Elements of Easter

What to write during this season, a time in which we reflect on the potency of new life made known through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ…?  Let me tell you about a book I have just finished reading: The Periodic Table, by Primo Michele Levi (1919-1987).

Levi was an Italian Jew, a Holocaust survivor.  He is considered to be one of the most powerful witnesses of twentieth-century suffering.  Unlike his first novel, The Periodic Table is written some 30 years after his experiences at Auschwitz.  It is full of ‘haunting reflections’ gathered over a life-time of working as a chemist in various contexts including the concentration camp itself.  

In the book, Levi explores his story with reference to different chemical elements (hence the title).  At times it is technical and hard going as he mentions yet another experiment to liberate a substance in pure molecular form from its natural habitat.  There is a certain barrenness about the dusty under-resourced laboratories in which he worked - reminding me of the sights and smells of my own science lessons at school.   But his writing is also deep, diligent, and lyrical.  The great atrocities Levi saw, and the personal suffering he endured, seem to bring him closer to the very grain of reality and life. 

For me the most powerful anecdotes come at the end of the book.  In the post-war years, Levi came into contact with a German scientist, his former ‘Boss’, at Auschwitz.  The exchanges between them make for uncomfortable reading as they try to address the memories of being on the opposite sides of the Holocaust…  

And then comes the finalé: a beautifully poetic chapter tracing the journey of the carbon atom, as it migrates from air to animal to plant to mineral and back again; coursing through life.  It is a surprisingly positive almost eucharistic ending to this otherwise somber book.  Light and gratitude pour through the pages as Levi shows how life cannot be extinguished even when surrounded by processes that lead to decay and death.  

Without undermining the deep difficulties and painful memories of Jewish-Christian relations over the centuries, this unexpected turn for me shifted the focus of Levi's writing from human suffering towards hope and the glory of eternity.  This is something Christians think about as the Easter season gives way to Ascension and Pentecost, and as we move from celebrating Jesus’ resurrection to considering what it means to be ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’.  

The life we are given in Christ, even the suffering Christ, is even more powerful and enduring than that of a versatile carbon atom.  In many ways, God’s Spirit is able to touch everything, presenting the possibility of healing and love, and yet God never undermines the difficult and perplexing situations in which we find ourselves.  God in Christ is especially near to those who suffer, and is always working in love…

Here’s to watching and waiting for the gift that God promises in Jesus (Acts 1.4).

Farewell Article

In the summer of 2010, the weather was warm, England were performing rather better in the World Cup, and the Kichensides arrived in Lilleshall and Muxton.  Four years ago I was writing to say thank you for a wonderful welcome, bristling with the excitement of meeting so many new people.  I had my first taste of the Activity Days (the theme: Zero to Hero) and was encouraging everyone to pray for the vision days.  Having just arrived, I remember making the most of a quiet August by trying to finish a 12,000-word dissertation alongside planning All Age Holy Communion services on Deborah and Gideon.  How time has flown?

Preparing to leave a place with significant memories is never easy.  In our house the other day I stumbled upon a pot of mystery keys – every home must surely have one; mystery keys which as far as I can tell open all the houses we’ve ever lived in, and all the padlocks on the sheds and garden gates!  It was time to sort out the pot, and I felt the Holy Spirit speak. 

Keys…  Jesus said, ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ (Matthew 16.19)  The kingdom of this world knows nothing of heaven.  It remains a mystery, locked, hidden away.  All over the earth there are corners of our humanity that need to be touched by heaven - bitterness among ethnic groups, powerful structures that mask abuse, suspicion within communities, broken marriages, hurting people.  And, there are things deep within ourselves that need to be named and loosed, and things that need to be left with Christ on the cross.

I sense this is what God has been doing in my life and ministry over the past 4 years.  Jesus said, ‘I will give you the keys’ – keys to hearts and minds, both young and old, and keys to your own heart and mind.  The Holy Spirit has been opening new opportunities for God’s healing love to move out-there and in-here.  Sometimes it’s been through a big project, sometimes a school assembly or Sunday service, but other times its happened through a quiet visit, a word, or even just a look.

Preparing to leave Lilleshall and Muxton is unlikely to be easy.  I want to simply give thanks for all God has done in this place.  And, may there be more to come in the future.  I will carry the treasures of the kingdom of heaven gathered here, to the next phase of our family-life to Holy Trinity Parish in Chatham.

Journeying Out

Ann Morisy's, Journeying Out: A New Approach to Christian Mission provides refreshing insights into how the local church might engage with community.

A brilliant book...  Some reflections on key concepts:

• the principle of Obliquity (pp. 11-18 & 215) - In most cases in the business world the ultimate objective is getting your money/maximizing profit, but no company states this upfront.  Rather, the objective is achieved by selling a product or service which offers the promise of a life transformed.  The Church on the other hand often states its objective upfront.  For example: join our church, be baptised, become a disciple of Jesus Christ (cf. Matthew 28.20 or any number of alternatives).  When it should be creating structures which led to an opportunity to be truly transformed by Christ.  Morisy argues that authentic community ministry offers a transforming space in which people can encounter God, and so find themselves part of the Church.  So, in this postmodern world sceptical about sales-pitches, power games, and authoritarian institutions, should not the Church be using a different marketing strategy?  This is a fascinating insight garnered from business studies, further reflection might be useful on whether it holds water theologically.  To what extent do we see salvation history or the great commission work on the principle of obliquity for instance?

• Grace Cascades (pp. 32 & 213) - Morisy writes, 'We have been slow to recognize that when people, motivated by venturesome love [cf. Karl Rahner], embrace a struggle for the well-being of others, it can prompt a very graceful, and often unanticipated dynamic, a cascade of grace, and this dynamic should be the very thing that churches are seeking to generate.'  Here we have a critique of every outreach initiative (or even ecclesiology) that aims to offer gospel proclamation and professionalism from a position of power to a world that doesn't know any better.  There is no mission or discipleship without struggle and vulnerability.  When we have all the answers and all the resources, there is no room for God's grace and transforming presence (2 Corinthians 12.9).  Furthermore, grace seems to abound from the most unlikely sources and the most unlikely people are drawn together when disciples embark upon challenging projects.  (An example from Muxton and Lilleshall is the Activity Days, a summer holiday-club for primary school-aged children, which is always difficult to plan and execute.  The event is now drawing interest and sponsorship from all sorts of community contacts and partners.  Over the past few years, our experiences is that, with collaboration and prayer, God is able to supply all the strength, energy and resources need to achieve his purposes.)

• The Suburban Challenge (pp. 95-106), the Story-rich life (pp. 67-90), and the Experience Economy (pp. 106-114) - Two subsequent chapters take up issues that I have deep concerns about: the nature of human society in large swathes of the affluent postmodern West - i.e. those living in suburbia.  Here, I believe, Morisy offers a substantial antidote to the malaise Alain de Botton describes in his book Status Anxiety.  In reverse, Morisy argues that the most valuable economic good (in the contemporary West) is that of experience.  It is hunger for experience that drives consumerism and lifestyle choices.  The houses we buy, cars we drive, the holidays, the way we socialize, who we socialize with, the choices we make for our children and the values we live by are shaped by a narrative of experience.  Businesses have caught onto this dynamic.  Hence, the most successful products and services are sold on the basis of the experience they offer.  However, as Morisy has gone on to espouse elsewhere, chasing a narrative of experience based on material consumption will always leave us wanting.  In the comfort and monotony of suburban dwelling, people are left empty with lives actually devoid of narrative - the stories which bring true wealth, meaning and purpose.  These are the stories that the Church can offer.  Morisy suggests some quite radical action is necessary to turn this around.  One example involves travelling to another country to serve the poor, returning with rich experiences and stories to share.  Another, could be taking on the local council about the decision to build new houses in the community!

• Without Power (pp.117-135) - Eva McIntyre recently argued in the Church Times that a more mature and sensitive theology is needed in the Church to engage the spectrum of human experience in the world (Church Times 18 July 2014).  In this short controversial chapter on power and the church, Morisy calls for the same thing but draws special attention to the nature of power and the traditional claim of the church as guardian of the truth.  What emerges in these pages has huge implications for the kerygmatic ministry of the church. 

Three points worthy of further consideration:

• Morisy's concept of Apt Liturgy (p.156)
• Religious experience and the growth of moral sensitivity (p. 168)
• Transformation (pp. 218-221)- 'Transformations are a distinctive economic offering, they form the final, i.e. the highest aspect of progression of economic value. A transformation is what the out-of-shape person, the emotionally troubled person, the young managers, the hospital patient and the struggling company all really desire.' (Pine and Gilmore).  Interestingly, Morisy argues that the church needs to contest the types of transformative experiences offered in the world.  Those for example which Till defends in his analysis of Pop Cults (cf. p. 220).

Pop Cult - New Religious Expression

A brief review of Rupert Till's, Pop Cult, Religion and Popular Music, (London: Continuum, 2010).

Similar to other works on cultural phenomena in conversation with theology or religious practice,  Till takes a history/philosophy of religion approach to this study.  The main question he seeks to address is '...whether functions formerly served within society by religions are now being addressed by cults of popular music', giving a nod to the 'effects of postmodernity, or liquid culture on religions, and the roles of cults of popular music in this process' (p. ix).

Till '... aims to show how popular music mixes, confuses and plays with imagery and traditions that are traditionally regarded as either sacred or profane, transgressing borders and creating a 'Sacred Popular' set of popular cults that lie between the two, in the realm of popular culture often thought of as secular, but in fact drenched with meaning, belief, faith, worship and ritual...' (p. 5)

In Chapter One, Till defends his use of the term 'cult'.  He convincingly points out similarities between the practices of traditional religions and the new religious movements which are heavily criticised in mainstream circles because of questionable theological orientation and the seemingly negative social practices they encourage.  He argues that cults of popular music in the West have moved to fill in the gaps left behind as traditional religion has rejected activities that connect with certain aspects of faith and religious expression (p. 10).  (For example, consider the controversies surrounding icons and music in church history, or the question whether dancing is acceptable in a place of worship!).

Chapters Two through Eight contain a detailed analysis of the different cults within the Sacred Popular that have emerged in the Twentieth Century:

• Sex cults - the centrality and celebration of physicality, sexuality and eroticism in music, lyrics, clothing and performances;
• Drug cults - the relationship between drug-taking and popular music; 
• Personality cults - the deification of artists and admiration/imitation of their life-styles; 
• Local cults - the emergence of local scenes to differentiate regional identities (c.f.  The Beatles and Brit-pop);
• Virtual cults - where the personas of artists, or as Till prefers, 'mediaphemes', only exist in the media (e.g. the Monkees and Gorillaz);
• Death cults - the way that certain genres of music celebrate death (e.g. various kinds of Metal) and the martyr myths surrounding artists who have committed suicide or died young; 
• Cult of Electronic Dance Music - which brings together many concerns: ritual/transcendent experiences/drug-taking/dance/social connection/spirituality;

This is quite a neat list that highlights the parallels between the features of the Sacred Popular and traditional religion and shows what is arguably missing from traditional religious expression.  I found it surprising that Till was able to demonstrate that many of these cultic features of popular music stretch right back to the origins of this cultural movement.  

Alongside historical analysis, Till suggests that 'opposition' against the controlling mainstream culture is partly why these cults have emerged in popular music.  Hence, conservative values about the human body and sexuality are challenged.  The traditional stance on taking drugs for recreational and transcendental purposes is ignored.  Artists and musicians that represent anti-establishment behaviour or alternative life-styles are invested with god-like qualities and are exalted and worshipped.  Features of local culture challenge the prevailing homogenous mainstream culture, and so on...

However, I wonder whether this is where a small crack opens in Till's thesis.  Using historical analysis and working with an organising narrative to study any subject in the contemporary world is likely to collide methodologically with the currents of the intellectual climate of postmodernity that defies such inquiry in the first place.  (But, I suppose books must begin somewhere, follow some logical pathway, and end somewhere else.)  To be fair, Till offers more trajectories of thought rather than firm conclusions, and this is apparent in his rather discursive and cyclical style.  Yet, if one reads popular culture today there are good reasons for suggesting that something new is happening outside of Till's thesis.

Although many of the cultic features of Sacred Popular highlighted are still very much present, it seems to me the most recent developments seem to pay less credence to what you might call, in modern terms, the canon of pop music and a narrative of 'opposition'.  The reasons for this are twofold: 1) The ideals of opposition and anti-establishment which have been an integral part of youth culture since the 50's have become so ingrained in society that there is less incentive to engage in cultural expressions that undermine traditional values.  True, youth culture still involves reacting against the parental generation, but I wonder whether this is as much to do with natural human development than being swept along by cultural phenomena;  & 2) Virtual Technologies are enabling more artists to create, record and market music for music sake without the support of 'traditional' record labels and publicity channels.  Consumers of popular music can download and stream whatever they like.  There is less interest in historic concerns about different musical tastes and also a distinct lack of loyalty between genres exemplified by the types of artists now appearing at Music Festivals during the summer months.

On one level, Till is correct about the mutually conditioning effects of the pop music on postmodernity - as pop music has evolved it has contributed to the fragmenting of culture and the search for new religious expression.  But I suggest that more recently there has been a 'philosophical turn' in discerning how we experience what we experience in postmodernity rendering the methodologies used to analyse cultural phenomena increasingly irrelevant.  If we buy into postmodernity wholeheartedly, it seems the pursuit of intellectual inquiry is destined to drown in the whirlpool of a 'liquid culture'.

Nevertheless, in the final Chapter, Till returns to his opening question and discusses what traditional religions might learn from the phenomena of popular music cults.  He deals with the contact points.  A particularly interesting comment is made about the use of pop music at funerals to manage the complex human emotions experienced over the death of a loved one (pp.168-169).  Going back and forth, Till suggests that traditional religions are currently failing to address the human need for transcendence and religious expression.

It is fascinating the way he argues that the history of Western culture has broadly followed James Fowler's, Stages of Faith.  The 'Intuitive-Projective' and 'Mythic-Literal' stages representing pre-history and the medieval period, the 'Synthetic-Conventional' stage during the renaissance and enlightenment, and the 'Individuative-Reflective' stage in postmodernity.  Till suggest the Sacred Popular in place of traditional religion has vitally helped the populace navigate through the crises of this fourth stage (p. 175).

Again, why do traditional religions not work today?
Till keeps reinforcing the same view often to do with a cultural fracture between traditional religion and society, the problems of power, control, regulation and institutions.  For example:

'Christianity, for example, has lost connection with the culture of contemporary society due to the conservative tastes of those in power within the organisation.' (p. 178)

'Mainstream religions are in many ways out of touch with contemporary Western culture [he can only seriously be talking about Christianity here], and therefore their rituals, music and culture are such that they are often not effective in helping members of youth culture experience the divine or transcendental.  In the West religions have traditionally been controlled by priests who were chosen from the educated classes, and who held religious knowledge in a world where few could read written religious texts.' (p. 182)

'Religions have presented themselves as all or nothing, as a complete systematic approach to life rather than a set of functions and practices developed as social technology, and selected as useful from a range of possibilities, and thus have largely ruled themselves out of postmodernity.' (p. 185)

The solution (and I am going beyond Till here in many points here): a 'new reformation' that embraces the notion of deregulation of religion as a contemporary concept and the loosening of control over sacred text and doctrine.  A 'new reformation' that also acknowledges the need for flattening the governance structures within traditional organised religions - after all the Church, for example, is meant to consist of a priesthood of all-believers.  In the other direction, a movement of 'reconstruction' and 're-enchantment' of religious practice is needed that reconnects with some of the lost elements of human spirituality such as physicality and mysticism possibly through new art forms, music and liturgy.  Here it seems that new religious communities, the Emerging Church and Fresh Expressions movement have a key role to play.

To conclude, by no means does Till hold up the Sacred Popular with its different cults as the total solution to the dilemma of religion in the postmodern West, however, this fascinating study raises all sorts of questions for religious minded people to grapple with as they consider the evolution of culture and intellectual history and what religious practice looks like today.  It certainly presents a challenge to those involved with mission and ministry in the local church.

Virtual Worlds

Sporadically over the past few years there has been comment in the press about the impact of virtual media on society…  

[Stories range from parents neglecting their children because they are addicted to 'Second Life' (www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2455567/Parents-immersed-video-game-daughter-nearly-starved-death.html), to online bullying among young people (see NSPCC Statistics), and the way social networking sites have acted as a catalyst for political protest.]

Needless to say, the Internet permits all manner of interaction between people in an environment that notes the passing of time but doesn’t actually exist physically.  If we choose, technology helps us engage with the multitudes at great speed – buying, selling, chatting, or playing.  The days of letter writing, even of telephone calls, are waning and government, business, learning and relationships are being done differently.  (Next year, I am told, I will need to renew my car tax online!)  

[Virtual worlds burst open ontological possibilities in a way never before imaginable.  Categories of time and space, and of the 'knowing/acting' individual become disconnected, dark, distorted and surreal.   The whole nature of 'being' is open for negotiation.  I wonder what Martin Heiddegger would make of it all!]

One of the big questions surrounding the use of virtual media, as far as Christians are concerned, is whether it is a force for good; an inhibitor of God’s plan for the world; or, ‘morally neutral’- a tool like any other, simply subject to the intentions of the one who wields it.  




[Recently Vicky Beeching asserted that virtual media is 'mostly neutral' whereas others are less positive, cf. Graham Houston, Virtual Morality, 1998).]  




Having reflected on this for some time, I think a number of tensions come in to play:

1) There is no doubt that the technology behind virtual media is driven by the ‘progress’ agenda of modernity; our attempt to improve, control and better the human situation through science, technology and industry.  In a sense, this is linked to a God-given calling ‘to rule’ and ‘subdue’ (Genesis 1), but in history our efforts have rarely been without unforeseen side-affects (e.g. Eighteenth Century Industrial Revolution = Twenty-first Century Global Warming).  




[For a theological critique of humanity's relationship to the environment see Richard Baukham,  The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation, 2010.]

2) Exposure to a higher volume of communication leads to a greater awareness and solidarity with our fellow human beings, as the recent campaign concerning the 200 girls kidnapped in Nigeria has shown – yet the sheer amount of messages flying our way can be overwhelming.  It is wonderful to keep up with events and the news of friends and relatives from around the world, but information overload often leads to an unreflective or un-prayerful engagement with them.  We react pragmatically to the information we receive rather than with mindfulness and grace.

3) A different ethical stance is necessary depending on the type of environment in question.  On-line gaming can be a positive experience for youngsters, allowing them to learn and adventure - just like reading a gripping novella.  

[In this respect I find Rowan Williams analysis of the lost icon of childhood insightful.  Williams suggests that imaginative play, and in particular, the exploration without consequence of fictional worlds as vital for a child's social and emotional development.  He warns of the dangers of plunging children into a world of economic and social consequences before their time (cf. Rowan Williams, Lost Icons, 2005.]

Children need be kept safe from choices they are not yet equipped to deal with.   This is even more the case with social networking websites, which seem especially open to the nastier side of human behaviour.  I sense these sites need more care, perhaps more regulation, in order to protect the young and vulnerable from the harm of hidden social dangers that this technology allows.

Whether we like it or not we are all affected by virtual worlds, even if indirectly via those we love.  It is worth being aware of the issues and to pray for the ethical and affective use of technology in the world God has made by the people God loves.