Theology Everywhere

by Catrin Harland-Davies.

If Mary had said, “No! 
Ain’t no baby going to grow 
inside my womb –  
find some other woman to give house room 
to the Son of God.” 

If Mary had said, “Hey! 
You’ll have to find another way. 
Keep your Spirit off of me 
and find a meeker woman to be 
the mother of God.” 

If she’d sent that angel back to the sky 
I guess young Mary would have passed us by, 
cos be she ever so gentle and ever so good 
I’m betting that without motherhood 
she’d never have made it into Scripture. 
If she wanted to be in the biblical picture 
she’d have to get healed to find her fame, 
and chances are we’d never know her name. 

If Mary had said, “Oi! 
I don’t care what you’re calling the boy, 
he don’t belong in my family –  
he ain’t coming between my Joseph and me, 
that child of God.” 

If Mary had said “No”,  
Gabriel would’ve had to just go 
if God is a God who honours free will 
and doesn’t force co-operation just for the thrill. 
I wouldn’t blame Mary for getting lairy –  
the task ahead must’ve looked proper scary! 

But… 

Then would God have found another virgin – 
someone meeker, weaker, with the urge 
inside of her to bear the child, 
someone obedient, gentle, mild – 
if Mary wasn’t willing enough, 
if she’d summoned her feminism, told God “tough”? 

Or would God have reviewed the situation, 
put on hold the incarnation, 
powered down the special star, 
sent the wise men back to lands afar, 
cancelled the booking for the animals’ manger, 
leaving Bethlehem with nothing stranger 
than shepherds warming round a fire –  
a night off for the angel choir, 
a silent night in the Little Town, 
nothing much really going down? 

Perhaps it was good that Mary was mild 
and couldn’t say “No” to bearing the child. 
If she’d had the guts to stand up for her right 
would there be no miracle that Christmas night? 
If she’d stood her ground for womankind, 
would there be no salvation for humankind? 

Or… 

What if Mary’s ‘passive humility’ 
was really an act of proud femininity? 
What if she willingly claimed her place 
in God’s awesome, astounding act of grace? 
What if her role in that first Advent 
was a confident, assertive act of consent? 
What if she wasn’t being passively ‘good’, 
but striking a blow for the sisterhood? 

Maybe Mary understood 
that God had a plan and the plan was good, 
but that if God was going to save the world, 
what God needed most was a kick-ass girl. 
If earth was going to receive its King 
God needed things only Mary could bring. 
No use coming top in any meekness tests – 
What was needed was a womb and a pair of breasts, 
and a woman’s courage and a hell of a faith 
and a rough, tough, female kind of grace. 
At the most amazing moment in history 
God needed Mary – this is her story! 

by Clive Marsh.

Just how many theologies can there be? In one sense, of course, there’s a simple answer: there are as many theologies as there are people wishing to articulate what God means for and to them. But putting it like that makes the meaning of the word ‘God’ too subject to human control. If God is the reality – the one basic reality – in whom we (all living things, not just human beings) live, move and have our being, then it’s not up to us to decide who God is. That said, it’s important to recognize that no-one has the definitive definition. From within a particular religious tradition it is inevitable that claims are made that what believers in that tradition are saying about God are true. But caution, reserve, humility usually goes along with such claims. If that doesn’t happen then dominance, arrogance, even supremacy, quickly get in the way.

I’ve been wrestling with this a lot recently, noting the extent to which much theological exploration at the moment (rightly) emphasizes the significance of ‘context’ and, alongside that, ‘experience’.[1] My recent wrestling has been with the inevitability of the relative significance of particular experience and particular contexts. Both aspects are crucial to the theological task so that whatever is said of God is real, rooted, grounded, connected to the everyday, and to the actual experience of living, but it can never just be an expression or articulation of subjective, human experience presented in the form of God-language. Such a ‘theology’ may end up not speaking of God at all. But specific experience and contexts do need identifying and naming, otherwise dominant (often hidden) experiences and contexts prove decisive and the contributions of multiple voices to the theological task just don’t get heard. It’s why the so-called ‘dismantling of Whiteness’ is underway.[2]

How does all this take shape in practice? Let me give some examples. When I was in Zimbabwe some years ago working within a multi-ethnic team with a group of 13 postgraduate theology students from across 8 different African countries, a few sharp insights came to light. The openness of the group was wonderful. The Europeans in the tutor team were able to voice their (our!) hesitations about speaking of ‘African experience’. The students themselves both laughed, and were self-critical enough, to acknowledge openly that they were quite happy to speak of ‘African experience’ over against whatever may be considered ‘European’. But as soon as any further digging was done, then Kenyan, Nigerian, Liberian, Mozambiquan and Zimbabwean experience would of course become significant. In similar ways in the UK, when working with Black colleagues in theology, it is appropriate for me to recognize the importance of references to ‘the Black experience’ even though I am fully aware (and am made aware of!) the many different kinds of Black Experience (within multiply different British, Caribbean and African life-experiences).

The distinctions and nuances which are needed are not, of course, just to do with ethnicity, nationality or geography. Feminism has been challenging male dominance in Christian theology for fifty years and more. Explorations of sex and gender have now pressed much further than over-simple binary assumptions about male and female/masculine and feminine have implied. Attention to ableism and classism have come more to the fore of late. In short, the multiple voices representing the diversity of human experience in all its various forms are to be respected both locally and globally, not least because ‘all of life is here’ in any local church by the very fact that God is present.

At this point there is a real irony. As a would-be systematic theologian I remain interested in seeing how the different bits of Christian faith all fit together, inform each other, critique each other and generally enable us to get a better understanding of the God in whom we say we believe. It’s vital to hear how people of different backgrounds, with diverse experiences, and working out of differing contexts speak of Spirit, Christ, Church, Human Being, Trinity, and so on. The problem, I discovered years ago, is that it’s often assumed it’s only men (and usually White ones) who try to be systematic about faith and theology. We can, though, dispense with the word ‘system’ whilst being respectful about what systematic theologies have been trying to do. At their best they’re saying: we have a responsibility, within the constraints of all our collective human experience/s, to do the best we can to express who we think God to be. Contextually and experientially responsible Christian systematic theology is none other than the Church’s attempt to be true to the God in whom we believe and letting everyone contribute to that endeavour. Everyone may indeed have their own theology, and no-one has the definitive Christian systematic theology. But between those two extremes – what I earlier called the ‘theological task’ – is the collective effort of doing justice to the God who speaks and acts in and through all manner of different people and contexts. Articulating that is both an act of basic Christian sense-making and a form of mission.

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[1] Fairly recent contributions to this site from Ed Mackenzie and Tom Greggs are relevant here.

[2] Just as an aside: I have some reservations about the actual language being used here, whilst wanting to support what is being identified and undertaken.

by Ed Mackenzie.

During this Advent, many of us will spend time reflecting on God’s incarnation in the person of Jesus. We’ll no doubt hear again the words of John 1:14 – ‘the Word became flesh and lived among us’ – and sing carols celebrating God’s presence in the manger at Bethlehem. Over against docetic approaches to Jesus which deny his embodiment, we might recall that the incarnation affirms the goodness of the body of Jesus; ‘Jesus Christ has come in the flesh’ (1 John 4:2b).

The incarnation also has implications for our approach to human nature. If Jesus’ body is good, we can extrapolate that bodies as such are good, created by God as the form in which our humanity exists. Such a theme resonates with the beginning of the biblical story in which creation is declared ‘very good’ (Gen 1:31) as well as end of the biblical story with its anticipation of resurrection, that is, future embodied existence (1 Cor 15). How might such a biblical view on humanity shape our approach to the body today?

Firstly, affirming the goodness of the body can lead us to be grateful for the wonder of creation and how God has made us. In today’s context, we are especially privileged in having a huge amount of insight into the inner and outer workings of the body, with Bill Bryson’s recent work on the Body offering one recent reflection on its amazing nature.[i] As the Psalmist says, we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14), knit together by God’s own hand.

While it’s possible to be grateful for bodies as such, it can be harder to be grateful for the bodies we inhabit – or rather, the bodies we are. Many of us look down on our own bodies and our gratitude for embodiment is certainly curtailed when illness, pain or ailments afflict us. But despite the weaknesses of the ‘jars of clay’ we inhabit, it’s through these vessels that God’s light and goodness can be made known (2 Cor 4:7-12). Perhaps thanking God for our bodies is a small way of honouring the God who has made us.

Secondly, the goodness of the body might lead us to spend time looking after our bodies. Such a posture is not selfish or self-centred, but rather a matter of rightly stewarding our lives. We know too that much ill-health – physical and mental – can be attributed to ways we use or misuse our bodies, and so finding ways to eat or exercise more healthily are ways to attend to our bodies. This is not a matter of pursuing a particular look or a specific size, but rather of moving and living in ways that lead us to flourish for the sake of God our service in the world.

While focusing on bodily wellbeing might form a part of many New Year’s resolutions, it’s something that we can return to as part of the rhythm of our life in every season. It might also feature as part of our conversations with others, certainly not to bring guilt or shame but rather to frame caring for the body as a way of caring for the self and so encompassed too by the love of God.

Thirdly, the goodness of the body means that it is as bodies that we seek to love God and love others. In Jesus’ reworking of the traditional Jewish practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving (Matt 6:1-18), each practice requires bodily involvement – stepping inside our ‘closets’, resisting our desire to eat, and reaching out to help those in need. At a key juncture in Romans, Paul also invites Christians to offer ‘bodies as living sacrifices’ to God (Rom 12:1), with each of our individual bodies playing a role in the larger body of Christ (Rom 12:3-8).

Our bodies, then, are the means through which we move towards God and others in love. We are not our own, we’ve been brought with a price – and so Paul calls us to glorify God in our bodies (1 Cor 6:19-20). Just as Jesus gave up his body in love of God and the world, so too our bodies can be shaped in service in and for the kingdom.

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[i] Bryson, Bill, The Body: A Guide for Occupants (Doubleday: 2019)

by Anthony Reddie.

This Spectrum paper is a reflection, written by Professor Anthony Reddie, on a lecture he gave at the Spectrum conference in May 2022.

In Anthony’s second session, participants engaged in a Bible study entitled ‘Theological Reflection’. Once again, he started with some reflections based on personal experience. The theme was one of how societies and faith communities deal with the challenge of engaging with issues of sameness or homogeneity and difference, or questions of pluralism, i.e. do people need to be the same or have some unified perspectives in order for them to live together and be one?

When is it right that we affirm difference or when is better that we ignore our differences and rather affirm the things that make us more or less or very similar?

 After an initial introduction participants were split into groups and asked to look at Acts 2: vv. 1-11. They were encouraged to reflect on how the dynamics of sameness and difference were played out in the biblical text. After the groups had reflected on the text, on coming back together, they shared their differing perspectives with each other. Then Anthony shared his reflections on the text and how it offers an important mirror to the continued challenges of sameness and difference in contemporary society, where the dangers of nationalism and populism have been exemplified.

The key aspect of Anthony’s reflections was the challenge as to what difference did religious faith make in terms of how we see those who are marked as ‘the other’. How does faith in Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit, impact on our social values? This is especially the case when issues of empire and whiteness are deeply embedded in how we see people, especially those of ethnic parentage or who themselves were born beyond the shores of Britain.

Anthony said, ‘In using this text, I would say that my lifelong commitment to social justice, and liberation from oppression for all people, has emanated from the inspiration gained from this text. I continue to believe that the narrative of the first Pentecost has much to teach us as we struggle with the continued challenge of embracing and affirming difference in our contemporary life in 21st century Britain. For a Black Liberation theologian, much of whose work has been critiquing and challenging White norms and assumptions of superiority, I love the way in which Pentecost demolishes any notion of cultural superiority or Government inspired attacks on multiculturalism in favour of the mantra of sameness and integration’.

Pentecost has a special resonance for our increasingly plural and complex world, because any materialist reading of this text affirms notions of difference and particularity. If physical differences are themselves part of the problem for our post modern, differentiated world, then what are we to make of a text in which difference is visibly celebrated?

In the Pentecost narrative, we hear of people speaking in their mother tongue. There is no presumption of pre-eminence in terms of language, culture or expression. The ability to have visions and dream dreams are the preserve of all human kind, irrespective of class, ethnicity or culture. The God of all, in Christ, has called all humanity into an unconditional relationship with the Divine, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

For Methodists, the inclusivity of Pentecost is a reminder that our founder John Wesley was committed to a gospel that spoke to and was available for all people, irrespective of rank or social status. The ‘Four Alls’ of Methodism is a radical restatement of the availability of grace for all peoples and that this prevenient spark calls us into relationship with God and most crucially, with one another.

Inspiration for social justice emerges from the God who challenges us to seek the good of our neighbour and encourages us to find human fulfilment in radical hospitality, in community with others and communion with God, revealed in Jesus.

Liberation Theology often speaks of ‘Base Communities’  and the term is often associated with Marxism or Communism, but one can argue that the roots of this form of simple, faithful living and the following of Jesus’ message can be found in Acts chapter 2.

This text counters all our bourgeois notions of Christian faith as an expression of self-centred, middle class, consumer style individualism. The transformation brought about by the Holy Spirit does not lead to self centred notions of individual blessing and notions of ‘cheap grace’ as we have been admonished by the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Rather, living in the spirit leads to a renewed commitment to live for and to serve others in the name of Christ.

Questions:

1.  Does Acts chapter 2 really have a socio/political dimension?

2. Where is the Holy Spirit at work ‘on the streets’ these days?

3. How may the Church, your church, speak the language of the people today?

We are pleased to continue our partnership with Spectrum, a community of Christians of all denominations which encourages groups and individuals to explore the Christian faith in depth. This year the study papers are from talks by Prof Anthony Reddie and Rev’d Simon Sutcliffe on the theme ‘Being the Salt of the Earth (A look at some peace and justice issues)’. This is the third of six coming through the year.

“In the beginning when God began to create the heavens and the earth, [everything] was a formless void and darkness…”[1]

by Sheryl Anderson.

It is hard to imagine a time when all that existed was darkness, when you could travel in any direction for millions of years and still see absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, this is the story that scientists tell us of the “dark ages” that gripped the Universe before the first stars ignited. Furthermore, they hope very shortly, to be able to show us that time, or rather how that time ended – how the cosmos ultimately became filled with light. What is commonly referred to as the ‘Big Bang’.

Along with many, I have been fascinated by the images of the furthest parts of the cosmos created by the James Webb Telescope, which is able to gaze further into the cosmos than any telescope before it; thanks to its enormous mirror and its instruments that focus on the part of the light spectrum known as infrared, allowing it to peer through dust and gas. This type of light isn’t visible to the human eye, but the telescope has no problem detecting it. In fact the telescope’s incredible features allow it to see deeper back in time to the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago.

In his book Helgoland[2], Carlo Rovelli, an Italian theoretical physicist, tells the story of the birth of quantum physics and the bright young scientists who were to become some of the 20^th Century’s most famous Nobel prize winners in science. He particularly focusses on Werner Heisenberg who, in June 1925, retreated to the treeless, wind battered island of Helgoland (Heligoland) in the North Sea in order to think. What Heisenberg wanted to think about was the physical properties of nature at the scale of atomic and subatomic particles. This was the beginning of quantum mechanics, an understanding of matter based on probabilities rather than certainties.

Heisenberg was fascinated by the relationship between subatomic particles. Many years later, reflecting on the theory, Heisenberg wrote, “Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection (between subatomic particles) though we can only speak of it in images and parables.”[3] Heisenberg was a devout Lutheran and appreciated that humans are able to give an account of the physical world only in as far as their language and experimental tools permit.

In his book Rovelli makes an extraordinary statement. He suggests that, at the subatomic level, particles have no properties in themselves, properties only exist in the relationships between the particles. He beautifully describes the world we touch as ‘a fabric woven by relations’; where we, as every other thing around us, exist in our interactions with one another.

For Christians, Advent is season of reflective preparation for the birth of Christ. A time of hopeful expectation of the arrival of Jesus ‘in the flesh’ as a new born infant. However, for many the idea of God taking on mortality in order to join in with God’s creation seems like a fairy tale. Many other faith traditions and the Greek and Roman myths are full of stories of the gods assuming human form, often to seduce or trick a particular individual. In Christian theology there are lots of plausible and sophisticated explanations about why God would do such a thing, and debates about how God might do such a thing greatly tested the Early Church, creating a theological crisis focused on the nature of Christ.  This culminated in the nuanced language of the Nicene Creed in 325, which seemed to bring an end of the matter. To the modern Western mind, much of this seems archaic and irrelevant.

But… what if Rovelli is right? What if particles (which is what everything is made of) have no properties (qualities, characteristics) in themselves but properties exist only in the relationships between the particles? That everything that exists does so, not in itself, but in its interactions with other things. In which case, how about this for a description of what God does in Jesus? How about this for a description of what the person of Jesus offer us – a connection with God that we can fully understand although we can only speak of it in images and parables. Perhaps the means for God to join in with God’s creation is built into the very fabric of the Universe.

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[1] Genesis 1:1-2 NRSV translation, edited for emphasis.

[2] Rovelli, Carlo, Helgoland, Allen Lane; (2021)

[3] Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, Harper & Row; (1971)

by Ben Pugh.

Understanding the Immanent Frame: How did we get here?

The Immanent Frame[1] is a way of looking at the world which limits itself to the immanent, to the down-to-earth and here-and-now. Those most caught up in it tend to be devoutly materialist since the Immanent Frame was created ultimately by the long-established conviction within Western philosophy that humans lack capacity for the knowledge of transcendent things. We must therefore limit our knowledge to the stuff of the world.

When it comes to these immanent things we have, by contrast, become immensely capable. Take cell theory. Cell biologists can literally describe what life is, and do so in eye-wateringly granular detail. They can describe all the organelles within a cell – chromosomes, mitochondria, nucleus – which work together to ensure that both the cell and its host are alive. They can describe the components and the electric pulses that make life happen. As believers, we might be quick to point out that biologists cannot say what life ultimately is, or what ultimately powers it along, but our voices echo out across a culture that has been habituated never to ask such questions and does not see the point of them. It is a world without wonder, and averse to mystery.

Perhaps surprisingly, our culture’s immanentism has long been acknowledged to be an outworking of Christian beliefs, which explains why secularity has taken such firm root within historically Christian countries. The Bible itself presents us with a God who is distinct from creation, and a creation that does not emanate directly from him and hence, by implication at least, can be engaged with by itself with no reference to God or the transcendent realm. The Biblical authors ardently proclaim an anti-idolatrous distinction between the divine and the not-divine. This divide, according to some sociologists, was then further cemented by the way Protestantism emphasised the private study of the Word, separation from the world and personal conversion. These individualising moves further reinforced the hiving off of supernatural from natural, transcendent from immanent and private values from public facts.

Before Protestantism arose, the possibility of an exclusively immanent outlook was kept at bay for as long as people viewed the world in a basically Platonic way. Platonism had long reinforced Christianity’s view of the world as participating in the divine. Even in its fallenness, the world was understood to be the still-glorious product of God’s heavenly world of original forms that gave meaning, definition and substance to the earthly realm. Even without the aid of Platonic metaphysics, the Christian version of immanence was an immanence that participated in the transcendent at every point. It was an immanence within transcendence. And it is the possibility of tapping into a world beyond us that has been largely lost to the modern imagination. It crops up these days mainly in the far-fetched fictions of silver-screen superheroes whose earthly weaknesses can be spectacularly transfigured by an all-conquering force from beyond.

Where are we heading?

Commentators seem unanimous that people cannot survive within a purely flat, disenchanted universe. We instinctively believe that there is depth to it. Though the culture tells us that what we see is all there is to know, we are aware that the universe is full of impenetrable mystery. Even Karl Popper was sure that what we know is finite, hence our ignorance, according to him, is infinite. When people become aware of their ignorance of the unfamiliar, and of their boredom with a disenchanted universe, they find themselves asking that question, ‘Isn’t there more to life than this?’ For as long as people keep asking this, it is unlikely that the secular outlook will entirely cancel faith. It is even less likely that the long-predicted extinction of religion from modern life will ever happen, as most secularisation theorists now agree. In fact, the strange paradox is that many of those who do not attend church today want us who are devout to carry on being religious for them.

What do we do?

The task we seem to face today, as preachers and teachers of the people that God sends our way, seems to have a lot in common with previous generations of Christian thinkers whose task it was to proclaim the good news during previous episodes in the history of our culture’s rejection of transcendence. I think of the radical materialism of Hobbes and Bacon and the counter-moves made by the Cambridge Platonists, and later by George Berkeley. I think of the onward march of modernity in the nineteenth century and the alternative worldview offered by John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement, and of modernity’s further triumphs in the twentieth century and the alternative perspectives offered by the literary outputs of the Inklings. Between them, these thinkers have opened our eyes to a speaking universe, a sacramental world, and a sanctified imagination within which a greater world, more real than this one, can be accessed.

None of this directly answers my question, ‘How do we preach good news in the Immanent Frame,’ but it suggests a strong New Testament ally in our task: the one who penned: ‘In the beginning was the Word . . .’ (John 1:1).

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[1] A term coined by Charles Taylor

by Elaine Lindridge.

I’m scared…

Another country’s government swings to the right.
Another newspaper headline spouts lies about refugees.
Another calamity linked to climate change.
Another foodbank runs out of food.
Another ‘warm space’ opens as if this were somehow normal.
Another change in the law erodes my rights to protest.
Another woman cuts her hair in Iran.
Another recession.

I’m content…

My home is warm and my belly is full.
My family are wonderful.
My diary has a holiday in it.
My work is fulfilling.
My budget balances.
My faith is in One who is faithful.

Now before you worry about me, let’s each be honest with ourselves. How many of us have emotions and responses to life that fluctuate frenetically from positive to negative? The writers of the Psalms obviously experienced this too. Many of these timeless songs start in dismay and move to hope. Then the next psalm, dismay, hope, and so it continues.

Panto season will soon be upon us, and I’m reminded of the slapstick character who fails to  see that someone is right next to them even as the audience shouts, ‘he’s behind you!’. We can look at characters in the Bible and see the ending of their story without really engaging in the trauma of the ups and downs they faced. A blasé approach that nonchalantly concedes that God will sort it out in the end.

But when we are in the midst of rapidly changing times and we’re trying to navigate the turbulent seas of life, our view of God might sometimes be obscured. Maybe on the days when we’re not sure where God is, we need to remember that there’s a cloud of witnesses shouting, ‘God’s behind you….and beside you, and all around you.’ (Hebrews 12:1)

This is going to sound incredibly obvious, but at either end of these emotions is the need to breathe. The pioneer community that I am part of has weekly zoom prayers and we use a liturgy we have written ourselves. A refrain that runs through it is this,

Rooted in the mystery,
wonder and power of the Great Creator
who shows us how to breathe.

So on the days that are good, when the sky is blue and I’m living my best life, I pause and breathe deeply, remembering that I am rooted in the mystery, wonder and power of the Great Creator.

And on the days when the News is overwhelming and debilitating, and fear creeps into my soul, I pause and breathe deeply, remembering that I am rooted in the mystery, wonder and power of the Great Creator.

Take a moment right now.
Don’t rush.

Pause.

Breathe.

Acknowledge your fears.
Relish your contentment.
Listen as the crowd of witnesses point to the God who surrounds you.

And know deep in your being that you are rooted in the mystery, wonder and power of the Great Creator who shows you how to breathe.

by Philip Sudworth.

In a poll for Time magazine a third of USA Christians surveyed agreed with the statement – “If you give money to God, God will bless you with more money.” This is a response to the message of some popular preachers who suggest that, if you are generous to God, he will be generous to you.  Your business will flourish, or you’ll get a better job, or you’ll be healthier.  We may dismiss such bargaining with God as materialistic and self-centred, and a long way from the teaching and example of Jesus.  Yet a more subtle form of bargaining with God is found in the style of Christianity which focuses primarily on how we get to Heaven – the everlasting benefits of being a Christian. Here the major payback is deferred until the next life or until the new earth is established, but the motivation is much the same – the emphasis is on the rewards that faithfulness to the right beliefs will bring. 

Of course, there are tremendous advantages from being a Christian. In addition to the eternal blessings, studies show a significant increase in spiritual and psychological well-being, which comes from knowing that one is loved and accepted and also from a sense of purpose, and this impacts positively on physical health.  We should celebrate the gifts of faith. Yet, if people become Christians in order that God will protect them, heal them, forgive them or reward them; if it’s all about them and how they’re going to benefit, then is it really faith? Surely, faith is about entering into a relationship with God without self-interest.  That may seem rather strange in our materialistic society, where so many people want to know – “What’s in it for me?” 

However, it’s easy to understand the truth of it, if you’ve been in love.  Love is about wanting the well-being of the one you love.  It’s about putting the other first.  You’ll collect your teenager from a party at 2 am because you put her/his safety above your sleep.  You’ll stand on the touchline on a cold, wet day to support your child in her/his sport.  You’ll take your spouse to a concert of music which s/he loves but you hate.  Love is for the hard times as well as the easy ones.  Loving makes you vulnerable.   You hurt when your loved one hurts; you open yourself to rejection and to grief.  The more deeply you love, the more you open yourself to being hurt. 

Jesus’ message to us about what is at the heart of faith is also far more about offering than taking.  There is a large element of self-sacrifice involved.  “If any of you want to come with me, you must forget yourself, carry your cross, and follow me.”  (Matt 16:24).  That’s hardly the most popular saying of Jesus.  You don’t find it very often on wayside pulpits!  It’s not a very good recruitment slogan.  We much prefer to stress the positive; what we get out of being a Christian.  So we talk much more often about the power of God to solve our problems; the riches of God to supply our needs; the love of God to care for us and look after us. Yet we are called to follow Christ, and following Jesus is at least as much about being spent as being saved.  Being “cross-centred” should not just mean turning our back on the world as we gaze in wonder at the cross.  We have to place ourselves by the cross, at the heart of our hurting world, and see what Jesus saw and loved in people, even as he suffered.

Faith is about far more than assuring one’s own survival and salvation and/or gaining God’s favour during this life.  We are not called to be slaves of God who respond out of fear of the consequences if we don’t obey.  Nor are we called to be servants who look to the rewards we are promised if we fulfil our role satisfactorily.  We are called to be children of God, called to a relationship of love – firstly with God and then with our fellow human beings.  Self-sacrificing love has its costs, and we can get hurt. We might have to give up something we really want. If we care for people, they may still reject us or take out their frustration and hopelessness on us. Challenging injustice and proclaiming freedom can mean confronting vested interests and that can be dangerous.  Opening ourselves up in self-sacrificing love is a risk but it means that we are also open to receive all the love that can flood into us. 

John Wesley saw wholeness and harmony in the lives of those who have “a faith that works by divine love in the crucible of everyday life.”[1] ‘Shalom’, with its sense of complete peace, wholeness, well-being and harmony, isn’t something we’ll find by bargaining with God or by striving for it.  It will find us when we focus on working with God to bring peace and blessing to others.

Points to Ponder:

1. How do you explain to non-believers why being a Christian is so worthwhile?

2. What does “Take up your cross” mean in your life?

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[1] Dieter, Melvin, Five Views on Sanctification (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), p.12

by Raj Bharat Patta.

In September 2022, I attended the Church of South India’s Platinum jubilee celebrations in Chennai to represent the Methodist Church in Britain as a mission partner.  When the Church of South India (CSI) sent an invitation to the Methodist Church in Britain to join them at their platinum jubilee celebrations, they were expecting a White English British person. But when I landed in Chennai, it was a total surprise for the hosts to see yet another Indian who was speaking a native South Indian language representing the Methodist Church in Britain. A participant asked me whether I ‘really’ represent British Methodist Church? I had to reply with a smile, ‘certainly yes.’

The reason for their surprise was, how come an Indian Lutheran minister now attending a CSI celebration representing the Methodist Church in Britain? All I had to say was that the Methodist Church in Britain today is a postcolonial church seeking to be relevant for our times by celebrating multicultural, multi-ethnic, multilinguistic identities, for which I, as a person with multiple-belongings stand as a testimony. However, that made me think to reflect what does it mean for the Methodist Church in Britain to be postcolonial today?

Clive Marsh while reflecting on theology in a postcolonial key, identifies domination, privilege and power that needs contestation along with a critique of imperialism and colonialism, celebrating the perspectives and theologies ‘from the underside.’[1] The project of postcolonialism in the context of church is an attempt to de-imperialise liturgy, doctrines and practices of the church. And in our quest for a postcolonial Methodist church in Britain today, the call for us as a church is to recognise the ‘undersides’ of our society and to be a ‘church of the undersides,’ contesting all forms of oppressive powers that discriminate and subordinate people.

On my trip to India, my friends have asked me how do I cope serving my current congregation in the UK whose membership is only 40 in comparison to the 400 people who were on my membership when I served the local congregation in India? I had to reply to them saying, “I might have only 40 people in my local church, but God has called me to serve and minister to the 40,000 people who live in my neighbourhood in the UK, and that keeps me busy meeting to their demands.” Colonial Christianity has defined church and ministry with membership and has emphasised the primary call of the church is to meet to the needs of its members alone. However, postcolonial church is not bound by the membership of the church, rather it is called to reclaim Wesley’s ecclesiology of “the world is my parish and every street corner is my pulpit,” and work with and in the public sphere. This is to engage in doing public theology and public theological mission, working with the world around us, striving towards transformation of the society, which is a mark of Christian discipleship.

The other area for us to be a postcolonial church is with regards to the understanding of partnerships as mutual sharing. If the Methodist Church in Britain and the CSI have been working as mission partners for the last 75 years, what are the new hymns and liturgies that the Methodist Church in Britain have learnt from the CSI and have used them in their local congregations to celebrate the global relationships between the two churches? This is where I am suggesting to affirm in the reverse missional engagements of the people from the global majority heritage in the UK. The colonial understanding of partnerships thrived on the binary of donor and receiver, where the church in the West worked as a donor, with the churches in the global south as receivers. A postcolonial Methodist Church in Britain should mutually learn from their mission partners on mission and theology and consciously sing the vernacular hymns/songs in our churches, for mission is about ‘singing the (strange) Lord’s song in our strange land.’

To celebrate October as Black History Month, I wanted my church to sing ‘we shall overcome’ and ‘this little light of mine’ the two most famous freedom songs from the civil rights movement. I was surprised that none of these songs are found in any of the hymn books that we use in our church. Perhaps, in our movement towards being and becoming a postcolonial church in Britain, my dream is to see freedom songs from different contexts incorporated in our hymnary. 

A postcolonial Methodist Church in Britain is about being prophetic and justice seeking by contesting the evils of racism, misogyny, patriarchy, classism, secularism, poverty, hunger, climate change, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and Islamophobia. It is about celebrating inclusion of all people, where love is the common denominator.

Let me conclude with the words of an Indian theologian Vinayaraj as a call for us as a Methodist Church in Britain to be a postcolonial church in the 21^st century British society:

“A church that finds its life only in prayers and sacraments and liturgical acts and that which do not reflect its responsible faith in the world of injustice and exploitation is a failed church. It never fulfils its call and commission to be the sign and sacrament of the coming kingdom. In such a situation, faith gets fossilised, practice becomes imperialised, and the community becomes closed and triumphalistic. A creed that is closed for ever becomes idol and will make the worshipping community stagnant and saturated.”[2]

Help us O God for us to be a church relevant for our times by being a postcolonial church with love as our public witness.

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[1] https://theologyeverywhere.org/2019/07/01/theology-in-a-postcolonial-key/

[2] Y. T. Vinayaraj, Faith in the Age of Empire, (New Delhi: ISPCK/CWM, 2020) P. xxiii

by Neil Richardson.

Is the Church weighing us down? A conscientious Methodist told me once that she needed a Sunday off! When our churches are numerically declining, we easily forget that supporting the Church and keeping it going isn’t our job; it’s the Holy Spirit’s.

But that decline continues, and it’s tempting to go for growth (to coin a phrase currently fashionable). Yet evangelism with church growth as its aim isn’t really evangelism; it’s proselytizing.

Many people in our churches seem reluctant to talk about God. Money-raising events often attract greater numbers than services of worship. Church-centred Christianity struggles on when something deeper is needed.

I once asked a group of students which words are indispensable if we’re explaining the Christian faith to someone who doesn’t share it. ‘Jesus’, ‘love’ and ‘life’ certainly, but also, I think, ‘God’. That word is so misunderstood we can’t avoid it. But there is another reason. Our President and Vice-President are reminding us that the first commandment is to love God with all our hearts. How can a person who has fallen in love not talk about the love of their life?

But what or who are we talking about? Certainly, a Mystery. The name of God in the Bible is a verb rather than a noun:

‘I will be what I will be.’[1]

The future tense is appropriate to the story the Bible tells. God’s covenant with all creation (Noah), and with Israel (God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) , and then, through Jesus, with all humankind, runs through the whole of Scripture. This future perspective, the divine promise, is especially important as we face the existential threat of climate change.

The Christian faith in our day is changing. Many factors have contributed: two world wars, twentieth century genocides, the accelerating pace of history and much more. We should not be alarmed by this change. Both change and continuity are built into our faith because of God’s coming amongst us in Jesus.

The Incarnation wasn’t a mere episode in the life of God. God ‘took up residence’ amongst us (John 1.14). In this incarnation the cross and resurrection of Jesus reveal the eternal suffering and triumph of the Creator God, who dared to bring homo sapiens into being, with all the grief that would entail. (Genesis 6-8 tell the story).

We need to re-discover this story for a world threatened with self-destruction. Two themes, especially, need to be recovered and shared. First, God’s providence at work in our human history which the prophets perceived. But, second, the refreshing of our belief in what we used to call ‘the Second Coming’ of Christ. ‘The day of Christ’ is more biblical. It means the coming together of heaven and earth, as the final chapters of Revelation show. The Apocalypse, like the New Testament as a whole, is about the climax of God’s creative purposes which began with the incarnation.

We easily miss how Jesus’ teaching about the coming of the Son of Man develops in Paul’s writings: first, we have Jesus coming ‘with all his saints’ (1 Thessalonians 3.13), and, later, ‘the revelation of the sons and daughters of God’, (Romans 8.19), which ushers in the healing of all creation (v.21).

We can’t imagine the final coming together of heaven and earth, this merging of time and eternity. But the New Testament teaches that this ‘day of Christ’ is the climax of what the Church came to call the incarnation. Whenever, in the providence of God, that comes about, there will be ‘life in all its fulness’, as God promised through his prophets. And, as St Paul explained to the church at Thessalonika, no previous generation will be left out.

For now ‘Babylon’, the kingdom of Mammon, is still with us, hell-bent on destroying God’s creation. But already, as the early Church’s addition to the Lord’s Prayer reminds us, ‘Yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory’ (compare Revelation 11.15).

 Disciples of Jesus can join others who are resisting Mammon’s malign influence. In these crisis-ridden days, we are called to be as ‘wise as serpents’, and never ‘lose heart’, (Luke 18.1). Re-discovering, waking up to God is vital.[2]

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[1] The future tense probably reflects the Hebrew better than the more familiar ‘I   am what I am’.

[2] See my Waking Up to God. Re-discovering faith in post-pandemic times, (Sacristy Press, September 2022).