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.

Why is our Christianity so Immature?

I’ve just sneaked back home under a volcanic ash cloud. The Munich Passport Contoller who said the flight was cancelled was wrong.

I’ve said various things about Kirchentag, but it is remarkable how the Germans do serious theology on a mass scale.

Equally remarkable was the age breakdown of 167,000 people a day doing this:
. 7,68% Unter 12 Jahren
. 13,74% 12 bis 17 Jahre
. 16,45% 18 bis 29 Jahre
. 7,77% 30 bis 39 Jahre
. 19,07% 40 bis 49 Jahre
. 18,12% 50 bis 59 Jahre
. 7,34% 60 bis 65 Jahre
. 9,83% über 65 Jahre

Think about it.
Incidentally, where were the 30-39’s?

Thoughts such as these, Nick Baines’ reaction to the Hans Küng / Jurgen Moltmann evening, struck me again and again —

This evening was remarkable. Thousands arrived early to ensure a place in the auditorium – I got there for 6.30pm thinking it began at 7pm only to find it was scheduled to start at 7.30pm and didn’t in fact get going until 8pm. More people were locked out than could get in. The excluded crowds chanted ‘Wir wollen rein’ (‘We want to come in’) to listen to these two elderly men talk together about church.

Can you imagine that ever happening in Britain? Most of the excluded were young people eager to garner the wisdom of these two theologians. Why? Because their theology is neither dry nor ‘merely academic’, but engages with the real world of economics, politics and culture. They bring to their subject the intellectual rigour that is associated with German philosophical thinking. Yet, they speak with simplicity, clarity and passion – eschewing theological cleverness in order to communicate accessibly with all-comers: they are remarkable men who show no sign of being ego-driven.

This brings to mind a disturbing question posed by Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and spirituality wonk, about why the way we do Christianity in the West is so childish and discombobulated by rushes to judgment:

All spiritual teachers tell us “DO NOT JUDGE.” For those of us raised in a religious setting, this is very difficult. In a strange way, religion gave us all a Ph.D. in judgmentalism. It trained us very early in life to categorize, label, and critique. It told us all about worthiness and unworthiness. This judgmental mind told us what is right and wrong, who is gay or straight, and who is good or bad. This sort of mind never creates great people, because everybody has to fit into our way of thinking. At an early age our grid was complete. We had decided who fit in and who did not fit in. We fashioned our own little world.

Christianity that divides the world in this manner and eliminates all troublesome people and all ideas different from our way of thinking cannot be mature religion. It cannot see the multiple gifts of each moment, nor the dark side that coexists with it. This mind does not lead us to awareness, and above all, this mind will find it impossible to contemplate. To practice awareness means you live in a spirit of communion; your world becomes alive and very spacious, and not divided by mere mental labels.

What Grace is Not...

I’m gutted to hear of the tragic resignation of Margot Käßmann as Bishop of Hannover and Chair of the EKD Ratsvorsitzende, following a drink driving incident when she jumped a red light. Bishop Nick Baines’ account here, and DW press roundup (in English) here. The local TV headline was “Bearer of Hope explains her resignation.”

As leader of the Protestant Church in Germany, Käßmann has engaged passionately and intelligently with culture and society, and won much respect at home and abroad. The respect is undimmed by her resignation, indeed the journalists at her resignation press conference applauded her for her honesty, sense of responsibility, and dignity. We can only accept her decision, I suppose.

Still it leads me to ask, in Lent, what is grace, and what is it not?

When I worked in a prison I had to reflect for the first time in my life, if I’m honest, on how grace really worked among people who had often done criminal, some would say evil things. The colour, contrast and volume were certainly higher in prison, but amidst much that expressed the worst side of what we call human nature, I did also see some clear and present demonstrations of the Grace of God powerfully redeeming people and turning their lives around.

20 years ago, only the Chaplaincy and uniformed staff worked Saturdays, so the reception board that morning was always busy and somewhat mob-handed, with a crowd from Isleworth Crown Court the day before. Amongst them would be middle class prisoners, often with fraud or drink driving convictions, who had been bailed on remand and told they would never be imprisoned, and had honestly not believed they would be, until they found themselves in prison the night before.

Sometimes, in the night, I still recall these prisoners’ bewilderment, anxiety, embarrassment, rage and distress. It was no part of my job to pretend they had not done what was criminal, wrong and foolish. But neither was it my job to add to their shame or distress. Being deprived of your liberty is the punishment, not cruelty or disrespect whilst you are inside

Quite apart from the humiliation and pain of the moment, often careers or relationships were kicked into touch by the conviction. I was in absolutely no doubt what Jesus would do, and tried, stumbingly, to do likewise. So did the screws, in that sometimes hard but essentially humane world that is gone of Ronnie Barker Porridge.

So how real is Grace? Is it like borrowing money from a bank, where you only get it if you’re rich enough not to need it? Assuming Jesus being ironic when he talked of “righteous persons who have no need of repentance,” we may assume the idea is that the sick need the doctor not those glowing with health.

How do the sick receive the doctor’s help? And when Jesus implied hating someone was as bad as murdering them, lusting was as bad as adultery, was that “as bad as” or “as good as” or... both? And so what?

Over to you.

Planting an apple tree in Bremen

A few stray shots do no justice to what was, overwhelmingly, the largest and most impressive learning gathering for Christians in Europe this year. Dancing around the streets to 20 samba bands with 250,000 others is, indeed, an unusual thing to be able to do. There’s a great account of the event by Martin Flower, a member of St Anne & St Agnes Lutheran Church in the City of London, who went to entrely different things from me, here.

One challenging phrase was quoted incidentally, however, at 3 events I attended. It is one description, by Martin Luther, of what it means to have real faith:

Auch wenn ich wüsste,
dass morgen die Welt zugrunde geht,
würde ich heute noch
einen Apfelbaum pflanzen.

Which being translated means

Even if I knew that the whole world
was going to smash tomorrow,
Still, I would plant an Apple Tree today.

Liturgical Terrorism or the future?

Fifty years ago, most denominations had some degree of closed communion — people were generally nice about it, but the denomination was the gatekeeper. Since the 1950’s this rather Brethren way of doing Church has largely broken down in the West.

People who are not personally excommunicated are admitted on the basis of baptism, and the whole Church, not the denomination is the medium of the Sacrament. The institutional denomination is only trustee for the Lord, to whom the Sacrament belongs.

In the good old days saying the Lord’s prayer with other Christians was a mortal sin for Roman Catholics, but that was many years ago. Conciliar theology has a structure to support Eucharistic hospitality, which is only offered in certain closely defined circunstances.

In Hanover in 2005, my eyebrows raised as the (now retired) Cardinal Archbishop of Mainz described the current restructions in his denomination as a “thorn in the flesh.”

In Bremen I stayed with a delightful Catholic host, who told me the hot ticket for Saturday morning’s Bible Study was Fullbert Steffensky, Professor Emeritus at Hamburg.

He was now a Lutheran, having started out as a monk of Maria Laach — the place Adenauer found sanctuary from the Nazis in 1934 (though that’s not quite the whole story of the monstery at that time).

The Bible Study considered Genesis 16 and Hagar the slave woman. She is not entirely outside God’s blessing, and we were led into considering the probem of religious absolutism and the inability of some Christians and others to believe God has blessed anyone but their in-group. He leapt straight from there to an incident at the Berlin Kirchentag in 2003, where large crowds had been banned from intercommunion. What right had ecclesiastical authorities to try and deprive the people of God of hope? As I mentally fell off the seat, given the style distance between the presentation and our customary stately Englsh ecumenical quadrille, the preacher continued.

The basis of Communion is the mercy, gift and call of God, not what he scathingly called “die Einheitlichkeit in einigen Sätzendes Bekentnisses. (loosely, “the oneness of a sit-down of acquaintances”) It was pointless for ecclesiastical authorities to say the Church wasn't ready for such a thing, if all they meant was that they weren’t. Now, Ecumenical diplomats, sit down somewhere comfortable and pour a stiff drink, as I quote the published text:

Wir können nicht darauf warten, bis die letzten fußkranken Mitglieder von Kirchenleitungen angekommen sind und das Mahl für erlaubt. (very loosely, “We can’t wait for the last lame duck Church leaders to catch up and join us at the table...”)

Dr Steffensky very much hoped that at future Kirchentage people would just go ahead and eat as the Lord commanded, concluding

Auf Dauer werden die Bischöfe schon fördern, was sie nicht verhindern können. ( loosely, “The Bishops will soon enough require what they can’t prevent.”)

Boooom! Right, my English Ecumenical Chums. This is certainly Provocative stuff that you wouldn't hear in a gathering of 125,000 Christians in England.
Is it “Liturgical Terrorism” or the Future?

The Ascent of K[irchentag Day] 1

A smooth and easy journey across Europe, including a curried sausage in Köln! It's amazing how train connections in Northern Europe snap together to the minute over hundreds of miles, in a way they don't always in the UK. It’s also good to see the back of the Mrs Thatcher memorial slow patch on Eurostar.
I am deeply moved by the hospitality of ordinary people who open their homes to complete strangers for Kirchentag. My delightful and engaging host is a Roman Catholic, originally from the South, with a passionate interest in art and Thomas Merton. It’s really moving to be treated with a Benedictine warmth, hospitality and generosity. I’d like to think we’d do the same. I hope so.

I’m trying to develop my desperately bad German a bit, and this is certainly one way to do it. The main headline events are available in English, but how far my language skills are up to some of the more interesting but abstruse events here remains to be seen. This morning we meet in the International Centre to plan the campaign. The clever bit will be grabbing internet access and time to blog in a complex and fast-moving scene; so if nothing more is heard this week, that’s why.