Woodhead on Feminism and Christianity

Linda Woodhead's interview with Vicky Beeching on Beeching's blog Faith in Feminism  here this week has reminded me of Mary Grey's book Redeeming the Dream, published, I think, in 1989 here in which she puts forward and explores a model of Christian redemption which takes into account the inadequacy of categories within the tradition to interpret women's experience. Grey rejects traditional definitions of what it is to be a woman from within the Christian tradition as being unhealthy for women, encouraging them to lose a self they have never known. Reading this attempt at a radical theology of redemption and atonement left me, I recall, with a lingering and uncomfortable question. 'Is what Grey is trying to do possible or is it the case that Christianity is irredeemably patriarchal?' In one sense, of course, the answer is 'no' because the essence of Christian belief is that nothing is beyond redemption; everything, everyone can be transformed by encounter with Christ and through life in the Spirit. But it's a scary question for both feminists and Christians because, if the answer were 'yes', it would lead, inevitably to the parting of the ways. Feminists could not regard themselves as being on a Christian quest and the church would ultimately have nothing to say to them. It's the question some women who have spent a large part of their lives in the church hardly dare ask.

I discovered my own response to this disturbing question by spending a lot of time digging around in the Christian tradition, especially the early part of it, for snippets of evidence that the mainstream story (what Schussler Fiorenza would call History) was not the whole story and that there are in fact ways of telling a different story by piecing together what has been overlooked and edited out (Herstory). You then have to learn to live in the interstitial space between the two worlds, hearing one thing from most of the church and experiencing another kind of life alongside it - often more by imagination and desire than in reality. A prime example of this kind of tension would be the juxtaposition of the mainstream story in which we all collude about family life being God-given and of first importance with the other story in the gospels - 'Jesus, blessed are the breasts that gave you suck!' 'No. Rather, blessed is she who does the will of God.' Jesus wasn't always big on conventional family ties, it seems, and this is strange in one brought up within Judaism. Yet people seldom ask the meaning of this. One of Grey's key points is that, for women to thrive, there must be Christ centred freedom to stand apart from traditional understandings of womanhood as laid out by the church fathers, several of whom, by the way, described women as the gateway to the devil and in various similarly scathing terms that have redounded down the centuries influencing everything from theology to popular culture.

So I was interested to read Woodhead's interview in which, if I understand her correctly, she gets quite near to saying that, while there is always hope, there are not many signs that the churches are being effective in doing anything to redeem Christianity for women at the moment. Vicky Beeching asks her if there is hope for a feminist friendly future and she responds that to achieve this would take a 'genuine revolution' led by church leaders who have the ability and desire (and I would add understanding) to undertake some major re-thinking. I agree with her analysis completely. Having recently moved, after 25 years, from full time church ministry into a ministry largely focused in the secular world I have realised forcibly that the space young women inhabit makes it almost impossible for them to take seriously many of the things the churches appear to be saying about women, power and authority, sexuality and family life. There just is no longer any point of natural engagement. Or at least most of the points of natural engagement are obscured by attitudes that reflect neither the truth about the range of possibilities contained within the Christian tradition nor the way life is experienced today by women. Some of these attitudes are seen as frankly oppressive, degrading and abusive. 

I found Woodhead's distinction between patriarchy, sexism and misogyny, on the one hand, and paternalism, on the other, very illuminating indeed. I have often asked myself why it is that negative attitudes to women seem so especially intransigent. Why is it that in societies that have gone a long way to rooting out racial hatred there so often still lingers oppression for women of all races? Woodhead's category of paternalism is very helpful here. It helps you to see how it's possible to get to a place where blatant patriarchy and misogyny are rejected by most people but for there still to be that lurking, hidden paternalism - an unstated belief that women need guidance from those who represent the status quo (ie. unconscientized men and women) in order to get to where they should be. The churches are full of this kind of thinking based on the perception that church order requires obedience to a higher authority which has already defined all the categories in terms of maleness as the norm. There is a consequent infantilizing of anyone or any group that dares to see things another way followed swiftly by a tendency to control or exclude. A striking example of this is to be found in the Act of Synod in the Church of England. A whole generation of bishops have required women priests to work with cheerful good grace under legislation that allows for bad behaviour towards them 'for the good of the whole church'. This is serious stuff. Women have been spat at, shouted at, called names, had libellous things written about them, been excluded from applying for jobs, been required to participate in debates about whether they had any place as priests and have had their ministries curtailed and constrained. Nowhere in secular British society is it possible for one group to require this of another under the protection of the law. Yet most of the bishops would not in any sense support arguments for strict patriarchy or hold overtly misogynistic attitudes.

On the whole, I think Woodhead is very accurate in her analysis - there is hope but there needs to be a lot more evidence of new kinds of thinking and behaviour before we can say that there has been progress. I'm now going to make myself very unpopular by saying that I think that the women of the church need to wake up (a good Advent discipline) and take responsibility. How have we allowed the churches to lag so far behind the rest of society in terms of working to change structural gender oppression? We need to see major change and, to date, we have not taken an effective part in ensuring it happens. How do we do this? We should be tireless in searching out our 'herstory' in the biblical, liturgical and doctrinal traditions of the churches; we should be fully aware of it, conversant with it, publishing it and using it. We should be refusing to participate in structures and ways of behaving that are damaging to women and we should be far more vocal about what is really going on. We should be listening to women in secular spheres who have worked out how to name gender oppression and abusive patterns of behaviour and we should be learning from them. We should be engaging with women outside the churches in other faiths and none to shape society in ways that allow women to thrive. Judith Plaskow, in her book Sex, Sin and Grace here uses the theologies of Niebuhr and Tillich to come up with a theory that I think has the ring of truth. She says that the besetting sin of maleness (and we are all a mixture of maleness and femaleness) is hubris - the tendency to put oneself in the place of God and assume therefore that your view of the world is the true one. The besetting sin of femaleness is failure to take responsibility for oneself. As people overcome these tendencies they become grace-filled and therefore true gift to one another. On the showing of the Anglican church I think the women of the church need to take Plaskow's words to heart. As one of my young colleagues said to me with incredulity the other day, 'And you just put up with that? Where's your self respect and, actually, where's your respect for other women?' She is undoubtedly a daughter of the Syrophoenician woman!

Discipleship

Delighting in God's Presence, Engaged in God's Purpose

                                                         Walter Brueggemann

New venture at Bradford Cathedral today. 30 minutes over coffee - teaching & discussion. Today it was Advent; When is He Coming? Watch this space on Twitter for more @archdeaconjanet

© Telegraph and Argus, Bradford www.telegraphandargus.co.uk

Advent

Fourth Century Origins

Advent in Two Minutes

(A Busted Halo Presentation)

Advenio, advenire – to come to approach

Themes

Preparation for the coming of Christ in
·                              Incarnation (at Christmas)
·                             Judgement (Second Coming at the end of time)

Watching, Waiting, Hoping, Anticipating

Being Ready

Penitence – especially around Social Justice – the message of the prophets

Dispelling the darkness of the world

Wilderness places becoming fertile

Waking out of apathy and sleep

Readings

The prophets – Isaiah 2.1-5, 11.1-10, 40.1-11, 61.1-11, 64.1-9 Amos 7

Zephaniah 3.14-20, Micah 5.2-5a, Joel 3.9-21, Malachi 3.1-4

The Gospels – Matthew 11.2-11, Matthew 24.15 -28 and 36-44, Luke 4.16-19

Isaiah 61 and Luke 4 – this is what you should expect to see when Jesus comes.

Advent Antiphons

O Sapientia (Wisdom), O Adonai (Lord), O Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (Key of David), O Oriens (Dayspring), O Rex Gentium (King of the Nations), O Emmanuel (God With Us)

Advent Wreath (19^th century origins)

Patriarchs, Prophets, John the Baptist (the forerunner), Mary, Christ at the centre, on whom we wait

Welcoming Evangelii Gaudium

The recent Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium is remarkable for the  way in which it begins with an outpouring of the Pope's own sense of the joy flowing from encounter with Christ. 'With Christ, joy is constantly born anew,' he begins and his purpose in writing is to encourage the faithful to engage in evangelization and mission that are singled out by a joyful exploration of 'new paths for the church's journey in years to come.' This is a very hopeful and significant document. In it, if my reading is correct, I see the foundations being laid for the church to re-examine some of its teachings and, more importantly, some of the ways it relates to the social, economic, scientific, interdenominational and interfaith issues that are hot potatoes today. That is not to say that the Roman Catholic church is likely to revise its stance on these things any time soon. But I think the Pope is preparing the ground for some careful work and for the possibility of 'new light' to dawn in the future. 

www.catholicbishops.ie

There is something astir in the Roman Catholic church. I've just been reading Hans Kung's new book Can We Save the Catholic Church? (Collins, 2013). It contains a scholarly analysis of how the church has got to the place it is today with regard to many of the issues people struggle over - it's wealth, hierarchical nature and dogmatism, its attitude to science, progress, contraception, sexuality, celibacy and women's ministry amongst other things. Kung (once a mainstream Catholic theologian, censured by the Vatican and subsequently not allowed to teach in Catholic seminaries for many years) sets out very helpfully the things he regards as needing reform in the church. Startlingly, these include the abolition of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and, perhaps more understandably, given Kung's treatment, the cessation of theological repression. Kung was a central figure in the Second Vatican Council and he shows how the reforms envisaged as a result of the Council have been effectively largely blocked under Popes John Paul and Benedict. Evangelii Gaudium might just be the beginning of the journey back to the path Vatican II was heading down.

Pope Francis has not been in office very long but, already, there is a radically new atmosphere about his papacy and things are being challenged in the Vatican. Fresh voices are being heard. Even before his election as Pope there was a great deal of talk about an urgent need for reform. What I find so hopeful in Pope Francis' document is the new reality with which he talks about many things. One feels that he has not lived in an ivory tower - he has touched and been deeply touched by the ordinary day-to-day lives of those who struggle with poverty, political oppression and family breakdown. He has some deservedly serious challenges for us in the two thirds world:

The danger in today's world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent and covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God's voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt and the desire to do good fades....that is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life...I invite all Christians everywhere , at this moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ....'no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord.'

Evangelii Gaudium is a long document but I think it is well worth a read. Above all, it announces to the world the direction that one of the major churches will be attempting to travel over the next few years and no serious Christian ought to be unaware of it. As a Reformed and fairly liberal Christian, I do not myself agree with with some of the things the Pope has to say about, in particular, family life, contraception and abortion and the role of women in the church but I can see a new awareness of the cost of some of the church's teachings as they are played out in people's lives. This suggests to me that the Vatican may be willing to examine afresh some of the assumptions upon which its pastoral ministry and mission are based. On the other hand, I find very great encouragement in some of the things  the Pope has to say, for example, his identification of the parish system as being one that has (or should have) great flexibility, allowing the church to be present and relevant in so many different contexts. He has some thought-provoking things to say about the relationship between the rapid scientific and technological progress being made in some parts of the world alongside the reality of the daily struggle to survive in other parts. Can we who live in 'throw away' cultures continue to 'throw away' the lives of the poor as though they were expendable? This is a South American Pope speaking to us. This is a voice from a church that is truly global.

Evangelii Gaudium appears to be the first truly 'Franciscan' document of this Pope's reign. He previously completed and published Lumen Fidei which had been largely drafted by Pope Benedict. It is noticeable that the two documents are very different in tone and content, suggesting that Francis is now finding his voice and making his true mark. 'Joyful evangelisation' of the whole world could be said to be the theme of the exhortation - a proclamation of the gospel in deed and word through a joyful living in response to encounter with Christ as risen Lord. An exhortation is intended to be a pastoral rather than a theological document and so the nature of what he says is essentially practical and driven by what he sees as the missionary needs of the church. There is a long section on the effects of the secularisation of society and another on the social inclusion of the poor. He also covers peace and interfaith (mainly Islam) dialogue, preaching ('the preparation of the homily') and the spiritual foundations of the church's imperative to be engaged in mission. I can't do justice to the full 224 pages of the exhortation here, but I hope that I may have whetted your appetite and roused your curiosity sufficiently for you to look for yourself 

Evangelii Gaudium    

See also Hans Kung Can We Save the Catholic Church?

Pilling - Initial Reactions

My first reaction to seeing the Pilling Report was disbelief that in the twenty first century any church could put out a report on human sexuality written by a group that appears to have consisted of 8 men and 2 women and expect it to be taken as a serious contribution to the subject. In the introduction, Sir Joseph Pilling, the chair of the working party states that one of the women, Revd Dr Jessica Martin, appointed as a consultant, 'challenged the group to think about sexuality more widely than most of our experience was leading us to do.' Well, no surprise there! That's what women do to men, they challenge them to understand sexuality from a different perspective (as, of course, men do to women and people of different orientations do to one another.) How any sane community of faith can contemplate commissioning a group to sit down and try to understand the complex nature of sexuality or the theology written about it when that group consists largely of one gender is beyond my comprehension and probably the comprehension of most of the people outside the church who may read the report. Most of the men I know who've read a book like Jo Ind's insightful text on female sexuality, Memories of Bliss; God, Sex and Us here find parts of it quite difficult to take, never mind empathise with. Most of the women I know have similar trouble with books like Anthony Swofford's Jarhead here which is a reflection on intense male bonding and sexuality by a Vietnam veteran. To explore the wonderful phenomenon of sexuality in anything more than a superficial way, we need to be in the same room talking and listening to people of both sexes and both orientations. 

SCM Press 2003

So the report is a bit more superficial than anything I was hoping for. The group have done their best but actually have not got to grips with the range of understandings of sexuality present in research, literature and society today. What they have done is to compile a report that examines a select spectrum of the church's handling of matters to do with social, liturgical and pastoral structures for marking out the territory around gender difference and the relationships that people form. The document is less about human sexuality and more about what kinds of attitudes and behaviours the Anglican church has taken and could adopt in the near future (without being too radical) in relation to matters to do with sexuality and especially some aspects of gender orientation. There is a long section on the effect of all this on the Anglican Communion.

In particular, on the social sciences front, I was really disappointed that the report does not show much evidence of considering the wide spectrum of research available on the nature and incidence of homosexuality - it refers to a very limited range of studies which all seem selected, in advance, to make a particular point. I was also disappointed that, on the theological front, it does nothing very much to help us look behind, around and beyond the contribution of St. Augustine of Hippo and the Introduction to the BCP Marriage Service for the many sources embedded in the Christian tradition that do not regard sex as sinful and marriage as the only acceptable remedy for its connection to original sin. You have only to look in the Hebrew scriptures to find a highly sophisticated and nuanced range of approaches - the stories of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz, Esther, David, Jonathan, Hagar.... The notion that marriage is the only way that sexually active people express themselves is surely just one of many strands in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, aimed at the ability to control knowledge of the paternity of children. Its predominance has come about in cultural settings and for cultural reasons that do not always have a great deal to do with faith or with the teachings of Jesus or interpretation of the whole spectrum of biblical, rabbinic and apocryphal texts. 

The report, then, is interesting for two reasons. It is the first time that such a report by a Church of England working party contains an open acknowledgement that, where there is a massive shift in social perception such that a practice or set of practices that were previously not acceptable have come to be seen not only as acceptable, but as desirable, then this can leave the church with a problem if it does not listen and engage. Rightly, I think, the working party point out that this kind of seismic cultural shift is not  necessarily of itself a justification for re-writing theology or re-configuring traditional beliefs. However where new understandings of what it is to be human and of the deep oppression of groups of people are at stake, the church must, preferably sooner rather than later, engage with what those beyond the church are saying and learn from them. Even if the working party were not influenced by it, the Archbishop of Canterbury and many of the bishops are unlikely to forget the day that the largest attendance in the House of Lords since 1945 produced an overwhelming defeat of the bishops' objections to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act at its second reading. The Archbishop has now, on several occasions, outlined the need for the church to learn from this and the Pilling Report will, I hope, add weight to his plea.

Secondly, the report does pave a gentle way forward for progress. Its recommendation that a conversation process be set up to enable the church to hear the range of views in society can only be positive. At least the report defends the need for the Church of England to stand firm in insisting that this issue must be addressed with other provinces of the Anglican Communion - this is probably not hugely encouraging but at least it begins to set the direction of travel. I think that it's the first time I've been conscious of phrases like 'warm welcome and affirmation of presence and ministry' in respect of lesbian and gay people. I fear this is far too little, far too late and could sound patronising, but I do sense a break through similar to that on women bishops - suddenly here is an official group being moderately positive, not simply a maverick lay person or an odd cleric! Similarly, not much ground is given in terms of liturgical provision for same sex couples but at least it is acknowledged that there is a need for provision and there is an acceptance of blessings for gay partnerships. No points for condemning homophobia, I'm afraid, how could they not? And no points for doing anything to clear up the double standards on requirements around chastity for clergy and laity. 

I very much fear that the approach taken in the whole report repeats the old mistakes made with regard to admitting women to the threefold order of deacon, priest and bishop. It jumps very quickly to a pragmatic approach to mission without first dealing in any depth with the nature of what it is discussing, namely theological critique of the difference between the sexes and orientations and the ways in which they relate. The premise appears to be - here is something (same sex relationships) the tradition apparently has been held to forbid; this does not tally with modern thinking about humanity-in-the-image-of-God, or about compassion, justice and oppression. Therefore we must find a way to keep old teachings and insight while adopting the new thinking that social changes demand of us. So, instead of addressing the deep theological, physiological and sociological issues and mining into the Christian tradition for the whole range of voices that have always been present, we are encouraged to retain the old, oppressive insights fairly unexamined but at the same time jump straight into pragmatic (but dare I say not very logical or practical) responses. Women clergy have been required to practise psychological contortion for two decades because of this kind of ill-thought-out strategy and we've seen how that has nearly torn the governance of the church apart. Let's not repeat the mistake. Really.  However, the need to listen and explore is entirely right and I applaud that.   

In Memoriam John Taverner

The two twentieth century British composers who have had the most profound effect on me are William Mathias and John Taverner. So it was with great sadness that I read of the  death of Sir John, last week. The power of pieces like Ultimos Ritos, Apocalypse, the Celtic Requiem and Eis Thanaton to evoke that which is beyond, connecting us to the source of life, is remarkable. Taverner himself said, 'There is nothing easy about achieving simplicity' and his music is an embodiment of that simple truth. Deceptively effortless and somehow in time and tune with both the rolling spheres and the breath of the sleeping infant, it takes us to a place where the boundaries of self and the world beyond touch, through the exquisite use of finely disciplined sound, rhythm and timbre. He said that writing music became, for him, ultimately an act of prayer, something that brought him into the presence of God.

It was a poignant and remarkably apt co-incidence that Taverner's last public appearance was on a radio programme whose subject was the light that religious art throws on the experience of approaching death. Andrew Marr's Radio 4 programme Start the Week posed the question, 'Why is it that religious poetry and music are found to appeal to those who would not describe themselves as religious when they gaze on the spectre of their own mortality?' I listened because I was interested in the question. Afterwards, I was glad I had glimpsed, briefly, the wisdom of one whose music speaks of eternity and who was himself, unsuspected at the time, so close to death.

Often, in the hospice where I work, people who would not describe themselves as religious nevertheless find that the stories, poetry and language of religion give them a space in which they can dare (or sometimes bear) to explore what approaching death might mean. Music, too, can be more than a solace - a medium through which they can expand their vision and horizons, exploring what has held life together thus far and the thread that connects life to the possibility of something more than we sense in our bodies in the here and now. The piece which does this par excellence for me is Bach's chorale Come Sweet Death as performed by Accentus. In performance, the voices stretch each chord beyond, almost, what is tolerable -  the wait for the resolution of each dissonance brings you closer and closer to the place where the boundaries between what is known and what is unknown yet undeniably present blur...well you just have to listen for yourself really! The chorale is sung here by an un-named choir and is first performed straight through here

John Taverner's music has a similar kind of appeal, if that is the right word. It conveys us to places where it is not only possible but desirable to ask the ultimate questions about existence. And then it takes you further into the uncharted territory where, for odd moments, the boundaries between time and timelessness are blurred and you are brought to a place were you are almost no longer conscious of your own existence. It is this quality that marks him out as one of Britain's great composers and also which explains why he himself became frustrated with more conventional forms of music which he felt did not convey spiritual truth in this way.   

Urban Ministry; Not the End of an Era.

Giles Frasers' article in the Guardian Why the Writing Could Be on the Wall for the Church of England in the Inner City here is important and is, I fear, quite likely to be overlooked as we stampede toward discussions about women bishops at the General Synod of the Church of England. Giles draws attention not so much to the situation of inner city parishes (and, of course, they are all different, some flourishing and others in apparently terminal decline) as to the changing attitude of the whole church to its commitment to city ministry.

I was at theological college in Durham in the late 1980's around the time of the Faith in the City  report that so much displeased Margaret Thatcher. Part of my training was spent living and ministering in the parish of Gateshead near Newcastle. I then served as a Parish Deacon, funded by the Church Urban Fund, in a very large urban parish in Nottingham and taught at St John's College Nottingham which, I like to think, instilled in its students a sense of responsibility for urban ministry. You would have been hard pressed to get through a course without at least thinking seriously about it.

The truth about urban ministry is that you will probably be working with very small congregations of 20 or fewer people in areas where there are glaring  and urgent social needs. You will be part of a tiny group of dedicated Christians who do not have a great deal in the way of resources or skills to promote themselves, their communities' needs or their causes. Often, they have vast wisdom, humour and sheer commitment and stickability but, like everyone, they have their limits beyond which they cannot be pushed. You will live in places where personal safety can be an issue and where, if you have children, they may attend schools that do not have a high level of academic achievement. One of my urban colleagues was burgled 80 times in 10 years. He used to joke he kept a packet of biscuits on the kitchen table with a note saying 'Welcome, please help yourselves.' I was burgled 5 times in 3 years and my husband (this was before we were married) had his windows shot out with an air rifle and his fence repeatedly stolen for firewood. A local pub dealt in arms, drugs and prostitution and, one memorable summer, there were three shootings and an arson attack on the estate in just a few months.  The Community development worker, 7 months pregnant, was threatened at knife point by an irate parent. Yet...I've never actually felt personally safer in terms of being able to call on neighbours for help. I've never known my neighbours so well nor enjoyed life so much as in that deeply urban parish. I've also never known such generosity - 20% of church income was given away without a murmur, share was somehow paid, money came miraculously through the door on Christmas Eve 'for the children of the church', people would share their homes with someone who was evicted at the drop of a hat because they knew what it felt like to be thrown out of your home. It was different from the parish described by Giles. We didn't have any listed buildings. But we had workers to pay and land to maintain. We raised over £10,000 a year towards the salary of a Community Development Worker and to support volunteers. 

Recently, in the Diocese of Ripon and Leeds, we have had a strong commitment to fund the share (payments from the parishes to the central Diocese) across the whole diocese so that the less well off parishes can be provided with resources, primarily clergy who, significantly, tend to be one of the few professionals living in the urban areas they serve. We've done quite well at cross-fertilisation between the urban and rural areas in what is one of the most urban/rural diverse dioceses in England. Yet even here, I feel, the message is not getting through as well as it used to. 

As the Archdeacon, until recently, of a very rural area, I have huge sympathy for rural clergy who are grappling with the challenge of serving 8-12 different communities and churches. But as a former parish priest, I feel I have, ultimately, to speak up for our commitment to urban parishes where (in my own experience) there may be as many as 40,000 souls living. I don't want to belong to a Church of England that does not recognise its responsibility for caring and being active in these kinds of city parishes. After all, that would be to dismiss a large proportion of the population. We may have to jettison buildings, think about church very differently and get away from models of ministry that are dependent on ordained ministers, but we cannot move away from our responsibility to fund ministry in these areas without ceasing to be a national church and without failing in our call to respond to the situation of people we live alongside. 

For ways you can gain insight, fund projects or think about urban life and ministry, go to the Church Urban Fund website here 

Inspiring Lives

A visitor told me a lot about the work of Dementia Forward (Ripon and surrounding area) today. Moving film below athttp://youtu.be/20Q6YPRdyLQ Local groups all over the country - please get involved or help if you can.

You've got the rest of your life to live

www.youtube.com

Here is a film Amplify Communications produced to help wonderful charity, Dementia Forward, showcase its fantastic work.

Mindfulness or Sacrament of the Present?

One of the new buzz words in therapeutic communities is 'mindfulness'. There are many different ways of describing mindfulness. Basically it is a way of being fully present in the moment, focused on how you feel and not on future plans, past mistakes or present distractions. The regular practice of mindfulness is said to reduce stress considerably and also to alter the structures of the brain so that there is increased energy in the area (the pre-frontal cortex) that is to do with positive emotion. There are various techniques to help you practice mindfulness most of which utilise body awareness, breathing and noticing your thoughts, feelings and body sensations. Mindfulness is said to be able to help with depression, anxiety, addictive behaviour, stress, chronic pain, chronic fatigue syndrome and insomnia. The Mental Health Foundation website has details of some of the research that has been done about it here

There are many courses that can be accessed - in our local area you can do mindfulness training on a Saturday morning and it's increasingly becoming something that those who work in the caring professions use both to help their clients and patients and to deal with their own stress and sense of pressure.

Now, to someone who has prayed twice a day (or tried to) most of their life, mindfulness sounds very like what I have always called the 'practice of presence' and regarded as an awareness of the sacrament of the present moment. In a nutshell, this is an awareness that all we have is contained in the moment and that to be aware of this and give oneself up to it is to encounter the source of holiness and even God. Jean Pierre de Caussade in his seminal work The Sacrament of the Present Moment, says this, 'The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love. The more a soul loves, the more it longs, the more it hopes, the more it finds. The will of God is manifest in each moment, an immense ocean which only the heart fathoms insofar as it overflows with faith, trust and love.' Natalie Goldberg in The Long Quiet Highway says, 'Every moment is enormous and it is all we have. Our life is a path of learning to wake up before we die.' 

Working, as I do, in a hospice, I am very aware of the spaciousness and content you find in some people who have grasped the lessons of mindfulness or present sacramentality - perhaps 'lesson' is not quite the right word. They have learned to live their lives in the here and now, with consciousness of the depth of the present and all that offers in the way of opportunity to the soul. I'm sure we've all met elderly people who radiate graciousness, patience and a sense of 'being at home in their own skin'? It's not something that is often found so it stands out when you meet it. Joseph Campbell (professor of comparative religion and inventor of the 'follow your bliss' philosophy) said, 'One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.' Now you could sit that alongside a belief that holds that this life is all there is, but I don't think he intended it that way; it is precisely as we immerse ourselves in God who 'is everywhere present and filling all things' and become aware of what God is offering us now that we learn how to rest and how to be in eternity. Time and space begin to collapse around us and an awareness of all things being one in the presence of the present God emerges. Is this what the writer of the epistle to the Ephesians is trying to articulate? 

'For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will.' (Ephesians 1:9-11)

Regulation of the Media

I was pleased to see that, despite last minute opposition by newspaper editors, the Privy Council granted its Royal Charter on press regulation during the week. As I understand it, the press will continue to regulate themselves but there will be new structures including a new watchdog that will comprise lawyers, financiers and members of the public but not members of the press. Editors will be free to opt out of signing up for regulation under this system but will then face much heavier penalties if things go wrong. Read about the three tier system in the BBC's report here

As I have always been a great supporter of the freedom of the press, I am very surprised to find myself approving these measures. However, having acquired personal experience of direct press attention, I now thoroughly support this move. I believe it will give a typically British balance between, on the one hand, freedom of the press to investigate and report what seems to be the truth and, on the other hand, freedom of the individual to find redress when investigative processes lead to serious misrepresentation by either a particular journalist or a number of publications that pick up on a story without running proper checks.

I recently came across a series of letters sent by John Cleese to the editor of the the Sun newspaper in 1982  see Letters of Note  It seems that things have not changed a great deal since then, although I suspect that improper practices have become more widespread and complaints less gentlemanly. John Cleese's claim was that he was reported as having said something he did not say. In a very witty set of letters he suggests, among other things, that he might print his correspondence with the editor in the Monty Python book of the film (the incident happened on set.) Kenneth Donlan, the then managing editor of the Sun, replies, 'We do not wish this correspondence to be included in the Monty Python book of the film'. Cleese responds by pointing out that, although Mr Donlan's journalist's view has been printed in the paper, John Cleese's view has not and now the editor is objecting to the publication of Cleese's view. It seems there is one rule for journalists and another for everybody else.  

Well amen to that and the very humourous way in which Cleese makes his point. In my own experience, words I had not at any time spoken and did not understand were put into my mouth whereas words that it appears had been spoken by others were reported and attributed to anonymous sources. Not only can you be misrepresented, it seems, but others can say all sorts of things without taking any responsibility for their views. Indeed they may be reported so as to give the impression they speak for whole groups or organisations they do not, in fact, represent. Sadly, I've also acquired direct experience of being on the receiving end of practices designed to intrude into personal space. It's not a comfortable feeling when journalists are able to tell you what you were doing at certain times in private space, especially when this information is used to imply something that is not true.

So all power to the elbow of the new watchdog! 

See also http://socialhorizons.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/media-processes.html

Social Media Bringing Life to the Church

A Presentation to the Federation of Finnish-British Societies 

 The British Embassy, Helsinki

25th October 2013

Social Media Enhancing Well Being.

In this presentation I want to concentrate on the use of social media to promote relationships and projects which happen in time and space that it not digital. I think that the distinction often made between the 'real world' and 'digital world' is false. Things that profoundly affect our lives happen in both spheres - digital and non-digital - and the church must respond to this and, more than simply responding, give some help and leadership in thinking about the ways the one sphere influences and shapes the other. And let us not be afraid. We have a God who became incarnate as Word so Christians above all ought not to be afraid of exploring new forms of communication. 

I confess to you at this point that I am no expert. In 2010, I knew next to nothing about the phenomenon we now call social media. I had never used Facebook or Twitter and I was one of the brigade who secretly thought they were probably a bit of a waste of time. Then came a snowfall. Now in Finland that would have been unremarkable, but in Britain the lightest of snowfalls causes a crisis; roads become unusable, trains fail to run, schools close and the whole country grinds to a halt! I used what was, for us, a heavy snowfall in November 2010 to stay indoors and start a blog. I had been encouraged to do this by David Brighton, our Diocesan Webmaster, and I shall be eternally grateful to him for setting me off on a new new adventure. My message is that anybody can learn to use social media; the opportunity to use it for good rather than for harm is there for the taking.

My use of social media in my ministry has not been about generating large numbers of followers or about getting huge numbers to read what I'm writing. I have not even actively promoted interaction online as I have known that I've had little time to read and moderate comments, though I am always grateful to receive them. The focus of my use of social media has always been about building relatively small communities of interest that make a difference. I'll repeat that - 'relatively small communities of interest that make a difference.' These have been communities with a common purpose that can get things done and/or offer support. A large part of my use of social media has been about increasing trust between people. Today I'm going to give you 6 examples of how that can happen, some examples are my own work and some the work of others or the work of several people as so often happens on the internet when one person picks up another's idea, adds to it and runs with something new.

First, however, a warning from history!

Anne and some of her court were, of course, eventually tried and executed for treason and alleged adultery. Anne was beheaded after short months of marriage to Henry. What started as harmless fun and something to bring the court together ended in tragedy. Perhaps there is a lesson here for us all. Never say anything on social media that you would not own up to before God or defend in a court of law. Remember that what you write will be read in many cultures and at times in the future when you no longer agree with what you once wrote or you are even no longer alive. It can go viral in a matter of about three seconds. Never write anything when you are angry or after you have had more than one glass of wine! All bloggers know that slightly queasy feeling of watching the page views on your blog suddenly leap up by 100's of views per minute, 'O heavens, what have I said?' I'm grateful to Tom Standage for this insight from Anne Boleyn's life. Tom is currently writing a book about the history of social media Writing on the Wall, to be published shortly and he has an interesting facebook page dedicated to the use of various forms of social media here

These are the forms I am familiar with. I use Twitter for political comment and regional networking, supporting local causes, events and interest groups, and promoting tourism  in the area. I also use it to direct people to my blog. Facebook I use to stay in touch with friends and particularly with former students. I think that I am probably part of the first generation of university lecturers that has been able to follow the career paths and ministries of many of my students and this is a constant source of pleasure as well as helping me to do my job and to find resources! I also use Facebook to point people to my blog but I try not to overdo this as not everybody goes on Facebook to read blogposts! I use Linkedin exclusively for professional development and to join communities that will help me to increase my knowledge in my own field of expertise. Google+ I find scary - it appears to me to make links you didn't authorise or anticipate!

  

Archdeacon in the Dales is the blog I started in 2010 when I was Archdeacon of Richmond, a geographically large archdeaconry with a very rural character. The area had around 187 churches and it was difficult to visit them more than once or twice every couple of years, if that often. Using the blog, I set out to do the following -

To date, the blog has had over 78,000 page views. I purposely did not use Twitter or Facebook to promote it. The readers to whom it was directed were largely church wardens and other church officers, many of whom were not used to social media and, in some cases, were highly suspicious of them. I decided that if I told them that the blog was like an electronic newspaper and that it was a source of useful information, this would be the best way to create local readership. This seemed to work, along with a link on the Diocesan website which a lot of people used.  

Archdeacon in the Dales allowed me to say things about subjects I was interested in and that, in turn, allowed people to get to know me. This meant that when I arrived in a parish for a meeting, people often felt they knew something about me - we might even have had a conversation by e mail or through comments on the blog or one of the diocesan chat rooms. You can read the blog here

One of the interest groups that grew out of Archdeacon in the Dales was provoked by a review I wrote of this book

Lisa Genova writes movingly about a university lecturer who realises that she has dementia. It is the story of her progression into the disease and, uniquely, it is  written from the view point of the person who has dementia. A blogpost about the book provoked a number e mail responses in which people told me their own stories of caring for someone in the family or the local community with dementia. With people's permission, I put some of these readers in touch and they are still supporting one another and also, many of them, now involved in local groups working for and with people who suffer from dementia.

   

Another inspirational story is that of Fun-key Church in the market town of Richmond itself. St Mary's Richmond is a fairly traditional parish church with a fantastic choral tradition - the choristers have won many Royal School of Church Music awards over recent years. Apart form the choir and a small Sunday School, the regular Sunday services largely attracted people aged over 50. Inspired by the vision and leadership of one exceptional mum, they have created an entirely new worshipping congregation in which parent-to-parent contacts and social media have played a great part. Their leader, Gillian Lunn, has used a blog, wordpress, facebook and twitter extensively to build up the fellowship and sense of community which surrounds the worship. In particular, the blog is used to create a sense of anticipation  - you'll see 'advertisements'  -  'two weeks to go to the Archbishops of York's visit', 'one day to go to our first baptisms', 'pet service today'. The blog describes exactly what to expect when you attend a service - if you were a parent new to the experience of coming to church and you read the relevant short blog post for a particular service you would know exactly what would happen and you would be able to explain it to your child. 

Fun-key is a project about growing the younger element in a parish.  It has close links with the schools and it has shown a great capacity to adapt and spread - there is now a Fun-key service in one of the nearby village churches. It is becoming well known around the area and also nationally as one example of what can be achieved through the use of social media and real-space-and-time worship. You can find out more here and here

Saxon Roots is another project which is spawning new forms of worship. This one centres on the crypt at Ripon Cathedral which was built in 672AD. There are numerous Saxon sites around North and West Yorkshire. I can take you to churches where there is Saxon masonry, a Saxon preaching cross, a Saxon pulpit or font and even the remains of what is through to be a Saxon bell. The deep roots of Christianity in the region are from the 6th and 7th centuries and these influences continue to  play a part in shaping Christianity in Yorkshire today, through the location of sacred sites and the stories that are associated with them and still told. 

The project is the idea of Nick Morgan of the Ripon Cathedral community. Nick has tapped into some research that is being done by a diocesan group to try to dig out the history of the saxon sites around the area. The aim is to understand and use elements of the Saxon Christian past to shape acts of contemporary worship. For example, in Saxon times there was often no church that could be used for worship in a village. People would gather round a preaching cross in the middle of the village where they would listen to a travelling preacher, participate in the sacraments and hear and discuss news about the life of the community. The first Saxon Roots service took place in Ripon cathedral at the end of October and the vision is to extend the project by holding acts of worship in other communities around the area. Here's Nick's very creative vision for doing that:

For information abut this project go to Saxon Roots Wordpress or the facebook page

The blog you are reading this lecture on, Social Horizons, is something that I started in May 2013. It's very important to have clear, idenifiable themes if you are going to build up readership on a blog. Social Horizons was inspired by the thinking of a colleague, The Revd Dr Peter Sedgwick, Principal of St Michael's Theological College in Cardiff. In discussing pluralism and the concept of society, he says this,

[William] Temple assumed that Christianity had a central role in society, but had to demonstrate its concern for social change. Contemporary ethicists may take the concept of reform as inherent to Christianity, but they have to ensure that the Christian faith has any credibility at all in modern British society and politics. In a pragmatic, pluralist, technologically driven world, that is a very considerable challenge.

In the blog, I set out to explore the connections - I wanted to call it 'Only Connect', but that blog title had already been taken - between social justice, community development and theology. My husband, who works in an industry that spends most of its time thinking about the future, once asked me why the church spends so much time thinking and talking about the past. Social Horizons is a blog that sets out to call into play the imagination to help us think about the the future. If we explore concepts of community and justice and we relate them to aspects of the Christian tradition such as the imperative to live as brothers and sisters and the expectation that Christ will return and is therefore as concerned with the future as the past, we can expect to discover insight and energy for new shapes of social being. The old saying, 'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children,' is attributed variously to Indian and Amish sources and to Ralph Waldo Emerson. It rings true in most cultures and is at the heart of what I am about. The way we think about society today and the decisions we make are our gifts or burdens to pass on and we should be as motivated by what we make possible as by what we have achieved.

To this end, Social Horizons aims to promote the discussion of locally and nationally important issues. It attracts about 400 page views for each post and is advertised through twitter. For example, North Yorkshire has an ageing population and a higher than average incidence of dementia. There is also currently a national debate about end of life care both at a legal level (questions about whether the law should be changed to allow assisted euthanasia in some cases) and a clinical level (questions about something called the Liverpool Care Pathway which has been used by hospitals in the care of the dying but has recently come in for criticism.)  Blogposts connecting these topics have brought together professionals who are concerned with the issues in their daily work and the cross discipline discussions are proving useful to all concerned. This is an example of social media enabling people who would not normally come together to contribute joined-up thinking to an area of public life.

The last of my 6 projects was entirely the work of a colleague at the hospice where I work, The Revd Dr Jonathan Singh,  has recently written a thesis about a Lenten discipleship blog which was used to promote discipleship through the careful use of the narratives that were told by those who participated. About 15 people took part in a password-protected blog which was moderated by a small group of faith leaders. The aim of the experience was to help the participants move forward in their spiritual life and, of course, to allow them to help each other through the use of their own stories. The spiritual formation had clear goals, was aimed at the whole person and used a range of resources and tools to assist with personal transformation. It included opportunities to engage in the practice of the present moment, disciplines of simplicity, silence, fasting and solitude, study of the faith and memorization of key texts and participation in community life. The narrative of the whole project is itself fascinating and the thesis offers reflection on the effectiveness of the use of social media in this way as a tool for promoting mature and committed Christian discipleship. The project demonstrates, I think, an effective way for parishes to work among people of faith whose lives do not realistically or naturally bring them together with other Christians on a regular basis or in ways which allow them deep discussion or meaningful learning. 

There are, of course, limitations to the ways in which social media can be used. In particular, SM challenges our preconceived and powerfully held concepts of community and sacrament - two things that lie at the heart of Christian self-understanding. It is not possible to explore these within the scope of this presentation but it would be wrong not to flag them up as areas that need considerable attention and thought. It's often said that  community ties are weakened by the use of social media. I would argue that that is a an over simplification of a very complex area. Better to ask the question, 'In what ways does the use of social media change the ways we experience community?' I would suggest that the use of social media can be very helpful in helping to create relationship. For example I have used it in parishes where people would not come to the vicarage to talk about having their baby baptised without first having a detailed discussion about the nature and meaning of baptism by email - I doubt that without the initial relative anonymity of the internet there would have been any face to face contact or joining of the church community. On the question of sacrament, I think that the absolute requirement to meet will always lie at the heart of the Christian faith and this will always be a corrective to the impetus to use the internet as a replacement for time-and-space community. There is now a whole new discipline within theology (Haptic Theology) which is exploring questions about touch - where community forms without the immediacy of touch and smell, what does that mean for our humanness and for the ways in which God communicates with humanity through sacrament?

If you would like to explore these kinds of questions further, you might be interested in two projects that are seeking to help Christians make sense of the digital world and its influence on the ways that we think about life, faith and theology

    

Codec can be found here CODEC and the Big Bible project here Big Bible

In Conclusion

The most important thing to take away from today is that you do not need to be a great expert in the use of the internet to develop ways of interacting with it and through it that help us understand, practise and spread our faith. The message is 'try something small, monitor it carefully and see where it leads you!' Jesus came as Word into our world. There is, at the heart of God and at the heart of the incarnation, something which is essentially about communication. Christians are people of word and text and therefore intrinsically of communication. The internet, like any form of communication is, I believe, there to be used for good or for evil. It's essential that Christians take responsibility to learn to enter into communication through it in ways that speak powerfully of the Gospel and of the nature of God in Christ Jesus. The digital world is now as key to the shaping of life as the industrial revolution was or the dawn of printing or the realisation that the world was not flat. We should not fear it but embrace it critically. 

Finally, blogging, twittering, facebooking and all the other forms of media we have mentioned can sometimes appear to be about numbers - the blog that has millions of readers may be seen as more influential than the magazine that has a few thousand.  Time spent on the internet may be justified in terms of the number of people 'reached'. You may even worry about the amount of time your priest appears to spend in front of the computer screen or on the iPad!  However, I always maintain that we only count people because every person counts. My intention in using the internet has never been to generate huge numbers of readers but to make a lasting difference to a few. All the blogging and twittering I have ever done is made worthwhile by the one person who occasionally sits in my study and tells me how a real connection has been made, through the use of social media, that is truly life-giving.