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Thursday 19 August 2010

Jimmy Reid

Today was the funeral of Jimmy Reid, leader of the work-in on the Clyde in 1971. He was a great believer in human potential, arguing that the inequalities of society would ensure that such potential is not realised. He fought to save the Clyde shipbuilders. Here is the rat-race speech.
"Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts and before you know where you are, you're a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?".

Saturday 7 August 2010

The Bible, a Troubling Text

SUGIRTHARAJAH, R.S., Troublesome Texts: The Bible in Colonial and Contemporary Culture (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008).

The Bible IS a troublesome text. Its interpretation has been over the centuries the cause of major conflict. It has been used to promote slavery and patriarchalism. It has been the cutural symbol of empire, the basis of education systems in non-Christian developing regions. From it identity is claimed, and land disputes are fomented. Missionaries, by translating God as Ancestor, replaced tribal histories with an over-arching Biblicist ‘history’ in which Adam and Abraham are common ancestors, so biblical violence becomes an acceptable political model, and patriarchy-with-polygamy a legitimate social means of repressing women.

    This thought-provoking collection of conference papers asks uncomfortable questions about Biblical hermeneutics. In ‘Gautama and the Galilean’, Sugirtharajah uses his Sri Lankan background to explore how and why Victorian theologians constructed lives of Buddha and Jesus, revealing rampant racism. There is however another side to this: enough ‘Orientalists’ took the task seriously enough to contribute to the preservation of texts which has turned Buddhism from a local cult to a respected global world religion.
Buddhism was encountered as an indigenous religion separately in Nepal and in Sri Lanka, and gradually the similarities and differences between the two observed and the conclusion reached that these were two traditions of a single religion, which came to be named Hinayana (lesser vehicle) and Mahayana (greater vehicle). Hinayana (also referred to as Theravada) was regarded as purer than Mahayana, which was considered syncretistic with local pagan deities and spirits. Today, Mahayana belief and ritual would be treated philosophically and symbolically. The Dalai Lama (leader of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism) is globally known and respected for his spiritual wisdom. Sugirtharajah notes that the reason for the study of Buddhism was to discredit it, and finds many quotations to support this. There is another side to the story and academic study of Pali texts began, albeit slowly. Lives of Jesus have abounded over the past two centuries, are mostly devotional in intent (some thrive on being controversial), and tell us more about the writer than about the historical Jesus. My view is that even the canonical gospels are fictional hagiography which owe more to the need to demonstrate fulfilment of scripture than to historical recollections. Unfortunately, fewer sayings of Jesus have survived than words of the Buddha.
Chapter 2 is on ‘Subjecting the Johannine Letters to Postcolonial Criticism’, concluding that the letters have a dogmatic, imperialistic tone demanding compliance, but that the new message being promulgated owes some informal debt to Buddhism. To ‘walk in the truth’ and ‘walk in love’ is likened to the Buddhism requirement to ‘walk by dhamma’, a praxis-centred practical religion by which ‘everyone who does justice is born again’ and ‘everyone who loves is born of God’ (3 Jn 4, 2 Jn 4-6, I Jn 2.29, 1 Jn 4.7). For the writer, actions not words indicate a person’s faith, salvation by works contrasting with Paul’s salvation by faith and God’s grace. Unfortunately, this worthy ideal is presented as a demand to be obeyed and not an aspiration to be taken to heart. Chapter 3 focuses on the Sermon on the Mount read in India as a basis for ethical spirituality, for example by Gandhi and Roy. He notes that after independence it was replaced by Leviticus 19-26, a ‘roadmap’ for state building, John’s Gospel (mystical), liberation theology and identity hermeneutics. Chapter 4 looks toward next steps: these are for interpreters to explore power-knowledge relevantly. It challenges the dominant hermeneutic by demanding emphases are shifted and silences are vocalised. Chapter 5 explores ideas of God after the tsunami of boxing day 2004, where images of all-powerful and compassionate deity is exploded. Chapter 6 focuses on the link between Bible interpretation and conflict, even violent conflict. Those who study and interpret the Bible from outside the powered elite risk scorn and gagging, even lynching. For Sri Lanka, this is a call for open and honest multi-faith dialogue. Chapter 7 looks at the Bible industry as a form of cultural imperialism, for repression towards a dominant view instead of being a sea of challenging and exploratory stories. Chapter 8, ‘Future Imperfect” calls for attitudes of exclusivity towards the Bible as word of God is replaced by a recognition that the Bible itself was (and is) a site of ideological battle, and has to sit beside the scriptures of other faiths as together charting the spiritual questings of humankind. Chapter 9 ends the compilation autobiographically of the writer’s journey and motivation, calling for creative and imaginative scholarship.

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Take Five

Five recent posts in my blog, about literature relating directly to the second world war, as a taster ... enjoy  http://1930-1960.blogspot.com
  1. Flying Officer X (HE Bates) - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/08/flying-officer-x.html
  2. Josephine Blackstock- http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2009/11/malta-and-greece-josephine-blackstock.html
  3. John Pudney - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2009/09/john-pudney-war-poet.html
  4. Major Charles Gilson - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/07/major-charles-gilson-1878-1943.html
  5. Jack Heming and Eileen Marsh - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/07/heming-and-marsh-again.html

Critical Religious Education.

It seems to me that the issue of religious education rather than religious instruction has never been resolved. Ninian Smart's team in Scool Council Working Paper 36 talked of critical study of religion alongside phenomenology and I think he paired these correctly. We have developed phenomenological awareness of believers' points of view, trying to see the religion through the eyes of the worshipper; but we have not cracked the issue of criticality. Examples of religious education syllabuses remind me of Sunday School. They take for granted that Jesus was/is God (I don't), that the Gospels are accurate biography (I don't), that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven (I don't), that we go to heaven on death (I don't) and that belief is more positive than disbelief/scepticism (again, I don't). I am not a Christian, but Christians vary considerably on their understanding of this particular list. RE should not oversimplify, or claim certainties that have to be overturned later.

Criticality suggests that religious education asks about what Christians mean when they call Jesus divine, whether this is rational and coherent, and what its implications are for personal understanding and social practice. Why do people believe what they believe? Why do they find argument difficult? We should make no assumptions that this is a right belief, just that it is a belief. Over history, Christian practices/beliefs have had good consequences and bad. Oxfam and the inquisition. Religious exclusivity/inclusivity is a pertinent topic for school. Diversity is important. Topic study could include population control and birth control. Christians have views on the environment, some of which campaign against sustainability, a world created for humans to use as the dominant species. Where religious be;ief is irrational or non-rational, it should be discussed. Children and young people need to understand the nature of religious belief in all its diversity, whether it is a belief they are inside of, or exterior to. They need to see the positive as well as the negative, and conversely the negative as well as the positive. RE has mainly stressed the positive, whilst the media emphasise negatives. Atheism is a strident point of view (pov) at the moment, and pupils need to know where this is coming from.

John Dewey emphasised the importance of experience and multiple perspective, building up knowledge from personal experiences. If we add up personal experiences of suffering, bullying, fear, family, affection etc, it adds up to a balanced view of life and of moral responsibilities, but not particularly of religion or Christianity. What extra does the myths and rituals of religion add? And why the need to accept them literally?

Non-literal interpretation of metaphorical language is a step forward - is there something in Paul Tillich's theology of depth which language is struggling to illustrate facets of? Or is doctrine a socially repressive instrument to prevent thinking? I argued this in some detail in Creating the Old Testament. If we look for figurative meaning, we escape from naivity.

From this you will see that my vision of what RE ought to be doing is not what it is doing. Nor do I have any confidence that current staffing/training could provide a workforce to could teach this curriculum. A movement stressing thinking skills in RE could be a way forward.