Postmillennialism - a temptation best avoided

Calvin taught a doctrine of the Church “continuously actualised within history”2 - the Body of Christ is not invisible, or concealed, but rather, although humbled in condition by suffering, actually glorious. Calvin’s eschatology has three socially-oriented consequences for the Church: to gather its members (i.e. mission), to discipline itself continuously, and to unite:3

What is the purpose of the coming of Christ but to gather us all together in one from this dispersion in which now we are wandering? Therefore the nearer His coming the more we must bend our efforts that the scattered may be brought together and united and that there may be one fold and one Shepherd.4

Calvin is not so hopeful about society outside the Church: the only remade society is the fellowship of believers. Yet the state (or prince) could play a positive role in the advancement of the Kingdom. In Book 4 of the Institutes he describes the work of governments which may indeed be called “Christian”.5 In the seventeeth and eigthteenth centuries it was Puritanism and Pietism that extended this optimism to the coming of the millennium within history. This was “post-millennialism”, as espoused by John Owen, Jonathan Edwards and later, James Orr,6 for example.7 Secular versions of post-millennialism have been foundational to the national identities of many modern states. Dutch theologian Hendrikus Berkhof goes so far as to propose that world has been sanctified by the rise of “Christian” culture.8

But Jurgen Moltmann is right to critique this “historical millennialism” on the grounds that it has been used to legitimate ecclesiastical or political power.9 Biblically speaking, post-millennialism rightly emphasises the binding of Satan (Luke 10:17, 18, John 12:20-32) and urges the Church to mission to the whole world (cf. Rev 7:9). There is a present reality to the reconstitution of society in the Church. We ought to believe in the present rule of the Ascended Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit in the world. However, post-millennialism can not withstand its own historical failure; nor does it properly account for the inevitability of suffering and persecution. It is also a doctrine which in the end emphasises the power of human works to achieve a social utopia in the here-and-now; it is little wonder that this theology is a parent to secular industrial modernism. God is too easy to removed from the post-millennial picture.

1 H.R. Niebuhr, op.cit., p.218
2 T.F.Torrance, op.cit, p.60
3 ibid., p.62
4 Comm. on Heb 10:25, tr W.B. Johnston, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963)
5 J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Battles, F.L., (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), IV.20.3-4. See R. Doyle, op.cit., p. 45
6 J. Orr, The Progress of Dogma, London, (J.Clarke & Co, 1901)
7 D.Bloesch, op.cit., p.193
8 H. Berkhof, Christ The Meaning of History, tr. L. Buurman, (Grand Rapids: Baker. 1966); a position he modifed in Christian Faith - An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, tr. S.Woudstra, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 1979), pp.511-21
9 J.Moltmann, The Coming of God - Christian Eschatology, tr. M. Kohl, (London: SCM Press, 1994), p.192

Barth on Election

Please allow me this foray into Barth without labelling me forevermore 'a Barthian'! (Though I think I have a rather cheeky article in me entitled 'the Barthianism of DB Knox'...!!!)

I am currently reading Barth's Church Dogmatics II.ii. In this volume he puts forward perhaps his most remarkable - and controversial - theological innovation: his doctrine of election. He is well aware of the novelty of his position: but his claim is that this is the only biblical way of construing the doctrine. That at least on the face of it is his ground.

Of course, Barth is a Reformed theologian in the tradition of Calvin, and so it is the Reformed commitment to predestination and election that drives him. And it is the Reformed tradition that he must supercede if he is to establish his version. His discussion of the Supra- vs Infra- lapsarian positions - in small print of course - is absolutely crucial. What he claims is that the Supralapsarian position - the least popular and least accepted alternative - is the more consistent and more rigorous. The tendency of Infralapsarianism is to offer the incarnation as God's plan B - a response to the fall rather than a decree from all time. But Supralapsarianism, with its implication that God has decreed some for damnation even before the fall is a tough sell! Which clears the ground for him to offer his correction of both positions.

And it is this: Jesus is the answer. Before the foundation of the world, God in Christ made his double decree of election and reprobation. Where he scores a hit against the Reformed construals is in their tendency to rely on an account of God's decrees which makes them inscrutable and mysterious, invisible and unrevealed. Speculation abounds (and it does!) Whereas, by making Jesus the electing God and the elected man, he is able to talk about the election of God as revealed in full view of humankind.

Now I need to read some critiques of his position - or hear them from my kind readers....

Migraine

I have had perhaps four or five episodes of migraine headaches in my life. I don't want any more.

It is inadequate to call a migraine a headache: it is more a whole body displacement. It is like going out of focus. The nausea rises and rises until you are blind with it. But it is a nausea of its own kind somehow not digestive. Do I want to eat, or not? So, you eat something...but, no, I didn't want to eat at all, the food lies flat and heavy in your mouth. The metallic taste that seeps down from your brain through your skull and onto your tongue makes you feel like you are chewing on a nice fragment of the handlebars on your bicycle. You can barely see: or, rather you look but you don't see. Light itself suddenly feels poisonous, vile and agressive. People speak words to you but they don't speak syntax. Words no longer run like tickertape lines across the bottom of your brain's screen. They are now like heavy lotto balls swimming round and round and popping suddenly out! one by one but not with any sense of relief just outness. You feel regret for something you must have done to feel like this, but you can't remember what it was, because there wasn't anything. You make yourself promises you'll never drink coffee again, or red wine, or any other headachy thing, but they weren't to blame. You go to sleep, but it isn't sleep that you have, it is just shutting your eyes and waiting with the neckstiff burr of blood on your plastic-waxy eardrum tom-toms.

A migraine is an assault on being itself. It's dreadful power lies in the fact that you can't locate it anywhere, so you can't mollify it or tame it. It seperates you from your body even though you know that without your body you aren't anyone.

Nominalism: no, not a post about medieval philosophy

I have been a fan of St George Rugby League Club in Sydney since 1980 (they were champions then, and have failed to win since). However, I own only one piece of club paraphenalia (a beanie I sleep in sometimes), and I have been to perhaps three games in the last 27 seasons. I am not aware of their current form, nor of the names of their current players. Their coach is Nathan Brown (or was last time I looked). I don't watch their games on TV (even when I am in Australia). However, I do want them to win, and if they are in a major game it is them that I barrack for (that means 'support' in Australian). St George RLC is certainly not aware that I exist - but I think that they could make a better effort to flush me out.

Am I a St George fan?

Well, I think I am. But a diehard, every game attending fan will most likely despise me for my lack of commitment. But how dare they!

It strikes me that this is how many, many people think about their membership of the Anglican church, at least in Sydney. Apparently, there are fewer of them than five years ago (see here), but it is still a whopping 20+% of the population - more by far and further than support St George, even more than support Rugby League!

Evangelicals have in the last thirty years seen such people as a bit of a nuisance, because they asked for baptisms and funerals which took a lot of time but in many cases didn't really believe what they are doing - it's a horrible feeling performing a sacred ceremony when you know people are basically perjuring themselves before God, believe me. Or, perhaps they lingered on as Christmas and Easter attenders who complained when anything changed, but didn't really care about what happened the rest of the time.

But: some 700,000 people in our city already think if themselves as members of our club, which I would think means that they have some vaguely positive feelings towards us. So: what are we doing about it? This is a huge potential missionfield.... What is the statistical information that we have on this vast population of people? Why are they still connected, but absent?

Herbert on Humilitie

I am preaching next week at St Ebbe's on 1 Peter 5, the theme of which is humility (stop laughing family members!). Anyhow found this poem by George Herbert, who is one of my favourites. It takes a bit of looking at: he describes a scene where the Virtues are presented with symbols of submission by a series of animals.

Humilitie.
I Saw the Vertues sitting hand in hand
In sev’rall ranks upon an azure throne,
Where all the beasts and fowl by their command
Presented tokens of submission.
Humilitie, who sat the lowest there
To execute their call,
When by the beasts the presents tendred were,
Gave them about to all.

The angrie Lion did present his paw,
Which by consent was giv’n to Mansuetude.1
The fearfull Hare her eares, which by their law
Humilitie did reach to Fortitude.
The jealous Turkie brought his corall-chain;
That went to Temperance.
On Justice was bestow’d the Foxes brain,
Kill’d in the way by chance.

At length the Crow bringing the Peacocks plume,
(For he would not) as they beheld the grace
Of that brave gift, each one began to fume,
And challenge it, as proper to his place,
Till they fell out: which when the beasts espied,
They leapt upon the throne;
And if the Fox had liv’d to rule their side,
They had depos’d each one.

Humilitie, who held the plume, at this
Did weep so fast, that the tears trickling down
Spoil’d all the train: then saying, Here it is
For which ye wrangle, made them turn their frown
Against the beasts: so joyntly bandying,
They drive them soon away;
And then amerc’d2 them, double gifts to bring
At the next Session-day.

1 Mansuetude = Gentleness, meekness.
2 amerced = With a penalty of the amount expressed.

In short, without humility the other virtues fall easily prey to passions. But why humility?

Harry Potter released in Oxford (no spoilers)

So, Simon and I braved the rain and the crowds (my goodness, the crowds!) to pick up the last Harry Potter at midnight last night. (We are dressed as wizards in case you didn't pick it).

A couple of thoughts about things Potter:

• Rowling really isn't a great writer and she writes with no ear for how words sound. The Potter books are really quite tough to read aloud (and I should know) compared to classics like the Narnia series. This to me is a test of the quality of children's literature. She writes in choppy uneven paragraphs and uses quite colourless bland language. But that isn't her gift: her gift is her sheer inventiveness with characters and ideas to fill the world she has imagined. Like Dickens, there is always something new around the next page, some new brilliantly conceived person or thing. Like Dickens (at his worst) she sometimes uses this technique to keep the plot going when it is flagging.
• The Potter books are incredibly nostalgic. Remember Enid Blyton? She channels Enid Blyton half the time: the private school setting, the two-gendered friendships, the resourcefulness of the child heroes and what have you. Have you ever read The Naughtiest Girl in the School? And Quidditch resembles Lacrosse, which is the game the Naugtiest Girl plays. Potter harks back to that British children's literature which deals with upper middle class children in schools that no-one can actually afford.
• I always like to ask kids 'what kind of a hero do you think Harry Potter is? What makes him heroic?' It isn't actually his magic that does anything. It is his courage. I think he is a very courageous person rather than a talented one. To me it is interesting that Harry Potter and his friends always are prepared to break the rules if circumstances demand it - and are rewarded for doing so.

Review of Urban Tribes by Ethan Watters

“Why isn’t she married yet?”

Pretty much everyone knows by now that people are putting off the decision to settle down and get married until they are well past thirty: which means that for members of the so-called “Generation X”, there is a decade-long (or more) period of adulthood between leaving education and becoming a member of a traditional family unit. Social commentators and politicians alike have seen this as a result of rampant individualism and shallow hedonism. Gen-Xers are charged with being commitment shy and selfish. We are a generation of wanderers, dreading the thought of “settling down” and extending our adolescence well into our thirties. We will, it is prophesied, reap the rewards of our attachment phobia in spades of loneliness.

In his intriguing book Urban Tribes, Californian journalist Ethan Watters argues that, in fact, young adults are forming their own significant communities in place of traditional family units; and finding in these groups some of the benefits that family life offers. Watters claims he discovered the mass phenomena of the Urban Tribe almost accidentally: having written a brief magazine piece on the idea, he was invited on TV to discuss it. In the following weeks his email inbox was inundated by twenty-somethings from all over the US who felt that he had articulated something very real to their lives. They had found community in all sorts of areas: among college friends, in book clubs, at the gym, or even in groups that just kinda evolved from friends and friends-of-friends. People performed different roles within the tribes in order to enable organization and decision-making, nurturing and entertainment. Some group members were valued even though they contributed very little to the group at all.

Watters is insistent that the sense of belonging and loyalty he and others feel is just as strong as family ties may be. He recounts example of remarkably loving and self-less behaviour, and the experiences of great tenderness, group rituals and generous sharing. As he puts it:
After more than a decade, my sense of living as a single person in a modern American city was that of belonging to an intensely loyal community of people. (p.39)

The social conditions that have lead to this phenomenon centre on the remarkable freedom that young adults in western cities now experience. They are wealthy, with a high disposable income; and may choose voluntary poverty in order to study, travel or follow a dream without to much hardship. They have grown up in the age of contraception and sexual liberty which means that sex does not appear to need the safety-net of marriage. The women of this group are the first “post-feminist” generation, aspiring to have a meaningful career as a priority. Socially acceptable behaviour has become a much broader category. Watters notes that the advice that Xers have received from their baby-boomer parents has been strangely reticent and devoid of any heavy moralising. “Only conservative politicians”, he writes,

"continued to give lifestyle advice as if it were still in style. It was pretty easy to read this for what it was: political posturing. George W. Bush’s advice that we abstain from sex before marriage was an excellent example. Given that many of us were delaying marriage until we were thirty or thirty-five, his just-say-no-to-sex rhetoric read like a blatant pandering to the Christian Right or willful ignorance of social trends or both. Regardless of whether we voted or these conservative politicians, the idea that we would let their advice influence our personal choices was laughable." (p.28)

Watters goes on to make the case that separating sex from the decision to marry and delaying that choice leads to much more mature decisions. Gen-Xers, as the first generation who were children of divorced parents, are understandably slow to commit themselves given the domestic disasters they have witnessed.

What Watters describes I found resonated with what I see my contemporaries experiencing in Sydney and in Oxford, where very similar social conditions apply. It strikes me that many evening church congregations or university-based churches resemble urban tribes, in a way which would have been unimaginable only a generation ago. The longing for belonging that so many twenty-somethings feel is an opportunity for these communities. However, it may be the informal contact and the spontaneous social gathering that most unites the group as much as the formal meeting.

I feel strongly however that churches also have the opportunity to remind the generations that they are not the only generation. We must resist and transcend the segmenting of our community into demographic sub-groups, which is chiefly driven by marketers and journalists. The cry of generational identity (“we are such-and-such”) is also a cry of non-identity (“and we aren’t like you old so-and-sos”). The community of Jesus is built around the shared experience of forgiveness and conversion, not the shared experience of being brought up in the 80s.
Then there’s the sex thing. The powerful social trend to delay marriage that Watters notes is fairly universal. For the Christian determined to pursue chastity there are two options – marry early, or marry late and remain celibate. Both choices fly in the face of prevailing cultural wisdom; for the young adult with non-Christian parents it will be probably even counter to their easy-going baby-boomer advice. Trust and commitment in matters of the heart are going to be rare qualities indeed.

Jurgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas, one of the contemporary world's leading political philosophers and no Christian (as far as I know) recently said this (according to Philip Jenkins:

“Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.”

Wow. Full marks to Jurgen!

'There is no such thing as a 'reader' '

Brian Brock examines in detail Augustine's exegesis of the Psalms, and Hannah's Song. As he concludes:

...Hannah's Song is paradigmatic for Augustine for understanding the Psalms because it is a text that, because of its narrative location, tells us something essential about biblical Psalms - that they cannot be 'read'. Therefore, there is no such thing as a 'reader' for Augustine, unless this describes the activity of those who make this song an 'objective' text devoid of any personal claim because they see human strength as determining of world events. This distancing stands in contrast to those who affirm Hannah's praise of God by singing with her...the form of Scripture that is called a psalm, and the interpretive ontological claims Augustine brings to this form, work together to question a basic commitment of contemporary hermeneutics: that we can describe a general hermeneutical strategy that is appropriately applied to the biblical texts. Because this is not simply a text, but Scripture, to read the Psalms as a text is to consolidate our self-emasculation in deciding in advance that they point only to human activities. The psalm form is thus correctly understood only when it appears as an invitation to the community of faith to sing God's praises.

That is: you can't just read the Bible. You must sing it (well the Psalms, anyhow).

Further on Biblical Studies and the Bible: Brian Brock

I mentioned my surprise at the chasm between Biblical Studies and Doctrine/Ethics in terms of use of the Bible. Brian Brock in his fascinating new book writes:

No academic discpline can be posited as privileged or primary in its relationship to Scripture, including biblical studies. The only solidity to which the Christian faith can cling in its exploration of the Bible is Christ as body, head, and Word. Any concept or academic discipline that makes itself the arbiter between rival interpretations would have to be established as another axiomatic truth. p. 266

Brock opposes the development of some academic superstructure that operates like a bureaucracy through which the Bible must pass if it is to be made available for theological/ethical reflection. Actually, sometimes I feel like this: a theologian wants to use a passage of the Bible in his work. Has he filled out the right forms, and applied to the New Testament department for permission to use the passage? If so, he must wait, and only then use the passage within carefully defined parameters, subject to and with reference to the most important commentaries on the subject... Then, he must develop a sophisticated hermeneutic which meets with all our criteria.

Sigh!

Annual Diocesan Jamboree?

Here's an idea that will never come to pass:

Why doesn't the diocese of Sydney run an annual conference in the way that Hillsong does? That is, an unmissable city-based ministry conference which fulfills the aims of:

• allowing cross-pollination of ideas
• enabling people in the diocese to meet up and communicate with one another in a forum other than Synod
• the shared process of identity building in a positive and non-adversarial context
• a chance for lay people in particular to participate in building the diocese

You could have plenary sessions and seminars on a broad spectrum of topics.

At the moment, CMS Summer School is treated like this by a certain generation of clergy, but the trouble is firstly that it is in Katoomba, and secondly that its focus is narrowly on overseas missions and thirdly it is at the wrong time of year (January). We have the annual Synod, but this is a parliamentary body which meets for politico-legal reasons, and excludes those who have not been elected to it. Already there is a very crowded calendar of events, but you just trump them by being better than all of 'em put together.

Anyhow, since I had the idea it is probably very unlikely ever to come to pass!

Benedict XVI on faith and politics

Great stuff from Ben 16, even if he doesn't want to acknowledge me as any but a separated bro:

...Faith does not make reason superfluous, but it can contribute evidence of essential values. Through the experiment of a life in faith, these values acquire a credibility that also illuminates and heals reason. In the last century (as in every century), it was in fact the testimony of the martyrs that limited the excesses of power, thus making a decisive contribution to what we might call the convalescence of reason. Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 29

So long as they aren't Protestant martyrs, I guess..!

I think this idea of faith healing reason is quite a contribution. Martyrs, by showing in extremis that human power is relative, temporal and not as powerful as it thinks it is, actually contribute to general human flourishing. That is, they are not anti-social, but rather help politics learn its true meaning for the greater human good.

Benedict XVI on changing things...

I bet the Pope uses a Mac. He likes everyone to be the same everywhere... He has even brought back the Latin mass. That's regress for you!

Politicians of all parties take it for granted today that they must promise changes - naturally, changes for the better. The once mythical radiance of the word 'revolution' has faded in our days, but far-reaching reforms are demanded and promised all the more insistently. This must surely mean that there exists in modern society a deep and prevailing sense of dissatisfaction precisely in those places where prosperity and freedom have attained hitherto unknown heights. The world is experienced as hard to bear. It must become better. And it seems that the task of politics is to bring this about. So since the general consensus is that the essential taks of politics is to improve the world, indeed to usher in a new world, it is easy to understand why the word 'conservative' has become disreputable and why scarcely anyone views lightly the prospect of being called conservative, for it appears that what we must do is not preserve the status quo but overcome it. Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 11

Change is the one constant of political discourse it seems...

The passion of Mac-users: a theory.

My new Toshiba laptop arrives today.

Thanks for all your help. What amazes me though is why, even though I gave no indication of dissatisfaction with PCs, Mac users thought I just had to know about the Mac option and ought to change. I have been a Mac User. I know the product. It is OK, I guess. I don't find it much easier to use or more logical than PC. I don't find it more reliable at all (that bomb sign haunts my dreams!). It is still the case that you can't assume Mac is compatible with everything. Mac is much more expensive. I know that in institutions who have a network running Mac and PC compatibility means that the institution has to invest in extra equipment that duplicates the function and also in the man-hours to fix everything up. But, you know, if that's what you want to do...go for it. I just don't think the difference is so great that it matters. I really don't care, except when I get made to feel defensive by you one-eyed Macmen and women!

Why is that Mac users are so passionate about their brand choice, so evangelistic and fervent? I really think this is a one way debate in terms of passion: PC users just don't exhibit the same dewey-eyed brand loyalty. I think it is just that when you outlay significant sums of money on an item which effects your whole interaction with the digital world, you so badly want to have made the right decision that your talk becomes part of convincing yourself you have... I think this applies to other consumer items, like cars, too. Your identity can really get caught up in having a Ford.

It would be fascinating to me to learn whether Mac use was at a higher rate in the Christian world than it is in the rest of the community. Could this be true? Anecdotally I feel that it is!

Update

The view from my room at Nuneham College, Cambridge.

Well it has been a slower period than normal on what my sister affectionately calls 'the most boring blog in the world.' Not that I'm sensitive...

Chiefly, the reason is that my HP/Compaq laptop has given up the ghost, and it has taken the Uni computer dudes a few days to decide this. This is the longest I have ever owned a single laptop: others have been lost to lightening strike, theft, water spillage (what idiot left a paper cup of water on the computer desk at Moore College), and virus. I would love your help on a replacement: at the moment I am favouring a Toshiba Satellite Pro.

Cambridge was excellent: I went to a Symposium on Oliver O'Donovan's Ways of Judgment which is proving to be a re-readable book - which in a world of many great books is high praise. Trouble with the English in formats like this is that they are too polite, and so it is hard to tell when they are actually having an intellectual disagreement. Jonathan Chaplin, Nigel Biggar and Ben Quash gave papers, and O'Donovan responded to each. He is a very fine and engaging speaker, and concedes very little!

The Tyndale Conference followed: this was more of a mish-mash of issues and papers. We heard some very interesting stuff on Islam, and also from David Ford (Prof at Cambridge) on 'Scriptural Reasoning'. He has a new book out called 'Christian Wisdom' which looks enticing. Basically, he is suggesting that inter-faith dialogue (and ecumenical dialogue) take place on the basis of reading one another's scriptures. This prevents an annoying liberal consensus having to be established first (WCOC style). Brian Brock gave a great paper on Genesis 1-4 and ethics. We heard some other papers on politics that made me feel more and more that Christendom wasn't so bad, crusades and what-not notwithstanding. Whenever I hear a Christendom-basher make huge sweeping statements about some fourteen centuries of Church-state relations - as is currently the fashion in Hauerwas-dominated circles - it makes my toes curl. I am becoming more grumpily conservative in me old age...

I also went to one of the Biblical Theology papers given by Brian Rosner. What was fascinating for me is that I realised that there is a HUGE chasm between the methods of biblical studies scholars and those involved in doctrine and ethics. And it seems to me that there is not a great deal of mutually respectful conversation going on between the two...

Since then: I have been reading Barth's Dogmatics II.i, one of the must-read volumes. His review of the Supralapsarian-Infralapsarian controversy is fascinating... though you can see how he is introducing his own position as the only alternative through his account.

I should also report that I have an almost complete first draft of my thesis. Blogging has not hindered but rather helped this! Having had a couple of readers review parts of it, I am encouraged to do a lot better of course. But at least I am getting better at answering that 'what is your thesis about' question...

Rorty on literary criticism

The recently deceased pragmatist liberal Richard Rorty, in his key text Contigency Irony and Solidarity makes the fascinating observation that for 'ironists' - by which he means people who deny that there is any metaphysical referent to our language and that we ought always be aware of that as we use grand sounding words - for ironists, literary critics are 'moral advisors', not metaphysicians.

As he writes:

literary criticism does for ironists what the search for universal moral principles is supposed to do for metaphysicians. p. 80

Literary critics, you see, engage in the placing of books into traditions of books. Their business is not absolute claims, but relative ones: relating books to other books. Literary critics have basically read alot, and so are less likely to get sucked in by any one book. The critic's job goes well beyond the bounds of mere literary criticism, of course:

...the critic is now expected to facilitate moral reflection by suggesting revisions in the cann of moral exemplars and advisers, and suggesting ways in which the tensions within this canon may be eased - or, where necessary, sharpened. p. 82

Persecution reported

An interesting report in the Melbournian paper The Age .

Nice to see persecution of Christians not neutralised into 'religious violence'.

The Anglican Communion - worth saving?

At the moment, I don't think it is. The present arrangement is a fairly recent affair born of the collapse of the British Empire. The denominational formalities are becoming increasingly absurd ('we are/are not in communion with X diocese' etc etc) and an obstacle rather than an aid to truth speaking and the actual unity of Christians with one another. I was prepared to believe that Rowan Williams' softly softly strategy might actually work, but today I think that it has been mealy-mouthed: he should have had the courage to say either 'look, I am pushing for the full inclusion of active homosexual people in the ministry of the church, like it or lump it' or 'I am not prepared to accept it at all and if you push for it you are not in communion with me, go choose another church.' (A third option would have been to resign).

Either way, we would have known we all stood. As it is, I think the communion is going to be worse broken than it would have been. Sheesh.

In Cambridge

This week I am off to Cambridge for a couple of conferences. Should be fun but -

pray for Catherine at home with Simon, Sacha (that's Fireman Sam to you!), Matilda and Freya.

My hat is off...

...to the sound/PA team at St Ebbe's. We had, by turns, some uplfiting and full-bottled singing, prayers really well done, bible reading excellent (as usual) and an A-grade sermon from Pete Wilkinson.

And not a single PA glitch. Not a one.