A Skinny Fairtrade Latte in the Food Court of Life

I dunno, in the last two weeks I've had to replace my radio alarm clock (estimated at 30 years old, I've had it 26 years having swapped my trannie for it (with my Dad) when I went to university in 1981; I think my Mum still has the trannie somewhere...) and my kettle (19.5 years old).  They just don't make stuff to last anymore!  How can high street spending be down when I have bought not one but two consumer items in under a month?!

I have a couple of Google alerts (and a couple of Zetoc ones which are undoutbedly more scholarly) set up to let me know when things appear that ostensibly might just relate to my research work.

Today one popped up that says this....

"Every evil that Spurgeon saw came to pass.  Toleration of error eventually put error in control.  Today the British Baptist Union has virtually no positive spiritual impact."

The Baptist Story David Potter, PhD, online

Setting aside that the writer clearly doesn't even know the correct title of our august body, let alone that Connexion is spelled with an 'x' in relation to the New Connexion, it is a pretty swingeing indictment of a fairly large tranche of 21st century British Christianity.  It would seem that our lack of fundamentalism is what makes us so mad, bad and dangerous to know.  At least now I know we're all heretics, I feel so much happier.

I'm sure Dr Potter is a very nice man, sincere and devout, and his opinions of us are, of course, for him to form, but "virtually no positive spiritual input"?  I don't think so.

Another year over already.  How scary.  How inevitable.  How relevant?  What stands out?  What is best forgotten?  (And how many times will I rewrite this post before publishing it?!)

I think it's safe to say that I end the year feeling a lot more positive than I have done during it.  I know that at times I've been very grumpy and aggressive and that the wrong people have borne the brunt of that.  They know who they are, and whilst I thank you for being good friends, I'm sorry.

The talks with D+1 and the mashinations of the local council's planning department absorbed a lot of time and energy with little or nothing to show for it.  As I type, I have the latest set of architects drawings on my desk and we hope for another submission in January/Febrary 2008...   Whilst we continue to have a closer friendship with D+1, it is already clear that the joint services are becoming less well attended than they were during the 'courtship' phase.  For church folk all this has proved quite demoralising and frustrating, and it is continually clear that many of them just do not 'get' the financial side of any of this. 

More positively - much more positively - our outreach activities have continued to grow and flourish.  My rough estimate is that during 2007 we have had contact with at least 500 people through different endeavours.  It has been hard work pushing things along, and at times has felt that it would be so much easier just to do everything myself, but I think that almost everyone in our church has been involved in at least one outreach event as a 'helper.'  No one now thinks it odd to do 'church' in school, pub or public park.  Result!

Pastorally it has been the usual mix, though this year quite a few 'massive' things to deal with - the sort that cannot be shared and a few that have to go with me to my grave.  Folk have been good at accepting that I can't tell them things, but if only they'd tell each other they would be surprised at how much common ground they'd find.  On the 'up side' were the two weddings, an older couple in January and a young cross-cultural couple in August.  Each of these was a wonderful occasion. 

Some of my non-minister friends think I do nothing but church - and reading this back I undertsand why!  Life beyond church is, hmm, theology!  Well, part time doctoral work anyway.  To be honest this hasn't had the time it deserves, and I am suitably pleased just to have 'passed' the first year.  I think I've probably learned a lot about how not to approach this kind of work, and am grateful to all those who have kept me sane and roughly on track.  Technically half way through year two - oh dear, still not working enough, but at least I've blocked two four hour slots a week in my diary until Easter - we'll see if it happens!!

And beyond theology is.... GB?!  It has been a good year really, watching the girls grow in confidence, helping them learn some country dances, thinking about wildlife conservation, producing a nativity show... We began the year with about a dozen girls and end with over 30 on the books (though if half attend we're doing well).  It has been fun - now I have to sort some games for next week's party!

So, do I have a life?  Yes!  I enjoyed walking Hadrian's Wall, I have had some good times with friends in Warrington/Manchester/Derbyshire and even found half an hour last week to play the piano (boy, I'm rusty!). 

I am looking forward to 2008 and the challenges it will bring - already I am looking forward to another long distance footpath (probably Offas Dyke) and a couple of theology conferences in Prague and Manchester (is that sublime and ridiculous enough?!)

Over the last week things have been said to me that show me that the last year (or the last four maybe) has been worthwhile...

• one of the Methodists collared me after the joint morning service on 23rd.  He said, 'you always send us encouraging thank you emails after the events, but we never thank you.  We need someone to rattle our cages, and you do that.  Thank you.'
• one of my folk, after the Christmas Eve communion said, 'thank you for making this Christmas so special'
• another of my folk, as I dropped them off after an event on Boxing Day, knowing I was off to see family the next day said 'make sure you come back'
• an email from one of my folk regarding someone who has been taken into hospital this week advising me of visiting times and saying 'but don't disrupt your holiday to visit.'

To my loyal friends and readers, thank you for being yourselves, for your patience, gentleness, grace and encouragement.  Wherever you are, whoever you are, whether I know you in life or not, as you approach 2008 may I wish you God's peace in your hearts and homes?

A quotation...

The theological historian will have at his or her disposal, for instance, the category of sinfulness.  Such a category might well have far greater explanatory power in accounting for a particular stretch of human history than anything available to the secular historian.  Or she might use the category of divine grace in accounting for extra-ordinary acts of forgiveness and reconciliation that may be evident in human affairs.  That such categories don't permit empirical verfication in the same way others might doesn't settle the matter of whether or not they are valid categories to use.  It just means that their utilization is a very skilled affair that draws upon uncommon resources of wisdom and insight.  Again, the test of their valdiity will be the explanatory power afforded by their use.

Murray A Rae, History and Herneneutics, London, T&T Clark, 2005, page 154

Discuss!

At one level, I find this very appealing - one of the questions that rolls around my mind as I read church history is the lack of any mention of God as an 'actor' in the story.  To all intents and purposes, I could be reading the history of Nether Wallop.  And yet, how does one write God into the story in a way that is credible, sensible (i.e. can be understood) and authentic?  Do categories such as 'grace' or 'sin' offer a middle course?

Maybe.  But.

But who decides what is 'sinfulness' or 'grace'?  Reading Baptist history I find more about 'heresy' and 'orthodoxy' which are largely about dogma.  In other words, it isn't just about finidng theological categories to employ, it's also about deciding which ones to employ.  'Sinfulness' and 'grace' sound great but who decides they are the ones to use?  Are we clear on the distinction between 'sinfulness' and 'sin'?  Do we write off as 'sinful' that with which we disagree? 

I am fairly certain Murray Rae is clear about the distinction of 'sin' and 'sinfulness' and would offer us ways of endeavouring to discern, communally, in the light of the greater story of God's covenant with humanity, how toi nterpret events with these categories.  But, since I have yet to see much evidence of his suggestions that the Bible is read in this way, I don't hold out much hope for reading/writing history.

However!

All is surely not lost.  Could we attempt to read the stuff we already have through a consciosuly theological 'lens' - could we try to find evidence of 'grace' or 'sinfulness' - or some other distinctly theolgocial category - in what we read?  Is this, in fact what people like Steven Pattison (I think) try to get us to do as we seek out 'resurrection' or 'redemption' in reflecting on events?

I am still a bit apprehensive about trying to write God back into the story, though intuitively, I feel we ought to try.  Perhaps, though, having a more self aware set of categories in mind in telling it, we end up with a story that is more explicitly theological and less a boring account of theological triumphs and disasters!

Any thoughts, anyone?

Have been a good girl today - done lots of reading and note taking.  Not quite sure how to weave it into my essay but never mind, it's all grist to the mill in the end.

Murray A Rae, History and Hermeneutics, London, T&T Clark, 2005 is a nice read, the sort I like - in normal English (well most of the time) and basically talks common sense.  Whilst it is really about Bibilcal hermeneutics (~interpretation) and has to keep coming down to a faith position that God speaks somehow through scripture, it is of some use as I try to get my head around the kind of history writing that might be more helpful for theological reflection, and how concepts of tradition and testimony might (or might not) be useful.

In a chapter on testimony and its relationship to knowledge is this lovely citation from Karl Popper which is the best kind of common sense you can get in regard to reserach or knowledge...

It is a very simple and a decisive point, but nevertheless one that is often not sufficiently realized by rationalists - that we cannot start afresh; that we must make use of what people before us have done in science.  If we start afresh, then, when we die, we shall be about as far as Adam and Eve were when they died (or, if you prefer, as far as Neanderthal man).  In science we want to make progress, and this means that we must stand on the shoulders of our predecessors.  We must carry on a certain tradition.

Karl Popper 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition' in Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London, Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1963, 129 (cited in Rae, above, p 124)

What Rae is addressing is the claim of some that you can only know what you have experienced, and therefore that people who read the Bible cannot know about Jesus' life.  Whilst what we know is mediated through testimony, something Rae equates to what happens in law courts, it is still knowledge.

What struck me most was the simple reality of human limitation - it is only by accepting testimony, albeit with appropriate testing, that we are able to discover new knowledge and extend the 'frontiers' of what is known and understood.  As I said at the start, not actually what I'm studying, but somehow reassuring!

Today I have been reading some essays on history. Among them was a set of "Theses on the Philosophy of History" by Walter Benjamin, a German Jew (1892-1940) who offered some 'deep' stuff which I'm not entirely sure I understand, but made me think...  The two I cite below I chose because of their theological threads... 

A

Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various moments in history.  But no fact that is a cause is for that very reason historical.  It became historical posthumously, as it were, through events that may be separated from it by thousands of years.  A historian who takes this as his point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary.  Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one.  Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the 'time of the now' which is shot through with chips of Messianic time.

B

The soothsayers who found from time what it had in store certainly did not experience time as either homgenous or empty.  Anyone who keeps this in mind will perhaps get an idea of how past times were experienced in remembrance - namely in the same way.  We know that the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future.  The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however.  This stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succomb who turn to soothsayers for enlightenment.  This does not imply, however, that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous, empty time.  For every second of time was the strait gate through which Messiah might enter.

(from Tamsin Spargo (ed) Reading the Past, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000 p 126)

Benjamin took his life in 1940, so we can never know how he might have revised his ideas in later life.

I am struck by a kind of now-and-not-yet running through these two theses.  The 'chips of Messianic time' running through the whole of history (now) and the future possibility of Messiah entering (not yet).  The commentator suggests a view of history which eschews theological comfort, and maybe there is a deep irony in these two extracts that has gone way over my head.  But I wonder if I can read them more positively as affirming the divine both within and outwith time/history?

Watched the film The History Boys last night.  In amongst all the other stuff a couple of interesting, pertinent quotations - but probably not the sort one can quote in a nice polite theology essay!

As the boys rehearse for their Oxbridge interviews, the female history teacher, Mrs Lintott, poses the question 'what is history?'

Her own response is "history is women following behind with a bucket'

The character Rudge observes "one [expletive deleted] thing after another"

One of the characters comes up with the idea of 'subjunctive history' based on the favourite verbal mood/voice (I never fully get to grips with grammar, not something late 1970's/early 1980's comprehensive education went in for) of the teacher known as Hector.  History as a story of possibilities - might have, could have, would have.... the 'what if' questions... the diffenrence that arose (or arises) from seemingly insignificant or random events.  I have a suspicion that there is a lot of mileage in this idea, if anyone wanted to pursue it.

I quite enjoyed the film - though did the early 1980's really look that old fashioned?!  Thankfully in my compehensive school it was achievement enough to make it to university - 'Loughbrough in a bad year' would have been judged worthwhile.  The film as an exploration of history in its own right - now there's an exercise for the reader!

(Having now read a couple of reviews of the film and the play, it appears the theme Bennett is exploring is that of novelty in education - and its logical consequences if allowed to run unchecked.  But being a good Post Modern person, I'd argue that once you set it free to real 'readers' thay make of it what they will, and, in the words of the recycling advertisement, at least in theory, 'the possiblities are endless')

Christmas is a time when we can demonstrate to our ministers just how much they mean to us.  It is also a time when ministers can discover just how much they need to grow in grace.

I have thought long and hard whether or not it was too ungrateful and unkind to tell the world of these three gifts I received this year.  But in the end I decided the amusement it would bring to others probably outweighted the embarassment it could cause if this post was discovered by the perpetrators of these opportunities for me to grow in grace....

No gold, frankincense or myrrh, I received...

• A Christmas decoration that would have been tacky when it was bought several years ago, but the big giveaway was the faded box demonstrating it had long been hidden away.  At least it was unused!
• A box of biscuits 8 months past their use by date.  Yummy!  Well the garden birds thought so.
• A secondhand tea towel!!!!!  Though to be fair this was in a parcel with two new (kitchen related) items.

I am sure that each gift was well intentioned... I'm just glad these people weren't among the mages of old!

I don't know, I sit down to watch some junk TV and end up with stuff relating to my research work!

In the Christmas Day edition, we had a character who claimed to be an expert in earth customs explaining what Christmas was about, and using lots of mildly amusing cliches along the way - such as Santa being married to Mary.  Well I found it amusing and mildly thought provoking, others may not have done.

Then I read an essay entitled 'Emperor Kennedy Legend: A New Anthropological Debate' by Lesek Kolakowski in Tamsin Spargo (ed) Reading the Past, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000.  This short essay is equally humourous, and presents a mythical debate between three scholars some 600 years into the future, into the story of John F Kennedy.  With only limited extant documents, interpolation, extrapolation and surmise are employed, with reuslts that are funny for 21st century English speaking readers but could, conceivably occur in several centuries time.

The essayist offers no commentary and on comment, like a parable, whoever has ears to hear is left to deduce what the story says.

So here's the interesting bit for me - what is the difference between Kolakowski's scholarly contribution and Hyacinth Bucket's husband (I can't recall the name of the actor or his character!) as a phony expert in Dr Who?

And, which is the message in each case, unless you were there, what can you REALLY know about the past?

On Christmas day we had our little quiz about "truth and tradition" in the Christmas story - the answer to most of the questions being 'actually we don't know.'  We don't know what colour Mary wore, how old Joseph was, what the angels looked like, how many Magi there were or how anybody travelled to Bethlehem.  Yet the so-called traditional nativity scene is how most people envisage Christmas; most Christians live with a neat synthesis of Luke/Matthew that skips over inconsistencies to bring us to a tableau in which shepherds stand stage right, along with a donkey and a lamb, and three kings, one with black skin and possibly one with oriental features, stand stage left along with a camel and three elaborate caskets.  I ended my 'quiz' with the idea from the book whose title I've forgotten that somehow God can speak 'new' or 'different' truth through this - that Christ is where rich and poor, educated and uneducated, black, white and 'everything in between' meet on equal terms.  That the whole of creation - humans, animal and maybe even vegtable and mineral - bow, or are laid, at the feet of their creator.  The familiar nativity scene isn't 'true' but it contains 'truth'

If this is so for scripture, could something be similar for history?  And in particular Baptist history?  If history is 'created as much as found' or is a form of 'creative non-fiction', how might it parallel or differ from the nativity play?

The Baptist histories I have read so far are definitely synthetic - the origins of one strand, the heroes of another and the useful bodies of a third are carefully drawn together into a nice whole, with struggles, tensions and inconsistencies neatly ignored to present an inoffensive whole.

So, if there are to be parallels with nativity stories, what, if any, 'new' truth arises from this synthesis?  What is distorted?  What is lost along the way?  In what way does the 'traditional' story work?

I think that some of what it (Baptist history) loses, and is diminished by, is the loss of struggle and tension, it becomes as clean and saccharine as the Christmas card glittery nativity.  The Bible is not a nice, happy story: both Luke and Matthew (especially Matthew) drop hints of the pain that accompanies Jesus - promises of a sword piercing Mary's heart, babies slaughtered by a megalomanic ruler; not a nice story for the kiddies, I fear.

The synthetic nativity story has its place in our Christmas celebrations.  It has its place in learning the stories of Jesus.  And while it is not 'gospel truth,' it can, with some theological creativity, point us to gospel truths.  For all that, we don't expect Christian disciples to stick with Mary in a blue dress and a baby who never cries; we expect them to cultivate a habit of discovering more and more about Jesus the man, the prophet, the Son of God, the saviour (see John 9, the man born blind, for support of this model of disicpleship).  Yet, when it comes to history, the history of our own faith tradition, we seem content with the infant school version.  Granted, it is not the most earth shatteringly important thing for us to devote time to, but I can't help feeling we miss out on useful insights into what it might mean to follow Jesus in an authentically 'Baptist' kind of a way because we don't actually take time to discover what our own story really is.