Mind the gap (between 6% and 48%)

Here's my article for April:

Much has been said about the 2021 Census, particularly the self-identification or otherwise of people as Christian. The headline was “Christianity now a minority religion in England and Wales”, though the figures actually showed that “Christian” remained the most common response (46.2% or 27.5 million people), followed by “No religion” at 37.2%; Muslim: 6.5%; Hindu: 1.7% ; and Jewish: 0.5%. So, to be more accurate, the headline was that for the first time since records began, fewer than half the population of England and Wales identified as Christian. However, either way, it was hardly an earth-shattering finding – or was it?

One of the problems with the census question was that it was about identity rather than practice, so although 46.2% of people identify as Christian that doesn't mean that they all attend church on Sunday. (Though more people still attend church than attend football matches in the top four tiers [around 956,000 compared to 700,000].) Another survey in 2022, the Talking Jesus Report (talkingjesus.org), looked into what people in the UK think of Jesus and compared it with the research they did in 2015. Much the same as the 2021 Census, it found that 48% of the population choose to describe themselves as Christians - down from 58% in 2015. But it also asked how many of that 48% were practicing Christians (defined as those who attend church monthly and pray and read the Bible weekly) and the figure was 6%, more-or-less the same as the 7% in 2015. So although self-identification had dropped, actual attendance hadn't.

Given that only 6% of the population are practicing Christians, two other statistics stand out from the Talking Jesus Report. Firstly, 20% of people believe that Jesus is “God in human form who lived among people in the 1st Century” (21% in 2015). Secondly, 16% of the population believe in the resurrection of Jesus, word for word, as it is described in the Bible and a further 29% say they also believe in the resurrection, but that some content of the biblical account should not be taken literally. The Report says “That is extraordinary, in an age where faith was supposed to be dying, and where science could have disproved such things as resurrection, still 45% of the population believe Jesus rose from the dead” (p10).

This is good news for Easter! 45% of people believe in what the apostle Paul calls “of first importance” without which the Christian faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15). Though as we can see in the figures, believing something is true does not always affect the way you live your life. But this might also explain why the two most commonly asked questions, according to the report, were “Will everything be ok?” and “What happens when you die?” Peter, who witnessed the crucified and resurrected Jesus, wrote this “In [God's] great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade” (1 Peter 1:3-4). If you, however hesitantly, believe in the resurrection (and even if you don't) why not put it to the test? Come along to church, read the Bible, pray and see if you, like Peter, will find the answers to those questions.

To fast or not to fast...

Here's my magazine article for March:

To fast or not to fast that is the question for Lent!  Lent was traditionally a time to give things up (especially 'luxuries' like fat, eggs, meat and alcohol) but it has become more common in the past few decades to instead take something on (for example charitable works or spiritual exercises).  Whilst these things that are taken on are good things to do, I think that we lose something important if we avoid the practice of giving things up for a period of time.

There is often criticism of Millennials, Zoomers and Gen Alphas that they display feelings of 'entitlement' – they want everything 'put on a plate' for them and like the worst of fussy eaters they demand what they want, when and how they want it, often regardless of how if affects other people.  Whether or not that is more true of those generations, it is definitely true that entitlement is not exclusive to those generations.  Entitlement is a human condition because humans are selfish by nature – it is one of the observations that reminds us of the truth of the Biblical narrative that human beings are 'fallen' beings.  By giving things up at Lent (or at any time!) we are reminding ourselves that the world doesn't revolve around ourselves and our desires – and traditionally this giving up of things was linked with fasting.

Fasting is not unique to Christianity or even to religion, but there is something distinctive about Christian fasting.  We see three types of fasting in the world: health, political and religious fasting.  Some people fast as part of a health regime, which used correctly might be a benefit, but done badly can also lead to eating disorders.  Political fasting is used by people, e.g. Gandhi, to put pressure on authorities to make certain decisions.  Religious fasting can sometimes be similar to political fasting – trying to pressurise God into doing something we want him to do – or it can be a way of earning 'Brownie points' to 'get into heaven'.

One of the early sermons authorised for use in the Church of England was on the topic of true Christian fasting and it gave the following three aims which make fasting beneficial to us and acceptable to God.  Firstly, to discipline and control our desires, especially those desires that are contrary to the way God wants us to live, not really in order to make ourselves more holy, but so that by refraining from things that give us worldly pleasure we can find contentment in the greater pleasure of a relationship with God.  Secondly, that we may be more earnest and fervent in prayer, both by giving us time to pray and also by transforming a physical hunger into a hunger for God's kingdom to come.  Finally, as a way of showing our repentance and sorrow for our sins so that when we say sorry for our sins it's not just a trite statement.

To give things up, even good things, for a period of time can help us to rely less on ourselves and more on God.  It can also to help us to see how we make 'gods' out of the good things God gives us, so that by putting them aside we can re-discover the God who satisfies our deepest hunger and longings.

Cars and Signs

Here's my article for the February magazines:

As an adult, presents tend to fall into the categories of practical, edible or amusing.  This Christmas I received a book that was given in the spirit of the latter category: “Driving School” by Mark Philpott.  The book's subtitle is “Learning about life, God and the Bible through the world of motoring”, and in it Philpott looks at the world of cars and driving to see what we they might teach us about God and life.  As I read through it, I saw that some of the links Philpott makes are almost as tenuous as the links I make in these articles!!

You might ask whether drawing lessons about God from 'everyday life' is a legitimate exercise, or just trying to 'shoehorn' a religious message into a religiously neutral topic – can rallying really tell us anything about the Christian life? (see page 52 for the answer!!).  Unsurprisingly, I do think it is a legitimate thing to do for three reasons.  Firstly, Psalm 19:1 tells us that “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” - in other words the Creation bears the fingerprints of the Creator.  When we look at the universe with awe and wonder it's because it reminds us of the awesome and wonderful God who created it, so we can learn about God from his creation.  As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20 “Men cannot say they do not know about God. From the beginning of the world, men could see what God is like through the things He has made” (New Life Version). Secondly, as we humans are made in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27) the things we create and do can also tell us about God.  Amongst other things our love of sports, music and science, as well as our desire for justice and our capacity for love are all reflections of the image of God within us and can teach us about him.

But above all, I think it's legitimate because there are so many examples of it in the Bible:

In Proverbs 6:6 ants are used as an example of working hard; Psalm 32:9 tells us not to be like a horse that needs to be controlled by bit and bridle.  In Isaiah 64:8 God is described as a potter, and most famously in Psalm 23 he is described as a shepherd.  Jesus also uses the image of a shepherd to describe himself (John 10), as well as using farmers (Luke 8:1-15), builders (Matthew 7:24-27), bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13) and fishermen (Matthew 4:19) to illustrate his teachings.

In the section on Road Signs, Philpott talks about the signs in the Old Testament that point to Jesus as the Messiah and the divine Son of God, and how many people in his own day ignored those signs.  We don't just have the Old Testament signs, and the signs all around us, but we have the record of Jesus' words and actions, which were written, as John says, “that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).  Ignoring these signs is as disastrous as ignoring road signs.

But if cars aren't your thing, there is also 'Flight School' available, with 'Farm School', 'Battle School' and others to come! 

Do we know it's Christmas?

Here's my December article:

By the time you read this article you may already be sick of hearing Christmas songs wherever you go. Just as 'The Chicken Song' parodied summer songs, Peter Kay, as 'Geraldine McQueen', lovingly parodied Christmas songs in 'Once Upon a Christmas Song' singing “It's getting in your head / And if you're not singing it all night, / You'd be telling a lie, / You'll be singing this over and over, and over again.”

Everyone has their own favourite Christmas song (and usually at least one that they hate!) but the chances are that at some point you'll hear at least one version of “Do they know it's Christmas?” It was Christmas Number 1 in 1984 by Band Aid and spawned three cover versions which also went to Number 1. The original was written to raise money for Ethiopia in the wake of the famine there, and is the best selling Christmas song of all time, selling 3.82 million units. This is despite it being generally recognised as having little artistic merit as a song, including by its writers - although as Midge Ure wrote in his autobiography “It was all about generating money... The song didn't matter: the song was secondary, almost irrelevant.”

But to some the song does matter. It has been accused of a patronising view of Western 'civilisations' coming to the rescue of poor Africans. It also is wildly inaccurate, claiming “there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time” (not even on Mount Kilimanjaro or the Atlas mountains?), and that it's a place “where nothing ever grows”(!) and “no rain or rivers flow.” Of course, as the cause of the song was a famine, this might be forgiveable hyperbole, but as the song has been reissued and this line kept it perpetuates a misleading picture of Africa, which in fact has two of the top ten wettest places in the world and two of the top ten longest rivers in the world (including the longest!).

Bob Geldof responded to such analysis of the inaccuracies in the lyrics by saying that its just a pop song not a doctoral thesis. However, the most problematic aspect of the song is the view it has of what Christmas actually means.

It suggest that the reason that Africans might not know it's Christmas is because they won't have parties, snow, presents and food and drink – and this says a lot about what we think Christmas is all about. As African Christians appear in the New Testament, and more Christians live in Africa than any other continent it is unlikely that they don't know it's Christmas! More than that, each year the charity Open Doors published a 'World Watch List' (an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution) and five of the top ten worst countries are in Africa. So not only do Africans know what Christmas is, they are prepared to suffer for their belief in the Jesus whose birth is celebrated at Christmas.

A Somalian woman who was tortured for her faith said “Previously I didn’t have happiness, but now I have joy… I know that until I came to know Jesus, I knew nothing at all.” If this time of year is just about presents and parties, perhaps it's us who don't know it's Christmas.

Is death really nothing at all?

Here is my November article:

Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918) [Source: www.commons.wikimedia.org/]

November is traditionally a month where we recall those who have died, possibly because of All Saints day at the beginning of the month, but more probably because the days are getting darker, the weather is getting worse, the plants around us are dying back. We have a fascination with death, as is demonstrated by the 'going viral' of my friend, Dr Allan Barton's niche YouTube videos on various burial customs, particularly royal ones.

This year we have thought about death quite a lot; there are still the consequences of the pandemic and of course we have had the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The sermon preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Her Late Majesty's funeral has been lauded by many people, and it reminded me of another sermon preached after a monarch's death that is very famous, even if its origin isn't.

At St Paul's Cathedral in May 1910 before the Lying in State of King Edward VII, Canon Henry Scott-Holland delivered a sermon titled “Death, the King of Terrors.” This sermon contained words that have become one of the most frequently used poems at funerals, usually called “Death is nothing at all” which expresses a belief in the continuity of the relationship between the deceased and the mourner. However, this was not the message Scott-Holland was trying to get across in his sermon.

Instead he was contrasting two views of death: “First there is the familiar and instinctive recoil from it as embodying the supreme and irrevocable disaster…Nothing leads up to it, nothing prepares for it. It simply traverses every line on which life runs, cutting across every hope on which life feeds…It makes all we do here meaningless and empty…” This is the view of “the terror of the unknown, the terror of loss, the terror of finality.” The second view is that expressed by “Death is nothing at all”, that talks of “the trick played us by seeming death. It is not death; nobody is dead...Everything that we cared for and loved exists...Nothing that we see in this dead material now laid out under our eyes represents or involves or includes the thing that was or is alive.”

The first view of death is what an honest atheist should have: if we are mere accidents of atomic collisions and chance events then death is final and ultimately makes life meaningless. The second view is that of those who feel that there is more to life than the materialist atheist view, but in the absence of a reasoned religious belief wishfully hopes that what we value continues beyond death.

Scott-Holland contrasts these two approaches to death: “the mood of violent recoil” and “the mood of quiet continuity” and then says “Our task is to deny neither judgement, but to combine both. The contrasted experiences are equally real, equally valid.” We need to avoid the trap of either despair or denial in the face of the the fact of death, as well as acknowledge the truth behind both experiences.

This is only possible through Jesus' death and resurrection, which guarantees both the defeat of the finality of death and the possibility of the continuity of eternal life. But in order for this to happen we must undergo death ourselves; not physical death but putting to death the sins which make us spiritually dead, by repenting and allowing the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into us. As Jesus promises: “Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; and those who live and believe in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26).

Grief and hope at empty tombs

Here's my sermon for this year's Remembrance service at Broughton:

Last Thursday, the Cubs, Scouts and Explorers came to church to think about Remembrance Sunday and created these poppies to decorate the church with for today. We thought about the two minutes silence and how, for some people, in the first minute we recall those who have died in the two world wars, and whose names we hear read out, and in the second minute we think of all those affected by war, through injury, bereavement or loss of homes and livelihoods.

So on these poppies we wrote on the top half a name of someone from Broughton who died in the two world wars, and then on the bottom half people that we pray for during the service, either because they are suffering because of war or because they are trying to make peace. So thank you to the Cubs, Scouts and Explorers for helping us to remember the purpose of Remembrance Sunday – to remember and to pray.

Of course, this two minutes silence happens at our poignant War Memorial: with our soldier deep in thought, remembering his friends who have died and holding in his hand a laurel leaf for peace. Remembering and praying.

There are many war memorials throughout the country – from simple plaques to huge monuments but almost all of them have one thing in common – they are technically cenotaphs. A cenotaph is a monument to someone who has died and whose body is buried elsewhere and I learnt recently that the word 'cenotaph' comes from two Greek words meaning 'empty tomb'. So these cenotaphs are not graves but memorials.

This reminds us that so many of those who went to war never came back, for most not even their bodies came back and for some the location of their bodies is unknown. In the absence of a proper grave, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier represents all those whose bodies never returned, and all our local cenotaphs are testament to the absence in all senses of the word of those who never returned from war.

We gather at an empty tomb to remember those who should be here but aren't. And as we feel the pain of the empty tomb we commit ourselves to praying for all those who suffer because of war and violence, and all those who are working for peace and justice.

But we don't just gather at the cenotaph, we also gather here in church, where the words 'empty tomb' have a different resonance.

In our first reading (Acts 13:26-39) we hear the words of the apostle Paul telling people in a synagogue about Jesus. He tells them that Jesus was unfairly tried and unjustly put to death, but that he was raised from the dead, and that unlike his ancestor, the great King David, his body did not decay. Instead there was an empty tomb. And because of that empty tomb Paul could say for certain that Jesus' death is the way sins can be forgiven, as Jesus himself had said it would. And it's those sins of course which lead to war and violence. Therefore, Paul goes on, everyone who believes and trusts in Jesus is set free from their sins, something that is simply not possible through being a good person doing good things.

That empty tomb is the central belief of Christianity – if it is untrue, as Paul says elsewhere, then our faith is pointless, but if it is true it should change every part of our lives. If Jesus has not been raised to life again then all graves are empty tombs – they all mark people who no longer exist except as dust and ashes and memories – merely names carved on stone. If Jesus has not been raised all grief is without hope – we will never see those we love again. But if Jesus has been raised from the dead then those who believe and trust in him will share eternal life together.

To stand at the empty tomb of Jesus is to celebrate that death is no longer the final word in our lives either personally or as a world. In our second reading (Luke 21:5-19) Jesus teaches his disciples that after his death and resurrection he will return to his Father for a while before he returns to earth again at the end of time. In the meantime there will be suffering, wars and disasters, and his followers will be persecuted. His promise is that those who remain faithful will receive eternal life. But when he returns death and suffering, along with war and disaster, will be got rid of once and for all and justice will be done. Without that empty tomb, death, suffering, wars and disasters will continue, and evil will go unpunished.

So as we gather around the cenotaph, the empty tomb, let us remember those who died and pray for those who suffer and who work for peace. But let us also remember that it is only by gathering by faith around the empty tomb of Jesus that there is the certain hope of an end to injustice, suffering, wars and death.

Harvest Thanksgivings - not just for food

Here's my article for October:

Harvest is a time for thanksgiving - across the country churches and schools will gather for services which focus on being thankful for the world, and especially for the food we eat, those who produce it and also God who is ultimately responsible for it. It is quite right to give thanks to God for the gift of creation and all the ways he blesses us through the natural world. But it's not just the created world that we need to remember to be thankful for, we also need to be thankful for each other.

During the worst months of the pandemic we got used to being thankful for the NHS and other 'key workers' but this year our thankfulness has mainly been focused on one person: Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Earlier in the year we joyfully celebrated her Platinum Jubilee and there were many books, speeches, articles, videos and programmes talking about 'Our Faithful Queen' and giving thanks for her 70 year reign. In our Jubilee celebration service we thanked God “for the example of loving and faithful service which she has shown among us” and prayed that he would help us to “follow her example of dedication and to commit our lives to you and to one another.” We also observed that she herself “follows the example set for her, reminding us that 'God sent his only Son “to serve, not to be served”. He restored love and service to the centre of our lives in the person of Jesus Christ.' ” Then, last month, we recalled with thanksgiving her life of dedication and service as we mourned her death.

An important part of many funerals is the eulogy where the life of the deceased is recalled, and there is often a time of reflection where all those present can silently recall their own memories. I usually introduce this time of reflection by suggesting that the congregation thank God for the person who has died and also thank God for the way that God has blessed us through that person. As we mourned the death of Queen Elizabeth, so much was said about the effect that she had, not only on those who met her, but also on the course of world events. An unlike a lot of her predecessors and some world leaders today, she did this not through revolutions, battles and invasions but often with a simple gesture: a handshake, a nod of the head, a laugh.

The simple gestures we make may not have historic, world-changing effects, but they can change the lives of those around us, even in ways we cannot see. The song “Thank You” by Ray Boltz imagines a scene in heaven where someone is shown the effect their life has. Some of the lyrics are: “One by one they came, far as the eyes could see. Each life somehow touched by your generosity. Little things that you had done, sacrifices made, unnoticed on the earth, in heaven now proclaimed.” It's sometimes said that it's a shame we don't hear our eulogies before we die, so perhaps this harvest time we could say thank you to someone who's touched our lives.