Distinctly Welcoming

A Busy 2008

I found out this week that funding is available for me to proceed with part time PhD research in January 2008. It's going to be a long slog but I will be supervised for a PhD in political theology at Heythrop College, University of London while continuing much of my work here in Birmingham. Heythrop is a Jesuit college with a long tradition of distinguished study into the Abrahamic faiths. I'm very excited at the possibilities offered by such a institution with such a rich tradition that I have much to learn from and the excellence of my superviser Anthony O'Mahony.

I'm going to have to come up with some shorthand ways of describing what I will be looking into so here's a first pop...Basically, I'm looking into Christian and Muslim notions of territory especially where Muslim communities are in the majority and the church is small and declining. How do both traditions view their local area? What are their respective responsibilities to the geopolitical space? Does the church duck out and leave these patches, or engage? If it does engage, how should it without trying to replicate a version of Christendom? Does Islam have a notion of a vocation for the wider community and what might that look like? In essence, "who owns the city?"

So, have a great Christmas and a peaceful New Year...I'll hold off reading Augustine's City of God until January! 

The Church's Biggest Challenge?

Back in the 1980's, when Britain's beaches were strewn with litter and sewage and acid rain fell over Scandinavia from the muck our factories coughed out, we were known as the "dirty old man of Europe". Listening to Condeleeza Rice being heckled at the Bali climate change conference, I wonder now whether the USA is the "dirty young man" of the world.

I know there are huge issues about the emissions of China, India and Russia, not to mention Europe again, but the wealth and privilege of North America surely gives it an added responsibility to take radical steps forward in cutting down on energy use and concentrating on renewables. I was out with some friends last night, all active in politics and committed to the cause of conservation. As a Christian, I find myself wanting to distance myself from what someone labelled last night, "the loony Christian right". Is there hope for the word "evangelical" to be redeemed while the White House is occupied by an evangelical that all commentators admit is holding back on costly but necessary measures to correct the downward spiral of climate change?

Now I tend to be biased, as anyone is with particular vocations and hobby horses, about the priority for the church to engage constructively with other faiths in an age of religious extremism. I have to admit, though, that climate change seems to be the number 1 issue of our age and tops even that in my book. It's an issue that is inextricably linked with wealth, inequality and the plight of the most poor on our planet. It's an issue that affects our children and our children's children in a way that perhaps no other issue before now has. For those of us in the church, it ought to be of the essence of mission and gospel. For those of all faiths and none, it can be a rallying point of unity and dialogue, because without positive steps it is bound to become a rallying point of war.

So, in the meantime we campaign, recycle, educate, vote, and some of us maybe even praying that the evangelical President of the United States has another conversion.

Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth

I'm enjoying Christmas preparations reading through Maggi Dawn's "Beginnings and Endings" book. There are some gems of theological insight and gentle nudges to a lived Christian life. Reading yesterday, I was reminded of a wonderful Advent prayer by the theologian, Walter Brueggemann, that seems doubly apt as a prayer into a world of inter-religious conflict:

We give you thanks for the babe born in violence.
We give you thanks for the miracle of Bethlehem, born into the Jerusalem heritage.

We do not understand why the innocents must be slaughtered;
we know that your kingdom comes in violence and travail.
Our time would be a good time for your kingdom to come,
because we have had enough of violence and travail.

So we wait with eager longing,
and with enormous fear,
because your promises
do not coincide with our favourite injustices.

We pray for the coming of your kingdom on earth
as it is around your heavenly throne.

We are your people grown weary with waiting.

We dwell in the midst of cynical people,
and we have settled for what we can control.

We do not know that you hold initiative for our lives,
that your love planned our salvation
before we saw the light of day.

And so we wait for your coming,
in your vulnerable baby
in whom all things are made new.

Amen.

This can be found in Brueggemann's book, "Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth" here.....

Britain in 2008

I picked up the "Economic and Social Research Council" annual report, "Britain in 2008" yesterday (available in all good bookshops!). It's a vital overview of trends in British lifestyles and consumption, attitudes to conservation, religion and science, affording a picture of where we are now. The corresponding website is a helpful repository of statistics and articles here.

The stuff on religion is fascinating and attempts to unpack that majority of those who continue to designate themselves "Christian" in the census. Research conducted by the likes of Prof Woodhead at Lancaster University suggest that there is a large and growing constituency that they are now calling the "fuzzy faithful". This group go to church for high days and holidays, believe something but have relinquished core beliefs such as Jesus being the Son of God. As well as the well documented "spiritual seekers" they have another category known as "Sheilaists" after a young nurse who told a study of religion that although she believed in God, "I can't remember the last time I went to church", her position defined by herself as "Sheilaism. Just my own little voice."

The landscape is evidently hugely complex and belies any talk of absolute secularism. Nominal believers are in turn categorised as "natal nominalists" (born into the faith and assuming this is all that is necessary for such religious identity), "ethnic nominalists" (describing themselves as Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu etc in order to signal a difference from people of other faiths) and "aspirational nominalists" (who claim to be Christian in an established church because it is associated with respectability).

To muddy the waters even further, I see that Professor Richard Dawkins has "come out". In a full-blown admission of his skeleton in the cupboard, the prophet of uber-rationalism has trumpeted to the BBC that he enjoys singing Christmas carols!  Apparently, Richard Dawkins sees himself as a "cultural Christian". There we have it: he's obviously a "natal nominalist". So long as religious folk keep their religion to themselves (that means keeping it from the kids too.....does Richard Dawkins do nativity plays??), then that must be fine in his way of looking at the world.

This is all interesting stuff. Our context is perhaps not as bad as we think but neither is it as good as we might want to believe. The huge numbers of "fuzzy faithful" are at a staging post towards secular hegemony, having left religious hegemony. What should discipleship and mission look like for a 2008 Britain? Imagination, prayer and the willingness to take risks and make mistakes are commodities the church needs in abundance.

Careful what you say

It's been a tough few weeks for the Islamic community in Britain as the Sudanese teddy bear incident raged and the spectre of freedom to convert from Islam once again has come to the fore. Ruth Gledhill, the Times' correspondent, has been covering these issues and it has been dismaying to me to see the venom that has been generated by us good old Christian folk. As I've said before, we should not duck out of the truth-telling in our engagement with other faiths, speaking out against wrong and injustice. What perturbs me, though, is the tendency to make sweeping judgments about whole groups of people and foreclosing what "the other" can be to us.

I'd like to pose a question to some of those that have posted so liberally about the wrongs of Islam: is it inevitable that a Muslim be violent, cruel and sexist? Now I can answer a quick and categorical "no" to that question. I answer from experience but I also answer from within my own Christian tradition. Not one person in this world is "inevitably" always going to be wrong. There is something about the Christian hope that I hold to that will see the good, see signs of grace in all places and in all people. If Christmas means anything, it's about God surprising us in the most unexpected places. Isn't that what the Parable of the Good Samaritan is all about?

So, as gently as I can, I'd like to suggest that words like "they", "always", "all", "must" in connection  with negative behaviour from Muslims be deleted. The added incentive might be a slightly less gentle reminder to some Christian self-reflection. Here's another question: is it inevitable that Christians be colonial, paternalistic and compromised by power? I answer again from my own experience and from the trajectory of my Christian hope an unequivocal "no". However, my recognition of those traits in myself and in the church ought to drive me to humility as I bring challenges to my neighbours, of whatever faith.

A bishop back in the early 20th Century said, "how can we sing our love song to Jesus without telling dirty stories about the other?". More recently, Vaclav Havel said, "There is only one way to strive for decency, reason, responsibility, sincerity, civility and tolerance and that is decently, reasonably, responsibly, sincerely, civilly and tolerantly". In our truth-telling, in our necessarily robust engagement in the public arena, guard us Lord from falling into sin.

Distinctly Welcoming iPod - No.1 "Seven Swans"

Cue drum-roll as I announce the final entry in the Distinctly Welcoming iPod list of songs to reflect on our multifaith society. This has been a tricky one. I've wanted to say something about being motivated by love not fear so toyed with sharing John Martyn's "Don't wannna know about evil (only wanna know about love)". It has the remarkably prescient lines, "waiting for the planes to tumble, waiting for the towns to fall" (written back in the early '70's) but returns to a determination to avoid hate and live in love. The trouble is, I'm coupling my Christmas preparation with Maggi Dawn's Advent readings and Sufjan Stevens' incredible box-set of Christmas songs: witty, ironic, beautiful and touched with transcendence. So, I'm going with Sufjan Stevens' title track to his album Seven Swans, which has all of those.

Stevens seems to be an incredibly eccentric peddler of Americana, utterly wired into the pysche of God-fearing suburbia. In his pared down, master-story-teller mode, we're given the merest brush-strokes of a garden bonfire that suddenly changes as the family's mood, unaccountably, is jolted by fear. Sufjan looks up in the sky and sees Seven Swans and from an intimation of mortality, he sees a sign from God: "I hear a voice in my mind, "I will try, I will try"". The voice speaks again, just saying, "I am Lord, I am Lord".

As the song reaches a climax, Sufjan gives himself up to a God "who will take you, If you run, he will chase you, cause He is the Lord". It's a psalm for a suburbia paralysed by fear. There's plenty of fear around these days, much of it unwarranted, much that ought to be put into the perspective of a world where a majority of our children go to bed hungry. But let's look for signs of God at work; signs in the ordinary and in the everyday, signs in the stranger, signs in the pain. Rev Dr David Marshall has posed a wonderful question to the church in his Grove booklet on Islam and Christianity: "what might the church become through its encounter with Islam?"....what might the church become, as it endeavours to stay faithful in a society of other faiths, secularists, agnostics, spiritual searchers? Who can I become as I engage in love with my neighbour, "the other"?

...."Seven swans, seven swans, seven swans". Read the signs, banish fear, embrace love.

Distinctly Welcoming iPod - No. 2 "God is in the House"

I've just had a weekend hosting the Resource training here in Birmingham and to kick-off some discussion on Gospel and Culture, I played Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' classic track, "God is in the House". This has to be my number 2 track for the Distinctly Welcoming iPod. Nick Cave wrote it after travelling around the Bible-belt of North America. It's a eulogy to a perfect, Waltons-style town, laced with bitter irony: "Drug freaks in the crack house, We don't have that stuff here. We have a tiny little Force But we need them of course, For the kittens in the trees And at night we're on our knees As quiet as a mouse For God is in the house".

Nick Cave's window into the church is of a white-only, morally superior, clean, unsullied community of privilege. It's a far cry from the vision of what church ought to be: a multicultural community of the broken, of sinners forgiven and affirmed, of people embracing the dirt and messiness of life and bringing God's transformation. The kind of "heaven in ordinary" that we prepare for in this Advent season: God with Us, with the teenage mum, the shepherds, the spiritual searchers from other lands. The thing is, Nick Cave's perception is not drastically far of the mark. Let's hear his prophetic voice from the outside.

As the song closes, Nick Cave's voice drops to a whisper: "For no-one's left in doubt, There's no fear about,  If we all hold hands and  very quietly shout, Hallelujah, God is in the house, Oh I wish he would come out". God did come out, he is out; let's look for him in our cities, in the poverty, brokenness and diversity.