How she forgave her daughter's killer

Some readers may suspect that my interest in forgiveness in these extreme circumstances has roots in our life and a road traffic incident two years ago which deprived our daughter of one of her legs. Surprisingly, perhaps, (as a search through this blog for 'forgiveness' with attention to dates, will show). That's not to say that I don't find connections. A lot goes back to a sense that we talk a lot about forgiveness but we often don't think that clearly about what's involved. My interest comes more from trying to wrestle pastorally with the issues presented by grieving families and the rough-and-tumble of everyday miscomprehension, unthinking uncare and/or malice.

So it's good to see the topic aired here: How I forgave my daughter's killer | Life and style | The Guardian: I still find the writer focuses on isses which flit the surface; the presenting issues of anger and pain without examining the relationship between those things and love and feelings around justice, punishment, revenge and counter-transference of such things. It is also a bit short on just what is forgiveness and what excusing and then what the costs are.

Let me, however, pick out of the article the things that I think are really important for helping us to learn forgiveness.

'When Charlotte was murdered, �forgiveness did not enter my mind. For a long time, I wanted to know, who is this wicked girl that took my daughter? Who did this evil? My baby was gone. I was just coming to terms with the loss. I had to weigh things up, to really allow my emotions to take their course.' ... I kept ­staring over at her. I wanted her to look at me, to look at the pain she had caused me, for her to see that Charlotte had a mum who loved her. I wanted her to show me how sorry she was. ... I wanted her to feel a bit of my pain at losing my daughter. ... Mary came to understand more of Beatriz's background. "I learned about all the bullying and intimidation she had ­received, about all the things that had happened to her at home and at school.
"So I wrote back to her and said, 'I forgive you, I believe you didn't mean to do it, although there is a price to pay for the choice you made.' ... ­Certainly she wishes her "an ­emotionally stable life, a good life. I hope she turns out to be a ­wonderful mother. I don't wish her any evil. I don't wish her to lose a child. I would not wish that on anyone."

I think all the elements that I have come to recognise as necessary are there. The one issue that isn't clear in this account is the relationship between excusing (which is recognising where there are factors that relieve the perpetrator of culpability) and forgiving (which is foregoing vengeance or 'counter-transference' whilst recognising the genuine culpability of the perpetrator). In this telling most of the weight falls to excusing -and that is right and proper and can make forgiving easier. The account as we have it here doesn't help us to understand how she did the harder work of letting go of the 'residual' culpable wrongdoing and its entails. That's a shame because that's where most of us need the most help and support: to forego just anger and its successor events and to re-open the possibility of a positive relationship with the perpetrator.

Where the Praan is Matt?

Hat tip to my colleague and friend David Runcorn who introduced me to this -me and the rest of the college- at his spirituality session on friendship last Wednesday.

Music is Praan by Gary Shyman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfGk6S8-n9E&feature=channel). I was really taken by the tune and the composition. At first I thought it was an Enya number but then it became evident it was far richer than that. And I love the words: translated from Bangla (I gather they are those of Rabinath Tagore) ....
The same stream of life
that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world
and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life
that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life
that is rocked in the ocean-cradle
of birth and of death,
in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious
by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages
dancing in my blood this moment.

In [the Word] is Life, and that life is the light of all ...

Bracing for Rising Seas

Forgive the article's long examination of USAmerican effects; at least they give the rest of us a picture of the kinds of things we need to be thinking about. For 'New York' or 'Miami', read 'London' or -I don't know- 'Chichester' (and see here)
... Anyway, here's why you should read the article: to make sense of just something of the magnitude of the problem; "Responding to long-term sea level rise will pose unprecedented challenges to the international community. Economic and humanitarian disasters can be avoided, but only through wise, forward-looking planning. Tough decisions will need to be made regarding the allocation of resources and response to natural disasters. Let us hope that our political leadership can provide the bold vision and strong leadership that will be required to implement a reasoned response."
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Bracing for a Century of Rising Seas.
As Christians we are global citizens; loving our neighbour with a God who cares for the refugees and marginalised means we need to be using our votes with this agenda in mind and speaking with our neighbours in such a way as to influence opinion towards a safer and less volatile world for our neighbours into the future: our grandchildren and their peers.

Interestingly, politically, I think that this makes an adjunct to the already huge case for political and economic decentralisation: we need to pull our nation's financial and governance out of a basket that looks to be submerged. Guess whose parliament is on the front line of inundation? Ditto one of the world's leading financial hubs.

Prayer and forgiveness, gender and guilt.

Intuitively and in experience, I guess, we know this already, but as often, it is reassuring to find research that bears it out: "results showed that those who had prayed for their partner harbored fewer vengeful thoughts and emotions: They were more ready to forgive and move on." Blessing those who persecute us and praying for our enemies does useful things to us let aside any interaction with God. The next piece of research, however, might indicate that women may need to do it more, not because they are more vengeful but because men are less likely to feel guilty, perhaps, and so more likely, I guess, to act irritatingly and with disregard for the feelings of others. The article is here, and here's a snippet of the report commenting on the interesting thing for me because I'd not really considered that there were several forms of guilt:

The most common forms of guilt are related to situations where we cause harm to others. Stemming from this, it is normal that this arouses feelings of empathy for the people we may have harmed, which tend to turn into feelings of guilt when we recognise that we are responsible for their suffering... The anxious-aggressive kind of guilt is more common in people who have been raised in a more blame-imposing environment, and who are governed by stricter rules about behaviour in general and aggression in particular. "It seems obvious that this component will be more intense among women, and especially in older women,"

Now we should note that this, therefore, has a great deal to do with socialisation and so is not making claims for innate gender differences.
Note the role of empathy, though, in both these studies.
Prayer increases forgiveness:

France banning niqab: big mistake

I think that we really do have to learn to distinguish hard and soft secularism. The former is probably a threat to civilisation, the latter is messy but probably the best we can do. Here's why hard secularism is self-defeating.

"The worst about all this fuss is that we are completely off target. Women donning the full veil are not against modernity but represent rather its sophisticated product, just like westernised Buddhists. The veil, surprising as this may seem, is good news for modern values. Some smart young women keep a niqab in their bag but only wear it in Paris's Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, in order to draw attention to the fact that they belong to the best Muslim set, that they really have got that Muslim chic, something like the equivalent behaviour in a gay district. This deep western social movement is no threat to modern values, but rather vindicates the latter under unexpected aesthetic guise: it is so individualistic and depoliticised that it is more of a real threat for Islamism and terrorist networks themselves."

-Raphael Liogier.
For the record: I'd rather they didn't wear niqab etc, -sI do find it disconcerting to lose a whole set of social signals (one reason I don't like phoning strangers about delicate matters). But then the reasons given don't really add up unless hoodies are banned and any costumes of a carnivalesque nature are also banned from public places...
France's attack on the veil is a huge blunder | Raphael Liogier | Comment is free | The Guardian:

Cancel the clawback for Haiti

"As Haitian families search for survivors and relief rolls in, Haiti is still staggering under $1 billion in old debts racked up by unscrupulous lenders and unelected governments of the past.But in recent days, a worldwide outcry has grown to cancel Haiti's debt -- and while some key lenders are rumoured to be holding out, the IMF and some key governemnts have indicated that debt relief could be within reach.
More pressure is needed. The petition ..."DROP HAITI'S DEBT:

Are carrots orange?

Actually, not always. Any more than hen's eggs are brown (if you're British) or white (if you're USAmerican). I've been telling people for a couple of years in those odd 'did you know...' moments that carrots used to be purple. Well, and more. And it could be that there is a political angel to this. Are carrots protestant? | Culture Making:

"the long orange carrot of supermarket and snowman-nose and Bugs Bunney fame was popularized by Dutch breeders in the 17th century, perhaps as a tribute to William of Orange, the the Dutch independance leader who became a Calvinist and helped get the 80 years war started. His grandson William III ruled the Netherlands and, later on, the British Isles, where he was responsible for the introduction of orange as the favored color of Irish protestants."

Picture: Wikipedia

Social Attitudes, News Headlines and Moral Relativism

I think my old friend Doug is right about this:
Social Attitudes, News Headlines and Moral Relativism:

"Imagine, for example, that the report had contained a series of questions like this – all relating to the sort of stories we might see in our headlines.

Do you believe there there are some circumstances when a sexual relationship between an adult and an child is right?
Do you believe that there are some circumstances where children may justifiably torture other children?
Do you believe that it is an acceptable means of protest or conflict to blow yourself up in a crowded tube station?

And then the question were asked: “Do you believe right and wrong is a matter of personal choice?”"

He's put his finger on something I think is fundamentally correct: if I can express it in terms more familiar to me; our society's ideology says 'it all depends', but our guts in certain cases say 'die heretic-miscreant'. That is 'we' collectively believe some acts are absolutely wrong: paedophilia, child abuse, violent/lethal protest. I think Doug's idea that there is some redefinition of morality is intriguing. However, I think it is simply that we are 'built' for absolutes but we have an ideology which justifies the breaking of a certain set of outgoing cultural taboos. Come back in 40 years and it could feel different again. What Doug's getting at I think I agree with: that there is a redrawing of boundaries between 'wrong' and 'sometimes acceptable' if I can put it that way, and '(perfectly) normal' at the other end of a spectrum. I think that the term 'normal' is important here: the ideologies relating to moral and ethical choices are heavily informed by concepts of 'natural' and 'normal' on the one hand and 'if it harms none' on the other. Perhaps the real offence of paedophilia and abuse for many is actually that it harms and that informed consent cannot be gained from one party. Similarly with violent protest...

Thinking out loud, don't shoot, muse with ...

10:10 | sign up or come up with excuses for your grandchildren

Go here. Sign up. It's simple and you have to do it. 10:10 | Cutting 10% of emissions in 2010: "It’s simple: We all cut our carbon by 10% this year. You, me, that bloke walking his dog outside, your work, your kids’ school, the council, the church, the chip shop. Everyone."

Global deep freeze threatens 2010 food supply

It's time to start thinking about simplifying our diets. Recall that a Christian response is called for ...Global deep freeze threatens 2010 food supply: "The global deep freeze now striking North America, Europe, China and other regions may lead to severe food shortages and price hikes throughout 2010. Right now, rare freezing temperatures are destroying root crops in their ground, wiping out citrus orchards and devastating food producers around the world. The upshot of it all? Expect food shortages and rising food prices throughout 2010."

Language structure is partly determined by social structure

This is so intriguing, but now I've looked a bit more at the article:Language structure is partly determined by social structure I recall that it chimes with informal observations: "human languages may adapt more like biological organisms than previously thought and that the more common and popular the language, the simpler its construction to facilitate its survival."
The main issue is determining simplicity of grammar; this seems to be taken to mean less tense, number etc inflection and less pronouns. The upshot is "anguages with long histories of adult learners have become easier to learn over time. Although a number of researchers have predicted such relationships between social and language structure, this is the first large-scale statistical test of this idea." Which makes intuitive sense. The interesting thing therefore is the implication that languages like English have evolved partly because of having non-native speakers: in a sense, I would venture, by a degree of creolisation. There may be issues of cultural transfer implied in this: that such forms are more widely adopted because of association with prestigious cultural artefacts (objects, music etc).
Of course this means that 'purist' approaches to English language may have to bow to the multi-cultural history ...

Self-centred Buddhism and the introspective conscience of the West?

This is definitely worth adding to your clip-book of articles on Buddhism:Self-centred Buddhism | Mark Vernon | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
There's a really nice exposition of western Buddhism through an encounter with a retreat centre and it has a concise and helpful guide to the central beliefs of this religion-philosophy. Then comes an outline of why it might be appealing in contemporary western culture:

It's religion as a kind of therapy, and points to one of the reasons that Buddhism is finding such a ready audience in the west. Modernity has damaged many egos, perhaps as a result of the Enlightenment teaching that we are autonomous selves, capable of self-creation, control and consolation

Pleasinngly for me, this is rather similar to things I've been saying and writing (especially). One particularly pleasing part of the article is the way that it picks out a central issue in the interface between Western culture and Buddhism:

... it comes with risk. Meditation-as-therapy flirts with narcissism when it is devoted to observing yourself, for that can lead to self-absorption and self-obsession.

In fact the issue is a contradiction -or perhaps paradox-

I suspect this is a key paradox with which western Buddhism is currently grappling: the practice that tells you the self is a delusion could, in the modern context, deepen the very attitude it seeks to dislodge. It's a risk compounded when self-concern is arguably the secret of western Buddhism's current success.

. I think that is quite right. And, as I've also pointed up before,

a God-centred spiritual practice might offer a better way to get over yourself, and in turn offer a more satisfying "therapy".

Haiti: stick this in your prayers and say 'em

Of course, and rightly, people are praying for Haiti (pr Ha-eetee, please, not hate-ee). Can I encourage to take the risk of plunging some of your praying into the arena of the Powers? Check out this article: Haiti needs water, not occupation | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Here's some of the most salient points in praying with Thrones and Dominions in mind:

The US, together with Canada and France, conspired openly for four years to topple Haiti's elected government, cutting off almost all international aid in order to destroy the economy and make the country ungovernable. They succeeded. For those who wonder why there are no Haitian government institutions to help with the earthquake relief efforts, this is a big reason. ... Washington's fear of democracy in Haiti may explain why the US is now sending 10,000 troops and prioritising "security" over other needs. This military occupation by US troops will raise other concerns in the hemisphere, ... non-governmental organisations have raised other issues about the proposed reconstruction: understandably they want Haiti's remaining debt cancelled, and grants rather than loans (the IMF has proposed a $100m dollar loan). Reconstruction needs will be in the billions of dollars: will Washington encourage the establishment of a functioning government? Or will it prevent that, channelling aid through NGOs and taking over various functions itself, because it of its long-standing opposition to Haitian self-rule?

What I don't yet get is why the USA should be so against Haitian democracy (apart from it being more lefty than they like)? I've not been 'following' the region; I'm hoping the NI will do a piece on it soon.

Siblings as 'agents of socialization'

Feminist critiques of Freudian psychoanalysis tend to focus on the supposed role of the Oedipus/Electra complexs. Often the role of siblings is highlighted. Well, it looks like some research is favouring that approach. Siblings play formative, influential role as 'agents of socialization': "siblings are better role models of the more informal behaviors -- how to act at school or on the street, or, most important, how to act cool around friends -- that constitute the bulk of a child's everyday experiences.

'Siblings are closer to the social environments that children find themselves in during the majority of their day, which is why it's important not to overlook the contributions that they make on who we end up being,'"

POWER 2010

"What 5 reforms will bring real change to UK democracy? You can vote for as many reforms as you like, but just once for each reform.
The top 5 ideas become the POWER2010 Pledge - the backbone of our nationwide campaign for change at the next election. Vote now."

A version of my 'pet' idea is there: I do think that there should be a second chamber and I do think that it should be a democratic system. However, I think that Parliament should be more proportional and what I don't think we need is a second chamber with a democratic rivalry to it. Further, it seems clear to me that there is quite a lot of energy in some areas of civic society as well as expertise. It would be good to harness that in a scrutinising sort of way by having a different kind of constituency; non-geographical. So I'd love it, if you're a Brit, if you'd add your vote to that particular idea.
POWER 2010:

Cut the Cow, pass on the pork, leave the lamb ...

Christmas, as you might imagine, can be a testing time for vegetarians. All that ostentatious consumption of meat along with the mental picture it conjures up of mass-slaughter and factory-farm conditions for the vast majority of hapless victims. It is more particularly testing for those of us who are vegetarian for reasons of environmental impact and planetary justice. We don't have the fairly absolute inner prohibitions in place that our animal-welfare sibling-vegetarians and vegans have. We are merely 'tactically' vegetarian; that is we are not refraining from meat because we think that eating flesh is simply wrong. On the contrary we think that there may be a time for some meat-eating if the world were not so screwed up. So our difficulty is the treacherous sense that we could eat some meat, it's a special occasion, and it does look so nice, and everyone is enjoying it so, and just one little bit wouldn't hurt...

But of course, that would be the slippery slope to rejoining the overconsumption that is now normal in the global-North /West. I've been there and got the t-shirt. You see, I became vegetarian when I was about 22, mostly because I was convinced by Ron Sider's position in Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Basically Sider pointed out that in a world where many died of hunger and malnutrition, it was scandalous that we made meat a regular part of our diet given that it was so expensive, in resource terms to produce. His figures were (if memory serves me aright) that it took roughly 8 units of vegetable protein to produce one unit of beef, 6 for lamb or mutton and 4 for poultry. Our mouthfuls of meat were taking the bread from the mouths of the global poor, as we could outbid them to feed our livestock..

Later on, I got fed up of the way that my diet seemed to inconvenience people in my parish; so I decided I'd eat meat from time to time mainly to not put others out. (It takes a re-vamping of the culinary imagination to be able to menu in vegetarian and a lot of people were clearly flummoxed when their invitation to a meal became a bit more of a drama than they had anticipated). The problem was 'occasionally' slipped into 'regularly' and before long the idea of being a lower meat-consumption body was away with the fairies. So a few years later, I realised what had happened, prompted partly by the keeping company with vegans and vegetarians and partly by my daughter's dislike of most meat, and I re-became vegetarian. It was good, also, to return to the major reason and renounce meat for the ecological footprint reasons.

These reasons are well-stated by Philip Sampson in a recently-published article in Third Way (December 2009, in fact). Let me quote some of his pithy summaries of the argument.

Industrial meat production is a profligate consumer of grain and water. One kilogram of beef requires 16 kilograms of feed and the same volume of water as 200 kilograms of potatoes. Worse, more than one third of the world's grain harvest is fed to livestock, and two thirds of cattle food in the industrial world is imported from countries where there is a shortage of grain. ...

Current meat consumption in the UK requires six times more land than we have available. We therefore import feed, and fatten animals on other people's land. Cattle grazing and animal feed are the main drivers of deforestation worldwide. ...

The livestock industry generates some 18 per cent of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Reducing meat consumption is the most effective single thing a family can do to combat global warming. ...
Our abuse of animals is certainly unsustainable, and it would be foolish to continue a pattern of consumption that robs our children.

There you have it: these seem to me to be huge reasons to reduce, if not eliminate, meat from our diets. You may as well start and get in practice now because when peak oil hits and carbon trading effects kick in, we're going to notice quite big hikes in price of meat and of products which hiddenly rely on meat production. It is a matter of justice for the globally-marginal and precarious. It is a matter of creation care for the beleaguered ecosystem that God has let us have in trust for future generations and the dignity and beauty of what it has become.

Lord when did we see you hungry and fed you? ... When you forewent meat and helped to feed the hungry, you did it to me.

Lord, when did we see you naked and clothed you? ... When you ate only vegetables, you saved forest from the plough; then you clothed me in the verdancy of the planet.

In as far as you did this for one of these little ones and for my creation, you did it to me.

Malaysian court: Christians can worship Allah

This seems to be the obverse of an attitude some of our students come with (and sometimes leave with): that 'Allah' is a Muslim God.
Attacks after Malaysian court rules Christians can worship Allah - Times Online: "many Malaysian Muslims, who make up 60 per cent of the population, say that Allah should be reserved to refer exclusively to the Muslim deity and that use of it in a Biblical context encourages conversion to Christianity, a crime under the country’s Islamic laws."
The attitude by both some Muslims in Malaysia and some Christians in the UK and USA ignores the fact that Arabic-speaking Christians have no other 'ordinary' word for God. We should note that both sides are doing their theology in a language other than the original language concerned and have imported the word into their own languages.

I could say more but I'll leave it for now. It is, however, an interesting study in sociolinguistics as well as theology and interfaith dialogue.

In defence of lists

Lots of intriguing stuff here. I'm a bit of on Eco fan; he does semiotics in a way I enjoy. Here's an interview related to his latest book The Vertigo of Lists.
SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco: 'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International. What attracted my attention particularly was this: "The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order -- not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries."

This is one of the things I've been wrestling with in the theological reflection on language and culture based in Adam's naming the animals. It felt validating to see Eco saying something pretty much on the same wavelength.

Heaven and virtual worlds

At university, a friend articulated the unattractiveness of Christian faith for him by saying that heaven seemed pretty boring. My riposte at the time was that if it was boring then it could hardly be heaven. In fact, since then I've come across some who argue that Hell would be very boring (perhaps it was CS Lewis in the Great Divorce?).

And I was reminded of this when I saw this article:
Why playing in the virtual world has an awful lot to teach children | Society | The Observer:
One of the paragraphs mentions an early virtual world which was a paeon to virtual plenty:

It was a utopia, and it was boring. Not only did people prefer virtual worlds in which there were brutally strict limits on available resources, and where vast amounts of effort had to be expended to obtain these resources; they were actually prepared to pay money to spend time in these scarce worlds.

And there is the difficulty really: a lot of imagery about heaven talks about rest and seems to paint a rather static picture (a carol sung at Christmas has the line: "Where like stars, His children crowned/All in White shall wait around" -like some waiting room? -No thanks).

Now I'll admit that the attractive thing about these kinds of traditional images is that if you are feeling that life is frantic, full of oughts and musts, full of oppression, poverty, pain, then images of rest are good. But there really does come a point where boredom presents itself in life after rest. It's a good job there are also images of feasting and of fellowship. I'd like to suggest too that the image of a heavenly Jerusalem, a city, seems to hint at a life with activity, creation, interchange. Is it too much to suggest that 'heaven' (and here I signal that I'm aware of the dangers of that word, especially post Tom Wright) would be a world of growth, development and expansion? Is that part of the deal underlying the notion of disciples being given responsibilities to rule? Because if so, then the lesson of the virtual world that we appear to need limits to push against, can be applied to the Eschaton. Work doesn't cease, but the curse of Genesis 3 is removed from it. I note too that much creativity thrives on dealing with limitations: managing to convey the effect with paint; managing to do something beautiful with a voice of only 12 tones (in Startrek Voyager there's an episode exploring just that issue when that limit is transgressed), managing to convey beauty and emotion with 17 words and a metre scheme ... it's the limits that drive the cleverness, the creativity, the charm ...

Heaven with limits? Of course: wouldn't we remain finite? Of course there are all sorts of caveats with this: there could be (are likely to be) things that we don't, perhaps can't, imagine which would make these questions and ideas seem laughable. And yet, we have to note that some of the ideas and imagery already do seem self-defeating and oxymoronic. Just remind ourselves that it's 'through a glass darkly' stuff; that all we can 'know' is that we will be recognisable, fulfilled, and together with God. Still, it's worth reflecting that we should be able to cross 'boring' off the list of possible attributes, though.

Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire:

I have just posted a review of this book (see link at the end). One of the things that arises from it for me which is beyond anything that the book even hints at is this:

I was also taken by the linkage of paradisal imagery with what seems to have been early Christian experience of nature and beauty as partaking in paradise in some way. This is intriguing because, for me and I suspect many coming into Christian faith, part of the experience of entry into faith is of a greater subjective sense of the aliveness and blessedness of the world of nature (including human beings). I find CS Lewis making a similar observation in his account of conversion. I'm intrigued doubly because this seems to have been part of the experience of many people of early Charismatic renewal in the 1970's. For example, much material used in worship by Anglican Churches touched deeply by Renewal at that time seems to have quite a lot of appreciation for nature and reveling in the glory of God as experienced in Creation. In addition the churches of Christ the Redeemer (?) in Texas where Betty Pulkingham worshipped, St Michael-le-Belfry in York (under David Watson, then) and groups such as the Post Green Community in Dorset also developed quite a folk arts emphasis in their common life and mission as well as a social-change (justice and integrity of creation) edge to their life.

What happened to all of that? Have we, in the last 30 years seen a compressed-time reprise of the loss of paradise to a sacred-violence, somewhat neo-platonic (?) account of Christian faith? I suspect that there may be something in this: the Evangelical fear of illuminism along with an unreflective and sometimes (often?) too-simplified proclamation of a particular kind of atonement theory may well have severed or de-emphasised a Spiritual experience of the Spirit of God in creation in favour of something more ecclesiocentric, more culturally churchy. I think we may have lost some important mission opportunities in so doing

I'd be interested to know if anyone else sufficiently long-memoried or with salient recent experience or research can add, confirm, nuance or better-inform that? It seems worthy of further research, though I'm not sure I'm the one to do it ...

Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire: Amazon.co.uk: Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker: Books"