Blog
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Dimensions of Baptist Spirituality: Under the Rule of Christ.
It's here. Just received in the post my copies of the most recent Regent Study Guide entitled Under the Rule of Christ. Dimensions of Baptist Spirituality, Paul Fiddes (Ed.), Smyth and Helwys, 2008 (ISBN: 978-095397 – 4-1). The book arose out of a request from the Baptist Union Retreat Group to the UK College Principals to write something on spirituality amongst Baptists. The result was a series of papers which we wrote, reviewed together, revised in the light of our discussions, and then offered for publication.
Here's the blurb from the publisher
In this book the Principals of the six Baptist colleges in Great
Britain take up a request to write about Baptist spirituality. They
propose that the spirituality of Baptists, in all its diversity, is
characterized by living ‘under the rule of Christ’. While all Christian
spiritual traditions affirm this truth, they suggest that there is a
particular sense of being under Christ’s rule which has been shaped by
the story of Baptists and by their way of being church through the
centuries. Elaborating the main theme, chapters explore various
dimensions of spirituality: giving attention to God and to others,
developing spirituality through suffering, having spiritual liberty
within a community, living under the rule of the Word in Christ and
scripture, integrating the Lord’s Supper with the whole of life, and
engaging in the mission of God from an experience of grace. Together,
the writers present an understanding of prayer and life in which Christ
is both the final authority and the
measure of all things.Chris Ellis is Principal Emeritus of Bristol Baptist College; Paul Fiddes is Principal of Regent’s Park College, Oxford; Steven Finamore is Principal of Bristol Baptist College; James Gordon is Principal of the Scottish Baptist College, Glasgow; Richard Kidd is Principal of Northern Baptist College, Manchester; John Weaver is Principal of the South Wales Baptist College, Cardiff; Nigel Wright is Principal of Spurgeon’s Baptist College, London.
Ive a lot more to say about the Bible, Baptist principles and Baptist spirituality on the College blog here. You can find it just after the publisher's blurb. There is a big conversation to be had about what it means to be Baptist in such a distinctive way that it actually makes baptist people distinctive! Such distinctiveness doesn't necessarily make baptists more right, more spiritual, more theologically sound – it does indicate what it is we are called to be, and to be faithful to, within the diversity of the church universal.
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Life returning to a more bearable abnormal – SPOOKS is back!
Sub Prime Mortgages. The run on Northern Rock. Credit Crunch. HBOS takeover. Major Banks bail out. Recession inevitable. The sequence of significant moments affecting the future welfare of the planet since last year, hasn't finished yet.
But, some of us who live on more than one level of unreality will find with apologies to Boethius, The Consolation of Spooks. The scarily plausible, brilliantly acted Spooks are back.I have every intention of marking the occasion with whatever calorie laden sweetie I fancy at 9.00pm Monday night. And for the next 10 weeks there will be at least one TV programme I can be sure posits a worse case scenario than is being painted for the global financial markets – I think.
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“here’s tae us, wha’s like us” – Is there a Scottish spirituality?
An area of increasing interest for me is the way a spiritual tradition grows out of its native soil, and takes on the characteristics of its environment. The question of what is distinctive, even unique, in a spiritual tradition depends on the particularities of context – historical, political, cultural, religious – perhaps even geographical.The term "Scottish piety" (not sure about the continuing usefulness of the ubiquitous descriptor "spirituality") needs some clarifying.
Is there a uniquely Scottish stream of Christian faith as it has been experienced, thought and lived? If so what gives Scottish piety its distinctive flavour?
What in the Scottish context, over centuries, shaped and gave specific Scottish content to Christianity in Scotland, as through processes of revolution and evolution, it developed and changed?And what is meant by piety? In Scotland, amongst other things the impact of religious experience, doctrinal developments and doctrinal fixity, the role of the Kirk in discipline, worship, liturgy and community and people's experience of all of these. But also the relation of people to Bible, prayer, preaching and the hard to measure extent that such piety and faith exerted on and influenced daily life.
All of this – but even then, "Scottish piety" remains unsatisfactory as a catch-all. For Scotland itself has a religious history and representation as varied as its own georgraphical landscape – Prebyterian and Catholic, Episcopal and Dissenting, Highland and Lowland, West and East – and in all this variety a gift of fractiousness that made fragmentation inevitable, bringing both blessing and loss.
The research part of my current sabbatical is focusing on how to explore all this in a way that will help Scottish Christians to 'look to the rock from which we are hewn". Such an exercise involves a long ponder about what in our tradition, our way of following Christ, is of lasting significance and value, what can be appropriated and what now needs to be relinquished, in order to clarify what faithful following of Christ means in contemporary Scotland. If context is decisive in how a tradition is formed, it is also decisive in how that tradition changes, adapts and stays healthy. Quite straightforward really – not!
A subsidiary interest is the way Scottish Baptist communities have emerged, developed, declined and yet continue to feature within the Scottish ecclesial landscape. Again, the focus of my personal interest is the way Scottish Baptists have experienced, thought and lived out their way of following Christ. The suggestion there is such a disctinctive thing as "Scottish Baptist piety" might be even more contentious. And for that very reason even more interesting, as a route to self-understanding and renewal for communities sharing in the experience of decline, and badly needing to recover confidence in a Gospel which never promised us a rose garden – or an assured place at any table, political or religious, other than the one where bread is broken and broken hearts are healed.
Anyway, that's what I'm about these days.
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The unbearable heaviness of hailstones
Now I know it's possible to take things too personally. And that when we begin to do that, we are assuming that we are the centre of attention, which is a bit self-obsessed. So I'm trying not to take it personally, that when I return from a few days on the East Coast (Crail), I'm just getting out the car in Paisley when the heavens open and malteser size hailstones start bouncing off my unprotected skull. And they fell with volume and venom for several minutes. No wonder Pharaoh hated hailstones- especially if he was bald and no one was areound with a palm leaf umbrella.
Anyway, Crail was both fun and fruitful. Some anecdotal evidence:walking up the road from the centre of Crail we met an elderly woman pulling her shopping trolley. She liked the sound its wheels made, she said. "Makes it sound like a skateboard and people move out the road."
Bought a beautiful pottery vase for our wee hoose. The colours, shape, size and the overall Scottish feel to it appealed to both of us so the decison was unanimous. I love unanimity in a marriage – balanced with an equal amount of equanimity about differences.
Read chunks of the Apostolic Fathers in the new Michael Holmes edition that has the Greek text and the English translation. Just to be clear, I read chunks of the English translation, and occasionally deciphered a Greek sentence or two. But I've liked these early Christian thinkers and writers ever since Maxwell Staniforth's translation was published by Penguin in the 1970's. My aged Penguin was brown, split into looseleaf and recently recycled – so I bought this new edition that matches the format and size of my Greek NT.
Discovered at least three good coffee shops, and one where you get home made clootie dumpling with fresh thick cream, which I haven't had with coffee before but will have again – soon! The photo is the clue – after a 7 mile round walk from St Monans, what's a dollop of cream here or there?Rediscovered the local practice of the Wednesday half day. As a sabbaticaling visitor I readily approved of the idea that if you have to work on a Saturday (or Sunday), there is a need for compensatory time – and a need to protect it. An incoming resident complained to the butcher that he was shut when she came the day before to buy the victuals for tea. His answer was enigmatic and emphatic 'Aye, but this is Crail". Which had me inwardly seconding the motion, "Aye, so it is".
Walked several chunks of the Fife Coastal Walk, and apart from the usual ornithological suspects, saw redstarts, linnets, goldfinches, a heron standing like a grey obelisk, and close ups of hunners and hunners of geese strip-mining a recently harvested field.
Read around John Wesley's theology and especially those theological traditions which most influenced him including the Moravians, the Greek Fathers, the Puritans, and various other contributors to the eclectic mix that makes Wesleyan theology both rich in its diversity and frustratingly elusive for those who insist on theological consistency.
Spoke with the proprietor of the wee Picture Gallery in Pittenweem, whose wife is a superb painter, and whose daughter is both a primary teacher and a painter in her own right. One of her paintings was beautiful – just what I'd like to have bought and looked at endlessly – but it was too expensive, so I was left to battle with my covetousness. He told us about some of the local artists some of whom are pretty good, and some of the more pretentious ones who see themselves as 'serious' artists. Art is largely a matter of taste, but I do find myself at times baffled by some abstract work which is given a very specific name – and I can't for the life of me get the connection between the name and the picture. Perhaps a conversation of the obtuse with the obtuse. But what a nice man to talk to.
So – Crail was great, and the break a generous gift – and our thanks to the givers.
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The Fife Coastal Walk, the Equinox and Psalm 93
Going here (to Crail, Fife), to do walking, reading and thinking. Sheila likewise and taking her watercolours too. The weather forecast is "none of this over-rated and boring blue skies with day on day constant sunshine, but as we move towards the equinox there will be high winds, rain and the usual seasonal challenges." Once had a holiday in the East Neuk during the equinox and the seas were mountainous – I love big seas crashing in on the shore. I can well understand how in the Wisdom Literature the image of humanly uncontrollable waves points to the immensity and mystery of God, and makes human beings feel small, relative to the vast dynamic reality of the God whose love and power is imaged in pounding waves. Taking my waterproofs and probably not my Factor 40 sun cream. Taking my wee NT and Psalms as well – and if there are big seas, I'll read Psalm 93 on the shoreline – perhaps as a reminder there is a power greater than all the Market Forces of discredited globalisation!1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the LORD is robed in majesty
and is armed with strength.
The world is firmly established;
it cannot be moved.2 Your throne was established long ago;
you are from all eternity.3 The seas have lifted up, O LORD,
the seas have lifted up their voice;
the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.4 Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea—
the LORD on high is mighty.5 Your statutes stand firm;
holiness adorns your house
for endless days, O LORD. -
Sabbaticaling Continued
Amongst the sabbatical benefits so far:
- a sense of being rested – which is what Sabbath is for; and therefore a regular necessity
- a fresh perspective on other important aspects of life beyond immediate vocational responsibilities
- a recovering of physical fitness with a regular exercise programme
- time with people usually squeezed into odd 'windows of opportunity' – meals, conversation and laughter – kind of what friendship is about.
- specific reading keeping up with recent work on Evangelicalism, its own internal critique and history, the ongoing search for definition, the problem of politicisation especially in the US, and that bright elusive butterfly of an agreed evangelical identity. The relationship between Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism is currently under scrutiny and itself raises important issues about Evangelicalism's relation to culture, the nature of biblical authority and the straightforward equation of Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the popular mind, often in the writing of journalists, and less excusably in some academic work in sociology and theology.
- a range of reading not limited to the funtional but intentionally recreative – this includes poetry of Levertov,Dickinson and the later R S Thomas; Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me, with some sorties into Desert Spirituality; some of Tom Torrance's later work, Christian Doctrine of God, The Trinitarian Faith,(in preparation for the day conference at the end of the month, and several novels which don't feature on any academic list I can think of!
- some jobs done to the house, either by ourselves or organising for them to be done by those who can them properly.
- listening to music that is new and old, from Eternal Light by Goodall, to Beethoven's Symphonies (is there anything more wildly manic than the lst movement of the Seventh which one contemporary reviewer explained by the accusation Beethoven was drunk when he composed it), and then Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bruch, violin concertos all of which I've listened to loadsatimes!!
- Several periods of longer change and holiday, a week at St Deiniol's, 8 days in Cornwall, and next week mostly at Crail doing amongst other things the Fife Coastal Walk, or parts thereof. A couple more such jaunts are planned, including a still to be arranged pilgrimage to Manchester to commiserate with Sean the Baptist about the amount of sunshine he'll have to get used to in Australia!
- Alongside this some preliminary work towards Advent when the later part of this sabbatical will be spent exploring the images of Jesus in art, music, icon and film – in preparation for return to College and a new course, but at this stage an opening up of mind and heart to the unique glory of that grace and truth that dwelt among us.
Now and again I recall the important disclaimer of A J Heschel probing at the pride that drives our drivenness:
He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the
profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go
away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury
of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must
say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world
already has been created and will survive without the help of man. Six
days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth;
on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in
the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone
else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world; on the seventh day
we try to dominate the self. (Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath) - a sense of being rested – which is what Sabbath is for; and therefore a regular necessity
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Prayer and the volatile money markets
Prayer for the current financial situation
The
Church of England put a "prayer for the current financial situation" on
the prayers page of its website and saw traffic increase by almost a
third. On Friday, it was viewed 8,000 times.The
Rev Simon Butler, a curate at St Giles church in Nottingham, said he
had seen more young professionals at services since the crisis began.
"I would guess that some of them would be looking to things of a
spiritual nature because things of a material nature are looking a bit
shaky," he said.The Prayer
Lord God, we live in disturbing days:
across the world,
prices rise,
debts increase,
banks collapse,
jobs are taken away,
and fragile security is under threat.
Loving God, meet us in our fear and hear our prayer:
be a tower of strength amidst the shifting sands,
and a light in the darkness;
help us receive your gift of peace,
and fix our hearts where true joys are to be found,
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The link for this was sent to me by a friend and colleague at University of the West of Scotland. You can find it and other interesting stuff here.
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Northern Rock on not forgiving its debtors
"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors…."The news this morning featured Northern Rock – remember, the bank that was nationalised at tax payers expense? Whose debts were forgiven even if the irresponsibility that led to them was unforgiveable?
Now we hear that Northern Rock are using aggressive tactics against those struggling to pay their mortgages, that they are inflexible in helping make arrangements for people who want to pay but are struggling, and that Northern Rock is significantly increasing the number of house repossessions as a way of dealing with mortgage debt. This claim was made by Credit Action who are seeing the consequences of this for families ambushed by recent events that the Government itself blames on global factors beyond its own control.
Apart from the obvious line in the Lord's Prayer, (I prefer the Scottish version of 'forgiving debts' for several reasons) I recall there is a parable in the New Testament about a servant who was forgiven a massive humungous debt, only to be found later beating up on someone who owed him a tiny fraction of what he had been forgiven. That parable ended with oppressors being cast into outer darkness, and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
As a taxpayer, I don't want a Bank that exists because of my money to use money-power against people by defaulting to the repossession of people's homes as the quickest way to realise assets to pay off what is owed to the Government (and me). But what can I do about it? I want to think about this, because I have a feeling that as money gets tight, so will the jaws of the vice that holds people's future. (In relation to abuse of money-power, just noticed, "vice" has a double entendre)And on a global scale, an even bigger worry, where now the possibility of ending world poverty?
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Reading Poetry, and Recovering a Sense of Slow
Slow reading of poetry is becoming a favourite way of recovering a sense of slow. Some of the most important human experiences require us to take our time, or better, to take the time it takes to listen, see, understand, appreciate, enjoy, allow ourselves to be spoken to from outside ourselves. And the time it takes isn't the time I can spare, but the time it takes for that other voice to speak. So whether that voice is Brahms' Violin Concerto, a tern diving into blue sea, the distant profile of a mountain I climbed years ago, Rublev's Icon of The Trinity above my desk, a sycamore tree aflame with autumn, food lovingly prepared and eaten in friendship, shared silence with the love of our life, or poetry – these are voices that are raoutinely obscured, obliviously silenced by the noise of undeterred preoccupations and the clatter of a life too busy to want to hear them.
Amongst those from whom I am currently re-learning the gift of slow listening, is Denise Levertov. She would have rejected the description of her work as 'Christian' poetry – rather it is the poetry of one who during her life as a poet, came to deep convictions through an inward conversion, expressed in words and ideas recognisably Christian. Not so much Christian poetry as and increasingly recognisably Christian theology giving form and tone to her way of seeing and saying the world. Here are a couple of short poems to read………slowly…..more than once…SuspendedI had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummetted.The Avowal (Recalling the 300th Birthday of George Herbert, 1983)
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-suurounding grace.
In yesterdays post (below) I mentioned the inaugural meeting of what I called 'The Baptist Theological Study Group'.
A fuller post at the College blog prompted several questions from Margaret which make it important to clarify what is envisaged. Here is Margaret's comment / questions, and the response I posted on the College blog. I am answering only for myself as the occasion is being organised by Andrew Rollinson – but in our conversations about it I have a good idea of what Andrew is envisaging and hoping for.
Margaret
"What's the Scottish Baptist
Theological Study Group? Where and when do they meet? Who is "in the
group"? How do you get to be "in the group"? Just curious….."
My reply
The
name is provisional Margaret – and likely to change because it's hard
to avoid words like 'group', 'society', but they have a kind of closed
feel to them that is entirely unintended.
The initial meeting was set up by Andrew Rollinson, our Ministry Advisor at the Baptist Union of Scotland, by an email
circular inviting expressions of interest – not sure who was on that
first list. But the intention is to get such a discussion forum under way and make it into
an inclusive place for creative reflection, responsible discussion and
respectful listening about issues and themes important for the ongoing
life and health of Baptist thought and practice.
At this first meeting, as well as the lecture, we hope a broader
discussion will help clarify what we want to be about, and how best to
develop through thoughtful, informed discussion together, Baptist ways
of thought and practice that arise out of such a process of theological
reflection.
So I guess the invitation is to all those who are open to and
supportive of the intended ethos of "an inclusive place for creative
reflection, responsible discussion and respectful listening about
issues and themes important for the ongoing life and health of Baptist
thought and practice". At this stage it is only being initiated – what
it becomes will largely be determined by those who want to make this
journey together.
My personal conviction is that such a shared journey can only be taken if the journey itself is inclusive and welcoming, accessible and jargon free, contextually sensitive but challenging, and therefore enabling practice which arises out of shared learning 'in the school of Christ'; and that such a journey of learning and discovery means our willingness to travel together in conversation, companionship, and commitment to live together 'under the rule of Christ'.
Hope that helps with the 'just curious' questions –
for which many thanks!