CofE bishops - doing the right thing (at last)

Watching the Church of England do the right thing can sometimes feel like watching a dogged oil tanker reverse into a tight parking space at night, with no wing mirrors and an upside down map. It'll get there eventually but its not clear how and it can take so many different attempts arrival seems unlikely.

This week a platoon of bishops signed a letter to the Observor calling on the government to pass a series of ammendments to its proposal to cap benefit payments to families. About time, of course, and the church has not been silent on the government's work so far, but this still marks a significant departure. This is partly because it includes a series of additions to improve the proposal, highly specific and drafted with the help of a major charity. They all look eminnently sensible. It is also partly because 18 bishops signed the letter, a rare and impressive show of unity, although one which does you wondering why on earth the others didn't.

And what a joy it is to see the right wing papers have to cope with a sensible, thoughtful and intellectual reproach from the heart of establishment England against an extremist government. In the wake of the St Paul's protests (ongoing) which saw an out pouring of bile from the Sun, etc, it is nothing short of delightful to find that the church is not fearful of doing the right thing in the face of bigotted unpopularity.

Should we forget?

My Spanish friend told me of his mother's reaction when she heard about Britain's two minute silence to observe the war dead on 11 November. "That," she said, "is a civilised country." There is something much more humbling about a silence than there is about a cheer, or a trumpet blast, or a "hell yeah".

A few days earlier a German friend had told me how much he liked the red 'poppies' the British wear to mark Remembrance Sunday; the ambiguity of the symbol, he argued, gave a suitably de-politicised badge which the whole country, regardless of political affiliation, could rally around. More attractive too, he argued, than any equivalent in Europe.

Buying a poppy can almost be done on auto-pilot for most of us at this time of year but it also brings on soul searching - many in 1919 thought we should forget, not remember. The line between commemoration and valorisation is surprisingly thin. At my church the two minute silence began with the playing of the Last Post, the beautiful, haunting military bugle call. 'For the Fallen', the poem read to commemorate the day, is only steps from noting 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'. But to refuse these rituals on the grounds that they glamorise would be to throw the baby out with the bath water. Far more dangerous that we forget the horrors of war than that in remembering we also do so with some pride in the sacrifice. Sometimes we inherit traditions; sometimes we choose them.

The British obsession with drinking

The British are unusually childish when it comes to alcohol. From binge drinking in city streets after hours all the way to the precious giggle which accompanies the offer of a glass of wine at a genteel drinks party; it all betokens a weirdly teenage obsession with booze. I met a vicar who boasted that she never offered her guests tea or coffee, but wine, evidence of her urbane taste apparently but also the last thing I would want at a vicarage. I've been to lunch parties where the an offer of wine was greeted by: 'Oh I shouldn't, but I will'; or 'You know me, I wish I could, but I can't', and a comradely chuckle at such an illicit desire. To request a soft drink shows you are no fun or, worse, a flat out refusal of hospitality. Alcohol is special, desirable and naughty - for 14 year olds and for 60 year olds.

The teetotallers are in on this too. The deliberately intoned 'No thank you, I don't drink', is just as desperate for attention as asking for a second glass. What is it about booze that is so terrifying for those who reject it (on anything other than health grounds) and so tantalising for those who are convinced of its naughtiness? Given that almost no social situation is without the offer of alcohol, and drinking it has become almost a social requirement at many events, why doesn't it elicit the same reaction as water or Coca Cola? It is time for the British to snap out of this adolescent attitude to alcohol which is as embarrassing as the antiquated attitude to sex espoused in the Carry On films. Drink it if you like; don't if you don't. Either way don't make an exhibition of your sense of fun or your purity.

The Bible warns against drunkenness repeatedly (Ephesians 5:18; Proverbs 23:29-35) but rarely against drinking alcohol at all, presumably because water was far more dangerous for your health. Indeed wine became the centre piece of the Mass, as a representative for Christ's blood. This doesn't stop many Christian denominations from departing from Christ's own example in preferring Ribena to red wine in the Eucharist. The fear is presumably that one drink will lead to another, just as some Christian student groups disapprove of full frontal hugging on the grounds that it might lead to sex. This seems like a very odd notion for everyone apart from alcoholics and the most sexually depraved, who form only a small minority of society and so also most Christian groups. Who can't trust themselves with a hug or a single glass of wine? It seems possible, even, that it is the teetotallers and those who refuse any bodily contact who might be at most risk of falling of the other end of the wagon. The prayer is 'Lead us not into temptation' and not 'Do not tempt us'; without temptation how can we learn to resist? The most responsible attitude is to drink when appropriate, and to drink as much as is responsible, but not to deny it entirely on grounds of purity.

Purchasing Misery for Children

Quelle surprise - children with huge amounts of stuff but who enjoy little real communication with their parents are unhappy, and British children suffer the worse, ranking bottom of the UN's table of well being. Parents spend the least amount of their time their children in this country, are more stressed personally, rarely communicate about things that matter (rather than giving commands) and are more inclined to spend time with their children in purchasing things for their bedrooms. It is depressing and predictable.

The parents are, in a sense to blame, but to take the chain of responsibility back only so far is to do parents a disservice and to ignore the effects of our social environment. In a free market economy the only standard of success and self worth is possession and so, inevitably, parents find that their only role is to be the procurer of products for their children. Just as children are told in adverts that goods will make them happy so parents are instructed that, if good parenting is making their offspring happy, so their job must be to pay for stuff. Meanwhile the pressure to produce ever bigger profits by working ever longer hours and reducing themselves to automotrons in the service of businesses means that the ability of parents to do anything other than work and shop is reduced anyway.

Of course the equation doesn't work - you can't buy your way to a happier future nor can you purchase it for your children. This is nothing new but what is remarkable is how we have failed to act on it. In this way is capitalism so impressively tenacious. Even with the knowledge that economic success is often a poisoned chalice it is still impossible to avoid it - partly because of the structure of work and the demands of earning money, but much more importantly because capitalism instills its values in those who participate in it, which is almost all of us. You might know, intellectually, that your child would rather you spent more time together, but the desire to consume, and need to finance this consumption, is so overwhelming that even free time becomes subsumed into the need to earn more and work harder.

Church vs. Mosque

As a medieval historian I am sensitive, perhaps overly so, about the accusation that my subject doesn't matter - a point raised usually in the context that unless you're saving a life (read: training as a doctor) what you're doing doesn't really count.

This was, to some extent, disproved during my trip to the cathedral church of Cordoba, a vast renaissance edifice built in the centre of one of the most spectacular medieval mosques in Europe. This is widely recognised by historians and visitors as an appalling act of architectural vandalism and a miserable piece of symbolism, emphasising cultrual chauvanism and religious intolerance. Even Carlos V, the king who authorised the construction of the church and who was responsible for a huge amount of muscular church building in what was formerly Al Andalus, damned the creation after he saw its completion. Indeed for three centuries after Cordoba was taken by the Christians the mosque was maintained more or less intact.

The modern cathedal chapter, to judge from its visitor guide, which is given for free to every visitor to the church, does not share this opinion. Indeed the mosque, one of the most extraordinary pieces of architecture in the world and a rare survivor from the ninth century, merits only a cursory summary in the guide - two sides - while the cathedral, an impressive building for its domination and power but otherwise rather familiar from every other church in Andalucia, receives a wealth of attention - and three sides.

The leaflet goes further, however, in emphasising the destruction of the Muslims and the restoration of the Christians. Some of the quotes are quite extraordinary in their revision of history.

It is an historical fact that [the Visigothic church] was destroyed during the Islamic period in order to build the subsequent Mosque... the dominating Muslims proceeded to the demolition of the martyr's church

In fact after the Islamic conquest, the church was divided between Muslims and Christians. The Moors were reknown for a high degree of religious tolerance: Abd ar-Rahman I, the builder of the first mosque, allowed the Christians to rebuild their ruined churches. Evenually he purchased the Christian half of the church and rebuilt it as a mosque, which seems almost civilised compared to the wholesale destruction and rebuilding of mosques as churches across Andalucia after the reconquista.

[The consecration of the mosque as a church] was a matter of recuperating a sacred space that had suffered the imposition of a faith that was foreign and distant from the Christian experience... the reforms of the church were motivated by the need to restore the cult that had been interrupted by Islamic domination

This could hardly have been the case after almost five centuries of Muslim rule. It would be as reasonable to argue that Christianity was a foriegn experience for the pagans who had worshipped in Spain for millenia before Christ.

Indeed the building of the church could hardly be

a response to the desire of contemplating Christian symbols, or the inconvenience of celebrating the Liturgy amid a sea of columns

It is transparently an act of religious domination, a word often used in the guide to describe the Muslims but never the Christians, who merely 'restore' the true religion of Spain.

There is hardly any mention of the controversy of the new building, which is described as

an ingenious integration of the caliph structures within the gothic, renaissance, and baroque creations.

This guide probably reveals more of the insecurity and defensiveness of a church on the decline than the muscular military Christianity of the Reconquista but it is a sad example of the tensions that still exist between religions and the contortion of history to fit political aims. It also demonstrates an inability to understand the lessons of history for the confidence to engage with those of other beliefs.

Evil, bankers and anthropology

An anthropologist friend of mine almost took up a job with a giant consultancy firm in Germany a few weeks ago, saved only by his own lefty instincts. No doubt it was a close shave. But an anthropological study, although of a rather unacademic variety, into bankers was begun this week by Joris Luyendijk.

His findings so far are interesting rather than revelatory but he does warn us of the importance of distinguishing between different groups within the banking sector. It is this humanising of people usually referred to only in groups which presents a real challenge to those of us who read the news and form opinions about society. How easy it is to generalise and condemn, or to see nothing but triumph and success in the faces of our enemies. The reality is, of course, more complicated. There are different types of bankers, different jobs in the banking sector, and as many different types of people as there are people.

Often the activities that we wish to condemn - short term profiteering, incompetant investment, encouraging debt onto those who can't afford it - are committed by institutions or enforced by an office culture that runs roughshod over employees more human instincts. The individual is lost in this equation or is party to the offence rather than the author of it. Should we judge and, if so, whom should we judge? It is very, very easy to see the speck in a banker's eye before we remove the log in our own. Similarly it is easier to condemn en masse than to pick apart the moral failures of a large institution and find its source. Who can doubt that some of the most descpicable and stupid actions, with the most widely and profoundly pernicious consequences, of any in recent decades have been committed by the arrogance, idiocy and blindness of banking institutions and some of their workers? The question is how do we, as individuals, respond to this?

Hell is a High Rise Office Block

As my train drew into London last night it was dawdling on the empty track outside Paddington. Outside my window office blocks towered to every side, every floor lit and empty. The scene was almost gruesome - layer after layer of identical strip lit, double glazed, climate controlled expanses; row after row of small desks and big chairs stretched out one after the other. How extraordinary that this ethos has come to govern office architecture for so long. Although it was inevitable that at some point the drive to increase profit would lead to the principle of 'pile 'em high; sell 'em cheap' being applied to work spaces, that it would endure for so long is almost incomprehensible. It is not only amazing that talented workers would continue to apply for jobs in these kind of battery-farm conditions but that companies would disregard the obvious benefits of providing their employees with more stimulating surroundings. Illness, inefficiency and poor attention spans are only some of the miserable effects of these conditions, and yet they are subject to remarkable little public criticism let alone political attention. Even the bankers and lawyers of Canary Wharf appear to be more willing to put up with this architectural monotony than to insist on improvements at a fraction of a cost of their annual bonus.

I spent some time working for a large company in a large, bland, open plan office, I can remember how miserable it was having no variation in temperature, light quality or view and how difficult it was to focus in an open plan space. Perhaps it is the destruction of the unions that has led to this inability to claim a working environment that will actual help employees work? Perhaps our sensibility is too accustomed to experiencing illness, headaches and misery at work to expect anything different? Or possibly we just don't think architects can do better? The architects offer only a spineless kowtowing to the profiteering requirements of developers. No matter how spectacular the exterior might appear, no matter how grand the architect's name, neither developer nor designer appears to have given any thought to the experience (or efficiency) of the office block's users. The 'Gherkin' in London is a case in point - unusual looking, very recently built, and design by the much lauded and once-great designer of tedious, identikit office blocks Norman Foster, but hell to work in.

Britain tries to limit pro-choice policy

Nobody would wish an abortion upon their closest enemy. Not only for the psychological trauma and misery inflicted upon the mother and father, but also for the death of a foetus that could grow up to live a full adult life. But we also know what damage an unwanted pregnancy can wreak, and, again, not just on the parents but on the baby too. A lapse of judgement, a faulty contraceptive, a rape - and a whole life time of repercussions, some good, perhaps, but many not.

Indeed the decision to have, or not to have, an abortion seems to me to be of such magnitude that the process by which an answer is found must be critical to making the right one. And that process is, obviously, almost overwhelmingly challenging, upsetting and difficult. Who to get advice from? Who to make the decision? How long to decide it? Etc. Tory politician Nadine Dorries wants abortion providers, such as the universally lauded Marie Stopes, to be barred from giving advice in favour of 'independent' counsellors - including religious groups and for the decision making period to be lengthened. Her argument that MS et al have a vested interest in persuading women to have abortions is so implausible as to be almost offensive but perhaps her point is a good one. Isn't more time and greater independence desirable?

But is there any such thing as 'independent' advice? If we believe this decision is important then surely the first consequence we can affirm is that women must make this decision for themselves and not have legislators do it for them? Who could believe an MP has a better chance of making the right decision than the mother concerned? It would follow, surely, that women must be allowed to choose their advisers too and even the period of time that decision should take. For some it will be obvious, for others days if not weeks of agonising may be necessary. We can accept this and still allow a degree of protection - limiting advisers to those with a minimum level of qualification and setting some upper limit on decision making period. Although Dorries claims otherwise, this appears to be part of a gradual chipping away at the right to choose at every stage of having, and not having, an abortion, which the Conservative government have, until now, appeared willing to promote.

A final thought: even those who believe no abortion is acceptable do not need to affirm that it ought to be illegal. The Christian must love, forgive, help, aid and care but not condemn, ostracise or punish; loving your neighbour means allowing them to make decisions for themselves too.

Evangelical Teen Camps & 'Faith Healing'

I've been watching the half-hour long 'best of' clips compiled by Soul Survivor, an evangelical Christian festival aimed at teens. One of the most striking features, between clips of rock music that's pretty far off my taste, was an extended sermon by an attractive, young woman in friendly clothes with a nice, confident voice. I'm sure it wasn't sold as a 'sermon', come to thing of it. It was a loose collection of anecdotes about experiences she had had or heard about when people had been remarkably healed by prayer.

To take two examples:

1. John Wimber had visited an African village where a young boy had been cursed by the local 'witch doctor' after his parents had converted to Christianity. He was mute and shrunken but after Wimber's group prayed for a bit and the boy began to grow and speak. Soon he was fully developed for his age.

2. The woman reported an exchange with her nail technician, one of whom's arms was 1.5cm shorter than the other. After prayer again her arm miraculously grew to full length.

I'm not interested here to assess whether these events took place, although it is hard not to be a little sceptical, but rather what it would mean if they were true, which is what this woman evidently believed and what she was encouraging the enormous crowd of teens listening avidly to her talk.

First, what would it mean for the boy's parents in example 1? Had they not prayed for their son? Had they not prayed hard enough? Were their prayers not good enough? Were they not good enough Christians?

Secondly, what would it mean for other sufferers who don't get better? Her prayers were able to extend the arms of a person she had only just met but why do some good Christians, from loving churches, die from cancer? Were they not really that good? Did they pray wrongly?

Thirdly, did she change God's mind? Had God intended that the little boy should remain cursed unless a prayer group from the USA turned up to help? What about other little boys who are cursed but weren't on Wimber's itinerary, does God give up on them?

In other words does God only act when someone, typically an evangelical Christian, prays to him and why does he act sometimes but, apparantly, not others? My biggest fear about this kind of understanding of 'the power of prayer' is what it means for the practice overall. Prayer, it seems, is like a shopping list of physical ailments for God to fix. If you do it right, he fixes them. For some reason, unknown, He sometimes doesn't. In this sense He's like a capricious car mechanic and we're trying to buy an MOT. Anyone with some knowledge of the history of prayer knows that this is selling prayer far too short and that it simply doesn't reflect our experience of how God works. I don't intend to give a definition but prayer involves, at the very least, a listening exercise not a speaking one. It is about opening ourselves up as a channel or conduit, the traffic is two way. We are in dialogue not monologue.

Perfect Haiku

Writing a haiku as a westerner demands you give up so many intuitive assumptions about the kind of language and expectations poetry fulfills. Gone is metre, metaphor and theorising. No more lengthy wonderings about the internal life of the mind, instead just a crystal clear moment captured in language that perfectly reflects something observed. How hard it is to abandon the likening of one moment to another, or the deliberate shoe-horning in of a thought not an observation, and how perfect it is when a haiku does work and an observation speaks volumes.

Some of my favourite haiku:

Thirty pence each:
a cup of tea,
and a singing bird
(Issa)

Snail – baring
shoulders
to the moon
(Issa)

In the moonlight a worm
silently
drills through a chestnut
(Basho)

The skylark:
Its voice alone fell,
leaving nothing behind
(Ampu)

Each morning in spring
the birds and the toaster
doing their stuff
(Koji)

lend me your arms,
fast as thunderbolts,
for a pillow on my journey.

(Hendrik Doeff)

 

lily: 

out of the water 

out of itself

bass 

picking bugs 

off the moon 

(Nick Virgilio)

   

Some of my own: 

a chapel at night
above the towers –
stars

pigeon breast
puffed out and pulsates;
full of desire

by the tower –
below the window –
a man


a boat leaves behind
quiet quivers
on quiet waters

against the bank –
little lappers
from a paddle
  
unripe grape
between my fingers;
resting on a bruise

Evangelical Teen Camps

Writing in the Guardian, Tom Prosser criticises Christian teen festivals, calling them 'wicked', 'emotionally manipulative' and exploitative. His damning claim is based on two points: first, that the 'tactics' of those who run the camp are manipulative, tricking children into committing to Christianity; and secondly, that the theology of their organisers is suspect. These points do not seem sufficient, to me, to merit his condemnation.

Steve Clifford, general director of the Evangelical Alliance and adviser to Soul Survivor, wrote back, but missed all the key points, although he did do a good job of defending the playing of rock music and so on at Christian festivals from the sneering of Prosser.

Each of the points Prosser made are important, to the first I think he is right that the use of music, dance and spectacle is intended to create an ethereal atmosphere, charged with religious significance and likely to stimulate a reaction that can be quickly identified as the 'Holy Spirit' by the organisers. A substantial part of the appeal of these events is the sense of transformation that be accessed so easily with the right conditions. Prosser goes to far, however, when he characterises this as a ploy to get teenagers to sign on the dotted line like the practices of door-to-door hucksters. The commitment is not odious, without financial demands, and which people keep only as long as they wish to. The signing of a 'contract' to "to include Jesus in their thoughts, words, and actions" is rather more dubious, but not, I think, a widespread practice and obviously more of an initiation ceremony than an out and out legal commitment.

To the second point, I agree again that the theology can be extraordinarily conservative in youth churches but if Prosser really believes, as he claims to, that "young people have a right to choose their religious beliefs", and he ought, then this kind of theology must be available to them. He claims: "Youngsters are threatened with divine judgment, and they are initiated into the world of charismatic Christian practices. At Soul Survivor, the largest Christian youth festival in the UK, teens have been told that witch doctors can maim children by cursing them. They have also been informed that God judges us on death for our deeds and thoughts, and they have been encouraged to practise physical healings."

I suspect not all these claims are true, and if they are, they are not widespread. Taken as a whole, they do not look deeply pernicious, indeed the idea of 'divine judgement' is surely to be expected at a religious festival? The reality is that evangelical teen festivals at their worst are ghastly rock concerts, but as long as the children who attend have fun the core message is overwhelmingly positive.

Evicting rioters must stop

The news that councils in England, with the backing of the Prime Minister, will start removing benefits and council homes from the families of those arrested for rioting - even before they are convicted of their offence - is loathsome, immoral and unjust. Off the top of my head, here are just some of the problems with this: it punishes families for the crimes of their children, it exceeds the punishments given in court for the crime committed, it uses the provision of shelter and welfare as a tool of punishment, it risks extending poverty and homelessness, it is likely to increase antagonism with the police and councils, it will break up communities, and, ultimately, it will increase the liklihood of crime in the future.

These changes are probably best seen as just one further step an a series of antagonistic and thoughtless acts of community vandalism by councils run with both eyes on wealthy, right-wing voters and a complete willingness to sacrifice the needs of council tenants to pursue those votes. Wandsworth, Westminster, Greenwich, Hammersmith and Fulham - the list of councils proposing to start evicting the families of rioters reads like a roster of far-right Tory-run model councils who have spend much of last few decades doing their best to make those in vulnerable positions feel ever less secure.

The 'TRUTH' about the riots

How quickly 'truths' become accepted and established. A glance through Facebook and Twitter informs me that two beliefs are becoming universally adopted: first, that what's needed is a merciless police battle with the rioters stopping short only of bullets; secondly, that the rioters are violent idiotic 'chavs' who riot because they were born that way, viz. working class. Few seem willing to wonder if these actions could be borne from their social or economic context - this is not to excuse horrible acts of violence and vandalism but to acknowledge that people carry them out not because rioting is their DNA but because they are in such a miserable situation that rioting becomes a desirable option. To greet these despicable actions with classist condemnations, to group being working class with being violent as if the two are simply different labels for the same phenomenon, is grossly wrong.

Nor is it patronising, bleeding-heart liberalism to contextualise these actions. No one should seek to deprive the rioters of their agency. What they are doing is wrong, but it is also not surprising, it is part and parcel of the changes to British society and politics that we are currently witnessing. As Martin Luther King said:

"When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty and shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard."

Nations, like individuals, show their true colours in testing times. There are always two options - to go in with all guns blazing rubber bullets and tear gas; or to learn what wrong, to clean up the streets and to make sure that no one is so ever again so desperate, angry and dispossessed that this campaign of violence, vandalism and self defeat looks like a good idea. The choice is between revenge and compassion.

Riots are a sign of the times

What do the riots in Tottenham, Enfield and Brixton tell us about contemporary Britain? It seems to me there are two options: either there is a violent streak in all young men which simmers beneath the surface waiting for an excuse to be unleashed with little threat of criminal charges and rejoices at the chance to nick some electrical hardware; or else the social and economic context are important and riots are an indicator of wider changes in society.

The first is surely impossible to credit - albeit the rioters do seem to consist of young men unconnected to any protest or legitimate concern and are hell bent on causing mayhem, destruction and looting, but these traits are not endemic, genetic traits shared by all young men. To say so is to ignore the relative rarity of such violence and their correlation to poverty, unrest and inequality, whether in Toxteth, Tolpuddle, Brixton or Tottenham.

If the second is the case then I suggest three important factors to look at first: 1. the break down in community policing in London in the last few years after the enlightened policy making of the first Labour government; 2. rising inequality and the failure of living standards to advance significantly for the poorest members of society; 3. the effect of the cuts on poverty, misery and community. To treat these riots as a self contained example of the evil of certain segments of the population or to link them with recent protests by students or public sector workers is as disingenuous as it is contrary to the evidence and to common sense. Why is it now, in poor areas of the most unequal city in the country, that these events are taking place? Vandalism is the most perfect act of self defeat, of blind rage expressing itself in short term, selfish idiocy, of pointless hurt and pain, of dispossession by people with little or nothing holding them to normal society. The police, with all credibility and public trust shattered, have no ability to hold a fragile peace amongst fractured communities. There will be more where this came from over the next few years.

Is £100,000 a year enough for a top civil servant?

There's a popular trope in politics, driven particularly by the Tory media/News International, which says that top civil servants are paid too much - conning tax payers, not giving value for money and earning vastly more than those at the bottom of the profession. Tory ministers recently boasted of the amount they had 'saved' from public spending partly by sacking top staff or cutting their wages.

This is problematic for several reasons. First, ministers rarely consider whether the staff they sack will need to be replaced, creating either holes and problems in the delivery of services or leading to a re-hiring or expensive consultants. Secondly, 'savings' for the taxpayers usually means cuts they will have to endure in another form - as the government reduces fuel duty, imposes punitive rises in VAT and proposes canceling the top rate of income tax so they scrap essential services these could have paid for.

Thirdly, a point least often raised, is that the discourse of 'high pay' for top civil servants redirects attention from vast private sector salaries, the need for high quality individuals to run public services and the differential between pay in the public and private sectors. All of which is very helpful to a Conservative government filled with millionaires and desperate to slash and burn with as little censure or observations as possible, but we should be sceptical of any argument which turns cutting public expenditure into a virtue and casts public servants as grasping fat cats. Public sector pay is chronically low, we should never have to worry about paying 'too much' to those who provide services to the public, particularly to those who have managed to rise to the top. Good management is essential, particularly in a time of cuts, and it costs a lot of money to attract the kind of managers who will ensure that services survive the Tory government. Why shouldn't a top teacher earn a salary which, although much more than most other civil servants, is still less than any equivalent private sector salary? Which, after all, do we believe is most important?

Arrogance, cynicism and ignorance: the foundation of the 'Big Society'

Listening to Phillip Blond on this week's Beyond Belief reinforced to me the cynical, empty and arrogant assumptions behind the Conservative Party's 'Big Society'. This is nothing new of course, it has been well attested to by political commentators, Labour Party politicians and the archbishop of Canterbury. Even David Cameron appears to have lost faith on this empty, ill-considered slogan left over from a failed piece of electioneering, relaunching it time and time again with no new policy ideas, little funding and no sign of public confidence.

How staggering it is that the hubris of politicians leads them to believe that in dismantling the welfare state, the single most important force in helping voluntary organisations offer care in communities, it is politicians who must be central to its every reduction. Only a Conservative politician with staggeringly little experience outside public school and TV public relations could fail to understand how many small societies there are, and have always been, providing services in damaged communities, and how much they rely on the state funded bodies which he is attacking. How patronising it is for a lofty think tank wonk in Westminster to tell religious organisations he's letting them take over libraries, after school clubs and so on. What hypocrisy from a bunch of elite men at the centre of the political machine. I just keep remembering this delightful quote from Francis Maude, who admits to doing no volunteering and then has the arrogance to claim its unfair he's been asked (why on earth should he have to do anything?) - at the same time as he tells local communities to volunteer to fill in the short fall he is creating. Phillip Blond also seems to have memorised important and meaningful phrases very well, listening to him speak is full of soothingly old fashioned left-wingism, until he tries to talk about the welfare state or about religious organisations. The welfare state keeps people poor! Religious groups'll fill in all the gaps! They just need the cuts to help them get it off the ground! Volunteer groups always do it better than the state! Cuts are good for you!

Few tropes are as short sighted or ignorant as that of 'Broken Britain': a nasty, damning sneer on how things look from houses in the Home Counties which rely on the Telegraph and nostalgic hearsay for their information about the world. The problem is almost as glossed and oversimplified as the solution: to fix broken Britain you first take away resources first from the poor and vulnerable, then from state sector institutions that provide services for the poorest people, then from voluntary organisations that vulnerable people rely on. That this outlook, a blinkered pessimism that judges without evidence and condemns without empathy, is so widespread and so instantly accepted shows how little information percolates through the right-wing media firewall to the kind of people who fill the political classes. Why bother hunting after examples of communities in impoverished areas supporting their own or attempting to form a nuanced conclusion based on actual observation and curiosity when an entire world view can be granted in two words? The seductive power that instant condemnation grants that suits both the Tory party and the boor by the bar: "I'll tell you why's this country's going to hell in a hand cart mate, it's the immigrants, the nanny state, health and safety, red tape, blah, blah, blah."

Why the powerful must be corrupt - and what to do about it

I am naturally hostile to any conception of politics or society that rests on an 'us and them' mentality, essentially because I doubt it to be true. There is usually so much middle gournd, such a long ladder between top and bottom, that to divide it at some point and cast the the ends as naturally opposed seems arbitrary. We all have more in common than we have differences - the fundamentals of our physiology are not illusory in this respect, even as wealth or geography create appalling inequalities we all find ourselves in essentially the same predicament as human beings.

Even the division between owner and worker seems more slippery than ever before in the age of digital communications and pension funds; my bank was one of the ones which went under spectacularly, had to be propped up by the government and is now paying its employees astonishingly well, I just feel happy if my interest rate stays about inflation. But the revelations of recent weeks about links between News International, the Metropolitan Police and the government reveal a degree of interpenetration that would surely surprise even the most jaded observer. Each provided funds, personnel and information to the other; restricting it from other institutions and neglecting their prime motivation. The structural imperatives of democracy, elections, the maintainance of law and order and the pursuit of readers and profit formed themselves quite naturally into a closed circuit running to its own logic which even the most heinous of actions against principal figures in the chain could not break (I think here particularly of how Rebecca Brooks ill treated Gordon Brown over the death of his son).

In this it seems overwhelmingly not only that a 'rogue reporter' is to blame, nor even a few 'evil' newspaper proprieters, but rather a huge number of people willed into a kind of automatic amorality by the unavoidable implications of capitalism and a tall hierarchy of power. Power, I think, does corrupt; not because the people who hold it are turned bad, drunk on their own superiority, although this does happen often enough, but because they are forced to act in certain ways to maintain their position. They have the capacity to resist, but not the power to resist and hold their position. Their fault was in choosing ambition and survival over integrity. It is a challenge given to almost all of us on a regular basis - admit to an unfashionable belief, quit an immoral job or call out a loved family member. We get stuck behaving how we are meant to behave, not how we ought to behave.

Should we expect our politicians to give up principles in favour of pragmatism, in a Machiavellian manner which the Tory party has always been proud of, or to fight for what is right in the sure knowledge that to do so will force them out of the system and deliberately undermine it? The latter is surely preferable but I suspect that the best alternative might be to remove the hierarchy of command and the narrow class of power-holders altogether. If the struture doesn't work, ditch it. Is it possible to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's or must the former, ultimately, ruin the latter; or the latter ruin the former? Let's instead abandon a situation where one or the other must take place - let's get rid of Caesar and let SPQR back in on the act of government.

What's inter-faith for?

I have always been, without thinking about it too hard, a supporter of inter-faith institutions and proposals. I believe in the value and interest of every religion and the importance of sharing that wisdom between all believers, particularly when it can promote peace, cooperation and friendship. At its root I hope it would reflect at a more widespread level my own experience of friendship with Muslims, Jews and Sikhs, something which has stimulated my own faith, and my fascination with other religions, more than any other encounters.

However, attending a presentation at the Cambridge University Divinity Faculty on 25 July 2011 was my first real engagement with an institutional inter-faith event. It was an odd evening, the talks, given by Jewish and Christian academics, and a Muslim student, were more negative than I had expected, focusing on necessity, pragmatism and conflict as much as on theology. The talk was intended not to find common ground between faiths but to find independent reasons within each religion for engaging in interfaith, a sensible approach surely but one which seeks to remind us how far some religions are from one another. Occasionally the talks were provocative, especially when considering the most grievous points of conflict, serving to make me wonder whether the Israel/Palestine issue, for example, is essentially impossible to overcome. One questioner at the end of the talks proposed one Islamic view on Judaism which he claimed was too fundamental to ignore, the Muslim student handled this aggressive point brilliantly but it left a sour taste in the mouth. Does inter-faith, speaking pragmatically, require some taboos in order to work? Marriage counselling presumably only works because the two sides have, at some point, been in love, they just need to recapture a sense of this original emotion, which is why discussion works; the same is not obviously true of religion. The study of comparative religion, in my opinion the most fascinating subject of them all, perhaps requires independence from engagement between individuals with chips on their shoulders.

My final surprise was that the discussion left relatively little room for individuals or friendship - there was some talk of love, agape, courage, 'eye to eye' and so on, but it was communities, religious texts, doctrine, prophesy and politics that absorbed the speakers' attention. After the talk I spoke to a priest from Leicester who told me that 'all you need for inter-faith work to happen is a few key players from either side to lead it'. When I suggested it was friendships between individual members of each group which really counted, his friend, also a priest, told me this was inter-faith too, as if a natural relationship between a Jew and a Christian could never be other than the meeting of religious representatives across a great religious divide. Maybe 'inter-faith' benefits from a fuzzy definition that allows academics and leaders to compare different scriptures in university settings while grouping this activity with hypothetical relationships between real religious believers, but I worry that it emphasises difference by its very name, excludes normal social activity and threatens to descend into an activity carried out by and for academics, priests and religious leaders. To use a cliche - can a top down structure deliver bottom up results?

Blue Labour

There's been a lot of talk recently of Blue Labour, Maurice Glasman's 'traditionalist' proposal for future Labour Party policy. It is an interesting idea, one now widely discredited in light of Glasman's recent remarks about immigration. This is a shame, not just for the sake of pluralism and discussion but because it did offer a coherant alternative to technocratic New Labour capitalism, Conservative libertarianism and 'old' Labour social democracy. It also seemed to resolve a problem many of us on the left who have always believe in the importance and value of a large and active state have felt concerned about for the last fifteen years: how to provide meaningful and progressive public services when the political class is now drawn from such a limited pool, when the major political parties vary so little in leadership or ideas, and when the dominant ethos and discourse is so childish, empty and right wing.

The answer is not distantly related to Cameron's 'big society' - the use of mutuals, trade unions, faith groups, community groups, cooperatives, etc - traditional aspects of left wing policy making stretching back decades and predate the Labour Party. To use of a horrible cliche: 'grass roots' politics, where it is associations of people outside politics but supported by government, carrying out political activities. Labour's obsession with Westminster politics, with statist changes, with business, the EU and the major levers of state could be replaced by focus on domestice policy, providing or helping people to provide services in local areas. The key to this idea is not social conservatism, although Glasman did stir in a healthy dose of it largely as a vote winner, but embracing and supporting communities which include social conservatives, socialists who are also concerned about immigration say.

It would not of course take the politicians out of politics, unlike Cameron's proposals it would require funding, an active state run by left wing politicians who understood the importance of taxation for the provision of a healthy public leaf in Britain. But perhaps it would allow the flourishing of real communities, locally specific engagement, the mixing of human beings with their neighbours and a diversity in public life.

The Greatest Building of All Time

A recent Guardian newspaper bit of puff asked columnists to write about the most formative cultural event they saw in the field they write about. So the pop critic picked seeing the Pixies in 1988, Adrian Searle chose an exhibition of Goya and Billington wrote about a performance of Pinter's No Man's Land.

So what would I pick, as an architectural historian?

There are a few great buildings I can think of visiting while a teenager, some overwhelming experiences and moments of inspiration, Durham Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, St Peter's in Rome, and so on. But the moment at which my love of architecture first stirred properly was in the National Theatre in London when my Dad pointed out to me how the concrete had been cast in wooden moulds leaving an imprint of their grain which then decorated the walls. I found the idea fascinating and weird. These clear cut lines and curves, otherwise overwhelmingly a man-made creation but with a texture and softness from nature. The sober grey of the concrete suddenly become much less alien from the quiet browns of timber. I felt I could almost imagine the decisions being taken at the architects' meetings; for the first time I truly appreciated the level of detail and depth that architectural design could take.

Falling away

The Sunday before last I didn't go to church. Not an unusual event particularly - I miss one or two every now and then when I'm out of town or busy or ill or whatever, and I had been every Sunday for many weeks previously and went again the next week.

But this was the first Sunday I missed when I could have gone, when I failed to attend for no reason at all. It wasn't an active decision just a lethargy, an unwillingness that sapped my self discipline and my energy. Of course, waking up and getting out of bed on a Sunday morning never comes easily but this time it was even worse than usual.

So why did it happen? Sadly I can think of one reason, that a few days earlier I had had some good news, winning a competitive scholarship, and, flushed with my own achievement, success and self reliance, I simply didn't see space for religion in my life. I was thankful, grateful and still intellectually curious about church but empty of that appreciation for God which should be part and parcel of our daily life.

Today I read an interview with actor Tom Hollander (who plays a vicar in a BBC sitcom called 'Rev') who said he was surprised at how many vicars go through agnostic periods, that theirs is a true 'relationship' with God. I feel a bit ashamed of how I felt last weekend but I also know that it comes as part of trying to live religiously and failing.

The big society

As the Conservative government cuts away at public services it hopes to recreate some of them, at no or little cost to itself, by relying on volunteer replacements with little support or funding to help. It's called the Big Society.

There are many problems with this idea. In my village the local library is to shut. A few jobs will be lost, a local resource ended, the many elderly people in the area will be that much more limited in their access to company, books, information, newspapers and the internet, a social space gone. The alternative is to set up a new 'community run' equivalent, relying on volunteer staff, presumably open for vastly reduced hours and without specialist workers. Where the funding for this will come from is anyone's guess.

This blog is not intended to critique government policy. What I want to focus on is the patronising idea that the Big Society is something new or that it depends on government support. Most of us don't have to look far to find examples of extraordinarily generous acts on behalf of volunteers - or, as often as not, we even use services that we don't even realise are being carried out by volunteers. There are a host of television programmes on at the moment recording the nineteenth-century history of social entreprenurship and philanthropy, see the one about Robert Owen or Dr Bernardo. In the former the presenters are amazed to discover that the Big Society wasn't a twenty-first century creation. It isn't a nineteenth-century one either.

Every medieval monastery was obliged to give hospitality to those who asked for it. Tithing in medieval villages was intended both for the poor and for the church. I'm sure there are ancient examples too, but it's a period of history I'm less familiar with. Government can help a little - it can provide funding and expertise, and it can seek out the projects that need these resources - but it isn't the creator, only a sustainer. And now, of course, it has stopped doing even that.

Tyrants, shepherds and priests

The toppling of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, whatever happens next, shows the awesome power of persistent popular protest, there is no greater force than the coherent, consistent actions of the Third Estate. It was wholly different from the sanitised clashes that we are used to - between leaders of political parties, trade union general secretaries, heads of think tanks or charities or campaigning organisations, journalists and Prime Ministers, and so on.

It was a clash between the people and an institution occupied by an individual. There were no leaders, no committee, no single spokesperson. Does this mean it was messy? Mal-coordinated? Did not do itself justice? Lacked leadership? One of the most exciting, inspiring aspects of the protest was its corporate unity. Human beings not simply carrying out their function within a hierarchy or structure but acting as part of a whole. So do we need leaders?

My university's Defend Education group, currently fighting the cuts to public services being carried out by the Tory government in the UK, also operates without a leader or even a leadership committee. Instead working groups were formed, each in charge of a different part of the organisation and reporting back to the entire body, which took all major decisions, planned future action and organised the campaign. It was, at root, the realisation of the kind of direct democratic control that has never been fully adopted at a national political level. It was fair, open, inclusive, effective and productive. Finding a collective voice or an efficient route to a solution could be challenging, of course, but the result was always the stronger for it - the means justified the end and the end, the means.

Could religions work like this? The Catholic and Anglican churches, among others, have rejected the possibility, choosing instead to set apart a small number of the congregation, targeting resources at these few people; giving them special training, special powers in the performance of the sacraments and a more-or-less monopoly on teaching, preaching and service leading in the church. The ordained priesthood has become bound up with the traditions of the church, an in-built aristocracy of those 'called'. Both churches are active these days in emphasising the calling of the laity, but not, of course, to preside over the sacraments, and only rarely to preach, teach, carry out 'official' pastoral work, or lead a service.

Most priests are not, of course, called to carry out all these tasks and often struggle to fulfill each to a sufficiently high standard. The natural end point of this thought is, of course, that perhaps no one person is called to carry out all this tasks but instead are each called only to do one or other of them. So why group them together and give them to individuals? Why neglect the teaching, preaching and sacramental abilities of so many members of the church?

Imagine a church where the whole congregation carried out the sacraments, the teaching, the preaching and the pastoral activities in turn and according to the skills and interests of the members. Those gifted at teaching could teach, while those gifted at caring could care, and those gifted at both could do both. Training, resources and special powers could be given to all those who will need it to carry out their activities. This would not be the end of the priesthood or the Church but its widening to include the whole of the religious body.

The Best Kind of Reincarnation

Buddhists believe being reincarnated as a human being is highly desirable. This is not because human beings are are the highest level of creation; the opposite of the flea in a hippo's backside. In fact human beings occupy the fifth of 31 levels of existence, far below the gods who occupy levels which can only be accessed by the most brilliant of human meditators. Nor is it because there's some likelihood to it - in fact the opposite is the case, the fear of returning as an animal or a ghost or worse is at least partly because it seems quite probable.

The human level is desirable because it combines rational thought and the potential for achieving enlightenment with the suffering and mortality that will compel us to do it. It offers a combination of intelligence, insight and motivation that is not available to the gods whose lives are so long and free from pain that leaving the cycle of rebirth is virtually impossible.

I once argued with a friend that happiness was too readily considered all important and all desirable today. The justification for any activity or life plan is that <<it will make me happy>> Books are written on how to achieve it, those with it are winners, those without losers. It is a deeply individualistic, focused on the purchase of products and services that immediately grant us our desires.

She told me <<if you really think that, you've never been truly unhappy>>

Of course this is true. Happiness might be ephemeral, worshipped - even fetishised - to the point where other goals are almost completely disregarded, but its inverse is something we must all fight against. But it is a fight we are destined to lose; all human lives are marked by light and dark. An ethic built on pursuing happiness is doomed to failure and, given that, perhaps we should find what it is about unhappiness that drives us to make positive changes. The struggle to avoid unhappiness, to find what it is that makes life worth living, is the positive side effect of the hellishness of misery. This isn't much comfort to the miserable, none perhaps, but its a pleasant thought that were we offered a future life as a god we might do well not to choose it.

Are religions evil?

What do all these have in common: a documentary on the BBC about illegal Zionist settlers in Palestine, the recent news about a couple owning a B&B who refused to accommodate a married gay couple and the heart breaking story of a little girl caned to death for being pursued by an older neighbour?

They all make me feel distinctly depressed about the extremes of behaviour that religious faith can drive individuals to.

This was also one of the points that kept being made repetitively, and boringly, in the debate between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens in Canada. The former cited the many examples of extraordinary charity, support and goodwill carried out by religious people and groups around the world. The latter noted the evil, intolerant and bigoted behaviour often seen by the same.

So is it a one-all draw? Well, essentially, yes. Human beings have the capacity for exceptional love and kindness; and evil and misery. Religion, for its enormity, for its calls for sacrifice and powerful action, can push these tendencies to each extreme.

What distinguishes religion from other drives which lead people to behave well or badly (sexual desire, hunger, ignorance, empathy, etc) is that those extremists on either side are willing to act <<in the name of their religion>> The Israel/Palestine conflicts might be best understood using a realist theory of international relations but it is carried out in the name of God or, rather, of different Gods. Whatever the role of Judaism or Islam is in the conflict, it is tarnished by the religious language used on either side.

I think it is probably an important caveat that the vast majority of religions, in the vast majority of their interpretations, stress love, forgiveness, mercy and generosity. Those who commit extreme acts of viciousness are generally to be found far outside the majority opinion of the faith. This is not to say that there are no 'mainstream' popular theologians, thinkers and religious leaders who freely propagate some horrible beliefs - homophobia springs to mind here in particular - but these examples are rarely typical of the core teachings of the faith.

The God Gene, part II

It's Christian Union week next week and the faculty is filled with undergraduates in bright blue hoodies with 'Truth' emblazoned across the front and a line up off implausibly ambitious talks on the back. It's reminiscent of a tour hoodie for a rock band but without the flavour of dark and dingy suburban gigs.

In the student newspaper this week is a letter by the President of the CU in response to an article run last week about a genetic tendency to religious faith. He argues that religious faith is simply one form of the faith that everyone has - in relatives, friends, and so on. It is not some sort of speculative, general philosophical thought or 'worldview'. Specifically, he writes, Christians put faith into Jesus Christ, a specific person like mum, dad or Bob.

This might make Christianity sound like a pretty enormous leap into the dark - who would put their entire repository of religious faith in an individual they, nor anyone they knew, had never met and whose person is unknowable - but he does make an important distinction between religion as <<I think there's something else out there>> and as <<here are the people and creeds I trust in>>

Religious faith can be stimulated by trust in many more people and things than God - in other religious people, in institutions, in books, in prayers, in liturgy, in art, in music, in architecture, in experiences, in religious history, even in the natural world. Faith in one particular divine person can be a culmination of faith in every part of our experience, things that show God in a way that is far more accessible than one messianic figure.

The Hereafter

How to believe in the afterlife?

N says that it must exist - that there is <<too much love in the world for this to be everything.>> But I don't feel enough tension between these two forces - love and death - for this to be problematic. Couldn't there be too much love in the world for there to be more than 'this'? Or conversely, couldn't there be too much pain and suffering in the world for there to be an afterlife?

I have a different suggestion: in our world time is sequential (apart from, perhaps, at sub-atomic level or as we approach the speed of light). We live in chronos-time, where an afterlife must follow this life with death acting as the crucial marker in time separating the two. The afterlife is something else, somewhere else, belonging to the next period of time after the one in which our bodies are alive.

Time is subjective of course - it goes slower in a boring class, faster in a film, it stops in car crashes. Perhaps chronos time is one of the filters we use to turn noumena into phenomena. Noumenal time could be very, very different.

Ancient mythology included other kinds of time - particularly kairos, an undetermined period during which particular, peculiar or special events occur. Even as our lives are replaced, sequentially, by death, they could continue to exist in undetectable kinds of time. Perhaps to a time-less being - God - we are always alive, all events happening together, non-sequentially, although the concept expressed by 'together' relies on an idea of chronos time which is meaningless to God.

The afterlife has, occasionally, become an obsession within Christianity, generating theological contortions such as purgatory, limbo and chantries. We hear regularly of the virgins promised, apparently, to posthumous Islamic suicide bombers in the hereafter. If we are going to think about the hereafter at all our starting point should be the 'everlasting life' rather than 'afterlife', what does it mean to live forever? Is it like moving house into a new kind of 'existence' so that death never really takes place? Or is it the 'forever' part we should focus on - what happens to time when something lasts forever?

The God Gene

I'm interested by the arguement that there exists a 'God Instinct', which tilts those with the necessary genetic make up to be more inclined to believe that God exists (or something along those lines).

My first thought was that this is slightly embarrassing for religion - making it ultimately a matter of biology not revelation. If you believe because you were always going to believe and not because you chose to take a leap of faith isn't that reductive, even embarrassing, for those who hold that God freely gave them religion? It has nothing, ultimately, to do with truth. Or even 'Truth', if you prefer.

Then I read this article by Nick Spencer, a director at Theos. He argues that the God gene could work in a totally different argument - that it is suggestively consistant with a divinely created universe. Evolutionary advantage could suggest that:

Not only does God tilt creation towards life, and life towards sentience, and sentience towards intelligence, and intelligence towards morality and wonder, but he tilts that package of intelligence, morality and wonder that we call human nature towards himself. Creation delivers us to God's doorstep and bids us only knock at his door.

Of course it doesn't prove anything - transferring from helpfulness or inevitability to truth or goodness jumps Hume's is-ought gap - but perhaps it's less of a problem than I thought.

Spencer concludes saying its bad news for the atheist who must defend his/her beliefs for their 'unnaturalness'. I'm not sure he's right, there seems something rather noble about being unnatural, and this is where I worry that the God gener might still be bad for religion.

If religion were weird or 'unnatural' it would give religious faith a valourous, against the odds sense of overcoming an 'animal' disposition. What greater obstacle to overcome than genetic disbelief? Bigger than martyrdom or persecution. And what is the effect on personal experience - for the fool that saith in his heart there is no God, but trusts in him anyway?

The most reasonable answer is probably that of Michael Argyle, as quoted by Spencer:

psychological research can tell us nothing about the truth, validity or usefulness of religious phenomena: these are questions which must be settled in other ways

He is, however, only repeating the conclusions made eloquently by William James in Lecture I of The Varieties of Religious Experience. The 'nervous' causes of any belief do not determine our judgement of it, which is based rather on other values (how pleasing it is, how well it fits with other beliefs, etc). As the mad genius is no less a genius for being mad so the mad believer is no less true or insightful for his madness.

Imam Butt

I don't truly believe I was born into a faith, although my parents did go to church - religion is something I feel free to question and explore how ever I wish to. Every so often I come across a part of the religious experience which chimes, where I feel I can empathise fully with the beliefs of the faithful.

Imam Butt found a chime between his western 'hippie' beliefs in the 1960s and Islamic scholarship, going to live out his adult life with the Pashtun tribes of the Hindu Kush, awed, he suggests, by the extraordinary topography of the area and the peaceful, thoughtful form of Islam practiced there.

Around him times changed, the Swat Valley became dangerous, violent and home to a new breed of extremist Islam. The Imam didn't change with it. A man able to explore his core beliefs through a programme of intense and demanding Koranic study did not change them in the process but found them reinforced in scripture. He took up the struggle against violence and extremism, preserving the way of life he had always believed in.

Picking and Choosing - the Episcopal Church, Part II

Theo Hobson replied to my post below and said this:

<<I wrote about a visit to a Quaker meeting in the summer for this site. I said they throw out the baby Jesus with the bathwater of dogmatism.

Christianity is, at root, a cult of this mythic personality.>>

I replied with this:

<<A note - Quakers are not a Christian denomination, they are a group of believers who hold in common an approach to religion that cherishes different sources of truth and believes in the importance of personal revelation. They don't necessarily worship the 'mythic personality' of Christ, but they can do, if that is the truth revealed to them.

If you want to have Christ-worship in common with all your fellow believers then I suppose Quakers are not for you, but if you want a radically liberal approach to religion, which I think you do, and are willing to believe in Christ when those around you may not, then it might be what you are looking for.

This is just a thought, otherwise I'm pleased that the Episcopal Church can give you something of what you are looking for although I suspect more of it was to be found in England than you say.>>

I searched out Theo's piece on the Quakers (Thursday 18 March 2010 13.00 GMT) where he writes of his disappointment with the lack of Christian symbolism and structure at a Meeting he went to.

Picking and Choosing - the Episcopal Church, Part I

Theo Hobson's article in the Guardian newspaper (Friday 28 January 2011 12.44 GMT) describes his postive experiences in the Episcopal Church after his frustration with the Church of England (C of E).

Here's my response:

I too have been very impressed by the Episcopal Church's bold, brave and liberal stance on so many important issues, but you do the C of E a disservice. The point about an established church is that it includes a wide variety of voices - some liberal, many less so - and what could be more liberal than that?

There are few denominations which are spread as evenly across race, class, age and gender divides (not that the C of E doesn't have a long way to go on some of these). The Episcopal Church is a far more middle class institution than plenty of innercity C of E churches.

Joining in willingly with a bunch of people who have a load of different beliefs about many things but share a core trust in God is one of the most positive expressions of faith I can think of. Shopping around to find the church that agrees with everything you already think seems lazy and arrogant - challenge and diversity are essential in life as in faith.

Sure you don't get what you want in every way, but you do get to exercise skills of tolerance, argument and community. I'm not suggesting you should feel obliged to go to a mega evangelical homophobic stadium church if that is the antithesis of your belief, but then very, very few C of E churches are like that.

Holding onto liberal beliefs while actively engaging and changing the illiberal beliefs of others is a commission not a chore.

Lastly - one thought, why didn't you try the Quakers? Its not a ritualistic form of faith but there are meetings with clear purpose and format, its disestablished, and exceeds even the Episcopal Church in liberalism. An organised religion where members are called Friends and every book is treated as being as Holy as any other.

Picking and Choosing - Division and Unity

Where I live there are lots of churches, for every denomination, every neighbourhood, every style, every brand, every outlook, every set of opinions and every set of beliefs that I am familiar with. Between each of them there runs a line, sometimes deeper, sometimes shallower, separating even churches within a denomination and beneath the same authority.

Here's one church: liberal, cerebral, reflective, catholic in tradition. Here's another: energetic, vibrant, evangelising, socially conservative.

And who goes? To the first: middle class families, older people, in their fifties and above, retired priests, a few ordinands. To the second: students, young people, young families.

My friend T, an atheist, loves the diversity. You can choose to participate in the religious outlook you believe in, to support the values you believe are true. Anything else is dictatorial, conservative and moralising, removing the free choice of the individual.

Here's what Screwtape thinks:

<<My dear Wormwood,

.... You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not wholly pleased with it. May I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realise that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.... the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil....>>

If we choose the religious experience we like the best, as we choose our favourite brand of peanut butter from the shelf, wouldn't we be creating a market where:

<<religious institutions become marketing agencies and the religious traditions become consumer commodities>>

as, in fact, the economist Peter L. Berger describes contemporary society? The big, popular churches can hoover up worshippers from the small, local ones.

Could I remove myself from the market by choosing not the commodity which suits me the best but rather the one I am already living closest to? My local church is neither conservative evangelical nor liberal catholic. I would have a short walk on Sunday mornings. I don't imagine it teaches anything I would disagree with, or at least no more than any other place of worship. And, given that members of one outlook on Christianity don't tend to live together, it's probably a safe assumption that there would be a good mix of views and beliefs, and not a bad one of affluence and class.

But, says T, does this choice really exist? What if you lived next to a church you believed was fundamentally wrong? Now that we do pick and choose is it worth being a martyr to your local community when most of it heads off to the church they like the best on a Sunday morning? What about those churches where no one lives locally, such as in the centre of town, should they just fold?

We finished lunch and I told him I'd think about it.

Events; coincidences

A few weeks ago I met a woman who had become a doctor and then, after some 15 years, a nun. While in holy orders she met a monk and they fell in love. There was nothing for it but to leave the convent. So, after several years of waiting and thinking she left and they married. Out of the cloister he became, perhaps inevitably, a priest and she took up the full time position of priest's wife.

They grew old together. Eventually it was time for him to retire from parish life and they planned a new life in a pretty, old city. Shortly before they were about to move he died unexpectedly. There was nothing for it but to move there on her own. Suddenly it was hard to go to church, to see someone who was not her husband take the service. Each time it was a disappointment, never quite the way she remembered it, the way it had been when her husband took the service. So she changed denominations and became a Quaker, finding in it something of the convent, quiet, reflective and surrounded by other people. No priests to remind her of her husband. This was when I met her.

Capitalism, TV and God

At an Anglican discussion group this week and the question <<is distrust endemic in our society?>> came up. Surely, I thought, everyone will pitch in with examples of distrust - bankers, lawyers, politicians on the make - you don't have to look far for excellent folk examples. But there was silence.

I give it a minute and ask everyone what they think about capitalism - specifically does competition, relentless competition, breed distrust? It isn't the kind of statement that would always be guaranteed much traction in this kind of environment, but no one demurred. One woman in her thirties agrees, giving an example of students competing for results. A priest goes further - is it possible to stop competition becoming reflected in a relationship with God? What happens when consumerism, individualism and competition become defining characteristics of our relationship with other human beings - it doesn't seem credible that the faithful of any religion could shake off these shackles when having a relationship with God.

There's a new television programme on the BBC by the Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker called 'How TV Ruined Your Life' (I don't think the irony is lost on him) which argues that the media has used fear to increase ratings. An obvious one I guess. But he pulls out research which argues that the more a particular image is repeated on TV the more ingrained it becomes in the brain; the more real it seems. Inevitably, therefore, other studies show that those who watch more TV believe they are in greater danger from crime and other threats than those who watch less. And, equally inevitably, this bares little to no relationship to reality as represented by falling crime statistics.

Competition and fear are natural bedfellows, and, of course, they undermine trust and then justify distrust by leading us to behave in untrustworthy ways. And TV, one of the most irresistible conduits for information about our world that there is, uses every tool in the disaster movie handbook to amplify competition in any way it knows how.

Not silent but thinking

To a Friends Meeting House and a service in silence. An hour spent sitting still, in the quiet, surrounded by other people is a challenge. You won't find me plugged into my iPod at all hours, I don't even listen to music much, but silence is a novelty, especially purposeful silence.

I am on a bench by the door, three rows back from the centre and all I can hear is breathing, pages turning, legs crossing, feet shuffling. My face itches like madness. For the first twenty minutes I focus well, discerning the Spirit, or trying to. It is taking, I realise later, all my powers of concentration. I focus, I refocus, I search my body and my head, the sounds near to me, the sounds far away from me, looking for something I don't understand. I close my eyes but that makes the itching worse. I try to sit with my feet on the floor, my hands in my lap, but I can't. My legs need to be crossed, my head supported. I give up.

Around me men and women, mostly in their 40s and 50s have their eyes closed beatifically. I can't copy them. I try and I can't. There is no deepening. My focus oscillates back and forth metronomically between discernment and distraction. Do I feel the Spirit? Do I feel nearer the Spirit? How do I even know?

After 20 minutes my psyche is exhausted and I think <<maybe that's the point>>

Time to not-try, to just exist in the room. I open my eyes and watch the other people. Someone speaks, tells a story, and I listen carefully. One woman hasn't shifted a muscle since I walked in. I feel envious. My head is sometimes filled with white noise, sometimes blank. I sit together with everyone else and enjoy the dawdling, the pleasant large windows, the young guy in a cap who smiles consistently. Are they all discerning the Spirit together? Are <<we>>?

The time passes very quickly and within moments the hour is up and two men in long beards shake hands, there is a sense, I think, of collective release. We smile and nod at each other. There is tea afterwards and one woman suggests to me that this is close to a monastic experience. Communion that isn't filled with action or purpose or function but just - communion. I agree and have a coffee.