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.