On why loopholes on a conversion therapy ban must not be created...

A personal story about why I am very much against loopholes in any legislation banning conversion therapy for LGBT+ people.

A few days after I came out as trans, I was summoned to see Rev Fred*, who was my parish priest when I lived in Milton Keynes and whose church I attended at that time. We were going to meet in the local pub for a pint, but at the last minute, he asked if we could meet in the vicarage garden instead.

After several minutes of small talk, he told me he was deeply worried about my intention to transition. He put my gender dysphoria down to being a sexual abuse survivor, although I had known I was trans (though I didn't have the language to express it in those terms) for over a decade before I met my abusive ex-partner. Rev Fred* proceeded to warn me that I was going against God's plan for me, and would be mutilating my body if I ever had surgery or took hormones.

This all ended with him reading Psalm 139, which Rev Fred* clearly intended to make me believe that God had made me female and I was seeking to go against this. He then prayed that I would be healed from the effects of the abuse and no longer be queer in any way (which he made clear also meant ending my relationship with the woman is who was then my fiancé and is now my wife). After this, I went home.

That meeting with Rev Fred* convinced me to leave that church, and move to Cornerstone, where I had already gone to some of the evening services. I was lucky; I found a supportive minister there, and I was secure enough in myself that Rev Fred* and his attempt at exactly the kind of prayer the Evangelical Alliance insist must not be outlawed didn't do too much damage. However, I shudder to think what might have happened if I had been in a more vulnerable place, or had not had somewhere safe to go instead.

Religious organisations and ministers/pastors must NOT be exempt from any ban on trying to change someone's gender identity and/or sexual orientation. It causes huge damage, and calling it 'pastoral prayer' or 'exploratory prayer' does not change that fact.

* Not his real name.

Why I Stand with Rev Jarel Robinson-Brown

The late American theologian Walter Wink, in his classic work ‘Engaging the Powers’, understood the imagery of ‘Principalities and Powers’ in the New Testament (cf. Ephesians 6:10–17) to point towards the both the “outer, visible structure” and “inner, spiritual reality” of human institutions. Such institutions, Wink argued, have a life of their own, which is greater than the sum of the individuals involved, and cannot necessarily be controlled or reigned in by any one person.

A ‘Domination System” results from networks of Powers becoming “integrated around idolatrous values”, so that its transformation must address both its spirituality and outer manifestations. The worldviews that emerge – which readily come to be viewed as representing ‘common sense’ – easily seduce us into accommodating the powerful, and switching off our critical capacities.

For Wink, liberation from Domination Systems thus involves recognising and naming them, unmasking the “delusional assumptions” which can hold both oppressed and oppressor in thrall, and creatively embodying God’s loving alternative.

Although Wink’s work dates back to the early 1990s and comes from a different geographical context, it immediately came to mind as I watched my friend, Rev Jarel Robinson-Brown, subjected to horrific racist and homophobic abuse.

This followed a tweet he posted on 3rd February, which said, ““The cult of Captain Tom Moore is a cult of white British nationalism. I will offer prayers for the repose of his kind and generous soul, but will not be joining the ‘national clap’.”, in response to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s call in Parliament for people to clap on their doorsteps in honour of Captain Sir Tom Moore.
Captain Moore was a World War Two veteran who raised over £30 million for NHS charities, by walking around his garden and winning the hearts of many people. Having recently turned a hundred, he sadly died in hospital having caught Covid-19.

Despite having removed and apologised for this tweet on the same day, Jarel was hung out to dry by the disgraceful and tellingly unsupportive statement issued by the Diocese of London. He has since seen his reputation lynched (I use the word quite deliberately) in the right-wing press, been forced off social media, and had a petition raised calling for him to be removed from the curacy he is soon set to commence.

Watching all of this play out has been extremely hard, not least seeing the line in the Diocesan statement about the need for social media output to based upon “truth, kindness and sensitivity”. What bothers me so much about this critique of Jarel’s tweet is that I think he was telling the truth – the hard and painful truth which is often not heard as ‘kind’ and ‘sensitive’, but as with much prophetic speech, is no less true for the fact.

Allow me to explain.

Deeply intertwined with the Domination Systems that Wink draws attention to are the stories we tell about ourselves. Stories are incredibly powerful, not least (as many have argued before me) because human beings are storied people. They have a life of their own, bigger and deeper than the individuals who tell them, and we are all shaped by them. Stories lie at the core of our identity, and more often than not, it is the stories of the dominant and powerful that come to be viewed as representing ‘the way things are’.

Many of the ‘culture wars’ arguments we saw play out in 2020 stem, at their heart, from contention around the stories we tell about what it means to be British. Wink uses the language of angels and demons to describe the Powers and Principalities; I prefer to picture the dominant stories told about Britishness as being like ‘sacred cows’, which their defenders are willing to protect from being slaughtered at all costs. Even naming them is often deeply controversial.

As an example, consider the reaction to the National Trust’s plans to update material in some of their properties to be honest about their connections to the transatlantic slave trade. It is simply the case that many of our great buildings (including much of the City of London) were built using compensation paid to slave owners (not the oppressed people themselves!) in order to finally get the abolition bill through Parliament.

However, the National Trust’s desire to recognise this led to accusations of being ‘woke’, selling out to Black Lives Matter and, as Sir John Hayes MP claimed in November 2020, attacking British history. For the latter, “defending our history and heritage is our era’s Battle of Britain”, and he was backed up in his views by the Leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who referred to “an avalanche of miserable Britain-hating nonsense filling the airwaves in recent months about our history and our culture”.

In other words, then, the act of naming the realities of Britain’s imperial past was cast as ‘hating Britain’, and this is very telling. Any suggestion that the stories we tell of imperial glory and national greatness might not reflect an accurate view of British history was pounced upon, and not just by Hayes and Rees-Mogg. Their interventions reflect the rhetoric of much of the (right-wing) mainstream media, and a fair proportion of Twitter users, alike.

Similar rows emerged last year over the content of the Last Night of the Proms, statues of slave traders, and the legacy of Winston Churchill. The same pattern was highlighted: even to name the ‘sacred cows’ of what one might call ‘Hegemonic Britishness’ or ‘Toxic Britishness’ was to run the risk of incurring a vicious and well-orchestrated right-wing backlash.

Partly due to the failures of our education system over many decades and administrations to teach children about the realities of the British Empire, and partly due to a failure to address the impact on English national identity in particular of the loss of said imperial power, together with the lingering sense of exceptionalism that arguably has its roots in the English Reformation, it has become very difficult to have an open and honest conversation about our nation’s past.

Moreover, it is arguably even harder to discuss how its legacy is still widely felt today, in everything from the Windrush scandal to the deep-seated unwillingness to make reparations for our past ruthless exploitation, cultural erasure and economic destruction, and to acknowledge the advantages still enjoyed by former colonial powers, as highlighted by post-colonial thinkers across subjects ranging from economics to theology.

In particular, in being stuck in delayed grief over the loss of Empire, a simplified and idolised story of World War Two, and the mythology of Churchill, have taken on great emotional and identity-forming significance.

They play to a lost sense of Britain as a global and military power, in an era when the United States, Russia and China have become the dominant international players, and globalisation and technological development are reshaping western economies in ways which have been very painful for many communities previously centred around traditional industries. Add to this the impact of over ten years of austerity measures, and you get the kind of volatile mix that arguably resulted in Brexit.

So, coming back to Jarel’s tweet (which has been wilfully misconstrued as a personal attack on Captain Tom, despite highlighting his generosity and kindness), several of the sacred cows of Toxic Britishness come into view – the belief in the superiority of white people in relation to people of colour that shaped the mindset of those driving Britain’s imperial ambitions and the Christian missionaries who saw themselves as bringing ‘civilisation’, the militarism that equates victory in battle with moral vindication, and the national myth of ‘greatness’ based on WW2. 

What has ethnicity got to do with it? Well, the stories we tell matter, but the stories we *don’t tell* are often more revealing. It is not an accident that Captain Tom has been lionised, called a national hero and the ‘best of British’, when others who have displayed the same kindness and generosity (such as Dabirul Islam Choudhury, an Asian Muslim man, also aged a hundred, who walked in his garden to raise money while fasting in Ramadan) have been largely ignored.

None of this is to take away from Sir Tom’s achievement, but it is to say that his story fits far more neatly with the narratives of Hegemonic Britishness, and who is considered acceptable to the Daily Mail crowd, than a Muslim gentleman undertaking a similar endeavour ever would. It is not wrong to draw attention to this, and indeed name it for what it is.

The way Boris Johnson and others have sought to manipulate and take advantage of his (Sir Tom’s) efforts to reinforce the same Toxic Britishness that led them to describe unease with celebrating colonialism as wimpy, is wrong. It is toxic, and it is playing to the same crowd who are the targets of their culture wars narrative. Is it an accident, after the controversies of 2020, that Johnson is now talking about a statue of Sir Tom? I suggest that it is no coincidence.

Could Jarel have phrased his tweet more carefully? Sure, but show me one person who has never regretted how they have phrased an online comment. Could he have timed it more sensitively? Again, possibly, but experience tells me that there hardly ever appears to be a ‘right time’ for people of colour to speak out.

The bottom line is that, because of who he is and because he dared to name the ‘sacred cows’ of Toxic Britishness, I seriously doubt that Jarel wouldn’t have been targeted, however carefully or sensitively he put his thoughts out there, He said more forthrightly and openly what many others (including me) also thought, and said in more guarded and less public ways without the same backlash. He has been targeted, I suspect, exactly because he is a black queer man challenging dominant narratives of Britishness.

Moreover, I am sure that his comments did come across as “unacceptable, insensitive, and ill-judged” when read by a Church of England hierarchy that is itself so in thrall to the same Hegemonic Britishness described above. After all, as they say, truth hurts. I pray that Bishop Sarah, who seems a decent person to me, will consider the consequences of the statement, reject it, and publicly and unequivocally call out the racism and homophobia directed at Jarel.

Thus, and as unpopular as I know this will be with some of those reading this, I stand with Jarel Robinson-Brown, and I am proud to do so.

Reflections on Holy Week 2017

This week, Christians across the world have been remembering the story of Holy Week, beginning with Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, recalling along the way the events of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and the Crucifixion on Good Friday, before finally celebrating the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. Holy Week this year marks my final experience of this special time prior to completing my theological training, and beginning a new ministry as a Methodist probationer presbyter in September. Perhaps because of the significance  of what is to come, this has proven to be an especially powerful time for me, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts. As we are outside of term time, I've been free to choose where I worship, and have been joining the congregation at Birmingham's St Philip's Cathedral, which seems to have moved up the candle somewhat following the departure of the previous Dean and the arrival of a new Canon Liturgist. This suits me well as someone from an Anglo-Catholic background, and has contributed very much to my experience.

 

Maundy Thursday was particularly special, in that I had an unexpected and profound encounter with God. I'm not someone for whom out-of-the-ordinary experiences form a part of my spiritual life normally, but this was different. After the main service, during which the story of the Last Supper was recalled and the Eucharist celebrated, we were invited to join the clergy for a vigil in the north chapel in front of the Sacrament (consecrated bread left over from the said Eucharist). The lights were turned out and we sat for around an hour in near darkness but for a few candles, with Peter Eugene Ball's Crucifix behind the altar. During this time, I found myself reflecting on both the calling to serve reflected in the reading from John's Gospel also used in the service, which reminds us of Jesus washing the disciples' feet in an upper room, and those things that have shaped my own sense of vocation in the eleven years since I became a Christian. The beginnings of my being called to ordained ministry go back to when I was a postgraduate student in Durham and found myself daydreaming about being the one behind the altar, presiding at the Eucharist. It's incredible to think how much life has changed in that time.

Crucifix by Peter Eugene Ball

At the point God began to stir up this calling, my life was rather more messy and substantially less happy than it is today. I was living with my ex-partner in a relationship that had become abusive, and was struggling to deal with both the scars of a difficult childhood and confusion about my gender identity. In the subsequent years, I've found a sense of wholeness that I never thought possible, and a key factor in that has been the importance of the Eucharist. Meeting Christ in his brokenness, reflected in how we cannot receive that presence in the bread until it has been broken, enabled me to find healing and begin a journey of forgiveness. This didn't happen overnight, and I'm grateful to various people who journeyed with me along the way, but for me the Eucharist encapsulates the transforming reality of God's love. In that side-chapel on Maundy Thursday evening, and as much it probably sounds like a very 'cheesy Christian' thing to say, I felt myself drawn incredibly close to Jesus and at ease in his presence, aware of being completely and unreservedly loved, and safe in the knowledge of how his brokenness on the cross has brought me wholeness. As I prepare to begin a new stage of my ministry, the thing I'm most passionate about is enabling others to recognise that they too are infinitely valuable to God, and I see my role as a minister as being about inspiring those in churches to feel confident to share this amazing love with others, through words and actions, and in challenging injustices.

Moving onto Good Friday, Sally and I began the day by taking part in Birmingham's ecumenical Walk of Witness through the city centre. It consisted of fourteen short Stations of the Cross, and was led by leaders from various denominations, including the Methodist Chair of the Birmingham District. I found the experience quite powerful on the whole, but I also have some reservations. For starters, the liturgy came from a very particular perspective, and I found myself unsure about some of the theology, especially around whether talking about 'offending' Jesus really helps us speak meaningfully about the subjects of evil and sin (itself an interesting word to use in general conversation these days). However, my biggest worry is about what those who do not belong to a church would have made of it all. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing things that are counter-cultural and make people think, but as the Mission-Shaped Church report argues, "the Christian story is no longer at the heart of the nation" (indeed, hearing a clearly bright and thoughtful student explaining to some international students on the way home on Thursday that eating chocolate on Easter Day is traditional here, but she has no real idea why that is, sums things up). I wonder how much of what we were doing made any meaningful impact on those unfamiliar with the story of Jesus' passion; there was little attempt to put things across in everyday language, and there's a real danger that although it made the local news, the Walk was little more than a source of bemusement for the small numbers of people who saw it at that time of day...

Ecumenical Walk of Witness in Birmingham

I suppose the same thing could be said of the Good Friday worship in the Cathedral - at one point, the clergy were knelt before a giant wooden cross laid on the floor, as the choir sung the reproaches to God's people - but I nonetheless found it very helpful. Remembering the story of Christ's passion reminds me that none of us is called to serve God based upon our own merits; rather, it is because God chooses to see us as worthy and makes us holy, through the reconciliation made possible in Christ, that we can stand in God's presence and be used by the Holy Spirit to make a difference in the world (for what it's worth, it seems clear to me that God uses people well beyond the Church, but that's a whole other argument for another day!). I recognise that the closeness I feel to God at the moment is not something that will always be present; indeed, things have been a real struggle since my mum had a stroke a couple of years ago, and at times I've felt like a bit of a fraud if I'm honest, though a wise person once told me that half of the battle is just turning up and keeping going. However, I know I can take heart from this assurance of God's love that I've found this Holy Week so far, as I prepare to move into this new phase of my ministry. Perhaps for the first time, I have no doubt that I'm doing the right thing.

Letter to the President of Conference

What follows is a response to the current President of the Methodist Conference in the UK, Rev. Steve Wild, following the initial response issued by the Vice President (Dr Jill Barber) and him to the shooting in an LGBT nightclub in Orlando on 12th June:

Dear Steve,

I hope this finds you well and you're still enjoying your presidential travels.

Yesterday I read the joint statement that the Vice President and you initially put out in response to the shooting in Orlando, which thus far has claimed the lives of fifty LGBT people, left others fighting for their lives in hospital, and yet more people traumatised, frightened and grieving. I have to say, I was saddened and disappointed by your initial statement; while I am heartened by what you have added subsequently, what you didn't say in your initial response speaks volumes. I would like to explain to you something of the hurt this caused to me and to many others, in the hope that this be helpful in guiding future comments, responses and prayers.

As you know, our paths recently crossed again after many years. You baptised me as a baby during your probationer appointment, and we met again when you visited the college where I am now training for Methodist ordained ministry. Subsequently, you described our meeting in the Methodist Recorder as an example of prevenient grace, of how God goes ahead before us and calls us into a deeper and fuller relationship with him. Well, there's something you should know about me, and how that grace has manifested itself in my life: I'm both bisexual and transgender, and these things profoundly influenced my decision to candidate for ministry.

Allow me to explain. I first became aware of being 'different' when I was four years old and starting primary school. It was the first time I'd been around lots of other children,  and I couldn't understand why I was suddenly expected to dress, play and socialise like a girl, when I knew I was male. While I didn't have the vocabulary at that age to explain what I was feeling, it was nonetheless deeply distressing. When I told one of my teachers I wanted to be a boy, it was made clear to me that this was wholly unacceptable. I thus learnt from an early age that being open about my gender identity was something that was liable to lead to prejudice, misunderstanding and rejection. Repressing this part of myself, and the attraction to girls I experienced as a teenager in a time when the homophobic Section 28 was still in force, took a huge toll on me psychologically and at its worst led to suicidal thoughts. Becoming a Christian in my early twenties has changed and transformed my life in so many ways, not least in helping me to come to terms with who I am, to find the courage to transition and live an authentic life as a man, and to overcome the feelings of shame that dogged me in earlier years. I've realised that I am a beloved child of God, that I matter and that I can make a difference to the world around me for the better. It's hard to talk about feeling called to ordained ministry without reference to this part of my journey, and the fantastic support I received from my minister and church family.

I'm telling you all this because, from my own experiences and through meeting many other LGBT people in different settings, I've learnt both the difference positive affirmation makes to our lives and the negative consequences of the prejudice and fear that all too often affects us. Homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are, alas, daily realities for LGBT people in this country and around the world. Gay people are scared to hold their partner's hand certain in public places for fear of attack. Some LGBT people struggle to leave their homes through anxiety about what they will face on the other side of their front door, and there are folks who won't set foot in our churches for fear of rejection and condemnation. It therefore matters immensely that hate crimes against our community are called out for what they are, especially by church leaders, and that the LGBT identities of their victims are publically acknowledged, not quietly ignored or airbrushed out of the picture, as in so much of the media coverage of the attack in Orlando. This was, after all, an attack on an LGBT venue that resulted in the deaths of LGBT people.

I do not doubt the sincerity of the sentiments expressed in your initial response, but its silence on the nature of the attack and failure to acknowledge that its victims came from the LGBT community in Orlando caused a lot of hurt, as you acknowledge in your subsequent response. It was also surprising that nothing was said about the need to ensure this is not used as a weapon to fuel the flames of Islamophobia and to further divide communities. Now more than ever, our society nears to hear that love, not hate, is the only way forward.

It is my prayer that the Methodist Church will be at the forefront of working for the flourishing of all people, whatever their identity or background, and that we will not become complicit in allowing discrimination, hatred and violence to ruin lives because of our silence in the face of these things. I hope and trust that you will join me in this commitment.

Yours in Christ,

Karl

Starting Out...

There's a film starring Martin Sheen called 'The Way', about a father whose son died walking the first stage of the 'El Camino de Santiago', the famous pilgrimage to the grand church of Santiago de Compostela. He (the father) decides to undertake the eight hundred kilometre walk himself in memory of his son, from whom he'd been largely estranged in the years before the accident. It's a film about journeys, new friendships and vulnerability, with milestones that need to be reached along the way to avoid being left sleeping out in the cold, and various obstacles to be overcome. Through the process, the father is changed from a grumpy git with a deep suspicion of others to someone who is a bit less hostile, having had some of his rough edges knocked off.

I was thinking about this today during the Holy Communion service that marked the conclusion of the induction period of my theological training, at Queen's College in Birmingham. This week has involved an intense period of introduction to college life, and this post is an attempt to make sense of this and where life is at.

 

This time last week, I was on a train to Birmingham, having completed my final day at work in London, validating mathematical models for a bank. The next few days were spent moving our stuff from a temporary flat (the rain and a leaky roof conspired to damage the kitchen in our actual flat) to our new home, and building our new furniture. It turns out that making flat pack stuff isn't as hard as I thought it would be! Anyway, after that was all sorted, there was a gap of a few days, during which time the reality of becoming a student minister (student presbyter, to be precise and to use the correct Methodist wording - apparently I'm very much not an ordinand yet) stubbornly refused to begin to sink in.

On the Sunday, I went to Birmingham Cathedral for the morning Eucharist, looking for something familiar and reassuring, and found the interior covered in scaffolding, which summed up how I felt at that point: being propped up, goodness knows by what, in danger of falling down otherwise. My mum had a stroke on New Year's Day which has left her unable to communicate in any meaningful way, and since then I've really struggled to pray. To be honest, it's actually given my relationship with God quite a big knock, in that while I can happily give intellectual assent to the same doctrinal framework I've had for the past few years, the emotional/relationship side of things feels deadened. Preaching regularly has kept me engaging with the Bible, but otherwise it's been hard to keep up any real kind of spiritual discipline. With all that going on, I was dreading going into an environment full of Christians, and wondering how it would pan out.

The first few days have involved getting to know the other people, made up of fellow Methodist student ministers, Anglican ordinands, international students and independent students, and being bombarded with things to take in, about the academic work we'll be doing, ministerial formation, college life and so on. It's all been rather overwhelming, due to both the sheer volume of information to process and digest, and the things people kept saying about being Christian leaders, the milestones on the way to being ready to go into stationing (in English, the first appointment), and the Church's expectations. I felt increasingly like a fraud as time went on, given the dryness of my own prayer life at the moment.

One of the things that has helped me settle a bit is the regular pattern of worship, and community meals and time in the Common Room have been useful for getting to know people. However, the big question that keeps coming back is 'why on earth am I here?' This all came to a head during the Communion service, which brought up all sorts of unexpected feelings. As some of you may know, I was kicked out of the ordination process in the Church of England when I came out as gay (this was before I went through gender reassignment, so I still identified as a lesbian), meaning I didn't the chance to explore my vocation. While I have reconciled myself to having moved denominations, sometimes this is still painful. I wonder if there's an element of sacrificial service, maybe? Being in an environment where familiar and deeply meaningful language was being used, and knowing that having ended up in Methodism means that isn't now my tradition, is tough. Being able to express this to one of the others, someone I've known for a long time, really helped but I think it will all take time to settle down and make some sort of sense.

The main thing I've found useful, though, is the cross in the grounds of the college, which I've photographed:

For me, it's a really powerful symbol of brokenness and God making us whole through breaking us down and knocking off the rough edges. College will be a journey with milestones that need to be passed in a given time period, obstacles to be overcome, much to learn and community to embrace and negotiate. The thing that's stopping me running away at the moment is the thought that, however confusing and muddled it all feels (which is very!), God is somewhere in the mess and I'm not here at Queen's through coincidence or accident. John 15:16 is the text we had during the corporate silence today, which makes the point clearly.

So, now there's a few days to recover before it all gets going. I intend to keep posting as and when I get the time, as a way of journaling I might actually do, so watch this space...

David Cameron's Easter Misunderstandings

It was reported in the Guardian on Thursday that David Cameron believes the 'Easter message' is about hard work and responsibility. In an interview he gave to Premier Radio, he argued that the heart of Christian faith is "compassion, forgiveness, kindness, hard work and responsibility", and that "‘Love thy neighbour’ is a doctrine we can all apply to our lives – at school, at work, at home and with our families". Mr Cameron admits to being "fuzzy" about the "finer points" of the faith, but having read this, I can't help but feel he's hazy about rather more than that; indeed, I found myself wondering if we're reading the same Bible!

The version of Christianity put forward in this article misses the point of the Gospel completely and wilfully. Throughout the centuries, the church has wrestled with who Jesus is and what he accomplished, meaning for example that the creeds took hundreds of years to thrash out, and that the Reformation of the sixteenth century had such a turbulent effect on European society. However, what it never has successfully done is to claim that Jesus Christ was crucified for preaching the kind of inoffensive, motherhood-and-apple-pie 'faith' that Cameron talks about here. Rather, at the heart of the Gospel is the scandalous idea that, contrary to the conform-or-die mentality of the Roman Empire that brutally supressed descent and used crucifixion as the ultimate way of denying the humanity of its enemies, there is no such thing as a person that doesn't matter to God. That includes the outcasts, the poor, the sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes of Jesus' day, and inconveniently for Cameron's neoliberal ideology, it also includes the unemployed, immigrants, disabled people, single parents, working poor and all the other groups regularly demonised these days.

It strikes me that the neoliberal consensus that has emerged over the past thirty-five years, the emergence of which I've discussed in an earlier post of the nature of the Establishment, values people in terms of their economic output and potential as consumers. This means that those who are less well-off, or in our context less able or unable to contribute to UK plc., are considered less worthwhile human beings than those in work, unless they're pensioners as they're more likely to vote than any other demographic. Moreover, the changes we've seen under Cameron's government that have made employment less secure, led to zero-hours contracts creating instability for a great number of people, and seen record numbers of working people needing to call upon food banks to survive, have added to a sense that human worth has been reduced to economic utility manifested in the betterment of those who are already wealthy, rather than seeing human beings as intrinsically worthwhile, as mattering for their own sakes.

The Gospel stands, therefore, in sharp contrast to a worldview that fails to value all people as God does, as evidenced by Jesus' laying down his life on the cross and rising again for all, not just a privileged few. Jesus bashed up against Roman might not because he was a Jesus Barabbas-style bandit, but because he loved with a freedom that simply proved too hot for religious and secular power alike to handle. If you read of the events of Holy Week, as I strongly encourage you to do, you’ll see that Jesus offended the authorities by challenging how things were done in the Temple, questioning the exclusion of the poor, sick and marginalised from Israel’s religious life, and crossing boundaries to reach out to those most in need of God’s love. This wasn't in the script as far as either the Temple authorities or the Roman governor were concerned, and they sought to remove a potential thorn in their side in decisive fashion.

 

They found a ready ally in one of Jesus' own disciples; scholars have speculated that Judas might’ve been a zealot, looking for a military Messiah who would overthrow the hated Romans by force. If so, he was probably angry with, and disappointed by, the sort of Christ Jesus turned out to be. Moreover, when it came to it, the same crowds who rejoiced at Jesus' arrival were ready to scream 'crucify' when stirred up by religious leaders. There was something about the freedom with which Jesus was able to love and challenge the barriers we slam up, the way we create an 'us' and 'them', which was deeply threatening then and remains so today. After all, as I said earlier, Jesus wasn't stripped naked, beaten, crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross for preaching motherhood and apple pie! Crucifixion was not just a form of capital punishment, but a punishment designed to be as cruel as possible and to strip its victims of all human dignity.

 

The cross of Christ, then, stands in opposition to a Roman empire that sought to enforce conformity, and to value human life in of itself as worth nothing. It still stands against those things in our culture that enable the misuse of power to the determent of human flourishing. I'm increasingly convinced, therefore, that resurrection is about the emphatic rejection of everything crucifixion stands and stood for. It's as clear a demonstration as possible that the power of love made visible in utter weakness is stronger than violence, than the worst of human nature. Put simply, contrary to the whole framework which Roman rule operated under, there really is no such thing as a person who doesn't matter, because there's no-one who's outside of the reach of the love of God.

 

I fear that Mr Cameron's twee theology, that so readily creates a 'them' and 'us' society (think strivers against skivers, and other spurious dichotomies), doesn't hold water when set against the reality of Holy Week, of the cross and resurrection. I'm sorry, but unless I'm missing something, I don't see where hard work or responsibility comes into what I've outlined above. The biblical narratives present a God who's all about overflowing love, reckless love that acts indiscriminately to include both the 'good' and respectable and the outcasts and misfits, and is no respecter of status, wealth or economic utility. Above all, this love is a gift, unearned and unmerited, not a reward for hard work. Mr Cameron should try reading the New Testament occasionally. He might learn something!

The Pioneer Gift

For the final part of my series of posts in preparation for ministry selection, looking at a film, an exhibition, a non-theological book and a theological text, I’ve decided to look at a collection of essays edited by Jonny Baker and Cathy Ross, called ‘The Pioneer Gift: Explorations in Mission’. This contains twelve contributions from a range of practitioners, lay and ordained, some of whom are publishing their first such piece. I found it an interesting and thought-provoking book as someone going through a process of selection to become a minister in what’s often referred to as ‘inherited’ church, though I cannot deny I felt a sense of frustration growing inside me as I journeyed through it, alongside much useful food for thought.

I’ve explored material on fresh expressions of church and pioneer ministry before, and I struggle with the way that, for all the talk of a genuine mixed-economy church, the reality often means people like me keeping the ‘old way’ going, while others get on with the ‘creative stuff’, like we’ve created two parallel strands that don’t connect very often. While this book is much better than much of what I’ve previously read at avoiding this trap, my burning question at the end of it was, essentially, about where people like me fit into the picture. I want to and can reach out to those for whom a transformative relationship with Jesus Christ isn’t yet there, and there’s no way I’m giving up a well-paid and enjoyable job to be a professional manager of institutional decline. Yet, given I think God’s calling me to work predominantly in ‘traditional’ church, I was left wondering how that fits with a desire to move beyond its boundaries.

I’m not going to give a blow-by-blow account of each chapter, as much as anything else because Sally’s already done this extremely well in her review. Rather, I want to draw out the aspects that most interested and grabbed me, as well as pondering the above question.

So that brings me to Jonny Baker’s opening chapter, looking at the nature of the pioneer gift, which in his words is “the gift of not fitting in”. Pioneers are those who have the vision to see new possibilities and then to work to bring them to life, which he argues is something every church needs “if it is to have a future and not get stuck … if it is to be missional and move out of its comfort zone”. The church has needed such people in every age, yet the term still retains ambiguity and complexity, allowing for diversity in both its expression and the range of people called to walk its path. Consequently, it flourishes through authentic expression of what it means for each pioneer to be thus in their context, as opposed to trying to conform to predefined expectations. At its core is mission; pioneering is about orientating to the true North of the missio dei, in traversing a rapidly changing cultural landscape while learning from the Bible and history, and developing a “mission spirituality” to sustain the journey.

Baker goes on to discuss some of the difficulties encountered by pioneers and those seeking to support, train and authorise them within existing denominational structures. He argues that it needs “imagination, courage, tenacity and resilience (and indeed velocity)” to resist being sucked back into a “business as usual” framework, and that the journey of change the church needs to go on to make this smoother will not be easy. Moreover, one of the dangers in trying to share the Gospel in new contexts is that the culture of those doing so gets unwittingly imposed on the recipients, so deep engagement with those cultural contexts and a willingness on the part of pioneers to let go of some of their own preconceptions is necessary. It’s thus a gift that takes time to grow and to flourish, and requires being what he calls “path-finding dissenters”; that is, people able to “bridge the gap between the Gospel and culture, imagining and implementing new strategies”.

A good deal of the rest of the essays flow from Baker’s, and pick up on the ideas and challenges outlined above. Cathy Ross talks about her experience as part of the Church Mission Society (CMS), and outlines various aspects of what mission means in practice: sight means reading culture and context, properly seeing and therefore respecting and valuing others, and being able to imagine a different way to be that goes against the grain. Emptiness and hiddenness mean self-emptying love (with a note of caution about ignoring our own needs) and an emphasis on the aspects of discipleship that aren’t always seen and recognised, rather than focusing on headline-grabbing quantitative (numerical) growth as the end point of everything. Hospitality means mutually enriching relationship, echoing Ann Morisy’s argument about the transformative power of meeting others on equal terms, and homelessness involves stepping out into alien theological territory, into the wilderness, and letting go of current thinking to receive new insights from God.

I found this a very helpful chapter, in that while her focus is on pioneers, much of what Ross says is more widely applicable. After all, discipleship is by its nature relational, rather than something that happens in isolation. Consequently, there’s a need in every context to learn how to see anew, to catch glimpses of the unexpected and transformative things the Holy Spirit is doing in our communities, and to properly care for the marginalised and easily overlooked people that we encounter. We follow a God who took human form, was often to be found teaching, healing, challenging and receiving at the dining table, and who became the servant of all, so it’s natural that diakonia and hospitality should be central to mission. Additionally, like it or lump it, the church will need to change drastically in the coming years due to declining resources (people and financial), so we’ll all need to risk theological (and ecclesiological) homelessness in order to discover where God’s leading us next.

This idea of theological homelessness is further developed in three chapters that illustrate the need for existing doctrinal ideas to be challenged and reformed. Anna Ruddick talks about her work with the Eden Network in troubled communities, with the language of transformation being far more natural for the young people she encountered than traditional terms like salvation and redemption. Andrea Campanale works in South West London, and talks about her experience of shame being at the root of the difficulty many have trusting that God loves them, rather than a sense of sinfulness. This pushed her to explore the stories and thinking in our tradition that can speak to this and bring about healing, to help people integrate their actual and ideal selves (her ‘Screen Eucharist’ liturgy is a very powerful example of this in practice).

On a related theme, Emma Nash talks about her research on the language of sin, arguing that “we need to present sin as a profoundly relational dysfunction” that causes us to be estranged from others and God, and not simply about “guilty thoughts, words and deeds”. This also means acknowledging systematic injustices far more prominently than is often the case. Moreover, she wonders if we need to find words that don’t “require people to acknowledge wrong in their lives in the first instance” but instead “invite them to spend time with a person and experience a friendship like no other”. All this stems from findings that suggest that sin and atonement formed very little part in becoming a Christian among many of her interviewees. Additionally, the conception of sin as relating to ‘naughty thoughts’, particularly of the sexual variety, didn’t connect with people in a society where there’s more freedom than ever to construct one’s own moral code and understanding.

I found these three chapters fascinating; the question of finding language to express Christian faith that connects with people outside the church is crucial for all Christians. As a local preacher working in secular employment, predominantly with people around my own age (late 20s and early 30s), my experience has been that much of the language we take for granted simply doesn’t resonate beyond the church walls, or indeed the concepts we think are most important aren’t always those occupying others. 1 Peter talks about being able to give an account one’s faith, in that case to a bunch of Christians derided for being different and not fitting in with the world around them. If we’re going to carry on that fine tradition of not fitting in as a gift, pointing to an exciting and life-giving different way to be, as a core part of discipleship, we need to take this challenge seriously.

As an example, shame is something that experience tells me resonates with a lot of people who believe themselves unlovable for a whole variety of reasons, often connecting with deep hurts and or a sense of not living up to social expectations in some way. Lecturing people about sin in these circumstances can be not just unhelpful, but actively harmful, as Nash recognises. I once took part in research looking at the impact on transgender people of shame, in a society that is more open than many but where negative and hostile attitudes to gender nonconformity can lead to people struggling with self-hatred or profound embarrassment. In that situation, being able to speak of God’s loving acceptance and always having known and delighted in us exactly as we really are, has the potential to bring about healing and help people towards wholeness. Placing too much emphasis on sin, on the other hand, risks further alienating a group generally wary of Christianity, for good reason.

Moving from some of the gifts pioneers can offer the wider church to some of the difficulties they experience living with it, Doug Gay and Gerald Arbuckle talk about some of the frustrations of dealing with existing institutions, and obstacles to bringing about change, respectively. Gay (who I met on Iona once upon a time…) is a lecturer in practical theology at the University of Glasgow. He discusses not being able to get permission to start up a new project from the local incumbent, and the issues caused by not having ‘permission-givers’ enabled to make things happen in his denomination, the Church of Scotland. Arbuckle, an anthropologist now working in Australia, explores the nature of myth. He reflects on the hope for reform present at the time of Vatican II, and what went wrong as cultures and structures did not change enough to prevent conservatism regaining the upper hand.

These two chapters point to one of the challenges I guess pioneers face: how to carve out the space to enable them to take risks and start something new. Feeling threatened by new people rocking up, or worrying about Christianity being dumbed down in some sense, are probably common reasons for hostility towards pioneers arising. It also takes time and concerted effort to bring about cultural change. However, I do wonder if this is a two-way problem, and that actually pioneers may not notice some of the gifts and resources that inherited church has to offer. Perhaps they sometimes fail to recognise that although starting from a different base, there are those of us looking to straddle the two worlds, to connect with the surrounding culture and context in ways that engage those on the edges of or outside the church, alongside refusing to give up on what’s there already. There’s also an issue that pervades church life generally, of cliques forming and those on the outside not being taken seriously, on both ‘sides’.

With that backdrop, Karlie Allaway’s contribution was a breath of fresh air. It gave me hope that the false dichotomy between inherited church and fresh expressions/pioneer ministry is gradually being broken down, at least in some contexts. Allaway is a Roman Catholic, and she reflects on the challenges and joys of living together in community and the central role for her of sacramentality. Coming from that tradition myself (I’m a recovering Anglo-Catholic!), it makes a great deal of sense that a sacramental worldview “does something profound to your imagination. When you can see how beautiful everything is meant to be, or rather actually is, this makes you look differently”. Making the connection with Walter Brueggemann’s ‘The Prophetic Imagination’, she argues that sacramental communities could be surprisingly prophetic through the experience of being marginalised, and thus learning to see things differently. From this base, her community engaged meaningfully in mission and made a difference to others. I also appreciated her vulnerability, and her prayer of becoming is beautiful.

Overall, this is an interesting book that made me think, has influenced my preaching and worship leading, and challenged my understanding of mission. It has a good range of material, and while full of thoughtful reflection on experience, isn’t light on theological exploration. However, I did also feel somewhat irritated that, although better than most at not succumbing to the temptation to pit inherited church and pioneer ministry against one another, this was still there, implicitly if not explicitly, in many of the essays. I can’t help but wonder where someone like me fits into the picture. I’m attracted to the Methodist Diaconal Order because I like the idea of working on the margins and with those outside church, though the importance for me of the sacraments means presbyteral ministry makes more sense. I also feel a desire to step out, take risks and try new things, but to do so from a base in inherited church, rather than as a pioneer minister. So where do I fit in? Or is the real value in not fitting in anywhere?