Being English

I don't shop at Tesco these days but there's a bus stop outside their Didcot branch so I get to see what Sainsbury's competition is doing.  A middle sized delivery lorry was parked rather precariously near where the bus pulled in and I spent a moment or two reading the sign on the side of the van.  It proudly proclaimed a list of countries where the company operated: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Eire, France, Belgium ... you get the picture.  What immediately struck me about this list was that the sequence was far from random.  Starting in England and ending with the nether regions of Eastern Europe the progression ran from 'home' to 'away', presuming that for most of the people who read the sign England would be 'Home' with a capital 'H'.  The end of the list presumably, comprised of wild and pagan lands typified by unruly barbarians,  indecipherable dialects and savage sporting activities.   In other words, most unlike England, except Liverpool (the fact that I'm an Mancunian, is of course immaterial).

I came away thinking though, that the list of the side of the van was incomplete.  If England is 'home' then even within England there are places which seem more homely than others.  After all we have a group of counties, seemingly clustered around London for warmth, that are described as the 'home counties'.  The implication of arranging counties in this circular way is perhaps, to suggest that somewhere in the centre of that circle is a place that is so fully ENGLAND that it might be spoken of as the source of all Englishness.  Maybe in some corner of Buckingham Palace there is a plaque on the floor, like the one at the Greenwich meridian, that marks the spot.  I admit to a little self-indulgent irony in imagining portraits of the Queen's German relatives on the wall, looking down on the scene.

To a degree some of this seems innocuous - no more serious than The Vicar of Dibley or jokes about our obsession with the weather.  But the current increasingly bitter row around, migration, race, religion, ethnicity and national identity presents 'Englishness' in quite a different light.  Nor does the notion of 'Englisness' look quite the same for significant of the community in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland for whom the English are opportunists or even oppressors.  Even in northern England there is a deep well of resentment that power and priveleges seem to gravitate to London and the South-East.  The implication of 'home counties' is that there are some other counties that aren't 'home'.  London itself is an enigma - the capital of the United Kingdom, yet also the most cosmopolitan place on earth. Behind the London of Big Ben and friendly red buses that the tourists see there is another London of fragmented and competing sects, a miriad of overapping national identities and hidden poverty.

Perhaps there is such a thing as 'Englishness' but it's far from monolithic.  The England that I meet in inner-city Manchester and jostle against on the tube is something far more composite and subtle.  If this is an English identity then it's not a static one.  England is on the move and nobody knows the destination.

Living by Faith

I'm uneasy admitting that I have a problem with 'living by faith'.  I've still enough of my old missionary zeal remaining to feel that somehow I'm letting the side down.  It's not that I don't believe in miraculous provision or in God's generosity but this week I've been remembering why I'm so grateful to get a salary for an honest day's work. It was more than twenty years ago now that my ex-wife and I were members of a missionary society, due to go to Japan.  I like some of the people we came to know, so I'll leave the society anonymous.  We never got to Japan.  A matter of weeks before we were due to leave the mission dumped us with no explanation.  In my case I had spent seven apparently wasted years in preparation.  I'm not proud of the letter I sent to the mission afterwards or the two years or so we spent outside of the Christian Church as a result of the experience. Eventually a good friend told me that it was 'more important to be healed than to be right' and somehow we found our way back.  We forgave the mission but for both of us the damage had been deep.  I still believe that the experience played a large part in the later breakdown of our marriage.

This was a 'faith mission', where no salaries were paid and missionaries lived through the support of local churches and individual donations.  It was frowned on to ask for help.  Instead, missionaries and accepted candidates were encouraged to 'live by faith'. In my day even thanking donors for their help via a newsletter was disapproved of though I noticed recently that the Society made an exception for the refurbishment of its own premises.  'Living by faith' was repeatedly portrayed in the Mission as a life of joy and surprise but our experience was one of hardship and daily anxiety.  I remember one week not even having enough money for a stamp to send a letter to my mother.  In practice we discovered that some longstanding Society insiders had simply become adept at 'living by hints' rather than 'living by faith'.  Others (the most vociferous 'living by faith' people) tended to be members of large, affluent congregations.  We were neither very good at dropping hints or affluent and as a result we starved and had no social life.

If my post sounds bitter it isn't meant to.  I'm trying to say how it felt from the inside.  Thanking God for miraculous provision is a wonderful thing to do but I don't do living by faith any more.  To turn the glorious exception into the norm is neither biblical nor sensible.  Those mighty Prophets were full of faith, but I seem to remember them working for a living much of the time.  It may not be true of every 'faith mission' but our own experience leads me to worry how frequently an ethos of self-sacrifice and radical dependency disguises rank exploitation.  These days I'm still grateful to God and thankful for his provision - but especially on the 15th of the month when my salary goes in!    

Mennonite Church Planting in Britain

For those of you who have followed my blog it will be obvious that I'm not afraid of the occasional controversy.  I still have the scars to prove it.  This post again risks argument but this time with great reluctance.  I would love to see Mennonite churches planted in the UK as part of the wider growth of the Anabaptist Tradition but I am well aware that there are those in the Anabaptist constituency - some of them my friends - who would disagree with me or at least express grave reservations.  I respect and understand their point of view.  Britain already has an extensive range of sometimes competing Denominations and independent churches.  Every wave of migration seems to add to this complexity.  Is there room for yet another ecclesiastical stall in an already crowded marketplace?  Isn't there rather, a wonderful job to be done in bringing an Anabaptist influence to bear on churches of other Traditions and in public life without feeling the need to build our own little private empire?

I can of course, respond by saying how lonely it is to be a left wing Evangelical peacenik in the UK.  You know the problem.  The Quakers are too liberal.  The Baptists aren't pacifist.  What's left seems to be the hermit life, only that would never do for a corporately minded Anabaptist.  Sorry if this seems a frivolous place to start in proposing a Mennonite church planting initiative but this isolation is deeply felt and I'm not alone in experiencing it.  It wouldn't seem so bad if the absence of Mennonites (the archetypal Peace Church) was an accident of history or something peculiar to the British temperement, like cricket instead of baseball.  In the beginning it was not like this ... or at least in the 16th Century it wasn't.  There were Anabaptists in Britain at that time and still would be if it were not for persecution.  These Anabaptists did not jump but were pushed.  I'm not saying this to thumb my nose at the Anglicans or justify church planting as a kind of 'poetic justice' but only to affirm that the removal of Anabaptism was something unnatural, a diminution of British Christianity, rather than something that 'just happened'.  Whatever else might be said about the merits or otherwise of planting Mennonite churches in the UK it cannot be said that such churches are alien or exotic.  Mennonites belong in Britain as much as tea with the vicar.

Of course that's a very modest starting point.  It's much more challenging to ask whether the assertion that Mennonites 'should be here' translates into 'could be' or even 'will be'.  The trouble with historical 'wrong turns' is that the offending fork in the road remains inaccessible after the fact.  As a 21st Century British Mennonite I accept that the past may be regrettable or even inspirational but only in a very limited sense retrieavable.  There is always bound to be a certain amount of regret in an admission like that but mostly it's liberating.  We are free to find fresh beginnings and new partnerships in a shared Post-Christendom future, perhaps even with former adversaries.  But who are 'we'?  At present British Anabaptism consists of a few Mennonites and Hutterites, the Anabaptist Network and the modest ecumenical constituency sympathetic to the Tradition.  There is something to be said for embracing our marginality but this can be overstated.  I believe the Anabaptist Tradition in Britain is capable of more than our current numerical strength will allow.

If it is right to ask who 'we' are it would also seem proper to to wonder who we might be speaking of when we expect 'them' to do the church planting for us.  'Them' seems to refer to anybody but us - frequently assumed to be wiser, better resourced and altogether more capable than we are.  More pertinently 'they' are often assumed to be responsible (usually with the connotation of blame) for a current state of affairs and equally culpable for delay in the way things are becoming the way things should be.  However Mennonite churches are to be planted in the UK such congregations will not be planted by solely by 'them'.  If 'them' includes sympathetic Anabaptist oriented mission agencies, North American or  Continental European Mennonites then 'we' (i.e. British Anabaptists) and 'they' will need to work together.  The list of potential partners may also include other Mennonites (e.g. African Mennonites) and non-Anabaptist bodies with whom we share common missional concern.

There is more to this post than meets the eye.  As I am writing there are the beginnings of conversations underway concerning the potential for Mennonite church planting in Britain and some of the initial practicalities.  It is very much an exciting time and all the more so because development could go in a variety of different directions.  At present I am struggling very hard not to attempt to steer what's happening too rigidly.  It is my hope though, that whatever develops will find itself more comforably placed in an emerging church/fresh expressions setting than in more traditional forms of denominational church planting.  This post is intended to stimulate discussion so comments would be very much appreciated.     

In Praise of Minor Virtues

I'm a non-driver.  Years ago I did try to learn but found I was even more terrified than I was uncoordinated.  The driving instructor retired through ill health the week later.  Clearly I'm quite a challenge.  So, mostly I'm on the bus.  Wallingford to Didcot, Didcot to Abingdon with a little bit of Wantage thrown in.  Yesterday, I was sitting there on the 130 service alternating between my book and glorious views of Didcot power station when I noticed something.  Without exception all of my fellow passengers - the pensioners, a woman with a pushchair, a quarrelsome couple by the luggage rack - thanked the driver as they left the bus.  The virtue, of course, was 'courtesy'; quiet and unassuming but fully capable of transforming a journey.  I think of it as a minor virtue - good for everyday occasions but not much use in a fight.  We could have an enjoyable time adding other such virtues to the list: politeness, neatness, delicacy, etc.  There's something subtle about 'minor' virtues.  I wondered what the world would look like if every passenger thanked every bus driver.  That's the truth behind the cliche - 'common courtesy' - something small, magnified by the ubiquity of everyday life.  Contrast that with a 'major virtue', perhaps 'heroism'.  Heroes are great for a battlefield and handy for pulling children out of rivers but not much use at the breakfast table.  Thankfully, breakfast is more common than war.  So, which is the 'minor virtue', heroism or courtesy?        

2012

I saw a film yesterday - 2012.  Don't bother with the plot.  You've seen it before.  Planet in peril from 'solar radiation' [substitute global warming, antichrist, new ice age, alien invasion, nightmare plague or nuclear war].  Cue rampant CGI mayhem, ancient prophecies, bad Russian accents, worse Indian accents, holy fools, international conspiracies, greedy baddies (you can tell them because they're all overweight), simplistic moralising, cartoon Buddhists and the inevitable love interest.  Top it all off with the perfect disaster movie hero - chequered past but basically decent; nicely ruffled at the edges but fundamentally unimpressed by the apocalypse.  Bring on explosions, volcanoes, earthquakes, dust clouds, tidal waves, before - inevitably - hero saves the world.  2012 is a woeful title.  Maybe they should have called it 'The Day After the Day After Tomorrow'.   

Numb and Anxious

I don't know what I expected when I first launched this blog.  Sometimes I think it has become a little impersonal and that I'm too busy wrestling with great issues to bother telling you what kind of a day I've had.  Today was a pleasure but yesterday was another story.  What I expected to be a routine visit to the optician has left me numb and anxious.  It's not every day that in so many words I'm told I could be going blind.  There was plenty of detail, only some of which I understand, so I won't weary your ears with it.  I have the impression though, that I'm heading downhill in a vehicle with no brakes. Still, it's early days as yet and I'm waiting for an appointment with an eye specialist. 

Nonconformist Spirituality

This is such a hard post to write because it's about something intangible - that can't be weighed, measured or bottled. To talk about Christian Traditions comparatively - their spirituality and 'atmosphere' - is bound to be rather subjective. So, here goes. It is my impression that Episcopal Christianity - Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism has an advantage over Nonconformity, at least in Britain: they find it relatively easier to communicate continuity with a deep and lifegiving spiritual tradition.  Probably this is linked their respective claims to the Apostolic high ground (a kind of perceived Petrine family resemblance) and an impressive associated spirituality 'industry' including the retreat movement in Britain which is heavily weighted towards the Anglican and Roman Catholic retreat houses. Any dictionary of spirituality has a chest full of Episcopal treasures: saints, music, pilrimage, spiritual direction, liturgy, mystics, Celtic devotion, monasticism and devotional writing, to name just a few. Yet how many people could say what Pentecostal, Baptist or Methodist spirituality is? The 'dark night of the soul' is widely referred to even by non-Christians but who knows a thing about the Anabaptist concept of Gelassenheit (submission to God in community).

Now, I can hear some of you beginning to object that my observations are hardly 'rocket science'.  Much of the disparity in the relative profile of Nonconformist or Episcopal spirituality is an obvious corollary of relative strength and influence: occupancy of the 'limelight' and the presence of a substantial interface between a Christian Tradition and the wider culture.  There is, for example, a very good reason that we haven't heard of Gelassenheit or understand the wisdom of the Amish attitude to technology: Anabaptism was exterminated in Britain and is still barely detectable on the religious radar. For some British people their only knowledge of the Amish comes from a single Harrison Ford film.  Even Methodism and the United Reformed Church have been ravaged by decline, pollarded to the point of obscurity. The local chapel is just as likely to be a carpet warehouse as a place of worship. Yet, there is more going on here than a simple game of numbers. It is as if something in Nonconformity had died. Methodism is choking on a high carbohydrate diet of bureacracy and property fetishism. Quakers seem to be more interested in Buddhism than Christianity. The 'dry bones of Calvin' are very dry in indeed!

To some degree the problem is about 'marketing'. In the U.S.A. and Canada where the Amish are strong a burgeoning tourist industry has grown up, to the obvious mixed feelings of the Amish themselves. The appeal of 'authentic' artefacts - quilts, furniture or other craft goods - and the commercialization of spirituality bear a striking resemblance to what has happened in Britain with 'things Celtic' (whether pagan or Christian) or the New Age Movement. I am sure that many of us will feel that this kind of marketing creates as many problems as it solves. Should Nonconformists wish to go down the same route we should prepare for a viper's nest of contradictions. Yet, I feel it is sad that Nonconformist riches are not better appreciated: the Methodist Covenant Service (in its original form), Puritan devotion, Quaker decision-making, Anabaptist community-mindedness or Pentecostal expectancy.

The problem is acute. In Britain Nonconformity is not yet dead but it is dying, regardless of counter-indicators such as the growth of the so-called House Church Movement or Black Majority Churches. For Methodism, despite the hopes of a few, it seems unlikely that the Anglican cavalry will ride over the hill any time soon. Signs of hope such as the excellent Venture FX programme realistically offer a potential postive impact over a timescale of decades, perhaps beyond the life expectancy of the Denomination. I have no diagnosis, only an instinct that spirituality is a key component of the cure. Years ago I remember hearing a radio interview. I paraphrase because it was a long time ago. Three contributors who had converted from Christianity to other religious Traditions gave their reasons for making the move. All I remember from the programme are the words of one of the interviewees in answer to the question 'why did you leave'. She said, 'because I found no smell of God there'. For whatever reasons many Christian churches have lost 'the practice of the presence of God'. We have come to smell of death. Mission strategy is vital but it matters more that everything we are and do reeks of life.  Nonconform freely!