The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Top-Down | Bottom-Up | Powers

An excellent week away, helped by the fantastic sunshine that rayed on us every day, while the South got soaked in rain.

Reading material for the train/ferry/bus etc. on the way up/down was this month's Prospect, which contained an article from some old Blairites challenging Brown to move away from top-down centralised governance to a more liberal bottom-up approach:

Labour politicians too often see a social problem—obesity, children at risk on the internet or declining interest in high culture—and make two assumptions: first, that the problem is amenable to a policy solution; and second, that this solution ought to involve the establishment of a council, commission or task force. But many of the issues facing modern society are too complex and too cultural for such a wooden approach.

Coming back I've just received an email from an organization struggling from within over whether they should be taking one or the other approach, and many of the discussions we had on Iona related to the same issue.

In other words, the debate continues to rage, and usually follows the same line: those in power want to preserve power structures because, from their perspective, it's the only way to get things done, while those outside those structures see the world very differently and realise things aren't working as well as those in power think they are.

I've been into this in detail in the book, but, to summarise: power and leadership are about facilitating communication or, in the governance situation, creating environments within which the best possible outcomes for people are likely to emerge. You can't legislate for decency, but you can create the kinds of frameworks within which people are more likely to be decent to one another.

I think this is the tricky situation which both our Labour government and certain wings of the church find themselves: they feel so threatened by some external power (terrorism / biblical liberalism) that they panic and want to legislate hard in an attempt to protect us. I currently feel that I'd rather enjoy freedom and decent human rights / civil liberties and be blown up a free man, than be safely cocooned in a tight-assed, Orwellian world.

Technorati: Liberal | Prospect

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.

The Nicene Creed | Constantine and the Beginnings of Power Religion

Last April, in the build-up to Easter, I posted a series of thoughts about Jesus and Paul's journeys toward Jerusalem, and the very different attitudes they took when arrested there. I argued that in Paul's 'strategising' to get himself to Rome, we see the conception of power-Christianity, which perhaps came to full birth with the rise of Constantine and his assimilation of Christianity as a political and military tool.

For those interested in exploring this further, I highly recommend listening to this episode of the fantastic BBC programme 'In Our Time', which discusses the Nicene Creed. What's fascinating is how this statement of faith was actually itself a set of statements designed to allow certain Bishops to 'sign up' to the view of faith Constantine wanted. It was 'delicate theology and robust politics.'

As such, it too is couched in politically loaded language, and thus, as the contributors point out, a creed that helped move Christianity from a religion of peace, to one of war and power; from a 'sea of boats all moving on their own tacks generally toward belief in Jesus, to one mothership, which demanded this creed as a boarding pass.

As you may know, the council was called in part to deal with the 'Arian Heresy', and Arius himself became a figure of hate in the Church. He died in a public toilet as his bowels exploded, and the church later set up a statue of him on that site, encouraging people to piss and shit on him. Nice touch that. Just what Jesus would have done.

 

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

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!

The Mergees - Sort it out Emergent, We Want an Award Ceremony

So the Oscars have been wept along to, and we've had the BAFTAs and the BRITs and the Grammys... I think people are missing a trick here. Come on Emergent, give us an award ceremony! We demand a tacky hotel and venue, with numbered tables, free alcohol and cut away shots to Andrew Jones as he shuffles when the Lifetime Achievement category approaches!

Someone should design a gong... I reckon a brass cast of a tea light should do it.

And the award for Best Use of a Video Projector in a Badly Lit Space goes to...

Further categories and nominations welcome. The 'Mergees' start here...

Technorati: BAFTA | Emergent | Oscars | TSK

What Are The 'Grand Challenges' for Theology for the 21st Century?

Wired reported a couple of days ago on the conclusions of Google co-founder Larry Page's working group on improving life on earth, and the list of '14 Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century'. They included things like making solar energy affordable, reverse-engineering the brain and providing energy from fusion. Energy, quality of life, quantity of life, in summary.

This got me thinking: what might a list of the grand theological challenges of the next 100 years look like? Well, I'm no Larry Page, but I mailed out a bunch of people in my address book, texted and called a few others, and had lunch with one, asking them, very simply, what they thought should be on the list.

Actually, not that simply. Because I also asked if they thought whether such a list could even be created. Page's list is more simple: science - our knowledge of our physical world - does progress. We have better materials and technologies than we used to. But has our understanding of God actually moved forward? Or do people simply dig ever-deeper into their rutted positions?

So what did people say? You can find the unexpurgated version here, but, edited down a little:

Brian Maclaren (writer) Grappling with Jesus' good news of the kingdom of God, realizing how it differs from the popular Western gospel of "how to go to heaven after you die and be happy and successful until then.

Nic Hughes (designer) I wish that someone, some group, something, somewhere would develop a theological project that captured the imagination. All the good ideas are elsewhere. Cross-discipline theological labs please?

Vanessa Elston (teacher) In very basic terms how do we move from a reformation/protestant/enlightenment emphasis on the salvation of the individual to one of communal participation in salvation.

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

God is a Londoner: Time Out

The usually so-antagonistic-its-almost-funny Time Out seem to have mellowed this year. They gave Greenbelt a great write-up as the 'best family festival' and this week have an actually really good series of pieces on religious London: Muslim speed-dating, living in a London monastery, Kensington Temple and a trip behind the scenes at the stunning Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden.

Good on them.

Technorati: Hinduism | Islam | London | Time Out