tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-104409522024-03-07T10:54:45.713-08:00The Kew ContinuumWe are living through some of the strangest times in which it is vital for Christians not to lose their heads - to be prepared to do some hard thinking and dreaming about how we best fulfill the mission the Lord God has entrusted to us. As we look together at our journey with God, this is a setting in which you are going to discover the inner working of my mind as we wrestle with these concerns - and I will discover the inner working of yours.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.comBlogger232125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-63342998913548453242010-09-18T23:24:00.000-07:002010-09-20T00:15:54.071-07:00Reflections on Benedict XVI's visit to Britain<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMjDbWSC-HF4rs9tYkHx5f2e69bQEB3GBIc8lzXrRUTpJWMNcLhzJl_7t8FP3eCkNGH_pl7sTkiPC_zpegK7xAbNrVlsk9ORlD4yyz9OoHOXC4D30RZw-hSZu_p9zeOzPuL3x5/s1600/pope_273788s.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 136px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMjDbWSC-HF4rs9tYkHx5f2e69bQEB3GBIc8lzXrRUTpJWMNcLhzJl_7t8FP3eCkNGH_pl7sTkiPC_zpegK7xAbNrVlsk9ORlD4yyz9OoHOXC4D30RZw-hSZu_p9zeOzPuL3x5/s200/pope_273788s.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518890907765130594" /></a><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">Cambridge, England,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">September 20, 2010</span></div><div><br /></div>I have spent the last few days watching the coverage of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain. The Pope has shown extraordinary stamina for an 83-year-old, and great fortitude in the face of the negativity toward him from some many quarters. I suspect that Britain's historic distrust of Catholicism still lurks beneath the surface. <div><br /></div><div>By the end of the Saturday evening prayer vigil in Hyde Park, London, he looked utterly exhausted -- but happy, and happier still when he had beatified John Henry Newman in Birmingham on Sunday morning. Perhaps the most moving moment for me, however, was when he and the Archbishop of Canterbury stood side-by-side on the steps of the high altar in Westminster Abbey and together pronounced the blessing at the end of the beautiful prayer service held there.<div><br /></div><div>There was tension hanging in the air when he arrived, but as the days passed there was a visible thawing toward Benedict, who handled himself with great grace and courtesy. To me there has been the deepening sense that while there are huge barriers that hold us apart from our brothers and sisters in Rome, there is very much more that we have in common, especially in the face of an assertive secularism. </div><div><br /></div><div>Interestingly, there was a mingling of Anglican, Protestant, and Catholic hymnody at the gatherings, with John Newton's "Amazing Grace"being belted out in Birmingham, while the last hymn sung at the vigil in Hyde Park was "Tell out my soul..." by Timothy Dudley-Smith, an evangelical Anglican bishop trained at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. Following that the choir sung a well-known piece by John Rutter. It seems that not only are elements of our liturgies converging, but we praising God with many of the same songs. These may be little things, but they are evidence of two streams that want to run together despite all the difficulties. </div><div><br /></div><div>The dark side of the Pope's visit to Britain has been the constant reminders of the Roman Church's child abuse scandals. The Pope constantly apologized, as indeed he should, but for his detractors that is not enough. While the activities of a tiny minority of sick priests is detestable in the extreme, these sins should be measured alongside the extraordinary ways in which Roman Catholics in Britain have served the poor and needy, provided education, and stood firm in times of need -- all in the midst of proclaiming the love of Christ. Indeed, my own granddaughter is being educated at a Roman Catholic elementary school not far from Newman's Oratory Church in Birmingham, an education that is enriched and tempered by the evangelical Anglican parish she attends on Sunday mornings!</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet it is this dark side of the papal visit that has added ferocity to the response of the secular left and atheism toward all things Christian. While the media have generally covered things better than I had anticipated, these opponents have been allowed to get away with things that are scurrilous, tainted by anger and viciousness. For example, on the BBC World Service the other morning a question was asked of a sophisticate of a detractor; his throwaway response that he would not deign to answer a question about "a man who wears lace and red shoes" cried out for cross-examination, but he was allowed to get away with it. While it is clear that there are some wonderful people at the BBC who have treated this visit with great grace, there are others there and in the newspaper who have taken every opportunity to cast aspersions.</div><div><br /></div><div>After having lived back here for three years I have little doubt that Europe has been disposing of its Christian heritage with a breathless rapidity. This sexual crisis in the Roman Catholic church has certainly not helped the cause of Christ, either within Catholicism or beyond for in one way or another we are all being tarred with the same brush. It is almost impossible for a holy man like Benedict to claim any high ground when members of the priesthood have behaved so badly and seem in certain cases to have gotten away with it. This is perceived as an inconsistent hypocrisy that Christians should not be allowed to get away with, barring their access to the high moral ground. </div><div><br /></div><div>In my more pessimistic moments I find myself wondering how on earth the churches are going to recover from this horror. Cleaning house is necessary, but the memory will remain as a scar for generations to come. This is just one more strike against the faith. Nothing short of a new Reformation and Counter-Reformation is called for, and at the moment it is hard to see from where that might come.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a sense of wrestling not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers whose reach seems almost limitless. This is a continent that is assertively and with glee turning its back on its spiritual and intellectual heritage in favor of the empty puffery of materialism, and a purposeless listlessness coupled with self-indulgence. In a way this crisis could not have come at a worse moment, but in the timing there might be evidence of just a glimmering of the providence of God. Could it be that the old traditions that have shaped European Christianity for so many centuries now must be deconstructed and reconstructed -- but this time to enable mission and not governance/control? It is certainly the case that structures that had seemed solid and immovable just a few years ago are starting to totter.</div><div><br /></div><div>Christianity is not dead in Europe, as can be seen by the multi-national crowds that turned out to honor the Pope, but it is certainly going through a very difficult time. Could it be that the structures with which we have lived since the Reformation are in their dying days and that not too far into the future we will see a 21st Century remaking of the churches in order that they might effectively proclaim Christ to pagans, Muslims, materialists, and secularists alike? Already many are exploring new ways, something that could well snowball.</div><div><br /></div><div>I would like to think we are on the verge of a new beginning, but first it is from relationships like those being forged through Benedict's visit that residual distrust is given permission to edge toward a more cooperative fellowship. Europe is not lost to the Christian gospel, the wounds inflicted have not been moral, but there is much to be done and prayed over in this generation if the faith focused on Jesus Christ is to begin to assert itself again in this part of the world.</div></div>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-10555325966513267832010-08-30T03:30:00.000-07:002010-08-31T00:26:24.013-07:00Now I am sixty-five... (with apologies to A.A.Milne)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9lZ4vfRV_lczQPeXln_wbchOW_1R-BqYp1bHop3o2QnY4vMn7zp-dwbuSX0MOfRZu96BiR9JHCir_XkywHmVk2Rf89p2U2F_tjhVYJHgWgN6vesqKE-XZ-va-S1q6-lMM6Xpj/s1600/0525361278.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 95px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9lZ4vfRV_lczQPeXln_wbchOW_1R-BqYp1bHop3o2QnY4vMn7zp-dwbuSX0MOfRZu96BiR9JHCir_XkywHmVk2Rf89p2U2F_tjhVYJHgWgN6vesqKE-XZ-va-S1q6-lMM6Xpj/s200/0525361278.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511163669468662626" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">My inspiration</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cambridge, England</span></div><div><br /></div>After a week that included torrential rain this particular day dawned bright and fair. I knew it was coming, but had stuffed the idea to the back of my mind, paying little attention to it until two or three days before it actually occurred; now I found myself early that morning sitting with my bible, my journal, and feeling glum. All sorts of thoughts ran through my mind, some of them less than charitable. I had turned sixty-five and there was no way on earth that I could ever again pretend I was young. Having been raised and worked my whole life in a culture that glorifies youthfulness, it had been possible to kid myself, but the march of time had brought any lying to myself to a conclusion.<div><br /></div><div>As the day progressed greetings started popping into my Facebook inbox, together with cards through the letterbox. Most were gracious, some were humorous, one or two were rude, and my former churchwarden deigned to call me an "old man," not that I felt that old. In fact, in some ways I feel younger now than I did ten or even fifteen years ago. My brain is still working pretty well (after a fashion), and my elder daughter following her mother's genetic line has more gray hair than I do! The body is working pretty well, too, and the crippling back pain that marked my middle years seems to moved on to make someone else's life misery. I admit that I tire more easily, and am now convinced that televisions have been designed to encourage an evening nap before going to bed.</div><div><br /></div><div>But here I am at that age when most of us are supposed to collect our clock with a little plaque on it and ride off into the sunset. Sixty-five has been perceived for several generations as the age at which you graduate from being a useful member of society to one who is spending your children's inheritance, as the old bumper sticker goes. That is changing -- for example, I cannot receive my full US Social Security for another year, while people all around us here in Britain are hopping up and down with fury about a proposed hike in the retirement age, but it will take several generations for this particular birthday to lose its sense of hope for some, and stigma for others.</div><div><br /></div><div>I thought when I was around 45-50 and gasping under the load of college bills that retirement looked an awfully attractive option, but as the years have passed since then I have been changing my mind. I have friend and peers who are rejoicing in their new-found status as retirees, but while I respect the decisions they have made, sometimes for very good reason, it is not something that I find myself attracted to. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are all sorts of reasons for this, but first among them is that I am not ready to leave the pitcher's mound and disappear into the dugout. Friends have said as they move toward retirement that they feel pretty worn out, and a slower life beckons. I fully understand that, and on a cold wet English winter's day when it is dark until long after breakfast and barely teatime before the sun sets again, I find myself wondering as I back my car out of the driveway why I am doing this to myself. But most of the time I find myself looking forward to the day ahead and the opportunities that are awaiting me. </div><div><br /></div><div>Being on the staff of a theological seminary means that I no longer have to be at the helm of something, for which I am truly grateful, but in a creaking economy it can be frightening to find myself in the midst of raising a huge sum of money to insure the college's future strength and vision. Yes, I do sometimes wake up at night worrying about the challenges that lie before me. I miss parish ministry, but at the same time I get regular opportunities to preach, pastor, baptize babies, marry young couples, and bury the dead -- and that is a huge privilege. But it does mean that what I once got paid for I now do as a hobby (there is a certain penuriousness about the Church of England when it comes to clergy fees and expenses if you are a non-parochial priest).</div><div><br /></div><div>The challenge of our campaign at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, will keep me busy for several years yet, and meanwhile I am part of a congregation where I am able to make a significant contribution -- I might slow down a little but thiswill mean that my <i>modus operand</i>i is altering to be more that of the tortoise/turtle than the hare! I believe with all my heart that those of us who have been around for a while still have a huge contribution to make, even if it is not as part of the mainstream of our society or church.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have been reading a book by several faculty from Duke Divinity School and one or two others entitled <i>Growing Old in Christ, </i>and have found myself appreciating their notion that growing old, becoming a elder, is not the problem that our culture wants to make it be, but a privilege that the church would do well to honor -- and we would do well to live into. My emotions like the idea, but I am still in the process of getting my mind around it. </div><div><br /></div><div>The evidence suggests that my generation are likely to have a devil of a job adjusting to being old, senior, elders, golden-agers. Many have not saved for this chapter of their lives, some have ragged familial relationships, and others still are likely to find that the hedonism of their youth will not hold them into old age. This places a huge opportunity in front of the Christian churches, and it will be those of us who are in the final quarter of life who are best positioned to help them over the ultimate threshold that awaits us all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Am I happy to be sixty-five? Not really, but it does seem that there is an awful lot waiting to be done. As Billy Graham once said when asked about retirement, "I don't read anything in my bible about the apostles retiring." I have been on a bit of a Robert Frost jag of late so let me leave the last words with him as he paused in the New Hampshire snows:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>The woods are lovely dark and deep,</i></div><div><i>But I have promises to keep,</i></div><div><i>And miles to go before I sleep,</i></div><div><i>And miles to go before I sleep.</i></div>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-31444481613888326722010-08-26T03:40:00.000-07:002010-08-26T03:47:47.273-07:00Whatever happened to discussion and dialogue?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivAh0CfufVjU1AugB0xSqzbLIVAhTxkkrx3eFZjPC1zT6DolgBQuQH0zCZ6KfW-Xo8D9IwqgTIZfBPavHtit2YR2hLYUohtWkq8_Vwuw55VM4ARsDKp0yQt64DDVYpp5dVPRur/s1600/argument.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 136px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivAh0CfufVjU1AugB0xSqzbLIVAhTxkkrx3eFZjPC1zT6DolgBQuQH0zCZ6KfW-Xo8D9IwqgTIZfBPavHtit2YR2hLYUohtWkq8_Vwuw55VM4ARsDKp0yQt64DDVYpp5dVPRur/s200/argument.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5509667887791407826" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">Whatever happened to dialogue and discussion? It seems that much that passes as interchange has disappeared, with the online world being the biggest killing field. Almost everywhere you go looking for intelligent input there is little or no thoughtful response to something that has been said or been posted. An honest and astute interplay of ideas is becoming rare because instead of responding rationally people seem determined to respond viscerally, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">ad hominen</i>, and with raw emotions rather than enquiring mind.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Online forums (fora?) have become settings in which moderating or dissenting voices are literally drowned out by those who shout and pontificate. Each online setting develops its own peculiar brand of political correctness, and woe betide anyone who crosses a particular line in the sand. Often these correctnesses are contrary to the original intention of the owner of the site, and they will lean heavily in one direction or another. There is in many places what can be described as a Rush Limbaugh approach to conversation: not to listen to what another is saying but to shout the so-and-so down because he or she has no right to say such things in this setting, and besides, any fool knows that their position is wrong and not worthy of serious consideration.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The result of such a quarrelsome <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">modus operandi</i> is animosity so that those with helpful insights on a particular subject in that setting refuse to post there any longer because, honestly, life is too short to put up with that sort of wrangling. There is a particular site that I have visited for a long, long time and will probably continue to visit because it is helps me to stay up-to-date with things that are going on, but last week I wrote the owner to say that I will no longer be contributing because I just don't have the stomach for the bruisings I so often have been given. I am delighted to engage with people who read the materials and want to discuss them, but I am no longer willing to be treated as if I am weak in the head, apostate, someone who taken up arms against the western world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Wherever I look, on either side of the Atlantic, there is animus being hurled around online as one adamant group takes on the other. Scurrilous things are said which people should not be allowed to get away with -- but because people like me have now opted out, they do. This only makes them bolder, less reflective, and more bombastic, so the whole sorry cycle is intensified. Whatever one's principles or presuppositions, some of the things that I have read about the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Newt Gingrich, James Dobson, and so on, and so on, should be challenged because they are a parody of the reality. If there is such a thing as freedom of speech, and I believe there is, then individuals should not be allowed to get away with some of the things they write or say.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a sane and ordered setting this is possible, but in one where an unyielding pack mentality prevails, the pack's job is to pounce on anyone who strays into their little domain and questions what they hold to be precious and true. Anyone doing so reaches the point in the end where we find there is no longer any delight in banging our heads against this particular brick wall. Besides, no one is listening. The result is that creative debate does not take place, lines in the sand become concrete bunkers, and constructive dissent becomes impossible.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I was in seminary and university in what is now the distant past we were rigorously schooled in the fundamentals of logic so that we might learn rationally to analyze an argument and respond to it in an informed and reasonable manner. It was some of the most valuable teaching I had, but in today's forums that rules of logic and principles of rhetoric have all but disappeared. We have delineated ourselves into what are essentially two armed camps slugging things out. Moderating voices are sidelined and so the answers now HAVE to be right or wrong, black or white, left or right, liberal or conservative, traditional or progressive, and so forth, and so forth.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am not sure that discussion in most places on the Internet as they are presently configured can be redeemed, partly because I am not sure that those who shout and holler from atop their particular soap box want to hear any other position or view than their own. They are convinced that they are right, they have the truth, and others are so wrong that alternative voices do not deserve to be heard. To function this way is to stray into very dangerous territory that will have disasterous consequences in the long term.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When this happens among Christian people then we have to examine ourselves to see if this is how we learned Christ. </p><i>(Also posted on www.covenant-communion.net)</i>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-16542574530476407852010-05-12T09:54:00.000-07:002010-05-14T23:38:51.252-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/S-5BNWn-RqI/AAAAAAAAASA/4nPINf84H7c/s1600/RidleyPicture2010.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 142px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/S-5BNWn-RqI/AAAAAAAAASA/4nPINf84H7c/s200/RidleyPicture2010.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471382294969075362" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/S-5AvAM7F2I/AAAAAAAAAR4/tx3oJCgeq28/s1600/RidleyPicture2010.JPG"></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The planned new facility at Ridley Hall</span></div><div><br /></div><div>I was walking the dog across the fens as the sun was starting to set the other evening when Gordon Brown drove to Buckingham Palace and tendered his resignation to the Queen, by the time I was home the new Prime Minister was on his was to 10 Downing Street to take up the reins of office, as many have said, perhaps accepting a chalice poisoned by the ailing British economy. <div><br /></div><div>At the back of my mind was anxiety about what the markets would make of all this -- we are certainly in for some roller-coasters and months of uncertainty as soon-to-be proposed debt-reduction measures are brought into play. Just yesterday the markets tumbled and the value of the euro plummeted. A layman has to be asking questions about what this means.<div><br /></div><div>This last week has felt something like those days in November 2000 when the Florida election was twisting in the wind because of hanging chads. There was that sense of deep uncertainty, fear and hope mingling with one another at each turn in the road that finally delivered a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. This was the first time Liberals have even sniffed power, with the exception of World War Two, since 1922.</div><div><br /></div><div>What does seem to be clear is that while not wanting to give anyone a majority, the British people are getting ready to grit their teeth and accept that the finances are a mess, there are debts to be paid, so we had better hunker down and do something about it. That fiscal tightening will hurt us all as taxes rise, services diminish, and discomfort increases in all sorts of ways. The truth is that the British people have been spending too much, saving too little, manufacturing has shrivelled, and despite all the vitriol that has been thrown at the banks, it has been the huge financial sector that has done a lot of the economic heavy lifting for too long.</div><div><br /></div><div>As someone whose job is to raise money this is just a tightening of the screw that will make my work just that little bit more difficult. Development work in Britain is not easy at the best of times, as there is just not the tradition of giving here that there is in the USA, but now we are being stretched that little bit further.</div><div><br /></div><div>As we have moved forward with the major capital campaign on which we are working at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, we have been acutely aware of God's leading and guiding along the route that we have taken. If that leading is into a long wilderness journey, then so be it. Our task is to follow in hard times as well as good. This task we are involved in is of great importance for the future of Christian witness in a university city like Cambridge, and to the ends of the earth. So let us get on and do it, anticipating that God will open the windows of heaven in some way or another.</div></div></div>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-36069012641293703942010-03-16T06:31:00.000-07:002010-03-16T07:19:58.510-07:00I have been Kindled<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpp7qLcvEskiFPhCjWNUMoj3738doaYPbfBOVhmUXIa0m7Adylx5DdQINJvx14WQxy1bbIVYrP3gP_AAQZHRo0Wpwrx7oHslKjoSQfxH7FQpI6Q3du95Vh5iK62h0VIW2u6iq7/s1600-h/kindle.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 102px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpp7qLcvEskiFPhCjWNUMoj3738doaYPbfBOVhmUXIa0m7Adylx5DdQINJvx14WQxy1bbIVYrP3gP_AAQZHRo0Wpwrx7oHslKjoSQfxH7FQpI6Q3du95Vh5iK62h0VIW2u6iq7/s200/kindle.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449236246139400194" /></a><br /><div>I am now well and truly Kindled!</div><div><br /></div><div>After I had been kicking the idea around for months, at Christmas my family bought me an Amazon Kindle and in one leap I entered the age of digital reading. My idea was that having a Kindle would be much more convenient than lugging round armfuls of books as my travel schedule on planes, trains, buses, and automobiles expanded, and then there was the fact that the Kindle could help conserve the limited bookshelf space that we have.</div><div><br /></div><div>I didn't have great ambitions for my Kindle at the outset, it was more about convenience than anything. But to my surprise I have fallen in love with this approach to reading and at this precise moment there are fifty-eight items on this little piece of equipment with room for about 1200 more. It is possible to carrying around a veritable library, and the whole thing weighs less than a pound. These days wherever I go I am able to take with me the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, the compete works of Shakespeare and Jane Austen, the whole of Sherlock Holmes, a whole scad of novels, some serious works of study and biography, and even PDF files that I need for my work. In there also is the American Oxford Dictionary, as well as the ability to switch on the wireless facility and download whatever I want from Amazon's library of about 450,000 electronic titles. I can even go online if I want to.</div><div><br /></div><div>Several weeks ago I was reading in bed when reference was made to a title that I thought sounded interesting. I went exploring to see if by any chance Amazon had the book on its downloadable list -- they did, and so as I lay there under the covers I got it for myself to read and seconds later it was corralled on my Kindle and backed up both on my laptop and at Amazon's great cloud in the sky.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since moving back to England I have been distinctly underwhelmed by the British press, but that problem has been solved by Kindle. I have always loved the <i>International Herald Tribune</i>, and each morning I turn my Kindle on a five o'clock when I get up and within seconds there is the daily paper, waiting to be read while I drink my first cup of tea of the day, and do my daily devotions. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yesterday evening I came home from work, changed, and went out to the garage to pump my exercise bike. Kindle came with me. Before beginning to pedal I set up the text-to-speech capability and listened to pages of news from the paper as I looked after my body. I confess that I don't like the female voice that the Kindle has, it sounds too electronic and tinny, but apart from the occasional odd pronunciation the male voice is very listen-able to. I suspect that several generations of text-to-speech from now it will be difficult to tell that it is not a human voice that we're listening to, and we will probably be able to choose timbre and accent.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I was into MP3s in a huge way I could store and play them on my Kindle, but I am a book person, and if I want to listen to music it will be classical on the radio or one of my nice CDs. I know that CDs are now considered old-fashioned, but I grew up in the day of vinyl records that galloped around the turntable at 78 rpm, so having it all on a disc makes me feel comfortable.</div><div><br /></div><div>A fascinating title that I have on my Kindle is <i>Publish Your Own Book on the Amazon Kindle. </i>I haven't yet cracked it open, but it is enticing to think that it is entirely possible with a laptop and this Kindle technology to sidestep the publishers who might not be interested in a small niche market -- and do it myself. </div><div><br /></div><div>Of course the Kindle has its shortcomings, and it is at present limited in ways that will not be the case as each new generation of the technology is launched. Already Amazon are strengthening their position for the future in this whole realm. I bought a hybrid car in December 2001, and although people thought I was nuts, we loved it. When I moved to England in September 2007 I bought the same model but six years on -- and the technology has moved on in leaps and bounds during that period of time. The e-reader will be the same. It probably won't be long before the Kindle produces huge pages in color as well as black-and-white, but for most of my reading a spectrum of shades is not necessary. I expect in due course it will get slimmer, lighter, swisher in its presentation of itself, but right now I am perfectly content with this approach to reading.</div><div><br /></div><div>I would happily admit that the Kindle is probably not for everyone or for every type of literature. When I am working hard with what I will call a study book I go to and fro between the pages, underline, write comments in the margins, and so forth. While such a thing is possible with the Kindle it's a bit clunky. Also, because you can vary the size of the font so that page numbers don't work, distance into the book is measured by what it calls 'locations.' It took me a while to work out that these are the number of sentences. Page numbers really are an easier way of remembering where something is.</div><div><br /></div><div>I suspect I am in the process of moving from a single approach to reading from books, magazines, etc., to a mixed economy of hard copy and my e-reader. Some things will work better in print, others on the nice little screen which doesn't glare at me, and to all intents and purposes looks like a page. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I took my Kindle on its first transatlantic flight six or seven weeks ago I was afraid that the battery might give out on me. The fear was groundless. I could have gone around the world on one battery charge not just across three thousand miles of water or so. I reckon that the Kindle has about a 20-25 hour charge depending on how carefully you use it. I defy anyone to read for that long in one stretch!</div><div><br /></div><div>So, as I say, I'm Kindled. I bought my first laptop (then called a portable computer) in 1988. It was a computer, yes, but not portable by today's standards, yet this technology in a few short years zipped forward and revolutionized the way we handle information. Today's Kindle is probably where the computing industry was with mobile computing in about 1990, and already there are other models and technologies nipping at Amazon's heels. We will have to see whether the reader by Plastic Logic or Apple's IPad are serious contenders, or whether the Kindle will stumble and give way to other software and hardware options in the future...</div><div><br /></div><div>... but right now I would encourage you to think about Kindling yourself!</div>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-21654374267373040892009-11-10T00:43:00.000-08:002009-11-10T01:52:19.170-08:00Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus is not all it seemsThere is much about the Roman Catholic Church that I have come to appreciate over the years: Catholic colleagues whose fellowship has been the source of much blessing, occasional opportunities at Catholic worship that have enriched, and joint projects with Catholics that have been fruitful. Having grown up with a somewhat negative Protestant attitude toward the Church of Rome, I have come over the years to benefit from their particular graces and charisms.<br /><br />Yet, alas, there seems to be almost an imperialism about the Catholic tradition that allows for little variance from their church's dogma.<div><br />Given the concerns Pope Benedict has about the secularism and godlessness of Europe (and so out into all the world), it seems that some kind of common front under the charmanship of the Bishop of Rome would be of great benefit to the churches. This, of course, would require a measure of acceptance of the differing emphases of other Christians by Catholics, especially those of us who are rooted and grounded in the historic creeds and statements of faith of the church. However, it is sad that Rome is not able to stretch that far.</div><div><br />The whole recent flap around the Pope's overtures to dissident Anglicans is an example of this. I understand very well that there are fellow-Anglicans who have lost confidence in the Anglican tradition, and if their own faith is more happily accommodated in the Roman setting, then so be it. But as we mull over the small print it seems to be more hard line than the gentle invitation of concerned fellow-Christians.</div><div><br />A genuine, fraternal invitation, for example, would at the very least turn the expectation of re-confirmation and re-ordination into conditional rites, but Rome seems unwilling to reconsider the 1896 declaration that Anglican orders are, in effect, no orders at all. This un-churching of Anglicans has a tang of dishonesty about it because on the ground in most settings Anglican and Catholic clergy work alongside one another, mutually accept one another's status as ministers of word and sacraments.</div><div><br />The Apostolic Constitution makes it quite clear that the <i>Catechism of the Catholic Church </i>is definitive theologically and doctrinally for all those who move along the path Rome is offering, which, in effect, obliterates theology that is distinctively Anglican and nullifies the richness of the Anglican tradition. You can come in, we are being told, but you have to leave what we perceive to be Protestant baggage at the door.</div><div><br />As I read the small print of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus</span>, it is phrased in such a way as to suggest that only certain Anglican liturgical texts will be acceptable for use by those who want to make this transition, which would suggest that anything that does not dot the 'i's and cross the 't's of Roman Catholic eucharistic theology, etc., will be unacceptable. This would then probably declare out of court much of the historic Prayer Book tradition which has been the foundation of Anglican life for nearly half a millennium.</div><div><br />While I don't really wish to nitpick to death this document that codifies an invitation that some are likely to take up, the more I look at it the more I suspect the spirit in which this invitation has been made. It comes from a mindset that because it believes it is the one true expression of the Christian faith, it possesses the trump cards, and can demand rather than entering into conversation accepting the graces and charisms of another tradition.</div><div><br />Last week I cooperated with the most gracious Roman Catholic priest in the funeral Mass and burial of my nominally Roman Catholic brother-in-law. The priest was a prince among men, godly and caring, and the manner in which he presided over the Eucharist was both sensitive and genuinely moving. He was genuinely embarrassed that he could not invite to the Lord's table those Christians of other traditions, so there I sat behind the altar, with my faithful Anglican extended family sitting in the pews (together with a few family Baptists), while the handful of Catholics present took participated in the sacrament.</div><div><br />This to me was an acted parable of the situation in which we find ourselves as two Communions that maybe respect one another, but nevertheless talk past each other. By excluding Anglicans from their sacramental life they are treating us as non-Christians, while at the same time in the day-to-day elements of church life in local communities considering one another to be believers. The are plenty places in the world where Anglicans and Catholics even share the same buildings. If the Catholic priest had not thought me a Christian, would he have allowed me to preach in his church, and would he have accepted that committal by me according to the Book of Common Prayer was appropriate in any shape or form?</div><div><br />In the Apostolic Constitution the Roman Catholic Church is saying, "Well, if you jump through the hoops we think necessary then we will accept you," while all the time jumping through those hoops is a negating of what are already our convictions -- in which they may see inadequacies, but little fundamental heresy.</div><div><br />The challenge facing us is missional, and it gets more pressing as each day passes. While accepting that each church has its own ordering that should be respected and taken seriously, it would seem that the time has come for Rome to be willing to enter a conversation with the same generosity as is expected of Anglican Christians.<br /></div><div><br /></div>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-5962969197681931182009-10-19T01:28:00.000-07:002009-10-19T08:25:31.994-07:00Reflections on the 20/20 Report of 2001<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzRGrbsiyPi1T7xDn9a23X6ZCJH4dLeisf28Vlizcv15TVvhr2Y-A8_glDZarlYK_bMpEpT3r5kKzAhOwYiPDlL33_E1SAObIvQA_DaSKC80qhaZHgFMAEVQMZ8c9VEBD9X_kq/s1600-h/2020.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 155px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzRGrbsiyPi1T7xDn9a23X6ZCJH4dLeisf28Vlizcv15TVvhr2Y-A8_glDZarlYK_bMpEpT3r5kKzAhOwYiPDlL33_E1SAObIvQA_DaSKC80qhaZHgFMAEVQMZ8c9VEBD9X_kq/s200/2020.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394327622785551650" border="0" /></a>A couple of weeks ago, while looking for something else, I ran across a copy of the Report of the 20/20 Task Force of the Episcopal Church, produced in 2000-2001 at the request of the General Convention. For a few minutes I thumbed through its pages, remembering the rising sense of excitement experienced by those of us who were part of that Task Force, and drew up the report. Now the Report was far from perfect, but looking back over the work we had done I realized afresh that our prognosis and prescription, if applied, could have done a significant amount positively for the Episcopal Church.<br /><br />The 20/20 Initiative was deceptively simple: it was to do all that we can to double the size of the Episcopal Church between 2000 and 2020. Such notions have visionary potential, and we felt that as we did our work, this was more about launching a movement rather than becoming mired in a program. Perhaps those of us who were part of the 20/20 Task Force were naive, but we were cautiously optimistic that our recommendations would be taken seriously, and if that happened that they would bring a fresh evangelistic fervor to the church. Doubling the size may have been a little optimistic, but we believed that the Episcopal Church was capable of a good crack at that sort of challenge.<br /><br />A few days after I had reacquainted myself with the 20/20 Report the 2008 Episcopal Church statistics were published. They do not make happy reading. While numbers may not be everything, they are a record of just about wholesale retreat on every front. Rather than being twice the size it was by 2020, things will be going well if it is only half the size. And like a patient ignoring the doctor's warning after a full physical comes up with some disturbing outcomes, the denomination continues to deny the realities.<br /><br />We had worked hard during 2000 and 2001 to come up with this Report, which we then took to the Executive Committee in October 2001. It was hardly a fortuitous moment for the nation was still reeling from the shock of 9/11, so grief and anxiety were never far from the surface. But we made the best of the opportunity.<br /><br />The Executive Council was meeting at a pleasant hotel on the Jacksonville Beaches in Florida, but even before we made our presentation I sensed a degree of hostility toward what we were all about. Our potential agenda was passe, another was brewing and would eventually prevail. We would, no doubt, be indulged, it was highly likely that the product we presented would be watered down to the point of being neutralized, with the institution pulling its teeth and domesticating it. That is precisely what happened.<br /><br />The agenda which prevailed, and which would start having its most significant impact around the General Convention of 2003, was already gathering momentum. Since that time the church has been divided, financial resources have been dwindling, and the shrinkage has been nothing short of disasterous. Congregations, clergy, bishops, dioceses, have headed for the exits, with litigation being used as never before in the history of the Episcopal Church. Church planting, which was an encouraging component of church life in 2000, is virtually at a standstill, and heads are buried deep in the sand whenever anyone attempts to make honest sense of the truly appalling statistics that get dished up now each year. What is bizarrely fascinating is that no one seems to have the heart to ask the very difficult questions of this distressing reality, or act constructively upon them.<br /><br />For me, the final chance of an exciting future for the Episcopal Church was nailed into the coffin not during General Convention 2003, but at that meeting of the Executive Council in a comfortable hotel by the beach in Florida in 2001, when the 20/20 Report was received with phony smiles and blue-penciled to death. I think that was when the Episcopal Church broke my heart, what followed from that time was merely a further trampling of it into the dust. That was when I retreated, burying myself back in parish ministry and avoiding the national scene.<br /><br />It was, however, while I was at that hotel in Jacksonville Beach that I had the worst nocturnal experience of my life. Not long after switching off the light one night, and when I wasn't sure whether I was asleep or partially awake, I found myself face-to-face with a kind of gray featureless creature which was doing its level best to suffocate me. I was in terror, and truly thought I was dead and was being dragged down to hell. My body thrashed as I fumbled for the light switch. When eventually I managed to illuminate the room I was alone, drenched in sweat, heart pounding like a sledgehammer, and frightened out of my wits. It was a long time before I was calm enough to face the darkness again, and try to get back to sleep.<br /><br />I have spent eight years attempting to make sense of that episode, whose reality is as intense and frightening today as when it happened. Did it emanate from somewhere inside me? Was it something to do with the room in which I was staying? Did it have something to do with the recent events at Ground Zero and the Pentagon? Or, perhaps, was it related in some way to the spiritual conflict related to the Executive Council meeting? I cannot answer these questions with any sense of certainty, which would be presumptuous. It may have been due to none of the above, or all of them may have somehow contributed to this particularly unpleasant situation.<br /><br />What I do know is that imperfect as the proposals of the 20/20 Report might have been, the Episcopal Church would have been a very different place today if the strategy suggested had been pursued. If a red-blooded 20/20 had happened perhaps there would not have been the agonizing parting of friends, perhaps the financial dilemmas would be ameliorated, and perhaps the challenge would have continued to be planting new congregations, while training to recruit and train the sort of leaders who could nurture these little green shoots and turn them into something significant.<br /><br />During these last years there have been many casualties, and perhaps I am one of them. I remain a priest in good standing of the Episcopal Church, but my ministry is now an ocean away. I find what I am doing fulfilling, satisfying, and (I hope) making a constructive contribution to the advance of God's Kingdom. However, the temperature of my passions starts to rise when I think of the extraordinary adventure 20/20 would have been as a movement in the hands of the Holy Spirit.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-48567289412960684242009-07-17T01:31:00.000-07:002009-07-26T00:21:35.379-07:00A Conversation Waiting to Begin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SmGrF2pJKHI/AAAAAAAAARg/2FbCrysvG8M/s1600-h/aconversationwaiting.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SmGrF2pJKHI/AAAAAAAAARg/2FbCrysvG8M/s200/aconversationwaiting.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359753148603377778" /></a><br />I spent the last couple of days of my vacation reading Oliver O'Donovan's <i>A Conversation Waiting to Begin: The churches and the gay controversy </i>(London: SCM Press, 2009). The book has sat on my shelf for several months, but this was a good time for me to digest O'Donovan's words, applying his insights to the circumstances in which I am living. <div><br /></div><div>The General Convention of the Episcopal Church of the USA was meeting as I was reading, and each day my spirits were further dampened by the actions the Convention was taking, decisions that are surely moving it beyond the fringes of the Anglican Communion, and perhaps beyond a generous catholic Christianity. These were decisions which the good professor was, I think, hoping to head off with a thoughtful and carefully argued discussion.<br /><br />I was also reading it following something that had happened in our own family recently, something that was not on my mind when I purchased the book. During this time one of my nearest and dearest came out of the closet and admitted to being actively gay. While I had long suspected this, knowing something for certain tends to color perceptions and raise a whole series of questions. This latest admission probably means that within my immediate family there are statistically actually more homosexual persons than in most others.<br /><br /></div><div>The actions of the church and circumstances like these have forced me on several occasions during the last decade to ask substantial questions about human sexuality. I have found myself wondering if there is something that I have missed. My understanding of human sexuality has been very traditional, but I have felt for the sake of honestly that I must go back and examine not only my presuppositions, but also the evidence being presented to me both by current scholarship and the substance of the Bible. Neither in my exploring have I stuck to those writers and thinkers who echo what has been my own position, but have roamed far and wide and, among other things, have been looking to see if there are insights that I have overlooked, misunderstood, or misinterpreted.</div><div><br /></div><div>I guess you can say that within my own limits I have sought to be as open and as honest as is possible. The exercises have been fruitful, because each time this has occurred I have gained new and constructive insights into the human condition in general, as well as this particular aspect of being human. As I have approached this topic again, among others I have had Oliver O'Donovan as a helpful companion, and for this I have been grateful.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, this time I have brought a different set of questions to the dilemma the contemporary approach to human sexuality presents because this whole business comes impossibly close to home for me. My questions have been informed by the fact that this is something I am likely to have to deal with face-to-face most days for the rest of my life. The overriding query I have made of myself is how I might do this.</div><div><br /></div><div>My internal landscape during this last ten or fifteen years of battling over sexuality, both in the church and in wider society, has probably experienced most of the same ups and downs as so many others. Fury, fear, confusion, and now a kind of stoic fatalism have flavored my responses. At times raw anger has led me to say and do things which I have subsequently regretted, at others I have worked hard to find some kind of <i>modus vivendi</i> with those whose convictions have not matched my own. It has seemed to me more and more that we have been presented with a <i>fete accomplis </i>rather than being able to participate in a conversation both whose substance and whose outcome have been far from clear.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oliver O'Donovan's book was published in the USA as <i>Church in Crisis: the Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion. </i>With all due respects to the American publisher, I believe the British title, <i>A Conversation Waiting to Begin, </i>is a much better description of the book's essence. Yes, the starting point of these ten dozen pages is the crisis in the Anglican Communion that caught light in 2003 with the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, but having alighted from that point it ranges over far wider territory much as any intelligent conversation would.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rather than pontificating, he graciously nudges us to look at issue within the context of the changed realities with which we live in an evolving culture. Each relatively short chapter asks us to come at the topic using tools of ethical and theological scholarship, Scripture, hermeneutics, and measuring these against the substantial doctrines of creation and redemption. Sometimes he speaks overtly about being logical and reasonable in our quest, but on almost every page he is whispering this as if between the lines. </div><div><br /></div><div>Why is it, he asks, that this one little thing has proved so explosive and divisive? Well, comes back the answer, it depends what you mean by 'one little thing?' How little actually is this? In the fourth century the church as it went through the exercise of creed-making seemed to be riven over one little iota, but in reality that discussion was about a great deal more because at stake was affirming a truthful understanding of the nature of God or one that is idolatrous. Are we, he asks, in a similar situation here?</div><div><br /></div><div>While never exactly giving a definitive answer to such a question, by leading us along a number of different pathways as we approach the topic he leaves us nodding and saying, "Yes, there is an enormous amount at stake here of which differing understandings of human sexuality are merely the trigger." </div><div><br /></div><div>Part of what is being said is that we have probably not given as much attention as we should to the changing social climate of the world in which we now live. Certainly since the nineteenth century, and especially within Anglicanism, there has existed a 'liberalism' that has modulated disagreement and enabled diversity to exist within the context of a generous unity. This underlying liberalism has been able to step back, untangle the skein, reconcile conflicting views, tone down exaggerated positions, forge coalitions, square circles, and in the process find a commonsense way through (page 5). </div><div><br /></div><div>But now "the whole stock in trade of a tradition once defined by opposition to enthusiasm of every kind, seems to have been mysteriously wiped off the software. In its place are radical postures, strident denunciations and moralistic confessionalism" (page 5). Because of the tendency of 'liberalism' to ally itself to 'victim' causes that they believe require a moral and just leveling of the playing field, a situation is created which leads to a face-off with conservatism, both political and ecclesiastical.</div><div><br /></div><div>"For the theological liberal... the substantive content is indeterminate, and what is wrong with conservatism is precisely that it clings to the past, holding back in reserve from the God-destined character of the present cultural moment... the self-validating ethical convictions of modern civilization are the final criterion for judging all else; they are the very image of God that it bears anonymously as its birthright" (pages 9-10). </div><div><br /></div><div>While I cannot hope to encapsulate a carefully presented discussion in a handful of words, O'Donovan is essentially saying that yesterday's 'liberal' way of resolving things no longer works because the culture has moved on, but what we do not have, to quote the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a "habit of cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected questions too quickly" (quoted Page 7). </div><div><br /></div><div>Having set the discussion up, the rest of the book examines the dilemma using the finely tuned tools of O'Donovan's trade as a world-class theologian, ethicist, cultural observer, and philosopher. All the time he is nudging us toward the final chapter which is entitled "Good News for the Gay Christian?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Professor O'Donovan does not step back from saying that there is hard news in the gospel for gay Christians (as well as all other Christians) to listen and respond to, we also need to consider Rowan Williams' question, "How does the homosexually inclined person show Christ to the world?" He continues, "For if the gay Christian is to be addressed as a believer and a disciple, a recipient of the good news, he has also to be addressed as a potential evangelist. But we must take this... question further. The good news meant for the human race is meant for the church, too. What good news does the gay Christian have to bring to the church?" (page 103).</div><div><br /></div><div>O'Donovan demands that instead of making our case with statistics, scientific reports, and so forth, but we should use the words of the evangel for, "if the church speaks not as a witness to God's saving work but as a pundit or a broker of some deal, it speaks out of character... for the gospel must be preached to the gay Christian on precisely the same terms as it is preached to any other person" (Page 110), for homosexuality is NOT the determining factor in any human being's existence -- despite the pressure within the culture to make us think it is such.</div><div><br /></div><div>Put another way, it seems that what O'Donovan is asking us is as a broken church living in the context of a broken world to speakChrist's righteousness to a shared brokenness, and this inevitably involves our sexuality in all its shapes and forms. In such an environment soft and evasive compromises do not appeal, and neither do they have traction. The touchstone is living the righteousness of Jesus Christ in a world that has presented us with a very different reality. This, he posits, is about friendship, not about "juridical language of justice and rights" (Page 116). </div><div><br /></div><div>"The gay Christian thus faces in a particular way the choice that constitutes the human situation universally: whether to follow the route of self-justification or to cast oneself hopefully on the creative justification that God himself will work within a community of shared belief" (Page 116). However, if this is to happen not only is friendship a prerequisite, so also is serious patience. The old-style 'liberalism' that used to preside over the church has to give way to something that is differently flavored, friendship and patience being touchstones. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am only at the beginning of unpacking what this means given my own personal dilemma, but I have to say that it makes a lot more sense than the polarized and polarizing yelling at one another and excluding one another that seems to have been taking place. I have been hurt by what has gone on, and it is likely that I am doing some of the hurting. As I deal with this on a personal level I have been given clues to try to keep the conversation civil and constructive. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the ecclesial level, it would appear that separation is the only solution being offered by 'liberals' and 'conservatives' alike. Given the gospel of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, neither appears acceptable when tested against the great doctrines of Christianity, catholic ecclesiology, and within a forum where the grace of friendship and the grace of patience surely ought to prevail. "Anyone who thinks that resolutions can be reached in one leap without long mutual exploration, probing, challenge, and clarification has not yet understood the nature of the riddle that the ironic fairy of history has posed for us in our time" (Page 119).</div>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-16363865969763101912009-07-13T09:22:00.000-07:002009-07-13T10:29:56.462-07:00Tired, Postmodern, and a Generally Depressing Convention<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SltsduneWyI/AAAAAAAAARY/CB4I6wItdnU/s1600-h/gc2009_100.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 100px; height: 101px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SltsduneWyI/AAAAAAAAARY/CB4I6wItdnU/s200/gc2009_100.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357995439672941346" border="0" /></a><br />We have been back in the States for the last three weeks but will be returning to our ministry in Cambridge, England tomorrow. This means we have been around for the razzmatazz that went with the launch of the Anglican Church of North America, and now for the spectacle of the General Convention. Having been present at most General Conventions since the last Anaheim convention in 1985, I am glad I am not there. I have to say that what looks to be happening is a sad, sad spectacle, and from the deluge of words coming out of Anaheim it is evident that the Convention is in little mood to take seriously historic Christianity, or to honor the worldwide Anglican Communion.<br /><br />As a bishop friend said to me in a personal email from Anaheim a day or two ago, the trend seems to be for TEC to become a stand-alone American denomination rather than part of the worldwide church. Clearly, the presence and advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury for a few days meant little or nothing to the majority of the House of Deputies. As the same episcopal friend also said, those who are for inclusion do not seem to realize that for a large chunk of us that means exclusion -- although we certainly have no desire to be excluded from catholic Christianity through the Communion.<br /><br />This whole exercise is not about sexuality or sexual behavior, but is fundamentally about what we believe the Christian faith to mean and be about. When it comes down to it, it is about our attitude toward Jesus as God's Son, the nature of the Trinity, divine revelation, Christian obedience, and holiness of life. The cavalier attitude of the Presiding Bishop to the creeds and their recitation is evidence that she considers the likes of me as pedantic has-beens rather than those who are on the cutting edge -- but the cutting edge of what?<br /><br />Yet the truth really is, as you look around the world, that those who are pushing this worn out postmodern melange and calling it Christian are increasingly the has-beens. They seem to have tied themselves to the coat tails of the last dribblings of the least attractive side of the Enlightenment, and it is entirely likely that they will disappear down the drain with them. I say this as an Episcopalian who lives in England and now functions as part of the church under great pressure.<br /><br />The church in England is wrestling to adapt to an altogether more secular and hostile climate than exists in most of the USA, and what is interesting, I don't see postmodern Christianity standing up very well in such an environment. It is a limp and aging rag. The creative scholarship, for example, is coming from a far more theologically orthodox direction (as can be seen from the recent awarding of the Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing to Richard Bauckham for his extraordinary challenge to scholarship in <span style="font-style: italic;">Jesus and the Eyewitnesses</span>). Healthy progressive liberal and theologically to-the-left congregations are few and far between, while it the theologically more conservative who are creatively evangelistic that have become the majority of stronger centers of the faith.<br /><br />This isn't to say that the English church doesn't have a belly-load of problems and challenges, some of which it is refusing to address; but it is illustrative that so-called progressive faith is not flourishing well in an environment which affirms and celebrates many of the values and attitudes it endorses. Picking over concrete evidence from Britain and asking what this might mean for the Episcopal Church of the USA, one can only confess that it does not auger well on this side of the ocean. Looking at the hard statistics about the health of the Episcopal Church that have been coming out of Anaheim, the best interpretation of them is that the church is in serious decline -- if not free fall, and those who say otherwise are clearly in denial with their ostrich necks firmly stuck down holes.<br /><br />All this is happening in the midst of the deepest recession in living memory, and one that promises to impact us for a very long time to come. Looking at the dire financial state of the Episcopal Church after the Great Depression might be a valuable exercise to help us grasp what the circumstances of denomination, dioceses, and congregations could well be like when the world eventually pulls out of this dive. Money is the mother's milk of ministry, and there are huge problems if there is none, or little or none.<br /><br />The churches in England that are healthiest are those who approach their Christian witness in a missional manner: which means trying to ask and answer how we take the gospel message and enable it to speak in an environment where the church a bit of a joke -- or worse. Some of them are making whopping mistakes, but at least they are trying! The intelligensia in Britain will generally take every opportunity to denigrate religious people of all flavors, the Church of England in particular. There is little or no social or intellectual kudos to be gained from being a believer in England, and the bulk of the general population doesn't have the vaguest notion of what the Christian faith is all about. There are too many uncanny parallels to the 1st Century.<br /><br />Yet, there are Anglican churches (and varieties of others) that are packed to the doors. There are some fascinatingly creative experiments being undertaken. The theologically orthodox seminaries are the ones enrolling the majority of new students. The House of Bishops is becoming increasingly orthodox (although they may not want to label themselves that way), and so on, and so on. The end product will ultimately be a church that looks very different from the one we have now, and it is likely to be one that the older folks (like myself) will have our struggles with. But what is more important: our understanding of the right way to express the faith and decline, or a whole new generation being renewed and revived by God to take the message to their lost and floundering contemporaries?<br /><br />As a priest of the Episcopal Church I honor my ordination vows and I stand with those who stand with the historic, catholic, and evangelical formularies of the faith. I recite the creeds with conviction, I believe Scripture is God's Word written, and I cannot and will not walk away from what is happening.<br /><br />At the beginning of this decade I was part of the 2020 Task Force that posited ideas and plans for the doubling of the Episcopal Church in the first two decades of the 21st Century. The reverse has happened because that agenda was dumped by 2003 in favor of what Paul might describe as 'another gospel.' I suspect that if the Episcopal Church is half the size it was in 2000 by 2020 it will be a miracle if the present course continues to be followed.<br /><br />This is a tragedy of monumental proportions, but it does not prevent us from standing firm alongside Augustine, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooker, Janani Luwum, Festo Kivengere and many other selfless women and men who have gone before us in the faith. Error disrupts and does damage, but in the economy of a God who is truth it does not ultimately win the day.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-54428317824103441212009-05-18T05:54:00.000-07:002009-05-18T06:41:55.536-07:00The Times They Are A-ChangingI'm sitting in my office during my lunch hour thinking. For a while I have been trying to make sense of all that has been happening in the last year or two. Not only has my own life been turned upside down by moving back to work in England after thirty-one wonderful years in the USA, but the world in which we live is experiencing ructions that compare with some of the things I have been going through.<br /><br />All this has been brewing for a long time, but most of us either didn't notice -- or didn't want to notice -- what was going on. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Soviet bloc fairly rapidly disintegrated. After that I spent several years going in and out of Russia when that giant of a nation was on its knees, and wondering what it would look like if something similar happened in the West.<br /><br />Of course, the rats were gnawing at the innards of western culture and life, but under the cover of the prosperity of the last couple of decades it was easy to ignore them, or to pretend that they weren't really there. As the millennium turned things seemed to get more frantic. The new century properly began when planes controlled by fanatics flew into New York skyscrapers, sought to obliterate the Pentagon, and could have done worse. For a moment people stopped, even came to church for a few weeks, but seemed to want to reassess what they had believed reality to be. But then, as the trauma diminished it was back to business as usual -- and shop 'til you drop.<br /><br />But the gnawing didn't stop, so that the results were finally exposed when the crafty misuse of complex financial instruments began blowing up in our faces in the middle of 2007. I moved to England soon afterward, and as I shaved every morning that Fall I listened to the financial gurus of the City of London talking confidently on the BBC of the minimal impact these American misdemeanors would have in Britain. I remembered thinking then that this all seemed like so much whistling in the dark, then I tried to bury the thought feeling guilty that I had even had it.<br /><br />Just as we watched helplessly on September 11, 2001, as the Twin Towers collapsed in on themselves, so during the last twelve months we have watched helplessly as the banking system tottered and almost fell, coming within an ace of bringing down the whole economic world as we have known it. Through the grim, bleak winter that has just passed we listened to day after day of gloomy news and agonizing statistics which rubbed salt into already raw wounds. We aren't out of the woods yet, by any means, but things do appear to be more stable since billions and billions have been thrown at the problem.<br /><br />As Spring progresses there are suggestions that perhaps, maybe, sometime in the future, we will see some of the slender green shoots of recovery. Meanwhile, the statistics continue to be miserable as hundreds of thousands are thrown out of work, but here and there we see intimations that perhaps not all is lost.<br /><br />However, all of this is happening against a backdrop of ecological gloom and doom. Constantly, we are being told that the way in which we are living is destroying the planet, melting the ice caps, dissolving the coral reefs, and obliterating any future that our children and children's children might enjoy. This diet of planetary despair leads many of us to shrug, mutter "What's the use?" and keep on living as we are living because, however much we care, there are no viable alternatives being presented to us.<br /><br />It is into this that the latest peculiarly British crisis has been dropped -- Members of Parliament messing with their expenses. I suspect that the House of Commons is a pretty fair reflection of the cross-section of people they represent, a good number of whom would not be averse to a little bit of nest-feathering of their own if given half a chance. But this for many has been the final straw, and it would be surprising if significant parliamentary reforms were not ultimately in store here. The last time politicians were so loathed, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, it eventually led to the Great Reform Act of 1832, something desperately needed and long overdue.<br /><br />There is little doubt to me that these gloomy facts are evidence that we have reached the end of a particular chapter in western, possibly even human, history, and that a new chapter might well be in the process of beginning. The trouble is we don't yet know whether it will be better or worse than the one now closing.<br /><br />I was thinking these thoughts when I read a little piece by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Times</span> of London. In it she quotes a letter received by <span style="font-style: italic;">The Times</span> in the last few days. It read, 'There is growing evidence that society is starting to embark on a process of desecularisation. The role of religion in renewing civil society, human well-being and the growing identity politics are all significant reasons why it is back on the political agenda....Since religion is going to play a more central role in global politics in the future, we'd better try harder to understand it.'<br /><br />I don't know whether the author is right, but there is certainly plenty of evidence to suggest that course which our culture and society has been following for so long has run out of steam, and that we are disgusted with ourselves for allowing it to go on for so long. Just perhaps, now is the time when a tired and jaded secular world will look again to the treasures of its religious and spiritual past that until now it has so happily trampled underfoot.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-41665245586602517962009-05-10T09:11:00.000-07:002009-05-10T09:23:00.460-07:00The Lost History of Christianity<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-Jucf0OTsc-mpaqY6JygOVZTm-265wdCNRks2TgrXXwXFaj4XzTTK_ImB2pd2sRXcuO_4VVmaKPphgwT0tn0Sm_FXc4pQRWBVX2hZjwNarKYBhypRDJYbGeHTCIOOIevFDAc/s1600-h/LH.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-Jucf0OTsc-mpaqY6JygOVZTm-265wdCNRks2TgrXXwXFaj4XzTTK_ImB2pd2sRXcuO_4VVmaKPphgwT0tn0Sm_FXc4pQRWBVX2hZjwNarKYBhypRDJYbGeHTCIOOIevFDAc/s200/LH.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334231005097073426" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">
<br />The Lost History of Christianity</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">- The Thousand-year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia</span>
<br />Philip Jenkins
<br />(Oxford: Lion Publishing. 2008
<br /><div style="text-align: center;">New York: HarperCollins. 2008)
<br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<br />A Review by Richard Kew
<br /></div>
<br />I have gained much from Philip Jenkins' writing, and his latest book, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost History of Christianity</span>, I have found to be as edifying as his earlier titles. This book is a surprisingly successful attempt to open up a Christian world that is little more than a ghost to most of us in the west.
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<br />Jenkins sets out to explore the rise and decline of the churches of Asia and the East over the last two millennia. While much of the hard data relating to these churches has long since disappeared, what evidence there is tells the story of a vibrant faith during most of the first millennium of the Christian story, followed by a steady decline that during the last hundred years or so has accelerated. Professor Jenkins fills out a story of which a few of us might be aware, by drawing upon the remaining shreds of evidence that have been left behind by these believers. <p></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He wants us to know something of the history of a lost Christianity because “a society that today considers itself Christian might in a century or two have equal confidence in its complete identification with Islam, or radical secularism, or Buddhism, or some other religion not yet born. That caveat also applies to specific denominations...” (page 42). Jenkins ends his book by drawing out a selection conclusions for us to ponder in our time. These may not be rocket science, but they demand serious attention.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Philip Jenkins is one of those gifted intellects whose reading is encyclopedic, as is his capacity to absorb, organize, and synthesize the quantities of information he has been digesting. Perhaps one of the shortcomings of his earlier works has been a tendency to overwhelm the reader with so much data that the narrative gets so thick that it loses its vivacity, sometimes with the result that the case being made is swamped by the welter of facts and statistics backing it up. “The Lost History of Christianity,” perhaps because so much of the information pertaining to these eastern churches has been lost or deliberately destroyed, does not fall into this trap. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The result is 262 pages of riveting reading. For a long time now books seldom have the ability to keep me awake if I read them in bed before putting the light out: this was an exception. Oh, I don't want to give the impression that this book is under-researched and based on hunch and intuition, because there are a further 34 pages of endnotes!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We westerners read the story of the spread of Christianity with our perceptions molded by the Acts of the Apostles and our own geographic location. Whether we like it or not our viewpoint is shaped by the fact that our heritage is rooted in the European part of the Roman Empire and what followed it. The result is that we overlook the reality that missionaries headed out from Jerusalem after the Day of Pentecost to every point of the compass, not just westward. In fact, the eastward expansion of the Christian faith is nothing short of spectacular. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In large parts of western Europe the natives did not exactly fall over themselves to accept this new faith, while to the east extraordinary things were happening in the name of Christ. Just as the Roman roads aided the spread of the gospel in our direction, the Silk Road and other trade routes across central Asia enabled the message to move well beyond the borders of the Mediterranean world. If Roman stability assisted things in the west, those pioneers traveling eastward were dependent upon the power of the Persian Empire. And, “as in Europe, early followers of Jesus spread into a world already extensively colonized by Jews” (Page 53). </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This glorious history has perhaps been overlooked because of our myopic (and sometimes fretful) focus on Europe, as well as those centuries further on, by the New World and those bits of the globe that were influenced by more recent European colonial ambitions. The churches in the east were sage and mature when those in the west were still trying to find their voice and their spiritual compass. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We may treasure some of the awe-inspiriting stories that brought the message to our part of the planet, but our limited horizons mean that we have never properly noticed the courageous mission to the east with its own set of heroes and martyrs. Within relatively few centuries the Gospel had penetrated Africa as far as Nubia and Ethiopia, as well as all the way from the Mediterranean to the heartland of China. I was amazed to learn of strong and established bishoprics in places as diverse as Tibet and Samarkand well before the end of the first millennium, and that these Christians developed cordial relationships with the pluralistic mishmash of religious traditions that they encountered. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The tale of the eastern church is the story of powerful centers of learning serving literally hundreds of dioceses networked across a landscape that we today think of as having been Islamic from the moment that Mohammed's followers came out of Arabia. Basra and Baghdad were major centers of Christian learning, with equally impressive focal points hundreds of miles further to the east. Christian mission was well established in Arabia, with strong churches led by forward-looking bishops in what was to become the heartland of Mohammad and modern Yemen. Indeed, Jenkins suggests the significant influence of these Christians upon the founders of Islam. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Hugh Jordan, who taught me Old Testament in the 1960s, was convinced that Islam is actually a Christian heresy, a thesis with which Jenkins toys. “Even when Christianity has seemingly been eradicated, we find many traces of it on the cultural and religious landscape. A traveler in today's Middle East sees societies that are so overwhelmingly Muslim, and in some instances exclusively so. In many cases, though, those Muslims are the lineal descendants of communities that were once Christian, and that often maintained their Christian loyalties for a millennium or more. Even if the connection is not by blood, many other Muslims live in nations in which Christian influence was once predominant and shaped everyday life... Modern Christians or Muslims can scarcely denounce the practices of the other religion without in the process rejecting a substantial part of their own heritage” (Page 174-175).</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Having made such a sweeping statement, Jenkins then sets about illustrating some of these factors, demonstrating how, for example, strands of Christian piety were translated into Islamic terms and have given substance to various traditions of the Muslim faith. For example, he ponders the possibility of a close link between Islamic devotional practices and the Jesus Prayer, as well as the manner in which the historic Ethiopian and Yemeni Christian approach to Lent gave shape to the Islamic season of Ramadan.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">While Christianity may have rapidly collapsed before the advance of Islam in North Africa for particular set of social reasons, it did not crumble and fall when Muslim princes became the rulers of other lands. Even as Islam grew stronger, Christians remained at the core of society for centuries following. Even after the arrival of the Muslims there were courageous missionaries, extraordinary bishops, preachers, and teachers, as well as diplomats, monks, hermits, and daily heavenward focus of ancient liturgies. Jenkins asserts that very often the basis of the learning that gets attributed today solely to Islam during its intellectual heyday, was actually grounded in the scholarship of Christians in major centers like Baghdad – whether it be the study be mathematics and philosophy, or any of the other sciences. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One of the reasons we know little of this story is that at its core were churches whose theological niceties were scorned by the church catholic of the great Councils. For example, there is little doubt that some of the most dynamic missionaries of the first thousand years were the Nestorians, a group expelled as heretics after the Council of Ephesus in 431AD. Yet, Nestorius and his followers could well have been excommunicated as much because of a strong political undercurrent running against them as because they nuanced the nature of the Godhead slightly differently from the majority. However, when placing Nestorius and his crew beside some of the absurd theologies circulating within the churches today, they look like paragons of doctrinal virtue!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As Philip Jenkins draws together the threads of his research he makes some tentative suggestions about churches that once were and now are no longer, and upon which we would be wise to chew. He challenges us to ask various far-reaching questions about our own church and current Christian tradition. “The ruins of Christianity in a particular region might confound Christians who have long been accustomed to seeing the expansion of their faith as a fundamental expectation,” he writes, but asks us to see the long haul of the faith within the broader and over-arching providence of the God who is the Lord of history. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He wonders aloud how we might interpret the apparent disappearance of the faith from what was once its well-established heartland, and what this might have to do with winning the world for Jesus Christ. One brief illustration he draws attention to has fascinated me for several years. This is the “Back to Jerusalem” movement being prayed over and fostered by the growing Christian Church in contemporary China. Could it be that they have properly understood the panorama of the history of salvation when they think of themselves as God's chosen vessels called to take the faith back to Jerusalem from the east along the trade routs of that old Silk Road?</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I would love to see a variety of authors write about various facets of this story, making them accessible to the general reader, and providing further insights into some of the broader observations that Jenkins makes. I suspect there is much food for thought for those of us living in post-Christian Europe, for example, as we explore precisely how the Christian churches were eclipsed in the east, how geopolitics played into the hands of the forces aligned against the churches, what precisely was the role of Islam and the rise of the Arabic language, and so forth.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I don't think that <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lost History of Christianity</span> is a book that is likely to sit on my bookshelves gathering dust as so many other volumes do. I am sure that there are assertions that can and will be challenged by more serious scholars than myself, but I am also sure that with broad brush strokes Philip Jenkins has written something that will force us to ask and seek answers to some very difficult questions.</p> <meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.0 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style> Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-86001842450105338472009-04-19T09:48:00.000-07:002009-05-02T10:09:02.570-07:00Being an AnomalySome weeks ago I met another Anglo-American returnee, a professional woman who has been back in England several years longer than myself. Over lunch she "comforted" me with the news that I have at least another two years of adjusting to do before I will have come to terms again with being back in this country again. I was grateful for Liz's insight because I guess I was beginning to think along such lines myself.<br /><br />Re-acclimating to Britain has been a seesaw kind of business, positives and negatives mingled with one another in a hodgepodge kind of way. There is the sheer exhilaration of coming into work on a soft spring morning with the sun breaking through the mist over Kings College Chapel and the Backs, only to be greeted when I get to work by something annoyingly English that has me grinding my teeth!<br /><br />I love the work that I have been called to do, and feel privileged that for the last lap of my stipendiary ministry I am able to do something that could have a real long-term impact on the advance of the Kingdom, but at the same time I realize with every passing day that I am an anomaly. As when a radio station is slightly out of tune, so do I feel about my inability to fit here.<br /><br />To begin with, development and institutional advancement has a puzzling flavor to many on this side of the water -- and that a priest should be doing it further intensifies that puzzlement. But playing a part in bringing the noble work of gathering resources to the fore is the sort of challenge that I have always relished. I guess that having played a role in widening the commitment to global mission among North American Anglicans over the last thirty years, which was no small feat, getting people used to raising of funds for ministry and mission should be a no-brainer here... but I am not sure that it is. However, my life has been a succession of challenging interludes, so I suppose that what I am doing fits me admirably.<br /><br />But then the waters are muddied by the fact that I am really much more American in my attitudes than I had ever imagined when I came back. A friend who is the CEO of one of the largest container ports in East Asia, and who was back home for a couple of weeks leave over Easter, with typical North of England bluntness said things about the British with which I found myself agreeing with 101%. His work has taken him all around the world, and the attitudes of the British do not enamor him one little bit. I often find myself scratching my head that this nation once put together the greatest Empire in the world, because now visionary thinking is very much a minority sport in most areas of enterprise.<br /><br />I love that American expansiveness that says, "Let's give it a try," and I caught that bug in my three decades in this States -- something that makes me very much an anomaly on the British side of the Pond. What is lovely, however, is that it is not entirely dead. There are great successes that people have when they think and act that way, rather than playing protective games that erase the excitment that comes when taking a calculated risk.<br /><br />Two sayings from my American years have indelibly imprinted themselves on my consciousness. One is from Martin Luther King, who said that if a man has not found anything worth dying for, then he isn't fit to live (remember King spoke before gender inclusive language became the norm). The other is that we need to take on challenges that are so big, that unless the Lord is in them they are bound to fail. That's what gets my juices flowing.<br /><br />But such thinking doesn't cause much of a ripple here, and yet could unleash such talent if it was tried. It isn't that such big picture thinking isn't possible but that there is a tendency to shy away from it and play safe. I guess I have never been too good at shying!<br /><br />But another thing that makes me an anomaly is far more personal, and that is that even when I am trying to be extra careful I find when speaking with others that I am often slightly out of tune. A very funny joke flops, a throwaway remark is interpreted in the wrong way, or in some way or another I find myself talking past someone -- even when being scrupulous in my choice of subject or words. While my accent might sound almost English when I speak, beneath the words that come out is a mindset and worldview that is thoroughly transatlantic and at odds with Old World attitudes.<br /><br />We really are two great peoples divided by a common language, but when that becomes personified in one individual who isn't quite sure which of those languages or thought worlds he inhabits, then the confusion is complete. This then carries across into everything else from the way in which we "do church" to the manner in which we make decisions, explore interesting ideas, or seek to find our way through difficult sets of circumstances.<br /><br />It is interesting that the things about which Americans get passionate are somewhat different than those which light up the sky for Brits. It does seem to me that the British are much more inclined to accept uncomplainingly what is dished out from those in power and authority, and yet there is a certain kind of assertiveness and posturing among leaders in the States that would never go down in this country. Then, while most of the "loud mouths" on the American scene come from the Right, often the very far Right, in Britain they tend to be more measured, less bombastic, but are also distinctively leftward leaning.<br /><br />Whereas secularism has eaten away at the heart of each nation in its own way, I would have to say that because there is still a healthy civil religion in the States, there is still something of a soul in public life most parts of the country. Here, such a thing is very hard to find, and it is <span style="font-style: italic;">de rigor </span>in the media to ignore, denounce, or find fault with all things religious and religious people (always very carefully and respectfully if they are Islamic, but with utter disdain if they have anything to do with the Church of England!).<br /><br />But then there are wonderful things about England that I am treasuring. This afternoon, for instance, I took my bike and headed out across the fields and along the Fenland ditches for miles, listening to the birds in the air and watching the little clouds go scudding across a gentle blue April sky. In the distance on the horizon were the towers of Cathedral in Ely, whose diocese is this year celebrating the 900th anniversary of its founding.<br /><br />And then there is Cambridge itself. It is crammed to overflowing with some of the brightest people I have ever come across. World-class discoveries are coming out of Cambridge laboratories and hi-tech facilities with monotonous regularity, and at a social gathering you might find yourself talking one minute to a learned barrister and the next to an inventor who is bubbling over with ideas. On top of that, I wouldn't have missed Maundy Thursday at Kings College...Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-77493031586528272252009-03-08T00:28:00.000-08:002009-03-08T10:13:52.232-07:00Manure and the Church<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SbP73dC1dzI/AAAAAAAAARI/5z43ldSRYH0/s1600-h/manure.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310865315707844402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SbP73dC1dzI/AAAAAAAAARI/5z43ldSRYH0/s200/manure.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>For my special Lenten reading this year I have chosen Eugene Peterson's book, <em>Tell it Slant. </em>Asking us to consider the way we use language, Peterson takes us through Samaria with Jesus as he went up to Jerusalem in Luke's Gospel, opening up the parables that are the heart of the Lord's teaching. Early this morning I got to what Peterson calls the Manure Parable (Luke 13:6-9). </div><br /><div></div><div>Here is a parable that I have read for years, puzzled over, but never really properly understood -- and had certainly not seen in light of the struggles that the churches, especially the Episcopal Church, have been going through in recent years. But Eugene Peterson has not only shed fresh light on my understanding, but has also given me some helpful insights into the way we have all been handling ourselves, especially through the last half dozen years.</div><br /><div></div><div>The parable goes like this:<br /><em><strong></strong></em></div><div><em><strong>Then Jesus told them a story: "A man had a fig tree planted in his front yard. He came to it expecting to find figs, but there weren't any. He said to his gardener, 'What's going on here? For three years now I've come to this tree expecting figs and not one fig have I found. Chop it down! Why waste good ground with it any longer?' The gardener said, 'Let's give it another year. I'll loosen the ground and dig in manure. Maybe it will produce next year; if it doesn't, then chop it down.'"</strong></em> </div><br /><div></div><div>When I saw the subject of the chapter this morning was manure, I have to admit that I wasn't particularly excited. I thought I might skim over the pages so that I was soon somewhere more interesting. But from the outset it grabbed me. Here is Jesus leading his disciples through the sometimes dangerous country of Samaria where religious wars are common and even bloody, but he is challenging the natural response which is "Chop it down!"</div><br /><div></div><div>"So much of the time it is not complecency that threatens but its opposite, impetuosity. We see something that is wrong, whether in the world or in the church, and we fly into action, righting the wrong, confronting sin and wickedness, battling the enemy, and then we go out vigorously recruiting 'Christian soldiers' ... we solve kingdom problems by amputation" (Page 69).</div><br /><div></div><div>He goes on to point out that manure is not a quick fix because it takes a long time before anyone begins to see that it is making any difference. What we want is results: which means chopping down the tree, clearing the ground, making a fresh start. Spreading manure is neither glamorous or exhilarating work, it is the slow solution, but "it's the stuff of resurrection."</div><br /><div></div><div>He quotes George Adam Smith, the great Victorian Scottish expositor who says when commenting on some of Isaiah's prophecy that "we are not warriors but artists... after the fashion of Jesus Christ who came not to condemn... but to building life up to the image of Christ." What a wonderful description of the nature of Christian ministry and relationships during difficult times. </div><br /><div></div><div>The trouble is, we don't have the patience for manure -- cut it down, make a fresh start, if we are Christian soldiers then those who disagree with us must be the enemy. </div><br /><div></div><div>Peterson goes on, "Manure. The Psalms are prayers worked into the soil of our lives to shape our imaginations and obedience so that we live our lives to shape our imaginations and obedience so that we live our lives congruent wit hthe way God works in the world and in us, works in a world of violence and antipathyu without becoming violent. One of the most repeated sentences, repeated because we are so impatient to 'cut it down and get on with it,' is 'O give thanks to the Lord for he is good; His steadfast love endures forever... His love never quits.</div><br /><div></div><div>Manure. God is not in a hurry. We are repeatedly told to 'Wait for the Lord.' But that is not counsel that is readily accepted by followers of Jesus who have been conditioned by promises of instant gratification, whether American or Assyrian. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, one of our great modern Isaianic prophets who has extensive experience with violence in two World Wars, wrote, 'The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profound relationships.' Like Isaiah, he was ignored" (Page 72).</div><br /><p>But we are in a hurry. We are pushing to put things right, and to get them right here and now -- even if it means pushing God out of the way but, of course, in the name of God!</p><p>"Manure. Silence. Manure reentering the condition of 'Let it be done to me,' submitting to the silent energies that change death into life, the energies of resurrection. Language consists in equal parts of speaking and silence. The art of language requires skills in not speaking quite as much as skills in speaking. Much mischief and misunderstanding result from talking that is not embedded in much listening. When we listen we are silent. I like Saul Bellow's comment, 'The more you keep your mouth shut, the more fertile you become.' Silence is the manure of resurrection...</p><p>... The Manure Story is free-floating throughout the journey through Samaria -- as it is in the journey through America. It is ready for use whenever we come up against animosity, against antagonism and impetuous indignation and are prepared to counter the opposition with violence, whether verbal or physical. But the story comies to its most powerful and incisive expression in words Jesus spoke from the cross..." (Page 73).</p><div></div><div>As I look at the ruins around us as well as the promise of more to come, there is great enlightenment in the words of Jesus, and Eugene Peterson's insight as we seek to understand them. This is a little story for the church in our time. It is a story that points the finger at our impatience that fails to allow the manure of divine grace to slowly filter its way into our relationships, our disagreements, our politics. </div><br /><div></div><div>This is a story that speaks volumes to those of us whose impatient wielding of power has us hurling vituperative lawsuits at those who can take no more and want to walk away.</div><br /><div></div><div>At the same time it is strong medicine for those who have lost patience and walked away saying "Chop it down" as they have departed -- and sometimes those words are spat out with agonizing viciousness. </div><br /><div></div><div>We have become warriors and abandoned the artform of the Christian faith. It is little wonder that there is a swathe of destruction all around us that is the ecclesiastical kin to the path taken by a tornado through a densely populated suburb. I know that is a good analogy because I have had just such a thing happen to me. </div>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-1467624524640643192009-01-10T23:53:00.001-08:002009-01-11T01:00:54.605-08:00We No Longer Take A Newspaper<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SWm0OEkw5QI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/h7W0qW-xezo/s1600-h/newspaper.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 173px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SWm0OEkw5QI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/h7W0qW-xezo/s200/newspaper.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289957391162467586" border="0" /></a><br />For the first time in my whole life I live in a house that does not have a regular subscription to a daily newspaper. This is not to say that we are no longer keeping up with the news (although it is SO bad that often I would rather bury my head in the sand), rather it is a vote of no confidence in the quality of daily journalism. While I find journalism leaving a lot to be desired everywhere, in the UK it seems to be particularly unattractive.<br /><br />I read a newspaper so that I might learn what is going on in the world, and while I realize that I am going to get it funneled to me through the perceptions of the writer, I have reached a point where I am tired of the journalist propaganizing me for his or her particular agenda. Since my initial first-hand encounters with the press in the early 1970s when I discovered that their description of events at which I was present did not seem to jibe with what I had seen and experienced, I have been leary of the media. Over the years, on those rare occasions when I have been interviewed, I have concluded that rather than listening to what I am saying and engaging with me, they have instead been looking for a hook on which to hang a story that might have a whiff of controversy about it. Since the dreadful fall of 2003, after a particularly painful episode, I have avoided dealing with journalists altogether.<br /><br />It seems to me that if we want to get a rough idea of what is actually going on then we need to gather our news from a whole variety of sources, taking into account the innate biases that these sources might have. One newspaper with its own editorial line is no longer enough, and if taken needs to be supplemented by all sorts of other publications in various media formats. Neither is one broadcasting source enough, whether it is the <span style="font-style: italic;">BBC</span> or the <span style="font-style: italic;">Fox News Channel</span>, each of which has their own bias despite their vaunted claims otherwise.<br /><br />These days we find ourselves primarily drawing on the <span style="font-style: italic;">Economist</span>, the <span style="font-style: italic;">BBC</span> (both domestic and the World Service), the online <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">CNN International</span>,<span style="font-style: italic;"> CNBC,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Bloomberg</span>, the online <span style="font-style: italic;">Tennessean</span>, the online <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> of London, and the headline services that appear on AOL, Yahoo, and other internet portals. The important thing is then to measure reports from different sources against one another, mentally debating their reports and assertions. I know that I am going to get much more serious reporting of current events from the <span style="font-style: italic;">BBC World Service</span>, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Economist</span>, and the <span style="font-style: italic;">NY Times</span>, but then unlike AOL and Yahoo they don't give me interesting little snippets of information that provide some flavor for our worldview.<br /><br />I think it is the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> of London that has disappointed me the most since returning to England. This once great icon of serious news reporting seems to have lost its way in the rough and tumble of the highly competitive newspaper market in Britain, and as a result the perspective of its reporters and correspondents leaves the reading asking questions about what actually is going on. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum the popular daily tabloids are about as helpful as the average weekly tabloid found at the supermarket checkout in the USA! This might be amusing, but it needs to be remembered that it is these that are shaping popular opinion.<br /><br />The media that I have missed most since returning to Britain has been National Public Radio and the wonderful current affairs programming of Public Television. NPR has always said that it has modeled itself on the BBC -- well, I would have to say that in much of its handling of the news it has surpassed the Beeb by far.<br /><br />The funny thing is that I don't feel anything is missing now that a newspaper is no longer delivered each day to our home, which rather surprises me. I rather like it that twice a day the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times </span>plops into my online intray, and despite the howls of some that the Times is too liberal there is something stately about the way in which it handles the stories and issues that are concerning the world. I am actually looking forward to Amazon beginning to sell the Kindle outside of the USA because I intend to buy one -- and could very well subscribe to have the NY Times delivered to it!<br /><br />I guess, therefore, that there are two reasons why we no longer receive the delivery of a newspaper. One is that the journalism is not of a quality that we actually want to pay for it, and the other is that we are actually find ourselves being ushered further into the electronic age of news delivery services. However, I am old-fashioned enough to say that if a newspaper is worth buying then I would jump for it. When we were recently on vacation in Vienna we read the <span style="font-style: italic;">International Herald Tribune</span>, a publication that I think is a real winner.<br /><br />There is increasing talk about newspapers going under in the midst of the economic crisis, and of journalists losing their jobs. Perhaps one of the ways this could be prevented would be their willingness to publish the quality that would make you mad not to subscribe to their publication.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-86220277430524528192008-12-29T02:32:00.000-08:002009-01-01T03:56:30.608-08:00What can we learn from all this?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr9qd1hhRWgMQ4k73GzPErGdiohDQVoZndg1h39Y7WXWYoFcmx_ZIv1f0AW-1xoTZnAkdJnNkxnMdvxF4phY0sZ6EZaRZrGD82TueG7KeF-rWcQNQ4IbLI0cGYeqMztKfw_mhF/s1600-h/new+year.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr9qd1hhRWgMQ4k73GzPErGdiohDQVoZndg1h39Y7WXWYoFcmx_ZIv1f0AW-1xoTZnAkdJnNkxnMdvxF4phY0sZ6EZaRZrGD82TueG7KeF-rWcQNQ4IbLI0cGYeqMztKfw_mhF/s200/new+year.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286292173819684322" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The year that came from hell</span><br />It is no exaggeration to say that 2008 was a hell of a year and there are few of us who walk away from it without some kind of wound or, at least, a heightened sense of anxiety. At a meeting the other day a colleague leaned over during one of those dead-time moments and whispered that a friend who last Christmas had been the epitome of success had that very morning filed for bankruptcy as a result of a real estate deal gone badly wrong.<br /><br />Each day the news from either side of the Atlantic (and Pacific) seems to bring another sad story of a business or chain of stores seeking protection or closing down. In the USA the auto makers teeter on the brink of ruin, while in the UK we have watched that venerable institution, Woolworths, close its doors for the last time. Japan reports a whopping drop in export production, in China there are fears of unrest because of lost jobs, and in some countries there is denial that things are that bad at all. Meanwhile, those at the bottom of the pile of world prosperity are being hit the hardest.<br /><br />For years now we have crowed about the arrival of globalization, and while we have focused on the positives of this movement within planetary culture, we have forgotten that if we internationalize the economy then when it tanks it will tank globally. Among the earlier victims of this new kind of world emerging a generation ago was world socialism and the Communist bloc, could it be now that the capitalism of the 'free world' as we have known it is being weighed in the balance (and found wanting)? It is because we have no answer to that question that our fears are magnified.<br /><br />And the news has gone on being either bad or worse. I have in the last few months found myself praying as one appalling thing after another comes up on the media, "O Lord, please give us some good news, please, please, please..." I had often wondered how it must have been for my parents' generation in England to live through the first three years of World War Two when the news each day was one of backs against the wall, retreat, and one defeat after another as Britain sought to hold tyranny at bay. While this is nothing like as bad, I think I now have an idea.<br /><br />Back last summer people were keeping their worst fears to themselves, but I have discovered there are now people of influence who are prepared, in private at least, to express them. There was a particularly grim face on a very successful man I met with several months ago who not only declared that he thought things would get worse for quite a while before starting to improve, but also that he feared massive civil unrest on the streets of Britain and the USA -- now there's a comforting thought!<br /><br />Add to this the black humor of friends who have now decided to postpone retirement because, as they put it, their 401k had been reduced to a 201k, or to see well-endowed universities scrambling because their endowments have suddenly plummeted and something grips us inside. Even though I knew there would always be ups and downs, for the first time in my life I have come to realize just how fragile the economic gods we have worshipped really are. The whole financial system upon which we have depended all our lives has demonstrated that it has feet of clay, and with that realization comes fear and lack of confidence.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Denial?</span><br />However, the other day when we went to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest take on <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet </span>in the West End of London, the streets were crammed with shoppers, and the same was true in Cambridge yesterday when I slipped into town to buy socks to replace the increasing number of holey ones among my aging collection. Yet on the streets there wasn't the lightheartedness that normally goes with after-Christmas sales and coming off the holiday season, rather the mood was a somber one of let's get the things we need and want while we can and while the prices are low, or put another way, "Eat, drink, and be merry..."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silver Linings?</span><br />An array of black thoughts has been churning in my mind for so long that some days ago as a spiritual exercise I began trying to see if there are any silver linings in these glowering economic clouds that have put down the mighty from their seats. The Boomer materialist in me doesn't like the idea of hardship and discomfort, and I truly hope that things will not be as bad as the Cassandras suggest. Yet I also realize that there are a lot of us who have lived so long with seemingly endless prosperity that a little sabbatical from plenty might be healthy.<br /><br />My sense is that this is not just a rather deep pothole which is rattling the undercarriage of our world, more a significant turning of the page. We have come to a major intersection, and this is reality check -- a reminder to us that the world's idols have feet of clay. For a long time we have been coddled and now that the tide has been going out we have to dig deep and ask some really fundamental questions about the sort of people we are, the lives we should live, and the values that will shape them. Society as a whole is being asked to do the sort of inner hard work that the bereaved have to do when they lose a partner, a parent, a sibling, and to build a new life for themselves in the wake of it.<br /><br />A lot of us have been used to paying lip service to the idea that life is about more than things and their accumulation, and then having placated our consciences with our words have got on with the business of getting more. Now the opportunity of living more simply is before us and once again we are being asked how we are going to handle our patterns of consumption. Are we ready to ask ourselves whether having lots of things has actually been good of us, and what we might be able to do to begin cutting our cloth somewhat differently?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Living more simply and frugally</span><br />I have entertained private thoughts for a long time that it is the height of madness to build a national or a global economy on a throwaway materialism that uses every instrument in its toolbox to urge us to consume more percentage points of stuff every year. I am not an economist, but I think we should consider whether the affluent consumerist way isn't one huge Ponzi scheme as we borrow from the future to fuel our present. And I mean all of us, because whether we like it or not we are all implicated.<br /><br />If I ever made New Year resolutions this year one would be for the rest of my life that I will try not to consume just for the sake of consuming, or to purchase things that can only be discarded when they go wrong rather than being repairable -- these would be a start down a different pathway. The trouble is that right now that is almost impossible.<br /><br />Now is the time for renewed economic responsibility, and perhaps we Christians should be working on removing whole trees lodged in our own eyes before encouraging our fellow-citizens to work on the logs in their own. Several bishops in Britain have been castigated by the press for making pronouncement about economic things in which they have no expertize. Actually, they are asking ethical questions, and while they may not understand all the macro-economic implications of their words they have asked us to consider whether the emperor has clothes.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A time of hope</span><br />If this is a time to question the pattern of our lifestyle, then it is also a time for hope which comes with a fresh beginning. That may sound a weird thing to say as we consider that throughout the world before this whole crisis winds down millions will have lost their means of livelihood, so I write advisedly. Yes, this has been a huge hiccup in the way our culture organizes itself and governments have been doing their best to find a way through, and they deserve the fervent encouragement of our prayers. But perhaps we should see this time as an opportunity.<br /><br />Here is the opportunity to launche into a major overhaul of the world we inherited from our forebears and have made a bit of a mess of. Here is a massive and exciting challenge for the rising generation of late cohort GenXers and the Millennials -- to reconstruct a different kind of world that is governed by a fresh vision and set of values, and we might say that it wouldbe helpful if it had a smaller carbon footprint. The task for those of us who are older is to be there for them, prepared to roll up our sleeves and work alongside them on this truly massive project. The is a 'Marshall Plan' of huge proportions. As Christians play their part in this, they are the church seeking to be the leaven, for there are facets of this that have a truly Kingdom flavor.<br /><br />In a way, if global reconfiguration for the 21st Century began with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, could it be that 2009 is the year when the great 21st Century task facing the US, UK, and all the nations together actually comes into focus in the wake of this great economic bruhaha?<br /><br />I have been rereading John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address which he delivered on January 20, 1961. I was a high schooler in England when it was delivered but despite the fact tha America was a long way away and I never thought I would be part of it, Kennedy's words challenged me to an idealism that has never fully gone away. It is fifty years since those words we await the arrival on the scene of another visionary president -- and coincidentally, his Inaugural Address will be delivered on January 20. Whatever our varied political biases, we are obliged by Scripture to wish him well and pray for him as he takes on leadership with expectations laid upon him that no man nor woman could fulfill. It is within this environment that we are called to be the Church of God for a different kind of culture.<br /><br />Perhaps we should bring into the present Kennedy's words from the steps of the Capitol a half century ago: <span style="font-style: italic;">"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world." </span>If this signalled a turning point in 1961, how much more in 2009? While Kennedy spoke to the fifty States of the Union, this year Obama will speak to (and perhaps f0r) a listening world.<br /><br />Meanwhile, while Presidents are important we are the followers and the family of the Prince of Peace, called to live as part of this generation at a most difficult time. What sort of fire are we going to light so that its glow might be seen around the world?Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-29273074068498695772008-12-21T08:52:00.001-08:002008-12-23T08:21:42.862-08:00"Rowan's Rule"<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SU6GKEoe0HI/AAAAAAAAAQc/4sSc_uSCdYM/s1600-h/RowansRule.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282306920552517746" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 130px; height: 200px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ti9V_GldW6w/SU6GKEoe0HI/AAAAAAAAAQc/4sSc_uSCdYM/s400/RowansRule.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div align="center"><em>Rowan's Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop, </em>by Rupert Shortt. </div><div align="center">(London: Hodder and Stoughton. 2008)</div><div><em></em></div><br /><div><em>Rowan's Rule</em> is a fascinating book, not only tracing the life and ministry of the present incumbent of Augustine's Chair, but also seeking to introduce us afresh to one of the most complex individuals. The book confirms what I have been saying about Williams for a number of years: that he cannot be pigeon-holed by simplistic labels and shallow formulas, especially those that might be polarized and polarizing.</div><div></div><br /><div>Rupert Shortt reckons that Williams is probably the most brilliant Archbishop of Canterbury since Anselm, while at the same time being one who wears his intellectual capacity humbly. This is a huge claim to make when there have been incumbents such as Michael Ramsey of recent memory, and Thomas Cranmer of the Reformation years. The reader will have to judge whether Shortt has succeeded in backing up his assertion, but he certainly makes a strong case.</div><br /><div></div><div>The Archbishop is a man who in conversation with those who lack his ability treats them as equals and listens to them with great care and an open mind, always willing to modify his own views if a case is made to justify it. Many who are as gifted take great delight putting interlocutors in their place, but not Rowan Williams; indeed, it could be that he is prone to take a little too seriously some of the input that he receives. This is a mark of Archbishop Williams' genuine godliness, and a humility that is, perhaps, his greatest strength. It is probably that humility is one of his qualities that is least understood either in or beyond the church. </div><br /><div></div><div>There is little doubt that the Archbishop occasionally misspeaks, and in recent years he has occasionally handled things flat-footedly, but these shortcomings should be seen in light of the onslaughts that have been launched against him -- often way out of all proportion to the 'offence' that he might be accused of committing. A lesser man would have fired back withering broadsides in response, but not Dr. Williams. Instead, he has worked to listen to all points of view, taken on board what he can, and whatever difficulties he has been dealing with to keep as many people at the table as possible. It has been a kind of crucifixion, but he has borne it with great grace.</div><div></div><br /><div>Being in the presence of Rowan Williams is like being with a transparently holy Orthodox monk or patriarch. This is hardly very surprising given the amount that he has drawn upon Orthodox spirituality and wisdom in his own thinking and personal Christian discipleship. The fruit of a recently sabbatical was a substantial book dealing with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and it stands as evidence of his significant grasp of Russian culture and spirituality, into which he began to dig when he was undertaking his doctoral work -- to the extent that he taught himself Russian.</div><br /><div></div><div>Yet having been immersed in the treasures of Orthodoxy, Williams has then mediates them to others with a distinctly Anglican appreciation and focused by an Anglican lens. But in a way it is much more than Anglican because his earliest perceptions were shaped by the noncomformist Chapel culture of his native Wales in which he was reared until his teens. In the Williams family tree are several minor leaders of Welsh noncomformity, as well as the likelihood of poets and hymnwriters. Poetry, it seems, is well imbedded in the Williams DNA!</div><br /><div></div><div>One of the points that Rupert Shortt seems determined to make is that despite his willingness to undertake academic exploration and theological surmise, Rowan Williams not only owes a lot to Orthodoxy (with a capital 'O'), but is also theologically intensely orthodox in terms of his trinitarian faith that is focused on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and mediated to us through Scripture. While he will rhuminate in an exploratory manner over issues and doctrinal challenges, his faith is catholic, and he is not prone to press his intellectual inquiry upon then church, or to go off on wild goose chases after theological notions that curry favor with the present age but lack roots and foundations in that which the church has received. </div><br /><div></div><div>It seems there was a time when Rowan considered the possibility of celibacy and the religious life, but he always seemed to enjoy the company of women, they enjoyed his, and eventually he settled down to marriage with a woman whose theological acumen is an excellent match and foil for him. Jane Williams is the daughter of an evangelical bishop, and her own teaching ministry now takes place as part of the theological training college that is within the nexus of Holy Trinity, Brompton. However, Jane Williams, it seems, is not without her worries for her mate. She believes that she lost her own father to the stresses placed upon him by the church, and is fearful that she could lose her husband in much the same way.</div><br /><div></div><div>Her fears are easy to understand because Rowan Williams has the heart of a poet, and composes sensitive and perceptive verse in both English and Welsh. While I am sure he has had to develop a certain thickness of skin to deal with the things that get thrown at him, he has not grown the hide of a rhinoseros that can protect his inner being from the darts and arrows that get aimed in his direction. Being Archbishop of Canterbury is the most onerous of offices, especially in our time, and maybe the question this raises is whether he will step down from the task before he reaches normal retirement age. I suspect that if he did Oxford, Cambridge, or maybe an American university would create a chair for him so that he might finish out his ministry within the context of academia, a setting in which he is very much at home.</div><br /><div></div><div>Meanwhile, he toils away seeking to hold the Anglican Communion together in some kind of way. Several years ago he admitted to me that it was the Communion that kept him awake at night, and since then the ongoing riot that is international Anglican life has intensified rather than subsiding. As I read Shortt's latest book on Rowan, again and again I found myself thanking God that he had called such a man to this challenge in our era.</div><br /><div></div><div>In 2002 I was deeply disappointed by Rowan Williams' appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, but as the years have passed my assessment of him has altered. His tenacious grace has done an enormous amount to keep this fractious family of Christian churches at least on speaking terms despite the pressures of those at either end of the theological and ecclesial spectrum, as well as the actions of the occasional bomb-thrower. Maybe the best that can be done at a time like this is to keep people talking wherever possible -- and there is no better person than Rowan Williams to keep the conversation going. The final outcome of these wrenching years will probably not emerge on Rowan's watch, I suspect, but the trajectory that Anglican life will take for generations is now being set.</div><br /><div></div><div>I find that the example of Rowan Williams calls forth from me a generosity of Spirit, and a desire in my own small way to try to emmulate his humility and gentle kindness. Although Rowan is prepared to think outside the box in ways that I consider to be tempting providence, in many respects there is not so large a gulf between his brand of catholic Anglicanism and the charitable evangelicalism which I hope occasionally characterizes my faith. </div><br /><div></div><div>Historians are likely to spend generations picking over the archiepiscopate of Dr. Rowan Douglas Williams, but there can be little doubt that this intellectual giant and gracious pilgrim is one whose whole heart is in the business of seeking to enable the church to maintain the unity of the Spirit within the bonds of peace.</div>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-50483703575151014572008-09-05T23:54:00.000-07:002008-09-07T07:08:13.342-07:00The Church of England after a Year Back<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwDilXJflJtWZPwMsi6DC87z5cuN6tENww56VzzLGE_1hrfZYEsbIDUFGs8xmbKm8mbjAFA436_VUZFRq3RnjlsSZj6vp0sRYyRTepSES0LyAmfBssXZ5dY5ToBNdSXiVEU4Yo/s1600-h/imp44t.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwDilXJflJtWZPwMsi6DC87z5cuN6tENww56VzzLGE_1hrfZYEsbIDUFGs8xmbKm8mbjAFA436_VUZFRq3RnjlsSZj6vp0sRYyRTepSES0LyAmfBssXZ5dY5ToBNdSXiVEU4Yo/s400/imp44t.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5242827100803430050" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">St. Andrew's Church, Impington, Cambridge, approx. 1900</span><br /></div><br />Yesterday was one of the wet and windy days that seem to have been the trademark of what passes for a summer in Britain, but there was a brief sunny break early in the evening which gave me an opportunity to take the dog for a walk. We went to a favorite place, one of the ancient trackways northward out of our village along which cattle were driven to market for hundreds of years. As we turned the slight corner along the very wet and muddy drove there on the horizon, shining in the evening sun, was Ely Cathedral, nine or ten miles away.<br /><br />I have often wondered what it would have been like for men and women hundreds of years ago when they saw such a massive building as they trudged toward the ancient city in the heart of the Fens. The cathedral is 175 yards long with two towers, one of which rises more than two hundred feet. There was an Anglo-Saxon abbey there before the Normans came along and started work on the present building. Next year the Diocese of Ely will celebrate its 900th anniversary, making Cambridge University look positively youthful at 800 years old next year!<br /><br />These are the sort of buildings inhabited by the Church of England, evidence of the long and remarkable Christian heritage that there is in this country, and they give the illusion of Christian rootedness here. While it is an illusion to think of England as a Christian nation, folk religion still survives and it has been shaped by the established church. Whatever anyone says, the Church of England remains the church of the English people, the one from which they stay away -- and woe betide you if you threaten the church build which neither they nor their forebears attend!<br /><br />Having been born, raised, and ordained here, these historic buildings are as much part and parcel of my identity as is my own name. In a very real sense the Church of England is my spiritual mother. However, coming back to be part of the life of the English church last year after all these years away I realized that I had tumbled into something that I no longer really properly recognized or understood. Some of the most difficult elements of returning to the UK have been focused on readjusting to the good old C. of E., an entity that is simple to parody and always provides an easy target for journalists when there is a slow news day.<br /><br />The media trumpet the Church's shortcomings endlessly, and seldom is there any good news shared with the general population, many of whom are six or seven generations away from realistic contact with the church. That innate religiosity that pervades much of American life is just not there in this country, and probably hasn't been in the major industrial cities since the Industrial Revolution or earlier. The British people are quite happy to sing "God save the Queen," especially at football (soccer) games, but have little idea who that God they are asking to save her actually is.<br /><br />The great untold story of the Church of England is that of faithful persistent ministry in season and out of season. There are impressive batallions of laity and clergy who receive very little affirmation for their constant labors, their care for the sick and needy, the conduct of worship, bouts of evangelism, and the maintenance of these expensive historic buildings that crop up in even the tiniest community littering the countryside everywhere. These are good and faithful servants, and they have their parallels in the other Christian traditions and denominations in the UK.<br /><br />Alongside this very traditional continuity of the church there is also what is called "Fresh Expressions." This, I think, illustrates that the Church of England's life is not trapped in crumbling medieval piles but is seeking to reach beyond the culture of the churched to the culture of the totally unchurched. This movement has a long way to go but seems to be gathering encouraging momentum. New congregations and other expressions of church are coming into being which may not look anything like what the Church of England is meant to be, but are an open door and threshold over which the spiritually hungry might come without feeling alienated. We have Fresh Expressions leaders training at Ridley Hall, and I have to say that while their commitment to Christ and mission is rich they don't look or sound like previous generations of pastors and clergy!<br /><br />It is, perhaps, too early to tell where all this is leading, but I find it very encouraging even if it is rather alien to the likes of me. But then, coming back from the USA I have found much of what the Church of England has become rather alien. I suppose that as a result of my years in the States I have become a bit of an oddity -- a liturgical evangelical Anglican. Nothing innately abnormal about that in America, but here I'm truly out of step with the mainstream of evangelicalism.<br /><br />Perhaps I should say mainstreams, because Anglican evangelicalism has fragmented since I left here in 1976. When I was ordained we were a disdained minority who stuck together for comfort and fellowship. Today evangelical Christianity is the tradition with the most significant life and vibrance in the English church. It has produced some of the finest scholars (Wright, McGrath, and younger generations nipping at their heels), many dioceses realize that if it weren't for their evangelical congregations, and especially the larger ones, they would be in an even greater degree of trouble. Perhaps 80% of those training in theological colleges are of the evangelical persuasion (although there are weekend courses that produce clergy whose flavor is more varied), and if our experience in Cambridge is anything to go by we are seeing some of the fruits of Alpha training for leadership and ordained ministry.<br /><br />Yet there are differing flavors of evangelical and I am not sure that I have yet worked out the lines of demarcation and nuance. At one end of the spectrum are the 'open evangelicals' who have followed the lead of the National Evangelical Anglican Congress at Keele University in 1967 that has seen itself as part of the whole church and seeks to be integrated into the church's life. Open evangelicals believe that other traditions bring an enrichment that we should learn from and not ignore. Then at the other end of the spectrum are conservatives who have maintained the historic suspicion that evangelicals have always had for the church and its structures, and have their eyes skinned for what they consider to be compromise.<br /><br />This whole evangelical hotchpotch has been profoundly influenced by charismatic renewal, while at the same time in certain quarters a significant adherence to classic Reformed theology and historic Protestantism remains. Perhaps one of the most apparent things about evangelical Anglicanism here is what a colleague of mine has called "The Wimber-ization of the Church."<br /><br />The average American Anglican coming to the UK often exclaims that evangelical parishes, both large and small, feel more like Vineyard churches than what they understand Anglicanism to be from their North American experience. They are right, because John Wimber seemed to have had a profound influence here 15-20 years ago, and the fruit of that is still working through. From an endless torrent of renewal songs that are often weak on content and sentimentally egocentric to the absence of a robust sacramental theology and practice, we find in many places something that only vaguely resembles the tradition from which all this has grown (although often they are merely pale imitations of the model that came across the water to them).<br /><br />This is disturbing because while I recognize that there is a great need for diversity of worship styles and approaches in a country like this, you can readily reach a point where the baby has been flushed out with the bathwater. The transcendent is often missing, and in its place is something that might be described as believing in "My big bro Jesus." This clearly leads to a poverty-stricken faith very quickly, and I think we are seeing some of the fruit of this. The casual (even sloppy) also reigns supreme now in the UK generally, and particularly in evangelical environments there seem to be few means whereby believers can appropriate the presence of the great high transcendent God.<br /><br />All that I am saying is probably a vast over-simplication, but I present it to make the point. If you want to worship God in an Anglican church in Britain today it is almost as if your choice is a dry recitation of the liturgy, or little liturgy at all and a great deal of real or manufactured vibrancy where the contemporary reigns supreme.<br /><br />But then a wholesale abandonment of the old, tried, and true is probably a prevailing characteristic of Britain itself today. Organizations with venerable names are suddenly called something else, the traditional and historic is frowned upon, and often the great heritage from the past (with its warts as well as its plaudits) is something to be embarrassed or ashamed about. Ancient-Future does not go down here as well as Contemporary-Future (and let's forget anything more than 25 years old). I suspect that some of this is over-reaction against the past, and there are signs that there might be a redressing of the balance starting to take place.<br /><br />Last year when I got here I needed to find a church to which to belong. I decided to begin at a parish church in a neighboring the village where I live, but their website was down the weekend I intended to go there so I couldn't find service times. Instead, I went to another neighboring parish. The congregation was older, but no sooner had I arrived than I was welcomed, invited to coffee after the service, and made to feel at home. The worship was fairly traditional, the preaching not stunning but certainly truthful. At the coffee hour I was invited to a men's breakfast the following Saturday. Within a week I was hooked and never went anywhere else. Welcome is the parish's secret weapon, I think.<br /><br />We have come to love the people at St. Andrew's, Impington, and are seeing the church gradually grow as a result of the faithful lay leadership it has. Not only that, but every now and again younger folks are appearing... and some of them are staying. St. Andrew's is not doing many of the things that are now considered de rigor here if a congregation is going to grow, but something is going on that is both lovely and intriguing. I say this about our congregation to illustrate that despite what I have said generalizations about the Church of England ought not to be taken too literalistically.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-7411821275642615232008-08-24T00:53:00.000-07:002008-08-31T00:30:25.599-07:00One Year After Returning to England<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpzN29OWN0deNWl5tRARtLgSYy3TSeDP6V2XczdQ5ZInQsI3Cq-_Ej-6HoltRycynZRT5ryrNbpVDNSWpZPGKJX_7U2ikhXKopd8oymF_W7syaHIpvzzW0B45w6b-Q-xxh8pe3/s1600-h/9_48674t.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpzN29OWN0deNWl5tRARtLgSYy3TSeDP6V2XczdQ5ZInQsI3Cq-_Ej-6HoltRycynZRT5ryrNbpVDNSWpZPGKJX_7U2ikhXKopd8oymF_W7syaHIpvzzW0B45w6b-Q-xxh8pe3/s400/9_48674t.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240358368158303314" border="0" /></a>After thirty-one years in the USA I have now been back in Britain for one full year, during which time I have been rather quiet online. There are all sorts of reasons for this: one is that re-immersing myself has been demanding in different ways than I had anticipated -- and all of them energy-sapping. Another reason is that I have been incredibly busy, while a third is that contemporary Britain is a bewildering place and without a good grasp on the current landmarks I haven't been entirely sure what I have been looking at.<br /><br />I see this country today with eyes that are more American than British, and I have found myself being tossed about by the waves of reverse culture shock. You may think you know the country because you were born and bred here, but it has changed enough to be familiarly unfamiliar. I know that I have changed and am prepared for some friction, but what has battered at me has been totally unexpected. I lived out of England for half of my increasingly long life: this is not the country that I left and neither am I the person who left it. It is amusing to be considered strongly English when in the USA, but now that I am back here I come over as a brash (and sometimes opinionated) American.<br /><br />While the economy here is going through the same ructions as the rest of the world, the Britain to which we have returned is far wealthier than the one that we left, and there are people who have been able to establish financial empires that rival those found in North America. The average person has a higher degree of affluence, but try to get this across to Brits and most of them will be insistent that it is "poor little Britain" as opposed to big wealthy America.<br /><br />However, the Britain to which I have returned is seeing the full bloom of the fast-advancing secularism that was spreading across the landscape when we left. This is illustrated in all sorts of ways, not least an intense and vociferous distrust of all things religious in public intercourse. A number of times on the media I have sensed a sickening emptiness in the pit of my stomach as representatives of the chattering classes have aggressively dismissed someone's deeply held religious convictions as hypocrisy -- or suggested that they are a cover for something questionable and even malevolent. With the possible exception of certain facets of Islam, little benefit of the doubt is given to faith, and it seems to be a truism in the British mind that <span style="font-style: italic;">all </span>religious people are narrow-minded and intolerant, dinosaurs to be discouraged until their outmoded ideas eventually go away. Meanwhile the seed that was being sown in the Sixties and Seventies is being harvested in all sorts of ways in the culture.<br /><br />All this make Britain (like much of Europe) a demanding context within which to minister effectively, and figuring out how to be a mission-driven church in such a culturally demanding environment is still very much a work in progress as far as the churches are concerned. This is a challenge for everyone: Roman Catholics, Methodists, Baptists and Pentecostals, the Salvation Army, Anglicans, the whole company of Christians. It is my assessment that a large proportion of the solutions being experimented with are too contemporary and not enough rooted in the ancient, but despite that courageous folks should be given high marks for at least trying to allow the Gospel to speak to a totally different form of culture.<br /><br />What I have begun to realize is how easy it is for North Americans to point the finger and declaim how poorly the European churches are doing. Having started to become engaged in the situation here I have found myself wondering whether they would be as effective if facing the sorts of challenges with which the People of God here are seeking to get their arms around.<br /><br />Yet despite the regular obituaries that get written, and the seemingly endless retreat that has marked the Christian faith in Europe for a century or more, all is far from lost. Interestingly, the congregations at cathedrals seem to be growing significantly, while a new generation is arising in Christian leadership that has no illusions about our environment and is exploring the options -- even if for many in the older generation the penny has yet to drop. Experimentation is necessarily, but by its very nature you don't get everything right first time, while sometimes you might find yourself making a significant mess of things.<br /><br />Since the end of the Olympics I have re-watched the eight-minute segment of the finale from Beijing where custodianship of the Olympic ideal is passed on to London several times. At the heart of the presentation was a London double-decker bus coupled with dancing and music. That piece said an enormous amount about the sort of country Britain has become -- and, as a result, the challenge that British society presents to those seeking to be faithful to the Christian gospel. Like that segment which got rave reviews in the media, popular culture here is shallow, gaudy, disposable. It is much more about pop singers and football stars than the roots and traditions of the nation. Indeed, huge numbers of Brits have been conditioned to be embarrassed by these, the positives from the past constantly being damned, or damned with faint praise.<br /><br />This reflects an absolute confusion of what it means to be British, and what have been the events and values that have shaped the country. The church (and its message) is considered to be very much part of that old-fashionedness. It is a lingering embarrassment from the past, and the subliminal message is that the country will be a better place when it is dead, buried, and gone. A lot of this negativity is focused and unfairly personalized onto the person of the Archbishop of Canterbury with his scholarly language, thick glasses, and straggly beard, but there are other figures who bear the brunt as well. Suffice it to say that it is an exception for a leading Christian to be characterized in a positive manner.<br /><br />The question is, of course, what would fill the vacuum if Christianity did utterly collapse? I think it unlikely that the mile-wide, inch-deep secular hedonism that is always shouting the loudest would last long -- any more than Marxist-Leninism was able to outlast the rich history and spiritual heritage of Russia during the Soviet era. Islam is constantly named as a possibility, but while it has all the pushiness of an adolescent, an awful lot would have to change very quickly for Britain to embrace the Crescent while trampling the Cross underfoot. Certainly, this needs to be flagged for careful attention, but scenarios of this kind are a long way from playing themselves out.<br /><br />What I would say is that there does seem to be a real sense of spiritual hunger flowing somewhere beneath the surface of Britain, but the spiritually hungry at this point seem determined not to go to the historic places to look for sustenance. Meanwhile, as I have intimated already, the churches are still in the early stages of working out how to speak to a spiritually-empty culture that brashly asserts itself. I have found myself musing whether the period through which we are now living might be more akin to that period when the industrial revolution radically changed the face of the land in the matter of a generation or two.<br /><br />If there is anything to such a theory, then with it comes the recognition that the churches scrambled in those days to catch up with the new reality of sprawling industrial cities, coalmines instead of cornfields, and a population whose whole mindset was being radically altered. It took a work of the Holy Spirit, several generations, and the genius of the likes of Whitefield, the Wesleys, for there to be any effective communication of the Gospel story to this burgeoning new kind of world.<br /><br />I am sure that there are many who would disagree with me, but there seem to be all sorts of telltale signs that things are not well here as in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. The ones that leap out at me are the demise of the family, incredible levels of alcohol consumption, unprecedented levels of personal debt, petty pilfering, and a prevailing live-for-the-moment kind of mentality. I suspect that some of these things are inevitable in a country that is stressed and in the midst of a huge transition, but I suspect also that because there are no longer very many values that are generally accepted an anything goes mindset is almost bound to prevail.<br /><br />While the demise of marriage and the family presents huge challenges in the long-term this is not being taken particularly seriously by a whole raft of politicians and social leaders who don't want to be labeled as narrow and small-minded. I have this notion that providing meaningful ways for couples to stay married and have fruitful relationships could very well be a means of great renewal here and should be something the churches might concentrate on.<br /><br />Something that has truly startled me since getting back has been the enormous expansion in the accessibility of alcohol at all hours of day and night, encouraging over-consumption, binge drinking, and worse. Let me put it crudely: there is a lot more vomiting in the gutter going on than there was 30+ years ago, and those involved tend to be both male and female. Add to this gambling and staggering levels of consumer debt as the symptoms of a deeper problem, and it is possible to see how much a mission field this is, and how much the churches have their work cut out for them.<br /><br />While there is part of me that wants to run away from all of this, another part of me is eager to roll up my sleeves and wade in the best a sixtysomething can. I might not be able to do the frontline things any longer, but there is a lot that can be done to support, encourage, and fund, while pastoring and picking up the pieces of those who have been exhausted or hurt by the inevitable hugeness of the challenge.<br /><br />Jesus told his disciples to life up their eyes and look on the fields, that they are white already to harvest. They may be one of these days, but there is a lot of ploughing, planting, weeding, and tending of the crops that needs to be done before there can be bumper harvests -- but those harvests are still possible.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-15561771769501719562008-07-01T00:39:00.000-07:002008-07-01T00:55:51.809-07:00The Scapegoating of the Archbishop of Canterbury<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizZBqDjpYDSvagP7gUjuxy0jbrOq8W92i8qouY6aEzlzRzUz7D3kBJ0pMqEEq3nojgN4XziqleL-Mzcq_LoaZJPmVQ-2O2cGLWKjFCD6dmW2oqeglFX00CculJwq6HY94hSqRa/s1600-h/Rowan+Williams%231%23.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizZBqDjpYDSvagP7gUjuxy0jbrOq8W92i8qouY6aEzlzRzUz7D3kBJ0pMqEEq3nojgN4XziqleL-Mzcq_LoaZJPmVQ-2O2cGLWKjFCD6dmW2oqeglFX00CculJwq6HY94hSqRa/s400/Rowan+Williams%231%23.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5217951003836209266" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">I wrote this little piece for Covenant blog yesterday (www.covenant-communion.com):</span></span><br /><p><br />I am concerned about attitudes toward this present Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems by many of those of the GAFCon persuasion to have become the scapegoat not only for his own shortcomings in this confusing crisis, but also everyone else’s. I have found myself wondering what the attitude of the GAFCon loyalists would have been if George Carey had still been the ABC — and who/what the scapegoat would have been in those particular circumstances. Scapegoating is, quite honestly, a very easy way to shrug off one’s own responsibilities for the situation. </p> <p>Yes, the office of Archbishop of Canterbury does seem to have colonial overtones, but again, is the anti-colonial argument pressed because it can be used to great affect against Rowan Williams whose public persona is eminently difficult for most people to grasp (especially when the media have finished messing with his idiosyncrasy)? It needs to be asked if the office would be disdained in this particular manner if John Sentamu was Archbishop of Canterbury instead of York: I rather doubt a once-persecuted Ugandan with a huge and extrovert personality and faith would be dismissed with the scorn afforded the gentle Welsh scholar who inhabits Lambeth Palace.</p> <p>One of the frightening things about the whole turmoil of events since 2003 is that it has become so wrapped up in issues of personality that the principles of theology, ecclesiology, and anything else have been molded in response to attitudes toward people rather than truths and errors. Now I realize that it is almost impossible to separate persons from beliefs and ideas, but it does seem that increasing numbers are not willing even to try.</p> <p>What has grieved me more and more as this whole sorry game has played itself out is that both grace and truth seem to have become victims of the fight. I suspect that it is going to be increasingly difficult as time passes for the scars of the wounds now being inflicted to be soothed — yet seeking some kind of reconciliation has to be our priority if we are truly bearing with Christ his Cross.</p><p><br /></p><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">There were all sorts of responses to this piece, and several of them lashed out at Archbishop Rowan. So here is my clarifier:</span></span><br /><br />Either I did not make myself clear or the point I was trying to make has been missed. In the first sentence of what I said I had hoped I had made clear that Rowan Williams has his shortcomings. He is in an almost impossible position and since his accession to the See of Canterbury I have felt that he may not necessarily be perfectly equipped for times like this; let's face it, few individuals are.<br /><br />However, what has happened is that Archbishop Rowan has been turned into the issue and made to accept almost everyone's blame. I state quite clearly that he has not led as I would have liked him to lead, but this pickle has been stewed up and then made worse by people on every side of the spectrum. Conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between has made this mess, and everywhere we look instead of humility and grace what we see is self-righteousness and posturing.<br /><br />For saying something like this I have been roundly accused of being soft, of having lost my theological bearings, of compromising biblical truth, and so forth. Although this is untrue, people have the right to their own perceptions, but nothing could be further from the reality. It is because I am committed to biblical truth that I say what I do. Rowan Williams should not be blamed in the way he is, we should all take upon ourselves the responsibility for the chaos and the seemingly endless stand-offs that just lead to a downward spiral. The Archbishop can surely be criticized for some of what has happened, but then so can everyone from the Primates and bishops down to you and me.<br /><br />Brothers and sisters, this situation is about being honest and it is about the Cross. The Cross challenges me in ways that I do not find comfortable, but without that Cross I am lost and in hopeless despair. There is nothing comfortable about the Cross for it demands of us integrity, humility, and a willingness to put ourselves under God's microscope -- whatever other people might do. The Cross is not there for us to use to hit others over the head. The truth is that we have had rather an insipid theology and practice of Cross-centered Christianity.<br /><br />Let me be brutally personal about what the Cross means. I have said (and done) some pretty awful things about those with whom I disagree in these troubles, and who I believe have played a major role in bringing this crisis on the church. I have been presumptuous, judgmental, bitter, arrogant, and unkind. I have had some of the worst years of ministry I can remember, and have wept copiously. Much of what I have done has been grounded in pride and self-rectitude. However, regardless of what I believe to be the errors of others, I cannot load the consequences of my sins on anyone else's shoulders. I must take responsibility for them, and then share them with the Lord who died for me and rose again -- if I do not do this then I am of all men the most to be pitied.<br /><br />I would plead with those who seem to want to blame Archbishop Rowan for everything to reconsider and look first into their own hearts. This is a case of the one who is without sin throwing the first stone...<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-70810608842706352842008-06-28T03:40:00.001-07:002008-06-28T05:05:23.175-07:00How I have changedMy wife has a picture that was taken of us on the damp cold March day in 1969 when I was ordained deacon in an equally damp, cold church in North London. I was looking at that picture the other day and wondering how much is left of that couple setting out on life together, grinning broadly, and with their arms around each other. Every morning when I stare at the mirror I recognize that beneath the surface somewhere is that skinny man with a thick mop of dark hair, but these days I feel the face I am looking at is more like my fathers did than that twentysomething uncomfortably clad in his brand-new clerical collar.<br /><br />Today's waistline isn't anything like it used to be, my collars are several sizes larger, and I have less hair and it is turning pepper and salt gray. I am still pretty fit for a sixtysomething, but my back and knees tend to creak a little, if left to my own devices I drop off to sleep in my chair around 8.30 pm, and the beauty to whom I had been married for only seven months when that picture was taken is now a grandmother -- which, come to think of it, makes me a grandfather!<br /><br />Back then I would have considered someone my age now incurably old -- but the funny thing is that despite the occasional aches I don't feel old. In some ways I feel younger now than I did ten or fifteen years ago. Certainly, our concerns are those of any couple our age, like how we fund our old age so that we are not a burden on our children, but I still have that same sense of excitement that goes with having something useful to do in God's Kingdom.<br /><br />There was a similar excitement back then when we were setting out on our life's journey, and whilst a seasoning has taken place over the years there is still essentially the same flavor. I don't know how I would be feeling if I was staring down the barrel of the gun of retirement because that is not something to which I am looking forward. Spending and being spent for the Kingdom is a lot more fun!<br /><br />Neither has the substance of my theological presuppositions changed much. Again, there has been a maturing and I have wrestled with my share of doubts and agonies related to the faith over the years, but at the heart is still the crucified and risen Jesus Christ as revealed to us in the Scriptures -- which I maintain now as back then to be God's Word Written. Part of that maturing has been discovering a richness that I didn't know was there when I was first ordained, and an exposure to scholarship and attitudes that have forced me to think through my own positions very carefully, modifying some of them, but whose foundation is firmly laid and stands firm despite all my sins and shortcomings.<br /><br />I think that points to another factor: I am more conscious today of my sinfulness in a way that I am not sure I was when I was young. I grieve that while I might have made some progress in the process of sanctification, there are so many flaws in my character and personality that I had believed then I would grow out of. They are still there, and like Paul's thorn in the flesh they harry me daily. I press on toward the goal of God's call, but as I perceive the holiness of God when compared to my own innate fallenness I realize just how unworthy I am of God's grace.<br /><br />Most of those years since that picture was taken were spent in the USA, and coming back to England points up just how much my American experience altered me. The other day a friend was comparing me to another American who we both know and who has lived in England for a long time; he said that this individual had become as British in his attitudes to the same extent that I had let go of my Britishness to become American. Most of the time I can see it in myself, but there are occasions when I say and do something that is quintessentially "New World" and it has to be pointed out to me.<br /><br />I have shed a lot of the middle class English conditioning that had shaped that newly-minted deacon in the photo, and instead a middle class American conditioning has taken its place. I was never particularly comfortable with a lot of those English attitudes that once shaped me, but it wasn't until I got back here that I recognized just how many of them I have during my American years shed.<br /><br />My political bias in the 1960s was of a distinctly more radical and leftish flavor than the one I adhere to now. In those days I believed the Conservative Party for which my family had consistently voted for ever and aye was so far to the right that no thinking Christian could possibly support them and retain their integrity. By contemporary American standards I suppose my political views are now perhaps slightly in the center or, perhaps, slightly to the left, but while I have changed so have the political parties here. These days I look at the three main parties here and consider them all a bit too progressive for my liking. I am not particularly comfortable with the 'nanny state' and neither do I have a lot of time for a lot of the social engineering that is so chi-chi in all quarters. In my youth I thought I knew what the political values appropriate to citizens of the Kingdom might be, now I am far from certain!<br /><br />I was talking to my old liturgics professor a while back (one of the pleasures of returning to England has been remaking links with folks of whom you had lost track), and said to him that I felt that I had left England as one who was gently radical when it came to Christian worship and had come back three decades later as a hopeless traditionalist. I was not here for the full-scale Vineyardizing and Wimberization of the evangelicals in the Church of England took place, and from whose worst excesses Anglican evangelicalism has yet to recover.<br /><br />What the Episcopal Church did was to allow me to realize just how much liturgical worship can sing and it formed me away from the overly informal approach to worship that English evangelicals have tended to glory in. Interestingly, I probably have an approach to liturgy, ceremonial and ritual that condemns me to minority status everywhere. In Tennessee I was considered a snake belly low churchman, while among evangelicals here I am a tad further up the candle than most would like... and don't get me talking about the quality of the lyrics of so many of the more contemporary pieces of music that we sing -- and the endless and unthinking repetition of verses, choruses and phrases.<br /><br />I don't know how the young man in the picture would respond to what I have just said because there was no such thing as contemporary music of that kind in church settings back then -- we listened to the Beatles and Rolling Stones sing that stuff!<br /><br />I know that the seeds of what I was going to become were there back then, but I'm not sure that I would have guessed how the youth would give birth to this older man. If God gives me another quarter century of life then it will be interesting to see how the even older man then will look back on the relative youngster I am now, and the mere babe in arms I was then. I hope to goodness that I am not a bad-tempered old curmudgeon!Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-47699606536874051852008-05-31T07:09:00.000-07:002008-05-31T07:30:35.302-07:00A Week of Weeks<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6zNv3Jw7McoX6D-Y5xAtTw_NzPiJgWhet5PniHkRIF8Cw-4PH3Z6XfjJDtxxhU6UKc84it70Fx-bbMG6GHSNeQbqHumYBLnxJNDEqZwbhQJWrpjWxWjZiuzivf_R6v3Mr8sbI/s1600-h/kewandprince.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6zNv3Jw7McoX6D-Y5xAtTw_NzPiJgWhet5PniHkRIF8Cw-4PH3Z6XfjJDtxxhU6UKc84it70Fx-bbMG6GHSNeQbqHumYBLnxJNDEqZwbhQJWrpjWxWjZiuzivf_R6v3Mr8sbI/s400/kewandprince.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206544446749065650" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">The Prince of Wales talking to me together with the Principal and Bursar<br />after viewing the plans for new buildings at Ridley Hall<br /></span></div><br />As you can see from the above picture we have had quite a week at Ridley Hall -- probably one of the most momentous and busy in the whole of my forty years of ministry.<br /><br />The Prince of Wales dropped by for tea on Tuesday, and it fell to me to coordinate and stage manage the event. The Prince seemed to enjoy himself very much and had good conversations with sixteen Ridley students training for ordination in the Church of England or for youth leadership. It was valuable for the future Supreme Governor of the Church of England to meet some of those who will be ecclesiastical leaders when he comes to the throne.<br /><br />I don't want to leave you with the impression that this is something that happens every day for this was the first royal visit to the college since its doors opened in 1881. It has certainly raised our profile in Cambridge, with Ridley being on the front page of the local paper twice in a couple of weeks. My impression of the Prince having met him briefly is rather different from the image that the media paint of him.<br /><br />But that wasn't the end for the week, because on Thursday we had a major event at Lambeth Palace hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It kicked off among major donors and potential donors the campaign that we hope will put new academic and residential facilities for students at Ridley Hall -- the first building of its kind since 1914. Again, it was my responsibility to make it happen. It didn't help that there were torrential rains all afternoon and evening despite nothing being forecast. However, it went off well and we seem to have gathered some new friends who we believe are going to help us to make the expansion of Ridley Hall a reality.<br /><br />But that isn't the end of it all. At this very moment, even as my fingers hit the keys, the Council of the College are working toward the selection of a new Principal and we were all tied up in that yesterday. Meanwhile next week we have a very important Council meeting, an Alumni/ae event with 150-200 participants, and the first lecture in a series of public lectures in memory of Professor Charlie Moule with Bishop Tom Wright as the speaker. We aren't quite sure how many visitors will be coming for that, but we have learned someone has made it the primary reason for coming from the USA.<br /><br />Someone suggested to me the other day that I might be slowing down now in preparation for retirement. I had to chuckle because I have never being going so hard in my whole life. While I expect retirement will happen one of these fine days, right now it is a dirty word as there is just too much to do for the Kingdom of God!Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-89038561578815544022008-05-06T01:25:00.000-07:002008-05-25T04:24:03.751-07:00The Challenge of Adjusting<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuvd25oZM8Mb0Y1amiT4GWWqoIlMGCx2O7YaB8YYwQ-v6vXvNPla-SKUMU-230K4s-RWqEj-Q8y9TG7vwnLMiaT_yReCy_KlHVVd02Q68B0r702zZZpQn2giyuvEzfX8BAgOWW/s1600-h/photo-laurierking.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuvd25oZM8Mb0Y1amiT4GWWqoIlMGCx2O7YaB8YYwQ-v6vXvNPla-SKUMU-230K4s-RWqEj-Q8y9TG7vwnLMiaT_yReCy_KlHVVd02Q68B0r702zZZpQn2giyuvEzfX8BAgOWW/s400/photo-laurierking.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5204274298835091874" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Author Laurie R. King, in whose company I have been spending a lot of time since coming to England</span><br /></div><br />During the last eight months I have been less than assiduous about keeping up my blog, and I apologize to any regular readers for this -- if there are any regular readers left! Some of you probably think that I have more or less dropped off the edge of the world, while others might be relieved they are hearing less from me! I haven't disappeared and am still here on the edge of the English Fens, working as hard as I ever have, and puzzling to adjust to the British way of doing things!<br /><br />I have to confess that while there are times of great delight and satisfaction, there are also days of utter frustration. The truth is that I was in the USA for so long that I don't think or respond to life and reality as Brits do. Also, my use of North American vocabulary has been the source of entertainment to some of my colleagues at Ridley Hall.<br /><br />In the midst of all this there are times of a deep and even painful missing of the United States. It is fascinating that I still dream in American, as it were. I do not remember in the nine months that I have been here ever dreaming in an English setting -- they have all been set in Tennessee or some other part of the US (last night, for example, I dreamed I was elected a US Senator for Texas -- glory knows where that one came from!). The other night I woke in the wee small hours and lay there for a full thirty seconds trying to work out precisely where I was and what I was doing here. All this, I have concluded, reflects a massive dislocation and disorientation at a significant depth in my psyche.<br /><br />One of the side effects of this is the amount of mental and emotional energy I am using up as I adapt to a new life and lifestyle after three decades in the States. A by-product is that my concentration and creativity quotient are both at a very low ebb. I can just about manage to put together an occasional sermon and writing my daily devotions, but apart from what is required for my work I tend to be short of the emotional and spiritual wherewithal to do some creative exploring and branching out mentally and imaginatively.<br /><br />Making major adjustments upsets the life of different people in different ways. Some may gobble up intellectual stimulation as a result of being tossed around so much, but I am finding the demands made by transitioning to be so enormous that reading serious books that are filled with significant content requires more intellectual energy than I have, and I sometimes fear that I might never get that side of myself back.<br /><br />Instead of digging into works that are meaty and demanding, I am reading far more fiction than I have for a long time. Having been recently introduced by my elder daughter to the Mary Russell mysteries written by Laurie King, a San Franciscan who has some transatlantic roots in Oxford, I am devouring these with a passion. It is as if my psyche and imagination need taking care of and recharging before I am able to launch back into heavier fare.<br /><br />It just was as I started writing this that I met a man who had recently gone through a similar episode, and it was a comfort to know I am not alone in attempting to garner the concentration levels and capacity to do things that make a high demand. After a heavy business schedule with much traveling globally for years and years this particular individual began slowing down as he felt the end of his career approaching. He was actually considering how he would redirect his life. This was the point at which his brain seemed to clam up, and coupled with a bout of ill health it had taken eighteen months to get his head back on so that he could read significantly and write again.<br /><br />It is obviously a human shortcoming to refuse to accept that there are certain life events that leave us hollowed out and in need of recovery time if we are to be generative and creative in the future. I plead guilty to being one who finds it difficult to listen to the inner voice that prompts me to slow down a bit at times. I like to think that this fallow time for me is being a bit like a connoisseur laying down a cellar of fine wine that isn't yet mature, but will be able to be enjoyed later on.<br /><br />So I have been spending the last months observing and learning again what reality look like from a British point of view so that I can eventually participate in and draw upon the seeds of ideas being stored up. In a way I suspect what I am doing is a little like adjusting to sharing my life with a new spouse, a process that probably requires meeting some of the unknown or overlooked darker and nastier sides of one's partner personality and being -- as well as enjoying the nice, sunny, and enjoyable components of their identity in a more intense and satisfying way.<br /><br />The underlying truism is that this country has changed enormously since we left and this is what we are trying to come to terms with, discovering things about this land that I didn't really wish to know. Such reality therapy takes a toll. I am developing this impression that while Britain has succeeded in the material world after fighting world wars followed by a long time in the economic wilderness, the price it has paid has been its soul. The country in which I now live is wealthier and more prosperous by far than the one I left, and in true British fashion is muddling through, but it is a country that has happily sacrificed much of its historic identity.<br /><br />The solid and serviceable have given away to the transitory and garish, in everything from the way people furnish their homes to the kind of lives they set out to lead. Being British today is more about supporting a soccer team than belonging to a nation. In some ways Britain feels very much like a historic building whose innards have been gutted and replaced with decor that may for the moment be fashionable but in every other respect are transient.<br /><br />I hope in due course I will have some mature and constructive comments to make about this reality, but right now I'm not ready so must continue nurturing my psyche and soul with the hope that in due course I can enter into British life with the kind of verve that I enjoyed those many years in the USA.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-57495375786668253092008-04-13T03:09:00.000-07:002008-04-13T04:32:42.778-07:00Trying to Sell an Environmentally-Friendly House in Tennessee<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOcW9S1chtAas-n0wipRg7UwZQDod8rgAMbYyUpj3aALuIZqtDjsgnZOy4hudVEIIvk5U8ggUEKsbfo4sxfeF_Ts4pBPf3u6jsAMqmxHuGdxBm-Yewf8yyICUYuSwegDiVLM9u/s1600-h/tim+burke+-+fenland+landscape+nr+woodwalton.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOcW9S1chtAas-n0wipRg7UwZQDod8rgAMbYyUpj3aALuIZqtDjsgnZOy4hudVEIIvk5U8ggUEKsbfo4sxfeF_Ts4pBPf3u6jsAMqmxHuGdxBm-Yewf8yyICUYuSwegDiVLM9u/s400/tim+burke+-+fenland+landscape+nr+woodwalton.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188689498809410530" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">A Fenland Landscape<br /></span></div><br />Early this morning, soon after the sun had risen, I took Freddy, our Silky Terrier, for a long walk over the Fens where on the lodes (or drainage canals) we saw a spectacular cross-section of waterfowl. Walking in the cool English spring sunshine helped clear my brain following an unexpectedly difficult week.<br /><br />Perhaps at the heart of the week was the deepening realization that in my growing sense of being settled here I had let certain guards down and had started talking and trying to relate to people as if they were Americans. Even as I turned over in my mind a little presentation I made yesterday afternoon to an essentially friendly group, I probably was a little too unguarded for most of my listeners. Americans tend to reveal more of themselves and allow themselves to be read far more readily than the British.<br /><br />Three decades in the USA have left little of the English reserve with which I crossed the Atlantic in the 1970s, and now I am having to work out how to synthesize the American me with the British way of doing things and managing relationships. With this comes another level of reverse culture shock, one which after seven months or so here is not so readily forgiven by my British friends and colleagues who probably believe I have now adjusted back to this land. So, as I walked across the Fens this morning I was doing some painful reassessing of myself.<br /><br />In the midst of all these ponderings I found myself gazing at an indescribably beautiful wooden house, and that got me thinking about my own house in Tennessee that has not yet sold despite being on the market since the end of last August.<br /><br />I found myself ruefully wishing that I had it here in Britain where it would be not only a relatively easy sell, but I would get mucho, mucho pounds for it! Not only is housing here exotically expensive, but environmental sensitivity is far higher here than it is among the general public in the USA, An environmentally-sensitive house like ours would be in very high demand -- probably with people bidding, counter-bidding, and scrambling over one another to get it.<br /><br />There sits our beautiful home in Tennessee and the only offers we have had have been derisively low -- what one Tennessee friend with a lot of financial smarts has described as carpetbagging. While we know we are experiencing the post-sub-prime blues, it does sadden us. Our home sits on three lovely acres, overlooking a beautiful valley, it is well-insulated and generates its own electricity while at the same time heating its own water, but no one seems to want it unless we are almost prepared to give it to them.<br /><br />That is probably a sad commentary on environmental consciousness in the USA, especially in Tennessee, the state which we love the best and where we lived the longest. Whatever you believe about global climate change, and I think the evidence is overwhelming that it is happening, just being a responsible steward of the planet should encourage us to think in these terms when it comes to housing. What we have learned from our realtor is that some of those who have viewed it have been more concerned about the lack of granite counter-tops than the things that make the house such an energy treasure!<br /><br />I suspect that we were such pioneers when we built the house as far as America is concerned that even the early adopters are wary of doing something that might make them look silly (tree-hugging wackos) -- even if it does leave them several thousand dollars a year better off each year when it comes to utility bills! But not only are the bills lower, so is your carbon footprint -- again, not a bad thing.<br /><br />Yet having said that an environmentally-friendly house would sell like hotcakes on this side of the Atlantic, I was talking to a scientist researcher a month or two back who was telling me that in North America in general there are far more opportunities to explore and experiment with alternative fuels and energy sources than in Europe, and that despite all the words that come from official chatterers in this country the USA is probably ahead on the technology. The problem here, he asserted, is that regulation is out of control -- and land to do such things is very difficult to find.<br /><br />I guess that on all sides of the world we are struggling to work out how to live on a small planet with such limited (and over-stretched) resources. I suspect that for the next few years the issue of food security is going to be as high up the agenda as the climate, partly because there is such a food crunch and partly because our food situation has been made more difficult by uncertainties created by the climate.<br /><br />The challenges before us are enormous.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-12487058739198908902008-03-24T09:58:00.001-07:002008-03-25T02:26:05.137-07:00Easter and Human-Aminal Embryo Research<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHnld0uwRV4V4xwv5aS3Bb2X-aoYSC5wwC4CyXMz5vMMv-2q4iBsrorR02Xb23srzMVzWsZMgkQ9Fsmbxd0K-ulVpEDIaNw2E01iPgnEPtXfbfRv4gXo-FjQnWWX6H2oT7gW-Y/s1600-h/_42417493_embryosplcred.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHnld0uwRV4V4xwv5aS3Bb2X-aoYSC5wwC4CyXMz5vMMv-2q4iBsrorR02Xb23srzMVzWsZMgkQ9Fsmbxd0K-ulVpEDIaNw2E01iPgnEPtXfbfRv4gXo-FjQnWWX6H2oT7gW-Y/s400/_42417493_embryosplcred.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181601260483585010" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Hybrids are made from an animal egg mixed<br />with human genes<br /></span></div><br />Over the Easter period perhaps the biggest issue in the British news has been that of scientific research using animal-human hybrid embryos. The issue has been smoldering for a while, but legislation is being thrust with indecent haste through Parliament to allow British scientists, within careful limits, to create and use in research these chimeras. Last week in his Easter message this development was challenged by the Cardinal Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.<br /><br />Cardinal Keith O'Brien stated, <span style="font-style: italic;">"It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which more comprehensively attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular bill."</span> The Cardinal's words hit the nail firmly on the head, and others have supported and endorsed his deep anxiety about what is going on. Bishop Tom Wright of Durham said in his Easter sermon that <span style="font-style: italic;">"Our present government (is) pushing through, hard and fast, legislation that comes from a militantly atheist and secularist lobby."</span><br /><br />Bishop Tom goes on to say, <span style="font-style: italic;">"We create our Brave New World here and now; so don’t tell us that God’s new world was born on Easter Sunday. </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Reduce such dangerous beliefs to abstract, timeless platitudes. The irony is that this secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we (it’s interesting to ask who ‘we’ might be at this point) have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people, and to play games with the humanity of those in between. Gender-bending was so last century; we now do species-bending. Look how clever we are! Utopia must be just round the corner."</span><br /><br />For some years now I have been asserting that one of the most pressing issues before us is just what does it means to be human. As Tom Wright implied on Easter Sunday, the whole sexuality debate and controversy is merely a symptom of the confusion that prevails, for the culture has abandoned anything that approaches a Judeo-Christian understanding of humans as beings made in the image of a sovereign God, while at the same time providing no alternative to take its place. Indeed, not only has no clear alternative emerged, but those who question this so-called scientific advance are being painted (and not for the first time) as spoilers and obscurantists, and that their thinking is an attempt to draw a red herring across the path of scientific advance.<br /><br />Yet what is spoiling and obscurantist about insisting that we need carefully to define our terms in order to understand where we are and what we are doing before we proceed with a particular course of action? As I have listened to the debate over this past weekend, it has appeared that the government is utterly determined to shove legislation allowing this kind of scientific activity through the House of Commons, so much so that it has little sympathy for the conviction of members of its own party who for religious and/or ethical reasons are saying, "Hey, wait a minute..."<br /><br />The reasoning for proceeding with this course of action is pretty threadbare:<br /><br />1. There are nationalistic commercial reasons for doing this -- we don't want to tie our scientists' hands behind their back in such a way that it prevents Britain from retaining its position as a global leader in biogenetic research. Such an argument should hardly surprise us because we live in an environment in which economics is king, and if there is an unstated definition in our society of what it means to be human it is that <span style="font-style: italic;">homo sapiens</span> is a consumer and creator of wealth: "I spend, therefore I am."<br /><br />2. The stated morality behind research of this kind is that out of it might come cures for some of the dreadful diseases that assail millions of people, old and young, around the world. Evan Harris, A Liberal Democrat MP who is a member of the House of Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee, has said that it is right to conduct research that "might be used to treat people with terrible diseases".<br /><br />There is a legitimacy to such an argument, but to date the track record arising out of so much biogenetic research suggests that the promise is more significant than outcomes and results. Besides, is it justifiable to destroy or radically tamper with life in the hope that from such activities will come positive outcomes for the human race?<br /><br />In the last forty years I have been up close to many of the diseases researchers are determined to eradicated, and have pastored (and buried) many who have been suffering from them. Of course, I would love to see such horrible maladies wiped out because I have seen their consequences in the lives of sufferers and their families, but I find myself stumbling over the question of whether it is right to destroy life in order to save life. In this case, does the end justify the means? If we believe that human beings reflect God's image then it is hard to answer in the affirmative. Those who argue along these lines have succumbed to the crudest form of utilitarian thinking.<br /><br />3. The third argument is that science must be allowed to advance for we stand on the brink of a whole new frontier, and we won't know what opportunities might lie just around the corner if we don't follow this path. True, but the counter-question then has to be posed whether it is appropriate for our race to find out. Just because something is possible does not make it either necessary or right. It is entirely possible for a pilot to land a plane full of passengers on a busy road or a playing field, but only in one landing in a million is it right to do so.<br /><br />Behind such thinking as this, and it has been expressed variously in a number of books that I have read, is the conviction that we are on the cusp of a new evolutionary development -- and what is so exciting about it is that this time we human beings can control and direct that development (and do not have to leave it to outside, supposedly random, forces). This is a notion that is deeply ingrained in the whole transhuman movement, and that movement is of significant influence in certain scientific circles. While I am not saying that pursuing such a path of research has Frankenstein qualities, I am saying that those who enthusiastically pursue such studies either have not properly thought through the long-term consequences of their actions, or are quite happy about being in such a driver's seat.<br /><br />The mentality of those who believe this line of research is right seems to reduce human beings -- men, women, babies, fetuses, embryos, -- from being flesh that reflects the divine nature into products to be used and mixed in the process of manufacture -- whether it be manufacture of cures for diseases, or ends up as being something more sinister.<br /><br />Now as soon as someone says such a thing the champions of such research throw their arms in the air and say that we untutored ignoramuses are meddling in something that is not any of our business. We might respond by affirming that while we may not be experts in this field, is it appropriate for a self-appointed scientific priesthood to make these kind of decisions for the whole human race, for human-animal embryos are playing with the DNA that is at the very root of every persons' being.<br /><br />It also seems that today, especially when Christians start raises objections to something that is going on, the rejoinder is that it is none of our business, and shouldn't the Church keep its nose out of areas of endeavor and discovery that do not concern it. We have to respond in this instance, "Sorry, but this <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">does</span> concern us very much. We are human beings, we believe there is purpose in God creating us in the way he has, and while meddling with the building blocks of life in this way may not immediately result in some terrible disaster what does it say about the value of being human?"<br /><br />Let me leave the final words with Bishop Tom Wright:<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />"Have we learnt nothing from the dark tyrannies of the last century? It shouldn’t just be Roman Catholics who are objecting. It ought to be Anglicans and Presbyterians and Baptists and Russian Orthodox and Pentecostals and all other Christians, and Jews and Muslims as well. This isn’t a peripheral or denominational concern. It grows directly out of the central facts of our faith, because on Easter day God reaffirmed the goodness and image-bearingness of the human race in the man Jesus Christ, giving the lie simultaneously to the idea that utopia could be had by our own efforts and to the idea that humans are just miscellaneous evolutionary by-products, to be managed and manipulated at will. The Christian vision of what it means to be human is gloriously underscored by the resurrection of Jesus, and we as Easter people should make common cause with all those who are concerned about the direction our society is going in medical technology as in so much besides.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">…The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the final putting-to-rights of all things. In the light of the resurrection, the church must never stop reminding the world’s rulers and authorities that they themselves will be held to account, and that they must do justice and bring wise, healing order to God’s world ahead of that day. Those who want to depoliticize the resurrection must first dehistoricize it, which is of course what they have been doing enthusiastically for many years - and then we wonder why the church has sometimes sounded irrelevant! But we who celebrate our risen Lord today must bear witness to Easter, God’s great act of putting-right, as the yardstick for all human justice."</span>Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10440952.post-65505487723315311322008-03-05T04:19:00.000-08:002008-03-05T04:41:36.244-08:00Choosing A BishopDuring the last couple of years I have found myself close to the selection of a new bishop on either side of the Atlantic, and the contrast between the two approaches could not have been more different.<br /><br />On Monday morning at 11.00 a.m. London time it was announced from 10 Downing Street that Chris Cocksworth, the Principal of Ridley Hall, is to be the new Bishop of Coventry. Chris had shared this piece of news with just a handful of us in the leadership of the College before the weekend, but it would have been a great embarrassment to all if the statement of the Queen's approval of his nomination for election to the position had been upstaged. Even the people in the Diocese of Coventry did not know until a smiling and nervous Chris was brought out into the ruins of the old blitzed cathedral to meet them and the press.<br /><br />There are wheels within wheels in back rooms that produce bishops here. There is a process of feeling out, approaching of candidates, checking credentials, etc., which eventually lead to the bishop-elect's name being announced and everyone applauding. It certainly means that someone of ability can be selected for the task, and while the diocese is involved in the process far more than was the case thirty years or so ago when I left England for the USA, there is still this pall of secrecy that hangs over things. However, it only takes a few months.<br /><br />What a contrast to the long drawn out battle that we had in the Diocese of Tennessee when we attempted to elect a new bishop. The first stirrings of the process were in the latter part of 2004, the whole of 2005 the Episcopate Committee worked assiduously at the task, and because we took four bites at the cherry before electing John Bauerschmidt as bishop, it wasn't until October 2006 that we had a successful candidate, and then early 2007 before he came on board.<br /><br />The great thing about the American process was that it is about as public as it could have been, with only those components kept confidential that needed to be. There was an effort to listen to all the voices in the diocese and to take them into account, and then it was up to the diocese itself gathered in convention to do the electing. Finally, the bishops and standing committees of the church had to endorse the election that had been made. A lot of people were involved in the selecting and making of the bishop.<br /><br />I am absolutely convinced that an English style of electing would not work in the US, given the culture and history of the nation; but given the sort of House of Bishops that it has thrown up in the last couple of generations it has to be asked whether it is working particularly well. On the other hand, given how theologically detached from historic Christianity the Episcopal Church has become, I am not sure that I would want some unknown network of individuals working in private to come up with potential leaders for the dioceses.<br /><br />I am delighted for our Principal at Ridley that he will soon be the youngest diocesan in the Church of England, and while we will certainly miss him here, my prayers go with him. However, the part of me that has been well-marinated in the American way of doing things wishes that the people could have a lot more say than they seem to get here.Richard Kewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10917359509462320976noreply@blogger.com1