FaithInSociety

2009-10-28T18:13:00.001Z

A LARGER STORY

"We live limited lives until we 'cross over' into the concrete world of another country, another culture, another tradition of worship ... I have left forever a small world to live with the tensions and the tender mercies of God's larger family." - Joan Puls, from her book Every Bush Is Burning (WCC).

2009-10-14T23:31:00.003Z

GAG SHOOTS ITSELF IN THE FOOT

Wonderful news that the new media has helped to scupper one of the most outrageous attempts at a gag in British history - oil trader Trafigura's injunction through law firm Carter-Ruck against the Guardian newspaper, which for a time prevented them from reporting... a parliamentary question. That's right, a question asked by an elected member of a democratic assembly. The free speech implications of this were and are monumental. In fact, the company has succeeded only in drawing millions upon millions of people's attention to its nasty practices concerning pollution and the Ivory Coast - the opposite of its intention. Barclays and Tesco are among those who have used legal action against the Guardian in the past for gagging purposes. It is vital that such attempts to misuse corporate power fail. And ordinary people can help by defying them and using the technology at their disposal to do so. Now Gordon Brown is calling for reform of super-injunctions. Here, for the record, is the follow up to the original parliamentary question (no. 61) Transfigura wanted to keep quiet. Let the noise continue.

2009-10-12T10:31:00.002Z

BACK IN THE WRITING POOL

As a friend remarked not so long ago, I've been rather "blog-lite" recently, other needs and priorities having interrupted the flow. However, I'm prompted back into action by a slight pang of guilt at being described as a "regular" blogger in a biographical note that appears in the programme for the conference I'm attending at the moment - 'Religion in the News' at Cumberland Lodge (pictured). Guilt is not a good spur for this particular medium, however. There's already too much pathology in cyberspace. "Be there for a positive reason or be somewhere else" would be my watchword. And as it happens I'm running a workshop/seminar this afternoon on the 'new media'. About which (and this gathering), more anon.

2009-07-27T19:31:00.000Z

THORNS BEFORE THE ROSE

"In today’s world, poverty and humility should be a thorn in the side of secular society and the church, a dangerous recollection of Jesus and a threat to the status quo of church institutions." - Karl Rahner (hat-tip to Roy Dorey)

2009-07-27T19:03:00.002Z

PRETTY IN PRINT

It was good talk today to Roy Dorey, a Baptist minister with a long track record in church and community development. We were liaising over a future book about the recovery of church vision and practice in a society in which dominant understandings of power and its use have disabled (and in some cases corrupted) the Christian understanding and doing of local community. Along with our prime publishing partners in Edinburgh, Shoving Leopard, Ekklesia intends to get into quite a bit more book production over the next few years.

In addition to my Fear or Freedom?, the book I edited with Jonathan Bartley, Consuming Passion (DLT), two titles from Jon himself and a further one due next March from our new associate Symon Hill, called The No-Nonsense Guide to Religion (New Internationalist Publications), we have a number "on the boil".

However, my latest book, Threatened with Resurrection: The difficult peace of Christ remains very, very late. It should be with you all fairly shortly. But I'll be a bit cagey until I can be sure of the publication date. Whereas I throw out articles, both journalistic and academic, rather quickly, when it comes to books I want to keep changing my mind, angle of approach, selection of material, and so on. Probably some illusion about "completeness". Still, as my own harshest critic, I'm reasonably pleased with the way it has developed (even if embarrassed at the delay). But it will be the readers' opinions that really count. That's the terrifying thing about committing yourself to paper with a cover round it, an ISBN, and an entry price.

Good job the leopard doesn't bite. Well, the one in Edinburgh, anyway.

2009-07-25T12:43:00.002Z

A RADICAL CHRISTIAN FUTURE?

What role does Anabaptism have to play in renewing Christianity in the new century? How do we appropriately take our past into the future? Can Mennonites and other peace churches make a serious impact on inherited and emerging church in the UK? The forthcoming London Mennonite Theology Forum, on 10-11 September 2009 will take place at the Guy Chester Centre in North London. The keynote speaker for the forum will be Ted Grimsrud, theology professor at Eastern Mennonite University and author of the recent book Embodying the Way of Jesus: Anabaptist Convictions in the 21st Century. Other presenters include Simon Barrow (co-director of Ekklesia), Anne-Marie Visser (Mennonite representative on the advisory committee for Inter-Religious Encounter for the Dutch National Council of Churches), James Jakob Fehr (director of the German Mennonite Peace Committee) and Vic Thiessen (theological consultant, and until recently director of the London Mennonite Centre).

For more information and booking, click here.

2009-06-21T02:43:00.002Z

THE NOISE OF ART

A cruciform tree, a radiating Cain eyed by a simmering Abel and a doveish floating vision: these are just a few of the images you will see as part of the vital and (until recently) little-known Methodist Art Collection, which has now gone online.

The collection is an extraordinary achievement of quiet but committed curation, and includes some very well-regarded twentieth century artists, as well as a number of less publicly profiled (but equally evocative) contributors.

How did one of Britain's historic denominations end up with a rotating and touring collection of some of the finest examples of contemporary art exploring the pain and poetry of spirituality in a troubled world? Read my short article about it here.

2009-06-16T17:06:00.000Z

RE-CONNECTING

"In life we receive more than we give; therefore it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

2009-04-30T22:59:00.004Z

INTELLIGENT SIMPLICITY

"Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own little aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected" - Eckhart Tolle (hat-tip to Janet Lynn Kroeker)

"Those who can combine simplicity and intelligence can prevail. But what is simplicity? What is intelligence? Simple is the one who in the transfiguration, confusion and twisting of all concepts keeps the simple truth of God in focus, who is not double-minded, not a person in two minds (James 1.8), but has an undivided heart... Because simple people do not look past God to the world, they are in a position to look freely and naturally at the reality of the world. Thus simplicity becomes intelligence. Intelligent is the one who sees reality as it is, who sees the foundation of things... The perception of reality is not the same thing as knowledge of certain external processes; it is, rather, seeing the essence of things. The most intelligent are not those who are the best informed." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (1940-43), p.67-8.

[Image: (c) faulkner.biz]

2009-04-23T11:01:00.003Z

WHAT KIND OF LOYALTY?

Today is St George's Day. In the past this has been misused in England as an excuse for narrow nationalism, bigotry, xenophobia and imperial self-regard. It doesn't have to be like that. Sadly, however, those traits are still around. In an uncertain, conflicted world, identity remains important. Who are we and who or what are we loyal to? Trying to "re-invent Englishness" without questioning our past, present and future amounts to attempting to fashion national cohesion without honesty and humility. It is not only flawed but dangerous, given what is lurking (rather openly) in the shadows. One place we could start is by looking at what we have done to the myth of St George himself. I've flagged that issue up (so to speak!) this morning. Ekklesia took a more lengthy look a couple of years ago in When the Saints go marching out? St George for a new era.

2009-04-22T23:26:00.002Z

STANDING OR FALLING

"Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear ... Christendom adjusts itself far too easiliy to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now."- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

2009-04-10T21:43:00.004Z

WHAT WOULD JESUS TWEET?

Trinity Wall Street in New York, a leading Episcopal Church, has streamed a Passion Play via Twitter.

I've run the embedded link at the foot of this site...

2009-04-09T23:48:00.007Z

WATCHING AND WAITING...

Thursday was a day that brought together many strands of my life. 9 April is my father's birthday. He died in 1997 (The book Fear or freedom? Why a warring church must change which I edited last year is dedicated to him, and to my mother, who passed away in 1978.) It is also the anniversary of the execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose life and work is one of my inspirations. Though not one that casts me in a particularly good light! There is a family connection, in that I discovered Bonhoeffer through Eberhard Bethge's classic biography on my father's bookshelf, though I think he rather preferred the cautious Otto Dibelius. The new and expanded edition of Bethge is so much better, by the way.

There's no Holy Thursday night vigil around these parts, so instead I have decided to re-watch Martin Doblmeier's moving film Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister, about his life and influence. The theological dimension gets a look in as well, with an interview from South African writer John de Gruchy - whose stimulating review of Stanley Hauerwas' Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence can be found here. Doblmeier gives an interview about the project on the film website. I must also pick up Geoffrey Kelly's reading guide (pictured) to the Fortress Bonhoeffer works edition at some point. Fresh perspectives are always welcome, and I am far from complete in my reading.

Thinking of the Maundy Thursday vigil: the Eucharist and the stripping off the altar at the Church of the Annunciation in Brighton, where I lived for five years (in the town, not the church!) was always an extraordinary occasion. The then priest, David Wostenholme, who is now in Glasgow, would turn the lady chapel into a flowering garden of waiting and remembrance, complete with the Host and the shadow of the tree of betrayal. It generated a tremendous sense of prayer and suspense before the abandonment of Good Friday. Some people who know the Anabaptist, and especially modern Mennonite, influence on my theological thinking are sometimes surprised that the liturgical and aesthetic dimension of the Catholic tradition is important to me. But as far as I am concerned they are wholly congruent. As Dorothee Soelle once put it, mysticism and resistance are two complementary paths to meeting the Other in the midst.

One final thought, on foot-washing. I was intrigued by today's news that it has been temporarily reincarnated as shoe-shining. Actually, that's quite a creative idea. I'm delighted that money is going to Zimbabwe, too. But in another sense it would be wonderful if church leaders could go out onto the streets and serve for no reward at all. In our commodified culture, "random acts of kindness" are regarded with suspicion, though. Debt rather than grace is the way society is ordered. The church as well, all too often, in contradiction of its calling. So it is worth reflecting again (since I have certainly mentioned it before) that whoever asked: 'what might have happened differently if foot-washing had been the primary Christian sacrament?' posed one of the most important post-Christendom questions of all. Perhaps it will be picked up more and more in the 'new monasticism' (which of course goes back to Bonhoeffer) and in 'emergent' circles?

2009-04-09T21:50:00.004Z

A VOICE FROM THE MARGINS

How gratifying to discover that Ben Myers, who maintains the fine Faith and Theology blog ("for theological scholarship and contemporary theological reflection") has developed an affection for the dissenting Episcopal theologian William Stringfellow (pictured left), who died some 25 years ago... but whose insistent critique of injustice, bold commitment to Christian discipleship and iconoclastic vision continues to resonate when it is given a hearing. Ben's full stock of Stringellow posts may be explored here. (There are a couple on here, as well, relating to the book I'm about to mention again...)

In 2000 I was involved in a conference in Oxford celebrating and examining his life and work. There were some fine speakers, and Rowan Williams gave a good address at the end. His contribution is included in a volume that I also have an essay in: William Stringfellow in Anglo-American Perspective, ed. Anthony Dancer (Ashgate 2005). Ben cites a bit of it. Unfortunately, as with other academic-oriented titles that could actually find a wider audience, it is only available in hardback and for £45. Libraries and aficionados only, effectively. When I met Rowan at a reception a year ago he said that his name could be mentioned in relation to a proposal for a paperback. But I've lost touch with Tony, the editor. One for the (rather long!) 'to do' list.

2009-04-09T15:03:00.001Z

APPROACHING GOOD FRIDAY...

“We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”– Dietrich Bonhoeffer (executed by the Nazis on 9 April 1945)

“God, for me, represents the holiness of otherness. Through an encounter with the divine Other I come to value the encounter with the human other. What I ask God to do for me, God asks me to do for others: listen to them, empower them, believe in them, trust them, forgive them when they betray that trust, and love them for what they are, not what I would like them to be. More than we have faith in God, God has faith in us, and because [God] never loses that faith, we can never lose hope. God is the redemption of solitude.” – Jonathan Sachs, chief rabbi, reflecting in the New Statesman

“[Christ] was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own ... by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.” – Dorothy L. Sayers (1943)

2009-04-04T12:21:00.002Z

AN UNDIVIDED HEART

"Only through the bringing together of head and heart – intelligence and goodness – shall we rise to a fulfillment of our true nature." - Martin Luther King Jr.

2009-04-01T16:57:00.001Z

SOMETHING AFOOT

“When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.” - Rudolph Bahro

2009-03-29T08:02:00.000Z

REALITY CHECK

The Talmud reads, "Never pray in a room without windows." Never pray without the world in mind, in other words. The purpose of the spiritual life is not to save us from reality. It is to enable us to go on co-creating it. - Sr. Joan Chittister

2009-03-19T20:15:00.002Z

DANGEROUS THINKING

"Love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny." - Diane Ackerman

"We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul." - Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Proceedings of the Eleventh Women's Rights Convention (1866)

2009-03-18T04:26:00.003Z

TURNING AWAY FROM ANTI-JUDAISM

'Repentance, Renewal and Reconciliation: How One Denomination Has Come to Terms with its Anti-Judaic Heritage' is the title of a forum taking place this evening in the Seabury Auditorium at the Episcopal Church's General Theological Seminary, New York, where I'm staying at the moment.

In 1994, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America issued a 'Declaration to the Jewish Community' in which it repudiated Martin Luther's anti-Jewish writings, expressed its sorrow for their baleful effects in subsequent generations, and affirmed its "urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people."

Franklin Sherman,who chaired the committee that prepared the Declaration, will be discussing how it emerged, how it was received, and how it has been followed up in the years since. Dr Sherman is Director of the Institute for Jewish - Christian Understanding at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The event is being presented by the General Seminary’s Center for Jewish-Christian Studies and Relations.

2009-03-17T15:37:00.002Z

STRUGGLING FOR HUMANITY

The Still Human, Still Here campaign highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of refused asylum seekers who are destitute in the UK is one I passionately support. A few years ago I was involved in providing bail for asylum applicants. Those I met had been through some terrible experiences, and were treated humiliatingly by the 'justice system' here. My wife also sees what is going on as a lawyer.

As Ekklesia associate Vaughan Jones, CEO of Praxis, commented recently, in a broader context: Does the migrant have a human right? Are migrants fully human? Do they have, in the old language, souls? The answer as it currently appears from government is “unfortunately they are human, but we will do everything we possibly can to stop them from being so.”

2009-03-14T05:12:00.002Z

HEART IS WHERE THE HOME IS

“[M]utual service and attention are the basic elements through which the human world becomes transparent to [God]. The realising of that transparency is… the beginning of happiness – not of a transient feeling of well-being or even euphoria, but of a settled sense of being at home, being absolved from urgent and obsessional desire, from the passion to justify your existence, from the anxieties of rivalry. And so what religious belief has to say in the context of our present crisis is, first, a call to lament the brokenness of the world and invite that change of heart which is so pivotal throughout the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; and, second, to declare without ambiguity or qualification that human value rests on God’s creative love and not on possession or achievement. It is not for believers to join in the search for scapegoats, because there will always be, for the religious self, an awareness of complicity in social evil.” – Rowan Williams (more from his lecture on Ethics, Economics and Global Justice - see below, 12/03/09).

2009-03-13T19:50:00.003Z

TALKING ABOUT RELIGION AND LIBERTY

The full online audio from the 'Faiths and Freedoms' session at the Convention on Modern Liberty in London on 28 February is now available here. It lasts about 1 hour 15 mins and features me (chairing and doing an introduction), Vaughan Jones (Praxis), Keith Kahn-Harris (New Jewish Thought) and Savi Hensman (equalities adviser and theological commentator). Edited and amplified text versions of what they said are available at Ekklesia - under features (9, 3 and 1 March) and in my column. A Muslim contribution will be added soon.

2009-03-13T16:03:00.002Z

HOPEFUL SCHOOLING

It's good to see that integrated schooling in Northern Ireland is getting a little more publicity at the moment -- though sadly in the wake of attempts by hardline sectarian groups to revive the bloody conflict there. It has much wider ramifications, however. See also the article by the Rev Jeremy Chadd, which highlights why selective denominational education runs counter to Christian testimony as well as cross-community development.

2009-03-12T05:02:00.002Z

A MATTER OF ETHOS

“Ethics is about negotiating conditions in which the most vulnerable are not abandoned. And we shall care about this largely to the extent to which we are conscious of our own vulnerability and limitedness. One of the things most fatal to the sustaining of an ethical perspective on any area of human life, not just economics, is the fantasy that we are not really part of a material order – that we are essentially will or craving, for which the body is a useful organ for fulfilling the purposes of the all-powerful will, rather than being the organ of our connection with the rest of the world. It’s been said often enough but it bears repeating, that in some ways – so far from being a materialist culture, we are a culture that is resentful about material reality, hungry for anything and everything that distances us from the constraints of being a physical animal subject to temporal processes, to uncontrollable changes and to sheer accident.” – Rowan Williams, from a stimulating lecture on Ethics, Economics and Global Justice given recently at the Welsh Centre for International Affairs in Cardiff.