Turning Things Upside Down: A Manifesto by The Rev. William R. Coats: “There are forces at work that would destroy this church in order to establish another church on these new grounds. In that sense, to fight for the Episcopal church against the Windsor process is to fight anew for the Gospel.”

Very interesting – do go and read it.

The beginning of the film ‘Contact’ provoked awe when I first watched it, on a trip to Boston in 1997. It is the ultimate in pull-back shots, beginning from the surface of the earth and just going back, and back, and back, and back. Out of the solar system, past the heliosphere, through the Milky Way, beyond the point where our galaxy is just a small dot in a haze of other galaxies. I had thought that I had a good sense for the scale of the universe, but when I lost my sense of depth about three-quarters of the way through the sequence, I realised that I had been deluding myself. The sense of scale that we need to try to comprehend when we consider our position in the universe is quite possibly unattainable to the human mind. Our Galaxy, the Milky Way (above), has some 400 billion stars. There may be 125 billion galaxies in the universe. There are probably more stars than there are grains of sand on earth. I find these numbers meaninglessly large. Perhaps we need Monty Python to help us through:

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the ‘Milky Way’.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go ’round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.

Contemplation of these facts provokes some questions – and perhaps a little smile. “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” The Christian understanding of the world was born in an environment radically different to the one that we inhabit today. What are the implications of this shift for Christian faith?

In traditional terms, Christians look forward to the resurrection of the dead on the last day. This says something very important about our bodily future – that our existence as embodied beings now will somehow be recognised on that last day. Also in traditional terms, that last day will come after the apocalypse, when the last trump shall sound, the anti-christ shall be overthrown and Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead. The early Christians – such as Paul, who writes about this in his letter to the Thessalonians – believed that this last judgement would happen in their lifetimes. Of course, we are still waiting.

This hope or expectation of a last judgement is something which has been of great comfort to many believers over the years, and I would not wish to argue against it. What I would say, however, is that it is not something which I find moving – it is not something that reaches into my heart, it is not something that makes a difference to how I shape my life.

As well as the difference in size of the universe that we are living in, there is a difference in the scale of time of comparable scale. When the church was getting established, it was considered that the world was created, in roughly the form it has now, some few thousand years ago – and it’s end would be a similar number of years in the future. Whereas now consider that in fact the earth was created some 4.6 billion years ago, the universe perhaps some 15 billion years ago, and we do not have any conception of when it will end, if indeed that question has meaning.

My point is to do with the ‘background drama’ against which we might understand the story of Jesus of Nazareth. The early church placed that story in the setting of their culture, and we must do the same. Our culture has radically changed its conception of time and space, and our understanding of the significance of Jesus must change too.

It is rather as if we were watching a Punch and Judy show, and we were caught up in the drama, and that small stage bounded our world. And suddenly we were pulled back to see that this stage was placed in the centre circle at Wembley Stadium – the story just doesn’t have the same imaginative impact any more. And then we are pulled back to a satellite orbiting above London, and really the question of what is going on in the Punch and Judy show on some grass in North West London has to do something really rather remarkable if it is going to attract our attention. And the camera keeps pulling back.

Our imaginations, in terms of time and space, are set to a different scale. And my imagination is engaged more by an episode of Star Trek than by a consideration of who will be Left Behind. Perhaps the apocalypse will come, the last trumpet will sound, and the four horsemen will come riding out. Or perhaps not. I am quite confident that it will not happen in my life time, and that, if, at the end of all things my Lord raises me up, I shall indeed be delighted.

I don’t believe that Christians have yet begun to explore this difference, not to a substantial degree. That may await my generation and after – those who were born after Armstrong had walked on the moon. We are in a different place now; the old language and habits don’t have the same purchase any more. Yet the Christian claim is that Jesus shows us what it means to be human – and what is the nature of God. I believe He will do so for as long as there are human beings.

Let us be human. We cannot be anything else. Perhaps the key thing is that we are open-ended, and our futures are not yet determined for us.

Peak oil appeal | Making change (campaigns) | Get involved | Soil Association: “The Soil Association, with the support of its members, is determined to press home the case for the rapid expansion of the only clear alternative: organic farming, linked to local food supplies.”

I’m delighted that the Soil Association have thrown their weight behind this. For non-UK readers, the Soil Association is the principal organic food watchdog, which has a very high reputation. The fact that they are fully signed up to Peak Oil, and are pursuing the local agenda, is great news.

Less good news is that Mersea Town Council have approved the Tesco store planned for Barfield Road. How sad.

I remember the time when Cantona rebelled against the insults directed at him by a cretin. There is something essential about rebellion, about acknowledging that there are boundaries to what can be said. I am aware that this contradicts what I believe about scandal and offence. Yet even so, I shall continue to esteem Zidane as a man, un vrai homme.

“What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes as soon as he begins to think for himself. A slave who has taken orders all his life, suddenly decides that he cannot obey some new command. What does he mean by saying ‘no’?….
“In every rebellion, the man concerned experiences not only a feeling of revulsion at the infringement of his rights but also a complete and spontaneous loyalty to certain aspects of himself. Thus he implicitly brings into play a standard of values so far from being false that he is willing to preserve them at all costs…
“Resentment is always resentment against oneself. The rebel, on the other hand, from his very first step, refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being.
“Rebellion is the common ground on which every man bases his first values. I rebel – therefore we exist.”

From ‘The Rebel’, written by another Algerian-French footballer, Albert Camus.

It is not Ollie who needs the walks the most.
(Picture taken 22nd April 06)

To the river I am going
Bringing sins I cannot bear
Come and cleanse me come forgive me
Lord I need to meet You there

In these waters healing mercy
Flows with freedom from despair
I am going to that river
Lord I need to meet You there

Precious Jesus I am ready
To surrender every care
Take my hand now lead me closer
Lord I need to meet You there

Come and join us in the river
Come find life beyond compare
He is calling He is waiting
Jesus longs to meet You there

(Brian Doerksen)

Comment is free: Sowing the seeds of change: “Catholicism trumps liberalism”

A very interesting article from Theo Hobson, which gets things wrong in a provocative way (especially the Abraham comparison). I think he is right about the near term analysis, ie that liberalism is ‘dead and buried’ – but I think he gets the bigger picture profoundly wrong (he’s also wrong in accusing Radical Orthodoxy of being a part of the liberal Anglo-Catholic stream – that might be Don Cupitt’s analysis, but it’s rather fervently disputed by the RO themselves!). By the way, his ‘Father Giles’ is a thinly disguised reference to Giles Fraser, who is himself always worth reading (and almost as often worth disagreeing with).

Where Hobson has something interesting to say is in pointing out the tension between a Catholic understanding of authority and the liberal tradition – the liberal tradition being derived from Protestantism, where both place primacy on individual will and understanding. What has happened is that the wider Modern culture has so reinforced that tendency that it became a distorted parody of itself, lacking any place for humility before the truth, and some sense of Christian solidarity – which is why Protestantism dissipates into the ten thousand things. A Catholic sense of authority – healthily understood, for even in Catholicism the individual conscience is paramount – is one that gives more weight to church tradition, and therefore tempers the arrogance latent in Protestantism, that the individual is in a position to know better than the church as a whole. It can happen – I think that Luther was right to Protest – but the onus is on the one seeking to overthrow the church tradition to show why. And as Rowan has put it, genuinely prophetic action has costly consequences.

What the liberals in TEC seem not to be able to supply is an argument properly grounded in theology for taking the stance that they do (see Oliver O’Donovan on this here). This is where Rowan is most seriously misread by the liberals, for he was never ‘one of them’ in placing individual opinion so recklessly ahead of the gathered consensus (which is why he keeps emphasising that full understanding of the truth requires unity). I’m quite sure Rowan still holds the same views about homosexuality etc that he has always held; what has changed is that he has taken on the office and authority of ABC and he has a profoundly Catholic (ie correct!) understanding of what that involves – that individual opinion comes second to the authority of the church. Not always – conscience does NOT have to be violated – simply a recognition that “I MIGHT BE WRONG” – and that the Spirit works through the church to lead it into truth – we therefore trust the process, and trust the church.

Where I most disagree with Hobson, however, is that the liberal tradition (in the CofE) is ‘dead’ – although he himself retreats a little with his final remarks. If you accept the classical Anglican understanding of authority (Richard Hooker’s) , it is a ‘three legged stool’ – and needs all three elements to stand fast. So we can picture this as a triangle, with each corner representing one of the ‘legs’ (I’m equating liberal and ‘reason’ here). The church as a whole, and individual believers on their own path of spiritual growth, can move or emphasise one leg of the stool more at one time, and another at a different time. In other words there is a progression around the legs. A healthy progression is centripetal, ie it remains focussed on Christ, and tends towards the unity and integrity where all three elements are in harmony. An unhealthy progression comes when an aspect is emphasised at the expense of the centre, and there is centrifugal force, which destroys the unity and harmony of the whole.

This is a quick sketch of what I have in mind:

So there is a place for each ‘strand’, and the health comes from the recognition of the essential unity of all three strands in Christ; where things go wrong – and where some elements go zooming off into the outer darkness – is when the different corners lose touch with their opposite areas. At that time, the Spirit becomes most active, and rebalances the church as a whole. This is why, at the moment, the most interesting theological and ecclesiological work is taking place at the borderline between the Catholic and the Evangelical (things like ‘deep church‘).

Liberalism won’t die – or at least, it WILL die, but only to be resurrected. It has an essential part to play in the balance of the church, it is thoroughly incarnational and engaged with the world, but what it has forgotten at this time is that the church is to be in, but not of, the world.

There is something precious in this Anglican hermeneutic, and it is worth defending. Thanks be to God for Rowan! He knows these things. Trust him. The Lord is with him.

~~~

UPDATE: see this from the Archbishop of Cape Town, discussing “the rich heartlands of Anglicanism – the solid centre, focussed on Jesus Christ, to which we are constantly drawn back by the counterbalancing pull of the other strands, if any one threatens to become disproportionately influential.”