Catching up with life after Spring Harvest

Well, I've been back from Spring Harvest for a couple of days, catching up with stuff and getting ready to go Studland for the weekend for a reunion with a load of friends from our days in Peckham. Should be a blast!

Spring Harvest was very busy and completely manic on the final day. Our team of 8 saw 96 people over the four days plus all those we talked and prayed with after the evening sessions.

We really enjoyed the Encounter Cafe led by Pete and Becca Brierley (who happen to be from Peckham too). It was a great mix of fun and films, interviews and discussion - just what we needed at the end of a busy day!

The other highlight was seeing Joe Fisher. He's a stand-up comedian and I've avoided him in years gone by but this year we caught his show and it's a glorious mixture of send-up and one-liners, focused on the ridiculous things that the church does and spoofs of TV shows - what's not to like? If he visits your town, check him out.

I've also nearly finished Brian Walsh's wonderful book on Bruce Cockburn - I shall be blogging about that soon. But first I have a book review to write on a book I am struggling to like (I have another one to do as well about a book I like a whole lot more but that one must take second place).

A book to meditate over

I have just started reading Marilynne Robinson's When I was a Child I read Books (the title alone is worth the purchase price). Robinson is the author of Gilead and Home, novels of rich beauty and seering insight. She is a Congregationalist and has been a teacher and writer in residence at various universities across the States. She has a PhD in English literature and seems congenitally incapable of writing a dull sentence.

When I was a Child I read books is a series of essay on the place of literature and the role of faith in our lives. She writes as one unashamedly shaped by what she reads and how she thinks (and she is a rigorous thinker). She speaks of her current political context in the States (after Walt Whitman) as 'characterised by wolfishness and filled with blather.' She is one, I suspect, who feels that we need to read more and express opinions less.

And she worries for the people of faith. The passive pious, she suggests, just shrug and declare the whole enterprise bankrupt; while the active pious 'see some hope in a hastily arranged liquidation of cultural assets'. What a wonderful phrase that is and how it fingers the shallow activism of so much that passes for faith and theology. She laments the fact that people of faith have in recent years retreated from 'the cultivation and celebration of learning and of beauty, by dumbing down, as if people were less than God made them and in need of nothing so much as condescension.' See what I mean about her language!

I was having a Facebook exchange earlier this morning about Bishop Graham Cray. A friend is doing sessions at Spring Harvest with him this week. I was reflecting that back in the 70s Graham Cray - then a curate, I think, in York - opened up the world of popular music as a field of serious study for Christians. It was, literally, music to my ears; it gave permission for a life-long exploration of and grappling with the deep stuff of popular culture. It also told me - at an impressionable age - that ideas matter, that how we think about the world shapes the way we live in it.

Robinson stands in the same cultural stream as Cray, Christians who recognise that all truth belongs to God and reveals something about him wherever that truth is to be found.

Even on the basis of the fifteen pages I've read so far, I recommend you go and get this book and meditate over it of the rewards it yields will be rich indeed.

Reading to give ideas a fresh hearing

Today I have finally acquired a copy of Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God. I have resisted until now because of the sheer size and the vast price, so when I found a pristine copy going for a comparative song at a second hand book shop this morning, I thought 'oh, go on, then...'

I am due to teach a course on Romans from the beginning of February and since Campbell's book is seeking to make an argument about Romans, I thought it would be good to have it to refer to. I have read some bits and pieces of it before (in library copies) and remain to be convinced that his central suggestion that not all of Romans 1-4 represents the thinking of Paul but rather that of a rival teacher he is seeking to correct holds any water.

It's an intimidating read - there are 300 pages of thicket clearing before he actually gets to Romans! The introduction does contain one insight that has set me thinking, however - and augurs well for the journey ahead. He argues that 'at the heart of the conventional "Lutheran" approach to these texts...are powerful commitments to individualism, to rationalism, and to consent.' He goes on to suggest that Luther's reading of Romans (and Galatians) were heavily influenced by the prevailing renaissance culture with its strong attachment to humanism and individualism.

It is of course not new to suggest that protestant and evangelical formulations of the faith are deeply indebted to modern and even enlightenment thinking. But it is new (at least, it is to me) to have a scholar arguing that the very reading of the core texts of protestant Christianity owe more to the renaissance than they do to the apostle Paul.

I am interested to see what Campbell makes of this because one of my current study interests is the whole area of the relationship between literacy and spirituality - both in the NT world (where literacy rates were very low) and in our context (where literacy rates are high but people read less and less - especially in the areas of theology and Christian spirituality).I am wondering if we need to develop a hermeneutics of the faith that is based on oral culture rather than reading, much as the one Paul operated in; wondering if evangelical renewal will come via hearing rather than reading.

And I wondering if  a 1200+ page book is going to help me!

A summer reading report

Among my holiday reading highlights this year were two excellent books: William Gibson's Zero History continues to confirm Gibson as one of the best novelists around. It's a taut, wonderfully constructed thriller with savvy observations about contemporary culture and a truly sympathetic central cast of characters.

And Richard Sennett's Respect: The formation of character in an age of inequality confirms his status as one of the leading thinkers of our day. The book is a wide-ranging, historically erudite exploration of how we build respect in an unequal society. He leaves countless loose ends but provides a mountain of stimulating ideas and insights. I await delivery of his slightly older book on work.

Tomorrow I start teaching again at Spurgeon's - two slots this semester as I'm covering for a sabbaticalling colleague. So, it's Introduction to Paul at 8:30am tomorrow (what a great way to start the week!) and New Testament Theology at 8:30am on Tuesday. I've been frantically reminding myself over the past 48 hours what these two courses are about - especially NTT which I have not taught before. Looking forward to being stimulated by a set of lively students.

I have also written a review of the Blackwell Companion to Paul for Regents' Reviews. This is an excellent and wide-ranging resource covering all bases in the area of Pauline studies. But it's so eye-poppingly expensive (£110 for a 600 page book) that I wonder who will benefit from its insights!

Hope, humility and holding on to Jesus - grandfatherly advice from Tony Benn

I've been on the look out for something to read during Advent. I know, I should have been doing this two months ago and been already to go when the season started. But nothing seemed to strike the right chord with me until yesterday when I came across Tony Benn's Letters to My Grandchildren: Thoughts on the Future.

It's an unlikely choice, I know; yet it's a book full of advent themes - hope, justice, peace, a new world order where people are free and there's equality. I was also drawn to it because I wondered what kind of letters would I write to my grandchildren - one already here and another arriving in the New Year.

Benn gets off to a belting start: 'people have always dreamed of a world of peace and plenty but it was beyond man's capacity to secure it,' he says (p2), adding 'I have made many mistakes, and I have also become aware as I have got older how little I know. I am much less sure than I was in my youth that I am right about anything and for these reasons I am reluctant to give advice to you.' (p3).

Hope and humility - those are two great advent themes; recognising our need for a world better than the one we have, but realising that we don't have the resources in and of ourselves to make it happen.

He continues by suggesting that advances in technology raise fundamental moral issues that we have to face, adding that 'the teachings of Jesus are more relevant now because the stakes are higher, and the violent anti-Christian atheists who denounce those who follow Jesus completely fail to appreciate that science and technology offer no moral guidance as to what should be done with them.'

Hope, humility and holding on to the values we find in Jesus - now those are great advent themes worth hearing again.

I'm beginning to wish Tony Benn was my granddad.

Looking for a leader...

Our new series on 2 Corinthians - being a holy people in an unholy world - limped into life yesterday. I say limped because I'm not at all you'd say it was launched. I'm not convinced that I was on top of the material. Still, we'll see what subsequent weeks hold.

I finished Hilary Mantell's Wolf Hall last night. It's a very satisfying read, if a little long (since it only tells half of Cromwell's life as Henry VIII's key servant) but it's made me want to read more about my favourite era in English history. So I've got myself John Schofield's The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell, the most recent scholarly life of Henry's right hand man, which looks pretty good.

So, Gordon has resigned and the talks between Nick and David are taking a long time. Who knows, we could still see a progressive alliance that brings voting and political reforms. Perhaps we need a man or a woman of the stature, humanity and political savvy of Thomas Cromwell to help us navigate these uncharted waters. If only...

A bracing week at Butlins

Today we're off to Spring Harvest, to the icy chill of Skegness, for a week of listening to stories and praying with people.

Being on the pastoral team at an event like this is a wonderful privilege as people entrust us with their struggles and joys, challenges and disappointmnts and we are able to walk with them for a while, offering pointers to where grace might be found in their circumstances.

We also work with a team with whom we have loads of fun. So we're looking forward to our week.

I'm taking Patti Smith's memoire, Just Kids, with me to read in the quiet moments as well as the manuscript of my book to start compiling a list of subjects and people that might go in the index.

For the journey, as well as listening to at least one Patti Smith album, we also have the soundtrack from Slumdog Millionaire, Lonelady's lovely, edgy Nerve Up, and Paloma Faith's still splendid Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful.

We'll be testing out the dongle. So I hope to be able to post from time-to-time through the week

Lent with Stanley

I am reading Stanley Hauerwas' A Cross-Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching for lent. I started this morning (slightly late...)

Hauerwas is one of the premier theologians of our age who says here about his craft and its practitioners, 'modern theology tends to be an extended exercise in throat clearing,' adding that 'even after the theologians have cleared their throats it often turns out they have nothing to say.'

I think he's an exception to this rule. He laments that modern theology has become less and less scriptural, suggesting that theologians have tried to see themselves as philosophers. 'Theologians are not "thinkers",' he says. 'We are servants of a tradition in which the creative challenge is how to be faithful to what we have received.'

And he thinks that the best form through which this is expressed is the sermon. 'I am convinced that the recovery of the sermon as the context for theological reflection is crucial if Christians are to negotiate the world in which we find ourselves,' he says

This is a challenge to those of us who find the sermon an inefficient tool for disciple formation in our churches. But perhaps the problem is less with the model than our execution of it(!), though I do feel that preaching is only part of the issue; listening and hearing is the other part and even the best speaking needs good listeners. As C S Lewis once said in a different context, there are no bad books, only bad readers.

As Hauerwas says: 'I hope the reader will discover that the problem is not that they do not understand what I say. Rather the primary challenge is how what I say challenges the way our lives are put together.'

All this magic and I'm only on p14!

So, this is Christmas...

So far, Christmas has not been quite as frantic as previous years, though our grand daughter arrived on Wednesday afternoon and I've had lots of lovely distractions to deal with since then - and my productivity has plummeted! So, this might just be a state of mind!

In common with a lot of churches, we'll be busy this weekend. We have three carol services on Sunday plus an hour spent on the forecourt serving mulled wine, mince pies, tea and coffee to passers-by (it'll be interesting to see if the current lovely weather has any impact on the numbers)

We're also going to Starbucks on Monday evening to sing carols and other Christmas favourites at six to bring a little cheer to last-minute, late evening shoppers.

I've been enjoying more over-looked music - Florence and the Machine and Paloma Faith. Both their records are very listenable. And I've taken delivery of Alan Roxburgh's new book Introducing the Missional Church which I shall take away on my Christmas break to Devon. It looks pretty good.

A day out in London

Listening to a great episode of In Our Time on the death of Elizabeth 1 with the peerless John Guy as well as two other really interesting historians. This is Radio 4 at its best.

Last night we continued our reading John's Apocalypse, tackling chapters 12-14. It seemed to go well - one or two making really positive noises afterwards. I have really enjoyed getting stuck into this book and think I might try to write something about it when I've finished.

But today I'm off to see my MA supervisor. Yes, my on/off on/off studies are back on because Lambeth will allow me to do a review MA on the social location of the early Christians. This dovetails nicely with the book I'm writing for Lion, so I hope to kill two birds with one stone without killing myself in the process!

Anyway, heading for St John's Wood means that I'll get a chance to stop off at a gallery or two on the way, as well as drop into my favourite bookshops. I still love browsing bookshops despite the fact that I can get all I need at much better prices from Amazon (and particularly Amazon Marketplace). There's nothing like actually fondling books in the hushed environment of a bookshop. The end result, of course, is that I normally buy things - but I will be resisting that today!

Part of the reason for that is that I have plenty to read already. I'm still working through Hirsch's excellent The Forgotten Ways and this week I took delivery of Allen Brent's A Political History of Early Christianity which looks interesting. Brent is a a bit of a maverick, a patristics scholar who has written widely about the influence of the imperial cult on the shape of early Christianity.

I'm also working through some excellent papers on Roman economic history and poverty in Paul's churches. Yes, I know, I need to get out more....

Recovering the incarnation

The section of Hirch's searching book that I've been reading this week feeds directly into conversations we've begun having at church. We know the attractional model no longer works - our falling Sunday attendance and lack of people at special evangelistic events proves that. The question is 'what do we replace it with'?

Hirsch's answer is that we need to recapture the core Christian doctrines of the incarnation and the mission of God. He argues that the attractional model tends to negate these two insights because it 'demands that in order to hear the gospel, people come to us, on our turf, and in our cultural zone. In effect, they must become one of us if they want to follow Christ.'

This is, of course, the opposite of incarnation: God comes to us - the word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood (as the Message memorably puts it). It means that we, who have been sent as Jesus was sent, must go to where people are rather than expect them to come to us.

This is the method Jesus modelled in his ministry and called his first disciples to follow when he sent them out - Matthew 10:5-16. They were to accept hospitality rather than offer it. It was Paul's practice too - finding people he could establish a workshop with, accepting invitations to be based in people's homes (see Acts 14-18).

Hirsch stresses that church grows out of mission and not vice versa. And mission grows out of a proper grasp of who Jesus is (ie our Christology). So he produces a simple diagram that says Christology determines missiology which in turn determines ecclesiology. It's a good simple principle that ought to underpin everything we do as gatherings of Jesus followers.

It follows, therefore, that mission needs to take place in third places, those spaces that are not our homes or workplaces, but rather where we socialise and have fun. This would mean more gatherings in pubs, cafes, clubs, arts centres, community halls, etc.

So, we'll see how St Arbucks goes this Sunday. But we'll also be exploring how our allotment group can become a missional community with shovels and coffee. And what else...? The possibilities are limited only by our imaginations.

Summers are for reading

Finished the wonderful Buechner's Telling the Truth. Get it and read it - especially if you are involved in any kind of ministry.

I have returned to Michael Gorman's rather harder but extremely stimulating new book on Paul's theology.

I am also reading Christopher Bryan's Render to Caesar: Jesus, the Early Church and the Roman superpower which I got half-price in the Oxford University Press summer sale (which is nice!).

It's well written, considerably 'lighter' than Gorman and offers a nuanced interaction with a plethora of studies on Jesus and empire and in particular the work of William Horsley. Mid-way through chapter, I'd say it's pretty good.

I'm also trying to plan the autumn programme and finding myself unable to make anything work but I'll keep prodding away.

Laughing with God

I think when I first read Buechner, I didn't get it. Oh I thought it was good in an earnest, po-faced kind of a way. I think was too young, I came to it at a time when I knew everything and had a system that I was able to slot everything into and neatly file away for future recall.

Well, I'm older now. And I've just read the chapter on the gospel as comedy, sitting the garden in the afternoon sunshine and laughed and laughed - and cried - and thought that for the first time I've seen things about God that I've known to be true in theory but have never felt rumbling in the depths of my oh so serious and sorted soul.

What a joker God is! And how blessed I am that he is. because the biggest joke is that I can join him at his table, share his food and laugh along with him.

There's no point quoting any of the chapter. You need to get this book and consume it, feast on it, relish every morsel of it and find your soul nourished by it like nothing you've experienced for such a long time.

His retelling of parables - especially the prodigal son - is like hearing them for the first time and in a way that makes you realise that they are telling you your life story, including the moment when God accepts and embraces you, welcomes you into his kitchen and shares what he's just cooked for himself.

Just how hard is the Christian faith?

I think my anonymous dialogue partner makes a good point about Christianity being for everyone and not just intellectuals in his comment on my recent post on Michael Gorman's new book. I think the challenge for Christian teachers is simple: how do we grasp the depth and breadth, height and length of God's word to us and pass it on so everyone can respond to it.

The Christian faith is both disarmingly simple - as Karl Barth famously said: 'Jesus loves me this I know for the the Bible tells me so' - and mind-stretchingly complex and intricate.

I actually think that what Gorman is saying is fairly straight-forward - he speaks, of course, as a theologian and New Testament scholar and as with all branches of knowledge, this discipline has its own language (jargon, if you like) and ways of expressing ideas that can appear opaque to those unfamiliar with them. Again, it's the job of the teachers in the church to take what is opaque and try to make it clearer - without dumbing down.

The simple idea at the heart of Gorman's book seems to me to be that Jesus calls us to die to self and live to God; he calls us to stop running our lives according to our agenda - the what's-in-it-for-me approach to life - and start listening to what God says and living it out at home and work, in politics and in our relationships with one another.

The New Testament, says Gorman, uses a number of pictures for this of which 'becoming like God/sharing the divine nature' (theosis) is one central one.

The question that immediately arises is 'how does this happen?' There are lots of people who want to lead less self-centred lives that pay attention to the needs of others, especially those who haven't landed on their feet the way we have, but who struggle to do so because the impulse to look after number one is so strong.

Gorman's answer is that God pours himself out for us (that's what kenosis is all about) in Christ, so that we can be empowered through forgiveness and receiving new life (his life through his Spirit being poured into us) to live as Jesus lived (this is what he means by justification - being put right; this is one of Gorman's distinctive and more controversial suggestions).

One central idea he uses - based on Galatians 2 and Romans 6 - is of co-crucifixion, that by faith, we share the cross of Christ so that we might share his resurrection. I will blog on the detail of this later - once I've finished and digested the chapter dealing with these two texts.

Imitating our extraordinary God

The great thing about the NAM's conference is hearing the stories of ministers finding their feet in the wacky world of the pastorate. There was a good mix of ages this year plus more women than I remember from three years ago when I was last involved and more black ministers too.

The stories are pretty diverse, as you can imagine, with some new ministers being pitched into chronically unhealthy churches and having to try to sort things out, while others are parts of well-functioning teams and are able to put what they've learned into practice in a supportive environment. I have to say that the latter is less common than the former, sadly.

I've been reading Michael Gorman's new book that luxuriates in the title Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology. However, it's a lot more readable than that mouthful would suggest!

So far, I've read the first of the four chunky chapters that form the the kernel of the book. It's on what Gorman describes as Paul's master story, Philippians 2:6-11. And it's wonderful. He argues that this story tells us as much about God as it does about Christ, suggesting that God has always been kenotic and cruciform and that Jesus is just the most perfect and accessible image of that.

He argues that the narrative arc of Philippians 2:6-11 follows the pattern 'although 'x', not 'y' but 'z' where 'x' is Jesus as the form of God; 'y' is the human expectation of what that will mean, how it will play out; and 'z' is how it actually works. So, although Jesus is God he doesn't consider this as something to exploit for his own advantage, but empties himself (using 'empties' in the sense of emptying a liquid from a bottle to a glass).

So, here's a flavour:

'God, we must now say, is essentially kenotic, and indeed essentially cruciform. Kenosis, therefore, does not mean Christ's emptying himself of his divinity (or of anything else), but rather Christ's exercising his divinity, his equality with God.' (p28). In a lengthy footnote, Gorman points out that saying God is cruciform does not mean that God is constrained in his being by a particular form of Roman execution but that because the perfect revelation of the divine kenosis for Paul was in the cross and especially 'in the voluntary rejection of power/ privilege and humble self-giving' (p28 fn 67).

This leads to Paul's understanding of the shape of discipleship and leadership. 'We see, then, that Paul believes that in his decisions not to use or exploit his apostolic power and rights, he does not renounce his apostleship or divest himself of his apostleship but in fact exercises true apostleship because he thereby acts in ways that are in conformity to Christ. That is to say, as an apostle - an ambassador (2 Cor 5:20) of the self-emptying, crucified Lord - Paul acts kenotically and cruciformly.' (p24).

As ministers we are called similarly to lives of kenotic and cruciform discipleship so that, like Paul, we can be models and examples, calling others to follow our lead (Phil 3:12-17). That's a tough call but it's what it means to have the same mind that Jesus had (Phil 2:5). It is only leadership modelling such a lifestyle that will lead to the creation of missional disciples which is essential if we are to embody and communicate the good news of this kenotic and cruciform God to our neighbours and colleagues, families and friends.

Unsettled in a good way

As part of my preparation for part four of our series, Why Follow Jesus? which is exploring why the world's in such a mess if there's a loving God, I have started reading Christopher Southgate's new book - which I first came across late last year on Robin Parry's always-readable blog.

Called The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution and the Problem of Evil (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), it is an attempt to create a thorough-going evolutionary theodicy. It is extraordinarily well-written and clearly argued (speaking as one who often finds systematic theology thoroughly opaque and unreadable) and it does what all good theology should do: it's making me think afresh about some pretty basic positions I hold.

For example, in accepting Darwin's theory of evolution as the best explanation for how life arose on earth, Southgate questions whether it's really realistic or plausible for a doctrine of 'the Fall' to be used to account for all the bad things that happen. After all, dinosaurs walked the earth tearing each other to shreds long before people arrived on the scene. And parasites are among the earliest life forms and they live by devouring other forms of life. in other words, predation is part of creation. I'm not sure what I make of this yet... It has big implications for how we read Paul and understand the cross (Southgate, however, believes the cross and redemption to be at the heart of his theology - but I haven't got there yet; his title is taken straight out of Romans 8, of course).

This is challenging, unsettling theology of the very best kind. I have found myself excited and anxious in equal measure as I've read it. But having said that, I will not have time to process this by Sunday so it's unlikely to appear much in my 25 minute reflection on how we speak about God and suffering.

Exploring Christianity's forgotten history

I've started reading Philip Jenkins' new work, The Lost History of Christianity: The thousand year golden age of the church in the Middle east, Africa and Asia - and how it died (Harper One 2008).

Jenkins is the author of the seminal The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity(Oxford 2002) and a number of other well-written studies.

His new one does exactly what it says in the subtitle, namely chart the largely forgotten history of the church in the non European world from the first to the eleventh century.

In the introduction I was set thinking by this simple fact. in 1050 in Asia Minor - the cities of the seven churches of Revelation and the church planting exploits of Paul and his team - there were 373 bishoprics and virtually the entire population were Christian.

By 1450, barely 10 to 15% of the population were Christian and there were just three bishops.

This is a collapse of allegiance to the Christian faith that mirrors the experience of Europe over the past 400 years but which can't be accounted for by the rise of science and rationalism. Most would put it down to the rise of Islam but as Jenkins has already said, the church in the East lived fairly comfortably in Muslim states - contributing much to Islamic learning (see p18)

I look forward to reading Jenkins' interpretation of this extraordinary fact.

The joys of the brief getaway

I struggled through Sunday with a sore throat, kept afloat by adrenalin I think, and crashed yesterday. So I was listening to the news through the day, drifting in and out of sleep, as US stock markets crashed and Congressmen failed to grasp reality.


Last Friday we went over to Amiens in Northern France with friends for a twenty-four hour getaway, ate by the river in the shadow of the cathedral, visited the market, sat in the sunshine enjoying bread, cheese, wine and good company. It was a world away from the shenanigans on world financial markets and the pressure of ministry.

So, I'm trying to get my head in gear this morning for the challenges of the week (or maybe that should be weak as I don't feel too brilliant yet). I took delivery over the weekend of Jurgen Moltmann's The Coming of God, his exploration of Christian eschatology. I look forward to dipping into that today, along with Simon ponsonby's really rather good And the Lamb wins.

The series on hope is going fairly well. Reactions in church are positive and the questions I'm getting are helping to shape how we proceed. Having spent three sessions mapping the framework, next time we get much more personal looking at what happens when we die and how Christian hope helps us with our grief.

Our sermons are online now, so you can hear what I'm making of all this here - should you wish to (you'll need to click the downloads button on the right of the welcome screen and follow the links through).

The Plain man's pathway to heaven...

I've just finished Chris Haigh's The Plain Man's Pathways to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in Post-Reformation England (Oxford 2007). And what a fabulous book it is.

Ok, I'm slightly biased as Chris was my tutor on my special subject at university back in the 1970s, and reading his prose is like hearing him speak - the more so in this volume as it started life as the Wiles Lectures at Queen's University, Belfast.

He sets out to explore the nature of faith in England between the 1560s and 1630s by seeing what kinds of cases were coming up before the church courts. In doing so, he paints a rich and varied portrait of the beliefs of ordinary people in the years of upheaval in religion from the accession of Elizabeth 1 to the outbreak of the English Civil war.

In many ways he makes the case - something I have believed for a long time - that the Revolution of the 1640s and 1650s was a continuation of the Reformation that had started with Henry's desire to divorce in 1529.

Along the way, Haigh uncovers marvellous anecdotes and tales of people's beliefs and disagreements over how church should be run. It's refreshing for a preacher or minister, for example, to read of the number of cases brought before the courts of 'gadding to other places to hear preachers'. It appears that even 400 years ago consumerism was alive and well in the church as people travelled some distance to hear a particular preacher or avoided their parish church in favour of another down the road because the minister was more to their liking.

I guess one of the major findings of his reading is that people disagreed over religion - sometimes pretty vehemently - but generally speaking they got on with each other. They continued to work together, share harvesting together, be neighbourly to one another. Only occasionally did religious differences spill over into hostility and then only for short periods - until the Bishops' War of 1639 showed that such differences could actually tear the world apart (and maybe indicates that tolerance was only ever skin-deep).

One thing that is absent from Chris' account - though I'm not sure how much you'd expect it to show up in the records he so carefully analysed - was any reference to separatist congregations or even to those who might be so non-conformist that they were labelled not just 'puritan' but 'baptist' or 'independent'. I wonder if there is any trace of early baptist life in the court records Chris looked at.

Anyone with an interest in Reformation history, the history of Christian churches in England, or just generally in fascinating history brilliantly told and brought to life, should read this book.

Seeking the welfare of the city

I've been reading Henry Drummond's The City without a Church. I do this every July because the Northumbria Community's readings for the month come from it. I love it. It never fails to move, inspire and challenge me.

Drummond is almost forgotten Victorian Scot who worked with Moody and explored the frontier between science and faith. He died in his late 40s and left a substantial body of work on science, faith and spirituality. You can check out his work here. The Northumbria Community has produced The City Without a Church as part of its How shall we then live? series of booklets. Check out the community website here for details.

The City without a Church is a meditation on verses from Revelation 21 & 22 and is a call for Christians to live their faith in the grubby realities of our city rather than hide away in our churches. It's written in a simple and direct style that continually asks us 'why not?' Here's a flavour:

'I make this, then, in all seriousness as a definite practical proposal. You wish, you say, to be a religious man. Well, be one. There is your City; begin. But what are you to believe? Believe in your City. What else? In Jesus Christ. What about Him? That He wants to make your City better; that that is what He would be doing if He lived there. What else? Believe in yourself—that you, even you, can do some of the work which He would like done, and that unless you do it, it will remain undone. How are you to begin? As Christ did. First He looked at the City; then He wept over it; then He died for it.' (booklet p11)

There is a glorious, down-to-earth optimism about his writing that sits uncomfortably in our slightly cynical, ironic times. I'd say that he's a pioneer missional thinker. He repays careful and reflective reading. So why not read it with a friend or a home group and ask how you might put it into practice in your own communities?