Mark Greene on Kings

Also in the e-post today is LCC’s Connecting with Culture thread. The standard varies but Mark Greene is usually good for a good one, and here he is on Pretenders to the Throne.

We love to crown kings. This week alone, cricketer Graeme Swann was hailed as England’s ‘spin-king saviour’, a posthumous 75th birthday bash was thrown for Elvis Presley – the king of rock ‘n’ roll – on the lawns of Graceland, and, as his latest film ‘Avatar’ amassed record box office receipts, speculation mounted that ‘Titanic’ Director James Cameron would crown himself ‘king of the universe’.

It seems Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg spoke more truth than he realised when he dubbed the great British public ‘king-makers’ in view of their power to elect the next government.
If Britain constructed the ideal king, what would he look like? The Tower of London’s current exhibition on Henry VIII spotlights his sporting credentials, valorising the muscular power, mental strength and brutal determination needed to succeed on jousting and battle field alike. Today, we make heroes of Swann, Beckham and Wilkinson, honouring their physical prowess and gentlemanly attitude to competition, having more refined taste than our Tudor ancestors.
Shakespeare suggested good kingship required a little more than undisputed flair and a sharp PR agent. Richard II has to be stripped of his power to recognise the value of integrity, humility and compassion in a monarch, while Henry V asks ‘what have kings that privates have not, save ceremony’, provoking a re-examination both of how we view our monarchs and how they understand their subjects.
Shortly before Christmas, Prince William – very likely a future King of England – sought to understand the plight of the homeless by sleeping rough on the streets of London for a night. It was a commendable gesture, revealing a compassionate concern for the poorest members of society, but William’s night on the streets won’t eradicate homelessness. The truth is that no earthly king (or queen) can fully resolve the pressing issues of terrorism, climate change, political corruption or social injustice.
Nevertheless, we can hope that William’s gesture is indicative of an innate humility – that rare quality that brought the Christ-child to the poverty of the Bethlehem manger, in order that we, through his life, death and resurrection, might become children of the King of Kings. Whether we be a prince, a princess, a police officer, a picker, a packer or a porter, we, like the magi (who were not kings and probably not three) must all learn from him that:
He who would wear a crown
Must first bow low,
Must first bow down.

Filed under: Wisdom from others!, Kingship, LICC, Nick Clegg, Shakespeare

Nick Spencer on the Noughties

Nick Spencer, Director of Studies at Theos has put out a good article in Theos’s January newsletter (originally published on the Guardian’s Comment is free website). He asks, “What did the noughties mean for religion? Can we climb out of the trenches?” Here are a few snippets, but do look up the full text if you have time:

Peter Berger’s oft-quoted comment from The New York Times in 1968 that "by the 21st century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture" must rank as one of the worst predictions of all time, as Berger himself has recognised. Religion did not roll over and die, as many expected. Rather it migrated from being a fundamentally socio-economic phenomenon, which would simply dissolve when humanity finally arrived at perfect socio-economic conditions, to being a biological one, as hardwired into us as sex or aggression. Almost irrespective of whether religious beliefs are true or false, religious identity, behaviour, and communities are here to stay. …

Europe stumbled into the first world war through a kind of inadvertent positive feedback loop, as aggression was met with aggression was met with aggression. The last thing the 21st century needs, faced as it is with the prospect of resource shortages and environmental degradation, is contention between "faith" groups, among which I would include atheists and humanists, descending into conflict. The challenge before each group is to affirm what is of worth in the thinking and traditions of others. As Jonathan Sacks remarked recently, "religious groups in the liberal democratic state must be prepared to enter into serious respectful conversations with secular humanists … about the nature of the common good and the kind of society we wish to create for our grandchildren."

The next decade will not see anyone with their feet up in a Berlin café, but nor need it witness an exodus to the religious trenches.

Filed under: Wisdom from others!, Nick Spencer, Peter Berger, religion

Another Ely Blog!

Revd Ally Barrett of Buckden Church blogs here, and Buckden Church is online too. Thanks to Paxtonvic for the lead.

Ally is amongst other things a gifted hymnwriter, and I’d like to reproduce one of her latest (which I gather she is happy for others to use non-commercially, with due acknowledgment). She writes:

I’d completely forgotten about this one. We tried it out at church the other week (when the vine and the branches came up in the lectionary) and people seemed to like it. It goes to the tune of ‘The Church’s one Foundation’ (which may have been what they liked!). It’s based (mostly) on the seven marks of a healthy church – see if you can spot them!

it particularly appeals to me of course because I keep on banging on about John 15, growth and roots, shoots and fruits, and open churches.

Be here, Lord, in your churches,
And shine through us your light,
As cities built on hill-tops
We’ll not be hid from sight,
O give us, Lord, the courage,
the energy and drive
to make our faith turn outwards,
incarnate and alive.

May we, in words and action
Bring all your plans to birth,
Make us your holy people
for this, your needy earth.
When all our aspirations
Can’t set our hearts on fire,
Lord, fill us with the passion
that you alone inspire.

Lord, give us roots that nourish
the branch, the leaf, the shoot,
And help us by your pruning
To yield a richer fruit.
Lord, save us from distractions
that human minds devise,
And give us grace to strive for the trophies you most prize.

Are we a true communion,
diverse and yet as one?
A house with doors wide open,
and room for all who come?
Renew your church in mission,
In ministry and grace,
That all who seek may find you,
In this and every place.

Filed under: Christianity, Church of England, Technology, Wisdom from others!, Ally Barrett, Blog, Buckden

Polite society

Andrew Brown, to whom I have hat-tipped before – thank you Andrew! – posted recently to recommend the following quotation from philosopher David Hume’s Enquiry into the Principles of Morals as the basis for a “comments policy” on a blog:

Among well-bred people, a mutual deference is affected; contempt of others disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained, without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority. These attentions and regards are immediately agreeable to others, abstracted from any consideration of utility or beneficial tendencies: they conciliate affection, promote esteem, and extremely enhance the merit of the person who regulates his behaviour by them.

Mmmm. I take Andrew’s point, and Hume is accurate in describing the way things often do work in practice in common rooms and the corridors of power. But there’s something worrying about that word affected, of contempt really is only being disguised. The ethicist in me is concerned about a public discourse essentially founded on untruth and concealment. And is there a whiff of elitism too, an exclusion of classes and individuals who don’t play the insiders’ game?

It certainly makes me think! I suspect that my own mix of northern upbringing and Oxbridge education means I am fairly mixed up on this particular subject too – participating most of the time in the consensus quite happily and valuing its steadiness and sane-ness, but then prone to moments of passion that can rock the boat. What about you?

One final thought: David Wood speaking on TV on Beowulf in the good poetry series on BBC4 suggested that it was marked by irony, and that this was something essential to our national character – and there in Hume’s polite pretences too?

Filed under: Thoughts for the Day, Wisdom from others!, blogging, comments policy, David Hume

Popular Christianity: A Contradiction in Terms?

My near name-sake and neighbour Professor David Thompson retires shortly from his distinguished service in Cambridge as Professor of Modern Church History; Director of the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies; and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College.

A few days ago he gave a Valedictory Lecture with the provocative title, Popular Christianity: a Contradiction in Terms?
(An earlier even more provocative book on a similar theme is pictured left …)

I sadly missed the lecture, but was pleased to discover that it is online here on the Divinity Faculty’s website. And pleased too to hear that there is an open invitation to the Faculty’s Lightfoot Room on Wednesday 3rd June at 2.15 to discuss the lecture with David.

To whet your appetite an extract from the opening and closing sections of the lecture follows:

Filed under: Wisdom from others!

Ask TED

 

I’m trying out registration with TED  – a sort of social network focussed on short presentations by the great and good which are then put on the web as a point of discussion. They have conferences too, but they are not cheap (while basic registration on the web is free…).

I did a search for ‘faith’ in their archive and came up with following, which should all link to video clips (in Creative Commons so you can use them elsewhere) of the person named doing their stuff:

Filed under: Wisdom from others!, TED

Church as Communion: Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor

I thought the Cardinal’s address to General Synod this week was both encouraging and helpful – in our Anglican issues as well as ecumenical ones. Here’s the text as circulated:

Church as Communion: the ARCIC Agreed Statement and its

Significance

An Address to the Synod of the Church of England, 9 February 2009

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ – dear Friends, I am grateful, and feel privileged, to have this opportunity of speaking to you here in Synod for the first and, most probably, for the last time. The reason for my being here this afternoon is to say to you something about the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), of which I had the privilege to be Co-Chairman for over sixteen years. The key word, of course, of ARCIC was koinonia – quite an unfamiliar word when ARCIC was initiated in the late ‘60’s. In fact, there were two very nice ladies who were then our secretaries, one Roman Catholic and the other Anglican and at Christmas one sent a Christmas card to the other saying, ‘Happy Christmas – and koinonia to you too!’ I have been asked today to speak to you about that key concept in ARCIC’s work, communion. It is clear that from the start ARCIC found this idea opened up fresh perspectives about the Church which seemed to make progress very possible.

Filed under: Anglican Communion, Current affairs, Wisdom from others!, ecumenical, Roman Catholic

Alongside

Earlier this week I met Marisa, a member of the Society of Friends  (Quakers). She is involved with the Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel that Quakers run on behalf of the World Council of Churches. In a nutshell “The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) seeks to support local and international efforts to end the Israeli occupation and bring a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a just peace, based on international law and relevant United Nations resolutions.” (See  www.eappi.org and www.quaker.org.uk/eappi.) Volunteers, mostly from churches world-wide, spend time in Israel/Palestine standing alongside and supporting Palestinian people, and Marisa did this herself three years ago. Her work was to monitor checkpoints in East Jerusalem and to support Israeli peace and human rights organisations. The 30^th group of accompaniers are just starting their work. Marisa has kindly let me reproduce here the last entry in her journal as she looked back on her visit. As I try to understand the situation in Gaza and the whole area, I find personal stories like this very helpful to set alongside the reporting in the media.

Saying Goodbye

At 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday 1^st March, Group 15 and Group 16 of the EAPPI programme will gather at the church of the Redeemer in the old city, in the lovely chapel on the first floor, which overlooks the beautiful shady courtyard, full of flowering climbers and birds. At the ceremony we will formally hand over our task of providing a presence in this troubled land, offering a measure of protection to vulnerable communities and individuals, solidarity and advocacy, to the new Accompaniers. With the phones, the visiting cards, the cameras, the laptops and the memory sticks, we shall entrust to those who have come to take over from us precious relationships and enduring hope, even in the face of much uncertainty, many setbacks, hostility and indifference. I remember very vividly the feeling of owe and the great sense of privilege and responsibility I felt when we took on from Group 14 the EAPPI torch, that has been burning with commitment, imagination and faith for almost three and a half years now.

Filed under: Current affairs, Wisdom from others!, Gaza, Holy Land, Quakers, WCC

Half of Britons sceptical about evolution

 

Only half of the UK population consistently choose evolution over creationism or Intelligent Design, according to a major report published on Monday by Theos.
The report, entitled Rescuing Darwin, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth on 12 February, draws on extensive new research conducted by the polling agency, ComRes.
It reveals that only 25% of British adults think that evolution is "definitely true", with another quarter thinking it is "probably true".
The remaining 50% are either strongly opposed or simply confused about the issue. Around 10% of people consistently choose (Young Earth) Creationism (the belief that God created the world some time in the last 10,000 years) over evolution, and about 12% consistently prefer Intelligent Design or "ID" (the idea that evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things). The remainder of the population, over 25%, are unsure and often mix evolution, ID and creationism together.
Nick Spencer, Director of studies at Theos and co-author of the report, said:
"The problem is that evolution has become mixed up with all sorts of ideas – like the belief that there is no God, or no purpose or no absolute morality in life – which people find very difficult to accept.
"The tragedy is that this was never Darwin’s position. Three years before he died he wrote ‘it seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.’
"Darwin’s own beliefs have been ignored or misused by some of his modern disciples. Today too many people associate Darwin and his theory with a bleak and brutal vision of life, which is why so many people are sceptical about evolution."
To read the report in full, click here. To read media coverage of the report, click here.

My own view: I’m happy to go along with Darwin and be an ardent Theist (indeed, Christian) and believe that God’s creation has been through the mechanisms that science reveals to us. Mind you, I don’t see that that rules out exceptional activity by God as well that scientific methodology – geared up as it is to the reproducible event – will always have some difficulty capturing. The most obvious example would be the unique event of the resurrection of Christ.

Filed under: Wisdom from others!, Darwin, evolution, science

Autism Spectrum Disorder

I’m booked to ‘say a few words’ at a conference at Histon Parish Church on 6th June on Autism and the Church with Professor Simon Baron-Cohen the keynote speaker. It matters to me because I’ve worked in a church which was blessed (and challenged) by having many people with disabilities within its company; with a school that was a ‘centre of excellence’ for children with ASD; and I believe the church is called to be profoundly inclusive here (and grows too when it is). You can find details of the conference at (http://www.ely.anglican.org/news_events/diary/?year=2009;month=6). But if you want to know more why not click through to Oxford Diocese’s guidelines on how a church can best welcoming those with Autism and Asperger Syndrome at http://www.oxford.anglican.org/asperger-friendly-church-6974.html. Dave Walker’s cheerful cartoons (as above) are great.

Filed under: Wisdom from others!, autism, disability, inclusion