2008/12/17

I want to be wrong

I have a deep sense of foreboding for the coming few years.

Perhaps it is an indication of the turmoil we have seen in the financial world in the last year or so that someone can recently be arrested for an alleged fraud to the value of $50bn. $50bn ! $50bn!! Surely a few more chickens will come home to roost before this settles down. And when it does, for good or ill, the shape of the whole finance sector is going to be changed for years to come.

For that and other reasons, a big recession seems to be taking hold. That's bad enough for those at the margins of western society - how will it affect people in India and China, and other places which have come to rely on rapid economic growth. Then, there's the impact of measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions: if they are to be effective, they are going to begin to bite hard - affecting, again, most profoundly, those at the bottom of the heap, who have the least choices. And - whether due to anthropogenic climate change or not - there seem to be many places suffering from drought.

Meanwhile, there seem to be ever more signs of society disintegrating. Whether it's young people rioting in Greece, or the rise and rise of extremest political parties across Europe, or tensions and instabilities in the European Union, or news of immigrant communities in Britain feeling disaffected and isolated from the wider community, the impact seems to be tension, and a threat of strife. Add to that a veiled threat of many nascent terrorist plots, with many experts predicting nuclear terrorism as a strong likelihood within a few years.

Not only do I fear these outcomes, especially as they will affect the weakest in society. I fear, too, what the general population's response will be, and what the political class will do. This will not be a re-run of 1930s fascism - there are too many people watching out for that, to defeat it on principle. But that does not mean it will not be brutal, violent, and profoundly illiberal.

Frankly, I'm scared. I'd love to be completely wrong. But the signs really don't look good. Let's not get all apocalyptic about this: WWII wasn't the end of the world, but it was a very very bad thing.

God give us grace to learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.

Lord, have mercy.

2008/12/13

an excellent post

Here is a very thoughtful post: "So long, sola". Nic Paton argues that the modern way of holding the doctrine of "sola scriptura" is amiss. He says that it's at odds even with the intention of Luther and the rest who coined five "solas" as pillars of the Reformation, and he makes rather eloquently the point that the whole structure of the epistemology surrounding scripture is itself, er, unscriptural.

He mentions Wesley's "quadrilateral" in which truth is found in Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience; he even goes on to suggest that we might add to this Creation, intuition, and imagination. Wow.

I find these lines of thinking thrilling and liberating ... but also quite unsettling. It feels naughty, taboo, dangerous: am I really allowed to admit that the text of the bible, if taken as a single book (which it is not) has all manner of contradictions within it? Can I say that, rather than having to construct complex arguments about why it all means the same thing really? Can I happily repudiate those odd arguments that if two books, their authors separated by centuries and seas, use the same word in different contexts, they must be referring to the same thing? Is it ok to suggest, as I did last month, that "that was then; this is now"?

It feels like one is messing around with foundational ideas, with the fear that everything will come crashing down and nothing will be left. But as I write that, I'm reminded of Rob Bell's picture of doctrine not as the bricks in an edifice, but as a collection of springs surrounding a trampoline. Pulling out the one marked "scripture", and giving it a stretch to see what happens, seems like an excellent move.

2008/12/08

formative influences (7?) : loving liturgy

A comment from Mike Morell, put me in mind of this:

Growing up in a decidedly non-liturgical fellowship, occasional tastes of liturgical worship seemed rather wonderful. Not particularly the theatrical aspects: costume, processions, colours, and the rest, but the prayers, the shared affirmations, the structure. Every-member ministry with extempore prayer can be uplifting but can be ... dire. Words that have been considered and weighed by many, over the centuries, carry nuance and force all of their own.

I blogged before about College Chapel: I loved the way that the creed always followed the sermon. No matter how weird, woolly, or distracting the sermon might be (or so I judged it at the time), everyone would afterward stand and declaim together some of the truths of the faith.

Likewise, when I belonged to an Anglican church, I really valued the unifying, normative effect of the liturgy: if there was an element in the service (perhaps the sermon, again) that I didn't value, I was brought to my senses again by the introduction to the Peace, right before Communion:

Christ is our peace
He has reconciled us to God
in one body by the cross.
We meet in his name and share his peace.

That was tremendously normalizing, uplifting, resetting, unifying. On the other hand, we held onto the liturgy very lightly in that church. Sections would be omitted on a whim, the vicar would have the whole congregation say parts supposed to be reserved to the priest, he let me lead much of the service, despite not being authorized by the Bishop, and so on. The liturgy was shared and subordinate to the people - not the other way around.

Moving away, and joining a Baptist church I missed much of this. I missed the structure, the meditative elements, the space to pause, the shape of the whole thing. When the church was due to celebrate a major anniversary, my new-found Anglican sensibilities expected that the main service would incorporate sharing communion - what could be more appropriate? Not a chance!

In that church and my current one, has been my privilage to lead worship from time to time. I value the opportunity to introduce liturgical prayers, shared affirmations and other elements. Everyone can participate in these, even those who cannot sing, or do not enjoy music. I'd hate to be hide-bound by these things, but as tools for us to use, they can be superb.

I think I missed it



From looking at jesuswantstosavechristians.blogspot.com, it seems that I missed a rather marvellous back-story to the Jesus wants to save Christians book that I reviewed a few weeks ago. Evidently, there is/was an "alternate reality game" centered around the creepy "Citizens of Virtue". That site is awesome in its awfulness, and all too plausible in places.

As far as I can see on a little bit of surfing, the game now seems to have played out, which is a shame indeed. I'd love to have joined in, and help save the Seven.

Brilliant stuff.

2008/11/30

implications

Where does my last post lead?
  1. I'm not sure. It leads me to a certain humble uncertaintly about a lot of things. In particular, on the proxmiate issue of "women's ministry", I think I can sympathize with just about every position taken by others - certainly the integrity of those who hold a particular point of view, even if I find a lot of those perspectives problematic.
  2. More generally, it leaves me concerned. Can the methodology lead to anything other than a rather nihilistic subjective relativism? Is that not problematic? It might not be, but it takes work to integrate it into my understanding of truth and God. I haven't got there yet.
  3. On the other hand, I know that it does fit into my broad understanding of God's truth: if people ask what is "allowed" and what is "commanded" by the New Testament, I always feel that they need to re-read Galatians. But I probably do, too :-).

2008/11/27

how I learned to stop worring (long post)

This blog post has been a long time coming, but I must delay it no more. It should be in my "formative influences" series, but I've lost track of the numbers... I think it significant more for the methodological conclusions than from the particular matter at hand - but that is itself rather important, too.

So, what did I stop worrying about? Well, women. No, not like that. Women's ministry, if you want that phrase, is my topic here.

First, the context: I grew up, as I've said, in an Open Brethren church (assembly, ok). Hat-wearing was on the way out, but when it came to "open participation", of which we had lots, the women didn't get to say anything. Unless it was a home bible study. Like a good evangelical I wrestled with the new testament texts, weighing one against another, but struggled to work out how that position could make sense. Requiring women to wear hats seemed anachronistic, but was there in the text as plain as the "must keep slient" bit. (Yes, you could argue about the nature of the head-covering, but that's a cultural digression, really). I came to my own view that if we were to encultureize the one, we should do the same for the other. On the other hand, I kind-of agreed with Michael Green (I forget which book) that whatever the New Testament texts meant, they rather implied that women should not hold the ultimate authority - by which, I largely mean the normative teaching role - in the assembly.

I never saw that as a deeply profound or important position. I could see that it affected certain women rather strongly ( :-) ), but it wasn't going to cause me to make or break fellowship with anyone. When the church fellowship I belonged to as an undergraduate split over the issue of women participating in open worship, I took the default position, which was to stay with the "no" people. But soon afterwards, I joined fellowships which periodically had women in the pulpit, and, indeed, in leadership.

All in all, I guess you could say my position, on my reading of scripture, was a "weak complimentarian" position. Weak, on two counts: I saw no obstacle to women leading worship, prayer, and so forth, only to normative (doctrine-espousing) preaching and leadership, and secondly, weak in the sense that when encountering the latter I was going to generally grin and bear it - perhaps to the point of deciding not to listen to the sermon, rather than accidentally not doing so :-). With all my heart, I wanted to believe something different - namely that in the late 20th century men and women were all called together to the work of the kingdom, and we should make no distinction - but I couldn't, in honesty, find it in scriputre to believe that, so I lived with that tension.

That came to a head somewhat when I was invited to join the leadership of my local church. As a regular member, I didn't have to go along with everything the church did. But I felt that as a leader, I couldn't endorse the ministry of women preaching, nor among the leadership, so it seemed wise to decline.

But by the second time I was asked, I was in the middle of learning about this crazy band of people who might go under the banner of "emerging church", or variations on that theme. Not only was what they were doing culturally relevant, it also began to imply a very different kind of postmodern exegesis of scripture. Being an academic, that kind of line of thinking wasn't totally alien to me - though my part of science has yet to grasp hold of it entirely. But I began to see (and I think I am still only beginning) how to apply that thinking to the way I read scripture: not as a rejection of Evangelical principles, but a development of them.

That does mean placing more weight on the culture in and into which the original text was written. And, indeed, it means realising that we don't always know as much as we'd like about that culture. For that matter, it means realising that many of the cherished ways of interpreting things are a matter of tradition alone: oft repetition really doesn't make them true.

So, on the matter of women's ministry, here's where I've ended up. Would Paul, in his day, have been dismissive of women in leadership and preaching? Yes, it seems so, at least in some places, at some times. Would Paul expect his teaching to last for all time? Most probably, yes. Would he therefore be upset with the practice of [my group of] Christians today? More than likely. Would he be right about that? No. So, right now, here, is there any problem with men and women sharing equally in all Kingdom activity? None at all.

The fourth question and answer is the kicker, as far as evangelicalism is concerned. What reason have I to reach such a conclusion? Why, the whole revelation of God. Faith, reason, scripture. We do lip-service to the idea that the bible needs interpreting, isn't simply a rule-book, isn't akin to the ever-unchanging Koran. But too frequently we fail to embrace what that really means. The Evangelical custom has been to take the text and twist it until it means what we want it to, even to the point of making a reading which plainly wasn't in the mind of the original author. Of course, finding meaning which wasn't known to the writer is a valid interpretative method (it applies, after all, to much OT prophecy), but to go so far as to say that that meaning is normative seems, well, several steps too far. I'm much happier with a "that was then; this is now" argument, even though it feels more tentative and provisional; less grounded.

I could be wrong, I know. But I have peace. I haven't stopped seeking after truth, and I don't think I've properly grasped the extent and shape of this. But I have stopped worrying.

2008/11/24

I'm a mechanic

So www.typealyzer.com says I'm a mechanic. My blog represents the independent, problem-solving type.

So there you are.

life affirmed

There's something terribly life-affirming about this news from the BBC:

Down's births rise despite tests


More Down's syndrome babies are being born than before pre-natal screening became widespread, figures show. The UK saw 749 Down's births in 2006, up from 717 in 1989 when tests came in.


I'm not a parent. I don't have close friends or family who have the joys and pains of children with disabilities or learning difficulties. So in many ways I'm not qualified to pass comment on others' decisions.

But there is something there which lifts the soul, and gives you confidence that actually our shared sense of morality as a society is not completely unravelling. The article is woeful because it doesn't count the number of abortions, or miscarriages, or whatever, and the "rise" is probably not statistically significant. Affirming human life is good; learning to care for the weak and the needy, and the just plain different, is a way we show the spark of God's image in us.

2008/11/20

when is a church not a church?

A recent post by Dan Kimball set me thinking. He talks about an increasing trend for multi-site churches, whether linked by video sermons, or connected in some other way.

I remarked upon this pattern at Mars Hill in Seattle, back in July, with further reflections on using video, later. I had no idea it was so widespread. It seems most curious. If you have a bunch of people who meet at separate locations, and interact with each other firstly on the basis of where they meet, and you put together a group of those, you don't have a church, you have a denomination. "Bishop Mark" sounds altogether more grand than "Pastor Mark", don't you think?

Why would you do this? Well, if you're planting churches, they will tend to retain ties to the mother church for a little while. But surely the whole point of the mother-daughter picture is that you aim for maturity and eventual independence in the latter.

I'm fearful that the biggest reason for such arrangements - especially where video is involved - is the cult of the lead preacher. On the one hand, it makes eminent sense that those who are particularly gifted in teaching should do more of it, and share their gift using whatever modern technology is available. On the other hand, the notion of a "teaching pastor" - somewhat cut off from day-to-day interactions with the flock, and devoted only to preaching - seems alarming and very much a mistake. All the more so when that teaching is promulgated largely through high definition video, or to a huge auditorium where the preacher cannot see the whites of the eyes of the flock.

Having quite so many people beholden to one man (it always seems to be a man) seems calculated to end in tears. Even if he is the most sainted, prophetic individual alive, what will happen when his ministry comes to an end? Will he be replaced by another, in an office-bearing kind of way? Or will the whole personality cult disintegrate? "It is not good for man to be alone" applies very much to those who would teach, as well as its original reference.

Perhaps I'm just sensitized to the dangers of one-man-ministry, the unnecessary weight of denominations, and the need for plurality in leadership because I've just finished Frank Viola's book. But then, I have to confess that I have come to doubt his methodology: the New Testament gives us a pattern for what church ought to be like, most probably - a church in the first century Mediterranean culture. Precisely how much that tells us about how church ought to be in our culture is, I think, debatable. But it seems most, most unwise to eschew denominations on the one hand, and almost accidentally to create new ones on the other.

2008/11/19

review: Reimagining Church


Reimagining church
Frank Viola


I never bothered to read Viola's earlier book, Pagan Christianity, which was the talk of the bologosphere about a year ago. From the reviews I saw, I expected that I would know much of what he had to say, already. I looked forward to this book, though, as a much more positive offering. The previous book, if you like, set out what had gone wrong with the church; here, Reimagining church: pursing the dream of organic Chtistianity would surely reset the balance by suggesting what to do about it.

Well, it does. Sort of. The trouble is, I had an overwhelming sense of déja vu. For in chapter after chapter, as if he is describing something new, Viola describes to near perfection the tradition I grew up with. That's generally known as the "Christian Brethren", a decidedly vague name, on account of how that group (if it can be called a group) has never sought a name, or an identity, or any kind of denominational structure. In a sense, it's no surprise that Viola should rediscover Bretheren ecclesiology: after all, in the early chapters he warmly quotes F. F. Bruce, who was for most of his life a leading member of a Brethren assembly.

So, the book takes us through the reasons for Christians meeting together, the centrality of the Lord's supper, the open participation of all believers [ok, so for the Brethren, "all" has tended to mean "all men". Things have moved on], pluarality of leadership, elders as emerging gifted indivduals, not office-holders, consensus as a means of assembly decision-making, and so on. If you picked up any text on Brethren distinctives, you would find exactly the same stuff - even to the repeated phrase of "being gathered to Christ alone".

One point of divergence, perhaps, is that Viola stresses the value of meeting in homes rather than set-aside sancturaies: togetherness, rather than pews facing a pulpit (or altar, if you're of a higher church persusaion): Brethren have often - and in recent years, particularly - tended to own premises for the assembly to meet in, but frequently will meet "in the round" rather than in traditional church format.

So what shall I make of Viola's suggestion that this is how church should be? Well, the Brethren movement, if we shall call it that, has lasted some 170 years, but is becoming close to defunct: those that kept their distinctives have mostly whithered away; those who have embraced other ideas are often indistinguishable from other free churches (with notable exceptions). Part of me is thrilled to see these ideas rehearsed afresh, because I have held many of them very dear for a long time; part of me is disarmed, to say the least, that they should be presented as if discovered for the first time. (If, dear reader, you want to see a sometimes tenuous argument that these ideas have been present throughout church history, you might try to lay your hands on the truly ponderous The Pilgrim Church, by E. H. Broadbent. You should buy a case of Red Bull at the same time.)

As regards content and presentation, the book is fairly easy to read, though frequent long quotes from other authors put me off, rather. The rhetoric is over-blown at times, giving rise to some questionable bits of theology: even though I tend to find the conclusions sound, the argument is sometimes rather dodgy.

This is stuff that I feel as if I know a great deal about, in theory and in practice (what works, and what does not). I'm going to have to look for other reivews of this book, I can see...

2008/11/16

and where does it lead?

A footnote to my post of yesterday: one of Sweden's parties proposes that as part of its new gay marriage law, pastors should be compelled to officiate at gay weddings, or at no weddings at all.

That might seem an unwelcome interference with church matters, were it not for the blindingly obvious question of why the church is in a position to be dictated to by parliament anyway. Surely the problem, if there is one, is with the relationship of the church with the state, or even with the notion of pastors anyway. [I've been reading Frank Viola's Reimagining Church lately, which takes a particularly hard line on such topics.]

There are some other complexities to the argument, of course - such as which kind of discrimination trumps which other kind. But that wasn't the point I wanted to raise.

2008/11/15

nothing to see here; move along

Reading blogs and visiting America several times this year has impressed upon me quite how concerned much of the American church seems to be about what they are calling "gay marriage". This seems to have overtaken some people as the biggest moral concern of the age (ahead of worrying, for example, whether people a few blocks away have food, or access to basic healthcare), and seems to be a yard-stick by which you judge someone's theological orthodoxy.

I'm glad that in the UK, we've largely avoided the depth of this discussion. We've had "civil partnerships" for a few years now, which are gay marriages in all but name. Indeed, colloquially they are known as marriages, with accompanying weddings, husbands, and divorces. And they carry almost identical privileges and responsibilities to marriages. And, surprise, surprise, the moral structure of society hasn't collapsed as a result. The Anglican church has rather tied itself in knots over what to do with its members - and clergy - who elect to enter into such partnerships. But the Anglican church has rather specialized in knots lately.

Now, I confess that I was rather opposed to the whole idea. Not so much on the grounds of trying to limit what consenting adults do in private, but because giving those people the accompanying tax breaks seemed unreasonable to me (a single person). But the fact is that take-up hasn't been enormous and the tax breaks aren't that substantial anyhow. It's a matter of basic humanity to let people nominate those whom they regard as next of kin; it's a matter of simple expediency that if people want to set up home together, they should be able to manage their affairs to reflect their joint ownership of property, and so on. I don't know if it's had any effect at all on promiscuity - its impact on public health can only be positive, though.

I realise that I'm being rather ambivalent about the romantic long-term commitment aspect here, but others are better-placed than I to comment on that. Long-term stable households seem good for society, in general.

In short, this law makes a few people happy and impacts almost not at all on everyone else. It's really not a big deal for those not participating.

2008/11/06

Review: Jesus wants to save Christians


Jesus wants to save Christians
Rob Bell and Don Golden


I read enthusiastically Rob Bell's first book Velvet Elvis, and have lent it out and given away several copies as presents. The second book Sex God maybe requires more caution -- someone at church suggest I should pass it around in a brown paper bag -- but I enjoyed that, too. So I was excited to see the publication of his latest book.

In Jesus wants to save Christians, Bell has aqcuired a co-author, Don Golden, formerly another pastor at Mars Hill Church. Stylistically, it doesn't show: the book is still full of Bell's trademark pithy prose. Rather frequently it breaks down

into those short, connected phrases

which are separated by blank lines

and run for up to a page

to make a dramatic point.

And I fear there are too many of them, so the dramatic point is sometimes lost. The presentation is, however, once again, beautiful.

Enough of the externalities. What is the book about? Well, I'd have to say that it has much in common with McLaren's Everything must change, except that where McLaren is verbose in the extreme, Bell and Golden are, well, golden. The readers are left to join the dots for themselves. The book tracks what you might call the redemptive purpose of God across the ages, through the scripture. Along the way we get to reflect on power and weakness, on being exiles and relating to the empire. As with Walsh and Keesmet's Colossians Remixed we have to concern ourselves about whether the church is too associated with the empire and not enough with the exile.

And of course, the climax of the redemption narrative is the cross. The "blood on the doorposts of the universe" as Chapter Six has it. The cross matters deeply in all this -- not only for all that Christ does there, but because he established a eucharistic community. The chapter dwells on this idea of the church as embodying and sharing the eucharist --- the "good gift".
"The church is a living Eucharist, because followers of Christ are living Eucharists. A Christian is a living Eucharist, allowing her body to be broken and her blood to be poured out for the healing of the world."

They talk about how this is accomplished in weakness, in peace, in reconciliation, in a new humanity. They remind us of our calling to give to those who cannot give in return.

And in doing so, they raise a telling question: "if our church was taken away - from our city, our neighbourhood, our region - who would protest?" If only those who belong and attend, then too many are surely missing out on the blessing.

If you don't get to join the dots by yourself, an epiologue to the book spells out some things Jesus wants to save us from. It is good, thought-provoking stuff. I'd rather like to see a companion volume - a study and action guide. Somehow it's easy to let this stuff challenge me, then put it on one side and forget it again. The book is undoubtedly a call to action; a manifesto for a transformed church. Read it.

2008/11/03

Too odd

I know that journalists are great at obfuscation. And I know that bookmakers are renowned for taking anyone's money as a bet on anything. But really, news that Paddy Power is offering odds of 4-1 that God exists, really takes the biscuit.

They say that they'll only pay out if there is independently-verified scientific evidence. What kind of evidence can that be? [hint: it's not the `God particle' Higgs Boson being sought at CERN]. It's axiomatic that there will never be scientific evidence for God's existence. There cannot be. To borrow a phrase from Alistair Campbell, science doesn't do God. It cannot. Maybe in some postmodern reconstructed notion of what science might be, it might. But then the notion of "evidence" would be changed. The whole thing, trust me, is a logical absurdity.

They say that the House always wins. Paddy Power is onto a good thing: given their definition of "exitsts", they'll never have to pay out.

2008/10/30

Aping the culture

For ages, it's been a concern of many that Christians have a habit of trying to ape popular culture, rather than making their own. (I remember well the despair of a friend who saw a car-sticker in the style of an Oakley ad, saying "Jesus: Thermonuclear Protection", but I digress; I don't think their ads say that any more.).

So it's with some surprise that now the militant atheist fundamentalists are doing their best to emulate the behaviour of believers. Not content with their "I'm right and I won't listen to anyone who disagrees" line - the mark of a good fundamentalist, it seems to me - they are moving on to copy other things. Last week the big news was those unimaginative and hesitant atheist adverts (or were they agnostic) on the sides of London buses. And now, I've become aware of Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People. I'm obviously a little late on that, because the tickets are sold out, and have been for a while, it seems, even with a ticket price of £20. (I've nothing against the event: it sounds rather good. And contemplating the wonders of the Universe would be good for us all).

I am rather left wondering what we'll see next. If you were an atheist fundamentalist, what elements of Christian sub-cluture would you choose to rip-off?

2008/10/21

Probably atheists

So, the advertising campaign to promote an atheist message has finally raised enough money to go ahead. London buses will carry a message saying "There's Probably No God". What wierd things some people spend their money on.

There's Probably No God - poster

I do wish the BBC would stop asking 'Christian Voice' to give opinions on this kind of thing, since they speak for approximately one man and his dog. But I suppose getting one whacky group to comment on another is what passes as news reporting these days.

I suppose the advertisers are trying to make a point. I'm just not sure what that point is. It's a free country, though.

2008/10/20

cigars

Well, here's a thing. Jake Bouma points to a post by a Jared Wilson entitled "20 ways to smoke cigars to the glory of God". I confess that I didn't find the 20 ways as thought-provoking as the preamble: the post begins with a quote from no lesser person than C.H. Spurgeon describing his joy in smoking cigars. You might argue that he was doing that before the full extent of the health problems associated with smoking became apparent. But that would be primarily a health argument, not a theological one, wouldn't it?

Anyhow, I thought it an interesting fresh challenge to presuppositions. We assume so much about "normal" Christian behaviour; so much that is actually determined by culture and today's values, not necessarily by timeless Kingdom values. We assume at our peril. It ain't necessarily so.

2008/10/17

America again

Here I am again. New England this time. Here are some more curiosities:

1. Nowadays, all the car adverts announce loudly their fuel economy figures. And 30 mpg is good, seemingly. Folks, it isn't.

2. I love the way Sen. Obama keeps talking about wanting to help middle-class families. I can't imagine any of the British political parties saying that.

3. Socialism is a bit silly, but the venom being directed towards Mr. Obama, on the charge that he looks like a socialist, is quite staggering.

Does that have anything to do with my normal blog topic? Not particularly, save to say that "good news for the poor" doesn't seem to feature big in either party's rhetoric. Nothing new there, then. But I don't really understand America. That much is clear. After all, I still don't know what baseball is for.

2008/10/11

Feeding the trolls

I was in Blackwell's this morning. They have the biggest Theology section of any bookshop I've ever visited. I noticed a big display of books critical of Richard Dawkins and all his works. Since Dawkins is "one of us" (Oxford Faculty) and has foisted his own mix of genius and nonsense on the world, I suppose it only just and right that some of his colleagues in the University do the same. Many of the (8? 10?) books in the display were by Oxford authors.

The title of my blog aludes, of course, to the glory days of Usenet, when some people would post articles simply to attract attention. The more contentious the point of view, the better. Feeding such trolls by responding to their arguments was frowned upon. I do rather wonder whether Richard's ramblings are worthy of responses from quite so many busy theologians, philosophers, and, indeed, scientists. "The God Delusion" would disappear all the quicker if the soon-retiring Professor of the Public Understanding of Science (or is that Misunderstanding?) were left to his own devices, methinks.

For there is a whole slew of books out there about new spirituality, about, on the one hand, a rise in spirituality. I've had "The Twilight of Atheism" on my half-read books pile for quite some time - but there are many more I could add to it, it seems. I have to say that among the people I mix with, I don't really see this happening - if anything, there is a rise of militant Atheist fundemaentalism. That seems terribly recherché in this postmodern age - but a great many scientists are struggling to re-think their philosophy, and cling to the epistemology they learned as undergraduates.

But I guess we all do. And if we're not careful, the things we read just reinforce that, instead of broadening our horizons. Which is why I fear for the "is/isn't" books, and want to leave the trolls well alone. Except that I just wrote this blog. Ooops.

2008/10/02

Interesting times

So, will September 2008 go down in history as the time when capitalism ended and the banking system collapsed, or the time when the idea of "emerging church" blew up?

The former is clear enough. The idea of socializing the losses but not the profits of the banks is certainly ... interesting: it seems somewhat uneven. But I long-ago decided that I do not understand macroeconomics - my only fear is that it sometimes seems that no one else does, either.

As for the "Emerging Church", well, there are certainly lots of people running a mile from the term: Jason Clark is moving on, and making his emphasis his "Deep Church" perspective instead. The sainted Dan Kimball and others are pointing to a post by Scott McKnight, inviting us to distinguish "emerging" from "emergent". The wise Tall Skinny Kiwi went so far as to have a post on "now that we have stopped emerging". And so it goes on. And on.

Trying to put things into a named box seems often to be an attempt to close down a debate, and attempt to coral lots of diverse people into the same corner. So if the whole "emerging church" label has passed its usefulness, it doesn't seem a big deal. If this helps to disentangle those with very conventional evangelical theology but lots of relevancy (certainly Driscoll, probably Kimball) from those who are more ... adventurous (the Emergent folks, MacLaren, and so on) perhaps that's rather good.

If MacLaren is right, and we are in the midst of a one-in-400-year sea-change in culture and theology, you can hardly expect it to happen in one leap, anyway. And if that turns out to be a load of froth signifying nothing, well, that's life, too. I wonder what the next name will be.

Ideas, good. Simplistic names, bad.

2008/09/30

Rather wonderful

I rather love this collection of maps: they show the world from a series of novel perspectives. I don't know what we learn from this, really, but they are great to look at.



Example: Tourist destinations


The size of each country indicates the proportion of international tourist trips made there. Western Europe receives 46 per cent of world tourist trips, while just 0.1 per cent of trips are made to Central Africa.

Specks and planks

Here is rather a nice blog post, which made me call to mind Jesus' suggestion that it's much easier to take a speck out of your brother's eye after you've taken the plank out of your own. In short, he says that if we want to suggest that the Muslim community needs to reign in its fundamentalist wing, we had better call a spade a spade with regard to the Christian fundamentalist wing.

A not dissimilar idea comes in this blog from Alan Hirsch.

In the past, I've been reluctant to put clear space between my evangelical perspective and that of the fundamentalists - I so understand where they are coming from. But as I remarked earlier in the year, it seems increasingly necessary. Too often, those of a fundamentalist persuasion appear to speak for all Christians, but their faith isn't the historic faith of the church - or, more importantly for many, the truth revealed in the bible. It's an aberration, the result of reading the bible as a modern text, when manifestly it is not. And it seems to be getting worse (witness the onward march of the Creationists) and ever more legalistic. And it needs to be called out on those grounds.

Ah, but you say, doesn't the line about specks and planks (or motes and beams, if you're that way inclined) apply equally to one Christian tribe criticizing another. Yes, maybe. So should we keep silent?

2008/09/22

Driscoll just won't go away

That man Mark Driscoll seems to be everywhere. He was in London recently, but I didn't go and join the fans. Then I got this link to one of the most bizarre sites I've ever seen. I suppose there's no reason why the Song of Songs shouldn't be a cartoon, but ...

And then today, I got news (thanks Martin) of a talk he gave to the Sydney Anglicans, while he was down under recently. The Sydney Anglicans are not known for their relaxed, easy-going attitude, so I can only guess at the response: I guess the blogosphere would tell me if I searched ... the news reached me from a different (geographical and ideological) corner of Australia, so it is certainly travelling.

I would urge you to take a look, and even to listen, if you have time (it takes about an hour). Why? Well, what he says is by turns prophetic and inspirational, brash to the point of being arrogant, wise but hubristic, factually incorrect but searching, and above all entertaining if you can picture the audience. There's much of what he says that horrifies me (though his references to church leaders as "men" will doubtless go over well in Sydney). In general his reformed theology gives me nightmares, but there's not too much theology here. If you can get past the ranting about entrepreneurs, socialism, and the British, there are some nuggets of wisdom there, and, moreover, some good methodological challenges for us all.

In the background, there is much movement going on over the use of words ("emerging" is nearly gone, I think) -- more on that another time. Whatever words you want to use to describe Driscoll, he is a prophetic voice when it comes to making the news of the kingdom relevant today. And his influence seems to be becoming very great. If you pray about things, please pray for him: it would be too easy for his outspoken ways to come before a big fall. And that would hurt a lot of people as it fell. That would be a bad outcome. Pray that his ministry may continue to grow and thrive, all the while becoming more and more Christ-like.


Edit: I sound like a fan. I'm not (see some earlier blog posts). But we do need to listen to many challenging voices if we are better to grasp the truth.

2008/09/16

Poetry

Wouldn't it be poetic if all those bankers loosing their jobs found themselves unable to keep up their mortgage payments, and had to sell their houses, finding themselves in a situation of negative equity, as the economy crashes around them. Somehow it would just begin to vindicate those folks who, having been sold mortgages they couldn't afford, lost all their quality of life as they defaulted on their loans and became that amorphous mass of "sub-prime" debt.

Shadenfraude is such an ugly emotion, however. But I do hope that the news and business reporters who cover this story - which will, I fear continue to get worse before it gets better - will spare a thought for all the individuals caught up in it.

No one is blameless, I fear. The bankers were either negligent, or knew they were living on a bank of shifting sand. The mortgage brokers are perhaps the true villains of the piece. But the hard-up borrowers should surely have known that something seeming too good to be true probably was. The latter get my sympathy, however: surely our calling is to protect the weak and vulnerable - whether that vulnerability arises from weakness or a simple inability to do arithmetic.

Great strides have been made - though there is much more to be done - in the area of fair trade. If at least we make the processes of global trade transparent, we can decide for ourselves whose blood, sweat, and toil we want to exploit. I wonder if there is room for a similar venture in the area of financial transparency. The whole business of "ethical investments" just means that I don't buy shares in tobacco companies and arms manufacturers, as far as I can see. As financial instruments get more and more complex, I should perhaps care exactly how the banks (and others) that I deal with make their money - and where the scope for collateral damage might be.

Teasing that all apart would be quite a job. It would take an institute full of dedicated ex-bankers, I suspect. As well as informing the end customer, it would have an opportunity to engage in lobbying for improved accountability in the banking sector, too.

There are, of course, some people doing much more creative thinking around this subject. There's micro-finance along the lines of Kiva, for example, or Josh's Indian (former) Taxi Fund [how's that going, I wonder? I Googled around for a more up-to-date blog post, but couldn't find the one I wanted]. And there's probably a lot of other things beside.

I fear there will be a lot more fall-out from the banking sector still to come. And too often, those in high finance will forget the little people. Wouldn't it be great for Christians to be known for charting a course through the mess, and helping people get their lives straightened out (rather than for bickering about creationsim, women bishops, or homosexuality). But I'm dreaming.

2008/09/14

Is Ancient Knowledge worth having?

A colourful postcard just came through my letter-box: "Ancient Knowledge", it says, "The Centre for the Study of Self-Knowledge invites you to a series of open lectures: ... Tibetan Psychology (Buhhhata-Consciousness, Ego, Self-Knowledge) ... Mayan Wisdom (Secrets of a lost civilization, pyramids, cosomology) ... Celtic Mysteries (stone circles, leylines, the Runes).

Who believes in this crap? Of course, I have no problem with people studying this stuff for reasons of history or anthropology, but the clear implication of the leaflet (and much else beside) is that we'd be happier, better people if we would just listen to the message of ancient times, and get more in touch with the lifestyle of our cave- or hut-dwelling ancestors.

Well, I don't buy it. Modern life has its problems, but if you want me to swap 21st century medicince, communications, and manufacturing for that of a few thousand years ago, you'll have a long wait. Why suppose that those people were more in touch with truth and reality, and the things that really matter? What possible reason, other than distant romantic mist, is there to suppose that creators of stone circles were wise folk who can give us insights to help our present situation? Perhaps agrarian iron-age hut-dwellers used to sit around the camp-fire and reflect on how much more in touch with the real world the cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers had been.

Of course, such a rant comes with a barb, doesn't it? I came across someone this week declining to follow the ethical teaching of the church, saying that if some people wanted to follow the mythology of a nomadic bronze-age tribe, that was fine, but he shouldn't be expected to join in.

That stings. But I can see where he's coming from. The truth about God surely transcends our circumstances, and if the bible is one of his principal means of revalation, well it cannot be tossed lightly aside. But I'm increasingly coming to the view that we must work much harder to situate that truth for our present generation.

2008/08/09

Obama the antichrist

A post by Brian Maclaren, points to a Time article describing an advert for American TV, evidently endorsed by the McCain campaign, which insinuates that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. This has me alarmed.

What if .......?

No, but seriously: evidently the allusion is to the Left Behind books. I was given the first one, and read it. Well, I remember starting it - there was something to do with the rapture and half-empty aeroplanes, and a charismatic leader sweeping all before him - but I don't remember any more. Perhaps I got fed up with the poor writing, fanciful story, or doubtful theology. But I get the gist: a bright young leader promises marvellous things and is adored by a watching world, even though he truly represents the most manevolent force in all creation. Or something. Must be Mr O. (Is he adored? I think that most of the world is reserving judgement, really. But I digress).

Now, perhaps Mr. McCain actually believes Mr Obama is the Antichrist. In which case he should come out and say it, and have a public debate at that level.

Assuming he does not, what alarms me is that the man who wants to be the leader of the free world seeks to hold that position by scaring a section of his electorate with a proposition he knows to be false. (Hey, the rapture hasn't happened, so in that whacky eschatology, the rise of the Antichrist is premature...) Let me say that again: he wants to be elected on the basis of a plain, clear, bare-faced lie.

I know politics is a messy business, and politician are prone to exaggerate, spin, and generally encourage double-think. But this is different. Which one of the candidates is evil?

2008/07/29

Things I have learned

I've been in the USA for over two weeks. It's my longest ever visit. Watching Fox news has become something of a morbid fascination. Here are some things I have learned:
  • The real problem with universal healthcare is that the 46m people who don't have medical cover right now will want it. And that means they will want doctors. And there aren't enough to go around. So the whole idea is a non-starter.
  • Obama's international tour was foreshadowing his would-be role as Commander-in-Chief. Not as top diplomat, or representative of all branches of government. No; as guy-with-the-nukes. Gee, that's really encouraging.
  • Americans have to tell their doctors which drugs they want. At least, that's what I surmise from the adverts explaining how wonderful the therapies are. In my country, the doctor tells you what she/he thinks would be good for you.
  • Fox news is fair and balanced. Say it every five minutes, like a mantra, you might start to believe it.
  • $4 for a gallon of (albeit ludicrously low-octane) fuel is a lot of money. [Ha! What a joke. No; I don't believe that one.]
  • If you are poor enough to qualify for Medicare, you can still get pressured into buying a top-up card to cover all the things that Medicare doesn't. It could save you thousands of dollars, apparently.
I'm sure there are more gems, but eventually it all just washes over you.

2008/07/27

Preaching by video

So, most of the sermons at Mars Hill church are presented by (live) video. That's of interest to me: I've often wondered how we would "do" church differently if the apostles, or the reformers (or any other era that's had a big impact on how we conceive of what we do) had had access to modern media.

If the objective of the sermon is to teach the Word (as most churches from the somewhat reformed rightwards tend to say it is), then it seems peculiar that, today, we have pastors, lay preachers, and others spending hours preparing sermons for themselves. Some are much more gifted and insightful than others; and some are simply much better communicators: why not have videos of them preaching, teaching, and admonishing, rather than one of us stumbling through our own particular thoughts? You can make a classical evangelical argument out of that: spiritual gifts are given, surely, to the whole church. Modern media means that there really doesn't have to be a one-to-one mapping between gifted preachers and local fellowships.

I see a number of counter-arguments:
  1. The "sermon" isn't really just about teaching the word (or the Word). It's about the formation of the community. It's about deepening the speaker's own spiritual life. It's about addressing the issues germaine to the moment, in the community.
  2. Educational establishments are widely giving up on traditional lectures, finding them to be one of the least effective ways to teach anyone anything, and (with notable exceptions) have not found video a terribly effective substitute. What lesson for the church?
  3. Why get together to watch a video?: we can do that better in the comfort of our own homes. Indeed, watching Driscoll on the big screen is rather like watching the God channel (though I confess he's better than most of the programmes on the there). You can view the video for yourself on the church web site. That is part of the bigger question about why come together at all. What is church for?
  4. There is a huge danger in being attendant upon every word of a man (hey, it's Driscoll I have in mind; no danger of it being a woman in Mars Hill's case) at a distance. I come from a tradition with a deep fear of a "one-man ministry": often a source of eccentricity, heterodoxy, eventually out-and-out manipulation. That's what would worry me most about the set-up at Mars Hill, actually, but in the more general case, this is the most easily answered: the local leadership could select videos from all sorts of different preachers, and thereby gain really rather a balanced view.
Re-imagining our time together as a church fellowship seems terribly important for the present times. The world has changed so much from the era when everyone knew their neighbours, would walk with them to a large local church building, and sit together to receive the word (and sacrament...). We have much less need of large buildings these days, and much more need of community. Much less time, perhaps in a "service", and much more time serving each other and those around. This is not to say that the disciplines of spiritual formation are not needed today - perhaps they are, more than ever - but the shape and form they take can be so, so different, if we allow them to, and if we take advantage of all that the modern world has to offer.

2008/07/23

"Americans don't do Atheism"

Here is a new blog which will join my blogroll, at least for a while. The writing is interesting enough, and has attracted a good range of comments.

I was particularly struck by the mention of Rick Warren/Saddleback as a significant milestone in the American election campaign. In Texas last week, I had a conversation in which my interlocutor described the seeker-sensitive churches as liberal and loosing their way. It's all very interesting.

2008/07/21

Mars Hill Church, Seattle

Since I'm staying in Bellevue, Seattle, for two weeks, it was almost inevitable that I would go and check out Mars Hill Church (Bellevue Campus).

I approached with some trepidation. If you read Mark Driscoll's books, the church was founded with some of Seattle's most far-out people. Mark is a fan of Mixed Martial Arts, and the Bellevue campus has its own MMA club. It's the first church I've ever attended that had a group of burly guys with shaved heads hanging around outside, wearing T-shirts marked "security" (and no, that was not some kind of joke). Driscoll's theology is more-or-less at one with St. Ebbe's, which also scares me. (Though in the case of Ebbe's, it's more the preponderance of privately-educated members of the congregation that re-awakens in me undergraduate feelings of inadequacy. You have to be English to understand that.)

But of course, the welcome was warm, and the whole experience distinctly un-threatening. In fact, if you leave aside the fact that the sermon was shown via high-definition one-way video link to one of Mars Hill's campuses (all the campuses get the same live sermon), it could have been any Evangelical church, anywhere. Perhaps it was more middle-class than some. I certainly felt the need to remove my baseball cap... I didn't see anyone with big tattoos...

The "worship" was a perfunctory two songs. The sermon, an hour. Followed by a loosely-structured communion. I'll write more about sermonizing by video tomorrow: it raises interesting questions.

The sermon was the first of a new series on prayer. If you leave aside the Driscollisms (I was disappointed. The Cussing Pastor is evidently a thing of the past), it was completely straight down the line standard teaching on prayer. That in itself raised lots of questions for me ("you don't have to argue/struggle with God"? What about Jacob. Or Moses, come to that.), but we'll leave those on one side. I learned that Driscoll prays for parking spaces. And had his prayers on that subject answered as recently as this week.

Will I go again? Yes, maybe. Next Sunday is free right now. Would I join, if I lived here? I think it unlikely: the membership programme sounds kind-of scary. I think I would ask the wrong sort of questions.


EDIT: I did go back on the following Sunday. Previously, I'd had to dash out right after communion. In fact the band does an extended set through/after communion: this is the church's main "worship time". That's quite attractive - and unusual in a reformed-minded fellowship (to go out with communion and worship on your mind, not the sermon).

2008/07/19

Community myths

Nick's post reminds me, as does something more lengthy from the Tall Skinny Kiwi (not to mention spending last weekend in Texas) of the curious, unshakeable conviction some Americans have that having lots of guns in the community makes everyone safer. There is little evidence to support that point of view, but some people are utterly convinced of it and will not countenance a different point of view.

Equally well, try telling an Australian that their quarantine rules are more than a little over-the-top (you get fined for taking an apple from the aeroplane into the country, and airport sniffer dogs seek you out; they're particularly concerned about cheese, too, for reasons quite beyond me), and they will look at you with a horrified stare, and say "but it's essential: we have a fragile ecosystem and must protect it". They learned this at their mother's knee, and had it reconfirmed through school, and nothing will shake them.

Of course, we all have this baggage we carry around (I don't know what community myths Brits tend to hold on to: perhaps someone can tell me). I guess it must be well-studied in psychology (though not by me). And these myths are so deeply ingrained that we seldom get to see ourselves as others do: you have to live outside your own culture for quite a while to get de-programmed (or maybe re-programmed).

And it's hardly an original thought, but I'm bothered too about the extent to which the same shared psychosis affects the Christian community. "The truth as we have received it" is often all that we have, but we imagine it's the same thing as the truth that, say, the apostles received. But it ain't necessarily so.

2008/07/17

Animals and human rights

I was reading USA Today the other morning (strange what staying in a hotel does for you!), and came across an article about moves in Europe to give certain "human" rights to apes. From memory, one instance was Spain about to legislate on the subject, and another was a story from Austria about someone petitioning the European Court of Human Rights to allow certain rights to a particular great ape: specfically, the recognition of its right to life, and the appointment of a legal guardian.

Now, let's leave aside well-worn (but rather valid) arguments about rights going hand-in-hand with responsibilities (it's a long time since a horse was last tried for murder), and comments about man (solely) being made in God's image. Moreover, I'll not explore Jason Clark's Is Christianity Irredeemably Speciesist?.

What really bothers me is the shape of the current argument: the rather naive observation that higher mammals are rather like young children, or certain handicapped people: capable of high degrees of cognition and communication, yet not sufficiently developed to be able to function independently in society. I say 'naive', because the comparison is rather selective, and tends to ignore the ways in which these animals are quite unlike people - young, old, or otherwise.

I'm less worried about extending further rights to animals; I'm more worried about the comparison running the other way - that children and handicapped people are somewhat less than human. If they are on a par with great apes, then eventually they have less human rights than you and I. That flies in the face of everything which has been achieved with Bills of Rights, the Universal Declaration, the European Convention, and the rest.

It's not very postmodern of me, but I'm inclined to think that, as a general principle, the notion of certain inalienable rights for all human beings is a good thing. Extending certain rights to animals seems to dilute, rather than strengthen, that position. And that worries me.

2008/07/14

tipping tyrrany

I'm in the USA, mainly to visit Microsoft HQ for a couple of weeks.

Something I so easily forget about this country is how much I hate the
tipping culture. It's not just that I am cheap, though I am. It's
not just that I don't always know when to tip, or how much. [When my
brother first moved to the States, he had the maxim "if it moves, tip
it". That seems to work.] It's not just that it seems so arbitrary -
as far as I can see, if the person stays behind a counter or desk, you
don't generally tip them; if they walk around, you do... It's not
just that in much of the civilized world, a tip is a reward, a thank
you for outstanding service, rather than an automatic right.

No. Over all, my problem with the culture of tipping is the way that
it puts some people in a permanent position of subservience. Much of
the service economy is built on this notion that we don't really want
to guarantee you a living wage, but if you make the customer happy,
you can get a bit extra.

Now, I'm not really advocating the opposite, that we should not care
about how well or badly those people do their jobs: travel in the
former Iron Curtain countries was certainly no fun. But there are
plenty of cultures - Australia is a great example - where they mange
to structure things so that people working in such jobs get paid a
decent wage, and occasionally get a tip, while at the same time having
generally great cusomer service. Is it really so hard?

Or look at it the other way: perhaps we should tip people in all walks
of life. How great it would be if students gave me some cash at the
end of each lecture? Or if we tipped the checkout assistant at the
supermarket? Or the preacher, after the sermon? Maybe we should tip
the dentist after the tooth extraction? Why do all those sound weird?

2008/07/04

Evangelical Manifesto

Here is a most curious document. This Evangelical Manifesto sets out "A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment". There is much to be said for it: the authors do not presume to speak for anyone other than themselves, but seek to be inclusive and invite others to sign. It defines an "old school" evangelicalism, concentrated upon the good news of Jesus Christ, and doesn't stray into fundamentalist territory. Nor is it a proof text fest, as I expected it to be: in fact, I don't think there's a single direct bible quotation or reference.

And this purpose seems good:
For those who are Evangelicals, the deepest purpose of the Manifesto is a serious call to reform—an urgent challenge to reaffirm Evangelical identity, to reform Evangelical behavior, to reposition Evangelicals in public life, and so rededicate ourselves to the high calling of being Evangelical followers of Jesus Christ.
So it doesn't focus simply on identity, but also calls Evangelicals to reform their behaviour. So, for example:
All too often we have prided ourselves on our orthodoxy, but grown our churches through methods and techniques as worldly as the worldliest of Christian adaptations to passing expressions of the spirit of the age.
All too often we have failed to demonstrate the unity and harmony of the body of Christ, and fallen into factions defined by the accidents of history and sharpened by truth without love, rather than express the truth and grace of the Gospel.
And many more passages in a similar vein.

But (and you knew a 'but' was coming, didn't you...) the very lack of presumption about it makes it, well, presumptive. The preamble is long on explanations about "we who sign this declaration do so as American leaders and members of one of the world’s largest and fastest growing movements of the Christian faith". But isn't that curious? They define Evangelicalism as a theological category (so presumably its expression shouldn't be contingent upon culture), and emphatically see it as a world-wide movement, but sign "as American leaders". Why not simply "as leaders"? Something doesn't stack up. I think that what they have written is an American Evangelical Manifesto, even if the title doesn't say so.

The prose is by turns very lofty, and then third rate. Perhaps it smacks of having been written by a committee: for a twenty-page document striving for clarity, it lacks sufficient structure. I somehow expected more. Perhaps this is why it hasn't achieved a higher profile. That, and the curious web-site design making it hard to find out who has drafted and signed it.

But, those criticisms aside, perhaps the most interesting observation for me comes from Tony Jones: he notes that, especially in America, "Evangelical" can be either a theological or a cultural category. In practice, most of the time, for most people, it is surely the latter (how many members of my local Evangelical church could unaided come up with the list of seven Evangelical distinctives from the Manifesto?). Yet, these (and perhaps most) leaders define it theologically.

However, I'd go further than Jones: they may define themselves theologically, but the document is emphatically a call to action, to praxis, to being Christ's people: the deeper message is anything but a dry, definitional, systematic, confessional, faith. It is heading towards being incarnational and missional. I find that rather encouraging.

Have I signed my name to the document, using the web site? No. Will I do so? Let me get back to you.

2008/07/01

And on a similar note

Is the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans really going to call itself FOCA?

Context is crucial

I love those little dissonances you get when you see signs and announcements in unfamiliar contexts...

Here I am in a German hotel. As is common in this country, the sauna is a fully mixed sex thing, with fully naked people... In the shower area, there's a basket of mini shampoo bottles, each with a large label saying "avoid eye contact". I guess that would work.

2008/06/19

The Shia Newspaper

Someone put "The Shia Newspaper" in my letterbox a couple of days ago. You can read it online, if you want to see.

Fascinating.

I've seen a number of Evangelical (and Evangelistic) tracts presented as tabloid newspapers. This has much in common. Even down to the whole-page rant about why Darwin was so utterly wrong, and how his "prattle" has evolved... There's also a lot of mumbo-jumbo completely incomprehensible to outsiders.

Indeed, at 32 pages, totally devoid of any form of advertising, it's quite a heavyweight document: the format may be tabloid, but the articles are all longer than those in The Times and its ilk. You can admire the time and effort which has gone into producing and delivering it, but also sincerely doubt it is going to have much of an impact upon those who have received it, like I have, via a random delivery.

It's a salutary reminder, all the clearer for coming from outside my own faith community: sharing the message of Christ and his Kingdom is not easy. Engaging in some worthy activity may make us feel better (and may, by his good grace and some serendipity, advance the kingdom anyway) but eager hard work is not the same thing as effective communication.

[Yes, the self-conscious emerging punchline would say something about a relational gospel, too. You can fill in the details...]

2008/06/18

Colossians Remixed: the event

I spent today at an event organised by blah. I think I probably found it via Jonny Baker's blog, though I can't really remember. I spoke to several people who asked me why I was there: I think the answer is that having read lots of books and blogs, I thought it was time to get out and actually meet some of these emerging church-types: what do they wear? how do they smell? do they really all carry Apple Macs?

Meeting people was probably the most valuable part of the event. There was an interesting cross-section of South-of-England Christendom. I was particularly pleased to be introduced to folks from some emerging-type gatherings in Oxford: "home", and mayBe. Interesting that they both seem to be part of the Anglican Fresh Expressions: but I guess that's the sort of people you expect to meet at a CMS-hosted event.

That's not to say that the event content wasn't worthwhile, too: the speakers were Toronto-based husband and wife Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. They were giving an overview of the themes in their book Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. A nice mix of straight talking (with a little interaction), large-group interaction, and small group discussion - the teacher in me is at least as interested in the format as the content! I don't get to sit and participate from this side of the "fence" too often.

They started by talking about how that in order to understand Colossians (or any scripture) we have to understand context: the Jewish context, the Roman context, and our context as readers (there was a fourth, the micro-context of Colossae: the whole Philemon/Onessimus situation). Keesmaat is a former pupil of Tom Wright, and so the Jewish context bit is a big deal, part of the "New Approach to Paul" - a bit of theology which is slightly lost on me.

The big idea, though is that Paul's writing is deeply subversive towards the prevailing Roman system - the Pax Romana coming from a highly organized but highly violent society, with a stable economy built on slave labour and keeping the Roman Citizens in the style to which the had become accustomed. And without naively looking for one-to-one correspondences, we can see many similar patterns in today's western society. Ergo, our calling is likewise to subvert the prevailing order.

They speak persuasively, and so I really want to read the book. Somehow, the message starts to sound similar to that other well-known Toronto activist's Naomi Klein - a politics I have some passing sympathy for, but eventually I'm inclined to reject. The compassion which motivates it is spot-on. The analysis of the ills of globalization is far less clear. But perhaps that should be the subject of a separate blog, because this one is already over-long.

The book is, in essence, a commentary on Colossians (evidently, it describes itself as an anti-commentary), and a fairly academic one, at that, I'm told. I'll look forward to reading it, if I can manage the theology.

2008/06/16

Storing up treasure

I don't often find that my doodlings here cross paths with my professional life. But a recent post in an information security blog pointed me to the rather remarkable "You've Been Left Behind" Services website. For a modest fee, they will store for you emails and messages to be sent to loved ones after the Rapture has taken place.

The quote appears to run like this:
"The unsaved will be 'left behind' on earth to go through the 'tribulation period' after the "Rapture".... We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You will also be able to give them some help in living out their remaining time. In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys' (you won't be needing them any more, and the gift will drive home the message of love). There won't be any bodies, so probate court will take 7 years to clear your assets to your next of Kin. 7 years of course is all the time that will be left. So, basically the Government of the AntiChrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way."
Now, I can't find this on the site anywhere. It certainly would be a great way to mount an identity theft operation: most people who lodged details there would almost certainly forget about it after a little while. Maybe they've taken down that particular suggestion for now.

The world is always slightly more odd than you expected it to be, it seems to me.

My Walk to Work

Today, I thought I'd try something different. I have a lovely walk to work. It is beautiful and serene. I'm not sure this timelapse video does it justice. I thought it would be easier than uploading lots of still photographs.

2008/06/08

Review - Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture



Review
Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture
Michael Frost


This book has had pretty good reviews all round, so I had to read it. If truth be told, it's been on my "current reading" list for some months. It went all the way to Australia with me, and back. Only now do I discover that while I was there, I was driving right past Morling College daily - I could have called in to see the author! He's doing a tour of the UK later in 2008, so I rather hope I can go to hear him speak anyway.

And I think that would be worth doing. Certainly some of the sections of the book are sit-up-and-take-notice-good. The central theme of the book is well-expressed by the title: that Christians - specifically, those of us living in Western society - are like exiles in the culture which surrounds us, cut adrift from the Christendom we once called home. Christians are called in the New Testament to live as aliens and strangers in the world, but the present position of the church vis-a-vis the rest of society is something we haven't experienced in well over a millennium.

So we get passages like this:

The experience that faced the Jewish exiles mirrors the church's experience today. In fact, the biblical metaphor that best suits our current times and faith situation is that of exile. Just like the Jewish exiles, the church today is grieving its loss and is struggling with humiliation. ... The passing of Christendom might be compared to the fall of Jerusalem, and there is no going back.


Such talk is at once refreshing - we don't often dare say such things - and challenging. If we admit that there's no foreseeable return to the way faith was practiced a century ago, say, then we have to reconsider, maybe, just what we are here for, and how to do it. I guess that is what the remainder of the book is about.

And that's where some of it seems to unravel. Much of it is a great re-imagining of what church ought to be about, or could be about. But that's inter-mixed with some frankly bizarre sections telling me how to improve my diet ("drink more water"; "don't overdo carbohydrates"; "eat more protein"...), and be good to the planet ("recycle plastics"; "replace ordinary lightbulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs" ...), and some half-baked economic theory. The principle is sound - I'm sure that missional living must impact how we shop and run our households, as well, as what we claim to believe - but the detail seems somehow ... small.

So, like Punch's Curates Egg, I'd have to offer the review "Good in parts". If you can get past the atrocious page design and font choice, the slight academic verbosity, and the curiously nit-picking social science norms for citation and referencing (frankly I don't care that the author referenced a particular web page on the 21st February 2006), this is an excellent and thought-provoking read.

2008/05/30

Theological Quiz

Ok, thanks to Chris Case, I found an interesting quiz, with enough questions to give a reasonable measure. I'm a bit surprised by the result: I know I've never been terribly reformed, but I suspect most people who met me would have me down as a moderately conservative evangelical right now. Or maybe not. Note to self: theology is one thing; action is another.






What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com
You scored as Emergent/Postmodern

You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.


Emergent/Postmodern


93%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan


71%

Modern Liberal


61%

Neo orthodox


57%

Classical Liberal


46%

Roman Catholic


39%

Charismatic/Pentecostal


39%

Reformed Evangelical


32%

Fundamentalist


11%


2008/05/24

Ouch!

Peter Rollins' writing is always thought-provoking. I don't understand it all, but I find it by turns confusing, exciting, provocative, thrilling, and many other things beside.

His post this week (Treating church as a fetish) certainly fits those categories. Sometimes, I feel quite at one with those he describes in the first paragraph (though I would hesitate to describe my fellowship as "dogmatic"), but far from all the time. The post is, however, quite close to the mark. Not that I fully understand the last part of it. The ensuing comments make for an interesting discussion, as does his promise that more thoughts on the same subject are yet to come.

I appreciate most of his sentiments, and yet, I wonder. Is it really a given that we are eventually happiest when we throw off the social charades? The pursuit of truth is downright important, but some ways of doing so cause more pain than others. For me, evolutionary change usually beats revolutionary change.

2008/05/20

The Ethical Cross-Road

On which topic is the vast majority of (Western) Christianity at odds with wider society most vocally? Something central to Jesus' teaching perhaps? Or a key Pauline doctrine on how to live in a world tainted by sin? Or at least, something the law of Moses dwells on? Or a topic from one of the catholic creeds? Or something that would feature in the "basis of faith" or "doctrinal statement" of most of our churches and para-church movements?

Arguably none of those (though therein lies part of the argument). No, one thing where there's a huge amount of friction is biomedical ethics, and specifically the issues around reproduction. The British Parliament is currently debating a bill on the subject, and has already voted to allow human-animal hybrid embryos (though precisely what that means is ill-explored in the press); to allow the creation of "saviour siblings" (engineered to provide genetically-suitable material to be a doner to a sick brother or sister); to remove the presumption in IVF that the child to be created should have a father figure; and, as I write, probably to retain the present term limits on abortion.

All this is taking place against the backdrop of arguments - largely from believing people - that these things are bad, unethical, and calling down judgement upon the land and/or the people. Of course, the lines are not perfectly drawn, and there are believers and unbelievers on both sides, but the voice of opposition seems to come largely from the Catholics and the Evangelicals.

Have we got it right? Of course, there's no a priori reason why society has to have got it right: indeed, there are many reasons to suppose, on many issues, that society has not. And yet, those promoting the measures described above (and embryonic stem cell research, and much else beside) do so not from a hedonistic desire to promote sexual licence or infidelity, but from a genuine wish to advance medical science, to allow as wide a cross-section of the community as possible to enjoy family life, and to avoid the terror of a return to "back-street abortions". These are all good motivations.

It would be naive to say that because the motivation is good, therefore the measures and the consequences must also be morally worthwhile. But, on the issues at hand, at least, that seems to be the direction of travel for our society. And it has much to commend it.

Man made in the image of God might well expect to wield the creative power of God. I find it hard to approve of selective breeding but disapprove of DNA manipulation. "You shall do no murder" is a plain enough command, but there is a legitimate debate about when life begins.

I have this fear of Christians painting themselves into a corner, rather as some have over creationism; rather as the JWs have over blood transfusions; rather as the Amish have over the trappings of modern life. In 50 years' time, there will be a staggering range of treatments on offer. Many will, in all probability, have had their genesis in, say, embryonic stem cells - whether as a one-off kick-start, or as an ongoing part of the treatment. Will there be a rump of Christians who refuse to have anything to do with those treatments? Will that be a large or a small rump? How will that impact telling people about God's love and the gospel of the kingdom?

It strikes me that we stand at a cross-roads. Our society is choosing to take its bus off down a particular route. We choose that route or another at our peril. But I think the time is running out for that choice.

2008/05/19

Emerging politics/economics

Something that's quite striking about the emerging conversation (or whatever you want to call it) is the fairly overtly political (or economic; the two being very closely linked) stance often involved. That seems entirely reasonable: the gospel is about transforming ourselves and our community according to kingdom principles, surely.

And yet, that too is a reason why it's silly to try and say "emerging church people believe X", because the context in which politics is being done varies so much from place to place. I'm very struck, for example, by the way in which both Democrat candidates for the US presidency are surely (on most analyses) somewhere to the right of the British Conservative Party (not that "left" and "right" work so well as political categories these days). Emerging church as a protest against the alignment of evangelicals with the American Right has no obvious counterpart in Britain.

Which is why Josh Brown's Indian Taxi Fund is intriguing: it's a plan to raise money for Amit, a church planting guy in India. But it's constructed as a loan scheme, along the lines of Kiva, but more relational. So, folks from the blogosphere hand over cash to help get a business going for Amit (it was going to be a taxi; now it looks as if it will be a shop), and later the money will be paid back. Now, that sounds like a very right wing way of thinking about aid to me - but to Josh and others (I'm guessing here, but with some confidence) it probably seems radical and subversive.

Perhaps this blog is just a thinly-veiled way of suggesting that you, gentle reader, might want to participate in the fund. That would be a most excellent thing to do. Perhaps, too, it is a plea to anyone who wants to put the conversation (or whatever you want to call it) into a box and claim to understand the full extent of the motivation of all the participants. It's all a bit too complex for that.

2008/05/14

Love Oxford: Pentecost in the Open Air

Sunday saw a large open-air service for Pentecost, in the centre of Oxford. This was an initiative of a big combination of many of the city's churches, under the banner of "Love Oxford".


Mostly, I feel very positive about that. First, it was a celebration, a festival of faith: it sought to be inclusive for people on the edge of faith, but wasn't particularly trying to arrest and proselytize them. We celebrated the birthday of the church, the joy of all being together, the tremendous heritage we have in this city, and much else beside. The sermon, from Michael Green, stressed that those who believed needed to get out there and serve our city - whether in youth work, caring for the elderly, looking after the homeless, serving on the City Council, and so on. The climax of the meeting was some open-air baptisms, conducted jointly by one of the city's Baptist pastors and the (Anglican) Bishop of Oxford: what an expression of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism"!

I do wonder what the non-churchpeople thought of it all. One of the students in a nearby college (doubtless rudly awakened at 11.30am on a Sunday, and resenting it) started playing loud music from his (or her, but I'm guessing his) window: but it didn't last long. Perhaps he decided to get a life; perhaps the college authorities impressed their rules upon him. I could imagine that for many of those around, the strength of the message would have come from how many people stayed around to buy lunch (and the attitude they had as they waited in line). And how they responded to the stewards asking them to keep the footpaths clear. Or to the crazy cyclist who insisted on taking his bike right through the middle of the crowd.

Slightly mixed feelings? Well the thing that spurred me to write this after all was today's Tall Skinny Kiwi's post on Post-Charismatics. It seems churlish of me to criticize the event on stylistic grounds (when they went to great lengths to be inclusive), but the phrase "Many are Post-Charismatic. . . after 20 years, they would rather shoot themselves than sing another chorus." seems apposite. After about the twentieth time of singing "Greater things are yet to come, ... still to be done... in this city" it did begin to pall slightly. Well, actually, the second time wasn't that great. And I wasn't really sure what the phrase/song was supposed to mean. In fact, the more I think about it, the less sure I am. [The whole singing and worship thing prompted some other thoughts, actually, but they'll have to wait for another blog.]
Nor was I sure what to make of Charlie Cleverly's outburst prayer "Lord we're so jealous of China". But perhaps we can let that ride.

2008/05/01

Ascension Day

How is it that those from the protestant wing of Christendom don't tend to celebrate Ascension Day? This day - today - 40 days after Easter, celebrates the end of Christ's ministry on earth. It's a day for closure, celebration, for victory. A veritable feast day. I confess that it has all but passed me by. I would have gone to the Cathedral service ... but I, er, forgot.

I know that some people celebrate festivals of the church not for their own sake, but because they represent "an opportunity" to "reach" people. I understand that when my parents were younger, our "tribe" celebrated Easter only insofar as it was an opportunity to get together over a long weekend (in England, we have public holidays on Good Friday and Easter Monday) for a conference, not as a specific celebration of Jesus' death and resurrection. So, I guess, with Ascension-tide having a lower profile in the wider community (and no public holiday!), there's been no reason to mark it.

But what a narrow view of festivals this is. Primarily, surely, they belong to the Christian community. They are an opportunity to mark the turning of the year, and to rehearse the details of our shared faith; to teach the young, and to cure us of narrow emphasis. The liturgical traditions, with their set readings covering the whole bible through the year, and festivals to mark all the major events of Christ's life (and other events too), have much to teach the rest of us. Slavish adherence to that Church calendar may be out of keeping with the modern age, and it certainly isn't an essential, but I'm increasingly convinced that if we overlook these markers of the changing seasons of the year, we are the lesser for it.