Contents
Editorial
Embodiment, Dinah Livingstone
Articles
Over my Head, I Hear Music in the Air, David Paterson
You are What You Eat, David Lee
Broken Bodies in a Broken World, Frank Regan
Why do the Abrahamic Religions Fear the Female Body, and even Loathe it?, Helena Woddis
Jesus of Nazareth: the Embodiment of God?, Mark Dyer
Poetry
Tapestry, Roy Lockett
Leighton Road, Roy Lockett
Reviews
Review: Geering Interviews by Mike Grimshaw, Anthony Freeman
Review: Victorian Agitator: George Jacob Holyoake by Stephen Yeo, David Boulton
Review: The Christian Middle Way by Robert M Ellis, Ben Whitney
Review: Sanctuary by Isabel Bermudez, Kathryn Southworth
Regulars
Revisiting: David Lambourn revisits The Roots of Romanticism by Isaiah Berlin, David Lambourn
As I Please: John Pearson visits Finland and finds a far-flung battlefield of the Crimean War, John Pearson
Editorial
Embodiment
May 31st this year is the feast of Corpus Christi. Do I hear cries of ‘Hocus pocus!’, ‘No popery!’ from ‘low’ or quaking readers? But I am not talking about transubstantiation, which belongs in a medieval world where the sun goes round the Earth, the globe has not been circumnavigated, medicine believes in the ‘four humours’ and has not discovered the circulation of the blood. Corpus Christi means ‘body of Christ’.
One of the few times Paul quotes Jesus’ own words he says: ‘For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood…” (1 Cor 11: 23-5)
Paul pursues the idea of the body of Christ: ‘The cup of blessing which we bless isn’t it a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break isn’t it a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body because we all share the same bread’ (1 Cor 10: 17).
The body of Christ becomes a body of people. Christ is the head or figurehead of a new humanity in which ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3: 28). All are of equal moral worth. Everyone counts.
In his book Inventing the Individual (p.60) Larry Siedentop points out what a revolutionary idea this was: He comments on the above quotation from Galatians: ‘Paul’s “one” signals a new transparency in human relations. Through his conception of the Christ, Paul insists on the moral equality of humans, on a status equally shared by all.’ His conception ‘overturns the assumption on which ancient thinking had hitherto rested, the assumption of natural inequality.’
This vision of humanity as one body all sharing the same bread – the body of Christ – resonates with Jesus’ vision of a ‘reign of God’ coming on Earth, a reign of Kindness which is good news for the poor and dispossessed. It also resonates with the vision in Revelation of the New Jerusalem, the beautiful city where tears are wiped away, coming down to Earth. God as the personification of Kindness, light of the City, God embodied in Jesus, who as the Christ then embodies all humanity as one, are ideals, poetic visions of human potential for love and fulfilment, both personal and political. In fact, God does not act. The ‘reign’ or Christ’s parousia did not come upon Earth ‘in the lifetime of some of those standing here present’. It is up to us.
Paul’s conception of the body of Christ uniting Jew and Greek – all humanity – tearing down lethal fences and walls of division was revolutionary. An equally revolutionary step is necessary today to keep those aspirations potent in a secular world, which can no longer believe in supernatural beings and is bemused – sometimes repelled – by the arcane dogmatics of fundamentalism. We need Paul’s imaginative boldness to leap to the insight that we created these ideas – ideals – and that they remain a vitally important guiding light; to grasp that the supernatural is a creation of the human imagination or poetic genius, sift out and keep visions of hope and treasures of wisdom, and try to embody them in life on Earth.
In this issue of Sofia five very different writers give their own take on some aspect of ‘embodiment’ – David Paterson, Frank Regan, David Lee, Helena Woddis and Mark Dyer. They do not ignore the dark side. Frank Regan writes about Broken Bodies in a Broken World with ‘bodies trafficked and enslaved’ and ‘bodies queer and indecent’. Helena Woddis asks: Why do the Abrahamic Religions Fear the Female Body and even Loathe it?
David Lee reflects on the Eucharist (which Quakers don’t celebrate), while in his incantatory poem Tapestry, Roy Lockett celebrates Quakers ‘always singing’… ‘as they make new Jerusalems’, whereas they ‘reject the new Jerusalem/of guns and occupation’.
Finally, don’t forget the SOF Annual Conference in Leicester 24th–26th July on The Necessity of Hope. More details on page 27.
Dinah Livingstone
Letters to the Editor
Gay Marriage
To practise what I am about to criticise – ‘identity politics’ – I am a sixty-six-year-old gay man, not ordained because, during the 1970s, I was given the choice between ordination, and the chance to share life with another man, and opted for the more spiritual experience! The negative impact of my decision has been a life lived outside the ‘benefits’ of the Church: but the positive is that I discovered SOF, and have shared thirty-five years with David, a retired architect and militant ‘attacker’ of religion: man-made or otherwise. We have neither a civil partnership, nor have we been through a ‘wedding’.
To address John’s excellent article, firstly, there is, no longer, any ‘gay community’. There was: back in the sixties, seventies and eighties, when gay men were very much the objects of public and political censure (a phenomenon which received a real ‘boost’ with the arrival of AIDS, and its taxonomical classification as a ‘spiritual’, and not ‘biological’, disease). Old habits die hard in the world of sex!
Secondly, if John imagines that the ‘fiercest enemies (of gay men) both personal and institutional, are mostly long gone’, then he is wrong. Look at the Church! Like all the ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’, homophobia has simply retreated from respectable public expression. The views John expresses on ‘gay weddings’ are – like mine on Islam – and those of the majority on ‘Brexit’, simply ‘unacceptable in the public square’, even for discussion. Yet, as an old gay man, I share John’s views. This is the problem with ‘identity politics’: it seeks to deny independence of thought and free expression.
Civil partnership guarantees, legally and publicly, what ‘marriage’ does. If you seek God’s blessing on your relationship, you do not need a congregation, priests, or ministers, you simply need God! I suspect most gay weddings are – like many (not all) of their heterosexual counterparts – simply the wish for a ‘fuss’. Fortunately, God does not confine ‘God’s-self’ to the Church (or any religion). In place of censure from the Church, David and I have enjoyed the support of many who, like us, would not dream of darkening its doors.
Mark Dyer, Nynehead, Somerset
Giving Up Giving Up
Thanks for the latest Sofia, which as always was most enjoyable. I was particularly amused by John Pearson’s curmudgeonly piece which brought back many similar memories of seasonal efforts at self-denial which so often seemed rather futile and phoney. However, I have now solved this problem not so much by giving up giving up but by simply removing the ‘up’ and focusing on the giving. I don’t know about others but there is hardly a day goes by that I don’t get a sheaf of requests for support from charities addressing a plethora of needs and genuine good causes from the fate of orang utans to the victims of slave trafficking. Some of these address natural defects like cleft lip or damaged eyesight which, whilst easy to treat, very often aren’t in many parts of the world through lack of basic resources yet if done so can be life transforming.
Simply giving support to the efforts of others could come down to a choice between giving up the next purchase on Amazon and giving to some greater good which challenges human perversity. But it is not just about giving money as giving time and effort. Each day I feel that I can do something that no one else can or will, whether it’s weeding the flower beds in the park, sharing a skill or filling in potholes on public footpaths. It’s simply a matter of getting out there and giving something of oneself – what Don has called solar living. And though one may be more inclined to make that extra effort periodically, simply giving has no special season. It also makes life worthwhile. Just a thought!
Dominic Kirkham, Manchester