The consolations of faith: on leading on non-religious funeral
Today I led a funeral service for my grandmother; in accordance with her views, and the wishes of her children, the service was devoid of any ‘religious’ content. I found this odd. Not difficult, but odd. Obviously, when asked to do it, I said yes; it did not take any thought to decide to help family members at such a time, and I rapidly worked out that, whilst I could not lead a ceremony speaking words I did not believe, I have no problem (indeed, a fair amount of experience, one way or another) in acting with integrity in public whilst not saying certain things that I do believe. What difficultly there was lay in working out what the service was for, in order to construct an appropriate form of words (I keep saying ‘liturgy’ in my head, although that’s the one thing it definitely wasn’t…). But for a funeral that was not so hard: we come to remember; to say goodbye; to stand together in grief. There is little trouble in finding words that speak well to these purposes. Inevitably, I looked around for help; I’ve done enough liturgical work to know that there are always riches from which to borrow. That said, the Humanist material I discovered surprised me – although on reflection the problem was predictable. Like most contemporary ‘humanism’, it all failed rather badly to be nonreligious. I looked at half-a-dozen or more published patterns for a humanist funeral; every one borrowed central Christian texts, deleted the obvious references to God, and then used the filleted remains to shape the service. (Even Scripture was not immune; Eccl. 3 was several times in evidence. John Donne’s Divine Meditation XVII was also referenced more than once.) This of course reflects the reality – and the tedious banality – of too much contemporary Western atheism: take a philosophically-rich account of things; delete surface references to the divine; and assume that what is left will be meaningful or coherent or interesting. Nietzsche, the world hath need of thee… The experience itself was interesting; the defiant rebellious joy of a Christian funeral was of course absent (‘Where, death, thy sting? Where, grave, thy victory?’ (a phrase I recall Graham Tomlin describing as the liturgical equivalent of ‘You’re not singing, you’re not singing, you’re not singing anymore!’); ‘Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son – endless is the victory thou o’er death hast won!’), but that did not feel like a huge problem. We came to say goodbye, and goodbye was said; if I personally could have said so much more, that was the absence of a wonderful bonus, not the presence of a yawning absence. I know the philosophical stuff on the obscenity of death, but my grandmother died old and full of years, and it did not feel like that. My mind went to various nonreligious weddings/civil partnerships I have attended. They were far worse; duty was heaped upon duty, and responsibility upon responsibility, and not a finger was lifted in promised help. The offering of prayer for a couple newly-wed; the humility and confidence expressed in the confession, ‘by God’s grace, I will’; the sense that these open-ended and absolute promises are undergirded by benevolent divine power – all of this, for me, is necessary to the uttering of wedding vows, or their equivalent. To commit oneself in one’s own strength to such things is an act of promethean courage, of which I at least would not be capable. All of which makes me reflect: for me – I do not generalise – the point at which I find God’s grace to be necessary for existence, and not merely a wonderful bonus, is not in thinking about what happens beyond death, but in thinking about how it is possible to live before death. I desperately need grace and strength and assurance of the forgiveness of sins not for eternity, but for tomorrow, and for tonight, and indeed for this moment right now. I respect and admire those like Nietzsche who, with eyes wide open and with no self-deception, can live and die in their own strength; at the same time I know that I am not one of them (and I recall Nietzsche’s own last years). That said, I suppose that dying will be relatively easy; everyone seems to manage to do it adequately in the end. Living is the challenge. I do not propose a general rule, but, as far as I know my own heart, for me the reality is this: I need grace to live more than I need it to...
Read MoreChristianity, Cameron, and Rev
David Cameron’s several interventions during Easter week concerning his own faith and his perception of the UK as a ‘Christian country’ aroused much interest, and more derision; by contrast, in it’s third series, the BBC2 sitcom Rev has apparently reached that level of popularity which requires newspaper columnists to take pot-shots at it (see Tim Stanley in the Telegraph and, much more interestingly in my estimation, James Mumford in the Guardian). Unravelling the various lines of a media and social media feeding frenzy like the one that surrounded the Prime Minister’s comments is not easy. His narrative of his own faith journey, which has clearly deepened in recent years following the death of his son Ivan, deserved much more respect than it got – a judgement I base simply on an ethical commitment to decency and respect in the face of personal tragedy; his line about a ‘Christian country’ was a soundbite that was largely meaningless without further specification of what a ‘Christian country’ might actually be; it successfully baited a predictably shallow response from the rent-an-atheist crowd, whilst inviting more thoughtful writers to propose potential meanings for the term and to test them against the evidence (see the present Archbishop of Canterbury here and his predecessor here). One, seemingly repetitive, feature of this furore offers an interesting contrast with the portrayal of Christianity in Rev: although neither term fits entirely comfortably with a good understanding of the essence of Christianity, the debate around the Prime Minister’s various remarks generally constructed Christianity in terms of ethics, whereas Rev constructs the faith in terms of spirituality. David Cameron wrote in the Church Times of ‘the Christian values of responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, and love’; of course, I do not doubt that these are ‘Christian values’, even if I would be happier with the word ‘virtues,’ and with a slightly different list (adding things like faith, hope, justice, prudence, courage, and temperance…). To define Christianity, however, in terms of these values is to elevate a part to the whole, and in particular to elevate effects above causes. The debate that followed offered some – fairly unkind, in general – words about the Prime Minister’s personal morality, and the morality of his government’s agenda. Most of this commentary failed to offer any rounded judgement or nuanced analysis, but even if it had, it constructed claims to Christian identity in terms of the achievement of certain moral standards. The Prime Minister’s original construction of a Christian country as one full of people committed to doing good was contrasted with a more corporate vision of a Christian country as one in which the government is primarily tasked with doing good; the notion that Christianity should be equated with doing good went largely unchallenged. (Danny Webster on Threads was an honourable – and energetic – exception.) Tim Stanley’s criticism of Rev (link above) constructs it on similar grounds: it, he claims ‘depicts a vicar trying to be kind to his parishioners – with hilarious consequences’. That does not ring true as a description of the show I have watched; Adam’s relationships with Colin, Adoha, Mick, and (perhaps particularly) Ellie are much more complex than ‘trying to be kind’ – ‘trying to be good,’ perhaps, but even then only with the qualification ‘and regularly failing’. The heart of the show, though, is not in Adam’s attempts to be good, but in Adam’s attempts to be Christian. Almost every episode through the three series turned on a moment of prayer, during which Adam realised what he must do, or after which events turned out for the better; the climax of the first series came when Adam’s fairly spectacular personal collapse was arrested by a dying person’s request to see him; in a powerful affirmation of vocation he re-dons his collar, quoting Isaiah 6 ‘The Lord said, who will go for us? And I said, here am I; send me.’ Prayer and vocation are not primarily about ethics; they are about spirituality, about a relationship with the divine. (The last episode of the third series again used clerical vestments as a metaphor for vocation; it’s not my tradition, but I can recognise and understand it.) It was this, I suspect, that made Rev so popular with so many Christians, and particularly with so many ordained ministers. Yes, the acting was wonderful (I’m slowly coming to the view that even an episode of Top Gear with Olivia Colman in it might be worth watching; she really is that good. And Tom Hollander is not very far behind); yes, the observations of inner-city church life, which I have known first-hand, and (I am told) the observations of the inner life of the...
Read MoreTranslocal ecclesial identities
The theme of the recent – and excellent – Evangelical Alliance Council meeting was ‘It takes a whole church to raise a child’. Amongst the points made, two seem to me to connect interestingly. First, there was emphasis on the increasingly post-Christian, and so alien, nature of our society, which means that churches must become counter-cultural communities successfully modelling different values to the cultures around. Second, further reflection on the fact that young people tend to drop out of church when they move location – and the assumed mobility of many parts of our culture. We listened to testimony from Jesus House, and lots of helpful guidance as to what had worked for them. It struck me, however, that they seemed to be able to assume a fairly continuous process of catechesis and discipleship that began when a child entered the church and continued until she was into her twenties. My own cultural expectations are that it is unusual for a professional white British family not to relocate once or more often during a child’s schooling, and that on completing her schooling, she will attend a university some distance from home, and then relocate again away from both her university and the family home on graduating. The continuous discipleship practiced by Jesus House becomes an seemingly-impossible ideal in that context. Perhaps in a counter-cultural church geographical stability should be taught and modelled to and for families, but at present it isn’t, to the best of my knowledge, and there are obvious issues in thinking that way: most British Baptists seem to expect pastors to move on every seven to twelve years, taking their families with them, for example, and we seem to assume that this is both a right discerning of God’s call, and good for the development of both pastor and congregation. More promising might be a much more denominational outlook(!) The Free Church of Scotland recently agreed to allow the use of hymnody, and not just metrical psalms, in worship; one of the arguments against, as the debate was explained to me, was a serious concern for uniformity: a Free Church member coming from Lerwick to Glasgow should feel ‘at home’ in the service he experienced there, should recognise it as part of the same community; psalmody facilitated that. I think it was right that this argument was rejected, but that nonetheless there is something we can learn from it. Uniformity in style of music in worship is trite and almost irrelevant (at best it might be a part of a symbolic construction that points to what is truly important); what if we succeeded in creating a denominational, or quasi-denominational, network of Christian communities that were united by a deep commitment to owning and exploring the same set of counter-cultural values? Imagine if a teenager, moved by her parents from Stirling to Bournemouth, knew that if a community in the new town branded itself as ‘Baptist’ (or whatever), it would understand and encourage the life of discipleship she had been trying to construct, would support her in ways that she had been supported before, would be an experience of continuing the same journey, albeit in a different place and with different people. Now, as I hinted above, trappings like music or dress styles, shared lectionaries or shared liturgies, or owned symbols, could all contribute helpfully to creating a shared symbolic structure that gestured to the shared ideology that was driving this. And for those who were in the process of relocation – and experiencing dislocation, as inevitably people do – such obviously-familiar symbols might be very important as a reassurance. What matters, though, is a continuation in a process of cultural formation, a coherent set of narratives and values that successfully shape someone into that oddest of things, a ‘Christian’. Networks like this might succeed as Jesus House has succeeded, in growing people up into maturity in Christ. The EA couldn’t of course, but maybe in a mobile society like contemporary Britain we should have met under the slogan, ‘it takes a whole denomination to raise a...
Read MoreDavid 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...
Read MoreOn Christian ‘belief’
Various folks commented in response to the two posts I managed to put up during Christmas travels, suggesting that a properly Christian account of ‘belief’ implied rather more than I had implied or allowed for. I am aware of this, of course, but probably should have been clearer that I was. The best analysis (as almost always…) comes from the scholastics: ‘belief’ is to be divided into three parts: notitia (‘knowledge’); assensus (‘agreement’); and fiducia (‘commitment’ or ‘trust’). To ‘believe’ in the gospel is, simultaneously, to know the claims of the gospel, to agree that they are true, and to stake one’s life upon them. My problem is that I don’t think that anyone asking the question ‘Do you believe in God?’ in modern Britain has any of that analysis even subconsciously in mind. They are asking for an affirmation or denial of the factual veracity of a hazily-formed and unanalyzed proposition–in scholastic terms, assensus without notitia or fiducia. And I think that, in sheerly missional terms, this is a problem for us. Take a look at this, rather heart-warming, press comment; the writer records an entirely positive (for her…) experience of church-attendance, and even implies a certain wistfulness that she feels excluded from more active and regular involvement in her local Christian community, on the basis that she ‘doesn’t believe in God’. This is not uncommon, in my experience. (I acknowledge that it may be rather peculiarly British, or even English: unlike the French in particular, our atheism was always tinged with regret, as Mathew Arnold discovered looking at Dover Beach.) If we could get away from the ill-formed and unhelpful ‘Do you believe in God?’ question, people like Vikki Woods might be given the chance to discover in Christian community what Christian ‘belief’ really...
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