Virtual Community

A significant part of the Christian story is about community: about its formation and reconciliation. During the last 250 years theology has often tended towards the individual, and has concentrated on a Robinson Crusoe type of figure in which the story is entirely about one person and their God. Yet to think of Christianity as a solitary business is to strip it of much of its meaning and force. Christianity is not primarily a religion about individuals, but about communities.

From the very beginning of the biblical narrative we are presented with the view that ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. Humans are made for community. Their identity is forged and found by being with other people. The story of sin that is told through the Old Testament after the expulsion from Eden is one in which human relationships become possessive and violent. To deal with this God creates community. He interacts with certain individuals in Genesis and Exodus to form a people for himself.

Jesus’ own ministry was one of community building. One of his first acts was to call disciples. The miracles are not simply about wonders, but rather they are stories that tell of people being restored back into their communities, and therefore of healing and reconciliation. Jesus’ last act before his death is a fellowship meal with his friends, and after the resurrection he appears to them to make them a new community as the church.

To be a Christian, from the very earliest of times, was about belonging to the community of faith. The early Christians suffered persecution for belonging to the church and participating in the eucharist. The Western church for over a thousand years formed society so that it adhered to Christian ideals regarding the moral and good. Until modernity (after 1750) thinking about Christianity as mainly an individual commitment to God would have made little or no sense.

And that is what makes the current situation so difficult for us… We are a community of faith, and yet we cannot physically meet. To be church means to be an assembly, and yet we cannot assemble in one place. This is why maintaining community is of paramount importance. As tempting as it may be to pull up the drawbridge from the rest of the world, Christians are called to be a community and to engage with the world.

I think that in some ways the word ‘virtual’, when we refer to electronic communications, is not helpful here. When we speak to someone over Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, Teams or other programmes, we are establishing and maintaining real relationships and real communities, and there is actually little that is virtual about that. We would all prefer to be back as we were but, until churches can re-open, building community is a profoundly Christian thing to be doing. And so especially during this time, I encourage you to use the technology that is available to maintain relationship, prevent isolation, and support the vulnerable.

After the event… the future of the church after the virus

For those who are part of central planning in dioceses and the national church the question that will increasingly be on the horizon over the next month is ‘what happens after the virus?’ Will people return to church? Will the virus particularly affect the congregations of the church? Will live streaming continue to be popular? How might this, and an ongoing culture of social distancing, change our worship? Who will be providing this worship? How can this worship be sustained if people do not physically come to church and financially support it?

So, some thoughts:

The dangers: Gnosticism. The chief danger in all this is that Christianity becomes rather virtual and cerebral during the lockdown. If Christianity becomes chiefly something that we think on our own, then we have lost significant chunks of the Christian message. Christians believe that the word became flesh, not an image on a computer screen, and we celebrate this in physical sacraments. We are also a physical community. The first thing that Jesus does during his ministry is to call disciples, and the first significant event after the resurrection is Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit comes to the disciples to forms them into the community of the church. Christians rightly should reject a disembodied Gnosticism that stresses only personal religious experience, for the life of Christ described in the Gospels is one in which physical life and community are significant.

The opportunities: Evangelism. Despite all the theological dangers there is a great opportunity here if we seize it. Normally morning prayer in the cathedral is attended by a gathering of around 7. At present several hundred people tune into the Facebook Live-Stream at some point during the day. Our daily office worship has been re-orientated away from the needs of a few clergy towards those of the general public watching at home. This gives us a huge opportunity to engage de-churched and unchurched people with the Christian story. Churches need to be pro-active to seize the opportunities that Live-Streaming can bring so, for instance, a cathedral choral evensong normally attended by around 20 people could be streamed to several hundred.

The challenges: Resources. The greatest challenge will relate to resources. Those churches that have truly excellent worship (whether traditional choral or modern) and are able to engage with modern means of communication (and buy the relevant kit) will be those that are able to engage with the opportunities for mission. The use of Live-Streaming and virtual conference programmes demonstrates that church life is heading in two directions. Firstly, the demand for high quality large scale worship that is inspiring and professional. Secondly, the desire for community in smaller groups. Clearly, cathedrals and larger churches can provide the former. The challenge for smaller churches is the degree to which they can provide the latter. In evangelical circles this twofold approach has been happening for some time: large worship gatherings backed up with home groups. The challenge for dioceses will be in creating benefice units that are capable of supporting such a life.

A good deal will depend on how long the current lockdown lasts, and our response when restrictions are ended, but the church of 2021 may be very different to that of 2019.

Sabbath Rest

Many of us will have been feeling bewildered over the past week. In a week we have gone from the frenetic pace of modern life and work, to a world in which we are physically isolated and surrounded by quiet. Many of us find ourselves directly confronted with questions about health, wellbeing, work, rest, illness and death in a way that was not the case a week ago.

If your normal work life is anything like mine, you are confronted by a constant stream of meetings, phone calls and emails. Last week’s announcements meant that I had something like what an Oxford undergraduate might describe as a Saturday of 8th week (i.e. end of term) experience: after a period of hectic activity, you look back and ask what had actually been achieved, and what was valuable.

The measures that have been forced upon us by the threat of COVID 19 have made many of us break off from the normal round of productivity and, as we adapt to new technology, make us ask whether activities are necessary. There is an element of forced rest about the current measures: we cannot carry on as we used to. We have been forced to keep (at lest in part) a sabbath rest.

As Christians we often misunderstand the Sabbath. We tend to view it through the prism of our knowledge of a puritanical legalistic sabbatarianism that once dominated British society: a day that was about being miserable because it was felt that God would love us more if we suffered. So we have a tendency to seize on Jesus’ words and actions to justify our sabbath breaking: he did it, so we can too.

Theologically this has led us into a bad place. We buy into a Protestant work ethic in which rest is a waste of time, and that human worth is about productivity. We think that our recreation is unworthy in God’s sight. The crown of creation is not sabbath rest, but an omnipotent humanity that can do whatever it likes with the environment.

Yet what we fail to appreciate is that Jesus’ sabbath breaking was about a Christological claim, and also about the proper use of the sabbath. Jesus comments after healing on the sabbath remind us that it is not meant to be about a puffed up puritanical work to make us religiously distinct. Sabbath is holy because it is a time of healing when the ill are made whole and reincorporated into the community. A challenge for the church is how it can use this time of rest from its normal activities to bring healing, fulness of life and peace.

I pray that you find time for your own healing and that of others in the coming weeks.

The Beheading of John the Baptist

I have for a long time, probably since I was an ordinand myself, thought that the role of clergy contained an element of the ministry of John the Baptist. This has been traditionally crushed out of the role because the priority has been placed on a certain pastoral model of ministry in which notions of care and politeness have tended to trump any sense of being prophetic or radical. The danger for the church is that it so seeks to appease society that its message lacks anything that is uniquely of God, and so it becomes bland and irrelevant.

In the post-Christian context of the modern Western world there is a need for us, as the church of Christ, to again discover a prophetic voice that speaks out into our society. John the Baptist provides a model of one who is a fierce critic of the abuses within a society, and one who also points to Christ as the one who is the solution to the ills of that society. Today, in modern Britain, we live in a society that is utterly confused about what it believes to be important to the extent that as a national community we seem to be politically dysfunctional.

The root of our problem is that our nation no longer has a meaningful narrative. During the world wars we portrayed ourselves as a Christian nation fighting the forces of neo-paganism, and it was this Christianity that marked the setting up of the NHS and the educational reforms of 1944. Today no such narrative is advanced by government, and so it is unclear what undergirds our national thought process beyond materialism, consumerism and self-interest, with political parties competing to sell us an infantile and unrealistic vision of ever more provision at ever decreasing cost. The results of such a vision are clear: outsourcing, and a race to the bottom in terms of a wage structure that exploits the poor.

The church has a real role in reminding our society of another narrative in which society, community and mutual concern matter. 

Anglicanism and Orthodoxy

I am always slightly amazed by my encounters with the Greek church and cannot help but reflect on what the Church of England and Anglicans more generally might gain from offering a similar rich form of spiritual life. One cannot help but notice the way in which Greek society, across the generations, is able to engage with the life of the church: icons are venerated and candles are lit throughout the day.

The post-Reformation settlement in England transferred our popular religious culture to Prayer Book and knowledge of the English Bible, and in due course an English tradition of hymnody was added to this. The difficulty that the church now faces is that much of this cultural inheritance is in decline, and that its very cerebral nature does not appeal to a post-modern world of signs and symbols.

A challenge for the church to think about is how we could offer something similar to the Greek church. Too often churches are only open for services, and sometimes when they are open there is little left for the visitor to provide an accessible form of prayer and engagement with God, unless they are habitual church attenders and communicants. We do not have a traditions of the veneration of icons in the same way, but making sure that each church is open during the day with candles and prayer stations might provide some way in which we could similarly engage with our society.

We have been too focused on a modern tendency to learn by hearing and reading, and it is time that we revisited the idea of learning by seeing and doing. It therefore may also be time for the church to rethink its default position for whitewashed church interiors, which communicate only an empty space, in favour of decorating churches with art that depicts the story of the Christian faith.

The Church of England and the end of Steam Traction 50 years ago

On 11th August 1968 steam traction (the use of steam engines) ended on the national rail system. This was part of a 'modernisation' that started in the mid-1950s that introduced electrification and cut back many lines.

The reason for my interest in this matter is a comparison with the Church of England and its culture. There are a number of warnings we might want to heed as we think about the way in which the church might change in the future.

1. British Rail made steam locomotives for far too long (until 1960). Given that all steam locomotives had been withdrawn by 1968, and one could expect at least 20 years of service from a locomotive,  this was most obviously a waste of resources. Undue panic change was unduly quick: why were the new locomotives not left in service until 1980 when they would have naturally retired? Some locomotives have done more years on preservation lines since restoration than they did in BR service.

The danger for the church is that it continues to invest in things when they are out of date, and then changes tactics so quickly that it wastes the previous investment. Long term planning is key for the church: invest wisely for a number of decades. This means dealing with paradigm shifts rather than perfecting the current paradigm (both the end of steam and the shift to electric, and the shift in photography from film to digital, show how being the best at the moment does not protect you against the future without strategic planning).

Doing the old fashioned things well still matters, and we should not abandon traditional worship too quickly, but we have also to realise that good choral evensong is likely to be confined to an ever diminishing market. We therefore also need to move over into forms of worship and church life that are more adapted to a post-1960s world.

2. We should beware of closing and withdrawing simply because something is not working now. The rationalisation of the rail system may have been necessary in some places due to the decline of certain industries, but the whole scale cutting back of lines and goods facilities was far too short term in its vision for the future. Some of the lines may have needed to close, but others could now brining greater capacity to  an overcrowded commuter system. We should therefore beware of being over hasty about saying that some of our church buildings should be closed: they may be the places in which a very different form of church life could thrive and make a real impact.

3. We have a real challenge of dealing with romanticism. Our notions of what the steam age was like are conditioned by going to tourist lines where immaculate locomotives create a Harry Potter like experience. Films of the mid-1960s demonstrate that the realities of steam traction on the mainline was not like this: dirty locomotives pour out ash and smoke into the air and on to passengers. Living with an unrealistic view of the past inhibits our ability to move on: the modern railway system will never be able to compete with the appeal of the preservation lines, but this is a distortion of reality as it is not a form of transport you could use for everyday.

The church needs to realise that romanticised versions of the 1480s, 1580s or 1880s distort our view of what the church really was like. Very rarely do we talk about the high levels of tithe and fees that built great churches or cathedrals, or the social coercion used to fill churches. This is also part of the picture that was Christendom.

4. Steam railway enthusiasm might be easily compared to enthusiasm for certain kinds of ways of life from the past: a love of the Book of Common Prayer or pews, for example. The problem is of course a long term one: these groups generally find it difficult to recruit after the generation for whom these things were of their childhood has died out. The matters then simply become something of an aesthetic preference: a matter of choice to differentiate oneself from a more popular product, or a hobby used to define who we are as a person. The appeal of such practices we can therefore expect to be specialised and the hobby of a minority.

There have been several comments in the press about the post-Brexit 'blue passport' and how this appeals to a certain generation over 50 years of age. The same is probably true of steam engines and much of the life of the Church of England. However, those who only have ever known a maroon passport, electric trains and pop culture may see very little in the Church of England that attracts them and allows them to engage with us.

The church therefore needs to understand the challenge ahead of it. We need to shift into another paradigm that works for today, but not so quickly that we alienate those who have chosen to make the Church of England their home. For clergy and churches this means a difficult course must be navigated over the next two decades if the church is to avoid the fate of many of the steam locomotives withdrawn in 1968: the scrapyard.

Discipleship

The disciples on the day of Pentecost

Over recent years there has been quite a debate about the use of the term 'discipleship' in the Church of England. At one level it has become such common parlance that it is used in central reports without worry, but at another level there is an allegation that it is a foreign import from the United States, and therefore has no place in the English church.

In many ways those who note the use of the word 'discipleship' is novel are correct. It is hard to imagine the use of the term a hundred or more years ago. However, I disagree with them that what we try to describe in the life of Christian believers by the use of this word is new in any way at all. Instead it is about a changed context. A hundred years ago, even perhaps 50 years ago, we were at the sunset of Christendom, but now we face a post-Christin culture. This change of context is why a change of emphasis is both justified and necessary.

If we were to go back a hundred years, the church's language would be around education and discipline. The issue for the church, and its ministers, was how to turn the nominal Christian, or faithless Christian, into a more faithful believer. This meant convincing those with some knowledge and background in the faith that they should take it more seriously by practicing their faith publicly and privately, and demonstrate it through Christian behaviour. In a Christian society this made sense. There was little need to talk of Christian discipleship being a distinctive way of life: everybody agreed that a Christian way of life was a good thing, it was just that the careless needed to be won around.

For those who oppose the use of the term 'discipleship' there is an implicit assumption that we still live in that society: most people are still nominally Christian. However, the statistics tell another story. Most people under 50 did not go to Sunday School and are familiar neither with the Christian story nor the life of the church. Their path to faith will be rather more complicated than simply becoming better Christians. Instead the task that we face is of evangelisation from little or no familiarity with the faith. Further, we do this in a context in which society has been secularised, and in which materialism and utility are considered to trump religious concerns.

'Discipleship' therefore reflects the context in which we find ourselves. Like Christ, we are called to walk alongside people, and call them to leave one way of life behind and follow another. This is about a radical discontinuity in which, like Christ's first disciples, we are called to be remade by having our world reordered. This is now about more than education and discipline, although it certainly includes them, but it is also about seeing the world in another way from the culture around us. It is about renouncing consumerism, materialism and utilitarianism, in favour of an ethic that is directed to towards the good of individuals as beings who have been made and redeemed by God, in which the lives of others are of infinitely more value than the cheap production of material goods.

Discipleship is a valid term for the church of today to adopt. The problem for the church is that the task of the formation of disciples is a very difficult one, as Christ himself knew.