Theology Everywhere

by Frances Young.

The first time I met the man who has been my husband for over 50 years he and a friend were doing a Guardian cryptic crossword. I sat on the touchlines making somewhat caustic comments – to my linguistically-trained mind the tricks and conventions were just ridiculous! But then I had never been any good at puzzles, outshone by younger siblings, fearful of failure – though I suppose some would have thought I was doing puzzles all the time as I struggled to read and write Greek and Latin. No – I was never a puzzler! Yet late in life I’ve discovered Sudoku and Codewords and have to discipline myself not to get addicted and waste all day on them… They are definitely therapeutic, certainly a distraction from pressures and anxieties, a better accompaniment than reading to listening to music – you really can listen… And they say, there’re a possible antidote to dementia, a serious consideration in one’s 80s! Puzzles are to be celebrated.

But should we treat Scripture as puzzles deliberately set for us by the Holy Spirit? Believe it or not that is exactly what significant Christian theologians of the third and fourth centuries did think. I wonder if they might be onto something.

Augustine, the great theologian of the Western Church, whose life spanned the fall of the Roman Empire in the early fifth century, composed a treatise On Christian Teaching. It was essentially about interpreting and communicating scripture. He knew all about teaching classical literature – professionally he had been a rhetor, an educator, before his conversion. He had been one of those cultured despisers of the scriptures – they lacked style, being written in awful translationese, and were thoroughly alien and strange. But once a priest and bishop he devoted himself to making sense of them. He could then exemplify their natural eloquence and wisdom, while admitting that in places it was hard work to find it. Problems and ambiguities of many kinds were presented to the casual reader, “so thick is the fog created by some obscure phrases.”

I have no doubt that this is all divinely predetermined, so that pride may be subdued by hard work and intellects which tend to despise things that are easily discovered may be rescued from boredom and reinvigorated.

No one disputes that it is much more pleasant to learn lessons presented through imagery, and much more rewarding to discover meanings that are won only with difficulty… In both situations the danger is lethargy. It is a wonderful and beneficial thing that the Holy Spirit organised the holy scripture so as to satisfy hunger by means of its plainer passages and remove boredom by means of its obscure ones. Virtually nothing is unearthed from these obscurities which cannot be found quite plainly expressed somewhere else.
(De Doctrina Christiana II.6-7)

This kind of attitude did not come out of the blue. In the East the first great biblical scholar, Origen, had, more than a century earlier, suggested that the aim of the Spirit was to conceal the truth:

The word of God arranged for certain stumbling blocks, as it were, and hindrances and impossibilities to be inserted in the midst of the law and the history… for the sake of the more skilful and enquiring readers… By giving up themselves to the toil of examining what is written [they will discover] a meaning worthy of God.
(De Principiis IV.2.8)

He thought the prophecies “are filled with riddles” and the aporiai (puzzles) were intended to move readers into seeking deeper meanings.

All this may seem rather surprising, but in fact it helped to get a hearing in the culture of the time, and eased acceptance of this “barbarian” collection of books. How it helped is illuminated by the essays of Plutarch (a pagan thinker) discussing oracles: philosophers attributed such prophetic phenomena to the workings of providence, but also recognised they were often very enigmatic. Plutarch suggested that the god deliberately posed problems in the form of riddles or puzzles so as to create a craving for knowledge of the divine. The culture encouraged the idea of revelatory concealment, of hidden mysteries. No wonder then that the entire Old Testament was treated as a system of prophetic symbols and riddles pointing to Christ, if only you worked hard at teasing them out.

So to my questions for today: how do we find a way to encourage contemporary “cultured despisers” to try reading the Bible? And do puzzles have a theological purpose?

by Inderjit Bhogal.

The story of creation in Genesis affirms the place of both light and darkness (Genesis 1:1-5).  The light that God creates does not eradicate darkness. In fact, a new day begins, in Hebrew understanding, with evening, with darkness. I like that. Life begins in darkness. Day begins with darkness.

This presentation flows from my passion to achieve justice for refugees. Around 1000 refugees a day are coming in to Italy and Spain. At least 1200 of them died in the Mediterranean Sea in 2020, and over 1800 in 2021. There are many refugees who want to return home when it is safe to do so.

Before colours were developed and used in art, artists worked with black to make all art. This is certainly true in India. A friend in India taught me to draw, using Indian Ink only. All images emerge from black. (a number of short films on YouTube illustrate this). As you read, I suggest black line drawings to illustrate my words.

My favourite word is “dwell”. In my view “dwell” sums up, and is the key to unlocking the message in the Gospel according to St John. It is a frequently used word in the Gospel. It will repay close study, beginning with the use of the word in Chapter 1:14 where we read, “The word became flesh and dwelt among us”.

The word translated “dwelt” is the Greek word from the root skenos which gives us a picture of a tent (here, draw a tent). It is translated as “shelter” in Revelations 7:15. It is the word we find in the Septuagint text of Exodus 25:8 where we read God’s request to Moses.

“Have them build me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them”.

So, John 1:14 literally speaks of God pitching a tent in the midst of humanity. God wants to take sanctuary among people. A tent is a good image. It shows God travelling and pitching with people in all their travels. It is intriguing that Churches use the image of a boat as an image of Church.

Many years ago I read a book called Theology of Hope by Jurgen Moltmann where the author gives two images of Church. A Boat and an Arrow. There are, of course, many other models or images of Church.

The Boat image is used in the logo of many church organisations (draw a boat). Where does the idea of a boat to symbolise church come from? Noah’s Ark which is focussed on salvation resulting from getting into the ark. The mission of the church is to rescue people from the choppy waters of life for eternal salvation. Only those who get into this boat will be saved. The Arrow image speaks more of a movement, and direction. (draw an arrow)

Images of Boats are very much in the news. Creaky, leaky, overcrowded boats carrying refugees desperate for safety and sanctuary. Many boats overturn. Many people perish. Many refugee people crossing seas have drowned in the last year.

Overturned boats give a different image to contemplate (draw an overturned boat). It looks like the roof of a house or shelter. This is the plea of people escaping danger and threat to life.

The word ecumenical comes from the word Oikumene (from the root Oikos, house) meaning household of God. The household of God includes all people, all created order. This is what God wants to save, according to the image of the covenant we read in Genesis 9 in the story of Noah.

This brings me to the logo of City of Sanctuary which shows two people standing beside each other, holding hands which are raised between them to head height making an arch or a roof of a shelter, a dwelling (draw the City of Sanctuary logo).

This logo brings us back to the image of a tent, a shelter, a sanctuary. There is an Irish Celtic proverb which reads, “it is in the shelter of each other that the people will live”. This is the heart of the City of Sanctuary idea and movement.

I am trying to encourage churches to explore this idea, and to develop and promote the concept of Church of Sanctuary. This includes a commitment to ensure communities and congregations of worship work and pray together to build, embed and promote cultures of welcome, hospitality and safety for all. And to do this with pride.

Make your place of worship a sanctuary where all are treated with warm welcome, generous hospitality and protection from harm. A Christian symbol of this is Holy Communion, (draw a picture of Rublev’s Trinity of Holy Communion) a revelation of the world as it is meant to be, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, where all are welcome and valued equally, and where no one is excluded or made to feel like an outsider.

There is more of this line of thought in my book Hospitality and Sanctuary for All (available from me or CTBI).

Questions:

1. When and how does the day begin for you? With the dark or with the light or even another time?
2. What do you think of the notion of ‘sanctuary’? How may our churches become places of shelter and sanctuary for people post the pandemic?

by Richard Clutterbuck.

It’s fifty years since I first ‘caught’ theology. In 1972 I failed some university exams, dropped out of my biology course and began the journey that would lead to ordained ministry and a lifetime as a student and teacher of theology. I can still remember the buzz from first reading John Macquarrie’s  Principles of Christian Theology. I settled on systematic theology and Christian doctrine as my main areas of study and teaching. In other words, I’ve been interested in reflecting on the main affirmations of Christian faith, the ways we hand these on from generation to generation and the connections we can make between different affirmations and the world we live in.

This means that I see things rather differently from Andrew Pratt (The illogicality of faith, March 28^th).  He worries that an over-emphasis on creeds and faith-as-affirmation has blunted Christianity as a way of living out the lordship of Christ in the world. I think I see what he means, but from my perspective, creeds and doctrines do matter, not least because they have a profound effect on the way we understand the world and act within it. Bad theology is one element in the perversion of human behaviour, prompting and underpinning evil deeds with divine sanction. By contrast, good theology, sound Christian doctrine, helps to underwrite a way of life that models itself on Christ. Two contemporary examples illustrate this.

The first is very close to home. In an essay in The Guardian[i], to mark the recent Netflix documentary on Jimmy Savile, Mark Lawson wrote about Savile’s distorted theology of salvation and its part in his horrendous catalogue of sexual abuse. Savile, a life-long committed Roman Catholic, believed in a God who judges us according to the balance of our behavioural accounts. We are admitted to heaven if our tally of good deeds is longer than our list of sins. His frantic charity work, fund-raising, sponsored runs and cycle rides, were all part of a desperate attempt to compensate for the abusive actions that he knew were wrong. He really seemed to believe that he could earn his place in heaven by – as it were – bribing God to ignore the many sins he had committed. Repentance, mercy and grace do not seem to have been part of his theological vocabulary.

The second example is even more current. Several observers have noted that Vladimir Putin’s hostility towards Ukraine is at least partly driven by a theology and spirituality that legitimises aggression. According to the Religious Information Service of Ukraine[ii], this theology combines a belief in the divine inspiration and vocation of the Russian nation with a Manichaean mindset, setting a virtuous, godly Russia in opposition to the dark and evil West.  While there may be an element of political expediency in Putin’s religiosity, it does seem that this mystical nationalism is a genuine conviction. Once again, bad theology is linked in with disastrously immoral and destructive action.

Now, I don’t want to argue that believing in the traditional creeds will guarantee a life of righteousness and responsibility – there are far too many counter-examples for me to do that. But they are part of the story of faith, which is always a combination of belief and action. Last Saturday – Easter Eve – I joined the congregation in my local parish church for the Easter vigil. As part of the service we re-affirmed our baptismal vows, confessing our faith in the words of the historic creeds, and at the same time we renounced evil and promised to follow Christ.

Let me briefly mention two authors who can help us see the relevance of doctrinal affirmations. The first is the American theologian, Ellen Charry. In By the Renewing of Your Minds [iii](one of my all-time favourite books on doctrine) she takes examples of doctrinal controversy and developments in each stage of Christian history, from the New Testament to the present. In each case (for example, the trinitarian theology of St Augustine) she shows how doctrine is presented in order to promote a vision of the Christian life, not simply as a form of abstract speculation.

My other example is a contemporary British Methodist theologian, David Clough. Clough (a fellow contributor to Theology Everywhere) has made the focus of his work the Christian approach to non-human creation, particularly animals.  In On Animals[iv], he takes some of the central affirmations of Christian doctrine, creation, reconciliation and redemption, and helps us see how they can direct our attitudes and behaviour towards animals.

So, let’s not abandon the creeds, or water down the key affirmation of Christian faith. Instead, let’s make sure that we don’t separate doctrine from discipleship. They really do belong together.

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[i] The Guardian, April 1^st, 2022.

[ii] https://risu.ua/en/russian-world-20-and-putins-spirituality_n126473 , accessed 16-04-22.

[iii] Ellen Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds, The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine, New York, Oxford, 1997.

[iv] On Animals: Systematic Theology: Volume I: London, T&T Clark, 2012

by Aaron Edwards.

It has become customary at theological conferences nowadays to include a panel discussion on race. These tend to revolve around the problem of “whiteness”, with the invariable outcome that the white people present should become, in one way or another, less racist. If we’re unsure whether we are in fact racist, we’re told it’s probably in there somewhere, covertly submerged within our very deepest theological convictions.

This intensity of focus is not difficult to understand given the parallel tensions within western society at present, exacerbated by the viral responses to the death of George Floyd, an event which seemed to take on cataclysmic significance, catalysing a new “great awakening” of racial consciousness. Many theologians and preachers even saw the phenomenon in divinely revelatory terms. Pulpits usually reticent to preach socio-political issues suddenly found their sermons saturated with Critical Race Theory alongside numerous apologies for white privilege.

The super-charged narrative means any theological panel discussion tends to become significantly less “discursive” than expected. In one recent panel I attended, an influential black theologian lamented the lack of BAME representation in UK theological institutions, stating this was, in no uncertain terms, “a demonic apartheid”. Thus, any white theologian within UK theology is necessarily a perpetrator of deeply oblivious systemic oppression, the kind Hannah Arendt called “radical evil” (think Eichmann et al!). How does one begin to respond to such claims within such a climate? The person making this comment then added that the time was over for yet another panel on race – radical action was the only solution left.

I’m certainly not unsympathetic to homiletical rhetoric on significant issues, nor to critiquing inconsequential virtue-signaling panels. Indeed, the academy often seems to specialize in prolonging debates precisely to avoid transformative action! But what if you don’t agree with the premises – let alone the conclusions – of the discussion? What if you do need to talk more? What if the idea that most-white-theologians-are-unknowingly-racist-especially-if-they-think-they’re-not is wrong? How could someone articulate such a belief without incurring the charge of “whitesplaining” (an always-pejorative term connoting an essentially undefendable accusation)?

It was Robin D’Angelo’s bestselling book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism (2018), where the astonishing claim was made that “rational argumentation” was a typical “behaviour” of white people when accused of racial privilege or bias. Charitably, this likely refers to the stacking-up of countless propositions purely to enhance one’s invulnerability to critique. But the obvious problem with D’Angelo’s observation is that only via some form of “rational argument” could we have any hope of being persuaded that such diversionary filibustering was even wrong. The notion that rational argumentation is an ethnically particular “mode” of engagement is an alarmingly racist claim with disturbing implications – yet robust discussion of such problems has become virtually impossible.

This problem echoes the ill-fated era of Unconscious Bias Training, eventually scrapped by the Civil Service after it was discovered that, far from reducing racial tensions and inequalities, it often made them worse. Meanwhile, churches who already came somewhat late to the systemic antiracism party continue to roll out such training in the vain hope it offers some pneumatological magic to heal deep-set wounds which fall within the purview of the Gospel alone. Whenever someone tentatively points this out – say, at a conference – the increasingly common response is that “the Gospel” is itself a “white” construction (thus, just the kind of thing a white person would invoke in general to avoid confronting racism in particular).

The Church rightly wrestles with its own problematic legacy on race, a problem still bearing wounds for many communities in today’s world. But Christian theologians and churches have too swiftly adopted strategies of racial reconciliation which not only find their basis beyond the Gospel, but often actively undermine it. The adoption of such strategies grates against much of what was revealed and achieved in the Cross and Resurrection (obvious examples include new birth, expiation of guilt, divine grace, and paradoxical forgiveness – there are many more!).

It’s not coincidental that just when academic theological conferences are hosting panels debating systemic whiteness, the very same debates were already occurring in other subjects (decolonising mathematics is the latest iteration). Regardless of reverse-engineered public statements, it’s clear that the principal lens through which much of the Church views race today is not the Gospel. Our theology must always remain attentive to the cries and laments of injustice in our world. But it’s concerning when the roots of such attentiveness are identical to what was already happening before the Church “caught up” with the appropriate rhetoric/paradigm/programme.  

Tertullian’s famous warning of the irreconcilability of Jerusalem and Athens can often be overstated, but it should never be far from our minds today. True, the Church has always made use of non-Christian wisdom, but usually via annexation rather than wholesale adoption. We live at a time where western Christianity’s ingratiation in worldly systems of thought and action is epidemic. To even hear the declaration of “worldliness” today often brings patronising eye-rolls rather than honest Biblical self-reflections on the indistinctness of the Church’s prophetic witness.

Ironically, the Church’s historic complicity with racism is rightly deemed heinous precisely because it was “worldly”, because it repudiated the logic of the Gospel. In our fretful attempts to confront this legacy today, we inadvertently allow a worldly ideology (“antiracism”) to become a gospel unto itself. We must allow the Gospel to interrupt us on its own terms, however inconvenient such terms may be at any given point. If not, the light that the Church alone is given for the sake of loving the world is hidden under a bushel for the sake of pleasing the world.

by Philip Turner.

Though I attended my local Methodist Church at least twice each week as a child, I do not remember seeing a cross.  I saw organ pipes pointing upwards, casting a shadow over the raised pulpit, but no cross.  It was only later that a small wooden cross was rebelliously placed on the communion table under the pulpit.  It was only after that when, where once had been a flower festival display at the back of the chapel, a cross remained that flower arrangers decided not to dismantle, and the rest of us let it be.

I’ve often wondered why my childhood Methodist chapel was designed without a cross, and the congregation had, for many years, been content to leave it that way.  It is still a mystery, but this year I feel I may have some insight.

Since January, my church community has been steadily reading reading the account of the last few days and hours of Jesus’ life in Mark’s Gospel.  I’ve read this account many times, yet the impact this year feels different.  It isn’t because, unlike in my childhood, I now have a cross to look at: my church meets in a nearby coffee shop where there are no fixed displays of faith.  But reading Mark, and honestly struggling with what it means today, has presented a picture of the cross that has shaken me to the core.

This is because, in Mark, Jesus tells his disciples, no less than three times, that he must die.^[i]  It is because Mark highlights, not so much Jesus’ physical pain, but how he is humiliated.  It is because Mark painstakingly shows how his so-called ‘disciples’ left him, his faith leaders disown him and the civil authorities make fun of him.  So far has popular opinion swung away from him, that not one single person casts a sympathetic vote in his favour.  Not even his mother, in Mark’ account, comes out in the support of her son.  And God remains silent.  The desolation goes even further.  On the cross, the last remaining thread of human dignity and and self protection is removed; Jesus’ body is shown as frail and completely exposed for all to see.  Yet, what is most disturbing is not what is seen, but the invitation we can still hear.  We remember that Jesus has said, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.‘^[ii]

Samuel Wells^[iii] highlights, among other things, that 90 percent of Jesus’ life was obscured and hidden.  The remaining 10 percent was his recognised public activity, and a small percentage of that was his suffering and death.  The implication is that, for those of us who seek to follow Jesus, it might be reasonable to expect a similar outline for our own lives.  Yet, to what extent is that our expectation?

I work as a chaplain in my local acute hospital where I often meet patients and their families who are shocked by the realisation that this life is short and that they must, one day, die.  Fortunately, unlike Jesus, most of us need not experience pain: modern medication has almost eliminated that necessity.  However, it is beyond the ability of modern medicine to address the humiliation highlighted in Jesus’ experience.  Modern medicine can’t relieve the hurt we feel when people let us down.  There is no painkiller for the abandonment that we can feel. The reason, Frances Spufford assures us, is the Human Propensity to Mess things Up, which means that we should not be surprised when we experience human cruelty.^[iv] 

I wonder whether those of us seeking to follow Christ often reach for the vision, but avoid the realism.  This might have been the reason for the absence of the cross in my childhood chapel, yet I suspect that the visual cue does not automatically lead to engagement with our own cross that Mark’s Gospel presents.  Certainly, I am both grateful and disturbed by the realism that my current church community has uncovered.  Yet, I also reach for the vision. Morna Hooker reminds us, ‘Jesus loses his life, and is saved by God; he accepts shame, and receives glory; and he expects nothing less from his followers.’^[v]

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^[i] Mark 8.31; 9.31; and 10.33f

^[ii] Mark 8.34

^[iii] Samuel Wells, A Nazareth Manifesto (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), p.24f.

^[iv] Francis Spufford, Unapologetic (London: Faber & Faber, 2015), passim and p.233..  He prefers the initials HPtFtU..

^[v] Morna D. Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1994), p.53.

by Paul Bridges.

Six months ago, my wife and I visited Coventry and had the opportunity to see the Methodist Modern Art Collection. My approach to art is similar to my approach to theology – I love exploring it, but claim no expertise. I was looking forward to seeing the collection, having failed on several previous occasions to marry my diary with its location. It was a long but enjoyable thought-provoking day.  ‘Pink Crucifixion’ by Craigie Aitchison, and ‘The Washing of the Feet’ by Ghislaine Howard both captured our imagination. 

However, whilst enjoying the whole collection, the truth is I really wanted to see one particular picture. A piece that I had never seen for real but have fallen in love with from a distant – Eularia Clarke’s ‘The Five Thousand’.

It is for me, and I assume from the title, a modern version of the feeding of the five thousand. It depicts a 1970s church outing with the congregation enjoying fish and chips whilst listening to an only partially visible preacher. A woman with a pearl necklace, a couple of men smoking, babies in carrycots, toddlers and children, a few people snoozing, most eating and listening to the preacher. The picture and the biblical story speak to me of the Kingdom of Heaven or in other words the value of community.

The story and the picture are for me a miracle of generosity and community spirit, rather than a metaphysical miracle – and no less a miracle for this. This is a miracle that we can still see today when people respond to need and genuinely share what they have. People generally want to help each other, and even more so when food is involved!

At Huddersfield Mission, we have recently had the opportunity to formalise some work that we have been doing for many years – supporting local communities. We have two staff who are using community interventions to tackle health inequalities. So, I ask myself what might Jesus and the story of the feeding of the five thousand tell us about community development.

The feeding of the five thousand starts by someone -in this case the disciples- seeing the need. Too often agencies, professionals and churches start with a solution- borrowed from Google or a book – this is the wrong place. Community work needs to start with people or as the mug on my desk reminds me: “It all starts with a brew.”

The disciples had a solution, but also made the problem one of resources – we need lots of money, they said. Jesus had a different approach, he understood the need and saw that the people already had the solution, but perhaps did not know it yet. This is an asset-based approach, rather than a deficit model. The Kingdom, time and time again is built on what communities already have. Let’s not simply assume that communities have problems and we, the church, has the magic answers to fill the gaps.  Following Jesus is a much more active process than this. Community work cannot be done solely from a desk, and involves getting our hands dirty – or at least doing the washing up!

It is important to add here that an asset-based approach is not an excuse for saying that communities don’t need more resources, they do, but resources are only ever part of the solution. Asset Based Community Development is more about the attitude we have to people rather than resources.

Jesus’ solution was based on modelling positive behaviour and then involving everyone – those that came with nothing, and those that had enough to share, and everyone in between. Too much community development only involves the immediately willing, but real change needs to involve everyone. This is frighteningly difficult at times.

Perhaps Jesus could have ordered a huge takeaway for everyone via UberEATS, but the following day the poor would have been hungry again. Modelling the sharing of resources among everyone, shows a way of solving the problem for today and tomorrow. The best solutions always resolve the immediate issue and the underlying problem. Too often we are drawn to immediate solutions that at best are short term and at worse lead to dependency.

Jesus is often described as a fantastic story teller, and he was surely that, but to me he was also a brilliant community worker.

Finally seeing Eularia Clarke’s – The Five Thousand – for real reminded me just how little of the preacher is visible in the picture, and perhaps this is the last lesson for those of us grappling with community development – the story is not about us!

by Andrew Pratt.

It has been said that the earliest Christian creed was ‘Jesus is Lord’. It carried with it the understanding that for the Christian Jesus was the definitive model for human life and living. To say the words is easy but, for the most part we don’t take this seriously. If we did, finding out how Jesus lived in relation to people and mirroring that in our own lives would be our priority.

Beginning with that creed, we have built a religion predicated on the affirmation of beliefs rather than on ways of being. The consequence is that faithful living has become equated with this affirmation rather than on a recognition of the enormity that follows from embodying those beliefs. When they are attacked we spend time defending them and trying to diminish our detractors rather than demonstrating through our lives and actions that we accept Jesus as Lord. Our loss is that we dismiss this opposition often without hearing what its proponents are saying. Richard Dawkins, especially, I think largely because of his aggressive tone, has been side-lined. Some of what he has to say ought really to be understood if we are to recognise how difficult the call to faith actually is. This calling is unnatural.

A starting point for Jesus was not adherence to a creed, but with a call to love, demonstrated to the uttermost in how he lived and died. Deuteronomy 30:19 states: ‘I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore, choose life, that both you and your seed may live.’ If Jesus did have a creed, this was it. This choice of life is not referring to life after death, though you might want to define it as ‘eternal’ as being so utterly different from ordinary human life as to be ‘other’. The choice is existential, determinant for the very existence of humanity and love is at its centre. This is what I believe Jesus was pointing towards.

Dawkins in The Selfish Gene writes of his understanding that life continues from generation to generation by preferring aspects of living things which preserve them. Self-survival is hard-wired into out very being. That is why being selfless is so difficult. It is, by definition, unnatural. Human nature is counter to what Christians are supposed to espouse. Dawkins is, however, subtle. He addresses altruism. ‘Altruism’ may have advantages. It can make us feel good, but it can have other benefits which are not individual. He points out that care of another, in the long term, can help the whole population. This is simply utilitarian. It relates to the long-term survival of a species, in our case, humanity.

This, if we could see it, brings us back to Jesus Lordship. When we frame our statements as to what defines being Christian we need to be conscious that what is being asked of us is, firstly, apparently running counter to a strand of our being which is fine-tuned to self-interest. This demonstrates itself, for instance, in the uncritical development of hierarchy in the church. We have an inherent drive to survive and the higher up we rise, the greater the likelihood of survival.

It seems that Jesus is conscious of this, but his understanding reaches beyond the individual, beyond the tribe to encompass all of humanity. Jesus demonstrates not what to say, or believe, but how to live in a way which chooses life.

Two, illustrations undergird this. In Mark 1 Jesus is moved to reach out and touch a leper. This opens him to condemnation. It is physically and socially isolating, the opposite of being self-protective. In terms of the Greek words describing what is happening, he is viscerally moved so that he feels the person’s alienation as his own. This motivates him far more strongly than simply seeing it. He has to do something about it even if it is personally deleterious. Secondly, the Good Samaritan is moved to help in the very same way. The same language is used. Following this example puts us at a disadvantage but ultimately makes the body of humanity stronger, more inclusive, more likely to survive.

If we take Jesus as Lord, this is our model. It is not natural, in the sense of our biology, it works against our own existential longing, yet it offers salvation for humanity as a whole. The outcome enables the continued life of those despised or damaged. Finally, on the cross, those who have taken Jesus’ life are offered forgiveness. Had they been condemned, and such condemnation been our creed, humanity would have been diminished.

Moving to immediately current events, the events of war. I am conflicted. For whom do I feel compassion? The answer must be obvious. But Jesus interposes himself between those who espouse hatred and those who are hated to save both. He becomes victim to save both.

And can I follow? This is never as easy as giving assertion to any creed or belief.

This is no cheap grace.

by Mike Long.

The Methodist Church is currently undertaking a two year exploration of what it means to be a justice-seeking church through the Walking with Micah project.  Theology Everywhere is working in partnership with the project to host a series of articles about justice. For more information visit www.methodist.org.uk/walking-with-micah/

Justice for Grenfell?

For years following the Grenfell Tower disaster until coronavirus intervened, a silent march set out from the Methodist Church on the 14^th of every month at 7pm. The ending is always the same: a brief speech or speeches, then the final rallying cry as the crowd join in repeating the leader’s call many times: ‘Justice! Justice! Justice! Justice……’

What does ‘Justice for Grenfell’ mean? For many of those joining in the cry, there is a clear idea of what justice means: accountability for those who constructed and managed the tower, and those responsible for ensuring safety both before and during the fire. There is also the expectation that justice cannot be delivered without individuals being convicted in a public trial. There seem to be two elements in this particular expression of justice: transparency and judgement.

An important feature of Justice for Grenfell is the public airing of what has happened: for the bereaved, survivors and local community there is a strong emotional need for their story to be told, and for their experiences to be heard, validated. This is not so much an attempt to correct misinformation in the public realm, for example as with the families of the Hillsborough tragedy, but the product of being disregarded and marginalised over a long period of time; a prominent Grenfell campaigner has referred to ‘institutional neglect’. At Grenfell this translated into unheeded warnings about fire safety made by a residents’ group, and complaints dismissed in ways that made them feel like ‘second-class citizens’. But the Grenfell Tower fire also plays into a wider local narrative that they are often dismissed and disregarded by authorities. Perhaps because they are black, or immigrant, or social housing tenants, or simply living in North Kensington.

So ‘justice’ for Grenfell is more than a deep, sometimes visceral, longing for culpable persons and organisations to receive due sanction: it is, at heart, about truth. Truth that exposes wrongdoing in its entirety, and is broadcast in the public realm; truth that validates the accounts of those who felt marginalised, and affirmed as persons of integrity and worth. Such a justice might then be able to deliver the oft-quoted mantra of learning lessons from the tragedy, that such tragic events must never be able to occur.

In the case of Grenfell, the difficult question is how truth and (especially) sanction can be obtained when, most likely, responsibility for the tragedy lies with many people and across a plethora of companies and agencies. There is a real fear that culpability will be so widely spread as to prevent individuals being held to account. Many in the local community sense a clear idea of who is responsible, and there can be a disjunct of understanding as to how people behave within systems. That is not to excuse criminally careless, neglectful or false behaviour, but to recognise the fog that can hinder clear identification of individual responsibility.

Sometimes truth takes priority, even at the expense of retributive justice. This was a key feature of the Truth and Reconciliation Programme in South Africa following the end of apartheid, recognising that figures with significant information might never reveal information if faced with the prospect of prosecution. In that context, the need for transparency was paramount, and the agenda was fostering healing in an utterly broken, divided society. In other realms (child abuse, for instance) no amount of disclosure would forestall prosecution. At Grenfell the prospect of the Public Inquiry granting immunity from prosecution has been greeted with alarm.

Where does Christian justice lie in all this? It is more than putting right in a retrospective, retributive sense. But it does involve putting right in the sense of adherence to God’s kingdom, which is shown in the life and teaching of Jesus to indicate a priority for the excluded and the outsider, the downtrodden and marginalized: think of the parables where Jesus speaks about the kingdom as being like a feast, or judgement (eg Matt 25: 31 – 46), or where he describes those who are truly blessed. This focus on the kingdom of God opens up a future in which people will not live in fear of flat fires. It is not based upon some notion of fairness – because that is an insufficient valuing of human worth – but on love for all that attends to the most broken and vulnerable and ushers in the possibility of a wider justice.

Some measure of punishment without truth may satisfy some campaigners, but I doubt for long. Ultimately truth is a prerequisite to justice, because it opens to door to awareness not only about what happened but the causal processes, and to empowerment for change. And the truth can be hard to bear – particularly in a polarised environment, but can also set free.

For those at Grenfell marches calling out for justice, nothing less will do.

by Gary Hall.

‘I don’t know how to feel,’ she said on her way out of chapel. ‘How do I sing praises when I have a headful of horrors from Ukraine?’

This story and these images have invaded imaginations and pounded emotional landscapes. For most of us, these are other people’s horrors, not our own. We are safe, but we still have nightmares. Our children are not being bombed or terrified, but our feelings of relief and gratitude can seem distasteful – unless expressed as responsive action. Affirming and celebrating the love of God can feel crass until we have worked out how to act in relation to other people’s devastation. I think this is what she was saying. Knowing how to feel is tied up with knowing how to act; meaning not just the relatively straightforward business of ordinary human kindness (donations, statements of solidarity, lobbying, prayer and tears, movement of resources from here to there), but the bigger question of how much needs to change. For those of us with choices, is this the moment which demands a greater willingness to be disrupted? Should everyday routine and everyday emotions be suspended, when other people’s everyday living has been so violently ruptured? Are everyday playfulness and joviality just indecent when faced with what we are currently seeing and hearing? Is this sickening episode different from all the previous ones, or the more distant ones?

We didn’t have long to talk, so I am guessing that these are the kinds of things she might have meant when she didn’t know how to feel. She left me wondering about how and when the trauma visited upon other people rightly disrupts our own lives. We have a room, food and friendship if any refugees get this far, and that would be a little disruptive, but also a gift. More poignantly, a young adult asked, ‘Will we be conscripted?’ No, you won’t, I replied. ‘Should we volunteer?’ I didn’t answer that one. Who can say what this moment means for this person?

We might resist any disruption, arguing that disproportionate attention to the actions of a deranged despot only multiplies the loss and amplifies the impact of this invasive violence. Why should even more lives be impacted by this gang of kleptocrats? Besides, in this world there is always horror, somewhere, tearing lives apart – and there is always beauty. There is violence and there is love; cruelty and tenderness and everything in between. Perhaps there will be occasion when you and I also have to make immediate, life-changing decisions about protecting family and friends. Meanwhile, we are working out how to live in ordinary human solidarity, with compassion, without colonising someone else’s misery. It doesn’t help that we are wary of the manipulative power of images, and have already accumulated so many images of other horrors, along with too many questions about what kind of intervention actually makes the right kind of difference for the victims, rather than for ourselves.

How to feel? How to act? Most of the time, those of us blessed with predictability and security don’t experience the questions so intensely. Then the horrors come near, and we are jolted to a new level of attention, revulsion, compassion, rage. We feel with fresh force the weight of Jesus’ question, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ or the implicit question addressed to us by a terrified child huddled in an underground station: ‘And who is my neighbour?’

Blessed are they who can translate feelings into actions with relative spontaneity. Meanwhile, the friend who didn’t know how to feel was struggling to work out the extent to which massive, unspeakable disruptions to other people’s lives might – should? – disrupt her own. When to consider the lilies and birds, and when to stay close to Christ in Gethsemane?

On the road to Holy Week, Christians once again anticipate a re-telling of the violent disruption at the heart of the passion story. At the same time, we are familiar with the idea that God breaks in, irrupts into history, into our lives, as incarnate infant or risen Christ or Pentecostal spirit. Some disruptions are divine and transformative; some can only be described as horrific, demonic. What we may be working out, in those moments when we don’t know how to feel, is the relationship between good and bad disruptions – so our living might express a little of the hope that this earth will be a homeland in which all can dwell in peace, including our enemies.

by Inderjit Bhogal.

This is the fourth of our series of articles through the year from Spectrum, on the theme ‘Darkness and Light are both alike to Thee’. 

I want to question and reject the idea that white is the colour of purity, and black is the colour of profanity; that white is good, and black is bad.

Let me illustrate by considering words that should be familiar to readers of the Bible.

Isaiah 1:18 where we read, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (KJV).

These words are traditionally taken to mean, though your sins are dirty they will be made clean, as white as snow.

It is illuminating always to consider the context in which scriptural words are said or written.

Biblical scholarship is broadly agreed that the Book of Isaiah can be divided into three sections.

In section one (Chapters 1-39), there is a warning and prophecy about exile; section two (Chapters 40-54) reflects the time in exile and promises a return from exile; section three (55-66) follows exile.

In section one then there is a focus on things getting worse because people have again turned away from God. They will be taken into exile.

In this context the words of Isaiah 1:18, though your sins are as scarlet, they will become white as snow may be taken to mean, you are going to go from scarlet to white. Things are going to get worse.

Let us look at the use of the term “white as snow” in the Bible, by examining the first appearance of this phrase in some English translations of Numbers 12 where  we read in verse 10 that “Miriam had become leprous, as white as snow”. What led to this?

What does the phrase “white as snow” mean here? Does the original Hebrew text even use the term “as snow”?

Whatever the gloss, clearly it is pointing to something bad rather than something good, it is referring to impurity rather than purity.

The context is criticism of the leadership of the great Moses. To criticise him Aaron and Miriam pick on the choice of his wife. All we know about her is that she is a Cushite. We know nothing else about her.

Cush is the ancient designation of territory on the Upper Nile, south of Egypt. It can be reasonably assumed that the Cushite woman is of black African appearance.

Did Aaron and Miriam object to Moses being married to a black woman, and see this as the greatest weakness of Moses’ leadership to exploit? What results from this prejudice in the community?

God “heard” the criticism (verse 2), and challenges it, saying to Aaron and Miriam, and Moses, there is something we need to talk about (verse 4). The discriminatory reasoning of Aaron and Miriam is challenged in the meeting with God. Then we read, “and the anger of the Lord was kindled against” Aaron and Miriam (verse 9), and there are consequences. God departs.

Miriam becomes “white as snow”. The progress of the community is halted (verse 15). Moses prays for the healing in the situation (verse 13).

From here on, where ever the term “white as snow” appears in the Hebrew Scriptures, we have to read it in the light of the Numbers 12 story.

White as snow is a reference to impurity.

When Black theologians point this out, they are challenging bible-based communities to examine how we use colours in our language and liturgy and hymnody. It is important to note also that people of the “ancient world regard black people favourably” on account of their high esteem and status (see for example Randall Bailey in Felder, 1991, Stony the Road We Trod. Fortress Press, Minneapolis. Pages 135, 179-180). Moses’ black wife may have faced prejudice for her class as much as her colour.

There is evidence that black Africans, of Cushite or Ethiopian backgrounds, were held in high esteem. For example, we read in Amos (9:7, the words where Israel is contrasted with Cushites/Ethiopians, “are you not like the Ethiopians/the Cushites to me, O people of Israel, says the Lord.”

What intrigues me is that in the Biblical texts like the ones I have referred to, white is a negative colour.

The association of white only, with holiness, has to be questioned in Bible based practice. What are the implications of this for example in our language, liturgy, theology, ethics, pastoral care and dress codes?

Questions:

1. How careful should we be in our use of language? What do you think about ‘political correctness’?
2. Should there be a ‘black theology’? Has theology been too ‘White’ and European in its orientation?
3. Is the Bible truly inclusive in its record of events?