It is with some sadness that I’ve learned of the death of Fr Francis McKenna, one of my former colleagues in Swansea. His funeral homily is on the Belmont Abbey website. It rings very true to my experience of him. He had a great sense of fun and, in the words of one of his students, an acerbic wit.
Go with God, Francis. It was a privilege to have known you.
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He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens to mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like a child.
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Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.
Born thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By thine all-sufficient merit,
Raise us to thy glorious throne.
Charles Wesley
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…to all my US friends. Especially those exiled this side of the Atlantic. You know who you are!
Hope you’re able to get your traditional pumpkin and pecan-based fare.
Even if it is strange.
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OK. I know this vid is doing the rounds. But it gave me a smile.
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Irony alert.
Pajamas Media on ‘Climategate’
So what does this all mean? It does not mean that there is no warming trend or that mankind has not been responsible for at least some of the warming. To claim that as result of these documents is clearly a step too far. However, it is clear that at least one branch of climate science — paleoclimatology — has become hopelessly politicized to the point of engaging in unethical and possibly illegal behavior.
To the extent that paleoclimatology is an important part of the scientific case for action regarding global warming, urgent reassessments need to be made. In the meantime, all those responsible for political action on global warming should stop the process pending the results of inquiries, investigations, and any criminal proceedings. What cannot happen is the process carrying on as if nothing has happened.
‘Unethical and illegal behavior’? What — you mean, like, stealing a load of email? As for the politicization of climate science, the ’skeptics’ have relentlessly been pursuing an essentially political agenda in their approach to this issue ever since it first appeared. Pots and kettles, gentlemen, pots and kettles.
I was surprised by the reaction of George Monbiot to this story.
It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
One of these papers which was published in the journal Climate Research turned out to be so badly flawed that the scandal resulted in the resignation of the editor-in-chief. Jones knew that any incorrect papers by sceptical scientists would be picked up and amplified by climate change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry, who often – as I documented in my book Heat – use all sorts of dirty tricks to advance their cause.
Even so, his message looks awful. It gives the impression of confirming a potent meme circulated by those who campaign against taking action on climate change: that the IPCC process is biased. However good the detailed explanations may be, most people aren’t going to follow or understand them. Jones’s statement, on the other hand, is stark and easy to grasp.
So the head of a serious and respected research outfit should resign because of a PR coup by folk who, let’s not forget, illegally hacked in to a private email system? It’s time to get real about this.
When the dust settles on climategate, the science will still be there. Nothing in this scandal does anything to alter the IPCC assessment or the increasing evidence for the need for action on climate change.
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“What is wrong with capitalism, then, is not that it involves some people being richer than I am. I cannot see the slightest objection to other people being richer than I am; I have no urge to be as rich as everybody else, and no Christian (and indeed no grown-up person) could possibly devote his life to trying to be as rich or richer than others. There are indeed people, very large numbers of people, who are obscenely poor, starving, diseased, illiterate, and it is quite obviously unjust and unreasonable that they should be left in this state while other people or other nations live in luxury; but this has nothing specially to do with capitalism, even though we will never now be able to alter that situation until capitalism has been abolished. You find exactly the same conditions in, say, slave societies and, moreover, capitalism, during its prosperous boom phases, is quite capable of relieving distress at least in fully industrialised societies - this is what the ‘Welfare State’ is all about. What is wrong with capitalism is simply that it is based on human antagonism, and it is precisely here that it comes in conflict with Christianity. Capitalism is a state of war, but not just a state of war between equivalent forces; it involves a war between those who believe in and prosecute war as a way of life, as an economy, and those who do not. The permanent capitalist state of war erupts every now and then into a major killing war, but its so-called peacetime is just war carried on by other means.”
Herbert McCabe, “The Class Struggle and Christian Love”, in God Matters (London: Continuum, 1987, 2005), pp. 192-93.
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PamBG has a very helpful post: Capitalism as a Belief System
In many ways, I’m still a “foreigner” here in the US and one of the things that has struck me is how much capitalism appears to be for many people in the US a belief system as well as a way of running an economy. After twenty years working in the equity markets, my own opinion is that capitalism is, historically, the least worst way of running an economy that human history has devised.
It’s also my opinion however, that as a belief system, capitalism stinks. And I believe that capitalism is the number one belief system held by US society. Christians may say that they believe in the Lordship of Christ, but in actual fact we believe in the Lordship of Profits. We prove this every day by the way we live our lives.
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In advance of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, a group of 26 scientists have issued The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report, which aims to highlight the main issues for the negotiations.
The most significant recent climate change findings are:
Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present –day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2oC. Even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increase the chances of exceeding 2oC warming.
Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-based warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.190C per decade, in every good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short- term fluctuations are occurring as usual but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.
Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.
Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. This area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.
Current sea-level rise underestimates: Satellites show great global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be 80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.
Sea-level prediction revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4, for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as – 2 meters sea-level rise by 2100. Sea-level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperature have been stabilized and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.
Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets. Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds (“tipping points”) increase strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.
The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2oC above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society – with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases – need to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.
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“To what may we liken [the] distinctive theology [of Karl Barth]? It has a character of its own. To come upon it is like entering a light and roomy and beautiful church with wide-open windows and open doors that invite an entrance and welcome the everyday world…. He was convinced that the church does not serve people aright, or protect them properly against dangers, if in doing so it is diverted from its own worship of God and interrupts it.
“His theology is focused on such worship as the community’s service of God. It is itself an act of worship and service, related to the reformers in the conviction that it is worship in the field of thought. Not by coming up short intellectually! When asked concerning the significance of reason in his theology, he said: ‘I use it.’ Regarding laziness of thought, he said that ’stupidity is also sin.’ Yet theology draws its life from the Holy Spirit, who is ‘an express friend of a healthy human understanding.’ But: the service of God on the field of thought! Theology carries out this worshipful service in that it understands clearly that ‘theology can be performed … only in the act of prayer.’…
“Worship services have good reason to be beautiful. Similarly a theology that combines work and prayer, even though it involves sighing and stammering, will have to be ‘a particularly beautiful science. Indeed, we can confidently say that it is the most beautiful of all sciences…. It is an extreme form of Philistinism to find, or to be able to find, theology distasteful….’
“Barth’s theology does not only query theology regarding its spiritual substance. For all the questioning, theology has its own distinctive quality. Even where it is modern, it repudiates what is coquettishly novel. Even where it stands in the tradition of the church, it plows a new furrow. When speaking about what concerns it deeply, it refrains from subjective emotionality. And yet when it thinks ’strictly objectively,’ it does so with perceptible warmth. It speaks often in an elementary way yet avoids catchwords. It goes into detail at times but steers clear of what is unimportant. It focuses on the singular center of faith yet sees it from different concrete angles. It does not address a detail without keeping the total picture in view. It gets down to the root of things yet keeps in mind the possible and necessary ramifications. It steadfastly puts to scripture the question whether this is how it is, and it does not separate from dogmatics the ethical question: ‘What shall we do?’ It professes a definite knowledge but does not ride certain principles to death, because it is always engaged in a long march forwards, without ever roving around short of breath and purpose. Even in difficult movements of thought it never loses the childlikeness of faith. Starting from faith, it relentlessly seeks insight, enlightenment. It never flees from problems, and it recalls forgotten issues… In addressing its temporal context, his theology was more like the needle of a compass than a weather vane…. He knew that it was tied to the object of its knowledge, and yet it moved in the air of freedom in which it could appropriate the insights even of non-Christians. It distrusted the force of its own logic and asked always whether its efforts of thought might not involve a ‘flight from the living God.’ Nevertheless, it was always sure of its subject mater… Adopting a phrase of Nietzsche, we might call Barth’s theology a ‘joyous science.’”
Eberhard Busch, The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromily, eds. Darrell L. Guder and Judith J. Guder (Grand Rapids / Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 13-15.
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The other day, Kim quoted from Stanley Hauerwas on ministerial formation. Allow me to repeat a morsel:
Medical education, therefore, entails moral formation that those who teach in divinity schools can only envy. Why are those who run medical schools able to form students to be physicians in a manner we are not able to train students in divinity schools? Again I think the answer is quite simple: in this day few think that an inadequately trained minister may damage their salvation, but we do believe an inadequately trained doctor may hurt us. Accordingly we often care a great deal more who our doctor is than who our priest may be.
If I’d been more on the ball recently, I’d have picked up that Angela Shier-Jones has been addressing a similar theme in a similarly forthright fashion. Here she is arguing that all ministers should have a theology degree before they are ordained
It’s not just that I am ashamed of the poor standard of ministerial education compared to our European and American counterparts, I am also horrified at the biblical and theological illiteracy which we foster on our people as a result.
The lack of ability of all too many ministers to engage critically and analytically with the rest of the world using the resources of the faith, (Scripture, reason, tradition and experience) is one of the main reasons that the gospel is often deemed irrelevant and anachronistic. It is widely thought by those who must wrestle with global problems such as ecology, justice, the war on terror and human trafficking that the Christian faith is as much use in such matters as belief in the tooth fairy is.
Surely the best way to begin to change this and to recover a national voice which can speak confidently and intelligently of Your concerns in these matters, is for the Church to follow the lead of the government. All ministers from 2013 should need a minimum qualification of a recognised Bachelors degree in theology or ministry before they can be ordained.
The fear that this will prevent people from offering for ordained ministry must surely be set alongside the fear of what is happening to the Gospel because we don’t!
Her follow-up post on Wesley’s lists is worth looking at, too. Guaranteed to rile some, but sometimes feathers have to ruffled.
I don’t know that I would go as far as Angela, but I believe she is right in every respect that matters. How about you?
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The hacking of the Climate Research Unit’s email system has been all over the blogosphere for several days. It has the ’skeptics’ excited. Friends of science’s response is representative
The Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) computer system at the University of East Anglia in the UK was hacked and over a thousand sensitive emails and many important data files were made available on the internet. The emails show that the CRU scientists manipulated data to support the global warming agenda of the IPCC. The CRU provides a temperature index used by the IPCC and climate scientists.
The Telegraph UK reports that the emails from some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory suggest:
“Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.”
The truth is, of course, that these emails reveal no such thing. In fact, you might be tempted to wonder why, if the science is a obvious as they frequently claim, this is the best the ’skeptics’ can do? For what these emails have “revealed” is that the scientists working on climate change are as human as the rest of us and that private email isn’t written for circulation (that’s what the word private means). Neither of these insights is very revelatory.
This morning there was an interesting conversation on Radio 4 between Lord Lawson (a noted climate change skeptic) and Prof Robert Watson of the University of East Anglia. I post it here for your edification.
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Ben Bradley is cycling to Copenhagen
I’m a pragmatic kind-of fellow and having understood a little about advocacy and campaigning as part of my time working at an international relief and development charity, I thought it was right to offer my time and enjoyment of cycling to the cause.
I think we can all see that I couldn’t exactly justify flying out to Copenhagen for the COP15 event. It was for this reason that my employers The Methodist Church of Great Britain had been put off sending a representative. So I offered myself and teamed up with Christian Aid who have pooled together 30 or so other passionate folks to cycle there as well.
I do think the time is now, I do think it will be hard to implement, I do have hope that there is going to be the political will to sign on the dotted line, and I know that people are already suffering and dying because we haven’t already acted decisively on this.
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Jesus — the name high over all,
in hell or earth or sky;
angels and men before it fall,
and devils fear and fly.
Jesus — the name to sinners dear,
The name to sinners given!
It scatters all their guilty fear,
it turns their hell to heaven.
Jesus — the prisoner’s fetters breaks,
And bruises Satan’s head;
Power into strengthless souls it speaks,
And life unto the dead.
O that the world might taste and see
the riches of his grace!
The arms of love that compass me
Would all mankind embrace.
His only righteousness I show,
his saving grace proclaim;
’tis all my business here below
to cry, “Behold the Lamb!”
Happy, if with my latest breath
I might but gasp his name,
Preach him to all and cry in death,
“Behold, behold the Lamb!”
Charles Wesley
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From BBC News:
A Methodist minister has been sent hate mail because he has allowed his church in Greater Manchester to be used by a group helping refugees.
Reverend Phil Mason, from The Victoria Hall in Bolton, said he was concerned for his family after receiving the notes in the last few months.
But despite their abusive nature, he said he had forgiven the authors.
The hall supports the Befriending Refugees and Asylum Seekers group, which runs a weekly drop-in session.“It’s very hard when you open a letter and you see some of the aggressive language that’s put in there,” Mr Mason told BBC Radio Manchester.
“Your stomach turns and your immediate thought is concern about the safety of the family and yourself.
“But then you begin to see beyond the language and just realise that people’s perceptions of asylum seekers and refugees are very distorted.”
Mr Mason has not reported the incidents to Greater Manchester Police, despite the offensive content of the letters.
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…an end to the locking up of children
This just in from the Methodist Church:
Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Church leaders have called on people to send an extra card this Christmas, to Immigration Minister Phil Woolas MP, asking him to end the detention of children in the asylum system.
Revd David Gamble, President of the Methodist Conference, said: “Britain is the only country in Europe which locks up the innocent children of people who have had their asylum claims declined. Every year hundreds of children are sent to detention centres; most of them are under five years old and many of them are locked up for more than a month. Holding innocent children in detention centres can never be justified.”
People should send their cards to Phil Woolas MP at the Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF and can find tips for drafting their Christmas message at www.jointpublicissues.org.uk/childrenindetention.
Revd Jonathan Edwards, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, added, “Many Christians support projects that offer help to people seeking sanctuary and know the pain caused by present policies. On average each household in Britain sends 76 Christmas cards each year, and we are asking people to send just one more to let Phil Woolas know that what we really want for Christmas is an end to the detention of children.”
Revd John Marsh, Moderator of the United Reformed Church General Assembly, commented: “Policy makers have a difficult job – we understand that. But research has shown that detaining children can damage their mental and emotional well-being. We pray that during this season of goodwill the Government will have a change of heart. Other countries manage without detaining children, so why should Britain be any different?”
The three Churches are supporting the Sanctuary Pledge, which asks all General Election candidates to agree not to use the issue of people seeking sanctuary as a political football during the election campaign.
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This article from USA Today is doing the rounds on Twitter
“Pray for Obama.”
A kind and generous statement.
Or is it?
A crop of bumper stickers and T-shirts emblazoned with that call to prayer for the president have appeared for sale recently online through make-it-yourself outlets such as Zazzle.com and CafePress.com. And most of the “Pray for Obama” slogans are accompanied by a scripture reference: “Psalm 109:8.”
In the New International Version translations, that verse reads; May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.
That same Psalm goes on:
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.
May his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the next generation.
May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord; may the sin of his mother never be blotted out.
May their sins always remain before the Lord, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
Nice.
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Of course, it’s not real. But it gave me a much-needed smile.
(H/T: Hacking Christianity)
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