It’s Christmas on Sunday…….

You wouldn’t think it was that big a deal that December 25^th happens to be a Sunday. And for most of the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants it probably isn’t. Many will neither recognize or celebrate Christmas regardless of when it falls, including those with no Christian interest or history, and those who as a matter of their atheistic principles will not want to have anything to do with it (and quite right too). After all, the (nominal) Christian world only makes up about 30% of the world’s total population. Within that 30% one might reasonably expect that Christmas falling on a Sunday would not lead to any dramas. However it turns out that there has been a bit of a tiz going on. Apparently, because it is Christmas day some places of worship (I hesitate to call them churches) have cancelled their services. While the debate probably started on Twitter (don’t they all these days?), and spread to the “Christian” press and websites (e.g. see “The Christian Post”), it eventually reached the New York Times, hardly an evangelical rag.

I should mention at this point that I have skin in this particular game. I come from a theologically fairly conservative background, and remember at least one childhood Christmas that fell on a Sunday. Because of my aged state I’m afraid I can’t remember the details of that particular Christmas day. But I do remember having the distinct impression that this was a Sunday to be spent like every other Sunday. Same meetings (with perhaps the exception of the Sunday afternoon Bible class), same content. Jesus' birth may have been mentioned, but only as the necessary prelude to His life, death and resurrection. The world may have been celebrating with its trees and tinsel, but that was nothing to do with us. There was also perhaps a touch of if the world was happy we had to be miserable. None of us can entirely escape our backgrounds, so I still find myself in two minds about all the Christmas hullabaloo (ie the trees and tinsel) and still sometimes find myself wondering what it has to do with me.

As an aside, there are those who end up in roughly the same place but come at it from the opposite direction. Self-confessed “cultural Christian” Poly Toynbee, likes goodwill, the idea of the poor inheriting the earth and the way “the stable stands for the homeless and refugees”. The rest of it (by which I think she means biblical Christianity) she finds “loathsome”. And so she should too. The theology of carols (like “veiled in flesh the Godhead see”) should strike her as bizarre. And there are all sorts of reasons to be appalled at a Saviour born to die on a cross (a “symbol of barbaric torture”). Christmas comes with “religious baggage we should shed” she says. Although one might be forgiven for pointing out that this confuses carts and horses - without the religious "baggage" there would, of course, be no Christmas. Her main motivation, though, appears to be that she wants religious opposition to the “right to die” removed. It is far from clear that is a sure fire way to ensure goodwill to all men. Time will tell. But certainly I can see why, from her point of view, there are logical reasons for a degree of ambivalence about Christmas.

But for me there is no ambivalence that applies to Sundays. I know what Sunday is about. Albeit the English name goes back to pagan times, it’s clear what Christians are to make of the first day of the week. It is the day on which our priority is to come together to focus on and remember Jesus. Maybe Greeks have the right idea (and not for the first time), naming Sunday “Κυριακή”, which is derived from “Κύριος” Lord. The Lord’s day, one that affords that opportunity for fellowship with other believers, with Jesus “in the midst” (as He put it Himself). A weekly opportunity to be provided with fuel for our living as we take our minds of our twitter and RSS feeds and fill them with His word. All of this is mandated; it marked the early Church and should mark churches today. So, on the one hand a (Christmas) day of ambivalence and on the other a (Lord’s) day I’m fairly clear about. Seems like a no brainer as to which should have prominence when the two coincide.

We would, in any case meet as a church on Christmas day, not something I have ever found a chore. But it did lead to a degree of mental and chronological confusion because it meant that a Monday, Tuesday or whatever would end up feeling like a Sunday, without actually being one. At least this year there will be no need for such dissonance. It will be like killing two birds with the one communal stone. This helpful aspect aside, it does seem strange to me that some who claim to be Christians seem keen not to meet, and the suspicion arises that it being Christmas day is an excuse not a reason. A bit like those who think that things like cup finals in which their favourite team is playing is a reason not to meet. This is to put church on the level of a hobby or diversion; it’s really not. This coming Christmas Sunday those of us who followers of Jesus have an extra reason to be together (not a reason for not gathering) to focus with others on what, or rather Who, really matters. And indeed not just His birth, as remarkable as that was. But on His life, death, resurrection, ascension and return.

It was, after all, the Saviour, Christ the Lord, that was born, not just a baby.

The Christmas movie channels popped up, unbidden, in September. TV adverts for Christmas food started in early October, and the John Lewis ad appeared at the beginning of November. By the beginning of December lots of houses around here had begun to sport inflatable, flashing reindeer, and illuminated fat men with long white beards, who were dressed in red suits. At night, houses began to be lit up like ….. well, Christmas trees! Yes it’s that time of year again where I try not to yell at the telly “But it’s only September (October, November etc)! To quote Noddy Holder, “it’s Christmas”.

Even in an economic downturn there are presents to be hunted down and bought, and in the midst of a bird flu pandemic there’s turkey to be procured. It is about preparations and as there’s lots to do and it takes lots of time, it’s important to start early (apparently). In our house, a Christmas tree appeared early in December and various gifts have now begun to appear beneath it, suitably wrapped and labelled. Much of the activity going on, perhaps this year more than most, is part displacement activity, part distraction. I suppose it is richly ironic that Christians who originally hijacked the end of December from their pagan predecessors complain when the pagans reacquire it for their own purposes. But this time of year, at least notionally, does have something to do with certain events in the ancient world concerning the birth of a particular individual.

Actually, the relative importance of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth has always been a bit ambiguous. It turns out that even for some of the Biblical writers, what we call “the Christmas story” wasn’t that important, or at least was not important enough for them to write about it. In their gospels, both John and Mark don’t tell us anything of the birth narratives of Jesus. Matthew starts his with a genealogy, and covers the actual birth story in just eight verses, although he does go on to tell us about the subsequent visit of the “wise men from the east”. It is Luke who, as part of his project to provide a full account of the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension and continuing activity of Jesus in the world, provides the most detail, including Gabriel and choirs of angels singing to shepherds (probably without the tea towels so beloved of small children). And it is also Luke who details some of the preparatory activity that preceded the events in Bethlehem. Back to preparations again. But when did God start preparing for Christmas, or rather the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity?

When you begin to think about it, this turns out to be a tricky question. That is because it has to do with time. Time is a given for us because we are creatures. We think and live in terms of, and in between, beginnings and endings and the change implied by a constant succession of events. This is all absolutely basic to our existence. It is written into our biology at a basic level, as well as into our psychology. The past has meaning for us, precisely because it is past and can be meaningfully contrasted with the present and the future. We are able to anticipate events, and given the current state of affairs be aware that there are things to do “now” that will  maximize the benefit to us of “then”. And all of this is so given that we don’t think about it and are hardly aware of it. It’s the way things are. It's the way we are. And there’s the problem - God is different.

He is different by definition because where we are creatures, He is the Creator who gives and sustains our lives. And it is not only that He precedes us. Nor is it just that He has no beginning. For even without a beginning, He could have been as time-bound as we are, subject to a succession of states and events and therefore also subject to change. But apparently He is not like that. I say apparently because we are at the point where we are quite close to getting stuck. Whenever we think about what God is like, because we are inevitably using the language of time-bound creatures, we are also inevitably limiting Him. The pictures that we paint with our words are inaccurate, maybe even wildly inaccurate, right from the start. The whole exercise would be futile were it not for the fact that God has used words to describe Himself in terms that we can understand. We cannot know everything, or know completely, but we can know certain things, and we can know them correctly.

And so back to time, or rather eternity. There isn’t a thing called time that exists outside of God to which He is subject. Indeed, as space and time are intimately connected, time did not exist until God created, so that He created both space and time. But clearly time exists for us and always has. How is this time, our time, experienced by God? All we really know is that if it is experienced by Him, it must be experienced in a fundamentally different way to our experience as creatures. Beyond that, it is difficult to say. The Bible writers used our time-bound language to illustrate this: “…. with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Peter 3:8). But this doesn’t really help me understand how God experiences the time He created any more that I can understand what it is like to be everywhere in the same instant (another feature of His being). But what is clear is that God does interact with us “in time”. So we read: “in the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4; i.e. “just at the right time”) Jesus was born.  Clearly this was an event that was not just a happy accident. It was planned. So when did God start planning?

Talk about one who was to come is easily found in the Old Testament. Although apparently it was just as easily missed, as Jesus Himself made clear to two of His early followers (see Luke 24:25-27). Passages from Isaiah will be read at many a carol service this year as every year, passages that date from long before Jesus’ actual birth (on which see this). These were written at the time Israel’s collective failure to live the way God had instructed them became apparent (particularly to them). Did God wait until a Plan A (Israel) failed before he began planning for Bethlehem? But then at the very start of the Bible, in words recorded thousands of years before the events that unfolded in Bethlehem, there are at least hints of what was to come, at least in terms of Jesus death, if not His birth (Genesis 3:15). Did God start planning Jesus’ entry into the world when things turned sour in Eden? Both seem unlikely. If God is eternal, He exists outside of time, even once He has created it. He knew about both Adam’s and Israel’s failure long before it occurred. Indeed, in a sense both were always before Him, as was the answer to this failure and the predicament that comes to all of us as a consequence. He knew that in the person of His Son, He would, amazingly, take on flesh and be born in time, at the right time. It was in eternity past that God began planning for the first Christmas.

Except that in eternity, there are no beginnings, because there is no time. He always was, and He always knew. And He accomplished all that was necessary for the events that we think of as Christmas, just at the right time.     

(Way) less than less than half….

No, the title is not a typo. It was inspired by the headline on a report on the BBC website last Tuesday, which also appeared in their main 10pm TV bulletin. On Wednesday, the Times got in on the act with a report (“End of an era for Christian Britain”), analysis on page 7, and a Leader. Thursday’s letters pages were full of opinions, advice and argument (here’s the Guardian’s as an example; the Times sits behind a paywall). This flurry of interest in the state of “Christianity” in the UK was prompted by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) who are gradually working their way through the data produced by the 2021 census. They had just published data on “ethnic group, national identity, language and religion” for England and Wales (actually four separate statistical bulletins) on a relatively slow news day. Before thinking about what implications (if any) can be drawn from the numbers, it’s worth just noting some caveats. The particular focus of the discussion was analysis of the voluntary “religion” question in the census (first introduced in 2001); that was enough to prompt the ONS itself to urge caution when looking for trends. If you want to look a trends over time, there are precisely three data points. A trend is extractable; whether it means anything is the question. That said, in 2021 the question was answered by 56 million people, 94% of the estimated population of England and Wales.

What attracted the BBC’s attention was the change in the number of respondents reporting their “religion” as Christian between 2011 and 2021 which had dropped from 33.3M (59.3% of the population) to 27.5M (46.2%); hence the headline “Less than half of England and Wales population Christian, Census 2021 shows”. The story then started with the statement “For the first time fewer than half of people in England and Wales describe themselves as Christian, the Census 2021 has revealed” (italics mine). The reason I have italicized the first part of this sentence is that it struck me as odd. We have no real way of knowing when this state of affairs became true. And we cannot know if it was true before (it must have been at some point in history). But I’m being picky. We kind of also know the point that is being made.

Have we learned anything new and does it matter? We do not know what was in the minds of the millions who answered the question. This was self-reported religious affiliation that turns on the interpretation of words like "religion" and “Christian”. The two are not synonymous, nor would I argue is one necessarily a subset of the other. When challenged I am usually inclined to deny that I am religious. If “religion” is about humanity’s search for God (as it is occasionally defined in some dictionaries) then that does not apply to me, even although I am happy to accept the label of Christian. I was sought and found by God and am the recipient of outrageous grace. When I could do nothing for myself, God stepped in and rescued me – I am what I am because of Him, not me. And if “religion” names a set of institutions that the religious belong to, or rituals that they must practice, then again I deny that the word applies to me. There are institutions and practices that may be said to mark groups to which the label “Christian” can be attached. But these are neither defining nor obligatory for the Christian, the foundation of whose identity lies elsewhere. All of which raises the question of what a Christian actually is.

If for some reason you have had cause to refer to my blog profile, you’ll have noticed that I have qualified the word Christian. Qualification is needed precisely because the word means different things to different people. And this goes to the heart of the interpretation of the census results. I qualified it with “Biblical”, because that is where the term originates. When the early, mainly Jewish, followers of Jesus were driven by persecution away from Jerusalem (where they had congregated), some headed to Antioch and some spoke to non-Jews “preaching the Lord Jesus” (Acts 11:20, ESV). The result was the founding of a church in Antioch  (modern day Antakya in southern Turkey), and it was here that these disciples of Jesus were first called “Christians”, probably as an insult. This was the origination fo the word and it seems to me that it continues to be a sensible meaning of the word. It is those who are in personal relationship with the same Jesus, in response to the same Apostolic Gospel. It is less dangerous and insulting these days to be associated with Jesus (at least here and at least for now). But it is this relationship that was and is the heart and essence of Christianity.

Something is clearly in decline and this may have important consequences. But consider for a moment a counterfactual. Taken at face value, prior to the recently reported decline in the proportion of “Christians” in the UK, every second person I met would have been a Christian. But this has never been my experience. My experience is that people who are followers of Jesus, who are in personal relationship with Him, who seek to think as He thinks and live as He lived, have always been fairly thin on the ground. They were not commonly encountered day to day and certainly made up way less than half of those encountered. This has not changed in my thinking lifetime. Primarily what has declined is a different kind of thing and we might therefore usefully employ a different qualifying word, like “cultural”. What the census is picking up, consistent with other surveys, is a decline in cultural Christianity. The “Christian” veneer that has covered UK society, a veneer derived from values inherited from Biblical Christianity, has begun to slough off.

Veneer, of course, is only ever a covering, hiding an underlying substance that is usually something entirely different. Indeed the purpose of a veneer is to both cover and often conceal what lies beneath (like oak covering chipboard). If this covering is now being discarded, and at an increasing rate, then perhaps this is to be welcomed as something at least more honest. But one wonders what really is being revealed underneath and whether it will turn out to be all that agreeable.

The neo-Babylonian captivity of (some) evangelicals

Around September 1520, Matin Luther published a tract. Along with his other writings, he would be invited to repudiate it at the Diet of Worms in 1521. When Erasmus read this particular tract he is reported to have blurted out “The breach is irreparable” for it was seen by Luther’s contemporaries as his most incendiary writing to date. It attacked the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, which Luther maintained had actually held the Church in a kind of servitude. His aim was to set the Church free. The tract was called “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”. It seems that today part of the contemporary church may have fallen prey to its own modern version of captivity. We all run the risk of being held captive by the culture which surrounds us. It configures us to think in certain ways, and not think in others. It has an ability to weave a spell that for the most part we are unaware of. It is always a challenge to break free.

For the Christian (in the Biblical sense) culture is particularly problematic where it is suffused with ideas and values opposed to the way the Creator would have us think. That there is such a thing as “the way the Creator would have us think” is of course highly contested in modern culture. Some maintain there is no Creator. Others maintain that even if there is He/She/It is unknowable (at least in any practically important way); one can therefore live as a practical, if not a philosophical, atheist. Then there are those who are happy to wander around in an agnostic fog, probably because it frees them to live as they see fit. This will have the added advantage of allowing them to fit in with the culture that surrounds them, of which they will be largely unaware. For my part, I am convinced that there is a Creator to whom I owe my existence. I am also convinced that He has revealed Himself in the Bible, not as the remote watchmaker of the deist, but the loving Father who goes to inordinate lengths precisely so that the He might know me, and I Him. As this is a minority view (and always has been) there is a potential clash between ways of thinking and behaving taught in the Bible (properly understood and applied), and those taught or even mandated in the surrounding, non-Christian, culture.

Such a clash is exactly the state of affairs that prevailed when the first Christians began to preach the Gospel, the good news of Jesus’ rescue mission (the one we’ll be celebrating in a few weeks). The Gospel was so counter-cultural in their time that living it and preaching it cost many of those first believers their liberty and their lives. That doesn’t of itself constitute evidence that the Gospel is true. Men and women in history have given their lives for all sorts of causes. But it does indicate that Biblical thinking and living has and can be costly. There are areas in the world where this is true today. But because broadly Biblical ideas and values came to predominate in the “West”, while there have been periods of difficulty, it would be hard to argue that, at least in recent times, we have experienced having to pay a high, let alone the ultimate, cost for following Jesus. And there have even been places where it has been reasonably comfortable for “evangelicals”. 

I mean of course the U.S. where historically it has not only been relatively easy to be a Christian believer, but in recent decades one could argue it has been desirable. Evangelicals in the US have had a political presence in the US since the 19^th century. However in the second half of the 20^th century, they emerged across the Protestant denominations to form a more clearly defined block, albeit with fuzzy edges. In the 1970’s moreover, they began to form a coherent voting bloc, coalescing around a number of political issues, particularly abortion. As a bloc they were of course actively courted by one Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and as a bloc they apparently supported him. This was always a transactional relationship. Trump promised to put conservative justices on the US Supreme Court and announced himself to be an ardent “pro-lifer”; the evangelicals voted for him in large numbers, even if some of them held their noses as they did so. Back in 2016 there were those who pointed out that Trump did not pass some fairly basic tests that evangelicals should have been interested in. For Max Lucado he didn’t pass the “decency” test that he would apply to someone who wanted to take his daughters out for an evening, let alone run the most powerful country in the World. Russell Moore elicited a Twitter rebuke from Trump, when among other things he called him one of "two immoral options". For Al Mohler too, Trump didn’t pass the smell test, although the other candidate was at least equally unpalatable. Mohler is a smart man, who made a ton of cogent points at the time. That he has now changed his tune has led some to question his motivation. Other evangelicals are reported to be heading in the opposite direction, experiencing what sounds like frustration and a degree of buyer’s remorse. But the fact is that in their support for Trump they were prepared to prioritize the political over the theological. They got what many of them wanted. But they got a lot more besides.

There has always been an anti-intellectual strain in US evangelicalism (and perhaps evangelicalism in general). By that I don’t just mean a dislike for intellectual endeavours outside of the Scriptures some of which like philology, history and science, were used to attack orthodox Christian belief. Thinking hard about that very belief has sometimes seemed too much like hard work for some evangelicals. There is something simple in the Gospel that is attractive (“Jesus loves me, this I know”), but the New Testament is clear that we should progress from milk to meat (1 Corinthians 3:1-3; Hebrews 5:11-14). Where teaching, training and thought are lacking, churches become vulnerable to being captured by influences and teachings other than those found in the Scriptures (Eph 4:14). It was the this sort of thing that Mark Noll diagnosed in the 1990’s:

“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. An extraordinary range of virtues is found among the sprawling throngs of evangelical Protestants in North America….. Notwithstanding all their other virtues, however, American evangelicals are not exemplary for their thinking, and they have not been so for several generations.” (Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind).

Just over 25 years later, that hollowing out of evangelical thinking, intellectual, apologetic and theological, has led in some churches to partisan politics trumping (pardon the pun) Scripture. Those churches have entered a new Babylonian captivity. We shall see whether they return, and in what state.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic we have no reason to be complacent. We either hear and appropriately respond to the warnings of Scripture and grow up in our faith, or we too run the risk of entering some or other captivity.   

Turbulent Bishops (with apologies to Henry II)

In his displeasure at Thomas Becket in 1170, Henry II is reputed to have cried “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest”, leading to some of his more impulsive Knights paying the Archbishop a visit, resulting in his untimely demise. Even in the absence of outraged monarchs, the Church of England continues to encounter turbulence, although not (thankfully) with a similar violent outcome. This time it is the Bishop of Oxford who has been stirring the pot (one too many metaphors). For those not familiar with the continuing agonies of the established church in England, it has been discussing issues of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage in a process called “Living in Love and Faith”. It has come to the point where the Bishops are meeting to agree concrete proposals to put to their governing General Synod; change is in the air. Officially, the Church of England currently holds to “traditional” (i.e largely Biblical) views of sexuality, gender and marriage. The broader culture, of course, does not. Hence the “traditional” view is pitted against what is widely regarded as a “progressive” view. This is seen as a problem in that not only is it uncomfortable, but is said by some to be unsustainable. Something has to give.

It is worth saying that it would be surprising if the views of Christians, seeking to follow a Saviour whom the world saw fit to crucify, were ever entirely compatible with the views of that same world. However, for a long time broadly Biblically-based values and attitudes have so influenced the Western World (an issue famously explored in Tom Holland’s “Dominion”), that tensions have tended to be at the margins or under the surface (with the occasional glaring exception). But, with increasing speed the values of the culture which we inhabit have been diverging from anything remotely Biblical. Hence problems have arisen, among them what should the church’s response be to this divergence and how should it decide. And this brings us back to the Bishop of Oxford, Stephen Croft.

In the middle of the final part of a process involving discussions among the Church of England’s Bishops from November 2022 to January 2023, Bishop Croft decided that it was time for him to make his own thinking clear and public. So he published a pamphlet entitled “Together in Love and Faith: Personal Reflections and Next Steps for the Church” (downloadable here) in which he concentrated on the issue of same-sex relationships, and in particular the attitude the Church of England should take towards same-sex partnerships. Some have questioned his objectives. Others have rather rolled their eyes at another bishop seeking to subvert the very teaching he promised to uphold and defend. But his pamphlet is interesting. It is in part a description of a journey from an evangelical position in which Scripture is the starting point and final authority, including in areas as difficult, fraught and contentious as human sexuality, to what he calls “a more affirming position” on same-sex relationships. It is a careful, thoughtful and I have no doubt sincere attempt to argue for that position. And he does it claiming that he remains an evangelical, retaining “a high view of the authority of Scripture”.

There have been lots of responses, from both those who share his newly adopted objective (that the Church of England abandons its currently orthodox position and move to recognize same-sex relationships as on a par with heterosexual relationships), and those who oppose it. Some of the opposition is from “traditionists” who look at 2000 years of church teaching and practice and see that the Bishop’s position stands this on its head. For them this is sufficient basis for rejecting his conclusions. But much of the opposition (unsurprisingly) has come from those Anglicans who claim, along with the Bishop, to be evangelicals, recognizing Scripture as the source and standard of Church teaching and practice (while taking note of 2000 years of teaching and practice). Perhaps the most thorough and penetrating response has come from a member of the Bishop’s own diocese, Vaughan Roberts. To be fair to the Bishop, Roberts’ response it is as effective as it is because the Bishop gave him prior sight of his pamphlet before it was published. And the Bishop has praised both the tone and content of Robert’s response. All very Anglican. But both cannot be right in their conclusions. Part of their discussion is about practical steps the Church of England might have to take to retain both of them within its compass. But there is a more fundamental, and familiar, issue that quickly comes to the fore. 

Vaughan Roberts is no naïve Biblicist. He is a thoughtful and experienced pastor and Bible teacher, who leads one of the largest evangelical Anglican churches in Oxford. And crucially, he has personally has had to grapple with issues of human sexuality not just in the abstract, but personally. Once again in this paper he is very open about his own struggles and experience. Where he agrees with his Bishop, he makes it clear (and there are areas of agreement). But he is surely correct in spotting what has really changed for the Bishop. It is something the Bishop is also fairly clear about. Notwithstanding warm words about Scripture, he actually prioritises something above it. For him, Scripture is trumped by experience. We do not interpret our experience in the light of Scripture, we use experience to interpret Scripture. Where the demands and implications of Scripture lead to difficult and painful conclusions, including some that might mean careful and perhaps painful readjustment of our thinking and behaviour, it is legitimate to reinterpret Scripture. In fact, we probably should. For how could painful change be what God demands of us?  For the Bishop, in the light of the painful and unjust experiences of some of those whose sexual identity is different to Biblical demands and norms, we should find a way to alter our interpretation of Scripture to avoid the pain. This is simply the loving thing to do. And so in his pamphlet the Bishop goes to considerable lengths to do exactly this. As Roberts points out this is “an essentially liberal, rather than evangelical, approach”.  

All of which means that we have been here before. It is the old claim that Scripture is not the revelation of God, and does not have any authority over and above us. Authority lies somewhere else. For the Enlightenment it was in reason; in the 21^st century it is in experience. And so the current impasse that the Church of England finds itself in boils down to this familiar issue of authority. There is much more in Robert’s response beyond this, and all of it worth reading and thinking about. But why should the rest of us be bothered?

There are practical reasons for being bothered about the state of the Church of England; there's its infrastructure for one, with churches up and down the country. Then there are those links of fellowship between evangelicals (in the Roberts sense) in the Church of England, and those of us happily outside of it. We should not be, and are not, indifferent to the pressure they are under and the struggle on which they are embarked. It is tough. But what is at stake is truth, and truth always matters. There is such a thing as “Neuhaus’ law”:  where orthodoxy is optional, it will soon or later be proscribed. And that matters to us all.  

Amateur Hour

 It is hard to fathom the political pickle we are currently in. On this side of the Atlantic we (some of us) watched with horror as our friends in the US elected a political neophyte to the highest office in the land. From early on, it was clear that President Trump was completely mystified by the business of government. There were obviously things he wanted to do; he was admirably clear about what these were (fix healthcare, reduce crime, stop illegal migration by building “the wall”, appoint conservative judges, fix campaign finance). Some of them were entirely within the gift of the presidency, such as nominating Supreme Court justices. But many were not, requiring the cooperation of the legislative branch of the US system (ie the Congress). This should have been unproblematic for the at least the first part of his administration, given that he was elected as a Republican president, and the Republican party controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives (and a majority of state Governorships to boot). The Republicans even tightened their grip on the Senate after the 2018 mid-term elections (although they lost control of the House).  But yet, Trump achieved remarkably little beyond securing a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. While this is not to be sniffed at, his term was more marked by an inability to govern than to get stuff done. He seemed to be more interested in trashing the very norms and institutions he should have been using. The simplest explanation is that he was an amateur and basically not up to the job. He famously said of healthcare “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated” in 2017. But everybody did know (except apparently him). Maybe he should have been paying more attention.

But Trump’s rise can be seen as part of a reaction to professional politics and the “elite” that populates it, as represented at the time by Hillary Clinton. There’s no doubt she knew all about politics from her experience as former First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State and so on. But she just couldn’t get enough voters to believe that she was on their side, and would get the sort of things done that they wanted. Trump was the perfect foil; a way of holding two fingers up to the system (apologies for this British cultural reference, in the US it is of course one finger). The problem is he proceeded to trash the system and the institutions that made it work, to the extent that it sort of did work, if only haltingly. And so a vacuum was created that was filled with conspiracies, distrust, misinformation, outright lies and an increase in domestic political violence (threatened and executed). The tragedy for us on this side of the Atlantic is that it appears that there are those that seek to follow the same playbook, whether actively or passively. And, at least initially, they managed to strike a similar cord.

For us it was not a disputed election that brought things to a head, but a contentious referendum. There’s no point relitigating Brexit. The decision was passed to the people, the people decided and we all have to live with the political, economic and cultural consequences. The outcome was in part about sticking it to the elite, or at least that section of it that seemed to have actual arguments, facts, analysis, the biggest political beasts (one remembers press conferences with Balls, Osborne and Cameron) and, of course, experts. And in order to “get Brexit done” we were then, by some margin, prepared to entrust our system to Boris, a man who in normal times would have been completely disqualified from the highest office by his track record of lying and buffoonery. We apparently had had enough of “experts”, and handed the keys to those who would not pay undue respect to important institutions, not to mention personal integrity. Things then began to look up when Boris was dispatched precisely because of his lack of integrity (although no doubt basic political and economic incompetence played a role). But, alas, this turned out to be a lull, the calm before an economic storm brought on by monumental hubris which magnified the effects of a basic incompetence. Once again, some the stabilizing and constraining institutions which previously might have moderated the excesses of the political class were ignored or undermined. In the case of the Truss/Kwarteng omnishambles, non-budget, “fiscal event” these were mainly economic institutions like the OBR, the Bank of England, and the top civil servant in the Treasury who was apparently too “orthodox” for comfort. Trussteng knew better than the faceless (if experienced) bureaucrats, and better than the markets that they proudly professed to worship. They had been warned of course, in public debate, that fantasy economics don’t usually fare well when they collide with reality, but they either didn’t listen, or didn’t care, or actually believed the fantasy. We may never know which it was. But they managed to persuade the key selectorate that they knew what they were doing, and so the keys were duly passed on to them. 

If someone had proposed a script with a plot that followed the twists and turns of the last few months in UK politics, it would have been rejected out of hand as being too far-fetched. And the idea of a popular insurrection (albeit an unsuccessful one) in the US would also have seemed implausible not that long ago. But this torrid tale of people promoted or trusted beyond their abilities, of the triumph of the amateur and the charlatan over the serious and experienced, holds lessons for us. Knowledge, experience and character all count, particularly when it comes to running things like governments and economies. It turns out that this is no easy job and takes skill, experience, application and even a little luck (or the aid of Providence). Democratic political systems no doubt can be frustrating and exasperating, but the answer cannot be to entrust them to those who don’t really have a clue about what they are doing. Trusting the expert and the experienced, may also mean trusting the cautious, and that may mean that change is slow and incremental. But in the complex world in which we live, that may be the best we can hope for, no matter how impatient we may be. Better slow change than quick disaster.

Democracy only works where the voters play their part, inform themselves and decide carefully, weighing the options, judging character and ability deliberately and dismissing fantasies and the fantasists that promote them. Maybe in the end we get the politicians and governments we deserve. Well, we’ve tried the amateurs. Maybe it’s time to revert to the professionals, as unappealing as that might seem.

Science + theology?

A while ago I took to thinking about the area of study in which I am now engaged (theology), and also the area in which I had previously been professionally occupied (science). I suppose I conceived of these as two largely separable and separate fields. Sitting next to each other in the intellectual landscape, I suppose I would have expected to find a fairly well defined boundary between them. But because I am a realist (technically a critical realist), committed to a single , overarching and knowable reality outside of me, I would expect the boundary to be a fuzzy one, allowing friendly contact and interchange. If both represent valid pursuits, then they both deal with the same reality, although from different perspectives, using different tools. They are neither enemies or rivals. Admittedly, few scientists spend much time in properly theological reflection (except the ones who do), and there are probably more than a few who would deny theology any validity at all. But that has more to do with weaknesses in the education of scientists (at least in the Anglo Saxon world) than with any real problem with theology as a discipline. It has its problems of course, but validity is not one of them. However, it turns out that there may be a bigger overlap between theology and science than I had suspected.

I was alerted to this by having to critique a paper published in the Journal of Empirical Theology. Can there be such a thing I wondered. If theology is the study of an ineffable and inapproachable God, then it seems unlikely that empirical methods will have much traction. I am rather assuming that there are theologians (Barth perhaps?) who argue that when it comes to knowing anything about God, what is required is revelation not scientific experimentation. And while God’s self-revelation can be examined, debated and understood (and misunderstood), this is not a task that the methods of the natural sciences will be much help with. But theology (rather like science) is really not one single institution or discipline, with a single object of study from a single standpoint and a single set of tools. Given that things are believed about God (and indeed gods) by people, there are reasons for studying these beliefs, the people who hold them, and perhaps thereby discover things  about the God in whom they believe. In general, those who study people develop interests in the beliefs people have. So it is no surprise that tools have been developed to study such things, and some of these are thoroughly empirical.

Obvious examples are found in social and cognitive psychology, where many of the classic approaches found in other branches of the natural sciences, are used to study things like beliefs. The general approach can often be couched in classic hypothesis-driven terms (observation-hypothesis-prediction-test), using standard instruments and testing strategies to get at what is going on in people’s minds (or at least inside their heads). Religious ideas and beliefs might simply be seen as a subset of beliefs and ideas, examinable using exactly the same techniques. This is not a new idea; that religious belief was nothing special is a view that Scottish arch-sceptic and empiricist David Hume would have agreed with. Such investigations, undertaken from a standpoint of “methodological naturalism” generate explanations for the phenomena under investigation that do not invoke God, any more that I would have invoked His activity to explain the eye movement phenomena that I used to study. But then this doesn’t really sound like any kind of theology. And indeed it isn’t – it’s psychology.

As an aside, as a Christian believer, while I did not invoke the actions of God to explain the things I was investigating, I was well aware that He was not remote. He was as present in my lab as anywhere else; I am a Christian not a Deist. I was always quite comfortable with the belief that underpinning everything I did, indeed underpinning my very existence as well as that of the universe, was God’s power (revealed by writer of the New Testament letter to the Hebrews; Heb 1:3). But my job was to find immediate and natural explanations for what I was investigating, based on natural rather than supernatural mechanisms. My hypotheses were couched in terms of these natural mechanisms, and these were what my experiments tested, and what my theories invoked. But God and natural explanations are neither contradictory or mutually exclusive. They are different, and pertain to different levels of reality. But this poses a conundrum. I assume that there is an explanation that connects the power and working of the God who is spirit with the existence and maintenance of this universe which is material. I have no idea what it is, and my gut feeling is that even if God had revealed it I would not be capable of understanding it.

But back to empirical theology. There are models of belief and thought that originate within an avowedly theological context and use theological concepts. These are likely to be dependent, at least for the most part, on the revelation of God mentioned above. Empirical methods could, I suppose, be used to study such beliefs. But the methods themselves would have to be theologically informed, otherwise we’re simply back in the realms of psychology. This seems to be what goes on in what is called empirical theology. What I don’t quite understand is what it’s for. Mind you, that applies to a lot of science which is actually at its best when it is just about finding out stuff. It is only subsequently that it turns out that some of the stuff is useful or important or worth lots of money. There’s a lot of serendipity involved in even the hardest of hard sciences. There are contexts where finding how what and how people think is important. An example would be education where if you wanted to know whether a concept or belief was being adequately transmitted, then there are ways of finding this out in a rigorous manner. This is likely to be as useful in theological education as elsewhere. But is this really theology? Who’s to say. Defining disciplines is famously difficult. But I can conceive of investigating theological concepts and beliefs in a thoroughly scientific manner. Whether it ever is, is a different story.

A tale of two cities…

Edinburgh and London, September, 2022. The first has been sombre and restrained, the second has been brighter. The one has welcomed the arrival of the late Queen’s mortal remains to lie in state before heading south. The other filled with people looking excitedly for a glimpse of the new King as he takes up the responsibilities and burdens as head of state, even while grieving the loss of his mother. So many emotions, and a number of contrasts.

As so many have noted in these days, Queen Elizabeth II was (as we now have to get used to saying) a remarkable woman and a remarkable sovereign. Having lived one of the most scrutinized of lives, she is no less scrutinized in death. From the announcement of her passing at around 6.30pm on Thursday 8^th September, cameras were trained on the gates of Balmoral (where she died), as well as following all the intricate actions that seamlessly accomplish as well as evidence the succession. On Sunday the coffin containing her remains, draped in the Scottish Royal Standard, was driven from Balmoral to Edinburgh, with a helicopter filming from above. This had the added benefit of demonstrating again the impact the Queen’s death has had on so many. Throughout even relatively sparsely populated sections of the Scottish countryside, ordinary folk made their way to stand by the side of the road and pay their respects. By the time the cortege reached Edinburgh, where the route included the Royal Mile, ending in Holyrood Palace, the crowds were six or seven deep on both sides of the road. The quiet, respectful murmur of the crowd was interrupted by a wave of equally respectful applause.

Scotland, it is claimed, is unsure of its place in the state of which the Queen was head. She had made no secret of her love for Balmoral and its setting. It was where she spent her last days on earth. Just last week, in the first time for a long time, a departing Prime Minister had to make his way there to resign, and the newly elected leader of the largest party in the Commons had to make her way there to be offered the position. The Queen’s relationship with the locals around Balmoral was a warm one, and they and many others made their way to Balmoral’s gates to make their feelings clear. It is notable that the Queen rose so high above the political arguments over independence. Of course she inherited the crown of Scotland by right, independent of her status in the rest of the United Kingdom. She was a direct descendant of James VI. But given the level of political argument over Scotland’s status, one referendum behind us and perhaps another one to come, the affection in which she was held by Scots was amply demonstrated by the crowds. There will be many a Scots tear shed when, shortly, she leaves Scotland for the last time. Whether her departure will mark a turn to a republican frame of mind remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the events that confirm the accession of the new King continued to unfold back in London. For the first time we were all able to see the meeting of the Privy Council as an Accession Council on Saturday. Over previous centuries this had only been witnessed by Privy Councillors themselves, and then only by relatively few. Now, millions of us could observe the inner workings of the British constitution. Again Scotland loomed large. King Charles III will take a number of oaths at the time of his coronation. But long before that he has already taken an oath to “inviolably maintain and preserve the settlement of the true protestant religion as established by the laws made in Scotland”. This is part of the constitutional settlement that brought about Union in 1707. In what is seemingly becoming a secular state, this must have bemused many of his subjects, including Presbyterians back in Scotland who seem to have little notion of what the “true protestant religion” actually is.

Today (Monday) Edinburgh witnessed the solemn sight of the Queen's coffin, with the Royal Family walking close by, being taken from the Palace of Holyrood, to lie in St Giles Cathedral. The new King joined his grieving family there having completed another key ceremonial task back in London. Both the Lords and the Commons have met to allow their members to pay tribute to the Queen. All of the speeches were personal, many of them were moving. One thing that was striking was the number who highlighted the Queen’s personal faith in Christ. While this has been observed by all, it is clearly more meaningful and personal for some. Those who were not just subjects of Her Majesty, but fellow believers with her, were able to bring a special focus to her faith and witness pointing out that hers was no mere formal or official religion. She bore a personal commitment to a King higher than herself; this was what had liberated her to perform her duties in the way that she did. I have no way of knowing the extent to which these speeches, just a small subset of so many being made across the world, will have an impact on the King. But today all of Parliament, along with the King and his Queen Consort, gathered in Westminster Hall to hear the Speakers of both Commons and Lords remember the Queen and express condolences to the King and the Royal Family for their loss. It was a reminder of both the public and personal. We have all lost a Queen; Charles has lost a mother.

Then the King was on his way to Edinburgh from London for another procession, more ceremony, further words of remembrance and condolence. Then the Queens coffin will leave Scotland for good, and head to London to lie in state before the funeral next week. The divided focus on two cities, will again be concentrated in one place. The past will give way to the future. There are new memories to be made, and a new reign will unfold. But even in an age of rampant materialism and naturalism, the usually unseen hold of the unseen has been laid bare. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, moved to tears by the death of someone who was inevitably remote from most, bereaved by the loss of a near stranger. And those invisible cords of history that makes a nation out of a people, have been revealed for the strength that they provide even if they are poorly understood and appreciated. A whole hidden world revealed, if only temporally.

It turns out there more to life than meets the eye. We’ll all be praying God save the King, as He surely did his mother.

Methodological musings

Summer is nearly over, school exam results are in, and the traditional English pastime of agonizing over the education system is in full swing. As the days lengthen and the temperature (hopefully) drops, I have to return to thinking about my little part in the great educational adventure (the masters programme at Union Schoolof Theology). Having completed a bunch of modules last year covering a range of topics, this year I am about to embark on the research methods module and then my dissertation. There are those who insist that we’ve all moved on from the days when Theology was taken seriously as an academic subject. I suspect some lurk among my former scientific colleagues. Mind you, they would probably also hold the same view (although only ever very quietly articulate it) of sociology, political studies, poetry, swathes of psychology, and other oddities. In fact, if they but knew a little bit of history (another subject area with dubious credentials) they would know that this is a very 19^th/early 20^th century view of the academy in which only science provides truthful and therefore useful knowledge. Everything else is “nonsense”; useful only in so far as it is mildly entertaining.

Before coming back to the issue of theology specifically, it’s worth just making a few rejoinders to this sort of (admittedly minority) view (see also here). The first thing to note is that scientific approaches have only ever applied to a fantastically narrow sliver of life and experience. To claim that only those things which can be measured and weighed, parameterized and counted matter, leads to an extremely impoverished view of life that no one could, or ever really has, held. To dismiss the warmth of human relationships, the beauty of sunsets, the evocations of great music (whether Elgar or E.L.O), is to dismiss the sort of thing that makes life liveable. None of these things can finally be reduced to numbers without missing something both important and wonderful. The view that only the measurable is knowable is only held in seminar rooms, and while having arguments. Then its proponents return to spouses and children and talk of love and affection (presumably genuinely), or go out and enjoy a good meal, and do not feel in any way that these are nonsense experiences that are to be dismissed.

And the notion that science is somehow self-sufficient, never requiring insights from other disciplines, is a peculiar kind of intellectual arrogance not worthy of the first-year undergraduate flushed with A-level success, who has yet to learn of his true ignorance. Where this type of attitude (articulated or not) persists among professional scientists (and where it does true professionalism and rigour are undermined) trouble is usually not far behind. You might think that clear thinking is a hallmark of science, but the literature is replete with counter-examples that a mildly competent philosopher or historian of science would be able to supply. Confusion and conflict over no more than poorly defined categories and misnamed concepts is far from unknown.

It is the philosophers of science (rarely scientists themselves) who have had to tackle how scientists actually think when engaged in effective science. Most scientists find that doing stuff is complicated enough without thinking too hard about it. In my experience it is not uncommon to bumble about in mist before finding a sensible approach to a problem. Activity rather than cool, dispassionate thought is often the preferred approach. The highly sophisticated, specialized and technical nature of most contemporary, professional science has exacerbated rather than moderated such tendencies. And all of this is prior to the really big elephant now sitting right in the middle of science’s front room – integrity. “Ethics” is not science (like epistemology it is a sub-discipline of philosophy), but “ethics” are now one of science’s big problems. This is perhaps inevitable where things like careers, salaries, and economic exploitation of scientific results are to the fore. All research costs money, and the money is usually someone else’s. This brings inevitable pressures and temptations. Things are further complicated where science and political controversy become entwined as in current debates around vaccines and climate change. Science is far from the clean, cool, rational, straightforward, always successful enterprise that some would have the non-scientist believe.

So in the complicated and nuanced world we all have to inhabit, studies of other aspects of existence have their place and I assume require an appropriate toolkit, some knowledge of the past, and strenuous efforts to discover and apply new knowledge. There is a right way to go about science, or rather right ways – it’s not as methodologically monolithic as you might think. And I’m assuming the same applies in a discipline like theology. There is even an interesting overlap in methodology, in as much as reasoned argument has the same characteristics across disciplines (a philosopher could give me chapter and verse on this). Coherence will be good and contradiction bad. Claims will be testable and tested against evidence. Interestingly, while the main object of study in theological investigation is different to that which I studied previously, there is again an overlap between my former and future efforts. If the object of study in theology is God (the only real and true one I mean), then there is a problem because there is a sense in which He is unknowable. And yet He has revealed Himself in a number of ways. Of prime importance is Scripture, the book of His words, and His primary method of self-revelation. But then we have His created order (including ourselves) – the book of His works. And that’s what I’ve been studying for all these years. In studying them, I have been studying Him.

But I take it that given the centrality of Scripture, this will be a prime focus of theological research, and therefore theological method. This raises a bit of a conundrum as far as research is concerned. The Bible has been an object of study for a long time. In my former existence a premium was placed upon revealing new things. Admittedly where I managed this, the things that were revealed were only of interest to me and a tiny handful of other people. Had they not been revealed the world would have continued spinning on its axis. But they were, in their way, novel. But is theological research about finding out new things about God in Scripture or do we know everything about Him we need and are able to know? Research would then become a matter of rediscovering the thoughts of others, a sort of history. I can see the value in this, but is it all there is? Or are there new things to be discovered, articulated and applied? I am already aware of two theological tribes which take two different, and opposing, positions on this - constructivists versus conservatives. No doubt there are others I’ve yet to encounter.

The inventiveness of humanity and the productivity of science and technology do occasionally throw up genuinely new issues which require theological reflection. One example would be nuclear weapons which placed the means of planetary destruction in human hands for the first time. A current example would be the current controversy over gender, what it is and whether it is fixed or fluid; such questions would simply never have occurred to previous generations. But is this fundamentally about generating new truth, or applying old truth to new issues? Novelty may not be as novel as it first  appears. And if some claim is made that a really novel theological truth has been discovered, is this a good thing or simply danger sign?

These are the questions to be batted about next week. Some hard thinking to do. It’s unlikely to be dull.

Messiness and main things

It can be very easy to fall out with people, something all human beings seem to have a talent for. Sometimes religious people in general, and Christians in particular (particularly those at the Protestant/Evangelical end of the spectrum) get singled out for being key exemplars of this propensity. Given that, it is worth pointing out that the Monty Python joke about “splitters” has much more to do with politics than religion, suggesting that this really is a human, not specifically Christian, frailty.

Unity is of course important. In philosophy it has been a matter of debate from Plato and Aristotle forward. In politics, it is valued because of the perception that people don’t vote for divided and disunited political parties (a rule most recently restated by Nadhim Zahawi, Boris’ final chancellor). More importantly for me, it is enjoined by the Psalmist  (Ps 133:1 – “how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity”) and prayed for by Jesus (John 17:21 – “..that they may all be one..”). But unity is one of those odd things that while important, is not really of value in an of itself. Just as faith can only ever be as strong as its object, so unity is only of value where there is something (or someone) to unite around. This brings us back to splitting.

One of the accusations constantly thrown at the Reformers in the sixteenth century was essentially that they were “splitters”. They were introducing division into the church that had no business being there. The point was often made that it would not end well; once a splitter, always a splitter (partly the Python’s point). It was predicted that once the split had occurred from Rome there would be other splits, until the whole reforming project ran into the sand. Where previously there had been glorious unity under Rome, there would be all these fissiparous protestants, both defacing the beauty of the church, and generally causing lots of trouble. And it did rather look like this for a while. Except for a couple of things.

The unity of Rome was both around the wrong object and was in part illusory. The human institution of the church, with its accretion of prelates and both extrabiblical and unbiblical ritual, with its devotion to international politics and political rather than spiritual leadership, had moved so far from the church as instituted at Pentecost as to be unrecognizable. It had become a barrier to the saving truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not its doorway. Even so, even Luther recognized a high threshold for secession, and his original intent was reform rather than schism. That door, if ever open, was swiftly closed against him. In any case, Luther faced a situation in which no-one was entirely sure what the truth really was that everyone was supposed to unite around. He was active during a period of theological pluralism, when even for key ideas (including some that would become hotly contested like justification) the right line was often ill-defined. The production of Erasmus’ new translation of Scripture, a great improvement on the Vulgate, had the effect of showing up that in certain areas what had become accepted truth was far from it. The institution, when challenged, reacted with hostility. A split became both inevitable and unbridgeable where truth was defined by God in His Word, as opposed to a human institution.

And while it still looks to some that chaos was the result, chaos that is still with us, this is surprisingly deceptive. That central role of Scripture as defining truth has another important aspect to it. Some things are both true and necessary – get them wrong and the consequences can be eternally disastrous. Deny them, and the outcome is likely to be as unpleasant. It is clear that Jesus is not just a great teacher or prophet, but God and man. As hard as this is to get our heads around, undermine, redefine or deny the truth of who Jesus is, relegate the truth of His life, death and resurrection to opinion, and the Gospel is emptied of its transforming relevance and power. This hypothesis has, as it happens, been tested in contemporary Europe (including the UK) and North America, and the results may be clearly observed. However, it is less clear whether it is necessary for Christians to meet at 10.30am every Sunday morning, sit in wooden pews and sing songs written prior to the nineteenth century only accompanied by a pipe organ. In the New Testament there is teaching about some of things we should do as Christians, and in some cases the way in which we should do them. But there is surprisingly little practical detail, leaving ample scope for a legitimate spectrum of practice. This has not prevented some Christians from falling out over details that Scripture simply does not supply.

John Newton, former trafficker in human slaves, writer of “Amazing Grace” and latterly Church of England vicar and rector wrote “If a man is born again, hates sin, and depends upon the Saviour for life and grace, I care not whether he is an Arminian or a Calvinist.” I think Newton puts it rather well. Essentially he was saying that we should keep the main things the main things, and not fall out over the other stuff. And this was the genius of the eighteen century revival and awakening. Even though there were fallings out, and the big one was the Calvinist/Arminian division between John Wesley and George Whitefield (the one referred to by Newton, and one that still exists today), there was an underlying unity in the Gospel. Even the division between Wesley and Whitefield should not be overstated; they found a way to work if not together then at least with a degree of harmony. Wesley famously preached Whitefield’s memorial sermon in 1770.

Of course there will always be a legitimate debate about what the main things actually are, and where the border really is between main and secondary issues. I think Newton summarises them well. There are primary issues, those necessary for salvation, and then there are secondary issues. We can debate these, and perhaps we should, but we should not be falling out about them. Because some have fallen out about them in the past, we find a range of different groups, and it can all look a bit messy. And yet I have always found so much in common with fellow believers in, and followers of Jesus, that there has always been a degree of unity for all to enjoy. This unity, based on God’s Word, is the sort of thing experienced at places like Keswick.

Keep the main things the main things and it turns out things are not as messy as they first appear.

Keswick 22.3: Beyond the big tent…..

The Keswick Convention for us is over, and we have moved on. Indeed, we have moved north on our summer road trip. We spent a good part of today wandering around Edinburgh, our former home. When we first married, we settled here. In driving in to the city we made a short detour to drive past our first flat. Two of our children were born in Edinburgh (one studied here and hasn’t yet left). Even when stuffed with summer tourists it is a beautiful place. And, as we are obviously north of the (currently fictional) border, it was the Scottish edition of the Times that we bought today. Scotland these days is said by some to be a fairly Godless place. The national church, as opposed to the Church, is in rapid, if not yet quite terminal decline. Government here, particularly its Green Party element, is relentlessly secular. And yet today I found two church stories in the Scottish edition of the Times (unfortunately behind a paywall, otherwise I’d provide links to the stories). For different reasons, neither of them is particularly encouraging, at least when taken at face value.

On page 5 is a story about Destiny Church, described as “an American evangelical church”. Destiny Church and Ministries was founded in Glasgow around 1990. Its belief statement on its website certainly declares that it teaches everything you would expect in an evangelical church, with a few additions. It falls into the charismatic camp, with the expected prominence given to teaching about the Holy Spirit, and an attachment to claimed miracles such as healings. In the past it has had associations with “prosperity gospel” teachers such as the appropriately named Creflo Dollar. It has now suffered some splits and defections, with complaints about financial irregularities and exploitation of members being made to the charity authorities in Scotland. Hence the story in today’s paper. I have no notion whether there is any truth in these accusations, and I have no particular criticism to make here of Destiny. I happily confess I know little of them. However, even taking a sceptical view of some of their own claims, they provide evidence that parts of the Church are apparently far from in decline. Exactly how authentic the churches in Destiny’s network are, time (and for that matter eternity) will tell.

Then a little further on (page 23) I encountered the headline “Secular Scotland feels little need for God, warns Kirk moderator”. This is a story about the Church of Scotland’s continuing decline and indeed its own narrative of that decline. It has recognized this formally in as much as it is in the process of rationalizing (i.e. reducing) its number of parishes and posts. The incoming moderator, writing for next months “Church and Life”, is to claim “Christendom has gone” and that Scots live in a culture “that feels little need for God”. The quotations are those that the Times’ journalist has seen fit to include in the story of course. Presumably the Times has seen a copy of the Church and Life article, rather than itself claiming any prophetic insight.

I suppose that the Moderator might claim he has been misquoted. We’ll see. But it is true that there is an ongoing debate within the C of S about its decline and what it is to do. A blog post which is also quoted in the article, authored by one of the Church’s academics, gives a flavour of aspects of the ongoing discussion. The blog post focusses on how the human institution that is the C of S should organize to survive. But nowhere does it engage with the C of S’s central problem. It ceased believe and preach what was supposed to be, and historically was, at its core – the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To conclude that the C of S’s decline means that there is no appetite for the Gospel it has refused to preach is bizarre. Destiny’s story, at least in part, provides evidence to that end.

It was not really the detail of either story that caught my interest. It was that firstly both appeared at all. Again, this rather counts against the idea that there is no interest in such things here in Scotland. I assume that the newspapers, here as elsewhere, only devote column inches to what they think their readers, or at least reasonable proportion of their readers, will find interesting. The Times apparently thinks that news about Christian churches falls into that category. Admittedly you could see both as fairly depressing, and a sign of a secular media taking the opportunity to paint Christians in a poor light. But secondly, beyond the immediate contrast between the two stories themselves there are a number of other contrast that should be pointed up. And this is where Keswick is relevant.

All last week we had the confident presentation of a Gospel and its impacts based on the authoritative Word of God. The confidence was not based in the talents of speakers like Alistair Begg (a Scot as it happens) or the other main speakers, one of whom, David Gibson, is based in a growing church in Aberdeen which, while presbyterian, is not part of the Church of Scotland. These men, and others, were both confident and competent. Not in their own talents, but in the Word that they preached. Now of course the audience they were preaching to was self-selected (although in Week 1 it has a distinctly Scottish feel). Many of us were there precisely because we shared the basic presuppositions of those who were speaking. No surprises there. But we have all now dispersed, some us to that part of the UK which it is claimed “feels little need for God”. As for ourselves, we’re only visiting. But many others love and live here in Scotland. And they are no doubt back with a spring in their step, and I hope a renewed ambition to share the Gospel that the Church of Scotland is so singularly refusing to share.

In the big tent as Keswick, over three summer weeks, there will be full hearts and occasionally damp cheeks. It will be warm in more ways than one. It’s an atmosphere where it’s easy to be a Christian and committed to the Gospel. It may be harder beyond the tent, but this is where the Gospel is in desperately short supply, and therefore where it’s desperately needed.

Keswick 22.2: Picture language

Cooler on Wednesday in the big Keswick Convention tent. So cool, that Alistair Begg had donned his jacket and tie once again for the morning Bible Reading. Tuesday and Wednesday we looked at the pictures that Paul painted for Timothy that he might understand who and what he should be. Not painting by numbers, but painting with words. Two millennia later, the same pictures remain helpful. That’s because as Paul wielded the brush (or rather the pen), he was doing so as one entirely shaped and sustained by the eternal artist (author). We had three pictures on Tuesday, and three on Wednesday. Anyone interested in the details can get access to the talks via the Keswick Ministries website. But here are some highlights from the first set of three.

On Tuesday we thought about the devotion of the soldier, the discipline of the athlete and the determination of the farmer. These pictures still work because we’ve all been reminded recently about aspects of all three, and how much they all matter. There is, after all, a war raging on this continent which is global in its impact. On one side of the conflict there are lots of resources in terms of men and material. And yet, because of the quality of the soldiers opposing all of that force, and because of their bravery and discipline, there has been success in slowing the advance of the enemy. Such qualities may yet turn the invaders back. A conflict, the outcome of which seemed inevitable when it started, could now tip either way. But the point is that discipline is vital for victory. The picture holds true, and lessons can be drawn.

Just yesterday, a UK athlete, Jake Wightman, won a gold medal at the World Athletics Championship. To do so, he had to compete within the rules. Some have won, but have been stripped of their prize because they broke the rules. Some even don’t get to compete because they break the rules. In fact rules are absolutely necessary if there’s to be a meaningful competition in which people are able to express themselves freely. It seems a contradiction, but rules are actually liberating. Such expression takes devotion, discipline and serious application. Wightman himself said after his run “I have given up so much to get to this point, such a lot of things sacrificed….”. But, it was all worthwhile (although his was a reward  that will soon fade.  

And then there’s the farmer. As food prices soar, both in the UK and internationally, we’re all coming to appreciate more the importance of farmers. Not for them the glory of the smart uniform or athletics vest, not for them the parade or the packed stadium shouting their name. Just a boiler suit, and dirty finger nails, and hard graft. There’s a glamour about the soldier and the athlete that’s absent from the farmer’s experience. Maybe that’s the point of the picture. There might be a harvest to enjoy, but there might not be; farming is a risky business. But the farmer will work on regardless. Determined. Persevering. Sometimes life has a plodding quality. Maybe for most of us, that’s what it’s like most of the time. Fine.

As a friend of mine used to say - don’t be afraid to plod.

Keswick 22.1: Baton passing for beginners……..

It’s July, it’s hot (record-breaking hot), and it’s time for the Keswick Convention once again. Today (Monday) was the first day of this year’s Week 1 “Bible Readings”. The theme of the week is “Grateful” and this week’s messages will be from 2 Timothy, delivered by Alistair Begg. And I’ve already been amply reminded of lots of reasons to be grateful.

Some of these are to do with my own past. In listening to the Begster (as a friend of mine called him recently - I would never be that cheeky), I was reminded of seed-sowing, mind-shaping experiences of student days in the Christian Union in the University of Glasgow. In fact I last heard Alistair Begg in the Queen Margaret Union common room (actually just a big beer-stained party space) in the early 1980’s. The older I get the more I appreciate those far off days when with a group of like-minded and like-aged individuals started to grow up – a process that continues. Home and family provided a good foundation, but it had to be built upon. A whole range of speakers at CU “teaching meetings” and a network of Christian friendships provided both means and materials. That is now 40 years in the past. I have no doubt that there are those who do not look back so fondly. For me it may only have been a stage but it was no passing phase. It was critical.

This morning, Alistair Begg mentioned in passing his friend Eric Alexander. The Rev Alexander, who retired from ministry in the Church of Scotland some years ago, in my day was something of a hero to many of us. A faithful and gifted preacher of the Word of God, and a man of faultless courtesy, he and his congregation in St Georges Tron in the centre of Glasgow provided a spiritual home to many of my contemporaries. He also figured in an early Keswick I attended, again in the ‘80s. There have been so many of these figures. I attended a memorial service for Peter Maiden yesterday in the Keswick tent. I suppose those whose formative days are today will have their own heroes, models and influences. But today the subject of baton passing was definitely front and centre.

This is one of the big themes of 2 Timothy, a parting letter from Paul to his young (or at least younger) associate Timothy. There is truth, ‘sound words’ to be guarded. Believing this truth, teaching it, obeying it, living it, would be costly. It would entail suffering because to live in this way would inevitably evoke opposition, and that opposition would bring pressure. To resist that pressure would involve cost and suffering. Paul endured suffering, and invited Timothy to share in it. This all sounds a bit grim. And it would be if we were talking about suffering for a philosophy or creed. But the Gospel is much more than that. Much more than a set of human propositions. It is both a person to whom we are drawn and united, and the truth that reveals that person. Paul calls it the “testimony about our Lord”. It was transformative in Paul’s life, and in Timothy’s. But would it, could it, survive the passing into history of the likes of Paul and the other Apostles?

This was Paul’s concern. He would tell Timothy (I’m assuming we’ll come to this later in the week) to pass it on to faithful men and women. Others who, having been called and transformed, would themselves pass it on, unaltered and untainted (otherwise it would not be the Gospel). Paul need not have worried, indeed he probably didn’t. He had both conviction and confidence. Not in himself, and not even in Timothy. He reminds Timothy (I’m fairly sure this was ground they covered many times) that the resources available to accomplish this task were primarily not human but divine. The same God who authored the Gospel (Paul calls it the “Gospel of God” in Romans), provided the resources for its preservation; the “spirit of love, power and self-control”, the Holy Spirit who through His indwelling would empower Timothy to guard the good deposit. This is hardly surprising given that the Gospel is God’s rescue plan for sinful, fallen creatures, initiated in eternity past, with an objective in eternity future. Its execution is not likely to want for resources.

But Paul’s letter to Timothy was written a long time ago and long way away. How is it all going? Well, Timothy found those trustworthy men and women, and then they, in their turn, found others, and so on down the years. All the way along there were probably those who fretted that things were so bad that the whole thing was running into the sand. But eventually the very same Gospel was entrusted to the likes of Alexander and Begg, who have spent their lives doing exactly as Paul instructed Timothy. It happened again, today, in a big tent in Keswick. I owe a great debt to the likes of them, and many others. In a sense that same message has been entrusted to me.

Many thanks. Now to pass it on. 

Bookending Boris

As one layer of political dust falls out of the air and begins to settle, another cloud is kicked up by the shuffle of political feet, stinging the eyes and clogging the back of the throat. Boris is no more. Not quite true of course. Like so much else about him, what is said, and what has actually transpired do not quite tally. They might, in time; hopefully they will. But with Boris, one just never knows. I am referring of course to our current and (probably) soon to be former Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He became PM on the 24^th July, 2019, and stepped through the Number 10 door to announce his intention to resign at 12.30pm, July 7^th, 2022. When the Conservative party has elected a new leader, Boris will tender his resignation to her Majesty, who will then invite his replacement as Conservative party leader to form a new administration.

To digress and to be clear, the people of the UK to not elect Prime Ministers. We each of us have a vote for a constituency MP. In theory, the PM is anyone who can command a majority in the House of Commons (usually, but not always, determined by a general election), and he or she then chairs a cabinet of equals to implement a manifesto and govern the country. In practice, for much of the last 200 years this has been done on a party basis, and the leader of the largest party (which usually holds an absolute majority in the Commons) is the PM. Parties and manifestos have become less important as first mass and then social media have turned politics into a personality-driven affair focusing on one person. But our system does not work well this way. The kind of checks and balances in the US presidential system (of the kind Trump tried to subvert with partial success) do not actually exist here. In a way, because our PM holds lots of executive and legislative power, the position of PM is the more powerful (and therefore dangerous) position. This is something Boris has amply demonstrated.

He has been displaced without an election, even although it took an election to (only just) dispense with Trump – at least for now. There is no great policy divide in his party. Everyone is now a brexiteer, and believes in a small state and reduced taxation. It was Boris personally, rather than politically, who had become unacceptable and had to be replaced. It was his colleagues in government who provided the mechanism, not the people at large. This is not in the least anti-democratic, provided that Boris’ Conservative successor is committed to implementing the manifest on which all Conservatives were elected back in December 2019. There’s no point huffing and puffing that the next PM is being imposed on the rest of us by a selectorate of mainly southern bluerinsers. We don’t elect the PM, and we never have. Anyway, back to Boris.

Although he has not yet departed, it is worth identifying what has done for him, because it is both troubling and heartening. His lack of attention to the requirements of governing (as opposed to campaigning), observing important rules and conventions, paying attention to detail, caused problems which afflicted his administration right from the start. But it was his complete inability to act honestly and transparently that really hurt him. Latterly, there was even an attempt to institutionalise what looked like his contempt for honesty by making none-too-subtle tweaks to the “ministerial code” – a venerable but toothless set of guidance authored by each PM, and provided to serving ministers. Boris’ problems with honestly and consistency, as evidenced by his inability to apply the code to himself and one of his friends, cost him two ethics advisors who were both serious and non-political public servants with copious experience in public life. This all began catching up with Boris when his Health Secretary and then his Chancellor resigned, to be followed by a gathering avalanche of other resignations. So the central issue was not policy; it was entirely to do with Boris’ unsuitability for the role because of his lack of personal integrity. What’s troubling is not only that all of this was predictable, but that it was predicted.

This is usefully illustrated by two columns written by Max Hastings, the first in June 2019 and the second last Thursday, (7^th July). Two bookends for Boris’ time as PM. Hastings is a distinguished (indeed Knighted) journalist and historian, and one of Boris’ previous bosses. He has observed him from afar and up close, and while never a chum, was not a natural enemy. While I suspect Hastings is a natural, small “c” conservative, he has actually voted both Conservative and Labour in the past. In 2019 he was excoriating; he is now relieved, while sounding somewhat apprehensive about the future. He is clearly a remainer, although in his more recent article he makes it clear that for the time being re-joining the EU is off the agenda (the current political consensus), even while arguing that he expects the issue to be revisited in the future. But while thinking that Brexit is folly, this is not at the centre of his critique.

Writing in 2019, Hastings quickly honed in on the character flaw that would eventually lead to Boris’ downfall: “He would not recognize the truth…if confronted by it in an identity parade”. He was unfit for national office because “…he cares for no interest save his own frame and gratification”. He then predicted that Boris’ premiership “..will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability”. Prescient indeed. Writing after Boris’ demise, with the evidence clear to see, Hastings wrote “[Boris] is a stranger to truth who has sooner or later betrayed every man, woman and cause with which he associates”. Nothing has changed though, Boris was “the same moral bankrupt as when the Conservative party chose him”. Of course both the Conservative party and the country connived in the Boris phenomenon. Pushing issues of personal morality aside, he was voted for to achieve what was deemed of more importance than things like truth and integrity. I understand this; I struggled with it myself at onepoint.

The heartening bit is that, having flirted with disaster, we have avoided it. The unwritten British constitution has been flexible enough to both survive and remove Boris, without mass violence. This is not something to be dismissed lightly, as events in the US demonstrated. It looks like the system there has also survived but only after mass violence that cost lives. We have apparently decided that integrity matters, even if accompanied by a dash of hypocrisy and political calculation. It may not be everything, but I’ll take it as a promising sign that all is not lost.

One other heartening aspect is that according to Sajid Javid, whose resignation got the ball rolling, it was the sermon of the Rev Les Isaac, “Serving the Common Good”, at the National Prayer Breakfast early on the 5^th July that pushed him across the line. He went straight back to his office to write his letter of resignation. The cynics will claim that this is just convenient cover for ambition and disloyalty. But it sounds to me more like Providence being kind to us (again), and doing what we could not do ourselves – focus on, and value, truth over expediency.