Led by the spirit into the wilderness

We used this Bible study at Living it out - SCM's Conference 2010. The study can be used to explore the wilderness periods of our lives, the temptations of power, and where we draw our strength from.

Led by the spirit into the wilderness - a study for Lent
Luke 4: 1-13

What you will need
Bibles or a handout of the text Luke 4: 1-13
The questions
Facilitator's notes (see handout attached below)

Beginnings
The passage begins with Jesus being ‘led by the Spirit in the wilderness’. Think about where this passage comes within the narrative of Jesus’ life.

1. Why might Jesus be led by the Spirit in the wilderness at this particular moment in his life?

Unmasking the temptations
One way of thinking about the temptations is that they are different expressions of power. The first is the power to exploit the land for our own profit (turning the stone to bread), the second is the power of domination and Empire (authority over all the kingdoms of the world) and the third is the power of entitlement (God will protect
us whatever we do). Jesus unmasks these as ‘false’ powers.

2. What do these temptations look like today? What are we, as individuals and as the Church, tempted by?

Wisdom of the old
Three times Jesus replies “It is written…”. He is rooted in ‘the old Story’ of his people and draws on scripture to reject the temptations of the Devil.

3. Where do we draw our strength from in the wilderness? What are we rooted in?

Lenten journeys: looking ahead

4. Do you have any particular ways of ‘journeying’ through Lent? Is there something you would like to try to do differently for the next few weeks, to live out your faith?

This study is inspired by Ched Myer's writings "Led by the Spirit into the Wilderness: Reflections on Lent, Jesus’ Temptations & Indigeneity". Ched Myers is an activist, theologian and biblical scholar. Some of his writings are available to download from his website: http://www.chedmyers.org/node/64

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Christ the King?

We used this bible study at one of our gatherings, exploring imagery associated with kingship and what it means to 'belong to the truth'.

For groups
Read aloud the two Bible readings and the two reflections. You can use some of these questions to help your group reflect.

• What images and words do you associate with kingship and kingdom?
• What do you understand by the ‘everlasting dominion’ and the kingdom that is ‘not from this world’?
• How do you respond to images of Christ the King?
• What do you think it means to ‘belong to the truth’?

Old Testament reading
Daniel 7. 9 – 10, 13 – 14

Gospel reading
John 18. 33 – 37

A reflection on truth

“Truth evidenced in Jesus is not an idea, not a concept, not a formulation, not a fact. It is rather a way of being in the world in suffering and hope, so radical and so raw that we can scarcely entertain it”
- Walter Brueggemann

A reflection on Christ the King

A throne for Christ the King
on the pavements with the lonely and homeless

A court for our God
in the food queues of the down and outs

A crown for our saviour
in a twist of thorns shaped for mockery

A robe for our Lord
with a blanket wound round a quiet doorway sleeper

A banquet for our Redeemer
in a broken loaf shared at a broken table in a broken world

A jewelled goblet for the use of Christ
in a bowl of water for Christ to use washing the feet of others

A dull glory
a tarnished grandeur
but a reign of grace
This is our God

© Roddy Hamilton, Abbotsford

Download this bible study as a handout below.

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Liberating Gender - I say to you rise up!

During 2008-09 we explored the theme of Liberating Gender and the complex world of gender and justice.

• Does gender matter?
• How do we perceive and construct our identities?
• What relationships are there between gender, power and injustice? Whatever happened to a positive masculinity?
• Where are women's voices in the Bible?
• Does it matter that Jesus was male?

This Bible study explores issues of transformation and liberation. Thinking about gender and power can open up interesting discussions around the gospel story.

I say to you, rise up!
Mark 5: 21-43: A Girl Restored to Life and a Woman Healed

What you will need
Bibles or a handout of Mark 5: 21-43
The small group discussion questions
A big piece of paper and some pens

Beginning together as a whole group
Ask someone to read the passage slowly out loud.

• Ask people to think of one word which sums up the passage for them. It might be a word within the passage or something about the message of the story and how it speaks to them.
• Invite people to write that word on the piece of paper, placed in the middle of the circle.

Small group discussion questions
Some things to think and talk about:

• Look at the spoken words, the dialogue, within the story. Which phrases seem significant to you and why?
• What transformation or liberation takes place in the text?
• The two stories are intertwined – how does this affect our reading? How might one story throw light on the other?
• Talitha cum can be translated “Little girl, I say to you, rise up!” It is one of only a handful of phrases in the Gospels that remained written in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. One suggestion is that this was because the early Christian community repeated and remembered these phrases, perhaps in prayer and devotion.
• “I say to you, rise up!” – in which contexts, and to whom, can you imagine Jesus saying this today?

To end the session you could return to the sheet of words you created at the beginning and see what words people would like to add.

Reading the Bible - Translations

This study demonstrates how exploring different translations of the Bible can deepen our understanding. It is taken from the SCM publication Reading the Bible.

Since the Bible wasn’t originally written in English, nearly all of us depend completely on translations of scripture. Translation isn’t an exact science. It’s often impossible to be 100 per cent accurate in our translations. Concepts in Greek and Hebrew can mean two or three different things in English, and sometimes more than one at the same time. Often, how a translation comes out depends a great deal on what the translator’s presuppositions are, and on what they think the book they’re translating is really about.

This has a knock-on effect on the reader: because we only have what the translator thinks the Bible says to go on, it means that our interpretation of the Bible – and our relationship with it – depends on the translation we use. Some Christians – perhaps unconsciously
– pick Bible translations that make the Bible say what they want it to say.

This study explores four different translations of each of two verses from the Gospel of John. All of them are reasonable translations of the text, using different techniques.

You can download the study and the handouts below.

Reading the Bible contains accessible articles about approaching the Bible as well as more Bible studies suitable for groups or individuals.

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What to be? How to be? Discipleship and Vocation

This series of Bible studies explores questions of discipleship and vocation through the Gospel of Mark. It was developed by John Vincent during our Reading the Bible year theme (2006-07)

1. Be Different!
   The Kingdom has come (Mark 1:14–15)
2. Be Relevant!
   The response of disciples (Mark 2:13–17)
3. Be Ecological!
   What to take with you (Mark 6:8–11)
4. Be Committed!
   Losing life, gaining life (Mark 8:34–38)
5. Be Significant!
   Leadership and servanthood (Mark 9:33–35)
6. Be Together!
   Solidarity and community (Mark 10:28–31)
7. Be Political!
   The alternative Messiah (Mark 11:7–11)

You can download a free PDF of the Bible studies below or you can order a hard copy here.

If you are interested in the theory/method of vocational bible reading then there is also a helpful article by John Vincent below.

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Prophets and Profits - hearing the call

Here are two of the bible studies we used during the Prophets and Profits year theme. We wanted to explore themes of justice and solidarity as found in the message of the biblical prophets, and identify prophetic voices in our own society which echo that tradition.

Hearing the call
Isaiah 6
This is the passage where Isaiah is called to be a prophet. Many people who take on a prophetic role have a traumatic experience of some kind, which to them represents the call to speak out; for example, Oscar Romero would never have faced off against the corrupt government of El Salvador if he hadn't seen one of his friends gunned down by a death squad in 1976.

In the end, whether you believe or not that Isaiah was literally touched on the mouth by an angel holding a burning coal, the point of the story is that one day, Isaiah was just like everyone else, until the moment when he became awakened to the plight of the people, and empowered with a message to give.

Questions for groups:

• Does Isaiah have any choice in taking on the job?
• Does Isaiah have any choice in what he says once he's taken on the job?
• Is Isaiah going to make any difference?
• Why is he necessary?
• What does the burning coal mean?

Isaiah, of course, has the option, when the voice of the Lord asks who is going to go, to say ‘no’, although you could probably argue that in a vision this intense, there's no choice at all. Certainly, the message he has to give is not one that's going to make him a lot of friends, and having taken on the job, he's stuck with the message. More than that: it burns like a coal on his lips: he has a desperate need to speak out. It looks like it's going to be a hopeless job, though. Why, then, is he needed? What's the point?

People of faith who stand for justice often ask themselves this. What is the point? The simple fact is, someone's got to do it. There has to be someone who can make a stand, for no other reason than it's the right thing to do.

Check out Amos 7:14, which gets across the personal cost to the prophet, making him a lonely, isolated figure, and Ezekiel 2:1-3:13, where again, we see the call, its non-negotiable nature and its seemingly hopeless result. But note 3:3, where Ezekiel is made to eat the scroll, an act which symbolises Ezekiel's commitment to take on God's message as his own and deliver it in his own words to Israel. Why does it taste so good?

Bringing it on
Isaiah 61:1-2
According to Luke's Gospel (Luke 4:14-20), this was the passage that Jesus read out in the synagogue in Nazareth, as he began his three-year ministry.

There's a bias in this particular passage, which runs throughout the Old Testament prophets, towards the poor and the dispossessed. But then, why shouldn't there be a bias? The rich, the established and the powerful already have a voice. But the poor and the homeless, the orphan and the asylum seeker, who speaks for them?

Questions for groups:

• Why would Jesus choose this passage in particular through which to make his policy statement?
• Is it useful for us now? Why? Why not?
• Should we be so biased?

Many commentators reckon that Isaiah is using the concept of the Jubilee year as a symbol for a new world of justice, a projected new Kingdom of God.

Jubilee was supposed to have happened every fifty years (as ordained in Leviticus 25), and ushered in a year where all slaves were freed, all debts cancelled and all land given back to its original owners and allowed to remain fallow. It was intended to put things back to the point when the Israelites first took Israel, when everyone was free, no one was living in poverty, and everyone had enough land.

Jesus, in co-opting this passage for himself, is depicted as declaring himself to be the harbinger of the same new Jubilee, the same new Kingdom, that Isaiah was so desperate to see.

Want to follow up the issues raised in these Bible studies? Try some of the following:

Living on Purpose
Tom Sine, Monarch, 2001.
Book about why being a Christian is more than just a lifestyle decision.

Brave Hearts, Rebel Spirits: A Spiritual Activist's Handbook
Brooke Shelby Biggs, Anita Roddick Books, 2003.
A collection of biographical sketches of 20th-century prophetic figures from a wide range of cultural and religious backgrounds.

Mark Thomas http://www.markthomasinfo.com
Comedian Mark Thomas is a veteran campaigner. A modern day prophet? This is his site. Thoughtful, provocative, and very, very angry.

Church Action on Poverty http://www.church-poverty.org.uk
Campaigning organisation mobilising churches to work alongside others to overcome poverty in the UK.

Liberating Gender

Liberating Gender by Stephen Canning

Now there are men and women
and there are women and men.
Jesus died so that we
could all live again.

Some men used to be women,
some women used to be men.
Will Jesus be a woman
when she comes back again?

Some men sleep with women,
some men sleep with men,
some women sleep with women
and some people sleep with no-one.

If you’re living a new life
should it still be the same,
when the goalposts are moved
is it still the same game?

We’ll all be there together
at the end of days
with a promise of grace
that our Lord Jesus saves.

Now there are women and men
and there are men and women.
Jesus died so that we
could all live again.

Stephen Canning is a student at Manchester University

Did Jesus really die for my vagina? by Jelly Morgans

Tertullian told women “You are the devil’s gateway… how easily you destroyed man, the image of God. Because of the death which you have brought upon us, even the Son of God had to die.”

Tertullian had some funny assumptions:

• Only 50% of the population were made in the image of God.
• Eve was responsible for all sin. Ever.
• Eve is ‘Everywoman’ – the other 50% of the population.
• Without women there would be no sin, and Jesus would never have been crucified.

Tertullian and the other Church Fathers were pretty mean to Eve. They created a reality in which women were polarized as either madonnas or whores (a reality which in too many ways continues today). Eve is the personification of feminine evil. She is a temptress, with connections to sexuality. She is fleshy, matter-bound, earthy, weak.

The Virgin Mary is recognized as a ‘second Eve’, the only truly redeemed woman. She is a virgin, but she is a mother. She denies her ‘earthiness’ to be selfless and passive. This puzzling and impossible archetypal model for women places all other women as ‘Eves’. Am I a madonna or am I a whore? A whore, it would seem.

Augustine wrote “it says that Eve was made as man’s helper so that… he rules and she obeys. He is ruled by wisdom, she by the man.” Ambrose adds that her ‘helping’ is “in the generation of the human family.”

So there is hope – I can breed! Hurrah! I have a special function decreed by God. Oh, but even this, it seems, was given to me as a curse rather than a blessing. And children were, according to Augustine, contaminated from the moment of conception. Hence, because of her role in carrying the child, the evils of sex were particularly identified with the female. Marina Warner summarises that “Woman was womb and womb was evil.”

What upsets me is the assumption that this is biblical, and somehow divinely decreed. Well, go back to Genesis and read again. And as for Jesus, I don’t think me having a vagina had much to do with the crucifixion. I aspire to be like Eve – perceptive, independent, questioning. I don’t think she had anything to do with the crucifixion either. So, why did Jesus have to die? He died to save us all – equal in his love, equal in our sin, and equal in our genitalia.

Jelly Morgans is a student at Edinburgh University.

Gender Blossoms by Rowan Percy

Concepts of masculinity-femininity and male-female are constructs not facts. This binary gender institution is a social divide that serves patriarchy, economic and social structure and world religions. It causes mental health problems, emotional disturbance and social distress. It curbs self-expression, social balance and creativity.

Human beings’ biological and sexual gender often vary in ways that defy our binary thinking about gender. What is socially constructed as feminine in one culture may be masculine in another. My partner spent three weeks hanging out with a man in India before he realized she was a woman!

None of this is a problem if our societies embrace a spectrum of gender self-expression that is broad and inclusive. But we don’t.

I identify as queer, lesbian and transgendered. I appear as an androgynous middle aged woman who would probably “fit in” in most Anglo cultures. We can neither assume who is behind the image we see, nor can we think gender or orientation identity is static. In some circumstances I might say I am bisexual and often would say I am a woman. Context, speaker and listener play a part in this.

I was raised Christian and practice Zen Buddhism. Buddhism and anti-racist, feminist, progressive thinking have helped me re-evaluate the binary assumptions of the white Judeo-Christian world-view. Making a a choice about what is right or wrong is still necessary at times, but thinking in binary terms pushes us to assume a choice between this and that, to judge, shut down enquiry and not consider context. When we see “opposites” as a continuum we tend to stay open, explore and see with fresh eyes. The world is never what it was even one second ago.

Radical faeries, queens, drag kings, transmen, bois, femmes - shifting queer identities - represent a collectivity of exploration in sexual orientation and gender. Although the two are not the same, they are linked. All are warriors for queer spirit. They blossom as a rag-tag movement, wanting to awaken the static, stuck world of heterosexual, male-female dogma.

Queers and non-queers alike may think these expressions are only appearances. But appearance and the spirit that informs it cannot be extricated. Queer spirit is a dynamic force for healing not just for that community, but for all people.

As queers challenge “straight” society, will Christians and followers of other religions, like Buddhism, see the possibility for healing of the global obsession with rigid gender formulations?

Can we see how rigidity around gender bruises our thinking about love, war, peace, economics, other species and spirituality? Will we ignore or judge the contributions of these warriors or embrace gender expression?

Children on the altar by Beth Dodd

Children are wonderfully anarchic and have a beautiful disregard for propriety. My local church pastors are a married couple with a two-year old daughter. One Sunday recently, the young girl went up to the front during the Eucharist and started tugging on her mother’s robed sleeve. Right next to the most holy sacraments displayed, the most holy and precious relationship - that between parent and child - was also on view, sanctified before the congregation and before God with the bread and wine. The ordinary things of the world made holy.

That is the kind of anarchy which liberates, which joins the disparate pieces of our lives, which we separate into little boxes, and pieces them together so that there is no join or seam, but a holy wholeness preserved forever, even if we only see it for a moment. This is what a truly incarnational theology will give us. An approach which allows worship and family, work and home, male and female, young and old, tradition and novelty, to bleed into each other. That is where freedom is, and that is where Christ can be found.

Beth was SCM's Resource Worker (2008-2009)

Why on earth is gender still such an issue? By Terry Biddington

Star Trek Enterprise always comes to mind when I think about gender issues. There is a particular episode when the ship arrives at a planet-with-no-gender and a person-with-no-gender is curiously attracted to Commander William Reicher and his well-trimmed beard. Reicher is tempted to reciprocate but is held back by Federation curiosity:

‘You have no gender in your world’ he asks, ‘so who leads when you dance?’

‘Why, whoever is tallest!’ replies the genderless one.

Ah! So maybe that world had gender division by another name. Heightism!

And perhaps there is no world - anywhere in the universe - without some structure or so-called ‘essential’ division within its society between ‘us and them’, ‘insiders and outsiders’, ‘good and bad’, ‘sacred and profane’. Perhaps there is ‘hallowed law’ in every world, disguised, promoted or justified as ‘divine decree’ or the ‘will of the Collective’ or ‘bidding of the Leader’. Perhaps it’s bound up with the essential biological basis of human society, perhaps it will always be with us; or perhaps it’s just a lack of imagination…

Walter Brueggemann in a recent lecture series argued that gender is the place today where the world has taken its stand to fight the last battle, with the collected forces of fundamentalism and conservatism ‘digging in’ against ‘non-biblical’ and, therefore, ‘inauthentic’ liberals and feminists. So much has changed so quickly in the world that secular relativism has – one side argues - eroded traditional norms and boundaries: blurring gospel clarity and threatening the distinctiveness and unique identity of the Christian message. The vitriol, fear and paranoia – says the other side - are the result of trying to hold on to a world which (as people felt during the 13th century Renaissance and 16th century Reformation) is fast disappearing and of a basic lack of trust that what will follow will also be a world that is birthed and loved and nurtured by the God we know in Jesus. And most days, watching the news and seeing the ever-increasing abuse of women and other ‘minorities’ in the world, it seems to me that Brueggemann could well be right; so how can we move forward into God’s future?

In Galatians 3, Paul places ‘faith in Christ’ over against ‘living by the law’ and argues that life ‘in Christ’ impacts upon us not just individually, but collectively, as a community of believers: ‘there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’. Paul seems to suggest that the essential binary divisions of his day would, for those opting to live the Christian life, be dissolved: that all believers are equal, as ‘heirs according to the promise’. For what does ‘baptized into Christ’ represent, for individuals as well as for communities, if not a meaningful change from a life where gender division results in gender-stereotyping, inequality and abuse, to one where gender division is dissolved and both genders are affirmed as fully and effectively representative of human personhood. Surely the implication of Paul’s words is that those who choose to support or maintain social division by gender are still living ‘according to the flesh’ and not fully living ‘in Christ’ where there is no functioning or symbolic gender division.

Now this act of putting into speech an experience of his physical freedom from ‘the curse of the law’ was a radical act of imagination on Paul’s part. And perhaps that is his most overlooked bequest to us, his fellow heirs. For the church today is in sore need of a radical gesture of imagination to do away finally not only with gender injustice in its own life, but to help it regain the moral and spiritual authority needed to speak out against the world-wide disciplines of violence that are being daily nurtured and practised in the name of ‘ the law’ and to proclaim that fullness of life which is surely both the common goal of the great religions of the world and the particular gift which God gave us for the world in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Very often it feels already too late for the church; but there is still hope. We have to be able to imagine a different, thoroughly inclusive, future for Christianity and the task that falls to us alive today is to imagine that future into becoming. Will you join with me in promising – foolishly – to help imagine a new church into life?

Extract from an article first published in Franciscan, May 2005, the magazine of the First Order of the Society of St Francis in the European Province. Terry Biddington is Anglican Chaplain to Higher Education in Manchester.

Liberating Gender by Beth Dodd

What does liberating gender mean? The title of this year’s theme may appear a little strange at first glance, but the more I read the more I find how much gender is associated with liberation. Feminist theology is often written by liberation theologians or linked to liberation theology. The purpose of gender-neutral or gender-diverse worship is to liberate our minds and our worship. For the early Christians the meaning of ‘neither male nor female’ (Galatians 3.28), was liberation from the law into the new law of freedom in Christ, and liberation of the spirit from the ties of the body.

Whenever we talk about liberation, we have to think about what we are being liberated from, and what we are being liberated to. Liberating gender is about liberating men and women from the bonds and pressures of a patriarchal social system and way of thinking and being. It is about liberating us from restrictive and damaging socially-constructed images of ourselves and others.

What we are liberated to is not an absence of gender, but the freedom to recreate our individual gendered image in the light of the reality of Christ, to become more truly ourselves as we become closer to God. It does not have to be a gnostic rejection of our bodies and the wonderful diversity and difference we share, but a joyful recognition and redefinition of the meanings of our bodies. This is a liberation of mind, body and spirit, which is only possible through the transformative power of God’s grace. What does God want to liberate you to be?

Beth Dodd was SCM’s Resource Worker (2008-2009)

Liberating men from patriarchy by James Hawes

The main value of patriarchy is the belief that men are supreme to women and children. The feminist movement has made great advances for women in the public arenas, specifically in the areas of equality. However, often in private women still endure men who are deeply entrenched in this view.

I work as a psychotherapist and I consider myself to be fairly self-aware. Most of my clients are men and the core area of my work is helping them increase their emotional literacy, and yet I sometimes find thoughts, feelings and words seeping into my awareness that touch on this deep value of patriarchy exhibiting itself in inner thoughts that sound like, ‘but I’m the man, I’m right and you should listen to me.’ I am also aware that when I am frustrated by my son’s behaviour I feel like saying, ‘stop being a “woos”’ or ‘stop acting like a girl.’ Fortunately these thoughts are very rarely externalised… but they are still there!

Jesus challenged the values of patriarchy and sought to liberate gender and specifically men from the oppression of patriarchy. Jesus demonstrated a different way of being, going against the values of this deeply rooted system. He exhibited a different kind of masculinity where he was able to honour children, question the laws of hierarchical institutions, and spend time with women and other marginalised groups.

The life and values of Jesus challenge traditional masculinity, which is exhibited by the following constructs: avoidance of femininity, restricted emotions, sex disconnected from intimacy, pursuit of achievement and status, self-reliance, strength and aggression and homophobia.

To liberate ourselves from social conditioning and traditional masculinity we need the courage to reflect on the above constructs, to question our comfortableness and to move towards a positive masculinity.

James Hawes is a psychotherapist who leads Men@work, a spiritual support service that promotes positive masculinity. He has links with the Northumbria Community.

Small World

Small World and the Jubilee Debt Campaign by Rosie Venner

The chain is an emotive symbol. It brings to mind images of oppression but when we link ourselves together it can also be a strong statement of solidarity and interconnectedness.

On Sunday 18th May 2008 I joined hundreds of other people at the Jubilee Debt Campaign’s event to celebrate 10 years since the Birmingham human chain that brought the world’s attention to the need for debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries. The event was called ‘Journey to Justice’ and highlighted the impact of debt cancellation so far and what still needs to be done.

It reinforced for me the urgency of the campaign - because over $400 billion of debt still needs to be tackled. After 10 years of demonstrating, petition-signing, letter writing and shouting from the rooftops, it would be easy for frustration or apathy to overtake us. But when six million children die each year from lack of adequate nutrition and when countries like Kenya have to spend millions of dollars more on debt repayment than on health and education, there must be no slowing down.

Yes, we can pause briefly and celebrate the 20% of unjust and unpayable debt that has been cancelled so far, but then we must carry on campaigning with even more spirit and determination than before. That's where young people and students come in - let's commit ourselves to campaigns like Jubilee Debt, to ensure a fairer world in the near rather than the distant future. Be part of a chain of solidarity and interconnectedness, so that we can break the chains of injustice.

To find out more and to take action go to www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk

Rosie is SCM’s Links Worker

Nonviolence and Interdependence by Ethan Nichtern

The connection between nonviolence and interdependence is crucial. When the nature of anger is misunderstood, no mental force can take us away from the truth of interdependence more swiftly. Violence makes us fall into grotesque and primal misconceptions of separation. The growl of aggression sucks us from the realm of human decency down into a hellish zone of Us-versus-Them, and me-against-the-world mentalities. The bitter mind-frame of violence is ancient, engrained in our evolution since the first two amoebae battled over a tiny glob of protein.

For thousands of years our human cultures have been utterly dysfunctional about the relationship between aggression and peace. The twentieth century was almost a hundred straight years of wars among empires of hungry ghosts, viciously addicted to the fleeting economic fix of creating new enemies. Each war carried a surprisingly similar rhetoric of xenophobia. And each time, violence was presented as the necessary precursor for a true and lasting peace. We were always fighting in the present so, somehow, we wouldn’t have to fight in the future; fighting them over there so we wouldn’t have to fight them over here, and on and on. Each time the rhetorical future became the actual present and then the textbook past, the cycle proved to be both endless and fruitless. The twenty-first century is picking up right where the twentieth left off, with better weapons. There’s only one little problem with the logic of violence: war doesn’t end war – any more than a heroin fix ends a heroin addiction.

An extract from One City: A Declaration of Interdependence by Ethan Nichtern, Wisdom Publications (2007). Ethan is the founder of The Interdependence Project (http://www.theidproject.com), a grassroots movement bringing the principles of meditation and interconnectedness to the arts and activism.

Skating on Thin Ice by Rev. Jamie D. Schmeling

Skating on thin ice is a tenuous endeavour—not to mention a dangerous one, yet the evidence of global climate change is all around us and we haven’t quite ‘cottoned on’ to the reality of our choices, consumption, and “free”-market places within the closed system that is the earth.

These issues would have been well understood by the under-emphasized physicist, Lord Kelvin. Lord Kelvin was influential in testing the laws of thermodynamics, which when put simply state: a)”you cannot get something for nothing” and b)”you cannot even break even”. These laws govern our universe—and have yet to be refuted, thwarted or re-envisaged. The laws are constants.

So, does the human part of the natural world have an innate propensity for risky business—or was that just Tom Cruise?

In Glasgow, I’m a member of a planning group that organises an event called: HOLY CITY (http://www.holycity-glasgow.co.uk). We create a space to explore contemporary and global issues through workshops and worship, from a faith perspective. This year’s programme, Dancing on the Edge, included a specific opportunity for folk to consider the concerns of global climate change: “Skating on Thin Ice”.

The Biblical exploration workshop at that event centred around these questions: How do we as people of faith respond to the evidence of Global Climate Change? Do we need to ‘re-think’ our understanding of the Divine? For example, can we make a case for: a green-God?

Regardless of our response, the way we think about God, the Sacred, determines how we live.

Time to ante-up! As icebergs, twice the UK’s size, come adrift from the polar ice caps, can we remain innocent in our ignorance—or is it time to face up to the implications of this inconvenient truth?

The Rev. Jamie Schmeling is the Project worker for the Wild Goose Resource Group, a semi-autonomous project with the Iona Community. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland.

A case for Christian Vegetarianism by Fr. John Ryder

It is a sobering fact that the meat industry has a severe and negative impact on the environment, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and human health. ‘Livestock’s long shadow’, a major report from the UN, published November 2006, revealed that the meat and dairy industry are responsible for the third highest source of global greenhouse emissions, more polluting than the entire global transport system and nine times higher than global airline emissions. The report continues that the meat and dairy industry are responsible for land clearances which account for 70% of the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest (home to 50% of the planet’s animal and plant species).

These unpalatable facts bring home to us the inter-connectedness of the created order. We have to face the fact that, ‘a high-meat diet translates into a tremendous amount of carbon emissions. It takes far more fossil fuel energy to produce and transport meat than to deliver equivalent amounts of protein from plant sources.’ (Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, 2006, p317).

According to the Movement for Compassionate Living’s agricultural leaflet, it takes 8 times the land and 10 times the fossil fuel to produce the Western omnivorous diet compared to vegan. George Monbiot claims, ‘Within as little as ten years, we will be faced with a simple choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.’ (George Monbiot, ‘Why vegans were right all along,’ The Guardian, 24th December 2006).

So we stand on the brink of pursuing a path towards destruction unless we radically change our lifestyle. Christians bear a particular responsibility to safeguard God’s creation for future generations.

Father John Ryder is the Spokesperson from the Christian Vegetarian Association for the UK.

The Global Ethic by Prof. John Hick

The idea of a global ethic is variously understood, but for me it means basic moral principles that are common to all the main religions and cultures of the world. Is there such a global ethic?

I only have space here to refer to one aspect. All the long-lived cultures have so far been religiously based. Within the world religions there is the universality of the Golden Rule, in either its positive or its negative form.

We find this in the Hindu Mahabharata, ‘One should never do that to another which one would regard as injurious if done to one’s self’; in the Jain Kritanga Sutra, where we are told that one should go about ‘treating all creatures as one would oneself be treated’; in the Buddhist Sutta Nipata, ‘As a mother cares for her son, all her days, so towards all living things a man’s mind should be all-embracing’; a Zoroastrian scripture declares, ‘That nature only is good when it shall not do to another whatever is not good for its own self’; Confucius taught, ‘Do not do to others what you would not like yourself’; Jesus taught ‘As ye would that men should do to you, do ye likewise to them’; the Jewish Talmud says, ‘What is hateful to yourself do not do to your fellow man'; and Muhammad taught, ‘No man is a true believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desired for himself’.

Professor John Hick is a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham, and a Vice-President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion and of the World Congress of Faiths.

For more on the Global Ethic see http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article17.html

Like the morning stars by Dr Isabel Carter

Climate change is not an environmental issue – though thankfully environmentalists have been raising awareness of the issues for decades. By giving climate change a green or an environmental label, it makes it easier for us to shake off responsibility. Climate change needs to be mainstreamed. It is an issue of human rights and of justice; it is a political issue; an issue of economics. It is an ethical issue that we as Christians need to take responsibility for.

It will also become increasingly an issue of political stability; political leaders are ultimately responsible for dealing with the impact of climate change - whether from the floods we’ve experienced in the UK, or the heatwave, drought and loss of crops experienced here in S Europe this summer. Who got the blame for Hurricane Katrina?

This is ultimately an issue of human survival for life as we know it. Whatever happens with climate change, human life will continue but it may not be in ways or in numbers that we would like to envisage. Societies can and do crumble. We have a tendency to believe our civilisations are stable and secure – but we have numerous examples of civilisations that crumbled, often very fast - the Mayan civilisation or Easter Island. Our societies are often more fragile than we would like to believe. Blockading fuel stations in the UK in 2000 brought the UK to the point of collapse within 5 days.

Who will take the leadership? What will future generations say of us? Did they not know? Could they not understand, Why did they do so little, so late?

Let us take the initiative and say ENOUGH!

We have only one, infinitely beautiful, varied and fertile earth. So precious in God’s eyes.

Like the morning stars that sang for joy at creation, let us too cry out, burning brightly.

We can stand together in unity in the light and love of Christ to say – ENOUGH!

Extracts from a speech given by Dr Isabel Carter at the Third European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu in September 2007. With thanks to the European Christian Environmental Network www.ecen.org

Connections with the Natural World by Sarah Pillar

Kevin lived as a hermit in the south of Ireland in the early 7th century. In his vocation to seek God, Kevin chose to live fully dependent upon and engaged with his environment. Nature was to be embraced as the place to experience God. Once, whilst praying in stillness and silence, a blackbird settled upon the palm of his hand. She began to build her nest. Kevin faced a choice: to withdraw his offer of openness before this availability became too costly or to value the fragility of this encounter above his own comfort, to hold his exact posture … for a long time! For Kevin, as this beautiful story recounts, the initial, humbling thrill gave way to endurance, pain and sustained commitment. Through what had now become an extended prayer-time, Kevin’s aching open hand mirrored his open heart to God. He held the nest until the chicks learnt to fly.

Kevin’s costly hospitality speaks to us in a way facts and figures cannot. As God reveals to us the treasures of His creation should we simply catalogue them that we might ‘own’ them, to marvel and move on? Rather, here is a challenge to hold an open hand to the increasingly fragile world of which we are a part. We learn to value God’s creation, glimpsing His value of us.

In the words of a traditional Irish blessing, we draw together both the challenge of Kevin’s costly nurturing care and God’s tender care for us:

May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

Sarah is from the Northumbria Community

The freedom of radical obedience by Matt Gardner

Probably one of the most damning indictments of our modern cullture’s obsession with freedom is that it’s a name we even give to our wars. Like other concepts which become removed from their context and valued in an absolute manner, freedom can become a very dangerous tool – being free from all forms of control and domination (and increasingly, free from ‘offence’) soon means being free to control, dominate or offend others. Absolute freedom has no end beyond itself, but as John Milton recognised in the 17th century (just as the great era of privatisation and individualism was dawning), freedom that is not directed towards virtue is not freedom but merely licence, ‘which never hath more scope or more indulgence than under tyrants’.

This utilitarian definition of freedom, where everybody is free to do whatever they like ‘so long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’, poses huge problems for all modern human politics. But perhaps the place in which it comes unstuck most spectacularly is the way we treat our natural resources and damage our environment. For if there is one thing the increasing environmental awareness of the last 20-30 years has shown us, it is that we are incapable of ‘not interfering’ with our environment, and if there is one thing that the processes of globalisation over the same period have shown us, it is that ‘our environment’ includes the whole planet. All animal and plant life, the atmosphere, soil, sea, rocks and desert – all are created as one interconnected community.

In this context then, our neat Enlightenment concept of freedom as essentially amoral, individual and privatised breaks down. Other people do not merely exist as restrictions to my freedom, and neither does the rest of the natural world. We need to learn that true freedom comes not from asserting ourselves over each other and over nature, occasionally banding together to lobby on shared agendas, but from learning to co-operate and co-exist in community. This means discourse based on ‘needs’ rather than ‘rights’ and the acknowledgement that human will is not the most powerful force in the universe.

Operation Enduring Freedom, the name given by the US military to their response to the 11/09/01 attacks, was originally called Operation Infinite Justice. The name was changed to avoid offence to Muslims (for whom only God, the Al-‘Adl, is Utterly Just) but the blasphemy and presumption remains. For, paradoxically, true freedom is not to be found in the separation of violence and individualism, but in community, islam (submission) and radical obedience to laws not of our own making.

Matt is SCM's Administrator

Reading the Bible

Lay your burdens down? by Jim Cotter

Among the people who lived in biblical times we discern a profound struggle between two points of view, a struggle which has still not been resolved. It is the question of the relationship between 'us' and 'them'. It is easy to think 'we' are superior - or we may have been taught that 'we' are inferior. Or, more usually, we may think ourselves superior in some ways and inferior in others. Where are you on what pecking orders?

If we are not careful we project this attitude onto God, and then we may think we are chosen while others are rejected. Are we chosen for privilege (i.e. heaven) while others who do not respond to God's call are destined for rejection (i.e. hell)? Do we believe God will divide humankind into a small minority that are 'saved' and a large majority who are 'damned'? Or should we think of ourselves only as servants of others, that they are more important than we are?

This really would be to love without condition, even love our enemies whatever they may do. God never rejects. The God shown to us in Jesus does not know how not to love.

Yes, love can be resisted, a loving response can be postponed, there is much misunderstanding and pain to be worked through. Love is costly. Courage is willing to pay. Most of us are reluctant.

In the pages of the Bible you find both points of view. Each of us has to ask which of them we are prepared to embrace. And how do you think most religiously-minded people decide?

Jim wrote a regular column for SCM’s magazine Movement.

Monotheism by Jonathan Clatworthy

If you don’t buy into fundamentalism, what’s so special about the Bible? After all it’s a diverse collection of ancient texts, many of which are incomprehensible, irrelevant, factually wrong or morally repugnant. So what does the Bible say which (a) is different, and (b) matters so much as to be the basis for a religious tradition?

Here’s my answer. For the people who wrote the Bible, what distinguished their tradition from other ancient Near Eastern traditions was their monotheism. Only one God. Polytheism - lots of gods quarrelling with each other - is good at explaining why the world is a mess, and why there is so much illness, natural calamity and tragedy. If life is miserable, that’s just the way it is and there’s nothing you can do about it. Monotheism, on the other hand, begins with a God who doesn’t have rivals, and therefore created the world just as intended. Such a God cannot have any personal needs, so must have created the world for its own sake, as an act of goodness. So declares Genesis 1. Therefore monotheism means the universe operates in regular, ordered ways. It is this presupposition of regularity which made modern science possible. Monotheism also means we have been created for a purpose, our lives have value, and it is possible for all of us to live together in harmony - because that’s how we’ve been designed.

Today it looks different. Polytheism has been almost forgotten. Ordered society has been secularised, so the Bible no longer seems distinctive on this count. The greatest threat to Christianity comes from a science which proclaims a regular, ordered universe with no gods at all. Desperate to reaffirm the spiritual realm, Christians re-read their Bibles. Threatened by godlessness, to establish one god would be good, to establish more seems better. And, since some biblical authors weren’t entirely consistent with their monotheism, it’s possible to discover texts with realist pictures of the Devil and evil spirits. Paul becomes the hero of the century, with all his passing references to ‘powers and principalities’, ‘elements of the universe’, etc. As a result, what Christians now reaffirm, over against secular godlessness, is all too often precisely the pagan polytheism which the biblical authors rejected.

I’ll stick to the old religion. I don’t believe every sentence in the Bible is true, but I do believe that it was absolutely right about its main preoccupation, so I proudly stand in the biblical tradition.

It’s the Bible’s monotheism which makes sense of believing that it is possible for the people of the world to live together in peace and harmony. And that therefore it’s worth working for.

Jonathan is the secretary of the Modern Churchpeople's Union.

A frightening book by Revd Stan Brown

The Bible is the most frightening book I know. I don’t go there for comfort and reassurance – I open the covers with a sense of anticipation close to dread. What challenge will I find next? The scariest moments of all come when trying to work with a Bible passage to prepare a sermon – how can I know what this means, do I really have the nerve to announce what I think I find there? What on earth I am supposed to say about a story of divinely commanded genocide, or of a God who breaches the laws of nature with spectacularly strange miracles and signs? What makes the preacher more than a spiritual entertainer or theology anything more than an intellectual trick to square these impossible circles?

The Bible, as we know, is not one book but a library, written, edited, collated and copied by countless individuals and communities through several millennia of human history. With all its internal variety and inconsistencies, it is held together by a grand narrative – an overarching rainbow story of a universe that has its origin and end in a gracious and loving God. Whatever we find in there – even the strangest and most disturbing things – is hanging upon that story like an ornament on a Christmas tree.

The key to understanding it all is to accept that you and I are also a part of that story, our lives, stories and experiences are continuous with those of the Bible. I hate it when people say 'your faith must be a great comfort to you'. It is not my comfort: it is the eyes through which I see the world, the language I speak to communicate in the world, the community which holds me, the culture through which I experience the world, and the story which both shapes and challenges all that I do. Comfortable it is not.

Stan is Ecumenical Chaplain at Kingston University.

Why trust the Bible? by Susannah Rudge

The Bible consists of many books, of varying genres, written, rewritten, and amended by different people living in different contexts at different points in history. It speaks of love, justice and peace – and yet seems to condone, even encourage, capital punishment, misogyny, homophobia, blind nationalism and a host of other evils. So how can it be authoritative? Can we recognise its diversity and questionable morality, and yet continue to give it a central place in Christian discussion and devotion? Or must we either try to ignore the difficult parts and pretend the rest speaks uniformly of whatever suits us, or dispense with the whole book and consider it nothing more than an interesting artefact?

I have come to believe that the Bible’s multiple voices, far from undermining its importance, actually help to justify its prominence in the Christian faith. For through them we discover the story of an authentic relationship between God and humanity, one which is not all sweet agreement, but which encompasses everything from the deepest anger and doubt to the most sincere forgiveness and reconciliation. In the Bible’s pages, we read of countless people caught in the complexity that is real life. Sometimes, like us, they are unsure who God is, or what they should do, sometimes everything does go horribly wrong, but nonetheless they persist in their conviction that God is at work in their situation, guiding, loving and forgiving them despite their confusion and their failings. It is not a straightforward story, but, that, I think, is all the more reason why we should read and trust it.

Susannah is a former member of SCM's General Council, and was on the editorial panel that planned our Reading the Bible resource.

In the beginning by John Baxter-Brown

In the beginning.

Some of the most stimulating words ever written, words that have inspired controversy and poetry, courtroom battles and polemic, words that have filled shelves with miles of commentaries and prose.

In the beginning, God.

The source of it all - time, space, cosmos, creature and controversy.

In the beginning God created.

God, the active agent that gets everything going, including atheists and fundamentalists (who can sometimes be the same people!)

Every time I read these words and the following three chapters of Genesis I am overwhelmed by the power the words contain. These chapters are so rich in insight and so well crafted that I can be taken on a journey beyond my own life with all its foibles and struggles and joys, even beyond the knowable universe to glimpse the mind of God. Across the millennia these words show us something about the foibles, struggles and joys of the author(s), of the editors, of humanity, and give us a fleeting glance into the nature and character of God who makes all things 'good'.

Getting the most out the words is not simple. There are layers upon layers of digging to do. I need to get beyond the simple (and wrong) science against religion arguments of our own times. I need to appreciate how other people over thousands of years have understood these words. I need to study and think and pray.

And always I am drawn back to the words, 'And God said'. And I believe He still says. Therefore I have a responsibility to listen. And so do you.

John Baxter-Brown is Exectuive Officer (Youth) for Churches Together in England.

When God Was One of Us… by John Cooper

The Bible is an imposing book. Before an examination of the contents, a barrage of stereotypes appear to remind us that it has been both the source of liberation from, and the cause of, suffering around the globe. From ‘Dr’ Ian Paisley to Archbishop Desmond Tutu it’s easy to name people who have used or abused the book to seek their ‘truth’. Yet for someone like me, with no formal theological training (just a want to explore) it is a difficult read. I have often struggled to want to read it, let alone manage to get anything meaningful out of it. It is often seen by many as the source of all truth yet all I enjoyed were the pictures.

Recently I came to realise that the difficulty stemmed from its ever-changing nature. Ever-changing in both translation and personal perception. How can you learn from it if it never stops changing? Many of my friends read Bibles such as The Message which I view as awful and yet I can easily pick up the NRSV or sometimes the King James and connect instantly. Did that just make me odd? Were they all right and me wrong? Were we all wrong and there was a true version out there? So many questions before I had read a page! Yet, after many years of this contradiction, I have learned to step back and see what the Bible is.

The Bible is theology.

‘Theology’, writes Richard Holloway, ‘is a human activity, something we do, but we also acknowledge that it is done in different ways.' This perception cleared up my problem outlined because by embracing the concept you can doubt and challenge what is written (because it is human-written and we are fallible) you can come closer to the real truth contained within. Once the debate is moved beyond full stops and words. then real discoveries can be made.

By discoveries I mean a simple one. The exciting and challenging message contained around the key character, Jesus Christ. Through his life and works, as described by the humans who saw him, we are treated to a perception of how God had lived when he was, and the promise of returning now to live (as the song says) as one of us. Wether he will return or if we just have to delve for the key messages from the historical basis doesn't matter though. Because the ultimate message from it all was that Jesus was a man of action!

When approaching the Bible, to find out how it can inspire modern campaigns like MakePovertyHistory or Stop Climate Chaos, we need an open mind. It enables themes to be noticed, contradictions to smoulder and links that are interwoven throughout the centuries of history contained within the book to become clear.

I must admit though, I am not the most academic of people, so once I have begun to get an idea, I like to do something with it, play with it or nurture it in my head. To do that I tend to go for a walk and get out of the modern hurly-burly for a short time. The more I walk and explore nature, the more connected I feel to it all. Being more connected to what has come before and what is to come helps me to realise my own mortality and the implications of this.

Hmmm, startlingly deep. Well no, what I mean is the idea that we are just a drop in the ocean of human history. There is much that has gone before us and much that will come after our time on this planet. So whilst I may be short-lived here, that doesn't mean I can't make a difference. As humans find new ways to destroy the fragile earth and its inhabitants, it is also up to others to fight to protect it.

The phrase ‘As a Christian....’ prefacing a statement is always questionable. That said, the more I read the Bible the more I can't sit still and let injustice and poverty continue, as though by doing nothing I am allowing it to continue. But I suspect I am getting ahead of myself really as others have spread the news in better ways than I.

I want to finish by turning to the works of Charles Wesley. This year sees both SCM examining the Bible and the 300th anniversary of the birth of Charles Wesley.

This man, with his brother John, re-wrote the approach towards the telling of their discoveries within the Bible. He wanted to tell all about the Bible yet there was an issue of inaccessibility because of a largely uneducated (in the formal reading/writing sense) population.He worked tirelessly to ensure that songs and hymns were written to give out the key messages.

Just because someone couldn’t read the book doesn’t mean they would miss out on the good news contained within. I hope this inspires you to consider what and where next for you on your spiritual journey. Bon Voyage!

‘Come, Holy Ghost (for moved by thee
The prophets wrote and spoke),
Unlock the truth, thyself the key,
Unseal the sacred book’
H&P 469 ‘Come, Holy Ghost, Our Hearts Inspire' (Charles Wesley, 1707–88)

John is an individual member of SCM.

Food for the journey by Martin Thompson

I like reading the Bible. I always have. Long before I would call myself a Christian I was intrigued by it. Bible stories at primary school, studying Luke’s Gospel in RE, reading a battered old King James Version at home – it all fascinated me. When eventually I became a follower of Jesus, I brought my obsessive/compulsive nature to my Bible reading. I couldn’t get enough of it (and still can’t). My Bible reading habits have changed over the years but are still daily. We are encouraged to see the Bible as spiritual food and therefore I feel the need to 'feed' on a daily basis – or perhaps I’m just greedy!

I’ve learned though that feeding is not the same as feasting. Feeding is a daily necessity, feasting an occasional exciting indulgence. Sometimes when I read the Bible it’s like meeting the person of my dreams and watching a firework display all rolled into one. But for most of the time it can be a bit like reading the telephone directory. Little by little though, as I press on with whatever particular way of reading and Bible version I’m using, I am learning about God’s amazing love for me and my duties towards Him and other people.

I look back on feasts, and the reasons for them, with pleasurable memories. However, it’s the daily bran, bread and baked potato that keep me going! If the Christian life is a travelling to Heaven, for me daily Bible reading is the food for the journey.

Martin Thompson is SCM's Administrator.

Understanding context by Julian Lewis

A bank robber shoots a bystander dead.
A long-term carer suffocates their chronically ill partner.
A driver skids and hits a pedestrian, killing them.

Three separate actions resulting in each case in a death. Yet our response to each situation will probably be different. We need an understanding of context when we try to appreciate the varied situations life generates.

Yet we look to our religions to provide certainties, and hanker after guiding texts as rulebooks. How much easier life then becomes. But when we understand that we must contextualise all other areas of life, how absurd is this? It is both theologically and emotionally juvenile, and frankly a cop out.

I think it is critical when reading the Bible to always bear in mind that it is not The Bible. That is a handy name for a collection of books, letters, songs, poetry, genealogy, history and propaganda which were collected together at a given point in history for certain reasons by a particular group of people who understood the world and its workings in a way very different to ours. Much possibly relevant material was left out. It is argued this was a divinely ordained process, an example of God working in mysterious ways. Personally I believe that a great hindrance to accessing the insights of the Bible is precisely this approach.

Read the Bible. As Christians that is a must. But if you want theological and emotional maturity, get rid of the pedestal. The power of the Bible is precisely that it is not sacred.

Julian is a former editor of Movement magazine.

Life in all its fullness

Having it all by Jo Ind

There is a great deal of debate about whether it is possible for a woman to 'have it all', by which is meant a fulfilling career, a loving husband, a great sex life and still having time to keep fit, make her own chutney and see her children compete in the egg and spoon race.

People panic themselves into trying to achieve all of these things without reckoning that ultimately we are not in control. We might well suffer from a debilitating illness, be infertile, be unjustly imprisoned or the victim of a stabbing which leaves us paralysed from the neck down. We are not the sole architects of our destinies, whatever the lifestyle gurus might say to the contrary.

Happiness is not about being able to tick the boxes – partner, health, career, house, children - however good those things are in themselves. It is about both more and less than that. There is no connection between someone’s outer good fortune and inner sense of wellbeing. Ask any therapist. Ask someone who has lost his arm in a car accident and despite that, or maybe because of that, exudes the bubbly playfulness of God.

Life in all its fullness is not about having it all. It is about learning not to be afraid. It is feeling connected to everything that is. It is compassion. It is knowing we are loved. It is saying: 'Yes' to the moment at hand. The Good News is that these things are available to us, whatever our situation.

Jo Ind is a journalist and author. Her books include Fat is a Spiritual Issue and Memories of Bliss: God, Sex and Us.

A new kind of resilience by Alison Webster

I write this in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings (7 July) and attempted bombings (21 July). By the time you read this there may well have been more. Many have been reminded that life is fragile, survival (injury and death) random, and that the big question is: how do we live and flourish in the light of this? For most of human history, and for billions around the world today, this question forms the backdrop to everyday life. Those of us who have grown up in a context of relative security and material affluence are unusually privileged.

Mental health has been defined as, ‘the emotional and spiritual resilience that enables us to survive pain, disappointment and sadness.’ In other words, it is not a ‘state’ but a ‘process’, a set of skills and strategies that can be learned and developed.

Our society is entering an era when we need a new kind of ‘resilience’ – corporate and individual. Speaking on Thought for the Day on 8 July, Rowan Williams spoke of the need to keep believing in what is positive and hopeful, not allowing the terrorists to have their way, which is the way of fear and ‘sick desolation’.

Resilience comes not from hunkering down and putting up a protective shield, but from opening up and taking risks. For the mental wellbeing of us all, now is the time to embrace cultural, religious and racial diversity as never before; to resist stereotyping, however much the tabloids try to persuade us that it is common sense. To remember that suspicion narrows our vision, whilst creative risk-taking enhances it.

Alison is Social Responsibility Adviser for Oxford Diocese.

Fresh courage take by Frances Young

My eldest son was born in 1967. We are still changing nappies, and still get upset when he is distressed and cannot tell us what is wrong. He was born at full term but at premature weight – he had been deprived of oxygen and nourishment in the womb. With an abnormally small head and brain, he has extreme learning disabilities: no self-help skills, no language, and in adulthood he has lost the limited mobility he once had because his hips permanently dislocated. He takes drugs to prevent epileptic fits. He cannot be left alone, but attends a day centre in the week. My husband and I share all his care, apart from about nine weeks' relief each year.

Over the years I have moved beyond the ‘Why?’ questions to find myself drawn deeper into the classic truths of the Christian faith. Mary at the foot of the cross has become a ‘type’ of all mothers who in one way or another ‘lose’ their sons. Persons with disabilities have become essential to the body of Christ, because they ‘image’ God in the crucified Christ in a way that is missing otherwise. Creatureliness is at the heart of the human condition, and we all share vulnerability and mortality. Mutual love and interdependence are core values which produce the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5).

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
(William Cowper)


Frances Young is Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham.

Flourishing in community by Timothy Radcliffe

Can we flourish alone? That is a real question in Western cultures, which are deeply individualistic. Most societies believe that human beings need community if we are to be fully alive. There is a Zulu saying, ‘A person is a person because of persons.’ We receive our existence from the smallest of all communities, our own parents. Christians believe that we shall finally flourish in the largest of all communities, which is the whole of humanity gathered into unity in the Kingdom.

We all belong to multiple communities: families, football clubs, networks of friends, places where we work, internet circles, churches. A community should not be a tight prison which shuts out strangers, but opens me to others. If being a supporter of Manchester United or a Catholic means that I must hate supporters of Liverpool or Protestants, the something has gone wrong.

My most important community is a Catholic religious Order called the Dominicans, scattered around the world in more than a hundred countries. For nine years I lived at its HQ in Rome. We were more than 30 brothers from 21 nationalities. This stretched open my mind and my heart, demanding that I see the world through African and Asian eyes. I discovered different ways of cooking, joking, praying and thinking. If we can learn friendship with strangers now, then it is a small preparation for the Kingdom, in which there will be no strangers any more.

Timothy Radcliffe OP is a Dominican friar, living at Blackfriars, Oxford.

Life in all its forms by Susannah Rudge

To whom does Christ offer life? Even ‘inclusive’ communities, which stress God’s love for everyone, can often overlook an important point – that the Christian message of reconciliation and hope does not only concern human beings.

This is not a recent oversight. Christians through the ages have reflected endlessly on the nature of salvation, but few have looked beyond the human perspective to affirm the redemption of the whole created order. Some have even explicitly denied the importance of the natural world. Aquinas, for instance, argued that nature existed only for human ends, and saw Adam’s ‘dominion over the earth’ not as respectful stewardship but as a licence for exploitation.

Yet this was not Christianity’s heritage. The Jewish scriptures affirm the value of nature, recognising Israel’s God as the creator and Lord of the universe who is revealed in all he has made. They promise that though nature is now finite, and sometimes chaotic, it will become eternally harmonious in the time of future salvation. The New Testament writers locate this salvation, for creatures as for humans, in Christ, in whom ‘creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay’ (Romans 8). The idea is not that humans should transcend or ignore the material world, but that all things are given the chance to enter into a new kind of existence, freed from finitude and united to God in eternity.

Today, modern technology allows us ever-increasing dominance over nature. Thanks to environmental campaigners and the media, most of us are aware of the damage human activities have caused to the natural world. I’ll be the first to admit, however, that my response has been woefully inadequate. Nor have the Christian communities to which I’ve belonged offered much encouragement; I’ve heard plenty of sermons about how people should treat each other, but few about the right treatment of nature. However, we must improve. Aspiring to live ‘life in all its fullness’ must involve recognition and respect for everything which shares God’s gift of life.

Susannah Rudge is part of a Jesuit volunteer community in Liverpool. She was a member of SCM's General Council in 2004–05.

'You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here.' by Chris Mead

I like watching films. I mean I really like watching them. I’m not sure at what point a hobby becomes an obsession but I’m certainly in that neighbourhood. I live my life in the hinterlands of the fanatic, in front of a flickering silver screen that tells me stories, teaches me and sometimes, if I’m very lucky, sings to me.

There is a theory that the human race seeks to define itself through the tales it tells. We thrash out our humanity by degrees, flinging fictions and fantasy every which way, seeing how far we can stretch reality and still recognise ourselves. Be it fairy tale or sonnet, slash-fic or urban legend, airport page-turner or magnum opus, we start to discern the shape of our soul through the thrust of our narratives.

There are some, then, that place religion in this category, merely a collection of stories that teach us how to know ourselves better. As a Christian I am caught somewhere between ferociously refuting this point of view and kind of seeing what they mean. For me the true successor to this millennia-long tradition of global story-telling is cinema. When the lights fade down around me, when miracles and wonders start unfolding before me, I feel wise and strange and connected to something bigger and older than myself. Even, and this is the weird part, if I’m watching something like American Pie 5: How do we keep getting away with this?

I can draw a very real parallel between my faith and my film-watching habits which is why I’m always so annoyed at Hollywood’s treatment of Christianity. I’m not talking about Gibson’s gore-fest Christ or even the horror genre’s steady succession of sallow-faced priests and corrupt clerics. I’m talking about the perception of normal, everyday Christians. These fall into two distinct categories: a) the humourless bigot and b) the psycho.

And that’s it.

Let me give you an example: in One Eight Seven Samuel L Jackson plays a high school teacher who is both an inspiration and a father figure to those in his classroom. In an early scene, apropos of nothing, we see him kneel in prayer before going to bed. When I first saw this scene I nearly jumped out of my seat. Finally, I thought, here’s a Christian on film who lives his faith through his actions, who doesn’t preach or whine or irritate but simply tries to do what he believes is right.

Of course, at the end of the film it turns out he has been slaughtering children on a perceived mission from God. So here we are, the forgotten billions, the sub-section of Christianity whose idea of a perfect Saturday night doesn’t necessarily include wearing white sheets and ritual sacrifice. I think we need to ask ourselves some serious questions about why we’re always portrayed in this unflattering manner. If cinema sees us as a bunch of killers n’ killjoys then some of the blame has got to rest on us. Especially if you believe, as I do, that popular culture is a funfair mirror into our collective consciousness.

Perhaps Christianity is a collection of stories and fables, but they’re stories with real blood pumping through their veins. They’re relevant and ballsy and revolutionary, tales of power and faith. We are the children of these stories, walking in footsteps that stretch back through centuries, journeys that were begun in mud and desert sand. These are the things we believe in, the stories that drive us, ideas and beliefs that have lasted for generations. We shouldn’t be ashamed of them, we need to shout them louder, so that those that twist a fundamental message of love and acceptance into something divisive and hateful can no longer be heard. Then perhaps we’ll see a different kind of Christian on our television and cinema screens.

Chris Mead is Christian Aid's Higher Education Resources Officer.

A different world by Fabian Radcliffe

The highlight of the SCM conference in March was the talk by John Hull. From the age of 13 he suffered steady loss of his sight, which was complete by his mid-twenties. Yet he sat there talking to us, with energy, enthusiasm and humour, positively embracing life in all its fullness, in a way that astonished us.

Had we suffered the same misfortune we might have complained. Not he. His life-work was teaching Education in Birmingham University, and though now retired (in his sixties) he works part-time and gives lectures and talks. How can he be so positive about his life, his work and his faith?

He is not the kind of person to let things get him down, though it was never easy. But a turning point came when someone said to him: ‘You are so lucky; you will never see your wife getting older’. At first he felt angry; but then he thought: ‘That’s true’, and he began to embrace blindness positively. He had thought of himself as a sighted person who cannot see. Now he became a blind person. Blindness changes the whole person, not just the eyes. You become a tactile rather than a seeing person. You begin to ‘see’ with your whole body, in a way that we sighted people find hard to imagine. We assume that our world is the whole world, so the blind are handicapped. But the blind person’s world is just as real, though different.

Blindness has not diminished John’s faith. He has no visual image of God now; but he lives with God, just as he lives with his wife and children of whom he has no visual image either. He is a living example of what ‘life in all its fullness’ can mean.

Fabian Radcliffe acted as reflector at this year's SCM conference. He was formerly co-ordinator of HE chaplaincy for the Catholic church in the UK.

A precarious vision by Laura Biddington

It is reported that, on being asked to produce a summary of the Christian faith on the back of an envelope, Rowan Williams would scribble the Lord’s Prayer. And he has a point. If we accept the historicity of this prayer, then what we have here is something of Jesus’ own vision for the world; an insight into the things he hoped and prayed for.

This prayer, in effect, is a vision of life in all its fullness. A world in which God’s kingdom is manifest is a world of inclusive community, radical equality and social justice; a world where people have the time and resources to live life to the full. It is a world where we all have the freedom to seek God’s will by exploring and utilising our gifts, talents and desires in order to discern where God, in making us who we are, might be leading us.

Being open to the will of God in this way is a precarious existence (indeed, ‘precarious’ is Latin for prayer), because we are committed to a way of life which is neither comfortable nor straightforward. It is not easy to forgive or to accept forgiveness, but as Mrs Gee Walker, mother of murdered teenager Anthony Walker, has said: 'Unforgiveness makes you a victim'. To truly live as forgiven and forgiving people, without denying the pain and difficulty of this, is to begin to enter the vision of the Lord’s Prayer.

It is a risky prayer, for it commits us, changes us and deeply involves us with the injustices of our world. We can be cut off from the richness of life by choosing only the easy things, the things that do not challenge or frighten or disturb us. We can choose not to be involved. But if we are open to the disturbing of our comfort, we can seek the coming of God’s kingdom, rely on God for our daily needs, live as forgiven and forgiving people, and enter Jesus’ vision of life in all its fullness.

Laura is chaplaincy assistant at Sheffield University.

Lay your burdens down? by Sarah Armstrong

Jesus came that we might have life.
The light of the world, come to bring life to us all.
His light overcomes the darkness
In the places where we fear we cannot go
He is with us and lives in us.

Often we are troubled by questions and doubt
Difficult decisions, unsure which way to go
Things which cause stress and anxiety,
which we would rather not have to deal with
Why me, Lord? Why now? I can’t do this on my own.
It feels like we've been given more than we can carry.
Why must life be this hard?

'I put my trust in God', we say.
We encourage others to do the same.
'Your will be done' we say each week,
but are we prepared for what this means?

In reality this is one of the hardest acts;
to hand our lives over to His keeping
We fear this loss,
this surrender of control over our lives.
When things are difficult we want to be able to do something,
want it to work out the way we would like
It feels like the most unlikely way to gain life.
How can I be more alive if I’m not in control?

But through this surrender, this submission to His will, we gain freedom.
Freedom from the burdens we carry,
from the obstacles we cannot overcome,
from the struggles which we cannot face alone.

He doesn't say it will be easy
He cannot and will not take away the pain we feel.
But he promises to be with us, by our side, always.
We must live through the dark times,
but within that darkness we feel His presence.

A presence which takes us through the trials of life,
and brings us to a new life with and in Him.
As we lay our burdens at Jesus' feet
We are renewed and refreshed, and find life again.
Trusting in Him, our lives are changed,
and even the darkest night,
the fiercest storm, cannot shake our confidence.

'Come to me, when your burdens are heavy.'
Put your trust in me,
and I will lead you into life.

Sarah studied at Swansea University and has been a member of SCM's General Council.

Prophets and Profits

The Kingdom by Wood Ingham

It's a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It's a long way off, but to get
There takes no no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
- RS Thomas

Are we ever going to see the perfect world, the jubilee year, the Kingdom of equality and justice? It's a long way off. But its distance doesn't mean that we can't have a vision of it, or imagine what it should be like, what it could be like, if it would only happen.

But the secret of it is, that it's a long way off... but it's already here. It starts with us, with each of us, and all you have to do is make yourself a part of it.

Wood Ingham (John Heron Project)

Prophets by Richard Holloway

Prophets do not predict what is coming; they do not tell people living in the present what the future holds; rather, they embody the future in themselves and bring it into the present; prophets make the future happen by living as though it were already here.

The people who campaigned for the emancipation of women in Church and State did not wait for permission before treating women as equal to men: they lived that equality long before authority gave its consent to the change. That is why prophets are always in conflict with authority: authority always protects those whom the present privileges; prophecy always identifies with those whom the future liberates. Those in authority, those who possess power in the present, never consent to its removal, never yield willingly to the future. The powers that be always fight the future, but they always lose.

They lost their battle against the emancipation of slaves. They lost their battle against the emancipation of women. And they will lose their battle against the emancipation of homosexuals. There will be other battles to come against evils we cannot now even identify. They will be fought and they will be won, because prophecy never ceases.

Richard Holloway, writer and broadcaster, former Bishop of Edinburgh.

Small green pieces of paper by Wood Ingham

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Sprial Arm of the galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant blue-green planet whose ape-descended lifeforms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

When you look at it that way, like you're an alien from outer space, it all seems so ridiculous, doesn't it? How on earth did we get to the point where small green pieces of paper control the doings of the whole world?

It's the lot of people who are prophets to stand outside and grasp the ridiculousness of the situation. When you become aware that the value of these little bits of paper is ephemeral and imaginary compared to the value of people's lives, and the quality of those lives. And if people are making fools of themselves over these little green pieces of paper (or because of other, equally daft factors), wouldn't you have the urge to say something, to do something about it?

Obvious, isn't it? Try telling that to the managing director of a large multinational corporation...

Wood Ingham, The John Heron Project

Shopping centres by Gordon Lynch

Shopping centres create their own vision of reality. When you walk round the latest new shopping centre in your area, the halls, balconies and shops are all designed to maximise positive feelings. Spacious. Clean. Light. Airy. The dream of modernist visionaries come to life. ‘Everyone is welcome here’, is the implicit message.

There’s more. The new shopping malls offer a vision of life that is comfortable, undemanding, fun, in which everyone (whoever they are) is free to choose. Sounds like heaven. Or one version of it at least. And the act of shopping can become a ritual in which (like the Eucharist) the taste of heaven is brought into everyday life.

But look beyond this and see who and what is excluded. Who is unable to participate in this new commonwealth of consumption? People on low incomes – the sick, the mentally ill, asylum seekers, the unemployed or those trapped in minimum wage employment. These are the banished others, whose presence tarnishes such places with the reminder that there is still injustice, struggle and suffering in the world.

Faith is about how we see the world. It is about how we learn to look at the world. And it is about where we take the trouble to look.

Faith is about seeing where the kingdom of heaven is present in the world. And faith is about learning not to buy false visions of the world, even if they may be more comfortable and congenial.

So next time you’re in a new shopping centre, have a look and see what’s really going on.

Gordon Lynch, lecturer in practical theology at the University of Birmingham, author of After Religion and Losing My Religion?

Words, silence and the Word by Gareth Jones

Prophets are people who use words: they speak out, they give utterance to things that need to be said, and if they try not to speak, it is as if there is in their heart, says Jeremiah, 'a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.'

The prophet is therefore a reflection of the God who utters the primal word, 'Whose command is "Be!", and it is' (the Qur’an). The divine word constantly creates order out of chaos, and it is when the world becomes disordered, through imbalances of power, or exploitation of the poor, or unjust policies, that the prophet has to speak a new word of judgement and grace.

But there are times when words seem inappropriate, unnecessary or impossible: in times of grief or atrocity ('After Auschwitz,' said Theodor Adorno, 'no poetry.') or when wonder and ecstatic awe permit only silence.

St John writes that in Jesus, the Word is not just written, or spoken, but embodied. Here is something more than the uttered word, urging the world to justice; here is the lived reality of love, generosity, compassion and self-sacrifice. To change the world, we have to be more than merely articulate: we have to be human.

Gareth Jones, Chaplain to SCM and the University of Birmingham

Follow the money by Steve Collins

If you want to know the truth about a situation, follow the money. It won't account for everything - there are religions and ideologies - but even there, following the money will tell you a great deal about the realities of power as opposed to the fantasies.

So when I read about a malign or damaging policy, I ask myself: who is making money out of this? You cannot serve both God and money, Jesus said. Such a strange saying - why name money as the opposite of God? Sadly we live in times which make it all too clear. Money is the agent of self as God. Money reduces all things to commodities, that have no value except in relation to the self that disposes of them.

You've heard of 'structural sin', how frameworks beyond our control make us act unjustly even against our own intentions. And structural sin, under such names as 'market forces', is the excuse of the powerful and greedy for inaction.

But at some level, the structures depend upon the choices of individuals. This person chooses a business direction. That person chooses to pay themselves a large amount. These choices could be made differently - be made to help the poor and heal the planet. But they are not. And structural sin turns out to be the usual sort - the personal choice, to follow the way of self as God, to put my profit before their justice. I think those at the highest levels are culpable.

Steve Collins, columnist in movement magazine and webmaster for alternativeworship.org

Prophets, profits and the Presidency by Michael Meacher

One of the most striking aspects of the US Presidential election was the degree to which it was decided around the question of moral values. Despite the fact that a very large swathe of the American workforce has enjoyed virtually no increase in real income for 30 years, despite the fact that 3 million Americans lost their jobs since Bush was first elected, and despite the rising costs of basic health and education services, Bush still won.

He won because issues over gay marriage, abortion, school prayers and capital punishment played more heavily with a broad mass of voters than pure economics – even though some of the particular moral principles at issue might seem anathema to many Europeans. He won because religion is on the rise in the US, for example because the teaching of creationism as opposed to evolution is now an issue in schools – even if the brand of evangelical fundamentalism that Bush espouses jars with many Europeans.

But whatever the specifics, the key point is surely that in a country saturated with unrelenting materialism there is now a forceful reassertion of moral and religious values, in however perverted a form it may seem to us. Prophets – and it is the Old Testament and unenlightened version of the holy law that is now being so stridently demanded – are taking preference over profits, despite a very real and growing poverty class in America. Man is no longer purely an instrument – whether victor or victim – of economic forces; he is an upholder of a moral vision. The precise manifestation of this in the US election may seem curious, even bizarre, to us. But it heralds a change toward deeply held beliefs and values which Europe, repelled by spin and manipulation, may very well be hungering for soon.

Michael Meacher MP, former Minister of State for the Environment

Global Village by Chris Hodder

I’ve been told that if the world was shrunk to one street with 100 people living on it, but all the percentages about who we are, what we’ve got and how healthy we are stayed the same, then:

* 70 would be non-white
* 6 people would own over half (59%) of all the stuff
* 80 would be living unsafe housing
* 70 wouldn’t be able to read
* 50 would be starving or suffering from malnutrition
* 1 would be near death
* 1 would be near birth
* 1 would own a computer


That’s a bit scary, because when I read Jesus’ teaching about the rich and the poor, I always kind of assume that rich people are the people who aren’t like me. They have flash cars, and jetset lifestyles. A Vauxhall Astra and a Pentium 4 processor don’t make you rich, do they?

Well, maybe they do. However you decide to measure 'well-offness' - whether you do it in economic, social or educational terms - I guess most of us score quite high.

Jesus didn’t think that money, and having money, was a bad thing. In fact, the Jesus I read about seems to have no problem with people enjoying life and creation; but he is very challenging about the fact that all human beings have a responsibility for the things that they have in life, and how they use them.

That means that if we’re rich in material terms, there is nothing wrong with enjoying it; we’re not condemned for enjoying Maroon-5, Franz Ferdinand and Snow Patrol CDs, wearing aesthetic trainers, or going to the cinema. But we are also called to work for justice and fairness in the world for those who haven’t; and God will hold us accountable for what we do with the resources we have. Money is a part of that mix. Having it isn’t wrong, or a bad thing. But it does matter hugely how we come by it, what our attitude to it is, and what we do with it.

Chris Hodder, Curate at Emmanuel and St. Mary’s in Loughborough, fan of Peterborough United.

Money matters by Mary Hunt

Feminist activist/writer Gloria Steinem observed that the most reliable indicator of one’s values is a look at one's chequebook. I agree. Social justice is a way of sharing the earth’s goods with the earth’s people. We are far from it. Ironically, it is harder for many people to discuss money than sex.

Those of us who work for justice for a living have to live too. How we do so is a reliable indicator of what we envision. As part of my feminist commitment to a just world, I pay special attention to where my money (not that I have much!) goes. In the United States, and in most other wealthy nations, it is hard to escape the capitalist system. Pensions and other long-term investments are virtually all stock-market-based. What is a conscientious person of faith to do? Socially responsible investing is a start. There are many strategies for screening investments to avoid collaborating with the makers of tobacco products, nuclear weapons, and other armaments. Such investment groups look at corporate boards for gender and racial balance, and at labour practices at companies they invest in to be sure they treat their workers fairly. In an imperfect world, this is a step toward justice. Community development banks are another option. They invest their money in poor neighbourhoods, co-operatives, and other economic empowerment programs while returning a competitive rate of interest.

The theory here is that one can ‘do well and do good’ at the same time. The practice is that one needs to pay as much attention to the ethical bottom line as to the financial one. None of it is simple; all of it makes a difference.

Mary Hunt, theologian and Director of the Women’s Association for Theology, Ethics and Ritual

Living Bread by Joy Mead

I think it was the Russian philosopher Nicholay Berdyaev who said ‘Bread for me is a material concern but for me in relation to my neighbour’s need, it is a spiritual concern’ And the German mystic Meister Eckhart said that there is no such thing as my bread, all bread is ours.

When we break bread with friends and pass it from hand to hand all distinctions between material and spiritual are erased in a sacred and prophetic act so ordinary we often miss its significance. Bread becomes the bread of life when my neighbour passes it to me.

George MacLeod, the founder of the Iona Community, said, ‘The greatest community problem of our modern world is how to share bread.’ Each time we gather for a meal we link ourselves with those whose plates are empty. Who shall eat isn’t about shortage – there is enough to go around. We have the knowledge, skills and resources to feed every child, woman and man on earth and to ensure a future in which all people can be offered the hope of life and the earth preserved in the capacity to provide that life. The big question isn’t how we do it (GM foods won’t solve the problem any more than the Green Revolution did) but why we are not doing it. What we lack is anger at injustice, imagination to see that things could be different and the political will to make a fairer world.

Joy Mead, author and member of the Iona Community

Close your eyes and imagine by SPEAK

It’s a peaceful, lazy Saturday afternoon. It’s summer, the sun beats down on your face. You decided to stroll to the shops, you browse a few but then see the most amazing item on the shelf, it’s a must have! You’ve got to buy it, it’s a little on the pricy side but you’ve got to treat yourself sometimes right?

You hand over your money and go home with your shiny new present that takes pride of place on your shelf. You look at it admiringly, yes, you think, that was a good buy.

Now stop.

You are now a factory worker in one of the world’s export processing zones. You got up at 5am to start work as your factory just got an order for a shiny new item, the company wants them fast so you now have to do double shifts. One shift alone is 10 hours so last night you slept on the factory floor, you went to bed at 1am.

As you sit there working, you remember that you had such big hopes coming here, to the big glitzy city. Escape the hard labours of farming you were told. Farming was hard but you got to see your family, and there was fresh vegetables to eat.

You haven’t seen your family for 3 years now and there hasn’t been a moment when your stomach didn’t hurt from hunger.

You can afford enough rice to keep yourself alive but nothing more.

You can afford enough money to rent a square marked out in white on the concrete floor of the factory owned dormitory but nothing more.

No money to afford to travel home, no money to buy enough food, no money to live somewhere with 4 walls of your own, and definitely no money to treat yourself.

What does God have to say about this through the book of James?

'Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.' (James 5:1–5)

You continue staring at the object on your shelf.

Where did you put your money?

SPEAK, an organisation of students and others aiming to transform situations of injustice through linking people together to use their voice and pray for change.

Deep cries to deep by David Spriggs

Why have so many people given so generously to the Disaster Emergency Committee’s appeal and many other charities in order to help those who have been so devastated by the Tsunami?

Without detracting from the upsurge of compassion for others and without wishing to detract from the generosity of the ‘British Spirit’, I think further reflection might be challenging.

So, let’s begin with a true story. On New Year’s Eve my wife and I were ‘seeing in’ the New Year with three other couples. As the evening jollied along one of the ladies began to cry! Why? Last year her daughter had got married. Her daughter’s best friend and bridesmaid is training to be a lawyer. The law firm sent her to Bangkok for some international experience. Being in Bangkok she thought that it would be great for her boyfriend to spend Christmas with her at Phu Khet. So, when the Tsunami struck, it struck her, resulting in her having her leg amputated!

So many people can tell similar stories. That horrific and distant event has challenged us so much because it became our story and not simply what was happening to other people. The reality of the ‘global village’ has been felt with powerful effects!

Then I wonder if another element that has generated the response is a sense that we don’t need to feel so guilty about this disaster. After all this one was ‘an act of God’! It wasn’t like famine in Ethiopia or genocide in Rwanda or massacre in the Sudan – terrors which have stitched to them the label “human and avoidable”! Has this meant we felt freer to respond without having to admit guilt as well?

Or is it even deeper – have we looked into the abyss and realised that maybe after all we cannot be quite so sure that we are the masters of our fate? Perhaps we have drawn not only closer to one another, but also closer to God whose own compassion has touched our hearts.

The ocean is roaring, Lord! The sea is pounding hard. Its mighty waves are more majestic, and you rule over all.
(Psalm 93:3–4, Contemporary English Version)


David Spriggs, Head of Church Relations, Bible Society

Jerusalem by Wood Ingham

And did those feet in ancient times
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance Divine
Shine forth upon those clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I shall not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword rest in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land!
- William Blake

Poetry is a dangerous thing when people just don't get it. I went to the kind of school where they used to sing this every year at speech day. I had no idea what it meant. But then, I wouldn't be surprised if none of the people who ran the school knew what it meant, either. Hell, I bet none of them even knew that it isn't even called 'Jerusalem' (that's the name of the tune). And if they did understand, would they have sung it? I'm not sure they would.

William Blake used the idea of 'Jerusalem' in his poems to signify his imaginary perfect kingdom of justice and equality. Was a kingdom like that ever 'builded' in England's green and pleasant land? Or anywhere else, for that matter? Nope. But then, that's the point.

Blake knew that the weapon of a poet is the ability to inspire people, to fire people up, to shoot 'arrows of desire'. You can't change the world by yourself, but you can inspire others to join with you. The fight is mental, the sword is the word in your mouth, but it's still a battle, a battle for hearts and minds, a battle to win the souls of the people of your country. He's fighting alone... but we're going to build Jerusalem, in England... and wherever we are.

It's a prophet's mission statement. If they had understood that in my old school, would they have sung it? I don't think so somehow.

Wood Ingham (John Heron Project)

Does prophecy belong to the past? by Susannah Rudge

I suspect if you were to ask a random sample of people for their immediate reaction on hearing the word ‘prophet’, they would be most likely to talk about a select group of ancient religious visionaries, and far less likely to mention their friends, family or colleagues. We do not, on the whole, expect to find prophets in the modern world, and still less among ordinary people going about their daily business.

Yet the biblical picture challenges that assumption. The Old Testament prophet Joel predicts that in the future, far from ceasing to call people to speak for him, God will in fact extend the prophetic calling to the entire human race:

‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female slaves,
in those days, I will pour out my Spirit.’
(Joel 2:28)

As if this were not in itself an astonishing claim, more incredible still is the fact that later, in the New Testament, it is believed to have been realised. Peter, in his first ever speech to the people of Jerusalem (Acts 2), proclaims the events of Pentecost to be the fulfilment of Joel’s words. Prophecy is not consigned to the old order of things, but has an essential place in the new life in Christ. The Spirit has been outpoured, the time for the establishment of God’s Kingdom has arrived, and from that point onwards, all people, irrespective of gender, age or social class, are called to proclaim God’s vision for the world.

Susannah Rudge is a member of SCM's General Council. She studies Theology at Oxford.

Prophets and lawmakers by Julian Lewis

Biblical prophets were often lawmakers – or givers if you take the view they were passing on instruction from above. Charlton Heston casting down the tablets of stone is perhaps the image here. What laws did they make? We may, as modern, secularised Christians, be in turn amused, intrigued or appalled by the content of Leviticus and the like, but the overall picture is surely one of ordering society in the correct manner – the correct manner being that which was pleasing to God.

What of our lawmakers and/or givers today? They do not have the luxury of living in a society that agrees about what is pleasing, let alone the more troublesome and annoying concept of God. And then there's the profit factor. We congratulate ourselves that of course our politicians and judges are not like those in corrupt countries, nor even as suspicious as some of our European or North American friends. Yet look at what can be gained out of 'the system'. Politicians may not be overly paid for the day job, but what about the second housing allowance, the admin jobs for the wives? How many dabble in other areas? How many look forward to retiring to the after dinner circuit or company boards? What of the other ranks of people feeding off the law whose knowledge and technical services come at such price? These set the agenda at least as much as the politicians, for greater reward and away from sight.

The Bible stories return time and again to the ordinary men and women, who cry out for justice. Those cries are no less today. There are many idealistic lawyers and politicians who seek to answer those cries, but how many become creatures of the very systems they struggle against? How many of their victories are small? And how many unheeded? We must nurture our modern-day prophets carefully, because we need them no less than before.

Julian Lewis works for the Law Centres Federation, setting up free social welfare legal advice clinics. In previous incarnations he has been MethSoc Co-ordinator and, briefly, Movement editor.

Social justice and Christian faith by John Hull

The Bible makes radical demands for social justice, but as the church became more and more involved with power, the sharpness of this demand was blunted. The result is that the modern reader of the Bible may fail to notice the meaning, and the Christian of today may not realise the nature of his or her own calling.

Let us take an example. The Greek work dikaiosune may refer to the quality of justice, or to the character of people who practice justice. In the latter case, it is often translated ‘righteousness’. It was significant for the history of faith that the translators of the King James Bible early in the seventeenth century always preferred this to the other possible English word: justice. If we take a few of the well known verses where the Greek word occurs, remove the rather stuffy and pretentious word’ righteousness’ and replace it by ‘justice’, the impact is worth noticing.

‘Blest are those who hunger and thirst after justice.’ (Matthew 5:6)

‘Blest are those who are persecuted because of justice, because theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ (Matthew 5:10)

‘Seek first God’s Kingdom and God’s justice, and other things will be given to you as well.’ (Matthew 6:33)

Get the point?

John M Hull
Read more of John Hull’s writing on www.johnmhull.biz

Brandscapes by Chris Hodder

We live in what the anthropologist John Sherry has referred to as 'brandscapes'. Brands are a part of modern life, and they are in every sphere of it, including the church. Major corporations like Microsoft often feature on news stories, pop stars are increasingly marketed as brands, and even in the sphere of politics, brand management is seen as key. More often than not, the symbolic associations of brands are such that they tell us enough about an object that more description is unnecessary to conjure up the correct image in the mind of the person we are speaking to. We can talk about our 'favourite pair of Levis', our 'new Vauxhall' or 'our old Hoover', and friends know exactly what we mean.

In fact, we’re living in an age where some sociologists argue that our identity is becoming as orientated around what we consume as what we produce. Anthony Giddens talks about our society as being 'post-traditional' in character. Gender, class, race, religion no longer fix us utterly to the same place in life (although they still place some constraints), and to some extent, we have to 'construct' our identity for ourselves. In this context, some people argue that brands are in fact, the new traditions - the things that give us the ideas we need to live by.

Which is an interesting challenge to the church, who might want to celebrate the fact that people are no longer as 'fixed' to stations in life as they once were, but also to question whether, in an age of economic inequality, the consumer revolution offers emancipation into anything more than a slightly different structure than the old traditions had us fixed in. Those who need to find wisdom for living may be enticed by aspects of creativity in the new traditions; but on closer inspection, they may also find that there is life and creativity in the old God yet...

Chris Hodder, Curate at Emmanuel and Saint Mary’s in Loughborough, fan of Peterborough United.

How to stand on one leg by Louise Mitchell

There is an old Jewish story found in the Talmud, the Jewish Oral Law, that relates an incident in the life of Rabbi Hillel. ‘A man who wished to be converted to Judaism came to his school and said: “Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot” ... and Hillel converted him saying: “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.”’ (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a)

The story may not be familiar to you, but the message of the story will be, for it is the golden rule at the heart of so many religions – treat others as you yourself would wish to be treated. It sounds so simple in principle, something easily learned while standing on one leg. When we are young, scolding parents and teachers use the law to teach us not to hit, steal toys or call people names with the warning call: Would you like it if ‘Jonny’ did that to you? Yet, as we get older, the far-reaching consequences of our actions blur our culpability. There are no warnings about not buying fairtrade products, of ignoring the suffering that some multinational companies bring to the developing countries, of seeing only the personal, received value in the products we spend our money on. Moreover, in our privileged position in the West, the threat of ‘Jonny’ retaliating is negligible.

Hillel’s comment that we need to learn the laws of the Torah, whilst assuming we already understand the concept of social justice, is sadly misplaced in today’s world. In the time of globalisation and neo-capitalism, we no longer instinctively know what is right or wrong. Clever marketing and glossy packaging cover up the darker side involved in pursuing the principle aim of capitalism – profit. The leg of social justice is shown to wobble.

Standing on one leg makes us increasingly vulnerable. Yet, if we take away that one leg, then the whole world is on its knees. It is imperative that we learn the consequences of our actions, imperative that we know who profits and who loses from any transaction. No one likes to see suffering; it is instinctive to want to help those who need it. The way people have responded to the Tsunami disaster is indicative of this. The problem is that we are so used to averting our eyes and blocking our ears we no longer sense the injustice. In a global marketplace, the golden rule of social justice ‘that which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow’ still stands; the rest is consumer knowledge – open your eyes, unblock your ears, go out and learn!

Louise Mitchell is Youth Officer for the Council of Christians and Jews. The youth section of the CCJ is involved in community projects at home and abroad. It organises events which bring together young people from different faith backgrounds in an atmosphere of dialogue, understanding and shared experience.

Profits vs Prophets: two worldviews by Rosemary Radford Ruether

Profits versus the Prophets, or the prophetic vision, is the critical issue of our times. These two words point to two worldviews that divide global humanity. The worldview of ‘profits’ points to the ideology of neoliberal economics that dominates economic theory in universities, government and business in the global economy. It is based on a materialistic utilitarian anthropology that defines the human being as homo economicus. Humans are seen as isolated individual rational subjects who act solely to maximise their economic self-interest. ‘Profit maximisation’ is the only norm that should regulate business. Increasing wealth is equated with wellbeing and happiness. Three dogmas govern this worldview: 1) growth benefits all; 2) market freedom is identical with human freedom and hence ‘democracy’; and 3) this system is natural and normative. No other system is possible. To quote Margaret Thatcher, ‘There is no alternative’ (TINA).

By contrast, the prophetic vision is based on the principle of the common good that comes about through justice and a preferential option for the poor. Those left out of the dominant system, those oppressed and exploited by it, are God's special concern. Those who grow wealthy by exploitation stand under divine judgment. They should repent or be swept away in an outpouring of divine wrath. God's Kingdom come on earth, where God's will is done, is one which gives to all their daily bread, forgives debts and avoids the temptations of excessive wealth and power of some over others.

Which worldview one chooses will determine not only the future wellbeing, but even the survival of humanity and the planet. Christians and all people of good will need to hone a prophetic vision based on justice and the common good to counter the reign of ‘profits’.

Rosemary Radford Ruether is Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Pacific School of Religion in the USA.

We need limits by Tim Gorringe

‘Growth’ is the mantra of every economist and every business leader, and therefore of every politician. Listeners to Radio 4 at 6.20 every weekday morning can hear the ‘business update’ where they will hear growth extolled and forecast. The perspective is infinity.

These people live in a virtual universe, where profits will always go up and where there are no buffers against which the process might eventually run. They are fools and blind, but the blindness stems from the apparent success of the various technologies of the past forty years.

The fundamental question of the whole of human history, how we will produce the means for life, is, it seems, no longer an issue. Creeping up almost unseen, meanwhile, are increasing water shortages all over the world, and behind that a growing failure of GM technology. When these two finally spring their ambush, we may finally need to think about limits again.

In our conceit we tell ourselves reality is virtual, but it is not. Everything is finite but desire, and for this reason every ancient ethic prioritised moderation. This is not something to be lamented. On the contrary, it is the disciplining of spirit which makes art and every real achievement worthwhile. The infinity of the business update is vapid and destructive. What we need are creative limits.

Tim Gorringe teaches Theology at the University of Exeter.

5.5.5 by Jan Sutch Pickard

I’m writing this on polling day. Just now I’m Writer in Residence on a university campus. Last term there were elections for various Union posts. What a campaign, what slogans and posters and promises! But this time round, a dull thud of mental doors shutting: a sense of ‘It’s boring; it’s not relevant to my life.’

To me, as a Christian, as a member of the Iona Community, engagement with the imperfect, political, world is relevant, in fact inescapable:

What is it that the Lord requires of you:
Only to act justly, to love loyalty,
to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)


I keep on struggling to discover what this means. So, taking part in the Trade Justice Vigil a few weeks ago was relevant for me. It was encouraging to be surrounded by so many different, yet like-minded people. In the huge crowds, there were many youth groups, young families too. But where were these students? In the following days I put up my own posters around the college – of poetry describing the event. But here and now I want to share the ‘Poem for Today’ I’ve put up on walls and doors and am about to hand out.

The Vote
This booth’s not big enough
for all of us.

The officials who check
name and number on your card,
and hand out ballot papers with due caution,
direct one person to each booth;
but as you stand here,
picking up the pencil stub,
be aware
of those looking over your shoulder.

There’s a working man,
who had no vote and no voice
for centuries:
illiterate, intelligent,
he could at least have made his mark –
but under the law
no chance.

There’s a woman,
quite silent,
she suffered for the struggle,
bedraggled with marching
manhandled, mocked –
lost her voice
shouting against injustice.

There’s a prisoner of conscience,
behind bars
somewhere in the world today
for believing in democracy,
wanting to take responsibility –
standing up and claiming
the right to be human.

Look over your shoulder now –
you’re not alone.
This booth’s not big enough
for all of us.
There’s only one ballot paper here
and only you have the vote.

Jan Sutch Pickard, Writer in Residence, Southlands College, Roehampton University (former Warden of the Abbey in Iona)

Check the whole package by David Spriggs

Dream with me of the day that for so long we have worked: studied, written dissertations, endured the agony of exams... At last the day arrives... We’ve filled in the forms and been through the endless processes of recruitment and have now been offered our first 'proper job'... It’s very important before saying 'Yes!!!!' to check the whole package... Letter bombs aren’t the only dangerous items!

What is the salary, how many days' holiday, what are the pension arrangements, is there a company car, what about a mobile phone, health care, special rates at the local gym, what are the sickness arrangements, how easy is promotion…?

But it’s very important to check the whole package!! Are there still more perks??? Probably not, but there is the other side to the package... Not only whether our aptitude, knowledge, personality and skills can be used and we find fulfilment in the role, but whether the outcomes from our company will add to or detract from the wellbeing of the world. Maybe we are offered a pharmaceutical research post, maybe a graduate training course in HR, maybe our future is in nursing or farming, banking, media or teaching... Whatever it is, we need to assess as far as possible what we are helping to make happen and to ask God whether he approves... To discover whether the resources used by our company (whether physical, financial or human) are being properly respected... To discern whether our being there can help make the whole package slightly more 'holy' or not.

Prophets lived in messy situations and confusing times; they weren’t naive but neither were they prepared to forget God.

The Lord God has told us what is right… 'See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God.'
(Micah 6:8, Contemporary English Version)


David Spriggs has three adult children – the youngest is applying for jobs!! He enjoys sport, especially watching rugby – if England or the Tigers win that is. He writes books for a Christian audience, but most of his life is spent working for Bible Society – who are committed to making the voice of the Bible heard everywhere.

Prophets about Profits by Fuzz Kitto

In our emerging realities there is a shift from what has been the dominant force in the modernist world – dry rationalism. Before World War II, chemical physicist Michael Polanyi observed the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. He did not like what he heard and saw, yet in his scientific rationalism he could justify all that Hitler was doing. However, deep inside himself he knew it was wrong.

This sent him on a journey back to study philosophy. Through this time of questioning and thinking, he changed much of his frameworks dramatically. He then asked the profound question – how do we know? Bob Mayo, at Ridley College Cambridge, argues that Polanyi was one of the Fathers of Postmodernism. He was definitely a prophet about profits. They way we now think and the way we now ‘know’ has changed. The end did not justify the means. He was a prophet about profits.

Yet Economic Rationalism still hounds much of the thinking of corporations and governments in the capitalist Western world. However, as Canadian novelist and essayist John Ralston Saul notes, it does not hold up even under its own criteria. People, culture, community, the environment and belonging matter much more in the long term to our health let alone our survival.

It was so sad to see the exclamation of George Bush Senior during the State of the Nation speech after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the old Iron Curtain. He raised his fist in the air and stated ‘We won. The Cold War is over and we won!’ I think it was at that point he lost. Blinded to the reality of the world situation, USA politics continues to think they are the prophets about profits – yet seems to have little understanding about the loss of ‘going it alone’, albeit with the ‘coalition of the willing’.

The words of Jesus ring true now as much, if not perhaps more, than when he was on earth. What does it profit a person if they gain the whole world – all that is possible to own – yet in the process lose themselves – their spirit and their soul? He was also a prophet about profits.

If we are not seeking justice, showing kindness and mercy and walking humbly with our God, we have not discerned what it is that God requires of us – Micah 6:8. If we think that we are losing values and devaluing human life, they are not to be regained by a Law and Order emphasis. Rather in the understanding and development of community do we discover together the knowledge and reinforcement of what is real. Values are no more than the shared beliefs of a community. In looking out for the poor and the weak, the disenfranchised and the marginalised, we indeed find the life that Jesus talked about. Perhaps it is understood a little more through story. Have a listen to this one:

Some years ago, there was a small tribe of Native Americans. They lived along the banks of a very swift and dangerous river. The current was so strong that if somebody accidentally fell in, they would likely be swept away to their death downstream. One day this tribe was attacked by another hostile Indian tribe. They found themselves literally with their backs up against the treacherous river. They were greatly outnumbered. Their only chance for escape was to cross the current, which would mean sure death for the children, the elderly, the weak, and the ill and the injured… and likely death for many of the strong. The leaders of the tribe huddled up to devise a plan. The logical thing, the reasonable thing, the expedient thing, the sensible thing was to leave the weak ones behind. They were going to be killed anyway… why risk losing the strong in a futile effort to save the others? That was the rational answer but they couldn’t do it! Instead, they chose to be extravagant in their generosity… and they decided that those who were strong would pick up the weaker ones and put them on their shoulders. So, the little children, the elderly, those who were ill or wounded, were all carried on the backs of the stronger. With great fear, they waded out into the rapid waters of the river and they were met with a great surprise. To their astonishment, they discovered that the weight on their shoulders enabled them to keep their footing through the treacherous current… and to make it safely to the other side. Their own extravagant generosity saved them. What they did was not the reasonable thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.


Profits seem to focus on the reasonable, yet prophets focus on the right thing to do.

Fuzz Kitto is a Youth Ministry Consultant based in Australia, with 25 years of full-time experience in youth work.

A meditation by Rachel Cavill

This prayer/meditation involves a chocolate coin, real or imagined. You should also think of a company, perhaps one you often buy from, or have worked for in the past – or perhaps a company which you feel needs our prayers. If you have time you could do some research about the company you are praying for beforehand so that you can add facts and figures and specific prayerpoints into this prayer.

Take your coin... turn it over... hold it... feel it... It is a coin... a symbol of wealth and money... a counter for barter, for trade.... something of which few have many... Think of the profit your company makes... the number of copper coins that would be... how much space they would fill... how heavy they would be...

Pray...

* that the profit might not be at people's expense and depend on over-exploitation of resources.
* that the profit might be used wisely, by both the business and the shareholders who gain from it.
* for those who run the company, that their decisions will be wise and inspired by God, not just profit.


Unwrap the coin... scrunch up the foil... The foil is now waste... It is no longer useful in its original purpose... it must now be discarded or recycled... All businesses have an environmental impact.

Pray...

* for your company, that they will record and report their impact...
* that they might work to minimise it...
* that they will pride themselves on being sector leaders in all things green.


Take the chocolate... this is the product... the point of the company...

Pray...

* for all consumers of your company, whether individuals, companies or governments and other organisations... that they will shop thoughtfully.
* for the workers of the company, those who produce the product... that they will be treated fairly and have enough to live on.


Rachel Cavill is a postgraduate student at York University, and a member of York Christian Focus.

Creative, interactive, symbolic ideas

Chocolate
You will need: Broken up chocolate

Read Luke 7:36-50, and then read the following reflection.

• We are called to live modestly – shirking a life of luxury. Are there moments though when a little self-indulgence is allowed? Can it be good for us?
• The creator of all things created cream, sugar, chocolate and strawberries. Jesus enjoyed parties and he delighted when the woman poured perfume on his feet – despite the extravagance.
• There are times for restraint – for fasting, praying, preparing; but Jesus came to give life in all its fullness – so we can let go, have fun, take pleasure in the richness of life.
• Take some chocolate, hold it, smell it, then eat it. As you eat it, think about the pleasure of simple things and thank God for his extravagance.

(SCM/Sarah Henderson)

Still Small Voice Prayer Trail
The Still Small Voice prayer trail was created for SCM’s Annual Conference 2011. We invite you to use the prayer trail in your own context – whether just choosing a few stations for use during worship or in a prayer room, or setting up your own prayer trail around a larger area. You could use it in your chaplaincy/church or around campus. Each station can be used independently, and you can create your own stations if you want to focus on a particular theme.

Download the resources you need for the Prayer Trail below.

Attachment	Size
Prayer Trail stations.pdf	146.75 KB
Setting up the Prayer Trail.pdf	41 KB

For Bible study

A prayer before the reading of scripture

Listen and be welcomed,
these words are spoken for all.
Listen and be aware,
hear the absent and silenced voices.
Listen and be open,
ready to question and challenge.
Listen and be radical,
let us translate our responses into action.

(SCM/Rosie Venner)

Intercessions and prayers of concern

People and places

(You could begin and end this prayer with a simple Taize chant. Leave a pause between the sentences so that people can add names, places, issues of concern)

Where there are people and places waiting and praying for an end to conflict, bring peace.
We pray for…..

Where there are people and places waiting and striving for an end to fear, bring comfort
We pray for…..

Where there are people and places waiting and struggling for an end to oppression, bring justice
We pray for….

Where there are people and places waiting and working for a new beginning, bring hope
We pray for….

(SCM/Rosie Venner)

I am waiting for

You need: 4 big pieces of paper, coloured pens or pencils
To prepare the prayer: in the centre of each piece of paper write one of these phrases
I long for…
I am inspired by…
I am waiting for…
I will not wait for…

The prayer: Either in silence or with some appropriate music (we used Tracey Chapman’s Talking ‘bout a Revolution and Ben Harper’s Waiting on an Angel), invite people to come and finish the sentences by drawing or writing around the central phrases.

(SCM/Rosie Venner)

Let Justice roll

Let justice roll down like waters
on those who are thirsty
on those who are hungry
on those work to pay off debts which are not their own.
on those enslaved by poverty and need.

Let justice roll down like waters;
on those who need cleansing
on those who need wisdom
on those profit from the poverty of the poor
on those who have the power to end oppression

Let justice roll down like waters;
on those who need refreshing
on those who need to hear your word
on those who work and pray for peace and justice

Let justice roll down like waters;
on those who need healing
on those who need to feel your love wash away their pain
on those who need to hear your voice in their darkness

Let your justice, love and righteous anger
roll down like waters into our lives
that we may act to build your kingdom
in which streams of righteousness will flow.

(SCM/Marie Pattison)

Opening prayers and calls to worship

Come to us

Come to us this night, O God
Come to us with light.
(A candle is lit)
Speak to us this night, O God
Speak to us your truth.
(A bible is opened)
Dwell with us this night, O God
Dwell with us in love.
(A cross is placed)

(SCM/Marie Pattison)

Fullness of joy

Lord Jesus, our companion and guide
You show us the path of life.
In your presence is fullness of joy.
Take us by the hand and journey with us
as we come to worship you.

(SCM/Jo Merrygold)

Small World

God of rainbow colours
God of life-giving water
God of all that sustains us
We come into your presence

God of this small world
God of food and feasts
God of all that inspires us
We come into your presence

(SCM/Rosie Venner - written for SCM's Small World conference)

God in the ordinary

God in the ordinary – we come to worship you.
We come from the pressures of work and play
Of essays and deadlines
Of bills and overdrafts
We come from the world of 24-hour shopping and reality tv
Of internet chatrooms and ipods
Of cheap flights and ebay
God in all things, we come to worship you.

(SCM/Jo Merrygold - written for SCM's training event)

Holy Ground

God of fire and burning bush
Come meet us on holy ground
Come sit with us
Inspire and challenge us
Dazzle us with your creation

God of surprises
Come meet us on holy ground
Come sit with us
Move and provoke us
Startle us with your beauty

(SCM/Rosie Venner - written for an SCM gathering)

Prayers of confession

There are times

(between the prayers you can sing a simple Taize chant like Ubi caritas)

There are times when we cannot see clearly
When we are too busy and stressed to notice the most important things in life
We bring them to mind
And pray that we can learn to experience grace and love, even when we cannot see.

There are times when we cannot follow nearly
When we cannot go that way, regardless of what we’re told
We bring them to mind
And pray that we can learn to seek guidance and truth, even when we cannot follow.

There are times when we cannot love dearly
When we cannot understand and find it hard to care
We bring them to mind
And pray that we can learn to experience peace and hope, even when we cannot love.

(SCM/Hannah Chalmers)

Prayers of offering

As people with a vision

As people with a vision of a God of Love
we offer our prayers
As people with a vision of eternity
we offer our time
As people with a vision of an end to poverty,
we offer our money
As people with a vision of community
we offer all we have shared together
As people with a vision of a just society
we offer ourselves.

(SCM/Marie Pattison)