God Is A Black Woman

Christena Cleveland’s God Is A Black Woman is a powerful, challenging, uncomfortable and inspirational read, and much more. I can’t say that it was easy to read, but I am so glad that I came across it. It is a really important challenge to our conventional thinking, which is there, whether we like to admit it or not, but which needs to be moved into a significantly new place. We simply cannot impose our categories on God, and then especially when they are rooted in wrong ideas of power and position. Cleveland puts it powerfully, but importantly: “The prevalence of white male images of God easily lead us to conclude that God is definitively and exclusively white and male. And like many culture-shaping ideas, we don’t even question the idea or how it shapes our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. For most of us, regardless of what we might want to believe or claim to believe, the image that immediately comes to mind when we imagine God is that of a powerful white man who is for and with powerful white men. It’s a deceptive idea that flies under the radar, powerfully shaping us without our consent.” She rightly points to the importance of our imaginations and the effect of how we ‘imagine’ things to be. We need to capture a new understanding of God, which take us to radically different places, and which retains the ability to free our thinking about God. “The Sacred Black Feminine cannot be distilled into a TED Talk or a tidy sermon. Though She can rock with the best of the intellectuals, She exists beyond the edges, beyond the orthodox ways of knowing, and beyond traditional logic. She beckons us in dreams and speaks to us through our embodied experiences. As I continued to journey toward the Sacred Black Feminine, I could see that She was guiding me away from my obsession to prove Her and instead inviting me to simply experience Her.”

Reflections on Corrymeela

Photo taken on a visit to Londonderry during the 2012 Eastern/Thames North Synods Spring School at Corrymeela I have just read Paul Hutchinson's little book Between The Bells which has taken me back to my two visits to Corrymeela in 2008 and 2012. The book is a selection of stories, almost diary pieces, from Hutchinson's time as Centre Director at the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland. It's a reminder of the importance and the challenge of the work of reconciliation. Hutchinson reminds us that, though it is difficult, we need to do things differently, commenting: The theologian David F Ford, speaking at an Anglican conference I attended in 2017, suggested that if society placed the rich, powerful, beautiful people at its centre, then at some point we would all be excluded. But, says Ford, if we placed at the centre of society those with learning disabilities, children, the elderly, then we could all find a place, a welcome, inclusion. A world upside down. Oh, for that upside down world!

Young, Woke and Christian

Young, Woke and Christian: Words from a Missing Generation, edited by Victoria Turner, is a great collection of writings by younger Christian theologians and practitioners. It is certainly a challenging volume, but in a helpful and needed way. The Church needs to listen to its younger voices, and this book definitely helps us to do that. As Victoria Turner herself says, in her editing role: “Our desire is to make radically loving Christianity as well known as rigid, traditional, life-limiting, restrictive Christianity. The contributions here begin to outline what that Church might look like in the eyes of young leaders.” A lot of the pieces focus on issues of identity and inclusion, but a wide ranges of topics are covered, including climate change, homelessness, mental health and hope. I did like Sophie Mitchell’s reflection on leadership in which she says: “Luke 5.11 highlights the importance of developing unlikely leaders in and for our mission in the account of Jesus choosing his first disciple, Peter. It is interesting that Jesus’ first choice for his top team cabinet is a fisherman. Visiting the temple regularly for the annual festivals he would have seen the rabbis and leaders of the temple and could have sought to align himself with a political leader of power who would compound his influence, or even with the socialites of his day, yet he chooses a simple fisherman. I cannot imagine that he would have looked or smelled the part.” It is a volume that is well worth reading and, alongside the many legitimate challenges, sounds some equally important positive notes, like Nosayaba Idehen’s words on hope: “Hopelessness is not the only option, and we do not have to default to it. In this sense, hopelessness is a choice that we make, but then so too can we choose to open ourselves to hope. This choice does not require us to ignore our anxieties about what our collective future might hold. Hope does not require arrogance – a blithely optimistic assertion that everything is going to be OK. Grief and hope can exist together and they do not have to lead us into hopelessness. Hope is not the end-product but rather the beginning, an opening to possibility that allows us to go on in seemingly impossible circumstances.”

Roland Walls

Picture is visiting Rosslyn Chapel in February 2022. ........... Roland Walls (1918-2011) was clearly an exceptional character. He was a founding member of the Community of the Transfiguration, formed in the mining village of Roslin (Midlothian) beside the historic Rosslyn Chapel of which Walls was, for a while, priest-in-charge. A modest figure, he lived extremely simply, but held a variety of significant offices, including as Chaplain to the Bishop of Ely and Canon Residentiary of Sheffield Cathedral where he got involved in Sheffield Industrial Mission. A convinced ecumenist, he eventually converted to Roman Catholicism. However, his main work was that at Roslin. His thinking is reflected in a fascinating way in a book of conversations, Mole Under the Fence put together by Ron Ferguson. Just a couple of quotes - ....................... “So far as I know, there is no mention in the Bible whatsoever of building the kingdom, or indeed of building Jerusalem. The Lord builds up Jerusalem, and he comes down from heaven to us.” “Now, the funny thing is that when it comes to numbers, the gospel-writers tell us about 5,000 or 4,000, not the numbers who came to hear him, but the numbers he fed. That's a different thing. Now, if we could get new church statistics, they ought to be about the numbers we've really given to, unconditionally - like the feeding of the crowd. It was unconditional. It was an abundance of grace. It wasn't about how many people were won for the Lord. How we twist all this! With that gospel story, we can all of us think: ‘What a marvellous success story - he got 5,000 to listen to him!’ But that wasn't the point of the gospel story. It was how many were fed. Now, if we want statistics, that's the way they ought to be presented: how many of you touched rather than ‘got in’.”

Freedom and Faith - and Scottish Identity

Donald Smith’s Freedom and Faith was a fascinating read, exploring Scottish identity but particularly in the context of, and in relation to, faith. He notes the importance of Scottish history and heritage, and the complications of the mixture of serious history and frivolous tourist tat. However, it is not to be ignored. He also notes the place of faith. “Present-day Scotland is characterized by religious diversity. While agnosticism may command the support of a silent majority, there is an articulate camp of atheistic belief, and a much larger but segmented community of faiths.” The decline of the church, particularly the Church of Scotland, has had a major impact, but faith communities retain a vital role. He explores the advantages and difficulties of operating within the British context, but makes clear that Scottish identity is vital and distinct. Perhaps it is Smith’s final chapter on ‘faith in the future’, with its conviction that the Church and other faith communities continue to hold an important role, that struck the strongest chord for me. “Despite the hopes of some secular humanists it is unlikely that religious faith and practice will disappear. The sensibilities, imagination and psychological needs that nurture religion are deeply layered. Only a few totalitarian regimes have succeeded in suppressing organised religion, providing instead state and leader worship, but religious faith has returned to haunt - and in some cases help to topple - them. A uniformly secular Scotland is an improbable but also a dull prospect. …. … The Christian Gospels are not focused on establishing an organised religion, but with practising a moral and spiritual anthropology that illumines all life, regardless of race, creed, gender, culture or class. This is the fertile power of Christianity that most churches have devoted much energy and ingenuity to confining. There are no institutional or intellectual barriers set by Christ, only the invitation to begin on a compelling journey.”

Embracing the Transformation

Unsurprisingly, this little volume from Walter Brueggemann, Embracing the Transformation, calls us to do precisely that – to embrace the transformation that God brings. Brueggemann is a great believer of Scripture and of preaching and this book contributes to his reflections on what preaching can achieve. As he says; “I understand preaching to be the chance to summon and nurture an alternative community with an alternative identity, vision, and vocation, preoccupied with praise and obedience toward the God we Christians know fully in Jesus of Nazareth.” He also says: “The challenge of preaching is that this well-known tale of God must be told as if it had never been heard before. The new land must be shown as if it had never been seen before.” I wonder how readily and how frequently preachers manage to inject the kind of excitement that ought to provoke into their preaching. The point is that God not only makes a difference, but God makes all the difference. “Chaos is transformed into creation. In its largest scope, the Bible invites us to think about God’s transformation of the whole cosmos.” How much of God’s transforming grace do we manage to glimpse?

Indian Reflections

From my 2019 trip to Vellore

I really enjoyed reading Betty Robinson's Thursday's Child Had Far To Go, sub-titled 'From Scotland to India'. Betty, now, like me, a member of Rutherglen United Reformed Church, served as a missionary (mission partner) in India from 1966 to 1999 through what was originally the London Missionary Society, later the Council for World Mission.

The book tells her story by re-producing the circular letters that she, and after her marriage together with her husband Leslie, sent to friends and supporters.

I enjoyed the book for two main reasons. The first is my own, seriously briefer (1991-1994), period of overseas church service in Panama which has made me more interested in the experiences of others who have had such experiences in various parts of the world.  The second is my two visits to India, in 2015 and 2019, leading groups on behalf of Cambridgeshire churches and as part of a partnership with the Diocese of Vellore, and so to a part of India that overlapped where Betty and Leslie served. Betty's writing certainly evoked some good memories for me - but for anyone offers a fascinating picture of a little bit of the world church.

Reflecting on her title, are we each ready to go where God wants to take us?