Formation for participraying

As I've been thinking about the difference between group processes for intercessory (rather than 'merely' petitionary) prayer meetings (see previous post if you've started on this one). It has been occuring to me that there are certain characteristics of behaviour and attitude that are needed by participants -this then is about Christian formation.

I've been aware too, as I wrote, that some of what I've been suggesting is quite like Quaker discernment practices -so that's a cross-reference point. I have long thought that part of the unspoken (!) underpinning for Quaker practice* is a set of internalised rules about conduct in a meeting. It is this sense of  the processes needing a good human habitus that I'm trying here to sketch out.

So, what is required, humanly speaking, for a group intercessory prayer process to work as well as it can?

Well, the things that most readily come to mind are as follows. They form a sort of core competency list which suggests some things that are necessary in initial Christian formation (discipling, baptism and confirmation preparation -probably). They are in no particular order. Though perhaps the first really is foremost.

Listening to God. As a gateway to this, I'd suggest a thorough grounding in lectio Divina or a robust version of the Quiet Time. It seems to me that the core of this discipline (I take they view that they are basically the same thing differently contextualised), is hearing the words of scripture with openness and sifting our own responses to note what in our own reactions may indicate God's Spirit drawing us to a particular word or phrase and being prepared to stay with that long enough to understand how and why it is settling with us.

Listening to others. This means not only hearing and understanding (which may in turn imply we ask some questions sometimes to improve our comprehension) but dwelling with what is said in such a way that we can suss out what it in resonates with us, unpick our own responses and so weigh up what is of God in it. It's rather different to listening for the next cue or gap where we can say our own piece. It requires patience and self-control (fruit of the Spirit). Asking clarificatory questions well will require gentleness and kindness (also fruit of the Spirit) in attitude to enable a genuine sharing and not trigger defensiveness or anxiety in our conversation partners.

Self awareness -related to the previous paragraph; being aware of our own responses and being familiar enough with our habits of response enables us to own our own 'stuff' and so refrain from projecting onto other humans or onto God.

Self examination. Being aware of our own motivations and being prepared to notice and take responsibility for our own reactions. This enables us to offer things to the group with less entanglement from the less worthy side of us. It won't go away except by us becoming aware and dealing with it appropriately. So we may want to set aside time to consider our participation and what drives it.

Becoming comfortable with silence. Much of what is written above requires us to be able to give attention to what our inner world is doing. This is likely to mean that we (and others) are quiet for periods of time to do so. We need to be okay with that for enough time to let things happen.

Loving challenge: kind and respectful speech. It is likely that from time to time, we find that we sense that something is mentioned or shared that for some reason seems 'off'. Obviously we need to examine ourselves to understand better why it may seem 'off' to us. However, if having done so we feel we should try to put things right or back on track, we will need to offer a corrective or at least a question. As we do so, we do well when we recognise that the person who shared has probably done so in good faith and may feel somewhat vulnerable having done so. Loving challenge recognises that and seeks to reassure that person that their effort is appreciated, that they are respected even while questioning what may have been shared. It may not always be explicitly said, depending on the level of trust and friendship in the group, but it should always be conveyed by the way that things are said and by choices of words that are not derogatory or shaming. We want people to feel that they can continue to be wrong sometimes without being derogated for it. Being wrong is a great way to learn how to be right more often. We'd want that encouragement for ourselves, so we should model it ourselves in relation to others. Having a meeting which is slow and thoughtful, will help in this since we are less likely to 'shoot from the hip' in such an atmosphere.

 

Starred Note

*I'm not a Quaker but I have long been interested in their origins and sympathetic to their historical roots. I dissent from their standing aside from the dominical sacraments. I value their conviction that there is that of God in everyone -I'd elucidate: the Spirit is at work in all. And I value their experience in  developing ways to listen to the movements of the Spirit in individuals and collectively. I think that churches could and should learn from their discernment processes.

Participraying processes

Following up the previous blog post...  which I nearly delayed posting because I wondered whether to write more. Instead I've opted to write this further piece having now published the previous one. Very near the end of the prior post, I set the agenda for this post:

how do we change a typical prayer meeting from a collecting of concerns in prayer leading to a serial presenting of requests (more or less elaborated), to a sharing, naming, listening and discerning mode in which we begin also to share what we think God is responding and discerning those promptings and tentative suggestions we begin to sense?

 In some ways the answer is there; implicit in the list: sharing, naming, listening and discerning. I think that there also needs to be a further stage about how we then pray after significant discernments. I think that list probably names some tasks, but not necessarily a step-by-step process.

Sharing is fairly typical in the conventional prayer meeting. Either a leader or leaders suggests some matters of concern or the members of the group are able to say what they'd like prayer for. Typically, this involves giving a bit of background and then usually anyone in the group can then make a prayer of that, usually that happens once everyone has had a chance to share what they would like prayer for*. This might be still a part of a more intercessory meeting but there needs to be consideration for the amount of work involved in processing a suggestion for prayer. So a way to sift suggestions (what would be "requests" in a conventional petition presenting meeting) is probably going to be needed. In fact group intercessory prayer might be best to try to focus on one thing at a time. And there may be need to processes to help centre in on one. So there could be a time of discernment and various ways to capture a sense of what people are feeling drawn to pray about if there are several possibilities on the table. One could be to delegate to a leader or leaders, possibly before the meeting. They would then present the matter at hand, perhaps with some background and perhaps with initial thoughts about the character and ways of God which might give clues as to how to start reflecting and dialoguing with one another and God. In other cases a process of quiet reflection on what has been brought to the meeting for potentially deepening of prayer, and listening to ones heart individually with a means to then share what seems to be 'settling' with group members. All this takes time.

Naming is perhaps not a separate item, really -I think it is the outcome really of the previous process of identifying what is to be held and explored in prayer. But we should be aware of how the way that we describe and term things can be helpful or unhelpful in directing our attention and our thoughts. A good naming enables insight, a less good naming may distract or frame our thoughts misleadingly. It would be wise, I think, also to consider naming in relation to discerning (see below).

Listening is where the nub of things begins to be identified. What are we drawn to pray about? What do we think God's stake and agenda might be? It's a process of hearing one another as we try to listen to God and to make sense of the various things that seem to be implied or relate to the matter at hand. Listening to the situation and context: what is actually happening and what does it mean? What is at stake to whom? What do we not know? Listening to God alongside all of this: are there things in what we are sharing and learning that seem to us to draw us, lectio-divina-like; things that seem to carry a mark of God with them?

Discerning -this is about becoming aware and more sure of what it is that God is pressing upon us or inviting us into. I'm envisaging activities of sharing 'weighty'** intuitions and insights -prophecy, if you will. I'm envisaging these resting on core disciplines such as lectio divina which (it seems to me) is pretty much what lies at the heart of the classic evangelical Quiet Time practice. Same rose, different name. Same rose, different traditions' gardens.

In a group context this means both attending to our own sense of what God might be highlighting to us and also sharing that with the others and then applying the careful listening and weighing up discipline to what is shared. This might look a bit like contemplative dialogue: people offer something in a gentle tentative way -after all this is offering a thought or possible insight for discernment, this is not the time for 'Thus says the Lord" but rather "I think God may be drawing my attention to...". The rest of the group sit with it, holding it before God. This takes time in quietness. In time others respond -or even offer further thoughts or insights.

In my experience of contemplative dialogue (which is not necessarily oriented to particular issues or questions), people share things that sometimes don't seem especially connected to what has been shared just before. However, over time threads and themes emerge. There is a degree of 'trust the process' -or, as I would gloss it: "trust the Spirit in the process".

In broad terms, then, a process of group intercessory prayer might go like this.

The group, or leaders beforehand, considers what is to be prayed about. There is some exploration of what is involved. This exploration itself is contemplative, that is it involves listening, questioning, weighing, getting a feel for the issues in relation to God, there might be sharing of scripture, theological perspectives and all of this (and more) in a quiet way giving time for people to hear and to weigh up what they hear before sharing further. There should be room for people to express how they feel before God and one another (this could be direct address to God -but resisting the habit*** of turning that into a petitionary prayer).

In time themes and guidance emerges. The group take note of these and there is an iterative process of receiving, weighing and discerning. Each time also expressing to God how we feel with honesty -think Abram at Mamre, or Amos's cry that Israel is too small! Processing those feelings in prayer is as important as the more cognitive dimensions. This kind of emotional honesty is also quite hard to acquire in prayer. At least I have observed it to be so both in myself and in groups I have prayed with. There's a tendency to take a message from the normal habits of not expressing how we feel (despite the example of the psalms). Well, certain things we feel: it's okay to show or express mild emotions and the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements have made some enthusiastic emotions almost mandatory in some circles. However, lamenting, expressing anger etc ... we tend to (self-) censor. We anticipate and move to the next stage without really allowing ourselves to sit with the difficult emotions. 

Yet again, scripture does actually model this. I've just mentioned the psalms and we can read again Jonah's responses, or Jeremiah's, or many of the prophets' writings. There's Elijah's post-competition depression, Jesus's weeping. Sometimes these things are described as taking 'many days'. Many days to process the enormity and the impact on ourselves. Perhaps this indicates that intercessory prayer groups need to factor in that their meeting together is not the only thing they do. There is work (self-work and God-relating) to be done between meetings. Which also implies groups need to spend time catching themselves up with one another and events in between.

The culmination point of this sort of (iterative) process of discerning may well be a sense of what is to be asked of God because this is what God wants us to participate in by praying. And maybe not just praying petitions but more bodily prayer, acting in ways that align with the prayer that is emerging from all the discerning and travail of heart.

And, I would suppose, that there comes a point of rest too. A sabbath before the next intercessory engagement.

I'm looking back at what I've written here and thinking that the clear process I thought I had in mind, does not seem that clear after all. I think this is because it is iterative and organic and may vary according to the kind of group and leadership involved. I hope it is clear that at the heart of it is making time for people to listen inwardly to what the Spirit may be pressing upon them and to find ways to allow people to share in a way that invites further discernment. And in addition to be open to the revelation that affective knowing brings as well as cognitive.

Footnotes

*There's a whole other consideration that could be undertaken about the dynamics this creates around people remembering properly, about the fear of disrespecting someone because their request is forgotten, about the unwritten rule that the person who requested prayer shouldn't be the one to make the prayer, not to mention that the whole thing seems to suggest that God doesn't hear the prayer until the group has explicitly said it to God rather than to each other. I've written about this elsewhere.

**Weighty here is trying to indicate the sense that it has something of God's weight behind it: it seeems significant and godly, wise or insightful. It has greater heft than a merely human thought.

*** A habit born of the normal format of prayer meetings that most of us have been socialised into. I've observed how deeply engrained this 'liturgy' is -to arrest it may require leaders or the rest of the group finding care-ful ways to stop themselves and each other running on into it as the habit is laid aside.

Participraying

 In a meeting earlier today, I was taking notes and in order to try to express a nuance found myself making a neologism in the phrase, "to participray 'your kingdom come'.

It was an attempt to capture the idea of praying but recognising that we are often called to be part of the answer to our own petitions. And indeed, to be engaged in an ongoing dialogical process around the petition -discerning different dimensions of what impinges on the petition and being open to nudges from God about what to pay attention to or to bring to the foreground of our prayer and action.

In this I know that I am indebted to explorations as a relatively young Christian in intercessory prayer. One of the big take-aways for me from those explorations was the idea that intercessory prayer might be distinguished from petitionary prayer*. In this schema of prayer, petitionary prayer is where a person names before God a situation and asks a particular thing: a desired outcome is commended to God; a request has been presented. Quite a lot of everyday praying is petitionary and this conceptualisation leads to the idea that God responds to such petitions with, for example, "Yes, no or not yet". This is often the kind of praying that is actually envisaged by many people when they talk about being persistent in prayer.

However, this is not what the kind of writers I was reading meant when they talked about intercessory prayer. In this sort of account, intercessory prayer involved more empathy, self-identification with the matter of prayer and a more dialogical approach. To unpack those a bit more ... empathy is about having a sense of fellow-feeling with the suffering, with the groanings of those who are the subject of the prayerful concern This correlates to an emotional connection and commitment to the matter at hand. By self-identification, I'm getting at that connection and commitment: we begin to make the concern our own and to hold it, as our own, before God. It is dialogical in the sense that I mentioned above in writing that it involves contemplating the matter and seeing it from different angles, finding out more about the context and entailments: it is dialogical with the context and the wider concerns involved. It is also dialogical in not stopping with presenting a request to God and simply waiting for a 'no' or a 'yes' or 'wait'. Rather, that request is a starting point for the kind of investigation just mentioned and also to listening to God: what does God seem to lay on our hearts or awareness in relation to our concern? How does God nudge us to develop our request? Does God seem to be keeping us focused on some particular element? Does God bring to us something new, a perspective or new development to incorporate?

And, I'd add 'participatory'. In inviting us to intercession, God invites us to share the Divine concern. A scriptural model for this might be Abram at Mamre. Abram offers the three figures (later named 'the Lord') hospitality. At the end of the visit (one of) the visitors asks whether they can share with Abram what they're about to do and there follows a haggle in which Abram appears to beat the Lord down to sparing Lot and his family from a disaster about to befall Sodom. That dialogue might be regarded as a kind of prototype of intercession. Intercession is being drawn into God's concern and learning to share it and to share the playing out of what happens. 

'Participatory' also, to my mind, is about the possibility -even likelihood- that in some way or ways, we seek to be part of the 'answer' to our own prayers. At a simple level this could be exampled as praying about just trade in the world would go along with promoting and buying fairly traded goods. Or, presenting concerns for climate change would tend to suggest that we should be seeking changes in lifestyle to downsize our carbon footprints.

So, my question beyond these considerations is how we do this not just individually (the prayer-warrior model, perhaps) but in company? In practice, how do we change a typical prayer meeting from a collecting of concerns in prayer leading to a serial presenting of requests (more or less elaborated), to a sharing, naming, listening and discerning mode in which we begin also to share what we think God is responding and discerning those promptings and tentative suggestions we begin to sense?

I think that this implies a different way of organising prayer meetings than I usually see. I think it also implies a re-founding of Christian shared prayer such that our default understanding and practices are reformed.

Next post in this (short) thread.

Notes

* Obviously people's use of terminology may vary. So I sit loose to the terminology. This is how the terms and ideas lodge in my brain. Please do adapt and adjust if yours differs.

Witch in the Wardrobe

 Quite a clever title, I thought. Connotations of 'in the closet'. I was partly drawn to read this book by the suggestion in the question in the blurb: "Was C.S. Lewis a Secret Mage?" I could well understand where that came from. CS Lewis did keep company with an eclectic mix of people including some who were interested in 'esoteric' religion in the mid 20th century. And among them some Christians who were interested in the way that some Christian spiritual themes had parallels in esoteric speculations and thinking and of course people whose interests related to story-telling and ancient stories which often involve magic and strange creatures. Bear in mind too that Lewis had an idea about myth becoming incarnate in Jesus and indeed to the bold idea that the cross is the 'deep magic' (a phrase from The Magician's Nephew as well as the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I  think) of the universe. But of course this preparedness to do what the apostle Paul did is not shared by some more uptight versions of Christianity. Paul was prepared to borrow terms from the wider religious and spiritual culture of his times, -so was the author of the fourth gospel, come to that. By contrast there are Christians whose go-to place in such cases, is to suspicion and heresy hunting. Usually without giving any attempt to understand what is really meant and what is actually going on with other people's world-views. The dialogue in the book goes over some of this ground as characters explain their different positions at various points.

And it is this fracture in mainly USAmican evangelicalism that the novel uses to drive plot and tension. On the one hand, those who are comfortable that Lewis was an orthodox Christian (albeit one who was somewhat high church -though many don't really notice that) who had a helpful approach to imagination, apologetics and faith. On the other hand, there are those who are deeply suspicious of anything that even hints at the occult.

From the explainer I saw: "When a mysterious document suggesting C.S. Lewis had occult connections surfaces in Belfast, it triggers a deadly chain of events that brings together an unlikely duo: a former IRA sniper seeking revenge and a Christian college professor guarding his faith." So it is easy to grasp how the suggestion of proof of membership of an occult society (making him a "witch") would be a big blow to the reputation and marketability of CS Lewis.

 The plot moves fairly briskly and is engaging. I would say that this is a plot-driven story. And I quite liked the way that against a very sectarian background of both Northern Ireland on the one hand and on the other of deep differences in the Christian world of North America, there was some degree of learning to work together and to begin to understand that the religiously other might not be as bad as they're cracked up to be. The parallel between Irish sectarian violence and the latent violence portrayed of 'christian' militias in north America was not lost on this reader. For me this is the most uncomfortable part -being confronted with the way that too many people bearing the label 'Christian' are ready to resort to force of arms to defend their faith Even against other Christians -the apostles and church fathers and mothers would spin in their graves.

Personally, I sometimes felt that some of the characters were portrayed speaking in ways I didn't always find convincing: unlikely vocabulary or turns of phrase. I also felt that I didn't really get to know the characters properly -the plot and length of the novel didn't give me enough time to get to know them. That said, I did feel for the central characters and their tragedies as they unfold and was happy to see some bitter-sweet resolution.

An oddity in this book: Rather than C.S. Lewis, the typesetting consistentely has "C.    S. Lewis" -at least in the edition I had to view.  I kept wondering whether this was significant, -maybe there'd be an explanation later in the story. There wasn't. There was also something intriguing going on with some of the names. Notably for me, Simon Magister whose name seemed to nod towards Simon Magus and Magister itself has been a title used by occultists of higher grades or statuses of magician. I wondered whether this was merely a co-incidence or would have some other significance. It was almost Dickension a name, I thought. But Simon remained far from a Simon Magus or some sort of covert occultist which his name had made me suspect he might be at first.

"... Controversial aspects of C.S. Lewis’s legacy are also ingeniously woven into the story." (Lasse Heimdal, general secretary, Kirkens SOS) I guess I'd say that it's more than woven-in -it's the central hinge of the story. It's interesting because there's enough of a hook there to tie in the struggle for influence between over-anxious heterophobic evangelicals on the one hand and a commercially sensitive USAm' ican publishing industry on the other.

“The strongest element of this narrative is how seriously it takes books—there is something thrilling about the idea that books, and their interpretations, can be matters of life and death.” —Kirkus Review   -That's true; it's central and probably this is a fair point of comparison with Dan Brown where it's religious documents at stake that could shift the way people think about things. I think I prefer my thrillers to be a little more this side of the believable. I didn't quite believe UNIKORN or even the booksellers' cartel, in the end. Though it is this close to believability [indicates small distance between thumb and forefinger].

L.D. Wenzel’s Website
L.D. Wenzel Interview on The Author Show
A Witch in the Wardrobe YouTube character shorts

#WitchInTheWardrobe

 

 

"Spend and tax" not "tax and spend"

 I got a response from my MP which got me kind of mad. You'll see why as I reproduce it here. Apologies for the strange changes in typestyle -which seems to be due to the way blogger treats the paste-in.

I'm sorry, Catherine, but I really do urge you -again- to review or become acquainted with some monetary theory which at the very least lays a huge question mark against the specious claim being made by the government and which you repeat in your response: 

"if we are to fix the foundations of our economy and address the £22 billion hole..."

Before repeating this highly questionable metaphor, please at least look into Modern Monetary Theory or at minimum review Keynes' basic proposals about government spending which helped create the growing prosperity beginning in the 50s through to the mid 70s and to begin to narrow the wealth gap in British society (and beyond). Keynes needs supplementing in the light of coming of the gold standard and away from the Bretton Woods agreement but the success of his approach in setting off waves of progressive outcomes is not to be ignored.

Please allow me to whet your appetite by presenting a quote to open up the slight shift in thinking to help Labour to actually fulfill some of the stated missions. To wit:

"... governments create money by their spending, and they do so before taxing, is a matter of fact. ... ever since governments began to work as fiat currencies - and that transition happened across the world basically between the 1930s when countries like the UK abandoned the gold standard to 1971 when the USA finally abandoned it - over that period of adjustment, everybody moved from being a gold standard currency to being a fiat currency, and during that period of transition gradually everyone moved to this point where the central bank simply always created money whenever the government issued an instruction for it to do so.... wrong understandings as it turns out of the way in which money behaves at present, which are based upon old gold standard thinking, and the gold standard hasn't existed for over 50 years. 

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/10/18/mmt-is-not-a-policy-option-its-a-description-of-the-economy/

Of course there is more to be said, but the main point is to understand that "tax and spend" is not the way it works. It is and has always been "spend and tax". The role of tax is not to raise finance but to moderate flows of the money that governments make available for the common good -to prevent it accumulating unfairly, usuriously and in quantities able to sway governments. Controlling flow can also help when genuine inflation threatens. But raising finance? -that's not something a government with a sovereign currency need worry about. Pretending that it does in the face of post-war macro-economic history is, in effect, a decision to continue to enrich the already wealthy at the expense of the least powerful and most marginalised people in our society: -the real strivers if truth be known.

When Reeves' project fails, please be ready with this idea which is already lying around.

ɷˡˡ̷

Andii Bowsher

52 Fern Avenue

Jesmond

NE2 2QX

"Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease; or was it made to preserve all her children?” 

- Gerrard Winstanley, 1649, founder of ‘The True Levellers’

I blog

We pray

On Tue, 29 Oct 2024 at 17:29, Catherine McKinnell MP <catherine.mckinnell.mp@parliament.uk> wrote:

Dear Andii,
 
Thank you for writing to me about the event on the Budget for National Renewal. I understand the strength of feeling regarding public finances. Unfortunately, due to ministerial commitments, I was unable to make the event on 8 October. Nevertheless, I am committed to an economy that serves everyday Britons across the country.
 
As you will know, the upcoming Budget is set to be released on 30 October. Therefore, at this moment in time, I am unable to comment on specific aspects of public finances. However, please be assured that the new Labour Government is working tirelessly so that our public finances serve everyone in Britain, not just the wealthiest in our society.
 
As I am sure you are aware, the country faces several difficult decisions on spending, welfare, and tax, if we are to fix the foundations of our economy and address the £22 billion hole left in the public finances by the previous Conservative Government. It is in this context that the Chancellor will be making any decisions on public finances at the Budget.
 
Nonetheless, the Government is committed to ensuring the tax system raises revenue in such a way that supports economic growth and prosperity for communities across the UK. The Labour Government was elected on a manifesto that pledged to rebuild Britain and serve the working people, and we will ensure that public finances are set up in a way to achieve those goals.
 
Thank you once again for contacting me about this issue.
 
Kind regards,

Catherine

Catherine McKinnell MP
Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne North



Tel: 0191 229 0352 (Constituency) 
www.catherinemckinnellmp.co.uk  

 

The Great Open Dance -a review

 What grabbed my interest in looking at this book was a bit of promo blurb:

"The Great Open Dance offers a progressive Christian theology that endorses contemporary yearnings for environmental protection, economic justice, racial reconciliation, interreligious peace, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ celebration. Just as importantly, this book provides a theology of progress—an interpretation of Christian faith as ever-changing and ever-advancing into God’s imagination.

Particularly was the idea of developing a theology of progress. In part this relates to something I've been thinking about for a little while (for quick way in, see here). So, what do I make of it? 

Well, from my point of view, there's a lot to like. It's well thought through and careful in explaining. I enjoyed the systematic sort of engagement and the wide range of it. It may fluster some and I raised an inner-eyebrow at starting with an exploration of non-duality and doing so by considering Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. But it is actually a really helpful starting place. I just fear that it means that I'd have to be careful lending or recommending it to some people I know who, I think, would actually really benefit from reading it. -That goes for the under-argued-for universalism about two-thirds of the way through. This is a bit of a shame because I think that Snydor makes a really good case for a biblically faithful, ultimately orthodox re-framing of Christian faith in a way that resonates for the age we're entering. 

I'm excited to see someone wrestling with the implications of emergence and integrating that into discussions of Trinity. I think he does a good job of understanding the frame-space that orthodox teachings about the Trinity are seeking to place around consideration of the concepts and then showing how the 'third way' offered by emergence and non-duality properly understood, is a help in this.

There was an interesting discussion of slavery in the latter part of the book relating Christian attitudes to it to how scripture is handled. I think that this is a key point of reflection (as well as how the inerrantist doctrines are historically contingent and adrift of how Jesus and Paul used scripture). What gave me pause for thought was contrasting the experience and (Christian) response of Frederick Douglas to being enslaved vs the advice of the epistle of Peter. The former literally fought back against brutal dehumanisation, the latter appears to advise patient endurance of it as a salvific road. I thought it interesting that at this point we are not invited to consider Paul's letter to Philemon which seems to set an anti-slavery trajectory whilst being careful of the 'Overton window' of the time (arguably) which might have protected many Christian slaves in less unpleasant circumstances.

This is a stepping stone in the argument towards apparently espousing, at one point, an approach to scripture which, to be frank, I suspect Luther would have characterised as 'a wax nose'. And it felt rather dissonant with the way that Snydor actually uses scripture up to that point. I do agree with a lot of what he says up to that point, but I do feel that some safeguarding of the approach, methodologically, against wax-nosing would have been good. Though, perhaps that's not entirely fair: the main argument is that agapic interpretation should be the keynote -I agree. And by contrast, again I agree, noting that inerrantists also have a canon within a canon -despite protestations to the contrary. There is a brief run through of examples of inconsistency of approach. In practice, most of them also don't propose or support slavery (though Snydor mentions that some, in fact, do think it might be okay) and I'd suggest that a consideration of why most of them would decry slavery today would be worthwhile. And indeed, what kind of hermeneutics would underlie that?

I did like the spirit of the final words of the book:

When this book is forgotten, which it will be, I pray that it will be forgotten because it has been replaced by more loving theologies that are more faithful to our loving God. These theologies will correct every accidental offense I have committed due to my own immersion in a specific place at a specific time with a specific set of blinders. For those theologies, and for their eventual appearance, I thank God, who is forever leading us into the reign of love.

As a final offering, here are some more quotes I particularly liked.

historians report that church leaders have always worried about church decline, church membership has always fluctuated wildly, and attendance has always been spotty. Today is no different

a third of young adults complain, “Christians are too confident they know all the answers.” 9 Increasingly, people want church to be a safe place for spiritual conversation, not imposed dogma, and they want faith to be a sanctuary, not a fortress 

pluralistic nondualism, the belief that reality is composed of real difference harmonized into perfect unity. ... pluralistic nondualism differs from monistic nondualism, which argues that ultimate reality is absolute homogeneity without difference. ... In our view, nondualism means indivisibly united yet internally distinguished. Nondualism discerns the unity in difference that underlies all things. ... perennial philosophy erases difference. If all religions are basically the same, then differences in thought, feeling, and practice are irrelevant. Nondualism, by contrast, finds wealth in difference.... Ramanuja’s personalist panentheism, in which God is a full- fledged person, better serves Christian faith than impersonalist Platonic idealism,... If nondualism is a fundamental ontology of relation, in which the one and the many are perfectly harmonized, then the Christian Trinity is a form of nondualism. That is, the Trinity is not either three or one. The Trinity is both three and one.

Given Christ’s revelation of God as agape, the Christian tradition must justify itself as agapic. Agape need not justify itself as traditional

people want faith to give them more life, and people want faith to make society more just, and people want faith to grant the world more peace.

Love is not the Godhead beyond God, a singular, pure abstraction. Instead, love is the self- forming activity of the triune God, the most salient quality of each divine person, and the disposition of each person toward the other— and toward creation. 

Metaphorically, we could say that quarks function only in communion.

God is empty of any excluding, occluding self. 105 All separation is illusion and God, as all- knowing, is not deluded. As a result of God’s perfect wisdom God feels perfectly, which is to love perfectly. In other words, God feels what should be felt as deeply as it can be felt. 106 Within God there is no capacity for celebrating another’s pain or envying another’s success, because God is perfect. “Perfect” does not mean unchanging, but changing perfectly.

Exclusively male language for a gender transcending God misrepresents the divine nature; hence, it is theologically inaccurate.

The margins have the clearest perspective. The margins see the hypocrisy in hierarchy and realize that “what is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God”

Why does Jesus characterize a preaching that explicitly threatens the rich and powerful as “good news”? Perhaps because they (at least some of them, I hedge, because Jesus didn’t qualify his statements) need to be rescued from themselves

Theologically, the crucifixion of Jesus testifies to the unholy within the universe, useless suffering that freedom produces but God abhors. From the gift of freedom, something emerges in creation that is alien to Godself. God did not intend the unholy, but God allows it out of respect for our autonomy and moral consequence. Crucially, God suffers from this demonic fault in reality. God in Christ undergoes alienation from God through crucifixion.

Therefore, the church must seek truth in others, with others, and for others, including other religions, in an attempt to develop a common wisdom that will be validated by the flourishing it creates.

Prayer is a spiritual gift, but other spiritual gifts can become prayer, and prayer alone is never a substitute for action. When Joan Cheever was fined for feeding the homeless in San Antonio, she explained, “This is how I pray. I pray when I cook. I pray when I serve.”  

Links for The Great Open Dance  on Bookshop Jon Paul Sydnor on Google Scholar Jon Paul Sydnor on Facebook Tag #TheGreatOpenDance

About the Author Jon Paul Sydnor is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Emmanuel College, theologian-in-residence at Grace Community Boston, and a podcaster at The Progressive Sacred. He studied at the University of Virginia, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Boston College, where he received his PhD. He practices theology in conversation with other religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, whose concept of nondualism has highly influenced the trinitarian theology of this book.

In person and its accidental eugenics

In a recent article, a CofE bishop, Martyn Snow, talking about recent riots stirred up in large part by disinformation shared by groomed-enraged people in right-wind networks, proposed the following:

I don’t believe we will ever get beyond the need for face-to-face encounters. Despite social media changing the way we interact with one another, genuine, physical interaction is more important now than it ever has been. Those face-to-face encounters help foster empathy, strengthen our sense of community, and reveal to us the truth about our neighbours – and there’s no amount of disinformation that can counter that.

I'm interested in this and think that we should be wary of it. I'm hearing similar sentiments shared quite a lot in the church circles I'm in touch with and interact with. I'm wary of it because of my experience with the privileging of physical space sharing being deployed in such a way as to exclude various disabled and vulnerable people. In fact, in some cases to express fairly eugenic sentiments in relation to the vulnerable.
I think that the basis for this viewpoint is rooted in an affirmation of the incarnation and taking from that an appreciation of the embodiedness of human beings as something to be celebrated. This has a long pedigree in Christian theology beginning most notably with push-back against the dualistic and gnostic-leaning ideas around in the late classical period in the eastern Mediterranean.
I also note that this particular theological trope (if that's the right term) comes on the back of the move from the public-health measures put in place in the initial phases of the covid19 pandemic. My strong suspicion is that the emotional push-back is significant and that there is an unspoken fear or anxiety about things that recall or hint at those measures.
So we have a social-psychology-in-search-of-a-theology dynamic at work.
Let me make explicit something of the effect on disabled and vulnerable people. When the first responses to the covid19 pandemic were put in place, many disabled people got a taste of inclusion in church that they have rarely had. With the putting aside (or even demonising) of those measures, they have been re-excluded. In addition the effects of long-covid have added even more people to the roster of the excluded from ordinary church life. These latter are those who join those with vulnerabilities which make reinfection a potential death or further-disablement sentence. In addition the difficulties for some in the disabled communities come to the fore once again with the re-prioritising of "in person" meeting. In respect of my earlier use of the word "eugenics", I'm referring to an attitude expressed in a clergy gathering (!) whereby the old and vulnerable were verbally dismissed from being worthy of consideration in how to respond to easing of legal restrictions (a telling word in itself) even when it was pointed out that their fuller inclusion had been an un-sought benefit of using electronic means to gather and do faith together.
Now don't get me wrong here: I'm very much of the opinion that human embodiedness is significant and important. I do not think that we are primarily souls temporarily encumbered with material bodies. I believe that matter is something that God delighted to make and that God delighted to join with in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. So what I write here should not be taken as a call to return to dualism or some kind of gnostic spirituality, far from it! I agree that Christianity is a most materialistic faith and I very much lean into that.
However, I do think we should be alert to some nuance. Not least in noting that some of the pressing of embodiment language in this cultural moment comes from something of a moral panic about online meeting starting in the late 1990s when lots of people started to form communities and to find entertainment online. There was and is a lot of misunderstanding and unrecognised inconsistency in thinking going about online activity. A lot of the more panicky things I read seem[ed] to somehow imagine that online means some kind of disembodied brain-in-a-vat experience. Forgetting that the interactions were and are still physical. They require interfaces, use bodily processes both to project and to receive a variety of messages in a variety of media. Muscles, eyes, bloodstreams, breathing, digestion and so forth are all very much involved in supporting online interactions many of which are patterned after physical space and interactions. They are intrinsically bodily in action and conceptualisation. Just not occupying proximate space.
Some of the objections to meeting online do not bear the weight of history or deeper consideration. I don't find any in-principle objections being voiced to the use by the apostle Paul of letters to project himself and to remain in (and indeed, build) community with people not physically present to him. Is there a difference in principle to the 'remoteness'? Admittedly these letters (and other scriptural materials) attest to the desire to be with people, sharing the same space. But there is, in the epistolatory nature of much of the New Testament, a recognition of remote interaction as viable and useful. Indeed we are richer for it because we have preserved it.
And what is it about occupying closely adjacent space that we are prizing exactly? When bishop Snow says, "physical interaction is more important now than it ever has been" I'm not at all sure what we're supposed to understand by the words "physical interaction". Is this about shaking hands? Hugs? Making a cuppa and handing it over (maybe with home made cake or biscuits)? But how much quality do those things add. -A sharper question if the traditional English sang froid is in play, reducing the physical interaction to a bare minimum. So, are we supposed to be thinking smell? -Well, that is pretty specific to closer proximity: fair cop. Body language? -Well that can often be seen or inferred online and facial expressions and micro-expressions can possibly be seen more fully on screen. So can we please specify what physical interactions are meant and how it is that they give such clear improvement over electronically-mediated meeting? I call this out: it's exaggerated and an unfair comparison.
I think the case is better made in terms of what we are used to and the unease with meeting with others using media we are less familiar and confident with. This necessarily favours physical proximity but doesn't prove its superiority, merely its preferability given normal current life experience. We might do well to consider the way human cultures have adapted to telephones -despite the misgivings of the early days. And it's worth considering too the warnings about the negative effects on society of mass reading that printing enabled, or indeed of writing itself because of the changes these technologies produced in the way we memorise, learn and indeed relate to one another.
And again, there are problems with the assertion "face-to-face encounters help foster empathy, strengthen our sense of community, and reveal to us the truth about our neighbours". I take it that "face to face" is meant to imply close physical proximity but it could, strictly speaking, include a screen-mediated connection. In that list of benefits, I do not see one that is excluded by screen-mediation. What I see expressed by implication and connotation is a preference for gathering information, strengthening and building connection in the more familiar ways experienced in physical proximity. But I'd remind us how much we can pick up in a phone call (for example we can hear someone smiling as they talk) and how much of those things we gather in phone calls and even text interchanges -increasingly so as we collectively gain experience and reflect together on how to use short-text formats.
I submit that what the bishop is aiming for is not necessarily dependent on being in relatively close physical proximity but rather on attentiveness, openness, honesty, consideration, curiosity, good questions and generally non-violent communication -in whichever medium.
Pause for thought: it's easier to punch or kick someone else in close proximity! Sexual abuse is usually focused on physical access. I mention that only to recall us to the darker sides of what is being lionised. My sub-text is that we are seeing a comparison between the best of physical proximity and the worse of other forms of relating. Let's remember there are positives and negatives in all; the point is to properly understand and appraise what they are and deploy them skilfully, wisely and inclusively as possible. Also, we should notice how in the past, moral panics passed on by word of mouth where people were close enough in physical terms to 'catch' each other's misinformed emotional reactions. Although that contagion is clearly not just possible in close physical proximity, clearly, if there are advantages to close physical proximity, these also provide a putitively enhanced means for the demonising and organising of cruelty, bullying and murder. The fall, as many orthodox Christians repeat, affects everything. This would mean that there is no good thing that cannot suffer the warping of sin; that cannot be corrupted. This would include the aforementioned: "empathy, strengthen our sense of community, and reveal to us the truth about our neighbours" -all of those can be put at the service of ill-will and harm.
I'm noticing also that after celebrating how online meeting made it easier to gather people in a rural diocese as well as to lower implied carbon footprints and travel expenses claims, a recent glance at diocesan events and training showed that 'in person' events that probably would be better to be online, are now creeping back with no provision for remote participation being offered, apparently. This despite the know-how and equipment being available and relatively well-practiced. I continue to strongly suspect that the pull of the familiar and thus 'easy' is working its stochastic influence. The problem being, of course, that the familiar is ablist. And implicitly eugenicist.
Theologically, we should remember that no-one actually does disembodied relating. We continue to use the 'meat' of our brains to think, to produce messaging using vocal tracts and bodily movement especially facial expressions. We hear using ears and to a lesser extent eyes. Most of those channels have been formed and shaped by bodily proximate interactions. But as phone, writing and printing have already shown us, we can extend capabilities (htt Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong et al) and simply need to collectively learn the affordances of the media; to culturally receive them. We do this learning in relation to speech etc from the womb, and we can overlay further learning as we go.
We should also note that there is in Christian history a tradition of remote communication and a recognition of the importance of communications of ideas and attitudes -however they are communicated. We shouldn't mistake historical happenstance for principle: the historical happenstance is that we have lived in physical proximity to one another. However, that does not amount to an in-principle restriction of our modes of relating only to physical proximity. The use of epistles and writing of gospels if anything endorses extending our channels of communication, including those enable more remote communication.
About the only thing I can think of that may be 'better' about so-called in-person meeting is the informal before and after socialising. Of course, we could find ways to reproduce that -and some online meetings do that deliberately. I have heard of some churches deliberately setting up breakout rooms after a main meeting to allow it to happen.
And even if we were to grant that somehow physically-proximate meeting was better, let's note that 'better' is a comparative term and it is scalar. It should not be treated as polar as if by being better the compared-with term was rendered bad or exclusive of the other term.
I do understand that some people were traumatised by the abrupt life change, restriction and underlying panic of the early pandemic. So it is easy to comprehend that for some, a degree of dislike -or anxiety, even- may have become attached to the idea of e-meeting others. I see that in the preferences some now have to avoid it and how that preference is justified and the emotional flavour of how they justify it. On the whole, however, this can and probably will change as the 'new' possibility is culturally received and people become more aware of the affordances of the array of possibilities now open to us.
If we add to all of that a consideration of the inclusion of marginalised people, then we should surely be exploring these 'new' possibilities. This is rooted in the command to love neighbours as ourselves and to do to others as we would be done by. These commands amount to learning to look at the world through the eyes of those who are disadvantaged and marginalised. And this implies listening attentively and taking seriously the perspectives of, in terms of the starting point here, those who are immune compromised. It also implies trying to create conditions that don't, for example, add to the risk of (say) long-covid.
This topic leads inexorably to consideration of Eucharist and the debate about whether that can be celebrated extendedly using e-meeting technologies. Lots of church groupings have not had a problem with that. The CofE doesn't sanction it (though I'm aware of practical dissenters). I *think* that the reluctance is because of a suspicion that an electronically mediated communion lacks something important which may be found in a physically proximate congregation. But I haven't seen that spelled out. It's probably the lack of having thought about it and a worry that it could lead to abuses which are as yet unconsidered at a corporate level. However, I do think that many of the considerations mentioned above should be part of thinking about this.
I think for some people meeting online for corporate worship was difficult because it meant that they were not meeting in a familiar and beloved building which had rich connotations of godliness and a personal history of spiritual comfort and growth. Judging by the way some congregations actually act, I think that this must be a major issue. It's about atmosphere and associations but definitely not about interacting or meeting with others. I think the conversation that has been had so far confusingly lumps together the different kinds of physically-proximate events that we undertake together. On the one hand we have meetings which enable people to interact, converse, joke, transact matters of administration or work and so forth and on the other we have essentially spectating events which involve witnessing something but not making meaningful contact with others. Many an early communion service fits into the latter category. These latter may be ones where the atmosphere of where it takes place is a paramount consideration. However, this does not appear to be in the bishop's mind. So if we were to compare the 8am communion service just alluded to with most online meetings, it would be the latter where we would find most of the bishop's criteria met: empathy, community and discerning the truth of our neighbours.

It's true that the bishop is not dismissing online meeting, and his first quoted words are making a case for the recognition of the importance of physically-proximate meeting. What I am concerned with above is that the reasons given for the importance of such meeting do not really make the case and my further concern is that it plays into a lazy thinking which actually has a eugenic edge to it.

If the bishop wanted to make a case for physically-proximate meeting I think that it would be better to choose a bunch of other things which note the difficulties in some cases of e-meeting as it is currently configured.

I would note that eye-contact is difficult in e-meeting; that it is difficult to work conversational turn-taking according to some of the cues we use in physically-proximate conversation; we have fewer body-language cues; our sense of smell cannot be part of our meeting (or probably, more importantly, our sensing of odourless pheromones), there is also the matter of immersion in 'atmosphere'. And singing together is currently not easy online and the immersive experience of being among others singing is less involving online (although not impossible). However, we should note that these are not compelling advantages in a 'clear blue water' sort of way and have to be weighed against the advantages of e-meeting. These are things like inclusion of people with various disabilities, better time usage and hence 'productivity', often a lower carbon footprint and bringing together greater numbers of people because of these things. For many of the things included in the bishop's list of good things from physically proximate meeting, e-meeting can do well and sometimes better. In discipleship, it can do well and sometimes better. It can foster praying together -sometimes better. It offers tools for considering scripture together that are better online than off.

If discipleship is a central concern (and Rom.12:1-2 suggest that even worship together has this as a central aim), then online activity can and should be part of the mix the more so since it enables the participation of people otherwise unable to access the 'space'.