kicked in the privates

After hearing and reading Michael Gove‘s comments about the dominance of the privately educated in pretty much every aspect of public life (from the Cabinet to Olympic medal winners to comedians) it caused a little recurring demon to unravel its wings within me. My dad always used to call me an inverted snob, being as I am as middle-class as they come (in the Purley sense, not the Kate Middleton sense) but never really liked that and pretended not to be. My university never had a ‘t’ in it, for example.   

I’ve always been hyper-sensitive to the dominance of the wealthy elite. And now I am in church leadership it seems even more prevalent. I go to clergy gatherings and the demon roars. From the (stereotype alert) evangelicals in their chinos (before they were trendy) and brown loafers to the (anglo-)catholics in their black suits and shiny shoes, from the New Wine obsession with v-necks casually slung over shoulders to the Walsingham set counting vestment stitches and comparing organ voluntary favourites, we in the C of E are awash with the privately educated.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with being privately educated. After all, if your parents choose to inflict their principles on you, you can’t be blamed, and you must do your best to fight the system, regain a sense of community, ethics and discard the knowledge that you have a right to succeed (*tongue in cheek*). There is of course nothing inherently wrong with a mixed-economy education system, especially when everyone pays for the state system whether or not they use it. 

But my thinking is this: why does it seem that so many clergy are from the private system? When I originally tweeted about this, other questions came up: what about Bishops, surely the percentage of those privately educated is huge. Why is this? For me, there is something about being in church hierarchy which means you begin to get obsessed with things ‘ordinary people’ are disconnected from: vestments, golf, literature, yourselves, and other privately educated people. Like Bishops.

I could of course be very wrong. And this could all be irrelevant. I have no figures to back up my thinking. And the thing about Jesus is that he uses all sorts to lead his people, regardless of background, and even despite their background. From the most annoying private school churn-out to the salt-of-the-earth rough diamond with no social graces, and even the left-leaning middle-class university-educated  mocha-drinking inverted snob like me.

Thank God. 

There’s just something worrying about it. It does matter. Doesn’t it? 

There, I’ve kicked the demon in the privates and it’s back in its box. 

I began thinking about this because of blogs by Jon Kuhrt and Sarah Mullally.

shrinking your camel

A turn of the page couldn’t reveal two more different approaches to the good news. I was reading the latest edition of Christianity Magazine and p18 had an article about the so-called Machine Gun Preacher, a hard-core Christian who uses machine guns to rescue stolen African children in Uganda/Sudan in the name of Jesus, and is the subject of a recent film of that name. Controversial, obviously.

The previous page had a simple interview with an ‘ordinary’ person with an even more controversial theology yet one that slips under the radar of respectability.

The interview was with the top man in RK Capital Management LLP, which runs one of the biggest industrial metals hedge funds in the world. He is known as Mr Copper because of the fund’s significant role in the copper market. He attends St Helen’s Bishopsgate. All fine so far.

© 2011 Thomas Lekfeldt/Moment/Redux

It is well-known that conditions in Zambian copper mines are not good; many are run by Chinese-state companies that routinely flout labour laws, according to Human Rights Watch. So he was asked whether, as one of the biggest buyers of copper in the world, he could influence conditions of workers in the mines in a country where copper is 75% of the country’s exports and 2/3 of Government revenue. Surely the workers would be pleased to have a Jesus-following Bible-believing man of influence on their side?

No.

He washed his hands of any responsibility for their working conditions, saying that if he were to do anything, it would be to import “God-fearing gospel-believing ministers into Zambia, because once hearts are changed, improvements are made.”

Unless it means him, of course. Has his heart been changed, so improvements can be made?

Perhaps even more distressing was the fact he made claim to Jesus’ encounter with the Rich Young Ruler as a way of reconciling his wealth and inaction. Somehow he came to the conclusion that money is neutral.  He has completely missed the point. This is an extremely wealthy man who makes his money, in part, gambling on the future of copper mined in extremely dangerous circumstances. Were people like him to have a direct encounter with Jesus in the manner of the rich young ruler, I do not think they would get away with claiming their wealth was neutral and their hands clean.

There is a problem with City of London ghetto theology that justifies turning blind eyes, washing of hands and hiding behind claims to “preach gospel” before improving living conditions for copper slaves . I’m sure we can guess which one the workers would call good news. “Thinking of the cross at the beginning of the day”, as he says he does, makes no difference to their lives. Few can influence copper mines. When you are one of the few who can, yet hide behind “the gospel” as an excuse for inaction, the Jesus movement  is in a sorry place.

Money is not neutral. Jesus said it is harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  This is a challenge to little me, but surely a massive challenge to to Mr Copper and the many who work in the City and think like that: shrink your camel.

Because that needle is gonna hurt.

cathedral of consequences

There are and have to be consequences to our actions. That is what community is. As soon as some become beyond consequences community disappears and humanity disappears. You gamble, you might win. But you might lose. And if you lose you take the hit. That is economics. Economics is not something that exists on it’s own in the way Robert Peston talks about it. Economics is humans in relationship with each other. 

Wealthy businesses  and banks living in a world where there are no financial consequences to themselves should be showing as naive, deluded and warped a sense of reality as X-factor auditioners with blatantly no talent. Except they get away with it. 

This is why there are camps outside St Paul’s Cathedral. And this is why they are shouting and protesting and no-one is listening, because no-one knows who to shout at, and those that need shouting at are happy not to listen. It makes no difference to them.

St Paul’s however, did listen. And stole the news headlines. Why did they do it? Well, I think that it’s down to consequences again. In my experience most of the people who work in cathedrals are naturally averse to a) risk b) change and c) quick-thinking. They are more used to preserving ancient (or Victorian) worship that hasn’t changed for centuries and to be suddenly placed in the middle of a national story that was moving fast took them by surprise. Hence, caution. Always caution. And I imagine they have many links and ties with those who work in the LSX next door. We are the establishment after all.   

...loose the chains of injustice...

What can we learn from it all? That the church needs to be a prophetic voice against greed and people living without consequences. That that is part of our worship. That is our worship. That is more important than church services. More important than order in worship. More important than health and safety. And more important than caution. Following Jesus is about risk.

And it’s important to remember, as it’s so easy to criticize, that Jesus would have words to say to the protestors, to the church, and to us, as much as to the FTSE100‘s on 50% pay rise. 

There will be consequences. There must be. Keep protesting.

george’s [one holy catholic] marvellous medicine

I am an accidental Anglican, by virture of a beautiful lady I fancied who I followed to church back in the 90′s. I’ve now been married to the beautiful lady for 10 years and an undercover Baptist (erm, Anglican) vicar for 6. I don’t mean I’m married twice. I’m the vicar.

Accidentally and reluctantly, I was drawn into the strange concoction of personalities and traditions that is the Anglican church. A bit like George’s Marvellous medicine, it often feels like someone was having a laugh when they decided to put us all together. Po-faced cassock-wearing catholics / cords-and-shirt-wearing evangelicals * [* delete as applicable], too-trendy-jean-and-hoody wearing young upstarts and a whole load of [insert adjective] people across the board.

See what I have just done. Succumbed to the basic human desire to categorise according to prejudice. You are like me, you are not. You are different, so I will stereotype and ridicule, thereby reinforcing my own belief in my innate superiority.

I have just been to a licensing of a vicar in the neighbouring parish, and there could not be a more different church experience. From our low-church mostly evangelical working-class urban thing, to a cathedral-like exposure to choirs and cassocks and incense and posh people in suits and hats and a word called ‘Mass’ and someone called the Mother of God. This can bring out the worst in me. I look around and see so much that seems wrong. 

God seems to be worshiped from such a distance, people seem to need to wear fancy haberdashery and look all solemn to approach their Saviour who bled and died and rose through shit and death so we didn’t need to do just that; where the church seems to say ‘over there, look, God!’ rather than ‘in here? God? amazing!’ Where the incarnation seems to be restricted to the sacrament, like God is bound into some contractual agreement not to cause too many problems by running around like a naughty schoolboy, but only to appear when the priest is there to maintain order…

There I go again. Sometimes prejudice just flops out. The way to challenge prejudice? People. Simple, really.

Image from ASBO Jesus

The way we structure our relationship with God is so precious to us. So it can dominate our thinking. But I meet people from the breadth of church traditions and, mysteriously (and occasionally disappointingly), find them to be genuine. Genuine followers of Jesus. In a very different way, and often in a way I do not understand. And some ways I cannot agree with. And me also for them. I know what I look like. Disrespectful of tradition, casual with the Eucharist,  slouchy with the liturgy and lazy with the proper order of the church. Offensive, even.

But I follow Jesus. And people who fundamentally disagree with me can see that. Mostly.

One of the beauties of the Anglican Church is that we rub up against each others differences all the time. In charitable moments, this feels like a beauty and a gift. In less charitable moments it is frustrating and annoying, because so often we go for the lowest common denominator, bore ourselves to death and it makes me want to leave.

Image from ASBO Jesus

But we follow a subversive rabbi who included in his inner circle Matthew the collaborator and Simon the insurgent and used a Pharisee to build the church so I feel it must be right to try and find our common ground and purpose and try and see each other as people and not representatives of ‘tradition’ or any other kind of label. So I promise to keep trying. Maybe you will too.

That being said, please don’t put me in a cassock, sit me in a straight-line and make me enunciate every word to old hymns like I’m teaching a toddler to lip-read.

house of cards

It’s terrifying when it all comes tumbling down. The world so carefully crafted around you, a world built around friendships and favours, shared interests and mutual fears. A world carefully controlled by the interlocking spiderwebs of self-interest and self-preservation. A world in which the original reason you built  your house of cards is long-forgotten amidst the task of maintaining your current position.

Maybe this is News International. Maybe this is the continuing revelations about deep corruption at the heart of our free press, elected politicians and our Police force. That is certainly a house of cards that is tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. How far will it fall?

It’s made me think about, well, me. Us. About how easy it is to get drawn in, to take a simple and firm foundation and begin to build on it with cards. After all, we are called to influence the world we live in; so it is important to know people to be able to do that. So how do we choose those worth knowing? Card 1. We cannot know everyone, so who do we ditch? Card 2. It is important to have the press onside. Card 3. Better the devil you know. Card 4.

Jesus had an unusual relationship with the ruling elite. They wanted him as one of them, but they couldn’t have him. The Pharisees saw his qualities and some of them saw his truth – see Nicodemus – but he was too risky for them. They had a house of cards they did not want the Spirit to blow through. Position, favour, reputation. White-washed tombs, Jesus called them. Looks great on the outside, but contains only death within. Harsh?

It’s easy to knock those in the public eye. As the webs of deceit and corruption surrounding surrounding News International and our ruling elite are exposed, it is easy to look in righteous anger. And rightly so. Yet in that old cliche from the 90′s, What Would Jesus Do?

Remove the plank from your own eye before you point out the speck in your brother’s.

I know the church has friends in high places. Not just the ‘established‘ church, though of course we probably go as high as it’s possible, what with the Queen being the Supreme Governor of the church and our Bishop’s sitting in the House of Lord’s. There’s also many Christian lobbying groups and think-tanks, from Theos to Ekklesia to CARE to Faithworks and Charities Parliament; there’s well-known and unknown Christians at the heart of our decision-making, like Steve Chalke to Rowan Williams and many others from across the spectrum of evangelical to Catholic, conservative to liberal.

We must pray for them. We must help in holding them all to account, whether we support them or not. Do they get too close, or not close enough? Are they blowing on the house of cards, or helping build one? We’re in it together. We’re about Jesus, not reputation. Kingdom, not personal empire, whether we mix with Prime Ministers or local councillors or the local gang leader.

There’s a lot of houses of cards out there. It’s good to blow on them. It’s not good to sit on them.

Though we cannot help it. After all, what is faith, if not a house of cards?

cooling your calling

Calling is a funny thing. It’s one of those words we use for Christians with worthy Christian… erm, callings. You know, vicars, missionaries, worship leaders, Mike Pilavachi. Calling is for people with extra-ordinary jobs. It’s for people called out of the secular and into the sacred. Not ordinary people. “They” are called. Not “we”.

That of course is not a very Christian view, and has little Biblical basis. It is, however, what is unknowingly and often unintentionally preached.

Which is why it was refreshing on Sunday to have Ann Moore with us at church, a lady who has spent the last 15 years working in Kisiizi hospital in Uganda. A classic case of the “proper” calling? She spoke about faith that changes people, from Hebrews 11. Her point? That our faith must change us, or it is not true faith; that our faith might lead us to an extra-ordinary calling like going abroad. But just as likely it will lead us to an extra-ordinary calling in the place in which we already live.

We are all called to live as disciples, as followers. All are called to submit our lives to Jesus as our lord. This will impact our families, our parenting, our finances, our friendships. It may impact where we live or what we do; or how we do it. Whether we are “just” a mum in an un-supportive marriage or we are a “missionary” in foreign places, the key thing is: are we submitted to Jesus as much as we can be? Being a called abroad doesn’t guarantee it, nor does being called to be at home cancel it out.

I know. I was called home once. I spent a year living and working in Uganda, teaching Old Testament history to Ugandan, Rwandan, Burundi, Congolese and Sudanese students. I know, God has a sense of humour. I explored the possibility that God was calling me abroad longer-term and God said… no. Go home, he said. Go home and work in your own country. So I went home.

back in the day

That is as much of a calling. As is what I am now, being a husband. Being a dad. Being a friend. Being a part of a church. Being in a running club. As is where you are, if you are submitted to Jesus as Lord. He may call us out of where we are to somewhere else. He may not. That is not the point. The point is, do we allow our faith to change us, to inform our decisions, to lead us? Our identity is found in being children of God, followers of the Way, apprentices of Jesus. 

If we get that, then all the guff about one calling being higher up the spiritual scale than another can be left well behind.

comedy hedge fun(d)

I have a heavily suppressed competitive streak. People who rarely win tend to suppress it. Even deny it. I support Liverpool, so I guess that’s understandable. Now I am a regular runner the competitive streak peeps out a little more… though hopefully any (small) victories I have are tempered by the knowledge of what it is to regularly lose. I said hopefully.

going supersonic...

Recently I took part in some leadership training. Part of this was a day run by someone from an unfamiliar world to mine. As an inverted snob I have to make a special effort with the office-based chinos-and-polo shirt chaps, especially when you think they might actually play polo. Anyway, this friendly man with an elusive job description led us in a series of (admittedly great fun!) outdoor puzzles and games in order to stimulate our team-working brains and teach us lots of things that were quite obvious.

That many of us are not primarily motivated by winning. That competition doesn’t always work.

This wasn’t his aim.

puzzled?

He put us in boys & girls teams and set us the task of completing a jumbo jigsaw puzzle as quick as we could. He was very excited by the thought of a competition. We, on the other hand, were excited by the fact he had included “fun” on his list of essential factors in a team. So we decided to include in our timed puzzle challenge a comedy run from the nearby hedge. It was a sunny day after all.

This bothered him. But it will slow you down, he said.

Yes, we replied, but think what fun we’ll have!

We were both right. The girls team figured out a more efficient way of building the puzzle. It seems working in silence and the absence of a comedy run makes building quicker. But they looked so serious! We were actually not far behind them, and yet seemed to have a lot more fun. And winding up polo-man far outweighed the cost of not winning a little made-up competition.

We could draw many tenuous sweeping conclusions from this experience. I just throw it into the current political obsession with competition and market-forces being the solution to all problems. Competition may be the core motivation for a certain type of human in a certain type of environment. Like the ones in power. Wealthy successful white men love a competition especially when the dice is loaded so they always win. See banks. See Serco. See power companies. See privatisation.

Competition is not everyone’s motivating factor. Plain efficiency is not everyone’s aim. Think of farming – when efficiency becomes the primary motivation over love, care and time then the land starts falling apart and needing artificial help to stay productive. Like over-used fields many of us are needing artificial help to stay productive, in the form of tablets or alcohol or therapy. This is not  life in balance. This is not how we are meant to be.

Let’s not get drawn into constant competition to generate the mirage of perfect efficiency. We are all humans after all. There is no such thing as an economy, just humans relating to each other. So if you are a boss, if it is up to you, I invite you to lead by example and institute the comedy run today.

You may even find people work harder. I’m sure they’ll be happier.

the forest-tree commission

The ascension is a funny old thing. Possibly the most important thing in the world. Well, apart from the erm, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and other rhyming words. Anyway, more on that here. Today I thought I’d try a different way to explain how the ascension means Jesus is King of the world when it looks like he’s out to lunch. And it’s all tied up with the Great Commission…

Chequers Tree (© Andrew Dunn)

There was once a man who bought a forest. He paid a huge price for this forest. But people laughed at him. Because it wasn’t a forest, it was vast wilderness. There was nothing growing except some weeds and scrubland bushes.

 His friends tried to help. This is not a forest, they said. To turn this into a forest why not take some mud from the ground, and fashion it into the shape of a tree. They showed him. The clay tree was rather impressive. But it did nothing. It did not grow, it did not seed, it didn’t even blow in the wind. In fact, soon it dried out and crumbled to the ground.

They had another idea. Then they suggested he take some of the weeds and bushes and twist them together into the shape of a tree. It was rather impressive. But it did nothing. It did not grow, it did not seed, it did blow in the wind but the wind dried it out and it soon crumbled to the ground.

Smiling, the man took 12 seeds from his pocket. Oak. Birch. Ash. Cherry. Pine. Holding them he imagined all his land covered in this rich mixture of trees. This will make a beautiful forest, he thought to himself.

 He set to work. He dug a small hole, and in the centre of his land he planted the acorn. Then he planted all of his seeds across his land. He gazed across the wilderness. It looked no different. Give it time, he thought. He watered his seeds.

 Some people came by. They laughed at him: how’s your forest coming along, they mocked. I can see a beautiful forest, he said. Most people laughed, and moved on. Some, however, stayed. They were… intrigued. The man and his new friends watered them, tended them, protected them.  And as time went by, the seeds began to grow.

Soon, when the 12 trees blew in the wind, they dropped their own seeds. Some of these seeds landed in good soil, and began to grow. Other small trees grew around the now established original 12 trees.

When this began to happen, the man told his friends he needed to go on a journey to oversee the growth of the forest. He needed to see the big picture. He told them that he was still the owner of this forest, and was entrusting them to tend it.

But it’s not  really a forest, they said, it’s a huge area of wasteland with a few trees in. The others are right.

It will be a forest, he replied, and I want you to tend the forest from its central oak through the wilderness to the edges of my land.

So the man who owned the not-yet-forest entrusted its growth to his friends, whom he had taught. As time went by the trees became a copse, and the copse a forest. There were big trees and small trees and clearings, and the forest attracted birds and insects and animals of all shapes and sizes.

Over time the man’s friends passed on their knowledge of tending and growing the forest to their children, and their children… and so the trees grew and grew and grew.

It turned out that the man really had bought a forest after all.

meetings

I discovered this on the brilliant (and very insightful!) ASBO Jesus site…

*knowing chuckle*

bin laden with questions

The world we live in is flat, was created in 7 days and morality is as black & white as a zebra. There are no further questions.

The thing is, the world appears to be a sphere. Genesis appears not to be attempting to be a construction manual. And the closer you look at a zebra, the more the black and the white hairs seem to be a mixed-up and blended in.

It is important to me that our faith in the resurrected Christ impacts on all areas of our life. And those lives are all mixed up. Which is why sometimes I write about my own faith journey, sometimes about politics, sometimes about music. Because there is no place in which Jesus is not. As Rob Bell said, everything is spiritual. There is no sacred/secular divide. 

Which brings us to the death of Osama bin Laden. Immediately I heard the news, I was concerned about the language that was used. ‘Taken out’, ‘eliminated’, and all kinds of other euphemisms. I was concerned about the celebrations that were taking place in America, though thankfully it would seem only in America. People from Pakistan were killed on 9/11 too, though that is easily forgotten. 

But what difference does me being concerned make? Am I just being pious, do I live in a cloud-cuckoo-land where a fair and just trial for bin Laden would cause more problems than there already were? Maybe. But I think we are right to think about these things. We are right to ask difficult questions to those who act on our behalf. There may well be good answers. But we must ask the questions. Because the Jesus I know was not afraid to ask them. The Jesus I know sought justice for the oppressed and he also sought integrity from the powerful.

Richard Littledale notes how mixed-up those things are in posting this picture:

Image: cdn.theatlantic.com

Many have commented on bin Laden’s death so I won’t repeat what has been said, but provide some links to those discussions. 

Tom Wright caused a bit of a storm by comparing the execution to America’s obsession with ‘exceptionalism’, based on the Wild West model of being beyond the law, writing in the Guardian and quoted by Ian Paul; Will Cookson has offered a response to that and to the question of whether Bishops have anything to say on global political issues. Journalists often criticize them for speaking out,  whilst at the same time reporting what they say. 

Nick Baines responds to the accusations of Bishop’s ‘hand-wringing’ with this example:

For example, my own involvement in Zimbabwe led me to believe that unless and until the rule of law is established there, little else can happen to sort the place out. What should Robert Mugabe learn from the killing of Bin Laden? Either the rule of law is fundamental or it isn’t.

These questions are important. We must be uncomfortable, even if we decide that the situation could be no other way. The moment we stop being uncomfortable, the moment we don’t allow ourselves to be deeply concerned, is the moment we are no longer being ambassadors of the radical, life-changing, transformative and very very resurrected Jesus. Because life is not simple. And Jesus is not on our side.