furtherandfaster

Bibles and their wraparounds

This week I have been within reach of a bookshop which has a wall full of Bibles - so I have been taking full advantage to see what the state of play of Bible marketing is. It has been quite a discovery. There have always been special editions of Bibles but marketing has really started to go to town. I discovered the Recovery Bible which is designed as a kind of environment for those escaping addictions of all kinds. Daily reading plans linked to the 12 steps of Alcoholics anonymous.  There is a spiritual formation Bible and a Green Bible now but these weren't in stock.  There's the Poverty and Justice Bible which has put a magic marker through all the bits of the Bible which address um poverty and justice issues. Which is at least a third of it. Is this flummery - marketing for its own sake? Or does it actually make the Bible easier to get into? Still thinking about that one. The Bible has a reputation for being obscure - though it didn't used to. The Bible used to be the first and for some only book which people read. 

With the Olympics starting up this week it is intriguing that 100,000 bilingual copies of the gospels in Chinese  and English are being distributed athletes and visitors to the games. A joint project run by the Chinese government and the Bible Society. The gospels carry the official Beijing Olympic logo. With Christianity being the fastest growing religion in China - reports of 10,000 converts a day have been bandied around.. is this a sign that the Chinese government is will to entertain the possibility that Christianity far from being a western religion is developing its own Chinese cultural identity? It may be that bilingual translations come to play a particular role in enabling  Chinese to learn and read English.

Watching how the Bible is handled makes for fascinating watching. The Qu'ran and the Hebrew scriptures are considered by their religious adherents to be divinely inspired in the original languages in which they were written. Christian orthodoxy holds that the Bible is divinely inspired in whatever language it is translated. Which makes it  stubbornly resistant to the attempts of the religious establishment to control its distribution and interpretation.  The Bible has literally been a godsend to all kinds of minorities.  I'm not pretending that the Bible is much read in the UK nowadays though I reckon to spot someone reading the Bible, the Torah or the Qu'ran on the London Underground 50% of the time I travel on it and almost always in the morning rush hour. 

Enough on Bibles for now..

The Muslims are taking over.. really?

A bit of a dust up today - Ruth Gledhill has written a piece in the Times about the Muslims outnumbering Chrsitian churchgoers by 2035.  About the time we'll be planting colonies on Mars and driving flying cars. I know I sound facetious but a lot can happen in 30 years. We just had a million immigrants arrive in this country in the last 2-3 years - and their arrival has dented the church decline figures - why? Because a lot of them were more fervent Christians than those already here.  There are churches in London with literally thousands of members.

The real story is I believe a little different - for a generation we have had trumpetings about a multifaith society - which basically meant a secular society with room for people to practice their faith privately. Publicly we were supposed to agree that all religions lead to the top of the mountain despite the evidence that aside from Buddhism - no world religion at its core had that axiom. Multifaith is poppycock - there never was a public consensus on this just goodwill and good manners for other religionists who were as passionate about their beliefs as we were. The interesting thing is that religion has invaded the public sphere in its raw and undiluted form. I don't mean fanatics and bigots - I mean that it is OK to express ones faith in public and its not a declaration of war on anyone who happens to disagree with you.  What is my basis for this? The same publication used in this article to say that the Muslims are taking over aka the Times was used last December in the Sunday Telegraph to show that the Catholics are taking over. Whose right? You know with a threshold of 30 years I really don't know and I don't care. What interests me much more is that for the last couple of hundred years it didn't make any sense any religious group taking over. Because it didn't matter - secularism ruled. But now it does.

Essay completed this morning on experiments in worship

summarising some of the experimental work I have done in church services - importing workshopping and research facilitating techniques - I wonder if they'll give me a mark? Next essay topic is funerals - which I will be qualified to take as of next March when I'm licensed. I kid you not. Well it adds variety to the day job!

Religious trends..

This morning in the post I receive the report of the 2005 English church census together with the latest copy of Religious Trends which looks at how this compares with the last 3 census surveys made over the last 25 years. It makes for fascinating reading.  You can actually look at trends in church attendance borough by borough by denomination, gender and age. What it shows is that the church in the UK is mutating faster than any of its leaders can really grasp.

If you read the papers you would still think the Jacobeans have it. They don't - they've gone off to drink tea in National Trust properties muttering about Grade 2 listings and the old Prayer Book. The bulk of white middle class Christianity in mass collusion with materialism, keeping crime figures low and GCSE's high will continue a steady decline. 50% of the clergy being appointed now are women - even if they won't let the girls take a turn being team captain. Though I think they are on equal pay now.

What the census shows is that the emerging church is urban, black and English isn't the first language. Fundamentalism is on the rise. Earlier this summer I spoke to a professor of anthropology who had attended a hearing with testimony from women who by day keep the NHS going and away from work by night lay on hands for healing and to cast out demons.  The privatisation of faith is a peculiarly white concern. It was brought in 2 centuries ago to stop European Protestants and Catholics killing each other. It is no longer relevant and the Islamic community has been notable in bringing matters of religious faith into every day life without embarassment in a way which is unthinkable in the English suburbs. The church set to decline for a few years but it is down but not out. What emerges will be multicultural, vibrant and not very English. What would George Herbert make of it?

If you don't believe me then look at the biggest religious story of the summer before the Pope got into hot water. The second most senior churchman in the UK, who came to this country as a refugee from Idi Amin, cancelled his summer holiday and spent a week living in a tent in front of the altar in York Minster, praying and fasting for peace in the Middle East. I give you George Sentamu Archbishop of York.

Most people in this country have taken a look at Christianity and have found it wanting. The really interesting thing is how they will respond to a Christianity we have never seen before in these islands. We are moving into unmapped territory.