More meejah matters

Three stories penetrate the work-ridden last few days.

Yesterday Trevor Kavanagh, associate editor and former political editor of the Sun had the nerve to accuse the Metropolitan Police of wasting time and resources on their investigation of criminality at the heart of News International. He described police tactics as treating suspected journalists like “members of an organised crime gang”. He objected to dawn raids and intrusive searches of journalists’ homes.

Forgive my naïveté, but why does he think the police are doing this at all? Would he or his newspaper have had any patience with police ignoring criminality on an industrial scale in some other area of society? Did he consider the handling of the MPs’ expenses scandal as a waste of time and money – a gross overreaction? Does he really think that investigations into corruption and criminality at the Sun is ‘disproportionate’?

I usually find Trevor Kavanagh interesting, but this has left me staggered. Is he so out of touch that he still doesn’t get the public outrage at this enormous corruption? The irony of his choice of words is that the need for expensive and thorough police investigation arises directly from crime that looks distinctly ‘organised’. Or is it just that it is OK for ordinary mortals to have their lives intruded upon, shredded and dumped – their reputations rubbished and their families disturbed – but somehow wrong for journalists to suffer the same treatment? I am boggled.

Richard Dawkins is at it again – although Giles Fraser rattled him on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning. As Dawkins mocked respondents to his poll who couldn’t name the first gospel, Fraser embarrassed him by exposing his inability to remember the full title of Darwin’s Origin of Species. His latest evangelistic campaign is just silly. In danger of confusing atheism with secularism (they are not the same), he perpetuates the pretence that he occupies neutral space whereas religious people are somewhere up the loaded loony scale. What makes him think that his world view is to be privileged above all others is still unclear. Anyway, his survey proves little – and certainly not what he thinks it proves.

Baroness Warsi has complained to the Pope about rampant and aggressive secularism that is marginalising religion in general and Christianity in particular in Britain today. Not having had time today to read all the reports of this, I remain unclear why she needs to tell the Pope what he already thinks. But, the question is really whether or not she is right. I just hope she doesn’t slip into the language of ‘persecution’.

The most interesting two responses I have seen to Dawkins and Warsi are by Giles Fraser and Julian Baggini. Rational atheist argument is fine and secularist campaigning acceptable. But, where does the mindless aggression come from? Why the irrational evangelism that doesn’t even pretend to be tolerant of any world view that differs from it’s own fundamentalism?

 

Irrational rationalists?

The world appears a bit weird when Man Utd lose 6-1 at home to Man City. Wonderful (says the Scouser who is worried that two Manchester clubs now rule the Premiership).

But, more interesting is the response by atheist academic philosopher Daniel Came to the refusal by New Atheist academic biologist Richard Dawkins to debate with William Lane Craig. Dawkins gave his reasons in the Guardian here – and then got a response from Came. (Paul Vallely has also contributed in yesterday’s Independent.)

Not surprisingly, I am with Came on this. The New Atheists give atheism a bad name by substituting assertion for argument. Watch this space – the debate between Dawkins and Came might be even more interesting than debates between the theists and the New Atheists.

 

Eagleton & Fraser

I know they sound like a firm of solicitors, but it’s not law that they have in common.

Terry Eagleton wrote an excoriatingly incisive critique of AC Grayling’s decision to leave Birkbeck College in order to set up the New College of the Humanities. Eagleton questions the motives, values and consequences of the establishment of this college – which only rich kids will be able to access. Others suspect it might be a successful venture, but don’t address some of Eagleton’s questions (especially of the values underlying the move).

Giles Fraser has a go at atheistic humanism, stripping bare the pretensions of an assumed humanism that has amnesia with respect to its own roots and fails to follow through the logic of its own case. He cites Nietzsche and Foucault en route to his challenge:

Indeed, the new atheists simply duck the challenge made by atheistic anti-humanism, believing their expensive scientific toys can outflank the alleged conceptual weakness of their humanism. Thus they dismiss the significance of philosophy just as much as they have always done of theology – as if the two were fundamentally in cahoots. But this is nonsense. Nietzsche, Marx and Freud attacked Christianity with passionate ferocity.

Christian theology of the 20th century has spent much of its time wrestling with the consequences. Why won’t the new atheists do the same?

It’s a good question. I wonder of any answers will be forthcoming. Probably not from the New College of the Humanities which appears to be headed towards the sort of thing Grayling & co hate about (their often misguided perceptions of) faith schools: only addressing matters from a narrow perspective that conforms to a set of philosophical assumptions that have been previously agreed – and won’t admit inconvenient theologies or anti-humanist philosophies.

Or will we be surprised?

 

Even Bill Bailey’s at it

I went into London today to have lunch with a friend who is ‘in media’. On the way in I read that ’80% of Bill Bailey’s new show is a rant against Christianity’. Can’t remember exactly where I read it, but that was basically what it said. “Oh no,” I thought to myself, “here we go again. There’ll be more protests about Christians being persecuted and attacked.” And I was right! (Which is shameful when you see what is happening in the real world in Iraq…)

I am beginning to feel in a minority of one in being a Christian who doesn’t think we are being persecuted. ‘Misrepresented’, ‘misunderstood’ and ‘an easy target for people too lazy to think through their own assumptions’, maybe. Subject to educational and political assumptions that are sometimes staggering in their arrogance and ignorance in relation to Christianity in particular, definitely. But ‘persecuted’, no way.

I go with the agnostic Marxist Terry Eagleton when he complains that the so-called New Atheists have bought their atheism on the cheap and that this enables others to think that their easy dismissal of ‘religion’ (let alone Christianity) has inherent intellectual credibility – that Dawkins’ position is self-evidently true because it is Dawkins who says it. And it is obvious that the methodologies Dawkins adopts in his television tirades would never pass the editor’s desk were it to be driving towards a theistic theme. (It would be like me depicting Stalin in the first minute, extrapolating from Stalin that all atheists are on the same road as the Soviet dictator, then writing off atheism as having any intellectual, cultural or ethical credibility worth thinking about.)

As contributors to this blog have demonstrated, there is a thoughtful and intelligent discussion to be had between atheists and Christians (or theists) – one that presupposes mutual respect. I usually find Bill Bailey sharp and funny, so look forward to his new show. But, if it does turn out to be an easy potshot at Christianity, I guess I’ll just have to be big enough to take it. Popularity and big laughs don’t prove any point whatsoever.

The problem is that there is much about Christians that is funny or odd or open to question. Now is not an easy time to speak of ‘the ministry of reconciliation’ in a context in which Christians appear happy to accuse each other of all sorts of nastiness. But, if our reputation is tarnished and our credibility low, then we cannot blame anyone else for this… even if the reputation also involves selective reporting, misrepresentation and misunderstanding.

Anyway, to go back to the main point, being misunderstood or misrepresented by a liberal elite who dominate the public discourse with a confidence that is ignorant of its own (religious) illiteracy, is inconvenient, painful, embarrassing and should be countered. But, it isn’t persecution. Bill Bailey is not pulling our finger nails out or stopping our kids from going to university purely on account of their faith – he is simply doing what people have done to Christian faith since Calvary. It’s not clever and it is boringly predictable - get used to it. The way to counter it is to stop being ‘against’ anything we don’t like and proactively present what we are ‘for’ in the public space. And, for God’s sake, try to enjoy it.

I come back again and again to the need for Christians to put their own house in order, gain confidence in the content of the Christian faith (which, strictly speaking and in shorthand, means in ‘the Word made flesh’ – the person of God seen in Jesus Christ), question the assumptions of those who attack or question Christianity, and stop complaining about being victims of other people’s horribleness.

And the BBC still needs a ‘Religion Editor’…

 

Shock report: faith affects choices!

The BBC website is likely to shock the world today with a headline of staggeringly obvious accuracy:

Religion may influence doctors’ end-of-life care

Better sit back and absorb that one. The report begins:

Doctors with religious beliefs are less likely to take decisions which could hasten the death of those who are terminally ill, a study suggests.

So, before we go on to look further at the BBC’s report, why don’t we ask why the corollary of the headline wasn’t addressed instead. The item could – with equal validity – have begun with:

Doctors with no religious beliefs are more likely to take decisions which could hasten the death of those who are terminally ill, a study suggests.

(‘Suggests’? Why not ‘concludes’? Or would that make the story less worthy of coverage?)

The report goes on:

The London University research urges greater acknowledgement of how beliefs influence care. Doctors and campaigners described the findings as “concerning”.

I guess my question is the one I keep banging on about in various posts here: is it only religious beliefs that are to be ‘acknowledged’ or all beliefs? All human beings have a world view based on assumptions about why the world is the way it is, what matters (and why) and how moral decisions should be made. This is not the sole preserve of ‘religious’ people. Every human decision – including medical ones – are influenced consciously or unconsciously by the world view of the decision-taker. There are no exceptions.

This simply means that we should be asking of the (unidentified and unquantified) ‘doctors and campaigners’ what are the implications of their own world views on the treatment or advice they give to their patients about end-of-life options. What the report really seems to ‘suggest’ is that religious people might be more open, more honest or more clear about the moral or philosophical basis of their moral approaches.

Let’s try it a different way. I have just been in Berlin and looking afresh at the rise of the Nazis in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. The question keeps being raised as to how human beings could possibly have done to other human beings what the Nazis did. It is dangerous to over-simplify such enormous matters, but it can be said at the very least that the disconnection came partly from an accommodation with a world view that reduced some people to (a) categories that are (b) sub-human. As we also saw in Rwanda in 1994, see people as vermin and you find it easier to treat them as vermin.

This is NOT to say that non-religious people are to be equated with Nazis or other genocidal psychopaths. Conscious atheism or agnosticism should be demonstrate equal consistency and be examined for inherent weakness in the same way as religious beliefs should be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. But, atheism cannot simply be assumed to be the neutral default position from which any other ‘belief’ is a dangerous deviation.

The point is simple. Religious beliefs and convictions should influence doctors – but so should non-religious doctors allow that their assumptions and beliefs (about the way the world is, why the world is that way, where human beings derive their value – and why – and what happens when we die… and why this matters).

The British Medical Association said: “Decisions about end-of-life care need to be taken on the basis of an assessment of the individual patient’s circumstances – incorporating discussions with the patient and close family members where possible and appropriate.

Absolutely right – except that there is no mention of the basis on which these ‘decisions’ are to be taken.

The religious beliefs of doctors should not be allowed to influence objective, patient-centred decision-making. End-of-life decisions must always be made in the best interests of patients.

The ‘best interests of patients’. According to which criteria? Who decides and who defines?

Again, the corollary of that statement is: “The non-religious beliefs of doctors should not be allowed to influence objective, patient-centred decision-making.”

The unidentified and unquantified ‘doctors and campaigners’ might well be ‘concerned’ – but so should the rest of us be concerned at their naivete, selectivity and the poor philosophical thinking behind the ‘suggestions’ or ‘conclusions’ they derive from their research. Perhaps they are simply bringing the wrong questions to the data in the first place? Perhaps this is a matter of using language properly – for the language used in these statements gives the game away.

Update  27 August 2010: Much fuller analysis to be found here.

 

Sharing our ignorance

It would be hard not to draw attention to the unsurprising but embarrassing outcome of the YouGov poll commissioned by the Exploring Islam Foundation. Apparently, 58% of respondents linked Islam with extremism while 69% believed it encouraged the repression of women. 40% disagreed that Muslims had a positive impact on British society.

Not really suprising, though. Islam is represented negatively in the media and with an ignorance that would be deemed embarrasing in any other discipline. See Bishop Alan Wilson’s blog today for just one example – and it doesn’t even come from the nightmare Daily Mail. Alan remind sus of the ninth Commandment:

You will not bear false witness against (lie about/misrepresent) your neighbour…

However, this is simply a symptom of a wider religious illiteracy in our society… and perpetuated in the media (with some exceptions). Perhaps it isn’t coincidental that yesterday saw a further report of the ineffectiveness of some Religious Education teaching in British schools. According to this research, the problem lies with teachers who don’t understand Christianity in particular and can (for example) tell the Nativity story, but can’t say what it means.

The response in some quarters was predictable. For them the problem lies with the requirement to teach anything religious in the first place. But, that misses the point completely. This is not about believing or defending the content of any particular faith (which would demand commitment of some sort), but, at the very least, understanding it.

This harks back to a long discussion last year about the (then) Poet Laureate Andrew Motion’s argument that people need to understand the Bible if they are to stand any chance of understanding art, literature or music. He was not saying that people have to believe it or live by it, but simply to be familiar with it and understand something of it.

The same goes for religion in general. Whether the secularists or so-called New Atheists (they are hardly new…) like it or not, religion is a phenomenon without which politics, economics and culture cannot be understood.

• If, as they attest, religion is purely dangerous fantasy, then it needs to be understood if only to be countered.
• If, as they attest, religion is a loaded worldview whose followers sit somewhere up the loony scale (away from their assumed ‘neutral’ space), then it is all the more vital that it be explored in order to be rubbished intelligently.

It is shocking to encounter some of the popular ignorance in the media and government. All religious groups are lumped into a single misleading category called ‘faith’ and seen as a minority interest for inadequates. Ignorance of finance, business economics, etc on such a scale would not be tolerated and would be a source of some shame. But, when it comes to religion in general – and Christianity in particular – the usual informed, intelligent and curious mind turns to incomprehending blancmange.

I don’t believe for one moment that Hindus have got it right, but I do need to understand Hinduism if I am to understand the politics, culture and societal shapes of countries where Hinduism shapes not only what a large number of people believe, but also how they live, vote, fight, etc.

Islam needs to be taught with integrity (as seen through the eyes of a good Muslim). Christianity needs to be taught with integrity (as seen through the eyes of a good Christian). And the truth claims of these faiths need to be taught – not as commanding inevitable allegiance, of course, but in order that people know (a) what they are dealing with and (b) how such believers are to be understood.

This is an appeal for intelligent and informed understanding – prior to any thought of commitment. The appeal to commitment is the job of the church – those Christians who can do no other than commend and defend their faith. The church has to be evangelistic; schools should be informative. And the media should pay attention to reporting religion accurately and intelligently – unlike the examples given by Alan Wilson and a myriad of others across recent years.

During an interview last Saturday one of the candidates quoted someone as saying

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Unfortunately, we should care (deeply) how much we all know – shoddy understanding, reporting or commentary simply means we don’t care a toss about those with whom we are trying to communicate.

Which is also why I keep urging my clergy and churches to renew their commitment to learning, understanding and growing in confidence in the content of the Bible and Christian faith… which we don’t usually learn by means of (what I like to call) liturgical osmosis.

 

Atheism & theism: the debate continues

Having decided to turn my mind to other matters, I then came across the article in the Guardian by Madeleine Bunting in which she summarises the state of the debate between theists and atheists and makes particular reference to Richard Dawkins.

The article itself is lucid, but the comment thread (while including some interesting observations and responses) displays some of the intemperately-expressed categorical statements that make this debate more of a shouting match between people who don’t want to listen to those who start from a different set of assumptions. I am grateful that some of those commenting on this blog showed more genuine interest in the central issues and respected those who differed.

I link it here because it is a place where the debates we have had on recent posts here might be continued. I remain unsure whether the online medium is a useful one for the conducting of such debates.

 

Why blog? (Radio Times article)

Below is the text of the article I wrote for the Radio Times recently. Not surprisingly, it provoked a lot of comment and objection, mostly ignoring the central thrust of the article and picking up on the dismissal of Richard Dawkins as a ‘thinker’. The criticisms were fair and it was unwise of me to edit in a shorthand comment that needed more precision, clearer elaboration and a different context – none of which were possible in an 800 word commissioned article.

The deluge of comments (also by mail and email) was a little difficult to keep up with, given that (a) I have a rather busy day job and (b) it was Holy Week. But, apart from the reasonable criticisms levelled at me, there was some interesting discussion. Because it is spread over several threads (readers came in to the blog on different days and at different stages of posting), it is not easy to follow as a single conversation. However, I make the following observations before moving on to other areas of interest – after all, this is a personal blog and not an internet forum on a single theme:

1. I should be more careful before writing throw-aways without explaining them. Fair cop. (Richard Dawkins is obviously not an ‘awful thinker’ when it comes to some things, but is very vulnerable when it comes to religion, philosophy and that sort of thinking.)

2. Atheists derive their atheism from different origins and can’t be lumped together.

3. Some atheists are remarkably sensitive to any criticism of Richard Dawkins et al – and sometimes betray what comes over as a rather uncritical reading of him. This is odd when one of their criticisms of Christians/theists is their uncritical assumptions about the world.

4. Science explores and explains the mechanics of how the world works, but says nothing about ‘human meaning’. This is something that Philip Pullman and the Archbishop of Canterbury agree on. As ethicists put it, you can’t get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. This is where people like Pullman take over from Dawkins in grappling with morality and meaning, taking a different starting point and proving much more interesting (in my view).

5. ‘Proof’ is a slippery word, often used as if it were monovalent. As I wrote in response to an email yesterday (and this is concisely illustrative, so not intended to be a knock-down argument):

I prove that a table is a table by looking at it, measuring it, testing it (does it do what we expect a table to do?), using it and checking whether or not it conforms to what we usually mean by ‘table’. I prove that Hitler existed by looking at documentary evidence, historical evidence (what has happened to the shape of Europe, for example), literary evidence and personal record. I prove that my children (or friends) love me by the way they behave towards me. But, I don’t write off the existence of Hitler because I can’t do to him what I do to a table or because I have no relationship with him. Nor do I reject my family’s love on the grounds that I might be deceived and cannot provide incontrovertible ‘proof’ that that love is real.

In other words, we accept different ways of experiencing and validating reality. I can’t put God in a box and measure him. I can’t find a birth certificate for him. But I might want to explore the history of humanity, the search for meaning and morality, my/our experience of love (and what makes me think that my life and death matter at all).

6. I am grateful to all those who engaged in this matter and hope it leads to a more mutually respectful conversation along the lines I intended to open up in the article itself – before inserting the notorious distraction.

Here’s the text (which appeared under the title Why I am an E-vangelist – not a title I chose…):

Over a cup of tea, a woman in the garden of a church in Surrey asked me a question that nearly made me choke. Where was my chauffeur? She was clearly surprised to find that the world has moved on, that (most) bishops don’t live in huge palaces and that we usually drive ourselves to wherever we’re going. I dread to think how she would cope with some of the more radical social changes in British society in the past six decades.

For example, the demise of deference. There was a time when bishops and clergy were given automatic respect because of the offices they held. No longer. Respect has to be earned, and people feel free to argue with whatever you dare to say about anything. There are no longer any protective pedestals from which to preach, and dialogue is replacing monologue as the dominant medium of communication. Get out of the safety of the church and it’s a jungle out there. 

Yes, there are still people around who will listen uncritically to whatever they hear from a pulpit – especially if it ticks the “right” boxes and confirms their view of God, the world and us. There are Christians around who mourn the passing of the old world and fear the loss of a privileged place for Christian culture in the public square. I don’t mourn the passing of deference, but I do think that what has taken its place isn’t very impressive. Richard Dawkins isn’t alone in excelling in one field – such as biology – while being awful in another – such as “thinking”. Some commentators have a shockingly misplaced confidence in demolishing religious straw men that even I don’t believe in.

This is evident also in the blogosphere. I have been blogging since the end of 2008 – normally five times a week and I have had more than 5,000 views a day – but I am still amazed that so many people engage online with the things that interest me. When I started blogging, I decided that it was pointless to play it safe or simply propagate the usual stuff to the usual suspects. A number of bishops blog, but mainly for their church audience. I wanted to be “out there”, engaging in public debates about the world, politics, the arts, the media, ethics and theology.

My starting point is an insatiable curiosity about the world and about people, and why both are the way they are. At the heart of Christianity is the understanding that God has opted in to the world and not exempted himself from it: that Christian living means engaging at every level with and for that world. This means I’ve had to grow a thick skin. The glory and agony of blogging – which I see as the first word in a conversation, not the final word of judgement – is that anyone is free to argue with me, question me, ridicule me or be abusive. But what I have found is that my own thinking is changed by the light other contributors throw on a subject. The holes in my own perceptions are exposed as my prejudices and ideologies become open to scrutiny. That has got to be a good thing.

It’s an interesting exercise. I don’t know most of the people who comment on my blog – some I hope never to know, others I might like to befriend. But, whether they are critical or complimentary, they make me think. And I don’t regard it as a bad thing for any leader to think openly, change his mind when appropriate, apologise when he gets it wrong (in substance or in tone), or to be unafraid to be thought inadequate. We live in a culture in which politicians and others feel compelled to appear watertight in their consistency and always incontrovertibly “right”, but I think there is a place for a different model of “learning leadership”. Christian leaders should be unafraid to offer an alternative model of what I often call a “confident humility”.

An area of challenge relates to the atheists in the blogosphere, particularly those who represent perfectly what their prejudices tell them is the preserve of religious people: fundamentalism and an unswayable confidence in their own unargued-for assumptions about the world and human meaning.

This frequently leads to clashes, but the robustness of these is – if not always enlightening – usually entertaining. The blogosphere isn’t for the fainthearted. But what’s the point in simply talking to those who agree with you, when you could be arguing your way to a better understanding of God, the world and people (as well as yourself ) “out there” in the rough new world of instant media?

I think Christian faith is big enough to stand confidently in the public square. The worst they can do is crucify us. But then, Easter tells me even that isn’t the end of the story.

 

The Gospel According to Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman is my kind of atheist. He takes Christianity so seriously that he takes a long, hard look at its texts and its history and writes something that engages with it. He doesn’t start out by assuming that all Christians are either stupid or credulous, but shines a different light on its origins in the light of its later (institutional) development.

I posted a couple of days ago about Pullman’s new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, having heard him on the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2. That was before I had read it. So, today I read it – it doesn’t take long. And I haven’t changed my mind. But see the excellent reviews by Rowan Williams and Alan Wilson – I won’t repeat them.

Pullman can’t resist being driven by a serious dislike and suspicion of the institutional church. It isn’t hard to understand why. But, I think that in order to grasp his critique, this has to be disconnected from his atheism and rooted in his understanding of Jesus and the Gospels. Although he wants to dismiss the bits of the Gospels he doesn’t like (or are inconvenient to his case), he does manage to shine the sort of light on them that should make Christian readers go back to the text and read them with the freshness that Pullman (the outsider?) brings to his reading. It certainly has its weaknesses, but doesn’t everything?

In fact, I came away from the book smiling at the conceit that forms the framework of the narrative, but pleased that he has done it. It is thoughtful, well-crafted and often moving. But, most of all, it is serious.

It seems to me that Christians ought to read the book and reflect (a) on why they read the Gospels the way they do and (b) why the institutional church can seem to some people so far away from the Jesus of the Gospels.

Atheists might read the book and then go back to the original Gospels to see how Pullman has tackled the narrative and its meaning. I am constantly amazed at how many people I meet who slag off the Bible clearly have never read it. (And, no, I am not lumping every atheist or ‘opponent’ into that category.) An atheist approach to Jesus (as he is depicted and recorded in the Gospels) can be enlightening even if not always compelling.

Pullman and Rowan Williams were on BBC Radio 4 this morning on Andrew Marr’s Start the Week. This sort of intelligent conversation (about a range of matters) lifts the spirit. But it made me realise that the mutual respect between Pullman and Williams is what sets them free to have this sort of conversation in the first place. They could agree that science is limited to descriptions of mechanics and cannot denote ethical imperatives. They understand myth, literature and thought. So, they can start beyond the cat-calling that characterises some debate about theism and atheism (from a ‘scientific’ perspective) – something that I and others can learn from.

(I wonder whether the story about Rowan Williams criticising the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland will still hold up now people have heard the original discussion. He was clearly making a wider point about the problem for the whole of a society posed by the corruption of an institution so woven into its fabric – in other words, it isn’t just  aproblem for the Church, but for the whole of that society. An intelligent point – and one that got completely lost amid the hysteria about ‘credibility’. Intelligent points don’t make for good headlines, however, and Rowan walked through an open ‘media story’ door.)

 

Pullman’s punches

The great writer Philip Pullman was interviewed on the Jeremy Vine Show this afternoon (BBC Radio 2) and the piece can only be listened to for the next seven days – unfortunately. Pullman’s new book is published tomorrow and is called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Obviously, I haven’t read it, but I have read and heard enough to make me want to read it.

According to the interview, the novel basically attempts to distinguish between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Christ appropriated by the Church: the former was a good bloke, but the latter went astray and got it all wrong. Several things can be said about this:

1. This isn’t new thinking. Many twentieth-century theologians tried to make a similar distinction between the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’. Of course, the distinction was arbitrary and often a convenient way of dealing with the difficult or inconvenient bits of the New Testament. So, the reaction by some Christians to the idea of Pullman’s book simply demonstrates that they are a bit behind on their theology.

2. The Church should not feel the need to hide from its history and especially from its mistakes. Pullman and others often do us a service by shining a light on us that can only be directed from outside the Church – illuminating our weaknesses and inconsistencies. What is the problem with this? The Church has a good theology of failure (and redemption) and shouldn’t be scared of being seen as it is and as it has been. OK, Pullman is a bit preoccupied with it and not all his critiques stand much scrutiny, but some of it does.

The interview was interesting, dealing with the nature of the Gospels, the status of the Bible and the mindset of those nutters who threaten Pullman with death. Pullman respects the Gospels and the biblical text, but sees them as works of human inventiveness. What disturbs him is not the witness they bear, but the use made of them (for reasons of power) by subsequent generations of Christians. He acknowledges the apologetic power of the inconsistencies in the Gospels – particularly in relation to the resurrection accounts – and recognises that unified narratives would have been the product of propaganda.

However, the subtleties of biblical literature are clearly lost on some of those who then called in to comment on these matters (as, again, George Pitcher points out):

• ‘The Bible is just fiction’ demonstrates a stupid ignorance of both (a) what fiction is and (b) what the Bible is. The Bible is made up of a range of different genres of literature and (as one example) poetry cannot be read in the same way as prophecy or a New Testament letter. To write off the whole ‘book’ as ‘fiction’ just proves that the contributor hasn’t bothered to read it as it is written.
• ‘The Bible cannot be questioned or re-written’ is simply sad. I agree that it can’t be re-written (it is what it is) any more than Hamlet can be re-written without it becoming a different play. But if the Bible has to be protected from scrutiny, debate, argument or challenge, then it isn’t worth reading in the first place. Pullman stated that ‘the Gospels do not belong to the Church’ – and he is right. Jesus made it clear anyway that he was for the world, fulfilling what had always been the vocation of Israel: to live and give his life in order that the world might see who and how God is (and respond accordingly). The Bible must be able to stand in the marketplace or it cannot be what it claims to be. Jesus (and the Gospels) cannot be caged by the Church.
• ‘We wouldn’t do this to the Quran’ simply exasperates me. Do we really think Christians should consider emulating the worst of Muslim extremism? As George Pitcher admirably and clearly explained in yesterday’s Telegraph, we shouldn’t confuse the woeful (and often silly) ignorance of secularists and some atheists with some bizarre and inappropriate notion of ‘persecution’.

Christians are in danger of saying by their defensiveness that Christian faith and the Bible itself are so vulnerable that they must not be challenged and must be protected. As I have remarked in an article in the Easter edition of the Radio Times (no link available), we have no reason to be afraid of challenge or scrutiny – Christians need to be a little more confident and a little more intelligent in articulating their faith and their understanding of the story told by the Scriptures. As Pullman pointed out, a Christian notion of ‘inspiration’ is not the same as an Islamic one – but plenty of Christians treat the Bible as if it were.

The answer to Pullman is to write something better and more convincing – not to threaten him. Pullman is at least able and willing to have a reasonable and informed conversation with Christians – unlike some of the New Atheists he is often lumped in with.

Bishop Alan Wilson has an interesting ‘take’ on the interface between Christians and atheists in his comment on Peter Tatchell. Worth a look in conjunction with these observations on Christian confidence when in engagement with writers like Philip Pullman.