Disaster Area

Watching the Church of England

I've been reading a book over the last few months called Wqatching the English by Kate Fox, and English anthropologist. It's been both insightful and frustrating - seeing both the best and worst of English culture, and seeing which parts I've left behind and what has stayed with me - a maddening mix of both the good and the bad.

The Church of England, though, is reserved for the end, almost an afterthought or epilogue in itself. Her observations, culled from observing all manner of English people, ring so true it's startling. They come down to these three passages:

I’ve called this chapter Rites of Passage, rather than Religion, because religion as such is largely irrelevant to the lives of most English people nowadays, but the rituals to which Church of England vicars irreverently refer as ‘hatchings, matchings and dispatchings’, and other less momentous transitions, are still important. Most honest Anglican clerics will readily admit that the rites de passage of marriage, death, and to a lesser extent birth, are now their only point of contact with the majority of their parishioners. Some of us might attend a service at Christmas, and an even smaller number at Easter, but for most, church attendance is limited to weddings, funerals, and perhaps christenings.

Fox, Kate (2008). Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour (p. 353). Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Kindle Edition.

In any case, the Church of England is the least religious church on Earth. It is notoriously woolly-minded, tolerant to a fault and amiably non-prescriptive. To put yourself down as ‘C of E’ (we prefer to use this abbreviation whenever possible, in speech as well as on forms, as the word ‘church’ sounds a bit religious, and ‘England’ might seem a bit patriotic) on a census or application form, as is customary, does not imply any religious observance or beliefs whatsoever – not even a belief in the existence of God. Alan Bennett once observed, in a speech to the Prayer Book Society, that in the Anglican Church ‘whether or not one believes in God tends to be sidestepped. It’s not quite in good taste. Someone said that the Church of England is so constituted that its members can really believe anything at all, but of course almost none of them do’.

ibid (p. 354).

It is hard to find anyone who takes the Church of England seriously – even among its own ranks. In 1991, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, said: ‘I see it as an elderly lady, who mutters away to herself in a corner, ignored most of the time’. And this typically Eeyorish comment was in an interview immediately following his appointment to the most exalted position in this Church. If the Archbishop of Canterbury himself likens his church to an irrelevant senile old biddy, it is hardly surprising that the rest of us feel free to ignore it. Sure enough, in a sermon almost a decade later, he bemoaned the fact that ‘A tacit atheism prevails’. Well, really – what did he expect?

ibid (p. 354).

All of which makes me wonder why anyone cares about whether or not one is affiliated with the organization on the personal or corporate level.

The Gandhi Man Can...

Interesting book out on Gandhi: Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India...

Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew
Cover it with choc'late and a miracle or two
The Gandhi Man, oh the Gandhi Man can
The Gandhi Man can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good

From the Wall Street Journal review:

Yet "Great Soul" also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals.

Sounds about right, although far from the sanitized, revered icon he has become, which understandably brings down the wrath of those who would protect the myth.

He was also crazy and impractical (non-violence only really works on those with a sense of fair play, for example):

Starting a letter to Adolf Hitler with the words "My friend," Gandhi egotistically asked: "Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success?"

As Dr. Phil might say, "How's that working out for ya?"

He advised the Jews of Palestine to "rely on the goodwill of the Arabs" and wait for a Jewish state "till Arab opinion is ripe for it."

Yeah, we're still waiting to see which comes first - that or hell freezing over.

Even more delusional thinking:

Gandhi claimed that there was "an exact parallel" between the British Empire and the Third Reich, yet while the British imprisoned him in luxury in the Aga Khan's palace for 21 months ­until the Japanese tide had receded in 1944, Hitler stated that he would simply have had Gandhi and his supporters shot. (Gandhi and Mussolini got on well when they met in December 1931, with the Great Soul praising the Duce's "service to the poor, his opposition to super-urbanization, his efforts to bring about a coordination between Capital and Labour, his passionate love for his people.")

Ah, Mussolini, how we miss you - the trains running on time, the megalomania...

There's much more weirdness in Gandhi's life, but we all know the real story of his sexual passion from Seinfeld (Episode 4.18: The Old Man):

Mrs. O: That's when I began my affair with Mohandas.

Elaine: What?

Mrs. O: Mohandas.

Elaine: Gandhi?

Mrs. O: Oh, the *passion*. The *forbidden pleasure*--

Elaine: You had an affair with Gandhi?

Mrs. O: He used to dip his bald head in oil and rub it all over my body. Here, look... [shows Elaine a picture of the two together]

Elaine: Oh, my God... The Mahatma?

One annoying legend myth-busted.

 

 

Church Cartoon Excellence from England

My UK readers will no doubt be well aware of the cartoons of Dave Walker. Those in the US not so much. The inestimable Mr. Walker has a new book of cartoons out (his third, I believe) called The Exciting World of Churchgoing - available Sept 30 on Amazon in the US.

I could try to describe Dave Walker's style or the book myself, but Simon Jenkins of Ship of Fools (the (web) magazine of Christian unrest) fame did the job for me.

Dave’s visual style is deceptively simple – with childlike drawings of bishops, people in pews and church architecture – and reminds me of Tim Hunkin’s Rudiments of Wisdom cartoons from the Observer in the 1980s. But what takes these above Hunkin is the humour, which is delivered through flatly factual text.

For example, a cartoon on the responsibilities of the church sound desk operator: ‘Moving the slider up a bit. Moving the slider down a bit. Every now and then pressing the “sudden unexpected feedback” button.’

The deadpanning and the simple drawings conceal an artful and inventive brain at work.

Here's a sample of Dave's work from his blog:

Not all humor crosses the Atlantic in either direction, but I find Dave's work to be uniquely British, but also easily understood universally. Oh, and funny as heck... and licensable for use in your church bulletins and newsletters for a very reasonable fee.

And there's a calendar for 2011, too...

The Girl With...

I may be the last person on earth to be reading the Stieg Larsson Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, but they have been well worth the wait. Absorbing and intriguing and not exactly G rated. It's also odd to think that Larsson wrote the books and delivered them en bloc just before he died.

It's also been fun to adapt to reading novels on the iPad. In fact, with Kindle syncing between laptop, desktop, iPad and iPhone it's been a very high tech reading experience. And speaking of technology, Larsson inserts huge lists of the tech items that Lisbeth Salander uses in the books. I guess at the time it must have been cool (so much apple gear!), but seven or eight years on it all seems terribly outdated. Then again, I guess the iPad will be an amusing relic in about five years too.

Meanwhile, off to San Francisco for the weekend and looking forward to Hawaii at the end of October.

Lucas Mix Book Signing

As I wrote recently, Lucas Mix, a priest in our diocese here in Washington, is the speaker at my church's Lenten series on the subject of Science and Faith. He also has a book out -  Life in Space
Astrobiology for Everyone. He will be doing a book signing here in Seattle on April 8th.

Elliott Bay Book Company
7:30pm Wednesday 8 April

Lucas will read for a few minutes then take a few questions before signing away. If you haven't bought a copy, this would be a great opportunity.  If you have a copy already you can get it signed.

Book publicity site:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MIXLIF.html

Seattle Times Review:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2008786225_br01astrobiology.html

The bookstore:
http://www.elliottbaybook.com/

For those of you interested but too remote to attend, you can get the book at Amazon.

Sadly, I will miss it, as I will be attending the dress rehearsal for Swan Lake at the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

The Laziest Book Ever Sold

I was intrigued by the blurb about Rising From The Ashes: Rethinking Church by Becky Garrison. A book about the potential synergy between the emerging church movement and mainstream churches? Sounded like just my thing. So I ordered it and started reading it as soon as it arrived – just jumped right in at Chapter 1 – Where Are We Now?

Well, Where We Are Now? didn't do much to answer the question, unfortunately. A rambling, incoherent picture emerged from the assortment of phone, in-person and IM chat interviews that failed to reveal any clear or even vaguely discernible picture. "Never mind," I thought. "All will become clear when Becky sums up the recurring themes…"

Except Becky never does sum up the themes. "Never mind," I thought. "All will become clear when we move on to chapter two and find out what Becky thinks…"

Except chapter two is The Gospel of the Kingdom, with exactly the same format. A quick skim through the rest of the book confirmed my worst fear at this point: it's all a collection of random interview snippets. This must have sounded like a really cool, "emergent" concept at the publishing house. It doesn't, however, make it a good book. Somehow, the words "book" and "author" imply a certain amount of care and, dare I say, "writing". "Transcribing" doesn't quite cut it.

Now, none of this need be the kiss of death if the content is fabulous. But, to be blunt, it isn't. The majority of it is more pretentious than The Matrix and less disciplined than Amy Winehouse. The cast of interviewees is not without merit, but the twee self-descriptions in the front of the book often fail to give any meaningful reason for the person's inclusion. Sometimes their role or place in the grand pantheon of Emergent becomes evident in the interviews, but far too often it doesn't. There are vague references to some possible relevance in there, but it's never made clear. More often than not you would have to know what obscure emergent community the interviewees are members of just make sense of what they say. So quite a bit of the book is people you don't know, whose role in the church is unclear, rambling about stuff that makes no sense. Maybe that's what postmodern is all about…

There are some good comments, but they are lost in a sea of randomness, with occasional icebergs of "wha?" One particular interview that stunned me (and not in a good way) was that of Tony Jones, the National Coordinator of Emergent Village, no less. In a mere page and a half Jones turns in an astonishingly belligerent phone interview, rife with testosterone fueled masculinity and potshots at the mainline churches (Anglicans quite specifically). I thought I was reading Mark Driscoll for a minute.

Not that the book is without merit. There's a long section by Karen Ward of Church of the Apostles here in Seattle that makes a lot of sense. And unlike Jones' rant against mainliners in general and Anglicans in particular, Cheryl Lawrie (Uniting Church in Australia) has a nice comment near the end:

How do you define church in the 21st century? 
At its core the church is a community of people who are being faithful. The church has been around for over two thousand years and millions of people who have given their lives to changing the world and being faithful to the kingdom.I want to honor that.

To wrap up, the book is a carelessly slapped together collection of ideas and thoughts that may or may not (likely not) result in moving "the conversation" forward. As a mainliner interested in helping my denomination move forward in an "emerging" manner, I found the book singularly unhelpful.

One of my criteria for church related books especially is – would I recommend it or even give a copy to a friend? Sadly, this is not something I could do with this book.  Something could have been salvaged with an index of contributors with real descriptions of what made them worthy enough to be included, cleaning up the writing (I mean, why include even the random breaks in IM chats? IM purity?) and perhaps even a brief synopsis of the ideas from each chapter.   

In the self-congratulatory world that has become emergent, maybe it's time for somebody to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

Beginnings and Endings

I got hold of a couple of copies of this book early because I just knew there would be some useful material for the alt-worship Advent service at my church, and I was right. The specific idea that I used was one that Maggi herself had used - the Eat, Drink, Sleep story of Elijah (December 12 meditation.) It helps when you can consult the author... But this book has been so much more than a worship resource. Maggi weaves a fairly comprehensive look at the gospel story through thirty seven readings and meditations, working from the beginning to the end and back again.

Some highlights for me:

From December 30th, The Man Who is God, she explores the perpetual conundrum of Jesus as both human and divine. I found the following excerpt particularly helpful:

"But sometimes the desire to find a logical answer to the puzzle of the human and divine nature of Christ has become so intense that the purpose of the incarnation - for God to make himself known to us in Christ - has got somewhat lost in the mix. Surely God did not send his Son in order that we should have more practice at logic problems but in order that we might have life."

For me, this gets to the heart of some of the great disputes in the church. There are those who do want the answer to all the logic puzzles, and will go to great lengths to "prove" that there are answers for everything.

And it's not as if Maggi eschews logic and a proper academic perspective - far from it. From Jan 2nd, Shepherds and Wise Men, she takes a look at the contrast between the experiences of the shepherds (very experiential) and the magi (academic). There's a tension between an academic theology and an experiential one, but for most of us we need an integrated whole. One without the other is unsatisfying. I started out life with a mostly agnostic perspective, and came to the church initially through a little bit of an experience of community, developed my faith primarily at an intellectual level for quite a time and eventually found experiences of God that complemented all I knew to that point. I can't imagine being where I am without both kinds of spiritual development.

"Isn't it true, in the end, that there is more than one way to find our way to Jesus? It may be be study, enquiry and a steady route through reading and debate, or it may be an experience that grabs us by the heart and won't let go. I think it's probably true that most of us need a mixture of both, but it doesn't matter which route we take and which gifts we bring."

Obviously this book is meant to be read through Advent and the Christmas season, and I thoroughly recommend picking up a copy for next year if you haven't already done so. But really, it's a pretty good read any time of the year when you might need thirty seven thought provoking and insightful devotions. You don't even have to take my word for it, the book is endorsed by a real live Church of England bishop. Copies have been hard to come by in the US, so it may be easier to order it from the UK, but order it now and get the pipeline flowing...

Review: A Handbook for Widowers

I'm finally getting around to reading some of the material on grief and grieving sent by Lifecenter. One of the books is a slim tome entitled A Handbook for Widowers. I intended to skim it, but ended up reading all of it in about half an hour. I didn't agree with the critical tone of the one (two star) review on Amazon, so I just added  my own, and I'll post it here too:

This is not an in-depth treatise on grief for widowers, so the title may be a bit misleading. It's not a step by step guide with multiple options for how to deal with your grief. What it is is one man's account of how he dealt with the loss of his wife, sprinkled with mostly helpful suggestions.

Ames writes about the things he did poorly and the things he did well and invites his readers to avoid the mistakes he feels he made. Some sections are eminently practical and will no doubt help some men who just didn't see one thing or the other coming. The section on what to do with one's wife's belongings is especially useful, I think.

I think one of the biggest positives in the book is that Ames points ultimately to hope and the future. One of the positive things he mentions about being single (and yes, he is looking for the ray of hope amidst so much gloom and darkness) is this:

"If I did not before, I now know how precious life is; I must not forget that.I am more mindful, more aware of everything in my life - persons, things, actions, impulses. Now, not yesterday, not tomorrow, but now, in this moment."

Another thought I liked:

"One of the perils of grief is that it is so self-centered. An integral segment of your personal history has been wrenched from you, and you need time to allow the wound to heal. No one can predict the length of time your grief should take, but after a time, you need to get out of yourself and rejoin the world outside."

Well worth the brief time it takes to read it.

An Acceptable Sacrifice? - The Full Story

I just finished reading An Acceptable Sacrifice? It's an intriguing book in many ways. I'll write more of an in-depth review soon, but for now, here's a few first thoughts.

First, it's the kind of intelligent inquiry into the "gays in the church" debate that should have been initiated years ago - more specifically in the US long before Gene Robinson's episcopacy was a gleam in anyone's eye. And given that Gene was an unsuccessful (but close) candidate for two episcopacies in the late 90's, sooner would have been better.

Still, on to the book at hand. Kudos to the authors for taking this on. Now, undoubtedly, they come from the sympathetic side of the great gay debate, yet they do it with a great deal of humility. Much of the content is framed as a question or situation to be explored, rather than territory to be defended.  That's refreshing in its own right.

That said, the book is written by high falutin' Cambridge bred theologians for the most part, so it can be heavy going in parts.  Apparently they don't  have a "writing theology for the mass market" class in the UK (Now there's another opportunity for Brian McLaren), so you have to gear up your brain pretty tight. 

The question of the title has different connotations depending on geographic location. To what extent are we sacrificing the gay community? In reality, the debate is about honesty. "Don't ask, don't tell" prevails in much of the west, while "don't even breathe a word because you might get killed" is the model that prevails in much of the global south. The debate in the west is not really about whether gay people should be in the church, but how far up its leadership ranks they can be permitted to go. This is the Gene Robinson/Jeffrey John question. What happens in Nigeria is something I can't even fathom.

The book is divided into four major sections:  The Use of Scripture  (could have been titled  "or misuse"), History and Tradition,  Reason and Personhood, and The Wider Horizon.

The first section, the use of scripture, covers how we read and interpret scripture, and delves into the old and new testament perspectives on homosexuality.

The second section, history and tradition, is fairly broad ranging, covering sexual, economic and political mores through the ages. It points out, as many have, just how modern a thing is the modern marriage. Marriage through the ages has been much more about maneuvering for political and economic advantage than it has been about companionship and relationship. So "tradition" isn't always what one expects.

The third section, reason and personhood, covers the physiological and psychological aspects of being.  The chapter on intersexuality is very thought provoking as we  contemplate the "not quite binary" nature of male and female.

Finally, the section on the wider horizon gets into global economics and its  role in gender politics and economics. I disagree on many levels with Malcolm Brown's chapter on globalization, but it was still an interesting and thought-provoking read - surely the litmus test of good writing? Michael Beasley's chapter on the global threat of AIDS and the response to it is also excellent. I also have some issues with that chapter, but I'm glad he wrote it.

So, for this go-around, I give the book full marks for intent and effort, slightly less for accessibility, and I commend it to you heartily if the subject is of interest to you.      

Free Book

If you're interested in a free copy of Going to Heaven, the biography of Bishop Gene Robinson I reviewed in this post, let me know by email (a shipping address would be helpful).

I finished the book and will be posting a wrap up review soon.