Fragments in Focus - 1

A Review of:

David V. Barrett
Fragmentation of a Sect: Schism in the Worldwide Church of God
Hardback, 280 pages.
Oxford University Press, 2013
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British scholar David V. Barrett's earlier work includes The New Believers (Cassell, 2001), which devoted its final chapter to discussion of the WCG. Fragmentation of a Sect is based on his recent doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics.
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Part 1.

"This... is an academic book which I hope will contribute to social science and religious scholarship, I also hope it will be read by members of the religious groups of which it is a study: the many Churches of God which are offshoots of the Worldwide Church of God. It is, after all, their story... I hope that all readers will find this account of a group of heterodox, millenarian, Sabbatarian, British-Israelite Churches, which splintered in hundreds of directions after their founder died, even a fraction as absorbing as I have for all these years I have been observing them."

From the Author's Note

And so the tone is set for what might be the most significant study ever published on the movement founded by Herbert W. Armstrong. Up till now there has been a great deal of heat, but not much light shed, when it has come to discussing the collapse and disintegration of the Worldwide Church of God. Partisans for the various factions are rarely able to achieve the degree of detachment necessary to rise above the battlefield and take in the wider perspective. The problem has been compounded by dilettantes outside the movement who have rushed in to support church leaders who they see as taking an agreeable position. There has been much talk about doctrine and teachings, but little about the human cost of a church - and a high-demand church at that - in freefall. Precious little talk, also, of leadership accountability.

Fragmentation of a Sect goes a long way toward redressing the balance. Stepping back from the polemic and apologetics, Barrett maintains a rare critical distance. His interest is not in theology but sociology, the people part of the equation, and provides what UCG reviewer Michael Snyder deems a "secular analysis" (which sounds suspect, but simply means the theological spin and posturing has been, for once, set aside.)

It is, after all, a fascinating story in its own right, with all the tragedy and pathos of a long-running soap opera. Some of us have had bit parts over one or more seasons, others have identified closely with certain of the lead characters. But the lessons to be learned are not only for those whose lives have been caught up in the ongoing drama, but for everyone who wants to understand how a seemingly successful religious movement can crash and burn, taking down with it the dreams and even part of the very identities of its followers.

The book has had a lengthy gestation period, and included a rigorous process of consultation and fact checking. This review, as it progresses, will seek to do justice to Fragmentation by working its way through the various sections of the book, some in greater detail than others.

To continue...

Unplugged

The Sabbath isn't something we hear about in the news too often.  Despite an awful lot of misinformation about the subject, at its core is a message about stepping outside the everyday routines and obligations that so tightly bind us and, hopefully, centring ourselves for a space of time each week on those realities and experiences that lie outside the mundane. There's many a slip however, as the saying goes, between the cup and the lip, and the Sabbath can end up as merely another burden that restricts rather than liberates.  On this matter I have some small experience as a former member of a Sabbath-keeping Christian community from back in my salad days.

Which is a long-winded preamble to talk about the National Day of Unplugging, which I first heard about just this week, and begins Friday evening 1 March and runs through the following twenty-four hours (corresponding to the Sabbath hours).  The idea, originally an initiative in the New York Jewish community, is to turn off the tech - the cell phones, laptops, tablets, PlayStations and assorted iThings, and reconnect with non-virtual reality.

Gotta say, I think the idea has it's merits.  Those people who have gotten involved - and it's an idea that seems to have seeded well beyond its original roots - seem to have been (to use a word I don't use lightly) blessed. Blessed by opting out from Twitter, Facebook, email, texts and needless phone calls. Blessed to interact with real people, family and friends. You've also got to suspect that their stress levels dropped a couple of notches too.

So I've added it to my calendar this year. It's one "Jewish Holy Day" I don't mind adopting! Friday the 1st from sundown through till the same time on Saturday. If the idea appeals to you too, regardless of your religious tradition (or lack thereof) check out the links below.

http://nationaldayofunplugging.com/
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/8345564/Can-we-turn-all-the-tech-off

This Shadowed Beauty

The Jesus stories: virgin birth, water to wine, decomposing corpses revived, walking across a lake, replicating seafood without a Star Trek replicator, stepping through closed doors... Fact or fiction?

It's not a very subtle question.  How about legend or myth, and what's the difference?

Max Cryer comes to the rescue.  Although not a crusty academic, Cryer is much admired as a word expert in New Zealand; the sort who delves into the peculiarities of the English language and its many puzzling expressions.  He has been widely heard on public radio, and has authored several popular books, one of which I'm working my way through at the moment, Curious English Words and Phrases.  I confess to having cracked up completely at his deadpan and studiously understated explanation of the potentially R18 rated "donkey deep."

In an entry on the distinction between the terms legend and myth Cryer writes:

"A good way of remembering the two definitions is to think of Santa Claus. Santa Claus is a myth based on a legend, because Saint Nicholas was a real Turkish person. He was much admired... and he became a legend. But he had never been to the North Pole and he didn't ride reindeer through the sky at night. All that extra detail is mythical."

Now Cryer is certainly no theologian, which probably explains why his books actually make sense. In any event, what if we were to take his Santa Claus exemplar and morph it into one about Jesus?

Jesus is a myth based on a legend, because Yeshua was in all likelihood a real Galilean person. He was much admired... and he became a legend. But he had never raised rotting corpses and he didn't walk on water. All that extra detail is mythical.

So, whether you're on the Bart Ehrman side of the debate, or rooting for someone like Tom Brodie, the outcome is essentially the same. Jesus, the literary character of the New Testament, is a myth. And, to put it bluntly, the literary character is the only Jesus we really have. The "historical Jesus" can only be a constantly shifting reconstruction, a best guess based on almost no hard data. The only real difference of substance between the feuding parties is whether the myth is based on a legend (and therefore probably resting on some sort of slippery historical bedrock) or was at some early stage crafted out of the whole cloth.

But if Jesus, the essential Jesus, the biblical, canonical Jesus is a myth, is faith still possible? These measured words are those of Tom Brodie, Dominican priest and self-outed mythicist.

This shadowed living beauty that we call Jesus Christ is not a specific human being. It is visualized as a Jewish-born carpenter, and at one level it is personal and history-related. Jesus Christ is historical insofar as he symbolizes the aspect of a personal God that is interwoven with the fierce particularity of history and with the bloodied beauty of individual lives.

Tom Brodie OP

... but it is the same Jesus Christ who underlies all formulations, no matter what name we use.

What is important is that, while the loss of Jesus as a specific individual human may bring sadness, union with the living Jesus - the universal living figure of truth and goodness and shadowed beauty, the Gospel figure who touches the leper, embraces the children, and lays down his life for our sins - union with this Jesus brings new life.

And that is hard to gainsay.

Yes, I know that adapting Cryer's comments is a gross oversimplification, and that it pays scant respect to the Gordian Knot in which scholars tend to gleefully emesh themselves in order to write dense and unreadable tomes. But really, at the end of the day, do we really need another pointless and overpriced book by Maurice Casey or N.T. Wright to further muddy the waters and help us ignore the obvious?

(Curious English Words and Phrases is available on Kindle. The Brodie quotes are from chapter 21 of  Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, 2012.)

A liberal faith

From James McGrath's blog...

If “liberal Christianity” means Christianity that reflects the cosmology and worldview of a particular era, then the earliest Christianity is liberal Christianity. It is only later, as cosmologies and worldviews changed, that some insisted on clinging to the views of an earlier era, because those happened to be part of the worldview of previous generations of Christians, including the Bible’s authors. That is why “conservative” Christianity ends up being a very radical departure from earliest Christianity, even in the process of fighting to try to keep the same worldview as they had to the minimal extent that that is even possible. By making the assumptions of prior generations into articles of faith, they stand against and not with the approach of the earliest Christians, even while claiming to defend their specific beliefs.

Preach it brother!

The Missing Links

As a mere strip of a lad, I remember asking our family pastor, Byron Klein of Hamilton's St Matthew Lutheran, what to make of this evolution thing.  Byron, who was a thoroughly decent and sincere bloke, paused for a moment then responded: "well, I take some comfort from knowing that so far science hasn't been able to track down any 'missing link'."

Or words to that effect.

It was perhaps an acceptable evasion back then, especially to an irritating know-nothing kid.  But today it'd be a bit threadbare. The February 16 issue of New Scientist has a cover feature entitled Missing Links: Evolution's Biggest Gaps and How We're Closing Them.

Not that the staff writers at The Good News are likely to pay much attention.  But intelligent lay people - both in the worlds of science and religion - definitely should.  The world is far too interesting a place to wallow, eyes tightly shut, in the slime pits of creationism.

Summer and upcoming book reviews

Spot the traffic cone

It's been a pretty darn good Summer in my neck of the woods.  The weather has been great, and a long break from the chalk face was brilliant.  Blogging mercifully took a back seat, apart from a sporadic rant.

But while the weather is still holding, the realities of having to get back into routine have landed with a thud.  Another year in servitude to Hekia Pro Rata (let the reader understandeth). Sigh. And another year of pounding the keyboard?  Well, yes.

I had hoped to complete a couple of fairly extensive book reviews over the Summer, but have been thwarted at every turn.  Bob Price's The Amazing Colossal Apostle is a work that many of his fans have been hanging out for for a very long time.  Unfortunately Bob chose Signature Books of Salt Lake City as publisher, and it has been one long delay after another.  When the book finally launched, another Signature pratfall meant they were unable to sell for several more long weeks on Amazon.  Hardly had it appeared there - finally - than it was out of stock.  As best as I can tell, a copy is dog-paddling across the Pacific toward Auckland at this very moment, and when it arrives I'll be posting a review, possibly in several parts, and probably in early March.

The other major review, one which I'd hoped to have well and truly out of the way by now, is of David V. Barrett's The Fragmentation of a Sect.  Securing a copy has, however, been a source of ongoing frustration, and we're now probably talking about the end of March (hopefully 2013, but who knows?)  This is an important work for anyone interested in the way autocratic sects grow and divide, and of special interest to those who remember the heyday of The Plain Truth magazine and Garner Ted Armstrong's World Tomorrow radio and television ministry.  Again, based on what I know about it second-hand, it will definitely be worth detailed examination over several postings.  When this will be possible is, sadly, anyone's guess, but hopefully some time before it's out of print!

On a lighter note, the photograph is one I took at Port Waikato over the break on the mobile phone.  Atop the tree is a large size traffic cone, proving, as a friend who spotted it first remarked, that today's teenagers aren't all that different from those in times past.

Babble On

If you come across someone citing Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons as a credible source, run like the wind.

Moreso when a writer - particularly one living alongside the rest of us in the twenty-first century - calls it "densely researched and thoroughly documented," as James McBride, a Church of God minister in the United Kingdom, does in this article.

The Two Babylons was a piece of creative anti-Catholic invective written in an age when certain sects of Protestantism could hardly bring themselves to regard Catholicism as Christian.  The final edition appeared in 1919, though it first appeared as a pamphlet as far back as 1853.

Fifty or so years ago an American evangelist named Ralph Woodrow vigorously promoted Hislop's arguments through his own 'evangelistic association'. Then the unthinkable happened. Someone confronted his dogma with a few pertinent facts. Woodrow, to his everlasting credit, did a 180 degree turn, withdrawing his popular 1966 book, Babylon Mystery Religion. He wrote:

"As a young evangelist, I began to preach on the mixture of paganism with Christianity, and eventually I wrote a book based on Hislop, titled Babylon Mystery Religion (Ralph Woodrow Evangelistic Assn., 1966). In time, my book became quite popular, went through many printings, and was translated into Korean, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and several other languages. Hundreds quoted from it. Some regarded me as an authority on the subject of "pagan mixture." Evan the noted Roman Catholic writer Karl Keating said, "Its best-known proponent is Ralph Woodrow, author of Babylon Mystery Religion".

"Many preferred my book over The Two Babylons because it was easier to read and understand. Sometimes the two books were confused with each other, and once I even had the experience of being greeted as "Reverend Hislop"! As time went on, however, I began to hear rumblings that Hislop was not a reliable historian, I heard this from a history teacher and in letters from people who heard this perspective expressed on the Bible Answer Man radio program. Even the Worldwide Church of God began to take a second look at the subject.  As a result, I realized I needed to go back through Hislop’s work, my basic source, and prayerfully check it out.  As I did this, it became clear: Hislop’s "history" was often only an arbitrary piecing together of ancient myths."

It seems some modern writers have still to catch up with Ralph Woodrow.

Wikipedia even has an entry on The Two Babylons, and while Wikipedia may not always be the best place to go for a serious discussion of theological issues, it has a very fair summary in this case.

"It has been generally regarded by scholars as discredited, with one calling it a "tribute to historical inaccuracy and know-nothing religious bigotry" with "shoddy scholarship, blatant dishonesty" and a "nonsensical thesis"...

"Although scholarship has shown the picture presented by Hislop to be based on a misunderstanding of historical Babylon and its religion, his book remains popular among some fundamentalist Protestant Christians. The book's thesis has also featured prominently in the conspiracy theories of racist groups..."

It speaks for itself that an organisation like Chick Publications continues to sell this discredited material, even labelling it "a classic." In other words, Hislop is the refuge of dilettantes, and there is zero excuse for anyone, conservative Bible believers included, lending credence to nonsense of this sort.