There have been some rather odd articles about this bill recently.
Telegraph Simon Caldwell and Martin Beckford Minister predicts legal battles between churches and atheists over Equality Bill and later George Pitcher Equality legislation means our very right to believe is under fire
Catholic Herald Simon Caldwell Get ready to be sued, Minister tells Christians
And various repeats in the blogosphere, of which this is perhaps the most extreme headline: The Equality Bill: Will A New Law Essentially Outlaw Evangelical Christianity And Roman Catholicism In The U.K.?
Leading to items from the lobbying organisations:
Christian Institute MP: Equality Bill will lead to legal action against churches and Equality Bill could drive faith from ‘public sphere’
Christian Concern for our Nation Act to protect employment freedom for Churches
Much of this criticism is unjustified by the facts (I was present at the press briefing with Michael Foster), and I will write more about this soon.
Meanwhile, the BBC has published a helpful reminder of the main objectives of the bill: What the new Equality Bill means for employers
3 CommentsO Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.
The dream of Emmanu-el, or God-with-us is a very powerful one. Depending on the character of the God in question can make the greatest of differences to what you believe is the right or wrong thing to do. The creation myth which begins both the Torah and our Christian Hebrew bible tells of a god who creates the world as an original blessing; the world is created and it is intrinsically good. The creation myth of the Babylonian captors of Israel is a story of the violence of Tiamat the mother god slain by Marduk who spreads her butchered carcass out to create the geography of a world, a world which has been formed both in violence, and in violence against the feminine.
Before we smile too readily at these ancient near-eastern myths, we only have to consider those causes of our own day, who believe God-is-with-us. Osama bin Laden is a man of faith, in such a way as we may prefer him to have no faith at all. The last several United States Presidents have been impotent in the face of present-day Israeli atrocities, because the powerful voting lobby of the evangelical right believes that Israel has the right to that land, and is ethically absolved from how it maintains that right.
The Church of England has, by law, been the established church of the English people. While few would defend this as a meaningful title in public life, it remains the basis of assumptions in rural communities. If the Church of England represents Emmanu-el, God-with-us, whether we are signed up to the faith or not, we are currently witnessing a breach of that generation’s long-held view of that implicit covenant.
For over a thousand years, Emmanu-el meant the rights of the established church personified in the lord bishop, indistinguishable from his secular counterparts. Emmanu-el meant, for village communities, being required to gather each Sunday in churches funded by the landowners, in order to acknowledge that the pecking order of earth was ratified in heaven.
There are few rural communities now where the ancient feudal powers still exercise the same rights of patronage over the parish church their forebears built. Since the Second World War, in many places, these rights have been assumed by people of new money. These people have not been motivated by the noblesse oblige of the landed powers, but have expected the services of the church with little or nothing in return. They have expected power without responsibility.
As feudal estates have receded, with their guarantees of employment and grace and favour accommodation, they have been replaced with the new rural with the aspirations of gentry, but who do not understand the obligations with which that power was balanced in former days.
So, the notion of God-with-us is open. Formerly the Us, whom God was with, was a contact between feudal power and peasant, and each looked after the other. Our medieval churches are littered with memorials to the moneyed. As despicable as this is to the original Jesus vision, at least it is honest.
But, in these days of pastoral restructuring of the church, the voices who oppose closure of a church are not those which have contributed to its life, either by piety or by brute underwriting. They are arid voices which do not give life to anyone, but rather defend their own view of themselves and of the romantic view of the countryside which overlooks the impoverishment which made its economy possible.
We need church leaders who can articulate what it means to have God-with-us which supersedes the basis of much of what has given the Church of England, and before that, the Bishop of Rome, power in the past. It must be rooted in the character of God represented in the infancy narratives, stories from which we cherry-pick for our carol services each year, because we value attendance over conviction.
In short, we need to re-visit the character of the God whom we claim to be with us, re-visit Emmanu-el, and ask whether our practice discloses God’s character, or seeks to shore up a practice whose underlying assumptions are corrupt.
Andrew Spurr is vicar of Evesham, in the diocese of Worcester.
10 CommentsThe Uganda Monitor has an article Museveni will block anti-gay Bill – reports.
The BBC says Uganda fear over gay death penalty plans.
Ecumenical News International reports World church leader concerned about Uganda anti-homosexual bill.
CBS News has Republicans Condemn Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill, and see also Members of U.S. Congress Invoke their Faith to Oppose Ugandan anti-Gay law.
4 CommentsO King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.
What now, late in 2009, might be the desire of the nations?
It should be possible to answer that question, surely. After all, only last week, the nations came together. Or, at least, their leaders did. From the super-powers and the almost-super-powers, and from the tiny island states, diplomats, negotiators, heads of government, all gathered over the last week or so in Copenhagen. Nations with contrasting, even competing, experiences and priorities; nations clinging to what the comforts they now enjoy, nations aspiring to more as they grow into affluence, nations desperately fearful of losing what little they have.
They came seeking a foundation — or to change the metaphor, a cornerstone, something which would hold them together in an accord, an agreed response to the threat of changes to the climate which may alter all our lives, diminish the earth’s abundance, and destroy those who already struggle for survival. If there is a cornerstone, if not entirely neglected, it is as yet scarcely in place. Over the last few days of the conference, reports moved from gloom to hope to gloom again. Since its conclusion, there has been some rewriting of the last grim summaries. At least the meeting took place. At least there were conversations. At least something was written down. At least we are at the beginning of a road. But it is the beginning, I suspect, of a very long road, and the journey may take too long. We are very, very far from being one, even in our fears, let alone in our hopes, or in converting hope into reality.
The old story, the story reflected in today’s antiphon, is that we were fashioned from clay, from the soil, the very earth from which we still draw what sustains our physical life. As we come towards the great festival of the Incarnation, we so often focus on the divine entry into the day-to-day, earthed, ordinariness of what it is to be human. Yet now, we are also aware, as perhaps never before, of a profound disharmony between the story of the earth and its well-being and the actions of the beings who have their life on it and from it. It is, it seems, the clay itself which is in need of salvation, in need of saving from what so many of us, in our particularly voracious way of living, are doing to the soil, the seas, the atmosphere.
‘Peace on the earth’, we will read, and sing, and pray, over the coming days. Perhaps we should be praying instead, ‘peace for the earth’, for the raw material of God’s creation.
Truly, an antiphon for our time.
Canon Jane Freeman is team vicar at East Ham with Upton Park in the diocese of Chelmsford.
0 CommentsThe Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan has issued a statement, via his press office:
“Whatever one’s standpoint on same sex relationships, the private members motion for an Anti Homosexuality Bill in Uganda is unacceptable. It could lead to the legitimising of violence against gay and lesbian people which is totally against what Lambeth 1.10 agreed in 1998 and its proposal for capital punishment against such people is barbaric.”
On the other hand another report from Wales shows that Stephen Green has a different view.
Warren Throckmorton reports Uganda National Pastors Task Force Against Homosexuality demand apology from Rick Warren. This task force claims to represent among others The Roman Catholic Church in Uganda (but not the [Anglican] Church of Uganda).
Reuters reports Ugandan gay community says prejudice to become law.
New Vision reports Govt defends need to legislate on homosexuality.
Voice of America reports Africa’s Anti-Gay Laws Spark Accusations and Denials in US.
ACNA has issued a statement. Read ACNA speaks out on Uganda anti-homosexuals bill. And also from Episcopal Café read Don Armstrong’s silence, and other news on that anti-homosexuals bill.
7 CommentsO Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
Today’s antiphon addresses Christ as the morning star, the rising sun, the dawn. Whichever translation is used, the image is one of the light of the sun turning the darkness of night into bright day. It echoes the words of Isaiah, who prophesied that ‘the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has the light shined’ (Isaiah 9.2). This light has the power to bring joy as well as justice, clarity as well as re-ordered relationships and peace. This light is intended to transform both individuals and institutions.
The prophet Malachi, in trying to convince the people of Israel of God’s continuing love for them, also speaks of the rising of ‘the sun of righteousness’ (Malachi 4.2), with a beautiful additional phrase made familiar in the final verse of the great carol ‘Hark, the herald-angels sing’: ‘Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings.’ The potentially dazzling light of the sun of righteousness comes not to blind, but to burn out and dissolve and so heal all that wounds or damages people and nations, all that prevents their flourishing and their right relationship with God.
In the New Testament, in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is described as the Word, in whom ‘was life, and the life was the light of all people’ (John 1.4). Part of the enlightening action of this light was to reveal the true nature of Jesus as the Son of God and to make clear the possibility for all who believe in him also to become children of God. The light of Christ both enables a new way of being and reveals a new identity, an identity in which we are invited to share in the life of the Divine.
As we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ, we are encouraged to step out of all the different kinds of shadows there may be in our lives that obscure the life of God in us — the shadows of hurt and disappointment, fading hope and growing despair, sin, loneliness, grief, regret. We are once again reassured of God’s ongoing, never-ending love for us, a love that is strong enough to overcome any kind of darkness.
By stepping into the light we turn our backs on the darkness and on our own ability to deceive and to be deceived, and place ourselves in a position to be shown more of who God is and more of who we are. As we open ourselves more and more to the light, and look more fully into the face of the sun of righteousness, all that is shadow in us is eventually dissolved and ultimately we ourselves become light.
Christina Rees is a member of the General Synod and Chair of Watch (Women and the Church).
5 CommentsStephen Bates wrote in The Guardian yesterday (although it was only published online today):
35 CommentsWith some leading Anglicans calling for gay people to be killed (and the archbishop staying quiet), we visited one congregation to see if they’re still proud to be CofE.
Diarmaid MacCulloch writes in today’s Observer:
Why we should be thankful for Rowan Williams and his church of common sense
22 CommentsThe Church of England has taken a pounding from critics, but Rowan Williams has reasons to be cheerful as Christmas approaches, says a leading Anglican historian and commentator.
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.
The Key of David figures twice in the Bible: once in Isaiah 22, when Eliakim is told that God, ‘will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open;’ and then in Revelation 3 where the Church in Philadelphia is told ‘the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. … See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.’
Jerusalem and Philadelphia both faced uncertain futures. Each in their own way is challenged neither to be hopeless, nor hope in hopeless things, but to put their trust in God.
Our own society has issues too about the future and hope. We oscillate between what can be an ostrich-like preoccupation with our present prosperity, and apocalyptic angst about the future that we find hard to turn into effective action. One of the reasons no political party seems to cut the mustard at the moment for me is that none of them seems to have a real grasp on giving us a future.
Can the Christian Gospel do it? Can a hope that is ‘steadfast and certain’ not dissolve into other-worldly post-mortem escape on the one hand, or doctrine-driven tyranny on the other, but lead us into a coming of God’s kingdom that is both good news now for all God’s children, and good news that in the end all shall be well?
I think it can. Committed faith in Christ matched with an equal commitment to live in a Christ-like way can release the resources of the past into the passion of the present, and unlock the door of the future. We see it happening all the time in very practical actions by people we know, and when the time is right we see it breaking through and changing society itself.
This, I sense, is such a time. Faith is returning rapidly to the public stage. Let’s make sure it speaks in a way that gives us all back our future.
David Thomson is the suffragan Bishop of Huntingdon in the diocese of Ely.
0 CommentsCif belief asked this week, Is the Bible anti-gay?
Responses came from:
Theo Hobson: Ours is not the same homosexuality
Davis Mac-Iyalla: A terrible use of the Good Book
John Richardson: Evasive answers don’t help
Judith Maltby: Not much to do with the Bible
Giles Fraser wrote in the Church Times that Perhaps the politicians really value Christians.
Jonathan Sacks writes in The Times Thank God for the Courage to live with uncertainty.
Nesrine Malik writes in the Guardian about usury.
21 CommentsO Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.
As a teenager I helped in coppicing woodland. Even the mightiest trees were felled. But the intention, rather than simply destroying the wood, was to allow the old roots to put out new growth. It wasn’t a replacement of the original trees, but something potentially just as useful. With careful management we had chestnut and hazel for woven fencing, cover for pheasants and even willow for cricket bats.
Isaiah saw the great family tree cut down. The legacy of King Solomon, a magnificent temple crowning the royal city, had been destroyed, and the rulers of the divided kingdom of Israel and Judah were taken captive. Surely nothing could arise from this, yet the prophet saw the survival of the stump as a sign of hope. Isaiah’s vision of what it might produce kept the hope of Israel alive through long generations in spite of conquests by foreign powers. However, rather than wondering about what the possibilities of new growth might be, people may have longed for a return to the old days, with a clone of Jesse’s son who might once more slay the new Goliath and throw out the Philistines again.
The descendant whom the nations would seek was no clone. The man who came, humble and riding on an ass, didn’t fit with the expectations of either the zealots or the temple elite. He neither restored the military power of Jerusalem nor added to the glory of the city’s temple.
But how people long to relive former greatness! There is in Britain today a similar longing to recapture the days of former glory, when London was the capital of an empire which reached every continent and included a quarter of the people of the world. In those days Britain was expected to take a leading role on the world stage and indeed did so. But the mighty tree is no more. It will not grow back as it was, and the coppice needs to be valued for what it can produce today.
The false perception wasn’t helped when the rapidly won victories in the Falkland Islands and in Kuwait lulled the nation into thinking that all that was needed on the foreign stage was a continuation of sabre rattling and gun boat diplomacy. We are now seeing that Bush and Blair only thought they needed to give a final kick to a regime in Iraq that was already beaten, and everyone would rush to congratulate them. The ‘special relationship’ with the USA appealed to Blair’s vanity and bounced us into an expensive illegal war with no plan for securing the peace. He clearly thought it was Britain’s role to act as the major player alongside the USA rather than acting alongside our more cautious and larger neighbours such as Germany and France.
But if governments can learn to move from conquest to co-operation, then the churches need to do the same. The stock of Jesse did not ask for Constantinian triumphalism, crusades, inquisitions and holy wars. This tender shoot announced a kingdom which did not require the trappings of worldly power in order to proclaim his universal message. Churches which appeared as temporal powers in nations and empires are increasingly irrelevant to the lives of many, and the wars between the remaining Christians bring faith into disrepute.
If we are truly to offer what the nations seek, then we need to model ourselves more closely on the shoot from the stock of Jesse, whose mission was to the bruised reed and whose message proclaimed justice for all. We need to be seen as the bearers of that hope, offering new life. ‘Come and deliver us’, we cry this Advent – that we might offer this deliverance to all. He offers us a new creation open to everyone, not a return to the past glory of a few.
Tom Ambrose is a priest living in Cambridge.
2 CommentsFrom the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion
The following resolution was passed by the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion meeting in London on 15-18 December, and approved for public distribution.
Resolved that, in the light of:
i. The recent episcopal nomination in the Diocese of Los Angeles of a partnered lesbian candidate
ii. The decisions in a number of US and Canadian dioceses to proceed with formal ceremonies of same-sex blessings
iii. Continuing cross-jurisdictional activity within the CommunionThe Standing Committee strongly reaffirm Resolution 14.09 of ACC 14 supporting the three moratoria proposed by the Windsor Report and the associated request for gracious restraint in respect of actions that endanger the unity of the Anglican Communion by going against the declared view of the Instruments of Communion.
For those who haven’t been keeping up, this body was formerly known as the Joint Standing Committee (JSC) of the Primates and Anglican Consultative Council.
24 CommentsMore links added
The final version of the Anglican Communion Covenant has been released and sent to the member Churches of the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury has this evening issued a message to go with it.
A message from the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Anglican Communion Covenant
Thursday 17 December 2009
As the final version of the Anglican Communion Covenant is sent to the member Churches of the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury has given the following message explaining the purpose of the Covenant and the processes surrounding its adoption.
[On the Archbishop’s website a 4 minute 37 second video follows here.]
A transcript of the Archbishop’s video message is below:
After several years of work, the proposed covenant for the Anglican Communion has now reached its final form and is being distributed to the provinces for discussion, and I hope it will be adopted by as many provinces as possible.
It’s quite important in this process to remember what the Covenant is and what it isn’t, what it’s meant to achieve, and what it’s not going to achieve. It’s not going to solve all our problems, it’s not going to be a constitution, and it’s certainly not going to be a penal code for punishing people who don’t comply. But what it does represent is this: in recent years in the Anglican family, we’ve discovered that our relations with each other as local churches have often been strained, that we haven’t learned to trust one another as perhaps we should, that we really need to build relationships, and we need to have a sense that we are responsible to one another and responsible for each other. In other words, what we need is something that will help us know where we stand together, and help us also intensify our fellowship and our trust.
The covenant text sets out the basis on which the Anglican family works and prays and lives and hopes. The bulk of the text identifies what we hold in common, the ground on which we stand as Anglicans. It’s about the gift we’ve been given as a Church and the gift we’ve been given specifically as the Anglican Communion. All those things we give thanks for, we affirm together, and we resolve together to safeguard and to honour.
The last bit of the Covenant text is the one thats perhaps been the most controversial, because that’s where we spell out what happens if relationships fail or break down. It doesn’t set out, as I’ve already said, a procedure for punishments and sanctions. It does try and sort out how we will discern the nature of our disagreement, how important is it? How divisive does it have to be? Is it a Communion breaking issue that’s in question – or is it something we can learn to live with? And so in these sections of the covenant what we’re trying to do is simply to give a practical, sensible and Christian way of dealing with our conflicts, recognising that they’re always going to be there.
So what happens next? This Covenant is being sent to all the member Churches of the Anglican Communion. Each church will, within its own processes, decide how to handle it, and by the next meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in three years time we hope that many provinces will already have said yes to this and adopted it into their own understanding and identity. Clearly the process won’t all be over by then, but we’re hoping to see some enthusiasm, some general adoption of the principles. We hope to see a new kind of relationship emerging. We hope to see people agreeing to these ways of resolving our conflicts.
Beyond that, what’s going to happen? It’s hard to say as yet, but the Covenant text itself does make it clear that at some point it’ll be open to other bodies, other Ecclesial bodies as they’re called, other Churches and communities to adopt this Covenant, and be considered for incorporation into the Anglican Communion. Meanwhile, it’s open to anybody that wishes to affirm the principles of the Covenant – to say that this is what they wish to live with.
So in the next few years we expect to see quite a bit of activity around this. We hope, as I’ve said, that many provinces will feel able to adopt this. We hope that many other bodies will affirm the vision that’s set out here, and that in the long run this will actually help us to become more of a communion – more responsible for each other, presenting to the world a face of mutual understanding, patience, charity and gratitude for one another. In other words, we hope and pray that the Covenant for the Anglican Communion will be a truly effective tool for witness and mission in our world.
The full text of the Anglican Communion Covenant can be found at:
http://www.aco.org/commission/covenant/final/text.cfm
The Covenant Working Party Commentary on Revisions to Section 4 contains an explanation of what they have done.
A PDF file showing the exact textual changes that have been made to Section 4 is available via this page.
An official comparison of the texts is now here in another PDF.
A cover letter from Kenneth Kearon to Primates, Moderators and Provincial Secretaries is here (PDF).
23 CommentsO Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
Many years ago when I was still living in Germany, some time in the mid-1970s, I used to go on prison visits with a local priest. I was at that time a bank employee, and these visits seemed to me to balance my life in a useful way.
One of the prison inmates was a man then probably in his late 50s. He was a loner, and though he was always present in the prison’s leisure room when I was there, he never joined the group conversations and kept himself to himself. Eventually I learned from other prisoners that this man was a serial offender, usually convicted of burglaries and other similar offences. However, despite his clear inability to fit into society, he was known never to be violent towards the victims of his crimes.
One day I did manage to get him to talk to me, and I was completely taken aback by his story. Before the Second World War, he had been a Roman Catholic ordinand, but when the war started he felt he should join the German army and did so. From 1941 he was posted to Russia, and apparently was known as a courageous but also a humane soldier (a significant feature, given where he was and who he was fighting for).
In December1943, he and a group of other soldiers were instructed to ‘clean out’ a shed which had been used as a refuge and hiding place by some Jews, who had been found by the SS and had presumably been murdered. As this soldier and his comrades removed the bodies, he saw that one of the refugees had written something on the wall — the single Hebrew word ‘Adonai’. So here, somewhere in Russia, during Advent in 1943, this German soldier was reminded of his theological training, and as he put it to me, the shout of the people yearning for their God amidst this terror reached him through this one Hebrew word written on a barn wall. He was not able to fight any more after that day, and was in fact relieved to be wounded a few days later and, as a result, transported back to Germany.
After the war he was unable to return either to his seminary, or indeed to an ordered life, and he drifted in and out of petty crime. I ended my prison visits a short while later, as I was moving to Ireland, and I have no idea what happened to this man. But I think of him from time to time.
O Adonai has been described as the most Jewish of the O Antiphons, and it reminds us that the people of the law that was handed down on Sinai are the people to whom the Messiah was to come, and that we are also possessors of their heritage and are their brothers and sisters. And it reminds us that the Lord’s outstretched arm reaches through the torments and cruelties of this world and can touch us when we least expect it.
Ferdinand von Prondzynski is President of Dublin City University.
3 CommentsUpdated Friday morning
Christianity Today reports that David Zac Niringiye, the Church of Uganda’s assistant bishop of Kampala, says that American Christians should cultivate relationships before condemning the proposed legislation.
Read Ugandan Bishop Pleads With American Christians on Anti-Homosexuality Bill by Sarah Pulliam Bailey.
And there is a related article by the same author, Anti-Homosexuality Bill Divides Ugandan and American Christians.
The Times has just published this Leading Article, Uganda’s Inhumane Bill.
The European Parliament approved a resolution criticising the Ugandan legislation. See this press release.
Friday morning update
The Episcopal Church of Brazil has published an Official Note on the Proposed Ugandan Bill.
Today’s Church Times has a report by Pat Ashworth headed Dr Williams ‘shocked’ by Ugandan Bill.
According to Episcopal Café the Church of Scotland has issued a statement which is copied below the fold.
11 CommentsO Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.
O Wisdom. When God speaks, he speaks wisdom. But what is formed by his mouth is not words, but The Word. God is love, and when he speaks, what he speaks is a person. We usually think of ‘person’ as a human category, but God is much more a person than we ever are. Surely the Platonists were right in this instance at least. We are people because we are made in his image.
This person, who is God’s Wisdom, is the order and the purpose of creation, the strength which fires up super novae, and sends glaciers scraping through granite mountains, and is the desire which kindles the fawn in the deer. And all of this is very poetic and beautiful and moving. Inspiring, even.
Until we get to Jesus of Nazareth, who is Wisdom and shows us the way of prudence. Yes, right. We get to Jesus who is an extraordinary way of showing either of these two virtues. As Kenneth Bailey’s books show (Poet and Peasant: Literary-cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke; Through Middle-Eastern Eyes), he spent most of his public ministry firmly committed to a path guaranteed to exasperate and distress the religious and civil hierarchies. A path which alternately delighted and appalled the crowds, and which was, much of the time, clearly a mystery to his closest followers, never mind his family. The Wisdom of God in person.
And actually I believe he was. Wisdom does not lie in dodging conflict, or trying to escape it. It lies in just how you confront it. Jesus does not confront conflict by blaming others. It is striking how rarely in the Gospels he ever blamed individuals. He blamed that which creates false barriers between people: the mix of closed minds, impossible purity standards and bumptious self satisfaction which has people hiding behind masks which disguise their inner failings, and their inner selves. Faced with individuals, typically he asked for hospitality, or offered forgiveness, without ever seeking an admission of guilt. So Jesus accepted Simon’s hospitality (Luke 7.36ff.). Simon failed to offer Jesus the usual courtesies, and Jesus made no accusation then. Later, he took an opportunity to comment on what actually happened.
Jesus’s very reaction to others sparked more anger and more controversy. In my experience, it still does. When we are hurt, or despised, we very naturally want to hit back, to prove our worth, and to point out the failings in our attacker. To be pulled up short in the enjoyable pursuit of seeing all the failings in the other is painful. Naturally we want to aggrandise our own virtues by contrasting them with their failings. To forgive, and to advocate forgiveness, is generally misunderstood. People think one is condoning the failing, or admitting one’s own guilt.
Naming sins, wrongs done to self or others, is healthy. It always needs to be balanced by an awareness of the humanity of the other and a lively sense of one’s own weaknesses. Otherwise one gets dragged into a spiral of accusation and counter accusation. You don’t even need to believe that Jesus is the wisdom of God to see how pointless that soon becomes.
Jesus avoided tit for tat, dodging it by wit, or evasive answers or silence. He did not do much spelling out of what is and is not the right moral code, and gave his followers few chances of scoring against others. He did not give simple, clear and easy to follow moral codes. He would not make his people into ‘the good guys’ and he would not turn any of the expected figures of hate into the bad guys. On the other hand, he was impossible to turn from what he believed to be true. He would not keep silent and he did not take a path which lead to appeasement. He kept right on speaking the truth. He had no discernable interest in keeping others on board, and less in keeping any faction of the Jewish faith together.
He saw the need of the people, and also their desire for him to be a leader and a ruler of a kind he had no intention of being, and he refused to fulfil it. He took his own chosen and principled path. That is how one acts out the Wisdom of God.
He sparked a huge anger, and a mix of disappointed hopes and unreal expectations. Mere common sense suggested his death, which was facilitated by one of his own followers whom he had failed to keep on board. O Wisdom. He died in agony.
Christian leaders would do well to bear all this in mind. Easy moral codes are not wisdom. Wisdom lies in taking a principled path, which does not blame others, but holds to what is true. Not yielding one’s own agenda, but not heaping blame on those who do not follow it. The only trouble is that this is also the path for all of us, and it leads to various kinds of crucifixion, although it is actually the only path that really works.
Many will rightly comment that the distinction between boldly naming wrong done, and not getting drawn into recrimination, is at best a fine line, and very hard to maintain. But that is the trouble with having a Wisdom which is not words, but a person.
Rosemary Hannah is a historian and writer who lives near Glasgow.
6 CommentsYou can read the entire debate here at Hansard and continued here, or at TheyWorkForYou it starts here, and then continues here (the debate was interrupted for a discussion of the Defence Statement).
The following individual speeches are interesting:
Archbishop of York and also this.
Bishop of Chester, and also this.
Lord Alli
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen (questions about women bishops)
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, summing up the debate for the government.
More about this later.
4 CommentsUpdated Thursday morning
The Court of Appeals (Civil Division) has today dismissed the appeal of Lilian Ladele from the Employment Appeal Tribunal decision of December 2008, which found in favour of the London Borough of Islington.
The full text of today’s judgment can be found here. A printable version here is in .rtf format.
Initial press reports:
Press Association Registrar loses discrimination case
Reuters Christian registrar loses gay wedding appeal
Islington Tribune Registrar who refused to carry out civil partnership ceremonies loses appeal
Ekklesia Partnerships registrar loses case in Court of Appeal
BBC Christian registrar loses same-sex partnership case
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63 CommentsEpiscopal Café has an article Does the Church of Uganda really have no position?
Evidence continues to accumulate that the Church of Uganda supports the anti-homosexuals bill before parliament.
And the article proceeds to give chapter and verse in some detail.
Meanwhile, Ecumenical News International reports Anglican church warns on homosexuality
15 Comments[Bishop] Onono-Onweng in his interview with ENI said he did not wish to comment on the draft law until he had more time to study it…
This one by George Pitcher in case you missed it yesterday.
On the one hand, there is the bit about Uganda:
Andrew Brown Rowan denounces Ugandan law
There is a passage a long way down in the Daily Telegraph’s interview with Rowan Williams which deserves celebration and quotation:
“Overall, the proposed legislation is of shocking severity and I can’t see how it could be supported by any Anglican who is committed to what the Communion has said in recent decades,” says Dr Williams. “Apart from invoking the death penalty, it makes pastoral care impossible – it seeks to turn pastors into informers.” He adds that the Anglican Church in Uganda opposes the death penalty but, tellingly, he notes that its archbishop, Henry Orombi, who boycotted the Lambeth Conference last year, “has not taken a position on this bill”.
On the other hand, there is the bit about politics:
What would he like to see from politicians in the coming general election year? He responds that we “curiously have three party leaders, all of whom have a very strong moral sense of some spiritual flavour”. David Cameron may have conceded that the Church of England is in his DNA, but Gordon Brown is a son of the manse who is notoriously secretive about his faith or lack of it, and Nick Clegg has declared his atheism. “But he takes it seriously,” replies Dr Williams. “And with all of them I think if you can get them off the record or off the platform, these convictions will come through quite strongly.”
Is the problem “we don’t do God” spin doctors? “I think it’s important for politicians not to be too protected, to be able to establish their human credentials in front of a living audience.” So our leaders need to be more open about their faith? “I don’t think it would do any harm at all. Part of establishing their human credentials is saying ‘This is where my motivation comes from … I’m in politics because this is what I believe.’ And that includes religious conviction.
“The trouble with a lot of government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem, it’s an eccentricity, it’s practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities. The effect is to de-normalise faith, to intensify the perception that faith is not part of our bloodstream.”
Theo Hobson What’s Williams whinging about?
Ok, Williams is right that there is a widespread perception that religion is “a bit fishy”, but I don’t see how the government can be blamed for this. MPs who raise secularist concerns are only echoing a major sector of public opinion, and I haven’t noticed many senior ministers denouncing religion. He is fuelling a crass culture war by complaining that poor Christians are persecuted by nasty secularists. If religion is now widely mistrusted maybe he should ignore the speck in the government’s eye and consider the beam in his own.
Bishop Nick Baines has more about the interview here.
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