Goodbye to Canterbury

What a way to go out?

Dr Rowan Williams celebrates his first day of freedom from office with a brilliant documentary journey through Canterbury Cathedral: Goodbye to Canterbury. The BBC at its best and Rowan at his best: brilliant, poetic, articulate, fascinating, stimulating, educative, erudite, clear.

I still maintain – as I have consistently – that the 'Rowan is too hard to understand' narrative was mostly an excuse by lazy commentators who couldn't be bothered to work at thinking.

In this programme – written and presented by Rowan himself – he proves himself to be an adept communicator and media operator. How embarrassing for so many to have written him off so easily.

In this wonderful programme we have poetry, art, history, music, aesthetics, theology, philosophy, drama, beauty, honesty, storytelling, ecclesiology, evangelism, rhetoric, social analysis, realism, education, communication, interpretive clarity, personal reflection, politics, economics, explanation, and more besides.

Perhaps Rowan might be persuaded to do more of this now he has left office?

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What’s truth got to do with it?

Call it coincidence, but planning a look at Pontius Pilate on Good Friday got interrupted by watching Alan Bennett’s History Boys (again) with American friends who are staying with us. Out of the blue comes the question – in relation to literature and history – about truth: “What’s truth got to do with it?”

Good question. In the film (about education and learning and poetry and identity) truth is irrelevant to playing the right game and getting the exam results you need to get into the university of your choice – box ticking does the job nicely. And Pilate – though obviously not terribly preoccupied with the sort of educational sausage-machine nonsense we have had to put up with from successive governments in England – is puzzled by the same conundrum: not only is truth questionable, but it also isn’t clear what truth looks like or whether it matters.

Pilate, faced by one in whom the truth about God, the world and us is embodied, is rendered impotent. The judge stands judged; the powerful is neutered. All he has left is violence and populism. But, truth isn’t shaped by either of these.

Later in the film Hector, the teacher who inflames the imagination of his students, is being told to resign by the philistine snob of a headteacher who just ‘doesn’t get it’. Hector starts to quote poetry. The boss stops him, spitting out: “This is no time for poetry.” Yet, Hector has been trying to tell his students that poetry gives us a language – a vocabulary – for expressing an understanding of experience. Poetry learned and absorbed now gives us a language later when we do experience the things represented in memorable and imaginative language.

Perhaps Pilate might have fared better if he had learned a bit more poetry. Perhaps, if he had been teased by the parables of Jesus, he might have been driven by less functionalism. Maybe.

 

And another thing…

I haven’t exactly been blogging alot in the last few weeks. I haven’t lost my nerve (or my interest), but there hasn’t been time to give attention to it. Loads of meetings, some wonderful visits to wonderful places to meet wonderful people and just a bit of problem stuff. A six-week series of Lent Addresses, a lecture last week on Christianity & the Media, loads of sermons and a Quiet Day tomorrow (Telling Tales: Recovering our Scriptural Nerve): very creative.

But the world isn’t boring, is it?

• Today the USA and Russia have agreed a massive reduction in nuclear missiles/warheads.
• The Pope is under fire, as is his Church, because of historical sexual abuse and a flood of apologies.
• There is about to be regime change in Iraq (again)
• The General Election has all but begun.
• And the future of Rafa Benitez remains uncertain (despite the protestations) – look at the face and behaviour of Gerrard and Torres.

What’s interesting about these matters is that they all have something to do with power.

Mutually Assured Destruction was as mad as it sounds – and now belongs in the 1980s. Post Cold War generations can’t believe that this was ever seriously considered a reasonable approach to global security. So, Obama adds a foreign policy victory to his domestic (health care) achievement of last week and thus puts another question mark over what many Americans understand by ‘freedom’. And about time, too.

The Pope is in a mess, but so is much of the criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. The particular criticism I refer to has to do with the knee-jerk stuff about celibacy, homosexuality and priesthood. I don’t believe in celibacy as a dogma (I think my wife is relieved), but it is ludicrous to say that celibacy itself turns priests into paedophiles or abusers. What does that say about single priests whose celibacy is a definite (and often costly) vocation?

Surely the problem is with people who abuse their privileged access (to people), trust and authority to exercise power over vulnerable people. Removing the insistence on celibacy might make some priests happier, but it won’t address the essential problem of those who abuse the power they have – and rightly attract the opprobrium of those who are betrayed. (Bishops asking for ‘forgiveness’ sounds a bit too easy…)

Like everyone else, I feel horror at the abuse exercised by priests over a long period of time. But, seeing Rome squirm is not a reason for vicarious mocking (as is being heard in some quarters); it is a tragedy and a crime and the focus should be on restoring those whose lives have been wrecked by abuse. Both they and the abusers need our prayers, but our prayers should be realistic.

I was reflecting on all this while visiting the excellent Cross Purposes exhibition at Mascalls Gallery in Paddock Wood, Kent. We went there after visiting All Saints’ Church, Tudeley, the only church in the world to have all the windows decorated by Marc Chagall. The windows are beautiful, powerful, moving and challenging. Go from there to the exhibition at Mascalls and you are confronted by representations of crucifixion that make you stop and stare.

Chagall’s drafts for his Tudeley windows are also there, but it is his Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio (1945) that speaks most arrestingly – even today as we think about power (and its abuse) in all its guises, and especially as we face increasingly confident right-wing parties gaining ground in the forthcoming election. Here’s the picture:

The Jewish Chagall has the crucified Jesus blocking access to the blackened Nazi as ruin lies around. Here we see the confrontation of two contrasting concepts of ‘power’.

One far-right party in England asks (in its attempt to attract naive Christians to its causes): ‘what would Jesus do?’ I think Chagall offers an answer.

 

Images of power (Rome 3)

The Vatican Museums are brilliant, but deceptive. I don’t mean ‘deceptive’ in the sense that they are out to deceive you, of course. What I mean is that you get inside the building at the back of the Vatican City and a sign points to the Sistine Chapel (which was what I wanted to see). What it doesn’t really tell you is that you have to walk about ten miles through endless other galleries before you get to it. And once you are there, you are suffering from sensory overload – having had your eyes assaulted by classical riches on every surface of every room. It is wonderful, but overwhelming.

What struck me particularly on this journey (with aching feet) was the syncretism of so much of the religious art. I am sorry if this confirms my ignorance in the minds of the intelligentsia, but this stuff is not my forte. Biblical, Christian and classical mythological themes and characters are mixed up to such an extent that anyone coming to it cold could be forgiven for being somewhat confused.

The second striking thing (for me, at least) was the masculinity of the women in the Sistine Chapel frescoes. Everybody says Michelangelo ‘couldn’t do women’, but I hadn’t realised how true this is. It is as if he painted muscular blokes and then stuck odd-shaped breasts on their front. It is weird. Now, when I mentioned this to someone who knows more about such things than I do (which is not very hard…), he shrugged and suggested it was just one of those things – every genius has his weak spots. Well, I am not so sure. That is like suggesting that Mozart was a great musician, but that he could only read or write music in a few specific keys. It doesn’t add up.

I don’t go in for all the ‘da Vinci Code’ nonsense, but I am a bit perturbed by some aspects of what I saw in the Sistine Chapel.

• Michelangelo could have painted women if he had wanted to: but he chose not to. Why?
• Why is Satan showing us his bare bottom as he is being cast out of heaven?
• And why does Adam have a belly-button?

I don’t want to push this too far, but the heart of the Vatican is full of naked flesh in very odd circumstances. And I wonder how that is dealt with theologically and ethically.

Perhaps the most shocking image for me was in the Constantine gallery – before getting to the Sistine Chapel. The ceiling has a powerful image of the shattered statue of the emperor lying in pieces on the floor while his place on the pedestal is taken by a crucified Christ. I understand this refers to the vision Constantine had prior to going into battle under the sign of the cross, but it left me disturbed for two reasons:

1. The power of God seen in Jesus Christ was not a simple substitute for political power as exercised by emperors and generals. The power of God in Christ is a scandal to the world of the military powermongers because it is apparently so weak: a man hanging on the gallows with his arms outstretched in welcome to whatever the world throws at him. This is an affront to power, not a substitute for it.

2. Yet it could also be seen as the ‘scandal of the cross’ standing in judgement over the broken transience of hubristic rulers.

It might be that I am confusing this crucified ‘Christ’ with the ‘Church’ here and not reading the ceiling properly. Whatever the case, there is something weird about the syncretism of the art overall and what some of it seems to be saying about God, the world and people.

 

Bible and Motion

At last – a shaft of light penetrates into the murkiness of much public commentary on Christianity and religious matters. Today’s Guardian newspapercontains two articles about the call by the former Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, to teach our children the Bible. His reasoning? You can’t understand English (or global) cultural or historical heritage – particularly art, literature or theatre – unless you have a basic familiarity with the biblical text.

Andrew Motion is an atheist, so he is not banging a theistic drum here. Rather, as an intelligent man with his brain engaged, he is stating the blindingly obvious in the face of a culture that has largely lost its ability to be rational about anything to do with religion, Christianity or the Bible.

His point is simply that successive generations of students are ignorant of the stories that formed the worldview of a couple of thousand years of western people. So, you can’t understand them or their art if you don’t understand to what their art refers. Motion recalls teaching students of the great English poet John Milton (1608-1674) who had no idea there had been a Civil War in England and understood nothing of the references that are integral to Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained (for example). This isn’t about evangelism or indoctrinating children with religious fables; rather, it is about equipping children and young people with the basic tools they need to understand their historical and contemporary culture.

No surprise, then, that the ridiculous and irrational National Secular Society spokesman should respond with this enlightened nonsense: “It’s a bit excessive – children already get 45 minutes of religious education a week for 10 years. They also attend compulsory acts of worship which includes reading the Bible. Isn’t that enough?” So says Keith Porteous Wood, executive director and former general secretary of the National Secular Society. It is so silly (and a prime example of missing the point) that it isn’t worth spending any further time on it.

I think Andrew Motion has been able to say what many of us have been saying for years, but without the ‘credibility’ that comes from being an atheist. Motion asserts that study of the great stories (classical, biblical and other religious stories) would form part of a general studies programme - somthing that has long since dropped off the syllabus at many schools because of an obsession with targets, exam preparation and narrow specialising in limited fields.

He says: “I can imagine every teacher in the land saying, ‘not more to do’, because the pressure on the curriculum is so enormously heavy already” … I’m not suggesting this as a ‘bolt-on’, but part of a broader rethinking about what education is meant to be. What is probably required is a more radical conversation about how the curriculum is structured.”

The Guardian article also notes that “aside from the Cross Reference Project, which is supported by the Bible Society, and provides resources to help students to understand how literature has been shaped by the Bible, there is little out there” to help teachers who have also been brought up without the knowledge they need to teach this stuff.