Youâ??ve written that the nation state has become a â??parody of the Churchâ?? and that we should treat it like the â??phone company.â?? How far do you think the state has overreached itself in this country?

William Cavanaugh: The phone company quote comes from MacIntyre. He says that the nation state is a dangerous and unwieldy organization that presents itself on the one hand as a bureaucratic provider of goods and services which is always about to, but never actually provides, value for money, and on the other hand, as a repository of sacred values which from time to time asks us to lay down our lives on its behalf. He says itâ??s like being asked to die for the telephone company. I think that really characterizes it very well.

On the one hand, you have this enormous bureaucratic organization which is growing constantly despite all the talk about small government. Even under Reagan and the current president the state continues to grow. People foresaw this as early as the 19th century. When thereâ??s no organic community and your society is a mass of individuals, each with their own goals, goods, and ends, you need a bigger and bigger state to keep them all from interfering with each other.

Thereâ??s a spiritual aspect to the stateâ??s claims. Thatâ??s why I call it a â??parody of the Churchâ??â??it claims to saves us. Currently, itâ??s saving us from these diabolical terrorists who are out there and want to kill us. The state presents itself as the only protection from this diabolical enemy. The irony is that the state made this enemy for us in the first place.

The amnesia about who terrorists are and where they come from is just amazing. The way the storyâ??s usually told, we were just sitting here minding our own business, and then on September 11, 2001, these crazy people attacked us for no good reason and now we have to defend ourselves. But the truth of the matter is much more complex. It has a lot to do with American foreign policy and American military meddling in the Middle East which we donâ??t want to talk about. It has a lot to do with the CIA helping to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 and installing a Shah who ran a brutal dictatorship. These are things we forget, but that other people never forget. The state in a lot of ways is like a protection racket: it defends us against the enemies that it itself creates.

What can or should the Church do if or when the nation state oversteps its boundaries? The first thing the Church needs to do is stop fighting unjust wars. Take the just war theory seriously. Iâ??m not talking about pacifism. If thereâ??s a war that the Church judges is unjust, then Catholics shouldnâ??t fight it. Thatâ??s the way the just war theory is supposed to work. Itâ??s sometimes supposed to say â??noâ?? to acts of violence. What the theory is usually used for, of course, is to justify whatever violence is going on. I canâ??t think of a single instance where it was used to stop violence. That is the most pressing issue.

Imagine what would have happened if Catholics in the previous war had said in significant numbers, â??No, sorry, this is an unjust war; weâ??re just going to sit this one out.â?? The world would have turned upside down.

Another thing is to stop buying into the idea that all significant questions of money and power need to be funneled through the state, that the only thing we can do about issues like health care is to get the state to do something.

William Cavanaugh in interview with GodSpy

The Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics is giving a

One-day colloquium on Professor Oliver O’Donovan’s Ways of Judgment

Tyndale House, Cambridge 3-4 July 2007

Professor Oliver O’Donovan, Edinburgh University

Professor Nigel Biggar, Trinity College, Dublin

Dr. Ben Quash, Peterhouse, Cambridge

Dr. Jonathan Chaplin, Director, KLICE

There is no doubt that we are living in a moment of extraordinary development in the human capacity to decipher the rules and structures of matter, and in the consequent dominion of man over nature. We all see the great advantages of this progress and we see more and more clearly the threat of destruction of nature by what we do.

There is another less visible danger, but no less disturbing: the method that permits us to know ever more deeply the rational structures of matter makes us ever less capable of perceiving the source of this rationality, creative Reason. The capacity to see the laws of material being makes us incapable of seeing the ethical message contained in being, a message that tradition calls lex naturalis, natural moral law. This word for many today is almost incomprehensible due to a concept of nature that is no longer metaphysical, but only empirical. The fact that nature, being itself, is no longer a transparent moral message creates a sense of disorientation that renders the choices of daily life precarious and uncertain.

It is precisely in the light of this contestation that all the urgency of the necessity to reflect upon the theme of natural law and to rediscover its truth common to all men appears. The said law, to which the Apostle Paul refers (cf. Rom 2: 14-15), is written on the heart of man and is consequently, even today, accessible. This law has as its first and general principle, "to do good and to avoid evil". This is a truth which by its very evidence immediately imposes itself on everyone. From it flows the other more particular principles that regulate ethical justice on the rights and duties of everyone. So does the principle of respect for human life from its conception to its natural end, because this good of life is not man's property but the free gift of God. Besides this is the duty to seek the truth as the necessary presupposition of every authentic personal maturation.

Another fundamental application of the subject is freedom. Yet taking into account the fact that human freedom is always a freedom shared with others, it is clear that the harmony of freedom can be found only in what is common to all: the truth of the human being, the fundamental message of being itself, exactly the lex naturalis. And how can we not mention, on one hand, the demand of justice that manifests itself in giving unicuique suum and, on the other, the expectation of solidarity that nourishes in everyone, especially if they are poor, the hope of the help of the more fortunate?

In these values are expressed unbreakable and contingent norms that do not depend on the will of the legislator and not even on the consensus that the State can and must give. They are, in fact, norms that precede any human law: as such, they are not subject to modification by anyone. The natural law, together with fundamental rights, is the source from which ethical imperatives also flow, which it is only right to honour.

In today's ethics and philosophy of Law, petitions of juridical positivism are widespread. As a result, legislation often becomes only a compromise between different interests: seeking to transform private interests or wishes into law that conflict with the duties deriving from social responsibility. In this situation it is opportune to recall that every juridical methodology, be it on the local or international level, ultimately draws its legitimacy from its rooting in the natural law, in the ethical message inscribed in the actual human being.

Natural law is, definitively, the only valid bulwark against the arbitrary power or the deception of ideological manipulation. The knowledge of this law inscribed on the heart of man increases with the progress of the moral conscience.

The first duty for all, and particularly for those with public responsibility, must therefore be to promote the maturation of the moral conscience. This is the fundamental progress without which all other progress proves non-authentic.

Pope Benedict to the International Congress on Natural Law

Reporting on religion in the mainstream British press is not only sometimes dreadful, it's dangerous, and something needs to be done about it.

Making such a statement does not come easy. Journalists are notoriously reluctant to criticize the work of colleagues, and not just because it's a great way to make enemies. We know the agonies of fact-checking and finding balance, especially facing ever-tighter deadlines. Since I occasionally write for the British press and give interviews in the U.K., I understand that religion reporting is up against a ferociously competitive media market and a highly secular audience, where some over-simplification and even exaggeration is the price of doing business.

This is not merely irritating, but dangerous.

John Allen Irresponsible reporting on religion is dangerous

It is in the law that the deep-seated nature of our ‘culture-muddle’ is beginning to be manifest. The secularization thesis which denied real significance to religion, also suppressed intellectual life. By divesting religious actors and institutions of their social, economic and political influence, it at the same time, permitted anomalies to flourish in many disciplines and a down-grading - or ‘disenvisioning’ - of public life. Only now is it becoming respectable again, for example, to write about the deep interrelation of religion and law. It is only the presence of minorities with different legal systems based in holy texts that has allowed this particular debate to resurface. For such minorities the privatisation of religion is unthinkable. Yet the English legal establishment resolutely maintains the secular fallacy that it is ‘neutral on religion’.

Academics who long ago jettisoned religious categories as a means of understanding anything, will have to go fishing over the side of their boats to retrieve the unthinkable. Religion is once again become a live, as opposed to a merely textual issue - in public life, in law, in social policy, and in the academy - and any political vision for Britain, merely by the exigencies of existing race legislation, will have to take religion seriously.

If religion is once more a vital political issue - thanks in large measure to the presence of Muslims in Europe - it presents an urgent opportunity for the Church both intellectually and practically to retrieve its sense of itself and its role.

Jenny Taylor The Myth of Religious Neutrality

The Gospel and our culture network presents

Mission in Christian Soil? Cultural awareness and personal conversion - A day conference with Elaine Storkey Saturday 15th Sept 2007 Carr Lane Church Centre Birmingham

People who take the question of human truth, freedom and meaning seriously will never remain silent about it. They canâ??t. Theyâ??ll always act on what they believe, even at the cost of their reputations and lives. Thatâ??s the way it should be. Religious faith is always personal, but itâ??s never private. It always has social consequences, or it isnâ??t real. And this is why any definition of â??toleranceâ?? that tries to turn religious faith into a private idiosyncrasy, or a set of personal opinions that we can have at home but that we need to be quiet about in public, is doomed to fail.

The mentality of suspicion toward religion is becoming its own form of intolerance. I can see a kind of secular intolerance developing in our own country over the past two decades. The modern secular view of the world assumes that religion is superstitious and false; that it creates division and conflict; and that real freedom can only be ensured by keeping God out of the public square.

But if we remove God from public discourse, we also remove the only authority higher than political authority, and the only authority that guarantees the sanctity of the individual. If the twentieth century taught us anything, itâ??s that modern states tend to eat their own people, and the only thing stopping this is a resistance based in the human spirit but anchored in a higher authorityâ??which almost always means religious witness.

You know, thereâ??s a reason why â??spiritualityâ?? is so popular in the United States today and religion is so criticized. Private spirituality can be quite satisfying. But it can also become a designer experience. In fact, the word spirituality can mean just about anything a person wants it to mean. Itâ??s private, itâ??s personal, and, ultimately, it doesnâ??t place any more demands on the individual than what he or she wants.

Religion is a very different creature. The word religion comes from the Latin word religareâ??to bind. Religious believers bind themselves to a set of beliefs. They submit themselves to a community of faith with shared convictions and hopes. A community of believers has a common history. It also has a shared purpose and future that are much bigger than any political authority. And that has implications. Individuals pose no threat to any state. They can be lied to, bullied, arrested, or killed. But communities of faith do pose a threat. Religious witness does have power, and communities of faith are much harder to silence or kill.

Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Denver Religious Tolerance and the Common Good

St Paul's Theological Centre Annual Lecture

Professor Jeremy Begbie The Emotional Power of Music in Worship: Have We Anything to Fear? 14th June 2007, 7.30pm at Holy Trinity Brompton, London

Jeremy Begbie is Honorary Professor of Theology at the University of St Andrews and Associate Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge. Jeremy is a professionally trained musician and one of his passions is the renewal of music in worship. He is the author of many books including ‘Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts’ (T & T Clark). The lecture will include a performance at the piano, recorded music and worship. Entry is free.

In his 1990 apostolic constitution on Christian education, John Paul II insisted that the university is _ex corde ecclesiae_â??from the heart of the Church. He spoke of the Catholic university, of course, but the vision challenges every Christian university. In Ex Corde Ecclesiae, John Paul wrote: â??With every other university [the Christian university] shares that gaudium de veritate, so precious to Saint Augustine, which is the joy of searching for, discovering and communicating truth in every field of knowledge. [Such] a universityâ??s privileged task is to unite existentially by intellectual effort two orders of reality that too frequently tend to be placed in opposition as though they were antithetical: the search for truth, and the certainty of already knowing the fount of truth.â??

There areâ??or there should beâ??different kinds of universities. At least that is the case if there is no such thing as a university pure and simple. A decision must be made, and constantly remade, to be a particular kind of university. It is sometimes said that a Christian university has a â??dual identity,â?? one by virtue of being a university and another by virtue of being Christian. I suggest that is seriously mistaken, since it assumes that the term university is neutral or self-explanatory. Every university is, whether by careful deliberation or by accident, a university of a particular kind.

The Christian university requires a structured form of conversation, both affirmative and critical, with a particular community of Christian faith. In the absence of such accountabilityâ??an accountability that is not imposed but freely soughtâ??the Christian university will most likely succumb to the institutional and ideological dynamics of other kinds of universities. It is not enough that there be a department of theology or a vibrant student chaplaincy. Indeed, as James Burtchaellâ??s demonstrates in The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from Their Christian Churches, the schools that ended up in repudiating their Christian founding began by assigning the responsibility to be Christian to theology departments and the chapel. The result was that they lost their connection with â??the Churchâ??s heart for learningâ?? and, along with it, the responsibility of inviting students to enter on the high adventure of the Christian intellectual traditionâ??a tradition ever so much richer than the reductionist Enlightenment embraced by schools that claim to be universities pure and simple.

Richard John Neuhaus A University of a Particular Kind

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will tonight give an address at Toynbee Hall, in which he will call for a widening of the debate on multiculturalism beyond narrow considerations of ethnicity or nationality, and to take in arguments about globalisation and commerce.

Delivering the lecture, Dr Williams will address the question of the homogenisation of human beings, with the increasing dominance of the global market:

"We live in probably the least multicultural human environment there has ever been. The global market has canonised once and for all certain ways of making: industrialisation is everywhere, the network of global communication is everywhere, the effects of market forces are felt by everyone on the face of the globe….It may be benevolent to some aspects of local cultures; it may learn to speak in local accents for certain purposes, advertising or decoration but it works in one mode of production, employment and marketing, and assumes that everyone is a potential customer. It is as universal as ever Christianity or Islam aspired to be, but the substance of its universality is a set of human functions (producing, selling, consuming) rather than any sense of innate human capacity and of the unsettling mysteriousness that goes with that."

Dr Williams will also argue in his lecture that those who wish to debate multiculturalism should first look critcally at what they mean by the term. He will suggest that the growth of cultural relativism in the twentieth century has led many to feel unable or reluctant to question the values of their own communities or those of others and that this risks the development of a secular state, which is unable and unwilling to exercise moral judgement.

Dr Williams will stress that it is not wrong to expect schools in shared cultures to teach the history or traditions of the majority. This, he will say, is necessary not because it is arbitrarily right to do so, but because children need to be able to understand how cultures evolve - and what forces, for good or ill, have come together to explain the values and traditions society currently holds.

Christopher Roberts Creation & Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in the Moral Theology of Marriage

Does sexual difference matter for marriage? Are there good theological reasons why the two main characters in a marriage should be a male and a female, or is marriage a more flexible covenant, which any two people can keep? Creation and Covenant analyzes latent but under-examined beliefs about sexual difference in the theology about marriage which has been dominant for centuries in the Christian west. The book opens by studying patristic theologies of marriage, which rested on mostly implicit and often incompatible beliefs about sexual difference. However, Roberts argues that Augustine developed a coherent theology of sexual difference, according it a shifting significance from creation to eschaton. Roberts traces how Augustine's theology influenced and was developed by subsequent theologians, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Luther, Barth, and John Paul II. Finally, Roberts engages today's debates about gay marriage.

Before becoming an academic, Dr. Roberts was a journalist. On behalf of PBS television, he covered both the Lambeth Conference in England and the World Council of Churches in Zimbabwe. During those years, he was disappointed by both the liberal and conservative arguments on homosexuality. Left-wingers seemed more interested in privacy, autonomy, and experience than in theology, and right-wingers seemed to have lots of prohibitions but little good news. In the final chapters, this book tries to do better, inviting liberals to improve the standard of their arguments, and explaining what is beautiful and persuasive about the traditional case.

This book articulates often latent and under-examined, but nonetheless significant, beliefs about sexual difference in the theology about marriage which has been dominant in the Christian west. Chapter one explains that patristic theologies of marriage rested on mostly implicit beliefs about sexual difference, and sometimes these beliefs were incompatible with one another. However, chapter two argues that Augustine developed a coherent theological anthropology of sexual difference, according it a shifting significance from creation to eschaton. Chapters three through five show that for the major subsequent pre-modern theologians, the significance of sexual difference was rarely the subject of direct discussion. Nevertheless, Augustine's most important successors both presupposed and occasionally developed his beliefs about sexual difference. Bernard of Clairvaux shows how sexual difference in marriage is privileged material for allegories of God's love; Aquinas emphasised the procreative significance of sexual difference; and the Reformers argued that because God made the sexes, marriage should be central to Christian life. Chapters six and seven study Barth and John Paul II, who each discuss sexual difference with a hitherto unknown degree of sustained systematic attention. Their anthropology and biblical exegesis is rooted in Christology, which leads them to conclude that humanity is created for fellowship, and that sexual difference is necessary for this fellowship. Chapter eight explains why certain contemporary and revisionist theologies of marriage, notably ones which seek a rationale for gay and lesbian marriages, are problematic. These contemporary theologies have not yet reckoned with theologically important and defensible claims about the meaning of sexual difference. The conclusion suggests that renewed clarity and selfconsciousness about the theological significance of sexual difference should strengthen any Christian ethic of sexuality and marriage, enabling the church to be more articulate in its dialogue with contemporary culture and science, and more coherent in its own internal practices.

â??The question of the significance of sexual difference is at the heart of many divisions within contemporary society. It is producing hurtful tensions within all of the major Christian Churchesâ?¦.Robertsâ?? contribution to the debate is forceful and scholarly, while always charitable. This powerfully argued case for the abiding importance of our sexual identity shows how rich can be the contribution of the Christian tradition to our societyâ??s present search to understand the meaning of our lives. Even those who do not accept all of the authorâ??s conclusions should be grateful for this beautifully written and profound book. It will help us all in our journey towards understanding who we are in Christ.â?? - Timothy Radcliffe, OP, former Master General of the Dominican Order

â??Sexual ethics and gay marriage -- Creation and Covenant is essential reading for anyone who wants to think about these issues in light of the Western Christian tradition. Roberts helps us see and resist the Gnostic temptation that so dominates the moral imagination of modern cultureâ?¦.A very fine book - just the sort of patient survey of the classical tradition we need, and absolutely on target as far as the core theological issue is concerned. It's the sort of book that will be very helpful for teaching a seminar on sexual ethics." - R. R. Reno, Creighton University, and editor of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible.

â??In Creation and Covenant, Christopher Roberts has done both church and society a great service. â?¦We cannot go forward with any of these issues in the future without Roberts' excellent guide to the past.â?? - Don Browning, University of Chicago and author of Marriage and Modernization Creation and Covenant

You would like a publisher's discount? How about $78, or £39? Get in touch and I'll pass you right along

Dear brothers and sisters, in the catechesis on the prominent figures of the early Church, today we come to the eminent personality of St Irenaeus of Lyons.

...Irenaeus was concerned to describe the genuine concept of the Apostolic Tradition which we can sum up here in three points.

a) Apostolic Tradition is "public", not private or secret. Irenaeus did not doubt that the content of the faith transmitted by the Church is that received from the Apostles and from Jesus, the Son of God. There is no other teaching than this. Therefore, for anyone who wishes to know true doctrine, it suffices to know "the Tradition passed down by the Apostles and the faith proclaimed to men": a tradition and faith that "have come down to us through the succession of Bishops" (Adversus Haereses, 3, 3, 3-4). Hence, the succession of Bishops, the personal principle, and Apostolic Tradition, the doctrinal principle, coincide.

b) Apostolic Tradition is "one". Indeed, whereas Gnosticism was divided into multiple sects, Church Tradition is one in its fundamental content, which - as we have seen - Irenaeus calls precisely regula fidei or veritatis: and thus, because it is one, it creates unity through the peoples, through the different cultures, through the different peoples; it is a common content like the truth, despite the diversity of languages and cultures. A very precious saying of St Irenaeus is found in his book Adversus Haereses: "The Church, though dispersed throughout the world... having received [this faith from the Apostles]... as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them and hands them down with perfect harmony as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world" (1, 10, 1-2). Already at that time - we are in the year 200 - it was possible to perceive the Church's universality, her catholicity and the unifying power of the truth that unites these very different realities, from Germany, to Spain, to Italy, to Egypt, to Libya, in the common truth revealed to us by Christ.

c) Lastly, the Apostolic Tradition, as he says in the Greek language in which he wrote his book, is "pneumatic", in other words, spiritual, guided by the Holy Spirit: in Greek, the word for "spirit" is "pneuma". Indeed, it is not a question of a transmission entrusted to the ability of more or less learned people, but to God's Spirit who guarantees fidelity to the transmission of the faith. This is the "life" of the Church, what makes the Church ever young and fresh, fruitful with multiple charisms. For Irenaeus, Church and Spirit were inseparable: "This faith", we read again in the third book of Adversus Haereses, "which, having been received from the Church, we do preserve, and which always, by the Spirit of God, renewing its youth as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel, causes the vessel itself containing it to renew its youth also.... For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and every kind of grace" (3, 24, 1).

As can be seen, Irenaeus did not stop at defining the concept of Tradition. His tradition, uninterrupted Tradition, is not traditionalism, because this Tradition is always enlivened from within by the Holy Spirit, who makes it live anew, causes it to be interpreted and understood in the vitality of the Church. Adhering to her teaching, the Church should transmit the faith in such a way that it must be what it appears, that is, "public", "one", "pneumatic", "spiritual".

Starting with each one of these characteristics, a fruitful discernment can be made of the authentic transmission of the faith in the today of the Church. More generally, in Irenaeus' teaching, the dignity of man, body and soul, is firmly anchored in divine creation, in the image of Christ and in the Spirit's permanent work of sanctification. This doctrine is like a "high road" in order to discern together with all people of good will the object and boundaries of the dialogue of values, and to give an ever new impetus to the Church's missionary action, to the force of the truth which is the source of all true values in the world.

Pope Benedict XVI on Irenaeus (General Audience Wednesday 28th March 2007)

Christianity teaches that each person is created by God with a distinct calling and capacity. For the Christian believer, human dignity – and therefore any notion of human rights – depends upon the recognition that every person is related to God before they are related to anything or anyone else; that God has defined who they are and who they can be by his own eternal purpose, which cannot be altered by any force or circumstance in this world. People may refuse their calling or remain stubbornly unaware of it; but God continues to call them and to offer them what they need to fulfil their calling. And the degree to which that calling is answered or refused has consequences for eternity.

This means that whenever I face another human being, I face a mystery. There is a level of their life, their existence, where I cannot go and which I cannot control, because it exists in relation to God alone – a secret word he speaks to each one, whether they hear or refuse to hear, in the phrase from the prophecy of Ezekiel. The reverence I owe to every human person is connected with the reverence I owe to God’s creative Word which brings them into being and keeps them in being. I stand before holy ground when I encounter another person – not because they are born with a set of legal rights which they can demand and enforce, but because there is a dimension of their life I shall never fully see, the dimension where they come forth from the purpose of God into the world, with a unique set of capacities and possibilities. The Christian will have the same commitment to human rights and human dignity; but they will have it because of this underlying reverence, not because of some legal entitlement.

. . . .

The churches do not campaign for political control (which would undermine their appeal to the value of personal freedom) but for public visibility – for the capacity to argue for and defend their vision in the public sphere, to try and persuade both government and individuals of the possibility of a more morally serious way of ordering public life.

Archbishop Rowan Williams Christianity Public Religion and the Common Good St Andrew’s Cathedral, Singapore 12th May 2007.

In a striking example of self-analysis, about 500 delegates, including both practising and nominal Muslims, attended an inaugural Secular Islam Summit this month in St Petersburg, Florida.

The declaration was signed by such luminaries as Ibn Warraq, a widely published author, whoA group of prominent secular Muslims has shown the kind of unconditional willingness to engage in self-criticism which is so well-established in the non-Muslim West. The declaration points the finger at some of the pillars of institutional Islam, calling on governments to â??reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their formsâ??, and to â??oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostasy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsâ??.

Rather than trumpeting the message of Muslim conservatives, who call for obedience to authority structures, this new group demands â??the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxyâ??. In perhaps the most controversial statement of all, the group calls for â??a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islamâ??. This suggests that the scriptural foundations of Islam, the Qurâ??an and Hadith, should be subject to scrutiny.

Of course, there must be some doubt about the extent to which the secular Muslims will have any impact in Muslim-majority countries. Yet theirs is a voice that is long overdue. Under the right circumstances, they might trigger a process of profound self-examination among some Muslims.

Peter G. Riddell A breath of Islamic fresh air - Secular Muslims are creating signs of hope: donâ??t knock them

The St Petersburg Declaration - There is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine

Europe’s current problems are entirely self-inflicted. This does not mean, however, that the result will be less catastrophic. By subverting the roots of its own Judeo-Christian culture – a process that started with the French Enlightenment (as opposed to the Scottish Enlightenment, which was not anti-religious) – a religious and cultural vacuum was created at the heart of European civilization. The collapse of faith in its own values has, not surprisingly, led to a demographic collapse because a civilization that no longer believes in its own future also rejects procreation. Today, a new religion and culture is supplanting the old one. There is little one can do about it, but hope for a miracle.

America’s immigration problems pale in comparison with what confronts Europe. America’s major ethnic minorities – Blacks as well as Hispanics – are Christian, while the meanstream culture is also rooted in Christianity. In Europe a secularized post-Christian culture is facing a Muslim one. The secularized culture is hedonist and values only its present life, because it does not believe in an afterlife. This is why it will surrender when threatened with death because life is the only thing it has to lose. This is why it will accept submission without fighting for its freedom. Nobody fights for the flag of hedonism, not even the hedonists themselves.

I suppose one could feel sad about all this, but sadness is not what I feel. One can feel compassion for those who die in accidents, fall in battle or get murdered (like the countless unborn children that perish every day) but can one pity those who have killed their own future for the pleasures of the present? Europe’s predicament, I repeat, is entirely self-inflicted. Not Islam is to blame. Secularism is.

Paul Belien The Closing of Civilization in Europe

One of the points made was that many religious houses, whilst centred deeply on prayer and the eucharist, have allowed the study of scripture to fall into neglect. When it does take place, it is predominantly the individual religious who ‘studies scripture’, meditating alone with his or her Bible. Aside from recitation of the psalms and the lections in worship, there is little if any communal engagement with scripture – and its use in worship is in any case a thing distinct from study.

It is not only the ‘catholic’ tradition that faces worries about the quality of scripture study in the life of the Church today. Many of those gathering in the Deep Church group in London come from charismatic and/or evangelical backgrounds, and feel that their traditions while professing to be ‘biblically based’ often engage with scripture in a relatively superficial way. This can be because a strong doctrinal paradigm acts to preempt a sustained attentiveness to the possibilities and nuances of a text – the reader already ‘knows’ what she is going to find; she thus hears what she expects to hear. It can also be because scriptural texts are deployed in relative dissociation from each other (in bite-sized chunks, used for very specific pastoral or teaching purposes, and thereby prematurely instrumentalized), or else through very controlled forms of association with specific other passages or verses (again, it is often doctrinal concerns that dictate which associations are considered legitimate).

‘Bible Studies’ in the contemporary church often manifest precisely an evasion of scripture, rather than a willingness to take it seriously. This is true at every level of the Church’s life: I saw exactly the same symptoms at work in the Bible Study groups of senior bishops at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 as in many student or parish groups.

Broadly, two tendencies tend to emerge – neither of them wholly satisfactory. The first is the reduction of scripture to propositional statements, which are then deployed as authoritative descriptions (of the world, human beings, the facts of sin and redemption, or whatever), or else as irresistible ethical instructions or injunctions. As a mode of reasoning which works from the establishment of clear first principles and then works out from them, this approach to scripture might be described as rather like ‘deductive’ reasoning.

The other dominant tendency – even more prevalent in my experience – is one which uses the reading of scripture as an occasion to tell stories about oneself and one’s own religious experience. Scripture is thus made a vehicle or opportunity for self-expression, rather than being read as something with its own internal ‘logic’ and power to resist and reconfigure the reader’s expectations and understanding. As a mode of reasoning which seeks to derive judgements from experience, this might be likened to an ‘inductive’ approach to scripture.

Ben Quash Deep calls to Deep

Ben is moving from Peterhouse Cambridge, where he was Dean, to become Professor of Theology and the Arts at King's College London

I think weâ??ve reached a point where certain things need to be clarified about the rights, liberties and dignities of independent bodies with the State (the Archbishop of Canterbury to Robert Pigott of the BBC on Jan 24th 2007).

In what follows I want to explore why I think that the Archbishop has offered that careful and profoundly serious observation and to ask, in the light of recent events and with the publication imminent of the long-awaited Sexual Orientation Regulations for the UK Mainland, whether there are limits to the â??reachâ?? of the State?

The Government - basing itself in a range of convictions and ideas quite widely but by no means universally held, and often loosely linked to the Human Rights Act - is behaving increasingly as if Government and Parliament were the sole arbiter of what is right and good and wholesome, whether for individuals or for society.

There is appearing a jealous, if somewhat edgy, and a rather poorly informed intolerance of alternative moral and ethical authorities, and especially of those based in the life and the traditions of communities of Faith.

And unless, to use the Archbishops judicious language, â??certain things......are clarifiedâ?? and certain people think about all this with rather more care, there seems to be a real danger that this country will come to lose the contributions made to every aspect and level of its life by its range of independent voluntary bodies, many but by no means all of which have their roots and motivation in the Churches or in other communities of Faith.

At stake is the status of marriage in British society. Government and Parliament are imposing upon the country â?? and especially upon the Churches â?? alternative concepts of the family and of parenting as the equivalents of marriage.

Where does this leave this countryâ??s hard-won traditions of religious freedom and of the freedom of the individual?

The Government is rightly concerned that the Human Rights Act should be valued and welcomed, not misused as whipping-boy by means of all sorts of fantastic charges against it. The Government could have used the HR Act, as the Polish Government used it, to exempt Roman Catholic and other adoption agencies from the SORs. But instead it has chosen to privilege secular over religious ideologies, perhaps because it thinks it opportune to cut the Churches down to size after the autumnâ??s arguments over (so-called) â??Faith Schoolsâ??.

And Government is colluding with those who would corral the Churches and the Faiths into the private sphere, so as to leave â??the street, public life and political decision-making open to the influence only of secular ideologies.

No wonder the RC Archbishop of Southwark has called the recent decisions about Faith-based adoption agencies â??a triumph of dogmatism over freedom of conscienceâ??.

Nor are these the first examples. Registrars are required, at the risk of their jobs, to officiate at marriages of transgendered people and at registrations of Civil Partnerships, even if they have conscientious hesitations about doing so. Verified stories abound of Faith-based, and especially Church-based, organisations that offer social care, often to some of the most disadvantaged and demanding individuals and groups, which have had their public funding threatened as officialdom is anxious about a crucifix on the wall or Grace before meals.

Is this ignorance? Or prejudice? Or is it intolerance, even fear of an influence and a source of authority beyond and implicitly challenging the authority of the State? Must diversity of provision have been designed and authorised by Whitehall and Town Hall, rather than developed over centuries in a society that has had to struggle hard and long to win its freedom from Government.

How close are we getting to the point when a religiously-formed conscience will be seen as an obstacle to, rather than an inspiration for, service in Parliament, and still more in high political office? What an irony, as we celebrate William Wilberforce and all the others, of many churches and more than one Faith, through whose efforts in Parliament the Slave Trade was abolished.

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt, Bishop of Winchester, When the State decides what the Church believes

Communicating Bible to Babel - Exploring and shaping the debate on Christian language and communication in the public square

Liverpool Hope University Friday 28 – Saturday 29 September 2007

For a long time religious discourse has had limited access and impact in politics. In the UK, it is generally acknowledged that Christian political discourse has not been effective in speaking truth with grace in our contemporary mediascape. However, given the growing number of challenges to secularism, it is clear that God is very much back on the political agenda. In this new context, it is important to explore the themes and issues that define language and communication of a Christian worldview in the public square.

Following Bible Society Discourse Process events at political party conferences and a Parliamentary symposium, the colloquium will provide for a more detailed theological and philosophical exploration. With an interdisciplinary approach, it will offer a forum to facilitate discussion about the development of Christian political discourse.

Bishop of Liverpool, Rt Revd James Jones Dr Jolyon Mitchell, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh Nick Spencer, Theos – the public theology think tank Professor John Sullivan, Centre for Christian Education

Building on themes and issues raised in the earlier events, the colloquium facilitates a more sophisticated theological and philosophical exploration of the language and communication of Christians in the public square. On the basis of what we understand and experience about the challenges and opportunities for ‘Doing God’ in contemporary political discourse, this event develops thinking about the necessary connections between worldview and discourse in public theology.

I have found three events organised by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster in London

1. First Sunday Plus Young Adult Ministries launches THEOLOGY-on-TAP, a speaker series for young adults 18-39 straight talk, hard facts and real answers about our Catholic faith and how to live it in real, everyday life.

2. Society and its problems: The Catholic perspective A series of four Monday evening talks and questions at St Mary Moorfields entitled: ‘Society and its problems: The Catholic perspective’ by Edward Hadas.

1. Wealth and work: Economic issues in an industrial age (Monday 4th June at 6.30pm)

2. The ruling class: The right way for government (Monday 11th June at 6.30pm)

3. War and peace: Idealism, realism and hope (Monday 18th June at 6.30pm)

4. Modern society: Light and shadows (Monday 25th June at 6.30pm)

Edward Hadas is Associate Editor at Breakingviews.com. His book, Human Goods, Economic Evils; A Moral Look at the Dismal Science will be published by ISI Books in August. He has also written a coursebook on political and social philosophy for the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham.

3. Marriage: the rock on which the family is built; the rock on which society is built. An evening with Dr. William E. May Vaughan House, Francis St (behind Westminster Cathedral) Monday 21st May, 6pm - 8pm.

Dr. May will share his reflections for discussion on male/female complementary,and the importance of the role of the family as the domestic Church in the work of evangelisation.

Dr May is the Author of 'Marriage: the rock on which the family is built' (1995) and the Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology, Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. Member of the International Theological Commission from 1986 through 1996.

I'll go to that last one - even I have heard of William E May .

The â??common goodâ?? is more than a political slogan. Itâ??s more than what most people think they want right now. Itâ??s not a matter of popular consensus or majority opinion. It canâ??t be reduced to economic justice or social equality or better laws or civil rights, although all these things are vitally important to a healthy society.

The common good is what best serves human happiness in the light of what is real and true. Thatâ??s the heart of the matter: What is real and true? If God exists, then the more man flees from God, the less true and real man becomes. If God exists, then a society that refuses to acknowledge or publicly talk about God is suffering from a peculiar kind of insanity.

What can the â??common goodâ?? mean in the context of Nietzscheâ??s superman or Marx or Freud or Darwin? These men became the architects of our age. But they were also just the latest expressions of a much deeper and more familiar temptation to human pride. We want to be gods, but weâ??re not. When we try to be, we diminish ourselves.

Thatâ??s our dilemma. Thatâ??s the punishment we create for ourselves. Thereâ??s a terrible humor in a man who claims that God is dead, then starts believing heâ??s Dionysius or Jesus Christ, and then ends up on a candy bar made by out-of-work philosophers for middle-class consumers who just want some â??chocolaty goodness.â??

Humility is the beginning of sanity. We canâ??t love anyone else until we can see past ourselves. And man canâ??t even be man without God. The humility to recognize who we are as creatures, who God is as our Father, what God asks from each of us, and the reality of Godâ??s love for other human persons as well as ourselvesâ??this is the necessary foundation that religion brings to every discussion of free will, justice, and truth, and to every conversation about â??the common good.â?? Sirach and the Psalms and the Gospel of Luke and the Letter of Jamesâ??these Scriptures move the human heart not because theyâ??re beautiful writings. Theyâ??re beautiful writings because they spring from what we know in our hearts to be true.

Bernanos once said that â??the world will be saved only by free men. We must make a world for free men.â?? He also said that prudenceâ??or rather, the kind of caution and fear that too often pose as prudenceâ??is the one piece of advice he never followed. â??When trouble is looking for you,â?? he said, â??itâ??s primarily a question of facing it, since it would be still more dangerous to turn your back on it. In that case, prudence is only the alibi of the cowardly.â??

We most truly serve the common good by having the courage to be disciples of Jesus Christ. God gave us a free will, but we need to use it. Discipleship has a cost. Jesus never said that we didnâ??t need a spine. The world doesnâ??t need affirmation. It needs conversion. It doesnâ??t need the approval of Christians. It needs their witness. And that work needs to begin with us. Bernanos said that the â??scandal of Creation [isnâ??t] suffering but freedom.â?? He said that â??moralists like to regard sanctity as a luxury; actually it is a necessity.â?? He also said that â??one may believe that this isnâ??t the era of the saints; that the era of the saints has passed. [But] it is always the era of the saints.â??

Charles J. Chaput Archbishop of Denver Religion and the Common Good at First Things - with some discussion of George Bernanos

Though we are fundamentally encouraged by the Windsor Report, and note that its recommendations reflect the major insights of our common ecumenical documents, there are two points also found in the ARCIC [Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission] texts which we hope can be more clearly articulated and directly addressed in the ongoing reception and implementation of the Windsor Report.

The first point concerns the textâ??s ecclesiological approach itself. While the Report stresses that Anglican provinces have a responsibility towards each other and towards the maintenance of communion, a communion rooted in the Scriptures, little attention is given to the importance of being in communion with the faith of the Church through the ages. In addressing the exercise of authority in the Church, â??The Gift of Authorityâ?? speaks not only of the necessity of a synchronic communion of churches but also of a diachronic consensus; in fundamental matters of faith and discipline, the decisions of a local or regional church must not only foster communion in the present context, but must also be in agreement with the Church of the past, and in a particular way, with the apostolic Church as witnessed in the Scriptures, the early councils and the patristic tradition. While the Windsor Report stresses the catholicity of the Church, we believe that in the discussion that will follow, it might be helpful for the Anglican Communion to place more stress on the Churchâ??s apostolicity. This aspect also has important ecumenical ramifications, since we share a common tradition of one and a half millennia. This common patrimony - what Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey called our â??ancient common traditionsâ?? - is worth being appealed to and preserved.

Walter Cardinal Kasper Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury - on the publication of the Windsor Report

The Deep Church ecclesiology seminars at Notre Dame’s London Centre will continue to explore the resources of the whole Christian tradition for contemporary church worship and life.

Friday 11 May 3-5pm David Hilborn – ‘Why should evangelicals be Anglican?’ David is Director of Studies and acting Principal of the North Thames Ministerial Training Course. Previously he was the Evangelical Alliance’s Theologian, convenor of the Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals, and editor of ‘Evangelicalism and the Orthodox Church’.

These seminars are open to anyone in Christian ministry or theological study in London. If you would like to come to any one of these please email, using the address in 'About Us'

The Book of the Series – There will be a book launch for Remembering our Future: Explorations in Deep Church, the papers from the last Deep Church series, edited by Luke Bretherton and Andrew Walker, on June 6th at Kings College London, Strand. Evening prayers in the King's Chapel at 6.00 are followed by a reception in the Council Room at 6.30.

Jesus, our Great High Priest, lovingly offered his own life on the cross as a holy sacrifice to the Father for our sins. As the spotless â??Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the worldâ?? (John 1:29), Jesus established the everlasting covenantâ??â??the new covenant in my bloodâ?? (Luke 22:20)â??with the Father. In the Eucharist, this one sacrifice of Christ is again made fully present.

By taking part in the liturgy of the Eucharist, we join ourselves to this one holy sacrifice of Christ. The celebration of the Eucharist culminates in the reception of Holy Communion. We are nourished in the Eucharistic banquet by the living bread, and we partake of the cup of our salvation. The Risen Lord Jesus comes to dwell personally within us, and so we share in his life and friendship. He gives himself completely and entirely to us, and we are called to give ourselves completely and entirely to him. We are also lifted up into his heavenly Kingdom, and, in union with him, we are embraced by the Father in the love of the Holy Spirit as his redeemed sons and daughters. Receiving Jesus in Holy Communion, therefore, fortifies us against sin, which damages our relationship with God; heals us of our weaknesses; and empowers us to live holy lives of sacrificial love for one another.

The reception of Holy Communion is an act of the Church as the Body of Christ. While we each personally receive Holy Communion, it is not a private devotion. Rather, the reception of Holy Communion is an integral part of our worship as a community of faith. Likewise, the term â??communionâ?? accentuates the fact that, in receiving Holy Communion, we are united to Jesus and thus to one another. As we become one body with Christ in receiving Holy Communion, so we are also united with one another. â??Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loafâ?? (1 Cor 10:17).

Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become â??one body,â?? completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbor are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself. Receiving Jesus in Holy Communion is then the foremost source and expression of our communion with the Blessed Trinity and with one another. Holy Communion is truly a foretaste of heavenâ??where together all of the Fatherâ??s children will become fully one with his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the love of the Spirit.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper: On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist

Speaking each Wednesday to the thirty to forty thousand faithful who flock to listen to him (twice as many as went to the audiences of his predecessor) Benedict XVI has been holding, since March, a new series of his weekly catecheses. He dedicated the previous series to the twelve Apostles and to the disciples of whom the New Testament speaks. The pope illustrated these one by one. Now he is tracing each time the profile of a â??Father of the Church,â?? one of the great personalities of the ancient Church.

He began on March 7 with Saint Clement, the third bishop of Rome after Saint Peter. And he continued on the following Wednesdays with Ignatius of Antioch, Justin, Irenaeus.

After the Easter break, he resumed on April 18 with Clement of Alexandria, and on the two following Wednesdays with Origen, whom he describes as a person â??so innovative as to give an irreversible new direction to the development of Christian thought.â??

In this way, Benedict XVI is explaining to the faithful not so much the â??whatâ?? of the Church, but the â??who,â?? beginning with those who guided it during the first centuries, building up the great Tradition from which the Church of today draws.

The pope is careful, in fact, to bring to light each time not only the originality but also the perennial relevance of the work of each Father of the Church.

For example, with Saint Clement, Benedict XVI emphasizes his theses on the primacy of the bishop of Rome, on the relationship between laity and hierarchy, on the distinction between the sovereignty of Caesar and that of God.

With Saint Ignatius of Antioch, the pope brings to light his intuition of the catholicity of the Church, its universality.

In Justin, he admires the synthesis between evangelical truth and Greek philosophy, and the primacy he accords to the truth against the â??customâ?? of the time.

With Saint Irenaeus, he exalts his defense of the apostolic tradition against the intellectualist deviations of the Gnostics.

With Clement of Alexandria, he emphasizes his further support for dialogue between the Christian faith and Greek philosophy.

With Origen, the pope praises his genius as an interpreter of the Sacred Scriptures â?? â??as I tried to do somewhat in my book â??Jesus of Nazarethâ??â?? â?? and his profound spirituality.

Here below are presented the first seven catecheses of the new series inaugurated by the pope on March 7, with as many profiles of Fathers of the Church.

Sandro Magister The Fathers of the Church in Installments

The bishop who is president of Iraqâ??s Council of Catholic Churchesâ?? Committee for inter religious dialogue , signed a declaration regarding the â??tragic situation of Baghdadis Christiansâ??, denouncing militant groups which under the threat of armed violence ask Christians to convert immediately to Islam or to consign their property and leave the country. The same thing happens in Mosul, but with a different â??choiceâ??: pay a monetary tribute to the Jihad if they want to avoid their death.

However in the current situation Christians are targeted as chief conspirators to be exploited or eliminated. They cannot openly profess their faith, the veil is imposed on the women and the crosses are taken down from their churches, threats of kidnappings and extortion weigh heavily over all of them. Msgr Sako lists the violence to which they are submitted on a daily basis: â??now a days Christians are suffering in certain areas and cities in Iraq from forced evacuation, rape, kidnap, blackmail, scarring and killing. This unfamiliar behaviour contradicts the Iraqi humanitarian and Islamic morals. Let everybody realize that emptying Iraq of Christians will be disastrous not only for the Christians but for all Iraqis!... Forcing Christians to leave their homes indicates deterioration in the concept of conviviality and furthermore it destroys the cultural, civil and religious mosaic of which Iraq is considered to be the very cradleâ??.

The appeal signed by Msgr. Sako urges all of the political, religious and cultural communities of Iraq to remain united, because â??there is no salvation without our unity. Let the outsider whoever is he, leave and stay away so that the danger of death and the risk of division disappear and vanish and thus permitting life to return to what it once was; a river which flowed in harmony, a river of brotherhood and close unityâ??.

Asia News

Jon D. Levenson is an exceptionally interesting biblical scholar - I hope you know his Sinai to Zion, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, The death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son and The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies

Now Levenson has produced another:

Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life

This provocative volume explores the origins of the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Jon D. Levenson argues that, contrary to a very widespread misconception, the ancient rabbis were keenly committed to the belief that at the end of time, God would restore the deserving dead to life. In fact, Levenson points out, the rabbis saw the Hebrew Bible itself as committed to that idea.

The author meticulously traces the belief in resurrection backward from its undoubted attestations in rabbinic literature and in the Book of Daniel, showing where the belief stands in continuity with earlier Israelite culture and where it departs from that culture. Focusing on the biblical roots of resurrection, Levenson challenges the notion that it was a foreign import into Judaism, and in the process he develops a neglected continuity between Judaism and Christianity. His book will shake the thinking of scholars and lay readers alike, revising the way we understand the history of Jewish ideas about life, death, and the destiny of the Jewish people.

I don't expect that you will buy all these books for yourself, but you could get your college library to order them, ask your professor about them, get them put on course reading lists. You have have the email of whoever orders theology books for the library, don't you? I would glad to hear about other things you think I ought to read - via my LibraryThing catalogue.

Of course The Eschatological Economy discusses Levenson's work.

The Aquinas Center for the Theological Renewal Spring Newsletter indicates that they are having a busy time at Ave Maria (FL).

There are a couple of strong book series. Out or forthcoming from Sapientia Press are:

Francis Martin’s Sacred Scripture: Disclosure of the Word

Benedict Ashley OP The Ashley Reader

Guy Mansini’s Promising and the Good

Avery Cardinal Dulles SJ Magisterium

Steven Long The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Object

William Brennan John Paul II’s Confrontation with the Language Powering the Culture of Death

John Paul II and St.Thomas Aquinas

and Aquinas the Augustinian (CUA)

David Dalin & Matthew Levering (eds) John Paul II and the Jewish People (Rowman & Littlefield)

Then there are conferences

Humanae Vitae: 40 Years Later We are pleased to announce our upcoming conference Humanae Vitae: 40 Years Later, February 1–2, 2008 at Ave Maria University, including the following distinguished speakers:

Janet Smith, Sacred Heart Paul Gondreau, Providence College Mark Johnson, Marquette University Joseph Koterski, SJ, Fordham University Fr.Antonio Lopez, John Paul II Institute Graham McAleer, Loyola College in Maryland Tracey Rowland, John Paul II Institute (Melbourne, Australia) Michael Sherwin, OP, University of Fribourg David L. Schindler, John Paul II Institute Michele Schumacher, University of Fribourg Mary Shivanandan, John Paul II Institute Michael Waldstein, International Theological Institute

So not a single UK Catholic theologian able to speak on this subject? But wait, further on in the same newsletter, there is this:

The upcoming issue of Nova et Vetera—5:2 (2007)—celebrates the work of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. Authors for the special issue include Francesca Murphy, Geoffrey Wainwright, Aidan Nichols OP...

Two are of these are international superstars, but more exciting is that one of these is British and works in a British university - Francesca Murphy of Aberdeen. Does this mean that the UK finally has one academic theologian who has noticed the documents that have been pouring out of the Vatican these last thirty years, faster now than ever, and is interested in teaching it? I hope British Catholic students are knocking her door down.

'Celebrates the work of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI?' About time. I have been dancing the streets, alone, for a while now.

What are the main problems with the Regulations? Doesn’t regulation 14 (the religious exemption) provide all the protection Christians need? There are a number of problems with the Regulations (many of which are set out in greater detail below). For example:

1. The Regulations automatically assume that homosexual civil partnerships are fully equivalent to heterosexual marriages and therefore it is assumed that any discrimination (in the provision of goods and services) between married couples and homosexual civil partners is illegal.

2. There is a crucial gap in the protection of vicars and ministers so that it will be illegal for them to teach their congregation that they should follow the Bible’s teaching on sexual morality even where this conflicts with the SORs. For example, it would be illegal for a vicar to cite the example of the Christian printing company and then say ‘it is better to follow the Bible’s teaching and risk being sued than to be complicit in sin by printing leaflets promoting gay pride’.

3. There is no protection for individuals to guarantee their freedom of conscience – the only exemption for religious belief (Regulation 14) applies to organisations rather than individuals. Therefore an individual Christian GP, for example, would have no freedom of conscience to refuse to give a reference recommending homosexual parents as suitable for adopting because the GP did not believe it would be right/in the best interests of a child to be raised without a father and a mother. This does not make sense in light of a doctor’s freedom to refuse to recommend/perform an abortion on the grounds of conscience under the Abortion Act.

4. There is no specific protection for faith schools which are bound by the law in the same way as all schools. Also, there is a substantial danger that it will be illegal under the SORs for faith schools to continue to teach that extra-marital sexual relationships are wrong.

5. There is no protection for commercial Christian organisations, however strong their Christian ethos (e.g. a Christian printing company will be acting illegally if they refuse to print fliers promoting gay sex).

6. There is no protection for many voluntary organisations which, although run by Christians who are motivated by their faith, are not strictly 'religious' in the language of the legislation (e.g. a Christian homeless shelter would not be able to hold the policy that ‘we will not provide services to someone if this were to promote homosexual practices’).

7. There is a substantial danger that where a church or other religious organisation receive funding from the local authority to provide goods or services (e.g. if a church receives state funding to run an overnight homeless shelter), it will lose all the protection under Regulation 14 and would not even be able to refuse membership of the church to openly practising homosexuals.

8. There is a danger that it will be unlawful for vicars to be able to continue to preach that same-sex relationships are sinful because preaching itself is not protected by the religion exemption and may contravene Regulation 9. It is true that Regulation 14 does offer a substantial degree of protection to churches and other religious organisations that are not ‘solely or mainly commercial’ and which do not provide goods, services etc on behalf of a public authority under a contract. So, for example, under the Regulations, in the vast majority of cases, a church will be free to refuse to let out a church hall to a group wishing to promote homosexual practices. However, as the list (above) shows, there are still many problems with the Regulations.

Lawyers Christian Fellowship Sexual Orientation Regulations 2007 Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)

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Lawyers Christian Fellowship

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Christian Concern for our Nation

Been meaning to write to your MP? They Work for You is the quick way to find them and tells you how they have been voting.

Vigen Guroian The Fragrance of God Reflections on Finding God through the Beauty and Glory of the Natural World 10 May 2007 7.30pm Dr. Vigen Guroian is Professor of Theology at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland and a Senior Fellow of the Center on Law and Religion at Emory University. In the past he served as the Academic Director of St. Nersess Armenian Seminary. With many articles on theology, ethics, politics, and literature, he is the author of nine books including Ethics after Christendom, Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination, Rallying the Really Human Things: The Moral Imagination in Politics , Literature and Everyday Life, and Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening. An avid gardener himself, Dr. Guroian has recently spoken on the US public radio programme "Speaking of Faith" giving a talk entitled "Restoring the Senses: Life, Gardening and an Orthodox Easter." Dr. Guroian will be present to discuss his book, read from it, and autograph copies.

The book launch is hosted by the Armenian Institute with Darton Longman and Todd Armenian House, 25 Cheniston Gardens, London W8

Rusty Reno on why he left the Episcopalian Church for the Roman Catholic Church

Newman is excruciatingly detailed in his account of his own thinking, but for my purposes, I can simply report his conclusion: he came to think that the basic rationale for Anglicanism lacked validity. Even more strongly, he came to think that Anglicanism was a midwife for a liberalism that led to atheism. I still do not think Newman correct in the way he sets up Anglicanism, liberalism, and atheism as falling dominos, but I have come to think that the Episcopal Church is disastrously disordered and disarrayed. Here my own reasons and analysis are of no more moment than Newmanâ??s. What matters is the way one responds to the judgment that Anglicanism is in ruins.

As he looks back in his Apologia, Newman reports that the realization that his prior confidence in Anglicanism was mistaken did not produce an immediate conviction that he must leave. He developed a figural interpretation of his circumstances that justified staying put. â??I am content,â?? he wrote to a friend at the time, â??to be with Moses in the desert, or with Elijah excommunicated from the Temple.â?? When I wrote In the Ruins of the Church, I also adopted a figural strategy to make sense of my situation. I clearly saw that the apostolic inheritance bequeathed to the Episcopal Churchâ??a liturgy more medieval than reformed, a veneration of the ancient creeds, a love of the Church Fathers, a scriptural piety that did not confuse being learned with being criticalâ??was being dismantled by a revisionist ideology that knew no limits. But I did not see myself as a prophet who hectored at a distance. I appealed to the scriptural figure of Nehemiahâ??s return to the ruins of Jerusalem. The gates of the Temple had been thrown down, but rather than leave in despair, we should follow Nehemiahâ??s pattern and live in the ruins of the Church with redoubled loyalty.

Under the influence of Ephraim Radner, I placed Nehemiahâ??s return to a destroyed Jerusalem in a larger, more comprehensive figural interpretation of our situation as late-modern Christians. In his ambitious study of the history of Western Christian theology since the Reformation, The End of the Church, Radner places the destiny of the Church within the passion of Christ. Like his body crucified and broken, the divided churches in the West are undergoing a paschal suffering. Thus, I thought of staying put as a form of spiritual discipline. If I followed the path of Nehemiah and drew near to the ruins of the Church, then I would be closer still to my Lord.

Figural interpretations are not intellectual propositions that can simply be judged true or false. They are attempts to make sense out of disparate data according to patterns within Scripture, and they either compel us as deep, structuring insights, or they do not. I imagined that Radnerâ??s larger figural interpretation of our vocations as modern Christians (and my Nehemiahan figure) had the power to justify and structure an orthodox loyalty to a ruined church. I would not have written In the Ruins of the Church had I not believed that the paschal figure of Christ really is present in the increasingly debilitated and diminished forms of apostolic Christianity that one finds in the Episcopal Church, just as Newman would not have remained an Anglican if he had not believed his own figural interpretation of his situation. The problem was not that I had failed to notice that Anglicanism was a mess. Rereading Newman, I discovered that the problem was with myself and with the way in which I had come to hold my figural interpretation. . . . .

Modern Christianity is modern precisely in its great desire to compensate for what it imagines to be the superannuation, impotence, and failures of apostolic Christianity with a new and improved idea, theory, or theology. The disaster is not the improving impulse. I certainly wish that all Christians would expect more from their teachers and leaders. The problem is the source of the desired improvement. For Newman, â??theoryâ?? is a swear word because it connotes the ephemera of mental life, ephemera easily manipulated according to fantasy and convenience. Yet in my increasing disgruntlement, there I was, more loyal to my theory of staying put than to the actual place that demanded my loyalty. It was an artifact of my mind that compelled me to stay put. Unable to love the ruins of the Episcopal Church, I was forced to love my idea of loving the ruins. With this idea I tried to improve myself, after the fashion of a modern theologian.

. . .

In the end, as an Episcopalian I needed a theory to stay put, and I came to realize that a theory is a thin thread easily broken. The Catholic Church needs no theories. She is the mother of theologies; she does not need to be propped up by theologies. As Newman put it in one of his Anglican essays, â??the Church of Rome preoccupies the ground.â?? She is a given, a primary substance within the economy of denominationalism. One could rightly say that I became a Catholic by default, and that possibility is the simple gift I received from the Catholic Church. Mater ecclesia, she needed neither reasons, nor theories, nor ideas from me.

R.R. Reno Out of the Ruins

Another famous Englishman tackled the atonement recently. On Palm Sunday Sam Wells preached How does Jesus save us?

First indulge a little wistfulness.

Wells went off to the States a couple of years ago. Had he stayed he would be in the Anglican front row - which presently consists of Rowan Williams, Oliver O'Donovan, Tom Wright and John Webster (subs. Michael Banner). Of course the chapel of Duke is an important place to have a good theologian. We English import all our spirituality from the States, in our inverse snobbery assuming that there are no substantial Christian teachers here in the UK. So strangely we are more likely to hear Wells from Duke than from where he was, in dismal Cambridge.

How does Jesus save us? (PDF) is a great sermon, though you can feel the temptations on this wordsmith. I'll make a couple of points in the hope that you'll read it all. First Wells reviews a clutch of models of the atonement.

But I want to suggest today that there’s a real danger with all five [atonement] theories. And that is that they’re theories. That’s to say, they are disembodied constructs that pay little or no attention to the context and contours of Jesus’ life.

Why turn theory and story into opposites? What is a theory if not a story compressed? Let's come back to ‘disembodied constructs’.

The single word that epitomizes the context and contours of Jesus’ life is this: Israel.

Which is to say that God is faithful to his promises to his people, promises given to us in the Scriptures. In slogan form: the gentiles will inherit Israel and Israel will inherit the gentiles, in Christ.

This is, I believe, how Jesus saves us. Not through a decontextualized theory that posits a faraway God doing curious deals in the light of arbitrary codes of debt, justice or honor

Arbitrary codes? Ouch. Nothing like belittling the whole dogmatic tradition of the Church

but through the Jews, God’s everlasting love for them, and his love through them for all the nations and the whole creation.

‘Love’ (and communion) and ‘church’ or people’ are the components of a properly theological account of how Jesus has saved us.

The Church is that body of people who declare they want to be in continuity with this story

Story? We just need to make clear how a ‘story’ may be be true and become our truth. Perhaps sanctification will get a mention in a minute. There should be a doctrine of creation, or ontology, here somewhere. We'll need just a little eschatological ontology.

The circumstantial detail is the gospel

And a theological ontology would secure, not threaten, particularity.

When you hear all these theories together

They are not theories but doctrines, the teaching of the church. There is no dogma (settled decisions of the Church taken by its councils) of the atonement. It is for the Church in each generation to relate these doctrines of the atonement, and do so by linking them to the doctrines of God, man, creation and eschatology. Then they'll make very good sense and not be so easy to belittle.

Wells rightly says that we need more than ‘disembodied constructs’.

What we need is embodied givens, embodied gifts. ‘Embodied’ refers to the ecclesiology. The gifts of God to us are embodied as this group of people, the Church, made distinct by God for the world, in particular congregations in particular places, and as the sets of instincts (‘virtues’) that they share with us.

And we need, not ‘constructs’, but doctrines, and with them all the good practices by which we can receive and learn the doctrines of the church, taught us by teachers who, like this one, understand their responsibility. Through this teaching we grow up into the whole truth - and life - of Christ. We receive Christ in those packages Christ gives to the whole Church, packages we call doctrine and sacrament (or gifts of the Spirit). That’s your pneumatology and eschatological ontology.

Anyway, Sam Wells is not too young to be a bishop. Tempt him back, somebody. Meanwhile another Anglican theologian has recently given us an account of the Christology, pneumatology, anthropology, ontology and eschatology that are required to say how Jesus saves us. Readers of this blog will not need much of a hint.

The spiritual theologian Maximus the Confessor (580-662), writing long before the introduction of Aristotle to the medieval West, likewise insisted that soul and body together constitute the human being. Taking as his basis the Incarnation of the divine Logos, he argued that the genesis of soul and body is strictly simultaneous. â??The soul arises at conception simultaneously with the body to form one complete human being. . . . There is no temporal hiatus (diastema) of any kind within the nature itself or among the reciprocal parts of which it is constituted.â?? This, by the way, is why it may be said that the Annunciation, not Christmas, is the chief feast of the Incarnation. If the individual human being is an integrated, composite whole, then this is how he must be from the very moment of his existence. In this conviction Maximus was more certain than the Scholastic philosophers, who held the view that an embryo becomes human only after it has attained â??a sufficiently advanced state of bodily development.â??

For Thomas, any purely philosophical judgment on whether the soul is created at the moment of conception had to conform to what could be ascertained by empirical means. Given the limits of medieval physiology, Thomas was constrained to accept the Aristotelian theory of the soulâ??s progressive generation and avoid any absolute, categorical affirmation that the soul is created at precisely the same moment as physical conception. Such reluctance was entirely in keeping with his theory concerning the limits of rationally attainable knowledge. Of course, he knew that there exists a higher form of knowledge, namely, divine revelation, by which one can affirm, specifically on the basis of the miraculous conception of the incarnate Word, that at least Christâ??s body and soul coexisted from the moment of their coming into being.

Even so, medieval philosophy left it to Maximus to draw far-reaching conclusions about the nature of every single human being on the basis of Christâ??s human constitution. But it would be wrong to conclude that his thoughts on the matter were derived exclusively from religious belief. For he asserts that even at death, when the soul and body are temporarily separated, the fundamental principle of generation (logos geneseos), by which from their inception soul and body are simultaneously constituted as parts of a whole in a permanent and natural relation (pros ti), remains intact. Here Maximus is clearly drawing on philosophical categories derived from Aristotle, most likely via the sixth century Neoplatonic commentators. On this basis, when speaking of a personâ??s body or soul in the separated state after death, he argues that neither may be referred to simply as soul or body but always as the soul or the body of this or that person: someoneâ??s body, someoneâ??s soul, each an essential part of an irreducible, personal whole. In sum, â??the relation between them is immutable.â??

Adam Cooper Redeeming Flesh (First Things subscription required)

Adam Cooper The Body in Saint Maximus: Holy Flesh Wholly Deified