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ry i think the parish of backwell with chelvey and brockley advertised for a new rector this was certainly in the ideal location so we went to have a look however after a quick look at the rectory we decided that it wouldn t work for us we have eight children between us and a four bedroom house presented problems in that respect so i didn t apply however a few weeks later backwell came up in a conversation a pity that one didn t work out which lodged in my mind so when it was re advertised around may time as no appointment was made i thought i d better take the possibility more seriously so i studied the parish profile in more depth and the more i looked at it the more i thought i really like the look of this job and i got in touch with the diocese to register interest however when push came to shove i couldn t see a way to make it work as a family home and i again didn t apply enter god stage right my eldest has been attending the latin mass in bristol with a view to being received in the roman catholic church and shortly after deciding not to apply for the post i went with him to his sunday worship to get a sense of what he was getting involved with the sermon made mention of the rich young man who asks jesus what he must do to gain eternal life and the story is about giving up attachments in order to follow jesus i felt rather convicted after hearing this and wondered if my attachment to a large house was getting in the way of hearing god s call so i said to god as a bit of a gideon s fleece if they don t appoint i ll stick my head up above the parapet they didn t appoint so i sent a message to the bishop describing what had happened and asking if he thought it would be worth my applying i enclosed a truncated application this was not replied to which made me assume that i had breached ecclesiastical etiquette and that the non answer was the substantive answer come september and the post is advertised again for the third time after a few days of pondering i thought let me just make sure that they got the email it turns out that the bishop had been away through much of the summer and i was encouraged to apply which i did as part of the interview process candidates need to give a short homily on a bible passage and you can guess which one was chosen as the text i felt that god was giving me a big cosmic wink which i found reassuring so i told this story in the interviews and i have been appointed to the post which means that i am moving to backwell in february to take up the post of rector it is reasonable to think that this will be my last job before retirement and there is a freedom that comes from that i shall write more on that freedom in due course i still don t know how we are going to make the house work but we fiancée especially are in a very strong can do frame of mind and we are determined to make a success of it it is of course a very nice house it helps that timings can be flexible and that soon the majority of children will be at university or completely independent they are all also mostly reconciled to the prospect of sharing rooms when needed so that has really been the story of 2024 for me there have been some particularly hard moments through the year but a strong sense through all the testing times that god was leading me and that despite regular ego trips making me stumble i have really learned to trust the lord alleluia god is good i am very much looking forward to 2025 which will end with a wedding previous years 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 posted in autobiography htr some key principles of righteous resistance posted on september 5 2024 by elizaphanian my last post was a bit of a screed sorry i just needed to vent this one is a little more considered i have spent a lot of time in my life thinking about questions of violence pacifism and non violent resistance see here i first engaged with these questions properly at university where i studied gandhi in particular but in the long run i have probably been most influenced by stanley hauerwas on this question i love his comment why am i a pacifist i m a pacifist because i m a violent son of a bitch i understand that comment i consider his peaceable kingdom to be the best primer for christians on this question though there is much else and of course there is an immense political literature from augustine to wink that needs to be taken account of what i want to do in this post is share a quick over view of what i see as four key principles for righteous resistance1 which have to be held to no matter what it is that is being resisted 1 violence is fallen and only tragically necessary in god s intentions there is no violence all the violence is in us the violence is a product of the fall of our departure from eden and every resort to violence represents a failure of humanity the aim of all resistance is fundamentally spiritual to change the hearts and minds the souls of those who are being resisted violence is not just the use of physical force as the various social and psychological harms eg coercive control are also actions that qualify as violence violence is a reduction of a person to person struggle i thou to a contest of forces i it gandhi taught that it is an article of faith for every satyagrahi2 that nobody is beyond the reach of ahimsa3 where violence is resorted to it is always and everywhere to be regarded as a sin that is not to say that sometimes it isn t a just choice it is to insist that when we are forced to choose the lesser of two evils the only way to prevent further corruption is to recognise that the lesser of two evils remains an evil righteous resistance insists upon the shared humanity of those who are being resisted we do not hate the human for nothing human is foreign to us in most cases it is more righteous to receive suffering rather than to give it for this is the way of christ on the cross and unless we carry our own crosses we are not worthy to be counted as his disciples 2 imagination is primary this is a point i take from hauerwas that we are conditioned by our imaginations long before we come to the consideration of specific situations if our imaginations are filled with violence if in particular such violence is held up as worthy then we are all the more likely to indulge in a lust for violence and yes it is a lust a deadly sin this is why it is essential for our imaginations to be formed on christ for jesus to be the principal source of our mimesis girard in particular much of what is seen as based christianity seems to me to be drinking from imaginatively corrupted wells where worldly success military victory is seen as righteous in an unqualified sense such approaches seem to me to have accepted the devil s bargain from the mountain top the kingdom of christ is not of this world and whilst tolkien may have overstated things with his perspective of the long defeat it is imperative that we do not think that anything is achieved in this world from our own effort cromwell trust in god and keep your gunpowder dry 3 never undermine the rule of law the rule of law is the basis of civilisation it is what i refer to when i mention the king s peace and it is far more important than things like human rights or democracy for those depend upon the rule of law in order to have any effect at all the rule of law is the bulwark against barbarism it is the only thing that can keep the bullies of all forms in check it is our principal defence against σάρξ4 what this means is that even when a specific law is being opposed as that specific law is seen as unjust eg a racist law in 1960s alabama then the resister must absolutely must not resist the operations of the law in dealing with the resistance the resister must cooperate with being arrested must plead guilty in court for the offence if they are guilty under the existing law and must humbly accept the duly administered punishment martin luther king in birmingham jail5 most especially the resister must not physically harm or fight with the appointed officers of the law righteous resistance affirms the importance of the thin blue line righteous resistance loves the police and needs to show it which means that the lawless ones eg the rioters those who push burning bins at police behind riot shields have no righteousness and stand condemned 4 the struggle is spiritual jesus says what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but loseth his own soul in the same way what would it profit a righteous resistance if a cause succeeds and yet simply sows greater alienation and division within a community the path of righteous resistance cannot be reduced to a particular change of law or regulation rather it is about the establishment of community and fellowship in place of division strife and accusation all the hallmarks of the realm of the enemy the greatest problem that we face is the spiritual vacuum at the heart of the west the soul death that preceded caused the civilisation death that we are living through yet resurrection it is a good thing that christianity teaches the conquering of death and we are not without hope the most important task is to use the tools of righteous resistance to clarify what is at stake spiritually in the struggle to bring things into the light so that all might live in the light i ll write further about what these mean in terms of our present distress posted in crisis culture ministry politics violence after southport secularism scapegoating starmergeddon posted on august 27 2024 by elizaphanian i put off writing this for a while for all sorts of reasons much of which boiled down to feeling immensely depressed and despondent about it all that however is faithless the virtue of christian hope is all about not giving in about keeping on keeping on and yes i m re reading lord of the rings at the moment which has that as a major theme so for what it s worth here is my take it s not very cheery but when i despair i remember that it is to god that we look for salvation and that we put not our trust in princes the rioting and lawlessness that followed the foul attack in southport must be dealt with by the law without fear or favour on the king s peace does civilisation depend thus far i agree with starmer but no further most especially the absurd disproportion on display between the sentences given to angry working class white people and those given to other categories has become darkly comic starmer has quite clearly chosen a side against the white working classes and i guess following a government briefing mr welby has done the same such things are catastrophic and the consequences are going to be grim attention has been paid to the rumours that the attacker was islamic which led to the attack on the mosque and all the consequent disorder so there has been a crackdown on bad speech not just incitement but all that might be considered legal but harmful watch what you post says big brother what this ignores is that the bad speech the rumour was simply a match tossed upon kindling soaked in petrol if it hadn t been this event and this story then it would have been another one the firm hand of the law managed to suppress the disorder this time but it will not always be able to do so indeed the success of that suppression and the manner in which that suppression was carried out has added more fuel to the pile the eventual conflagration will be more severe in the end something will give our elite supports an ideology of multiculturalism what i as a short hand tend to call the secular the secular mindset is premised on the superiority of the weird understanding of the world within which religious belief is something that can provide all sorts of interesting colour to life but is not of practical consequence and best conducted in private secularism is in fact intensely protestant i might write more about that at some point the protestant grammar of wokery and one of the most harmful elements of the secular approach is the way it is unconscious of its own theological premises and biases after all every world view worthy of the name contains theological premises and biases the point is only to uncover them and bring them into the light to see if they are good true or beautiful or simply to be discarded so our public order is structured on the dismissal of the validity of religious belief most especially christian belief you can believe what you like so long as you keep it to yourself and in the meantime the public square will support the values of tolerance diversity and equality driven principally this often goes unmentioned by the need to feed more human fuel into the great maw of mammon industrial capitalism religious belief is inefficient which leads to our present challenge and the choice that will inevitably have to be made publicly clearly and committedly do we preserve the freedoms and tolerances that have been granted to those hitherto treated poorly most especially women and sexual minorities but also ethnic and religious minorities or do we tacitly sacrifice those freedoms and tolerances in order to appease one particular religious group how does multiculturalism cope with a constituency that radically rejects multiculturalism secularism sadly lacks the philosophical spiritual resources to cope with such a question it is a vehicle that has been running on empty for some time and the engine has started to sputter as i touched on before this is the tragedy of the modern left cultural conflict is not supposed to happen in a multicultural society we re all supposed to just get along yet where there are egregious offences committed by one group against another and where not only are the criminal group protected by the state but those crying out against the crimes are themselves criminalised and oppressed and victimised even further by the people that are meant to protect them protect everyone this is not the path to peace one of the most heartbreaking stories i have read about the child rape gangs was of one father who went to the local police station to raise the alarm because he was concerned about his daughter and who was rejected by the police for being a racist the jay report put such truths in language accessible to acceptable to the authorities but it is the specific and individual stories that need to be felt in order for what happened at the hotel in rotherham to be understood secularism cannot cope with this multi cultural ideology is a cruel fiction that abolishes the possibility of peace and friendship across cultural divides violence inevitably follows which brings me to scapegoating the particular cultural conflict that starmer et al are trying to suppress is a distinctive of the problems that we face in our country in our time the underlying dark dynamics however are of much more ancient and universal character when a society is stressed and so many of our left behind communi...