The blog of Richard Hall, a Methodist Minister in Wales.

“Actually, the Bible no longer remains just what it was…. It is very important that we keep this in mind and radically reflect on it. Many members of congregations no longer do so, … they hold to the conviction that the Scripture is totally God’s word, inerrant, and their criticism of it is sacrilegious. The fact that Paul and James contradict each other, that in his sayings and doings Jesus corrected Moses, that in Antioch not even apostles were in agreement and were irreconcilably estranged, that there is continual report of parties, even of deserters in Israel and earliest Christianity - all this makes no impression on those who simply will not have it so. Very often one reads only what one already believes, and the great poverty of Christianity stems not least from the fact that it always or mostly finds in the Bible what it already knew, thus actually intends self-confirmation. It is no longer known that the Gospels are collections of a thousandfold variety of tradition. There is refusal to hear that God does not say the same thing to parents, children, and grandchildren, to the point that he might be replaced with a phonograph record. It is denied that the Spirit is critical and engages in criticism, because self-criticism is not allowed. Finally, many biblical utterances are not known at all because they are not understood or are skipped over. For each of us the Bible is and remains an unknown book in which something new is continually discovered.

“It would be an uncommon enrichment of our life as well as that of our congregations if we were to read Scripture again with the continual question, What is it that I have not yet known, considered, or understood? ….

Much more would have to be said about this than is possible here. On the basis of our text [Galatians 3:1-9, 26-29] we have merely wanted to highlight the fact that the Spirit makes everything new and continually demythologizes, rescues us from the sphere of the flesh. He does this even with reference to the Bible, which is not to be interpreted merely on the basis of its letters, rendering us blind worshippers and slaves of past tradition. Christians are also free toward Scripture. They know that they do not have God’s word clearly without it, thus must seek salvation in it ever anew, since God will speak to them through it… A proclamation at whose center there are slogans of any kind is at least dubious and probably false, whether the slogans read order or liberation, reconciliation or piety. Ideologies almost always lurk behind them… But since there are many different portraits of Jesus, Paul adds that he has intended to preach no one but the Crucified. With, from, and toward the Crucified the Bible is God’s word, while otherwise it remains a document of past religiosity. Only with, from, and toward him does it lead to freedom, rather than leading us to founder in a thicket of laws. Only there does the Spirit speak from it.”

In short, with Luther, the Word of God comes to us as adversarius noster; or again, extending Luther, “Crux probat omnia - etiam scripturam.”

Ernst Käsemann, “Galatians 3:1-9, 26-29: Children of the Spirit”, in Onbeing a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene (Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 103-05.

{ 15 comments }

There are some pretty awful prayers out there. The Sinner’s Prayer is an awful prayer for all sorts of reasons that have been well rehearsed, not least by evangelicals, particularly the version where, as the climax to a manna-back guaranteed four-part plan of salvation, you say it on the Naughty Step (otherwise known as the Anxious Seat). The Prayer of Jabez is another God-awful prayer. I think of it as the Thirty Days Mind-Loss Manifest Destiny Prayer: daily reiteration for a month of the petition “enlarge my border” and Bingo! – you’re a soteriological imperialist.

But the most awful prayer of all has got to be the Justwanna Prayer. This is a corporate prayer. It works best when you form a circle (facing inwards) and sit slouching forward, in something like the position one is told to assume by flight attendants in case of a plane crash. (Holding hands is optional, particularly among hormone-rich adolescents who might thereby be sexually distracted). Then off goes one of the group: “Father, I/we justwanna praise you for this, and justwanna thank you for that, and justwanna ask you for the other thing.” Why is this so awful?

One reason is the brain-numbing heart-sinking spirit-sapping repetition of the phrase, as it is invariably picked up and echoed by the next pray-er, and then the one after that, and then the one after that, … “world without end”. Often the initial vocative “Father” is also religiously repeated, as if God might suddenly forget his paternal identity and think he’s a Second Cousin.

What makes the repetition even worse is that the “justwanna” is grammatically redundant. Why “we justwanna thank you”? Why not, simply, “we thank you”? What work does the “justwanna” do? Syntactically, none whatsoever. It should be struck out with a red prayer pen.

Actually, however, the “justwanna” does do some work – work, however that makes you justwanna puke. It goes with the body-language of the slouch. You might even call this the Uriah Heap Prayer for its “umbleness”. Humility? No, false humility, because the obsequiousness suggests (a) that we are not really asking for all that much, so it ill behoves God not to give us what we ask for, unless (b) we justwanna do great things for God, like have a mission and save the atheists, Muslims, and lost folk at St. Gargoyle’s from eternal, painful, if pointless, perdition, in which case, still with hand-wringing self-abasement, we give God alone the glory.

Finally, one might ask why this atrocious prayer has such staying power. The answer is not far to seek (apart from sheer inertia). The Justwanna Prayer is a shibboleth. It’s the badge that you are a certain kind of Christian, the saved kind of Christian. It’s a sort of Masonic handshake: those who don’t punctuate their prayers with “justwanna” are not part of the guild, and must either be cold-shouldered or initiated into this arcane rite. Perhaps by first saying the Sinner’s Prayer or the Prayer of Jabez.

{ 7 comments }

Why are we here?

We are not here to “do a bunk” from the world.
We are not here to “get in touch with our ‘inner selves’”.
We are not here to “recharge our batteries”.
And God help us if we are here to “make a deal” with God:
“Lord, if you do this for me, then I’ll do that for you.”

Why are we here?

We are here because the world is not right,
because we are not right,
and because we are angry about injustice,
sad about suffering,
and ashamed of ourselves.

Why are we here?

We are here because God so loves the world
that he is making it right,
turning it into a new creation;
and because God so loves us
that he is making us right.
turning us into a new people,
making us like Jesus:
faithful, truthful, peaceful, hopeful.
Paul writes: “For those who are in Christ, the whole universe is new”
(II Corinthians 5:17).

We are here because God, in his grace, has called us here.
What else could we do but come?
With gratitude and joy, in the Holy Spirit, let us worship God!

{ 10 comments }

COME, sinners, to the gospel feast,
Let every soul be Jesu’s guest;
Ye need not one be left behind,
For God hath bidden all mankind.

Sent by my Lord, on you I call,
The invitation is to ALL:
Come, all the world; come, sinner, thou!
All things in Christ are ready now.

Come, all ye souls by sin opprest,
Ye restless wanderers after rest,
Ye poor, and maimed, and halt, and blind,
In Christ a hearty welcome find.

Come, and partake the gospel feast;
Be saved from sin; in Jesus rest;
O taste the goodness of your God,
And eat his flesh, and drink his blood!

Ye vagrant souls, on you I call;
(O that my voice could reach you all!)
Ye all may now be justified,
Ye all may live, for Christ hath died.

My message as from God receive,
Ye all may come to Christ, and live;
O let his love your hearts constrain,
Nor suffer him to die in vain!

His love is mighty to compel;
His conquering love consent to feel,
Yield to his love’s resistless power,
And fight against your God no more.

See him set forth before your eyes,
That precious, bleeding sacrifice!
His offered benefits embrace,
And freely now be saved by grace.

This is the time; no more delay!
This is the acceptable day,
Come in, this moment, at his call,
And live for him who died for all.

Charles Wesley

{ 0 comments }

Near the end of his time at Notre Dame, where he had become a member at Broadway United Methodist Church, Hauerwas, with his family, spent six months teaching in England. In South Bend Hauerwas always took his son Adam with him to worship. So, in London …

“We thought we should go to a Methodist church. We found one some distance beyond Portobello Road. For a month, we walked an hour each way to go to church with the Methodists. The church was described as a ‘people’s church,’ which meant that it was mainly black. We liked the people but hated the liturgy. The Sunday that we sang ‘God is like a magic penny, you lose him and he comes rolling back,’ I told Adam we were not coming back.”

He should have tried a URC. He might have got “If I were a butterfly”.

Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (London: SCM, 2010), p. 168.

{ 4 comments }

Thanks to Darryl Dash

{ 1 comment }

…. I certainly count myself a Christian. Or, more accurately, I have friends who count me as a Christian. I have, moreover, tried to live a life I hope is unintelligible if the God we Christians worship does not exist.

I believe what I write, or rather, by writing I learn to believe. But then I do not put much stock in “believing in God.” The grammar of “belief” invites a far too rationalistic account of what it means to be a Christian. “Belief” implies propositions about which you get to make up your mind before you know the work thay are meant to do. Does that mean I do not believe in God? Of course not, but I am far more interested in what a declaration of belief entails for how I live my life.

It may be that I am not interested in “belief” because God is just not “there” for me. God is “there” for some… But God is not there for me in the same way. Prayer never comes easy for me. I am not complaining. I assume this to be God’s gift to help me think hard about what it means to worship God in a world where God is no longer simply “there.”

Charles Taylor has characterized “our age” as one of “exclusive humanism.” God is a “hypothesis” most people no longer need - and “most people” includes those who say they believe in God. Indeed, when most people think it “important” that they believe in God, you have an indication that the God they believe in cannot be the God who raised Jesus from the dead or Israel from Egypt.

I am a card-carrying citizen of “our age.” I live most of my life as if God did not exist….

…. It is not that I lack faith, but that I always have the sense that I am such a beginner when it comes to knowing how to be a Christian.

“How” is the heart of the matter for me.

Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (London: SCM, 2010), pp. ix-xi.

{ 2 comments }

I’m conscious that since he changed from doing a weekly to a daily round up of Methodist blogdom, I haven’t really given Allan Bevere much of a mention. But he’s doing a cracking job and offering a great service to those of us who try to keep up with what’s happening across Methodism.

{ 0 comments }

The “idolatry of the actual” is the target of Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism and History (2003) by J.C.D. Clark, Hall Distinguished Professor of British History at the University of Kansas (who has also taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and the University of Chicago). Clark diagnoses and treats the chronic intellectual illness of “presentism”, the privileging of the present, the discarding of the past except as nostalgia, always a sentimental distortion, or the deployment of it for utilitarian purposes, at best in law, at worst for propaganda. Along the way Clark explores the nature of nationalism and the guff often talked in the name of “tradition”. There is a particularly good chapter on “Challenging the American Public Myth” - “History, indeed, labours under a major handicap in all societies suffused with a sense of their own rightness or inevitability”; while in the chapter “The End of the Special Relationship” there is the salient observation that “British exceptionalism and American exceptionalism were, indeed, linked themes, but the first has been fundamentally reconfigured where the second has grown in strength.”

This isn’t a book review, it’s a cri de coeur (actually, it’s just a rant) piggybacking on a book, but The Shadow of the Present is a pertinent piece of polemic against Whiggism and “the [prevailing] assumption … that events and episodes are more ‘relevant’ to the present the closer they are to it in time.” On the contrary: “For individuals as for nations, the most formative events are not necessarily the most recent: they may come early in the life of either.” (I guess Christians should know this.) Clark argues that the present is always “shadowed” by the past, confirming Faulkner’s famous dictum that “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”

But for Clark it is not only, with George Santayana, that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, it is also that “To forget our history is not to be free, but to be mad.” This combination is the most worrying feature of presentism: it is an ideology of pathological hopelessness; its surface optimism is, in fact, infused by a deep-seated pessimism that sabatoges the future.

Of course there is nothing new in Clark’s thesis. As Cicero wrote: Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. (To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.) But then the people who need to know it wouldn’t know it, now would they?

(Btw, the patronising hauteur of the prevailing puerility, particularly in ecclesiastical circles, really pisses me off - e.g., the church fathers and reformers were writing in a pre-critical, pre-scientific era, so as people “come of age” (liberals usually, appealing, unbelievably, to Bonhoeffer, not to mention simplisticaly assuming a monolithic Enlightenment), we needn’t take what they say too seriously; or Karl Barth is passé (when he continues to make most modern theologians look like a bunch of odd-jobbers, if not bullshitters - cf. Stanley Hauerwas’ comment that there is “a ‘no bullshit’ quality to Barth’s thought”.)

Anyway, that’s my rant on what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery”.

{ 4 comments }

Bishop Alan gives us an introduction to the Hungarian language. Who’d have thought that reading blogs could be so educational? And who would have guessed that the Church of England has Hungarian-speaking bishops? Now if only I could work out the difference between barásnak and baráshoz, I’m sure I’d be a better, more rounded, individual.

It’s all the excuse I need to share this classic slice of Monty Python.

{ 3 comments }

Blogger Daryl Lang has caused quite a stir with his post “Hallowed Ground”. Daryl is a resident of New York and decided to examine just how sacred the ground of the proposed Muslim community centre can be considered. So he walked around taking photographs in its vicinity, and at other sites a similar distance from the World Trade Center site.

His pictures are, to say the least revealing.

{ 30 comments }

From the NY Times Green blog we learn that a study published in the journal Science shows that climate change has caused a noticeable reduction in global plant growth

“Earth has done an ecological about-face,” a NASA statement said. “Global plant productivity that once flourished under warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline, struck by the stress of drought.”

Research over the past two decades had shown terrestrial plant growth on the rise, with higher temperatures and longer growing seasons linked to a 6 percent increase in global plant productivity from 1982 to 1999. Between 2000 and 2009, terrestrial plant growth declined by 1 percent.

“This is a pretty serious warning that warmer temperatures are not going to endlessly improve plant growth,” Steven Running, a biologist at the University of Montana in Missoula and co-author of the report, said in the NASA statement.

One of the arguments that the ’skeptics’ have routinely trotted out is that a warmer Earth will inevitably mean greater harvests.

Looks like they’re wrong. Again.

{ 7 comments }

Drinking water before meals helps dieting, according to a report on the BBC.

Scientists from Virginia found that slimmers can lose an average of 5lb extra if they drink two glasses of water three times a day before meals.
They tested the theory on 48 older adults, split into two groups, over 12 weeks.
While drinking water can make you feel full on zero calories, say researchers, too much water can also lead to serious health problems.

I don’t think I’d normally have been tempted to post this, but coming hard-on-the-heels of yesterday’s post it seemed appropriate.

And let’s be honest. Having a couple of glasses of water before your dinner is a lot easier than getting your theology right.

{ 0 comments }

More good stuff from Jay Vorhees, this time looking at the ‘ground zero mosque’ from the perspective of US history.

…the concerns raised about Muslim expansionism in recent weeks shouldn’t surprise us, for they are the extension of the John Birch Society raised concerns about the election of a Roman Catholic president during the election of 1960. While the media has focused on the Ground Zero mosque for it’s symbolism, the fact is that in places like Murfreesboro and Antioch, TN there are even more heated battles over the ability of Muslims to build community centers and places of worship. In these places there is no symbolic consideration, no hallowed grounds to protect. No, the concerns raised are blatant NIMBYism, driven by the same motivations that led Puritans to tie Baptists to dunking stools and hold them under water until they drowned. And as folks search for justifications for their fears, the rhetoric rises and political leaders co-opt those fears for political purposes.

Another hit, I think.

{ 7 comments }

Jay Vorhees writes of his struggle with his weight. It’s hard not to admire a blogger who is prepared to be so vulnerable in his writing.

Last week I got a call from Bob Smietana, the religion reporter at the Tennessean. It seems like Bob is always calling looking for some sort of response on the latest study or some political happening, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that he was looking for comments on a recent study out of Duke on the unhealthiness of clergy folk. I hadn’t read the study, but replied that I wasn’t very surprised, talking about how the pressures of schedule lead to bad eating habits, and a general aversion to exercise. Along the way I made an off hand remark that my running from place to place often leads me to too many McDonald’s drive-through runs. I didn’t think much about it . . . I was just talking to Bob . . . until the story came out the next day and I find myself as the poster child for clergy unhealth.

There’s a couple of warnings to the rest of us in this piece. First, don’t make off hand comments to reporters. (Of course, it’s easy to be wise when you’re not the one taking the phone call). Second, don’t underestimate the speed at which strangers will rush to judgment. Many of the comments at the Tennessean are somewhat less than helpful.

Of course, it is easy to be judgmental about the ‘weight issues’ of others. I’ve done it myself. So I’m grateful to Jay for the reminder that what we all need is “a supportive community who is willing to walk beside me, who doesn’t judge but rather encourages, who is willing to not only share words but is willing to give the time to walk with me”.

A vision of what the church could be?

{ 18 comments }

Mark Byron :: Having a sacred cow

It (ground zero) housed a number of key financial futures markets and a number of high-powered business offices, but it wasn’t a holy site to say the least. Unless money and international finance is your god.

It has become a memorial for the people who died there, but it is sacred only to the American civil religion that blends generic Ten Commandments-style theism with patriotism. A bit of free-market economics gets folded into that faith as well, so that the Word Trade Center’s demolition-by-plane was seen as a jab at American neoliberal economics.
…

Jesus ran the money-changers out of the Temple. Modern patriots are trying to make the modern money-changers HQ into a new temple and want no ideological competition in the neighborhood, especially from seeming fellow-travelers of the folks who trashed the Twin Towers.

It’s an important place of remembrance, yes. But it isn’t worth trashing the Constitution to keep competing visions from that part of Manhattan.

Prof. John Stackhouse - Ground Zero Mosque: It’s a Simple Question

But it seems to me that this is not a difficult matter to understand or decide. In fact, it comes down to an utterly simple question. Either we think all Muslims are somehow implicated in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or we don’t.

If all Muslims are thus implicated, then of course they shouldn’t be allowed to build near Ground Zero. Nor should they be allowed to build near anything else that matters to the rest of us. In fact, they should all be rounded up and exiled as the clear and present dangers that they are.

If we don’t think all Muslims are implicated in the attack, then of course they should be allowed to build a mosque or community centre or whatever the heck they want to build wherever the zoning and funding will allow—just like any other citizens.

(Thanks to Bene Diction for the Stackhouse link)

{ 24 comments }

COME, O thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with thee;
With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell thee who I am,
My misery and sin declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name,
Look on thy hands, and read it there;
But who, I ask thee, who art Thou?
Tell me Thy name, and tell me now.

In vain thou strugglest to get free,
I never will unloose my hold!
Art thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of thy love unfold;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new, unutterable name?
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell;
To know it now resolved I am;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

’Tis all in vain to hold thy tongue
Or touch the hollow of my thigh;
Though every sinew be unstrung,
Out of my arms thou shalt not fly;
Wrestling I will not let thee go
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long?
I rise superior to my pain,
When I am weak, then I am strong
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail.

My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath Thy weighty hand,
Faint to revive, and fall to rise;
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let Thee go
Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquered by my instant prayer;
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me if thy name is Love.

‘Tis Love! ’tis Love! thou diedst for me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, universal love thou art;
To me, to all, thy bowels move;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

My prayer hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;
Through faith I see thee face to face,
I see thee face to face, and live!
In vain I have not wept and strove;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

I know thee, Saviour, who thou art.
Jesus, the feeble sinner’s friend;
Nor wilt thou with the night depart.
But stay and love me to the end,
Thy mercies never shall remove;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

The Sun of righteousness on me
Hath rose with healing in his wings,
Withered my nature’s strength; from thee
My soul its life and succour brings;
My help is all laid up above;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Contented now upon my thigh
I halt, till life’s short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness, I
On thee alone for strength depend,
Nor have I power from thee to move;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey,
Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o’ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart fly home,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Charles Wesley

I understand that Isaac Watts, himself an incomparable hymn-writer, regarded this as worth all the hymns that he had written. It is a marvellous journey into the scriptures, its 14 verses (!) weaving the story of Jacob wrestling God at Peniel with a rich variety of Biblical allusions and Wesley’s own experience of spiritual struggle and liberation.

Jacob’s struggle, and Wesley’s poetic commentary upon it, remind us that engaging with God is not simply a matter of ‘praying the prayer’ and walking into prosperity and blessing. As Kim* is wont to remind us, “God is the wound, not the bandage.” Jacob leaves the stranger having been given a new name, a new life — but also a limp. Matthew Henry puts it this way in his commentary, “Wrestling believers may obtain glorious victories, and yet come off with broken bones; for ‘When they are weak, then they are strong’, weak in themselves, but strong in Christ”.

The struggle of the believer who wrestles with God is the struggle to know the God whose nature and name is Love. This is therefore always a struggle of faith, not despair. The fight may be hard, but our companion is the God who wounds only to heal and who has himself been wounded for our sake. The hands on which our names have been written (Isaiah 49:16) are the same that bear the marks of crucifixion, hands which lift us up and lead us home.

{ 8 comments }

1st Hope Scouts have a blog.

That’s it, really. Actually, we’ve had it a while, but for some reason the search engines don’t seem to be picking it up. It’s a bit odd: the main site is being indexed OK.

Anyhow, this is a gratuitous attempt to get the 1st Hope Scouts blog noticed by google.

{ 2 comments }

I visited the Blue Planet Aquarium today with Mrs H, daughter number 2 and a young friend. It’s a great place to spend a couple of hours. The entry price is quite high, but if you find vouchers it can be made quite reasonable.

The main selling point of the place is a very large tank which is reckoned to house, amongst other things, Europe’s biggest collection of sharks. An important feature of the tank is this tunnel made of clear acrylic so that you can literally walk among the various sea animals.

I’m not sure whether it was an effect of the curved acrylic, the water, or a combination of the two, but I found walking through the tunnel quite disconcerting. Things shifted in my vision in unexpected ways and sometimes different perspectives were presented almost at once. Most disconcerting.

Not unlike some conversations on the internet.

{ 4 comments }