How can I be just? The intellectual incoherence of the West

Following the (non) reaction to my post about the ‘legality’ of the Iraq war, I wanted to return to the question of law and modern society. This is an area where I feel two issues arise. One is that Christians ought, from their unique perspective of the gospel, to have something radical to say. The other is that this issue highlights what I believe to be the increasing incoherence of modern society.

Incoherence
Why do I speak of ‘incoherence’? The reason lies, I believe, in the tension between what I will call moral demand and material narrative.

On the one hand, we see a continuing moral demand for justice and, with it, an expectation that law can be so framed as to produce that justice. Hence, according to some modern commentators, Tony Blair must not merely be condemned but ‘arrested’ for starting the Iraq war because what he did was ‘illegal’.

On the other hand, we have the prevailing material narrative which undergirds our understanding of the nature of existence. That narrative, quite simply, is that human beings are just one amongst many meaningless products of meaningless processes. We are distinct from animals —or rather from the other animals —only in degree, not in kind, and our much-vaunted ‘ethical’ values are nothing more, ultimately, than the product of evolutionary forces written into our genes by natural selection.

What is justice?
Thus, whether we realize it or not, there is a contradiction between what we believe we want and what we believe we are. The ethicist Peter Singer puts it like this:

Justice is not, as often thought, a sacrosanct moral principle imposed on us by a divine being, nor is it somehow engraved into the bedrock of the universe.

His first point is, of course, gladly embraced by most of our leading moral commentators. There is no God, therefore moral principles have no divine sanction.

What is generally missed is his second point: neither do moral principles derive from the fabric of the material world. You may look down through a microscope or up through a telescope, but you will see nothing that tells you what you ought to do when faced with a so-called ‘ethical dilemma’. What, then, is ‘justice’? Singer continues,

Justice is neither more nor less than a set of conceptual tools for making Tit for Tat work in the real world. (Peter Singer, How are we to live? [Oxford: OUP, 1997], 176)

Tit for Tat (or Doing unto others as they have Done unto you) is, quite literally, Singer’s basis for ‘moral’ behaviour, advocated because it ‘works’ in producing what Singer argues is the best outcome for everyone (and is therefore the ‘best’ outcome). In all this, Singer is thoroughly reductionist — the proof of Tit for Tat morality is in game theory and the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, and when we see it applied in human society we should recognize we are doing nothing basically more than chimpanzees grooming one another for fleas — but on it he wishes to rest the whole edifice of moral living.

Whence justice?
Singer’s particular ‘explanation’ does not appear to have gained wide acceptance. Nevertheless, I suspect that the general principles it entails are becoming almost universal in Western thinking, albeit in a semi-conscious way. The atheist who is also an unthinking materialist would surely find little to contradict in Singer’s view that justice is neither divinely imposed nor a fundamental property of the material universe. It must then, in some sense, be derived from ourselves alone.

The problem is, from whence in ourselves can such a notion of justice derive, and of what value is it once it has been so derived?

The standard ‘evolutionary’ explanation increasingly focuses on ‘altruism’ as the basic source of ethical behaviour — evolutionary altruism being behaviour which appears to be inimical to the survival of the individual but actually favours the survival of the group, and which is therefore increased by natural selection.

On this view, our sending money to help the people of Haiti is an unconsciously driven ‘human survival’ mechanism. And indeed, one can see how such an explanation has a superficial appeal. If our ‘being good’ comes down, ultimately, to prospering the human gene, then clearly appeals for help will tend to succeed, whether they be those of crushed Haitians or drowning swimmers.

But actually that is not how things work, as is shown by the so-called ‘bystander effect’. The truth is, we are not all impelled by instinct to help those we perceive to be in trouble. On the contrary, we turn off the TV, we look the other way, we regard it as ‘none of our business’, even when the personal risk is minimal. Somehow, our ‘altruistic instinct’ turns out to be rather inefficient.

On the other hand, Singer himself is adamant that argument and reason can, and must, be used to induce ethical behaviour. It would appear that our genes are not strong enough —indeed, Singer sees this as taking us beyond “the straight line of evolution” which gave us the capacity to reason in the first place (p 269).

What is ‘I’?
But that being the case, we must ask, “With what are we reasoning and on what is our reasoning working?” The automatic answer is that we are reasoning with our minds. But what is the mind? The contemporary Western material narrative says that the mind is created by physical processes resulting from evolutionary forces. (That may not be what modern research is showing, incidentally, but it is, I believe, what is being accepted as the ‘popular view’.)

The key question, though, is whether we can control those forces. If ‘I’ am the product of material forces, how can ‘I’ turn round and, in an instant, manipulate those same forces which make up ‘me’? It would surely be like a puppet suddenly grabbing its own strings. The material narrative can tell me how ‘I’ experience what I do as a result of electrical processes in the brain. I can even watch them happening. But it leaves me with a problem as to how the brain that produces those phenomena can be told what phenomena to produce.

The modern dilemma
Like many moderns, Singer is an ardent ‘moralist’. That is to say, he is a man for whom human moral issues are a consuming interest. I am sure he would make a very good neighbour (unless you were, perhaps, senile or terminally ill, in which case I am not so sure).

It is similar moralists who want Tony Blair arrested. But what, according to the material narrative, has Blair done wrong? Biologically, he is a product of evolution. Individually, his thoughts and decisions are the product of material processes in the few pounds of jelly contained in his cranium. His is, to use Desmond Morris’s terminology, a ‘naked ape’ — as are we all.

The pure materialist might argue that rather than being arrested, Blair should be put down. Yet that would surely require a judgement which would be independent of the same limitations that the nature of material reality imposed on Mr Blair. And it is difficult to see how, according to the material narrative, that is something any of us has.

Revd John P Richardson
28 January 2010

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(Who says) the Iraq war was illegal?

Just a bit of musing before I go to bed, but I’ve been pondering on the question being addressed by social and political commentators as to whether the Iraq war was ‘illegal’. I was particularly struck by the fact that Guardian journalist George Monbiot not only thinks it was, but is particularly incensed at Tony Blair, to the extent that he has started a website calling for his arrest. Monbiot has also put up £100 ‘bounty’ as a contribution to the person who first arrests Blair.

Considering Monbiot’s clear sense of righteousness and the scale of the crime he alleges Blair has committed, this doesn’t seem to carry much practical conviction. Compare it with the £50,000 offered by Ross McWhirter for the arrest of PIRA bombers, which actually got him killed, and I think you’ll see what I mean. Nevertheless, it raises an interesting question as to what we mean by an ‘illegal’ war.

What is law?
Maybe I am naive, but I thought that, in common parlance, laws were statutes declared and established by competent bodies such as parliaments, monarchs, etc. I have found one definition of ‘law’ as “a rule or body of rules of conduct inherent in human nature and essential to or binding upon human society”, but this is itself arguable as a definition, and in any case there is clearly room for disagreement on what such rules might be.

In China, for example, the death penalty is ‘the law’ in many cases. Yet in the European Union, the death penalty is regarded as abhorrent. Who is right? The death penalty is clearly not ‘essential’ (as in the above definition), but it is equally clearly not antithetical to a stable and economically successful society, as China increasingly proves. (Indeed, it is arguable that the ruthlessness underlying the Chinese attitude to the death penalty has greatly contributed to China’s social and economic development.)

Moreover, there is surely a case for arguing that war is, indeed, inherent in human nature. Social conditioning may successfully persuade us otherwise, but wars and rumours of wars continue to abound.

It seems to me, then, that ‘law’ is more usefully considered as “the collection of rules imposed by authority”.

Under whose law?
Yet this definition immediately poses the question, “Whose authority?” And this raises the further question, “Over whom does this authority extend?”

Readers of the Bible will perhaps be familiar with the notion of the suzerainty treaty. This imposed certain terms and conditions (some welcome, some not so) on two parties, not by common agreement but by the stronger dictating to the weaker. We may feel this was ‘unjust’, but such treaties certainly had the force of law.

Indeed, I know people today who feel our own laws about smoking are also unjust, and are unreasonable. Yet the law is the law, and against their personal judgement those people have given up smoking in their own offices.

With the debatable exception of theocracies, the law, ultimately, is clearly a human invention. It is not determined by our DNA, or by the physical properties of the natural world, but arises out of our own, sometimes mixed and conflicting, understandings of right and wrong and of the necessary means to achieve what is widely (though not necessarily universally) regarded as justice.

It is thus, to an extent, always arbitrary and is limited in scope by the capacity of the lawmakers to enforce it.

Who is under the law?
Those familiar with our Book of Common Prayer may be aware of one particular manifestation of this principle, where it says in one of the prefaces that, “... in these our doings we condemn no other Nations, nor prescribe any thing but to our own people only.” This, it would seem, is another principle of the law: that it applies only to those people over whom the lawmakers, for whatever reason, have authority of some kind.

In this particular instance it meant the people under the authority of the English king (though it should be pointed out that this included not just the English but those in, as Article XXVII put it, “other his dominions” — such as Calais, for example). The point is, however, that just as the authority of the monarch extended to all his realm, the authority of others was excluded from that same realm. Thus, as the same Article says, “the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.”

Now as is well known, this principle no longer applies, in that our Parliament now accepts the authority of European law and lawcourts. Nevertheless, their writ only runs here because we have agreed, through Parliament, to allow it to do so. It is perfectly possible, at least in theory, to overturn that situation, just as the English Reformation began with rejecting the legal authority of the Pope.

UDI
Back in 1965, the then Rhodesian government shocked the world, or the UK at least, with a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, freeing it from British rule. This was, of course, immediately declared illegal —indeed, it probably was against the law —but since it was a declaration (unilaterally) that the law no longer applied it posed certain questions about what ‘the law’ meant.

This was not the first time such a thing had been done, even to Great Britain. The United States of America had come about as the result of a rather more successful enterprise some years earlier.

But the point is this: if a nation, or a community, chooses to do so and has the physical power to carry out its wishes, it can simply leave one legal system and set up another of its own. There is no ‘natural’ law that prevents such a thing happening, nor is their a universally accepted legal framework which renders it illegal.

Back to Blair
And that brings me back to the question of Tony Blair, for we must ask whose law he is supposed to have broken, and why that law should apply to him. And we must also recognize that, if the United Kingdom so chose, it could —even against existing laws —simply act as nations have done in the past, and remove itself from a legal framework to which it takes exception.

In other words, Tony Blair may, by one definition, have ‘broken the law’, but the definition will, in the end, be entirely arbitrary, and could presumably just as easily be reshaped so that he is entirely immune from prosecution.

Comments, please!

Revd John Richardson
26 January 2010

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The future of Anglican ministry: liberty or inhibition?

Yesterday I posted about the new expectations apparently emerging for Anglican clergy. As I said then, there are potentially good aspects to this as well as bad. The real question, as far as I am concerned, is whether the existing administration of the Church of England can deliver on the good, rather than simply multiply the bad —and I think readers will know which I suspect is the case.

Roland Allen’s ‘three selfs’
Amongst the potentially good things are the possibilities for allowing local clergy to become real team leaders, especially in recruiting, training, authorising and deploying people in local ministry. If clergy really were given the independence, authority and financial clout this required it would undoubtedly be to the long term good of the gospel. It all goes back to the principles advocated by Roland Allen, the great missionary writer of the early twentieth century, that indigenous churches should be ‘self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating’.

When I first came across Allen’s work, I found it truly inspiring, not for what it said about overseas mission —those days were long past, and indeed most of Allen’s had, of necessity, been applied insofar as former ‘missionary’ churches are now running themselves.

What really struck me was the exciting possibilities for mission at home. Substitute ‘the vicar’ for Allen’s missionary, ‘the vicarage’ for the mission station, and ‘the diocese’ for the sending and supporting missionary agency, and it seemed to me then (and now) that much of what was inhibiting overseas mission in Allen’s time is inhibiting church growth in England today.

The diocese as financial inhibitor
Let us begin with the second point. Allen believed that, in order to grow, mission churches had to become self-funding. This, however, was not because he believed that the locals should pay more towards ‘mission’. Rather, he believed that the existing financial arrangement inhibited mission by creating a dependency culture, based on a fixed and rigid approach to mission funding.

On the one hand, the ‘sending’ missionary organization insisted on certain ‘standards’ for its (white, western) missionaries —a standard far higher than could be afforded by the ‘natives’. On the other hand, the local Christians knew that ‘mission’ was something paid for by the notionally rich home-country of the missionaries. Mission was thereby inhibited, but in a way it suited everyone! The locals remained in reliance on the mission society and the mission society remained in control.

Compare that with the arrangement pertaining in most dioceses in England, and the picture is depressingly familiar. Most churches are used to having clergy ‘provided’ by the diocese, which, rather than making the parish fund the ministry, ‘tops up’ what the parish ‘can’t afford’ from sources which remain a practical mystery to most parishioners. On the other hand, there is a refusal to allow parishes which could afford it to fund their local ministry because all sorts of dire consequences would follow leading ultimately, it is often alleged, to ‘congregationalism’.

Sometimes it seems diocesan management would rather do without money than lose control. Thus in our own context, where our vicarage could do with upgrading before the arrival of the new vicar, the diocese have actually refused to allow us to pay for the work, but told us that the work cannot be done.

In short, the present financial arrangements between dioceses and parishes are mission inhibitors, just as much as the arrangements between mission societies and indigenous churches were in the nineteenth century.

The episcopate as ministry inhibitor
But if the diocese is an inhibiting mechanism, so, often, is the bishop. Allen complained about the way that the lack of ordained clergy (usually white and therefore expensive to maintain) meant that many of the local Christian communities established by missionary organizations were only ‘half churches’, lacking a sacramental ministry of baptism and holy communion.

Compare that with what is increasingly the case in English rural ministry. I have written before about the minister I met from Norfolk to whom I jokingly remarked that in her diocese you weren’t pulling your weight if you didn’t look after fifteen parishes. “How many have you got?” I asked her. “Fifteen,” she replied.

In our Benefice, we have four morning congregations, and if they all wanted communion every week it would be impossible. But of course it is not just a matter of the sacraments. Ministry needs to be exercised at many levels and in many areas. The local ‘team leader’ minister of the future therefore needs to be able to identify and authorise people to carry out these ministries. And the last thing he or she needs is ‘diocesan central’ re-allocating these people, once they have been picked and equipped.

The reality is that the erstwhile ‘vicar’ is increasingly exercising an ‘episcopal’ role. But that being the case, the vicar needs episcopal authority. In short, we need to get back to something nearer what is generally acknowledged by scholars (and was recognized by the English Reformers), namely seeing the local presbyter as also the local bishop.

Indeed, if the need is for more ministers and ministry, why shouldn’t there be more bishops? I would guess that a typical rural dean today probably overseas a population as large as that of some medieval bishops. Why not go the whole way and make them into bishops who can ordain local ministers accordingly? In that way, the first and last of Allen’s criteria — self-governing and self-propagating —would also have some chance of being fulfilled.

The answer, I suspect is twofold. First, there would be a fear of the unknown. But the second would be jealousy of the office. I well remember Colin Buchanan, in his own pre-episcopal days, saying that one of the reasons bishops were regarded as so important was their rarity value. In other words, if there were more of them, people would regard them with rather less awe.

But which is more important —the reverence in which an office is held or the needs of the gospel? True, they might become ‘as common as muck’, but they might also become as effective as muck does when it is properly spread around.

Conclusion
Undoubtedly there are changes ahead, and undoubtedly there is a need for change. However, there is also the opportunity for radical new thinking. The worst thing would be to try to fit new models of ministry into the ‘old wineskins’ of the past and present. Sadly, though, I suspect this is still what will be attempted.

Revd John P Richardson
26 January 2010

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What future for the Anglican clergy?

A short while ago, I had a conversation with a friend who is going through ‘Continuing Ministerial Education’ —what use to be called Post-Ordination Training, or ‘Potty’ by some wit. He had phoned me to express his concern at what seemed to be the message coming from diocesan management about the future of Anglican ministry, which envisaged significant changes in the nature and deployment of clergy.

That conversation has left me musing on what the church might look like in a decade or two, but also on the whole approach of the church’s ‘managers’ —its leaders and policy makers —to issues which affect ministry at the ‘grass roots’.

Clergy cuts
Behind this current thinking is a recent diocesan report which confronts the declining numbers of stipendiary clergy with proposals for a decreasing deployment of full-time clergy in the parishes. (This, of course, is not being driven by money —it is simply a lack of people coming forward, let the reader understand.)

The clergyperson of the future will thus need to be, above all, a team leader, since he or she will be in no position to do personally the work that used to be presumed of clergy in the past. Only such team players will be affordable as stipendiary clergy. The individual ‘specialists’, apparently, will have to work on a self-supporting basis.

Clergy deployment
At the same time, therefore, clergy will have to be capable of being more widely deployed than is currently the case, ready (my friend was told) to work outside their ‘comfort zones’. What I think this means is that the old concepts of ‘churchmanship’ will no longer apply. Catholics will have to be able to slum it with the low church, and liberals to lead charismatic worship-fests —or something of that sort.

This also seems to imply, however, that the deploying will be done rather more actively than at present, with diocesan managers being more able to send clergy where they are ‘needed’ or ‘suited’.

The good side
Those of us brought up on the old understanding of parish ministry, who also happen to have an innate cynicism towards diocesan management, may react to these suggestions with instinctive hostility, but some of them do make sense.

It is a welcome suggestion, for example, that clergy need to be team leaders. Indeed, my last six months spent overseeing a Benefice of three parishes has not only demonstrated the importance of this, but shown what a great job was done by the previous two vicars.

The earlier of the two, for example, with the permission of the then diocesan bishop, set up a preaching team. This means that we can now draw on anything up to half a dozen laypeople who can, and do, preach on a regular basis. Most of them have learned to do this ‘on the job’, and they are not half bad!

Similarly, we have laypeople leading most of our services, so that the one regular service I do lead in its entirety is BCP Holy Communion, and that not at every venue where it is held.

However, I am painfully aware that so much lay involvement needs a level of input which is currently hard to provide. People need training and supervision, yet there is still the expectation that clergy will be hands-on with traditional parish ministry, especially visiting anyone and everyone who ‘needs a visit’. Deploying clergy as team leaders will need some explaining in a culture which does not understand the church as a team needing to be lead.

The down side
And then there is the down side of these proposals —or rather of the thinking behind them. I am especially suspicious of the emphasis on deployability and deployment. Of course there are potential advantages to clergy being deployed across a wider range of theological situations. In some cases, it will mean good, conservative, biblical preaching going places where it has never gone before. But I wonder if the desire for clergy to be deployable in the terms envisaged will mean in future recruiting only those with a ‘middle of the road’ theology which is inevitably quasi-liberal.

As to the deployment itself, does this mean bishops and archdeacons moving clergy around like those little markers on maps that they used to use in the Battle of Britain? This could only be done effectively if the bishops and archdeacons were themselves situationally aware in a way that I doubt is currently the case, given the lack of contact one has with them on a day-to-day basis. Given that my only two experiences of taking jobs on a bishop’s recommendation were both disastrous, I will need some convincing!

Consultation
My biggest worry when I heard about these proposals, however, was how much consultation they reflected with the ordinary parish clergy. Have diocesan management been interviewing clergy to see what they think about the job, or what resources they wish they had? If so, it has rather passed me by, but that does not mean it is not happening.

My suspicion, however, is that most of the theorizing and planning is being done by those who move largely in the cloisters of power, rather than by those who face the daily challenges and demands of the typical parish.

Independence, authority and money
I am also concerned that the thinking behind these proposals will, almost by definition (given that it seems to be coming from our present managers), fail to allow those tasked with putting them into practice the tools they need for the job.

It is the natural tendency of management to want to manage. In an hierarchical church, this is exacerbated by the view those managers sometimes have of themselves as divinely ‘gifted’ with managing. I remember one bishop, now retired, who believed that at his consecration he was actually given by the Holy Spirit the ability to discern trends and movements.

Of course, some people do have greater gifts than others in such areas, but I am instinctively worried about someone who claims to have these gifts ‘because they are a bishop’. (I would be rather less worried if I could be persuaded that the system made people with such gifts into bishops, but I am not yet convinced.)

In fact, I would say that for quite some time leadership skills as such have hardly been a requirement for the English episcopate, where the motto seems to be ‘Moderation in All Things’ rather than ‘Who Dares Wins’.

This innate tendency to conservatism and control sometimes leads to bureaucratic farce. For example, everyone who administers at communion in our diocese (ie who gives out the bread or wine during a service) needs a ‘card of authorisation’ from the bishop and is to be given “careful instruction ... before they begin this ministry.”

For heaven’s sake! You’re giving people a piece of bread or a sip of wine. It isn’t bomb disposal. What could go wrong? Yet I have been in a church vestry where the wall is covered with such cards. Is it inconceivable that the incumbent just might be able to spot a good ‘un from a wrong ‘un in this ‘ministry’?

The fact is that if the clergy of the future are to be team leaders, they must also be allowed to be team managers, and this means being allowed independence to exercise local initiative, authority to commission local leadership and financial control to fund what they propose doing.

And that is where the problems will come, because I cannot see the Church of England’s current hierarchy allowing any such thing. What we will have instead, I fear, is centralized control, outside interference and fiscal starvation. In that case, for Anglican clergy, the future’s bleak, the future’s purple.

Revd John P Richardson
25 January 2010

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Getting things in perspective

Yesterday, whilst languishing in my sick-bed, I was musing about my occasional hobby of astronomy and wanted to look up online some information about galaxies. That led me to this website which, as the name suggests, is a handy 'Atlas of the Universe'. What is really fascinating is that it begins at the level of 12.5 light years from the Sun and zooms out in stages - the solar neighbourhood, our local arm of the galaxy, etc.

Where it gets truly mind boggling is at the level of the local galactic superclusters - groups of galaxies where our own galaxy is just one dot amongst thousands, consisting of 200,000,000,000,000 stars (200 trillion).

Finally, we get a picture of the whole universe (and yes, there really is a 'you are here' sign, though it points to the Virgo Supercluster, rather than just us).

The temptation, of course, is to see ourselves as 'insignificant' against such vastness. The curious thing, though, is that we ourselves seem to be about a third of the way along the spectrum from the very smallest (subatomic) to the very biggest (whole universe) objects, as can be seen here and here. From the perspective of a single cell, then, we ourselves are truly 'vast'. And from the perspective of a virus, a cell is huge. Yet right now I am experiencing the importance of the very very small when it comes to the very very big. (The scale difference between me and a virus is about that between me and the entire globe.)

John Richardson
24 January 2010

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Labour's ironic worship of Mammon

Yesterday, I was half-listening to the news, as you do, when I thought I heard something Harriet Harman was reported to have said which struck me as astonishingly revealing.

Today I checked out a couple of news reports in the papers and I think this, from the Telegraph, relates to what I thought I heard (the quote is much longer than the ‘snippet’ I originally picked up):

“Equality is important not just for the individual but also it’s an economic argument. Think about the economies that will thrive and prosper in the future. Do you see those that are hierarchical and hide bound – where everyone knows their place – where you get [on?] on the basis of your connections or because your “face fits”? Far from it. Because that is the opposite of a meritocracy.

“The economies that will thrive in the future are those where everyone can achieve their full potential and where the economy can draw on the abilities of all.”

So what is the ultimate point of giving people a better opportunity in life and a better education? Apparently, It is to feed the maw of the economy.

Now I find this not only a horrifying vision of human life and society, but an astonishing thought from the mouth of a Labour politician. I rather naively thought that the Labour Party regarded the worship of the economy as in some sense inimical to human well-being. Indeed, it was originally called the ‘Labour Party’ (I thought) because there were people — labourers — whose lives were weighed down and diminished by the unending demands of ‘capitalism’.

There was —or did I imagine it —an element of Marxist Utopianism about the labour movement. But that Utopia did not consist of a world where the economy got bigger and bigger, and the contribution of the individual towards it became more and more effective. Rather, the point of the movement was to free the labourer from his labour and to allow people time, space and the necessary personal and intellectual equipment to be something other than a cog in the machine.

Thus, when the Workers’ Educational Association was founded in the early years of the twentieth century (by a keen member of the Church of England) its aims were, not that people would thereby gain the ‘skills’ needed to contribute to the economy but,

... to acquire knowledge which would enable them to decide for themselves what to think about the society in which they lived and worked. (A Brief History of the WEA)

Thus the education ‘workers’ were encouraged to receive was as much in the liberal arts as in the practical sciences. It was certainly not about giving people ‘job skills’. Nor, therefore, could the education it offered be evaluated in terms of its economic ‘usefulness’, unlike the present.

Nevertheless, this could not, I think, be characterized as ‘learning for learning’s sake’. Rather, it stemmed from a particular understanding of education which itself reflected an understanding of being human. It is noteworthy that one of the key patrons of the movement was the future Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who was also an early tutor and who regarded it as one of his most important contributions to society.

Unfortunately, New Labour’s worship of Mammon, and its subservience of our education to our suitability to feed the machine, is all of a piece with the ‘decadence’ of Western society — its declining or falling away from its previous character. Of course, it was never perfect —indeed, far from it. But surely it had a higher view of human life, and therefore a greater potential for human development. By contrast, what Labour’s ‘equality’ policy seems to offer is the equal opportunity for all of us to become Epsilon-minuses of Huxley’s Brave New World —fit for a purpose designated by others, and blissful in our ignorance.

Revd John P Richardson
22 January 2010

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Christian Community —the right question about Church?

For some months now, the Benefice where I work has been in an interregnum, following the departure of my old friend and colleague, Dick Farr, for pastures new. My role since July has thus been supervisory but intense, involving, amongst other things, overseeing the drawing up of the parish profile and currently chairing three PCCs as well as trying to ensure nothing goes obviously wrong. (Please don’t e-mail your ‘three PCCs —luxury!’ anecdotes. Anything above two is, I agree, a challenge.)

Although I haven’t applied for the incumbent’s post myself, the experience of the last few months has inevitably made me ask ‘incumbent-type’ questions about the strategy we should be following. This is particularly so since we are earmarked as an area for substantial new housing —anything from 500 to 3,000 dwellings.

Just the other day, therefore, I was musing on what this would mean for our strategic planning and on what it would look like if the church were successful in its outreach to new arrivals. “What,” I asked myself, “Would a whole community look like if it were significantly influenced by the presence of the local churches?”

And then I found myself asking if this were actually the question we ought to ask about church itself. A lot of our own time and energy is put into working out what we should do —specifically, what kinds of programmes we should run, whether that be applied to youth work, Bible studies or ‘Sunday church’ itself.

Recently I have received a complimentary book (as yet unread) which seems to be suggesting that our focus should rather be on individual people. But would a more useful starting point be to ask ourselves what a Christian community should look like, and then to seek to apply this to the church and, through the church, to the wider community within which it is set?

To some people, this might seem an obvious question with straightforward answers. Surely, they will reply, all our efforts within the church are aimed at building a Christian community, and surely such a community will be, first and foremost, one of Christ-like love and acceptance? Those are the Christian ‘trademark’ qualities, and the only problem is in seeing them developed and applied.

But in fact I do not think the answers are anything like that straightforward. For a start, ‘love and acceptance’ are surely not uniquely, or even specifically, Christian qualities. It is like the person who sums up Jesus’ teaching as ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. All well and good —but as most readers of this blog will know, the sentiment is from the Old Testament, quoted, but by no means invented, by Jesus.

In fact, working out a Christian ethic is quite a challenge! Obviously it must, in some way, engage with the ethical framework of the Old Testament. Yet, as the Sermon on the Mount shows, it consists neither in slavishly following, nor outrightly rejecting, the Law. Nor does the life of Jesus provide a Christian ‘sunnah’, to be learned and applied by his followers, like Muslims following the example of Mohammed. The question, “What Would Jesus Do?” is hardly helpful if the answer is, “Walk on the water,” or “Raise the dead man to life.”

A Christian ethic is not a regurgitated Old Testament ethic, nor is it a blanket adoption of Jesus’ ‘example’. Rather, I suspect, it derives from engaging with who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for us. And this would produce rather radically different answers from those usually offered when we think of the life of the ‘community’, particularly when it comes to the influence of the church within the wider, mixed, community.

One of the most crucial —and least explored in my view —points of Christian uniqueness is the relationship of Christian ethics with the law. Almost the entire assumption of social thinking is that the law is fundamental to community life. By contrast, the New Testament is quite clear that the law, far from being central, is a practical irrelevance. The ‘law’ to which it refers is, of course, the law of Moses, but as is increasingly recognized, this cannot be simply and arbitrarily divided into ‘moral’ and ‘ceremonial’ aspects and then partitioned between the bits we keep and the bits we don’t.

When Paul writes in Romans 7 of the law to which we have died and from which we are therefore freed, he uses as his example, the tenth commandment against covetousness. Now this is clearly a moral, not a ‘ceremonial’ command. The Christian is clearly not thereby entitled to covet. But equally the Christian is not under the ‘law’ against covetousness. Time and space preclude elaborating this further, but my conclusion would be that a Christian community would be marked by a minimalist resort to law. (It would also, incidentally, be one where suing one another was almost entirely unknown —1 Cor 6.)

This abrogation of the law as an instrument of personal control is precisely one of those ‘community consequences’ which I would argue flows from the ‘person and work’ of Christ, who fulfilled the law and is the ‘end of the law’ (Romans 10:4) for those who have faith.

However, there must surely be much more. In a Christian community, for example, divorce would also be unknown. But what about care for others? How and why is a failure to care for one’s relatives a ‘denial of the faith’ (1 Tim 5:8), and what are the communal consequences?

One of the challenges to the church is that it is very difficult to live as a Christian community —much easier just to ‘go to church’ on Sundays and to keep your distance from one another the rest of the time. Yet it is also difficult to know what a Christian ‘community’ means. I’m therefore inviting readers of this blog to contribute their own suggestions and comments. Remember, though, if you have ideas about community you need to show why they are specifically Christian.

Revd John P Richardson
20 January 2010

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On the problem of opinions

“Do you not see, then, that you had no right to have any opinion whatever on the subject?”

Thus said ‘the Great Knock’, the tutor of the young C S Lewis, in response to his subject’s views on the Surrey landscape. But it ought, in truth, to be blazoned across our media generally and the internet particularly. Indeed, some people ought to have it as a screen-saver.

It is more than three weeks since I last posted a ‘proper’ article on this blog. Partly that is down to the busy-ness of Christmas, partly to a holiday thereafter, partly to trying to do some reading and partly to the demands of running the Benefice during our current interregnum.

However, I have continued to visit the odd blog or two and to look at the comments made in online newspapers, and the one thing that has increasingly struck me is that most of what is written is complete twaddle, not only in what is said, but how, and even why.

Too many people, it seems, have little grasp either of basic comprehension or of logical reasoning. The result, thanks to the internet, is a constant pouring forth of opinions fiercely held and rebuttals vitriolically delivered, but little actual engagement or sense.

I am reminded of a group of largely-unemployed men who used to gather at a church-run coffee shop I knew. What characterised them when they debated together was the great passion with which so little was said. It was clear that they had strong feelings on the various subjects under discussion, but they lacked the educational or intellectual ability to get very far in their analysis. The result was doubtless fun for them —and why should it not be? —but it would have made a poor radio broadcast.

Now some, I am sure, will feel I am mocking the ‘inferiority’ of these men. I am not. But I am asserting that argument or discussion may be of a greater or lesser quality depending on the abilities and skills brought to bear. My target is not the cheerful ‘bumpkin’, who is a threat to no one, but the person who really does believe they have understanding and that therefore they have something to say.

Such a person will probably have negotiated our educational system with some success. Indeed, it is likely they have a degree. However, as the scarecrow discovered in The Wizard of Oz, a diploma is not the same thing as wisdom.

The first problem I observe is the sheer lack of comprehension reflected in many people’s comments on an article or issue. Quite simply, people read without taking things in. Their responses therefore are often tangential to, or sometimes even unrelated to, what has actually been said.

When I was in my early years at school, we were required to write two sorts of ‘English’ essay —comprehension and composition. I much more enjoyed composition, where we were allowed to express ourselves on a subject. Comprehension essays, where we had to sum up the content of someone else’s work, I found dull and repetitious. Yet I now understand the value of the latter, for if I am to engage with the ideas and opinions of others I must first comprehend what they are saying.

Such comprehension, however, is clearly lacking in many today, as evidenced by comments which miss the point, which ignore what has been said or which, most frustratingly of all, attribute to an author ideas or views which he or she has simply not expressed. The latter, which is all-too-common, arises perniciously not from the words of the author but the opinions of the reader, who has gained nothing from the effort of reading save an increase in bile.

It was a very important lesson to me, in my university days, to realize that although one might be able to read very well, it did not guarantee one understood what was written. This was brought home to me by an assignment to read chunks of David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding over the Christmas holidays. Sitting on a bus from West Croydon to Charlton, I realized that although I understood every word on the page in front of me, I simply had no idea what Hume was saying. Only during tutorials in the following term did I finally, and slowly, get the hang of comprehending Hume’s words.

Lesson number two also came through the philosophy module, where I eventually, and painfully, learned the difference between meaning something and saying it. Too often, essay marks suffered because although I knew what I meant, it simply wasn’t there in the words on the page. It was almost an epiphany when I realized this was the problem, and my writing improved dramatically. At the same time, however, I realized that what was true for me was also applicable to others, and that I could therefore only take their meaning to be what they had actually expressed in their words —for better or for worse.

Unfortunately, far too few people have any experience either of being taught to read or to write in a disciplined way. The result is too much careless reading and thoughtless writing.

And then there are the disciplines of argument and evidence. Too many people, again, imagine that philosophy and the natural sciences are about the ‘big ideas’, without grasping that these entail the basic building blocks of reason.

Recently, I was browsing the philosophy section of a bookshop, looking for an introductory work on the subject. The first book I picked up purporting to be such almost immediately introduced the reader to the question of the existence of God! (Indeed, it was surprising how many works on ‘popular’ philosophy and science touched on religion.) Of course, this is an interesting topic, and one on which much philosopher’s ink has been spilled. But the point is, how can someone who has not yet learned the basics of philosophy understand whether the presentation itself of such a topic is philosophically sound or otherwise?

Before we can usefully debate the arguments for the existence of God, we must understand the principles by which argument works, at the heart of which is the notion that “If p, then not not-p” —the axiom that two contradictory things cannot simultaneously be the case. Those who are unfamiliar with such a concept, or who find it too abstruse to grasp, are surely not in a position yet to trust their own arguments for the existence of the Deity or to dispute those of others!

As I hinted in the introductory quote, however, what is lacking today, above all, is humility —humility, in particular, about our abilities or understanding. People ‘read into’ more easily than they read, and opinionate more eagerly than they reflect. The Bible’s advice concerning the latter is clear: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself” (Prov 26:4). Equally clear is its advice regarding the former: “Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes” (Prov 26:5).

It is the wise person indeed who will stop to think before rushing to comment on how to reconcile the two.

Revd John Richardson
16 January 2010

PS: Just to illustrate the relevance of, and need for, basic 'philosophical' skills, readers might like to consider this news item and list the points which require critical awareness of the nature and rules of argument.

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Petition to remove the provisions set out in the Equality Bill relating to sex, marriage and sexual orientation for the purposes of organised religion

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Remove the current employment provisions set out in Schedule 9, Paragraph 2, subsection 8 of the Equality Bill (the occupational requirements relating to sex, marriage and sexual orientation for the purposes of organised religion). These restrict the rights of religious bodies to employ personnel who conform to their teachings only if their duties are confined to worship activities or the explanation of doctrine. More details

Submitted by david skinnner – Deadline to sign up by: 05 April 2010

If you've not signed this petition yet, please go here:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/harryhammond/


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