Distinctly Welcoming

UK Under Attack Again: really?

I was sent a link recently to a broadcast from the States lamenting that "Christian Britain" was "under attack again". It's a polemical report scattered with stories about the persecution of Christians in the workplace and the inevitable and inexorable erosion of Christian values in the nation. I'm reminded of a great story that the artist David Hockney tells. His mum is visiting his villa in the hills overlooking LA, all the way from industrial Yorkshire. As she looks out over the vista of swimming pools glinting in the sun below them she remarks to David (cue broad Yorkshire accent): "It's disgraceful! All this sunshine and no one has got their washing out."

Well the supposed decline of Christian Britain really depends on how you're looking at things and where you're standing. Admittedly, many of our inherited denominations are struggling with numbers and finances, but look across at the growth of black-led churches. What of persecution then? I don't want to be complacent, and there are real issues for many converts from other faiths seeking to become Christians in Britain, but is our country really a harder place to be a disciple than even 20 years ago? Look at the profile of religious issues in the news and documentaries. We have to thank our Muslim neighbours for some of this, but I believe that we are in a far healthier state than we have been for the significance of religion in the public square.

The broadcast I linked to began by referencing Winston Churchill's Christian battle against the forces of Nazism...(These days, anything that defaults to using Churchill as an emotive way in to making a point deserves deep suspicion!) I think what we are seeing is a genuine distinctiveness in the church from society, and that is something to be welcomed. It is not as simple as separation of church and state; the American model which originates the broadcast gives the lie to that pretence. Rather, it is about the genuine reality of diversity and the church being a voice of pastoral and prophetic concern. It will at times agree and affirm, and at others at will contradict. But being a critical friend means that, as Christians, we have to make sense of our beliefs to others, communicate why they are "good for all" and expect that they will not be the aspiration of many.

Having a Christian core to the constitution from our history gives us a duty that cuts both ways: to be faithful to pointing out the one hope of all humanity but to be humble about where the church has failed. Invoking the ghosts of Churchill et al means we need to tell the story of colonialism, patriarchy and the class system. Loving our country and witnessing to Jesus seems to me to be less about bemoaning how far we have sold off the crown jewels of our Christian inheritance and more about pointing forward to the new humanity that Jesus has inaugurated.

'BNP Has Nothing to Do with Christianity'

I was trying to work out an appropriate image to head this posting and settled on the union jack...and then was troubled! Does it make my blog look jingoistic and right wing?! Oh dear...I've gone along with the image basically to make a point about our confusion and doubts over loyalties to the state and national pride. It's a confusion and doubt for good reason because our (for British readers!) national story is a mixed tale (as I guess everyone's is). As Christians, more particularly, our loyalties should be quite split (well, not even split: our ultimate loyalty is to another country entirely). So, there is the union jack in all its glory/shame. Oh, and if we needed reminding at the moment, the Houses of Parliament, seat of our very human and fallen government. But God uses and works with and in nations and government. Our task as Christians is not withdrawal, not to rubbish all this, though we should hold some critical distance.

I say all this because I think we live in a quite precarious time as regards nationalist tendencies. My own city's church leaders have just written a public condemnation of the British National Party ("BNP"); a statement that can be read here and that I would echo. It's an important marker in the sand; a public statement that demonstrates an involvement and posits a real critical distance. I'm concerned in the area of my interfaith work because the BNP, and other extremist groups, are mobilising religious language, and seeking to jump on a bandwagon of Christian heritage as counter to the "foreign" threat that is Islam. We have a responsibility to present the counter truth; and part of that truth is making clear the "foreign threat" that is the Christian faith, hospitable to all, regardless of race and colour! It's worth drawing attention to Paul's sermon in Athens in Acts 17: Paul acknowledges the God-given diversity of the city and nations and affirms the gospel, with its higher loyalties, within all the cultural mix of an Athens or a Birmingham.

As regards the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, appearing on BBC's Question Time: I hope you'll join me in expressing dismay that a programme dedicated to honourable  and reasonable debate across difference is in danger of providing a veneer of honour and reasonableness to policies that are far from so. So, when we reflect on some of the crises of our age, the lack of "moral compass" and the like, recalling our Christian tradition, let's own what was good, be utterly repentant about what was bad (lest you need reminding...tawdriness of colonialism, sexism, pillage of the earth's resources to name a few things done in the name of British Christianity), and engage the good news of Jesus with the Britain we live in today, in all its richness.

Should Britain be a Christian Country?

No more blogging about pirates for me! Back to a topic intertwined deeply with my local church context and research studies... Global Connections are organising a day conference entitled "Should Britain be a Christian Country?" The worrying growth of far-right groups, scape-goating the Muslim community in particular, suggests that the church needs to get its head around culture, diversity and values. It is troubling for me that some of the extremist groups that have hit the headlines in recent weeks are using language that i hear all too frequently in church circles,  (I'm getting to the stage that when someone invokes Winston Churchill and Chamberlain as the two choices available to British responses to Islam then major alarm bells are set off!). Global Connections have Dr Philip Lewis and Dr Stuart Murray-Williams speaking on the topic. I can highly recommend them both. Philip is a lecturer at the Peace Studies Centre at Bradford University, adviser on interfaith matters to the Bishop of Bradford and writer of the recently published, "Young, British and Muslim" (a superb analysis of the challenges facing young British Muslims today). Stuart is a great thinker but also committed practitioner of urban mission, coming from the Anabaptist tradition.

Monday October 5th 10.30am-3.30pm, CMS Head Office, Watlington Road, OXFORD OX4 6BZ
Cost: £20 Members and concessions, £30 Non-Members
Please bring your own lunch or purchase at the CMS cafe

If you went some substantial reflections on what it might mean to be faithfully Christian in a multifaith Britain, book now here.

The Credit Crunch and the Gospel

Being an early morning Radio 4 addict, it's hard not to feel sucked into a downward spiral of pessimism about the state of the world's finances. Daily conversations with leading commentators about whether it is now safer to put all your money under a mattress get you thinking just a tad about what we have done to get into this sorry state. It's intriguing that some Muslims are beginning to point out the wisdom of their stance on usury and it suggests a hole at the heart of modern western liberalism. The thing is, they have more than a point don't they?

I was at a seminar on Wednesday at Heythrop College, tracing the evolution of political theologies in the church. Now you can come up with a million definitions of "political theology" but whichever way you slice the cake, it's the discipline that gives flesh to the tension of when the church should work with secular (ie non church) leaders and when it should confront and challenge that leadership. The recent growth in this discipline revolves around the fundamental failure of the church's political theology in Germany during the Nazi regime: in essence, why did so few Christians stand up and challenge the horrors perpetrated by the state? (As one theologian Dorothy Soelle put it, "did no one smell the gas?").

I'm prompted to pose a similar question: "did no one see the red on the balance sheet?" Alarmingly, though, for many of us in western culture, the question ought to be aimed within. For all I'd like to see some accountability among the banking high-flyers and city whizz-kids with their bonuses, we are all reaping what we have sown. How on earth do we say something/do something as a church with authenticity and credibility in this situation? And let's face it, few of us in the church are equipped to design complex financial instruments that keep markets afloat.

The seminar, lead by Michael Kirwan SJ, gave a helpful summary of the two alternatives that the church has deafulted to over the centuries: "Leviathan" or "Covenant". Leviathan (an image from the secular philosopher Thomas Hobbes) suggests that we're all one step away from chaos and anarchy and we just need some centralised authority to reign things again, knock us all on the heads and keep the barbarians at bay. It's the kind of approach I see from some Christians concerned that Islam is about to overtake Europe and that we'll be witnessing beheadings in British cities before too long.

Covenant is an alternative trajectory in the church in its relation to the state, and one that I think is authentic to our model of Jesus: an approach that binds us in relationship and commitment across difference. There's no room for smug self-righteousness (or hypocrisy!) when it comes to covenant. It's all about building bridges, being alternative model communities, and speaking truth where that's needed.

I don't think Western Civilisation is going down the pan; just watch some BBC comedies from the 1970's to be reminded of the racism and sexism that was normative not so long ago. But there's a whole lot wrong with British society too; it's getting better and worse, I suspect.

So, let's wrestle with these issues, pray for business and political leaders, live personally more responsibly and name greed for what it is, conscious that we too are guilty as charged.

Things are Never as Simple as they Seem

The late lamented Joe Strummer once said in an interview, "I'm smart enough to know how stupid I am". As I wade into my PhD reading, trying to get a handle on "Anglican trends in political theology" (.....alternatively, what the CofE has thought over the years about its relationship to the rest of society), it's been the most unnerving experience. You embark on any study with the usual amount of baggage, preconceptions, prejudices, hoping to find things that confirm what you already think. Most annoyingly, you end up discovering ideas and approaches that challenge how you viewed things and, sacre bleu, changing (?).

Quoting another icon of the punk era, Paul Weller sang, "The more I see, the more I know, the more I know, the less I understand". I have to confess that the lefty, anti-establishment side of my personality has viewed the church's privilege in society (yes, there's still plenty of it around) with dismay. We must junk all our holds on society and culture and place ourselves intentionally at the edges and on the margins: the church's only authentic influence is when it foregoes power, I might say.

And then I think, and read, and reflect....see the new society of Revelation coming out of the testimony of the faithful, believe and hope that even, yes, the political structures of a nation can be redeemed......And it gets just a tad bit more complicated, (reading Oliver and Joan O'Donovan at present if you want some clues). It's a dilemma that I believe needs airing in the emerging church. In all the talk of deconstruction, of renewal, of experimentation, how do we hold onto the church's mission for the entirety of the society? Dare we detach the micro missional community from the macro questions of our world? (In that vein, I'm encouraged to hear that Brian McLaren, all-round good-guy American writer and church leader, is addressing an audience at the Davos Forum in Switzerland this week).

So, with a sheepish smile to my anabaptist friends, I do wonder whether there is something about the church being a voice for the nation: a benchmark for public services, politics, accountability and economics. The knotty problem that I have to wrestle with over the next few years is how it ought to do that in the midst of a diversity of faith allegiances. Finding the answer in the suffering Christ is where I suspect I'll find a renewed convergence with anabaptists.

No-go areas - digging deeper

I've been pondering awhile on Bishop Michaell Nazir-Ali's comments on "no-go areas" in our inner city created by Muslim communities, and trying to make sense of the range of opinion out there. The issue, not surprisingly, gained some energy in Birmingham where a number of clergy, including our own and the diocesan interfaith adviser published some comments in the local press that have generated their own stir.

The debate is exceedingly complex and is in danger of being held hostage on the one hand to the paralysis of political correctness and on the other to the cultural supremacism of Christendom. The thing is, and this is where Bishop Michael is correct, a debate is needed. My concern is that brandishing words like "no-go" and coupling this with a seeming return to church hegemony in society is no way to deepen the quality of the debate.

What kind of society do we want? Are we happy for Britain to continue apace with ever-widening economic, cultural and religious separation? These questions are vital for the church and for the whole of society. And these questions are not merely social, political and economic. Factors like poverty, housing and education policy all contribute to the vast chasm in the values and aspirations that exists between sections within even one city like Birmingham. In these, non-Muslim communities are arguably more culpable because the motor for such separation is greed (witness the "white-flight" from our city centres, a flight that the church sometimes aids and abets).

However, and this is where I take a gulp, there are some very definite cultural and theological features to much of traditional Islam that give an added dimension of concern to the debate. There is an undercurrent in orthodox Islamic theology that aspires to self-governance and majority and accentuates the need for self-reinforcing communities and to some extent, self-referencing. Care needs to be taken here because this is by no means inevitable nor necessary, but the trajectory of Islamic understanding tends towards separation. At the extreme end of this separation, there are the voices of terrorism and arcane attitudes to women, science and education. There are harsh realities littered among the ideals that do need to be faced. For the vast majority of Muslims in communities like ours in Birmingham, though, the self-referencing provides for mosque worship, halal butchers, family networks and sharia business practices. These, of themselves, are not problematic, but we do need to provide for a for mixing and sharing our stories, for a public square that offers mutual challenge to faith and secular alike that can enhance our contribution to the whole.

Big complex questions. And fab questions for the church. Basically, if we dare to pose these questions to  Muslims and secular multiculturalists, we need to have answered questions about our own contribution to the good of the whole of society. It is perhaps this latter deficiency that Bishop Michael lapses into that undermined so much of his contribution to the debate.

Do I live in a no-go area?

In yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, criticises multiculturalism in the UK and warns of no-go areas dominated by Muslims and governed by shariah law. You can read the article here. Tomorrow, I'll be walking my kids to school in one of the boroughs with the highest concentrations of Muslims in the country. The fact that we will see lots of hijabs, curry houses, Asian sweetshops and a couple of mosques on the way does not make it a no-go area and, frankly, it will be a pleasure for me to be back home after family sojourns in the Gloucestershire countryside.

The bishop's comments highlight just how complex the issue of Muslim presence in the UK is. There are legitimate questions as to the level of interaction between communities; those questions as legitimate for suburban white sink estates and leafy rural villages as much as they are for inner city Muslim communities. Indeed, for some of the local Muslim youth, shopping in downtown Solihull carries its own intimidating freight and potential for "no-go".

And then there are the bishop's references to our "Christian" country: its laws, values and character. I struggle even more here. I recognise a huge amount of Christian influence in Britain, a history that should not be erased from the collective memory, but it is a mixed legacy that is also infused with arrogance, privilege and some significant and good influences from secular modernity (NB - sadly it wasn't Christians who championed equal pay legislation and prohibitions against racial and gender discrimination).

Things aint so clear cut and, sadly, clumsy generalisations like those in the Sunday Telegraph article are in danger of feeding into a xenophobia that has little to do with the gospel we espouse as Christians. Surely a robust Christian faith does not require that  the Christian faith is privileged or that no other faith can be in the public square?

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! 

Church Schools - critical friendship

Big Bulky Anglican is a thoughtful parish priest who is not afraid of commenting on the church and its mission and place in public life. He has posted recently on the role of church schools in a multifaith and post-Christendom society and provides some worthwhile reflections here. The post effectively encourages a stepping back from unqualified support of faith schools and, noting comments by Simon Barrow and Jonathan Bartley of the Christian think-tank Ekklesia suggests that we should be putting some clear blue water between ourselves and the self-serving agendas of government.

Now I speak as a parent and governor of a church school in a mixed faith, multicultural area. Nearly half of the school's in-take is Muslim yet it provides a distinctly Christian ethos to its education; education that  genuinely sees every child and member of staff as significant and valued. Other faith celebrations are acknowledged, taught and shared while there is a weekly Christian act of worship. The key thing is, though, no assumptions are made about the allegiance of pupils and in every explicit Christian story or prayer, a lesson or application that can be owned by everyone is provided. Indeed, every prayer is prefaced with a, "if you agree, you can say "Amen" at the end". The church is distinctive, but inclusive. Not one pupil is taken out of the collective worship and the local community, of decidedly other faiths, value the school partly because it "does God".

Now, after this eulogising, I have to go back to the posts mentioned above. The challenge to us is that faith schools are often NOT like this. The critique of society that they are elitist and self-aggrandising can so often stick. There are genuine issues too about the unfairness of the privilege enjoyed by CofE schools that I too am concerned about. The argument is not, "should faith schools exist?" but rather "how should their respective faiths inform their role in the schools in an age of diversity?"

I would commend to you the booklets published by my friend Smeeee, "Top Tips for Welcoming Children of Other Faiths" which you can link to on the sidebar of this site and also the latest edition of Colin Chapman's "Cross and Crescent" book. The latter has some case studies in the back of the book, one on faith schools where I was kindly invited to publish some thoughts. Let's not spin the success of some faith schools; dare I say it that in a post-Christendom, cynical society, we should have no truck for spin by the church anyway, but let's take a long hard look at what we can and ought to be in society. The public square is there for us to serve, not to conquer.