Super-strength alcohol 'is killing more ... than crack or heroin'

Of course because the actual headline has the words 'homeless people' in the '...' it will be taken less seriously. But I'm interested because of the link to drugs policy. The popular press's knee-jerk reaction to deaths from substance abuse is to call for bans. There's a hypocrisy about this because it's almost certain that we will not hear calls for illegalising alcohol despite the huge health and mortality figures associated with it. Yet what, essentially, is the difference between that and, say, cannabis, or cocaine? The biggest problems with the latter are those caused by the crime they produce and that is a function of their classification as banned substances. Rather than treating alcohol like these drugs which would be a logical response on precedent, perhaps it's time to treat these substances like alcohol and nicotine: regulate, tax, educate and treat. Portugal has been doing so for the last 9 years, I can't find indications that it has made society worse there; something of the reverse, in fact. Nor have I heard horror stories from holiday-makers coming back from Portugal, many of whom, I suspect, have never even realised what Portugal's laws on drugs are.

Super-strength alcohol 'is killing more homeless people than crack or heroin' | Society | The Observer: "these drinks are killing more people than heroin or crack,"

Paper money redesign

This is a good example of how noticing something simple and asking a basic question about whether something very familiar couldn't be 'done' differently can actually be quite revolutionary. Check it out here: US dollar redesign:
"... people tend to handle and deal with money vertically rather than horizontally. You tend to hold a wallet or purse vertically when searching for notes. The majority of people hand over notes vertically when making purchases. All machines accept notes vertically. Therefore a vertical note makes more sense."
So simple you wonder why no-one thought of it before. Of course, you might know that 'they' did: there is often also a sense that a good idea occurs to a number of people independently because the conditions for 'having' the idea are more present at particular points in time. I 'invented' the supermarket trolley coin-return idea about 5 or so years before they began to appear at British supermarkets. I was just told by one of my managers at the time that it would never work, so didn't take it any further (trusting soul that I was)...

Stanley Hauerwas: some quotes from Greenbelt

Just a few things I managed to note down from a couple of talks ...

"Politics is ... a wisdom-determined activity" (which he seemed to be giving as a reason for being skeptical of liberal political positions -I'll have to think more about that; please comment if you 'get' that statement in that respect).

"Learning the language of the craft [of theology] ... determines how you get to tell the story of the failures of your life."

"I don't believe in spontaneous prayer ... it turns out they're formulas people use again and again"

"Ethics depends on developing the eye of a novellist" (I think this may be actually from Hannah's Child).

"The problem with realism is that it can shut down the imagination." (Amen!).

"We need to learn ... how a priest ... [can] acknowledge their failures and learn ..."

Of these, I find myself continuing to think about two: the spontaneous prayer one and the eye of the novellist one. The latter because what I think it means (and what I think I heard in context) is the idea that ethics does require one to learn to pay attention to the human dynamics and alertness to the pain and human complexity of people and situations. I think that this is true more widely of practical theology.

Stanley Hauerwas

 

Greenbelt: Stanley Hauerwas

I went to Stanley Hauerwas' first talk earlier this evening at the Centaur venue. It consisted of a number of readings from his book Hannah's Child which is his autobiographical reflection on the making of him as a theologian. I hadn't read the blurb, so I hadn't realised quite what we were in for, but I was happy to have gone. Interestingly for someone who claims to do theology from revelation and principles, it is a reflection on a life. I think that perhaps this is partly explained by something he said. Assuming that I got it down correctly:
"Learning the language of the craft [meaning of theology] ...determines how you got to tell the story of the failures of your life". I actually think that there is a good definition of practical theology. Of course there's more to be said about that (not least some methodological unpacking) but ... I commend it to you.
Greenbelt - Festival Info Section

Baptising infants and educating out of Spirituality

Quite and interesting article/posting here: Educating out of Spirituality � Such as These part of it (interestingly) resonates with a fundamental message of Mat Fox's Original Blessing (I won't go into what I think is wrong with that book, merely affirm that the original blessing message in itself seems fair enough). Part of it is the curriculum that is engendered: "Gretchen Wolff Pritchard wrote in Offering the Gospel to Children that “Adults come to church on Sunday in order to worship; children come to Sunday school to acquire information” (140-141). The assumption is that it’s more important for young people to know about God that is for them to know God. We are educating our children and youth out of their innate spiritual capacities. God, the subject of our worship, becomes the object of our study."
It's an approach to curriculum more informed, I would say, by Enlightenment attitudes which prize rationality as the pre-eminent human characteristic. I'd like to develop a Christian nurture curriculum based on an approach I started to take with confirmation groups of doing far more about spirituality, formation and spiritual disciplines with an experiential dimension written in, and this is an approach which is pretty consonant with what is being said here.

The link to infant baptism is that I think it's interesting that the big rise in pisteuo-baptism comes with the post-Enlightenment period and exhibits concerns with conscious (rational) faith commitments. It has struggled with issues to do with the incorporation of those who have diminished rational capacities. The biblical basis of infant baptism (ie of children in the household of Christians) is precisely about recognising that faith is something lived and felt as much as, if not more than, rationally apprehended. I could go on, but I think that I have drawn the parallel ...

Follow up:
Case for Infant Baptism (Grove booklets on ministry and worship)  

FAILFaire: celebrating failure

I've been thinking quite a lot recently about failure. Or more precisely about the inevitability yet unpredictability of much failure. I've been coming across business gurus who point out that for every successful project there are many failures and that therefore we have to have a positive valuing of what we can gain from failures: we can learn and we can learn what to improve.
I've also been reflecting how counter-productive is a regime that doesn't really deal productively and compassionately with mistakes. By raising stakes unnecessarily, the energy that could be ploughed into learning and improving and even cleaning-up is ploughed instead into covering-up, in-fighting, blame-games and generally making a workplace less happy and productive.

So imagine my delight to find this: FAILFaire�|� Why FAILFaire?
Basically an organisation dedicated to sharing mistakes in an accepting environment in order for everyone to be able to learn from them: "We believe that only if we understand what DOESN’T WORK in this field and stop pushing our failures under the rug, can we collectively learn and get better, more effective, and have greater impact as we go forward."

I wonder what would happen if Christian literature would have more of this instead of the '10 successful ministries of sheep-stealing' books that abound. In fact, wouldn't you have thought that, with a crucified 'failure' at the heart of the faith, we'd be a bit better at valuing 'failure'? ... Yes, I know about the resurrection, but still; in terms of the generally accepted success-script for a Messiah, Jesus didn't do it properly. And so much of the successes of the early church in Acts seem to be presented rather as opportunist exploitations of God's proddings and acts rather than the playing out of successful strategies. Paul's missionary journeys seem more happenstance and trial-and-error than successful campaigns; if it doesn't work here, move on ...
I may be wrong, but ...

Moral decisions use general-purpose circuits

This is something we need to note and reflect on theologically...

It seems that our capacity for complex, life-and-death decisions depends on brain structures that originally evolved for making more basic, self-interested decisions about things like obtaining calories. Many of the brain regions we find to be active in major moral decisions have been shown to perform similar functions when people and animals make commonplace decisions about ordinary goods such as money and food.

It probably also supports, in general terms, the Lakoff/Johnson contention about the co-option of neural 'circuitry' for thinking analogically or metaphorically in general. I think it may also indicate that a single-purpose language may not exist neurologically, so much as a coming together of a number of capacities (of which the metaphorical re-use would be one.
Major moral decisions use general-purpose brain circuits to manage uncertainty:
 

How sewing machines work

I've idly wondered several times. This shows how ...

How machines work

IMBT revisited

A little while back I mentioned Integrative Mind-Body Technique in this blog. It gained a large number of hits and quite a high rank on a certain well-known search engine. I said then that I couldn't tell what it involved but that I was concerned that it might be a money-for-old-rope thing like TM was. Well It would seem from Contemplative Mind in Life that it is a combination of mindfulness techniques and bodily posture/relaxation techniques. See here: "stresses no effort to control thoughts, but instead a state of restful alertness that allows a high degree of awareness of body, breathing, and external instructions from a compact disc. It stresses a balanced state of relaxation while focusing attention. Thought control is achieved gradually through posture and relaxation, body–mind harmony, and balance with the help of the coach rather than by making the trainee attempt an internal struggle to control thoughts in accordance with instruction. Training is typically presented in a standardized way by compact disc and guided by a skillful IBMT coach"
So I would counsel readers to be wary: the current hype following the scientific study looks very like the precursor to a sales campaign. If I'm right in seeing this as a rehash of basic techniques known by various religious traditions -including Christian- then you may well be as well going along to a good local church or diocesan centre where such things are bing taught perhaps for free or perhaps for a fee which is more related to the costs than to the fashionableness of the the thing.
 

Gameful, positive impact gaming

I've been spending time recently in the company of some little people who are delightful in many ways. But I found myself reflecting this morning on how thoroughly their imaginations seem to have been colonised by martial-arts and televisual violence (think: Power Rangers, SHS, etc). The difficulty being that these forms of imaginary fighting are heavily based on individual strength and agility, make a rather arbitrary demarcation between goodies and baddies (ie they are like two football teams rather than being divided by values and commitments) and rather contextless (again rather like sports contests).

So I found myself worrying about the way that, in conversation about some of WWII, they seemed to think that a solution to Nazi presence would be to act violently towards German soldiers in a 'superhero' sort of way. Many of their scenarios began with 'What if ...'. At one point I felt I had to say to them that if one of a village did hit a soldier then that would actually result in everyone in the village being punished and many people being beaten up. I didn't press the point but, listening to them, I was becoming more and more disturbed by the way that fantasy violence was so disconnected from the world of systematic oppression and how the ideology of 'redemptive violence' was being laid down in imagination in ways quite divorced from reality. This is, in itself, quite an interesting reflection on arguments about just wars or otherwise: we need to recognise that too many people have an image of what it is about that is simply not robust enough to recognise the real brutalities and miseries.

So that's why I think it is good that some people are trying to produce imaginatively engaging games that don't continue to feed the memes of fantasy violence.
Check it out:
With a hat-tip to those lovely people at Worldchanging.
GAMEFUL, a Secret HQ for Worldchanging Game Developers by Jane McGonigal — Kickstarter: "Gameful is an online 'Secret HQ' where you can connect with other people who believe in the power of games to make us better and change the world.

It will be a free resource -"

A Thinking Machine -metaphors for mind

A big chunk of late 20th century thinking about thinking/brains/minds was dominated by computational metaphors, and my informal recollection would say that this accelerated in the 80s as people increasingly had their own computers at home. So I was very interest to see this article about language which draws attention to the way that computational metaphor has influenced and been used in thinking about language: A Thinking Machine: On metaphors for mind | Child's Play here's how it works: "the mind is like a spreadsheet: a prefabricated architecture that follows a strict, rule-based program, that rigidly structures its inputs and outputs in just such a way."
So what's the alternative? Well, there have been some more serious attempts to dethrone this metaphor:

By this suggestion, when we hear or read language, the computational principles of this innate grammar conduct a series of logical operations, which parse the incoming stream according to its component parts, and so yield understanding.
But what if this is simply the wrong metaphor?

What if – say – language is more like a search engine? ....
A search engine is a probabilistic, predictive learning machine. Unlike spreadsheets, search engines do not engage with their input in a determinate, preprogrammed manner. Instead of rigidly structuring incoming information according to some prefabricated set of rules, they discover structure within information. ...
This metaphor gives rise to a fundamentally different view of language: one in which language acquisition relies on relatively simple – yet powerful – learning mechanisms, and in which language comprehension and production is fundamentally predictive, rather than determinate.

Your Brain on Nature

http://nouslife.blogspot.com/2009/12/urban-verse-for-how-great-thou-art.htmlThis article does a nice job of capturing my main objections to a lot of romantic and only partly thought-through ideas about 'nature' in relation to human flourishing. Don't get me wrong: I enjoy being in the outdoors with trees and water. But I'm profoundly distrustful of the romanticism sometimes about it that has a down on the urban. It basically doesn't compare like with like and not only misses important points both about 'nature' and the 'city' but also drives policy and lifestyle in arguably dangerous ways that tend away from human flourishing.
So have a look at it: Your Brain on Nature: Outdoors and Out of Reach 2 � Neuroanthropology Here's one of the points that I found resonant for me:

The article, like in a lot of Western discussion of natural environments, is shaped by a romanticization of Nature and a failure to recognize what’s happening when urbanized people go into forests and other outdoor environments. I would argue that they are not ‘returning to Nature,’ in the sense of undoing the effects of technology, but rather moving into a setting which, although admittedly beautiful, is also full of information

So, myths are rightly challenged in this article:

So, in the ‘natural’ setting, is there no brain-taxing multitasking or demands to process information? In fact, Mr. Strayer describes a sensory rich environment, with a lot of potential ‘information’ in myriad sounds, smells, even ‘the earth’ itself. Admittedly, the participants are no longer ‘multitasking’ as they have a few relaxing days to float down the river (not even having to work against a current). But this hardly means that urban settings are full of ‘information’ and ‘natural’ settings are free of stuff to perceive or to think about.

Just so, and my thought almost exactly. And this next problematisation of the myth is very like what needs to be said to a lot of people about Celtic spirituality (and I think Donald Meek does indeed do so).

The inclination to relax is not coming just from the Nature, but also from the profound ignorance and sensory naivite of urban people in bushland or forests as well as the social distribution of responsibility that frees up some individual from worry (the neuroscientists) while imposing it on others (raft guides and even previous generations of outdoors-people who, for example, have virtually exterminated large predators in North America).

It's our experience of 'tamed' nature and oil-fuelled transportation as well as communications and technologies of coping (clothes, gizmos etc) that mean that we are free to experience the change as a rest rather than an anxiety provoking and multi-tasking concern for safety. In fact, if you really know what's going on and you are really not supported by the infrastructure of communications and transport, the wild is actually pretty scary. This is what I'm alluding to when I tell our students that in the UK there is very little of the country that is not, in reality, touched and formed by the urban: even the deeply rural in our society is actually servicing, formed by and reliant on urban markets, concerns, policy and -yes- dreams of escape.

Some of our spiritual retreat into nature is more formed by this romanticism and I worry that it may often mean that we are severed from looking for God in the urban: the 'sacrament of nature' becomes the enemy of the sacrament of the present (urban) moment. I worry too that the impetus from the city disinvests us from looking to serve the missio Dei in urban environments; we just see them as something to flee, godlessness and full of ugliness and vice.

It's this that lay behind, I think, the lack of uptake when a colleague of mine offered a prize for an urban verse for 'How great Thou Art'. I gave it a go, eventually, when I had an hour or so to spare...

Maslow Updated

Every year I mark a few essays and reports, at least, which include reflections on and based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So it is with interest that I read: Maslow Updated: Reworking of the famous psychological pyramid of needs puts parenting at the top:

The revamp of Maslow's pyramid reflects new findings and theory from fields like neuroscience, developmental psychology and evolutionary psychology, ... it missed out on some very basic facts about human nature, facts which weren't well understood in Maslow's time, but were established by later research and theory at the interface of psychology, biology and anthropology ... big changes are at the top. Perhaps the most controversial modification is that self-actualization no longer appears on the pyramid at all. At the top of the new pyramid are three evolutionarily critical motives that Maslow overlooked -- mate acquisition, mate retention and parenting

This is the revised version of Maslow's pyramid of needs. (Credit: Doug Kenrick, Arizona State University)

The controversy lies with the (ideological?) contest between the old and the new which comes out in what we make of 'self actualisation', in short:

many of the activities that Maslow labeled as self-actualizing (artistic creativity, for example) reflect more biologically basic drives to gain status, which in turn serves the goal of attracting mates.

I'm not yet convinced that this is 'the' right explanation (I'm comfortable that it could be part of it, but in complex dynamical system, with emergent properties such as a socialised human being, the reductionism sits ill, I think).
The other thing to change is that the new pyramid is seen as networked rather than hierarchy. This I'm almost entirely comfortable with in principle: I think that networks do seem to be more 'ultimate' in our universe than hierarchies. This means that it is more natural for the model to capture the insight and common criticism of the original model:

needs overlap one another and coexist, instead of completely replacing each other. For example, certain environmental cues can make them come back.

Anyway, the authors appear to be looking for further discussion to fine tune it.

Alcohol use and upbringing

Well, the title of the article pretty much tells you what you need to know. And it does seem to reinforce the common sense and the anecdotal evidence: Italian youths who drink with meals are less often adult problem-drinkers: "'Young people allowed alcohol with meals when growing up were more likely to never drink 5 [or more drinks] or get drunk,' the authors wrote. If they did drink more heavily, it was typically at a 'later age than participants who weren't allowed alcohol in a family setting.'"
However, I think that we need to add in one factor in relation to British society and that is culture. Binge-drinking has huge cultural drivers and that also needs to be addressed, but clearly, the home and upbringing can be a factor (as it seems to have been for our children).

Musical Language: sometimes they behave so strangely

In my first curacy, the choirmaster used to tell me that he could teach people who were supposedly tone deaf to hold a tune. I asked him to elucidate a bit. Part of his answer was that we use pitch in speech and English speakers do so very well; we can 'sing' our sentences fine. Listen to this programme and in the first few minutes you will hear why this is significant; I mean literally hear it -and you will find it hard to 'unhear' it afterwards! Go here for it. WNYC - Radiolab: Musical Language (April 21, 2006)
Here's what it's about: "For those of us who have trouble staying in tune when we sing, Deutsch has some exciting news. The problem might not be your ears, but your language. She tells us about tone languages, such as Mandarin and Vietnamese, which rely on pitch to convey the meaning of a word. Turns out speakers of tone languages are exponentially more inclined to have absolute (AKA 'perfect') pitch." That's like, in a sample group of Mandarin speaking children, Chinese were nine times more likely to have perfect pitch than American children. Fascinating. However, the bad news -to counter the good just mentioned- is that there are developmental windows.

 

Words worth thinking

I think that I should bring this to your attention. Now recall that I am/was a linguist so the language thing is very engaging for me, but I think that you will find this so even if you're not a language buff of some kind. Not least because part of my reaction was to the sheer artistry of the programme. This isn't just the straight talking of Radio 4 style talk radio; rather there is a clever interweaving of sound and voices which has some rap-style effects but without being yeuchy about it and also which reminded me of a sound equivalent of collage using semi-transparent overlaps. Very nice example of good use of sound which upped the engagingness of it.
So go and listen: WNYC - Radiolab: Words (September 10, 2010). I listened to the whole thing straigt through but it looks (and sounded) as if it is actually in three parts (it's just under an hour it total) If you were just to check out one part, I'd suggest the second which they accurately summarise thus:

"Charles Fernyhough doesn't think that very young children think--at least not in a way he'd recognize as thinking. Charles explains what he means by walking us through an experiment in a white room. And Elizabeth Spelke weighs in with research from her baby lab--which suggests a child's brain begins as a series of islands, until it can find the right words and phrases to bridge the gaps."

Though the final part reprises the consideration of the adult who learnt to sign to make the point that he 'said' that he couldn't really remember how it was before language because he just didn't think the same any more. The contrast was with some of his former friends who still hadn't 'got' language: they communicated by elaborate mimes which took ages to put over simple points. The time taken was simply too much for the guy who acquired ASL. Though I have to note that the miming described does have a symbolic thing about it: something (ie bodily movements) is being described as standing for something else (in this case part of a bull-fight). What seemed to be missing is a way of abstracting further or even making certain kinds of abstract concept which can carry a lot more semantic freight.

 

aM laboratory

You have got to try this. It is utterly delightful. You click on the play surface and that creates a 'ripple'. Do it again somewhere else and where the ripples touch they produce a tone. Just add more in different places and you get an ambient and random 'music'. Love it, love it, love it....
aM laboratory

3 Cultural Trends Impacting Church Leadership

Intriguing reading mes ami(e)s: 3 Cultural Trends Impacting Church Leadership | TonyMorganLive.com
Here's the barebones, the flesh is in the article:

In: Influence Out: Power Way Out: Board Meetings ...
In: Creativity Out: Corporate Way Out: Red Power Ties ...
In: Networks Out: E-mail Way Out: Meet-Ups

I muse: apart from the last one, this list pretty much characterises my leadership style for about the last 10-15 years. WRT the email thing; I've actually, in the last 2 years been finding that my initial love affair with email (at its height between about 1997 and 2005) is palling: I'm finding that I'm almost instinctively going for eyeball-meetings because I'm getting fed up with the way that emails seem to be adding to the emotional miscegenation in the workplace. I think that email has become the new memo!

I also muse that there seem to be some facets of organisational life with which I am acquainted that seem to be latching onto the 'out' column stuff just as others are abandoning it ...

 

The more change the more it's the same

I think that this winter I shall be trying to get down to the British Library because this exhibition is just up my street. It's reported here: 'I wrote 2U B4'! British Library shows up textspeak as soooo 19th century | Science | guardian.co.uk

There are a number of things in the article I enjoyed and this was a new information for me: "The well-intentioned Victorian pamphlet Poor Letter H advised its mostly lower middle class readers that if they really want to get on in life, they should be saying house, not 'ouse, and head, not 'ead. But the book also says the H should remain silent in words such as hospital and herb."
Which is presumably why Frasier (and other north Americans) talks about "drawing an 'erbal bath" -the nAm's haven't heard that Euro-Anglo's weren't convinced and so steadfastly hold to the advice to this day. I'm wondering whether it has something to do with the relatively new fad for TV presenters and others to talk about "staying at an 'otel". I was brought up to pronounce the 'h' and it seems to me that dropping it has only been seen as 'sophisticated' sometime in the last ten years or so (or did I miss something?).

Of course it also relates to that lovely piece of stupidity: school children being told to drop the initial sound (okay there are phonetic problems with that statement but let's set them aside) of 'H' so to pronounce it "aitch" rather than "haitch". I say 'stupidity', of course, because the logic is that the name of the letter should, surely, contain the sound!

Ah well: I wonder whether 'honour', 'heir' and the like will eventually acquire the H's that a number of readers will often give them?

 

Integrative body-mind training (IBMT) meditation found to boost brain connectivity

I predict that this is something to watch, see here: Integrative body-mind training (IBMT) meditation found to boost brain connectivity: "IBMT subjects in China had increased blood flow in the right anterior cingulate cortex after receiving training for 20 minutes a day over five days. Compared with the relaxation group, IBMT subjects also had lower heart rates and skin conductance responses, increased belly breathing amplitude and decreased chest respiration rates."

There is already a lot of evidence to show that meditation techniques lead to positive mind and body outcomes and so part of the issue is what it is that is helping and how many other techniques can and do share it. My suspicion is that IBMT is potentially the new 'TM' in that it is hyped and marketed as if it is a special way of meditating when, in fact, many meditation methods use similar if not identical techniques and produce similar results. That said, it does give opportunities for us to offer things from our traditions which can be said to be healthy and whole-some ...

Online Examen, Journal and Lectio Divina

Now this looks like a really helpful online tool. I found it as I was trying to find something else; the search terms returned this site as one of the top answers. I've had a quick look and I'm impressed. It can be used as a one-off standalone kind of thing -to try out, this is great. But you can sign up for an account and use this as a kind of spiritual journalling; the entries will be securely kept and you can export them if wanted. There are five forms of examen offered, including meditations on scriptures. It takes you through the prayers and stages step by step.
Give it a go!
EXAMEN.me | Start an Examen | Prayer of Examen, Online Journal, Lectio Divina

Lord's Prayer Complines: beta testing

I've been working on some Compline services informed by the Lord's Prayer shape. I'm hoping that you, dear reader, might try them out and let me know 'how they pray' with you. What I'm hoping is that you would be willing to copy & paste and print out these services and to use them for a month or two. I'm not suggesting any particular way of doing this except -obviously- that they be used in the evening at some point before going to bed or going to sleep. There are five orders of service. You could either use them one each day in turn or you could take one order per week or every few days, depending on your own routines.

Abbey Nous: Lord's Prayer Complines: beta testing:

The Future of Faith

Harvey Cox who is a well-known theologian speaking about how he sees the future of faith. You'll need just over 50 minutes to hear all of the video including about 25-30 minutes for the questions and answers which are worth hearing. However, if you want to get a sense of what is covered, here are my notes.

There are 3 Main points (related to Cox's book The Future of Faith)
1. predictions of demise of religion were premature and we can expect religion to be around for a good while yet.

2. We are witnessing a fundamental change in what religiousness means. (In past overestimated the benefits of modernity (Progress?); 20th century disproved the optimistic modernisation thesis. Also underestimated the ability of religions to adapt to changing times). Particularly
(a) the 'experiential turn' (foregrounding encounter rather than teaching) which is affecting all religions globally. Eg Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.
(b) change to a more porous/open relationship between religions: Eg RC woman who goes to mass, a Pentecostal choir, yoga and has books by the Dalai Lama. Borrowing.
(c) focus: away from next-life to this-life

3. Fundamentalism is declining and will continue to do so. Term reapplied from Christianity to other religious movements in Judaism, Islam etc. It has hard time coping with the general pluralism in societies globally.

Christianity is entering the most exciting phase in its history. It is now beginning to have a majority of non-western followers for whom (an experience of) Jesus rather than doctrine is most central. Also, discoveries at eg Nag Hammadi, which have emphasised the variety and plurality of early Christianity before imperial centralisation, is beginning to affect and reinforce the experiential turn.

Questions and disputations
Belief ctr faith: Belief is about assent; faith about loyalty (etymologically). Belief often implies lack of surety while faith indicates a direction of life.
Three ages:
1. Pre-Constantinian ('Age of Faith' -?)
2. Age of Belief (post-Constantinian) where Christianity meant asssenting to a creed or creeds.
3. Age of the Spirit (now-ish) reconciliation, unity and wholistic perspectives come to the fore. Analogies in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism.
The issue is how to be in touch with the sacred without the packaging: an awareness of how our symbols and talking are imperfect and provisional.

Re RCC, Pope etc
RCC is showing up a dramatic out-playing of the changes being discussed above. Important figures from 20C RCC: John XXIII and aggiornamento -Vatican II. Thomas Merton who died in a Buddhist monastery. Dorothy Day: Catholic Workers' Movement and serving the poor etc. Oscar Romero drew attention to preferential option for the poor. Benedict seems to have the idea that he needs to 'circle the wagons': defendable and clear articulation of RC faith. He sees secularising Europe, Latin American RCC haemorraging to pentecostalism and Liberation theology and in N.Am lay people asking for a say in church governance. His response seems to be defensive and rallying non-RCs who empathise with 'circling the wagons' hence invitation to Anglicans.
Cox thinks this approach will be self-defeating:. note. for example, married priests coming in from Anglican dissent .... !!!

Family resemblances of fundamentalisms
reaching back, retrieving and redeploying some element of tradition into present day. Changelessness is sought.
All fight a war on two fronts: one is against a secular world, the other is against 'accommodationist' or dissenting co-religionists.
Also share a suspicion in positions of leadership.

Evidence for declining fundamentalism?
Taliban in Afghanistan are increasingly distrusted where they are mainly about violence because they seem unable to build social and economic life in communities. In Iran, the violent response to demands for greater say in governance indicates insecurity.

Human Interest - The Future of Faith - Book TV

Now I'm not as sure as he is about declining fundamentalism, though I do think that he is right to point to the way that the need for positive and constructive engagement with real people, community-building and global citizenship tends to mollify and chasten hardline ideologues -even when the ideology is religious.

I think I would add into the mix concerning 'fundamentalisms' that many of them gain their energy from people who seem to be looking for fights; looking for ways to feel better about themselves by metaphorically spitting on other people. There are some interesting mental gymnastics that have to be done to hold that impetus sealed from the core of most religious traditions which really do lie with respect, love, compassion etc.

I have various ideas about how we should respond to the challenges ahead. I broadly agree that the wholistic impetus is part of a global culture thing that we need to take note of and think how to articulate Christian faith in relation to. The first bite at that gave us a lot of 'New Age' stuff, but that fails to hold onto the distinctive things that characterise Christian faith (and often other faiths too, save, perhaps, some Hindu traditions) and produce a variety of religious expressions that are, in effect, something new and not recognised or 'owned' by any religious traditions thus failing in their unitive or reconciliatory aims.

I have various thoughts about this, but not time to develop them here. Hopefully I'll get to write more in due course about re-playing Christian faith in the key of wholism.

Feast of Fools: Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy

Future-Church-Scenarios

While I think that these scenarios are underspecified I do think that they capture things that are likely and in many cases could apply over here and not just in the USA. In fact I would say that I recognise all 4 in church life here and I am actively considering or actually involved (either previously, presently or looking to) in 2 or 3 of them.

I think futuring is an important way forward in our planning and strategising. Don't get hung up on the theological issue of whether God has a relatively open future for us or whether God is into meticulous providence; interesting though that is it is not the practical issue here. Unless we have particular revelation (like Agabus's prophecy in Acts), the between-the-times norm holds: we are to plan to do what we are called to do and to use our nous in service of the Kin-dom of God. The Lord on return expects us to be busy in his service, not waiting around ... And any of us who use insurance should recognise that we are already bought into the future scenarios thing.
Church-Futures.com:-Future-Church-Scenarios

The Concept of Form of Life

I've been making some very intriguing connections between Agamben and Wink. Something of it can be seen on my more fully theological blog. If you're interested.

Life with/out language

If you're interested in human thought and language, this is a very interesting reflection: Life without language � Neuroanthropology
It looks at the cases of people who are brought up without language and reflects on the issue of language as shaper or shaped by our thinking. One of the key insights, very nicely put, I think, is this:

"For the vast majority of us, our thought processes have been profoundly shaped by the introjection of language into our cognitive worlds, the taking on board of a massive intellectual prosthesis, the collective product of countless generations. Human thought, for the majority, is not simply the individual outcome of our evolved neural architecture, but also the result of our borrowing of the immense symbolic and intellectual resources available in language."

It's that image of an intellectual prosthetic which I find very interesting. It also helps us to make the connection with the insights of such as Marshall McLuhan about how our technologies extend and disable human abilities. In many ways this article is a reflection on how language both enables some things and disables others.

language has been knit into my neurological functioning to such a significant degree that words are my constant inner companion. Even when I find that I have not been engaged in an inner dialogue, it is like waking from a sleep, unable to recall a dream that fast slips away. Perhaps like Ildefonso, I cannot talk about a languageless ‘dark’ once in the linguistic ‘light,’ even though there is a rich potential for action and perception in the dark.

The Spirit Level denialists: like Climate Change denialists?

I had hoped that this book would help us get beyond left and right in issues to do with social well-being. However, the power of vested interests and certain kinds of ideology would make it not so. The Spirit Level: how 'ideas wreckers' turned book into political punchbag | Books | The Guardian: "'Do they even believe what they are saying?' he said today. 'I suppose it doesn't matter if their claims are right or wrong; it is about sowing doubt in people's minds.' The authors fear the attacks have scuppered any chance of removing the inequality debate 'from the left wing ghetto'. Wilkinson said: 'It is now something for the left and we would rather have avoided that. People on the right will feel relieved knowing they don't have to treat this seriously and will be happy to know it has been rubbished.'"
But the wreckers might well, then, the equivalent of those whe are paid by certain vested interests to knock the evidence for climate change. The introduction of forceful denial need not be true, it just creates enough doubt for the Powers that Be to make a case for business as usual.

So what's the book actually saying? The article offers a synopsis.

...most of the important health and social problems of the rich world are more common in unequal societies. Using data from 23 rich countries and 50 US states, they found problems are anything from three to 10 times as common in more unequal societies. ... A key explanation is the psychological impact of inequality which, they say, causes stress and anxiety. ... The way parents react to relative poverty also affects the way they treat their children, affecting education. Violence rises in more unequal societies too. ... "The association between inequality and violence is strong and consistent. The evolutionary importance of shame and humiliation provides a plausible explanation of why more unequal societies suffer more violence." Suicide is the only social ill that increases in more equal societies, ... the evidence shows that all levels of society benefit from more equality, not just the poorest. On health, "... it's better to live in a more equal place". Whether rich or poor, ... the most profound conclusion is that economic growth among rich countries has finished its work because it is no longer increasing life expectancy and the only way to do that is to better share the wealth we have.

That's was why the Cameroons were talking big society; it remains to be seen whether they will keep their nerve to resist the equality denialists.
Oh, and here's the Spirit Level's authors' riposte ...

Pew PDAs

That's 'public display of affection' ... thing to remember: we're always communicating; we can't help ourselves. I see dog-walkers doing it even on their own, they talk to their dog as if there may be other people there; they're not really talking to the dog, they are conveying explanations to onlookers. I know: I've caught myself doing it!

When we communicate we do so using the media and conventions open to us. Therefore there is a huge amount of that which is cultural; culture gives us our repertoire of signals and background understandings. Some people are more skilled than others in deploying the repertoire and judging how much and what shared background can be presumed upon, but we do all do it, deftly, clumsily or otherwise.

So when we consider pda's in church settings, we need to consider a raft of issues: what is acceptable in that setting; what are congregants likely to understand or infer about particular behaviours; what image or 'message' do the couple wish to project (individually or as a joint enterprise) and how do these things interact? So check out this brief comment piece on USAmerican church pda's. It's at #139 Pew PDA - Stuff Christian Culture Likes: "When a married couple sits together in church it's understood that the husband will put his arm around the wife and he'll keep it there until it's time to get a hymnal. After the hymnal is retrieved the arm resumes its rightful position like a reflex. The people in the pews behind them are to understand that they have a Good Marriage."

And my question is: is that the same in the churches you know? Please do comment: let me know (and if you're reading this on Facebook, please visit the blog to comment, please, please, please ...)

I feel I should also point out that in such a setting it may well be the case that a couple would also have to consider the semiotic value of not doing the arm round the shoulder thing (or of the wife doing it, or of putatively paradigmatic substitutions such as hand-holding...). Would fellow congregants interpret it as 'relationship rockiness'? Or is the gesture only occasional and perhaps even interpreted as 'trying too hard: there must be something wrong'!

What to see at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Well, I can't say that I can give a definitive guide but I can say a few things that, if you're going, could benefit you.
I'll be positive and pass over our less up-building experiences. So, if you have the chance go to see these:
No Living Room (Alkamie Theatre -check out the video of clips) is a multimedia performance in which a dancer performs inside a computer -generated virtual reality projected over the stage. There is a neat fusion of live action and virtual environment which complements the soundtrack's sometimes humorous and often thought-provoking sampling of comments on environmental crisis and consumerism (including the song 'Start wearing purple' by Gogol Bordello -now my fave fun/ironic song). The whole is quite enchanting, well performed and thought-provoking; working on a few levels.

My other top pick is Limbik Theatre's Harbour. This is a retelling of a Selkie tale but don't let that put you off if you aren't a fan of folkloric story; this is a really clever retelling and nicely acted with a well adapted live sound track using mainly cello. Good features are the way that the symbolic dimensions of the folklore are allowed to interact with the 'real' world horizon of the story; so a multi-level semantic topography which has you thinking over aspects of it long after you have left the theatre space.

Also enjoyable was the use of props; with economy and cleverness of vision; wellie boots also did duty as fish, for example and fish nets were very nicely used to represent the tide. The small acting team played multiple parts and did so well offering some nice characterisations. The actors mostly used north American accents (so giving a feel of a New England or perhaps Newfie setting) though one actor used a Dutch acccent, and the origin of the selkie tales was invoked by what appeared to be the use of Gaelic at moments of tension (but that was only an impression of a non-speaker but sometime hearer).

We also saw some good children's theatre and would commend to you the following: Aberglass; Arabian Nights; The Emporer's Quest; The Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business. Of these I'd particularly remember the mole one for the quality of acting and the thoughtfulness in making sure it really is a children-friendly performance along with some good music and quick changes!
Home | Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2010

Life expectancy -or dread

Having recently had a conversion with one of my sons and my daughter about the likely effects of climate change (some of which could be 'apocalyptic' in the popular sense), I found myself with a modicum of sympathy for this perspective:

Having been born in 1940 rather than 2010, I am pleased to say that my chances of reaching 100 are extremely slim. There comes a point when one starts to say to oneself that one is glad that certain scary things – the flooding of London, nuclear war, the end of the world or whatever – are unlikely to happen during one's lifetime. It is comforting to know that one's risk of exposure to serious unpleasantness is getting rapidly smaller, but future generations may not enjoy that solace

And of course there is the disaster-waiting-to happen aspect which has meant that for the last five years I've been saying that I can't see full retirement at 65 years being a sensible option for much longer.

There is a feeling of panic in the air as it is realised that within 30 years there will be only two working adults for every pensioner – half as many as at present

So there are now 10,000 centenarians in Britain? This ageing business is getting out of control | Alexander Chancellor | Comment is free | The Guardian

cursed profane swear words

I was surprised to see this in 'How stuff works' but it's there and quite useful as an intro.
HowStuffWorks "How Swearing Works":
It picks up a number of points I have already made in posts with the 'profanity' or 'swearing' tag, in particular:
"the use of particular expletives can:
* Establish a group identity
* Establish membership in a group and maintain the group's boundaries
* Express solidarity with other people
* Express trust and intimacy (mostly when women swear in the presence of other women)
* Add humor, emphasis or 'shock value'
* Attempt to camouflage a person's fear or insecurity"
Recall that my main emphasis is to help us understand that the middle class prejudices about this form of language are just that and that they may not connect well with truly Christian concerns. About the only connection, really, is about loving neigbour in presentation of ones ideas, but we need to be wary of im/exporting attitudes cross-culturally.

Marriage and registration

I think that it is time to reform the way that we do marriages in Britain. Take this letter in the Church Times where the correspondent tells of his daughter's wedding, in a stately home with state registrars, where a poem deemed to have religious content was banned from the main ceremony and not allowed until the registrars had left the building.

She says: "I understand that a ceremony conducted by the registrar is not a “religious” ceremony — although some of the choices of vows were “I do solemnly declare” and “I take thee . . .”, taken directly from the Book of Common Prayer. We were under the impression, however, that, as the letter included with the pack from Somerset Registration Services states, “the choice is yours” to “personalise your marriage ceremony”. This is incorrect. It should read: “the choice is only yours as long as you don’t mention God.”"

Of course, it's a hard thing: if the state registrars start 'doing' religion; where might things end? Would they end up encroaching on the rites of religious bodies? And would we have to let traffic go the other way; 'religious' registrars would have to be able to do 'non-religious' ceremonies? And would that situation be a problem any way?

I'm inclined to think that we should do one of three things. One: registrars are licensed to conduct marriages wherever (the situation in many USAmerican States, and in Australia, for example) and it is up to the families and the registrar concerned just where and by what rites the ceremony is conducted (subject to a set of standards to allow it to be a marriage or a civil partnership). Two: the state should only register civil partnerships and then religious, or other bodies would conduct blessings of the same according to their own polity and policies (which would be similar to the French, Belgian and Dutch systems). Or Three: a comination of these two: the state registers partnerships as in scenario two, but it does so either via registrars who would attend a ceremony and register it regardless of its religious content, or via making the 'celebrants' into registrars.

Personally, whatever scenario we went for, I would just like to be able to conduct a marriage ceremony anywhere acceptable. For now, I'd love it if the CofE would allow us to conduct services elsewhere than a licensed church building. I would love to conduct a marriage service in a forest or on a hilltop or even amidst standing stones ... But that would be a further battle not with state legislation but with church canon law. At the moment the two coincide, under any of the alternative scenarios, the CofE would have to decide its own terms of engagement and that would be another story.
Church Times - ‘Are you here for your banns?’ Marriage matters:

Leaving Christianity in the name of Christ

There are times when I really do have so much sympathy for this: "My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me,' Rice wrote. 'But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become."
At the end of the day what keeps me 'Christian' (and 'Evangelical' for that matter) is a cussed refusal to cede the label and the history to the headbangers. But the idea of dissociating from the institutions and the negative stereotypes which are based on viewpoints which I do not share, well, that's very attractive.

I guess the other thing that keeps me is a sense that both Christ gives other Christians to me/us, and we are to learn to receive their gifts. And the mirror image of that: if I depart, then what I have to give is removed from potential influence. Oh and that is assuming that my influence is good; and of course, that's not always to be taken for granted; sometimes I may need the challenge and correction and keeping-me-on-my-toes-ness ...

And then there is the issue of being able to make use of the collective weight of Christian institutions for good. There is no getting away from institutional dimensions of life if we want to use our collective weight for good... individualism is not a plan to improve the world. But, yeah, the downside of that is where we started ...

Anne Rice leaves Christianity – The Marquee Blog - CNN.com Blogs:

 

No gains without culture change

"When van Commenee was interviewed himself he made it clear that ‘culture change’ could not be condensed into a new program or a new training manual for athletics. Rather he singled out three things; team spirit, dedicated back up staff and individually tailored training programs for each athlete."
Is this not analogous to what is needed for the CofE in relation to pioneering? It seems to me that the best of our pioneers are very much aware that no matter how much insight, inspiration and get-up-and go they have individually, in the end a team is needed and we rely on the effort and input of others (connect this with a recent speech by +Rowan Williams on a couple of petitions of the Lord's prayer). I'm certainly aware of the back up staff thing (and sometimes frustrated by some of the way that the CofE organises itself in this respect) and I've long advocated the individualised learning approach -coaching- sometimes I've blogged things relating to that as 'vocation-shaped church'.

No gains without culture change August 2010 � Metavista:

Anatheism

I love new terminologies, so introducing for your delight and delectation "anatheism". More here: Faith After Religion: Christianity through the filter of atheists' critiques - By Kenneth Sheppard - Patrol Magazine And a quick characterisation: "Anatheism is also a kind of call to action. One way of characterizing the anatheist project might be as a kind of attentive listening. Listening not only to Scripture, but to the Stranger and the Other that is often called divine, but also listening to the many others with whom we share our lives. In the Christian tradition we might easily recognize this as a philosophical broadening of one part of the Christian message embodied in the Emmaus story."
It kind of looks like the approach that is formed by a recognition of the work of the Spirit beyond the boundaries of the church and as exemplified in the synthesis represented by aspects (at least) of the wisdom traditions in scripture....

 

Pop accent, American English and worship

At college, when listening to those who are lead singers in chapel, it is sometimes very clear that they may have learnt the music from an American source. Interestingly, unlike pop music, quite a lot of lead singers in a worship setting don't actually use north American pronunciation features in singing, but some do. In doing so they are probably signalling a psychological reality, for them, of the social domain of singing rock or pop music; it is a domain in which certain features are expected to be used* and for them, perhaps, contemporary worship music is in the 'pop' domain.

Some research from New Zealand was done on NZ pop singers and their performance accents: Pop accent comes naturally�(Science Alert). Actually I was a bit disappointed, at least by the reporting. This is because of a mismatch between the stated aim: "research at AUT University’s Institute of Culture, Discourse and Communication looked at why we pronounce words differently when we sing." However, the news article doesn't say all that much and without the actual article, I'm speculating as to the whys that may actually be given and the results. The news article certainly didn't seem to really answer the question except to say that it happened. My understanding of what it does actually say is that it seems to happen because pop singing is a domain where an Americanised accent is expected (and that the meanings of a NZ accent in pop music therefore relate to comedy etc). So maybe (and this is my speculation) the 'why' really is simply that people pick it up just as they pick up more standard or more local variants for use in appropriate circumstances. In which case americanised English in pop music is mainly, probably, a statement saying, in effect, that what is being performed is 'pop' rather than (say) folk and the performance is being construed in solidarity with the traditions of pop music. It is a claim to be taken to be performing within that frame of understanding.

So the question I'm pondering is what is the meaning of using or not using an americanised accent in leading worship or even in singing our own worship? Is it a bringing of our own cultural repertoire into worship or is it a loss of 'authenticity'? Certainly, I wondered several times whether to ask a particular lead-singer whether they could lead in their own voice because the change was so marked from their own normal accent and I actually found it more difficult to sing along because I do normally sing worship in more-or-less my own normal accent and to be led in such a different accent with all the suasion that brings to move ones own expression to match that of the lead. So maybe that's the issue about this in leading worship: if a congregation normally sing in an americanised accent than, fine, but if they normally worship in their own, then use of a more 'normal' accent is called for. And part of the issue then is not to restrict 'worship' to singing; what accent(s) is/are used to express said prayers and preaching?

I'd say that there are other things we might want to consider in this case too. There is the socio-economo-political one about how we situate ourselves in respect of American hegemony (though this is a convoluted matter, historically**). It may be that if we wish to take seriously a somewhat resistant stance to the dominant Powers (cf Keesmaat and Walsh, Colossians Re:mixed), then we may want to encourage local rather than mid-Atlantic voices in worship, for example. Another is how far we judge such register switching to be 'authentic'; that is how far it is heard or felt as 'natural' or alienating; does it distance worshippers from their worship (for example, by tending to push it into a 'performance' category like Karaoke and thus making it rather than God the focus)? Theologically, the issues can be seen, then, to revolve around an 'incarnational' trajectory which affirms the indigenous and values the marginalised (cf Lamin Sanneh's work on the effects of vernacular Bible translations: affirming African languages and vernacular cultures).


*Typically the markers of 'pop English' are post-vocalic r (ie the r is sounded after vowels unlike southern British English), the reduction of /ai/ to /a:/ (so 'I' will be typically pronounced 'ah') and quite often the vowel in 'on'/'God' is lowered (so that to Brit ears it tends to sound more like 'ah'). There are a bunch of other little linguistic tells that also go with this (the treatment of intervocalic 't', nasalisation etc), so that list is not exclusive, just the more obvious features. Of course there are often (amusingly to the linguistically aware) hypercorrections; intrusive 'r' where the re-introduction of post-vocalic are is overextended to areas where it never would be in n.Am. English.

**A number of years ago, one of my university profs (the relatively famous Peter Trudgill, a major sociolinguist) did an occasional lecture on accent in pop music in which he outlined how much pop music was done in an Americanised accent. In fact, he pointed out, it is done in a somewhat southern n.American accent because it is betraying its origins/roots in black music (I'll leave readers to recall histories of pop music which should put that connection in context). One of the interesting things he noted though was that punk rock had tended to 'allow' if not encourage singers to use British features in contradistinction to n. American a tradition which can still sometimes be heard in newer music which inherits the punk style. This leads to an extra and ironic amusement to be found in the film Jumpin' Jack Flash, where Whoopi Goldberg's character is trying to decipher Mick Jagger's black-n.Am English accent ...