Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Doom & Gloom
This is why a lot of the people I work with are looking very stressed. And also why I'm going to a union rally tomorrow!
Monday, September 15, 2008
Spring is sprung
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On Saturday, because it was 25 degrees, we remembered that we live a couple of minutes from this lovely bit of view. Fish and chips, in the balmy outdoors, with a friend and a dog, while the sun went down. Bliss!
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Lipstick-wearing Pigs
Party politics always confuse and alarm me. I often find myself being outraged at the policies of politicians I quite like - and vice versa - and agreeing with commentators whose general viewpoint I detest. For example, I wouldn't vote for Sarah Palin and the Republicans in a million, billion years - but I find myself agreeing with Christopher Hitchens (Christopher Hitchens!!) that much of the criticism of her from people I am politically in sympathy with is inconsistent and hypocritical.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Saints and Psychos (II)
[In my first post, below, I argued that many modern evaluations of religion impose contemporary categories - such as 'left-wing' and 'right-wing' - upon religious movements in ahistorical and unhelpful ways.]
All this is not to say that there is no place for making moral judgements about the past, or that religion can only be understood by those with a theological education. It is simply to say that analysis of religious cultures and individuals needs to pay attention to religious beliefs and practices, recognising how they have developed over time and how they interact with other social and cultural changes. I’d like to give one example from my own work of the explanatory value of looking closely at the internal logic of a particular religious sub-culture.
My own area of research is early English Methodism, a movement of reform and revival that developed within the Church of England in the eighteenth century. Perhaps the most influential and certainly the most interesting of interpretations of English Methodism was given by the Marxist historian E.P. Thompson in his book The Making of the English Working Class. Thompson painted Methodism as a movement of political and personal repression. Where generations of Methodist historians had portrayed their forbears as saints, in Thompson’s work Methodists are quite definitely psychos. In his interpretation, the emotional upheaval of the Methodist revivals diverted the energies of the English working class away from political activism and towards a rigorous self-discipline that kept them working uncomplainingly in the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution.
Thompson is particularly damning of the Methodist emphasis on suffering. He argues that in Methodism the Christian symbol of the cross became not just an incentive to personal self-denial, but a model for the whole of life. That is, he argues that for Methodists, the life that pleased God was a life of suffering. This belief made Methodists passive fodder for the factories and workhouses of the industrial cities. Assured that their suffering pleased God, Methodists did not dare to agitate for change.
My study of Methodist culture confirms that, in their hymns at least, Methodists were encouraged to value and welcome suffering as the road to holiness. Quite clearly, such an understanding could lead to the acceptance of injustice. One famous Methodist woman leader wrote of meekly accepting the beatings of her violent husband as the discipline of God for her sins. To this extent, Thompson’s work is, I think, a good model of exploring the way in which a particular doctrinal emphasis, distinctive to Methodism, had broader social and cultural implications.
However, Thompson’s emphasis on the industrial revolution leads him to ignore the full implications of this Methodist belief in the positive value of suffering. This belief could also sustain political and religious activism. A number of early Methodist women defied social convention by becoming preachers. In their letters and journals, they often described the personal cost of this unusual behaviour as a cross they had to bear. They embraced the resulting insult and ostracism as a means by which they could grow in holiness. More broadly, of all religious groups, English Methodists were the most active supporters of the abolition of slavery. Those Methodists who campaigned against slavery often paid a significant price in terms of their health, wealth and social standing. Again, they described this suffering as a cross God had given them to bear, which would eventually lead to a heavenly reward. And it is worth noting that the woman I mentioned above, eventually left her violent husband, believing that God had ordered her to do so.
Recognising the diversity of ways in which early Methodists embraced the ‘cross’ of suffering in this life forces us to go beyond simply characterising them as conservative or progressive, as left or right- wing, as saints or psychos. It may be relevant and indeed I think it is important to make judgements about Methodist complicity in the abuses of English workers during the industrial revolution, and equally to question the value of Methodist activism. But moral judgements of this kind will not help us understand the religious cultures of the past and present and their impact on our world unless we take seriously the systems of religious conviction and practice that informed people’s behaviour at any given historical moment. These are the insights that religious historians can bring to public discussion of religion and its place in our society.
All this is not to say that there is no place for making moral judgements about the past, or that religion can only be understood by those with a theological education. It is simply to say that analysis of religious cultures and individuals needs to pay attention to religious beliefs and practices, recognising how they have developed over time and how they interact with other social and cultural changes. I’d like to give one example from my own work of the explanatory value of looking closely at the internal logic of a particular religious sub-culture.
My own area of research is early English Methodism, a movement of reform and revival that developed within the Church of England in the eighteenth century. Perhaps the most influential and certainly the most interesting of interpretations of English Methodism was given by the Marxist historian E.P. Thompson in his book The Making of the English Working Class. Thompson painted Methodism as a movement of political and personal repression. Where generations of Methodist historians had portrayed their forbears as saints, in Thompson’s work Methodists are quite definitely psychos. In his interpretation, the emotional upheaval of the Methodist revivals diverted the energies of the English working class away from political activism and towards a rigorous self-discipline that kept them working uncomplainingly in the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution.
Thompson is particularly damning of the Methodist emphasis on suffering. He argues that in Methodism the Christian symbol of the cross became not just an incentive to personal self-denial, but a model for the whole of life. That is, he argues that for Methodists, the life that pleased God was a life of suffering. This belief made Methodists passive fodder for the factories and workhouses of the industrial cities. Assured that their suffering pleased God, Methodists did not dare to agitate for change.
My study of Methodist culture confirms that, in their hymns at least, Methodists were encouraged to value and welcome suffering as the road to holiness. Quite clearly, such an understanding could lead to the acceptance of injustice. One famous Methodist woman leader wrote of meekly accepting the beatings of her violent husband as the discipline of God for her sins. To this extent, Thompson’s work is, I think, a good model of exploring the way in which a particular doctrinal emphasis, distinctive to Methodism, had broader social and cultural implications.
However, Thompson’s emphasis on the industrial revolution leads him to ignore the full implications of this Methodist belief in the positive value of suffering. This belief could also sustain political and religious activism. A number of early Methodist women defied social convention by becoming preachers. In their letters and journals, they often described the personal cost of this unusual behaviour as a cross they had to bear. They embraced the resulting insult and ostracism as a means by which they could grow in holiness. More broadly, of all religious groups, English Methodists were the most active supporters of the abolition of slavery. Those Methodists who campaigned against slavery often paid a significant price in terms of their health, wealth and social standing. Again, they described this suffering as a cross God had given them to bear, which would eventually lead to a heavenly reward. And it is worth noting that the woman I mentioned above, eventually left her violent husband, believing that God had ordered her to do so.
Recognising the diversity of ways in which early Methodists embraced the ‘cross’ of suffering in this life forces us to go beyond simply characterising them as conservative or progressive, as left or right- wing, as saints or psychos. It may be relevant and indeed I think it is important to make judgements about Methodist complicity in the abuses of English workers during the industrial revolution, and equally to question the value of Methodist activism. But moral judgements of this kind will not help us understand the religious cultures of the past and present and their impact on our world unless we take seriously the systems of religious conviction and practice that informed people’s behaviour at any given historical moment. These are the insights that religious historians can bring to public discussion of religion and its place in our society.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
On the Psalms
Well, after posting the first section of my paper on religious history, I succumbed to one serious virus and have hardly been out of bed since. The rest of the paper is on my computer at work, so I will have to wait till I get back there to post the next installment. In the meantime, I am re-reading one of my favorite books of theology (admittedly, I don't read much theology!), Walter Brueggemann's The Message of the Psalms. These are his wise words on the psalms of lament:
'I think that serious religious use of the lament psalms has been minimal because we have believed that faith does not mean to acknowledge and embrace negativity. We have thought that acknowledgment of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith, as though the very speech about it conceded too much about God's "loss of control".
The point to be urged here is this: The use of these "psalms of darkness" may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith. It is an act of bold faith on the one hand, because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way. On the other hand, it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs to this conversation of the heart.'
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