The DNA of Christendom

Attending an ordination and induction service at an Anglican church yesterday evening, I was struck by the extent to which the DNA of Christendom is still powerfully embodied in the liturgy of the service and the self understanding of the structure of the church.

What do I mean by the DNA of Christendom? Not having an established church tied to the state, but rather the imprint of assumptions about relationships of power and structured order that church received during the Christendom period and that it has continued to carry with it even when the politico-legag settlement has been untangled. The Anglican church carries this imprint with it in its governance, appellate tribunals, canon law, ecclesiastical structure and its liturgy.

If you examine the language of the ordination liturgy it carries within it still the implicit assumption of a structured order in which priest is placed 'over' a geographically limited group of people, who have a lesser level of biblical and theological knowledge and may not even be very spiritually committed. There was no assumption of mutual learning together under the guidance of the spirit, no sense of mutual accountability and a strong sense of institutional maintenance rather than mutual commissioning for ministry among a group of fellow disciples.

The 'top down' character of the role to which a priest is being commissioned is perhaps made clear by the language of the commissioning service I attended at a Baptist church recently, where the incoming minister was commissioned to join in the ministry currently being undertaken by the congregation. Very different understanding and relationship.

Have churches in Australia "got over "christendom?

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".

Marriage and the state

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 hopeless confusion - current debates about marriage

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.

1. 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.
    
2. 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.
    
3. 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.
    
4. 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.

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

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. 

A tourist's reflections on the Christchurch earthquake

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.

Christendom and mapping religion

Attended the first day of a four day roundtable on spirituality in Australia to celebrate twenty five years of the Christian Research Association of Australia - an amazing effort by Philip Hughes at an intellectual level. (I was there to talk about spirituality and the Public service).

What struck me during the presentations on the first morning was that the basic research paradigm for the sociology of religion that had guided the work of both CRA and the NCLS reproduced the assumptions of Christendom and its decline without making those assumptions explicit. To put it another way, the ecclesiology is uncritically shaped by the Christendom paradigm. It finds what it looks for but doesn't find what it doesn't look for because its sociology and ecclesiology shapes the research program.


Let me see if I can unpack this:

• the assumptions about church attendance are assumed to represent the norm for the pattern of the ekklesia, the gathering of the people of God for their public witness in the world.

• the research focuses on attendance as part of an institutional structure on Sunday, that is an expression of something called religion - this is form a theological and historical point of view anachronistic
• the research approach fails to to recognise or map the activity of christians as the scattered people of God - it fails to pick up the reality of disorganised religion, people gathering outside formally organised institutions or in movements that express Christian faith in terms of movement style characteristics nurtured by organisations such as for example TEAR.
• The research paradigm fails to take account of the migration of the sacred into forms of civil religion
  

Christendom mentality

Thanks to Jon_Bartley

  

Two good articles challenging Lord Carey: Frank Skinner (Times) http://tinyurl.com/yju8x6t Riazat Butt (Guardian) http://tinyurl.com/yjfqj67

This Christendom mentality displayed by Lord Carey former Archbishop of Canterbury is not unknown in Australia.

Who are the real subversives?

Fred Nile in commentary on the shooting massacre at Fort Hood stated:

Australians would like to be assured that our defence forces have in place a system of assessment and review which would identify any person whose adherence to any alien ideology might one day override loyalty to mates and loyalty to the Crown," Mr Nile said.

I thought initially that he might be going to mention Christians, who after all are supposed to be followers of Jesus, people who would adhere to that alien ideology that Jesus announced in the Sermon on the Mount about loving enemies etc. No such luck - Muslims got the guernsey. an what we have here looks like the automatice assumption of a Christendom lockstep between Christianity and the powers that be.

If he is serious about having such a test then it should be applied to Christians as well given the subversive teachings of their leader.

If this statement means, however, that the Rev Nile cannot envisage that adherence by Christians to that "alien ideology" could never override loyalty to mates and loyalty to the Crown then something is drastically wrong with his understanding of the call to Christian discipleship and that should be a matter of some concern and subject to fraternal dialogue within his church community.

Getting over Christendom - Douglas John Hall

Doing some preparation for teaching a course on Christianity in Australian Society, I have been going back over some reading on ecclesiology, paying attention to one of the few mainstream theologians who has made this a major concern in framing his work.

The Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall has paid continuing attention throughout his career to the cultural disestablishment of Christianity in North America as opposed to the legal disestablishment of the churches in Europe. He combines this with attention to Luther's "theology of the cross" as opposed to a theology of glory. All this makes for an astringent theology that takes a clear stand against both liberalism and fundamentalism.

For a couple of articles online see: An Awkward Church


For an introduction to Hall's theological stance see The Cross in our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World (Fortress Press). What is curious is that he betrays no real awareness of the anabaptist tradition and history or its relevance for his argument.

Still like Stuart Murray in PostChristendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World he regards the movement beyond Christendom as an opportunity to be rejoiced in rather than an occasion for lament.

Echoes of Christendom or a call to a new world?

The impending "Back to Church" Sunday scheduled for this weekend shows how deeply engrained the Christendom mindset is in Christian churches in Australia.

It shows up in a couple of ways.

One is in the assumption that people have strayed from the church when the empirical reality is that for those aged under forty probably a majority have never engaged with the church whether as a community or institution in any significant way. How can they come back if they never have been there in the first place?

The other is the tacit assumption that is a close, not to be questioned link between being Christian and being an Australian and that the church is a central element in maintaining social order.

What are we calling them back to? Notice the work "back" - it carries the undercurrent of reference to returning to a past institution, a retreat from the world, rather than calling them to an adventure, a movement towards a future that is subversive of the world of violence and injustice.

Simon Barrow in his latest column on the Ekklesia website A Different Way of Seeing the World expresses the sense of excitement that Christians should be about when he speaks of a ... vision of shalom presented by Isaiah and by the Psalmist reveals the opposite of what now is, in the form of a promise. A world of oppression, injustice and suffering is neither inevitable nor necessary. To defy the order of death and to envision a realm of peace based on the restoring of right relationships among people, with the natural world and with God is – despite all appearances to the contrary – to go with the final grain of the universe as sheer gift.

If only we could recognise it, say the biblical writers, there is a divine reversal going on. When mercy is shown, when the stranger is welcomed, when right is done, when abusive power is resisted, when the hungry are offered food, the prisoners release and the homeless shelter – in those moments of faithfulness to God’s underlying purposes, despite the suffering and brutality around us, a new world beckons. http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10162

This is about a movement not an institution - a movement like Micah Challenge with its Voices for Justice.http://www.micahchallenge.org.au/voices-justice

Australian Parliament and the Lord's Prayer

The semi-regular rerun of the argument over opening the meeting of the Australian Parliament with the recital of the Lord's Prayer has had it's run with the usual arguments trotted out.

The only thing relatively fresh was the suggestion by Senator Bob Brown of the Greens that a few minutes silence would be appropriate given the volume of words that flowed forth every day. That certainly is a point worth making.

The Christendom mentality was still well and truly represented in letters to the editor with references to Australia being a Christian country and the Christian influence on our laws and heritage.

Let me offer a few random thoughts and questions from a Christian tradition that has its roots in a profound critique of Christendom.

Let's start with a bit of theology. The so-called "Lord's Prayer" is more appropriately titled "the Disciples' Prayer". It was taught by Jesus to a motley group of followers who were on the social and political margins - it was a prayer that was subversive of the governing assumptions of the Empire - focusing around questioning of the Empire, God was more important than Caesar, a commitment to an economics of enough, rather than excess, and of forgiveness as a basic pattern for social life.

The disciple's prayer is a prayer for the church - a prayer to shape the character of its life and that of its members not a rote piece of religiosity rushed through with intonation or feeling. It's recital in Parliament in fact has the effect of subverting the subversive character of the prayer by giving a flavour of conservative religiosity to what is and should be a "secular" institution in the sense used by the current PM in an article he wrote back in 2006.

Christians he argued should … always hold a state somewhat at arm's length, but in their engagement with the state, they should take a consistent ethical position, which is always based on a cause of social justice or the interests of the marginalized.

…I strongly defend our parliament and our polity as being both secular and pluralist, but within that secular pluralist polity, you can't deny Christians having their voice, just as you can't deny anyone else having their voice …,

Christians if they took the disciple's prayer seriously should be moving immediately to have it withdrawn from the formal proceedings of parliament. It is an unacceptable hangover of Christendom. Its current use in that context is a profaning of its character and a mockery of its original intent and meaning.

Olympics, Christendom and the Sacred

The "sacred" doesn't disappear under the pressure of modernity it simply migrates elsewhere.

The week's headlines over the protests against Chinese violence in Tibet provides a significant moment of illumination on the reality of this process with regard to the Olympics, sport and the nation state.

A lot of criticism of the Oympic movement in recent years has focussed on the linking of the event with marketing and consumerism. While there is undoubtedly substantial empirical truth in this tale it has tended to occlude the ongoing linkage of performance sport and national identity in the Olympic movement.

The Christian movement in the West has spent the last few centuries disentangling itself from the linkage to state power and the upholding of national identity expressed in the Christendom settlement.

The Olympics has been heading in the opposite direction with performance sport becoming inextricably linked with government purposes. The International Olympic Committee has been in the business of promoting the Olympic games as a hyper-nationalist event.

Governments provide huge amounts of funding to run the events, providing the continued justification for the IOC's existence. The symbolism of the Games particularly the flame and the opening and closing events draws large draughts on unacknowledged elements of ritual usually associated with the "religious" elements of human behaviour. The sacred has become more and more visible in these ceremonies over recent decades.

The IOC has brought politics, national purpose and state power together in a new sports "Christendom" that benefits chiefly the IOC and the state authorities who wish to obtain the blessing of association with the event for their own political purposes.

The actual benefits of a Christendom arrangement, whether it is religion or sport linked to state power for those who are on the margins of empire are dubious in the extreme.

Suggestions that protestors should let the Olympics proceed and keep politics out of sport are totally misguided. Olympic sport is in politics up to its neck. Watch to lobbying associated with the decision as to where the Games will be held.

We need to get sport out of politics by abolishing the Olympics movement and being saved the hypocrisy that has politicians and commentators proclaiming that the Olympics are purely about sport. The Chinese government has performed us all a service in making that abundantly clear this week.

Christendom is hard to get away from...

Moving between churching, being reminded of the main stages of the Easter story and the National Folk Festival was an experience that raised lots of interesting theological questions.

Maunday Thursday with its once a year inclusion of foot-washing in the Anglican liturgy left me ambivalent and aware of how complex meanings and symbols of power and service can get. The call by Jesus was to wash one another's feet. To have those in power in the church wash feet looks appropriate at first glance. From another angle the act can result in the subtle association of their position and role with sacred power by those in clerical positions. Without anyone intending it is almost impossible to completely dissociate themselves from the memory of the Gospel story in which Jesus washes the disciples feet.

The National Folk Festival offered some interesting images for discipleship and community. We had renderings of the prophets - critique of injustice and the call for the powerful to be brought low and lashings of the wisdom literature wit reflections on how to live in all sorts of situations and relationships. Much of the music and songs, as well as the craft of performance is passed on through forms of mentoring and discipleship and disciplined practice. Exemplary performers of the craft of musicianship are acknowledged because they are just that exemplary performers. It is not the same thing as professionalism.

The choice of hymns on Easter Sunday made me acutely aware of how much the imagery is shaped by themes of battle, crusade etc. Much of the language does not have strong warrant in the Gospel stories. The wonder of a new creation (Tom Wright is strong on this theme) doesn't get much of a run. Even where there is warrant in the NT for the victory metaphor it is often presented without reference to the fact that Jesus had rejected the way of violence on the path to his arrest. Again there is deep confusion here - the centuries of christendom have left their imprint on our language of worship and we just accept it without thinking - without stopping to ask the question as to how this language might strike someone with only minimal knowledge of the NT but some knowledge of the Church's implication in the crusades.

Marriage, christendom and Christian confusion

Is the major issue at stake in the debate between Christian conservatives and those proposing civil unions for homosexuals about the status and character of the family?

Is the real question one about sexuality or about the hangover of Christendom and a Christendom mentality within the Christian church?

The question needs to be considered but has substantial ramifications that take us into questions of ecclesiology, social change and why the church should be subversive.