Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Report - Part 3

The Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England (CFCE) have refused on two occasions the application made by the Chapter of Chichester Cathedral to commission Jaume Plensa's Together for installation in the Cathedral as the Hussey Memorial Commission.  The grounds for rejection are to do with the perception of significant change in the character of the space above the Arundel Bell Screen as a result of the installation.

It is undeniable that there would be significant change to this space as a result of the installation. The more complex question is whether the change that would occur is positive or negative, allowable or not. The chapter have argued that the change should be accepted and the CFCE have ruled that the change would be unacceptable. The commission has therefore come to an impasse because no basis for further discussion exists. This is because there are no objective criteria on which it is possible to discuss this issue or, in my view, the quality of art generally.

All of us routinely make judgements about the art that we encounter. Art is something which generally provokes opinions, whether positive or negative. However, when asked to explain the basis on which we make these judgements most of us would struggle to do so. Often we resort to saying things like, ‘I know what I like,’ which are ways of closing down the conversation without answering the question or examining our own assumptions. We tend to assume though that art professionals do have some more objective means of assessing the worth or quality of artworks. After all, they are constantly selecting work to show and attributing differing values, financial and otherwise, to that work.  

Jonathan Jones is an art critic for The Guardian who has acknowledged that the age of the art critic as an unassailable voice of authority is long gone due to the force of digital debate and the era of readers biting back. Entitled 'how I learned to look – and listen' Jones wrote that the way he thinks about art criticism has changed: "Criticism in the age of social media has to be much more playful and giving ... Criticism today is not about delivering truths from on high, but about striking a spark that lights a debate."

In the past, he argues, he and other art critics could speak in an "aggressive, cocksure, dismissive voice, determined to prove that my opinion was worth more than my readers" but "in today's more open forum – where people answer back, and where people often know more than I do – it becomes more and more absurd to claim such august authority for one's opinions." As a result, the way he thinks about his work, and about art, "is infinitely more plural and ambiguous than it was in 2006." Essentially, Jones is arguing that, while he can still express strong opinions, he is now much more aware that his opinions are essentially personal opinions and need to be acknowledged as such. The underlying implication is that there are no agreed criteria for assessing, evaluating and critiquing contemporary art.

Yet we continue to look for rules or talk as though these exist. Grayson Perry explored the issue of taste in the Channel 4 series All In The Best Possible Taste. He thought that "there will always be this barrier where there are people who are looking for rules. A lot of the lower middle class still need reassurance and clear rules, which they find in brands and in definite trends because they perhaps don't have the confidence to go on their own intuition and try something else out. So there's always going to be a large proportion of the population that have what they think is a very clear idea about what is good taste. But of course the good taste is just an illusion; it's just that they're obeying the rules of their tribe."

Within the art world, Perry suggests, the rule by which people work is that of consensus plus time i.e. “If it's agreed amongst the tribe for a fairly sustained amount of time, then it becomes good taste.” This is no different, then, to the seeking after rules which he criticizes in the lower middle class. On this basis, too, “good taste is just an illusion; it's just that they're obeying the rules of their tribe.” But many choose to work on this basis that, as artists, commissioners, critics, curators, gallery owners, historians or patrons, they know what good taste is because of consensus plus time. If one is in agreement with the consensus it is, of course, a safe place to be.

This does not mean that no criteria exist at all within the visual arts as there are clear technical criteria within each discipline that relate to whether or not the work is well made. However, these relate to the artwork as a craft object and do not provide us with answers as to the difference between a piece which has been competently crafted and one which demonstrates significant artistic vision or merit. Nor does it mean that particular groups, by consensus, do not have their own criteria. What does not exist, however, are any broadly accepted, and therefore objective, criteria.

In a dispute like that over the Hussey Memorial Commission, because there are no objective criteria on which discussion can be based, all that can be done to argue the case in favour of the commission is to demonstrate the consensus which supports it. That is essentially what the chapter did in response to the first rejection presenting significant support for the proposal from public consultation and written support from significant arts professionals; all this on the back of an initial well-run and broad selection process. Yet when the CFCE rules that they perceive a different consensus against the proposal, there is essentially nowhere else that the discussion can go because there is no objective basis for dialogue.   

What has happened in essence within the visual arts is that the action of Marcel Duchamp in exhibiting ready-mades and his arguing that the choice of the artist makes them art (now widely accepted as the most significant art event of the twentieth century) has opened floodgates which render rules or criteria for the creation and comparison of artworks superfluous.

As a result, we enjoy huge diversity in the visual arts. So, for example, I have been able to see a wide variety of styles and media of art and architecture in the sabbatical visits I have made. But the techniques required for each medium are often not transferable to other media, meaning that like cannot be compared with like. In this way, the variety of styles and media that exist within contemporary art limit the extent to which contrasts and comparisons can be made. As art can now be made of anything that the artist wishes, one blindingly obvious implication seems to be that the quality of a piece of video art by Bill Viola, for example, cannot be gauged by comparing it positively or negatively to a painting by Maurice Denis or stained glass by John Piper. Each is its own entity within a medium with its own techniques. As a result, widely accepted quality standards for works of art no longer exist. In addition, the techniques required for many of the traditional forms of Church art – stained glass, mosaic etc. – are no longer as widely understood as previously nor are these media generally viewed as cutting edge; a factor which impacts on the attention paid to church commissions within the art world.

The Church world and the art world, on the basis of Perry’s definition, are essentially different tribes with different tastes and fashions causing confusion for the emerging artist who is a Christian and those who commission art for churches. The dichotomy which is often cited between significant contemporary artists participating in church commissions and "self-styled 'Christian art' that though sincere and well-intentioned" is "often formulaic or decorative" and has "little or no standing within the art world," is essentially a debate about which tribe’s rules of good taste it is best to apply. Ultimately, that is a superfluous debate about illusions.

The way through this situation is, I think, what I perceive Sister Wendy Beckett to be doing in her art criticism, meditations and TV programmes. Sister Wendy is an informed enthusiast who applies the injunction in Philippians 4:8, to fill our minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise, to her writing and presenting. The kind of poring and praying over images that characterizes Beckett's best writing can be a distinctively Christian contribution to the plurality of art criticism and the experience of commissioning for churches. Beckett cultivates a prayerful attentiveness to the artwork through sustained contemplation in order to see or sense what is good and of God in it, regardless of whether the artist who made it has an international, national, regional or local reputation.

Early on in my sabbatical I gave a talk on visual art to the East London Three Faiths Forum in which I said that art, at its best, is epiphany and sacrament. In other words art takes the stuff of everyday life and transforms it so that we see it, ourselves and God differently. This was reiterated for me towards the end of the sabbatical in a talk by Rev. Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on ‘Art and the Renewal of St Martin’s’ where he also spoke of the sacramental nature of art.

In a talk I gave to the Friends of Chelmsford Cathedral earlier this year I said: “To encounter the Gospel in contemporary art, diversity must be embraced. The traditional forms of expressing the Gospel in art – illustrating Biblical narratives and the lives of the Saints – remain, albeit sometimes in the newer forms of movements like Expressionism, while attraction and reaction to the meaning, impacts and influences of the Gospel also continue to inspire creative work by contemporary artists working in fields such as the abstract, conceptual, performance and relational arts.”

This has been the attitude and approach that I have sought to bring to my sabbatical art pilgrimage and the site visits I have made. There is no value in arguing for a difference in quality between an image by Maurice Denis and another by Bill Viola. What is of value is to reflect on the nature of each image (sacrament) and what that image reveals (epiphany). 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leonard Cohen - You Got Me Singing.

Transcending tribal identities

On Thursday, at St John's Seven Kings, we hosted a fascinating meeting of the East London Three Faiths Forum looking at the topic of Marriage and the Family. There was a high degree of consensus among the three speakers for what we tend to think of as being the traditional view of marriage and family life i.e. marriage being the lifelong union of one man and one woman for the procreation of children and the family unit as the foundational building block of society. From this perspective, the diversity of forms of relationship which we find today within society is viewed as a sign that society is disintegrating and that we have moved away from God’s pattern for human flourishing.

Yet, as Christians, we claim to follow someone who poses some very significant challenges to our understanding of the place of family (Luke 9. 51 - 62). "The obligation to bury one’s father was regarded by many Jews of Jesus’ time as the most holy and binding duty of a son; but Jesus says that that is secondary to the call to follow him and announce God’s kingdom." This call cuts across family life and our traditional understandings of family. Here, even saying goodbye to your family before you leave seems to be criticised by Jesus!

In Matthew 12, when Jesus was told that his mother and brothers were nearby, we read that he said: "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? … Whoever does what my Father in heaven wants is my brother, my sister, and my mother." Then in Matthew 10 we read of Jesus saying: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law; your worst enemies will be the members of your own family."

Tom Wright notes in his commentary on this passage that Jesus is quoting from the prophet Micah (Micah 7.6) who predicts the terrible divisions that will always occur when God does a new thing. "Jesus came to bring and establish the new way of being God’s people, and not surprisingly those who were quite happy with the old one, thank you very much, didn’t like it being disturbed." "He didn’t want to bring division within households for the sake of it," Wright says, but "he knew that, if people followed his way, division was bound to follow."

So what is this new way of being God’s people which challenges our more traditional understandings of family life? I’ve recently read the latest book by Peter Rollins called ‘The Idolatry of God’ which I’ve found very helpful on this question, so I’d like to share with you some of his thinking.

"There are so many divisions in society, divisions between political parties, religious traditions and social groups. This is perfectly natural, of course. From birth, we experience a pre-existing matrix of beliefs and practices that differentiate us from others.

We discover early on that we have been given a mantle, that we are part of a tribe, one with a rich history, deep hopes and a variety of fears. The world is full of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Some of these divisions have deep histories that span multiple generations, while others are very new. Some are serious and others border on the ridiculous. But, at their most extreme, these divisions can result in local and global conflicts."

Rollins argues that to leave these divisions behind we need to transcend our given identities:

"Whether we are Conservative or Labour, rich or poor, male or female, these various bearers of our identification do not fully contain or constrain us and all too often prevent us from truly experiencing our own humanity."
 
He suggests that that is what St Paul teaches when he writes to the Galatians saying, "there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free people, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3. 28). "Here Paul mentions six distinct tribal identities that were ubiquitous in his time; six identities that can be further subdivided into three, namely the religious (Jew and Gentile), the political (slave and free) and the biological (male and female).

It was not that these different groupings were totally isolated from each other, but the way that each of these groups related to the others was clearly defined and carefully regulated.

These distinctions were justified by the authorities either in terms of a natural law or a divine plan; thus the difference in roles and responsibilities were non-negotiable and were required to maintain social stability."

In Jesus’ ministry though "we find a multitude of references to one who challenged the divisions that were seen as sacred, divisions between Jew and Gentile, male and female, and slave and free. Jesus spoke to tax collectors, engaged with Samaritans and treated women as equals in a world where these were outrageous acts." In our Gospel reading today we see Jesus refusing to perpetuate the divisions between Jews and Samaritans when his own disciples want to see revenge enacted on a Samaritan village for rejecting them.

More than this, though, in the incarnation we are presented with a picture of God coming down to earth as Jesus and being progressively stripped of all his prior identity as God’s Son. In Philippians 2 we read that he "made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!" (2.6-8).

Rollins writes that, "This is called kenosis and describes the act of self-emptying. This is most vividly expressed in the crucifixion, where we see Christ occupying the place of the complete outsider, embracing the life of one who is excluded from the political system, the religious community, and the cultural network."

To do this is to cut through the divisions which exist in society because of our different tribal identities. This is what Jesus means when he says he brings a sword into the world. He cuts into "the very heart of all tribal allegiances, bringing unity to what was previously divided":

"There is no change biologically (male or female), religiously (Jew or Greek) or politically (slave or free). Yet nothing remains the same, for these identities are now drained of their operative power and no longer hold us in the way that they once did. These identities no longer need to separate us from each other."

Our "concrete identity continues to exist, but it is now held differently and does not dictate the scope and limitations of one’s being. Paul expresses this powerfully when he writes:

What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. (1 Corinthians 7.29-31)

What we witness here are concrete references to three different categories: (1) relationships, (2) the things that happen to us, and (3) the things we own. For Paul, these continue to exist, but we are to hold them differently from the way we previously did. We are no longer to act as though we are defined by the things we own, the things that happen to us, or the relationships we have. While these continue to be important, we must hold them in a way that ensures they do not have an inescapable grasp upon us.

Paul understands this radical cut as emanating directly from one’s identity with Christ, for Paul understands participation in the life of Christ as involving the loss of power that our various tribal identities once held for us."  

Last weekend our curate, Rev. Santou Beurklian-Carter, took on a new identity, that of a priest. But she does not do so in order that she can then define herself over against the rest of us. Her role as priest is not that of ‘Father’ or ‘Mother’ knows best. Instead, her role as priest is to lead us into our commemoration of the act in which Jesus let go of every identity by which he was known, becoming nothing, in order that we might come into a new life within the family or kingdom of God where all are one and where there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes.

Scriptural Reasoning

Following a very constructive planning meeting last week, I am now looking forward to the start of a local Scriptural Reasoning group after Easter.

Scriptural Reasoning is a practice of inter-faith reading. Small groups of Jews, Christians and Muslims, and sometimes people of other faiths, gather to read and reflect on short passages from their scriptures together.

The next meeting of the East London Three Faiths Forum provides an opportunity to try Scriptural Reasoning through the discussion of texts relating to women and equality.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pierce Pettis - That Kind Of Love.

Vocation and qualification for religious leadership

Tonight we hosted a meeting of the East London Three Faiths Forum at St John's Seven Kings. The topic under discussion was vocation and qualification for religious leadership and we heard from Revd Ernie Guest - St Laurence's Church, Barkingside (and Warden of Ordinands for Redbridge); Rabbi David Hulbert - Bet Tikvah Synagogue, Barkingside; and Hajj Mahmoud Attiya - South Woodford Mosque, PhD student.

Rabbi David briefly outlined the development within Judaism from priests and prophets to rabbis. He highlighted Hassidism, the Enlightenment, and gender equality as key developments in understanding of the roles and responsibilities of rabbis. Rabbinic training is five years and the training institutions select those offering to train as rabbis. Rabbis have an employment contract with their synagogue.

Hajj Mahmoud Attiya spoke about the importance of gentle teaching within Islam and respect for People of the Book. He discussed his research exploring ways of transforming those who are radical preachers including the distinction between unchanging laws regarding morality and changing reflecting cultural practices. How these are defined plays a key role in whether a radical or reformist position is taken.

Ernie Guest outlined the criteria used by the Church of England for assessing the calling and vocation of those offering to train as ordinands and the process by which this discernment and selection takes place.

In the discussion which followed we explored ways in which our religious leaders are appointed, our differing approaches to the removal of leaders from post and approaches to gender issues in leadership. In relation to the latter, Dr Mohammed Essam El’Din Fahim argued that the practice of gender separation in Islam was cultural and did not reflect the practice in the time of the Prophet when men and women prayed together.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Youssou N´dour- Li Ma Weesu.
  

Our Holy Scriptures: an invitation to share in a conversation about the nature of life

This evening I spoke on 'Our Holy Scriptures' at the East London Three Faiths Forum where I said the following:

In a context where we are attempting to dialogue about our different faiths and where the strapline is that “there can be no peace between the religions without religious dialogue,” I thought it may be appropriate to speak about the Christian scriptures as a site for dialogue.

‘Scriptural Reasoning,’ which is championed in the UK by the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme sees Jews, Christians and Muslims meeting to read passages from their respective Holy Scriptures together. Together they discuss the content of those texts, and the variety of ways in which their traditions have worked with them and continue to work with them, and the ways in which those texts shape their understanding of and engagement with a range of contemporary issues. The goal is not agreement but rather growth in understanding one another's traditions and deeper exploration of the texts and their possible interpretations. 

What I would like to explore is why, from a Christian perspective, it is possible to do this with our holy scriptures and to do that I need to begin by talking about the form or shape of the Christian scriptures.

When we think about the form and shape of the Christian scriptures we need to remember that we are not speaking of one book but a collection of books. Maggi Dawn has, for example, written that the Bible’s: "stories are not laid out chronologically, and it is the work of so many different authors, in different genres and from different times, that although it seems like a book it would be more apt to call it a small library." Similarly, James Barr has said that the Bible needs “to be thought of not so much as a book but as a cave or cupboard in which a miscellany of scrolls has been crammed."

Other images for this diversity of form and content which I have found helpful include Mike Riddell’s description of the Bible as "a collection of bits" assembled to form God’s home page or Mark Oakley’s more poetic image of the Bible as "the best example of a collage of God that we have.” Riddell and Oakley both develop their images of the Bible from the recognition that the whole Christian Bible contains, as Oakley says, “different views, experiences, beliefs and prayers” drawn “from disparate eras, cultures and authors” which are not systematic in their portrayal of God. As Riddell states:

“The bits don’t fit together very well – sometimes they even seem to be contradictory. Stories, poems, teachings, records, events and miracles rub up against each other. They come from all over the place, and span at least 4,000 years of history.”

This is not surprising when there are in the New Testament, for example, four Gospels not one, when there are at least two different accounts of St Paul’s conversion and ministry, and when the principal form of the New Testament – the letter – is the form of long-distance, written conversation where we don’t have all the letters which originally formed that conversation.

To ignore the disparate nature and form of the Christian scriptures is to run significant risks as Riddell warns us:

“ … let us be aware that the assembled parts of the Bible are collected in a somewhat haphazard fashion. To push them into chronological order requires a great deal of scholarship, and runs the danger of doing violence to the material.”

The Christian scriptures, then, do not move forward in the smooth linear style of, for example, a nineteenth century novel, an academic thesis, a sermon or a systematic theology. Reading the Bible in terms of linearity or chronology is a stop-start process involving multiple perspectives on the same key events or characters and extensive wastelands where little or nothing of significance happens or is recorded.

The literary critic Gabriel Josipovici describes well how this works when he writes of the Hebrew scriptures. He suggests that the scriptures work “by way of minimal units laid alongside each other, the narrative being built up by slotting these together where necessary”. This form then affects the content because “events are laid out alongside each other, without comment, and we are never allowed to know whether the pattern we see emerging at one point is the true pattern”:

“This is an extraordinarily simple and an extraordinarily flexible system, which can lead from what could almost be described as shorthand to rich elaboration … Each new element … helps to bring into focus prior elements which we would have overlooked had we not been alerted to them by what follows.”

Despite the Christian scriptures having this form there is also a clear story which is threaded through the disparate and fragmented books and genres of the Bible. Josipovici also writes:

“It’s a magnificent conception, spread over thousands of pages and encompassing the entire history of the universe. There is both perfect correspondence between Old and New Testaments and a continuous forward drive from Creation to the end of time: ‘It begins where time begins, with the creation of the world; it ends where time ends, with the Apocalypse, and it surveys human history in between, or the aspect of history it is interested in, under the symbolic names of Adam and Israel’.”

So, what we have in the Christian scriptures is a both/and. A linear narrative thrust is combined with fragments of writings or story that are laid side by side so that each fragment adds to and challenges the others.

The biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, similarly, suggests that the Bible has both “a central direction and a rich diversity” which means “that not all parts will cohere or agree” although it has a “central agenda.”  The Bible is, therefore, structured like a good conversation with a central thread but many topics and diversions. On this basis, Brueggemann emphasises that “the Bible is not an “object” for us to study but a partner with whom we may dialogue.” In the image of God, he says, “we are meant for the kind of dialogue in which we are each time nurtured and called into question by the dialogue partner.” It is the task of Christian maturing, he argues, “to become more fully dialogical, to be more fully available to and responsive to the dialogue partner”:

“… the Bible is not a closed object but a dialogue partner whom we must address but who also takes us seriously. We may analyze, but we must also listen and expect to be addressed. We listen to have our identity given to us, our present way called into question, and our future promised to us.”

It is not only the form of the Bible, however, which makes it a site for dialogue but its content as well. Again writings about the Hebrew scriptures can help open our Christian eyes to aspects of the scriptures we may have overlooked. For example, Jonathan Sacks commenting on Midrash Raba in his fascinating series of Faith Lectures, states that:

“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,” Sacks says, “can we understand the great dialogues between God and Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job”

Similarly Mike Riddell has noted that for Christians “Jesus represents the essence of God’s desire to communicate with humanity.” Jesus is “the self-communication of God.” This is why he is ‘the Word of God’ and this is why Erasmus, in his 1516 translation of the New Testament, translated ‘logos’ as ‘Conversation’ not ‘Word’. A contemporary paraphrase of the Prologue to John’s Gospel based on Erasmus’ translation reads as follows:

“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)

Rowan Williams makes a similar point in his book ‘Christ on Trial’ where he writes:

“All human identity is constructed through conversations, in one way or another. The gospel adds the news that, in order to find the pivot of our identity as human beings, there is one inescapable encounter, one all-important conversation into which we must be drawn. This is not just the encounter with God, in a general sense, but the encounter with God made vulnerable, God confronting the systems and exclusions of the human world within that world – so that, among other things, we can connect the encounter with God to those human encounters where we are challenged to listen to the outsider and the victim.”

So, for Christians, to be able to enter into the conversation initiated by God by encountering the subject of the conversation – God made vulnerable – is what forms our identity. This puts dialogue at the centre of our faith and our holy scriptures which can then mean that the kind of dialogue between scriptures which occurs in processes like Scriptural Reasoning can be seen as a significant expression of something which is at the very heart of Christian faith.  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sufjan Stevens - All The Trees Of The Field Will Clap Their Hands.

Our Holy Scriptures

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mark Heard - Well Worn Pages.

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.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsies - Seize the Day.

Shared Faiths response to the credit crunch

Last year Faiths in London's Economy (FiLE) published a shared faiths response to the credit crunch which calls for: non-interest bearing transactions; mutual societies; business accountability to a wider range of stakeholders than shareholders alone; transparent and ethical business practices; and recognition of the role that artists and communities play in generating real wealth.

The document was picked up by the Faith Engagement Team in the Department for Communities and Local Government and posted on the G20 London Summit site as part of the Faith Debate section. The full text of our ‘Shared Faiths response’ was published in the ‘Faith in Business Quarterly,’ an article on the document was prepared for the Three Faiths Forum newsletter, the document informed a consultation on the issue undertaken by the East of England Faiths Council, and a Faiths Conference organised by the Basildon Faiths Forum.

Stephen Timms responded to the shared faiths response to the credit crunch in a speech to the East of England Faiths Council. In this speech, he focused on two aspects of the Shared Faiths response:

Firstly, he said that the paper is right to highlight how the faiths value work – how: “The work ethic is seen as a noble endeavour in many faiths.” Secondly, he focused on what we describe as the ‘breakdown in the relational aspects of the economy’. "You say ‘many faiths reflect on transparency and the hidden (often in terms of the imagery of light and dark’) suggesting that where actions can be hidden, injustice and wrongdoing often occur’. Rowan Williams said earlier this year: “our faith depends on the action of a God who is to be trusted; God keeps promises.” I think you’re right. Hiddenness, and a lack of transparency, has been one of the causes of this crisis."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gillian Welch - Everything Is Free.

Children of Abraham

Bit late but this was my All-Age Mothering Sunday sermon at St John's Seven Kings:

How many of us have watched the TV programme ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ How many of us have done some research into our family history? For those who have researched their family histories, how far back have you been able to go? What has been the most interesting thing that you have discovered? How many of us have known our grandparents? Our great-grandparents? Our great, great grandparents? What is that we find interesting about ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ Why is that we need to know so much about our past?

There can be many reasons why it is interesting to research our family histories; we may track down relatives about whom we knew nothing and broaden our extended family, for instance, or we might come to understand ourselves better by knowing about family traits and characteristics which have been passed down across the generations.

I doubt that any of us have traced our family histories back to Abraham and Sarah but our Bible readings today suggest that we can. Abram and Sarai, as they were originally known, were very old and very sad because they had no children. But one night, out in the desert, God made Abram a special promise. God said:

“Look up and count the stars – if you can. That’s how many people there will be in your family one day. Think of the sand on the seashore. How many grains can you count? I’ll bless you and give you such a large family that one day they’ll be as many as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore.”

As a sign of that promise, God changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah. God’s promise comes true when Sarah finally does have a baby, called Isaac, when she’s very old. The great-great-great-(lots of greats)-grandchildren of this family are the members of God’s family here today, so we’re all actually members of the same family; Abraham and Sarah’s family, which is also God’s family.

Now, because we are all part of the same family we’ve got to care for each other like we are family. Some of us heard John Bell talking about that this week in our Lent Course. He said:
“... within the Church, at its best, we are the surrogate mothers and uncles and grandchildren to other people – and that’s a very different unit of belonging. Which means that should your mother or father reject you, the Christian Church will still accept you.”

This is an important part of Mothering Sunday because today is about Mother Church as well as being about the Mothers who gave us birth. As John Bell says, the Church at its best is our extended family; “the water of baptism will be thicker than the blood of genealogy.”

As a result, we’ve got millions of brothers and sisters of all ages and colours in every land all over the world. In fact, just like on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ when we realise that we are Children of Abraham, we also realise that we have some unexpected relatives because Jewish and Muslim people are also Children of Abraham.

Bono, the singer with rock band U2, suggested in his guest column for the New York Times on 2 January this year the idea of an: “arts festival that celebrates the origin of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Every year it could be held in a different location; Jerusalem would obviously be the best place to start.”

We can already experience something of that idea locally through the East London Three faiths Forum:

“For more than ten years, the Three Faiths Forum has been encouraging friendship, goodwill and understanding amongst Muslims, Christians and Jews. We also facilitate dialogue, leading to action with people from other faiths, and those who do not subscribe to any religion. We create new models for faith encounters.”

So we can see through all this that although God’s promise starts out with small things it can become incredibly massive. Sarah laughed when she heard what God had planned. Just like Sarah we can be sceptical, cynical and mocking about what it is possible for God to achieve through us but, in the story, Sarah’s cynical laughter turns to joyful laughter when her son Isaac is born and the same can be true for us too as we learn to trust that God can use us and achieve great things through us.

We know the difference between cynical laughter and joyful laughter don’t we? Who can give me a cynical laugh? Who can give me a joyful laugh? Sarah’s story shows us how we live life joyfully and hopefully. Patricia De Jong has described what happened to Sarah like this:

“Here is Sarah, at age 90, saying to God: Look, I'm old, I'm tired, I have arthritis and even a little osteoporosis; are you sure we want to get into something new like this now?

But this is when we encounter the marvelous wonder of God, at that very vulnerable moment - when the improbable is mistaken for the impossible, at that moment when we actually believe that our spirits are wasting away, as our bodies are, and God couldn't possibly have any more surprises in store for us, at that moment when we have settled in to things the way they are, instead of things the way they can be through the hope of God …

And yet what better way to live than in the grip of a promise? To wake in the possibility that today might be the day ... To take nothing for granted. Or to take everything as granted, though not yet grasped. To handle every moment of one's life as a seed of the promise and to plant it tenderly, never knowing if this moment, or the next, may be the one that grows.

To live in this way is to discover that God is always blessing us ... This is what Abraham and Sarah found out late in life ... This is what the psalmist had in mind when he wrote, "so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's." (Psalm 103:5) This is the spiritual path we embark upon when we place our hand in the open palm of God ...

Abraham and Sarah believed in God's promises and dared to hope. As Paul reminds us, "hope does not disappoint because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given to us."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pops Staples - Hope In A Hopeless World.

Presence & Engagement Network update

Here is the latest update from the Greater London Presence & Engagement Network:

PEN work and events

We are just putting together the promised resource pack. This has become a CD-ROM rather than a folder of papers. It updates the pack given out at our 1st June launch and is being sent to clergy in all four of our sponsoring Dioceses with the intention that every parish will have access to at least one copy. So for lay colleagues who would like one please let me know or badger your nearest incumbent and make sure they make good use of it please. (Those in Southwark Diocese will receive theirs through the monthly clergy mailing.)

Living with other faiths: to help those who would like to familiarise themselves with this material or get pointers on how to put together a course that a fits particular context, there is a training morning on Thursday 11th February in the Chapter Room at Southwark Cathedral (very central for transport, right next to London Bridge). Starting prompt at 10 am until 12 noon (with a midway coffee break), the session will be lead by the author of the material, The Revd Jonathan Evens. There will be a £5 charge payable on the day. Please let me know if you are hoping to attend.

Jonathan is also leading a five week course using the material as part of the Diocese of Chelmsford Lent and Eastertide School 2010 on five Fridays in Lent (February 26th, March 5th, 12th, 19th & 26th); 10am until 12 noon, The Chapter House, Chelmsford. The five week course costs £15 and can be booked through Liz Watson at the Chelmsford Diocesan office. Email lwatson@chelmsford.anglican.org or telephone 01245 294400. (This is module Lent 13 of the CCS course.) The Revd Angus Ritchie (Director of the Contextual Theology Centre) is running the course for five Mondays in Eastertide (April 19th & 26th, May 10th, 17th & 24th). ; 7.30 – 9.30pm, University of East London Stratford Campus. Cost and booking as above. (This is module Easter 4 of the CCS course.)

Also using these materials but slightly differently, Churches Together in Balham and Upper Tooting Lent course will run five Wednesdays in Lent (February 24th, March 3rd, 10th, 17th & 24th)7.30 – 9.00 pm at St Mary’s Church Balham High Road. (Balham station and Northern line underground are close by) please let The Revd Wilma Roest vicar@stmarybalham.org.uk, or myself, know if you plan to attend. The course is being led by PEN Coordinator, Susanne Mitchell and local church members.

Learning and Growing: this one of the series of Autumn seminars was postponed. In the next few weeks I will be in touch with “providers” about their latest courses and materials to put on something late Spring early summer. I would welcome suggestions as to what you would find helpful by way of an event to encourage the practice of Christian Learning and Growing and developing confidence in being able to explain our faith to others.

A recommendation: I recently met with Jane Winter and David Grimwood of Zedakah. Zedakah (http://www.zedakah.org.uk/) is a faith based work consultancy which provides a range of services to support individuals and local community groups through the processes of project planning and management. Staff have considerable experience of Christian based social justice, community ministry and consultancy. I will be adding details to the website soon but if you are thinking of embarking on a project why not take a look at what they can offer by way of support.

Other news and events

The Three Faiths Forum is looking for an education officer for Christianity, interns, and volunteer speakers for their workshops in schools and colleges. Training is given for speakers in dialogue skills and public speaking. Ideally they want volunteers under 30. Details about this and the education office post are on their website: http://www.threefaithsforum.org.uk/.

The Just Share Lectures continue at St Mary-le-Bow Church, Cheapside. Wednesday 27th January at 6.05pm ‘The City of God and the City’ The Revd Canon Dr Nicholas Sagovsky, Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey.

Jewels in His Crown Day Conference Saturday 23rd January 9.45am – 1.00pm Which Way the UK Asian Church? Which models are working in London? At St Peter’s Church, Vere Street, London W1G 0DQ. Details of their national conference in June 2010 will be added to the PEN website soon.

The Christian Interfaith Practitioners' Association will be holding their Annual Consultation from the 18-20 May 2010 at Luther King House, Manchester. Face to Face and Side by Side: Who is in? Who is Out? www.cipa-uk.com for more details.

Community Mission a partnership between Tearfund and Livability (formerly Shaftesbury Society) are hosting Mission in multi-faith communities on 10 March in central London. The day is facilitated by Richard Sudworth, author of Distinctly Welcoming. Richard also runs a community project in a diverse part of Birmingham. The day will focus on evangelism in a multi-faith context and how to maintain a distinctive Christian approach. It is £20/person including lunch. To book, contact Jill Clark or phone 020 7452 2018.

Contextual Theology Centre event for the Week of prayer for Christian Unity. Thursday 21st January, 7.30-9pm at St Paul's Church, Shadwell E1 Christian Unity - for a Change Hear the Revd Ric Thorpe (St Paul's , Shadwell), Capt Nick Coke (Stepney Salvation Army), Sr Una McCreesh (Ursuline Sisters) and Pastor Wayne Brown (NT Church of God) speak about the impact of community organising on their congregations and neighbourhoods.

And still with a Social Justice theme Insidegovernment Tackling Race Inequality: Improving Opportunity, Strengthening Society on Tuesday 23rd February, Central London, 09:00 - 14:00 more details at http://insidegovernment.msgfocus.com/c/1iK09ym24tI4QrFOZ).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Curtis Mayfield - Keep On Keeping On.

Shared Faiths response to the credit crunch

The latest edition of Faith in Business Quarterly is now available and features the text of the 'Shared faiths response to the credit crunch' which was developed and issued by Faiths in London's Economy.

The 'Shared faiths response' has picked up by the Faith Engagement Team in the Department for Communities and Local Government and posted on the G20 London Summit site as part of the Faith Debate section. An article on the document was prepared for the Three Faiths Forum newsletter, it informed a consultation on the issue undertaken by the East of England Faiths Council, and also features on the Practical Development Ideas website of Nick Heap.

In October I shall be speaking about the development of the 'Shared Faiths response' and the issues it tackles at an inter-faith conference in Basildon.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

M. Ward - Hold Time.

Is society losing touch with morality?

Last night I spoke at the East London Three Faiths Forum on the theme of whether society is losing touch with morality. My dialogue partner was Rabbi Alex Chapper of the Ilford Federation Synagogue, who is also a local magistrate.

My contribution to the evening can be found below. By contrast to my input, Alex argued that a sense of personal responsibility has been lost within society and cited the example of those that he encounters in his work as a magistrate as examples of this phenomenon. Our contributions kickstarted a lively debate exploring the issue further and focusing, in particular, on:

• whether morality is rules-based or character-based;
• the interplay between personal and social morality, in particular whether responsibility for obesity lies with those individuals consuming it or the companies that manufacture and promote it, or both; and
• whether distinctions can be made between universal moral principles - such as the Golden Rule - and changing ethical norms in specific societies and cultures.

Has society lost touch with morality?

Morality simply put is about codes of conduct which are put forward by a society, a group, a religion or are accepted by an individual for his/her own behaviour. All human beings and the groups we form are characterized by a worldview, however poorly articulated, and that view of the world that we hold generates patterns or codes of behaviour that we tend to follow because they are the outworking of our beliefs about the world.

Incidentally, I think that this is as true for those who are atheists or humanists as it is for those who follow a particular religion. Two implications of this are that our different worldviews generate different codes of conduct (different moralities) and that our different worldviews are each based on unprovable assumptions about the world which we believe to be true. Therefore, all worldviews are ultimately based on faith (whether religious or not) and all worldviews generate codes of conduct or morality.

As a result, I think it is a fallacy to ask whether society has lost touch with morality. Morality is always particular to a society or group or religion and therefore rather than suggesting that there is a definitive morality with which we can lose touch, we should instead ask whose morality it is that we are discussing.

For each of our religions there have been periods in our respective histories when the morality of our religion has been the dominant morality in particular countries or among particular racial groups, as well as periods where the morality of our religions has been a minority morality. It seems to me most likely that for each of our religions in contemporary Britain our experience is that of our morality being in the minority.

We may want to debate later whether that is actually the case. If we agree that it is, then we might debate whether that is a good or a bad thing (there are pros and cons to both) and how we might respond either by seeking to gain or regain dominance for ‘our’ morality or some other approach. However, if accepted, what it does not mean is that, as a result, Britain has lost touch with morality. All societies have some form of generally accepted code of conduct which forms their sense of morality, even when that is not predominantly formed by one or the other of our religions.

We should also note that morality or codes of conduct are rarely clear-cut or pure. If it is accurate to say that contemporary British morality is not predominantly being shaped now by our three religions, we should recognize that our religions do nevertheless influence contemporary codes of conduct as can be seen, for example, in the legislation which has been introduced to outlaw discrimination on the basis of religion or belief in the workplace.

It would also seem accurate to suggest that the morality of a particular religion is also influenced and affected by the codes of conduct inherent in the wider society. I want to suggest that the dominant morality in our society is a consumerist morality and that Christianity, the religion I know best, has not been unaffected by this morality.

Having been thinking along these lines in preparing this talk, it was then fascinating to find a feature article in last Saturday’s Times arguing that we live in an age of turbo-consumerism; of instant gratification; of a voracious appetite for ‘stuff’; of living to shop. The article argues that “shopping has become the premier leisure activity” and that we have “gladly boarded the work-to-spend treadmill, the insatiable pursuit of “more”, which resulted in there being, for example, 121 mobile phones for every 100 people in the UK by 2008.”

One of those quoted in the article is Neal Lawson, a political commentator and author of a book called All Consuming. He argues that turbo-consumerism fosters a “new selfishness”:

“For the shopper there are no obligations to others, no responsibilities, just rights. If the consumer is king, the concept ‘because I’m worth it’ translates into a world where we are the centre of our own universe.” He adds, “Personal freedom to shop, to own, to do what you want is the guiding principle of our age.”

One example of this new selfishness that is given in the article is of a woman returning a dress to a fashion chain. Is there something wrong with it, she is asked. “No, I just got it home and changed my mind.” Then she asks if the reporter will use a pseudonym in the article and confides: “I’ve already worn it, actually, but everyone does it.” Does what? “You wear it once then take it back for a refund.”

As the article notes,

“A consumer society can’t allow us to stop shopping and be content because then the whole system would die. “Instead it has to sell us just enough to keep us going but never enough that our wants are satisfied,” [Lawson] says.”

He calls it “the heroin of human happiness” and it doesn’t take the Times’ reporter long to find those who are addicted:

“A young woman rushes by at a semi-trot. On her shoulder is an eco tote bag bearing the slogan: “All You Need is Love.” But she evidently doesn’t subscribe to this ideology; she is laden with branded carrier bags — Mango, Urban Outfitters, New Look. What she really needs, it seems, are more shoes, skirts, scarves, belts. How often do you go clothes shopping, I ask when I catch her up. Most lunch breaks and every weekend ideally, she says. Why? She eyes me dubiously: “Because I love it.””

She speaks to Karen and Abi staggering under the weight of their carrier bags: “Will they go home now and put their feet up? “No, we’re taking these bags home in a taxi,” Abi says. “Then we’re coming back to do another hour before the shops close.””

Lawson says: “The more we consume the less space there is to be anything other than consumers. The space to be citizens and make decisions equally and collectively about the world around us is diminished.” This is a consequent effect of consumerism and generates the new selfishness that he argues we are seeing as our world comes to revolve around the search to satisfy our own desires through consumption and at the expense of those unable to consume.

In these, and other ways, consumerism generates a morality, a code of conduct, for those of us who are consumers but it is a very different morality from that which has traditionally been associated with the major world religions. However, we should not be naïve and assume that we are in someway removed from this or holier than others. I can only speak of the Church culture that I know and am part of, which certainly does uncritically reflect aspects of the consumerist culture around us.

This is the latest issue of Christianity magazine, of which I am a subscriber. It’s lead article is about the cost of living in terms of the recession’s effect on the poor but it is also filled with more than 30 adverts aimed at encouraging me to spend money on the products being promoted together with references to or reviews of another 17 new books or CDs that I could buy. The advertising revenue received by the magazine keeps its cost affordable for me and enables me to read about the effect of the recession on the poor while continuing to consume. We are by no means immune from a consumerist mentality or morality.

How should we respond? What I don’t think will be effective is for each of us to promote the morality of our religion or the strand of our own religion with which we agree most vehemently. To do that would be to accept the morality of the marketplace; competing products and consumer choice. Instead, I want to suggest that there is a different kind of morality that can emerge from the activity that we are all engaged in this evening; inter-faith dialogue.

This is a suggestion that I have drawn, in part, from the writing of Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi. In The Dignity of Difference he writes:

“We must learn the art of conversation, from which truth emerges not, as in Socratic dialogues, by the refutation of falsehood but by the quite different process of letting our world be enlarged by the presence of others who think, act, and interpret reality in ways radically different from our own.”

When we do this, when we “recognize God’s image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideals, are different from mine” then we are allowing God to remake us in his image instead of making God in our own image. And to do so has moral outworkings, as Sacks notes when he writes:

“I believe that we are being summoned by God to see in the human other a trace of the divine Other. The test – so lamentably failed by the great powers of the twentieth century – is to see the divine presence in the face of a stranger; to heed the cry of those who are disempowered in this age of unprecedented powers; who are hungry and poor and ignorant and uneducated, whose human potential is being denied the chance to be expressed. That is the faith of Abraham and Sarah, from whom the great faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, trace their spiritual or actual ancestry. That is the faith of one who, though he called himself but dust and ashes, asked of God himself, ‘Shall the judge of all the earth not do justice?’ We are not gods, but are summoned by God – to do His work of love and justice and compassion and peace.”

We are, I believe, seeing something of this possibility emerging from the development of inter-faith dialogue. For example, the Christian Muslim Forum has recently published ten ethical guidelines intended to enable Christians and Muslims to talk about their faith to each other in ways that are just, truthful and compassionate. Faiths in London’s Economy recently developed a 'Shared faiths response to the credit crunch' which calls for: non-interest bearing transactions; mutual societies; business accountability to a wider range of stakeholders than shareholders alone; transparent and ethical business practices; and recognition of the role that artists and communities play in generating real wealth. The Greater London Presence & Engagement Network is making resources on inter-faith dialogue available free of charge to Christian congregations in order to provide a biblical, theological and philosophical grounding for such dialogue in the Christian tradition.

These are just three of many initiatives – reflecting those that I know best – which are essentially seeking to develop codes of conducts or morality from the experience of inter-faith dialogue. These initiatives, if developed and affirmed, can become part of a search for a morality that we can all share and within which the particularity of our own faith and its morals will be valued and affirmed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Waterboys - Old England.