The Economist meets evangelicals

The Economist has published an article titled Hot and bothered: The rise of evangelicalism is shaking up the established church. It's evenly reported and balanced yet still begs the question: "um, why now?", because not a single thing in it is new or in any way newsworthy.

But still, as it's here ...

For all the impression it gives that the reporter might have picked up an old Alpha leaflet and decided to write the story as though it's breaking news, it is absolutely not a scare-mongering "look out, the Christian Right are coming!" article. Nor is it the kind of Radio 4 report you get, warning that our dearly beloved traditional CofE that no one actually believes in but everyone values as part of our national heritage will wither away and die in the face of these horrible people who actually believe what they preach and want to make it accessible and relevant to everyone else. You know, the kind of thinking that goes "We may gain souls but we'll lose the Book of Common Prayer, and that's not a trade-off worth making".

No, it's not like that at all. I say, well done The Economist for actually presenting a balanced article on this topic. Albeit one that's a few years behind the times.

What I have issues with are some of the facts reported in it, which sadly I have no reason to doubt.

1. "Of the 515 people accepted as candidates for ordination in 2010, fully 108 were under 30, up from 74 the previous year." No doubt true, but I'm agin it. I don't want children being ordained. I want a clergy who have been soured and stained by real life and can bring some real-world thinking to their job. Not that clergy under the age of 30 can't do this, of course, and of course they can always get soured and stained on the job, as it were. But. Still.

2. "Many of the rising generation of keen young clerics already make it clear they wish to work in large evangelical churches, ripe for American-style mission, rather than in slums or charming villages where social views are relaxed and doctrinal purity is not prized." Oh, now here is where I just give a big T.S. to the whinging brats. You go where you're needed, mate, and it may be you're needed just as much in Dibley or St Mary Mead as in St Shiny's Church Plant, Newtown. In fact, probably more so. Get used to it.

Okay, rant over, get on with your lives.

The day I met a Knight of St John

Many years ago my good wife was au pair to the families of a pair of sisters, whose mother was one of those ladies often described as 'indomitable'. The kind on whom the British Empire was built. I had the privilege of meeting her once but could happily have done with more. She died at the age of 92 and on Friday we were at a thanksgiving mass for her life.

Born in Kenya, she apparently had this recent exchange with a Kenyan immigration official:

"How long are you staying in Kenya?"

"I don’t know."

"Have you visited Kenya before?"

"Yes."

"How long did you stay then?"

"Sixty years."

Anecdotes about her life included finding a gun lying around in the house of one of the suspects in the White Mischief murder. "Don't ask," she was advised, so she didn't, and quietly put it back.

A lovely service with some good tunes: 'How great thou art', 'I, the Lord of sea and sky' (a surprisingly modern choice) and, um, The Battle Hymn of the Republic. I'd quite like that last one at my own funeral, but for me the only version worth having is performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the vicar might have something to say about that.

Anyway. I was moved by the service and also by something else even closer to my heart. There’s a biblical passage where we're enjoined not to take the seat of honour at a gathering, because someone more important may turn up and we’ll be hideously embarrassed to have to go and sit somewhere else. Instead, says Jesus, sit at the back so that you can be guided up to a more important position by the host.

Which is exactly what happened to us. All prepared to sit quietly at the back, one of the grandsons that Beloved had looked after as a small boy firmly guided us further up the church, assuring us (well, her) that we're family. That was just the start of an afternoon that made me feel truly privileged, because men and women she hadn't seen for decades were falling on her and hugging her and thanking her for coming, and I realised how much she had touched their lives way back when, and now I have the blessing of being married to her.

And the Knight of St John? He was actually the priest conducting the service. I noticed this strange cross a bit like the Blue Max bobbing at his throat as the service went on, but as he probably wasn't a German WWI fighter ace I had no idea what it could be. Afterwards we shook hands, and I asked, and he told me. Cor, knock me down with a feather.

The Reverend Father knows, let's say, how to work a room. Voice trembling with emotion – he was an old friend of the departed – he told during his homily how, on the day she died, he had been driving in the country, and stopped for a sandwich, and a little robin alighted upon his arm, whereupon he fed the small creature a few crumbs and it flew off again. "I don't know what you think of that," he finished.

Later the oldest grandson privately told us exactly what he thought: "I think you’re a f&^%ing liar, Father!" But he said it with a big smile, and grandmother would have had a good laugh.

Prayers for Hallowe'en

There aren't any. At least, none that I was prepared to use when I led the service this morning.

There are people around who distinctly don't like Hallowe'en. I'm not one of them - or rather I am, but only because I find it irritating to be dragged down two flights of stairs to find a group of munchkins demanding trick or treat with menaces. I don't have a problem with the supernatural aspects. (I remember Giles in Buffy revealing that supernatural activity on November 31 is decidedly down because the vampires all find it rather vulgar and embarrassing.) But there are people who have deeper issues with it and chances are good some of them are in the same congregation. So I did some searching for a good prayer.

First category: the type I couldn't say with a straight face. Only one that I found actually falls into this category, the traditional Scottish prayer:

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

Anyway, the only thing that goes bump in the night around here is an extremely non-supernatural teenager stumbling sleepily to the bathroom. Though I will grant he falls into the long-leggedy camp.

Second category: the, let's say, trans-Tiber camp, which I might be tempted to say at Christ Church on Long Furlong just to see the reactions, especially when invoking or addressing Michael the Archangel. Some good All Hallows Eve examples here. But a good chance I wouldn't be asked back, so maybe not.

Third category: okay, straightforward prayers against the powers of darkness etc, all much closer to the Thames than the Tiber but still ... No. If I say a prayer, I have to believe it first. If I don't then I keep quiet. If I could find a prayer against crassness, commercialism, creeping Americanisation of our culture then I'd say it: but there's nothing about powers of darkness on this day of the year that isn't equally valid on any other.

So I redefined the problem and looked ahead to tomorrow. All Saints Day! What could go wrong with that? The Collect for All Saints Day goes:

Almighty God,
who hast knit together thine elect
in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of Your Son, Christ our Lord:
Give us grace so to follow Your blessed saints
in all virtuous and godly living,
that we may come
to those ineffable joys
that thou hast prepared for those
who unfeignedly love thee;
through the same Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth,
one God, in glory everlasting. Amen
(Book of Common Prayer, 1979)

And if you can't see at least two mines in that particular field then you haven't been around.

1. Saints? Saints?? We're Protestants, Godda- I mean, God bless it. We'll have none of your papist-deriving-from-Roman-paganism saints, thank you very much.

2. "All virtuous and godly living?" We're Protestants, etc. etc. and it's all about grace, thank you very much, mutter, grumble, where's my hammer I need to nail some theses to a door somewhere ....

And so on.

So in the end I settled on the Collect for Grace, which I've always liked anyway and which surely can't upset anyone:

O Lord our heavenly Father,

almighty and everlasting God,

who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day;

defend us in the same with thy mighty power;

and grant that this day we fall into no sin,

neither run into any kind of danger,

but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance,

to do always that is righteous in thy sight;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen, and so there.

Women can wear dresses too, says CofE

The CofE is to allow women bishops. Excellent.

The saddest part of the Beeb's report is the line "although supporters were celebrating a breakthrough, some traditionalists had left the synod chamber in tears." Well, of course, and that was the teeth-grittingly inevitable bit that had to come. This was not going to happen without a lot of people feeling that the church they love has slapped them in the face. Sadly, the nature of that love is not the fully-featured bi-directional give and take of a proper loving relationship. It's the love of a stalker for their victim; of Mrs Van Hopper for the future second Mrs De Winter; of Michael Corleone for his family. It's a love that says "I give you so much because I love you, now you must respect that love and do exactly what I say or else you don't love me in return." In any such relationship, for the secondary partner to have a future they can can only tear themselves away, maybe in tears themselves, knowing that any damage caused is only by the first partner refusing to let go and is not their fault.

Don't let the door hit you as you process out in all your finery.

I remain utterly baffled why anyone who would consider conversion to Catholicism over this issue isn't a Catholic already. What does the future hold in the eyes of these people from Planet Trad? Especially the ones with wives and kids? I'll tell you. Palpatine Benedict will regard them as used goods and his open arms of welcome will at the same time usher them into a securely guarded enclave of the church behind several firewalls where they will be second-class citizens forever more, but they won't mind, because like the denizens of Hell in CS Lewis's The Great Divorce, they are in a fool's paradise of their own making. And because the most important thing to them is the absence of women bishops, they will never notice.

On Planet Trad, the whole Reformation was just friends agreeing to disagree; Martin Luther's Thesis no. 1 was "women clergy now!" while the other 94 were just nitpicking over details; Bloody Mary would have been Lovely Mary if only Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer hadn't insisted on such dangerously liberal issues as letting women read the Bible in English. (Thankfully they will admit that more sophisticated avenues of dialogue have evolved since those days.) Whereas in the fantasy world that I live in, the whole ministry of Jesus Christ might be seen as instituting the salvation of all humankind in a manner equally applicable to every nation and every society of every part of the world in every era of history (and that includes the utterly unimaginable future), in actual fact it was to set up an exclusive, male-dominated, highly ritualised church based heavily upon the rites and practices of an extinct pagan empire.

I don't have a theology degree but I'm suspecting the divine purposes ran deeper than that.

So, three cheers for the synod, and just don't get me started on Jeffrey John.

Present danger

Finish this sentence from a classic hymn, concentrating especially on the next noun you're going to use.

"Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were ..."

You're an intelligent reader (look around you on screen: QED) and doubtless went for "an offering far too small." Which is the right answer. Well done. I won't insult you by reminding you that this is of course the last verse of "When I survey the wondrous cross", and it finishes:

"Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my life, my soul, my all."

Oh, drat.

Sadly, you are not the fool who wrote the version displayed in church this morning that would have it as "... a present far too small."

A present? A present? Can you honestly not tell the difference between a present, a token exchanged between friends, and an offering, a sacrificial presentation with the potential range to include absolutely everything you have? Who gives God presents? (Apart from these guys.) Can you not see what Isaac Watts was trying to say? Can you really not?

Anyhoo. I'm very glad to report that the congregation was far more old school than I would usually have given them credit for and most seemed to sing "offering" too. As it should be.

Present. Honestly!

Bijou Arkette

And if you can't tell what it is just by looking, you're not my target readership.

While the rest of us were singing "Come down O love divine" with the pauses in all the wrong places, the kids were having fun. Compare it with the original assembly instructions:

¹⁰ "Have them make a chest of acacia wood—two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. ¹¹ Overlay it with pure gold, both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it. ¹² Cast four gold rings for it and fasten them to its four feet, with two rings on one side and two rings on the other. ¹³ Then make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. ¹⁴ Insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the chest to carry it. ¹⁵ The poles are to remain in the rings of this ark; they are not to be removed. ¹⁶ Then put in the ark the Testimony, which I will give you.

Having the rings dangle freely on the poles misses the point a little, but we'll let it pass. The manual goes on to say:

¹⁷ "Make an atonement cover of pure gold—two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. ¹⁸ And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. ¹⁹ Make one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; make the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at the two ends. ²⁰ The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover. ²¹ Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the Testimony, which I will give you. ²² There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites."

Okay, there's only one cherub. This is a high-speed Ark of the Covenant for the modern age, with no time for that fancy wandering-in-the-wilderness-for-40-years malarkey. We intend to take the Promised Land before tea time and a backwards facing cherub wouldn't be aerodynamic.

Next week: advanced tent making.

Except you become as students ...

I hadn't realised how old I'm getting until I realised how long it's been since I had a decently silly theological conversation.

I had made the offer of transferring my collection of Dr Who videos to Middle Godson's family. Middle Godson's father and I were at uni together. At one point the discussion of the terms of the transfer, conducted devant une des enfants but phrased to avoid arousing excitement until a conclusion was reached, lapsed into New Testament Greek. The years just fell away.

MG's vicar father has also developed the Christingle concept for other festivals where the quotient of unchurched punters on pews might be higher than usual: Eastingle (chocolate eggs instead of oranges) and Harvestingle. This is an idea that could run and run. The higher forms of church could pick it up too. I propose Annuncitingle. Children could all clutch a parthenogenetically grown fruit on which they have drawn a very surprised face. Stick a cross in it, hold it upside down and you've got a ♀ .

I wonder if the student Richard Dawkins and his friends ever lapsed deliberately into really bad science just for the fun of it?

It's not just about calendars

The best queue I ever stood in was for Lenin's Tomb. It snaked around one and a half sides of the Kremlin but it kept moving. The Russians did not approve of dawdling. 40 minutes in and out to see the old wax work and then get on with our lives.

Yesterday's queue was 45 minutes stationary in a medieval cloister, but that was expected. We were told to be an hour early for the doors opening to Salisbury cathedral's candlelit Advent service. At T minus 45 minutes, when we got there, the queue already reached round two sides of the cloisters. Before too long we were being asked to squeeze forward as the cloisters were full and people were standing out in the rain. And they were still coming in from the rain when we finally got to go in. (Showing, I thought, a slight lack of initiative: the cloisters are quite wide enough for the queue to coil at least once.)

The people in front of us were well organised, with flasks of mulled wine and Tupperware boxes of mince pies and a large packet of Tyrells crisps. One of them came up with a throwaway line, "When I was on Ark Royal we organised our own Welsh male voice choir ..." Yes, we were in line with the right sort of people.

And how worth the wait it was, even with the extra 50 mintues after we actually took our seats before the service began. I had brought a book - Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin - but thought it would be better just to sit and absorb the atmosphere.

The cathedral is plunged into darkness with just one candle lit at the west end. Light spreads throughout the cathedral - very slowly, candle by candle. (In fact we were all probably standing for about five minutes after the order of service decreed emphatically "The congregation SITS" because of course at that point in the service no one could read the order of service ...) The choir comes in and splits up, going down either side of the cathedral into the darkness while the trebles throw the chorus back and forth from side to side, as if someone is playing with the balance settings.

The light stops at the transept - the east end and the altar stay in darkness. But the choir heads off into the dark, all the way to the Trinity Chapel right at the far end, their singing now slightly muffled but sending back sound signals to plumb the depths of the building. Little stars of light move around as candles are lit with tapers. The east window starts to glow. Light has reached even that far. Utterly magical.

By the end of the service there are upwards of 1000 candles all adding their little flame to the overall illumination. I wondered if the service was tailored to the burning time of a 12 inch candle, or if the candles were ordered in to suit the length of the service. Either way they got it exactly right. And then we sung the outward processional hymn, "Lo, he comes with clouds descending", and I have never meant the words of the last verse more wholeheartedly than last night. I see why the first thing any self-respecting cult or alternative religion tries to do is knock Jesus of his throne, because it's all about him. It was helped by a two minute bridge played on the organ before the final verse, to give the procession time to proceed, during which it got louder and louder and more and more triumphant. But even so:

Yea, amen, let all adore thee,
High on thy eternal throne. (Yea! Sing it!)
Saviour, take the power and glory,
Claim the kingdom for thine own. (Darn tootin'! Take it! Take it!)
Alleluia, alleluia,
Thou shalt reign and thou alone. (Abso-fragging-lutely! Thou alone!)

And not a word about doom. Marvellous.

As I get older I find I require more and more aesthetic satisfaction. The world is so much more than the sun of our five senses but the fact is we have five senses and they require fulfilment. Why cheat them out of it?

My student self would barely recognise me sometimes, but that's his loss and my gain.

Requiem for Jennifer

I didn't know Jennifer Swift that well but I knew her well enough to be sad to hear she had died. I must have first met her at a convention but I already knew the name from her stories in Interzone. She was Christian, she lived in Oxford, she wrote sf and she liked C.S. Lewis – obviously we were going to get on. Thanks to her I even got to give a talk at the C.S. Lewis society: Lewis was quite strongly opposed to space exploration, but I humbly proposed a few takes on the topic through the lens of science fiction that he might have approved of.

We developed an annual tradition in which she and her husband Tim would explore yet another picturesque cycling route around Oxfordshire on their tandem, and the route would intersect with a pub where I could join them for lunch and she could pick my brains about agents, writing novels and other related affairs. When Jennifer had identified you as a source of information you got a distinct feeling of being locked on to. She was born to be a journalist. The parallel world where her novel did finally get published is a richer place than this one. My input would have accounted for a fraction of the whole which would have been drawn from the many, many streams and strands of thought that so fascinated her.

Latterly, of course, it was we rather than I who joined them for lunch. No lunch this year, though. Didn't think anything of it and it was probably unrelated to her illness, which was only diagnosed mid-July. Then on 30 September Tim emailed all her friends to say she had died: stage 4 metastatic breast cancer in the liver and possibly the spinal column. Requiem mass sung this morning in the chapel at Magdalen.

Good grief, if I was doing a reading at my wife's memorial service I couldn't possibly be as dignified and calm as Tim was, reading a passage from Julian of Norwich in which she saw God hosting a banquet for all the honoured souls in his house – i.e. all of them – and taking a lower seat himself, refusing to hold an exalted position in his own home.

After a couple of shaky starts – the lad must be just on the verge of his voice breaking – a child sang a solo from Perelandra: the Opera, music by Donald Swann (who Tim has always strongly resembled in my eyes):

No man may shorten the way.
Each must carry his cross
On the long road to Calvary,
Follow where other feet have trodden.
Though the burden seems too great
For bleeding shoulders to uphold,
Too dark the path
For failing eyes to see,
Yet the lonely hill must still be climbed,
The desolation still be borne.
No man may shorten the way.

And what a difference it makes at a funeral where the minister delivering the sermon actually knew the deceased.

Once in a while it's good to splurge out on some really high church. Incense, Latin, the lot. (Though if I had one teeny, tiny criticism, it would be that the incense was kept in a separate room the other side of a closed door, and the server in charge of smells would duck in and out from time to time to get it. The first time he left I honestly thought he might have badly needed a pee and questioned why he had to go in the middle of Tim's reading. Okay, this was probably for a good reason: I expect the incense was kept in a liturgically sanctioned fume cupboard without which it would have reduced visibility in the chapel to five feet – but even so, it was distracting.)

I thought of the contrast with my usual church and remembered an analogy by C.S. Lewis, which therefore Jennifer would approve of. In fact I know that even Philip Pullman approves of this one because he's who I heard it from. Roughly it goes: when I was a child, I liked lemonade but I didn't like wine. Now I'm an adult I still like lemonade but I also like wine. I now enjoy two experiences where I used to enjoy only one: my maturity has enriched me.

Those churches that resolutely use only forms of worship devised this century are confining themselves to lemonade only – and the more determinedly modern they are ("this unsingable piece of whimsy was a hit at New Wine so we must sing it every week until either one day someone learns the tune or we bring back a new hit from New Wine next year – whichever is sooner") the flatter the lemonade is. Everyone needs a good vintage draught from time to time.

Back to Jennifer, her Church Times obituary is a lovely read and I'll finish as the service did. Jennifer:

In Paradisum deducant te angeli, in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead thee to Paradise; at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem. May the choir of angels receive thee, and with Lazarus, once a beggar, may thou have eternal rest.

Alpha beater

Just watched Channel 4's Revelations: How to Find God, which this week was a documentary about the Alpha course as run by St Aldates. Interestingly it highlighted several of the reasons why I am no great fan of the course ... and threw up some problems that I hope are unique to St Aldates.

I myself have Done Alpha. I held out for a long time but eventually I cracked, and I enjoyed it. I had no great revelations myself but then I was already about as committed a Christian as I will ever be. I met some nice people. My group leader was one of the saintliest, wisest, most head-screwed-on people I know. My problems?

Well, even Richard Dawkins couldn't argue with the idea of Alpha. A simple, straightforward presentation of Christian belief, in a friendly, non-threatening setting. Something to counter all the misconceptions the average bod is likely to pick up through a lifetime of half-heard truths and strawman targets and the Vicar of Dibley. What could go wrong? Show them the facts and let them draw their own conclusions.

I don't know if this is how all churches do it, or just us - but the first thing our meetings kick off with is a couple of choruses. Now, to the people running the thing this may be as natural as breathing and it wouldn't occur to them to do otherwise, any more than they would set off in a car without putting on their seatbelt. However, my most positive feeling towards those songs is grudging tolerance, and that's when I'm in a good mood. I go to my church for the fellowship and the friends that I love. I don't go for the singing. And so I honestly couldn't invite someone to Alpha with a straight face, telling them it's all a simple, straightforward presentation etc. but knowing they'd be singing "Hungry I come to you" before anything else.

Second is the content itself. It'll be no surprise to anyone that I fully agree with all the main conclusions of the arguments ... just not always the route taken to get there.

Example: in the session on Sin, the official Alpha coursebook contains a handy little story about Arthur Conan Doyle sending telegrams to a certain number of friends saying "flee, all is discovered", whereupon most or all of them cleared straight out of town. The point is meant to be that we all have a guilty conscience, or something. But the number of friends varies from telling to telling, I'm sure I've heard exactly the same story told about Mark Twain (in whose case it sounds much more likely), and this very day I came across this handy little thread that seems to conclude the tale is apocryphal.

Again, to some people it's completely natural to trot out a half-understood urban legend in the genuine and sincere belief that it's just as good as hard, solid fact. There is no intention to deceive. But it isn't as good as hard solid fact and that's all there is to it. Give me citations, or leave it out. I have ranted about this before. If a speaker demonstrates that he's a very nice bloke but will uncritically receive any pile of tosh that comes to him from another Christian, why should anyone believe what he has to say on ... I dunno ... Jesus?

(I've also read the Christianity Explored coursebook, which is for people who find Alpha too liberal and non-commital (a bit like actuaries being people who find accountancy too exciting). But whatever your views on it, the content is based squarely on direct anecdotes from the author's life, or illustrations drawn from movies that everyone will have seen. In that respect, Christianity Explored is streets ahead.)

And then there's the old CS Lewis chestnut about Jesus being "just a good teacher". No one, he said, could make the claims he did and just be a good teacher. He was God, or he was a deluded lunatic, with no middle ground. Well, this is one of the few times I have to say that old CS was talking cobblers. Mother Teresa is a perfect example of the contradiction CS Lewis says is impossible. The love and devotion she showed the poor of Calcutta was exemplary. Her teachings on contraception verged on criminal irresponsibility. Of course you can have both those extremes in one human being. We are complex people.

Again, no surprise to regular readers to know that along with Lewis I also believe Jesus was God. But I don't believe it for that argument, not least because that argument doesn't work. It is illogical. It should not be used.

It is used.

The content that works best in Alpha is never intended to be a show-stopping argument, but still it tends to get used as such. There is an answer to every objection I have ever heard raised, both at my own sessions and on the TV show, but these are not absolute arguments designed to sweep away all doubt. They are simply counter-arguments that take the game back to 15-all. There is no other way to do it. Yet, they are used as absolute arguments, and the Alpha leaders seem strangely confused and upset when doubts remain in the mind of the questioner.

To the TV programme, and the specific St Aldates thing I really disliked was the matter of Tongues. It may just the editing, but it looked horribly like speaking in Tongues at St Aldates is the indicator of success for the Alpha weekend away. And again I say unto you: cobblers.

Two of the participants walked out during the Holy Spirit session on their weekend away, and my heart went with them. One of them said straight out that if he had known, if he had realised it would be like this ...

Meanwhile the Reverend quotes the first half of 1 Corinthians 5, in which Paul states: "I would like every one of you to speak in tongues ..." But you can't have the first half of that verse without the second: "... but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified."

Not every Christian speaks in Tongues. Not every one has to. A Christian message that says otherwise is just Wrong.

Overall, Alpha - at least, as practiced as Christ Church in Abingdon and apparently at St Aldates - starts off as the presentation thing, but it tries just a little too hard to make you click into one particular slot and it doesn't make it clear that there are many, many, many slots available. And if you don't make that slot, yet you conclude on the evidence presented that this is all that's available ... well, then, obviously you decide you're not going to be a Christian and according to official Alpha doctrine you're destined for Hell.

Fortunately I don't believe that either.

Let's not diss it. The Spirit works wherever he is given the opportunity and that includes Alpha, including the Wrong bits. I can say this because he works in all of us, including the Wrong bits, because he has to: down here on Earth there are no bits that are wholly Right. Alpha does great things. I will gladly help set up and deliver puddings for the meals. I even have that sticker in the back of my car of Bear Grylls on top of a mountain with his arms held out. I do all this because I want Alpha to succeed, which means giving the Spirit a chance to act and overcome the foibles of his human servants.

But I'm not of the Alpha slot.

To the Tower!

Here's a useful tip. If you're going to a Sunday morning service in the Chapel of St Peter Ad Vincula within the Tower of London, and provided you're pre-booked in (or just plain convincing, smartly dressed and clearly not a terrorist) you can get in for free. See, there is a plus side to an established state religion. Of course, it's probably best that you actually go to the service after that if only to establish some cred.

Or, in today's case, to attend (arriving five minutes late due to a crash [not ours] on the M4 and having to awaken a slumbering teenager at 7.30am on a Sunday) the christening of Junior Nephew in the same building that has previously seen the christening of his sister and brother and the marriage of his parents. This is a chapel royal and they do it ... differently to Christ Church on Long Furlong.

The medals worn by the vicar on his robes are the first clue (six of them, one with bar and a mention-in-despatches). The robes themselves are another. As the service progressed I had cause to discover (and feel quite pleased that) I can still mumble my way through the Venite, the Te Deum and the Jubilate, all in 1662 English. And I can safely say that the highly spiritual meditative aid that starts "Oh it's great great brill brill wicked wicked skill skill to have a friend in Jesus" has never rattled these particular rafters.

The rafters are however rattled by a marvellous choir who can hit their notes so perfectly that the sound just seems to come out of the air around you. We finished, as you would only expect, with the National Anthem and the final verse of "Eternal father strong to save"-

Oh Trinity of love and power
Our brethren shield in danger's hour.
From rock and tempest, fire and foe
Protect them wheresoe'r they go.
Thus ever more shall rise to thee
Glad hymns of praise from land sea.

In case this all seems a little overpowering, it's also worth mentioning that the choir master has a pony tail, he looks (from behind) like the lead singer of the Commitments, and at my niece's christening four years ago he played "The wheels on the bus" on the chapel organ for the benefit and delight of Senior Nephew.

Sometimes it's good to take a break, eh?

On previous occasions we've taken the opportunity to see the Crown Jewels, but not this time as the queue was winding around the block and there's some things even chapelgoers can't jump. As I recall they have a conveyor belt down either side to carry the tourists past, thus preventing build-ups of gawkers which is a very good idea. With only a small effort you can make the perceptual shift that you are standing still and it's the Crown Jewels that are gliding past, like a very expensive edition of the Generation Game. "A priceless diamond. An orb. A sceptre. A cuddly toy ..."

Then we repaired to Zizzis in St Katherine's Dock for lunch, where I had the seafood risotto "with a hint of chili". I would say more than a hint - it gave me several harsh nudges, a couple of curt requests and at one point it was outright barking orders at me. Very nice. I'm loath to admit to any good coming out of the Thatcher era at all, but sheer honesty often forces me to admit that quite a lot did and one of these things is the renovation of the Docklands. If a building has to be one thing or the other, would you rather an Italian restaurant with a slightly experimental menu or a mouldering warehouse that's no good to anyone except rats? Not a hard choice to make.

Rites and wrongs

I came across this link on Liz Williams's Diary of a Witchcraft Shop in Avalon (i.e. Glastonbury): "Dysfunctional Behaviour and the Pagan Scene". I'd like to be able to quote from it here, in a number of places, but the owner specifically asks that people ask permission before quoting and hasn't replied to my request. So I'll just have to recommend you look at it, and make the following points. The author says (my interpretation):

1. People too often join a pagan circle hoping to find it full of superior types rather than normal, doing-their-best types just like them. Depending on the level of dysfunctionality of the circle and/or the newcomers, at best this can lead to disillusion, at worst to active abuse.
2. By a strange paradox, dysfunctional groups don't have to try as hard as functional ones to succeed and therefore last longer. By being permanently in crisis and not having to work hard to ride out storms, deal with conflict etc. they survive where much better groups fail.
3. Newcomers are drawn in by a misunderstanding of what is on offer. They want a love spell but don't want to be more loveable. They want a spell to make them rich without having to work harder or be better at their work.
4. The right (or rather, wrong) mentality can quite easily take a good, healthy proposition like "Love your neighbour" and corrupt it – vide the Inquisition. Thus even the positive, life affirming ideals of a good pagan circle can be twisted to justify obnoxious, anti-social behaviour.

... and it strikes me that all of these can apply just as much to churches. Just do a find-and-replace on the terminology and it matches. In fact it quite possibly fits even more belief systems than just our two but these are the two I'll concentrate on at the moment. Unrealistic expectations on both sides, unwillingness to take the rough with the smooth ...

Let's just say they're problems to look out for.

One area where we see completely eye to eye is the notion that to do it properly it must have meaning. It must be relevant to your life. That also means you must be free to ask questions and you must accept that just because person X does thing Y in way Z, that doesn't mean everyone does, or should. You can be trapped in the form and the ritual.

There are several testimonies on this site from young pagans who were raised as Christians, or at least contemplated it, but found what they were getting in church couldn't hold a candle to what they got from a simple walk in the woods. In many cases that could be because the church was in fact doing it properly, and good for it: they wanted power and all the church could offer was humility, so they went somewhere with comforting rituals that at least give the impression of being in charge. See point 3 above. But I've also been in some churches which have as much to offer the modern world as King Herod had to offer the youth ministry, when they should be able to offer so much more. Could it be, I dare ask myself, that they're trapped in their own rituals and therefore don't have anything to offer a genuine seeker? It's not just the pagans who have rituals, y'know. A ritual may be jumping naked backwards over a bonfire while the moon shines above the Eye Stone or it may be singing a chorus in a key that makes dogs in nearby villages bark, and then shifts after the bridge to a key that actively knocks bats out of the sky, and that's before you even reach the fifth repetition.

Nor does it help if the automatic response of the church in question is to threaten such notions with eternal punishment in Hell ...

Just saying.

The Baby Eating Bishop of Abingdon

Someone - no idea who - once told me that the late Abingdon Abbey was, until the time of Henry VIII, the size of Wells Cathedral. Nowadays of course it's an outline in the park by the river.

But assuming it was not only the size but also the exact shape of Wells Cathedral, here is how an aerial shot of the Abbey Grounds might look today ... I know, marvel at the way the shadows point in different directions.

I feel an alternate history coming on.


I'm in doubt at all that becoming Protestant was one of the best things that ever happened to this country (item: Isaac Newton was born the year Galileo died; item: I doubt we'd have cut the King's head off if we all belonged to the same side; item: ... I could go on) but there was a lot of collateral damage, lives ruined, atrocities perpetrated en route. Just to stop us feeling too smug.

You lisp and wear strange suits

Well, a rather touching little interlude in my normal Sunday morning routine today.

My childhood Sundays were blighted in interesting ways by formal, garrison-based moderately high suit-wearing CofE church attendance. What made all the difference around the age of 15-16 was some positive, helpful youth outreach at school. Some grown-ups who had already been there and done that themselves took the time out to show how (a) it can all actually be relevant to life in the modern world, (b) it's not all about following the list of Do Nots and beating yourself up when you Do, and (c) it can actually be fun. And as I always like to give back, or pay it forward, or whatever, I've now been a youth worker with teenagers for so long that any child who had been born during my first meeting can now legally marry.

That's at the present church. Take it back a bit further to my previous church and any child born during my first meeting there can now vote.

I throttled back a little when I got married - suddenly I could think of other things to do with my spare time - but this summer I formally handed in my notice for good. It's been great fun and I've seen some pretty superior examples of teendom through to adulthood. The earlier examples are now older than I was when I started. But there comes a time when you really feel you've done it all, enthusiasm becomes ever harder to muster, and anyway it's time to get out before my reputation is dragged down by any real failures.

I was forewarned and so expected to be Surprised during the service this morning by some kind of public vote of thanks. They went a bit further than that. Quite apart from the Youth Pastor presenting me with a bottle of bubbly, it turned out a Family Fortunes-type quiz had been arranged on my behalf, with me as the special subject. Apparently, for example, a lot of people decided my favourite book of the Bible would be Leviticus. I guessed Song of Songs. Put it this way - we had a reading from the latter at our wedding. We did not have a reading from Leviticus.

"[Shellfish] shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination."

No.

And what I will most be remembered for, apparently, is the introduction of Shakespearean insults into our meetings.

This was a simple little game devised, if memory serves, to illustrate the principle of forgiveness. The rules are dead easy and require access only to a good source of insults. I forget which one I used but there are plenty of websites out there that will generate Shakespearean insults for you. Accept no forgeries, though: some just use Shakespearean language to make insults up. I hold that if it was good enough for Shakespeare then it's good enough for us, so only use a website with the real stuff. This one, for example.

Once you have generated a good number, write each one on a card. The game can now begin.

The first player draws a card and insults the victim of his choice from among the other players. The victim throws a pair of dice.

• Even number: victim forgives the insult. Insulter discards insult. Games moves on clockwise from the insulter.
• Odd number: victim doesn't forgive. Insulter gives the insult to the victim, draws a new card and insults someone else (never the same victim twice running, or at all if possible in one go). Keep going until an insult is forgiven.
• Double: regardless of outcome (even or odd as described above), game moves on clockwise after that insult.

The game continues until all insults have been drawn. The loser is the one with the most unforgiven insults.

The point? (All good church youth activities have one.) It ends much more quickly if the insults are forgiven straight up.

There, I make my bequest to the world. Feel free to adapt or modify in any way you like. And for anyone wondering, the title of this post comes from "As You Like It".

Sheep and Sugar Loaf

Back in July we visited Hereford, taking in the small town of Credenhill where I used to live. As an adult you observe a lot more than as a child, and one of the things observed was, to the left of the Black Mountains, what looked like a volcano. A tall, distinct, conical pointed peak standing on its own, thirty miles away, which I could swear I had never seen before. As I'm 90% sure there are no volcanoes in the Welsh Marches, I took steps to find out what it was, and it turned out to be the Sugar Loaf.

So, having finally learnt of its existence, finding myself in Abergavenny this weekend it seemed only right to climb the thing.


If I look knackered and sweat drenched, there's a reason. That's 596 metres, boys and girls. Getting on for two thousand feet. Most of them mine. Astonishing views, needless to say, and I'm 90% certain I could see Credenhill.

A lot of sheep had been there before us, in every sense of the word "been". This one was the friendliest sheep ever, and no jokes about Wales please.


It has probably deduced, correctly, that any human who makes it to the top presents no threat at all to any form of life larger than a beetle that they might accidentally tread on. In fact it comes up to you and asks for food. Well, it nuzzled my hand as I was texting my accomplishment to Best Beloved. It's breath was very soft and silky. Basically, I think it thinks it's a cat. Or my phone was food. Or both.

The cause for this little outing was a church-organised Men's Weekend Away. And I have to say, I do feel very Menly.

A challenge for the organist

From the ever-reliable BBC: a church in Cardiff is to host a Dr Who-themed service for young people (young people?! It will be wasted on them!). Organiser Fr Dean Atkins says that as a saver of the world, Doctor Who was "almost a Messiah figure".

So now we know. He didn't Rise, he Regenerated. The tomb was in fact a TARDIS with a functioning chameleon circuit.

Suggestions for hymns?

• "I the Lord of Sea and Sky (and Time and Space)"
• "He is the (Time) Lord"
• "Time Lord of the Dance"

... Hmm, too obvious just sticking "Time" in front of "Lord". Maybe I should be more lateral.

• "Gallifrey is very wonderful"
• Anything that mentions "Citadel"
• "Come on regenerate"

And doubtless others for hours of decreasing entertainment.

The comedy of errors

Like Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and the Veneration of the Reserved Host, Holiday Club is an annual rite. At least, it is where I come from.

It's really quite a feat. For four days in August, a couple of hundred primary school age children flock to our church for a programme of fun and silly games, all managed by CRB-registered volunteers and teenagers of the parish in a truly professional manner. And yes, we try to get a Christian message across, but it's in a church, you know, so join the dots.

Oh, and don't forget the songs. Some really quite fun, some truly, truly, horribly, awful. You grit your teeth, stick your hands in your pockets (in case you feel drawn into doing the actions) and remind yourself that this is the faith that gave the world Verdi's Requiem and the Missa Solemnis, so clearly God has a sense of humour. Anyway. Kids get out of the home, the parents get some hours to themselves, everyone's happy.

And the highlight - for me, because it's my sole involvement and doesn't even involve having to turn up, though I like to if I can - is the drama. A scene each day, humourous and light hearted yet embodying that day's themes. These are great fun to write and to watch and as far as I can see to perform, usually by talented teenage actors who get a little taller and deeper voiced each year.

For the first couple of years I wrote these from scratch. Lately the organisers have got off-the-peg ones from Scripture Union or somesuch that require some adapting. Sometimes the adaptation is very light - say, there's five scenes that have to be condensed into four, as Holiday Club only runs for four days. Sometimes the work is heavier because the drama was written by someone who once had "funny" described to him by a bloke he met in the pub, but as neither of them had much sense of humour to start with it hasn't really worked.

This year's tended towards that end of the spectrum. The basic plot was the rivalry between two airlines at Kingdom (of Heaven) Airport. In the original version one of the airlines was called FAG, which really had to go, whether you subscribe to the US or UK interpretation of the word, so it became RASH - the Reliable Airline Syndicate of High Flyers, which wasn't called RASH-fuh because that would sound silly, and which opened the door to all kinds of jokes about "my RASH is still growing" and the like.

And the last scene, get this, revolved around a briefcase exploding. The organisers felt that the subtext of airport terrorism, and the King of Heaven blowing up his loyal subjects, was a little outré for a drama aimed at children, so my revised and somewhat more lighthearted version involved an actor being convinced the briefcase would explode, and trying to stop another actor from opening it, and the latter actor opening it anyway and finding a bit of paper marked BANG.

It would all have been so much more effective if the poor boy had been able to open the briefcase at all ... Memo to stagehands: don't supply as props briefcases with combination locks for which no one on stage has the combination.

Still, the young actors improvised their way through it with great aplomb - the net effect was still that it didn't actually explode, which was all that was really needed - and the comedy was heightened.

My favourite of all the Holiday Club dramas still has to be one I wrote from scratch some years ago, about the adventures of Paul Saint, the demon traffic cop who has a change of heart and becomes a rally driver. Can you spot the symbolism? Can you, I ask? Anyway, I've decided to make it available here.

A quiet night out

We attend Christ Church on Long Furlong, and like most Christ Churches it's fairly evangelical. Evangelicals won't deal with anyone below the boss's son.

Just down the road from us, though, is St Michael's, which is technically Anglican but which I was put off many years ago by excessive Highness. The high church types have no difficulty in dealing with the senior management team and St Mike is about as senior as you get without actually being a deity.

But I have matured a little in my own tastes and we've just got back from the 6.30 evening service. The two of us swelled the congregation by approximately a third. We listened to readings, we sang a hymn, we sat in pews designed by a secret cabal of chiropractors to boost their trade. All interspersed by periods of silence.

The church was utterly peaceful and full of light. Birds sang outside. All was well with the world.

St Michael's will never have a teenage band member treating the congregation to his indie version of "If I were a butterfly", as ours did this morning. It loses nothing by this fact. In the great body of Christ, Long Furlong is arms or legs - active, visible bits that go out and do things - and St Mike's is the secret, hidden organs that you rarely see but which are just as important.

Long live denominations.

Saddest story of the day

Choirmaster abuses boys - boys complain - choirmaster sacked but not reported to police as long as he promises not to do it again - choirmaster sneakily does it again without letting church know. [Details]

One of the sad things being, the church in question says it was following best practice at the time - 1990 - and, you know what, it probably was. In fact it probably did more to stop the abuse than many other organisations would have done at the time. Child abuse existed, obviously, always has I suspect, out in the big bad world somewhere, but it just wasn't on the radar as something likely to be perpetrated by one of your own. I speak as someone who was a volunteer youth leader then (at St Christopher's, Cove, not too far from St Peter's in Farnborough) and still am now. Compared to now, then was a shower.

Seventeen years later, in my present church, we have a full time youth pastor, we have child protection officers, we have diocesan guidelines and everyone remotely connected with youthwork is CRB registered. A fact of which I am most proud (and which has come in handy as a children's author in getting speaking gigs, but that's a spin-off benefit). Leaving out the fact that even if I wanted to get intimate with a minor in my care then I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to go about it, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yet when I started we had a part-time and pretty ineffectual youth worker (nice guy but with issues), and to get a job in youthwork you had a nice chat with the vicar and that was that.

But for far too long the church - any church - has been seen as a perfect storm of confluences: ready access to children, a mindset that says we're all sinners and your sin is no greater than mine, a willingness to forgive - in fact, a pride in forgiving - and cluelessness about the realities of the situation. I'll bet you good money that under those conditions a lot of people came into the church for the wrong reasons, and they're still there.

Well, you can't condemn anyone for the contents of their mind, just their actions. Maybe they did come in; there's nothing that can be done about that, except pay attention to the guidelines, which - if followed - are pretty good at limiting the opportunities for abuse. Never letting kids be alone with an adult is a good start. The few times I've had to be alone with a minor, for whatever reason, I make sure there's a good physical distance between us, and they're closer to the door than me. Or we meet at their home, with other members of their family within easy reach and earshot.

My conscience is clear - I can safely no child is in sexual danger from me. (I may want to throttle some from time to time but that's another matter.) I know that, you don't. For your peace of mind it's important that I limit my actions in this way. And by default, the actions of any actual potential abusers will be limited in the same way.

But if they do find a way through ...

It's not the church's place to forgive child abusers. Any forgiveness is purely between the children and the abuser. The church's job is to protect the vulnerable, and that means that if you catch the abusers, you throw them to the dogs.

Bad luck Mr Gorsky

There's no excuse for it.

Neil Armstrong allegedly uttered two famous lines on the moon, and the second was "Good luck Mr Gorsky" as he climbed back into the lander. Apparently, as a child he had overheard his neighbours the Gorskys arguing, with the wife promising the husband sex "when the kid next door walks on the moon."

This was presented to us with the assurance "this is a true story" at a meeting at church last night, and padded out with lots of supplementary detail: NASA assumed he was talking about a Soviet cosmonaut and checked their files but couldn't trace the man; Armstrong refused to expand on his comment until 1995 when Mr Gorsky died.

What a shame that it's just a joke made up by comedian Buddy Hackett – in, curiously, 1995. As a very quick and easy Internet search discovers.

In some versions it's apparently the oral variety that Mrs Gorsky is trying not to promise, but I don't think last night's speaker was ready to go there. It was still a good talk, good points ... just a little undermined.

I like to think I can detect an urban legend quite easily. There's something about them – the tone, the very faint stretch marks it leaves in your disbelief – that makes my antennae twitch. Some are just funny to tell as jokes. Did an Asian family in Weston-Super-Mare really think the miles of low-tide mudflat meant there was a tsunami coming? I don't know and frankly can't be bothered to check. But then, I don't intend to use this as an illustration in a talk.

With the internet, there's absolutely no excuse for not checking any anecdote you intend to repeat to reinforce whatever you're saying. And yet, up they come, time and time again, and the ones I hear most often are shoehorned into sermons or church talks. Christians do have a distressing tendency to believe anything told to them by another Christian without questioning. The first time, it might amuse, even if already the antennae are twitching. The second time, especially if one or more of the key features varies slightly ... well, that's when I tend to shut down.

What does it say? It says your talk is so flawed it has to be backed up with lies. It says you're so clueless you can't do a simple Google search, yet apparently people should believe you. Or maybe you're just a very nice guy without the slightest idea of how the world works ... so still not really worth listening to, sorry.

Another one that pops up frequently tends to be on talks about sin or guilt, in the format of:

[Arthur Conan Doyle / Mark Twain / A.N. Other] sent a letter to every man in town saying "Leave town at once – all is found out." [A quarter / half / three quarters / all] of the people who received it immediately left.

Unlike the Gorsky one, I can't find this at all on the web ... which itself makes me suspicious as to whether it happened to Conan Doyle or Twain or anyone at all.

For pity's sake, people, get it right or shut up.