“In an age when we no longer ‘do god’, in what ways can the biblical book that doesn’t ‘do god’ be a guide?”

In exploring this question, the first thing to do is read the book of Esther.

Having done that, there were of course a number of reflections and connections that I instantly wanted to make, and suggested that this might be a profitable investigation. But before jumping the gun, background research and reading is required – so as not to fall in to the naive trap of saying: “the bible says…”

So I looked to my bookshelf for some guidance.

I am currently reading, Reading the Bible After Christendom, by Lloyd Pietersen. which explores how one might read the whole Bible in the light of post-christendom. It helpfully looks through all the books of the Bible, very briefly, and as I am currently reading, it is on the right subject, and is brief, it seemed the obvious first place to turn.

“…Esther, with her access to royal power, is able to provide deliverance through her own cunning and by a “huge act of subversive, dissenting imagination”.” [1]

Pietersen then goes on to quote a large passage of Brueggeman, which is wholey relevant to my question, and therefore I am posting it here in its entirety:

“Christians in the West, in a now increasingly deprivaleged  situation, may be instructed by the book of Esther. The book of Esther invites readers – contemporary as ancient, Christian as Jewish – away from certitudes of modernity that have long been an instrument of Christendom. It instructs too the fragile strategies of drama and narrative by which to maintain a distinct identity. The point at which characteristic Judaism (short of the state of Israel) and contemporary Christianity (now deabsolutized) may read together concerns narrative strategies and playful features that generate particular identity out beyond the leveling, generic humanity of military consumerism. The cases of Judaism and Christianity are not at all symetrical, of course, but there is now enough of a crisis in Western Christianity to ask about the practice of subversion in the interest of communal survival.” [2]

The picture therefore that Pietersen seems to be presenting here is one in which Esther can be read as one of creative resistance to the imposed empire, and that for the survival of a faith community something of that subversive spirit must be rekindled with the church community.

[1] Pietersen, Reading the Bible After Christendom (2011).

[2] Cited in Pietersen (2011)

Working with young people – as I do – I am often met with questions and intrigue when they know that I am Christian; they know so little beyond the headline grabbing stories of what a Christian is, or what a Christian might believe or how one might behave. The old adage, that once stood true – that I was born in England, I am a good person therefore I am a Christian – seems foriegn to these young people. They are quite happy to state that they are good people, and atheists, agnostics, uncertain, but certainly not religious.

All this is a preamble to an idea that I had yesterday, something that I am going to reflect upon and blog about (hopefully!) To sum it up in a short phrase:

In an age when we no longer ‘do god’, in what ways can the biblical book that doesn’t ‘do god’ be a guide?

This is the question I am going to explore, through a number of posts ove the coming weeks. I am blogging about this because I hope that one or two people might want to engage with me as I blog, rather than me studying away in a dark corner somewhere – so please feel free to add your comments, thoughts, ideas of where to start…

[The Biblical book that doesn't do God, in case you are wondering, is the book of Esther in the Old Testament]

Nirvana – Dumb (nostalgic, and happy memories of awkward teenage angst – ‘i think i’m dumb, or maybe just happy, think i’m just happy’)

Delirious – Blindfold (Mezzamorphis, was in my opinion their best album, and this was the best song from it, simple. When the coda of ‘Glory…’ comes in towards the end makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up each time.)

Radiohead – How to disappear completely (it’s just really nice. understatement?)

Henryk Gorecki – Symphony No. 3 (a bit of classical just to show I am cultured!)

The Mars Volta – Cicatraz ESP (mental, yet brilliant)

Sigur Ros – Hoppipolla (My wife and I had decided that this was the piece of music she would enter the church to at our wedding, and then it was used on loads of adverts and a rediculous remix dance version – still hasn’t ruined it for me)

Bjork – All is full of love (Happy to listen to this song over and over again, therefore ideal for a desert island!)

The Beach Boys - God Only Knows (I heard that Paul McCartney called this the best pop song ever, so who am I to disagree?)

But, being a serial distribution hopper at the moment, after a month of using Ubuntu – and being fairly happy with it – three pieces of information have come my way to make me think that there is something better out there. (There’s always something better!)

One: All the reviews I have read about Fedora 15 have slated it. It therefore might not have been the best choice for testing Gnome 3 out. I’m also reminded that this is the first release of Gnome 3, so there is still plenty of development happening on it – maybe it’s not quite ready for prime-time yet?

Two: As an avid watcher of the Linux Action Show, and there recent reflections on how google, and cloud computing is taking over the world(!) de-googling my life, and thinking about other areas where I am giving my computing soul over to various companies without even thinking about it has, well, made me think about it! So I am thinking…maybe there are some strategic changes I should make…

Three: This study in to how different desktop environments get the best out of their graphics cards is fascinating. In my mind KDE has always been considered bloated and slow – but it seems this is no longer true. Especially when using the NVIDIA proprietary driver (which I do, and always will until the open equivalents get anywhere near it) – KDE continuously excels. Therefore is it time to give KDE a try, and if so which distribution?

All this information together – may, if I can find the time – send me back to the drawing board to think about, what do I need my computer to do, what is going to do it best, and how can I make that happen. Or I could just install Windows and be done with it (but where’s the fun in that?!)

Today I found this report on a report, or an overview of some research in to pioneers and fresh expressions. It seems to confirm my suspicions. Some choice quotes:

“I am amazed how optimistic and naive pioneers can be when starting out.”

and:

“Whilst the church likes the idea of pioneering in theory the gravitational pull back into ‘normal church’ is still strong so if you are taking a role that involves a mix of regular church leadership with some pioneering take a long hard look at the details and get them written in stone – 70% pioneering to be guarded or something.”

There were a number of things that I came away from the conference reflecting on, and I didn’t rush out to blog them so I had time to reflect – but now it seems time!

It seems to me, from my experience of working for the Methodist church, having been a part of an Anglican ‘fresh expression’ and having known a good number of ‘vicars in training’ that the rhetoric of fresh expressions and the institutional church, and the reality is quite different. This is just purely my observation but it seems that a good number of aspiring vicars and ministers in training come from non-traditional churches, free churches, call them what you will. I don’t know what the statistical break-down is, but from me friends maybe a third are from this background. They feel called to church leadership, and as the institutional churches provides a career path, and have the finances for training there are plenty of opportunities. They also speak about fresh expressions of church, which to many outside can be seen to be similar to what those outside of the traditional/denominational churches have been doing anyway. It seems a match made in heaven – the young enthusiastic Christian, called to leadership joins a formal training course with the aspiration of helping develop fresh expressions of church – and revive the denominational churches.

Then reality hits:

What do you mean we can’t just share bread and wine in a small group?

Why do you expect this small group to come to church on a Sunday as well?

What is a parish share – and why should we be paying it?

You expect me to take funerals, weddings, christenings, PCC meetings, church council meetings, run the children’s work as well?

The building’s roof needs repairing – £100000…but I’m a pioneer missionary not a fundraiser!

The institution swings in and takes away all the fun (I exaggerate!) But, again from my observation, many aspiring ‘vicars’ have little concept of what baggage being a part of the institutional church brings with it – and how this can stifle many creative and genuinely fresh expressions of church. And many entering ‘full-time’ ministry seem ignorant – through no fault of their own – of what awaits them. Even ‘pioneer ministers’, of which there are few, still have to bow to the authority of the institution regarding communion for example.

It seems to be the institution is in self preservation mode – the institution must remain and somehow make allowances for these quirky fresh expressions, rather than the radical over-haul that seems to be necessary. For example – Bishop Graham Cray at some point during the conference suggested that non-stipendiary (ie unpaid) pioneer ministers would need to be trained, encouraged and empowered to lead new churches. Maybe, if we were serious about fresh expressions, and new forms of church, it would be the institutional Bishops (and their many advisers) who should become non-stipendiary?

I am by instinct wary of institutions- they formalise relationships into something more contractual and can become focused on the survival of the institution, where adaptation becomes a tactic only for maintaining the status-quo.* I think it would be harsh to throw the whole ‘fresh expressions’ movement in to this category. But some whole-sale changes are needed to those institutions that finance much of the ‘fresh expressions’ movement for it to become anything more than a passing fad.

* The church has always evolved, and adapted to survive – that’s the only way that it could have for 2000 years. I think the gospel stories and the early church letters encourage this. But as this became formalised in to institutions, with creeds, specific codes of conduct and the concept of orthodoxy – the dialogue about church and faith begins to dry up and became propositional; ‘do you believe XX?’ It also becomes hierarchical, where those at the top become the guardians of orthodoxy and what is ‘right’. Undoing some of this requires quite a risk – but it may be necessary for us to rediscover what it means to be church rather than an institution.

Quick Conclusion

I am writing this post on my freshly installed version of Ubuntu 11.04, using Unity; so there you have it!

The slightly more long-winded answer…

In my, relatively brief testing of Ubuntu and Fedora, both impressed. Both felt fresh, modern and complete operating systems. The software I use on a daily basis (Firefox, Evolution, Abiword, and Bibble) all ran perfectly well on either system. It was therefore a simple case of which felt and looked better overall. Where was I going to feel happier working on dull emails, and long documents, which just worked better?

Gnome 3, was the bigger leap from my regular gnome 2 world, in places it was the best, in other places it seemed to let itself down – for example the panel across the top of the screen seemed way to big, and there is currently no way to narrow it – as far as I could see. Also changing the default icons etc was a bit of a faff – not impossible, just not as intuitive. I’m sure all this will change as Gnome 3 develops, but for now it has lost out to Ubuntu, on my  system at least.

Ubuntu 11.04 just had one or two extras that swung it for me. Firstly the integration of global-menu is a great plus. I’ve always thought it was a great space saving idea and had it implemented on my gnome 2 desktops, but now it is default and includes more programmes (including Firfox and LibreOffice, which is great!) Secondly, it all feels like it has come together as a complete package, more so than Fedora and Gnome 3 at this stage.

I don’t think I could conclude that one is better than the other, all I am really saying is that for me, right now, Ubuntu 11.04 – and I am happy with that.

I’ve been a Linux user for almost 8 years now (wow! I didn’t realise it had been that long.) In that time I’ve mainly been using gnome based distributions, fedora and ubuntu being the most common. I’ve flirted with others (elive for enlightenment, crunchbang for openbox, and most recently Chakra for KDE) and all have their postives, but for one reason I’ve ended back with gnome.

But things are about to change – with ubuntu adopting unity for their OS and fedora heading down the Gnome 3 route, it seems like a good opportunity for a change.

I was at first sceptical of where Unity and Gnome 3 were heading, but having seen various screenshots, videos and reviews of both, I’m warming to them. Both are heading towards release dates soon, so now seemed like a good time to dowload the beta’s of both and see how I get on.

So that’s what I will do, and expect more geeky blogging in due course!

Yesterday, like every other household in the UK I received through the post a leaflet extolling the virtues of why I shouldn’t vote in favour of the alternative vote. Maybe this would contain the startling new piece of evidence.

My search was in vain though, it barely held a coherent argument, it was entirely negative in outlook, attempting to rubbish the AV system rather than extolling the virues of first-past-the-post, it contained so many half-truths and scaremongering that it was quite frankly shameful. It is a sad reflection of contemporary politics if this reflects the standard of current political publications. Little in the way of serious policy discussion, but negative, personal attacks (this time on Nick Clegg) and what essentially amounts to spin.

It made me angry and sad. I almost now feel like I’m voting in favour of the AV out of spite to annoy who ever concieved and printed this shoddy piece of paper.

At least on the bright-side, I can hope that it will be recycled in to toilet paper.