Occupy St. Paul's

The Church of England is looking pretty foolish over the whole  St Paul's protest camp debacle.  I take no pleasure in this discomfort, the Chapter of St. Paul's were placed in a near impossible position from the moment the protesters arrived there.  The more tortured the Church's internal discussion over the occupation becomes the more publicity it draws and the longer the protestors are likely to stay!

At heart of this foolishness, confusion and discomfort, however, lies a fundamental question which I fear the Church of England has just not been asking.  "What are the Cathedrals for?"  I have visited many and in them I have found excellent and professionally presented material on history, heritage and choir music, but rarely have I found similarly presented material to explain the Christian faith or challenge me to reflect on the plight of the world.  I have been in Cathedral books shops where I couldn't find a Bible or a prayer book an sale, I have attended Cathedral worship in which the clergy could not lift their eyes from the stipulated liturgy for long enough to explain to a visitor what was happening and which page to turn to, and I have heard choirs sing every last word of the liturgy on my behalf (even the "Amens") turning me into a spectator and not a participant to the offering of worship.    

Anglican Cathedrals are virtually independent entities in the Church system - they are controlled not by Bishops or Congregations but by canons and chapters.  There are some shining examples of humble, gracious and even radical ministry amongst those canons and chapters, but sadly these examples do not predominate.

IMHO it is time the Church of England took control of its own flagship churches.  Some years ago Archbishop John Sentamu of York spent a couple of weeks of his holiday time living in a tent inside York Minster to reflect on the plight of refugees and spend time listening to that Cathedral's visitors.  It was an act of faithful humility which drew many to the Minster and to the Archbishop.  That is what a Cathedral is for - a place where the magnificence of architecture and liturgy meets listens to the needs of the whole world.  A Cathedral by its very nature is a place open to all comers.

Maybe it's time for the Bishops to set up camp inside St. Pauls and occupy the Cathedral. The protesters outside hold daily open conversations about the purpose and future of their actions, they have created a space for free debate in the heart of the city - I'd like to see the same kind of democracy of the Spirit inside the Cathedral.  Let's have a week of free entry to London's great Churches and once every day let the clergy call all and sundry together not for evensong but for the liturgy of dialogue - an open conversation with London on what the Cathedrals are for.  I don't mean the usual colloquium for clergy and power brokers, I mean a public meeting for all the tourists, gawpers, photographers, roofless people, music lovers, regular worshippers, candle lighters, city centre workers and occasional God-visitors who wander in and out of any open town centre church.  If we want to give St. Paul's back to God we will first have to give it back to the people.

on being an almost monotheist

This is not going to be well received by everyone (which doesn’t matter because not everyone reads my blog :-)…. but a recent visit to a Hindu temple has reopened some thoughts I’d been having after engaging in dialogue with friends who are neo-pagans. I suspect Monotheism and Polytheism are not anything like as mutually exclusive as most of their proponents suppose.

Let me explain the less challenging (for a Christian) horn of the dilemma first. For religious traditions such as Hinduism and many forms of neo-paganism the manifest forms of the deities are just that – many different forms of the divine. All expressions of the divine are to be honoured and may be worshipped, but behind all of this (at least at the deeper levels of philosophy) there lies the ultimate unity of the divine (indeed of all things) to which they ultimately belong. So Hindus are not really polytheists after all. Polytheists are really monotheists with lots of bells and whistles on - well sort of.

What happens, however, when we scrutinise monotheism in the same way? Does a God who is absolutely indivisible make complete sense? How would such a God be in any kind of relationship with human beings, how could we ever know this God, how could the indivisible divine communicate with us? Although I know it is controversial to say this, the purest monotheisms of Judaism and Islam have actually struggled with these issues of knowing the unknowably, indivisible God. The Holiness of God in the Hebrew Scriptures makes him/her ultimately unnameable and therefore unapproachable, so various circumlocutions are developed “The Holy One (blessed be He)”, “the Almighty”, “the Lord of Hosts”. Then there are ways of describing the presence of God at one remove; “the Hand of God” “the Spirit of God”, “the Glory (Shekinah) of God” and so on. Not to mention the angels and all the hosts of heaven.

For Islam anything which threatens the divine unity is “shirk” – the ultimate sin. Yet the Qur’an is held to be eternal – yes that’s right it wasn’t created during time but always existed as the mind of God before creation. If you are a Christian does that sound a little iddy-biddy bit like the Logos or Eternal Word of God? A God so undivided needs the services of angelic messengers to speak to human kind – and what are they if not some kind of projection of the divine onto the great screen of the world?

Ultimately, taken to the far extreme, monotheism like polytheism stops making sense. We cannot affirm the unity of God at the expense of abandoning the knowability of God without becoming deists, and deism is just a well mannered term for godlessness. Enter the doctrine of the Trinity (with a flourish of seraphic trumpets, attended in glory by cherubim and seraphim, by saints and angels and archangels and all the hosts of heaven). God who is three, and yet undivided, God who exists not in isolation but in divine eternal relationship with Godself. It is confusing, it is contradictory, but it is divine, for it tells us the limits of proper speech about God. God is not to be divided: is was and always will be ultimately one, but not ONE in an undistinguished, unapproachable kind of way. Not wrapped up in him/herself and invisible like the dark inside of a tennis ball which only faces inwards on itself. Not unwilling to risk the confusion, change, division and separation of being in relationships, but rather willing, loving and desiring to be known in so many ways within this world.

Lessons from Islamic Awareness Week

I have been listening carefully to my Muslim brothers and sisters during their Islamic Awareness Week in the University. I think there has been more debate than dialogue and the form which the debate takes has crystallised very clearly for me. For those Muslims who want to debate with Christians (and for many Christians who want to debate with Muslims) the very core of the argument is about consistency. The Judaeo-Christian scriptures are argued to be inconsistent – there are textual variations, inconsistencies of thought, and disagreements about the extent of the canon. All of this is evidence that these scriptures are therefore corrupted by numerous human influences. The Qur’an by contrast is a unified text with no variations which can be securely traced to the revelation received by the Prophet Mohammed; no human hands have shaped it. The message of God must be pure, consistent and eternal, so the Judaeo-Christian form of it must therefore be inferior and incomplete.

This line of argument inevitably leads to a debate (rather than a dialogue) and one which proceeds by swopping texts from scriptures. I’m bored by this. Bored and a little frustrated by the inability to see the prior philosophical and theological presumption on which all of it rests. There is a presumption that truth must be, clear, consistent and unitary. But it isn’t. Truth often proves to be elusive, frequently both-and rather than either-or, and limited by human capacities for knowledge. Even if God is speaking to us (and I believe s/he is!) our ability to hear is determined by our humanity, bounded in space, time and intelligence. It is impossible for a revelation not to be passed through human hands, heads, hearts and voices how else could we receive it?

The Qur’an was received within the prophetic ministry of one man, through one language, in one culture at a single place and time. It is a prophetic proclamation with comparatively little narrative and does not offer witness accounts of historical events or even of the Prophet’s life. I would expect it to be largely consistent. The Bible was received over many centuries in at least two languages, located in several cultures and a number of different places. It includes witness accounts of events and experiences. Yes I can see an underlying consistency – but only if I accept that this is a developing revelation. What collection of historical documents or of witness statements spread over so much time and space would be completely consistent? Too much consistency here would be robust evidence that the documents had indeed been corrupted by an editing hand.

The whole consistency argument doesn’t work for me, not because I am anxious to “prove” Muslims wrong, but because it lacks the one real condition necessary for a dialogue rather than a debate. The argument sees and measures the value of one tradition against the underlying presumptions of another rather than attending carefully to the “other” and hearing how they understand themselves.

Please can we move on?

I'm Going Out Fishing

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink”. The suffering caused by the Pakistan floods has touched us all, and I hope it will continue to do so after the media circus moves on. For the real tragedy is still to enfold, with summer crops destroyed and winter sowing impossible there is a real danger that famine will follow after flood and pestilence, and some fear that the dark forces of extremism will exploit the situation. The adjective “Biblical” gets bandied around these days to mean “epic in scale” (Jezzer is rather fond of it in his Top Gear car reviews…). Surely this is a flood of Biblical proportions and on the waters ride the four horsemen of the apocalypse – death, pestilence, famine and war. Where else can we turn to find words and images to describe this catastrophe, other than to the Bible?
Yet there is an imagine from our TV screens which sticks in my memory – an old man fishing in the flood waters from what remains of his house – and fishing very successfully too. It is a wonderful picture of human ingenuity, tenacity and adaptability in the face of devastation. I grew up in a family of inshore fishermen and to me, going fishing means falling back on something familiar and deeply ingrained, something you know how to do, something you can rely on when all else fails. When Peter the disciple faced all the confusion, loss, desperation and fear which followed the crucifixion of Jesus he said: “I’m going out fishing”, and I would have gladly joined in the answer of his friends - “we will go with you”. And that was when they met the risen Jesus.
Faced with the tragedy of Pakistan we need to go on fishing too by believing in the power of ordinary people to rebuild their lives through ordinary means – and that includes the ordinary means of help at our disposal through giving and praying.

Why the Church of England has no Balls

It has been a troubled month for the Church of England. A weakened and long delayed proposal for women bishops has finally been accepted by General Synod (muted cheering), but Jeffrey John's name has mysteriously been withdrawn from the shortlist for the prestigious bishopric of Southwark (loud booing).

There really is a crisis of authority in the Church of England and much as I admire Rowan Williams I regret that it is now time for him to come out loud and proud for what he actually believes in. It is widely accepted that Dr. John is the best bishop the Church of England hasn't got and it is time to put this right. The Archbishop is of course facing pressure on two fronts - from conservative "catholic" Anglicans over women bishops and from conservative "evangelical" Anglicans over women bishops and gay clergy. Both groups are actually minorities though substantial ones.

I'm not an Anglican but it puzzles and distresses me that the Church of England has ceased to believe in its own authority to make decisions. The founding principle of the Anglican Church is not so much a unique doctrine, as a belief in its own right to govern itself independently. When decisions like the consecration of women bishops or the nomination of a candidate for bishop who happens to be gay, are taken through the proper processes of that church they are valid and binding. Part of our Christian fellowship is that we belong together in churches in which we may not always agree - but we have to accept the decisions that we have made prayerfull y together after seeking God's guidance. The Church of England does not have to wait until it finds full unanimity (this will never happen) nor should it be looking over its shoulder at what Rome is doing (a denial of the very nature of Anglicanism as a self governing church). Acceptance of decisions with which we cannot all agree is part of the true meaning of Christian discipline.

Given the nature of the issue I shall not mince my words. It is time for the leadership of the Church of England to have some balls. If you want to find the right people to be your next generation of bishops then you should look at those whom God is gifting and calling - and that cannot be done by restricting God's choice to one gender and one interpretation of sexuality.

Ghosts in the Machine

Whilst searching for an old email that I needed to recover I came across several others from two friends who have died in the last year. There are ghosts in my computer. Unsurprisingly it was a bitter-sweet experience: memories of times and tasks shared, in one case shot through with a stab of laughter seeing again the words of one who was infamously witty and wicked in her on line correspondence. I paused – just what is the “etiquette” about keeping or deleting mail from lost friends? Are emails like letters, to be held as a treasured keepsake, or should they be discarded as nothing more than a memo, a fleeting moment unworthy of being held as a true memento?

This strangely mixed moment raises real issues about who we are and the footprint of our lives in this digital age when so much of what we do is recorded. A hundred years ago what physical trace would we “ordinary” people leave behind us? Birth, marriage and death certificates, a handful of letters, perhaps a will and some sticks of furniture for our children if they were lucky. Today all my financial dealings, all my correspondence, most of my work and a large part of my life are recorded somewhere on computers or cameras. There are photographs and videos, sound recordings and filing cabinets, all full of bits of me. Does this effect who I am or not? Some contemporary social thinkers would insist that I am creating my own “identity” out of this scrapbook of choices and chances.

It was once said of the rather vain Benjamin Disraeli that he was “a self made man who adores his maker”. I’ve always thought of myself as a half-made human, a collaborative work in progress with the real me still emerging out of the ongoing conversation with God which we call “life”. Mostly I detest the idea that all these people are holding so much information about me, but in some ways it serves to show that I really am not “self made” - I only exist in a whole network of relationships and responsibilities to others. What I need to sort out is which of these relationships and which of these records really matter to me - which of these threads of conversation are significant in the tangled web which joins me to the God who is the centre of all things truly real?

Scientists Create Life

Scientists in American have created life! Well, if you believe the headlines they have, a closer examination with a little scientific advice shows that they have successfully rearranged some of the components of life to make a synthetic microbe capable of reproduction. This is a remarkable achievement and whatever reservations we may have the imagination, ingenuity, skill and sheer persistence of the research team deserves our admiration and applause.

Two comments – firstly, as ever in these breakthroughs scientists are accused of “playing God”, as though this were a knock down argument against human arrogance. Allow me to let you into a little secret – according to the Christian faith human beings were actually made and designed to “play God”. In the Bible humanity is said to be made “in the image of God” – with the capacity to imitate God and to be intimate with God. Created not to be God, or replace God but to imitate God. It is our very purpose for being here that we should honour God by becoming a people who are shaped by the same qualities that God has shown towards us – love, patience, grace, justice, compassion and yes creativity! So “playing God” is precisely what we are to. To suppose God made a mistake when we were made with minds capable of synthesising DNA is what I find arrogant – not that scientists should venture to do this.

But secondly: This discovery clearly has both dangers and opportunities attached to it. Part of “playing God” is learning about restraint. A God who can do anything doesn’t chose to do everything. Some things are not to be done not because they are impossible but simply because they are harmful and demeaning. We are told that there are big moneyed interests behind this development, and that worries me more than the success of the scientists. Market forces are notoriously difficult to control when they conflict with ethics.

So let us pause. Let there be plaudits (and Nobel Prizes?) for the scientists, but we need to do some more ethical thinking before we start to use this new technology. If we want to play God that is the way to do it – creativity and wisdom hand in hand. If there is any arrogance in science I find it not in these discoveries but the false notion that we can imitate the creativity of God without seeking to imitate his wisdom.