I am standing for election to General Synod’s House of Clergy. About time I put my mouth where my keyboard has been.
My election address can be found here.
There will be more material in due course (much mined from old blogposts!)
Prayers for everyone involved would be much appreciated. I think this is going to be an important Synod.
So those who know me know that I’m a dissident, old-fashioned and curmudgeonly sort, “afflicted with the malady of thought” – and that applies especially to Green things, where I find myself repeatedly annoyed by what I think of as ‘the great green herring’ of climate change.
I see the IPCC process as simply yet another form of the technological imperialism, the death-complex, that drives out our common humanity in favour of unacknowledged puritanical theologies and self-hatreds (I don’t doubt warming, nor human contributions to that, but all the coverage is about the most unlikely outcome). Fear is the mind-killer.
I like Schumacher’s idea of appropriate level technology, and the importance of the human scale, emphasising our biological and social nature and the importance of what we have in common. That is where we need to concentrate our attention – not with pandering to the fear-factories of modern media because we think that being seen is sufficient.
To put that in concrete terms – our future is not going to be electric cars, nor will it be people riding around on horseback, it will be everyone using a bicycle, and our communities will be geared around that, not the interests of the motorists.
The truth is that no matter what measures are taken to respond to climate change we are not going to be able to carry on in the way that we have been. We are still tracking the ‘world model’ outlined in the Limits to Growth, which means that in ten to fifteen years – AT BEST – we are going to go through a breakdown and collapse.
Personally I think it has already started – and it will solve the climate change problem fully no matter what we do. I first started studying climate change in 1989 – I still have my Greenpeace report on Global Warming on my bookshelf! – but what made me start questioning the orthodoxy was discovering LTG. You can’t be worried about both LTG and climate change – the one cancels the other.
Human life will carry on. Human civilisations will carry on. I think that the UK is well placed (in many senses) for a good future. The only question is how much damage the death-complex will make as it struggles with its own demise. When something is unsustainable that means that it will not be sustained, it will come to an end. Our machine civilisation, this asophic industrial fascism, will come to an end.
I am interested in what comes afterwards. What comes afterwards will be determined by the stories that we tell each other (which is why the Dark Mountain group is so important). I think a healthy story has to be rooted in the greatest story ever told – the only story that leads to long-term, healthy and sustainable communities. It’s also why we need a much better national narrative – more on that another time.
For a sense – a much more effectively-written sense – of what I am on about, have a read of this by Wendell Berry. Our human future begins with a hug.
There is a bad form of argument known as the ‘motte-and-bailey’ fallacy. This is derived from the medieval castle system, where there is a motte (mound/castle) that can be defended easily, and a separate area (the bailey) which can’t be defended. In peaceful times the bailey can be used for lots of human activity; in times of conflict the people can retreat to the motte. So in an argument, a position can be advanced which is outlandish (can’t be defended) and the fallacy comes when the person advancing the argument shifts their position to say that they were only advancing a reasonable position (the motte). So it is an example of bad faith, what might be called ‘trolling’ these days.
So what do I mean when I say that I have a ‘motte-and-bailey’ mind? I mean that I will often consider things, and talk about things, without being committed to defending them – they are in the bailey. Whereas some things that I argue for I really AM committed to. I appreciate that this causes problems for other people; it has certainly caused me problems in my own life, when people have thought I was committed to a perspective (my motte) when in fact I was only exploring it (in my bailey).
In considering matters of faith, I have sometimes used the language of a doctrine being ‘weight-bearing’. That is, the Christian faith has many elements within it, and I have grown in my understanding of the faith over time. For many years I took the doctrine of the resurrection on trust – it resided in my bailey, I was still working through it. Eventually it became a part of my core understandings, it ‘took the weight’ in terms of how I live my life, and so it became a part of my motte, my most fundamental commitments. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth, by contrast, is still in the bailey, although it has moved closer to the motte over time.
This sequence of ‘I don’t want to sound like a crazy person’ is me making public those things which I am pondering which are in the bailey. I find them alarming. I don’t want them to be true. I am therefore opening them up to public scrutiny in order to bring them in to the light, to be exposed to criticism, to be tested and examined. I am grateful when people engage with what is in my bailey and say ‘Sam, that’s crap, because X, Y, Z’. I am saddened when people look at what is in the bailey and say variations of ‘you’re a moron’. It may well be true that I’m a moron, but calling me a moron doesn’t help me – and it doesn’t help those who are also considering the same questions.
I think I need to find a way of signalling the level of commitment that I hold to any viewpoints that I choose to discuss. The Less Wrong community have a useful marker – ‘epistemic status’ – which I quite like, but it’s a bit philosophically exact for this blog. Perhaps I can simply continue to use this language, putting ‘this is in my bailey’ or ‘this is part of my motte’ when putting forward an argument. Hopefully that will help to clarify things.
So, for the record – this entire sequence of IDWTSLACP is operating with my bailey. Everything I outline in it could be wrong, and my fundamental convictions would not be affected.
Whereas, when I start talking about the resurrection, and what it means for spiritual warfare and our present political crisis – that will involve a lot of ‘motte-stuff’!
One of the dire consequences of our present cultural breakdown is the collapse of a shared space of discourse – a common frame of reference, a mutual framework of values – against which, within which, we can hammer out our differences without threatening the stability, and therefore the safety, of the community as a whole.
One of those shared values is democracy, which has as a necessary component the notion of ‘loser’s consent’. In other words, democracy is the means by which we have agreed to resolve our differences. We make our arguments and then there is an election (or a referendum!) which produces a decision for one path or another, and then there is a gathering around that decision with a common resolve to make the decision work, or apply.
The two shocks in the English-speaking world, of 2016, did not receive that expected loser’s consent. However, the working out of that refusal of consent took a different path in the UK and in the US.
In the UK there was a concerted effort on the part of the governing class to overthrow the verdict of the referendum. However, in contrast to what happened in other EU member states, the governing class was not able to succeed. Through a sequence of further democratic votes, most notably the impact of the Brexit party in the EU elections of 2019, and culminating in the General Election of December 2019, the democratic decision was re-affirmed, Mr Johnson received a mandate for Brexit and – slightly to my surprise – he has actually implemented it.
Please note that this is not an argument saying that Brexit was the ‘right’ decision. This is simply saying that in the UK a democratic verdict was implemented – there was a time of strife but in the end the institutions of the state, the limbs of the body politic, did actually reflect the choice that was made.
(A personal aside: whilst I am – obviously – a committed Brexiteer, it was actually a sense that this needed to happen, that there was a risk of something profoundly wrong and damaging about to take place, that moved me to stick my head up above the parapet with the Brexit Party. That was a terrifying experience on all sorts of levels; but it was the right decision, and, I believe, it was of God. A small but healing (for me) act of prophetic drama.)
This outcome – that the UK voted for Brexit, and the UK has now got Brexit, for better or for worse – gives me a degree of confidence in the future of our society. Our institutions eventually worked, and that means that our institutions continue to enjoy the consent of the population. When things go wrong – as they seem to be doing with our COVID response, whatever your view on the underlying science – then people will turn to the existing systems to remedy what has gone wrong. In other words, if Johnson is eventually considered to be an incompetent and bumbling fool then he will be thrown out of office, either by the Conservative MPs as they face the prospect of losing an election, or by the voters in a General election themselves.
The reason why I think that this is so essential is because I think if it hadn’t happened – if Brexit had been somehow denied by overt and covert means – we would find ourselves in the situation that the United States finds itself in today.
When Trump was elected, against the odds, there was a parallel reaction of the establishment to try and overturn that democratic shift. It took various forms, Russiagate was the most blatant, but there were others. Again, this is not a point in favour of Trump, it is a point about the democratic process. When one side of a democratic context refuses to accept the basic legitimacy of a decision that they did not support, then it is the framework itself that breaks down – and when the framework breaks down then there is no longer a possibility of a consensual future.
In my view, what we are seeing in the United States today is the product of both long-term and short-term factors. The long-term factors need not detain us now (see MacIntyre amongst others) but the short-term factors are quite straightforward. The deplorables have been demonised, and they have demonised in turn. Trump was denied legitimacy, and now Biden is denied legitimacy. Consent in the democratic process is being withdrawn, and that withdrawal is escalating. Place this into a context of cultural polarisation and add free access to automatic weapons, then stir.
I am very worried about the short-term (up to five years) future of the United States. I do not see how to get through the crisis that now obtains without things getting significantly worse, up to and including a degree of civil conflict, and possibly the secession or breakdown of the United States itself.
If there is to be a shared future – and this applies to the UK also, even though I hope and pray that we have now avoided the worst outcomes – then I believe there are two linked things that simply must be put in place. The first relates to political leadership, the second relates to how ordinary people conduct themselves with each other.
Political leaders must demonstrate honesty. The normal jostling for advantage, the reliance upon ‘spin’ to present events in a light that is most flattering to the speaker, these belong to a more luxurious and decadent age. We need plain speaking, frank admissions of what has gone wrong, what the true situation is. Leaders need to trust people again – and that cannot happen if the full truth of a situation is not disclosed.
Similarly, if there is to be a renewal of our shared cultural space there needs to be an acceptance of the legitimacy of difference. To denounce different perspectives as malicious – which is what happened in the Brexit debates – and fail to engage in the substance is part of the cultural breakdown that leads to greater conflict.
One might say: if there is to be reconciliation between the warring factions, that reconciliation can only be built upon a shared truth.
Which is why the ‘crazy’ questions simply must be addressed. They must be engaged with, patiently, and the truth must be excavated and brought out into the light. It will not do to repeat talking points shared on the one side or the other. There must be a recognition of the sincerely held beliefs held by those who oppose. There has to be an affirmation of the shared humanity of the other side. Without this there is only perpetual conflict and dissolution.
I am hopeful that the UK has been enabled by grace to find that more creative path. On this day of Epiphany, the light that enlightens the nations, I pray for the US – an amazing nation, a beautiful people – currently in the grip of a devilish crisis. Lord have mercy.
My views updated here; this post left otherwise unchanged for reasons of historical accuracy…. and humility 
So a little while back, my son sent me a link to a James Delingpole interview with Mike Yeadon. I don’t listen to podcasts much, for the same reason that I don’t watch Youtube videos much – I find them an inefficient use of my intellectual bandwidth, as I can absorb information much more effectively by reading. However, I have something of a resolution to do more physical exercise (especially yoga) and it turns out that listening to a podcast matches up quite nicely with stretching my tired limbs during the day (much study leads to a weariness of the flesh and all that).
So, Yeadon argues – and he’s got a fair bit of authority from which to argue – that COVID is a real and horrible virus, and that it became endemic in the UK in April. However, as a virus, there is no such thing as a ‘second wave’ – they don’t exist. Viruses spread through a population following a Gompertz curve – all of them, without exception. Any rise in infection after that first wave peaking in April comes from where there are pockets of population that were not exposed earlier.
In addition, Yeadon argues that the testing regime that we have put in place isn’t just useless, it is actively counter-productive. He argues that we don’t have an epidemic of the virus, we have an epidemic of testing. We don’t know what the false-positive rate is for the tests, nor do we have assurance that those ministering the tests are competent to do so. Essentially, if the virus is really as widespread as believed – and has the effects that are believed by those advocating a continued lockdown – then there would need to be other evidence in addition to the testing. Which, allegedly, there isn’t. Certainly not much in terms of overall death rate or hospital admissions (see work by Joel Smalley).
I would have thought that if Yeadon is wrong then it would be fairly straightforward to show that he is wrong. His claims about the nature of virus epidemiology, for example, which he states as ‘axioms’ and learned in the first year of a degree – and which undermine most of the press coverage of COVID – are either true or not. So I’m looking out for a refutation of his arguments.
In the meantime I will happily follow the recommended advice; I will wear a mask when out in public; we will not sing in church services; and so on and so forth. Yet all the while I shall also become more and more persuaded that we have, more by cock-up than conspiracy, ended up in the absurd position of sacrificing lives when we thought we were saving them, and I wonder more and more – what will follow ‘following the science’ once it is shown that ‘following the science’ has caused such needless havoc and pain?
So here is the issue that prompted me to start writing this sequence. From what I have read, there is a prima facie case that the Democratic party machine fixed the November 2020 election. In addition, the way in which the Mainstream Media (MSM) have covered the issue has demonstrated that they are not concerned with the truth – and the way in which FB (which I hate) and Twitter (which I love) have engaged with the issue renders them morally compromised at the very least.
Why am I saying this? Where’s the evidence? Well, keep in mind that, as I have said before, Evidence ≠ Proof and if you sincerely want to examine the evidence, then the evidence is here.
What tipped the balance for me was the discovery that almost all the ‘bellwether counties’ called the election wrongly this year. I would love to see a probabilistic assessment of how likely it is for this to happen. It is such an unprecedented event that it would need (absent fraud) to be included in a wider narrative of election success. In other words, if this remarkable result were the consequence of a wide political embrace of Biden (or rejection of Trump) then many other things would also be the case. For example, Biden would need to outperform the results that Clinton achieved. Biden would have needed to have done that consistently across the United States and not just in the swing states. And so on.
So far as I can tell, these things did not happen. The remarkable achievements of Mr Biden seem to be associated most closely with the results obtained in Democrat governed swing states (not exclusively – eg Georgia).
None of this is to say that the people making these arguments are not lunatics. It’s because they seem to be lunatics – and engaging in blunderbuss legal applications riddled with errors – that I came up with the theme for this sequence. Yet, just because they are lunatics doesn’t mean that the election wasn’t fiddled.
There is something very wrong here. I’d love to read a psephological analysis (looking at you Peter Ould) as to how in fact is is perfectly plausible for Biden to have achieved what he achieved, especially with regard to the bellwether counties. Until and unless I do, I shall continue to find myself in the epistemic company of the crazies, nervously looking at my feet.
Update 10/1/21 – I’ve continued to dig, and found some good websites with the information that I was after. This lawsuit (against one of the key crazy people) is especially informative. I would now rewrite the headline as ‘the election almost certainly wasn’t fixed’. I’d want to keep some element of doubt, but that’s a personality quirk of mine, stemming from a theological and philosophical training – the only absolute is God.
I’m keeping the original post – and original post title – in place, to encourage my epistemic humility.
I don’t want to sound like a crazy person – which is an acknowledgement that I know I sometimes do.
However, I also know that sometimes the crazy person is right, and not just in a ‘stopped clock is right twice a day’ sense. Sometimes the crazy person is right simply because they are outside the social consensus, in the way of children and naked emperors; sometimes also the desire to be a child, and mock the nakedness of emperors, is a temptation for those who are more cynical than innocent.
So I accept the hazards involved in speaking from an unusual perspective. I accept most of all that ‘of course I could be wrong’ and perhaps what I most want from speaking about what I see is a refreshed dialogue, new perspectives that can show me where I am wrong. I am thirsty for the truth.
I have my own biases, most of which flow from a profound commitment to the Christian tradition, which has given me a respectful scepticism towards “the science” and a realistic appraisal of the nature of human evil.
All of which is a bit of throat clearing. This last year – these last few years – have been difficult ones. I have often proclaimed that I wanted to write more, and then not done so. So I’m not going to proclaim anything about how often I shall write. All I want to say is: I’m going to write some things that will make me sound like a crazy person. This is me trying to find the truth, and providing updates along the way – I am a work in progress.
There are so many remarkable things about what is happening in the United States at the moment. It is clearly in the throes of a constitutional crisis, which has been a long time coming, and will take many years to work through. We can hope and pray for wisdom, mercy and civil peace while they go through it. The US – and the world – may look very different on the other side, and it is in everyone’s interests for the US to be healthy.
I want to draw attention to one thing, though, which troubles me. The US mainstream media (MSNBC, NBC, ABC, etc! ) have been consistent in cutting off Trump’s rather bizarre speech last night. The “print” media has followed suit, and is being remarkably robust in pushing back against Trump’s claims.
I have no doubt that there is an immense amount of untruth, half-truth, exaggeration and simple bull$H!+ in what Trump has said – I haven’t listened to it, nor will I, but I base that remark on everything I have heard from him in other contexts. He’s an appalling politician, on all sorts of levels (still might be the best available option – that’s another conversation).
Yet all that can be true and it still be the case that ‘there is something rotten in the state of Denmark’. Just because a fool says that the sun will rise tomorrow, it doesn’t mean that the sun won’t rise. These claims need to be investigated thoroughly, and due process needs to be followed. If the system breaks down – and one of the more dangerous things that Trump has done is undermine faith in the system – everyone loses. The rule of law and the democratic process MUST be upheld, and seen to be upheld. It’s a Caesar’s wife situation.
I found the video footage (circulating on twitter) of what appeared to be an election official filling in blank ballot papers alarming to behold. Then I read that this is apparently standard practice when the original ballot paper cannot be machine read. There is claim and counter claim – evidence gets offered one way or the other (that’s what evidence IS) and eventually a judgement is reached. Evidence is not proof of wrong-doing, it’s saying ‘there is something funny going on here’.
From what I have observed in my semi-detached state, I think that there is evidence of wrong doing that needs to be investigated thoroughly and properly. There are clearly many problems in many states relating to due process, many of which were flagged up twenty years ago with Bush/Gore. It’s interesting to me that Florida seems to have updates its processes in a way that other states have not, but I’ve not examined things closely. I suspect we’re going to have a 2020 equivalent of ‘hanging chads’ pretty soon – Sharpie smudges perhaps?
Trump’s claims are ‘unproven’ and ‘alleged’ and so on. I think it’s fair enough to describe his claims in that way; I’m not sure it is right to shut him down completely and exclude those views from the public square. I think 2020 still has some surprises in store for us, and it would not be out of character for this year for Trump to eventually succeed in remaining President, which would leave the various media organisations with something of a problem. Well, they have lots of problems already.
More broadly, it seems to me that the coalition that Trump has pulled together – effectively the US equivalent of Red Tory – is going to win huuuuugely next time out. It’s the person who wins the next presidential election – who I expect to be a younger, more charismatic and charming version of Trump – who will end up guiding the US forward. I just hope the world doesn’t endure too much damage whilst the US undergoes some necessary refitting.
Much commentary about the effects of this COVID crisis seem to me to be assuming too much. In particular, there is an assumption that it is both possible and desirable to return to how things were before the virus so disrupted our patterns of life.
In saying this I am not simply referring to the point that human behaviour has changed, and become more cautious, and that the damage being caused by social distancing will remain even were the legal elements of the lockdown to be lifted. (I am sympathetic to the idea that we can rely on common sense to carry us through, à la Sweden, but I am not wholly persuaded that our shared understanding is yet adequate for that task.)
No, I think there is a more fundamental challenge, and to make that clear I want to employ two contrasting images.
The first is of a pathway up a mountain. It is a good path, and as we ascend higher up the mountain, so the scenery becomes more breathtaking. In this image, the ascension up the mountain corresponds to our economic growth, which takes us ‘higher and higher’. In this image the virus is like a small landslide. There is now a blockage up ahead, and we’ll have to go a little lower in order to get around it – but then we can resume our upward path. In other words, in this image, there is nothing fundamental about our situation prior to the virus that makes it at all problematic to go back. We will get back to the pathway once this crisis is over.
My second image is different. It is of walking the plank – that is, of a wooden path being extended over the side of a ship, and walking along it until there is a catastrophic departure from the path which can never be regained.
My view is that the crisis is tipping us off a plank, not just setting us back on our path. There are lots of reasons why I think that – mostly to do with the Limits to Growth – but it’s the reflexive assumption of the pathway image that most concerns me.
Our culture has assumed that constant economic growth is the best of all possible things, and we live in the best of all possible worlds that has such economic growth within it.
This economic growth has become an idol, and worship of the idol has stored up for us a vast cornucopia of problems, ecological, sociological and financial. The virus has given this idol a huge shove, and now we are watching the idol topple.
To get through this, which will take many years yet, we need to imagine things differently. We will need to work out ways in which we can look after each other during this crisis, and develop the equivalent for our own time of rationing during World War Two (my preference is a UBI but there are other possibilities).
Most of all, I think we need to learn how to swim. There are sharks around, but also a rowing boat or two.
I have been reflecting much on my experiences of last year. I shall not reach any conclusions until after a retreat next month at the earliest, but one thing that is coming to the fore is my sense of a gulf between the 53% of England that voted for Leave (higher amongst self-identified Anglicans) and what I think of as the ‘institutional mind’ of the Church of England.
By ‘institutional mind’ I am principally thinking of what is expressed by those in positions of authority, so the House of Bishops first and foremost, but extending more widely to include General Synod and also the para-church organisations like the Church Times. An example of what I have in mind is the letter from 25 Bishops that triggered my article in response. This is not about hostility to the Leave position; rather, what troubles me is my sense that there is a theological lacuna in the insitutional mind, a gap where an understanding of the nation – and therefore of England – needs to sit.
Here is my sketch of what I am thinking about.
In Scripture there is consistent reference to the nation and the nations, Israel being a paradigmatic example. I need to do more work and reading on this, but nations are clearly a part of the created order – fallen and redeemable. This is a point of conflict with the prevailing liberal mindset (which I see as also culturally dominant in the church, part of the institutional mind) which does not give a nation any existence that is separate to the viewpoints and habits of those individuals which aggregate together into a ‘nation’ (or a ‘family’ or a ‘corporation’ or a ‘government’). In contrast I see such entities as part of the principalities and powers – and I see the Biblical treatment of such things as an essential aspect in our understandings. We cannot understand the cross, or the teachings of St Paul, without understanding the principalities and powers. The Biblical understanding of nation does not map neatly onto modern understandings of the nation, let alone the nation-state, and let alone the rich complexity of a ‘United Kingdom’ but there is something here which is essential for the Church of England to grasp if it is to fulfil its vocation.
For historical reasons, principally rooted in the experience of WW2 but not restricted solely to that, our dominant culture sees the expression of national identity as immoral, inherently risky and liable to cause disaster. This can be seen in so many ways – the whole Brexit debate itself is rife with examples – but for me, a paradigmatic instance was Emily Thornberry’s scorn towards the display of an England flag. This distance between the somewheres and the anywheres is now becoming an accepted short-hand, so I can say that my concern with the institutional mind of the Church of England is that it is a resolutely ‘anywhere’ mentality. This is ironic, as the whole tradition and theological standpoint of the Church of England is ‘somewhere’ – rooted in each local parish, and bound up with an emphasis upon the incarnation as a leading theological doctrine in our self-understanding.
Which is why this phrase isn’t leaving my mind: we shall not evangelise England with an emaciated incarnation. One of the texts used to justify the disdain for national identity within our church conversation is the wonderful passage from Galatians – in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek etc. I believe that this passage is being misused. I do not for one second doubt that our identity in Christ trumps our various national identities. We are called to a Christian identity that is more foundational than any national identity. Yet what I wish to insist upon is that this Christian identity does not evacuate the national identity of meaning or continued application. On the contrary, it is only through being set within that larger Christian identity that the national identity truly finds itself and is able to flourish and shine.
Jesus, after all, was a particular man born in a particular time and place within a particular culture. His universality is not something imposed ‘top-down’ from Heaven, as if he came down from the sky fully-formed, rather it is built up out of that identity – they are the building blocks. Jesus never stops being a Jewish man from first century Palestine. This is what I mean by ’emaciated incarnation’ – the anywhere ideology seeks to downplay all the particularities and distinctives that makes us different from each other, as they are perceived as problematic. In contrast I want to insist that these distinctives cannot be taken away from us, for they make us who we are. We are not called to be national eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven.
The great beast of global capitalism generates an immense social and cultural pressure pushing a ‘smoothing’ of individuality. Capitalism wants us to become efficient ball-bearings that do not hinder the accumulation of profit. My concern about the institutional mind of the Church of England is that this ideology – this Royal Consciousness – has surreptitiously crept in and taken over. Of course it is wrong to value a distinctive national identity! Don’t you know that it inevitably leads to bigotry and racism and fascism and all the other terrible things that the twentieth century taught us?
I see this, not simply as an acquiescence to worldly thinking but as an abandonment of our own, distinctive, Anglican charism. The Church of England needs to be a Church for England. We shall not evangelise England with an emaciated incarnation. Telling that story simply aligns the church with those economic forces that depersonalise and dispossess the people in this land. We are seen as hostile and alien, court chaplains whose ultimate service is to Mammon not to the living and incarnate Lord.
I have much work to do to flesh this out. It links with understandings I’ve gained from Tom Wright about apocalyptic language, and Stringfellow and Wink and Richard Beck and many others. But I think this is what God is calling me to say. Abraham is much on my mind – and has been ever since May of last year – and he, after all, becomes the father of many nations. I need to learn what that means – and apply it to our situation today.
I’ll keep you posted.
You must be logged in to post a comment.