Get debaptised

It’s not quite April 1st yet, but the recently initiated craze for getting yourself debaptised seems to be gaining ground in the UK.  The National Secular Society has all the details here, and claims that 100,000 people have already done it.  Well, they’ve downloaded the form to see what it’s about, which isn’t quite the same thing necessarily.  A fair guess that some of them will be like us, who took a look out of curiosity just to see what all the fuss is about.

It’s being presented as a rational approach to life, by renouncing whatever it was that your baptism as an infant did for you in the first place.  Which on the face of it seems a very strange thing to do, especially if you don’t believe it could possibly have done anything at all because you don’t accept its underlying philosophy.   But then that’s not the first example of the irrationality of rationality that you’ve come across, is it?  Nor is it likely to be the last.  And of course being conflicted in this way is by no means unique to self-proclaimed secularists.  A lot of religious believers are just as confused.

Thomas the Tank Engine gets spiritual

It is well known that the author of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories was a Christian minister who first told them to his own kids.  He was inspired by the little trains of Wales, but even he can hardly have expected this development.  How cool is this as a creative, missional, reflective, Easter pilgrimage?

Fuzzy faith of the Brits

Two of this week’s news items caught our eyes, both of them more or less agreeing that the UK is one of the least religious countries in Europe, yet offering quite different explanations for that, not to mention different prognoses of what might happen next.  This report here summarizes the forthcoming publication of the latest edition of the European Social Survey in which its main author, David Voas (a Manchester University professor) sees the ‘fuzzy faith’ of the British as the latest stage in the demise of religion in general, and Christianity in particular.  What is described as ‘fuzzy’ sounds remarkably like the sort of spiritual aspirations and longings on which we commented yesterday in relation to Jade Goody – a sort of ‘I definitely believe in something, not quite sure what it is, but it seems to have something to do with Jesus and God’.  Whatever else might be said, no-one could reasonably suggest that the death and dying of Jade has no spiritual dimensions and Linda Woodhead (professor at Lancaster) makes exactly that point in the press article, that not being religious doesn’t mean you’re not spiritual.  No prizes for guessing which opinion the church mice favour.

The second article to come our way is this one, reporting a lecture given at Leicester Cathedral by Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, in which he ackowledged the changing religious landscape of the country and the fuzziness of much faith – but claimed that many people are ‘haunted’ by religious memories.  Though the article doesn’t say that he attributed these bad memories to Christendom, he may well have done in the lecture.  Another interesting angle on the challenges facing people of faith – and one that potentially we can do something to address.  We wonder if being ‘haunted’ by religion is a euphemism for having been damaged by it.  If so, there are plenty of people who will put their hands up to that.  Maybe as well as the now established ‘Back to Church’ Sunday, somebody should work out what a ‘healing from the scars of religion’ event might look like.  Alan Jamieson, Baptist minister in New Zealand, addressed that in his homeland with the establishment of Spirited Exchanges, which has now been established in the UK as well.  One of the church mice is a patron for that; maybe we should be putting more energy into it.

Jade Goody RIP

One of today’s headlines declares that ‘Prime Minister Gordon Brown leads tributes’.  You might be forgiven for supposing that a dour Calvinist like Brown would only provoke that sort of description on occasions of great national significance, but today’s statement relates to the death of Jade Goody from cancer at the age of 27. For UK readers of this blog she will have become a household name in recent months, though readers elsewhere in the world might need a word of explanation. 

Like Truman Burbank in The Truman Show, the Jade Goody we all know was a media creation, beginning with her appearance (or incarceration, some might say) in the reality TV show Big Brother, in which a group of people chosen for their incompatibility live with one another and under 24/7 surveillance by the cameras for eight weeks.  Right from the start, when she entered the Big Brother house in May 2002, Goody was the focus for media attention, with the tabloid newspapers calling her more insulting things than you care to know about.  Of course, her behaviour was calculated to attract attention from the start, with drunken romps in bed with other housemates, and outspoken opinions (mostly negative) about things she clearly knew nothing about.  A poll taken at the time showed her to be more hated than Saddam Hussein, and when she emerged from the BB house there were genuine concerns for her safety as a mob chanted outside ‘Burn the Pig’ (an epithet applied to her by the press).

Interestingly, she described herself as ‘an escape goat’ – and that is no doubt what she became.  The fact that she didn’t actually know the right term (scapegoat) highlighted her deprived background, and helped to explain why she was so reviled.  For she held a mirror up to a society that had clearly failed people like her.  Her father was a heroin addict who spent much of his life in jail, and was thrown out of the family home when she was only 18 months old for hiding guns in her cot, and subsequently died of an overdose.  His mother was a one-time brothel madam who also had a drug addiction, while Jade’s mother was a small-time thief and a ‘clipper’ (someone who pretends to be a prostitute but then runs off with the money).  At age four, Jade rolled her first joint for her mother and took her own first puff aged five – something that was captured for the family photo album.  When her mother was disabled in a motorbike crash, Jade ended up as her main carer, even though still a small child.  She was expelled from one school after another, as a consequence of violent behaviour against the teachers, by her mother as well as herself.  Not surprisingly, her educational accomplishments were limited.  None of this is hearsay: it’s all on public record in her best-selling autobiography.  It’s no wonder that in describing her experiences in the BB house she said: ‘It was like no one could get me or hurt me in there … I was safe.’

The press eventually realized the tragedy of her situation, and by the time she appeared in the BB house for a second time in 2007 she had become a celebrity, with the lifestyle and bank balance to match.  She famously fell out with Indian movie star Shilpa Shetty, and was accused of racism, followed by a very public reconciliation that led to her appearing in the Indian version of BB, during which she learned that she had cervical cancer.  From that moment on her every move was followed by the TV cameras.  Was she controlling the media and enjoying it all, or was she the victim of manipulation?  Opinions vary, and that conversation will go on for some time.  But what does all this say about the spiritual state of the culture?

There are two ways of reflecting on that question.  Jade was undoubtedly right to describe herself as a scapegoat and in that guise she reflected the conflicted feelings of our culture.  On the one hand, we are pleased with ourselves, seeing our way of life as liberated and fulfilling – while having more self-doubt than any other generation in living memory.  We both love and hate who we have become, and because we are so conflicted about where we’ve ended up, Jade Goody became a living icon of our times, loved and hated in roughly equal measure.  But we also knew that here was a person sinned against by the culture into which she was born, and in that sense she was truly a representative of a growing chunk of the population, especially those in her own age group.  The fact that she died so unexpectedly and publicly merely emphasized the mess we’ve got ourselves into, and has created alarm in the minds of many other young women, who are now flooding to the hospitals wanting to be tested in case they too show signs of cancer.  All the pundits seem agreed that in that sense her untimely death has provided a wake-up call to our lifestyle, and maybe therefore from a theological angle her sad demise could be described as redemptive, in much the same way as Princess Diana’s sudden death opened up a moment of reflection on who we all are, and who we might become.  Therecan be no doubt that in the months following her diagnosis, Jade herself underwent a transformation from loud-mouthed celebrity to become an inspirational example of how to face suffering and death, reminding us all that it is never too late to change our ways. 

As the end approached, Jade started to put things in order.  First priority was the multi-million pound media deals that would help secure the future of her two children.  But after that came a series of decisions that can only be described as spiritual house-keeping: she got married, and had herself and her sons baptised (or ‘christened’, to use her word).  The eclectic nature of both these events provide an interesting comment on where we now look for spiritual nurture.  Her wedding was conducted by Jonathan Blake, archbishop of the Open Episcopal Church, who says on his website that he is‘happy to take any Christian service from any type of prayer book wearing any form of vestments with any form of ritual’.  But the baptisms were conducted by Royal Marsden Hospital’s senior chaplain, Revd Chris Lee (a Baptist), along with a local Anglican priest.  Her stated reason for wanting to be baptised along with her children was: ‘I want them to try to get to know Jesus, because if they get to know Jesus hopefully we will be able to keep in touch in future’.  And subsequently she is reported as having told them that she was not expecting to be enclosed in heaven, but would reappear as a star in the sky.  No doubt some Christians will find all this distasteful, but from a missional perspective it offers some insights into the spiritual search of the nation at this time.  For the striking thing about all this is that it reflects a broadly conventional Christian worldview.  The fact that she had not bought into reincarnation in any shape or form, and the way that Jesus features as the central connecting point, will certainly be informing the spiritual aspirations of many of her admirers as they reflect on how they might now deal with life’s fragilities.  Here is a striking example of Grace Davie’s contention that we are a nation who believe without belonging, though the believing is clearly also mixed up with a good dose of implicit or folk religion – ‘I believe in something, not quite sure what, so I’ll cover all my bases’.  The publicist Max Clifford says that Jade Goody will be remembered for all time.  We’ll have to wait and see.  But the spiritual aspirations of others like her will undoubtedly be around for a while yet.  The big question for Christians is how to journey with such individuals in order to move forward in our own understanding of where God is at work in the culture, as well as becoming channels of grace into the lives of others.  The funeral has yet to take place.  Will that bring more insights into the spiritual search of the culture?

Spring is (almost) sprung

The heading just about sums it up: today has been a mixture of warm sunshine, bringing the flowers out, and now as we look out of the window we are surrounded by thick mist.  Not quite all four seasons in one day, but then this is Scotland …noted as a land of mists and all that image evokes of romance, intrigue, destiny, and history.

The smell of new life has been very much on our minds and in our conversations this week, as one of us had been invited to blog about the theme of smell in relation to the BBC Lent series, Sense Making Faith.  Being in London with interesting people earlier in the week helped to formulate what we thought were good questions, and you can see the result here.  Last night we met up with a group of folks here in rural Aberdeenshire, who had invited us to explore some similar questions with them.  There was much reflection about what new life in their church might look and smell like, and how we might help to nurture signs of new life.  The arrival of spring is stimulating all sorts of unexpected and potentially exciting challenges and opportunities.

Interesting people

This week we’re in London, a week of meetings with some interesting people.  Cyd Latty was the first, founder of the UK cafe church network, who has done an amazing job in persuading a major chain (Costa) to partner in a formal way with churches.  His story was inspirational, as he told us how he got involved – just by going to his local Costa and asking if he could hold a Christian gathering there.  It was so successful, he was invited in by regional managers, and then by the entire Costa board – and now he’s getting requests not from churches but from coffee shop managers who are desperate to get in on the act and host cafe churches in their shops.  Cynics will no doubt say that they just want to make money in the face of the credit crisis.  Why shouldn’t they?  They are in business, after all.  But there’s also something else going on surely.  Savvy readers of this blog won’t need to be reminded that when Jesus sent the disciples out he told them to wait to be invited into other people’s spaces.  Something different happens when Christians know how not to be aggressive by barging into other places.  Cyd’s headache now is that coffee shop managers are saying ‘can you start next week?’ but churches can take a lot longer than that to make a decision …

The other person we spent a lot of time with is our friend Yvonne Richmond, who’s just got a new job as canon for development in Birmingham Cathedral.  The three of us chewed the fat for a long time about the church’s attitude to women and other similar topics. No prizes for guessing what the conclusion of that particular conversation was.

In between times, John spoke at an event at Lambeth Palace on new spirituality, and how Christians might relate to it.  There was a good crowd of really interested (and interesting) people.  We wonder how long it will be before something like this surfaces in London.  Maybe the credit crunch isn’t bad enough just yet …

Lent reflections

For the church mice, this is another crazy week, with John in Oxford to help launch a book, then on to London; and Olive in Fife and then the Scottish Borders.  So not a lot of mouse conversation time, except in text messages and emails.  Not a bad time then to continue our Lent reflections, focused around the Sense making Faith theme being promoted by the BBC, and which came to birth through the work of  the Mission Theology Advisory Group of which John is co-chair (along with Brian Castle, bishop of Tonbridge).  As well as the radio programmes and associated materials on the Sense Making Faith website, there’s also a blog which you can find here.  Regular readers of this blog might like to contribute some thoughts to it.  This week’s theme is imagination, which we generally find pretty easy – translating our big imaginations into some sort of reality can be a bit more tricky though!

And here’s something to think about.  A report published today shows that in the US 15% now say they have ‘no religion’, which is pretty much the same percentage as in the UK.  Of course, other statistics are still different, not least the growing numbers of people who say they are ‘evangelical’ – though the authors of the report conclude that this is a word that is getting more and more ambiguous, as people who claim that allegiance seem to make their own definitions of what it means.  For those who question whether the US churches are facing the same challenges as those in Europe, though, it will make some interesting reading.  The whole report is here.

Do we ever stay still?

Well, not this week.  We’re writing this in a hotel room alongside the M6, en route from Bristol to back home (something like 11 hours driving time, which means if you stop at all it probably takes 13 hours or more).  Nothing much to those of you who live in the US or Australia, of course (we remember a seminar in Adelaide where people had driven 9 hours to be there by 10 in the morning!).  But at the end of a very busy week, we needed a bit of space.

One of the things we did was meeting up with the core leaders of Earth Abbey – something that hasn’t featured on this blog yet, but which has a lot of potential to become a really significant online spiritual community (and with the hope that it will encourage people to form their own local networks).  We already knew Chris Sunderland, who had the idea in the first place, but now we’ve met all his colleagues we are even more excited than we were before.  So check it out here – and sign up if it appeals to you.

S1m0ne

After a busy day, we crashed last night by watching S1m0ne, a film made by Andrew Niccol in 2002.  At one level it’s a spoof on all the goings-on in Hollywood studios, as a director falls out with his major star and ends up creating a digital star instead, whose screen presence then woos the viewing public as well as the critics, who all desperately want to see her.  Of course they can’t, as she doesn’t exist …  Watch the movie yourself to see what happens next.  It’s an interesting tale of deception, truth, relationships, etc etc.  Next time we watch it we’ll need to make sure it’s with a group of other people: it would generate an interesting conversation.