The Bible in a Disenchanted Age -a brief review

 Why this book? For me? -I've been finding myself wanting to wrestle more and more with the interface between scholarly questions and devotional reception of scripture. Walter Moberly has a reputation which suggests he could be a helpful thought provoker and angle-giver. I've not previously read much of his work, so I also felt that this might help me to orient to his oeuvre and suss out whether more acquaintance could be good.

What this book does is to consider the challenges that we face in commending the Bible to our contemporary cultures. Obviously, this isn't quite meeting what I mentioned I'm looking to wrestle with, but it is adjacent-enough to be helpful to me. It also has the advantage of coming at the issue through the pathway of attentiveness to culture and mission which lie in my background. It does deal with the reception of texts and as part of that there is relevance to the devotional reception while making use of scholarly insights, approaches and techniques.

One of the interesting things that Moberly does is to cross-reference specifically, as a kind of case study, Daniel 7 with the chapter 1 of the Aeneid. I feel embarrassed to say that I'd never known about the Aeneid, -I'd heard of it but had no idea what it was or where it fitted in Roman history and culture. I have to say that it was really helpful for me to do the compare and contrast that Moberly does with it. It was interesting to get some insight into the way that Roman empire Christians appreciated, made use of and critiqued the Aeneid. I was glad of the insight that gives into their strategies for reading texts which carry across to using scripture.

 It was helpful also to be walked through the likely composition drivers of the Aeneid as well as to get insight into why it would have been received by imperial Romans as a kind of divine oracle which bolstered and underpinned the imperial mythology and solidified a sense of destiny and participation in divine design. This was helpfully compared and contrasted with the same sort of examination of Daniel 7. The contrasts were helpful as the similarities. I also found it useful to be reminded of the multivalency of such texts, that they could/can become unmoored from their original purpose and gain a wider reception which can be disclosive. 

For me too this helped to consolidate thoughts and reflections about the way that apocalyptic language and imagery works and gives a useful handle on why we really do need to understand it and be able to use it so that we don't fall into the kinds of 'dating the signs of the end' we see with Schofield, the JWs, Adventists and others.

What this careful work does also is builds a basis on which to be able to commend the Bible for spiritual use to intelligent and 'disenchanted' readers. For me this is important as I am increasingly thinking about the formation needs of those adults who are new to the Christian faith and considering what it is that we need to do with them to help them to develop service-able habits of mind, perspective, approach and routine. I think that this book gives insights and approaches that could help in that task.

I was interested to see Moberly take an approach I've seen used in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics where the main text is interposed with more in depth comment -excursuses- in a different typeface. This was done with the suggestion by Moberly that if the reader didn't want to go into the detail, then they could easily identify what to skip over. The only problem for me with that was on my e-reader, it was quite hard to get the small text to be a reasonable size for easy reading without having huge main text.

I quite liked the excursus on how to present dating 'AD and BC'. There's a handy little description of how we got "AD" and "BC" (and he shares my puzzlement at why one set of initials refers to a Latin phrase and one to an English phrase -why wouldn't you be consistent: AC and BC, for example). And I like his alternative to the CE and BCE -using an up arrow symbol for numbers rising (ie CE/AD) and a down-arrow for numbers falling (ie BC/BCE). Personally I think we should give that a go, but I also doubt it'll catch on, unfortunately.

So, I commend this book to you if it looks at all interesting and resonant for you.

Links relating to Review The Bible in a Disenchanted Age on Amazon R. W. L. Moberly’s Website Tag - #TheBibleInADisenchantedAge

Note:  This review was given of the book which was supplied free for the purposes of review. Nothing but an honest review was asked; no inducements to make it a favourable review were offered.

Secularities and religions

As a brief way into helping managers and others at my university to think about how the university should handle matters of religion, I have tended to use a distinction I learnt from Phil Lewis who was our diocesan interfaith advisor when we were in Bradford. It  has proved useful in helping people to think about what they mean by "secular" when we talk about the university as a secular institution. What appears to be the default in many people's minds is that secular means to exclude religion. In Phil's binary this would be "hard secularism" and the explemplar national exponents would be France and Turkey who work to remove religious symbols and ideas from the public square. Religion can only be practised in private and can have no influence on public affairs.

The contrast, and the sort of stance we try to encourage people to take, is 'soft secularism'. The national exponent of this would be, in theory, India (though this is under threat) where the state remains impartial about religion but recognises that citizens come to the public square as, among other things, religiously-identified actors.

In this article, Building Ethical Bridges in a Secular Age | Comment Magazine | Cardus,  a three-part distinction in made using the words 'freedom' and 'religion' but varying the adjective between them.

• Freedom of religion—the state does not impose a religion on its citizens: there is no state religion. 
• Freedom for religion—the state does not restrict the free practice of religion by its citizens. 
• Freedom from religion—the state excludes religion and religious voices from the public square, in particular, in relation to law and public policy making.

I think that this is a useful way of thinking about it in a secular organisation. The final point, of course, is pretty much the "hard secular" approach. The first two are both "soft secular" approaches. The first point is about impartiality: not favouring one above the rest. The second point is about allowing all expressions to flourish. These first two points are complementary. However, the human rights approach does restrict the second by making clear that expressions that infringe the rights and freedoms of others are not covered. This reminds us that there is, in fact, a fine line between allowing religious expression and one or more of them becoming an imposition on others.

Beyond this the referenced article makes a case for a post-secular approach.
one of the arguments is this:

... we should point out that everyone has beliefs, so the argument that those with religious beliefs should be excluded from the public square because of those beliefs is discriminatory and anti-democratic. The new option, "none," in answer to the survey question about religious belief, reflects a belief system.

One of the reasons I became convinced of the importance in broad terms of a soft secular approach was noting how the hard secular approach was, covertly, an imposition of a particular viewpoint which has a bearing on religion. As such it functioned in a quasi religious way. In the European human rights framework, religion is paired with philosophical viewpoints. This would include "hard secular" approaches. To be truly pluralist and respectful of the rights of others, the hard secular approach has to be eschewed: it ends up imposing a particular religiously-significant stance on people who conscientiously may believe that their faith is supposed to have a public-square face.

It does require though, an acknowledgement that there are no easy answers. At least with the hard secular approach there is a clarity, even if it can be somewhat oppressive to religious actors. With a soft secular approach, the messiness of understanding, dialogue, compromise and negotiation is implied as no single solution will fit all societies and communities and over time the actors and circumstances and interpretations change, meaning that we will be engaged in constant monitoring, listening, learning and dialogue. But then, isn't that what human society is about anyway? Why should we expect religion and spirituality to be different in that respect?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why post-secularist might be mindful of Buddhism

When I've led workshop/lectures on post-modern spiritualities, I've quite often cited the rapid growh of Buddhism in the west and the connections it seems to make with 'new age' stuff, and invited students to reflect on what about Buddhism might be attractive to post-secular spiritual seekers. I've not fully named it for myself, even, but I suspect that this quote puts us in the right vicinity to answer the question. "Buddhist-influenced cultures understand adaptive self-deception; they view human cognitions, emotions, and preferences as self-interested illusory constructs that may serve biological goals, but that do not reflect objective reality". I think that these things are being seen from a reflective post-modern mindscape and that are then being seen in Buddhism. Perhaps. This is certainly one area I'd like to be able to research if my new post allows it.
Mindful Hack: Evolutionary psychology :Goodbye cruel US - prof claims EP's future is Asia :