How to say ‘G-sus’ in a secularising Europe?

The Revd Darrell Jackson, Researcher in European Mission and Evangelism, Conference of European Churches.

3rd Version: Finland, November 7th 2005

For further information contact: The Revd Darrell Jackson Researcher in European Mission and Evangelism Conference of European Churches PMTI-CEC H-1461 Budapest Pf. 150 Hungary +361 210 4056 (Office) +36 70 365 0307 (Mobile) [email protected]

1. The Challenge of Europe

The absence of any reference to God or the Christian faith in the Preamble of the European Constitution has caused an ongoing debate from before the point at which Europe’s Churches manifestly failed to persuade European politicians to refer to Europe’s Christian heritage. It may be an ambiguous heritage but the success of politicians at excluding reference to God highlighted the extent to which current European policy making takes place in a secular vacuum. The Constitution1 guarantees the Christian churches a permanent consultative role within the European institutions but even this fails to assure individual believers that European policy makers take sufficiently seriously the motivating ability of the Christian faith. This is strange given the most recent work of Jürgen Habermas, the German neo-Marxist philosopher who suggests, persuasively, that Europe may be seeing a ‘return to the religious’, and uses the term ‘post-secular’ to describe this latest phenomena in the career of religion within European history.

Yet, the fact remains that the complexity within Western Europe is reflected in the equally complex situations found in the post-Soviet societies of Central and Eastern Europe. Reflecting on this, the call for Papers at the 2004 ISSR Conference highlighted the barriers that remain to be bridged in the attempt to understanding religion at a pan-European level. The invitation for papers not only made reference to the diversity of religious experience across these countries but also pointed to the diversity of methodological approach to the study of religion. The Slovakian National Census in 2001 revealed a 10% increase since 1991 in the number of people who self-describe as ‘Christian’ from 76 to 86%. Are we to understand the increase as a reversal of secularisation? To understand such phenomena carefully it is necessary to understand something of the immediate, post-Soviet, historical situation. In Hungary in 1956, with the relaxing of restrictions, many previously underground groups (the Scouts, Christian groups, etc.) emerged to draft letters requesting permission to start up new groups. Their letters are displayed in the House of Terror in Budapest. Many letter writers were rounded up and punished following the collapse of the Hungarian uprising. Asking Slovaks in 1991, only eighteen months to two years after the ‘velvet revolution’, to indicate religious affiliation was always likely to generate anxiety among a certain percentage of the population. Such stories, and others like it, contribute

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1 to the complexity of understanding the situation of religious belief and practice in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989.

There are also significant developments within Western Europe that require careful reflection by those with an interest in the Christian research and the study of religion.

Perhaps the most significant is the rising tide of scholarly voices being raised against the classical theory of secularisation. Its power to monopolize the manner in which religious discourse is framed in Western Europe is waning, as the sociological and philosophical consensus begins to break down. The secular prophets of the 60s and 70s simply assumed that secularism stood at the end of history; the future was assuredly a secular future and several secularized theologians substituted Christian eschatology with a secular teleology. If we are able to locate secularism as a period within history and not as the goal of history, we are able to dethrone its teleological claims.

I want to turn to a discussion of these shifting trends at the outset of this paper before I begin to take a more detailed look at the current situation in Europe with regards to the study of Christianity and the mission of the churches in Europe.

2. The ebb and flow of secularisation

There can be little doubt that any serious student of contemporary European religiosity has to give an account of secularisation. The debate has raged for nearly fifty years. However, more recent contributors to the debate, including several former secularization theorists who have since recanted, offer evidence that the consensus surrounding classical forms of the secularization theory is beginning to break down. New possibilities and approaches to the questions raised by European religiosity and secularization are being suggested. Sociologists and theologians within Europe2 and North America are enlivening the debate that has focused on the inevitability of religious decline in modern societies.3 Sociological mantras learned during the heady days of the sixties and seventies are no longer felt to be adequate in this rapidly moving debate. Church and Christian leaders who wish to engage with contemporary European societies must do so with a greater awareness of the sacred and secular diversity that exists across Europe.

Equally, there can be little doubt that secularism and secularisation continue to provide significant numbers of the citizens of Europe with a framework for shaping ethical decisions, priorities, actions, worldview, ‘beliefs’, and their attitudes towards other individuals, social groups, and institutions, including the Church. Further, as Raymond Fung reminds us, “In talking about our secular neighbours, we are also talking about ourselves.”4 Within such a framework religion has little or no value in the public realm and is considered to be a purely private matter. As a result, the privatisation of religion has tended to accelerate the degree of nominal religiosity. Consequently church members demonstrate an attendant lack of spirituality accompanied by a widely reported suspicion on the part of the wider population towards the

2 For an accessible treatment, see Paul Avis, A Church Drawing Near: Spirituality and Mission in a Post-Christian Culture (London: Continuum, 2003). 3 For American sociologists, the context of a highly modern and highly religious society has provided a sharp contrast to their observations of European societies; similarly modern but secularised. The most recent assaults on secularization theories have come from the ‘rational choice’ school of sociologists of religions. See, for example, Stark and Finke Acts of Faith; explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) esp. pp 4 R Fung ‘Evangelising a Secular Society’ in Proclaiming Christ in Christ’s Way Samuel, V. (Oxford: Regnum 1989) p146

2 church as an institution. Churches are accused of exercising undue power and influence over individuals and society and promoting mission merely as a means of extending their influence. One thinks of the recent reaction to the statements by the Italian candidate for the European Commission, Rocco Buttiglione,

"I have the right to think that homosexuality is a sin, but this has no effect on politics, because in politics, the principle of nondiscrimination prevails, and the state has no right to stick its nose in these situations," Buttiglione said.5

How one responds to this statement is likely to reveal to what extent one feels Europe is, or should be, a continent of secularizing nations.

Despite the cautions suggested by the findings of the European Values Survey6, the trends across Europe should make sobering reading for leaders of the European Churches that are seen to have decreasing relevance to the everyday lives of Europe’s citizens. However, as I have travelled I have begun to feel that a more nuanced understanding of secularisation and its impacts may be called for. In their work Religion in Secularizing Europe, summarising the findings of the European Values Surveys of 1980, 1990, and 1998 the report’s editors write,

“Secularization has not proceeded at a similar pace all over Europe.”7

For many citizens of Central and Eastern Europe, ‘doubly secularised’ may be a more appropriate description. For them, soviet atheistic materialism has been followed rapidly by a western, capitalistic form of materialism. The story of Gabor is instructive in this regard:

Gabor Kovacs is a bright, engaging and articulate Hungarian in his mid 30s.

He is English and German-speaking and learnt English in his spare time to enable him to improve his career prospects with the multi-national companies that have been relocating offices to Budapest over the last fifteen years or so. He has worked for various multi-national offices in Budapest over the last seven or eight years and although he recognises the economic advantage of working for the western multi-nationals, he is very aware of the social cost to the individual employees and feels this personally. He speaks of being a ‘slave’ of western multi-nationals and complains that the higher than average salary brings with it a higher than average set of expectations. He laments that he is unable to give more time to his family commitments. He complains that colleagues in London, Paris, or Frankfurt have high unrealistic expectations. He suspects that they sometimes tell him that his allotted tasks should only need eight hours in the working day when in fact they know that eleven are needed. His working day is typically eight to eleven hours long, a fact he resents.

He readily suggests that the Soviet education of his youth offered no religious education but reveals that he is very interested in religion as an alternative to capitalism’s inhuman processes. He thinks that it might provide a way of achieving inner peace, harmony and a way of dealing with stresses of modern life. He also wonders whether religion can provide an alternative ideological or value base.

5 Frances D’Emilio, ‘Italian Minister Withdraws as Candidate for E.U. Commission’ in The Washington Post Sunday 30th October 2004 pA30 6 Religiosity in Iceland is surprisingly higher than in all Northern European Countries, Poland and Ireland are far less affected by secularization and individualism than other countries. In Spain, levels of trust in the Church are increasing and in Italy, religiosity is increasing (though not institutional religious activity). 7 Halman, L. & Riis, O., Religion in Secularizing Society (Brill: Leiden, 2003), p9

3 He suggests that Hungary and other EU accession states are likely to pay a high social cost for entry into the EU and believes that many of the accession states are in the pockets of the larger Western nations. Perhaps somewhat ironically therefore, he aspires to a world citizen, or at least a European one (although he hesitates to tie this too closely to the European Union), and enjoys travelling. He is fearful of nationalisms and is fearful that such factors may be de-stabilising in the enlarged EU. He asks whether the EU knows what it is doing by inviting potentially unstable nations into enlarged membership.

His interest in religion extends particularly to eastern, esoteric, religions, including Buddhism. He readily admits that he has little time for the study and devotion required by most religions. His understanding of religion is fairly individualistic and he rarely talks of religious ‘groups’, ‘communities’, or even ‘churches’.

My encounter with Gabor reveals, I believe, that there are Europeans who, though carrying the burden of double-secularisation, instinctively believe that religious belief may in some way provide a way towards deeper personal integration and possibly a way to resist the de- humanising tendencies of the western multi-nationals that have recently arrived in Central and Eastern Europe.

Such an instinctive response underlines the strength of the sound-bite that, “Secularity may have won all the arguments but religion still gets the votes.”8 The scientific methodology of secular societies is clearly concerned with providing answers yet it clearly fails to provide answers to personal choices such as, ‘What should I spend my money on?’ or, ‘What life choices am I to make?’ In short, science may not be answering the questions we care about.

Metropolitan Daniel of Romania, argues persuasively that in the face of such a predicament,

“Secularization obliges the Church to renew its spiritual life, to become more responsible in the world, more sensitive to the presence of Christ in the “signs of the time”, in the social struggle for justice, freedom and human dignity; even to experience often the situation of being marginalized, in order to better understand those who are marginalized or forgotten in different societies. Secularization calls paradoxically for more holiness of life, for a deeper spirituality.”9

Resisting the de-humanising tendencies of the western institutions and corporations, in some instances, is given institutional expression. In countries such as Russia, for example, the Orthodox Church can be understood as an important ally in resisting the inroads being made by less desirable elements of western individualism and secularization (although in some versions, this seems to give way to extreme ideological expressions). In such countries, perhaps ironically, where minority churches feel themselves disadvantaged by the dominance of a majority Church, the attraction of a secular State as the only apparent means of securing religious freedoms is difficult to resist.

Grace Davie has put the case well for an understanding of ‘European exceptionalism’ but she would be the first to admit that her analysis fails to give adequate account of the complex social and historical realities of Central and Eastern Europe.10 Further work is needed in these areas to

8 Sommerville, JC. ‘Post-Secularism marginalizes the University’ in Church History, 71:4 (December 2002) p.848 9 Metropolitan Daniel Ciobotea Confessing the Truth in Love: Orthodox perceptions of life, mission and unity (Iasi: Trinitas, 2001) 10 Davie, G Europe the Exceptional Case (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2002), xi

4 understand more precisely the interaction between Gospel and culture. Within the Orthodox context in Europe, for example, one is struck by the pace of modernization of Cyprus which appears, at least on first impression, to be accompanied by vital forms of Christian faith, witnessed to by the presence of new and impressive church buildings. The story of the resurrection of the church in Albania, under the spiritual direction of His Beatitude Anastasios, will be well known to members of CEC Central Committee.

However, even in Western Europe, there remain surprises. In ‘secular’ France, a 2003 survey revealed that 32% of people who described themselves as ‘Christian’ had recently returned to the faith. Ten years previously that figure had been only 13%.11 Jean-Claud Gillebaud is a leading French intellectual whose critically acclaimed book, Refounding the World: the western Testament begins with a quotation from the Psalms and has a chapter on the Apostle Paul. In essence the book is a pleas for France to re-examine its Judeo-Christian roots. The French equivalent of Forbes or Fortune magazine published an article in August of 2003 titled, ‘God – the stocks are rising’ noting the surge of interest in religion and spirituality and its impact on the business and educational worlds as it displaces secularism. An evangelical congregation has been established in France every eleven days for the last thirty-five years.12 In October 2005, the head of the Reformed Church of France, the Rev. Marcel Manoel told people gathered in Switzerland for the executive Committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, that the decline in importance of traditional family ties to membership in his Church had been replaced by numbers of disillusioned Catholics and Evangelicals.

"Without doubt there are fewer people but they are more active," he reported. "We are beginning to see a new way of being the Church which is less about organizing members and more about helping them to witness in contemporary society."13

The increase in the reporting of forms of contemporary spiritualities in the UK, informed in part by the work of David Hay and Kate Hunt, contributes to the developing sense that all is not well with the classical understanding of secularization. Work currently underway in Britain, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden and Ireland is attempting to understand and learn how best to respond to those people with no formal religious affiliation but who describe themselves as ‘spiritual’.

Attendances at the film ‘Passion of Christ’ suggest a significant level of popular interest in the person and story of Christ. I do not want to offer a theological or artistic evaluation of this film(!) but simply to draw attention to the appeal of the Gospel narrative and the corresponding failure on the part of the churches of Europe to engage its peoples with it. The churches continue to empty at an alarming rate across Europe and their attempts to mediate the Gospel narratives seem less convincing, less appealing, and more institutionally demanding than handing over eight euros for a night at the movies. However, eight euros is obviously considered good value for the many within Europe who are constructing individualized ways of making sense of religious narrative, symbolism, and ritual.

The tragic death of Theo van Gogh is a reminder of the power of religiosity to stimulate both a strong aversion (van Gogh’s work) as well as strong sympathies (van Gogh’s assailant). I also, however, note the absence of any mention of the launch of the new Dutch version of the Bible. I visited the Netherlands two days after its launch on the 27th October, 2004 but could not obtain a

11 Tennant, A. ‘The French reconnection’, in Christianity Today March 2005, p29 12 Ditto, p30 13 ENI-05-0791 ‘French religion faces new future 100 years’ Ecumenical News International email News service, 18th October 2005

5 copy in the local bookstore in Amersfoort. They had already sold out.14 As a part of the launch the Queen read Genesis 1:1-10 on prime time national TV, featured in a five hour feature on the Bible. A friend, standing in line to buy his copy, asked other purchasers whether they would be reading it. The most common response was, ‘No, I just wanted to own a copy!’ A survey conducted at the same time revealed that only 33% of the Dutch population regards itself as Christian.

How the famously tolerant Dutch will handle questions of integration in their multi-religious society will doubtless continue to interest the rest of the Europe. In France, the banning of religious symbols in public schools is a timely reminder that secular public policy is not exercised consistently within Europe. In a perverse contrast with the French experience, Muslims who wish to own a passport in equally irreligious Denmark15 are required, as loyal Danes, to carry an image of the crucified Christ on the inside front cover.

Moving on from the Dutch bookshop we visited a trendy clothes store and on entering were surprised to be greeted by a bleeding heart Jesus, a Madonna and Child, and a Crown of Thorns. Not as religious icons, but as style icons, borne on the sleeves, chests, and quilted padding, of jackets, t-shirts, and other items of clothing.16 Religion may have lost its institutional power base but, in this instance, it has not disappeared, just been captured and subverted by the fashion houses, including G-SUS Industries. Are we to understand by this that the secular is being sacralised or can we interpret it as evidence of the unstoppable appetite of the secular spirit: a mutant form of secularization that is unafraid to invade the private sacred space, previously negotiated over several hundred years of Enlightenment history.

Permit me to refer to the work of the French fashion designer MFG who, in March of 2005, displayed the highly provocative advert of a female ‘Last Supper’ on the billboards of Neuilly, near Paris. French Courts considered the advert to have insulted, ‘the religious feelings of Roman Catholics’ and banned it from public display. The private domain of religion is, it seems, no longer territory respected by advocates of secularization. In essence, we can see this response to Christianity paralleled by the work of van Gogh and his response to Islam.

Finally, it might be suggested that a further complicating factor is likely to be the presence of increasing numbers of migrant and ethnic minority churches across Europe. Their forms of Christian faith are vibrant and vital, often charismatic, and require high levels of personal commitment from their members.17 The interaction of such congregations with traditional forms of the western church, as well as civic authorities, political leaders, and local communities, will remain an area of relevance to the discussion of secularization over the coming years.

In short, we can say that a more careful understanding and account of secularization will need to take account of these European realities, before we too readily conclude that Europe’s peoples are on an unstoppable journey towards spiritual anomie. I believe that we have to learn to address our Christian discourse in multi-lingual ways to societies that are simultaneously pre- secular, secular, and post-secular. But, we must also be extremely cautious about too readily concluding that the complex substrata of the contemporary social field are potentially more receptive to the seed of the Gospel.

14 ENI reported that 200,000 copies were sold in four days. ENI 10th November 2004 15 Halman, L. & Riis, O, Ibid ‘in both 1981 and 1990, the French and the Danish are the least religious people.’ p11 16 See the fashion website www.g-sus.com 17 It is not unknown for members of Church congregations in London to be told that they have been selected to go and establish a new congregation of their Church in another country.

6 Halman and Riis again,

“All age groups show increasing levels of general religiosity when they get older, but as soon as institutional aspects are evaluated, all age groups show declining levels of religiosity. There is indeed an institutional crisis, but not necessarily a religious crisis’18

More recent work arising from the World Values Survey by Inglehurst and Welzel develops a theoretical model of cultural change based on a revised version of modernisation theory.19 Their work highlights several variables determinant for ‘mass belief systems’ including economic development (with industrialisation and post-industrialisation offering differing sets of changes) and cultural change.20 Their work suggests that across Europe, the varying historical and cultural experiences are largely responsible for the political and religious diversity that one observes across the continent’s industrial and post-industrial countries.

So, the challenge for our churches remains: to engage with both the sacred space and the secular space. The religious ambiguity that tends to characterise these two spaces can be confusing for the casual observer. Responses to survey questions such as, ‘Do you believe in God?’ continue to suggest that a majority of European citizens have orthodox Christian beliefs. However, as Andrew Kirk notes,

“This is because it is understood as a theoretical question. Were the question to be, ‘What difference does God make to the way you bring up your children?’ Or, “How does God influence the way you do your job?’ I suspect that an honest answer is most cases would be, ‘He doesn’t.’”21

If the first challenge for the contemporary church is how we may make sense of both the marketplace and the cathedral precinct, the second is equally crucial, ‘How may we speak the name of Jesus in both places, in witness and in worship, with equal relevance and conviction?’ 3. Daring to speak

English Church liturgies derive the term ‘confession’ from the Latin. It is as possible to ‘confess faith’ as it is to ‘confess sin’. It allows the double meaning of admission (of failure, doubt, uncertainly, disbelief, and guilt) and profession (of faith, credo, truth, and beliefs). To ‘say’ Jesus is to confess Jesus and it may be appropriate to recognise that in the act of confessing we recollect and express our doubts as well as our beliefs. To paraphrase Lesslie Newbigin, conviction and humility are both implied. Consequently I wish to be somewhat more tentative in this section and the next: tentative and questing. This reflects the research nature of my current work on behalf of CEC but it also reflects the reality that some European churches identify a problematic in the act saying the name ‘Jesus’. How can we say ‘Jesus’ without simultaneously being heard to say, ‘Conqueror’, ‘Ruler’, ‘Coloniser’, ‘Violator’, or ‘Oppressor’, for example?

18 Halman, L. & Riis, O., Religion in Secularizing Society, Brill: Leiden, 2003 p11 19 Inglehart, R. & Arbor, A., Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005. They describe their model as probabilistic rather than deterministic. 20 “This model postulates that: (1) economic development tends to bring predictable changes in mass values. But it is not a simple linear process: industrialization brings one set of changes, while the rise of post-industrial society is linked with another set of changes. Moreover, (2) cultural change is path dependent: a society’s historical heritage has an enduring influence on its value system, so that societies shaped by Protestantism, Islam or other historical forces, show distinctive values today that differentiate them from societies with other cultural heritages.” Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C., ‘Exploring the Unknown: Predicting the Responses of Publics not yet surveyed’ in International Review of Sociology Vol. 15, No.1, March 2005, p176 21 Kirk, JA., Christian Mission and Secular Freedom forthcoming p25

7 May God forgive us that the Church has so often, in her counter-witness, distorted the image of the ‘Inheritor of Peace’, the ‘Beloved Son’, and the ‘Man of Sorrows’.

Even in situations where violence has not been obvious; in the absence of an Army or an overwhelming Christian presence, “We have been taught by Christian culture to interrupt strangers and force people to listen.”22

Jesus himself began in a rather different place ‘Who do people say that I am?’ (Mt 16:13ff); listening before speaking. By analogy it would be revealing for the Churches of Europe to ask a similar question, ‘What do people say that a Christian is?’ Asking such questions is one way of discovering in very concrete ways the extent of the missio Dei in a culture or society, prior to the mission activity of the churches. Discerning the extent and the nature of God’s gracious, self- giving and self-revealing missionary activity is a key responsibility of the church in her missionary task. By learning to ‘ask’ for Jesus in secularising societies we may come to a deeper understanding of who secular people say Jesus is.

Verbal communication has always involved listening and speaking, asking and saying. We may suggest that communication, conversation, dialogue, and participation – all elements of relational interaction between peoples – are patterned on the inner trinitarian life and nature of God. To speak implies a search for understanding on the part of the hearer if the act of speaking is intended to elicit a response. To address God in this way is to make oneself vulnerable to participation in the Holy Mystery; to know and be known by God. In asking and saying ‘Jesus’ it becomes possible for all people, all humanity, whether secular or otherwise, to go on to know the divine ‘Other’ in the fully participative experience of encounter, conversation, and communication.

To ‘say’, of course, implies to ‘verbalise’ and today many within the church question whether we have forfeited the right to speak as a result of inappropriate and damaging attitudes, motives, intentions, and/or methodologies. However, it is my conviction that verbal articulation is as central to witness as it is to worship. Witness is certainly more than the mere use of the correct discourse – the right words – but it is certainly no less than the use of discourse and words. In order to earn the right once again to say ‘Jesus’ to other European citizens it will be necessary to discover the communicative value of the poetic, the visual, the literary, the cinematic, the dramatic. How might we sing, or dance, the name of Jesus? Consider the Easter events. They begin with the agony of darkness and death, silence and stillness, and conclude with the victory of dazzling light and life, laughter and joy. Is it possible to express the music in this narrative? Is it possible to name Jesus, victorious, but in non-violent ways?

The mission of the Baptist Church of Georgia: “Theologically reformed - culturally Orthodox.”

Chechen refugees began streaming over the border into the Pankisi Valley region of Georgia immediately prior to Christmas 1999. As traditional enemies, the Chechens could not expect to find easy haven in Georgia, even among the inhabitants of the valley who were their ethnic cousins. The Islamic Chechens were infamous for their long-practiced skills in hostage-taking and even the Georgian Muslims disowned them. News of this human drama on an epic scale reached the Baptist community as it met for joint Christmas celebrations in Tbilisi. One thousand Baptists were attending an overnight vigil to be followed by a party when the announcement was made that Chechen refugees were crossing the border. After a long silence, a brave woman

22 Simpson, M. Permission Evangelism (Colorado Springs: Cook Communications Ministries, 2003) p10 This quote from an evangelist within the evangelical heartlands of the USA!

8 suggested that Christmas should be cancelled. Malkhaz recalls that Christmas was not cancelled but a far bigger revolution took place within the Baptist community of Georgia.

During the Soviet era the Church had been forbidden to engage in social ministry, other than among its own members. Many might have felt that the Church had no reason to become involved but a recognition that the Kingdom of God was wider than the church resulted in the collection of food parcels for distribution among the refugees. An initial one-off email request for $800 resulted in the collection of $16,000. Soup kitchens were set up (1,300 children per day were being fed), medical operations for children wounded by shrapnel were paid for, and a school for the Islamic children was established with Chechen teachers employed. Ethnic, historic, and religious barriers, barriers of suspicion and hate, were crossed with these gestures. This was the first experience by the Baptist Church of mission beyond its own boundaries. Many significant stories of reconciliation in Christian-Muslim relations are told from this period.

The Baptist Church was not alone in crossing boundaries. The Chechens and their community leaders were fearful at first that the Baptists were KGB spies but one Chechen leader later told Malkhaz that in the new independent Republic of Chechnya he would personally oversee the building of twenty five Baptist churches in Grozni. It was decided from the outset that, for the sake of integrity of their social ministry, the Baptist Church would not distribute Christian literature or Bibles among the Chechens.

A new openness within the Muslim community in Georgia occurred after the events of September 11th. Fearing tensions and isolation a number of Muslim communities invited the Baptist Church to work with them. In one of the Muslim villages a sport stadium with artificial turf was built in partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Church and a group of German young people. Subsequently the local Imam has asked for a Baptist church to be built in the village (with the request that news of Muslims who choose to become Christian should not be publicised widely or loudly). Multi-ethnic children’s camps (Georgian, Ossetian, Greek, Syrian, Chechen, and Russian) have proven especially successful as a means of bridging community divides and allowing exposure to each other’s faith. Neither religious community imposes its symbols on the other community’s children. However, it is not unknown for religious songs to be taught by one community’s children to the other and the sight of Muslim young people crossing themselves as their football team was winning caused some amusement among camp leaders!

The experience of the Baptist Church of Georgia bears out the truth of the words of Reformed missiologist, Darrell Guder,

“Being and doing the witness provide the context and also the validation for what we say.”23

It is my contention that ‘being’, ‘doing’ and ‘saying’ are inextricably linked in the missionary service of the Church. If worship and witness are the primary activities during which we ‘confess’ then the arenas of the cathedral precinct and the marketplace are the venues in which our baptismal promises encourage us to say Jesus in appropriate ways. It is possible to understand both worship and witness as service, or to put it in a uniquely Orthodox way, it is necessary to see a ‘liturgy after the liturgy’.24 In other words the dynamics of the liturgical celebration must extend into the daily life of the Church’s members to serve the community at large. Many within the Protestant community, drawing upon the Westminster Confession of

23 Guder, D. Be my witnesses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985) p133 24 Bria, I. The Liturgy after the Liturgy: Mission and witness from an Orthodox Perspective (Geneva: WCC 1996) and note the use of the equally suggestive phrase, ‘Liturgy before the liturgy’ by Russian Orthodox Archpriest Vladimir Federov.

9 Faith, have also noted the priority of worship over witness, none perhaps more exuberantly than the evangelical, reformed pastor, John Piper,

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man (sic). Witness still exists because worship does not.”25

However, Schnabel, in his magisterial work on Early Christian Mission, points to the scholarly consensus underlining the absence of Jewish missionary activity in biblical and Second Temple Judaism.26 This makes the missionary activity of the early church all the more remarkable and should caution against the temptation for the contemporary Church to embrace a similar mission theology, namely, ‘That proselytes are welcome, if they find us, but we are not called to trouble the nations with our witness to the Gospel. Our worship of the one who is Gospel should be sufficient to draw others to worship the God of all in company with us.’

Friends within the historic Reformed and Lutheran Churches may point to this tendency within the theology of Luther and Calvin but I must quickly add that I am greatly encouraged by the recent and crucial work being done by the Lutheran and Reformed communities on the drafting, publishing and adopting of new Statements relating to contemporary understandings of Mission.27 I am particularly impressed that these documents all show evidence of wrestling with the inter-relatedness of ‘being’, ‘doing’, and ‘saying’.

Witness and worship were held together in a wonderful dynamic relationship in the writing of Raymond Fung, former Evangelism Secretary of the WCC. In his formulation of the Isaiah Vision, Fung envisages Christians working in solidarity with others to achieve, for example, justice, peace, reconciliation, and liberation. He sees the need for the Christians from time to time having to say,

“Excuse us for a while. We must pause and worship our God. We cannot go on without a time of prayer and intercession. Please feel free to join us. But we will be back.”28

During March 2005 I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the Revd Sheila Maxey, then serving as the Moderator of the United Reformed Church in the UK.

In her year as Moderator she is visiting churches and posing three simple questions to each congregation. Firstly, she asks, ‘Where, or with whom, do you talk about your Christian faith and how to live the Christian life?’ The second question follows, ‘Where do you think you see God at work?’ Finally she asks, ‘What gives you hope?’ Her first question draws the longest pauses from the members of the churches she visits. Eventually, she receives somewhat hesitant replies that follow a remarkably similar pattern. ‘We don’t really talk about our faith to people outside the church.’

25 Piper, J. Let the Nations be Glad! (Leicester: IVP, 2003) p17 26 Schnabel, E. Early Christian Mission Volume One: Jesus and the Twelve (Downers Grove: IVP, 2004) See particularly pp55-173 27 See the LWF & CPCE Mission Documents, WARC Mission in Unity programme, and the Scandinavian Lutheran Mission Conference 2004, among others. 28 Fung, R. ‘Evangelising a Secular Society Europe’ in Proclaiming Christ in Christ’s Way: Studies in Integral Evangelism (Oxford: Regnum Books 1989) p151 See particularly Fung, R. The Isaiah Vision: an ecumenical strategy for congregational evangelism (Geneva: WCC 1992)

10 Sheila feels that such confessions are often accompanied by feelings of guilt and fear and so she replies, ‘No, I mean in the church!’ ‘Oh, you mean where do we talk about our faith in the church!? Hmmm..’

Sheila highlights a failure within the liturgical and pedagogical life of our churches. A failure to encourage people to articulate their understanding of faith, to learn to say ‘Jesus’ in worship, within the community of faith, in ways that are their own and not merely those provided by sanctioned liturgical formulations. Drawing upon the practice of Ignatian spirituality she goes on to draw attention to the need to re-engage with biblical narrative as a stimulus to the spirituality of church members. She suggests that we can only learn to say ‘Jesus’ after we have encountered him through reading and entering into the biblical narrative. 4. Naming Jesus

The British hymn writer, Brian Wren, encourages us to,

Bring many names, beautiful and good; celebrate, in parable and story, holiness in glory, living, loving God. Hail and Hosanna, Bring many names.29

And offers several possibilities in his own hymns, including: Maker of Rainbows, Spinner of Chaos, Weaver of Stories, Nudging Discomforter, Midwife of Changes, Dare-devil Gambler; Life-giving Loser, Good and guiding star, Life-creating Wisdom, AlI-perceiving Lover.

There are many names by which Jesus is and has been known in the biblical record and throughout the history of the Christian Church. Some may be more helpful to current situations than others, some may be so historically and contextually bound that they may be judged to be unhelpful today. Wren’s own characterisation of the majority language for God in contemporary British hymnbooks is KINGAFAP (King, Almighty Father, Protector). The point of Wren’s survey is to suggest that this kind of language certainly reflects the biblical and historical Christian tradition but that it does not exhaust it.

By what names is Jesus most likely to be recognised? What names are most likely to have contemporary appeal? By what name is Jesus known in the inter-religious dialogue our Churches are committed to? It seems to me that our responsibility in inter-religious dialogue is to ask of our dialogue partners, ‘Who do you say Jesus is?’ Evidence of his being named within any particular religious tradition may be taken as evidence of God’s prior missionary engagement with and within that religious tradition. When we visit the giftshop of a devout Hindu in London and see postcards of Ganesh displayed adjacent to postcards of Jesus with the bleeding heart, what are we to assume the local Hindu culture knows of Jesus? The witness that we bear in such situations is to confess, as did the Apostle Peter, that for Christians, Jesus has been revealed as the Christ, the anointed of God. To do so with the fullest possible integrity is to confess faith and doubt at the same moment. It is to confess, in faith, that the confession of Peter is not merely an ethnic or tribal confession, it is a confession that carries the weight of a universalising claim to one’s allegiance. At the same time it is to confess doubt, wondering at the sincerity and devotion of adherents of other religions and to see evidence of God’s grace and Spirit at work within their religious communities. To simultaneously confess faith and doubt in this way, in the context of

29 Wren, B. What Language Shall I borrow? (London: SCM, 1989) p137

11 inter-religious dialogue and diapraxis, is to wrestle with the pain that results from holding these obvious and self-evident realities side by side.

However, of equal significance is the question, ‘By what name is Jesus known on the financial trading floors of Frankfurt, London, or Paris?’ This question is as crucial a question as inter- religious question that has galvanised so many of our church communities in the aftermath of September 11th 2001. Some years ago Jurgen Moltmann suggested at a meeting of the British and Irish Association of Mission Studies that the goal of inter-religious dialogue should not merely be a more enlightening dialogue, a more informed understanding of the other. He argued that inter-religious diapraxis ought to be the proper outcome. As a younger, evangelical theologian I was not fully persuaded at the time. Today I am far more persuaded that inter- religious dialogue does not best serve the cause of co-religionists unless it enables the various religious communities to address those who tread the financial trading floors, unless it prepares them to challenge the ideological status quo of contemporary, secular policy makers. It only plays into the hands of the secular public policy makers to have members of the different religious communities engaged in inter-religious dialogue, as long as the dialogue is conducted in private; talking about our prophets among ourselves. By talking about their profits with them, we take what should be the fruits of our dialogue and diapraxis into the public forum. True we may run the risk that if our inter-religious diapraxis were to be enacted in the public marketplace, contributions to the public debate in the name of Jesus (or indeed of the Buddha) would be scoffed at, ridiculed, held up to public shame in the newspapers. A public lynching might even ensue (to extend the obvious analogy).

To name Jesus in such a public way is appropriate (noting all the cautions due regarding the inappropriate use of power and established status). It is essential for the health of our European societies, their institutions, cultures, and systems.

“The name of God is basic to the structure of traditional societies. It forms and regulates agricultural rituals, territorial cults, agrarian festivals, the solar calendar, fertility ceremonies, mortuary observance, anniversaries, and so on. It’s therefore hard to think of viable social systems without the name of God, but easy to envision societies that have become vulnerable because they lost the name or the sense of the transcendent.”30

Meanwhile, as we engage with the post-Christian West, in the places where Jesus’ name has been forgotten, the missionary task of the church is to help forgetters become rememberers (to borrow a phrase from Brueggeman). This is especially challenging for our Churches of the northern hemisphere as we contemplate the current renewal of Christianity in the global south. Lamin Sanneh observes that countries from the global tend to give space within the public and private discourse to the name of God: only a minority of Africans are atheist. He continues,

“Renewal movements in world Christianity have in the main been restricted to societies where the indigenous name for God was preserved, with corresponding minimal Christian impact in places where the name of God has been forgotten or suppressed.”31 (emphasis mine)

The task of renaming Jesus anew in each and every culture goes hand in hand with the challenge to remain faithful to the apostolic witness. Young people, Pentecostals & neo-charismatics, migrant Christians, and marginalised groups, are likely to name Jesus in ways that sound strange to our ears. In discovering the Bible in their ‘own tongue’, whether Lingala or the language of the ‘Street Bible’, they have a tongue through which they become capable of discovering their

30 Sanneh, L. Whose Religion is Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) p31 31 Sanneh, L. Ibid p79

12 own names for Jesus. Perhaps, in this regard, the missionary task of the churches is to relinquish the temptation to sanction and control the naming of Jesus whilst simultaneously asking such groups and movements, ‘Who do you say Jesus is?’

Undertaking the task of naming Jesus in our contemporary contexts is likely to be an increasingly vulnerable task as we re-discover how to do so with the ‘bold humility’ called for by Bishop Lesslie Newbigin. Vulnerability requires tentative exploration and a willingness to learn. Each of the programmes that follows is an attempt to illustrate what it might mean to name Jesus in new ways and in new places. Each of them displays an exploratory openness that hints at their vulnerability and temporality. It is not an exhaustive list, neither is it a perfect or fully satisfactory list. To seek for such qualities might in fact tend to be counter-productive in the case of churches bearing witness in a society where certainties tend to repel and neatly packaged solutions are often revealed for what they are; cleverly marketed products in search of customer share in a dwindling religious market. Time to Talk of God The novelty of Shiela Maxey’s question to her URC Church members, ‘When did you last talk to somebody about your faith?’ lies in its freshness and simplicity at a time when many church members seem to have abandoned or lost ‘God’ language. Time to Talk of God is a book from the Methodist Church in the UK that aims to encourage Methodists and other Christians to renew their ability to talk about God. The book, based on a report that was enthusiastically received by the Methodist Conference in 2005, was written by its Discipleship and Church Membership Working Group.

The book honestly addresses the reasons why Christians can find it hard to talk about their faith, and how easy it is for churches and congregations to develop habits that make Christian conversation hard. Its group and individual exercises, prayers, Bible passages and practical guides to shifting church culture are designed to make talking to each other about God easier and more natural. Janet Morley, the convener of the working group, suggests that Time to Talk of God, “starts a stage back from evangelism. It is about how we talk - and listen - to each other about the things that matter most. How shall we be confident in sharing our faith more widely if we never have these conversations among church members? And what sort of church will genuine seekers encounter if we are embarrassed to discuss the spiritual questions that motivate them?”

Username: Liberator The Street Bible was published in the UK in 2003. Authored by Rob Lacey, a theologian and dramatist, the Street Bible is a radical paraphrase that takes the name of Jesus into the street and clubbing sub-cultures of young people in the UK. Without their own names for Jesus, such young people are, if Lamin Sanneh is correct, otherwise likely to remain beyond the effective reach of the witness of the church. Lacey’s text is not intended for the careful scrutiny of scholarly academics, its intended audience is the many thousands of British young people who are increasingly alienated by the failure of the churches of the UK to communicate the biblical narratives as they relate to following Jesus.

Matthew 5:4, 17 ‘I’ll tell you who’ll still be laughing: the people who know about grief, who don’t shove the mess behind the sofa, but face it – God himself is going to put his arm round them.

‘It’s rumble the rumours time: I’m not here to diss Moses’ Big Ten Rules. I’m not here to do a character assassination job on the couriers. I’m not here to finish them off – I’m here to complete them.’

13 Other authors, in a variety of European countries, have similarly undertaken to make the text of the Bible ever more accessible to increasingly biblically-illiterate societies in parts of Europe. In those parts of Europe where there is an active Bible Society, an underlying value has been the importance of ecumenical co-operation in the task of translation and publication. Bible translation continues to be an essential aspect of the Churches in their mission task of making the name of Jesus more widely known. www.ReJesus.co.uk The ReJesus website is an outstanding example of a co-operative venture in mission on the internet. It is the joint initiative of several inter-denominational and ecumenical organisations. Its single focus is to take the visitor straight to the heart of Christian life and faith - the person of Jesus Christ himself. Its aim is to reach people who have little previous knowledge of Jesus or the Christian faith and to encourage steps of faith. Every visitor has the opportunity to engage with the site’s material and respond to it by giving their opinion, praying a prayer or asking a tough question.

Through this and similar initiatives, Jesus is named in new contexts. The surfer may be a seeker after truth and the electronic medium offers anonymity to those who bring their questions and tentative attempts to formulate a response to the question, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ The site encourages this approach through its use of multiple images of Christ, its invitation to discover the man behind the images, and its exploratory and participative design. Users of the site can burrow down through multiple layers of information, dependent on their determination to discover what lies beyond the immediately apparent.

The donors and Directors are drawn from a very wide range of UK Churches and Christian agencies, including: Activate, Alliance of Asian Christians, Baptist Union of Great Britain, Bible Society, Catholic Missionary Society, Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, Christian Enquiry Agency, Church Mission Society, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, Churches Together in England, Churches Together in England Group for Evangelisation, Congregational Federation, Deo Gloria Trust, Diocese of Litchfield, Evangelical Alliance, Group for Evangelisation, The Jerusalem Trust, Lutheran Council of Great Britain, Methodist Church, Moravian Church, ReSource, Roman Catholic Church (CASE), Salvation Army, Scripture Union, Springboard, United Reformed Church, Youth for Christ.

The site comes with the warm commendation of the General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, and the Moderator of the Free Churches. It is a BBCi ‘recommended site’, the BBC’s quality assurance mark. The healer of the wounded planet For some years now, the Danish-Norwegian organisation Areopagos has been a keen supporter of the work of several Scandinavian Christian organisations working among the devotees of so- called New Age practices. Similar work in the UK and elsewhere takes seriously the spiritual search of many who are engaged in the quest for esoteric knowledge and experience. Such searchers are not beyond the reach of the church. As one Swedish Lutheran Priest told me recently, ‘It’s entirely possible to search for God on the shore of the Lake... but after a while it gets quite cold there!’ British Methodist minister, Rob Frost, worked with an ecumenical group to develop Essence, an introductory course to the Christian faith intended for spiritually questing individuals. Course participants learn in a variety of ways, experiential and rational. A session that begins by exploring the ecological crisis journeys towards the question, ‘Who is responsible for the crisis and why?’ In naming human greed, Jesus is implicitly named as the selfless, self-

14 giving one who lived in harmony with the created order. (And who offers an answer to the human failure, or sinfulness, that is reflected in each one of us). The soul physician Many western Europeans experience the world they live in as fragmentary and fragments. Family life has become increasingly fragmented, both geographically and relationally. Patterns of social relationships are breaking down. Most British houses being built currently have a 2m high wooden panelled fence surrounding the rear garden – we no longer talk to our neighbour ‘over the garden fence’. A church that names Jesus as healer and physician is able to respond to the social and inner fragmentation of individuals searching for meaning and purpose, yet apparently unable to find it in the forms of the Christian faith that they are familiar with. The Swedish ‘Serenity services’ offer space for encountering Jesus as healer and physician to people looking for somewhere to recover, recharge, reintegrate, and rediscover themselves. Doing so within the experimental liturgical life of the churches in Sweden is a more appropriate route for some than attendance at the normal Sunday Parish worship with the particular responsibilities that this may involve. The Thomas Mass of Finland is another manifestation of church that takes seriously the current search for wholeness and meaning in life.

Bridge-builder

Attending a class for Catechumens at St. Vladimir’s Cathedral, St. Petersburg. Saturday 3rd January 2004, my wife and I were greeted warmly though our appearance was to prove ecumenically educational for all parties! We sat solemnly among the group of two Arch-Priests and twenty or so lay Orthodox catechumens.

Each catechumen spends three terms on the programme. The first term lasts between 8 to 10 months and focuses on Christian lifestyle, or ethics. The second term lasts between 4 to 6 months and focuses on Christian doctrine and Church history. The final, or third term, lasts between 6 to 8 weeks. Each session includes refreshments, discussion, and presentation. Three hundred people have passed through the programme in the seven years it has been operating and a total of 300, divided into smaller groups of twenty, were under instruction when we visited. Attendance at divine liturgy is expected.

Encouragingly, this group of catechumens was spending an evening considering ecumenics (under the expert tutelage of Fr. Vladimir Federov). We hade been invited along, as Baptists, to meet with this group and answer questions. The first question was intriguing, ‘Are Baptists Orthodox?’ Other questions followed rapidly, ‘Do Baptists pray?’, ‘Do Baptists believe in miracles?’

In conversation I discovered that of the group of twenty adults present, only one knew a Baptist Christian and one other had, ‘met a Baptist once’. Jesus, where named as the bridge-builder and fence-mover, sets his Church free for the role of encounter and mutual enrichment. The questions enriched me as a consequence of being helped to understand something of the ‘Russian Soul’ and the depth of faith of Orthodox believers. I trust our Orthodox friends discovered a little bit more about their Baptist relatives who are (reasonably) orthodox, do pray, and leave room for God to act miraculously. The missionary task of the church is to be seen in her commitment to the ecumenical task of the churches; reconciling and repairing, building and discovering true Unity in Christ.

I offer these stories as transcripts of the ways in which different Christians in different parts of Europe are naming Jesus in new and challenging ways ripe with possibility and potential. Our experience of the divided Christian world stimulates us to deeper and ongoing reflection on how

15 we may develop new and faithful ways of naming Jesus, recognising that a diversity of naming only reflects our as yet unfinished goal towards achieving the unity for which Christ prayed.

From within the evangelical world of North America, missiologist Darrell Guder, openly comments about the diversity of expression and naming as the churches of Christ bear witness to him,

“There is, as yet, no consensus about what we mean by, ‘The Gospel’. The Gospel always goes before us. The Gospel is always bigger than any definition we may have of it. The Gospel is always more because God is still active in his salvation history, it is not yet complete and the world within which it is active is still changing and developing.”32

Into this world we are called, together, to take what we have understood of the Gospel and of the one whom it names, and to strain for the whispers of muted voices saying ‘Jesus’ in our changing and developing world. Jesus asks us to consider who they say that he is. Then he turns to us and asks, lastly, ‘But who do you say that I am?’

Darrell Jackson, June 11th 2005

32 See Guder, D. Be my witnesses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985) p75-78

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