Starting to think about Limitarianism

 I came across this article recently that explores something I'd recently begun thinking about. In part I was thinking about it because of recent conversations and also the persistent thought that there must be a limit to how much one can spend in a lifetime and perhaps that should inform a policy about how much one should accumulate.

“I contend,” Robeyns argues, “that for people who live in a society with a solid pension system, the ethical limit [on wealth] will be around 1 million pounds, dollars or euros per person.” 

This lines up with what I had started out thinking. Partly noting that when I was a kid, being a millionaire was a big thing. No-one was, as far as know /knew a billionaire. It seemed to me that multimillionaires had more than enough for a rather nice looking life in material terms.

A lot of people say: ‘I’ve been thinking this all my life.’ 

There is even some recognition among some of the ultra wealthy that something must change:

    Some, such as the Irish-American billionaire Chuck Feeney, who made his money from a monopoly of duty-free shops at airports, have enjoyed nothing so much as giving all their money away. Mackenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, has been shedding billions of her divorce settlement a year, on the basis that “she is giving it back to [society] where it came from”. Others, such as the entertainment heiress Abigail Disney, or the British-based group “Patriotic Millionaires”, are sympathetic to the fundamentals of Robeyns’s ideas, recognising that “policies that favour the richest are unsustainable”.

All of which reinforces my sense that perhaps we should be talking and thinking about this way more than we do. The thing that I'm most interested in at this point, is the reasons for proposing this and making sure we have a solid basis for making the proposal founded in ethically defensible insights. And I think this bit gets us started on that.

... the idea that any discussion of a limit to wealth must be born out of envy, for example; or that most seductive of all myths, that people somehow deserve the wealth (or poverty) of their lives – that multimillions are made mostly by hard work and talent, not by luck and vast inequalities of opportunity... Despite the fact that “trickle down” economics has long been discredited as an idea, we apparently remain in thrall to the mythology of “wealth creators”

So what sorts of principles would soundly and ethically undergird a limitarian set of policies? Taking the hints above into account. We'd need to have a good sense of 'desert' in relation to wealth 'creation' or accumulation. This would include considerations of 'luck' and social-positionality (aka. systemic factors relating to opportunity). I guess also that the vast multiples in relation to basic wages being gained by the very rich also need to be questioned in relation to the influence power that such wealth buys; it accumulates power because to a large degree wealth is power. In a democracy, we can't ignore this.

However, I think that there are some other fairly fundamental things to pay attention to. Most fundamental of all is to think about how wealth is created and distributed. Another story: when I started work at around 13 years old (part time, I think there was a maximum of 12 hours or so a week we could legally work because we were also at school) I began to think about why it was pay rates were so different. We were told  that a different shop further down the mall paid their workers much better (but then their prices were higher too). I became aware that the more senior one was, the more pay people got. But I wasn't entirely sure why. I had gained the impression that hard work was praiseworthy and so I had an idea that hard work ought to be better rewarded. 'Hard' work being work that was physically or mentally more tiring -and that would include longer hours. I came to appreciate that there may be a case for paying someone for responsibility, that is if they had to make decisions which could affect other people's well-being to some degree. I guess that would amount to a form of 'hard work' in terms of emotional labour -especially anxiety.

In the light of such musings, it does feel ridiculous that someone should be paid multiples of many thousands in relation to the lowest paid. It is hard to find some kind of justification in terms of hard work or even rewarding risk or innovation for such differentials. On the other hand, what it does seem that such differentials are 'rewarding' is the holding of power: power to set rates (whether by rent or positional/hierarchical means). However, power is not necessarily fair, and usually is not unless held to account. Obviously, this consideration of pay and reward, shades into thinking about monopolistic power in markets which is a helpful reference point, I suspect.

Relatedly, there is sometimes an argument made to pay higher rates to attract people to do jobs that might be hard to recruit for otherwise. But it seems to me that this manifestly does not work in the case of menial and dirty jobs which are often among the worst paid and I can't really see why a CEO is 'worth' so much more than a sewage worker. In fact, to me, by standards of hard work and slog it seems to me they may be the wrong way round in remuneration. Furthermore, in terms of the anxiety-labour mentioned above, it seems to me that in actual fact, many CEO's are being rewarded for not caring and are in fact rewarded for failure oftentimes: they "fall upward".

I've just sketched out my concerns about concerns regarding reward and pay. I think that a lot of differentials are actually about social and hierarchical power in a way that is fundamentally similar to the power of monopolies or oligopolies to be rate setters in a market. My concern going forward from here, is to consider what kind of basis there might be for limiting the pay and wealth of the richest. It seems to me that this most fundamentally requires a consideration of 'just' 'rewards'. This would also require us to think about what unjust rewards are and how they work -which I've begun to alight on in considering hierarchical power ("controlling the purse strings", in popular saying). 

It feels now like this is a kind of introduction. I think that I will try to develop some of these threads a bit further is subsequent posts rather than here.

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PS -as many blogs no longer link to an article or other web address at the title, I think that there's a danger that some readers may not be aware of this former custom that you can click on the title to be taken to the main post or article or page being commented on. In case that's so, the article quoted above at several points can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/21/how-much-personal-wealth-is-enough-ingrid-robeyns-limitarianism

Neighbour-love means pushing back against discrimination

Just to be clear that discrimination is a Christian issue -that is one which Christians should be concerned about and actively resisting. This research finding:

 "when an individual experiences discrimination, they report worse health and depression. ... -- this stress spills over and affects the health of their partner as well"

means that by the imperatives of loving neighbour, doing to others as we'd have them do to us, seeking the welfare of our society and even going second miles, we must actively work, speak and think against discrimination. We can't be loving our neighbour (etc) if we allow discrimination, fail to consider how we can push against it or how we can include and affirm others who are different. The research is showing clearly that discrimination causes actual harm to health. This isn't simply a matter of stiffupperlipping (a prescription usually applied to others, btw) but of serving others, seeking the good of others which is the least of what loving our neighbours means.

Just saying.

Discrimination harms your health, and your partner's, study shows -- ScienceDaily:

'via Blog this'

Are we seeing the start of a cultural shift in sexual mores?

I've been involved in a small group in my university of staff concerned about so-called 'lad culture'. I share the group with feminists and gay-rights activists. We talk a lot about issues of consent. It is recognised that sometimes women are the perpetrators of 'laddish' behaviour and men (hetero and homo) the victims. However, on that last point, we should note that it does seem that the biggest problem is men on women and where it goes in the other direction it is about an imitation of the worst behaviour and attitudes and as such is a cultural reflex; a kind of equality gone bad.

In a piece advocating a zero tolerance approach to sex with minors, an interesting further dimension arises, foregrounding issues of consent and wider cultural attitudes to sex which set a context for abusive actions:

It’s like drink-driving. Decades of relativism on that issue were probably fair to nice folk who were driving home after a glass or two and meant no harm. But a lot of people died. So now we have an absolutist approach and a lot of mildly tipsy drivers have been very harshly punished – perhaps unfairly in the immediate, individual sense – but far fewer people die. No, Adam Johnson, child abuse is not a grey area | Victoria Coren Mitchell | Opinion | The Guardian

For a while now I've ben wondering whether this is laying foundations for a very different sort of social contract around sexual behaviour than has been around since the mid 20th century. Here's why I'm wondering that.

It seems to me that a great deal of the 'sexual revolution' has been on terms formed by patriarchy: presumed female compliance and male rights (often grounded in a 'might is right' sensibility) with an ethic rooted in a walk-away attitude which recognises very little emotional entail. This background, I suggest, meant that the sexual revolution was conducted largely on patriarchal terms in many ways. And Christian ethics on the matter were caught in a double bind of having been associated with a quasi-Gnostic attitude towards matter and body and so simply pleasure-denying -and hypocritically so- on the one hand. And on the other hand, it had been stated and explained through a cultural lens inextricably bound up with patriarchal assumptions and attitudes albeit ones that forked from the more libertine versions of patriarchy.

But, what I think we may be seeing in the world outside of the the churches and other religious sub-cultures, is a problematising of presumed sexual liberties. What I mean by this is that the recognition of not just physical coercion but also psychological coercion and grooming begins to erode the presumption of consent until it is fairly obvious and explicit. In time this constructs a degree of hesitancy about the idea of sexual intercourse early in a relationship particularly where drink or drugs may have been involved.

And in another cultural strand, we have a recognition of the profound psychological impact of assault and particularly of unconsented sexual contacts of all kinds (verbal, touching or violent). Such recognition is partly related to issues of psycho-somatic unity drawn from the discoveries and implications of scientific research and treatment of the aftereffects of abuse and a growing realisation about the mechanisms of grooming, priming etc. In conjunction with a rightful concern for the vulnerable and more careful thinking at institutional levels (and thus in terms of training in workplaces etc) about rights, equality and diversity, there is a fuller cultural groundswell towards care and caution in matters of sexual expression, I think.

To be sure this is not the same as a former 'Christian' sensibility based in "sex only within marriage" (contaminated as it was by ideas of property and male supremacy /female incompetency). However, it is nevertheless an ethic based on consent, care and awareness of vulnerability and consequences.

Christian sexual ethics need to be rethought and restated against this background.  Much groundwork for this has actually been done (I think of the work of Jack Dominion, for example) but I think that Evangelicals probably need to re-examine the presumed interpretations rooted in Genesis 1 and 2 and a handful of NT texts.

That's as far as I've got with that, really at the moment. I would be interested in comments that help push the ideas above forward or at least engage with them constructively. I'm not so interested in restatements of the 'traditional' positions: I know them well, want to keep faith with the best intents and insights of them but I want also to tackle whether the cultural matrix for interpreting sexual mores is changing in the kind of way I'm trying to sketch above and whether Christian theology can engage the positive aspects of the changes in an open and yet critical manner.

Churchgoers keeping quiet on gay marriage

It's an interesting little window that this opens up into British Christianity. At first I was not sure whether the results of the survey were indicating that of the c.50% who held more 'liberal' views, 38% were quiet about it or whether it was 38% of the total surveyed Somehow the former seemed more likely. However, this paragraph in the report seems to indicate the latter.

A survey of worshippers across the main denominations, found that Christians were effectively evenly split on whether same-sex relationships should be considered sinful.But 38 per cent of those polled said that they believe churches should accept and affirm same-sex relationships but are reluctant to say so openly. Churchgoers keeping liberal views on homosexuality ‘secret’ - Telegraph

Now, what I find interesting is the implications about church life because 38% is a big proportion when we are considering something like feeling unable to express views. But when I think about it I can understand, I suspect, the dynamics. It's probably a bit like what I hear some Muslims saying about expressing less conservative views in Mosque influenced communities. That they feel that the religious discourse space is owned by the conservatives and that they do not feel sufficiently empowered religiously to gainsay the official statements. Perhaps because they don't have a sense that they may be more than a small minority allied with the sense that the tradition seems to favour the conservative interpretations and that those who hold those interpretations hold the influential positions by virtue of having been through the system and in position because they are entrusted with it.

I've also been inside systems where a particular line has been dominant and where it is difficult to speak a different perspective. Those who are already in positions of respect and trust by dismissing or even ridiculing, or perhaps even aggressing against 'unsound' opinions and maybe even people. This is a very strong signal to others in the community to discount or even take ostracisitive actions. This means that at the very least the ideas are discounted and quarantined and those holding them are dismissed or even ridiculed. All of which functions as a fairly effective social control.

The worrying thing, of course, is that it inoculates dominant perspective holders from considering issues that may actually be helpful for them in the longer term (whether or not they end up agreeing). All of this can be seen in the way that Steve Chalke was responded to by Evangelicals when he announced that he now considered that Scripture was not against committed lifelong-intended homophile sexual partnership. The gatekeepers of soundness denounced him and others picked up or reinforced this dismissal. Very few actually offered arguments that properly engaged with Chalke's arguments, many reiterated arguments which Chalke had shown to be less than conclusive.

All of which makes me wonder about whether we can work, as churches, on better ways of disagreeing. It seems to me that derision, abuse, dismissal and ostracism of people who disagree is not loving our neighbour as ourselves. I can scarcely think it possible that any of us, finding ourselves wishing -even compelled- to express a minority viewpoint or disruptive idea would want to be on the receiving end of the disdain or outright abuse that Steve Chalke saw (and I saw directed at him on Twitter and Facebook). And the consequence of that observation is that if we wouldn't want that ourselves, why do we think we have a right to pass it on to others?

More, we should ask ourselves how we would like to be treated given that we could be wrong: how should those who disagree correct us? Well, isn't that the way we should offer to correct others? All of which says that churches should be communities where we disagree humanely, with a desire for the good of the other and with a teachable humility because we could ourselves have something to learn. The 38% who don't feel able to say what they think are a testimony to us as churches that we still have a way to go on this.

Pan, Hook and innocent cruelty

In this the panto season in Britain, a post involving a play that is often put on as part of a pantomime season offering may be apposite. I have a number of memories from early childhood  and quite a few from what I think of as mid-childhood (roughly primary school age). One of these was shaken loose by this article about Peter Pan in which early on we are told:

... the Boy Who Won’t Grow Up is—in actuality—a terrifying protagonist .Peter Pan’s “Greatest Pretend” is Heroism | Tor.com

It reminded my of my first reaction to the Peter Pan story when it was read at school in class (you know, that carpet time thing at the end of the day). I recall actually not liking Peter Pan very much. I remember thinking that he reminded me of school bullies: that sense of what I would now label 'entitlement', being full of himself and the carelessness for others. It all just seemed to me that the kind of characteristics I was, in most other parts of my life, being encouraged to emulate were spectacularly absent from this boy's character, not even in embryo were they there nor was this a story of a journey to wisdom on his part. And worse, this lionising of Pan seemed to be empowering to the attitudes of those who swaggered around the playground and the classroom assuming that if they could take it, it was theirs and if anyone objected, we were to be agressed into line.

Now I've got that flashback of my chest ...

The article linked to reminds us how never Neverland is some kind of virtual world (programmed by Tinkerbel who seems to be of a piece with Pan's negligent insouciance) with Pan at the centre.

Peter Pan is lord dictator of Neverland. His word is law. His adventures take precedence. His desires are paramount. Super fun as an avatar for any child, but what about everyone else who occupies space, who breathes Neverland’s air? What happens to the indians, the Lost Boys, the pirates? They are only relevant in terms of how they play into Peter’s story.

So in some way, fair enough: if it's his 'party' then he can be the centre of it. Note, though, there's an interesting Christological counterpoint we could explore on the back of this.

Not only, though, is he dictator; he is a kind of pagan god (I had to say it that way because I was intrigued as a child by his apparent naming for the Greek mythological god of woodlands).

Barrie states—in no uncertain rhetoric—that when the Lost Boys get too numerous, Peter Pan thins out the herd. ... . And we have to assume that he either deliberately leads them into danger, or that he does the deed himself.

Perhaps apt for a character who shares a name with a woodland god: a survival of some version of the fittest -fittest in this case to capture and hold Pan's interest. It really does feel like a version of a pagan sprite or deva has been narrated into this tale.

Again it is hard to avoid thinking of the this god's carelessness in contrast to another Centre of the/a world who self-empties and submits to death rather than condemning others to it and in order to bring life to those others.

So I found this piece somehow affirming of my 7 year-old self's distrust of Peter Pan. interestingly it was because, at that age, I was taking a view from the margins, from the point of view, more in a sense, of the lost boys who outlive their usefulness to Peter Pan and are 'thinned out' of the herd: I knew what it was like to be one of those.

So it is worrying to realise that this is still the world we live in. Emily Asher-Perrin, who wrote the article makes a good point (and I defer to her as she studies Barrie's Peter Pan as a life project, and I don't). I think it is right that what I was as a junior-school child reacting to was the heartlessness of Pan. Dimly aware that something was wrong about it. In this case, we are invited to consider ...

as Barrie states, Pan will always come back to steal our runaways and
lost boys, and will continue to do so as long as children are “Innocent
and heartless.” The genius of Pan’s tale, is that innocence does not automatically denote goodness. Instead, it makes a child’s lack of experience a very frightening thing after all.

it is that important point: innocence does not necessarily mean goodness. Not only children, but animals are innocent. However, the levels of what we would consider cruelty, exploitation and bullying in primate bands, for example, are horrific by our standards. 'Frightening' might be the right sort of term. indeed. But it is the discomfort of the fact that we are considering human children not chimpanzees.

But there's a further discomfort. In part we can see this played out in the film Hook (which I think is brilliant in many ways). Where we meet what turns out to be a grown-up Peter Pan who has been lured back into the grown up world by love. (In this context, this is an interesting reflection in itself: the way into goodness is through love). This Peter Panning (as he becomes) makes his living by mergers and acquisitions -as 'granny' Wendy says, he has become a pirate. But in this case, it is the grown-up who has become hardened against the simple delights of love and joyfulness who needs to discover the innocence of delight and, actually to rediscover the love of and for his own children. But the interest is in how the man mirrors the carelessness of the Pan though in this case by being lured into 'piracy' -a macho, game-playing, status-seeking heedlessness of human costs. So this discomfort, I'm saying, isn't about the cruel innocence of children but the fact that the selfish cruelty runs through into adulthood.


And there's a question as to how far it is right. I'm not convinced by this innocent lack of goodness. I think, theologically, I'm committed to the insight that goodness is basic and evil is dependent on, parasitic even, on goodness. There can be goodness without evil but no evil without goodness. Evil is always derived from, a twisting or negation of what is good. This is rooted, for me in the Genesis declaration, which the early church understood to rule out gnostic attitudes to the material world, that "It is good". So I'm suspicious of something that appears to see 'good' (and by implication 'evil') as human impositions on a 'neutral' cosmos.

But is that what the phrase 'innocent but cruel' implies? The word 'cruel' seems to be about a lack of kindness or love, well more than lack; in fact, will to harm or hurt. 'Innocent' however, seems to be about not having a will to wrong. So I'm wondering whether 'innocent cruelty' is not an oxymoron. But of course, the words attributed to Barrie are "innocent but heartless". So the question is about whether heartlessness is evil, in truth.  I've translated 'heartless' as careless and cruel, above. Is that fair?  Well, to me 'heartless' seems to mean something like 'lacking empathy' on the basis that 'having a heart' seems to mean being kind, understanding feelings or in some way having empathy. Not having a heart seems to involve being, to some degree, cruel. So I think that these are words sharing a huge amount of semantic overlap. However, I wonder whether cruelty has connotations of deliberate intention of harm whereas heartlessness has the same connotation: could it mean ignorant harmfulness?

All of which, to me, indicates that in Barrie's estimation, children lack empathy or fail to understand others' feeling and are unkind. But could that unkindness stem from simple inability to understand others' feelings and to have empathy. So, is their innocence, in fact, not having yet developed the capability to be empathic? But if so, then I'm not convinced: child development studies indicate children mirroring and matching emotions with those around them, particularly those with whom they share bonds. -Perhaps that is it: the heartlessness comes from not sharing bonds or not having developed them. If that is so, then the difficulty is one of failing to extend the circle of sympathy, perhaps of even refusing to. There may be a degree of willed carelessness arising from an inarticulate understanding that to do so would mean giving up the advantages that their 'lordship' can confer. Such power over others requires the cultivation of heartlessness, learning to suppress or evade sympathy. And perhaps this is what name-calling is about: a distancing mechanism; framing the other in a way that rules out empathy by emphasising distance and making difference a cause for repugnance.

So, it's not so much that children are innocent but cruel as that their (actually 'our') emergence from innocence involves distancing and suppression of empathy. Of course, this is why love of God and of neighbour is a cardinal virtue in many spiritual paths: it is not so much an attempt to restore innocence as to weigh against the creeping distancing and growing repugnance. Peter Pan is not testimony to innocent cruelty but to the loss of empathy and acquisition of the attitudes of objectifying others which allows us to instrumentalise them and even to justify cruelty.

I can't, however, leave it there. One of the other memories shaken loose by this article was that, having got over my dislike of the heartless Pan, I did manage to identify with one aspect of his character: the love of action-adventure. And it is here that I think that Pan's appeal to us really resides. When I watch my nephews playing rough and tumble, when I remember my own children doing the same and when I think about my own childhood, then I realise that it is the exuberance of physical movement and of pitting yourself against something that draws out your abilities particularly when it puts you in a story where you are winning the acclaim of others perhaps by rescuing them or winning a prize for them. (Of course the story may be one that justifies distancing, repugnance and cruelty). So where Pan scores for us as story is identifying with the sheer joy of physical expression and the excitement of deeds of daring-do, especially when these can be framed as the heroism of the smaller or weaker standing up to and defeating the mighty (Pan the child with a knife against the adult Hook wielding a sword). (Again, interesting to note a resonance with a gospel theme here). I guess this further illustrates, in fact, how evil is parasitic on the good.

There is something in this that resonates with the Biblical theme of growing in wisdom, perhaps.But that is an exploration for another post, perhaps.

Why investigations into MPs shouldn't be in secret

It is being proposed that when an MP is accused of something like fiddling their expenses, the investigation should be in secret. My email to the committee ...

The MPs expenses scandal in 2009 contributed to a significant erosion of trust in MPs. It does seem to me that holding investigations in secret does nothing to help address the issues of public confidence. Quite the reverse; it reinforces a sense of a closed shop and a refusal of accountability. As such it seems to lack an awareness that MPs expenses are ultimately tax-payers' money for what are meant to be public servants accountable to the electorate.

While I am sympathetic to issues of reputation should an accusation of impropriety prove to be ill founded or even malicious, it seems to me that such accusations are unlikely to have been made privately and having a degree of openness about them is likely to build public confidence and help to clear the name of the innocent. A secret process, on the other hand is likely to give rise to suspicions of a cover up and leave a question mark in the public mind about any acquittal.

Let's not let guys off the hook about porn

While I deplore that women have had photos of themselves in compromising situations or vast undress distributed freely without their consent, I am really, on reflection, a bit concerned about this:

I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you.Jennifer Lawrence on nude photo hacking: 'It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting' - People - News - The Independent:

What I find  disturbing is the apparent acceptance that her boyfriend would consume porn when away from her, and that somehow this is to be expected and not censured to some degree.

First of all I'm disturbed because it buys into a view of male sexuality which is both demeaning and also potentially dangerous. Demeaning because it implies that men are not able to say no to porn. Newsflash: men are able to say no and to avoid it, on the whole. Honestly, it's true. Part of the problem may be that men have been given a free pass on this.

There is research indicating that a number of men are ruining their  ability to respond well sexually because they are rewiring their responses via porn in ways that are not conducive to good relations with potential partners. If that is so (and it makes sense as well as being indicated in research), then women who are partners should be discouraging their boyfriends, lovers, partners, husbands from porn not accepting it. Personally, I can't really see how it isn't a kind of mental-affective adultery, and all the worse because it's not even in a relational and affectionate context. And it seems to me that Ms Lawrence's response is recognising that: she'd rather he looked at her image than some other woman's).

I think that this is an important point: it looks to me (and I have to admit that I have no real insider insight on this) like it is contributing to the objectifying women by making such objectification virtually inevitable.

And that is why it is dangerous: it seems to me that the use of porn is helping to construct a set of attitudes that make it more likely that women are going to be viewed as mainly bodies to be penetrated than as friends or colleagues.

Men can and do learn continence of gaze and thought.  When we are motivated by beliefs and affections that emphasise respect, faithfulness and mutuality between people of all genders, men are able to grow into gentlemen in the best sense. I have deliberately chosen a slightly old fashioned term there because I think that we have been underrating the virtues at the heart of being a gentleman: consideration of others, a spirit of service and of self-restraint for the greater and common good. These are virtues that sit ill with the consumption of porn when it is understood in its wider context.

So I appeal to Ms Lawrence and others; don't let the men get away with it, don't collude in the myth of unavoidable lust. It demeans men to pretend that we cannot control our urges -though God knows, so many men collude in their own demeaning. It doesn't have to be so..

Social media killing off quiet reflection?

It's possible that I'm about to disagree with Justin Welby -though mostly it's a disagreement with the Torygraph's headline (Social media killing off quiet reflection, says Justin Welby ) and soundbite reporting a recent speech of his.

 “Instant reaction has replaced reflective comment.

“That is a reality that you deal with in politics and it demands a new reality of ways in which we accept one another, love each other, pray for each other.

“The best answer to a complex issue … is not always given in 140 characters.



Basically, it looks to me like the Torygraph headline writer is seeking to build and feed something of a moral panic about twitter by co-opting 'the church' into a 'modern life /social media is rubbish (things were better in the old days)' trope.  The effect of that kind of contextualising is to psychologically elide Justin's caveat phrase 'not always given in ...'



My response to this kind of trope is to recall that we human beings have always (I suspect ever since we have been able to have conversations) struggled with immediate reactions, over-simplification on the one hand and on the other hand trying to encourage more considered and generous responses. From one point of view, Twitter is just a further medium for this age-old bifurcation of response. Now, admittedly, the brevity does make it easy to offend -but then in many an animated conversation we are reacting quickly and offense is easily given and taken (and sometimes apologies and explanations are given -which can happen in tweeted exchanges too). Nor are printed media proof against cavalier dismissals and gross oversimplifications. What Twitter can do positively is to give the possibility of an extended dialogue of short interventions in which people could, over time, explore more thoroughly some issue. I've been part of many a conversation verbally and even on newsgroups (remember them?) where instant brief reactions have given way to longer discussions -sometimes thoughtful and sometimes intemperate: both of which can happen on Twitter.



it is true that 140 characters make nuance difficult (in one tweet at least), but we should observe what actually happens when twitter is used for discussions or arguments involving more depth and breadth of topic: people give hyperlinks to blog posts, articles etc and briefly state why they think it is important/helpful etc. Tweets then come to act as a kind of newspaper headline drawing attention to the content they head up.



So we should be wary of essentialising Twitter as if it is only 140 characters and that we have only come up with one usage for it. It is, in fact, part of an evolving media ecology. Part of the evolution is in the way it references, contains and is contained by other media. Another part of the ongoing development is of the social dance of developing mores and conventions: what counts as polite and rude and so forth.



At base we have human beings trying to communicate for a variety of reasons with a range of imagined and actual audiences. Human beings who are very adept in the aggregate at making communication work well enough within the constraints of bandwidth, signal noise and contextual meanings. One tweet does not a conversation end; we should not judge the medium by static standards but rather take it in as a dynamic of human communication and observe how people actually overcome the constraints -such as the brevity of 140 characters in the face of the desire to communicate a whole lot more.



in fact, what I think is most important about that bit of +Justin's speech is the call for generosity -charity- of interpretation given that widespread messaging is possible. In effect, is this not a call for us to see past the possible elisions and misunderstandings of short messages and to engage with open-heartedness with the possibility that there is a whole hinterland of understanding and perspective by human beings who are, in many ways, very like ourselves. Can we not exercise generosity by asking for further information and seeing through the exchange to an end in greater mutual understanding? That too is possible via Twitter.



Is this not the age-old challenge of communication?

The Fall of Oxytocin the so-called 'love hormone'

After reading stuff that eulogises oxytocin as the creator of empathy and interpersonal love and so the chemical equivalent of 'all you need is love'. The simplistic equation of something that chemically promotes good feelings towards others with moral behaviour was always due to hit the buffers of human realities. And so ... ta da ...

Oxytocin, 'love hormone,' promotes group lying, according to researchers -- ScienceDaily: oxytocin caused participants to lie more to benefit their groups, and to do so more quickly and without expectation of reciprocal dishonesty from their group.

Now, I have to admit I was disposed to see this coming and had even thought it would probably be at this level: something that promotes group solidarity does not necessarily promote inter-group solidarity and could even help solidify a group in rivalry or enmity to another. In other words the 'dark' side is to create the possibility of an out-group which could be an enemy. And so, it would seem, it is.


The disposition to see this coming comes from an appreciation of one way to think about 'total depravity' which can be understood to be saying that there is no dimension of human being that is untouchable by sin -or that there is no human faculty that is automatically free from sin: if there's a way to do wrong; someone somewhere will find it. This is not, of course, the same as saying that everyone is fully 'evil'.



So even the 'love hormone' is capable of being corrupted and become a tool for wrongdoing. Human solidarity is good, but vulnerable to misdirection. A clear understanding of corporisations, the 'Powers', reminds us of that.

Prepare kids to be billionaires?

I get updates of questions from Quora -they are often interesting questions and sometimes the answers are knockout. I found that this question What are good ways to prepare my kids to be billionaires? And it stuck with me. i must confess that some of it was because I was really disturbed by it. I bespoke unaware entitlement (though I may be wrong) and a load of assumptions that really need unpicking.



So I found myself commenting:

Bigger questions: why would you think they would become billionaires?
And what is it about being a billionaire that you covet (for them)? Why
is that the measure of whether you have helped bring a wonderful human
being into the world?



I ask these further question because there are 7bn people on the planet.
Millions of them have the qualities necessary but only a very small
amount of the total potential billionaires have actually achieved that
potential. Why? -we should perhaps recognise that it is mostly good
fortune that makes a billionaire: the good fortune to have social,
financial and political capital that can be leveraged and to be in the
right place at the right time.



Our problem is confirmation bias -we see the already successful but
discount their failures on the way and see them as if their 'success'
was inevitable. We *don't* see the thousands just as 'worthy' who happen
not to have had the happy combination of factors come together for
them. To prepare kids to be billionaires they have to be prepared not to
be: to fail: character  such as humility , empathy, no sense of
entitlement, generosity etc are never going to go wrong.



Also, why would you think that your own efforts to hothouse your
children might not backfire? Better to put more effort into making the
world one where more of the billions can be heirs to a better chance to
make more than a dollar a day. In building a world like that we make a
safer world for all our children.

 What I didn't write because I thought it was even more likely to draw trolls was that, in fact, too often billionaires become rentiers and end up in rent-seeking behaviour; in effect by occupying certain critical/strategic positions in the political-economic complex they accrue money for doing, in actuality, nothing and they accrue money by denuding others of opportunity or  even the means of proper livelihood. To prepare a child to be a billionaire -even if this were a sure thing- must, morally, surely, involve helping them to recognise that they would have huge debts to society and good fortune which should be given back (I'm not saying they don't have some kind of right to enjoy the fruits of their genuine labours). That no-one actually needs (or really deserves) that amount of money and that holding onto it is actually clinging to power to continue to exploit without work or effort -'rent seeking behaviour'.



The obverse of this is to think more about the normal fact of life for 'successful' entrepreneurs: failure is rife before, for a small percentage of them, they get a big break. Commonly this may involve 'betting the farm' on something: it's about risk. So, if we want a society where people can have a go at 'making it big' we need to make sure we have a society which looks out for the losers (some of whom may become 'winners' one day): we need 'safety nets' and the means to put people back on their feet -because not everyone can be billionaires -or the inflation would make the 'admiration' connoted in the term obsolete.



(2) What are good ways to prepare my kids to be billionaires? - Quora:

Should we judge people of past eras for moral failings?

Whether it's to do with governments or organisations apologising for misdemeaners of previous eras, or debates about the moral record of  churches or other relgious organisations (for example -is God immoral to have got Mary pregnant at age 13 -if that particular speculation were to be correct?). So this article has a number of things worth thinking about. First up commenting on the idea that we can't judge people of other cultures or times:

 The philosopher Miranda Fricker is not a moral relativist, but she thinks the test for blameworthiness is whether the person could have known any different. "The proper standards by which to judge people are the best standards that were available to them at the time".BBC News - Should we judge people of past eras for moral failings?

 Now I think there's something to that, but on the face of it, it doesn't get us out of the hole. 'Best standards available' sounds fair enough but is actually a hostage to interpretation of 'best'. Who defines best? Is that not simply re-immersing us in the problem we started off with? - Best standards in 1700's in Europe seemed to be that slave-holding was fine provided they were treated well. There were people arguing slavery was simply wrong, but how were people of that age to know that we, their descendants, would consider that the 'best' position? After all, it was considered that the humane slavery argued for was a civilising institution for primitive people whose lives were being improved by being slaves. A position not dissimilar from the arguments for apartheid, interestingly. It's obvious to us now what the best standards were/are but I'm not convinced that it is obvious within the situation. As the article says at the end:

just as we judge Kant's century, and identify its moral defects, so it is inevitable that the people of the 23rd Century will detect flaws in ours, the 21st.
What might these flaws be? Our treatment of the environment? Our tolerance of poverty?
... the way that we, in the early part of the 21st Century, still treat animals.

 There's a really helpful perspective discussed in the article involving distinguishing between blame and responsibility using an idea called 'moral luck'.

20th Century British philosopher, Bernard Williams, tried to tease apart a distinction between blame and responsibility. He did so by writing about what he called "moral luck".

Take the following example. Imagine that while a lorry driver is on the road a child suddenly runs out in front of him. Through tragic bad luck the child is hit by the vehicle and dies.

The man is blameless, for the accident has happened through no fault of his. In this sense he has nothing to reproach himself for, and has done nothing wrong. And yet, writes Williams, surely this man is now enmeshed in a set of moral responsibilities that, for example, a bystander, who is equally blameless, is not. It makes a moral difference that it was him at the wheel. As the driver, he might have an obligation to meet the parents or attend the funeral

 This in turn helps us to think about whether and how corporate entities might be blameworthy or responsible and, in a sense, whether they can let alone should apologise for past wrongs. So ...

[Australian] Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who finally made the formal apology on behalf of the state in 2008, against the wishes of a significant minority of the Australian people. Here is an example where, arguably, the current state might be blameless, yet somehow responsible

 It seems to be an emerging consensus that institutions and organisations can be held responsible as corporates even if the individuals involved are now different.

"It seems to me to be a measure of civilisation that our institutions have full accountability, in much the way that individuals do," says Fricker. "An apology is an incredibly important act that our institutions should increasingly become capable of - people who have been wronged by the state are owed an apology by the state, even if the individuals in government are different from those at the time."

 What needs to be done beyond this, of course, is to weigh up the responsibility and blameworthiness of individuals concerned. How far are some people caught up in corporate wrongdoing blameworthy or responsible. Are they more like the lorry-driver mentioned above or a drunk-driver or even some other position on a scale of blame and responsibility.

Monogamy evolution -providential ethics

Around a quarter of primate species practice monogamy, suggesting that there is a biological background to it. Now, of course, if it was totally driven by instinct it wouldn't be a moral question. So, I'm suggesting, the combination of biological drivers and some moral reasoning based on big ethical themes gives quite a strong case for preferring it. Here's the report in NS:

Suckling infants are most likely to be killed by unrelated males, in order to bring the mother back into ovulation. With pair-bonding in place, not only would a mother have a male to help protect the infant from marauding males, but there would then be the opportunity for the male to help care for it by providing extra resources. This means the infant can be weaned earlier, again reducing the chance of it being killed.  Monogamy evolved to keep baby-killers away - life - 30 July 2013 - New Scientist

As I read that I was put in mind of one of the insights that shows up in the debate on marriage and divorce: the position of women in pre-modern society was (and often still is, actually) somewhat precarious economically without adult men in the household and a recently unmarried woman's difficulties were multiplied. Thus it can be argued that a strong reason for not making divorce easy is to protect women and to discourage a disposible attitude towards them.

It seems to me that the 'protecting baby' matter bringing about monogamy (though mechanisms are hazy but presumably relating to infant survival rates for faithful fathers) has a similar sort of feel to it. There are sensible reasons why, in general terms, it's a good idea. We should note, too, that the evolutionary basis to this would suggest that there is a certain 'built-in-ness' about this (which may apply to the drive towards faithfulness too). However, as creatures able to reflect and create meanings and act differently as a result, quasi-instinctual drives can be overruled. And so that leaves open at that point the question about the ethical meaning of such a discovery/hypothesis.

I think that this is where we need care, of course. The long-established principle of moral reasoning is that you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. In other words just because things are a particular way doesn't make it right. We can see this working out in different ways from two examples. On the one hand the 'is' of a homophile orientation doesn't of itself say anything one way or another about the rightness of various homosexual acts or arrangements. On the other hand, the 'is' of feeling attraction to another person's spouse does not make an 'ought' to act on it. Or to take a different arena: it is the case that the strong exploit the weak, however this 'is' does not imply that they ought to do so: might does not make right of necessity. The 'is' of violent feelings does not make an 'ought' to murder.

So, does an evolutionary reason for monagamy translate into any kind of ethical steer?  Clearly not directly.However, the question remains in such a case of whether it is an 'is' we should go with, resist or think about carefully. I'm intrigued by the idea that such a thing might have evolved in order to protect babies and probably to support and protect their mothers. This opens the possibility that such behaviour generalised actually makes for a society in which grief and anxiety are minimised and so socially-cohesive behaviours fueled by healthful emotional states predominate. Basically a utilitarian perspective there.

If God is in some sense community where love, joy and shalom are characteristic then utilitarian perspectives deserve some consideration. If God desires the welfare of creation, a utilitarian approach is part of what should be considered. That being so, if the created order has, providentially, structures built in that tend towards the well-being and happiness of humans, we should take them seriously as clues to properly moral behaviour.

I would point up 'tend towards' in the last sentence: we need to note that this is 'aggregate ethics', that is something like Kant's (and Sartre's) universalisability argument. However, we should recognise that aggregates may not serve individuals in some cases and may even tyranically bear down and harm some if the 'norm' is made into a universal 'must'.

So does the evolutionarily-explicable tendency towards monogamy give any clues as to whether there are reasons to be wary of an aggregate-norm becoming universal-rules tyranny? Well, the putative reason of protection for child and mother would seem to offer the basis for a trump-card: if monogamy was bad for either or both, there may be reason to resist universal application and an insastance on faithfulness. This seems to be where we have got to in a lot of reasoning about such things: that protecting the welfare of vulnerable parties is reason to disolve a marriage.

I don't think that this is deriving an 'ought' from an 'is'. I think that it is treating the 'is' as having a providential dimension to it which is potentially a clue or a supporting reason for a general or aggregate ethic. Perhaps this is close to being a 'natural law' position but not entirely so. it doesn't absolutise the 'natural' state and in this case the providential approach (that is seeing a potentiall providentiality in the way some things have come to be) is not so much an argument as a way into a perspective to help uncover reasons for decisions or approaches. You'll note, of course, that I combined the evolutionary theory with a theological perspective. I think that this is probably the only way to try to ground a providential argument to be able to shift it from a simple 'is' into some kind of 'ought' in however weak or nuance-needing a way.

Perhaps I should freely confess that I've not made ethics a big part of my studies, so please forgive any naiveties in this. I'd be happy to have some gentle pointers to assessing the kind of approach I'm outlining -or even some cross referencing.

Did my moral compass just become demagnetised?

 I've been watching Continuum and finding it fascinating. The brain-bending to do with whether the future can be changed, the sci-fi fun with tech. But the more I watch, the more it seems I gain sympathy with those who are being presented as the 'baddies' and feel that the character presented as the heroine (Keira) may not be a goody. One of the viewer comments says it well:

 Should the viewers really like Kiera and what she stands for ? Do you honestly have no problems with the future she comes from and which she uncompromisingly defends ? She reminds me of Gestapo officer. They also had families they loved, feelings like Kiera, friends/family members who got killed by rebels (Kiera mentioned this as a justification) but they stand for something utterly wrong like Kiera does. And until now I have not seen Kiera doubt that fascist dictatorship, she defends so much, one little bit. .... Liber8 stands for the right cause but they try to achieve their goals with the wrong means.Kiera and her background does not get m... - IMDb:

 From about episond two or three I've been thinking that the ideals of the group Liber8 seem more aligned with mine -apart from blowing people up: undermining and working against corporate interests that seem to be content, over the arc of the future we catch glimpses of, to trample on people's rights and to exploit people unmercifully. The more it goes on, the more it looks like Keira is simply defending her chance to get back to the life she once knew. We have been taken through the story in such a way as to be sympathetic to that. But what of those for whom the future seems to be one of brutality and tyranny where a corporate-led big-brother society dominates. Keira seems to have been 'fortunate' to have been able to be on the side of money which gives her a personal and family stake in the system as it is/will be but what I'm seeing suggests that perhaps there's a further development perhaps as we realise that the comment above likening Keira to a Gestapo officer may be on the mark. But we'll see.

We've just been seeing an episode where debt is used to enslave people who are set to work on production lines having had their minds removed in effect by the implantation of a sub-dermal chip. Somehow the 'baddies' don't look so bad and the 'goody' seems to be defending the real baddies.

Why is gay sex biblically condemned? Not your usual answer ...

I was wondering what I was going to read when Matt Stone drew attention to this article by  Nigel Chapman
Gay Sex for Evangelicals - Chapman-2013_Gay-Sex-For-Evangelicals_v1-4_26-April_final.pdf: I thought it might be a simple restatement of what is currently the usual evangelical stuff on the issue, but as it was Matt, I wondered. Have a look, but if you want a sense of why,

 To answer my starting question: Why is gay sex biblically condemned? Because it is profoundly abhorrent and immoral in the cases which scripture addresses, and for the reasons which it gives. But as Romans 1 makes clear, the case we must address is different. When the reasons that establish immorality and abhorrence in the biblical cases are applied to permanent and involuntary same-sex attraction (orientation) and faithful and monogamous same-sex unions (gay
marriage), then we see a clear and clarifying pattern: the reasons that condemn do not apply, and
the reasons that apply do not condemn. Biblically, this case is not the good but unattainable ideal. But just as biblically, it’s not a moral evil. We should stop treating it like one

  It doesn't deal with the argument drawn from Genesis 1 and 2 but others have done that. See here. Also commend this book for a closer examination of the other exegetical issues.

Have people stopped singing in church?

Now this is USAmerican by context, but relates to a phenomemon that 'New Churches' in GBlighty probably share; certainly I can see the like in churches I've been visiting in the last year or so. The blog post linked to is also one focussing on men in church so the issue presented is Why men have stopped singing in church: but it is probably wider than men, and in fact the matter is framed first in terms of 'people'.

It starts from an informal observation that people, including men, have stopped singing. It offers a few possible reasons, the most important being this:

 Songs get switched out so frequently today that it’s impossible to learn them. People can’t sing songs they’ve never heard. And with no musical notes to follow, how is a person supposed to pick up the tune?

 The follow-on point is that this reduces participation and that this is a bad thing.
I think that the lack of participation is a point of concern, and agree that this might be so especially in relation to men. However, I think also that the un-learnt-ness of the songs may not be quite as big an issue as suggested. 

In my experience of a few band-led services in different churches over the last year or so, I have been exposed to a variety of songs that were new to me. I didn't find them hard to learn on the fly, for the most part: first of all they were often repeated enough for me to get the hang of the main features, but then (secondly) I could in any case easily predict most of the turns of musical phrase since they were written in a very predictable MOR rock style with common chord sequences. Heck, I could even harmonise lines on the spot without having heard them before!

So, I'd have to say that I don't think that learning new songs is really at issue here if people aren't singing. So what might be? I have a couple of hypotheses. One is to do with the style and sentimentality of the music and lyrics and the other is to do with the presentational format.

I have tended to come away from services like this feeling that I've spent a lot of time in a MOR, soft-rock zone with a penchant for Disney-esque big numbers. I've also felt that the lyricisation was on the whole rather restricted, general, cliche'd and rarely poetic. It all felt overall as if the music and lyrics could have been written by a modestly sophisticated computer algorithm. And I think that this saccharinity could be one reason why some people (maybe proportionally more men) don't sing along: it feels too bland, it puts sentiments into their mouths that they are not sure about.

However, I don't think that hypothesis is so strong: I think for the sake of community many people will sing along even if they aren't with the programme in their hearts. Although if you get a critical mass of non-singers then it's more likely that others will feel they don't have to join in or even that joining in is bad form. In fact this latter point may point to a stronger reason: cultural priming.

The whole set up of putting a band on a stage, up front, and using contemporary instruments and styles says, culturally, "concert". And so a whole set of associations, connotations and expectations are cued up. Among these is that it is largely a spectator event where occasionally people might join in if they felt like it.

There are two more theological issues involved here. One is about the nature of leadership and participation. The semiotic value of the band approach is in effect, I would suggest, the priestification of the band, especially the leader/s. And this raises all the usual issues about every-member ministry, parity of esteem and so on. The band puts a bunch of people on a pedastal and magnifies their ministry. A worrying subtext of this could be to devalue other ministries by comparison, and my concern here is not only for teaching and learning but also for ministries 'in the world': worship becomes a very restricted concept which doesn't take in service in the world (for more on this, see the argument in God Against Religion) restricting worship not only to what goes on in church but, even more, to what the band leads.

The other matter is to do with what should be at the liturgical heart of worship. Singing/music has become, it seems to me, another sacrament. And one without scriptural support. Yes there are a couple of Pauline passages that encourage singing, but this hardly weighs equally with 'do this in remembrance of me'. I fear that in experiential terms, despite what might be said, the Lord's Supper has been almost totally eclipsed by singing 'worship songs'. As a side-bar to this point I observe the very pared down and often individualistic celebrations of Eucharist which don't even have a proper fourfold structure* related closely to the bread and the wine.

I think we should be seeking to decentre the 'worship band' visually, address the balance of content in worship and encouraging a wider variety of participation methods for congregants. 

I'm also concerned at the ethics of worship of this kind. Now that we know that serotonin releases and brain-alteration take place in band-led 'worship', we have a duty of care to congregants not to simply take them for emotional/hormonal rides and simply and isomorphically equate this with the work of the Holy Spirit, implicitly or explicitly. I'm not saying that the Spirit isn't at work or that the work of the Spirit wouldn't show up in such ways, but I am saying that more things than the Spirit can produce the feelings most associate with such worship sessions and that we are in danger of substituting well-crafted musical-emotional dynamics for encounter with God and have people addicted to this process rather than relying on the Holy Spirit.

At the level of personal anecdote, I'm constantly surprised that people whom I would expect to be able to enter into praise of God in informal, simple verbal prayer are not apparently. It seems that their ability to do this is dependent on music of a particular style and emotional strain. And I have to wonder if this isn't an indication that something has gone awry with their Christian formation and whether their 'spirit-led'ness has less to do with the Spirit than with the musical genre they worship by.

PS Stephen Garner helpfully drew our attention to this article. 
*The fourfold structure is what Jesus told us to do in remembrance: 1. Take bread and wine; 2. Bless/give thanks (by implication God is thanked for acting in favour of our salvation); 3. Break the bread; 4. share/consume the elements. Thanks to Gregory Dix for helping us to appreciate this.

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:

Ethical wiggle-room: a seedbed of miscreancy in corporisations

On the basis of what's said in this article, I'd want to see a bit more research cross-culturally, but if the basic results pan out, it's a very significant finding for the study of corporisations (politology?). It would relate to the issues relating to the Eichmann thing about participation in corporate evil and perhaps give a window into a psychological mechanism allowing people to offload a sense of responsibility to an aggregate, corporised entity:

Our experiments showed that if people plainly see that to lie in a given situation would be fraudulent, they shy away from it. However, if people are given "wriggle room," they can convince themselves that their behaviour is not fraudulent and this does not attack their sense of who they are

In a sense it seems to link 'back' to the question "Did God really say '...'?" in which the serpent, by that question, precisely opens up the kind of wiggle room uncovered in this research. This strengthens my hunch that evil is essentially social not individual.

We are basically honest – except when we are at work, study suggests

Anarchist among Jihadists raises questions Christians should consider

This is just such a fascinating article both because it tells us more about the situation in Syria than most of us in the West would otherwise know and because there are some intriguing ideas in it worth considering by Christians.

If like me you're used to Anarchists being fairly anti-God, then this is refreshing:

My real problem, and that of the oppressed in general I think, is not with god himself, but with human beings who act as gods and are so sick with authority that they think and act like gods, be they secular dictators like Assad or Islamic imams.
God himself is never as deadly dangerous as those who 'speak' for him.

Of course that's not to say there's any theism there, it's probably simply saying that believing in God is not high on the hit list (God may still be 'dangerous' in anarchist terms because God represents some degree of heteronomy) -there are more important issues; one being the way that God is used in human discourse to legitimise tyranny. And that is fair enough: I'm similarly concerned. And of course the converse should be noted too: atheism can be tyrannical (Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao Zedong demonstrate that well enough I think).

There's an intriguing thought too about sharing ones beliefs which I think bears further reflection. I'm interested to see it in relation to the issue of proselytism too:

I have never tried to convince anyone to be an anarchist and have always thought that trying to affect others is another way of practicing authority upon them.But now I see this issue from another perspective. It is all about making anarchism 'available' or known to those who want to fight any oppressing authority, be they workers, the unemployed, students, feminists, the youth, or ethnic and religious minorities. It is about trying to build an example — or sample — of the new free life, not only as a living manifestation of its potential presence, but also as a means to achieve that society.

I think that articulates quite nicely some issues to do with evangelism and its ethical implications. I wouldn't have used the phrase 'practising authority upon them' of my own accord, but it does say neatly what one of the problems can be. But then so is his 'another perspective' useful to help us to understand how a re-imagined evangelism could be. Working, as I do, in a context where the explicit 'contract' is to avoid proselytism, this perspective is useful: there is a difference between promoting ones views in a harassing or even bullying way and making a perspective or a set of facts and interpretations available to those to whom it may be relevant. I would say the former is proselytism, the latter is part of a free society.

Article here: http://peacenews.info/node/7061/anarchist-among-jihadists

New Evangelical Manifesto; neighbouring Muslims

How do New Evangelicals relate to the religiously other? One of the most important test cases in this would be Muslims, and the appositely-name Rick Love takes up the task in this collection of addressing it. The interesting flash-point of departure is the question from a Muslim about why his Christian street-neighbour appeared to love his family less than did the non-Christian street-neighbours -a question intensified by  it being a response to a presentation stating that Christians are to love God and to love their neighbours as themselves. This leads into a reflection on why a Christian might treat a Muslim neighbour less generously than non-believing neighbours might treat them. Rick Love identifies three things that probably contribute to this sad state of affairs. One is terrorism and the ill-treatment of Christian communities in some Muslim-majority societies. A second is a theological bias to Israel and thus against Muslim middle-easterners. The third is negative stereotyping. And so in the face of this 'fear that drives out love' (nice soundbite); how should we seek to replace fear with love. Rick Love writes from a background well-able to remind us of the great diversity of 1.5 bn of the world's population -as against the stereotyping based on worst-cases. He points out that many perhaps 50% of Muslims are from a Sufi background where the love of God is more important than the externals of religion; where the poetry of Rumi is considered an important inspiration. Such an Islam is resistant to terrorism and more favourable to peace-making. It's a form of Islam which often sees Jesus as an inspirational figure. An interesting reflection on probable figures would indicate that there are probably about as many terrorists among the Muslim population as there are KKK members amongst Christians in the USA.

The chapter explores the interesting suggestion that Muslims are the new Samaritans -in terms of the way that Jesus related to them in the context of the NT. And it is followed up with a contemporary parable of the Good Samaritan with a Muslim family playing the role of the good Samaritan.

What I found interesting, because it's something I've become concerned about; is the critique of friendship evangelism because it violates the pure and direct obedience to the command to love neighbour by making serving them and genuinely befriending them instrumental to their conversion. Of course it is possible to love by sharing the most important beliefs we have; but that needs to find its place genuinely as love rather than a duplicitous ruse to propagandise.

The racial dimension of God's mission is the topic Lisa Sharon Harper tackles in chapter 11. "Is America a postracial society" (yeah, I know, the question assumes that the USA is America -Canada? Mexico? Brazil? ...) and reminds us of a series of issues and events of the 1990's when racism was very much an issue and the USA very much not 'postracial'. One of those issues was how the churches responded to the challenges, an example of Promise Keepers trying to address race but without realising that cultural power was (is) an important dimension of the matter. The problem here was/is that the individualism ('personal salvation through an individual decision for Christ') frames racial issues that way, and elide structural and culturally-wide dimensions. In fact dismiss them as distractions from personal (individual) responsibility. For white evangelicals, living self-segregated lives; the experience of encountering structural unrighteousness is rare and so the a-political view of the world is rarely challenged in a meaningful way. I'm reminded of the British evangelicalism that I was introduced to in the 70's and 80's which was heavily formed by public-school and elite university leadership and naturally tended to take the same sort of approach. But here, somehow, a lot of that changed. Perhaps it was the fair-trade and drop-the-debt campaigns combined with growing awareness of needs of our inner cities because these are actually mission fields and encounter bred fuller understanding and broader engagement. (That's not to say British Evangelicalism is hunky-dory on the race front).

Much of the chapter is a telling of USAmerican history of race and racial discrimination. the point being to show how fiscal and political instruments helped to create and solidify white domination and so to remind us that similar instruments are needed to redress matters. The word 'repentance' is chosen for this. Evangelicals were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement -but it turns out that this was something of a high-water mark and since then the movement has tended to quiescently take the segregationist side. But that is to fail to love neighbour.

When Worship is not really and what worship leaders' responsibilities are

I've been aware for a while that there's something similar between the way that the emotional impact of a football match or a music concert (rock or similar) has huge similarities to some forms of liturgy in some churches. And I remember George Verwer saying how it is possible to organise the crowd dynamics of a service or meeting to produce certain emotional effects.

A University of Washington study has found that megachurch worship experiences actually trigger an “oxytocin cocktail” in the brain that can become chemically addictive. The same has been found at large sporting events and concerts, but attenders to these gatherings don’t usually attribute the “high” to God.

Thing is how we assess this. I'm not against the idea that we might use good and culturally-relevant music in worship -it seems to have gone on for most of Christian history. But I am concerned when it is found to be chemically addictive. The point of worship together is to enable us to encourage each other to draw near to God and to be transformed by God. Some of that encouragement can be through the cultural media we employ. But it is really concerning when hiddenly the medium becomes the actual focus rather than God.

And my worry is that for the oxytocin junkies, faith struggles to survive the discovery that the worship 'high' is not necessarily the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Spirit can affect us that way, but that doesn't mean that there cannot be other things that can do that nor does it mean that the effect must always imply the presence of the Spirit.

Worship leaders who are involved in the 'high-producing' forms of liturgy, I would say, have a responsibility to be aware, in broad terms, of the bio-chemical ramifications of corporate worship. And, having taken cognisance of that, to plan worship to enable/encourage people to connect with God aside from the music-driven emotional roller-coastal. I wonder too, whether, we don't also have a responsibility to inform people of this and, in a sense, to gain informed consent.

The implication of George Verwer's perspective is that, if we know these effects, we are culpable if we don't take seriously our responsibility to our fellow worshippers not to mislead them or, in fact, to use them. This research ups the ante for church leadership; to ignore would be to abuse our congregants.

Out of Ur: When Worship is Wrong: