SubversiveVoices

Australia Day

2012-01-27T15:32:00.002+11:00

A couple of interesting reflections on the significance and meaning (not?) of Australia Day by Kym at Larvatus Prodeo and Peter Chambers at This Blog Harms.

Both reflect on some of the changes to the character of the day and the celebrations over recent years. Kim first:

I think everyone of a certain age can also remember a time when “Australia Day” was pretty much a nothing day. A moveable feast that made a long weekend, where some obscure ceremonies involving firing salutes would take place, and where a few history re-enactors would have their One Day of The Year .... It was, of course, always a day when The Great Forgetting moved into overdrive, and Indigenous people, rightly, sought to remember and remind by renaming it Invasion Day and marching, and being visible.

But it wasn’t a day when people who – in any way – departed from The Great White Australian Male Norm – had to observe bunches of drunks with Australian flags draped over their shoulders marauding about, demanding people kiss said flags, and generally harassing anyone who visibly departed from said Norm. And chanting “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!”.

But what are we left with? Sermons and worthy speeches about unity. But a strange unity between the Official Symbols (Flag, Governor-General, military flyovers, and so on) and the appropriation of those symbols by a minority of nativists who believe that they “grew here” ... This is not unity. It’s actually disunity wrapping itself in the flag of Nation and unity.

Peter draws attention first of all to the oddness of the day.

Australia Day is an odd selection for a national day. I mean, most nation-states celebrate independence: independence that they fought for, or won, or were given. I suppose this is impossible in Australia, seeing as we effectively refused it when given the opportunity. Nonetheless, the obvious choice is Federation, which was on January 1, 1901. It would be the technically correct choice, since before that, ‘we’ weren’t a nation, just a bunch of self-governing British colonies. But it would also be the hungover choice, given that it’s also New Years Day… in Australia. Scotch that.

But it gets weirder as soon as you ask what Australia Day actually purports to commemorate. I mean, the arrival of a bunch of stinking prison hulks full of transported convicts, mostly men, and their introduction of smallpox to the local Aboriginal populations… Well, it doesn’t seem like our finest moment. Convict origins, shit food, barely potable water, various types of pox, no toothpaste, insufficient opportunities for conjugal bliss… it seems like an experience that most peoples would prefer to forget.

Then he puts his finger I something that I had been partly conscious of but not got round to fully articulating - the extent to which national identity is now being expressed as consumerism, identity without history and detached from memory. this shifting to a consumerist focus has happened increasingly over the past decade, but has been really noticeable during the past two or three years.

This is a picture of an Australia Day merchandise stall at a Woolworths.No doubt you’ve seen it at yours, if you’re a shopper (and how could you not be, if you’re Australian). When I look at this rack, I see nude capitalism: the emptying out of everything. Rack upon rack of cheap, tacky, Swanston St-quality merchandise, whose only uniting factor is the flag (on which, weirdly, the flag of the colonist still looms large). Check just around the corner at bigger stores, Woolies are also pimping be-flagged boogieboards. Ten years ago, Australians would have laughed at gullible tourists for buying this crap… now, judging from what I’ve seen on the Mornington Peninsula and at the tennis, we’re lapping it up. ... Australia Day has become something irredeemable, full to the hat brim with its own emptiness. But, as I see it, there’s a way through this. It’s the difference between celebration and remembrance.

All this before the actual media event of the Prime Minister and tony Abbott retreating for the Lobby Restaurant and the protest by people attending the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy at the comments by Tony Abbott. The two episodes were overlapping, but not identical, but that's to the issue here. What the overlapping episodes showed was that political leadership in Australia has no sense of the importance of truthful remembering about this nation's morally complex history.

Christian "remembering" on Australia Day is going to be even more complex because what we are remembering here involves placing the story of church here in the context of its identity as a pilgrim people, that cannot own the claims of our nation as final and determinative of who we are but place ourselves in a longer and broader story. The Epistle to Diognetus reminds us of some of the tensions of this location for the task of remembering:

Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they speak some unusual dialect, nor do they practice an eccentric lifestyle....While they live in both Greek and barbarian cities, as each one's lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship.

"They live in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign.

Religion as idolatry

2012-01-23T20:00:00.000+11:00

I am continuing to meditatively read Nicolas Lash's beautifully written lectures, Holiness, Speech and Silence: Reflections on the Question of God. Much of what he has to say on 'religion' turns on its head most of the commonly held assumptions in contemporary discourse about the meaning of the term.

Most religion is, of course, idolatrous. We ascribe divinity to, we treat as sacred, a vast diversity of ideas and institutions, peoples, place stories, customs, which are, at worst, destructive of ourselves and of the world in which we live, and, at best, ambivalent intimations of where true holiness, beyond all our construction and imagination might be found.

Thus it is that the great religious traditions of this world function as schools in which people learn that there is no feature of the world - no nation, institution, text, idea, ambition - that is, quite simply, sacred. To be a pupil in these schools (and all the teachers in these schools are pupils too) is to learn that we are called beyond the worship of the creature; to learn that that alone is truly 'holy', is quite beyond location and imagination, radically transcends the secular in which we live and die, bearing the gift and burden of contingent freedom. It is within the world, in all the world, in all we think and do and say and see, achieve and suffer, and by no means only in some small margin of the world which people, these days, call 'religion', that we are required to be attentive to the promptings of the Spirit, responsive to the breath of God. (39-40)

'Doing' theology today

2012-01-20T10:12:00.003+11:00

Nicholas Lash has an excellent account of what doing theology means today in his series of lecture Holiness, Speech and Silence: Reflections on the Question of God.

... continuing to hold the Gospel's truth makes much more serious and dangerous demands than mere lip-service paid to undigested information. Unless we make the truth our own through prayer, thought and argument - through prayer and study and an unflinching quest for understanding - it will be chipped away, reshaped, eroded by the power of an imagining fed by other springs, tuned to quite different stories. And this unceasing, strenuous, vulnerable attempt to make sone Christian sense of things, not just in what we say, but in the ways in which we 'see' the world, is what is known as doing theology. (4)

For a helpful unpacking of some of the themes in this fine piece of theology, see Simon Barrow's paper What Difference does God make today?

Lack of focus

2012-01-11T19:38:00.000+11:00

I was struck by a news item on the ABC this morning. It was based around the substantial increase of Iranian refugees getting to Australia through Indonesia. The percentage of refugees from Iran has increased over the past two years from 6% to 50%.

This is a really significant shift. So what is the Australian Government doing? The are going to talk to the Indonesian Government about trying to cut off the channel for Iranians getting to Indonesia from Dubai.

Hullo? did I hear right? What about what this increase might tell us about the situation in Iran this is giving rise to this increase? Could this have anything to do with the Iranian Government response to US policy in the region? Could it be the result of action by the Iranian Government in its crackdown on dissent?

Wouldn't this prima facie evidence of increased persecution of dissent and minorities be an issue that might be of concern to Australians?

Apparently not - not is all about us and refugees reaching us - not issues of human rights and the possible impacts of US policy.

A new take on Australia pre 1788

2012-01-08T13:22:00.004+11:00

Bill Gammage, in The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, fundamentally challenges the traditional account of the character of the Australian landscape and the role of the Aboriginal people in creating that landscape. He quotes the account of Charles Darwin during his visit to Australia in the 19th century: ''Harmless savages wandering about without knowing where they shall sleep at night and gaining their livelihood by hunting in the woods.''

Darwin, along with most of the European invaders, got the story wrong,Gammage reckons, though they provided much of the evidence on which he build his case for that fundamental misapprehension.

Gammage's book is a big, beautifully presented, intellectual detective story. It is rare to be able to praise a book for both presentation and content, but this is one of those occasions on which I am free to do both. No effort has been spared in the presentation of the argument, with around 35 pages of reproductions of early paintings, sketches of geographical areas and their vegetation and current, comparative colour photos. He makes the case that the Aborigines not only adapted to the Australian environment but that in significant ways they created it and that this creation underlay a lifestyle that was relatively free, independent and provided substantial time for cultural, religious and social activities.

In making his case for a continent wide consistent pattern of using fire to create a landscape that provided sufficient, sustainable sources of food, Gammage draws heavily on paintings and sketches from the early settlers shortly after invasion when the pre-1788 regime of management was still in place and the situation following the forced abandonment of that regime in a wide range of contexts across the country, along with extracts from diaries and correspondence.

Much as Henry Reynolds forced a revision of the contemporary wisdom on the issue of the Aboriginal response to the European invasion, Gammage has laid the basis for a revolution in the understanding of Aboriginal management of the environment pre-1788. He concludes his argument with the following observations:

This book interrupts Law and country at the moment when terra nullius came, and an ancient philosophy was destroyed by the completely unexpected, an invasion of new people and ideas. A majestic achievement ended.. Only fragments remain. For the people of 1788 the loss was stupefying. Australia, of how to be Australian, vanished with barely a whisper of regret.
We have a continent to learn. If we are to survive, let alone feel at home, we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day we might learn to be Australians. (p.323)

Christmas is not for children

2011-12-26T11:27:00.000+11:00

Christmas is not for children. This observation seems at odds with the sights and sounds that have blitzed our senses in the shopping malls over the past few weeks, with children lining up for photos with Santa Claus and suggestions of both the cute and the glitzy manger scenes.

The source of our confusion and our inability to grasp this reality lies in the fact that the Christian Church's celebration of the feast of the Incarnation has become completely overlaid by a celebration of family driven by the unrelenting consumer logic of late capitalism. Christmas for us is about family, therefore becomes centred on children, creating an immense source of pain for those whose families are dysfunctional, those who are single and separated.

A look at the readings for the Christmas service that I attended in Canberra yesterday will start to make the point about how little the whole festival is about family, middle class selection and generally having a good time. The reading in the lectionary for the Old Testament for Christmas morning strikes quite a different note:

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
You have multiplied the nation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:2-7 ESV)

This is an account about politics and government. The debris of warfare and battle will be burned up and destroyed and what we are to look for beyond that is one who will bring a reign of peace, characterised by justice and righteousness. This is a perspective that is supposed to frame the discussion of the Gospel reading in Luke 2 on Christmas morning, but I suspect usually doesn't. It certainly didn't at the church service I attended. The passage takes away any excuse for a sentimental account of the significance of the birth of Jesus and places it in a context of empire and exile.

As it is if you manage to ignore the political frame of God's project for the achievement of peace and justice in Isaiah, the account of the birth of Jesus in Luke Chapter 2 opens with a clear account of the political context. Debra Dean Murphy from the Ekklesia Project makes this very clear in her lectionary reflections on this passage:

In Luke, we glimpse what the tyranny of the imperium romanum meant for its subjects, especially those on the margins of empire geographically, ethnically, and religiously. In verses 1 through 5 it is clear that the events leading up to Jesus’ birth were no picnic – nothing like the familiar, beatific stuff of greeting-card sentimentality. Rather, despots and oligarchs populate the scene and the treacherous journey to the stable – labor pains upon labor pains – includes refugees on the run, authorities asking for papers, and risky border crossings.

We can miss this, of course, and often do – especially when we rush to the later, more palatable and more accessible passages of Luke’s narrative. The Christmas pageant version of verses 8 through 14, for instance, has long colonized our imagination, with toddlers in bathrobes and bed sheets, coat-hanger halos on their wee heads.

But as Dorothee Soelle once observed, “the boot of the empire crushes everything in its way in the narrative from Bethlehem to Golgotha.” The terror of the shepherds was real and, as those among the poorest of the poor, the glad tidings they received from the angels (in whatever form these heavenly messengers appeared to them) signalled something of the radical politics of the infant king and his own future dealings, as one among the poorest of the poor, with the imperial powers.(The Logic of the Incarnation)

Tom Wright spells out the contrast between two kingdoms that Luke sketches in his account of the birth of Jesus:

Luke's scene ceases to be a romantic pastoral idyll, with the rustic shepherds paying homage to the infant King. It becomes a clear statement of two kingdoms destined to compete, kingdoms that offer radically different definitions of what peace and power and glory are all about.

Here is the old king in Rome, turning 60 in the year Jesus was born: he represents perhaps the best that pagan kingdoms can do. At least he knows that peace and stability are good things; unfortunately, he has had to kill a lot of people to bring them about, and to kill a lot more, on a regular basis, to preserve them.

Unfortunately, too, his real interest is in his own glory. Already, before his death, many of his subjects have begun to regard him as divine.

Here, by contrast, is the young King in Bethlehem, born with a price on his head. He represents the dangerous alternative, the possibility of a different empire, a different power, a different glory, a different peace. The two stand over against one another.
Augustus's empire is like a well-lit room at night: the lamps are arranged beautifully, they shed pretty patterns, but they have not conquered the darkness outside. Jesus' kingdom is like the morning star rising, signalling that it is time to blow out the candles, to throw open the curtains, and to welcome the new day that is dawning. Glory to God in the highest-and peace among those with whom he is pleased!

You see the two empires squared off against each other toward the end of John's gospel, when Pilate confronts Jesus with two questions: Don't you know that I have the power to have you killed? And, what is truth? That is the language of kingdom, power and glory that the world knows.The Most Dangerous Baby

Why Samuel Wells ponders do we turn Christmas, into an event that is really just for children? After all ...

this is a story about political oppression, harsh taxes, displaced people, homelessness, unemployment, vulnerable refugees and asylum-seekers. That's the danger of performing it in a place like Delhi and having it acted out by adults who themselves know the very real possibility of any or all of these realities. We might have to recognize what it's really about.

And the truth is, we don't want to think about such realities. We don't want to think that our own political system and the demands of our own economy could have comparable effects on far-flung places to those brought about by the Roman Empire and its client regimes all those years ago.

We don't want the cozy Christmas story besmirched by such tawdry human and political realities. We don't want to spoil things by thinking of the oppressed - and more than that we absolutely can't face the possibility that we might be counted among the oppressors.

So we get youngsters to perform our nativity plays. We talk about how magical this season is. We say "Christmas is really for the children." How ... convenient. Christmas is really for Grown-Ups

If it is for children we can then evade all the hard and the difficult questions that follow if we read it for the hard disturbing tale that it is. We are then faced with the call to discipleship, the call to follow, to become people who are on the Way, no longer at ease with the world in which we are so deeply invested. And we in our churches provide a chaplaincy service to a society, giving a religious veneer with our affirmation of the importance of family and personal generosity to those who live and work on the margins every day of the year.

I got given this year the DVD of the movie Of Gods and Men, the disturbing story of the monks in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria who made the choice to stay and accompany the people in the local village in the midst of a dirty war between the Army and Islamist guerrillas. This story I think provides a parable of the Incarnation, of the costly choice of identification with the pain and brokenness of the world. As a parable of the Incarnation it makes it clear why Christmas is for grown-ups and not for children.

An Advent Credo (courtesy of Daniel Berrigan?)

2011-12-22T11:48:00.002+11:00

I found the following while doing an annual tidy up: I have no idea where I got it from, or the accuracy of the attribution to Daniel Berrigan. It seems appropriate as an affirmation for Advent, so here it is.

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss ...
This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction ...
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever ...
This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful, councillor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of Peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims off the powers of evil who seek to rule the world ...
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even unto the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers ...
This is true: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.

It is not rue that our hopes for liberation of mankind, of justice, of human dignity, of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history ...
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that true worshippers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.

So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ - the life of the world.

Have churches in Australia "got over "christendom?

2011-12-18T14:36:00.002+11:00

You would not want to conduct a prosecution on the basis of media reports, even if the report did appear in such a sober paper as The Canberra Times. Well more sober than say, The Daily Telegraph, or The Herald-Sun. However, the report on Christmas messages from church leaders, buried on P.9, of the December 17 edition, under the heading "Churches address contentious issues", rises some interesting questions of some theological significance about how churches place, or perhaps better, imagine themselves in addressing Australian society, in a time after Christendom.

My suggestion is that the church in Australia has not yet really "gotten over" Christendom and is still assuming a location in society that gives it a particular position of power and responsibility for sustaining the social order. The news report gets to the heart of the issue with the observation of one church leader that "... rather than legislating morality the Church could help to unite society" and is followed by the comment that ...the gift of the Church is ... being the voice of Christ, especially to those who feel alienated from or dispossessed of the gifts that this nation has.

The comment about the Church "uniting society" betrays a lingering Christendom mentality in which the church and state are still linked together to uphold the social order, even if the church does not wish to proceed by way of legislation in achieving its goals. While it is one step away from the original Christendom arrangement, the next part of the statement assumes that there is still an important degree of linkage between church and state and that the church will play a "conserving" role in society as a chaplain to support the social order as it is. The observation about the Church being the voice of Christ "to" the alienated, assumes that the Church is in a position of power and can speak from that position "to" those who are on the margins as an upholder of social order and a source of "values", a term that usually remains curiously undefined. Everyone is in favour of "values", aren't they?

Unfortunately, the church leaders who were responsible for producing these statements have not, in my view anyway, being paying enough attention to the readings for the third Sunday in Advent. These readings are particularly unsettling to any presumption that the God that the prophets of Israel presumed to speak for can be easily corralled into support of asocial and economic order in which it is business as usual. If God is in favour of "values" then they are very specific and disturbing values, not likely to be enthusiastically embraced by those entrenched in positions of authority. and power.

The readings from Luke and Isaiah caste into severe doubt the presumption that God is interested in upholding the social order as it is. Indeed they suggest that those who wish to align themselves with God's activity will be unlikely to be found acting as chaplains to a society devoted to consumerism in its early twenty-first century manifestations.

Take the reading from the prophet Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the LORD has blessed. I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. (Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11)

That doesn't sound a lot like a recipe for maintaining the social order and business as usual to me, while the declaration by Mary, recorded in Luke's Gospel is positively rabble rousing in its political and social implications:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1: 46b-55)

Yes I know these passages are read in the churches, but the problem is that they are read by the those of us who are in positions of relative social and political power, and economic and social comfort. We carry the assumptions a hangover from Christendom about the social location of the church and its responsibility for maintaing social order. As a consequence we remain largely oblivious to the way that our location in the comfort of middle class Australia obscures the radical and disturbing call of the passages.

The voice of the churches in Australia will only start to take on the disturbing character of the prophets and Mary in addressing the world around us when they can begin to imagine themselves as being "other" than the chaplain to the state, and without the perceived responsibility for maintaining the social order and thereby supporting business as usual. When the churches can recover their identity as witnesses to the upside-down disturbing kingdom that Jesus came to announce and inaugurate, then they might begin to speak not "to", or even "for" those who are on the margins, but "from" the margins, as a community that has begun to practice justice, and depends for its life upon the faithfulness of a merciful, remembering God, not the support of the state and alignment with the "powers that be".

Good and Bad Religion

2011-12-16T16:36:00.001+11:00

The following review originally appeared in St Mark's Review , No.217, August 2011 (3).

But what is religion?

Peter Vardy, Good& Bad Religion, SCM Press, London, 2010, paperback, 179 pages,ISBN978-0-334-04349-2, RRP $29.95

The necessary connection between religion and violence hasbecome a familiar trope in both media commentary and the public polemics of the“new” atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Peter Vardy,Vice-Principal of Heythrop College in the University of London, has written, Good & Bad Religion to redirect thedebate from being a purely defensive reaction on the part of religious peopleand as an attempt to find common ground between believers and atheists.

Good & BadReligion is a brief, paperback, relatively accessible in style, targeted ata thoughtful, but non-academic audience. In a non-defensive even-temperedmanner Vardy has sought to place the argument about “religion” and thecontemporary critique of its dangers, and indeed its inhumanity, more clearlywithin the history of western philosophical and theological thought than hasoften been the case in the debate to date.

The organization of the book is simple. Vardy develops hisargument in two distinct parts and at the end of each part he provides a clearsummary of the argument that he has developed and the conclusions that hedraws.

In Part One,entitled The Challenge, Vardysketches the critique of religion provided by contemporary atheists. Religion can be bad, Vardy concedes to theatheists, but supporters of “good” religion should be at one with them inresisting “bad” religion. It may be, Vardy asserts, that … in today’s world there is a more important distinction between atheistand theist, namely that between those who pursue bad religion and those whostand for truth and what is right, whether it be within, or without a religiousframework (p14).

Vardy then takes us through a discussion of the nature oftruth and the good in the major philosophical traditions as an aid to assessingwhat “good” and “bad” religion are. The author concludes with an account ofAristotle’s approach to the nature of human flourishing which he argues is themost helpful way of distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion.

Aristotelian philosophy, Vardy contends … offers a partial solution to the problem of devising standardsagainst which to judge religion and religious practices. … the natural lawapproach is compatible with the major world religions and indeed has been usedby them in the past to extend and enrich their philosophies of religion …Further the approach may be acceptable to atheist philosophers as well. …most normative philosophical systems rely ondefining good and bad in relation to what it means to be a fulfilled humanbeing.(p.67)

In Part 2: A WayForward Vardy covers a range of issues that arise in the assessment of whatis ‘good’ and ‘bad religion’, starting with questions of authority and textualinterpretation, and then moving on to the topics of science and religion,justice, equality and freedom. From the discussion in each of these chaptersVardy provides us in The Conclusion witha summary based on an Aristotelian, natural law framework, of six broadconclusions, and 26 more detailed criteria that we can use to distinguish‘good’ from ‘bad’ religion.

Given the natural law basis of his argument, the conclusionsthat Vardy draws are coherent, admirable and largely predictable. The majorproblem that I have with the structure and argument that he develops lies notin his analysis but in the underlying assumptions about the character ofreligion that are touched on briefly in the first chapter but are notsystematically developed.

The brief references to religion that he provides do not addup to a consistent, or coherent account. Vardy starts out promisingly by notingthat religion is the cord of ideas, beliefs and practices that hold communitiestogether and that it is not a consistent monolithic phenomenon. However, hethen goes on to affirm that religion can be used in damaging ways, but that itis important to the human psyche and cannot be eliminated, thus moving towardsan essentialist and non-historical account of religion.

The working assumption that I draw from Vardy’s referencesto religion, seems to be that we all know what religion is, and that it can betreated as a timeless generic category that can be evaluated in its specificmanifestations as either ‘good’ or “’bad’.

The problem with such a generic account of religion becomesclear when Vardy refers to the early Christians as having taken a stand against“bad or debased religion”. This really will not do. The early Christiansaffirmed that they were followers of Jesus whom they affirmed as “Lord”, a termin with both political and the religious connotations and implications. What theytook a stand against was not “bad” religion, but the specific politicalreligion of the Roman Empire, because Roman officials sought a commitment tothe Emperor that would overrode their primary and basic loyalty to Christ.

I would argue against overall thrust of Vardy’s project todistinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion, that people are not committed to‘religion’ in general. People are committed to living lives from withinspecific traditions, traditions that embody differing accounts of the world,and differing accounts of what it is to be human and how one shouldappropriately live and shape one’s life.

As William Cavanaugh argues in The Myth of Religious Violence, religion has a history … and what counts as a religion and whatdoes not in any given context depends up different configurations of power andauthority … the attempt to say that there is a transhistorical andtranscultural concept of religion that is separable from secular phenomena, isitself part of a particular configuration of power, that of the modern secularstate as it developed in the West. Inthis context religion is constructed as transhistorical, transcultural,essentially interior, and essentially distinct from public secular rationality.(p59)

Vardy’s apologetic is overall an eirenic and thoughtfulresponse to the new atheists. He seems to share with them an account ofreligion as a transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. If we do not accepthis account of religion, the task before Christians and members of other faithtraditions and communities is to interrogate the history of our own traditions,their specific beliefs and practices, both for their implication in encouragingviolence at the individual, family and communal levels, and for their resourcesfor witnessing to, and embodying shalom. This seems to me to be a morepromising, though more difficult project than the one that Vardy hasundertaken.

Marriage and the state

2011-12-04T19:51:00.001+11:00

Theses for debate:

That the state has no business passing acts to do with marriage. It's only interest should be in the question of people's relationships in so far as it relates to ensuring justice and good order in the handling of matters to do with property and those who are vulnerable, such as children.
that the issue of "marriage' and who is "married"and can or cannot be married with reference to that community is a matter for the communities with which people identify or to which they are committed.
That the entire debate in which we are involved in Australia is profoundly shaped by the legacy of Christendom and the shaping of common understandings of "marriage" informed by the use by the Christian church of the state to legislate the view of an established church across the community at the expense of dissenting community.

A subversive practice of "kingship"

2011-11-20T13:48:00.001+11:00

This is the Sunday in the liturgical calendar of the Christian Church which is celebrated as the Feast of Christ the King. This carries with it much of the odor of Christendom and the terrible things that were undertaken under the alliance of the church and the empire. what I would want to argue is that if we dig down below our cultural memories and associations we find in the original account of Jesus' kingship a deconstruction of such associations and a subversion of our commonly held accounts of power.

Let me start with the Revelationof John chapter 1: 4-8 From John to theseven churches of Asia: grace and peace from him who is, who was and who is tocome, from the seven spirits in his presence before his throne and from JesusChrist the faithful witness, the first born from the dead, the ruler of thekings of the earth. He loves us and has washed awayour sins with his blood and made us and Father; to him then be glory and powerfor ever and ever. Amen. It is he who is coming on the clouds; everyone will seehim, even those who pierced him and all the races of the earth will mourn over him.this is the truth. Amen, ‘I am the Alpha and Omega’ says the Lord God who is,who was and who is to come, the Almighty. (JerusalemBible)

The key phrase around which the rule of Jesus revolves is that which describeshim as the faithful witness and from that faithfulness his power and rule flows.He is the first born from the dead, the ruler of the Kings of the earth.Faithful in suffering a highly political death that was a scandal to all thereligiously respectable. A death loaded with political and religious meaning.This is the paradox at the heart of our faith which we keep wanting to obscure, if not deny.

It is out of this faithfulness in dying a death whichleft Jesus identified with those who rebelled against Rome, with allthose who were outcasts and marginal that Jesus is affirmed by God to be rulerof the kings of the earth.

The stunning force of this claim needs to beregistered if we are to seriously consider our own commitment as Christians.There is so much which seems at first to stand against it. To glance at thenewspaper headlines or the lead stories on television is to be bombarded withevidence that whoever or whatever is in control it sure isn’t God. Perhaps Johnis suggesting that is not what God is about - God’s claims are overarching butperhaps her preferred mode of working is not by control.

Indeed the claim of death as the power whichrules our age seems to confront us once we stop and ask the question. The newspaperheadlines may be part of our problem because they already assume who the rulersof this world are and are shaped by the visions they claim to merely report on.that what is done by the powerful is all that is important and defines what is importantfor our life. That it is in the spectacular, the momentary that the measure ofsuccess is to be found.

Perhaps we don’t see the signs of God’s activityand rule because we are looking for the wrong thing, we are looking in the wrongplaces, we have the wrong assumptions about how God’s power and rule are to beidentified. To change our sight our vision our expectations about the kind ofkingdom or commonwealth Jesus was talking is going to be necessary before theevidence of God’s activity will become apparent - in a word we need to see with the eyes of faith.

What was the result of Jesus’ faithfulness? Accordingto John the visionary it was that we might become kings and priests to serve God- his rule is so that we might become rulers - it is an empowering kingship. Isthis empowering activity evident in our life together?

If we go back to the gospels and the gospel readingwhich we have not got to yet, the power of Jesus, the rule of Jesus is power thatdisturbs the status quo, offends the respectable, challenges the certainties ofthose who have God worked out and boxed within their system - preaches goodnews to the poor, heals the sick, eats with the unclean, touches the lepers,the AIDS victims of his day, announces the year of jubilee - a time of economicredistribution -the renewal; of God’s commonwealth Where do wesee these signs? The Gospel passage John 18:33-37 focuses ourattention on the nature of Jesus kingship.

So Pilate went back into the praetorium andcalled Jesus to him. ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Jesus replied ‘Do you ask thisof your own accord or have others spoken to you about me?’ Pilate answered ‘AmI a Jew? It is your own people and the chief priests who have handed you overto me; what have you done?’ Jesus replied “My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdomwere of this world my men would have fought to prevent my being surrendered tothe Jews. But my kingdom is not of this kind.’ “So you are a king then? saidPilate ‘It is you who say it’ said Jesus “Yes I am a king. I was born for this.I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth and all who are onthe side of truth listen to my voice.’

If we come to this passage with the assumptionalong with those who take a narrow spiritual view that Jesus kingship hasnothing to do with politics then we will miss the point of what Jesus has tosay. Pilate it seems with his Imperial pragmatic and realistic view of politicsmissed it too. Jesus denies that what he is offering is a kingship of thetraditional kind. Human beings, and Pilate will serve to stand in for all of ushere, find it hard to imagine kingship except in terms of violence and force.

Jesus accepts the title of king but it is notof the kind that is established by violence. But it is a kingdom for all that –a kingdom rich in politics, economics,social relationships and strong in its affirmation of the earth and ourmaterial existence. It is not ethereal, vague, individual lie mystical and feelgood in your own way sort of entity. It is a kingdom which is exercised in our practiceof truth and faithfulness in relations not in force or emotional violence. Itis tough and uncompromising - the practice of truth as demonstrated by Gandhi or Martin LutherKing, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, or Jean Vanier.

Holiness and Justice

2011-11-19T14:48:00.001+11:00

Giles Fraser, former Dean of St Paul's in a recent column in The Guardian puts his finger on a critical issue concerning the relationship between holiness and justice that was provoked by visit to Bethlehem.

"This is the place where Jesus Christ was born," whispers a guide in an affected and well practised baritone. Bells jingle and incense fills the church. And thousands queue up for the experience with hushed reverence. Buses from plush Jerusalem hotels make their way through the Israeli checkpoint and disgorge their passengers just a few paces from the narrow entrance to this most holy of Christian shrines.

Crusaders lowered the once grand entrance so as to stop pilgrims entering the church on horseback. Nothing so profane as a horse, and its inevitable waste products, must go anywhere near so sacred a place. Leviticus 10.10 puts it thus: "You are to put a difference between the holy and the unholy, between the clean and the unclean." In other words, the church must be protected from the world.

Sitting on the far side of Manger Square, I find myself getting more and more angry with this deeply rooted understanding of holiness. Bethlehem is a place of such vast injustice and social deprivation. The Israeli separation barrier has severed the whole town from its traditional sources of social and economic vitality. Farmers can no longer reach their olive trees. Families who live just a few miles apart can no longer visit each other. Graffiti on the vast concrete wall offers a slender message of hope: "Nothing lasts for ever."

But it seems that for many of the pilgrims to Bethlehem, this complex political reality is something to be passed by on the other side. They have come to find a sacred space that is as protected from politics as the holy is from the unholy. Yet there is a terrible irony in all this. For the birth of Jesus Christ, in a smelly cow shed, and threatened by the forces of occupation, represents a wholesale rejection of precisely this idea of holiness. God is no longer to be set in some pristine otherness. The sacred is no longer to be protected from the profane. Which is why Jesus makes such an ostentatious show of fraternising with those who were traditionally debarred from holy space – the lame and blind, sinners, lepers, menstruating women.

In the life of Jesus, holiness is redefined as justice. Like the prophets before him, he is at best indifferent and at worst downright hostile to traditional forms of protection against defilement – washing, ringfencing the Sabbath from work, and so on. The task of religious professionals is not to keep God clean, as one might defend a brand new exercise book from inky fingers. "I have come to give good news to the poor, freedom to the captive, sight to the blind." Occupy St Paul's: no church should insulate itself from human raw need

Foolishness, yes but not what Paul had in mind

2011-11-16T17:23:00.001+11:00

Cardinal Pell has ventured out on the issue of climate change and has managed to demonstrate a level of foolishness on the issue that is a bit hard to credit someone who by reputation has a capable intellect.

I know Paul the Apostle referred to the Good News as "foolishness to the Greeks" but he was speaking about a message that was turning the world upside down with a message that was about turning the world upside down, in its critique of the social order, not trying to support "the powers that be, in the case the fossil fuel industries, to keep their hold on power.

The article the Cardinal Pell appeared under the title Can our Babel Succeed? Questioning the Moral Dimension of Climate Change

It has provoked several detailed critiques:
Tim Stephens argued that the Cardinal's scepticism was scientifically and theologically indefensible. In addition to canvassing some of the issues on the evidence Stephens noted that he seemed to be out of step with recent Popes theologically speaking (Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI) ... that God entrusted the planet to us and gave us responsibility to care for creation, and that we will face the consequences of not doing so.
John Cook of Skeptical Science advised Cardinal Pell to practice what he preaches and engage with the evidence when he enters the public debate. Joh provided a very clear account of the key scientific issues that were at stake.

Detailed point by point account of factual errors by Tim Holmes and Robin Webster from Carbon Brief "Cardinal Pell lecture peddles misrepresentations of climate science".

Theologically the good Cardinal is well behind the pace on this. Professor Michael Northcott, Professor of Christian Ethics at Edinburgh University has already written extensively on this issue, and was interviewed on Encounter on the issue earlier this year.

What is religion, really?

2011-11-14T21:12:00.001+11:00

I have been sound off about the issue of'generic religion' in some recent blogs. Here is a review of a recent book that takesup the same theme. This is a revised, extended and slightly more conversational version of a review thatoriginally appeared in St Mark’s Review(No.217, August 2011). Word limits left the published version somewhat elliptical in style.

Let me start by pointing to the connection between religion and violence thathas become a familiar theme in both media commentary and the public polemics ofthe “new” atheists. PeterVardy, Vice-Principal of Heythrop College in the University of London, haswritten, Good & Bad Religion totry and redirect the whole debate. He wants to get away from the sort of purelydefensive reaction on the part of religious people that he believes, quite rightly I think, is neither helpful, norinteresting. Instead he embarks on an attempt to establish that there is somecommon ground between believers and atheists.

The outcome of this worthy enterprise is Good & Bad Religion, (SCM Press,2010) a brief paperback, relatively accessible in style and targeted at athoughtful, but non-academic audience. Hopefully this sort of audience stillexists. In a relatively non-defensive and consistently even-tempered mannerVardy moves to place the entire public polemics about “religion” and thecontemporary warnings and assumptions of its dangers, and indeed its deep andconsistent inhumanity, more clearly within the history of western philosophicaland theological thought than has been the case in much of the debate to date.

While this is a helpful step in placing the debate into a wider context, I want to note that Terry Eagleton’s interventions on this issueby comparison have sought to remind us of the taken for granted politicalbackground to the contemporary emergence of this debate.

Vardy develops his argument in two distinctparts and at the end of each section, he provides a clear summary of the argument thathe has developed and the conclusions that he draws.

InPart One, entitled The Challenge, Vardysketches the critique of 'religion' provided by contemporary atheists. Religion can be bad, Vardy concedes to theatheists, but supporters of “good” religion should be at one with them inresisting “bad” religion. It may be, Vardy asserts, that … in today’s world there is a more important distinction between atheistand theist, namely that between those who pursue bad religion and those who standfor truth and what is right, whether it be within, or without a religiousframework (p14).

Vardy then takes us through a discussion ofthe nature of the truth and the good in the major philosophical traditions asan aid to assessing what “good” and “bad” religion are, He concludes with anaccount of Aristotle’s approach to the nature of human flourishing which heargues is the most helpful way of distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion. This is aninteresting philosophical move, given the role that engagement with Aristotl,eplayed in the early development of Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of modernityand the fact that he moved on to recover the thought of Thomas Aquinas becauseof Aristotle’s inadequacies in the restatement of a natural law approach toethics.

Aristotelian philosophy, Vardy contends … offers a partial solution to the problemof devising standards against which to judge religion and religious practices.… the natural law approach is compatible with the major world religions andindeed has been used by them in the past to extend and enrich theirphilosophies of religion … Further the approach may be acceptable to atheistphilosophers as well. …most normativephilosophical systems rely on defining good and bad in relation to what itmeans to be a fulfilled human being.(67)

In Part2: A Way Forward Vardy covers a range of issues that arise in any attemptto undertake an assessment of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad religion’, starting withquestions of authority and textual interpretation, and then moving on to thetopics of science and religion, justice, equality and freedom. From thediscussion in each of these chapters Vardy provides us in The Conclusion with a summary based on an Aristotelian, natural lawframework, of six broad conclusions, and 26 more detailed criteria that we canuse to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ religion.

Given the natural law basis of his argument,the conclusions that Vardy draws are coherent, admirable in their intent and largelypredictable. The major problem that I have with the structure and argument thathe develops lies not in his analysis, or his conclusions, but back in the underlying assumptionsabout the character of religion that were touched on briefly in the firstchapter but not systematically developed, either then, or later.

The brief references to 'religion' that heprovides in the early part of the book do not add up to a consistent, orcoherent account of what religion is. Vardy starts out the discussion in a promising vein by notingthat religion is the cord of ideas, beliefs and practices that hold communitiestogether and that it is not a consistent monolithic phenomenon. However, hethen goes on to affirm that religion can be used in damaging ways, but that itis important to the human psyche and cannot be eliminated. In taking the argument in this direction he is moving inexorably towardsan essentialist and non-historical account of religion. Religion becomes a generic category into which particular faiths or traditions can be shoehorned (or not).

This is followed by the observation thatreligion has often been taken over for political purposes. A key questionarises here. If religion is as he acknowledges, the cord that holds communitiestogether, how could religion not be political in character, and can we thendistinguish in any meaningful way between religion and politics? Augustine inhis critique of Rome seems to have found himself up to his neck in politicaltheology when discussing “religious” issues. This phenomenon has reappeared min modern guise in the form of civil religions, of which the cult of Anzac Day has emerged in Australia as a recent local variant.

The working assumption that I draw fromVardy’s references to ‘religion’ seems to be that we all know what religion is,and that it can therefore be treated as a timeless generic category that can beevaluated in its specific manifestations as either ‘good’ or “’bad’. Who indeedwould be in favour of “bad” “religion”?

The problem with a generic account ofreligion becomes clear when Vardy refers to the early Christians as havingtaken a stand against “bad or debased religion”. This really will not do. Theearly Christians affirmed that they were followers of Jesus whom they affirmedas “Lord”, a term in with both political and the religious connotations andimplications. What they took a stand against was not “bad” religion, the Romanscalled them “atheists”, but the specific political religion of the RomanEmpire. Roman officials sought a commitment to the Emperor that wouldoverrode their primary and basic loyalty to Christ. That after all is the wholepoint of the book of Revelation.

I would, therefore, argue against overall thrust ofVardy’s project to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion, that peopleare not committed to ‘religion’ in general. People are committed rather to livinglives from within specific traditions, traditions that embody differingaccounts of the world, and differing accounts of what it is to be human and howone should appropriately live and shape one’s life in that. Indeed they may have very differing understandings of what the "world" is.

As my friend William Cavanaugh argues inhis important work, The Myth ofReligious Violence, religion has a history … and what counts as a religion and what does not in any given contextdepends up different configurations of power and authority … the attempt to saythat there is a transhistorical and transcultural concept of religion that isseparable from secular phenomena, is itself part of a particular configurationof power, that of the modern secular state as it developed in the West. In this context religion is constructed astranshistorical, transcultural, essentially interior, and essentially distinctfrom public secular rationality. (59)

Entirely in its favour is that, in an era of loud shouting, and rhetorically excessive, and factually limited ambit claims passing as argument from protagonists on both sides of the debate, Vardy’s apologetic is overallan eirenic, even tempered and thoughtful response to the new atheists thattries to reframe some of the terms of the debate. He seems willing to sharewith them an account of religion as a transhistorical and trans-culturalphenomenon and hopes that something can be built on that common ground.

If, however, we do not accept Vardy's implicit accountof religion as generic, as I do not, the task before Christians and members of other faithtraditions and communities will take us down a different path from the one thathe maps out in this book. Our task will be to interrogate the history of ourown traditions, their specific beliefs and practices, both for theirimplication in encouraging violence at the individual, family and communallevels, and for their resources for witnessing to, and embodying shalom. Thisseems to me to be a more promising, and interesting, though more difficult project than the onethat Vardy has undertaken and one that will require churches as communitiescommitted to peacemaking to get involved.

Rediscovering the "Jesus Movement" Revolution

2011-11-13T12:38:00.001+11:00

I cannot recall during my lifetime a public debate aroundissues of belief and “religion” anything quite like that sparked by RichardDawkins, Christopher Hitchens and their fellow travellers, commonly referred tounder the collective title of the “new atheists”.

Before going toconsider the significance of that debate we should take note in passing thereminder by David Bentley Hart that “religion” as the term is used genericallydoes not actually exist. There are, Hart reminds us …a very great number of traditions of belief and practice that, for thesake of convenience we call "religions", but that could scarcelydiffer from one another more. Perhaps it might seem sufficient, for thepurposes of research, simply to identify general resemblances among thesetraditions: but even that is notoriously hard to do, since every effort toascertain what sort of things one is looking at involves an enormous amount ofinterpretation, and no clear criteria for evaluating any of it. One cannotestablish where the boundaries lie between "religious" systems andmagic, or "folk science", or myth, or social ceremony.

There is not any compelling reason to assume a genetic continuity orkinship between, say, shamanistic beliefs and developed rituals of sacrifice,or between tribal cults, and traditions like Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity,or to assume that these various developed traditions are varieties of the samething. One may feel that there is a continuity or kinship, or presuppose on thebasis of one's prejudices, inklings or tastes that the extremely variable andimprecise characteristic of "a belief in the supernatural"constitutes proof of a common ancestry or type; but all of this remains amatter of interpretation, vague morphologies, and personal judgments of valueand meaning, and attempting to construct a science around such intuitions canamount to little more than mistaking "all the things I don't believein" for a scientific genus. One cannot even demonstrate that apparentsimilarities of behavior between cultures manifest similar rationales, as humanconsciousness is so promiscuously volatile a catalyst in social evolution. ...

… the task of delineating the "phenomenon" of religion in theabstract becomes perfectly hopeless as soon as one begins to examine whatparticular traditions of faith actually claim, believe, or do. … what sort ofthing is the Buddhist teaching of the Four Noble Truths? What sort of thing isthe Vedantic doctrine that Atman and Brahman are one? What sort of thing is theChristian belief in Easter"? What is the core and what are the borders ofthis "phenomenon"? What are its empirical causes? What are itsrationales? Grand empty abstractions about religion are as easy to produce asto ignore. These by contrast are questions that touch on what persons actuallybelieve; and to answer them requires an endless hermeneutic labor - aninvestigation of history, and intellectual traditions and contemplative lore... (192-193) In the Aftermath: Provocationsand Laments (Eerdmans, 2009).

After that significant and provocative diversion, let me toreturn to the “new atheists”. It is, I would suggest, not coincidental that thisdebate seems to be having its biggest impact in societies, like Australia, societiesthat are moving through the transition from a Christendom settlement, into atime that perhaps might best be labelled, if provisionally, post-Christendom.Their argument is driven at least in part by a reaction against a memory of theclose connection of church and state, and the violence and terrible compromisesthat resulted from that connection.

The very public polemics of theses “new atheists’ haveproduced a range of responses, some of which offer entertaining andinvigorating reading, and vigorous intellectual argument, in about equalproportions.

A highly significant contribution has come from Terry Eagleton with his rambunctious Terry lectures, Reason Faith and Revolution: Reflections on theGod Debate (Yale University Press, 2009), a guaranteed page turner, with a take no prisoners edge toits aggressive, intellectual Irish night at the pub rhetoric. Possibly moresubstantial in the detail of its argument is the work by David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolutionand its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2009), whichoffers by contrast to Eagleton a rather more grace-full andelegantly written historically informed demolition of many of the assertionsmade by Hitchens and Dawkins about the ills arising from Christianity’s impacton the world during the past two thousand years.

I won’t be attempting a comprehensive or comparative reviewof both books. Rather I want to unpack one particular and profoundly importanttheme that is central to the case that both authors want to make. In identifying this point of common concern Iwas helped to focus on it by Shane Claiborne’s account of his experiments inpracticing the Christian faith under the title The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an ordinary radical that Iwas reading around the same time as Eagleton and Hart.

Having taken the risk of rhetorical overkill in the title ofhis book, it transpires that Claiborne has strong support for his assertion ofthe revolutionary character of the Christian movement from both Eagleton andHart.

Before proceeding to outline their respective accountsof the Christian revolution and its moral and political significance, I want todraw attention to one other strongly shared judgment by Bentley and Eagleton,in their response to the current wave of atheist critics of Christianity. Theyhave in common the conviction that the quality of atheist criticism ofChristianity has sadly declined from days of yore, or at least the time ofNietzsche. The current crop of critics are, in their view, embarrassingly illinformed, if not down right incompetent, in the case they make against“religion” in general, and Christianity in particular.

Eagleton in taking this stance, I need to emphasis, is notwriting from inside the Christian movement, though we was exposed to it through Irish Catholicism when growing up andengaged with liberation theologians during his university years. What Christiandoctrine teaches about the universe and the fate of man may, he admits, not betrue, or even plausible. The issue of truth he says is not the questionimmediately at hand. The matter at handfor him is one of the ethics of controversy, how the argument is advanced. Thecase against critics such as Dawkins and Hitchens, referred to by Eagletoncollectively as “Ditchkins”, is that they have failed morally andintellectually in the way they have prosecuted their case. … Critics of the most enduring form of popularculture in human history have a moral obligation to confront that case at itsmost persuasive, rather than grabbing themselves a victory on the cheap bysavaging it as so much garbage and gobbledygook.

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/04/28/terry_eagleton/.

Eagleton it must be acknowledged has had Dawkins inhis sights for some time, as his review of the God Delusion in the October 2006 issue of the London Review of Books makes perfectly clear. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching. The Terrylectures evidently gave him the excuse and the space that he was looking for tomake his case out at greater length.

Hart strikes a similar note in his judgement of the currentcrop of atheist polemics: I can honestlysay that there are many forms of atheism that I find far more admirable thanmany forms of Christianity or of religion in general. But atheism that consistsentirely in vacuous arguments afloat on oceans of historical ignorance, madeturbulent by storms of strident self-righteousness, is as contemptible as anyother form of dreary fundamentalism. (4) Hart too has had his eye on the“new atheists” for some time. His review of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a NaturalPhenomenon entitled “On the Trail of the Snark with Daniel Dennett”displays the same characteristics of articulate prose and intellectuallysubstantial critique.

But having digressed again, the temptation to quote andquote again from both Hart and Eagleton on the inadequacies of the “newatheists argument, is almost totally irresistible, so clear, forceful andentertaining is their prose, I must delay no longer in addressing the puzzle ofwhy it is that the Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton and the Orthodoxtheologian David Bentley Hart have arrived at a point, if not of furiousagreement, then have moved intoreasonable proximity around a judgement about the revolutionary character ofthe Christian movement, and its impact on the way we in modernity, (or is itpost-modernity?), still engage with the world.

Eagleton moves very early in his lectures to make hiscase against the new atheists on the grounds of Christianity’s revolutionarycharacter. His line of argument is of particular interest because it does notrest on letting Christianity in its actually existing manifestations throughouthistory off for its failures. The case he wishes to make does not provide anapologetic for the failures of the Christian church. Eagleton after all beginsthe first paragraph of his book with the observation that, Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs. For the most part,it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, andoppressive ideology. (xi)

In a fascinating on-line review in SalonAndrew O'Hehrir observes of Eagleton’s opening gambit: That's quite a start, especially when youconsider that the point of Eagleton's "Reason, Faith, and Revolution:Reflections on the God Debate" … is to defend the theory and practice ofreligion against its most ardent contemporary critics. ... http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/04/28/terry_eagleton/

While it is, as O’Hehir observes, quite a start,Eagleton is only warming up. In Chapter 2 “The Revolution betrayed” he observesthat Far from refusing to conformto the powers of this world, Christianity has become the nauseating cant oflying politicians, corrupt bankers and fanatical neocons, as well as animmensely profitable industry in its own right . . . The Christian Church hastortured and disembowelled in the name of Jesus, gagging dissent and burningits critics alive. It has been oily, sanctimonious, brutally oppressive and vilelybigoted. (56) http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6293043.ece

Despite the record of betrayal, a record that Eagleton acknowledgeshas been matched in actually existing Communism, he proceeds to suggest thatatheism of a certain character, and politically engaged Christian orthodoxythat takes the call of Jesus seriously might not be that far apart. After allChristians in the Roman empire were regarded as atheists.

According to Paul Vallely in his review of Reason, Faith and Revolution in The Independent Eagleton is clear thatthe … history of religion is "asqualid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressiveideology." Just as communism has misunderstood Marx, he argues, so theChurch has betrayed Christ by backing an establishment of warmongeringpoliticians, corrupt bankers, and exploitative capitalists for centuries. TheJesus of the gospels, he insists, was as radical a revolutionary who took theside of "the scum of the earth". The love he offered was astransformative as true socialism. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/reason-faith-and-revolution-by-terry-eagletonbr-the-case-for-god-by-karen-armstrong-1749432.html

Andrew O'Hehir points us in the same direction when heobserves later in his review, You canalmost hear the steel chairs creaking as the last secular liberals rise todepart when Eagleton declares where his true disagreement with Richard Dawkinslies, which does not directly concern the existence of God or the role ofscience. "The difference between Ditchkins and radicals like myself,"he writes, "hinges on whether it is true that the ultimate signifier ofthe human condition is the tortured and murdered body of a political criminal,and what the implications of this are for living."

What Eagleton is saying here is that in the crucifixionof Jesus we have an ultimate account of what it is to be human, and that thisis where the revolutionary character of the Christian movement is grounded.

In hisreview of Hart, Stefan Beck argues that

. . . [Nietzsche] hadthe good manners to despise Christianity, in large part, for what it actuallywas--above all, for its devotion to an ethics of compassion--rather than allowhimself the soothing, self-righteous fantasy that Christianity’s history hadbeen nothing but an interminable pageant of violence, tyranny, and sexualneurosis. He may have hated many Christians for their hypocrisy, but he hatedChristianity itself principally on account of its enfeebling solicitude for theweak, the outcast, the infirm, and the diseased; and, because he was consciousof the historical contingency of all cultural values, he never deluded himselfthat humanity could do away with Christian faith while simply retainingChristian morality in some diluted form, such as liberal social conscience orinnate human sympathy." (Liberation theology” in The New Criterion)

Hart makes a similar case toEagleton for the significance of the crucifixion of Jesus, though he makes thecase from inside the Christian movement and argues at some historical depth ofthe extent to which Christianity has changed the way we understand what it isto be human. This practice of humanity in Hart’s view has profound moralimplications that have gradually worked themselves into the way we understandthe world and its sufferings.

Hart argues that, [W]e shall never really be able to see Christ’sbroken, humiliated, and doomed humanity as something self-evidently contemptibleand ridiculous; we are instead, in a very real sense, destined to see itas encompassing the very mystery of our own humanity… . Obviously, of course,many of us are capable of looking upon the sufferings of others withindifference or even contempt. But what I mean to say is that even the worst ofus, raised in the shadow of Christendom, lacks the ability to ignore thosesufferings without prior violence to his or her own conscience. We have lostthe capacity for innocent callousness.

To follow through Hart’s account as to thedepth and significance of the Christian revolution for our understanding ofwhat it is to be human would require a substantial essay in its own right. Ineed to emphasis that what Hart offers is no easy apologetic to justify or todismiss the profound failings of the Christian church. The changes that its hasbrought have only worked there way through our institutions and culturegradually and over a long period of time. Nevertheless he wants to insist thechanges are real and profound, they are an interruption, the full significanceof which it is hard for us to understand for those of us who now stand on theother side of that interruption. Eagleton provides a helpful account of whysuch interruptions are significant with reference to the work of the Frenchphilosopher Alan Badiou (see pages 117-119 of Reason Faith and Revolution)

In the first few centuries of Christian witnessthe gospel was regarded by the intellectuals of the time and those holdingpositions of power throughout the Roman empire, as an outrage. Christians wereenemies of society, impious, subversive and irrational. … for advancing the grotesque and shameful claim that all gods andspirits had been made subject o a crucified criminal from Galilee – one who hadduring his life consorted with peasants and harlots, lepers and lunatics. Thiswas far worse than mere irreverence, it was pure and misanthropic perversity;it was anarchy. (115)

Christianity did not preach a message ofliberation from the flesh. This crucified criminal in his death andresurrection, body and soul, was associated with a proclamation of the goodnessof creation, the transfiguration of the flesh and the glory of creation. Hartdevelops this account against a detailed rebuttal of accounts of a cheerfulpaganism but of a despondent society full of religious yearning in which thedominant spiritual movements sought an other worldly release. (144-5)

The Christian difference was found in theplacement of charity at the centre of the spiritual life. It raised the care ofwidows, orphans, the sick and the poor to the centre of the religious life. Inthe third century the bishop had substantial responsibilities for socialwelfare. His duties encompassed responsibility for the education of orphans,aid for poor widows and purchase of firewood and food for the destitute.According to Hart however this is only to touch the surface of the differencebetween Christianity and the older religions of the empire.

The story of Peter weeping at his betrayal ofJesus is for Hart one of those moments that displays the differenceChristianity has made. …in these textsand others like them we see something beginning to emerge from darkness intofull visiblity, arguably for the first time in our history : the human personas such invested with an intrinsic and inviolable dignity and possessed of aninfinite value. It would not even be implausible that our very ability to speakof “persons” as we do is a consequence of the revolution in moral sensibilitythat Christianity brought about. (167)

The form of God and the form of the humanperson according to Hart has been revealed …to them all at once, completely then and thenceforth always in the form of aslave. (182)

Theaccount Hart develops of the revolutionary character of Christianity connectsto his recognition of the power of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity and thesignificance of what it would mean to reject Christianity and its view of thehuman. In an article “Believe it nor Not”published in the theological journal FirstThings, (May 2010), Hart states that, Because he understood the nature of what had happened when Christianityentered history with the annunciation of the death of God on the cross, and theelevation of a Jewish peasant above all gods, Nietzsche understood also thatthe passing of Christian faith permits no return to pagan naivete, and he knewthat this monstrous inversion of values created within us a conscience that theolder order could never have incubated. He understood also that the death ofGod beyond us is the death of the human as such within us. If we are, afterall, nothing but the fortuitous effects of physical causes, then the will isbound to no rational measure but itself, and who can imagine what sort of worldwill spring up from so unprecedented and so vertiginously uncertain a vision ofreality?

… on the sheerstrangeness, and the significance, of the historical and cultural changes thatmade it possible in the first place for the death of a common man at the handsof a duly appointed legal authority to become the captivating center of anentire civilization’s moral and aesthetic contemplations—and for the deaths ofall common men and women perhaps to be invested thereby with a gravity that theancient order would never have accorded them.

One does not have tobelieve any of it, of course—the Christian story, its moral claims, itsmetaphysical systems, and so forth. But anyone who chooses to lament that eventshould also be willing, first, to see this image of the God-man, broken at thefoot of the cross, for what it is, in the full mystery of its historicalcontingency, spiritual pathos, and moral novelty: that tender agony of the soulthat finds the glory of God in the most abject and defeated of human forms.Only if one has succeeded in doing this can it be of any significance if onestill, then, elects to turn away.

Waging Nonviolence

2011-11-04T18:16:00.000+11:00

Some extracts from a recent sermon at Canberra Baptist, Waging nonviolencel by Thorwald Lorenzen, reminded me of how central to the heart of Jesus' call to discipleship, this practice is.The full sermon is available, in both audio and transcript at the above link on the Canberra Baptist website. The following extracts get to the heart of the matter:

... the grand narrative of our faith is unambiguous and clear: in a violent world, Jesus introduced a new way of being: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God!"

The early Christians followed Jesus in that. For the first three hundred years Christians refused military service and tried to live nonviolently. But then, in the 4^th century, when the church became interlocked with the Roman government, the church also became involved with war and violence.

While acknowledging the failure of the church we should, Thorwald argues, move to a way of being where nonviolence, rather than violence, is the default position. The Sermon on the Mount, and the Beatitudes do not call for a passive approach to engagement with the world.

A commitment to nonviolence in a violent world is not weakness but strength. It means marching out of step with the ways of the world. It invites us to swim against the stream. A commitment to nonviolence does not mean being passive or withdrawing from responsibility for life. Nonviolence must be pursued. It must be actively lived. It must be waged!

... On the basis of the resurrection of the Crucified One, we may therefore speak of nonviolence as God's way of being....On that basis we can affirm in a world of war and violence, that peacemakers are the children of God. We can confess in a world where political, economic and military power seems to dictate what is right and what is wrong, that ultimately the meek will inherit the earth.

How then can we live this new way of being?

May I remind you that we have already done so. With our faith in Christ and our baptism into his sphere of influence we have been born to a new way of living. We only need to remind each other what this new way of living is, otherwise we easily fall back into the old ways of violence.

Intentionally with our prayers, our words and our actions we can tune in to the new consciousness of letting Christ rule our lives. We shall then be kind with each other, we shall walk softly on the earth, and we shall seek new and nonviolent ways to deal with human conflicts.

We need to examine and unmask elements in our thinking about God and the church to see whether violence has crept into our language and thoughts. Whatever we think and do, it must be an echo to the central Christian confession that "God is love" and that God is the “God of Peace”.

We can encourage our churches and our government to contribute to the United Nations Millenium Development Goals. The reduction of poverty and injustice and the empowerment of the oppressed are more effective antidotes to terrorism than the ever turning spiral of violence.

There is no better way to end than to remember the words from the prophets Isaiah and Micah that are hewn into the United Nations Headquarters in New York:

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more."

Occupy, St Paul's and why the church needs a radical reformation

2011-11-01T22:06:00.000+11:00

Responding to the contortions of the Church of England, and the dominant media narrative that Occupy LSX is a "disaster" for the Church as a result of the troubles at St Paul's Cathedral, my good friend Simon Barrow, co-director of the Christian think-tank Ekklesia, has drawn attention to the theological and ecclesiological issues at stake. Simon observed that:

Actually, Occupy LSX has also presented an unprecedented (some would say God-given) opportunity for the established Church radically to reconsider its mission and message in a plural society. The church needs to seize the chance to move from failing attempts at top-down control based on historic patronage, towards dynamic engagement with those at the grassroots and on the margins of an unequal and uneasy social order.

The core Christian message is that, in Jesus Christ, God pitched a tent among human beings for the purposes of bringing about radical personal and social change based on love and justice. The 'vertical church' of Christendom, emblemized by the remote, patronising and hierarchical response of the St Paul's management to a flowering of creative protest, is no longer 'fit for purpose' in a post-Christendom situation.

By contrast, Occupy, with its energy and imagination, is modelling a different possibility for the church. The institutions of Christianity need to be remade from the edges inwards. They need to be turned inside out.

Which Religion? Whose Spirituality?

2011-10-31T21:47:00.001+11:00

Browsing through a questionnaire on social attitudes at the start of my long march through a PhD, I was brought up short by some questions that invited me to assess my religiousness and/or spirituality.

The problem is that I don't consider myself very religious, or very spiritual for that matter.

The difficulty is that both terms are used generically, without clear definition,as though we all knew what the essence of religion and spirituality respectively are. Unfortunately, for anyone wanting to use the terms this way, there is no such thing as a "religion" and no such thing as a "spirituality" without further qualification.

The question we need to ask, with appropriate apologies to Alasdair McIntyre, is "Which religion? Whose spirituality?"

As the question implies, both religion and spirituality at the very least, need some form of qualification before I could even begin to think about, contemplating giving any sort of an answer to the above question.

The issue of specifying which gods we are worshipping is important, because as Rowan Williams pointed out in his address Analysing Atheism, Unbelief and the World of Faiths, the early Christians were in a very significant and life-threatening sense not religious.

... to understand what atheism means, we need to know which gods are being rejected and why. Thus an early Christian was an atheist because he or she refused to be part of a complex system in which political and religious loyalties were inseparably bound up. 'Atheism' was a decision to place certain loyalties above those owed to the sacralised power of the state.

Simon Barrow in What difference Does God Make, makes clear, drawing on the work of Nicholas Lash, why "individual religiousness" is not really the point.

Before modernity, the term ‘gods’ was understood, correctly, as a relational one, designating whatever it was people worshipped – gave ultimate worth to. It resided in occurrences, activities and patterns of behaviour – not concepts. Explains Lash: “The word ‘god’ worked rather like the word ‘treasure’ still does. A treasure is what someone... highly values. And I can only find out what you value by asking you and by observing your behaviour… There is no class of object known as ‘treasures’… valuing is a relationship.”

However, with the dominance of instrumental reason, ‘gods’ became, correspondingly, things (objects, entities, individuals) of a certain kind, a ‘divine’ one. Analogously, the ‘home territory’ of God-understanding shifted from worship (the assignment of worth-ship) to description (the assignment of properties). It became a metaphysical enterprise rather than a matter of appropriate relationship. The difference is that the former has to make claims about essence or ‘being’ (of a person, a thing, or ‘god’) in order to find it meaningful. The latter does not, though it needs a good idea of what it speaks.

This double shift of meaning and affection fundamentally corrupted and disabled the modern comprehension of ‘God’ – because God is, logically and necessarily, beyond definition (delimiting) and categorisation. God is most definitely not a ‘thing’ belonging to a class of things called ‘gods’.[10] “Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists all have this, at least, in common: that none of them believe in gods”, says Lash. Therefore religions are best considered ‘schools’ in which people learn properly to relate to God precisely by not worshipping any thing – not the world nor any part, person, dream, event or memory of it.

Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, nationalism and even atheism offer specific, and in varying ways overlapping and competing schools, in what it is to be and live humanly in the world in which we find ourselves. Spirituality, like religion is never generic. And in the account of religion that I am arguing for the substantive difference between "religion" and "spirituality" begins to disappear, in so far as spirituality is expressed in differing, and non-generic ways of learning to live in relationship to the world.

The key difference is that "spirituality" is seen as differing from "religion" in being less tied to institutional structures and intellectual formulations. This outcome is what we might expect if the move in public identification from "religion" to "spirituality" is the result of the deconstruction of Christendom. This process has generally fallen under the label of secularization, a process which is notably been played out in the geographical areas of the world shaped by Christendom.

In the light of this development the sociology of religion needs to be reconsidered and perhaps de-constructed as being powerfully shaped imaginatively and historically by its relationship to Christendom and its underlying assumptions. Such an exercise might have the helpful result of relativising its explanatory usefulness for Christians thinking about mission and church growth strategies. The analysis offered by this discipline with its focus on the "decline of religion" and the "rise of spirituality" if used without appropriate caution could simply result in importing the problematics of Christendom back into our ecclesiology and practice of mission.

Note: an edited and slightly extended version of this is now available on Ethos: EA Centre for Christianity and Society blog.

What should we return (render) to Caesar?

2011-10-16T15:38:00.000+11:00

The gospel reading this week was Matthew 22: 15-22 on the much quoted, but much misrepresented passage on "rendering to Caesar". The comment by Jesus on paying imperial taxation "give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar - and to God what belongs to God" has been frequently used to underwrite a political quietist stance in which a line is drawn between political activity and "religion".

Well, this approach just won't wash for a number of reasons starting from the fact that the distinction between a private sphere of "religion" and a public sphere of politics would have been incomprehensible at the time. To read such a distinction back into the text is anachronistic. We need to read the incident within its historical context. As a Jew, speaking to Jews, Jesus would have been understood to have been reminding his interlocutors of the prior and total claim of God over their lives. The books of Moses and the Prophets, whose authority he held in common with his interlocutors, were devoted to spelling this profound claim out in redundant detail covering the whole of life, from agriculture to food to economics in an arc whose trajectory pushed increasingly to emphasise the central character of the claims of justice and and mercy in walking humbly before God.

So what is going on here?

James Scott in Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts I think helps us get a handle on at least part of what is happening with his study of conflicts between the powerful and the oppressed, and his account of the difference between the onstage, public, and the off-stage roles and the differing accounts offered by both groups. What makes this passage so rare and so interesting is that Matthew offers us in the story an account of what the powerful, though still subordinate groups (remembering that the Romans are in overall charge), the Herodians and the Pharisees are saying off-stage as opposed to their on-stage performance.

In this on-stage moment, they offer Jesus an opportunity to say in public what they suspect he might be saying as a member of the discontented oppressed class off-stage. What his reply offers is an account of a politics that is theologically unassailable, from their point of view, but is nevertheless quietly subversive of his interlocutors and the stance they have taken in their practice of engagement with the Roman empire.

Jesus' answer while apparently deferring to Caesar, is subversive in that it places people in a position in which they are invited, by implication to consider what it means to "give back to Caesar what is his" as against "giving back to God what is his". It does so by inviting, implicitly, a consideration of the question "what is Caesar's?", a question that, in Caesar's terms, should not even be asked. Such a question brings the possibility of a political and socially critical discipleship into view. What we owe to Caesar, or the liberal democratic nation-state of Australia, itself aligned to an imperial power, is always, and must always, be open to question against the prior claim to return to God what is God's.

What should we return to Caesar? Not an easy question, but one that should be struggled with continually and communally. We can start our reflection on this question from Jesus' the point that the prior claim is to return to God what belongs to God, a practice which acknowledges that the baseline of the human is filled out for us paradigmatically in the life and teaching, the death and resurrection of Jesus. We learn from him what it looks like to return to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to return to God what is God's.

The irony of a "dead democracy"

2011-10-15T19:33:00.000+11:00

The death of democracy was announced in a letter to the Canberra Times this morning. There is a certain irony about this announcement.

Democracy understood as the continuing struggle to try and place limits on the accumulation of unaccountable and arbitrary power by the state is always a struggle. And the recent demonstrated ability of vested interests to buy a decision by the expenditure of 20 million dollars in advertising against a proposed mineral resource rent tax shows why we have reason to be concerned about its future.

The death of democracy was announced in the very week that the Federal Government decided not to proceed with amendments to the immigration legislation that would have handed substantially increased power to the Minister for Immigration that could not have been disallowed by Parliament, or reviewed by the courts.

This outcome was purely accidental and resulted from Tony Abbott's campaign of saying no to everything that the Government proposes. Nevertheless, even if only temporary, and for quite bizarre rreasons an attempt to extend the arbitrary power of the state has been at least delayed.

Wendell Berry - beyond the Sacred-Secular distinction

2011-09-20T20:54:00.000+10:00

Poets at their best say things that need to be said, and get behind our disabling, dysfunctional dualisms.

See Wendell Berry getting beyond the sacred secular distinction:
The incarnate Word is with us
is still speaking, is present
always, yet leaves no sign
but everything that is

(Sabbath 1999, IX in Given: New Poems, Counterpoint, 2005, p.78)

How do you know that a war is a war?

2011-08-30T22:22:00.000+10:00

The following post was put up on an Ekklesia Project website in response to the Nobel Peace Prize address by President Obama in 2009 and is now about to be taken down. I have reproduced Stanley Hauerwas's comments because there are a couple of critical issues he raises that I think are worth noting.

You tube Obama speech

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

How Do You Know a War is a War?

by Stanley Hauerwas
Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at the
Divinity School of Duke University

I think President Obama’s speech was remarkable. It was so because he makes articulate the defense of war and that is unusual for someone in his position. But the kind of defense he makes, he admirably acknowledges, is required by his being in a particular position, that is, the Presidency of the United States. The question for Christians is: how did he get in that position? Could he have been elected if he had said something as basic as “I am a Christian and Christians have a problem with war”?

Instead Obama says what a President is required to say. As head of a state he reserves the right to unilaterally go to war if the people he has pledged to protect are in jeopardy. Yet he well knows he is not the head of just any state, but America. He clearly thinks that to the extent “peace is possible,” America has done it. He is, therefore, not hesitant to represent a country that thinks it is in control of history. Thus his claim early in the speech that he believes we can bend history in the direction of justice. That seems such a worthy ideal, but it hides an arrogance that can result in imperialism.

There is, however, another perspective that suffuses the rhetoric of the speech. He genuinely feels the horror of war. Nowhere is his humanity revealed more clearly than in the paragraph early in the speech in which he acknowledges that because we are at war some will be killed, but others will have to kill. I thought it quite telling for him to recognize that part of the tragedy of war is not that you may be killed but that you may have to kill. The pathos of such a recognition can be a resource to make war less likely.

But there is a deep conceptual issue that he does not raise concerning war. That issue is: how do you know a war is a war? He begins with the claim that war in one form or another appeared with the first man. One assumes he’s referring to Cain and Abel. But what happened between Cain and Abel was not war. It was murder. His lack of clarity about what distinguishes war from other kinds of violence becomes the basis for his claim that because evil exists then war is necessary. Thus his suggestion that war is simply “there,” requiring acknowledgement. To recognize the necessity of war is to simply acknowledge history. But that is simply an assertion without argument.

I realize it seems odd, but I think one of the crucial critical questions for those that would so justify war is to ask them what they mean by “war.” I have tried to raise the question by asking, “If a war is not just, what is it?” The question is designed to challenge the assumption that war is just “out there.” Those who use just war criteria often seem to assume war is just “out there.” You then see how many of the criteria work, but even if you only get two out of six (depending on how you count) it is assumed it is still a war and therefore has moral justification. But why should that be assumed? If a war deserves the description “war” surely it must have been just from the beginning.

Though Obama assumes war is a necessary response to evil, he also thinks it can be regulated by just war considerations. He notes that later philosophers, clerics, and statesmen sought to regulate the destructive power of war, resulting in the development of just war criteria. But it is interesting that in turning to the criteria he doesn’t offer a clear statement of all the criteria. In particular he does not mention that the war must be declared by a legitimate authority, that the aims of the war must be declared to the enemy, and the intention to go to war cannot be different than the declaration. These criteria are very important if “just war,” as Paul Ramsey argued, is to be limited by making war serve a limited political end. That the intention to go to war be declared means, moreover, that war can never be fought for unconditional surrender. These are the kinds of considerations that Obama should have engaged if he was to give us a better understanding of what he means by war.

I suspect Obama thinks the crucial moral distinction is between wars between armies and wars between nations where civilians become blurred with combatants. He certainly would prefer wars between armies, and he may think just war is closer to that. But he needs to be clearer than he was in this speech about why he prefers the former. One assumes it is primarily because the latter involves civilian deaths.

While acknowledging the importance of King and Gandhi he nonetheless thinks that, though it is an evil, war is necessary and as he puts is,” it is on some level an expression of human feeling.” I have no idea what he means by “an expression of human feeling,” though I assume it suggests that there is a justice that shapes the necessity to go to war. He even underwrites the view that war is somehow fought for peace. But if just war thinkers are correct, the idea that war should be fought for peace is a mistake. War should not be fought for peace, but rather for relative justice. If Reinhold Niebuhr is informing his understanding of the necessity of war, it seems that we should be a bit more “realistic”.

Of course the idealism that is shaping his justification for war is extremely dangerous. Thus his claim that a “just peace” should be based on the inherent right and dignity of every individual. He then underwrites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a basis for accomplishing the peace that war makes possible. But to make rights the rationale for going to war will make war even more difficult to control. It may be, as he maintains, that peace is unstable if most rights are denied. But it is just as likely that claims for rights will lead to what some call war.

Obama’s idealism, I thought, was most apparent in the paragraph where he praises Nixon for dealing with Mao, John Paul II for reaching out to Walesa, and Reagan for his embrace of perestroika. He is right, of course, that you never get to choose between good and evil, but it seems to me he’s going to need a more complex case than the examples this paragraph provides. He needs better examples because of the claim that America is exceptional just to the extent that we were always an aspiration with commitments that are universal. That is a deep unrealism that can lead to war. So his speech comes full circle, back to the beginning in which he asserts that America is the people who have bent history in the direction of justice.

That the speech ends with appeals to love I suppose seems a good. But, again, I worry that such appeals make peace an ideal which war becomes the means to achieve.

Overall I think this is a remarkable speech that we would all do well to attend to. I plan to use it as the first reading for a seminar on War and Peace I will be teaching next semester. I continue to think that peace should be a more determinative reality than war. And hopefully Obama’s articulate defense of war will provide grist for that mill.

2011-08-18T09:37:00.000+10:00

Interesting reflection from the blog Journey with Jesus by Dan Clendenin on "Transformed Non-conformity"

Non-conformity by itself is nothing special. Here in California where I live, non-conformists are everywhere. They ride funny bikes, experiment with alternative energy, eat organic foods, dress down instead of up, and flaunt what they think is an independent spirit, but which often is merely a different type of social conformity. Sometimes, says King, non-conformity is little more than exhibitionism. In contrast, the non-conformity that Paul describes in Romans 12 has a specific direction, which is Christ-likeness through a “renewed mind.”

The French sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) encouraged believers to move from being "negatively maladjusted" to the world to being "positively maladjusted." King says something similar: “There are some things in our world to which men [sic] of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men [sic] of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.” Christian non-conformity, in other words, has a specific direction.

Hope for our world rests in creatively and positively maladjusted believers, says King. This week’s text from Exodus 1:8–2:10 provides an example of nonconformity in relation to the powers of this world, in contrast to conformity to God’s redemptive purposes. The Israelites were in Egyptian bondage, increasing in number and power, when Pharaoh gave the order for infanticide — to terminate all the male Hebrew births. But the midwives defied the state authorities because, the text says, “they feared God” rather than Pharaoh (Exodus 1:17). Later, when asked what had happened, they covered up their civil disobedience by lying (v. 19).

A hopeless confusion - current debates about marriage

2011-08-18T09:25:00.000+10:00

I have great difficulty getting involved with current debates about granting the right to marriage to same sex couples. The debate from my point of view is hopelessly confused and to line up on one side or the other in the debate is but to remain enmeshed in the confusion and to leave entangled what needs disentangling, the respective roles and responsibilities of the sate and the churches, and any other group for that matter.

The historical and theological issues at stake are sketched helpfully in a piece by Simon Barrow What Future for Marriage? on the Ekklesia web site.

The interests of the state and the church in issues of relationships should be distinct, but we still have a massive confusion which goes back to the Christendom settlement. The state has responsibilities around assuring the protection, safety and well being of children, not directly but in holding parents and guardians responsible, and for legal issues around property.the church has responsibilities around supporting its members in the vocation of christian marriage and in carrying out their commitments to faithful discipleship in that role. As Simon Barrow observes:

What is called 'marriage' today is essentially a civil contract which can be dissolved or re-entered as many times as necessary. Superimposed on that is a Christian ideal of lifelong fidelity which many accept as a 'nice idea' but which is not necessarily what they are really choosing, and whose basis in a community of faith they often do not understand or accept. Ekklesia

Simon's recommendation, for which I have a good deal of sympathy, is that we disentangle the respective roles of church and community groups and the state around the issue of marriage.

Our current confusion between the civil (secular), juridical (legal) and sacramental (religious) meanings of marriage arises from the 'Christendom' assumption that religious understandings can be superimposed on society through the state, and vice versa.

It is positive to enable people to express their civil commitments in legal terms which reflect the variety of long-term partnerships people are actually forming - and which offer as much stability, especially for children, as possible.

What the church calls marriage is not just another name for a legal and civil arrangement - it is specifically about the kind of relationships made possible by God's love and the community of people who seek to be transformed by this love through worship, common life, mutual forgiveness, and discipleship.

If you try to force everyone in society into a one-size-fits-all legal arrangement you risk devaluing what is possible for different kinds of partnerships, sell short the meaning of Christian marriage - and end up in something of a no-win mess. That is where we are right now. Ekklesia

And that is why I find it hard to enter into the current debate about same sex marriage. To take a position on the debate as it currently exists is to remain within the entangled confusions of the Christendom settlement. Much of the churches stance on marriage in the current debates is theologically confused and historically ill informed. Christians have no stake, in my view, in upholding the intervention by the state in upholding issues of Christian meaning with respect to relationships.

Thinking about "people smuggling" and taking care of our language

2011-08-14T14:09:00.000+10:00

I have been thinking a lot about the issue of public policy about asylum seekers and the language in which that debate is being conducted. In the New Testament Christians are enjoined to be careful with the language that they use and that injunction surely applies as much to the language that we use in debate about public policy as it does to the language that we use in personal relationships. The need for honesty, truthfulness and respect are relevant characteristics that follow from this injunction.

The term "smuggling" as it is normally used carries connotations of attempts to conceal the items being smuggled from the relevant authorities. The use of the term "people smuggling" with reference to the activities of sailors bringing boat loads of refugees, seeking asylum, seems to me to be totally inaccurate and misleading as an account both factually and morally of what is taking place when a boatload of refugees arrives at Christmas Island.

Those bringing the people to Australia in those boats do not seek to conceal their arrival from the authorities - the point of their arrival is to bring the presence of the refugees to the attention of the authorities at the earliest possible moment after their arrival, so as to make their claim for asylum.

The use of the term "people smuggling" it seems to me is designed to ensure that the activity is judged to be morally obnoxious before the debate even starts. The moral status of the activity of the people supplying transport to asylum seekers needs some careful analysis. The activity may be illegal, it may be reckless, but that does not automatically make the activity immoral, let alone evil. It is difficult to see how the later characterisation could stand, considering that from the point of view of the law, if a person's claim to asylum is acknowledged by the Australian authorities to be a valid one, the means of entry to Australia is not regarded as illegal.

How the activity of assisting refugees to make a valid claim for protection can be regarded as an evil is something I struggle to understand. The activity may be illegal, disruptive of Australian Government policy, reckless of human life, and disorderly. It may indeed be any, and all of the above. But evil?

The other issue that emerges from paying attention to the language and focus of the public debate, is that we are now not discussing the question of how we can achieve a compassionate and just policy with respect to refugees seeking asylum. The policy debate is now framed almost entirely with respect to the effect of policy decisions on the activities of those termed "people smugglers".

The obsession of the Australian Government, media and public at large with this group of people is indeed amazing to behold. The concern with their activities has so hi-jacked the policy debate that we have lost focus on the underlying realities that are driving refugees to seek asylum.

Giving the attention being paid to this group it seems strange that we do not yet have a "Minister for 'People Smuggling'" because that is what the Minister for Immigration seems to have in fact become.
The national obsession with this relatively small group of people is now bordering on the bizarre, in terms of the actual numbers involved and the impact of their activities on the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia, in terms of both absolute numbers of those who seek asylum in Australia and as a proportion of the total of long term arrivals in Australia under the various immigration programs. We are now spending large amounts of public funds on a range of "non-solutions" that are totally unnecessary.

In such a situation how might Christians respond? We should start with trying to examine carefully the language of public debate and begin unpacking the truthfulness of the assumptions that are embedded in it and the accuracy of the accounts of the policy and moral issues that form much of the media debate around asylum seekers. The call to truthfulness and care in our speech demands no less. Beyond that we can get involved in our local community with groups that seek to meet the needs of asylum seekers and refugees. Get to meet refugees and asylum seekers, listen to their stories, and begin to understand a little of how they see the world.

Violence, religion and the modern state

2011-08-13T16:55:00.000+10:00

What was interesting about the media reporting of the massacre in Norway was that the religious identity of supposed perpetrators emerged in the reporting right from the start. If it was not Islamic terrorists that were responsible as first thought, the attention turned to the "fundamentalist Christian".

The political theologian William Cavanaugh has some helpful comments on this tendency. In his review of Charles Kimball's book When Religion Becomes Evil. Kimball, he observes ... wants to proscribe religious justifications of vilence because he belives that religion, with its absolutist tendencies is prone to fan the flames of violence.

... The problem is that there remain in Kimball's view, perfectly legitimate non-religious, or "secular" ways of justifying violence. Far from a condemnation of violence, Kimball's analysis results in a selective condemnation of certain kinds of violence, labelled "religion". the problem is not violence as such; there are still occasionally good reasons for bombing or shooting people. To qualify as good these reasons must be "secular". "Secular" violence. however regrettable, is sometime necessary. "Religious" violence is always reprehensible. (p45 )“Sins of Omission: What ‘Religion and Violence’ Arguments Ignore.” The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture 6:1 (Spring 2004): 34–50.

The conclusion Cavanaugh draws that is relevant to the issue of considering the way we talk about the massacre in Norway, by an individual, or the current activities of the Syrian army, to quote an example at random, is that if we really want to address the problem of violence in the modern world, we must treat violence as the problem, whoever is responsible for it.An adequate approach to the probem he argues,

... would be to be resolutely empirical: under what conditions do certain beliefs and practices, jihad, the invisible hand of the market, the sacrificial atonement of Christ, the role of the United States as a world wide liberator turn violent. The point is not simply that "secular" violence should be given equal time with "religious" violence. The point is that the distinction between "secular' and "religious" violence is unhelpful, misleading and mystifying and should be avoided altogether. (p50)

Of gods and men - reflecting on the film through Revelation

2011-08-10T20:33:00.000+10:00

Occasionally a film will engage me deeply, its story, the characters, the scenes recurring in memory, touching the heart and challenging the conscience. Of gods and men is one of those films. Some friends of mine have been back to see it a second time, already.

As an account of martyrdom, of loving your enemy, and being present with the poor and marginal in the context of a very dirty war on terror in Algeria in the mid 1990's, based on a true story, this is a stunner. It is beautifully shot, and wonderfully acted. A patient exploration of a community of Trappist monks dealing with the issue of what their vocation and commitment to the way of discipleship means in a time of threatening violence and deep injustice. It is a retelling which recaptures the tensions around their decision-making process, in which we are reminded again and again that at the heart of what they are about is the cycle of worship and prayer, the chanting of the psalms and the reading of the scriptures that shapes what they are becoming and what in the end drives their decision to stay with the Muslim village that they continue to serve.

I won't attempt to do a review of the film, or attempt to tell the story in any detail. If you are interested in a range of views, from a diverse bunch of reviewers, from people of faith to those outside, check out the following links. They are some good You=tube extracts of scenes from the movie on some of them.

Interesting Links:

Of Gods and Men (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Of Gods and Men – review | Film | The Guardian
Of Gods and Men « Notes & Quiddities
OF GODS AND MEN (Why we need St. Benedict more than ever) « Ecclesiastical Graffiti
Of Gods And Men (2010,France) « Andygeddon
Of Gods And Men | Movie review: 'Of Gods and Men' - Los Angeles Times
Film review – Of Gods and Men (2010) « Cinema Autopsy
Father James Martin, SJ: “Of Gods and Men” | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS

What I want to do is to just point you to some of the theological issues and biblical context against which, as a Christian, I found myself trying to understand the path that they took.

The film title is taken from Psalm 82 verses 6-7, underlined. I have reproduced the entire Psalm because I think it is worth thinking about in view of the trajectory of the movie. Who are the gods and who are the men? Is the movie title referring to the pretensions of those who think that violence is the key, as opposed to the monks who seek to treat all, including those who might do them violence as children of God?

¹ God presides in the great assembly;
   he renders judgment among the “gods”:
² “How long will you^[a] defend the unjust
   and show partiality to the wicked?^[b]
³ Defend the weak and the fatherless;
   uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
⁴ Rescue the weak and the needy;
   deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
⁵ “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
   They walk about in darkness;
   all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
⁶ “I said, ‘You are “gods”;
   you are all sons of the Most High.’
⁷ But you will die like mere mortals;
   you will fall like every other ruler.”
⁸ Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
   for all the nations are your inheritance.

Michael J Gorman in Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation (Cascade Press, 2011) observes in terms that are relevant to the story in the movie and the rejection by the monks of the offer of protection by the Algerian military, that:

The current dearth of martyrs in the Western church may be welcome, but its accompanying amnesia of past martyrs and our ignorance of martyrs elsewhere in the world are tragic. In addition to failing at practicing the community of saints, this lack also feeds the desire for national heroes and martyrs. In church history, there has also been a strong correspondence between truly Christian heroes and martyrs and the presence of religious-like commitment to the nation state and its heroes and martyrs - ie., civil religion.

This is very relevant in thinking about the rejection by the monks of military protection and of the attempt by the guerillas to bring their weapons with them when they invade the monastery in search of medical assistance,

The Book of Revelation is associated by many Christians with violence and fighting and may seem a strange biblical resource to bring into consideration in the context of non-violent, enemy loving practices of the monks. That association is substantially wrong.

A further consideration of the relevance of the message of Revelation, with its focus on the slain Lamb and the waiting of the saints to the story of this movie is signaled by the comments by Gorman towards the close of his discussion in Reading Revelation Responsibly, in the chapter entitled "Following the Lamb: The Spirituality of Revelation". This account captures much of what the monks were grappling with in reading the decision to stay. To read Revelation correctly is to understand what their stance was all about. Revelation lived out at the end of the twentieth century.

The resistance (discerning, imaginative and self-critical) required of Christians can be likened to warfare in search of victory. But because this victory is of the victorious slaughtered lamb, Christian resistance to empire conforms to the cruciform pattern of Jesus Christ and his apostles and saints, faithful, true, courageous, just and nonviolent. ... It is important here to emphasise how Revelation conveys a spirituality and ethic of non-violence ... Jesus has already demonstrated both how God deals with evil and how god's people are to deal with evil. ... not in a show of violent power, but in a paradoxical and subversive act of not confronting evil on its own terms. ... Revelation knows that true spiritual existence is warfare, but it defines victory in the cosmic battle as faithfulness. Neither the Lamb, nor his followers fight in any other way than faithfulness , even to the point of suffering and death. (p.183)

The other important resource that fills in some of the background that is not dealt with in the film and assists in coming to grip with the Prior, Christian's approach to Islam, is the wording of a testament written not long before his death.

The folowing testament was composed by Dom Christian de Cherge in Algiers, December 1, 1993 and produced in Tibhirine, January 1, 1994. It was opened on Pentecost Sunday, 1996, shortly after Dom Christian and others of his Trappist community were murdered in Algeria.

In an early scene in the movie he is seen composing this document, visible on the desk are The Rule of St Benedict, The Little Flowers of St Francis and a copy of the Koran.

If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. To accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I would like them to pray for me: how worthy would I be found of such an offering?

I would like them to be able to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones allowed to fall into the indifference of anonymity. My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a space of lucidity which would enable me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this. I don’t see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder. It would be too high a price to pay for what will be called, perhaps, the “grace of martyrdom” to owe this to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.

I know the contempt in which Algerians taken as a whole can be engulfed. I know, too, the caricatures of Islam which encourage a certain idealism. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience in identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam is something different. It is a body and a soul. I have proclaimed it often enough, I think, in view of and in the knowledge of what I have received from it, finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church, precisely in Algeria, and already respecting believing Muslims.

My death, obviously, will appear to confirm those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!” But these must know that my insistent curiosity will then be set free. This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills: Immerse my gaze in that of the Father, to contemplate with Him His children of Islam as He sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, fruit of His Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, playing with the differences.

This life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that JOY in and in spite of everything. In this THANK YOU which is said for everything in my life, from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, O my friends of this place, besides my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families, a hundredfold as was promised!

And you too, my last minute friend, who will not know what you are doing, Yes, for you too I say this THANK YOU AND THIS “A-DIEU”-—to commend you to this God in whose face I see yours. And may we find each other, happy “good thieves” in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both. . . AMEN!

Dom Christian de Chergé, OCSO from Bulletin 55, May 1996

‪

Mortality of the nation state and the risks of nuclear proliferation

2011-07-13T19:36:00.000+10:00

Don't get me wrong - I strongly in favour of action to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I have often, however, reflected on the hypocrisy of those states with nuclear weapons acting occasionally, vigorously, to restrict their spread.

"You can trust us" is the implication, we are not crazy like those other states for whom possession of these weapons might prove a risk. "You can't let states that might have crazy leaders get hold of them". "We are rational democratic states, we don't get crazy people in charge, who might start waving them around".

Leaving aside that the logic of deterrence involves creating the impression that you might be crazy enough to actually use nuclear weapons, their is another critical assumption in the rationale that rarely gets unpacked. Lee Griffith in The War against Terrorism and the Terror of God (Eerdmans, 2002) nails it nicely.

There are no Reichs to last a thousand years, no empires on which the sun will never set. Like the Soviet Union, like Rome, like Babylon, the United States will surely pass away. Like treasures, nations are consumed by moth and rust (Matthew 6: 19). The life span of nations is much shorter than the half life of most nuclear materials. A failure to acknowledge that the weapons we disperse, and the weapons we possess, will someday be possessed by other hands is simply hubris. (p.82)

The reality of the Holocaust and the value of human life

2011-07-09T17:25:00.001+10:00

Watching from a distance the implosion this week of The News of the World has had the awful appeal of watching a disaster in slow motion. You can see it coming, you know you really have better things to do with your life but the appalling inevitability of events calls for your attention with a degree of hypnotic power.

The entire shenanigans certainly won't do much for the not terribly public regard for the profession of journalism. It so happened that this week I have been reading a selection of the writings of one of those journalists whose contribution reminds us that there are some who stand out through their moral sensibility and their concern with the way language is used. I refer of course to Robert Fisk, in this case to his collection of columns in The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings.

Throughout Fisk's writings is a concern for care in the use of language and a rooted antipathy to politicians whose misuse of language and unwillingness to go anywhere the truth in their justification of war.

There is a also a deep concern throughout Fisk's journalism that human life should be respected and it was a few lines on this issue that caught my attention. In the course of his discussion of the diary of Klemperer's account of the Holocaust he quotes a comment from Khatami a former president of Iran responding to the current President Ahmadinejab who apparently views the holocaust as myth, who observed that "The death of even one Jew is a crime", While this reply starts with the specific issue of the holocaust of Jews it pushes the moral issue beyond that of the ethnic identity of the victims.

Fisk goes on to observe that "Indeed his words symbolised something more crucial: that the importance and the evil of the Holocaust do not depend on the Jewish identity of the victims. The awesome wickedness of the Holocaust lies in the fact that the victims were human beings just like you and me." (p.143)

Yes indeed, and those who have been the victims of other episodes of attempted genocide have their claim on us because they too were human beings, not because of their ethnic identity.

The tragedy of asylum seekers and other displaced people

2011-07-08T08:37:00.001+10:00

I didn't watch the ABC documentary on the Tampa last night because that issue is one of those guaranteed to make me very angry - I feared it would become "a near occasion for sin".

However I did find myself drawn into watching some of the Q&A afterwards. As I thought about the way the questions and responses went it occurred to me that the lack of clarity about the numbers of people who are refugees and the different categories of refugee enabled us, as Australians debating the issues to avoid facing some important questions.

No matter how large the numbers of those seeking asylum are on a global scale, they are nowhere near the total number of refugees across the globe. Many are displaced people within their own countries. Many more are displaced people outside the land of their origin who want to go home.

The moral issue of how we deal with asylum seekers and refugees who seek to come to Australia is important. No question but we need some perspective here. The number of people coming via boats is in the order of 2-3,000 per annum at the moment. The number who seek asylum after arriving in Australia by air is around 9,000 per annum. The fear and anger in the Australian community over this number of people coming by boats is out of all proportion to the numbers involved - contra Scott Morrison.

Surveys have shown that most members of the Australian community think the numbers involved are much larger, 100 times larger and neither of the major political parties have seen fit to get out their and educate people about the facts. Instead we have appeals to fear and prejudice and blatant attempts to de-humanise the people involved. Why we are so vulnerable on this point is an issue that needs thought and self critical reflection that will take us beyond simply using labels like xenophobia as David Marr did last night.

Beyond that the focusing on the relatively small group of asylum seekers coming by boat enables us to dodge consideration of the reality of the much larger groups of displaced people in the world and our implication as a nation or as consumers in helping create the situation that led to that displacement.

For example, our involvement in the war in Iraq helped fuel a massive displacement of people both within and outside Iraq. Our ongoing involvement in the war in Afghanistan implicates us not only in the creation of Afghan refugees but also in the flow over effects into Pakistan and the displacement of people within that country.

On the economic front some of the immense displacement of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and surrounding countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa has been fueled by the push for minerals to sustain our consumption of the goods in which they are incorporated and I won't even go on to discuss the displacement of people in civil warsarising from struyggles for the control of diamonds.

So by all means let us explore thoughtfully the issue of how we are as a nation-state to respond to the claims of the vulnerable and displaced who come seeking asylum. Let us not become so obsessed that we assume that even achieving a relatively just and compassionate policy will exhaust our responsibility towards the displaced people across the globe. We are all deeply implicated in their condition. We are more truly and deeply than we might want to acknowledge our bother's and sister's keepers.

Messianic Americanism - where did it start?

2011-07-06T20:04:00.000+10:00

Harry Stout in Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (Penguin, 2007) set out to under take an assessment of the war using just war criteria. I don't think he succeeds all that well in that particular task, not helped by the fact that he doesn't deal with the complexity and ambiguity of the history of the criteria.

That relative failure may not matter all that much because he has done something that is much more interesting and relevant for Australians. He has presented an interesting argument as to why and how the theological arguments developed on both sides of the conflict to underpin a new sense American messianism that emerged as one result of the war.

Stout's account of the dynamic interaction of the progress of the war with the arguments that were developed by the churches and clergy on both sides to justify their support for their respective governments looks plausible or at least arguable and is underpinned by a wealth of documentary evidence from sermons, printed and unprinted by which he tracks the trajectories of the argument as they developed in response to the ebb and flow of the war.

The Civil War was the crucible of modern US identity. If you want to understand how that sense of nationality acquired its deeply religious, messianic character then a reading of Upon the Altar of the Nation will repay a thoughtful reading.

It also provides a reminder of how much the language of religion has now become taken over by the state to justify its use of violence. The "holy" has well and truly "migrated" as William Cavanaugh has recently reminded us. Indeed I am inclined to argue that Stout's work stands as a helpful case study of that migration in the American context.

Christian confusion around marriage, gay and otherwise, or why abolishing marriage as we know it might be a good idea

2011-06-29T21:13:00.001+10:00

The churches and Christians generally should take a long hard look about the issue of marriage and the respective responsibilities of church and state. We have not yet disentangled our thinking from the distortions of Christendom. Let me try a thought experiment.

The state has an interest in issues to do with transfer and management of property, payments, taxes and an interest in the fact that children are appropriately cared for. This requires a formal recognition of such relationships by the state, or acknowledgement for the state's purposes that de facto such relationships have been entered into. That interest can be taken care of through a purely administrative process.

The state should have no interest or involvement in the ceremonies that "religious" or ethnic/religious communities and organisation may engage in to celebrate the commitment of people to long term relationships. Such matters should be an issue for the bodies themselves.

The disentangling of the respective interests of the state and the civil community, including churches, would help sort out the confusion over what marriage is about. Simon Barrow and Jonathan Bartley have tackled this issue in an Ekklesia Research paper What Future for Marriage?.

As they point out ... the form of marriage we know as such today is a relatively late invention out of something that once had much more to do with solidifying dynastic power. The link with Christendom is important in understanding how this happened. This link continued with the ... revival and spread of marriage in the general population ... based on a fusing, of course, of civil and legal provisions with Christian meanings and rituals, because the church and the state were seen as mutually reinforcing institutions with a common grounding.

Much of what Christians think they are defending as essential elements of Christianity in this context is nothing of the sort and is deeply at odds with Jesus' radical critique of the way institutions stand in the way of the new community that he called people to.

Most people both inside and outside the churches assume that Christian teaching is uncomplicated and unequivocal about marriage. But when we look at the texts and traditions involved, we discover that things are actually much more challenging, exciting (and, perhaps, worrying) than we tend to suppose.

There are certainly biblical traditions that uphold marriage strongly. But the Bible also portrays a wide range of extended family relationships. Jesus himself never married (unusually for a wandering rabbi, perhaps, and contrary to the fancies of the Da Vinci Code). Paul was rather sceptical and grudging about it, so the evidence suggests.

Meanwhile, the Gospels are often downright hostile a search for Jesus' sayings about 'the family' suggests that, while he cherished covenantal values, had married companions and abhorred the practice whereby men could summararily divorce and disinherit women at will, he saw blood ties or contracted family bonds as less significant than the creation of a new kind of community.

That community was rooted in those who were often despised and 'impure' within the established political order. But it reflected the levelling, forgiveness-generating, favour-free, all-embracing, demanding love of God's coming kingdom. And for that, Jesus said, one should be prepared to abandon all if necessary - even family as we have understood it thus far.

Barrow and Bartley's argument is worth reading carefully in full. While it has specific reference to the UK arguments and legal situation, it offers a recasting of the current controversy that has ended up in a confusing debate in Australia that has focused on the proposal for "gay marriage". In summary they recommend for consideration:

... that the legal and ceremonial aspects of forming partnerships should be viewed as distinct, and that the differences between religious and civil/secular definitions of marriage openly acknowledged by all concerned.

In this way, individuals who want to enter into marriage as a religious commitment within Christian contexts would be free to do so - as would humanists with their own meanings, and people of other faiths in their distinct traditions.

But registering their partnership under law would be a separate process allowing different arrangements depending upon their intent, and including clear provisions for the protection of children.

By the same token, it would be up to religious bodies to decide what forms of civil partnership would be acceptable within their understanding of marriage, and they would be free to offer ceremonial services, blessing and pastoral support or not. But such blessing (with its inherent meanings) would not be imposed on the non-religious or those who did not feel able to, or want to, make the commitments required or encouraged within a religious framework.

This would allow both civic and religious authorities autonomy in decision-making, would avoid people having to make vows they do not believe in, and would encourage couples to think more seriously about the kind of commitment they wanted to enter into, and the consequences of this for others.

It would also separate arguments within religious communities about gay marriage and cohabitation from the state‚provision of legal contracts for relationships, and would make space for both faith-based and secular understandings - without privileging or constraining either.

... discussing the possibility of a new set of recognized civil partnerships would require lawmakers to focus on the intentions underlying legal arrangements. Such values as justice, compassion, protection, community, commitment and love could thereby receive greater acknowledgement within public policy debate.

Some fresh thinking by the churches along these lines would be helpful, particularly if it addressed issues of justice, compassion and the reality of living in a pluralist society.

Refugee policy - a defining issue for Christians and to live beyond anger

2011-06-12T13:47:00.000+10:00

Browsing through some columns that I wrote for Zadok Perspectives back in 2002, I came across a column on refugees. It was written after the events surrounding the Tampa. Though some things have changed since then, some critical things haven't.

I have therefore reproduced it in its original form. What is truly sobering is that it would take very few editorial changes to bring it up to deal with current issues. The pastoral issues as to how we can live faithfully in such a time as this remain as does the anger that I need to deal with.

Prophetic Patience - Active Waiting - Refugee policy as a defining issue

Despite the inescapable impact of the terrorist attacks on September 11, for many Australians the treatment of refugees became the defining issue of public policy in the year just past. The divisions in Australian society revealed by the Coalition Government’s handling of the “Tampa” event, the “Pacific solution” and mandatory detention seem likely to be with us for some time.

The issues raised by the current government policy stance on refugees are complex and ramify out to include questions of church state relations, indigenous reconciliation and the atrophy of public debate on political issues. They will have to wait for another time. What I want to engage with in this column is the reality that I find myself called to live out my discipleship in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion in the wider Australian community toward the stranger and the refugee.

I have been shocked at the depth of my own anger at the events that have unfolded over the past year and the cynical willingness of the government to demonise the stranger in the form of refugees for their own political ends. Overlaying this has been a deep frustration and helplessness that almost no one was speaking for me in the public realm. Their was no debate during the election. The two major parties were trying to out macho each other over border protection and were quick to silence dissident voices amongst their candidates.

While I know that many Christians do not share this interpretation of what has happened, I am also aware of a significant number who share my state of mind. There is a significant issue of pastoral care and witness at stake here and I can only ask those for whom this is not an issue to stay and listen.

What resources do we have to live as disciples, to live humanly in a time of fear in our community and anger within ourselves? How can we avoid becoming conformed in our reaction to the violence which we are called as Christians to overcome? For many this has been a moment when the automatic and unquestioning identity between being a Christian and being an Australian has been jolted. We have been made aware of the possibility that there might have to be a gap between the two identities if we are to be faithful to the Gospel.

What Isaiah has to say

Biblical reflection seems an appropriate first step. During the election campaign, in which the appeal to a variety of fears seemed to have become the staple fare of both major political parties, I found myself reading through the prophet Isaiah. The following passages from Isaiah 8 snagged my attention like a woolen jumper on an obtruding nail.

Do not call conspiracy

All that these people call conspiracy;

Do not fear what they fear,

do not be afraid of them.

It is Yahweh Sabaoth,

you must hold in veneration,

him you must fear,

him you must dread.

….

I bind up this testimony,

I seal this revelation,

In the heart of my disciples.

I wait for Yahweh

Who hides his face from the House of Jacob;

in him I hope

…

Distressed and starving he will wander through the country

and, starving, he will become frenzied,

Blaspheming his king and his God

Turning his gaze upward,

then down to the earth,

He will find only distress and darkness,

the blackness of anguish,

and will see nothing but night.

Is not all blackness where anguish is.

There is a passion in the prophet’s message which makes most of the preaching in our churches sound anaemic. The recovery of such passion and an honesty about our emotions and the violence within us and around us is an important step within the Christian community if we are to overcome violence.

The passage quoted above from Isaiah though it is honest and unsparing in its account of the darkness of the prophet’s time offer us some clues about the virtues and spirituality that we need to embody if we are to be faithful to God’s calling.

Truthfulness

The prophet calls us to truthfulness. We need to find the words to truly describe what is happening, which is to say that we need to learn how to speak truthfully. … do not call conspiracy all that they call conspiracy… For the prophet to speak truthfully is to draw out clearly the dimensions of the tragedy while opening himself to the reality of the pain of those who are entangled in lies. The virtue of truthfulness will be as much a public and political activity as it is a spiritual discipline. It requires us in this context to research the reality of refugee policy and the experiences of those who have been refugees and not accept without question the official definitions and language.

That will be hard enough. But Isaiah pushes us further. We need to learn how to fear appropriately, that is we need to learn how to fear rightly. In our case we need to learn not to fear the stranger and the refugee but to fear God. The God that we are called to fear is not the god of violence and destruction but the God revealed in Jesus Christ. We are to fear the God who comes to us in the form of the servant and the powerless.

Patience

We will also need to learn how to wait, how to be patient. Isaiah announces that he will wait for the right time for his message and for God’s action. The prophet is committed to a patience and a waiting in which he shares the pain and the darkness of his community. The prophet speaks not from a position of moral superiority and distance but as someone who allows the darkness to reverberate within his own being. The kind of patience Isaiah is called to has its analogue in the New Testament embedded in the Lord’s prayer.

Will Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas in their wonderful account of the Christian life Lord Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer and the Christian Life (Abingdon, 1996) highlight the importance of patience.

We have just prayed ‘your kingdom come”, a petition full of hope. Now we are taught to say “your will be done” a petition for patience…. Indeed our hopes as Christians can make us dangerous if they are not schooled by patience. Without patience we are tempted to storm the walls of injustice, destroying our enemy and thus betraying God’s way of forgiveness. Instead we are called to be a patient people schooled as we are by the patience of our crucified God so that the world might know that love not violence rules this world. God’s way of dealing with us and our evil is called the cross, the unlimited suffering patience of God. We are called to take up our cross and follow God’s patience. (p.65)

The patience that is called for here in the Lord’s prayer has nothing to do with passivity. It is an active waiting which is expressed in service. For my wife and myself that active waiting has taken the form of joining a local community refugee support group. The group has no formal church connections but the vast majority of the members are active in a number of local Catholic and Anglican parishes.

While the group works with the immigration authorities in the resettlement of refugees under the humanitarian resettlement program it has also committed itself to providing active support for refugees with Temporary Protection visas: that is to say refugees who have arrived in Australia and whose claim on arrival to refugee status has been accepted by the government, but who receive little assistance from the government to access their entitlements.

Christmas Eve found me as part of a group of over a dozen people helping shift furniture into a flat for an Afghani refugee family on a temporary protection visa, and in the process committing myself in a small way to learning the patience called for in the Lord’s prayer and something of the truth of the refugee’s experience. The first English words learnt by their two year old daughter after 11 months in Port Headland detention camp were ‘Hullo officer.’ That says a lot. As we manoeuvred the furniture up the stairs it occurred to me what a highly appropriate way it was to commence my Christmas celebration.

Caring for suffering?

2011-06-09T20:03:00.000+10:00

Moria Rayner nails the hypocrisy of concern for animal welfare over cattle exports accompanied by a lack of concern over the welfare of children, young people and those seeking asylum for situations of war, and political and religious persecution.

Does anybody see, other than myself, the dreadful hypocrisy of demanding and obtaining real, inconvenient and expensive interruption to the export of live cattle, and the complete lack of outrage and demand for action to ensure the humane treatment of asylum-seeking, unaccompanied children, and a ban on their being transported to work in the sex trade or enslaved pauperism in Malaysia?
Such disparity in public outrage, such blindness to the sinful (for once, a proper adjective) lack of compassion for those who have no power and no voice, and such incredible hypocrisy about the likely improvement in the attitudes and practices in both of these countries to whom we have given the discretion to exercise our own moral responsibilities, leaves this writer a little short of breath. Eureka Street

Who is saving who from what?

2011-06-04T18:25:00.000+10:00

Who is Mr Bowen as Minister for Immigration thinking he is kidding with his media comments that the latest policy initiatives to offload asylum seekers are designed to prevent Australians having to go through the trauma of witnessing the horror of the drownings that occurred off Christmas Island?

Who suffered on that occasion? It was I believe the asylum seekers. This line of argument I find morally degrading and demonstrating a self absorption that is absolutely reprehensible in its moral blindness.

The evidence is clear that the vast majority of Australians are totally uninformed as to the actual numbers of asylum seekers involved in efforts to get here by boat. The fact that it is substantially smaller than the number who seek asylum after they arrive here by air. The unwillingness of the government to get up and defend a policy based on moral principle and actual facts displays a lack of guts and willingness to stand for anything.

The linkages the media doesn't make

2011-05-31T11:10:00.000+10:00

Three stories on the ABC news this morning, all a cause for grief, that were related but the connection was not.

There was the report of the return to Pakistan, through Afghanistan of the body of an Afghan asylum seeker that had taken his life while in detention in Queensland. The Pakistan government had refused to have the body flown back to Pakistan. The body was flown back to Kabul and then was being transported by the family back to Quetta in Pakistan where they are now living.

This was followed by new of the death of two Australian serviceman in the past twenty four hours in Afghanistan and was preceded by a US apology for the death of between 9 and 14 children in an air raid earlier in the week.

According to the Prime Minister "we will stay the course". Of course, but what about the families who are grieving the loss of loved ones due to the ongoing war? And what about those who are suffering from a policy of detention for those seeking asylum ? A policy set by a government that is unwilling to get out and tell the truth about the extent of refugees and unwilling to make the moral argument for receiving those seeking asylum.

Wedded to a Right Royal Theological Confusion - theological reflections provoked by the royal wedding

2011-04-29T19:10:00.000+10:00

I am frequently deeply in debt to the musings theological and otherwise of my friend Simon Barrow, co-director of Ekklesia. On this occasion I want to reproduce in full his theological comments on the situation of the Christian church as highlighted by the wedding of William and Kate. It's great. I wish I had said most of it myself. Read, be provoked and become a regular reader of the Ekklesia site.

Wedded to a Right Royal Theological Confusion

Reading the church media over the past week, and probably for the succeeding one, would leave many people with the impression that the boundary between church and monarchy is virtually indecipherable. I find this elision of faith in God with a longing for worldly pomp and circumstance deeply disturbing.

Though Anglican by tradition and somewhat Catholic in my spirituality, I am increasingly a Mennonite-shaped Anabaptist in my core theological convictions - and ecclesiologically formed by the difficult but fruitful conversation between these three.

However, at a time when flags are waved, national anthems sung, royalty celebrated, the state ritualised, and all 'proper' persons presumed to be monarchists, it is my nonconformist and Anabaptist side that I feel coming to the fore more than ever.

Next to a willingness by Christians to sanction or excuse war, there is for me no greater evidence of the theological vacuity, privatisation of belief and civic absorption of the church (all of which lie at the heart of the crisis in modern institutional Christianity) than clerical eagerness to fawn over earthly monarchs and be their courtiers.

I write this without an ounce of ill-will towards any individuals within Britain's royal family, and without in any way wishing to be churlish about anybody's wedding - whether they are famous or not.
But for me, the idea and reality of monarchism is deeply offensive. It rests on nothing more nor less than absolute eugenic privilege and the reservation of power, wealth and status for the very few - in whatever attenuated 'constitutional' form. This is deeply unChristian. Yet most Christians, socialised into deference and mistaking the upside-down kingdom of God for earthly kingdoms, appear not to notice it. Even when it is pointed out. We have a massive amount of unlearning and relearning to do in the transition to post-Christendom.

That means, among other things, re-visiting our theological roots. In this sense, while remaining implacably at odds with the constraining (modernist) ideology of fundamentalism, I am not a 'theological liberal' either. It is the deep structure of the narratives, language, events, experiences, grammar ('doctrine') and communal inheritances of the tradition of Jesus and the dynamics of his movement in the world which I wish to be constitutive of my political orientation - not passing fads in culture or secular theory.

But for that structure to become usable - and resistant to the powers that be - we need a hermeneutic of new community (ekklesia), a recognition of the tension between monarchical / establishment and prophetic / dissenting religion (much more significant than the modern 'conservative' versus 'liberal' typology Christians have become captive to), and an ethic of demonstrative Gospel virtues - economic sharing, forgiveness, peacemaking, hospitality and more.

Otherwise we Christians - whatever our denominational or other labels - will go on 'getting it wrong' by interpreting the kingdom of God in terms of the kingdoms of this world, rather than the other way round. Which is where the confusion about monarchy (something established against the warning and will of God in the historical biblical tradition) comes in.

Who or what are we really wedded to in terms of social practice and spiritual formation? Those are important and challenging questions for Christians to ponder on 29 April 2011, and beyond.
Meanwhile, I wish William and Kate well. But I am not their loyal subject, and never can be, given my defining allegiance to Jesus the subversive.
----------
© Simon Barrow is co-director of Ekklesia.
Also on Ekklesia
* Simon Barrow, 'The mytho-poetics of royalty' - http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14663
* Symon Hill, 'The subversive feast of Christ the King' - http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/13613
* Chris Rowland, 'A kingdom, but not as we know it' - http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/8020
* Tom Hurcombe, 'Disestablishing the kingdom' - http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/8138
* Jill Segger, 'Crown or parliament? Time for reflection' - http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14635
* Phil Wood, 'Beyond 29 April: Equity after monarchy' - http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14660

Folk festivals, the church and the practice of tradition

2011-04-28T12:53:00.000+10:00

I spent a good deal of the Easter holiday weekend at the National Folk Festival here in Canberra. The experience got me thinking about the importance of tradition for both folk music and the church. I thought that there was something in the handling and sustaining of tradition as manifested in the festival that might be worth unpacking that might be helpful for the church in thinking about its engagement with the tradition. so let's see where this line of thinking might go.

The National Folk Festival (NFF) offers a huge range of music under the label of "folk" and provides an opportunity to display at a moment in time where the traditions of music are being taken by their current practitioners. Individual strands of musical tradition display a huge range of difference in performance - some seeking to represent a particular tradition in what is viewed as its authentic form, while others work on adapting it to say things in a different cultural context or because they have access to a differing range of musical skills. At the NFF this year, 2011, this difference could be seen in the contrast for example between The Peter Rowan Band and The Baylor Brothers. Another example would be in Celtic music where you had the expression of traditional Irish instrumental music by The Kellys, focused on tunes from a particular region, County Clare, contrasting with Australian performance of the tradition more broadly by Sunas or by a slightly more upbeat interpretation by younger performers in The George Jackson Band.

The various sub-traditions within the broader, or "great" tradition of folk music have in common an emphasis on the quality of their perfomance, sustained by the practices and disciplines of learning from and showing respect for those who are regarded as exemplary performers of the tradition by way of their musical and performance skills, and their willingness to pass on those skills to those who wish to be discipled in the tradition.

The sub-traditions are sustained by people living in an ongoing engagement, both informally and formally in gathering to share what they have learned and to learn from one another. There is a remembering of the past, a re-expressing in the present and the hope that the tradition will be picked up and continued in the future.

All of this seems highly relevant for thinking about the place of the church in a time in which the institutional and cultural supports for the church as an integral part of society are fading and its future will be to return to the past as a counter-cultural community. Those who want to be part of the community of followers of Jesus share with the folk music community that they both inherit traditions that are in tension with a broader culture that focuses on consumption, not participation, on the individual rather than the community and both will require intentional discipling in the skills and practices that are integral to their respective traditions if they are to survive and thrive.

Why Easter needs to be less religious

2011-04-28T10:27:00.000+10:00

Attending a Good Friday service at a small suburban Anglican church this year I found myself grappling with the question as to whether the service was about the death of Jesus, or whether it was really in the end about us and about being religious.

The bulk of the service was fine with the focus on reading of Scripture, Psalm 22 and the reading of the passion narrative from John. Then we got to the reflection which turned to focus on us and a focus on the things we wanted to let go through writing them on to a slip of paper and hammering them to a cross set up at the front of the worship space. While this might have been therapeutic it did not have much to do with what happened on Good Friday and became an occasion for individual introspection. We are here in the realm of religion, in which the focus is on individual and the internal, private, spiritual experience unrelated to public issues and the wider world.

Stanley Hauerwas observes that the words from the cross "Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing," reveals that all our assumptions about God and the salvation wrought by God are rendered presumptuous. What is happening is something much more significant and much more broad ranging in its implications than an obsession with ourselves. "We are made members of a kingdom governed by a politics of forgiveness and redemption." (Cross Shattered Christ p.31) Yet this note was almost totally absent in the religiously focused Good Friday service that I participated in.

We became focused on ourselves and yet as Stanley Hauerwas reminds us in his reflection on the cry of dereliction "My God, My God why have you forsaken me?" we are confronted in these words by the sheer unimaginable differentness of God which shatters all our attempts to understand God in human terms. Any attempt to short circuit this profound reality of difference is the first step towards the creation of an idol, the creation of a god whose ways we can understand and manipulate through our internal emotional responses, to make us feel comfortable and at ease in the world.

Our idea of God, our assumption that God must possess the sovereign power to make things come out all right for us, at least in the long term, is revealed by Jesus' cry of abandonment to be the idolatry that it is.(p.64)

Focusing on ourselves and our emotions in the context of a world redefining and almost unimaginable event is to shrink the Gospels down to a point where they can be absorbed into a consumer, narcisitic "me" focused culture and community. Our liturgy, our hymns and prayers that we share in our gatherings of the community that would seek to follow this strange messiah needs rethinking.

A rejection of Christianity as being centered on individual "religious experience" has profound implications for how we understand, and have misunderstood, in the contemporary world, the character of liturgy. Christian liturgy argues William Cavanaugh in his discussion of "Liturgies of Church and State":

... knows no distinction between sacred and secular, spiritual and material. To participate in the liturgy is to bless God as God blessed all of material creation, to respond to God’s blessing by blessing God. And as Schmemann says, “in the Bible to bless God is not a ‘religious’ or a ‘cultic’ act, but the very way of life.”14 As such, liturgy is the natural (not simply supernatural) act of humanity, to imagine the world as God sees it, and to return the world to God in praise. All of creation is “material for the one all-embracing Eucharist,” at which humanity presides as priest.15

It is only because of our fallen condition that it seems natural not to live eucharistically, to accept the reduction of God and God’s blessing to a small reservation of life called “sacred.”16 When this happens, what remains outside the sacred is not simply the “secular” or the “natural,” stripped of God, disenchanted, and functioning on merely material principles. For the Bible does not know the material as some self-sufficient substrate upon which is overlaid the spiritual. There is no such thing as pure nature devoid of grace. ... But what remains when humans attempt to clear a space of God’s presence is not a disenchanted world, but a world full of idols. Humans remain naturally worshiping creatures, and the need for liturgy remains a motivating force, as we have seen in supposedly secular space. Christ came not to start a new religion but to break down the barrier between human life and God. Therefore to be redeemed from our fallen condition means to resist the imagination that would bifurcate the world into sacred and secular. Casting away this division means seeing also that Christian liturgy and the liturgies of the world compete on the same playing field, and that a choice between them must be made.

Jayber Crow - sitting in church

2011-04-27T15:43:00.000+10:00

Rereading Wendell Berry's wonderful novel Jayber Crow over Easter, I identified to an extent that scared me with the account by Jayber Crow of how he relates to the church services he attended as a byproduct of his work as church handyman and cleaner.

In general, I weathered the worst sermons pretty well. They had the great virtue of causing my mind to wander. Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons. ... What I liked least about the service itself was the prayers: what I liked far better was the singing . Not all of the hymns could move me. I never liked " Onward Christian Soldiers" or "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Jesus' military career has never compelled my belief. I liked the sound of people singing together, whatever they sang, but some of the hymns reached into me all the way to the bone: "Come thou fount of every blessing," "Rock of Ages," "Amazing Grace," "O God, Our help in Ages Past."...
I thought that some of the hymns bespoke the true religion of the place. The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that they world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but they still liked it. What they came together for was to acknowledge, just by coming, their losses and failures and sorrows, their need for comfort, their faith always needing to be greater, their wish (in spite of all words and acts to the contrary) to love one another and to forgive and to be forgiven, their need for one another's help and company and divine gifts, their hope and experience of love surpassing death, their gratitude. (p162-163)

One brief comment on "the Wedding"

2011-04-27T15:19:00.000+10:00

Marriage is one of the hardest, though greatly rewarding, ventures of the human life. William and Kate have the stakes raised in that their journey towards this commitment is being conducted in the full glare of the mass media. They will have my prayers, beyond that I feel no need to engage with the circus of media self promotion. Fortunately there is the option of an AFL game on TV Friday evening one I shall certainly take.

A poetic take on theology

2011-03-28T19:40:00.000+11:00

Kristin Jack, from the Servants to Asia's Urban Poor, in his powerful collection Poetry and Prophecy observes:

I am so weary of creedal system,
even more of doctrine,
for spirit will not slide
underneath a microscope,
or flow inside a formula
no matter how elegantly precise.

But I am all ears to Poetry and Prophecy,
the wild song that rides
upon the Wind and on the Light,
as ode to Love and Wonder
sung to the One and only Word
that ever truly took shape. ("Theology" p.39)

Tertullian and Christian non-violence

2011-03-21T20:37:00.000+11:00

Dipping my way through Jean-Michel Hornus's fascinating source book on early Christianity It is Not Lawful For Me To Fight: Early Christian Attitudes Toward War, Violence and the State (Herald Press, 1982) brought to my attention his conclusion that Tertullian, Origen and Lactantius during the early centuries of the Christian movement were developing a doctrine of positive non-violence. Hornus is a church historian from the Reformed church so he could not be accused as an Anabaptist might of reading back his/her commitments into the original sources.

Hornus argues that their approach was rooted in a conviction that there was another power at work in history beyond that of brute force. He finds in Tertullian an account of how believers might resist injustice without having to resort to unjust methods. Tertullian in his admonition to the proconsul Scapula referred to a historical precedent.

In Asia, under Arrius Antonius, the Christians had responded to persecution by going en masse to the tribunal o be condemned. The prosecutor's embarrassment and confusion had been comical. What would Scapula do "if thousands of those under his administration men and women of all ages and conditions , were to come and offer themselves voluntarily for martyrdom?"(p.215)

A tourist's reflections on the Christchurch earthquake

2011-03-03T11:31:00.000+11:00

The Christchurch earthquake occurred close to the end of a wonderful holiday that my wife Jillian and I had been enjoying on the North Island of New Zealand . After the earthquake, for the last few days of our visit we found ourselves at the bookending each day of sightseeing with the continuous live TV coverage of the impacts of the earthquake on the lives of people in Christchurch and the search and rescue process.

Beyond the ongoing feelings of horror at the devastation both physically and of the fabric of people's lives and awe at the instinctive and generosity of ordinary people that was on display we found ourselves referring back to several visits we had made during the previous ten days of our visit in which the reality of earthquakes in re-shaping the landscape and communities across New Zealand had been on display as part of the tourist experience.

It had started for us in Wellington at Te Papa, as the wonderful National Museum is affectionately referred to, where New Zealand's location on the Ring of Fire was visually demonstrated and explained. At Rotorua we learned about a series of earthquakes prior to the eruption of Mt Tarawera in 1886 that led to the destruction of several Maori villages, the deaths of probably more than 120 people, and the vast expansion of Lake Rotomahana to twenty times its original size.

Our visit to Napier on the east coast was particularly poignant in retrospect. We had visited the city just a few days after the eightieth anniversary of the Hawke's Bay earthquake. On 3 February 1931 an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale devastated Napier as well as causing widespread damage in the neighbouring town of Hastings.At least 256 people died in the earthquake that remains in absolute as well as proportionate terms given the population of New Zealand at that date.

The central business district of Napier was completely devastated by the quake and the resulting fire. The national response was to embark on a rebuilding of the city centre, intereswtingly the in art deco style, a reconstruction that was completed within two years. The resulting distinctive character of the city has been maintained by the residents and is a source of civic pride, community identity and most helpfully, a substantial flow of tourists.

With these experiences fresh in our minds, we quickly became aware that the commentary accompanying the television coverage displayed an almost total lack of awareness of the history of large scale devastation and loss of life in New Zealand from earthquakes. The framing of the narrative as though there had been no previous history of major disasters in New Zealand, occluded from view a possible source of encouragement; that is accounts of how the New Zealand community had responded in creative and compassionate ways to disasters of this scale in the past.

The other issue that emerged as we listened to the interviews with people in Christchurch related to the language used to describe the terrible devastation of the Cathedral and the destruction of the spire -at last count probably 22 people died in the Cathedral as a result of the earthquake. The use of the term "iconic" was repeatedly used to describe the Cathedral and its destruction was described as "tearing the heart out of the city". Remnants of the Christendom settlement were clearly evident in this expression of grief over the destruction of the building. In the midst of this the Dean of the Cathedral struck the right note when interviewed in the early days after the quake with his focus on the question of the safety and survival of the missing people ahead of questions about the building.

It was, however, I thought a significant use of language by the media and civic leadership in a country in which church attendance and affiliation is probably even lower than in Australia, and points toward a significant issue that is likely to emerge when the question of restoration or rebuilding of the cathedral comes to the fore. The question will be who pays and who will determine the shape of the rebuilt cathedral? If it is indeed a community icon, then the wider community will want a say in shaping the new building.

I acknowledge that his may seem preemptive at a point when grief and dislocation are the issues that need to be dealt with by those on the spot. Let me at least put the issue on the table for consideration when the time is ripe.

I would doubt that the Anglican Church of Aotoerea even with whatever insurance it might receive will have the funds by itself for a reconstruction along traditional lines. If reconstruction is publicly funded then the general public is likely to want something that looks recognisably like a the previous cathedral, or a "real church"in that location. I would guess that there will be a substantial group of engaged Anglicans who are likely to see the rebuilding of the Cathedral as an opportunity for a building design that represents a more contemporary understanding of the church, and its role in the community, as a creative minority in a post-Christendom environment. These respective visions are almost certainly bound to come into conflict and the pastoral effort and wisdom required by Church leadership in dialogue with their faith community in discerning how to move forward is likely to be considerable.

Beyond this specific issue, the damage to the fabric of the churches across Christchurch and the engagement by Christians in the recovery phase over the next couple of years offers a substantial opportunity to reconsider the shape of Christian mission across the city. I would hope that the leadership of Christian communities will see this as an opportunity to reassess the shape of church life and the infrastructure needed to support it and check the rush to automatically commence rebuilding what was destroyed. Hopefully too the experience of engaging with people where they are and focusing on being present with people outside the safety of traditional "sacred" spaces during the process of recovery might provide some clues as to the future shape of a church in Christchurch which demonstrates the presence of Christ in the everyday.

In the meantime, we can continue to pray for all those in Christchurch who are grieving with those who grieve and sharing the relief with those who are relieved that their losses are less than others.

Holidays

2011-02-05T12:28:00.000+11:00

Further delay in resuming normal service in this highly irregular blog. I have been sorting through lots of hard copy stuff in my study, clearing layers of the stuff out in preparation for the next stage of my life, resigning from the public service and starting a PhD on the engagement between church, their agencies and the Federal Government in delivering public policy and community services. Should generate lots of material to comment on this site. That's the plan.

In the mean time off to New Zealand for three weeks holiday.

An anarchist history of upland southest Asia - a way of rereading the history of Israel

2011-01-23T15:07:00.000+11:00

I have just finished a great read - James C Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, 2009).

Here Scott offers a history of the estimated 100 million people who live in a vast hill and mountain zone that runs across southwest China, northeast India, and parts of five Southeast Asian countries. Contrary to the usual account that sees these people as the original inhabitant who have been left behind by history, he provides an account that turns the usual assumptions upside down.

These populations fled into the hills over the course of two millennia, he argues, to avoid the imposition of slavery, indentured labor, and taxes by expanding states. they have developed their community, economic and religious life as an active effort at state evasion and state resistance

That is, they evolved languages, economies, and ways of life that were designed to keep the state at bay, or to be engaged with on their own terms. He draws attention to some examples of this process outside of Asia, as well. Scott often returns to the complex example of Myanmar (also called Burma) to explain how states mapped terrain, classified populations, and acquired resources as they expanded -- and to show how the Kachins, the Hmong, and others resisted. often successfully this process.

Beyond the relevance of this work for studies of the region, this work raises tantalising questions about the role of the state in history and enables us to deconstruct the assumed, taken for granted account that the state is all important and acts of resistance to the state are marginal. We have here a framework for questioning the taken for granted character of this narrative.

Beyond that it also occurred to me that this account of resistance to the state might be of interest to Old Testament scholars in thinking about the emergence of Israel and helping to reread that history through the pentateuch and especially during the time of the Judges. I'm not an Old Testament scholar but it seems to me that there might be a PhD thesis of two in exploring the relevance of Scott's model for our understanding of the dynamics of the formation of Israel.

For example:

the hills as a region of refuge or escape from the state making projects of the valleys (pp.22-3)
pp122-3 to leave state space is to become characterised as a "barbarian" or a "tribal"
"State expansion when it involves forms of force labour fosters (geographical conditions permitting) extrastate zones of flight and refuge. The inhabitants of such zones often constitute a composite of runaways and earlier-established peoples. (p.133)
the hill population were those without kings, operating with non-hierarchical patterns of limited local authority,
the religious commitments of the hills were resistant to religious uniformity of the valley states - the hills are the source of prophetic movements.

Scott's account of the development of tribal identity as not being driven by long lasting ethnicities but by the development of identity by all those fleeing to the hills to escape the valley states centralising authority.

The history of Israel has coded within it a resistance to centralising authority, in the escape from Egypt, the initial tribal form of non-hierarchical authority and the limited power of the judges. Even under the kings there was always ready to emerge the strain of prophetic critique and resistance to that authority.

Canning Stock Route exhibition

2011-01-17T21:07:00.000+11:00

The Canning Stock Route exhibition at the national Museum here in Canberra is finishing up its run on Australia Day. If you can get out there do it. It is an engaging and powerful recovery of history and mapping of geography from the point of view of the Aboriginal people in the region stretching from Wiluna to Halls Creek..

What it demonstrates powerfully is that geography and mapping is not culture neutral. The "white fella" map of the stock route took no account of the lines of language and cultural responsibility that were critical to the Indigenous geography of the region. There is a wonderful painting of one region that takes the form of a "western' map and overlays it with a pointers account of the ecological niches across the region as understood by those whose home it was and who closely the plant and animal patterns of life.

The story of the encounter with the stock route was a major project in historical and cultural documentation using Aboriginal artists and film makers from the communities along the length of the stock route to paint and narrate their stories of encounter and the impact that it had had on them. Some of the paintings were made by artists who had been part of the last communities to engage with the European invasion as late as 1956.

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Church, state and refugees

2011-01-01T14:19:00.000+11:00

Joshua Ralston in Refugees and the Role of Religious Groups draws attention to the central role that religious organizations play in the long resettlement journey for refugees that begins with forced exile, moves through a sojourn in a refugee camp, and ends for some at least with resettlement in a new country.

Church World Service, Jewish Family Services, World Relief and many other denominational organizations are involved in every step, from the handling of interviews and applications to determine refugee status, to meeting new arrivals at the airport, and providing the first few months of housing. The relief or mission agencies of churches and synagogues are integral partners in the government's response to refugees.

This appears to be a perfect symbiotic relationship, with the state providing what only it can - a political polity and the possibility of citizenship - and religious groups offering what they are best equipped to provide - hospitality. The political limbo of statelessness, which consigns refugees to "bare life" outside the law (as Giorgio Agamben describes it), can apparently only be overcome through the joint efforts of religion and state.

Ralston questions whether the church can be totally comfortable with the terms of this partnership and moves to articulate an approach that treats the church's own distinctive character seriously.

While much of the religious involvement in resettlement is laudable, it still regularly falls short of the call of Jewish and Christian scriptures to love the alien as "one of your own citizens" (Leviticus 19:33). Central to the biblical narrative is a reminder to love and treat the stranger as a neighbour.

However, partnership with the state presses Christian mission increasingly away from this biblical mandate and towards what the German Jesuit theologian Johan Baptist Metz calls "a service providing religion." Under this model, refugees are not new neighbours or possible joint-members of the body of Christ, but clients to whom a political service is owed.

Bretherton is right to worry, then, that "involvement with the state often exacerbates social divisions and forces the church to mimic the state in its form and practices." At times, the church's response to refugees resembles something like the Department of Motor Vehicles. Once the service is met - with a pick up at the airport, a quick welcome, and few months rent paid - the church's mission moves on to its next project.

What is lacking in this model is the kind of long and patient friendships that nurture community, alter the national character of the church, and challenge the state's assumptions about citizenship and human identity.

One way that the church might enact this is to follow what Bretherton calls "doxological politics," which "hallow" or bless the lives of refugees through acts of listening, community organizing, offering sanctuary to asylum seekers and shared worship. All of these acts serve as ad hoc ways to move beyond the service-oriented logic of resettlement and toward genuine encounter and mutual enrichment.

Another model is found in the Jesuit Refugee Service's practice of physical accompaniment, which signals God's presence alongside those excluded from national polity.

The church can thereby hold a mirror up to liberal democracy's claims of inclusion and human rights by demanding the state live up to its own ideals. As political philosopher Selya Benhabib argues in The Rights of Others, "There is not only a tension, but often an outright contradiction, between human rights declarations and states' sovereign claim to control their borders as well as to monitor the quality and quantity of admittees."

Hallowing the life of refugees and accompanying them beyond the services of resettlement includes advocating for just national and international immigration policies that are grounded in something more than the economic needs of the welcoming nation.

This is not to say that the church, or other religious organizations, should abjure their roles in resettling refugees. However, if they are to partner with the state in this process, they must also stretch their imagination and political commitments beyond the borders of the nation-state and the national rhetoric that accompanies debates on immigration.
The church would then act as a public and political witness to the presence and dignity of refugees, both locally and worldwide. In so doing, the church might be surprised to find itself following the way of the God who, in Karl Barth's wonderful phrase, journeyed into the far country for our sake.

Refugees and intellectual freedom

2011-01-01T14:05:00.000+11:00

Rowan Williams throws a different angle on the issue of immigration and the role of the refugee in his address Refugees make us strange to ourselves.

So the refugee intellectual brings into our insular discussion the knowledge that justice is vulnerable and has to be defended against the silencing of discussion and the silencing of particular classes or racial groupings. ... And there are two interconnected issues that come into focus as a result of this recognition.

One is about the need to sustain a culture in which genuine and strong disagreements over the shape of the 'good' society are given space to unfold and interact - the need for a robust public intellectual life, supported by a university culture which is not simply harnessed to productivity and problem-solving.

The second, closely related, issue is about the need for access to these arguments on the part of all citizens. An intellectually lively society nourished by a vigorous and independent academy, appears actually to presuppose certain things about universal education and democratic accountability, the imperative to resist the restriction of argument to those already possessed of ideological and material power.

It might be objected, of course, that this formulation itself takes for granted a pluralist and democratic society and thus stifles any discussion of whether society could or should be otherwise - whether absolute monarchy, say, or religious uniformity enforced by law, might be the form of a good society.

But the point is that as soon as you are asking whether absolute monarchy is a possibility for a good society, you are granting that it needs to be - and could be - justified. You are allowing that an argument could be mounted for absolute monarchy; and this implies that absolute monarchy is not the only thinkable shape for society - which is already a decisive move away from the historic understanding of absolutism.

If you want a theological reference in the margin here, you might recall St Augustine's deep scepticism about any suggestion that this or that social order could be identified with the City of God. History, in his eyes, certainly has a momentum and an overall story, but it is not one that moves inexorably towards the perfect human society. The task of the citizen with Christian conviction is to work for the changes that reflect the justice of God - and always to recognise that such changes can be reversed, in a world of endemic rivalry and acquisition.

The need for 'argumentative democracy', as it has been called, is not to be confused with either a passive tolerance for diverse points of view that never engage with each other; nor is it a recipe for a Babel of populist prejudices. The former - as Michael Sandel put it in his excellent recent book, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? - can mean "suppressing moral disagreement rather than actually avoiding it." Whereas the ideal situation is neither suppressing nor avoiding but engaging.

Engaging, however, is possible only when there is an assumption that it is safe to say what you believe, and that there is a process in which you will be heard, so that any ultimate outcome will have at least registered your own conviction even if it does not endorse it completely. Passive tolerance suggests an underlying nervousness about conviction of any kind and a serious lack of confidence that there are processes and contexts that make disagreement bearable.

Beyond this account of the conditions for a pluralist society Rowan Williams goes on to draw attention to an important theological warrant for thinking about the Christian as a migrant.

... one of the mainsprings of Christian self-understanding in the formative years of the Church's life was the idea that the believer was essentially a 'migrant', someone who was in any and every situation poised between being at home and being a stranger. In the New Testament and a good deal of the literature that survives from the first couple of Christian centuries, one of the commonest self-descriptions of the Church is in the language that would have been used in the Mediterranean cities for a community of migrant workers, temporary residents.

As a 'resident alien' in whatever society he or she inhabited, the believer would be involved in discovering what in that society could be endorsed and celebrated and what should be challenged. The Christian, you could say, was present precisely as someone who was under an obligation to extend or enrich the argument - sometimes indeed to initiate the argument about lasting social goods in settings where there was previously no possibility of thinking about what made a social order good or just or legitimate.

In the context of a religiously diverse modern society, something of this role is bound to be played by all communities of faith, to the extent that they operate with different ideas of accountability from those that mostly prevail around them; they believe they are accountable to transcendent truths or states of affairs. But it is worth noting how deeply and distinctively this language is embedded in early Christian literature. And this suggests that, if it is the case that the stranger is always necessary to make any society think about itself both critically and hopefully, the believer's role is always, in modern societies, going to show some intriguing parallels with that of the refugee intellectual.

Perhaps we may understand the social role of the religious believer more adequately if we think of it in terms of extending or enriching argument, offering resources for thinking about social pluralism rather than either deploring it or reducing it to the passive tolerance I mentioned earlier.

Borders and Refugees

2011-01-01T13:53:00.000+11:00

The politics of refugees and policy responses in Australia raise questions about how we understand the role of borders and the moral responsibility and status of nations. This later issue is one that the Christian community or movement needs to do some serious thinking about given its fundamental theological commitments regarding ecclesiology, the character of the church, and its practice of mission.

The ABC religion and Ethics website has recently re-listed a number of articles relevant to this issue.
Luke Bretherton in The Moral Status of Borders frames the moral issues at stake in the following way:

Mass migration is a central feature and consequence of globalisation and will continue to be a major factor of social, political and economic life for the foreseeable future. Mass migration is, of course, not a new phenomenon, but it is morally and politically problematic for two key reasons.

It is politically problematic because it involves crossing borders between different nation-states and therefore it involves the re-negotiation of the fundamental political and legal status of the individual concerned.

It is morally problematic because current immigration policies adopted by all nation-states favour the needs of the strong (the existing members of a polity) over the weak (asylum seekers and vulnerable economic migrants).

The underlying options shaping the political debate and policy response to mass migration seem unable to cope with either reality. We seem to be forced either to prioritize the needs of the strong, and so have closed borders with tight immigration controls and large-scale deportation of illegal immigrants in the hope that this will deter further migrants; or we prioritize the needs of the weak and have open borders.

Bretherton then sets out two major ethical stances that are prominent in the debate:

Liberal utilitarianism starts from the principle that democracies owe an equal duty of care to all humanity and that by implication borders should be open. What is critical here are the rights of the individual and that these should in general take priority over the existence of a particular political community.
A communitarian approach takes the stance that borders are not only practically necessary but morally required and needed to sustain the life of the community.

Christians, Bretherton argues, have difficulty with utilitarianism because of its abstract account of the individual. We are called to love, as the parable of the Good Samaritan exemplifies, particular people in particular places. On the other hand, the cultivation and maintenance of a distinctive national life as argued by the communitarians, cannot be an end in itself, but must be subordinated to the concern for a broader international order of justice and freedom. Though Bretherton does not develop this point, there is a case here for viewing concern with such an order from the perspective of the catholicity of the Christian movement, a commitment that is not confined within the limits of the world of nations.

The true end of humans lies neither in family, nor in a particular culture or nation, nor in some kind of worldwide polity, but in communion with God. The way we order the relationship between the needs of migrants and the needs of existing citizens needs to be set within this bigger picture.

... we need to see borders as a face that we, as a nation, present to the world. A face is what says that I am somebody who deserves respect, that I am not simply a piece of land to be bought and sold or a thing to be used for a time.

It says that I have a personality and a history and a way of doing things, but also that I am made for relationship and without coming into relationship with others who are different from me, then I do not grow.

Ultimately, it says that I am a face who seeks to look upon the face of God and who finds the face of God reflected, not in the faces of the strong and powerful, the skilled and the economically capable, but in the faces of the orphan, the widow and the refugee - and this is who God bids invites me to be hospitable.

To think of borders in terms of the metaphor of the face re-orientates us to see there is value to be placed upon the existing community, but the existing community is not an end in itself. It is only fulfilled as it moves beyond itself and comes into relationship with those around it.

On this basis Bretherton provides a quick sketch of the policy stance that would follow from the metaphor of borders as the face of a community.

Borders are a means of framing and structuring this relationship, and orientating places like Britain and Australia to the rest of the world in a way that presents an enquiring, confident, hospitable face rather than a closed, incestuous, hostile face that abjures its responsibility to the poor and vulnerable.

By understanding a nation's borders as a face, we can express pride in our national character and history. We can also require that those whom we welcome learn our language and commit to the economic, social and political life of this country.
But it also requires that we move beyond mere humanitarian concern or isolated charity, and toward authentic long-term relationships, and it is this that enables strangers to become citizens.

So much for the first of these articles. The question left hanging here relates to the role of the church in arguing for and articulating such an option.

Bruce Cockburn On Mountain Stage : NPR

2010-12-21T21:11:00.000+11:00

Bruce Cockburn On Mountain Stage : NPR

Blogging Through Advent - 4th Sunday

2010-12-19T14:31:00.000+11:00

Readings Advent 4 (Year A)

Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

The readings for this Sunday in Advent, particularly the passages from Isaiah and Matthew need to be read in the wider context. The full force of the connections aren't fully obvious. Terms like Emmanuel, God with Us, are hard to read through the lenses that we have inherited from the experence of Christendom in which monarchy came to be equated with arbitrary power. what we need to anticipate and open ourselves to is that in this week in Advent our expectations will be turned upside down.

Walter Brueggeman, the Old Testament traces this turning of our expectations upside down in his compact reflection on the readings for this Sunday.

The two central texts, the gospel narrative of Matthew and the Isaiah text to which Matthew alludes, speak about the biology of this evangelical event. The biology does not leave much to argue about. Let us say simply and at the outset, "Yes, born of a virgin." And we say that in the innocence of Christmas without quibbling over translation problems of which something likely could be made. We simply follow the creedal way of the church and leave these niceties undisturbed.

But the biological event does not stand as a bald medical claim. In the context of Isaiah 7:10-15, the birth of the unnamed child points us to two other considerations.
First, the child is given to King Ahaz as a notice that the present world should not be feared, trusted, or credited. The virgin birth is a sign that the known world, the one we treasure, is not permanent. It is in jeopardy, under assault by the power of God, and it will soon be terminated.

The scholarly inclination is that the years before the "knowing good and evil" are to be reckoned at two years. That is how long it takes a child to learn. So this odd birth is a time bomb. In two years, O king, the landscape of the human world will have completely changed. It is not to be treasured or relied upon.

The season of Advent invites us to imagine what in the landscape of this world will change in two years because God is God. What threats will dissipate? What evil will be overcome? What chances for obedience will be take—or missed? And if we take Isaiah 7:17 seriously, under what threats will we be in two years?

The whole passage reminds us that the present world is not locked into a safe or predictable mode. It is open and on the move, precisely because Yahweh is Lord. We must not be so fascinated with the biological as to miss the news that is here, good and bad.
Second, the name of the child, like so many names, is an anticipation: Immanuel—God with us! That is the evangelical claim of the biological event. Immanuel could be royal propaganda, a throne name. Or it could mean the most important new reality ever made available in creation.

The God who has been far off draws close. The one who is enemy and judge becomes comrade and friend. The calculus of heaven and earth is changed, and earth becomes the place of God's governing presence. This is cause for celebration.

In the epistle lesson, Paul begins with reference to the same gospel (Romans 1:1). It is far from clear that Paul knows anything about virgin birth. If he does, he makes nothing of it. But he does know about and makes a great deal of the odd reality of Jesus. He uses a barrage of titular terms to try to express it. What all the listing of names and the celebration of Jesus yields for Paul is a call to be set apart for the gospel, a call to obedience and apostleship (verses 1,5).

Advent and the birth are not events that happen and just sit there. They are events with futures. They open new lives and establish fresh vocations. They call baptized folks to live lives as odd, abrasive, and unacceptable to reason as any biological miracles. A World on the Move

Yes, the world is not safe or predictable, as we have had reason to be reminded this week with the shipwreck and drowning of refugees within sight of, note the irony of the title of the geographic feature, Christmas Island.

The passage from Isaiah comes at a time of empires clashing, people being uprooted and dispersed. The promise recorded in the encounter between Isaiah and the king is a ticking time bomb for those in power trying to play it safe. An openness to the future of God's salvation is paradoxically risky and uncertain, played out in the reality of women giving birth and empires on the march.

I find no easy comfort here in these readings. It does not offer salvation as something spiritual disconnected from the world of politics and the wonder of the birth of a child. It offers to us a way in which salvation has to be lived, not an intellectually constructed creed to be believed.

The sacredness of the secular, Incarnation Gace and the Wrold according to William Stringfellow

2010-12-18T19:22:00.000+11:00

In one of his early works, A Private and Public Faith, theological polemics at their best, William Stringfellow charts in compact yet elliptical prose the relationship between Christian witness and the presence of the grace of God in the secularity of the world.

The cohesion and commonality of the vocation of Christians originates in their power to discern the truth of the word of God in any event whatever, and precisely because the Word of God is present in all events that power may be exercised in any event... No man - for that matter, no creature, no idea, no institution, no nation, no issue, no action - is beyond the reach and intercession of some member of the Body of Christ. It is in this way, indeed, that is by the width and the depth of the implication of Christians in the life of the world, that the unequivocal fact of grace is communicated, that the universality of Christ is represented and that the ubiquity of the Word of God is exposed.

For lay folk in the Church this means that there is no forbidden work. There is no corner of human existence, however degraded or neglected into which they may not venture; no person however beleaguered or possessed whom they may not befriend or represent; no cause, however vain, or stupid in which they may not witness; no risk, however costly or imprudent which they may not undertake.

This intimacy with the world as it is, this peculiar freedom, this awful innocence towards the world which a Christian is given is what makes Christian look like a sucker. He looks like that to other men because he is engaged in the wholesale expenditure of his life.

A Christian is not distinguished by his political views or moral decision, or habitual conduct or personal piety, or least of all by his churchly activities, A Christian is distinguished by his radical esteem for the Incarnation ... by his reverence for the life of God in the whole of creation, even and in a sense especially in the travail of sin.
The characteristic place to find a Christian is among his enemies. The first place to look for Christ is in Hell. (pp.42-43 A Private and a Public Faith)

For links with access to resources by and about Stringfellow see: Stringfellow - Ethics and Theology and the archives of Ben Myers Blog Faith and Theology March 2009.

Terrorism and the Terror of God

2010-12-12T17:28:00.000+11:00

One of my tests of a book is whether I want to go back and re-read it. Lee Griffith's The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God passes that test. I am not sure why but I think it has something to do with the way he undertakes the theological task.

Griffiths sets out his theological agenda and method in the Preface.

... consideration of the terror that people inflict on one another necessarily entails a consideration of faith. Karl Barth once called on believers to read Bible and newspaper side by side. An understanding of current events sheds new light on the hermeneutical context from which the reader approaches the biblical text., but more importantly the juxtaposition of newspaper and Bible makes more readily apparent the manner in which the biblical word demythologises our contemporary ideologies and social and political circumstances. A reading of Barth's Church Dogmatics reveals that Barth added a dialogue with church history into the mix of newspaper and Bible. The encounter with the biblical word is less individual than communal. It is within the community - both the living communion of saints as well as the host of witnesses that have gone before us - that we come to understand our own idiosyncratic readings of Scripture and faith ... (p.xiii)

This method makes for a richness of discussion that continually pulls against any simple ideological positioning and rush to judgment of the obvious "badies" or uncritical accounts of those who we might have expected to see as obvious candidates for uncritical approval. Griffith's discussion of the abolitionist movement is a particularly good example of the discriminating complexity of his assessment of the differing strands of that movement.

Particularly challenging and likely to be counter-intuitive to many both Christians and atheists alike is his reading of the book of Revelation. He opens his discussion with the observation that there is general agreement that the author of the book of Revelation was a criminal and goes from there. If John was not well loved by the Roman empire he observes the book of Revelation indicates that the feeling was mutual.

Griffith makes the important point that while there is much violence in Revelation we need to be clear as to the perpetrator of the violence, Babylon, the Beast and the dragon. God's weapons are the truth of God's word and the blood of the slain lamb. The other theme he highlights is that it is not a book about the end of the world it is about re-creation and a new heaven and new earth. The terror of God he notes is the resurrection. ... the resurrection is terror to all who assume that death and bloodshed will have the final word.(Publisher's Interview)

The author does not remain detached in a theoretical vein. The theology becomes personal and passionate at this particular point when he draws to our attention the two best sermons that he has ever heard preached on the book of Revelation. The first was an address by the lawyer/theologian/activist William Stringfellow on the defeat of the saints.

His meditation on the defeat of the saints was a renunciation of all triumphalism, be it academic, ecclesiastical, economic, political or military, It was a reminder that the saints are not raptured out of terror and into victory. It was a reminder that Easter is preceded by the cross, that God's cause is not served by the righteous who are triumphant but by the faithful who re defeated.(p.216)

The second sermon took the form of the recitation of a text by a wino in a ramshackle soup kitchen in Washington DC. The story is worth reading in its entirety but I cannot forebear to quote from the account. Late at night in the kitchen open to provide warmth for the homeless following the death by hypothermia and the funeral of North Carolina one of the regular visitors to the kitchen.

Scott Wright one of the members of the Community for Creative Non-Violence who ran the kitchen asked if people wanted to recite some poems or have some readings. An old wino, Cool Breeze, asked for a reading from the Bible, "The Revelation to Saint John, chapter twenty-one, verses one through seven".

Scott read, and right from the very first word, Cool Breeze recited alon: "Then I was a new heaven and a new earth ... " Coo, Breeze - his words were slurred but there was no mistaking it. It was Revelation 21, the word of God spoken in a way I had never quite heard before or since. " ... and God himself will we with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more ... See, I am making all things new."

Well, for reasons I do not understand, that was one of several conversion experiences in my life. What was it? Was it the words of promise spoken in a ramshackle setting? Was it the conjoining of voices? The voice of Scott a man of gentle faith and nonviolence, with the rough and slurred voice of Cool Breeze, also a man of faith who had been brought low by the great society as surely asby his bottle? Or was it simply fatigue that left me open to hearing the versus of Scripture in my guts as well as my ears? I do not know.

But this I do know. As day broke and Scott and I left the kitchen I knew it to be absolutely true - there will be a new heaven and a new earth. And we are going to be there. O we may be transformed. We may not have our finery and fancy attitudes, but we're going to be there. ... And that no-good old wino Cool Breeze he's gong to be there too. Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus. (pp217-8)

Blogging Through Advent - 3rd Sunday

2010-12-12T14:54:00.000+11:00

Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146: 5-10 or Luke 1:47-55; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

Debra Dean Murphy in her reflections on this weeks readings for Advent draws our attention sharply to the outdoor character of what we are waiting for in Advent. Here is no vague Aldi brand spirituality that we can briefly tune into as a form of therapy before resuming business as normal in the frantic rush to consume.

Wendell Berry observes that it’s not enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. For many, such an insight serves mainly to underwrite the idea that we can worship God best in nature’s environs: mountaintops, seashores, golf courses. But I think that Berry is on to something else, as are the appointed texts for the season of Advent generally and for the third Sunday especially.

The Advent scriptures are relentlessly eschatological: preoccupied with consummation and completion, concerned with all things, at long last, being set to right. ...

Even more of a challenge, perhaps, is the particular vision of Advent’s eschaton: transformed landscapes (blooming deserts, water in the wilderness); the glory and majesty of forests and mountains (Lebanon, Carmel, Sharon). Eschatology here is topographical, earthy, local. It is, at heart, about the renewal of creation. Christ’s second Advent portends not the sweeping of souls up into the clouds but heaven come to earth. It’s land reform, people.

But it’s people reform, too: blind eyes opened, deafness cured, lepers healed, the dead raised. It is justice executed: food for the hungry, prisoners set free, the rich sent away empty. It is good news, at long last, for the poor. (Advent Outdoors)

The richness of the good news that surfaces in the readings for Advent is revolutionary in the deepest sense of that term. Walter Brueggemann advises us that:

The news is that big change is coming. Mary sings (in Luke) her revolutionary song about the reversal of social arrangements and Isaiah offers a poem about homecoming for the alienated. Advent is about pondering the big changes that are set in motion by Christmas.

In the narrative about Jesus in Matthew 11, John the Baptizer wonders whether Jesus is the long expected Messiah. Jesus urges John to consider the “facts on the ground,” which are the consequences of Jesus’ effective ministry. The list of beneficiaries of that ministry is not unlike that in Psalm 146. The list includes the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dead, and the poor (Matthew 11:5), that is, all the devalued and marginalized.. In the psalm “the Lord” does the work. In the narrative, Jesus does the work. Ergo … yes, Jesus is the Messiah. Yes, Jesus is the one expected and welcomed. It is no wonder that Mary sang her revolutionary song: the birth and ministry of Jesus constitute a social revolution that keeps reverberating through every time and place. (The Jesus Revolution)

How do we wait for such a revolution? We are in this for the long haul as the reading from James reminds us. We wait patiently for the rain, we can't rush it, we can't live without it and sometimes it comes down not as the Palestinian farmers knew it in regular quantities and at regular times, but as we have experienced it in Canberra this week unexpectedly and with a force that reminds us we are not in control.

What does patience mean in a time of speed, where speed translates increasingly into violence against the world, animals and people, psychologically and physically. Note the kangaroos killed on the road, the people who lose family members in the road toll, those people who are notable to keep up with technology which places more and more demands on us to fit in with the drive to efficiency and has little pity for those who cannot accommodate themselves to its demands.

The ultimate in speed is war in which we refuse to take the time to converse with our enemy and assume that only the speed of violence can bring about change and justice. Patience begins with James reminds us not complaining against one another. Taking the time to listen. Patience is non-violence as a practice which trusts that we have all the time we need to be changed by our neighbour and by God so that we might be able to recognise and respond with joy to the changes that Advent is announcing when they actually arrive.

Different take on Non-violence

2010-12-09T20:52:00.000+11:00

William Cavanaugh provides a different take on the theoloogical rationale for non-violence.

Christians who embrace non-violence are often accused of unrealistically trying to impose a perfectionist ethic on mere sinful human beings. I find it remarkable that travelling to the other side of the world to shoot people is considered somehow everyday and mundane, while refraining is considered impossibly heroic.

The reason we should reject violence is not from a prideful conviction that we are the pure in a world full of evil. The gospel call to non-violence comes from the realization that we are not good enough to use violence, not pure enough to direct history through violent means. Peacemaking requires not extreme heroism, but a humble restraint in identifying enemies, and an everyday commitment to caring for members of one's body in mundane ways: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, all of whom, Jesus says, are Jesus himself.

Christian non-violence imitates Jesus' nonviolence, but it also participates in Jesus' self-emptying into sinful humanity, his sharing in the brokenness of the world. It is this peacemaking that we enact in sharing the broken bread of the Eucharist.

Breaking Bread, Making Peace

Blogging through Advent - 2nd Sunday

2010-12-05T11:08:00.000+11:00

Advent 2 (Year A)
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12

The readings for Advent seem to bring out the best in the compilers of the lectionary. The readings hang together, the connections are not forced and we find ourselves confronted with themes that run deep in the tradition. We sense and are given theological and narrative warrants for the connections between Isaiah, Jesus and the prophet John.

The passage in Romans shows Paul at his most Jewish, writing as a Jew about the inclusion of the pagans in mutual care in the new community that God is bringing into being. Doug Lee in the meditation on the these readings on the Ekklesia Project Blog draws out the political implications of these readings in his critique of the limits of a liberal polity. Paul in his reference to Isaiah declares that the ancient promise is on the way to fulfilment.

The day of hope has come, for Jesse’s root has risen to rule the Gentiles (Romans 15:12). While Isaiah sees only the eventual emergence of the coming king (“he shall stand”), the Greek translation cited by Paul signals something far more startling. It employs the word regularly utilized for “resurrection” and thus ignites Paul’s proclamation that Christ’s rising from the dead actualizes apocalyptic day of hope. “The Lord of our longing has conquered the night,” declares the lyrics of the Catholic hymn City of God. God has fulfilled the longing of Israel and the nations, and so Paul proclaims Christ as Lord of the nations to those who live under the nose of that Roman pretender, Caesar.

But this is far from revolutionary ideology or political theory. For Paul, all politics is local.

Therefore, the politics of hope begin at home, in the church, and around the table. The weak and the strong shall sit together at table and not devour each other with their condescension and condemnation. They can now eat together without qualms about each other’s dietary restrictions or voting affiliations.

Under Caesar and American liberalism, the best humanity can hope for is to maintain a sham unity enforced by power. When we bump up against intractable differences, the most we can practice is a tolerance that allows us to coexist but at a safe distance from one another. “Peace” is won through enforced division.

But under the reign of the coming king, the people of God are liberated from merely tolerating each other, from practicing that forced cordiality that plagues too many of our relationships in the church, and from mouthing that nonsense that we are all the same on the inside.

Christ did not die for generic people; he died as a servant of the circumcised and to fulfill God’s promises to the Hebrew people. Christ did not live at a safe distance from others so that everyone could go on pleasing themselves; he denied himself so that the Gentiles might be grafted and join a redeemed Israel in praising God with one voice. Therefore, we welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. We see that we could never be whole without each other, even in—and because of—our differences. We disturb the powers, liberal and imperial, when people who have no business eating together share one table. Our little welcomes are deeply interpersonal and vastly public, political, and apocalyptic at the same time. Paul’s politics of hope is practiced in the near and now. The Power of Hope : American and Apocalyptic

More particularly according to the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman, the Advent readings announce the end of the world as we know it, not through some spiritual experience detached from the world that we live in, but in practices of hope living towards justice in that very same world. A generic spirituality just doesn't cut it in the Scripture readings for Advent. The account of the readings that he offers us challenges much about what we thought being a Christian was all about. If we are not uncomfortable with the status quo and its distribution of power and wealth then it may be doubtful whether we have begun to grasp, or be grasped by the message of Advent.

In the epistle reading, Paul writes of God's truthfulness, by which he means reliability. God does what God says, that is, keeps God's word. This same God is described as the "God of hope", (verse 13). God's truth is about God's resolve to transform our world, to make it utterly new. That is why Gentiles may rejoice, praise, and hope (verses 9-12). And we believers, out of that promise, are invited to joy, peace, and power (verse 13).

So we ask, what is the promise? As the lectionary is arranged, we are bound to say the governing promise is the coming of a new leader, of the line of David. Both Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 articulate a new leader who will be empowered by the Spirit (Isaiah 11:2), who will have great dominion and much prosperity (Psalm 72: 8-11, 16). The common element in these two poetic forays is that the new governor will attend to the well-being, equity, and worth of the poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised: "May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy and crush the oppressor" (Psalm 72:4). Also, "With righteousness he will judge the poor, and decide with equity for the poor of the earth" (Isaiah 11:4).

... the pivotal point is the transformed situation of the poor. That is what the coming governor will do.

Note that the promise is not social evolution or developmental improvement. It is rather the inversion of the present in which the devalued will become the properly valued. So the promise is, at the same time, an enormous hope and a heavy judgment on how things now are. The function of the promise is to make the present provisional and tentative, even while we tend to make it absolute and treat it as an eternal arrangement.

In Matthew 3:1-12 the promised sovereign now draws near in the words of John the Baptist. Matthew uses the language of Isaiah 40:3 to envision a homecoming of the new king in triumphant procession. John calls for repentance (verse 2), which means ending old loyalties for the embrace of the new regime.

Jesus did indeed come to do exactly what Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 had promised. He came to cause inversion, to displace the old marginalizing arrangement. He summoned people to abandon the old patterns for God's new truthfulness.

It does not surprise us that John has conflict with the ones who value the present arrangement (verse 7). The establishment figures do not understand that this coming of the new king means the end of privilege and priority. They trivialize the baptism of Advent as a religious act without realizing that it means the end of the known world.

And so John disputes with them, urging that their pedigrees of status, conviction, and influence are of no use, because all these belong to the old age now placed in deep jeopardy. The lesson ends in verse 12 with images of harsh judgment on those who hold too intensely to old power arrangements that do not grant access to the poor and marginal. ...

Advent is for pondering the promise. And so it is a time for joy. But Advent is also a time for sober inventory, to face how deeply enmeshed in and committed to the old regime we are. Many of us benefit from the marginality of the poor, and we do not want it to change. In the real commitments of our lives, we are deeply in conflict with the new reign. And we are without hope, meaning we do not want, expect, or welcome the new leader. In our moments of honesty, we crave our hopelessness because it lets us keep things as they are.

But the new sovereign comes on the wind—by the Spirit (Isaiah 11:2, Matthew 3:11, Romans 15:13). That means he cannot be stopped and will not be resisted. The Spirit works through us, among us, and even against us. The Spirit in these days would indeed work against our hopelessness to let us hope.

Amen and amen!

Defining Terrorism

2010-12-04T20:46:00.000+11:00

Like the terms community and religion, the definition of terrorism has proved controversial and created a literature of its own. In his powerful work The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God, Lee Griffith makes a couple of salient points on the relationship between religion and terrorism and how we might define it.

On the relation with religion he comments:

O Brother Job, the terrors are with us still. The raiders still come and the firepower falls from the sky: the winds still rage and the edge of the sword is bloody (Job1:13-19). While some suffer these horrors others try to sleep. Are these terrifying dreams by which sleep is invaded a warning from God (Job 33:14-18). While the source of the dreams is unclear, in Lebanon, the violence can be traced to its sources. When we follow the trail, and trace the violence back we do not find God. We find a mad confluence of godlets. We find principalities and powers; imperial nation states and barely organised guerilla fronts, all self exalted , all petty, and all appealing to as much inhumanity as humans can muster. It is called liberation and martyrdom. It is called defense and justice. Call it what you will. It is terrorism. (p.6)

Griffith goes on to suggest that in the confusion of defining what terrorism is perhaps we should let the victims of violence do the defining.

... what better experts are there? They recognise it when they see it. Both the US Marines subject to the truck bombing in Beirut and the Lebanese citizens subject to US shelling - they knew terrorism when they saw it. The women who are subject to rape and abuse, the African Americans who are subject to racist attack, the gay men and lesbians who are beaten in homophobic rage - they all know terrorism when they see it. Hutus and Tutsis, Palestinians and Israelis, Iraqis and Kuwaitis, Serbs and Croats - they all see and they know. No matter the identity of the perpetrators or the class of their weaponry or the nature of the motivation it is terrorism. (p.8)

Light, Love and Resurrection in "A World Lost"

2010-12-04T20:26:00.000+11:00

At the conclusion of Wendel Berry's short novel A World Lost, Andy Catlett who has told the story of his Uncle Andrew, his murder when he was a child and his attempt many years later to unpack the events of that day, reflects on the members of his family and the way their story has unfolded.

One by one, the sharers in this mortal damage have borne its burden out of the present world ... At times perhaps I could wish them merely oblivion. But how can I deny that in my belief they are risen?

I imagine the dead waking, dazed, into a shadowless light in which they know themselves altogether for the first time. It is a light that is merciless until they can accept its mercy; by it they are at once condemned and redeemed. It is Hell until it is Heaven. Seeing themselves in that light, if they are willing, they see how far they have failed the only justice of loving one another; it punishes them by their own judgment. And yet, in suffering that light's awful clarity, in seeing themselves within it, they see its forgiveness and its beauty and are consoled. In it they are loved completely, even as they have been , and so are changed into what they could not havbe been, but what, if they could have imagined it, they would have wished to be.

That light can come into the world only as love, and love can enter only by suffering. Not enough light has ever reached us here among the shadows and yet I think it has never been entirely absent.

Remembering, I suppose, the best days of my childhood, I used to think I wanted most of all to be happy - by which I meant to be here and undistracted, I thought I would be at home.

But now I have been here a fair amount of time, and slowly I have learned that my true home is not just this place but is also that company of immortals with whom I have lived here day by day. I live in their love, and I know something of the cost> Somewhere in the darkness of my own shadow I know that I could not see at all were it not for this old injury of love and grief, this little flickering lamp that I have watched beside for all these years. (p.326 - pagination from the the reprinting of A World Lost in Three Short Novels)

Wendell Berry and pastoral theology - Part 3

2010-12-04T19:54:00.000+11:00

As discussed in the two earlier blogs on this theme, Wendell Berry has provided us with some closely observed and challenging accounts of pastoral care, in which a one way relationship often assumed on such occasions is challenged and something closer to a mutuality is demonstrated, a mutuality that challenges the expectations of the clergy involved.

In a recent engaging collection of essays, Wendell Berry and Religion: Heaven's Earthly Life edited by Joel James Shuman and Roger L Owens, (for an interesting review of the book see the review "Living the Incarnation" by Ragan Sutterfield) there is an essay by the Baptist minister Kyle Childress "Proper Work: Wendell Berry and the Practice of Ministry".

Berry is a farmer. How, asks Childress, are we to read him as a pastoral theologian?

"I engage Berry as a guide to good pastoral ministry" says Childress, "by starting where he starts, with his place. Place is a beginning from which to counter disincarnate forms of the Christian faith that raise the hackles of Wendell Berry and go against the grain of biblical faith that is lived out in the flesh."(p.73)

Childress reported that he wanted to commit to a congregation for the long haul - to pastor like Berry farms. "Just as Berry committed to staying on the farm, somewhere along the way I decided I needed to do the same - commit to a particular congregation of people over the long haul." (p.73)

The chapter is a report that bounces Childress's experience of pastoral ministry over 15 years at a Baptist church in rural Texas against insights from Berry's writing particularly his stories and novels.

Instead of designing a blueprint for how the farm ought to be and then reworking the farm to fit the design, Berry pays attention to the particularities of the land itself and listen to others who might have wisdom about what has worked well in this place and what has not. He works patiently and humbly and lovingly. There is a kind of "hermeneutics of farming" similar to the late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder's hermeneutics of peoplehood", in which one patiently and humbly listens to the sense of the congregation and the Bible and the Spirit in a particular context. (p.76)

Childress explains what this has meant for him with regard to dealing with issue of racism. He started out in the full prophetic "thus says the Lord" mode. But after conflict and near brawls with some people ... I began to pay attention to my congregation and to what God was saying through themas well as to them. I began to learn he says, ...how to do a hermeneutics of peoplehood, sitting on front porches, and working gardens with the people, and drinking iced tea afterward while listening to their stories, including their stories of race and fear. As a result my preaching and teaching changed. I still talked about race, but how I talked about it was different. My sermons began to grow out of a conversation between the people and the Bible and the place where we lived. (p.76)

Childress points that while Berry's writing is drenched with the Bible, one of the key stories and images is that of the lost sheep and the lost son in Luke 15. These stories provide a lens through which he explores how he sees what community, friendship and the extended family look like. Stories that reflect these images include "Making it Home" in which a lost son who has been away at the war is journeying back home, "Thicker than Liquor" is about a nephew seeking his lost drunk uncle and bringing him home, "Watch with Me" is an account of a community watching out for a lost member who has had a "spell" come over him and concludes with a sermon from the one who was lost on the parable from the point of view of the sheep that was lost.

This is truly a counter - cultural account of what pastoral care is all about in shaping ministry by the images of being an attentive patient farmer and in the rejection of the model of a professional career with the implication of needing to move on and climb the ladder.

Wendell Berry and pastoral theology - Part 2

2010-11-30T21:33:00.000+11:00

As promised I will provide a sketch of another pastoral encounter in a Wendell Berry novel, this time from A Place on Earth, a novel in which land and community in the small Kentucky village of Port William are closely engaged against the backdrop of World War 2, the absence of young men from the

community serving overseas.

This story is more substantial than the interview I discussed previously and provides a more complex and nuanced account of the interactions between the people involved. What it shares with the first story is the fact that the people who are the supposed recipients of pastoral care are active agents in the encounter and challenge the expectations of the minister who expects to be in control. Not only is he not in control but he is a subject who has to respond to the actions of those who he expects to be the subjects of his visit.

The elements of the story that I want to draw attention to comes at the point at which the news gets around the community that Virgil Feltner is missing in action and the minister Brother Preston comes to pay a visit to Matt and Margaret Feltner his parents and his wife Hannah, who is pregnant and living with her in-laws. Matt it should be noted featured in previous incident in part 1 of the blog on this topic. Berry titles this episode involving the pastoral visit "A Comforter". Berry offers three accounts of how this visit was experienced and understood. The first is a direct description in which the progress of the visit is reported from the perspective of its direct impact on the four people directly involved.

Early Wednesday afternoon Brother Preston leaves the parsonage and walks across town to the Feltner house, ... The town is shut against the weather, and quiet except for the sounds everywhere of water dripping and running. He meets no one along the road. There is no sign of life at the Feltners' either.

... He draws a small black leather Testament out of his coat pocket , faces the door and knocks. His knock is itself an act of ministerial discretion; the sound is perfectly modulated, both quiet and loud enough. As he waits he continues to face the door, standing erect , lifting himself slightly forward now and then onto the balls of his feet, patting the little Testament with a sort of casual correctness against the palm of his hand.

The door is opened by Margaret Feltner.

She smiles, greets him, moves aside from the entrance in welcome. The openness of her welcome is a little disconcerting; she is putting him at his ease - which is not why he has come. He senses that she has anticipated him, forseen his coming and his purpose, but greets him now on her terms, not his. (p.95)

The minister sits down while Mat is called back by Margaret from the barn.

Out of the sound of her voice - not speaking to him now, remote from him - and out of the look and atmosphere of the room where he sits, there comes to him the sense of the completeness of this household, the belonging together of Mat and Margaret Feltner, the generosity of these people, in which there is maybe no need form him. He is alone in his mission, which whole in itself surrounds him with its demands and isolates him. Uneasiness coming over him, a swift tremor, he thinks of the burden of his duty. And then, as though under the pressure of his own hand, he knows his old submission to the mastering of this duty and he knows he will do it. (p.96)

While waiting for Mat the preacher sits talking with the two women about trifles, by unspoken mutual agreement staying clear of their feelings and the shared understanding of the purpose of the visit. The preacher is not unaware of the emotions and the body language of the two women and Berry portrays him as in many ways very aware of the unspoken messages. Watching Margaret ...

He believes that he sees in her face the marks of her grief for her son - but no sign that she expects to be comforted, or asks to be. ... To Brother Preston, it is as if something in her leans in waiting, not for him to begin the business of his visit but for Mat. (p.97)

When Mat..returns from the barn the conversation remains at the level of pastime which as Berry observes ... moves by no force of its own but by a determination in all of them against silence.(p.97) The preacher struggles with hesitation feeling that he is failing in his duty. Finally he moves into a break in the conversation ... "My friends, I've come because I know of your trouble".

But he has begun and he goes on hastened like a man walking before a strong wind, moved no longer by his own intention but by the force of what he is saying. His eyes have become detached from his hearers; he might be speaking from his pulpit now, looking at all, seeing none. But beneath the building edifice of his meaning, he is aware of something falling between them. It is as though in the very offering of comfort to them he departs from them. And now he is hastened also by an urgency of haste. He feels the force of his voice is turning back toward himself, that he is fleeing from the safe coherence of his own words, away from those faces shut between him and their pain. He speaks into their silence like a man carrying a map in a strange country in the dark.(p.98)

Mat in his response of listening to the preacher is aware of his need to bear with Margaret and Hannah what he is coming to accept through the fear that he is acknowledging will be the loss of their son Virgil. The preacher's voice is by this stage riding above mortal and worldly hope, moving toward rest in the hope of Heaven.

In the preacher's words the Heavenly city has risen up, surmounting their lives, ... the final hope in which all the riddles and ends of the world are gathered, illuminated and bound. This is the preacher's hope, and he is moved to it alone, outside the claims of time and sorrow, by the motion of desire which he calls faith. In it having invoked it and raised it up, he is free of the world.

Mat in Berry's account is not free to engage with this hope as announced by the preacher. Berry here is moving it seems to me by the impulse towards tracing out tine implications of the incarnation as opposed to the dangers of the unintentional but nevertheless real evangelical gnosticism of the preacher.

He (Mat) is doomed to hope in this world, in the bonds of his own love. ... His hope of Heaven, must be the hope of a man bound to the world that his life is not ultimately futile, or ultimately meaningless, a hope more burdening than despair.

It is from this possibility of meaninglessness that the preacher has retreated. So that the earth will not be plunged into darkness, he has lifted up the Heavenly City and hastened to refuge in its gates. and Mat in the act of leaning toward that restfulness, turns away from it to take back his pain. (p.99)

The preacher as the interview comes to a close feels that he is the subject of the generosity of Margaret and Hannah ... that they are offering to him, out of some kind of hospitality, the safe abstraction of his belief. (p.99)

The second perspective on the visit comes later when Brother Preston returns to the church and reflects on the visit.

He came away from the Feltner house grieved by the imperfection of his visit. It was not as he hoped it would be, a conversation, It was a sermon. this is the history of his life in Port William. The Word, in his speaking it, fails to be made flesh. ... He belongs to the governance of those he ministers to without belonging to their knowledge, the bringer of the Word preserved from flesh. (P.101)

The third perspective comes in a letter from Burley Coulter in a letter to his nephew Nathan Coulter serving overseas and reflects Burley's presumption as to how the interview went based on his experience with the minister following the death of his older nephew Tom.

Wednesday after the news had pretty well got around, I seen Brother Piston going in up there at Mat's. And I says to Jayber "I know the speech he's going to make". And so would all of us. He came and said all that to me after we knew Tom was dead. and none of it quite fit. ... Here in away he came to say the last words over Tom. And what claim did he have to do it? He never done a day's work with us in his life, nor could have. He never did stand up in his ache and sweat and go down the row with us. He never tasted any of our sweat in the water jug. And I was thinking, Preacher, who are you to speak of Tom to me, who him and knew the very smell of him?

And he sat there in your granddaddy's chair, with his consolations and his old speech,. Just putting our names in the blanks. and I thought, Preacher, he's dead, he's not here, and you'll never know what it is that's gone. (p.104)

Berry leaves us with a rich account of the complexity of what is going on in these pastoral conversations. There is no doubt that he places a strong emphasis on the limits of what the minister has to contribute. What he leave us with is an emphasis on the active role of those who are suffering grief and loss. That there is a mutuality in the encounter cannot be doubted and that underlying this is a strong ecclesiology - not of the institutional church but of membership of a community of people committed to a common place, a common purpose and the good work of sharing a life, work, food, joy and grief and an accountability for the care of the land that they are part of.

But that brings me to some broader theological issues in the work of Wendell Berry and that will have to wait as i anticipated for part 3 of this blog.

Wendell Berry and pastoral theology - Part 1

2010-11-28T16:28:00.000+11:00

Doing some reading recently through some of Wendell Berry's novels I was struck by his account of a number of incidents of death and dying and attempts at pastoral visitation. I thought that these rich accounts of the interaction between the minister and the families might prove a rich source for reflection by those involved in such visitation. Certainly there is a substantial cultural difference between early 20th century Kentucky the situation a century later in Australia. Nevertheless, I reckon there is still something to be learnt particularly for engagement in pastoral care with people who are members of the Christian community. Stories such as this are a great source of material for reflection as they are interesting to read and rich in substance and nuance in a way that formal case studies can never be.

The first incident comes in The Memory of Old Jack as Matt Feltner the long time friend of "Old Jack" (Jack Beechum), takes up the responsibility for organising his funeral to prevent the funeral falling into the hands of Jack's daughter and son-in-law from whom he was deeply estranged, in both sympathy, and understanding as to what was important in life. Jack remained committed to his farm and community while they had moved to the city and lived life devoted to the pursuit of money and its comforts.

The story displays Matt's efforts to be faithful to the friendship in death, a claim that for him overrides the formal claims of family. Matt,

... put on his glasses and looked up the number and dialed the undertaker in Hargrave. It was a strange and stubborn mood he was in. He was standing guard over Old Jack and over his death. He would not have the outline of that absence blurred or its dimension narrowed. The voice of the gentleman at the other end of the wire was full of solicitude, prepared for death no matter whose, and Matt propped himself against it. The voice assumed that Matt would be down later to select a coffin and to make the necessary arrangements. Matt thought not. The gentleman would be informed of the arrangements when they were made; as for a coffin the dead would be well satisfied with whatever was cheapest. Ans so it went on. Each exchange followed by a silence in which the gentleman on the other end was perhaps taking notes. The dead, Matt allowed were noted for their frugality. (p.149)

Matt then moves on to deal with the preacher, Brother Wingfare, a seminary student recently arrived in the community to arrange the actual funeral service. The seminarian was,

... a pale, slightly plump, impeccable young man, very new to his profession, eager to please both God and man, a difficulty of which he had not yet encountered either extreme. He began of course by saying that though he had not had the privilege of knowing- uh- Mr Beechum, he was very sorry to learn that he was dead. "But' he said " the Lord knows of our affliction, and is our refuge in the hour of trouble. ... Matt sat down in the easy chair facing the preacher."Well" he said "I don't know that you should be sorry. After all you didn't know him particularly. And it is not a tragedy when a man dies at the end of his life." (p.150)

The interview of Matt's with the preacher continues where it has begun, on Matt's terms, with each of the assumptions of that the preacher makes is undercut by Matt's directions as to what needs to be done and how the service will be conducted. The entire exchange reverses our presumptions as to how such a conversation should be conducted and who is in charge and who is the specialist in such a time and on such an occasion. After announcing that what is required is a simple graveside service, Matt goes on to explain to the preacher why he is making this request.

"My friend" he said "I want you to understand this". He considered a moment and went on. "He was not a churchly man. He was a man of unconfining righteousness. He stuck with us to the end. He never liked a great deal of fussing and formality, and we don't want to impose it on him now. That would be kicking him while he's down, if you know what I mean.

Brother Wingfare either did, or did not know what was meant. He did not say. But he was paying attention. He heard something in Matt's voice that did not permit his mind to wander. There was a strange authority in this old man with his white hair, with the dirt of the filed on his clothes, who spoke as the younger kinsman of a dead man much older. Nothing in his training at seminary had prepared him for this. He was supposed to be the spiritual authority. But he knew he was receiving orders. And he was afraid he was taking orders.(p.151)

Matt presents him with a list of Psalms that he wants read, that will comprise the service. There is then an exchange with the preacher who asks if he wants a few remarks, or a prayer at the end of the service, a request which is answered with a clear and definite no. As it happens when it comes to the service, the preacher ignores this final instruction. and after reading the Psalms well, as Matt acknowledges, then launches into a long prayer, which Berry reports with an acute ear for the genre, ... and having thus notified the Almighty of so much, the truth or error of which, He presumably already knew, Brother Wingfare concludes by imploring special blessings upon the bereaved mourners in their hour of sorrow. (p.160)

The question of authority in this context, who has it, and on what basis is it exercised is central to this moment in the novel. Matt is exercising his authority out of his place in the membership of the community of Port William and his relationship over time, and in that place, to the other members of that community. Granting of specialist religious authority by a distant institution does not cut the mustard in Berry's telling of the story. It is Matt, not Brother Wingfare who has faithfully exercised his authority in the conduct of the burial.

In Part Two of the blog on this theme, I will look at another incident, this time in A Place on Earth, involving a pastoral conversation with a family dealing with the news that one of its members has gone missing in action during World War 2. I suspect that there will be a Part Three looking more broadly at what Wendell Berry has to offer on the practice of ministry, drawing on a discussion by Kyle Childress that forms a chapter in Wendell Berry and Religion: Heaven's Earthly Life.

Blogging through Advent Ist Sunday

2010-11-28T13:27:00.001+11:00

1Advent appeals to me in one way but is an uncomfortable time as well. It is part of the church year that makes sense to me, in the way that it provides an approach to Christmas, in a way that Lent, quite frankly does not.In other words I "get" the liturgical logic of Advent. Lent as a time of discipline and learning to be disciples, of disciplining our desires, fits much more appropriately, in my view, into the long haul of "ordinary time". The approach to Easter is a time of engagement with the world of the principalities and powers, the time of public witness and confrontation as God's kingdom confronts the powers that be and the injustice and exploitation of Empire.

Anyway this year I thought I would try blogging on the Scripture readings for each Sunday in Advent, noting some thoughts and questions, using the readings in Sojourners - noting that the lectionary they use may differ somewhat from those in use in mainstream churches in Australia. Before moving to that I want to draw attention to a great collection of readings: Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas put together by the folks at Plough Publishing, still in print I believe. Some of them are brief, suitable for meditative reading. while others are longer. there is a hard challenging edge to the readings, particularly for Advent.

Isaiah 2:1-5 reminds us that the coming of God's kingdom is not some detached spiritual affair, unconnected to our politics and economics. Laurel A Dykstra in comments on this in Sojourners preaching the Word Commentary points out that:

The transformation of weapons into tools used for planting and harvesting crops shows that war and hunger are intimately connected, that finite resources cannot feed both the hungry and conquest. As Dwight Eisenhower said of modern weapons in a 1953 speech, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”

The Isaiah reading also points out the deliberate and studied nature of war: Nations learn and teach it. It is neither natural nor accidental when farmers are trained as soldiers and tools of life become tools of death.

Romans 13:11-14 offers us a challenge to our frenetic consumerism - anticipating the demands of Lent where they are separated from the themes of waiting and anticipation that Advent offers. Walter Brueggeman, the distinguished old Testament scholar makes this connection explicit in Light the First Candle in his discussion of the passages for this day:

These readings ponder both preparation and expectation.

The preparation is delineated in Romans 13. Paul urges the avoidance of “reveling, drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarreling, and jealousy” (verse 13). The mad rush of “Christmas preparation” drives us to self-indulgence and enough fatigue to make us edgy and quarrelsome. The alternative for Paul is to be unlike the world and not consumed by our “desires.”

The Gospel reading for the day, Matthew 24: 36-44 writes the message of waiting and expectation in large letters, underlining the theme. Matthew hits bold and underlines his theme to make sure we don't miss it.

Bonnie Greene in her meditation on this passage comments that:

Jesus' story of the people working in the field, one of whom was taken and the other left, has often been a touchstone of traditional spiritualities, particularly of the "that's incredible" variety. Most are otherworldly and focused on a Jesus who appears to bear the passkey to an otherworldly kingdom of God.

But there is afoot another spirituality that also draws life from this passage, one that is firmly rooted in human life and is responsive to the needs of our times. People who practice it tend to stress the real, historical Jesus and his behavioral as well as verbal announcement of the kingdom. For these people, Jesus' call to be alert and watchful for the coming of the Son of Man is a call to a way of life sensitive to God's active work of deliverance for the people of this world. Such a spirituality requires them to scan the horizon incessantly, watching for signs of renewal, for evidence that the suffering are rising up to new life.

In some parts of the world it's hard to miss the signs of God's work among people. But for us in the industrialized countries of the North, the distinction is often blurred by too close association with life-as-it-is-now; we haven't developed the skill to discern the spirits of our time. If the Son of God were to appear among us, some would scarcely recognize him; others would be utterly surprised and unprepared. (God in Mcdonald's)

The time of waiting in Matthew draws upon the somewhat discordant idea of God as a burglar.
Bill Wylie-Kellermann in Barbed wire and beyond: a theology of trespass unpacks this disturbing theme in a reflection on the activist tradition of Christian witness.

The preface to John's Gospel identifies the light with Christ Jesus. He is the one shining in the darkness and not overcome. It is abundantly clear that the light is not at all welcome in the world. He is not recognized or received, but hated and rejected. From the standpoint of the world and its claims, the incarnation is an intrusion, a divine incursion.

It is, I suppose, a kind of cosmic trespass. I am led to think of the way the New Testament speaks of the Lord's coming as a "thief in the night." The metaphor has always been troublesome to me. It evokes a little cringe. Our Lord the cat burglar. The point, of course, is the unexpected timing of things, but I suspect a further implication. Perhaps this glorified "breaking and entering" implies the breaking of our false securities. Our lives are penetrated and vulnerable. We are broken into. Here again, we find the truth sneaking in our back door.

Advent then is about dealing with a disturbance of our certainties and a breaking open of our comfortable life of business as usual. Perhaps our conversion starts from here.

Feast of Christ the King - subverting our ideas about Kingship

2010-11-22T18:44:00.000+11:00

Simon Barrow in his column The subversive feast of Christ the King comments that:

After days of wall-to-wall media coverage about royalty, churches across Britain have today celebrated Jesus Christ as the true king. This is a truly subversive claim.

A carpenter's son executed as a political troublemaker by an oppressive regime does not conform to our understandings of monarchy; even less so when he teaches that the first will be last and the last first. The man who announced his engagement last week appears to be a far more suitable candidate for the position.

The claim that Christ is king not only subverts common expectations about the nature of power. It is also a reminder that no-one can serve two kings. If Christ is king, then no other person or institution can demand our total loyalty – whether William Windsor, the British state, the free market or even the Church.

Many early Christians attracted extra persecution by refusing to declare that “Caesar is Lord”. If Christ is Lord, they reasoned, then Caesar cannot be. After the coming of Christendom – when the Church became allied with the forces of power and wealth – this claim was softened. In order to get round the problem, earthly monarchs were presented as representatives of Christ.

But if we no longer accept the notion that monarchs are anointed by God, why are we prepared to acknowledge anyone other than Christ as our king? It may well be argued that the British monarch has no real power. This claim is an exaggeration, but there is a lot of truth in it. However, the very use of words such as “king”, “queen” and “lord” reinforces the values of hierarchy and privilege whose emptiness is exposed by Jesus' radical message of the Kingdom of God.

Curiously enough there is support for the subversion of commonly accepted cultural ideas of kingship extends back beyond the New Testament accounts of Jesus that go back deep into the history of Israel. One of the more unexpected of these surfaces in the Old Testament reading for the Feast of Christ the King, in of all places the book of Deuteronomy. The account of kingship offered in Deuteronomy 17 attaches some requirements that qualify the support for the people of Israel having a king so drastically as to redefine the nature of kingship.

The king is not to:

have "too many horses" particularly from Egypt - limiting his military power severely
have too many wives - limiting the options for building alliances
try to get huge amounts of silver and gold - again limiting the basis for dynastic power
not think of himself as better than anyone else - that is he is not to consider himself superior to his fellow Israelites - like them he is under God

The king must:

write out a copy of God's laws under the supervision of the priests
must read and obey these laws
learn to worship the Lord with fear and trembling

Given that the kings of the ancient near east saw themselves as having unquestioned and unlimited power and authority the limits placed on kingship in Deuteronomy fundamentally redefine the role of kingship. The authors of Deuteronomy are contributing to an ongoing argument in Israel about the desirability of kingship and its character and provide an account which cuts against the grain of their time and place.

Radical Christianity - Anabaptists & anarchy

2010-11-16T20:22:00.000+11:00

The connections between radical Christianity in its Anabaptist form and a christian anarchy have not received a lot of attention but really come to focus in the life and writings of the southern Baptist activist and theologian Will Campbell. Christians uneasy with institutional church structures might find themselves both encouraged and disturbed by him. I'll try and use this blog as a work in progress.

What is a good death?

2010-11-14T15:34:00.000+11:00

Wendell Berry is a joy to read whether it be his essays, poetry or his novels. I have been rereading this week That Distant Land: The Collected Stories (Counterpoint, 2004) that being together all his stories about the small town of Port William in Kentucky.

This is a wonderful collection of stories that span nearly a century and encompass a variety of themes and emotions. Helpfully the contents pages gives a date for the story and locates it chronologically in relation to the other novels about Port William.

One story in particular moved me to tears and set me thinking about the question: what is a good death? The issue is not academic as I am currently watching a family close to me try and accompany some one close to them trough the end of his life.

In "Fidelity" Berry explores what faithfulness means as we accompany someone in their dying. Burley Coulter is seriously ill and his family and friends who want to do something to express their car and concern take him to the Doctor who has him rushed off to hospital in the nearest city. There he is hooked up to all the machines and drips, the technology that expresses the predominant way we express our care for those who are dying. His family and friends quickly come to the conclusion that they have made a mistake.

When they had returned on yet another visit and found the old body still as it had been, a mere passive addition to the complicated machines that kept it minimally alive, they saw finally that in their attempt to help they had not helped but only complicated his disease beyond their power to help. And they thought with regret of the time when the thing that was wrong with him had been simply unknown and there had been only it and him and them in the place they had known together. Loving him, wanting to help him they had given him over to "the best of modern medical care" - which meant as they now saw they had abandoned him. (p.376)

Berry is asking here, are there other ways of expressing faithfulness to the dying beyond that of the technology of medicine.

Berry as he unfolds the story is clearly not convinced that dependence on technology is the only possibility for a good death. But how is Burley to escape from the clutches of the hospital and the medical profession?

Burley's son Danny determines that faithfulness to his father requires that he be removed from the hospital which he proceeds to do that night without seeking the permission of the medical staff.

Danny's presence with Burley during the final hours of his life, his care for him and his burial in the woods where Burley has been most at home throughout his life is told with a restraint that is all the more powerful for its disciplined description of that presence and care. Berry's description of Burley's death is intertwined with the story of his community's support for Danny and approval of what they assume he has done and is doing against the forces of law and order's attempt to track down Burley.

In balance against the grief of Burley's death the other strand of the story has moments of humour and drama as the detective who supposed to be asking the questions finds himself under question as the community of Burley's friends gather to in a strange way give witness to Burley's life and why his disappearance is in keeping with the way he lived his life. In the course of that discussion Berry has the opportunity to ask some questions about whose interests are in fact being served by the specialisation of medicine particularly in the time of dying. The exchanges between Wheeler Catlett the community solicitor and the somewhat confused detective left me at times jolting between grief and an almost spluttering guffaw.

Berry too is no mean theologian. Wheeler Catlett takes his cue from Augustine in his discussion with the detective regarding the proper use of the law.

"Well anyway " Detective Bode said, "all I know is that the law has been broken, and that I am hereto serve the law".

"But my boy, you don't eat or drink the law, or sit in the shade of it, or warm yourself by it, or wear it, or have your being in it. The law exists only to serve."

"Serve what?"

"Why, all the things that are above it. Love."(p.418)

Brian Volck a medical practitioner who is himself no mean theologian, in his discussion of this story, comments that:

"Wheeler Catlett know something that his interlocutor, Detective Bode could not: that things are never as discrete and separable as we wish, that autonomy and specialisation, for all their productive power, cause apart from an embodied regard of a contextual whole. ... Wheeler - who chides Bode after the detective angrily accuses Danny Branch of burying Burley Coulter "somewhere in these end-of-nowhere godforsaken hill and hollows" - also knows something about finding grace and holiness even in the end-of-nowhere places of the created world. As Berry notes elsewhere:

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places

Like a broken clock Detective Bode could not help but be right on occasion. Danny did in fact bury Burley in the hills the old man loved. Danny, who understands the landscape as anything but "godforsaken" returns after the burial to a Port William membership with "the aspect and the brightness of one who had borne the dead to the grave, and filled the grave to the brim, and received the dead back to life." ("Mr Berry Goes to Medical School" p. 46 in Wendell Berry and Religion: Heaven's Earthly Life edited by Joel James Shuman & Roger Owens University Press of Kentucky, 2009)

To return to the issue of dying well. For Berry this is not something that we can do alone, it is not a project arising from our autonomy as an individual charting our own life. Dying well requires that we be part of a community who can sustain us in our vulnerability and carry us with their presence when we can no longer walk by ourselves or even articulate clearly our intentions. We need a community who can remember who we were and who we have become so that they can express that appropriately in our dying.