Conclusion on the adoption brouhaha in the UK

From this mornings "Thought for the Day" by Jonathan Bartley comes the announcement already made by Prime Minister Blair that there will be no opt-out for Catholic adoption agencies from the Sexual Orientation Regulations.

On January 30th the ABC reiterated his position on the matter which is rather more nuanced than is reflected in the press:-

In response to a question on the UK Government announcement on the implementation of Sexual Orientation Regulations:

“I’ll wait to see I think what the period of negotiation that lies ahead will bring, to see whether the concerns of the Catholic Church has raised are going to be addressed. But what we’d most want to do is to disentangle two things. There’s a particular issue on which the Catholic church has taken a stand, as other Christians have; and there’s a general issue about the rights of the state and the rights of conscience especially in voluntary bodies. Now that second question is one that, I think, is by no means restricted to this issue. And I think it’s not going to go away, so I would like to see some more serious debate now about that particular question – what are the limits, if there are limits, to the State’s power to control and determine the actions of voluntary bodies within it, in pursuit of what are quite proper goals of non-discrimination. So I hope there’ll be a debate about that.”

In a January 23rd letter written with Bishop Sentamu the principle had been expressed thus:-

"The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning."

A valid point which would have had much more weight if it had been the case in the past that religious bodies like the C of E had stood up for underpriviledged minorities criminalized in earlier times by the state.

"Thought for the Day" concludes with this useful reflection:-

The choice for churches doesn't have to be between a compromise of conscience on the one hand, and complete withdrawal from public life on the other. This is however a decision which increasingly appears to mean choosing either to love unconditionally - or not love at all. And at a time when the medium is the message, this is a golden opportunity for the churches to show that Christians can once again be known by their love.

R. S. Thomas #3

Emerging
Not as in the old days I pray,
God. My life is not what it was...
Once I would have asked
healing. I go now to be doctored...
to lend my flesh as manuscript of the great poem
Of the scalpel. I would have knelt
long, wrestling with you, wearing
you down. Hear my prayer Lord, hear my prayer.
As though you were deaf, myriads of mortals
have kept up their shrill
cry, explaining your silence by their unfitness.

It begins to appear
this is not what prayer is about.
It is the annihilation of difference,
the consciousness of myself in you,
of you in me...I begin to recognize
you anew, God of form and number.
There are questions we are the solution
to, others whose echoes we must expand
to contain. Circular as our way
is, it leads not back to the snake-haunted
garden, but onward to the tall city
of glass that is the laboratory of the spirit.

Adoption Row in the UK

Blogging is the tip of an iceberg and this week's example is the row in the UK over implementation of the Equality Act in regard to adoption. Here's a useful commentary by Simon Barrow, co-director of Ekklesia. Simon Barrow also writes for the Guardian and here is this week's comment on the same topic. For a sense of how this is playing out in the public arena, look at published letters e.g. from the Guardian.

Simon Barrow, it turns out, is an old friend of the family. His father and my parents were in Kenya as missionaries together. We met occasionally as children. It is wonderful to be back in touch again as adults and to appreciate his work for the church.

R&E Newsweekly: Turkey's Christian Roots

On Sunday evening Jan 19th, PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly reported on Turkey's Christian Roots. A reporter for R&E, Kim Lawton, interviewed Allen Callahan, from the Society of Biblical Studies. He is also an interim chaplain at Brown University and since 2003, Professor of New Testament at the Seminário Teológico Batista de Nordeste in Bahia, Brazil.

The interview includes images from Ephesus, Hierapolis, and archaelogical material from Turkey. Topics covered include the tradition that Mary spent her last days in Ephesus on account of the scene in John 19 where Jesus from the cross says to his mother, "Woman, behold your son!" Then he says to the beloved disciple, "Behold your mother!" And from that hour, John reports, the disciple took her to his house. Allen Callahan renders the scene thus:-

Jesus says from the cross, "Mother, behold your son," then turns to the beloved disciple and says, "Son, behold your mother." He entrusts his mother to the care of the beloved disciple, this disciple whom he loves.

Actually, Jesus never calls his mother, "Mother!" in the gospel of John. And he never addresses the BD as "Son!" in John 19 from his mother's (or anyone else's) perspective. In fact the whole question of the gender of the BD has been a topic of Sandra Schneider's scholarship on John. Callahan's retelling of the scene is a classic misremembering of the last dialogue of Jesus from the cross according to John's gospel. Why Jesus calls his mother and other women "Woman!" in Cana (chap 2; chap 4--the Samaritan woman; chap 20--Mariam of Magdala) is another investigation. But the point of this post is to commend the PBS website and the topic of Turkey's Christian past.

Listening

On Saturdays or shortly therafter I listen to BBC's CD Review (its on their website for 7 days after being broadcast unless you download the program). I confess I find it hard only (just) to listen--I'm in fact listening as I'm blogging. Actually, I've always found it helpful to be thinking about something and then to listen to music. It has a beneficial effect on thinking.

I've been musing on use of the verb "to listen" in Mark 4 as evidence of a transition from orality to written material. Jesus' parable begins thus: "Listen! Behold! The sower went out to sow..." (its a rare translation that keeps both the present plural imperative and the exclamation--Tyndale however does) and concludes, "Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear."

"When the disciples asked for a model of spirituality that they could imitate, all that the Master said was: Hush! Listen!" (Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom).

Commentators on Mark 4 invariably point out comparisons with the "Shema" in Deut. 6:4 which is cited by Jesus in Mark 12:29-30.

People hear the word in several ways: as nonsense, superficially, temporarily (it goes in one ear and out the other), and as internalized.

Thus in Mark 4,
* those on the outside see but do not perceive and hear but do not comprehend
* disciples/others hear "the sown word" but immediately Satan tears it out of them
* disciples/others hear the word and grasp it with great joy temporarily
* disciples/others are those hearing the word but cares and longings entering in choke the word and it becomes unfruitful
* disciples/others hear the word and accept it and it bears fruit

With all these ways of hearing it is no wonder that Jesus says (v.24), "Heed how you hear." But the parable is not just a warning about hearing in specific ways. Its a statement that people hear in these different ways. Thus the admonition, "Heed how you hear!" (v.24) addressed to disciples is an intensification of "Listen!" at the opening of the parable of the sower.

After the parables follows an example of immediate obedient listening, this time by the wind and the sea. They show the disciples how to listen/attend to Jesus' commands: the wind "ceased" (aorist). Its the narrator who observes the disciples exclamation, "Who is this that even the wind and sea hear/obey (obey is a compound of the verb to hear) him?" So Jesus' command to listen is explored narratively through Jesus' dialogue with the disciples for understandings and misunderstandings of hearing including obedient hearing as a command to silence by rebellious powers of nature.

New Catalog from Religious Publishing House minus women

Yesterday a large glossy 65 page catalog from a religious publishing house arrived. As they seem to do, possibly because "biblical studies" begins with "B," the opening 14 pages covered biblical grammar, commentaries, and reference books in English and Spanish. I've discovered that there aren't any women scholars publishing anything new in my field of biblical studies from this publishing house except for one, "Women's Evangelical Commentary." So, being charitable but somewhat irritated, I moved to other areas. There are no women publishing anything in preaching. There's one in worship. And --would you believe--ONE author in youth ministry. There are certainly none in leadership --duh--but there IS a resource guide for women's ministry. 'Nuff said?

And if there are readers from such publishing houses, take a look, gentlemen, at Anne Graham Lotz's post this week on the clarity of the Bible regarding gender questions.

What Would Jesus Do? Get screened!

According to the New York Times, the American Cancer Society reports a drop in cancer deaths two years in a row.

"This second consecutive drop in the number of actual cancer deaths, much steeper than the first, shows last year's historic drop was no fluke," says John R. Seffrin, PhD, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society. "The hard work towards preventing cancer, catching it early, and making treatment more effective is paying dramatic, lifesaving dividends."

By far the greatest decreases in mortality have been in colorectal cancer — 1,110 fewer deaths in men, 1,094 fewer in women.

What would Jesus do? Get screened!

Dr. Elizabeth Ward, a managing director in epidemiology and surveillance at the cancer society, said the most important factor in the decrease was screening for colorectal cancer, which can detect the disease early when it is most treatable, or even prevent it entirely by finding precancerous polyps, which can be removed before they turn malignant. Progress has been significant even though only about half the adults who should be screened have been. If more people were screened, there would be even steeper declines in death and the incidence of the disease.

The screening methods include stool tests; colonoscopy, which examines the entire large intestine; and sigmoidoscopy, which examines the lower part of it.

I was diagnosed with colon cancer at 44. As a suvivor, I cannot stress the importance of early detection enough.

Is marmalade disappearing?

Alan Coren in the Times (UK) laments the disappearance of marmalade. Oh no! Of course its nostalgic to remember breakfasts growing up with toast and marmalade. I like marmalade myself. My mother continues to make it as she and my father eat it every day. Just this week we were discussing marmalade she made over three days with oranges, lemons and grapefruit. According to the Guardian, fewer and fewer people do. Not people my age of course. 81% of all marmalade sold in the UK is eaten by the over-45s. Marmalade is seen as part of the colonial heritage along with M&S knickers. Speaking only for myself I like the citrus taste of marmalade whether it be orange or lime or grapefruit or lemon and I recommend it with enthusiasm! (It goes well with sausages)

R. S. Thomas #2

Cyclamen

They are white moths
With wings
Lifted
Over a dark water
In act to fly,
Yet stayed
By their frail images
In its mahogany depths

Making Bibles (Sackler Exhibit revisited)

This week's New Republic contains a somewhat breathless article "Getting the Word Out" by Anthony Grafton for the issue dated 1/22.

Having already posted on my visit to the Sackler exhibit in November, I make the following comments on the Grafton piece:

Grafton makes much of the photo of Solomon Schechter with the Cairo Genizah in Cambridge UL and indeed it is given pride of place in the exhibit being the first image that you see:

Bearded and saturnine, the great scholar clutches his forehead as he contemplates one of the thousands of texts that had to be catalogued and identified and reassembled like so many lost mosaics before the Genizah could release its secrets about the history of Judaism and Christianity.

Taken together, photograph and heap embody the scholar's lot--a curse of Tantalus, which condemns its victims to an endless desire for and an impossible pursuit of the whole past, the whole book, the whole truth. Beauty and truth are fragile. Often they survive only as fragments. At the core of this show is a hymn of praise to the slow, grinding work of those forgotten Bartleby-like creatures, the scribes and the scholars, those who first made and those who reassembled the fragments over the millennia, and by doing so preserved and illuminated the textual traditions of the human race.

But alas, the photograph is staged as I pointed out in November. When he worked on the manuscripts, Schechter could only do so in short bursts and then with a mask. Not as photogenic, of course. But it wouldn't be hard to find examples of similar painstaking scholarly work.

What about Hartmut Stegemann's technique for reconstructing the column arrangement of a whole Dead Sea Scroll? Placement of the fragments in order and in the right columns was based on the shapes and damage-patterns of the fragments, and the width of the folds in the manuscripts. Stegemann's method has been verified by independent reconstructions of the Hodayot Scroll (1QHa) by Stegemann and Puech, and cross-verified by the texts of the Cave 4 Hodayot manuscripts.

Grafton adds further examples of ancient scribes and copyists:-

The range of scholars one meets here is extraordinary: they come from everywhere, from the Latin West to far in the East, and they include women as well as men. The Selden Acts of the Apostles bears what seems to be the scratched signature of Abbess Eadburh of Minster-in-Thanet, a correspondent of Saint Boniface and one of many holy women who copied manuscripts. Most electrifying of all is a fragment of the Aleppo codex of the Hebrew Bible. Known as HaKeter, or "the crown," this manuscript was copied in the tenth century in Tiberias, the citadel of Hebrew grammar, by Solomon ben Buya'a. Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher, the last member of a distinguished family, added the commentary, vowel points, and accent marks. The oldest Hebrew Bible in one volume, this may also have been the first one ever made as a single, coherent book, by a scribe and a scholar working together from start to finish.

He concludes from these observations that no single bible represents the word of God by itself:

Every one of them derives from beautiful but imperfect handwritten books like those displayed here, many of which, perhaps most, omit verses and texts that a modern American would normally expect to find. Only by reading each version--sometimes, each of the many versions of a version--in context can we see what they meant to their creators.

Just to illustrate this point further, the exhibit contains a leaf from Codex Caesariensis (6th C) normally in the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum here in New York City. On the leaf is the text of Matthew 15:38-17:7 in large silver uncial letters in two columns of 16 lines including the words of Jesus:-

"When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'It will be stormy today for the sky is red and threatening.'" These verses (16:2-3) are not found in either Codex Vaticanus or Sinaiticus but are in other Byzantine text types like Codex Sinopensis. Are they in your Bible?

Refugees

The Iraq war has resulted in displacement of 2 million Iraqis (you may have to login to this opinion piece from the NY Times). It could mean the end of the presence of Iraqi Christians and other minorities that have lived there for over two thousand years according to an article by Felice D. Gaer and Charles J. Chaput for the Washington Times (Dec 22, 2006).

Amid the widely publicized cycle of Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian violence in Iraq, members of non-Muslim religious minorities continue to suffer a disproportionate burden of violent attacks and other human-rights abuses. Minority communities, including Christians, Yazidis and Sabean Mandaeans, have been forced to fend for themselves, and are particularly vulnerable given their lack of a tribal or militia structure to provide for their security. The repeated targeting of Iraqi religious minorities in coordinated bombing attacks and other violence has forced many worshippers to cease attending religious services or participating in religious events. Moreover, they face a continuing climate of impunity.

As a result of these attacks, Iraqi ChaldoAssyrians and Sabean Mandaeans are fleeing Iraq in numbers disproportionate to their size. While they constitute less than 3 percent of the Iraqi population, they represent approximately 40 percent of those who have fled Iraq seeking refugee status over the past three years, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Numbering at least 100,000, these refugees are dispersed today in Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Iran and Lebanon.

In the countries to which they have fled, their welcome is wearing thin. Iraqi refugees live in fear that they have no legal protection and no work opportunities in the countries where they have sought refuge, and are vulnerable to forced repatriation.

The article's authors plead that the United States should create new or expand existing options, independent of UNHCR, for allowing members of Iraq's ChaldoAssyrian and Sabean Mandaean religious minority communities to access the U.S. refugee program. It should also urge UNHCR to assess all claims from Iraqi asylum seekers without delay.

Thousands of Iraqis are suffering and fleeing their country, and refugee protections should be available to all of them. Iraq's Christian and other religious minority communities are particularly vulnerable, and UNHCR, the United States and other nations must recognize their special circumstances and address their needs. Surely countries can make "room at the inn" for these vulnerable people so badly in need of help.

In an OpEd piece for the LA Times (Jan 13, 2006), Anna Husarska describes the case of a Dinka man named Kur who had been proposed by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for resettlement to a third country. His application — for himself, his wife Angelina and their six children — was submitted to the United States by the commissioner's office.

In the last six months, I have met many refugees around the world — Burmese Karen in Thailand, Burmese Chin in Malaysia, Lao Hmong in Thailand, Eritreans in Ethiopia — whose cases were put "on hold" by U.S. authorities because the organizations to which the refugees had belonged were later designated as terrorist. But I never saw a blunt refusal until I saw Kur's letter.

What's particularly upsetting is that those "on hold" are, in many cases, heroic freedom fighters who struggled for democracy against brutal dictatorships (like the Burmese junta or the Laotian communists) or even, sometimes, people who had been recruited to fight by the Unites States (like the Lao Hmong or the Vietnamese Montagnards).

The reason for this bizarre treatment is that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. adopted a very broad definition of "terrorist activity" in American law. This overzealous legislative approach means that thousands of genuine refugees who participated in armed insurgencies — even those friendly to (and in some cases supported by) the United States — are now treated as a threat to American security.

It's not just those who participated in the insurgencies. Those who provided "material support" to these combatants can be barred too. The global effect of this draconian law has been devastating: Of the 70,000 slots allotted in 2006 for new refugees by the traditionally hospitable U.S. resettlement program, only 41,000 were filled. According to estimates from the International Rescue Committee and other refugee organizations, about half of the 29,000 excluded were due to the "terrorist" and "material support" provisions.

On Thursday, the Bush administration acknowledged the "unintended consequences" of the post-9/11 laws. Officials from the departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security announced plans to expand the waiver program, some of which will require a vote in Congress. The officials named in particular Cuban, Tibetan and additional Burmese freedom-fighter groups whose supporters and members could get special consideration for admission to the United States.

But the waiver program is a partial solution since it is time-consuming. Husarska concludes with a plea that Congress must act to broadly amend the immigration law so that all bona fide refugees can be easily and fairly considered for refugee or asylum status, not punished for the courage and commitment they demonstrated fighting for peace and democracy in their homelands.

Now from today's UK Observer comes an article by Ed Vulliamy, "Welcome to the new Holy Land" about the dynamic effect on UK city RC churches of legal and illegal waves of immigrants.

He comments:
The burgeoning Catholic congregations are a sudden but barely discussed result of mass immigration and constitute a major moment in the complex history of the faith here. By tradition, British Catholicism had become a strange alliance - in counterpoint to, and often in defiance of, the Anglican establishment - between a refusenik aristocracy and intelligensia and the Irish masses, supplemented by a few Italians and Poles. But in the past decade, with European Union enlargement, British Catholicism has become a global village. The new faces of all colours not only revive the church but radically redefine it. Because the new communicants are strangers, mostly poor, often exploited and here illegally, the church becomes their home from home, obliged to rediscover that subversion innate to the faith here - for all its global power - since the crown and establishment split from Rome.

What does it now mean to be a Roman Catholic in Britain? The demographic studies are not yet available.

At St. Peter's Woolwich, 75 nationalities, mostly from across Africa but also South America, Asia and Europe, comprise its congregation. On Advent Sunday there was an extended Mass featuring music and later food from 34 of them. This is where Monya the Rastafarian from Zimbabwe, with his locks and tri-coloured beads, takes communion along with the Filipino ladies who work on the ticket counter at Tower Bridge and in local hospitals. This church is where Cliff Pinto from Uganda met Eva Krejcarova from the Czech Republic. 'We were married here, and soon our child will be baptised here,' says Pinto, patting Eva's stomach. This is where the local Ghanaian community does its business in the church hall, while Hannah Mulvihill, who cleaned the local library at 6am every morning for 25 years, reflects, in her Irish accent: 'It was a full church but then the Irish died or went back to Ireland and it emptied. Then they all started coming. At first it was a bit... er, well, I'm not very good at expressing myself... But now it's lovely, having the church full again and these people from all over.'

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Primate of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has emphasised the integration of the faith into British society. But last May Day he staged an extraordinary Migrant Mass at Westminster Cathedral after which he argued the case for the regularisation of undocumented migrants.

Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff is tipped to succeed him. The article continues by quoting him:

Gradually we need to integrate immigrants into the parishes, which means locating them, supporting them, helping them with registration. But the real priority is to get their children into our schools and educate them' - He is genial and hospitable but the lexicon of the man likely to lead the new tapestry of British Catholicism through its next phase is one of steel, echoing that of Pope Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II: 'This is now a battlefield,' he says plainly, 'in a materialist society where many young people have no moral values at all, a society which does not allow a child to remain a child and which transmits rubbish whenever I turn on the TV. We face an aggressive secularism, imposing its values on people while accusing us of trying to impose ours. We are not imposing anything, we are proposing a way of life that challenges secular materialism and leads to physical, emotional and cultural as well as spiritual well-being, a just life for the common good.'

Such immigrants will undoubtedly have a new and different voice on moral issues of our times once their immigrant status is resolved.