British Evo's and the shape of national life

An article recently published in Prospect magazine under the header The Marshall Plan, has a lot in it that seems well noted and there's a degree of sympathy in the writing, allowing for it to transcend being simply a 'hit piece'. As someone who has commented on allied matters on this very blog over the years, it is interesting to see some lacunae of mine closed with further information. I've been on the edge of the kind of Evangelical-Charismatic Christianity examined in the article most of my adult life. So I do recognise the truths in this description.

I think there are two things I want to pick up from this article. One is to note the way that the narratives of this particular brand of Christianity are pulled to the political right (and need not be). The other is to consider how (or maybe if) it can be called more fully into a better force for the good of the "least and the lost" to borrow a phrase that is popular -ish in such circles. 

I'll pick some quotes from the article to comment on.

The first one is a 'credit where credit is due' sort of thing. "...he is worth around £800m, according to the Sunday Times Rich List—Marshall lives relatively modestly." And that is good to learn. Though 'relatively modestly' is an elastic concept, I don't doubt that it involves not retaining all his income for himself and his family and investments. I do think that there are wealthy evangelicals who do indeed take seriously biblical teaching about modesty and almsgiving.

The next quote is both to affirm and to question. "Marshall is worried by the displacement of the Christian ethic in society. He has said that “traditional British liberalism rests on the Judeo-Christian understanding that we are all, in moral terms, fallen creatures... Somewhere amid the arrogance of the Enlightenment, we lost this sense of fallenness” that is ultimately the consequence of the sins of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. On this view, we are all sinners, redeemed only by Christ’s death for us, so anything we have is an undeserved gift from God. What we do with our time, money and talents is a response to what God has done for us. This outlook reminds me of what Jesus said to his disciples in Luke 12:48: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”

I think that I recognise this from my years of insider acquaintance with this brand of Christian discipleship. Both the worry about 'liberalism' and the core focus on fallenness of humanity (it's in most evangelical bases of faith). I also recognise -with sympathy and gladness- the sense of responsibility and humility that this engenders. This fruit is Evangelical Christianity at its best. That said, I would want to do a bit more work with the fretting about 'liberalism' and the heavy lifting it is doing in a culture wars /moral panic sort of way. I'd also want to think more about the way that the fall narrative is functioning and whether it is a fair theological move.

I pick up comment on the phrase "Judeo-Christian" further down the article. It's also important to pick up the issue of the work that the Fall is pressed into ideologically.

Marshall is quoted as saying in 2012: “I am a committed Church of England Christian, I believe we are all made in God’s image, that we all have gifts and that education is the key to realising our potential.” And again, I want to affirm something of that: making a starting point with being made in God's image and recognising human giftedness. I think that this might not be doing all the work it should, however, in this kind of world view.

Politically speaking it is interesting to learnt that "he co-edited The Orange Book, which was a plea for a return to the core liberal philosophies of choice and freedom" This is important, I think, because it already indicates a capture by right-wing talking points and I think is probably symptomatic of a lack of rigour in theological thinking. The Orange Book was was enabled the LibDems, essentially, to go into coalition with David Cameron's conservative government in 2010 (was it?) enabling support for austerity politics and economics.

 Of great concern to me is to read the following. 

Marshall invested £10m in GB News, taking over as interim chair when Andrew Neil—who had been the founding chairman—jumped ship. The following year, with the station in financial and technical chaos, Marshall stepped in with a further multi-million-pound investment and gained, with others, significant control of the company. Most of the rest is owned by Legatum Ventures, a private equity firm and cousin of the right-wing Legatum Institute, 

This is recent history and as such is concerning in that it may indicate a trajectory more fully into the political right, if not fascism -at least that form of paternalistic and individualistic moralism that gave cover for some Christians in the 1930s to support Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. I think that some sentences from later in the article raise similar concern: 

Marshall’s latest reform project is the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (the acronym serving as a second take on the Ark theme). Its glitzy inaugural conference, attended by 1,500 people last November, culminated with a keynote speech from Jordan Peterson in the O2. This Arc is crewed by right-wing politicians, activists and influencers, whose aim is to repair what their research describes as “the fraying of the social fabric”. While not explicitly religious, it is clear that faith—in its Judeo-Christian expression—underpins the enterprise. Once again, Legatum is providing finance and infrastructure for the movement

Fascism, of course, won't arrive saying "Look, we think Mussolini got a bunch of stuff right". No, it's going to talk about traditional values, citizenship and it's going to pick up and amplify fears about the fraying of the social fabric and suggesting that we need to discipline people for their own good. -Without, of course, noting that the fraying is pretty much a direct result of the financial shenanigans let loose by 40 years of financialisation, privatisation etc which is driven by these same Old-school-Tie-ers making millions in usury, derivatives and hedge funds and eroding the safety nets and protections for the many vulnerable and precarious members of society. No, (they think): better redirect concern to personal morality and culture-wars and in doing so find a way to ridicule and blame those most concerned and who have ideas to address the inequalities that fray the fabric. (I note that Pickett and Wilkinson's thesis, based in good research, about inequality and worse social outcomes remains a standing rebuke to right-wing political postures -somehow Marshall et al manage to 'miss' that addressing this societally would actually help with a lot of the fraying they claim they are fretting about).

But of course, the blind spot about what works is probably rooted in a blind spot shared by background. 

"Culturally, Holy Trinity is rooted in the public school system and the ethos of English exceptionalism. Several of the clergy who have led the church into its current dominant position are Old Etonians, like Welby, and have been friends since meeting at Cambridge in the 1970s." 

And unfortunately, the Christianity that is sincerely and wholeheartedly taken up by these folk is so focused on individual salvation and evangelism that it cannot see the social except very blurrily. Their position in large part depends on not knowing the social. I know, because I've been there -not as public school product but by trying to be part of the Christian Union at university and beyond that, being in circles which were often significantly influenced and led by the public school Evangelical networks. These networks are very suspicious of people who don't 'fit' unless they have done the necessary gymnastics to pass soundness tests and the 'one of us' social-fit tests. This resonates with what is said later on in the article: "The view from Brompton Road is that the Church is divided between those who champion the true faith and those who do not, and that God is blessing the faithful." -Interestingly, the latter is a precarious proof, for many biblically aware Christians know that persecution is rather to be expected for being faithful. They then look at themselves and wonder why that's not the case, and wanting to justify themselves they find tiny little frictions where people disagree or push back against them and try to make out that this is persecution -so "See! We are the faithful". Never mind that much of the time they bring these 'persecutions' on themselves by being insensitive, not reading the room, arrogant and even bullying. It's a 'heads we win, tails you lose' sort of situation. See below in the quotation where Michael Gove is mentioned, it ends with 'signs that God is at work'. So heads -we are blessed by God and tails -we are persecuted, so we know God is at work with us which is also a blessing.

I'm also a bit suspicious of the work that the term "Judeo-Christian" is doing in this discourse. I think that the term is probably meant to capture something that is judged to be common to the two religious traditions, and the Hebrew scriptures and particularly the 10 Commandments probably lies at the bottom of that. "Judeo-Christian" is probably code for the 10 Commandments for the most part. I think too that for those in power, the more individualist morality of the commandments is congenial. What is omitted in this framing is the more social dimensions and redistributive elements as well as the ban on usury -charging interest, for example.

In relation to redistributive strands of the Torah, the vision is clearly of levelling, preventing the accumulation of power through the accumulation of wealth, enjoining a duty of the better-off to care in practical terms for the less well-off and so forth. To this end the laws of Sabbath and jubilee envisage a return of land acquired to the original holders, this would have had the effect of re-distributing wealth and re-levelling the playing field -by giving all families access to means of production- as well as putting back the accumulation of wealth and power to more equal terms. I find it funny-sad that the spirit of these laws is rarely invoked in evangelical Christian discourse about social and economic relationships and governance while far more marginal and dubious laws are made shibboleths for orthodoxy. 

I'd like evangelicals to consider the example of John Wesley who supposedly had an annual income of £28 when he started out and although his income rose during his life, he still lived on £28 pa and gave the rest away (hat tip to Howard Snyder, I think it was this book that first tipped me off about Wesley and money: New Wineskins ).

Going now to banning the charging interest as part of the actual Judeo-Christian traditions (and recall that it was only in the medieval period that usury was redefined by the Church as 'excessive interest'). This alone should give pause to many of the bank-roll-ers of western evangelical endeavours. It seems from this article that many of them are deep in the practices that the Judeo-Christian laws against usury are arguably meant to disallow or curtail. These would include the idea of making money from money rather than from production or offering goods or services. Money should 'stand for' actual goods and services and the licensed gambling in money markets, derivatives and the like should be very much looked at askance by inheritors of the Judeo-Christian traditions. It's salutary to read David Bentley-Hart's Jacobin article in relation to this.

Whatever we might make of wealth and usury in relation to modern life, I think we who claim to be Christians should be wary of straying too far from the concern for the perils of wealth accumulation and exploitative means for doing that. Since much of the political right wing is essentially about defending wealth accumulation and has shown itself extremely sanguine about unjust and exploitative practices which enable it, I think that as Christians we should be very wary, at peril of our souls, of supporting the political right.

Of course, we should look at the theological justification for supporting right-wing political-economics. This is where the prioritisation of the Fall comes in. The line of thinking takes greed and selfishness as givens in human affairs and these are taken to be signs that "Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty..." (UCCF Doctrinal Basis) and the harnessing of these fallen characteristics by the theory of free-market capitalism is taken to be a happy mitigation in a 'fallen world'. Never mind that the theory is a crock and the actual results of following that theory tend towards accumulation of wealth and power on the basis of injustice and exploitation. The point of the correlation being made is to provide cover for the mammonists to continue serving Mammon and to head-off measures that might substantially restrict that service or seek to make a more just and fair social settlement in relation to the common goods that God has bestowed upon the earth. 

"Don't resist this greed, make it work for the common good" is what they say, in effect -ignoring that the Market doesn't, in fact, do that. In fact, it's made into a way to avoid doing justice and loving mercy (Micah 6:8) -matters which would overwhelmingly benefit the poorer, the marginalised, the least. These are in such dire straights because of the injustice and lack of mercy in the political economy of the West. Shouldn't we rather be taking the idea of the Fall to mean that we need to set up systems to disable greed from producing such disparities, misery and unfairness? Shouldn't we rather follow the example of the Torah in putting in place measures to capture ill-gotten gains for re-distribution back to the society which actually enables the wealth so captured? -Especially to the poor and vulnerable who are often those exploited and extorted of their just rewards. That we are all 'undeserving' theologically, does not mean that those who are defrauded should continue to endure the fraud while the perpetrators get away with it.

And, let's also note that 'bearing false witness against your neighbour' covers maintaining falsehoods that prop up a system of extraction from the most powerless of our neighbours. That's a Judeo-Christian principle for you but the big money uses its muscle to commission think tanks to sow seeds of doubt about markets, inequality (and don't forget climate change) which is already impoverishing and immiserating many globally. I note 'against' in that commandment; a special emphasis on the harms that such falsity brings about?

"The resentment industry"

Germane to that prior observation, is this following quote which I have also seen and heard echoes of among Evangelicals I have been in fellowship with.

"He believes that large parts of the leadership of the Church have fallen captive to what his friend Gove, speaking in a broader context, has called “the resentment industry”. But in evangelical theology, attacks—whether from outside or inside the church—are to be expected. In fact, they are a sign that God is at work."

Let's notice what work Gove's rhetoric is doing and hiding: he doesn't argue but merely labels something as 'resentment'. By that he seems (in common with many on the political right) to imply that people noticing wealth and privilege and seeking ways to address the injustices produced and the lack of mercy involved, are acting from resentment. It's not a new accusation: I heard the like back in the Thatcher era to disparage the idea of taxing the rich at higher rates. In Gove's discourse "resentment" is a framing of legitimate concerns about inequality to imply they are not legitimate and the sour grapes of the losers -as if it was a 'fair competition' in the first place rather than the rigged 'game' where "to those who have, more will be given". A better word than 'resentment' might be 'fairness'. And once we've noted that, let's note too, that there might be actual resentments, and that they might be well deserved pointing to a need for redress. I may resent someone having stolen from me, disparaging the resentment doesn't make the injustice go away. It also obscures the possibility that a resentment might be just: you've had your efforts and fruits of your labour misappropriated by others through bullying tactics or systemic discrimination -that would be just cause for resentment, would it not?

So, there's no real reason to think that church leaders (which?) have fallen to the "resentment industry" -rather those that champion the poor and social justice are simply doing two things. One is to attempt to apply the teaching of Jesus and Torah in a world of system-built inequalities. The myth being constructed behind this word in Gove's discourse is that church leaders should be pushing the lines 'rich man in his castle/ The poor man at his gate/ God made them high and lowly/ And ordered their estate'. -A position which gives a free pass to the immoral means by which wealth and power were obtained and maintained. A position which elevates the expediency of the powerless to an eternal virtue -disallowing redress even when it is legally and strategically possible.

The second thing is to bring the truths about how inequality and poverty is formed and maintained in a world that is really pretty abundant. The actual resentment, it seems to me, is that of the rich at having their self-congratulatory narratives challenged and shredded by those they consider less worthy than themselves. The claim of those church leaders that Gove so dislikes is that the actual 'resentment industry' -more properly designated as movements for social and environmental justice- are a sign that God is at work: anointing people to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, setting prisoners free ...

British evangelicalism going forward

I hope that Graystone is right when he writes the following.

Despite all this, we’re not likely to see the emergence of a religious right in Britain comparable with the evangelical movement in the US any time soon. The historic social liberalism of the Church of England means the identification between evangelicals and the political right is nowhere near as potent. In the forthcoming UK general election, very few politicians will campaign on issues such as abortion rights, and few British pastors would dare to instruct their flocks how to vote.

 I think that in many ways this is correct. I hope it is right that British evangelicalism may resist the capture that we see in much of USAmerican evangelicalism. However, I'm not quite as sanguine about it as Graystone seems to be. There is clearly money being deployed from the USA to influence things on this side of the Atlantic. It's worrying that MP Steve Baker, a member of an evangelical church in High Wycombe, has become meshed in with climate denialist and oil-extraction interests.

British evangelicalism has been increasingly influenced by USAmerican evangelicalism through the greater output of books, songs, and other media products. Many of them are innocuous in themselves but by building brand loyalty and on-selling techniques, enable exposure over time to more noxious content veiled as Christian but in fact betraying the spirit of Christ and the church of the first centuries in relation to wealth and power and keeping faith with the spirit of the parable of the good Samaritan.

The veiling is accomplished through bringing to the fore less weighty matters with a particular spin on application and pushing them in such a way as, over time, to make them central in the consciousness of evangelicals to the point where the position so named can be activated without dissonance to what should be central matters of faith expression like compassion, mercy, neighbour-love and so forth. Abortion is a good example. 

I suspect that the abortive Franklyn Graham evangelistic campaign which was being planned in 2018-19 (if memory serves aright) was less an evangelistic campaign (and let's face it, the format is largely unsuccessful and a waste of money and effort, be honest; it's more a test of orthodoxy than a means to win hearts and minds of unbelievers) than a means to network British evangelical leaders with a significant chunk of USAmerican-based right wing pressure-groupees. I resent that our faith and notions of fellowship are being viewed as social capital for recruitment to causes that betray the spirit of Christ.

I think British evangelicals are not sufficiently aware and wary of these overtures and avenues of capturing the evangelical mind and I fear we may have reached a tipping point. In part this tipping point is because there are numbers of ex-evangelicals who have left evangelical churches or Christian corporate practice altogether and the drivers of the exodus are the increasingly uncharitable, insensitive, unnuanced teaching they are hearing, the bullying and abuse they experience and see and the failure of large evangelical churches to be able to resource spiritual growth beyond a certain point (so people leave for more spiritually nourishing churches). At this point my evidence is experiential based on the number of people I interact with who report having been evangelical at some point but left for the kinds of reasons implied by what I've just mentioned. I visit churches where people tell me this, I interact with students in ministerial training who have this in their personal history. There are a lot of ex-evos out there.

Philanthropy, power and democracy

As I was thinking about this article, I found myself considering Jesus' words in the gospels to 'sell all you have and give to the poor'. This because 'give to the poor' is a different dynamic to 'set up a charity to do things for the poor', though at first it might seem like they are outworkings of the same thing. The latter is actually a form of paternalism while the former actually puts the poor in charge of how they use the money given to them. The latter is usually based on a fear on the part of the donor that the poor will spend it frivolously or harmfully, and so a means to give is devised that prevents that but leaves the donor in charge and often breeds resentment. We should bear in mind that there is research to indicate that putting the poor in charge of their own affairs is actually better in general terms. This relates to the issue of philanthropy more generally. Philanthropists mostly give money for pet projects but do not open up a democratic door into the donation and use processes. "Nothing about us without us" should apply to receipt of charity and is generally regarded as good practice in third sector work while paternalism is rightly frowned upon. I note also that the same power-divesting dynamic is at work when Jesus sends his disciples ahead of him to the villages and towns around and effectively tells the disciples (12 at one point and 70 or 72 at another) to rely on the hospitality of those they are proclaiming to, to be vulnerable to their welcome. 

The other dimension of this is trickier for many of us which is the 'Sell all you have' bit. This is reinforced by the example of the church in Acts where people sold stuff and shared the proceeds with the church. It's also clear in the background of the epistles that there was quite a lot of looking after the poor going on.

At the very least, I think we should consider what it would look like to encourage discipleship built on John Wesley's example, mentioned above where the money is genuinely given away or at least put into democratically-run trusts like Marlene Engelhorn did with her inheritance.

My suggestion for Marshall, his fellow evangelical Old Etonians and their networks is to decide what the equivalent of Wesley's £28 per annum is and give away everything in excess -preferably by giving it over to citizens' assembly-like trusts (Christian or otherwise) drawn from the ranks of those likely to be beneficiaries. This latter because other research indicates that simply giving aid directly to the homeless or the poor results in better use of the money or assets. It may be that Marshall is doing this. However, I get the impression that his lifestyle far exceeds what could be afforded on a median-sort-of income which might be a better starting point for consideration. I would commend taking in the insights of limitarianism as a starting point.

Fall theology as ideology

As mentioned above, Marshall is quoted: “traditional British liberalism rests on the Judeo-Christian understanding that we are all, in moral terms, fallen creatures... Somewhere amid the arrogance of the Enlightenment, we lost this sense of fallenness”.

Ironically, as I mentioned above, the "sense of fallenness" has been selective: happy to see it in political opponents of mammonism but giving a pass to those benefiting from the channels of wealth accumulation and retention which are normally the flip side of misappropriation, wage-theft, and the use of power to suppress claims for just reward or fair shares. As long as the latter is dressed up with a veneer of legality, it is ignored. The Hebrew prophets and many a psalm would disagree that this is moral.

I guess that the "arrogance of the Enlightenment" is meant to be the idea that 'man (sic) is the measure of all things' and/or that reason is somehow not subject to fallenness. In the case of the latter, I think that this is in need of more nuance. Reason is properly a collective rather than individual matter, Enlightenment reason is the idea that some version of peer review will over time solve problems and come to better and better understandings of things -but the key is not to allow the formation of pockets of group-think, epistemic privilege or shared prejudice. I agree that probably considering that 'man is the measure' is a problem but mainly because it cuts us loose from our (God-given) ecological roots and embeddedness. In practice it also makes wealthy white males the actual measure of all things and without a sense of accountability (to God, ultimately) ends up justifying genocide, ecocide, misogyny, racism and so forth -basically treating other humans as lesser and forming systems of life and habits that sustain the lessening of these others. In Christian terms, this is neglect of love, justice and mercy -the weightier matters of the Law.

 A sense of fallenness would seek a Tower of Babel resolution -that is to decentralise power. It would put in place robust means to prevent the accumulation of wealth and power (and recognise that the latter is often a product of the former) or mechanisms for the removal of excess wealth and redeploying back into the ecosystems and social networks that enabled it to be created in the first place. And the means and mechanisms would themselves be scrutinised democratically.

Beware the Liberalism my son...

It's worth noting that the term is used in a weasely manner. 'Liberalism' can be a kind of way of thinking about politics, human rights, government and in the quotes above that is to the fore. However, we should notice that for evangelicals it is more frequently a boo-word designating churches and theologians who go 'too far' in adapting Christian thought to the culture and times. So we should be aware of this double-entendre when hearing evangelicals speaking. Part of what is being done often is activating the framing which disposes evangelical hearers well-trained in their tradition to put the concepts or ideas into the mental rubbish bin -and by association, the people who use the concepts and ideas. It is a logical fallacy but since it rarely reaches conscious thought, it is not seen as such and it then becomes simply a part of the outlook.

It's actually more a felt thing most of the time and because it's not fully conscious it is deployed inconsistently and hypocritically quite a lot.

In practice 'liberals' are Christians who might not express Christian ideas in vocabulary that fits the evangelical norm (this despite a professed desire to not speak or write 'Christianese'). One is becoming liberal if (too many and too hard) questions are asked about received ideas in the evangelical traditions -this despite setting up enquirers' processes which claim that any question is allowed; at some point one must put up or shut up.  Liberals are people who "don't accept the bible as God's word" this is a lie in many cases. I've come across many people who are looked at askance or written off by evangelicals who take the bible with utmost seriousness as an artefact which conveys to them the voice of God. And because thy take it seriously, they find they have to think about what kind of communication it offers, how to think around the inconsistencies it has in it and what those differences one part to another mean for how we need to read and receive it as God's word. (And, btw, never mind that the Word of God is theologically speaking, Christ primarily). Too often those who don't treat the bible as a kind of textbook are regarded as liberals and metaphorically booed. These 'liberals' are people who are often putting The Quiet Time into practice, and if you enquire of many of their evangelical detractors -these latter are often only reading scripture when they attend church or a bible study and relying on others to tell them stuff rather than hearing God for themselves in scripture.

Evangelicals may agree that "God has yet more light to break out of His Word", but all too often they are discouraged (both by authority figures and from internalised self-censorship) from actually listening to discern whether this might be so.

Explicit link to article: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/65415/the-marshall-plan-paul-marshall-gb-news

Further reading: https://jacobin.com/2024/03/christianity-poor-debt-jesus-moses-wealth/   

https://discipleshipresearch.com/2017/02/millennials-bible-readers-or-bible-admirers/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13644-013-0109-2

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2021/04/evangelicals-and-their-politics-dispatches-from-the-field/ 

"Here again we see that more Bible reading is positively related with higher scores on the liberal policy views scale." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235410637_Reading_the_Bible_in_America_The_Moral_and_Political_Attitude_Effect

Comment on evangelical recent history in USA by Barbara Bass Butler.

Innoculating British Christians against USAmerican rightist ambitions

I just read this:

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

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

The article goes on to say this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blue Ocean Faith -book review and reflection.

I have to say that I'd never heard of the Blue Ocean network, and when I read what they were about I had a bit of a 'where have you been all my life?' moment.
So, what's the 'blue ocean' thing about then? Well, we're told neart the beginning that it's a way to describe churches who "fish where other churches don't and because it's the blue oceans that connect all people". I like the idea of fishing where other churches don't and I wonder how that really works out even while I recognise a real need to do so from a situation where I see rivalrous churches casting for the same kinds of people to form congregations of middle class soft-rock singing slightly multi-media soft-charismatic people. And while I get it that they'd want to pitch in where there is obviously some traction, I can't help wondering what about the huge number of people outside of that kind of demographic -is God's Spirit really not at work beyond it?

The movement is characterised by six things. First what they call a 'solus Jesus' framework and with that a centred-set mentality. They aim for a childlike faith approach to spiritual development and a third way for controversial issues. They aim to be ecumenical in relation to other churches and for joyful engagement with secular culture. All of these things I warm to and in many ways I would describe my own position in very similar terms. Of course those are the headers. What do the particulars look like?

Solus Jesus is looked at through a historical development lens, a trajectory from the Reformation (and worth thinking the more about given that we are in the 500th year since Luther's famous 95 theses) and in particular the Sola Scriptura approach that emerged from it. The point is well made that without inspired interpretation, it perhaps doesn't help us as much as we'd like to have a sola Scriptura thing going on. So the thought is to take our attention to the Jesus who speaks through scripture and to embrace the subjectivity involved in that. I found one quote intriguing and probably about right in this matter; "Neither Jesus nor Paul, nor Peter were sola scriptura people. Actually, their apponents better fit that description" (Loc.558)
I also liked the approach to subjectivity captured in this quote: "When Joan of Arc's opponents assert that what she calls the voice of God is in fact only her imagination, her response is 'Of course. How else can we hear God?' " Perhaps that is slightly undermined by the real doubtfulness of what she 'heard', but the point is well made that our human faculties are inevitably involved and interpreting scripture does not deliver us from that.

On the matter of childlike faith, it seems to me that the idea is to focus on faith as trust and counterbalance the inherited 'faith as propositional assent' that we seem to have got locked into in much of the west. There's a nice tour of scripture to show that this is really consonant with the experience of God's people and the thrust of a lot of scripture.

One of the things I'm left thinking about is the 'third way' approach to controversial subjects. It is based -rightly in my opinion- on Paul's approach to the meat offered to idols controversy and from that the basic approach of inclusion until clarity is found (and a historical point is made to say it takes a lot of patience and quite some time) is taken as well as the principle of respect for 'weaker' brothers and sisters -but the way that is done is worth considering. I'm not sure that it helps fully as the problem of identifying who is 'weaker' still complicates things -but the principle of inclusion as the default is definitely worth thinking about further as a principle based in a clear biblical strategy. For the record the 'weaker' here are identified as those who take the more restrictive role in a dispute. I think that this is probably right and a good way to approach things. However, it may just become a political football of a principle: I suspect we need to test it a bit more against some hard cases from history...

In some ways, apart from the third-way approach, I don't think there is anything radically new here, and that is fine. Similar things are said by others. But then they need to be said perhaps quite a lot to be heard: said by many people in many ways to get through (think advertising and political slogans). And not only said but, as we glimpse here, acted upon and made the heart of a curriculum of Christian formation. I think some of the ways these points are put over are likely to grab some people but maybe not others, but that's okay since the idea is to find somewhere to fish where others are not.

It's interesting to read too from the perspective of not being in the USA which is, of course, not nearly as far down the post-Christendom road as the UK and indeed western Europe. So I'm left musing about the fishing-where-others-don't motif. In England that probably means noting that the HTB church planting network will continue to do a good job of creating the kinds of church they tend to produce where there may be relatively good numbers for that expression of faith. However, there may also need to be room and encouragement given to those fishing in other waters where the results may be less spectacular and take longer (and indeed there are signs that the HTB folk are finding this at the edges).

I found, also, the question raised and partly answered here about how the hippy-like Jesus movement became entrapped by right-wing fundamentalism. I think that this book offers an intriguing answer to that but I suspect there is more to be said too. However, it is a question adjacent to my GB-centric question of how come the creative and radical Charismatic movement of the 70's in Britain became so influenced by fairly hardline and defensive approaches to Christian faith. Admittedly the GB scene has retained a great deal more openness to concern for the poor and for the environment, but still ...

There are some interesting glimpses of how this approach is fitted for engagement with post-modern culture. For example, "... what you're saying is that Jesus is for everyone, not just for Christians! I've never heard such a thing!" -Said by a previously-unchurched person wishing to bring similar friends to a set of workshops held at the church.

Link-Love: 
Blue Ocean Faith website
Blue Ocean Faith at Amazon
Blue Ocean Faith on Facebook
Blue Ocean World - Podcast
Hello Horatio - Website 

hashtag for this book is #BlueOceanSpeakeasy

I reckon it's only fair to let you know that I got an e-copy of this book as a deal: review within 30 days of receiving it. However, that is the full extent of the 'contract': I am not obliged to make the review favourable and there is no direction given to me whatsoever concerning the content of this review. the Only thing that is given is the 'Link-Love' bits above.

Hearing God in Conversation: How to Recognize His Voice Everywhere: Samuel C. Williamson

I am reviewing this book having had a free e-copy for the purposes of review but my review is not obliged to be favourable because of that.

So what do I make of this book? I was drawn to it because I think that for many people I deal with, hearing and listening to God is important, So I was looking for a potential resource to recommend on to them. Personally, as well, I'm interested in how we discern and know God speaking to us. I have to say that this book is fit for those purposes. It comes from what I think of as a classic evangelical background (classic is not code here for militantly conservative but rather rooted in the kind of piety which has a generosity to it and an affectionate approach to God). So, I recognised the classic quie time disciplines of attention-giving to God in and with scripture and the in-life expectation of reflection, and ongoing conversation with God. So in many ways this is a clear and gently encouraging restatement of what used to be considered normal evangelical spiritual practice. What is interesting, of course, is that the author writes this because he perceives that so many in supposedly evangelical churches do not know this stuff and have even been warned off it by a particular kind of biblicism which is scared of iner spiritual experience. This book does a great job of normalising in a low key way the expectation that God does address us personally.

Thire are stories of hearing God to illustrate the points being made. Many of them are the author's own experience and are helpful for  their honesty and power to enable the reader to grasp how it might look in their own experience.

Hearing God is anchored, for this writer, in the discipline of reading scripure ruminatively with the expectation of finding in it things that inwardly resonate and which may then be reflected on and kept company with to disclose to us something of God's communication with us. He also shows how this process can be followed in everyday life, with the biblically-based and learnt basis forming a kind of training ground and filter.

I'd commend this book to people wanting to connect or reconnect with classic evaneglical discisplines of quiet time and converse with God. In this book we get to see how scripture memorisation might make sense as part of a living relationship with God rather than a way of arguing with people. In this book we see the Bible as a devotional tool rather than a textbook or apologetic tool. I think it would also, potentially, be enjoyed by Christians with a Catholic background as it is, in more catholic terms, an exposition of Lectio Divina.

One thing that I think deserves more consideration, though, is the way that Scripture is conceived of to be functioning in the devotional life of a believer. The writer is clearly keen that people are not misled by mistaking inner voices for the voice of God (there is no sure-fire method except learning by experinec and reflection to distinguish the various voices, some are obvious, others are not). A big part of the remedy for this is seen to be testing the voices/feelings by scripture. So far, so evangelical and clearly a reassurance to the traditional evangelical presumptive readership. However, there is a lacuna, a missing piece in relation to this in the book. The author, discussing hearing God through Scripture, points out that it is possible to mistake things. In other words, just because it is in Scritpture dosen't mean that whatever you 'pick up' is of God; we need to triangulate (my phrase, not his) with the rest of Scritpture, but also our reason and to take advice from the wider Christian communtiy through space and time (again my expression). So, the point here is that the same difficulty also applies to listening for God in Scripture as in oher areas of life.This may not satisfy some hard-line biblicists but it is true to human experience and the nature of creation and Christian Scripture. Implicitly we are invited to enter into a life-long learning to discern the Spirit's leading. An anchor point for this is Scripture, but it is not something that can be read text-book-wise or oracularly but a place to learn to hear but with its own potential pitfalls.
This is a good book to think about psycho-spirituality and to recover a wise and gentle Evangelicalism rooted in a warm God-centred piety rather than finger-pointing alledeged doctrinal rectitude.

Hearing God in Conversation: How to Recognize His Voice Everywhere: Samuel C. Williamson: 9780825444241: Amazon.com: Books

Cosmos Reborn : Happy Theology on the New Creation -some reactions.

Well, it had me intrigued, the title and the blurb:

 Need a religious detox? Have a dose of happy theology! Good news to liberate your life. Though we opposed Him as "enemies in our minds," God never set Himself against us as our enemy. Adam was breathed from the very life of God, and it has always been the Creator's intent to restore humanity to the bliss and immortality of its divine origin. In the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God included you and absorbed the entire created order into Himself, bringing an end to decay and corruption. Mortality has been swallowed up by immortality 

 In part because it  seemed to promise some exploration of things I'd been considering lately and also because it seemed to be promising that it would be based in some 'respectable' theology. I like the way that the book quotes and uses the ideas of theologians like Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Clement of Alexandria and modern ones like Torrance and Barth. This list might rightly give the impression that there is a strong Trinitarian focus to the theology. The author, John Crowder, confesses himself to be a fan of such theology though with the disclaimer that he may not always pass it on so well. And to be fair there were one or two points when I felt that he fell of the theological wagon but overall the thrust was fairly consistent and sustained.

One of the things I enjoyed also was someone quite obviously formed in the pente-charismatic end of US Evangelicalism 'selling' Orthodox theology like theopoiesis and doing so in a style that would probably connect with that constituency. Even to the point of using the language of prosperity teaching -which was frankly a bit disturbing though a hint here and there that it is nuanced in such a way as to avoid the excesses of that kind of teaching (though not enough that I felt entirely sure of that)

The main theses being promoted are an exposition of the theological implications of God being love and that we are loved from eternity. In the process he does a take-down of popular excesses in the relating of penal substititionary atonement, the misconceived understandings of God's wrath and the general grumpiness of the way that popular American Evangelicalism portrays God. And he's right to do all of those things.

Just sometimes I felt he got carried away with his own rhetoric and so seemed to fall into the 'rebound' effect of argumentation (you know, trying to state something against an error so strongly that you end up appearing to endorse something equally erroneous the other way) -though there are little bits that indicate these are flights of rhetoric. A notable place where this happens is in the treatment of anger where he manages to calm the rhetoric to note that love implies anger in some circumstances and he probably does so in a way that overall gets the balance right on that.

I found myself speed-reading some sections, and asked myself why. What i realised was that there was a lot of familiarity on my part with the broad line of argument being made and that I was getting impatient with the preacherly voice of delivery in the text which battered at me: 'I know, I get it; now can we get on with the next point?' captures my inner reaction.

The thing I'd probably want to explore with him, if I got a chance, would be how -given the hammering home of the finished work of Christ- we are actually to understand continuing bad behaviour and bad attitudes in Christians. Sometimes it almost seemed that he'd slipped into transcendentalism and was singing Mary Baker Eddy's tunes.

Amazon.com: Cosmos Reborn : Happy Theology on the New Creation eBook: John Crowder: Kindle Store:


Cosmos Reborn -- Amazon
Cosmos Reborn -- Book Trailer
John Crowder -- Main site (Sons of Thunder)
John Crowder -- Fan page on Facebok

#SpeakeasyCosmosReborn

Review: Coffee Shop Conversations

This book is one that I now seriously consider recommending to the student Christian groups I'm in touch with whose basis is Evangelical. That's the constituency Jonalyn and Dale Fincher are chiefly writing for and from. The reason I would recommend it is that I think that it starts in the right place with the right attitudes.

Let me backtrack briefly to say what the book is about. It is a book to help Christians think about how they/we share our faith and encourage others to follow Jesus. It aims to help develop confidence in handling bits of conversation that take a spiritual turn. One of the refreshing things about this book is that the authors are aware that there is a great deal of bad practice which has gone on and that it has brought Christian faith into disrepute. Sometimes explicitly and often implicitly, the reasons for bad practice are gently but firmly challenged and a better way is pointed up.

Dale and Jonalyn do a good job of rooting the whole endeavour in loving neighbour, and this is indeed the right place to start. They encourage and model by the examples they give, genuine friendship which is respectful, gracious, committed to relationship and the good of the other person. They are able to write of friends who have come to faith and friends who have not and the way they write shows a genuine love of those who fall into both categories.

Where I have slight hesitations it would be that sometimes I felt they offered examples or approaches that felt a little too bold for me. I can't work out whether that is something to do with the differences between USA and GB in cultural terms or whether at times the boldness seemed to slide into inappropriate challenge. I'd also have to say that the hedging about creation and evolution was not to my taste but reflects the USAmerican scene. Though I'd want to say that, given their obvious ecclesial context in this regard, the approach they outline is good: they model and enjoin that we keep the main thing the main thing and don't dump our in-house arguments on people for whom it means nothing and who will run a mile if we insist on conformity to our pet hobbyhorses. Of course, that may not work with some who seem to have worked themselves up into a lather about it and can scarcely recognise those of us who differ as Christians. At least they are aware of the serious difficulty 6-day-creationism presents for apologetics and that there are many Christians who don't think like that.

I was interested in their approach to the issue of homophile relationships too. I think that this is, in our culture, a defining issue and so it is helpful to note their approach. If I read them aright, they tend to the inherited view that sex outside of marriage in wrong and that marriage is between a man and a woman. However they clearly hold this view with graciousness and with room between their understanding of the matter and the issue of following Jesus.  Jonalyn tells of one of her friends who is Christian and in a committed relationship with another woman, she tells it in a positive way and with a humble attitude.  They tell stories touching on this issue which show that they are most keen to invite people to consider Christ and then (and only then) to work out what it might mean for their relationships. I think that approach has integrity and is helpful. It is miles away from the hatefulness of Westboro Baptist Church and represents a way ahead for those who don't accept the rightfulness of committed gay relationships.

Coffee Shop Conversations on Amazon.co.uk -just change the "co.uk" into "com" for the US version.

God's gay agenda

 This is the next wave: an Evangelical pastor who is partnered with someone of her own gender making a case as a somewhat Pentecostal Evangelical not only for acceptance of gay people in covenanted partnerships within the church and the ordained ministry of the church, but more than that: for a special purpose for gay people within God's purposes.

This book looks at the so-called 'clobber' texts and does so in a way that will commend itself to those who do theology as Evangelicals. These texts are successfully 'disposed' of in the sense that it is shown that for the most part, what they are about is either inhospitality or idolatrous religion.

it is often said that Jesus never said anything about what we call homosexuality, Sandra Turnbull challenges that. One of the 'new' things this book does is to look at the word 'eunuch' firstly in Jesus' teaching and to make the case that part of the semantic field of the term in the gospel and in the history and culture around it, is to refer to those who are constitutionally unable to make a heterosexual marriage even though they may be genitally intact -notably what we call homosexuality. This makes it considerably more plausible to see a potential affirmation by Jesus of 'gay' people, including couples and also in the early church.

I was very skeptical about this but I'm, if not convinced, at least now considering this. Sometimes I think that Sandra overstates her case and once or twice I think the argument looks a bit contradictory, but I think that the main direction of the argument is not unduly affected by those.

It will be very interesting to see Evangelicals in the Charismatic and Pentecostal traditions wrestle with this book.
God's Gay Agenda

Cross as forgiving: Tim Keller agrees

Looks like I'm not the only one trying to recast the Cross as a forgiving event, Tim Keller seems to be making the same sort of move:
The (True?) Story of the Cross | Musings on Science and Theology:

Forgiveness always requires sacrifice. When we forgive we bear the consequence, the suffering, ourselves rather than demanding retribution. No one “just forgives” any grievous wrong. How much more then for God? God did not, then, inflict pain on someone else, but rather on the Cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of the world into himself. This was not just an example, but an ultimate act of forgiveness.

So maybe I'm not saying something too off the wall -perhaps even an idea whose time has come?

Retelling Atonement forgiveness-centred (1)

nullIn this first post in this area I want to consider mostly
Love and anger.
I've been long reflecting on models of the atonement. At college, before ordination, I did a study -complete with pilot study of Evangelical church members- of how people became Christians with aparticular interest in whether a sense of guilt and forgiveness was an important aspect (basically, 'no' except for a minority ). So, in respect of PSA (penal substitutionary atonement) I found Scot McKnight's article here Center of Atonement | Theology, News & Notes | Fuller helpful in sketching out some of the issues behind the PSA debate of late:

The Neo-Puritans believe that the most genuine, authentic experience of the gospel and personal salvation is to comprehend in a profoundly humiliating encounter with the utter holiness of God that a person is a wretched and vile sinner, and therefore also knows both that he or she deserves nothing but wrath and hell but has experienced, by the sheer grace of God, an elective salvation so that he or she has been welcomed into the arms of the Father through the Son’s propitiatory and reconciling work. (Their worship follows this pattern.) My contention is that penal substitution is required by the gospel of the Neo-Puritan. To question this is to question everything.

I tended to agree with the proposition that the Evangelical gospel seeks to answer a question few people in our society ask: 'how do I find deliverance from my guilt?'. So a lot of Evo preaching heads into the business of guilt arousal rather than finding ways to respond to the other questions being asked. And because for many Evangelicals, in fact, the existential dread of wrath and a guilty conscience is actually not a very prominent/real subjective experience, they don't actually 'tell' the PSA story that well or with much conviction. Indeed it tends to be mangled or scrimped and heard as, well, "cosmic child abuse". it is possible to articulate PSA with a degree of care to avoid that charge (as, I think, Jim Packer did and a helpful example ofwhich is set out here) -but then you have to be prepared to talk Trinity -and that may not be helpful in an evangelistic situation with limited time. The other effect is to pretty much put a wrathful idea/image of God centre-stage which actually works in popular imagination against the one of the primary attractions of a Christian theology that God is love.

Most people see wrath and love as mutually exclusive; and so that needs looking at. Most people don't really understand forgiveness. These dysunderstandings are linked. And the real challenge is to tell the Cross story in a way that holds love central, puts wrath into a congruent perspective and clarifies forgiveness. Anything else is going to miss the mark -NT-theological pun intended.

So I want to sketch out such an approach. It is a kind of 'practical theology' account in that it starts with a consideration of human forgiving and supposes that analogies to divine forgiveness are possible (else why let 'forgiveness' figure so highly and frequently as a concept in Scripture?).  To get some better idea of the human dynamics you might want to look at the 2004 posts I made under the 'forgiveness' tag. in those posts you will see me trying to uncover the psychological dynamics of forgiveness and hints of how this might relate to God's forgiving. In this latter respect, a  more recent post commenting on what I think is a Barthian approach may show something of the genealogy of my thinking.

I am taking it, too, that forensically-centred, cosmic-battle or exemplary approaches may not claim any last words -as McKnight argues in the linked article.

Love and anger: closer than we often think
I want to start with love then anger then forgiving and being forgiven. God is love, and many reckon that anger has no part to play in our thinking about relating to God because love and anger are conceived to be mutually exclusive. However, as I learnt from CS Lewis, we should remember what love is and involves. In my experience love can be a driver of anger. Lest that sound too oxymoronic, let's notice that in fact most people would actually think there was something wrong with a parent who did not get indignant (and I think that is a form of anger) or even outraged if their child is mistreated, bullied, or discriminated against. That anger is born of love for the child. The anger is directed to challenging and righting or at least mitigating the wrong being done to the child. I note, with interest a recent editorial in the Guardian that seems to point in the same direction: outrage and indignation arise from caring about the good.

However, that is not holding the two emotions towards the same person simultaneously, so the illusion of the incompatibility of love and wrath could be maintained. Maintained, that is, until we consider the matter more fully still. Perhaps the child is being bullied by her brother, who is just as cherished as his sister. Does the parent fail to be angry about the wrong because the perpetrator is loved? No. The parent is cross, and cross with the brother yet the brother remains loved. JM Barrie's Tinkerbelle was said not to be able to have two emotions at once on account of being so small. We being bigger can. And God being, in a sense, bigger yet certainly can have both 'emotions' at once and do so in relation to millions and billions. Even so we should note that the two emotions are actually not so different but share a commonality: without love, there would be no anger. Without anger, we doubt the depth of the love.

So the first thing to notice is that love generates anger when the beloved is harmed. That anger is directed to rectifying the harm, the wrong. In so doing it can be directed to the wrongdoer (especially where the wrongdoer identifies with the wrongdoing).

The second thing to notice is that the anger doesn't nullify the love and that we (and God who is ever greater) can both love and be angry with a beloved (I note that I can't find a simple transitive verb for 'be angry at' ...).

Let's note too, that it doesn't necessarily require that someone else be involved. We parents can be cross-out-of-love with children who harm themselves or even just put themselves in harm's way. Witness the parent who rescues a child from running in front of a moving car -quite often relief competes with anger and the child may be scolded as well as hugged.

So, I argue, God-who-loves-us is enraged-out-of-love for us when we harm ourselves or harm others whom he loves. And this love-born-anger is about the desire for the best, the welfare of the beloved and the love-born-drive to right the wrongs involved.

In brief, this means that if we think that it is great that God is Love, then we have to be prepared that such love has to be outraged by the wrongs done to the beloved. If it is not so outraged, then it is not love: it is indifference, or apathy, but not love. We should also frame this consideration globally: God loves everyone. So when I wrong someone else, I am wronging someone whom God loves. When someone wrongs me, they are wronging someone whom God loves. When I harm myself or even just fail to be my best, I am wronging someone whom God loves.

None of this is to say that what I've just presented exhausts what human anger is about. I've presented anger in a more noble form. It is of course possible to find human anger that is not rooted in a virtuous or godly love for others. It can be irritableness -or worse- at being inconvenienced or slighted or pouting about such perceived mistreatments of ourselves (or sometimes significant others). In a few words, it can be selfish or narrow-minded or 'petty'. But before moving on from that observation, let's notice that even these instances are still the same dynamic as the more noble version we first considered, it's just that they are based in less noble motives. It's not so much that the anger is wrong, but that the 'wrong' it seeks to right is not really wrong or it is selfish or petty or unworthy.

The  interesting and important thing even here is that the dynamic is nevertheless basically the same. A wrong is done to someone (or something) that we hold in our affection or esteem -it may even be ourselves. We react out of love for whatever-it-is with a desire to right the perceived 'wrong': a desire that carries a surge of energy to take down/away the wrong and wrongdoer/s. The main problem is that the wrong may not be really wrong or disproprotionate or even misperceived. With regard to that latter: most of us have probably known times when we have been cross about a wrong done to us or to others, an injustice. Only to find that anger deflate as we discover that in fact it was not wrong or unjust; we'd got wrong what was happening, misinterpreted and so misapplied our anger. It is not so much the anger that is wrong as the misjudgement, lack of charity, quickness to think ill or whatever other lack of charitable disposition. It is most fundamentally about truth and humility.

And this is part of the problem for PSA. It tends to sound as if it is portraying God as displaying an anger that is rooted in  taking umbridge at a slight to his honour or that his rather arbitrary rules have been ignored or flouted. It is not seen as related to noble love but something rather petty. God should just 'get over it' is the thought that lurks so easily as a next step from that perception.

In subsequent posts I hope to take the argument further in the following sorts of ways:

What's this got to do with forgiveness?
To answer this we need to consider, first of all, a working definition of forgiveness. We then have to relate it to what we've noticed previously about love-born-anger and love itself. And we should note at the outset of this bit of enquiry that there is much misunderstanding of forgiveness around -just as there is about love and anger.

Can this apply to God in relation to humans?
God-talk is inescapably analogical. The question is how far and how truthy is the the analogy?

Next post in series...

Posts in the series:

Posting 9 Analogy: human to divine and back again 
Posting 8 Eikonic forgiveness explored further

posting 7 The Eikon of forgiveness

posting 6 The cost of forgiving

posting 5 Counter mimesis

posting 4 Reacting to being wronged

posting 3 To know all is to forgive all?

posting 2 Forgiveness in human life

posting 1 Love and Anger

The Evangelical Brand and the RC Brand

I've not myself used the term 'brand' in thinking about the way that church traditions operate. But actually, now I've had a bit of time to consider it through the lens of this article Out of Ur: Giglio & the Weakness of the Evangelical Brand I think that in a world where the broadcast media have been so dominant in public discourse, of course some of what happens around 'churchmanship' takes on the character of branding. The interesting thing is the voluntariness of the corporate body concerned: congregants take on the branding of their own free will. Probably this has some kind of similarity to the way consumers may identify with a brand and give it loyalty.
Anyway, the article uses the notion of brand to help elucidate some recent trends in the USA with regard to sexuality. The crucial thing to note is that for the general public at least Evangelicals are marked by relevancy.

Given this commitment to relevancy, when evangelical leaders refuse to accommodate to the culture on matters of homosexuality it appears to those outside that they are violating their own brand. While Catholic clergy are understandably behind the times ...

And so for some people this sets up a kind of dissonance which I've seen myself in relation to how people respond to me. I have sometimes found that there is a pleasure when people discover that 'despite' being a priest, I'm not very 'religious' and seem to understand and enjoy a number of things about contemporary life that they don't think 'go with' religiosity. They seem to enjoy the idea that perhaps spirituality doesn't have to hedge about with thorns and briars their joys and desires (to marshal Wm. Blake's words). However, then they may make an assumption that therefore I'd be okay with something that I have questions about (usually something like sexual activity outside of a committed relationship) and then there is palpable confusion. Which I suspect is rather like ...

While Catholic clergy are understandably behind the times, the gay community has trouble believing that evangelical opposition to same-sex marriage is predicated on a principled religious conviction or tradition. As one leader in the LGBT movement asked me, “Evangelicals are fine with ignoring many other parts of the Bible, so why do they insist on holding on to a few verses about homosexuality?”

And that is indeed a good question. Part of the proble, also, is that the hermeneutic is so obscure. At least with RC's it's clear that tradition and 'the Pope says' is more or less the last word and if they change its only after a very long time (there's an awareness, at some level, that many of the principal arguments of the protestant reformers were conceded eventually but only after about 400 years).

This leads to an articulation of what many of us who do or have identified with the label 'Evangelical' now wrestle with.

There are a great many Christians who are looking for a new public identity--a new banner--that is distinct from the tainted brand of evangelicalism we’ve inherited from the Religious Right. We’re looking for one that retains the theological orthodoxy of Scripture as well as the historical commitment to the common good that earlier manifestations of evangelicalism affirmed.

Though there is one other dimension that some of us bring to the ring: a sense that we don't want to cede the label to the 'headbangers'. But terms like Red-Letter Christians do look awfully attractive alternatives.

New Evangelical Manifesto -Race, women and children

There are a series of chapters on race, women and children. All of them focus on the way that the issues raised call for responses that go beyond Evangelicals' comfort zones. The race chapter does a nice job of showing how the individualism of Evangelicalism is inadequate to meet the real requirements for racial reconciliation. The chapter on women is well narrated and passionately told, but in the end had the weakness of dealing with the 2 Timothy 2 passage by means that would be least convincing to evangelicals and likely to confirm fears that 'New Evangelicalism' is a stalking horse for liberalism though there are some well-made points. By contrast, the chapter on children does a really nice job of considering children as portrayed in the Gospels. It then moves on to enunciate principles and an evidence-based approach to achieving them rather than an ideological one.

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.

New Evangelical Manifesto -changing the bad world

Jennifer D Crumpton shares a concern about people trafficking mainly for sex -new fashioned prostitution using the internet as a shop-window. Worse, much of it amounts to sexual slavery fuelled by threats, violence, blackmail. She outlines the horrendous and huge problem reminding us of the disgusting abuse of human beings involved and points out that it is becoming well ensconced in the USA. A truly horrifying story is told of abduction, brutalisation and sexual slavery in ordinary America. Of clients who were ordinary family men with children. The numbers of men who are paying for sex -including knowingly soliciting for it with under-age girls are disturbingly high. We should, of course, remember that the way that sexual imagery is used in everyday culture surely plays a part in 'normalising' the mentalities that underlie the behaviours. She points out that active participation in making changes for people such as those caught up in sex trafficking is what is needed from the churches. To participate in God's liberating action and right-wising reign.

This is a chapter which deserves reading more than my comment. There are some very real evils which affect and blight many; they put some of the campaigns beloved of certain Evangelical groups into perspective. I would say there is a degree of straining at gnats and swallowing camels involved; this chapter helps us to see that.

Andi Thomas Sullivan writes about people suffering from preventable diseases. So many of which are not only preventable but the cost of their prevention is pretty low. The concrete example in the chapter is that of insecticidal bed-nets which can prevent malaria. And how handing them out can give a real sense of participating in God's commonwealth. It is an inspiring story of practical help for good; how something relatively simple can be used for the good of many and the social enterprise needed to make it happen -not in a paternalistic fashion but in partnership.

These chapters are a salutary reminder that combatting evil is not just  about praying and recruiting souls to pray the sinners prayer but partnering with God in making the world a better place.

New Evangelical Manifesto [4] theology into the world

Paul Markham writes a chapter entitled A Theology that 'works'. For him the chapter has an existential origin in the sense of not really 'fitting' in Evangelical circles and discovering he was not as alone as he had thought. He also notes that 'new Evangelical' is not a self-designation for most of the people the label is designed to designate: these are people who tend to resist labelling.

Markham outlines a characteristic of New Evangelicals as 'having a Kingdom vision for the common good'. In fact he identifies striving for social justice as the unifying characteristic of the group and that it is a spiritual issue. Furthermore, they (we) are willing to engage in partnership for the common good which implies with people of good will beyond the Christian faith. More than this, such partnerships are  most likely to be 'grassroots' -what I would probably call 'bottom-up' and 'self-organisinng'.

What I found intriguing was linking this with the story of Nehemiah: noting that Nehemiah did not do the SMART planning thing but rather empowered and encouraged people to work together and to do their bit and in so doing to discover their community with one another. He doesn't mention the word 'emergent' or 'emerging' -but here it lurks close behind and so exposes why those terms have had saliency.

I loved this phrase: 'empowering communities to become co-creators of the world not merely consumers of it'. Just so, and I think that the co-creator theme is actually also important, in fact characterising. Related to this is the phrase 'the Commonwealth of God'.

The bottom up approach to action is mirrored by a bottom up approach to theology: rather than starting with the theory and methodology from first principles, let the action open up the imaginative space to understand better and more fully both what is going on and what the theology is. A willingness to "start in the middle" and trust that clarity can emerge is another characteristic.

I found this chapter helpful, because it has a real sense of laying bare some important dynamics of what is happening. The odd thing is that it doesn't quite name them or join them altogether and the word 'emerging' -which would do the latter- only occurs right at the end and not in that way. But it is that word that captures and pulls together the phenomena being identified and furthermore explains the occurrence of the word for at least some 'new Evangelicals'.

In the next chapter, Glen Harold Stassen writes about Kingdom discipleship as being God's vision for the Church. The diagnosis here is that many churches separate Jesus as personal saviour from Jesus the one who calls us to be disciples -following his teaching and example. Furthermore he notes that in practice Christologies that are docetic or gnostic inform their thinking. I think I'd say that monophysite ought to get a look in and perhaps not so much gnostic. Whatever the analysis, the point Stassen is making is that 'conversion' is important.

He mentions too the importance of an incarnational approach by which he means 'entering into the lives of others different from ourselves' (p.66) in a costly way; it's actually an 'incarnational solidarity' especially with the poor. This requires a 'participatory' 'christomorphic' grace; that is to say a recognition that God gives us grace to work with God and that it is a grace that forms us into the image of Christ. He notes that such a grace challenges our culture's relegation of faith matters to the private sphere. And this means, I would say, that his next point is a logical outcome; justice is something not merely about secular authority but something that our faith asserts and looks to find mirrored in the public sphere. Stassen mentions then that prayer is an important lesson from the lives and ministries of Bonhoeffer and MLK. He rightly notes the mismatch between the agenda of the right in the USA which seems to draw from Ayn Rand and, on the other hand, the teaching of Jesus. It is good to know that Stassen detects signs that megachurch leaders are choosing the latter rather than the former to help form their view of faithful Christian living where it impinges on the public sphere.

If I have a concern about Stassen's article it is about the centrality of conversion. I have a phobia about that word. I have a conversion story myself, so it's not a 'phobia' rooted in lack of experience or envy. Rather my concern is twofold. One aspect is knowing people who find it difficult to say they had a conversion because they cannot recall a time when they didn't have a real sense of God's involvement in their life and living formed by Christ. Another aspect is the way that that conversion becomes a procrustean bed forcing people to tell their stories in a certain kind of way, including distorting them by removing aspects that don't work so well and heightening or re-interpreting events to provide the required fit with the canonical story-arcs. One of the ironies of this is that when I deal with evangelical youth, I discover most of them are the products of Christian homes and their 'conversions' are arguably more about transition to adulthood  and integrating their faith in that. That's not to deny there is an element of commitment (or recommitment), but it is to note that there is a huge amount of cultural interpretation and translation going on.

To be more positive and to step back from projecting my hot-button reaction onto the article; I think that he actually means that we have an identity which is founded in Christ rather than social or political loyalties. But the danger is of using a word like this where certain connotative meanings are so prevalent. I suspect that its use is a kind of shibboleth; I can't decide whether it is well or ill to pander to the apparent need for it.

New Evangelical Manifesto [3] -Cizik changes his mind

For those of us who aren't USAmerican Evangelicals, Richard Cizik had worked for a number of years for the National Association of Evangelicals until he was resigned (just so: sometimes a resignation is not freely offered but coerced) because of remarks he made on a radio show. This prompts a reflection on changing ones mind. His remarks were that he could support gay unions and government funded contraception as a way to avoid abortion. He was also suspected of voting for Barack Obama and had been talking about the need to embrace the climate change issue but not as denialists.

This resignation led to him being dropped from other organisations and speaking engagements and to numbers of former colleagues and 'friends' ceasing to be in contact. He reflects that although he got support from a number of people, most Evangelicals who dissent over political matters with the party line have little or no support and face a lonely time. Cizik notes that Putnam -a sociologist- thinks that there is evidence that USA Evangelicals choose their church by its politics not its theology. Cizik argues that this points up the problem for USA Evangelicalism: it has been captured by conservative politics and the Gospel has been made subservient to that.

From this background he develops ideas about what  'new Evangelicals' might be. He notes the word traces back to 'good news' and feels that USA Evangelicals have become bad news, noting that they have become marked by being against things: anti liberal; anti-social gospel; anti-communist; anti trends. In doing so, the baby is often thrown out with the bathwater.

Cizik sees the 'new' bit of 'new Evangelicals as, firstly, a concern for building bridges beyond narrow sectarian boundaries -such as with scientists over climate change.  Secondly it's about not politicising the church. This is about engaging for the common good. I think he means by 'politicisation' what I might call 'becoming party political': I make this distinction because, in the end, 'political' is pretty much everything that we do in the public arena; the difficulty is when particular party disciplines, lines and loyalties are invoked to the detriment of building bridges and trying to identify commonalities -which is the political in the sense of 'the art of the possible'.

The fact that many USAmerican Evangelicals might label these characteristics as 'heretical' is a sad indictment of the party-political captivity of USA Evangelicalism. And this hurts us all: if I identify as Evangelical, I have to spend time explaining that this is not a cipher for USAmerican political nastiness (because that's what most people I interact with in GB think it is -rather like many Brits think the Conservative Party has a tendency to be the 'nasty people's party' because of the self-righteous, selfish and uncaring attitudes of its members).

And the 'nasty people's party' epithet is not irrelevant: Cizik's own experience is of being on the receiving end of personal attacks -not to mince words; unloving attitudes and hateful behaviour. The unrepentant unchristliness of those who are supposed to represent Christ is deeply hurtful and offensive.  Cizik spends some wordage explaining his thinking and the actualities of his positions and it is revealing, not least as it uncovers the actual disagreements of sections of the Evangelical community in the USA with the [tea-] party-political 'official' line; Latinos, African-American and often younger Evangelicals are likely not to sit square -or even comfortably- with some (or more) of the agenda.

This article is a cri de coeur for religious liberty and a proper separation of church and state: ironic given USAmerican history and foundations. Odd and disturbing that Evagelicals of the USA should so desire a Christendom model and to act in ways that are decried when they proceed from papacy.

The important remedy he identifies is that space must be created for people to be heard: for Evangelicals to dissent from the 'party-line' and to raise their concerns coupled with a willingness to be corrected. Of course the implication is that it also needs to create a space for people to change their minds; something that is excoriated in the political sphere. Surely a Christian public discourse should count on the need to repent -literally to change ones mind and more than that; to celebrate it.