What Christians do

We start and end each day with prayer

We teach our children to pray

We read the Scriptures daily

We publicly confess our failures to each other & to God weekly

We share bread & wine together when we meet

We meet together with our local community of fellow Christians 

We work hard, for God, not for our employers

We give away a proportion of our income, often 10% or more

We do not swear

We do not get drunk

We don't do drugs but experience the energy of the Holy Spirit

We remain faithful to our wives and husbands

We encourage those who are not married to stay celibate and develop deep friendships

We try to meet the needs of the poor as far as we are able

We support other Christians elsewhere in the world

We try to share our faith with whoever is willing to listen

We honour our dead with burial in hope of Resurrection

We try to be honest in all our dealings

We look for ways to love our neighbour as ourselves

We express our gratitude for our daily food each time we eat

We listen for God's voice to us each day

And that's just for starters....

Why we need women Bishops: A complementarian case for female episcopacy

The debate on women Bishops often follows familiar tracks. On the one side there is the argument from equality or justice. Men and women are and should be equal; therefore they should have equal rights to posts within society and within the Church. There is therefore no reason why women should not be ordained bishops, as they can do the job just as well as men.

On the other side there is the complementarian case. This starts from the position that men and women are different and ‘complementary’ to each other. The argument is then often used to suggest that it is appropriate to reserve some roles for men and others for women. This usually ends up with denying the possibility of women being ordained bishops, or even priests or preachers.

Does complementarianism always lead to a denial of the validity of female church leadership? I want to argue that when you take complementarianism seriously (mind you, I don’t really like the term - I want to suggest another which I will come on to in a moment) it actually leads you to the conclusion that women bishops are, at least in our culture, right, proper, and necessary.

The biblical texts on the issue have been trawled over many times and so I don’t intend to do so here. It seems to me that we have to start from theological reference points, which the whole of Scripture give us rather than individual proof texts. The key ones seem to me those we find at the beginning of the Bible, which orientate us in all our thinking about gender:

Genesis 1.27: ‘God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’ This is of course is confirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19 and Mark 10.

Genesis 2.22 – 24 ‘the man said this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife and they will become one flesh.’

These texts suggest that fundamental to our nature as human beings is the fact that we are created male and female. In other words, it is impossible to be human without being one or the other. There is no such thing as a genderless human being.[1] Humanity comprises both, and is in a sense incomplete without both. This leads to what I think is the central theological reference point, which is that men and women need each other. We are interdependent. I mentioned a moment ago that I am not very happy with the term ‘complementarian’. It seems a trifle weak and passive. I much prefer the term ‘interdependence’. A Christian anthropology tells us that we are not isolated individuals completely self-subsistent in our own autonomy (as post-Cartesian thought has taught us to think we are) but instead we need God and we need each other. And that latter idea is expressed most radically in our need for the ‘other’, across the central distinction which runs through the whole of humanity: that of gender.

This is confirmed in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 11.11 -13, where Paul writes ‘in the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman, but all things come from God.’ In this passage, often referred to in the debate, Paul argues that, in the Genesis story, woman did indeed come from man, in that Adam was taken from Eve (as is stated in 1 Tim 2.13 – another key verse of contention), which might imply a certain priority to maleness. However, he also argues that subsequent to the original creation every man comes from a woman – his mother. In other words, there is no such thing as a man who has come into being without the help of woman, nor a woman who has come into being without the aid of a man. It is Paul’s way of making the point that men and women are interdependent. They cannot exist without each other, are incomplete without each other. They are drawn to each other. And there is something missing if there is any one gender in sight.

We sense this of course every now and again. One might enjoy a ‘boys night out’, or a ‘girls evening’, but most of us wouldn’t want that all the time. We all experience a certain fascination with the opposite sex. In other words, something remarkable happens when men and women come together. Men need women, and women need men, and this of course is not just about marriage. Single people also need proper friendships with the opposite sex and in a sense are incomplete without those good, healthy relationships. The other gender offers something which we cannot find within our own gender, and that expresses a fundamental theological truth: that we are not independent, but interdependent on that which is different from us.

Male and female do offer something different to one another. Now of course we instinctively feel that, but it is notoriously difficult to pin it down. Once we start to try to define male or female characteristics, we find ourselves quite quickly running into trouble. We might suggest that men are tough and women are gentle, men are rational and women are emotional, men are strong and women are weak. The minute we say those things however, we can think of all kinds of examples where it is the other way round. This kind of typecasting never quite works. The difference between men and women are real in that we sense and instinctively feel them, and yet they are undefinable and mysterious. Maybe it is important that we can’t define these differences or we would begin to define, limit and stereotype each other in terms of them. Persons would lose their individuality and uniqueness in a lazy pigeonholing of others. Of course that difference is expressed physically in the different shape of male and female bodies, but there is also something emotional and psychological that is hard to tie down but is there none the less. This is a point that Karl Barth insisted on strongly in his thought on gender, saying that trying to define this difference was to go beyond what revelation allows us to say.

This is an argument for mutuality in Christian ministry. Christian ministry needs both men and women. Now, cultural circumstances may have an impact. Jesus found a way of holding together the interdependence of men and women in his group of disciples in a very patriarchal society in the first century towns Roman Palestine. There was perhaps a certain scandal associated with female leadership and so different roles were found in the early churches to express the interdependence of male and female. In other cultures around the world today, it also might remain appropriate for men and women to play different and distinct roles.
However this is the important point: It is not that we in the 21^st Century west have finally understood the equality of men and women, in  way that that those primitive people in the Bible didn’t quite get. As I see it, this is not fundamentally an issue about equality or justice, not least because Christian ministry is not about status (as if Bishops were the CEOs, the goal of every ecclesiastical career), but about service – it is about going lower, not higher. The issue is the need the Church for both male and female insights, wisdom, and contributions to Christian ministry. Women should be bishops not because they can do the same job as men, but because they can offer something different and equally valuable. The house of Bishops needs women and is impoverished without them. Of course the same would be true if we had an all-female house of Bishops as would be true of any all-male or all-female church, party, or group.

This is perhaps a new way of recasting the debate. Complementarian arguments are frequently used to justify denying episcopacy to women, but it seems to me that when they are taken seriously they actually lean in the opposite direction.

At the heart of Scripture we find this radical interdependence between men and women in the pre-fall created order and in therefore the Church. We need to find ways of expressing that in culturally appropriate forms. To ordain women as both priests and Bishops, alongside men seems to me absolutely the right thing to do in our culture, to express this mutual interdependence and to ensure the full rounded contribution of both genders to the church and its leadership. Although we like to think we are independent, men need women and women need men and the church needs both.

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[1] Of course, there is the phenomenon of intersexuality, but this is the exception that proves the rule – intersex people live at the border of the distinction, but do not eliminate it.

Is Multi-Faith a Different Faith?

In Heathrow airport recently, I saw a small yellow sign, pointing to the 'Multi-Faith Chapel'. Having a little time until my flight left, I wandered in that general direction, round various corridors, through a 'Relaxation Area', with people lying on what looked like sun loungers (only there wasn't any sun), until I found the centre of religious life in the vast sea of humanity known as Terminal 4. It was a small, square, rather drab room with not much in it. A table in one corner held a number of books: various copies of the Qu'ran, some Islamic tracts, a scruffy copy of the New Testament in Polish, a Gideon Bible and a few other assorted religious texts. A small cabinet had some prayer mats, there was a sign telling you the direction of Mecca and a distinctly scratched table which looked like it had been bought from a car boot sale, with a laminated sign saying 'Table/Altar for Christian use' containing some copies of the Bible. The walls were bare except for a poster with symbols of all the major World religions on it - a cross, a crescent and the rest.

It was distinctly underwhelming. It had very little sense of 'holiness' or prayerfulness, such as you might find in a church, mosque or temple. It felt like a spare room upon which little attention had been spent. And more importantly, a room very few people would use.

I was recently told of a venture to build a large multi-faith centre in east London, and the more I heard of it, the more I wondered who on earth would ever use it. Christians go to churches, Muslims go to mosques, Jews go to synagogues and Sikhs go to Gudwaras. Who goes to a 'multi-faith centre'?

The multi-faith chapel or centre is not a church, nor a mosque, it is a temple to religious pluralism, which is a distinct religion all of its own. Religious pluralism is a product of the secularist domestication of religion.  The idea that Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc. are all examples of the general species called 'religions' is only about 150 years old. In Christian theology it stemmed from the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher who, although a Christian himself, saw Christian faith as one example of an underlying thing called religion. Defining 'religion' is notoriously difficult due to the fact that they differ so much from each other. Some believe in one God (Islam, Judaism) some in a more complicated three-in-one God (Christianity), some in many gods (Hinduism), some in no God at all (some types of Buddhism). All are systems of contested belief, but so are Satanism, Atheism and Marxism. Come to think of it, why not add those to the multi-faith Chapel?

Religious pluralism asserts the similarly contested belief that there are such things as 'religions', which are all equally valid (or invalid) and can safely be put to one side (or a drab, unwanted room in the corner or an airport), while the real business of life goes on elsewhere. No wonder real Christians, Muslims and Jews feel faintly patronized.

It reminded me of the great complex of pagan temples at Baalbek in Syria, a supermarket of pagan pluralism where one could chose who to worship - Jupiter, Bacchus, Minerva or Hermes. Ancient Paganism was effectively pluralist, which is why such a complex could be built. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are not. They each make pretty uncompromising claims to be true. That doesn't mean they have to be at each others' throats - in fact religions on the whole get on pretty well in the UK - just ask most local vicars, rabbis or imams. A belief that God will reveal truth at the end of time, breeds a healthy reluctance to force faith on others, and to converse and sometimes convert by persuasion not by pressure.

Gilbert Meilaender, the German ethicist, writes of different religious communities: “Each should help his children and friends strive for virtue as we fashion our smaller communities of belief and seek to transmit the vision which inspires us... And perhaps out of such sectarianism will arise some smaller communities whose vision is so powerful and persuasive that new moral consensus will be achieved among us.” While adding the need for good friendship and conversation between religious communities, that seems to me a much more realistic approach to inter-faith relations, that respects the particularity of each one, than forcing each into a wider secularising agenda. Any religion worth its salt claims to be true, and so cannot agree with the pluralist agenda. Religious pluralism is not a compromise between different faiths, it is a different faith.

Martin Luther on Prayer

Martin Luther on Prayer:

But why should we make our prayers known to God? Doesn't he already know them, even before we begin to pray? Doesn't he himself come to us first, inspiring us to pray? Answer: St. Paul says this to teach us what a righteous prayer should be. Namely, that it should not be thrust into the wind, prayed onto some doubtful excursion, as those who do not consider whether God hears it or not, always remaining uncertain--in fact they think they will not be heard. That, however, is neither to pray nor to ask, but instead is to test and mock God. For, if someone asked me for a pfennig, but did not believe or think that I would actually give him one, then I would not listen. I would think he is mocking me, and is not being serious. Now then, how much more will God not listen to such howling! A prayer should be made known to God, that is, we should not doubt that God hears us and that it comes to his attention, we should be assured that they reach him. If we do not believe that God hears it or that it comes to his attention, then certainly it does not. As we believe, so it happens.

Church Postil (1522), Fourth Sunday in Advent 37

Letter from Egypt

Just had an email from a friend in Egypt. Egypt always seems to steer where the Arab world goes, so what happens these is important for the world - some stinging criticism of the west here too...

Dear friends,


Egypt needs your help to complete the revolution it began last year. It was started by truly pro-democratic forces that were tired of oppression and corruption; the result was the downfall of Mubarak.

Unfortunately the Islamists jumped on the bandwagon when they saw the uprising beginning to succeed. In the confusion they broke open many jails to release their and Hamas' members. Because of their intimidating use of religion and the manipulative economic tactics they use to buy votes, they "won" the presidency by the slimmest of margins (just over 50%). Unfortunately it seems almost certain that Egypt's top military leaders at that time cut a deal with the Islamists and handed them the presidency in return for not being held accountable for their own corruption. Subsequent events have confirmed this in the minds of millions of Egyptians: top military leaders were given honorable discharge.

The first few months of Islamist rule have been dismal. The freedom of the press has been under attack. The harassment of women and Christians is alarming. The economy and infrastructure continue to deteriorate. Weapons and other resources have been passed to Hamas in Gaza. Radical groups are threatening the stability of the Sinai Peninsula.

With their cloak of sham democracy, Islamists are now trying to force a very flawed constitution on the country. Political leaders, judges, lawyers, constitutional experts and journalists have rejected the constitution as well as the way it is being proposed to voters. Several assistants to the president have resigned in the last few days in protest at his actions. Millions of people have poured into the streets all over the country since his dictatorial announcement of November 22. Unfortunately, peaceful demonstrators have been attacked in the last few hours with deaths and injuries being reported. Among those demonstrating are students, friends and other loved ones. As a sign of the nations's outrage, Muslim Brotherhood offices are being attacked in several cities. But they retain their power through intimidation and heavy funding (and international backing?).

We need your help. Firstly we need your prayers. We also plead with you to communicate this message to your church, other organization, influential friends, press and/or government leaders: Are we supporting freedom in Egypt? Do we want an Islamist Mideast or a truly democratic one? What is happening in Egypt is remarkable. Millions of Muslims are rejecting those who are using their religion as a tool for political gain. Christians are standing next to these moderate Muslims and together they are making a difference. But why is so much of Western media strangely silent or ambiguous in the message that it is sending?

Specifically we want the president to rescind his unconstitutional declaration of November 22 and gain the consensus of major political parties on the proposed constitution before it is submitted to a referendum. We also demand that the government protect peaceful demonstrators and bring the attackers of the last few hours to justice.

If Western countries don't stand against religious bigotry and defend freedom now, they will have to answer before history and before the people of the Mideast who are tired of hearing pro-democractic rhetoric from the West and yet see contradictory behavior.

Please let me know if you need more information or have questions. Once more we are asking for your prayers and the use of your influence however small it may be. The way Egypt goes will influence the entire Arab world.

You can use this email in any way you deem to be wise and effective. If you are concerned by the ramifications it could have on us, please consult me ahead of time.

Rescue the Arab Spring from turning into a cold and dead winter.

Euro 2012 - The tournament that money cannot buy

Euro 2012 has been growing on me. I hate the adverts with fake fans waving flags, corporate sponsors pretending to like football, The facepaints, the Mexican Waves - and Ireland’s footballers’ (but not the fans’) performances have been disappointing. On the whole, however, it has been pretty good so far. But there is one thing I have particularly enjoyed – the fact that no-one can buy this tournament.

If you have read my previous blog, you will be aware of my depressed state about the state and future of football. Clubs who got rich by winning the lottery, instead of long-term hard work and careful management won the big prizes. Cardiff have had to change their shirt colours because their new Malaysian owners think red is a lucky colour and the Chinese prefer dragons to bluebirds.

The thing I really like about the Euros is that no-one can buy the cup. Money is irrelevant in this competition. Players play for teams not because they are paid a fortune, but because it is their country; teams are bound together not by a billionaire’s money but by national origin; fans support the team not because they are successful but because that’s their country.

International football these days is of a lower standard than club football. Teams like Barcelona, Real Madrid Bayern Munich etc. have more time together, and can be assembled from any part of the world. If you don’t have a good left back you go out and buy one. If there isn’t a good English left back, then tough, you have to make do with what you have. As a result, club football has overtaken international football as the pinnacle of the game. To be honest I have always favoured club before country. But I just wonder if the tide will turn. As more and more of club football gets dominated by the lottery of billionaires buying toys to play with, maybe international football will be the only place left where football retains a bit of purity, the only place where money does not win.

Money and the Future of Football

Ever since Man City won the Premier League and Chelsea won the Champions League I have felt rather depressed about the state and future of football. I’ve have fired off the odd frustrated tweet about how Money has finally won the day, but usually get messages back accusing me of sour grapes because Man United didn’t win anything this season. 140 characters is not enough to mount an argument, so this is to explain my point.

It’s not that I don’t like them. I actually quite like watching Man City play. Mancini, Kompany etc. have been truly gracious in victory (Chelsea are a different story, but I won’t go there!). And for the umpteenth time, yes of course I know Man United have spent a lot of money in recent years. It is impossible to win anything big in football these days without spending money. The point however is how that money has been acquired and the degree to which that money swings the ability to win trophies. The difference between Man City & Chelsea and all the other main clubs at the top of the EPL (Arsenal, Liverpool, Man United, Spurs etc.) is that Chelsea and Man City alone have been massively boosted by the random injection of unimaginable amounts of cash by individual donors, money which at least in Abramovitch’s case is highly dubious, as pointed out by Dave Boyle in a recent article.

Roman Abramovitch and Sheikh Mansour could have chosen any club, but happened to choose Chelsea and Man City as objects of their largesse. In other words the money acquired has little to do with their identity or history as a club, skill at management, whether or not they have bought or sold well, levels of support, fan loyalty etc. United, Liverpool, Arsenal etc. have survived and sometimes thrived, instead by virtue of a gradual build-up of good management, tradition, stewardship of resources etc. In fact for many of them, their owners have been a handicap to success rather than a bonus. The Hicks & Gillette era at Liverpool was an unmitigated disaster. United have spent £71m on debt repayments over the past 9 months - they could have bought two Eden Hazards for that, with some change left over. In addition, the money Chelsea and Man City receive means they can offer players virtually what they want, which means that clubs such as Arsenal and United will struggle to attract top players any more, or at least ones for whom the pay packet is a primary factor in who to sign up for. In addition it means that clubs like Portsmouth and Leeds have almost gone bankrupt as a result of trying to keep up, and more will follow in time.

It is hard to see how Chelsea and Man City would have won what they have won this season without Abramovitch and Mansour. These donations have hugely tipped the balance in their favour, and the result is that there is no longer a level playing field in English football. If City & Chelsea can trump anything United, Arsenal or Liverpool can offer, the latter will find it hard to get the best players. While such injections of cash were not met with success, it was possible to cling to the hope that tradition, good management of resources and old football nous would win out. But this season, finally the big donors got what they wanted. And that is truly depressing for the future of football.