Autism and The Church

This  should help people with Asperger's syndrome feel better about themselves!

There was an interesting article on the Premier Christianity web site about autism written by someone who is probably at the Asperger's end of the autism spectrum. Here's the link:

 'I want to love God with all my mind, but as an autistic Christian, my brain works differently to yours' | Magazine Features | Premier Christianity

This subject interests me because I've long suspected that my personality type is skewed toward the mild end of the autistic spectrum. Reading about people such as Gary Newman, Chris Packham, Paul Dirac and the like I detect many points of contact with my own experience. I took an online test and it returned a score that plonked me in the lower reaches of the spectrum. Not a surprise really: The social world never really attracted me and seemed too complex & difficult to get involved with in a big way. In any case the noise of my own thoughts drowned out the noise of the social world around me. I was well known for not listening to what people had to say and as a result I was backward at school (that's still a weakness of mine!). I disliked the hubbub of the school playground and seldom joined in. I was especially averse to the raucous fairground environment. 

A communication dysfunction seems to be a core symptom of autism. It's easy to understand that if this dysfunction is severe, it completely stultifies development. On the other hand a mild dose of autism can be a positive advantage (see article above); a measure of disconnection from one's social environment helps facilitate internal focus on problem solving, favours independence of thought and helps avoid being dragged along by mindless group think.  Also, the tendency of autistics to seek out calm, ordered environments with predictable habitual rhythms helps free up the precious resource of thinking time so that it can concentrate on pondering the meaning of the big picture.  

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The highly gregarious environments of churches are not a natural environment for those on the autism spectrum.  A conversion myth that Christianity makes you super-gregarious and good with people is abroad in many Christain circles. In fact in my experience the quality of one's faith may be judged on one's ability to be outgoing and sociable: When I first converted to Christianity, I got the distinct impression that the sign of a good conversion was that an otherwise introverted dispassionate person suddenly becomes full of passion, very sociable and shows the "Love of Christ" by hobnobbing with lots of people. In fact some of the pundits of the gnostically inclined charismatic culture (I wouldn't want to say "all", however) judge the presence of the "infilling of the spirit" in such superficial terms. They misinterpret an overt existential expression of faith, a fixation with spontaneity  and prolific verbal communications (especially speaking in tongues & prophecy) as the obligatory signs of the "power of the spirit".  They also see the human thought world through a contrived "head knowledge vs heart knowledge" dualism.  These doctrines are oppressive & excluding. See here where I endured six weeks of gnostic bigotry as I followed & analyzed a gnostic sermon series. 

I suppose it's no surprise that my involvement with church has been nondescript: I've lacked the requisite rapport and synergy, especially with those Christians who have bought into existential conversion myths. Being a science aficionado has meant that my attitude to some Christian subcultures has been considerably jaundiced by the presence of anti-science proto-conspiracy theorism which in some quarters has morphed into the full-blown conspiracy theorism of the far-right (e.g. such as QAnon and support for dictatorial & authoritarian forms of government). The latter has just about taken the biscuit, although in the UK this isn't nearly as bad as it is in the US. 

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I published a link to the Premier article on a church FB page. Not a great response mind as you might expect from someone lacking the social connection to be a pundit of status in church circles. But in any case, for me the search for truth must always have priority over social linkage and social status. Creative problem solving is its own reward. 

I accompanied my link to the Premier article with the notes below:

1. The article suggests that the 1% figure for autism is a lower limit and as diagnostic services improve a larger figure will emerge. But as with any multifaceted condition the boundaries demarking autism are fuzzy.

2. It’s often been remarked that the human social skill is the most advanced and complex processing ability we possess; after all, the social world which we endeavor to grapple with daily is the most complex object of all creation. No surprise then that stresses should arise with such a demanding task.

3. Thinking about the Christian environments I’ve had contact with I’m sure there is a correlation between a church culture and the personalities it selects and vice versa (it’s a “feedback” effect). The social scene selects or deselects certain personality types leading to a local bias. e.g. in a population where there is roughly a 50-50 male to female mix overall, churches, last time I looked, return roughly a 4 to 6 mix in favour of females.

4. It is likely that those on the autism spectrum would find quieter regular services with smaller populations more mentally manageable. It would help if people became more effete with the idea that people are not all as equally gifted to cope with the demands of gregariousness.

5. One of the problems churches face in modern times is that community fragmentation has fragmented human contact time over large numbers of people. But building individual relationships requires above all the precious resource of human contact time not fragmented over large populations.   

Relevant link:

'My autism made me an artist but I wanted a family' - BBC News

Vulnerable Mission

 Here is a recently written document which I use to try to explain to people what Dr. Jim Harries "Vulnerable Mission" means for Christian mission. It also touches on the subject of the role of Western developmental efforts in Africa.

The Four to Six Mix Stays Steady (Nearly)

Photograph: Countryside collection - Homer Sy/Alamy

During a recent church service I revisited my 15 year old project of counting male and female church attendees with the aim of getting the mix. I sampled a large block of attendees that were visible from where I was sitting - that is, I didn't take a count of the whole congregation. I did two counts and came up with the numbers 28 males to 54 females and then later in the service I counted 35 males to 55 females.  (There were some comings and goings during the service).  Those two sets of figures give returns of 35% :65% and 38%:62% respectively.  That might point to a slight drop in the male proportion since my last counts but on the whole that's fairly close to the four to six mix which has otherwise been stable over 15 years; after all, we've been through a lock down which has definitely perturbed churches in many as yet unforeseen ways, not to mention the ongoing decay of church populations. There may be a differential in the way these two factors are effecting men and woman.  But given these factors it's surprising how steady the 4 to 6 mix is. 

For more see here:

Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: FourToSixMix (norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com)

On the Masonic connection

George Washing was a Freemason

Well, here I am again probing the under belly of Protestantism. This time it's the Masonic connection.

 A few months back someone asked me if any of our Baptist forefathers (such as those whose names are celebrated on the walls of traditional Baptist churches) had connections with Freemasonry. That these Baptist grandees had great social & business success, plus their use of symbolic heraldry might have prompted this question.  (See Samuel Morton Peto as an example of that success). The person I was approached by was worried that such a connection might be the cause of one those "spiritual blockages" which are vaguely reminiscent of fears that some kind of witchcraft has been worked on the church. 

As it turns out the Masonic connection seems unlikely, although absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence. But the imagination of the religious mind, as we are seeing in North America today, has a tendency to erupt into a kind of spiritual delirium in the absence of evidence. Deeply sensed intuitions, sometimes taken to be the promptings of the Almighty Himself, can then kick-in as an override and be regarded as sufficient condition for the confirmation of truth. But claimed knowledge arrived at either by strong intuitions or rationality still have to express themselves through a flawed human nature, leaving them both open to cautious critical appraisal.

 After polling three church historians on the subject, I drew a blank. So unlikely was the idea that it seems never to have occurred to them to even ask the question: In the light of what we know about Freemasonry it’s easy to dismiss any Masonic connections with Baptists without thought.  However, it's a well-known fact that some C of E clergy have joined the Masons (moreover George Washington was C of E). The only non-conformist Freemason one of my historians came up with was Lord Leverholme.  Another of them said that someone had told him that Spurgeon was a Mason, but frankly that's looking like web-rumour mongering. Rumour mongering seems to be the conspiracy theorist's and witch hunter's epistemic method.

As for Freemasonry itself: It's a secret boys-club involving bizarre rituals & sinister oaths that I doubt are taken too seriously by many rank-&-file Masons, a rank-&-file who are probably in it for the benefits of elite social connection, blokehood and an off-the-peg career structure of social advancement for the exclusive few. This, taken together with the high sounding talk about the ritual entering into a new life of achievement and morality (but only for a male elite), makes it a questionable option for Christians. After all, for Christians the new life has already started and (cult versions of Christianity apart) is based on a message that is public property, not the secret property of an exclusive elite. If I had to summarize Freemasonry in a word I would say that it is strong on God as architect and creator, but weak on God as saviour.

Freemasonry is in large part an eighteenth century start-up with some historical antecedents. With its lineage largely based in the Western world it is suffused with Judeo-Christian symbolism and is clearly strongly influenced by it: The meaning of some of the symbols one finds on the façade of The City of Bath's Circus (built by the Freemason John Wood Jnr) can be applauded (although there are also legendary pagan influences via druidism and the classical world). All this is no surprise as Freemasonry was influenced by the eighteenth century enlightenment which in turn was influenced by Christianity.

With Freemasonry, as with all human institutions, the rough comes with the smooth. Although owing a huge debt to Christianity Freemasonry nevertheless short-changes the God-head. The same goes for much Western secularism. It’s been said with some plausibility that Western secularism (& Marxism?) is a kind of Christian heresy & the same might be said of Freemasonry. Historian Tom Holland has remarked on the Christian influence that saturates the values & thinking of Western secularism, much of which one can applaud and support. But those values & thinking teeter on the edge of the nihilist abyss if God and Christ are either ignored or denied.

But even if Freemasonry is in a church's lineage it would not in my opinion taint it to the point of causing the spiritual blockage that some "witch hunters" are looking for. For although such a pass would rightly be the target of criticism, unless one can show that Freemasonry has an occult element (& there’s no evidence of that as far as I’m aware) it would not cause a blockage: We don't inherit sin: We only inherent a sinful nature. "Original Sin" really should be translated as "Original Sinful Nature".

There is much I would personally criticize about Freemasonry but there is also much I can applaud. The same can be said of Christian fundagelicalism: For let us put criticism of Freemasonry in the context of some of today’s Christian excursions into the absurdities of Conspiracy Theorism such as QAnon, the flat earth conspiracy, Covid 19 hoax theories, anti-vax ideas, the millennium bug conspiracy farce, climate change hoax theories, false-flag conspiracy theory, the failed Trump 2nd term prophecies  & links to the far-right to name a few. Fertile ground for these harmful notions has been provided by antecedents such as quasi-gnosticism, fideism, extreme libertarianism and anti-government & anti-academia sentiments. Nevertheless I endeavour to be fair and take a lenient view on these extremist opinions with an understanding of the mitigating circumstances under which they have formed; namely, a faith that is currently under great cultural pressure and which is increasingly marginalized and ostensibly in a state of decay. And yet Christianity is still raided for its moral standards, its grace and its rationality. But The Source of all morality, grace and rationality is too often neglected or proactively rejected.

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I like to think that our Baptist grandees did well and made a name for themselves not because they had the unfair advantages of belonging to an elite secretive club that plays fast and loose with Christian language & standards but because of their faith & honesty and gave glory to the only One to whom it was deserved. If that is the case then their names deserve to be memorialised on the walls of a traditional Baptist church.

Relevant Link

Noumena, Cognita and Dreams: Of Stones, Stars, Circles,Status, Secrets, Sacredness, Mystique and Masons. Part 2