Seen and Unseen: Art, AI and apocalypse: Michael Takeo Magruder addresses our fears and questions

My latest interview for Seen & Unseen is entitled 'Art, AI and apocalypse: Michael Takeo Magruder addresses our fears and questions'. In the interview the digital artist talks about the possibilities and challenges of artificial intelligence:

'Like artists, perhaps theologians can use emerging (and disruptive) media to not only expand possibilities for their work, but more importantly, to refocus their efforts towards areas that these technologies cannot presently (and will likely never) address.'

For more on Michael Takeo Magruder see here, here, here and here.

My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.

My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.

My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.

My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.

My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.

My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.

My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.

My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.

My 10th article was 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

My 11th article was 'How to look at our world: Aaron Rosen interview', exploring themes from Rosen's book 'What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World'.

My 12th article was 'Blake, imagination and the insight of God', exploring a new exhibition - 'William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum - which focuses on seekers of spiritual regeneration and national revival.

My 13th article 'Matthew Krishanu: painting childhood' was an interview with Matthew Krishanu on his exhibition 'The Bough Breaks' at Camden Art Centre.

My 14th article was entitled 'Art makes life worth living' and explored why society, and churches, need the Arts.

My 15th article was entitled 'The collective effervescence of sport's congregation' and explored some of the ways in which sport and religion have been intimately entwined throughout history

My 16th article was entitled 'Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d' and reviewed the ways in which artist Richard Kenton Webb is conversing with the blind poet in his former home (Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles).

My 17th article was entitled 'Controversial art: how can the critic love their neighbour?'. It makes suggestions of what to do when confronted with contentious culture.

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Maria McKee - I Should Have Looked Away.

International Times: The Black Rain

International Times, the Magazine of Resistance, have just published my short story entitled 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media.

My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect, and two stories about Nicola Ravenscroft's mudcub sculptures - 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes' and 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King'.

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Hurtsmile - Just War Theory.

We don’t know where we’re going

I've appreciated Gary Younge's recent reflections on the Election result in The Guardian (click here and here). The following quotes align with my reflections following the result:

The Brexit vote revealed a fundamental division within our nation and the Election result shows that we remain a divided nation and don't know how to address that reality - 'When Big Ben called time on Thursday night, we saw clear evidence of a political realignment that the media and the political establishment had dismissed with hostility, and now regarded with confusion. We saw a polity that has lost touch with its people; a political culture unmoored from the electorate, and a mainstream media that drifted along with it. The election did not create that dislocation; it was merely the clearest and least deniable manifestation of it so far. We are in new territory. And we don’t know where we’re going.'

Brexit unleashed a wave of self-centred isolationism which is not representative of the majority within our nation and the Election result indicated a corrective to this - 'During the EU referendum, much of what was wrong with Britain was blamed on foreigners – either the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels who took our money at the expense of the NHS, or immigrants, who, it was claimed, took our jobs and plundered our benefits. But this time round, there was no one else to blame. There was a concern in that room in Wembley that Britain had become too harsh and unforgiving. One woman said she thought things had swung too far the wrong way, and that it was time to “make things fairer”. Another agreed. “We need to show people we care about them,” she said.'

'For far too long, cynicism has been the dominant force in British electoral politics, willing failure at every turn. When they saw large, engaged crowds, the political class and its stenographers in the media dismissed them. They did not appeal to people’s better nature because they assumed people did not have one. Mistaking morality for naivety, they presumed that people were motivated solely by self-interest – in the narrowest and most venal sense – and could not be moved by principle.'

'One of the most important lessons, and one that goes beyond our borders, from this result is that there is a response to the multiple pathologies of xenophobia, racism and rabid nationalism, bequeathed by globalisation, that does not demand pandering to bigotry.'

We are seeing a backlash to the unfairness of austerity cuts which have targeted those already poor whilst allowing those already rich to continue to make money - 'After the 2010 election, the Conservatives insisted on a period of austerity, claiming that it was necessary to repair public finances in the wake of the global banking crisis. The poor and the public sector have borne the brunt of these cuts – but after seven years, the pain of austerity has spread well beyond the very poorest ... As this sense of precariousness broadened to touch those who had never felt it before, and the desperation felt by an ever-widening cross-section of society deepened even further, we should not be surprised that there was an electoral backlash.'

'The print media are losing their influence in part because people receive much more information online nowadays but also because the right-wing press stopped try to report news objectively and began reporting news polemically (and, as a result, can no longer be trusted as an accurate source of news) - 'But while it was possible to see how most voters had formed their first impressions of Corbyn and May from the image presented by the media, what became clear to me while I was covering the campaign was that the impact of Fleet Street was not decisive. Thanks to the proliferation of online media sources, the decline in newspaper readership and weakening loyalties to established brands, the press does not have the same electoral clout it once did.'

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Deacon Blue - The Believers.

Discover & explore: Peter Delaney (Internet)

Today's Discover & explore service at St Stephen Walbrook, explored the theme of internet (and the London Internet Church) through the ministry of Peter Delaney. The service featured the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields singing Ubi Caritas by Duruflé, The Call of Wisdom – Todd, Loquebantur variis linguis by Tallis and Nunc Dimittis by Barnaby Martin.

The next Discover & explore service is on Monday 24 April at 1.10pm when, as part of our new series exploring Reformation500 themes, together with the Choral Scholars, I will explore Grace, not Works.

In todays service I gave the following reflection:

Peter Delaney was Archdeacon of London from 1999 to 2010 and was Priest in Charge of St Stephen Walbrook from 2004 - 2014. He is a man with a passion for the arts and communication as a means of understanding humanity and God. After a classical art education and a brief period teaching, he worked for NBC television in Hollywood and there found his vocation to the Anglican Priesthood returning to England to read theology at Kings College London.

He served at Marylebone with Chaplaincies to the National Heart Hospital and London Clinic. He was Chaplain at the University Church of Christ the King. From there he was invited to become Precentor and Residentiary Canon at Southwark Cathedral, where he developed an arts programme of exhibitions and theatre and theological training. He was appointed Vicar of the ancient City church of All Hallows by the Tower where he not only developed the parish but set up a Performing Arts Cultural Exchange Programme twinned with New York and Philadelphia. Peter was made a Prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral, London 1995. He began the City Churches Advisory Group at St Katharine Cree to develop the City Churches until being appointed Archdeacon. He was made MBE in 2001 for services to community in the City of London.

As part of the work at St Stephen Walbrook, he developed the London Internet Church as a vision of the church for the future. Peter is Director of the London Internet Church and with a team of others has moved this concept of the church of the future into a reality. After a lifetime holding together the disparate interests of faith, arts, theatre and television, St Stephen and the London Internet Church became the synthesis of all these interests.

At the heart of the London Internet Church is the praise and worship of Almighty God. In order to involve the whole LIC family on line, the Trustees have considered carefully how each one of can fully enter into the fellowship of the LIC. In line with the principles of the Anglican Communion, daily prayer and the Eucharist are the core of worship on the site. Those visiting the site are invited to worship and study with the LIC using the following new ways of approaching God in worship, prayer and praise:

• Morning Prayer and Night Prayer – short filmed services lasting a few minutes and to be used at work or wherever you may be able to pray. These are services of quietness and reflection as we start or end the day: a daily changing prayer, ranging from 5 to 9 minutes in length, fronted by a number of church leaders, church dignitaries, actors and other celebrities.
• Walbrook Eucharist– A film of the Eucharist using the words of the Book of Common Prayer set around the Henry Moore altar in St Stephen Walbrook. The film can be used to pray with us, make a spiritual communion with us, and teach others about the Eucharist.
• Prayer Request and the Light a Candle Ministry – join with people throughout the world in placing prayers on the prayer board and actually lighting a candle on the webpage. When people pray or light a candle online, their prayer will be said and once a week a candle is lit in St Stephen Walbrook.
• Teaching – Sermons from St Stephen, a series of Bible Studies involving Scripture, Prayer and Action, art courses covering Caravaggio, Giotto, Spencer and Botticelli, and videos such as The Exodus Story in twenty minutes retold by John Simpson CBE, Rabbi Mark Winer, Rabbi Mark Solomon, the Bishop of London, the Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the Dean of St Paul’s and Dr Jonathan Gorsky of Heythrop College.

In developing the London Internet Church Peter would have been seeking to fulfil the Great Commission given by Jesus to his disciples to make disciples of all nations. At the beginning of the 1970s a Roman Catholic document called Communio et Progressio pointed out that “modern media offer new ways of confronting people with the message of the Gospel”. ‘Pope Paul VI said the Church “would feel guilty before the Lord” if it failed to use the media for evangelization. Pope John Paul II declared that “it is not enough to use the media simply to spread the Christian message and the Church's authentic teaching. It is also necessary to integrate that message into the ‘new culture' created by modern communications”.’

‘All this applies to the Internet. And even though the world of social communications “may at times seem at odds with the Christian message, it also offers unique opportunities for proclaiming the saving truth of Christ to the whole human family. Consider...the positive capacities of the Internet to carry religious information and teaching beyond all barriers and frontiers. Such a wide audience would have been beyond the wildest imaginings of those who preached the Gospel before us.’

‘As the Church understands it, the history of human communication is something like a long journey, bringing humanity “from the pride-driven project of Babel and the collapse into confusion and mutual incomprehension to which it gave rise (cf. Gen 11:1-9), to Pentecost and the gift of tongues: a restoration of communication, centred on Jesus, through the action of the Holy Spirit”. In the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, “communication among men found its highest ideal and supreme example in God who had become man and brother”.’

‘The modern media of social communication are cultural factors that play a role in this story. The Church has a two-fold aim in regard to the media. One aspect is to encourage their right development and right use for the sake of human development, justice, and peace—for the up-building of society at the local, national, and community levels in light of the common good and in a spirit of solidarity. But the Church's concern also relates to communication in and by the Church herself. Such communication “finds its starting point in the communion of love among the divine Persons and their communication with us”, and in the realization that Trinitarian communication “reaches out to humankind: The Son is the Word, eternally ‘spoken' by the Father; and in and through Jesus Christ, Son and Word made flesh, God communicates himself and his salvation to women and men”.’

‘God continues to communicate with humanity through the Church. The Church herself is a communio, a communion of persons and eucharistic communities arising from and mirroring the communion of the Trinity; communication therefore is of the essence of the Church. This, more than any other reason, is why “the Church's practice of communication should be exemplary, reflecting the highest standards of truthfulness, accountability, sensitivity to human rights, and other relevant principles and norms”.’ Our hope is that this has and will continue to be true of the London Internet Church.

Intercessions:

Heavenly Father, we embrace Your call for us to make disciples, to be witnesses and to grow leaders. Give us the eyes to see Your vision, ears to hear the prompting of Your Spirit and courage to follow in the footsteps of your Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Help us help others to discover your Way, to know your Truth and to share your Life in your dear Son. Inspire us by your Spirit to sow the good seed of the gospel through the London Internet Church with imagination and compassion that many will come to know you and many will be strengthened in their faith, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We light candles in church and on the London Internet Church site as a prayer: when we have gone the candle stays alight, kindling in the hearts and minds of others the prayers we have offered for the sick, the suffering, for those who have died, for the peace of the world, for ourselves and prayers of thankfulness too. Lighting a candle is a parable: burning itself out it gives light to others. Christ gave himself for others. He calls us to give ourselves. Lighting a candle is a symbol: of love and hope, of light and warmth. Our world needs them all and so we pray for these things in this world. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, you speak and bring all that is seen and unseen into being: we give you thanks for the gift of the media to reach the far flung places of the earth with messages of hope and life. We give you thanks for those who risk their security and even their lives to expose injustice and to bring news of hope. May they strive to be the bearers of good news that all people may come to know the abundant life for which we have been created; and yet more wonderfully redeemed in Jesus Christ. We offer our prayer in your name, in the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of the Father. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

The Blessing

The Lord says, ‘Go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations.’ The Father, whose glory fills the heavens, cleanse you by his holiness and send you to proclaim his word. The Son, who has ascended to the heights, pour upon you the riches of his grace. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, equip you and strengthen you in your ministry. And the blessing of God almighty, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

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Will Todd - The Call Of Wisdom.

Malcolm Muggeridge: Accurate prophecy in many areas

Sally Muggeridge, our curate at St Stephen Walbrook, has written an excellent comment piece for the Church Times this week about her uncle, Malcolm Muggeridge.

Sally reviews her uncle's life and thought suggesting that: 'The legacy of the writer, journalist, and Christian apologist Malcolm Muggeridge can be viewed in retrospect as one of accurate prophecy in many areas. Although he did not always get it right, he expressed legitimate concern on many of the issues of our time: sexual permissiveness, immigration, ethical questions over advances in medical science, the spread of Islam, lowering of standards in the media, the fantasy world introduced by technology, and others.'

'Writer and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge died 14th November 1990 at the age of 87. To mark the 25th Anniversary of the passing of her uncle, Sally Muggeridge will be leading the 10.30am service on Sunday 15th November at the Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene, Whatlington, Sussex.

As President of the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, Sally will review the life of her uncle and his spiritual journey as a twentieth century pilgrim towards faith. All are welcome. A display of the extensive literary legacy of Muggeridge will be made available to view.'

John Stott once characterised the Prophet Muggeridge as courageous, perceptive, awkward and exaggerated. Intended as a compliment after Muggeridge's London Lectures in Contemporary Christianity entitled Christ and the Media, Stott's summing up captures some of the complications that made Muggeridge fascinating as a journalist, broadcaster and writer. Stott characterised him as a prophet while the then Director-General's of the BBC and the IBA who also chaired these lectures, in order to neutralise what they thought to be his attack on them and their work, preferred to characterise him as a jester. 

He was first and foremost a journalist who, in the course of his life, reported from the key continents and ideologies of his time - Imperialist India, Communist Russia and Capitalist America. He documented his dissatisfaction in his memoirs, Chronicles of a Wasted Life, and in his novel, In a Valley of this Restless Mind.

His life took a new, and to his mind, more purposeful direction when his dissatisfaction with the transient waste of what he until then done and seen, led to conversion and a commitment to Catholicism. His new commitment was expressed both through and against the new media of television. 

As a broadcaster he was involved in programmes that allowed key figures such as Mother Theresa and Alexander Solzhentitsyn airtime to communicate. Yet he also viewed television as a shallow, superficial medium. This, in itself, would not be incredibly harmful if television was not presented or viewed as the ultimate reality - the window on the world. It was this that Muggeridge argued was so damaging and which ultimately meant that television, rather than mirroring reality, was actually creating fantasy. For these reasons he argued, in the lectures collected as Christ and the Media, that, if offered by the devil, a fourth temptation of a primetime television slot Jesus would have rejected the temptation because his reality could not be conveyed using the fantasy medium of television. 

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Malcolm Muggeridge - Face your Image.

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.

Ticking the box of our own self-interest

In all the analysis of the surprise and shock of yesterday's election result, three key influences to do with the process rather than the content of contemporary elections stand out:

First, polling is a distraction from the reality of what is occurring. Polling has provided the media with their primary source of news and debate throughout the election and, as a result, much of that debate and discussion has proved wholly irrelevant to the outcome. Lynton Crosby, who masterminded the Conservative's victory, has been quoted as saying, 'Ignore most of the opinion polls that you see in the newspapers, because they are so simplistic.' This proved true for Labour who were 'given false comfort by the national opinion polls showing the party neck and neck.'

Second, Crosby's strategy of negative campaigning, which is based on the politics of fear, has proved once again to be successful. In this case the fear was of 'the influence the SNP might hold over a minority Miliband government'; a fear which is a essentially unfounded but which, 'with typical shrewdness and ruthlessness, Crosby identified ... as a wedge that could be used against Labour, both in Scotland and in England.' Crosby has stated that, 'At its absolute simplest, a campaign is simply finding out who will decide the outcome … where are they, what matters to them, and how do you reach them?' (Andy Beckett). No-one has been more effective than Crosby at focusing on this simple truth.

Third, the continuing power of the predominantly right-wing press has been demonstrated. 'When Murdoch appeared before the Leveson inquiry he argued that the Sun’s “won it” headline had been “tasteless and wrong”, adding: “We don’t have that sort of power.” The election of 2015 might just prove him wrong.' The 'campaigning coverage of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun and the Times, Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail and the Barclay brothers’ Telegraph titles has been a marked feature of this campaign ... the Sun, Murdoch’s biggest-selling title, was more virulently anti-Labour in this campaign than it was in the runup to the 1992 election when Neil Kinnock was depicted in a lightbulb on polling day.' 'With a party now in power whose only manifesto pledge on the media was to freeze the BBC’s licence fee, Murdoch and his UK executives can rest easy that they can do business again. Calls for a Leveson-approved press regulator are likely to diminish.' 'It is likely that whoever replaces Miliband as Labour leader will be even more wary of threatening Murdoch or any other press baron with increased regulation and the breakup of their empires.' (Jane Martinson)

Giles Fraser, as often, is both clear and honest in his reaction:

'Right now I feel ashamed to be English. Ashamed to belong to a country that has clearly identified itself as insular, self-absorbed and apparently caring so little for the most vulnerable people among us. Why did a million people visiting food banks make such a minimal difference? Did we just vote for our own narrow concerns and sod the rest? Maybe that’s why the pollsters got it so badly wrong: we are not so much a nation of shy voters as of ashamed voters, people who want to present to the nice polling man as socially inclusive, but who, in the privacy of the booth, tick the box of our own self-interest.'

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Patti Smith - After The Gold Rush.

Hearts on Fire: The power of story

I have been invited to speak at Artserve's festival weekend Hearts on Fire! which is inspired by the power of story – our stories shared, God’s story lived. Sharing inspirational stories can reveal God alive and present among us, speaking through our actions and lives. Telling stories is not just about words, but all forms of media. I will be talking about the themes of The Secret Chord; an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life through the prism of Christian belief.

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Mumford and Sons - Roll Away Your Stone.

A different way of doing things

Larry Elliott wrote about Elinor Ostrom in yesterday's Guardian concluding:

"For the most part, the world is not run along the lines suggested by Ostrom. It is overfished, increasingly deforested, ravaged by those who care nothing about resource management and local communities, dominated by dogmatists who think they know best. But there's something heartening about an economist who doesn't claim to have all the answers and who suggests there is a different way of doing things."

Andrew Brown often seems to me to offer a very honest take on the media and his piece on the Royal pranksters is the latest in this vein:

"What's constant in this story is the assumption that we, the public, deserve to see others humiliated. Pity and scorn, it seems, are appetites which everyone has a right to gratify."

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Graham Parker and the Rumour - Hey Lord, Don't Ask Me Questions.

Sparking off new developments

In a recent interview Peter Heslam has discussed his Cambridge multidisciplinary project, “Transforming Business," the value of entrepreneurship, thinking about enterprise solutions to poverty, and the wisdom of Abraham Kuyper and John Wesley when helping us think about the current economic crisis and recovery in light of the value of thrift, magnanimity and magnificence. The interview can be read at http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/Interview%20with%20Peter%20Heslam%204.pdf.

In it he gives an interesting summary of the significance of Abraham Kuyper:

"Kuyper dominated the religious and political life of the Netherlands for nearly half a century, and during his career he achieved positions of eminence in a number of different fields. As a scholar he established himself early in his career as an academic theologian and provided the chief impetus towards the founding of the Free University, a university in Amsterdam with a Christian constitution. As a journalist he founded a daily newspaper, and remained its chief editor for almost fifty years. As a politician he organized the Anti-Revolutionary Party, a Christian-based popular people‟s party, and remained its leader for some forty years, during which time he served a four-year term as Prime Minister. As a writer of devotional and religious literature he launched a weekly religious journal, and published scores of meditations and works of applied and pastoral theology. As a church reformer he led a revival of orthodox faith within the national church and later established a new confederation of Reformed Churches, which has vast numbers of sister churches all over the world.

Taken together, his achievements indicate that he enjoyed a distinguished and multi-faceted career. But what is most striking about his career is that in virtually every area of his activity he sparked off new developments. His establishment, for instance, of the Anti-Revolutionary Party in 1879 along modern, democratic lines, signalled the end of liberal domination in Dutch politics and helped to make way for the rise of a more democratic and representative form of government based on modern party organization. Likewise, his founding of the Free University the following year, stimulated the proliferation of a great number of social and educational institutions founded on Christian principles."

For more on Kuyper, read Heslam's book Creating a Christian Worldview:Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism, published by Eerdmans.

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Paul Weller - Man Of Great Promise.

Anglican Communion life impeded by insufficient communicators

Improving the way in which the Anglican Communion communicates with the wider world might be thought the least of its problems but an inability to effectively communicate its good news story and stories is an endemic problem for the 21st century Church. Therefore, it is interesting to see recognition of the problem within the Anglican Communion:

Anglican Communion Working Group: “More communicators needed to sustain the vital circulation of information and dialogue”

By ACNS staff

The Anglican Communion faces a shortage of qualified communicators, according to an international Working Group on communications. The group—consisting of communications professionals from five continents—concluded that the Communion life was at risk of being detrimentally affected by some Provinces’ inability to source and share their news and stories widely.

“The narrative of the Body of Christ is very powerful,” said group member Revd Dr Joshva Raja “and currently the Anglican Communion is not properly equipped to share that narrative.”

Dr Raja, originally from the Church of South India, explained that an informal survey had revealed that only a third of Provinces have full-time communications staff.

"In many cases the job of telling the story of the Church is left to busy Provincial Secretaries, unqualified volunteers or, in some cases, the bishop or Primate," he said. "How can the world hear about the best of our church life if we do not hire people with adequate time and/or the skills to source and share the stories of our part in God’s mission?"

During its recent three-day meeting in London, the Anglican Communion Communications Working Group, identified that Strategic Communications—that is, communicating proactively as well as reactively—is now, more than ever, a vital ministry of the church.

“The world has changed massively in the past decade,” said the Anglican Communion’s Director for Communication Jan Butter. “The Internet and mobile phone technology is challenging the way the Anglican Communion can and should engage in God’s mission: sermons now reach global audiences; evangelism is happening via Google’s Search Engine; church notices reach Anglicans in remote areas via text messages.

“Increasing access to Social Media also means there is greater, often instant, dialogue between everyone; church communication is no longer simply ‘top down’. The Anglican Communion needs to do all it can now to seize these new opportunities to work together to share God’s Good News.”

The group—that also included members from the Episcopal Church of Sudan, Hong Kong, Southern Africa, the US, England and Mexico—reflected on the effective communication that is taking place around the Anglican Communion. Examples include communication via text message (SMS), Facebook and Twitter, printed material, websites, video, radio and television.

However, it was clear that there is still a way to go before all Anglican Communion Provinces are equally able to share news and information domestically and intra-Provincially. An imbalance in the availability of resources, technology and training means that only a few Provinces prioritise communications as a life-giving ministry of the Church.

“The group has made several recommendations to strengthen Anglican Communion communications,” said Bishop Anthony Poggo of the Episcopal Church of Sudan.

These include conducting a Communion-wide audit to identify gaps in Province’s communications systems and structures; strengthening the Anglican Communion website and News Service; and providing training in communications for both communicators and clergy.

“A key recommendation, however, is that every Province should have at least one paid, qualified Communications Director,” he said. “We know this will be a challenge for many Provinces, but we are committed to finding ways of making this happen.”

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Athlete - Half Light.

Disabled people are being betrayed

Ekklesia has an excellent short research paper which maps out the contours of a revolution in Britain’s benefits and welfare system.

The evidence "Karen McAndrew examines and evaluates indicates that, far from enabling and supporting sick and disabled people, the changes and cuts the UK government is making – disguised by a superficial rhetoric of compassion and empowerment, and eased by ungrounded prejudices stoked in sections of the media – are causing real harm and destroying the fabric of national care and genuine opportunity. Putting human impact centre stage, this paper sets out disturbing evidence that disabled people are being betrayed, the public misled, and the welfare system endangered. Here is yet more indication that the 'Big Society' is punishing the most vulnerable and eschewing social justice, by making cuts and implementing an inadequate patchwork of policies whereby under-resourced voluntarism cannot substitute for official, statutory neglect."

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Ian Dury and the Blockheads - What A Waste.

Conversation starters in the media

On Monday I initiated some debate at a team meeting of the Greater London Presence and Engagement Network on the way stories of our work can be shared in and through the press and media.
I began with examples of press reaction from the weekend to the then decision by St Paul's Cathedral and the Corporation of London to obtain separate High Court injunctions to clear the Occupy London camp:

“It’s not a very good advert for Christianity … It’s a very well-organised protest. It’s peaceful. I was brought up to believe that a church was a place where people would find refuge.” Max Clifford, Publicist

 

“The church … has missed a sensational trick. Namely, the chance to hold out against the opaque Corporation of London and allow a space where an alternative view of the world could be presented.” Marina Hyde, Guardian columnist

 

“Really, Church of England, I despair … What astute Anglican … could look out over a sea of the best-behaved civic protestors in even our island’s long tradition of same and see a problem instead of a vast, synergetical opportunity? … Don’t emerge bleating about health and safety issues from a monument that even the Blitz couldn’t close like some local government jobsworth … Such petty risk aversion looks bad on anyone, but particularly those who purport to believe in an afterlife.” Lucy Mannan, Guardian columnist
 

One week before, The Revd George Pitcher wrote the following in a prescient Church Times article entitled ‘Ten media tips for the Church’:

“Our relationship with risk in the Church is ambivalent. We like to think that our faith is edgy, unpredictable, and invasive, liminal and envelope-pushing. In reality, we hide behind medieval walls. Our institutions are deeply risk-averse."

 

Pitcher's ‘Ten media tips for the Church’ are relevant to engaging with the press and media at both national and local levels:

1. Define the issues – prioritise the crucial issues with which the Church is faced, and go for them

2. Stop being a victim – get on the front foot, and stop whingeing about how badly you are treated

3. Be clear on the core offer – exploit our unparalleled insight into how society works in the UK, and tell our stories
4. Integrate – weave yourselves into the fabric of the media, instead of lecturing to or complaining about them

5. Talk the talk – use the vocabulary of the world, not of the Church. Reporters need to know that the hungry are being fed and the homeless sheltered, not that our pastoral ministry is a blessing in deprived areas.

6. Walk the walk – step up to the plate and say what you think 

 

7. Speak truth to power – this is not just the job of the media

8. Rapid rebuttal – don’t whine that you have been misrepresented. Hit the phone, and tell the journalist

9. Stand by the weak – stand alongside the marginalised

10. Allow access – let the media in. Sometimes you’ll regret it, but that is the price of all the times you won’t.  

As examples of the way in which good news stories can be told when Pitcher's tips are put into practice, I pointed to coverage in the Birmingham Mail of the stand taken by inter-faith project The Feast prior to the EDL rally in that city over the weekend plus extensive coverage in the Ilford Recorder of the 10th anniversary of the East London Three Faiths Forum:  

 

I ended by pointing to translations of the Prologue to John's Gospel which translate 'logos' as 'conversation':

“It all arose out of a conversation, conversation within God, in fact the conversation was God. So God started the discussion, and everything came out of this, and nothing happened without consultation.

This was the life, life that was the light of men, shining in the darkness, a darkness which neither understood nor quenched its creativity.

 

John, a man sent by God, came to remind people about the nature of the light so that they would observe. He was not the subject under discussion, but the bearer of an invitation to join in.

The subject of the conversation, the original light, came into the world, the world that had arisen out of his willingness to converse. He fleshed out the words but the world did not understand. He came to those who knew the language, but they did not respond. Those who did became a new creation (his children). They read the signs and responded.

 

These children were born out of sharing in the creative activity of God. They heard the conversation still going on, here, now, and took part, discovering a new way of being people.

To be invited to share in a conversation about the nature of life was for them, a glorious opportunity not to be missed.” (John 1: 1-14 revisited)

 

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has said that the Bible is the record of the dialogue in which God and humanity find one another: “Abraham says: God, why did you abandon the world? God says to Abraham: Why did you abandon Me? And there then begins that dialogue between Heaven and Earth which has not ceased in 4,000 years. That dialogue in which God and Man find one another … Only thus, can we understand the great dialogues between God and Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job.”

Jesus says in John 8: 28 that he speaks just what the Father has taught him and in John 11: 42 that the Father always hears him. These two verses indicate that Jesus and the Father are in a constant dialogue or conversation.

 

On this basis, mission and ministry can be understood as inviting others to share in the conversation between God and humanity about the nature of life. Mission and ministry are about identifying the conversations that people in the parish may want to start with God or into which they could be drawn and contributing to those conversations (through action, meetings, preaching, press coverage, projects etc) from a Christian perspective.
The starting place for beginning mission and ministry in this way is to ask what are the conversation starters in my area and through which fora can those conversations begin? The press and media are a key fora within and through which such conversations can begin.

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Newsies - Seize the Day.

Poem: Guilty generation

Guilty generation

There is oil on the streets tonight, oil! It only takes a spark to ignite;
the streets are flammable! Ram raid a van into a wall, wait nervously
for its fuel tank to blow. Spread fire and build barricades on streets
giddily lit by flames as lines of blue lights flash on distant riot shields.
Scaffold poles to smash up shops and passers-by, the sensation of feet
crunching glass, the shells of cars burnt to paintless, tyreless shapes,
the cheering as TVs, gangster chic and dangerware - free shit -
are pillaged. Get free stuff, fuck the system, rip the feds, in a festival
of illegal consumption, a violent Olympiad of lawlessness.
London is burning with more than boredom now. The streets
of London are filled with rubble, ancient footprints are everywhere.
You could almost think that you’re seeing double on a hot, bright night
in Peckham Rye witnessing the decline and fall of the Western world!

The sneer of a wealthy diner from the safe side of a restaurant window
is observed by a young rioter who sees in this look all he is personally denied.
One kick from a boot shatters the glass divide and replaces the sneer
with a look of fear. The thin film between rich and poor has been torched tonight
as night-time riots follow daylight robbery by wealthy elites.
Traders and bankers socialise risk and privatise profits
while trousering bonuses which exceed lifetime average salaries.
MPs fiddle expenses, police take backhanders as journalists hack phones for profit.
Public discourse sneers in a celebrity-obsessed media,
cynical and contemptuous of old values. Mutual assistance abandoned
in favour of solipsistic entrepreneurship, as community is cut
from the big broken society. The already rich at the forefront of the charge
to grab what you can while you can, now the good times are over.

From Salford to Pembury, from the City to Westminster
fear and greed roam unchecked without bothering to mask their faces;
generational fear and loathing increases now the old have power,
money, votes and demographics on their side. A generation is lost -
brooding, disoriented, suspicious - bearing the imprint of a consumer culture
determining ideas of status and achievement. A generation which pays
for the financiers’ calamity while their elders, who have taken early retirement
with generous pension packages and the proceeds of property booms,
spend liberally on their own pleasure and leisure. A generation whose basic desires
for stable jobs and secure homes will be hit hard by a triple whammy
of climate change combined with the loss of cheap fuel and credit.
A generation with a shared sense of deprivation, seeing a democracy deficit
and experiencing a collapse in the authority of traditional institutions.
If it is a crime to live without hope or meaning, then, yes, this generation is guilty.

(This poem has been collaged primarily from phrases and images used in articles published in the Observer - 14/08/11 - and the Guardian - 13/08/11, 15/08/11, 18/08/11 and 20/08/11)

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The Jam - Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.

The News of the World as soap opera (2)

In my post 'The News of the World as soap opera' I argued that the popular press' focus on feeding our baser selves with a daily diet of reality, action, sex, violence and the trivial has led, in time, to the creation of an ongoing reality celebrity soap opera which forms the substance of the redtops, celebrity mags, reality TV, and online chats/tweets encompassing as it does the 'who has been seen where', 'who is with who', 'who has broken up with who', 'who has attacked who', and 'who has cracked up and/or rehabilitated' of the real (and, sometimes, manufactured for money) lives of celebrities, entertainers, politicians, sportstars and victims of serious crime. For this reason I suggested that Hackgate, rather than diminishing in any way this celebrity reality soap opera, will only feed it as its participants become part of the story.

In today's Guardian, John Kampfner also argues that Hackgate won't drain the trivia out of everyday life:

"As the old saying goes, you get the journalists, the MPs and the coppers you deserve. How many people were complaining about greed when bankers, BBC executives and many others in private and public life were lining their pockets? How many people were indulging in celebrity pap, enjoying the gossip being fed to them at the expense of serious news? Far more than a healthy society would admit.

Why did newspapers plunge towards the lowest common denominator? Because their product sold in a difficult market, and still does. How would the tabloids fare if they put the latest massacre in Syria on their front pages? The redtops are not exclusively to blame. Rarely does a so-called serious paper miss the opportunity to follow up on a celebrity story, sprinkling their reports with irony to help their more knowing readers digest more comfortably. I read them as assiduously as the next person ...

Over the past two decades some people did complain about iniquities in society; some journalists investigated wrongdoing. But far from finding out too much, unearthing corruption and assorted wrongdoing, our media is far too pliant. And the readers, it seems, were not that fussed either, at least while the going was good, while consumerism anaesthetised the brain ...

... the financial crisis, MPs' expenses or phone-hacking and the Murdochs? Each of these scandals attests to the corrosion of the public realm. None of these scandals can satisfactorily be addressed by themselves. They grew out of the same root.

Seriousness needs to be pursued and protected. It cannot be magicked into life by august committees, as each crisis unfolds in our public life. It ultimately comes down to our own individual choices and priorities."

If we feed ourselves a diet that is shallow, superficial and self-centred, we should not be surprised when society becomes ...

Hello! We are the shallow people,
reflections of our fitness ratings,
shining the surface of our existence,
selling our lives to seek significance.

OK! we are on heat, on fire,
hyper cool, yet full of desire.
Bad and wicked are terms of approval.
Bums and tums are there for removal.

Ultra-slim celebs shed baby weight,
the best bikini bodies we celebrate;
airbrushing or anorexic,
eating disorders are so photographic.

Narcissus is our role model;
made in Chelsea , such a fit young man,
lightly tanned and with a wicked four pack,
we know that he is Essex!

We are pissed off, falling over,
stumbling in the dark.
Drunk on celebrity chardonnay,
technology sated, intoxicated.

We think we are such foxy ladies
sexy, sultry sods.
We are hung over, hearing voices,
kissing the porcelain god.

We are off our heads,
out of our skulls,
out of our minds,
we decline.

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The Kinks - Dedicated Follower Of Fashion. 

The News of the World as soap opera

Ian Jack, in today's Guardian, suggests that with the closure of the News of the World "the great age of Britain's popular press is drawing squalidly to its close."

What he calls the great age of the popular press, he characterises in two vignettes. First, the owning by the News of the World of "what the Victorians knew as our baser selves" through the paper's specialisation in "salacious accounts of sex and violence." Second, the "enterprising devotion" of the popular press to the frivolous as characterised by Lord Northcliffe, who "spread the word to his staff like a preacher: roughly, to subvert the words of Philip Larkin, readers were forever surprising a hunger in themselves to be more trivial."

"Crime exclusives," Northcliffe noted: "are noticed by the public more than any other sort of news. They attract attention, which is the secret of newspaper success. They are the sorts of dramatic news the public always affects to criticise but is always in the greatest hurry to read ... Watch the sales during a big murder mystery, especially if there is a woman in it. It is a revelation of how much the public is interested in realities, action and mystery. It is only human."

This "only human" principle of feeding our baser selves with a daily diet of reality, action, sex, violence, and the trivial has led, in time, to the ongoing reality soap opera which forms the substance of the redtops, celebrity mags, reality TV, and online chats/tweets encompassing as it does the 'who has been seen where', 'who is with who', 'who has broken up with who', 'who has attacked who', and 'who has cracked up and/or rehabilitated' of the real (and, sometimes, manufactured for money) lives of celebrities, entertainers, politicians, sportstars and victims of serious crime.

This ongoing soap opera which blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction has become 'the news' for many, if not most of us. In what Ian Jack calls "the great age of Britain's popular press," it was the redtops which provided this daily diet to millions of us but, with the advent of rolling news and the internet, the ability of the redtops to deliver, sufficiently quickly, the public face of this celebrity reality soap opera has diminished pushing the News of the World into its alleged illegal focus on the secret face of the celebrity reality soap opera.

This soap opera now provides our sense of the sacred. Gordon Lynch, writing in the same edition of the Guardian, explains that: "Coverage of the death of Baby P or processions at Wootton Bassett honouring soldiers killed in action momentarily bind their audiences together in strong, moral sentiment, either through their recognition of a particular sacred form or horror at its pollution ... The moral credibility of news media lies partly in their ability to work with the grain of sacred meanings shared with their audience ... The degree to which the News of the World profaned what many people take as sacred is unprecedented in post-war media history ... The tipping point came when the actions of people associated with the News of the World became profanations, an evil polluting the cherished sacred significance embodied in the stories of Milly Dowler, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and the 7/7 bombings."

The death of the News of the World, however, does not diminish in any way the celebrity reality soap opera. Instead, it feeds it. Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson have all become part of the story in ways that they never intended - indeed they are 'the story' for the moment - but, because we are fed by this ongoing soap opera and therefore need those who become stories in it, I predict that - as in the career of Piers Morgan - the story will rehabilitate them at some point in the future and by means of some other role in the soap opera, as long as they come to accept that they have, by foul means, become characters within the ongoing celebrity reality soap opera that they themselves have helped to perpetuate.  

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Echo and The Bunnymen - The Puppet.    

Brief book reviews

I've just finished Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps which (amazingly, given the subject matter) is a very readable application of 'medium as message' insights from Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman to Christian faith. The book is a call for the Church to lose the naivity of its relationship with media by developing awareness of the varying ways in which the mediums we use to express our messages affect the way in which those messages are received and understood.

Hipps argues the "gospel message is not a single abstract concept" instead it is "a story that changes and expands with each new set of characters and settings." We must remember, he suggests, that "the Bible is not merely - or even primarily - a collection of objective propositions" instead it is "a grand story told through hundreds of different perspectives and diverse social settings." As a result, its message is "multilayered, textured, expansive, and complex."

The "print age led to an efficient gospel" where salvation "became as easy as 1-2-3: (1) believe in Jesus; (2) apologize for your sins; (3) go to heaven." In this way, "we were shown the power of personal relationship with Jesus" and "the heavily intellectual emphasis of the print age helped unlock the treasure chest of Paul's rich, rational, and nuanced theology."

Now, "the image gospel is ... moving beyond cognitive propositions and linear formulas to embrace the power of story and intuition" ... We move from understanding salvation as a light switch to seeing it as a gradual illumination ... The gospel is seen as a way of life that transforms the world here and now, not just in the next life."

Robert Gelinas argues that jazz "is a unique medium by which to translate the gospel" so his excellent Finding the Groove, through which I also made great headway, is an example of Hipps' overall thesis. Jazz, Gelinas argues, "is the willingness to live beyond freedom and unfreedom and see where it leads":

"Jazz is the inclination to seek the interplay between life and death, right and left, up and down. When we embrace tension, we see multiple realities that are simultaneously true and lead us to the tertium quid thinking of Jesus ... Jazz thrives on tension, and a jazz-shaped faith will discover the wonder of improvisation if we are willing to embrace opposing views at the same time. This leads to a new way of Christian thinking - a way where we are not arguing and debating all the time but pursuing and discovering the creative way, which will hopefully, be the kingdom way."

Gelinas concludes:

"Seek syncopation. Hear that which is so often missed, and accent the offbeat until IT begins to swing. Find the groove, and set the Spirit of God free to improvise in you and through you. Hone your skills, and begin to call and see if there are others who will answer in response ...

Have time to develop your ear so that you can hear those around you and live in concert with them. Get to the woodshed and practice! Practice the ways of Jesus so that others can confidently count on you when you take the stage. Dig deep into God's word, not for the purpose of regurgitation, but so you can join in with melody of the Spirit's eternal song and add your own voice to that of the ancients. And when pain visits, don't forget to finger its jagged edges - sing the blues - until those around you have o choice but to smile in recognition of the living crucified Christ in your life!"

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Miles Davis - So What.

Wardman on the NSS

The Wardman Wire has kicked off a fascinating series of posts about the approach of the National Secular Society (NSS) towards faith communities.

In his post beginning the series, Matt Wardman criticises the NSS for presenting itself in the media as “representing” the “non-religious” when it is an organisation with a tiny membership that then constantly criticises religions with committed memberships of millions for being insignificant minorities. He outlines their approaches of: achieving influence via a network of “Honorary Associates” in the media and politics; having individual members act as local activists; and using campaigning tactics where the “office” backs up campaigns by local members by leveraging targeted media coverage, and sometimes legal threats.

He ends by arguing that the case for a secular state could be put far more strongly if the NSS was sidelined, as there’d be far fewer insults thrown around, and far more use of accurate information in the debate.

To demonstrate that he is open to genuine debate on these issues, the second post in the series is a response from Carl Gardner, an NSS supporter. Gardner argues that the secular viewpoint is much needed in our public debate about competing rights and religion – more needed now than ever when new, assertively countercultural forms of religion are becoming increasingly strident and that, while the NSS may not get everything right, it’s a vital organisation doing a good job of fighting for important principles.

This series should run and run and looks as though it will be well worth checking out. My recent sermon, which I posted as http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2010/01/post-christendom-church.html, touched on some of these issues.

Expanding on that post, many Christians seem to feel that, as the first comment to a post by Adam Higgitt on the pressures being brought to bear on Christianity says, "Religion (especially Christianity) is extremely marginalised in British public life." My argument, though, is that that is too simplistic a response to the current position of Christianity in the UK. First, we are in a Post-Christendom period where the privileged position that Christianity once had in the UK is gradually being eroded. For Christianity to have had a privileged position in UK society was not an unmitigated blessing and the change in its position has pros as well as cons (and arguably brings us closer to the position of the Early Church in relation to political powers). However, our awareness of this erosion process as a series of losses gives the impression that Christianity is being treated unfairly.

Second, there has been and still is a secularist agenda that seeks to marginalise religion (and Christianity, in particular). It is this agenda on which Higgitt focuses in his post. Secularism combined with Post-Christendom was a potent mix initially seemed to threaten the survival of Christianity as a factor in the public square in the UK. In much of the 70s and 80s this secularist agenda essentially excluded faith-based organisations from involvement in the delivery of public services but that situation has changed radically as a result of ...

Third, the multi-faith nature of the UK and its inclusion in the diversity agenda which has been a counter-balance to this secularist agenda. Equalities and human rights legislation is resulting from the diversity rather than the secularist agenda so that, instead of religions (including Christianity) being excluded from the public square, we are in a place where discriminating against people on the basis of religion or belief is illegal. One result has been the increasing reversal of the exclusion of faith-based organisations from involvement in delivery of public services (as example, see Lifeline Projects and the FaithAction network within which they are one of the key partners).

So, I was arguing in my sermon that our current context is an appropriate reduction in the privileged position Christianity has occupied in the UK in the past combined with a secularist argument that seeks to remove religion (and Christianity, in particular) from the public square but that the secularising agenda has been halted and the position of religions (including the Christianity) regularised and equalised by the diversity agenda.

Christians though regularly conflate the secularist and diversity agendas arguing that multi-faith UK threatens Christianity when the major threat actually comes from the secularist agenda. Many in other faith communities actively support the Church having a voice and role in the public square and would prefer Christians to be more outspoken in our comment on public affairs (albeit, generally from a conservative perspective); essentially they would prefer to be live in Christendom rather than in Post-Christendom. To conflate the two is to 'bite the hand that feeds you'; multi-faith UK has essentially strengthened the position of Christianity vis a vis the secularist agenda and is a stablising factor reducing the advance of secularism. As a result, the diversity agenda needs to be supported and utilised intelligently by the Church.

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Extreme - There Is No God.