Poor old Pete - seems like some Fundie at the printers for his new book has taken exception to the title of his new book 'The Fidelity of Betrayal', done some reworking, and sent it out to stores as 'The Betrayal of Fidelity.'
Ouch. That's gotta hurt sales.
Both copies have been pulped.
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.
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.
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.
"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
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 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...
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.
Continue reading "What Are The 'Grand Challenges' for Theology for the 21st Century?" »
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
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
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