Treating the Bible like some vast jigsaw puzzle

Tom Wright wrote an article for the Times in the wake on the Synod decision on Women Bishops which was also posted on the Fulcrum website and aimed to nail the lie that 'people who “believe in the Bible” or who “take it literally” will oppose women’s ordination.' He wrote:

"All Christian ministry begins with the announcement that Jesus has been raised from the dead. And Jesus entrusted that task, first of all, not to Peter, James, or John, but to Mary Magdalene. Part of the point of the new creation launched at Easter was the transformation of roles and vocations: from Jews-only to worldwide, from monoglot to multilingual (think of Pentecost), and from male-only leadership to male and female together.

Within a few decades, Paul was sending greetings to friends including an “apostle” called Junia (Romans xvi, 7). He entrusted that letter to a “deacon” called Phoebe whose work was taking her to Rome. The letter-bearer would normally be the one to read it out to the recipients and explain its contents. The first expositor of Paul’s greatest letter was an ordained travelling businesswoman.

The resurrection of Jesus is the only Christian guide to the question of where history is going. Unlike the ambiguous “progress” of the Enlightenment, it is full of promise — especially the promise of transformed gender roles."

Among the comments made on the Fulcrum website about Wright's article is this: "The meaning of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is clear - the only question is whether we choose to obey the instruction of the apostle who was appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ to open the eyes of the nations and turn them from darkness to light (Acts 26: 17-18), a teacher of the nations in faith and truth (he speaks the truth in Christ and lies not) (1 Timothy 2: 7)."

Giles Fraser comments in The Guardian today that: 'Conservative religious people are generally locked in a self-referencing worldview where truth is about strict internal coherence rather than any reaching out to reality. That's why they treat the Bible like some vast jigsaw – its truth residing in a complex process of making the pieces fit together and not with the picture it creates.'

So, St Paul sent greetings to friends including an “apostle” called Junia and entrusted that letter to a “deacon” called Phoebe.  He clearly accepted women in his ministry teams and among the leadership of the churches with which he worked. Yet on other occasions and in different circumstances and contexts he made statements such as that in 1 Timothy 2. 11-12. 

To take the Bible seriously surely means to live with the tension of the different and sometimes contradictory statements and actions found within the Bible, both taken as a whole and in relation to its key protagonists instead of trying to 'treat the Bible like some vast jigsaw – its truth residing in a complex process of making the pieces fit together and not with the picture it creates.' To my mind that also includes taking context, both then and now, into account in seeking to understand what God was saying and doing, both then and now, and not simply insisting that particular statements originally made for particular contexts and times necessarily have literal validity for all times and contexts.

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Lone Justice - Don't Toss Us Away.

Free us, Lord, from our addictions

This was my assembly on addiction, given yesterday as chaplain of Venus College at St Edward's Church of England School and Sixth Form College:

Think of something that you really like and that makes you feel good. It can be anything you like; something you do, something you watch or listen to, something you eat, someone you like to be with.

Now think about the feeling that you get and how it makes you feel.

Imagine not simply enjoying that feeling but beginning to crave it; so that, rather than being something great when you happen to experience it, you start to want to have that same feeling more and more frequently.

Imagine now that you begin wake up craving that feeling so that you have to satisfy your craving that day.

Imagine that the craving is so strong that you will lie, steal, cheat, hurt, and maybe even kill to ensure you get that feeling that day.

What began as something good has become something ugly. What began as something you were free to enjoy has become something which controls everything about you. What began as something that enhanced your life has begun to destroy it.

That is how addiction works. We are most familiar with talk of addiction in terms of alcohol, drugs or smoking but we can actually become addicted to all sorts of things and addiction has taken hold when we can no longer cope without the thing to which we have become addicted. 

Earlier in the week I watched an interview with the shock rocker Alice Cooper; someone who has had a well-publicized battle with addiction, often consuming an entire bottle of whiskey each day. He has said, “Nobody ever sees the alcoholism coming. It’s one of those things that broadsides you. There’s never a place where the drug or the alcohol says, oh, by the way, it’s time to stop now. It just keeps going until your body tells you, ‘If you don’t stop you’re going to die.’ I never met anybody who was an alcoholic or a drug addict that ever walked out of it going, ‘Yeah, what a good idea that was.’ For me it was never a great idea.’”

Cooper has said that divine intervention is what broke his drinking habit in the mid-1980s. "I honestly think I was simply and completely healed. I guess you can call it a miracle. It's the only way I can explain it. It was absolutely eliminated from my life." He once told the Sunday Times, "Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call."


So how can Christianity help when it comes to addiction. First, the Bible commends moderation to us. “Moderation is better than muscle, self-control better than political power.” (Proverbs 16. 32) We need to be clear that the Bible doesn’t try to ban the good things in life, but does say don’t allow those things to control by becoming addictions. The way to do that is to enjoy things in moderation. The second thing it encourages us to do is to put God first. “Do not get drunk with wine, which will only ruin you; instead, be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5. 18) If we put God at the centre of our lives then everything else will find its proper place and won’t be addictive or controlling.


So, with those thoughts in mind, let us pray:


Lord Jesus, You said, "I have come to set the captives free." We are captive and need Your healing touch. Free us, Lord, from our addictions, so that we will be:
... free from the cares and worries that stifle our happiness;
... free from sins that cling to us, and to which we cling;
... free from all compulsive behaviour that prevents us from becoming what You, Lord, have planned for us.
Bring us, loving Saviour, to the experience of abundant life which You promised. Amen.


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Alice Cooper - Poison.

Responses to the Templeton Prize award

Here are two responses from today's Times to the decision to award this year's Templeton Prize to Lord Rees:

"Martin Rees is a brilliant astrophysicist and a personal friend, but I believe he has made a mistake in accepting £1 million from the Templeton Foundation. In doing so, he supports its primary aim, which is to undermine the most precious tenet of science: that it is the only philosophical construct we have to determine truth with any reliability. The Templeton Prize has been set deliberately at a higher value than the Nobel Prize in a pathetic attempt, using enormous amounts of money as their lure, to bask in the reflected lustre of the most prestigious of science awards." Sir Harry Kroto

"Lewis Wolpert, Emeritus Professor of Biology at University College London and vice-president of the British Humanist Association, said that Lord Rees was justified in accepting the prize. "I think religion helps a lot of people, and as long as it doesn't interfere with science I don't mind. My son became religious and it did him some deal of good. Martin works so hard and does so much for science that any prize is well deserved."

I leave it to you to judge which response is the more reasoned and reasonable.

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Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place. 

The New Dark Ages (2)

II

The Times, Thursday 22nd December 2011

The New Dark Ages

Our palaces of cultures – the museums and galleries of which free access to the riches of their great stores of human learning and culture have been among the greatest achievements of our culture in recent centuries – lie in ruins. Barricaded by rings of security personnel and barred by locks, chains and all manner of high-tech security devices, we, the public, can no longer access the collections to which we previously shared the right of open access.

Yet this denial of access combined with its concomitant rapid increase in security has been powerless to prevent the slow but relentless eradication from sight of artefacts from the earliest times of human culture together with all reference to these artefacts in later artistic, educational and scientific creations.

The darkness which is systematically obliterating human culture and which, if it continues, will lead us into a new Dark Age shows no sign of being abated by the actions taken to date by the Government to seek to protect what remains of our national collections.

Culture, to be preserved, must be lived and breathed in order that it fertilises future creativity and learning. Too much of our current culture is already blind to the extent to which it utilises and is informed by past culture. We think and act as though we emerge from the womb as fully formed independent individuals with no debt to nurture, yet our every thought and word and action is inevitably and unconsciously predicated on some past learning.

This year, we celebrated a cultural artefact – the 1611 King James Version Bible – which is among those artefacts that will shortly be lost from sight should this dark blight on our culture continue its relentless progress. When this Bible is lost from sight, we will not only lose the artefact itself but all that it has contributed to our culture in terms of imagery, story, phraseology and much, much more.

Our culture cannot sustain such a loss, such a repeated series of losses, and survive unharmed. We face a new Dark Age which cannot be prevented by denial of access and security cordons. Therefore, we call for the doors of the palaces of cultures to be flung wide open once again. Maybe in the learning which ensues an answer to the relentless rush of this tide of darkness in our culture can be found. Or, like Canute’s courtiers, we will see the folly of our hubris.

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Carly Simon - You're So Vain.

The religions of consumerism and Christ

Janice Turner reflects on the false god of consumerism in today's edition of The Times reflecting young protestors on tuition fees and tax breaks are raging against consumerism's broken promises:

"Consumerism, the religion they grew up with, has let them down. The infrastructure of their lives - shiny shopping malls and coffee shops - led them to believe that living standards would keep being upgraded like mobile phones. And since less than half of under-24s are registered to vote, they believed in the power of shopping more heartily than in democracy.

How apt that they will show their political frustration, not just in angry protests, but by withdrawing their consumer support. Student unions are cancelling Vodaphone contracts and encouraging their members to do the same. The young built these companies; they can hurt them too.

As Naomi Klein pointed out in No Logo, brands win us by insinuating themselves into our hearts: a can of Lyle's Golden Syrup makes me feel warm and nostalgic; wearing my one pair of Prada shoes, I feel chic, though, in truth, they're nothing special ...

But those emotional associations matter ..."

A different attack on consumerism comes from comedian Richard Herring, currently touring Christ on a Bike: The Second Coming, who says that how show "is by no means as disrespectful to the Christian myth as all the barefaced commercialism that is going on in suposed celebration." He says that, though he is an atheist, he loves Jesus and thinks he is amazing - "It's just all the people who follow Him who tend to be such idiots. He's like the Fonz in that respect" - and notes that "if our society ran on genuine Christian principles of not judging or stone-throwing and looking after the weakest rather than rewarding the richest, then maybe we'd be better off."

There appear to be more than one artist publicly reconsidering the possibility of faith this Christmas. Tony Jordan, the writer of The Nativity (BBC1 from Monday), interviewed in Christianity says:

"I think I represent a huge swathe of people that say: 'Yeah I believe in God and all that,' but don't tend to do much about it ... It's true to say that I had a faith. I had a faith that wrestled daily with my intellect. I really struggled with God as something I could see and touch and that had some sort of physical presence that I would know if I saw it. But then the more I thought about it, I did find a route through."

For him that involved a discussion with a scientist about dark matter, while researching The Nativity, leading to the thought that this thing without which the laws of physics do not work could be God:

"... I think that whoever God is and whatever God is, it's beyond my comprehension. I can't even get my head around what it must be, or what he must be, I can't do it. And once you understand that, I think it suddenly makes sense. So the story of the Nativity for me, I kind of found I reinforced my faith along the way."

As a result, he says he genuinely hopes that people are converted through the series: "I'd love to think that people are moved enough to believe it, to find faith, but to find the beauty of faith and not to say, 'my denomination is right.'" What he hates about religion is the contrast between the beauty of "faith and religion and the teachings of Christ" - the simplicity of 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' - and the many people who have been killed in wars over denomination and interpretation.

Andrew Motion is another who is reconsidering. He writes about being in the ambivalent middle, with millions of others, "where faith flickers off-on like a badly wired lamp ... where honest doubt comes and goes, and in so doing keeps alive the argument with and about God."

For him, the catalyst has been a priest; clever, funny and moving, whose talks made him think about things he hadn't thought about for a long time and "then in not quite the same way." This has led to:

"the conviction that my faith is not proof of a God-down Universe in which human beings scurry around trying (or not) to do His bidding. But of a Universe in which the primitive hunger to imagine beyond ourselves is manifested in a series of overlapping stories that give us the possibility and permission to do so. They shape our ambition to think bigger and to live better, and they help to define our place in the scheme of things."

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Jakob Dylan - Nothing But The Whole Wide World. 

Enough is enough: live more simply

This is the sermon that I preached at St Gabriel Aldersbrook and St Mary the Virgin Great Ilford this morning. The Gospel reading was Luke 12: 32-40. It was interesting to hear the engaged and knowlegable feedback from the two congregations. At St Gabriel's, a former City banker said that the sermon made a refreshing change while at St Mary's one post-service comment was to do with the way in which the self-sufficiency of villages in the two-thirds world has been compromised by the adoption of aspects of Western lifestyle.

I began with a quote from Thursday’s Times where a former Bank of England rate-setter, William Butler, now chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, was quoted as saying that, “Effectively, UK consumption – household consumption, public consumption, or both – is going to have to take a decade-long holiday.”

“We lived beyond our means year after year,“ Butler said, “and the nation collectively has to consume less.” “This period of austerity is almost arithmetically necessary if we don’t want to go into national and indeed personal bankruptcy.”

The idea that we need, as individuals and as a nation, a period of austerity because we have lived beyond our means is one that surely has some resonance with Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading about the absolute non necessity of wealth and possessions in the light of the coming of the Son of Man and his kingdom.

“Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor,” are words that we have rationalised away from their plain meaning by arguing that Jesus’ disciples, to whom these words are addressed, were expecting his imminent return and therefore had no need money or possessions. We, we have argued, do not have that apocalyptic expectation and, therefore, while, not neglecting to give generously to others, also have a God-given imperative to provide for our families through our work and the income it provides.

What this has justified in the Western church, as we have reflected the culture around us more than we have the imperatives of the Gospel, has been the over consumption of which William Butler spoke. However, while the church in the West has often been complicit in our consumerist society, there have been key Christian voices who have stood for Gospel values and who have spoken out prophetically against the growth of consumerism in the West and its impact on the rest of the globe.

John V. Taylor, the former Bishop of Winchester, published in 1975 Enough is Enough, a book which kickstarted the simple lifestyle movement with its slogan of ‘Live simply, that others may simply live.’ More recently, Sam Norton, the Rector of Mersea Island, has regularly blogged about the coming impact of peak oil; the idea that the supply of oil has peaked leading to increased oil prices in future with consequent increases in the price of food, transport and utilities. All of which we are currently seeing occurring and which will, in time, necessitate changes to a simpler, more localised lifestyle than any of us in the West have experienced for many years.

Putting his predictions and perceptions in a Biblical framework, Norton argues that continual economic expansion and growth have become the equivalent of ‘god’ for Western economies and are a contemporary example of idolatry. Next month a group from St John’s Seven Kings plan to visit Mersea Island to hear more about peak oil and initiatives to transition from over consumption to a simpler lifestyle. If any of this strikes a chord, a good place to start is this book, The Transition Handbook, which shows how “the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome … [leading] to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials.”

The prophetic cry, from those like Taylor, Norton and others, for a greater simplicity of lifestyle, whether from moral choice or economic necessity, is one that has been effectively sidelined during past prosperity but is one that we, as church and culture, desperately need to hear as we face what is predicted to be a temporary period of austerity.

If we were to genuinely hear and respond to their cry for the abandonment of over consumption and the adoption on an ongoing basis of a simpler lifestyle then not only could we learn not to repeat the issues raised by our over consumption but we would be also be returning to the plain meaning of Jesus’ statement that we should use our wealth for the benefit of others.

Remember that this statement that, in the light of his coming kingdom, we should sell our belongings and give to the poor comes hot on the heels of Jesus’ story about the rich man who piled up his riches for himself without reckoning on the crisis of his imminent demise. Taylor and Norton, from different perspectives, are both arguing that, just like Jesus’ disciples, we too face a coming crisis which necessitates the adoption of a simpler lifestyle.

If we hear these prophetic cries, if we learn lessons from the over consumption of our Western prosperity, if we take on board the plain meaning of Jesus’ words then, with John V. Taylor, we will say that “enough is enough!” and will seek to turn a temporary period of austerity into a permanently simpler lifestyle; living simply that others may simply live.

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Bruce Cockburn - Justice.

Artists & spirituality

Yesterday I spent a profitable half-hour at the Marcus Campbell art bookshop where I found catalogues about Michael Cullimore, Bella Brisel P. J. Crook, Lynn Dennison, and Folake Shoga, all artists with an interest in spirituality.

Clive Adams was one of those who hosted the exhibition 'I am awake in the universe', of which I purchased the catalogue yesterday. He writes that, "Michael Cullimore is belatedly becoming recognised as one of our most significant contemporary artists; a man of passion and intellect in the tradition of such visionaries as William Blake and David Jones." John Russell Taylor, writing in The Saturday Times, has noted that 'Cullimore has always had an odd and individual way of looking at things; he is a homegrown Symbolist, excited by the way that signs and portents and unexpected allusions seem to be half hidden in every shape of hill and valley, and finds magic and mystery in the most commonplace objects.....'

Born in Jerusalem, Bella Brisel studied art in Tel Aviv and Paris. She participated in various salons, biennales and group shows in France and other countries and had one-woman exhibitions in Paris, London, New York, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Osaka, Lausanne, and Lille. She is known for her her mystical human figures of mothers and children, intertwined and interconnected.

In Reclaiming the Madonna P.J. Crook writes that many of her paintings have a religious subtext giving the example of 'The Apprentice' where she is looking at "both craftsmen who have worked for me and Christ as creator." Lynn Dennison writes that: "I use religious imagery to celebrate and explain my life. In my larger paintings I often use a large central image, usually of myself, surrounded by tokens of my family and friends, in the style of a religious icon." Folake Shoga writes that as "a sometime convert to Catholicism", she is "more familiar with the imagery of it than the dogma." She writes about the poetry of the Ave Maria being "informed by an appreciation of the physical power of female reproductive capacity ..."

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Carleen Anderson - Mama Said.

With Jesus asleep in the boat

With Jesus in the boat,
we can smile at the storm,
smile at the storm,
smile at the storm.
With Jesus in the boat,
we can smile at the storm
as we go sailing home.

Do you remember that old children’s chorus? It’s based on the idea that Jesus stills our storms enabling us to sail serenely through life until we weigh anchor in heaven. But to read Luke 8. 22-25 in that way you have to ignore everything else that happens in the story in order to focus only on Jesus’ stilling of the storm which the song then makes normative for our Christian lives.

In other words, it ignores Jesus sleeping through the storm, the disciples' panic in the storm, and Jesus’ rebuke of them for their lack of faith. It would be a very different song if it took on board the rest of the story, maybe something along these lines:

With Jesus asleep in the boat,
we can panic in the storm,
panic in the storm,
panic in the storm.
With Jesus asleep in the boat,
we can panic in the storm
as we go swiftly under.

We don’t like the idea that God might be sleeping on the job while we are going through crises, so we naturally concentrate on the moment when Jesus saves the day and make that part of the story the part that we teach and remember. But to be true to scripture, we can’t simply pick and choose the bits that we like and ignore the rest. Instead we need to deal with all that is involved in a story like this and, when we do, then a very different point emerges.

Why is Jesus asleep during the storm? Presumably, he is able to sleep because he trusts his disciples to get him safely to the other side of Lake Galilee, even in the midst of a storm. After all, many of them are fishermen, experienced sailors, while he is, as a carpenter, a landlubber. The disciples know boats and they know the lake, it makes sense that he would trust them to sail safely from one side of the lake to the other. He trusts them enough that he can catch up on some sleep while they get on with doing what they are actually very good at doing. The disciples have skills and knowledge of sailing and Jesus expects them to use these and trusts that they will use them well.

The problem comes, of course, when they don’t use their skills and knowledge well. The strength of the storm is such that they panic and don’t take actions (like taking down the sail, bailing out the water, and steering against the storm rather than with it) which would have enabled them to ride out the storm and get to the other side of the lake. They made the situation worse by panicking and it was their panic which could have got them killed.

This, I think, is why they are rebuked by Jesus for lack of faith. Essentially, he was saying, “If you had trusted in God to see you through the storm, you would have done the sensible things that would have enabled you to survive. But, because you didn’t trust in God to see you through, you panicked, didn’t take sensible actions, nearly got us all drowned, and needed me to intervene to save you.”

God does not, and cannot, simply intervene to save us from crises and storms. If he did, he would take away our free will and we would be automatons rather than humans. John Shepherd, Dean of Perth, writing in yesterday’s Times put it like this:

“Why doesn’t God miraculously intervene, and take things over? Dictate how everything should go, and what we do, and how we live our lives?

But then, of course, we would have a world of fixed laws. Our lives would be totally regulated and controlled. We couldn’t decide anything for ourselves. We would not be allowed any choices, or any freedom of action.

So our lives would become non-lives ...

Knowing everything will be all right because God will make it so is no longer to have life.”

But, if God isn’t there to save us in any and every circumstance, what is the value and point of faith? Again, John Shepherd is very helpful in a way that links up with what we are discovering about this story:

“We all need someone to believe in. And we all need someone who’ll believe in us. Think of the number of times we’ve told someone we have faith in them — that we know they can do it, that they’ll achieve their goal, pass that exam, get that job, survive that relationship, recover from that bereavement. We tell people we have faith in them all the time. “You can do it,” we say.

“I believe in you.”

And it happens to us as well. Think of the people who have told us they believe in us. They gave us confidence. They told us they had faith in us, and they believed we could do it.

We know how important faith is, because we’ve known what it’s like for people to have faith in us. And we all have this faith, consciously or unconsciously. We’ve all given it, and we’ve all received it. We know what it is and how it works. Having faith in others, and others having faith in us, isn’t a sign of weakness or mental deficiency. It’s reasonable and logical.”

What we find through this story is that God has faith in us. Jesus trusts himself to his disciples by sleeping while they sail and expects them to act responsibly during the storm in order to keep them all safe and to survive. What annoys him is when they don’t do this, when they don’t trust in the skills and knowledge with which God has gifted them. He wants them to see that the skills and knowledge with which God has gifted them are enough for them to come through the storms of life. He has faith in them but at this point they don’t have faith in all that God has given to them. Later, after the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension and Day of Pentecost, they do develop such faith and go on to do great things for God.

“This is faith,” John Shepherd writes, “trusting in God without specifying what will happen. God has let the darkness be, so we may have life. But as well, God has given us Jesus, so we may have faith that the darkness will not destroy us.” God will not, and cannot, continually intervene because then life would be fixed instead of being free. So we are not to depend on God to save every time we encounter difficulty but instead to trust that he is with us in the storms of life and that he has given us what we need to come through.

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The Call - I Still Believe.

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.

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The Waterboys - Old England.

Faith-shaped art or Art-shaped faith?

The Times has had an interesting Holy Week series on Christianity and the Arts. Rachel Campbell-Johnston wrote about contemporary art and Christianity noting that:

"the irreverent subversion of religion ... [by] our home-grown Brit-pack ... does not mean that religion and art are growing apart. Rather, it could almost be taken as a mark of respect. The principle that these subversive artists work upon is simple: the bigger the tree that you fell the more striking will be the crash when it falls."

The edition on Music and Easter featured an interview with James MacMillan. Crucifixion and Resurrection are MacMillan said, “the most important days in human history": “The Passion is about why God wanted to interrupt human history and let Himself be known through His Son ... As a believing artist you revisit the implications of those days constantly." As a result, his music is “very much shaped” by his world view and Catholic faith.

In looking for these links I also came across Indian Artist Paul B:

"Self-taught, for Paul B, painting has always been instinctual, an intuitive manifestation of his essence, efficaciously mirroring his soul, breathing life into the wondrous reflections of his unfettered spirit. Paul B has an insatiable zest for new experiences and hence his inspiration is manifold, drawing from an eclectic palette that transcends cultures and beliefs, the traditional and the contemporary - notably nature, classical Indian & Russian icons and Christian art."

Born to a family with a long line of Protestant priests and educated in the very Catholic Don Bosco school, Mumbai, Paul’s influences are deeply religious but, despite this, the emergence of Christian icongraphy in his art was initially a surprise:

“For me, given my background and education, I didn’t realise how much I was bombarded with Christian iconography until it began to emerge in my art. But it was after a lot of soul searching, questioning norms – why was it a priest had the power to tell a congregation what to do and not to do for instance – that I’ve found a spirituality that works for me – it’s called humanity.”

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Aretha Franklin- Walk In The Light.

The Black Rain (5)

The Cialdini effect takes its name from Robert Cialdini, a American psychology professor who wrote a groundbreaking book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. A Dutch study has recently shown that the Cialdini effect is only the start of our troubles, claims an article in The Times:

"People can actually be steered into criminal behaviour, such as stealing, simply by tinkering with their environment. In fact, the scientists claim, if you know what psychological buttons to press, you can make antisocial behaviour spread like a contagious disease."

Cialdini's argument that "people do what they see others doing, even when they know they shouldn't" would seem to support Tom Davies' assertion that people seeing anti-social activities through the media can then become involved in copy-cat activities. The Times article includes an example of just this phenomenon:

"The looting of the MSC Napoli off the coast of Devon two years ago is a perfect example. Media coverage showing people walking off with items washed ashore emboldened others to try their luck, culminating in “looting mayhem”, in the words of an inquiry into the incident published this week."

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Jeff Buckley - Everybody Here Wants You.

Peak ecological water

The Times had an article earlier in the week suggesting that world is in danger of running out of 'sustainably managed water'. 'Peak ecological water' is the point where, like the concept of 'peak oil', the world has to confront a natural limit on something once considered virtually infinite.

The article notes that there are concerns that water will increasingly be the cause of violence and even war:

"Dan Smith, the Secretary-General of the British-based peacebuilding organisation International Alert, said: “Water is a basic condition for life. Its availability and quality is fundamental for all societies, especially in relation to agriculture and health. There are places — West Africa today, the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system in Nepal, Bangladesh and India, and Peru within ten years — where major changes in the rivers generate a significant risk of violent conflict. Good water management is part of peacebuilding.”

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Violent Femmes - No Killing.

Poetry treated in a religious spirit

There is an excellent article by Michael Symmons Roberts in today's Times on the poetry of John Berryman.

The article concludes:

"T. S. Eliot warned against a religious poetry that “leaves out what men and women consider their major passions, and thereby confesses to an ignorance of them”, but argued instead for “the whole subject of poetry” to be treated in “a religious spirit”.

For Berryman, the “whole subject” included radioactivity, chicken paprika, mistresses, Lana Turner, Kleenex and the pearly gates. Is it possible to write religious poetry that communicates widely in an increasingly secular language? Berryman’s Dream Songs say yes."

I concur wholeheartedly!

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James Macmillan - Veni Veni Emmanuel: II. Heartbeats.

The Black Rain (1)

Over Christmas I have read two books by Tom Davies; his biography Testament and his most recent novel The Tyranny of Ghosts. Not having read any of his work for some years it was fascinating to revisit the uncomfortable issues about faith and popular culture that his writings raise. The following is a synopsis of his career that I wrote several years ago:

Tom Davies is a seer. As a travel writer and semi-professional pilgrim, his descriptions both evoke and enliven the ordinary sights and people that he passes by, pausing just long enough to perceive significance. As a prophetic visionary, he uncovers the apocalyptic battle-drop against which ordinary life is played out. His best works involve journeys in which observation mingles with vision and where he runs the gamut of emotions from despair through boredom to wonder.

Trained as a journalist with the Western Mail, he later wrote for the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and Observer before biting the hand that had fed him by castigating the media in the books (travel, theology and novels) that he wrote subsequent to his conversion. His career came full circle with a column in the Western Mail under a pseudonym and published as The Visions of Caradoc.

His work is a tracking of the bloody footprints of Romanticism through literary, social and media history. Davies defines the Romantic Mind as emphasising the imagination and emotion over and above reason and intellect. It cultivates sensation and emotion for their own sake and has a persistent attraction to the morbid, the supernatural, the cruel, the perverted and the violent. He believes that: this Mind is predominant in Western media and culture; has been the gasoline in the bottle igniting a blazing orgy of violence that is speading uncontrolled through the world; is to be identified with the Biblical Man of Lawlessness, a tide of evil which engulfs the world as a necessary precondition to the return of Christ. In a Caradoc article he sees the television dramatist, Dennis Potter, as characterising this Romantic Mind.

By contrast, as Caradoc, he argues that the Christian artist should "generally seek to affirm that which is pure, good and lovely. He would always be seeking to mediate the beauty of the ordinary world to us; he would be looking for new insights into reality and, in this way, celebrate the fantastic wonder of creation.

The Christian artist would never bother with a pervert, preferring to study a normal man at work or play; he would never gaze at a scene of horror when he could find as it floats, like a falling leaf, through the real world. The art of the Christian is the most difficult art of them all."

This sermon is delivered to Idris the Pointless, a Van Gogh in safety pins, who promptly informs Caradoc that his latest project is paint "portraits of the homes of all the convicted murderers in the Valleys". Davies' self-deprecating humour and confessions of personal weakness leaven the fire and brimstone of his prophetic vision and allow us both to absorb his warnings and follow his evocations of wonder. He has said of the Biblical prophets that "With their wild veerings and ravaged visions they all had a questionable sanity". He would count it a compliment if we admitted him to that same company.

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Sam Phillips - Baby I Can't Please You.

Artistic nuns

Today's Sunday Times has an interesting interview with Dame Joanna Jamieson, a 73 year-old abbess who has just spent a year at an East End art school.

Dame Joanna's call to the monastic life followed a meeting with Dame Werburg Welch at Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire, where she was herself to become a religious.

Dame Werburg entered Stanbrook in 1915. Expecting to give up art altogether, she found herself instead being encouraged to extend her scope to vestment designs and wood-engravings for the Press. Desmond Chute and Eric Gill gave her postal tuition. As a result she adopted Gill's angular style, which was a life-long influence on her own work.

After her paintings, vestment designs and wood-carvings received favourable reviews at exhibitions of the Guild of Catholic Artists and Craftsmen in the 1930s and 1940s, commissions came in from churches and private individuals all over the country. Illustrations appeared in contemporary Catholic magazines such as Art Notes and L'Artisan Liturgique.

Stations of the Cross painted by Dame Werburg include a set painted on wood for the Church of Christ the King, Bromborough, Cheshire (c.1950); those painted for the Catholic Chaplaincy at Birmingham University c.1961; and c.1956 the set for St. Edmunds, Isle of Dogs. The Isle of Dogs paintings, along with the church building, suffered severe deterioration from damp but were restored for the new church in 1998. The Stations of the Cross carved in wood by Dom Vincent Duprè of Farnborough Abbey for the Anglican church of All Saints, Weston-super-Mare, were designed by Dame Werburg, as were the Douai Abbey Stations carved in stone by Dom Aloysius Bloor. Other major works include several large hanging crucifixes and the carved oak crucifix commissioned c. 1982 for the Czech chaplaincy in London.

Examples of Dame Werburg's work can be seen by clicking here.

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Karl Jenkins - Benedictus.

Chapel of Light

Ruth Gledhill has an interesting piece, in today's Knowledge section of the Saturday Times, on Sir Anthony Caro and the the war-damaged Roman Catholic church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Bourbourg.

In the article, Caro, who is an atheist says, “I am not against the Christians. But I am against [Richard] Dawkins. I am against people who think everything is explicable in material terms.”

He goes on to say, “We are living in an extremely materialistic world. I think it is very important to help the spiritual side of our lives. So for this reason it is good to have a place where one can go and allow that side of one’s life to flourish. I hope people of all religions will use it to allow themselves to think and be tranquil and find that side of themselves.”

The Chapel is saying, "the world is good. The world is great. Aren’t we lucky to be in it?” A video of scenes from the Chapel can be found on Ruth Gledhill's blog.

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Noah and the Whale - Shape Of My Heart.

Ethics in a global economy

Here are some of the comments that have been received following Wednesday's seminar on Ethics in a global economy:

• "Thank you for a really well organised and interesting event with good speakers and discussion."
• "I certainly received the impression the seminar was greatly appreciated by everyone present and am convinced we will be able to build on it as we begin to plan our next seminar together."
• "Just wanted to say thank you for yesterday's event. I felt it was a valuable first conversation and the speakers created an interesting range of perspectives. I hope we can do some kind of follow up to this. It would be good to start the ball rolling and help get a multi-faith response to this more widely heard."
• "I was very impressed with the contribution from the rest of the group. This country has given many good things to the rest of the world like (as Ed remarked) the Banking system. Yet people in this country do not recognise the even greater concept they posses - dignifying humanity - this concept too needs to be globalised. What we may do in a small group can become the catalyst to do this."
• "I hope you were encouraged by today - I thought it went very well and had an interesting mix of people and contributers. I particularly valued the exercise we particpated in on the 16 core values. I can talk for the UK in the Olympics but always gain massively from those sort of participative exercises."

One of the participants, Zaki Cooper, had a very useful article on Faith and business: a new deal for the modern workplace published recently in The Times while Alison Murdoch, one of the contributors to the seminar, has highlighted an interesting initiative from The Templeton Foundation. "Does the free market corrode moral character?" is the Big Question posed in the latest of the Templeton Foundation's advertorials, which has been running this autumn in newspapers and magazines in the United States and the UK . The advertorials bring together different combinations of the thirteen distinguished commentators and public figures who have written essays responding to the question. The essays are available in their entirety at www.templeton.org/market, where the full texts can be read, printed as PDFs, or requested in a free printed booklet.

I'll post more on the event and its outcomes shortly.

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Sam Phillips - Can't Come Down.

An Alice in Wonderland market system

I have a new Gospel Reflection on the MiLE website for Sunday's Gospel Reading. This reflection links up with the comments made by the Archbishop of York when addressing the annual dinner of the Institute of Worshipful Company of International Bankers at Drapers Hall in the City of London.

Dr Sentamu declared: "To a bystander like me, those who made £190million deliberately underselling the shares of HBOS, in spite of its very strong capital base, and drove it into the bosom of Lloyds TSB Bank, are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers."

He continued: "We find ourselves in a market system which seems to have taken its rules of trade from Alice in Wonderland, where the share value of a bank is no longer dependent on the strength of its performance but rather on the willingness of the Government to bail it out, or rather on whether the Government has announced its intentions so to do."

The Archbishop also spoke of the contrast between the bail outs being proposed for banks and the lack of funding for the Millennium Development Goals and drew attention to the plight of those outside the financial industry who would benefit from Government assistance at a time of need.

This contrasts with a fascinating comment piece by Matthew Parris in The Times where he argues that "Christian socialism has ambushed [socialism], subverting its original message and wrecking it as a viable philosophy of government in a market-driven age":

"Marx is about power. Christianity is about charity. Marx is about the authority of the collective. Christian liberalism is about the individual conscience. Marx is about justice. Christian humanitarianism is about mercy. The common causes in which Christians, liberals and socialists have tried to reconcile their differences - personal freedom, the redistribution of wealth and the beneficent State - have in Christian hands proved ruinous to the socialist idea: softening its head, picking its pocket, throwing good money after bad, nursing the weak and neglecting the winners, hearkening to disability and turning away from ability, and leaching its energies into a welter of simpering charitable causes. For most of the second half of the 20th century, Western socialism has hovered around the bedside of the victim, the loser and the marginalised. To win, it should have been outdoors, exhorting the strong."

Parris' comment is fascinating because he clearly understands the 'bias to the poor' within Christianity at the same time that he rejects it. As my Gospel Reflection seeks to set out, I stand with the Archbishop of York.

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The Clash - Working For The Clampdown.

From the papers

Angus Ritchie, Director of the Contextual Theology Centre, has an interesting comment column in this week's Church Times. Titled 'Social capital can be built by the people,' Angus describes the cross-party support secured by London CITIZENS for a striking array of policies.

Also in the Church Times, Margaret Sentamu describes the input to the spouses conference at Lambeth from Mugisa Isingoma, who visited St John's shortly before the conference and who shared her story with our Mothers' Union.

The Times published a letter today from 19 bishops supporting Rowan Williams following the publication just after the Lambeth Conference of correspondence from eight years ago by Williams on the issue of homosexuality. Their letter states that one can only wonder at the motives of those behind the releasing, and highlighting, of these letters at this precise moment – and at the way in which some churchmen are seeking to make capital of them as though they were ‘news’. One example of attempts to make capital of them can be viewed here while for a much more balanced view click here.

Finally, in responding to the comment by Libby Purves, which I highlighted in Thursday's post, Richard Dawkins, in his letter to the Times, once again reveals his complete inability to recognise the extent to which many Christians are able to engage creatively and constructively with both science and belief.

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Woody Guthrie - Jesus Christ.

The naive Professor

Libby Purves has an interesting column in the Times today on the naivity of Richard Dawkins following the first episode of his Channel 4 series, The Genius of Charles Darwin. Her argument is well summed up in her punchy conclusion: "A subtle and well-evolved species like us can accept both ammonites and Alleluias. Live with it, Prof."

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Bruce Cockburn - Creation Dream.