Living Wittily

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  • Evangelicals of substance?

    I’m currently doing a revision and some rewriting of my book, Evangelical Spirituality: From the Wesleys to John Stott. The past 20 years have seen a huge increase in interest in Spirituality as a subject for scholarly activity and research. When I wrote Evangelical Spirituality in 1991 there was very little published on the Evangelical spiritual tradition. This is now changing, and Evangelicalism itself has become a major area of scholarly activity – the recently published Cambridge Companion to Evangelicalism is evidence that Evangelicals (a much more varied group than often supposed) are a substantial and important tradition.

    Mw114911 So as I’m ploughing through the cosmetic reformatting, converting over 1500 endnotes and in-text references into newly formatted footnotes, and reconstructing and updating the bibliography; then I’ll do the revision and updating of the text. While doing all this, I’m being re-introduced to a community of saints, attractive or annoying, conciliatory or confrontational, melancholic or exultant, but whose love for Jesus transcends differences in temperament, diversity of experience and variety of theological emphases. As noted a couple of days ago when quoting R. W. Dale, (pictured) many earlier Evangelicals lived out their faith at profound levels of thought and spiritual experience. This meant that when I wrote the book I was able to follow through on my chosen approach – which was to take two contemporary significant Evangelical figures, and to compare and contrast their spiritual experiences, the way they lived the doctrines they believed, and how their theological emphases exerted leverage on lifestyle, spiritual discipline, relationships and social action.

    The latest pair I dealt with was Martyn Lloyd Jones and John Stott. So here is the question –

    if I were to write a further chapter, comparing and contrasting two contemporary leading Evangelicals, who should they be?

    Who in their lives, Christian activity, writing, teaching stands anywhere near some of those earlier pairings – the two Wesleys, Whitefield and Edwards, Hannah More and Charles Simeon, D L Moody and Frances Havergal, Lloyd Jones and Stott, to mention only a few. I’d be interested to hear suggestions – is it just me, or am I right that there’s a dearth of people of stature, significant figures who both define Evangelicalism at its best and embody a tradition that is still living, growing and enriching the Body of Christ?

  • Sonorous prose and leisurely syntax…..

    Books02619x685_2 I spent the morning with the good people of Hillhead Baptist Church. They were exploring options and possibilities for the future ministry of this significant  and strategic fellowship, located in Glasgow’s West End. As a friend of the congregation I was offering what wisdom and help I could as they plan for their future. Finished by just after 12.00 noon. I casually mentioned that I was now probably going to sin in the Oxfam Bookshop on Byres Road. Remember I previously bought my Poems for Refugees book there in February and blogged about it several times. Well my sympathetic and pastorally alert friend immediately reassured me:

    ‘But if you are buying in the Oxfam shop that wouldn’t be sin, that would be a good thing to do.’

    And I sinned by the sheer alacrity with which I grabbed hold of this much more positive perspective on my book buying urges and floated in self congratulatory virtue down the street to the Oxfam shop. And yes, I did indeed buy a book – not an expensive one you realise, but enough to consider it a donation rather than a piece of self-indulgence.

    More seriously it is a book of sermons – boring huh? By a Victorian Free Church minister who was the leading OT scholar in Scotland for a couple of decades, (1870’s to 1890’s) the venerable A. B. Davidson. Not everyone’s taste – but now and then I dive into the sonorous prose and leisurely syntax of the Victorian age, and find there the extended descriptive responses of another generation to the truth of God – and I find their voices persuasive, their words moving, and the faith that underlies their ruminative theology an antidote to the Devotions for Dummies approach of much contemporary ‘devotional’ writing.

    Here is A B Davidson, on the experience of Job and the text ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth…’

    The sufferer’s ideas may not be complete, and he may not see the way clearly to that which his faith demands. His expressions are exclamatory and disjointed; but this is his assurance, , that though he die in darkness, as he will, though the riddle of God’s dealing with him remain unsolved here, though God’s face be resolutely hidden from him till, under the ravage of his disease, his flesh be consumed and his bodily frame dissolved, yet that shall not be the end of all. He shall not be dissolved, and God cannot be dissolved; and this darkness is not an eternal darkness. On this night of estrangement and mystery, however long it may be, a morn shall break at last; and through the clouds there will shine out a face, a reconciled face, that I shall see for myself; and mine eyes shall behold and not another’s….

    What Job craved, and what his faith enabled him to say he knew, was that the unseen God should become visible; that God whose dwelling is in heaven amid clouds and darkness, should descend and stand upon the earth; that the great problem between God and man, and between men and men, should be unravelled by God in human form, and in human speech; that the riddle of the painful earth, the mystery, misery, the wrong, the bitter wrestlings of mind with mind, should be removed forever and composed and that all those who clung to God amidst the darkness and misconceptions of men, or of their own, should pass out of darkness into an unclouded light, in which their eyes should see God.

    No – they don’t write them like that anymore. Taking our human frailty along with God’s redeeming purposeful love, with utter seriousness, and a hopeful trust. These are words that respect life’s tragic turns, puzzling perplexities, and faithful questionings.

  • No Politics in heaven!

    Mw36422 R. W. Dale is now largely forgotten, except for a few conclaves of those interested in Victorian Non-conformity, and probably some of the better informed local politicians and Congregational Church members in Birmingham. That’s a great pity – Dale was one of the most significant churchmen of the nineteenth century. Here’s just a few of the reasons why he shouldn’t be forgotten:

    1. He was a major mover in the City of Birmingham Council and was a key figure in the upgrading of the drainage and sewage systems as a way of preventing cholera.
    2. He was one of the first Victorian churchmen to recognise and argue for the link between poverty and crime
    3. He promoted the civic Gospel, insisting it was the individual’s duty to pursue the same civic and humane goals expected of good government.
    4. He supported trade unions, schemes for housing improvement, extension of the franchise.
    5. He was one of the finest preachers of his generation – not as impassioned orator, but as persuasive and cogent exponenet of a Christian moral vision rooted in the Gospel of grace and the reality of the Risen Christ.
    6. He wrote one of the most learned (and difficult to read) treatments of the doctrine of the Atonement, upholding the moral seriousness of sin and the righteous love of God.

    One quotation:

    Accused of spending too much time pursuing political goals, and told by some church members to concentrate on spiritual activities because ‘there are no politics in heaven’, his answer was a superb piece of righteous scoffing:

    No politics in heaven! well i suppose not; but there are no agricultural labourers there living on twelve shillings a week…there are no hereditary paupers there…there are no gaols to which little children are sent for an offence committed in ignorance, no unjust wars to be prevented. Politics unchristian!…by going on to Boards of Works and Town Councils and improving the drainage of great towns, and removing the causes of fever, men are but following in Christ’s footsteps. (Laws of Christ for Common Life, page 268)

  • Eggstreme Daftness

    There are degrees of daftness that are so, well daft, that they should become a new form of  reality TV called ‘Extreme Daftness’. The following comes from a news item on my AOL browser. I cannot think of anything to say that comes anywhere near the gobsmacked astonishment with which I read this. Please don’t read on if you are allergic to extreme daftness.

    Re-runs of a well-known television commercial from the 1950s which instructed viewers to "Go to work on an egg" have been banned. Standards watchdogs say they do not encourage a balanced diet.

    The Egg Information Service, set up by the industry to provide information and answer questions about eggs, had wanted to screen the advert, which featured legendary comedian Tony Hancock, to mark its 50th birthday. But the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC), which regulates advertising standards and practice, blocked screening of the adverts on the grounds that they did not comply with Ofcom rules about promoting a varied diet.

    BACC spokesman Kristoffer Hammer said it was not a question of whether an egg a day would cause any harm, but that it should be served with fruit juice or toast.

    He said on GMTV on Wednesday morning:

    "We are not questioning the effect it would have on your health. Our role is to ensure that advertising that goes on television is in compliance with the act. It’s quite clear from the act that they should be presented as part of a balanced diet."

    British Egg Information Service spokeswoman Amanda Cryer told BBC Online: "We have been shocked by this ruling as eggs are a healthy, natural food which are recommended by nutritionists.

    "What’s more, there are no restrictions on the number of eggs people can eat, which was recently confirmed by the Food Standards Agency, and between five and seven eggs a week would be totally acceptable for most people. In addition, many other advertisers clearly promote their products to be eaten every day such as breakfast cereals so we are very surprised that eggs have been singled out in this way."

    Re_runs_of_a_well_known_a8484183118

    I have since sent the following email to abovementioned Kristoffer Hammer:

    Dear Kristoffer
    I really did think it was April 1 when I read the news item about the ban on the ‘Go to work on an egg’ advert. Now I understand the reasons for the legislation, the regulations, the guidelines, and the need to make decisions that are consistent across the board and congruent with the purpose of said legislation, regulation and guidelines. But.
    What kind of anachronism is being perpetrated when a 50 year old advert is banned because it falls foul of a regulation introduced half a century later? Is it seriosuly suggested that an audience is likely to overload on eggs because juice and toast aren’t included? And in any case why are breakfast cereal adverts not banned as they are even less of a balanced meal? Do you not think that there are times when rigid literalism turns good guidelines into daft rules that actually work against what they first intended?
    I’m at a loss for words that a responsible agency could ever make such a wrong call. Am I missing something here? Please explain further if I have,
    Yours in genuine if mystified sincerity,
    So I await a reply – will keep you posted!

  • Jesus, worldview and lifestyle

    Dsc00733 Brodie has tagged me to take part in one of them meme things. Now I am by and large a good natured and co-operative person who is obliging (mostly) and accommodating (generally) so I’m going to do this. But I have to say upfront I don’t like the terminology (not Brodie’s choice) I am being asked to adopt. So what I’ve to list is

    "The five things I dig most about Jesus."

    I don’t dig anything much but the garden, the nether regions of overstocked secondhand bookshops, and perhaps I’ll have a dig here and there at opinions or behaviour which for some reason or other annoy me.  But Brodie has been courteous enough to ask, so apart from replacing the verb "to dig", I’m happy to list five things about Jesus that make a difference to how I view the world and live my life.

    1. Jesus is risen – so the world is a place where resurrection, new life and hope are forever possible, where violence is contradicted, hatred absorbed into an act of God inexhaustibly redemptive, and where those who follow Him do so defiantly hopeful into God’s future for the creation.
    2. Jesus welcomed children – so wherever children are loved he is present to bless, and wherever children are abused he is present in mercy, pray God.. and in judgement of those who cause the little ones to stumble, pray God.
    3. Jesus laughed – I believe this though the gospels don’t say he did, and I believe Jesus laughs uproariously at those who use this argument from silence to suggest the One who was accused of being a winebibber and a glutton, never enjoyed a loud guffaw at the expense of the ultra-sober.
    4. Jesus honoured women – I mean words like respect, include, listen, welcome, befriend, love, depend upon, converse with, take meals with, be touched by, cry with – I mean Jesus gave women their place at the table, their place at his side, and they were there for Him, at the cross at the end, and first at the tomb.
    5. Jesus was the teacher par excellence – the Word clever with words, the Light enlightening the slow to see, the Truth made known in personality, illustrated in image, picture and story, and the Person embodying what he taught of compassionate love, demanding grace, astringent judgement, and God-oriented trust.

    These are five things about Jesus that shape the way I look at the world, influence the way I try to live my life, discipline the way I think about other people…and keep me on the way, following after Him.

  • Modern Britain and the hard task of being hopeful

    Jitcrunch Just watched Andrew Marr’s Modern Britain, last episode. From John Major to Tony Blair. 16 years of our life in this country reviewed with journalistic flair, incisive observation, studied impartiality (mostly), and intelligent commentary. And I found most of it depressing – the first Gulf war, black wednesday and the economic aftermath, the murder of Jamie Bulger, the Dunblane School massacre, the death of Diana, the twin towers, the war in Iraq, the death of David Kelly, the bloody aftermath still convulsing Iraq, bombs on London Underground, the increasing mistrust of politicians and other public figures as honesty, integrity and public accountability are eroded.

    Easy to blame one person, and the truth is, there is much for which accountability is required but of whom, and by whom? Perhaps one of the most revealing comments was that the religious experience we all now share is ‘buying stuff’. And yes, shopping mall’s could double as temples; their piped music representing the proffered harmony of souls yet again satisfied; the logos are secular icons and our credit / debit cards our offering. The concept that gathers together the phenomenon of our contemporary culture is globalisation, the consumer empire that provides security at the price of our freedom, a world wide web of cyber cash in which we are all enmeshed.

    I watch a programme like Modern Britain and think thoughts like some of these being written here, and I wonder if the church of Jesus Christ has a clue – if I have a clue – 

    how to be faithful in our following of Jesus, how to know the difference between relevance that can diminish the Gospel by accommodation, and faithfulness that can make the Gospel seem inimical to modern culture

    how to stand firmly with those who are victims of global power plays, how to make a difference about world poverty, how to express with effective action prophetic dissociation, ‘not in my name’

    how to pray – to give thanks for God’s creation in a world so messed up by us, how to pray for orphanages of starving children tied to beds in Baghdad while their food and clothes are sold on the black market, how to not let such outrages corrode and poison the sources of hope, optimism, joy and peaceable friendships.

    All of which is a bit melancholic – not sure I’m comfortable with the idea that being at times melancholic is a suspect Christian mood. Hope is not the denial of the bad stuff, but defiant trust that the bad stuff isn’t the way it has to be…or will always be. In the meantime a prayer:

    Save us from weak resignation

    to the evils we deplore

    Grant us wisdom, grant us courage

    for the living of this hour, Amen and Amen.

  • Unsaved and unsaveable – in the non-theological sense…

    "Blessed are those who don’t need to fill in pro-formas, for they shall not be so frustrated they want to stick the heid on the computer monitor".

    Just spent an hour writing a report on a pro-forma and it wouldn’t let me save it – or copy it – or print it. So all my wise, perceptive, helfully constructive comments just sit there, ciphers on a screen, mockingly inert, unmoved and apparently immovable, and in the non-theological sense, unsaved.

    So – nothing else for it – to save doing the work again I decide to write out the more complex bits in longhand to save me thinking it all through again and if truth be told so as not to lose the more, in my less than humble opinion, well, the impressively, sonorously wise bits – aye, OK!

    0511070131171330 Well – only took quarter of an hour. But then I had to find out what went wrong. So I retraced my clicks, repeated the actions, and when the pro-forma appeared it gave me an option to save it before I started working on it. So I clicked save – and bless me, so it did. It saved it. So now I have a Word document into which I can insert, all the handwritten work I copied from the previous pro-forma which was, again in the non-theological sense, unsaved and apparently unsaveable.

    By the time I now type my report, it will be a third draft – I wouldn’t mind if the whole process had contributed to my sanctification – on the contrary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Ruth Graham: Thanking God for a life well lived

    Vert_graham2_ap I was sad to hear of the death of Ruth Graham, wife of Billy Graham, on Thursday 14 June. A gentle and honest tribute can be found here at CNN. Her funeral service was held today following yesterday’s thanksgiving service. In reviewing his own life work Billy Graham was convinced that Ruth was an essential source of courage, support and organising skill, in the background mostly. May she rest in the peace of Christ, and may they, in due course, rediscover the joy and love God gave them, in the presence of the God they have served together for over 65 years. Well done, good and  faithful servants.

  • Community Theologians and the Miracle of the non grasping God

    Evelyn Underhill, one of the more spiritually subtle, perceptive Anglican spiritual writers, spoke of un-selfing the self. She didn’t mean denial of self, but the surrender of self-interest, self concern and self-promotion as the controlling motivations in Christian devotion and service. She was far too shrewd to be taken in by all the disclaimers that can be invented; that self-denial is psychologically damaging or diminishing; that leadership is about charisma, authority, and effective strategic thinking; that there is a proper love of self; that self-esteem is good and lack of it is bad.

    Hanna17  If all these points are true what does it mean that the one who was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped? And why DID Paul place this great hymn of humble sovereignty and exalted servant-hood, smack bang in the middle of a letter about disunity and dangerously self-centred attitudes? (Philippians 2.1-11). Just look at the community descriptions and community exhortations that lead into this sublime statement of divine condescension, this hymn about the miracle of the non-grasping God:

    The Community Descriptions

    • Encouragement from being united with Christ
    • Comfort from Christ’s love
    • Fellowship with the Spirit
    • Tenderness and compassion towards each other

    The Community Exhortations

    • Likeminded, same love, one in spirit and purpose
    • In humility count others better than yourselves
    • Not only your own interests but those of others
    • Do everything without complaining

    The Community’s Defining Call

    • Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling
    • God is at work within you…to do his purpose
    • Shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life

    Now whatever else those community descriptors mean, they are a call to Christ-like kenosis. They describe what un-selfing the self might look like. And they tackle head on attitudes that very easily attach themselves to common forms of leadership, approaches to ministry and claims to authority within the Christian community. And their contradiction isn’t an argument  but a theology rooted in the truth of who Christ is, and the nature of redeeming love as self-giving and non grasping.

    300pxchrist_of_saint_john_of_the_cr The community theologian is one who embodies and lives the truth of Christ, the self-emptying, non-grasping One whose authority is defined by obedience to the Father and whose Lordship is the victory of love. But then, the community of Christ is made up of all those called to the same kenotic lifestyle, to the taking up of the cross, to the reckless losing of life for Christ’s sake and the Gospel’s – that’s what Paul means by being stars in a dark universe…holding out the word of life. The community theologian is one called, by God and by the community, to think out and help them think out, what working out their own salvation with fear and trembling might mean for THIS community; called too, to remind and encourage that it is God who is at work to will and do according to His purpose; called to hold out the word of life, proclaim the gospel of redeeming and reconciling love in a world where redemptive conciliation seems beyond human grasp – and must therefore come by divine gift.

    The community theologian’s thinking isn’t therefore imposed on the community, but arises from good questions, creative conversations, biblical reflection, prayerful listening, – all of these are communal activities and spiritual disciplines of those who covenant together to follow after Christ.

    .

    Working out our own salvation with fear and trembling…. And God at work amongst us to will and do according to His purpose – two theological assumptions that define the theological community and the work of the community theologian – fear and trembling, God at work…fear and trembling because God IS at work – and because GOD is at work, amongst of all people US, and of all times NOW.

    .

    The Community theologian heightens our awareness of divine activity in our all too human forms of community – and does so by reminding us, with the gentle persistence of scottish drizzle on a June day in the Trossachs, of the grace, kenosis and non-grasping love of God in Christ, who ’emptied himself of all but love’.

  • When all is read and done…..

    June is the month I review what I’ve read in the past year, and write myself a wee essay on why certain books were important and worth the investment of time and energy

    This year, several make the list of ‘Glad I Read You.’

    51i65nts87l__aa240_ Stanley Hauerwas, Mathhew. A Theological Commentary. The first book I blogged on – and persuaded some people to buy – hope no one was disappointed. A readable commentary is no fair achievement – readable and specific to both the text and its contemporary meaning makes it refreshingly sharp. Compared to other anodyne ‘application’ commentaries, this is astringent salt that stings and heals.

    080282997x_01__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ John Swinton, Raging with Compassion. An immensely helpful approach to evil and suffering, not as problems to be solved, but as human experiences to which we respond with strategies of resistance. This is theology made practical, pastoral practice made theologically secure.

    0060771747_01__aa240_sclzzzzzzz_ Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church. An honest, spiritually alert and pastorally gentle account of this Episcopal priest and renowned preacher, following God’s call out of church and into seminary.

    511exkgk4hl__aa240_ David Hempton, Methodism. Empire of the Spirit. The best analysis of denominational growth and decline I’ve read, and the social and contextual pressures that influence such patterns. Hugely important as an example of historical analysis clarifying the ecclesia-babble and exposing the self-concerned survivalism of  contemporary strategies for growth in North Atlantic America and Europe.

    41pcxa7zv0l__aa240_ Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God. Third reading of this (for class seminars), and although I’m not prepared to sell out completely to the social model of the Trinity, Moltmann shows why it is an attractive and essential emphasis in a contemporary understanding of the Christian doctrine of God. In class we listened to Moltmann’s testimony in a lecture he gave several years ago – I was deeply moved by his debt to Ayrshire miners who welcomed a young German soldier while he was building roads near Cumnock – the place where I spent my first 10 years of life. Maybe I walked on a road Moltmann laid – theologically I’ve enjoyed walking along some of the theological paths he has laid since.

    41z95kfd6gl__aa240_ Hans Kung, My Struggle for Freedom. Ever since reading his On Being a Christian, I’ve followed Kung’s developing thought and writing. Nothing has ever bettered that book – but this volume one of his autobiography describes the formation of a brilliant mind, and gives remarkable insight into the machinations of Vatican II ( from Kung’s perspective of course). As in many autobiographies, Kung can’t avoid making himself the hero – and others the villains, which preserves a theological autobiography from tedium.

    This is also the time of the year when I make a modest list of the books I intend to get through before next June – if the Lord don’t come and the creek don’t rise. The list isn’t started yet – except in my head. Any suggestions?