Theology Everywhere

by Ken Howcroft.

This is the second of Ken’s two-part series. We published part one last week.

This piece looks at the dynamics around the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, whether there are any traces of them in the Gospel of Mark, and prompts the question of what might be any implications for us today. Part 1 set the historic background. This Part 2 looks at the time of Jesus and the early Church.

Herod the Great died in 4 BCE. Augustus divided Herod’s kingdom into 4 areas to be ruled by three of his sons. Herod Antipas ruled two of them, Galilee and Peraea, until his death in 39 CE. Philip ruled the area east of the Jordan to the north of Peraea until his death in 34 CE. The area of Judaea (including Jerusalem), Idumea and Samaria was ruled by Herod Antipas from 4 BCE until Augustus removed him for incompetence in 6 CE. It was then made into an enlarged Roman province until 41 CE.

Augustus died in 14 CE, and Tiberius ruled until 37. In 26 CE Tiberius appointed Pontius Pilate as procurator of the province of Judaea. To establish his authority Pilate sent his troops to Jerusalem. Josephus states that they entered the city by night with their military standards bearing images that conservative Jews found offensive. People rushed to Pilate in Caesarea to object. Pilate backed down, and continued to rule until 36/7 CE.

Tiberius died in 37 CE and was succeeded by Caligula, whose close friend was Herod Agrippa I. He was a grandson of Herod the Great from Herod’s marriage to a Hasmonean princess. He was named Marcus Julius Agrippa in honour of Augustus’s son-in-law and right-hand man, and spent most of his early years in Rome. In 37 he was appointed by Caligula to be king of the region previously ruled by Philip. Caligula then deposed Herod Antipas, and gave Agrippa that kingdom as well.

Then in 40/1 Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be placed in the Jerusalem Temple and that he be worshipped as a god. That doubtless raised fears of another ‘abomination of desolation’.  He was bravely dissuaded from this at least for a time by his friend Herod Agrippa, to whom he promised the kingdom of his grandfather, Herod the Great. But Caligula then again demanded to be worshipped, and the Temple’s situation was only saved when he was assassinated. Agrippa was then prominent in Claudius being acclaimed as the new Emperor. In return Claudius added Judaea and Samaria to his kingdom.

Claudius ruled from 41-54 CE, followed by Nero from 54-68. In 64 Nero sent Gessius Florus to be governor of Judaea. In 66 Florus used Samaritan troops to confiscate a large sum of money from the Temple. Riots ensued, and when Florus  responded savagely, militants seized control of the Temple. They were led by a young priest, Eleazar. He banned gestures of loyalty to Rome and sacrifices made and paid for on behalf of Caesar. War ensued. The militants defeated the Samaritan garrison and the moderate Judaean peace party. But when the Roman governor of Syria was on the point of taking the Temple, he inexplicably withdrew his troops. They were ambushed and massacred, and the eagle of the XII Legion Fulminata was lost.

Nero’s death in 68 led to the year of the four Emperors, the last of whom, Vespasian, had become the Roman commander in the Jewish war. As he returned to Rome, proclaimed by Josephus as the fulfilment of Jewish messianic prophecies, his son Titus completed the siege of Jerusalem and the final destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Not one stone was left on another.

It was around 70 that the Gospel of Mark probably reached its written form. In Mark 5 the tormented man at Gerasa is called Legion. That term always refers to or alludes to the Roman army. So what is oppressing him is the Roman army. The evil is driven back to the pigs (which were ‘unclean’ so far as Jews were concerned, and so a suitable home for it), and then into the lake (the waters of chaos out of which God created order in Genesis 1). The emblem of the X Legion Fretensis, which was in the region throughout the first century period and which eventually destroyed the Temple, was the wild boar.

In Mark 11 the stories of the temple and the fig tree are intertwined. Jesus prophetically acts against the animal sellers and money-changers in the Court of the Gentiles. He says that the court should be a house of prayer for all nations (gentiles) and not a militant, nationalistic bandits’ den (which is what the word often translated as ‘robbers’ means).

In Mark 12:13ff Jesus is asked about how to deal with the competing claims of the Emperor and the Jewish God. Jesus responds profoundly. If they have Roman coins they are already compromised. If he had asked for a Temple coin, the Tyrian shekels the temple used had an image of the pagan god Melkart on them, and again they would already be compromised.

At the end of Mark 12, Jesus turns his attention to religious tendencies to idolise buildings and status at the expense of living faithfully. The Torah says that the worshipping community should care for widows, orphans and migrants. The Temple is turning that on its head and impoverishing a widow to keep itself and its practices going. In Mark 13 the disciples wonder at the huge stones in the Temple, which had not long been completed. Jesus says that not one stone will be left on another. Jesus then warns of the abomination of desolation appearing. Pilate’s troops had recently brought standards into the city. When these stories were told around 40 CE the saying would resonate with Caligula’s plans for his statue. In 70 it would resonate with the destruction of the Temple.

What might it resonate with today? We have military, economic and political ‘empires’ that can do good or be oppressive. We have local leaders and groups that can do the same, and which often struggle with the ‘empires’ and with each other. What does it mean for us as the contemporary incarnation of the body of Christ to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s?

by Ken Howcroft.

This is the first of a two-part series by Ken. Part two will follow next week.

The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE at a time of regime change in Rome was a major event, and catastrophic for the Jewish people. Have you ever wondered why it is not directly mentioned in the New Testament? Does it have any lasting implications for us in our world? This piece turns over the stones that were thrown down (Mark 13:2) to look at the roles in the drama played by the Temple and its authorities, sundry Herods and the Romans, and the traces of their interactions in the Gospel of Mark. It is in two parts. Part 1 sets the historic background. Part 2 will look at the time of Jesus and the early Church.

The story begins in the time of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled swathes of the Middle East from 175 to 164 BCE. The priestly elite in Jerusalem were at first happy to ‘modernise’ and transform Jerusalem into an Hellenistic city. But in 169 BCE Antiochus IV had  visited Jerusalem and looted the Temple, and then in 167 rededicated its Temple to Olympian Zeus. This is what the Book of Daniel refers to as the ‘abomination of desolation’. it led to a rebellion led by the Maccabees. They ousted the traditional (hereditary) high-priestly families and were then themselves declared to be High Priest-Kings in what we have come to know as the Hasmonean dynasty.

Not all of this was universally popular. One member of the traditional families, Onias IV, failed in an attempt to be reinstated in Jerusalem by the Seleucids and so went off to Egypt around 160 BCE and founded an alternative Temple and cult in Leontopolis. Yet another group of the old elite, the Sadducees, supported the Hasmoneans. A more moderate group however continued seeking to engage with Hellenistic rulers. Against this, the lay movement of Pharisees opposed the Hasmoneans for their usurpation of the High Priesthood. The group that centred around the Dead Sea Scrolls (probably Essenes or closely linked to them) similarly believed that the High Priest-Kings were illegitimate, and also that the Temple rituals were being conducted wrongly on a lunar rather than a solar calendar.

There were therefore major tensions between Jewish groups which focussed on the Temple. These continued for the next two hundred years. In 63 BCE the Roman general Pompey intervened to bring Judaea under direct Roman rule. He besieged and captured Jerusalem. He entered the Temple and, whether inadvertently or not, went into the Holy of Holies and thereby desecrated it. The following day he ordered that it be purified and its rituals resumed.  He left the Hasmonean priests in office, but deprived them of what we would call ‘political’ power.

In 54 BCE however Crassus, who with Julius Caesar and Pompey made up the First Triumvirate, plundered the Temple’s money and gold.

Things began to change with the parallel rise to power of Herod the Great in Judaea and the Emperor Augustus In the whole of the Roman Empire. Herod was a loyal client of Mark Antony. In 47 BCE he was named by the Romans as governor of Galilee. In 40 the Roman Senate appointed him King of Judaea and supported him in regaining Jerusalem from the Parthians in 37 and gaining complete control of the country in 34. When Julius Caesar’s heir, Octavian, had defeated Antony in 31 and become the Emperor Augustus, Herod skilfully moved from being Antony’s loyal client to Augustus’s.   

Augustus’s attempts to settle the empire were mirrored in Herod’s to settle Jerusalem and Judaea. Both involved the creation of infrastructure and investment in huge public building works. While the former built, for example, the Forum Augustum in Rome, the latter built a new harbour and city in Roman style on the coast at Caesarea Maritima (the choice of name being significant!). Aligned with the harbour rather than with the city streets he built an imposing temple to Roma and Augustus. The Roman Empire was being opened up to the Jews.

At the same time in Jerusalem Herod almost completely rebuilt and extended the Temple. The extension included the creation of a Court of the Gentiles which took up about half of the total area. In it Gentiles could study and pray. But also Jews and Gentiles wanting to offer sacrifices and make money offerings could buy temple-approved animals and change their money into temple-approved Tyrian shekels there.  The Temple was being opened up to the Gentiles in general, and the Roman Empire in particular.

Herod therefore followed Augustus in enacting a policy of “eusebeia” – performing the actions that were appropriate to the gods, particularly ‘local’ gods. According to Livy, Augustus was “the founder and restorer of all sanctuaries”. The Jewish writers Josephus and Philo say that in Jerusalem Augustus presented the temple with golden vessels and other precious gifts, and he ordered that whole-offering sacrifices be made on his behalf, paid for from his private purse. That is not the same as saying that he should be worshipped and sacrifices offered to him. His son-in-law and main military commander Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (with whom Herod’s family were closely linked) paid for a hundred oxen to be sacrificed, together with other gifts.

But what did the various Jewish factions make of all this, and are there any traces in, for example, the Gospel of Mark?  We shall explore that in Part 2.

by Will Fletcher.

One of the first posts I wrote here  focused on  my hobby of playing in a brass band. In recent years, I’ve started having a  go at birdwatching. I must admit to not being very good – I don’t always have the patience, and I’m not the best at identifying what I see. However, I do like that it makes me walk a bit slower, being more aware of what is around me. I’m also grateful to friends and church members who have taken me on birdwatching walks and helped me start to learn a little more.

A few weeks ago, I visited a local RSPB reserve on my own. There are a series of hides around the site looking over several ponds. I was in one of those hides looking at the few ducks and geese swimming about. There didn’t seem much out of the ordinary. I was on the verge of moving on. But instead, I lingered a bit longer, and had another scan of the pond with my binoculars. There, in the pond, was a bird I hadn’t seen before, wading through the shallows. After consulting my book (and with confirmation from others present) this mysterious bird was a green sandpiper. Probably not that exciting for experienced birdwatchers, but a nice spot for me.

However, what struck me, was that this bird had been there all the time. It hadn’t flown in but was going about its business unseen by me. What is more, when I took my eyes off it, it disappeared again, until I looked carefully again and found it in a slightly different place in the pond.

This made me think about my encounters with God. My rhythm of prayer is familiar, and sustaining because of that. Watching ducks and geese can be enjoyable enough. Yet it sometimes needs that intention to linger that little bit longer. When it feels as though there is nothing out of the ordinary to see or experience, when there is the danger that the pattern of prayer can feel like a routine where I can predict or expect how things will be, then I need to remember the urge to hold on a little longer, pray a little slower.

As with birdwatching, there still might not be anything unusual to notice. But sometimes, just sometimes, there is the surprising discovery of God present in a way unseen before. Maybe it is in the word of Scripture I’m reading, a line from a hymn, a glimpse at an icon, an ancient prayer, a scene of creation before me, a phrase in a piece of music. Things that feel familiar, yet infused with something new.

It isn’t that God has suddenly appeared, as though God could be absent somehow. Instead, God is the bird that was there all along, in the midst of the busyness of life. With time and care taken to noticing, a new sense of God’s presence is found.

Yet how quickly my attention can slip from that realisation, back to the bustle of life all around me. I remember the jobs I’m meant to be doing, the phone calls I’m meant to make. I start thinking about what I’m going to preach on that coming Sunday, or what I fancy for dinner! So many thoughts flood my mind, distracting me from the thing most important. Despite this rare spot, I’m back again looking at the ducks and geese.

I turn back to where I spotted God before – I rewind the music, I re-sing the hymn, I re-read the Scripture, I look again at the view before me – but it has returned to the everyday. That newness has faded. Have I lost God? Has God departed from me? Taking time to look carefully once more, to turn away from the ducks and the geese, I open myself up once more to discover in a new place, a new moment, the God who has always been there.

This, for me, is at the heart of what prayer is. Not saying the right words to welcome God into my space and time, but creating the space to allow myself to glimpse the God who is always present, and feel that excitement of heart and soul when I do. With that, is also the reassurance when it feels as though I’m only looking at ducks and geese, that God is there in surprising ways, just, as yet, unseen. 

by Simon Edwards.

I was recently convinced by two of my children that they were ready to make use of ‘my’ Lego, which has been stored in several lofts since I was about 16. The instructions have long since disappeared, and the once bright white bricks are now pale yellow, but I know what they can become, I know which boats or aeroplanes or cars could be built. As the children examined the contents, one said to the other “where should we start?”, and the reply was “let’s look at the pieces and see what we can build together.” I returned to later to see that a boat had emerged, a boat that looked familiar, but had never been created before. As I pondered whether my Lego should be used to create things that I hadn’t thought of, I realised that this was an example of how we engage with theology. The church has a treasury of history, tradition, ecclesiology, theology and experience, but perhaps the first step should always be to “look at the pieces and see what we can build together.” 

I am fascinated by the discipline of Practical Theology, which calls us to explore and reflect on experience to gain new theological insight, as Eileen Campbell-Reed notes, practical theology ‘is nothing without a context. Whatever it tries to be without context will be neither practical nor theology’ (2016, p.38). The theological process is a cyclical one, as any experience continues to be explored; it becomes a cycle of reflection which informs theory or practice and leads to further reflection. The aim of this cyclical reflection is articulated by Bennett et al., who propose that the ‘principle of practical theology to date has been to undertake work that makes a practical difference to the life of the Church and the world’ (2018, p.154). In a sense, a new understanding that comes from a commitment to “look at the pieces and see what we can build together.” 

Where do we start? We start with what we have: experience. But it might not be quite as simple as that, because there are (at least) two ways to approach practical theology. Both approaches value the knowledge that can be gained through exploring an experience, but differ in their method. The first potential approach is to begin with established theological principals and use these as a lens through which an experience can be explored. Swinton and Mowat argue that in this exploration, theology must be privileged because ‘the overarching framework within which practical theology takes place is theological. Theology offers a perspective on knowledge, truth and reality’ (2006, p.76). The exploration of an experience provides new ways in which a previously established theological principle can be understood, revealing new perspectives within an theological existing framework. A second way to engage in practical theology is to give priority to the experience without imposing any existing theological framework. Bennet et al argue that in practical theology, ‘everything is up for questioning and critical scrutiny, including the taken-for-granted processes, beliefs and thought patterns of human societies, religious beliefs and practices, and theological constructions’ (Bennett et al., 2018, pp.29-30).

Some of my current work in circuit is amongst pioneers, particularly working in buildings and communities where the Methodist society has ceased to meet, but the building remains open. ‘Where do we start?’ is a question that we return to regularly as we seek to build new ecclesial communities that are embedded within the context. Do we start with what there was and seek to recreate a society where Sunday morning was the principal act, to start with an established theological principal? Or do we do as my two children did and “look at the pieces and see what we can build together.”  We look and see, we examine, and we reflect together asking what there might be of God here; we follow the model where everything is up for questioning and scrutiny. We carefully explore and listen to the voices in the context, and we are beginning to see something new, familiar, but most certainly new, emerge, even though we might not know quite what it is yet! 

With the growth of New Places for New People (and Fresh Expressions or Emerging Church) we are seeing new kinds of ecclesial communities being born. They bring a certain familiarity, but also a wonderful newness as they deeply explore their own context, all that they have, and together see what can be built. 

The key to all of this is that we take seriously the idea that the world in which we live and have our being has much to say theologically, and that every context offers something different, perhaps familiar, but different. We then return to where we began, as we explore theology, all that is familiar, history, tradition, ecclesiology and theology but without imposing existing principles as we “look at the pieces and see what we can build together.”  When we do this, I think that we can find that theology is truly everywhere and sometimes it can even surprise us.

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Bennett, Z., Graham, E., Pattison, S. and Walton, H., 2018. Invitation to research in practical theology. Oxon: Routledge.

Campbell-Reed, E.R., 2016. The power and danger of a single case study in practical theology. In: J.A. Mercer and B.J. Miller-McLemore, 2016. Conundrums in practical theology. Boston, MA: Brill. Ch2

by Leslie Newton.

In the early days of the Fresh Expressions movement the then Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Revd Rowan Williams, coined the phrase ‘mixed economy’ to describe how the Church of the future could embrace both the ‘old’ (or ‘inherited’ or ‘time-honoured’) expressions of church, and the ‘new’ emerging patterns of Christian mission and community.  That was such a helpful image and insight.  Over time the phrase has in some quarters been augmented, or succeeded, by the phrase ‘mixed ecology’ embracing helpful metaphors of nature.  Michael Beck, United Methodist and influential Fresh Expressions leader in the United States now talks of ‘blended ecology.’  His deliberate substitution of the word ‘blended’ is to emphasise the need to ensure that the ‘inherited’ learns and gains from the ‘new’, and the ‘new’ is inspired and fed by the treasures of the ‘inherited’.  The ‘old’ and the ‘new’ need each other!

However, finding ways to enable a ‘blended ecology’ to develop healthily and fruitfully is hard and challenging.  It’s not easy to get to the point where the ‘inherited’ and ‘new’ can really both flourish side by side, in such a way that the result is becoming more than the sum of their parts.  Many circuits, and leaders of both inherited and new contexts, have stories to tell, sometimes with great pain and sadness, of how hard that is proving to be.

An insight I find helpful as we travel this journey is that of ‘Dual Transformation.’  The research underpinning this approach identifies the need to recognise that the work of developing the ‘inherited’ and pioneering the ‘new’ are very different pieces of enterprise.  One is about working with ‘what is’ to support greater health and flourishing. The other is about creating ‘what is not yet’ to become healthy and flourishing.  

The principles of ‘Dual Transformation’ highlight that we can’t do both things well under the same rules: inherited patterns and polity really struggles with new creation! Working with ‘what is’ and ‘what is not yet’ require two entirely different leadership models.

So, although the ultimate aim is for a flourishing ‘blended ecology’, what is needed first of all is to create lots of space for both the ‘new’ and the ‘inherited’ to be valued, supported and encouraged as very distinctively different types of ministry and mission.  As both ‘new’ and ‘inherited’ then flourish within their own ecosystem, the ways in which they can benefit each other become apparent.

In Acts 15 we read of a key moment in the early Church as they wrestled with the interplay between the ‘inherited’ and the ‘new.’  The Council at Jerusalem were struggling to discern what to expect of the new Gentile believers: effectively how much of their ways of being Christian should be expected from those of a completely different background.  Their conclusion was courageous, faith-filled and liberating.  In verse 28 we read that they recognised the prompting of the Holy Spirit to declare that they should not place any extra burdens on the new believers.  This message was received with ‘rejoicing’ by the Gentiles in Antioch (verse 31).  This pivotal declaration fuelled the continuing growth and expansion of the early Church by encouraging diversity to burgeon.  And over time the ’blended ecology’ of mutually enriched mission and ministry did emerge.

As we give thanks for the lead of this year’s Methodist Conference in making the development of the God for All strategy a continuing priority in the next few years, I think it’s important for us to take all this on board.  For the creation of the ‘new’ to really flourish we may need to give it more creative space from our inherited structures than we’ve yet considered.  For the ‘inherited’ to be renewed and play its vital ongoing part we may need to ensure its contribution is more fully honoured and valued than is sometimes evident.

In travelling this path, we must also be careful to remember that ‘creating distinctive space’ for both streams is not about pursuing ‘separation’ and must never lead to ‘competition’.  As Michael Beck identifies: ’The blended ecology is not healthy if both inherited and emerging forms do not have some influence on the other.  As both grow and influence each other, the whole church is strengthened.’[1]

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[1] Michael Beck in Deep Roots, Wild Branches , Revitalizing the Church in the Blended Ecology, 2019, page 10

by Hannah Fremont-Brown.

At my baptism, I was given several pink-spined compendiums that celebrated the presence of women in the Bible. Over the years, the invitation merely to acknowledge the presence of these women and gloss over the complicated contexts they come with has become increasingly unsatisfying. Holding on to my faith has required me to wrestle with the way that the stories of these women and the history of interpretation that accompanies them jars with my understanding of God’s desire for justice.

The invitation of feminist theologians to read biblical texts with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” has been empowering in this task. It has enabled me to notice where the presence of women in the Bible (or interpretation of it) has come at the cost of their exploitation, oppression or lack of agency. Reading with a hermeneutic of suspicion, the goal is not to find a lens which resolves gender equality. Instead, it is liberation.

Take my namesake Hannah’s story, for example. In the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, we encounter Hannah, longing for a child and appealing to God. Hannah’s story is often used to highlight the benefits of prayerful petition. Whilst this may be a good message, using Hannah’s experience to demonstrate it feels uncomfortable. At the boundaries of Hannah’s story, we encounter limitations which mean both her desires and agency are shaped by her need for survival. Hannah’s longing for a son is not simply borne of desire or rivalry with her husband’s second wife, Peninnah, but of necessity. Without a son, Hannah risks becoming kinless after her husband’s death, left to poverty. Her husband, neither childless nor dependent on his offspring to survive, taunts her with her own desperation by constantly questioning her love.

Hannah does express agency throughout the narrative: she names her child, dedicates him to Yahweh, petitions God in prayer and sings out in celebration. In fact, she is the subject of a verb in the narrative more than three times than she is the object. We even glimpse notes of social transformation in her prayer. But all of Hannah’s power to act is tied to her desperate need to bear a son. Her agency beyond the domestic sphere is neither mentioned nor operated, should it even exist. Even the only other woman in the narrative is exploited to this end: as the rivalry between Hannah and Peninnah is used as a narrative tool to demonstrate divine intervention, we ignore the exploitation of both women’s experiences to prop up a moral message.

As 1 Samuel continues, men become kings and Hannah returns to domestic life, her future secure but the limitations of her world intact. Hannah’s story may well be a vehicle for a bigger message, but her experience of it does very little to transform the restrictions imposed on her because of her gender.  As her song concludes, the narrative moves on, dominant structures are fixed, and Hannah is eclipsed from the picture. Even if transformation is to occur in the long term, as Hannah’s song predicts, she won’t be part of it.

Is Hannah’s story redeemable despite all of this? Does it even need to be redeemed in order for it to be part of the good news of the Bible? Perhaps Hannah’s experience of God at work in her life is enough to be good news. Hannah exercises her agency; her plea is heard by God and her future secured. But this isn’t liberation. Hannah’s desire is shaped and met by a patriarchal structure which goes on to be upheld beyond her lifetime. Change happens, but transformation never occurs.

If we’re reading with the goal of liberation, then we must be uncomfortable when the Bible stops short of this. We cannot be comfortable with an understanding of a God who is content to work through structures that perpetuate oppression but never break them. We cannot be satisfied when boundaries that reduce agency and deny power are upheld, even celebrated, because they set the scene for an interesting moral message. If we settle for easy answers that dismiss the pain experienced by people because of inequality and injustice, this does not feel like good news.

Instead, perhaps this complexity and discomfort is exactly what we should seek. Feminist biblical scholar Elna Mouton suggests that a feminist interpretation of the Bible invites us to learn to rest in the liminal space between “wonder” and “discomfort”. ^[i] We must “experience and account for both the richness and the complexity, both the admiration (awe, trust, hope) and the discomfort”. ^[ii] In doing so, we create safe spaces, in Mouton’s words “risky and fragile” spaces, where we experience God’s offer of life alongside all of creation – not just the privileged few. God’s freedom embraces complexity, and our task as readers in pursuit of liberation is to work at the thresholds, refusing to leave anyone trapped by interpretations that uphold unjust structures of oppression. This feels more like good news to me.

 

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[i] Elna Mouton, “Feminist Biblical Interpretation: How Far Do We Have Yet To Go?”, in L. Juliana Claasens and Carolyn J. Sharp, Feminist Frameworks and the Bible: Power, Ambiguity and Intersectionality, (Bloomsbury: T&T Clark, 2017), pp. 211-220, (p. 216).

[ii] Mouton, “Feminist Biblical Interpretation”, p. 216.

by Jennie Hurd.

The Welsh priest and poet R S Thomas wrote in his poem “Welsh Landscape,”

To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky[1]

It’s a dark and brooding work, painting a bleak picture of a country trapped by its past. I am not Welsh, but I have worked in Wales as a Methodist minister for sixteen years to date. Thomas’s poetry is essential reading for me, but I often want to dare to put an alternative understanding alongside the message of much of it. The past need not constrain us but can be a source to set us free.

“To live in Wales is to be conscious” also of the sacredness of the land and the presence of the saints of years gone by. In Wales, you are never far from a community whose name begins with the prefix Llan – Llangollen, Llandeilo, Llandaf and so on. Llan is not easy to translate, but it implies a religious settlement, community or church. Often, it indicates a place where a holy man or woman lived and prayed, sometimes with followers, or where people wished to name their church in his or her honour. There is no escaping these local heroes, many dating back to the Age of the Saints in the sixth to eighth centuries. They are offer inspiration and encouragement and are remembered still.

If this is so in Wales and in other Celtic nations, it’s also true in England, if a little less obviously. St Albans, St Neots and Bury St Edmunds might be clear examples of places with associated saints, but historic holy men and women are often present, wherever you go Sometimes it takes some digging, that’s all. When I lived in Lichfield, I became aware of St Chad. St Who? He was one of four brothers who were among the first monks on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne when King Oswald sent St Aidan to establish his missional community there in 635. Chad became an apostle to the Mercians and lived for a time in Lichfield where you can still visit his holy well. Chad sent me digging. I found that his brother, Cedd, was the founder of St Peter’s on the Wall at Bradwell, Essex, and of the community at Lastingham in Yorkshire, as well as being an interpreter at the Synod of Whitby in 664.

King Oswald spent part of his youth in exile on Iona, to which he looked when planning the evanglisation of Northern England from Lindisfarne: Aidan was an Iona monk. I dug further. I discovered St Paulinus who had come over to England from Rome in 604 as part of the second Gregorian mission. He became chaplain to the wife of King Edwin of Northumbria who became a Christian and enabled the baptism of thousands of people, including his niece Hilda, later Hilda of Whitby. I discovered Paulinus’s association with Goodmanham in East Yorkshire and Dewsbury in the West Riding as well as further north, for example at Yeavering. Oswald built on Edwin and Paulinus’s foundations. I learnt that John of Beverley was educated under Hilda at Whitby, and that led me to the Hermit of Spurn Point, at the very edge of the east coast of Yorkshire, my native county. From Lichfield I returned to live in Wales, near to where Oswald died in battle, the place marked by a well. I’m sure you get the idea. We are never far from the heritage of a local saint.

I do not have a clearly developed systematic theology of the communion of saints, but I do know that my awareness of them and of their geographical closeness to familiar places inspires me and helps me in my discipleship day by day. I feel they stand in solidarity with us. I have never visited the Holy Land, but perhaps my experience rings true for those who have walked where the New Testament saints walked. I treasure being part of the one church on earth and in heaven, and to know that some of the great heroes of the faith – local heroes – were familiar with places I also know makes my journey that little bit easier. I feel they accompany me on the way, as they accompany many.

I wonder who are your local saints, your local heroes? Perhaps an awareness of them helps and inspires you as well.  

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[1] Thwaite, Anthony (ed.) 1996, R S Thomas Selected Poems, London: J M Dent

by Angie Allport.

There are a number of women called Mary in the New Testament. Some of them have not only been confused with each other, but with other women briefly mentioned in the gospels.

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.[1] (John 12:3a)

Who is the Mary in this reading? From the context, it is probably Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, as the anointing is said to take place in their house in Bethany.

And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.[2] (Luke 7:37-38)

Who is this woman in the house of a pharisee named Simon? Which ‘city’ is Jesus in? His last identified location in Luke’s Gospel was Nain.

While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.[3] (Mark 14:3)

Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table.[4] (Matthew 26:6-7)

So now we’re back in Bethany at the house of Simon ‘the leper’, who may or may not have also been a pharisee, and the woman is not identified as ‘a sinner’.

Is the unnamed woman Mary Magdalene? There is nothing in the texts to suggest that it is, but she has come to be identified with her. The mistake appears to have been made in the fourth century by Gregory the Great, who identified her as the sinful woman who anointed Jesus, and the idea has been a powerful force since then, even to the extent that Mary Magdalene came to be viewed as a prostitute. You may even have heard this view propounded from the pulpit. Yet there is no justification for identifying the ‘sinner’ from Luke’s account with Mary Magdalene, who appears in the next chapter (Luke 8:2-3) as having been healed from possession by seven demons (i.e. mental illness) and as accompanying Jesus with some other women and the twelve men.  It also says the women supported Jesus from their resources, and Jesus is hardly likely to have lived off the earnings of a prostitute!

Western literature, film, music and art more often than not portray Mary Magdalene as a sinful woman repenting of her (sexual) sins – as an internet search of images of her will show. This was to play into the idea that women are inherently promiscuous and ever in need of repentance. But what do we know of the biblical Mary Magdalene?  Apart from her healing and accompanying Jesus, we find her at the centre of Christ’s passion and resurrection: she is named as being among the women at the foot of the cross and at Jesus’ burial; on Easter day she is portrayed as going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body, an act which she wouldn’t have to perform had she anointed him when he was alive; it was to her whom the risen Jesus revealed himself, and it was Mary Magdalene who was chosen to proclaim that Jesus is alive.

The ’repentant sinner’ was to be sainted by the Church. In 2016, the Roman Catholic Church raised the liturgical celebration honouring Mary Magdalene from a memorial to a feast, putting her on par with the apostles. Her Feast Day is 22^nd July.

Mary Magdalene, of course, is not the only character whose story is not consistent either within or beyond the Biblical texts. Why not, for example, look up the references to Judas Iscariot and see what you make of his story in relation to what you have been taught.

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[1] The Holy Bible. John 12:3a. New Revised Standard Version: Anglicized Edition (2007). London: Harper Collins.

[2] The Holy Bible. Luke 7:37-38. New Revised Standard Version: Anglicized Edition (2007). London: Harper Collins.

[3] The Holy Bible. Mark 14:3. New Revised Standard Version: Anglicized Edition (2007). London: Harper Collins.

[4] The Holy Bible. Matthew 26:6-7. New Revised Standard Version: Anglicized Edition (2007). London: Harper Collins.

by Gary Hall.

Back in 2016, inspired by the radical political evensong led by Dorothee Soelle and others in the 1960s and 70s, and galvanized by the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump, we created Political Night Prayer in Birmingham. We were responding to a perceived need ‘to work continually at real solidarity, when the political agenda is to divide and to annexe resources for the already privileged who imagine themselves entitled’. I’m quoting from a PNP email exchange of the time. 

In 2016 it was Donald Eadie and Renate Wilkinson who brought to us a vivid sense of how, in late-1960s Cologne, Dorothee Soelle held together ‘the burning actualities of political situations’ with biblical encounters, meditation, discussion and faith-motivated action. We pondered why, in our experiences of then and now, this was not more of an everyday ecclesial reality. The many who turned up for each Political Night Prayer demonstrated a hunger for this kind of work and worship, and for this kind of gathering which was itself an instance of the reflective practice we were trying to articulate: communion, connexion, ekklesia, solidarity, different ways of naming something we were feeling about our human (and more-than-human) interdependence, and about how we wanted to live together into the future.

Since then, the Methodist Church in Britain adopted a Strategy for Justice, Dignity and Solidarity and fostered invaluable solidarity circles. The priority has been, rightly, to get on with good practice across the connexion; but it goes hand in hand with the ongoing work of delving into what solidarity can actually mean in Christian, theological understanding. To this end I turned to several recent presentations by Rowan Williams, for whom the theme of solidarity has become increasingly prominent.[1]

He sets his own work in the context of twentieth-century Catholic social teaching, especially the 1987 encyclical of Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (Concern for Social Affairs). This is the encyclical which defines solidarity as a virtue revolving around truly recognizing one another as persons, and recognizing interdependence ‘as a system determining relationships in the contemporary world, in its economic, cultural, political and religious elements’. The solidarity evoked ‘is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.’[2] Solidarity is when feelings get grounded, when you and I live out the implications of the realization that our flourishing is always bound up with that of the other person; never over against the other. Solidarity is an essential characteristic of deep peace, and a mark of a healthy democratic society, a conviction enfleshed as, for instance, the trade union founded by Lech Walesa and others at the Lenin / Gdansk Shipyards in Pope John Paul II’s Polish homeland.

In Christian theological perspective it is also more than that. This ‘more than’ is vital. Following a trail laid by his late friend and mentor, Kenneth Leech, Rowan Williams evokes the richness of solidarity by describing several things it is more than. For instance, it is more than a commitment to the common good. It is also more than communitarianism, and more than empathy.

It is more than commitment to the common good because that good must remain relatively undefined whilst we learn to live the inevitable conflicts and tensions of our clashing ideas of what is good for us. How even do we face these conflicts constructively and intelligently, then navigate them to a better place together?

Solidarity is more than communitarianism, a love of the community which gives me identity, because community-bound affinity can flip into the kind of romantic nationalism which grows out of harmful forms of nostalgia. Dare I say that whilst Flower of Scotland and La Marseillaise are spine-tingling football anthems, they are potentially lethal battle hymns in the wrong hands or circumstances. When we are too closely defined by comforting and truncated expressions of our particular social/tribal belonging, then it is all the harder to see the potentially better values, habits and power structures of people who are not like us.

Solidarity is also more than empathy, because empathy can always morph into acquisition or occupation of the other person’s experience. When ‘I know how you feel’, then I cannot be properly attentive to how your experience of the world may be utterly other than I can know or imagine. Solidarity includes the art and habit of standing with strangers whose struggles and hopes and pains are not mine.

In fragile times, when ‘many of the structures of relationship in our epoch have been eroded, leading to a sense of lostness, of fragmentation, of exile’,[3] faith involves discerning together how the tough realities of political life might more closely approximate to the human and more-than-human solidarity which, for us, is expression and extension of communion, koinonia, connexion – and a little echo of that redemptive solidarity enacted by our incarnating God.

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[1] See for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_k-EHVFxzo, ‘Ethics and Solidarity by Rowan Williams’ – a lecture recorded on Saturday 25 February 2023; or the Bampton lecture 2024 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H9vz0QqFCY&list=PLWCAltzb4KrORSI9r8KLs8AIlWEPNyryI&index=2 or https://baptistnews.com/article/politics-faith-and-mission-a-conversation-with-rowan-williams/

[2] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis.html, 38 & 39.

[3] Kenneth Leech, The Sky is Red, DLT 2003, page 10. For more on this theme see especially Chapter 1, ‘Solitude and Solidarity’.

by Catrin Harland-Davies and Afon Harland.

Catrin:

In May 1997, aged 19 and having just voted for the first time in a general election, I stayed up all night to watch the nation become a different place. I had only ever really known one party in government, and suddenly new things felt possible. It wasn’t just about my own political preferences (although I will admit that it played well to them), but also the idea of change, of new ideas, of fresh energy and enthusiasm. I was on the cusp of my adult life, coming of age into a whole new era.

This week, July 2024, I sat up all night with my 18-year-old to watch the country change once again. I had nearly three decades of adult cynicism under my belt, and (although it once again played to my party political preferences) was well aware of the realpolitik which means that compromises and pragmatism are needed to win an election. And I was deeply upset at some of the narrative of hostility and hatred which surfaced at many points during campaigns in many constituencies. But still, I couldn’t resist the thrill of watching a nation change leaders and change direction.

But I wondered what my 18-year-old, also voting for the first time in a sea-change election, made of it…?

Afon:

Undeniably, the chance to participate in an election that brought about a fundamental change of government was exciting. The chance to alter the direction of the country from the only path I can remember kept me engaged in all the debate for the long six weeks (although I must admit, as a politics student I am easily excited by the debate and choices that come with an election campaign).

In contrast, I am that fresh-faced 18-year-old filled with idealism. As a politics student, I am firmly rooted in my ideas and the reasoning behind them and so it can be hard to accept that everybody else doesn’t have the exact same views. I struggled a bit between wanting to support a party that matched my ideals, and wanting to see actual change in the country. I joined, campaigned for and voted for a party that I had some problems with, but which stood a chance of being in government and making a difference. But I still feel a bit, I guess, disappointed that it falls short of what I’d like to see.

Catrin:

Perhaps it’s too easy to see any government through the lens of disappointment – the failures, the decisions with which we disagree, the decline into in-fighting, the heavy defeat at the polls. Some combination of those things always happens. And the positives often seem so fragile. There may be improvements in the economy, but some people will still live in poverty. We may work for peace, but the world still always seems full of wars. We may see greater equality, but we also hear voices of hatred and fear. But perhaps that’s always what the Kingdom of Heaven is like? Jesus talks about some single moments of transformation, like finding treasure or the world’s most improbably valuable pearl. But most of his ‘kingdom’ stories are about seeds, coins, sheep – ordinary things, which might seem a bit insignificant.

And when I think back to 1997 (or any term of government, probably), I can see glimpses of hope, some of which grew into tangible differences in people’s lives. There were things I noticed at the time, and other things that happened so gradually that I hardly noticed, and took them for granted. There are always things that leave me feeling betrayed. But there are also things that feel, when I look back on them, like glimpses of kingdom values. Of course, many others will see individual policies and actions more or less positively than I do. The mechanics of how kingdom values are brought about (and sometimes what those values look like in practice) are very much debated.

But I wonder if there’s a deeper question here, about how far we should rely on our elected politicians to bring about change for the better. Isn’t that our responsibility? Is the problem that we often look to elected politicians – especially when they promise much and suit our own political outlook – to be some kind of messiah or saviour? I wonder if we fall into idolatry, placing our political leaders on a pedestal, rather than seeing ourselves as partners with them in the work of seeking God’s Kingdom?

Afon:

I think that’s right. I recognise that the country as a whole isn’t necessarily going to vote for what I want, and that leaders of parties have to be pragmatic and compromise. I think it’s hard to accept change, even when we want it, if it doesn’t come in the shape that we want. But if you look at the ways in which the Kingdom of Heaven is portrayed in the Gospels, it’s not just  surprisingly small, but also not quite what lots of people expected it to be? I’m not suggesting that the new (or any) government is the same as the Kingdom of Heaven!! And I’m certainly not wanting to call any politician ‘Messiah’. But there’s also a danger of thinking we know what the Kingdom will look like, and how it will come about. After all, I’m not the Messiah either!

Catrin:

<Resists making a Life of Brian reference…>