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Archive for Thinking Aloud
The Struggle to be Truthful: Thinking Aloud by Simon Barrow
I’m not a journalistic pessimist. Overall, I think the massive expansion of the media is a good thing. I also believe that truthfulness has a way of continuing to assert itself, if we are serious in attending to it. But that takes some hard work, and in the meantime there can be little doubt that modern reporting and commentary is frequently tempted to put passion well ahead of precision. A couple of recent items concerning religion might serve as an example.
Last week, a row broke out after The Times ‘reported’ the latest ‘findings’ of a well-established agency called Christian Research, which issues regular data on Religious Trends. The headlines were dramatic enough. The Times itself had Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour, followed by correspondent Ruth Gledhill’s God-shaped hole will lead to loss of national sense of identity. The Telegraph weighed in with Practising Muslims ‘will outnumber Christians by 2035’, while the Daily Mail’s similar take was ‘More practising Muslims than Christians in Britain by 2035’.
Then the interest groups got involved. The Church of England pronounced that Latest Religious Trends publication ‘flawed and dangerously misleading’. The National Secular Society said that the C of E was attempting to “shoot the messenger” and labelled the Telegraph’s religion correspondent as “not caring about the overwhelming evidence” that the church is “dying”. Meanwhile, Benita Hewitt defended the data (published by the Bible Society) by drawing attention both to the inadequacy of its original reporting and to the conclusion jumping of much subsequent comment.
Papal authority and human rights: Thinking Aloud by Simon Barrow
Simon Barrow has been thinking about the tensions within the Roman Catholic Church between a traditional vision of authority, and a desire to engage with human rights and the modern world.
Whose rights, whose wrongs?
Benedict XVI’s recent, high profile visit to the United States highlighted the coincidence of two anniversaries. The first was his own inauguration on 24 April 2005 as 265th reigning Pope, Bishop of Rome, spiritual head of the 1.2 billion strong Roman Catholic Church, and Sovereign of the Vatican City State. The second, to be marked fully later this year, was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed by UN General Assembly in resolution 217 A (III) on 10 December 1948.
The pontiff embodies three kinds of combined headship – the ecclesiastical, the spiritual and the political. As such, his office is the supreme expression of a Christendom vision of the relation of heavenly and temporal authority in one inherited throne, invested in locus Christi. Here is a universal claim to supervening moral authority, one that causes considerable controversy within and without.
The United Nations declaration, by contrast, is the result of an agreement among states and their peoples (what is somewhat vaguely deemed “the international community”) arising from a long historical struggle, involving people of many faiths and none. Its aim is to give practical expression to an inalienable sense of human dignity, worth and mutual obligation which can be seen to be grounded (though not without disputation) in significant strands of Jewish, Christian, humanist, secular and Muslim thought.
Global ethics and institutional inquisitions
For some, the UN declaration is part of the quest for a truly global ethic arising from major points of inter-religious, inter-cultural and cross-political convergence among those “of good faith”, believers and otherwise. Such an ethic invites cooperation through consent, self-limitation and relationship (covenant) as well as regulation (contract).
One of the key figures in this quest is Professor Hans Kung, the prominent Catholic intellectual. There is, of course, an irony here; one which points to the underlying tension between some institutional religious interests and the search for universal human goods within a plural framework. For this is the same Hans Kung who, after forming a collegial academic relationship with one Josef Ratzinger (they shared a reforming agenda as advisers at the great Vatican II Council) ended up being stripped of his official teaching office by the Church in 1979, after he questioned the doctrine of papal infallibility and the functioning of the magesterium. Meanwhile, the man he had known for nearly 35 years (at that stage) went on to become the Vatican’s prime theological ‘enforcer’.
In that capacity Cardinal Ratzinger denounced not only Hans Kung. He also disciplined and condemned a range of creative thinkers ranging from Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff (for his advocacy of a grassroots church) through to the late Jacques Dupuis (who wrote with enormous depth and humanity on the theology of religions) and Roger Haight (whose Jesus, Symbol of God seeks to express concerns conceived through ancient metaphysics in terms of modern thought).
Dupuis, a deeply faithful scholar, died a broken man as a result of the harsh way he was treated. Meanwhile, the Catholic Theological Society of America, the European Society for Catholic Theology and committee members of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain went on to complain about what they called an “unjust, theologically questionable and unnecessary” 2007 notification against Fr. Jon Sobrino, whose writing and work has been done against a backdrop of poverty, violence and threat to his personal safety in Central America.
Critics of the Vatican, both within and without the Catholic community, often observe that the Church is in the habit of affirming human rights, fair treatment and intellectual and religious freedom in the world at large, while acting rather differently towards those inside its own institutions - using a hierarchical doctrine of the Church as a privileged instrument of God to justify this.
The Problem has a Face: Thinking Aloud
Simon Barrow reflects on conflict and confusion, and suggests that the place to focus is on the human beings in the middle - and work outwards from there. I am reminded of a quote that was current in interfaith and ecumenical dialogue some years ago: From meeting to encounter.
The Problem has a Face
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
Charles Dickens’ famous Tale of Two Cities remains the narrative of the world today, with voices of gloom and optimism seeking to colonise the complex reality of the post-modern condition for their own ruling purposes.
So we have apocalyptic movements addicted to religious violence and governments wedded to a righteous war against terror speaking of their own nirvana and the hell of the other as the defining characteristic of the age. Side with us and eliminate the infidel, they say.
Then heaven, or Nasdaq, will be on your vindicator. Then again, the evangelists of bio- and techno-science, like genomics magnate Craig Ventnor and superstring theorist Michio Kaku, believe that only our lack of imagination and trust in the the capacity to re-design life is holding humanity back from a future of unimagined prospering. Entrepreneurialism not politics is the key to the new era, they say.
Personally, I am inclined to disbelieve both the apostles of doom and the soothsayers of paradise – whether the garb they wear looks “religious” or “secular”. Indeed an endless rhetorical battle over what is religious and what is non-religious is liable to miss the real point – which is that false hopes and false promises usually dress themselves up in what you are tempted towards, not what you are inclined against. This should be a warning to all persons – Christian, Muslim, humanist, atheist or whatever – who want to think that if only their system could prevail and the others be confounded, all would be fine.
Flexing the Faith Muscle: Thinking Aloud by Simon Barrow
[Editorial note: I have held Simon’s column over until today due to the urgent need to move the site - we’re getting there.]
Flexing the faith muscle
The vocal lobbying of Catholic leaders in Scotland over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has undoubtedly raised the hackles of many commentators concerning the place of organised religion in public life – specifically the political arena. As a result, the demanding task of creating a durable public discourse for discussing ethics and understanding science has been reduced to voter management and angry counter-assertion.
How to Engage?
There are a number of different strands to figuring out what might and might not be a constructive contribution to public decision-making from a religious perspective, but they all tend to get bundled together rather indiscriminately when people become over-agitated, resulting in negative polarisation rather than positive argument.
“The growing audibility of Christian voices in public affairs may partly be a reaction to the success of Muslims in aggressively using their religious identity as a political tool,” writes Ellis O’Hanlan, in the Irish Independent.
He continues: “If the imams can do it, goes the thinking, why not the bishops? Whatever the reason, after years in the shadows Christians are undoubtedly beginning to flex their collective muscles once more… But giving in to the demands of bearded men in frocks for the sake of a quiet life rarely results in a quieter life for anyone.”
Well, hold on a minute. I seriously doubt whether bishops are taking imams as their prime role model, though there is undoubtedly a feeling in sections of the church that Christianity attracts more hostility and criticism than other religions in the public square, on account of the need not to increase alienation among volatile minorities.
Getting cross and bothered: Thinking Aloud by Simon Barrow
Looking back through an old diary I was surprised to discover that my life sometimes runs more in sync with the cadences of the Church’s liturgical calendar than those around me might imagine. In particular, and without any great consciousness about it, I have ended up finishing off and contributing to two books on Easter-related themes in the months of March and April.
Right now I’m tidying up an overdue manuscript for Darton Longman and Todd called Threatened with Resurrection, examining the true cost and vocation of peacemaking in the Christian tradition. A couple of years ago I co-edited Consuming Passion, which looked at the way in which the doctrine of the Cross can be abused to excuse or even institutionalise retributive theology and ideas of messianic violence.
Neither of these books is exactly controversy free, but they are unlikely to get me drummed out of any ecclesiastical club (because I studiously avoid the gold-studded membership cards) and also because, well, not many people know or care what I think! You need to be someone like the former Anglican Bishop of Durham, Dr David Jenkins, to make those kinds of waves - and with the cultural climate around religion growing both more hostile and more disinterested all at the same time, even that’s getting a bit difficult.
Every so often someone repeats the old canard that Dr Jenkins, now retired but never retiring, “doesn’t believe in the resurrection” (he most certainly does, though not in the simplistic way it is usually affirmed or dismissed) or that he “said it was a conjuring trick with bones” (his point was precisely the opposite - namely that the kind of life God offers is not reducible to magic but is about a thoroughgoing transformation in and beyond the material world as we think we know it.)
The whole ‘Durham saga’ was over 20 years ago but won’t quite stay buried. Ironic.
This year, Easter controversy is thin on the ground so far. There isn’t even a tacky Channel 4 documentary ‘proving’ that the bones of Jesus have been found underneath a pub in Walthamstow. What we have instead is some relatively polite jousting about historical details in the BBC’s dramatisation of The Passion, an altogether less blood-lusting rendition than Mel Gibson’s film noir. It began on 16 March and ends on Easter Sunday.
Politicians doing and not doing God: Thinking Aloud by Simon Barrow
Earlier this week I interviewed Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in his parliamentary office. Such great revelations as emerged are mostly reserved, I’m afraid, for Third Way magazine – which is not some kind of house journal for Blairism, but a Christian social ethics and current affairs monthly founded in the 1970s.
What they had in mind in using the title “Third Way” was a re-framing of standard political discourse in terms of principles emerging from the biblical traditions of social thought.
The Influence of Personal Convictions on Politics
Anyway, the influence of religion and other personally grounded [notice I didn’t say ‘private’] convictions in the political arena was obviously one of the issues I wanted to discuss with the new head of Britain’s third party – especially as there was a minor fuss when he proclaimed, shortly after his election as leader, that he was an atheist. Well, that’s what most people think occurred.
As a matter of fact, there was no such announcement. What happened was that Clegg responded to one of those quick fire interviews, was asked whether he believed in God, and was given only two possibilities, yes or no. So he chose the one that approximates closest to his view. On that basis many headlines and columns were written.
This little episode certainly tells you rather more about media pigeonholing than it does about the subtleties of Mr Clegg, as you will find out when you read May’s Third Way. But it also highlights a rather important question that hardly figures at all on the commentariat’s agenda. As I put it in one of my sideways interrogations,
“How do you think not believing in God impacts on the way you conceive politics and the way you make political decisions?”
Though Nick Clegg is undoubtedly a thoughtful man, I’m probably not breaking any embargoes by revealing that this question took him a bit by surprise. I suspect the same would be true of almost any figure in public life. We have got very used to enquiring about how religion should or should not enter into the political process through the pores of politicians who “do God” in other aspects of their lives (at least). However, it rarely occurs to anybody that non-belief might be anything more substantial than a rejection of, or aversion to, “religious faith” – whatever that means for the person doing the non-believing.
Simon Barrow Column Delayed
A quick note to say that Simon Barrow’s “Thinking Aloud” column has been delayed due to him being doorstepped by a visitor this morning.
It should appear later this evening.
Tags: simon barrow, thinking aloud[tags]simon barrow, thinking aloud[/tags]
