A Climate for Debate

I'll refer to it as an example - but to do so, I have to spell out the importance of the issue: Climate Change. It's high time we in the churches got serious about science, not so that we simply accept whatever scientists say or do (because there are issues which call for ethical guidance as well as theological frameworks), but certainly so that we at least appreciate the seriousness with which science is undertaken. For it seems that many 'religionists' treat science as though it is 'mere propaganda', a distorted mindset, whereas its strict method and due sense of openness to ongoing discovery mean that it ought to be better described as the exposure of propaganda. The scientific method requires evidence, tested and tested - so when well over 90% of relevant scientists tell us that it is virtually certain that warmer climates are going to suffer more famines, more insect outbreaks, more deaths due to a 2 degree rise in temperature, certainly exacerbated by human activity, then we should listen - and although Britain itself can possibly afford to delay, we should be far more concerned about those who cannot afford to do so. Poorer people will suffer more. What this requires is a "climate of debate", i) with Christian communities daring to give more time to the big issues facing humanity than to the details of church preservation, ii) with us supporting each other to discover ways of tackling the issues in our daily lives - to help us live sustainably, how we might address our own consumerism and wastefulness, and iii) with us learning how to converse with other disciplines and other communities ... but instead, we preoccupy ourselves with churchiness and talk to ourselves, hiding fearfully behind our walls, or no better, behind doctrinal assertions. I suspect God is no respecter of such walls or assertions, when a climate of debate and conversation demands lives which dare to imagine a different future.

Political Faith - duh!

The one thing that really holds me back from being very vocal about the need for Christians to be proactively political, is the thought that some Christians who are already proactively political are scarily reactionary! At the time of writing this piece, the ekklesia news-feeds on this blog give a glimpse of the divergent politics of Christians - from the Scottish Christian Party with its homophobic, pro-capital punishment, apparently anti-human rights agenda, to the Archbishop of York's newspaper advert calling on people to get out and vote (in local elections) against the BNP. When Christians hear the call to put their faith into political practice, they hear very different calls. It has, of course, always been this way - and it would be inconsistent of me to wish for a neat and tidy political package, since I am generally in favour of mess! But I can't help but be embarrassed, even ashamed, by certain Christian voices which claim to speak decisively for Christian politics - but their lack of grace, lack of awareness of structural injustice, let alone their lack of good news can be so overwhelming that it's not easy admitting one's own Christian affiliation. For isn't it high time we got serious - radical, even - about humanity? Isn't it high time, not least in this year commemorating the abolition of the British slave trade, that we put human beings before profits, before prejudices, before preservation of any oppressive status quo? Isn't it high time we dared to stand in solidarity with anyone 'crucified' today - for their sexuality, ethnicity, tribe, class, gender, nationality, age, politics or views? It is not Christian to stand only with Christians, or only with people like 'me'. Instead, it is Christian to stand with all who suffer - with all the contradictions that can bring. And if that means that Christian politics is inherently 'progressive' or left-leaning, well so be it ... but can we nevertheless still stand with reactionaries and right-wingers too?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Secular Faith?

I'm not quite sure if this is the right title for this blog-entry, but the point is this: It is said, with good intentions, that Christians should affirm that we have more in common with other 'people of faith' than with 'secularists', but I am sure that this is not always the case! By saying this, I am certainly not attacking the interfaith movement, because that is essential in its own terms, not least because it is a properly Christian concern to build relationships and share in conversations with those who are 'other', those from whom we can learn, those from whom we appreciate how we are seen ourselves, those with whom we can work for justice and peace. However, I am aware that there are issues on which I wish to stand firm with so-called secularists (even if they are wrapped up in western Enlightenment assumptions! for I certainly do not wish to throw out the wisdom of the Enlightenment with its dirty water) in the face of dubious religiosity. I am thinking of science, respect for its methods and (tentative) findings, the concern for 'secular' human rights, the importance of secular education, the value of a church-state divide (for the good of both) and generally the need for religion to be exposed to secular suspicions. After all, I am convinced that, if God is for religion, God is also for the secular - not unconditionally, since God is not unconditionally for religion either! - because God has high hopes for humanity's capacity to critique bad or dubious religion. We are given prophetic resources within our religious tradition(s), to critique our concretions of anti-secular ideologies, but we must also be open - dare to be open - to those extra-religious voices which criticise our religious ideologies. This is not merely because I read The Guardian, as though I give more credence to it than 'The Gospel' (as some sneering religionists might suggest), but because our Good News is fundamentally self-critical, a living, organic tradition, which takes seriously humanity's God-given quest for truth in all its multi-facetedness. This does not make me reductionistic (not always, anyway!), or debilitate my ability to criticise secular materialism, but I should remember that some secularists are also critical of materialism, and we must be committed to serious relationship with 'the secular' on such an understanding.

An Easter Saturday world

The good thing about religious calendars is that they give us discipline and a shape to help frame our lives, to place the events of 'ordinary' life in the context of God's relatedness with us. But the problem with them is: we know what happens next. There is a lack of surprise. In our church, on Good Friday this year, we prayed for the strength to wait patiently, anticipating that hope will be fulfilled, healing will come, but recognising (at least in our words) that we do not know when ... which is why we need to develop the ability to wait patiently but actively. And this is where we are, as a world, every day: between the depths of what has happened and the hope for what could happen. Of course, many people anticipate only that things will get worse, but the Christian calling is to resist that pessimism, but without retreating into a naivety which denies the awfulness of Good Friday. Many Christians prefer not to attend services on Good Friday, because it is too painful - which on the one hand I find disappointing, because there is a journey to be shared together; but on the other hand, may be the fact that they cannot face it suggests that they already recognise its awfulness ... but the thing is to hope for tomorrow, without assuming it will simply drop into our laps. We must go to the grave, bringing our spices and flowers, to witness the things we would rather forget, and our calendar tells us "tomorrow" will be much better ... but in the meantime, we wait, patiently, actively, loving not only those who show us kindness but also those who would do these awful things to others, hoping, hoping ...

More on the romanticism of faith

Reactions to this Christmas carol by the Iona Community (1987) are always illuminating:

Once in Judah's least known city
stood a boarding-house with back-door shed,
where an almost single-parent mother
tried to find her newborn son a bed.
Mary's mum and dad went wild
when they heard their daughter had a child.

Giving a fruity twist to the Once in royal original, invariably churchy people are a bit unsure about it, whereas people who attend Christmas services but who would not usually come to church are much more impressed by it. While it's always a bit risky generalising from anecdotal experiences, I believe the contrast is indicative of something: people outside of churches are wary of romanticism, whereas church-regulars have definitely been shaped by it. This doesn't mean - at all - that churchy people are heads-in-the-clouds while other people are feet-on-the-ground, because I believe churches address more gritty topics than we give ourselves credit for (it is, after all, churches who risk talking about asylum-seekers, poverty, racism, etc.) But when it comes to the things of faith, spirituality and religion, we tend to like ours served with a fair dollop of romanticism, something to make the pill taste better, whereas the public at large is ready for a bit more realism. After all, this faith-stuff has to measure up and we need to know what we're talking about - especially in a world of conspiracy theories, scientific fundamentalism, anxiety about absolute claims and religious extremism, and a fairly healthy degree of scepticism about institutions, if not an unhealthy cynicism about everything! Victorian carols may serve a cultural function, galvanising a sense of history, continuity, safety; but they do little to nourish the spiritual hunger for something more real. The contrast is telling.

The Inescapable Christmas Orgy?

Every year it's said, and every year it happens again. How come? It's not even as though it is religious people alone who make the point; most conscious people are aware that commercialism has done something negative to Christmas, and that far from making it a happy time, it is a very stressful time. Of course, it's all very well for people to complain about it if they/we are among those wealthy enough to participate in it without too much hardship - the more pressing point concerns those who are stressed and depressed because things are such that they cannot even participate in it, while they remain surrounded by images and crowds which make it perfectly obvious what it is all about: presents! So it is rightly often said that "Christmas = debt" for many normal people, something which should shame the culture we take for granted ... but the point is, even though we can identify the crass superficiality and poorly disguised money-making orgies of the High Street, and even though we can deplore the stress the whole package causes us in terms of expectations, yet we still do it. Nothing seems to indicate more clearly Walter Wink's observations about the Powers: see how we remain in the thralls of something bigger than ourselves, even though we know the right thing is to head for a much simpler festival. Something takes hold of us at the corporate level (in both senses of 'corporate'!!), which Wink believes has a spirituality of its own. Perversely, the nativity narratives actually give us the key to unlock and dismantle this treasure chest approach to the Christmas 'season'; for while Emperors and Governors and Kings get on with their dirty business, the real action happens where there is "no room", in an animal trough, a simple manger. This is no justification for Christian self-righteousness, however, as though Christmas should embrace Victorian romanticism plus a 'superior' sense that we are now the victims keeping alive the true flame! Instead, the nativity narratives invite something more subversive than romanticism and pride: commitment to the margins, to those who poke at and unpick the enormity of the Powers. And yet, it remains so difficult not to buy more than we can eat and more than we need.

Articulating Church, Class and Mission

Hopefully I'm not stupid enough to imagine that class determines everything, or that 'churches' can be neatly defined in terms of the socio-economic class of their memberships; and yet I firmly believe that class continues to be at least one of the factors, one of the determinants, which contribute to the nature or "groupthink" of any community, churches included. Take, for instance, the research into "growing churches": research which identifies "successful" churches in terms of those best able to articulate their faith and to cultivate church programmes explicitly designed to introduce other people to faith, and advertised as such. "Middle class" churches are not only at a distinct advantage if this is the game we must play "to do well", but I would suggest that middle classness almost defines such "growth" - not that "working class" people and churches cannot be part of similar developments, but churches in "working class" areas which reflect such developments are perhaps bucking a trend, and may be even being quite "middle class"?? I don't mean - at all - that inner-urban churches must define themselves "only" in terms of practical, social concern kinds of things, either as though those things are less important (they're clearly not!) or as though such churches can't do "thinking" and "articulacy" too! But what working-class contexts surely suggest is that Christian "good news" is much more rounded than the business-model of articulation-led mission. If a church works hard to include someone who might not be included in any other group, then that is at least as valuable as a church's evangelistic programme, because it is a real sign of good news. Working class communities are often better at this ... but often the "middle class" pressure to "succeed", to be "viable", means that a church itself will not value such inclusion as they ought to, hoping instead to "grow". If only, instead, each church could "be itself" with as much integrity to its story of good news.

The hand that feeds you

I wonder: may be there is a need for ministerial training to include something about systems analysis! After all, if Walter Wink is right, then every 'system' - every power-that-be - is, to use traditional Christian language, 'fallen' and yet capable of being 'redeemed', and this presumably applies to the church as well. We need to see the church, then, as a system in its own right, since if we are called in some sense to 'manage change', then we must understand - we must be able to analyse - the systems at work in the life of the church, the ways in which people behave because they are in thralled by a 'system'. For people cannot individually be blamed for their intransigence, perhaps, or for ignorance, or for manipulativeness, but should be understood as operating within a collective "groupthink" - or in Orwell's terms, by the "doublethink" which allows people to believe contradictory things at the same time unquestioningly. To ask these things, to suggest these criticisms, of course feels a little like biting the hand that feeds you - if 'you' are a minister, as I am - because it seems like disloyalty, hum-bug, to suggest that your employing institution is 'fallen'! Or it implies that I'm simply frustrated that things aren't going my way at the moment - it comes out of a sense of my inability to deal with what's up! And yet, seriously, it is also good news: for I must see myself as much a part of this fallen movement as anyone else; that we are all complicit with the operation of the system; that something is going on which transcends the behaviour of any individual, so no one of us should beat ourselves up about it. But the question is: is it for individuals to 'see the light', to change from within, or should we engage as a corporate body in the analysis of our incapacity? I suggest we need to look at this together, that it should therefore be part of how ministers and church leaders are trained into the role, that direct engagement with the system already starts to transform it.

Addressing the captivity of faith

I'm going to be a bit presumptuous, so forgive me. But it seems to me that we in the churches have a problem. That claim in itself is nothing new, but my particular emphasis is this: that our 'western presuppositions' are so focused on the individual, that we find our faith held captive. This, too, is not a new claim - it has been said before that the individual's faith-opinion has become dangerously privatised, shaving off its awkwardly public implications, especially the need to live our faith confidently in public - but I particularly observe this problem as being a problem with our political lives. People are happy with practisiong their faith as indidivuals who are basically called to be nice, tolerant, peaceful, respectful - values which happen also to reflect the values of western secularism! - and to gather together with like-minded practitioners for uncritical "fellowship", to affirm our faith in the face of a suspicious world. But any talk of faith as a social enterprise, something which exists between people - as well as privatised within an individual's mind and life - or as something which addresses the dominant social structures and assumptions and norms of our everyday world, is crazy-talk which people find hard to hear. And it's not that people won't "apply" the prophetic traditions of justice to specific situations - people will accept that faith "has political implications"; rather, it is a non-acceptance of faith's inherently political nature. How, then, are we to speak honestly, and to live openly, with regards to faith as a special kind of social imagining, a "way of being" which sees, and hears, and celebrates, and criticises the relationships of the world in a particular light? How are we to address the captivity of faith, if we are so used to its being captive that we do not even see it? Orwell says (and I arrogantly use his quote here): "Unless they become conscious they can never rebel, but until after they have rebelled they can never become conscious." This, then, is the point of discipleship - action and reflection together; but if people don't want it, because it sounds too alien to our western lives, what are we to do? How can we set faith free?

More on "1984" - Staying Sane?

Orwell describes the situation of his hero,Winston, like this: 'He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.' Of course, once again, it is easy to over-play our connection with such a situation - after all, we love to be the hero(ine), don't we (or do I speak for myself only?)?!! But speaking in terms of Christian discipleship, there seems to be something poignant in this idea: for the radical critiques of the Powers made possible by Jesus, and the radical ways of transformation energised by his example, certainly seem to be silent or silenced in the face of the sheer weight and inertia of the status quo - whether it is a totalitarian regime, or a reactionary society, or we are enthralled by the politics of fear. All we can do, in the face of it all, is quietly utter our truths, such that we "stay sane". This obviously isn't about resisting mental illness, because as others have observed, who is to say whether mentally ill people aren't more open to "the truth" than the silent majority doing what we do? Instead, the kind of sanity he celebrates is simply that commitment to reality - especially in the face of the pressures to ignore it. In terms of discipleship within our churches, this can often feel counter-cultural, since there is often something "unreal" about the corporate practice of religion - and yet the possibility remains ... and sanity demands that I see my own fears, insanities and logs in my eyes.

We're told to be humble - but what is it?

If we were always humble in the way often taught by the churches, however implicitly, would we ever say anything or offer to do anything? There seems to be something real within church traditions which urges people never to push their own gifts forward. Of course, churches want us to offer our willingness to fulfil the kinds of roles that need to be fulfilled (being secretary, doing the cleaning, helping with the flowers, doing the rotas, etc.), and all of those things give people a sense of purpose (at one level). But I'm talking about something else: after all, to fulfil those roles we are expected to do so humbly, never thinking of our gifts as being too important but contributing to a bigger picture ... but does this mean that genuine creativity, something that might actually destabilise the status quo, is broadly suppressed? Is "Christian Humility" an ideology which basically keeps people in their place, keeps the structures and systems of the church AND of the world largely undisturbed? And within a particular model of Humility, are some roles fulfilled in a way that actually allows the exercise of manipulative power? (Think of the martyrs who cannot be criticised, because they are so committed to the roles.) So what, instead, is a more authentic kind of humility, which still avoids arrogance, but which enables everyone's giftedness to be celebrated in a way that could potentially change the system/s?

A Solidarity of Others?

I am fascinated by the ideas in a book by Anselm Min, a Korean American, called "The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World: A Postmodern Theology after Postmodernism". He argues that the church as 'the Body of Christ' is called to be a solidarity of 'others', in the sense that we are all 'other' to one another, we are all 'different' from each other. It is a great vision of the church, but more than that, a great model which is offered - in humility - to the world. For we set out this vision, admittedly imperfectly, trusting that the world may witness it as good news: that very different people can nevertheless live together peaceably and justly. But it doesn't seem to work quite as we would hope! We need to be better at promoting a couple of things: first, the diversity of people already in the church, which is often overlooked or directly suppressed (because diversity is messy); and second, the idea of solidarity, a mature way of handling differences, which ain't easy! If we don't work at those things, it'll be difficult to offer it as a model for (other) others ...

Spreading the word? (liberally)

It's a strange tension: the prospect of this "Jesus-movement" changing the world, of it being something truly radical and revolutionary for the sake of the oppressed and marginalised, can be genuinely exciting ... but I am hopeless when it comes to speaking to people who do not know much about it. In fact, my liberal sensibilities are such that I am very reticent, tending to be very wary of what people will make of it - after all, passion is a bit embarrassing, isn't it?! - and there are so many problems with the Church at large, that it is difficult to invite people to be a part of it ... and on the one hand, I don't lose any sleep about this, because I focus on working with the people already committed to the church, and kind of expect them to invite others! So how, if at all, should I set about becoming more able to say "this story is worth it", "this movement really can make a difference - trust me"? And how especially should I do this without being heard as saying "this movement is the best", because I know only too well that other agencies are making invaluable contributions, and other faiths must always be part of the conversations?

Anger Management?

On the day when World Trade Organisation talks have faltered, much to the concern of development agencies, an argument in our church's Bible Study comes to mind. Someone had complained that we're always being told how the world's poverty is "our fault" and we never seem to hear what we've done right ... Well, it's simple - it's because so much of the ongoing hardship of millions of people is because of the intransigence of countries which can afford to make changes but refuse to. So why was this person getting so worked up? It's because the miraculous story of the Feeding of 5000 people raised hard-hitting realisations: things can be done, Jesus expected them to be done, he got disciples involved in seeing them and in doing them, but still we don't like hearing it. I got angry in response - still aware that I don't do enough to follow through on the compassion that is evoked, but angry that such defensiveness can stand in the way of the need for a contemporary miracle. And what would the miracle be? Nothing but managing the anger so to direct it towards building a world in which hungry people are fed.