This blog continues my reflections on the church of Scotland and the sexual revolution of the late 20th century in this country.

I should be honest about my own place in the story which I have been telling. I along with most of my friends, just missed the revolution.  By reason of class and age I was part of the last generation to live by the old standards. At least mainly. I would be unjust if I let it be supposed that the church gave me only some unhelpful sexual morality. In fact, the church had been for me a warm and encouraging community in which many adults gave time and creativity to its varied organisations for children and young people. Its Youth Fellowship gave me the opportunity to mix with young men and women and an experience of responsibility for others. The preaching of the church offered me the gospel of God’s forgiveness of my sins, which I received as a precious truth. Like many of my generation, I stuck with the church because it had been good to me.

For my younger contemporaries however, especially those who rejected traditional sexual ethics and contributed to the the changing culture of the 60’s and 70’s, the church was identified with the the past, and with the voice of condemnation. Sadly, the church was good at offering guidance to young people but bad at listening to them. This disabled its occasional attempts, through special youth projects and the like, to understand even its own young people, far less the majority who had no experience of the church. My judgement is that most churches abandoned young people to cope with the huge changes that were taking place in social and interpersonal mores, which issued in the establishment of pre- and extra- marital partnerships as a way of sharing life as well as sex.

Had the churches been willing to listen to young people, they could have provided stable and affectionate support for the adventures of the young. They could have encouraged parents to understand their own children and to give their partnerships a measure of material help. They could have offered the Jesus of the Gospels as someone who only ever condemned self-righteousness, while challenging people to live a tough love. They could have diagnosed the genuine evil of the commercialisation of sex by the market, especially by the expanding youth market and its attendant media. They could have protected young women from fleeing the imposition of marraige and family only to become disposable objects for liberated males. They could have invented special blessings and rites of passage to accompany  key moments in a new timetable of maturity.  In other words, the churches could have played a creative role in social change but chose rather to defend a culture which, although it had Christian elements, was fashioned by a particular class (middle)at a particular time, (postwar Britain) under a particular economy (welfare capitalism).

There are doubtless many ways of analysing this failure. I will use three critical categories which I have developed through my biblical studies: ecumenism, economy and ecology, which all contain the Greek word oikos = house.

ECUMENISM means the practice of acting according to your membership of the OIKUMENE, the inhabited world, and is the opposite of sectarian, which means acting according to your membership of your own group. The first Christians, through St Paul, recognised that faith in Jesus was ecumenical; it could not be limited to Jesus’ fellow Jews, nor defined by Jewish custom and history. This was revolutionary in its time and remains so even in a world where “globalism” is a cliche designed to hide the sectarian interests of the most powerful people on earth. The word ecumenical has been highjacked by the movement for unity amongst churches, but it is much broader than that, encouraging people to see that what they take for granted in their place and time (like circumcision amongst Jewish men) may be utterly meaningless to people in other times and places ( like the first century gentiles visited by St. Paul)

Ecumenical thought is especially aware of the geography and history of the inhabited world, knowing that these often determine beliefs and customs, including one’s own. This does not dissolve its own convictions but increases awareness of their limitations and encourages their further development. Ecumenical custom values contact with people round the world, and obeys the ancient command to welcome strangers. In an era menaced  by sectarian identities it acts on the basis that we all come from this planet. (So far)

I would argue that the church of my childhood was insufficiently ecumenical, imagining that its sexual ethics and its family structures were right for all times and all places, which prevented it, for example, from understanding those of its own Bible. There is nothing in that Bible which limits the number of wives a man may have. Jesus forbade divorce but he did not forbid a man to marry more than one woman. More generally it failed to see the patriarchal nature of its own traditions and the inequality they excused, making it unsympathetic to the arguments of female liberation.

Instead it slid towards a sectarian mode of existence which was insufficiently critical of its own history and of the world in which it ministered, while holding fiercely to its traditions.  This incipient sectarianism disabled its ministry towards young people in a time of rapid social change. Its house was not open to its own children.

ECOMOMY means household management in Greek and has been expanded to mean the management of a national or international budget, including goods amd services,  taxes and pensions. Churches, as well as citizens, live within particular economies, which determine the opportunities open to their citizens, through inherited wealth, paid employment or state benefits. Within the capitalism of western Europe the division of the population into landowners, business and professional people, wage labourers and the unemployed has come into being and continues today. That structure permits individual success and failure but also determines that there shall always be the rich, the adequately remunerated, the poor and the destitute.

The old church aystem of parishes meant that all sorts and conditions of people belonged to the one local church, but the Scottish Disruption of 1843, which brought the Free Church into existence, although evangelically inspired, led to the establishment of many new congregations and the virtual abandonment of the old parishes. In 1929 when the free and established churches reunited, many parishes included only a single class of citizens and  congregations were less aware than previously of the relationship between wealth and family values.

As for example: the relative license in sexual matters granted to the sons of substantial landowners was balanced by strict control over marriage, since that affected the future of the family’s property. The late marriages of the professional classes made possible the lengthy education necessary for their children’s success. As there was no place in the economic system for homosexual people, the moral system also denied their value. The meagre income of many working families put such a continuous pressure on the mother and father, that the marriages  were frequently put at risk.

The church was unaware of these relationships, seeing moral judgements along with their theological underpinnings as separate from practical matters like money, food, clothes or work. In the case of young people it was ignorant of how commercial interests encouraged the developing youth culture to be competetive, for example in sexual attractiveness, in order to generate profits and expand their markets. A church that was more aware of the economy might have helped young people to distinguish between what they wanted and what they were being sold. A church that  had exposed the economic roots of its patriarchal values would have been well-placed to challenge the exploitation of young women endemic in the new sexual culture of All You Need Is Love.

The wise management of a house requires a critical knowledge of the wider economy.

ECOLOGY is a term invented in the 19th century to designate the study of the universe as a home for life. It is concerned with the natural systems that produce, sustain and enhance living beings. It is especially concerned with ecosytems, that is, with the interrelationships of living beings with each other and with the material processes of the planet.

Sex is one of the strategies developed by living beings on earth to secure the survival of species by determining an unpredictable mixture of genetic material in every newborn. The sexual activity of human beings was evolved through the sexual activity of  mammals, birds, fish and even insects. Any genuine understanding of human sexuality must interpret it as the genetically coded result of millions of years of evolution, which has as its primary purpose, the survival of the species.

The fact of self-consciousness in human beings means that sexual activity is not simply instinctual but mediated by human understanding and relationship. It is however, in a way which greatly disturbed St. Augustine, not completely under the control of the human will. An ecological understanding of human sexuality will see it as a meeting place of nature and nurture, of instinct and personality, of compulsion and choice, of mating and love.

Jesus’ understanding of sexuality is thoroughly ecological: “In the beginning God made them male and female….therefore a man shall leave his family and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” Human beings share the division of other creatures into male and female. The human male is under compulsion to unite sexually with a woman, and the one flesh of the sexually united couple is blessed by God.

The moral teachings of my church about sex, at the beginning of the 1960’s, were untouched by any ecological wisdom. Instinct, for example, was seen as merely animalistic and therefore bad; there was no appreciation of our animal heritage, or of the wisdom of the species laid down in our genes and the working of our bodies. The sexual discourse of the church emphasised the control of the human will rather than any art by which sex might enhance our capacity to be truly human. Unlike Hinduism (The Kamasutra) or Islam (The Perfumed Garden) Christianity produced no classics on the art of sexual love. Its recognition of the the frailty of human existence and the permanence of salvation led it to neglect the place of humanity in the web of created life.

Along with its younger members the church might have produced a more graceful sexual ethic which valued pleasure and fun but retained a commitment to tenderness and faithfulness between partners as elements of the “one flesh” which Jesus valued. Its failure to do so was due to its lack of ecological understanding. The house of God includes the created world and its processes.

I was a young minister of the church I am criticising and must acknowldege my own share in its failure. Although I was already aware of some of the above, I  failed to make a disciplined analysis of the problem, or to develop, along with others perhaps, a model of the kind of teaching and nurture which was lacking. It is out of a sense of missed opportunity that I offer this analysis now, with a view to offering further crtiques and proposals for the church’s future, based on the three categories I have used in this blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some kind readers have said these words to me at times, indicating that while they liked what I had written well enough, they weren’t sure I could cope with anything that demanded more stamina. I could argue that in my other blog, emmock.com, I have commented on several complete books of the Bible, sometimes translating them as well, but that doesn’t prove I could carry a sustained argument on a big subject. All of which is just a preface to announcing my decision to tackle the question of why, over the course of my lifetime, institutional Christianity in Scotland has declined continuously so that on any Sunday, less than 10% of the population will actually be in church. A slightly larger percentage will state their intention of going to church, but some of them won’t make it. This is the sort of statistic which leads my own denomination to ask how it can survive, and  Secularist Society to demand that all religious faiths are separated from the state and its institutions.

Where has the church gone wrong?

One response is to argue that such decline is evident at other times in history, and that the church may be blameless and helpless in the face of cultural movements it cannot control. If I describe those movements as typical of liberal democracies with advanced capitalist economies, you may think it unlikely that any church could do much to control or even influence them. But churches are part of the changing society, and 60 years back, when I was a teenager, a much larger part than now. It is reasonable therefore to consider whether they have, by their own action or inaction, contributed to their own decline.

I am going to confine my analysis to the Church of Scotland of which I have been a member since childhood, and to the years since I left school, namely from 1960 to  the present day. I do not think I need to write a chapter reminding you of all the societal changes in Britain in that period; they are many and profound. But in any review of these changes, I cannot find any in which churches were leaders or more than a very few in which they were a major influence. You might think that such a significant section of society might have at least one or two beneficial changes to its credit, but I can find none. Not one of the main moral, political, economic, artistic, technological or scientific or even spiritual changes in British society over these years has been led by the churches.

That seems to me an important judgement that deserves analysis, but given the huge number of changes and their complexity any extensive analysis across the board would be well beyond my capacity. On the other hand, an examination of just one area of significant change might be possible and illuminating. I’m going to focus on the changes in sexual attitudes and behaviour in Scotland since 1960. I’ll list those I consider most important:

1. Effective contraception and the availability of abortion have made it possible for heterosexual people to have sex without making babies.

2. It is accepted that teenagers are sexual beings and will probably have sex during their achool years.

3.  It is accepted that a large proportion of young people will form significant but temporary sexual partnerships outside of marriage.

4. The sexualisation of large areas of social life – music, fashion, news, social media- some of it extreme by any standards is taken for granted.

5. All forms of consensual sex are legal for people over sixteen, and most sexual orientations are recognised as of equal worth, in spite of lingering prejudice.

6. The revolution in the status of women can be overstated, but the degree of equality achieved would astonish my parents’ generation.

7. In 1960 about 5% of births were outside marriage, at present almost 50%.

8. Over the period, the divorce rate first increased, peaked, and has been falling for the past few years, due to cohabitation making marriage more of a personal choice than a required status

With regard to most of these, my church has played a reactive rather than a fully participative or leading role. It has rightly seen that some of these changes are far from beneficial, but even its opposition has been largely ineffective. The one exception to this criticism is instructive. In 1968 The Church of Scotland agreed to the ordination of women as ministers in full equality with their male counterparts. Although many professions had for years admitted women to positions of authority, and one or two churches, notably the Methodists, had already accepted women ministers, this was a bold decision by my church, placing it alongside progressive groups in Scottish society which were promoting the equality of women.  The results have been overwhelmingly beneficial, transforming parishes with new practices and the fellowship of clergy from a smelly male club into something much healthier. Three women have been elected as Moderators of our General Assembly, representing the Church for their year of office. The public face of the church has been a rebuke to all who want to deny the equality of women, especially those Christian denominations who offer spurious biblical arguments in favour of male superiority.

Contrast that example of leadership with the church’s attitude to the revolution in the sexual attitudes and behaviour of teenagers and young adults. Affluence, pop culture, contraception, along with the far from altruistic encouragement of  market forces, accompanied a gradual but very definite rejection by young people of the conventional morality about pre-marital sex. This had frequently been two-faced: boys and young men might sow their wild oats,  but girls and young women should remain virgins until marriage, because that’s what men wanted. Nobody asked which females were to be the receptacles of the wild oats, or how, in the face of such sowing, a sufficient supply of virgins could be maintained.

The church generally avoided the topic – never in all my years in the (Christian) Boys Brigade was the topic discussed, unless the shinyness of one’s leather belt and the blancoing of one’s haversack were some kind of symbolic indicators. Public teaching by the church always pointed to marriage as the right context for sex, and recommended chastity outside it. Homosexual activity was condemned as unnatural and harmful. God had designed the sexual apparatus of male and female for use in marriage alone and any other use was not in his plan. Except…. it was kind of admitted…..somewhat shamefully…. that “occasional masturbation” might take place. Occasional! Millions of acts of masturbation helped the males through years of restraint, into the sexual license of marriage. What the girls did is unknown to me.

Of course, young men and women did get together. My working class friends seemed to find enthusiastic young women without much trouble, and because they were wage- earners from age 14, were able to marry in their late teens, whereas middle class young people were not expected to marry until their mid-twenties or later leading to a variety of sexual strategies which fell short of “going the full way.”

The economics of liberal capitalism demanded the postponement of marriage until mature adulthood; the church demanded chastity outside marriage, and the young people caught in this trap rebelled. Pop music and so-called youth culture, along with the gurus of liberation, advocated sex as a pleasurable experience without any moral strings attached. From year to year the church deplored the evidence of “increased promiscuity”, the sexual content of books, magazines and films, the easy availability of contraception, not to mention the “animalistic posturing”of pop idols, all to little avail. Meanwhile it left at least one generation of young people to find its own way towards better sexual attitudes and relationships. Small wonder if in that endeavour many young people made serious mistakes which hurt themselves and others, were frequently led into unwise behaviour by the idiot pronouncements of their favourite entertainers, and, hampered by persisting inequalites, women were disadvantaged and abused; but great credit to them all that out of this chaos there emerged the new form of cohabitation called partnership, in which men and women, men and men, women and women, committed themselves for longer or shorter periods of time to share dwellings, love, sex and the fortunes of life. There are no formal rules for partnerships, but rather a broad expectation that partners are equal, and will treat each other with respect, honesty and affection.  There are of course exploitative partnerships as there are marriages, but the social usefulness of this new relationship cannot be denied. It was invented by young people,  while the institutions of society which might have helped them, parents, educators and churches stood on the sidelines and carped.

It’s not surprising that younger people deserted a church which had deserted them, while standing in judgement on their creativity.

(more to follow)

 

 

 

This famous expression of Robert Burns in his satirical address to King George 3rd in the year 1778, means in English that “facts are lads that won’t be moved,” which remains true even when we know that facts don’t meet us ready made but have to be constructed. E= MC2 may be a fact about the universe but it took Einstein a bit of labour to find it. Human beings do not live by facts alone but we should all be ready to live with facts even if they contradict our cherished myths or opinions. Mr Trump is convinced for no good reason that Iran is a very wicked country, possibly because it harbours a desire for influence in the world similar to that of the USA, but he would do well to look carefully at the facts, as befits a man who is always complaining about fake news.

My weekend dose of science from the Spanish newspaper El Pais brings me a story which shows the relationship between myth and facts very clearly.

For many centuries people have puzzled over the great stone statues which stand in numbers on Easter Island, in which the heads are at least half of the whole artifact, so much so that some travellers described them as simply heads or faces. After more than a century of research archeologists describe them as images of ancestors, believed to hold ‘mana’ or sacred power, to protect their living descendants, and perhaps the island itself. They were constructed continuously over a period of 250 years between 1250 and 1500 CE, and this competitive cult – the size of your ancestor’s image was important- may have exhausted the resources of the culture that produced them.

But who were the islanders? And how had these human beings reached such remote pacific islands? Some historians considered the statues to have links with Amerindian culture, Aztecs, Mayans,  maybe, but their critics pointed out that with the very primitive water transport available the huge distance would be uncrossable. Cue Thor Heyerdahl whose Kon-Tiki raft with its crew sailed from Peru to Polynesia across 5000 miles of ocean, proving to Heyerdahl’s satisfaction the possibility that the  islands were settled by immigrants from South America. He liked  myths of jouneying, believing also that some  Caribbean islands had been settled from West Africa

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Scientists have just finished testing DNA from five Easter islanders, three whom.ived after European/ American contact with the islanders and two from before. The three showed some elements common to Amerindian DNA and the two showed none, but instead some common elements with the so-called Denisovans, a human group contemporaneous with Neanderthals, which can be traced in the populations of the Asian mainland. It seems the original Easter Islanders came from Asia.

After many years of speculation, mythology and argument, one scientific discovery is enough to establish the fact. Before the DNA sequencing technique was available the issue was open to argument. Now a fact is established and further understanding of Easter Island history has to start with it. The rigour, beauty and value of scientific investigation are made evident by this story.

There are many Christians who believe that Jesus earthly corpse was raised from the grave by God’s power leaving the empty grave behind. If so, the DNA of the risen and exalted Jesus ought to match up with that of other first century Jewish corpses. It might seem blasphemous to ask the Son of God for a blood sample, but if it could be arranged it would help settle matters of theological debate. Of course the same believers may point out with some justification that Jesus’ DNA was already odd, as it derived from his mother and the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, there is also a argument that Jewish racial identity, as asserted in the  Bible is itself a myth, which could be examined by DNA evidence

from the past and the present. It is possible that instead of issuing from the loins of Abraham, Jews are a congregation of many races, pressed into racial purity by their own propaganda and the prejudice of others.

The power of science to establish facts amd settle arguments is disturbing to those who love the myths which can be tested by its procedures.

I would argue, as indeed Jesus himself did, and his first followers, that the “DNA” shared by his true brothers and sisters is not physical but spiritual, based on a commitment to the justice and goodness of God, and proven in voluntary poverty, sorrow at evil, generosity, peace-making, mercy, purity of heart and readiness to suffer for justice. These characteristics are also matters of fact, which establish a believer’s likeness to Jesus, and demonstrate his contemporary aliveness in a way that goes beyond all mythology.

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It’s some time since I gave my readers any information about my blog’s mascot, Desperate Dan, whose statue strides across the city centre of Dundee accompanied by his dog called Dawg. It is the most populat piece of public art in the city, with locals and visitors. Somehow it works as a symbol of Dundee and its people.

He was in invented in 1938 in the Dandy, the famous comic published by D C Thomson, who still flourish today. Desperate Dan (DD) was originally a wild western desperado, but over time evolved into the giant muscleman who used his strength to help others, especially children. His most famous habit is his addiction to cow pies, enormous meaty dishes with the horns sticking out of the pastry. A succession of gifted artists drew the cartoons, whose bright colours and bold forms delighted generations of children. Even today, years after the sad death of the Dandy, DD Annuals and paraphenalia sell well, especially at Christmas, and a huge DD mural decorates the gable wall of the Thomson building.

What’s the appeal? Well, unlike DD, Dundonians male and female, are neither tall nor  large and may relish the thought that a huge, strong and genial giant is looking after their welfare: in the face of officialdom, the Law, Nazi Germany, employers, the Church and bullies everywhere, Desperate Dan was on their side, and would, however clumsily, help them win the battle. The clumsiness was important; Dan was a superhero with the human quality of messing up, which especially endeared him to his admirers. He wasn’t like Superman who never made a mistake, which allowed children and adults to identify with him. There were attempts over the years to broaden his appeal, by giving him a family – I think I remember an Aunt Aggy, and maybe a Squaw, yes, honest, a native american, but these soon vanished as they only detracted from the lasting appeal of the Big Man.

The process of developing a popular superhero has been called, by people with too much time on their hands, as “mythopoeic enhancement” which adds to the hero’s profile elements from the history and character of the readers, so that he/she becomes their hero. The Greeks, who were addicted to warfare and wisdom, could identify with Homer’s heroes, the angry warrior Akhilles and the wily wiseman Odysseus. As in the case of these heroes, popular response to the early stories of DD contributed to the further development of the character.

Nobody should think that the technical accomplishment used by a comic book artist, who is required to invent and present episode upon episode, is trivial. Some of the greatest artists like Michelangelo have used their techniques to great advantage, as he did on the Sistene Chapel ceiling. But the enhancement of the myth by elements of character and ability which come from its audience’s experience demands an equal if less recognised skill. People may show reverence or awe before some reprentations of heroes; DD has always been able to count on the affection of his admirers.

So where does that leave Jesus, the other hero of my blog, which I called xtremejesus because the UK Government classified as extreme anything that contradicted  British values or denied our national narrative, such as the Jesus of the Gospels? Isn’t he too an invented figure, mythopoeically enhanced? Isn’t he the work of  skilled artists, who also had the ability to incorporate into their story fundamental experiences and convictions of the people for whom they wrote, using material from the tales told and retold in their communities. Yes, he is, but unlike DD who has no particular time and place, no history, no identification, Jesus is presented as living in Galilee and Judaea in the time of named emperors, kings and officials, having an ordinary trade, that of carpenter/ builder, belonging to an identifiable family, and entering recorded history as a result of his challenge to named religious leaders and a named official of the Roman Empire. The earliest evidence about him comes in the letters of St Paul written less than 20 years after his death. Unlike superheroes, Jesus died, which is a reasonable indication of real humanity. So Jesus was a historical person, about whom we know at least some facts.

But surely I’m not suggesting that the Gospels with their angels, demons, miracle cures and walking on the water, are factual accounts of their hero? No, I’m not; the Gospels include much invention and mythopoeic enhancement. The usual critical interpretation of what the gospel stories are doing is that they are turning Jesus into a superhero by giving him abilities which are supernatural. If we take the story of Jesus stilling the storm in Mark, we are inclined to agree: Jesus is described as stopping a storm at sea by his command. And it looks as if the author does want his audience to think of Jesus’ supernatural power, for he finshes his story with the question, “ who is this that even the wind and sea obey him?

If we want a fuller understanding of what’s going in this story we have to look at the Jewish consciousness of the sea, displayed in their  Bible. The sea is the image of pre-creation chaos in Genesis 1 and of the return of chaos in the story of the flood. The Psalms and the book of Job praise God for controlling the turbulence of the great deep. The chaotic potential of the sea was part of the thought and experience of every Jew. It was particularly linked to evil and death. So when Mark tells his audience that the boat with Jesus and his disciples is crossing the sea of Galilee, the audience pictures a journey through chaos to safety, which is of course an image of the journey of faith. When the storm strikes the boat, Jesus is asleep, apparently uncaring, as indeed he might seem to be to disciples facing personal danger or persecution. This mysterious sleep of Jesus mimes the fact of his death – this Jesus who commands the ship of faith, appears dead when chaos strikes. But when he awakens, demonstrating his risen life, he can issue the command to the elements of chaos, “Peace, be still” because he speaks in the power of God. The result, in nature and in the minds of his disciples is a “great calm.”

In this case the mythopoeic enhancement uses imagery from the Jewish culture, with which however people of all cultures can identify, to address the experience of abandonment common to all humanity. Just when terror strikes, when the diagnosis is bad, when the baby is stillborn, when the car crashes, when the holiday is interrupted by a hurricane, when the mortgage cannot be paid, just then the hero, the saviour, appears to be asleep or dead or not to care if we drown, Then we, the audience are told two things: one, he’s in the boat with us, sharing the danger, we are not on our own; two, when he responds to our fear, as he will, he can speak a word from beyond us, a creative word which calls the chaos to order.

The story is if you like a dream sequence depicting Jesus the crucified and risen Lord who is with his people in the fragile ship of faith. A simple moment from the history of Jesus, crossing a lake in a boat with his disciples, becomes a story about the One who was dead and is alive for evermore. Often miracle stories are pieces of magical realism that depict a fact about the relationship of Jesus and his followers, rather than about the life of Jesus in Palestine.

Even when the gospel story is apparently ordinary history, as for example, the trial of Jesus, the magical realism is still present – just listen to that cock crowing three times! We can interpret the enhancement of the history of Jesus as a subtle way of communicating the human meaning of his life and death and rising. And besides, they’re good stories.

Desperate Dan is a product of my culture, Jesus is the producer of my faith. Two good men.

I have a special service to lead at 12 noon today, and therefore an unusually quiet Sunday morning to spend in thought. I could go to church, but my local congregation worships at 11am at which time I’ll be leaving for work. So writing a blog seems as good a way as any to discipline my thinking.

Having just returned from (French) Catalunya, I’d been considering an essay on the different forms of violence displayed in the last week in the dispute over the referendum in Spanish Catalunya, including Señor Puigdemont’s implicit violence in not recognising the opinions of Catalans who want to remain part of Spain. In a volatile situation any violence may be dangerous, and the state has a responsibility to use its monopoly of force to prevent violence rather than to promote it.  But I don’t really have much wisdom on this topic other than to confess it has made me question what percentage of a majority vote I would consider sufficient for Scottish independence, although I would once have thought 51% to 49% perfectly adequate.

Then I had an email from my friend Kostas with some material from Varoufakis on reform of the EU, which I read, marvelling at the scope of the author’s knowledge and imagination, almost as much as his complete lack of a workable plan for getting from A to B of his programme. Maybe that will come.

Maybe indeed I don’t really have a thought worth communicating, and should abandon the blogosphere to the millions who know that their opinion will benefit humanity. Maybe….perhaps…..I should listen to the quiet voice which I have often ignored as I wrote one blog after another, the voice that says, clearly enough, “Oh, shut up and listen!”

I want to protest that there’s no better recipe for madness than trying to listen to the clamour of global media, but I know the quiet voice is not directing me to a new batch of tweets, but rather reminding me that I used to imagine I could listen to God. Yes, I did, I remember, and not as an exercise in supernatural contact, but more as envisaged by D H Lawrence who wrote of “man in his wholeness, wholly attending.” He meant a disciplined awareness of oneself in the world and a disciplined openness to what comes from beyond the self.

I recollect that my mind has nagged me since I got up today with the memory of past events in which my smart mouth led me to say things that were hurtful or ungenerous or arrogant because I was in thrall to my own cleverness. It’s just as well I didn’t then have access to social media, as I would infallibly have turned bad thinking into worse messaging. One of the most painful of these memories is of a time when a female colleague was trying to tell me about her breast cancer, while I was on my high horse about some political issue. When she could stand it no longer, she said, “When God gave us one mouth and two ears he meant us to listen twice as often as we speak.”

 

There is the great bible story of Elijah who after his vigorous defence of the true God of Israel, feels overcome by the opposition, and journeys to the place of divine revelation at Sinai, where he experiences all manner of B-movie effects which do not however, reveal God. Then however he hears “ a sound of silence” that asks him what he is doing. Immediately he answers with a well- worded defence of his sacrifice for God, but is given detailed instructions about how to undermine his enemies and establish his successor. The ‘still, small voice’ beloved of sentimental preachers accepts that he is at the end of his life’s work and tells him how to finish it well. He is made quiet so that he can listen to the intelligent voice of duty. He is reminded that although he is necessary to its progress, he is not in charge of God’s business.

I think that’s what I need to hear.

 

 

 

 

 

While on holiday in the Pyrenees Orientales, I visited the so-called Cathar country where in the 13th century, at the command of the Pope, crusaders massacred thousands of innocent people because they held beliefs that were anathema to the Catholic Church. The Cathar communities came into being in the 12th century and had been almost completely eradicated by the end of the 14th.

They refused to recognise the authority of the Roman Church because they considered it corrupt and insufficiently Christlike. In this respect they shared some of the same concerns as St Francis, who, however, was obedient to the hierarchy of the church. The Cathars based their criticism of the church on a theology which was radically different from mainstream Christian tradition.

1. They insisted that there were two “principles” or Gods, one the true father of Jesus whose goodness liberates humanity from all material evils into the life of the spirit, and another who created the material universe and imprisoned humans in material bodies.

2. Much of the Old Testament they saw as witness to the activities of the evil God.

3. Jesus himself had no material body but was a disguised spirit, who therefore could not undergo a real death. For the Cathars, Jesus was the revealer of the life of the spirit.

4. Material sacraments like holy communion and baptism were rejected as unspiritual.

5. Conception and birth, as the means by which material life is continued, were seen as without value, if not evil. Some of the Cathar community might marry but those who desired to be perfect did not. As sexual difference was unimportant, women were encouraged to be leaders along with men.

6. The gospel teachings of Jesus were taken literally and put into practice: voluntary poverty, sharing of goods and love of neighbour were marks of the Cathar communities, as was admitted even by their orthodox enemies.

I have read an extended statement of Cathar beliefs by one John Lugio, dated 1240, in which he explains why he believes in “two principles” rather than one. He refers to the common problem of evil in the world and asks how so much evil can proceed from the will of a good Creator. If such an omnipotent creator intended the world to be this way, then he cannot he called good.

He recognises that the Catholic theologians have answered this difficulty by arguing that God gave human beings free will, so that they could choose good or evil. John counters this by saying that this just pushes the issue back one stage: if God is God he must known that some humans would choose evil and so he must either have intended the world to be as it is, or at least allowed it to be so. This last possibilty, that the Creator has given freedom for creatures to make their own choices and has allowed their bad choices although they give him pain, is rejected by John. He imagines God considering the evil of humanity:

“‘It repenteth me that I have made them; namely, I shall have to undergo suffering and pain in the future, through myself alone, because I made them.” And so it seems manifest, according to the doctrine of those persons who believe that there is only one First Principle, that this God and His Son, Jesus Christ, who, according to them are one and the same, causes Himself sadness, sorrow, and suffering, bearing pain in Himself without any extraneous intervention by anyone. But it is impossible and wicked to believe this of the true God.’

John glimpses a truly radical truth about the creator, that creation involves acceptance of the cross, because only through the suffering of God can human evil be forgiven and overcome. But he cannot accept this because his view of divine perfection excludes suffering. Therefore he concludes that evil originates in another principle or God, whom he designates as the creator of material reality. Faithful believers fight alongside the true God against the Evil One on behalf of spiritual goodness.

I am suggesting that Catharism, along with other dualistic theologies, grew out of a profound apprehension of evil, of the wrongness of the world as it is.  Conventional Christianity concentrates on personal sin but accepts worldy life as basically OK.  More radical believers have often questioned this acceptance and tried to make sense of a world-gone-wrong.  We can be pious and say that God simply endures the wrongness of the world, or we can be more daring and say that God has chosen this world and its wrongness over a world where goodness is achieved by compulsion. And we can assert that the consequence of this choice is that God in his/her goodness  suffers grief and pain. This vulnerability of God draws the believer to God’s side, walking the way of Jesus so that God may win against the odds. The Cathars thought this commitment entailed the existence of two opposed deities; I think it points to the   astonishing permissiveness of the one God,  who grants a genuine freedom to his/her creation, but maintains his/her goodness at the cost of pain.

All of which is to say that although I totally disagree with Cathar theology, I can  sympathise with their radical commitment to the gentleness of Jesus, their risky choice of the narrow path in a landscape of precipitous heights and depths. They were exterminated by the Church because they challenged its corrupt power. The worst thugs in Europe were employed by the Holy Father to cleanse the Albigensian lands of people whose only crime was being too clean.

A Cathar martyr described the conflict as between a “church that hides and a church that flays.”

I have described this historical event in the language of theological realism: God is this, God is that; but of course both Catholic and Cathar were engaged in inventing their Gods, as believers like me still do.

 

 

 

 

 

Today I am resuming this blog after a three week break for a family holiday in France.

In today’s news I’ve been reading a remarkable account of the creativity of capitalism, affecting, in this case, the food industry.

The Two Sisters Food Group, owned by Mr. And Mrs. Boparan, has swallowed up such well-known brands as Bernard Matthews and Harry Ramsden, so that it can provide a significant proportion of the chicken market in this country. A recent undercover investigation at one of its production units has shown employees faking the kill-dates of chicken corpses and restoring to the production line some that had been dropped on the floor. All more or less in accordance with the best traditions of the British chicken industry, you may say. But there was one particular matter which caught my attention: some chicken bits pacakaged for Lidl, which had been returned as surplus, were repacked as Tesco’s Willow Farm Chicken, which claims that its chickens are reared “exclusively for Tesco.” A lawyer for the Two Sisters explained the apparent contradiction thus: “The Willow Farms brand is exclusive to Tesco, but the raw material is not.”

I had never before seen it stated quite so clearly that a brand is a name without material content. Willow Farm Chicken exists independently of all actual dead chickens, while its immaterial content refers elegantly to supposedly idyllic English farms of the past. When I buy A pack of Willow Farm chicken I should be content that although the material content may have been bred anywhere in the world for any supermarket, the brand has been bred exclusively for Tesco. Alleluia.

Surely this invention of the immaterial brand – like The Volkswagen which is utterly removed from the filthy air- polluting vehicle people actually drive, or the Conservative Party which has nothing at all to do with the public school anarchism which is destroying our traditional way of life, or the  Sports Drink which cannot be identified with the liquid that gives you a week’s sugar in one suck – is a triumph of economic imagination. The materials may be guilty but the brands are pure and innocent. This invention is reminiscent of Allah the merciful, the compassionate, who is not responsible for the history of the  violent califates, or of the God of Love who has no part in the crusades, the Inquisition, the wars of religion, the ethnic cleansing of the Americas, or the persecution of Jews. The brand separates itself from from its (very) raw materials.

Philosophically I guess this kind of branding is similar to the Platonic notion of the forms of things. Every actual dog in the world, whether prize-winning at Crufts or stinking of the excrement it’s rolled in, derives from the pure form of dog, the innocent archetype in the world of truth. No disgraceful behaviour by any material dog can spoil the eternal form of dogness.

In his simplicity, Jesus of Nazareth found it impossible to make this kind of separation. While others were impressed by the Pharisaic or High- Priestly brands of religion, he said that the brands would be known by their fruits, that is, by the material lives amd actions of their adherents. He explained that a sound tree could not produce bad fruits, nor an unsound tree good fruits. He could see no merit in a religion whose brand was beautiful but whose material content was ugly, comparing it to a whitewashed grave or a cup washed clean on the outside only.  Not content with this unsophisticated down-to-earthness, he went so far as to call the sophisticated supporters of high-end religion, “hypocrites” meaning “play actors” whose words had nothing to do with their own material lives.

Play actors of many times and places, including popes and imams  and ministers as well as successful capitalists, have regretted the awkward simplicity of Jesus, but I find it a helpful antidote to all kinds of smart branding.

 

 

 

The story of the bear bile trade is not likely to increase admiration for the human race. Traditional healers in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan and other Asian countries think that bear bile has beneficial effects on human health; and popular culture promotes the utterly mistaken notion that it increases male sexual performance.  As a consequence the Moon Bear especially is bred, trapped, kept in cages, cathetered and deprived of its bile, for up to thirty years in some instances. In spite of some government intervention the trade remains legal in many countries, which means that an estimated 10,000 moon bears remain captive in China.

Captive bears suffer from being confined in tiny cages, with inadequate care if any, often living in their own excrement, and from a variety of painful invasions of their bodies to obtain their bile. Because they never walk their pads rot, their bones warp; because they never see the sun, their eyesight is poor, their fur is mangy, their resistance to infection is low; because they are ill-treated, they are terrified, depressed and angry. Their condition is a measure of the corruption of those who farm them. In my own country the condition of battery animals provides a similar measure.

As human beings will enslave, maim and kill other human beings for profit, it is unsurprising that they will do the same to animals.

The surprising thing is that some human beings oppose this kind of atrocity, and take action to have it stopped, while tending to as many of its victims as they can.

“Founded in 1998, Animals Asia promotes compassion and respect for all animals and works to bring about long-term change. We work to end the barbaric bear bile trade, which sees over 10,000 bears kept on bile farms in China, and, according to official figures, about 1,200 suffering the same fate in Vietnam. Animals Asia has rescued over 500 bears, caring for them at its award-winning bear sanctuaries in China and Vietnam.”

“Animals Asia also works to end the trade in dogs and cats for food in China and Vietnam, and lobbies to improve the welfare of companion animals, promote humane population management and prevent the cross border export of “meat dogs” in Asia.”
“In addition, Animals Asia campaigns for an end to abusive animal practices in zoos and safari parks in Asia, and works closely with governing authorities to improve animal management and increase awareness of the welfare needs of captive animals.”

The founder of this charity is Jill Robinson, who was moved by an encounter with a captive moon bear to campaign in the conviction that animal welfare is human welfare and vice versa. She is passionate and rational, personal and political, in her advocacy for animals. This has led to her establishment of a humane, intelligent and inclusive movement for animal welfare in Asia, which can operate even within authoritarian regimes that are averse to criticism.

The bible has provided animal lovers with a vision of comprehensive justice:

Isaiah 11English Standard Version (ESV)

11 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
9 They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

The wise rule which provides equal justice for human beings, creates at the same time peace amongst domestic and wild animals, amongst whom a human child will be safe. This vision which goes beyond what seems historically possible is nevertheless anchored in the history of Israel and its rulers. It has inspired other visionaries, notably the American Quaker painter Edward Hicks.

Animals Asia shows a number of practices common to movements for justice that work in the spirit of this vision:

1. It is founded in truth and respects facts.

2. It has clear aims.

3. It believes that other human beings will respond to its vision and therefore communicates with people in all parts of the world.

4. It believes that governments can be influenced by programmes which are for the benefit of their peoples and lands.

5. It knows that although legislation “cannot make my neighbour a good man, at least it can stop him lynching me” (Martin Luther King). The law can be a powerful force for change.

6. It is more concerned to talk quietly where it matters than to gain publicity through confrontation.

7. While it attempts to outlaw an atrocity, it seeks out present victims and provides them with loving care.

8. Inasmuch as there are genuine benefits derived from the cruelty it wants to abolish, it has worked to provide scientific alternatives.

9. Although it abhors injustice it has goodwill towards those who cause injustice.

10. It is realistic, but its hopefulness goes beyond what is real at the present time.

This kind of rebellion against injustices which are taken for granted was typical of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth – think of his attiitude to lepers amd possessed people-  and is one of the reasons he can be rightly be called a saviour.

I am just coming to the end of a part-time ministry in two linked congregations in the Angus countryside near Dundee. Over the five or six years of this association I have learned a great deal about rural life and its institutions, and about farms and farmers. Having spent all of my previous working life in cities, I had a great ignorance and considerable prejudices about the countryside, both of which have been reduced by my recent experience. When I add that the countryside in question is the lovely green strath on the southern side of the Sidlaw hills, readers will understand when I state that I feel blessed to have been given this opportunity, in my relatively advanced years.

The true blessing has been the new friendships made and sustained. Because rural living often puts people at a greater distance from each other than urban living does,  many rural dwellers put a great value on the friendships which prevent loneliness and build up community. Hospitality which fosters friendship is still recognised as a virtue in such communities. Readiness to share food, conversation, concerns and individual experience enables friendship, and although in many cases for me these friendships remained tentative rather than fully established, they involved a genuine sharing of goodwill. To know that another person with a different experience of life, likes you and values your liking of them, enhances your life and your ability to live well. Some of the pleasures of friendship – the times of mutual discovery, the fact of mutual trust, for example – are similar to those of being in love, but without the dynamics of sexual passion. There is an easiness about friendship which we do not find in sexual love. Many couples say however that in a long relationship, friendship between them has developed alongside sexual love and become as important.

Some of the friendships I have made will survive the end of my ministry, but many will not, which is why it can seem like an event of mulitiple bereavement, with losses which seriously diminish the wealth of my daily experience. I do not find this topic much addressed in the literature about retirement or changing jobs. Perhaps most people assume that friendships established through work will survive outside it. If so I consider they will be wrong as least as often as they are right. Nor is friendship itself a great topic of discussion in say, the popular press, unlike sex, while the endlessly discussed so-called friendships on Facebook are nothing of the sort.

Are there great works of art about friendship? Ancient literature abounds with friendships between warriors, Achilles and Patroclus, David and Jonathan, Roland and Oliver. Shakespeare of course recognised it in Hamlet and Horatio, Brutus and Cassius, although these are not the main matter of the plays in which they appear. Boswell’s biography of Dr. Johnson is at one level a celebration of his hero’s friendships. Mark Twain beautifully delineates friendship between Huck and Jim. Sherlock and Watson  are friends. Friendships abound in great modern masterpieces by Proust and Joyce, but in none are they the ruling subject. Perhaps the only great work of art in which a friendship is the true subject is Tennyson’s In Memoriam, where the friend has died. The poem eventually establishes the experience of friendship as constitutive of the poet’s intellectual, emotional and spiritual identity. Faced with his friend’s death and the absence of any coherent comfort, the poet says, “The heart stood up and answered, ‘I have felt.'” The experience of friendship allows Tennyson to hold to the worth of human existence even when everything else seems to reduce it to insignificance.

Perhaps in theology this sustaining human relationship has been underused as a model for understanding God. Set against the absolute use of the word love, friendship may look more ordinary. In Paul’s classic summary of the experience of God, “the GRACE of the Lord Jesus Christ, the LOVE of God and the FELLOWSHIP of the Holy Spirit” maybe we should look again at the last component, in Greek KOINONIA, often used of commercial collaboration, meaning shared enterprise,

shared life. We might define it as friendship within a common project, which for Paul means the down-to-earth shared friendship amongst members of the believing communities enabled by the shared friendship of God, extended to the newcomer and the stranger, and even to the persecutor. In this way we could give friendship its true place in the story of God: acknowledging the creative and sustaining parental love, marvelling at the passionate longing of the divine lover, we can enjoy the companionship of the divine friend, who shares our journey, and gives us other dear companions on the way. Maybe after all, the Bible is the great work of art about friendship.

 

 

Today the religions of Barcelona held their own event of opposition to last week’s atrocity. All Christian denominations, including Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, came together with Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Taoists and Bahais to asssert their common allegiance to the community of Barcelona, described as a unity of diverse people with diverse beliefs. They affirmed each other’s separate identity as a vital contribution to the richness of civic experience in Barcelona. Because the attackers had been young, the event included young women and men, encouraging them to believe that a robust personal identity was not contrary to a shared communal identity but rather a constituent of it; and to resist any attempts to found personal or group identity on hatred of others.

Civic and national leaders were present but were given no special prominence and there were no allusions to the Catalan independence issue. Religious people were saying that their very different traditions of faith and practice were directing them on the one hand to the welfare of their neighbours, and on the other to humility in holding their own versions of ultimate truth. Not that they doubted these truths, but rather that as they expressed them most clearly, they realised they pointed beyond themselves towards what cannot be expressed, but can be worshipped and lived. The great Taoist teaching is relevant: “The Way that can be (fully) told is not the Eternal Way.”

These people were not saying that their different faiths could be mingled in some super-religion that would take over from them; they were saying that their traditions had nurtured them and enabled them to keep moving into what T S Eliot called “another union, a deeper communion.” But maybe that phrase suggests a mysticism which was foreign to this gathering, whose focus was upon friendship, solidarity, wisdom and justice.

I only have a Spanish news report of this event which perhaps will not be picked up by worldwide media; but it struck me as both admirable and unusual. In a confusing world of myriad available points of view the temptation of some form of fundamentalism is strong. People, perhaps especially young people who are unsure of their identity, along with those whose identity has been shamed or abused, grasp eagerly at any certainty that promises them dignity. Many religious, as well as political leaders, understand this opportunity and gain power by offering their own form of certainty. Such brute certainty is not only a contribution to sectarian hatreds, it is also a denial of the sublety of all the great religions, who know that their good truths are not the whole truth.

A freindly act of witness to an inclusive civic culture which nurtures vibrant individual identities, gives religion a much-needed good name.