Walking through walls

Prague is an interesting city. Whether you see it as the "city of 100 spires" or the city of the never-ending stag-night, you can't escape the amazing mix of fantastic old buildings and of people. There is both the very ancient - long before the brave stories of early Reformers burnt at the stake or "defenestrated" (thrown out of windows!) - and the very new, with all the High Street shops you'd expect to see in the UK, and this fascinating wall reminding us that, when people were under Soviet rule, they were attracted to John Lennon, the peace-lover. A game of cat and mouse ensued, as the wall was covered with messages of peace and then whitewashed by the authorities, but now it remains - with Lennon's head coming through to meet us ... Overturning totalitarian governments, or making world peace, is somewhat like walking through walls: it's just not something that happens ... is it? And yet it is. Again I find myself drawn to the distinction between optimism (which can naively pretend the walls don't exist) and pessimism (which gloomily sees only the obstacle) - and to the conviction that Hope is far more radical than mere optimism, because it sees the wall squarely, head-on, for all its utter concreteness (the stubbornness of societal systems, of human attitudes, of violence and division), but still determines to walk through it, whatever the cost. So let's get to it - let's walk through walls.

Christians and the extremist threat

So, more bombs. Interestingly, though, the media are increasingly airing the views of Muslims who have been part of the so-called Jihadist networks but who walked away. They seem to emphasise that western foreign policy only aggravates the issue; that the crux of the matter is the state of Islamic theology; that moderates have left a vacuum of ideas which the radicals exploit and fill successfully. Critically, when questioned about this, one described the matter as one in which scholars fail to explain the context of those Quranic texts which urge violence on unbelievers. That is, the jihadists are justifying themselves faithfully with regards to ancient texts written at a time of real tension between Islam and 'the world': so their ongoing struggle has its own internal logic. Christians must learn from this - 1) by not leaving a vacuum of ideas into which the noisy fundamentalists can move; 2) which means debating strongly the question of biblical contextualisation - i.e. the idea that the Bible itself was written in certain historical contexts; that the idea of 'timeless' truths is a dangerous denial of God's concern with the particular moment. And it's not even that we can claim that Christian 'extremists' are innocent of violent outcomes, since their theologies not only underpin the space which allows for conflict in the Middle East, notably Israel/Palestine, but without seeing biblical texts in context, they also continue to preach prejudice and excuse various kinds of marginalisation. We must therefore ensure that progressive theology is spoken and lived - to take on the bibliolatry of those who refuse to put things in context.