Lament 2: Singing the Lord’s song in a strange land
Should we sing laments? Let me first distinguish: I have no doubt at all that there is a place for lament, both in the common English sense and in the technical psalms-of-lament sense (see previous post), in our worship. We should, when gathered before God, weep for and decry the evil in the world; we should wrestle with the disjunction between our confession and our experience. My question is whether we need do that in song. (Marva Dawn, in Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, notes that the Psalms of Lament are excluded from many lectionaries, and so lament is excluded from the whole of worship, not just from song (p. 176); this seems to me indefensible.) It seems to me that common-lament might most easily find its way into our prayers of intercession, and psalm-lament into our preaching (as noted in the previous post). ‘Ease’, of course, is not a compelling liturgical argument, but nor is it irrelevant. What reasons might there be for insisting that these ideas are expressed in our singing also? Two, as far as I can see: a canonical argument (it’s in the Psalms, so should be in our songs) and a formational argument (singing is what shapes our minds and hearts in worship, and so we should sing these things). The canonical argument seems more powerful when applied to psalm-lament, but it is perhaps worth noticing that the canonical psalms of lament contain what I have called common-lament; they just do not stop there. Assuming one song is not the whole of our worship, there is potentially space for a song of common-lament, that is moved into the Biblical key by the songs, prayers, readings, or preaching that follows it. That said, the canonical psalms contain many aspects of human experience that find no place in our hymnbooks (something I notice whenever I find myself at Free Church worship, singing only metrical psalms). Imprecation, in particular, is graphic, lurid and widespread in the Psalms, but probably not something that we are rushing to introduce into our song repertoire. (Back to the lectionaries; the old Anglican lectionary in the BCP omitted only Ps. 58 – whether this omission was right or wrong (‘all inspired Scripture is useful…’ 2Tim 3:16), asking God to break the teeth of our enemies, praying that they will be ‘like the abortion that never sees the sun’, and then looking forward to bathing our feet in pools of their blood, are attitudes that most of us, I trust, would introduce to a service of worship only with a great deal of care!) The psalms – particularly the psalms of lament, perhaps – are also rather good at confident assertions of personal holiness and righteousness before God, which again are not attitudes that populate Christian hymnody through the ages to any great degree. So, I don’t find a simple ‘the psalms did it, so should we’ argument very convincing. We know neither the origin, nor the redaction history, nor the cultic use(s), of many of the psalms (despite the best efforts of higher critics); nor do we know the reasons for their collection into the Psalter. The psalms of lament, particularly, often read as if they are very personal reponses to a very particular situation, and are not easily generisable to congregational use. I note again that, as far as I am aware, all suggestions of corporate cultic use of the psalter are hypothetical, usually relying on giving far more content to the shadowy new year festival than we can in fact do; one or another hypothesis may happen to be right, but we should not claim canonical authority for the idea. The psalms clearly have a crucial place in Christian worship, but that place might be read rather than sung, and it might be individually (in private devotion, or as a reading in the liturgy) rather than corporately. (My Reformed prejudice: they are Scripture, and so, necessarily, primarily should be preached…) The formational argument is more interesting. Music gets inside us in a way that little else does. Luther and the Wesleys knew this well. There seems to be a good argument that, if we want the people to internalise certain themes, putting them in regularly-used songs is the way to go. If we want our people to learn to lament, then we should have them sing laments. Do we want our people to learn to lament? I think another distinction is necessary here, between learning to lament and daring to lament. My observation in odd moments of pastoral ministry is that most people know how to complain to, or about, God (‘common lament’) – they...
Read MoreLament 1: Yet will I hope
Pastors complain about songwriters; it was no doubt ever thus. Somehow, no-one has ever quite written the perfect song to conclude your brilliant sermon, or to express (your sense of) the collective mood of your people as they gather together. One of the standard complaints in recent years is the lack of songs of ‘lament’. This, it seems to me, bears some reflection – enough that I want to spread it over at least a couple of posts. Three immediate questions occur to me: what is ‘lament’? Should it be sung? Does the coming of Christ make any difference to its reality? Ever since Gunkel and Mowinkel, ‘Lament’ has been one of the standard recognised forms of the Psalter. That said, the psalms of lament are not, straightforwardly, ‘laments’ in what I would regard as the normal English sense of the term. The OED offers us two meanings for lament (n): ‘a passionate or demonstrative expression of grief’ and ‘a conventional form of mourning’. The Bible knows laments in this sense – ‘a voice heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children’ – but the psalms of lament are not merely expressions of regret or great sorrow – all (bar Psalm 88 ) end in celebration and/or triumph, although they begin in complaint. Some recent scholarship has found varying voices in the psalms of lament: the complainer is met with a communal or priestly response re-affirming the faith of the community in God’s goodness and justice. This strikes me as an important idea: whether we accept the idea of multiple voices within a cultic setting, or see a more ‘poetic’ idea of an internal debate within the mind/heart/spirit of the particular psalmist, all the psalms of lament seem to contain this urgent dialogue, reflecting the present disjunction between lived faith and confessed faith, and the existential struggle that arises from this disjunction. (An example of this, drawn from Mandolfo’s God in the Dock: Dialogic Tension in the Psalms of Lament (JSOTS 357): consider Psalm 7; vv. 1-7 (Eng. numbering) are clearly lament – complaint, voiced by the Psalmist to God. v. 8a, though, is a change of voice; rather than the deeply personal pleas addressed to God that have come before, this is an affirmation of the truth of who God is: ‘YHWH judges the peoples’. In response to this confession, the pleas resume in v. 8b: ‘Judge me, YHWH, according to my righteousness…’ Mandolfo suggests the same happens in 9b, which she translates as ‘The one who tests the thoughts and emotions is a just god [sic]’ (i.e., as indicative, rather than vocative, with the NRSV, NIV [which inverts the verse], &c.), and again in v. 11-16: ‘God is a just judge, &c.’ Finally, in v.17, the psalmist is convinced, and responds with praise over God’s righteousness.) If we are to sing songs of lament, then, that adequately reflect the psalms of lament, they will be songs which express a similarly dialogical process, acknowledging both the pressing questions of lived experience, and the confident affirmations of faith – and acknowledging that both deserve to be taken seriously. This seems a difficult task for a song – much more the common stuff of sermons. (This difficulty is, I think, what leads to Mandolfo suggesting multiple voices, at least in the cultic use of the psalms; the psalm of lament becomes a piece of cultic theatre, illustrating or modeling the way the faith of Israel may resolve doubts.) So, should we sing laments? Next...
Read MoreAtheist buses: the effect of religion
The ‘atheist bus’ campaign has launched, with an astonishingly gushing and self-congratulatory piece on the Guardian website by the instigator, Ariane Sherine. (For non-UK readers, this is a campaign that has been running for a year or so to raise money to put atheist [sic; in the event, agnostic] slogans in the advertising space on London buses as an ‘antidote’ to the religious advertising that is around.) Ms Sherine’s piece notes that £135 000 has been raised, an amount she describes as ‘truly overwhelming,’ and demonstrating ‘the strength of atheism in the UK’. The amount of money raised is remarkable – remarkably small. Let me try some context: the campaign to gather funds ran nationally for six months, with considerable free publicity in national media; I can think of two local churches, one with considerably fewer than 100 members, within ten miles of my home here in rural Scotland, who in the last year or so have raised (much) more money in less time from essentially their own communities (both for needed building projects, as it happens). That is, 60-80 Christians in a little market town in Fife with no media exposure at all seem to have much better fund-raising ability than a heavily-publicised national ‘atheist’ campaign. (Actually, I think this does demonstrate ‘the strength of atheism in the UK’ fairly accurately – the National Secular Society refuses to reveal its membership figures, no doubt out of embarrassment, but I have been told by a credible source that it has fewer members nationally than many parish churches welcome each Sunday morning…) Part of this was no doubt the astonishing flacidity of the slogan (apparrently some people have complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that the slogan, ‘There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’, is ‘offensive’. Seriously? It is unquestionably banal and wimpish; it is also demonstrably illogical (connect the two sentences?) and ignorant (the first sentence is indefensible to anyone up on current philosophy of religion – see this article, written by a leading light of the Society of Humanist Philosophers, for starters – further, the notion that the possibility of the existence of the divine is the occasion of worry, or that the demonstration of atheism might lead to joy, is merely asinine), but it is about as offensive as a chintz tea service – you would rather that such smug suburban attitudes did not exist, but they are hardly matters to be offended by). Back, however, to the fundraising. It seems to me that the comparison with a local church demonstrates something interesting about the effect of religion in people’s lives. The current atheist literature suggests rather strongly that religion has been a force for evil in the world: people who believe in religion, any religion, do appalling things; people who are not religious are less likely to do appalling things. With a careful definition of ‘religion’ I happen to think this claim is true. The defences of religion tend to claim the opposite point: religion has been a force for good in the world: people who believe in religion, any religion, do ethical, charitable and altrusitic things; people who are not religious are less likely to do such things. With a careful definition of ‘religion’ I happen to think that this claim, also, is true. Tempted as I am to end the post there, perhaps some elucidation is appropriate… ‘A careful definition of religion’ first: I am not here interested in any belief in the ‘supernatural’ (whatever that, properly defined, may be…) so much as a belief system that claims to explain the nature of the world and the place of humans within it, and to offer guidance for human behaviour on the basis of this explanation. This is a definition of ‘religion’ that is carefully crafted to include many atheist positions, such as marxism, or the ‘scientific humanism’ of the Tamil Tigers. So to the two claims. It seems to me that belief systems like this make people less apathetic. a ‘religious’ person, in these terms, is more likely to care, more likely to donate, more likely to act, more likely to get involved, for better, or indeed, for worse. The precise balance of horrendous acts compared to altruistic acts probably depends on the particular nature of the belief, and on the psychology of the individual involved, but if people are exerting themselves to change the world, it is usually because they believe...
Read MoreThe Pope at New Year
According to the news reports (see here and here for example) Pope Benedict used a new year’s message to the Curia to offer a swingeing and trenchent critique of the acceptance of homosexuality. LGBT groups were predictably outraged, and newspaper leaders were condemning of his outdated attitudes and his decision to focus on this subject at Christmas. A simple and predictable story, with only one little problem… It’s not true. Not even close. You can read the full text of the Pope’s speech, in the original Italian or in English translation, here. If you do, you will discover that he never mentioned homosexuality. Not once. He offered a review of the good things that had happened over the past year – lots on the Bible; a discussion of how he doesn’t like the media presentation of his Youth Rallies as like rock festivals with him as the star; and four reflections on pneumatology. One of these considered the Spirit as creator, and so discussed Christian faith concerning creation. In this paragraph (so, we are now looking at one part of one of four paragraphs under one of several heads of the speech) there were some comments about human sexuality. He made the rather standard point that human sexuality is a part of the created order, and so finds its proper expression in certain channels. He did, entirely in passing, criticise ‘gender theory’ by which he meant, I presume (remember, he is a major league intellectual, fully at home in the current world of the European university) the academic discourse which tries to separate socially-constructed gender from biologically-determined gender. He accused this tradition of undermining the created reality of humanity as male and female. OK, this could be taken as a swipe at the transgendered community, if you really want to read something pointed into it. There is no way his words can be interpreted as suggesting that gay and lesbian relationships are an affront to the created order. I’m sure he believes that, but he didn’t say it in this speech. This was the context of the comparison with protection of the rainforests – it had nothing, nothing at all, to do with homosexuality. It just didn’t. He goes on to commend marriage, but the context is a rejection of human sexuality as a commodity to be used. The emphasis is on the indissolubility of marriage, not on its heterosexual nature. If you want an academic lesson, it’s about the importance of primary...
Read MoreThe Emergence of Evangelicalism
The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (IVP, 2008; ed. Michael Haykin and Kenneth Stewart) is a large book (432 pp) devoted to questioning one claim of David Bebbington’s magisterial, and still standard, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (first published 1988), that of the relative novelty of Evangelical Christianity in the 1730s. The contributors are a somewhat mixed bag: some are serious historians (John Coffey, e.g.), some senior scholars better known for work in other disciplines (Paul Helm), some so-far relatively unknown in scholarly terms (Garry Williams). It is fair to say that the historical expertise, or otherwise, of the contributors shows in various ways. It is also fair to say that some of the contributors make it somewhat obvious that they have an ‘axe to grind’ on this issue, and a more generous scholarly tone would have improved the book in places. Nonetheless, it remains an interesting and worthwhile collection. After some introductory material, the book has three major sections. The first is entitled ‘Regional Perspectives,’ with chapters on Scotland, Wales, England, New England, and the Netherlands. The second is called ‘Era Perspectives,’ and is a slightly odd collection: several pieces on pre-eighteenth century figures or movements (Luther, Cranmer, Puritanism); one on Edwards as a conservative figure; and one on nineteenth-century historiography of Evangelicalism. The final section, ‘Evangelical Doctrines,’ looks at the tradition of the conversion narrative (Bruce Hindmarsh; an excellent piece, but hardly on ‘doctrine’…), assurance (Garry Williams; a republication of his 2005 Tyndale lecture), eschatology (Crawford Gribben) and Scripture (Kenneth Stewart). The book ends with a ‘Response’ from David Bebbington himself, which is characteristically generous and careful. Two issues are repeatedly raised by the various contributors: the claim that an account of immediate assurance of salvation was something new and distinctive in the movements that arose in the 1730s, and the suggestion that Evangelicalism was best understood as a product of ‘the Enlightenment’. Behind these, one gets the sense of a desire on the part of some contributors to claim a more direct line from the Reformers, through the Puritans, to contemporary Evangelicalism than Bebbington’s book perhaps allowed – and a desire to demonstrate that Wesley’s Arminian convictions are an aberration, and no part of the mainstream of the broader Evangelical tradition. What struck me most in reading the book (and, indeed, David’s response) was the ingrained assumption that there is only one story to be told. Perhaps the most telling aspect of this was the uncritical use of the phrase ‘the Enlightenment’; since David’s book was published, the notion of a monolithic Enlightenment has essentially disappeared from the scholarly literature, to be replaced by a story of a number of national/cultural movements, sharing some characteristics and cross-fertilising, but actually very different. The French Enlightenment was something different from the Scottish Enlightenment, and both were different from the Jewish Enlightenment or the Russian Enlightenment. The relationship between the developing Christian traditions and ‘the Enlightenment’ was, therefore, different in different regions and cultures. It seems to me that the same point can be made about the forms of Christianity that existed prior to the 1730s revivals. The Puritan tradition of (parts of) New England, and the Presbyterian tradition of Scotland, were more naturally hospitable to a Calvinistic Evangelicalism than the Anglican tradition of England, which however was the only place a new Arminian tradition had a chance of survival. I therefore think Andy McGowan is broadly right to assert a general continuity from Knox and Rutherford to Chalmers and Cunningham (and, let it be said, McLeod Campbell, Erskine of Linlathen, and Edward Irving), and Doug Sweeney and Brandon Withrow are right to see Edwards as a basically conservative figure, but it is wrong to draw from these data the idea that Evangelicalism, broadly considered, was not an innovation. It was just less of an innovation (in its Calvinistic form) in Scotland and Massachusetts than it was in England and...
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