Christianity, 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 MoreOnce again: on being unapologetically charismatic
‘Are you a closet charismatic, Steve?’ I was having lunch with someone I like and respect greatly when he threw this one at me a month or two back. My response was heartfelt and immediate: ‘What do you mean, “closet”?’ On this issue, I’m out and proud – although hardly uncritical of the movement as a whole, or in its various strands. Because of this, I initially looked seriously at the first reports from the ‘Strange Fire’ conference that happened across the pond a while back; I have to admit that I quickly lost interest: there are some serious theological criticisms to be made of the charismatic movement, but there was no-one on that platform capable of making them. I picked up a farrago of unsubstantiated assertion, inaccurate history, poor exegesis, and – well, generally, it wasn’t good, and I quickly tuned out. One point stuck with me from what little I read, though. My friend Andrew Wilson, who clearly has far more patience and Christian charity than I do, engaged seriously with some of the arguments presented at the conference on the Think Theology blog here; I want to pick up just on one theme, albeit a rather central one: the definition of ‘charismatic’. Andrew quotes, and accepts, a definition offered at the SF conference by Tom Pennington: to be ‘charismatic’ is to support the continuation of the ‘miraculous gifts’. I am not convinced by this definition. My concern with this is simple, and deeply partial, in the sense that it is based only on my own experience and knowledge only, and not on any serious research. The charismatic movement which I know might formally be characterised theologically by its belief about certain spiritual gifts, but this is some distance from its lived concerns and interests. Andrew makes the point that the ‘charismatic/cessationist’ debate is not about belief in continuing miracles: conversion – God giving new life to someone dead in their trespasses and sins – remains the fundamental miracle of the church’s experience, and is believed and rejoiced in on all sides of this debate. I want to push this further, though: consider the ‘gift of healing’: on the ‘cessationist’ side, I have never met a pastor who does not pray seriously for God’s healing for his/her flock when they are ill; on the ‘charismatic’ side, I do not think I have met anyone who claims to have ‘the gift of healing’ (I know they exist; my point is that much – perhaps most – charismatic life is not narrated in these terms). I know many people – including one of my own children – who can give serious testimony to seeing instantaneous and apparently-miraculous healing happening in response to prayer; but the language of a ‘gift of healing’ is not the way these testimonies would be framed. Similarly, I think of people in congregations I have led (or been a part of) who would regularly prophesy in our worship times; none ever (in my hearing) claimed a ‘gift of prophecy’; that was not their self-understanding of how they were ministering. Again, I stress, I am reflecting on my own experience – but I have been on the speaking or leadership teams of several major charismatic conferences in the UK over the last decade; in some of these prophecy, healing, and salvation were daily realities; I never recall hearing the language of ‘gift of healing/prophecy’ in any context in any of them. When I have been present when messages in tongues have come, the request from the front has always been something like ‘Did anyone sense God speaking as that message was brought?’ not ‘Does anyone have the gift of interpretation?’ Again, I know lots of people who pray in tongues. It happens that I pray in tongues every day (that rumbling sound you can hear is the collapsing of my academic credibility). I suppose if someone asked me ‘have you received the gift of tongues’ I would say yes, but I do not recall ever being asked that question, and I do not habitually think of my spirituality in those terms; my ordinary daily discipline is to say an office, to pray in tongues, and to intercede for needs I am aware of; during the day, I will respond to events/thoughts in prayer regularly, sometimes praying in tongues, sometimes not (our family prayer time at night is obviously in English exclusively). The daily office – and the family devotional material we use – would be as much a ‘gift’ in my narration of this as the ability to pray in tongues; to speak of ‘the supernatural gift of tongues’ is just...
Read MoreOn negotiating Halloween
Yes, actually I have noticed that global injustice is a bigger issue than Halloween. The question, though, is not that simple.
Read MoreiPray: reviewing prayer apps for iOS
For anyone who ever travels, though, a daily office is a really natural thing to look for on your smartphone; I’ve tried quite a number of prayer apps – I think all the ones currently available for iOS, at least – and have come to some views on what’s good, what’s bad, and what someone really ought to do better soon. Here are some app reviews…
Read MoreOnline objects of spiritual significance
Tomorrow I am heading down to London to take part in the (so far excellent – tomorrow might pull the average down) Westminster Faith Debates series. One of the organisers contacted me and the other speakers to introduce us to an artist, a photographer, who is working on a series of portraits of people holding an object that is of spiritual significance to them. Would we like to take part? Yes, I said, and then today thought about what to take… What objects matter to me, spiritually? My initial thoughts could not get very far beyond a Bible. This seemed rather cliched, and I wondered whether just to pull out. I did what every good digital native would do, and crowd-sourced the question on Twitter. A rapid and fascinating exchange ensued with – as is common in at least that corner of Twitter I inhabit – much humour (WWJD bracelet; plain chocolate digestives); much wisdom (‘take one of your daughters’ – YES! but impractical…; ‘the Bible doesn’t matter as an object, it is the teaching it transmits’…); and some surprising realisations (‘take a cross’ // ‘you know what – I don’t actually own a cross, and I’d never consciously noticed that before …’) Helped by friends, I began to think more deeply. A book that has influenced me? Yes – but my good copies of Brother Lawrence and Mother Julian are in the wrong office for me to take either tomorrow now, and actually today I’d pick Phoebe Palmer’s Promise of the Father over either, which I’ve only ever read online – I have no physical copy to take. There is music – Matt Redman’s You Never Let Go was the track Heather and I both had on repeat the weekend she was hospitalised by blood loss following the birth of our third daughter, and I was hearing of the death of my father. But I don’t think I own the CD – I listen to it on iPlayer. Alongside that there are places – I think of several, but one in particular, a place where I have only ever prayed with deep seriousness, on the seashore, always at dawn or dusk. There, echoing Jacob’s own liminal encounter, I have from time to time wrestled with God – and never yet found my prayers unanswered. But I cannot take chunks of Fife coastline with me to a photoshoot in London! I reflected. I threw an idea out, with an explicit hesitation: what about my iPhone? On that screen I read Scripture, more often than not; follow the daily office that structures my prayers; listen to the music that means most to me; and connect to the very friends who were encouraging, entertaining, and challenging me right then. But the phone itself is not a spiritual object for me – it is, in my eyes, beautifully designed, but to lose it would be a financial issue, but not a spiritual one. And so I realised, with the help of friends: the things I value most spiritually are actually virtual objects. They are texts, or even meanings of texts, regardless of the format they come in – I have a beautiful leather-bound Bible, delightful to stroke, but the words are not more – or less – powerful there than read off a screen. They are recorded tunes, but the physical medium of the recording means nothing to me – I can play You Never Let Go from a dozen different devices, or hear/sing it ‘live’ in a congregation, and the personal impact does not change. And they are relationships: does the screen I skype my family on when away from home matter? No – it is replaceable; but the fact of being able to skype my family matters enormously. I value the Bible, not any particular Bible. And ‘the Bible’ is a virtual object: it is a set of data and meta-data, that can be expressed in various physical forms. My smartphone is profoundly important to me spiritually, because by carrying that one object I have access to the virtual objects necessary or helpful for my own practices of devotion; I have contact with friends who I can pray for, or who will pray for me; and I have access to a wealth of resources, audio, video, text, many of which are profoundly meaningful for stages in my journey so far. I am not sure I can explain all that in a one-line caption, and so I am not sure whether a smart phone is the right object. The Bible still says something clearly and powerfully, something that does matter to me profoundly. I will probably take several things with me...
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