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

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.

Folk festivals, the church and the practice of tradition

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.

Theology, politics an spirituality

I have been reading Barry Harvey's dense but significant book Can These Bones Live? A Catholic Baptist Engagement with Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics and Social Theory (Brazos, 2008).


A few notes on ideas and passages that struck me particularly in the second part of the book relating to the issue of spirituality.

 The fear of God entails accepting our very existence as gift, and to accept this is to come face to face with our contingency, our vulnerability as creatures, And from  this fact, says Nicholas Lash, nothing follows. Here we are. This is how things are. That's it. No safety belts, no metacosmic maps or guidebooks, no mental cradles for our 'ultimate' security. (pp252-3)

The spirituality promoted by state and market, by contrast, seeks constantly to capitalise on our fear of death, so that they might manipulate our creaturely vulnerability and anxiety to consolidate their hold upon our loyalty. Popular piety corrupts the insatiable human longing for wholeness and integrity with the lure of security, safety, stability and predictability through the eradication of tragedy. ... In some ... the lust for mastery runs roughshod over our created solidarity with one another and with all the world, as we are alternatively encouraged, enticed and threatened to seek safety and stability by taking ownership of the people and things around us.  For others ... the quest for security serves to drive them further and further away from the pain and disappointment of day-to-day contact with others, in a vain attempt to carve out an inner world of safety and tranquility within themselves. They flee to the inner garden of the soul to be alone with Jesus. (pp.256-7)

The discipline of unselfing divests us of the illusion that "I" exist apart from creation, apart from history, apart from a community, apart from a tradition, apart from the habits and relations that comprise my dealings with others. It is a discipline of demythologizing the working assumptions of contemporary existence, foremost among which is the idea that each of us is free to make up our own story, that our lives belong to ourselves instead of being a gift. (p.260)

 On Remembrance Day the following passage seems highly relevant:

 ...our own speech betrays us, for while the making of offerings to blood-thirsty gods is not generally a part of the working vocabulary of most nations, the language of martyrdom and sacrifice ... most certainly is. Time and again those in the military who have died for their country are extolled as having made "the supreme sacrifice." The question immediately arises: (Note: or it should but mostly doesn't) To whom do we offer this sacrifice, if not to the gods? If we respond to the God of Abraham ... then it would seem we are tacitly admitting that Christ's sacrifice was not sufficient ... If we say instead that we offer it to the nation-state of which we are a part, we are granting to a part of the created order what belongs entirely to God ... (pp268-9)

Churching in a time of "me"

A visit to a large Anglican church in the north west Bible belt of Sydney last Sunday was to say the least a revelation. It was the 10am family service with probably over 200 adults after the children had left, after the initial burst of singing.

Key observations:

• From the structure of the service there was nothing that would have told you that you were in a worshiping community that located itself in the Anglican tradition, no trace of even the most informal of the liturgies from any prayerbook that I am aware of.
• The music was essentially of the Hillsong style - 'praise" characterised by tunes that are not tuneful, that is not easily singable by the congregation and driven by the instrumentalists and vocalists.
• The lyrics were focused on the benefit to"me" of what God had done. In one song almost every line had a reference or I and/or me. The drift of the lyrics while supposedly emphasising the wonderful things that God has done for me, ends up focusing on the "me" as being important and the real focus of what is happening.
• The building had no element of decoration that would have conveyed that you were in a place where people were gathering to celebrate and no artistic expression of the life of the community and its relationship to God, the community and the world.

Questions that came to mind:

• How much is the cultural emphasis on our role as consumers infiltrating our worship?
• In an era in which churches are competing in a marketplace of choice how can we build critical resistance against consumerism and inculcate the characteristics of the beatitudes and the challenge of the call to discipleship and community?
• How do we hand on the traditions of the faith as a challenge and a claim on us rather than a feel good consumer option?

Anarchy & Grace - Will D Campbell on disorganised religion as ecclesiology

Despite all my reading on the sociology of institutions and the way movements become institutions not least the Christian movement I find something bracing about Will Campbell's anarchic views and practice of a radical Christian discipleship. In the light of the current difficulties created by institutions of established Christianity commitment to self preservation in their handling of sexual abuse cases you can't help feeling that he has a point.

In his account of a personal struggle for soul freedom he observes:

As most of you know my institutional flings didn't work out. None of them. There is not time here to list them nor explain their demise. To do so would serve no purpose. Doubtless part of my failure within the structures had to do with my own intractable genes. Whatever. I was a pastor, a university chaplain, an employee of the allegedly most free religious institution in the world. I didn't keep any job for long. But through it all I discovered one thing. All institutions, every last single one of them, are evil; self-serving, self-preserving, self-loving; and very early in the life of any institution it will exist for its own self. So beware out here this week. True soul freedom cannot be found in any institution. That is the guts of my testimony to you today. True soul freedom can never be found in any institution. If they will pay you, let them. I did it too. But never trust them. Never bow the knee to them. They are all after your soul. Your ultimate, absolute, uncompromising allegiance. Your soul. ALL OF THEM. Jesus was a RADICAL! And His Grace abounds.

 There are echoes here of William Stringfellow with his vigorous assaults on the institutional structures of the Episcopalian church in the name of the Gospel.

Churches, barbeques anarchy - getting out from under Christendom

Currently preparing to teach a course pm Christianity and Australian Society and looking at the demographically gloomy future of the mainstream churches - I came across the following proposal from Robert Capon an Anglican priest who displays subversive, nay anarchist tendencies that might finally get us out from under the long shadow of Christendom.


... since I find that when I spoke earlier about death and resurrection I said everything I had to say in principle about the marginal church (only a dead church can rise), let me simply add a word here about how such a church might achieve that happy outcome in practice.

My program would be this. Whoever was in command over the dying institution at the next highest level of the corporate church ... would take the bull by the horns and kill it: close the church, dissolve its board, sequester its endowments, and sell off its property, putting the proceeds in escrow just in case the corpse ever rises and finds a use for them. Then the managers would explain to the remaining members of those churches that they were free to do anything they could think of (or nothing at all, if they so chose). A suggestion would be made, however, that they might think about holding a kind of wake on the next Sunday, perhaps in one of their homes, or in a restaurant or bowling alley that didn't open until 1:00 p.m. And if they took that suggestion . . .

Well, they might sit and stare blankly at each other to begin with. But with any luck, some free spirit (young or old) among them would break the ice with the questions they had never before been able to ask - namely: "Who are we?" "Why on earth are we here?" And, most important of all, "What do we think we'd actually like to do?" Having no model at all to meet the upkeep on and no known shape to whip themselves into, they would for the first time be open to looking for really new answers - honest answers - that could range anywhere from "We haven't the foggiest notion, but let's get together again next Sunday and see if anything's occurred to us in the meantime," to "We're here to be the church, I suppose - whatever that means," to "How about for openers we just try to stick with fellowship, breaking bread, and saying prayers? - maybe God will take care of the rest, if he wants any."

Those answers wouldn't sound like much of a start, of course; but then, a bunch of Galileans twiddling their thumbs in Jerusalem for nine days after the Ascension didn't seem like a grand opening, either. The operative fact is that a start can only occur after a stop. As Isaiah reminded Israel, the church's strength is to sit still: all the power, all the resources, and all the hope of the defunctly marginal lie hidden in the terrifying reality of their death. Only out of that can they live. But, having accepted that, they can model their life in any way that strikes their fancy: AA style, family style, support-group style, whatever. The only thing they need to guard against is the temptation to stop being dead, the longing to be alive and kicking again. Alive and kicking may be nice, but it's not astonishing. Dead and kicking, though . . . that's astonishing. That, in fact, is resurrection - and it's the only thing that can bring out the best in the church.
"The Church in the Marketplace of New Models" chapter 8, The Astonished Heart
Robert Farrar Capon (Grand Rapids, Michigan. Eerdmans, 1996) p.103

Winning the argument is not the point - it is how we argue

According to James Allison the argument in the Catholic church about homosexuality is wrongly framed and seeks to develop his case as a gay by going back to the church's theological roots against those who claim to be traditionalists.

Leaving aside (for a moment) the merits of the particular issue that he is involved in, (that requires an extended consideration in another post, it seems to me that the point he then goes on to make is relevant to the way controversy and conflict are conducted with the church. The point he is making is about how we conduct conflict within the church. In most of the cases that spring to mind conservatives, liberals and those of us who struggle to articulate the peacemaking orientation of the gospels and the story of Jesus all need to revisit this issue.

My own hunch, he says, is that God is revealing to us that gay people, just as we are, are part of humanity and that it is as such that we re invited to share in the [God's] party. But I may be entirely wrong. Nevertheless of this I am sure, that being right or wrong is not so very important. Being so grateful that I am invited at all that I am quite determined to as warm, charitable and friendly as I can learn how to be towards those who completely disagree with me is terribly, terribly important; for its is by this that I will be judged.

If what I am saying is true then it is a fundamental point in this discussion that it is not how I defend ny own, but how I imagine, portray and engage with my adversary which is the only realy important issue at hand. ... Afterall our example is One who was happy to be counted among the transgressors so as to get across the power of God to those who couldn't understand it.

If this is the case, then the really hard work in Christian theological discourse lies in the theological sphere: creating Church with those we don't like. Or to put it another way; as a Catholic, the only way I could conceivably be right in what is recognisably a new theological and moral position, is if I show that how being right is nothing to do with me and how it includes an account of how we have all been wrong together, in which I too am on the side of those with whom I disagree as someone undergoing a change of heart along with them. (pp.169-170 in Undergoing God: Dispatches from the scene of a break-in DLT, 2006)