Saving Dietrich

It's a terrible shame. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's story is such a good one - brave pastor defies Naziism and ends up a martryr. But oh dear, he wrote some hard to understand things that make my bonce ache. Of course, he must have been a nice Evangelical deep down; certainly not a nasty liberal. If he was alive today he'd certainly be one of us, tooting the trumpet for Intelligent Design and sticking it to those depraved Episcopalians and heretical ELCA Lutherans. I know, what we need is a book that reclaims Dietrich for us good guys! Bonhoeffer rebaptised! Then we could get a righteous company like Thomas Nelson to publish it.

Well, as luck has it, such a book exists. Bob Cornwall blogs about it over at Ponderings. When all else fails, it's a time honoured strategy to cherry-pick the facts and ignore the stuff that doesn't fit. It's the godly thing to do. It pains me to say that Bob doesn't seem to realise this.

The problem of course is that most true Christians - people with lots of Thomas Nelson titles on their otherwise sparsely covered bookshelves - have never heard of Bonhoeffer, after all he was hardly in the same league as Billy Graham or Charles Stanley. And those that have wouldn't bother to read his work, and probably shouldn't because it needs someone like Brother Metaxas to explain it all safely. After all, we don't want anyone confusing what was with what should have been, now do we?

Bless you Eric Metaxas. Now, where did I put that Derek Prince tape...

God and Science

Colin Blakemore, a professor of neuroscience and a non-believer, hosts God and the Scientists, the penultimate episode of Christianity: A History. From Oxford to Dayton, Tennessee; from the Kentucky Creation Museum to the Large Hadron Collider, this is quite a romp. What seems like a rather sedate science-history doco at the outset - Copernicus and Galileo - morphs slowly into an impressive "curates egg."

Richard Dawkins puts in a very brief appearance, but I was more interested in the contributions by Ron Numbers, the former Seventh-day Adventist who has exposed the dubious history of creationism, and David Paterson, an Anglican priest who expounds the view taken by the "Sea of Faith" movement, which draws on the work of philosopher and renegade theologian Don Cupitt. Paterson makes the statement - profound or incomprehensible depending on your point of view - that there is no real difference between theism and atheism except the terminology.

Blakemore is clearly unimpressed by the persistence of religion, despite the best efforts of an affable Vatican astronomer, and given his later interview with Jason Lisle, a resident scientist at the Creation Museum, it's hard not to have some sympathy with his frustrations. Like many with similar views, reason stands firmly at Blakemore's back, but alas, there is not a lot of poetry evident in his soul. At the end of the day, religious belief is all about poetry and metaphor; how else could it be? Which is probably why wooden-headed fundamentalism of whatever persuasion is such a "fundamentally" stupid idea.

An atheist producing an episode in a series on the history of Christianity? Somehow I can't imagine one of the big American networks taking that kind of risk. Too bad.

Dark Continents

Kwame Kwei-Armah fronts the sixth programme in the series Christianity: A History. The theme: Christianity, colonialism, and the emergence of a new Christendom with its centre outside Europe and North America.

Five hundred years ago there were few Christians outside Europe and the Middle East. Then the Spanish and Portuguese embarked on colonial adventures in the Americas with the overt blessing of Rome. Mass conversions were attempted at the barrel of a gun. The indigenous culture fought back in the only way it could, by melding ancient traditions with the new Catholic faith. This is where the programme begins, and we find a modern Catholic priest who doubles as a Mayan shaman with no apparent qualms of conscience. Truth to tell, Christianity - and Judaism before it - have always been deeply syncretistic (just think of the impact of Zoroastrianism with its dualism and resurrections), so it seems a little hypocritical to throw one's hands up in holy horror because it happened once again in the New World.

The focus next shifts to Africa, and Ghana in particular, with a walk through Cape Coast Castle, the former centre of the British slave trade with dungeons below and an "Uncle Tom" Anglican chapel above. I recollect being told once that the British were thoroughly decent colonisers - much nicer than the wicked, cruel French, Germans and others. Theirs was "the gentle yoke of Ephraim." Don't believe a word of it!

A change of location to Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, established long before Constantine's rape of the Western church. Here is a very different expression of Christianity, sharing unique links to Judaism and the Jerusalem Temple cult. Perhaps it's a measure of our lazy indifference that we know so little - and care even less - about this ancient tradition of which we are (and I certainly include myself in this) so woefully and pitifully ignorant.

While the Ethiopian church preserves a history and dignity that deserves the attention and respect of Christians in other traditions, the new and growing independent churches that have sprung up on the continent are something else again. The programme suggests that here is the future of Christendom, in the intellectual desert of Pentecostalism, complete with exorcisms, biblical literalism and faith healing. Unlike the Ethiopian church, the new churches are invariably the schismatic offspring of Western missions. What can't be doubted is that they are both fervent and growing. It is probably true, as the film suggests, that Africa today is much closer culturally to the world of first century Palestine than the effete and bloodless post-Enlightenment churches of the West, but is that really a good thing, and do we realistically expect it to stay that way?

That ultimately is a question for African Christians to answer. Dark Continents presents a sympathetic perspective that certainly deserves to be heard.

Reformation

Ann Widdecombe in Lewes

The rather shrill British Tory MP Ann Widdecombe hosts the Reformation episode of Christianity: A History. The logic of having a convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism producing this part of the series evades me, but by and large the approach is evenhanded. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, for example, is covered in reasonable depth.

Before the programme bogs down in the inevitable Anglocentric bias - Henry VIII and all that - there is a nice intro with some great views of Wittenberg, Worms and the Wartburg. Luther is described, accurately I think, as imagining himself a prophet of the End Days. Widdecombe is surprisingly generous toward the reformer, but really endears herself to me by failing to mention that painful and pesky impediment to the cause of the gospel, John Calvin, even once. Nice touch.

Two remarkable images stick from the screening. One is footage of that sad, myopic Baptist, Ian Paisley, loudly heckling the late pope John Paul II as he attempted to address the European parliament. The second is the bonfire night celebrations in the English town of Lewes where, to this very day, they burn the pope in effigy each year to commemorate the martyrdom of fifteen local Protestants during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary. According to the organiser, even Catholics join in the festivities, though Mrs Widdecombe was clearly not amused.

The programme assumed throughout that the Church of England was (is) Protestant, but that assertion is contestable it seems to me as long as a significant faction within that church asserts otherwise, claiming to be a via media between Rome and Wittenberg Geneva, therefore neither fish nor fowl. Mind you, I have my doubts about those darned Calvinistas as well... and what, pray tell, do you do with crazy Sydney Anglicans whose grand high poobah, Peter Jensen, claims that Anglicanism is Calvinist?

But putting all that aside, Ann Widdecombe's perspective as a new Catholic is interesting, and her personal stake in the issues moves this treatment beyond the usual dry academic approach. Well worth the investment of an hour.

Playing the devil card

It's not only Anglicans who are weird it seems.

Have a look at the cultic language in this little pastoral epistle, and have a guess at its provenance.

Leadership is being challenged - - - egad not leadership! Persecution is ahead! Satan is behind it all. Fast and pray!

The author, David Wells, is "pastor" at St Mark's Community Church in the little township (blink and you'll miss it) of Te Kowhai in the rural heartland of the North Waikato, not too far from the city of my birth. You'll understand then that I was mildly intrigued.

Even more so when I read Alistair McBride's name in this press report from the local paper. McBride, who 'oversees' St Marks, is a fine bloke who I've met before and even shared some committee work with in times long past (the focus was education, not religion.) He is also the minister at the church my sister attends, and describes himself as a "Presbyterian minister, baby-boomer, socialist leaning bridge playing whisky drinking fencer." Alistair is anything but a fundamentalist.

And the "crisis" that sparked off Mr Wells' purple prose? A couple who wanted their marriage ceremony performed by the previous minister who had served St Marks for a quarter century. Oh the carnal wickedness of such a desire! Satan was surely working overtime on that one.

Wells is not listed on the register of Presbyterian clergy, and the lack of a 'rev' in front of his name indicates he may be an overly enthusiastic amateur, or even worse, a Methodist. But, dear lord, even so is that any excuse?

Leadership is a trip-wire word here. Hear a preacher - any preacher - use it to boost their authority and sound the alarms, then run like the blazes, for nothing good will come of it.

Apparently even in a "quaint" little community church affiliated with mainline denominations.

(Heads up to "he who recently emerged from muddy waters" - who drew my attention to the press report.)

Crusaders

Rageh Omar, a Somali born British journalist and writer, hosts the fourth episode of Christianity: A History. Pope Urban II preached "salvation through slaughter" - commissioning every murderous thug in Europe to help "liberate" the Holy Land. The crusaders, following on from the Augustinian doctrine of "just war," embraced something more vile by far: holy war. It's not a pretty story, and certainly nothing like the romantic image of fluttering pennants and good king Richard. The pope's mercenaries indulged in atrocities that are hard to imagine, but are documented by the very men who perpetrated them, including the butchery, and cannibalism of small children. Again one has to ask about the disjoint between the teachings of Jesus and the writers of the New Testament letters compared to those who, after putting thousands of civilians to the sword in Jerusalem, trooped into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with the blood of their victims still staining their bodies and clothes, to give thanks to their god.

Sow the wind, as Hosea warns (8:7), and reap the whirlwind.

In the West the crusades are viewed as ancient history, best forgotten, but in the Muslim world they are remembered with the same fierce passion that still divides communities in the Balkans and Ireland. Old wounds were opened again last century when the bungling British proclaimed a mandate over Palestine and proceeded - as only the British can do - to completely screw things up for subsequent generations. When George W. Bush used the rhetoric of the crusade to launch the war on Iraq more fuel was added to the fire, an error of judgement that played into the hands of extremist groups like Al Qaeda.

And so past meets present. Both are sobering and disturbing. This is a film that gives anyone who calls themselves Christian pause for thought.

Dark Ages? What Dark Ages?

The third programme in the series Christianity: A History is, in my opinion, the weakest so far. Robert Beckford, a Briton of Jamaican heritage, is responsible for this episode which follows the fortunes of the church in Britain following the collapse of the Roman Empire. We are introduced to a gaggle of forgotten luminaries - "the hugely important" St. Alban, Ireland's St. Kevin, St. Cuthbert and others. The cameras take us to such exotic locations as Harrow, Sutton Hoo and...

Ggnn, mmpfff... oops, sorry, briefly nodded off there...

It was mildly interesting to recap on the spat between the Celtic church, with its stronghold in Ireland, and the Roman church, introduced by St. Augustine of Canterbury. The major contention, other than the authority of Rome, was the correct date of Easter.

If you were to believe Beckford, the eighth century church in England was multicultural and inclusive, embodying diversity and pluralism: a veritable "golden age."

Yeah, right! All history may be reconstruction, but this version seems to consist of a great deal of projection - today's concerns superimposed onto the past.

In fact Beckford seems to make no distinction between Christianity and Christendom. Was any of this actually 'Christianity' in any meaningful sense? Opinions will obviously vary. Christendom, yes; Christianity, well...

It probably helps to be an cloistered Anglophile to appreciate such wonders as the conversion of Ethelbert. Oh, and prospective viewers should also be warned that the éminence grise of Anglican bishop N. T. Wright briefly rises from the lowest pits to provide a talking head (a mercifully brief cameo) toward the end of the film.

But if the Beckford contribution is a weak link, the next programme in the series more than makes up for it. The subject, incredibly relevant given the ongoing travail in the Middle East, is the Crusades.