Rubbing Shoulders

It was a nice surprise to crop up on a list of 'influential' Christians last week, I'm not really sure in what other context I'd rub shoulders with the Queen and Tyson Fury. The main virtue of the list is in showing the spectrum of Christian involvement in politics and society in the UK, as well as highlighting the very real persecution of Christian converts from Islam in the UK.

I'd happily swap with Katharine Welby Roberts, Tania Marlow, or the people behind Mind and Soul. There's only 1 out of the 100 who's making any noise about mental health (unless you count Tim Farron), and that's not enough. And for anyone, like myself or Stephen Croft, who is there because we have something to say about the CofE and church growth, Bob Jackson is the one who should get the credit.

Anyway, thankyou to whoever nominated me, not sure if I've struck the right balance of mild surprise and self-deprecation, or whether I should just give up and go around feeling a bit proud for a few days.  Mind you, the commendations clearly haven't been written by anyone in my parish - 'spiritual and discerning perspective on everything'? My family could set you right on that one.... The rest of the list is worth a look, and threw up a few names and ventures I'd never heard of, and which were good to read about.

Amazing Grace

Its simply staggering to read what the families of the victims of the Charleston shootings said in court this week:

Speaking to Dylann Roof in court, she said: "I just want everybody to know, to you, I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again but I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul. You hurt me, you hurt a lot of people, but God forgive you, and I forgive you.

"Depayne Doctor was my sister. And I too thank you [the judge], on the behalf of my family, for not allowing hate to win. For me, I'm a work in progress, and I acknowledge that I am very angry but one thing Depayne ...taught me [is that] we are the family that love built. We have no room for hate so we have to forgive. I pray God on your soul and I thank God that I won't be around when your judgement day comes with him. May God bless you."

Gun control will take weapons out of peoples hands, and yet again the USA will agonise but do nothing. Only this God-given ability to love, to forgive and show grace will bring and end to violence. These are truly incredible responses - I'm sure my natural reaction would be revenge and anger, but my brothers and sisters in Charleston remind me that Jesus' people can do better than that. 

How to live 10 years longer

"living a pure life, no alcohol, no tobacco, going to bed early, praising God for his goodness and for the blessing of life".

and

Every Friday evening (the community of) Loma Linda falls quiet. On Saturday, Adventists take the day off from anything that could be considered work.

This includes browsing social media or, in some cases, watching television. For most, Saturday is a day to recuperate from the past week and to be with family and friends.

"Our Sabbath is more than just the church that takes place in the morning," says Dustin Aho, executive pastor at the huge University Church, which dominates the centre of town.

"The actual Sabbath day is in our name, Seventh-day Adventists, and so the day is crucial. What is more crucial to us is the time set aside for our community and for our God."

and vegetarianism. Here's the full story

Warsi: Europe should be more confident in its Christianity

Baroness Warsi has written a piece for the Telegraph today, which is an interesting new angle on the secularisation debate. Writing in advance of a trip to the Vatican, she says

I will be arguing for Europe to become more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity. The point is this: the societies we live in, the cultures we have created, the values we hold and the things we fight for all stem from centuries of discussion, dissent and belief in Christianity.

These values shine through our politics, our public life, our culture, our economics, our language and our architecture. And, as I will say today, you cannot and should not extract these Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can or should erase the spires from our landscapes.

Quite striking, coming from a Muslim. Someone reminded me yesterday that there's part of the Lords prayer (I think) inscribed on the walls of the House of Commons, so to eradicate prayer from Parliament you'd have to repaint the place as well as rejig the timetable.

BBC summary here. And linking to the Bideford case, a piece from the Guardian which argues that the NSS may have shot itself in the foot, and that the case is a victory for religious freedom.

The British Humanist Association response to Baroness Warsi is oddly out of touch:
The British Humanist Association (BHA) described Baroness Warsi's comments as "outdated, unwarranted and divisive".

"In an increasingly non-religious and, at the same time, diverse society, we need policies that will emphasise what we have in common as citizens rather than what divides us," said BHA chief executive Andrew Copson.

well, yes, but there are some issues in our society which just affect women: is it divisive to focus on them? What about tackling stigma on the mentally ill, or youth unemployment, or children with special needs? Being a diverse society doesn't mean a lowest common denominator humanism, it means affirming and valuing people in their diversity, and valuing what that diversity brings to the common society. It also means that the whole values the parts in their diversity, rather than trying to eradicate them all. And part of what we have in common is a Christian heritage in our society, whatever you happen to think of that. So the BHA response  makes for a good quote, but rapidly unravels.
 
And be careful what you wish for: the USA has a much more rigorous separation of religion and state, whilst at the same time having a much more publicly confident Christianity, right up to Presidential prayer breakfasts. Imagine the stick Cameron would get for holding one of those in Downing Street? 
 
We are a post-Christian society, and I'm all for a debate about what's appropriate from our past and what isn't. But it should be a renegotiation, not a land grab by one side or another.

Mistaken ideas atheists have about Christians

In the interests of constructive debate, I'm working with Steve Borthwick on some cross-posts to help atheists and Christians understand each other better, so that we can do slightly better than taking the mickey out of each other. We'd both like to address the misconceptions that 'the other side' have about atheists/Christians.

I asked my Twitter crowd for 'things Christians would like atheists to know' and have had the following responses so far:

"we don't check our brains in at the door when we meet together as church"
"The vast majority of us are not biblical literalists or creationists"
"we share as many doubts and as much faith as each other"
"That we're not all brainwashed, right-wing anti-Darwinian idiots. Oh, and some of us used to be militant atheists too."
"we use our brains. We like stuff like science & art too. We're not closed shop we try best to love even those we disagree with."

there's a common thread emerging here....

Please add your own in the comments or via Twitter.

The responses will help me put a post together for Steve's blog, and he'll be posting here to give my (mainly Christian) readership a better handle on atheism. But start here if you can't wait until then, excellent post.

(by sheer coincidence, if you believe in that sort of thing, Slipstream is focusing on the 'new atheism' this month, with various book extracts to read, and an interview with Peter Williams, author of 'A Sceptics Guide to Atheism.

See also this on Maggi Dawn, which is partly the reason I'm doing the cross post. Not all atheists are 'new atheists' and not all Christians are creationists)

TV - Christianity, A History; Around the World in 80 Faiths pt 3

Channel 4 doesn't do straight religious documentaries, so it's probably not fair to expect 'Christianity, A History' to be objective. It clearly isn't meant to be: Howard Jacobsen's polemic on the Jewishness of Jesus and how Christians have obscured it, and Michael Portillo's meditation on Constantine the politician, each presenter so far brings such a strong lens of their own to the subject. It's hard to know whether you're being presented with history, or a sermon.

In fact, though historically rooted, both programmes have been highly selective in the historical events they highlight, and the significance given to them. For instance, Jacobsen paints Paul as a lone voice for the Jesus movement embracing Gentiles, when several of the other apostles (Peter, Philip, John) are involved in evangelism of Gentiles too. Portillo claims that the final version of the New Testament was put together by Eusebius, Constantine's spin-doctor, which is a claim you're unlikely to find in any history book. Even more peculiar was one scholar arguing that there couldn't have been a Roman census at the time of Jesus birth because Judea wasn't in the Roman empire. Hello?

Notable by their absence in either programme was anyone who took issue with the presenters point of view. So what we got was a selective and partial presentation of the facts (or 'facts') as though they were the whole truth. Meanwhile, for events from the life of Jesus, the Jacobsen programme gave us some kitsch images from old black and white movies on the life of Jesus - deliberately chosen for how silly they looked? Surely not.

There was plenty to learn from watching both programmes, but there was also such a clear agenda from the presenters that it became a major job sorting out fact from interpretation, which spoils the programmes.

Other views: Ekklesia in conversation with Jeremy Dear, producer of the series

Ruth Gledhill has some sizeable quotes from the Jacobsen programme. The comments are well worth a read, with several people surprised that Jacobsen was presenting Jesus Jewishness as some kind of new revelation to Christians.

Kings Evangelical Divinity School blog The overall effect of the programme was to leave the general viewer with the impression that the blame for the treatment of the Jewish people over the past 2000 years should be laid squarely on the shoulders of Christians.

the Independent has 2 reviews, this one thought it was 'great TV', and Tom Sutcliffe recognises that the series isn't quite what the title suggests. This isn't a part-work history, through-composed by someone with a seat in divinity. It's a collection of pointedly personal essays, loosely arranged around the evolving chronology of the Church.


Meanwhile over on BBC2, Peter Owen Jones made it to Africa (he looks increasingly knackered with each programme) on part 3 of Around the World in 80 Faiths. Avoiding the frontlines of religious life in places like Nigeria and Sudan, he took in 3 variants of voodoo, an ancient tribal hunting dance in Botswana, witch doctors in Africa, and finally Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. You learn a bit more about the faiths because POJ is willing to throw himself into the project, walking out only when the voodoo gathering started to dismember animals. (Worth remembering, though, that this is basic to Old Testament religion too).

He was clearly most moved by the Ethiopians, though whilst they had their 18 hour prayer vigil up the mountain, Jones retired to his camp to get a full nights sleep!

It's still all very much about people's personal connections to 'the divine' or 'the spirits' - no faith yet has been shown in practical action (apart from his comments about the hospitality of the Ethiopians in the midst of dire poverty), and there's been nothing much about faiths active in mission: they are all pretty self-contained, set within their culture. The Middle East is the next one, which will be fascinating.

Christianity, A History - New Channel 4 Series

New TV series starting on Channel 4 on Sunday at 7pm, there's a tie-in article in the Independent which looks at the changing face of religious TV, and a bit of the background to the series. Here's a snippet

The eight films in our series are each authored by a different commentator with a particular view or stake in the topic. For instance, the Independent's own Howard Jacobson rails magnificently against Christianity's denial of Jesus' Jewishness, and explores how this laid the ground for 2,000 years of anti-semitism. Michael Portillo investigates the political ramifications of Christianity's acceptance into the Roman Empire. Robert Beckford embraces the British conversion to Christianity as the defining moment of our history. Rageh Omaar considers the taint of the Crusades on relations with Islam today, and Cherie Blair asks whether, after the horrors of the 20th-century, Christianity has a future in the 21st. What all the films have in common is the idea that, believer or not, you can't deny the continuing influence of faith on almost every aspect of our world today – and that includes television.

It also got a spread in the latest Radio Times. That's print media, you know, the stuff where you pick it up and turn pages.

Here's the series homepage on channel 4.