Rob Halligan: Always Heading Home

Really looking forward to welcoming singer-songwriter Rob Halligan back to St Nick's, Beverley. It's free to come, but it would help to know numbers, so if you know you're coming, drop us an email at:

stnicksoffice@gmail.com, leave a message on 01482 863542 or book via Eventbrite here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rob-halligan-always-heading-home-tickets-89276104231 Rob returns to St Nick's, Beverley to perform songs and tell stories from his life. It's quite a story - including a period without a home, and losing his father in the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. Big themes in Rob's songs are forgiveness and the power of love to overcome bitterness and hate. Rob has also done work for Globalcare https://www.globalcare.org - a charity working with refugees in Lebanon on the Syrian border. Rob's set will include new material from his new CD Always Heading Home, as well as tracks from earlier albums. There will be an interval with a licensed bar, when you can have a chat to Rob and buy CDs and merchandise. There will be an opportunity to donate towards expenses, and any surplus on the night will go to Globalcare.

Politicians and Prayers

I heard a discussion on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme today about the new Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, and his Christian faith.

You can listen or download it here

Tim was a colleague of mine at St Martin's College in Lancaster (now Uni of Cumbria) where he worked as a senior administrator in one of the faculties. He sometimes attended our midweek chapel worship when he was on campus, so we had a few conversations. I do remember him talking to me about his decision to go into politics. He's well-liked in his nearby constituency, and the testimony to that is that he held on to his seat in the midst of the demise of the Liberal Democrats at the last General Election.

As far as I am aware, Tim has never made any secret of his Christian faith. It's no surprise that being a Christian means you believe in God, and prayer is one of the fundamental activities. It would be quite weird, therefore, to exclude a whole area of one's life from ever being mentioned in one's own prayers. So it logically follows that a politician who is a practising Christian (or indeed of any other theistic faith) is going to bring their work into their prayers.

What's interesting is that this seemed to disconcert John Humphrys and Polly Toynbee. Polly Toynbee seemed to be saying today that he should avoid giving the impression of consulting God, and that thinking God is there is a private matter. What she didn't seem to understand was that it's not really feasible. Christian prayer is about bringing the whole of yourself to God with all your concerns, fears, hopes, dreams, brokenness, thanksgiving, etc. We don't recognise the notion that there are bits of ourselves we can't pray about.
NB It's worth noting that Tim Farron talked about prayer in response to a question on the subject from John Humphrys..

Of course, the fear that lies behind Polly Toynbee's concerns is that a politician with a religious faith might claim that God is 'on their side'. Many people in faith communities will recognise the issues that can arise if someone moves along the spectrum from saying they have prayed about something (which leaves open the answer, and retains some humility about the result) and saying that God has told them to do something. We sometimes see it in over-controlling church leaders, and it has had tragic results in politics and conflicts. I quite agree that such people are terrifying both for those with religious beliefs and those with none. However, that is not a fair description of MPs who have a faith and practise it. In fact, Christians In Parliament is a cross-party association, which indicates that the most active Christian MPs clearly don't think that God inhabits only their party, or is solely 'on their side'.

The whole discussion struck me as quite amusing this morning at our services today, as we prayed for those who govern and those who represent us. If the established church routinely prays for those who carry political responsibility, then I can't see why politicians shouldn't be free to pray for themselves without criticism.

No doubt Tim Farron will face much more scrutiny as he begins the unenviable task of reviving the fortunes of the Lib Dems. I hope the discussion moves on from where it is now, to the direction he wants to take party policy, and how he might make his party electable again. I don't envy him that job, and I reckon he will need all the prayers he can get.

Sermon on Genesis Chapter 1

Sermon for February 23, 2014 on Genesis 1:1 – 2:3

On December 24 1968, Apollo 8 came round the moon and for the first time, human beings saw the earth rise over a horizon. On that mission they read over the radio from orbit above the moon Genesis chapter 1. We’ve just heard that story of Creation from Genesis Chapter 1. What did you think when your heard it? Was it as you picture how it must have happened, or is it so far removed from what you understand that it’s completely irrelevant?

Science tells us that the universe is about 13.2 thousand million years old, and the earth is about 4.5 thousand million years old. This is based on many different scientific observations and calculations, and on the assumption that the scientific processes that enable our complex world to function are consistent. The same scientific laws that mean the lights come on, and I weigh 11 stone 6 have applied and worked throughout the life of the universe and give us that evidence.

On the other hand, if we go with the Bible’s timescale, it’s all much more recent than that. Bishop Ussher of Armagh once calculated from the Bible that the world began in 4004 BC. Some have calculated it as a bit further back than that, but the point remains that a literal reading of the Bible means the world could only be a few thousand years old at most.

How widely is the Bible’s timescale believed? In 2012 a Gallup poll recorded that 46% of Americans believed that God created humans in their present form sometime in the last 10,000 years. Many also believe the earth to be only a few thousand years old. There are now schools in the UK, where creationism, as it is known, is taught on the curriculum alongside scientific analysis as an equal theory. 

Meanwhile, there is an increasingly vocal humanist and atheist voice in the media who not only accept the scientific data, but see the discoveries and insights of science as final proof that religion is nonsense. Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion won’t even bother debating with people who take Genesis literally.

"Just as I wouldn't expect a gynaecologist to have a debate with somebody who believes in the Stork-theory of reproduction, I won't do debates with Young Earth creationists," he said.

So where does that leave us? Does thinking about these things worry or disturb us? Perhaps we would prefer not to think about it, in case it unsettles the faith we have. The problem is that both extremes – the atheists and the creationists end up arguing with each other as if their views are the only two you can hold. And we end up squeezed between people who are downright hostile to our faith, and people whose beliefs defy all the scientific evidence, but say we should believe them to be proper Christians.

None of this is new, of course. Once scientists started making discoveries that challenged the Bible’s account of things the debate started, and we see it most sharply with Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection, or evolution as we usually refer to it. As Christians, we know that without the Bible, our faith makes no sense. It gives us the big story that helps us understand why we are here. Are the only choices to discard the Bible because of science or to discard science by putting blind faith in the Bible? Do you have to be an atheist to be a good scientist?

Speaking as someone with a degree in chemistry, I want to say an emphatic 'no'! Many eminent scientists in a range of expertise have a deeply held Christian faith. The two don't have to be seen as contradicting each other.

So here’s 3 starting points to answer the atheists on one side and the fundamentalists on the other about Genesis 1.

1. Genesis 1 wasn’t written as a scientific text book.

Scientific thinking and method as we know it didn’t exist until fairly recently. At the time Genesis was written, possibly up to 3000 years ago, people understood the world very differently. The world was in a dome, with water above that sometime came through as rain, or rose as floods. So Genesis wasn’t written to answer modern science’s questions. That means that if we go to the Bible looking for things it never set out to tell us, we get funny answers.

Genesis 1 addresses questions about God and about the world, and about human beings and their place within it. It isn’t about the modern disciplines of physics, chemistry or astronomy - it never intended to be. People who know about these things say it’s written in the form of a poem. It’s painting a picture, not recording a documentary.

The Great War - World War 1 - is in the news a lot at the moment*. If you want history, you read history books about the war (and some are busy re-writing those at the moment). But if you want to know what it felt like, or the how it impacted the big questions of belief or faith, you need to read Wilfred Owen or the other war poets. Don't read poetry for science, or science for poetry.

2. Genesis 1 is about God.

Other cultures at the time had stories that look like Genesis. There are other creation and flood stories - one was in the news recently, describing the ark like a huge coracle. But the other cultures had gods who got in a mess, who didn’t always have control. Some of them essentially lived inside creation, and struggled within it. But Genesis 1 speaks of a God who is involved in the universe but beyond it. Look at the text: "In the beginning, God… God said…, God said..., God made... etc.

The God described here isn’t tangled up and held captive by the chaos, He turns it into created order. This is about one God, a supreme God, and a creative God who shares his creativity with creatures he can have a relationship with. This is new stuff in the ancient world, but the author of Genesis tells about the God of Israel in a form familiar to the people of his day.

3. Genesis 1 is about us.

This passage contains one of the most dangerous ideas for the Western world. It could bring down capitalism, and revolutionise the way the world works. Know what it is? It is that we are stewards, not owners. God is generous here – he gives food, skills and abilities, the beauty of the earth and its wonder, the amazing possibilities of being human. But when he places human beings in dominion over creation it’s not “here’s the keys, do what you like”. This earth is somebody else’s property, and the people are accountable.

Our world works on a different basis. Economies are based on people earning, buying, owning and consuming. It relies on people acting as if the only criterion is whether they can afford it, or at least can they find the money from somewhere. But stewardship asks different questions. How would I explain my decisions to spend? Would I share? Do I understand the earth’s resources as on trust? Do I see myself as accountable to God? That’s called stewardship. Ironically the Greek word for stewardship is 'oikonomia' – the word we get economics from.

If we get obsessed with proving things literally in Genesis that defy science and logic, it’s a dead end. Worse, if we get bogged down in that, we forget what it is really trying to say to us.

In Genesis 1 the writer is saying that we need to understand our God, our place in the world, in the order of things, and the wonderful privilege and responsibilities of living within that world. If we could only appreciate that more, perhaps the world would be a safer, more just and more equal place for all to enjoy.

* the post was written in 2014, approaching the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.

Gareth Davies-Jones and Rob Halligan Concert

In October Morecambe Parish Church is hosting a concert by Gareth Davies-Jones and Rob Halligan. Gareth and Rob are singer-songwriters who have been busy over the last few weeks playing at a number of summer festivals, inclusing Greenbelt. We’re delighted they approached us to host this concert. Some may remember Gareth from the concert he did at MPC 2 years ago with Yvonne Lyon

Their songs reflect on life, faith, justice and both have appeared on the BBC with good reviews.

The concert details are:

Gareth Davies-Jones & Rob Halligan in Concert

Wednesday 17^th October 2012 at 7.30pm

Morecambe Parish Church, Church Street, Morecambe

Tickets £7, £5 concession (student, unwaged, retired), £20 family

Group discounts available (e.g. for youth group trips) – get in touch.

Fairtrade bar and refreshments available on the night.

For more information, contact Mike Peatman 01524 410941 mikepeat@lineone.net

Tickets are also available at Lancaster Christian Bookshop,
5 Mary Street, Lancaster LA1 1UW

More about Rob at http://www.robhalligan.co.uk

More about Gareth at http://www.garethdavies-jones.com

Click image for poster

 

Is theism getting a bad press?

I'm not very sure how to phrase this post correctly. I have been musing for a while about a change I've observed over the time I have been ordained. It seems that there are now significantly more atheist voices who are more vocal and critical of belief in God, especially in the media and in public life. The question is: why?

Looking at the kinds of digs atheists make online, they're not always very sophisticated or original. Some atheists even seem to mirror religious fundamentalists in their absolutism. Even when the critique is more considered, it's usually the case that Christians have been struggling with the same issues for centuries. Suffering, theodicy, Old Testament wrath vs New testament compassion, etc are all there in theology textbooks (but not any neat answers). Maybe that's the problem: people who want neat answers find a messy God difficult.

If there is a trend, my first hunch is that the percentage of people who don't believe in God may not have changed as much as we think; it's just that their presence is felt more now. It's not as if atheism was invented when Richard Dawkins started selling books about it - people who didn't believe have been around for a long time.

I also suspect that quite a lot of the British never really believed in God in any very specific way, if at all. However, at most they described themselves as agnostic. Not a few of them probably went along to church, because it was a 'good thing' and saw it as supporting community and family. The 'supernatural' bit passed them by, and there are still churchgoers for whom that is true. The stronger  tag  of atheist probably seemed a bit definite for those 20th century sensibilities.

What's become clear in recent years is that attitudes to organised faith/religion have changed. The Church of England was once seen as basically benign, if rather odd, eccentric, ineffectual and from a different era. Church of England schools and colleges would be seen as 'nice' places to study, even by those who didn't practise the faith in any committed way. There is now a debate as to whether these institutions should receive any public support at all, or even whether churches and faith groups qualify as charities.

So why isn't theism seen as benign for wider society any more? Religious conflicts must be part of the picture. These aren't new, either, and nor is sectarian terrorism. There was plenty of that during the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland. However, more recent developments such as suicide bombing and the description of such as martyrdoms has pointed to a difficult question. If it is believed that human existence doesn't depend on this material world, but upon a relationship with the divine, then someone can acquire an attitude that says this life doesn't really matter. And in case Christians start getting superior at this point, that tradition is there in our faith too. It hasn't worked itself out in suicide bombing, but in medieval times, being killed on the Crusades was regarded as tantamount to martyrdom. How do we hold that 'this isn't everything', yet still value the material world as real and precious?

Ethics and values have changed the goalposts too. Churches are often seen as maintaining sexist and homophobic values in an era when society's norms and the laws of the land have moved on from traditional standpoints. If the perception out there is growing that theism = prejudice and discrimination, then it's hardly surprising to hear a more vocal critique from theosceptics. (Have I just invented that word? Must look it up later)

If my hunches bear any relation to reality, I'm not particularly worried about these shifts in attitude. One the one hand, Christians should expect opposition if they are being true to the teaching of Jesus - it certainly came his way. I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't be a lot more unpopular about poverty, economic exploitation and injustice.

On the other hand, we also need to listen. The Bible and the Christian tradition are complex, and it's easy to confirm our own pet prejudices with careful selection of our sources. Sometimes a radical challenge from outside our comfortable circle of like-minded can jolt us into re-examining what we think and why we think it.

Perhaps most of all we need to be more willing to live more radical lives. Maybe the reason more people openly say they don't believe any more is that they can see precious little reason for belief in the lives of those who say they do.

Hope for Justice

Last night at Manchester Apollo, I was providing transport for my son, Jono, to get to "The Stand". This was an event organised by Hope For Justice, which is campaigning to end human trafficking. The statistics are scary, and slavery is a reality, even within the UK. It's clearly a huge problem across the world, and the people involved on the frontline of helping people escape and then come to terms with their traumatic experiences face real dangers.

Hope for Justice campaigns in a number of ways - awareness-raising, legal issues, rescue and support, campaigning and, of course, fundraising. The Stand 2010 was an event with video, drama, music, prayer and a hard-hitting talk from Tony Campolo.

It was very refreshing to go to something which was contemporary and had a lot of energy and passion, but wasn't about the people gathered. There was no sense that this was about having a religious experience, or that the audience/congregation were there to be receivers or consumers of stuff from the front. This was about a problem in society and the world which needs urgent action, and a key part of being faithful Christians was about working for justice for captives. There was also no sense that this was evangelism 'in disguise'. The motivation wasn't that people rescued might be converts, but that it's the right thing to be working for anyway. There was also a very positive view of working with allies, whether Christian or not. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that people in the 'sex industry' were recognised as being on a spectrum, and some are willing to provide information and evidence with regard to trafficked women and girls.

Music for worship came from Ben Cantelon and Graham Kendrick. They represent the latest and the established in the area of worship music. Cantelon seemed more at ease with the format (gig venue, high volume) than Kendrick, but the older guy can still deliver.

Tony Campolo never pulls his punches, and he spoke very passionately about justice, and also how attitudes in society towards making women 'commodities' can help to create a climate where there is demand. He gave an interesting example of common ground with a passionate feminist on this issue, with whom he had plenty of other differences.

What's perhaps the most disturbing is that this may well be an issue on all of our doorsteps.

Greenbelt 2010

The lineup for this year's Greenbelt is taking shape nicely. As an arts festival with Christian roots, it's never been afraid to take some risks in who it invites along. Eye-catching names already on the bill include Clare Short, Peter Tatchell and David Morrisey, although I think a lot of people will also know Simon Mayo and Janey Lee Grace from Radio 2. Oh and Roger McGough will be sharing poetry. Christian speakers include Richard Rohr, Rob Bell (he of the Nooma videos), John Bell from the Iona Community, Lucy Winkett and Stanley Hauerwas.

The headline musical acts aren't yet announced, but Athlete and Royksopp last year show the standard they aim for. Having said that, the smaller gigs are also excellent, so it's worth checking the lineup page regularly.

All this plus creative worship from all points of the Christian compass and comedy from Milton Jones. Well worth checking out

How SHould Christians Vote

Good post on thinking this through on the Trendlewood blog. Worth a read.

Belated chat about Greenbelt Music

I realise that I never fulfilled my promise to go back to the music we enjoyed at Greenbelt 2009. It's old news, but hey it's good news.

Mainstage enjoyed some big names. Lots of people raved about Röyksopp. As their website states, "Röyksopp is an electronic and chillout music duo based in Bergen, Norway." As I said to my old friend Tim (who I met after a mere 20 year gap) it was very impressive, but I just didn't get it.

Other mainstage acts included Cornershop, who are making a comeback, long after their big hit with a Fatboy Slim remix of Brimful of Asha. Indie and Indian mix together. Did a great version of Norwegian Wood [in Hindi?] with a real sitar player!

Duke Special, who I saw supporting Crowded House, did a great set in his eccentric style. Vaudeville extravaganza was one description. There were moments of rock, folk-rock, Edwardian music hall and more. Great theatre. Apparently he used to do music for YWAM!

We stayed the distance to see Athlete on Monday evening. Much better mix than their Radio 2 gig from Blackpool, so well done the Greenbelt crew. Good new songs from the new album Black Swan, as well as favourites such as El Salvador, 24 Hours, and of course Wires closed the show. Well worth staying for.

In smaller venues, it was possible to catch some great sounds. Martyn Joseph doing a little gig in the CD tent was brilliant as ever. The Performance Cafe provided a space with food, good coffee and some warmth on a cold wet day. Eddie Johns sang folky/acoustic songs which felt from early 60s folk revival era, especially with his slightly fragile voice. Lyrics harked back to another era too - crossing seas and talk of streams and fields. I liked it. Jazzelation gave us late night mellow jazz, which was a bit weird around 5pm. Quality sound, and great vocals though.

Big highlight for me was Yvonne Lyon. Scottish singer-songwriter wih a voice to fall in love with. Bought her latest album and intend to get the set. Well worth checking out.

That was only scratching the surface. I have to say that the quality and range of music was fantastic - I only checked out the acoustic and rock stuff (but then I would). Best value music festival of the summer (and then there's all the other stuff!!)

Living the Questions

A friend pointed out a new resource, Living the Questions, for getting people to think about the Christian faith. It looks really interesting - actually 4 sets of resources with DVDs and written materials. Some downloadable samples on the site.

With Jack Spong as a contributor, it's likely to be controversial, and with Hans Kung, it's going to be interesting. Looking forward to seeing if UK editions materialise