MetaCatholic

This could be a serious post about theological method, prejudice and fresh readings of the faith in the light of what actually happens and the real people we meet.

But superficially it’s about Microsoft’s new marketing wheeze. They got a whole bunch of people in and asked for their opinions on Vista. A great many of these were unfavourable. Then they showed them the new upcoming version of Windows, Mojave. The same people largely liked it. Then they told the the truth: there was no Windows Mojave – what they’d seen was Vista.

The se people knew what everyone knew from authoritative sources and common knowledge, but they’d never encountered a working copy of Vista for themselves. When they did, in a context unburdened by prior expectation, they liked it.

You can do your own theology with this.

(Note: this is the second in a series, following this post. The same requests for courtesy and careful argument apply.)

There is a whole range of texts which we ought to discuss with special care, that include those that have been used to justify or inspire violence against women, against Jews, against children and against gay people. That does not mean that we should make them say something other than what they do say. It only means we should handle them with care, knowing that past users of these texts have been complicit in a range of abusive, threatening, violent and (literally) murderous behaviour not unrelated to their use of the texts. The two texts I want to address in this post are among them. (And yes, dear reader, I know there are other texts, but one post at a time, please!)

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)

Curiously, the first of these texts was quoted today in a letter in the Church Times. (Sadly, I can’t link to it, since the CT doesn’t quite get the internet or indeed the general principle of subscription – bizarrely it costs more to subscribe than it does to buy it weekly in a newsagent.) There a certain Felicity Crow writes from rural Gloucestershire:

Christ came to remove not one jot or tittle of the Law. The Law says a man shall not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is an abomination. This is not a question of opinion.

Those who teach or preach otherwise … should be stark staring terrified. … To those who go against him and pollute his teaching Christ is totally terrifying.

That is one point of view (he says drily) and I’ll come back to it in a moment. (I hope questioning is allowed as Jesus readies the thunderbolts.) Ironically it is printed next to a very different letter, from someone whose name and address have been withheld.

I have been a worshipping Christian my entire life, but where I once found solace and friendship at church, it is true to say that I now feel like the enemy – a second class citizen … I spent many years coming to terms with my sexuality, and had a nervous breakdown in doing so.

This illustrates, I think, exactly why I am pleading for care. Let us assume for a moment that the end result of all these explorations will be a defence of the traditional position. Then I would note that Jesus was able to say to the woman caught in adultery “Go and sin no more” because he had first become her rescuer and protector. We can, I think, hear hard things from those we know love us, but if we never hear anything but hard things, it leaves us feeling very doubtful that we’re loved at all. Why would anyone want to know, far less trust and obey, a Jesus who sets out to terrify?

At one level, it seems to me that we can have some agreement about these texts themselves. They say pretty much the same thing, although the second elaborates and adds the punishment. It seems most likely that “lie with a male as with a woman” primarily refers to anal sex, although the euphemism is wide enough to embrace the possibility of other activities. It seems clear that it is specific actions that are being spoken about. It is worth noting that, unlike a fairly common view of the Roman world, both the penetrator and the penetrated are equally guilty. The implication, although rarely noticed, is also that, since this is a matter of purity, anal rape of an unwilling partner would still lead to the death penalty for both rapist and raped alike.

Moving beyond that to further interpretation is far from straightforward, however. At the most basic level, there is little obvious historical context. The development of the legal materials, the possibility of a separate Holiness Code (Lev 17-26) being incorporated into (later?) P material, the dating of earlier and final recensions all leave much of this lacking a clear cultural context within which to understand it. One possibility might well be pagan temple prostitution, or other cultic sexual activity. But it might not have that kind of connection at all. It may, as with so many other features of the priestly writings, be concerned with a particular construction of what is order, and therefore safe, and what chaos, and therefore dangerous. It could be held that there is a quite rational emphasis on the maintenance of sex for procreation, and procreation alone, at a time when mortality rates made this a matter of elementary survival and the common good. Non-procreative sex threatens the well-being of the community of Israel.

It seems to me impossible to adjudicate between these possible interpretations, and quite likely that there are elements of all three. In every case, the text is implicated in a particular context. The third context is one that some parts of the world can still identify with, and it also raises some awkward questions for heterosexual people, and the ways in which the modern West (at least outside the Roman Catholic Magisterium) conceptualises sex. The second possibility may lead to some of the more interesting and fruitful questions in cross-cultural interpretation. Order and chaos are primal categories, theologically, culturally, politically and psychologically. Saying the text needs interpretation is not the same as immediately kissing it goodbye.

The other issue that confronts and confuses the interpreter however, is one of selection. I go back for a moment to Ms Crow’s letter. Note that she has selected Lev 18:22 over Lev 20:13. In saying that not a jot or tittle in the Law are altered, she has nonetheless chosen the verse that omits the death penalty. Everyone selects, and so everyone interprets. These troubling verses are surrounded (staying within the boundaries of the so-called Holiness Code)by some very different ones. It includes laws that are reinforced in the New Testament and are regarded effectively as universal moral laws, such as “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). It includes laws that no Christian even begins to think might be applicable today, such as “You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.” (Leviticus 19:27).

It contains laws that the Church now regards as incompatible with its understanding of the will of God: “As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves.” (Leviticus 25:44). Nonetheless, for a large part of Christian history, tradition saw this law as perfectly acceptable. It contains laws that the Church, or modern society, has effectively sidelined, and which are rarely debated: “Do not take interest in advance or otherwise make a profit from them, but fear your God; let them live with you. You shall not lend them your money at interest taken in advance, or provide them food at a profit.” (Leviticus 25:36-37). By contrast with the law on slaves, for the larger part of Christian history, the church thought this law was of ongoing significance, and revealed the will of God for Christian society.

Laws dealing with sex are mixed up with laws dealing with sacrifice, conduct for priests, general ethical behaviour, and other matters. The question of interpretation is not a cop-out, nor a way of avoiding difficulties. It is a necessary response to the nature of the text and in particular to the reading of Leviticus, where the selective and variable nature of Christian interpretation is perhaps at its most obvious. We Christians, at least, do select, and our selections appear to change. The question is “have we made the right selections?” Are our selections truly refracted through the gospel?

The broader themes of order and chaos, and the place of the communal good offering a context in which to think about sexual behaviour that seem to relate to the specifics of these texts will be important ideas to return to in placing one cultural reading in tension with another. But the whole must be related to the Christ who enters the ultimate undoing in death of God’s created order in order to recreate it, and the one who creates a new community reordered around the pattern of his faithfulness, rather than Torah-obedience.

This may be a bigger task than I intended to take on (or indeed am capable of).

There’ve been a fair few reactions to the vote of the Church of England’s General Synod to move forward towards the ordination of women as bishops. One of the tendencies I’ve noted in more than the odd report, however, is that this is a liberal development, and one that largely overturns the Church’s tradition. It seems to me worth recalling what could be described as the biblical and Catholic case for seeing this as a faithful and proper development of the tradition.

The evidence of the biblical period is mixed. However, one has to note

• The description of Junia as “outstanding among the apostles” (Rom 16:7 – ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις).
• The description of Phoebe as not simply a servant or deacon of the church (Rom 16:1 – διάκονον τῆς ἐκκλησίας) but also as Paul’s patron (Rom 16:2 – αὐτὴ προστάτις πολλῶν ἐγενήθη καὶ ἐμοῦ αὐτοῦ). Patron – προστάτις – is a term that would normally connote a form of what many today mean by “headship” whatever Paul meant by that term then.
• There are Euodia and Syntyche who have not only struggled alongside Paul in the work of the gospel (Phil 4:2-3 – ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ συνήθλησάν μοι) and these two women are named ahead not only of other generic fellow-workers but also of Clement, who in Catholic tradition is identified with the third Bishop of Rome.
• In John’s gospel Mary Magdalene is entrusted with the first proclamation of the resurrection, which led tradition to call her “apostle of the apostles” (John 20:11-18).
• In Luke’s gospel Jesus defends Mary’s choice to sit at his feet as a disciple, instead of being about women’s work (Luke 10:38-42). The cultural implication is not only radical about roles (possibly in terms like the gospel of Thomas of becoming male – Saying 114) that she could be entrusted with the passing on of his teaching.

There are other instances that one can adduce, but it seems to me these are the most significant. They represent a spread across the width of the early Christian movement which seems at least strong enough to counter any facile quotation of Pauline texts. The Pauline examples seem to show that Paul’s practice is to accept women as apostles, and accord them significant honour for their ministry in the churches. And even if the idea of a bishop of Rome is a tad anachronistic in the first century, I rather like the idea of the third Pope learning ministry as a junior partner to a couple of women.

The early centuries are problematic. There is patchy evidence both from apocryphal writings and from inscriptions for women exercising ministry, but we have no idea how mainstream much of this is, nor exactly what is being described. There is also the evidence of women’s prominence and leadership in early martyrology – Perpetua, for example. There is also evidence from attempts to ban women from various forms of ministry, such as this one: “Presbytides, as they are called, or female presidents, are not to be appointed in the Church. (Canon 11 of the Council of Laodicea). Exactly what is being referred to is not fully clear, except that some form of public ministry appears to be in view. The cumulative effect of this, however, is to undercut any simple appeal to the idea that the church has only ever known one practice. There is no simple continuity but rather a more complex picture. Evaluating these precedents is a matter for theological reflection, and not historical excavation.

An outline of the “traditional” argument for women as bishops and priests might include the following points. (I note that this is not an argument which will appeal to evangelicals, who may have to content themselves with the biblical material summarised above. Saying that, however, does remind us that some of those who are arguing that women can’t be priests, don’t believe that men can be priests either!)

All Christian priesthood, whether that of the people of God, or the ordained ministry, is a participation in the priesthood of Christ in diverse ways. Essential to Jesus’ qualification to be a priest, and therefore to be able to offer himself as the sacrifice for humanity, is that, according to Hebrews, he must be made like his brothers and sisters in every way (Heb 2:17). The inclusive translation is demanded by the argument of the text. Only by sharing our flesh and blood can he share our death so as to redeem us from death. The whole argument of Hebrews, summarised in this key text, is that the efficacy of Jesus’ priesthood not only depends on his sharing humanity, but that if it was, instead, a function of his masculinity, then he could not be the Saviour of women, only of men. In short, any argument that there is something inherently masculine in priesthood contradicts the way in which Hebrews develops the argument for the priesthood of Christ. An essentially masculine priesthood is a different type of priesthood from that of Christ, and therefore cannot be a Christian priesthood at the most profound and fundamental level. As St Gregory remarks, “What he did not assume, he cannot heal.” If Jesus is the Saviour of men and women, then the qualification is the human nature he shares with men and women.

Now in terms of some forms of ancient biology which held that women are pretty much defective men, it would have been possible to affirm that men could represent men and women, and women could only represent other women, and still maintain that Christ shared our common humanity. I do not believe that understanding of humanity is biologically, philosophically or socially tenable in any respect. Furthermore, most coherent readings of biblical anthropology give little support for accepting that kind of Aristotelian biology.

Therefore, it seems to me that, given our understandings of humanity, psychological, social, biblical and biological, we must today insist that priesthood should be open to women (and if priesthood, then episcopacy). Unless we do so we will (however inadvertently) be calling into question either the full humanity of Christ, or the salvation of half of humankind. It is, in the end, a biblically informed catholic theology of priesthood as rooted in, and representative of, Christ our priest, which demands that the episcopate and priesthood be open to women as well as men.

This is what I mean when I say that ordaining women is actually traditional and conservative, because it is expressing the essential heart of the gospel. Maintaining an essentially masculine character to the priesthood is, given the rest of our understanding, increasingly running the risk of conveying not orthodoxy, but heresy, that Christ is neither fully human, nor the Saviour of all. By contrast, at least some of us who argue for the ordination of women are doing so in order to proclaim and defend the incarnation of Christ as one like us in every respect save sin, and to announce and receive the ministry of our great high priest for all humanity.

I clearly touched a nerve and said what others were also thinking with yesterday’s post The Bible doesn’t say. Among the responses the one I found most interesting and sympathetically challenging was Sean the Baptist’s. He asks:

My question here relates, I guess, to the ways in which we might creatively relate the provisional senses of language that Doug calls for here, with the proclamatory dimensions of preaching in particular. In the end I think the preacher has a responsibility to say ‘this is what the Bible is saying…’. If this is modified to read ‘this is what I think the Bible is saying’ - does the preaching lose its rhetorical power?

Now I can’t exactly vouch for what I say in practice, since I don’t write, record or transcribe my sermons. I suspect that there are times when I have said (and probably will say) a sentence beginning “the BIble says …”.

However, it stands as one of many ways of phrasing things. I will also introduce sentences with (and this is not an exhaustive list)

• Matthew says …
• Luke seems to be teaching us …
• Chronicles gives us an alternative way of looking at …
• The story of Jonah seems to be aimed at …
• John presents a Jesus who …
• A main thrust of scripture seems to be …
• How do we discern the word of the Lord in …
• The gospels teach …
• The church proclaims …

Now in the context of many such statements, I think that “the Bible says …” is much less likely to be understood as a claim to reading without interpretation, because I encourage my congregation to think along with me around and with the scriptures, rather than simply tell them what to think about them.

I rather agree with Tim’s comment that we can’t (of course) always qualify our statements out of existence. But too many preachers leave the impression that there is no qualification, interpretation, disagreement, or any other option open, far less any thinking engagement needed. “The Bible says …” mentality remains one to be resisted, even if we sometimes employ the phrase. Interpretation needs to come out of the preacher’s closet.

Not a few recent posts and speeches on question of bishops, whether gay or women, have prompted this, but I want to protest the casual use of the phrase; “The Bible says”.

There is one way in which that phrase might be true: if I were to follow “The Bible says …” with a long quotation that started at Genesis 1:1 and finished at Revelation 22:21. Even then that would be controversial depending on the inclusion or omission of the apocryphal / deuterocanonical books. However, that is not typically how people use the phrase, whether it is (normally) Christians staking out a position, or (occasionally) atheists seeking to argue for the ludicrous nature of Christianity.

There are two essential things that are meant by “the Bible says”. The first is, “I have read in my Bible the words X.” The second is, “My (or my tradition’s) theological interpretation of the overall tenor and thrust of the Bible is Y”. What happens quite often is that the two are combined, so that X is a shorthand statement for Y, and it seems to me that this then disguises the fact that Y is what is really happening.

Non-controversially, consider this claim: “The Bible says that God is love.” It is certainly possible to find in the Bible the phrase “God is love” (1 John 4:8). It is also possible to find a great many statements made, or stories told, about God which would strongly suggest both that this and its opposite is true. But a strong Christ and Cross focussed interpretation of God, leading into developed Trinitarianism, allows this short statement to stand as a summary of the whole narrative and interpretative framework adopted by the Christian Church.

Controversially, consider the statement that “The Bible says same sex relationships are an abomination.” Of course, it doesn’t quite say this even in my first sense. The specific form of words it contains that come nearest to this (and I note that I am entirely ignoring questions of translation) is “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). That is to say, the verse refers to particular but imprecisely specified sexual acts, not relationships. Just at this level, interpretation is needed to flesh out what the sexual acts might be, and further interpretation is needed to move from this to any concept of a relationship, especially the sort of monoandrous one being proposed by some gay Christians and others today.

But more must be said. A second verse, Leviticus 20:13, goes further: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.” What is it that allows our speaker to claim “The Bible says same sex relationships are an abomination” but not to call for the death penalty. The verse is being selectively referred to, because a wider interpretative framework is being applied. “Abomination” is also used to refer to shellfish among other things (Leviticus 11:10), or to confusing clean with unclean animals (Leviticus 20:25). A bigger framework is necessary to make sense of why part of one verse can be held to typify what “the Bible says” when another verse, or even another part of the same verse is laid aside as not being what “the Bible says”.

None of this is to argue for any particular interpretation of any verse, or to suggest what the right interpretation should be. But I am arguing that there is never a “Bible says” argument that actually is just the quotation of a verse. The very act of selecting the verse depends on an interpretative framework or tradition. “I take the Bible to say …” “My tradition teaches that the Bible says …” “Our church interprets the Bible to mean…” All these are fundamentally honest statements.

By contrast, use of the phrase “the Bible says …” tends to dishonesty and self-deception. It obscures the work of interpretation that lies behind the statement, whether individual or ecclesial, and it replaces an honest argument for that interpretation with a statement that labels disagreement as rebellion, and questioning as sin.

Repeat after me: “The Bible doesn’t say”.

I want to draw attention to the generally very useful series on justification that Michael Pahl has posted. This link is to his index page for the series. I think it’s quite important to read the whole series, since he takes things in a different order to others.

I’m fascinated by the way in which there is comparatively little explicit emphasis on either eschatology or the forensic dimensions to the metaphor. (Fascinated but dubious!) I like the social-scientific awareness of identity and relationship. I think he gives the most persuasive short account of the (mainly) subjective genitive for pistis Christou, showing why it makes sense.

I have some minor quibbles, for example in the post on representation and substitution, where I think the place of gift-offering and sacrifice as relationship restoring should be more highly stressed.

I have at least one major quibble. Although he deals with “solution to plight” later in the series, (which I think is an important emphasis) I’d personally like to argue that this was not only derived from his commissioning experience, but an earlier and perhaps quite primitive mirror-version of his later theology underlies his persecution, and is not entirely unrelated either to the apostolic preaching, or the transmission of the Jesus tradition.

Despite these quibbles I think that this series is as good and accessible an introduction to a broadly new perspective understanding of justification that you will find. It’s less polemical than many, and perhaps will be more broadly acceptable to evangelicals. I will certainly be referring beginning students to it.

Let me leave you with one taster from this post.

Paul knew the general story of Jesus; he knew Jesus had been viewed by Paul’s Pharisaic peers and the Jewish elders as a Law-breaker - “soft” on Sabbath and the purity regulations, to be sure - even finally condemned as “unrighteous” according to the highest Jewish court. However, in Paul’s commissioning experience near Damascus he was confronted by a mind-boggling reality: God had resurrected this legally “unrighteous” Jesus. Therefore, although Jesus had been deemed unrighteous according to the Law, God clearly considered him righteous, effectively overturning the condemnation of Jesus according to the Law by justifying him through resurrection. Thus, by resurrecting the legally “unrighteous” Jesus, God demonstrated that the Law is irrelevant to one being justified by God. The converse was also true then: by resurrecting the Jesus who had been obedient to his divine commission, God demonstrated that justification is available through the faithfulness of Jesus.

That serves as an admirable summary for a general reader.

You’ve probably heard about the man who designed a Christian aeroplane. It couldn’t actually fly, but did have John 3.16 painted on the wings. Now in a serious volte-face Nick Norelli decides to (at least for a time) give up listening to secular music because he wants to take Paul’s advice seriously. While I can commend him wanting to do what’s right for him, I think Christians make a mistake of Brobdinagian proportions when they equate excellence, truth and so on with being Christian, or assume that what is secular can’t share in those qualities. (Nick may not have intended to say this, but it’s certainly how his post comes over.)

It seems to me that starting from the perception that God is a God of truth and beauty, we can go in one of two ways.

1. We can say that therefore unless God is explicitly (and no doubt biblically) referred to, what is being spoken about cant really be true or beautiful.
2. Or we can say that therefore God is to be encountered in and praised through and for anything that is true and beautiful.

Again, it seems to me that the former position has a frighteningly low doctrine of creation and heads off towards Manichean territory. While I wouldn’t want to reduce truth to aesthetic perception or personal taste, and recognise that the second position needs both nuancing and disciplining within a theological framework, nonetheless, it’s where I pitch my tent.

(PS. Nick, nothing in this post should be read as a criticism of any spiritual discipline you want to undertake, nor as an endorsement of your hitherto execrable taste in rap music.)

Discussion of biblical texts is regularly anachronistic. This certainly affects heated and ongoing debates carried out at a non-specialist level such as what the Bible says about “homosexuality”, when in fact it knows of no such category (which is bound up with the 19th century medicalisation of behaviour). But it happens at every level. Here’s an example from the careful (to the point of obsessiveness) and hermeneutically sophisticated Tony Thiselton accepting an element of social-scientific criticism:

I now perceive how this [the Corinthians] theological misperception [over “being spiritual” – which Thiselton had argued for previously as a key unifying theme of 1 Corinthians] combined with the seductive infiltration into the Christian church of cultural attitudes derived from secular or non-Christian Corinth as a city.¹ 

There are two overwhelming anachronisms in this. The idea of applying the word “secular” to first-century Corinth as a synonym for non-Christian is completely misplaced. From the household gods, to the meat-markets, to the many temples around the forum, to the burgeoning imperial cult no Roman city was “secular”. This is, however, the less significant anachronism, and arguably just a matter of linguistic carelessness.

More seriously problematic is the idea that the church is sufficiently well established and developed for ideas to “infiltrate it” as alien, or that what Paul thinks is “church culture” and what the Corinthians think are alien cultural misperceptions. Partly the Corinthians are new converts, and conversion of mind, practice and culture is always a long drawn out and imperfect process, however impassioned the conversion of commitment and heart is. Partly Paul is one of many people trying to work out what a Christian vision is (and other equally prominent people in the new movement are articulating rather different ones). 

Paul comes from a long-standing Jewish communal tradition which has considerable experience of singing the Lord’s song in strange land, and is working out how that is transformed by his Messiah Jesus. The Corinthians have no real idea they are living in a strange land, and in so far as they might think in these terms it is not an idea of being in exile, but one of being a colony, there to teach everyone else to sing the Roman song.

Finally, there is nothing other than personal charisma and persuasive argument to say who is doing any misperceiving: Paul or the Corinthians. There is no orthodoxy for the Corinthians to be seduced away from. What will later (in varying degree) become orthodox emerges in part from Paul thinking on his feet. It is not apparent to me that if the Corinthians hadn’t provoked Paul to argument, the church would ever have so strongly committed to belief in the resurrection of the body. It is equally arguable that in some historical periods aspects of the Corinthian view of the body and sex, say,   have been at least as close to mainstream Christianity as Paul’s. (“It is well for a man not to touch a woman.” 1 Cor 7:1)

In short, Thiselton makes it sound as though what was happening on the ground was straightforward and obvious. I think it was a mess, in which people (especially in this context) Paul and the Corinthians are contending for the appropriate cultural forms of Christian practice and thought in a non-Jewish culture, one partly alien to Paul, in which the Corinthians are fully at home. I also think that’s much more like most of our own situations, whether in the traditional “mission-field” situation or in our very non-traditional one, where the culture has changed under our feet, and there are competing visions about how much to change with it. 

Reading this particular scriptural case as the “seductive infiltration into the Christian church of cultural attitudes” encourages us to do the same today, and engage in name-calling our opponents. Me Paul, you Corinthian. I argue that the reality of what’s going on is more complex, then and now, and if we’re less anachronistic about then, we might be more constructive about now.

1. First Epistle to the Corinthians NIGTC Eerdmans / Paternoster 2000. I use Thiselton here as an example of widespread practice, and indeed an instance of how even Homer nods [↩]

David Ker draws attention to a (sort-of) hermeneutical quiz that offers you the opportunity of answering each question A, B, or C. David rightly answers D, although I’m not quite sure that his “D” and my “D” are exactly the same.

There is a strange misapprehension that there are such things as timeless truths. Well, in an abstract sense, I’m happy to admit there are such things in some noumenal Platonic realm. But all attempts at expressions of more-or-less truth in the language worlds we inhabit are conditioned by the linguistic system in use, and by the culture(s) within which that language is used. To say that Jesus is God incarnate, for example, depends for its meaning on the particular stories we tell about God and the ways in which we think of ourselves. There is neither a universal concept of God, nor one of flesh.

Lingamish is right(ish): “D. Cultural, and for contemporary interpretation.” is the only possible answer for those who seek to read scripture as a means of faithfulness in today’s church and world.

I’ve been meaning to comment this week on a slightly odd story reported in the Sunday Telegraph. As reported:

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a “hate crime” and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that “no-go areas” for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.

Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.

…

West Midlands Police, who refused to apologise, said the incident had been “fully investigated” and the officer would be given training in understanding hate crime and communication.

For those who aren’t familiar with the UK scene, a “police community support officer” is sort of equivalent to a teaching assistant in a classroom. 

I want to offer a few observations:

This story seems to have sunk from view like a stone. That makes me think there may be rather more to it than reported, and that journalists investigating further decided it was less news-worthy than they thought. The “evangelists” concerned seem to be seriously fundamentalist. Of the Bible they believe that “Every Word of the original manuscript [sic] is inspired”, but they are also keen to state:

What We are Not
We are not ecumenical, Charismatic, Arminians, Calvinists or denominational.

That doesn’t seem to leave a lot of room for manoeuvre.

A large part of this story’s power comes from the bigger immigration narrative. Without wanting to downplay any of the issues involved, I want to highlight what I see as the biggest danger for the way some people want to enlist Christians to their aid on immigration. The implicit subtext is that Christians are white and native, and if you’re foreign and black you must be Muslim or some other religion. (Something similar seems to have happened in the US in the way some people regard Obama as Muslim.) This is not only politically dangerous, but, from a Christian viewpoint, profoundly heretical.

Churches that don’t evangelise ought to be seen as a contradiction in terms. Mission more generally is of the essence of the church. There are, however, good and bad ways to do it, and (as far as I can tell) what these particular preachers were doing is such a bad way of doing it it’s doubtful that it can be seen as evangelism at all. It looks rather more like an aggressive act of religious and racial hostility, than a generous sharing of the love of God. The preachers’ readiness to pose for a photo and take their story to the paper to tell a story of Muslim no-go areas for Christians encourages me in that suspicion.

It is interesting that nowadays the cases that may most test “freedom of speech” are religious ones. Christians probably need to remember that historically, they have approved of this no more than many Muslims today would, and that effectively it evolved more to protect those outside or against the churches from Christian totalitarianism. Its transformation into a basic Western value that Christians now appeal to both against the secular state and in favour of the freedom to evangelise, is deeply ironic.

I think we will see more and more of this sort of story, and we will need to be very careful about how we read them. They raise quite complex questions of civic polity as well as inter-faith relationships, dialogue and mission. They also suggest that there’s room for far more theological reflection on methods of evangelism that are appropriate to gospel and culture in the early 21st century West. How much power does the method used have to stop it being good news at all?