On not having preached about sexual violence
I’ve been involved in an online Bible study organised by the excellent Sophia Network, and we have been looking this week at narratives of sexual violence in the Old Testament, particularly (or I was particularly struck by) Amnon’s rape of his half-sister Tamar (2 Sam. 13) and Shechem raping Dinah (Gen. 34). Various points were made in the discussion, but one which struck me was a contributor saying ‘I’ve never heard a sermon about sexual violence’. It struck me that in twenty something years of preaching, I’ve never preached a sermon about sexual violence. I am fairly confident that I have not avoided the subject deliberately: I cannot recall either planning a series and thinking ‘Let’s skip that text’, or facing a text with a narrative of rape or abuse and thinking ‘I don’t think I’ll mention that issue’. That said, I’ve generally preached series as part of a team and when others have planned a series on the life of David, or on Judges, and have chosen to omit the stories of male violence against women, I have not challenged the omission either. In view of this week’s discussion, I feel that this has been a very serious gap in my ministry. Of course, this is an issue we would like to ignore. It is ugly, and painful, and messy – and even with my level of pastoral awareness, it is an obviously difficult topic to deal with adequately from the pulpit. I think, however, it needs to be raised. Why? First, the statistics are, as is (or should be) well-known, appalling: Credible statistics (from the UN) suggest that, worldwide, one in three women will suffer some form of sexual violence in her life; in the UK, the figure is only slightly lower at one in four (source). UK police received one report of domestic/sexual violence every minute in 2000, but data from 2002-4 suggests that between two-thirds and three-quarters of incidents of domestic/sexual violence in the UK are never reported. Sexual violence is a massive issue in the world and in our local culture; it would be simply foolish to assume it is not an issue in our church congregations. Second, we face a major attitude problem that needs addressing. A 1998 survey suggested that, amongst young people in the UK, 10% of women and 20% of men believed abuse or violence within a relationship is acceptable (source). This, we should note, was when they were asked the question directly; the number of men in particular who justify abusive actions by suggesting it was only in fun, or that they didn’t really mean it, or that it was just the drink, or whatever, is no doubt far higher. Such attitudes can never be changed unless we challenge them directly and explicitly; surely the pulpit is precisely the place for such necessary and timely moral instruction? Third, there are issues of silence and shame that need naming directly. Women who experience sexual violence often – routinely, perhaps – feel shamed by, or even guilty about, their experience (the same is true of male victims of homosexual rape male on male sexual violence, of course [see below for reasons for edit, and apology]). An unwillingness or inability to report the crime leads to a situation where it can be repeated. Only open conversation in places that carry significant cultural weight can hope to lessen this stigma – this doesn’t just mean the pulpit, but it at least means the pulpit. Fourth, we need to acknowledge that there is a specifically ecclesial dimension to this problem. Scripture, and Christian theology, have been, and are being, used to justify sexual violence against women. I do not believe the Bible to be inherently misogynistic, or justifying of sexual violence – but I know it can be used like that. A primary role of the preaching ministry is modelling good use of Scripture in public; specifically naming and denying (ab)uses of Scripture that justify, or lessen the offence of, sexual violence is a necessary part of the contemporary preaching ministry, therefore. In telling the stories of Tamar and Dinah, and of several others, the Bible refuses to ignore the reality of male sexual violence against women; no preacher who pretends to be taking the Bible seriously can ignore that reality – and no preacher concerned to speak seriously into our contemporary culture can ignore it either. This is not a topic for every sermon, of course, but I can’t help feeling that not having addressed it once in twenty years of preaching ministry has been a significant failure on my part. [Restored do great work on this issue; they offer links here...
Read MoreTwystematics 2: Revelation
For anyone who is interested, the second locus of my tweeted systematic theology, the doctrine of revelation, is now online here.
Read MoreThe Politics of Christmas
I don’t usually highlight my own writing here, but since this is available for free, I thought I’d mention it. I was commissioned by the excellent political thinktank Theos to write on ‘The Politics of Christmas’. The brief noted that we tend to assume that Christmas should be apolitical in our contemporary celebrations, but that the original gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus were perhaps less than apolitical, and that this invited some exploration. (If you know your recent NT scholarship and you’re thinking ‘shooting fish in small bucket; never mind barrel’ – well, yes, guess why I took the commission…) The report was released today; it explores the reasons Christmas became depoliticised in the Victorian period, and (at least some of) the various political commitments and implications of the gospel narratives. It owes more than a little to my colleague Tom Wright’s ‘anti-imperial’ reading of the NT, but I think that most of the positions taken are accepted by all strands of contemporary scholarship. As a result of press releases on the launch, I got to give a live interview with Kingdom FM. Every hairdresser and taxi driver in Fife is now convinced of my...
Read MoreThe spirituality of doctrine?
Renovaré, the organisation founded by Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline, et al.), have recently published a book entitled 25 Books Every Christian Should Read: A Guide to the Definitive Spiritual Classics. The list can be seen here (you’ll need to scroll down a little). I’ve read most of them, and at least some of almost all of them (as it happens, the only one I’ve never opened is Nouwen’s Return of the Prodigal Son; I know it’s wonderful; there’s even a copy in the house, as Heather’s homegroup worked through it a few years back; other things just keep getting in the way). The title is, I take it, deliberately provocative; such lists always generate argument, and an argument that leads to people being exposed to previously-unencountered classics of Christian spirituality is surely a good thing? I don’t particularly want to start that argument here; the list is a good one. It contains, however, three texts that would not often be included in the genre of ‘spirituality’: Athanasius On the Incarnation; Calvin’s Institutes; and Lewis on Mere Christianity. These are texts in doctrine (or perhaps apologetics for Lewis); the study of doctrine is not generally considered to be an aid to prayer in those parts of the church in which I move, at least. (And academic theological conferences do not often feel like powerhouses of prayer…) When John Rackley was BUGB President, he ran a survey asking (British Baptist) ministers what fed them devotionally, and commented in writing it up that almost none of them (two, from memory) mentioned reading doctrine. As it happens, reading Calvin does inspire me to devotion from time to time; the same is true of Barth, and one or two others in the dogmatic tradition. But if devotional inspiration is my aim, Brother Lawrence or Mother Julian are far, far more reliable options for me (and much lighter to carry around than Calvin or Barth!). This is, of course, a modern problem. The connection between doctrine and piety was routinely assumed in the tradition, whether in arguments that only the true contemplative could even try to do theology (Gregory of Nazianzus, First Theological Oration), or arguments that any right understanding of doctrine will inevitably lead to heartfelt worship and devotion (Calvin, Inst. 1:1-2). Less happily, heretics are routinely accused of the grossest acts, because it is assumed that their wrong doctrine must make them morally incompetent. This connection is, one way or another, traceable down to the beginning of the nineteenth century (it’s there in Coleridge (‘They must become better before they can become wiser’) and, in a way, in Schleiermacher), but had begun to fall apart a century, perhaps more, before that. By the time we get to the middle of the twentieth century, there is something of a prevailing assumption that theological scholarship will destroy piety and that practiced piety is at least an impediment to proper theological scholarship, and assumption that has begun to be overcome in the decades since, but that is still sometimes visible. What happened? I can think of various explanations. Perhaps St Bernard’s fulminations over Peter Abelard’s Sic et Non were well-directed, and the founding of the European university system was all a catastrophic mistake? (I don’t think this, by the way, but any academic theologian needs to reflect on it from time to time.) Perhaps theology should be done only within the local church (memorably, the Black Rock Address on ‘theological schools’: ‘In every age, from the school of Alexandria down to this day, they have been a real pest to the church of Christ’)? (I don’t think this either, but the authors were Baptists, and I accept that the challenge is as much mine to prove them wrong, as theirs to carry the point.) I have an alternative explanation, not quite so easy, which relies on some genealogical reflections. Doctrine, we should remember more often, is – or at least used to be, and should still be – the science of reading Scripture well. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation is a contribution to an ongoing exegetical debate. (I assume we all know by now that the whole debate over the Trinity in the fourth century was exegetical? The ontological schemes and logical distinctions that Athanasius and others worked out were proposed to offer ways of reading certain disputed texts that made better sense of the whole of Scripture than other proposals.) Calvin’s Institutes are written as a simple and easy textbook to give his readers the crucial concepts and distinctions they will need to make sense of Scripture when they read it for themselves. At some point (Hegel? Schleiermacher? Around then,...
Read MoreJustice and the gospel: Bruce Longenecker on Paul and the poor.
Joel Willits offers a review of my former colleague Bruce Longenecker’s recent book Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World (Eerdmans) over at Euangelion. I have not yet seen a copy, but Bruce was working in these directions before he left St Andrews for Baylor, and I think I can guess something of how the argument goes: although there is not an enormous amount of emphasis in the NT texts on Paul’s ongoing concern for the collection for the church in Jerusalem, or for caring for economically-disadvantaged members of the community, there is some; if we consider the then-prevalent assumption amongst devout diaspora Jews (like Paul…) that charity was an essential component of acceptable worship, then we can reconstruct on the basis of the evidence we do have a picture of concern for the poor, and particularly concern that the gentile churches should relieve the poverty of the mother church in Jerusalem, as being central to Paul’s vision of his own mission, and of the Christian identity of the churches he founded. Rather like Finney refusing to allow someone to profess Christianity without committing to the abolitionist cause, Paul could not conceive of a church that was not involved in (what we would now call) social justice; it is as intrinsic to the gospel as worship, discipleship, and mission – actually, it just is worship, discipleship, and mission, in Paul’s view. As Joel points out, this is a timely reminder. Joel himself has recently offered a substantial review of Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s What is the Mission of the Church?, which is only the latest of a stream of publications arguing that social justice, whilst perhaps commendable, is no part of the core business of a Christian community. I understand the concern that, sometimes, justice has been perceived as an easier and less costly practice than other forms of gospel witness, and so has been allowed to displace them. The answer to this, though, is not so to swing the pendulum as to neglect this aspect of gospel witness instead. The bloodless conquest of the Empire by the early church was in large part achieved by a sustained and serious practice of social justice; bishops took the title ‘lovers of the poor,’ and lived it so well that, over a century or so, they constructed a new and previously-unimagined political power-base that propelled them to positions of prominence in almost every city of the Empire (Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, is very good on this; start around pp. 90-100). Human hearts were conquered by the fearless witness of the martyrs; but the culture was conquered – whilst the church was still a minority movement – by a faithful practice of social justice. Paul consulted once with Peter and James and John about the ethical implications of belief in Jesus; one thing only was agreed to be non-negotiable by all four of them: ‘remember the poor’ (Gal. 2:10). This is at the heart of the...
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