Black leaders blast megachurches, say they ignore social justice

Prominent black leaders have denounced increasingly popular megachurches, saying many have abandoned Jesus' emphasis on social justice to preach a gospel of wealth and self-help.

Christianity :: Black leaders blast megachurches, say they ignore social justice

Petroleum-Free Polymers from Fructose

producing plastics this way might require some investment, but the long-term gain would be that the process is much cleaner than petroleum-based methods. While using petroleum dumps new carbon dioxide into the air, the carbon dioxide released when extracting chemicals from plants is created from molecules that are already in the ecosystem.

In fact, would this not be a kind of carbon sequestration?
WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Petroleum-Free Polymers from Fructose
Filed in: plastic, renewables, fructose, oil

Lazy atheism and bishops

If that title doesn't get your attention, what will? This post flags up an article that appeared today in the Guardian which has some interesting things to say about the Church of England from a friendly-atheist perspective. But, oh dear, Simon Jenkins gives an outing to several lazy atheist myths on the way. So I propose to comment on those first before having a look at the interesting and constructive things in this article.

So, first up, he says:

Atheism fields no armies, but Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam most certainly do. Never was a bigger lie told than that the Pope has no divisions.

What? Surely he can't be serious? Atheism fields no armies? Yet the armed forces of the PRC and of North Korea serve officially atheist regimes [not to mention the officially secular -and so kinda atheist- armies of the USA and France and India etc etc ...] ... and I can't think of any armed force currently engaged as a Christian army unless perhaps 'Christian' is doing duty as a kind of ethnic label, and ditto Hindu. I suspect the same is true of Judaism since Israel is officially a secular state and the most religious of Jews tend to be against the state of Israel... So not the easy goal he thought, potentially and own goal in fact.

It's good knock about rhetoric but it's flawed, I think:

Under Tony Blair's unequal extradition treaty, if Dr Williams opposes the appointment he could be "extraordinarily rendered" from Lambeth Palace to a New Jersey courthouse, thus fulfilling the Pilgrim Fathers' wildest dreams.

I take the point but I think that expressing an opinion is not covered, and the main point is that the ABofC has no power except that of moral suasion to oppose the appointment. He may advise that it is not a good idea but he has no other means to oppose it; the provinces of the Anglican communion are independent and held together voluntarily.

And this is a bit of selective reading if ever I saw it.

Rustle through the cuttings and you will see that almost all the Church's bad news involves bishops. Their appointments are controversial, if not cataclysmic, be they leftwing, rightwing, gay or, worst of all, women. From "Bishop John" of Reading to Bishop Gene of New Hampshire and Bishop Katharine of Nevada, from Hereford's Mappa Mundi to Lincoln's vendetta and the impenetrable faction-fighting at Ripon, Trollope himself could not catalogue the mischief caused to the Anglican church by the episcopacy.

Well, it's debatable about the bad news and proportions thereof. But more importantly it takes for granted that the media's view of things ecclesiastical is the important one. But let's think about that for a moment, shall we? The press and other news media go for bishop stories precisely because bishops are the nearest thing that the press thinks we have to celebrities and politicians and the best kind of news is 'bad' news. Given those two factors, it would be interesting if we found that there were not a lot of 'bad' news bishop stories. Case not proven, I think. In any case I suspect that there are probably quite a lot of the bad news stories that don't involve bishops and that the episcopacy probably causes less mischief on balance than other members of the church, it's just that when they do, it's bigger news with bigger consequences. And that's allowing for the fact that I have personal experience of episcopal 'fallen-ness'!

With a faulty analysis comes a faulty solution:

bishops seem to be accidents waiting to happen. Dr Williams should admit as much and abolish the episcopacy. He would save £18m and no end of trouble worldwide.

Abolish bishops and the accidents waiting to happen devolves to figures that would take their place in the spotlight of media scrutiny, so perhaps keeping them and giving them good media training is a better solution. That's without considering that some of us actually think that episcopacy isn't inherantly a bad idea and could even be good if done right. The other things don't require bishops to be abolished: I have long advocated that all clergy should be paid the same and that the only differentials should be expenses of office. If the idea is to pay people so that they do not have to have another income, I can't see the logic of paying 'senior appointments' more, especially as we should be vocation-motivated. If the stipend is a grant /enablement to pursue a church-centred vocation, then need not the worldly valuing of an appointment should be at the heart of financial compensation policies. Part of the point of equalising the stipends of parish clergy was to eliminate, as I understood it, the unseemly scramble for better paid preferments and to enable people to pursue vocations to areas of a more 'missional' character without undue concern for the financial implications. This has largely been successful, I would judge and needs now to be extended to so-called senior appointments. That would achieve the savings -though I gather that they are unlikely to be as much as 18m quid under either scenario.

Then the guy says this:

The Church of England's safety valve is covert schism, its most effective discipline indiscipline. Yet its diplomacy is lumbering and hidebound. Lambeth still cannot make its peace with Rome, as have the Lutherans, or with Wesleyan dissent.

I really don't understand this: the Anglican church in Europe is in full communion with north European Lutheranism, and I'm not aware that either of us has entirely patched up the orgument with Rome, nor will we ever agree on the role of the pope, I suspect which for both Anglicans and Lutherans continues to be the big issue. And, as the CofE is actively and with some success, on the whole, managing raprochement with Methodism in Britain ... ?

So having raised the problems, what is there of value in this story? Well, there's a few things I would like to say that it is worth hearing from our friendly disagree-ers.

It will be no surprise, given what I wrote a few paragraphs back, that I think we should 'hear' this.

The Presbyterians were right. Bishops are a noisome and bureaucratic pestilence. They were the agents of ecclesiastical power when that power was many days' ride away from provincial England. They shared with monasteries vast territorial wealth, survived the Reformation and, even as the Church declined nationally, proliferated regionally, taxing subordinate parishes to maintain their style of living and governing.

It doesn't have to be that way, though. I believe in the bene esse of episcopacy: that is to say that if you don't have bishops, their equivalent tends to get invented: people who handle trans-local relationships between churches and perhaps represent groups of churches tend to appear. The way they are appointed and hold office may differ and the amount of doctrinal or ecclesiological freight they are invested with may vary but essentially, you have an 'apostolic ministry' of some kind.

I would say that we could learn something from the Moravians here. If I've observed things rightly, in the UK they have bishops who are ordinary parish clergy most of the time. I guess in CofE terms they are a bit like area/rural deans in terms of the way they hold two offices together. The real problem, as I see it, with CofE bishops is that we have the medieval princeling model still in mind. So we have too few of them. I would say that we should have loads of them, tiny dioceses but bishops who are more earthed in smaller local communities, paid the same as the rest of the clergy but with a wider responsibility for the pastoral care and ministerial development of the other clergy.

So when Simon Jenkins writes...

The middle ages, when everyone was supposedly an active Christian, coped with 20 bishops, and only six were added before the Victorian era. In 1845, there were 30; by 1945 the number had risen to 90. Today there are 114 bishops and suffragans. There is even talk of a third archbishop. This is missionary creep. I was once sent a diocesan agenda proposing an increase in head office staff of 24 and a matching cut of 24 in parochial clergy.

The problem is not how many bishops, it's how they function and how they are resourced and more widely than that, how they have been seen culturally within and outwith the church. It is worth reading Gareth Miller's radical proposal for a new provincial structure which I reproduced on my blog a little while back. It seems to me that he outlines some structures that along with my suggestion about stipends, could actually work. Oh and incidently, I think that a church with more ordained deacons [most of those currently exercising the office of Reader are, in all but name, functioning, in Anglican terms, diaconally, let's recognise that] but fewer stipended clerge might be part of what we do. Making room for more bi-vocationality in varying degrees from voluntary to fractional posts is part of the solution. Who knows even bishops who are part time teachers, or welders job-sharing episcopacy with a spouse or one or two other clergy.

So, I want to thank Simon Jenkins for raising the issues, even if sometimes with a degree of wrongly-informed rhetoric. It is important for us to see how others see us, and where they have a point, to address the concerns.

I just can't work out how to get the CofE as a whole to listen to these concerns.

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Dr Williams should abolish bishops and end this missionary creep:
Filed in: atheism, CofE, bishops, armies

Survey on trust in ID cards in europe

If you are an EU citizen, then you might like to join this consultation on ID cards:

The Future of Identity in the Information Society, a project to explore identity issues in Europe, has launched a survey to gauge Europeans’ attitudes about electronic identification programs. Online at www.surveymonkey.com /s.asp?u=431712121747, the survey asks how strongly one agrees or disagrees with statements such as how much one supposes issuing systems will be secure, the difficulty of using an electronic ID card and the value of exchanging data about cardholders among governments and businesses.

Quite important to give it a go. It's not hard [though watch out for a couple of slightly confusing double negative questions] and not long.
Survey on trust in ID cards in europe (ML)

Filed in: ID, ID_cards, UK, Europe

Video link churches and the Papacy of Celebrity

I both agree and disagree with this article. The agreement is fundamental: that we ignore the connotative meaning of our media at our peril. I disagree that

A televised event doesn’t communicate anything about a person’s character. It can only affirm or deny talent and attractiveness

, I think that the example is weak and does not necessarily carry that connotation; it overstates things. However, I do tend to think that the writer is right with this.

the extensive financial outlay required to pull off a video-venue service communicates to the congregation that only a preacher with a golden tongue has authority to preach the gospel. It conveys the unspoken belief that no one in the satellite congregation has the authority to speak to their context because preaching requires unique talents that only a few actually possess. Like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, only the larger-than-life giants, painted by pixelated light, and hovering above the congregation, possess these elusive talents. The medium itself nurtures an elite priestly class in which the preacher is set apart from the people. With video venues, we can say goodbye to the priesthood of all believers and hello to the papacy of celebrity.

However, we do need to be careful at this point: the problem I see here is that a particular approach to worship has been hypered by the medium. As McLuhan was trying to say with 'the medium is the message', technology extends our abilities: it amplifies certain aspects of our abilities. In this case it amplifies the ability to project ones voice and image to a greater number of people at once. This does tend to have the effect of heightening 'celebrity', in effect. But it doesn't damn the use of video per se; just problematises that kind of use, and I agree that magnifying the office of preacher like that is perhaps not a good strategy and amplifies some of the worst tendencies of modernist-framed church culture. It's also a rather unimaginitive use of the possibilities: simply to do what we did before only bigger and more -dare I say?- oppressive.

But what if we used video imput more ambiently? Or to bring to bear things that would otherwise be hard to convey [a chat with a mission partner in Ethiopia, or a demonstration of just how things are in the downtown area the church is proposing to do some justice and social care work in], or to simply use graphic effects to expand the appreciation of liturgy and song or to help people remember better what is said. But talking heads? Give us a break. Let's learn from the use of video in clubs, in concerts and so forth. Let's also think about how it can empower ordinary Christians.

On a slightly different tack, I think that perhaps what the writer is reacting against is out of a feeling that not having the physical presence of a preacher is somehow not right in worship. I actually think that that instinct, which I share is about the same kind of difficulty with having communion over the airwaves; somehow the relationality that is meant to be inherant in worship is being attenuated so much that God's creation of community is being comupromised. Or am I being a bit too precious and reactionary?
Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: Video Venues and the Papacy of Celebrity: Why changing the methods always changes the message:
Filed in: media, message, Christian, worship, preaching

Get a grip Mr Darling!

It looks to me like there are certain influential figures in the British government who are proponents of the nuclear industry, for whatever reason, who just do not like the fact that there are substantial difficulties with the nuclear option and show no real sign of having listened to any of the objections other than financial. Take Alistair Darling:

One of the factors in nuclear is that the costs have got to be met. We know it is expensive but to have an energy review that says we are not going to do it, especially given the carbon problem we face, does not make any sense at all.

Alistair, the indications we've seen do address the 'buts' you have. The fact remains that if you really have the kind of government money that redeveloping nukes would require, you'd get more out of it helping to support efficiency measures and renewables or even sequestration. And that's before we consider that the carbon footprint of minikng, building and decommissioning nuke power plants is arguably higher than current carbon-burning options. Come on man! Get a grip. The fact is that energy security could trump plain security if we follow the nuke path: nuclear installations would not be a good thing to have if a terrorist organisation decided that flying planes or launching missiles at them would be a good way to further their agenda.

I could even be paranoid about things and say that given the security problems inherant in a plutonium economy, ID cards seem to be a potential tool to control populations and identify nuclear security risks, or that decisions to renew Trident might require a domestic nuclear industry ...

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | The lights will go out if we avoid the nuclear option, says Darling:
Filed in: energy, generation, nuclear, UK, government

Abbey Nous -the blog

Just to announce that I've set up a blog specifically to deal with matters of 'Lord's prayer spirituality' with the aim that it "is for friends and waysharers who are exploring or committed to a spirituality based on the Lord's prayer to share info and insights." In due course I will add the earlier posts where relevant on this blog to Abbey Nous. This blog will continue to capture more general spirituality and growth materials.