to face with the creating God. If we are prepared to accept in trust what Jesus proclaims, we can ask God for courage to embark on this path. We don't hope for survival but for re-creation - because God is who he is, who he has shown himself to be in Jesus Christ.

It is particularly dismaying (although the Archbishop didn't mention it) how we work to deny death and greedily 'assume there will always be enough to meet [our] desires - enough oil, enough power, enough territory', and do so specifically by bringing death, or the threat of death, on others. In our fear and anxiety of death, a primary way we are able to keep it at bay is through the death of others, perhaps as some perverse propitiatory sacrifice of a false deity. Such is the thirst of idols - or, more particularly, since idols are simply transference of human perversity, such is our thirst.

And if you'd also like a little something else, here is NT Wright- albeit from five years ago - musing on what sort of sermon you probably heard today and giving some theological indications of how it might have been a rather bad or good sermon.

The New Three Dollar Bill

2008-03-19T22:46:00.007Z

(The Euro has reached fresh highs against the dollar.)

I know, it's been done before. I totally ripped it off from Superfrenchie, who got it from Shakesville.
But if you don't laugh, you'll cry.

While we're at it, here's the look of the new ten dollar bill:

(The pound sterling remains trading at two to one, and is likely to go higher, soon.)

On the cross: and true and false gods

2008-03-17T22:53:00.009Z

The formidable Kim Fabricius has provided the internet with a copy of his brilliant and bracing Palm Sunday sermon, entitled Lose your Faith, via Faith and Theology; it is moving, bold, poignant - and theologically right on.

It's possible that his wife was right and he should have curtailed the refrain of 'Lose your faith' - or maybe repeated something in a mood other than the imperative. But on the other hand the boldness - parrhesia? - and honesty in what he says, being unwilling to 'make it safe' or even 'wrap it all up' at the end makes it. On the whole, it's a tour de force. Here's an excerpt, to whet your appetite for the rest:

(All content of this excerpt is from Kim Fabricius, and I'm sure he claims (at least) moral right to be identified as its author - just so we're clear)

This sermon doesn’t have three points, it’s got three words: Lose your faith! (I warned you I would be sacrilegious.) Yes, lose your faith. Lose your faith in God. For as the French mystic Simone Weil insisted, there is a kind of atheism that is purifying, cleansing us of idols. Lose your faith in the god that the cross exposes as a no-god, a sham god. Lose your faith in the god who is but the product of your projections, fantasies, wishes, and needs, a security blanket or good-luck charm god. Lose your faith in the god who is there to hold your hand, solve your problems, rescue you from your trials and tribulations, the deus ex machina, literally the “machine god”, wheeled out onto the stage in ancient Greek drama, introduced to the plot artificially to resolve its complications and secure a happy ending. Lose your faith in the god who confers upon you a privileged status that is safe and secure. Lose your faith in the god who promises you health, wealth, fulfilment, and success, who pulls rabbits out of hats. Lose your faith in the god with whom your conscience can be at ease with itself. Lose your faith in the god who, in Dennis Potter’s words, is the bandage, not the wound. Lose your faith in the god who always answers when you pray and comes when you call. Lose your faith in the god who is never hidden, absent, dead, entombed. For the “Father who art in heaven” – this week he is to be found in hell – with his Son.

I am just reviewing James Alison's book Undergoing God: Report from the Scene of a Break-in, and much of what Kim says resonates with Alison's unapologetically Girardian take on theology. While I am not a follower of Rene Girard, full stop, myself, he is insightful and even haunting in the way that his work illuminates Scripture, and helps to expose our own idolatries.

We need more people who are willing to wield the idol-hammer, not out of iconclasm (which, today, is usually more about the hammer-wielder than the icon), nor out of hatred of our images, but above out out of love for God - and, in God, love for humanity.

Wisdom - Let us attend.

2008-03-15T09:24:00.004Z

The title of this entry is taken from the Orthodox Christian liturgy, said just before the reading of the gospel. I use it because Clifton Healy, an old friend from seminary who has entered the Orthodox Church, has written something beautiful and wise which I wanted to share - I hope he doesn't find it embarrassing that I do so.

I share it partly because I find it beautiful and wise, but also because it gives voice to some of my own recent ruminations on life and faith, although he wrote this before I did and (no doubt) did so with more elegance and incisiveness than I might have. But it captures well the mystery of the searching love of God and the growing contentment with my own perplexity in being caught up in this which I have been growing in awareness of recently. (The only aspect I might add in, for my part, is the judgement of God.)

Anyway, here is an extract:

It seems as though with every day that I continue on in my journey as an Orthodox Christian, I find myself knowing less and less. The things I thought I knew are so pale and incomplete when placed in the center of the reality they claim to approximate, that I wonder if there is much use in holding on to them. God is love. The Tripersonal God is love. God the Father is love. Jesus, God the Son, is love. God the Holy Spirit is love. The Holy Trinity loves my wife, my daughters, my parents and siblings, my in-laws. Even, more mystery, even me.

The rest is inscrutable. Why is it that I am called to just this time, just this day, just this city, just this parish, to do that which I am called to do: to pray for the conversion of others? Why is it, that I am given just these pains and consolations at just this time? Why is it that I have been called to these things, and to this struggle? I do not know. I wonder whether I will ever know. I do not even know whether the pains and sufferings will be recompensed with deliverance and joy. I do not know whether the consolations will bring about further union with God, or whether I will squander them. But here I am, at this time, in this place of struggle and desolation and loss, and joy. And I must believe that God is love. And I must pray for the conversion of others.

Interestingly, this parallels in some respects what friend Maggi Dawn has recently written in the Christian Century 'Faith Matters' column:

When I was taking my first degree in theology, most of the building blocks of my faith came up for serious reexamination. I asked one of my professors how it was possible for faith to survive this kind of intense intellectual scrutiny. He thought for a while, then said, "Once upon a time I believed in a great many things. Now I believe only in a few things, but I believe in them more deeply than I ever thought possible. That God exists, that God is love, and that Jesus is the son of God—these things I believe. Everything else is up for debate."

I think I've realised in retrospect that this has been the case for me, after a fashion. Plunging more deeply into the church's tradition and the depths of contemporary theology has been humbling and formative. It's brought - what? Less certainty, more trust? That begins to get at it.

Not, that is, that I would only list the few things that Maggi's professor would. The Incarnation and the Holy Trinity are absolutely foundational for me. But they are not 'foundational' in the sense that I have them all figured out or even - as I study further - that I understand them in anything like an exhaustive sense. (Indeed, seeing how the church itself has maintained a discreet silence in some areas has been a large part of this learning.) But I believe in them, confess them, believe they are true, and that their truth is not dependent on my understanding them. It's not that they are not truths - it's that they are not my truths. They're truths of a world within which I have been given the grace to live, and the grace to spend inordinate amounts of time learning about, thinking about, and contemplating these truths.

Indeed, they make sense: not that they are entirely transparent to penetration by human reason, one wouldn't expect that of God anyway. Rather, they 'make sense' - create sense - because by them the world is rendered more sensible. Again, this is not 'more sensible' meaning 'more useful', as in a strategy to use the world for my own ends. It's something much more like seeing the world in the light of God's glory, and praying to be used for that.

!!!

2008-03-14T18:46:00.003Z

Shannon Matthews - who went missing (just disappeared without a trace, really) three weeks ago in West Yorkshire and has been the object of a massive manhunt ever since - has been found alive and safe. Her abductor is in police custody. Every parent's nightmare, at least in her case, is over.

(Maybe there's still hope, then, for Madeleine McCann?)

Thanks be to God.

And pray for those who are missing, and those unnamed who similarly suffer.

Dream Interpretation...

2008-03-09T22:43:00.002Z

What does it mean that when I'm awake I dream of Europe, but when I'm asleep I dream of Chicago?

Del.icio.us - the inevitable

2008-03-09T22:41:00.003Z

I've added an aggregator for my Del.icio.us account, whereby I bookmark and tag some of the things I'm reading online. It is in the righthand column underneath recent post.
Enjoy!
or:
Ignore!

Kim Fabricius on Simone Weil

2008-03-08T19:47:00.003Z

The estimable Kim Fabricius has given a brief introduction to Simone Weil and shared some of her most incisive thoughts, including:

“God alone is worthy of interest.”

“The false god changes suffering into violence; the true God changes violence into suffering.”

and

“Religion as a source of consolation is an obstacle to true faith.”

Sin, Society, Violence and Responsibility

2008-03-08T12:05:00.009Z

This is a slightly modified version of a response given to a comment on an earlier post.

The larger claim (the 'deeper question' as I phrased it) I was making in my post Getting Schooled? Violence in three movements - the claim which brackets the gun talk - is that America is a violent nation and seems to have become moreso in the last few years. I was ruminating on that and wondering where we’ve gone wrong, how is our soul deformed so as to work out this way? (So the risk is more a matter of being in the society than being in its schools.)

It is noteworthy that this is an American problem, not a problem for humans per se – other developed nations have nothing like the gun crime rates, nor overall violent crime rates that we do.

And my ruminations on Noah’s Ark suggest that, perhaps, at least theologically, violence is not the solution to violence.

So I am left wondering what can be done earlier in the process so we don’t get to the point of violence. There is disagreement among Christians, on Scriptural grounds, about the legitimacy of violence as a response to violence - although it would seem that all Christians, even those who espouse just war, must admit of limits to our actions, geopolitically and (presumably) personally. But Christians of all stripes would, I take it, be interested in the question of what gives rise to this violence, peculiarly focussed in one society.

Naturally, the answer on some level is that the problem is sin, and the response needs to be repentance, reconciliation and healing. I wholeheartedly agree. But sin is particular to systems and individuals, and the form of repentance, reconciliation and healing are just as particular. Given that violent crime – much of it between strangers, according to statistics – is so widespread in America, what particular form would these take for us?

Or to put it only slightly differently, what is broken and deformed in our system which prompts people to act out in this way? How might we even be complicit in this? After all, the ‘problems’ are not just those who act out, but also the extended social network by which they are formed and of which they are a part – and which they contribute to forming. The sin is not just the violent acting out, but also the sin done to a person to prompt them to act out, and the broader, systemic sins committed against a person. Sin begets sin.

Note well: This is not in any way saying that someone who acts out is merely a victim and not responsible – on the contrary, we are all victims and simultaneously we are all responsible. We are all sinned against, and we all sin.

So that’s the set of questions I am sitting with: what are the specific conditions of sin – and the specific shape of redemption and healing needed – in America today? At this point, I see the effects (violence) but am only beginning to grope towards an analysis of the causes in greater detail than ‘sin’ (which is universal, yet takes different characteristic shapes). I suppose in some sense, this has been an ongoing preoccupation of this blog ever since I began it.

Photos of rapeseed crops used in accord with relevant copyrights: uppermost image from Wikimedia commons; lower image from stock.xchng. Unfortunately, it is probably another 4 to 6 weeks for the local rapeseed to blossom.

Distractionfest 2008 continues! (Why not?)

2008-03-08T00:46:00.003Z

At the risk of promising to actually post on Gower Street with regularity, nevertheless I have decided that Distractionfest has been fun and interesting enough to become an irregular (but ongoing) feature here, bringing you intriguing, inspiring, and/or lighthearted findings from around the internet.

So for the first entry in Distractionfest Unlimited*, I bring you: The Condiment Packet Gallery, a collection of 700+ condiment packets culled from fast food establishments near and far. In fact, if you know of one which is not found in his collection, he would be keen for you to submit it to him, for which he will give you a genuine Condiment Packet Gallery Pin.

*patent pending

Blogging the Archbishops

2008-03-08T00:07:00.002Z

Maggi Dawn has undertaken a process of interviewing the Archbishops of Canterbury and York when they were here in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago. When they were here they gave a series of lectures which were excellent, enlightening and accessible - just wonderful. Now she gives us a chance to see how they responded to our questions posed to them through the interweb. Go and have a look - there will be more postings in the not-too-distant-future.

Getting Schooled? Violence in three movements

2008-03-07T23:22:00.008Z

In the two and a half years that we've lived here in the United Kingdom, the school system in America has been beset with a rash of gun-related violence - the most obvious (but not most recent) being the shooting at Northern Illinois University. Specifically, in that time, 45 students have been shot and killed, and 72 have been shot and injured.

Guns are generally legal to own in the US, and 48 states have at least some form of legal concealed carry laws - this certainly hasn't dissuaded any of this violence. In fact, it very likely amplified the violence each gunman gives voice to - knife crime, for example, is on the upswing here in the UK, but kids aren't killed in drive-by knifings, and you don't end up with 6, 10, 33 people dead from a knife, unlike in specific instances in school shootings.

So, we've tried one thing and it doesn't work: when will it be time to try something else? We Americans are famously pragmatic that way...

But under the circumstances, how can I allow my daughter to attend school in the US?

Obviously, the UK schools system is not ideal, and the degree to which we have succumbed to the constant pressure to test and quantify and groom students to be useful to business is having (more) negative results. Plus, there are the typical problems with bullying, kids falling through the cracks, and average or less students being neglected; and the gulf between students who go to public (i.e. private) and state (i.e. public) schools is massive and problematic - and a hallowed tradition. But there is no acting out violence on the level that the students in the US have.

The deeper question, of course, is not the means but the ends: why is the American social system - analogous to a 'family system' - giving rise to these people - in systems language, the 'identified patients' who are not themselves sick (although in some cases, yes), but who are the flash point for a sick system. What about our society, our culture, our soul is out of whack? What do we need to change, to genuinely change, to live in the sort of world...well, to live in the sort of world that we all want to live in.

+ + +

I've been haunted this last week especially for some reason by the ever-fresh pools of blood around the world, not least in Gaza and Israel, and the children and other noncombatants who are being routinely slaughtered.

My friend Thunder has an interesting post directly related to this, in which he encourages thinking along the lines of 'an eye for an eye'. His thought about holding to this 'venerable law' is: at least it would be a start. And I think there's something to it - it would at least say that there are limits, something that we are specifically unwilling to admit today. The use of 'Just War' criteria would even be a start, because these also admit of limits not only in going to war, but the amount of force that might be properly used when in war, and the proper targets of such force.

One of the interesting and challenging things about just war criteria is that they take seriously the humanity of one's enemy - perhaps one way of taking seriously Jesus' teaching on the enemy, which is not to deny that he is my enemy but to love him. Of course pacifism also takes seriously, maybe even moreso, the call to love one's enemy. But either one of these arguably loves the enemy in a way which destroying him without limits or consideration - and perhaps even without risk to ourselves - never can.

But embracing either one of these would require some serious rethinking and repentance as a society and while I would never place limits on the work of the Spirit, I'm also not holding my breath.

+ + +

It's interesting how often I meet people in the church how say more or less the same thing: 'When I was a child I used to love the story of Noah's Ark, but when I grew up it became really offensive to me.' People react viscerally to the idea that God would wipe (almost) all his creations off the earth and start new. One person in particular voiced that it was monstrous that God would do such a thing, over what were essentially mere pecadilloes.*

Except when you actually look at the story, God does not wipe out humanity because it hasn't put its pinky up whilst drinking its tea: God comes to grief over humanity's violence (Gen. 6.13). And God's response is to meet violence with violence, in order to overcome violence and start anew.

But by the end of the story, something interesting happens. God places a bow in the sky as a promise that he will never again destroy every living creature (Gen. 8.21): he repents of violence.

As of the time of my writing, humanity has not. Indeed, we are stuck on the idea that the only thing that will overcome violence is violence, preferably more of it.

And we think the story of Noah's Ark is monstrous?

* The idea that 'sin' or transgressing the law can only be pecadilloes or shibboleths or 'religious' things seems increasingly common. There is a growing disjunction between the idea of sin and justice, I suppose, and by extension we are coming to see 'religion' or 'faith' as unrelated to life: a real problem, seems to me. I think this is what we reap when we've sown increasingly hybridised versions of the faith as something private, individual or personal, rather than something political, cosmic, or - in the best sense of the term - worldly.

Food Miles - A Primer

2008-03-07T09:13:00.005Z

The BBC, in their estimable food section, have produced what might be characterised as a primer on food miles, or, more broadly, the environmental impact of what we eat - especially where it is grown and how it comes to us. It is a helpful and balanced presentation of the facts, including the importance of taking our carbon footprint into account as well as a sober look at all the sources of emissions related to our food (not just air miles). Check it out!

Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net: royalty free stock photography for websites.

'conservative', 'liberal' and theology

2008-03-05T22:01:00.003Z

A blog I've enjoyed reading over the last few months is Dan Reid's. He is an academic editor for InterVarsity Press, and he writes mostly about theology and theological publishing. (I also seem to think I've met him in real life once when he was here in Cambridge for a sabbatical.)

He recently wrote a particularly good post which dovetails with a good deal of my own thinking and writing, and I wanted to at least dogear the reference for another time (and share it with you as well).

In the post he cavils with the ease with which the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' are deployed in theological writing, and (especially) the pernicious effects of such. Put simply, it hinders thinking and engagement, two things we dare not live without.

If you need a goad to get you to click over and have a look, here is a choice quotation from the entry:

'It is a cheap scholarship that out of fear or partisan motives feels the need to immediately divide viewpoints into the simple categories of conservative or liberal—or relegate something to the ominous “slippery slope.”' - Dan Reid

Well put; thank you Dan - may your tribe increase!

Capitalism: consideration and critique (a post in three parts)

2008-03-04T21:15:00.009Z

1. Theological Critique of Capitalism and 'Complicity'

Halden at Inhabitatio Dei has returned to his theme of analysis and critique of capitalism on Christian terms, and the extent to which one must go to resist it. Here are his three most recent posts, with the most recent at the top.

On The Possibility of Resisting Capitalism

Modernism and Postmodernism or Early and Late Capitalism?

The Ethics of Complicity

I think each post bears something in it for readers, but the third, the Ethics of Complicity, is particularly helpful. A quotation:

The simple fact is that we are all complicit people, deeply embedded in violence(s) we fail to see, and pervasively compromised by the principalities and powers of this world. The key to proper theological action in a world in which we are all guilty lies precisely in not allowing our complicity to lead to resignation. That is precisely what the ruling powers are always after. Once we can be made to see that our lives are ruled by the powers of the state and the market, we rushed to believe that therefore we should simply become good citizens and good consumers, rather than placing ourselves in the precarious position of being a critic with blood on their hands.

I believe that this is right on. We have too often constructed a sort of 'you're either with us or against us' dualism, which also plays into a wrongheaded moral puritanism which insists that if one is somehow complicit then one cannot resist or challenge what is done.

This sort of dualism seems to assume that I must, at all costs, protect myself: I am complicit in 'x', and so then 'x' must either be permissable (or justified) or else I must extract myself entirely from the world made possible by 'x'. From a Christian perspective we ought to be deeply suspicious of this reasoning - although of course many of us are not and are entirely willing to play the game. One of the core Christian affirmations is not only the existence of sin, but identifying with it - or to put it more simply, the problem is not that the world is sinful and we need to escape it, but that the world is sinful and we are a part of it. Escape is itself sin, as if we were not caught up or complicit in it already. The simple fact is that we are thrown into this world, made by it, and involved in projects endlessly more far-reaching than those defined by our individual wills, not that our wills themselves are untouched by sin either.

The grace of God - knowing God's searching, unfailing, unconditional love, as well as knowing the demands of his justice and holiness - means not that we can withdraw or escape to some realm of untouched purity (as if we needed somehow to earn what can only be received as pure gift), but rather that we can actually be honest about our sin, and begin honestly to name the sin around us, begin addressing it in whatever small way we can. How can we do that if we persist in the myth that either 1) we are untouched by wickedness or 2) the wickedness we are complicit in is actually just fine, thank you.

Or in other words, we need to realise where we are and acknowledge that in order to hear the judgement of God.

2. Affluenza

From a rather different - i.e. nontheological - perspective, I have been reading the book Affluenza: How to be Successful and Stay Sane, by Oliver James. In the book, James, who has a background in psychology, does a cross-cultural analysis of several different societies in the world in order to test a hypothesis. His hypothesis is that the social practices associated with capitalism as practiced in the United States, the United Kingdom, and those societies influenced by them - what he terms selfish capitalism - combined with the formation we receive as children is leading to widespread depression and misery. The presence of these two factors (formation and social practices) James styles as the Affluenza Virus, which when fully developed hinders healthy relationships of nearly any kind and - naturally - contributes to a breakdown of society with far reaching effects for both those affected by the virus and those not affected.

Those who have affluenza are motivated by money fame and power and engage in pursuits (careers, relationships, etc.) primarily to serve these ends, rather than for intrinsic ends such as friendship, love, or the inherent interest of an endeavour. The virus causes one to focus primarily on oneself and leads to overwork and a constant dissatisfaction and discontent with what one has. (Especially in the light of these latter qualities, it becomes easy to see how these people are coveted by marketers - they're already halfway towards buying whatever you're selling.)

He engages in this analysis through interviews with people in countries as far-flung as China, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Denmark, and the US and UK. Throughout he gives recommendations to his readers who might find themselves infected with the virus - or who want to be vaccinated against it or vaccinate their children against it.

On the whole I would recommend it; it helped to bolster and nuance some of my own intuitions about the effects of capitalism on people. It is quite eye-opening and something that I would encourage nearly everyone to read. (He will soon be releasing his next book in the US, a closer analysis of selfish capitalism.)

If I were to lodge any criticisms of what I generally consider to be a deeply insightful account, it would be these two: first, I'm not sure that doesn't give Christianity short shrift at one or two points. He seems to have a vague appreciation of 'religion' as one vaccine against the virus, but I think a more involved account would strengthen his case.

Also, of the two factors involved in spreading the virus, it seems that one is more widespread than another. The stories he tells in his book clearly establish the importance of both factors, but even for those who were not given the virus by our parents, we still need to live in a world largely constructed and maintained by those who suffer from affluenza and their miserable overachievement. It seems like this might be even more widespread and influential than the factors surrounding childhood.

Here's one particularly bracing observation:

' In [Erich] Fromm's Marketing Society the consumer must be permanently dissatisfied, or gratified only for the shortest possible time. Satisfaction would stop consumption, which would stall economic growth. This society needs people with an exaggerated sense of the importance of work, a false need for things and an endless desire to consume, no deep feelings or convictions, standardised tastes, suggestibility and uncritical minds. In many commentators' views, this sums up America, the nation that most heavily influences Australia [, which is becoming increasingly like this.]' p. 67

3. Terms

Third, I thought I would take a moment to make some helpful distinctions between various perspectives. This might seem needless - even pedantic - but I've seen enough evidence to the contrary to think otherwise. It is not uncommon if someone expresses concerns about capitalism, especially in America, that one's interlocutor will pipe up with 'well, it's the only system which works', or some other bromide which is not so much true but common. I was expressing some real misgivings about it the other day to a fellow American, who I don't think was completely unsympathetic, but who nevertheless piped up early on with the question: are you a Marxist? I was stunned; it was as if this were the only alternative to capitalism available.

This notion, that this is the only thing which works is a great work of ideology, because it blinds us to any other possibility, even the ones which are all around us and which are working just fine, thank you. More than that, this sort of single-mindedness not only constricts our vision and the possibilities of thinking (and acting) differently, it also fuels growth of the production and consumption machine as we cannot imagine making a living - or constructing our society - in different terms. Or to put it more simply: it distorts our humanity, twisting us into something which serves an idol rather than someone who serves God and our neighbour.

So, in the hope of assisting us to think a little more clearly about these matters, I offer the following differentiation of terms:

+ Expressing concerns about capitalism is not the same as being anti-capitalism;

+ Being anti-capitalism is not the same as being socialist;

+ Being socialist is not the same as being communist;

+ Being communist is not the same as being Marxist;

+ Being Marxist is not the same as being Leninist or Stalinist.

We might as well go ahead and include the following:

+ The free market is not the same as capitalism.

+ Espousing any of the above (including the free market and capitalism) does not necessarily imply a stance on democracy as such.

+ Any of these stances on political economy (including the free market and capitalism) is purely an ideal, a goal to work towards, and never exists in its pure form.

+ Any actual society employs (at least elements of) each of these models in various ways, and several models often co-exist peacefully.

Decision '08

2008-03-02T20:22:00.004Z

Although I'm living in the United Kingdom, I am nevertheless closely monitoring political developments back in the United States - I even voted in a primary election recently.

It's not easy getting current, accurate news, naturally, but I am finding YouTube to be a reliable informant, and it is on that basis that I am finding myself fairly impressed with the quality of candidates, not that I would endorse all of them. Despite the evident intellectual prowess of the three main candidates, I am rather dismayed that they have stooped to attack ads, as can be seen below:

And sure enough, the other major candidate wasted no time responding in kind:

Is there no depth to which these men will not stoop? How could we possibly elect one of them?

Nevertheless, there is a clearcut third option, for whom I am particularly partial and whom I give my support unreservedly:

Well, I say 'unreservedly', and by 'unreservedly' I mean 'with significant reservations owing to the needless and foolish anti-French sentiment expressed in the video'. But other than that, I'm a Kierkegaard man! (Mmmm...Danish!)

By the way if like me you are fed up to the back teeth with anti-French sentiment and would like to read someone else who is and...I don't know, get more fed up, I guess...check out SuperFrenchie! (It will also satisfy whatever appetite you have for occasional atheistic rant,not my cup of tea, but that's him and there you have it.)

Hat tip to J.P. Sherman for the tipoff to the Kant and Nietzsche videos!

Intelligence Report I

2008-02-24T20:38:00.003Z

Or: Adventures in Missing the Point

Apparently Northern Rock's strategy of making loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them hasn't paid off like they thought, with the result that the government have nationalised the firm.

Unfortunately - according to the opposition - this nationalisation doesn't include the profitable arm of the venture, Granite, which is an offshore trust registered in Jersey, and so the government have annexed the failing part of the failing bank.

Apparently Alastair Darling didn't notice Archangels Michael and Gabriel running away at top speed.

in other news...

There is a serious problem here in the UK with teenage binge drinking and it leading to subsequent violence and vandalism (not to mention city centres looking awful after dark). Supermarket giant Tesco and others have called for the government to ensure 'responsible pricing' of alcohol, that is, for prices to be mandated to be higher, presumably so that teens and younger adults won't be able to afford it, or at least not as much.

Which is really great, you know, because cheap booze is really the root cause of drunkenness. This way only the posh kids will go on a bender.

(Of course - turning off my sarcasm for a moment - this is foolishness itself and completely fails to address the deeper social problems at the root of this sort of behavior. But I suppose this way we can tell ourselves we're doing something, and shake our heads and cluck our tongues when it does nothing.)

Progress, of a sort...

2008-02-22T22:40:00.009Z

I have had the perhaps odd experience of people - strangers - often remarking that I reminded them of a celebrity. (I don't know if this happens to others, too?)

The most...ahem...interesting thing is that the celebrity that I remind people of has changed over time. When I was in high school, quite a number of people thought I could have been a twin for actor Cary Elwes (of Princess Bride fame), pictured right.

But in university, that experience waned, the flower of youth somewhat faded. One summer I found myself working on a movie set (for The Babe), and was told that I had a more-than-passing resemblance for Charles Grodin (of Dave and the Beethoven series, um, 'fame').

More recently, this occurence has virtually disappeared. I have gone years on end without someone rumbling me as a celebrity lookalike. Until today.

I was getting a coffee at a great new shop in Cambridge called Origin-8. The shop itself is part restaurant, part grocery, and it specialises in local, sustainably grown (or humanely raised) food. A great idea whose time has come.

As I was struggling to get my money out of my pocket to pay, wrestling with my cumbersome coat, the lady behind the counter said in a friendly manner 'has anyone ever told you that you look very much like Bill Bryson?' At first I was touched, even a bit flattered. Bill Bryson is among my absolute favourite non-theological authors, I read everything he writes at least once. I thought of his engrossing books on the English language, and the American version of it. Warmly encouraged, I recalled his ever-growing list of humourous travelogues, of places such as Britain by (more or less) foot, America by car, Australia, Europe and Africa: there are few places in this world where he hasn't looked hilariously out of place and befuddled.

It was at that moment that I called to mind my mental pictures of Bill Bryson, which turned out to look something like this real life picture, to the right:

Bill is good-natured enough to be able to poke fun at himself - a tradition I hope I'm following through this ridiculous post - and so in one book (I think it was Notes from a Small Island) he introduced the term 'old flubba-wubba' which was his son's term for a middle-aged, out of shape, red-faced chap: namely his father!

It occurred to me that I wouldn't mind being compared with Bill Bryson at all, but would prefer that the comparison be made to his sharp wit, rich imagination, and formidable prose composition skills, and not his befuddled frumpiness. (Or more accurately, having my befuddled frumpiness compared with his.) Well, he is an American living here, who quite loves England, so the comparisons continue.

Looking back on it, I guess there seems to be a pattern to those celebrities to whom people have felt they can compare me. I'm not sure it's entirely encouraging, to be honest, but there you have it. It is progress...of a sort.

Reconciliation, divine and human

2008-02-22T22:37:00.001Z

Theologically, reconciliation with God is never apart from reconciliation with people, although obviously God takes the lead in ways that humans never could. As the Archbishop of Canterbury has elegantly put it in a recent talk here in Cambridge, 'Christian faith does not make the world smaller, it makes the world larger, puts us more in touch with the truth of reality, not less.' And a part of that, I am convinced, is seeing the magnitude of our own sin, personally and systemically, as well as sin done in my name and on my behalf.

'Biblical' investing?

2008-02-16T10:05:00.003Z

I just saw an article in The Guardian which explored the world of 'moral' mutual funds, in America, particularly 'Biblical' mutual funds. They are certainly making money, but one might raise questions about how 'Biblical' or 'moral' they are.

One steers clear of investing in Wal-Mart - not because of its labor policies but because it doesn't cloak the cover of Cosmo on its shelves.

The article doesn't name one, but indicates in its headline that such funds are 'pro-armaments' - yet they are also against investments in tobacco and alcohol. 'I don't drink and I don't dance, but I'll blow you up if I've the chance.' doesn't appear in the Bible, that I recall.

Never mind that such instruments are essentially profit-driven, and seem likely to be involved in interest-charging enterprises*, both of which are dubious in light of Scripture.

Of course, part of what this points up is the ambiguity of appeals to something or other being straightforwardly 'Biblical'. Texts and understanding being what they are, this is an appeal to an interpretation, not to an uninterpreted text. And so 'Biblical' can often function as a code word modifier which means 'my interpretation' or 'people like us'.** One of the dangers of this is that it domesticates - potentially quite radically - the Bible, so that the constellation of values we already hold (perhaps on other grounds) come to replace the alien, challenging word of Scripture. It also means we can avoid engaging with those who read it differently, because they aren't 'Biblical'.

But perhaps in this case the real problem is when 'evangelical' becomes a lifestyle, and 'Biblical' becomes a modifier for a profit-making investment. When that becomes the case, then that is a clarion indication that something has gone seriously wrong. Will we have ears to hear?

* The church for most of its history interpreted Jesus' words in the sermon on the mount straightforwardly that we are to 'give, without expecting repayment'. It is only during the last 500 years that charging interest (and other means of making money with money) became legal. Of course our entire Western society is based to a large extent on the practise of making money on money - mortgages, student loans, business loans, insurance, annuities and so forth. And we Christians carry on doing this without the slightest pang of conscience. Our behaviour betrays the fact that we are always negotiating with ourselves just what constitutes 'Biblical' values; or to put it another way, it is a matter of judgement, which could be different. (Or we could bite the bullet and refuse to participate in interest-bearing activities and try to find alternatives. {Some Muslims do this in terms of Sharia mortgages, since some interpret Muslim teaching as forbidding interest.} There might be good reasons for withdrawing from the money-making machine.) But I suspect most of us would be loath to do so, or to do what we can to stop supporting arms makers, or to advocate for workers' rights. But gays, the cover of Cosmo, and (I suppose) profit-making are the big moral issues of the day: not a promising sign.

** Notice, for example, the shrillness of the leadership of the Southern Baptists, who historically have advocated 'soul freedom' and liberty of conscience in interpreting Scripture, but who now, ironically, are imposing certain readings as authoritative.

Quick links for more reflection on the Archbishop's speech

2008-02-16T00:24:00.005Z

N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, for whom along with Archbishop Rowan Williams I have profound respect, has written an essay on ++Rowan's speech, clarifying what he sees as the essential matters of the speech, offering his appreciation of its importance and regretting its misreporting and misunderstanding. Whilst I respect them both, I find that +Wright has been given a gift of exercising elegant, piercing clarity in his prose in a way which quite often (by his own admission) eludes ++Wiliams. (H/T Steven Harris)

Moreover, Mike Higton continues offering ruminations and insights, this time from a slightly different perspective that before. A great reminder, through ++Williams and via Milbank that the 'secular' itself has a history, and is not simply the obvious or the given, much less the 'neutral' backdrop against which religion may (or may fail to) establish itself, even while there are some good reasons why it arose historically. This is offered not as a means of clearing away secularity, or traditions of universal rights, but to complicate them a bit, in order to open up a future which doesn't look exactly like the past.

Distractionfest 2008: day 4 or 5 - ubiquitous improv

2008-02-15T22:25:00.005Z

I have a couple of friends who have been involved with improvisational comedy, and it always looks like a lot of fun, and also a lot of work. (Indeed, my friend James, who was a major impetus for Distractionfest in the first place, served as a part of Impromime, an improvisational troupe who performed improv pantomimes.)

I really like the idea of public drama - and pranks and practical jokes and hoaxes - and I recently discovered Improv Everywhere, a troupe which does long form improv troupe which performs pre-planned 'missions', usually involving socially awkward or uncomfortable situations. (That text comes from their website.) It is somewhat like a more elaborate and well-organised flashmob, although the first 'no pants subway' day pre-dates the first official flashmob by about a year.

They have received some press around the world for their annual 'no pants' day (although I hasten to add for the sake of my British readership that this would be better characterised as 'no trousers day'). It involved hundreds of people in cities such as New York riding the subway whilst wearing no trousers. Safety in numbers, I suppose. It made the news. (Participants did wear underpants, it is worth noting.)

They've done plenty of other fun missions, too, including the following:

1) Frozen Grand Central, in which 207 'agents' all freeze in place at the exact same moment in various parts of Grand Central Station in New York City. The video is great - they always take video to record peoples' reactions. They did this for exactly five minutes, and then all unfroze as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and went about the rest of their day.

2) They also did a hoax improv U2 concert in Manhattan called 'Even Better Than the Real Thing', complete with adoring fans. (Apparently U2 are known for doing impromptu concerts for free in unusual locations, so there was a patina of credibility to the idea that U2 might be playing, unseen, on a rooftop in midtow Manhattan.) The singing and whatnot was not amazing, but it looked like a fun mission.

3) The Moebius is a mission in which a group played and replayed (acted and reacted) the same five minute script 12 times consecutively in a Starbucks, a scene involving seven agents and seven different components. It is quite elaborate, and fun to read about all that went into setting it up.

4) Best Buy is one of my favourites, and its cleverness is only matched by its simplicity. In this one, 80 agents infiltrate a Best Buy electronics shop in Manhattan, all wearing blue polo shirts and khaki trousers with a belt, in order to match the shop's uniform (minus name tag, of course).

5) There are many others worth a look - who can forget the Slo-Mo Home Depot or the Cellphone Symphony? - but I will close with another personal favourite, the McDonald's Bathroom Attendant. This one is, like Best Buy, sheer genius in its simplicity, and the margin of credibility really sells it and makes it a top drawer practical joke. As the name implies, a couple of agents infiltrated a McDonald's in midtown Manhattan and one of them - who used to be a 'professional' bathroom attendant in an upscale restaurant - sets up a station in the bathroom with all of the accoutrements of a typical bathroom attedant's trade: combs, cologne, other toiletries, even the dish with a few tips. He then proceeds to wait on the customers in typical fashion as they enter, ever the discreet servant, and continues to do so until the manager finds out. A hilarious concept, flawlessly executed.

No video from that one, as you can imagine, but check out the stills and the blog entry.

There are a number of reasons why I really like these kinds of 'pranks'; one of them is that by design no one is ever hurt or humiliated. In that sense it might not even qualify as a true prank. The only ones open to being humiliated are the actors, and they do just fine.

I also really like it because it is a way that opens up quotidien reality for people: here are people going about what seems to be their everyday lives and suddenly they cease obeying the laws that the rest of us effortlessly fall into. They play with conventions and do it in such a good natured way, never menacing, that it 'opens up' the world for others. New possibilities are presented (one of them being that maybe someone doing something outlandishly different isn't a threat). And it provides a pleasurable disorientation as the usual touchstones of life seem slightly off kilter. And of course it is about play, and joy, and in that way is an eminently human and humane sort of practice.

Juvenile? Maybe. But more than that, there is something postively childlike about it as well.

Long may it go on!

Well, that about wraps up Distractionfest 2008. Look for a future Distractionfest next year or the next time James chides me for not keeping him properly entertained, whichever comes first.

A Book Meme (via the Crimson Rambler)

2008-02-14T20:03:00.008Z

The Crimson Rambler invited me to participate in a book meme (thank you!).

The meme is as follows:
1) Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2) Find page 123.
3) Find the first five sentences.
4) Post the next three sentences.

Unfortunately, I did this in my living room, and I didn't have a book in front of me and so had to grab the book on the top of a stack on a shelf behind me. (I say unfortunately because...well, you'll see.)

The nearest book of at least 123 pages was Prolégomènes à la charité par Jean-Luc Marion (3e édition, La Différence, Paris, 2007)

The 'next three sentences' are, as follows:

Le regard donc où s'expose l'autre comme tel ne peut, en pesant sur le mien, que lui enjoindre de s'exposer, en retour, à l'insubstituable individualité. Le regard qui accomplit en lui l'insubstituable ne peut m'enjoindre que d'accomplir, en me projetant dans un regard, mon insubstituable. Si dans son regard, l'autre (se) risque a sa dernière individualité, il ne peut m'enjoindre qu'à me risquer, en retour, à mon ultime individualité - à rendre l'insubstituable à l'insubstituable.

So, moving right along, I invite the following to participate:

Jane Ellen
Marshall
Eric George - Il est un pasteur de l'Eglise Réformée de France; je lis son blog depuis janvier.

And, as a way of saying 'welcome back':

Jon Taylor
and
The Scandalous One

I know, it's not the list of usual suspects; if you're one of them, and you'd like to (and have time), jump on in.

Not an end, but a beginning

2008-02-13T21:37:00.004Z

The Australian Parliament today, by way of the Prime Minister, apologised officially for the mistreatment of the Australian Aboriginal Peoples. (BBC story here.)

Looked at from one perspective, this might be an end, a balm to troubled consciences, a way for the oppressor to move on and forget, to say to himself 'well, that's fixed, no more worries there': a way for nothing to change.

Or it can actually be the beginning of something much bigger, much messier, less manageable, and more troubling. It might not be a balm (in the short to midterm) for consciences, but actually stir up more trouble; it might be the occasion for more stories to be told, more uncomfortable truth to come to light. Any apology, by dint of coming clean about what one has done, always contains the risk of encountering more fully the depth and nature of one's offense

But maybe, just maybe, it will be the beginning of healing and reconciliation - ultimately, for all involved (for the oppressor often forgets how his oppression distorts his own humanity). And that would begin to change everything.

And maybe - just maybe - my own people in America might take a cue.

Jason Goroncy, an acquaintance who is a PhD student at the University of St. Andrews, and an Antipodean native himself, blogs on this new development here (with the text of the official apology) and here (with an extended reflection on guilt and forgiveness - good stuff).

Distractionfest 2008: day 3 - Coffee, IKEA, and Mark Malkoff madness

2008-02-13T19:28:00.006Z

Well, I guess I didn't promise my friend James that Distractionfest would be on consecutive days.

And after all, isn't the internet mostly just distraction anyway? So, in some sense it's like the old saw about kids' day when we were growing up : on the internet, every day is D.

Besides, I haven't been able to do much with Distractionfest recently because I've been...well...distracted.

But without further ado, here now is Distractionfest, Day 3.

I've recently discovered the comedy stylings and general hijinks of Mark Malkoff. I think I first ran into him on YouTube. He's a comedian, a filmmaker and a writer for (I think) Stephen Colbert.

Apparently his apartment in New York needed fumigating recently, and none of his friends could put him up while he waited for the poisons to recede. Finding hotels to be ridiculously overpriced, he did what any sane, rational person would do - and moved into IKEA in Paramus New Jersey. I'm honestly surprised no one's thought of this before; I'm even more surprised that IKEA - seemingly - went for it. Below is the introductory video for the series which lays out the situation and gives you a sense for how most of it will go. You can access the subsequent days spent at IKEA either on his webpage or via YouTube.

And here is his first day, moving in: hijinks ensue! Good humour.

The other thing which Mark is known for, and which I think is a bit cooler than the IKEA gig, is visiting all 171 Starbucks Coffee locations in Manhattan in 24 hours. It is crazy cool - he had to plot his trip to make sure he took in the 24-hour locations in the middle of the night; he had to buy something at each store; he started out bicycling but the caffeine wore on him. I wonder if he's come down from the high yet? Anyway, the entire lark was recorded and is available on YouTube; a fun watch, and nothing if not a modern-day Herculean Labour - which begs the question, what would be the latter-day equivalent of cleaning out the Augean Stables? Answers on a post card via this blog, please. But in the meantime, feast your eyes on 171 Starbucks:

~~Tomorrow~~ Some subsequent day on Distractionfest 2008: Improv!

Not Quite Distractionfest Again, Yet: A Few More Bits and Bobs on the Archbishop

2008-02-11T22:46:00.000Z

A few worthwhile links, for those with the interest and stamina not merely to read the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks - you have read them, right? Today's address in Synod, too? - but who would like some more perspective and information.

First, if you've read the archbishop's speech and would like some further clarification, Mike Higton is up to the job. An acquaintance who teaches at the University of Exeter, Mike is author of 'Difficult Gospel', an introduction to the thought of Rowan Williams, and edited Williams' most recent collection of essays. If one wants to understand the archbishop better, and the man himself is otherwise occupied, Mike is probably the person to whom you should turn. Mike has provided, via his blog, a multi-layered summary and interpretation of just what the archbishop said. It should not take the place of reading the thing itself, naturally, but may prove quite helpful in clarifying bits of what you have read.

He has also written an interesting reflection on how the very upheaval associated with Williams' remarks may actually serve the very ends he was recommending. That is, it may have actually spurred, alongside the thoughtless bashing and ludicrous accusations, some genuine thought on the matter; not all agreeing with what Williams proposes, of course, but he would never imagine that that would (or should) be the case. Harder to assess, Higton recognises, is the extent to which the misunderstandings associated with it may have also contributed to further islamophobia. Read it all here. Also worth noting, at the very end, are his tongue-in-cheek suggestions of 'easy narratives' for reporters, all of which I have (depressingly) heard or read in one guise or another over the last few days.

To return to one of yesterday's questions: how much time should the media be expected to spend on this stuff? Perhaps enough to grasp and report fairly the facts of the matter. I take it, after all, that that is the standard - at least of the quality press and the BBC - upheld in other complex and potentially obscure matters such as Middle Eastern politics and the ongoing crisis in the banking industry owing to subprime lending. I trust you to get it right in those cases. Why stop there?

And, lest I be seen as simply and only acting as an apologist for what the archbishop said, have a look at a critic who has actually read the speech, Simon Barrow at ekklesia.co.uk. I'm not sure that Barrow entirely grasps the way that Williams is trying to complicate the - allegedly - unitary sphere of secular power, and the inadequate ways it deals with people's membership in various groups; or, perhaps just as likely, I haven't appreciated the gist of his criticism and should have another look. But this sort of contribution seems likely to help advance the argument at any rate, and is worth a look.

Interrupting the Distraction: the Archbishop of Canterbury and Broadcast Media

2008-02-10T15:37:00.000Z

First off, if you would like to know what the Archbishop of Canterbury said last week in relation to Sharia law and British law, please - I beg of you - read it yourself. Too many have proven themselves too quick to believe the farfetched or scandalous and denounce the Archbishop in light of that, rather than actually engaging with what he has said. Moreover, the broadcast media - not least the (otherwise) eminently balanced and thoughtful BBC4 - have not been entirely clear or fair in their presentation of the Archbishop's remarks.

In addition, showing the seriousness of the matter and the anguished conscience of the nation, the Sun posted two ~~prostitutes~~ page 3 girls outside of Lambeth Palace calling for the Archbishop's resignation. Who says the tabloids aren't serious journalism?

Just as oddly, Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone has chided Archbishop Williams for saying such a thing when relations between Christians and Muslims were not on particularly strong ground. My question is, 'as opposed to when during the last 1350 years?'

But strangest of all, I think - and again, most odd that it was broadcast on BBC4, closer to a paragon of careful and thoughtful engagement than nearly any other contemporary media outlet - was the report on this morning's Broadcasting House, a weekly radio newsmagazine on the media. (You can listen again, at least for now, on the programme's homepage.) At one point the presenter Paddy O'Connell said 'Realistically, how much time is the modern media willing to devote to complex, challenging, and contentious religious argument?'

I would think that the answer to this question would be: enough time to understand the argument and accurately depict its significance for the listening public.

He went on to interview a former press secretary for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, as well as an Anglican vicar who formerly worked as an ad exec, but now is curate at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. The latter of the two said 'Where he's got it wrong, I think, is that he's fallen victim to the required pithiness of the media, the sort of 24-7 soundbite culture. in that he attempted to summarise something very complex in a very short and pithy way and in doing so I think has fallen victim to a brevity that required a greater fullness.' There were some good remarks later on in the interview, but it seems to me that the gist of the beginning of the interview was this: the media and its audience cannot be expected to take the time and mental effort to understand something complex or nuanced, and so it was the archbishop's own fault that he was misunderstood.

It seems to me an appalling lack of any kind of introspection to say that when someone else is damaged by one's own shortcomings it is entirely their problem for failing to take such into account. The problem is not our short attention span or our unwillingness to expend a little energy understanding a complex argument and issue; the problem is not the media's seeming inability to inform in proper depth and give people any genuine insight into their world (as opposed to trivia, bullet-point factoids and water-cooler conversation starters); no, the problem is someone trying to think aloud publicly and present a nuanced and complex perspective.

To the extent that this is a reasonable characterisation of what has happened, then let us be clear what it is: blaming the victim. And that is pathological.

For some sensible writing in the blogosphere on the furore surrounding the archbishop's remarks, Maggi Dawn is a good place to start, and she links to others.

Photo courtesy of The Archbishop of Canterbury's website.

Distractionfest 2008: day 2 - keeping it smooth

2008-02-07T22:51:00.000Z

Obviously, yesterday being Ash Wednesday, there was a one day hiatus in Distractionfest.

But today we return, after having witnessed the sublimity of Jacques Brel, to behold the ridiculousness of Yacht Rock. The phrase 'yacht rock' is used to describe the smooth rock hits which proliferated in the years 1976 to 1984, associated with names such as Michael McDonald, the early Kenny Loggins, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Christopher Cross and others. Yacht Rock is also the name of a series of videos released on channel101.com and youtube.com, created by J.D. Ryzner.

There are currently 11 in the series, the most recent being released just last week. Each of the videos manages both to send up the genre and also serves as an affectionate, if ironic, tribute to it. They are worth watching for a laugh, as well as to listen to some fine older smooth rock. (Tho' they aren't afraid to pull out the f-bomb...you've been warned.) Each fictional story focuses on the creation of at least one song, featuring outlandish yarns of how it came to be and the personalities behind them; if they are noteworthy for nothing else, they at least present a staggeringly accurate portrayal of John Oates and his personality...or not.

My personal favourites are episodes one and two, and I present them here for your distraction...er, enjoyment.

Here's Episode 1, the one that started it all, with the story of the genesis of 'What a Fool Believes'.

And here is Episode 2, featuring a songwriting duel between Hall & Oates (on the one hand) and Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins (on the other). Some fine cameos by Peter Cetera and Christopher Cross fill out what might be the best episode of the series.

In case YouTube is being stroppy, you can also see all eleven episodes at channel101.com.

Many thanks to my brother Matt - of Baconsteak fame - for connecting me to these videos when he was recently visiting. Here's a link to a cool short video of him playing the guitar.

Look for more Distractionfest 2008 soon!

Distractionfest 2008: day 1 - Jacques Brel

2008-02-05T21:39:00.000Z

Dear friend James gently chided me over the weekend for not posting more than twice a month recently. He was right, of course, I have been otherwise occupied for a while. But never one to miss an opportunity to overaccept an offer, particularly one of James', I hereby announce that today begins the annual installment of Distractionfest:

Distractionfest 2008

...because you demanded it!

Well, by 'you', of course, I mean 'James' - only he didn't really demand it either.

But before getting further bogged down, let us dash on to other matters.

Over the last year I have been acquainting myself with the delights of French pop music, in particular some of the songs of Jacques Brel (about whom I have known for a while, and even own a CD of his which is in storage in the US). But I have realised that, as incredible as Brel is to hear, he is even more moving to see.

Probably the best known song of Brel's to American audiences is 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' (translated - quite inadequately - into English as 'If You Go Away', and covered by numerous artists such as Dusty Springfield. A better translation would be 'Don't leave me'.). It is a desperate, poignant - and ultimately fruitless - plea for a lover to stay. It moves me whenever I listen to it; it is hard for me to watch him sing it without becoming choked up. Some have described it as a love song, but that's wrong - although it might be Romantic in a certain sort of (capitalised) way. It is filled with such raw, pleading emotion, only to end with abandonment; it's not love, but a deeply poignant vulnerability, a humanity. The video clearly shows Brel as both an astounding lyricist and an amazingly talented performer. He clearly communicates the emotion, without going 'over the top'; watch it, even if you can't follow the French, and see if it doesn't affect you. Vraiment, un maître!

Another song of Brel's which I have discovered more recently is Amsterdam, first performed live in 1964 and apparently not originally intended for recording, it is nevertheless another of his more popular songs (and covered in English by many, including David Bowie). When first performed, it was met with a three minute standing ovation, almost 30 seconds longer than the song itself. The music itself, as well as the singing, constitutes a crescendo which builds to the very end. The lyrics themselves speak about sailors in the port of Amsterdam and all that they do there - sing, sleep, dream, be born, die, whore, eat, drink (and drink, and drink), and so on. One commentator - who posted the 1966 version with English subtitles on YouTube - described this as 'Brel's vision of freedom', the implication being that this is something great and good. But interestingly, the singer himself - in the form of I (je) - only appears in the very last full line before the final chorus: 'Et quand ils ont bien bu Se plantent le nez au ciel Se mouchent dans les étoiles Et ils pissent comme je pleure Sur les femmes infidèles' = 'And when they [i.e. the sailors] are well and truly drunk, they put their noses in the sky and blow their noses in the stars and they piss like I weep for the unfaithful wives.'

I think, on the contrary, that this is deeply ambiguous about freedom: the narrator's not a sailor, the women of Amsterdam (or at another point in the song, Hamburg) are not sailors. They instead endure the sailors who sail from place to place with no home, no roots, exercising a kind of 'freedom' which is parasitic on those they find themselves amongst. The narrator does not style himself as eating, sleeping, singing, whoring, drinking, enjoying it all but merely weeping. Not accidentally, this comes at the very end of the song, at the very height of the crescendo; after that, the refrain is hastily repeated twice and it all ends abruptly, perhaps to some surprise, and we are left wondering about this reversal. I don't think this is a paean to freedom at all, but a startling presentation of its enduring ambiguities.

The presentation is dramatic and, like the other, worth a look even if you don't know French.

Come back tomorrow for more Distractionfest 2008 - space and time permitting.

Light amidst the Darkness: the paradox of Candlemas

2008-02-04T15:46:00.000Z

The text of a sermon preached by the Rev. Jason A. Fout
at Mattins on the feast of Candlemas (tr.)
in Selwyn College Chapel, Cambridge

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In this morning’s gospel reading from Luke, we pick up the story just after the Christmas story. The shepherds have left the Holy Family, the angels’ choruses no longer ring in their ears, perhaps they’ve found more suitable accommodation. They’ve just begun settling down to life with a new child, for although Jesus is the Son of the Father, the Word of God, he is also at this stage of his earthly life a reasonably normal child, with all of a baby’s needs. And now here, when we might be considering having our child baptised, Mary and Joseph take him up to Jerusalem to have him presented at the Temple, to make a sacrifice for his purity and Mary’s as well.

This should have been a fairly routine, mundane – even perfunctory – task. In the event, it became anything but.

Simeon was pious, dedicated, devout. In his old age he has dedicated himself to worship and prayer, and to waiting for God’s anointed servant to appear. You can sort of imagine Mary and Joseph, holding Jesus, trudging through a rather slow-moving line in the temple precincts, bleary-eyed from the baby still not quite sleeping through the whole night. Simeon, a complete stranger, comes up to them, takes their child and begins praising God. According to this stranger, Jesus is the long-promised saviour who will be a light to the Gentiles and the glory of Israel. What had been a routine task – perhaps the first-century equivalent of popping round to the county council office for some paperwork – suddenly became anything but routine.

Continue reading Light amidst the Darkness

But what good news this was! Joseph and Mary were astonished: if what this fellow said was true, then this meant that God was finally going to act to deliver his people from oppression under the Romans and other Gentiles – no more exile; finally God would return to the Temple and his presence would be seen there again; finally things would be set to rights and the creation would be as it should. It would be the beginning of a new age. It would be a blessing to Jew and Gentile alike – and it was going to be their Son who would do this. How could a family be happier or prouder?

But no sooner has Simeon’s blessing faded from their ears than he next confides in Mary that not everything will be a bed of roses. His work will cause much turmoil in Israel, as it casts some down and lifts others up; he will stir up opposition among the members of God’s covenant people and the hidden things that he reveals will be telling. And rest assured, it will cause pain and division for Mary too.

If they were amazed and astounded at what Simeon had said at first, then surely this must nearly have rent them apart. How can it be that something so good, so right, could have this effect? How can things getting better cause such strife and turmoil? It seems paradoxical.

And yet I suspect we have all encountered this at some point too. We make a breakthrough of some kind, a change, a decision about the future, and what seems like clarity and wondrous goodness for us is not received well by those around us. Maybe it’s someone we’re dating or socialising with of whom our friends disapprove. Maybe we’ve chosen a subject to study or a career path which seems promising, almost as if we were made for it, but we find our parents shaking their heads in incomprehension. One can only imagine the response of George Augustus Selwyn’s parents when he announced he had been recommended to be consecrated bishop in a land on the other side of the world, back in 1841. I have no idea how they reacted, but it might have seemed almost like a death in the family as they realised they might never see their son again. What was good news to George and to the people of New Zealand might have seemed rather like bad news to his friends and family back here in England.

Or maybe we’ve found Christian faith for the first time here at university, or have just begun taking it seriously for the first time, and it seems like – life! – and everything has opened out to us in a way it never has before, and experiencing God’s grace puts everything in a whole new light – and what could be better than this? And yet we might find those around us not knowing what to make of us, or even despite our best efforts feeling a little threatened by these changes.

Or it’s even possible that we know this from the other side. Perhaps a friend of ours lands his dream job in another part of the country and is eager to launch out into his career – but this also means, inevitably, that your friendship will change, and what seems like such great good news for him feels like a difficult change for you.

This paradox, that what is good can be perceived as being bad, is brought into particularly sharp relief with Jesus, and I think it shows us some of how the world is out of whack, that things are not as they should be. For Jesus, the light that he brings to the Gentiles and to the Israelites will uncover not merely their suffering or oppression, but the ways in which they contribute to others’ suffering or oppression, perhaps even benefit from it. To put it simply, it uncovers sin. And it brings change. And both of these things, even change for the better, can be very uncomfortable. I suspect most of us can attest to that in one way or another.

And when the kingdom of God threatens the powers of the world by promising to put things right, the powers react badly. They nailed Jesus to a cross. You can imagine in light of this, the sword of grief piercing Mary’s soul as well. But of course in God what seems like an end is not an end, but only a beginning. In God’s great love he is not content to take our rejection of him; rather, in Christ, he says ‘no’ to our sin and the darkness we’ve brought into the world, and in Christ, he says ‘yes’ to us.

Through Christ’s resurrection and through the power of the Holy Spirit he makes us capable of being agents of God’s Kingdom in the world. This means being agents of change for good: working in whatever ways we are given to release others from suffering, oppression, and sin; seeking reconciliation and new life in the world around us; loving others with the love we ourselves have experienced. This is our call as Christians.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves. A mission like this is difficult, and we should expect to encounter resistance as this new way of doing things might feel a bit threatening to the world. We might even feel resistance in ourselves; after all, we’re never completely transformed in this life. But I think because God’s love for us in Christ cannot ever be lost, then there is nothing truly, ultimately worthwhile that can ever be taken from us.

At the end of our reading this morning, after these singular events at the Temple, Mary, Joseph and Jesus return to their hometown in Galilee, and no doubt return to the usual routine of everyday life. And soon we, too, will return to our usual Sunday routine, and prepare for the next week of term. Our reading closes by noting that, in that return to the routine, Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and that the favour of God was upon him”, as he looked ahead to the rest of his life and the mission God had given him. It’s my prayer, as we return to our routine, that the Lord would do the same for us. Amen.

Biofuel dilemma

2008-01-20T17:14:00.000Z

Biofuels - ethanol in particular - have been trumpeted for a while now as a potential panacea for problems with fossil fuel, particularly because it is a renewable resource. I myself have been a strong supporter of them in the past.* And to the extent that something not presently used for another crop can be used - sawgrass, for example, or other weeds - I'm not against the use of biofuels. But we are finding that using corn (or other food crops) tends to drive up food prices. For us in America or Britain, that's not too big a deal; but the fact is it drives up prices across the board, including especially the third world, introducing the possibility of starvation not through literal scarcity, such as blight or crop failure, but a famine because the food is simply too expensive, and the process of globalisation/urbanisation in third world countries has changed their economies into (increasingly, but not universally) subcontractor manufacturing and agriculture for first world nations rather than agriculture for the nation's own consumption. The bottom line ends up being that our unnecessary driving ends up having a direct relationship with nutrional well being in other countries, giving the phrase dying to drive an SUV a rather new and horrific meaning.**

In addition, as today's Observer notices, biofuels also may have rather untowards environmental effects, not least through producing more greenhouse gases that the equivalent fossil fuels.

Or, to get down to brass tacks, it means that biofuel in itself is not the magic bullet that will solve our energy problems. The fact is, in all likelihood, barring the discovery of safe cold fusion, there is no magic bullet, and this is the equivalent of spending to get ourselves out of debt. The only surefire response to the energy problem is to reduce our consumption - full stop.

* Not that that means much: I don't determine national policies, and have virtually no say over energy policy on anything but a micro-scale.

** Add to that the increased vulnerability of such countries' crops which is foreseen through the process of global climate change and you have a sobering situation indeed.

The cereal image above is public domain. Thanks to Petr Kratochvil for the image. Traffic image also public domain, available here.

Little Victories/ des petites victoires

2008-01-16T13:14:00.000Z

I returned however reluctantly from several days in Paris a little over a week ago - photos to follow. More than the other times I've visited France, I felt that my French went into overdrive; a very interesting experience and I am trying to work hard to keep it up. But I experienced a few small victories, which may well have fuelled my rapid expansion of French: I was twice stopped and asked for directions from native French speakers (they may have been in Paris from Toulouse or Lyons or Montreal, who knows); apart from appearing savvy enough to actually be worth asking for directions, I also actually knew Paris - and French - well enough to direct them accurately.

The other moment of distinction was one night when I was in a bar with my brother, and we were talking with some of the patrons, and one of them guessed I was from...wait for it...Belgium. What an amazing holiday it was.

This might sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm really only bewilderedly proud, and grateful.

À Mme. Lowstuter, Mlle. Washer, M. Johnson, et toutes les autres personnes qui m'assistent apprendre le français: je vous remercie!

Managing the Manger (at Hopeful Imagination)

2007-12-14T16:13:00.000Z

Nearly two years ago, plans were announced for a theme park in the Holy Land on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus is said to have miraculously fed 5,000. It was to be a project undertaken by American evangelicals with the assistance of the Israeli government. Theme parks seem to be distinctively if not exclusively American inventions. It is richer than a mere ‘amusement park’ and typically involves aping some aspect of real life – the town square or other urban landscape is a favourite – in the setting. The result is a parody of the real world, but safe, secure, sanitised, shorn of any rough edges or real life beyond the time of business hours. No one is homeless; no one is oppressed; no one protests; no one lives there; no one is born, suffers, dies there. It is nowhere. It isn’t reality – in all its messy, heart-rending, wonderful, rough around the edges, glory. The theme park is a bid to control an unruly reality.

Now, of course it is just a theme park – a place of recreation to escape. That no one lives there is quite to the point: it is like an embodied drama in which we can assume certain roles and consider certain options. No one lives in Shakespeare’s Verona just as no one lives in Disney World. There is a necessary air of stylized unreality about it all, which is of the nature of the thing.

The problem becomes when the theme park substitutes for the reality – or when we can only think of the reality in terms of a theme park.I have a friend who went to Jerusalem a year or so ago, and he remarked that he was disappointed that it was so cluttered, and that there were so many people there hawking religious tchotchkes. He didn’t remark on the religious tensions and strife there, but he might well have. We can develop a notion of Jerusalem and other biblical locations as idealized locations, a sites so hallowed and sacred that they must be ‘pure’ in some way, unsullied by litter and congestion and strife and souvenirs. Or as a Rabbi friend of mine said to me in a slightly different context, ‘so this is the Holy Land?’ We can be tempted to find the real thing anticlimactic – maybe a little too real to be convincing – and wish we had something a little purer, a little more set apart. A theme park would suit this nicely.

It seems to me that the shed (or, more likely, a cave) we will find ourselves gathered near in 11 days is rather particularly like that. We have heard the story for roughly two millennia, and we have had children re-enact it for us for nearly that long, and it can become pretty idealized and well-scrubbed in our minds.But it was a stable, used in a desperate moment by people worried about taxes and unable to find room among the throngs in Bethlehem. An unanticipated place for an unanticipated birth of an unanticipated child, in a place which might have been tidy but still smelt of animals and oats and shit. It wasn’t prepared; it wasn’t ideal; it wasn’t special; it was just a place.

But the impurity of it all, the unruly reality of it all, that if we saw it today might make us wonder ‘so what’s the big deal?’, that is good news: because that’s our world, the world that God created and – despite our best attempts to live elsewhere – is determined through Christ to redeem. It might not be tidy or safe, but it’s all we’ve got.

Check out this and other people's Advent reflections over at Hopeful Imagination.

Shameful

2007-12-14T07:18:00.000Z

I can't believe that the U.S. is stonewalling in Bali, refusing to allow emissions cuts to be made mandatory or to share cleaner technology with developing nations. And at a time when the evidence is becoming more and more clear that climate change is genuine and human-caused. This is shameful.

The Bali conference and America's intransigence is reported on in the Guardian and the Chicago Tribune. The most laughable quotation to come out of it, reported in the Guardian, is the following:

James Connaughton, the senior US negotiator in Bali, said: "The US will lead, and we will continue to lead, but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow."

So, we've done nothing so far, denied that climate change is a reality, and resisted any hint of change, and now we're leaders - and you should just get in line and shut up? I don't wonder why America has trouble mustering respect around the world these days: we're pretty well out of step with reality.

Also, the BBC has had a couple of informative - and alarming - articles on climate change recently, including one on how this is the warmest year on record since 1850, and another on forecasting the summer melting of arctic ice by 2013.

All I can say is that if it's true, peak oil needs to kick in soon.

Also, I heard a really fascinating story on BBC Radio 4 about solar power generation in Saharan Africa, which is encouraging for the future in one way anyway (Here's a print reference to the idea); also the possibility of wind power for the UK.

Why America Could Never Have Universal Health Care (or: That's FOOD?!)

2007-12-13T21:45:00.000Z

O.
M.
G.

I just ran into, via Serious Eats, Paula Deen's recipe for - get this - fudge made using Velveeta.

It involves, well, Velveeta.
And confectioner's sugar and butter and cocoa powder; formed into balls, placed on sticks;
And dipped in caramel;
And dipped in white chocolate;
And rolled in nuts.

(Here is a link to a demonstration on the Ellen show - but I warn you, do not try this at home.)

Velveeta? What!?

As the Serious Eats blog says, she's trying to kill us all.

If that isn't enough, check out her recipes for fried mac and cheese wrapped in bacon, as well as - are you sitting down? - deep-fried butter.

Or perhaps you would prefer - as she moves from desecration to merely personal insult - her banana split brownie pizza?

Now, true, she specialises in Southern home cooking, and a number of her other recipes look like interesting versions of traditional favourites. (And I enjoy well-done Southern and Soul food it must be said.) But several of the recipes, especially those mentioned, just look like over-the-top creations fuelled by a Rococo too-much-is-never-enough aesthetic, like if Liberace had a bigger appetite and a less discerning palate. I nearly had congestive heart failure just reading the deep-fried butter recipe. Makes me want to eat nothing but consommé for a week.

All of which raises the interesting question: is it possible any longer to parody the U.S.?

Some Reasons We Wish We Could be Home for the Holidays

2007-12-13T07:08:00.000Z

Well, we're looking at another Christmas here in Cambridge - with all of the wonders that that implies - but without family present. My brother is coming after Christmas for a while (which will be great), but for Christmas itself it'll just be us three. So there's one reason we wish we could be back in Chicago for Christmas.

And just today in the Chicago Tribune, I saw another reason: there has been a spate of openings of better-quality thin crust pizza restaurants, which I won't be able to try out for a while. (I've blogged about my pizza adventures in Chicago earlier.) Chicagoans are learning about the wonders of Neapolitan (and Neo-Neapolitan) style pizza, often from a wood-burning or coal-burning oven. Although I like thick, pan-style pizza too (hey, I'm from Chicago, after all), I really prefer a thinner crust pizza, and that's the kind I am known for making myself. It will be interesting if this will lead to Chicago being known not just for deep dish but also for trademark styles of thin crust pizza as well? It can become a wide-ranging pizza mecca, pushing the envelope on tastes and styles.

Below is a link to a video on some of the new restaurants, courtesy of WGN News:
Thick vs. thin - the pizza war

On Being Left Behind

2007-12-08T15:50:00.000Z

Here I am, nearly a week later, and last Sunday’s gospel lesson is still rattling around in my head, Mt. 24:26-44. When it was read in chapel it quite struck me and my mind lingered over it for some time; I’m still not entirely sure just what to make of it, but I’d like to share some of my thoughts in process.

First, this is a favourite prooftext for premillenial dispensationalists to quote in support a rapture from the earth in which Christians are taken away to heaven and the world bears the brunt of God’s righteous wrath. This is the basis of the Left Behind novels – from the passage saying ‘one will be left [behind]’. This is a troubling doctrine in a number of ways, not least because it seems to indulge our own (self-righteous) thirst for others’ blood, at times even endorsing a sort of prurient voyeurism on others’ misfortune – I have heard some seriously suggest that they would enjoy being in heaven looking down and seeing everyone get theirs. It seems when doctrine fuels anything like these sorts of attitudes in us, we ought to take pause and soberly reassess where we’re at and how we’ve gotten there. But this is also not a true doctrine; in any event, it is abundantly clear that it couldn’t be supported on the basis of this passage: just as those in the flood were ‘taken’ in judgement, so also those at the coming of the Son will be ‘taken’ in judgement as well. This isn’t a matter of believers being raptured away out of the world, but of them being left in the world. (So much for the old Larry Norman song, I guess.)

This gives a slightly different sense to ‘apocalyptic’ – at least here – such that it is not about the rending of creation, but rather its judgement and continuation. In fact, there is almost the opposite sense, and nearly the opposite sense of the flood, that actually life goes on. The man in the field, the woman grinding: do they simply continue their work in the following days? It seems likely (although presumably there is now more work to do).

But I wonder if those left feel ambivalent about those taken? Or to put it more strongly, I wonder if they are left in grief, in loss, feeling the massive hole where these other valued people used to be: co-labourers, but also presumably friends, family, loved ones. Life does not merely continue for those who remain, but it continues with loss, and visible notable gaps where others used to be.

What is clear on the basis of this teaching is that although those left may live with grief and loss, no smugness of self-righteousness is allowed. There is a discreet veil over what happens to those ‘taken’ in judgement; there is no room in the kingdom, it seems, for satisfying our bloodthirsty curiosity. We are instead to be ‘ready’ for when the Son comes at an unexpected hour, a readiness which (I think) speaks of a certain integrity of life, such that we deeply appropriate and live the gospel of Christ, and its grace, service and love.

I trust that God’s judgement will be just and good and loving and in accord with the grace and holiness manifest in Christ. But at least now it takes a bit of graced imagination to think how this might work out, and I’m not sure I see it at this point. Even so, I join my voice gladly – though with perplexity – to the church’s chorus down the ages” Mara natha, O Lord Jesus, come!

This is also posted over at Hopeful Imagination, a group blog for Advent - check it out throughout the Advent season for more postings!

Streetwise: Rowan Williams on Anglicanism

2007-12-03T11:29:00.000Z

Archbishop Rowan Williams has provided, in his estimable book Anglican Identities, a working summary of Anglicanism, which I believe is worth noting:

"I have simply taken it [i.e. Anglicanism] as referring to the sort of Reformed Christian thinking that was done by those (in Britain first, then far more widely) who were content to settle with a church order grounded in the historic ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, and the classical early Christian formulations of doctrine about God and Jesus Christ -- the Nicene Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon. It is certainly Reformed thinking, and we should not let the deep and pervasive echoes of the Midle Ages mislead us: it assumes the governing authority of the Bible, made available in the vernacular, and repudiates the necessity of a central executive authority in the Church's hierarchy. It is committed to a radical criticism of any theology that sanctions the hope that human activity can contribute to the winning of God's favour, and so is suspicious of organised asceticism (as opposed to the free expression of devotion to God which may indeed be profoundly ascetic in its form) and of a theology of the sacraments which appears to bind God too closely to material transactions (as opposed to seeing the free activity of God sustaining and transforming certain human actions done in Christ's name).

-Rowan Williams, Anglican Identities, p. 2 (italics original)

No, I don't have a life - why do you ask?

2007-11-28T14:25:00.001Z

Last spring, when the prognosis of my supervisor's condition became clear, arrangements were made for me to have another supervisor 'waiting in the wings', for if and when Dan could no longer do it. My new supervisor is David F. Ford, for whom I have great respect and sympathy, and with whom, when I applied to Cambridge, I initially thought I might be working.

We had the 'Ford Home Group' today, a fellowship group of theology and doctrine students here at Cambridge, and it happened that David, who hosts it, was getting rid of a pile of clothes, and he thought at the last minute that some postgraduates might like to have a grab at them before sending them to Oxfam. Most of us demurred, but I did make one auspicious acquisition: I now own the tie that he was wearing in his official Cambridge staff photo (picture right).

It's almost like a brush with fame...

Unfortunately, I can't actually think of anything with which I would wear it.

Judgement Call: Sermon for Christ the King Sunday

2007-11-26T00:09:00.000Z

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our salvation. Amen.

During a certain prominent war of rebellion waged against His Royal Majesty King George the III, an odd tableau transpired among the king’s rebellious overseas colonists. Trying desperately to dig in and secure their position, a group of soldiers was trying to repair a small defensive barrier. A man in civilian clothes was riding by on his horse and as he drew near, he heard the soldiers’ leader shouting instructions to the men but making no attempt to help them. The rider paused and asked the leader why this was so. The leader shot back “Sir, I am a corporal!” At that, the stranger apologized and, dismounting, proceeded to help the exhausted soldiers.

The job done, the stranger turned to the corporal and said, “Mr. Corporal, next time you have a job like this and not enough men to do it, go to your commander-in-chief…and I will come and help you again.” Of course, the stranger was none other than general George Washington, commander-in-chief of the American forces.

Friends, I don’t seem to recall offhand just how the scurrilous rebellion played out, but I think we can agree at least that this was an edifying episode. And perhaps it is not entirely unlike the scenario which Jesus paints in today’s gospel lesson. In the one, the corporal doesn’t realise that it is his own general who is serving him; in the other all of those judged as either sheep or goats are surprised to find that all along they have been dealing with Christ.

We’ve no doubt heard this gospel story before, of Jesus, at the end of all time, separating people as a shepherd separates sheep and goats, setting things right. Perhaps you take great comfort in it; or perhaps you might take offence at it and the whole notion of judgement. Or maybe you’re somewhere in-between. Regardless of where you find yourself, I would ask you to lend me your ears this evening, as we look a little more closely at this rather odd story, and what it might tell us about the surprising nature the judgement of Christ, the King.

Continue reading Judgement Call

In America, there is a one liner joke going around on car stickers, which reads “Jesus is coming – look busy!” Joking aside, this episode from Matthew suggests that it is not merely looking busy, but being busy in a certain way which is important. The tableau portrays Jesus returning at some point in the future after being raised from the grave and exalted to the Father’s right hand, this return is what theologians have called the parousia. When he returns, Jesus – who turns out to be the king – serves as a shepherd, separating the sheep from the goats.

This separation, this judgement, turns out to be surprising, not least for those who are judged. But first it is worth noticing the basis of the judgement. There is no hint here that this judgement is based on peccadilloes, on obscure dictates that we are sometimes keen to observe. Jesus doesn’t seem to interrogate his sheep over whether they’ve ever smoked or danced or had a drink of whiskey; he doesn’t seem to care if they’ve voted Tory or Labour or Lib Dem or whatever. Jesus separates sheep from goats on the basis of what each has done for the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters.

Now some interpreters want to say that Jesus’ brothers and sisters – the Greek word just means ‘brothers’ – are the church, and that this passage deals with how the world will be judged for how it related to the church. But I think that the text wants to push against this easy categorisation some, and that there are good theological reasons that we might broaden this term and see Jesus as being a brother of all the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned.

In any event, it is on the basis of their serving the ‘least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters’ that the sheep are recognised as sheep; it’s on the basis of their neglect of these brothers and sisters that the goats are recognised as goats. So there’s a sense that Jesus’ judgement and separation is not at all something alien imposed on those arrayed before his throne so much as recognising the reality of what is already present, and what has been shown in the whole of their lives through attending (or not) to the least of Jesus’ sisters and brothers.

Perhaps the most surprising element of this all is the surprise of the people judged. There is a keen sense that they had no idea whether they were sheep or goats; they didn’t know they were serving the Lord or not in what they did. This means that no one can toady up to the king, no one can curry favour with him in order to get in on his good graces by doing just enough of the right thing. The judgement is not on the basis of what one has done for the king as the king, but only what one has done for the king inadvertently as he is hidden in the most humble of his brothers and sisters.

This, in turn, implies that at its deepest, life is not about securing and establishing ourselves over against everyone else; life is not, in contemporary parlance, about looking out for number one. Rather, true life – in our story’s terms, the life that leads to life – is not self-centred, but is open to others. True life is not concerned how others can serve us, but is preoccupied with serving others, especially those others who Jesus calls ‘least’, and who usually hover on the margins of our consciousness.

So we see the sheep and the goats are judged based on how they have served the ‘least’, and they are surprised to find that they were serving Christ himself – or failing to serve him. There are many things we can take away from this but I would like to focus on one in particular this evening, and that is how the judgement of Christ the King subverts our own judgement.

How does our own judgement usually proceed? I’d like to suggest three common alternatives on offer, limiting myself to religious judgements, but of course this can be easily broadened into any number of arenas.

We are all familiar no doubt with some ways in which the Bible is put to use these days whether in national politics or in the affairs of the church. It is perhaps somewhat more prominent in my native land than it is here in Britain, but we find some of it here as well. The scenario is clear – take our choice of issue, there are any number of them on offer. Find some biblical verses to support our perspective, and then claim that those who disagree with us aren’t merely reading scripture differently, but are failing to take it seriously, or perhaps disregarding it altogether in order to follow the spirit of the age. We could accuse them of hurting the church or compromising the gospel. Never mind that it’s other Christians we’re attacking. Either way, it’s clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

Or maybe we’d take a different tack. We might want to look at the spirit of the Bible as a whole, reasoning that otherwise we might miss the wood for the trees. Those people then, who select only particular verses are in danger of distorting the whole biblical message, no doubt to their own nefarious ends. Even if we can’t actually account for individual teachings of the bible, we might still be able to render some general more-or-less accurate account. Either way, it’s clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

Or perhaps we’d simply be happy to cut the Gordian Knot altogether, and just dump the Bible as the source of intractable and vicious disputes. This would be the way of the secular critic who instead embraces one form or another of pure reason as the light of life. If we were to take this route, perhaps we might call ourselves ‘brights’, just to set ourselves apart. Granted, this avenue hasn’t given us much in the way of saints, but why worry? Either way it’s clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

No doubt we can think of recent, concrete examples which fit each of these types. In all of them, we find that judgement is based on establishing ourselves as righteous, as having gotten it right, and being beyond question, having some special status. In all of them we are the good guys, and the other are the bad guys. After having established ourselves as right, in all of them we can then point at the others as unacceptable, not merely mistaken but deeply and quite possibly irredeemably wrong. This kind of judgement never touches us, but builds walls, digs ditches, erects borders to keep us away from the unacceptable. This kind of judgement seeks to determine now, once and for all, who are the goats and who are the sheep.

Sisters and brothers, how radically different do we find the judgement of Christ the King than any of this! Neither the sheep nor the goats knew who they were nor what they were doing. And because it is the king’s judgement, not ours, and is at the end of all time, not now, then we have no grounds for insisting we are the sheep or that we’re pretty sure who the goats are. We can’t rest secure knowing that we are the good guys or that the other are the bad guys. This means that there is no boasting, no self-righteousness, no self-assurance; no needing to make ourselves acceptable; no needing to make sure that others are unacceptable. There are no boundaries across which we can gesture to the goats, there are only boundaries which we can cross to love and serve our neighbour as ourselves, hoping perhaps, unwittingly, to find there Christ himself.

This is the judgement of Christ the King. And friends, what is this, at bottom, but the grace of Christ? And therein lies the surprise, that this judgement is nothing but the grace of God, who is never content to let us rest in our own sham self-righteousness, but loves us unrelentingly, constantly calling us to himself, through his Son, in the Spirit. God loves us so much that he isn’t satisfied for us to remain centred on ourselves, but calls forth from us responding love – a love which, in the mysterious nature of things, is only fulfilled in loving our neighbour, even the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters, a love which is unafraid to cross boundaries of all kinds.

I’d like to close tonight by sharing with you a story which I am convinced is an example of such a boundary-crossing in the name of love. This is a story from a society that is quite intensely interested in borders and boundaries. It was originally told to Tony Campolo.

Peter Arnett, a former reporter for CNN, was in Israel in a small West Bank village one day when an explosion went off.

Bodies were laying everywhere; from every direction came the sounds of pain and fear. A man came up to Peter with a bloodied little girl in his arms and begged the reporter to take him, saying “Mister, I can’t get her to a hospital! The Israeli troops have sealed off the area. No one can get in or out. But you’re from the press. They’ll let you through. Please mister!…If you don’t help me, she’s going to die.”

Peter hides the man and the girl in his car under a blanket, they get through the sealed area and hurtle down the road to the hospital in Jerusalem, all the while the man praying and pleading for Peter to drive faster.

They finally get to the hospital, the girl is rushed to surgery, and the two men sit in exhausted silence. Eventually the physician comes out of the operating room and solemnly says, “I’m sorry, she died.”

The man collapses in tears and Peter put his arms around him to comfort him. Searching for words, Peter says, “I don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I’ve never lost a child.”

At that, the man looked at Peter in a startled manner and said, “Oh, mister! That Palestinian girl was not my daughter. I’m an Israeli settler. That Palestinian is not my child. But…there comes a time when each of us must realize that every child, regardless of…background, is a daughter or a son. There must come a time when we realize that we are all family.”

Sisters and brothers... at its depth we find that life is not about ourselves, not about establishing ourselves and ensuring that others are unacceptable. Rather, we find that it’s about crossing borders, loving and serving our neighbour as Christ himself; in this we hear the surprising, de-centring judgement of Christ the King, which is none other than the love and grace of God, the fullness of Christ’s Kingdom. Amen.

Daniel W. Hardy 1930-2007

2007-11-18T14:32:00.000Z

Dan Hardy, my doctoral supervisor - and mentor, friend, colleague, father-figure, and much else besides - passed away at sunrise on Thursday 15 November, after having been diagnosed with brain cancer last spring. I am endlessly grateful for the years I had with him and all that he gave me. I go back and forth between joy for a full life, well lived, and grief at having lost someone so close to me. He was for me the model of a Christian scholar, teacher, and mentor, and I hope to spend the rest of my life sharing what I have gotten from him in these areas with students and parishioners.

I am hoping that the Telegraph does one of their fine obituaries for him in due course - I'll post it here if and when. In the meantime there are a few other tributes arising around the net, including:

Andy Goodliff

Fulcrum

Also, Wikipedia has a pretty good article on him, although as I write it has not been updated with news of his death.

AAR/ SBL 2007

2007-11-13T14:02:00.000Z

I shall be away at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature joint conference in San Diego from Wednesday 14 November to Wednesday 21 November. It should be a great time to hear some good papers, catch up with old friends and make some new ones, buy some deeply discounted books, and even participate in an interview for a possible teaching position. But I'll be away for a week, so keep the Street clean for me.

Also, if you can, please make time to lift a prayer for my doctoral supervisor - and dear friend - Dan Hardy, who is near death, and for all of his family, friends and colleagues. We will all dearly miss the presence of this scholarly saint who has given us so much.

Mature Christians and Willow Creek

2007-11-10T12:01:00.000Z

I have had - at best - an ambivalent relationship with Willow Creek and what they're about. Of course, evangelism is crucial, and they've tried doing it in a focused and specific way, and so should be praised for that. But I have far more questions and hesitations than I have endorsements for them.

They've come out with a self-study entitled Reveal*, which Christianity Today writes about here. They have discovered that, on the basis of a survey, people who are not yet Christians or who are new Christians find that Willow Creek (and churches like it) is wonderfully helpful. Growing and mature Christians however find it unhelpful and are moving to leave the church. The CT essay is right on in a number of ways. First, it questions the - at least potential - spiritual narcissism of someone who is 'mature' and is looking to be 'fed'. Bill Hybels said that they need to learn to be 'self-feeders', with the church giving them the tools to continue growing on their own. There is something basically right about this, and I've always been concerned about Christians using this phrase 'being fed' when it comes to teaching or preaching in a church: presumably when we are adults we can feed ourselves - and feed others as well. But I'm also concerned about this idea of being a 'self-feeder' to the degree that it is pretty isolated, something one does alone and apart from the church.

The essay expands on this helpfully:

Should we be encouraging this apparent spiritual narcissism by helping people become "self-feeders"? This does not strike me as a healthy way to describe the mature disciple of Jesus Christ. While there is great wisdom in developing for individuals a "customized personal spiritual growth plan"—which looks very much like the venerable practice of spiritual direction—I wonder if we want to make "my spiritual growth" the focus for the mature believer.

The more mature we become in Jesus, the less we try to measure or chart or describe "my spiritual growth." Instead, we are called to think less about ourselves and more about God. We're less interested in what the self is experiencing and more interested in the Jesus we're serving. The self, including the spiritual self, is increasingly crucified. The key question of the mature disciple is not "Am I growing?" but "Am I serving?"

'Not being fed' might also be about depth, too. (In fact, the phrased isn't parsed out.) If the only idiom in which the church can speak is an introductory one, then perhaps there just isn't much there to encourage depth of growth or engagement. Maybe instead of using the image of eating or being fed we might talk about a massive multi-generational conversation, which incorporates people at all levels: it isn't dumbed down for children, but neither are they excluded (indeed, the conversation is what they are brought into, even they don't understand it all).

Through all this, there is also a pretty anemic ecclesiology; there is no sense of the church actually being a body, and of the relationships among the various constituent parts being a crucial aspect of that body's identity. Indeed, one gets the idea that the church is primarily for getting people over the threshold, rather than being a differentiated body engaging the mission of God in the world; in Willow's model, it seems that the primary locus of discipleship is the individual, someone who is mature enough to be responsible for himself. But that's pretty limited; it seems instead that we are called as the church and as people to a kind of interdependence.

* Disclaimer: I have not yet read the survey and - like so many other commentators, no doubt - am relying on second-hand reportage.

Egads! Shop now and (be) save(d)!

2007-10-30T14:35:00.000Z

I think I have a book to write about this, but I have something else to write just now, so I'll just supply the link and a little more:

Naomi Schafer Riley reviews briefly and well the book "Shopping for God" by James B. Twitchell in the Wall Street Journal. Twitchell claims, without evident irony, that "Choosing a religion, he argues, is much like choosing any other product - from breakfast food to beer"* It sounds shocking but not surprising - turn the word 'pastorpreneurs' over in your head a bit - and if Twitchell is serious in what he says, this seems a wakeup call for the church in America (not the West as a whole). It poses the serious question of how to imagine our faith and the church in a way which is not wholly compromised by marketing, consumption, and economic metaphors.

It is worth noting, though, that it is not the opposite of such things, and there is a hallowed (?)tradition of combining consumption with Christian faith - purchase of mementos from pilgrimage sites being an early and obvious example. In some ways (not totally) the entire travel and souvenir industries stem from this practice of pilgrimage. This is only one example of a number that could be given. It might be worth looking closely at the practice of consumption - perhaps from a phenomonological perspective - to see, anthropologically and sociologically speaking, what human need is met, and how that might relate to religious faith.

But that aside, it does seem - and here I'm trying to be discerning and make a judgement, an activity which always implies that it could be otherwise** - that this might be one of the major tasks of the church in America (in particular***) in the early twenty first century: how do we imagine Christian faith as something other than business or personal preference? And how, through that, can we imagine genuine human life as something broader and richer than economics and consumption, both of which properly serve human life as a part of it, rather than becoming dominant modes of discourse and imagination?

I think I ought to read Twitchell's book - although I don't know when I possibly can - but I expect it will make me sick to my stomache. (Maybe Christmastide would be good.)

*This is Riley's summary of Twitchell's thesis; I am at the mercy of her summation skills!

**As opposed to, say, an arithmetic equation or logical syllogism, which require no judgement, discernment, or argumentation per se.

*** My experience of the church in England is quite different than this; there is generally a rather different sort of imagination here about such things which is not as easily reduced to these (economic) kinds of metaphors.

Stanley Hauerwas' sermon for Reformation Sunday

2007-10-30T14:17:00.001Z

Stanley had the, um, privilege of preaching on Reformation Sunday, and here's what he had to say. Go and read it all.

Here's one thing he mentions:

"Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days."

It's hot and heavy - rhetorically freighted (even exaggeratedly so) to prove a point which he doesn't think a more evenkeeled approach would demonstrate.

I think he's maybe on to something here, though, that as a church - and here I mean not just Protestant/Reformed but all of us - we have difficulty naming and marking our failures as a part of our story, of connecting these up to the larger story of the cross. Some of us are able to do it personally, which is great, but as a community/communion/ body we don't seem able to do so. (In terms of the Reformation, even if we would want to mark something good that came from it, it would seem that we need to remember the way in which it rent and continues to rend the body of Christ, and this is so for both the Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic church; for humans to be out of communion /alienated from each other always takes two, and reconciliation always takes two as well.) I wonder if this has anything to do with our decline in public mourning or lament.

Check it out, it's every bit the provocative Stanley, we know and love (or hate, depending), still kicking it. (Also check out the extensive comments.)

Theology and the Built Environment links

2007-10-28T14:20:00.000Z

I have been finding the interface of theology and the built environment as an area of preoccupation and enduring concern for me. In pursuing this, I have just today discovered a few web resources which seem helpful, and that I hope to make permanent links to in my sidebar in the not too distant future. They are as follows:

Theology and the Spatial Arts, University of Otago, New Zealand; This site aims to encourage work in the area of theology and the spatial arts, notably the built environment. Some great stuff here; I wish they had more information about upcoming conferences, though. Also, the colloquium on theology and the built environment itself has a website.

Of Kirk and Ale, a weblog (which now appears defunct), which deals with questions of urbanism and theology.

Sidewalks in the Kingdom, a site by Eric Jacobsen for Christian New Urbanists. (Jacobsen, author of Sidewalks in the Kingdom, by Brazos Press, is also a PhD student at Fuller pursuing these important issues in his work - respect!) (By the way, I reviewed his book in Reviews in Religion and Theology - it was great, you should read it!)

Streetwise: Rowan Williams on Reading Scripture

2007-10-27T13:54:00.000+01:00

First off, let me be entirely upfront that I owe this reference - even down to the post title - to Sean the Baptist. (Thanks, Sean!) Thankfully, the internet allows for (perhaps even encourages) endless iteration, and so it is not entirely beside the point to reproduce a great quote from Rowan Williams on the dynamics of reading (and just as importantly, re-reading) Scripture.

The address as a whole is great and well worth a thoughtful read through. Here are a few quotations from ++Rowan's speech to whet your appetite (including Sean's original quotation):

[B]efore Scripture is read in private, it is heard in public. Those of us who assume that the normative image of Scripture reading is the solitary individual poring over a bound volume, one of the great icons of classical Protestantism, may need to be reminded that for most Christians throughout the ages and probably most in the world at present, the norm is listening. ...the Church in reading Scripture publicly says both (i) that it is not a self-generated reality, created simply out of human reflection and ideals, and (ii) that what is read needs to be read as a communicative act, - that is, not as information, not as just instruction, but as a summons to assemble together as a certain sort of community, one that understands itself as called and created ‘out of nothing’. Whatever we do in private with our reading of Scripture, we must do in awareness of this public character. The Church – a familiar enough point – is in the language of the Bible itself an ‘assembly’, a ‘convocation’: an ekklesia. It declares its basic character when it represents itself as listening to the act of ‘convoking’, calling together.
. . .
what I am trying to define as a strictly theological reading of Scripture, a reading in which the present community is made contemporary with the world in front of the text, is bound to give priority to the question that the text specifically puts and to ask how the movement, the transition, worked for within the text is to be realised in the contemporary reading community. To move too rapidly to the use of the text to make a general point which does not require the reader to be converted is to step outside what I have been calling the time of the text, the process by which it shapes its question. It is to make the text more passive than active, and so to move away from the stance of the listener, from the stance of the Church as trying to be still enough to hear and free enough to respond to God’s summons to be his community. Of course the work of exegesis to establish doctrine and ethics is unavoidable; commentary is always going on. But the first moment of commentary – if this emphasis on the basic character of listening is correct – needs to be the tracing of the ‘time’ of a text so as to chart where it is moving.
. . .
A written text inevitably has about it a dual character. It comes before the reader/hearer as a finished product, and so as something that can in some ways be treated as an object. If we are not careful its written character can be misused by working with the text as if it were passive. In contrast to the event of a voice speaking, it can be abstracted from the single occasion when the hearer has no control over what comes to her or him from outside. At the same time, a written text requires re-reading; it is never read for the last time, and it continuously generates new events of interpretation. It is fruitful of renewed communication in a way that the spoken word alone cannot be. So to identify a written text as sacred is to claim that the continuous possibility of re-reading, the impossibility of reading for the last time, is a continuous openness to the intention of God to communicate. Just as the text itself contains re-reading, is almost constituted by re-reading, so that it repeatedly recreates a movement towards conversion (towards the cross of Jesus, in Christian terms), so the eternal possibility of ‘reading again’ stands as a warning against ignoring the active ‘restlessness’ of the text in summoning the reader to change. The writtenness of the text is from one point of view risky as a strategy of communication: it risks the appearance of passivity, and the re-readability of the text risks the appearance of indeterminacy. Yet from another point of view it can be seen as inseparable from the risk of the communication it itself describes as well as enacts – a divine communication that is never without human speech and narrative, never just an interruption of the created continuum but a pressure upon it that opens up to the divine by the character of its internal relations and connections, the shifting, penitent perspective of a story enacted in time. The writtenness of the text is like the sheer factuality of the historical past as the vehicle of revelation: it is
something irreversibly done, but for that very reason continuously inviting or demanding.

Read the rest here.

This is classic Williams. For all the occasional pains of living in communion with Anglicans, it is truly gratifying to have a primus inter pares archbishop who can theologise well in public.

Credit for the picture of Archbishop Williams and his wife Jane goes to Lambeth Palace. Similar such pictures may be found here.

Theocapitalism and theological economics

2007-10-26T10:39:00.000+01:00

I'm surprised to find it's been a fortnight since I've managed to post anything. I've been ill, and crazy busy, between writing up and preparing for lectures and whatnot.

But I ran across a post over at Scot McKnight's blog The Jesus Creed, in which he is exploring some of the ideas of Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change.

(I don't know about you, but whenever I'm confronted with a book title like that, I am instantly skeptical - oh, yeah? says who? on what grounds? to serve the interest of whom? and so forth. The odd thing about McLaren is that usually when I get around to reading him - and I do - I find that what he's saying isn't very radical or new at all but just seems, well, common. Odd experience, I don't know if anyone else has encountered that or not. Maybe I'm just not his audience, maybe he' s intending to 'rock the world' of an older group or a different part of the church or something. Or maybe I'm just radically out of step with massive parts of the church.)

So anyway, Scot has posted four points that McLaren makes about Jesus' counter-stories to the theo-capitalist mythology. In order not to simply reproduce that post, I will just provide a link to it - go and check it out, there are some very important points made here. Also check out, in the third comment, the very potent and rich phrase: 'Would it not be a good idea to have a group of people from different disciplines work on these ideas to design a “sacred ecosystem” as a genuine alternative to theocapitalism...' Indeed, developing that 'sacred ecosystem' may be part of the church's task for the foreseeable future, as it provides - often unintentionally, and in many cases less so now than in previous years - one of the few viable or widespread alternatives in America to theocapitalism.

(What is theocapitalism? Apparently McLaren says more in his book about it being an 'economic idolatry', and McKnight says a bit more here. As a term, it at least serves to place a wedge between our present arrangements and the Lord in such a way as to open some space for thinking.)

There have also been two provocative postings by Scott Stephens on Faith and Theology recently on theological analysis of political economics, one entitled Marx and Hitchens among the Theologians, and another called On Capitalism, God, and Mammon. They are not without their limitations - I've indicated as much in a comment on the latter one, (and further, although I don't see it, to the extent he actually is taking a Marcionite perspective on things, he wins no points from me). But in the former one, whilst incisively critiquing Christopher Hitchens' latest work, he also helpfully reminds readers that, for Christians, Marx may actually be (at least) as much of an ally as an opponent.

Interface

2007-10-12T15:36:00.001+01:00

I am a deeply intuitive thinker and I will often pursue disparate topics which seem (to me) deeply connected in some way, but without being able to articulate just how, rather trusting that it will somehow become clear in the pursuit. One such interface of topic for me is theology and architecture (or, urbanism, depending on how you define your terms). Little enough has been done on this (that I have seen), and what has been done isn't always fully satisfactory. I was musing on just this disconnect this morning prior to sitting in on my usual Friday lecture on Architecture and the Practical Imagination. In the moments prior to the lecture, I formulated the following:

What is architecture for? What are buildings for?
What they are for - apart from discrete functions - is the human.
What is man (humanity) for?
This in turn implies a whole host of (theo-)anthropological questions.
If the human is a graced gift of God, and is intended to glorify God to God's glory, and this is expressed ineluctably socially, namely through self-giving love and holiness, then architecture is (in part) the consideration of the space and conditions (physical, social, conventional) in which people may be ready for this glorifying or hindered and discouraged from it.

So far so good, but how to make sense of this in philosophical and architectural-theoretical terms?

And then during the lecture the professor said at one point that 'architecture is about the structure of relatedness.' Suddenly it all fell together for me, and I felt justified my intuitions (or at least as if I will be justified down the road; I haven't sent myself on a fool's errand.). If architecture is, literally but also figuratively, about the structure of relatedness, then it considers both the way that space shapes us as humans, and also the way to shape space for human flourishing. In this way, it becomes a precondition for all genuine human sociality, which is itself created by the Lord and which is intended to glorify the Lord and will be (ultimately) to the glory of the Lord. So architecture ends up being a very elemental consideration in sociality.

In all, a very good day in Cambridge.

Lazarus, the rich man, and The Kingdom: a sermon for Proper 21 C

2007-10-01T23:05:00.000+01:00

Text of a sermon preached at St. Mark's Church, Newnham, Cambridge
by the Rev. Jason A. Fout
on 30 September 2007

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Recently I had a very interesting experience. I was invited by a child – a prominent five year old in my family – to let her be the leader on our trip back home from school. Intrigued, I agreed. I then noticed that for the rest of our journey, her primary concern was making sure that I stayed behind her. I suppose this is natural from a child’s perspective. After all, if you’re going to lead, so the logic might go, then you need someone behind you to follow. Naturally, as adults, we know that leadership is a much more complicated proposition, and that there might well be times when what is needed is not to be out in front, but to linger behind and allow others freedom to explore and discover and even move ahead.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that this child picked up this notion from her father and his distorted notions of leadership. Who knows? In fact, this put me in mind of some of the things I thought as a child which didn’t quite pan out. For example, growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, I used to think it would be great fun to work downtown in the city, because I would get to ride a train everyday, and I quite liked trains. As I grew older, I realised there was a lot more to working as an executive than riding trains.

I’m sure we’ve all had these same sorts of childlike ideas when we were younger, trying to sort out the world and the way it works. We might remember them fondly, or with a bit of embarrassment, recalling the moment they were dispelled. There’s nothing wrong these ideas, of course, it’s just a part of growing up. The point at which we become concerned is when one fails to move on. There’s a point at which we learn more and our childlike ideas become a fuller, more mature understanding. If we were to cling to what went before, it would not be childlike, but childish.

I bring this up to give us a bit of a framework for thinking about today’s lessons, because it seems to me that they suggest to us that some of our attitudes towards life are childish.
Continue reading Lazarus, the rich man, and The Kingdom

Let’s turn first to the gospel lesson. Luke continues his tradition of giving us vibrant, memorable, well-known parables of Jesus. We heard from him a story about a rich man and a poor man and the dramatic reversals they had after death. There’s a great deal here and we won’t be able to touch on it all this morning, but for our purposes I’d like to call our attention to two particular elements of the parable.

The first thing worth noticing in the parable is the names. There are two principal characters: one is a poor man, named Lazarus; the other is a rich man…who doesn’t have a name. In fact, over the years, this has troubled people; so much in fact that tradition has given him a name, Dives. And so we have numerous representations in art of Dives and Lazarus. But even Dives isn’t a proper name, as it only means ‘rich man’ in Latin. So here’s a man so focused on his riches, so consumed that the story seems content to describe him simply as a rich man. That is, of course, he’s called a ‘rich man’ until he dies. After that, of course, he is no longer rich; he isn’t even called a man, and he doesn’t seem to have a name. It’s as if in being consumed by his selfishness he becomes virtually nothing at all.

Contrast this with Lazarus, the poor man who suffers who doesn’t even have a speaking partg and yet has the dignity of a name. He is named several times. While he is alive and suffering misery and neglect he is Lazarus. And when he is taken by the angels to the bosom of Abraham, he is still dignified as Lazarus. Here is someone the likes of whom we might encounter every day in Cambridge without even registering their presence – maybe sitting in a doorway, perhaps selling The Big Issue, possibly wasting in a bed in a nursing home or hospital – someone who, in conventional terms, is vulnerable and on the margin. And yet we see in this parable that the very person we might disregard or even, in a weak moment, look down on is precious to God and worthy of dignity. It is in this that we catch a glimpse of the radical nature of the Kingdom of God, which some have called an ‘upside down kingdom’, a Kingdom in which, in this parable’s terms, the rich dwell in obscurity while the poor have names which are remembered to this very day.

That’s the first thing to notice, the way names are used. The second thing I’d like us to notice is the poignant tableau which unfolds in Hades. It’s worth mentioning that this is a parable, and not a travelogue which is meant somehow to give us a detailed picture of the afterlife, that’s not Jesus’ intention. That said, the man finds himself in Hades and cries out for himself, to have his suffering lessened. Then, when Abraham says he can do nothing, the man then tries to act to save his brothers. It is rather touching, and it seems almost as if the man has finally grasped the enormity of it all and wants at least to save his brothers. Is it possible that the man has actually been moved to repentance, even after death?

It’s fairly easy, I think, to read this parable in a straightforward moralistic fashion. It might seem to say simply: if you do bad to other people in life, you will come to a bad end: you don’t want to come to a bad end, so do good. It would be easy to read it this way, but I don’t think that’s the right way to read it. And I’m not so sure that the man in Hades has really changed or repented much anyway. It’s true he doesn’t ignore Lazarus any more, but instead treats him like a servant, to be sent to relieve his suffering or warn his brothers. And, true, he’s no longer moved only by selfish concern for himself; but he replaces that with selfish concern for his brothers. He’s worried that they not join him in Hades; he’s not worried about them becoming piously observant of Moses and the prophets and therefore sacrificially generous to those around them. The man in Hades still doesn’t get it – he’s stuck in a moralistic world, rather than a world founded on grace

You see, the moralist’s question ends up being how much do I have to give to avoid Hades? The focus is on me, on me being good enough, on securing my place and status. And if the focus is on me, then other people aren’t on my radar screen, except when they stand in my way, or give me an opportunity to advance my own cause. ‘How can I use Lazarus to help me?’ ends up being the question in Hades. This really fails to grasp the nature of the situation: at bottom, it’s childish.

If the moralist’s question is ‘how much do I have to give to avoid Hades’, the better question, the one founded on the grace of Christ, is ‘how much can I give in order to love others well?’ To be gripped by God’s grace in this way doesn’t mean we don’t fall short: in fact, when we are no longer preoccupied with being good enough, when we’re no longer obsessed with ourselves, we can actually be more honest about our sin and our shortcomings. We’re able to come clean about ourselves because we realise that we aren’t here because we’re so great, but because God loves us. If the whole of our lives, and the whole of our life with God in Christ are a gift through God’s grace, then how can be so preoccupied with keeping accounts? How can we be so focused on ourselves and not open to the possibilities around us to love others well, and to let them love us? We have nothing to lose, for we have nothing that we have not been given as a gift and entrusted by God to use well.

This is reflected in the apostolic teaching from our epistle reading today, which reads ‘we brought nothing into the world so that we can take nothing out of it,’ therefore we are to use our resources, indeed our lives, so that we are wealthy not in money and status but in goodness and love towards others. This is an image of life in God in which all that we are given we are given for the sake of someone else. Friends, that’s not childish at all; that’s real life.

Naturally, realising this in our lives is a process of spiritual growth. We don’t arrive there immediately. We don’t grow out of deeply ingrained childish ways overnight. But as the Spirit works in our lives, by God’s grace we are able to repent, and we do see growth.

I’d like to share just one brief example. I served a parish in Michigan in the US for four years before coming here to Cambridge. While I was there, I learned about the fair trade movement, and the way that it worked with people in other lands to secure a fair price for their work and products, so that they were no longer locked in poverty. In this way, it short-circuited the powerful pressure for ever-lower prices – and lower wages - that larger distributors could bring to bear on their suppliers. I became convinced that this was a good way to use our resources to benefit others, and so I brought a proposal to a p.c.c. meeting that we change the coffee we used from conventionally traded coffee to fairly traded coffee. We had some good discussion around the issue, but we decided that it would end up being too expensive. So I let it drop. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time. Then, about three weeks later, someone who had been a part of that discussion approached me. She said that she had been thinking about it, and realised that when she had said no to paying more for coffee, she had said yes to paying less than a living wage for workers. And that troubled her. These aren’t just nameless, faceless nobodies, but people who want to feed their families and send their children to school. So she brought it up at the next p.c.c. meeting, and we revisited the issue. This is just one example – no doubt you’ve got stories like this from your life, or from our life here at St. Mark’s – but in it we can see the Spirit bringing growth to move away from childishness. The question was no longer ‘how much can we get for as little as possible?’; now it was ‘how can I use the resources we’ve been entrusted with to love and serve others well?’

And this work of the Spirit is evidence of the coming Kingdom of God, seen in Moses and the Prophets, begun in Jesus Christ, growing today in the Spirit, but not yet fully arrived. It can feel a little topsy turvy, even upside down as it questions our usual way of doing things. It’s a kingdom where everyone has a face and a name, because everyone matters; it’s a kingdom where by grace we’re freed from being preoccupied with ourselves, and freed to love God and our neighbour; it’s a kingdom where we are freed to use what we have been given for the good of others. Sisters and brothers, we’re not there yet. But the Holy Spirit keeps working with us, challenging and empowering us to leave behind childish notions and embrace the life that is really life, of loving service for others in the name of Christ. And as we glimpse this work of God, how can we respond, but in childlike wonder, once again? Amen.

Pink Martini - Sympathique

2007-09-30T22:04:00.001+01:00

I've discovered a lot of new music this year, new bands that I'd never heard of but whose music I've taken to quickly, bands like Zero 7, Ivy, Tahiti 80, Emily Loizeau, Stereolab, Thievery Corporation, Les Innocents, and, most recently, Pink Martini. Now, I would never drink a 'pink martini' - I like mine the old fashioned way, and don't stint on the gin, thank you - but I could listen to Pink Martini all day and all night and still be on my feet. Great stuff, and here is the video for what is (I think) there best known song. Check it out!

Defenseless Enemies

2007-09-27T13:02:00.000+01:00

In a - not terribly well verified - news story running the circuit of mostly conservative blogs, it is claimed that Israel easily breached the radar defenses of Syria and bombed a certain site well inland in that country. The upshot of all of this is that, the story alleges, Syria and Iran are now shaking in their boots as they realise that any sites within their borders can now be attacked at will by Israel and/or the US.

I'm not going to link to the story, but if you want to see it, google 'defenseless enemies are fun'. That's the rather striking line that the story/ essay ends with.

Of course, that is just the sort of rationale that terrorists use, whether in open air markets in Baghdad, buses in Tel Aviv, or airliners over New York. But never mind the likelihood that we are becoming the very thing we allegedly are fighting against.

And never mind that, in the usual process of global escalation, as we constantly militarily up the ante, it will soon be our enemies saying the very things about us: 'defenseless enemies are fun'.

I say never mind that not because those aren't massive problems that even a bit of reflection and prayer might bring to mind, but because they are simply more of the same that we have had through time to this point, only magnified by technology and anxiety. It's just sin, which is banal and unsurprising, if also unacceptable.

But I do wonder what Jesus would make of it.

I seem to recall that he told us to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us and do good to those who persecute us. And when he was arrested, subjected to a mock trial, and executed on a cross by his enemies, the enemies of God - that is, by us - he asked his Father to forgive them. And then after he was raised again he didn't return to kick some butt, but instead went to those who abandoned him and sent them to those (others) who killed him, with a message of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Or maybe he would agree that 'defenseless enemies are fun', not because that means you now have untrammelled, irresistable power (unchecked by love or goodness), but rather because it might deliver us from our own obsessive need for defense at any cost, giving us the basis for peaceable Christian witness, and the possibility for forgiveness and reconciliation. After all, the first apostles were sent without weapons, or security of any sort. Even granted the changed cultural situation we live in - heck, maybe because of the changed cultural situation - why should we expect to be any different?

I do wonder, however, to the extent that the attitude in this essay captures the present American spirit, on just what grounds we can maintain the pretense that America is a Christian nation.

6 Sixes in Twenty20!

2007-09-20T14:01:00.001+01:00

Wow! What else can be said? Yuvraj Singh was the first person ever in Twenty20 Cricket to score 6 consecutive sixes (a few others have done it in other forms of cricket). He totally owned the bowler. It is a massive pity, of course, that it was against England, but otherwise it is a thing of beauty to behold, a little free seminar in dominating your opponent. As the commentator says at one point: 'total carnage!' (Maybe next time Flintoff will keep his trap shut.) Give it a look!

Getting it Right, Pizza-Style

2007-09-17T23:54:00.000+01:00

I know it's been a long time since I've blogged at ya, but there's been a lot going down recently.

But Blake (of Blake and Nick, the Paupered Chefs), has just posted on New Haven Style Pizza and I had to break from work to post a link. He has realised that, as good as New York pizza is - and it can be sublime (DiFara's, Totonno's, Franny's) - it is not the only game in town. In New Haven, Sally's was closed for refurbishment, but the other classic, Pepe's, was open. And he loved it. Go check out the love - and the other two places he visited.

There's other non-New York pizza on the east coast that is definitely worth checking out (you owe it to yourself if you love good pizza!). Tacconelli's Pizza in Philadelphia is amazing, some of the best. I sometimes think about flying back to Philly just to go back and have another pie. Just in case it isn't clear: I am now living 50 miles outside of London in the UK. It's a long way to go for pizza, but it's good enough to make me dream. Just make sure you call the morning before you go to Tacconelli's to order your dough balls, or you might not get any pizza.

Also, two must-visit places in D.C., which make me dream of hopping a flight, with only the flimsiest excuses for a trans-Atlantic trip: Pride of place has to go to 2 Amys. I visited them almost a year ago with a friend. They do a real Neapolitan Style Pizza, complete with D.O.C. choices. Were they busy? We had to wait nearly two hours on a Sunday night in November. Was it worth it? I can't wait to go back! About as close to a sublime pizza as you can get.

Also well worth visiting, in downtown D.C., is Matchbox. It was also busy on a Monday night; I went with two other friends and we waited maybe an hour and a half. The pizzas were quite good; cooked in a woodburning oven, they were more toothsome than Amys, and the crust was more carmelised than theirs too. A bit less traditional than Amys (although they were both traditional and creative). The atmosphere at Matchbox is a bit hipper, at Amys a bit cozier, but both felt very clean and new, too. Both were crowded and busy, doing a booming trade. But on the whole, Amys has a slight edge, although Matchbox is close.

This last summer in Chicago I tried out two new pizza places, both well worth trying and not at all the usual Chicago style offerings. The first was Coal Fire Pizza. Newly opened in the spring, this near West side eatery offers traditional New Haven (I think) style pies from a wood burning oven. The pies I had - and I had about five over the course of the summer - were all light and crispy, with quality ingredients. Delicious. My only caution: if you are going to do take-away, order it when you arrive, not in advance, especially if you have a ways to drive. I don't think they have a website yet, but check out the chatter at LTHForums. (LTHForums is a massive Chicago-based food chat site.)

I also checked out Spacca Napoli on Chicago's North Side with my brother this past summer. It was vera pizza Napoletana, and something Chicago should be proud of. A quality operation - busy on a Sunday night, as I recall - the pizza was delicious and the service attentive. I'll definitely go back.

The summer of 2006, I also checked out two new pizza places in Chicago. One was Piece, a New Haven style Pizzeria. The pizzas I had were alright (I can't pronounce on whether they were authentic New Haven style or not), but nothing great - although the pizza with clams and bacon was new to me, and pretty good. The service was alright, but I'll never go back because they had no idea who they were supposed to be. They had everyone sitting on bar stools along high, raised tables, with massive televisions showing sports and music blaring so that we could barely have a conversation. When we were about to leave, a live band was setting up. And it's a brewpub ('tho the beer was good). Probably if I asked, they could have helped me re-finance my mortage and rotate my tyres. I'll only go back if they get an atmosphere transplant.

And finally, Pizza D.O.C., on the North Side of Chicago, was great. The pizza was high quality; the atmosphere conducive to socialising. I'm afraid too much time has elapsed to compare D.O.C. with Spacca Napoli, but D.O.C. was good and will get my custom again sometime.

So there you go. Do you have any pizza tips? (Especially anything great in the San Diego area? I'll be there in November for a conference, and I am always scanning for great 'za.)

Pizza pictures from Chicago's Coal Fire Pizza, and (ahem) borrowed from LTHForum.

Blogging

2007-08-30T03:54:00.001+01:00

Blogging has been sparse recently, I know. I was away on holiday for a few weeks, came back to the UK and immediately began the exhausting promise of moving, and now I am writing a conference paper that is giving me fits. And this upcoming term promises to be quite full, too. All of which is to say that my blogging between now and Christmas may continue being a bit thin. Or it may not. You never know.

Katrina, two years on: a reflection

2007-08-30T03:47:00.001+01:00

David Knight was a colleague of mine in seminary - although I didn't get to know him as well as I would have liked, I always had a deep respect for him. After seminary, he returned to his home diocese of Mississippi, and more recently became rector of a church on the gulf coast. He was in the thick of it two years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit, and his church's building - and much, much else in the area - took it on the chin. He has been blogging about the effects of living with such devastation, and today, the 29th, he has written a touching reflection on his own response to those two years. Go and check it out. While you're there you can explore around a bit to get a sense of what it has been like "on the ground". And if you or your church or whoever can pitch in, why not plan to do so?

Away

2007-08-03T03:33:00.000+01:00

We are away until 15 August, and so I will not be blogging during this time (unless provoked, but don't hold your breath), and may well be away at least another week, as we are moving immediately after returning to Cambridge. See you around in late August, or, just possibly, early September.

Streetwise: Balthasar on Beauty (a classic!)

2007-07-19T10:53:00.000+01:00

Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote great gobs of material on beauty (in fact, great gobs of material on virtually everything), but here is a classic line which caught my eye again this morning:

'We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past -- whether he admits it or not -- can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.'

From The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume I: Seeing the Form. (Ignatius/ Crossroad) p. 18

Streetwise: Blondel on knowledge of God

2007-07-19T10:46:00.000+01:00

Nineteenth Century French philosopher Maurice Blondel wrote of knowing God:

"As soon as we regard him from without as a mere object of knowledge, or a mere occasion for speculative study, without freshness of heart and the unrest of love, then all is over, and we have in our hands nothing but a phantom and an idol."

from L'Action, 1870

Reading updated

2007-07-18T11:19:00.000+01:00

I've updated (finally!) my reading list, past, present and future (and books reviewed) in the right hand column. Not that it's a big deal, I'm just saying...

My Neighbour, My Self (part II)

2007-07-16T22:24:00.000+01:00

Maggi linked to my sermon from last Sunday (Thanks, Maggi!) and reminded me of an idea I had hit upon that I wanted to expand a bit.

I said, in reflecting on the part of the 'great commandment' which says 'love your neighbour as yourself':

Who is our neighbour? Suddenly, in the logic of the parable, we’re not calling the shots; we are not so sure just who our neighbour is. Suddenly we’re not so sure just who our self is. If I’m to love another as my ‘self’ then the upshot is that I’m not even totally familiar with who I am, as I seem constantly to find that self facing me in others. And here we find the most radical challenge, for in this we see that no boundary will finally stand in the way of us and our neighbour, if we are to love them as our self. There are certainly distinctions: yes; love doesn’t seek to make everything else the same. But boundaries? No. There are no boundaries to our neighbours, no limits to whom we are to find our very selves in, no restrictions to whom we are to love unstintingly in God.

What I was trying to get at, although I probably did not develop it as well as I should have was the ambiguity of 'as'. Usually we simply think that we love our neighbour 'as' ourselves, in the sense that we love them 'in the same way' we love ourselves. Then the debate becomes - what if we don't love ourselves? or do we always love ourselves regardless? And other generally unhelpful things to dwell on.

How to get around this to something else?

I noticed that 'as' is ambiguous - it doesn't just need to mean (in English, at any rate) 'in the same fashion as'. And the way we usually parse it out with this verse, it simply assumes - reifies, really - our sense of self as something independent, interior, not essentially relational. Thus, there are two 'selves', which are basically complete and independent: neighbour and oneself.
But what if our 'self' is not something (completely) independent and self-subsistent? What if it is in process and something which is not possessed but given - by God, and by others? In that way, we discover who we are gradually through others (and eschatologically in God), and our failure to love another as our self is indeed as failure to love oneself, because it is in the other - in all of their individuality and otherness, to be sure - that our 'self' is found.

This sounds REALLY abstruse, when I put it this way! I arrived at it more intuitively than anything, in reflecting on the relationships in my life: spouse, child, parents, friends, mentors, strangers, etc. I wouldn't be - couldn't be - who I am without those people, most (or all) of whom I couldn't have anticipated. In that sense, my self is a gift (i.e. given to me rather than created by me) in the way that these others are gifts.*

Again, I want to emphasise that in saying that I find my 'self' in others, I am not colonizing others and co-opting them into my 'self'; just the opposite, in fact. The upshot of this all is not that the other is my 'self', but rather that my 'self' is not something I control and construct, but is itself - to a degree - 'other'.

And so, it is in loving others that we properly love ourselves, for it is only there that we truly discover, in God, our self; and we also then have the delightful opportunity - and the dreadful responsibility - to help the other, to some small degree, discover in us, and in God, their own 'self'.

Maggi helpfully clothed this all with a more concrete example: "Love your neighbour as if he was you" means I look at the homeless guy and realise that at the deepest level I too am vulnerable, lost, fragile, and so to offer him love and respect is to see myself mirrored in him. I love him, because I realise that I must also love myself as I really am, not just the exterior impressions that everyone else sees."

The only thing I could add to this is the sense that we don't just see ourselves mirrored in him, but who we are is extended through him, in a way it wouldn't be if we hadn't met him, or hadn't loved him.

A final thought is this: I don't think that Jesus had in mind all of the technical - and perhaps tortured - explanation I have just provided when he said 'love your neighbour as yourself.'** But I am also convinced that he didn't have in mind our usual sense of 'self' as something self-identical, self-created, and independent. I suspect that the sense of 'self' present in his culture would have been far different than our modern sense. But I offered this take on the passage not to 'read Jesus' mind' as if this is what he truly meant, but rather to attempt to faithfully expand on several implications of the gospel for our day, particularly having to do with our day-to-day lives and encounters with others. In this way, I think it is faithful to Jesus' teaching to 'love your neighbour as yourself.'

*I am aware of the fact that some of how people are given their selves - being defined by others through racism or sexism for example - is not at all a gift in a good sense. But I am not sure that the dynamic of one self only coming through others would be any different in an utterly virtuous and Godly community. The response, I think, is not utterly independent self-creation, but rather a restored communal creation.

** In fact, in Luke, it is the lawyer who says this, anyway.

Bible Study

2007-07-16T21:46:00.000+01:00

I really appreciated Andy Goodliff's ~~rant~~ ~~screed~~ well thought out concerns about 'Bible study' as it is usually done (although I think it is a re-posting of something from last year). And he implies that his criticism runs out to systematic theology as it is often done (particularly in conservative evangelical circles), as well. I would echo this, particularly as it applies to systematic theology.

One of the greatest ironies for me in doing a PhD in systematic theology,* is that the Bible has come alive for me again. So many people testify that in seminary and doctoral studies the Bible became flat and tiresome or intolerably alien and uninspiring for them. My seminary experience was mixed rather than awful (thanks - for the good - in part to AKMA), but it is really at the doctoral level that I have learned to appreciate the depths and unmasterability of the Scriptures. It is not awful but awesome. Thanks, largely, to my supervisor Dan Hardy for that. I have re-learned to read the Bible not just for scholarship or theology but also devotionally. It seems far far deeper than it ever has to me, and, as with any late realisation, I regret the years that I missed it all.

A major part of this has been refusing to give to the Bible neat and tidy categories; another part has been reading and re-reading and re-reading again.

Andy has written his post almost in a 'ten propositions' format, but there are more propositions, and they're all together. Great stuff; go and check it out. Here is a taster:

The bible is a dangerous, world-changing, life-altering text that is out to transform the reader. The bible wants to shape our imagination to the tune of Christ.

The bible is always fresh and never stale. The bible does not put God or truth into neat statements. The bible is not God's prison.

*or constructive theology or Christian doctrine, depending on what kind of day I'm having.

Streetwise: Rowan Williams on Conflict

2007-07-16T10:37:00.001+01:00

'We need, as I have said, to take on the reality and inevitability of conflict; our error is often to see this as a kind of metaphysical statement about the inevitability of mutual exclusion and strife, rather than about the ways in which we are formed in the hard tasks of responding to the resistance, the otherness of the world (people and things), and in the accepting of our inability to guarantee ourselves or anyone an untroubled passage through it. The assumption that strife is an absolute 'given' in the world grows from the convistion that we possess a territory to be safeguarded, whether of law-based achievement or naturally given essential selfhood. The gospel of the resurrection proposes that 'possession' is precisely the wrong, the corrupt and corrupting, metaphor for our finding place in the world. What we 'possess' must go; we must learn to be what we receive from God in the vulnerability of living in (not above) the world of chance and change.'

- R. Williams, from 'Resurrection and Peace', p 273, 274 in On Christian Theology

My Neighbour, My Self (Sermon for Proper 10c)

2007-07-16T10:05:00.000+01:00

Text of a sermon preached at St. Mark's Church, Newnham, Cambridge

by the Rev. Jason A. Fout

on 15 July 2007

It’s always a sign of mixed success when a proper name becomes a common noun. In America, for example, we make photocopies on a Xerox machine; if we need a facial tissue, we will ask for a Kleenex. Here in the UK, I’ve noticed that when we tidy up, we’ll get out the Hoover. There are many other examples I imagine we could cite. I am led to believe that executives are wary of this tendency though, because as these proper names come to apply to all sorts of things then they end up not meaning very much and the specific benefits of, say, a Hoover vacuum, are lost in the shuffle.

It seems to me that the term ‘Samaritan’ is quite similar to this, and that the story that Jesus told in our gospel reading for this morning has become so popular and well-known that the very pressure of the story on the meaning of the word ‘Samaritan’ has caused it to mean something else. For example, do a web search for ‘Samaritan’ today and you will be linked with Samaritan’s Purse, Samaritan Ministries, Samaritan Hospital, and a confidential counselling service by the name of the Samaritans. This certainly speaks of a great success for this story. These are good organisations doing valuable work, and they have taken their name from the one who showed mercy in this morning’s reading.

But friends the risk is that if we just allow ‘Samaritan’ to mean ‘someone prone to helping another’ then we might miss hearing some of the surprise in this story. The story of the Good Samaritan has, for good reason, been so well loved over the last two millennia that our familiarity with it might stop us from also noticing its strangeness, and we might miss some of the depth and the challenge present here. So I propose this morning that we linger over a few of the details from this reading, to better grasp it, to better love it, and most of all, to be better grasped by the love we find in it.
Continue reading My Neighbour, My Self

Perhaps the first thing to notice is that, unlike in Matthew and Mark, it is not Jesus but the lawyer who says what we have come to know as the great commandment, to love God and love your neighbour as yourself. This is not altogether surprising: both elements of this come from the Old Testament, and indeed rough contemporaries of Jesus such as Rabbi Hillel said similar things. But the effect in this context then is to lay the emphasis not on the teaching to love as such, but on Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s second question: ‘who is my neighbour?’ This question becomes the overriding focus of this entire passage, and Jesus’ response to it sheds ample light on both loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself.

‘Who is my neighbour?’ the lawyer wants to vindicate himself to the teacher, wants to show his cleverness, wants to manage his responsibility. And who is my neighbour? The way the lawyer asks this question puts him in the driver’s seat. He is in control. He is the one who loves. He is the one who decides if another person is truly his neighbour or not. This is his game. With his question to Jesus, he’s just trying to estimate the size of the pitch and identify his teammates.

In answer to this question, then, Jesus’ story becomes quite odd indeed. One of the two main characters, the man set upon by robbers, is passive and unconscious for virtually all of the story, left half dead in a ditch. He doesn’t even have a speaking part. We know almost nothing about him other than that he is most likely an Israelite, like the lawyer. And we know that throughout this story he is passive, exposed, vulnerable. In answering the lawyer’s question, Jesus effectively turns it on its head: who is my neighbour? Is not a question that we answer out of our own power, by our own decision, through our own control. Determining who our neighbour is is not a matter of carefully vetting likely candidates and finding some who are really worth bothering with. No; in the event, our neighbour is who we are given.

And what a neighbour this man is given. A priest and a Levite both see the man, half-dead, and pass by on the other side of the road. These fellow Israelites are most likely afraid that this man is not half dead but all dead, and in that case coming into contact with him would render them unclean. So his countrymen and co-religionists pass him by. Instead, a Samaritan comes upon him and helps.

Now here is where we ought to be careful and try to bracket out our contemporary notions about Samaritans. To an Israelite of Jesus’ day, a Samaritan would have been repugnant. There had been hatred and animosity between the Jews and Samaritans for centuries, as the Israelites held the Samaritans to be idolaters and betrayers of the faith. And the Samaritans gave as good as they got. Roughly 25 years before Jesus would have told this parable, a group of Samaritans entered the Temple in Jerusalem and scattered human bones around, desecrating the place. In our story today, once the Samaritan comes on the scene, the lawyer most likely would have thought that he would come upon the half-dead Israelite and finish the job. To the lawyer, the Samaritan’s help would have been shocking, even scandalous. And that, of course, is just why Jesus used him in the story in the first place.

What’s more, the help that the Samaritan gives is extravagantly over the top. He doesn’t just give first aid, but takes him to an inn. He gives the innkeeper an amount of money that, at that time, would have sustained a person for three weeks. And he doesn’t even stick around for a thank you. In fact, there is no sense at all that this half-dead Israelite ever even knows who saved his life.

In response to the lawyer trying to screen who his neighbours are, Jesus tells a story of an Israelite who is exposed and vulnerable and who is helped, extravagantly, by someone who would normally be considered a mortal enemy. Our neighbour is not who we choose; our neighbour is who we are given. It is in light of this, then, that we can go back and understand the teaching about loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbour as ourselves.

Who is our neighbour? Suddenly, in the logic of the parable, we’re not calling the shots; we are not so sure just who our neighbour is. Suddenly we’re not so sure just who our self is. If I’m to love another as my ‘self’ then the upshot is that I’m not even totally familiar with who I am, as I seem constantly to find that self facing me in others. And here we find the most radical challenge, for in this we see that no boundary will finally stand in the way of us and our neighbour, if we are to love them as our self. There are certainly distinctions: yes; love doesn’t seek to make everything else the same. But boundaries? No. There are no boundaries to our neighbours, no limits to whom we are to find our very selves in, no restrictions to whom we are to love unstintingly in God.
Sisters and brothers, in this day of the internet, international travel, and globalisation the world seems to grow smaller; it is clearer now more than ever that any line we draw to limit our neighbours will simply be arbitrary. And so we discover that we have neighbours far and near: your family who sits at the dinner table with you, the young woman across the counter at Caffe Nero, the Baptist or the Muslim or the atheist who lives down the street, the unemployed young man who lives across town, the politician we disagree with so ardently, even the worker in a different country who picked the fruit you ate with breakfast or who sewed the shirt you’re wearing right now. Who is my neighbour, who I am to love? Who isn’t my neighbour?

We might even be surprised to find, in fact, that God is our neighbour. That’s not to parrot the words of that song from the nineties that God might be ‘one of us’. What I mean is that the story of the Good Samaritan is also a parable of God’s grace. The man who is half-dead and abandoned, who is unable to do anything on his own encounters a freely given and extravagant healing love from a surprising source, without conditions. This love gives him back his life and allows him to be a neighbour to others. This is the mercy and love of God that we meet through Christ, and that empowers us to love our neighbour. And so here we find that love of God and love of neighbour meet.

We don’t love God because it is a commandment. It is ‘written in the Law’ because God loves us first. God’s love elicits love from us. We respond to that love with love; and we find that even the love we respond with is a gift from God. This responding love is then worked out in loving our neighbour. Loving God and loving neighbour are not two different projects, for love begets love. The love we receive is the love that we love those around us with; and it is with that same love that we graciously receive from our neighbour, who is also beloved of God.

We know how the lawyer in today’s story answered Jesus’ question, but we don’t know what he did after that. Was his life changed? Did he ‘go and do likewise’? Or was he so turned off that he went and looked for a different venue to plead his case in? Or did he, perhaps like most of us, walk away convinced that Jesus was right, yet also knowing how far he was from it, nevertheless trying to love others with the love that he had found in Christ? Of course, we can only speculate about him. But I hope that as we go out in the wake of this story we will be both challenged and comforted by what we find here: by the surprising Samaritan, by the neighbour in our life we do not choose but are given by God, and most of all by the extravagant love and grace of God. In that way, may we better grasp this story, better love this story, and above all, be better grasped by the love we find in it. Amen.

In Their Own Words

2007-07-13T13:34:00.000+01:00

Bracing reading today in the Guardian. Fifty American veterans of the Iraq war were interviewed and talked about the effects of their actions on Iraqi civilians. One quotation:

'For Sergeant Westphal, that night was a turning point. "I just remember thinking to myself, I just brought terror to someone else under the American flag, and that's just not what I joined the Army to do," he said.'

Read it all here.

Streetwise: John Donne and the end

2007-07-12T11:43:00.000+01:00

'When God shall come to the last Act in the glorifying of Man, when he promises, to wipe all teares from his eyes, what shall God have to doe with that eye that never wept?'

-John Donne,
from a sermon on the verse 'Jesus Wept'

I find Donne's notion that history is a drama of God glorifying humanity to be particularly intriguing, and it accords with much of my own work and intuitions.

Streetwise: Karl Barth on the imagination

2007-07-12T09:56:00.000+01:00

'Imagination, too, belongs no less legitimately to the human possibility of knowing. A man without an imagination is more of an invalid that one who lacks a leg.'
-Karl Barth, CD III/1, 91

Streetwise: Rowan Williams on Sacraments and society

2007-07-09T16:40:00.001+01:00

A couple more salutary quotations from Rowan Williams in On Christian Theology, this time from the essay 'Sacraments of the New Society'.

'Sacramental practice seems to speak most clearly of loss, dependence and interdependence, solidarities we do not choose: none of them themes that are particularly welcome or audible in the social world we currently inhabit as secular subjects. We are told, in effect, that the failure to see ourselves and find ourselves in one or another kind of corporateness is a failure in truthfulness that is profoundly risky. Our liberty to choose and define our goals as individuals or as limited groups with common interest is set alongside the vision of a society in which almost the only thing we can know about the good we are to seek is that it is no one's possession, the triumph of no party's interests. The search for my or our good becomes the searc for a good that does not violently dispossess any other -- and this not on the basis of rights who balance must be adjudicated, but because of a conviction that the creative regard calling and sustaining myself is precisely what sustains all. And what make this something different [than] an imposed collectivism is the fact that it is appropriated by no force but by trust, by the recognition of the hidden unities of human interest: our own transition, our own 'passover', into the need of the other, whereever and whoever the other may be.' (p. 219)

'It is this capacity to imagine a 'faithful people' [which the sacraments bring] that seems to me the most significant irritant offered by sacramental practice to the contemporary social scene. One of the most ill-disgnosed features of the present crisis in capitalist society (fast being exported to aspiring capitalist societies everywhere) is the decline of trust. Privation today brings cynicism in its wake: there is little reason for anyone to believe that others are dependable, that resources work for the common good. If this is a fundamental perception or experience of the social order, it becomes practically impossible to 'socialize' people who see their world like this -- the young or the old, marginal or suspect communities of any kind, those in prison, the disabled. This invites an adverserial relation to those institutions felt to have betrayed the disadvantaged, directly or indirectly (why are schools in impoverished areas regular targets for arson?) We can easily misunderstand the much-discussed problem of a so-called 'culture of dependency' among the disadvantaged. It is not, surely, that the ideal of collective welfare as such is disabling: welfarism becomes disabling when society is such that recipients or clients of social and health services are frozen in the attitude of suppliants, never becoming fellow-agents with those administering aid. They need but are not needed. It is not surprising, in such circumstances, that a discourse of rights and claims becomes more and more strident and -- often -- uncritical, unexamined.' (p.220)