Category: Review

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;
2 for like the grass they will soon wither,
    like green plants they will soon die away.

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

Unpolitics. The superpower.

The pushback against the autocrats (continued)

I’m enjoying the substack of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who is a scholar of autocracy and is writing with a wide knowledge and perspective on a subject that can seem very gloomy.

But here’s an upbeat assessment from her:

A growing number of countries are not just turning back autocracy but are also making their reborn democracies more robust. V-Dem Institute’s 2023 Democracy Report, “Defiance in the Face of Autocratization,” analyzes eight cases of countries (Bolivia and Slovenia among them) that have made a “U-turn” from autocracy and now qualify as democracies. Since that report appeared we also had the big victory of democratic forces over the far right in Poland (October 2023), and the successful unity play of the French left against a National Rally victory (June 2024).

Nonviolent mass protest remains among the most important ways to show our support for democracy in situations of creeping authoritarianism; to protest injustices and advocate for policy reforms; and, in autocracies, to show the world the government does not speak for us.

She goes on:

What they all share is a validation of nonviolent protest –people coming together in public spaces to express dissent—as a way of doing politics or simply acting on an inner conviction that what is going on in their societies is wrong and they can no longer stay silent.

Depending on the country, non-violent mass protest can be dangerous. But she quotes Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law:

History in the making. We have no idea whether are in the beginning, middle or end of it. But we are sure that history will mark what you have done as something magnificent. History will treat you well. No matter what will happen, your effort is not going in vain.”

It’s not all bad.

The big slow: unwrapping the narrative

A few tweaks, and the Biblical story makes sense

Patient revolution needs an intellectual framework and for those of us who are Christians, our understanding of the Christian picture of God and the world can give us one.

You have to work a bit, though. The Bible isn’t an easy book and plenty of it sits uncomfortably with our 21st century cultures. Not the least of the problems is the book of Genesis, which sets up the whole story but definitely does not sit all that well for those of us brought up on the kind of reporting that checks facts, balances opinions, and prizes cool-headed objectivity.

Which is where Biblical scholarship can, at least in theory, help. And perhaps the most refreshing set of studies I’ve come across were written by John H Walton, now emeritus professor at Wheaton College.

Walton comes from the conservative and evangelical wing of things — twenty years at Moody Bible Institute for example –but his take on the ancient literature is refreshing and helpful.

I’ve just read a book co-authored by him about Noah’s flood. Which is a topic frequently avoided in polite company, but he is arguably rehabilitating it. A few points:

  1. It is, in someone’s poignant words, ‘before theology.’ This is how people in that cultural flow learnt who they were and who God was. Abstract, propositional theology had yet to be invented.
  2. It was written in a different cultural flow than the one we inhabit, and written to different conventions.
  3. The author is not ‘describing an event’ but ‘authoritatively interpreting what God was doing’. Genesis’ flood account is ‘a rhetorically shaped account of an ancient flood tradition’. You can’t reconstruct what actually happened from it in the same way you can’t write the story of Guernica from Picasso’s painting of it.
  4. It uses hyperbole. As the authors point out, if I say ‘this suitcase weighs a ton’, I am using hyperbole. People of a literalist cast of mind would wonder if I am lying. But I am not lying. They just haven’t grasped the idiom I’m using. Similarly with cataclysmic events in the Bible. To show their cosmic significance, hyperbole is deployed. If the flood really happened, it was not universal, but in the Genesis interpretation, it is described in universal terms so that we see its cosmic significance.
  5. The big picture it paints is of
    • God bringing order to chaos, so that the whole of creation becomes his dwelling-place
    • Death as God’s judgement on sin, sometimes through catastrophe, sometimes through old age, but always and everywhere, ‘death reigns’, with sorrow and sadness always following.
    • But that’s the backing music. The melody is that God reigns even more supremely through kindness and mercy, in and through his care for his people, who are themselves (or are supposed to be) order-bringers and enjoyers of his company.

So, we can see a picture of God that one day involves

  • God’s whole creation re-formed as his dwelling place
  • Humans, in relationship with him, working towards that final destination
  • Not, it is true, walking a straight line.
  • Us happy to be slow in that work, not seeing its beginning or forcing its end, but fulfilling our bit of the story.

The silence where God is

Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash

The team I am part of took time out this week to talk about rest, stopping, putting work aside–and silence.

One of the things to come out of this for me was that there is a silence where God isn’t–like you are battering on the door but as (C S Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed) all you hear is the further sound of doors beyond being shut and locked. (If you even hear that.)

But there’s also a silence where God is. You might be wanting him to speak. You may have lots of questions. And there’s silence. But it’s a silence where God is, just is, just is here with you. Here with you.

You can jump off from this into further thoughts, all helpful for the patient revolutionary. Perhaps the main one is this: the world doesn’t stop when I stop. Even, my world doesn’t stop when I stop. I can go do something else, or I can do nothing, or whatever I want. I can take delight in things. I can spend time in companiable silence.

For those of us with a Christian bent, this is an expression of faith. The voices that call us to activity, to taking responsibility, are so strident. It’s a statement of faith to say to them, bad luck, I’m not responsible for the Universe, it’s in good hands. I’m checking out, I’m delighting in what I already have. And if just now that’s companiable silence, good.

We were guided in our thinking by the helpful book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero.

Dopamine – our dangerous friend

Just read a fascinating book called ‘Dopamine Nation’ by Dr Anna Lembke: ‘Why our addiction to pleasure is causing us pain’. It’s not clear what faith Dr Lembke has, if any, but I was struck by how Christiany, how committed to patient revolution, were some of her remedies. (Some other reviewers really hate the book for this.)

First, the problem. Dopamine, a happy hormone, is what we give ourselves when we reward ourselves, and evolved to keep us doing good things that make us healthy.

The problem is that our society is awash with unhealthy ways of giving ourselves a squirt of dopamine– rewarding us for unhealthy behaviours. So, for example, sugary and fat-laden foods; swiping on your phone; recreational drugs; shopping; opening a bottle; a long list of things we compulsively do but which aren’t that good for us.

Worse, our body adjusts to its squirts of dopamine. We come to need more reward to get the same feeling. We feel scratchy and irritated if we’re not doing whatever gives us our dopamine rush, and so we go back to it to get some more. So we spiral into addiction. Among the most compelling parts of the book are stories of her own addiction (she mentions an obsession with vampire romances) that are sobering because they show any of us can go there — if not with vampire romances, with something else.

The people who make it to Dr Lembke’s office are seriously addicted to lots of things. But her solutions are fascinating. They include:

  1. Making it difficult to do the thing you’ve been doing. She got rid of her Kindle, by which she’d been loading up on free books with no-one watching. A person troubled with sex-addiction had to root out all the triggers from his life, some of which were not triggers for other people. This is strikingly like the Bible’s command to ‘flee’ sexual immorality; get out of there.
  2. Quit, and endure the deep unpleasantness that comes from quitting. It will pass.
  3. Develop a habit of radical honesty. Again, this echoes scripture, ‘confess your sins to one another’.

What do you get back out of this? A happy life, untroubled by shame or secrets, not plagued with anxiety, back among the humans.

Plenty of people have issues with this book, but as someone starting from no-where, I enjoyed it.

Simple

Am in the midst of a book that my son bought me, lamenting ultra-processed food (UPF). Not news for many, I suppose, but an intriguing read for me. UPF is food that contains ingredients that you wouldn’t find in an ordinary kitchen. It’s put in to make products cheaper, longer lasting, easier; food designed for the poor.

I’m not sure I quite buy the idea that Big Food is evil like Big Tobacco (but I might be wrong). While Big Food makes a profit for shareholders, a lot of the shareholders who are thus enriched are poor people with pension funds, not the uber wealthy. And I think the scientists behind UPF were doing their best to make interesting and enjoyable food available to the masses. I’m sure I could, given a few changes of path, have become a food technologist myself with altruistic aims, spending my life on a good thing, not needing to channel my inner Cruella d’Eville.

But there are problems. Because UPF isn’t food, though it may have been once, it isn’t (so the argument goes) suited for human consumption. Obesity and many diseases follow in its train, and it targets the poor and nestles among those who struggle to make ends meet. (Or as Terry Pratchett described a maker of dodgy sausages, struggling ‘to make ends meat’.)

There are problems with this kind of book. How many books have been published over the years promising to be the definitive answer to the problems of good diet? Many. How many were backed by research? Many. How many have fallen out fashion? All of them. What will people think of this theory in 10 or 20 years? We shall see.

And yet the book’s appeal to make and cook food out of simple ingredients that belong in a kitchen, rather than engineered substances that are developed in a factory or delivered by a tanker, is appealing. Today I made a tomato soup for my grandchildren from just four ingredients (tinned tomatoes, an onion, chicken stock, and a wedge of butter. I deployed a slow cooker and a blender.) I make my own granola from honey, a neutral oil like sunflower oil, and oats, adding nuts, seeds and dried fruit and no funny stuff. I make my own bread on the same principles.

Better and deeper: I want to be simple before God. I love the description of bread back in the Old Testament, the bread for offerings: finest flour and the oil of squeezed olives: simple, simple. Pure, actually, because simple. That’s how I want to be before God, finest flour and oil mixed into a cake, not a packaged, complex, looks-good-but-isn’t convenience food.

The quiet revolution in the churches (part 2)

Photo by Bikash Guragai on Unsplash

This is something fascinating going on in Britain (and, I suspect, in the rest of Europe and the Western world):

  • Society is relying more on the social contribution of churches
  • Church attendance is declining
  • Churches are discovering that social action, church growth and discipleship belong inextricably together, and together open the way forward for a season of fresh growth, relevance and impact for the Church.

It is a quiet, slow-burn, patient revolution, my favourite type. It is not centrally organized, but spontaneously has arisen all over the nation. It developed through a decade of austerity and was shocked into further action by the pandemic. I think in a career of observing church trends in the UK, it is the most encouraging thing I have ever seen. It builds on and with other trends in the UK that have moved the needle: the rise of beautiful worship; the flourishing of the alpha course; the development of church-planting churches, networks and movements. There is probably a bunch of dying that the Church still needs to do, but perhaps for the first time in a generation, or longer, there are railway tracks heading into a bright future, and the Church is riding on them.

Here’s a quote from a report produced by the Theos thinktank in 2020, just as the worst of the pandemic was being felt:

Over the past decade, the contribution that the Church of England makes to society through its social action has increased, reflecting an increase in the demand and expectation for it. At the same time, church attendance in the country has continued to decline; by most key metrics, attendance at Church of England services fell between 15% and 20% from 2009-2019. This is the paradox facing the Church of England in 2020: the national church of a nation which is increasingly reliant on its social action and yet less and less spiritually connected to it. 1

The report noted that ‘the Church grows in number and depth when it is present in and connected to its local area, which may be manifested through its social action.’ Its longevity and presence make it well placed. Hospitality and generosity are significant. And ‘participation in social action can also offer a practical route into faith for people who weren’t previously part of the church community.’2

Exciting stuff. And it doesn’t involve massaging church statistics until something positive is squeezed out. It’s everywhere. I see it in the Christmas letters I receive from friends. I see it in my own church which, in other ways, is not exactly a picture of glowing health. I see it elsewhere in Cambridge. And I read it in reports like this one.

Four marks of revival

Photo by Paul Bulai on Unsplash

Four qualities of spiritual revival have recurred throught the centuries. Revivals are:

  1. Popular and populist
  2. Transformative, calling for conversions
  3. Reforming institutions
  4. Devotional – calling forth relationships of love

I’m grateful to Christian History magazine (episode 149) to codify these things and helping us to see that revival in those terms popped up not just among Protestants but at many points in medieval Christianity. It is, of course, exactly what we need today. And (see the two previous posts in this optimistic Advent season), perhaps it is happening.

Book reviews for Christmas

I suppose you can get people presents that are other-than-books.

But why would you?

Justin Brierley: The surprising rebirth of belief in God

Justin Brierley is as good as anyone observing the fickle winds of fashion in thought.

For many years he hosted the podcast Unbelievable which moderated match-ups between atheists and Christians. Moderated is the right word, since Brierley kept the peace and ensured, most times, the conversations were fruitful. You can’t help thinking that if the BBC had the sense to match their reach, they would have headhunted him years ago, a brilliant natural broadcaster with unshowy erudition. Still.

This book takes us through some of what he’s learnt from his ringside seat watching thought-leaders’ wrestle. Mostly it’s a careful account of the disintegration of New Atheist teaching, and some notes on what’s replacing it. He finds a new respect for theism; a renewed respect for the Bible; and some of the people he’s met has, to their surprise, either become committed Christians or thoughtful and sympathetic observers of the Christian faith. It’s a fascinating contemporary summary, leveraging his superpower of finding influential thinkers and inviting them onto his show.

If you, like me, wander into bookshops and have been occasionally surprised by finding sympathy for the Christian faith in unexpected places, this book gives a comprehensive and better researched summary of the shifting weather. It’s super and (for the Christian) heartening.

Justin Brierley offers three exhortations to the church near the end of the book – three things to cling tightly to:
1. Faith and reason
2. The mystery – the Christian faith quickly wanders into a dark woodland of paradox, the beyond-understanding, the ancient, the gnarly, all accompanied by the sound of worship (‘Church bells beyond the stars heard’ George Herbert wrote). Some of those turning to the faith enjoy all this, much more than they do Christian pseudo-rock concerts, or people ‘being discipled’ through a short course of study.
3. A forgiving, accepting community, a powerful force, now that social media has made witch-burning popular again in the outside world.

Super book for anyone wanting to keep up. Grab a copy.

Book reviews for Christmas

This SF novel doesn’t have anything at all to do with theme of the blog–sorry–but it’s really good.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is proper, hard SF, where the plot is driven by science, deeply thought out, a gripping kind of scientific whodunnit, though the question is not ‘what did the murderer do?’ so much as ‘what did the laws of physics come up with next?’

It’s really good, and free of any lit. fic. overhead or pretensions, just a great story, enthrallingly told, for you to eat through without stopping, like a bag of salted peanuts. Loved it.



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