Renegotiating 'value'

I have recently started a new blog called Renegotiating 'value' which has been set up as a discussion space for a seminar series exploring the benefit and challenge of faith traditions in leading sustainable businesses.

The series has three seminars:

• Profit vs Prophet exploring whether making money or making a difference are opposed. Speakers: Jay Lakhani (Hindu Council UK), Abigail Morris (ResponseAbility), Mannie Sher (Tavistock Institute). Thursday 7th October, 4.00 – 6.30pm, St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation & Peace, 78 Bishopsgate, London EC2N 4AG;
• Bonus vs Pro Bono exploring the place of inspirational leadership in renegotiating 'value'. Speakers: Peter Hyson (Change Perspectives), Bruce Irvine (Grubb Institute), Baronness Uddin. Thursday 4th November, 4.00 – 6.30pm, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ; and
• Stakeholder vs shareholder value exploring who it is that businesses are/should be accountable to and the difference this makes to their structure and operation. Speakers: tbc. Date: tbc. Venue: tbc.

Cost: £5.00 per seminar. For seminar 1 registration is online here or by phoning 020 7496 1610. For seminars 2 & 3 phone 020 8599 2170 or email jonathan.evens@btinternet.com. Further publicity will be added once the details of seminar 3 are finalised.

Renegotiating ‘value’: a seminar series organised by Faiths in London’s Economy (FiLE) in association with: Ethos HumanCapital; Faith Regen Foundation; The Grubb Institute; Mission in London’s Economy; St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation & Peace.

FiLE works with faith communities in order to create coordinated faith-community responses to the issues facing London's economy.
 
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Zbigniew Preisner - Road.

Windows on the world (116)

Wembley, 2010

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Moby - Go.

Division & crisis

“The great composer Ludwig Van Beethoven use sometimes to play a trick on polite salon audiences, especially when he guessed that they weren’t really interested in serious music. He would perform a piece on the piano, one of his own slow movements perhaps, which would be so gentle and beautiful that everyone would be lulled into thinking the world was a soft, cosy place, where they could think beautiful thoughts and relax into semi-slumber. Then, just as the final notes were dying away, Beethoven would bring his whole forearm down with a crash across the keyboard, and laugh at the shock he gave to the assembled company.” (LUKE for everyone, Tom Wright)

In reflecting on this story, Tom Wright suggests that:

“there may come a time when Christian teachers and preachers find, like Beethoven with his salon audiences, that people have become too cosy and comfortable. Sometimes, for instance, the selections of Bible readings for church services omit all the passages that speak of judgement, of warnings, of the stern demands of God’s holiness. Maybe there are times when, like Jesus himself on this occasion, we need to wake people up with a crash. There are, after all, plenty of warnings in the Bible about the dangers of going to sleep on the job.”

What Jesus says Luke 12. 49-59 about coming to bring division instead of peace seems a lot like Beethoven’s crash across the keyboard which is designed to wake everyone up. It certainly seems like that for us. After all, Jesus is the Prince of Peace isn’t he? The one who brought peace between humanity and God, and also between Jew and Gentile, through his death on the cross? That’s what the Bible tells us about him isn’t it? That’s how we think about Jesus! Yet here he is saying, “Prince of Peace, eh? No. Prince of Division, more likely!”

Sometimes, we need the piano crash to wake us up to reality and Jesus is never less than real! Here he confronts us with the reality that once the good news about him gets into households there’ll be no peace and families will split up over it.

We have our own example of this reality at St John's Seven Kings at the moment. A parishioner was baptised here in March as a sign of his earlier conversion from Islam. He has experienced persecution from friends and acquaintances as a result and received threats of harm from his family if he were to return to Pakistan. Despite this, he has spent the months between his baptism and last week when he was able to return to St Johns, in Immigration Detention Centres because the UK Border Agency has refused his asylum claim and want him sent back to Pakistan. He is only here because the High Court have agreed to a Judicial Review of the decision made by the UK Border Agency.

So, as we reflect on the reality and pressures of division that can result from hearing and responding to the good news of Jesus Christ, let us pray for success for this person in that High Court Judicial Review which is still to come and for a greater acknowledgement by our Government of the reality of persecution for those who choose to convert from Islam to Christianity and of those who live as Christians in countries where persecution from those of other faiths or none because of their beliefs is commonplace.

Jesus was real about the reality of division and wants us to be too; to anticipate it, to acknowledge it, to face it, to deal with it. It is after all, what the prophets foretold as:

“The warnings he gives about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and so on includes a quotation from Micah 7.6, a passage in which the prophet warns of imminent crisis and urges that the only way forward is complete trust in God.”

Jesus sees a crisis coming for those to whom he speaks; a crisis of which his own fate will be the central feature. He will be rejected and killed but will rise from death before ascending to his Father and sending his Holy Spirit on all who follow him. His validity as the Son of God will then be clearly confirmed when his prophecy about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem comes true in AD 70.

Jesus knows that all this is about to come and “is astonished and dismayed that so few of his contemporaries can see it at all”:

“why can’t they look at what’s going on all around them, from the Roman occupation to the oppressive regime of Herod, from the wealthy and arrogant high priests in Jerusalem to the false agendas of the Pharisees – and, in the middle of it all, a young prophet announcing God’s kingdom and healing the sick? Why can’t they put two and two together, and realize that this is the moment all Israel’s history has been waiting for? Why can’t they see that the crisis is coming?

If they could, they would be well advised to take action while there was still time.”

“Israel, rebelling against God’s plan that she should be the light of the world, and thus eager for violent uprising against Rome,” was liable at any moment to face the complete ruin that finally arrived in AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem.

“The church has from early on read this chapter as a warning that each generation must read the signs of the times, the great movements of people, governments, nations and policies, and react accordingly.” And, if we find ourselves caught up in crisis, so be it. What else should we expect?

Except that we don’t currently expect it because the church in the West, like the rest of our consumerist culture has become cosy and comfortable and in need of waking up to harsh reality. What are the signs of our times? Here are a few from the national press over the past two weeks:

• former Bank of England rate-setter, William Butler, now chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, saying that, “We lived beyond our means year after year, and the nation collectively has to consume less.”

• the number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan exceeds 13 million — more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the United Nations said Monday. The suffering of people in Pakistan comes alongside the landslides in China also caused by heavy rains which seem part of a worldwide pattern of climate change affecting the poorest nations hardest of all.

• Reflecting on the rise of superbugs which are resistant to antibiotics, Thursday’s Guardian found parallels between our need to conserve the antibiotics we have and our need to conserve the oil we have, because supplies have peaked, and to reduce its pollutant effects.

Overconsumption in the West, the long-term effect of pollutants on our climate, the peaking of energy supplies, the rise of viruses resistant to medication are combining to create a point of crisis which is directed particularly at those, such as the 13 million in Pakistan, who are the poorest and most vulnerable in our world.

If we are to read the signs of our times accurately, then we need firstly to respond with generosity to funding appeals for relief in Pakistan, China, the Niger and wherever natural disasters occur in future. But we also need to review the underlying causes and the need for a radical simplifying of our Western way of life and seeing that “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 Transition Handbook)

Last year at St John's Seven Kings thought about division and crisis through our Dealing with disagreement Bible Studies which introduced us to the idea of peak oil. In September, we have the opportunity to consider these issues further through a trip to Mersea Island where we will hear from Sam Norton, the Rector of Mersea Island, who has regularly blogged about the coming impact of peak oil. I urge us all to think seriously about the underlying causes of our contemporary crisis, praying for those in Pakistan, China and the Niger currently caught up in the effects of that crisis and for those dealing with the reality of division as a consequence of their faith.

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The Clash - London Calling.

Modern Religious Art

I've been corresponding recently with Christopher Clack who started the Modern Religious Art website just over a year ago. The site has had over 22,000 visitors over that time so has rightly attracted a good deal of notice.

Christopher writes that the motivation for the site was driven by his own work and interest in 'religious art' and because he believes "religious consciousness is nothing other then the indication of the new creative attitude of man towards the world" (to quote Tolstoy). He writes:

"I think that any new religious consciousness will be expressed through the arts, the problem being we may not yet know what it will be like or look like, it may not even at the moment be recognized as religion or religious, so I wanted to show examples of work that might (or might not) be part of this development. if that makes sense."

By religion he means matters of ultimate concern: "Religion means being ultimately concerned, asking the question of "to be or not to be" with respect to the meaning of one’s existence, and having symbols in which this question is answered. This is the largest and most basic concept of religion. And the whole development, not only of modern art but also of existentialism in all its realms -- and that means of the culture of the twentieth century -- is only possible if we understand that this is fundamentally what religion means: being ultimately concerned about one’s own being, about one’s self and one’s world, about its meaning and its estrangement and its finitude." Paul Tillich, Existentialist Aspects of Modern Art 

"Religion, like Art," he suggests, "is not about propounding doctrines, it’s not about what’s lawful or unlawful but about playfulness and creativity. Making art reconciles conflicting forces within us. The 'Religious' is found in the least expected places."
 
As such Modern Religious Art displays and encourages and the work of contemporary artists who are in some way motivated by or engaged with the religious. The site is not prescriptive of any particular belief system, it may contain contributions from artists who follow a particular faith but also artists of no faith or creed, and there will be those who consider themselves atheists, religious humanists, humanists, or agnostic. As the site is fairly new, Christopher has been searching out artists himself but he hopes more artists will start to find the site and he will start to find artists for the site that way.
 
Currently there are 11 artists featured on the site, including Christopher himself, and their work includes digital art, film, installation, painting, photography and sculpture. I particularly appreciated Tony O'Connell's photographs of everyday people as saints and Kate Pickering's performance and text based works which make "use of the language of religion to both examine and undo art world norms and assumptions."    

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Arcade Fire - Ready To Start. 

New Church Art Trail (5)

 'Nativity' window by Louis B. Davis

 'Christ & St John' window

'St Agnes & St Joan of Arc' window

Whitefriars mark on the right of the 'St Joan of Arc' window

Thanks to researcher Roy Albutt, we have been able to attribute the stained glass windows at St John’s Seven Kings in what was originally the baptistry and is now the Sanctuary. The clue was the Whitefriars mark on two of the windows which led Roy Albutt to the Whitefriars lists of stained glass, compiled by Dr Dennis Hadley, to be found on the NADFAS website, which contains the following information:

'Essex
Seven Kings St John
1908 2l (lights) L Davis
1931 2l Baptistry incl John Coakes, Hogan
1938 2l Baptistry incl Joan of Arc JH, JHH, Board E'

Roy Albutt writes that:

“The 1908 window, which I take to refer to the Nativity window, was designed by L. Davis. Louis B. Davis worked for Powell's from 1898 to 1909. He was an important Arts and Crafts stained glass artist. His windows at Dunblane Cathedral, Stirling are stunning, some of the most impressive stained glass I have seen. Davis trained with Christopher Whall, THE Arts and Crafts maker and teacher from c. 1893 until he moved to Powell's.”

Louis B.Davis was born and grew up in Abingdon. During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries he became known as a talented watercolourist, a playwright, book illustrator and above all a distinguished glass artist, continuing his work in the tradition of the Arts and Crafts movement. When referring to the splendidly translucent, glowing colours Davis loved so much, as evidenced in his windows at Cheltenham College chapel, Nikolaus Pevsner identified him as the last of the Pre-Raphaelites.

The obituary of Davis in the Abingdon Parish Magazine noted that ‘His colour and design satisfy the sense of beauty, and the actual craftsmanship will always be a wonder to those who understand the art of glass-making.’ The Times obituary commented: ‘Mr Davis may be said to have inherited the side of the pre-Raphaelite movement which was concerned with medieval glamour and Celtic twilight rather than with the method of fidelity to nature... Davis was so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his school that he used all its devices and mannerisms with an easy, natural skill, and the sentiment of his pictures never seemed forced or affected...’

Among Davis’ most important work, in a distinctive Arts and Crafts style, was his scheme for glazing the choir windows at Dunblane Abbey (1913); several windows in the chapel of the Order of the Thistle at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh; glasswork at Colmonell Church in Ayrshire; Paisley Abbey; Wemyss Castle; St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin and Welbeck Abbey. He also decorated the private chapels of the Marquess of Londonderry at Wynyard Park, County Durham and the Duchess of Bedford at Woburn Abbey. In southern England examples of Davis's work can be found at Littlemore Church, Oxford (1900); Abingdon School Chapel (1924, inserted 1952); Barton Hartshorn Church near Bicester; Foxley Church, Wiltshire (1901); Stoke Poges Church, Buckinghamshire (1899); St Silas's Church, Kentish Town, London (1900) and at Pinner (1900) and Hatch End Churches (1903–1932) in Middlesex. At All Saints' church, Longstanton, Cambridgeshire a depiction of Faith, Hope and Charity (1938) re-uses the figure of Hope from St Silas's Church.

After 1917-18 Thomas Cowell (1870-1949) played a significant part in re-working or adapting earlier designs by Davis. Cowell was for many years the principal glass-painter for James Powell & Sons who translated Davis’s designs and cartoons into stained glass.

The Christ and St John windows were A.F. Coakes and James Hogan, while Hogan was also involved in designing the St Agnes and St Joan of Arc windows, together with E. Board. All were also Whitefriars designers.

The most enduring and successful glasshouse in Britain, the Whitefriars Company made stained glass, table and ornamental glass, and scientific glass. It had a reputation for innovative design and retained an identity distinct from that of other British glass making centres. There are Whitefriars windows reflecting the glory of God in cathedrals and churches all over the world - from St. Paul's Cathedral, London, to St. Thomas's, New York; from Wellington Cathedral, New Zealand, to the great twentieth-century Anglican Cathedral of Liverpool, and village churches throughout the shires of England.

In 1720, a glasshouse was established on part of the site of the former medieval 'White Friars' monastery, situated south of Fleet Street. The factory really came into its own when James Powell a London wine merchant and entrepreneur, purchased the factory in 1834, the idea was to give his three sons a viable occupation. The Powell’s were related to Baden Powell, the Scout Movement founder.

The Powell’s were initially ignorant of the art of glass making, but by necessity soon acquired the skills needed and adapted and improved upon the new technologies of the industrial revolution. A Victorian barrister and archaeologist, Charles Winston, the authority for cathedral and church window restoration, had investigated the properties of medieval stained-glass, analysing the colouring agents used in the Middle Ages. He persuaded Powell to produce such glasses. By 1854 they were experimenting with the chemical mixes to achieve mediaeval coloured glass [quarries] for Winston. This innovation set them up as leaders in the field when hundreds of new Victorian churches were being built across the country and indeed the world.

Through Winston’s recommendation Powell was supplying Edward Burne-Jones with stained glass muff with the right mix of air bubbles and brilliant natural colours to match mediaeval glass. Soon Powell was commissioning cartoons from Edward Burne-Jones, Henry Holiday, Anning Bell, Edward Poynter, Ford Maddox Brown and George Cattermole. During the later portion of the 19th century the Powell’s became closely associated with leading architects and designers notably T G Jackson, Edward Burne Jones, William De Morgan and James Doyle. Not to mention Philip Webb who designed glass for William Morris that was manufactured by Whitefriars. By the late 1850’s the firm’s attention began to include designs and production of domestic table glass after manufacturing glass for William Morris's revolutionary Red House.

James Crofts Powell, his cousin, ran the stained glass department from 1876 using in-house designers and famous artists like Burne-Jones for important commissions. Under Crofts Powell the stained glass department did traditional work but also developed mosaic techniques to the Byzantine standards of Ravenna. His opus sectile mosaics were tilted to deflect the light and gained sufficient credit to be used by William Blake Richmond in his work at St Paul’s Cathedral.

The 'Whitefriars' trade name was added only in 1919, four years before the firm relocated from the City to a new site at Wealdstone, Harrow. In 1973 the Whitefriars Company closed its stained glass studio, and came under increasing financial pressure. When the company closed in 1980, the Museum of London acquired its archive of business papers, photographs, designs and pictures; some manufacturing tools and equipment; the contents of the glassworks' museum; and examples of the factory's final products.

This information will now be added to that included in our local Church Art Trail and will be of particular interest because our neighbouring parish of St Paul's Goodmayes also have several Whitefriars windows.

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Keith Green - Stained Glass.

Strangest Genius

Through the Imaging the Bible in Wales website I found a new website about Harry Clarke (1889 to 1931) who is reckoned to be Ireland’s greatest stained glass artist. During his short life Clarke created stained glass windows for churches, private dwellings and commercial venues throughout Ireland and England, and as far a field as the USA and Australia. In total 160 windows, and a small number of panels, were created by Clarke. Also an illustrator of books for Harrap and Co. in London, Clarke illustrated five books that show his undoubted genius in the area of graphic art.

I first came across his work in The Crucifixion in Irish Art. Now though a monograph, Strangest Genius, has been published which is unique in that it contains the entire stained glass collection of Clarke, including those windows now in art galleries. This collection has never before been photographed or published in its entirety. This publication will give those who are unfamiliar with the brilliance and originality of Clarke’s marvellous stained glass windows the opportunity to view images of his greatest creations, and perhaps in time to travel to see these wonders for themselves.

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Bap Kennedy - Howl On.

Imaging the Bible in Wales

Martin Crampin contacted me recently to tell me about some research that has been going on in Wales.

From 2005-8 he worked as Artist, Designer and Researcher on the Imaging the Bible in Wales Project, based in the Theology Department of the University of Wales, Lampeter. The project focussed on artworks in Wales which depicted or were inspired by the biblical narrative from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One outcome of the project was an archive of images which are catalogued and available online at: http://imagingthebible.llgc.org.uk/.

He writes that much of the new research was from places of worship in Wales, but they also did look at fine artists whose work is held in museum collections. One of the things which struck him was the number of twentieth century artists whose religious work has been almost totally overlooked by most commentators (not that there are a vast number of art historians working in Wales). Often these religious themes stemmed from their personal faith, something which again was not well known.

Welsh life and culture has been inextricably bound to the Bible, evident in the vast array of visual expressions of biblical themes found throughout the principality. However, such visual expressions are fast disappearing as churches, chapels and synagogues, often their original and only location, fall into disuse. Therefore this urgent project (focussed on 1825–1975), analysed the social, political and theological questions raised by Welsh biblical visual culture so that its contribution to the intellectual, artistic and cultural heritage of Wales can be recognized and preserved.

Biblical Art in Wales is a lavishly illustrated book with 17 contributors drawn from the world of Biblical Studies, Art History and Social & Cultural History which is another outcome from the project. The book contains analyses of the material discussed at two major project conferences (September 2006 and April 2008) as well as contextual information from a number of additional authoritative commentators.

Throughout Wales, the Bible has been interpreted and illustrated in a surprisingly wide range of media: in paint and sculpture, needlework and ceramic, woodcarving and engraving. The illustrations in the book (some 300 of which are in colour) include examples from several media and demonstrate how the process of ‘visual exegesis’ was an important feature of religious and cultural life in Wales in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The volume is accompanied by a DVD, written and produced by Crampin with the Project Research Fellow Dr John Morgan-Guy, which adds a further interpretative dimension. It contains over 600 images and allows the reader to explore further subjects introduced in the book, arranged and structured as seven key representative themes such as Word and Image, the Bible in the Welsh Landscape, Domestic Piety, and so on.



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The Alarm - New South Wales.