Anthony Hills lives in Berlin, broke but pretty content, enjoying the companionship of friends whose lives have crissed and crossed. He can be reached on motz52@freenet.de by seafarer Theology for necrophiles Strangled cry Seafarer’s text for today comes from Dorothy Allison, and I came across it on the SoF email list: “There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply _ have something greater than ourselves to hold on to - God or history or politics or literature, or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger. Sometimes I think they are all the same. A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist there is more to this life than we ever imagined”.
So what enables you to take the world by the throat? What takes you by the throat? A free place at the 50th SoF annual conference for every answer we print.
Rev Blair The second issue of Political Theology thudded through my letterbox on the day the papers were commenting on Tony Blair’s return to evangelical and theological language in his speech to the _ Black Evangelical Churches. This was serendipitous for the journal, as its editorial comments approvingly on Blair’s use of theological soundbites - “brother’s keeper”, “walking by on the other side”, and so on. The journal argues that this, coupled with its satirised version in Private Eye, where the Rev Blair is *Nicar of St Albion”, shows a “rich and _ stimulating” use of theological language “which ___ deserves further reflection and investigation’.
Convinced? Nor me! Don’t they all do it? The very day after Blair’s black churches speech, _ William Haig was addressing the same gathering, _ and using equally evangelical, biblical language. _ Maggie Thatcher quoted St Francis, Wilson projected the Labour Party (remember them?) as a “crusade”. And it’s virtually impossible to be elected to any office in America without invoking your personal relationship with Gahd (though was it George Bush Jnr. who, on being asked what it was about Jesus which had most influenced him, teplied “His books”?).
I don’t doubt Tony Blair’s sincerity as a practising Anglo-Catholic, any more than I doubt Anne Widdecombe’s as a Catholic convert, or Richard Nixon’s as a deeply relapsed Quaker, but it surely isn’t over-cynical to suspect that _ politicians find a smidgeon of the old churchy __ thetoric good for the odd extra vote in downtown Respectaburbia. The journal (associated with the : _ Christian Socialist Movement) suggests that Blair ___ is different because “he has led a major reforming roject”. Ho-ho, very satirical. jut the same issue of the journal carries a plendidly robust piece by academic theologian Stephen Pattison arguing that, far from making a comeback into public discourse, liberal theology is now “marginalized from public debate and the public arena generally”. This is the fault of theologians. “Too much contemporary theology seems to be a kind of whispered conversation on matters esoteric conducted in a foreign language behind closed doors in a distant attic...[It] has become a kind of cadaver that is of interest only to necrophiles. Its supreme achievement has been to make even the idea of God seem boring. It has no power to transform or inform lives or thinking in a vivifying, hopeful way, much less to contribute credible analysis and principles to public debates and policies.” Pattison - he’s a senior lecturer in the Department of Religious and Theological Studies at Cardiff University - has twelve suggestions for remedying this state of affairs. One is to “abolish free-standing, independent theology and religious studies departments”, forcing theologians to work at their ideas “in the interdisciplinary market place of ideas”. Another is “avoid the use of the self-ghettoising term ‘theology’...It might be helpful for theologians to redefine themselves as public critical thinkers who happen to address issues of common concern from the perspective of being critical inhabitants of a particular faith tradition or worldview”. And theologians should learn to think, write and speak clearly. He quotes J L Austin: “Tt is not enough to show how clever we are by showing how obscure everything is”.
Pattison concludes that “it would be easy simply to preserve a respectful silence as [theology] moves towards death” - but urges that it would be better to “rage against the dying of the light. And not only rage, but also work, adapt and become ingenious”.
Now there’s a challenge: ingenious theology which is “more truly imaginative and innovative... practised with passion and commitment”. A theology which can “create new religious stories that are not the old stories in new words but are actually new stories which have some indebtedness to the old... A useful and pertinent public theology would be one that funded the public imagination with images, metaphors and symbols that ‘cut the world at its joints’”, rather than “soundbite theology shaped by media imperatives”. Do you hear that at St Albion’s?
Political Theology is available from Sheffield Academic Press, 19 Kingsfield Road, Sheffield $11 9AS, at £20 annual sub (two issues). Worth it.
As others see us The Friend has run an interesting piece by Gordon Steel about his first visit to a local SoF group at Croydon: interesting because we rarély get to read descriptions of the impression we make on curious visitors. (continued overleaf) SOF 43 / September 2000 He found himself in the company of “a radical Anglican priest... very eloquent and keen for progressive thought within the church”; an engineer who had “a fleeting interest in religion of all types”; an ex-nurse now counselling, brought up as a Catholic but leaning towards Judaism, now doing a theology degree; and a woman Anglican priest in a stressful curacy, “ordained in spite of strong leanings towards the Sea of Faith and Buddhism”.
Gordon Steel commented: “Much of our evening together was spent in ‘telling our stories’. What struck me was the level of anger that was expressed, especially by the clergy and those of a Catholic background, anger at the oppressive and rigid hierarchy and the damage done to many lives. It was clear that the SoF Network was a breath of fresh air to them, even a life-line”.
He was “not sure” that he would go to another SoF meeting, preferring to tread “the radical road” within his Quaker tradition (with which he professed himself wholly satisfied). But thanks, Gordon, for your unsolicited testimonial. ‘Beyond Belief’ ... is the title of the New Zealand SoF Network’s annual conference at Havelock North from October 6 to 8.
SOF 43 / September 2000 Ostrich-imitating beggar, Karachi Beyond belief lies practice, and the theme will be developed in two strands, “social responsibility” and “culture”.
The New Zealand SoF Newsletter reports that Epworth Books are stocking our Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up! booklet, described as “user-friendly... with large type and interesting, challenging and thought-provoking black and white pictures...
Entertaining, readable, amusing”. The reviewer adds: “T will be ordering a personal copy if for nothing else but the delight of having it on the coffee table when the Jehovah’s Witnesses call”.
Perverse and foolish I have been instructed by the editor to convey his apologies for the silly mistake in his editorial on Northern Ireland in the last issue. He wrote of Ulster’s nine counties (correct), “only three of which are north of the border” (incorrect). A Rev Dr lan Paisley and a Mr Gerry Adams have written to point out that the partition of Ulster in the 1920s left three of the province’s counties south of the border and six in the north. They are in complete agreement on this point.