Rather a lot of heat has been generated over the regulations to allow religious premises to be used for conducting Civil Partnership ceremonies, which come in to force this week, I think.
The gist of the so-called 'Ali Amendment' (named after Lord Ali, who proposed it), is that Civil Partnerships can be conducted in religious premises, if the couple in question wishes it, and the relevant faith community allows it. The new regulations implement this law.
However, this is ill thought out, because the law also determines that a Civil Partnership cannot be conducted within the context of a religious service (just as, at a Civil Wedding, prayers and mentions of God are strictly regulated, and generally prohibited unless in a very vague sense in a poem, etc.). By some oversight, that provision didn't get repealed.
Various groups - such as the Quakers - are overjoyed at this provision. Others, much less so. They are particularly concerned that the option of hosting these non-religious religious ceremonies might get turned into an obligation by equality legislation. The Anglican lawyers think they're off the hook because the arrangements under which the CofE conducts weddings are very far removed from Civil Marriage - so no dint of inequality arises, because there is no direct comparison anyway. [This seems to dwell on the letter, rather than the spirit of the law!].
Other churches feel themselves in a more vulnerable position, because both their ability to conduct weddings and the new opportunity to conduct Civil Partnerships (albeit without a religious service while the Registrar is present) are both licenced in the same way with the local Registrar's office (albeit via separate applications). Though they couldn't be compelled to do something for which they are not licenced, it might be discriminatory for them not to apply for a licence, I guess.
All this seems Pharisaically hypothetical to me. The idea that two people are going to launch a lawsuit to enable them to host the 'happiest day of their lives' in premises where they are manifestly unwelcome seems remarkably far-fetched. I suppose that after being turned down, some particularly vindictive person might seek damages - but to what end?
Perhaps it would be better to spend time not seeking safeguards, but in looking at what sort of damage this kind of argument does to the message of the gospel. Jesus pronounced a lot of woe on religious leaders trying to uphold their legal system: to the rest of the population, not so much. "Love your neighbour" he said - and who is my neighbour?
2011/11/18
2011/11/16
disappointed
Wycliffe Hall is next door to my College. Its Principal gives a surprisingly candid interview. I'm disappointed, but not surprised, by much of what he says. I'm uncertain as to why he is proud that Wycliffe Hall is a part of the University of Oxford, given that he rather clearly doesn't share the University's present values, on a range of topics.
A wise man said that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. I wonder if that's relevant here?
A wise man said that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. I wonder if that's relevant here?
2011/11/06
blogger gone crazy
blogger is screwing up my blog layout. I don't know why. Sorry for the inconvenience.
[edit]
I think it's now fixed. Please let me know if there are still problems with comments.
[edit]
I think it's now fixed. Please let me know if there are still problems with comments.
Review: Fall to Grace
Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self, and SocietyJay Bakker with Martin Edlund
Amazon tells me I bought this book in January, so the fact that I've just finished reading it is a matter of some embarrassment, but that seems to be my common complaint - too many books on my 'to read' pile. So perhaps I'm missing the boat with this review - many others reviewed the book long ago. But it's a good book, so here goes.
Bakker's surname will perhaps ring bells: his parents Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Televangelists in the name of "Praise the Lord (PTL) Ministries". Probably more wholesome than some, the whole thing collapsed in the late 1980s, with stories (well-founded, sending Jim to jail) of financial irregularity, and stories (well-founded) of marital infidelity. Jay was 13 at the time, went proverbially "off the rails" - meeting his dad out of prison, he describes himself as "eighteen, pierced, and a raging alcoholic". His dad tried to help him reform - but instead he found himself digging a deeper hole.
Perhaps he over-plays that fall - I guess others have fallen further - and yet, it is an essential part of his tale. Through the patient help of a friend or two, and the help of a "twelve-step program", he not only cleaned up his life, he discovered a real revelation of God's grace. In place of the Christianity he thought he had received (despite some insightful pastoral wisdom from his mother, described later) founded on sin, guilt, and judgement, he learned instead a story of grace, of love, of acceptance.
Following this autobiographical introduction, he explores in rather more detail this theme of grace, tracing it through Paul and other biblical authors. With the zeal of a convert, he describes both the theology and the way it's worked out in his experience. He explores the ways in which the message of grace embodies the gospel so much better than the preaching of morality. In one sense, it's pedestrian stuff - but so often it isn't lived, it's just theory. Bakker puts this grace-laden gospel into practice, in the Christian community he now helps to lead, which meets in a bar and ministers to many on the fringes of polite society - precisely the kind of people that Jesus hung out with.
Besides this general interplay of theory and practice, of theology and a lived-out gospel, he spends a few later chapters exploring the outworking of this line of thinking in a few more detailed topics. In particular, he revisits the way that the church has treated gay people. Not only exploring the theology, he describes experiences in a national mission/conversation attempting to dispel fears and misconceptions (and his disappointment at the way Rick Warren and Saddleback church treated them). He describes how and why the church he serves - Revolution Church - is gay-affirming. He describes how this approach makes a difference for individual Christians.
This book is on the one hand an immensely personal book - the story of Jay Bakker's journey into understanding God's grace (I'm sure he wouldn't claim to have arrived yet). And on the other, it is a gentle tour of one of the absolutely central themes of the gospel - one that too often we overlook because somehow it is too generous, too outrageous, too loving, too much at odds with our cold hearts. His penultimate paragraph is this, it sums up the book rather well:
Grace is all about acceptance. By accepting grace we accept God, we accept ourselves, we accept each other.You probably gathered that I rather liked this book. It's all about God's grace. What's not to like?
2011/10/31
on the protesters
Anne Atkins on Newsnight: "if the protesters had encamped outside St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, instead of St. Paul's, they'd have been evangelized within five minutes". How true! Would they still be in place, one wonders?
I genuinely don't know what to make of the protests. It seems that the poor erstwhile Dean and Chapter are confused also. It has been amusing to see politicians of every stripe trying to put their oar in, and entirely failing to understand what the issues are. The letters to the Daily Telegraph never fail to amuse - and miss the point, it seems.
Followers of Christ are called to seek justice for the poor - but whether that is the same thing as finding common cause with those camping in front of St Paul's is, well, unclear.
I genuinely don't know what to make of the protests. It seems that the poor erstwhile Dean and Chapter are confused also. It has been amusing to see politicians of every stripe trying to put their oar in, and entirely failing to understand what the issues are. The letters to the Daily Telegraph never fail to amuse - and miss the point, it seems.
Followers of Christ are called to seek justice for the poor - but whether that is the same thing as finding common cause with those camping in front of St Paul's is, well, unclear.
2011/10/22
by their fruits
alternative title: to whom would Jesus send a cease and desist notice?
Apparently, Mars Hill Church in Seattle has set its lawyers on to Mars Hill Church Sacramento. The combination of the name and logo is claimed to be too close for comfort. We're not talking about hamburger franchises here, we're talking Christian congregations. I nearly swore there. Sorry.
I was going to reproduce the logos here, for comparison, but that turns out to be difficult for silly technical reasons. You can see them here:
http://marshillsacramento.com/
http://marshill.com/
Is really the fruit of the gospel that Jesus had in mind? Are these Kingdom values? Somehow it's not surprising, but it seems desperately sad.
Apparently, Mars Hill Church in Seattle has set its lawyers on to Mars Hill Church Sacramento. The combination of the name and logo is claimed to be too close for comfort. We're not talking about hamburger franchises here, we're talking Christian congregations. I nearly swore there. Sorry.
I was going to reproduce the logos here, for comparison, but that turns out to be difficult for silly technical reasons. You can see them here:
http://marshillsacramento.com/
http://marshill.com/
Is really the fruit of the gospel that Jesus had in mind? Are these Kingdom values? Somehow it's not surprising, but it seems desperately sad.
2011/10/16
on gay marriage
My blog post of last week left a loose end over the issue of gay marriage - or, as the advocates would prefer, marriage equality for gay people.
It does seem to have become a terribly polarizing issue - but my reaction is to want the middle ground.
In America, reactions to calls for people to be allowed to marry others of the same sex have certainly fallen out on largely political partisan lines - though by no means all Democrats are on one side, and occasionally a brave Republican will break ranks to call for change. In Britain, the Prime Minister (Conservative) recently suggested that having gay people marry each other was a thoroughly Conservative thing to do (since it tends to promote commitment, fidelity, stability; all [C]conservative values). Much of his party might disagree. Meanwhile, the Australian Prime Minister (Labor) seems to regard the idea as anathema, whereas her party appears largely to accept the idea.
Churches seem largely to be opposed - but my gripe with the EA last week was of course that the reasons for this seem to have more to do with either the practice of homosexual sex (which is not immediately relevant to he question), or to a somewhat circular argument that "marriage is defined as the union of a man and a women, so two men cannot get married". The bible largely takes man-women marriage as a given, but does not teach a great deal about it, and certainly doesn't set out to define it.
Undoubtedly, the first of those two positions is significant: it's a kind of rearguard action against society's broad acceptance of gay lifestyles. It's as if some want to say "well, we lost the argument long ago, but we want to continue to express our dislike." That's a powerful piece of prejudice, and leads to the rather curious argument which suggests that if gay people are married to each other this will somehow diminish the marriages of straight people. I can't quite fathom why. Undoubtedly, the aim is indeed to redefine the meaning of the word "marriage" to encompass more than it traditionally has.
There is additionally a red herring argument suggesting that whilst churches are not expected to be required to participate in solemnising marriages of gay people to each other (and, indeed, they may not be permitted to do so), some have thought that it will be only a matter of time before this is reversed, and equality laws will be invoked to force churches to act against their consciences. To this we might say that firstly if equality law were being invoked, the difference between marriage and civil partnership would be irrelevant - and even less speculatively, every church (perhaps excepting the CoE) has the right to marry whomsoever it chooses and deny marriage to whomsoever it chooses, according to its own criteria. That seems unlikely to change.
So the naming issue seems crucial, at least in the UK context. Civil Partnerships exist for gay people. They've been around for several years, and quite a few thousand people have taken advantage of that opportunity. Civil partnerships convey just about all the same rights and responsibilities upon those partnered and those who interact with them as civil marriages do. And many, colloquially, talk of them with the same vocabulary as is used for marriage - wedding, husband, married, and so on.
So it seems to me that all we must ask is "what's in a name?". To the gay community, I would have to ask whether it really matters what it says at the top of your certificate. the difference between "marriage certificate" and "civil partnership certificate" doesn't seem so very great to me - especially when your friends and family can and will call it the first anyway. There are many areas in society where the official wording differs from the vernacular.
But the same argument works in the other direction: it really is just a change of name, so why should anyone get upset about it happening? Of all the things to expend energy over, the use of one word instead of another seems among the most foolish. To say "it can be a partnership but not a marriage" really doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you want to argue that civil marriage is somehow sacred (which sounds like a contradiction in terms).
So, essentially I see no particularly strong reason for a change, and no particularly strong reason to deny a change. The difference is that making the change will make a few more people happy, and at least in their own judgement, reduce the total sum of iniquitous discrimination. That, in itself, seems a good enough reason to support the change.
It does seem to have become a terribly polarizing issue - but my reaction is to want the middle ground.
In America, reactions to calls for people to be allowed to marry others of the same sex have certainly fallen out on largely political partisan lines - though by no means all Democrats are on one side, and occasionally a brave Republican will break ranks to call for change. In Britain, the Prime Minister (Conservative) recently suggested that having gay people marry each other was a thoroughly Conservative thing to do (since it tends to promote commitment, fidelity, stability; all [C]conservative values). Much of his party might disagree. Meanwhile, the Australian Prime Minister (Labor) seems to regard the idea as anathema, whereas her party appears largely to accept the idea.
Churches seem largely to be opposed - but my gripe with the EA last week was of course that the reasons for this seem to have more to do with either the practice of homosexual sex (which is not immediately relevant to he question), or to a somewhat circular argument that "marriage is defined as the union of a man and a women, so two men cannot get married". The bible largely takes man-women marriage as a given, but does not teach a great deal about it, and certainly doesn't set out to define it.
Undoubtedly, the first of those two positions is significant: it's a kind of rearguard action against society's broad acceptance of gay lifestyles. It's as if some want to say "well, we lost the argument long ago, but we want to continue to express our dislike." That's a powerful piece of prejudice, and leads to the rather curious argument which suggests that if gay people are married to each other this will somehow diminish the marriages of straight people. I can't quite fathom why. Undoubtedly, the aim is indeed to redefine the meaning of the word "marriage" to encompass more than it traditionally has.
There is additionally a red herring argument suggesting that whilst churches are not expected to be required to participate in solemnising marriages of gay people to each other (and, indeed, they may not be permitted to do so), some have thought that it will be only a matter of time before this is reversed, and equality laws will be invoked to force churches to act against their consciences. To this we might say that firstly if equality law were being invoked, the difference between marriage and civil partnership would be irrelevant - and even less speculatively, every church (perhaps excepting the CoE) has the right to marry whomsoever it chooses and deny marriage to whomsoever it chooses, according to its own criteria. That seems unlikely to change.
So the naming issue seems crucial, at least in the UK context. Civil Partnerships exist for gay people. They've been around for several years, and quite a few thousand people have taken advantage of that opportunity. Civil partnerships convey just about all the same rights and responsibilities upon those partnered and those who interact with them as civil marriages do. And many, colloquially, talk of them with the same vocabulary as is used for marriage - wedding, husband, married, and so on.
So it seems to me that all we must ask is "what's in a name?". To the gay community, I would have to ask whether it really matters what it says at the top of your certificate. the difference between "marriage certificate" and "civil partnership certificate" doesn't seem so very great to me - especially when your friends and family can and will call it the first anyway. There are many areas in society where the official wording differs from the vernacular.
But the same argument works in the other direction: it really is just a change of name, so why should anyone get upset about it happening? Of all the things to expend energy over, the use of one word instead of another seems among the most foolish. To say "it can be a partnership but not a marriage" really doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you want to argue that civil marriage is somehow sacred (which sounds like a contradiction in terms).
So, essentially I see no particularly strong reason for a change, and no particularly strong reason to deny a change. The difference is that making the change will make a few more people happy, and at least in their own judgement, reduce the total sum of iniquitous discrimination. That, in itself, seems a good enough reason to support the change.
2011/10/09
a little milestone
This weekend, I resigned my membership of The Evangelical Alliance. I've been a member for most of the last twenty years, so that seems quite a big deal, somehow. I did it with a heavy heart, but it's been becoming an inevitable step, for a while now.
The EA often seems to be a force for good. It has generally avoided narrow sectarian positions, enabling it for a long time to claim to speak for one million UK residents (through personal and church memberships). They've dropped that line from their promotional material now, but they still seem to have a large following. In general, the EA promotes the positive things its members have been doing, and frequently undertakes sensible lobbying positions in speaking to government.
There was a time when I thought those approaches were spot-on and just right: I was proud of the EA and proud to be a member. But somehow the things it does have become increasingly marginal to me - and, I'd suggest, to a lot of other people who might live with a label like emerging or post-evangelical. I know that I have moved in an inclusive direction - I rather suspect that the EA has moved in the opposite direction.
In thinking about membership, one might start with the basis of faith, since this is the thing that all members must agree on. It is an unexceptional list - and widely adopted by EA affiliates as their own basis also. Do I still believe it? Well, that depends what you mean. If I wanted to claim that I did, I would need to re-interpret several of the clauses to imply something other than what most would agree upon as their "plain meaning". But more than that, my problem really is with making such a list the basis of unity: it seems a category mistake. Where in that list is the teaching of Christ? Even is command to love our neighbours is relegated to something of an after-thought in clause 11, where the outworking of that command is given largely to the Spirit, not to the believer. Surrounded by people in need, is it really so important that we unite around the abstract idea of the Virgin Birth? And so on. The clause on the authority of Scripture is delightfully vague, but seems to mean something which I don't think I share.
Reaching the conclusion a while ago that the basis of faith was rather irrelevant, I wondered if I could continue membership. I decided to keep an eye on news, and decide whether I would wish to be publicly associated with the EA's positions. And so, on Friday, I came across two recent news articles:
I'm not leaving the EA on the strength of two short articles, but they are the proverbial last straw. Sorry EA, you don't speak for me.
The EA often seems to be a force for good. It has generally avoided narrow sectarian positions, enabling it for a long time to claim to speak for one million UK residents (through personal and church memberships). They've dropped that line from their promotional material now, but they still seem to have a large following. In general, the EA promotes the positive things its members have been doing, and frequently undertakes sensible lobbying positions in speaking to government.
There was a time when I thought those approaches were spot-on and just right: I was proud of the EA and proud to be a member. But somehow the things it does have become increasingly marginal to me - and, I'd suggest, to a lot of other people who might live with a label like emerging or post-evangelical. I know that I have moved in an inclusive direction - I rather suspect that the EA has moved in the opposite direction.
In thinking about membership, one might start with the basis of faith, since this is the thing that all members must agree on. It is an unexceptional list - and widely adopted by EA affiliates as their own basis also. Do I still believe it? Well, that depends what you mean. If I wanted to claim that I did, I would need to re-interpret several of the clauses to imply something other than what most would agree upon as their "plain meaning". But more than that, my problem really is with making such a list the basis of unity: it seems a category mistake. Where in that list is the teaching of Christ? Even is command to love our neighbours is relegated to something of an after-thought in clause 11, where the outworking of that command is given largely to the Spirit, not to the believer. Surrounded by people in need, is it really so important that we unite around the abstract idea of the Virgin Birth? And so on. The clause on the authority of Scripture is delightfully vague, but seems to mean something which I don't think I share.
Reaching the conclusion a while ago that the basis of faith was rather irrelevant, I wondered if I could continue membership. I decided to keep an eye on news, and decide whether I would wish to be publicly associated with the EA's positions. And so, on Friday, I came across two recent news articles:
- The government should celebrate and protect marriage, not re-define it, and
- More of a big mistake than a big bang
I'm not leaving the EA on the strength of two short articles, but they are the proverbial last straw. Sorry EA, you don't speak for me.
2011/08/15
excessively postmodern?
I'm in Australia on holidays again, and as with last year, confronted by some of the presentations surrounding Aboriginal culture.
In Kakadu National park, Official notices on signs side-by-side (or, in some cases, even on a single sign) report both details of the billion-year-old rocks, and the news that the land was created in the dream time by the rainbow serpent. Not 'Aboriginal people believe that...', but 'it was'. These narratives are not entirely compatible. Well, that is to say, they are not compatible within our dominant system of epistemology. To ditch that system for this reason is something of a bold move, because it is rather a successful one. (We'll return to success in a moment).
To select those two narratives, and omit, say, 'creation science' or 'flood geology' seems a little arbitrary - not that I am uncomfortable with their omission, since they do not strike me as useful descriptions. One's own perspective is of course subjective: how is the National Parks Authority to select narratives, stories, and explanations? Do you privilege the Aboriginal perspective due to its longevity? Due to the sensibilities of the 'traditional owners' (a phrase itself laden with competing meanings)? Due to the expectations of the readers? Due to the long standing oppression and disadvantage of the Aboriginal people - to allow a voice that was for a long time denied?
Privileging the voices of the marginalized sounds like a good thing to do. But I can't help wondering if, applied naively, doing so is eventually self-defeating: you'd want to ask how those people became marginalized in the first place. The more successful voice/culture tends to overwhelm the less successful one, it was ever thus. In many walks of life, we would be in a parlous state if not. Perhaps that is an equally naive appeal to a kind of cultural survival of the fittest.
Success tends to be measured in terms of money, sex, and power. Perhaps it would be better if it were not. Instead, we might appeal to justice for the poor, living in harmony with the environment, self-giving, and a heap of other values that we tend to recognize as good humanistic qualities. Indeed, we might see those as biblical values, as Christ-like characteristics.
But does that really work? Would justice for the poor be best served by giving equal balance to the voices of the homeopath as to the voice of the scientific medical community? Will our emissions of CO2 be reduced by giving weight both to those who don't understand physics and chemistry, as well as to those who do? For the way that we understand the last 500 years of science, with all its very tangible benefits to the quality of life for all (all? most? some?) is very deeply rooted in a privileged narrative, with a value system of very definite 'right' and 'wrong', and based upon a culture which very often promotes those with sharpest elbows. Can we truly turn our backs on that - or embrace an epistemic humility - without losing its benefits? I guess it's a matter of scale.
I want to inhabit a world - and a system of knowing - where we give proportionate weight to every voice. But who decides what's proportionate?
In Kakadu National park, Official notices on signs side-by-side (or, in some cases, even on a single sign) report both details of the billion-year-old rocks, and the news that the land was created in the dream time by the rainbow serpent. Not 'Aboriginal people believe that...', but 'it was'. These narratives are not entirely compatible. Well, that is to say, they are not compatible within our dominant system of epistemology. To ditch that system for this reason is something of a bold move, because it is rather a successful one. (We'll return to success in a moment).
To select those two narratives, and omit, say, 'creation science' or 'flood geology' seems a little arbitrary - not that I am uncomfortable with their omission, since they do not strike me as useful descriptions. One's own perspective is of course subjective: how is the National Parks Authority to select narratives, stories, and explanations? Do you privilege the Aboriginal perspective due to its longevity? Due to the sensibilities of the 'traditional owners' (a phrase itself laden with competing meanings)? Due to the expectations of the readers? Due to the long standing oppression and disadvantage of the Aboriginal people - to allow a voice that was for a long time denied?
Privileging the voices of the marginalized sounds like a good thing to do. But I can't help wondering if, applied naively, doing so is eventually self-defeating: you'd want to ask how those people became marginalized in the first place. The more successful voice/culture tends to overwhelm the less successful one, it was ever thus. In many walks of life, we would be in a parlous state if not. Perhaps that is an equally naive appeal to a kind of cultural survival of the fittest.
Success tends to be measured in terms of money, sex, and power. Perhaps it would be better if it were not. Instead, we might appeal to justice for the poor, living in harmony with the environment, self-giving, and a heap of other values that we tend to recognize as good humanistic qualities. Indeed, we might see those as biblical values, as Christ-like characteristics.
But does that really work? Would justice for the poor be best served by giving equal balance to the voices of the homeopath as to the voice of the scientific medical community? Will our emissions of CO2 be reduced by giving weight both to those who don't understand physics and chemistry, as well as to those who do? For the way that we understand the last 500 years of science, with all its very tangible benefits to the quality of life for all (all? most? some?) is very deeply rooted in a privileged narrative, with a value system of very definite 'right' and 'wrong', and based upon a culture which very often promotes those with sharpest elbows. Can we truly turn our backs on that - or embrace an epistemic humility - without losing its benefits? I guess it's a matter of scale.
I want to inhabit a world - and a system of knowing - where we give proportionate weight to every voice. But who decides what's proportionate?
2011/08/14
review: Church in the present tense
Church in the present tense: A candid look at what is emerging
Scot McKnight, Peter Rollins, Kevin Corcoran, Jason Clark
My rule these days is that I buy hard copy books if I expect to enjoy them and lend them to others, and Kindle books if no lending is anticipated. I bought Church in the Present Tense in hard copy. But I'm not sure I will be lending it to many others.
In terms of disappointment, this book most puts me in mind of D A Carson's book on the Emerging Church, but the comparison is hardly fair. Carson seemingly spoke from a position of little real engagement: these authors are clearly active participants in what is emerging. And yet, because each really only speaks from a narrow personal perspective, the picture is still patchy, and didn't seem to me to amount to a candid look at all. Perhaps I just expected the wrong thing,
The book consists of eight chapters, with each author contributing two. Corcoran is the editor and writes first, about philosophical realism. This is a curious wander through Postmodernism, epistemic humility, and a heap of related topics: I felt as if I was receiving lots of polemic from Corcoran and understanding his own belief system - but it did little to persuade me to adopt it for myself. The second essay in the 'philosophy' section is by Rollins: surely he is writing about his favourote topic. I'm not sure that excuses a line discussing "Heidegger's somewhat Kierkegaardian reading of Nietzsche ...", but over-all the is Rollins at his more readable.
The successive parts take us through Theology, Worship, and Bible and Doctrine. Each takes us on a tour of the author's perspective, which is interesting,but doesn't really pretend to be representative or typical of the emerging churches they invoke (patchily). McKnight's chapter on scripture in the emerging movement put me very much in mind of McLaren's distinction of bible as constitution versus bible as library. But I fear the latter made the point more clearly. Under worship, Rollins writes on Transformance Art, reprising some of the parable-based stuff from his recent Orthodox Heretic. He also offers the helpful observation "It is not difficult to avoid hipocrisy when you believe in nothing."
The book comes with a DVD - another reason to but the hard copy - but no reference is made to it in the pages of the book, and as I write this I haven't had opportunity ot view it.
Overall, this must be said to be a book at the 'academic' end of the 'popular' spectrum. It's well constructed, but I cannot really describe it as instructive. It's a bit disappointing; it feels like a lost opportunity .
2011/07/17
the tension
Recent posts by Ross McKenzie and Philip Jensen (h/t to Ross, again; I wouldn't have gone seeking out that particular blogger) remind me to try to sum up the tension that's really bothering me. Here goes.
My Christian friends are not nearly scientific enough. And my scientist friends are not nearly spiritual enough. It's a rather longstanding tension, of course, but that doesn't make it any easier to handle.
On the one hand, Christians (and especially Evangelical Christians) really are prone to lapse into a rather mediaeval understanding of the world around us. They are not alone in this, of course: woeful ignorance of, say, Newton's laws of motion is quite common in the general population. But as I've said previously, the theology of prayer really needs a radical overhaul. Many of the things which are said to arise through spiritual means are much, much better explained by chance or by psychology, or a raft of other sciences. Just tolerating the young earth creationists (even without agreeing with them) is a shocking piece of intellectual sloppiness. Failing to follow through and accept that archaeology casts doubt on the historicity of big bits of the rest of the Old Testament is equally a careless piece of head-in-the-sand thinking. Denying the results of good textual criticism of the biblical texts - and holding instead to vague myths about origin and authorship - is just setting yourself up for a fall.
And so it goes on. None of these things is essential or central to the Christian gospel, and pretending that the metaphysics of the dark ages is better than today's scholarship is just a distraction, and liable to make thinking people reject the whole package out of hand. Then there's issues of morality ... but those are best left to a different discussion.
On the other hand entirely, many scientists seem equally stuck - albeit in the nineteenth century instead of the fourteenth. There is an optimistic hubris which assumes every problem will be solved eventually. There is an appeal to a kind of reductionism which 20th century mathematics and physics showed to be fundamentally untenable. Some will point out that in the middle ages, the thinkers of the day were kept from certain topics whereas today everything is open for research: conveniently ignoring that there is a long list of areas in which you would truly struggle to get taken seriously, or even allowed to proceed at all. (I refer not to the periodic nutter who invents a perpetual motion machine, but to a range of questions whose answers are not incontrovertibly settled but are nevertheless entirely un-researchable. There are subjects for which we do not want to know the answer, or are unwilling due to concerns of ethics, to ask the question). Equally, epistemology has moved on immeasurably, even to the point of asking whether there are truths about the universe which human minds will never comprehend.
The language we use to describe those truths is of course instructive. If pressed, most will admit that they are dealing with models of reality, models which must be mutable to take account of new observations. Frequently that language is suppressed in favour of a discussion of "how it is" - deficient as such wording is, along with its cousin "existence". A fixation upon whether or not things "exist" seems awfully dated, and not terribly helpful - whether one is dealing with quantum theory or theology. Insofar as we can understand the cosmos from our position inside it, taking account of the role of the observer seems to matter greatly - and therein is spirituality.
So I find myself reluctantly living in that tension. I find a lot of people who want glibly to resolve it one way or the other, or who want to inhabit "faith with science-lite" or "science, with personal faith if you must" but both seem really quite unsatisfactory to me. Perhaps this is partly due to that unhealthy parting of the ways in the mid-to-late 19th century, wherein real rigorous dialogue dried up in favour of is/isn't debates which often miss the point. In many ways, I envy those priest-scholar-scientists who lived before that divide, for theirs was a more holistic existence. But we cannot go back there. The Universe is much more wonderful than they could possibly have imagined; life more incredible than they might have dared to think.
My Christian friends are not nearly scientific enough. And my scientist friends are not nearly spiritual enough. It's a rather longstanding tension, of course, but that doesn't make it any easier to handle.
On the one hand, Christians (and especially Evangelical Christians) really are prone to lapse into a rather mediaeval understanding of the world around us. They are not alone in this, of course: woeful ignorance of, say, Newton's laws of motion is quite common in the general population. But as I've said previously, the theology of prayer really needs a radical overhaul. Many of the things which are said to arise through spiritual means are much, much better explained by chance or by psychology, or a raft of other sciences. Just tolerating the young earth creationists (even without agreeing with them) is a shocking piece of intellectual sloppiness. Failing to follow through and accept that archaeology casts doubt on the historicity of big bits of the rest of the Old Testament is equally a careless piece of head-in-the-sand thinking. Denying the results of good textual criticism of the biblical texts - and holding instead to vague myths about origin and authorship - is just setting yourself up for a fall.
And so it goes on. None of these things is essential or central to the Christian gospel, and pretending that the metaphysics of the dark ages is better than today's scholarship is just a distraction, and liable to make thinking people reject the whole package out of hand. Then there's issues of morality ... but those are best left to a different discussion.
On the other hand entirely, many scientists seem equally stuck - albeit in the nineteenth century instead of the fourteenth. There is an optimistic hubris which assumes every problem will be solved eventually. There is an appeal to a kind of reductionism which 20th century mathematics and physics showed to be fundamentally untenable. Some will point out that in the middle ages, the thinkers of the day were kept from certain topics whereas today everything is open for research: conveniently ignoring that there is a long list of areas in which you would truly struggle to get taken seriously, or even allowed to proceed at all. (I refer not to the periodic nutter who invents a perpetual motion machine, but to a range of questions whose answers are not incontrovertibly settled but are nevertheless entirely un-researchable. There are subjects for which we do not want to know the answer, or are unwilling due to concerns of ethics, to ask the question). Equally, epistemology has moved on immeasurably, even to the point of asking whether there are truths about the universe which human minds will never comprehend.
The language we use to describe those truths is of course instructive. If pressed, most will admit that they are dealing with models of reality, models which must be mutable to take account of new observations. Frequently that language is suppressed in favour of a discussion of "how it is" - deficient as such wording is, along with its cousin "existence". A fixation upon whether or not things "exist" seems awfully dated, and not terribly helpful - whether one is dealing with quantum theory or theology. Insofar as we can understand the cosmos from our position inside it, taking account of the role of the observer seems to matter greatly - and therein is spirituality.
So I find myself reluctantly living in that tension. I find a lot of people who want glibly to resolve it one way or the other, or who want to inhabit "faith with science-lite" or "science, with personal faith if you must" but both seem really quite unsatisfactory to me. Perhaps this is partly due to that unhealthy parting of the ways in the mid-to-late 19th century, wherein real rigorous dialogue dried up in favour of is/isn't debates which often miss the point. In many ways, I envy those priest-scholar-scientists who lived before that divide, for theirs was a more holistic existence. But we cannot go back there. The Universe is much more wonderful than they could possibly have imagined; life more incredible than they might have dared to think.
2011/07/02
schism
Insofar as I understand Anglican ecclesiology, this seems significant news:
My impression is that this may mark the beginning of the end for conservative Evangelicals in the Church of England. I imagine that quite a few will be wondering now whether they want to be counted in the AMiE or in a gay-clergy-affirming women-bishop-consecrating Church of England. The whole thing has been played out in slow motion, and it's easy to be impatient for a resolution - but I have a grudging respect for the tortuous processes involved, which may yet lead to a compromise which keeps everyone in the fold. I used to despise such Anglican fudge, but am coming round to the view that it is preferable to open schism. That said, the polemic on both sides appears irreconcilable: if a parting of fellowship is inevitable, it would be best done quickly, for delay will simply inflame passions and raise the temperature to no good benefit.
A NEW conservative Evangelical group, the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), already has three newly ordained clergy waiting to minister in the UK.The Society, launched at the end of last week, offers alternative episcopal oversight when diocesan bishops “are failing in their canonical duty to uphold sound teaching”.The three unnamed clerics were ordained in Kenya on 11 June by the Archbishop of Kenya, Dr Eliud Wabukala [...]The AMiE has appointed its own “panel” of five bishops “to provide effective oversight in collaboration with senior clergy”. The panel consists of one serving bishop, the Bishop of Lewes, the Rt Revd Wallace Benn, and four retired bishops [...]To this outsider, flying people off on a rather hush-hush basis, on a long-haul flight, so that someone can lay on hands, and pray for them and their future ministry, seems a most peculiar way to pursue "biblical Christianity". But what do I know?
My impression is that this may mark the beginning of the end for conservative Evangelicals in the Church of England. I imagine that quite a few will be wondering now whether they want to be counted in the AMiE or in a gay-clergy-affirming women-bishop-consecrating Church of England. The whole thing has been played out in slow motion, and it's easy to be impatient for a resolution - but I have a grudging respect for the tortuous processes involved, which may yet lead to a compromise which keeps everyone in the fold. I used to despise such Anglican fudge, but am coming round to the view that it is preferable to open schism. That said, the polemic on both sides appears irreconcilable: if a parting of fellowship is inevitable, it would be best done quickly, for delay will simply inflame passions and raise the temperature to no good benefit.
2011/07/01
Evangelicals surveyed
[Where did June go? Blogs have been getting infrequent. Oh dear.]
A couple of weeks ago, the Pew Forum published the results of a substantial Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders.
It makes interesting reading for two reasons: first, because I think that many of its questions are quite insightful and go to the heart of quite a few matters. Second, because the answers are enlightening, and often scary.
Take, for example, these snippets:
More than half say that consuming alcohol is enough to stop you being a good evangelical. Ooops; that's 'Good Evangelical'. Oh dear. Then again, if 97% see it as essential to follow the teachings of Christ, but 27% don't see that as extending to helping the poor and needy, which bible did they read, actually?
It's interesting in the light of my blog from a couple of months ago that 76% have experienced or witnessed divine healing. I'm also a little blown away by the fact that 61% confidently assert that "the rapture of the Church will take place before the Great Tribulation". Perhaps it's more positive to learn that 13% think that homosexuality should be accepted by society (51% of those in Latin America; 23% of those in Europe), even if 55% think a wife must always obey her husband, and 33% think women should stay home and raise children.
I think the thing that struck me most was this question:
Firstly, missing is any kind of self-doubt. Perhaps that's the survey's fault, but if you fear a decline in Evangelicalism (and a small majority in the global North anticipate one), surely you have to ask yourself whether that decline is due to an inherent flaw - a mistaken theology, philosophy, or pattern of thinking or behaviour. But, more generally, what can "influence of secularism" possibly mean here? That there's a battle of ideas - and you're losing? Likewise, "influence of Islam": if you believe that the gospel of Christ is the truth, and that the teaching of the Koran is not, well, why fear the latter? And so on. Many of the other things are fears about the gospel or the work of the Holy Spirit being insufficiently strong to protect the faithful: that seems at odds with the rhetoric about the power of the gospel.
Over all, the survey gives me the sense of evangelicalism - at least, northern hemisphere evangelical protestantism - being a spent force, far more concerned with the maintenance of its own way of being than with an essential spark of a movement of the Holy Spirit of God. But perhaps I'm unduly cynical.
A couple of weeks ago, the Pew Forum published the results of a substantial Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders.
It makes interesting reading for two reasons: first, because I think that many of its questions are quite insightful and go to the heart of quite a few matters. Second, because the answers are enlightening, and often scary.
Take, for example, these snippets:
More than half say that consuming alcohol is enough to stop you being a good evangelical. Ooops; that's 'Good Evangelical'. Oh dear. Then again, if 97% see it as essential to follow the teachings of Christ, but 27% don't see that as extending to helping the poor and needy, which bible did they read, actually?
It's interesting in the light of my blog from a couple of months ago that 76% have experienced or witnessed divine healing. I'm also a little blown away by the fact that 61% confidently assert that "the rapture of the Church will take place before the Great Tribulation". Perhaps it's more positive to learn that 13% think that homosexuality should be accepted by society (51% of those in Latin America; 23% of those in Europe), even if 55% think a wife must always obey her husband, and 33% think women should stay home and raise children.
I think the thing that struck me most was this question:
Firstly, missing is any kind of self-doubt. Perhaps that's the survey's fault, but if you fear a decline in Evangelicalism (and a small majority in the global North anticipate one), surely you have to ask yourself whether that decline is due to an inherent flaw - a mistaken theology, philosophy, or pattern of thinking or behaviour. But, more generally, what can "influence of secularism" possibly mean here? That there's a battle of ideas - and you're losing? Likewise, "influence of Islam": if you believe that the gospel of Christ is the truth, and that the teaching of the Koran is not, well, why fear the latter? And so on. Many of the other things are fears about the gospel or the work of the Holy Spirit being insufficiently strong to protect the faithful: that seems at odds with the rhetoric about the power of the gospel.
Over all, the survey gives me the sense of evangelicalism - at least, northern hemisphere evangelical protestantism - being a spent force, far more concerned with the maintenance of its own way of being than with an essential spark of a movement of the Holy Spirit of God. But perhaps I'm unduly cynical.
2011/05/29
Review: The Outsider Interviews
The Outsider InterviewsJim Henderson, Tom Hunter, and Craig Spinks
Christians often spend time trying to understand the perspective of those outside the church. Or, rather, they should. Too often, we simply assume. Our unchurched neighbours might as well belong to a distant tribe on the far side of the planet, for all we really know of their lives. The Outsider Interviews sets out to ask a mix of churched and unchurched people - mainly from the so-called Buster generation - about how they perceive Christians and the church. An early discourse explains why "Outsider": Evangelicals tend to talk of "the lost" to describe those outside the church - but not to their faces. The authors want a more useful descriptive term with less of a pejorative overtone.
The perspective is entirely a USA-centric view. The authors visited Kansas City, Phoenix, Denver, and Seattle. In each place, they interviewed two Christians and two outsiders, in front of a live audience, and also filmed additional backstage material. There is nothing earth-shattering in the answers (depending on your starting point) but there is much to learn, much to be reinforced by the way that these articulate young people express themselves. Very often they have missed the point of what the gospel message is all about - without apportioning blame, we may readily say that evangelism has failed!
This is a DVB - a DVD/Book. The DVD and the book have distinct content. You're supposed to consume both. I first bought it as a Kindle book, saving 50p: but it didn't come with the DVD content - so I sent it back for a refund! [the Kindle edition no longer seems to be available.] The DVD contains the actual interviews; the book gives the back-story and some commentary. The DVD has high production values and is well-produced. You could use its segments in many contexts - as discussion-starters or jumping-off points for talks. The book is more self-indulgent, in a way. It tells us the interviewers' perspective on the topics, and their reaction to the Outsiders' comments. Several chapters are reconstructions of their discussion over dinner, after the interviews - with perhaps more contextual information than is really needed. The background is useful, but doesn't really add as much to the videos as I might have hoped.
The book has a good website, where you can see excerpts of the text and video content, as well as extras. For example, there is a small group study guide, and suggestions on how to run interviews in your own church - an interesting fresh spin on approaches to evangelism.
I said that there is nothing too surprising in the answers: that is not to say that they are pedestrian. Complex situations arise: one story is told of a Christian whose friend contemplates an abortion. She tells her that she dislikes that option, but will stick by her - even going to the clinic with her - no matter what her decision. This turned out to be a powerful witness to the love of Christ. Other hot button issues for the American church - such as the gay rights agenda - also get a good airing. It is always salutary to see ourselves as others see us.
That, I think, is the value here. If we don't listen, we don't really have the right to speak. The topics that come up in conversation should help to define how we describe the love of God. Craig Spinks' rather wonderful Recycle your Faith site explores them further.
2011/05/21
Not raptured
The media have been full of amused comments about the rapture occurring today, many perhaps understandably confusing it with judgement day or the end of the world. Evidently some Christian broadcaster has decreed that his infallible calculations point to 6pm today: predictions that even now seem to be unravelling - to a lack of surprise from most of the population of the planet. [Though the link above seems to be non-functional at present: either its administrator has left the planet, or maybe its attracted an uncommon level of demand today.]
I grew up with this kind of belief system - though I was firmly drilled with the confidence that Matthew 24:36 (etc.) means that prediction of or speculation about the date was a waste of time. Happily, I encountered relatively few who took strong positions on matters of eschatology, but premillenial dispensationalism tended to go unchallenged - to the extent of showing unchallenged "A Thief in the Night" to the church's teens. I know that film gave many some sleepless nights (gosh, it has five stars on IMBb) - but I guess I had confidence that I would be in the rapture when it came, and so it held no fears for me. There was a kind-of double-think going on there already, because there would also be discussion of the second coming when Christ would be seen, and worshipped, by all - with no mention of there having been a preceding rapture. As I say, there was a lack of dogmatism.
That didn't stop us in the 1970s having a Sunday School chorus, inspired rather transparently by the space race, with bad poetry and worse theology:
And now? I don't think I live in expectation of rapture, nor even if I'm honest, the bodily visible second coming of Christ. All that end times theology is at best sketchy and at worst, downright absurdly made-up. It's difficult to argue that the biblical authors had a single coherent view of what to expect: and harder, I think, to reach the conclusion that they present a water-tight prophetic picture of the future. That's not a very satisfactory statement: and that's perhaps why this isn't the latest instalment in my "Here I stand?" series. I'm not sure where I stand.
I can't help thinking that I have that in common with most Christian people. There are lots of possible things we might believe about end times - from reading the scripture dispensationally as a "literal" (if perhaps contradictory) account of what is to come, through to a more alleogrical reading: and somehow we tend to manage to hold onto them all from time to time. I think I tend toward the allegorical hermaneutic, which puts me out of line with most evangelicals.
Why? Well, others (such as McLaren, or Ehrman) put it more eloquently than I, and with greater theological sophistication. I don't think the scripture invites us to read it 'literally' (mainly because I think that word meaningless in this context), and it is very clear that the primary events referred to in many passages are principally about contemporary problems (such as the Fall of Jerusalem) rather than predictions for hundreds and thousands of years hence. Does that downplay Christian hope? I don't think so - today's persecuted church can draw much strength from the church of bygone days. Looking to the resurrection of the dead - to rise with Christ - is the Christian hope for all ages.
The apparent confident expectation of some that today they would be raptured (to the point of paying to make provision for non-Christians to look after their pets) is touching if whacky. Since that's not me, and not most Christians I think, I do think that we need to find a new way to talk about these things that makes sense in the 21st century, and I know I'm not sure how that will work.
I grew up with this kind of belief system - though I was firmly drilled with the confidence that Matthew 24:36 (etc.) means that prediction of or speculation about the date was a waste of time. Happily, I encountered relatively few who took strong positions on matters of eschatology, but premillenial dispensationalism tended to go unchallenged - to the extent of showing unchallenged "A Thief in the Night" to the church's teens. I know that film gave many some sleepless nights (gosh, it has five stars on IMBb) - but I guess I had confidence that I would be in the rapture when it came, and so it held no fears for me. There was a kind-of double-think going on there already, because there would also be discussion of the second coming when Christ would be seen, and worshipped, by all - with no mention of there having been a preceding rapture. As I say, there was a lack of dogmatism.
That didn't stop us in the 1970s having a Sunday School chorus, inspired rather transparently by the space race, with bad poetry and worse theology:
Somewhere in outer space[yes, I typed that from memory. I do that.]
God has prepared a place
For those who trust him and obey.
Jesus will come again
Although we don't know when
The count-down's getting lower every day.
Ten and nine, eight and seven,
Six and five and four:
Call upon the Saviour while you may
Three and two, coming through the clouds in bright array
The countdown's getting lower every day.
And now? I don't think I live in expectation of rapture, nor even if I'm honest, the bodily visible second coming of Christ. All that end times theology is at best sketchy and at worst, downright absurdly made-up. It's difficult to argue that the biblical authors had a single coherent view of what to expect: and harder, I think, to reach the conclusion that they present a water-tight prophetic picture of the future. That's not a very satisfactory statement: and that's perhaps why this isn't the latest instalment in my "Here I stand?" series. I'm not sure where I stand.
I can't help thinking that I have that in common with most Christian people. There are lots of possible things we might believe about end times - from reading the scripture dispensationally as a "literal" (if perhaps contradictory) account of what is to come, through to a more alleogrical reading: and somehow we tend to manage to hold onto them all from time to time. I think I tend toward the allegorical hermaneutic, which puts me out of line with most evangelicals.
Why? Well, others (such as McLaren, or Ehrman) put it more eloquently than I, and with greater theological sophistication. I don't think the scripture invites us to read it 'literally' (mainly because I think that word meaningless in this context), and it is very clear that the primary events referred to in many passages are principally about contemporary problems (such as the Fall of Jerusalem) rather than predictions for hundreds and thousands of years hence. Does that downplay Christian hope? I don't think so - today's persecuted church can draw much strength from the church of bygone days. Looking to the resurrection of the dead - to rise with Christ - is the Christian hope for all ages.
The apparent confident expectation of some that today they would be raptured (to the point of paying to make provision for non-Christians to look after their pets) is touching if whacky. Since that's not me, and not most Christians I think, I do think that we need to find a new way to talk about these things that makes sense in the 21st century, and I know I'm not sure how that will work.
2011/04/25
Review: Miracles for Sale
Miracles for Sale, Channel 4
Monday 25th April 2011
Derren Brown is a TV hypnotist. He makes entertainment out of manipulating people's emotions and perceptions: but he is essentially open about this.
The premiss of this documentary is two-fold: firstly, that faith healers (every faith healer? Brown thinks so) are simply manipulative showmen who are out to make money; secondly, that Brown can train anyone to be a faith healer. He's quite exercised about this - and particularly concerned about those who suffer depression when their healing does not appear (or doesn't last), or throw away medication and become ill.
So he recruits a scuba-diving instructor, trains him over a few months, then takes him to Texas. There they see some faith healers at work, and learn a few tricks along the way - the best being the old favourite of leg-lengthening. He practices preaching, teams up with a worship group, does a bit of on-street 'healing', and then runs a public event and does the whole thing for real. At the end, he does a 'reveal' in front of the whole audience - telling people that faith isn't about handing over money to rich evangelists.
Throughout, he's eager to underline that he has no quarrel here with genuine faith, and doesn't wish to undermine it. He wants only to expose charlatans. He and his scuba-diving protégé are also very exercised about doing right by those they work with - to the extent of cutting ties with a Christian PR company which might have got them a much bigger audience, for fear that said company would crash when the truth was revealed. They suffer angst from the deceit they engage in, but remind themselves "we must be hypocrites for a while so that the reality may be shown".
All in all, the presentation struck me as thoroughly responsible and worthy. There are many "faith healers" who are plainly manipulative fraudsters, and the more they are exposed, the better.
But it's rather close to home, too. I've certainly encountered many within my branch of faith who will talk eagerly and in a convinced way about miraculous healing. Long ago, I even encountered people who'd experienced the leg-lengthening thing, though I haven't heard of that stuff for quite a while. But miraculous healing almost never seems to stand up to scrutiny. You'd expect the medical profession to be sceptical, of course, but given how many people believe in healing, you'd have thought that there would be at least a few well-attested, incontrovertible cases. But there aren't. As far as I know, the medical literature has none whatsoever. None at all. Even though there are plenty of Christian doctors - even plenty of Evangelical and Charismatic ones. None at all. None whatsoever. Isn't that odd?
Christian GP Peter May evidently set out some time ago some characteristics of biblical healing miracles, arguing that these form something of a "gold standard" for evaluating whether a miracle has happened.
Miracles today? They remain widely discussed in Christian circles. Should we move on?
Monday 25th April 2011
Derren Brown is a TV hypnotist. He makes entertainment out of manipulating people's emotions and perceptions: but he is essentially open about this.
The premiss of this documentary is two-fold: firstly, that faith healers (every faith healer? Brown thinks so) are simply manipulative showmen who are out to make money; secondly, that Brown can train anyone to be a faith healer. He's quite exercised about this - and particularly concerned about those who suffer depression when their healing does not appear (or doesn't last), or throw away medication and become ill.
So he recruits a scuba-diving instructor, trains him over a few months, then takes him to Texas. There they see some faith healers at work, and learn a few tricks along the way - the best being the old favourite of leg-lengthening. He practices preaching, teams up with a worship group, does a bit of on-street 'healing', and then runs a public event and does the whole thing for real. At the end, he does a 'reveal' in front of the whole audience - telling people that faith isn't about handing over money to rich evangelists.
Throughout, he's eager to underline that he has no quarrel here with genuine faith, and doesn't wish to undermine it. He wants only to expose charlatans. He and his scuba-diving protégé are also very exercised about doing right by those they work with - to the extent of cutting ties with a Christian PR company which might have got them a much bigger audience, for fear that said company would crash when the truth was revealed. They suffer angst from the deceit they engage in, but remind themselves "we must be hypocrites for a while so that the reality may be shown".
All in all, the presentation struck me as thoroughly responsible and worthy. There are many "faith healers" who are plainly manipulative fraudsters, and the more they are exposed, the better.
But it's rather close to home, too. I've certainly encountered many within my branch of faith who will talk eagerly and in a convinced way about miraculous healing. Long ago, I even encountered people who'd experienced the leg-lengthening thing, though I haven't heard of that stuff for quite a while. But miraculous healing almost never seems to stand up to scrutiny. You'd expect the medical profession to be sceptical, of course, but given how many people believe in healing, you'd have thought that there would be at least a few well-attested, incontrovertible cases. But there aren't. As far as I know, the medical literature has none whatsoever. None at all. Even though there are plenty of Christian doctors - even plenty of Evangelical and Charismatic ones. None at all. None whatsoever. Isn't that odd?
Christian GP Peter May evidently set out some time ago some characteristics of biblical healing miracles, arguing that these form something of a "gold standard" for evaluating whether a miracle has happened.
- The conditions were obvious examples of gross physical disease
- They were at that time incurable and most remain so today
- Jesus almost never used physical means
- The cures were immediate
- Restoration was complete and therefore obvious
- There were no recorded relapses
- Miracles regularly elicited faith
Miracles today? They remain widely discussed in Christian circles. Should we move on?
2011/04/03
is Love Winning?
This is the space where I might have reviewed Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins. But it has lit up the blogosphere so successfully (who'd have thought a book on heaven and hell would be a trending topic on twitter?!) that there doesn't seem to be a need. Countless reviews will tell you whatever you want to hear - that Bell is a heretic, a theological lightweight, a wise pastor, an opportunist self-publicist, or a fresh interpreter of sometimes-lost truth. Instead, these are my incoherent rambling comments on the brouhaha that has followed.
If you want to be outraged, the book will oblige. But being outraged at a refreshing look at God's grace seems inappropriate. Some purple passages have been widely quoted (and misquoted), such as:
I think this is really quite an important book. Bell has an immense following. People know he's not entirely "safe" but he is a great communicator, and most would have said that his heart was in the right place. But writing as he has done here, he does move people forward towards a point of decision. Not because he wants to create division, I think, but because it is time to tell the Jesus story in a new way.
The theme of the book, of course, is that Love Wins: that God's way of dealing with us is radical and full of grace. What's very noticeable is that Love isn't the word that springs to mind when you look at the way Bell's critics would wish to deal with him. John Piper's by-now infamous tweet is a mark of something very much awry - perhaps it was just a rash off-the-cuff remark, but a wise many said we should be slow to speak. "Conversation ...full of grace, seasoned with salt" doesn't seem to cover it, for me.
Doubtless those who want to disagree with Bell - and with Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and all the rest - would say that what they are doing is calling out false teachers. Does that relieve them of an obligation to grace? If you want a hint of the stress that the last few weeks have caused the man and those close to him, listen to the first few minutes of his sermon from Mars Hill last Sunday.
God is love. Love is the strongest thing imaginable. Of course love wins.
If you want to be outraged, the book will oblige. But being outraged at a refreshing look at God's grace seems inappropriate. Some purple passages have been widely quoted (and misquoted), such as:
A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and that to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.But Rob always loves to be a little enigmatic, so people don't get to pin him down on "what he really believes": of course the result is that you can read it as "really" saying he's a heretic, or "really" saying he's presenting the historic Christian message in a a fresher way. But that dichotomy misses the point. I don't think he's interested in playing that game. His style is questioning: some love it, and some find it destructive. Many have an inherent distrust of a fresh hermeneutic approach. I have to say that the way that some have rushed in to defend their favourite doctrines makes them sound more like the dogmas of a faith community they would want to distance themselves from.
I think this is really quite an important book. Bell has an immense following. People know he's not entirely "safe" but he is a great communicator, and most would have said that his heart was in the right place. But writing as he has done here, he does move people forward towards a point of decision. Not because he wants to create division, I think, but because it is time to tell the Jesus story in a new way.
The theme of the book, of course, is that Love Wins: that God's way of dealing with us is radical and full of grace. What's very noticeable is that Love isn't the word that springs to mind when you look at the way Bell's critics would wish to deal with him. John Piper's by-now infamous tweet is a mark of something very much awry - perhaps it was just a rash off-the-cuff remark, but a wise many said we should be slow to speak. "Conversation ...full of grace, seasoned with salt" doesn't seem to cover it, for me.
Doubtless those who want to disagree with Bell - and with Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and all the rest - would say that what they are doing is calling out false teachers. Does that relieve them of an obligation to grace? If you want a hint of the stress that the last few weeks have caused the man and those close to him, listen to the first few minutes of his sermon from Mars Hill last Sunday.
Thank you for continuing to remember that the gospel is known by its fruit, and that we can get all of the words right and we can have all the best doctrines and dogmas and we can actually be a clanging cymbal, and that love is what Jesus said is the greatest commandment.If the media storm was not foreseen - as he implies - perhaps that was naive. But it's more generous to think of that than to suggest there was a cynical sales drive going on.
God is love. Love is the strongest thing imaginable. Of course love wins.
2011/03/20
here I stand? part 6: morality
I'm in the middle of a series trying to set out where I've reached in my thinking about how to describe my faith today. The previous parts are these:
Morality is a big issue for Christians today. In my country, at least, the perception of those outside the church is surely that Chrisitans are great moralizers - and probably hypocrites into the bargain. There's often the perception that those morals are rooted in the Iron Age, and wildly out of touch with the current language of rights and self-fulfilment.
And it must be said that there's more than a grain of truth there. Christians seem to hang onto a Victorian morality when the rest of society has thrown it away. And we have a propensity to imagine that the mores of the 19th century are in fact God's ideals. But it ain't necessarily so.
The Scripture gives us Christ's Golden Rule; it gives us all manner of good principles about how we should act towards each other. But it doesn't give us a whole lot of absolutes - we made many of those up. Or rather, we evolved them independently of scripture. A strong theology of marriage just isn't there. We made it up. Which might help to explain why the whole gay marriage thing has caused quite so much angst. How do two people become married? What "can't you do" before marriage? Who says so? The whole "gay community" thing is of course a political construction. The society of biblical times didn't recognise gayness as a state of being - nor have most other societies. But attitudes to same-sex relationships have been much more complex, ambivalent, often tacitly accepting, through the ages.
Most (much?) (all?) of morality is a social construction. We need morals in order to live harmoniously together - and to my mind morality is a better notion than rights, because it tends to embody mutual obligation rather than naive individualism. Few morals are absolutes: they evolve, and difficult cases cause adjustments. The morality - or ethics - surrounding developments in reproduction (from IVF, through sperm donation, frozen embryos, all the way to cloning, embryo selection, and many things we haven't thought of yet) raises profound questions for which there is no trite answer within the moral framework of former generations. [Court cases in which a divorced man withdraws his consent for a fertilized embryo being implanted in his erstwhile wife's womb - her ovaries having been removed in the meanwhile - spring to mind. A rare instance of the "man's right to choose"?] As medical technology advances, there will be more and more of these questions: and if Christians flee from them they will be perceived (rightly, I think) as being as out of touch as they now view the Jehovah's Witnesses for refusing blood transfusions.
Are there no absolutes? Well, I'm doubtful. I don't imagine that we are ever going to come out on the side of being allowed to shoot one another on a whim, but "ye shall do no murder" clearly admits a lot more nuances than one might first imagine. Debates around just war, capital punishment, abortion, and euthanasia have illustrated some of the complexities.
We need morality and ethics, and they will continue to evolve. It's a shame that Christians are seldom in the forefront of the development of these. Arguing for the right to discriminate isn't very helpful. Arguing for the right to be abusive or to lay heavy burdens on the most vulnerable is not necessarily in keeping with the Golden Rule. Would that Christ-followers were know for their compassion, for a caring attitude to fallen, broken humanity; would that our watch-word was "let the one who is without sin cast the first stone".
- here I stand ? the introduction
- here I stand? part 2: scripture
- here I stand? part 3: gospel and salvation
- here I stand? part 4: mission
- here I stand? part 5: spiritual formation
- here I stand? reflection
Morality is a big issue for Christians today. In my country, at least, the perception of those outside the church is surely that Chrisitans are great moralizers - and probably hypocrites into the bargain. There's often the perception that those morals are rooted in the Iron Age, and wildly out of touch with the current language of rights and self-fulfilment.
And it must be said that there's more than a grain of truth there. Christians seem to hang onto a Victorian morality when the rest of society has thrown it away. And we have a propensity to imagine that the mores of the 19th century are in fact God's ideals. But it ain't necessarily so.
The Scripture gives us Christ's Golden Rule; it gives us all manner of good principles about how we should act towards each other. But it doesn't give us a whole lot of absolutes - we made many of those up. Or rather, we evolved them independently of scripture. A strong theology of marriage just isn't there. We made it up. Which might help to explain why the whole gay marriage thing has caused quite so much angst. How do two people become married? What "can't you do" before marriage? Who says so? The whole "gay community" thing is of course a political construction. The society of biblical times didn't recognise gayness as a state of being - nor have most other societies. But attitudes to same-sex relationships have been much more complex, ambivalent, often tacitly accepting, through the ages.
Most (much?) (all?) of morality is a social construction. We need morals in order to live harmoniously together - and to my mind morality is a better notion than rights, because it tends to embody mutual obligation rather than naive individualism. Few morals are absolutes: they evolve, and difficult cases cause adjustments. The morality - or ethics - surrounding developments in reproduction (from IVF, through sperm donation, frozen embryos, all the way to cloning, embryo selection, and many things we haven't thought of yet) raises profound questions for which there is no trite answer within the moral framework of former generations. [Court cases in which a divorced man withdraws his consent for a fertilized embryo being implanted in his erstwhile wife's womb - her ovaries having been removed in the meanwhile - spring to mind. A rare instance of the "man's right to choose"?] As medical technology advances, there will be more and more of these questions: and if Christians flee from them they will be perceived (rightly, I think) as being as out of touch as they now view the Jehovah's Witnesses for refusing blood transfusions.
Are there no absolutes? Well, I'm doubtful. I don't imagine that we are ever going to come out on the side of being allowed to shoot one another on a whim, but "ye shall do no murder" clearly admits a lot more nuances than one might first imagine. Debates around just war, capital punishment, abortion, and euthanasia have illustrated some of the complexities.
We need morality and ethics, and they will continue to evolve. It's a shame that Christians are seldom in the forefront of the development of these. Arguing for the right to discriminate isn't very helpful. Arguing for the right to be abusive or to lay heavy burdens on the most vulnerable is not necessarily in keeping with the Golden Rule. Would that Christ-followers were know for their compassion, for a caring attitude to fallen, broken humanity; would that our watch-word was "let the one who is without sin cast the first stone".
2011/02/08
curious
I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies (Genesis 22:17, NIV)
Here's a curious thing: the number of stars in the universe might be around the same number as the number of grains of sand on earth. That's a few billion billion. [it must be said that estimates vary widely]. Don't tell the literalists, though, because in the whole history of the world, there have been many fewer than a billion descendants of Abraham.
2011/01/27
oh, Pete
I love Peter Rollins' methodology, and his willingness to ask hard questions from new perspectives, but often I confess that I have absolutely no idea what he is talking about.
http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=1570
http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=1570
2011/01/09
here I stand? reflection
I'm in the middle of a series trying to set out where I've reached in my thinking about how to describe my faith today. The previous parts are these:
here I stand ? the introduction
This post is just a reflective aside.
In writing this blog - and particularly this series - I'm often painfully aware that I'm not a theologian. I'm reasonably well-read; I have a reasonable mind-map of the relevant topics, but I'm not well acquainted with how to contribute in a way that meets the norms of the discipline. That much will be evident to the reader.
That's a curious tension: I've always distrusted professional theology because it seems to take the faith which belongs to all believers and turn it in to an academic discourse in which only the best-educated can participate. And yet, trust it or not, I am aware afresh how hard it is to join in.
I have lots of questions. This little "here I stand" series reflects that. Though there are some things I just don't believe any more (and there are a few new things that I believe perhaps) far more of this is about how I believe rather than what I believe. Asking questions seems a fair thing to do: but I realise that the more I question the less I am in the middle of the mainstream.
This series was prompted by a question from James encouraging me nail what my issues and problems are. Am I still an Evangelical? Well of all I have read so far, I have most sympathy for - indeed, tend to agree with - McLaren, Jones, and Tomlinson. They have done more than ruffle a few feathers in the Evangelical world, so if they are exiting that label, then so, I guess, am I. And they're more eloquent than me, too.
here I stand ? the introduction
- here I stand? part 2: scripture
- here I stand? part 3: gospel and salvation
- here I stand? part 4: mission
This post is just a reflective aside.
In writing this blog - and particularly this series - I'm often painfully aware that I'm not a theologian. I'm reasonably well-read; I have a reasonable mind-map of the relevant topics, but I'm not well acquainted with how to contribute in a way that meets the norms of the discipline. That much will be evident to the reader.
That's a curious tension: I've always distrusted professional theology because it seems to take the faith which belongs to all believers and turn it in to an academic discourse in which only the best-educated can participate. And yet, trust it or not, I am aware afresh how hard it is to join in.
I have lots of questions. This little "here I stand" series reflects that. Though there are some things I just don't believe any more (and there are a few new things that I believe perhaps) far more of this is about how I believe rather than what I believe. Asking questions seems a fair thing to do: but I realise that the more I question the less I am in the middle of the mainstream.
This series was prompted by a question from James encouraging me nail what my issues and problems are. Am I still an Evangelical? Well of all I have read so far, I have most sympathy for - indeed, tend to agree with - McLaren, Jones, and Tomlinson. They have done more than ruffle a few feathers in the Evangelical world, so if they are exiting that label, then so, I guess, am I. And they're more eloquent than me, too.
here I stand? part 5: spiritual formation
After a break, I'm returning to my series trying to set out where I've reached in my thinking about how to describe my faith today. The previous parts are these:
here I stand ? the introduction
Now I want to think about spiritual formation.
How does one develop as a Christian? The Evangelical answer would have something about personal 'quiet times' with daily bible reading and prayer - coupled with weekly attendance at a service of worship, and preferably some kind of small group for bible study, prayer, and mutual encouragement (or, just possibly, mutual accountability). Other sections of the Christian church would have different mixes of mostly similar things. Some would speak of word and sacrament, for example.
Some of the spiritual practices adopted by some of those with the 'emerging' label - and those who have transcended the label, no doubt - are quite a departure from this. Frost's book told me of a "church" which consists of a group who go water-skiing each Sunday. Others meet with like-minded people in coffee shops ("neutral third spaces" for those who can afford the coffee!). Blogging and tweeting and commenting replace earlier forms of study. Action involves practical aid, or promoting ethical investments through Kiva, and so on.
The GenerationX response to the open-ended "small group" commitment has been the rise of the church-run, limited term course. Alpha is the example par excellence, of course, but there are plenty of others, not just for "new Christians", but to develop all kinds of skills, spiritual understanding, or practical abilities. Alpha has always bothered me slightly, but in my new questioning mode, I'm not sure I can handle a presentation which assumes there are simple right answers to questions - and assumes some naive apologetics along the way. I confess to being more interested in Rollins' idea of an Omega course: un-learning the things that should never have bound us in the first place.
What happens - and what should happen - when Christian people gather together. Should a pattern established in the sixteenth century guide us? Should we be bound up with the music and poetry of the nineteenth century, or be attempting to mimic the slickest of contemporary television - whether that's Ophra, or The X-Factor or something else? Is simplicity better? Is less more? Where does the idea come from that singing some songs and listening to a (too-often rambling, in my own case) preacher is "divine service"? With all the media available to us today, is a live third-rate speaker really preferable to a video watched in my own home anyway? There are many cultural expectations of what church is all about, but are they to be indulged or rejected? Some want to recover the practice of the first-century New Testament church. Is that possible? Even if it is, is it desirable?
Those outside the Christian community find their beliefs, morals, practices, shaped by all kinds of media which some believers may seldom touch - and certainly don't have a theology for. How can the Christian understanding of - and theology of - formation be essentially unchanged from centuries past? No wonder Christians often seem out of touch. I exaggerate for effect, of course, but I think that too easily we fail to grow up because we fail to engage with how people live today, we fail to make the most of the insights brought us by psychology, we mis-represent what living as a Christian is all about.
here I stand ? the introduction
- here I stand? part 2: scripture
- here I stand? part 3: gospel and salvation
- here I stand? part 4: mission
How does one develop as a Christian? The Evangelical answer would have something about personal 'quiet times' with daily bible reading and prayer - coupled with weekly attendance at a service of worship, and preferably some kind of small group for bible study, prayer, and mutual encouragement (or, just possibly, mutual accountability). Other sections of the Christian church would have different mixes of mostly similar things. Some would speak of word and sacrament, for example.
Some of the spiritual practices adopted by some of those with the 'emerging' label - and those who have transcended the label, no doubt - are quite a departure from this. Frost's book told me of a "church" which consists of a group who go water-skiing each Sunday. Others meet with like-minded people in coffee shops ("neutral third spaces" for those who can afford the coffee!). Blogging and tweeting and commenting replace earlier forms of study. Action involves practical aid, or promoting ethical investments through Kiva, and so on.
The GenerationX response to the open-ended "small group" commitment has been the rise of the church-run, limited term course. Alpha is the example par excellence, of course, but there are plenty of others, not just for "new Christians", but to develop all kinds of skills, spiritual understanding, or practical abilities. Alpha has always bothered me slightly, but in my new questioning mode, I'm not sure I can handle a presentation which assumes there are simple right answers to questions - and assumes some naive apologetics along the way. I confess to being more interested in Rollins' idea of an Omega course: un-learning the things that should never have bound us in the first place.
What happens - and what should happen - when Christian people gather together. Should a pattern established in the sixteenth century guide us? Should we be bound up with the music and poetry of the nineteenth century, or be attempting to mimic the slickest of contemporary television - whether that's Ophra, or The X-Factor or something else? Is simplicity better? Is less more? Where does the idea come from that singing some songs and listening to a (too-often rambling, in my own case) preacher is "divine service"? With all the media available to us today, is a live third-rate speaker really preferable to a video watched in my own home anyway? There are many cultural expectations of what church is all about, but are they to be indulged or rejected? Some want to recover the practice of the first-century New Testament church. Is that possible? Even if it is, is it desirable?
Those outside the Christian community find their beliefs, morals, practices, shaped by all kinds of media which some believers may seldom touch - and certainly don't have a theology for. How can the Christian understanding of - and theology of - formation be essentially unchanged from centuries past? No wonder Christians often seem out of touch. I exaggerate for effect, of course, but I think that too easily we fail to grow up because we fail to engage with how people live today, we fail to make the most of the insights brought us by psychology, we mis-represent what living as a Christian is all about.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)