The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Soul Synaesthesia

This month’s Believer documents a strange case from Hungary of audio-kinetic synaesthesia. The subject, whenever he hears certain words, ‘sees’ them as discrete and definite actions or gestures.

Colour synaesthesia is more common: sounds or numbers are seen as distinct colours, and some estimates reckon that around 1 in 23 experience it.

And I just wonder if some of us suffer some kind of soul-synaesthesia. All these sounds, words and senses kick off an involuntary response in the spirit that wonders why and how, and wanders, in wonder…

Technorati Tags: Synaesthesia,Believer

Into Great Silence ¦ Sound Pollution

I enjoy most things about city life, but one of the perennial frustrations is noise. Light pollution, on the micro scale at least, is fairly easy to manage. We can shut our curtains or buy special blinds, and shut our eyes if need be. And, while some objects are foul to look at, we only need turn our heads...

Sound, on the other hand, is a far more difficult sense. It doesn't 'shadow' well, and is extremely difficult to insulate against, far harder than light. Noise is therefore a far more antisocial thing than colour or design. If my neighbour paints their house fuscia, I needn't think about it much. If they play loud music, I have no option.

Cities are noisy places, and I think this does contribute in no small way to the general tension, and thus propensity for anger and violence, that cities are also guilty of. Traffic noise is perhaps the most pernicious, particularly since it is almost impossible to control (the infuriating 2-stroke scooter been driven past has long gone before any law-enforcement might arrive) and is also so widely accepted.

But perhaps help is on its way. Mathematicians and scientists have developed a theoretical material which would cloak an object in total silence. The implications for this are enormous. Houses that are properly sound insulated. Engine casings that would render vehicles quiet. Headgear, even, that would drop you into a calm oasis of silence amidst the noise and haste.

I wish them all the best in the trials that are to come. And want to sign up for a sheet of it to go over my back fence. Or round the boom-box in the boot of my neighbour's car.

 

"Money Having No Impact on Youth Crime" | "MPs Reject Need For Father in IVF"

Two pieces followed one-another on the radio this morning:

MPs voted last night to remove the clause that required IVF clinics to consider the need for a child to have a father and a mother - essentially opening the way for women to have the treatment without any father-figure being present in the prospective child's life.

And a recent report has found that, despite record investment, youth crime has continued to rise. "The government's record on youth crime and tackling the multiple needs of children caught up in the youth justice system is less impressive than many would have expected."

And no one suggested there might be a connection.
I am depressed.

Technorati: Crime | IVF

UK Wants Database of Every Phonecall, Email and Page View | Stop This Madness!!

Shocking news today: the UK government is proposing to create a database of every phonecall made and email message sent. (Update - original article in The Times here.) Yes, you did read that right: that would mean the government would effectively be tapping every phone call and intercepting every email and monitor every page view. What is this madness we're walking in to?! I actually had to check the date of the article to check it wasn't an old April Fool.

No need to ask about the reasons - it's our good old friend National Security. Just a wild guess, but I suspect it would get raided every time a crime occurred, to see if there was anything incriminating out there... and that would mean our everyday PC Plod fumbling around with data... and that would inevitably mean abuse of the system.

This from a government whose track-record on data protection has been terrible.

Oppose this now. Spread the word and raise awareness. Phone your MP. Email them. Write to them. And, if you can, get some of that 'this message will self-destruct' paper from the movies.

PS - hello lackey in MI5 trawling through suspect material. Yes I am planning to assassinate Bush, and Brown, and I have links with Al Queda, and Osama's hiding out at my house. NOW. Perhaps I'm just over-reacting having watched a Bourne movie last night...

Links: How to Avoid The Spies Around Us  ¦  CCTV 'doesn't reduce crime'  ¦  The All Seeing Soc(i)ety

Technorati: Civil Liberties | Politics

Clinton? Obama? McCain? This Guy Gets My Vote...

Thanks so much to Shane and his people for sending me a copy of his new book, written with Chris Haw, Jesus for President. It's gorgeous to look at and hold, fabulously designed, and perfectly balanced between seriousness and playfulness... starting with the title. Why can't every Christian book be like this? I just hope people get it, and read it thoroughly as they think about the coming US elections.

Worst case scenario: Shane gets asked to be Obama's advisor on something. As Campolo is quoted in the book: "Mixing the church and state is like mixing ice cream and cow manure . It may not do much to the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream." Stay pure and creamy Shane!

Check http://www.jesusforpresident.org for details / reviews / news.

Technorati: Claiborne | Don Carson | Jesus for President | Politics | Poverty | Power | puppy

The Final Word on Politics, The Credit Squeeze, Iraq, Boris and Everything...

A wonderful letter in today's Independent:

Sir: After a decade in which the electorate have been treated like idiots; when alternative political visions became a thing of the past and voting became a choice between different sets of accountants or fund managers; when a prime minister takes us into a catastrophic war based on lies, and is not held accountable, when the terrible results of the most obscene and idiotic schemes of greedy financiers are called a "credit squeeze", the people of London elect a celebrated fool.

This is either a fascinating piece of knowing irony or it is the completion of something far more disturbing.

Hear, hear, Mr Curtis of Nottingham, though, despite irony permeating every bloody area of life and sapping its blood, I increasingly fear it is the latter that is true.

I recall something from a review of a work by Kundera:

"In a world where everyone, in order to attract attention, turns somersaults, the man who stands on his own feet will be taken for an acrobat."

We need these tricksters, with their feet firmly on the ground.

Cans Festival | Get Your Stencils Ready

"A street party of stencil art"

Leake Street, London Waterloo. 3-5th May.

Technorati: London

So What's Worse...?

Your one-time minister saying some outrageous things about 9/11,
or being married to a man who had his cigar smoked in the Oval Office?

I don't get it - surely Bill should be the persona non grata on the campaign trail?

Technorati: Clinton | Obama

Don't Piss About London: Vote Ken Or The Monkey Gets It.

London goes to the polls this week. While the rest of the country has local council elections, London votes for its Mayor. It's the biggest directly-elected budget-holding post in the UK: £13 billion annually to spend, employing 103,000 people and a £39billion transport investment programme over the next 10 years.. And there are some massively key decisions to make which will impact on London for generations: the nature of the cross-rail project, the renewal of the contracts for the modernisation of the Tube...

And people are still seriously thinking of voting for Boris Johnson? Don't piss about London - this is serious.

Let's be clear - I really like Johnson. He's very funny, and articulate on TV. But he's simply no idea, or experience, of the complexity of running of major urban economy. The biggest job he's previously held is editor of The Spectator. While doing so he gave a lot of support and work to one Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan currently works on the Evening Standard, and has spent the past 17 weeks writing the most vitriolic attacks on the current Mayor, Ken Livingstone. The Evening Standard is the only proper London evening newspaper, and their hugely biased campaign has been disgusting.

Ken is no angel - he likes a drink, and a couple of his people have been less than perfect - but Boris would wilt in a day under the same scrutiny. Boris is:

• prone to terrible gaffes, mostly on the issue of race. Not what you need in the most diverse city in Europe.

• a political chameleon, who has u-turned his way through elections since his student days.

• a useless economist, who has screwed up the figures on his flag-ship transport joke policy.

• given to violence. It is well known he offered to sort out 'disposing of' someone who had offended a friend.

So, London, don't piss about here. If you live in London, explore the issues properly and I'm sure you'll Vote Ken, and put Green at number two. The Boris joke is over. We need more than a monkey in charge. And if you know someone who lives here, make sure you tell them to get out and do something sensible with their ballot.

Technorati: Boris Johnson | Evening Standard | Gilligan | Ken Livingstone | London | Mayor

The New Conspirators

There are lots of reasons why you really should go and buy Tom Sine's new book 'The New Conspirators', and none of them are that it's got a quote from me telling you to on the back.

One of them would be that I think it's the best looking Christian book I've seen for ages. Really good design work. Unfortunately, the US version is the usual pap, so you'll have to go direct to Paternoster and get the one that'll properly grace your shelves.

Another would be that Tom Sine is a genuinely incredible person. Carson can talk about 'Becoming Conversant With the Emerging Church', and others can prattle on about the emerging conversation; Sine actually is conversant with a massive number of people from around the world. When he tells stories, people ought to listen.

When the great book of life is opened, some would see it that it'll be the stellar Christians like Mclaren, Baker, Rollins and Wallis who should get all the plaudits. I wouldn't want to take anything away from any of them, but quietly, 'one mustard seed at a time' Tom has been actually inspiring people to do the stuff. It's a quiet, background role, perhaps, but I think if you could trace the significance of his words and actions through all the things that have happened because of them, you'd have quite an amazing list. Vaux certainly owes him its existence in many ways.

So go buy the book and get some low down on the real stuff people are doing beyond the spun-sugar of so much else that markets itself as the emerging conversation. And you'll have a nice looking cover to boot too.

Technorati: Carson | Sine | Rollins

Clinton Defaults to Conflict: This is Washington, not Hollywood

"One of the things that makes Mrs Clinton so psychologically fascinating is her tendency to portray everthing in terms of conflict and confrontation. And one of the characteristics that makes her so interesting politically is that she is a much better candidate when things are going badly than when they are going well." From BBC News.

This is precisely why I think you Americans should not vote for Clinton. When she says in an interview that she would completely destroy Iran if they attacked Israel, her rhetoric is getting dangerous. It is highly unwise politics to threaten another nation in order to win votes in your own.

The world does not need another US President who defaults to conflict. It's fine in Hollywood: the victim finds their metal and fights back. It's just not good enough if the White House is going to be a force for good.

"America deserves a President who doesn't quit." Perhaps Hillary, but it also needs one who knows when stopping fighting is for the greater good.

Go vote Obama.

No, This is Not a Joke | Yes, This is a Post About Bestiality

Or, perhaps more accurately, a post about liberty. An article I read over the weekend was arguing that the Church has let people down by shying away from theologies of sex. So I thought I'd dip my toe in...

Good to hear Peter Tatchell on the radio this morning, talking about the protests over the Olympic Torch in London yesterday, and the extraordinary story of his citizen's arrests on Robert Mugabe. I've heard him in person twice; I expect it's more to do with my journey than his, but Peter is someone I have increasingly warmed to over the years. At Greenbelt his life of extreme simplicity and strong vision came across very well. His attempts to force the church into facing up to issues of sexuality are well known, and some might disagree with his methods, but he has equally done huge amounts of justice work in other areas, notably the citizen's arrests on Robert Mugabe (for which he was beaten unconscious by his guards, live on TV). He has also be the focus of huge amounts of hatred, with his life in constant threat.

However, I digress. The second time I saw him was at a debate in school. The question I asked him there was about the liberalisation of sexuality. Over the course of (western) history, things that were previously taboo have become acceptable, things that have previously been punishable by the law have now become protected by the law. So, I wondered, though it's not really my cup of tea, did he foresee a day in the future when bestiality would become acceptable?

[The all-time most read story on the BBC's site is that of a Sudanese man who was forced by his tribal elders to marry a goat after being found having sex with it. The goat has since died, for reasons unknown, so the man is a free agent again. Bestiality is clearly a minority interest, but something in the wider consciousness is fascinated by it.]

The heart of what I was trying to get at was whether there was some idyllic just place where what was right was protected, and what was wrong was punished. The boundaries keep getting pushed back, but how far do we keep pushing? Clearly pedophilia is wrong - though I've heard people on TV sickenly argue otherwise, suggesting that society has ignored the issue of pre-pubescent sexuality - because the rights of the child are being abused. But there are other grey areas. If you're not a vegetarian, and aren't so concerned for an animal's rights, why exactly is bestiality wrong? Is it about disease control? And what about incest? An Australian couple describing themselves as 'normal intellectuals' made a plea on TV this week for understanding of their incestuous relationship.

What about other sexual pursuits? The head of FIA, Max Mosely, is under huge pressure to resign after an exposé of an orgy he'd organized and paid for. Have people been in uproar about the orgy, or about the fact he spoke German to the prostitutes, and there were therefore possible Nazii overtones? Was anyone there against their will? Good question. Did the prostitutes involved really want to be there?

We can get high and mighty about this, but, if we are honest, none of us are free of guilt when it comes to issues of sex and oppression, and society's twin defaults of romantic fantasy and nudge-nudge humour are clear markers of this.

So, if there are absolutes - and I was cheerily mocked for suggesting one in the area of biology last week - where do they now lie? In the same place that Christianity has always placed them? And if these absolutes are simply unworkable in the world we find ourselves, what should our response be?

Technorati: Bestiality | Liberal | Mosely | Peter Tatchell | Sex

Taking the Fight to the Government on Civil Liberties | "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?"

Disadvantage of getting older: you have to go to 40th birthday parties.

Advantage of getting older: the friends throwing the parties have done more interesting stuff.

Never more so in the case of Jules vs. His Rapidly Disappearing Youth... Great time on Saturday night hooking up with a lot of the old Abundant crew - who, if the ripples could be traced to their edges, really have had a profound impact on life, faith and culture in London and far beyond.

It had been common comic currency in the old days that Jules was always suing the police - making sure they were chased down properly over wrongful arrest, abuse in prison etc., but I'd missed the fact that he'd been representing some very high-profile people like Lotfi Raissi. Raissi was the first person charged in connection with 9/11... And subsequently Jules won him a huge victory by forcing the UK government to issue a complete exhonoration, which won him Lawyer of the Week in The Times last month.

Nice one Jules. Keep at them. As he notes in the interview, "in the past six years there has been an unprecedented expansion of the State into the life of the individual. Parliament has significantly failed to protect rights we have enjoyed for hundreds of years. Unless this trend is reversed soon, in ten years’ time I will be viewed on a surveillance monitor playing football in the park with my wonderful boys teasing me about how old school I sound going on about civil liberties."

It does genuinely worry me that we are sleepwalking into 1984, but we can all sleep more easily with people like Jules 'watching the watchmen.'

Connected: Phorm - don't let your ISP stalk you | The All Seeing Soc(i)ety | First Pilotless Police Drone Launches

Technorati: Civil Liberties | Jules Carey | Law

Snake on a Plane | In-Flight Mobile Use

Oh dear. The inevitable has happened: someone's come up with a way for us to use our mobiles when on the plane.

"I'M ON THE PLANE"

Next up: 'mobile free areas' on planes, and stickers telling people to keep their voices down.

I think it's sad, to be honest. Planes were one of those places where you could just relax a little, without the pressure of email and phone messages. I'm going to be posting in more detail about this another time, but a good friend sent me a fantastic article (see below) the other day by an English Professor at a US university, who is worried about how much his students are stressed by the constant demands of the infinite possibilities technology now give us. A quote in it from Thoreau came to mind as I read the news above:

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

"I'M ON THE PLANE." Precisely.

It's 19 pages. You'll have to cut some time out to read it properly. Fewer and fewer of us are willing to do that these days, and skim the surface of learning; no time to plumb depths.

Dwelling in Possibilities.doc

Technorati: Maine | mobile | plane | Texas | Thoreau

New MA at Kings

Kings College have a new MA which they wondered if I'd be happy to flag up, which I am.

It's in 'Politics, Theology and Faith-Based Organisations', and you can read more about it in the doc attached below.

Should British Kids Salute the Flag? | Identity | Symbols

A recent government report has proposed that teenagers should make an oath of allegiance to 'Queen and Country', in order to give them a 'sense of belonging.'

I'm aware that something similar exists in the US education system, though the only reason I'm aware of it is by it's bitter-sweet use in movies to suggest some apple-pie nostalgia that's going to be blown up in our faces.

I actually think it would be a very bad idea, for a number of reasons. As a teacher, knowing both the sorts of people who work in schools and the sorts of kids who attend them, I think it would be totally impossible to implement with a straight face.

However, leaving the possibility of people not taking it seriously aside, the question remains about what it would actually mean. Would we be insisting the teenagers 'take the pledge'? What would happen to those that refused? Would immigrants or temporary residents have to take the pledge too? Are we seriously suggesting that teenagers might think twice before acting in an anti-social manner, before buying cheap alcohol and marauding around high streets, because of it?

In these sort of public liturgies, the words themselves are merely symbolic, and are meant to be a public statement of some already deeply held truth. The same is true in marriage and baptism. So aren't we asking our children to actually lie if the are forced to say the words without the belief? And if so, is this not simply going to lead to deeper problems later?

Children in the UK are suffering an identity crisis. They are insecure, adrift and alone on the ocean of free-market consumerism, battered by peer pressure, told not to hold on to beliefs or foster relationships or risk being sunk by commitment.

An oath to Queen and Country is an insult to them. How about instead a commitment, a public statement by government, reciprocated by a public commitment by parents, to do better by our children, to love them and support them, to adopt laws that would support families rather than atomising them in the drive to make people work?

Once again, it's the children who are taking the rap. And, as I think the parable of the sower suggests, we shouldn't expect so much of our young seedlings.

Technorati: Allegiance | Britishness | Government | Oath | Parents | Teenagers

Time and Chance | Theology | Sport

It's been a huge day of sport in the UK. Depressingly the team I support got dumped out of a cup competition, and England were also beaten in a big rugby international by Scotland. But later on, Jonny's team - who've had literally hundreds of millions of pounds spent on players since being bought by a Russian oligarch - were beaten by a tiny side from a league below them, and dumped out of the cup too.

Joy and sorrow. Adrenaline and depression. Highs and lows. Season after season. It never ends.

Prospect, the politics/culture/arts magazine I subscribe too have recently begun a monthly sports column, having argued that it was about time it enjoyed the same cultural weight as the performing arts, and to be judged by the normal standards of public life.

I have a good sporting rapport with lots of people within church circles, and Jonny and Jordon blog some sports too, but, as in cultural life, it is really ignored as a theological locus, unlike literature, music or art. I'm beginning to wonder why this is. Part of the trickster in me wonders if it's just because the effete bookish types who ended up theologians were always the last to get picked for playground teams in school (though Camus had been a promising player). Perhaps it's something deeper.

Mentions of sport in the Bible are few and far between. Paul talks a bit about running the race... but it's hardly the taking part he thinks that counts. He races to win, not wanting to 'run like a man running aimlessly... I beat my body and make it my slave.' (1 Cor 9) We don't see Jesus ever doing something so frivolous as take part in a game of anything. Was this because society had such little time for leisure? As a Roman, Paul would have been more used to the idea of a successful culture creating leisure time due to its riches, and thus giving time for sport, for playful shows of strength and skill.

Hard edges of the church have looked down on sport in the past, seeing it variously as too sensual, too close to passion. And yet many of the UK's leading football teams can trace their roots back to evangelical men's clubs and the 'muscular Christianity' they promoted to keep the working class out of trouble and pubs. Perhaps it's harsh on those who gave so much to that work, but the hangover I've sensed seems to be a rather patronising attitude to sport: it's good for you, it'll probably keep you out of trouble, but it's got nothing really to do with faith.

Which leaves me wondering why I'm passionate about it, or, more accurately, why I've allowed myself to become more passionate about it, in inverse proportion to my proximity to evangelicalism.

I wonder if the answer might be in Ecclesiasties 9, where the sage says:

I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Time and chance. These are the twin curses of the sports fan: all victories are temporal. Each season has to be fought again from scratch each year, and past glories mean little. And, no matter what we might say, so much is down to chance. That 'goal of the month', that incredible shot, that goal - we can claim some great skill, but really we know that 99 times out of 100 it would not have come off, would have scuffed off a boot into the stands.

And this is where I think sport gives us a great theological grounding: the race is not to the swift. God does not play for us, does not ram the ball home and his riches do not guarantee victory. The highs and lows, the passing seasons, are part of this marathon. We must enjoy them, and yet, as all sports fans know, not ride hubris-high and expect some final victory. Not yet. Not in this advent, in this now and not yet...

So I think it's about time sport was taken more seriously. I'm done with people patronising the passion, the partisanship, the emotional energy, longing for us to turn our minds to higher things. It's about codes, about being bound to a team. They had a word for this binding, this commitment to something in Latin. Religare. That's right. Sport is a religion. And, as such, informs faith. So, anyone want to bat some theology of sport around? Or it is just me convinced God is right into Man United? (Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

PS - Nick Hornby, in his brilliant monthly column 'What I've Been Reading' talks about Ed Smith's What Sport Tells Us About Life in this month's Believer. Hilarious. And helpful encouragement that I'm not mad.

Technorati: Art | Chance | Prospect | Sport | Theology

Crazy for God | Frank Schaeffer at Greenbelt 08

"I'd rather be arrested for shoplifting than ever be an evangelical leader again. There was a certain basic and decent honesty about stealing pork chops that selling God had lacked."

It's only March, I know, but I'll put a punt on Crazy for God still being one of my top 5 books of 2008 in December.

The subtitle, "How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back", pretty much sums the book up nicely. Frank is, of course, the son of the massively influential Christian leader Francis Schaeffer, who was a profound influence on my parents and their generation's view of faith. Francis Schaeffer set up 'L'Abri' in Switzerland where everyone who was anyone hung out at some point in the 60's. The Rolling Stones, Led Zep, Os Guinness and every other star in the Christian constellation all passed by there to argue faith and culture with Francis and the L'Abri workers.

While Frank skiied, avoided school, hit on the scores of girls who passed through and scored with plenty of them, and his right hand too. This is what makes Crazy for God such a refreshing read: here's someone from the true Christian royalty actually telling it like it is, with all the sex drugs and rock and roll edited in. If you don't want the honest truth about a teenager helping a disabled friend jack off, praying for him to be healed by emptying a jar of oil over his head and ruining his clothes in the process, then this book isn't for you.

But if, like so many in the emerging movement, you've wrestled with your parents' faith, wildly oscillated between crazed commitment - and Frank does a very good job outlining how he did set up the Religious Right, and exactly what he thinks of it now - and total rejection, then you'll absolutely love it. Indeed, as the US heads into election fever again I'd say this should be required reading for all who are looking for their candidate to back up their faith perspective. Here's a book by someone who really knows, and has really been through it: extraordinary childhood, celebrity, acclaimed artist, teenage father, Hollywood director, jet-setting evangelical speaker... and he gave it all up, and had so much taken away, and did end up stealing pork chops.

It's a genuine laugh-out-loud read, moving, committed and written like the proper novelist he is (and if you haven't read Portofino, you must) and I'm really excited that he's agreed to come to Greenbelt this summer. That's reason enough to get your ticket now, before the March discount deadline ends.

Technorati: Francis Schaeffer | Frank Schaeffer | Religious Right

Leaps of Faith | God Immensurable | 'Life is a series of Estimates'

Friday 29th February. Another leap year, another 'correction' in our faulty estimate of 365 days in a year. We thought perhaps the Universe should have given us tidy integers, orbits that ran to exact days, but the closer we looked, the further away our measures got.

The 4-yearly leap day is an attempt to get our solar clocks back in sync., but even this is slightly out. So we have to have leap seconds too. None this year, the last was in 2005. We'll have to adjust our watches again soon though.

Problems of time and measurement. When is now, and how far away are you? Both incalculable. We zoom in, micro, nano, pico... only to find at the last a haze of leaping particles, refusing to be pinned and bound and ruled. Life, in other words, is a series of estimates.

As is faith. The strangeness of God is parallel to that of particles. The energetic scientists go off in search, determined to nail down truth, demanding we nail our colours and beliefs to their masts... Only to find that bodies nailed to masts die; the life slips from them mysteriously, to rise elsewhere.

And this, in the end, is the problem of theology. It can never be the measure of God, nor provide for us an accurate rule. Instead, we must open ourselves to these divine corrections, these leap moments where we have to adjust, and humbly admit we are not this spinning Universe's pivot, but part of an irrational orbit among myriad other heavenly bodies.

Technorati: Leap Year | Time

Sort it out gays - stop destroying earth!

The Telegraph reported recently that an Israeli MP has blamed the recent spate of earthquakes in the Middle East on gays. The Knesset has recently repealed various laws about homosexuality, and this created the siesmic events.

Gays were also to blame for flooding in Britain last year, according to one Bishop, and one might also argue that with their thrusting steel tubes penetrating and bringing down two of America's largest twin erections, 9/11 was some sort of twisted stunt to highlight the destructive power of gay love, a judgement on liberal America, if you will.

So sort it out gay people - we don't want more floods and earthquakes and terror attacks! Stop it!

So This Is What The World Wants: One Dimensional Men? | Bartlett and Williams

As the Archbishop heads for Synod this afternoon to defend himself and, according to some exaggerated reports, save his job, I've been mulling over exactly why he has been under such pressure for his comments on Sharia Law. Even the shallowest examination of him as a man would reveal a hugely intelligent thinker and a thoroughly, deeply spiritual life. Why would such a man want the UK to come under Sharia Law and start 'stoning women', as the tabloids would have it?

His words have been twisted out of all recognition of course. And yet pundits line up to judge that he has been foolish - of course his words have been twisted. Everyone's are. Which is why people say nothing. And thus runs the plot tension of a whole stack of West Wing episodes: Bartlett knows what should be said, but is advised he can't. Then at the last minute a way is found that he can, and all is good. In other words, we know this stuff should be said, and feel good when it is on TV, so what is stopping people talking intelligently in the public domain?

I tried to touch on this in the book. I think Marcuse's analysis in One Dimensional Man is really good. He writes that there are basically three ways that the dominant powers push people down - flatten them into nicely manageable one-dimensional beings. All three ways are lies, and they run like this:

The first lie: "Things are too big and complicated for you to be able to change them. Things have gone too far to change anyway."

The second lie: "If you do try to change things, you'll be risking all you've got - your own status and position and financial security."

The third lie: "And if you still persist in taking these big topics on, and are prepared to pay the cost, people will just laugh at you."

These are the main reasons why people simply don't do anything: it'll cost me, it's too big, people will laugh. And it's been interesting to note how these three lies have been spun out to attack the Archbishop. 'You don't understand enough about Sharia Law / Islam / the legal system to comment'. 'You're foolish for speaking out - don't you know you'll be putting your job at risk?' 'What a Burkha' etc.

But what is more interesting to note are the groups of people spinning them. As a general rule it's been legal pundits, the broadsheet media and more right-leaning politicians who've spun the first, the church and more left-leaning politicians who've spun the second, and the tabloid media who've spun the third.

What have all these people got in common? Something precious to lose. And this is the nub of the whole furore: in a country under tension from immigration, from European integration, people feel their identities are under threat. And what is perceived as the last bastion of Englishness? Our own legal system with its wigs and theatrics. The political right and the jurists are afraid of losing this precious control over how to tell people what is right and wrong, the religious right are afraid of Britain straying further away from hard-line evangelicalism, the political left are still frightened they won't be taken seriously and will lose their hold on power, and the tabloid media poke fun and stir up a storm to sell papers.

None of them are really interested in what Dr Williams had to say - which was a quite brilliant and brave talk on culture, belonging and identity. Not because they have no interest in it, but precisely because they've invested too much interest in keeping the status quo. Like Bartlett, I hope Rowan stays true to his message, and doesn't stop forcing us to see the multiplicity of our dimensions.

Technorati: Archbishop | Canterbury | Marcuse | Media | One Dimensional Man | Rowan Williams | Sharia

Rowan Williams and Sharia Law

Archbishop Rowan is getting huge amounts of flack for his comments on a selective use of some parts of Sharia law in certain communities in the UK. Typically, his arguments, based on some serious reading, have been caricatured and turned into shock headlines. Which suggests he was perhaps ill-advised - this sort of reaction was bound to happen.

"This means that we have to think a little harder about the role and rule of law in a plural society of overlapping identities....I have been arguing that a defence of an unqualified secular legal monopoly in terms of the need for a universalist doctrine of human right or dignity is to misunderstand the circumstances in which that doctrine emerged, and that the essential liberating (and religiously informed) vision it represents is not imperilled by a loosening of the monopolistic framework....

In conclusion, it seems that if we are to think intelligently about the relations between Islam and British law, we need a fair amount of 'deconstruction' of crude oppositions and mythologies, whether of the nature of sharia or the nature of the Enlightenment. But as I have hinted, I do not believe this can be done without some thinking also about the very nature of law. It is always easy to take refuge in some form of positivism; and what I have called legal universalism, when divorced from a serious theoretical (and, I would argue, religious) underpinning, can turn into a positivism as sterile as any other variety. If the paradoxical idea which I have sketched is true - that universal law and universal right are a way of recognising what is least fathomable and controllable in the human subject - theology still waits for us around the corner of these debates, however hard our culture may try to keep it out. And, as you can imagine, I am not going to complain about that."

The speech is an important one about how we respect difference, and, in particular, how people with allegiances to multiple to frameworks (Britain, Islam...) might benefit from a legal system that accommodates them. In fact, such a system already exists in an ad hoc sense, both in terms of Judaism and Islam, and he is simply suggesting a formalising of it. Is this concept too threatening to our identity as good Christian Brits? Is 'the law' all we've got left?

Don't knee-jerk. Read the full text here.

Technorati: Islam | Rowan Williams | Sharia

Car Commercials | Fantasy

There's a simple rule to follow if you want to make an ad about a car: make it total fantastical. Don't mention traffic jams. Don't mention the boredom of driving along motorways, the taxes and the emissions, the noise or anything else. Instead, make the car like a robot, or a dog. Make it jump between skyscrapers (I mean, who'd actually want to see what it's really like driving in a big city?) or hurtle down mountain roads with no other traffic.

In short, when advertising a car, more than any other product, lie. Because we all know how crap driving really is, and all need some fantasy world dreamscape to picture when we get behind the wheel.

Connected: Advertising Makes Us All Poor

Technorati: Advertising | Cars | Fantasy

Flocking to the Cities

Sorry been a bit quiet here. Kids' birthdays, other writing projects... stuff.

Anyway, a piece on the news caught my ear yesterday. Apparently a long-term study of the hunting habits of peregrine falcons has found that they have evolved their methods and are now increasingly hunting in cities at night.

The thinking is that they are using the lights from urban areas to spot migrating species - like Woodcocks - at night, and swooping in for the kill over our cities.

Why have they moved in? It's a pattern we can see in many other animals too. Foxes - once a very rare sight in my childhood - are now a daily feature of my suburban street. Animals are finding cities good places to be because of two factors. Firstly, there are lots of easy pickings for scavangers like foxes. Discarded protein, in the form of chicken wings and kebabs, are easier to hunt down than rabbits. And migrating birds crossing over cities at night are very easy pickings for falcons.

Secondly, the irony of urbanisation, and the intensive food production it requires (see previous series touching on this), is that much of the countryside is very bland. In fact, in some urban areas there is now a greater variety of plant species per square kilometer than there is in the 'countryside', with its acres upon acres of intensively farmed land.

What does this tell us about cities? What is abundantly clear is that they are heavy masses, with large gravities. Falcons didn't look at cities and think 'hey, it'd be great to go and live there'. They circled them and were drawn in by them, inch by inch. Cities do not exist in isolation from, or in opposition to the countryside. The presence of the city infects and affects that which feeds it.

There's a passage in the novel I've written* where the protagonist reflects on Forster's assertion in Howards End that 'all of Cornwall is latent in Paddington (Station)', and concludes that the flow has switched: all of London's vices are spread out and latent in the country stations that flow from its terminii.

It seems that the same pressures that drove people off the land and into the factories are being felt by other species. Nic always asserts that 'you're only out of the city when you can't get mobile reception', and that is getting a long way away now. But even in those places, the fingerprints of mankind's domesitication of the landscape is plain to see.

Masses that get too heavy exert such a strong gravitational pull that not even light can escape. These black holes are constantly hungry ghosts, never satiated. The question is, how do we avoid allowing our cities becoming these dark places, drawing in and consuming everything around them? I guess that was one of the questions I was trying to grapple with writing the book.

 

* on Lulu for a while while I flaggelate myself before agents.

Close Small Schools, Open Large Prisons?

The last couple of days have seen local government proposals to close hundreds of small village schools in the England, and central government proposals to build Titan 'super-prisons' in England and Wales.

Both policies seem in doubt now, as central government has written to local governments reminding them of their obligations to keep small schools running, and prison inspectors have written to central government telling them that 'super prisons' would be a really bad idea.

I hope people are wise enough to see the connection between the two stories. Large schools create communities where children are anonymous, not known well by staff, and this breeds poor behaviour. Investment in smaller, more relationally focused education will, eventually, reap savings in a smaller prison population later.

But that would require thinking beyond the 4-term cycle of General Elections. I hope we can see long-term enough to cough up now. Locking up thousands more simply can't be the answer.

Power Religion | Food | The Hunter-Gatherer Eucharist [5]

Power Religion [1] | Power Religion [2] | Power Religion [3] | Power Religion [4]

So, how might we try to gather some of this together into a ritual, a performance, a remembering worthy of the rich tapestry of signs it suggests? I think, firstly, we have to humbly accept that we simply never will do this most mysterious meal full justice. But secondly, we must commit ourselves to trying. The bland, tasteless bread and wine that is served at many of the churches throughout the world is appropriate for the bland and tasteless act of weak theatre that communion has so often become. Here is a ritual, a commandment, an act of collective memory, an enactment that has so much power... and it demands that we don't allow it to be neutered.

The memories that we are working with are loaded with paradox. We remember a man dying, a bloody sacrifice, an injustice... and commemorate the beginning of our reconciliation, the breaking of elements that draw us together. In these posts we have been thinking about the bread and wine acting as prompts for grief at our domestication of the earth, our spread of cultural mediocrity and blandness where there was such vibrant diversity. We have also seen how they suggest to us the breaking of the hunter-gatherer God. (Something I haven't touched on is the symbolism of Jesus as the 'lamb of God' - Diamond makes the case for domestication of animals like sheep as a root cause of much human disease, and thus responsible for the wiping out of many times more indigenous peoples than European guns.)

I wonder then if the Hunter-Gatherer Eucharist ought to contain within it more 'savage' elements. Rather than eating fine bread, perhaps we might incorporate a battering of the wheat, a physical milling and breaking of the grain into flour. Rather than sipping fine wine, we might similarly trample grapes, and thus get back to the raw materials and processes involved in food production. Alternatively, we might celebrate with found or scavenged items. Freegans collect and eat discarded food from dumpsters behind restaurants. There is risk here, and dirt, and life.

The Hunter-Gatherer / Food Producer distinction does not simply exonerate the Hunter-Gatherer as some wild and truer way of life. Food production began in part because the hunters had exterminated most of the large, passive mammals that once roamed the earth. And food production has led us to have to get along, to be interdependent, rather than simply killing the stranger.

So we must also turn the Eucharist into a meditation on our own use of resources. Are we living lightly on the earth, or are we feasting from it? Are we drinking fine wine and ripping into fresh bread as exponents of a religion of power, or are we partaking in the body of Christ, the body of the hunted, the broken, the condemned, the poor, the misunderstood, the dying prophet who, like a grain of wheat, fell to the ground and had to be buried before bearing wild fruit?

I hope for one that my eating of this strange meal might lean more toward the latter, and somehow sow the seed within it, as Christ's eating did, the downfall of power religion.

Thanks for journeying on this little series.

Technorati: Anarchy | Body of Christ | Guns, Germs and Steel | Hunter-Gatherer | Jared Diamond | Power | Agriculture

Power Religion | Food | The Hunter-Gatherer Eucharist [2]

Power Religion [1]

You might be wondering what the hell the last post was about, and where I'm going with this. Join the club.

In the previous post, I outlined Diamond's basic thesis in Guns, Germs and Steel, and retold the story of Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Emperor Atahuallpa. But what is the significance?

The pertinent question is this: how could 160 Europeans overcome 80000 Inca soldiers? The answer is simple: they'd domesticated horses, and had guns. But why had Europeans ended up doing this, and not the Incas? Were the Incas less intelligent?

Power Religion | Food | The Hunter-Gatherer Eucharist [1]

It's been out for about a decade now, but I finally got round to reading Jared Diamonds' book Guns, Germs and Steel. I think it's excellent.

The basic thesis, for those who haven't read it, is that humanity, having developed out of the same group of lucky apes a long time back, has obviously developed in radically different ways in different areas, and, rather than attributing the fact that it was Europe that conquered Africa and the Americas (rather than the other way round) to innate racial differences, it is the environments that these peoples evolved in that led to the Europe being so 'successful' and powerful.

I'm not going to blog through the book, but one aspect of it - the link between the evolution of farming, food technology and power that Diamond establishes - has prompted in me a series of posts about this and the link to power religion, and the eucharist in particular. We'll see how we go.

Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton: Dynasty or Democracy?

In my recent post about predictions for 2008, I was (not) surprised to find most of the debate being around the comment of the collapse of the Emerging project. Actually, I think it'll be more about the language changing, but hey.

What garnered no comment was the prediction about '0