Confessing Evangelical

Over the past few days we've been looking at Jacques Ellul on Anarchism and Christianity (1 | 2 | 3). In particular, we've seen how Ellul argues from both the Old Testament and the New Testament that "the only Christian political position consistent with revelation is the negation of power".

But what does this mean in practice? As I said in my previous post on this topic, Ellul's position can be summed up as "anarchy is neither possible nor desirable, but working towards it is essential". We can see this if we turn from the chapter we've been looking at from Jesus and Marx to the opening chapter of Ellul's book, Anarchy and Christianity (dodgy [in every sense] scanned-in PDF version available here). In this, he explains more of what he means by "anarchy", and in particular what he does not mean by this term:

There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anarchists who choose violence as a means of action.

Ellul opposes violence both as a matter of tactics - citing successful examples of non-violent protest led by people such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Lech Walesa - and on principle, since "[b]iblically, love is the way, not violence". This certainly does not mean we are to be politically docile:

Not using violence against those in power does not mean doing nothing. I will have to show that Christianity means a rejection of power and a fight against it...

I believe that anarchy first implies conscientious objection - to everything that constitutes our capitalist (or degenerate socialist) and imperialistic society (whether it be bourgeois, communist, white, yellow, or black).

This isn't just a protest against centralization, so the decentralization favoured by many politicians is not only insufficient, but "has made the defense of freedom much harder":

For the enemy today is not the central state but the omnipotence and omnipresence of administration. It is essential that we lodge objections to everything, and especially to the police and the deregulation of the judicial process.

We must unmask the ideological falsehoods of the many powers, and especially we must show that the famous theory of the rule of law which lulls the democracies is a lie from beginning to end. The state does not respect its own rules. We must distrust all its offerings. We must always remember that when it pays, it calls the tune.

Ellul is most in favour of localised ventures "organized apart from the political, financial, administrative, and legal authorities and on a purely individual basis", such as schools run by the parents of the children attending them.

Ellul describes himself as being "very close to one of the forms of anarchism", and says he believes that "the anarchist fight is a good one". So, he asks, "What separates me ... from the true anarchist?"

One key issue is anarchism's hostility to God and religion, but another "point of division" is Ellul's views on the attainability of an anarchist society:

The true anarchist thinks that an anarchist society - with no state, no organization, no hierarchy, and no authorities - is possible, livable, and practicable. But I do not. In other words, I believe that the anarchist fight, the struggle for an anarchist society, is essential, but I also think that the realizing of such a society is impossible.

Ellul argues that anarchists tend to have a naive view of human nature:

In truth the vision or hope of a society with neither authorities nor institutions rests on the twofold conviction that people are by nature good and that society alone is corrupt. At the extreme we find such statements as this: The police provoke robbery; abolish the police and robbery will stop.

Ellul denies that his argument here is based on the Christian idea of sin. "Sin in effect exists only in relation to God", he argues, and the equation of sin with moral fault has been "the mistake of centuries of Christianity". Rather, "sin is a break with God and all that this entails". So:

When I say that people are not good, I am not adopting a Christian or a moral standpoint. I am saying that their two great characteristics, no matter what their society or education, are covetousness and the desire for power ... No society is possible among people who compete for power or who covet and find themselves coveting the same thing. As I see it, then, an ideal anarchist society can never be achieved.

Moreover, as Ellul points out in Jesus and Marx, even if anarchism did achieve its aim to "overthrow society, destroying its whole framework", then:

...this destruction would amount to another manifestation of power, which could only lead, inevitably, to a reconstitution of power.

So, Ellul continues, "I have no faith in a pure anarchist society, but I do believe in the possibility of creating a new social model". This need for a new social model "is all the more urgent because all our political forms are exhausted and practically nonexistent":

Our parliamentary and electoral system and our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable. Nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, and omnipresent.

Our experience today is the strange one of empty political institutions in which no one has any confidence any more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of a political class, and at the same time of the almost infinite growth of power, authority, and social control which makes any one of our democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state.

This can be seen in "the growth of the state, of bureaucracy, of propaganda (disguised under the name of publicity or information), of conformity of an express policy of making us all producers and consumers, etc". (All this, written in 1988, is eerily prophetic of New Labour's methods and aims.) And, as Ellul continues:

...[t]o this development there is strictly no reply. No one even puts questions. The churches have once again betrayed their mission. The parties play outdated games. It is in these circumstances that I regard anarchy as the only serious challenge, as the only means of achieving awareness, as the first active step.

It is impossible to prevent some people from exercising power over others:

But we can struggle against it. We can organize on the fringe. We can denounce not merely the abuses of power but power itself. But only anarchy says this and wants it ... In a word, the more the power of the state and bureaucracy grows, the more the affirmation of anarchy is necessary as the sole and last defence of the individual, that is, of humanity.

As Ellul puts it in Jesus and Marx:

Challenging power is the only way to make freedom a reality. Freedom exists if the negation of political power is strong enough, and when people refuse to be taken in by the idea that freedom will surely come tomorrow, if only... No, there is no tomorrow. Freedom exists today or not at all.

Concluding thoughts

So, does this series of posts represent my own personal relaunch as a Christian anarchist? I doubt it. I'm not sure Ellul takes sufficient notice of his own point that "political power and organization are necessities in society". If political power and organization are necessary, then I don't see how our only relationship towards them can be one of negation and "conscientious objection".

And while Ellul makes a convincing case for saying that the Bible displays a far more radically hostile attitude towards earthly political power than is often assumed, the fact is it still takes the existence (and even, to some extent, the desirability) of that power for granted. Ellul's omission of Acts from his survey of the New Testament may be significant, because a key theme in Acts is the way the power of Rome played (inadvertently, and by the grace of God) a crucial role in allowing the spread of the Gospel.

So my attitude towards Ellul's radical critique of political power is similar to my attitude towards the similar critique made by many postmodernists about the misuse of language as an instrument of power.

In the case of language, much of this critique is spot-on, and the church would benefit greatly if Christians learnt to be more aware of how language, narratives and truth claims can function as power-plays and have an oppressive effect on others, and of how our view of what is "objective" is determined to a large extent by prior assumptions and our own interests. A more extensive (and self-directed) use of the "hermeneutic of suspicion" would do no harm at all in some quarters. But that doesn't lead me to agree with more radical assertions to the effect that we can no longer trust language to operate as a vehicle for objective truth at all, or indeed that there is no objective truth in the first place.

In the same way, while I think Ellul goes too far with many of his concrete proposals for living out anarchist principles, he is absolutely right to say that Christians should never give any political power a "free pass". "Jesus is Lord, and therefore Caesar isn't" - so we need constantly to be relativizing political power, to be regarding all political power as being inherently suspect.

If we find ourselves holding a position of wholehearted and uncritical support for any politician or political position, or if we find our instinct is always to seek a solution to problems by means of political power rather than by other means, then Ellul will again hold us to account on this, and rightly so.

Yesterday's Telegraph had some interesting coverage of what may turn out to be one of the most significant social transformations in history: the conversion of China to Christianity.

A piece headed "Christianity is China's new social revolution" describes how there are now probably more Christians in China than there are members of the Communist Party. The writer points out that "Few believe that many of the party's 70 million members keep the faith burning any more". As one house church member puts it:

"We have very few people who believe in communism as a faith, so there's an emptiness in their hearts."

The article describes the persecution that Chinese believers face, but also the ambivalence of the Chinese leadership, who find themselves in a similar position to that faced by Roman emperors between AD 50 and 300: the dilemma of how to deal with an ideologically threatening religion whose members are model citizens:

China's rulers are said to be ambiguous about Christianity's growth. Some see its emphasis on personal morality as a force for stability. House churches which go along with the authority and theology of the official organisations are often left alone.

But many reject the party's control over Christian practice and doctrine, and these are seen as a threat. After all, 80 million members would mean there are now more Christians than Communists in China.

Further background in the sidebar article, "Converts inspired by democracy protests and western values", including examples of how some conversions to Christianity are connected to the failure of the Tiananmen protests in 1989.

I just got a story accepted by Slashdot: Patent Examiners Flee USPTO. It's a story about an "exodus" of patent examiners from the US Patent and Trademarks Office, ground down by poor management and overwhelming numbers of stupid patent applications, particularly in the fields of software (read: Microsoft) and internet-based business methods (read: Amazon).

For those of us who had already long-ago concluded that the USPTO has lost it, and is now simply granting any patent where the application lands face up on the doormat, this provides an interesting insight into the human cost behind the scenes of a collapsing and discredited system.

(Apologies in advance for the truly abysmal "handle" that I got myself saddled with, btw. "John H" had, not surprisingly, long gone by the time I signed up for a /. account.)

Continuing our look at Jacques Ellul on Anarchism and Christianity (see previous posts 1 | 2), we come now to Ellul's assessment of the New Testament's teachings on political power.

1. Jesus

Ellul describes "Jesus' attitude toward power in the Gospels" as "radically negative". Indeed, he "held power up to ridicule", as demonstrated by:

...the famous incident in Matthew 17:24‑27, in which a shekel found in a fish's mouth served to pay the tax: the only miracle of this extravagant type, precisely to show that the obligation to pay the tax is ridiculous!

Just as Jesus "submitted to Herod's governmental jurisdiction without giving any sign that He recognized its validity", so it is with "the famous 'Render to Caesar'":

In no way does Jesus favor here the division of the exercise of power into two realms ... He said these words in connection with a second conversation about tax payment, and concerning a coin. The image on the coin is Caesar's; it marks the coin as his property. Give him this money, then (Jesus by no means legitimizes the tax!).

Jesus means that Caesar, as creator of this money, is its master ‑ nothing more (we must not forget that for Jesus money belongs to the realm of mammon, a satanic realm!).

As for "the things that are God's"..., how could a pious Jew of Jesus' time take this expression as meaning anything but "everything"? As Creator, God is the master of life and death. Everything depends on Him. Jesus' words mean that Caesar is the legitimate master of nothing, except for what he makes himself (and it belongs to the order of the demonic!).

Similarly, Jesus' statement that "My kingship is not of this world" (John 18:36) "in no way suggests that Jesus recognizes the validity of [earthly political] power":

Jesus does not represent an apolitical or spiritual attitude; rather, he launches a fundamental attack on power. Rather than showing indifference to what politics can be or do, Jesus expresses His refusal of politics in this passage.

No gentle dreamer who looks down from the sky, Jesus challenges the validity of the earthly kingdom. He refuses its power because it does not conform to God's will. This is still true, whether power is exercised by the proletariat, Communists, etc. Power does not change its spiritual nature when it changes hands.

The temptation narratives go even further: Ellul argues that, while Jesus refuses to worship Satan in return for the kingdoms of the world:

...He does not dispute Satan's claim by saying that these kingdoms and their political power do not belong to him. On the contrary, Jesus implicitly agrees: Satan can give political power.

This protest against political power "finds its most violent expression in the book of Revelation", in which we find two beasts representing the state and political propoganda respectively; the red horseman "whose only function is making war, exercising power, and causing human beings to perish", representing political power; and towards the end, "Babylon, the focus of political power, the power of money, and the structure of the city."

2. Paul

It is in the context of this "consistent biblical series of negations of political power, of witnesses to its lack of validity and legitimacy" that we are to read Romans 13:1-7. Ellul describes this as "the only text appearing to provide a general basis for submission", as opposed to those that tell us merely to pray for the authorities ("a service we render them, perhaps ... so that [they] will not fall into the hands of demons").

Ellul argues that Romans 13 is written in the context of a rejection of the authorities ("not only a refusal to worship Caesar") in the first generation of Christians, a rejection that led early Christians "to a refusal, for example, to do military service":

Consequently, Paul's text appears to be a reaction against the extremism of the anti‑political, anarchist position. Basically, he says: "Don't go too far; don't go to extremes in your refusal. After all, authority comes from God, who has reduced the magistrate to the level of servant (whereas he claims to be the master). The good in society certainly falls far short of the Word of God, but this good amounts to something, after all ‑ and the magistrate guarantees it."

This definitely seems to be echoed by Wright ("It’s fine to point out the wickedness of earthly rulers, but when someone steals my car I want justice"). It also reminds me of Orwell's comment in The Lion and the Unicorn in which he describes the assertion by his fellow left-wingers that Britain is no more democratic than the Fascist or Soviet systems as being equivalent to saying that "half a loaf is the same as no bread".

Also, Romans 13:1-7 must be read in its context:

Romans 12 speaks to us of love, and suggests several applications of it. Paul ends his chapter with love of enemies ("if your enemy is hungry, feed him," v.20, for example). Furthermore, immediately following Romans 13:1‑7 on the authorities, Paul returns to the theme of love ... Obviously, the verses on the authorities are included within Paul's teaching on love. I would go so far as to summarize them in this fashion: "Love your enemies. No doubt we all consider the authorities our enemies; we must love them, too, however."

But since Paul gives a specific reason for loving in each case he considers (the Church, the brethren, enemies, the law, the weak in faith, etc.), he does the same for the authorities. It is in this connection that he writes his famous "there is no authority except from God" (Rom. 13:1; we must emphasize the negative construction here, as opposed to its later formulation, suggesting a principle: omni potestas a Deo, all power comes from God).

This text, it seems to me, should be reduced to its real meaning: rather than giving us the last word on the matter of political authority, it seeks to apply love in a context where Christians detested the authorities.

Conclusion

So, Ellul concludes, "both the Old and New Testaments take exception to all political power":

No power can claim to be legitimate in itself. Political power and organization are necessities in society, but only necessities. They attempt repeatedly to take God's place, since magistrates and kings invariably consider themselves the incarnation of authority.

We must continually challenge, deny, and object to this power. It becomes acceptable only when it remains on a humble level, when it is weak, serves the good (how rarely does this happen!), and genuinely transforms itself into a servant (of people, since it already serves God!)

"Christianity's historical sin has been to recognize the state," Ellul declares:

there is no given Christian form of power. This is because, in reality, the only Christian political position consistent with revelation is the negation of power: the radical, total refusal of its existence, a fundamental questioning of it, no matter what form it may take.

I repeat this statement not so Christians will turn toward some sort of spiritualism, political ignorance, or apolitical position ‑ certainly not! On the contrary, as Christians we must participate in the political world and the world of action, but in order to deny them, to oppose them by our conscious, well‑founded refusal.

In my final post on this topic, we will look at Ellul goes on to describe here (and in the opening chapter of his book, Anarchy & Christianity) how Christians should apply these principles in "our concrete historical situation", one in which "the determining and decisive problem is that of the universal power of the state". (Briefly, his argument seems to be that "anarchy is neither possible nor desirable, but working towards it is essential".)

I will also try to say something on what I personally make of all this.

Labels: christianarchy, jesus is lord so caesar isn't

Before I get round to posting the last of my main posts on Ellul's chapter on Anarchism and Christianity, the following section seemed to have a certain topical relevance.

Ellul is discussing the teachings of the Russian religious and political philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev:

Berdyaev contends that the state's well‑being and prosperity do not represent the well‑being and prosperity of the governed, and still less of all people. The equation of the state's well‑being with that of its people is an abominable lie. The state's prosperity always implies the death of innocents. Faith in the state means that to save the state, we must go so far as to sacrifice the innocent.

Ellul then quotes Berdyaev as follows:

"The death of one man, of even the most insignificant of men, is of greater importance and is more tragic than the death of states and empires. It is to be doubted whether God notices the death of the great kingdoms of the world; but He takes very great notice of the death of an individual man."

(CS Lewis makes a similar point somewhere, but the reference escapes me at present.)

Update: The CS Lewis quote I was thinking of is from The Weight of Glory:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

Thanks to Bill and Rick.

In my previous post, I started to look at Jacques Ellul's attempt to "reconcile Christianity with anarchism". In the chapter on Anarchy and Christianity that we are looking at, Ellul summarises what he sees as the biblical evidence for anarchism.

First, in answer to the question "What does the Old Testament teach concerning political power?", Ellul looks first at power generally, among "the nations", and then at political power within Israel itself.

1. "The nations"

The Old Testament "always challenges political power in itself where the 'nations' are concerned":

The Old Testament claims repeatedly that these kings consider themselves gods, but they will be destroyed in order to manifest their weakness.

Even in the case of Israel's deportation to Babylon:

...when the prophets instruct the people to work for the good of the society in which they live, there is no question of supporting the Babylonian king.

Even the examples of Joseph and Daniel, who "collaborate with a foreign king", do not legitimise those foreign kings. Joseph's service to the Egyptian king, in the end, "produces nothing but the slavery of all Israel!"

As for Daniel, he finds favour with both Babylonian and Persian rulers, but he still ends up in the lion's den:

Power is dangerous and devouring; participating in political action and reflection on behalf of the government is an undertaking that inevitably puts true faith in danger. Such participation can lead only to proclaiming the end of this power and to its destruction.

We must remember that Daniel remains a prophet of doom for the different kings he serves. He announces to each one the end of his reign, the destruction of the kingdom, the death of the king, etc. Consequently, he negates power to its face, in a sense, even if he serves it temporarily.

2. The Israelite monarchy

The Old Testament's depiction of the Israelite monarchy is scarcely any more positive than that of the rulers of the nations. "The main text is clearly 1 Samuel 8, the institution of kingship", asserts Ellul, and the message of this chapter is threefold:

1. Political power rests on distrust and rejection of God (vv.6-8).
   


2. Political power is always dictatorial, excessive, and unjust (vv.10‑18).
   


3. Political power is established in Israel through conformity, in imitation of what is done everywhere else (vv.5, 19-20).

The first King, Saul, is a "raving madman". David is then "by grace and as an exception ... just a ray of light, showing that God can bring miraculous good from human evil".

As for David's immediate successor:

Solomon shows how exceptional David was; though admirably well equipped for the exercise of power, Solomon ends up radically corrupted by power. His accumulation of wealth and women, his setting up of an independent political power, his establishment of cities, etc. ‑ these can all be considered normal actions for a political power. But these activities produce Solomon's estrangement from God, and finally his rejection. The Bible indicates clearly that Solomon's exercise of political power corrupted a man who began as wise, good, and humble.

Ellul then makes a fascinating observation about the depiction of kingship in the books of Chronicles, which "offer us a very strange assessment of political power":

Systematically ... all those shown objectively to be "great" kings historically are represented as bad kings: idolatrous, unjust, tyrannical, murderous. These kings brought about better political organization, made conquests, and enriched their people. In other words, they exercised power "normally."

On the contrary, when it comes to historically weak kings, those who lost their wars, allowed their administration to unravel, and lost wealth, Chronicles considers these as good kings...

The utter consistency on this issue in Chronicles shows its significance. As far as I know, no other chronicle or historiography, in any country in the world, uses this approach; everywhere else, one considers the successful king as great and legitimate.

Then, as a final observation on the Old Testament, Ellul examines what the coronations of the Israelite kings has to tell us. He argues that the coronation procedure and the names used to designate kings show us that:

...the king is never considered to have value in himself. The king is never anything but the current, temporary, incidental sign of the One who is to come.

The Coming One defines the present king, who has no importance. He serves merely as a signpost, a pointer that anticipates. God accepts political power to the degree that it points ahead to the ultimate perfection of the Messiah and the Kingdom.

Political power never has any value in itself. On the contrary, Scripture radically repudiates, challenges, and condemns it whenever it claims to exist as political power rather than as a sign. Political power's only value depends on something coming in the future (uncertain at best!) and on what it signifies (the unknown!). We can therefore conclude that the Old Testament never in any way validates any political power. On the contrary, the Scriptures consistently challenge it.

In the next post, we will look at how Ellul tackles the "two tendencies" found in the New Testament: those texts (such as Romans 13) that are "favourable with respect to power", and those ("much more extensive") that are "hostile" towards it.

The French sociologist, theologian and (aren't they all?) philosopher Jacques Ellul looks at a rather different political perspective for Christians: Anarchy and Christianity (from his book, Jesus and Marx, which attacks the concept of "Marxist Christianity").

Ellul notes that anarchists have a fundamental hostility towards religion that goes far beyond that of Marxists: Marxist hostility to religion is, as it were, incidental to that system, whereas "anarchists make the destruction of religion a central element in their revolution". As the anarchist writer Bakunin put it (reversing Voltaire's phrase), "If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him".

And from the other side of the fence, anarchy is often equated with chaos; and "chaos can hardly suit Christians", who can "hardly conceive of a society without a preestablished and rigorously maintained order".

However, Ellul argues that in fact, contrary to the views of both anarchists and most Christians:

...biblical thought leads straight to anarchism ‑ anarchism is the only "anti-political political position" in harmony with Christian thought.

And, indeed, the anarchists - who see only the negative aspects of Christian history, while "all reality of love, joy and liberation, also lived by Christianity in these periods, is gleefully omitted" - are mistaken in thinking that atheism is a necessary condition for anarchy. On the contrary:

[T]he presence of the God of Jesus Christ is the necessary condition for human liberation. Denial of this necessity has caused the failure of all the so‑called liberating revolutions ...

Arriving at real freedom requires the relativization of all human pretensions and therefore of all human domination. This relativization takes place only if humanity recognizes an exterior limit that transcends it, and if the transcendent limit is liberating love (as in the Christian revelation).

Ellul goes on to look at the biblical support for anarchy, which will form the subject of my next post. However, just as a final thought for this post, we should not automatically assume that an "anarchist" position is necessarily going to mean a "left-wing" outlook. As Ellul points out:

In view of the fact that freedom remains the anarchists' central imperative, they belong to the Right (since freedom has been the Right's rallying cry since 1945).

And we'll see that there are marked parallels between Ellul's argument and those advanced by NT Wright (see previous posts: 1 | 2), so much so that I expect Wright must have read Ellul on this subject. But while for Ellul his conclusions lead him towards anarchy, Wright's not-dissimilar conclusions lead him, ironically, to a defence of monarchy (see the final section of his essay, "God and Caesar" (PDF)).

Labels: christianarchy, jesus is lord so caesar isn't

From famine and disaster;
     from violence, murder and dying unprepared,
     good Lord, deliver us.

- the Litany (from Common Worship)

"I'm not against the police - I'm just afraid of them."
- Alfred Hitchcock

The fallout from Friday's shooting continues to dominate the news and opinion columns. Yesterday's front-page story from the Independent was a powerful reminder of the human side to this tragedy:

Jean Charles de Menezes wanted to be an electrician from the age of 10. The blond-haired boy would tell his mother, Maria, that it was the way he would leave behind the poverty of rural Brazil for a better life abroad ... By the time he was 18, Jean Charles had overcome the odds to complete his professional diploma. It was the piece of paper that would allow him swap a life of odd jobs in the crime-ridden ghettos of Sao Paulo for a home in London.

Such was his desire to make the most of the opportunity, the Brazilian had mastered English within four months of his arrival in Tulse Hill, south London, in March 2002 ... He quickly adapted to British life. To relax, the 27-year-old would watch television - a favourite programme was EastEnders - or hang out with friends in a Brazilian bar close to Oxford Street.

In his thrice-weekly phone calls home, he told his mother he was safe and a happy in London - that the police did not even carry guns ... Gesio Cesar D'Avila, 37, a friend and work colleague, told The Independent: "He was happy in London. He liked all the different cultures on his doorstep. He wanted to go home as a success."

Three days ago, shortly before 10am, his modest ambition was terminated some 7,000 miles from home by a burst of 9mm bullets from a Glock 17 pistol fired into his jaw and mouth at point-blank range by an officer from a Scotland Yard anti-terrorist unit.

Even after several days, the details in that last paragraph are still truly shocking to read. Whatever we might believe about the rights and wrongs of the "shoot to kill to protect" policy and how it was executed (sic) last Friday, it is still a sobering thought to consider what a ghastly and terrifying death Mr de Menezes suffered. This is not reduced by the fact that the victims of the terrorist attacks on 7th July died in no-less terrible circumstances.

Anyway, today's responses to Friday's events include an intelligent article from Martin Kettle in the Guardian (from which the Hitchcock quote above is taken) reminding us that this tragedy should not blind us to what has changed, greatly for the better, in the relationship between Londoners and the Metropolitan Police. Some fascinating historical background.

Then, in the Telegraph, Mark Steyn weighs in with his thoughts on the subject:

[T]he supposed "suicide bomber" ... turned out to be a Brazilian electrician on his way to work. Unfortunately, by the time the Metropolitan Police figured that out, they'd put five bullets in his head. We're told we shouldn't second-guess split-second decisions that have to be made under great stress by those on the scene, which would be a more persuasive argument if the British constabulary didn't spend so much time doing exactly that to homeowners who make the mistake of defending themselves against violent criminals...

There is an important difference between events like this, and the situation faced by British soldiers opening fire on people in Iraq, argues Steyn:

Anyone who rubs up against the military in Iraq knows what to expect: attempt to crash a roadblock and don't be surprised if they open fire. But few of us had an inkling of the Met's new "shoot to kill" policy until they shot and killed Mr de Menezes.

That has certainly been the real shock for me, and I suspect many others. I can see why the "shoot to kill to protect" policy may be necessary, and I have considerable sympathy for the police officer whose feelings of grief and guilt at having shot an innocent man we can barely begin to imagine. But this terrible event was the first any of us in the general public had heard of this new strategy. Who knows how Mr de Menezes would have reacted had this policy been as widely advertised before last Friday as it has been since then?

As for the suggestion that Mr de Menezes was the "author of his own misfortune" (a point that has been put to me on several occasions over the past few days), Steyn gives this argument short shrift:

[A]lthough I've had a ton of e-mails pointing out various sinister aspects of his behaviour - he was wearing a heavy coat! he refused to stop! - it seems to me there are an awful lot of people on the Tube who might easily find themselves in Mr de Menezes's position...

So a man in a suspiciously warm coat refuses to stop for the police. Well, they were a plain-clothes unit - ie, a gang - and confronted by unidentified men brandishing weapons in south London I'd scram, too.

As Steyn points out, it is not much comfort to be told that what happened to Mr de Menezes "was the right treatment but the wrong patient and we'd better get used to it".

I can see why the police have decided it is necessary to adopt this policy of "headshots" with suspected suicide bombers, and I suspect the death of Mr de Menezes will end up being recognised as a tragedy rather than one in which anybody is culpable, but it's right that we remain shocked by events like this, and insist that the burden of proof is on the police to justify their actions.

A week after it dared to suggest that the principal "root causes" of terrorism may in fact be extremist teachings within Islam rather than the misdeeds of the west, the New Statesman reverts to type with a lead story entitled "Blair's Bombs". Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and it will surprise no-one to discover that John Pilger thinks the terrorist attacks were all Tony Blair's fault.

Anyway, I could respond to this by posting on the Spectator's lead item, "The Left's war on Britishness" (which is worth reading for its litany of achievements providing an answer to the question, "What have the British ever done for us?", though I could have done without some of the tedious boilerplate on "political correctness" in the first half of the article).

But, to quote the Pakistani academic reverentially interviewed by BBC Radio Four yesterday morning about the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, I think I would rather "repay them in their own coin", with a critique from one of their own. I'm currently re-reading George Orwell's classic extended essay, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, and the following passage had me punching the air in delight at its contemporary relevance:

The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality... And underlying this is the really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia - their severance from the common culture of the country.

In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during "God save the King" than of stealing from a poor box...

Orwell is scathing about both the attitude of the "Blimps" (i.e. "the military and imperialist middle class", as in Colonel Blimp) and the "intellectual sabotage from the Left" during the period between the wars:

Both Blimps and highbrows took for granted, as though it were a law of nature, the divorce between patriotism and intelligence. If you were a patriot you read Blackwood's Magazine and publicly thanked God that you were 'not brainy'. If you were an intellectual you sniggered at the Union Jack and regarded physical courage as barbarous.

It is obvious that this preposterous convention cannot continue. The Bloomsbury highbrow, with his mechanical snigger, is as out-of-date as the cavalry colonel. A modern nation cannot afford either of them. Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again. It is the fact that we are fighting a war, and a very peculiar kind of war, that may make this possible.

In my post on Saturday, Left and Wright, we saw how NT Wright, in his essay on God and Caesar, began by looking at the Enlightenment categories that continue to dominate and distort our political thinking today, even as Christians, and then went on to examine the very different perspective found in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha.

Turning to the New Testament, Wright looks at the "the trick question, and the opaque answer, about the tribute penny, about Caesar and God", in Mark 12:13-17 and parallels. Wright argues that "this is not an 'isolated' political comment in an otherwise nonpolitical sequence of thought". The whole sequence of debates in Mark 11 and 12, of which this exchange forms part, is "politically and theologically freighted".

Wright summarises this incident as follows:

Tax revolts against Rome were nothing new. A large-scale one had taken place during Jesus’ boyhood, and had been crushed with typical Roman brutality. Saying, ‘Yes, pay the tax,’ would be to say ‘I’m not serious about God’s kingdom.’ But to incite people not to pay would at once incur trouble.

Jesus gets his interlocutors to produce a coin, tacitly admitting that they kept the hated coinage, with its blasphemous inscription and its (to a Jew) illegal image, a portrait of Caesar himself. Whose is it? he asks. Caesar’s, they answer. Well then, says Jesus, you’d better pay back Caesar in his own coin – and pay God back in his own coin!

However, Wright suggests there is (even) more going on here than meets the eye, especially when we look at some of the echoes this would have for Jesus' hearers:

The closest echoes to this double command are found in 1 Maccabees 2.68. Mattathias is telling his sons, especially Judas, to get ready for revolution. ‘Pay back to the Gentiles what is due to them,’ he says, ‘and keep the law’s commands’. Paying back the Gentiles was not meant to refer to money.

I am sure that some of Jesus’ hearers would have picked up that revolutionary hint. Because he was standing there looking at a coin, his surface meaning was, of course, that the tax had to be paid; but underneath was the strong hint that Caesar’s regime was a blasphemous nonsense and that one day God would overthrow it.

It is also clear from this setting, argues Wright, "that Jesus did not mean it as indicating a separation between the spheres of Caesar and God, with each taking responsibility for a distinct part of the world."

Wright goes on to draw a fascinating parallel between Jesus' reply in the "God-and-Caesar" exchange and His crucifixion:

Jesus’ death can itself be seen as Jesus’ own offering, simultaneously, of what was due to Caesar (crucifixion was what Caesar did to rebel kings) and what was due to God.

Enlightenment categories are "simply unable to cope" with what Mark and the other New Testament writers are saying here, "let alone the meanings which [Jesus] ... intended his followers to discern in his death":

The death of Jesus brings to a head the ambiguous character of the Israelite monarchy from Saul and David right on through history. Calvary and Easter become the focal points of the apocalyptic and wisdom traditions, and hence of second-Temple Judaism’s political theology: God’s new world is born, claiming the kingdoms of the world as its own, because their central and most powerful weapon, death itself, has now been broken.

Moving on to the early church, we find many of the martyrs living out this tension between relativising the kingdoms of this world on the one hand, and living as obedient citizens on the other.

Take Polycarp, for example, who is called upon by the Roman Governor to blaspheme or curse Jesus Christ and to swear "by the Genius of the Emperor". Polycarp indignantly refuses ("I’ve served him for eighty-six years, and he’s never done me any wrong; how can I blaspheme my King who saved me?") but then continues to explain how he respects the Governor's office, since "we have been taught to render honour to the rulers and authorities who are appointed by God":

Even when Polycarp is on trial for his life, he is content to say, like Jesus before Pilate in John 19.11, that God has appointed the pagan governor who is about to pass sentence. This is puzzling to us, but it would have made sense to the authors of Daniel, Wisdom, Mark, or John.

This double point - "Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord, King and Saviour; but God has appointed people, however unfit, as authorities in the world" - is also found in the writings of Paul and Peter. To return to the point made in my post yesterday:

[I]n almost every letter Paul demonstrates that Jesus is Lord, and that Caesar isn’t; that the ‘gospel’ of Jesus upstages the ‘gospel’ of Caesar; that the true salvation is achieved through Jesus, not Caesar; that the world needs God’s justice, not Roman justice; and, with great irony, that the cross, a hated symbol of Roman rule, had been transformed into the life-giving symbol of God’s self-giving love.

Paul’s central arguments constitute a massive outflanking movement against the imperial rhetoric of his day (emperor-worship was the fastest-growing religion of the time).

Romans 13 then has to be read in that overall context:

God does not want anarchy. Nor, of course, do we. It’s fine to point out the wickedness of earthly rulers, but when someone steals my car I want justice...

Romans 13 is not ... a carte blanche for rulers to do what they like. Paul is not setting rulers on a high pedestal, above criticism. Instead, he is reminding them that they have been instituted by God and remain responsible to him for the authority they bear.

In conclusion, the fundamental Christian attitude towards the state is neither blind obedience nor "a blanket condemnation of all rulers and authorities"; neither revolution nor reactionism:

Rather, what the early Christians offer is inaugurated eschatology: like the Israelites under their monarchy, chafing at its imperfections and looking for the fulfilment still to come, the followers of Jesus are to live under the rulers of the world, believing them to be appointed by God but not believing that that makes them perfect or that they do not need to be held accountable. On the contrary. Because they are God’s servants they may well need to be reminded of their duty, however dangerous and uncomfortable a task that may be.

Labels: christianarchy, jesus is lord so caesar isn't

"The man shot dead in Stockwell tube station yesterday was not connected to the attempted bombings of London on July 21, police said tonight..."

A Metropolitan Police statement said, "For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets."

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm not sure the language in that statement really does the situation justice. You shoot dead in broad daylight someone who turns out not to be a suicide bomber after all, and the best you can come up with is the sort of language that might serve for someone falsely arrested for shoplifting ("the Metropolitan Police Service regrets" - someone should set that to music).

OK, they call it a "tragedy", but a bit more of a sense of people crawling over broken glass in abject misery and despair would be a start.

"If you're not Labour at 20 you have no heart, and if you're not Conservative at 40 you have no head."

- Petronella Wyatt, providing a variant on a much-attributed quote

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem with the Conservative Party: while not all Conservatives are heartless, far from it, that is where all the heartless people end up - and they have a twenty-year head start on the others...

Some more from Thomas Dunelm on the subject of the gospel and politics. His essay God and Caesar, Then and Now (PDF) is actually on the topic of the establishment of the Church of England - a fascinating topic in itself, but let's not go down that particular rabbit-hole today - but includes some good material on the more general issue of the relationship between church and state.

Wright begins by looking at "three influential features of Enlightenment thought which are taken for granted today":

The first is the assumption of a split-level world in which ‘religion’ and ‘faith’ belong upstairs and ‘society’ and ‘politics’ belong downstairs ... Our modern word ‘state’ is itself an Enlightenment invention, designating a self-operating system, free from religious influence. Thus even to phrase the question in terms of ‘church and state’ may run the risk of deciding things in advance.

When we hear Jesus talking about God and Caesar, we tend to import this modernistic church/state divide into what He is saying. Wright continues:

This brings us to the second Enlightenment assumption often taken for granted today: that political beliefs and attitudes come in two packages, and that everyone has to choose one or the other.

There is the package of the Right: rigid social structures, hierarchy, law and order, a tough-minded work ethic and a strong view of national identity. Then there is the package of the Left: freedom and revolution, overthrowing hierarchies, blurring old lines, doing things in new ways. It is assumed that, with local variations, you are basically in one camp or the other, and that many other decisions are determined by it.

This in turn has an effect on how Christians think about politics:

Those who have discovered in our own day that Jesus announced the Kingdom of God, and that Paul spoke of Jesus as the world’s true Lord, often assume that this implies some variation on today’s left-wing package, just as for generations people who have discovered that Paul insists on obeying ‘the powers that be’ have assumed that this implies some kind of right-wing pacakge.

"The third influential Enlightenment assumption" that Wright looks at "is the belief in progress":

History (it is believed) reached a climax in Europe in the eighteenth century; humanity’s calling ever since has been to implement this achievement. If recalcitrant elements in earlier worldviews have proved harder to shift than the early revolutionaries had imagined, they must be mocked or shamed into giving themselves up.

Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World follows precisely this agenda (though it does so with such verve and panache, and with such entertaining results, as to be highly recommended reading).

Wright then briefly sketches how each of these Enlightenment assumptions has come under attack in recent years, as belief in progress finds itself accused of being "a covert excuse for imperial domination", belief in left-and-right political alternatives becomes mired in the growing disillusionment with electoral politics in the west, and secular modernism (of which Wheen's book, again, represents a nostalgic last gasp) is replaced by "spirituality".

"This then brings us to the foundational question," continues Wright: "what does the New Testament say on the whole subject?":

Above the High Altar in Westminster Abbey are inscribed words from Revelation 11.15: ‘The Kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ.’

This is typical of what the New Testament declares: God is king, and the kingdoms of the world are thereby demoted. The crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Messiah, Lord of the world; he is already reigning at God’s right hand; he will reappear to complete this rule by abolishing all enemies, including sin and death themselves.

While Christianity sees history as moving towards a great climax, "this has nothing to do with automatic progress and everything to do with sacrifice, vocation and the strange purposes of the living God".

Wright identifies two main strands on this subject in Jewish thought before Christ. First, of course, the Israelite monarchy, which "in many periods of Christian history ... was invoked as the model for Christian kings and queens". But as Wright points out:

[I]n the Old Testament itself kingship is ambiguous, and hardly supports a triumphalist use.

Instead, the "really formative period for Jewish political thinking" was the Babylonian exile and its aftermath. This is the period "which set the tone for the New Testament", as "Jewish writers from the exile to Jesus and beyond wrestle with the ambiguities of living as God’s people under non-Jewish rule".

Wright singles out two books in particular. First, Daniel, with its stories "of Jews who refuse to compromise with paganism", but who nevertheless are promoted to positions of service within the pagan kingdom:

Jews may face martyrdom (not least because they refuse to privatize their faith), but they are committed to being good citizens even under a regime at best penultimate and at worst blasphemous.

Of course, there comes a time when the true God will judge the pagans, and then God’s people must get out and run. There will come a time when all regimes, including the one within which Daniel is a loyal civil servant, will give way to the kingdom that God will set up, which can never be shaken.

Combining apocalyptic visions of God’s coming kingdom and public service within the present one appears shocking to the Enlightenment mindset. But something like this is what we find in the New Testament and the early church.

The second book highlighted by Wright is the Wisdom of Solomon, which "offers a stern warning to pagan kings and rulers". They have been appointed to their high office by the living God, but will be judged for how they exercise that rule, and therefore need Wisdom ("more or less an alter ego for God himself") to guide them:

This is not the absent God of Enlightenment Deism; it is the wise, guiding, judging, rescuing God of the biblical tradition. This God does not divide the world between right and left, authority and revolution. Both of those are too brightly lit, too unambiguous, to be ultimately useful in guiding our steps in the right paths. Wisdom herself proposes a different way.

In my next post, we can look at how Wright then moves on to look at how the New Testament builds on this Old Testament and intertestamental foundation. But in the meantime, I think that last paragraph gives an important second guiding principle to add to the assertion that "Jesus is Lord, therefore Caesar isn't" (or alternatively, as quoted above, "The Kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ").

That principle is this: we are to be wary of signing up to any prepackaged and self-contained set of political ideas (whether "the package of the Right" or "the package of the Left"). Instead, what is needed is wisdom.

This may sound obvious, but on a personal level I certainly think that in rejecting "the package of the Left", I have at times fallen into the trap of unthinkingly accepting some aspects of the "the package of the Right" just because they are presented as part of a seamless, coherent political philosophy in which it is easy to get swept along, especially if (like me) you're a bit of a sucker for an incisive, entertaining and persuasive writer.

In other words: Jesus is Lord, therefore Mark Steyn isn't.

Labels: christianarchy, jesus is lord so caesar isn't

In particular, [the proclamation of the gospel] included from the start a strong political critique. Not the tired old left-wing harangue in Christian dress, of course, but a more subtle, more Jewish, more devastating critique: Jesus is Lord, therefore Caesar isn’t.

- NT Wright, Decoding Da Vinci (see previous post)

Of course, as I should have added yesterday, the principle that "Jesus is Lord, therefore Caesar isn't" also puts paid to the tired old right-wing harangue in Christian dress.

And, at the moment, that principle seems to be about as far as I can go in claiming to have any sort of coherent "political philosophy". As I put it recently, my political beliefs have gone over the past 20 years from "Conservative to Marxist to 'Left of Blair' Labour to Christian Socialist to whatever I am now (uninspired lump of sod, mainly)" - though an uninspired lump of sod that reads the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, you'll note, and that voted Conservative at the last election (albeit as what CS Lewis might call "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England").

Anyway, for most of my adult life I have been firmly on the left, politically. My main disappointment with Tony Blair between 1994 and around 2002 or so was that he was far too right wing. I kept thinking I ought to join the Labour Party just so I could then resign in a fit of pique over the latest betrayal of socialist principle.

For a few years I was a member of the Christian Socialist Movement (whose site currently appears to have been hijacked by some t0t411y 133t h4xx0rs!!! lol!!!! UR t3h kewl! 11!!), and if asked what my basic political guiding principle was I would have answered (please don't laugh at the pomposity of this!):

Let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

Stirring stuff.

Now isn't the time to go into the details of why I moved away from that Christian Socialist position. Part of it was rethinking what the Old Testament prophets such as Amos, as well as New Testament writers like St James, were doing: namely, calling on the rich to change their behaviour, rather than calling on the state to change it for them. Plus, the seventh, ninth and tenth commandments don't cease to apply just because we decide to break them collectively through the apparatus of the state rather than as individuals.

But, even if we reject the idea that the Bible mandates the state to enforce its teachings on economic justice, there is still the danger that we go to the other extreme and forget about those teachings altogether. (A similar dynamic can be seen in relation to sexual ethics, of course.) Unfettered capitalism seems as alien to the spirit of the Bible's teachings on this issue as statist socialism.

(Perhaps our motto should be "socialist ends by capitalist means!" - except that that sounds like something dreamed up by the Chinese Communist Party...)

This then raises the question of whether capitalism can really survive in a healthy way where a Christian moral framework has ceased to govern people's behaviour, and where "mediating institutions" between the individual and the state - such as families, churches, local communities - have been gravely weakened, so that increased state intervention and control to impose proper behaviour becomes (or, at least, can be presented as having become) the only alternative to anarchy and disorder.

Perhaps the problem is not unfettered capitalism as such, in the sense of capitalism unhampered by state-imposed restrictions, but shameless capitalism, capitalism unhampered by more general moral restraints and counterbalancing social structures.

Anyway, I find myself slightly adrift at the moment. But that New Testament, gospel principle described by Wright seems a good place to start in rebuilding a political worldview: Jesus is Lord, therefore Caesar isn't.

This isn't about saying we should be looking to build up some sort of Kuyperian system of Christianised politics. Quite the contrary: it excludes the very possibility of a unique and exclusive "Christian" politics. Caesars of the left and of the right, and all points in between, are relativised by the Lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus.

Hopefully I will be able to find the time to explore some more of these thoughts in posts over the coming days, including some more from NT Wright on this subject (now there's a surprise!) but also some others too. Who knows, I might even be able to approach some degree of coherence by the end of the exercise. But in the meantime, this post will hopefully give you some idea of where this particular uninspired lump of sod is coming from.

In the second of yesterday's posts on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I quoted NT Wright's summary of the political implications of the gospel in the context of the first century Roman Empire: "Jesus is Lord, therefore Caesar isn't". Wright's suggestion is that this political emphasis is a central part of the New Testament's message, and a key reason why the first Christians faced martyrdom.

Wright has recently written an entertaining analysis of the Da Vinci Code for the Durham University theological journal "Borderlands" (p.22 of that 1.8MB PDF file). In the course of his article he examines the claim that the "true message" of the early church is to be found not in the New Testament, but in Gnostic texts such as the "Gospel of Thomas" or the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. From these, we can supposedly discover that Jesus was just a spiritual teacher who made no claims to divinity, and who certainly didn't do anything so vulgar as to die for the sins of the world and rise from the dead on the third day.

On the contrary, Wright argues, "the divinity of Jesus is already firmly predicated by Paul, within twenty or thirty years of Jesus' death", and the other New Testament writers are equally clear on this issue. He continues:

In particular, the resurrection of Jesus was central to early Christianity; and his death was consequently interpreted, from extremely early in the movement, as (a) the fulfilment of the Jewish scriptures, (b) the defeat of all rival spiritual powers and (c) the means of forgiveness of sins.

Early Christianity was not primarily a movement which showed, or taught, how one might live a better life; that came as the corollary of the main emphasis, which was that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had fulfilled his age-old purposes, had dealt with the powers of evil, and had launched his project of new creation upon the world.

The early Christian gospel, which was then written up in the four canonical gospels, was the good news, not that a new teaching about hidden wisdom had appeared, enabling those who tapped into it to improve the quality of their lives here or even hereafter, but that something had happened through which the evil which had infected the world had been overthrown and a new creation launched, and that all human beings were invited to become part of that project by becoming renewed themselves.

In particular, this included from the start a strong political critique. Not the tired old left-wing harangue in Christian dress, of course, but a more subtle, more Jewish, more devastating critique: Jesus is Lord, therefore Caesar isn’t. That is there in Paul. It is there in Matthew. In John. In Revelation.

That is why, from at least as early as the second century, the Roman empire was persecuting the people who were reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and the rest – not, we note, the people who were reading "Thomas", "Philip" and the other Nag Hammadi codices. Why would Caesar worry about people rearranging their private spiritualities?

In the comments to my earlier post, Larry asked if it was "a deliberate choice ... or coincidence" that I should post a Bonhoeffer quote on 20 July, the anniversary (I now realise) of the failed Stauffenberg bomb plot.

Answer: it was because the secondhand copy of "Letters and Papers" that I ordered at the weekend arrived this morning, and I'd been wanting to post that quote for ages. It's not in the abridged edition I previously owned, but I'd loved the quote ever since reading a library copy of the full edition a number of years ago.

Anyway, the anniversary of the attempt on Hitler's life is a good excuse to post the following quote from Martin Luther King (HT to British Muslim blogger Yusuf Smith):

If your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi and non-violence. But if your enemy has no conscience, like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer.

"Discuss."

Actually no, discuss this instead (or as well...): at dinner my wife picked up on my description of Bonhoeffer as a "martyr" and asked whether that is really the appropriate term. We can see that Bonhoeffer died as a consequence of his faith; we can see how his imprisonment and death became a great witness to Christ and to Bonhoeffer's faith in Christ; but that's not the same thing as dying for one's faith.

His executioners did not consider themselves to be killing him for being a Christian, but for being a member of a failed political plot to assassinate their national leader. So does that make him a martyr?

On the other hand, were the first Christian martyrs really executed for "religious" reasons, or for "political" ones (as if those categories were so easily separable in the first century Roman Empire)? In other words, for the bold assertion that (as NT Wright is fond of putting it) "Jesus is Lord, and therefore Caesar isn't".

Perhaps Bonhoeffer serves as a caution to us against over-spiritualising (and de-politicising) martyrdom in a manner that is alien to the spirit of the New Testament and the experience of the early church.

(PS: on the subject of the Stauffenberg plot, this post from last year summarised Frank Johnson's argument that the failure of the plot was probably, in retrospect, a Good Thing.)

Here's Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing to Eberhard Bethge, 6 May 1944:

I shall be writing next time about Christians' "egoism" ("selfless self-love"). I think we agree about it. Too much altruism is oppressive and exacting; "egoism" can be less selfish and less demanding.

From Letters and Papers from Prison, p.287.

Sadly, Bonhoeffer appears not to have followed up on this statement in his subsequent letter, but it is a very useful principle to chew on and seek to apply in different circumstances. More subtle and interesting, if less amusing, than CS Lewis' line about the "woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expressions".

There are certainly contexts in which I've found it particularly useful over the years: such as driving, where it is often safer (and shows more consideration for other road users) for a driver to behave in a predictable but "self-interested" manner than to cause confusion by excessive "altruistic" deferring to others.

Great quote from "On the Unity of Christ" by St Cyril of Alexandria:

Indeed, the mystery of Christ runs the risk of being disbelieved precisely because it is so incredibly wonderful.

For God was in humanity. He who was above all creation was in our human condition; the invisible one was made visible in the flesh; he who is from the heavens and from on high was in the likeness of earthly things; the immaterial one could be touched; he who is free in his own nature came in the form of a slave; he who blesses all creation became accursed; he who is all righteousness was numbered among the transgressors; life itself came in the appearance of death.

All this followed because the body, which tasted death, belonged to no other but to him who is the Son by nature.

Fascinating introduction to this book, too: the Council of Ephesus is always an encouragement for those of us tempted to despair over the politicking that goes on within the contemporary church. Modern synods and conventions would be greatly enlivened by Ephesus' blend of procedural dodges, mutual excommunications and indiscriminate arrests of the leading participants (see Chris Williams' post on this from last year).

A reminder of what normal life looks like on the London Underground:


Text version available here. Other poems on the underground can be seen here.

The People Who Get It find their voice, at Unite Against Terror:

Terrorist attacks against Londoners on July 7th killed at least 54 people. The suicide bombers who struck in Netanya, Israel, on July 12 ended five lives, including two 16 year old girls. And on July 13, in Iraq, suicide bombers slaughtered 24 children. We stand in solidarity with all these strangers, hand holding hand, from London to Netanya to Baghdad: communities united against terror.

Some highlights from the statement:

The vast majority of the victims of al Qaeda's violence have been Muslims. Those who have suffered at the hands of violent Islamic Fundamentalist movements in Iran and Algeria have also been ordinary Muslims.

This terrorist violence is not a response by 'Muslims' to the injustices perpetrated upon them by 'the west'. Western democracies have been responsible for some of the ills of this world but not for the terrorist murders of these deluded Bin-Ladenists.

[...]

These terrorists do not hate what is worst in the societies they attack, but what is best. They despise individual liberty, critical thought, gender equality, religious tolerance, the rights of minorities and political pluralism. They do not criticize democracy because it sometimes fails to live up to its principles; they oppose those principles.

[...]

We are frequently urged to understand the terrorists, but too often the call to understand is code for justification and apology. There are always other, better, more effective, and more human ways of opposing injustice than by killing yourself and others in a symbolic act of hatred. Muslims who have pursued modern democratic politics have often been the first in the firing line of the terrorists. The road to a just solution in Israel-Palestine is signposted by 'mutual recognition' and 'political dialogue' not the blind alley of terrorism.

[...]

We offer our support and solidarity to all those within the Muslim faith who work in opposition to the terrorists and who seek to win young people away from extremism and nihilism, towards an engagement with democratic politics...

Read the whole thing here and sign up to indicate your support to this statement. The current list of signatories is here, and the blogger whom I am now permanently fated to know only as "someone called Wretchard" :-) has some of the more interesting expressions of support here.

The list of signatories seems to suggest that many on the left are finally shaking themselves and coming back to their senses, realising they can no longer make a de facto, "my enemy's enemy" alliance with extreme Islamism. The Michael Moore era is over. This has to be a Good Thing.

While we're all quoting "is he, isn't he?" Bob Dylan songs round here (When He Returns, Jokerman), here's one of my favourite Dylan songs in this vein, Every Grain of Sand:

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Far-too-short clip can be heard here.

This week's New Statesman has an excellent cover story by Ziauddin Sardar entitled The struggle for Islam's soul (free for the next few days, then £1 for 24-hour access). And I'm not saying that just because Sardar's article backs up the basic thrust of the argument in my post from a couple of days ago, Would the real Islam please stand up? :-)

Sardar writes:

Most Muslims abhor violence, yet the terrorists are a product of a specific mindset that has deep roots in Islamic history. If Muslims refuse to confront this, we will all be prey to more terror.

He continues by highlighting some of the statements from Islamic groups in the UK that tend to promote the view that "these are the acts of pathologically mad people; Islam has nothing to do with it", before asserting:

But Islam has everything to do with it. As Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, director of the Muslim Institute, points out: "The terrorists are using Islamic sources to justify their actions. How can one then say it has nothing to do with Islam?"

Sardar writes:

It is true that the vast majority of Muslims abhor violence and terrorism, and that the Koran and various schools of Islamic law forbid the killing of innocent civilians. It is true, as the vast majority of Muslims believe, that the main message of Islam is peace.

Nevertheless, it is false to assume that the Koran or Islamic law cannot be used to justify barbaric acts. The terrorists are a product of a specific mindset that has deep roots in Islamic history...

The terrorists place a unique burden on Muslims. To deny that they are a product of Islamic history and tradition is more than complacency. It is a denial of responsibility, a denial of what is really happening in our communities. It is a refusal to live in the real world.

He goes on to look at three characteristics of the tradition of Islam "that nourishes the mentality of the extremists".

Firstly, it is ahistoric, so that it sees Islam not as "a religion interpreted in the lives and thoughts of people called Muslims", but rather as "a utopia that exists outside time". This is illustrated by the fact that the Wahhabi sect that runs Saudi Arabia has spent much of the past 50 years bulldozing more than 300 historic sites in Mecca and Medina, "especially those related to the Prophet":

Why? Because other Muslims will relate to the history of the Prophet, and they will then see him as a man living in a particular time and space that placed particular demands on him and forced him to act in particular ways.

The Wahhabis want to universalise and eternalise every act of the Prophet. For them, the context is not only irrelevant but dangerous. It has to be expunged.

Secondly, this tradition is monolithic. Anyone who disagrees with it is, ipso facto, not a true Muslim. This is illustrated by the following shocking story from India:

Imrana Bibi, the 28-year-old wife of a poor rickshaw puller in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, was raped by her father-in-law. The religious scholars of Deoband, an influential seminary with Wahhabi tendencies, issued a fatwa: her marriage is nullified, her husband is forbidden to her for ever, she will have to separate for life from him and her five children. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board endorsed the "punishment".

When Imrana Bibi herself, along with women's rights groups, complained about the double injustice, the clerics at Deoband declared: "She had a physical relationship with her father-in-law. It does not matter whether it was consensual or forced. She cannot live with her husband. Any Muslim who opposes our fatwa is not a true Muslim and is betraying Islam."

"So no complaint or opposition is allowed," observes Sardar. "A perfect tradition can only produce perfect fatwas. And those who are seen as betraying Islam can themselves become subjects of other perfect fatwas."

Third, this tradition is aggressively self-righteous, with many terrorist targets (eg in Bali) chosen specifically as symbols of a moral decadence that deserves to be resisted with violence.

Sardar goes on to argue (as my earlier post did, following Malise Ruthven) that this tendency within Islam is not a modern aberration, but goes right back to the Kharjite sect that emerged in the earliest decades of Islam:

The Kharjites developed a radically different interpretation of what it means to be a Muslim. To be a Muslim, they argued, is to be in a perfect state of soul. Someone in that state cannot commit a sin and engage in wrongdoing. Sin, therefore was a contradiction for a true Muslim - it nullified the believer and demonstrated that inwardly he was an apostate who had turned against Islam. Thus anyone who did any wrong was not really a Muslim. He could be put to death.

"It just won't do," continues Sardar, "to argue that [neo-Kharjite Islamists] are 'not Muslims'":

We must acknowledge that the terrorists, and their neo-Kharjite tradition, are products of Islamic history. Only by recognising this brutal fact would we realise that the fight against terrorism is also an internal Muslim struggle within Islam. Indeed, it is a struggle for the very soul of Islam.

In his concluding paragraph, Sardar quotes Dr Najah Kadhim of the Islam21 network of Muslim intellectuals, who says:

The best way to fight the Kharjite tradition is with the humanistic and rationalist traditions of Islam. This is how they were defeated in Islamic history. This is how we will defeat them now.

In other words, something akin to the Enlightenment in the west (a better parallel than the Reformation, as Chris Atwood pointed out in the comments to my earlier post). Or as Boris Johnson puts it in his cover story for this week's Spectator (free registration required):

When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass?

Very sharp point from Andrew Gimson, in his parliamentary sketch on yesterday's discussions in the House of Commons:

We are witnessing the emergence of an immensely influential liberal consensus. Mr Blair and his followers may claim to be saying something about the true nature of Islam, but what they are actually doing is laying down the conditions on which Muslims will be allowed to live in Britain.

Moderate Muslims will be welcome while, in Mr Blair's words, those "who may incite hatred or act contrary to the public good" will be excluded, or deported if they have already come here.

Worth reading in conjunction with Boris Johnson's piece today, in particular his condemnation of Enoch Powell, whose "catastrophic 1968 tirade against immigration ... made it impossible for any serious politician to discuss the consequences of immigration, and how a multiracial society ought to work."

In the aftermath of an event like last Thursday's attacks, both Muslims and non-Muslims have been falling over themselves to point out that "real Islam" does not condone violence, that "real Islam" is a religion of peace and brotherhood.

Equally, there are those, including many Christians, who point to various passages in the Qur'an and the Hadiths to argue that, in fact, it is precisely the "real Islam" that lies behind attacks such as these: that it is not merely circumstances or culture that result in so much contemporary terrorism having its origins in Islam, but something intrinsic to Islam itself.

So, which is right? Which is the "real" Islam?

Well, I can't pretend to be an expert on this subject, but one book I can heartily recommend on the subject of Islam, and how its teachings have developed over the centuries, is Malise Ruthven's book Islam in the World. And one message implied by this book is that both sides of the argument are in some measure correct: both the "religion of peace" and the "religion of war" have some claim to represent "authentic" expressions of Islam.

It's striking just how violent the origins of Islam were. Quite apart from the 27 military campaigns led by Muhammad personally (and the further 38 that he delegated to his junior commanders), the decades after Muhammad's death were marked not only by further wars of conquest, but by int