Doing God in Dresden...

...is very interesting for anyone who grew up with the Simplicissimus (“We were right so everything we did was right.”) English black & white movie narrative of World War 2. But that's another story, best told, perhaps, in resurgent stone Baroque which contrasts strangely with Socialist Realist 1960’s blocks that doughnut the centre.

For the first (and probably last) time in my life, I looked along the row yesterday morning at a Bible Study, to find Dr Christian Wulff (CDU), President of the Bundesrepublik.

So, no name dropping you understand, there was I a few feet along from the head of state of the largest democracy in Europe...

So, it’s OK for politicians to do God in this country, including by a Roman Catholic politician who turns up at a Protestant Bible Study as participant. I wasn’t too wowed by all the childish nonsense in the UK press about Tony Blair and what denomination he could join.

But a further bit of doing God happened slightly later when the President was up on the stage with young people and educators concerned with integration and civil society. As a warm up, the interviewer asked everybody a personal question — “do you pray and, if so, to which God?”

The Christian Wulff answer, for what it’s worth, was that when he is on the road he enjoys some time out in Churches and similar places, and personally, he prays every night as part of his bedtime routine. He prays to “Jesus as described in the Bible.”

But what was interesting was what happened next, or rather what didn’t. Nobody suggested he was a nutter. Nobody suggested his new Economic wheezes were the product of either God or the Devil, being foisted on the public within a secret theocratic agenda. Nobody suggested that he was merely making it up to gain votes.

Indeed, Chicken Licken, the sky did not fall. And that was the difference between the way such a question is handled in the public square our side of the channel and pretty much everywhere else. Where grown-ups live.

Doubting Doubt

Much as I may disagree with many of Peter Tatchell’s views and methods, I respect his passion and sincerity. I’m interested (h/t Church Mouse) in his account of why he is a secular humanist:

Religion is the world’s single greatest fount of obscurantism, prejudice, superstition and oppression. It has caused misery to billions of people worldwide for millennia, and continues to do so in many parts of the world. As a human rights campaigner motivated by love and compassion for other people, I would be betraying my humanitarian values to embrace religious beliefs.
...
By the time I turned 20, rationality finally triumphed over superstition and dogma. I didn’t need God any more. I was intelligent, confident and mature enough to live without the security blanket of religion and its theological account of the universe. Accordingly, I renounced religion and embraced reason, science and an ethics based on love and compassion. I don’t need God to tell me what is right and wrong. We humans are quite capable of figuring it out for ourselves.

What particularly interests me is that, coming from a similar generation but with a loving and decent (but not Evangelical Christian) upbringing, his description of his formation in atheism rings a bell for me. A similar process led me in precisely the opposite direction as a teenager, from atheism to faith. Bearing that in mind, I'd fill in a similar form, perhaps, a bit like this:

Religion, like politics or sex, is part of being human. There’s good religion and bad religion, some healthy, some toxic. Failing to realise that made atheism seem clever. I had high ideals, but a limited capacity to distinguish between my own passionate feelings and a higher truth and calling which I have not yet attained, but towards which I could still struggle. Faith in God prevents me always externalising the foe, and reminds me that I have to struggle within myself to be the kind of change I want to see in the world, or all my efforts will be no more than anger and opinionations self-righteously aimed at others.

As a teenager, I realised that although I didn’t need God, better people than me had searched seriously for him. He did not exist as an object, in the way I had crudely imagined as a child. I became intrigued by the elusive possibilities this raised. Following up this perception was rather like the 3-d image in a magic eye picture emerging from what had seemed a simple, if complex, 2-d one.

Thus it dawned on me that things are not, in fact, always what they seem, and reality has many planes and dimensions. In a universe where something as basic as number theory cannot be anchored entirely securely in rational axioms, I came to see that human reason could not possibly be the measure of everything, but pointed beyond itself. Grasping reality would require awareness of hermeneutics, and a sense of history, as well as my own opinions.

Accordingly, I searched beyond simplistic secularism and began to grasp the complexity of life. I studied history, and engaged with the languages and content of Biblical texts on an adult level. I don’t need God to tell me what is right. I do, however, find his spirit gives me more wisdom, grace and power to live than I can generate within myself. We humans are quite capable of figuring it out for ourselves, but frustratingly incapable of delivering the goods on the basis of passion, and our own time- and ego-bound reason and emtion.

Winter Lights Oxford: hysterical tosh

I'll put some retreat notes up next week, but couldn’t help noticing the first sign of Christmas in the UK is a press report about a council banning Christmas. First off this year is the Oxford Mail, which ran a story saying Christmas had been dubbed "Winter Lights" so as not to offend other religions. Zenit, the view from Rome, ran a suitably breathy piece of hufflepuff allegedly by an RC archbishop, no less, denouncing the inexorable march of secularism:

A decision by the Oxford City Council to abolish all references to Christmas in the name of being more "inclusive" is the next step in erasing history and Christian identity

Within the week, however, truth, began to seep out. Oxford City Council is, in fact, holding all its usual Christmas festivities, carols, Christmas tree, and trimmings. Nobody has renamed anything. It had never struck the arts charity Oxford InSpires that they could, let alone would, rename Christmas. Their programme runs for several weeks, including, nice touch for Christians, an Advent fair.

In other words, this story was just hysterical tosh for the gullible. The truth is on the Oxford Inspires website, and the Oxford Mail had the decency to own up. Like October snows, these tales always seem to melt on inspection, however much they appeal to simple-minded paranoia in the ignorant and gullible. They are fast becoming part of the great British Christmas, along with a story from somewhere about a Vicar who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. Actually, as a bishop I would have serious anxiety about ordaining anyone who did, literally, believe in Santa Claus.Will that statement, in itself, make me “it” for 2008?

This stuff is like ground elder. The lone comment last night on the Oxford Mail story admitting the error said “I think that this is just the tip of a very large iceberg waiting to devour not just Christmas, but everything that goes with it.” So the Urban myth marches on, regardless of any attempt by the Oxford Mail to correct its original story. Guess which one will now be whizzing round the internet regardless, with added hilarious metaphor, powered by trolls? The last word on this subject belongs, I reckon, to the Muslim Butcher down the Earley Road in Reading who had a poster in his window three years ago, before I carried a blog camera at all times, saying “Halal Turkeys: Order now for Christmas.” Says it all, really.

Dwindling Churchgoers Death Plunge

Excellent summary by Thinking Anglicans and analysis by David Keen, here and here, of this week's press puffdoodle about church attendance. A basically serious Christian Research Report has, apparently, been hacked around and hammed up, with an hysterical sauce added about, guess what, Muslims. What a surprise.

All I can add is this yellowing cutting from the Times of 29 July 1971. It solemnly announces, as a matter of mathematical certainty, that as Britain secularises all churchgoing in the UK “will have disappeared completely” by... er... 2011. So, according to the Times of 29 July 1971, in two and half years time there won't be anything left at all. What are you waiting for? Pull your finger out! Get your skates on! Haven’t you got homes to go to?

Gentle Reader, this all goes to show... the fun of statistics. I note that the paid circulation of the Daily Telegraph in 1971 was 1,454,581. In 2005, allowing for giveaways, it was 605,555. At that rate, the Diocese of Oxford Reporter, with its stable circulation of 65,000 will overtake the Daily Telegraph, as a matter of mathematical certainty, by 2035. What a bunch of crap!

It also goes to show how elusive and subtle the phenomena of religious participation are. Despite the efforts of Christian Research and others it could be we simply don't have the reach and depth of figures that would shed light on the detailed position. There’s a really thoughtful reflective trail on the real situation and its implications on Richard Hall’s excellent blog, and, from a Conservative Evangelical perspective, John Richardson’s. See also the Interesting discussion of hammed up news by Simon Barrow here.

Angels with dirty faces?

Amongst various Christmas robins doing the rounds this year have been dire alerts about the march of secularism, as demonstrated by this year’s UK Christmas stamps. Here are the godless little blighters:
As you can see, Royal Mail is now riddled like a Swiss Cheese with militant secularists. Rumour has it, special instructions have been given to village postmasters not to issue the Madonnas. You can imagine the riot there'd be if one fell into the hands of a Ba’hai in Bradford (no you can’t - ed). The Madonnas are being reserved for highly Christian areas like East Belfast (shome mishtake?). OK, there are angels in the Bible (quite a lot, actually), but these ones are obviously fake. A Swiss Cheese Secularist front could never produce real angels.

To give Royal Mail a steer, and help the Faithful monitor this alarming trend towards secularist Christmas stamps, here are Christmas stamp designs from countries with Real Churches Militant like the USA, Spain & Italy: