Heresy

So far, so good. Sticking with about 70% of my Lent plans, which is much better than most years.

One unexpected and helpful addition to my Lenten prayer schedule has been Susan Stabile’s series of daily meditations, with a weekly podcast of her remarks to students who are doing this “Lenten retreat in daily life” as well. Worth checking out if you need to jump-start your final week of Lenten prayers.

The best thing I’ve read about Lent this year is a brief essay by Jacob Berendes in his monthly newspaper Mothers News. It’s not at all religious, but it’s funny and a great piece of writing. In exchange for being able to quote me saying “The best thing I’ve read about Lent this year,” Jacob graciously agreed to let me reprint it, below.
Read the rest of this entry »

Finally got my acts together to see Avatar (3D) yesterday evening, two months after release. My Green friends Drs Richard Lawson, Derek Wall, and Rupert Read (and those over at Two Doctors blog in Scotland) all liked it, along with many of us studying the Accra Confession at the Saint Columba’s Manse Discussion Group.

L’Osservatore Romano did not like Avatar, some suspected due to alleged pantheism. But the philosophy therein was not really pantheism, but can be more accurately described as panentheism (as my friend Dr George Zachariah of the Mar Thoma Church taught): finding God in everything; finding the image of the divine in everyone. I would have to struggle if I had to deny this as Christian.

[...] Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries [...]

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The scene was indicative, where the scientist Dr Grace Augustine presented her results about the synaptic nature of the biosphere on the planet Pandora, and the businessman Parker Selfridge dismissed her thus: ‘what have you been smoking!’ Science is only accepted when it conveniently serves the imperial–rationalist exploitation: at all other times it is dismissed. As Dr Lawson pointed out (and echoed by the Reverend Dick Wolff), this has been going on in the climate-change debate: ‘If you are a committed free market fundamentalist, you will never accept the climate change facts, as they are incompatible with your ideology.’

I will be going to the Conference of the Green Party of England and Wales this Saturday; expecting Green hugs.

Here’s a nice little article about Oakland A’s prospect Grant Desme leaving baseball to join a seminary.

I mentioned in these pages that the “green” Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All Holiness Bartholomew I, addressed the European Parliament earlier this year. This was as part of a series during the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. The other speakers were His Eminence Sheikh Ahmad Badr El Din El Hassoun, Grand Mufti of Syria; Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth; and most recently His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Thanks to the intervention by the Liberals and the Greens, Dr Asma Jahangir, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, were also invited to speak. (Sophia in ’t Veld: “I would like to know why the Conference of Presidents has chosen to interpret intercultural dialogue exclusively as an interreligious monologue and whether it feels a part-session is an appropriate platform for religious messages.” and Sarah Ludford: “it seems that you [the President(s)] have made the Grand Mufti comparable to the Pope and the UK Chief Rabbi as a European representative of his particular religion.”)

Here are some highlights from each the speakers, with links to their texts for the gentle readers’ perusal over Christmastime: Read the rest of this entry »

The United Reformed Church has a three-year programme called Vision4Life: for this coming year, the first year, we will be looking at the Bible in the Church’s life. It made me try to articulate how I think of the Bible.

It was Mike Benedetti who got me interested in the Apocrypha. I remember that summer nearly ten years ago, sitting in a hotel room in Iqaluit, Nunavut, tired from hiking, but discussing Bel and the Dragon (and, incidentally, also Thomas Aquinas) with some enthusiasm. Read the rest of this entry »

Gentle readers will recall that about half a year ago, Barack Obama got into some trouble because of his pastor from a congregation of the United Church of Christ. (Around the same time I also visited a United Church of Christ congregation which was “more liberal than I”.)

Since then, I have attended the United Reformed Church’s General Assembly in which the Reverend Roberta Rominger was inducted as General Secretary of the Britain-wide denomination. I have also attended two induction services (on neighbouring Saturdays): of the Reverend Tanya Stormo Rasmussen to the chaplaincy of Mansfield College, Oxford, a college historically related to the United Reformed Church; and of the Reverend Carla Grosch-Miller to my own church Saint Columba’s. A pattern emerged: all three of them are from the United Church of Christ!

So, gentle readers west of the Atlantic: if in a month’s time you feel an eerie urge to move hitherward, you know where you are sure to find a welcome. But for now, work hard to make yourself comfortable at home for the next few years!

Yesterday, the two most prominent presbyterians in these Isles (neither of them English) spoke out:

Ian Paisley: ‘We must all, in our own way, do what we can to help one another to get some way through this very dark hour for our nation. I know that there are many beliefs in this House; my belief in God is well known and my religious convictions are known. I trust that our whole nation will turn in repentance and cry to God for an intervention so that the calamity will not come on our children and on the babes in their cots.’

Gordon Brown: ‘And that is why we back the work ethic; we support effort and enterprise and responsible risk-taking. These are the morals markets need.’

It is well known that ‘presbyterians’ is an anagram for ‘Britney Spears’. By the way, sorry for the long hiatus from me. Let me know if you want to hear about my recent adventures – things like encountering a Georgian (as in Tbilisi, not as in Atlanta) baptist archbishop, and entryism into Britain from Barack Obama’s church – please let me know.

from Kevin Ksen Polka
(copyright 2008 Nat Needle)

Oh, lots of folks love soccer, they play it every day
But Kevin loves his soccer so, it carries him away
He butts his head, he kicks his legs, and if by chance he falls
The women rush the field so they can play with Kevin’s balls

CHORUS: Oh…
Kevin Ksen, he’s the sexiest of men
Kevin Ksen, he’s the sexiest of men
Kevin Ksen, he’s the sexiest of men
And if you don’t believe him, he will tell you once again
And if you don’t believe him, he will tell you once again

(Happy birthday, Kevin!)

For the first fortnight of February, I visited my friend Dann Dempsey in the great City of Monrovia, California; and the following places of worship:

• First Congregational Church, Long Beach
• Saint Basil’s Catholic Church, Los Angeles
• Central Christian Church of the East Valley
• Historic First Presbyterian Church of Phoenix
• the chapel at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport
• La Placita Church at the Mission of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels
• Pasadena Presbyterian Church
• the chapel at London Heathrow airport

I took Communion and participated in the imposition of ashes at First Congregational; Communion and witnessed a baptism at CCCEV; participated in an elder/deacon ordination at Historic First; caught the last of the Mass at La Placita. Read the rest of this entry »

Recent books from Verso:

Slavoj Žižek (2000) The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Is Worth Fighting For? ISBN 978-1-85984-770-1.

Terry Eagleton (2007) Jesus Christ: The Gospels. ISBN 978-1-84467-176-2. This is the New Revised Standard Version of the Gospels introduced by Eagleton and edited by radical cleric Giles Fraser. It is pretty cool that Verso is following the Gideons. On this note, I might mention that recently, I bought the Revised English Bible and the New Revised Standard Version. My copies of both of these are with the Apocrypha (though the collection there is different), and the NRSV is the ‘Anglicized’ text; both are published by the Oxford University Press. I thought each of these represented very wide (as wide as allowed in the current climate) ecumenical English-language translation work in either side of the Atlantic.