All God's People - Churches and Mosques Together

Colonial history in the Middle East has much to answer for. Its most unhealthy bequest to the people of that region has been the imposition of national borders which took little account of the existing delicate infrastructure of human relatedness. Centuries of sociality were strained to breaking point by  power politics, as they continue to be, because  power politics serve individuals. Even if these individuals justify their need for power on the basis of a vision for the good, it remains a good which, on the whole, accords with their personal ideology. Ideology and power-hungry leaders, supported by parties or religious sects who are just as hungry for power as the autocrat they choose to support, and who they may have put in place, do not make for true nationhood.

True nationhood is about belonging together as a people. People only really belong together when they do so out of love for each other and for all those things which make them who they are as a people, including the shared memories of their common history. This may sound idealistic, insofar as nationhood is impossible to achieve without selfless engagement with the other person, the other political party, and the other religion. But it does speak of hope, particularly with regard to the practice of good religion because religion, well understood and well practiced, holds the key to peace and healing. Here, in the West, as in other parts of the world, we experience both good and bad religion.

Last week I argued that sectarian violence is rooted in the darkest evil. This is especially so when its perpetrators appeal to religion as both a means and an end which are mutually justifiable. In the case of the current conflicts in the Middle East, the means, worked out in brutality and destruction, are held to be justified in the name of a ‘pure’, but utterly distorted version of a good religion, Islam. To make matters worse, the sectarian violence which we are seeing in Syria, Iraq and, more recently, Egypt, is arguably the product of a covert policy of divide and rule which has spilled over Syria’s borders, with President Bashar al-Assad waiting it out until Syria destroys itself from within. The situation is exacerbated in Iraq where autocratic but ineffectual leadership has created a power vacuum waiting to be filled by all too eager Islamist extremists, some of whom have been recruited from mosques in the UK. This latest and fast growing aspect of the Middle East conflict has shocked Muslims in this country, the vast majority of whom embrace their faith in the spirit of its name, Islam, which means ‘peace’.

There is a lesson to be learned from all of this which might yet change the situation. In a climate of extremism, we need to hear the voices of those who hold fast to their religious beliefs but do so modestly and from within the love of a merciful God, always considering the greater good of other people of faith, be they Christians or Muslims. Good religion does not need to demonstrate its authority through violence and intimidation, at any level, or in any religious context, including the power contexts of the Christian Church. So perhaps this is the time for Christians of good faith, in other words those who hold to their faith in love for God and as disciples of Jesus, to draw near to moderate and peace loving Muslims who would value their solidarity and support.

Sooner or later, the demands of Christian discipleship will confront us with our personal power dreams, .satisfying the need for power being one of the biggest traps of bad religion. But Christian discipleship invites us instead to walk the path of  modesty, an unfashionable and difficult virtue, by listening to, and being in solidarity with, all those who practice their faith in simple reverence and love for God. For Muslims, being a person of good faith will consist in being true to the spirit of Islam, of peace, by living modestly and faithfully with God. Modesty in the practice of religion makes inter-faith dialogue possible because it obliges everyone to listen, first to God and then to one another, thereby giving space for simple human friendship. If the suffering in the Middle East is to be brought to an end, it will be through a gradual building up of tiny moments of common understanding between moderate Christians and Muslims. They will have a cumulative effect, leading to the kind of friendships which make us all recognisably God’s people,  single and united ‘under the regard’ (to quote Rowan Williams), of a loving God.

Churches, especially those in urban areas, could begin this process today by ‘twinning’ with their nearest mosque. The 'twinning' process might gradually allow the sheer weight of their friendship in God to bring about his peace, a peace which passes all understanding and of which the Middle East is so badly in need. 

Out of the Whirlwind - Spiritual Warfare and the Middle East

Touching base once again with the news after a short break, I am painfully aware of how life goes on, or does not go on, depending on which country you happen to be living in. If you are one of the 33 million people who have been dispossessed or made homeless by conflict, life might just go on for the next 24 hours if you are one of the lucky ones.

As I have said on previous occasions, reality is hard for most of us to bear. For one thing, if you are not personally caught up in the tragedy of violence, you are cast into the disempowering role of bystander. Being a bystander brings on feelings of guilt and a general sense of helplessness, the two being corresponding aspects of despair.

The violence and turmoil which we read and hear about in the news is at its worst in the cradle of civilization, where we have our shared beginnings. What happens in the Middle East affects all of us because the Middle East has shaped our collective DNA, historically, culturally and spiritually. Perhaps this is why we are so inarticulate in the face of it all. It triggers feelings of dread and helplessness which are hard to describe. Perhaps they have something to do with our rootedness in the soil of those lands, the soil of our collective human history.

In his poem ‘The Second Coming,’ W.B. Yeats describes war as a ‘falling apart’ of our collective sense of self. He is talking about the disintegration of meaning, as it pertains to the meaning and purpose of human existence. Sectarian violence, and the chaos which it wreaks on the lives of countless individuals, undoes centuries of what we think of as civilization. At the heart of this undoing lies evil. Yeats, who was writing at the time of the first world war spoke of a ‘blood-dimmed tide’ being ‘loosed’ on the world. Today, we have the same blood-dimmed tide overwhelming Syria and Iraq in the form of murderous sectarian hatreds which are rooted in the darkest evil.

In the face of such evil, how are we to speak of a merciful God, or convey the message of hope given to us in the gospels? I think part of the answer lies in a deep conviction of our being loved by God. This is the conviction of faith which takes us beyond belief into the true meaning of all good religion, reconciliation. Yesterday, I read of a Palestinian academic who took some of his students to Auschwitz, so that they could get a better understanding of how and why the state of Israel came into being. He did this because of his faith in reconciliation as the only way for Israel and the rest of the Middle East to survive.

Deep reconciliation is a kind of ‘letting go’ into the very depths and darkness of love itself. We confront the hatred of both the past and the present in that place. The tragedy of the current conflicts in Syria and Iraq is that its key players have neither the will nor the motive to ‘let go’ in this way because they are driven by hatred. Hatred, like love, absorbs people completely, so that you end up hating not only those who you think are your enemies but also those whose interests you claim to be defending. This is how we recognise evil for what it is. It is a lie which leads only to the ‘black hole’ of nihilism and despair.

But there is also a darkness of love, which is its opposite. This is the darkness, or stillness, at the heart of the whirlwind, the tornado, in which Elijah the prophet was caught up and heard the word of the Lord. We can all connect with the stillness which is at the heart of the tornado around us, the ‘still small voice’ of God, when we engage with faith and hope at a deeper level. In the context of the world’s storms and tornadoes – political as well as environmental, we return to this place of darkness which is at the very core of our being, as it is at the core of the world itself. In it, we are offered a terrifying choice, whether to succumb to the despair of hatred, or stand firm in the heart of the darkness of love and of ‘not knowing’ and hear the still small voice of God speaking hope into it. This is what Christians call spiritual warfare. It can be done alone or in the company of others, although it is best done together. So if you are reading this and know of one or two people with whom you could undertake this work, tweet or facebook them and share the link. 

Generational Angst

Italian demographic statistics reveal an alarming drop in the national birth rate, alarming for the Catholic Church for all the usual reasons, perhaps, but also for the economy. The birth rate has fallen below the 2.1 children per woman which is needed for the Italian population to maintain itself, allowing for the difference immigration could make in the short term. In the relatively near future the demographic problem facing people under 70, to use a fairly arbitrary cut-off age, will focus on the problem of how to care for the disproportionate numbers of earlier generations who, thanks to medical advancement and better standards of living, are living ever longer. Here, in the UK, this is seen to be a source for real concern and a degree of ill-disguised resentment. The ‘baby boomer' generation is blamed for having had life handed to them on a plate from the cradle almost, but not quite, to the grave. The extent to which this judgment is valid is open to question as, for example, in regard to climate change. Did global warming begin in the 1960’s when that generation was starting to take full advantage of its new found freedom, both economic and sociological? Of course not.

Generational blame is bad for our collective social consciousness. Just as the older generations who bemoan the fact that things were so much better in their day, the same rubbishing of the post-war generation denies and wastes the hard won wisdom of that age. Despite the horrors of their times (Biafra and the Six Day War, to name only two) they were part of a tectonic shift in values and mores which gave many people today, women in particular, the freedom and opportunity which they have come to expect. They were, and remain, a generation which is not afraid to challenge the status quo.

The so-called ‘baby boomers’ were at the cutting edge of  the confrontation of capitalism with communism, of freedom with totalitarianism. They were the students marching to the Arc de Triomphe in 1968. They were in Washington and Central Park protesting the Vietnam war. They were the Greenham Common women, the Black Panthers and the Civil Rights movement. They were the makers of great films, the writers of great plays and novels, the creators of art which challenged and played with conventional ways of looking at space and colour and which was highly political. They were theologians who broke boundaries and challenged the Church.

Patronising that generation as ‘baby boomers’, a term which implies ‘superfluous and costly’, fosters a spirit of contempt between generations. Contempt between generations breaks down social cohesiveness because it destroys the possibility for the kind of trust which comes with honour given where it is deserved and due. Without trust, and without honour, there is no wisdom. Learning becomes impossible because there is no one to learn from. Where one generation despises and distrusts another, that generation is left alone to rediscover what it needs for its own spiritual, as well as physical, survival. We cannot begin our life as a world and as a society all over again every fifty years or so. There has to be something understood and passed on which is only learned through a willingness to honour and learn from the generation that has gone before.

Perhaps the difficulty today lies in the fact that Western Europeans have not been obliged, as entire populations, to fight wars, so this leaves us without a way to honour the older generation through collective mourning, which is not to say that we do not honour those who have fought the wars of the last sixty years. But we do need to rediscover, to remember, what it is we have to be grateful for in those who are now in the second half of their lives, who, admittedly, thought they would never grow old, as all generations are prone to thinking while they are young. If we do not do this, we will not learn the particular wisdom which they have to bring. It is the wisdom of life experience seen in a less clearly defined context than that which is provided by world wars, but it has much to teach. For one thing, many of the so called ‘baby boomers’ have travelled a hard road in the journey from head to heart and from heart to spirit, from self to other, to God. Perhaps the freedom and hedonism of the sixties disposed them to do this without their realising it, or perhaps their need for structure made them question the kind of freedom they thought they were enjoying, or were promised they would enjoy, as with advertisements for a certain cigar and brand of soft drink. Perhaps they outgrew that particular freedom and began to see it as not quite ‘the real thing’. They still have much to teach in this respect.