Truman and Amelie

This week I enjoyed watching Amelie Amaya’s introduction to the world and the Truman Show.  You are perhaps already jumping to the same insights I reached.

The Truman Show is on the list of films that I am encouraging my teenage daughter to watch as part of her home education.  Quite apart from just being a brilliant piece of film-making and entertainment [if you are not one of those people who just can bear to watch Jim Carrey], it is also a brilliant piece of social magnification.  By which I mean a film that manages to hold a magnifying glass up to our culture, blowing it out of all proportion, and presenting it as entertainment.  Often in such a way that most are still completely oblivious to the point and none the wiser to the situation that they are surrounded by.

In the late nineties when the Truman Show was released western culture was breaking the sound barrier along the race track of individualisation.  We were so far away from the kind of state control predicted by the likes of Orwell in the novel 1984, so secure in celebrating the fall of communism and socialism in general, that a film like the Truman Show only served to remind us what we were running away from.  Not that we needed it, but the Truman Show gave us the turbo boast through the millennium and into a new decade and century where globalisation and individualisation would be the unquestioned norm.

Alongside this celebration The Truman Show was also commenting on the increasing normality of state watching, of the increasing ubiquity of cctv.  Of course, this was pre 9/11; after which very idea of security changed and cctv became almost a desired rather than feared addition to our everyday live.

The magnification of these results in the idea of a person, Truman, being not just watched, but surrounded by people supporting his artificial world.  Everything that Truman does, every aspect of his mundane life becomes compelling entertainment for, quite literally, the world.

Enter Amelie Amaya.  This video, that went viral a few weeks back and has now been viewed on youtube alone nearly 9m times, clearly is brilliant. It puts the announcement cards that I carefully crafted for our three children to shame and raises the bar for those who are at this moment celebrating the arrival of their new child.  But I can’t help asking myself, how will Amelie feel about this viral video when she is 13?

In a way that Andrew Niccol [writer] and Peter Weir [director] could never have anticipated or predicted when they were working on the script and production of the Truman Show we now have the tech and know-how to fulfil their vision of a life watched! But we don’t need a dominant figure like Christof to develop and oversee such projects.  Since one of the by-products of our individualisation processes is that the tech and know-now is in the hands of people like you and me and readily available in our everyday lives.

The trouble with being human these days – a review

The Trouble with Being Human these Days – a documentary about Professor Zygmunt Bauman

A review following screenings at the British Association of Sociology Conference in Leeds, April 10-14 2012

I have been looking forward to watching this documentary since I first saw the trailer at the launch conference of the Bauman Institute in September 2010.  The film project arises from a conversation about a photograph between Mark Davis, the now Director of said Institute and Bartek Dziadosz [producer / director].  In the UK it might seem a little odd to consider making a documentary about a retired professor of sociology at Leeds University.  However, in Europe, Zygmunt holds a position in society as a public academic, someone not just worth listening to, but someone to be photographed with and queue for their autograph.

The film, of 51 mins, is a complex matrix of Bauman’s intellectual observations, friendly and supporting comments from other academics and intellectuals and some rare insights into his personal life.  Most of the content is taken from an interview with Mark Davis that took place over three days and Bauman’s public engagements around Europe during 2011.

This complex matrix perhaps leaves its audience wanting.  Those wanting more academic content, or hoping for a contextualisation of that content will feel short changed, but fascinated by the honest humanity of peeking into this man’s personal life.  Those wanting to see more of the man himself will be left frustrated by the teaser nature of the content but hopefully stimulated by Bauman’s ability to express the simplicity that he has found the other side of complexity.  Each of these groups of viewers and those in-between can sooth their disappointment by resonating with the hope of the film makers; that it will begin to reconnect rigorous academic reflection with the task of living an ordinary life in the modern world.  Obviously, Bauman’s rigorous academic reflection…

This hope is founded and probably springs out of Bauman’s self-confessed vocation as someone whose aim in their work is to not just contribute to the common good, but transform life for the better.  Bauman’s final faith is in humanity, that despite our tendency to create our own problems we are also supremely capable of solving them.  This stands in contrast to the common critique of Bauman’s work as being thoroughly bleak and often dark.  For me, he is a person who faces the brutal facts and in so doing provides the energy needed to move on from such darkness and never come back.

Reading Bauman over the last 15 years, or at least trying to keep up with his writings, has been a key fuel of practical theological reflection.  In an ecclesiological world that more often that not cannot refute criticisms of theological oversimplification and a reductionist and superficial appreciation of the complexities of everyday life a deeper engagement with Bauman’s sociological imagination is a much needed ingredient.  For many of my ecclesial contemporaries and peers ,who have disengaged from academic reading and study and whose year of graduation can be guessed at from viewing their bookshelf, this film may offer a more accessible view of a different perspective of a shared subject: humans and humanity.

One of the most telling scenes in the film almost at the very end.  Bauman himself is explaining his own almost certainly humanist faith in humanities ability to solve the problems it may have created; that his faith is that we “are supremely capable of solving them.”  The footage for this voice-over has Bauman wandering seemingly aimlessly towards an apparent, if not actual ecclesial building, a church.  Which of course is only itself a signifier of something else.  I can’t help wondering whether this was intentional or accidental, either way it is telling.

Zygmunt Bauman: Sociology of and for the Ordinary

Bauman at the PostGrad Forum at BSA Annual 2012 Conference

Despite being a prolific writer, Zygmunt is a man of few words in presentation. Instead he prefers to stir it up a little, just a little, and then address questions and observations: a style I appreciate. Aside from this, a timetabling issue meant that Bauman had even shorter time than was hoped for. Anyway…
However, when someone has been in sociology for a long time, beginning “perhaps even before some of your parents”, it is worth listening to their perspective.

Briefly Bauman observes that sociology has been in crisis many times before and so it is no surprise now and neither is it a time to panic.  Instead, sociology must pay attention to its public; who then will listen?  For a long time sociology has been the science of un-freedom and it’s public, those who are interested in the outcomes, observations and edicts, have been the managerial, those who direct others.  Those who bring order from the chaos of humans; typified by the forces, the school, the factory.  Sociology was the science of observing patterns in the so called chaos and the theorising those patterns in order to aid those patterns.  Those who listen where those who were interested in coercing through exploiting those patterns for the benefit of those for whom the managers were themselves accountable: the executives, the shareholders, the generals.

However, this side of, what Bauman referred to as, the second managerial revolution, where coercion has being upgraded, where the act or practice of coercion has morphed into a skill of soliciting desire or scoping for “opportunities and markets”, the former public are no longer interested in sociological observations.  The public has changed.

Bauman’s observations are that social problems are now addressed by the individual for that individual in a world where the only certainty is uncertainty.  The individual, those in need of a ‘line on the horizon‘, a pattern with which they resonate and therefore a path through the chaos are the new public for sociology.  Bauman suggests two clear strategies that sociologists might want to consider if they want to both acknowledge and communicate with their new public.

Firstly, that sociology needs to address ordinary people in their ordinary experiences.

Secondly, that sociologists need to be ready for dialogue, ready to be both teachers and learners with their public.  Sociologists are not the experts in interpretation, and only really offer secondary interpretations, interpretations of interpretations.  The individual is the artist of their own life and the master interpreter of the surrounding chaos in which they find themselves; finding their own solutions to the social problems and situations in which they are part actor part author.

Both these strategies are in the light of the subjective turn, or as Bauman referenced, the end of Cartesian philosophy with its clear, distinct and clean line between the object and the subject.  A line that sociology has respected in the past but now must be courageous to cross.  It is in that courageous move that sociology becomes exciting, or that there has never been an more exciting time to be a sociologist.

So, some of my emerging questions…

Is this sociology needing to embrace the communications revolution?

How do sociologists acknowledge the transition in their skill base that they might need to engage with the ordinary? and what are those skills?

What other disciplines should sociologists pay attention to because there is an emerging engagement with the ordinary within it?

Zombie Category 3: fair, ethical, moral

Much of the political rhetoric since the lead up to the last general election has focused on making Britain and its systems, procedures and taxes fairer.  It was the heart of the Liberal Democrat manifesto and the collation had enable such speak to leak into almost every governmental brief, announcement and policy that has come forth. Despite its ubiquity, I am yet to hear any convincing conversation about what fairness is.  We can add to that its rhetorical synonyms ‘ethical’ and ‘moral’.  These concepts are delivered with full conviction, full of energy and life and yet are lifeless without a conversation about what it might mean to be fair.  We might all agree that things need to be fairer, but the prize goes to the first person to say what that might look like and for everyone to agree that such is indeed fair. Apparently alive but effectively dead; fair, ethical and moral are contenders for zombie categories.

I am on my way home from an Oasis [wiki] event at their church in Waterloo under the banner of Charities Parliament [now renamed the People's Parliament] at which Vince Cable, Richard Paton [Occupy London] and Stuart Etherington led a community debate on #responsiblecapitalism.  ‘Responsible’ being just another mask for the words fair, ethical and moral that were used casually and yet with apparent collective meaning throughout the conversation.  Most of the content of the contributions of the guests and the questions, sorry monologues and sermonettes, from the ‘audience’ centred around proposals and demands to reform one aspect of the financial system or another.  Each contribution and suggestion presumably motivated by a conviction that the result would be fairer, more ethical, moral and responsible but without an open-sourced conviction about what might count as fair, ethical, moral or responsible.

These concepts are clearly alive and provide the source of energy for many of the convictions and motivations of such debates, conversations and indeed protests, but they may as well be dead for all the actual value they bring to the conversation.  Alive and yet dead makes them clear contenders for zombie status.

This is who you are, now act like it. 2nd before Lent, Colossians 1:15-20

Preaching today at Shipton under Wychwood, Holy Communion service.  Here is most of the text, although I am sure I’ll start better than is indicated…

The passage in Colossians is a thought through, carefully constructed and widely used amongst the early xian communities: not quite a poem, not quite a hymn, more like a creed.

My point here is that this passage is meant to be contemplated upon, reflected over and considered in depth.  It was meant to be repeated and become familiar amongst the believers in the community.  Who knows why using this passage did not last amongst xian communities, but I am glad that Paul records it here in his letter to the church in Colossae.

In contrast to last week’s readings in which Jesus heals many and the whole town becomes excited and involved.  This week’s are the result of careful reflection on the person who they were following.  In contrast to last weeks readings that almost demanded that we get up and join in.  This weeks readings demand us to stop and listen and pause and consider.  In contrast to last weeks readings where we had to work at keeping up and were in danger of being left behind.  This weeks readings invite us to say slow down, I need to hear that again just so I can begin to comprehend.  In contrast to last weeks readings that gave us a taste of what life as a disciple might be like.  This weeks readings are meant to reminds us who we are by reminding us who Jesus is.

Whilst I understand that many books and many have spoken on the details and complexities of Paul’s writings, I want to offer you my one sentence summary:  This is who you are now act like it!

In each of Paul’s letter he begins by reminding you who you are by talking about who Jesus is and finishes by encouraging you to act like it in the various issues of the time.

Whatever you were, whatever you used to be, whatever it was like before Jesus, you are now totally different: He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his Son.  To understand who I am, who you are, who we are, then the only place we can look is to Jesus.  We, who are born not of blood, or of the flesh, or the will of man, but by the power of God are like Jesus.

And he is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers, all things have been created through him and for him.

If this is Jesus and who we are who are caught up in, then we ought to act with respect to the created order.  Our attitude towards our environment should probably reflect who Jesus is and who we are as children of God.  We are, on the whole, much better at this that we used to be.  Although we have a long way to go until we undo the mess we have contributed to over the last few centuries.  But lets not fall into the age old trap of considering that we are somehow separate and distinct from that created order.   We, like the Jesus who walked around Palestine and Israel, are part of that created order.  If all things were created through him and for him, then that includes me, you and us.  It includes the person you struggle to get on with and the person who you hold a grudge against.  It includes the people you consider friends and loved ones and the stranger that you pass on the street and in the shops.  It includes those who have worked hard in their lives and those who have never managed to find work.  It includes those who were born British and those who have recently arrived here.  Those who will sleep on the streets tonight and those who will work them.  Those who will go hunger today, those who are lying in a hospital bed suffering from something they picked up because they do not have clean water and those for whom this morning was their last sunrise for they won’t make it through the day.

This is the created order that was made through him and for him.  And if I belong to Jesus, if I am caught up in his life, transformed by the same spirit and living in the kingdom of Light, then how should I act in the light of these issues of our time?

The passage goes on…Jesus is himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
This is who Jesus is and we are the church.  Jesus is the firstborn from the dead and our death will be like his, one that lead to life.  If this is who I am then who am I to fear death.  That is not to say that I should embrace it, but with Paul we can say that “living is Christ and dying is gain.”

If this is who I am, who you are, who we are, then death is put in its place and we are free to live: what does that look like?

The final part of the passage goes: For in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
This is who we are.  We have, as Paul elsewhere describes it, a ministry of reconciliation.  How shall we act this out?
Surely there are no grievance amongst us? Surely, despite the sad picture of the wider church, there are no differences that cause bad feeling between any of us.  Surely we speak well of each other and seek to build each other up with encouraging words, working hard to keep the bond of peace.  Surely gossip is not found on our lips and we don’t bear any false witness against anyone.
Phew! Thank goodness, seeing as we are about to approach the table, remembering where Jesus declared his love for us despite what we were about to do to him.

But the picture of reconciliation is much bigger.  Jesus is not just about being good friends and neither are we.  The reconciliation that Jesus is about and the reconciliation that we are therefore about is nothing short of the reconciliation of all things.  How do we act in the light of that?

I have been trying to teach my daughter Anna that when you don’t know the answer ask a good question.  And it seems to me, in an age where church attendance is still declining, where in the time it has taken me to deliver this sermon 13 people will have decided to leave the organised church in this country; in and age where people are happy to explore spirituality but not Jesus, in an age where it becomes illegal for consenting adults to prayer together in a public space, we need to ask ourselves a really good question:  Why are we no longer attractive?

If this is who Jesus is, the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, firstborn of the dead, holder of the first place in everything, for whom all things were created and through whom creation came to being, the head and the beginning the person in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and who love the world so much…

If this is who Jesus is and who we are caught up in, then you got to ask yourself, why are we no longer attractive?

Mind the Gap

I am sure that the gap that I have left will have hardly been noticed. I have forgotten the stats about how many website and blogs get abandoned on a daily basis. Nevertheless, there is now a gap!
Since the end of May…

• Kate secured a new position as Vicar of the Wychwood Benefice, West Oxon
• We carefully exited our curacy
• Moved house
• Holiday’ed in Europe
• Completely re-furbished the new vicarage [gosh it was a mess]

I am now focusing all my time on Home-Schooling my daughter, who is just weeks away from her scholarship exams at a school in Oxford.  In all that time I have not given one glance to my PhD nor done any reading or writing.  The gap has been a emotionally and mentally longer and wider than it has in actual days and weeks.  The anticipation of getting back to my desk is tangible and my family can tell the days when the I feel it more.  Just a few weeks to go…

Andrew Walker: a celebration and assessment

Andrew Walker was my first contact with Kings College London and the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture [CTRC].  I had a tough, but successful interview for a place on the PhD program and Andrew was keen to supervise me.  When I look back at that 40 minute chat there are two areas of naivety that stand out.  Firstly, that I really had no idea of what I was talking about.  I am now in my 4th part-time year of my PhD and I am just about ready for that interview.  I am just about ready to elaborate my ideas about evangelical identity and how I might go about trying to demonstrate a helpful and production approach to thinking about what it means to call oneself an evangelical.  Secondly, and to the point, I had little notion of who it was that was interviewing me!

I had of course engaged with some of Andrew’s writing, notably,Telling the Story, but I had no notion that Andrew could be held responsible for the growth [...]

Young people and religion

Waiting for Happiness

“This photo is meaningful to me because it is a metaphor for my life: Nothing is clear or certain, I am far away from where I should be to have a clear view of my life, for what I want to do, where I am.  It’s very messy.  I was quite lonely… You can achieve much more when you have someone with you.”

Attendance at the Young People and Religion conference last week has re-awakened some passions that have recently managed to find some dosing space.  A combination of other part-time aspects of my life and the sometimes dull security that rural ministry provides has meant that fuel-providing-passions of my first 13 years in full-time ministry had been throttled down to an almost silent tick-over.  An awareness of this was the motivation to attend the days conference at KCL.

The conference was sponsored by the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme; a huge £12m project exploring Religion and Society.  A significant aspect of that program has been a focus on young people and religion.  This day was the presentation of some of individual research projects that are part of this focus.

As I reflected on the content of the day and started writing a post, it soon became apparent that there were many questions and points to make, too many for a single post.  So I am offering some titles here which I hope to write over the coming days and weeks.

• Top of the Range Models: young people as the cultural experts
• Ecclesial Prophets: young people’s influence on spirituality and church practices
• Closing the Loop: research led local church leadership

Hoping to write…

[This image is taken by one of the participants in Pete Ward's Migration and Visual Culture: A Theological Exploration of Identity Catholic Imagery and Popular culture among Polish Young.  This project was funded by the Religion and Society Project.]

Discipleship and Wrongness

Kathryn Schulz [web, wiki, book], a self confessed “wrongologist”, has got me thinking about all kinds of things, but in particular about out theological statements. There is much I remember from my doctrine lectures at LBC [now LST], thanks to the passion and teaching of Graham McFarlane. On the top of that pile of learning is his oft-repeated phrase “Every theological statement is an interim statement.” The focus of such a statement was and is that we only see through a glass darkly, that we can not know the fullness of who God is and our theology is but a human attempt to speak of the divine. It is also clearly a statement about our human ability to be wrong.

Kathryn asks people in the audience at TED 2011 to describe what it feels like to be wrong.  After some worthwhile contributions she challenges those who replied claiming that they have answered the wrong question; you have answered what does it feel like when you realise you are wrong. Right up until that point when you realise that you have been or are wrong you feel like you are right. Being wrong feels like being right. It is only in retrospect, wrong. It is only in retrospect, embarrassing, confusing and humiliating.

The Common Lectionary reading on Easter Sunday, John 20:1-18, relates how Mary finds the empty tomb, runs and tells the disciples and returns with them to confirm her testimony.  John arrives first and waits by the door, Peter arrives and bundles past for a close look then John follows, “and he saw and believed.” [v8]  This is John’s moment when he realised he was wrong!  Up until this point he was right, even if that was confusion and disbelief.

It seems to me that scripture is, among many other things, a narrative of our wrongness. The disciples are wrong many times and Jesus’ exasperation is recorded, and each time the disciples don’t yield their rightness to accept their wrongness.  These minor verbal exchanges are micro examples of the large sweeps of the biblical narrative as the people of God think they have got it right in belief and practice and God gently, and sometime not so gently, shows that they are wrong.

This pattern of conviction and wrong did not stop with the end of the biblical narrative, as the abolition of the slave trade and, one can hope, the appointment of women as bishops show.  And yet we are so often so sure of ourselves, sure enough to fight for our position.  Sometimes such conviction becomes admirable and many will follow such a leader, and yet there is something more desirable.  Just the other side of conviction is a wisdom that enables one to be faithful and humble; faithful enough to belief and practice and humble even to “step outside that tiny, terrified space of rightness, look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say ‘Wow! I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong.’”

Prince William

So the Prince is greeting some of his guests in the Abbey and the commentators are filling the airwaves with congratulations for the day… and predictions and prophecies of what is to come.
I have a lot of respect for the Queen and perhaps a little more for Prince Charles, I admire his desire to just get stuck in even if many see this as meddling. And yet it is to William that we look.
My prayer is that as William steps front and centre into public life he finds that he is not just welcome but that it is a place where he can flourish. As he does I pray that he can bring this nation with him to a new place where we can be proud to be British.