Justluckie

Incredible Lives? Reclaiming Hagiography

The word 'hagiography' is now used to denote an exaggerated and inaccurate rendering of someone's life - it is a conceit and probably also a deceit which glosses over faults and magnifies what meagre virtues may have been present in the life of the person thus eulogised. The genre is assumed to be the antithesis of biography and is, therefore, rejected by the scientific mind in its quest for the truth about a person. But for many centuries, hagiographies were one of the main sources of spiritual formation for less learned Christians. Were they simply being deceived by a hierarchy seeking to impose compliant behaviour on ignorant masses?

The truth is, I think, considerably more subtle and interesting than that. I have recently been reacquainting myself with some of the early Franciscan texts in order to reconnect with the spiritual tradition that has formed me since early adulthood. St Francis was well provided with accounts of his life, including those written by Thomas of Celano shortly after his death. These earliest Lives were reworked by Bonaventure in the 1260s into a text that became the Order's definitive presentation of the saint's life. There were also later, more popular collections of anecdotes about Francis and his companions, notably the Fioretti - The Little Flowers of St Francis - which includes many of the tales we now popularly associate with the saint.

But how does all this material stack up as history? And to what extent does that matter? Bonaventure was clear that his task was both a historical and a spiritual one. He was careful about the analysis of his sources and interviewed the surviving companions of Francis to corroborate them. But his work is probably most interesting for its spiritual intent. Bonaventure was seeking not so much to inform his readers as inspire them and to offer them a vivid picture of how the soul/mind's journey into God (the title of his most famous work of mystical theology) is worked out in practice in the life of the man whose example of Christian living he follows. Francis left few writings - though what he did leave is important - but it was his life that bore testimony to his spiritual insight. Indeed, his very body became the image of the Christlike humility and the illuminated union with God that he sought. His stigmata are as much an image of transfiguration as of the identification with Christ's suffering.

So in the case of Francis, works of hagiography are the best way to offer insight into a life lived towards God. A hagiography is somewhat like a biography but finds its distinctive character in the interpretive purpose of the work. In our modern context, a work of hagiography should have nothing to fear from the rigours of historical inquiry. Indeed, an honest presentation of a person's life is a spiritual discpline in itself. But the key difference in hagiographical writing is that it intends to 'excite the reader to holiness' not by mere imitation but by offering the possibility that lives can, indeed, be transformed through spiritual discipline and openness to God.

Closed Windows? - Seeing the Past in Southern Finland

I spent some wonderful days at the end of last week in the company of members of our new twin Diocese of Espoo in southern Finland, just to the west of Helsinki. On our first full day there, we were taken to the parish of Kirkkonummi, an area of the diocese which had been used as a naval base by the Soviets in the immediate post-war period. This occupation was brutal, and we could see the scars on the old church. Gravestones had been broken up to use as building material. Local residents were expelled and the church taken over as an officer's mess.  This period is referred to as 'the parenthesis' - a blank time where normal life was driven out.  After the Soviets left in the early '50s, the church was reclaimed and artwork that had been kept safe was reinstated in the church. The interior is stunningly simple and bright, with reminders of the church's medieval past in the setting of a modern church.

During the occupation of this area, trains passing through the area had their windows covered over so that no one could see the Soviet forces. This image of repression and concealment was subversively used for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland's Communications Congress, which we attended for one of its sessions. In contrast to this brutal obfuscation, the church was now seeking to offer open and creative communication in the modern world, not dwelling on the past and not being introspective, but engaging with life in this modern European state.

Why do we misunderstand each other?

John O'Malley's excellent and concise book about the Council of Trent raises some fascinating questions about what might have been if the political circumstances of that turbulent period in European history had been different. He also does justice to the complex theological issues behind the Council and navigates skillfully through the twin conciliar processes looking at reform and doctrine. The key Reformation issue of justification is given interesting treatment and O'Malley shows the spectrum of views held by the Council's theologians, some of which come close to Luther's position. The question, in essence, is to do with the extent to which human will and effort play a part in the process of one's justification before God and this, of course, has implications for the place of the sacraments in the Christian life. But one of his most compelling insights in this part of his survey of the Council concerns the way in which the Council and Luther were coming at the issue from very different modes of knowledge.

Luther's writing is vigorous, polemical, passionate, exuberant, intemperate and personal. The Council's decrees are precise, concise, Scholastic and systematic. Luther's concern was primarily an existential one: how can I know that I am reconciled to God? The Council's concern was a doctrinal one: how can we define the limits of Catholic teaching on this matter? Both, of course, were also concerned with reform of the church's way of operating, and it would be foolish to draw too clear a distinction between these sets of concerns, but the fundamental difference of the dominant mode of knowing over the matter of justification is a vital insight.

It is not the case that doctrinal formulations and existential explorations inhabit separate worlds, but we do get into trouble when we get mixed up about what sort of language we are using to describe different kinds of knowing. It is a frequent concern of mine that religious and anti-religious people often fail to understand each other because of a failure to acknowledge different kinds of knowing and, from O'Malley's brief comment on justification, we can see that the church also runs into this problem in its internal discourse. We can sing something in a hymn that would make little sense in a cathechism and, conversely, precise philosophical language does not always make good poetry. More seriously, if we interact over matters of faith on the level of abstract intellectual discourse, but do not get to the heart of how faith shapes the real lives and choices of believers, we have not addressed the fullness of religious life nor, indeed, of human life. We do not only interact with the world around us through our brains, but also through our guts, our bodies, our breath, our hearts.

 

This Poor Sort - Anglican Franciscans, Poverty and Growth

Peta Dunstan is a notable historian of Anglican Religious life and, for some years, her history of the European Province of the Society of St Francis has been sitting on my bookshelves waiting to be read. I have at last got round to reading This Poor Sort and would recommend it as a careful and judicious piece of history writing. Her account of the birth and growth of SSF pays close attention to the movement's social context and this is vital, as the earliest days of the nascent order were focussed on the provision of help to men who had no fixed abode and relied on the meagre provisions of the casual wards. The work of Br Douglas and his early companions was first of all compassionate, but that compassion also led to political action to address the inadequate provision for homeless men. This political action was not naive and recognised the deeper underlying issues of poverty and worklessness.

So the origins of one of the Anglican church's most prominent religious communities was not a pious attempt to recreate a medieval religious order, but a genuine response to poverty inspired by the witness of St Francis. The later leaders of the movement established a more deliberate focus on the needs of the community life of SSF, ensuring a firm bedrock of prayer, but the order's missionary focus has never been lost. I was greatly privileged to work with SSF in the parishes where I was parish priest in Glasgow in the late '90s. The work of the small house in Barrowfield in the city's East End was impressive in its humble simplicity. The brothers lived in one of the most deprived housing estates in the city and offered a simple ministry of presence, listening, encouragement and committed involvement in a community that bore the brunt of post-industrial decline. Whether playing cards with unemployed young men or attending the management committee of a community project, the brothers exhibited the same prophetic compassion as their order's founders.

It strikes me that the church's wellbeing resides in no small part in its willingness to understand and identify with poverty and those who are poor. This is an evangelical imperative and I've suggested before that it ought to be there in the creed as one of the marks of the true church!

One of the other interesting insights of Dunstan's book is the slow growth of the order. For the first two or three decades of its life, the order grew very little in its numbers. Founded in the 1930s from three predecessor orders, the Society of St Francis did not really experience significant growth in its numbers until the 1960s. I suspect that this was due, in part, to the time needed to establish a single order out of the differing emphases of its constituent parts - not a smooth process - but it is interesting to me that this trajectory does not fit the common assumptions of numerical growth in the wider church. One might have expected to see more growth in these earlier decades followed by a decline as the radical '60s unfolded. It may not be wise to make too simple a comparison between the growth of a religious order and that of the wider church, but I think the contrast is interesting nonetheless. It suggests to me that growth and decline are much more complex phenomena than many suggest.

The story of SSF gives me hope for our Anglican way of being Christian. It shows that the vitality and faithfulness of the church is not restricted to one dimension of its life (eg parishes) and, more importantly, stands as a witness to the essential place of simplicity, poverty and joy in the life of faith.

 

 

War and God - Martial Images in Churches

In some churches, I  have found myself uncomfortably surrounded by images of warfare. These have included military banners, icons or statutes of soldier-saints and obtrusive memorials to military leaders. Their presence in churches disturbs me because they seem so much at odds with the message of the one who did not retaliate and commanded his followers to behave likewise. The presence of these images speaks of a church that has, at times in its history, been allied with secular power and secular power often exerts its influence militarily. As one example, large stone memorials on the walls of some 'civic' Anglican churches give honour to military leaders who executed Britain's colonial ambitions, with varying degrees of success, against subject peoples across a vast empire. That these same churches are often at the more iconophobic end of the ecclesiastical spectrum is a particular irony.

The truth is that churches have endorsed and even promoted the violent ambitions of the powerful at some points of their history. So is it more honest to allow these images to remain and use them as an opportunity to confess a bloody past or to remove them as having no place in a church that works for peace?

I have heard it argued that churches ought to be able to take the whole of human life into their worship and this includes the cruel realities of war. I agree with this principle, but I do not think that permanent memorials to military elites are the way to do this, whatever the ethical record of the individuals commemorated. I would rather see Picasso's Guernica in church as an icon of the cruelty of war than a plaque praising the perpetrator of such violence.

There is, of course, the further question of what one does with existing memorials. Should they be retained as a way of telling our history, however unpalatable? I can see the strength of this argument, but the iconographic arrangements of a church should be directed towards the worship of the God of peace, not the provision of didactic tools.

Churches should, of course, commemorate all the faithful departed, including all those caught up in violent conflict. But I think I would rather not see any martial images in church. I am strongly drawn to the simplicity of Cistercian architecture, which is sparing in its use of any imagery. Among the few images that should, in my view, adorn our churches, is, indeed, one of brutal violence. But it is the brutal violence of the apparatus of state shown for all its evil in the execution of an itinerant preacher who subverted that same violence by refusing to participate in its cycle of revenge, even to the point of refusing self-defence. God is caught up in violence. He is the victim of the powerful, not their ally. He is every bereaved mother, every expendable foot soldier, every piece of collateral damage, and every brave soul who silently resists violence by confronting it with forgiving love.

 

 

Is Religion Heading for Extinction?

Someone recently suggested to me that the statistical evidence surely indicated that religion was likely to die out sooner rather than later. This suggestion was not, I think, based solely on this 'statistical evidence' but also on the assumption that, as human beings progress, they grow out of their need for religion's infantile explanations and consolations. These assumptions have become commonplace among a particular group of people in many of our advanced industrial Western societies and they deserve to be taken seriously. I think a few basic points need to be made:

• The statistics referred to here concern the religious habits of Christians in a number of Western countries. They do not give a picture of how things are in the rest of the world and do not take into account contrary statistics concerning, for example, the growth of Islam in these same countries.
• The statistcs relate to patterns of association as much as 'beliefs' and are not a good indicator of people's religious dispositions. Such dispositions need not take a dogmatic form, and not all religions are primarily dogmatic. Religious sentiments, insights and practices can be found among people who claim no religious affiliation and among those who are atheists. I have met devoutly non-religous, even anti-religious people who practise yoga, find inspiration in the Tao Te Ching and are moved to tears by Bach's Passions.
• History warns us to be suspicious of simple trajectories. For sure, some expressions of particular religions go extinct (Shakers, Catholic Apostolics (more or less), Cathars, Arians), some disappear or are expelled from particular regions (Armenians, Orthodox in Asia Minor) and some are suppressed (in the USSR, post-reformation Britain). Some whole religions even disappear from the planet (Greek and Roman religions, early South American religons) though these often leave interesting traces, some of which are incorporated into successor religions. None of these phenomena lead to the diminshing of religion per se.
• The global context is interesting. Most people on the planet adhere to a religious tradition and that includes some countries that are rapidly modernising. Indeed, religion is in very good health in China and South Korea and the situation in North America is very different from that in Europe, which appears to be something of an exceptional case.
• The contention that religion belongs to a primitive stage of human development seems to me to be an entirely ideological one. The evidence seems to suggest that religion, in many different modes of expression which belong, nonetheless, to a recognisable category, is as deeply human as artistic expression, philosophy or politics.
• The simple identification of religion with a particular construction of theistic belief is mistaken. Not all religions are theistic and those that are have many ways of talking about God. Few of these ways bear much resemblance to the kind of theism one finds in certain brands of Christian fundamentalism, which is the understanding of God usualy assumed by those who talk about the forthcoming extinction of religion. Religion cannot be identified with belief alone. It also includes practices, artefacts, texts, communities and traditions of thought.

I am no use at all when it comes to prediction, but I am fairly confident that religion is here to stay within the human family. It will change, and may well change in ways we can't predict. Some religions, or particular expressions of a religion, will die, and our ways of practising religion may change very significantly, but religion is no more likely to disappear from the planet than music, conversation or social interaction.

Decent, Civilised, Humane? Lessons from Afghanistan

William Dalrymple's gift for writing good history is a many-faceted one. He writes compellingly, giving both intimate portraits of the individuals involved in his story and a clear overview of the narrative. But his greatest gift is the ability to draw on sources from all sides in a conflict, giving a fuller view of the complexities of history than the usual, more chavinistic narratives allow. As an aside, I fear that the hidden message behind recent political attempts to renew the study of history in England is that we should favour such chauvinistic perspectives.

Dalrymple's new book on the first Anglo-Afghan war of the late 1830s and early 40s, Return of a King, uses Afghan sources previously unfamiliar to anglophone writers on this period as well as the intimate memoirs of British protagonists. His rounded view of the events surrounding Britain's attempts to champion the cause of the exiled king, Shah Shuja, over against the reigning leader, Dost Mohammad, shows an imperial power that is at once paranoid about Russian intentions in the region, ignorant of local politics (willfully so - they had access to the information they needed), ruthless in executing their plan but hopelessly indecisive in the face of stronger than expected opposition, recklessly disdainful of local culture and morality and more concerned about saving face than achieving a sustainable outcome. The behaviour of British troops is, at times, shockingly brutal and the treachery shown towards Indian sepoys under British command was a significant factor in the first Indian Uprising in the mid '50s.

None of this is to say that the behaviour of the Afghan protagonists in the conflict was exemplary, but Dalrymple is quite right in maintaining the primary focus on the behaviour of an invading force seeking to impose its will on a sovereign nation. His account is subtle and even-handed. He is always willing to show the exceptional behaviour of individuals from either side of the conflict and is fully aware of the compromised nature of battlefield ethics.

Dalrymple has shown us the value of an honest appraisal of Britain's imperial past, a past that continues to have an impact on our international activities. He shows how the key figures from the British invading forces continue to have a place in the memories of Afghan people, long after these same figures have disappeared from British consciousness. Indeed, the war itself features much more prominently in Afghan self-awareness than in British memory. In this regard, I am reminded of the significant place of the Magdala Expedition in Ethiopian consciousness while the same events, so prominent in the British public awareness of the time, are now consigned to a few street names and regimental banners. It is not good for our national wellbeing that we exercise such efficient amnesia in relation to our imperial history. We would understand our current standing in the world better if we read more books by William Dalrymple.

On Pendle Hill

Jeanette Winterson's new novel, The Daylight Gate, is a retelling of the story of the Pendle Witch Trials. It is full of magic, alchemy, abuse, poverty, suspicion, love and brooding atmosphere. She captures well the tragedy of the plight of women trapped in extreme poverty, whose lives are always on the edge and whose survival can never be taken for granted. They become easy targets in a society undergoing massive cultural change and still recovering from the failed attempt to blow up king and parliament a decade before. The zeal of the law enforcers is driven by a mixture of fear, suspicion of the 'old ways', whether that be Catholicism or witchcraft, and desire to prove loyalty to a king who has taken a particular interest in 'daemonologie'. Winterson never allows the story to be depersonalised, with the relationships of Alice Nutter holding the narrative together. It is a story of power and weakness but also of love and knowledge. The magic is presented without apology or commentary and the lines between magical practice, witchcraft, technology, science and superstition are very fuzzy.

 17th Century England was an extraordinary place, experiencing the massive disruptions of rapid political, religious and intellectual change. The same century that produced Guy Fawkes and the witch trials later produced the Civil War, a new line of monarchy, Isaac Newton and John Locke. It also produced another event on Pendle Hill which contrasts powerfully with the witch trials of 1612. In May 1652, George Fox climbed the hill and experienced a vision that was to lead to a new direction for his band of religious seekers. He saw 'in what places [the Lord] had a great people to be gathered'. The society that was to become known as the Quakers formed, to some extent, around that gently apocalyptic vision. It is remarkable to me that, in a century of such utter turmoil, a religious movement should find a way based on the 'inward light', renouncing violence and power, seeking a path of simplicity and silence.

They were not, however, alone. At the same time in France, a movement known as the Quietists were similarly stressing the inner life at a time of great social agitation. Madame Guyon and her followers were strongly condemned by the church hierarchy at the time, although what was condemned was probably an extreme interpretation of her teaching. Unhelpfully, the erudite and eirenic Francois Fenelon's careful defence of Madame Guyon's position also came under attack and this resulted in a significant setback for the place of the mystical strand of Christian faith and practice for generations.

To me, these expressions of an inward faith at a time of politico-religious strife were powerfully prophetic stands against a compromised church, stands which did not come cheaply to their protagonists. It is wrong to see either the Quakers or the Quiestists as in retreat from the 'real world'. To my mind, they were doing nothing more than reminding their feverishly belligerent contemporaries of a gospel founded on love.

What will be left of us? - artifacts and digital ephemera

My new favourite website is called Europeana, a Europe-wide collaboration between cultural institutions which makes cultural artifacts available digitally. It's basically a huge online museum. One of their current projects is a roadshow travelling the continent to encourage people to drop in with their family artifacts from the Great War which are digitised on the spot and eventually made available through the web portal. People are bringing postcards, photographs, trench art, diaries, official military documentation and letters. One of the most moving things for me about this project is that it allows us to see this history from a very human perspective, but also from an international perspective. Most of our static museums show a partial, national view of this history. As an example of this, there is a very moving little film on the website showing a young German woman's search for material relating to her ancestor Otto Arndt, a German soldier who, along with a British soldier, rescued other British soldiers from a burning building. The two soldiers became and remained friends and Otto made a matchbox cover for his friend out of an old shell case. The matchbox is one of the items digitised and available to view on the site.

Many of the artifacts are written ones - letters, postcards and diaries - and this got me wondering about what our current generation produces in a tangible form that might offer a physical connection to our time to future generations. Given the extent to which our lives are transacted digitally, is it possible that we are robbing the future of its past? Where once a journal was written, now an ephemeral blog takes its place; emails and texts take the place of postcards; flickr and facebook replace photo albums. And it is not clear whether these new artifacts will have a future. If they do, we will be leaving behind more than our forebears did, but if they don't, we will leave considerably less. In any case, the physicality of the artifacts will be lost and this saddens me. The handwriting of an ancestor in a battered diary is surely a more wonderful and personal thing than a Times New Roman email.

So maybe we should all write a little more down, make artifacts to be handled and handed on, create a story for the future.

Another Journey to the Centre - Jerusalem

I hinted yesterday that the Muslim practice of Hajj and of orientation towards Mecca has had some similarities with the Christian understanding of Jerusalem. Alongside the British Museum's Hajj exhibition, there is another much smaller exhibition with a single object at its heart. It is a model in wood and inlaid mother of pearl of  the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem:

The model is beautifully crafted and dates from the 17th century. The separate components of the building are cunningly fitted together like a jigsaw and can be removed to show the interior spaces of this holy site. I've blogged a little before on the church itself and some of its architectural representations, but this portable version has an altogether more domestic feel, a table-top reminder of a space that represents so much faith, holiness, history and, indeed, controversy. The building is shared by six branches of the Christian church: Greek, Latin, Armenian, Coptic and Syrian, with the Ethiopians keeping above it all in their little monastery on the roof. The church is probably best known today for the annual disgrace of trench warfare between different hues of black-clad clerics and there is no doubt that this space has been contested for a very long time. Indeed, it could hardly be anything other, being situated in a city which is, itself, the most contested piece of land on the planet.

There is a part of me that wants to separate out this unseemly conflict from a 'pure' expression of the city's religious importance. It has, after all, prompted poetry of the highest quality from the Hebrew prophets, has occupied a place of unparalleled affection in the hearts of Jewish people, has formed the basis of a vision of a restored human community of peace and beauty and has stood as a metaphor for a place of belonging for all of humanity. In the face of its current, apparently intractable divisions, should we not just give up on th poetry and write the place off as a failed project, a broken symbol?

I am reluctant to do this because, in its very brokenness, Jerusalem still tells us very much indeed both about our human aspirations and about our human failures. And for Christians, the ability to hold failure and possibility together in the one place ought to be well practised, especially with reference to this place!

So, given the significance of Jerusalem for the history and practice of religions, good and bad, it seems like a good project for Lent to try to understand a bit more about it. I've started with recordings of Simon Sebag Montefiore's TV series and will seek out some good writing on the city, maybe starting with my old colleague, Simon Goldhill's book and a re-read of Gerard Hughes' reflection. Any further suggestions (short of a trip there, can't manage that just yet) are most welcome!