Novels by the pool
Yes, it’s that time of the year again. During the summer holiday I turn into a complete slob. It needs to be hot. I need to have lots of novels to read. I need a constant supply of cool beer and then I stay mostly static, occasionally dragging myself between pool, food-source and armchair.
This year, however, I jumped the gun, having picked up The Da Vinci Code just before sitting around waiting for one of my kids to be picked up in the car one day. From page one, I was hooked. I finished it in about 48 hours. A brilliant page-turner. Theological bullshit.
In fairness to the author, he makes clear at the outset that the factual basis for the book is miniscule, the vast majority being fantasy. However, that hasn’t stopped many people taking its theological claims seriously, viz. that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalen, who then gave birth to a line of children. That Mary Magdalen was the personification of the goddess. That all this was open knowledge in the early Church until the Council of Nicaea, and that it was thereafter hushed-up and suppressed by the nasty Roman Catholic Church.
The way this is justified is by piling speculation on speculation, often in contradiction to known historical sources, so that an enormous conspiracy theory is developed. Anyone who has studied history beyond secondary school level knows that all historical claims need to be subjected to a rigorous critical evaluative process, otherwise the whole concept of ‘history’ is unsustainable since it is indistinguishable from speculative fantasy. Traditionally, these disciplines were honed and preserved within the academic structures, which had their own, intra-disciplinary codes of methodology. This, of course, didn’t prevent the occasional conspiracy-theorist from making a lot of money publishing speculations which didn’t accord with these kind of scholarly canons. The work of Erich Von Daniken comes to mind. Good stuff for naive schoolboys and the feeble-minded, but not serious history founded on a critical reading of evidence and subject to peer review.
Theology also has a similar approach – but struggles to maintain it against two forces which often come into an unlikely allegiance. The first is the fear of the ultra-orthodox that critical approaches to religious historical texts will undermine faith. The second is from what might be called the ‘occult’ influence, of which the theory of The Da Vinci Code is but one example. (Other examples include the works of people like Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley, or even worse, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.) This ‘occult’ stream refuse the insight of critical scholarship because they wish to construct an alternative reality based on daisy-chaining supposedly special revelation together to suit their own particular theories.
Umberto Eco brilliantly showed that in a postmodern context, the conspiracy theorists and the occultists have the cultural upper-hand, since the canons of rational authority are no longer trusted, along with the academies which preserved the concept of ‘specialism’ within modernity. In his often under-estimated novel, Foucault’s Pendulum he pursues the story of what happens when someone removes all critical processes from a line of enquiry, and traces a path which ultimately leads to madness and death. In the book he is quietly showing the logical outworking of postmodern approaches to ‘facticity’, including that of the 20th century Foucault. All quality control systems which sift knowledge into varying degrees of plausibility are removed, and a fast-tracked, non-heirarchical system of data-delivery takes its place. The book could almost be a parable of the World Wide Web, where all information sources are presented as equally authoritative. Such an environment is inherently occultic.
To return to The Da Vinci Code: the Roman Catholic Church is extremely exercised by the cultural influence that the book is having. In a post-Christian culture, where ignorance of the Bible, basic theology and Church history is almost universal, conspiracy theories and occult approaches to tradition are easily digestible and are swallowed quickly. In places like the blogosphere and the web, the Church can no longer expect a reverent and privileged hearing alongside all the other competing voices. The situation is similar to practitioners of medical science finding, with horror, that they are being taken with equal seriousness alongside the voices of quacks – even by funding bodies. My guess is that nothing can now be done about this from the point of view of changing culture in the near future. Instead, the Church needs to invest again in its teaching role, preserving the tradition of rigorous, critical thinking about historical texts, particularly as they pertain to Christian identity and belief. This work may not bear immediate fruit, but in the longer-term it will be the only way that the Christian story and identity will be preserved from sinking into a forgetful swamp made up of the worst kind of mythology, masquerading as ‘history’. Or to put it another way, when something is a load of pure tripe the Church politely needs to say so, and point out why, even if nobody much listens. I find myself wondering whether future generations might see the 21st century as the scholarly equivalent of the sack of Rome, with the vandals putting the libraries to the torch. If so, then the places where fact still managed to be distinguished from fantasy would be regarded as equivalent to those monastic islands of learning, where ancient wisdom was preserved on illuminated codices of vellum. Again, Eco’s work is perhaps prophetic: in the closing scenes of The Name of the Rose the monastery, holding the largest collection of manuscripts in Europe, burns to the ground. The fire begins in the library.
All that said, The Da Vinci Code is a must for reading beside the pool this summer. Just make sure you put your head under cool water at regular intervals. See you in a couple of weeks.
Posted on Friday, 22 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in theology | 4 comments
Inspiration out of suffering
I was greatly moved by the inspirational Christian witness by Marie Fatayi-Williams, whose son was killed two weeks ago in the bus in Tavistock Square, which was broadcast on the BBC Today Programme this morning. You can download this wonderful interview here.
Posted on Friday, 22 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in spirituality | Comments Off
Patristic Christology in 90 minutes
Simon and I have spent quite a while trying to cram in the rather complicated development of the doctrine of who Jesus is from its roots in the New Testament up to the Nicene Creed (325AD) into a 90 minute presentation ready for tonight’s bluffer’s guide. The full info is on virtualtheology.net.
The venue is really nice, with a cocktail bar and groovy restaurant on the same premises. The weather is outrageously hot – in fact, we could have run it outside tonight.
During the evening, we’ll be leading a 4th century (heretical) ‘time of worship’ as part of the fun. Well, that’s how we get our kicks, anyway…
Posted on Thursday, 14 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in theology | Comments Off
The bombs fall close to home
On my way up to the York Synod on Friday, the news started to come through that Revd Julie Nicholson, who is vicar of a nearby church in Bristol and someone I taught at Trinity, had lost contact with her daughter Jenny, who works in London, on the day of the bombs. At that time, the story hadn’t broken the press, but now it is in the public domain I can make mention of it here. Jenny was on her daily trip from home in Reading to work, when she would have passed through Paddington station, onto the underground system, through to Edgware Road station. She is now among the ‘missing’ and the family await to hear the worst. Please pray for Julie, her husband Greg and Jenny’s brother and sister in this time of agony. Julie and I have been planning to host a youth arts theatre project this winter at St Paul’s, one of my churches. Two weeks ago we were sitting drinking coffee together and talking about a future, which now seems so blighted.
Update: The formal identification process finished today with the news everyone had feared. The BBC report is here. The diocese is handling the press coverage, so hopefully there won’t be too much by way of press intrusion on the family’s grief. Julie’s church are holding a prayer vigil tomorrow night. We’re running the silence in church at Cotham tomorrow at noon, just over a week after Jenny’s life was ended so abruptly and with such violence.
Posted on Wednesday, 13 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in uncategorized | 1 comment
Back from General Synod
Well, I spent what will probably be “summer” in UK, locked away in the stifling Central Hall of York University (why haven’t they invented air-con in the academic sector?)
The agenda to my mind was not exactly the most stimulating I’ve ever experienced, but of course we did have the debate on women bishops. Since this has attracted some interest in my part of the blogosphere, some comment might be of interest…
What were we debating? Before everyone gets too excited, it was about starting the process, not the actual decision which will ‘do the deed’. Following Monday’s debate, the Synod is now committed to drawing up the legal instruments under canon law which would allow women to be made bishops in the CofE. However, before these instruments get passed into law they need to achieve a 2/3rds majority in the three ‘houses’ of the synod: bishops, clergy and laity. The voting figures from Monday give in interesting breakdown of how the opinion is currently biased. In the houses of bishops and clergy the voting is confortably over the 2/3rd point. However, in the house of laity (which, being filled with a high number of elderly, retired people, tends to be the most conservative house) the vote was just over the 2/3rds point: 159 to 75.
However, it is important to realise two key things about Monday’s vote: 1. The vote was only to begin the legislative process, it was not on the legislation itself, which will come in about five years’ time. 2. There is an election coming up which will change the personnel involved.
The narrow 2/3rds majority in the House of Laity achieved this time should not lull anyone into believing that somehow the final outcome is certain. By my calculations it would only take a 2% swing for any legislation to fail in the House of Laity. Furthermore, even if the House of Laity stayed exactly the same, the vote on Monday was for moving to legislation, not for passing that legislation itself. It can be fairly guaranteed that some of those voting “For” proceeding to drafting legislation would vote “Against” when it came to the actual final vote. Therefore any swing in the House of Laity in the forthcoming election will be crucial to the final outcome. No doubt the traditionalist lobby are well aware of this, but how aware is the wider church?
Posted on Wednesday, 13 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in good ole cofe | 2 comments
General Synod
I’m off to the York University campus today for five days of sitting in the General Synod of the Church of England. The main subject to be debated will be to agree whether or not to bring legislation through which will allow women to become bishops. There are times when the unreality of church life comes home to me very powerfully, and the idea that I should still belong to a church which makes distinctions and places restrictions on the grounds of gender is almost like living in a time-warp. We’ve been sent lots of material from the anti- lobby, varying from the thoughtful to the certifiable. But I think they realise that we’re in a very different time from 15 years ago when a similar decision was made in regard to women priests. The generational turnaround since then, together with the excellent witness of the ministry of women in ordained roles, has ensured a much easier passage this time around.
There’s a lot of lower-profile stuff: revising the ordination service, reviewing how a training review is being implemented, the annual debate on how the church’s national budget is going to be spent, and so on. Strangely, I still manage to enjoy this kind of thing, but I think it’s something to do with the conversations in the bar at the end of the day.
Whenever the General Synod meet in York there’s always some kind of protest. Last year it was Fathers for Justice invading the communion service at York Minster (which just annoyed everyone, including those most sympathetic to the cause) and the year before it was Outrage invading the debating chamber protesting about gay rights. I wonder who it will be this year – perhaps they might have decided that security is only as strong as its weakest link and put barbed wire around the lot of us. Hands up all those who think they should keep the General Synod all locked in, as well as protesters locked out…
Posted on Friday, 8 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in good ole cofe | 2 comments
Open access theology
Well, Simon’s and my attempt at open-access theology did its first outing last night at Bar III (the old Mauritania at the bottom of Park Street. The venue was good, with about 25 people attending. This was my first attempt at podcasting, and we need a good, replicable system, which Simon (a self-confessed non-techy) can run for sessions when I’m away.
I think we took a while getting into the right pace and the right level of humour and seriousness, but listening back to the MP3 this morning is sounds a lot better than I felt it might. Given we did just over an hour’s material, it covers a lot of ground which can be very difficult to gain a clear hold on. We began the session with a minute’s silence in the light of the attacks on London during the morning.
Using audacity is a breeze, and it converts to MP3 nicely, although I had to remember to reset the MP3 bitrate to keep the file size down. Even then, it’s still 35MB, so isn’t for the non-broadbanded.
I’m off to the General Synod this morning, but I’m hoping that I can get web access easily on the York campus, in which case I will work on getting the RSS feed set up for automated podcasting. In the meantime, more details are on virtualtheology.net, and you can download the MP3 there.
Posted on Friday, 8 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in theology | 1 comment
virtualtheology.net
A frantically busy past few days. Simon and I have been plotting some open-access theology, and our admittedly grotty venue fell through this morning. So we spent the morning wandering up and down Park Street in Bristol looking for function suites. We’ve found a great one. Then later I bought virtualtheology.net and put up a blog, where we’ll eventually podcast the talks. In the meantime, you can see the link, plus the advert, here.
Oh, yeah, and one of the churches was broken into yesterday… Nothing stolen, just smashed one of the doors.
Posted on Tuesday, 5 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in uncategorized | 1 comment
Live 8 – how was it for you?
For me it was:
- Snoop Dogg (London)
- Will Smith preaching it at the start of Philly’s Live 8 – get that man in a pulpit *now*!
- Dido (London) – especially performing seven seconds
- REM (London)
- The moment when Bob Geldof brought on Birhan Woldu, the little girl who was shown 10 minutes from death in the “who’s gonna drive you home” video from Live Aid 1984, standing on the stage, a beautiful, intelligent woman, being hugged by Madonna.
- Madonna (London)
- Will Smith performing ‘Summertime’ at Philly
- Sting! (London) – with special lyrics to ‘Every step you take’, while pictures of the G8 leaders were flashed up on the screens
‘…so now we’ll see, if democracy, is just a game you play, no matter what we say…’
… every step you take, we’ll be watching you. - Pink Floyd in London, opening with Breathe, took me right back to when I was a slightly gloomy, introverted fifteen-year-old. The whole set was faultless it was great to see these men are still such excellent performers. Dave Gilmour, in particular, was astonishing.
Posted on Saturday, 2 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in uncategorized | 1 comment
