Established religion

Advisory: Snarkiness, widely distributed.

So Brian Tamaki, the leader of the conservative Destiny Church, is protesting the National Statement on Religious Diversity (which I've blogged about before), because it says that New Zealand has no "official or established" religion, and he doesn't understand the technical meaning of the word "established religion" - that is, a religion officially adopted by the State.

He apparently consulted a dictionary for his definition: "Footnote: 'established' meaning, 'those things that have been set in place'". His education at Te Nikau Bible College didn't cover much church history, I suppose. Nor, apparently, did it teach him how to spell "formally" (his statement says, "We formerly recognise New Zealand as a Christian nation") or that the Prime Minister is head of government, not head of state (though I'm sure Helen Clark would love to be our head of state).

He also ignores the clear statement in the Statement's preamble:

Christianity has played and continues to play a formative role in the development of New Zealand in terms of the nation's identity, culture, beliefs, institutions and values.

Which is basically what he means when he says that Christianity is New Zealand's "established" religion. But he is also going beyond that, and saying, in effect, that Christianity should have first-class status and other religions second-class status, rather than, as the Statement says:

The State seeks to treat all faith communities and those who profess no religion equally before the law.

In other words, on Planet Brian, Christendom still exists and is a Good Thing, and this is an underhanded attempt by the Government to undermine it against the wishes of the majority of New Zealanders. (Whatever Brian wants is generally wanted by the majority of New Zealanders, on Planet Brian.)

On the whole, I think our habitually interfering Government should indeed not be sticking its oar in, but for pretty much the opposite reasons to Brian Tamaki. See, I see Christianity as a religion for the powerless (I shouldn't even really be practicing it myself; I'm white, male, educated, middle-class and prosperous). I think that joining up with the institutions of power was the worst and most distorting move Christianity ever made, though I suppose it did open it up more readily to people like myself, so I shouldn't be completely ungrateful.

I don't think I actually want a religion that needs to be intertwined with secular power in order to be listened to, respected and followed. I prefer one that can achieve those things on its own merits. And that goes just as much for interfaith initiatives as for individual faiths.

Now, Paul Morris's Hamilton speech (19 February), of which I can't find an online copy so I'm referring to one Brenda sent me, does say this:

The idea of a ‘National Statement’ was that it would not originate from government and be mandated from above, as it were, rather it would arise as a result of broad discussions among faith and interfaith groups and the wider New Zealand public.

And, speaking of the consultation process:

...a minority were concerned that the National Statement on Religious Diversity was a new law to be enacted and binding on all New Zealanders. Of course, this is not the case but this was obviously not made as clear as it might have been...

...and evidently still isn't. Starting out with a statement "The State seeks...", having the text primarily hosted on a government website, and inviting the Prime Minister to present the statement are not good ways to convey the impression that this is a form of grassroots initiative, and not another attempt by the Labour Government to legislate every aspect of New Zealand life into conformity with their liberal ideologies.

Religion as accretion

I was talking the other day with Lois, who has known the Cityside church building at various points in its chequered history, and she was saying how its present state is the result of numerous small changes, without any overall plan, over a period of many years. Some of the switchboards (there are multiple switchboards) control half the lights in one room and the other half are on a different switchboard. There are little nooks and cupboards and odd areas everywhere.

Which is a bit like Christianity, really.

If you know very much history at all, it's hard to consider the Church and its faith as the outcome of a divine plan when it's so obviously the result of thousands of years of more-or-less uncoordinated human decisions. Half the "theology proper" (the theology about God) is based in Graeco-Roman philosophy, and so is a great deal else about the theology, including how it is traditionally constructed and conducted. The Trinity, as I've referenced elsewhere, is probably a result of Egyptian and/or ancient Indo-European influences. The Dying and Rising God, the Flood and its defeat, and many other biblical themes are common to much of the ancient Middle East.

And if you really start looking back, a lot of features we think of as essentially Christian - angels, resurrection, the prospect of a future judgement, even the figures of the Messiah, the one good God and the evil Adversary - come ultimately from Zoroastrianism via late Judaism, from when the Jews were subjects of the Persian Empire.

One response to this is to try to strip all of the accretions away. This is what the Reformation tried to do, more or less, and the later Puritans; also their philosophical descendants like the Jehovah's Witnesses, who remove the Trinity, Christmas and other evidently pagan aspects (while leaving the Zoroastrian bits; after all, they're already there front-and-centre in the New Testament writings). Some theological liberals do the same, for slightly different reasons - not to take the faith back to a mythical, primordial state of purity, but just because, having discovered their origins, they are no longer able to take these aspects seriously.

But I regard it as a bit like, oh, an old building. Say one of those really old churches or manor houses in England, where they have more history (our oldest extant building was built in 1820). Its core might be Norman, perhaps built on the site of an older Saxon, Celtic or Roman fort, villa or temple. But someone built onto it in the late Middle Ages, and someone built another bit in Tudor times, and then again in the reign of Queen Anne, and in the Georgian period, and in the Victorian era, and then they rewired it several times over the course of the 20th century, and now... now it's very rich and layered, and everywhere you turn there is history. It's a jumble, yes. But it's our jumble. And if we stripped all the new layers back (and how do you pick which ones?), what you would end up with would be, frankly, cramped, draughty, primitive, and lacking in either beauty or utility. It's the end product of a great many people who each, for reasons that seemed good at the time, altered it in a particular way, sometimes destroying things we now wish they'd preserved, sometimes preserving things we wish they'd destroyed, but adapting it to the needs of their own time as they saw them.

I can worship in a building like that. But you can see why I hold the Christian particularities fairly lightly, and am quite comfortable being around people who have other particularities in their quite different faiths. To change the metaphor, we all need lenses to look through, because we all have imperfect sight, but your lenses may not help me (though they help you), and my lenses may not help you (though they help me).

Stepping back from the Knife Fight

I-would-knife-fight-a-man has been going about a month, and I'm already pulling back from it, for a few reasons.

Firstly, I was busy last week, and then there was Easter, and I didn't check it for a while. It has threaded discussions, 30 threads to the page, and when I tuned in again today the last thread that I'd read that hadn't been subsequently posted to was on page 6, of 12.

Partly this is because Vincent (the moderator) has introduced a two-tier system of membership, and the criterion for becoming a "full" member is to start a thread about "a time you felt human", so that he can weed out people who won't fit. And this is the second reason; like some others on the forum, I kind of resent being made to jump through a hoop like that, though of course it's his forum and he can do what he likes. I just don't find the discussion as it is at the moment pulls me in enough to make jumping through that hoop worth my while.

And this is the third reason. I started posting there because there were some interesting religious discussions there, slopping over from Vincent's blog, which was why he started the forum in the first place (the blog wasn't serving the discussions well). At the moment, people are talking about a great many other things, some of which I have opinions on but none of which are nearly as interesting to me as the religion topics. If I had more time or motivation or something I would probably start my own forum (and, ironically, would almost certainly steal Vincent's method of weeding out the participants, despite my irrational resentment of it). But I don't.

(As far as I know there's no comparable forum in the interfaith realm, which surprises me a bit. No - actually, when you Google, there's http://www.interfaithforums.com/. It's using vBulletin forum software, which looks ugly and clunky after the nice clean Vanilla of the Knife Fight, but... maybe I'll check it out.)

And, finally, I agree with some of the other Knife Fight members that the tone of the discussions tends to assume a set of political views that I don't necessarily possess, largely because the core members of the community are a particular group of friends who hold these views. In part, I don't possess them because of lack of recent reflection upon the issues, so hanging out with people who do possess them has been good stimulus for such reflection. But given that I don't have my disagreement well-articulated, in the cases where I disagree, I just feel a little bit alienated and a little bit lacking in anything to contribute and a little bit uncomfortable.

Actually, they're pretty much the same kinds of views that I find slightly uncomfortable (and that Erin finds very uncomfortable) at Cityside. Maybe the problem is that people who think alike in many ways and are in a tiny, fringe minority tend to assume that anyone who agrees with anything they say buys into the whole package. When it's pointed out to them they do, of course, acknowledge that this isn't the case, but the assumption still tends to be there. At least, the older ones understand and acknowledge it; I remember having a discussion with a young guy at Cityside who was puzzled about why we didn't talk a lot more about politics, and who, I think, was still puzzled when I explained to him that there were diverse and incompatible political views within the congregation and this wouldn't necessarily be a good idea, community-harmony-wise.

So - currently not knife-fighting, and feeling basically OK about that. This isn't a final decision; I'll check back now and again, see what's on the front page, and if it's something important enough to me will jump through Vincent's damn hoop.

Faith Convergence

There seems to be something in the air that's leading many people of faith to say, "This is ridiculous, the things we have in common are more important than our differences. How are you, anyway?"

Brenda recently sent me some stuff around the Draft National Statement on Religious Diversity. The statement itself is fairly bland, as you might expect - apparently a horse designed by a basically liberal committee, with wide consultation, isn't a camel; it's an amoeba. But I was amazed at the, um, diversity - no, the multiplicity of interfaith initiatives that are going on. It's a hive of activity. Perhaps a relatively small number of people are involved in a large number of initiatives, but it seems too many for a small group to sustain.

At the same time, I've heard several people reflecting aloud that maybe it's time that Christians started to coalesce back into a new grouping that reflects recent changes. The first to say this to me was Nicky Jenkins, who works as a community celebrant and is a graduate of the same celebrants' course as me. The most recent is this guy who visited Cityside earlier this year and said:

"Since CrossWalk America walked across the U.S. in 2006, we have been insisting that there is a more inclusive, compassionate form of Christian faith emerging at the grassroots in America that is almost entirely overlooked in the popular media.... While this emerging faith is not homogenous, and cannot easily be labeled as “liberal,” “moderate,” or “conservative,” certain characteristics tend to cluster in these communities:

• openness to other faiths
• care for the earth and its ecosystems
• valuing artistic expression in all its forms
• authentic inclusiveness of all people - including God’s lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (lgbt) community
• opposing the commingling of Church and State
• promoting the values of rest and recreation, prayer and reflection
• embracing both faith and science in the pursuit of truth".

It makes me want to revise my "future history" for the fictional World of Biddy and May's so that rather than Pope Gregory XVII opening up the Roman Catholic Church, instead a new unified church coalesces more or less spontaneously and in a non-hierarchical, ground-up manner.

It also makes me think that something like my fictional White Star Order is likely, almost inevitable.

One thing I have to say, though, is that I hope we don't go the path indicated by Matthew Fox's new 95 Theses (posted at Wittenburg in imitation of Luther). I agree more or less with many of his formulations, and I know that "theses," in the original Luther context, are questions for debate rather than articles of faith (does Matthew Fox know this?). However, I think he's taken the wrong direction in proposing specific theological formulations, including an explicit Christology (nothing is more guaranteed to divide Christians than Christology):

"15. Christians must distinguish between Jesus (an historical figure) and Christ (the experience of God-in-all-things)."

Must we? I don't make a sharp distinction between them, because I'm not a classical Liberal drawing from the 19th and 20th-century debates about "the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith". This isn't an essential distinction for me to make in order to make my faith work. If it is for Matthew Fox, then good for him; but I think that the way forward for faith convergence is not this. Rather, as he says later:

"38. A diversity of interpretation of the Jesus event and the Christ experience is altogether expected and welcomed as it was in the earliest days of the church."

Now, that I can get alongside (apart from the pretentious wording).