Where Soon?

An underlying and still unresolved issue for me is the blogging I do and concerns about its direction, and contrasting this with the comparative neglect of my website. The website ticks over with some pages actively updated but others left alone. It all needs an overhaul, however, and in particular what to do about images. It is easier to put automatically reduced versions on Facebook, and I could use photographic websites easily too. Certainly the blog has been a motivation of producing many computer-made drawings.

The blog was begun in June 2007 as a means of expressing opinion, and would have been religion and politics (Gordon Brown was taking over then) but it has mainly been about religion with only occasional bursts of politics. The religion section was deliberately and unashamedly Anglican liberal, and that institutional combination gave it something to grind against. I would display theology as it exists, with my own position somewhere between Don Cupitt and John Hick.

My work on Wycliffe Hall between the blog and website made the blog an institutional one, and it campaigned from the beginning calling the proposed Covenant "centralisation and a departure" for Anglicanism. I was against it while many considered it.

What has changed this is my own move back to the Unitarians. The gap between my theology and the liturgy and the promises made by Anglican representatives was just too wide. Significant individuals like Don Cupitt and Graham Shaw had pulled out of any active Anglican activity, and those still in are now deeply in the margins. Even now I notice Simon Mapp, who's joined my friends list on Facebook, has moved to the Open Episcopal Church (an Old Catholic offshoot inspired outfit), and he is comfortable with a liturgy more conserving than his theology (a position I understand).

It gets difficult, even predatory, campaigning about an institution from the outside. The Covenant business is just a loose end to me now, and at the moment it looks like that either it will collapse completely or it will be adopted and become redundant (if with some nasty side effects: it will foster restriction and yet have almost no wider Anglican Communion problem solving abilities, and it may even be the instrument to make hostilities worse). Anglicanism is balkanising whatever it adopts, and the most likely conservative impact of the Covenant is likely to be on the Church of England itself. If I had more of a Unitarian travelling life, I'd have more blog entries like the useful Yorkshire Unitarian Union ones recently added.

The problem is that as the blog ceases to be institutional, it gets more personal. The rule of thumb regarding the Radio Chadderbox stuff is to put down no more about the fictional characters than the real counterparts have put out themselves. However, to put aspects alongside each other does bring matters into sharp focus, and it is a danger for those whose blogs are more confessional. What I mean is this, put negatively: if someone wants to hang themselves with pieces of rope, it is not my job to tie the knots together. I am happy bashing an institution that is going wrong and its public figures on the driving wheel, but less happy having impacts on lots of little people trying to stomp their feet on the brake.

My head has this make-believe element. I still had play long after other kids grew up, and I imagine. I can see one big final episode in my Radio Chadderbox string, but it might just have to be like my story - the last episode has never appeared (and that was purely fictional). I thought, the day I close the blog down is the day I'll do that final episode. To make the final Radio Chadderbox event means taking my characters a bit further than their real counterparts have gone, and the unstated needs stating on a final episode.

I could go on more about Unitarianism and there are institutional issues there, but they are just a few: the life that is in the differences between liberal Christianity and religious humanism, and between the rational and the romantic. This can be divisive but it also gives identity. This is just an ongoing matter rather than meetings and events by which bloggers can jump in. Most Unitarian blogs are expressions of faith, and mine is when it discusses the different language games of forms of knowledge and how to build signals of transcendence. These could be expressions on a website, because one page covers it for a long time.

I'm thinking, but only thinking, that I could do like one of the 'group' I can identify (that I might be "in") and just comment on other people's blogs and cease to have my own. Alternatively, this can become much more occasional, and allow Facebook to advertise it when there is an entry.

I could make it more political, but I haven't yet worked out the sheer let down and astonishment about the Liberal Democrats in government attacking the most vulnerable and becoming the Conservatives' wooden leg. I'm not pro-Labour if I am anti-Conservative. I've been a non-member supporter of the Liberal Democrats for a long time, including leafleting and the like, but if they approached me now I'd tell them to get stuffed and that my vote was stolen.

I'm not there yet regarding changing or ending this blog and haven't decided. On Radio Chadderbox I might just bite the bullet and go for it, whereas for my story I might collect them all to put on the website first and then do the final episode. Then people can read it (it is almost impossible to read, and can only be traced backwards by links).

What this blog won't become is a confessional one, and the reason is because I keep a diary, and it can only be truly confessional if it is honest about surrounding things and people that I could not put on a blog but can put in a diary. John Wesley had both a diary and a journal. I have approaches and strategies and personal points and opinions about people (including some online) that never appear here and never will. This is a journal, and even then it is basically opinion.

Basically a blog like anything has a lifetime and this one feels like it is in old age. It has done a job and its author has moved on, and it makes comments still but without the same connections. So I'll run it on longer and then consider a probable significant change including actually closing it down.

Chadderbox Panel In Depth

Adam Tilgate: Okay, once again welcome to the Radio Chadderbox religion slot, and I am still under the watchful eye of one of our radio presenting professionals but using me for my theology and Church expertise, apparently.

Peter Levite: Try and say okay less often.

Adam Tilgate: Okay.

Peter Levite: Go on then: introduce the panel. Next to you is a smiling lady, more smiling than even Rachel Marsovenus today.

Adam Tilgate: Okay, oh sorry. Well okay. I think I get nervous. Well I do with my guest alongside me, Lesley Bloke here again.

Peter Levite: You seem to be here a lot, Lesley Bloke, yes or no?

Lesley Bloke: Yes, but I'd rather not say why at present.

Peter Levite: Well that's a bit cagey given your blog I was reading, which seems to spill everything out. Spill the beans.

Lesley Bloke: I thought Adam was doing this programme.

Peter Levite: Well I note that you refuse to answer my question. Back to Adam then. Go on, who else?

Adam Tilgate: You mentioned Rachel Marsovenus. Okay, then we have a special guest, who refused to go to Dublin and the Anglican Primates' meeting, Right Reverend Mountaineer Anus.

Mountaineer Anus: It is pronounced Annus, despite the spelling.

Adam Tilgate: Sorry, Bishop Anus.

Mountaineer Anus: That's better.

Adam Tilgate: Sat on the other side of Lesley Bloke is Harry Tickpaper, and he has brought along fellow Unitarians Benny Hundle and Melanie Pritstick, and Rachel is for balance the other way. Oh I see that the Archbishop of the North is just walking in.

Peter Levite: Get out of my studio! Make yourself useful and go and make some sandwiches for lunch.

John Sendmehome: Huh. The idea is to be on the radio.

Peter Levite: Well you're not. Out.

John Sendmehome: Oh, I'll be of service and go and prepare some chicken sandwiches. A man asked a cook how do you prepare chicken and he said we don't, we just tell it that it's going to die. I'm going, I'm going. See you all later.

Peter Levite: He was cooking our breakfast this morning. Lesley Bloke, answer me: why are you all glowing and happy? You've been like this from the first moment you came in and no doubt it did not start just then.

Harry Tickpaper: She is best advised not to discuss these more personal things in public.

Adam Tilgate: Okay I agree and think we ought to keep to general issues and so can I ask the Bishop not just about not being in Dublin now but the general stance he is taking.

Peter Levite: I don't seem to be getting far with my contribution, Lesley Bloke, either about why you are here a lot or your smiling exterior? Are they connected?

Lesley Bloke: No, as it happens. Adam, for goodness sake.

Peter Levite: I just note your comparative reticence on all counts. And I see Harry Tickpaper is grinning.

Lesley Bloke: For the duration I'll discuss what we are here for as befits an ordained Anglican curate. And aren't we allowed to smile and even glow?

Peter Levite: And I'll discuss what befits the region's leading investigative hard-hitting news reader.

Adam Tilgate: Quick. Stop. Okay. Mountaineer Anus, what is your main argument? Better cover this in some depth, please.

Peter Levite: Are you telling me to stop?

Mountaineer Anus: We must be in the business of recovering se Word of God for the Anglican Communion, you see. Anglicanism is fundamentally grounded in the Bible, as by the early reformers and resolutions.

Adam Tilgate: So obviously there is a problem.

Mountaineer Anus: Yes. We need to look at where we have failed and how we recover the importance of se Word of God.

Adam Tilgate: Well before we see where we have failed, according to your view, what would we be like if we had not failed.

Mountaineer Anus: Sass is a good starting point. If we follow se Bible then it is living, active, sharp, penetrates and judges. Thas's from Hebrews, yes? And so the Bible continues to speak to us, living in us and and transforming each and every one of us. It works in us and transforms us. That means God of course, through his word, his word that does not change and does not make lies.

Adam Tilgate: So it doesn't change and it penetrates.

Lesley Bloke: Of course it penetrates but is it unchanging?

Mountaineer Anus: I'll come to sat. See, as such, it - unchanging- lets us discern if se heart is godly. Plus se Bible shows Jesus and his plan for salvation. There is something else too. Se Book of Acts says whenever the word is preached the church grows, that see number of disciples increases rapidly.

Adam Tilgate: Okay but all that might be said to apply in general for Christians.

Mountaineer Anus: No no, see it is true and then become Christian.

Adam Tilgate: You are clearly concerned with Anglicanism and so what did it get right, okay, before we ask what it got wrong?

Mountaineer Anus: Anglicans had a key role in making se Word of God available in the languages of the people.

Adam Tilgate: Is that it?

Mountaineer Anus: It is a great deal. Se Word of God was at se heart of se Reformation: and it was placed higher than any human authority. Take Cramner, Latimer, Ridley and Tyndale and the Reformers who would be burned at the stake. Cranmer's first and second Books of Common Prayer were both Bible centred. Hooker is often quoted: he confirmed that scripture contains everything necessary to salvation and Christ is there. Scripture first, reason second and tradition third.

Rachel Marsovenus: I couldn't agree more. It's really important to realise that the three legged stool has three legs of different lengths and each leg leads to the other. Ooh, I wonder if I left the cooker on?

Adam Tilgate: Okay. So what is wrong?

Rachel Marsovenus: I might have left the cooker on.

Adam Tilgate: No, Bishop Anus: what is wrong?

Mountaineer Anus: We need another reformation within the Anglican Communion. Anglican articles have said that if it is not in scripture then it is not required of anyone, and yet increasingly Anglican Churches demand submission to modern culture. But let us be clear: se Church has authority to shape faith but not when it is different from the Word of God. Now se whole Church is rightly guardian and interpreter of scripture in that it may teach nothing except what is concluded and proved by scripture. Lambeth Conferences of Anglican bishops once every ten years have successively stated resolutions to this effect. Yet there were no resolutions in 2008! Please don't laugh.

Adam Tilgate: Was there not a need to discuss? Indaba was a process of detailed discussion and listening from all sides.

Rachel Marsovenus: Definitely.

Mountaineer Anus: As an African I know what indaba means! It means you listen to both sides and make a decision: not just listen and listen and listen and listen. To conclude that scripture challenges and transforms us full of joy and that it can be unsettling did not have the force of a resolution. But we have had resolutions before: 1978 we said member churches are not advised to take action regarding issues of concern to others without consultation via the Lambeth Conference or the Primates Meeting. Primates initiated a study of authority. In 1998 we could see that some cases there could be intervention in an emergency when a Church was incapable of internal resolution based on the Bible finding limits of diversity.

Adam Tilgate: You are saying what?

Mountaineer Anus: That sis is already conciliar via the Lambeth Conference and the Primates Meeting.

Lesley Bloke: Can we comment yet? These things are only advised; these provinces are autonomous.

Mountaineer Anus: Yes I admit that the resolutions are not binding and lack executive authority. But it still produces a very biblical communion which can interpret together to find the limits of Anglican diversity. And my point is that if we followed the resolutions made we would not be dysfunctional.

Adam Tilgate: Okay. I can see people itching to come in.

Peter Levite: Lesley Bloke, you are not glowing and smiling like you were before.

Adam Tilgate: But we need to know your view still on how to recover.

Mountaineer Anus: Correct. We first need to remember from where we have fallen, then we must repent, and finally we need to do again what we did at first. We fell when some Churches lost confidence in se Word of God and its authority. You see it's about neglecting study of the Bible and the teaching that leads to biblical literacy. So we end up with Churches and its ministers that do not believe in essentials like the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, crucifixion, resurrection, salvation by faith and eternal life as defined in the creeds.

Benny Hundle: Well we Unitarians don't believe in the creeds, and we don't demand beliefs like those just listed.

Melanie Pritstick: In fact we move on. At a recent Yorkshire Unitarian Union meeting we said both that we are relaxed about old issues of dogma and doctrine and they are irrelevant to most of us.

Mountaineer Anus: It's why you are tiny.

Melanie Pritstick: I'm not tiny!

Moutaineer Anus: Why your Church is tiny, if it is a Church.

Harry Tickpaper: Why churches are tiny or large are for sociological reasons. There is no simple magic bullet, and certainly no theological magic bullet. Some of the most successful Unitarian churches are the most urban, radical, with a social and political message: a clear identity perhaps, and then some do well because they are suburban, and some because they are communal within and even without.

Mountaineer Anus: Anyway. I don't care about you. I'm only concerned with Christians and the Anglican dispute, which we must get right.

Harry Tickpaper: Oh go ahead and we'll happily pick up the liberals.

Lesley Bloke: [Cough]

Adam Tilgate: Well, okay, but there are liberals across denominations. I'd point to we Affirming Liberals.

Harry Tickpaper: Affirming what? Liberalism or minimal doctrines? It just reduces it to institutional politics.

Rachel Marsovenus: I don't understand why you can't find the Bible more exciting.

Adam Tilgate: Who?

Rachel Marsovenus: Any of you. It gives me a thrill.

Lesley Bloke: Whatever floats your boat.

Mountaineer Anus: For some the Bible is becoming an ancient book of wisdom, like other religious books, a heremeneutical supermarket where you pick what you like and leave what you don't.

Benny Hundle: Exactly right. Dead right. I won't beat about the bush. You have your shopping trolley.

Mountaineer Anus: Not se truth will make you free, because Jesus Christ becomes a truth among many truths not se Truth.

Lesley Bloke: But isn't that because Gandhi can inspire and Mohammad is a holy man?

Mountaineer Anus: I listen to you and it is all infested here, but revelation ends with a harsh judgment on those who take away from the Word of God.

Harry Tickpaper: It is one big fantasy. There is no harsh judgment. There is no plausibility structure for any of this now. You are just becoming sectarian.

Lesley Bloke: There is postmodern choice, though. If you think about it, society has so shifted. What Bishop Mountaineer says is true easily fitted the classical time of being mainly rural. Modernity was urban and now the distance between rural and urban has diminished. Christianity made so much sense when work was integrated with life and family, but again modernity came with the division of labour and specialisation, but now we have industrial decline, decentralised jobs and the unemployed. Hopefully we have gone from feudalism, to modernity's liberal capitalism to postmodern socialism.

Harry Tickpaper: What? Hardly Fukuyama's point. Have you ever tackled Slavoj Zisek for example?

Barry Hundle: Harry, you are showing off.

Lesley Bloke: I'm tackling the bishop here. The social field has gone from the personal and hierarchical via impersonal modernity to today's transience of relationships many of us do experience. Christians go on and on about an idealised family, but in modernity it was weakened through increasing regulations and now is redefined, diverse, and then if you move up to the community level you find that the one big Christian metanarrative in premodernity became marginalised in the modern nation state and now religion is fragmented, tolerant and really about personal choice.

Melanie Pritstick: You must be one of us. It becomes today about constructing your own stories, after careful and monitored engagement with individuals and their deepest selves. It's about spiritual transformation.

Lesley Bloke: If we once took morality from the absolute transcendent being, it became rational in modernity and now there are no absolutes with much inconsistency, with lots of subgroups. Knowledge was revelation based, very objective, and taught - just like the bishop teaches - but then in modernity it became reason-based by discovery, and now postmodernism allows the subjective, the intuitive, and validation by feelings. What was once supernatural became natural in modernity and now it is anti-realist. Bishop, you look backwards, but from going future orientated with modernity's discoveries we now look to the present. You assume original sin, as if subject to God’s will, Bishop, but modernity introduced autonomy and now there is social construction. Bishop, you are out of date.

Moutaineer Anus: And you are a clergywoman.

Harry Tickpaper: That's a load of cod sociology, Lesley. Even ideal types couldn't make such bold and sweeping statements and that is what they are designed for. First from an economic base you need to decide whether we have moved from one form of capitalism to another, and thus modernity to high modernity, and whether high modernism isn't somewhat continuous with modernism rather than discontinuous as postmodernism claims. And even so much postmodernism is continuous. I mean it doesn't do much for the Bishop's argument, but that's his lookout.

Barry Hundle: You've lost me. I thought the earth goes round the sun and that's it.

Rachel Marsovenus: But postmodernism leads to enhancing the Word because it allows us to be neo-orthodox, like along the lines of Hans Frei and the Church has a clear identity like with Lindbeck. We have the space to be and become Church.

Harry Tickpaper: Except it is without objective reference. It is like a fantasy, a drama, a play. Big deal. You may as well follow any vision you like - just like the Archbishop of Anglicanism implied in his New Year's message.

Adam Tilgate: Okay. Clearly a difference of opinion. I think Keith Realist isn't quite a postmodernist.

Peter Levite: Who?

Adam Tilgate: He is a broad theologian who takes full account of science in reconstructing theology. He fronts our small group of Affirming Liberals. Okay. What I was hoping to ask Lesley Bloke about was authority in the Church, but perhaps the bishop should underline his view on authority first.

Mountaineer Anus: Well we have had it laid in front of us here today. Se individualist and hedonistic spirit of our world today has penetrated our Communion and so it does not listen or consult Church to Church within the Communion. The Lambeth Conference of 2008 almost completely lost that conciliarity that had been developed over decades. Go down this road heard today and our Communion becomes the light of the culture and not scripture. Contemporary culture is being given more authority than scripture. Some is lack of confidence and some wilful neglect, and oh if only Africa had Western resources we would not have heretical sects and prosperity theology along with all se praise we give.

Harry Tickpaper: Unitarians are growing well in Africa, some in urban centres and very alternative, and some odd rural places with the Internet important where pastors say, "I like that," and set it up.

Adam Tilgate: So you were saying Bishop that after repentance we would need to get back to where it started.

Mountaineer Anus: The need for repentance is absolutely crucial. I will personally offer healing to you people in this studio. To get trust back among Anglicans at least we must be open to se Holy Spirit that inspired se people of God to write scripture in the first place. We must develop Sunday schools for biblical literacy.

Harry Tickpaper: The Sunday School movement is finished. Anyway, it was mainly to allow parents to have sex without kids coming into the bedroom.

Lesley Bloke: I'd like to develop Sunday School with my ministry, hands off and lay led of course.

Rachel Marsovenus: Lots and lots and lots and lots of children.

Lesley Bloke: We are not Roman Catholics.

Rachel Marsovenus: I'm talking about Sunday School.

Mountaineer Anus: Surely they use the Internet and so we must teach se Word of God in a way interesting to them. We can use drama where computers are not available or literacy is a problem. Singapore started a very ambitious lay people programme to teach the Bible. We need biblically sound theological schools to equip orthodox biblical teachers.

Adam Tilgate: Theological colleges aren't like that. Well, except about two. Crumbs there are some two hundred and fifty years of doing critical theology.

Mountaineer Anus: And let's not forget that se Anglican Communion needs to give the Lambeth Conference and Primates the conciliar role it was developing including the interpretation of scriptures. We must follow the Windsor Report here and call to the whole Communion a re-evaluation of the ways that we read, hear, study and digest scripture. No longer can we drop random texts into arguments, as if we can sweep away sections of the New Testament as irrelevant in today's world, as if this solves the problem.

Lesley Bloke: I thought it was the fundies who dropped random texts into arguments.

Mountaineer Anus: No no. We need mature, wise study and prayerful discussion; that is, a joint commitment to obeying God as he speaks, discovering Jesus Christ who is of all authority, and be open to the fresh wind of the Spirit and who inspired scripture in first place. The fact is that provinces moving from norm of Anglican tradition and the Global South and orthodox begin today in the effort to rescue and revive our beloved community. We guard the deposit entrusted with help of Holy Spirit.

Rachel Marsovenus: Fantastic.

Adam Tilgate: So what's wrong with that, Lesley Bloke?

Lesley Bloke: Mountaineer Anus didn't mention the elephant in the room.

Peter Levite: We haven't got much time left. What's an elephant got to do with this discussion?

Lesley Bloke: It's homophobia, because scripture forbids usury (that is lending money with interest) and the Church hasn't threatened to split over this. It's sex and gender, isn't it? Like that Reform clergyman Julian Womann says, your non-negotiable can be no women in charge of men.

Rachel Marsovenus: It's the issue of the moment. I want to negotiate.

Lesley Bloke: I don't want to negotiate with that. You won't tackle homosexual sex, but you have to tackle women in positions of leadership. The rapid shift in society towards accepting homosexuality has caused a very strong reaction from those who will not accept it, and far from Lambeth 1.10 1998 being a resolution to bind together it is what actually drives the Communion apart. It sure has no executive authority. And in Anglicanism bishops don't decide stuff, but all decide: bishops, priests and laity. The Reformation was against such papal-like authority. Bishops alone have no authority. Yet it's as if this authoritarianism is becoming the means of being an Anglican and also Some Issues in Human Sexuality is something Anglican clergy are forced to follow and I had to say yes to that to be accepted, but I don't say yes to it or Lambeth 1998. Forget about 1.10 from then and scrap Some Issues in Human Sexuality as well as the Anglican Covenant we haven't even mentioned yet. Each Church can address homosexuality itself.

Rachel Marsovenus: At least keep talking, surely. Indaba does do important things.

Lesley Bloke: We are not just talking; this bishop is instructing.

Mountaineer Anus: I am not instructing; the Bible is instructing me. You are saying society this and society sat and then you might produce some loose concept of Christ. But we have it written down so very clearly.

Lesley Bloke: And you are wrong on Hooker. Hooker says scripture is primary where there isn't reason and where matters can only be known through revelation, such as Christ as Son of God. Natural reason can be prior to revelation. Reason isn't just secondary but assists what scripture reveals. And where scripture is no longer applicable reason comes in. Plus it was Puritans who said only Scripture provides an explicit norm.

Rachel Marsovenus: Hooker said there are various God given laws, and one of them is the one God supernaturally reveals. Scripture leaves some things to be ordered by the Church and that means flexibility in organising, but Puritans said the Church organisation should be via Scripture alone and thus a stress on Presbyters. Like Scripture had to direct everything. Yeah but with Hooker although reason is not a supplement to scripture, it is to complement scripture and scripture contains its own divine reasoning. It is not individual reasoning that decides upon scripture, but nor is reasoning debased by sin.

Peter Levite: I bet this Hooker didn't hang about on street corners.

Harry Tickpaper: It is a Protestant version of Thomism: Aquinas absorbed Aristotle and the Islamic yes to reasoning. Reason wasn't going to operate alone or in competition either for Aquinas or Hooker. But Hooker downplays tradition, and that's the difference from Aquinas, and says tradition can change if not prevented by scripture. But for those who didn't believe in original sin at all, like the Socinians, they used what they called 'ordinary comprehension' - but that was in central Europe. Unitarians come from Puritans and Puritans had specific anti Socinian thoughts, including in Trust Deeds.

Benny Hundle: Strange world. Don't you Anglicans ever evolve?

Lesley Bloke: Well, await developments.

Adam Tilgate: Huh.

Rachel Marsovenus: But Hooker also said that the Church cannot go against scripture as that would be against union with God. So you cannot stretch it Lesley and whilst we might not agree with Julian Womann we might well conclude with the Open Evangelical position and I am one. The authoritative beauty of Scripture is our salvation. And he does write to state scripture first, then force of reason, then the voice of the Church. Scripture when plain is given first. Changes to tradition must be tested against scripture so that they are proved to be of God.

Moutaineer Anus: Hooray for scriptural literacy.

John Sendmehome: [Coming into the studio] Hooray for sandwiches. A chap says to the waiter, "Chicken sandwiches twice," and the waiter says, "I heard you the first time." Anyway, these are chicken and these are Quorn like chicken cubes.

Peter Levite: Where's that smile and glow gone now Lesley Bloke?

Lesley Bloke: Await developments. All I'll say is I want a job, not to be single, and lots of friends and I've already lots of friends online.

Peter Levite: Do you know what? I haven't had a clue what you have all been going on about.

Benny Hundle: Harry, can you do me a 250 word summary of this for the church magazine?

Harry Tickpaper: Are you serious?

Peter Levite: I'm dropping bits out of my sandwiches.

John Sendmehome: A man said to the manager, "Your restaurant is filthy," and the manager said, "You could eat your dinner off our floor," and he said, "It looks like they already have."

Peter Levite: Rachel, you're getting lipstick on your bread. Adam, ask for the weather.

Adam Tilgate: Where are you George Hudson?

George Hudson: Selby. Peter, I've just received an email. This woman saw you having lunch yesterday in that Russian shop having sandwiches then. You were then all glowing and smiling; that wasn't Carol Countdown again was it?

Peter Levite: If I was allowed to I'd swear. Why don't you stick to the weather? Oh, and trains.

George Hudson: Cold innit.

John Sendmehome: Why do New Age women fail to get pregnant? Because their men have crystal balls.

Mountaineer Anus: I never fail to be amazed.

Peter Levite: Do you ever give couples actual advice, Archbishop?

John Sendmehome: Oh yes. I tell them not to worry. It isn't premarital sex if they have no intention of getting married.

Peter Levite: Here on Radio Chadderbox from Wykkyfish it's time for my Music and Texts programme, where your texts fill out the gaps between my choice of CDs. Thanks to the panel and our interviewer Adam until the next time.

Indaba Daba Do

The Anglican Communion Official website regarding the Primates Meeting states:

At every meeting there are always a number of Primates who are unable to attend because of illness, diary commitments or issues in their Province. The informal nature of the meeting means that it does not require any kind of quorum to go ahead.

Now how's that for understatement? Presumably, the attempt by which primates 'decisions' become something to follow and, having not been followed, they don't turn up is covered by "issues in their Province". It says Donald Coggan set this up for "leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation" and presumably some primates ought to understand that deep consultation does not involve decision taking.

But this primates meeting is different, because, says the official site:

After the last Primates’ Meeting in Alexandria, Egypt in 2009, a number of Primates felt that at the 2011 meeting a mechanism should be found to address the big issues affecting the life of the Communion. In response to these requests a different kind of meeting has been arranged: a facilitated conversation with the aim of identifying, exploring, and, where possible, proposing next steps for those issues identified by the Primates as most seriously affecting the life of the Communion and their Provinces.

Presumably this is the Fred Flintstone approach, the indaba daba do, that is the Anglican misinterpretation of the Indaba process that, in origin, usually involves a large community meeting, thrashes out matters, including as many people as possible and - this is the bit left out - coming to a grand decision. The Anglican Indaba does not include a decision because neither this Primates Meeting nor the Lambeth Conference includes decision making powers. So it's rather a case of Indaba daba don't.

Or at least none of these gatherings do or did include such powers, but presumably with a Covenant the Standing Committee will oversee a process that will come to understandings or decisions whereby some Anglican Churches will be securely in the Premier League and some will be put in the Championship. But as a number of Primates deliberately stay away, and some think the Covenant is juridical in effect, and others think it is not punitive enough, the wheels seem to be coming off the wagon, whether it is by indaba daba do or indaba daba don't.

Struggling with Words and Struggling with Sound

At the YUU Bill Darlison quipped that Unitarians aren't really that free, because they are hidebound by what he called materialism and what I call rationalism - later some said materialism means commercialism and that's not right. He has written, published 2007 by Duckworth Overlook in London, The Gospel and the Zodiac: the Secret Truth about Jesus. On the principle of reading anything and despite my poverty I made a rash there and then decision to buy the thing and have a go, but I said at the time there is a reason why Unitarians are rational and perhaps that is no bad thing for definition.

However we are aware of the non-rational element in Unitarianism, either from Romanticism in Britain or from the Transcendentalist movement in the United States, and that now as well as the Liberal Christian versus Religious Humanist debate there is also the non-rationalist neo-Pagan and Eastern spiritualists versus the rationalists (though I suspect that Unitarian neo-Pagans are more rationalist than their Pagan religion neighbours, just as Transcendentalism and Romanticism were literary in basis, and also Buddhism lends itself to logical process).

I must admit I am really struggling with this book, including trying to read it with any persistence. The idea that the Gospel of Mark parallels Aries to Pisces seems to me to rest upon conjecture and make believe. There are claims being made for astrological matters that are just pure invention and even nonsense, as far as I can see, and that therefore parallels are neither here nor there. A question is this, I suppose: did the writer/s of Mark, genius writing as may have been, and indeed way beyond just collating Jesus traditions, pay attention to astrological matters in terms of the structure of the gospel. I just don't think this is the case. The book is more than just Mark and Astrology, and freely goes into the five main gospels (as I think they should be treated - there are five main ones not four) and across world faiths. And all that is useful, but it is just then an extended excursion into parallels. However, running through the book is the notion of spiritual awareness, practice and personal transformation, and that Mark's gospel is about you and me. Indeed this is a classic liberal and subjective view of the gospels: that they come alive when they are about your own life compared with the four gospels' biography-like narratives or about the wisdom of the sayings in Thomas related to your own philosophy. On that basis I will try harder. I have said that this is the sort of book you'd find in what Waterstones calls the Mind, Body and Spirit section as opposed to the Religion section (in which they keep many fewer books).

If I was a fully functioning postmodernist I suppose I could go along with paralleling one gospel with a made up myth system. But I am not such a postmodernist across the board, because I value the importance of research. We should look for regularity and validity, with careful research using long thought out rules. I'm with Patrick Moore that all astrology proves is that there is one born every minute, even if some can use its myth for personal reflection.

It's like today I went back to our sound system supplier because suddenly, like never before, people want voices amplified out of the speakers of the new sound system and simply do not consider the complexities of sound and feedback. It is a subtle area, based on knowledge and not assumption: how sound divides up and how feedback happens, and why female voices are far tougher to handle than male voices, especially females who speak quickly.

I sat in the congregation on Sunday except for both ends of the service, with the male speaker and a lower toned female, and I could hear microphone sound coming through the speakers, and it made a critical difference but only critical - and it would have fed the loop system with the proper peaking (which in itself is 'closed' - its slider can go up and down at will). Much still came from the front and actual person speaking, and as dominant people think nothing comes through the speakers! But suddenly, now, with a new system, people want it out of the speakers as if with the television or hi fi.

Well there are several solutions to try to gain satisfaction, but they are all based on knowledge and not what people think happens. So I can start with a different cable and plug in position to change the sound match and, another means is to add an existing microphone, and then later change the purchased microphone to deaden and heighten some characteristics (I want to leave the music sound alone: there are no separate settings for the microphone on the mixer). If that is no good then a further solution is another pair of speakers mid-way. People forget that broadcasters use either closed systems or sophisticated and even computer controlled open systems that can detect the onset of feedback and prevent it.

The other point is that even the best microphone cannot overcome the limitations of a lousy untrained speaker. Before I learnt about these issues in my previous (Anglican) church there was a chap who gave a sermon prior to starting training and when few could understand him they said they'd make the microphone closer to his mouth. It wouldn't make any difference! However, when I take my service I shall use the microphone so that there will be no ambiguity about sound and feedback, because rather than 'ignore' the microphone where it makes just a critical difference, you can use it actively to make it amplify.

Update

My previous (Anglican) church has just installed a new sound system. When one person preaches, who was always audible, the congregation can jump out of their seats, and when another speaks, who wasn't understood, people still cannot understand.

More YUU Notes

At Saturday's Yorkshire Unitarian Union gathering, the interactive talk by Bill Darlison was followed by a business meeting at which David Dawson was chosen to be Vice President (to subsequently become President). Money was discussed and the Spring Gathering will happen at Nostell Priory with already a sense of welcome there. A delegate was chosen for the General Assembly in Swansea/ Abertawe. Not one church had made a claim for money for Religious Education books or materials which the YUU was offering. Some attention was given to a Support Panel Pack sent out, like a health check for the YUU. It is not one of the weakest associations nor the strongest. Issues raised included money going to children to attend at Great Hucklow, along with all the business of safeguarding and promoting children in safety; encouraging five yearly surveys encouraged for church buildings, developing relationships with other faiths and denominations, and that one church in the district still needs a website and whether the district needs one (or if the national one with links to churches is enough). A chap took up these matters. Congregations told of new things: I mentioned Hull's new sound system.

Then came Neville Kenyon's presentation. He is the President of the General Assembly. He'd already delivered devotions and an address that asked if we take full advantage of our freedom. Now he asked if it all hangs together given the diversity of opinion. He was disappointed to open The Inquirer and find the Unitarian Christian Association regarding the late Cyril Smith (a long-standing Member of Parliament) as one of the UCA tribe. He could agree that good worship resonates, but commented that words of Mary Carpenter were typical of 1877 and not of now and such needn't be the basis of worship today. He had a questionnaire for groups to work through. In my group I was from Hull and the others were from Bradford, York and two from Wakefield.

Do we tailor services towards the local community? No, but York does (and another group said York did) because there is a heritage weekend that puts residents first (given that so many attractions in York are paid access that tends to mean residents don't access them). Hull once did a Sunday school outreach into the enarby housing (I was told) and Bradford Broadway had a young people's emphasis but the area became Muslim (the two Bradford churches became one).

Do we tell first time visitors Unitarian values? There is a danger both of ignoring and swamping the visitor. We said we have to get across that any one service can be atypical. Later mention was made of an American church that gives a different coloured mug to newcomers so that if the person is seen without anyone someone will go to them to talk.

Most services suggest how we live our lives as humans not necessarily as Unitarians.

Looking at new people, I mentioned that I was taking the service when the new Muslim attender (now gone back to Iran) came (then with boyfriend) and I said they'd be interested in this because I was talking about my very first impressions on first attending. Fortunately she returned again and again. I recalled on my first visit being told about Transylvania and wondering about what Dracula had got to do with it.

Sometimes services reflect what is on the websites. Websites, like much publicity, can tend to be better than the reality on the ground.

We were both relaxed about issues like the Trinity and divinity of Jesus and regarded them as irrelevant, as did many other groups.

Theology and the Bible we thought are still relevant but with a broader theology. However I said some people coming in from other churches are in transition and so ask the usual questions about Jesus and what is believed about him before they themselves move on.

My group did not get to discuss the clear blue water question but I noted some groups were not sure if there was clear blue water between our churches and others.


Groups' spokespeople gave rapid summaries of their positions and as far as I could tell (they were too rapid: time was pressing) there was quite a lot of agreement.

Neville Kenyon in his sense of disappointment noted how one Anglican Reader who had been to Unitarian services stayed in his Church of England setting as a Unitarian, and noted how one Unitarian church described that it had Liberal Trinitarians among its congregation, as it turned out people treated it as a parish church. He was unhappy when a minister thought the low numbers were because people in the locality had four churches to choose from, as if the Unitarians offered nothing distinctive. He was himself clearly of the evolve and move on school, to offer clear blue water from other churches in terms of content.


After this there was much informal chat, which is one of the significant functions of these meetings. I was talking Presbyterian history with Wakefield's and the area's principal historian including sharing mental notes on Domestic Missions and Bernard Manning the Congregationalist who was intensely opposed to Unitarianism. We'd brought packed lunches and now there was more laid on as a spread.

Bill Darlison on Preaching

Saturday was a 9 am to gone 6 pm day out for me, with an hour plus each way trip to Wakefield. I was a passenger, with two others and driver. This was to the Yorkshire Unitarian Union (YUU) meeting and one of its better attended events, indeed some came from Sheffield and over the Pennines though no one came from Leeds (as is often the case). Reverend Bill Darlison was one attraction, speaking in the morning about preaching. In the afternoon the GA President took devotions and facilitated a group discussion on a set of questions regarding the present and future.

Bill Darlison addressed his successful reputation early on, saying that anyone who could not grow a Unitarian church when the main church (as in Dublin) is in meltdown would need examining. However, most think he (and the others helping in Dublin) did better than that. For me, Unitarianism is a representation of the modernity coming into Ireland with its place in the European Union and alongside the decline of old, cultural, Roman Catholicism. Younger people have gathered at the Unitarian church as part of that modernity.

Bill assumed we were all local preachers, though we weren't (I am not in the sense that I don't go beyond the local church and take services, and I only do a few). He asked what themes we were using for sermons. Answers included Reverence for Life, the Spiritual Aspect of the Universe, the Book of Revelation as a great poem but also historical and non-literal, Epiphany in the sense of how wise men brought their own beliefs to Jesus and kept them, and a theme on What Does it Mean to be Made in the Image of God? which actually became more scientific.

Bill Darlison said how one person at Dublin referred to the sermon as 'a lecture' and I said how the now the now defunct Ethical Churches had a lecturer and a lecture (instead of a minister and a sermon). One comment was neither a lecture nor a sermon but an address is its name. But 'sermon' comes from the Latin meaning conversation, said Bill. The issue of feedback was raised and how: it comes in a variety of forms and in some settings better than others if not always or free flowing [I recall the 'answer back' in sermons immediately afterwards in my early Unitarian days]. One person preferred dialogue to sermons, and Bradford is the kind of environmental space to respond readily.

A sermon is often expected and of course it has often been propositional.

There is difficulty with lay preachers moving here and there, and being in different places, but if there is a leader present for 52 weeks then the sermon can be a process and not an event more easily. You get the space in time for different kinds of approaches.

Bill Darlison then gave his specific claim that there is a problem if a sermon contains nothing of a spiritual nature; the best sermon is of the spiritual kind that cannot be argued with, where no argument is possible. A bad sermon can lead to a 'so what?' and the puzzle as to how it affects one's life at all. But the experiential cannot-argue-with sermon is the one that says 'me too' in response.

Frances Power Cobbe was an Anglican who became interested in Unitarianism herself and needed the chance to attend a church. She managed this, only to enter a quarter full chapel to find a minister go on and on about a piece of Greek that demonstrated that John's Gospel really said The Word was with a God. She chose never to return there. She and Elizabeth Gaskell wanted not preaching on doctrines and the like but devotional preaching. Eventually she got that at James Martineau's church in London, which she attended when she was in London. I thought it somewhat contradictory that she wanted the idea of the motherhood of God principle in preaching, which was a means to arrive at the devotional.

Today we have the doctrinal equivalents of preachers who say 'Unitarians are free' but it's a bit rough if a succession of lay preachers arrive with that similar message. Outsiders would ask for content. Or perhaps people do an ecological sermon or something on gay rights. He suggested that there is some reverting to these when the spiritual should be involved.

Bill Darlison recalled how in 1998 he re-read the Divinity School Address by Ralph Waldo Emerson and how this resonated. It stated how the formalist preacher makes much effort but it is as if he never has lived at all. Rather, a true preacher deals out his life: life passed through the fire of thought.

Someone once said to never use the word 'I' in a sermon, and Bill said that's no good at all. He recalls a most successful sermon of a woman at Dublin, while Bill watched the congregation. Despite the woman's academic and expressive abilities, she told how agoraphobia affected one journey on public transport and it was an affliction she could not overcome. It was a liberating sermon because it said to others that you can admit your problems. An intellectual response was not possible, the feedback was on the level of engagement and empathy.

Bill Darlison said that we all walk around with veneers of respectability and competence, and it isn't so. However, again, not every sermon should be so thoroughly confessional. You can bring your life into a whole variety of themes.

Bill saw a book on who wrote the Bible and that there were ten good sermons in there. A Dublin chap would do 27 sermons on each Bible book in the New Testament. Such would be very 'so what?' in impact. It would not put your life through the fires of thought.

A person present said some people do not want to hear confessional sermons. Others like some sort of inclusion of personal belief. One said engagement groups go deep into personal situations and they need managing well, whereas a sermon cannot have such management and deep personal issues may be inappropriate in a sermon.

I asked what then of the intellectual element. We all know that theology is ambiguous these days and that much of it is to allow you to appear to say one thing while meaning another and thus so much theology has been dumped by Unitarians. But go down this route thoroughly and it dumps all theology, I suggested.

Not so, Bill argued. For example, he saw how his notices of sermons ahead of their delivery resonated peculiarly with articles in The Guardian - and with all these self-declared atheist authors. He read a piece in the issue today from the family section about a train journey, and the angel who was a person this woman chose to sit opposite for a long journey to London. They were able to share deep, personal experiences. Now the idea or theological aspect of that is chance and coincidence, or what Jung rather called synchronicity. He quipped that if you think you have just coincidence then you may have a very dull life.

Bill stated that Unitarians are full of dogma, and it is the materialist dogma where somehow we have to encompass the likes of Richard Dawkins.

A chap said of a peak experience in a wood. Something strange was expected and happened. A voice in that forest said don't be afraid. Bill Darlison asked if he had ever preached on this. No he had not. He recalled his own rough upbringing and abuse and felt uncomfortable unburdening himself.

The point was made that you can say more to a congregation that you know. Bill said it is more difficult if you are just visiting. A woman at Dublin always took off her spectacles before making a personal anecdote, and that became the trigger for people in the congregation to pay attention.

We can put theology itself to a very low level, or at least into the context of a transformed life. All spiritual traditions tell of a transformed life, that is observations put into the context of spiritual living.

The principles of spiritual living are:

1. Concentration - about waking up: don't sleep but pay attention to your life
2. Compassion
3. Awe
4. Gratitude
5. Generosity
6. Transformation

He told the story of a man who would be a Buddhist monk, but whose only skill was chess. So the abbot said play this young monk who could play well but the loser loses his head. The new man played the young monk and achieved an advantage but realised that the monk could not lose his head - he had done nothing wrong. So the new man engineered his own disadvantage to lose. The Abbot came along and disturbed the pieces and stopped the game: no one would lose their head. But the new person had shown both concentration and compassion.

Bill Darlison then remarked on an episode in the gospels where a man tells Jesus he can't see, so Jesus rubs his eyes and he can see but people are like trees, so Jesus rubs them again and he can see clearly. He said materialists against miracles have missed the point and preached against miracles and about Jesus rubbing off the cataracts at second attempt. Rather the story is about really seeing.

Bill Darlison said that rationalism leads to big problems for Unitarians and partly explains the state in which the denomination finds itself. He had been in the denomination for 23 years and thinks the denomination is autistic. It attracts loners and difficult people who proclaim tolerance and community but find it difficult to engage. When we genuinely promote community and tolerance we will learn to do what the other person wants. People disagree: it is a club for difficult people.


He had bought along some books all of which have some emphasis on nurturing the spiritual sense, including one by Erich Fromm the American Freudian Marxist Atheist. It is about the fear of freedom and we fear freedom. He said how our enslavement to materialism is demonstrated in reactions to his own book, Darlison, B. (2007), The Gospel and The Zodiac, London: Duckworth Overlook. People go funny at the mention of the Zodiac, but here is some real radical theology he suggested. It's the notion that the Gospel of Mark fits around the signs of the Zodiac: the relationship to world faiths and writing in the setting in which it was written. Being open to anything, I decided I'd buy a copy. Bill Darlison said Mark's gospel is about you and me, and the piece on resurrection is all about transformation.

Personally I thought this was a very valuable session on preaching but went off at the end into something of his personal hobby horse, even though the position on materialism is worth stating.




So that was one part of the YUU meeting in Wakefield. More on the YUU meeting in subsequent blog entries.

Confessions of a Sceptic

In my company Lesley Fellows can be sure to impress as a Christian believer. Already I have been criticised with the question that if I am no longer an Anglican, then why comment on the Church of England and Anglicanism. Of course I'm no longer Anglican because I do not subscribe to basic minimums of being Christian. Perhaps I might try to examine what they are.

I am aware that many Unitarians call themselves Christian, and I don't want to attempt to remove such self-labelling so my definition of Christian ought to respect their label as well as something more ontological.

It seems to me that to be a Christian Jesus needs to be the supreme and sufficient exemplar of one's religious and moral outlook, and that this must relate directly to your own concept of God. This may or may not involve the Bible and concepts in it up to and including the messianic.

This allows for a purely human Jesus. On the other hand, Jesus may have additional divinity than the rest of us, if not the whole divinity of God. That would be a sort of Reformation Arianism. A more classical Arianism would use John's Gospel and say that in the beginning was the Word (as opposed to in eternity) with other subsidiary divine statements in that gospel and elsewhere and include the 'economic Trinity' too at a push.

And of course Jesus may be the third person of the Trinity, an extra-biblical doctrine towards which the Bible may and may not point, as with the 'economic Trinity' in the acceleration of titles being given to Jesus in the early Christian communities.

Now it seems to me that if you go for the purely human route, as I do, then you are in the realms of the demands of history and the production of some sort of ethical and moral league table. The information is simply not available as regarding Jesus's moral and ethical conduct. Furthermore, he is likely to have been a sacrificer of animals at the temple and there are dubious messages regarding animals taking on demons etc.. So there is a moral issue here. And his attitude towards women was progressive at the time, but could be more so. Also he was clearly tribal: it took a Paul to unversalise his message, and Jesus was a Jew for Jews. Jesus was also wrong about the world ending and a coming of a messianic figure. Now in terms of bringing himself to Jerusalem and getting arrested, I am sceptical indeed about the gospel accounts but also there is a question of ego regarding the whole matter - putting himself in harms way in order to bring about the beginning of the kingdom - which is not morally clear self-sacrifice but a conundrum of martyrdom. The business with Judas is also more than likely ahistorical, but if not then it follows a scripture and if Jesus was in on it then it looks like a sham.

All that be as it may, the effect is not only don't I accept his divinity, but nor do I accept the notion of supreme humanity. I go with Francis Newman who preached against the moral superiority of Jesus.

As for God, I think this has more to do with our highest values and deepest wants. God language may be useful as a shortcut regarding reflection and contemplation, in developing a human spirituality. Buddhists used to tell me that this is misleading, and meditation ought to be godless in intention. I am though interested in what Matthew Collings called The Beauty of Equations, and that is the elegant mathematics that opens out our physical and environmental reality, the fact that we live in chaos but also within systems. If this is a form of transcendence then I accept it, but what it isn't is a God who intervenes. It is simplicity that leads to intelligence and consciousness and not intelligence that creates simplicity.

I know all about the notion of an intelligence that creates evolving systems from simplicity in order to create intelligences nearer to God that have freedom too, but that's just to fit in with the conundrums of the biblical theory (where it is so coherent). But it is worthy of awe that simplicity can fire off patterns: that a simple equation with a virtual number iterated can produce fantastic shapes and existences that are themselves productive. Of course such an awe is about something dynamic, and again some might call this Holy Spirit but it follows that this is misleading.

I think we ritualise because we are tribal. We ritualise in all our doings: exchange brings us together, but we further ritualise at a more abstract level because that has an overall binding impact - it makes us more collective rather than just a bunch of individuals. This is research backed and exists with a whole variety of forms. It is consistent with our evolved origins with collective altruism as forms and habits, interchange as sophistication and choice grows along with levels of consciousness. So religion is a kind of oversight.

I've done an MA in Theology and I am aware of many of the arguments. I did a lot of reading for the Ph.D as well. I keep up with these, even if it sometimes feels like a visit to the museum or some past life. So I know something about the liberalisms, the postmodernisms, all the literary devices, all the preaching strategies, and the way theology allows you to appear to say one thing while actually writing another. Much more interesting is to grapple with art, with science, with maths, with technology and in social science ask how these change our theoretical everyday thinking and more important our practical thinking - our plausibility structures we might say. The religious issue is in them and not in trying to uphold an old specific orthodoxy or being a bit heterodox about it.

So any Christian sceptic can have a chat with me and they'll either discover that, actually, they are comparatively quite securely orthodox or, in reality, they really agree with me and all they have is a surface appearance for one motive or another.