A More Christlike Word -a review

 One of the biggest problems I think I come across in Christian education is what I think of as a flat reading of scripture. By this I have in mind treating the whole bible as some kind of text-book: all one kind of writing, pretty much all of it giving propositional truths. Even bits that are obviously poetic and literary are treated as if the poetic form is merely a more aesthetic delivery system for what are really, at base, propositional statements. Related to that is the way that the differences of time, human writing and collecting and the history of receiving a text is banished to a far horizon (I think this is touched on at p.115: "literalism is generally tied to believing that truth is reduced to actuality, factuality, and historicity, whether or not the human or the divine author intended any such thing [p.115]"). This mind set is deeply uncomfortable with different parts of scripture apparently saying contradictory things because 'contradiction' means falsity in some part. Though of course if your definition of falsity is in large part leaning on a limited idea of 'propositionally true', then, yes; you are in trouble. Of course, a lot of this could be stood-aside from by simply being less prompt in equating "God's word written" with a kind of uniform concept of propositional truth. To turn the matter around: if scripture is in some way 'God-breathed' (I'm happy to start there, as is Dr Jersak), then what kind of way does it speak to us in the different 'notes' it is breathed through? As in music, cannot the dissonances also speak? If God speaks in Scripture, what do the differences and divergences tell us? -It's not good, in the end, pretending they're not there.

So a related question about how the early Church read scripture starts to bob up to the surface. They didn't have what we now call the New Testament, only that pesky hard-to-understand Old one. Can their readings of those writings help us to do a better job of reading scripture to tune into God?

I'll confess that for me the Anglican liturgical practice (retained from its pre-reformation form) where we  stand for the Gospel (and indeed face the gospel book and its reader) has helped me in this. Symbolically, to me at least, it says, "Christ is the centre -the rest is commentary". The Word (who was at the beginning) is the heart of the word of God written, the rest is commentary and context enlivened by the Spirit of the Word. (interestingly echoed on p.97: "... the “divine liturgy” of the church is a medium that functions to frame the Scriptures within the canon of faith—the message of the gospel—showing how they work together within the drama of redemption that inexorably points to Christ crucified and risen")

My hope was that this book might help me to think this through more, perhaps give me a resource to pass on to people I converse with about such things from time to time and /or perhaps deepen or re-found my line on the matter.

While above I mentioned as the way I think of a certain approach to reading scripture -'flat'- is the word used in this book too -in a fairly similar way. I think this word is going around in discussions about how we receive scripture and I've clearly picked it up too.

The idea of Christ being the centre and re-establishing in our thinking and attitudes that the Word is primarily, first and foremostly, Jesus is also robustly expounded here. One of my other favourite terms comes in here too: seeing the scriptures as witnesses to the Word. And from there he quickly gets into noting the hard questions prompted by the dissonance between the Abba of Jesus and some of the frankly genocidal commands in, say, Deuteronomy. And in relation to this issue, I found myself very much resonating with this:

I would not opt for the functional Marcionism of inerrantists who ignored the “toxic texts” or pretended they don’t exist. Nor could I follow the biblicists —literalists who were willing to throw the character of God under the bus, painting him as a monster and calling it “good” without blinking. Nor could I follow many progressives who had seen the problem but left the Bible behind altogether—and with the Bible, sometimes Jesus too! (p.45)

I like the way that the author keeps the Emmaus Road encounter as a paradigm case. Though I must admit that his putting the prodigal son story as a master text by which to interpret and weigh all others much surely have vied for the headline label, but I guess that "the Emmaus way" is probably more disclosive in that role than, say, "the prodigal way".

I was a little shocked that the fundamentalist /literalist way of reading scripture was labelled a heresy -a modernist heresy, but I must admit that I have gone a long way down the road already to thinking that there is something in that label. I found the characterisation of this in this sentence, very arresting: " seeing Christ thrown under the bus again and again through an agenda-laden, simplistic misuse of our sacred text..."

So, I think that I found that overall, the book was confirming me in where I'd come to, and that I would want to have this book to hand to commend or pass onto people I talk with about scripture and spirituality and Christian formation. I read with a sense of recognition of both the problems being identified and of the ways forward trough the network of issues raised. It is good to have a winsome book which goes through things systematically, with clarity and in a way that shows clearly that this a a 'faith seeking understanding' issue not one to be mistakenly characterised as 'disobedience', unbelief or deception.

It's quite a fat book -over 280 pages- but not a hard read at all; it covers a lot of ground in a winsome way with occasional turns of phrase that help to attract and hold the imagination. It doesn't labour points but feels to give enough information and argument to outline the main points and there are useful further reading and resources signalled along the way where the reader can follow-up things that become of particular interest.

The first parts of the book look at how the bible gets misused and misinterpreted and in what ways flat readings are inadequate and downright unhelpful, while making a case for a biblical strategy for reading scripture chistotelically. The second parts of the book cash out the theory. I was particularly taken by the chapters on rhetoric and diatribe -so far I'd only seem them in fairly scholarly books, it's good to see an author widening the audience and appreciation of these ways in which scripture is full of texture which is easily missed. The second moiety of the book moves more into the nature of God in relation to scriptural language. The key thought to emerge is that God is love and that we need to be wary of language about God, especially 'wrath'. We are also treated to some of the writings of the early Church supporting this. The main point, though, seems to be that by flattening out the scriptures, there's no way to put characteristics asserted of God into order and so a mean-spirited wrath is put on a par with love.

One of the things I gained from reading this book which I didn't expect was the challenge to read more of early church writers like, well more specifically, Origen and Melito of Sardis (being introduced to an online version of his On Pascha seem like a good place to start). I noted too that there's a really helpful 'further reading' section.

Lines I liked

The Word of God is inspired, inerrant, and infallible. And when he was about eighteen years old, he grew a beard (p.29)

  if there is a God (forever a faith statement), that God is Love. And God is Love only, for every other attribute of God must ever only be a facet of that one pure diamond lp.56]

I invite you to make an honest inquiry of how the so-called “toxic texts” function as a mirror that reveals the human condition and our habit of projecting our own un-Christlike images onto God, especially in the form of religious violence. [p.58]

seeing Christ thrown under the bus again and again through an agenda-laden, simplistic misuse of our sacred texts... [p.114]

... whatever unrecorded words Jesus relayed on the road to Emmaus, they did not fit into the historical-grammatical-literal approach (i.e., literalism) of my education. Frankly, I felt ripped off [p.129] 

Imagine Jesus saying, in all humility, “I hate to make this all about me...BUT, yeah, it really is.” [p.142]

 

Thoughts I found helpful

An Emmaus reading of their accounts sees these agendas. When the authors rationalize bloodshed, we ask, “How do they prefigure the Sanhedrin’s rationale for Jesus’s crucifixion?” And when they problematize violence, we ask, “How do their critiques anticipate Christ’s denunciation of violence?” As I read any given text through Christ, I need to con-sider whether the author’s perspective reveals a veil that Christ has since removed or an unveiling that foreshadows his revelation of God [p.84] 

Imagine that the whole Bible is simply an incredibly long version of the parable of the prodigals. And conversely, imagine that the parable is Jesus’s ingeniously brief summary of the whole Bible, distilled into short-story format. We can do this because both offer us the same gospel narrative...one in an expansive library and the other in a tight paragraph. So, here’s what we can do: turn the parable into an imaginary walk-in closet organizer for every section, every book, and every chapter of the Bible. [p.97]

The traumatic training offered in the Bible’s R-rated material should not be read as the threats of a violent deity but as the loving (and dramatically memorable) warnings of a good Father in good faith. The people of God made countless missteps that become vivid moral lessons for avoiding landmines. God wastes nothing... because of Jesus’s instructions on loving, forgiving, blessing, and praying for our enemies, and his explicit rejection of retaliation, vengeance, and violence, we must never use a text where the Philistines are slaughtered to call for the slaughter of “infidels.” Rather, we might see how they foreshadow Christ’s victory over the nonhuman enemies of satan, sin, and death, and our personal battles with the spirit of pride, malice, and other un-Christlike attitudes within ourselves.[p.133] (Personal note: this has been the only way I have been able to appropriate these texts)

I will say this to all Christians, Jewish or Gentile: we have no business in the Jewish sacred writings without reference to our Rabbi and his Emmaus Way of reading them. And that way of reading always points to and prostrates before him... Christotelic reading  [p.141]

So, as we read Old Testament narrative, we are invited to watch and see:

•When the people of God experience suffering, Christ suffers with them.

•When God’s people cause suffering, Christ suffers in their victims.

•When the people of God achieve victory, Christ is the victor.

•When God delivers his people, Christ is the deliverer.

•When the people go into exile, Christ goes with them.

•When the people of God are led out of exile, Christ leads them.

•When the priest offered a sacrifice, Christ was the priest.

•When the lamb was sacrificed, Christ was the lamb.

•When God appeared, that was Christ.  [p.158]

 ... new consensus has been emerging around what we are calling a “Christ-centered hermeneutic.” This term describes what we have been discussing throughout this book: that we must read the whole Bible through the lens of Jesus. Christ is the chief cornerstone—the Canon par excellence—so that all Scripture is received as authoritative only after passing through the life, teachings, and gospel of Jesus [p.196]

Rather, the best theologians are those who analyze and describe what the praying and worshipping community has come to believe through its corporate experience of the reality of the triune God. In other words, worship precedes theology, often by several decades. As we experience the presence of God in prayer and worship, we begin to compose liturgies and songs that express what we have come tosee. Eventually, theologians become observant and follow suit. Teachers may begin to confirm the implications of what the congregation has already been singing and praying (which is to say, believing) over the past decades. Ironically, the first generation of these teachers are often regarded as heretical, sometimes even by the very congregants who spawned theoriginal revelation. Why? It may be that the congregation is still under the spell of previous teachers whom they regard as their authoritative prescribers of the truth.  [p.197]

 The voices of sacrificial religion that permeate the story of Scripture are at least threefold in tone and content. Sacrificial religion speaks to readers as “the voice of the accuser,” “the voice of the victim,” and “the voice of the law.” Each voice makes particular claims and demands ..a fourth voice emerges in the biblical text, corresponding to the revelation of sacrificial love. I call it “the voice of the Lamb.” The voice of the Lamb—the voice enfleshed in Christ as self-giving love—proclaims the way of the cross vis-à-vis the worldly religious way of the sword. [p.204-5]

...biblicism regularly fails to delineate between the omniscient Author and the limited or unreliable narrator. However, there are many examples in literature where we are required to do just that. For instance, in Don Quixote, Cervantes constructs an epic tale of a very strange protagonist—but he also writes the tale through multiple genres, stories within stories, and a famously unreliable narrator. That is, the true author (Cervantes) knows exactly what he is doing, but he tells the story through a narrator who does not. Thus, the author is not truly the narrator. Narrators are actually extensions of the character they’re describing or evenan independent character who speaks from a particular perspective. [p.218]

Quotes I want to put 'out there'

 the first Christians would not have asked whether the Bible was authoritative. Instead, they would have said that Jesus was their authority, and then they would have asked, “Which books testify to this?” Those that did were chosen for inclusion in their written canon, [p.76]

I confess to finding the pastoral and evangelistic damage literalism causes upsetting. The edge comes from seeing Christ thrown under the bus again and again through an agenda-laden, simplistic misuse of our sacred texts...with the ironic claim that this constitutes faithfulness. [p.114]

literalism is generally tied to believing that truth is reduced to actuality, factuality, and historicity, whether or not the human or the divine author intended any such thing [p.115]

Modernist literalism... constantly stumbles into thinking that if a text (such as Genesis 2, Job, or Jonah) is not accepted as factual history, then it isn’t true. But consider this: is the parable of the prodigal son not profoundly true? Is Christ’s story of the good Samaritan not supremely true? [p.123]

... the redactors who gathered the Hebrew canon consciously incorporated texts that challenge and subvert other texts across the Scriptures... without imagining that this might undermine or threaten the authority of their Bible. The narrative is allowed to stand as is, confirming the integrity and genius of the story of God and God’s people.[p.201]

I used to flip right to the “good stuff” in Job until I started seeing how “good” the foolish counsel seemed to me. Some of it appears to make good sense. Exactly! The important function of the friends’ speeches is to shine a light on our own idiocy. The friends’ speeches are an inspired revelation of our own error, not a divine thumbs-up to their error. [p.207]

Side note: Paul commissioned the female deacon Phoebe to deliver (preach!) his sermon to the Romans in person. He would have prepared her to communicate the tones such that his first audience picked up on the diatribe [p.245]

The emotional pairing of the terror of judgment offset by the relief of escape is effective(ish). But if our message focuses on fear that makes God the cause or agent of fear, we’ll either run from God or turn to him but have no desire to draw near to him. Spiritual Stockholm Syndrome

True justice for the prophets is the beautiful restoration of the shalomic state by means of mercy—defined as every manifestation of divine goodness. In that case, justice and mercy kiss [p.269]

Provocative or intriguing quotes

Origen included within his literal sense the need to discern and distinguish (1) actual history from (2) fictitious history (when we can) composed by the Spirit to communicate more-than-literal truth. In either case, the message the story conveys is true [p.130]

If we don’t see that Christ is the point, then the whole Bible remains Old Testament, but if we do, then the whole Bible becomes New Testament [p.218]

Link-Love for Review

A More Christlike Word on Amazon
A More Christlike Word website
Bradley Jersak’s website 

#AMoreChristlikeWord

I should say that I received this e-book as a review copy via the Speakeasy review scheme. I'm not obliged to say nice things about it (or the reverse, come to that), just to comment on it within 30 days of receiving it. Which I've done. 

Call of the Child -a bit of a review

The title pretty much tells you, but here's what the author says:

It is about two things, tightly interweaved but seldom thought of as connected. They are: Being a child, and being a peacemaker

And that's what draws me in -those two strands of Jesus' teaching- because they are strong themes from the gospels and it's good to see them in company with each other imaginatively and reflectively.

Further, he goes on to say something that felt like it spoke to where I'm coming to (again) at this point in time.

A child trusts. A child does not worry. A child can be oblivious to the challenges surrounding them. A child plays. A child is filled with wonder. A child knows that their father can fix anything. A child has no experience with fear or abandonment. A child has nothing to prove. A child has no need of reputation. A child feels inherently safe. A child sees no limitations and believes that anything is possible. A child is at peace.

So, of course, I was going to read this! (smiley face)

Bruce's starting point, theologically, is a fairly mainstream evangelical approach to bible and atonement. It is radical in pushing back against some evangelical views of God's love and punishment though arguably no less radical than the Reformers themselves. It is worth noting that he's not about asserting that background since he has no desire to argue about it but a willingness to discuss.

Bruce starts off by leading us into a reflection on the nature of God's fatherhood and the implications of a real Good News which is that God loves us fundamentally; that the Cross has created us as God's children irrevocably. You can get the flavour of this from page 18: 

This English translation of the Greek word huiothesia ... When translated as adoption it implies to us that we were not the Father's children until after we were adopted. But the Greek word does not mean that at all. The word actually refers to the act of placing a son. In the Roman context, that would be something more like a coming of age ceremony, or a proclamation that a son is fully the legal and rightful representative of his father. The point here is that we have always been the children of Father God. We were stolen, but the Cross has redeemed us and purchased us back from captivity.

It is in a footnote to this first chapter that Bruce makes the point that while it is common for people to quote Rom.3:23 "... all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God", in attitude this is often severed from the following verse which tells us that all are justified freely by God's grace. In a sense, he's trying to get us to think about that and weigh it more heavily in our estimation. I think that this is right.

Bruce mentions that he is from a military background, so it is interesting to read the chapter on war -I would commend it. Interesting, not least because of the discussion of the just war tradition and its misuse and abuse. As an American, he seems to be under no illusions about the USAmerican role in maintaning an unpeace-ful world.

I liked that the topic of peace and peacemaking is approached holistically -looking at social and political dimensions, a well-rounded view of security based in people-centred everyday living and psychological. This is all woven together with reference to the kind of personal attitudinal considerations that are the everyday concern of ordinary prayer with scripture in one hand.

Link-Love for this Review

I note that Bruce stays off social media -so there's only his blog/website and a buying location here.

The Call of the Child on Amazon
Bruce McKibben’s Website

Tag: #TheCallOfTheChild

Please also be aware that I'm reviewing here a book I had an e-preview copy of from the publisher via the Speakeasy network. The deal is that I review it within 30 days of downloading a copy. The deal is not that I have to be favourable; I'm free to like it, dislike it, be nuanced about it and whichever it is to tell it as I see it.

Posting peace -digital peacemaking

I got interested in this book because its "call us to embrace the radical ministry of peacemaking in response to our destructive online world." is very much been on my heart and at the back and sometimes the forefront of my mind for two or three years. To the point of trying to find others to work with in research and perhaps action. And peacemaking has been a core image in beginning to think about a Christian response. My concern has arisen mostly since the Brexit debate in the UK and I became aware of how polarised, hateful, uncompromising, spiteful, it could be. It was shocking to see and to be on the receiving end of trigger-seeking, mocking and reason-deflecting messages. When I used to play football (soccer) we had saying, "play the ball not the man". These trolls and bots were definitely in the other camp: "play the man, forget the ball". As I investigated further, it became evident that the business models, the way that the algorithms work to amplify the most basely emotive tweets and posts and the weaponisation of that by troll and bot farms aiming to sow dissent by disinformation and winding people up with ever greater degrees of hatred and contempt.

So I got to wondering what blessed peacemaking looks like amid all of that.. What is the calling of Christ-followers on social media? I've begun to experiment on Twitter with trying to engage differently, more humbly, asking questions, remembering that sometimes there are humans behind the words and expressions. At least sometimes I have succeeded to some degree. In doing this I've learnt from the failures and the pockets of relative 'success'. I've learnt about my own affectivity in relation to trolling, and about my own triggers.

As the author writes and with which I resonate:

I’m tired of the fighting. I’m tired of being afraid of the fighting. I no longer desire to engage in fruitless heated discussions and meaningless contentious debates that don’t have a redemptive or transformative purpose. I want my best energy directed toward Christ-centered, truth-advancing, life-affirming, grace-filled, reconciling communication. I want to be a Christ-motivated peacemaker.

So, that's what I came to this book with, seeking perspectives and ideas to underpin action and peacemaking presence. Does it help me/us?

I've been finding that it draws on a good range of thinkers and writers to situate our thinking about social media in wider cultural and psychological perspectives, and I think that this is helpful. There have been times when I've thought that the author was taking a rather negative view and not understanding the way that people actually use and deploy social media out of our God-given humanity but then quite often the more (shall I call it?-) appreciative case is made. This saves it from simply being a call to join a moral panic and begins to make it useful. 

I found it useful too that at the end of each chapter there are suggestions for experiments with social media and some of them are quite challenging at the level of personal formation -but then, that's important. I would commend this book as a way to help ourselves become digital peacemakers and I am considering using it with study groups. I'd say that the level is not simplistic or overly 'popular' but it should be accessible to anyone who is willing to think and to take seriously the insights of scholars of culture.

Occasionally, I think that the critical ideas relating to discarnation etc were overplayed. For example, I'm not sure I'm convinced by the idea that social media separates our communications and intentions from ourselves (p.61).  I think perhaps that social media extends, stretches, our attachment to what we 'say' through time and space. It thins it out. But the fact that we can feel in our guts the concerns about how what we post is received and responded to suggests that separation is not taking place. We are projecting ourselves, admittedly in an attenuated form, but we are invested. I think we may be in danger if we pursue the 'separation' thesis too strongly, of losing sight of the similarities between spoken wording and visually based wording. They both involve us concentrating some thoughts into a narrow medium and 'expelling' them to be received by others vai air or light. In that sense both are alienated from us physically. However, we do keep the connection emotionally, we continue to identify with our communication.

That said, I do think that the proposition that social media tends to involve self-expression rather than other-focus/concern is probably true. I'd see this as an effect relating to the affordances of the media in relation to the psycho-cultural hinterland of many users. And, of course, once a critical mass is reached, it creates a set of cultural expectations whereby more other-directed, learning-focussed communications are not well received.

I liked, on p.62 the comment that we post in a way like advertisers of products and services. And I think there is something important to that in foregrounding the expressivist culture of much of social media. However, I think that it is also important to notice that advertisers seek to post in ways similar to socmed users.

Quotes I found helpful or thought-provoking

press my attitude or the intentbehind my communication. I would gladly use an “I’m not angry” font or a “This is a sincere reply” filter or an “I’m honestly trying not to fight with you” typeface or an “I don’t know why you’re so angry at me right now, but I’m not angry with you and I’m sincerely trying my best to find a way to communicate in a way that doesn’t make things worse” emoji. As of yet, that technology is unavailable and a smiley emoji isn’t a sufficient substitute for in-person, in-flesh communication (p.59)

#PostingPeace

Posting Peace: Why Social Media Divides Us and What We Can Do About It

Hope/less

Since the beginning of Lent, the first few lines of TS Eliot's Ash Wednesday have been revisiting. It's not that I have any great insight into the poem but rather because a phrase is resonant for me just now: "Because I do not hope". It feels to speak to a growing awareness and a reluctant coming-to-terms with the humanly-slow, geologically-fast unfolding of environmental catastrophe. 

"Because I do not hope" -for those with the power to act wisely and in a timely manner. 

"Because I do not hope" -for lobbyists or the business-as-usual crowd to be stood down.

"Because I do not hope" -for systemic changes to take place.

 

In noticing this resonance, I realise that I had been hoping for things that now seem unlikely. 

I had been hoping that enough people would realise, yesterday, how dire the prognosis is. 

I had been hoping that governments would see beyond the next election

and be concerned about future generations

and so to prime collective action with policy, law and finance. 

I had been hoping that our collective consciousness would kick in before tipping points were reached. 

I had been hoping that if enough of us made greener decisions, spoke, wrote, pleaded and even, God forgive us,

shamed enough other people, then maybe disaster could be averted.

 

What to do? To go off-grid would be an act of despair.

What is needed is a turn to a way of living together where doing roughly the right thing by the environment is the default and not a special effort by a few enthusiasts with the time, money and curiosity to hug trees and eat organic.

 

"Because I do not hope to turn" people around me to living a one-planet lifestyle…

"Because I do not hope to turn" politicians and business leaders towards the common good

and becoming better ancestors…

"Because I do not hope to turn" a profit- and rent-seeking, mammonist, System

into a humane, modest and creation-respectful modus vivendi… 

"Because I do not hope to turn" any of these things I cannot hope.

For I am, like you, helpless in the current of hopeless, misdirected, collective striving.

I no longer strive to strive for such things?

I may no longer desire the constant flow of tat and novelty

but I am carried along by the powerful rip-tides of those aggregated efforts;

billions of decisions formed and constrained by the ecosystem-eroding business as usual,

further empowering it in turn. 

 

I know the obverse of lost hope too: anger: at the short-termism, the stupidity, the cupidity.

Anger that speaking, shouting and lifestyle changing during 40 or 50 years were dismissed; ridiculed even.

 

"Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?"

Civilisations -each in turn has been 'the usual reign'- have risen and fallen.

“Why should I mourn?”

Because billions of people some of whom I know and love personally will be harmed and traumatised.

If they survive the floods, the famines, the pandemics, the migrations, the resorts to violence,

they will hope that their new feudal lords may be kind and respond mercifully to their new skills of servility.

 

What is hope in the face of a sixth great extinction? Of another desperate dark ages?

 

Humanly speaking: little or none; only degrees of denial -refusing to think about it.

Perhaps this is a kind of hope. A hope that if we refuse to see it, it will turn out to be a bad dream or a mistake.

Understandable: we sense the lurking trauma in being disabused

of the deeply-embedded cultural hope of Progress and contemplating its casualties.

 

Time and again the usual reign has passed away. This is not new -though it is grievous. 

Yet the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. 

God knows us, eternally.

 

Also in Lent this year, the refrain from Psalm 42 has played recurrently through my mind.

"Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me?  

O put your trust in God; for I will yet give him thanks, who is the help of my countenance, and my God."  

-I can answer the 'why?' in one sense:

my soul's heaviness and my disquiet are prompted by climate catastrophe

and the revealed priorities of our Westminster government in the face of the pandemic.

In the face of such entrenched greed, denial and veniality,

somehow, hope-against-hope, it feels like the only recourse is as these verses state.

And as I write that I am mobbed by centuries of teaching about trusting in God,

but it somehow feels like only now do I get it. Only now am I being disabused of a human pride

that somehow with enough motivation, knowledge or cajoling we can do it.

Like with step one in a 12-step program, we can only truly hope when

we admit that we are actually, truly, powerless. Only then can we hope.

But that hope is oblique to the sources of our despair.

Such hope feels small and underwhelming, fragile even. And yet …

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

    for his compassions never fail. (Lamentations 3) 

 

"I no longer strive towards such things" for myself.

But I do continue to strive because it is better to do good than not,

to live the change we desire to see God effect in the world.

I keep on striving because when the Day comes

we should be about our God-breathed business.

And who knows? -We may yet be surprised by hope.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins   

Innoculating British Christians against USAmerican rightist ambitions

I just read this:

Franklin Graham invested $10 million of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s money in his 2016 Decision America Tour to each state house in the country. Billed as “nonpartisan” prayer rallies, these gatherings framed the “moral crisis” as a decision between progressive atheist values and God. After the election, Graham called Trump’s victory an answer to prayer. 

The reason I'm concerned is that about 2 years ago, we nearly had a BGEA tour of the UK headed up by Franklin Graham. I was concerned at the time and this has made me more so. I was concerned that Graham was at least as much about networking so-called Christian right personnel with British Evangelicals with a view to creating a bridge-head to amplify an approach to values consonant with the USAmerican right-wing agenda. I wondered whether I was being too 'conspiracy theorist', but now reading this, I'm minded to think it would be precisely that bridgehead-building.

The article goes on to say this:

Today these influences — the Christian and religious nationalist organizations, religious capitalist and prosperity gospel movements, and independent charismatics — have access to the current administration in the form of its “court evangelicals.” The Values Voter Summit has become an important focus point for this coalition and its narrative. Through federal contracts and student aid, Liberty University has become the largest private Christian university in the country 

I'm thinking, having thought over the last 5 years in British politics, and recalling things I've read about the increasing reach of the American right into funding campaigns in Europe and further afield, that this is precisely an aim of Graham's deployment of the BGEA in this way. I think that they see an opportunity to leverage the current situation to build a stable if smaller base of right-wing support using somewhat Christian themes in the way they have in the USA.

As such I think that we need to be moving away from naivety in British Christian, especially evangelical and charismatic circles. We need to be in a position to resist Graham's next overtures. I'm pretty sure they will come once the dust is settling after the pandemic emergency.

So, my question is what do we need to do now to enable British evangelicals in particular to see through the rhetoric to the political agenda? To understand that this isn't the relatively benign BGEA of the 1980s and '90s but rather a vehicle for right-wing agendas which would struggle to answer 'WWJD' with responses that weren't more like responses to 'WWCD' (what would Caesar do?). There are UK evangelicals and charismatics who would covet the 'court evangelical' role, how do we pre-empt that? How do we innoculate against the cunning use of single issues to marginalise more Godly values (check out here for further reflection). It is a characteristic of some of the Pharisaism that Jesus criticised -maybe that's the way to pursue? (WWPD? -what would Pharisees do?)

My hope in this is that it seems that British Evangelicalism has tended to be more focused on justice and mercy than the USAmerican counterpart. I hope I'm not wrong in that, and I hope it is not too shallowly rooted.

This is going to be occupying some of my prayer-time for weeks or months to come.

And for the record, I think that such cynical usage of evangelism and co-option of the good will of those concerned for sharing the Good News of Jesus is despicable. If this is what Mr Graham is doing (and it does look likely given the history) then I think that puts him and those others who do it in the place of those pharisees and sadducees whom Jesus laid into for misleading the poor and the seeking. At the best they may be acting the part of 'useful idiots' at worst ... shudder ...

Source for initiating quotes: Our Demands – Poor People's Campaign:

Ephesians and All that Jazz -A review

Lately, I've been finding myself appreciating poetic writing more, and that's what drew me to the description of this book: I really delight in fresh expressions of thought and feeling that connect those concepts with different areas of our experience and throw light on them. That was the hope I began reading this book with as some of the blurb said "A fresh, new meaning must be created within the heart of a believer before these words can be understood and lived out. Objective truth must be internalized. The Word must become flesh once again. This is the essence of transliteration and what the Holy Spirit yearns to do in each heart, regardless one’s tradition. Jazz can begin to open up the possibility of God to a hungry heart." 

What struck me as I read the first pages is that it seemed to be a kind of midrash -especially in the way it offers a verse-by-verse 'commentary' but a commentary that is playful, sometimes poetic, always trying to connect with contemporary language, idioms and thought-forms. I guess that's why the word 'jazz' is in the title -it points well to the approach to the text. It comments not by looking into history or etymology or even intertextuality but rather by expanding, rephrasing and re-framing -riffing, you might say. That all makes for a lively, stimulating and sometimes intriguing and insightful read.

I think I'd classify it as devotional literature. It might be useful to refer to in sermon preparation because it might help shake loose an insight or a way to say something. It could also be helpful if  you're preparing to lead prayers referring back to Ephesians.

Links for this Review Ephesians and All that Jazz on Amazon Tom Anderson’s Website Tom Anderson Podcast Interview Tom Anderson Text Interview #EphesiansAndAllThatJazz Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this e-book free through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own

Funerals and tech -evolution?

Having now outlived both my parents, I find myself wondering more about funeral arrangements in a more personal way. And it is notable to me, being involved as I am, from time to time, in the funerals of university students, that funeral practices are changing. And then covid-19 arrived and introduced further changes, which may be to some degree permanent. it is poetically expressed by an Episcopal priest, Padre Angel of Boston, Ma.

 A smartphone is no longer an intruder into the numinous, but an acolyte in service of the sacred. The tablets have transubstantiated into pallbearers: holders of the moment, and not transgressors of it.

It has been a forced development, but now it's happened, perhaps it will mean that it will not feel so odd or sacriligious for remote viewing or even more active participation to take place.

On the other hand...

Mr Collier watched a ceremony live-streamed from Kerstin’s garden. “I feel like I witnessed it,” he says. “I don’t feel I took part.

On the other hand, some notice that the reduction in numbers being able to attend personally has meant a return to something that has been downplayed in recent years.

During the pandemic — particularly during lockdown, when numbers were so small — funerals got back to their original purpose of being allowed to grieve. And we’d almost forgotten that in funerals before then. The interesting thing will be what the long-term impact of that is, whether we’ll hold on to that. We want ritual, but we’ve got to reimagine ritual,

It seems to me that it is still too early to tell how this will play out. It is plausible that a hybrid might emerge: funerals becoming normally smaller, more immediate, affairs where bodily action is at a premium: being able to touch one another and perhaps the coffin or the body being more central possibilities. But those smaller events might be 'attended' also virtually by more people whose relative emotional distance means that it 'feels' okay to pay respects by viewing online. It may even be that others, more distanced by geography, could participate more actively by video interaction.

My question is about how this would all play out into ritual and the staging of memorial events. I suspect that the recent trend towards foregrounding the 'celebration of the life of...' someone may continue in later events. This life-celebration has probably had the effect of moving the grieving elements out of public view (understandably) and into more private spaces. Perhaps more intimate funeral services are allowing ostensible mourning back into the now-semi-public space of a church building.

My concern in it all is that what happens enables people to mourn. It is important that people are allowed and given supports to enable them to recognise their own grief and losses and to express them helpfully. 

I do still worry that the unspoken conspiracy to keep public things positive and upbeat is not doing us any favours in relation to processing loss, grief and even rage.

Drawing initially from this article: Funerals in 2020: better for mourners?: