You think you’d like to see an angel, do you? No. Not something to like.
The very fag end of a long, knackering day with the sheep. We were boiling up a bit of gruel on the fire. To this day when I smell gruel burning I feel … it takes me there. Burned porridge, and, — look, I’m not one of your religious types. I’m trying hard to keep this clean, not use bad words.
This thing was there, and yes, we were all s — we were all — This thing was there. Bigger than a house. Burning light. A lot of wings, claws, legs, a terrifying face. Then something like a human shape, wavering like looking at fire. That’s not why I nearly peed myself. Not the claws, not the face. It was a sense — look, I don’t do touchy-feely, woman’s stuff? OK? Don’t do it. But I just wanted to hide. Wanted the ground to swallow me. Found myself thinking of things I’d decided to forget.
And then it spoke. It told us not to be afraid. It was quite clear this was an order. You ever tried to stop being afraid because something terrifying gave you an order? I knew I couldn’t — and it made me even more afraid. And the thing spoke of the Messiah — and we all know what the day of the Messiah is like, don’t we? Fine for you holy bods, sure. People like me? Darkness, that’s what. Threat.
And then the thing told us to go to the village and find the Messiah.
Look it was like the burned porridge. It was so f, flaming ordinary. Not a Messiah like what I expected. Not darkness. A baby, wrapped up just as all little ‘uns are — and lying where busy mothers put them, in the work room, safe in the manger during the day while the beasts are out. It was so — look you don’t expect great masses of flame and when you get them, you don’t expect a message about a baby all safely wrapped up. You just don’t.
And you don’t expect one blooming great mass of fire to turn into countless masses of fire, none of them any smaller, all singing in complex harmonies. I like a song — I’m one they always call on to sing at weddings and the like — you may well think us a rough lot, but we have our songs. And I ain’t never heard the like of this. I can’t tell you what I’d give to take a part in a song like that. A good deal more than I possess — that’s what.
Then an empty hill — well, it seemed empty. Just us, the sheep and the burned out saucepan.
First published in Love Blooms Bright.
1 CommentThe Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has this week published a major report on the size and distribution of the world’s Christian population: Global Christianity.
A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world, representing nearly a third of the estimated 2010 global population of 6.9 billion. Christians are also geographically widespread – so far-flung, in fact, that no single continent or region can indisputably claim to be the center of global Christianity.
A century ago, this was not the case…
John L Allen Jr has written about this for the National Catholic Reporter with The Laws of Christian Thermodynamics and concludes
Based on the study, here are three rules of thumb about Christian growth and decline — extrapolations which go well beyond the contents of the Pew report, but which can be supported by the data it contains:
- If you want Christianity to shrink, give it wealth and privilege and back it up with the power of the state.
- If you want Christianity to show surprising resilience, suppress its structures and persecute its people.
- If you want Christianity to thrive, drop it into a free market environment and force it to hustle.
The Washington Post carries this Associated Press summary of the report: Study: Christian population shifting away from Europe, still largest faith group worldwide and this article by G Jeffrey Macdonald: Report shows Christianity shifting to Africa.
Myles Collier in Christian Today Australia writes New study: Christianity is the largest religion in the world, decentralized.
1 CommentThe last Evening Prayer of Advent is the context for this final ‘O’ Antiphon, O Emmanuel. When Evening Prayer comes round again, tomorrow, he will come. And that is the hidden message in these seven antiphons. Working backwards from today we have seven titles addressed to the coming baby: Emmanuel, Rex Gentium, Oriens, Clavis David, Radix Jesse, Adonaï, and Sapientia. Taking the initial letter of each of these invocations yields the words ‘ero cras’, a couple of Latin words that mean ‘Tomorrow, I will come’.
And the identity of who it is that is coming is to be found in all those titles: the divine Word or Wisdom; the LORD, the ‘I AM’; a shoot sprung from the family tree of Jesse; the successor of David; a Light shining in the darkness; the true ruler of the world. And Emmanuel.
Emmanuel, or God-with-us, was a name used by Isaiah when he tells King Ahaz that the royal house of David will flourish despite the great danger that it faced from Damascus and Samaria. Isaiah foretells that before a child who is still in the womb is able to choose between right and wrong, the kings of Damascus and Samaria will fall, and the threat to Jerusalem will fall with it. Isaiah gives this unborn child the name ‘Immanuel’, a sign of hope in the future and trust in the divine will.
And Matthew, in his proclamation of the good news about Jesus, takes this message out of Isaiah and makes the parallel with Jesus’s birth, seeing it too as a sign of hope and trust in God, and of liberation from oppression and tyranny.
To us, the name Immanuel signifies even more. It tells us of the immanence of God: El in Hebrew, so we can make a pun and say that Immanu-el means the immanence of El — that God, the creator of the universe, lives among us, lives a human life, a humble human life, born to an ordinary family, in a far-off colonial outpost. God is not some remote cosmic being, and God is not some fickle pleasure-seeking divinity who masquerades in human form on occasion. No, this is a God who puts off the divine attributes to live within the limits of a human life and a human death. Here the human and the divine mingle in a way that poetry and theology are better at describing than science. And in a day or so’s time we shall be, as it were, witnesses to this mingling, this incarnation, as we celebrate the birth of that baby and ponder its meaning in our hearts.
O come, O come Emmanuel!
8 CommentsUpdated Saturday morning
Lambeth Palace has issued this “press advisory”:
The Archbishop of Canterbury today set up an enquiry into the operation of the diocesan child protection policies in the Diocese of Chichester.
He has appointed Bishop John Gladwin and Chancellor Rupert Bursell QC to carry out the enquiry. They will advise the Archbishop on any steps that need to be taken to ensure the highest possible standards of safeguarding in the diocese. This will involve examining current child protection arrangements as well as making recommendations for the future. They will make a preliminary report to the Archbishop by the end of February 2012.
The Bishop of Chichester, the Rt Revd John Hind, has given his full support to the enquiry.
The step which the Archbishop has taken is an Archiepiscopal Visitation under Canon C 17. Bishop John Gladwin and Chancellor Rupert Bursell QC have been appointed as the Archbishop’s commissaries under Canon C 17.
The Diocese of Chichester has issued Archbishop’s Child Protection Enquiry:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today set up a visitation of the operation of the Church of England’s Child Protection policies in the Diocese of Chichester.
He has appointed Bishop John Gladwin and Chancellor Rupert Bursell QC to carry out the enquiry. They will advise the Archbishop on any steps that need to be taken to ensure the highest possible standards of safeguarding in the diocese. This will involve examining current child protection arrangements as well as making recommendations for the future. They will make a preliminary report to the Archbishop by the end of February 2012.
The Bishop of Chichester, the Rt Revd John Hind, has given his full support to the enquiry. He said: “Our diocesan staff have been in constant touch with Lambeth Palace over the last year and this is now the outcome of those discussions. We welcome this Visitation as an opportunity to resolve a number of issues in the implementation of best safeguarding practice in the Diocese and more widely, and should also contribute to the response of the Church to the pain victims have experienced as a result of abuse. We trust that it will add to the progress the Diocese has already made and will help to continue to establish robust safeguarding practices.
I expect full cooperation with the Archbishop’s Commissaries. I hope that after my retirement at the end of April 2012, the Diocese will have firm foundations on which the new bishop will be able to build in leading the Diocese in the future.”
Neither of these press releases refer to any earlier events, which were last reported here in this article: BBC challenges accuracy of Chichester sex abuse report which includes a link to this diocesan page responding to the earlier reports from Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss.
And most recently by the BBC in this: Bishop of Lewes, the Rt Rev Wallace Benn may face misconduct probe.
Today’s announcement is reported by the BBC as: Lambeth Palace launches diocese child protection inquiry.
Canon C 17 can be found here (PDF).
Further press reports:
Press Association Church child policies probe set up
AFP Church of England orders child abuse inquiry
3 CommentsThe Business Committee report on the reference to diocesan synods of the legislation to allow women bishops was emailed to synod members today. It is also available online as GS 1847.
The report includes the detailed voting figures on the motion in favour of the legislation (42 dioceses in favour and two against). Five diocesan bishops exercised their right to have a statement of their opinion recorded in the minutes of their diocesan synods and, as required by General Synod standing orders, these are included in the report. The report also gives details of all the following motions (whether passed or not).
The outline agenda for the February meeting of the Church of England General Synod includes these three items concerned with the legislation to allow women bishops.
Women in the Episcopate: Draft Code of Practice: Presentation and questions (Tuesday afternoon)
Women in the Episcopate: Manchester DSM (Southwark DSM as an amendment) (Wednesday afternoon)
This is the Manchester diocesan synod motion as it will have been submitted to General Synod.
That this Synod [i.e. the General Synod] call upon the House of Bishops, in exercise of its powers under Standing Order 60(b), to amend the draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure in the manner proposed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York at the Revision Stage for the draft Measure
and this is the motion from Southwark
That this Synod:
(a) noting the significant support the draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure has received in the Houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity of diocesan synods; and
(b) desiring that the draft Measure be returned to the Synod for consideration on the Final Approval Stage substantially unamended so that it can be seen if the proposals embodied in it in the form in which it has been referred to the dioceses can attain the level of support required to achieve Final Approval
request the House of Bishops not to exercise its power under Standing Order 60(b) to amend the draft Measure.
Women in the Episcopate: Final Drafting (Thursday afternoon)
At final drafting the steering committee can propose amendments that deal with matters previously overlooked or that clarify the wording. Members of the Synod no longer have the opportunity to propose amendments. Also this is not the point at which the House of Bishops can exercise its powers of amendment.
5 CommentsThe Church of England General Synod will meet in London from 6 to 9 February 2012. The outline agenda is available online and is copied below.
2.15 p.m. Prayers, introductions, welcomes, progress of legislation
Loyal Address
Report by the Business Committee
Dates of Groups of Sessions in 2014-2015
Appointments to the Archbishops’ Council
Private Member’s Motion: Mrs Sarah Finch: Independent Commission on Assisted Dying
Questions
[brief evening worship]
9.30 a.m. Worship
Legislative Business
Draft Parochial Fees and Scheduled Matters Amending Order 2012
Clergy Discipline (Amendment) Measure – Revision Stage
Diocese in Europe (Amendment) Measure – First Consideration
2.30 p.m. Women in the Episcopate: Draft Code of Practice: Presentation and questions
Legislative business not completed in the morning sitting
Presentation by Sally Keeble on the Anglican Alliance for Relief, Development and Advocacy, followed by questions
5.30 p.m. Session ends
6.15 p.m. Joint service with the United Reformed Church at Westminster Abbey
9.15 a.m. Holy Communion in the Assembly Hall
Chichester DSM: Appointment of Archdeacons
Legislative Business
Women in the Episcopate: Report on Reference to Dioceses
2.30 p.m. Women in the Episcopate: Manchester DSM (Southwark DSM as an amendment)
Report of the Standing Orders Committee
[brief evening worship]
9.30 a.m. Worship
Liturgical Business
Additional Eucharistic Prayers
Legislative Business
Women in the Episcopate: Final Drafting
Higher Education Funding Changes: Presentation and questions
2.30 p.m. Private Member’s Motion: Professor Anthony Berry: Reform of the House of Lords
Health and the Church’s Mission:Report from the Mission and Public Affairs Council
Farewell
Prorogation
Contingency Business
PMM: The Revd Stephen Trott: Manifestation of Faith in Public Life
Reports from ACNS
Papua New Guinea approves Covenant and says it is “proud to belong to the Anglican Communion”
The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea has announced that its Provincial Council last week approved and accepted the Anglican Covenant.
Writing to the Secretary General of the decision on behalf of the House of Bishops, the Bishop of Port Moresby, the Rt Revd Peter Ramsden, said the decision was based on their understanding of the name Anglican Communion.
“Anglican” was one of the styles of Christianity brought to this land and people near the end of the nineteenth century”, he wrote. “It never pretended to be the only form of Christianity, but it did reflect how one part of the Christian family had developed, built on the importance of scripture, creeds, sacraments and episcopal order. Today we try to combine our Anglo-Catholic theological heritage and personal discipleship to the Lord Jesus in the way we witness to the five marks of mission with our ecumenical partners in PNG and our Anglican partners overseas…
If you aren’t sure where Papua New Guinea is, here’s a map.
Southern Cone approves Anglican Communion Covenant
At its recent November (3 to 11) meeting in Asunción, Paraguay, the Executive Committee of the Province of the Southern Cone of America, together with its Bishops, voted to approve the Anglican Covenant. The Province views the covenant as a way forward given the difficult circumstance of watching certain Provinces of the Anglican Communion propose novel ways of Christian living in rejection of Biblical norms.
In response to these novel practices the Southern Cone had held churches in North America under its wing for some time while the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) was formed. However, the Province has not maintained jurisdiction over any local churches there for over a year. As a result, all so called ‘border crossings’ by any provincial members ceased (as of October, 2010) even though the Southern Cone still remains in impaired communion with US and Canadian Provinces. It is hoped that the Covenant can now provide Communion stability.
One of the Bishops commented, “We believe that life in the Communion must be maintained by a basic level of accountability if, in fact, we are a family of interdependent churches. The Covenant helps fulfill this role. Naturally, house rules should be kept to a minimum. But being a member of a family has responsibilities that must be ‘lived into’. Right now, a small faction in the Communion continues to do ‘its own thing’ enjoying many privileges and few responsibilities of family.”
There is commentary on this:
Preludium Province of the Southern Cone adopts Covenant, give or take a clause or two.
…The Province of the Southern Cone has adopted the Anglican Covenant, but with its fingers crossed. Apparently the PSC hopes that no one will notice that it still has the deposed bishop of Recife under its wings, along with a sizable number of congregants constituted as a diocese.
The PSC claims that it is no longer doing those things it ought not to have done in Canada and the United States, but makes no apology for having done so.
I suppose this counts as a “yes” in the score card on the acceptance of the Anglican Covenant, but there will not be much joy in Anglican-Land over this one.
The No Anglican Covenant scorecard on provincial voting is over here.
4 CommentsBack in the 1980s when I was in seminary in upstate New York, it had become fashionable to talk, not of the Kingdom of God, but of the Commonwealth of God. As a recent arrival, both to the country and to that particular concept, I was fascinated to hear familiar phrases in bible readings and liturgy where Commonwealth supplanted Kingdom. I had no trouble understanding why this would be; Kingdom is associated with heredity, class, privilege and self-interest where the identity of a nation, or a race was embodied by, even ceded to, a particular family which had the means to both maintain its supremacy by force, along with the illusion that its primacy was underwritten in the heavens. Yes, I could see it, Kingdom: bad concept, with dodgy associations, particularly in a republic, Kingdom out, Commonwealth in. It would take me years to figure out why this just didn’t sit right with me.
A commonwealth of God is indeed much closer to what the gospel writers envisaged. It is about the welfare of everyone, attested to in scripture from the creation of the world, where all of humanity, not simply the ruling elite, was made in the image of God. Again and again the overwhelming justice of God is described, not as retribution, but as a demand for proper distribution of the resources of the land. The first lesson the freed slaves learn during their exodus from Egypt is that there is enough manna from heaven for everyone to have sufficient for each day in the desert. It is written into the charter of the Promised Land, not only that that all have enough, but provision should be made for those who have no-one to provide for them, like widows and orphans.
The classical prayer of Christian faith, the Lord’s Prayer, describes the character of the household of God: everyone should have enough, bread sufficient for each day, echoing the freed slaves’ desert experience. The feeding miracles, and Paul’s tirade to the wealthy Corinthians who hog the best of the Lord’s Supper, so embeds the notion of common-wealth as a key Christian concept that it is amazing that it has never become a foundational Christian doctrine. The same lack of focus on common-wealth has compromised the definitive Christian ritual, which has long ceased to be about everyone having enough. The Eucharist has become petrified into a precious liturgy of prescribed words by authorised people, where God’s justice is now believed to be honoured by sanitised silver plate and spotless starched linen.
So, if commonwealth is so good, why do we revert to the word kingdom, and to the Kingship of Christ? It is a commonplace now to hear in Christmas sermons that the titles for Jesus: Son of God, Saviour, Prince of Peace are titles already well-known as titles for Caesar. The gospel writers, in using them for Jesus, are either having a joke or are committing treason against Rome itself. They are hi-jacking the existing language of power in order to re-define kingship, from being about punitive brute force to representing God’s distributive justice, a movement in which everyone will have enough.
And you can imagine Herod’s people getting news of the Galilean preacher and his Kingdom of God, and saying, “Kingdom, that’s our word, he’s talking about us” as indeed he was.
So we can embrace Kingdom and Kingship because the followers of Christ inherit a commission to take these titles of earthly power and subvert and transform them. In doing so, we enact God’s Kingdom: those happenings which derive not from earth but from heaven.
Andrew Spurr
6 CommentsJonathan Clatworthy has published an article at Modern Church entitled Instead of the Anglican Covenant.
20 CommentsProponents of the Anglican Covenant sometimes challenge opponents to suggest alternatives. Thus the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his 2011 Advent Letter to the Primates, wrote:
I continue to ask what alternatives there are if we want to agree on ways of limiting damage, managing conflict and facing with honesty the actual effects of greater disunity. In the absence of such alternatives, I must continue to commend the Covenant as strongly as I can to all who are considering its future.
This article seeks to respond to the challenge. It can only be a partial response because unlike the Covenant’s proponents, who are supported by the resources of the Anglican Communion Office, opponents work on a voluntary basis and none has the right to speak on behalf of all. The matter is complicated by the marked reluctance of proponents (with honourable exceptions like the Bishop of St Asaph) to communicate directly with opponents at all. This means that nobody in particular has been asked to offer an alternative. This one expresses the views of Modern Church and the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.
Normally, opponents of a suggested change are under no obligation to present an alternative change. In this instance we understand the challenge to stem from a sense of crisis and a concern to do something to resolve it. The question, as we understand it, is: if the Anglican Covenant will not be the solution to our current problems, what will?
Updated again Thursday evening
We reported recently on the upheaval in the Anglican Mission in the Americas: AMiA withdraws from Anglican Church of Rwanda.
Since then, there have been two developments:
First, a meeting was held in London:
Archbishops Emmanuel Kolini, Moses Tay and Yong Ping Chung, founding archbishops of the Anglican Mission, met with Bishop Chuck Murphy December 12-14, 2011, in London, England, and were joined by Cynthia Tay, Julia Yong, Susan Grayson, Canon Mike Murphy, and Canon Kevin Donlon.
They issued this Anglican Mission in the Americas Communiqué from the London Meeting (PDF).
In the midst of what must be recognized as a challenging transition, we believe God is showing us His direction for the future of the Anglican Mission. Our current situation necessitates a clear response based on what we have heard from the Lord, and therefore we commit to the creation of a missionary society as a cherished and honored model recognized within the wider Eastern and Western traditions of the Church. We look forward to the opportunity to give specific form and shape to this normative structure of a missionary society, seeking the input of our bishops, clergy, network leaders and laity. We are encouraged to be still before the Lord and to discern His leading to a new canonical provincial relationship. In addition, we pledge our commitment to the eight-member Council of Bishops and all of the Anglican Mission leadership and congregations. Living out this model within our Anglican context allows us to be a mission…nothing more, nothing less in North America and beyond. Finally, we recognize and affirm the development of a Pastoral Declaration designed to provide the necessary order for developing a constitution.
Second, the Anglican Church of North America has published this Pastoral Letter from Archbishop Duncan.
Recent events within the Anglican Mission in the Americas have challenged us all. This letter is a brief report to you all about those events and about our efforts to find a path forward. The present reality is brokenness. The vision, however, that governs our fledgling Province remains unchanged: a Biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America.
The resignation of nine Anglican Mission bishops, including the Bishop Chairman, from the House of Bishops of Rwanda, changed relationships with Rwanda, with fellow bishops and with the Anglican Church in North America. The resigned bishops lost their status in our College of Bishops as a result of their resignation from Rwanda. The Anglican Mission also lost its status as a Ministry Partner, since that status had been predicated on AMiA’s relationship with Rwanda. In addition, confusion and hurt has been created in Rwanda and in North America, and there is much serious work ahead of us.
Representatives of the Anglican Church in North America and of the Pawleys Island leadership met today in Pittsburgh. For the Anglican Church in North America the starting point was the importance of our Provincial relationship with the Province of Rwanda (a sister GAFCON Province) and with His Grace Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje, of our relationship with the North American Bishops Terrell Glenn and Thad Barnum and all the clergy licensed in Rwanda, and of our relationship to those represented by the Pawleys Island group with whom we were meeting. We, as the Anglican Church in North America, have been deeply connected to all three, and we can only move forward when issues and relationships have been adequately addressed and necessary transitions are in progress…
Updates
Mark Harris at Preludium has commentary on all this: So who do ACNA bishops go for jurisdictional connection?
He quotes the latest statement from the Southern Cone:
In response to these novel practices the Southern Cone had held churches in North America under its wing for some time while the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) was formed. However, the Province has not maintained jurisdiction over any local churches there for over a year…
And then asks:
…Now it would appear that Archbishop Duncan et al believe that “jurisdictional participation in a way that is fully Anglican” involves being part of a Province of the Anglican Communion as currently constituted. So the AMiA bishops “belong” to Rwanda. The Bishops of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) “belong” to Nigeria. The Bishops of ACNA “belong”…where?
And there is a further letter to AMiA members from some bishops: A Letter from some (formerly Rwandan) Bishops to the AMiA.
4 CommentsHow many of us, even in these dark, short days, are around, or alert to the morning star of the east? Very few, I suspect; but most of us will constantly, in these last days of Advent, make the connexion between the light eternal and the coming of Christmas. Light, lights, are part of the way in which the season is marked, the story told, in church and out.
I’m re-adjusting, preparing for Christmas in a new parish and in a different culture. I’ve swapped the hectic and heady mixture of faiths and ethnicities of east London for the particularities of south Essex (very close to TOWIE country). Here light chases away darkness not in the succession of festivals of electricity and fireworks which marked Newham between late October and the new year, but in the forms of illuminated Father Christmases, glowing reindeer, trains which puff their way across the upper stories of neighbouring houses, pulsating stars, and flashing greeting signs. Our residential corner has an especially fine display: and the participants are not purely secular celebrants of the season — one near neighbour, whose house is well and truly lit up, is a faithful member of the local Roman Catholic congregation, deeply committed to issues of social justice.
Tasteless? It depends on your own taste. Questionable on grounds of stewardship of scarce resources? Perhaps. But there is a prodigality, an exuberance which I find appealing.
Christians can be dour about Christmas, repressing the impulse to party, to take delight. We want people to wait in the darkness of Advent until the 25th. We resent the consumerism which so consumes people that they will not listen to what we want to say. The alternative seems to be to catch their attention by appealing to an imagined past. In our church last Sunday evening, the carol service began in candlelight, and even our 1960s barn of a building looked beautiful as the points of light were repeated around the church, on the altar, in front of the nativity scene. An aesthetically pleasing moment, but perhaps a dangerously nostalgic one, which may have helped to keep the Christmas story firmly distanced from the normalities of daily life for any of those present.
At the back of the church, though, was the Christmas tree, hung with lights, including some which flashed on and off. At one time I would have wanted to banish it to the narthex, if not the church hall; now I welcome it, as a symbol of shared celebration, of that exuberant joy which should be ours on Christmas morning. Yes, people (including the faithful) will overspend on ridiculous things they would never buy at any other time of year: we will give each other presents that we don’t need and often don’t particularly want; family relationships will come under strain; there will be too much food, and too much drink; many, including the clergy, will reach Christmas morning exhausted; the money, the time, the effort could be much better employed.
But the lights, products of our own time and culture, shine in the darkness, brilliant, vivid, unstinting tributes, conscious or unconscious, to the light coming into the world.
Jane Freeman
1 Comment‘O key of David!’ starts today’s antiphon: David, the second King of Israel, but the man whose name became synonymous with all forms of kingship and rule in Israel and Judah.
He is an extraordinary choice for the position of legendary revered ruler. It is sometimes suggested that he is indeed simply a figure of legend. Generally speaking, however, legendary kings are a good deal more noble and less flawed than David. The astonishing thing about the David narratives is their pictures of a fatally flawed but very vivid man. His beautiful lament for Jonathan, so beloved by those who want Biblical gay role models, should not blind us to the fact that Jonathan is killed as David makes his move on the throne. Jonathan is uncomfortably close to being the sacrifice made by his friend and lover in order to gain power. Indeed, too many of those whom David loves end up dead, particularly his sons. One of the most splendid narratives from the ancient world, the ‘succession narrative’, charts the closing years of David. His seduction of Bathsheba led to the skilful elimination (was she scheming?) of all plausible heirs to David except the son he has with her, Solomon. The narrative includes perhaps the most moving of all Biblical laments, that of David over Absalom: ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!’ But only a fool could have believed that the action against Absalom was likely to end any other way – and David was no fool. This extraordinarily believable picture of a passionate man who keeps a very clear and calculating mind strikes me as so totally removed from hagiography as to be very believable.
History or fiction (and David’s period is far removed from the Victorians of whom I know something) the fact remains that this great king is consciously and deliberately presented as a flawed figure. Perhaps it is his very passions which make him such an attractive figure. Perhaps in the often grubby reality of life we are closer to God than we are in those noble moments when we are blinded by our illusions. For sometimes we come to believe that our aspirations actually reflect the daily reality of our lives; that we are the kindly, thoughtful, people we seek to be. If we are more honest, there is often a tangled mess of demands made on us, selfishness and loving response, a darkness of misunderstandings, naked greed and those loving actions which (like David’s desire to keep his power and save Absalom’s life) were never going to work out. There is a terrible reality about David’s mixed desires and ambitions which make him seem astonishingly contemporary.
In that sense, today’s antiphon seems to fit him well – and in fitting him, to fit all those of us who know too well our flawed and dark passions, our divided loyalties and the complexities of our lives. It promises the rescue (by ‘great David’s greater son’) of those in darkness, trapped and ignorant of the paths to escape.
O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
Rosemary Hannah
7 CommentsAmidst the devastation of the holy city and the kingdom, Isaiah has seen the enormous potential for new life in the stump of a felled tree. Whilst forests may be destroyed by fire, or flattened by hurricane and tsunami, many species can regrow and the forest can flourish again. But the sign to which he points is not the military might of King David, nor the splendour of Solomon’s court and temple. He doesn’t choose the example of a heroic patriarch. Instead, Isaiah returns to the humble origins of David’s father Jesse. The man had been known simply as ‘the Bethlehemite’, someone from an unimportant village. Within the new kingdom of Saul this Bethlehemite would have appeared an insignificant sapling rather than one of the pillars of the realm. But the name of Jesse would replace that of Saul. Time and again the name Jesse appears, and Isaiah uses it to symbolise the enormous destiny of gathering God’s people from exile throughout the known world. It would stand at the heart of messianic hope of the Jews.
Directly this messianic hope is identified with Jesus in the writings of the New Testament, Paul (Romans 15.12) uses Isaiah’s prophecy with a wider significance. The name of Jesse provides a cornerstone for Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. Here is the inspiration for the apostles’ desire to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth, and for their faith to break out of the confines of their own nationality.
With the rise of Christianity, the Jesse Tree became a well-loved and familiar image throughout the Western Europe in the middle ages. The family tree, depicted as a vine growing from Jesse, passes through David and Solomon to Mary and Jesus, whilst all around the prophets make their proclamations about the messiah. Jesse, the root of this divine flowering, lies at the foot, blissfully asleep. He is oblivious of all that God would achieve. All he had ever done was respond to Samuel’s call to accompany him to a sacrifice. He hardly knew that God’s call was in Samuel’s bidding. But then, who does know? Did Ruth, Jesse’s grandmother, have any inkling of what would happen when she refused to abandon her mother in law? Did Boaz, Jesse’s grandfather, know what was in store when duty and desire invited him to marry Ruth, a foreign widow?
From all of this Isaiah gives us the unlikely spectacle of a fragile shoot rising from the unlikely ruin of a fallen tree. It is the insignificant man from Bethlehem, a forerunner of the unknown child who would be born in his town in a stable. God takes what the world counts insignificant, and with it he builds his kingdom. He takes our obedience, our generosity, our acceptance of him and uses them for his purpose. And though we may not see the fruits in our own lifetime, nothing is lost. Though we cannot see it, all will be grafted into the vine he makes, just as strange, seemingly unlikely disparate sayings of the prophets are woven first into messianic expectation, and then into glorious fulfilment.
2 CommentsAs a youngster, the version of this antiphon found in the Advent carol ‘O come, O come Emmanuel’, always intrigued me. What was this strange word, sung as ‘add-on-ay-eye’? It was several years before I discovered the answer to this question, buried in the foreword of my Revised Standard Version of the Bible. There it was explained why in the Old Testament, the word ‘Lord’ was frequently printed in all capital letters (in ‘caps & small caps’ to be precise), and occasionally in the expression ‘Lord God’ the word ‘God’ was capitalized instead. This tradition, still followed in many of today’s Bibles, dates back many centuries, or even millennia.
When printed in capitals in this way the word ‘LORD’ represents the occurrence in the Bible of the name of God. In the original Hebrew this is indicated by four consonants (written Hebrew having no letters for the vowels), and variously represented in our own alphabet, perhaps most commonly by the letters I, H, V, and H. But in ancient times this name had already come to be considered too holy to actually speak, and instead the Hebrew word for ‘Lord’ was spoken aloud. And that Hebrew word is Adonaï.
This then, is the meaning of the verse of the carol, and the meaning of the Advent antiphon. Each of the antiphons is addressed to Jesus: and in addressing Jesus as Adonaï we implicitly declare our belief in his divinity: that the baby born in Bethlehem is indeed the incarnation of the eternal God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, declaring to him his existence and his very name, the divine ‘I AM’. And the salvation that came to the Hebrew slaves, the downtrodden people in Egypt, that salvation is offered to all God’s people right now.
O come, O come, Adonaï!
8 CommentsAndrew Gerns writes on his blog about Choosing the anchor of certainty over the sails of comprehension.
[This is in response to the article by Joseph Bottum The End of Canterbury that I linked to last week.]
Nick Spencer writes in The Guardian that The Church of England’s future grows ever more bleak.
“One grim finding for Anglicans in the British Social Attitudes survey is how few find religion after not being born into it.”
Christopher Howse of The Telegraph has made a seasonal pilgrimage from Nazareth to Bethlehem: Holy Land pilgrimage: Away to the manger.
Giles Fraser writes for Church Times about Waiting and the need for God.
Joseph Harker writes for The Guardian that For all its flaws, religion remains a force for good.
“I’d rather have a reminder of what I should be striving for than hear no message at all.”
Updated Saturday night and Sunday night to add more responses
The Prime Minister gave a speech about the King James Bible in Christ Church Cathedral Oxford yesterday (Friday).
The Oxford diocesan website has this brief report: Prime Minister speaks to Oxford clergy.
Speaking to an audience of largely parish clergy at Christ Church Cathedral, David Cameron spoke strongly in defence of faith and the role of the Church in society.
Mr Cameron said that he was a committed but “vaguely practising” Church of England Christian who was “full of doubts” about big theological issues. But he stressed the importance of the Bible, and in particular the King James Bible, in shaping British culture, values and politics.
“We are a Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so,” he said.
“Let me be clear: I am not in any way saying that to have another faith – or no faith – is somehow wrong.
“But what I am saying is that the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today.
“Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend.
“The alternative of moral neutrality should not be an option.
“You can’t fight something with nothing. Because if we don’t stand for something, we can’t stand against anything.”
You can listen to the address in full here or read it here.
Here are some of the many press reports.
Riazat Butt in The Guardian: Cameron calls for return to Christian values as King James Bible turns 400
The Telegraph: David Cameron: the Church must shape our values
BBC: David Cameron says the UK is a Christian country
The Huffington Post: David Cameron Urges Britons To Stand Up And Defend Christian Values
Oliver Wright in The Independent: Cameron shows off his faith with a swipe at Archbishop
Kelvin Holdsworth has written this Response to the Prime Minister.
More responses
Nick Baines Words about Word
Laura Sykes Is David Cameron Representative of Many Members of the Church of England?
Will Cookson David Cameron and The failure of Christian vision
BBC David Cameron on Christianity – views
Melanie McDonagh in The Spectator Cameron’s missing the point: Christian values require Christianity
Jonathan Bartley at Ekklesia David Cameron’s Beatitudes
David Edgar in The Guardian We can’t allow the Bible to be hijacked for narrow and partisan politics
9 CommentsI love the Wisdom writings of the Old Testament. There is something wonderful about a religion that can give space in its sacred writings to compare a beautiful person lacking in sense with a gold ring in a pig’s snout, or include a verse such as “The lazy person says ‘There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!’” (Proverbs 22:13). Whilst the Advent Antiphon speaks of wisdom that comes forth “from the mouth of the Most High”, the scriptures are full of more earthy wisdom. It’s the wisdom that emerges from careful observation of the way the world is. Such wisdom can rightly be said to spring from God’s mouth because it is God’s word that makes and remakes creation.
Within the Christian tradition the wisdom that comes from evidence has often been made subservient to that which is derived from abstract thought. Redressing that balance is a key aim of the branch of academic study known as Empirical Theology, in which my own research group is based. Holding conversations with people, or inviting large numbers to complete questionnaires, may not look as highbrow as reflections on basic theological principles but it might actually tell us something about the Christian faith as lived. And if that faith is lived by God’s grace then maybe it is also telling us truth about God too.
The things that my colleagues and I find out often challenge the presumptions of those responsible for running church programmes – especially the tendency to assume that everyone else believes and likes what I do. They also expose the gap between the intentions of some religious policy or practice and what people make of it. Doing theology on the basis of evidence chimes well with Archbishop Rowan’s famous dictum that the task of the church is to see what God is doing, and join in. Above all it suggests that the form of theology that is of most use to the church is reflective practice – which is just what some wise individual some 2500 years ago was doing when they collected together the distilled essence of their observations in the Wisdom literature.
3 CommentsUpdated again Wednesday morning
The Church Times reports today: Paintings at risk as Bishop Auckland deal falters
CHURCH officials are working desperately to revive a £15-million deal to safeguard the future of the 12 Zurbarán paintings at Auckland Castle, Co. Durham.
Jonathan Ruffer, who offered to pay £15 million to the Church Commissioners to keep the paintings in the north-east (News, 1 April), announced last week that he was withdrawing his offer.
Mr Ruffer, an investment manager in the City of London, who grew up in Stokesley, near Middlesbrough, blamed “insurmountable” conditions that had been placed on the deal by the Church Commissioners.
Writing in the Church Times, Mr Ruffer describes the First Church Estates Commissioner, Andreas Whittam Smith, and the Commissioners’ Secretary, Andrew Brown, as “decent men who have gone wrong”.
The Church Commissioners have declined to comment in detail on Mr Ruffer’s charges. However, in a letter to Mr Ruffer, sent on Wednesday and seen by the Church Times, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Tony Baldry MP, writes: “We all hope that the matter is not irretrievable, and that we can press on as planned. . .
“I believe all are committed to achieve the end result that is desired, and I know the Church Commissioners are continuing to work to resolve the outstanding issues. They cannot, however, wave a ‘magic wand’ and bring it all together.”
And scroll down for a sidebar which provides a detailed chronology of how this saga developed.
The full text of Mr Ruffer’s article is, unfortunately, not available this week, except to Church Times subscribers. I will link it here when it is available.
Update
The full text of the article by Jonathan Ruffer is now available here: Why I pulled out of Zurbarán deal.
However, you can get some further idea of its content from another report:
Northern Echo Chris Lloyd Financier says Church commissioners ‘torpedoed’ Zurbarans deal
But today, the Church Times – the leading weekly Anglican magazine – carries a remarkable article by Mr Ruffer in which he says the two leading commissioners, Andreas Whittam Smith and Andrew Brown, are “decent men who have gone wrong” who have “torpedoed” the deals for the Zurbarans and the castle and so have delivered “two slaps in the face for County Durham”.
He says: “Andreas Whittam Smith is by nature a buccaneer: quick to offer the hand of friendship, decisive and brave. He generously accepted an apology for a remark I made which had hurt him.
“Andrew Brown is a very different character, the antithesis of the smutty joke: he is wholesome, serious, and dutiful.
He would make an excellent minor royal.
“Yet these men have managed to torpedo two deals, to the detriment of one of the neediest regions of the UK.”
Mr Ruffer paints a colourful picture of Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, becoming involved in the debate. He writes: “I witnessed last month the Primate of All England pleading for the future of the castle.
The Archbishop pleading; Andreas untouchable, untouched.”
Update In the Guardian Riazat Butt writes Would-be saviour of £15 million paintings hits back at Church Commissioners.
4 CommentsUpdated again Friday morning
The House of Lords today debated the Marriages and Civil Partnerships (Approved Premises) (Amendment) Regulations 2011. See earlier reports, starting here.
No vote was taken, as Baroness O’Cathain eventually withdrew her motion:
That a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 8 November, be annulled on the grounds that they do not fulfil the Government’s pledge to protect properly faith groups from being compelled to register civil partnerships where it is against their beliefs.
Links to Hansard:
The permanent record of this debate now starts here. See below the fold for links to the speeches made by the Bishop of Oxford, and the Bishop of Blackburn (twice).
Meanwhile, media reports:
And press releases:
This morning, the Guardian had published this editorial comment: Civil partnerships: questions for the church
…Today’s motion should be opposed. Opposing it would be more straightforward if the Church of England were to come off the fence on the issue of gay and lesbian equality. Britain has taken great strides towards wider tolerance and equality in recent years. Yet on civil partnerships, as on women bishops and gay priests, the church has recognised the moral wrongness of discrimination while failing to embrace the moral rightness of equality. Everyone can see where this journey is leading. But leading is the one thing the church is reluctant to do. It could make a start by throwing its weight clearly against the conservatives in the Lords today.
And earlier, the Cutting Edge Consortium had published this briefing note for peers.
The leaders of the religious bodies who had originally sought this legislation wrote a letter to parliamentary leaders, which is reproduced in this Ekklesia article: Faith bodies urge Lords to support civil partnerships.
12 CommentsTobias Haller draws our attention to Recommendation 1 from the 1878 Lambeth Conference. (The full set of them can be found in this PDF file.)
Union Among the Churches of the Anglican Communion – Encyclical Letter 1.5
There are certain principles of church order which, your Committee consider, ought to be distinctly recognised and set forth, as of great importance for the maintenance of union among the Churches of our Communion.
- First, that the duly certified action of every national or particular Church, and of each ecclesiastical province (or diocese not included in a province), in the exercise of its own discipline, should be respected by all the other Churches, and by their individual members.
- Secondly, that when a diocese, or territorial sphere of administration, has been constituted by the authority of any Church or province of this Communion within its own limits, no bishop or other clergyman of any other Church should exercise his functions within that diocese without the consent of the bishop thereof.
- Thirdly, that no bishop should authorise to officiate in his diocese a clergyman coming from another Church or province, unless such clergyman present letters testimonial, countersigned by the bishop of the diocese from which he comes; such letters to be, as nearly as possible, in the form adopted by such Church or province in the case of the transfer of a clergyman from one diocese to another.
- This does not refer to questions respecting missionary bishops and foreign chaplaincies, which have been entrusted to other Committees.
Tobias notes in Those Were the Days (Lambeth 1878) that:
It appears to me that most of the troubles in the present Anglican Communion stem from the failure of some provinces to observe and abide by point 1. Some of those same provinces have gone on to violate point 2, and the recent trouble in AMiA seems to reflect a bit of the mess one gets into by not observing point 3.
But point 1, in one sentence, is the key to any real Anglican unity. No further “covenant” is needed. And the one currently on offer provides a mechanism to frustrate point 1, by shifting from respecting the actions of the provinces to placating those offended by them. The proposed Covenant is government by discontent and disrespect.
This view is clearly not shared by IASCUFO members, who have issued this Communiqué following a recent meeting in Korea. They say this:
…Aware of our mandate to promote the deepening of communion between the churches of the Anglican Communion, we emphasised the importance of being a fully representative group, and we greatly regret that some of our members were not present. We re-affirmed the significance of the Anglican Communion Covenant for strengthening our common life. …
Jim Naughton has written a severe criticism of this at Episcopal Café in The InterAnglican Standing Committee and the illusion of consultation:
…One feels both gratified and alarmed, then, to learn that at is meetings last week, IASCUFO (the InterAnglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith and Order) recognized the importance of “being a fully representative group” and “re-affirm[ed] the significance of the Anglican Communion Covenant for strengthening our common life.” Gratified, because, well, it is nice to have your opponents make your points for you. Alarmed because the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion Office continue to behave as though the more centralized church they hope to create already exists.
Whatever its claims, IASCUFO is in no way representative. Its members are not elected to represent their provinces, but are cherry-picked by the communion office to ensure the outcome that the Archbishop of Canterbury desires, while creating the illusion of consultation. (In this way it is similar to the Covenant Design team and the Windsor Continuation Group.) Of the 19 individuals named in the release, no more than three hail from churches that have adopted the covenant. (Precise numbers are hard to come by, as many churches don’t actually care enough about the covenant to have made a public statement indicating their attitude toward it.) Yet the group asserts its representative nature, and then affirms what the churches its members allegedly represent have not: that the covenant is essential in strengthening our common life.
IASCUFO employs collegial rhetoric, but it behaves like a pressure group. What sets it apart from other pressure groups is that it uses financial resources contributed by member churches to lobby on behalf of a covenant that many of those churches will not sign—a covenant that would assure that essential decisions in the communion would continue to be made by purportedly representative bodies that are in no way accountable to the communion’s member churches.
As for some members being absent, here is a full list of its membership, dated July 2009, and here are some annotations provided in October 2010 by John Chilton. Readers may care to work out for themselves who was missing from the Korean jaunt.
9 Comments