Additional Baptism Texts in Accessible Language

Can be found on Amazon

Back in 2012 I considered the Additional Eucharistic Prayers and many of the failings that I found with that set of additional provision can also be applied to this provision for Baptism. The fundamental issue once again is that if you accept the need for alternative provision then what is offered here fails to provide a significantly difference from what was already on offer.

There is a need for greater boldness in revision if we believe there is a need at all, but the consequences of the need to pass through the Church of England's Synodical mechanisms is liturgy that is lack-lustre.

One feature of this booklet is that pleasing is that most of the rubrics are marked up as mandatory – I am a great believer in the importance of careful attention to rubrics – the only downside is that here, as is generally the case with Common Worship, the content of these “mandatory” rubric is entirely permissive – such as saying that “this or another suitable prayer may be said”, so you can say nothing, or say anything that happens to seem suitable to you.

It is also a worry that the notes on the use of the alternative text refer in a number of places to things which “a sensitive priest” will do. We have all met plenty of insensitive priests but who is meant to tell such insensitive priests that they are best sticking with the standard provisions as they lack the skill or the wit in order to make effective use of these alternative provisions?

Of the specifics of the alternative provision I think one particular loss is that both the alternative prayers over the water miss out references to creation – where rich and accessible imagery could have been included, imagery that would appeal beyond the Christian tradition.

Of the two prayers that are given – the first, with references to passing through the Red Sea and Jesus passing “through the deep waters of death”, seems to have little to commend it, especially in the context of trying to engage those with little knowledge of Biblical narratives. I find it difficult to imagine anyone using this instead of the second offering which makes a direct connection between Jesus' own baptism, his commission to baptise others, and the action that is about to happen.

In Search of Welshness by Peter Daniels

Can be found on Amazon

“If we are to be treated differently, then why not demonstrate that we are different.”

This idea is underpins much of this memoir by Daniels. Having grown up in Llanelli he has spent the vast majority of his adult life in England, and particularly in London and the Home Counties. In a move not uncommon for the “exile” the articulation of being “welsh” only became important to Daniels once he was no longer in Wales, once it became a point of differential.

Although growing up in an area with a strong presence of the Welsh language Daniels was a English speaking monoglot – and the place of the language within the national identity is something he explores – it is a complex and at times difficult relationship. In later life he is learning Welsh – not to make him a truer Welshman but to participate in other parts of the cultural tapestry of being Welsh.

Rugby places a massive part of Daniels' sense of being Welsh – centred on regular attendance at the London Welsh – I wonder what his reflection would be on the London Welsh's recent relocation out of the capital to meet the requirements for grounds in high league competition (that high level of play has not been sustained and so the Welsh are back at their traditional home of Old Deer Park). But you perhaps wanted him to explore, as with the language, what it might be to be Welsh and not love rugby – perhaps it was a question beyond the pale?

Coming back to the initial quote, I found a personal resonance to this. I have often had to explain, justify even, my claim to be Welsh. Having 3 English Grandparents, not a word of Welsh, and until recently never having lived west of Windsor, it could often take a fair bit of explaining! But having been given a Welsh name, having been mark out as different, it has always seemed the natural response to embrace that difference rather than try to deny it. (My parents provided me with an English middle name to allow me the choice of an alternative cultural identity – but I have never been able to imagine myself as Robert Stone).

That there is “a search” is part of a clue that all identity is at some level a myth – recalling Benedict Anderson's Imagine Communities – where we draw the lines is a process of construction. Acknowledging this is not to deny the power of the identities, or even their reality, but it opens the door to a certain degree of fluidity around who is entitled to claim the identity, and also to what the essential characteristics of the identity are. It gives room for healthy evolutions.

Buildings for Mission By Nigel Walter and Andrew Mottram

Can be found on Amazon

This book sets out to be a handbook for those with responsibility for church buildings – but what I liked is that it offers a good balance of practical tips and explorations of the theory, theology even, of what it is you should be trying to achieve with your buildings.

There is always a tension associated with the amount of resources (time as much as money) that goes into church buildings – as for Christians it is the community and not the building that is the Church. However early on in the book they quote a vicar who had “recently confided, 'Five years ago I was determined not to get sidetracked by buildings, but I have discovered in this rural group of parishes that if you don't get this bit right, you can't do anything.'”

It is important to state that it is right to attend to building matters – but as a servant of mission, so buildings become asset and enabler, and not as an end in itself.

The next aspect which I found really helpful was their explanation of the status of buildings within the Church of England – born out of our character as the Established Church. There are many aspects of the life of the Church of England for which all residents in a parish have a right to participate in. And so they conclude that “it could be said, in terms of moral ownership, that the church building and churchyard 'belong' to the residents of the parish, whether or not they ever darken the doors of your building; the PCC has the job of looking after the property, and it is all held in trust by the incumbent on behalf of the parishioners.”

Following on from this we have to understand church buildings not premises of private members' club – and I think this plays into the issue of whether church buildings are open outside of service times, the question we should be asking is not whether the church building should be open but what is the justification for locking the door and denying access of the parishioners to their building. In the same way that we would find it ridiculous to have a public park, but one that was only accessible when the parks committee decided to hold a carnival.

But being open is about more than having the door unlocked – they reflect that “many church buildings are prevented from addressing contemporary community needs because they are 'closed'; that is, inaccessible for much of the week because of locked doors but also in terms of mindset. They are 'constipated' by excessive amounts of furniture, insufficient circulation space and a lack of basic kitchen and WC facilities.” Clutter is the curse of far too many of our church buildings – pretty for the regular congregation this is homely – but there is often not space to breath or to think.

This issue goes hand in hand with how the community within the Church imagine the world outside them. They quote Michael Riddell in his fairly brutal assessment that it “is the form of the Church in the West which has become the biggest barrier to the gospel. The broad sweep of ecclesiastical life does not bear witness to the grace, passion, radicality, authority, tenderness, anger, excitement, involvement or acceptance of Jesus. Unfortunately for us, the medium has become the message. The popular image of Christianity is formed by encounter with the Church; and so Christianity is regarded as reactionary, oppressive, conservative, moralistic, hypocritical, boring, formal and judgemental.”

There is also a need to recognise that you don't have to even go into a church building for it to ve having a impact on you, because they “are makers and makers of sacred space in the townscapes and landscape witnessing to the Christian faith that has shaped and formed us as a nation. The churches hold the stories of the communities they have served through the ages; it is in this sense of being community narratives that our church buildings are 'common property'.” Church buildings are signs in the community – although we have to wrestle with what is it they are pointing to when they are not longer a place of “sacramental encounter” - the after-life of church buildings which are not long places of worship is a challenge.

While there is a decline in Church attendance and there are many church buildings which no longer have a congregation to use them, it is not simple a picture of decline, they point out that in 2014 Liverpool closed more church buildings than any other diocese – but it also started more new churches than any other diocese. There is evolution not simply retreat. Winchester diocese is planning a “building review” - which is in part aimed at addressing how to manage an “excess” of buildings, but I think it should not only look at the buildings we have but also the places and communities where we lack a presence and might need to establish one (which probably doesn't mean building a new building but will usually involve finding a venue for the gathering of the people of God, even if that is in someone's front room, or some pub's back room).

On this foundation of ideas they then take you through the various processes – of legal permissions, consultations, fundraising, statements of need, managing architects – which is probably not going to excite you, but they provide it in a very accessible way and so if you are thinking of a building project this book is a great way to find out what you need to know to get through it in one piece.

Everyone Belongs to God by Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

Can be found on Amazon

This book is made up of extracts from the letters of Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt to his son-in-law Richard Wilhelm, a Lutheran missionary in China in the decades before the First World War. That the ideas expressed are over a hundred years old is often surprising, as they have a very contemporary feel.

Blumhardt's message is summarised in Charles E. Moore's introduction like this “Jesus claims the whole world for his own, not just the Christian world. No one is separated from Christ's love – neither the “unchurched” nor the “pagan”, and especially not the oppressed.”

There are two major themes, one about the universality of God's love, and the other that one of the key barriers to people encountering that love is the behaviour of Christians.

Blumhardt has a deep respect for those of other religions, he is writing in a context where missionary and colonial narratives were intertwined – the Western Missionary was an agent of the colonial project to bring “civilisation” to what were seen as primitive native populations. Blumhardt's approach instead seems to be a forebear of Vincent J. Donovan's Christianity Rediscovered – rooting an articulation of the Gospel in the traditions and world view of those you are wishing to reach.

Blumhardt writes with humility and self-awareness, for example he says that “I may be stupid and clumsy – I may even commit grave sin – but my true self, which is created in God's image, belongs to God. Neither sin nor death can change this fact.” And out of this awareness of both his own weakness and God's enduring love he finds the basis to engage with others. He sees many around him struggling, but they have been “set free simply by my reminding them, 'You belong with me, because you and I belong to God.'” We should come alongside people and then encounter God together, as equals.

This approach is tragically lacking in the Church around Blumhardt, he is blunt in his criticism... He believes that we need to have a ministry that meets people's practical needs, because “If people had to rely on what pastors typically do for them, we would be in a bad way. We can't live from sermons” But it is not just that he sees the practices of the Church as irrelevant, it is actively blocking the encounter with God's love – he writes that “overly religious Christians with all their piety cannot bring the life that God wants.”

And what is wrong with being “overly religious” is, in Blumhardt's view, that it breeds self-congratulation and arrogance. In one of those punchy moments Blumhardt declares that “I find it incomprehensible that people who call themselves devout believers consider themselves better than other people... There are hundreds of thousands of people who seek to do the good and honest thing but who rightly refuse to go to church or have anything to do with religion. This happens because so many Christians stand above others. The world has had enough of that.”

But for me what is painful about this analysis is that I think many in our society today still react to the Church in exactly this way – Christians are seen as smug and judgemental – and to be honest all too often it is a case of “if the cap fits...” And somehow despite the fact that this probably doesn't apply to the majority of Christians it is still a common external encounter with the Church.

Alongside the main themes Blumhardt also gives some other really useful advice and pointers.

He reflects that “Most people who get all worked up about injustice are motivated by a sense of rage... the mistake is to think that turmoil must arise from resentment and be sustained by anger. The breakthrough that comes from God is based on love.” Here I think the important point is the phrase “sustained by anger” - I think it is OK to see the injustice in the world and react with anger, we might look to Jesus clearing the Temple of the money changers as an example of this response. But our ongoing work to change the situation can not be “sustained by anger” because to hold anger in your heart over a long period is corrosive to your own being. It is perhaps a problem that we often confuse being “angry” and being “passionate” - maybe outwardly these two states can look similar but when we look to the likes of Gandhi and Mandela, yes there was great passion but inside there was a calmness which can not be borne out of anger.

And finally he had some words of encouragement, knowing that the missionary methods that he was putting forward are those of the slow burn... “We can only do what lies in front of us every day, and will often do so with much sighing, for it all seems in vain. Yet I believe that there is progress taking place quietly, and that a new time is being prepared.”

Judaism: an introduction by C. M. Hoffman

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Visiting the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam last summer I was really aware of how little I actually know about the Jewish faith and people and getting this book out the library as a small step to address that.

It is part of the “Teach Yourself” series, but in a number of places it is self aware that the practice and life of a religion and a people is not something that you can actually “teach yourself” - it is fundamentally embodied, only by living it in community will you really have the possibility to “get it”.

But within those limits this was a good introduction – in part helping to see the differences between different parts of the Jewish community, the dynamics between the religious and the cultural identities, overlapping be not co-determinate – perhaps just giving me a glimpse of how much I don't know, don't understand.

It was also fairly abrupt about the ways in which Christians misunderstand Jews and Judaism. Even when you get past the long painful history of Christians demonising Jews as the murderers of Christ that are still a number of ways in which well intentioned Christians act in ways that do not actually treat the Jewish religion with the respect and dignity that it deserves.

This affirmed a discomfort I have always had about the habit around Holy Week of Christians holding Seder meals as a way to teach us something about Jesus' Last Supper and the Eucharist. Now there are flaws even from a purely Christian perspective around the fact that it is debatable whether the Last Supper was a Passover Meal, and, even if it was, the extent that it was the primary model for the Eucharist that developed.

Following the destruction of the Temple many Jewish rituals went through significant transformation, and there is a body of evidence that the Eucharist and the Seder Meal actually grow up alongside one another in the post-Temple era in a period when Jewish and Christian communities still overlapped – so where you might see common features it is just as possible that the Seder took from the Eucharist as it is that the Eucharist took from the Seder.

But the real problem is the arrogance – if the shoe was on the other foot and a group of Jews got together and held themselves a Eucharist as an “experience” I think Christians would be puzzled, probably offended, and certainly highly unlikely to see this as the act of solidarity and friendship which we ascribe to ourselves when we sit down for a Seder.

God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality by Phyllis Trible

Out of print but avaliable on Amazon

This was one of the books referenced in the Grove Booklet “Fairer Sex” which I read at the start of the year.

We might think “sexuality” is a new topic but this book was published back in 1978, which as a child of the 80s is ages ago (although I realise for others it might not feel that long ago).

Trible offers very close reading of the text searching for the depth of meaning contained within – rather than resting on surface meanings. This also brought me to recall James Goodman's Abraham and his Son and much of the wrestling with that story which was also search for meaning.

Thinking about Genesis 1.27 she writes that “although an argument form silence is never conclusive and often dangerous, this particular one may caution against assigning “masculine” and “feminine” attributes to the words male and female in this poem. Open to varied meanings, these words eschew sexual clichés.” and this becomes a key theme, while Biblical accounts involve men and women it is often unclear that the actions of these men and women are intended to be read as archetypes for the appropriate actions of all men or of all women.

Later thinking about verse where a man leaves his mother and father and joins his wife – Trible notes that “No procreative purpose characterizes this sexual union; children are not mentioned. Hence, the man does not leave one family to start another; rather, he abandons familial identity for the one flesh of sexuality.” She places this as the conclusion of a cycle of creation – where humanity is first created as a single being, there is then the drawing out of sexual differentiation, and now a coming back together.

Although Trible does not really get into issues of sexuality in terms of distinctions between hetero- and homo- sexualities this reading suggests meanings to this verse that can be more expansive in their application. It is one of the verses that is currently popular with those opposed to same-sex marriage. But we can perhaps read this verse in ways in which its meaning renders the sex of the participants as incidental. This can be applied across the Bible – although all the marriages in the Biblical record are between a man and a woman (or a man and a number of women) is the sex of the participants an important part of whatever message about human relationships the various examples of marriage are trying to convey to us.

The final reflection I want to share is a point Trible picks out from Eve's dialogue with the serpent, while God had told them not to eat from the tree Eve quotes God saying “you shall not eat from it and you shall not touch it.”. Trible says “Thus the woman builds 'a fence around the Torah' a procedure that her rabbinical successors developed fully to protect the law of God and to insure obedience to it.” Eve counter to many depictions is “intelligent, informed, and perceptive” - I enjoy the idea of Eve as the first rabbi, but also because it is important to remember that sin was not born out of passive ignorance, and being intelligent, informed, and perceptive is no defence.

Wandering Lonely in a Crowd by S. M. Atif Imtiaz

Copies can be found on Amazon

This collection was published in 2011, bringing together a number of reflections and talks that Imtiaz had written, it has been sat on my sit on my “to read” pile for a number of years and so it must have been a hand of fate that I finally picked it up the same week as I had listened to an AKC lecture on developments in Muslim belief in the UK. The lecture was a really useful key for unlocking my engagement in these reflections, it gave a little extra underpinning.

In many ways reading this points to how much has happened in the last 5 years, for it often felt that “historical”, and sadly very little that has happened promotes signs of hope.

We get a mix of detailed political reflections and more general philosophical thoughts, and a clear indication on the need to bring both of these into play with each other.

He explores the way different groups have risen and fallen within the Muslim community, the ways in which the British government has tried to engage, and the ways in which that has been less than successful for reason of either side.

But Imtiaz also quotes Nietzsche, for example “It is more comfortable for our eye to react to a particular object by producing again an image it has often produced before than by retaining what is new and different in an impression.” and we are pointed to bigger issues about how stereotyping acts in society.

He thinks about how our frame of reference is important to what we “see”, noting Steven Spielberg gave us “the Other” both as Jaws and as ET – one “the nightmarish shark, attacking us while we are on holiday. Or the other, as cuddly alien, to be embraced and protected from the evil that lurks within ourselves.” If ET's first encounter with the human race had been Sigourney Weaver things might not have turned out so well!

One of the most interesting insight was around the legacy of Tony Blair, who “knew how to convince an audience, a country; he relied upon the trust that he asked for to win his arguments. But that was his downfall as well. It was an 'et tu Brute' moment when the country stared back into his eyes and realised that he was in fact being economical with the truth on the most serious of matters.” 

The lasting bitterness that seems to follow Blair is therefore not just a result of the Iraq war, but also, for example, about his ability to speak for the nation after the death of Princess Diana. People saw Blair as one who really cared and who shared the feeling of the people, and so when they then saw him with a different lens there was a great sense of betrayal.

This sense of “unmasking” shapes our contemporary politics – in electing Jeremy Corbyn it is clear that many labour members were explicitly rejecting the case of the other candidates that you needed an “acceptable”, an “electable”, face. While I think many similar forces are actually behind the success of Donald Trump – for some the assumption is that all politicians self-serving and do the minimum to address your problems to get your vote, so maybe it is at least best to go for the one who balls to be honest that it is all about him.