Consider it possible you may be mistaken -about sexuality

I've been trying to see whether a discussion can take place via Twitter. By 'discussion' I'm thinking not just a bit of merry banter reaffirming each others' cameraderie over the great goal you've just seen, but rather trying to engage across some very different opinions in a topic that raises heat but often little light. I think I'm coming to the conclusion that this isn't a good way to conduct such dialogues -at least not as the exclusive medium.

 To be fair I embarked on this without thinking it through; to be frank I was a bit annoyed at some responses to Steve Chalke's coming out as a pro-gay Evangelical. Not least because despite his being fairly careful to argue 'evangelically' there were detracting comments which mostly didn't really engage with whether he might have a point, but rather went about bolstering the boundaries of a supposed orthodoxy based on misrepresentations, often, of his orthodoxy.

The phrase going through my mind in all of this is some words of Oliver Cromwell to the Kirk's general assembly in 1650

you have censured others, and established yourselves "upon the Word of God." Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God, all that you I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken.

Another thing going round my head is the thought that it's all very well having an infallible Bible, but unless you have infallible interpretation, it may not do you any good. The problem for a lot of the responses I've seen is an implicit assumption that our interpretation is straightforwardly right. I'm shocked to be reminded how much everyday readers of the Bible are unaware of their own hermeneutical biases and what a lot of questionable assumptions are smuggled into their (our) handling of Scripture. Many of us need constantly to be reminded of how our own cultural starting points lead us astray. Anyway, as with so many things in Christian living, learning humility is no bad thing, and it seems to me that Cromwell was counselling interpretive humility and charity. I'd say that interpretive charity (to name  further virtue) involves considering not only that we might be wrong but that others may well have good intentions, helpful insights and a genuine relationship with God (which does, I know, go counter to the evangelical typical propensity for salvific suspicion).

Anyway, perhaps some examples of attempted dialogue with some comments may help. I've removed names and aliases to take too much personal 'ad hominem' stuff out of it; I want to focus on the arguments, rhetorical strategies and my responses to them, rather than people.

So here's one snippet of exchange (which did have interweavings from other interlocutors which I've left out at this point.

Tweet: Is 2 Timothy 4:3 a description of the heretical Steve Chalke

me: No

 Tweet: 2 Timothy 4:3 seems a fair description of the heretical Steve Chalke

me: Only if you've already decided SteveChalke is wrong. What if 2T4.3 means homophobes find teachers to suit prejudice?

Tweet: to answer your rather odd question, that would be in contention with the whole body of scripture. Steve Chalke is out of line

Me: out o line re received understanding -which could be wrong: how are received u'standings supposed to be questioned? cf slavery.

Tweet: God's word is immutable. You cannot conflate slavery with sexual perversion. And in any case scripture never affirms either.

Me: Scripture affirms slavery and Xns defended it Biblically. Conflatn only at level of Xns reviewing understand'g of Bible's messg

Commentary: Of course, to describe SC as someone who is false teacher giving an audience what they want to hear (to confirm their ungodly living) presupposes that he is wrong. The irritating thing about this is the way that it seems to evade dealing with the issues raised in terms that Evangelicals are supposed to be strong on -arguing from (and about) scripture. This is apparently replaced instead with a simple dismissal without any attempt to engage SC's arguments on their own merits. It looks like it has been met with, well, prejudice: 'SC has articulated a view that doesn't agree with mine/ours: he must be a false teacher'. Actually, there's a tad more by implication: 'SC is only doing this to curry favour with (presumably) liberal secularists and the gay lobby.' ("He loves them more than us")

What my remark about homophobes is getting at is that the possibility of suiting itching ears cuts both ways. It could, in principle, apply to teachers who preach to people who are against faithful homophile relationships and find in scripture a way to scratch that anti-gay itch and shy away from any exegesis or reflection that might question that. It's quite clear that there are enormous pressures to continue to pander to the itching ears of the anti-gay crowd -if you don't, you'll get 'cast out' like they're attempting to do to SC "if you don't continue to produce interpretations that impossibilise gay relationships, we'll oust you from our club -don't bother us with the facts". I suspect my interlocutor hasn't really taken account of how hard it might be to feel constrained to take a position that earns the opprobrium of the constituency that has been ones home and sourced ones co-workers for so long: it is more likely that SC would find he would naturally want to produce an interpretation that doesn't upset his constituency: Evangelicals.

The point is that the 2 Tim passage is too much a wax-nose in a case like this. Both sides can accuse the other of pandering to the itching ears. If someone is going to make that accusation, they need to be prepared to engage in the dialogue properly and not just, so to say, throw bricks over the wall.

Okay, another bit of the interleaving dialogue, a different tweeter.

I'm assuming you're not familiar with the bible?@**** is right, looks more like eisegises than exegesis 

Me: I sus I'm more familiar wi Bible than u. Eisegesis = part o what #SteveChalke is q'ning. Engage with issues not psn 

 And then another snippet raising a similar issue:

You're clearly liberal I've no desire to debate with one who holds their own ideals above scripture

Me: Y're wrong: not liberal; interested in what scripture actually says vs received opinion. My ideals formed by scripture first.    

This is quite a disturbing rhetorical move. But first a quick vent of my outrage: 'not familiar with the Bible'? -I'm constantly finding that fellow evangelicals are lamentably ignorant both of contents and hermeneutical strategies. So if my reply sounds a little 'haughty' it was perhaps more in the vein (I hope) of Paul's 'boasting' which was strategically deployed in order to defend important insights and not to give his opponents' arguments a free-pass. The point is I'm well-acquainted with scripture and well-used to handling it in theological debate and in fact I've spent a lot of time, thought, effort and argument in relating my ideas to scripture and in trying to understand scripture whole and letting it speak into cultural (even church-cultural) norming. "As to evangelical 'righteousness', faultless ...".

Okay, I'll admit it: I've taught theology at secondary school and Higher Education level as well as from the pulpit -though I know that for my interlocutors this may count for little. I know this because I'm an evangelical and have shared the formation in suspicion towards those suspected of unsoundness (and if you follow up that link, I can affirm the things that the author classes as not being liberal theologically): it's a catch 22 situation; you can never prove your bona fides as long as you ever question any received interpretations or doctrines -even if you do so on biblical grounds.

Anyway, back to 'disturbing': it's just that typical Evangelical ploy (I know: to my shame, I've used it myself in the past, when I was keen to demonstrate my Soundness) that when someone says something outside of what we're used to, we tend to assume they must be liberals or ignorant of scripture. Problem is: sometimes scripture is actually more challenging than we're prepared to hear: it's 'liberal' sometimes. Sometimes scripture even seems 'ignorant' of itself...

So, moving on. There was another theme that emerged in conversation.

Me: out o line re received understanding -which could be wrong: how are received u'standings supposed to be questioned? cf slavery.

Response: God's word is immutable. You cannot conflate slavery with sexual perversion. And in any case scripture never affirms either.

Another respondant: God tolerated slavery as He tolerates divorce, but he speaks clearly against perverted same sex sex.

Me: Scripture affirms slavery and Xns defended it Biblically. Conflatn only at level of Xns reviewing understand'g of Bible's messg

Me: point is: Xns convincedly defended slavery from Bible -took #SteveChalke -alikes to reconsider. mutatis mutandi.

The point about slavery seemed to be confusing -I thought that it was clear that this was about a change of how the Bible was read and used in relation to a social-ethical issue. But I don't think people got that at all. I think this reveals one of the difficulties of doing this via Twitter: a helpful point can't be just 140 characters sometimes.

The point I was /am trying to make is basically that when the slave trade and the institution of slavery was challenged in Britain and beyond in the 1700's (and a bit before too) it was challenged by Christians (evangelicals prominent among them) on Christian theological grounds. But their argument was not straight forwardly Scriptural in the sense that there is no clear text to support their position. On the contrary much of the Bible is slavery-friendly in terms of specific texts. The NT has many passages where either slavery is unquestioned and some where it is merely limited but by being the subject of instructions on how to be a good slave or a good slave-master, is accepted even affirmed after a fashion. Thus there were many Christians -Evangelicals among them- who argued that slavery is acceptable (provided it is humanely done).  The Hebrew Bible similarly makes provision for slavery and even, in a sense, recommends it (providing for people to sell themselves and even to extend a period of servitude).

This left Evangelicals and other Christians with an eye to the Bible arguing a more nuanced position. Basically the kind of argument that has to be made against slavery in order to get it banned with the support of Evangelicals is that scriptural acceptance of slavery is an accommodation to the  unthinkableness of changing rapidly something that was endemic, widespread and finely-woven into the fabric of economic life. The unthinkableness was reinforced by examples in scripture and life of relatively benign slavery. Thus they argued that slavery is accepted in scripture merely 'tactically', that is: it's not as God's best but it can be accommodated as something to be put up with and mitigated where possible.

However, this is not an argument against slavery, it is for the acceptance of slavery. Something more is needed to tip over into campaigning against it. For this one has to argue that the 'camels' of scripture rather than its 'gnats' are counter-slavery; the big themes and main ideas lead towards removing slavery when the opportunity presents itself. These big themes are things like an equality of human beings before God, love of neighbour as oneself (on the whole, who wants to be a slave? So ...), the brotherhood of Christians such that in Christ there is neither 'slave nor free'. This latter theme comes up in Philemon and Paul's advice to Philemon concerning a runaway slave points quite clearly in the direction that the Christian thing to do is not to enslave fellow believers. And then not just fellow-believers: how can love of neighbour justify enslaving anyone?

The analogy I'm trying to make is that the issue of faithful, committed homophile relationships might similarly require us to recognise that the texts apparently pointing to not accepting such relationships may be cultural accommodations (or even outrightly not applicable when you check out the detail). But also the point would be that the sidelining of some texts in favour of more weighty themes is not unknown and in the case of slavery has become so unproblematic that it's hard for many contemporary Christians to conceive of Christians justifying slavery from scripture. Yet once upon a time it was 'obvious' to most Christians that slavery is fine (provided you do it nicely).

Christians can and do change our minds quite considerably about interpretations of scripture.

Now that isn't an argument in itself for accepting homophile relationships. It's an argument for being open to the possibility that this might be a 'slavery' moment and that obvious, 'natural' interpretations that we've inherited 'might be mistaken'.

I happen to think that Steve Chalke has articulated several reasons why we should look again (see my earlier posts). The task now is to weigh those reasons, not simply to cling fast to inherited reasons. They could be mistaken. It's certainly not a time to go around dismissively refusing to engage such reasons in their own terms and disrespecting people who disagree with us. Not least because the way that many Evagelicals are behaving at the moment is failing to commend them to a wider world. The world can't say 'see how these Christians love one another' because what they are seeing is 'see how these Christians slag one another off and hate people who are different through no fault of their own'. I can't see how positioning ourselves like that in the public eye can serve the gospel.
1 John 4:16 should figure more highly in our thinking and acting.

Multitasking? Not even women really do it

Actually this isn't new, If You Think You're Good At Multitasking, You Probably Aren't : "...scientists say that the better people think they are at multitasking, the worse they really are at juggling". A few years ago I saw some early research which seemed to indicate this. At that point I realised that 'multitasking' for most people is not really parallel processing but the ability to switch rapidly and relatively effectively between tasks. AND ... men can do that too.

The thing about that 'women multitask' thing is that men let women frame the discussion in terms of things that were important to women: men multitask (recognising that multitasking is just a way of talking about rapid attention shifting) all sorts of things they are interested in but don't really either notice they do it or have not realised that rapid-switching counts as multitasking. 'Women multitask' was a way for women to assert their dignity in working in the home, doing several things at once -over against men in the same domestic sphere who were trying not to do loads of things at once (heck, they were doing that at work).

Now I'm not saying there aren't all kinds of issues and problems with that -just trying to say how this little piece of battling between the sexes might have come about. Fact is, there are differences between the sexes (on average but often not in particular) but 'multitasking' so-called is not one of them.

Tweets, twits and the word of God

I've just been reading twitterati responses to Steve Chalke's reappraisal of homophile relationships (see my blog post a few days back). I'm a little concerned by the failure of many conservative responses to think through the logics of their responses. (PS -'twits' in the title may seem provocative -I understand that 'tweeters' or 'twitterers' might have been less so lest anyone think I was passing a judgement rather than simply enjoying the word play. Iow -no offence meant and the word is now enshrined in the permalink).

Here's a few that concern me and some comments on why I'm concerned |(I'm not naming people because I'm wanting not to get into personalities but you can find the originals at Twitter #SteveChalke).

How often does apostasy begin with a leader taking the authority of the Bible "seriously"?

This one concerns me because it implies that the only way to take the authority of the Bible seriously is by only letting it say what we've already decided it says. This, of course, would not pass the slavery test.

Or this one

So cofe and #stevechalke have both entered the Christian hall of shame. Anymore takers compromise and popularity awaits! But heaven doesn't

Ironically, this one works by appealing to popularity -in this case stay popular with 'our set' by rejecting popularity with 'their set'. Compromise and popularity work both ways and both are neutral with regard to truth.

Then there are the reactions that almost literally demonise those who disagree:

How many more so-called #Christian leaders like #SteveChalke will betray the Saviour?The #Church is riddled with a Judas spirit.

This worries me because there's no discussion allowed: 'my/our interpretation is right, end of ...'. And so there's no way to recognise the Christian bona fides of those designated opponents. 'Judas spirit' completes the demonisation allowing those who disagree to be written off as beneath contempt and certainly consideration as real Christians. Even 'love your enemy' would be better! This is the equivalent of sticking fingers in ears and saying "Lalala". The problem with this is that outsiders will see that and see someone precisely trying to remain faithful to the Saviour by upholding justice and compassion (at the very least) and being met by some of the so-called faithful not acting with love and generosity and mercy. Hardly going to commend the faith, is it? When we disagree we do so in public. The way we disagree is part of our message. If we fail to treat one another in disagreement as we would ourselves like to be treated, we have signally failed to love our neighbour as ourselves. The watching world will note that we don't really take Christ's most fundamental teaching seriously and conclude that we are indeed hypocrites.

Back to a response that fails the 'further implications' test:
If you follow the path of 'Did God Really say...?" You walk straight towards its author! Doesn't generally end well.
The problem with this is that it is actually too broad. The effect of this move is to outlaw any questioning of received interpretations (and by 'received, in effect 'our ...' or 'my interpretation' is meant). The point of any Bible study is to discover what God might be saying and any honest discussion has to ask 'does the text say ...?' in relation to contexts whether these contexts are historical, cultural, textual, developmental or whichever. This is not the same thing as saying 'did God say...?' as it is seeking to understand in the first place.

This is compounded by a misleading implied hermeneutic of the Genesis 3 passage alluded to. In Genesis 3 the serpent asks 'Did God really say ...?' and presents an exaggerated and deliberate misunderstanding of God's instruction to Adam. The purpose seems to be to create a conceptual space which by implication portrays God as a niggardly power against humanity. This is not what Steve Chalke is doing. In actual fact, he's probably doing the reverse.

Of course, the real frustrating difficulty here is that it takes a particular result of the enquiry into what God might think of sexuality (one that could be flawed by human frailty and sin) and uses that conclusion to outlaw other conclusions without entering into an enquiry about whether the means by which that conclusion has been reached actually do 'hold water'. In a sense it 'forgets' that it too is a result of interpretation while dissing other views for being evil interpretations.

How about this

another step away from evangelicalism

Which seems implicitly to define evangelicalism as a position on human sexuality: Steve actually engages the debate as an evangelical -he uses Scripture as authoritative and recognises the wider debate. This response is a further example, I think, that too many Evangelicals actually rely on the authority of their leaders' interpretations and positions than on the values of historic and classical Evangelicalism.

So, it's sobering to note how many response seem to be more about shoring up received interpretations than engaging with the substantive issues raised.
For further tweets and comments on them go here.
For an earlier post asking just what counts as sex and suggesting there should be some comparability between homo and heterophile relationships ....

Gifts differing: church, mission and unity

At this morning's 8am service in the church down the road from us, I presided over a small congregation (snow, no doubt, reduced the number) and preached. The themes I spoke about, I find -on reflection- are things I want to jot down here. The readings were 1 Cor 12:1-12 and John 2:1-11. I felt drawn to the former -surprisingly: I normally feel drawn to the gospel passage nowadays. I was considering a church (Anglican, CofE) which has a history of catholic ministry which has tended, by all accounts, towards the 'Father says...' rather than a Vatican 2 'whole people of God' approach. So I was also considering encouragement towards a whole people of God emphasis is probably important and appropriate at this time. This means a move from a medieval revival model of church being a sacramental dispensary where the role of the unordained is to give money and attendance and in a sense to 'sit tight and wait for glory' to a way of thinking about church in which everyone is discovering their gifts and callings and giving themselves into God's mission -part of which is to support and encourage others to do so (including to enter into doing so for the first time -which is evangelism).

So, I ended up making two or three main points -depending how you divvy them up: two of them are closely related enough to be parts of the same point, perhaps.

It starts with an incident when I was a curate, a newish church member said to me that she would like to be involved in doing something for the church. I was stuck for a there-and-then encouraging response because our church at the time seemed to have all the help it needed in doing what it was doing and the kind of involvement required to expand the work needed theological and pastoral experience as yet lacking for her (so it seemed to me). That incident has stuck with me though: it is a picture of what goes on more generally in churches: we arrange things so that only about 20% of the people actually can get involved -and that becomes a self-fulfilling arrangement: the 80% come to expect a passive role and even come to like it that way ("I come to be fed!"). So the challenge of 1Cor.12 is not only to recognise that everyone does have gifts (and callings -is implied) but that we consciously 'do church' in ways that enable those gifts to be discerned and to be expressed and used (and I would say that it is part of the charism of ministerial priesthood to work to that end).

Is this week of Christian unity it is worth reflecting, it seems to me, on the history of church fracturing. In many cases, I would suggest, part of that history is tied up with not simply doctrinal differences and misunderstandings but also with vocational and 'charismal' difficulties. Sometimes part of the problem has been that churches have been unable/unwilling to make room for the gifts and vocations of those not already in positions of ministerial power.

I think, for example, of the English scene where this seems to be part of the issue with Quakerism in relation to Anglicanism in the 17th and 18th Centuries and between the emerging Methodist movement and established Anglicanism (though not only Anglicanism) in the 19th century. In these cases the issue of how vocations and gifts were discerned, encouraged, enabled and resourced is part of what is happening. The pressure of having a strong vocation, evident gifts and important insights which couldn't be exercised or recognised through the existing churchly structures and procedures contributed to eruptions of Christian ministry beyond the currently ministerially recognised church. These eventually coalesced into further ecclesial entities and that coalescence was hardened by uncharitable and arrogant relating on both sides of what had become a divide.

However, this is all very church-centred and although Paul clearly had meetings of local Christians in mind in writing 1 Corinthians, it takes only a little thought to recognise that some of these giftings might apply beyond the gathered church setting. Indeed " the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" could easily be extended to a wider 'common-ity' than the church considering that

• some of the gifts mentioned are clearly capable of being exercised and useful beyond the church
• in other gift lists, outreach-y gifts and ministries are mentioned
• the gospel passage is of a spiritual gift exercised by Christ in what we would basically think of as a secular (perhaps even profane) setting.
• if the Mission of God is bigger than the church, then we should expect that spiritual gifts would be given to enable Christians to engage in that mission beyond the church, in everyday life and the secular and profane world.

Indeed part of response now to the woman I began this reflection with would be to consider this wider mission as well as to consider how her sense of vocation might indicate and open up the ministry of the church to a wider variety and expression and how that might be interrelated to the existing ministries and may even open up 'spaces' for new ministries to develop.

I renew my call to consider 'vocation-shaped church': the idea that we should organise, structure and fashion church life to identify and support the vocations off all its members -even when that leads us to form gatherings that look very different in all sorts of ways to the originating body. It is at this point that the matter of maintaining the bonds of peace becomes important -and indeed involved people who have vocations and gifts to do that.

Sandy Hook 'truthers' and historical truth

What a fascinating article. It's actually about conspiracy theorists claiming that the Sandy Hook shootings were a government staged 'unreal' event -actors were employed and lies are being told. I presume that the plot is to remove guns from the toters.
its here: Sandy Hook 'truthers' and the paranoid quest for meaning where there is none:

point is that when you freeze any moment of history, then analyse it in extreme detail, you'll always find numerous things that "don't add up". Every moment in history is full of them; it's just that most moments in history are mundane, and therefore go un-analysed. And "if you have any fact which you think is really sinister … hey, forget it, man," Tink Thompson, a private detective who investigated the case, tells Morris. "Because you can never, on your own, think up all the non-sinister, perfectly valid explanations for that fact."

I couldn't help thinking of Biblical Studies ... This article might be worth keep handy when discussing issues of historical truth, method and evidence.

That last comment from Tink Thompson is important and shows the place of imagination informed by cultural and general knowledge. It's also why I find Sherlock Holmes really annoying: the unbelievable part of Holmes's 'deductions' is not that he makes shrewd judgements about what is likely (and that is what a lot of is involved in his chains of reasoning as portrayed in the stories) but that he is always right when so many things could be otherwise -it is possible to think up other perfectly valid and probably equally likely explanations or rationales.

Similarly, quite a lot of Biblical criticism relating to the gospels (for example) while seeming to be straightforward applications of knowledge about background, culture etc are just one particular reading based on an inevitably partial understanding of what might have been occurring. That's not to say they aren't valuable or that I find some relatively convincing, but it is to say that we should be ever mindful of the possibility that a further piece of insight or knowledge could make some difference.

Coming culture change: the highstreet

 Apparently Amazon and others have non-storefront 'shops' all over the place in our cities: the distribution points for their distribution operations. So when we're considering job losses as yet more high street shop brands go under (Jessops, HMV, Blockbuster, to name some very recently), we should consider that there have been preceding them job 'gains' in other companies for people in warehousing and customer service and this is what capitalism is meant to be about: competition does mean that sometimes there are losses. I

Of course it is horrible to be made redundant, and I'd want to argue that in a social model of capitalism, we should be aiming to make the impact of such 'structural readjustments' as minimal as possible. I know from personal experience how debilitating to self-esteem and mental-emotional good functioning the sustained loss of employment can be.

But what I want to draw attention to now is that there will be implications to having a retail economy increasingly built round online shopping and to-house delivery. It will reshape our High Streets. in fact it is already doing so.

The scything of our shops is happening rapidly, and with no debate about what our high streets should become. If these hearts of community aren't to become low-rent wastelands, we need to create spaces that are public, without being driven by retail.

Actually, I don't think 'low rent' need be a negative. We have experienced a property bubble in this country and so it's likely that, by many standards, rents are too high. A fall in demand for retail space may well mean a fall in rents and sale prices for city centre properties without that in itself creating a down-at-heel feel. it could allow to thrive all sorts of innovative small businesses doing what can't be done by internet retailers (and I don't even know what some of that could be, yet)

It could mean a growth in leisure and meeting place enterprises. it could mean some of our city central spaces being reclaimed for (much needed) housing. it could even be a chance to prevent encroachment on greenbelt by developers both of commercial and domestic properties ...

Shopping: save our streets | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian:

Origins of life: origins of the Powers

I got quite excited when I read this article: The secret of life won't be cooked up in a chemistry lab | Paul Davies | Comment is free | The Guardian. One of the things that I have said in my recent presentations on corporisations, when I'm connecting up the theological/scriptural notions of the Powers with the emergent properties of much of the natural world and then applying the latter to the former, is that I am, in effect, proposing that there is a "creational trajectory" of emergence which doesn't culminate in humans so much as reaches beyond us and includes us. -We are held together in corporisations by mimetic instincts, shared projects, language and semiosis and these bonds along with the feedback provided by among other things, self-awareness and reflection by human beings provide the conditions for further living entities to emerge: the Powers; corporisations. The trajectory is of each 'layer' of emergent things to form a 'substrate' for the emergence of yet another layer of entities.

Anyway, in the article I'm pointing to, Paul Davis writes that he and Sara Walker are proposing:

... that the significant property of biological information is not its complexity, great though that may be, but the way it is organised hierarchically. In all physical systems there is a flow of information from the bottom upwards, in the sense that the components of a system serve to determine how the system as a whole behaves. ... In living organisms, this pattern of bottom-up information flow mingles with the inverse – top-down information flow – so that what happens at the local level can depend on the global environment, as well as vice versa ... Walker and I propose that the key transition on the road to life occurred when top-down information flow first predominated. Based on simple mathematical models, we think it may have happened suddenly, analogously to a heated gas abruptly bursting into flame.

Applying this in my 'creational trajectory' would suggest that where trans-human entities formed of human agglomerations emerge, then they do so because the 'top-down information flow' reaches a critical point. Given that the 'top-down' thing is about exercising control and is composed, at least in part, of human mentalities interacting, then we have the makings of corporisations: the Powers that Be.

The Bible and homosexual relationships

Interesting: I think; this:

 Was the author intending to enshrine the view that all lifelong sexual unions should be exclusively heterosexual because this is a ‘creation ordinance’? Or, is this simply the normative illustration, whereas the critical truths of the story lie elsewhere? If it is the former, then it is perhaps legitimate to refer to practising homosexual sex, even within a lifelong relationship, as having ‘fallen short of God’s ideal’ and to state that those who are not heterosexually orientated are ‘in need of restoration’. But if it’s the latter, then does the ‘norm’ necessarily infer the ‘ideal’? Or is it like the ‘norm’ of being right-handed, which never implies any failing of those who are born left-handed? If so, then neither of the earlier negative definitions is appropriate, but instead cause a great deal of unnecessary pain and, sometimes, terrible tragedy.

... is Steve Chalke making basically the same argument as I made here, about two-thirds of the way in under the sub-heading "What's wrong with the creational argument?". I think he is. I like the left-handedness illustration. But I think that Steve and I both need to work at sharpening up the expression of the fundamental insight so that the arbitrariness of extending the moral imperative to gendered-difference is seen even more readily.


The Bible and Homosexuality: Part One | Christianity, Sexuality:

A still big voice in the noise

Last week, in the Church Times'; Prayer for the week: There was an interesting prayer for those who don't do quiet well. It is by Martin Wroe.

They say you're available
on certain conditions. Quiet ones.
That if I can find an air of
 tranquillity
It carries that still small voice.
But I don't do quiet, stillness.
I am not tranquil except when
I am asleep
And then I am not available
As far as I know.
So, what's the chance of a still
big voice in the noise,
Of hearing you in the roaring
traffic, ...

Meryl Doney's comments on the prayer are, to my mind, pretty fair enough. However, there was a response in the letters this week from Mrs Viven Moores
Sir, - Meryl Doney chooses a "prayer for those who don't do silence" (Prayer for the Week, 4 January). Of course God can speak to us anywhere, but why should he have to shout?

Now perhaps I missed something about this, but I must admit I felt that it was avoiding the challenge. So I wrote back (though I doubt it'll be published).

I had taken Meryl Doney's "prayer for those who don't do silence" as something quite positive. As a Myers-Briggs (MBTI) extrovert (E), I came to realise that much spirituality teaching has tended to be by introverts for introverts. So I'd like to respond to Viven Moores' comment "God can speak to us anywhere, but why should he have to shout?" It's not a matter of God shouting: it's a matter of how we process information.

For introverts (in the MBTI 'I' sense), being quiet and processing internally is important. And I have, over years of spiritual practice, learnt to appreciate the value of silence and solitude -but it's not my native spiritual language. If Deity is everywhere, God doesn't need to wait for us to be quiet before speaking to us -we might need rather to learn to tune into God's disclosure in the everyday and to be helped in our discernment by being in conversation with others. Not all activity and noise is necessarily distraction.

Given that it is likely that the majority of the national population are MBTI E's, we church people surely need to be able to offer spiritual formation in the native language of E's as well as I's.

The feral rich: tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime

This month's New Internationalist has a good set of articles on the theme of the feral rich. Obviously referencing some politicians' rightist-press rhetoric about the 'feral poor'. There's a great set of cartoons under the title: "The Feral Rich, How Can We Help Them?" and it's a '10-point action plan for policymakers'.
These are witty. Some of them are quite worth considering (I nominate 2, 4, 6, 10).
1. Gang Culture. Break up their vicious, criminal gangs by arresting the ringleaders and locking them up. (The cartoon has the police turning up at the World Economic Forum)
2. Parenting. Provide parenting classes to teach social values and respect for others that they can pass on to their children.
3. Housing. Move them out of overvalued ghettos in the centres of the world's capitals. Turn over the properties that they own but rarely occupy to public use and social housing.
4. Crime and Rehab. Crack down on repeat climate-crime offenders by confiscating their luxury cars and private jets. Rehabilitate persistent offenders by teaching them how to walk and use public transport.
5. Wean the work-shy off the benefits of unearned profit. Break trust-fund dependence. Get undeserving recipients on to work experience schemes.
6. Anti-social behaviour. Use 'tough love' to deal with those who engage in risky behaviour, who gamble, cheat and deceive and then expect the public to bail them out of trouble. Ground them, tag them and ban them from using the internet to vandalize the global economy.
7. Profligacy. Target contraception towards problem families with morbidly obese carbon footprints fuelled by irresponsible lifestyles.
8. Vandalism. Get them to clear up after themselves (the cartoon has a reference to BP chief being made to help clear up an oil spill.)
9. Social Conscience. Teach them to start paying their own way. Lesson no.1 Pay your tax.
10. Restorative Justice.  Get overpaid execs who helped themselves to bonuses from bailed-out banks and businesses to face the victims of their crime and repay the money they owe.

The feral rich -- New Internationalist

Spirituality of the ordinary in these days of miracle and wonder

As a piece of cultural observation, I think that this is worth paying attention to because it seems to me to identify something that could well become a big  issue in the kind of way that 'instantness' has. The basic idea is that the proliferation of cameras and connectedness combined with the human attraction to novelty, spectacle and emotional extremes is likely to produce a stream of the extraordinary ...

 Cameras are becoming ubiquitous, so as our collective recorded life expands, we'll accumulate thousands of videos showing people being struck by lightening. When we all wear tiny cameras all the time, then the most improbable accident, the most superlative achievement, the most extreme actions of anyone alive will be recorded and shared around the world in real time. Soon only the most extraordinary moments of our 6 billion citizens will fill our streams. So henceforth rather than be surrounded by ordinariness we'll float in extraordinariness.

So what will it feel like to be 'us' -ordinary people in humdrum lives when

the improbable dominates the archive to the point that it seems as if the library contains ONLY the impossible, then these improbabilities don't feel as improbable.

So plausibility is affected. The miraculous is more imaginable, the 'laws' of physics perhaps seem more likely to be 'broken' "To the uninformed, the increased prevalence of improbable events will make it easier to believe in impossible things.".

So will that contribute to the growth of all sorts of belief and superstition? And how should we respond as Christians? I'd suggest we might find ourselves in the place of wanting to defend the regular, predictable and scientific -holding the fort in the face of those who may believe anything, as GK Chesterton warned.

Theologically, I would suggest that the Incarnation, notwithstanding its own extraordinariness, paradoxically affirms ordinariness. The extraordinary actually plays into the very ordinary and humdrum. It is precisely a choice to align with the 99% and the unremarkable and to eschew the spectacular. And even later when the miraculous figures it's understated  and woven into the everyday with Jesus on the whole trying to keep it out of the news because hype distorts and misdirects. The extraordinary tends to discriminate against most of real life. -We have an arrabon of that in 'celebrity culture'.

What I think that this may mean is that we need to help people develop an affirmative spirituality of the commonplace and everyday. This would be a mindfulness of the humdrum. More, I think learning to enjoy, take pleasure in and to be thankful about the regular 'stuff' which supports everyday life. In addition we will need to learn the discipline of curtailing envy of the extraordinariness of others, to be content and to forgo invidious comparison.

And we need to begin now to help people to grow in these dimensions of spirituality.

The Technium: The Improbable is the New Normal:

Does 'celibacy' include 'petting'?

I was amused by Sharon Ferguson's (of the LGCM) turn of phrase "The important thing is not what people do with their dangly bits, but whether their relationship is faithful and loving."
This is all part of commenting on the possibility of civilly-partnered gay men being able to be bishops in the C of E. My problem with this is that it is what people do or don't do with their dangly bits that isn't really talked about, and perhaps it should be because I suspect that there is a great deal of duplicity about this.

To put it as plainly as I feel I can given that this blog is 'universally' rated: there are manual acts and other non-penetrative but sexually-related actions that are being implicitly 'outlawed' by this ruling. The problem is that if an unmarried heterosexual couple engage in these things, it's probably considered by those, like Anglican Mainstream, who oppose gay uncelibate partnerships as a Christian option, to be kind of alright. I may be wrong, but 'heavy petting' is what this amounts to, but I bet lots of young Evangelical Christians do these things before marriage and would only consider penetrative sex as sex for the purposes of sexual morality.

So, I reckon the challenge back to the Anglican Mainstream (soi dissant) is what is your policy on heterosexual 'petting'? Because if it's not directly comparable to homosexual possibilities then it probably actually is homophobia and not simply heteronormativity. The follow-up question, if it is agreed that there should be comparability, is whether their members are willing to act on that. And so we do actually need to ask not so much what people do with their dangly bits, but what kinds of dangly-bit action counts as 'within-marriage sex' and what doesn't -and to be consistent about how that applies also to unmarried heterosexuals.

What I mean by contrasting homophobia and heteronormativity is that the former, I take it, is about attitudes of hatred or denial of civil respect and equality while heteronormativity I take to be about offering all civil and personal respect but holding that in regard to sex and marriage, only hetero- is morally sanctioned.

Fresh storm hits C of E after move to allow gay bishops - Home News - UK - The Independent:

Price ebooks less stupidly

This is ridiculous! I fancied this book, but when I saw this:

Kindle Edition 9.69
Paperback -- 8.91 

Something rebellious rose up in me: The ebook should be cheaper -there's insignificant costs for production: no costs for paper, printing. I think a fee for the author and for editing services is fine. But. So come on Westminster John Knox Press: price it properly. I reckon a fiver might be reasonable. The US site has it the right way round (though still on the high side).

A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age eBook: Glen H. Stassen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store: