Politics at Norwich Cathedral

 

The Revd Andrew Bryant, Canon for Mission and Pastoral Care at Norwich Cathedral, wrote a Network Norwich and Norfolk pre-election article on the citizen's voting responsibilities. The article can be read here:

Network Norfolk : Why voting should be regarded as a spiritual act (networknorwich.co.uk)

In these days when the cut and thrust and contentions of constitutional politics are under threat from those who seek to disabuse us of the right to agree to disagree and vote on it, I found myself agreeing with the article. Here was my reply

Timothy V Reeves (Guest)           21/06/2024 11:00

Thanks for the article, Andy. I very much agree with your conciliatory tone.

The constitution, forums and media of democracy must be preserved; they cater for the truism that as frail & fallible human beings we have a natural propensity to disagree and contend and therefore contention must be managed by systems of arbitration & accountability. Obviously, there’s always room for reform and enhanced justice but let’s respect our democratic culture of accountability as the way forward: As you say:

<<"Just as God calls us frail, fallible disciples to be bearers of the divine light in the world, so too the governance of our nation is placed in the hands of equally frail and fallible men and women, who need are our affirmation of their willingness to serve rather than a continuing reminder of where they have fallen short. Even as they are held accountable at the ballot box, we too will be held accountable on the Last Day.">>

Excellent! May we take that quote to heart! The alternative is dictatorship and the threat posed by dictators-in-waiting who make loud claims to being the saviour of society. There is of course only one saviour.

 

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Quoted from Network Norwich and Norfolk....

The Revd Andrew Bryant is the Canon for Mission and Pastoral Care at Norwich Cathedral. He was previously Team Rector of Portishead, Bristol, in the Diocese of Bath and Wells, and has served in parishes in the Guildford and Lichfield Dioceses, as well as working for twelve years with Kaleidoscope Theatre, a charity promoting integration through theatre for young adults with Down’s Syndrome.

You can read Andrew's latest blog entry here and can follow him via his Twitter account @AndyBry3.

The Problem of Suffering and Evil

 

I try to evade writing about this subject because a) Over the centuries gallons of ink have been spilt on this subject without a definitive solution b) Any "solution" proposed is in danger of trivializing the profundity of the question and usually withers away to nothing in the fierce heat of real suffering and evil.

However, as I recently attended a church session on suffering and evil I thought I'd better make a quick showing on the church FB page of how far my thinking has got on the subject and I reproduce that quickie FB post below; it is based on some ideas I expressed in a blog post I once made here.  It's a bit tongue in cheek though. 

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How can an omnipotent/sovereign loving & personal God tolerate suffering in the world He created? Shifting responsibility to human and satanic responsibility doesn’t work because that simply reflects back on the Creator’s responsibility in creating beings with such a propensity to screw up and fail so badly. Forget it.

Here’s a quick back-of-the-envelope solution to the biggest problem of all time.

OK, so if we demand our Creator deals with suffering, where does He start? Which suffering does he knock out of cosmic history? Well, because the cosmos, like Jesus' garment, is a seamless whole with many interlinked dependences it is very difficult to remove suffering in a piecemeal fashion; it has to be dealt with as a whole. The result is that the demand to remove suffering & evil entails removing all of it from day one, effectively shifting creation into another very different universe and a very different history to the one we know……Because our own existence is seamlessly bound up with the world we are part of this would mean that us sinners would have to go as well. For me that presents a very personal dilemma: Either suffering goes and me along with it, or the suffering world stays. The other thing I’d miss in a perfect world is that my favourite Bible verses, Phil 2:1-11, wouldn’t exist either. And I’m sure that if I found myself in a perfect world it wouldn’t be perfect for very long!

These considerations turn the problem of suffering and evil on its head: Viz: We have a big, big dilemma problem in the absence of suffering and evil. But perhaps because of Phil 2:1-11 the Sovereign Creator (bless His name) has selected our cosmic story for reification from among the many possible stories that can told. That reification must have cost Him a dearly in emotional pain. I suppose that's what we call grace.

QED(?).

Well, perhaps not QED, but the above can be the basis of more sophisticated thinking!

The Shifting Fortunes of the Pulpit

 

St Mary's Baptist Church 1811 build: The pulpit figures prominently

The above picture shows the interior of the Regency chapel of St Mary's Baptist Church in the 19th century, a building whose foundation stone was laid in 1811 by its minister Joseph Kinghorn.  What is notable about this interior is not just the overwhelming centrality of the pulpit, but that the pulpit is installed against a blank wall - well, almost blank: As if to relieve the starkness of this wall some memorial plaques have since been fixed to it. But the message is, I think, nevertheless clear: That is, it is intended one focuses on the pulpit ministry and not be distracted by extraneous details which may not be usefully edifying. 

In those days I don't think the congregation had any instrumental accompaniment to their singing as there appears to be no space in the pew packed interior for a band, although I suspect the pews running perpendicular to the congregational pews were for a choir. It was only in 1863 after some years of resistance and three years after open communion had been won in a court battle that a small organ was gingerly introduced. Ideas were on the move and the fact that the church had presumed to adorn their pulpit wall with memorials to their esteemed forbears suggests to me they were becoming aware of themselves not just as sinful ears to be harangued from the pulpit, but also as a respectable sub-culture with a proud lineage.

As if to confirm that a revolution was slowly unfolding, in 1886 the chapel underwent a lavish Victorian refurbishment (See picture below). The pulpit wall was knocked out and extended into an apse-like chancel and this was then filled with an organ and choir stalls.  In contrast to the coy introduction of the organ over twenty years earlier, the new organ was a sophisticated and grand piece of machinery. It served as a sensational centre-piece in the refurbished building, sending a signal about the wealth of the church and its social status. But the extravagant hedge of organ pipes and the richly carved surrounding polished woodwork were in danger of upstaging the pulpit. The pulpit however was still central, if rather lost in all the competing detail; unlike the Regency chapel where the pulpit stood out against the nothingness of a pallid wall.

St Mary's Baptist Church after the Victorian refurbishment of 1886 

In 1890 St Mary's Baptist Church planted a daughter church on Sayers Street in Norwich. In 1905 this new church went on to build the pseudo-Gothic pile of Dereham Road Baptist Church, serving the sprawling Victorian & Edwardian suburbs in that area. At the sharp end of Dereham Road Baptist Church we find a central organ/choir/communion table/pulpit configuration that has striking similarities with the configuration at St Mary's Baptist Church (See the picture below). Although the pulpits of both churches were now surrounded by competing details the overall impression, however, is that both churches still gloried in the pulpit and its ministry of words. 

St Mary's daughter church; Dereham Road Baptist.

Unfortunately, St Mary's elegant regency building with its rich Victorian interior was destroyed by a combination of fire in 1939 and a WWII bombing raid in 1942. But when St Mary’s congregation came to rebuild their post war church in the late 1940s and early 1950s something strange happened: The pulpit was shifted to the left of the communion table and stood in sentry at the mouth of a well-defined chancel; a configuration found in many C of E and Catholic churches. The pulpit was no longer vying for central attention as in days of old. Instead, we find only the communion table at the centre.... See the picture below:

St Mary's post war rebuild.

This change may have come about because history was now telling these non-conformists they were no longer a persecuted sect, in fact quite the opposite: They had been sympathetic to the North American revolutionaries and were vocal in their opposition to slavery; history had come out on their side. Moreover, they were now respectable pillars of society and had behind them a history of knights, MPs, and successful businessmen.  They would have therefore felt themselves to be on a par with the state church. In fact, the architecture of Dereham Road Baptist Church is evidence that they were already flirting with an establishment look as far back as 1905; that contrasted with the early days when non-conformists preferred a secular classical look as opposed to the state church gothic look; in those days classical architecture help set them apart from the state church. But there may be more to it than this: After two devastatingly destructive mega-death world wars the like of which were unprecedented in all human history there may have been a sneaky feeling that no rationale articulated in words alone could do justice to the human predicament.

In times of crisis & doubt there is a tendency for human beings to find consolation in mystery and the esoteric. During the first world war protestant soldiers would often resort to Catholicism's arcane rituals of death in order to derive some comfort in the face of mortality. In the first half of the 19th Century the Catholic architect Augustus Pugin tried to revive the flagging devotion of the industrialized masses with the architectural finery and romantic mysticism of the gothic revival.

But many protestants were also starting to behave as if words were not the only experience to be had in church. In the above picture of St Mary's Baptist Church, the centrality of the communion table may signify that there was a shift away from pulpit culture toward the mystery of communion with God. But this relatively mild change was a portent of more fundamental shifts that came in the second half of the 20^th century when the ministry of words was to find itself jostling with the ministry of esoteric experience. This reached a crescendo in the 1960s onwards as sublime gnostic encounters with God were regarded as the acme of Christain experience..... in fact, when I once recommended a scholarly & intellectual Bible teacher of my acquaintance, I was told that his ministry was like going back to the dark ages! At that moment I knew I was now in a culturally alien landscape to which I could contribute little. In much contemporary Christian culture faith centers around the mystical "encounter" with God. "Encounter" is now a rather hackneyed buzz word, heard everywhere in today's passion centred Christian communities; it connotes a deep mystical tryst with the divine. Not that I think there is anything wrong with ecstasies and sublime encounters with God; the trouble comes when these experiences are used as a shibboleth of an underlying authoritarian "gnostic" philosophy (See here).

Today services at St. Mary's Baptist Church (Now called Norwich Central Baptist Church) look like this.....

Worship today in Norwich Central Baptist Church.

The offset pulpit is now redundant and only used as a hideaway for sound equipment and other items; it no longer serves as a way to give non-conformist sermons some kind of cathedra authority; that may not be a bad thing. However, in its place one is likely to see the animated personable talking head who has plenty of personality; no longer confined to the few square feet of the pulpit they also have plenty of maneuvering room on a large stage. This stage may also be occupied by a band which is there to help the congregants lose themselves in the reverie of the worship experience, when they are not picking their way through the pith of the ministry of words. As it is at NCBC so it is with many other modern worship venues. At NCBC, however, there remains a healthy balance between Logos and Pneuma.  

My theory is that these changes in Christian culture are driven by changes in the wider society where the church no longer has an authoritative voice in that society. The story told by the church as a sense making "cosmic mythology" no longer resonates in the wider world.  I can understand that as a cultural (over) reaction to contemporary conditions (Although I, of course, beg to differ with that reaction). In this context to appear to practice some kind of pulpit-based cathedra authority may come over as presumption, even among church goers. When words cut less ice and their impact is exhausted there is a yearning for sublime encounters with the transcendent God.  This yearning has upsides and downsides; by itself it is not entirely healthy as words are needed to regulate the potential excesses of gnosis. 

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But in spite of these profound cultural changes, we don't have to go very far to find something that harks right back to the first half of the 19th century. Across the road from Norwich Central Baptist Church is a small Strict and Particular Baptist church which calls itself "Zoar Chapel". Inside the walls of its plain unfussy exterior, we find this:

Inside Zoar Chapel just across the road from NCBC

In this small Christian dynastic cultural pocket, it is as if nothing has changed for the last two hundred years. It has a pulpit standing against a featureless wall, thus allowing nothing to upstage the ministry of words. The only concession seems to be the small organ on the right-hand side below the pulpit. Such groups jealousy guard their doctrines. Even though the congregants at the massive pile of NCBC across the road bill themselves as faithful evangelicals (a title which must nowadays be distinguished from today's North American far-right Trumpian evangelicalism) they are likely to be regarded by Zoar Chapel to be in the grip of compromise. To the members of Zoar Chapel the stasis of their practice and belief is evidence they are attuned to timeless and universal truths. They therefore pride themselves as being unaffected by the changes in modern culture which shapes the practices of Christians beyond their walls - if indeed they even think of them as Christians! 

Bible Course Session VIII: Revelation

 

See here for the notes I've made for session VII

Bible Course Session VII: Acts and the Church

 

See here for the notes I've made for session VII

Bible Course Session VI: Jesus and the Gospels

See here for notes I've made for session VI.

Bible Course Session V: Exile & Prophets

 

See here for notes I've made for session V.

Bible Course Session IV: Judges & Kings

See here for the notes I've made for Session IV.

Bible Course Session III: Exodus.

See here for Session II. The notes for session III can be found here. 

Bible Course Session II: Genesis

 

See here for Session I. The notes for Session II can be found here. 

The Bible Society's "Bible Course"

 

The Bible Society's "Bible Course" is an eight-session course giving an overview of the Bible. As I'm helping to run the course for a group I thought I'd publish my notes & questions intended to be used as reference material for the introductory session. The B. Soc. have their own notes, but I prefer to generate my own as it helps my comprehension.  See here:

Sermons in Stone II: Just when you thought it was safe to go back to your pew.

Dereham Road Baptist Church, Norwich: 

The subject of my monograph, "Sermons in Stone". 

 I recently published on my FB page a link to my monograph "Sermons in Stone".  As I read through it again, I realized that there was more I would have liked to have remarked on and didn't. So, something like the following will probably appear as a short postscript in a future edition. It may be a bit obscure without a knowledge of history, but it is, I believe, relevant to contemporary church life. 

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May be in reaction to the ostentatious and austere spirituality of the puritans, the English Restoration of 1660 ushered in an architectural period when the rational and secular feel of classical styles was the preferred church architecture. This persisted until the end of the Regency, by which time the gothic revival (from 1740s onward) was making itself felt among church builders. This revival was part of the romantic movement: The romantics were a reaction to the intellectualism of the enlightenment and the machine society of industrialization. This reaction involved a reaffirmation of the mysticism of the infinite and the emergence of an idealized and nostalgic conception of the mediaeval world. (Consider for example Strawberry Hill) The romantics were trying to reconnect reality with the world of human feeling and mood.

When after 1688 the English nonconformists were free to build their own worship spaces they initially opted for clean & neat classical styles to distinguish themselves from the "semi-reformed" State Church. However, an innate human diffidence toward the outcomes of the enlightenment and the industrial revolution appears to have led to a complex reactional interplay between the rational & the romantic and the mechanical & the mystical, leaving many puzzled about where life's meaning is to be found, if indeed they believed there was such a thing as meaning and purpose. Even for non-conformists gothic styles became a way of reaffirming the overarching mystery of life.

Dereham Road Baptist Church is a left over from the late gothic revival built by protestants who in their early days would probably have reacted against such romantic architecture, perceiving it as too popish. In fact the Berean tradition from which these protestants came would likely have laid claim to the rational high ground in that they saw themselves as reading scripture unsullied by Catholic prejudices & mysticism.  But in later years, especially toward the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, Protestant evangelicals appeared to be the very opposite; that is, none other than a last bastion of mystery and irrationality. By the late 20th century Protestant mysticism had moved on from the external expressions seen in gothic architecture like DRBC to the mystical internal experiences of the chaotic Charismatic revival.

Today we still see the existential tensions caused by the unsettled contentions between mystery & mechanism, between rational secularism & religious fideism, between the sense of the romantic & the stark functionality of a machine culture, between modernism & postmodernism and between the cosmic perspective and the intimacy of the inner life. These unresolved issues are endemic to the culture of the industrialized West. They are also relevant to church life because they can result in existential crises and sharp fundamental disagreements. See here for example.

As Sir Kenneth Clarke said:

We've a long rough voyage ahead of us, and I can't say how it will end because it isn't over yet. We're still the offspring of the romantic movement and still victims of the fallacies of hope. 

 

   

Joseph Kinghorn at St Mary's Baptist Church, Norwich

A previous minister of St Mary’s Baptist Church, Norwich is remembered in the 27/02/2004 edition of Norfolk's Eastern Evening News (See scans below). Joseph Kinghorn was minister at St Mary’s from 1789 to 1832. His time saw the construction of a stylish new Regency church starting in 1811, just before Jane Austen wrote “Pride and Prejudice” . No longer a persecuted and marginalised sect the Baptists were an upwardly mobile social group at that time. They were Liberal and Whiggish in outlook. By the time of St Mary's Sir George White (1840-1912) it was said of the church that it was, quote, “a fashionable place of worship for prominent Liberal businessman and provided a forum for debate on the moral and political issues of the day.”

(Click scan to enlarge)

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.  

*** 

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 

Return of the Killer Pews

 

These pews were made for sitting and not the Charismatic Dub Step!

In 1995 I wrote a short essay entitled "Killer Pews". It was a response to a pattern of behaviour I had seen frequently in church life (and continue to see), a pattern where we find some Christians agitating for a spiritual revolution that supercharges what they regard as the rather humdrum, mediocre & unempowered work of a target church. The proposed remedy is that individuals must proactively seek an experience of "the Baptism of the Spirit". Given that many people in the church may already lay claim to having had the Baptism of the Spirit, sometimes more generic and vague terms such as the touch of God, an encounter with God or an infilling may be used. However, when one analyses what is actually being promoted one finds that it has less to do with spiritual experience per se than it has in trying to cast spiritual renewal into a quasi-gnostic philosophical mold by asserting a sharp distinction between the initiates and non-initiates of  some kind of inner spiritual light. As is so often the case when the target church fails to respond to the revivalist challenge it is then put down to "resisting the Spirit".

I must caution at this point that I am in no way presuming to put an unqualified denial on anyone's personal Christian experience or any epiphany they may have which takes them to a new level (which they may rightly or wrongly call the Baptism of the Spirit), anymore than I would expect them to cast doubt on my own very proprietary experience; rather my criticisms are about how such experiences are being interpreted and used to promote a philosophy which perceives Christian life in dualisms: "head vs heart", "intellect vs intuition",  "reason vs faith", initiates vs non-initiates and the like.  

***

I'm currently following an online service where the challenge of moving onto a whole different plane of super-spirituality & blessing is being promulgated by the speakers of the latest sermon series. At the time of writing Killer Pews in 1995 I was seeing, and had seen, Christian experience being cast into a very similar dualist mold of initiates vs non-initiates. This philosophy can lead to a lot of hard feeling not least because the logic of its aficionados has maneuvered them into such a position that they can only see criticism as a form of resistance to the very Spirit of God. They therefore can do little but consider any challenge to their views as a very grave matter indeed. 

I have of course written a lot more on this subject since 1995, some of which can be found in the links below. Possibly at the end of this latest episode I may say something about this particular foray into "gnostic" renewal. But let me hazard what I think will be the likely outcome of this latest sermon series: By and large the preachers will hear positive noises from the people they are preaching too, but because these preachers find difficulty taking onboard the variety, broadness and depths of the human personalities they are dealing with and moreover, the variety, broadness and depths of God's work, the outcome will fall short of the new dawn they are looking for. We might end up with some very disappointed promoters who will feel as though they have been punching at very soft foam rubber. It's happened before.

http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/search/label/Dualism

http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/search/label/Fideism

http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/search/label/Mythos%20vs%20Logos

http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/search/label/Logos%20vs%20Pneuma

http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/search/label/mythos%20vs%20logos

ADDENDUM 13/02/21

More details about the underlying philosophy of the sermon series commented on above can be found here:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2021/02/head-vs-heart-intellect-vs-feeling.html

ADDENDUM 

20/04/21: I post here my detailed comments on the online sermon series I refer to above: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OWIjP8FdaVrRYbhBJL0M9bVR3gM2kOGd/view

The Eternal Wall of Answered prayer

Unanswered prayer is conspicuous by its absence!

The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer

I was recently in discussion with someone about the building of the above huge 51 metre high monument costing £9.3m and called "The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer". This is what the Guardian says of it: 

An enormous Christian monument, more than twice the size of the Angel of the North, is to be built on the outskirts of Birmingham, fulfilling a vision its instigator says came from God.

The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer will be constructed using a million bricks, each representing a prayer from a member of the public and its outcome. The aim is to “encourage and inspire people going through the storms of life”, said Richard Gamble, the project’s chief executive and a former chaplain of Leicester City football club.

The monument, which has been granted planning permission with work to begin next year, has three goals: to “preserve the Christian heritage of the nation”; encourage prayer; and “proclaim Jesus for the country”.

More information can be found here: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-54123035

My friend, although a Christian, was clearly troubled by the thought that the money to build this monument could be more usefully spent elsewhere. (The money, according to the Guardian, is being donated by Lord Edmiston, a billionaire businessman, Conservative party donor and evangelical Christian). Although I was quite fascinated by the idea of a monumental Mobius strip my first reaction was surprise at the go ahead by North Warwickshire borough council’s planning committee who unanimously endorsed the scheme; after all, the UK appears to be a relatively secularised country, so how well does this huge Christian monument express British civic values? Below I present part of our conversation (I've called my friend "Bert"):

***

ME: At first sight it sounds a good idea to me. Love the symbolism of a giant mobius strip. Perhaps the country is not as secularised as I thought (Covid 19 anything to do with it?). However, weighing the incommensurables of the benefits of heritage (e.g. the moon landings) against more consumable benefits is not a straightforward comparison.

A good post though Bert: Got me thinking about balancing the monumental, which often serves community, kudos and status quo values, group identification and even hubris (e.g. Avebury, Silbury, Cathedrals etc...), against the more basic needs of just living satisfactorily. But I'm still puzzled and gob smacked that this project has got the go-ahead (unless it's a provocative troll article?). What's happening out there?

BERT:  I’m actually shocked it went ahead. Shouldn’t we give our money to the poor? Think of amount of meals that could feed those in poverty?

ME: Well yes, dire need should trump flights of monumental vanity, but when you've got a big economic surplus, human beings start to go monumental as we see in history. I assume your shock is about misplaced resources. My grasp of the economics here isn't great enough to contradict that, but I'm also shocked that what is basically a huge celebration of theism should get the go-ahead in the secularised UK. What in God's name is going on?

BERT:  Reminds me of Super/mega churches

ME: Not too keen on those myself! Shades of Nuremberg where you become one small cell in a frighteningly large organism run amok. Perhaps the funds are better spent on food banks and even covid19 research. But trying to put the balancing act here aside, as a monument I quite like the mobius strip. Although somebody did raise the question of "What about all those unanswered prayers?" Like all monuments it makes you reflect!

***

So, what about all those unanswered prayers then? How big a mobius strip would that require? Are there even enough bricks? Well, a few days later, independently and in an entirely different Christian connection, another Christian friend (whom I shall call "Josh") opened up a short email correspondence with me. The following is based on the first two email shots of that correspondence:

JOSH: I had a thought I wanted to run by you. It’s to do with prayer and when we request things – a bit of healing, a repair job, a decision going our way, a job interview, etc – it’s clear to me that although all our good prayers are answered by God at a general level in terms of our Christian progression, in terms of prayer requests for day to day things, the pattern of hits and misses often appears to me to be no more prominent in favour of hits than a random coin toss pattern.

What are your thoughts on this from a mathematician’s perspective?

ME: I think you may be talking about confirmation bias here? That is, is the concept of answered prayer just a myth which arises out of a natural human confirmation bias?

A few days ago I was discussing The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer with someone else. I don't think I'm the first to remark: "What about all those unanswered prayers?" So the question is: Do the answered vs unanswered statistics give us a result that is statistically significant in favour of "answered"? Trouble is, stats doesn't work here.

The question of answered prayer is reminiscent of the statistical research into telepathy & precognition: Telepathy and precognition guesses which yield simple and clear cut "yes" or "no" answers can be mathematically checked for statistical significance but when the message received is composed of highly complex pictures & relationships, judgements about whether telepathy and precognition work are much more difficult to evaluate. With these complex revelations it is very difficult if not impossible to define clear cut and precisely defined mathematical probability spaces of cases (prob of event = cases favourable to the event divided by all cases). Answers to prayer are often more akin to these complex precognition and telepathy models; they are like the intermittent transmissions received by a radio receiver: That receiver may only occasionally splutter into life and deliver a clear cut message for a short while: But just a single event like that is so improbable as a spontaneous random event that you just can't help the feeling that this single remarkable event wouldn't happen by chance! Clear messages very seldom emerge from a sea of random noise.

I'm not a great prayer warrior myself although we do pray briefly for the family every night. I can only make sense of this area using the metaphor of the parent-child relation: The child asks for things and the parent responds either affirmatively or negatively within that relationship and according to the boundless wisdom (and love) of the parent (boundless as far as a young child is concerned!). Given the parent's much wider perspective the child is simply not going to understand why some petitions are answered and others aren't. In fact the parent may say "no" more often than "yes"! But let's remember this: A radio need only crackle into life once or twice on your desert island for you know that someone is out there!

***

Epistemic Note

Our epistemology works best with regular, highly ordered, stable, accessible and relatively simple objects: If there are aspects of reality that don't conform to this pattern then our epistemic endeavors start to struggle; witness sociology, evolutionary psychology, economics, history and UFOs. 

If epistemically speaking we are going to be bowled the curve balls of an erratic and complex reality then don't expect authoritative certainty to emerge and instead differing opinions will have to be tolerated; interpretation of these difficult to evaluate connections will be very (cultural) context dependent. (Meaning = text + context!). Here epistemic humility is advised. It is likely that the subject of answered prayer and the paranormal in general will fall into this category. Prejudiced dogmaticism either way is unjustified; but really, given the polarisation and passion that pervades some of these more debatable epistemic connections I suppose that's just too much to hope! See below for some of my links on the subject of epistemology. 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2018/04/forget-epistemic-demarcation-problem.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2018/03/evolutionary-psychology-under-fire.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/evidence-not-proof.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/yes-its-all-science-larry-but-not-as.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/epistemic-notes.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/its-science-larry-but-not-as-you-know-it.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/evidence-guide-lines-but-not-tram-lines.html

ADDENDUM 7/11/20

An article very relevant to the above material can be found in the September 2020 edition of Christianity magazine. In the article, which is entitled Triumphalism, prayer warrior Pete Greig, initiator & leader of the 24-7 prayer movement talks about..... 

...the embarrassing swagger of my early faith.....Throughout the first year or so of the 24-7 prayer movement we were probably pretty unbearable....[we] genuinely thought we had found the big red switch called 'Revival'.....If everyone would just pray the way we were praying, Jesus would be back by breakfast time on Thursday...I'm ashamed to admit that I was often inconsiderate and uncompassionate towards those who were finding life really tough. 

But then,

Sammy [Greig's wife] got sick. I watched her slip into seizure after seizure, and no matter how much I cried out to God to make them stop - even claiming the scriptures - it simply didn't work.  I went from believing my prayers could save the world to questioning whether they could save my wife. 

Greig's attitude has improved no-end:

I still believe in miracles. I continue to pray for revival. But as C S Lewis said, miracles must almost by definition be rare. The creator is not a cosmic slot machine.... I hope I'm more compassionate these days. I'm certainly more comfortable with the sovereignty of God and the many paradoxes of life.

Greig puts a lot of his initial triumphalism down to his youth. But youth doesn't always explain it. 

Analysing UK Church Statistics: Logos vs Pneuma

From https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html

(click to enlarge)

The above chart shows how church attendance in the UK, for a variety of denominations, has changed in 35 years since 1980. The general trend is obviously downwards, although it will be noted that the Pentecostal denominations and what are termed "New Churches" have increased their numbers as have the Eastern Orthodox church. Some of these church groupings may be clusters  of church cultures with only marginal commonalities: For example, "Baptist" covers churches affiliated with the Baptist Union and also the Strict and Particular Baptists. "Independents" may cover Brethren,  FIEC and various independent evangelical and reformed leaning "Free churches" (Indeed "Brethren" itself breaks down into further sub-groupings). The so-called "New Churches" probably cover various "charismatic" leaning churches such as New Frontiers, Hillsong, Vineyard, Calvary Chapel, Bethel, Potters House, Jesus Army etc.

On a couple of occasions now I have heard some church goers lauding the "New Churches" as perhaps having found the holy grail of church life, namely the spiritual secret of church growth, in so far as they seem to have bucked the trend of decaying church population. But in the absence of more information this is a long shot.  Let me explain:

 If one of the components effecting church population is an exponential decay then we will have:

Rate of decay = a constant x church population

This means that the bigger a church population is the faster it decays. If this is one of the components at work it would explain the huge drop in the large traditional church populations of Anglican, Catholic and Methodists and the relatively smaller drop in other smaller traditional churches like baptists and evangelical independents.

However, exponential decay is clearly not the only component involved: Pentecostal churches, which are of a similar size to Baptists, have increased their population whereas Baptists have dropped. Also, the "New Churches" have increased. This might suggest that they've cracked the problem of church growth were it not for the fact that they are relatively small and therefore more resilient to decay; they only need a small "trickle-in" component to more than cancel their slow rate of decay. For example, if just some people coming out of the jaded traditional churches are looking for a new exciting church scene and in consequence turn to the lower end population New Churches that may explain the growth among these churches; after all these churches tend to address today's Christian existential crises by offering the security of "spiritual intimacy" and personal epiphany, not to mention the simplicity and certainties found in their style. But even so the New Church growth is not spectacular: It's taken 35 years for this relatively small population to grow by over 100% to 160k - that's  about 2.6k per year..

It's worth noting that the tiny orthodox church (and therefore with a small decay rate) doesn't need much input from the Eastern European immigrants to buck the trend and grow by 160% in 35 years. (that equates to a mere 0.5k per year growth!)

The Pentecostals have grown by 36%; that is, by about 2.2k per year; that's lower than the per yearly growth of the New Churches. That may be a bad sign: Pentecostal traditionality may be part of the reason, but the Pentecostals are quite a bit bigger than the New Churches and so their lower growth rate may, ominously, be evidence that their greater size means that they are starting to show the underlying exponential decay component at work. If this is correct and the decay component is actually there all along in both the Pentecostal & New Churches and that they are actually partly being fed by the decay of traditional church it follows that their growth will slow down as their populations get bigger and become more vulnerable to the decay component.

This foregoing analysis is rather precarious. After all, it's a case of looking at the data and attempting to resolve out a superposition of growth/decay components in a background of a lot of random noise. But then to my mind this is no less precarious an analysis than those who look at the data and conclude that the New Churches have cracked the problem of church growth by waiting on the "spiritual revolution" and therefore the traditional churches only need drum up the same enthusiasm for this new dawn to solve their population problem. Moreover, I think we need to factor in here the pattern often shown when the church feels culturally marginalised; namely, that it tends to become more spiritually internalized and shifts from an emphasis on the articulations of "logos" to the intimacy of "pneuma"! Sometimes the latter starts to skirt the boundaries of fideism and gnositicism

My best guess is that the real problem is what that background component of exponential decay really means; that's likely to be societally systemic and there is not much we can do about it. The nub of the problem is in the culture beyond, in society at large: The spiritual revolution needs to grab the outside culture (and not just the church) and turn its nihilistic malaise on its head! When that happens churches of all sorts may be left wondering why at one time it all seemed so hard!