I wasn’t going to see it. It wasn’t that I felt strongly about the movie, one way or the other, it was just not top of my list of must-do’s. It was only when I was alerted to the fact that The Passion of the Christ might be a subject at a dinner party that I thought I might give it a go.
I kept waiting for something to happen. That’s not to say that there was not plenty of action, far from it. I patiently sat and noted the various bits of the gospel stories which Gibson had pressed into service. I flinched a little at the initial bloodletting. Patiently I watched for the androgynous Devil character to develop into significance, but it never quite got there. By the time Caviezel’s Jesus fell a second time, I realised we were doing the stations of the cross, and I wearily ticked them off in my head as they passed across the screen.
At the end I was left with a big ‘so what?’ I didn’t know what Gibson wanted me to do with his tale; I was left with a surfeit of blood and carnage with nowhere to put it. It was beyond me why some of my colleagues had block-booked theatres, to use the movie to encourage people to faith.
The point about telling a Jesus story is that you do so to answer a question, or to raise one. Each of the gospel writers was telling their version of the Jesus story in such a way as to address a particular need of the community to whom they were writing. The question might be about who belongs in the Christian community? or who is my neighbour? Why should we take Jesus seriously? Either way the stories are written in such a way that invites a response. Gospel writers are not simply spinning a tale for the sake of it, they want you to take what they’ve written and do something with it.
The Gospel according to St Mel does none of this, unless having your nose rubbed in the brutality of first century Roman justice somehow makes you want to say your prayers. If the film was created to answer a question it was certainly lost on me.
Gospel writers and preachers know that there is no such thing as a plain vanilla Jesus story. That’s why the four gospels differ in the way that they do. Why they write and preach is because they recognise that people start with real-life questions, and so the story has to be told in such a way that speaks to the real-life situations of their hearers, and all of these are different. They shaped their material in the belief that God meets us where we are. So, don’t send me to a movie, tell me in your own words how you, a person like me, with problems and concerns like mine, has been changed by Jesus. If I can see that it is possible for me as well, then it’s news I can use, good news.
3 CommentsThe Church of England recently announced the appointment of a new Director of Communications for the Archbishops’ Council and General Synod. The Church Times duly interviewed Peter Crumpler:
…Mr Crumpler described himself as “passionate” about the Church, which he described as “a superb institution that is not given the value it should be in society”. He will take up the post in May. The post was vacated by the Revd Dr Bill Beaver in 2002, and was frozen while a review of the national communications strategy was conducted on behalf of the Archbishops’ Council. Mr Crumpler… said he had studied the Phillis report into government communication strategies, which stressed the need for positive presentation, openness, and no “spin”.
Some information about these two reports may be useful.
First, the Independent Review of Government Communications, a 40-page report which can be downloaded from here, deals with UK government communications strategy. It was originally set up in the wake of the Jo Moore/Stephen Byers fiasco but later it also responded to the departure of Alistair Campbell.
Bob Phillis, who is the chief executive of the Guardian Media Trust and a former TV executive (with both the BBC and commercial TV companies) chaired a group of media professionals, many of whose recommendations for restoring public confidence in the government are in my view equally applicable to the Church of England. Just try substituting “church” for “government” etc. For example:
R.10 A new approach to briefing the media – We found that the lobby system is no longer working effectively for either the government or the media. We recommend that all major government media briefings should be on the record, live on television and radio and with full transcripts available promptly online. Ministers should deliver announcements and briefings relevant to their department at the daily lobby briefings, which should also be televised, and respond to questions of the day on behalf of the government.
or this
Greater emphasis on regional communication – Research told us the public want information that is more relevant to them and where they live. We recommend that more investment should be made in communicating at a local and regional level and more communication activity should be devolved into relevant regional government or public service units…
and on websites:
R.10.3 Government websites should make all relevant background material available to anyone who wants it.
R.11 Customer-driven online communication
… We recommend that the central government website should be redesigned to meet the needs and perceptions of users, with individual departments only becoming “visible” when this makes sense to the users. Information on local public services should be prominent and easily found. There should be increased investment in websites to reflect the increasing importance of this method of communication.
Turning now to the Review of the National Communications of the Church of England which was undertaken by Mr David Kenning of Bell Pottinger Ltd, this has not been published, but a 35 page summary was posted on the CofE website in Microsoft Word format. That can be downloaded from here. A more concise 8 page version was issued last November to all General Synod members, diocesan secretaries and others, and is reproduced as a web page here. This is worth reading in full. Synod members were told that:
The Council has accepted the general analysis and overall prescription in Mr Kenning’s report.
…The Council agreed that the new Director would need some flexibility over the detailed recommendations in the report. They noted that decisions about the resources devoted to the Communications Unit would need to be considered in the budget round next spring in the usual way.
Translating into plain English, the specific recommendations of Kenning would require a huge increase in the staff and budget of the department. So that’s not going to happen any time soon. The new Director will have to fight for his slice of the cake like everyone else. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as Kenning’s emphasis on traditional media seems rather odd anyway. Kenning said:
The Communications Unit should invest in two additional professional journalists – one from the national press (preferably with tabloid experience) and one from national broadcasting (preferably also with national journalistic experience). This would increase the number of press officers from two to four…… revitalising Church relationships with key national journalists, columnists and journalists on a one-to-one basis. These (personal) relationships can only be improved where they are manifestly based on trust and openness. This should be done in the form of a weekly lobby – preferably held away from Church premises. … Hold a separate Thursday lobby for the Sunday press.
Whereas concerning the CofE website, Kenning said:
The Official Website requires full-time dedicated professional support with a recruited or outsourced full-time professional webmaster. Much more use could be made of an improved website (establishing an intranet) for more direct communications between the Unit and the dioceses and parishes…
A careful balance needs to be maintained between the effort devoted respectively to the press and electronic media. The recommendations for the staffing requirements above reflect the optimum balance for each. The Internet has made enormous strides into the national consciousness over the past five years and the next decade could well see it overtaking the established media as a source of information. However, the conventional press and media must remain a priority for the foreseeable future. There is no reason, however, why Church Advocates should not be able to post their views on the internet via webcams [sic] and, on occasions, invite an interactive communication with the nation such as is often conducted by television networks.
Compare this with what Phillis said about the lobby system, emphasising regional media, and using websites. Try looking at the Bell Pottinger website 🙂
On the other hand, Kenning accurately portrays the magnitude of the task facing the new director when he lists as a major issue:
A culture of inclusivity and openness – The fortress mentality in the NCIs needs to be dismantled – An entire strategy and programme needs to be put in place to improve and monitor relationships with the national press and broadcast media.
The Church must set about dismantling (the perception of) the “fortress” mentality at Church House in particular, and to a lesser extent at Lambeth. The first and most important area to begin with is within the Communications Unit itself.
This will require a change of culture.
Yes, and this is not a task which a Communications Director can do alone. Kenning also said:
The configuration of the Communications Panel holds the key both to enabling the communications strategy to work and to empower national Church communications as a whole. To date this Panel has been too remote, underpowered and insufficiently representative to do the job properly. It must draw together representatives from the major institutions and key individuals involved in communications.
… I recommend a new, re-configured Panel should include the following:
– Chaired by a media-literate senior bishop representing the House of Bishops with experience of national Church communications and who has a direct link to the Archbishops
– A maximum of two lay members (communications experts) to be elected by Synod
– One person elected from Diocesan Communicators’ Panel
– Director of Communications
– Senior Lambeth communications advisor
– Senior Bishopthorpe communications advisor ??
But the Synod was told that the Archbishops’ Council in its wisdom had:
– created a small task force to support and oversee the work of the Director over the next two years as he or she draws up and delivers a detailed implementation plan for the Review. The need for a Communications Panel will be considered further towards the end of the period. The task force will be chaired by the Bishop of Manchester. The three other members are Andreas Whittam Smith, Jayne Ozanne and Anne Sloman.
So no elected representatives of any kind on that task force, then. And the Panel recommendation has been sidetracked for at least two years. I don’t find that at all encouraging, and don’t suppose many synod members will either.
But, like many others, I do look forward to Peter’s arrival at Church House in May with joyful anticipation.
0 CommentsMy current job requires me to take a managerial view of my university. I have been an academic for much (but not all) of my professional life, and this has allowed me to comment, and often comment critically, on how other organisations behave. I have often done so from a perspective of self-righteousness, in that the frame of reference for my criticism was informed by a belief that I was spreading the gospel of openness, transparency, accountability and equity. It’s a potent cocktail, because it numbs the capacity to see error in one’s own analysis.
Now I am in charge of a university, and I see at least some things differently. I recognise, for example, that universities are notoriously bad at modernising themselves, see tradition as noble, dismiss out of hand the possibility that they are bad employers — or worse still, that they might discriminate – and are suspicious of the desire on the part of public representatives to hold them accountable. They also have bits of mystical dogma — sometimes described as ‘academic freedom’ — which can be used to slap down argument when all else fails. And yet, beyond the slogans and the traditionalism, universities are stewards of a great public good: education and scholarship which maintains civilised, cultured and tolerant values. It is just when they become too self-important (which usually happens at times of great stress) that it becomes hard to see these values in action.
It’s probably similar with the church. We have all become a little fed up with the evident failings of the men and women (but usually men) who occupy the major ecclesial offices, and we are critical of the way in which both the mission of the church and its resources have been mismanaged. We become impatient when dogma which an educated person probably started to dismiss as absurd at the time of the Enlightenment still adorn a catechism or two, and we wonder whether this is an organism which can adapt sufficiently in order to survive.
But I am also aware that in the middle of all this mess is the Word, and however we have corrupted it, it is still there. So when I hear some daft new episcopal pronouncement and think I want to leave, I remind myself that the church is more than, and bigger than, what currently irritates me. And so I stay.
But staying should not be a comfortable irritation, in which I shrug off what annoys or offends me and get lost in other-worldly contemplation. Staying means accepting the mission to promote, and if necessary provoke, change — in a spirit of love, tolerance and (properly understood) obedience. It means recognising God in the church and striving to be true to God’s Gospel — an unchanging God who, for every generation, makes all things new.
2 CommentsI’d read the reviews, heard about all the hype, read yards of stuff giving all the reasons for not going to see the film, and was prepared to give it a miss. That is, until local clergy were invited to a free viewing, and a number of us went. Some, fearing it would be too much of a horror movie, stayed away.
Those who went found the film moving, profound, and thought provoking. It may not be one you would advise your elderly, churchgoing granny to see, but for anyone used to adult movies, this is well worth seeing. In Passiontide, the pictures will fill our familiar hymns with deeper meaning, and add a new depth to the Stations of the Cross.
Once, rich visual imagery was available in England as an aid to prayer and meditation. The fourteenth century mystics saw prayer as starting with a meditation on the Passion, not by looking at texts, for the Latin scriptures were inaccessible to many people, but from the familiar picture set up at 10,000 altars and on rood screens throughout Europe. A contemplation of Christ’s sufferings, for the sins of the whole world, and for our sins, was seen as both a road to conversion and the beginning of the life of prayer.
As painting and techniques improved, the crucifixion was depicted with increasing realism, culminating in works such as that by Grunewald.
But printed, vernacular Bibles and the Puritans destroyed much of this culture in Britain, leaving us with whitewashed church walls, and smashed stained glass. The ear, through the word of God, became the prime means of stirring the heart to devotion, and even music for a time was questioned. The result is that we have not understood the power and the place of devotional art.
But, with the rise of cinema and television, the visual arts can now reclaim their former place. With Mel Gibson’s film, the biblical epic has come of age. Raw reality and even savagery are displayed to an extent that makes previous biblical epic films look like chocolate-box illustrations. Yet “epic” is hardly the right word. There is little more than a following of the Stations of the Cross, given that the film only begins in the Garden of Gethsemane. As with any good meditation on the Stations, Mel Gibson introduces other scenes which comment on these final hours. And with these, and with the reactions of the bystanders, particularly Jesus’s mother, we are time and again taken away from the gruesome torturing of Jesus just at the point when it might appear unbearable.
The shifting of scene means that instead of being presented with unremitting gratuitous violence, we see something of the loving purposes of God, precisely at the point when we want to cry out “Why?”
Unless the film had brought us to this brink of feeling that it would be unbearable to go on, we might have come away thinking that this was just one more sanitised view that made the Christian faith just an interesting diversion for children. But this, with an “18” classification, is not a children’s film.
It is a very honest piece of propaganda for the Christian faith, the best that Mel Gibson could devise. In this I would see him as standing in the tradition of great religious artists of the past who have wanted to convey their faith through their art, and express their own Passion for Christ. It is precisely this which has made it difficult for the critics to know where to aim their arrows. The complaint that the film is anti-Semitic, for example, misses the point. Those who condemned Jesus are portrayed as very believable human beings in whom we should be able to identify our own failings. They are only as Jewish as the Virgin Mary. What is depicted is part of the history of Judea, and the history of the world.
There is a great deal to think about in the film. Don’t go alone, and allow yourselves plenty of time afterwards to reflect together on what you have seen.
3 CommentsI’m beginning a round of tours of sites of special interest. Not historic architecture, or places of pilgrimage, or the nature reserves of east London, but places where I can compare my own working environment with other people’s.
In November I took responsibility (no, surely some of the responsibility belongs elsewhere) for a church-and-community-centre, one of a number in the surrounding area, and a hybrid well-known elsewhere. And my tour is of other urban churches which use this combination as a way of adapting the sites and/or buildings bequeathed us by the Victorians, in order to finance our continuing presence in the city and offer service to our neighbours.
I want to learn from the way other people and places do it, but more than that I want to underpin what we do here with some theological thinking. I want, at least, to know what the questions are — which came first, the need for money or the understanding of service? How do we identify the nature of that service — by responding to whatever regeneration pot is best filled, or by identifying the greatest need? What are the ethical issues around competing with other worthy causes for what money there is? Do I/we declare the building a no-smoking zone in the interest of abundant life, or say ‘yes’ to the single mothers and the street people who find it a safe haven? And, biggest question of all, how do the people who worship on Sunday relate to the weekday users?
A lot of the questions circle round the ancient counterpoint of immanence and transcendence — how do we hold the two together, and make evident the holiness both of the day centre for adults with learning difficulties and of our gathering as the people of God?
Answers on a postcard, please!
3 CommentsThe parish I am visiting this Sunday have issued a Press Release. It tells the world that among a series of repairs and improvements to be celebrated is the church?s new toilet, and goes on to declare that, ?The facilities will be put to use fully for the first time at a dedication service led by the Bishop of Dudley?.
I will leave it to my readers to speculate on what specific liturgical actions and movements might be appropriate to fulfil this promise. For me though it has served as a reminder of how significant a role the humble lavatory has played in my spiritual and ministerial formation.
Between school and university I worked six months in a labouring job. As the lowest of the low in the factory it fell to me to cover the jobs nobody else wanted to do. So when the cleaner went off on his fortnight?s holiday every blocked pan and overflowing urinal became my personal responsibility. I learned both that no task is beneath me and that even the most unpleasant duties pass. And I came to understand the gospel truth that engaging with the dirt and mess of life does not in itself defile us.
As a young vicar working in deprived urban areas there was a constant struggle to bring resources into the community. Governments attempted to show concern and interest by authorising a whole series of exceptional funds and programmes to combat poverty, unemployment or whatever the latest target might be. Much of it was well-intentioned but the delivery mechanisms were poorly thought through. I discovered that a proposal to improve church lavatories was the ideal quick spend medium sized project that officers badly needed to land on their desks in January ? just at the moment when they were being pressed to allocate the remainder of their budgets. ?Be wise as serpents?, says the gospel, and the new church loo was its practical outcome.
More problematically, I have learned the value of the comfort break in handling complex issues. I?ve long lost count of the number of occasions on which the breakthrough has occurred not at the negotiating table but in the gents? urinal. The psychological change from confronting across a table to standing side by side whilst engaged in a basic bodily function cannot be underestimated. Indeed I am told that a common ploy of industrial arbitrators in the 1970?s was to ply disputing sides with coffee and then call a strategic break. The problem of course is that it is hard to see how to incorporate gender inclusivity.
I could add other examples, but my point is that Christianity is an earthy religion. Our faith takes seriously that we are bodily beings. We follow one who took our flesh, with all its material nature, and we assert belief in ?the resurrection of the body? not the immortality of the soul. In blunt language we are not only Thinking Anglicans but eating, drinking, and defecating Anglicans. The tendency of religious writers and pundits is to over-spiritualise, to speak in abstracts and to attach labels to human beings that emphasise difference rather than commonality.
As a new teenage Christian in the mid 1970?s I was fortunate to come across the meditations of the French writer Michel Quoist. His ability to reflect theologically on the most prosaic and everyday objects and events continues to inspire me today. So I shall perform my liturgical duties this Sunday with gusto. Knowing that dedicating the church loo is no less important than dedicating a new stained glass window. And giving thanks for the ways in which God uses the ordinary stuff of life to reveal the gospel truth.
1 Commentjust thinking…
The potentially global reach of the internet is still quite limited in practice. In November 2003, less than 11% of the world’s population had internet access. 62% of North Americans and 28% of Europeans (58% in the UK) were internet users, while in Africa only 1% of the population had access. In two major African countries with significant Anglican populations, Nigeria and Uganda, the figures were only 0.1% and 0.2%. Within Latin America and the Caribbean the average was 7%, in Asia 6%, Oceania 2%, and in the Middle East 5%, although there were very wide variations between individual countries. The UK had the fifth highest number (34 million) of internet users in the world, after the USA (185 million), China, Japan, and Germany.
The reduction of this global “digital divide” is a major challenge which the United Nations and the International Telecommunications Union is trying to meet. Seven of the ten countries with the largest Christian populations, i.e. Brazil, Mexico, China, Russia, The Philippines, India and Nigeria have low figures for internet use.
Christian usage of the internet reflects the restricted geography of internet users. North American Christians currently dominate, with other English-speaking countries coming second, non-anglophone Western Europeans third, and the Global South is scarcely represented as yet. This balance will not change much over the next decade unless the global “digital divide” is significantly closed. It is not surprising therefore that so far the major Christian voices on the internet use the English language and reflect the theological balance of American Christianity, with strong representation of protestant and often conservative viewpoints. Thinking Anglicans is a small effort to redress this imbalance.
The most detailed survey so far of religious internet use is a 2001 survey of North Americans (see CyberFaith: How Americans Pursue Religion Online for details) which found that 3 million people a day (and in total 28 million Americans) had used the internet to get religious and spiritual information. This was a quarter of all American users and interestingly that was more people than had used internet dating services. 91% of them were Christians, compared to 71% of the American population.
Religious internet users appear to differ from many secular communities in that they do not use the internet much to find a new religious organisation to join, but rather to connect better with the one to which they already belong. Their most popular uses of the internet were to discover more information about their own faith, or about social issues, to email prayer requests, to download religious music, or to buy books or other religious materials. Nearly one-third subscribed to one or more electronic mailing lists of a religious kind. A majority had a favourite website affiliated with their own religious denominational group.
There are huge opportunities for Christians to promote the Kingdom of God via the internet. Thus far only a small proportion of Christian internet effort has been directed to evangelism: spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who have never heard it. Much energy goes to nurture existing Christians in their faith, which is valuable. But far too much internet time is wasted in disedifying wrangles between Christians. This does nothing to further the Gospel, and leaves the potential of the internet for Christianity unfulfilled.
2 Commentsjust thinking…
Matthew’s gospel concludes with a worldwide vision for the Christian message — ‘Go, and make disciples of all the nations’. The evangelist celebrates the universal vision first given by Israel’s prophets to the exiles returning from captivity. Matthew responds to Isaiah’s cry ‘Arise, shine, for your light has come’ by telling us that the first worshippers of the infant messiah are foreigners, magi from the East.
The gospel is written for Jews who are being awakened to the challenge of bringing the Christian faith to other cultures. Jewish dietary laws and distinctive dress would not be sustained within a faith which sought to be universal. Perhaps also the threat of persecution under the Roman Empire might have made it inadvisable for believers to parade their faith too publicly by sporting distinctive clothes.
One legacy is that there is no distinctive Christian dress code required by all, akin to the Sikh turban, or the Jewish skull cap. Within Britain we can also point to the fact that for those who want to retain a dress code which identifies their faith, this is accommodated to the extent of allowing Sikh men on motorcycles to wear a turban in place of a crash helmet. The law clearly shows that although the majority see no necessity for a religious dress code, the wishes of those who find this an essential expression of their faith are respected.
The present controversies about dress codes seem to show that the Christian community in many places has little understanding of the value placed on such rules by peoples of other faiths. It is significant that it was the Protestant President of Germany who made the point that ‘If one bans the headscarf in schools as a religious symbol, it is difficult to defend the monk’s habit.’ The comment is a two edged sword. Is he defending distinctive religious dress in a country that has a large Catholic population, or attacking Catholics as well as Muslims?
It is dangerous territory in Germany. Banning Jews from wearing skull caps would be almost as much an act of anti-Semitism as it was to insist that in Nazi Germany they should wear a Star of David. But it is unthinkable that the Pope, on a visit to Germany, would not wear his white cassock. Perhaps the President was saying that this line of argument had no future.
It is easy to caricature the Muslim headscarf as being a sign of the repression of women, or a political statement. Perhaps the opposite view should be heard — in many schools it would be far preferable if all girls dressed more discreetly, instead of following the pressure of advertising to flaunt their sexuality at increasingly earlier ages. Isn’t the modest dress of Muslim girls far more appropriate school wear than the revealing outfits of others? Isn’t there a value for the headscarf wearer in displaying a public sign that she belongs to a faith which prizes faithful marriage above casual sex?
At this time when we celebrate the visit of the magi from the East, we should be building a society which welcomes cultural diversity and allows people freedom of religious expression. With diversity, they bring precious gifts.
0 Commentsjust thinking…
My first reaction to the celebration of New Year is to retreat into the role my family describe as “Grumpy Old Man”. As a morning person I dislike the effort to keep awake well past my bedtime in order to simply watch some figures change on a clock — and I resent the expectation that I should do so with a show of bonhomie. I bemoan the way that New Year so quickly takes over from Christmas in the entertainment schedules that determine our popular culture; though I recognise that it allows broadcasters and journalists to put their compilation pieces together before December 25th, and go home to their families. Climbing fully onto my GOM soapbox I suspect that New Year bears blame for pushing the celebration of Christmas into Advent.
So is there anything positive I want to say about this commemoration? Well, yes there is. And it comes in the form of a plea that (as the current adage goes) we do what it says on the tin and let New Year’s celebrations be primarily a celebration in anticipation of the year to come.
Liturgically we make that point by beginning our year on the day when the church remembers the Circumcision of Christ. Efforts to re-brand the feast as “The Naming of Jesus” simply miss the point. Christ is not the last person whose circumcision gets recorded in the bible; that honour goes to Timothy. But he is the last whose circumcision is recorded as other than a piece of political expediency. Just as by his death he will destroy death, so with his circumcision the scripture looks back at the tradition into which he has been born, in order to move beyond it. Our challenge is not to forget the past, but it is also to try not to live in it either.
In different times the church will express this “future weighted balance” in different ways. In my own diocese of Worcester part of it is through our strategic plan, Looking to the Future. It isn’t a clever title, it doesn’t mean to be, but it does seek to determine an orientation towards the church we are, by God’s lead, becoming, rather than what we may formerly have been.
Back in our BC (before children) era Sue and I enjoyed long distance walking holidays. On a trek of well over a hundred miles the landmarks and staging posts became important. Be they natural, like rivers and mountain tops, or of human construction, towns and motorways, they punctuated the journey. They provided space to rest, to look back, and to look ahead. They were the places where we ate and drank, both to replenish our bodies after exertion and to build up energy for the next stage. There was a balance between what had gone before and what was to come, but the tilting of that balance was always towards the way ahead, and the ultimate destination that lay there. New Year is such a staging post, and it calls us to glance both forward and back, but then to set our feet firmly on the path ahead.
So amid all the other ideas you may have about New Year Resolutions let me suggest one more. When you catch yourself looking back in 2004, do so first in thankfulness for the good, then briefly in penitence for the bad. And then take that remembrance and let it strengthen you to face the year ahead, and embrace the new that it will bring.
0 Commentsjust thinking…
Headlong into Christmas we all seem to rush, but it is still advent and the hurry, whilst certainly to do with preparation, has little to do with penance. It might not have been the kind of preparation John the Baptist had in mind when he told people, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’. What preparation though would he be demanding of us today?
John challenged people to prepare themselves but also to look around at those in need and help them. Who are those most in need in our midst? Surely no one these days actually has nothing. Social security provides a safety net. The homeless shelters take people in, and feed them, and even help with clothing. But, do you know, there are actually those who have nothing. There are even people whom the shelters will not take at all? There are those in Britain, not just in major towns and cities but in your town on your streets, on your doorsteps who actually have nothing, not even food, and are hungry?
These people are asylum seekers. They have committed no criminal act. Routinely now, those who through no fault of their own, did not know that they had to claim asylum the moment they got to immigration control, but only found out even an hour later are denied all benefits. They are also prevented from working so they cannot earn their keep, as many would happily do. And these are not economic migrants, they are almost all from countries with which we have either been to war, or which have massive abuses of human rights. (Otherwise we would expect to see many more from the poorer African countries.) Many come highly educated, as many as 30% actually have a degree. In many cases, they cannot even be returned to their countries of origin, because it is not safe to send people back to places like Zimbabwe, Somalia, and Iraq. Their basic human rights were denied them in their home countries and they come here and find that they denied them here as well.
They are expected to have perfect knowledge of how the asylum system works here, before they arrive, even if English is not their first language — not that it gets explained to them at any stage.
So we have people now, without benefits, without work and without shelter, because the shelters only take in those for whom the state will pay for a bed, i.e. people who are British. We have managed to create a whole new underclass in our society, and one which generally gets nothing but vilification and blame from the media, as if they did not already have enough with which to cope.
So if you ask me what I think John the Baptist would be saying, I think he would be talking to us about asylum seekers. We might want to recall that Christ himself was a refugee in Egypt, that his family were even visitors to the town where he was born. And are we not to treat every asylum seeker, every refugee as Christ?
If you really want to help, if you really want to make a difference, then that would involve sharing money perhaps, but more importantly time, that is — getting involved directly; helping groups to distribute food, to dispense advice. But perhaps most important way of all, the way everyone can help them, is by not judging them before they have met them, and attempting to see behind the headlines, the rhetoric and the tinsel to see what life is really like for those who are marginalised on your streets this Advent and Christmastide.
And the latest news from the streets… the government want to take away Christ from his asylum seeking family — all for his own good you understand, because otherwise he would be destitute, too. And immediately with birth we see crucifixion as well.
1 Comment‘Go on, ask him for something this Christmas’ says the Churches’ Christmas advert.
The baby Jesus, dressed in an unlikely Santa suit, rather than the traditional swaddling clothes makes us think, and will probably cause anguish and confusion to the parents of thousands of children. The Christmas poster from the Church’s Advertising Network has again prompted all kinds of disapproval. Even the least of the criticism complains about the apparent desecration of a beautiful old master picture of the nativity.
But it does its job. It was intended to surprise, and, with gentle irony, make people think about what we have done to the festival which marks the birth of God’s Son. The meaning can be distorted or lost in all the events and all the products which claim the title of “Christmas” but have little to do with the Christian celebration of the incarnation.
The poster, of course, just adds to the confusion. But it’s only intended to point people to the places where the real message of Christmas is proclaimed — in churches of all denominations throughout the land, all marking Christmas in their own special ways.
All churches acknowledge that Christmas began with the best Christmas present in history, God’s greatest gift to the world.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
So, for the real message and meaning of Christmas, celebrated in carols, in scripture, in teaching, in drama and liturgy, come to church, and have a real Christmas. Ask him for something.
0 CommentsHaving lived for ten years in the North-East of England, I returned to Dublin (which I had left in 1990) just over three years ago. The Dublin I had left was really still a provincial town, and its inhabitants lacked the self-assured arrogance of those of some capital cities. But its community was also still far from being at ease in the modern world: the 1980s were marked in many ways by very public struggles in which the Roman Catholic church fought, and generally vanquished, what people elsewhere took for granted: contraception, divorce, homosexuality.
When I returned I encountered a very different city, and a very different country. The demure city whose pulse was hardly in evidence has become an in-your-face, secular, materialistic community. Churches in urban parishes which had attracted 90 per cent of the population to their Masses are now lucky if the get 10 per cent. A new RC archbishop feels the obvious need to begin his prelature by offering apologies to all and sundry on behalf of his church.
Anglicans have been beneficiaries, to some extent. For the first time in over a century or so the Church of Ireland is growing, and in some parishes it is growing fast. Young affluent-looking families (who will often still be declaring they are ‘Catholic’ on the census form) make the Anglican cathedral or parish church their spiritual home. And why? Because, as one said recently in a TV interview, ‘here is a denomination which understands the new millennium and can combine the spirit of the new age with the best of the old tradition’. And another said that ‘Anglicans manage to be religious without being obviously unreasonable’.
Maybe that’s too rosy a picture, and maybe the more familiar pattern of decline will return. But I don’t believe that a born-again dogmatism — whatever its direction — is a likely agent of continuing growth. Fundamentalists comfort those who cannot quite face the world as it is; but most people whose main instinct these days is to give religion a miss will run a mile if they sense a dogma around the corner. We need to speak a different language — still capable of being expressed in thees and thous, by the way — which engages the mind, refreshes the senses and shows the way forward.
3 CommentsA little over a year ago I began to learn bellringing. The bells at our church had been largely silent for several years, and a group of us decided that if we wanted them rung we would have to learn to ring them ourselves. Under the expert guidance of ringers from a neighbouring parish we started to learn the ropes.
This is no easy thing. As the bell turns full-circle on its wheel the rope goes up and down at a tremendous speed and the beginner has to learn to grab it and release it as it flies past, to pull it at the right time by just the right amount, and to feel what the bell mechanism is doing fifty feet above. This must be done for the safety of the beginner, of the other ringers, and to prevent damage to the bell and its mechanism.
After a few weeks practice this all begins to come together, and you can start to ring the bell properly. Now you must learn to ring with others, hearing the other bells as you ring, so that the church bells sound out together, calling people to worship God, or singing joyously in celebration, or sorrowfully at a funeral. Then the bells speak loud and clear, knowing their place among the other bells, singing harmoniously as they weave complex patterns to and fro.
When we try to follow the teachings that we find in the bible and in the traditions of the Church we can follow a similar path. Here there is a complex of ideas, underpinned by some simple principles, and we have to use the skills that God gives us to understand how to apply these concepts. It is not enough simply to pull on a bell-rope and expect to be able to ring a peal of bells — it takes practice, skill and co-ordination. Similarly we strive to deepen our understanding of our faith, and of the words of the bible, and to work out what we are called to do, and how to do it. The message of the bible is not always simple and its application to the world is not always clear-cut, and if we think it is then we risk becoming at best a clanging noise, and at worst a danger to ourselves and others, as when a ringer loses control of the bell-rope.
But when we have begun to understand the good news of the kingdom of God then we can sing out harmoniously, and proclaim the theme loudly, clearly and joyfully to the world.
0 CommentsAwaiting licensing to a new post, there is one bonus, as I sit amongst the detritus of moving house — I don’t have to preach on Sunday, the day we mark as ‘Christ the King’. I always find these weeks before Advent, which we now call the Kingdom season, difficult. The words given to us to use in worship and in our lectionary readings are distinctly triumphalist. They speak of majesty, power, grandeur, force. How do they fit with the gospel theme of a world turned upside down, a world where the priorities are quite other? The contrast seems all the more striking this year, when the immediately preceding Sundays gave us a whole series of readings from Mark, in which we are told that the first shall be last and the last first.
But perhaps I should regret not preaching this Sunday, and trying to work out my ambivalence about the Church’s season in the light of current events. News coverage this week has been dominated by the state visit of the president of the United States. George Bush’s visit has been an extraordinary mixture of pomp and security. He has been entertained at Buckingham Palace, and protected by enormous numbers of police and security officers; he has addressed the political elite, travelled in a limousine with doors five inches thick, and reviewed a traditional guard of honour. Majesty, power, grandeur, and force.
My questioning is not about the character of American foreign policy under this president, or even about the extent and limits of American power; it runs deeper than that. It is about how the Christian tradition views power and all its trappings. In celebrating Christ the King, it is not enough to imagine a purely virtuous superpower, engaged in promoting universal well-being by using the traditional levers of force and influence. We are called, I think, to something much more radical, to re-imagining the nature and uses of dominion, to losing the triumphalism, and seeking out what it might mean for the last indeed to be first.
2 CommentsGetting to the end
The hardest sentence to write of this article has been this one. Where to begin? What bearing to set off in? The start is determined by the end. I need to know where I want to go, so that I can point myself in the right direction.
For me this isn?t just part of the struggle of writing articles, it is central to the way I live as a Christian. I believe in a God of purpose and of destiny. A God who has clear ends in mind, and who calls me to journey with him towards our final destination. The question of discipleship is one of discovering where I think I am being led, and then trying to take the next step in that direction. Believing, as firmly as I can manage, that God himself will help me to take it. It?s a way of being Christian that makes the basic ethical question one of asking whether a particular action (or inaction) is likely to work towards the fulfilment of the divine purpose, or against it.
The clues to this destination come supremely in the bible, especially in the teachings of Jesus. Sometimes they are called the ?Kingdom of God? or ?Heaven?. They offer a glimpse of an existence characterised by complete intimacy with God, love, and forgiveness. In heaven there will be no more oppression, injustice or prejudice. In Christ there is, we are reminded, neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. The Kingdom we are told is breaking in even here and now. And it does so when we act in ways that show we are trying to live in it already.
The scriptures give us much more than a glimpse of the destination. They offer the reflections and experiences of others who have sought to make the same journey. As my uncle taught me years ago, ?Learn from other people?s mistakes. You?ll never have time to make them all for yourself.? St Paul in particular gives us lists of the types of behaviour that may help or hinder us on the way.
In the immediate post Vatican II era Roman Catholics built up the image of the ?pilgrim church?. And it is one that has stuck with me ever since. It keeps me from imagining, in some post-modern or ?new age? sense that the only journey is my personal one. My journey is part of the journey of the church, which in turn is part of the journey of the whole creation towards God. Again Paul?s letters provide some wonderful insights into the many ways in which the church lost the path, even in those immediate post-Easter years. And I often find comfort in them when we mess things up today ? the comfort of knowing there never was a golden age.
Because the journey is not simply a personal one, the creation itself matters, and matters deeply. I find myself in direct opposition to those Christians who deduce from their belief in the imminent return of Jesus that we should use up the Earth?s resources, or even hasten the destruction that the scriptures suggest will herald the end time. Rather the whole creation is being shaped by God to achieve its ultimate fulfilment in him. It is not a rejection of the doctrine of the fall, but a belief that God works to restore the fallen, rather than just to pluck brands from the burning. But that does mean that I part company, and pretty firmly, with those of my colleagues who base their theology on what one recently referred to as the ?utter depravity? of our fallen state. And in terms of the subjects that are most controversial in the church at present the primary question I take to the scriptures, reason and tradition is to ask what effect the love two men or women have for each other has on their and our ultimate destiny. Is it something that condemns to hell, or that will need to be discarded on the road to heaven? Or is it part of them that will travel with them and us to God?s Kingdom?
I?ve just about completed my journey through this article. I?ve got to where I wanted to get, and said what I wanted to say. But like most good journeys I?ve found something new on the way. It has struck me how the way I live my faith resonates with how I deal with a new computer or piece of software. In both cases looking for a book of instructions comes last on the list, after I?ve worked out what it?s meant to do and tried to get it to do it. And possibly followed the examples of more experienced friends. So if you?re one of those who reads the manual thoroughly first, and memorises as many rules as you can then it’s highly likely the way we encapsulate our faith is different too. And in that diversity is God?s glory.
1 CommentSixth formers, as a breed, generally do not need another reason to disregard the church. If they think about church at all, it is usually as a branch of the National Trust that sings hymns, theme park England, a costume drama and what goes with that is irrelevance, disdain and (this was a new one on me) pity.
We had talked before in class about sexuality and the church, when there had been the leisure to theoretically consider biblical texts and the worlds from which they sprang. This time it was personal, this time it had legs; four of them, Jeffrey John’s and Gene Robinson’s though, to be precise, there were eight legs if you counted their respective partners. It is the partners which fuels the sense of offence and, in the absence of a biblicist African bishop, it was me who was held to account.
Why I was so ill at ease was because, it seemed to me, that this group of young people seemed to be much better informed about both the nature of sexual orientation and the emotional range of affective love than has been evident in the recent public news releases of the church. In the past, the church at its best may have called secular culture into account, or, just as likely, been lagging behind secular wisdom while blindly protecting its own interests. In that classroom, I was uncomfortably aware that these young men and women had not needed to be taught about the values of compassionate and inclusive community, for them it was a given. It fell to me to try and interpret for them what appeared to be blind bigotry, and I did not have the heart to know where to begin and neither did I care.
The problem is that I do not have a position on homosexuality. For me it is personal, it has legs, lots of them. I cannot reduce to an issue my liturgy tutor from university who first introduced me to Thomas Tallis, and showed me what it was like to regard the moods of the day as sacred and a resource for prayer, while taking my friends and me out punting in long ago August afternoons. I cannot clinically debate the man who, when it was discovered I may have to preach for a living, took a clumsy sixteen year old with a stammer and began to train his voice over years so he could speak a complete sentence in public. I cannot weigh the spiritual legitimacy of a man and his partner who had no reason at all to keep an unobtrusive eye on me, when I was recently divorced in a foreign country, looking after my three-year-old at weekends. These are sufficient, but there are many more.
As a pastor I have learned that human communities seldom make decisions on the basis of logical issues. If we have an impasse we tell our stories, we show how we came to believe the way we do. I do not know, but I would not be surprised if this had been the hope of the Archbishop at the recent Primates Summit at Lambeth. But, publicly at least, the heat has gone into an issue, and the way back looks like an increasingly distant hope.
What saved me, before the period bell went, was to convey that the gospel, before it is anything else, is news. We have four gospels in the Bible and a few others outside. Each reflects the retelling of Jesus to different communities with different cultures and interests. These have been with us for almost 2,000 years, but we have not yet taken the hint.
We start with their witness, this is one of the characteristics of a Christian outlook, but we do not stop there. We can consult scripture, but we cannot set up camp there, even if we could. Like the gospel writers, we have to take what we have heard and seen and go and live Christ’s world in this one, by living in peace and justice with my neighbours on this earth, whatever amount of confrontation, struggle, recognition and surrender that may involve.
I am here to write this because some individuals, who have been called unclean by my fellow Christians, took time over me and cared for me. What is more important is that I, in my turn do the same. If I wind up caring for those who are being called outcast, and loving them because they are loveable, and that God did not make a mistake when he made them, then maybe I’m not too far off-message.
0 CommentsI am writing this on the day that Gene Robinson is being consecrated as Bishop of New Hampshire. He will be making history as the first open and active gay man to be made bishop in the Anglican Church. His election and consecration has threatened to cause division not only in his own Episcopal Church of the United States, but across the entire Anglican Communion.
For some faithful Anglicans, today marks the painful end of an agreed understanding of how we should order our lives and our churches. They feel distraught and anxious about the future of our Communion and the future of the Christian faith as it has been taught and handed down over the centuries.
For others, today heralds a time when we step out of the shadows of hypocrisy into the light of Christ’s love for and acceptance of all his followers, including that small minority who are attracted to their own sex. For these believers, the Church has just made a bold and positive stand which will enhance its mission and ministry to the world.
Last month the Anglican Primates gathered at Lambeth Palace at the invitation of Archbishop Rowan Williams, largely in response to Gene Robinson’s election. What they achieved was remarkable: no one walked out and everyone pledged to stay faithful to the process, even though they acknowledged that there would be repercussions when Gene Robinson was made bishop. As in politics, what happens now will have, at least in part, to do with the art of the possible: we are not starting in an ideal world, nor are we starting in a vacuum.
Right before he allowed himself to be arrested, Jesus prayed a powerful prayer for our unity – not albeit denominational, but for all his followers: … “that they may be one as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity.” (John 17:23 TNIV) This unity was for a purpose, so that “the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”.
I believe that Anglican unity is a prize worth fighting for, but that unity exists within the context of a greater unity – the unity of all believers in Christ. Even if the nature of Anglican unity changes over the weeks and months to come, we can still claim and stand on that greater unity, which, if we truly believe in the life, saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the ongoing infilling of the Holy Spirit, remains unshaken. We can disagree with one another, we can even declare ourselves out of communion with one another, whatever that means, but let’s not lose sight of the nature and purpose of the deeper unity that we have in the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. There can be nothing more important than that.
1 CommentOn 29 October the Archbishop of Canterbury named a group appointed to discuss issues of homosexuality. The day, marked in the Anglican calendar by the martyrdom of Bishop James Hannington, seems singularly appropriate. He was sent by the Church Missionary Society to Uganda in 1884. Exciting Holiness gives the following details of his fate: ‘The King of the Buganda, Mwanga, who despised Christians because they refused to condone his moral turpitude, seized the whole party, tortured them for several days and then had them butchered to death on this day in 1885.’
1 CommentOne of our hopes when we began ‘Thinking Anglicans’ was that it would include news, comment and reflections on a range of topics. We wrote of a spirituality ‘in which justice is central to the proclamation of the good news of the kingdom of God’. Now that the website has established itself as a centre for up to date news, we intend to expand the amount of comment and reflection.
Beginning tomorrow, we will add a weekly feature called ‘Just Thinking’. Each week one of our writers will share their thoughts with us and remind us of the spiritual nature of our task. The title ‘just thinking’ indicates both the desire to think about our Christian faith, and also alludes to the justice to be found in the Christian message — we must think justly. We hope that these thoughts will help provide us with a more rounded picture, a glimpse of God’s kingdom which we are trying to work towards and proclaim in our different ways.
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