Disaster Area

Grief and Healing - A Bishop's Perspective

A blog I latched onto a few months ago is that of Bishop Alan Wilson, the Bishop of Buckingham in the Diocese of Oxford in England. Bishop Alan does a wonderful job of just being a regular blogger, describing the life of a bishop in his diocese. He has a pretty decent sense of humour and can also get quite serious. On Sunday he posted a sermon he gave at a service for survivors of bereavement by suicide. I can hardly imagine how to approach such a subject, never mind do it with tact and grace, but he apparently does. His sermon is posted in full on his blog.

One might not think that there would be huge parallels with my situation, but really, there are certain characteristics of having someone taken from you suddenly that are universal. In the case of suicide, Bishop Alan writes:

I went to see Father Tom, my Roman Catholic colleague. He said to me,

"the hardest thing in some ways is to stop trying to renegotiate the outcome with the person we loved, and respect their decision. Only then can you leave God to sort out the big stuff."

Fr Tom’s wise words reflect another problem, tied up in being human. When somebody we love dies, there’s a powerful instinct find out why and fix responsibility. It quickly becomes a tortuous game of “if only...”

This is the one area that doesn't really apply to me, and I will admit I'm in a tiny minority of the bereaved here. In Sue's case, there was not really anything rational that would have indicated a problem. As such, it's really hard to point a finger at anyone or anything that would have helped or changed the course of what happened. In an odd way I'm grateful, because the "what if" or "if only" game is nothing but torture. I can't even imagine how hard it must be for the friends of relatives who are survivors of bereavement by suicide (an oddly tortured phrase, but appropriate).

My thanks to Bishop Alan for his kind, encouraging, compassionate sermon and for blogging his work so transparently. "If only" there were more bishops like him...

Fresh Breath Problems?

Maggi Dawn posted recently on various and sundry tacky Christian novelties. Well, the same people who brought you the wash away your sins soap also have this lovely borderline sacreligious product for sale...

Are the flavors of your last supper lingering too long? Freshen your palate with the miraculous breath-cleansing power of these Last Supper After Dinner Mints. Each collectible, 3" x 1-1/4" x -1/2" (7.6 cm x 3.2 cm x 1.3 cm) tin contains one hundred mints that you can share with your apostles! Thirty-six shrink wrapped tins in each illustrated display box.

In the right circumstances, I could see these figuring into a humorous alt-worship service of some kind. Come to think of it, why does church have to be so solemn all the time? Why couldn't we cut loose a bit with a humorous service? Of course, there's no need to get stupid about it...

Krister Stendahl...

Several people have noted the passing of Swedish bishop and New Testament scholar Krister Stendahl. Not being terribly knowledgeable about Sweden (nor, in terms of global academic standing, the New Testament) I was unaware of the influence of Stendahl until this point. Maggi Dawn linked to an essay of Stendahl's on "Why I Love the Bible", which I found both entertaining and fascinating.

Stendahl defined his love of the Bible in five negatives, thus:

• It is not primarily about me.
• It is not always as deep as we think.
• Even Paul isn't always totally sure.
• Don't be so uptight.
• It is probably not as universal as we think.

Apparently, Stendahl was pivotal in redefining Pauline studies, and I have to think that anyone that can point out that Paul wasn't always sure must have had a rough ride somewhere along the way. In particular, his expansion on why "the Bible isn't primarily about me" is an incredibly valuable piece of work. Although I never even knew of him before, I miss him now.

What Is Sin?

Well, whatever it is, Evangelicals are sure there's a lot more of it than everyone else. A recent survey by Ellison Research (hat tip to Episcopal Cafe)shows that there are many things that most of the population define as sin (even the for the non-religious "the concept is commonly accepted even among those who are not religiously involved", according to Ellison).

(Update - for some reason the tables didn't display properly, so I fixed them...)

The data are sliced and diced quite a few ways, but I thought I'd highlight a few things. First, the overall numbers:

Behavior	Overall
Adultery	81
Racism	74
Using hard drugs such as cocaine, heroine, meth, LSD, etc.	65
Not saying anything if a cashier gives you too much change back	63
Having an abortion	56
Homosexual activity or sex	52
Not reporting some income on your tax returns	52
Reading or watching pornography	50
Gossip	47
Swearing	46
Sex before marriage	45
Homosexual thoughts	44
Sexual thoughts about someone you are not married to	43
Smoking marijuana	41
Doing things as a consumer that harm the environment	41
Getting drunk	41
Not taking proper care of your body	35
Gambling	30
Telling a little white lie to avoid hurting someone's feelings	29
Using tobacco	23
Not attending church or religious worship services on a regular basis	18
Watching an R-rated movie	18
Playing the lottery	18
Being significantly overweight	17
Not giving 10% of your income to a church or charity	16
Drinking any alcohol	14
Working on Sunday/the Sabbath	14
Spanking your child when he/she misbehaves	7
Making a lot of money	4
Dancing	4
Average	36.3

We can see, then, that the average person has some peculiar standards for "sin". Not correcting an error in getting too much change is more sinful than having an abortion. A sixth of people think being overweight is sinful. The top of the list is dominated by big issues: Adultery, Racism and Drug use.

And it's important to bear in mind that just because someone may believe something is sinful, they wouldn't necessarily impose that belief on others, or want it prohibited by legislation.

I have to wonder about the "sexual thoughts about someone you aren't married to" item. I presume the question is meant to refer to married people, because if 43% of people think that's a sin for a single person thinking about another single person, i think we have a serious problem. Not to mention every single episode of Baywatch must have caused more backsliding than the slippery slopes in It's a Knockout...

It gets interesting when we look at the breakdown by demographics. You can look up many of those on the Ellison site, but one that caught my eye was the breakdown by Evangelical/Not Evangelical. There are lost more religious oriented breakdowns, but none as dramatic as that.

Here's the same list, with Evangelical and the difference between Evangelical and All added, ordered by the magnitude of the difference (i.e., the biggest likely cultural disconnects between Evangelicals and the rest of society)...

International Women's Day - Hurrah!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, what with the work trip to the UK a couple of weeks ago and then last week being occupied mostly by a not so fun medical procedure (nothing serious, and maybe more later - oh wait, no, sorry, I promised a friend I wouldn't - never mind).

The important event this past weekend was International Women’s Day on Saturday March 8. I’m not a big fan of special days or weeks or months for things (The International Day for Three-Legged Blind Dachshunds being a case in point), but this one is important.

In my opinion, the two most important Millennium Development Goals are Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women and Improve Maternal Health. The evidence from around the world shows that educating women has the largest positive effect on societal development. The effect is particularly evident in reproductive health, where sex education, and in particular birth control, always results in women having fewer babies, thereby stabilizing entire communities. Getting off the constant pregnancy/birth treadmill does wonders for not just the health of the women but the communities they live in, too. It's no big secret that the most godforsaken places on earth feature the highest birth rates and highest infant and maternal mortality rates.

Marking International Women’s Day, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour had this (among other things) to say:

“Many States appear to have simply ignored the commitments they have made. It is shameful that, in the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, fundamental rights are still not enjoyed by many women around the world.”

The leveling of the playing field needs to continue everywhere. Even in the enlightened West there is still a long way to go before women get a decent hold on what might be called equality. It’s a crying shame that one of the last bastions of male privilege remains "the church". Replace “States” with “Churches” in the previous quoted paragraph and you still wouldn’t be far wrong.

Kathy Escobar, a contributor to the Emerging Women blog, has a really great post about women finding their voice in the Emergent “conversation”. It’s apparently still a bit like trying to order two pints of lager and a packet of crisps in a crowded British pub where the barman doesn’t know you, but still, you have to start somewhere. In particular, she highlights these thoughts, and expands on them very well:

• The only way this (restoration and reconciliation in the church) can begin to happen is if power (aka: leadership, voice, value) begins to shift.
• Those without power need to begin to step into it.
• Power is not finite. If someone gives up power, it doesn’t mean that there’s now less power in the room. It actually means that there’s more power in the room.
• Don’t underestimate how much tending and nurturing this shift is going to take.

Number three strikes me as particularly important, because to too many people in power, power sharing is seen as a zero sum game, when in fact it isn’t. Acknowledging other smart people doesn’t make you less smart. It may make you feel less superior, but shouldn’t that be a good thing?

Well, it may be a day or two late, here’s to women the world round. You deserve more than a lousy single day anyway.

Top-Down, Bottom-Up or Sideways?

As the church grows into the 21st century, the nature of church organizations will change. Maggi Dawn has an opportunity to spend some time with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York at an event in Cambridge this week, and she kicks off blogging about the event with a great post on a view of how these esteemed gentlemen see their role in this particular event. No actual interviews yet, but coming soon. There's still an opportunity to post questions for them.

In many ways, a lot of the ecclesiastical disputes going on now (Anglican Communion, Emerging church) are not only about doctrine but perhaps even more so about the organizational structures that enable them and how power is wielded. There may be a lot to dislike in the ancient church hierarchies, and change will come slowly, but change is definitely beginning to happen.

Evangelical Misbehavior

Real Live Preacher has a series of posts of his early days as an evangelical Christian in college. He describes an evangelistic mission trip to the University of Wisconsin (!) by his Baptist Student Union group from Baylor University (Texas).

Fascinating reading. As a youth leader for 25 years I've been around far too many of these number-oriented, conversion-at-all-cost types and it really is quite reprehensible , on a lot of levels. Here we get to see the long range impact on someone guilted into doing stuff like that.

Here's the intro, then part 1, then part 2.

Church of England Attendance

Maggi Dawn points to a report on the latest Church of England attendance figures from 2002 to 2006 and asks, "I'm not a statistician - Maybe I'm missing something?"

Short answer: No, Maggi, you're not. People love to write about small changes in numbers like they mean something, but in this case the story, such as there is, is that there is no story.

The tables of data make it look like something is happening, sometimes up, sometimes down, but generally people read too much into a 1 or 2 per cent change year to year. Often (I'd say pretty much always) it's easier to see things visually. Thus, here's are the average weekly attendance figures for all ages from 2002 to 2006, data taken directly from the report tables:

At best you could say that there was a mild upward blip in 2003, followed by a slow decline back to 2002 numbers, but really, the variation over this time is quite small.

I took a look at the adults only and children numbers, but they both follow this trend quite well.

You would have to say that the Church of England is about as stable an organization (in terms o attendance) as you can find.

Maggi notes that the statistics don't include Fresh Expressions communities, but I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand it would be good to know how many people are involved in those. On the other hand, once you start measuring numbers, numbers become the overriding goal, and that, surely, is one way to kill creativity?

The report also contains 2005 and 2006 stats diocese by diocese, and one area of interest would be to look at which dioceses are growing and which are not. But really, anything less than 3 per cent either way isn't worth worrying about or celebrating.

Advent Service: Waiting in the Starlight

Tonight was the 4th annual Waiting in the Starlight Advent service at my church. It's an alt-worship type of experience with stations of various kinds. One of the biggest thrills of the church year for me is when D (my main co-conspirator) and I lay down the Christmas star in tape on the parish hall floor. It's just magical to see the first couple of tape stripes go down and see the star form emerge.

We have always placed a manger in the center of the star as the primary focus.

Last year we started and ended with live music provided by the three Daves - myself and two friends also called Dave, as it happens. One of those friends, Dave B, is a pretty good songwriter, and in response to a comment I made a couple of years ago about there being a dearth of Advent songs, he's written a couple of excellent ones, which we now play at the service.

We also usually change things up a bit each year, as some stations work better than others and there's always room for improvement. This year, based on Maggi Dawn's Advent and Epiphany devotional, Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between), I added a station called Eat, Drink, Sleep based on the Dec 12 reading from Maggi's book (and at her suggestion and prior experience, I should add...) It worked very well for me, as I managed a 10 minute nap.

The whole evening worked out quite well, although attendance was sparse due to the snow that arrived today. Washingtonians don't do snow  very well. But really, it's not about how many people show up, it's about how much those who do get out of it. And Advent this year is turning out to be very meaningful to me.

Losing (His) Religion

Thinking Anglicans points its readers at an article in the New Humanist by Stephen Bates, until recently the religious affairs correspondent of the Guardian. A seven year stint in the trenches has given Bates an interesting take on religion and the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes. A nominal Roman Catholic, Bates has lost what little faith he had during the process, which is rather sad.

Now I am moving on. It was time to go. What faith I had, I’ve lost, I am afraid – I’ve seen too much, too close.

I will say that one runs the same risk when getting involved on church boards or diocesan politics. It's so easy to become disillusioned and feel like faith isn't all its supposed to be. But then, if you can get past the first shock, you realize that the Bible is full of stories just like what you see today, and human nature is what it is.

It's a shame Bates couldn't see past the wackier excesses of fundamentalists like the Bishop of Carlisle:

An earlier book he wrote on demonic possession shows he believes devils enter up the anus (something Freudian here perhaps) and the signs of possession include wearing black, inappropriate laughter, inexplicable knowledge, Scottish ancestry or relatives who have been miners. You may laugh – inappropriately – but Dow used to be an Oxford college chaplain, indeed once prepared Tony Blair for confirmation, and has risen to be a diocesan bishop.

It's a shame in many ways, because he hits the nail on the head here, talking about conservatives in the Church of England:

The fact that the outside world regards the division with bemusement and indifference, insofar as it takes any notice, and that the conservatives have received no secular support for their stand whatsoever, not even in the British tabloids, baffles them but only serves to confirm their belief that if the world is against them they must be right.

Well, good luck, Stephen, and I hope with some distance maybe at least a glimmer of that faith will return.