Communal discernment and the church meeting

As Baptists, we believe in communal discernment of the will of God, and we engage in such communal discernment through the church meeting. However, this raises a question: is the practice of church meeting just a convenient occasion for communal discernment, or is it of the essence of such work? Is there something special about communal discernment that takes place in the context of church meeting, or is that practice of gathering merely a way of facilitating a process that can happen equally as well in other contexts?

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Moral arguments for independence

The Sunday Herald yesterday ran an advertisement carrying the names of thirty-four Church of Scotland ministers committed to a claim that a yes vote in the independence referendum would improve social justice in Scotland. Three individuals were quoted, two of them offering (what could be constructed as) moral arguments in favour of independence. Are they right? My judgement is that one might be, but it relies on an undemonstrated premise if it is; the other is wrong; both judgements depend on some interesting moral reasoning which is worth exploring.

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On patience: some reflections on the ethics of argument

The all-too familiar morality of strong opinions which we let off all-too easily and which accomplish nothing at all. I discovered yesterday morning, in the introduction to a seminar he was giving here in St Andrews, that Oliver O’Donovan, the leading moral theologian of his generation, is a colleague; apparently he took an honorary chair with us on his retirement from Edinburgh (which I probably should have known…). The above line is a quotation, as near as I could get it down, from early in a scintillating presentation on ‘Ethics and the Future’; Oliver reflected on time and action, hope and patience, as proper modes of Christian ethical life; it was, as we expect from him, beautifully crafted and extraordinarily tightly argued. The following reflections no doubt owe something to what he said, but are mine (his primary application was to the sterility of government by statistical prediction). It seems to me that, particularly on issues that are held to matter, we presently operate with an overwhelming urgency of decision. You have to come to a view, pro or anti, for or against. Argument is a luxury that follows from forming a position, (at best) a post-factum articulation of the instant judgements that were made; more likely a groping for pseudo-intellectual fig-leaves to cover the exposure of our lack of moral reflection. It would, to illustrate the point, be fatal to any politician’s career were she to greet a new question, fact, or development presented to her on air with the line ‘That’s interesting; I need to think about that…’ She is required, culturally, to take a firm position immediately. This might be presented as a requirement of honesty: it is certainly the case that, presented with a moral issue I have not previously considered, I have an immediate, instinctive reaction in one direction or another. In recent Christian ethical reflection – and more widely, if less universally, in moral philosophy – this has been valorised under the name ‘virtue ethics’: the goal of ethical formation is the development of such character that my instinctive decisions will be good, will instantiate virtues. To need to engage in moral deliberation when confronted with a question is, on this telling, already a sign of dis-ease, or a failure of moral formation. Now, at one level I understand and entirely accept these arguments; faced with one of the banal moral ‘dilemmas’ so beloved of ethical textbooks, I should need no deliberation. Finding a wallet on the floor, I should not need to think about whether to steal its contents. It seems, to me, however, that the situation of finding a wallet on the floor is a rather particular one: I am possessed of all the salient facts, as well as whatever character traits I have developed, and so I am, at least potentially, able to make an instinctive and correct decision. Compare a political debate – ‘What,’ to take the currently-noisy theme in my context, ‘do you think of the proposal for Scottish independence?’ I take it that the issue is, finally, one of moral deliberation: on the 23rd September (or in fact a little before, as I shall be away on the day and shall vote by post), I will make a decision on whether to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and that decision will be based on my best judgement as to which act is more ethical. Even if my moral intuitions are perfect and invincible, however, to come to that decision requires – at least potentially – extensive knowledge, some of which at present I do not have, and so I cannot form a snap judgement well. (To take one of the issues that has caused some noise, currency union, there are two quite distinct questions to form any intelligent moral evaluation of the issue. First, does continued Scottish use of sterling actually matter? There is an economic judgement to be made concerning the effect of currency union or an alternative – the reintroduction of the Scottish Merk, say – on various issues. Were I to be convinced that the Scottish economy would be weaker one way or the other, and that that weakness would be detrimental to something that mattered (economic weakness usually is; witness this week’s reports about foodbanks…), then the question is ethically charged. Second, if the question is ethically charged in this way, what is the likelihood of currency union continuing beyond a vote for independence? That seems to be a political judgement; as I read the arguments so far, there is some agreement that the rUK economy would be damaged by excluding an independent Scotland from sterling, but also an argument...

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Why should we be afraid of a UK Religious Right?

Last week’s Theos report asks the question ‘is there a religious right in Britain?’ and concludes not. The piece is well-researched and well-argued, and seems to me convincing. The Religious right in the US has coalesced around eight issues, of which perhaps two or three are on any UK Christian group’s political agenda; it has well-established links of influence with one political party, whereas UK groups either have no real influence, or work indifferently with all parties; UK Christians can be shown to be more left of centre than the general population on many or most questions of social and economic policy; and so on. At most, we can see two things. First, the beginnings of some symbiotic relationships between a couple of – small and unrepresentative – groups and certain sections of the press, notably the Daily Mail, where there appears to be a shared interest in presenting a (largely false) narrative of Christian marginalisation; this is disturbing, partly because of the undeserved prominence it gives to the Christian groups in question, and partly because the narrative is false, and should not be given publicity. Second, there are or have been broad religious coalitions which have pushed hard on specific policy questions: Sunday trading; abortion; and now equal marriage. These coalitions have been ad hoc and single issue, however, with no attempt at entanglement, or at creating a movement that can be mobilised on other issues. There is, clearly, nothing in the UK comparable to the USA’s religious right. The report begins with extensive evidence of media concern over the rise of a UK religious right, which gives justification for devoting time to the question. What it does not explore, which seems to me an interesting question, is why we are so worried about this? The report details dark hints in much of the quality press, reports a whole edition of Dispatches on Channel 4 given to the question, and generally presents a picture of deep concern over any possibility of a religious right emerging in this country. Why? I should say I am no fan of the religious right. My own political views are of course complex, but on the decisive economic issues, I am comfortably to the left of all mainstream parties in Britain.Even on touchstone moral issues, I generally tend to a libertarian position: laws should only restrict our choices when there is a clear and obvious danger of harm. If the American religious right, and those groups that look most like it in the UK, disappeared tomorrow, I would celebrate. But I believe passionately in freedom of speech, and that means believing that people I disagree with are allowed to say their piece as well. Further, I assume that in a mature democracy, this respect for freedom of speech is, or should be, general. The fact that a section of the media/the establishment/’all right-thinking people’ find an imagined UK religious right objectionable is not sufficient reason to object to its (possible) existence, or to complain about its (alleged) public voice. So, why are we concerned? In particular, why are we more concerned about right-wing Christian pressure groups than any other pressure groups? Phrasing the question like this seems to me important: many answers seem to come down to ‘undue influence,’ ‘privileged access,’ and the like. These are proper matters for concern – but, as far as I can see, the concern is about the possibility of the subversion of proper political process, not about the identity of those doing the subverting. Let us agree that any attempt to gain undue influence is improper; still, why the particular concern over right wing religious groups? We might answer by saying that they are the prime suspects – they do this more, and more effectively, than anyone else; if true, this would be good reason to single them out. The claim is profoundly implausible, however: after Leveson, we have very good insight into the levels of access to government allowed to certain businesses; to object to Christian Concern whilst saying nothing about News International would seem to be in gnats and camels territory… So, why the concern? We might say that specifically religious groups should stay out of politics. There are two versions of this claim, one of which is worth considering. One version concerns the ‘secular’ public square, and the idea that religious opinions are private matters which should not intrude on public reasoning. This was a noble vision in Locke and others: only that on which all can agree, because proved indubitably from unassailable starting points, is admissible in public moral reasoning. Unfortunately, this noble position has been shown to have a fatal...

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A US election, social media, and Christian internationalism

In every country in the world bar one, thoughtful Christian people seem to be remarkably united in publicly expressing pleasure and relief at the re-election of Barack Obama as President of the USA; the single exception is the USA itself, where the reaction is considerably more mixed, and the majority position probably leans towards sadness at the outcome, with a significant minority expressing something like horror. How do we make any sense of that?

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