‘The cultural mood might just be shifting’

A few thoughts from Oxford

Token photo of Oxford University. Oxford may be a car factory with a university attached, but you can still capture nice shots. Thanks to Nikita Ti on Unsplash.

In a super piece published in the Gospel Coalition website, journalist Carolyn Morris-Collier wrote about her surprising experiences while studying for a master’s at Oxford University. Even if if you edit out and allow for the way US Christians’ eyes go all misty when things Oxford are mentioned, it’s an interesting piece. A Christian, she expected ‘aggressive antagnonism’. What she found was ‘unexpected spiritual openness’.

She gave some reasons:

  • Nobody, of her generation, trusts institutions any more. ‘Maybe people are hungry to be guided by more transcendent principles instead of man-made institutions vulnerable to cultural conditions and corruption.’
  • Community: ‘The church’s concrete invitation into communal life … answers a culture-wide longing sharpened by the individualism of modern society.’
  • The transcendent: ‘Many people in my generation have grown up in atheist households without exposure to religious communities or spiritual teachings … In my conversations, even staunch skeptics light up when asked if they’ve ever experienced one of these unexplainable moments of wonder.’
  • The anxiety of wandering in an ethical wilderness: ‘Having a religious faith, some sort of trellis on which to build your emotional and moral life, sounds less tiring than conjuring your own beliefs and ethical systems … Suddenly, a moral system like Christianity, meant to produce virtuous, wise, and respectful individuals, may not seem so stifling or oppressive anymore.’

All super stuff, and chiming with what the major UK-based student Christian Christian movement, UCCF, is saying about students across the country. They are re-writing some of their study material less around the theme of ‘is it true?’ and more concerned with’show me that it works.’

Unpolitics

and breathe…

AI-generated image by Craiyon

We have had a lot of politics in recent years, or maybe it’s just me, but I found Keir Starmer’s first words outside Downing St on July 5th 2024 refreshing:

To restore service and respect to politics, end the era of noisy performance, tread more lightly on your lives

I am not missing (in the UK scene at least) the burlesque, the cries of ‘look at me!’ and the fighting over who gets to drive the clown car.

Even if the UK has temporarily rounded up the pub-bores who were roving wild and swinging like apes on the levers of power, unworthy people remain in charge in many other places around the world. You can feel depressed and powerless in the face of it.

Perhaps we needn’t, though. I am reading through, for the second time, Richard Bauckham’s book ‘The Theology of the Book of Revelation.

Really keen readers of this blog will know that I have wanted to read this volume for some time, and I have finally managed to do at a decent price via my subscription to the wonderful Perlego. Prof Bauckham wades into the Book of Revelation, disdaining the many authors and preachers who treat it as their own clown car. He is Scots-Presbyterian sober, theologically focussed, academically on top of things, devotionally hearted, and every dry paragraph can be mined for the good stuff.

It’s political. The rest of the New Testament, in my reading, isn’t really. The Roman Empire is a given. Luke, in particular, is keen to show the reasonableness of Roman rulers when he can. But all that political tiptoeing gets shoved out of the way in Revelation. Rome is a harlot, Babylon, wiping her mouth between lovers. The cultural discourse that accepts all this is a false prophet. They won’t be reformed. They are heading for the lake of fire. They will be entirely replaced with the City of God: a city still, but one not wormy with exploitation and injustice.

Prof Baukham notes a fascinating thing. What gets us to that happy place is not ‘politics’ but faithfulness. Not politics but ‘unpolitics’ perhaps.

In Bauckham’s telling, Revelation’s visions teach theological truth. Seals are broken on the scroll of history, and along come disasters on a quarter of the earth. But nothing shifts. Trumpets blow, and along come disasters on a third of the earth. And nothing shifts. Seven thunders roar (perhaps heralding disasters for half the earth) but they are held off. Why? Disasters don’t lead to lasting change, to repentance. What does make a difference? When you add to the disasters the faithful witness of the Church. That’s the picture in Revelation 11 of two prophets (you need two witnesses to establish a matter) who are martyred. Everyone parties initially. The ‘world’ has won. But then…

But after the three and a half days the breath[b] of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on.

13 At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. (Revelation 11:11-13)

A great universal repentance follows the martyrdoms. In a reversal of Elijah’s day (when a remnant of seven thousand was preserved) a remnant of seven thousand is lost but the rest give ‘glory to the God of heaven’.

This theme recurs in Revelation 14 when there are two harvests, one, ‘the harvest of the earth’ for gathering the good grain into the barn; another for grapes for the ‘winepress of God’s wrath’.

And it recurs again in Revelation 15 where the faithful witnesses re-write the Song of Moses (sung after the Exodus) for a new and better deliverance:

Who will not fear you, Lord,
    and bring glory to your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
    and worship before you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.”
(Revelation 15:4)

What brings the monumental change? What makes ‘all nations’ come? The faithful witness of God’s people. I absolutely love this.

Of course there is a calling and obligation for some people to serve in politics. But for the rest of us, deep, lasting change at the national level is brought about by what? By living faithfully for Jesus and bearing testimony to him. This is the mountain-moving act. Slow, steady, patient … this is the mountain-moving act.

In the United States, at the moment, the New Apostolic Movement is busy ‘mapping spiritual strongholds’ and seeking to overthrow them. (As described in a fine piece of journalism in The Atlantic.) They are hungry and zealous for God and for reform. I unfortunately believe they are being played by the current President Elect, who has co-opted them. I studied under Pete Wagner, the first and most influential academic to write about this stuff, and I appreciated Pete Wagner, but I do not agree with him here. It isn’t revolutionary holy struggle that gets us Christians where we want to be. It isn’t ‘spiritual mapping’. It isn’t politics as such–politics follows the path others have beaten down.

It is faithfulness.

We know this from the psalms:

Do not fret because of those who are evil
    or be envious of those who do wrong;
for like the grass they will soon wither,
    like green plants they will soon die away
.

Trust in the Lord and do good;
    dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart
. (Psalm 37:1-4)

Unpolitics. The superpower.

Why not me?

Healing seemed to come quickly in the New Testament

Photo by Johannes Roth on Unsplash

Today (yesterday as you read this), my wife and I listened to the Pray as you go app as we often do, a little daily dose of Ignatian spirituality. The passage was about the person with leprosy who said to Jesus, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean’ and Jesus’ reply, ‘I am willing! Be clean.’

My body was still upside down after our very recent and lovely holiday in Singapore. We had arrived back three days earlier. I was extremely breathless, perhaps exacerbated by jet lag. The previous evening it had taken me many minutes and several stops to walk the 200 yards in the dark and cold to our post box and I was frightened.

My first thought on hearing the passage was ‘why not me?’

But this was followed by a second thought: ‘It is you, and has been you.’

This lifted my spirits as I realized it was true. It was true in the larger sense 12 years ago when I recovered from a coma in which I was expected to die after my church held a 36-hour prayer vigil. But it was also true in the lesser senses of other bad times and fears negotiated. It was true in the smallest sense of daily acts of grace and goodness to my life and soul. I am a child of the kingdom! What a thing. I am a beneficiary of the power of Christ! Goodness and mercy has pursued me all my life! The (remaining) light and momentary afflictions are not to be compared with the glory to be revealed. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

This time of year we are also putting away the cards and letters received over Christmas, and I see these tendrils of love and faithfulness extending into lives all over the place. So many grateful! So many restored, or maintained, in life and health!

Why not me? It is us. In the midst of the shadows all around, it is us.