Trafalgar Square is to play host to a passion play on Good Friday this year, 2nd April.
full report at the Guardian:
With a cast of about 150 actors, donkeys, horses and an artificial tomb, the organisers anticipate some 25,000 spectators. It is less ambitious than the Life of Christ, a six-hour epic performed annually at the Wintershall estate in Surrey involving camels, a lake acting as both the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee, more than 200 actors and 30 sheep.
The play is being put on by the Wintershall estate, who regularly stage Nativities and plays about the life of Jesus in the grounds of the estate in Surrey.
2010 is also the year for the 10-yearly passion play in Oberammergau, so maybe London is a carbon-friendly alternative for people who are watching the air miles.
Links
Passion Play UK
BBC
Telegraph, which is cut and paste from the BBC. Or perhaps a press release.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
'After You Believe', new Tom Wright book
Tom/NT Wright has a new book due out in March, called 'After You Believe'. The book tackles the problem that many churches see their job as warehousing people for heaven: counting the souls in through the door, and then keeping them safe but otherwise unchanged until the next life.
The book is about Christian character, and how it's formed. Interesting to note that 'character' is a current issue in various places - witness Mondays' Demos event with David Cameron at the start of their enquiry into character and it's place in the good society. Here's an extract from an interview with Wright:
N.T. Wright: The point about the word “virtue” – if we can recapture it in its strong sense – is that it refers, not so much to “doing the right things”, but to the forming of habits and hence of moral character.
I remember Rowan Williams describing the difference between a soldier who has a stiff drink and charges off into battle waving a sword and shouting a battle-cry, and the soldier who calmly makes 1000 small decisions to place someone else’s safety ahead of his or her own and then, on the 1001st time, when it really is a life-or-death situation, “instinctively” making the right decision. That, rather than the first, is the virtue of “courage”.
In the book I use, as a “secular” example, the lifetime forming of habits exemplified by Chesley Sullenberger III, the pilot who, last January, brought the US Airbus down safely in the Hudson River after a flock of geese got into the engines after take-off from La Guardia. All his instincts had been trained so that when the moment came he didn’t have to stop to think what to do; it just “came naturally”.
Forming character by deliberate choices goes against the grain of just doing what we feel like, and expressing ourselves - another extract from the same interview on Prodigal Kiwis makes this point. The goal of character formation is that holiness becomes 'what we feel like' and 'what comes naturally', rather than just a random splurge of what we happen to be thinking or feeling.
I'll be interested to see what Wright sees as the path to character formation. My suspicion is that a lot of it will be about getting a correct understanding of life, God, the future and the present. We're currently talking about character and change on our Growing Leaders course with a group of lay leaders, and exploring what helps this process, including spiritual disciplines, accountability, reflection, suffering, overcoming at the points where we're tempted to quit etc.
Making disciples is the great challenge for the modern church, so if Tom Wright is applying his mind to this then so much the better. What I'd really like to see though is not a book, but a curriculum.
The book is about Christian character, and how it's formed. Interesting to note that 'character' is a current issue in various places - witness Mondays' Demos event with David Cameron at the start of their enquiry into character and it's place in the good society. Here's an extract from an interview with Wright:
N.T. Wright: The point about the word “virtue” – if we can recapture it in its strong sense – is that it refers, not so much to “doing the right things”, but to the forming of habits and hence of moral character.
I remember Rowan Williams describing the difference between a soldier who has a stiff drink and charges off into battle waving a sword and shouting a battle-cry, and the soldier who calmly makes 1000 small decisions to place someone else’s safety ahead of his or her own and then, on the 1001st time, when it really is a life-or-death situation, “instinctively” making the right decision. That, rather than the first, is the virtue of “courage”.
In the book I use, as a “secular” example, the lifetime forming of habits exemplified by Chesley Sullenberger III, the pilot who, last January, brought the US Airbus down safely in the Hudson River after a flock of geese got into the engines after take-off from La Guardia. All his instincts had been trained so that when the moment came he didn’t have to stop to think what to do; it just “came naturally”.
Forming character by deliberate choices goes against the grain of just doing what we feel like, and expressing ourselves - another extract from the same interview on Prodigal Kiwis makes this point. The goal of character formation is that holiness becomes 'what we feel like' and 'what comes naturally', rather than just a random splurge of what we happen to be thinking or feeling.
I'll be interested to see what Wright sees as the path to character formation. My suspicion is that a lot of it will be about getting a correct understanding of life, God, the future and the present. We're currently talking about character and change on our Growing Leaders course with a group of lay leaders, and exploring what helps this process, including spiritual disciplines, accountability, reflection, suffering, overcoming at the points where we're tempted to quit etc.
Making disciples is the great challenge for the modern church, so if Tom Wright is applying his mind to this then so much the better. What I'd really like to see though is not a book, but a curriculum.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
UK Border Agency: Invasion of the Baby-Snatchers
The thundering knock came early in the morning. It was 6.30am. Without waiting for an answer the security chain across the door was smashed from its fittings. Feet thundered up the staircase. The five children, all under the age of 10, were alarmed to be woken from their sleep by the dozen burly strangers who burst into their bedrooms, switched on the lights and shouted at them to get up.
This is not a police state. It is Manchester in supposedly civilised Britain in the 21st century. There is a clue to what this is about in the names of the children: Nardin, who is 10; Karin who is seven; the three-year-old twins Bishoy and Anastasia, and their one-year-old baby sister Angela.
Their parents, Hany and Samah Mansour, are Coptic Christians who fled to the UK after a campaign of persecution by a group of Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt whose friends in the secret police tortured Hany. But even though six Coptic Christians were shot dead by Muslim extremists only last week in a town not far from their home, the British Government has decided that it does not believe them. And so Britain's deportation police have launched another of their terrifying dawn raids on sleeping children.
Paul Valleley on the fate of another family who fell foul of the UK immigration system, and the inhumane treatment of children and families within the detention centres. It's a long piece, but the detail is necessary - over 1300 children were held in immigration centres in 2008-9, centres which have been condemned by a number of independent reports into child welfare. The Royal College of Paediatrics and the Royal College of Psychiatry recently investigated the mental health of children held at detention centres:
It shows that every single one of the children seen in Yarl's Wood by a team of paediatricians and psychologists displayed some signs of distress and 73 per cent of children they examined had developed clinically significant emotional and behavioural problems since being detained. None had previously had such problems..... All the children seen by clinical psychologists presented as being disorientated, confused and frightened. More than half, who had previously been well behaved at home and in school, had developed conduct problems.
There is currently an early day motion in the Commons calling for an end to child detention, with over 100 signatories.
Valleley concludes his piece:
When a family is ripped so brutally from their home it is not just those who are carted away by the police to whom an injustice is done. Something is rent in the very fabric of the community. "The second time they were taken away was very disturbing for the rest of Karin's class," said Anna Ward. "The other children were all crying they were very shaken by it. It was as if they didn't know who to trust."
What would happen, I ask 10-year-old Nardin, if the family gets another sunrise knock on their front door. She cuts me off, mid-question. "Don't say knock," she corrects me, "because they don't knock. They just smash the chain off the lock and march in."
What kind of country allows that happen to innocent children as they sleep in their own beds?
Mine, I'm ashamed to say.
Robespierre "Terror is nothing other than justice: prompt, severe, inflexible."
Update: and things are going to get worse. The UKBA is restricting the number of cases where it's required to give 72 hours notice of removal, which gives people the opportunity to contact a lawyer.
The current 72-hour notice rule was imposed following strong condemnation by judges of the Home Office resorting to trickery and devious tactics in order to deprive people of the opportunity to challenge their removal - including inviting people to 'interviews' where they are detained, and swooping on homes after working hours to detain families for removal early the following morning.
This is not a police state. It is Manchester in supposedly civilised Britain in the 21st century. There is a clue to what this is about in the names of the children: Nardin, who is 10; Karin who is seven; the three-year-old twins Bishoy and Anastasia, and their one-year-old baby sister Angela.
Their parents, Hany and Samah Mansour, are Coptic Christians who fled to the UK after a campaign of persecution by a group of Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt whose friends in the secret police tortured Hany. But even though six Coptic Christians were shot dead by Muslim extremists only last week in a town not far from their home, the British Government has decided that it does not believe them. And so Britain's deportation police have launched another of their terrifying dawn raids on sleeping children.
Paul Valleley on the fate of another family who fell foul of the UK immigration system, and the inhumane treatment of children and families within the detention centres. It's a long piece, but the detail is necessary - over 1300 children were held in immigration centres in 2008-9, centres which have been condemned by a number of independent reports into child welfare. The Royal College of Paediatrics and the Royal College of Psychiatry recently investigated the mental health of children held at detention centres:
It shows that every single one of the children seen in Yarl's Wood by a team of paediatricians and psychologists displayed some signs of distress and 73 per cent of children they examined had developed clinically significant emotional and behavioural problems since being detained. None had previously had such problems..... All the children seen by clinical psychologists presented as being disorientated, confused and frightened. More than half, who had previously been well behaved at home and in school, had developed conduct problems.
There is currently an early day motion in the Commons calling for an end to child detention, with over 100 signatories.
Valleley concludes his piece:
When a family is ripped so brutally from their home it is not just those who are carted away by the police to whom an injustice is done. Something is rent in the very fabric of the community. "The second time they were taken away was very disturbing for the rest of Karin's class," said Anna Ward. "The other children were all crying they were very shaken by it. It was as if they didn't know who to trust."
What would happen, I ask 10-year-old Nardin, if the family gets another sunrise knock on their front door. She cuts me off, mid-question. "Don't say knock," she corrects me, "because they don't knock. They just smash the chain off the lock and march in."
What kind of country allows that happen to innocent children as they sleep in their own beds?
Mine, I'm ashamed to say.
Robespierre "Terror is nothing other than justice: prompt, severe, inflexible."
Update: and things are going to get worse. The UKBA is restricting the number of cases where it's required to give 72 hours notice of removal, which gives people the opportunity to contact a lawyer.
The current 72-hour notice rule was imposed following strong condemnation by judges of the Home Office resorting to trickery and devious tactics in order to deprive people of the opportunity to challenge their removal - including inviting people to 'interviews' where they are detained, and swooping on homes after working hours to detain families for removal early the following morning.
General Synod Headline Predictor
Update 1 Tuesday 9th Feb: 1 out of 1. Church Mouse has been monitoring progress. Thinking Anglicans collects the headlines - Guardian 'New split in Church of England over Women Bishops' is the closest, though it's hardly 'new'!
In fact, it's there more than once: according to Thinking Anglicans summary of business, there is debate on the follow-up to Mission Shaped Church on Feb 9th, a presentation on Fresh Expressions on Thurs 11th, and a Children and Youth strategy report also on the 11th called 'Going for Growth', which hopefully is in the same ball park.
The most popular private members motion, which somehow hasn't made it to the order paper, is also about Fresh Expressions, and encouraging the creation of a library of worship visuals for people trying to do creative things in their local church.
However, my predicted headlines are linked to other business:
Monday: Anglicans Split Over Women Bishops (there's more debate due about this, I imagine half the articles are already written and filed, complete with headlines, regardless of what's actually said.)
Tuesday: Broke C of E's Pension Black Hole (debate about proposed changes to the clergy pension scheme, following consultations in the autumn. There's likely to be an increase in retirement age, and in the contribution rate, and some other reforms, to try to close the financial gap. It'll be interesting to see if they factor in the almost 100% bounce back in the Stock Market since autumn 2008, as the maths now looks rather different to the way it looked 12 months ago)
Wednesday: Church Slams BBC for Marginalising Religion there's a private members motion due on this. The vote will depend how many people watched A History of Christianity. Has the average Synod member discovered IPlayer?
Thursday: Church of Warcraft: Bishops Declare War on Violent Computer Games There's a very sensible private members motion calling for classifcation to be tightened on explicit computer games. Unfortunately it won't make a massive difference - if parents don't pay the blindest bit of notice to game classifications and let their kids play with anthing, then changing the classification won't really affect anything.
It's still a month until General Synod, and I'd be geniunely thrilled if all 4 of these proved to be wrong. They're certainly not the 4 most important items on the agenda.
Update 2: Thursday 10th Feb. 1 1/4 out of 3. Wednesdays headlines dominated by Rowan Williams address and what it said about women and sex (2 separate issues, sort of, calm down there), and synod thankfully rowed back from the BBC motion to something more generalised. There was also nearly 2 1/2 hours spent kicking a motion on the church in the USA into the long grass. I wonder if there should be a calcluation of how much every minute of Synod time actually costs, and to have a running display during the course of a debate. Last time I looked, the CofE was in a bit of a hole over finance, membership, leadership and age profile, so it's a bit frustrating to see where a lot of the time and energy is going at Synod.
A few months ago I noted that a debate on mission had been ditched from the General Synod agenda. It's good therefore to discover that mission is back on the agenda for next months session.In fact, it's there more than once: according to Thinking Anglicans summary of business, there is debate on the follow-up to Mission Shaped Church on Feb 9th, a presentation on Fresh Expressions on Thurs 11th, and a Children and Youth strategy report also on the 11th called 'Going for Growth', which hopefully is in the same ball park.
The most popular private members motion, which somehow hasn't made it to the order paper, is also about Fresh Expressions, and encouraging the creation of a library of worship visuals for people trying to do creative things in their local church.
However, my predicted headlines are linked to other business:
Monday: Anglicans Split Over Women Bishops (there's more debate due about this, I imagine half the articles are already written and filed, complete with headlines, regardless of what's actually said.)
Tuesday: Broke C of E's Pension Black Hole (debate about proposed changes to the clergy pension scheme, following consultations in the autumn. There's likely to be an increase in retirement age, and in the contribution rate, and some other reforms, to try to close the financial gap. It'll be interesting to see if they factor in the almost 100% bounce back in the Stock Market since autumn 2008, as the maths now looks rather different to the way it looked 12 months ago)
Wednesday: Church Slams BBC for Marginalising Religion there's a private members motion due on this. The vote will depend how many people watched A History of Christianity. Has the average Synod member discovered IPlayer?
Thursday: Church of Warcraft: Bishops Declare War on Violent Computer Games There's a very sensible private members motion calling for classifcation to be tightened on explicit computer games. Unfortunately it won't make a massive difference - if parents don't pay the blindest bit of notice to game classifications and let their kids play with anthing, then changing the classification won't really affect anything.
It's still a month until General Synod, and I'd be geniunely thrilled if all 4 of these proved to be wrong. They're certainly not the 4 most important items on the agenda.
Monday, January 11, 2010
New BBC series on the history of the family
January must be retrospective month at the Beeb, with last weeks 'History of Now' on the Noughties replaced by Kirsty Youngs The British Family. The series looks at how families have changed since the 2nd World War.
Young has written a lengthy piece introducing the first programme, which tracks some of the changes in roles and attitudes in early postwar decades:
I'm a mum of two daughters. I'm also a step-mum and the daughter of a divorce that happened in the period covered by our first programme - the period which traces how marriage changed from the end of the war to the end of the 60s.
So when I started out making The British Family, I was acutely aware that this wasn't the kind of TV series you could simply consign to the compartment labelled "work".
Doing a series about family meant thinking about your own most intimate and meaningful relationships, the lives of the people who are bound most closely to you in life. Divorce has profoundly affected my life and the lives of millions of others. But does that mean our commitment to family has fallen apart?
If there is one thing that unites the experiences of everyone we met making these programmes, it is the simple message: family matters.
Fast forward to the present day, and David Camerons' thoughts on Conservative family policy, including intervention where poor parenting is letting children down. A lot is still in flux, and up for grabs. 'Family' itself is one of those social institutions, like class (see History of Now, which noted the end of class as a significant marker), which is no longer a 'given'. Does that mean that every generation, even every individual, has to renegotiate what 'family' means, or are there some points on the compass?
Young has written a lengthy piece introducing the first programme, which tracks some of the changes in roles and attitudes in early postwar decades:
I'm a mum of two daughters. I'm also a step-mum and the daughter of a divorce that happened in the period covered by our first programme - the period which traces how marriage changed from the end of the war to the end of the 60s.
So when I started out making The British Family, I was acutely aware that this wasn't the kind of TV series you could simply consign to the compartment labelled "work".
Doing a series about family meant thinking about your own most intimate and meaningful relationships, the lives of the people who are bound most closely to you in life. Divorce has profoundly affected my life and the lives of millions of others. But does that mean our commitment to family has fallen apart?
If there is one thing that unites the experiences of everyone we met making these programmes, it is the simple message: family matters.
Fast forward to the present day, and David Camerons' thoughts on Conservative family policy, including intervention where poor parenting is letting children down. A lot is still in flux, and up for grabs. 'Family' itself is one of those social institutions, like class (see History of Now, which noted the end of class as a significant marker), which is no longer a 'given'. Does that mean that every generation, even every individual, has to renegotiate what 'family' means, or are there some points on the compass?
World Fat Map
This is a redrawn global map based on food consumption. It's not quite as bad as the one below, based on military spending, though the top bloaters are pretty much the same suspects.
Shallowfrozenwater explains more.
"In 2006, the World Food Program produced, but never publicly released, a map charting food consumption. Dubbed the “Fat Map,” it shows where the world’s calories go. Nations grow or shrink based on how much the average person eats. Depending on your perspective, it maps starvation or overeating.
The mis-distribution of food goes deeper than even the “Fat Map” implies. In India, for example, more than 300 million overweight people coexist with another 300 million who starve. Chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease that often stem from overeating are growing at a far faster rate in developing countries than in the more prosperous West.
I take it everyone is ok with this?
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Les Isaacs Interview
Very powerful interview with Les Isaacs, founder of Street Pastors, on Radio 4 yesterday. It's quite powerful to find a bloke in contact with so much violence and darkness, who at the same time is so hopeful and optimistic about how people can change.
Had the first session of training for our new intake of Street Pastors yesterday, 17 of them from 8 different churches, plus input from the Mayor of Yeovil and the beat manager for the town centre. Very positive morning, and it looks like we've got enough (44) to do Friday and Saturday evenings every week from the spring.
Here's my attempt to embed the interview:
Had the first session of training for our new intake of Street Pastors yesterday, 17 of them from 8 different churches, plus input from the Mayor of Yeovil and the beat manager for the town centre. Very positive morning, and it looks like we've got enough (44) to do Friday and Saturday evenings every week from the spring.
Here's my attempt to embed the interview:
Seen Elsewhere: atheists in strange places, attention-seeking, and Allah (or not)
Heresy Corner gives a brief run-down on the 13 people making up a new faith advisory council for the government.
David Hayward gets in touch with his inner atheist, so does Friendly Atheist, who asks if atheists have an inner theist. This is getting complicated.
Mark Meynell has an amazing visual of the 63,000 or so cross-references in the Bible. Good piece there also on how we make use of online sermons and worship. The problem with audio or even videos of sermons is that they can kid us into thinking we’re part of the church experience – when we’re far from it.
Carl Trueman on blogging and attention seeking:
We mediocrities struggle at a different level, hoping that our own petty contributions, irrelevant and ephemeral as they are, will be puffed and acknowledged by others; and, in a sense, there is nothing we can do about that. I am a man divided against myself; I want to be the centre of attention because I am a fallen human being; I want others to know that I am the special one; and as long as the new me and the old me are bound together in a single, somatic unity, I will forever be at war with myself
Dave Walker has a roundup of various responses to the clergy bullying stuff earlier in the week.
Archdruid Eileen wades into the moral stir-fry that is Celebrity Big Brother.
The Vicars Wife is collecting school prayers. So if yours has mysteriously vanished, she's probably got it.
Eddie Arthur has some good reflections on whether a Malay Christian can call God 'God' in their native tongue. Or 'Allah', as they would say.
David Hayward gets in touch with his inner atheist, so does Friendly Atheist, who asks if atheists have an inner theist. This is getting complicated.
Mark Meynell has an amazing visual of the 63,000 or so cross-references in the Bible. Good piece there also on how we make use of online sermons and worship. The problem with audio or even videos of sermons is that they can kid us into thinking we’re part of the church experience – when we’re far from it.
Carl Trueman on blogging and attention seeking:
We mediocrities struggle at a different level, hoping that our own petty contributions, irrelevant and ephemeral as they are, will be puffed and acknowledged by others; and, in a sense, there is nothing we can do about that. I am a man divided against myself; I want to be the centre of attention because I am a fallen human being; I want others to know that I am the special one; and as long as the new me and the old me are bound together in a single, somatic unity, I will forever be at war with myself
Dave Walker has a roundup of various responses to the clergy bullying stuff earlier in the week.
Archdruid Eileen wades into the moral stir-fry that is Celebrity Big Brother.
The Vicars Wife is collecting school prayers. So if yours has mysteriously vanished, she's probably got it.
Eddie Arthur has some good reflections on whether a Malay Christian can call God 'God' in their native tongue. Or 'Allah', as they would say.
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