In person and its accidental eugenics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Futuring formation in a climate of turbulence

Intro

This is a paper I wrote for a recent gathering of people involved in thinking about spiritual accompaniment in our region.

Reading Jane Shaw's volume, I was struck what a different world it addresses. Not only is my class background not really represented (it's all seems quite middle/upper class). I was largely left feeling that this is spiritual practice that seems quite detached from much of the lived reality of the nation that I read recently about in The People [The Rise and Fall ofthe Working Class 1910-2010]. The exception is to some extent is Percy Dearmer. These are people also who lived and worked in a world also where CO2 was below 350ppm (it’s now 420+) and the climate was still the relatively stable holocene we came to know and mostly love (yes, even in Britain!)

My fear is that to continue to think along the same trajectory as these mid-20th century pioneers would be to isolate Christian spirituality from the most important and momentous features of what is now underway. Gaia Vince puts that into perspective as she asks:

"Where are you at with your five stages of grief for the Holocene? That’s the geological epoch we were living in for the past 11,700 years – the period of time when humans invented agriculture, built cities, invented writing, became “modern”, essentially. All of history took place in this epoch, marked by its congenial, relatively predictable climate, in which ice sheets retreated from Europe and North America, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were high enough to enable the flourishing of grains, like rice and wheat." Now we’ve left those Holocene conditions for the uncharted Anthropocene, an age brought about by human activities and characterised by global climate chaos and ecological degradation...  find myself experiencing all stages simultaneously. Anger that my children won’t get to snorkel the wondrous coral reefs of my Australian childhood; pain and guilt over the millions of Indian villagers displaced by floodwaters, losing their homes, livelihoods, even their lives. Depression over the scale of loss: of wildlife, of glaciers, of verdant landscapes, of safe, reliable weather. It is the last two stages we need to reach – acceptance and reconstruction – if we are to build a livable Anthropocene."  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/18/heatwave-floods-save-planet-children

 So it does seem important to me to parallel the recent COP28 Global Stocktake with a  taking stock of what lies ahead and what it will mean for churches and Christians to respond well in order to understand, coram Deo, the kinds of communities and people we need to be; with our glocal neighbours and recognising we are [part of] the ecosystems that we rely on for sustenance.

“We must try to understand the meaning of the age in which we are called to bear witness. We must accept the fact that this is an age in which the cloth is being unwoven. It is therefore no good trying to patch. We must, rather, set up the loom on which coming generations may weave new cloth according to the pattern God provides.” (Mother Mary Clare SLG)

Where the climate crisis is causing distress and eco-anxiety, we have the opportunity to ground ourselves in a theology of a God intimately involved in creation – the God who created us, dwells in us (‘us’ including the natural world), and will meet us at our end. -JR Hollins: https://joannahollins.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/the-vicar-or-the-ground-source-heater/

What lies ahead?

It now seems we cannot avoid a minimum of 1.5°C for several decades. This will shift ecological zones, expand deserts, melt large amounts of polar ice, raise sea levels by metres not just the few centimeters we’ve seen so far. It will result in fiercer rain and storms. In turn this will imperil food security. These things will increase tensions in human society, promote migration, there will be wars and rumours of war. The darker angels of our nature will find greater opportunity to ride forth.

We are already seeing the emergence of the conditions of and for a neo-feudalism and a rentier basis for economies being laid down by TNCs and their billionaire owners.

We are already seeing the rise of the political reflexes of that economic shift.

While not inevitable, this path is likely. What we do now in the next 5-10 years is of deadly importance -I use that adverb with forethought!

………………………………………………………………………………

 

TAKE A BREATH -notice our own reactions, hold them before God …

 

This is a vital part of the work of God right now.

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The time for declaring emergency and working for sustainability was 40 years ago. Now our sector [conservation] must focus on being collapse-aware, to aim for ruggedisation and to build a regenerative culture. …. This means anticipating, facing and responding to the linked crises of ecological and climate breakdown, pandemics, rising inequalities, displacement, famines & conflict. … Earth crisis, for short. … Where society is competitive, where there is a lack of shared responsibility, and where heritage isn’t cherished as a commons, collapse is more likely to lead to conflict and displacement. … From <https://bridgetmckenzie.uk/sustainability-is-in-the-past>

Meeting what lies ahead

I suggest that Christians and churches will need to consider upping our game and preparing for action in these missional responses.

Churches *should* have a vital role in the short to medium terms:

·       helping to build community resilience;

·       offering help  for people to learn new skills;

·        providing pastoral care to the anguished, shocked and regretful;

·       truth seeking and telling in the face of disinformation and denial;

·       offering spiritual accompaniment as people re-orient lives around sustainable practices;

·       making known and exemplifying the riches of spiritual practice to support simple lifestyles and neighbourliness. (And be learning and re-learning all of that ourselves)^[i].

These feel somehow monastic. It is also vital and necessary. There are movements afoot already to promote and foment these things. Christians should surely be among them.

What spiritual perspectives support these 'missions'?

Grounding in natural world: we know that there are strands of Christian spirituality that value and rejoice in creation; we need to lean into them but in a way that doesn’t denigrate the urban per se. We should also widen our thinking about incarnation to more thoroughly incorporate (!) understanding that the flesh is matter, imbricated in ecosystems. (We might note and theologise about the way being in nature supports good mental health.)

Preferential option for the poor. Hopefully I don’t need to say more about this?!

Joy in enough, simplification (new Franciscanism?) and rejoining our lives and life-systems to the circular economies of nature. Yes, let’s consider the lilies and the birds how they are supported and support life around them.

Learning the insights of protest movements especially: undoing hierarchy; valuing each; self and other care; listening; (cf Quaker decision making);

It is important that we help the development of a Missio Dei perspective -implied spiritual disciplines of (corporate) attention, discernment and reflection; together and individually. We can use the Five marks of mission to help draw our attention to where to look for God at work.

We have been seeing the way that money buys social perception filters and narrative hegemony. Ctr "You shall know the truth and it will set you free" -rediscovering intellectual humility and valuing truth-seeking -disciplines of study, valuing not bearing false witness, courage in challenging untruths, half-truths and evasions, telling truth to power.

 One of the tests of actual faith, as opposed to bad religion, is whether it stops you ignoring things. Faith is most fully itself and most fully life-giving when it opens your eyes and uncovers for you a world larger than you thought - and of course, therefore, a world that's a bit more alarming than you ever thought. The test of true faith is how much it lets you see, and how much it stops you denying, resisting, ignoring aspects of what is real.     -Rowan Williams quoted in A Splash of Words" by Mark Oakley

 Humility in mission: it is God’s mission, God’s agenda we seek. Too often in the past the churches have tried to own and badge efforts for justice and reform. Too often we have been rivalrous with others. But it is God’s work, we can be content with doing right and good things even if it doesn't have ‘Brought to you by the CofE’ in the corner. Too often we have been arrogant and failed to listen and so we’ve missed the Spirit blowing gently and unexpectedly in the lives and circumstances of others -the sheep not of this fold.

 Courage:

 "In a time of overlapping global crises, it’s clear that radical courage will be required of us as individuals and as a society - in our communities and institutions at local and national levels, and not least among those in public life - if we are to make decisive progress on our interconnected economic, environmental and social challenges, and create truly just and flourishing futures ... That will require at least two things: the willingness to step out of our comfort zones and into the storms and waves, to protect the poor, the vulnerable and nature itself, and a clear sense of where to find the resources beyond ourselves to discover that courage." -Justin Welby

 Re-learning hope: not as optimism or wishful thinking or escapist eschatology. We can no longer work for a better world, only a less-worse one (accompanying people in bereavement from modernist progressive optimism). Hope as a humble sustaining of work with God in the world and among God’s people, simply knowing /trusting that “our work in the Lord is not in vain”

Finding spiritual perspectives that help us to deal with complicity. BLM and the current climate/enviro crises remind us how we are deeply formed and held in life-patterns and attitudes that do not serve wider human flourishing. Understanding corporate sin and our participation in it in ways that help us to live wisely ourselves and to minister to others, is vitally important. I personally believe that this is where conversations about sin and atonement ought to be circling. Not to mention liturgy and theological formation.

What does "holy and righteous life" look like in these conditions?

As well as regular attentive reflection on the world around us -human and more-than-human; as well as discernment of God’s mission and our own vocations within it; as well as meeting together for mutual encouragement and upbuilding … we will need to consider some marks of a holy and righteous life that we have not paid so much attention to over the last century (or maybe I’m wrong?)

·       Resilience through facing despair, complicity and world-view bereavement with gentleness, truthfulness and Godly neighbour love.

·       Peacemaking

·       Community building /Mutual aid to try to nurture resilience against the threats of divisive rhetoric and selfish responding to crisis. It will also enable the kind of working together that will actually save lives and enable human and ecological flourishing

·       Casting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly

·       Bearing witness to truth

·       Dealing wisely with complicity

·       NVDA, Civil disobedience

·       21^st century alms-giving that recognises structural dimensions of alleviating want.

As I mention these things, I’m so often aware that there are precursors. Christians in past times of civilisational change and collapse have done many of these things in various ways. Often it has been monastic and mendicant orders who have been at the forefront….

Over to you....

^[i]From < https://www.facebook.com/groups/2349278635285005/?multi_permalinks=3536698376543019&notif_id=1691680506613098&notif_t=group_activity&ref=notif

Cremation, Burial -or what? -Christian eco-propriety in funeral practice

We've been thinking about disposal of human remains lately, particularly our own when eventually it needs to happen: what do we want to do? Mostly our thinking has been around it being ecologically righteous as far as possible, starting with the body itself not polluting or being treated in a way that will hinder the natural recycling that nature has been doing for millions of years with dead bodies. And then also the processes of funeral rites not contributing to pollution or global heating (or at least minimising that impact).

But/And, as Christians, we also want funerals to be consistent with Christian discipleship. So this article when I happened across it, caught my attention. It did so because the article had no consideration of the environmental dimension but rather mainly a -forgive me for the slight disparagement- a narrow individual-salvation concern as shown by this couple of sentences early in the piece.

Some believe that the Bible says you can’t go to Heaven if you’re cremated. This isn’t what the Bible says. There is nothing in the Bible that forbids cremation as a means of disposing a person’s body.

Fair enough as far as it goes: our hope of salvation lies in God's grace and remembrance (both in the sense of knowing us 'timelessly' and of re-making us eschatologically) of us beyond death not in a particular treatment of human remains. A few moments reflection will show up problems with the idea of the physical remains being necessary to ultimate participation in the new creation: many, many people's bodies do cease to exist after enough time. eventually in most conditions even bones' molecules are dissipated into the environment. A theology of reconstruction, if I may characterise it like that, means that after a few hundred or thousand years, there is nothing to reconstruct. It also implies a reconstruction using 'new' material to replace decomposed flesh, so why not simply replace everything? Especially if the new creation's material basis is different to the current material basis? 

Anyway, to return to the main focus: I think that a more wholistic consideration of disposal of our remains should take place; it isn't just about whether we 'go to heaven' or even whether we are being consistent witnesses to Christian teaching. Actually that last clause in the quote includes, in reality, noticing that being good witnesses to Christian perspectives should include -prominently at the moment- doing right and justly by the ecosystem and climate.

With the following quote from the article, however, I see both a positive basis for thinking about corpse-composting and also I find a quibblesome point.

Cremation, however, subtly suggests that our bodies are of no significance. Burial, on the other hand, communicates something far more consistent with the Bible. It affirms not only that the human body has dignity, but also that it has a future. It affirms that death is not the end of the body.

The positive basis is the appraisal of human bodiliness as good and having dignity as well as having a future and those things I definitely affirm. I'm not convinced, however, that cremation really does suggest lack of significance for bodies; I think that's a value judgement that doesn't make sense from 'my' (ecological) perspective -I can see why someone might say that but it lacks force because it only communicates those things if you come from a certain cultural background or with a certain way of looking at life-processes narrowly focused on individuals in an industrial system. 

I'm not convinced that the means by which a body is decomposed do in themselves suggest any such appraisal. Because that's what we are talking about -burial, cremation (or whatever) are all about what processes we entrust a body to for return to the elements. We need to see the bigger picture of molecules and elements returning to the wider ecosphere. What gives a body significance (which is a cultural construct) is how we treat it in terms of 'fare-welling' and how we link that fare-welling to whichever 'bigger picture' of life and cosmos we are beholden to. 

I want to suggest that it is also important to affirm bodiliness by recognising that 'from dust we are created and to dust we shall return' -"dust" being matter, essentially, and the energetic means for its decomposition back to 'dust'. We can do that slowly, by letting bacteria, fungi and biochemical processes work through their life-cycles with the body as raw material. We can do that quickly by oxidising using heat. (And there is another option mentioned below).

More important in terms of Christian ethics and witness is surely making the process most consistent and compatible with the Creator's designs of energy and matter cycles and flows. So, if there's a problem with cremation, it's not really that it disrespects the body or a Christian appraisal of bodiliness. The problem with cremation as I see it, is that it uses methods to accelerate bodily decomposition that are noxious for the environment (ie usually fossil-fuel in the form of methane based gas jets). It may be possible to mitigate that, and to do so would help return to a more positive appraisal of cremation.

As a related side-note here, I would also point out that embalming is a pretty bad thing to do from the perspective of environmental impact. 

And while we're considering less-direct issues of body preservation, we might want to consider how a body is stored pending burial, cremation or whatever. Cold-storage often does have a carbon footprint or dangers around coolants' storage and release. So the title of the article that stimulated my response here might also ask "is it OK for Christians to be embalmed?". I think that embalming is far less good than cremation in the bigger picture.

As a Christian, I believe that we honour our Creator by playing our part in good creation-care practices. And this includes disposal of earthly remains. That is a very body-respecting and material-creation-affirming thing to do. It is good biblical theology to recognise the dust from which we come and to participate well in the systems of life-and-death in which that dust plays its part -to 'tend the garden' with our remains as well as our living effort. The practice of embalming seems to me to be not only dishonouring to the living flow of the ecosystem but also to speak, perhaps, of an overemphasis on appearance and human convenience which is not easily consonant with Christian teaching and virtues. Perhaps that's a harsh thing to say, but maybe we need to be sober about such things rather than simply sentimental and revise our funereal practices in the light of the bigger picture I'm trying to work with in this post.

Personally, I'm looking into Water Cremation to recommend and/or enable for my 'relicts'. It seems to overcome the difficulties associated with conventional cremation and offer a way not to take up lots of rooms with a grave plot. And, as a Christian, I'm trusting in God's recreative promises not the condition of my corpse for a share in the resurrection to Life.

And as a PS -as I've looked at what internet search brings up in relation to the environmental impact of cremation, I've noticed that much of the find is backed by funeral industry with an interest in promoting cremation. One of the effects of this is to not quite compare like with like and be low oncomparative detail, giving the impression that hot-cremating is better than burying. Admittedly this is perhaps true if you take in embalming, plot-maintenance etc. But the simple act of burying a body is less fossil-fuel energetic than firing a body. What needs to happen is to factor-in the ecological impact of the 'extra' acts to corpse-disposal: travel, preservation, storage, containment etc of the body and things like travel by mourners. And these need to be accounted for side-by-side in whichever disposal means is chosen. It's hard to believe, ceteris paribus, that like-for-like accounting would put cremation ahead. The one exception may well be so-called water cremation mentioned above.

What Does the Bible Say About Cremation | Is It OK for Christians to Be Cremated - Beliefnet

Formation and Sleep Ethics

One of the things I have noted in Praying the Pattern and which I will be reworking and expanding (maybe with this research!) in the forthcoming Living our prayer and praying our lives is how choosing bad sleep and rest patterns is choosing to make it more likely that we behave less graciously than we might otherwise. There is research, now, to back that up:

if you don’t get enough sleep, research suggests you are more likely to engage with unethical and deviant behaviour, such as being mean, bullying your fellow employees or falsifying receipts.  -Disrupted sleep article

So, contrary to some medieval asceticism, we should probably not normally be skimping on sleep.
It does, however, make me wonder what the purpose of sleep deprivation regimes was in those medieval regimes. I have the impression (but without researching it further) that it may have had something to do with avoiding sloth; that lying a-bed was seen as sinfully lazy. But I also wonder whether for some at least, there was a sense that we do indeed tend to worse self-censoring and self-checking when we are tired, so the point in that case may have been to push themselves more closely to their limits to make the testing of benevolence etc more real and more frequent, to give more chance to practice.
If that was the case, then I have to say that I wonder whether that is not, in fact, putting God to the test .... more thought needed.

The Spiritual Discipline of viewing from the margins -why do it?

It is actually pretty shocking to read the results of research into human prejudices based on looks. I can't now recall which USAmerican comedy series had an episode where one of the characters who has been blind to how his good looks have (exageratedly) tended to give him a free pass and a bye in all sorts of situations, gets a glimpse of how the other moiety lives. It should be required viewing!
Here's a synopsis of some results: If You Look Like This, Your Pay Check Will Be Higher Than Average - Business Insider And basically it's telling us that "Numerous studies have shown looks can impact career advancement. Some say physical appearance matters even more to employers than a cover letter.   Researchers have found that facial structure, hair color, and weight all can affect our paychecks.We can't help our genes, but some of them may be helping us more than others."

It probably starts really early in life. I seem to recall from primary school that those who had physical characteristics that were regarded as pleasant or desirable (and here I mostly mean in non-sexual terms since I think that 8 year-olds are not so tuned in to that dimension of attractiveness) tended to get preferential treatment from peers. And those of us with characteristics considered less desirable (red hair, very thin, plump, too fair, too brown, freckles ... to pick some that I recall) tended to be passed over.

The Biblical stories up to and around I Samuel 16 are reminders that physical appearances and prowess can be overrated and cause us to miss the real worth of what people who appear unprepossessing have to offer.

However, I find myself wondering beyond the almost truistic status of this observation to think about how we can and should do something about it. Clearly in some HR policies about recruitment, we get some sense of how this might be: eliminating things that give obvious clues about race, sexual, marital, religious status and the like. Ruling out certain kinds of questions in interview. And some of this can look and feel heavy-handed until you realise how deeply seated our prejudices often are and how easily and naturally we go into (self-) justification of them.

This brings me to the importance of what I've called in the title of a new "spiritual discipline". That is to say "new" to the classical lists of spiritual disciplines, though in fact it is probably a spiritual perspective that calls on several spiritual disciplines in the classical sense.

I would hope that I wouldn't need to rehearse the reasons why a Christian would take it reasonably for granted that we should have a care for those who are disadvantaged, down on their luck or otherwise disheartened. The main dispute between Christians is about the best means to address this. However, I would suggest that as we are not immune from self-justifying memes, tropes and distortions of thinking, we need to make sure that we have means to persistently address such distortions.

I think that the insight that we understand our social world best if we make sure that we view it from the underside; from the perspective of those who are not thriving in it. I think that this is an attitude that grows out of consideration for the disadvantaged and marginalised. It takes seriously loving our neighbour as ourselves by 'putting ourselves in their shoes' and so contributing to avoiding patronising and superficial responses which in effect do not respect them and therefore are not loving. And if there is any truth to the thought that we respond best when we understand well, then we should be making sure that our understanding is well-informed by the perspective of those who have to see our human social world from a perspective of hurt, exclusion and/or inaccessibility.

We tend to judge -as that research indicates- by the trappings of success. This means that we tend, unless checked, to perpetuate the conditions that continue to favour the already successful or those who have characteristics we associate with it or that we just 'like'.

So to offset this, to become more neighbour-loving and to change and be formed in the likeness of Christ, we will do well to find disciplines to embody and enact seeing from the underside.

I hope I'll be able to post soon about what such disciplines are and how they might play with other more commonly recognised spiritual disciplines.

Mindscape and the Powers that be

I've been asked to chat with some clergy about 'spiritual warfare' which prompted me to think about what I'd say and realising as I did so that I needed to be able to say it succinctly and clearly and that a lot of the stuff I'm reading and thinking about at the moment may be getting in the way of that. So, time to try to boil down some basics. I realised that I'd been quietly cooking up a metaphor which may have the potential to hold together the various things that I think we need to keep hold of for this take on the Powers That Be to be a useful 'ministerable' approach for 21st century Christian leaders. Here I'm expressing myself more succinctly than I might speak, and so with a more condensed and sometimes scholarly style.

So, what do I think needs to be said to give a way in that could be useful to get people started in thinking about the powers that doesn't reproduce the mis-steps of the strategic-level spiritual warfare approach?

I think a good place to start might be to recall that humans are created social ("it is not good that the earthling should be alone") and one of the corollaries of that fact is that we tend to build a shared 'mindscape'. By that I mean that we share, mentally and affectively a range of things which we hold in common even if we appropriate them individually in terms of subjective experience. We co-create and co-curate images, language, metaphors, habits of mind and practice, artefacts and objects etc. If you think that this looks remarkably like 'culture' then I think you'd be right. I think that the overlap between 'culture' and what here I'm calling 'mindscape' is extensive. I'm choosing to use the term 'mindscape' because I think that 'culture' tends to be overused and i want to try to focus our attention on the sense of co-ownership and intimate connection to it. It seems to me that 'culture' so often gets used in an objectified way which wrests from us our own (admittedly small) individual participation and contribution to this collective endeavour. I also want to develop the metaphor of landscape implied by the term to help us to understand some important things about the Powers and corporisations.

If we think about the collectively shared ideas, images, understandings, ways of thinking and perceiving etc as a landscape in which we all roam and which to limited degrees we help to shape then we have a way to begin to grasp corporisations and the Powers that be. But first we need to understand the geography a bit in order to properly see these latter objects of attention. We can in our imaginations see hills and valleys. These we might link to culturally-shared contours making some ideas, perspectives and affections more or less easy to traverse and to navigate. the valleys mean that some ideas and perspectives more easily collect from various minds and flow together further contributing to the shaping of the collective thought-world while the cliffs, hills, and mountains are things that we can take our bearings by and make difficult certain moves across the idea space.

Some of the mindscape has 'beings' in it. Just as plants and animals in our physical world are made out of energy and matter, so in the mindscape there are beings made of the 'stuff' of our collective thoughts, emotions and imaginings. And don't forget that includes people: we are also objects of our own thinking, feelings and imaginings and appear as such in our collective mindscape. And since these mindly representations are attached to and/or associated with physical bodies, (and so too are various other physical-world objects like mountains and buildings, buses and bison), then the mindscape is something that interpenetrates physical reality -mediated by human brains. Or perhaps it's the other way round: physical reality underlies and (partly but definitively) shapes the mindscape.

Therefore the mindscape has in it things like institutions and organisations  which are formed from human bodies, conventions, ideas, values and artefacts held together in the mindscape and having bodily and physical reality as well as mindly reality. We should notice how the physical and the mindly mutually inform one another. The mindly aspects help to hold together and shape the physical and yet also the physical enables, constrains and partially fashions the mindly.

This landscape of human shared thought is spiritually significant and in fact spiritual in its own way. First of all, since we human beings are spiritual beings, then the 'things' that we compose or make up, like organisations and institutions -in short, corporisations- must share something of that spiritual nature and that is worked out by their helping or hindering our relationship with God, by sharing and in a sense mediating it (I don't mean in a salvific way, but in a peer-to-peer sort of way in which church can be implicated, for example). Mindscape, particularly through the corporisations that grow within it, obscures or clarifies things relating to God and human flourishing: it helps to further or to hinder God's purposes on earth.

Walter Wink is quoted as saying: 'History belongs to the intercessors'. Listening to him explain this and translating that into the metaphor of mindscape, i would say that he saw prayer as reshaping mindscape. In a sense prayer erodes strongholds (ie bastions of ideas resistent to the gospel), rechannels flows of information or clears ground for easier movement of the gospel. I'd add also the Eph.6:10ff stuff which is really about faithful Christian living and sometimes costly integrity in discipleship: living in opposite spirit to an untruthful and/or degrading ethos, speaking truth to power, mind-feeding and discernment, works of mercy, acts of solidarity and prophecy which are all things that the classic spiritual disciplines are about forming and fostering within us individually and collectively.

I am wary of the language of spiritual warfare in a context where (unlike the early church) militaristic language for Christian discipleship is sometimes taken literally. However if we were to use it, it is these classic disciplines that constitute spiritual warfare. This I would hold along with the insight that our battle is not against flesh and blood (ie not primarily against the employees, volunteers or office-holders in corporisation) but against spiritual wickedness which by virtue of making use of the opportunities in the mindscape or the particular constitution of a corporisation is able to marshal human collective effort into anti-gospel and counter-humane processes and ends.

Church Engagement and its discontents

I have to confess that in the past, enthralled by leadership teaching and church growth and management insights and still not having fully and properly co-ordinated the secular management insights with theological reflection, I recall having similar niggles to those mentioned in this insightful article:

 weary of such teaching as we realised that it didn’t really resonate with the picture we see in Jesus who would not only ‘lay down his life’ for his sheep but would willingly leave the ninety-nine in order to find the individual who had become lost.

 This was a propos of teaching about leaving behind those in a church who weren't buying into the leaders' vision. This, of course, comes out of reifying the vision into, in effect, the very word of the Lord. Yet what had always troubled me was the way the there was so little in Scripture about vision casting. About the only text is the Proverbs verse 'Where there is no vision the people perish' -which only works in the AV 'translation' and seems to actually yield very little backing for vision casting. in fact, the Pauline and Johanine exhortations to unity  would seem to count against 'leaving behind' or, in effect, excluding those who don't 'catch' the vision. And, of course. the parable of the lost sheep is rightly brought to the bar above.



What this piece does rather well is to pick up and explain in churchly terms the basic three stages of church engagement -drawn from observation of organisational life (and which I'm adding to my reflections on being part of a university which is morphing into a self-aware business). The suggestion is also that expecting an ever upward engagement is cutting against the grain of a natural human engagement entropy:

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpu

... there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person's engegement to a group, community or vision. ... a three-phase journey experienced within a community:

1) Enthusiastic

2)Realistic

3) Apathetic

In each of these phases there are not only normal and expected patterns and psychodynamics of engagement (all of which are perfectly recognisable and understandable from our own experiences) but also tend to be exploited or drawn on by leaders in certain ways. We can also see these phase at work when people buy new products -and we may be aware of how the company that supplies it is really keen to get us to give re-usable feedback in the first few days of ownership -when we're still enthusiastic about it and before 'reality' sets in in the form of us having found that it doesn't actually change our life as much for the better as we thought it might or its downsides start to become apparent and a certain disillusion sets in. And of course it may only be a matter of time before we become non-users -apathetic, looking for something better or at least simply instrumental about it. Similarly with churches -doubly so if they are 'marketed' with visions, missions and vibe. So people drop out or move on from one church to another.



Accordingly, we need to teach leadership skills not just to do the first phase stuff but to pastor through phases 2 and 3. Informally this already happens, of course, we all know churches that do phase 1 stuff really well but have open back doors as well as front doors. Many of us are also aware of churches which tend to 'receive' at least some of the refugees from phase 1 churches, and some of us know people who don't reconnect with church. I'm also aware of some people who don't connect with phase 1 churches at all because they at a subliminal level understand only too well the marketing dynamic of the vibe and vision thing and shy away from the 'machine' that threatens to eat them.



So the question is not only how do we train priests to be leaders for all three phases, but how do we disciple Christians to work through them maturely (and are 'sabbaticals' part of this)? And that latter question morphs into a question about how we build church life so as not to be using up the first-phasers?



The fact is, I suspect, that churches that do phase one stuff well are doing so parasitically on the rest of the body of Christ: using up people's enthusiasm and 'letting them go' when they realise that all is not as shiney as it first seemed: then other churches pick them up and sometimes help put them back together. Sometimes, of course, no church is trusted thereafter. We badly need phase-ecumenism in order to cope with this natural life staging under our current 'system' -but it would be hard for many leaders to do this as it would mean admitting a certain relativity or contingency to their self-perceptions of ministry, theology and mission. Meanwhile the mission of the whole church is compromised.



I hope I'm wrong, but I fear i'm not.

there
exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s engagement
to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I have seen
explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a picture of an
onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am not sure that
this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable. - See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

there
exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s engagement
to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I have seen
explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a picture of an
onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am not sure that
this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable. - See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest
that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s
engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I
have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a
picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am
not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic




- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

 The Three Phases of Church Engagement | Alan Molineaux | Red Letter Christians:

Out of Babylon -Brueggeman

There's hardly a theologian currently more revered than Walter Brueggeman, and deservedly so: he is able
to bring to bear on reading the Hebrew scriptures a wide knowledge and understanding of the culture of the Ancient Near East but in a way that doesn't draw attention to his erudition but simply help unfold the meaning of the text and to bring it together with the 'horizon' of our own understandings and culture. I particularly enjoyed this expose -in effect- of perenniel forces which coagulate in/to empires and the way that they affect the corporate psychology and spirituality of 'subject' peoples. He then reframes the insights to help Christians (and other aliens) in the West (particularly the USA but actually this affects us all) to pray and live faithfully. And also, it seems to me, uses the contemporary experience of living under hegemonic systems to help us to understand the dynamics of Empire and give us insight into Babylonian exile.

I especially enjoyed the connections he makes between surviving and resisting Empire and liturgical practice. There are also important insights into the ways of corporisations and how we might minister to them.

Notes and quotes

obedience or disobedience will variously yield blessings and curses. The disaster of the sixth century, so goes the paradigm, was a justly merited curse worked against those who had violated covenantal obedience. This logic both imposed meaning on chaotic events and established the voice of the deported elite as normative for the larger community.   location 242

If we read the United States as chosen people, as carrier of "local tradition," then the church must bring to the table a clearer, less compromised sense of what "chosenness" means. The church must insist that the public policy and public practice of the United States be measured against covenantal requirements of neighborly justice, mercy, and generosity. Such a society might be expected to organize its life and its resources around the shared destiny of haves and have-nots. For as far back as the tradition of Deuteronomy, the notion of "chosenness" had to do with attentiveness to needy neighbors. If the "year of remission" in Deuteronomy 15:1-18 is central to who Israel was as a chosen people, then even its own economy was subordinate to its obligation to its neighbors. Likewise today, the church's challenge is to summon civil society to its best self.  location 698


On the other hand, it may be an easier case now to see the United States as empire that seeks to impose its will around the world, to demand "reform" as the price of engagement, and to monopolize resources in every possible way. As the prophets judge, such a superpower as Babylon is intrinsically unable to restrain itself, even as the acquisitive power of the United States is mostly beyond restraint. In such an environment God calls the church to carry the "local tradition," bearing witness against the empire's arrogance, greed, and insatiable appetites. It is likely that it comes only very late to every empire—including Babylon—to recognize itself as empire, to flex its muscles with restraint, to acknowledge the selfdestructiveness of imagining autonomy that is not subject to any ordered morality or even to the community of nation-states. It may be the work of the church to name empire for what it is.   location 705


contrast to the "local tradition" of Jews and Christians, empires do not know about loss. Empires do not grieve, do not notice human suffering, do not acknowledge torn bodies or abused villages. Empires deal in quotas, statistics, summaries, and memos. And memos rarely mention loss; when they do, they disguise it in euphemism so that no one need notice. Empires characteristically do not notice loss because they are able to engage in realitydenying ideology that covers over everything in the splendor of power, victory, and stability. Empires do not acknowledge that many such claims are highly contested, and beyond contestation are frequently exhibited as false. But empires are undeterred by inconvenient truths, and rush on to persuasive certitude. Thus I propose in this reflection on loss that we consider the tension between the candor and acknowledgment of the local tradition and the capacity for denial that characterizes empire.  location 775


If it is the case that "the truth makes free" (even truth about loss), then it is also true that "cover-up makes powerful."  location 784


Arrayed against the formidable social power of this claim that God would never abandon Jerusalem was the relatively weak challenge of prophetic poetry. This ongoing but highly irregular tradition featured uncredentialed utterers with no social standing. Their sole authority came from (a) their imaginative, playful utterance; (b) their knowledge of the facts on the ground connected to human, bodily reality; and (c) the claim to be connected enough to speak the truth of YHWH.  location 807


The Book of Lamentations invites us to imagine a long pause in both certitude and denial. It is a long pause against old temptations and against new imperial impingement. The pause is in order to honor and cherish and valorize this powerful moment of undoing.No need to rush, as there is nowhere to rush to. Linger. Linger in the ashes and tears, and ponder the truth that makes one free.  location 878


profound anxiety that the posturing of the Department of Homeland Security has brought about. But the empire really doesn't want that anxiety to go away, because it creates the hostility and rage that feed imperial ideology. By pandering to and co-opting anxiety among its citizens, the empire creates the "need" for even tighter hegemony, and at the same   location 956


Isaiah 40–55 works best when understood as a divine response to the Book of Lamentations' deep grief over the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of folk from Jerusalem.Read more at location 1314

There was plenty to fear in Babylon. There was taxation and exploitation, hostility toward local tradition, violence toward dissidents, and the requirement of conformity to imperial expectation. It was enough to cause the members of a local tradition to worry about opportunities for social advancement at the least, and perhaps even about their physical safety. Knowing all of those fears, the poet speaks a word that voids them. The ground for fearlessness is the utterance, promise, presence, and resolve of YHWH. The "salvation oracle" is dominated by first person assertions by YHWH. YHWH enters the empire's affairs and overrides its threat of coercion, not unlike, of course, the way in which YHWH nullified the abusive authority of Pharaoh in ancient memory.   location 1333


Empires do have their use, and it is not surprising to find traces of affirmation about Babylon in the biblical tradition. Indeed, more than traces, for it could even be affirmed in ancient Israel that Babylon, in its imperial expansionism, was acting out YHWH's intention for the world and for Israel. Thus we must allow for a sense of ambiguity and complexity about Babylon, because the empire may do good even as it is a devastator. Its reasons for doing good, of course, are never altruistic, but rather seek to further its interests and expand its power. Thus some in the ancient world saw that when Babylon imposed order on lesser states it also acted as their protector—albeit never a disinterested one. Indeed, some in Israel clearly perceived Persia, Babylon's successor on the world stage, as a benign or positive force. It is, moreover, well known that in the New Testament period one's status as a Roman citizen counted for a great deal (Acts 16:37-38; 22:25-29).  location 1609


the contemporary news of the gospel is that God invites and summons the faithful to a life beyond the demands and gifts of empire. In the New Testament, that offer is a call to discipleship. In contemporary practice, it is the joyous possibility of joyous existence beyond what I have elsewhere called the "therapeutic, technological, military consumerism" of our society. While the texts portray this homecoming as a joyous alternative, it is at the same time a costly alternative. Just as the erstwhile slaves in the book of Exodus yearned to return to Pharaoh's Egypt and just as many Jews preferred life in Babylon, so the imaginative possibility among us for an alternative life in the world is not cheap. But to "go out in shalom" is a mantra that continues to ring in the ears of those gathered in the "local tradition" of Yahwism.  location 1873


life with YHWH. The latter is a life of free sustenance—no money, without price. The imperial alternative is labor that does not satisfy. The empire is always propelled by cheap labor. Because the empire provides neither material nor spiritual satisfaction to its laborers, the poet urges these workers to end their collusion with the empire.  location 2066


this text summons Christians to depart the rapacious selfindulgence and exploitation of the U.S. empire, even as we continue to value and affirm this geographical space as our home. I suggest in such contemporary usage three dimensions of departure that belong to a faithful hearing of the text: 1. The departure from empire is liturgical, that is, it is a symbolic, bodily performance of what leaving is like.  location 2122

The liturgy invites participants to recognize that we do not belong to empire and need not obey empire,  location 2129


The reiterated practice of liturgical departure has as its intent a psychological transformation.   location 2133


The distinctive sign of that theology of "letting go" is no doubt the Sabbath that seeks to disengage, by bodily practice, the self from the imperial ideology of production and consumption.  location 2141

one can imagine that the departure from the empire is fundamentally an economic one, a refusal to participate in the aggressive economy of accumulation with all its practices of credit and debt.  location 2144

modest steps along the way to such radicality may open our eyes to further possibilities; and one never knows where the liberating presence of YHWH may lead.   location 2147

the compelling power of empire makes regular, reiterative narrative performance of emancipation in liturgy indispensable. Loc 2157

Add a note
The capacity to utilize religious claims for the sake of political expansionism is a hallmark of empire. While Luther does not unpack the formula in that way, his use of the phrase "Babylonian captivity" rings true on that score. In empire—Babylon or any of its successors—everything is taken up in advancement for those who sit at the center of power.  location 2362

Empires are about money initially, amassing, leveraging. There is still a lot of it in some quarters, even after the collapse of much of it. The high end need not be restrained. Because the lines are still organized to deliver for the controllers who refuse socialism but in fact thrive on it . . . a free stadium, free use of taxpayer money for those who know how to access.   location 2428

see—in sequence—Babylon, Rome, and us, and then notice that empires never learn.   location 2439


The empire intends to erase all local tradition and all local belonging and all local gospel.   location 2504


There would be no "going home" from Persia, for everywhere Jews went, including back to Jerusalem, it was still Persia!   location 2592

there. The deportees still had to participate in the Babylonian economy. They still had to obey Babylonian laws, acknowledge Babylonian authority. After an orgy of radical rhetoric one must still "come to terms." And coming to terms required a different way in the world of empire.  location 2633


The different posture of Old Testament texts toward Babylon and toward Persia could hardly be more pronounced, even if the empires were in fact not that different. The dismissive polemics against Babylon have already been noted. Remarkably, there are no such explicit polemics against Persian rule in the Old Testament, not one.  location 2637


suggest then that the texts reflect the change from a selfunderstanding of exile-restoration to one of accommodationresistance. The change is to be understood in terms of the change of imperial overlords and a changed choice of rhetoric from confrontation to engagement. Above all, the change reflects the good sense of those more concerned with sustaining the life of the community than with being heroes.  location 2663

Daniel makes no concession to royal preeminence, but subordinates that arrogant imperial rule to the most elemental claim of the God of Sinai. It turns out, in this quick testimony, that mercy and righteousness—to the oppressed, no less!—is the wave of the future. Such a heavenly mandate violates and contradicts the most important passions of empire, for empires prosper primarily by exploiting the oppressed, transferring the wealth and well-being of the many to the few. The narrative ends with a moment of imperial sanity when even the great brutal empire can sing in Jewish cadences, almost as if converted:   location 2799

Note: sanity and conversion. a story then of successful spiritual direction towards a corporisation?

Given a food monopoly, Joseph, on behalf of Pharaoh, confiscates the land and the means of production of the peasants and reduces them to slavery (Genesis 47:19-26). The trajectory of Joseph's rise to power in Egypt has rightly been termed by Leon Kass the "Egyptianization" of Joseph: "Joseph uses his administrative authority to advance the despotic power of his master. Joseph's rise to full Egyptian power is, to say the least, highly problematic, both in itself and in its implications for the future of the Israelite way."Read more at location 2864


consideration of these four narratives indicates that Jews experienced a complex relationship with the empire, one that admitted of no single or simple solution. It is in any case clear that the shared assumption of these narratives is that we are remote from a model of exile and restoration. These characters are not going anywhere; they are not departing the Persian Empire. Rather, they must use their agility, shrewdness, and patience to come to terms with Persian power and mobilize that power to work for their own wellbeing.These narratives suggest a variety of modes of accommodation and defiance of empire. • Ezra and Nehemiah mange to harness the resources and authorizations of the empire for local initiative; their hidden script emboldens them to tell the truth about imperial exploitation. • Daniel, in his wisdom, moves from an initial act of disciplined defiance and exhibits enormous authority in rescuing the empire, having found ways both to defy and to instruct the empire. • Joseph, at the other extreme, embraces "Egyptianization" (or in context we may say "Persianization"), whereby his Jewish identity is radically submerged in the management of imperial power and resources. • Esther dares to exhibit her Jewish identity and wins over the empire to care for and protect her people. The common theme is boldness, daring, and imagination that are to be enacted in a variety of strategies. All of these narratives underscore the importance of intentionality in the local tradition, and refusal to forgo that identity, though the refusal is perforce sometimes understated and opaque.  location 2917

is a matter of editing the script of displacement; perhaps we may risk a slight revision of the famous "Serenity Prayer" commonly credited to Reinhold Niebuhr: Give me the dignity to accommodate, When accommodation is the only option; Give me the courage to resist, When identity depends upon it; Give me the wisdom to know when to resist and when to accommodate. I suggest a viable gospel posture amid empire.

Out of Babylon

Millennials leave church because

This resonated with me:

Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances.In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular.Why millennials are leaving the church – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

I'm not a millenial but my kids are and actually I feel these ways too. To me it suggests that we need to be careful about the 'presentational bent' of a lot of contemporary forms of church. It suggests to me that highly relational forms of church are to be commended.

But beyoond that it suggests that liturgies (and by that I mean ways of ordering our time together before God) would do well to take issue with consumerism implicitly and sometimes explicitly. Liturgies should perhaps subvert and poke fun at 'selling' and identity-formation-through-buying. They should celebrate and affirm people for being people not consumers and root that celebration and affirmation in the love of God.

New Evangelical Manifesto [5] A story to challenge us.

Steve Martin writes a chapter called Kingdom Community. He begins with an appreciation of the hard work and prayerful care of thousands of pastors and for the work of the Holy Spirit in the church down the ages. He tells of leaving the pastorate having discovered that he could not be prophetically challenging -concretely in finding himself unable to challenge the Iraq war though convinced of its wrongness. It is from what he interprets as a wilderness perspective that he writes.

I liked his candour here though I retain my caution having seen too many 'prophetic' voices pouring forth their own dyspepsia rather than  what seems to be an authentic word from God. That said, the humility Martin's writing seems to show makes me less suspicious than in some other cases.

In considering the 'community' dimension of the title, he mentions the things that one would expect, but then adds a conclusion that a church worthy of the name and calling would be one that produces at least a few people capable of living out the most challenging of Christ's teachings, for instance 'love your enemy'.

I warm to this in the sense that there is an implicit recognition that discipleship is something we grow in and into; that people enter into discipleship with varying backgrounds and predispositions to different aspects of discipleship. The danger of that is to let some off the hook that require the challenge -indeed the potential is there for people to duck challenge on the basis that someone else is doing it.

There follows a discussion of enemy love moving beyond the personal to the corporate: loving those designated enemies of our society. And this moves into a look at the parable of the sheep and the goats, noting along the way that churches are not good at risking ministries of justice while ministries of pastoral care are relatively uncontroversial. Yet the message of the parable is clear enough: God wants us to care for others; for the strong to care for the weak. Illustrating this he tells the story of Elisabeth Schmitz who stood up for Jewish people in Nazi Germany, concerned that the Church was failing to do or say anything. She protested against the Kristallnacht violence, and resigned from her job teaching history, declaring that she could no longer teach according to the Nazi curriculum. She went on to be involved in rescuing Jews from the regime. She loved those her State declared enemies -at great cost. She fulfilled the implied agenda of the parable of sheep and goats.

I loved this chapter because that's where it ends: not with a blueprint for a church, just a reminder that loving neighbours and enemies is a radical act and that our churches need to be incubators of people who can do this.

Amen.