Great Books Explained: The King James Bible

 

I have recently co-scripted a film about the King James Bible with James Payne, a curator, gallerist, and passionate art lover. 

James is on a mission to demystify the art world and discover the stories behind the world’s greatest paintings and sculptures. Each episode of his Great Art Explained series focuses on one piece of art and breaks it down, using clear and concise language free of 'art-speak'. Great Books Explained, in which the film on the King James Bible will appear, is an extension of Great Art Explained and follows the same ideas, except it is about literature. Fifteen minutes, clear concise language, no outlandish theories, just a love for books and reading.

James says: "Coming this Friday is my film co-created by the Reverend Jonathan Evens about the extraordinary King James Bible. For an atheist I’ve also had a strange lifelong obsession with the Bible and in particular the gospels. My research paper for my MA at art school was on “The redemption figure in American cinema” so this was a real pet project for me. It’s a long time coming but the Bible is out this Friday at 8pm (UK time). I also get to use a piece of music I’ve been wanting to use for ages."

The film covers the content and structure of the Bible as well as telling both the story of the King James Version's creation and some of its cultural influence.

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Mark Heard - Well Worn Pages.

From "I will not believe" to "My Lord and my God"

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

Thomas’ statement to the other disciples that, “Unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my fingers on those scars and my hand in his side, I will not believe” is essentially one which is repeated regularly by atheists around the world. Here is a typical comment made in the discussion section of Richard Dawkins’ website, “I have never witnessed a scrap of evidence pointing to god's existence, which leads me to a total lack of belief in it.” Dawkins himself has said, "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."

How can we, as Christians, answer such assertions; because it is not enough simply to say that we believe and leave it at that?

First, we need to be clear that those who say there is no evidence for the existence of God seek to disallow the very evidence which has helped convince us otherwise by saying that the only acceptable evidence is scientifically measurable evidence. This is the argument that science and its methods provide the only way of knowing that gives us true knowledge of the world around us.

Yet, if that were to be the case then, for example, weddings would make no real sense. Instead of being about the mutual celebration of love and affection which we see between the couple themselves and also between them, their families and friends, on the basis of measurable scientific knowledge what occurs at a wedding simply becomes about the survival of the fittest through the passing on of selfish genes in procreation. Our experiences of love and faith cannot be adequately captured through the language of scientific measurement. Instead, we need the languages of belief and imagination to give voice to what we truly experience of love and faith. As Richard Chartres once noted in a wedding sermon, "Faith and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life.”

Second, we need to understand that faith is fundamental to all true knowledge and that applies to scientific knowing as much as to any other form of knowing. Philip Sherrard has given forceful expression to this view:

“Every thought, every observation, every judgement, every description whether of the modern scientist or of anyone else is soaked in a priori preconceived built-in value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas at least as rigid, if not more rigid (because they are so often unconsciously embraced) than those of any explicitly religious system. The very nature of human thought is such that it cannot operate independently of value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas. Even the assertion that it can constitutes a value-judgement and implies a whole philosophy, whether we are aware of it or not.”

Scientists like Michael Polanyi have come to understand that faith is fundamental in the whole enterprise of understanding because all knowledge of reality rests upon faith commitments which cannot be demonstrated. As a result, scientists and philosophers of science are now rediscovering the vital role that the imagination has to play in their endeavours.

When there is an acceptance that other forms of knowing and other forms of evidence have validity, then two further arguments can be made. The first of these is that belief in God makes sense of our experiences of life and love in ways that give full weight to our experience of these things without contradicting the findings of science. On this basis, Christianity offers, as Lesslie Newbigin has argued, “the widest rationality, the greatest capacity to give meaning to the whole of experience.”

Second, the arguments for the resurrection made in the New Testament and also subsequently come into play. Many historians, lawyers and sceptics have testified to the convincing nature of this evidence when objectively considered. Many would, for example, agree with E. M. Blaiklock, Professor of Classics at Auckland University, who said, “the evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history . . .”

One of the earliest records of Christ's appearing after the resurrection is by Paul. The apostle appealed to his audience's knowledge of the fact that Christ had been seen by more than 500 people at one time. Paul reminded them that the majority of those people were still alive and could be questioned. Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, emphasizes: "What gives a special authority to the list (of witnesses) as historical evidence is the reference to most of the five hundred brethren being still alive. St. Paul says in effect, 'If you do not believe me, you can ask them.' Such a statement in an admittedly genuine letter written within thirty years of the event is almost as strong evidence as one could hope to get for something that happened nearly two thousand years ago." These New Testament accounts of the resurrection were being circulated within the lifetimes of men and women alive at the time of the resurrection; people who could certainly have confirmed or denied the accuracy of such accounts.

Another interesting example of evidence for the truth of Christianity and, in particular, the resurrection of Jesus, is the testimony of former skeptics, many of whom attempted to disprove Christian faith. Thomas is merely the first in a long line of such people which in more recent years have included Frank Morison, C. S. Lewis, Dr Gary Habermas, Alister McGrath, and Lee Strobel.

So, there is evidence for the existence of God and evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Such evidence helps us in holding our faith and may, as was the case for those I have just listed, be helpful in bringing people to faith. However, we should never think that such evidences prove either the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus. Ultimately, if we believe in both it is because of faith, not proof; just as atheists cannot disprove the existence of God and, therefore, also hold their beliefs on the basis of faith. Neither positions can be proved conclusively, so can only be held by faith.

That is what Jesus emphasizes to Thomas after confronting him with the physical and tangible evidence of the resurrection that he demanded. Jesus said, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”:

Unless I see
the scars
of the nails
in his hands
and put my finger
on those scars
and my hand
in his side,
unless I can touch,
unless he is tangible,
unless I have proof,
I will not believe.

If you see
the scars
of the nails
in my hands
and put your finger
on those scars
and your hand
in my side,
if you can touch,
if I am tangible,
if you have proof,
you will not have belief.

Blessed are those
who cannot see
the scars
of the nails
in my hands
and put their fingers
on those scars
and their hands
in my side,
blessed are those who
cannot touch,
who are without
tangible proof,
for they truly believe.

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Good Charlotte - We Believe.

Crucifixions: Francis Bacon

Crucifixions: Francis Bacon – 6-31 March 2017, 10.00am – 4.00pm Mon – Fri (Weds, 11.00am – 3.00pm), St Stephen Walbrook, 39 Walbrook, London EC4N 8BN

For Lent 2017 St Stephen Walbrook is exhibiting Crucifixion drawings by Francis Bacon from “The Francis Bacon Collection of the drawings donated to Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino”. Between 1977 and 1992 Francis Bacon donated to an intimate Italian friend a considerable number of drawings, pastels and collages. Today those drawings are part of a collection which has previously been exhibited in Bologna, Dubrovnik, London, Madrid and Trieste among other locations.

The image of crucifixion was consistently utilised by Francis Bacon in his art to think about all life’s horror as he could not find a subject as valid to embrace all the nuances of human feelings and behaviours. This exhibition of crucifixion drawings by Bacon provides an opportunity to explore why the image of the crucified Christ retained its power for an avowed atheist such as Bacon and to reflect on the horror of the suffering that Christ endured for humanity.

Revd Jonathan Evens says: ‘Francis Bacon rather obsessively revisited religious imagery in his iconic paintings. The subject of the crucifixion preoccupied him throughout his life as he made at least eight major Crucifixion paintings, spanning five decades, including the work that launched his career, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Bacon thought that this subject, more than any other, had the validity to embrace all the nuances of human feelings and behaviours that enable us to think about all life’s horror. Bacon’s basing of his godless images on an image freighted and weighted with salvific power highlights its enduring impact, even in the secular West and even in the work of an avowed atheist. The bleak obscuring of features in Bacon’s images of Christ reveals the emanation of love which leads Christ into nothingness. For all these reasons, Bacon’s crucifixion drawings deserve the interest of Christians, as well as that of art historians or art lovers, and reward informed reflection and contemplation.’

In his recollections of Francis Bacon, Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino suggests that: ‘It is completely wrong to see Francis Bacon as a determined blasphemer and convinced atheist. As a matter of fact, and paradoxically, Francis was almost more fascinating in what he thought about religion than in what he actually painted. This man frequently described (first, by we journalists) like a merciless satanic drunkard was one of the most pitifully charitable people I ever met.’ He suggests that ‘Bacon was a gambler, but he was a gambler more in hiding himself from people than in actually playing roulette.’

Art Below

London based public art collaborative Art Below will feature selected works from the exhibition in stations including Bond Street, Green Park and St. Paul’s from the 13th March for two weeks.

Exhibition events

• Monday 6 March, 5.00pm: Francis Bacon & The Crucifixion – lectures by Edward Lucie-Smith & Revd Jonathan Evens

• Monday 6 March, 6.30pm: Preview & opening night reception

• Monday 13 March, 6.30pm: The Crucifixion in modern art & Poetry reading – Revd Jonathan Evens (lecture) & Rupert Loydell (poetry reading)

• Wednesday 29 March, 7.00pm: concert by Claudio Crismani

Edward Lucie-Smith is an internationally known art critic and historian.

Revd Jonathan Evens is priest-in-charge of St Stephen Walbrook and Associate Vicar Partnerships at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in English with Creative Writing at Falmouth University, a widely exhibited painter of small abstract paintings, and a much-anthologised and -published poet.

Italian pianist Claudio Crismani ‘is an amazing, daring and magnetic artist.’

Francis Bacon Collection. The Francis Bacon Collection of the drawings donated to Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino: This association exists to collect and catalogue the Italian drawings of Francis Bacon. The collection consists of a large number of drawings, created between 1970 and 1990. The drawings were a gift from Bacon to his Italian friend Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino. 

St Stephen Walbrook is an Anglican Parish Church rich in heritage, but one which remains actively involved in the City of London. In 2017 its art programme includes exhibitions of Jamaican spiritual art (3 – 14 July), solo exhibitions by Terry Ffyffe (15 May - 9 June) and Alexander de Cadenet (2 - 27 October), and a group show by commission4mission (4 – 15 September). On Holy Saturday (15 April), we will premiere 'The Stations of the Cross' (14 videos installed at an all night vigil) featuring work by video-artist, Mark Dean, and choreographer, Lizzi Kew Ross, as part of a wider project also including 'The Stations of the Resurrection' (a 12-screen work installed under the Dome of St.Paul's Cathedral) on 26 April. Each event incorporates performances of 'Being Here', a newly devised work for five dancers.

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Arvo Part - Passio.

Latest ArtWay visual meditation

In my latest visual meditation for ArtWay I reflect on work by Giacomo Manzù who "experienced both the support and censure of the Roman Catholic Church in relation to his work":

"The key debate over twentieth century ecclesiastical commissions concerned the extent to which the ‘secular masters’ of the day should be commissioned by the Church. Manzù, as a cradle Catholic whose father was sacristan of Sant'Alessandro in Colonna, Italy, gained such commissions from an early stage in his career but, as his anti-Fascist and Communist political convictions developed, found his work censured by the Roman Catholic Church.

For the traditional wing of the Catholic Church he became an emblem of all that was opposed to the Church, whilst still using Christian iconography in his work. Later he found support for his work in Pope John XXIII. The by-now atheist sculptor became the personal friend of and sculptor for Pope John, creating the masterful Door of Death for St Peter’s Basilica."

My other ArtWay meditations include work by María Inés Aguirre, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Antoni Gaudi, Maciej Hoffman, Maurice Novarina, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, and Henry Shelton.

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Randy Stonehill - King Of Hearts.

Society has largely lost the ability to talk about religion and belief in public discourse

There is an excellent article in today's Observer from Stephen Pritchard on levels of faith literacy in the media:

'“The media’s coverage of religion is a bit like covering football from the point of view of hooliganism and never really watching the game,” said Michael Wakelin, former head of religion and ethics at the BBC, at a fascinating, though occasionally depressing day of discussion held in London recently on Islam and its treatment in British broadcasting and newspapers. After years of conflict in Afghanistan and the Middle East, Muslims in Britain feel that they are too often associated with the crimes of extremists while too little attention is paid to the positive contribution they make to civic life or to the peaceful aims of their faith.

Understanding that faith – and indeed all faiths – is an urgent priority, said Wakelin, quoting Professor Adam Dinham of Goldsmiths University of London: “Billions of people around the world remain religious, despite the assumptions of secularity. Millions are in Britain, Europe and the west. After decades in which we have barely talked about religion and belief in public discourse, society has largely lost the ability to do so. Diversity, global trade and extremism make it pressing to do so now.”

Wakelin maintained that a generation of neglect, with education failing the religious curriculum, the major religions failing to engage with the wider public – and the media not understanding religion and therefore keeping it at arms’ length – had resulted in a society that lacked the confidence to deal with religious subjects and religious people.

Inspired by the success of the Science Media Centre in transforming the way science is reported, he is now involved in setting up a religion media centre. “We do not want to promote religion or even say that it is a good thing, but we are wanting to have a recognition that it matters and therefore it needs to be reported, discussed and examined with knowledge, fairness and respect.'

Earlier in the week Jonathan Freedland addressed this same issue in relation to society in general:

'Whatever else the seers of the past, the Aldous Huxleys, Jules Vernes and HG Wellses, imagined for the 21st century, it wasn’t ... that in 2015 we would still be in thrall to the stories we’d told one another for two millennia. And yet here we are ... a recurring theme of our era is the persistence of the ancient faiths.

It was not just the sci-fi writers who assumed we’d be over this by now. Most believers in science and progress took it as read that we would put aside such fairytales as we reached a higher stage of evolution. There would be no room in the space age for the sand and dust of the biblical past. What’s more, true progressives would want to hasten the banishment of religion from the public sphere, taking its superstitions, its fear-fuelled strictures about sex and its out-dated patriarchal attitudes with it.

But this has proved a double mistake. It’s failed as both description and prescription. On the former, its prediction of the future proved wrong: faith is still here, apparently stronger than ever. For that reason alone, for the role it plays in shaping our world, religion has to be taken seriously – more seriously than Dawkins-ite atheists, who dismiss it with talk of “fairies at the bottom of the garden” or “sky-pixies” will allow.'

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Arvo Pärt - Credo.

Figuring Faith: Images of Belief in Africa

"Figuring Faith: Images of Belief in Africa arose from an exhibition of the same name at the Standard Bank Gallery in 2006, curated by Fiona Rankin-Smith. The book documents and extends the exhibition, bringing together the debates and discussions on faith and art that the exhibition gave rise to, and shedding light on the ways in which art interprets, exemplifies and challenges belief and ritual."

William Kentridge, in his introduction to the exhibition, sets up a distinction between the rationality of the Enlightenment and the irrationality of religion. He claims that the exhibition was a "rational examination of the irrational" and that the gallery in which it was held is itself a "rational space." This view, which based on a simplistic and highly questionable juxtaposition, is unfortunate as an introduction to an exhibition and book which is significantly more nuanced in its understanding and discussion of faith.

What Kentridge fails to acknowledge in his introduction is the extent to which the rationality of the Enlightenment is based on unverifiable assumptions making it as much a matter of faith as religion and the extent to which art itself functions as a de facto religion for many of those who practice and follow it. Colin Richards addresses both factors in 'Seeing, Believing and the Dead,' the first essay in the book. Richards notes that "enlightenment always suggests something toxic" and criticises the "histrionic" nature of secular fundamentalism. He quotes Christopher Hitchens to make that point that art is used as a substitute for religion by reasonable sceptics who find the "lure of wonder and mystery and awe" in "music and art and literature."  

Kentridge is insightful however when he quotes Czelaw Milosz's poem 'On Prayer' (which he suggests parallels "what it is we do when we either make or contemplate a work of art") and applies Plato's term metaxu to the exhibition:

"Plato's term metaxu describes that which separates and connects, an ironic or oxymoronic, contradictory position. It makes me think of the wall between two prisoners that separates them, but that also makes communication possible through knocking. Or a window that separates you from the view outside, but also frames the view and makes you aware of what you are looking at. Metaxu also refers to an "in-between state", between being separated and connected, between a quotidian, every day reality and the world of mystery and transcendence beyond. Figuring Faith shows us that we are incurably en route between the quotidian and the other. We are able to understand the works in the  exhibition because we see  the journey they represent and understand that journey within ourselves. We understand that the safe place is within that journey. The terror is the terror of arriving. Because once it is arrived at, mystery disappears and in its place comes authority, the final word, the last book, the law which must be obeyed, and all the punishments that follow. The works in Figuring Faith embody the state of metaxu, and the very activity of making the work involves the artist in a journey of going from what is known to what is glimpsed at, half understood and tentatively approached with the work."

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Jonathan Butler - I Stand On Your Word.

Cluster Confirmation Service

Our Cluster Confirmation Service took place tonight at St Peter's Aldborough Hatch. There were six candidates from St John's Seven Kings and 11 candidates in total. Our congratulations go to them all for making this public confirmation of their faith. Bishop David, the Bishop of Barking, spoke about inadequate images of God which contribute to the agnosticism of many people in the UK today. Literally carrying a garden fence around the Church, he challenged us to get off the fence and choose belief in God or atheism. 

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Steve Mason - Oh My Lord.

Dealing with faith and with secularism is difficult but necessary now

Interesting to note that Michael Symmons Roberts' Drysalter which has just won the 2013 Forward Prize for Best Collection is being praised by the Forward judges for its powerful spirituality.

“We need to be able to talk of matters of faith and the soul, and how the soul intersects with the heart. What Symmons Roberts does is difficult but necessary now – it addresses a fissure in the human psyche: how we deal with faith and with secularism, how we find a life .. It is an outstanding winner,” said Jeanette Winterson, chairman of the 2013 Forward judges. She praised Symmons Roberts, an atheist who converted to Catholicism at university, for challenging the “fundamentalism” of militant atheists like Richard Dawkins.

The press release from the Forward Arts Foundation specifically notes that Symmons Roberts was a thorough-going atheist as a teenager, who chose to study Theology and Philosophy at Oxford University in order to “talk believers out of their faith”. The ploy backfired. "As university went on I got deeply into philosophy — and the philosophy completely undermined my atheism, by making me realize that there was no overarching objectivity, no Dawkinsian bedrock of common sense if you strip everything away.”

Symmons Roberts has publicly asked the question of whether it is possible to write religious poetry that communicates widely in an increasingly secular language, noting that "T. S. Eliot warned against a religious poetry that “leaves out what men and women consider their major passions, and thereby confesses to an ignorance of them”, but argued instead for “the whole subject of poetry” to be treated in “a religious spirit”. Symmons Roberts pointed then to the work of John Berryman as being one affirmative answer to that question. The response of the Forward judges to Drysalter indicates that his own work also genuinely answers that same question in the affirmative.

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Michael Symmons Roberts - The Vows.

Jesus is having a moment in literary fiction

The Guardian's ShortCutsBlog finds Jesus as a trending topic in literary fiction:

"Jesus is having a moment in literary fiction. Novelists can't get enough of him. In September 2012, Naomi Alderman's The Liars' Gospel was published – a month before Tóibín's book. The year before that came Richard Beard's Lazarus is Dead, and before that Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. More allegorically, JM Coetzee's Childhood of Jesus appeared earlier this year.

"There have definitely been more novels about Jesus recently," says Stuart Kelly, who is on the judging panel for this year's Booker. He thinks they might be a reaction to the current situation in the Middle East, or "the gauche and strident atheism of the likes of [Richard] Dawkins. People can argue what they like about the new atheism, but what it doesn't do is explain why this story has had such a hold over the human imagination for 2,000 years."

The conclusion of the piece makes a strikingly valid point based on the polyphony found in the Gospels and beyond:

"Perhaps the story of Jesus's life bears novelistic reiteration partly because it has always been told by multiple voices – not only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but many more whose versions were not included in the Bible.

That duplication and overlapping of narratives must create holes and folds in which novelists can work, to narrativise the contradictions and build new worlds in the gaps."

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Bruce Cockburn - Cry Of A Tiny Babe.

Census figures: Pluralism is here to stay

Yesterday the Office for National Statistics released data for religious populations from the 2011 Census. Angus Ritchie, the Director of the Contextual Theology Centre has posted a very helpful comment on these statistics. 

In his response Angus suggests that:

"In the midst of the debate which these figures will provoke, it is worth getting some perspective. The majority of English and Welsh people identify themselves as Christian, at a time when wider social pressures give less and less encouragement to such identification. There is no room for complacency – and no point in denying that this number has declined substantially in the last decade. But these figures tell of a striking persistence of religious belief and practice. The public square continues to be a place where people of faith and people of no faith coexist in large numbers – with people of faith forming the substantial majority ...

Whatever else we make of the Census figures, this much is clear: pluralism is here to stay, with a growing array of religious and secular worldviews commanding significant allegiance. Whatever challenges this presents to the churches, it is hardly the world the ‘New Atheists’ have been campaigning for. The task for us all is to negotiate and build a truly common life – bearing witness with confidence and generosity to that which we believe most deeply."

The Contextual Theology Centre’s Presence and Engagement Network (PEN) is holding an event in Southwark on Making Sense of the Census on the afternoon of Monday 18th February – before the PEN 2013 Lecture, to be given by the Dean of St Paul’s, the Very Revd David Ison.
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Bruce Springsteen - Land Of Hope And Dreams.

All-consuming contemporary forms of worship

Interesting piece from Giles Fraser, as ever, in today's Guardian:

'In a brilliant speech to students, the American novelist David Foster Wallace, who took his own life four years ago this month after struggling with depression, did a brilliant job of exposing the nightmare of any reality that is determined by our own desire. "There is no such thing as atheism," he writes, because we all worship something. "If you worship money, you will never have enough. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. Worship power – you will feel weak and afraid. Worship your intellect, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out." These are ultimately forms of worship that eat us alive and they are forms of worship that are so much more prevalent and all-consuming in a world that has the technology to make reality all about me.'

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Bill Fay - City Of Dreams.

Christopher Clack: Not Exist

I recently penned some thoughts for a friend on some of the issues and ideas that I think the 'Not Exist' series by Christopher Clack opens up. Chris' work constantly raises questions for Christians and non-Christians alike. It is deliberately provocative but the surface impression is rarely what is at the heart of the work.

 

In 'Not Exist', therefore, I would suggest that he is not making the simple statement that there is no God. In part, I think he may be seeking to explore our reactions and responses to the statements on the billboards i.e. that the meaning of the work emerges in the response that we make to them. It is interesting too that that the people depicted in the images pay no attention to the billboards. In a society where apathy reigns, it may be that atheistic propoganda (such as the atheist bus ads), like that of Christian organisations, actually provokes little or no response from the general populace. Or maybe our eyes glaze over when we view most advertising. Like words going in one ear and out the other, we are maybe so used to advertising that much of it simply doesn't penetrate our consciousness.

 

On another level, though, Chris is interested in negative theology; the tradition of theology which says that whatever we think we know of God it cannot ever adequately express what God is and is like. Negative theology argues that we come to know God most fully by moving beyond all human descriptions, images or conceptions of God. Therefore, Chris' billboards could also be a call to experience God by putting to death all that we think God is or all that we think we know of God.

 

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Lou Reed - Dimestore Mystery.

 

Born again: material and spiritual

Here’s a poem about our first birth:

These are your first lessons in living.

To begin we drag you head-first from your shelter,

away from your food, from your warmth.

We cut you apart from your only known friend.

We take you and beat you until strange gases

rush your lungs and pain jerks your frame.

These are your first lessons in living.

They will stand you in good stead. (Steve Turner)

In this poem life is portrayed as something hard and painful. It says that we are being born into a world where, if we don’t look out for ourselves, we will dragged from everything we enjoy and beaten up. And it says that our first lessons in living when we emerge from our mother’s womb, the placenta is cut and the nurse strikes us on the back to get us breathing are important lessons for us in survival. The lesson to learn is that in a world like this we need to put ourselves first, we need to look after No. 1, otherwise someone else will take what we have and hurt us in the process. It is what scientists describe when they talk about us having selfish genes which get us ready to live in a world that is about the survival of the fittest.

Jesus said to Nicodemus that no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3. 1 - 17). He went on to explain that a person is first born physically of human parents. In our physical, material existence we do not have to believe in God. We have a genuine choice, we can grow up choosing to believe only in the material world around us and in our own powers or we can encounter God and grow in relationship with him. The world in which we live can point us to God but it does not provide us with absolute proof of his existence. Therefore, we are free to choose.

Samuel Beckett’s great play, Waiting for Godot, features two tramps who spend the whole play doing nothing except waiting for Godot, who of course never arrives. For Beckett, to wait for Godot is the equivalent of believing in God, both are a waste of time. So Beckett in his plays is describing a world without God and what an unremittingly harsh and despairing place it is. In another of his plays, Endgame, two of his characters spend the whole play living in rubbish bins and the last speech in the play sums up Beckett’s sense of what a world without God is like in these words: “all he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all.” Life without God is the equivalent of living in a rubbish bin or of spending everyday pointlessly waiting for someone who does not arrive.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote that: “Only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation be safely built.” Russell, like Beckett, is saying that life without God is despair. If we are here by accident, if we are shortly going to die without there being an afterlife and if whatever we achieve in our short life will also be destroyed soon after our death, then a life without God offers us no hope just unyielding despair.

So, for us to believe in God, to believe that both the material and the spiritual exist and are intertwined, involves us in coming alive to the spiritual. It therefore involves a second birth, an awakening to the reality of the spiritual as well as to the reality of the physical. The physical things around us are easy to believe in because we can see and touch them. The spiritual, though, is like the wind - it can’t be seen, although it can be experienced and felt. It is not immediately apparent in the way that physical realities are and so we have a free choice about whether or not we respond to the signs of the Spirit in our world and when we do we are coming alive, being born again, to the spiritual in our world.

Here are some of the things in my life that have made me come alive to the spiritual:

When I stand in snow on a mountain slope viewing a cobalt lake,

I come alive.

When the morning mist forms a white sea on the Somerset levels, islanding trees,

I come alive.

When my daughter nestles up and hugs me tight,

I come alive.

When my wife and I lie, skin touching, sweat mingling in the heat of summer and passion,

I come alive.

When a friend listens with understanding and without advising,

I come alive.

When I sing and dance in the echoes of an empty Church,

I come alive.

When words cannot express Your praise and I sing in tongues,

I come alive.

When I hear the rustle of angel’s wings above me in the eaves,

I come alive.

I come alive to endurance

when I see a hesitant smile form on the face of the Big Issue seller.

I come alive to pain

when I hear a friend’s story of depression and unanswered pleading.

I come alive to patience

when I see a husband answer again the question from his alzheimered wife.

I come alive to injustice

when the Metro contrasts Big Mac obesity lawsuits with African famine victims.

I come alive to suffering

when I see Sutherland’s Crucifixion and read Endo’s Silence.

I come alive to grief

when I remember the aircraft shattered and scattered across Kosovan heights.

I come alive

when I am touched and see and hear

the beautiful or broken, the passionate or poor.

The mystery or madness

of the Other in which God

meets and greets me

and calls forth the response

that is love.

I wonder what it is that makes you come alive to the spiritual in life. Jesus came into our world to bring us to life; to wake us up from the despair of living only in the physical and material. He does this, firstly by showing us what life is like when it is lived as God intended and secondly, by the threatened response that we as human beings make to him. To see someone genuinely living by the Spirit is scary, it turns our understanding of life upside down. We often respond to people who live life differently to us by attacking them and that is what we did with Jesus. We focused on the physical, we nailed his hands and feet to a cross of wood. We thought that by killing him physically we were doing away with the threat he posed to our material way of life.

But God is greater than our materialism and he loves us too much for that to be the end and so he raised his Son from death that we might be saved from material existence and come alive to the Spirit of God himself.

We have a choice - the unyielding despair of a rubbish bin existence or the freedom of life in the Spirit. Which will it be for you? Have you come alive to the spiritual in life? And, if you have, have you gone on coming alive to the spiritual on a day by day basis by looking out for all that God’s Spirit is doing in our world and getting involved?

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David Grant - Life.

Christendom is on the way out

Responding to the Ipsos-Mori survey of 'census Christians' commissioned by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science UK, Simon Barrow, co-director of the Christian think-tank Ekklesia, has made what is in my view a very accurate and sensible response:

"This opinion survey makes interesting reading as part of a whole web of research on the changing shape and location of Christianity in Britain over the past thirty or more years.

"It shows that 'civic' and 'cultural' Christian self-identification is a very different thing to the deeply-rooted faith held by a much smaller number of people whose believing, belonging and behaving is strongly shaped by regular participation in active Christian communities.

"While we can argue over details, the broad outline of what this survey reveals should not come as any shock or threat to church leaders who have been paying attention to what has been happening in recent decades.

"Top-down and institutional religion is in decline. Trying to restore or maintain the cultural and political dominance of Established religious institutions in what is now a mixed-belief 'spiritual and secular' society is a backward-looking approach.

"Churches have a creative opportunity here. It is to rediscover a different, ground-up vision of Christianity based on practices like economic sharing, peacemaking, hospitality and restorative justice. These were among the distinguishing marks of the earliest followers of Jesus. They have always been part of the 'nonconformist' tradition shared in different ways by Anabaptists, Quakers, radical Catholics, Free Churches and faithful dissenters in all streams of Christian life.

"The mutually reinforcing pact between big religion and top-down authority that we call 'Christendom' is on the way out.

"The kind of conservative religious aggression that claims 'anti-Christian discrimination' every time Christians are asked to treat others fairly and equally in the public square is a threatened response to the loss of top-down religion's social power. So is overbearing 'Christian nation' rhetoric, and the 'culture wars' that some hardline believers and non-believers sometimes seek to launch and win against each other.

"A positive, post-Christendom perspective suggests that Christianity can and should flourish beyond the demise of 'big religion', and that a level-playing field in public life can and should involve both religious and non-religious participants.
"Likewise, while Richard Dawkins may not be a subtle, unbiased or persuasive analyst of religion overall, it would be entirely unhelpful for believers to dismiss this survey because they disagree with its commissioner in other respects. Its content evidently needs further and deeper analysis, alongside other data, than the initial response to it has allowed."
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Al Green - Belle.

The ethics and limits of atheistic evolution

On Tuesday I heard Anna Robbins (Senior Lecturer in Theology and Contemporary Culture, London School of Theology) speak at the Christian Resources Exhibition on Using the Bible in Ethics.

As an example of the application of the Bible in ethics, Anna contrasted the ethical implications of the Christian story of creation (as opposed to Creationism) with those of the story of atheistic evolution, which she argued is the current dominant story told in Western culture.

Atheistic evolution, she suggested, sees the development of life as a closed system requiring no external divine intervention in which the purpose of life is the transmission of genes through procreation. The ethical implications of this story then lead, she argued, to the sexualisation of our culture, something which can be seen, for example, in the lyrics of the Top 5 downloads (currently in the UK - 1. Where Them Girls At (feat. Nicki Minaj and Flo Rida) David Guetta; 2. The Lazy Song Bruno Mars; 3. Party Rock Anthem (feat. Lauren Bennet and GoonRock) LMFAO; 4. Give Me Everything (feat. Ne-Yo, Afrojack and Nayer) Pitbull; 5. Beautiful People (feat. Benny Benassi) Chris Brown) and the premature sexualisation of children through such things as retailers selling items of clothing inappropriate for the age they're targeting, sexually provocative music videos and newsagents stocking lads' mags in the eyeline of toddlers, among other examples.

I've preached on this theme on several occasions, particularly at baptisms, mixing the following poem by Steve Turner, the understanding of the 'world' which Stephen Verney argues is found in John's Gospel, and Switchfoot's New Way To Be Human:

"These are your first lessons in living.
To begin we drag you head-first from your shelter,
away from your food, from your warmth.
We cut you apart from your only known friend.
We take you and beat you until strange gases
rush your lungs and pain jerks your frame.
These are your first lessons in living.
They will stand you in good stead."

In this poem life is portrayed as something hard and painful. It says that we are being born into a world where, if we don’t look out for ourselves, we will dragged from everything we enjoy and beaten up. And it says that our first lessons in living when we emerge from our mother’s womb, the placenta is cut and the nurse strikes us on the back to get us breathing are important lessons for us in survival. The lesson to learn is that in a world like this we need to put ourselves first, we need to look after No. 1, otherwise someone else will take what we have and hurt us in the process. It is what scientists describe when they talk about us having selfish genes which get us ready to live in a world that is about the survival of the fittest.

John the Baptist talks about this way of understanding life when he says that Jesus is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. The word used for ‘world’ means a way of life centred on our egocentricity. In this way of life “the ruling principle is the dictator ME”. My ego is all-important. The world revolves around me, my needs and my wishes. I do what I want when I want and to whom I want. When society is organised like that people spend all their time competing with each other, manipulating each other and trying to control each other. It’s called the survival of the fittest and it is what scientists say the world we are born into is like.

John the Baptist says that that is a sinful way of life and that Jesus came to take it away. Jesus shows us a new way of being human. His way of being human can be summed up in the words of John 15: 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends”. He looks at all of us, at all human beings, and says, “You are my friends”. Jesus allowed his own life to end so that all people could know what it is like to really live. Not to live in the old, selfish, self-centred way of being human but to live in his new way of being human, loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

Similarly, in a recent post I used the recent Royal Wedding as an example of the way in which the language of what Robbins calls atheistic evolution is inadequate to capture our experience of the relationality of love:

"Instead of being about the mutual celebrations of love and affection which we saw between the couple themselves and also between the people of this country and the royal family, on the basis of measurable scientific knowledge what occurred Friday simply becomes about the survival of the fittest through the passing on of selfish genes in procreation. Our experiences of love and faith cannot be adequately captured through the language of scientific measurement. Instead, we need the languages of belief and imagination to give voice to what we truly experience of love and faith. As the Bishop of London said in his sermon, 'Faith and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life.'”

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Switchfoot - New Way To Be Human.

Resurrection: evidence and belief

Thomas’ statement to the other disciples that, “Unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my fingers on those scars and my hand in his side, I will not believe” is essentially one which is repeated regularly by atheists around the world. Here is a typical comment made in the discussion section of Richard Dawkins’ website, “I have never witnessed a scrap of evidence pointing to god's existence, which leads me to a total lack of belief in it.” Dawkins himself has said, "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."

How can we, as Christians, answer such assertions; because it is not enough simply to say that we believe and leave it at that?

First, we need to be clear that those who say there is no evidence for the existence of God seek to disallow the very evidence which has helped convince us otherwise by saying that the only acceptable evidence is scientifically measurable evidence. This is the argument that science and its methods provide the only way of knowing that gives us true knowledge of the world around us.

Yet, if that were to be the case then, for example, Friday’s Royal Wedding makes no real sense. Instead of being about the mutual celebrations of love and affection which we saw between the couple themselves and also between the people of this country and the royal family, on the basis of measurable scientific knowledge what occurred Friday simply becomes about the survival of the fittest through the passing on of selfish genes in procreation. Our experiences of love and faith cannot be adequately captured through the language of scientific measurement. Instead, we need the languages of belief and imagination to give voice to what we truly experience of love and faith. As the Bishop of London said in his sermon, "Faith and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life.”

Second, we need to understand that faith is fundamental to all true knowledge and that applies to scientific knowing as much as to any other form of knowing. Philip Sherrard has given forceful expression to this view:

“Every thought, every observation, every judgement, every description whether of the modern scientist or of anyone else is soaked in a priori preconceived built-in value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas at least as rigid, if not more rigid (because they are so often unconsciously embraced) than those of any explicitly religious system. The very nature of human thought is such that it cannot operate independently of value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas. Even the assertion that it can constitutes a value-judgement and implies a whole philosophy, whether we are aware of it or not.”

Scientists like Michael Polanyi have come to understand that faith is fundamental in the whole enterprise of understanding because all knowledge of reality rests upon faith commitments which cannot be demonstrated. As a result, scientists and philosophers of science are now rediscovering the vital role that the imagination has to play in their endeavours.

When there is an acceptance that other forms of knowing and other forms of evidence have validity, then two further arguments can be made. The first of these is that belief in God makes sense of our experiences of life and love in ways that give full weight to our experience of these things without contradicting the findings of science. On this basis, Christianity offers, as Lesslie Newbigin has argued, “the widest rationality, the greatest capacity to give meaning to the whole of experience.”

Second, the arguments for the resurrection made in the New Testament and also subsequently come into play. Many historians, lawyers and sceptics have testified to the convincing nature of this evidence when objectively considered. Many would, for example, agree with E. M. Blaiklock, Professor of Classics at Auckland University, who said, “the evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history . . .”

One of the earliest records of Christ's appearing after the resurrection is by Paul. The apostle appealed to his audience's knowledge of the fact that Christ had been seen by more than 500 people at one time. Paul reminded them that the majority of those people were still alive and could be questioned. Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, emphasizes: "What gives a special authority to the list (of witnesses) as historical evidence is the reference to most of the five hundred brethren being still alive. St. Paul says in effect, 'If you do not believe me, you can ask them.' Such a statement in an admittedly genuine letter written within thirty years of the event is almost as strong evidence as one could hope to get for something that happened nearly two thousand years ago." These New Testament accounts of the resurrection were being circulated within the lifetimes of men and women alive at the time of the resurrection; people who could certainly have confirmed or denied the accuracy of such accounts.

Another interesting example of evidence for the truth of Christianity and, in particular, the resurrection of Jesus, is the testimony of former skeptics, many of whom attempted to disprove Christian faith. Thomas is merely the first in a long line of such people which in more recent years have included Frank Morison, C. S. Lewis, Dr Gary Habermas, Alister McGrath, and Lee Strobel.

So, there is evidence for the existence of God and evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Such evidence helps us in holding our faith and may, as was the case for those I have just listed, be helpful in bringing people to faith. However, we should never think that such evidences prove either the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus. Ultimately, if we believe in both it is because of faith, not proof; just as atheists cannot disprove the existence of God and, therefore, also hold their beliefs on the basis of faith. Neither positions can be proved conclusively, so can only be held by faith.
That is what Jesus emphasizes to Thomas after confronting him with the physical and tangible evidence of the resurrection that he demanded. Jesus said, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”:

Unless I see
the scars
of the nails
in his hands
and put my finger
on those scars
and my hand
in his side,
unless I can touch,
unless he is tangible,
unless I have proof,
I will not believe.

If you see
the scars
of the nails
in my hands
and put your finger
on those scars
and your hand
in my side,
if you can touch,
if I am tangible,
if you have proof,
you will not have belief.

Blessed are those
who cannot see
the scars
of the nails
in my hands
and put their fingers
on those scars
and their hands
in my side,
blessed are those who
cannot touch,
who are without
tangible proof,
for they truly believe.

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The Script - Science And Faith.

Good News in the battle of ideas

March past following the Civic Remembrance Service at the Ilford War Memorial

How to live in wartime? That is essentially the guidance that Jesus gives his disciples in the teachings recorded for us in Luke 21. 5-19.

He was talking about a very specific conflict that would affect his disciples in the near future and which occurred in AD70 when the Roman army attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple there. When this happened, as Jesus prophesied, “not a single stone here will be left in its place; every one will be thrown down.”

The result of this conflict was twofold; the Jewish faith refocused its community life, teaching and worship around the synagogue (a pattern of faithful living which continues to this day); and Christianity, forced to abandon its early focus on the authority of the church in Jerusalem, stepped up its missionary encounter with the wider world to become a world religion. Both results are relevant to Jesus’ teaching here because the essence of his teaching comes in verse 19 when he says to “stand firm” in your faith.

The conflict he describes and prophesies will, he says, be an opportunity for his disciples to tell the Good News, if they stand firm:

“Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be terrible earthquakes, famines, and plagues everywhere; there will be strange and terrifying things coming from the sky. Before all these things take place, however, you will be arrested and persecuted; you will be handed over to be tried in synagogues and be put in prison; you will be brought before kings and rulers for my sake. This will be your chance to tell the Good News.” (Luke 21. 10-13)

That is what Jesus looks for from his followers in wartime and he promises his support and enabling in doing so: “Make up your minds beforehand not to worry about how you will defend yourselves, because I will give you such words and wisdom that none of your enemies will be able to refute or contradict what you say.”

The situations in which we are called to do this change throughout history but what is unchanging is the call to tell the Good News, as here, in situations of military defeat, but also in times of victory, while the outcome is uncertain, and in times of peace.

On Remembrance Sunday we remember particular examples of telling the Good News in and through the wartime experiences which are within our cultural memory most notably soldiers who fought and died in order to win peace within Europe such as Harry Patch, the last surviving British soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. Patch, in the moment when he came face to face with a German soldier, recalled the story of Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, including "Thou shalt not kill", and could not bring himself to kill the German shooting him in the shoulder, above the knee, and in the ankle. Patch said, "I had about five seconds to make the decision. I brought him down, but I didn't kill him." We can also think of: civilians living through the Blitz and caring for neighbours while accepting the simple lifestyle imposed by rationing; Archbishop William Temple setting out an Anglican social theology and a vision for what would come to constitute a just post-war society in ‘Christianity and the Social Order’; and Bishop George Bell assisting refugees, arguing against the blanket-bombing of German cities and encouraging the role of the Church in the reconstruction of Europe after the war.

The German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who took part in the plot to assassinate Hitler, was one of those who saw most clearly what was actually at stake in World War II, when he wrote at the beginning of the war:

“Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilisation may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilisation.”

Our situation is different again, meaning that the ways in which we are called to stand firm and tell the Good News are also different. In our time, the battle is one of ideas, a battle which is explained well by the French philosopher Jean Luc Nancy:

“1968 led to a process of transformation that amounted to adapting society to something that was leaving it behind: a new techno-political-economic world. This adaptation has had many negative effects. It unleashed the spirit of consumerism and ... completed the destruction of the frameworks, or references, of religious and emancipatory politics ... The resulting society has fewer foundations that it did before 1968. But society today is beginning to understand that a world and a civilization are disappearing and it has entered a change of the same magnitude as the shift from antiquity to the middle ages.”

In this changed and changing world, where, in the West, we are no longer part of a civilization which seeks to be built primarily on Christian principles, many people want to mount rear guard actions to retain as much of what they perceive to be the past as possible. So, for example, some seek to fight for a mythic mono-cultural white Britain which never actually existed while others seek to maintain the privileges that Christians have enjoyed in this country in the past instead of accepting the justice of the equality of faiths which is now enshrined in the law of the land.

The situation in which we find ourselves now equates to that of the Jews and Jewish Christians after the destruction of the Temple in AD70. Then there was no going back and Jesus sought to prepare his disciples for that reality. Instead of calling for rear guard actions to preserve as much of what had been as possible, Jesus sought to prepare and enable his disciples to go out into their changed and changing world and tell the Good News by standing firm in their faith. This remains the call of God on our lives and it is a task which requires the same bravery and courage as was shown by the Early Church in its missionary activity and as continues to be shown by serving men and women in conflict situations around the world today.

Jesus gives us the same marching orders that he gave to his first disciples: “Make up your minds beforehand not to worry about how you will defend yourselves, because I will give you such words and wisdom that none of your enemies will be able to refute or contradict what you say.” We are to trust that Jesus, through his Spirit, will inspire and enable what we are to do and say in this changed and changing world (as happened for Harry Patch).

We can also trust that he will give us surprising allies to stand alongside us as we speak. For example, at the very same time that Christianity has come under severe attack from the New Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, we find Radical Atheists such as Simon Critchley arguing that “to jettison [religious] traditions in the name of some kind of scientific rationality is simply philistine and counter-productive” and Slavoj Žižek stating that as a radical leftist he thinks “Christianity is too precious a thing to leave to conservative fundamentalists.”

The crucifixion, the resurrection and the Holy Spirit, Žižek argues, should be read as God trusting us by leaving his mission in the hands of a community which can be free of both liberal egotism and Christian fundamentalism; an argument which has clear synergies with what we have seen Jesus saying to his disciples in this passage.

Nancy argues that we should respond to our new techno-political-economic world:

“not with politics or economics but with thinking, with imagination, with what I call worship: a relationship to the infinite. We must stop believing that economic measures or political models can respond to what is happening. What is happening ... is the spirit of the world being transformed.”

The Early Church saw the spirit of the world transformed by God as they stood firm in their faith and told the Good News. That is how we are called live in wartime - in the battle of ideas or clash of civilizations which we now face - to stand firm in our faith and tell the good news. The challenge of this passage is whether we can do and see that within our changed and changing world.

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Talking Heads - Life During Wartime.

When was the last time you saw an explicitly religious work of contemporary art?

“When was the last time you saw an explicitly religious work of contemporary art?” Dan Fox asks in his November – December frieze editorial. Religious art, he argues, “when it’s not kept safely confined within gilt frames in the medieval departments of major museums, is taboo.”

Art about religion is totally kosher however; as are: “modernist dalliances with spiritualism;” the “obsessive cosmologies and prophecies” of ‘visionary’ or ‘outsider’ artists; and “a little dusting of Buddhism or Eastern philosophy.” But, “contemporary artists who openly declare affiliation to Judaeo-Christian or Islamic religions are usually regarded with the kind of suspicion reserved for Mormon polygamists and celebrity Scientologists.”

Why is the art world wary of religion? Fox gives five reasons:

1. “For most of the 20th century, art aligned itself with progressive rationalist secularity and radical subjectivity; the ideas that have fed into art come from modern philosophy, liberal or radical politics, sociology and pop culture rather than theology.”

2. “It’s also a question of finance: the money that funds art doesn’t come from churches or religious orders like it did hundreds of years ago.”

3. “Religion is broadly seen by many progressive thinkers to be a cause of intolerance and war.”

4. “The early 21st century has been characterised by a dangerous return to faith-based political conviction, be it radical Islam or neo-conservative fundamentalist Christianity, neither of which has much sympathy for cutting-edge art or ideas.”

5. “Also, religious organisations aren’t, of course, exactly known for their forward thinking attitudes to women or sexuality: the moral teachings of many religious denominations can be at odds with the ways artists want to live their lives.”

His editorial goes on to question the taboo without fundamentally challenging these five perceptions and the content of this edition of frieze, as a result, tends to confirm the taboo rather than shatter it by focusing primarily on art about belief, Occult art, and art with a little dusting of Buddhism or Eastern philosophy. Accordingly, the religious or spiritual commitments highlighted by the articles in this edition include: hermeticism (Lorenzo Lotto), radical atheism (Slavoj Žižek and Simon Critchley), sikhism (Linder), and spiritualism (Hilma af Klint, Ethel Le Rossignol and Austin Osman Spare) together with several profiles of artists creating art about religion or belief (Kai Althoff, Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda, Matthew Day Jackson, and Aura Satz, among others). Set against these, in terms of the dichotomy advanced by Fox in his editorial, is one article on the changing shape of the mosque in Britain and a book review exploring political theology.

The reasons Fox gives for the art world’s wariness towards religion can be challenged and, were those challenges to be engaged with, could open up a different engagement with religion. Taking them in order, we could say briefly, that:

1. Theological and religious contributions to modern art existed throughout the 20th century but were consistently overlooked and ignored (see my ‘Airbrushed from Art History’ series of posts for examples). There is great scope for rediscovering and re-examining these contributions in order to broaden our understanding of the development of modern art and to inform future creativity. What is needed, as Daniel A. Siedell suggests in God in the Gallery, is "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art, revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations."

2. Commission is a current exhibition claiming a contemporary renaissance of Church commissioning which could be critically reviewed (both claim and exhibition) by frieze. The Dictionary Corner in this edition of frieze contrasts curate and curator but does not mention the current experiments within emergent church communities which apply insights from artistic curation to the creation and oversight of alternative worship experiences (see Curating Worship by Jonny Baker).

3.  Significant research exists which suggests that religion increases wellbeing and makes people better citizens, as religious people are much more likely to volunteer and give money to charity. The linking of religion to intolerance and war has a tendency to ignore or downplay such findings and to do the same to religious teachings themselves, with their common strand which is the Golden Rule: 'Do to others as you would have them do to you'. This raises the question as to the extent of bias or prejudgement which informs such opinions. 

4. To see the 21st century return of religion in the sole form of religious fundamentalism is to see only part of the picture. The fact that struggles are occurring within Christianity and Islam between fundamentalism and liberalism means both that the future of religions is not settled in terms of fundamentalism and that other creative alternatives may emerge. This is potentially fertile ground for artists to explore.

5. Again, this is to focus on only one side of the debate within religions. There is potentially fertile ground for artists to explore in dialogue with people of faith who share forward thinking attitudes to women or sexuality.

It is worth noting that only two out of the five have significant links to Art per se, suggesting, as Fox points out, that "the art world is seen to be an open-minded and tolerant community in which to work ... until someone tells you casually that they regularly attend mass." 

Fox also rightly points out the belief which art and religion share when objects and images are invested with meaning and argues that a cognitive dissonance is experienced when this is ignored. Similarly, Jean Luc Nancy argues in his frieze interview that the destruction of the frameworks, or references, of religious and emancipatory politics have resulted in a society with fewer foundations that it had before 1968 and has unleashed the spirit of consumerism. We should respond, he argues:

“not with politics or economics but with thinking, with imagination, with what I call worship: a relationship to the infinite. We must stop believing that economic measures or political models can respond to what is happening. What is happening, in Hegel’s words, is the spirit of the world being transformed.”

This is reinforced by Simon Critchley’s argument in his interview that:

“To jettison [religious philosophical] traditions in the name of some kind of scientific rationality is simply philistine and counter-productive, so it becomes a question of inhabiting and mobilizing religion for interesting and radical ends.”

Or as Žižek bluntly states, “Christianity is too precious a thing to leave to conservative fundamentalists.”

So, frieze 135 talks the talk of critical engagement with contemporary artists who openly declare affiliation to Judaeo-Christian or Islamic religions but doesn’t actually show us anyone genuinely walking that walk, although examples do exist in contemporary art (Breninger, Celaya, Fujimura, Howson, Nowosielski et al) and certainly have existed throughout the history of modern art (Bernard, Serusier, Denis, Nolde, Rouault, Gleizes, Chagall, Severini, Manessier, Jellett, Spencer, Jones, Sutherland, Piper, Congdon, McCahon, Smith, Hayman, Adams, Herbert et al).

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Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More.