The starting point for any consideration of the priest’s role as an observer and interpreter of culture has to begin with H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, published in 1951¹. This was the definitive book on the subject, and remains the definitive book: as someone once said, books by theologians don’t remain in print, and they certainly don’t remain in print for fifty years. It is in short, a classic, which means that it “is a work of genius that a later culture must take into account once that work has had a chance to leave its marks.”² No wonder, as Glen Stassen has said, Christ and Culture:

is studied in graduate and undergraduate classes; it is required reading in courses in colleges, universities, and seminaries. It is used primarily not to introduce the theology of H. Richard Niebuhr, but to introduce a systematized representation of the various dominant forms of Christian belief. Often it serves as a basic text in the systematic study of Christian ethics, but more probably just as frequently as an orientation to Christian theology more generally.³

Continue Reading »

1. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and culture, (New York, HarperSanFrancisco, [1951] 2001). [↩]
2. Martin E. Marty, Foreword to the fiftieth anniversary expanded edition of H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and culture, (New York, HarperSanFrancisco, [1951] 2001), p. xiii. [↩]
3. Glen H. Stassen (probably), ‘Preface’ to Glen H. Stassen, D. M. Yeager and John Howard Yoder, eds. Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture (Nashville: Abbandun Press, 1996), p. 9. [↩]

Before we unpack what cultural literacy might mean it would be good to register a dissenting opinion. Pope Benedict XVI has a characteristically firm idea of what the Church and its people requires of her priests: “The faithful expect only one thing from priests: that they be specialists in promoting the encounter between man and God”¹. This means that “there is absolutely no need for the priest to know all the latest, changing currents of thought; what the faithful expect from him is that he be a witness to the eternal wisdom contained in the revealed word”. In other words, “the priest is not asked to be an expert in economics, construction or politics. He is expected to be an expert in the spiritual life.”² This might seem to be an assertion of an older, restricted, expertise for the priests of the church, a conservative revision of “rendering unto Caesar”. But Benedict XVI is too good a theologian to fall into that trap. In one of the innovations of his pontificate, the Pope has instituted regular Q&A sessions with various groupings within the church. He has met the priests of the diocese of Rome twice now, and in the session held in the summer of 2007 he responded to a question about his beliefs on the human side of the priesthood. The Pope’s response was clear:

Catholicism, somewhat simplistically, has always been considered the religion of the great “et et”: not of great forms of exclusivism but of synthesis… we cannot always live in exalted meditation; perhaps a Saint on the last step of his earthly pilgrimage could reach this point, but we normally live with our feet on the ground and our eyes turned to Heaven. Both these things are given to us by the Lord and therefore loving human things, loving the beauties of this earth, is not only very human but also very Christian and truly Catholic… this aspect is also part of a good and truly Catholic pastoral care: living in the “et et”; living the humanity and humanism of the human being, all the gifts which the Lord has lavished upon us and which we have developed; and at the same time, not forgetting God, because ultimately, the great light comes from God and then it is only from him that comes the light which gives joy to all these aspects of the things that exist.³

Even a dissenting opinion can be tempered by the great et et.

1. Benedict XVI in an address to the clergy of Warsaw, 25 May 2006, reported via Zenit.org. [↩]
2. Benedict XVI, ‘Address to the clergy of Warsaw’. [↩]
3. Benedict XVI, in the record of ‘The Meeting of the Holy Father Benedict XVI with the Clergy of the Dioceses of Belluno-feltre and Treviso’, Church of St Justin Martyr, Auronzo di Cadore, 24 July 2007. Available online here. [↩]

It has finally struck some members of the British Government that repeating over and over again “the economy, stupid!” isn’t making the country any happier. Why is this such a surprise?

 

 3MT : Worshipping the great god GDP [4:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (132)

Let’s press this image of the priest as Watchman a little further. Let us consider what the image says of the position and disposition of the priest. Imagine a city with a Watchman on its walls. In the city below the walls, life goes on: markets are held, goods made, bought, sold; meals prepared and eaten. If is clear that not everyone can be a Watchman. If everyone in the city were to be appointed a sentinel at the same time, then life would come grinding to a halt. If everyone were watching then no one could be buying, selling, teaching, learning, living. It is not possible to live the life of the city, a civilised life, on the city walls. Life goes on in the city below; people live their lives, trusting that there is someone as to go on in the city below, and the citizens have to trust the Watchman to see the approaching army or tornado or whatever. There should only be one Watchman per vantage point.

Similarly, it is not possible to be a Watchman in the market place, in the public library or in the private home¹: The Watchman must stand in the high and liminal places, on the edges of city life, so as to be able to see what is beyond the city, to be able to see what threatens or promises the city.

These are all characteristics of position; what about disposition? Disposition is a matter of attitude and discernment. The Watchman needs to believe there is something worth watching for: a Watchman who believes that no army could possibly attack the city from his watching place actually becomes the weakest point in the city’s defences. The Watchman also needs to be able to judge what it is he sees: is that cloud on the horizon rain or the dust from horsemen, is it a camel train or a raiding party. The Watchman also needs to know what not to notice. Not every sign of life or activity is significant.

When we transfer this (somewhat over-elaborated) metaphor to Church life, we see that the priest as Watchman needs to be able to read the signs of the times. He needs to be able to understand what is significant, what is changing, what is unfolding in the times and culture in which he finds himself, and in which his community lives. He needs to be engaged with, but not overwhelmed by, the sheer volume of events that unfold in our culture, especially with its tendency to value unmediated novelty. As Williams puts it, the best priest-watchmen “in this and other eras are, it seems to me, those who have known how to read the surface and the depths, but have had no great interest in the shallows”².

In other words, if a priest is to be a meaningful witness to the reality of the Church’s past experience of Christ at work, then the priest needs to be a meaningful student of the present in which the Church finds herself. He has to be able to answer the conspectus questions: where are we? What are the big stories of our day? What are the assumptions of our time and culture? Like a mountain guard, the priest today needs to be able to discern the tiny trembles of snow flakes that precipitate the cataclysmic avalanche. What are the signs of change in our time? Where can we discern God’s purpose being enacted?

And this requires cultural literacy.

The priest should be able to read cultural artefacts, because it is in them he can see what people really value. Samuel Butler’s novel Erewhon (1872) gives us a satirical depiction of this. Butler, the son of a parson and grandson of a Bishop, had broken with his family over his conviction of the truth of Darwin’s Origin of the Species. He emigrated to New Zealand, and made his fortune sheep-farming. Returning to England, and disappointed by the hypocrisies of Victorian society, he wrote Erewhon (“nowhere” rearranged, to make the obvious point). In it, the hero wanders into a European-like civilization in the interior of the New Zealand islands. Life is both like and unlike England. The hero gradually realises the central place of the Musical Banks to Erewhonian society. On a visit to one of the grand, impressive buildings which houses a branch of the Musical Banks, he realises that the currency of the Bank is

… supposed to be the system, and… in which all monetary transactions should be carried on; and as far as I could see, all who wished to be considered respectable, kept a larger or smaller balance at these banks… [but]… the amount so kept had no direct commercial value in the outside world; I am sure that the managers and cashiers of the Musical Banks were not paid in their own currency. Mr. Nosnibor used to go to these banks, or rather to the great mother bank of the city, sometimes, but not very often. He was a pillar of one of the other kind of banks, though he appeared to hold some minor office also in the musical ones. The ladies generally went alone; as indeed was the case in most families, except on state occasions.³

The Musical Banks are the cathedrals and churches of Erewhonian society: the desire to be respectable was stronger than the usefulness and meaning of the Banks. The real currency, the real business, happened somewhere else. Here Butler takes Jesus’s injunction in the Sermon on the Mount and asks what would a society look like in which the treasures of earth and the treasures of heaven were much more clearer distinguished. Like Higgs, the priest as Watchman needs to be able to read the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of a society’s cultural values in order to see what is truly important, not just what is said to be or thought to be important.

1. This is not to say that there is no place for any kind of surveying in the public places of the city, but the person who fulfils that role is a policeman and not a Watchman, and a policeman is a rather different role. Similarly, the person who stands on the city walls and watches the city inside is also not a Watchman, but rather a prison guard. These roles might be necessary, but they are not our concern for the moment. [↩]
2. Rowan Williams, ‘The Christian Priest Today’, a talk given at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, 28 May 2004. The talk is available from the Archbishop’s website. All otherwise unattributed references in this chapter are to the text published on that website. The Archbishop’s comment reminds me of the acerbic quip attributed variously to Robert Runcie or Bill Vanstone that “Church of England is a swimming pool in which all the noise comes from the shallow end.” The source of the Runcie attribution seems to be an address given to the AGM of the Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust, 5 June 1999, available online here. The alternative, Vanstone, origin seems to have its roots in his obituary published in The Daily Telegraph, 15 March 1999, republished in Trevor Beeson (ed.), Priests and prelates : the Daily Telegraph clerical obituaries, (London: Continuum, 2002) pp. 214-216. [↩]
3. Samuel Butler, Erewhon (English Library Series. London: Penguin Classics, [1872/1901] 1970), Chapter 15 ‘The Musical Banks’, p. 137-138. [↩]

Close readers (are there any?) will have noted the cryptic comment on Sam Norton’s website a few weeks ago, and my response here. I can now reveal (he says, self-importantly) what Sam was alluding to:

As Amazon says

Product details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. (13 Nov 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 1847065090
• ISBN-13: 978-1847065094
• Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 220,088 in Books

(Last week, for one glorious moment, it was the 20,393rd best-selling book on Amazon— but that’s because my parents put in a pre-publication order!)

There will be more, much more (!), about this stunning contribution to the sum of human knowledge in the weeks before publication.

The GAFCON conference in Jerusalem raises the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his insights into praying for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

 3MT : Learning to pray— for friends and enemies [3:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (141)

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower, (1968)

One autumn I found myself rewatching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings in my lunch hour. Gradually I was drawn in, and half an hour (very occasionally!) became an hour when I could have profitably been visiting, filing, sermon writing, planning, form-filling. I finished the final film on 1 November, overwhelmed once more by the breadth of Tolkien’s vision and the skilfulness of Jackson’s film-making.

The next day was All Souls’, and with it a Requiem Eucharist. I realised that Lord of the Rings, book and films, is about, on one level, the cost of death and the waste of life. What sacrifices can we bear, and in what cause? What lasting effect does the slaughter of the previous age have upon our own? Can the unheroic hero Frodo, who has suffered so greatly, and seen so much destruction, ever find rest and redemption? I realised that this was a story written in middle- and late-age by a man who, as a callow lieutenant, had fought in the trenches of the Somme. And yet, Tolkien had been able to describe the healing of death in a memorable image: “the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”¹ Jackson transposed this description into a speech by the wise and powerful Gandalf, made in the middle of a battle in which violent death was a certainty. The transposition was inspired, for Gandalf’s speech did not offer cheap comfort; the costliness of the experiences lived through and described by Tolkien prevents that. This is a truer, deeper resonating, understanding of life and death. My sermon on All Souls’ night used Tolkien’s experiences and Jackson’s creative depiction of Tolkien’s work to present my congregation with the Christian hope through and over death. A member of the congregation came up to me after and confided that she had never really understood such hope before it had been presented to her in the imagery of Tolkien and Jackson.

So, on one level, my lunchtime viewing was a waste of time. For the Time and Motion outsider it might have seemed to be a self-indulgent distraction from the core responsibilities of my job. Perhaps. But sometimes what is seen as ‘waste of time’ is actually fallow ground becoming fruitful.

The Archbishop of Canterbury in his lecture on ‘The Christian Priest today’ makes much of this apparent time-wasting. He calls it making sense of the landscape in which the priest conducts his ministry. There is an explicit precedent for this role in the scriptural tradition and the Archbishop draws the attention of his listeners to Habakkuk and Ezekiel: in this role, the priest is to act as Watchman.

In Habakkuk 2, the prophet tells how he has been set at the watch-post by the Lord, upon the rampart. Habakkuk makes clear that what he will see is what the Lord wants to tell him: “I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.” [Habakkuk 2:1b] The events seen by the prophet will be interpreted as the word of God to him, and an answer to his complaint. God will reveal his purpose to the prophet (and thus to the wider community of Israel) through the events the prophet will see.

In Ezekiel, the prophet is lifted up in the Spirit of the Lord to act as a sentinel. At first, it seems that this sentinel role is a traditional, verbal one:

Mortal, I have made you a sentinel for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. [Ezekiel 3:17]

The prophet has the responsibility to pass on the verbal admonitions of the Lord. However, towards the end of the book, the role of the sentinel is explained. If the sentinel sees a sword coming upon the land of Israel, he is to warn the people. This is not just a practical, military, role: as the Lord warns: “if any who hear the sound of the trumpet do not take warning, and the sword comes and takes them away, their blood shall be upon their own heads.” [Ezekiel 33:4]. The people shall not just be killed, but judgement is upon them as well. The Lord then applies the role, in analogy, to the prophet: “if you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, and they do not turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but you will have saved your life.” [Ezekiel 33:9]

We’ll press this image of the priest as Watchman a little further in the next post.

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘The Grey Havens’, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, (London: HarperCollins, 1991 [1955]), pp.1068-1069. [↩]

Choirs and Articles

The changing rooms of Durham Choir School at the end of a school term is a bit like the Church of England : full of Thirty-Nine articles, which nobody very much wants.

Attributed to John Grove, in a talk by Canon Martin Warner, Rochester Cathedral, 16 September 2002

If you haven’t already discovered Fr Christian Troll and his commentary on the world from a GAFCON perspective, then you must:

Since tomorrow is Big Pete Akinola’s official welcome to the “pilgrims” in Jerusalem, it’s less than a day before everything really takes off. My only disappointment has been learning that Bishop Venables has not yet shown up, and appears to have copied my strategy. I should have known better than to trust my advice to a man who can claim three alpacas and llama comprise a bona-fide congregation.

Huge Tragedy
John Ibbitson, of the Globe and Mail, on 14 September 2002 referred to an alleged conspiracy to murder an OPP police officer in Brockville in December 1999.

…the police and the local Crown attorney became convinced that they had prevented a tragedy of CNN proportions…

(… a tragedy of CNN proportions … Can a tragedy get any bigger?)