Of the Monarch, her Bishops, and the press

The Christmas tradition of the Monarch making a direct address to the nation is not one I object to, but nor, I confess, is it one I generally notice. All that I know of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II leads me to suppose that she is a person of wisdom, true Christian faith, and an unwavering commitment to the public duty that was thrust on her by accident of birth; none of that means that in an otherwise busy season I find sufficient reason to pause to take notice when she offers a brief narrative of her own understanding of the state of the nation. My Facebook and Twitter feeds this year, however, were full of Christian admiration for her speech, often coupled with unflattering comparisons to the sermons preached by the bishops who serve under her in one of the established churches in her realm. The admiration was not misplaced: she closed her speech with some direct and unashamed references to Christ’s saving and revealing work, asserting that God sent His Son to be a Saviour, and that the love of God is ‘known in Jesus Christ our Lord’. The comparisons, however, seemed less fair. Even an MP, John Glen, tweeted to the effect that, whilst the Queen’s broadcast was excellent, it was a shame that the Bishops focused more on bankers than Christ. I confess that I do not usually spend any more of my Christmas attending to the words of those elevated to episcopal office by Her Majesty than I give to her own words; I was sufficiently intrigued by a bit of a barrage of comments like this this, however, that whilst the rest of the family indulged an incomprehensible (to me) addiction to Strictly Come Dancing, I sought out the texts of various episcopal sermons. The Archbishop of Canterbury took the opening verses of John as his text; he explored more deeply, but no less faithfully, than the Queen the wonder of what God does in Jesus: ‘His life is what God says and what God does; it is the life in which things hold together … Jesus is the place where all reality is focused, brought to a point.’ He stressed the need for a response to what God has done in Jesus: ‘Before we have even got to Christmas in the words of the gospel we are taken to Good Friday, and to the painful truth that the coming of Jesus splits the world into those who respond and those who don’t.’ His focus was perhaps more on sanctification than justification – but that is no less properly a part of the Christian message, and perhaps an appropriate theme when addressing those who are, by choice, in a cathedral congregation on Christmas day, and so may be presumed to have some measure of Christian commitment. The Archbishop of York, preaching on Lk 2 and Is. 9:6, made not dissimilar points: describing the coming of Christ as a ‘still-open opportunity’ ‘The only way of coming to King Jesus,’ he declared,  ‘is on our knees, stripped naked of all our religious trappings, empty-handed and begging for mercy.’ He went on to quote a verse of Toplady’s ‘Rock of Ages’. Then, like Rowan Williams, he turned to the transformation of life that will come from following Jesus. I could continue around the episcopate, at least those texts that have already been made available online; the point would get tedious however. The criticisms that the Bishops were less adequately Christian than the Queen in their Christmas addresses simply do not stand up. Which led me to wonder, whence the criticism? Why did people – faithful, intelligent people in many cases – pass such harsh judgements in public on their fellow Christians? It would be possible to be judgemental in return: there is a temptation for a certain style of conservative Christianity to stress justification at the expense of sanctification because it pulls the sting of the gospel. It is easier to speak – and certainly to hear – of the forgiveness of God, full and free, without calling for true repentance, for a change of heart and life that involves painful and costly changes of behaviour. But the gospel for bankers and other financiers involves a call to visible repentance of professional wrongdoing – ask Zacchaeus… (and the gospel for preachers and theology lecturers involves just as much, or perhaps even more (Ja. 3:1) a call to visible and ongoing repentance of professional wrongdoing…) There are many, no doubt, who would rather hear about God’s forgiveness than their own greed, or lust, or anger, or whatever, but that is not a...

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Gloria in Profundis

There has fallen on earth for a token A god too great for the sky. He has burst out of all things and broken The bounds of eternity: Into time and the terminal land He has strayed like a thief or a lover, For the wine of the world brims over, Its splendour is spilt on the sand. Who is proud when the heavens are humble, Who mounts if the mountains fall, If the fixed stars topple and tumble And a deluge of love drowns all– Who rears up his head for a crown, Who holds up his will for a warrant, Who strives with the starry torrent, When all that is good goes down? For in dread of such falling and failing The fallen angels fell Inverted in insolence, scaling The hanging mountains of hell: But unmeasured of plummet and rod Too deep for their sight to scan, Outrushing the fall of man Is the height of the fall of God. Glory to God in the Lowest The spout of the stars in spate– Where the thunderbolt thinks to be slowest And the lightening fears to be late: As men dive for a sunken gem Pursuing we hunt and hound it, The fallen star that has found it In the cavern of Bethlehem. G.K. Chesterton, Gloria in Profundis. Merry Christmas to...

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David Cameron ‘doing God’

Alastair Campbell’s intervention has become famous. Asked, in the course of an interview with Vanity Fair, something that touched on his personal faith, the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair hesitated, and Campbell lent across to refuse the question with the line ‘We don’t do God.’ Blair’s faith was clearly genuine, if kept quiet; the same was true of his successor Gordon Brown. David Cameron’s announcement in a speech yesterday that he is a ‘committed … Church of England Christian’ makes him (at least – I know nothing either way of John Major) the third premier in a row to find some importance in a personal Christian faith; that seems remarkable enough to bear some analysis, but that is not my point here. In his speech yesterday, part of a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, the Prime Minister went further than any of his predecessors for some while in asserting that faith was more than a personal matter to him, but was a political compass. He asserted that our culture and politics are incomprehensible apart from a recognition of the Christian heritage of the country, and – most controversially – that the shared values that should guide British politics and society into the future are distinctively Christian. His first point is relatively uncontroversial; the National Secular Society may not get it, but outside such tiny and extreme fringe groups, the central place of the King James Bible (and the plays of Shakespeare) in creating the cadences of English is undoubted. The Prime Minister wandered through fine art and music, and it is true that without a fairly thorough knowledge of the Biblical narrative (& the stories of the saints, incidentally) there is much that cannot be understood; the specific influence of the KJV is found in literature particularly, of course. (I have written elsewhere on the dark side of this: the KJV was key in making the language of Oxford ‘normal’ and the language of Fife – King James VI’s own native cadence – a ‘dialect’; appropriately, perhaps, in a celebratory event, the Prime Minister did not touch on this aspect in his speech.) The second point wanders towards the controversial: ‘[t]he Bible runs through our political history in a way that is not often recognised.’ The Prime Minister cited examples: the concept of a limited, constitutional monarchy; universal human rights; the welfare state; and a commitment to aid and development beyond our borders. (He wavers into what Richard Dawkins calls ‘faith in faith’ a bit on the last: Jewish Care, Islamic Relief, and Muslim Aid, excellent organisations though they no doubt are, do not, as far as I know, find much of their inspiration in the King James Bible…) I suspect that on each of the examples cited Cameron is simply right, but I am conscious that there is some historical debate to be had in one case or another. Further, even if he is right, the fact that we originally came to belief in a constitutional monarchy (say) through a consideration of the Biblical narrative does not mean that no other robust defence of the position is available. It does establish a burden of proof, however. There is a classic form of European liberal atheism which adopts a series of distinctively Christian ethical – and even philosophical – commitments and asserts that they are in some way ‘obvious’; only a little knowledge of history shows that they are not. It has not generally been obvious to human beings that infanticide is a bad idea, let alone that limited government is a good one. A constitutional monarchy is a very odd idea in human politics, and empirically is significantly intertwined with Christianity; if the position can be defended robustly from a naturalistic philosophical position, that requires demonstration. (Not least because it happens that pretty much every confessionally atheist state in history has been repressively totalitarian…) The Prime Minister moved to his third point via a recollection of the importance of faith-based groups and individuals in ‘the big society’ (he chose not to use the phrase), and an acknowledgement that, whatever might be happening in Britain, faith is becoming more, not less, important and prevalent globally. Mr Cameron makes the choice to welcome that as a positive thing. The headline seen everywhere this morning, ‘Britain is a Christian country,’ comes from this part of the speech. The argument goes like this, as far as I can reconstruct it: every strong society is built on an unwavering commitment to certain shared values; the values which have shaped, and which should continue to shape, British society are distinctively Christian, although their worth can...

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‘Vanity requires no response’

Just after midnight (GMT) last night, it seems, the view counter on this blog ticked from five figures to six. I have no idea, and not much interest, how 100 000 views compares to the average for a blog, or for a theoblog, or whatever. It suggests that there are a certain number of folk who find the stuff I post here from time to time interesting enough to come back, however, and for that I am grateful. (I noticed too a couple of weeks back the number of comments hit 1000, although over a quarter are mine; I am particularly grateful for friends who help me to refine and test ideas through that mechanism and others.) I’ve been blogging a little over four years, with two lengthy layoffs. Over the time, I’ve reflected more than once on what blogging is for, and gradually come to change my mind. Originally, I had this as a place to record undeveloped ideas that might in future go somewhere; I still do a bit of that, but more it is a platform, a place to offer ideas that might be of use or interest to the churches. I get to ‘publish’ (i.e., make public) ideas in a variety of ways, spoken, recorded, and written; whilst inevitably there is a coherence and even a certain amount of borrowing and development, I more and more think that anything, on any platform, should be considered as finished output, with the different audiences, the different styles, and the different lead-times, each platform offers an opportunity to find the right place for each thought to be placed. Anyway, thank you to all who have shared this particular journey so far with me. The title is another quotation from the Waste Land, from Tiresias’s cynical narration of her lover’s sexual conquest of the typist; in the context of my blogging, I suspect it is not true: had these words apparently disappeared into the ether, I suspect I would not have continued for four months. So in a sense this is your output as much as mine, and I am...

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Catholic Bishops, Baptist pastors, and same-sex marriage

It seems fairly likely that we in Scotland will see the extension of marriage to same-sex couples before the rest of the UK, probably in the next 2-3 years. The government has proposed this, and a consultation on the proposal has just closed. How should a Christian commentator respond to this idea? The theology here is actually quite interesting, if we can catch enough breath to step back from the polemics. The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has gone on the offensive, suggesting that same-sex marriage is, roughly, a logical impossibility. Oddly enough, supporters of the government proposal have found this suggestion both offensive and unhappy, but it was both predictable and inevitable to anyone who understands Roman Catholic theology. Catholic ethics assume – in part – a ‘natural law’ position. This is the idea that all people, if they are thinking clearly, have been granted enough information to come to right conclusions on certain issues. The over-riding sanctity of human life, including human life in utero, is assumed to be a position demonstrable by natural law, as is the nature of marriage as the union of one man and one woman in faithful, lifelong, and exclusive sexual companionship. For the Roman Catholic tradition, natural law also demands the inalienable rights of all human beings, economic justice, and various other things. When the Pope visited Britain last year, his speech in Westminster Hall was entirely predicated on a natural law tradition – as he put it, ‘[t]he Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason…’. On this basis, the Church and a secular state could and should share a commitment to human rights and justice and other things because both were pursuing the same natural law. A more traditionally Reformed account of ethics is rather less happy with this. Christian life is necessarily gospel-shaped, and so is profoundly and irreconcilably odd, judged by the canons of any secular society. Christian marriage, to take the case in point, is (as Augustine taught) a profoundly ascetic practice, devoted mainly towards the disciplining of ‘natural’ desires in order to direct the lived life in ways that manifest the gospel and not alien values. (I have commented elsewhere on this blog on the possibility of extending such an understanding to gay and lesbian relationships.) In the extreme form of this view (made popular by Barth…) there is no ‘natural law’; there is the gospel, with its peremptory demands, and there are ways of life that are ignorant of the gospel, and so inevitably in some measure inimical to the gospel. How, then, do we deal with a state proposal to extend the legal definition of ‘marriage’ to include same-sex couples? For someone who is (properly) Roman Catholic, they examine the given definitions and expositions of natural law, and note that they assert, inter alia, that ‘marriage’ is the union of one woman and one man. The idea of gay/lesbian couples ‘marrying,’ therefore, is not so much wrong as incomprehensible and impossible. This is not a denial of the human rights of gay/lesbian couples – as a matter of fact, in British/Scottish law, there is no human right granted by the marriage relationship that is not also granted by being in a civil partnership – so much as a belief that it is intrinsic to the definition of the word ‘marriage’ that those entering into the state are of opposite sex. ‘Same-sex marriage’ on this view is a phrase like ‘four-sided triangle’; not something that should not be done, but something that logically cannot be done. Thus, Archbishop Conti was being faithfully Catholic when he said, ‘Governments do not have the authority to say what marriage is or to change its nature or to decree that people of the same sex can marry.’ (Could a natural law argument that extended the meaning of marriage to embrace same-sex couples be offered? It is certainly not impossible, but the argument needs to be made with, in the case in point, deep attention to the Roman Catholic tradition: how is a position embraced within natural law? Can gay and/or lesbian relationships, under certain limitations (inter alia, presumably, permanence, faithfulness and exclusivity), be adequately and meaningfully narrated within this tradition? I see some major difficulties in constructing the argument, and also some potential ways around them, but, thus far, as far as I know, the argument has not been attempted.) The Roman Catholic hierarchy of Scotland clearly generally believes that the natural law argument cannot be extended to same-sex relations; we could dismiss this as homophobia, or we could acknowledge that, within the tradition...

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