So What?

Lent 33: Ann Morisy

Let me stress very clearly that there is no problem with establishing a project as a response to a perceived need in the community, for example, providing hospitality for recently arrived asylum seekers in a neighbourhood, or in response to a high proportion of frail, elderly people in the parish.  Such an expression of care is to be commended and cherished.  The problem of 'needs meeting' begins to arise when the provision being made goes beyond hospitality, and the complexity of the needs of the 'clients' starts to be recognised.  At this point, the project may automatically assume it has to respond by providing a greater diversity of services and a more professional approach to its work.  The temptation is to drift into a feeling of obligation to pursue the needs of the client group, and the decision to develop additional provision in order to respond more adequately to the needs of clients is hard to challenge.  Only the most hardhearted could speak against such a commitment, and that may be precisely the trap for churches.  The urge to meet the client's needs more thoroughly is beyond rebuke, but it may indicate a failure of the imagination and confidence in the transforming power of God.  (From: Journeying Out: A new approach to Christian Mission , page 27)

I have heard Ann Morisy speak and I have been impressed by her energy and understanding of church related community work.  She was one of the authors of Faithful Cities : A call for celebration, vision and justice - a publication that marked the twentieth anniversary of Faith in the City .

Her concern in Journeying Out is how easily our intentions to work participatively are undermined by our desires to do the right thing.  It seems most of the problems we face are caused by people who sincerely believe they are doing the right thing.  How do we know whether or not we are doing the right thing?

 

Lent 32: Frank Viola

The practices of the first-century church were the natural and spontaneous expressions of the divine life that indwelt the early Christians.  And those practices were solidly grounded in the timeless teachings and principles of the New Testament.  By contrast, a great number of the practices in many contemporary churches are in conflict with those biblical principles and teachings.  When we dig deeper, we are compelled to ask: Where did the practices of the contemporary church come from?  The answer is disturbing: Most of them were borrowed from pagan culture.  Such a statement short-circuits the minds of many Christians when they hear it.  But it is unmovable, historical fact, as this book will demonstrate.  (From: Pagan Christianity?  page xix)

This paragraph illustrates the frustrations I have with this book; its uncritical view of the early church and implied rejection of most of Christian history.  However, its importance should not be underestimated.  Many Christians are questioning the practices of contemporary churches, concluding their origins are in imperial Rome.  Would that this book were called 'Imperial Christianity?'.  It is hard to deny the relationship between Christianity and imperialism has had a long and complex history.  Nevertheless, I would want to respond to Viola's book with a number of detailed questions; I am not convinced it is entirely reliable.  It is worth reading Viola alongside In Search of Paul by John Dominic Crossan .  I am attending the 2010 Hugh Price Hughes lectures  at Hinde Street Methodist Church.  The two lecturers, Morna Hooker and Frances Young, are planning a book on this topic in the autumn.  It will cover the issues in Viola's book with a more scholarly approach, identifying the complex nature of these arguments. 

Religion has always been used by imperialists, like Constantine, to control the lives and beliefs of the people.  The first church was a political movement against political control of the religious order of the day.  As it became more successful the imperialists bought into it.  To what extent are we aware of how our faith is formed not by the spirit but by an imperialist mindset?

Lent 31: James Hopewell

The tragic irony that I tell about my mortal body reflects something of the approach I make to understanding the congregation.  From neither body nor congregational habitation do I see miraculous escape, either by comic recognition that will give the church a special knowing at a higher level of development or by a romantic quest that turns the parish outward into God's undomesticated presence in the larger context.  Rather, the setting of my story and the congregation's portrays my own body and that of the local church essentially in human terms, but my factual portrait of the world is darkly shaded by the tragic inevitability of God's inexorable plan.  (From: Congregation: Stories and Structures , page 64)

Any reading of this book is inevitably coloured by knowing its author was dying.  I first encountered it around 1994, at a conference about James Fowler's work on faith development.  At the time the study of congregations was in its infancy and Hopewell's book was the seminal work.  It is still in print and the study of congregations is still something of a Cinderella topic.  It helps to know Hopewell identified four types of Christian: tragic, comic, romantic and ironic.  Of course real congregations fall somewhere between these four.

A famous passage in the book describes how friends of each type approached Hopewell's cancer.  I suspect most people are embarrassed by death but we all need to face its reality in the light of our belief in its defeat on the cross.  So, how do we approach death: the death of distant people, of people who are close to us, our own death?

 

Lent 30: Karen Armstrong

Even though the Greeks found his interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve far too literal, Augustine was no diehard biblical literalist.  He took science very seriously and his 'principle of accommodation' would dominate biblical interpretation in the West until well into the early modern period.  God had, as it were, adapted revelation to the cultural norms of the people who had first received it.  One of the psalms for example, clearly reflects the ancient view, long outmoded by Augustine's time, that there was a body of water above the earth that caused rainfall.  It would be absurd to interpret this text literally.  God had simply accommodated the truths of revelation to the science of the day so that the people of Israel could understand it; today, a text like this must be interpreted differently.  Whenever the literal meaning of scripture clashed with reliable scientific information, Augustine insisted, the interpreter must respect the integrity of science or he would bring scripture into disrepute.  And there must be no unseemly quarreling about the Bible.  People who engaged in acrimonious discussion of religious truth were simply in love with their own opinions and had forgotten the cardinal teaching of the Bible, which was the love of God and neighbour.  The exegete must not leave a text until he could make it 'establish the reign of charity', and if a literal understanding of any biblical passage seemed to teach hatred, the text must be interpreted allegorically and forced to preach love.  (From: The Case for God , page 122.)

I have admired Armstrong's writing for a long time and this book, published last year, does not disappoint.  She introduced the idea of mythos and logos in her earlier book, The Battle for God .  Logos is broadly what we would understand scientific thought to be.  Mythos is the parallel truths found in religious experience.  Fundamentalists and atheists both tend to confuse the two.  The Case for God develops this theme in more detail.

This paragraph interrupts a discussion of Augustine's idea of original sin.  It shows Augustine, with most exegetes from the three main monotheistic faiths, understands scripture must be interpreted afresh in every age.  Those who claim it has a plain meaning are not aware they are interpreting the text as much as everyone else.  This dishonesty falsifies faith and is used as an excuse to persecute minorities by labeling them as sinners.

Lent 29: Timothy Dudley-Smith

Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his might!

Powers and dominions lay their glory by;

Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight,

The hungry fed, the humble lifted high.  (Hymns and Psalms, 86 v3)

I've admired Dudley-Smith  ever since I discovered Child of the Stable's Secret Birth , in the 1980s, soon after Hymns and Psalms was first published.  This hymn, Tell Out My Soul (Tune: Woodlands), is based upon the Magnificat and is possibly better known.  Dudley-Smith retired a long time ago but is still writing hymns (I discovered the video on 13 March 2010 and so he is clearly still active).  He is a modern hymn writer who is much under-valued (at least by British Methodists).

This verse addresses the issues Walter Wink  identifies and once again we have a glimpse into the radical world-turned-upsidedown we never lose sight of as we read the Gospels.  It is a struggle to keep radical as we wrestle with the words of Scripture.  I wonder whether this hymn really helps?

Lent 28: John Bell

Feel for the parents who've lost their child,

Feel for the women whom men have defiled,

Feel for the baby for whom there's no breast,

And feel for the weary who find no rest.  (From: A Touching Place, Wee Worship Book , page 58.  Tune: Dream Angus)

I first encountered John Bell at the Abbey on Iona in what must have been about 1983.  I was part of a group who worked with John to produce the Iona Community's first ever recording Through Wood and Nails, which was of course issued on vinyl (and so, is no longer available).  Since then he has written, with Graham Maule, a large number of modern hymns in the Celtic tradition.  I've chosen this verse because it is a good example of his direct and grounded style.  The link is to a later edition of the Wee Worship Book than mine. 

The Iona Community is part of a revival of interest in Celtic Christianity.  John Bell has popularised it by writing modern hymns!  It is easy to forget when we take pleasure in his Celtic approach, enjoy the music and sing the words that the Christian faith is about suffering and love.  These words are an the invitation to encounter the pain of others, to ground our wilder flights of spirituality.  This is how we learn to love.

Lent 27: Muhammad Yunus

The next day I called in Maimuna, a university student who collected data for me, and I asked her to assist me in making a list of how many in Jobra, like Sufia, were borrowing from traders and missing out on what they should have been earning from the fruits of their labours.  Within a week we had prepared a list.  It named forty-two people who in total had borrowed 856 taka, a total of less than $27.  'My God, my God, all this misery in all these forty-two families all because of the lack of $27!' I exclaimed.  Maimuna stood there without saying a word.  We were both astounded, shocked, but also sickened by the pathos of it all.  (From: Banker to the Poor , page 11)

The first edition of Yunus' autobiography, was published in 1998 and I read it in 1999, during a short period of unemployment.  The truth Yunus discovered is the poor are kept poor because they can't get credit.  Without credit they are trapped in a cycle of poverty.  In Bangladesh the amounts they need are unbelievably small.  This made the Grameen Bank a possibility.

Like so many of the radical ideas that really work, this approach is based upon trust.  It is not about making a profit, but it is about helping people prove their own ability to work their way out of poverty.  Why are we not able to do this in our communities in Britain?

Lent 26: Isaac Watts

His dying crimson, like a robe,

Spreads o'er his body on the tree;

Then am I dead to all the globe,

And all the globe is dead to me.  (From: Hymns and Psalms, 180, verse 4)

This is a radical hymn.  Most people don't realise it is a radical hymn. No space to go into the detail of the whole hymn.   It is common for verse 4 to be omitted.  Why?  I am indebted to John Hull, who interpreted the hymn in a lecture some years ago.  Just two points.  When I Survey the Wondrous Cross was written around 1707, when the centre of the world's economy was moving from the Netherlands to Britain.  Perhaps it should be Great Britain, for this was the year the United Kingdom was founded.  The reason the verse is so often omitted, is not as some think the mention of blood (Watts father was a dealer in dye and the image is of crimson dye spreading through a cloth).  It is the word globe.  We no longer realise how important globes were in Watts' world.  They were used to plan trade routes. 

Watts could see which way his world was going.  Are we able to join with him in the last verse and sacrifice the whole globe for the demands of love?

Lent 25: Marcus Borg

I encounter this in my university students.  Every term one or more of them says to me after class, "This is all very interesting, but I have a problem every time you use the word 'God', because, you see" - here there's usually a pause and a deep breath - "I really don't believe in God."  I always respond in the same way: "Tell me about the God you don't believe in."  Invariably, it is the God of supernatural theism.  I then tell them that I don't believe in that God either.  They are surprised, for they know that I believe in God.  They're simply not aware that there is an option other than supernatural theism.  (From: The Heart of Christianity , page 68)

If you want to know what the other option is, you will have to read the book!  As a preacher I spend a lot of time correcting false images of God.  Both Christians and atheists believe in the same unbelievable supernatural God.  I include Borg in this series because he is a well-known radical theologian who does not make the common liberal mistake, where having rubbished the supernatural God, we are left suspended with half a faith and no way of moving anywhere else.

We need to ask ourselves who we are fooling.  Why do we find it so difficult to pass the Christian faith on?  Our educators, preachers, theologians and ministers conspire to set up barriers to God through their insistence in belief or doubt about a God who does not exist and is not believed in by people of faith.

Lent 24: Robert Linthicum

The primary purpose of a community organisation is to create a community - to create out of a victimised, marginalised, destructive conglomerate of people a community whose quality of life is such that people find fulfilment and joy in living there.  It is to enable the people to build their society around their common articulated, intentionally pursued values.  If such a community is not created, then all that we have accomplished through community organising is the replacement of one oppressor by another in the tyranny of the now powerful poor.  The power of the oppressor must be replaced by a quality of corporate life that is of such superiority to either the formerly oppressed or their oppressors that it brings purpose, direction, joy, and fulfillment to all who experience it.  That is the true objective of community organisation.  (From: Building a People of Power , page 243)

Linthicum, with others, picked up Allinski's  organising and made Citizens' Organising the powerful movement it is today in the United States.  It is worth putting Linthicum's approach alongside Lovell's (see yesterday's post).  What they have in common is the commitment to allowing others the space to make their own community or their own ministry.

We see, in the tendency for the oppressed to turn oppressor, the need to understand this flaw in all human relationships.  Traditionally, Christians call this sin.  The struggle to maintain community, in the inner city as much as in religious communities, is a call to live life on the knife edge.  This is why John Wesley  said, there is no holiness apart from social holiness.