7.12.24

Which Game? Whose Rules?

The Christmas truce of 1914 on the Western Front is one of those historical moments that I find most intriguing. Famously, the temporary ceasefire agreed on Christmas Day allowed British and German soldiers to stop killing each other and emerge from their trenches to exchange cigarettes, sing carols and even play football. For a few hours, the rules changed. It was as if for a moment the wider world of peace, play and friendship was inserted into the hellish context of the trenches. Two very different realities were shoved together, reminding the troops that a life they had almost forgotten was still possible. And then the curtain fell back, and the trenches became once again the only imaginable way of life.

This episode came to my mind recently when members of my family went to the Parkway cinema to see ‘Grand Theft Hamlet’. Sadly, I was otherwise occupied, but their accounts of this film left me tantalised.

As I understand it, the film is a documentary set during the lockdown of 2020 when two unemployed actors playing the violent online video game ‘Grand Theft Auto’ decided to stage a virtual Shakespeare play within the detailed digital world of the game. Grand Theft Auto is set in an urban landscape vaguely like Los Angeles, offering wonderful locations and populated by a wide range of non-player characters (‘NCPs’). One of the actors happens to be married to a film maker, who thought that this might make a good documentary.

The result charts how they put the word out to other actors/players, held auditions, and performed Hamlet, all in a context where random online gamers and NCPs are trying to shoot them up. We never see the real people in the real world; we only hear their voices as they speak through their avatars and see the world through their eyes.

In many ways it’s a totally absurd mash-up, inserting Shakespeare into the digital world of a 21^st century video game, all against a real-world context of pandemic and lockdown.

Nevertheless, there are some surprising parallels. Both Hamlet and Grand Theft Auto have a high body count. Hamlet is responsible for numerous deaths, like the players in Grand Theft Auto (who also sometimes kill characters by accident!). And there is the possibility of an existential void in both the play and the game: “To be, or not to be? That is the question.”

There are moments of surprise and delight, as for example when a virtual muscle-bound macho gangster type turns out ‘in the real world’ to be a mum who is a literary agent and a fan of Hamlet.

Another participant can’t act but invents a role for himself as a green alien with responsibility for the production’s security, and in his flying gunship protects members of the cast from other characters trying to shoot them.

There is a playful sense here, shared with other video games, of being able to try out different identities; but the reason I link it in my mind with the truce of Christmas 1914 is that both are examples of people trying to pursue an activity where the context is against them.

In the context of the First World War, fraternising with the enemy goes against the basic assumptions of war.  In the context of Grand Theft Auto, trying to create a work of art is at odds with what most people might think a shoot ‘em up video game is all about. Achieving the goal in view requires participants to play by a different set of rules to those assumed by the context, and they do this by referring to a wider reality.

Perhaps something similar is happening in the original Christmas story. Our world is often violent and frightening. Human nature is always generating anxiety and conflict. Other people are experienced as competitors and rivals for scarce resources. And we create rules for living accordingly: Look after Number One; the early bird gets the worm; it’s a dog eat dog world; don’t get mad, get even; there is no such thing as a free lunch. But in Christmas these assumptions get invaded by a different reality.

Jesus, the son of Mary, is born in a stable in Bethlehem and despite being poor and powerless he reveals a different set of rules for living: a way based on generosity, loyalty, compassion, mercy, openness and trust; the way of grace and love.

Within the limited world of the fallen human heart, the first set of rules makes a certain kind of sense; but against the wider reality of the kingdom of God they are a distraction from the path of genuine humanity.

In the original Hamlet there is of course a play within the play, which Prince Hamlet sets up to reveal the truth about his uncle Claudius: “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King”.

The birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus is the ‘play’ which reveals to us our own need of redemption; it opens up a wider reality, with the possibility of allowing God to turn our lives into works of grace-filled art, even though all around are often playing a different game.

Jonathan Baker

23.11.24

The Resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury

I wonder what your reaction was to the resignation of Archbishop Justin Welby the other week?

It was precipitated by the publication of the Makin Report into the Church of England’s handling of the abuse perpetrated by the barrister John Smyth upon dozens of teenagers attending the Iwerne Trust’s Christian camps in the 70s and 80s, and subsequently many more young men in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Some have responded to news of the resignation with satisfaction, holding the Archbishop to blame for the failure of the Church to take effective action over a period of years; some have been saddened, feeling that Welby has done more than anyone else over the last 12 years to make the Church of England safer; and others have been puzzled, wondering quite where responsibility lies for the passing on of information within an institution which is not highly centralised, and between other institutions such as the police and Winchester College (where some of Smyth’s abuse took place).

What is clear is that the victims of John Smyth’s abuse have not been well served. Leaders of the Iwerne Trust in the early 1980’s realised that something was wrong and commissioned a report which identified exactly what was going on; namely the horrific physical abuse of young men at the camps and also at Winchester College, which Smyth justified as a form of punishment for sin. Smyth’s own son was one of the victims. That report was suppressed out of concern for the reputation of the Iwerne Trust. It never came to the attention of the bishops or any of the Church’s hierarchy until decades later. Most of the leaders who knew at the time are now dead.

Not only was there a cover up, but assistance was given to Smyth to set up a “mission” in Zimbabwe and then South Africa where he was able to continue abusing many more young men, one of whom died.

So there was an appalling cover up. But the Archbishop was not part of it, and that is not why he resigned.

In 2013 a victim reported his experience of abuse to the Diocese of Ely’s Safeguarding Adviser, who raised it with Cambridgeshire Police, the National Safeguarding Team, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Diocese of Cape Town where Smyth was then living. The nature of the conversations with the police is unclear, with no Crime Number being issued or formal investigation opened. Safeguarding Advisers were waiting for police advice which eventually suggested that no action would be taken; but it seems the police were not told how serious or extensive the abuse had been. Meanwhile emails to the Diocese of Cape Town went unanswered, and the Archbishop himself was told that the matter had been referred to the police when this was not quite the case.

What this shows is that despite the matter being handled by experienced Safeguarding Advisers in both the Diocese of Ely and at national level, the system was not robust. Communications both with the police and internally were not as clear as they should have been; and although emails and conversations were sometimes followed up, there was a lack of persistence, and too many assumptions were made about what other people were doing.

The result is that Smyth remained free to continue abusing people until his death in 2018, and his original victims were faced with a Church which appeared not to be taking their experience  seriously.

Matters were made worse following a Channel 4 documentary in 2017, after which the Archbishop promised to meet with survivors. However he did not do so until 2021. Police had advised that survivors should not be approached until their investigations were completed, but this was not communicated to those expecting the Church to reach out to them, so this was experienced as a betrayal.

The Makin Report suggests the Church placed too much emphasis on following process rather than putting the needs of victims at the centre. Consequently many victims have been forced not only to relive their original trauma, but feel betrayed by senior figures who broke promises and failed to prioritise the needs of those who were most vulnerable.

It would be satisfying to point the finger at villains, but the most obvious candidates are all dead. What we are left with is a Church where even the Safeguarding Advisers don’t always get it right, and which is still coming to terms with the reality and extent of child abuse within its ranks. Culture is slow to change, and an important learning point from this scandal is that in historic cases the needs of survivors must be put first.

I find myself left with several reflections. First, there are the survivors, who need our understanding and support. The trauma of abuse is hard to understand when one has not experienced it, and the lingering effects are hard to overestimate.

Another is that we must continue to stress the importance of developing good Safeguarding practice at every level, and that begins in the parish; let no one imagine that this is some unnecessary woke fad.

Another is a more general question this raises about human nature. If recent Safeguarding scandals (such as that involving Bishop Peter Ball a few years ago) tell us anything, it is that great wickedness can exist alongside apparent holiness, and that even well-intentioned people can be part of a system that fails to protect the vulnerable. Sin is insistent, and doesn’t go away.

Christianity holds in tension a belief in the basic goodness of people (because we are made in the image of God) with a belief in the fallenness of humanity (because we resist God). We should therefore be critical of any tendency to see people as either monsters or saints, and instead try to look at one another, and ourselves, with both grace – and also a degree of doubt.

Jonathan Baker

9.11.24

Grace from Geese

It has been a depressing week. For months we have been wearied by headlines about the US Presidential election. It has been both fascinating and exhausting to see how Donald Trump uses his platform to express personal grievances, make playground boasts, and demonstrate his ability to make people believe that something is so just because he declares it, unencumbered by reason or fact. Now we have the prospect of this continuing for another four years.

At the same time we see a widening war in the Middle East, with an increasing circle of nations being sucked in, no prospect of an end, and untold misery for millions of people. The war in Ukraine grinds on, in which Putin can only be encouraged by the election of Trump.

Closer to home the economic uncertainty looks set to continue indefinitely, with many households struggling to make ends meet.

Here at the Minster we have had a cluster of funerals for well-known members of the community, and there is sadness.

And now the hour has gone back, the days seem shorter and we are into November and the season of Remembrance.

As I say, it’s been a depressing week.

Even so, our spirits can be lifted by mundane things. The other day Sue and I were walking our dogs near Molescroft, when over the fields of stubble appeared several skeins of wild geese, lines of them across the sky , wobbly v-formations breaking and re-forming, all heading south towards warmer regions and all raucously honking as they went.

It was a strangely moving experience, and I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps the reminder that there is more to this world than the madness of human politics; perhaps the notion that wild animals sometimes show more sense and purpose than human beings; perhaps the revelation that there is after all an unforced beauty in nature which signals the presence of grace.

Above all it was the sense that I was somehow being addressed. No doubt that was fanciful, but sometimes we do find ourselves not as observers but as recipients. Sometimes things speak to us, and catch us unawares. We thought we were reading the text, only to discover that the text was reading us. We thought we were safely looking at a bush, only for it to seize our attention with a flash of glory. We hear the honk of a goose, and within it make out the sound of our own name.

The wild goose is supposed to have been a symbol of the Holy Spirit in the early Celtic church. Whether or not that is true, the goose certainly speaks of freedom, beauty and endurance, all qualities in which we stand in need. And the Holy Spirit is the presence of God, active and at work within his world, despite appearances to the contrary.

There is a wonderful poem by Mary Oliver called ‘Wild Geese’ which came to mind as I watched the geese over Molescroft. To me it speaks powerfully of the presence of grace, even where there is loneliness and despair.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Jonathan Baker

26.10.24

Responding to the Call

Q: What do the films ‘Billy Elliot’, ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Ratatouille’ have in common?

A: They are all about vocation.

Billy Elliot (2000) is the story of a boy from a mining community in County Durham whose father hopes he will become a boxer, but whose real desire is to dance. Overcoming various obstacles on the way, he secures an interview at the Royal School of Ballet, which goes badly until he is asked how he feels when he dances. Billy struggles to find words, and then says, “When I get going I forget everything, I sort of disappear, I feel a change in my body, like there’s fire in my body, I’m just there, like a bird, like electricity.”

In ‘The Matrix’ (1999), Neo is a computer hacker in a dystopian future world who is identified by a group of rebels as ‘The One’, a messianic figure whom prophesies say will save humanity from their slavery to the machines controlling the world. Neo can’t believe it, and the story follows his discovery of who he really is and the nature of his destiny, even as he resists it.

‘Ratatouille’ (2007) is a Disney/Pixar film about Remy the rat who has a gift and a passion for cooking. Although rats and kitchens don’t generally mix, Remy overcomes the prejudices of the staff in a famous but troubled restaurant and successfully restores its reputation, before finding fulfilment in setting up his own bistro.

All three stories are far-fetched, yet all three touch on a universal question; what does it mean to be true to myself, and to become the person I was meant to be?

In the Christian tradition this is the subject matter of vocation, meaning not just the calling of the clergy, but the response of every human being to our Creator. If each of us is the unique creation of a loving God, then we shall only be truly fulfilled when we allow him to shape us into the people he intends us to be. The Christian life is at heart a mystery in which we are all working out what it means to say ‘Yes’ to God. Our ‘Yes’ is not the decision of a moment but the work of a lifetime as we reflect upon the gifts and temperament we have been given, the experiences we have lived through and the opportunities and circumstances we have faced.

For those who find it hard to think in terms of a relationship with God, it is interesting how often we still use the language of vocation even when God is denied. We all recognise how some people seem  to find a kind of completeness in living the way they do. To describe them as ‘purpose-built’ hardly describes it.

In one of Garrison Keillor’s beautiful ‘Lake Wobegon’ stories, he describes a character:

‘Corinne doesn’t believe in God, but there is some evidence to show that God believes in her. She has a gift to teach, a sacred gift. Fifteen years in dreary bluish-green classrooms, pacing as she talks, this solid woman carries a flame. She cares what she says, if it is precisely truthful and if it can be heard correctly; her dark eyes flash, her hands flutter, she lifts her head and stands on tiptoe to give the sentence coming out of her mouth a little more arc.’

One understanding of the Church is that it is the community where we are working out the nature of our vocation, individually and together; although perhaps we don’t give enough attention to this dimension of church life.

In order to try and correct this deficiency we shall be running the SHAPE course at Beverley Minster over three weeks in November. The three sessions will explore our identity as followers of Christ, our gifts, passions and experiences, and how we might be using our gifts and skills in the church and in the world.

I want to encourage as many members of the Minster community as possible to join us in this journey so that we can explore our vocation collectively as well as personally. To this end we are repeating each session in the hope that everyone can be accommodated. They will run on 6^th, 13^th and 20^th November, and on each date the session will start at 2pm and will be repeated at 7.30pm in the Parish Hall. There is a sign-up sheet in the Minster.

Our calling may not be of the dramatic, messianic variety like Neo in The Matrix. But all of us are called to be the children of God; in our baptism we made a first response to that calling; those who have been confirmed have made a further response and been commissioned to seek and to serve Christ in all people; and since then some of us may have explored our calling further, and others may not have been given the opportunity.

The terminology varies. We may speak of discipleship, following Jesus, of using our gifts; we may talk about fulfilling our potential, becoming the best version of ourselves, finding satisfaction. In each case it’s about responding to something bigger than we currently find ourselves to be. My prayer is that the SHAPE Course will be not only enriching, but also enlarging, as God draws us beyond our limitations.

Jonathan Baker

12.10.24

My Life, My Choice?

This week the House of Commons will debate a Private Members Bill to legalise assisted dying in certain circumstances. Supporters of such a Bill tend to couch it in terms of individual freedom; it’s my life, and I should have the right to decide for myself when I’ve had enough of it. My life, my choice.

At first glance, this is hard to disagree with; we live in a society which places enormous value upon the rights of the individual, and individual freedom of conscience and choice.

What is often overlooked is that we are not just individuals; we are also persons-in-relation. In practice, my choices inevitably make an impact on other people, sometimes in ways I don’t expect or understand. As John Donne says, ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’

In the space of this blog it is impossible to review all the arguments for and against assisted dying. Undoubtedly there are instances when people are in such pain that no purpose seems to be served by prolonging life. But legislating for such situations beforehand is very difficult; and hard cases make poor law.

Each individual’s decision to bring their life to an end, however justified by pain or despair, reflects an understanding of death as something purely personal and private. But it isn’t. The more people choose to end their own lives, the more this decision becomes normalised, and unconsciously places a burden of expectation upon others. As one commentator has asked, ‘When does the right to die become the duty to die?’

There are many elderly people who feel useless and doubtful of their value; there are many who think they are a drain on NHS resources, and who see their family’s expected inheritance disappearing in nursing home fees; there are many who have been taught to prize their independence above everything else, and who cannot face the thought of being dependent on others.

In other words, there are many people who are predisposed towards making an early exit before any question of illness or physical suffering has even been raised. Almost by definition, people in the last phase of life are vulnerable. In such a context, high minded talk of the freedom and right of the individual to choose sounds dangerously abstract and theoretical, when in practice folk in such circumstances will often be depressed, uncertain and fearful. Often they will just want to do what they imagine will cause the least fuss. Such a mindset is not genuinely ‘free’.

The lack of freedom is even more concerning when we consider those who are in controlling relationships and are at risk of being manipulated by others. The statistic that around a third of suicides are those of women suffering emotional abuse from a partner is unlikely to get smaller when assisted dying becomes an option.

The irony is that this debate isn’t about suicide, which is already legal. It is rather about the right to make other people validate my decision and enable it. This is a social and not an individual decision. So for all the talk about freedom of choice, this is actually impacting the freedom of others, by requiring doctors to do the unthinkable, and by increasing the risk that others may falsely be encouraged to choose death themselves.

The current law is not in place because of some outdated religious dogma, contrary to what some people argue. It is there to regulate relations between people, and especially to protect the vulnerable from the so-called rights and freedoms of others. If the law is changed there will be no shortage of people at risk, and they will have lost the protection that the law currently affords.

Jonathan Baker

28.9.24

Happy Ever After?

As I write this, my wife is attending a book-signing event at the Beverley Bookshop for the launch of her first novel, ‘Calm’. So I am preparing for life as the spouse of a Famous Author, and am bracing myself for the whirlwind of literary parties, Awards, and invitations to lunch with Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie. Or not, as the case may be…

However, it does mean that I have been thinking lately about the power of stories. It’s a theme Sue references herself in the book: in a dystopian future where nobody cares about reading, one of her young protagonists meets an elderly woman whose home is full of literature, opening up new worlds, and revealing how much has been lost.

A good story can work at many levels. It can enable us to live alternative lives, identifying with fictional characters, pondering their choices, allowing us to walk around in their shoes. I can be an eccentric 17^th century Spanish knight, re-living the age of chivalry; I can be a friendless 19^th century Governess hopelessly in love with her employer; or I can be drifting down the Mississippi on a raft with an escaped slave. I can live a thousand different lives without stirring from my living room.

Good writing of any kind can connect us with others. As Hector, the old-fashioned teacher in Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’ says, “The best moments in reading are when you come across something, a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things that you had thought special, particular to you – and here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone dead; and it’s as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” Even as we read about characters and situations impossibly different from ourselves, we can feel recognised, connected, and part of something bigger.

Part of the appeal of storytelling is that our lives are story-shaped. When someone asks, “How has your day been?”, we collect our memories of the last few hours and edit them into a narrative that we can share. ‘History’ is not just the sum total of past events; it is the setting down of some of those events into a sequence of cause and effect, a narrative that tells us what might have happened and why.

One of the differences between fiction and real life is that as we live our lives, and as we inhabit the flow of history, we don’t know the ending. We’re not sure what it’s all leading up to. And this matters. When Sue and I ask one another how we’re getting on with a particular novel, the answer is sometimes, “It depends how it ends”. It depends on how well the various threads are drawn together; it depends on whether the various plot twists can be resolved without any of the characters behaving unconvincingly; and it also depends on what the ending reveals about the author’s view of life. Is there hope? Is there some element of redemption? Is there sacrifice and love? Or is it relentlessly downbeat, with all the attractive characters killed off and only the cynical ‘look-after-number-one’ types left standing?

Because we haven’t yet reached the ending, we are not yet sure what kind of story we are inhabiting. Is it a comedy, a tragedy, or just an absurdist drama? In this sense, we all live by faith. Despite the uncertainty, we can still choose our category and live accordingly. As the theologian Walter Brueggemann puts it, “Evangelism is the invitation to re-imagine our lives…an invitation and summons to ‘switch stories’ and therefore to change lives.”

Part of the power of the Christian gospel is that it ticks the boxes required of a good story. It invites us to imagine becoming the children of God, however distant and implausible that may seem; it speaks of Jesus the Son of God as precisely the hand of God coming out and taking ours; and it trails an ending in which the disappointment and suffering of life is somehow redeemed and reconciled. As one commentator on the Book of Revelation puts it, “We’ve read the book, we know the ending, and guess what? We win!”.

The story we choose to inhabit makes a real difference. The Children’s Laureate, Frank Cottrell Boyce, who also writes screenplays for films, tells of working on the film ‘Welcome to Sarajevo’  when he interviewed a Roma woman who had been imprisoned by the Swiss authorities and had her own child taken into care. He asked her: “How did you know this wasn’t all there was? How did you know that you deserved more? How did you know that life could be better?” And she said, ‘I read Heidi.’

Heidi, of course, is a story of redemption. A hard-bitten old man who has lost his faith in God and humanity regains both through the faith and goodness of his grand-daughter. Sentimental and written for children it may be, but it can still inspire refugees to make a new beginning.

I wonder, what kind of stories speak to you? What kind of story have you chosen to live out? And where does your story mesh with the so-called ‘Greatest Story Ever Told’?

Jonathan Baker

14.9.24

On the Correct Way of Arranging Books

One unforeseen consequence of my father-in-law’s recent death is that the Vicarage is now full of his books.

This is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Sue and I enjoy reading, so having a fresh supply of unfamiliar books is no hardship; but a curse because the Vicarage is already full with too many books. We have books in every room, on every conceivable subject, classics and pop fiction, guidebooks and funny books, glossy coffee table books and tiny 1940s novels no one has ever heard of printed on disintegrating wartime issue paper.

Unwitting visitors might justifiably feel they have stumbled into some crazy library organised by magpies. Every room has bookcases of different sizes and designs, and good luck to anyone trying to discern the order. Some bookcases have an approximate theme, such as world history, while in others the books are grouped according to size. Novels are arranged alphabetically by author, except when the shelf is too narrow. Valuable antiquarian books go where the dogs can’t chew them, guidebooks go near the front door. There is also a lucky dip bookcase where the contents are deliberately unrelated, or where we put volumes we can’t think where else to place. In this way an improving title such as ‘Above Rubies: Memorials of Christian Gentlewomen’ by Miss Brightwell (1895), comes to rest alongside Frank Greenhill’s classic 2-volume  ‘Incised Effigial Slabs’ (1976), and a favourite from my own father’s collection, dating from his time as an apprentice quarryman in the 1930s, entitled simply ‘Modern Explosives’. It all makes perfect sense, except when it doesn’t. Suffice it to say that  Messrs. Dewey and Decimel would have a fit.

So when the rest of life gets all too much, my escape from the world is to reorganise the bookshelves. Some people used to do it with their record collections, others do it with the kitchen cupboards or the contents of the garage, but I do it with books. It’s a way of imposing an entirely imaginary order on a chaotic universe.

Part of the enjoyment in such an exercise is that there is no perfect solution. Could Animal Farm go with Cold Comfort Farm, along with anything by Charles Lamb and James Hogg?  What if   ‘Diary of a Nobody’ went with Samuel Pepys or Anne Frank’s Diary? Should a Life of Winston Churchill be shelved under ‘Biography’, ‘Second World War’, ‘British History’ or ‘Politics’? Many happy hours can be wasted trying out various answers to these questions, and then arguing about them. The test is always when Sue asks “Where is that copy of ‘Three Men in a Boat’?”, followed by hours of fruitless searching, recrimination and tears.

And now there are dozens of extra books to fit into an already tottering system.

Yet there is something pleasing here about the balance between order and chaos. There is an element of predictability and order in all of this; there are basic categories of fiction and non-fiction, history, travel, politics, art, and so on. There are also all kinds of connections waiting to be made which are not obvious. There are some titles which resist easy categorisation, and others which fit comfortably into more than one pigeonhole. To use the terminology of the philosophers, there is a tension between chance and necessity, freedom and law, what is contingent and what is essential. Like all of life, the arrangement of my books is sometimes predictable and sometimes seemingly random.

Is there something theological in all of this? It’s the Vicar’s Blog, so of course there is! My observation is simply that we are ourselves this combination of orderly system, regular rhythm and measurable pattern which any scientist could explain and rationalise; and at the same time we are surprising, unique, mysterious and unpredictable. Sometimes we don’t understand our own choices, let alone anyone else’s. We are creatures of earth and children of heaven, utterly free and slaves of nature, reasonable beings shaped by imagination, transcendent dust, mortals with eternity in our hearts. There is something open-ended about human nature which resists tidying up, at least in this world.

Somewhere on my shelves there is a collection with Hopkins’ poem on the Resurrection, where he says of himself,

           I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and

           This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal

                  diamond,

                                  Is immortal diamond.

My primitive skills as a librarian do not provide strong evidence of such an exalted destiny, but perhaps this is the end to which the combination of all kinds of order and chaos might point?

Jonathan Baker

31.8.24

The Endless Round?

The last weekend of August always has a slight ‘back to school’ feel to it, although the reasons for that may vary, from the children who are actually going back to school to the adults noticing the cooler mornings and darker evenings.

My own tinge of melancholy at the end of the school holidays is based less on seeing Dennis and Rob from the Old Fund sweeping up bucketfuls of leaves, and more on a feeling that I haven’t got as much done over July and August as I had hoped or planned. Usually during that period there is a slight slackening of the routine of church meetings and events, tempting me to form a completely misleading expectation that I shall somehow ‘catch up’. This of course never happens, as the routine is replaced by the one-off, often taking the form of unexpected funerals.

Sometimes I try to console myself that this sense of always being behind is part and parcel of ministry. Building community is never going to be complete, relationships will always be open-ended, and human need is endless, so there is much material for the self-pitying clergyman who wants to feel overwhelmed (or who suffers from the messiah-complex of thinking that everything depends on them!).

In reality this sense of grappling with unending tasks has nothing to do with ordained ministry, and everything to do with being human. My suspicion is that we all feel there is too much to do, and that for every task completed there are several more awaiting our attention. Every life is made up of multiple threads, and none of them end at the same time.

This could be depressing, as if we are sharing the fate of Sisyphus – the Greek fellow who was doomed to spend eternity pushing a boulder up a hill only for it to roll down again. Certainly that is how many people’s inbox makes them feel. But there is another, more interesting way of looking at it.

Embedded in the Book of Ecclesiastes, that most cynical and world-weary book of the Bible, is the verse: ‘I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.’ (Ecclesiastes 3:10-11).

This conveys the sense that we are properly concerned with eternity without quite knowing why; and that although we are finite, limited creatures, we have an appetite for the infinite. Understandably, this will stretch us. With every new discovery, the scientist wants to find out more; with every successful deal, the rich man wants to get richer; with every record broken, the athlete wants to go one better. The human soul is never satisfied by staying within limits, but in some sense is always hungry for more.

This may be what the sociologist Peter Berger once called a ‘signal of transcendence’, a hint that we are more than our biology, and that our world is more than what we can measure, observe and control. If we were entirely limited by our three dimensions, why do we have this endless desire for more? Why are we never content with what is familiar and manageable? And why are our lives never fixed and contained, but endlessly open to new experiences, new people, new challenges and opportunities?

In other words, our sometimes exhausting sense of having too much to do, and of life being made up of demands we can never meet, is the flip side of being creatures made for eternity. We do not inhabit a closed reality in which our lives contain a set measure. Instead there is a mysterious openness, a sense of potential which is without limit. This means we sometimes surprise ourselves with our own thoughts and actions, and we sometimes discover we are a mystery even to ourselves – Why did I say or do that? Why do I feel the way I do? How did I cope with that overwhelming new challenge? This is close to what secular commentators call ‘the human spirit’, which seems to me to be a way of acknowledging that humanity has a transcendent quality, without mentioning God.

So as we enter September and embrace a new term and a new season of activity, we do so as those who find the world busy, unfinished, and often overwhelming, but as those who also sense its beauty, its mystery,  and its transcendence. As such, the endless round may come to us not as mere drudgery, but also in the guise of wonder, because eternity is set in our hearts.

Jonathan Baker

17.8.24

Raging, Slipping or Trusting?

On Wednesday my father-in-law, Laurie Gavin, died unexpectedly. He had mild dementia and a degree of lameness, but nothing life-threatening, so it was a bit of a shock, to put it mildly. On the other hand, he was 96, and at that age one isn’t in a position to argue; he was so far in excess of his biblical ‘three score years and ten’ that it would be churlish to complain at losing him now.

Since then Sue and I have been talking about him a great deal, and much of our remembering has been of this ‘on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand’ nature. There has been much to be thankful for; dying suddenly means he has been spared the increasing confusion of progressive dementia and the suffering of a drawn out terminal illness. Most close members of his family had visited very recently, and he had been in good form, so most of the last memories are good ones. He timed it to perfection, during the school holidays but after our family holiday, so Sue is able to spend time mourning and talking with other relatives without other distractions. And he had been in the care home for long enough to settle after moving up from Kent 8 months ago, and had formed relationships with staff and other residents. On the other hand, he’s gone, and you only have one father.

Part of our reflecting has been about how death is handled in our wider society. Sue and I are naturally very sad, and there have been plenty of tears; but we’re not feeling emotionally fragile. So when people are very kind, as many have been, and ask us anxiously ‘How are you?’, it can be difficult to know what to say. We don’t want to brush such concern away, and we certainly don’t want to give the impression that Laurie’s death can be taken lightly. On the other hand, there is something natural about it and consequently we’re not  in a state of meltdown. So we end up responding with a rather feeble, ‘Well, we feel a bit mixed, you know?’

We live in a culture which seems to swing between denial of death and devastation. That reading you sometimes get at funerals: ‘Death is nothing at all, it does not count, I have only slipped away into the next room…’ etc., comes from a sermon in which Canon Henry Scott Holland was setting out that view, only to rebut it as inadequate and failing to do justice to the terrible reality of death. It is ironic that this piece gets read at funerals to make precisely the opposite point to the one the author intended – so I apologise to anyone who has ever chosen it for a loved one’s funeral, but it doesn’t work for me.

On the other hand, Dylan Thomas’ poem ‘Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ etc., goes to the opposite extreme. It may be appropriate for a young person facing a terminal illness before their life’s work has hardly begun, but most people at 96 are tired and ready to go, and we certainly had conversations with Laurie when he made that clear.

As so often, the Christian faith offers a framework for handling these complexities. In the Christian world view, death is an unwelcome intruder, an invasive disturbance disrupting God’s good creation. Mortality was never built in to the Garden of Eden. Against that background, it is possible to affirm that there is something unnatural about death, however old the person we have lost. And that fits with our experience; part of us does want to shout ‘No!’, even when a death seems perfectly natural.

Yet in the Christian way of looking at things, death is only penultimate. It does not have the final word. God’s love is expressed in a faithfulness that cannot be broken by death, as witnessed by Jesus’ resurrection. Even in the face of the most tragic and untimely death, there can still be hope. But the way to resurrection has to be through the cross, not around it. Immortality is neither automatic nor an entitlement. And that seems to fit with our experience as well.

In response to his grandfather’s death our son sent us a fragment of an ancient Egyptian poem – how he came across it, I’ve no idea – and although its wording is entirely secular, it captures something of that quality of death being real, and dreadful, and yet also a gateway to freedom and peace:

Death is before me today:
like the recovery of a sick man,
like going forth into a garden after sickness.
Death is before me today:
like the odour of myrrh,
like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
like the course of a stream;
like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.
Death is before me today:
like the home that a man longs to see,
after years spent as a captive.

Jonathan Baker

3.8.24

What is Your Onion?

In ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, Dostoevsky tells the story of a woman who ‘was wicked as wicked could be’, who died and was taken by devils and thrown into the lake of fire. Her guardian angel racked his brains trying to think ‘what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God?

Then he remembered and said to God, “Once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman.”

And God answered, “Now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is.”

The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her, “Here, woman,” he said, “take hold of it and I’ll pull!”

And he began pulling carefully , and had almost pulled her all the way out, when other sinners in the lake saw her being pulled out and all began holding on to her so as to be pulled out with her.  But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: “It’s me who’s getting pulled out, not you; it’s my onion not yours!”

No sooner did she say it than the onion broke.  And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day.  And the angel wept and went away.’

This is a story that came to my mind when I was reflecting on what might be remembered of our lives after we have gone. Maybe it’s because I’ve been taking too many funerals; maybe it’s because I have too great an antiquarian interest in the relics of the past; maybe it’s simply because in recent years Sue and I have each been clearing out parental homes and have had to make decisions about what to keep and what to throw out.

What has been made clear to me is how little evidence has survived from my grandparents’ generation. Three of my grandparents had already died before I was born, so I have no personal memory of them. What survive are a very few fragments; a few sepia photographs; an old wallet; a few pieces of cheap jewellery; my great-uncle’s cavalry spurs from the First World War; some family Bibles and Prayer Books. There are also one or two sayings that have been passed down: ‘I couldn’t eat any more if you gave me a white cow’; and ‘I could’ve driven sheep further in a day’ – this last pronouncement delivered by my great-uncle to my brother who had just cycled 90 miles to stay. You would be correct in deducing that on that side of the family at least I am descended from farming stock. But that’s pretty much it.

The truth is, memories are short. There may be more history books being written than ever, but they are not on the whole being written about ordinary lives, most of which pass without leaving diaries and documents from which a life can be reconstructed.

In his poem, ‘An Arundel Tomb’, Philip Larkin reflects how the passing of time renders even the tomb of an earl and countless anonymous. Only the sculpted attitude of holding hands still speaks to our ‘unarmorial age’, so that he concludes ‘What will survive of us is love’.

That is certainly true when we remember those whom we have loved but see no more. But after a couple of generations what evidence is there even of that love? All the relevant witnesses will by then themselves have departed.

My reason for proferring such melancholy thoughts is that they act as an important counterpoint to the way we live as if we are immortal and the present is eternal. The thought of being forgotten seems inconceivable to most of us, we feel too solid, we are surrounded by so many people and possessions; perhaps we develop the habit of acquisition and friendship to make ourselves feel more real.

At the end of ‘Middlemarch’, George Eliot observes that ‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’

So in the absence of an obliging sculptor to immortalise your image in an attitude of love for future generations, perhaps the question for each of us to ponder is ‘What is my onion?’ What deeds and actions can I contribute to the ‘growing good of the world’?

If future generations are left with as little evidence of your life and mine as we have for the lives of our own forefathers and mothers, perhaps the mark we make on the world needs to be of a different nature, less earthy and temporal, and sharing more in the character of God’s grace. So I wonder: what will your guardian angel remember from your life that is worth telling God?

Jonathan Baker

20.7.24

A Mind-Altering Substance?

“When it comes to unleashing lunatics, there is no mind-altering substance as powerful as the Bible”. So wrote Sunday Times columnist Waldemar Januszczak recently. I wonder what you make of that opinion?

Members of the Minster family may have heard me say occasionally that ‘Religion drives you mad’, so I think I understand what Januszczak may mean. Religion combines some dangerous elements; there is the conviction that we have glimpsed The Truth, with the corollary that anyone who disagrees must be Wrong. There is the related view that if we believe in God, then anyone who doesn’t is opposed not only to believers but to God himself. And there is the blue touchpaper of religious experience, which ignites faith and easily convinces us that everyone else ought to have that experience too. That is especially dangerous when we add in the deep-rooted human desire to control and shape other people’s behaviour.

The Bible is part of this heady cocktail; its mixture of different genres (66 different books full of poetry, law, proverbs, biography, history, prophecy, instruction and prayer), written over a thousand-year period, is not open to black and white interpretation and yet it claims at the very least to contain the Word of God.

The Bible gives every believer access to God independently of any clerical or institutional control, which opens the door to every fantasy, every delusion, and every conspiracy theory. Unfettered reading of Scripture may not only comfort the comfortable but disturb the disturbed, and risks not only inviting trust but reinforcing bigotry. This makes it easy for cynics such as George Bernard Shaw to say, “No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means”, and for a writer like Januszczak to associate the Bible with madness.

Yet where I think Januszczak is correct is in the recognition that the Bible can have a transformative effect on people. I was reminded of this today when the Spirituality Group met to explore ‘Lectio Divina’, an ancient way of reading Scripture which understands reading as a form of prayer. It offers four stages of engagement; reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. This requires patience and attentiveness, which are qualities often lacking in other kinds of reading. Instead of skimming over the text and filleting it for information, in ‘Lectio Divina’ we read slowly as the old Collect puts it, that we may ‘read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest’ the Scriptures.

Martin Luther used the image of the Bible as an apple tree: ”I study my Bible as I gather apples.  First, I shake the whole tree that the ripest might fall.  Then I shake each limb, and when I have shaken each limb, I shake each branch and every twig.  Then I look under every leaf.” This image reminds us that the Bible is there to nourish the soul, and that this happens when we read it expectantly, slowly and prayerfully.

Learning to read the Bible in this way doesn’t come easily to most modern people who are used to consuming words rapidly for information. It takes practice, discipline, and a certain restraint in order to listen to the text instead of interrogating it. But when we try this way of reading, we often discover that even the most familiar passages reveal fresh meaning. Above all, it allows the text to work upon us like a sacrament, bringing us into the presence of Christ and allowing his light to shine upon us. When that happens, the work of real transformation begins.

The language of sacrament also reminds us that the Bible is the book of the Church. Although we may read it individually, we test our understanding of it against the insights of others. It is a corporate text, and we are not the first to have read it. In this way we can be protected from the more wayward, wishful and eccentric interpretations.

At the heart of the Bible is the message that the Creator God is faithful to his creation, even when it is imperfect, corrupt or indifferent, and that this faithfulness is incredibly costly, amounting to the life of God’s own Son. This provides Christianity with a powerful internal critique. Whenever someone uses the Bible to promote power over self-giving love, meanness over kindness, greed over selflessness, exclusion over acceptance, or judgment over grace, we can be sure that they are going to have difficulty reconciling such a reading with the reality of the  God revealed in Jesus Christ.

It is the task of every priest to encourage folk to open themselves to the Bible often and regularly. You may think you know what the Scriptures say and that there is nothing more to hear. You may think that they are too difficult and that there is nothing to be gained from reading them. You may think that they will only encourage your own delusions and fancies. But for anyone hungry for spiritual food, for anyone conscious of having a withered soul, the Bible provides food and drink, if only we will read it slowly, prayerfully, attentively, and with the expectation that in its pages we can meet afresh with Jesus Christ himself. Encountered in this way, it alters not the mind only, but the soul as well.

Jonathan Baker

6.7.24

Humanity in Defeat?

One of the strongest emotions following Thursday’s General Election may well be one of relief. I’m not thinking so much about the result (although Sir Kier Starmer is no doubt able to breathe again, having been reassured that the opinion polls did not mislead), as the clearing of the air. Our TV screens and newsfeeds are no longer dominated by Messrs. Starmer, Sunak, Davey, Farage & co. We can now get back to the serious business of following the Euros and Wimbledon.

That was to be expected. What caught me a little by surprise was a different kind of relief; on Election night, as the Conservative seats tumbled, politicians began, haltingly, to speak differently. They were briefly speaking the uncharacteristic yet unmistakable language of grace.

There was something very refreshing about hearing Rishi Sunak apologise to the country as well as to his colleagues, taking responsibility for the electorate’s verdict. There was something quietly inspiring, if that’s the right word, about seeing so many defeated candidates, many of them ousted from what had previously been safe seats, congratulate their victorious opponents, wish them well, and at the same time manage to sound sincere.

Just for a moment, some of our politicians looked human. Just for a moment, they were able to speak without self-justification. Just for a moment, they weren’t dismissing rivals or running them down. And just for a moment, we saw people normally defended by carefully cultivated layers of thick skin appear vulnerable and undefended. For once many of them looked, as I say, like plausible human beings.

Vulnerability is a vitally important part of being human. No relationship can survive a partner who never admits weakness, let  alone making any mistakes. Yet this is what we demand of our politicians. Woe betide the MP who admits that, actually, the opposition might have one or two good ideas. Woe betide the Cabinet Minister who admits that, with hindsight, certain policies haven’t worked out all that well. Media interviewers aggressively probe those on the other side of the microphone, implying that any sign of softening a stance, any hint of listening to others, and any whiff of compromise must be damning evidence of weakness and incompetence.

In his book, ‘Politics on the Edge’, former Tory Minister Rory Stewart said that one of the reasons why he left politics was because he didn’t like what it was doing to him as a person. He felt that the Westminster system required him ‘to shimmer lightly and shamelessly over the surface of party and policy’, and rewarded the ability to abandon old loyalties and commitments, and to switch positions with ease. In other words, politics can seriously damage your integrity. On Friday morning Steve Baker, the self-described ‘hard man of Brexit’, spoke of losing his seat with a sense of genuine relief, because of the toll political life was taking on his mental health.

We can see the damage this does to all of us, and not just to the individuals in the thick of it. It sets up an adversarial model of political discourse which the rest of us feel bound to follow. When disagreement is amplified by social media, it leads to a weakening of rational discussion, so that polarization follows, and a tendency to demonise those with whom we disagree. We are seeing this disease spill over from the purely political realm into our social and even church disagreements.

It’s hard to know what can be done about this. But what I saw on Thursday night reminded me that underneath the soundbites and spin our politicians are real human beings. In the end they are public servants whose dignity we should all respect, even when we disagree with them.

The glimpse of grace in politicians was momentary. Normal service will soon be resumed. But as a new Government settles in, it may be good to reflect on the words of St Paul when considering a Christian attitude to those in authority. Paul urges that “supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”  (1 Timothy 2:1). It would seem from that the way we think about our political leaders eventually has an impact not only upon their dignity and humanity, but also our own.

Jonathan Baker

22.6.24

The End of Freedom?

Self-righteousness used to be the Christian’s guilty pleasure; confident in our own view of ourselves and the world, we could look at everyone else with varying degrees of condescension, judgement and pity. But in recent years we have been forced, painfully, to take another look at ourselves.

The failure adequately to safeguard children, the reluctance to include women and gay people as fully equal members of the Church, declining numbers, and the difficulty we now have in passing on what we think is a life-giving faith to younger generations, have forced some of us into an uncomfortable and unfamiliar acquaintance with humility.

But is there less self-righteousness in the world as a result? Sadly, no. It turns out that self-righteousness isn’t the preserve of Christians at all, but is hard-wired into  human nature, both secular and religious. We human beings have a deep-rooted tendency to imagine that our values, whatever they may be, are self-evidently better than the alternatives.

When I say this, what I have in mind is our confidence in western liberalism: what the political philosopher John Gray defines as the freedom of the individual, the equality of all, the idea of progress, and the universal application of these values across different eras and cultures. In the 20^th century these values seemed self-evidently superior to the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 western confidence seemed to have been proved right. One commentator, Francis Fukuyama, went so far as to declare the triumph of the West as ‘The End of History’, in the sense that no political system was likely to improve on western-style liberal democracy.

It was this self-righteous confidence that attracted western leaders to try and bring about ‘regime change’ in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. The theory was that one only needed to remove an oppressive dictator, and then free markets and individual personal freedom would do the rest. The reality has been more painful. We now see new autocracies, in Russia,  China and elsewhere, with the flow of history apparently reversed.

In the West there has developed an increasing emphasis on an individual’s right to live without any kind of restraint. We have moved from asserting the right to be treated equally to insisting upon the right not to be disagreed with.

On a range of issues, from assisted dying through environmental activism to gender identity, people are increasingly taking a hyper-liberal position in which the standpoint of the individual is held to be above question. The cancel culture which seeks to ‘no platform’ the views of those who are not ideologically fashionable can dismiss rational discussion as a cop out to fascism.

When ‘Just Stop Oil’ spray orange powder paint on Stonehenge just before the summer solstice, they risk alienating a constituency that would naturally be sympathetic to their concern for the environment; by giving up on debate in favour of direct action they are expressing a self-righteous confidence that there is no point discussing the issue.

When JK Rowling, the author of Harry Potter and a feminist activist, is branded as a hate-filled fascist because she insists that there must be some kind of social validation before someone can change gender, and not simply decide their identity for themselves, the cry that goes up is one of ‘No Debate’, as if debate itself is dangerous.

The issue of assisted dying has not yet reached that point, but it is heading that way as a growing number of wealthy celebrities line up to insist upon the individual’s right to decide the end of life as if that is obvious and unanswerable, and express exasperation with those who take a less benign view of the forces influencing a person’s decision-making at the end of life.

The irony is that western liberalism is the child of Christianity. The value of the individual is based on the truth that we are all made in the image of God. Human equality is based on the truth that we are all God’s children. The idea of progress is based on a Christian view of history moving towards a climax; and the universal relevance of these values is underwritten by a faith in an eternal and transcendent Creator. This foundation has been so taken for granted that it has been almost forgotten. But without it, the values themselves are starting to disintegrate.

The liberal values are not self-evident. They arise from an understanding of humanity in relation to God, which implies an attitude of trust, openness and an acceptance of creaturely limitation. If we take God out of the picture, human beings will eat once more the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and so try to take God’s place. Paradoxically, the eventual consequence of unlimited individual freedom is despotism, in which there is no humility, no awareness that we might be wrong, and only a self-confident righteousness that cannot tolerate dissent.

We still need God. Of course, I would say that. But we need God not to keep the Vicar in a job or to keep our churches open, but because without God the liberal values which our society has for so long taken for granted have neither foundations nor boundaries, and cannot resist the new despotisms of Right and Left which we now see rearing their heads.

Jonathan Baker

8.6.24

80 Years On

I have been struck in recent years by the growing desire to mark the anniversary of D-Day. Major celebrations marked the 50^th, 60^th, 70^th, 75^th and now the 80^th anniversaries. As the generation of those who landed on the Normandy beaches fades away, so the determination of the rest of us to ‘remember’ what we never actually experienced increases.

There will be all sorts of reasons why this is so, but part of it will be the awareness of losing that direct connection provided by the memories of those who were there. This can be creative; past anniversaries have seen the unveiling of memorials and the opening of museums, and events led by Heads of State with an emphasis on reconciliation and peace.

In a very different context, it was the dwindling of the first generation of Christians that led to the writing of the New Testament. Fear of losing the eyewitness testimony to Jesus was addressed by writing it down. This is why even the earliest parts of the New Testament were written at least 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Before then the eyewitness record was strong and alive and shared by word of mouth. We catch a glimpse of that in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth when he mentions 500 witnesses of the resurrection, ‘most of whom are still alive’. But they won’t all have had exactly the same memory.

When there are different witnesses, so the narrative remains rich and multi-layered, because people remember the same event differently. My sister recently visited from Australia and we did a certain amount of reminiscing over old family photographs, in which it became fascinating to realise that her memories are not exactly the same as mine. Different things stick out for her, even from the same events. Maybe this is why the New Testament gives us four Gospels and not just one, so that the memory is not restricted to a single point of view.

As memories get repeated, and especially as they get written down, so they tend to crystallize. The narrative takes on a certain shape which only partly reflects the full reality of what happened. ‘History is written by the winners’ , so the saying goes, which means in effect that the victorious narrative silences the losing or minority voices.

In recent years our understanding of history has become more nuanced, so that neglected voices and overlooked versions of the past are more often heard – so for example the role played in D-Day by troops from across the British Empire, a role which has not always been properly acknowledged. Perhaps one of the consequences of an increasingly godless society is that there is a greater need felt by people to control the narrative of the past, because without God it cannot be redeeemed. If you challenge the dominant narrative, you are challenging people’s sense of who they are.

The New Testament view of the past is helpful. At the Last Supper Jesus says ‘Do this in remembrance of me’, and Paul says ‘For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’ In other words, the sacrament is not so much an act of remembrance as a re-enactment in the present, with at least one eye on the future. Whilst remaining true to the original event, it allows fresh experiences and new memories to be made. In the same way the New Testament records the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in such a way that they remain not locked in the past but available for us to encounter the Lord afresh in each new generation.

The gospel message of God’s grace and redemption itself redefines the past; we may not be able to change the past itself, but the experience of God’s forgiveness can change how we feel about it and how we understand it. If my discovery that my sister’s memories are slightly different from my own places a question mark against those memories, how much more might that be the case when confronted with God’s eternal perspective on what has happened?

A Christian view of the past therefore sees it not as something with a fixed and unchanging meaning, and therefore determining the present. We see the past as something embraced by God’s mercy and therefore capable of redemption. The past is not the only thing shaping the future, which remains ultimately open and in God’s hands.

This can set us free from the pressure to control the narrative of what has happened in the past. Our sense of who we are no longer depends upon our ability to control the story of the past, but flows from our trust in the God of the resurrection who can be trusted with the future.

It is still good to celebrate the anniversary of D-Day and reflect upon its significance for us. But if we allow ourselves to be shaped less by our past and more by God’s future, then perhaps we can remember without feeling anxiety to insist upon a particular version of the past, and perhaps we can be more relaxed about allowing space for alternative narratives which might understand the significance of the past differently.

Jonathan Baker

25.5.24

Choose or be chosen?

So the General Election is to be on 4 July, and the Great British Public will pass judgment on its political class.

Free elections provide democracies with moments of high drama. The 2016 Referendum and the 2017 General Elections both produced results very different from what was expected by those who called them, and sealed the political fates of David Cameron and Theresa May respectively.

Perhaps because elections give ordinary people some say over who governs them, and place a limit on the power exercised by those in authority, they have come to symbolize our individual freedom as human beings. But they only work if those taking part recognize that individual freedom is secondary to some notion of the common good. If we vote for the losing side we are expected to accept the result with a good grace, and give way to the will of the majority. There has to be an acceptance that my individual preference does not have the last word.

This is an assumption that is becoming increasingly questioned. Those who lose elections in some cases now show themselves unwilling to accept the result, as we saw in the last US Presidential election, with the result that elections get mired in litigation, and the courts themselves are then attacked for being political.

This may be the natural outworking of western individualism. We worship freedom of choice, but with the democratization of opinion on social media, in which uninformed voices count for as much, or more, as qualified experts, we are increasingly struggling to reconcile one person’s choice with another’s. We are in danger of losing any sense that debating opposing views may be an effective way of discovering a bigger truth. If instead we think that no one has the right to question my opinion, then the only response to dissent is to try to silence the opposition by cancelling them. Freedom of expression has been made absolute, and we are losing the ability to cope with disagreement.

There is a theological tradition going back to Augustine, and before him St Paul, which is sceptical about how free we are in the first place. The argument, put briefly, is that if God is the source of all light and truth, and if human beings are alienated from God and ignore him, then none of us has any natural ability to understand clearly. Our judgments – and choices – will inevitably be distorted because our hearts have been blinded. As St Paul says, ‘the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God’.

The result of this blindness is a kind of captivity or slavery to sin. St Paul speaks of being made ‘captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members’, so that ‘I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’.

According to this line of reasoning, freedom as we tend to understand it is an illusion. St Paul again: ‘Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?’ In other words, we either serve ourselves and our own instincts and appetites (sin), or we serve the God who is love, who paradoxically is the one ‘whose service is perfect freedom’, as the old prayer puts it.

Elections give us the illusion of choice. In fairness, the choice is not completely illusory, but Parties tend to assume that we are driven by self-interest. Our freedom to choose needs to be understood against a wider context of the God who chooses, and who reminds his followers that, ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you’. That’s the vote that ultimately counts, that’s the basis for any confidence in the future, and that in the end is the source of genuine freedom – the freedom to choose love and to allow ourselves in turn to be chosen by love.

Jonathan Baker

11.05.24

Running Up That Hill

I’m writing this blog on top of the motte at Pickering Castle. It’s meant to be a day off – hence the location – but there are too many deadlines gathering, hence not waiting until I’m back in my study. I came up here because of the novelty of it being warm enough to be outside without a coat, and because the castle is usually quiet and peaceful. You get a good 360° view of the Vale of Pickering, the Wolds and the North Yorkshire Moors, and it’s a beautiful place to sit and muse undisturbed.

It was only after coming up here that it struck me how suitable a spot this is to reflect upon Ascension Day. This happened on Thursday 9, but got overshadowed by our annual pilgrimage to Harpham in honour of St John of Beverley, which always takes place on the closest Thursday to his Feast Day on 7 May. This year the Saint and the Saviour share festivals only two days apart.

Mountains and high places in the Bible are often associated with dramatic moments of encounter with God. Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah, Moses receives the Law on Mount Sinai, Jerusalem is built on Mount Zion, Elijah experiences the ‘still small voice’ on Mount Horeb, Jesus is transfigured on a nameless mountain – maybe Mount Tabor in Galilee.

Such associations are not limited to Christianity and Judaism; the pre-Israelite Canaanite religions worshipped their gods on ‘high places’, some of which can still be seen on the mountains of present day Israel. Even for secular minded modern people, there is something magnetic about mountains, if the numbers climbing Snowdon or Scafell are anything to judge by. For some it may just be the sense of achievement and the rewarding view; but for others there is something spiritual about being high up, closer to the heavens, and able to look down on the surrounding world. Mountaintops can be otherworldly places.

Against this background, the story of Jesus’ ascension taking place on a mountain outside Jerusalem is paradoxically both natural and surprising. Natural, because if mountaintops bring us closer to God, then a mountaintop is an appropriate point of departure from which Jesus could return to the Father. But it’s surprising, because Jesus gives his disciples no indication that they should do the same. On the contrary, he tells them to ‘stay in the city, until you have been clothed with power from on high’ (Luke 24: 49).

That’s an interesting and significant phrase, ‘from on high’. In other words, the disciples do not have to go somewhere high up in order to get closer to God. Rather, God will ‘reach down’. We don’t have to go to him; he comes to us. This is a gospel pattern; we cannot ascend into heaven in our own strength; instead, the Son of God has become the son of Mary so that we might become the children of God. The movement is all from heaven to earth before, as the Collect for Ascension Day puts it, ‘we in heart and mind may also ascend and with him continually dwell’.

Unlike Kate Bush, we don’t have to go “running up that hill”. Jesus went up the mountain so that we don’t have to – an encouraging thought for those who don’t see themselves as spiritual mountaineers. This is a reminder that God is always moving towards us, even when we think he is moving away. Jesus ascends into heaven in order to send the Holy Spirit upon his disciples, and to ‘fill all things’. For this reason he says ‘it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do  not go away, the Advocate will not come.’

And so the disciples are told to wait for the Holy Spirit in the city, not on the mountain. No doubt all of us have special places in our lives, maybe places where we feel closer to God. But it isn’t the place that makes God draw near; it’s the readiness of the heart to receive, wherever we may be. In our hearts we can indeed be lifted into heaven; but we first have to wait to be collected by the Holy Spirit. In this Ascensiontide season, the mood is one both of exhilarating triumph as Jesus achieves the summit of his ministry and sits down at the right hand of God; and also of quiet and patient attentiveness, as we await the coming of the Spirit of Jesus to meet us where we are.

Jonathan Baker

26.4.24

23 April was St George’s Day, prompting much discussion about Englishness and English identity. Do the English suffer from a lack of identity, highlighted in the way people confuse being English with being British? If Brexit was partly inspired by a fear that our sense of being British was at risk of being swallowed up by the EU, there is an irony that British identity is now under threat from renewed Scottish, Irish and Welsh nationalisms. If Britain dissolves into different nations, what will it mean to be English?

At the moment there is a real danger that pride in English identity is the preserve of the far right. The St George’s Day Parade in London was marked by violence, arrests, and speeches by known extremists. For many English people of non-white heritage, the flag of St George inspires not the warm glow of patriotic recognition, but the fear of racism.

There is another irony in this, which is that St George himself was not at all English. The historic figure of St George was a soldier in the Roman army who lived in Lydda in Syria in the early 4th century, born to a Syrian mother and a Greek father. According to Wikipedia, he is the patron saint of England, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Ukraine, Malta, Ethiopia, as well as Catalonia and Aragon in Spain, and Moscow in Russia. He is also claimed by several other regions, cities, universities, professions, and organizations, leading one to conclude that he is a truly cosmopolitan and international figure.

Yet another irony is that George was martyred under the Emperor Diocletian for his refusal to put loyalty to the Emperor – that is, the State –  before loyalty to God. His faith in Christ pushed his racial and political  identities as a Greek, Syrian and a Roman into second place.

The flag of St George is also open to more than one meaning. In medieval iconography, images of Jesus rising from the tomb often show him carrying the Resurrection Banner, which looks like the flag of St George. In fact it is an earlier symbol of Christ’s victory over death, so the flag of St George is derived from the Resurrection Banner, not the other way around. It was adopted by the Knights Templar, as a result of which it became popular across Europe and thence came to be associated with St George.

Another layer of confusion is caused by the similarity between the story of St George and the Dragon (which is a later medieval story) and the scene in the Book of Revelation where the Archangel Michael casts Satan out of heaven in the form of a serpent. In Christian iconography Michael is often shown as a soldier in armour spearing a dragon, and even carrying the flag of St George. There is just such a depiction of Michael in the window of the north transept of Beverley Minster!

All of which is a way of saying that managing symbols is a slippery business. A good symbol can have many different meanings projected onto it and can hold them in tension. Both George and his flag bear a rich range of associations and meanings which make him highly suitable to be the patron saint of a mongrel nation with a rich history and diverse beliefs such as the English.

It is very sad that much of this meaning has been stripped away, so that for many people George is now linked with a narrow minded nationalism, bent on exalting one group by excluding and rejecting others. We are seeing a resurgence of this zero-sum nationalism in the world today, where social groups try to establish their own sense of value and significance by peddling a narrative that diminishes others.

This is the final irony, that St George and his flag, with all their rich multi-dimensional resonances,  have been embraced and celebrated most noisily by people who have the flattest and most two-dimensional sense of their own identity, and the weakest grasp of their own history and culture.

Before he was remembered for anything else, George was remembered as a martyr who refused to venerate the idol of power, and who died witnessing to his faith in the God of grace – a grace which triumphs over death. We could do a lot worse than rebuild our English identity on this more generous sense of ourselves.

Jonathan Baker

13.4.24

Questions of Life

‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’. So speaks the risen Christ to his disciples in the Upper Room on the first Easter Day. The fledgling church is given a clear mandate to continue and extend the work of Jesus himself.

But what does that actually mean? According to John’s Gospel, Jesus was sent to be the Word made flesh, the Light entering the darkness, the incarnate Son of God. In what sense can the followers of Jesus  be sent like that?  Surely the last thing the world needs right now is more people who think they can act and speak like God!

Perhaps the sending is to be sent like Jesus in his humanity. Jesus expressed his mission through being steeped in the Scriptures, by forming a community of people willing to learn, by teaching, responding to individuals in need, doing signs of abundant life for those beyond his immediate circle, praying, facing conflict, suffering and death. These are things we recognize and in which we can share with humility and without presumption. All we have to offer is our own humanity, graced by a reliance on the Holy Spirit.

Learning and teaching require a forum where they can take place. In our own day Lent Courses and house groups provide such an opportunity for church members, but what about everyone else? Jesus taught not just in the synagogues but on the mountain and at the lakeside. It is harder for us, living in a culture where folk are often wary of the church and indifferent to talk of God. How do we engage with the world outside the walls of the church in order to get a conversation going?

Questions such as these lie behind the decision to run the Alpha Course at Beverley Minster. Alpha used to be run regularly at the Minster many years ago, and several of our church members came to faith as a result. In recent years we have run various other discussion groups and courses, but the great strength of Alpha is that many people have heard of it, and it provides a range of materials to help with publicity and promotion. This makes it easier to invite folk to come along and join in.

The other big advantage of Alpha is its emphasis on building community. Each session begins with a meal, during which participants can get to know each other. This makes it easier to hold open and honest conversations in which different experiences and understandings can be shared. The formal teaching, whilst professionally presented in a series of videos, is probably less important than the relationships which are built over the weeks in the same small group. Just like the first disciples, this helps us to grow in faith together.

I’m hoping the Alpha Course is something we can run regularly, perhaps a couple of times a year, so that we can always be looking ahead and ready to invite folk to join us on the next one. By embedding it in the life of the Minster it will, over time, help us to become more mindful of our responsibility to help new people explore faith and learn about it. In a world where so many people are confused and uncertain about themselves and their place in the world, and in which most people’s understanding of Jesus Christ is thin or even misleading, this is of increasing importance.

The Alpha Course begins on Wednesday 17 April at 18.45 in the Parish Hall. Anyone interested can sign up by dropping an email to alpha@beverleyminster.org.uk . By all means come along yourself and try it out. Even better, invite a friend and come along together. From the existing expressions of interest we expect the Parish Hall to be full and humming, so you will be in good company; and the questions each person brings will be a gift to others as we explore the big issues of life together.

Jonathan Baker

30.3.24

Stranger than Fiction

I recently re-watched the film ‘Stranger than Fiction’, strictly in the line of duty you understand, as it will shortly be dissected by the Minster film discussion group. In the process it struck me that this is a good film for Easter – so beware, this blog contains spoilers!

The premise is that Harold, a dry, boring, numbers-obsessed tax auditor (played by Will Ferrell) discovers he is a character in a novel. He keeps hearing an authorly voice (Emma Thompson) narrating his life in his head. With the help of a professor of literary theory (stay with me), played by Dustin Hoffman, Harold tries to work out what kind of book he is in – is it is a comedy or a tragedy? He is even more disturbed when he discovers that Karen, the writer of the book he is inhabiting, has a reputation for killing off her main characters at the moment they discover true happiness.

Harold tracks down Karen, who is alarmed to discover that her fictional hero is a real person. She has drafted the ending of her book, in which Harold dies saving a boy from being run over by a bus, but she has not yet typed it out. Should she change the ending or not?

The film playfully raises questions about the responsibility a creator has for her creature, how far any of us are free agents, and the way fictional characters can take on a life of their own. It also invites us to ponder whether our own lives are a comedy, in which obstacles are overcome, opposites reconciled, and the continuity of life can be affirmed; or whether we live in a tragedy in which death is inevitable and we help to bring about our own demise.

Paradoxically, Harold finds freedom and a boldness to live more fully when he is advised by the professor to accept the inevitability of death. Later, when he reads the fate Karen has in mind for him, Harold accepts it, recognizing that there is something beautiful and right in the way he is destined to die.

Karen is by now burdened with the thought that she is killing someone real, and she changes her mind about the ending of her book. Although the professor thinks she is ruining her masterpiece, she argues that her book was meant to be about a man who doesn’t know he’s about to die. But since Harold not only knows he’s going to die, but dies willingly, knowing he could stop it, doesn’t that make him the type of person you’d want to keep alive?

That sentiment echoes something of the theology of Easter, in which a life that is completely and fully human, a life given away for others, is a life which God the Father not only wants to keep alive, but is a life inherently stronger than death. Jesus is the one the world needs to live, even after Good Friday. Like Harold, but on a cosmic scale, Jesus knew his likely fate, and could have avoided it, but was still willing to embrace it. He did this not functionally to save the world from its sin, but because that is the person he is.

Easter itself offers a truth stranger than fiction; the promise that whether life is a comedy or a tragedy, the life of faith invites us to live as if the world is more open, more mysterious, more full of possibility and wonder than we can imagine. The resurrection of Jesus raises the question of what our own lives might look like if we were set free from our fear of death, and were able to give ourselves away instead of protecting ourselves from our inevitable fate. What would we be letting ourselves in for, if believing in Christ meant embracing a life the divine Author would want to keep alive forever?

Happy Easter!

Jonathan Baker

16.3.24

‘Am I not a man and a brother?’

In 2022 the Church Commissioners investigated how some of the endowment they manage on behalf of the Church of England was derived historically from profits made in the transatlantic slave trade.

In response to this they announced that a separate fund would be created from the Commissioners’ resources amounting to £100 million over a nine year period which would be set aside to support communities affected by historic slavery and to provide grants for projects focused on improving opportunities for such communities. An ambition was further expressed to raise funds from other sources totalling £1 billion over the long term.

Not everyone has welcomed this, leading to the subject being discussed again at the most recent meeting of the General Synod.

Critics  of the proposal raise two main objections. One is that since the original victims of the slave trade are no longer alive to benefit from any reparations, the gesture is meaningless. The second is that since many parishes are struggling to make financial ends meet, the money could be more productively used to support the current ministry of the Church of England, which is what the Church Commissioners are there for.

These are serious points, and worth debating. However, the legacy of slavery isn’t something that can be made light of. Its impact has been passed down the generations. It doesn’t only affect those who lived long ago. It was only in 2015 that the UK government finally cleared the debt incurred in paying compensation to slave owners when slavery was abolished in 1833. The slaves themselves, however, received nothing.

The legacy of slavery continues to shape the opportunities and life chances of a significant part of the UK population to this day, not least in the evils of racism which the Church should be able to oppose with confidence and conviction. It is difficult to do this with credibility when a proportion of every clergy stipend is generated from assets with such a dubious origin. Those who claim that there is no racism in the Church now, and that it was all a long time ago, and that demands for reparations are being made in bad faith, may need to listen more carefully to the voices of those communities descended from former slaves who continue to speak from the margins.

When we witness to a gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation, it is understood that for the reconciliation to be genuine there must be some attempt to put right the wrong done. In the Gospel of Luke, Zacchaeus the tax collector responded wholeheartedly to Jesus, and as evidence of his sincerity decided there and then to give half of his wealth to the poor and, if he had cheated anyone, to pay back four times what he had taken. No doubt he could have argued that the money would be better spent if he directed it to reform of the tax collection system; but instead he handed it over freely to his victims, and in so doing gave them back their agency.

If a relationship is to be healthy, then the underlying sources of grievance have to be acknowledged and addressed. There is no such thing as cheap grace, and some would argue that although £100 million in itself is a lot of money, it comes nowhere near what would be required to undo the economic harm done to nations impacted negatively by the slave trade.

The proposal is that this new fund should be built up out of the Commissioners’ income over nine years, so that the historic capital endowment fund is not affected. Over that period it actually requires only around 0.1% of the Commissioners’ annual income. This is not something which is jeopardising the Church’s ministry, present or future.

Unfortunately some parts of the media have spun this story as the latest episode in the culture wars, as if the Church is playing at being ‘woke’ and is guilty of empty virtue signalling. In fact we are dealing here with the Church’s core business, its ‘specialité du maison’ which is the gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation. The purpose of such language is not to look back and pretend that the past can be changed, for that is impossible. Instead, we are seeking to heal social relationships, which requires truth telling and seriousness of purpose if we are to build genuine trust and unity, and if the Church is to play its part in working for a less divided society.

In our individualistic culture it is easy when talking about such matters to shrug our shoulders and exclaim, ‘Who, me?’ as if the legacy of slavery or the reality of racism has nothing to do with us. But the Christian community extends down the centuries; history ripples down into the present; all of us are part of a bigger whole, whether we like it or not; and the gospel should be visible good news for everyone, not just members of existing congregations.

Jonathan Baker

2.3.24

A Dog is for Life

An enjoyable discovery on recent car journeys has been The Rest is History podcast, with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. The combination of banter and scholarship I find easy to listen to, and less hard work than reading books.

One recent episode focused on ‘History’s Greatest Dogs’. As my own Labradors show small likelihood of changing the course of history, I was intrigued; and was duly educated by discussion of the importance of Richard Nixon’s Spaniel ‘Checkers’ who saved the otherwise failing US Senator’s political career; Greyfriars’ Bobby (of course) whose loyalty to his master even after death became the stuff of legend and the Edinburgh tourist board; Rin Tin Tin the 1920s movie star who could perform amazing leaps before the days of special effects; and Admiral Collingwood’s dog Bounce, who accompanied his master on board ship during the Napoleonic wars but hated the sound of cannon fire. He would cower below decks and had to be comforted afterwards by the good Admiral singing a lullaby.

It is ironic that sometimes it takes a dog to humanize the owner. Nixon, Hitler and Putin all tried to present a softer image through their attachment to their dogs. On the other hand US President Joe Biden’s Alsatian ‘Commander’ got his master in the doghouse last year by biting 24 west wing staffers and Secret Service agents.

At the Minster we have cat people and dog people. It seems to be a clause in the Lease of 23 Outer Trinities that the tenant has to have at least one cat; Charlie, and previously Tim Kelly, and before him Robert Poyser all have cats, although Gareth Atha must have risked forfeiting his tenancy by owning a Dachshund. Vicars and Associate Vicars on the other hand are dog people, as Wendy Wale was wont to remind us! We now look forward to welcoming Rev. Eileen Connolly who has just been appointed as the new Mission Priest and who, according to her CV, is the proud owner of a ‘Golden Doodle’, which sounds potentially like a larger version of Jonah Wale.

Clergy need humanizing perhaps more than other people, but my dogs Maisie and Wilber don’t always help, as any caller at the Vicarage will have discovered. They mob visitors and egg each other on in displays of canine excitement. I can’t even show them off at the St Leonard’s Pet Service as they have a very traditional attitude towards cats, and I don’t want to be held responsible for the inevitable fracas.

Perhaps our relationship with dogs is just another example of the way we need to create meaning even when there isn’t any. It is so tempting to see human qualities in our pets, and our ability to imagine that our animals love us and are loyal to us makes us feel better about ourselves.

It may be only my imagination, but without doubt I do feel better when welcomed by my dogs; they seem pleased to see me however grumpy and indifferent I am, and in that way they are unwitting bearers of grace. And whatever their reasons, dogs are reliable companions. Nothing makes me feel at home more than having a Labrador flop at my feet; and many people learn to bear bereavement with the help of a dog or a cat providing an understated but continuous presence.

At the same time, our pets need us to feed and look after them, and in that way they also help to take us out of ourselves and ensure we cannot look at the world solely from our own point of view.

Lord Byron was so fond of his dog that after the animal died he was given an elaborate tomb in the grounds of the family home at Newstead Abbey, inscribed with verse:

Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferosity,
and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.
This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
if inscribed over human Ashes,
is but a just tribute to the Memory of
Boatswain, a Dog
who was born in Newfoundland May 1803
and died at Newstead November 18th 1808.

After contrasting the dog’s virtues with the failings of human nature for many lines, the verse ends:

To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one — and here he lies.

It is that quality of faithful companionship which most commends our pets to us. The need not to be alone runs deep. As a Native American creation story puts it, “God went forth to create the world, and he took his dog with him.”

Jonathan Baker

17.2.24

Where is their God?

One of the readings for Ash Wednesday is from the prophet Joel, who expresses the worry that if pagan nations are allowed to humiliate his people, God himself will lose credibility: “Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

It’s a good question: Where is their God?’

For the prophet Joel, the question arose because the Israelites were suffering defeat at the hands of their enemies, suggesting that at best their God was weaker than those of the other nations, at worst that he had abandoned his people, or even that he had never been there in the first place. If your land is conquered, where then is your God?

It is so obvious as hardly to need stating, but people of faith today evidently suffer reverses and setbacks quite as much as people of no faith. Belief in God offers no protection from disease, poverty or the malice of others. Where then lies the benefit of faith? Where is their God?

It is equally true that having a faith doesn’t make someone a better person than anyone else. The church is full of sinners – that’s kind of the point. But if Christians don’t seem any different from anyone else it does raise the question: Where is their God?

The great missionary-theologian Lesslie Newbiggin once said that ‘the only hermeneutic of the gospel is a community of people who believe it and live it’. In other words, the ability of the local church to live out the gospel is the only thing that gives it credibility.

In ancient Israel, faith was made credible, amongst other ways, by worship. Psalm 22:2 says that the Lord is ‘enthroned on the praises of Israel’. In the church today we say that God is made present in Word and sacrament, so that – in Jesus’ words – ‘where two or three gather in my name, there I am in the midst of them’. In worship, something important is going on, and as we draw near to God, he promises to draw near to us. But not everyone experiences the closeness of God in worship; alongside one person in raptures may be another who is just bored.

Some might argue that God is made credible through the work of Christian organisations such as Christian Aid, CAFOD or the Salvation Army, which directly address some of the most pressing needs of the world. In our own parish we support Jacobs Well, the Beverley and East Riding Food Bank, Hope into Action and a variety of other good causes seeking to make a difference. Faith can nourish and drive our humanitarian instincts, although of course these are not limited to people of faith.

For others, the credibility of the gospel depends simply upon the church being different. Faith gives one a distinctive way of looking at the world. Christians live not as individuals making the best of it, but as creatures made in the image of God whose lives are spent working out how to respond to God; and they see the world not as a cosmological accident, but as a universe made and sustained by a loving God.

That distinctive standpoint may motivate some people to live very different lives from the mainstream. Religious communities are the most obvious example, where allegiances to money, family and self-sufficiency are challenged by a deeper calling to live a shared life of mutual dependency.

Not many of us will respond to God in such a radical way. Nevertheless, at the start of Lent there is an opportunity for all of us to reflect on the implications of faith for our lives. Traditionally, Lent is a six week time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving, embraced as a way of preparing for the celebration of Easter. Each of those disciplines is potentially counter-cultural: in a culture of satiation where self-indulgence is celebrated as the norm, fasting opens up self-denial as an act of freedom, a radical and life-giving alternative. In a culture where the only realities taken seriously are those accessible to our senses, prayer opens up a whole new dimension; and in a world where many are driven by a sense of scarcity and the compulsion to grasp and possess, almsgiving and the practice of generosity witness to the possibility of eternal life welling up without limit.

Where is their God? For Christians he is found ultimately on the cross, the greatest place of abandonment and absence imaginable. God is not very easily found in the places where most of us naturally look. But in the wilderness of Lent we may more easily adopt the counter-cultural standpoint of the cross and find him in those unfashionable disciplines of fasting, prayer and generosity. Such practices are grounded in the freedom, transcendence and generosity of God’s own nature, and consequently they are provocative simply because they go so much against the flow and seem so unfamiliar. At the same time they are attractive and life giving; and perhaps that distinctiveness is one way that we can point and say ‘Behold your God’.

Jonathan Baker

3.2.24

Secular Doesn’t Mean Neutral

We have three church schools in our parish: Beverley Minster Primary School, Tickton CE Primary School and Woodmansey CE Primary School. They serve their local communities well, and they include everyone. Their faith commitment is clear, and part of that faith is that God loves everyone, not just church members.

It is a frequent complaint of secularists that Church/Faith Schools are divisive. The argument is that belief in God is an irrational superstition, or is at best a private opinion which cannot be proved, and that this has no place in a modern curriculum. Such schools serve only to reinforce cultural identities and divisions. Secular schools, in contrast, enjoy an objective neutrality. They have no prior faith commitments, therefore they can treat everyone the same.

This argument is based upon an important assumption which we too often fail to notice. It comes from the 18^th century Enlightenment, which divided the world of ideas into the realms of public fact and private opinion. Facts are true, objective, impersonal, scientifically provable, accessed through reason, and don’t vary from one context to another. Opinions and values, on the other hand, cannot be objectively measured or assessed, and are subjective and personal. They are often shaped by a conviction about our purpose, what we are here for, what really matters in life. These things may be important to me, but I cannot insist on the grounds of reason alone that you should share them.

On this view of the world, schools should stay neutral in matters of religion, because that properly belongs in the realm of private opinion, about which there is no common understanding. God should therefore be left at home.

This fault line runs so deep that most people don’t notice it, let alone question it. In the United States, it means that religion of any kind cannot be taught in publicly funded schools. In the UK it means that religion is pushed into a ghetto marked ‘Religious Education’ in which all faiths are treated the same without evaluation and where the focus is on the objective elements of religion such as buildings, festivals and scriptures rather than on God or the practice of faith itself. In that sense, RE tells only half the story.

However, the division of life into these two realms of public fact and private opinion is deeply misleading. In the first place, the assumption that human reason is objective itself relies on a prior faith commitment. Science, mathematics and reason only work if we assume that the world is ordered, rational and in some way predictable. Scientists maintain this faith even though there is much in the world that seems chaotic and unpredictable, and much at the frontiers of science that doesn’t obey the old laws of cause and effect. We therefore cannot prove that the truth available to our reason is the only, or even the most important kind of truth. If it is, that assumes a very closed kind of reality in which there are no surprises.

St Anselm argued nearly a thousand years ago that ‘I do not understand in order to believe; I believe in order to understand’. That expresses a basic insight about human knowledge, that it always has to begin with an assumption, a commitment made in faith that our questions are worth asking in the first place. Facts are important, but they are not the whole truth.

In the second place, scientists themselves are not as objective as we would like to think. They have to make value judgments all the time:  whether to pursue this risky line of enquiry or that safer but less exciting avenue, whether to seek funding from this grant-making body or that commercial interest (each with their own conditions attached), whether to seek evidence from a bigger or smaller sample (each with a bigger or smaller price tag). Those judgments will usually be shaped by a sense of purpose :  am I conducting this research because it is interesting? Because my PhD supervisor wants me to? Because it has the best potential for making money?

Part of the fascination of the film ‘Oppenheimer’, about the man who led the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb,  is that it explores how science is not objectively neutral, but can be coopted for political and national purposes. Research priorities are determined not by facts, but by purpose. And purpose is supposed to belong in the world of private opinion.

Thirdly, the debate about Faith versus Secular Schools assumes that while Faith Schools have a built in bias, Secular Schools are somehow neutral. In fact, everyone has their own angle; there is no such thing as an objective, neutral point of view. Secularists like to imagine that they enjoy a dispassionate, godlike view from the gallery that allows them to rise above everyone else’s prejudices. In reality, we are all on the stage acting our different parts, and the view that religion is of little or no importance is just one point of view alongside the one that holds religion to be of paramount importance. The commitment to hold no view is still a commitment. It is a view which is given preferential treatment in our education system without anyone acknowledging that it is based on a faith commitment quite as strong as that of any denominational school.

In practice, secular schools often have a strong sense of purpose, of the value of each individual child, and a set of values which usually owe more than a little to our shared Christian heritage. This is good, but for some reason such an identity isn’t seen as just one among many alternatives. Instead, it is disguised as objective and neutral. That isn’t honest, and one consequence is to confuse the terms of the debate about Faith Schools; in reality, the choice isn’t between Faith School versus Secular School, it’s between different kinds of Faith School – in which the secular option is just another variety of faith.

We can be proud of our church schools, not least because they are open and transparent about their standpoint. They have a clear sense of the purpose of education, which is not about filling children with facts, like Mr Gradgrind in Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’, but giving them a noble sense of purpose to live as those who bear the image of God. That isn’t some weird private opinion, but has been the shared understanding of a whole civilization for over a thousand years. Let’s not abandon it now.

Jonathan Baker

20.1.24

That’s Life!

Maybe it’s the post-Christmas blues, these wet and gloomy January days, or maybe I’m just suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I find my thoughts turning to the debate about assisted dying. Sir Terry Pratchett, Diana Rigg and now Esther Rantzen (remember ‘That’s Life!’ ?)are only some of the many celebrities who have called for the law on assisted dying to be changed, and it seems to be an issue that won’t go away.

My views about this aren’t as black and white as you might expect from a vicar, but I do find the terms of this debate depressing. Over and over, those supporting a change in the law argue that the right to die is a matter for individual choice. Every person, so the reasoning goes, should have autonomy. Each of us should have the right to determine when it is time to leave this earth. It is no one else’s business. Only the individual can say when he or she has had enough. As the poem goes, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul”.

The argument is bolstered by heart-rending descriptions of the suffering of some folk at the end of life, a sense of anger that nothing can be done about it, and perhaps above all a fear of what might await us all. Implicitly there is a sense that anyone with an ounce of compassion would want to minimise the distress leading up to a death. Such arguments are powerful, touching as they do upon deep emotions and fears. The words of Woody Allen come to mind: “I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens”.

I say that the terms of this debate are depressing because the sentiments outlined above reveal how far we have accepted a reductionist understanding of human nature. Issues around the beginning and end of life pull into sharp focus our ideas about what makes us truly human. What gives our lives value? Why do we matter? Why should anyone care what happens to us at the point of death? These questions, and our answers to them, ought to be at the front of our minds when we are considering the decisions that might be made at the end of our lives.

The argument that assisted dying is all about individual choice reflects a very 21^st century understanding of what constitutes human value. It is assumed that we are essentially independent agents whose value lies in making choices. Take away our ability to control our own lives, to make conscious decisions, to exercise choice and to be independent, and life seems no longer worth living.

To be sure, freedom of individual conscience and the ability to make informed decisions is an important part of our humanity. But where does that leave those who have no capacity to make decisions? If my humanity depends upon my freedom of choice, how human is the newborn infant? How human is the person with dementia who no longer has agency? Does my worth really depend upon being able to sustain my independence? Surely one of the marks of a civilized society is the way it values and provides for those who cannot care for themselves.

A Christian view of human nature will have something to say about being made in the image of a Trinitarian God of love. Far from being totally independent, our unique personhood derives from the giving and receiving of love. In loving God and our neighbour, we discover who we truly are: not isolated individuals struggling in our own strength to achieve dignity in the face of death, but persons in relationship, for whom receiving care is as important as giving it.

Fear of a loss of dignity is often more accurately the fear of a loss of independence, and reflects our culture’s ideology of self-reliance, for which there can be nothing more undignified than dependence upon others. But for the Christian, that is precisely where our human worth is to be found. God considers us, amazingly, to be worthy of love, even though our sins render us morally and spiritually helpless.

The Rule of St Benedict states that “Before all things, and above all things care must be taken of the sick, so that they may be served in very deed as Christ himself.” That doesn’t depend on the sick getting better. We have an opportunity to affirm the worth of infants and those who are dying by caring for them; and allowing us to love them is a gift which can still be bestowed by those who have no other agency. In the process they not only become more human, but they give an opportunity for those who care for them to become more human also. Conversely, what does it do to my neighbour’s humanity if I ask him or her not to care for me, but to kill me?

This doesn’t touch on the many other arguments for and against assisted dying; and in my view there may be situations in which some kind of assisted dying might be the lesser evil. But unless we acknowledge what we think gives our lives value in the first place, our opinions will rest upon assumptions that at best are unexamined, and may at worst be quite misleading if we want true dignity in the face of death.

Jonathan Baker

6.1.24

Conversion Course?

The New Year is, obviously, a season of new beginnings; ring out the old, ring in the new, make resolutions, turn over a new leaf, make a fresh start. It is the language of secular conversion, in which we seek to be transformed and to try again.

The difficulty is that it is hard to convert oneself, which is perhaps the reason why resolutions, if made at all, tend to be modest affairs along the lines of ‘I must tidy the cupboard under the stairs’ rather than more root and branch attempts at becoming a better person.

The three vows taken by a novice Benedictine monk are not, contrary to popular mythology, vows of chastity, poverty and obedience; but vows of obedience, stability (ie being willing to stay in the same community for life) and conversion of life. This third one includes poverty and chastity but is more wide-ranging; and recognizes that the work of Christian conversion is a lifelong task which has to be renewed daily.

We are sometimes shy of talking about conversion. Few people have experiences as dramatic as St Paul (whose Conversion is kept as a Feast Day on 25th January) on the Damascus Road, and this may mislead us into thinking that it belongs in the territory only of very spiritual people (such as monks and nuns) and is not relevant to most of us. But the monastic vow reminds us that conversion shouldn’t be understood simply as a one-off, once and for all moment; rather it is a normal part of everyday Christian discipline.

To use an analogy, in order to win a race the athlete not only has to run very fast; he or she must also be facing in the right direction. Conversion can apply to both aspects; making sure we are initially facing towards God, and then keeping on track.

The human heart being what it is, we often resist this simple orientation. It can seem easier to run towards a substitute for God: the Minster building, or to some church activity such as volunteering, singing, welcoming, (even vicaring!) than to God himself. God can be too big, too mysterious and frankly too much of a threat to my independence to be kept in focus. God is love, and love is always too free, too unconditional and too surprising for comfort.

Love is also the key to conversion. As mentioned before, resolutions fail because it is hard to convert ourselves. Our orientation changes, and we start to turn away from ourselves, when we pay attention to others. The first of the monastic vows is that of obedience, which at its heart is about listening; the Latin verb from which we get the word ‘obey’ means both ‘to serve’ and also ‘to listen’.

Listening is also the beginning of love. Noticing the other person in all his or her particularity is what allows people to be drawn to one another. Listening to our own preoccupations, hurts and desires is also the first step towards loving ourselves, which is ultimately about being set free from those preoccupations, hurts and desires, so that we can be available for God and our neighbour.

God converts us when we learn to listen. When we pay attention to what is going on around us and inside us, the love of God can reach us and draw us in new directions. It is no accident that one of the most frequently repeated phrases in the Old Testament is ‘Hear, O Israel…’ At the heart of the Bible is the act of listening.

May 2024 be for you a year of conversion and of genuinely new beginnings as you listen, love and launch into the future God has for you.

Jonathan Baker