Responding To Religious Weirdness

Browsing blogs this week, I came across two interestingly contrasting posts: both responding to religious people doing weird things, but in very different ways.

As I suspect many of you are aware, today is the day of The Rapture, according to US radio preacher Harold Camping and his Family Radio network. Predictions of this sort happen all the time, of course,  but this one has been publicised more aggressively than most (helped perhaps by the fact that 'non-commercial' Family Radio is said to be worth some 120 million dollars, which they presumably don't see much point in hanging onto). Now US atheists are said to be planning post-Rapture parties later today to celebrate still being here.

Earlier this month, following the killing of Osama Bin Laden, many news media published a photo showing President Obama and others in the White House. One minor newspaper, Der Zeitung, the house paper of a Brooklyn-based Hasidic sect, caused a furore by publishing the photo with the women present airbrushed out. This was in line with the paper's editorial policy of not printing pictures of women, "because of laws of modesty". To my mind, laws of truthfulness suggest that, in that case, you print pictures which genuinely have only men in, you don't doctor images to hide the the presence of women. Feminists, of course, had a field day.

Two well publicised examples of weird things being done by religious people ... note, by the way, that I am carefully not saying they are (necessarily) weird people - just people doing weird things. Inevitably, blogs worldwide (not to mention Facebook and Twitter) took up the subjects, in their many and varied ways. Two blogs I follow (you can see both in my sidebar) made me think, by taking radically different approaches to this weirdness.

One blog, by the English Bishop of Buckingham, went for righteous indignation: how dare these Hasidic editors oppress women in this way. The title of the post, Airbrushing Out Women, indicates his take on the subject. My reading of his post is that he is taking a small group doing something weird (and wrong), then loading a whole pile of other sins onto them, like a Levitical scape-goat, which he can then blast away at, to a chorus of approval from his like-minded choir. Standard fare for the religious right (to generalise unfairly), but a little disappointing in a highly intelligent writer who I see as generally on the liberal wing of 'moderate'.

Another blog, by US author Rachel Held Evans, took a rather more thoughtful (and humble) approach to the Rapture story. Yes, Rampling and his followers are doing something weird, yet another demonstration of the daftness of religion. But, for Held Evans, that's a reason to look at ourselves. Not to bask in how wonderful and right-on we are, at least in comparison, but to ask ourselves what strange things we do; how our behaviour is sometimes similarly weird. Also, if we are less weird than some other people, might that reflect on a lack of commitment to our professed faith? 

It's easy to mock and attack others for the strange things they do, but are we really always so rational in our behaviour? It's part of human nature to have odd beliefs that we don't question, and to do weird things sometimes - religious, agnostic, atheist, whatever. Mocking and attacking people, for example. Is that really such a wonderful way to behave?

The Prince Of Wales In Caversham

I've mentioned the PoW several times in previous posts, but I thought it was worth its own ramble today.

Something I only realised recently is that the Prince of Wales is actually part of a small chain of pubs - it seems the same team also run the Fisherman's Cottage and the Rising Sun. It's a very long time since I last went to either of those, but my memory of the Fisherman's Cottage is that it is next to the Kennet, over in Newtown, and seemed mostly focussed on the lunchtime office workers' trade, whilst the Rising Sun is an edge-of-town-centre pub which (back then) had a bit of an unfriendly reputation. As you can probably tell from the links I've put in, there's not much information on the web about either, although it seems that the Rising Sun are also featuring weekly live music and are starting to do food. Clearly the team responsible for the three pubs are not really into posting much info on the internet. Still, I reckon they've done a good job on the Prince, so if you live near either of the other two, they have to be worth a visit.

Like many pubs these days, the Prince has a fairly sizeable and pleasant outdoor area, to cater for smokers and anyone who fancies getting out of the main building and breathing lovely vehicle fumes from Prospect Street. A couple of Fridays ago I turned up, on my bike, to find the outdoor section completely full. Indoors it was like a Tokyo bullet train - absolutely packed. The reason was a local band showcase, with four local bands all playing on the same evening. I watched about half a set from one band, who were excellent, but claustrophobia took over in the interval and I squeezed my way out and left. Maybe they should do fewer local bands at once but more often?

Tonight they had The Generaters playing - to a busy but (thankfully) not completely packed audience - it's the first gig in a while where I've felt motivated to stay to the very end (life's a bit complicated and very tiring recently). They weren't perfect by any means, but were very enjoyable. Basically they play covers in and around the borderland between rock and funk. At times they really hit the groove and were brilliant, but they kept falling back out again. There was a tension between a younger singer and bass player, with an older guitarist and drummer, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. The lowlight of the set was a version of Queen's We Will Rock You, where the guitarist just went AWOL  (try to imagine the song without the lead guitar parts, and you'll see why it didn't work), followed by what I assume was AC/DC's Highway To Hell, completely testosterone-free. The main highlight was the encore, something about 'burning your sex'(?), where the guitarist and bass player swapped instruments and the singer finally persuaded several men to come up and 'dance'; but an honourable mention has to go to a really good cover of Bowie's Spiders From Mars during the first session.

I did plan to insert a photo of The Generators from a previous visit to the Prince into this post, but their Flickr albums block copying, so I can't.

Somewhat ironically, I seem to be visiting the Prince of Wales more often since we moved further away from it - as well as the Saturday night live bands (and occasionally Friday too) they also do excellent Thai food, so the two of us sometimes pop over for that also (the kids aren't keen on Thai, which is a bit of a pain, but they are old enough to be left to their own devices from time to time). The beer is more expensive, but far better kept, than the horrible big-chain pub down the road, and it is a genuine, friendly, community pub, which has to be good news.

PS: I meant to mention that on the 'Local Bands' night I dropped my coin purse somewhere in the PoW. When I popped around next day in the slight hope someone might have found it, there it was behind the bar waiting for me. As I said, a proper community pub.

Judgement Day For Lib-Dem Liars?

Tomorrow (Thursday, 5th May) is local elections day in England. This is a chance for all of us to make clear to all politicians how we feel about outright, bare-faced lying in elections.

A year ago we had the full UK parliamentary elections. In the run-up to these, every Liberal Democrat MP signed a personal pledge to vote against any increase in university tuition fees. This was a personal promise, given without qualifications, by each MP. It wasn't a manifesto, if-we-get-power-and-everything-is-as-we-expect, sort of promise. It was just a simple pledge, made in writing. It gained the Lib-Dems a lot of extra votes, because many people in this country believe that having a skilled and educated population is vital to our successful future as a nation.

As it turned out, the election result was inconclusive, so the Tories offered the Liberal Democrats an illusion of power providing they sold out their electorate and reneged on their promises. Something like two-thirds of them did precisely that: selling out their constituents for a seat at (or near) the top table. The rest of the MPs, and the rest of the Liberal Democrat party, condoned this betrayal by failing to call for deselection of MPs who broke their promises to their voters, and failing to replace Nick Clegg as party leader (or to remove the whip from Vince Cable, the architect of the betrayal).

The assumption seems to be that the British electorate has such a short memory that we'll have forgotten about this by the time of the next election.

I call on all voters to go out tomorrow and vote against your Liberal Democrat candidate - vote for Labour, or Green, or Tory ... even Pirate or Monster Raving Loonie if they are standing in your constituency. But vote against outright barefaced lying. Maybe, if their share of the vote is close enough to zero, the Lib Dems will rediscover their conscience, dump their cynical power-hungry leaders, and get out of that destructive coalition.

Love Wins By Rob Bell

When the religious movers and shakers, the guys with the power and the influence, are vigorously driving people away from God with messages about how hateful and judgemental He is, what can you do about it? If you're Jesus, you walk around Galilee and Judea, teaching and healing in the name of God. If you're Rob Bell you write a book. Either way, the intent is to show that God really is a God of love and faithfulness. But in doing so, they also show up the haters as being far, far from God, and they will want their revenge.

The religious right in the US were out even before Love Wins was published - they didn't care what it said, they just wanted to attack Rob Bell. Here in the UK they're not so blatant, but I was interested to read in this month's Christianity magazine an article arguing that without Hell in the message churchgoers wouldn't be able to witness to Jesus. Curiously Greg Downes, the article's author, goes on to say that universalism - the idea that everybody will eventually be saved - only works if certain sections of Scripture are distorted or disregarded. The irony of this line is that Love Wins gives a lot of examples of Bible passages which Downes has to ignore or distort to dismiss the universalist position. Actually, I think Love Wins is probably the most overtly Scripture-based book that Bell has written.

Once you read the book, it is clear that Rob Bell is not proposing universalism anyway. What he is doing is pointing out that the Christian faith, the historical sweep of mainstream orthodox Christian thinking, is much broader than the bigots would have you think. Variants of universalism have been around a long time and are not necessarily anti-Biblical. The tension between salvation of a remnant and salvation of the whole world is a Scriptural tension: the range of passages is there and we have to accept that we are not God and we don't know everything. In the meantime we are called to be grace-full and loving in our differing interpretations.

For Bell it is God's love which has the last word, yet God's love allows the freedom to say 'no'. So he is not a universalist, but he does believe that God will give every chance He can for every person to respond by choosing life.

Bell's genius is that he writes very well and very clearly, in a modern open style which avoids the jargon and religious nonsense. He writes for anyone interested in living life better, free-er, deeper; for anyone who recognises a spiritual side to life, but needs more than the Pharisees with their blaring megaphones can offer.

This is very readable and interesting book: I don't agree with everything Bell says, but I do suggest you read it for yourself. I strongly recommend it.

Hospices & Healing

Several weeks ago we had an excellent visiting preacher at Caversham Baptist. He preached about healing - which is easy to preach about badly, hard to preach well - and presented it in terms of the Kingdom of God breaking through into our 'ordinary' world. It is unpredictable and often unexpected, but when it does break in you can only wonder and give thanks.

He gave an example of someone he knew who has cancer, of a generally fairly treatable form, and was undergoing chemo. But there was a complication and she had been taken into hospital - very poorly indeed - where she just wasn't responding to treatment. Because she was so poorly they were about to stop the chemo, with long term consequences. The preacher and the young woman's mother prayed for her healing, then he left. A couple of days later, there she was, with her mother, walking into town, looking positively perky.

This story begs a lot of questions, of course. Was it God doing the healing, or was it the treatment at the hospital? If it was God, then why did she still have cancer, and still need the long course of chemo with no guarantee of the result at the end? Why didn't God just fix everything for her ... indeed why not fix it for everyone in the hospital? You could worry about the questions, or you could just look at this young woman who had been really unwell and now was out and about, living freely. And you could just thank God for that.

Some years ago, my wife worked at the Sue Ryder Hospice, out at Nettlebed. They've broadened their clientele a little since, but back then they mostly worked with people suffering from terminal illnesses. This gives a rather different view of what 'healing' means. In hospitals they tend to be mostly concerned with patching up your body and sending you home 'mended'. In hospices dealing with terminal care, the body isn't going to be patched: mending it isn't an option. Instead hospices look at enhanced quality of life, at relationships, at alleviating suffering: at the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the patient and of their friends and family. Many (although certainly not all) of the staff are Christians who regularly pray. But in most cases praying for longer lives for their patients isn't meaningful, instead they pray for healing and wholeness and peace, as each individual person comes to the end of their life.

At the church service, the preacher did one of those "raise your hand if you want to be prayed for" things. Fair enough, I guess, although I'm not a big fan. Then he did the slightly cringey, "I'm feeling there's someone here who has problems with their right arm" bit. In a congregation of some 80 people, ranging from 20's to 80's or 90's, there's bound to be someone with a sore arm. As it happened that included me, but to be honest I wasn't concerned about anyone praying for my arm. If we were going to have a time of prayer for the Kingdom of God to break through, I had a much higher priority.

Someone I know, and like, and respect, had spiralled completely out of control. Her life had crashed, she was in an utter mess, and it was not at all obvious how she could possibly get out in one piece. So I prayed for her, desperately. A day or two later, there was a development which looked like it was just going to make things worse. In practice, though, it moved her out of her pit of utter despair and into a place where she has the possibility of - slowly and painfully - rebuilding her life. She's not out of the woods by a long shot: sometimes it still looks as if she just wants to lose everything; but still she now has a chance at life and hope and rebuilding. As miracles go it might seem a bit low-key, and maybe it would have happened anyway, but that's no reason for me not to thank God for the change.