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As Paul Colgan (a self-described "lapsed and a-la-carte " Catholic) wrote in The Punch, " I have no tolerance left for the Church’s protection of child abusers, its silencing of victims and failure to adequately apologise or explain why it failed to act against paedophiles. Why, I asked myself, should my daughter be exposed to these men in frocks and their beliefs?". It must be said that some Churches have been doing better than others in responding to the revelations of abuse over decades, but I'm not planning to elevate or denigrate any one denomination here. What people really want to know is: what the hell went wrong? How did this obviously wrong behaviour, this prolonged and prevalent abuse, escape discovery and remain unaddressed for so long? As well as sheer grieving and sorrow, it is time to dissect the issue of how it happened. I found this piece These are not excuses; no, no such thing. There are no excuses. But they are an attempt to explain what went wrong, in order that children can be better protected in the future. Real repentance and repair will require that such practical questions are asked, alongside the grieving, anger and bewilderment (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
Les Murray, the great Australian Christian poet, knows this. He talks about Wholespeak, which is the kind of language that pulls together ideas, images, experiences, memories, feelings, history, projections, observations into an aesthetic form with some sort of integrity—and we call that a poem. This is a great definition of poetry, but I still like the one offered by a cricket commentator who, after reading on air a poem that delighted him, announced, "That's a top poem! Top words in a top order!" Not a bad definition of poetry. A poem like Dante's 14th Century Divine Comedy changed the way the world thinks about cosmology, justice and punishment. A poem like Milton's 17th Century Paradise Lost helped to shape the modern understanding of human capacity for good and evil. A poem like T.S. Eliot's 20th Century The Waste Land defined the modern era of moral confusion and malaise about human progress. The Bible, of course, is full of world-changing poems, from the opening chapter (Genesis 1), to Psalm 23 about God as a Good Shepherd, to the brief, hymn-like verses of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, which records the earliest formulation of Christian beliefs. From the erotic verse of Song of Songs, to the startling prophetic verses of judgement and woe, to the overwhelming 'songs' of the apocalypse: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered/to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might/and honour and glory and blessing!" (Revelation 5:12). In fact, the Bible itself might be thought of as a large Poem, holding together as it does from the accounts of creation, through the epic events of Israel's history, to the brief cosmos-altering life of Jesus, through to the vision of a new heaven and earth in the Book of Revelation. It's Wholespeak, Murray might say. Happy World Poetry Day! N.B. Murray defends poetry here, first in prose but finally with a poem! (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
All three of them are Christians. They are loved and prayed for. Many people hope they will get better. So far, they have not. I wonder what they, and others in their lives, might make of a study out of the US this year reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. The study found that “belief in a personal and concerned God” significantly improved responses to the medical treatment of major depression. Those who scored in the top third of the Religious Well-Being scale were 75% more likely to get better with medical treatment for clinical depression. These findings come on the back of a growing body of research that indicates strong positive correlations between religious belief and practise and good health outcomes. People like Harold Koenig from Duke University believe that clinicians need to be aware of the role of religion in their patient’s lives. Only then can they give comprehensive treatment and care. It’s hard to say what these studies mean. It would be easy to overstate their significance and leave the impression that you just have to ‘get religion’ and you’ll be on the way to health and happiness. That’s clearly not the case. But the sheer number of them calls for some reflection. A certain darkness surrounds my three friends and it’s clear that religious faith hasn’t shielded them from that. But I’m interested to know to what degree their belief, assuming it hasn’t been crushed completely, might bring them shards of light and hope and eventually contribute in some way to their healing. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
The program has a festive feel, and indicates the celebratory nature of a gathering of those who, despite the souvenir T-shirts, caps, mugs, fridge magnets and bumper stickers, claim their only common ground is what they don’t have—belief. At CPX we have spent considerable time and energy engaging with the latest and most evangelistic of the prophets of atheist piety. I’m not sorry we have. There are important arguments against religion that are being made loudly and trenchantly and these are worth testing and challenging. We have gathered the relevant material here if you’d like to take a look. But I was struck today by an article by the brother of Christopher Hitchens, that most caustic of opponents of religion (notably absent from the convention). Just like his brother, Peter Hitchens is a talented writer. But, no doubt alarmingly for the older sibling, Peter is a Christian. Given their pugnacious childhood it is not altogether surprising that they would adopt positions at polar ends of a spectrum. For many years in his youth, Peter was also counted among those who had rejected God and the church, but he slowly came back to faith in his 30s. This made an already difficult relationship with his brother nigh impossible. For many years they didn’t speak. The article speaks of a kind of healing in the relationship around the time of a public debate between the two brothers on the existence of God and the goodness of religion in 2008. On that night, as he did in the article from the Daily Mail, the younger brother challenged the arguments made in God is Not Great – How Religion Poisons Everything, systematically drawing attention to what he saw as logical flaws, inconsistencies and blind spots. But as Peter Hitchens makes clear, it is not really arguments that will win the day or change the heart of a person so sure of a godless universe and the singularly negative impact of religion. It’s not that a belief in God doesn’t have to be based on rational foundations. As Flannery O’Connor writes, “A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith … eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way”. If a belief system is true it shouldn’t be threatened in the face of attack. But ultimately shrill and often ugly arguments for and against the existence of God mask something deeper and more personal. ‘Those who choose to argue in prose, even if it is very good prose, are unlikely to be receptive to a case which is most effectively couched in poetry,’ Peter Hitchens writes. In other words, something beyond a debate is required; a force that penetrates the heart and transcends the merely rational. It’s scales falling from eyes and hearts being touched in fresh and surprising ways. Mystery. That’s what I think of when I contemplate those gathering in Melbourne this weekend, their different motivations, and personal stories of disillusionment with faith, steeling themselves for a life without God. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
What is there in the atheist’s perspective that can rationally inspire love and rationally discourage hate? I know that most atheists (in the Christianized West) choose love over hate. But if human beings are accidents in an unknowing universe, how can the decision to love or hate be anything more than a preference, a product of ‘feelings’ as atheist Bertrand Russell once famously acknowledged? On what grounds can the atheist speak rationally of the high and equal value of the poor or the weak or the asylum seeker? Put another way, while it is obvious that only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity (the way of love), any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
But it’s worth going back to the beginning of the story to get to the heart of what Christianity should mean for women (and men). Jesus was the only rabbi of his day that we know of who had women disciples. He had women supporters and women who travelled with him. The Gospels record women as the ones who stayed close to Jesus as he endured crucifixion and as the first witnesses to the resurrection. It is difficult to overstate the significance of all this in a world where females were regarded as property with limited legal rights. The dawning of the Christian age meant a radical shift in the way women were perceived. Sociologist Rodney Stark, who looks at a range of factors to account for the incredible growth in Christianity in the two centuries after Christ, believes its popularity among women was vital. Christianity’s view of the full equality of men and women before God was revolutionary and the implications profound. For women, the new religion provided opportunities for them to play significant roles in the church that were especially taken up by those from the upper classes. The earliest church building yet found (Megiddo early 3rd Century) honours no fewer than six women on the mosaic floor, but only two men! No wonder so many critics from antiquity heaped scorn on Christianity for the way it drew in so many women (and slaves). In Christian communities girls married later and enjoyed a better quality and longer life than their pagan counterparts. Largely this was due to the high rates of abortion in the Roman world—a decision made by the men. Sexual chastity was extended to males as well as females under Christian teaching, another major shift, meaning family life was generally more secure. Infanticide was practiced widely on girls in the Greco-Roman world, and Christianity ruled this out. For these and other reasons, the early centuries of Christianity mark a great leap forward for females. On International Woman’s day, as we consider the plight of millions of women and girls around the globe who still suffer indignities, deprivations, and the worst kinds of oppression because of their gender, it is worth recalling the Christian conception of what it is to be human, and urging all, whether believers or non-believers, to continue to be a part of the struggle to see that vision fully realised. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
1. Miroslav Volf, “Christianity and Violence,” Boardman Lectureship in Christian Ethics, 2002, 1. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
And those who suggest that these communist regimes were quasi-religious in their zeal and, therefore, provide further evidence of the pernicious effect of religion have abandoned sincere investigation into the problem and have settled on crass anti-religious apologetics. Better to state the obvious: religion or irreligion can inspire hate. The claim that religion has started ‘most of the wars’ of history ought to cause embarrassment to thinking people. And yet it remains, as David Bentley Hart points out, “the sort of remark that sets many heads sagely nodding in recognition of what seems an undeniable truth. Such sentiments have become so much a part of the conventional grammar of “enlightened” scepticism that they are scarcely ever subjected to serious scrutiny.”1 1. David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies. Yale University Press, 2009, 5. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
Kicking, kneeing, and choke-holds are part of the show, as is fighters pouncing on opponents who have gone down, to bash them more. There is no shortage of the promised blood on the canvas. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Peter Fitzsimons, himself a former international rugby player and no shrinking violet, could barely contain his distaste for the event. ‘… it looks like we might have moved into an age when tens of thousands of people no longer want cups of tea. They want buckets of blood,’ he wrote. It does feel like a different era. I’ve always enjoyed watching the battles of fiercely contested sport. Even boxing, at its highest level, carries something of the noble pursuit in my mind. The folklore around Ali and Foreman’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ still gives me goose bumps. But in its various permutations this cage fighting, looks more Colosseum than MCG. And the reaction of the people in the stands is what interests me the most. Curiosity might make it hard to turn away when we see a car crash, but what might we say about an impulse to revel in the carnage? Perhaps I’m being alarmist and melodramatic. To suggest that the arrival of UFC is a harbinger of the West going to hell in a hand basket might be taking things too far. But I can’t help thinking of the great historian Arnold Toynbee and his description of the common characteristics of great civilisations on their last legs. Rarely are they overrun, according to Toynbee, but rather they commit a kind of cultural suicide. Falling to a sense of abandon and lawlessness, once great peoples become adrift, unable to anchor themselves in any universal ground of justice, truth or reason. One of a number of characteristics Toynbee identifies is escapism and retreat into distraction and entertainment. Presumably that becomes more extreme the further down that path you progress. He talks about an indiscriminate acceptance of anything and everything - "an act of self-surrender to the melting pot ... in Religion and Literature and Language and Art as well as ... Manners and Customs." As I watched footage of jubilant fans leaving the arena sated from the experience of socially acceptable lavish violence, I couldn’t help thinking of a culture pushing further into a void; of something rotten in its spirit. An implosion. Or am I missing something? (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
Or take the iconic Northern Ireland conflict. It is widely known that the thirty-year ‘troubles’ led to the deaths of fewer than 4000 people. Again, one death ‘in the name of Christ’ is a blasphemy, but how did the Northern Ireland conflict ever come to symbolize the ferocity of the church? Compare it with the thoroughly ‘secular’ French Revolution. As many people were executed in the name of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ in a single year of the Revolution (the ‘Terror’ of September 1793 – July 1794) as were killed in the entire three decades of the ‘troubles’2. 1. This comes on the authority of Edward Peters, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading authority on the topic. See his Inquisition. University of California Press, 1989. 2. See William Doyle, The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less) |
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