Sense as the liturgical orientation of a work does not arise from need. Need opens up a world that is for me; it returns to itself. Even a sublime need, such as the need for salvation, is still a nostalgia, a longing to go back. A need is return itself, the anxiety of the I for itself, egoism, the original form of identification. It is the assimilation of the world in view of self-coincidence: in view of happiness.

— Emmanuel Levinas, 'Meaning and Sense'

Labels: dunedin, levinas, manchester, newzealand

Labels: dunedin, newzealand

Proclaiming the Gospel may have much to do with the struggle to make explicit what is at stake in particular human decisions or policies, individual and collective, and in this sense bring in the event of judgement, the revaluation of identities. [...] I am wholly in sympathy with [Lindbeck's] challenges to the "liberal" assumption that this [discernment] is to be achieved by adjusting theology to current fashion, and what I have already said accords in important respects with his call for discernment on the basis of criteria drawn from the specifically Christian narrative ("an intratextually derived eschatology").

But I want, in contrast, to argue that such discernment is not easily intelligible when divorced from the language of transformative judgement, enacted in particular events, that is the central theme of so many of our foundational texts. In short, I don't think that Christian and theological discernment can ever be wholly "contemplative" and "noninterventionist"; I believe it is more importantly exercised in the discernment of what contemporary conflicts are actually about and in the effort both to clarify this and to decide where the Christian should find his or her identity. The Christian is involved in seeking conversion — the bringing to judgement of contemporary struggles, and the appropriation of some new dimension of the transforming summons of Christ in his or her own life.

— Rowan Williams, "The Judgement of the World" in On Christian Theology (my bold)

The Anglican Communion is in one hell of a pickle. And in spite of his brilliant words (you can read the whole essay online), it is happening on Archbishop Rowan Williams' watch. Of course, the polarization of "liberal" and "evangelical" in Anglican churches was a process that occured over a period of decades, ably, if polemically, documented by Michael Hampson in his book Last Rites: The End of the Church of England. Williams cannot be held personally accountable for the fact that we are in our current situation. But both his sympathisers and critics believe he may well be responsible for perpetuating it by appeasing those that, according to the theology he expressed in the passage above, Christians should not be at all hesitant to pass judgement on.

In the light of all this, I suggest that the voices most often identified as "liberal" and "evangelical" have no claim to these names; and Williams knows it, because he, too, places "liberal" in inverted commas, uneasy with its connotations in ordinary language. In the contemporary church the word "liberal" has come to signify the maxim "be nice to everyone", while continuing with the most base of hypocrisies. The Church's theology, scripture, liturgy, religious belief, ethical reasoning, has been reduced by the "liberal" to this catastrophic, bastardised misreading of the gospel. By the same token, "evangelical" has sadly come to denote another bastardised misreading of the same gospel, this time based on a wantonly inadequate reading of the Bible undertaken to justify bigotry. Hampson writes of this situation:

The real tragedy [...] is the complete failure of integrity on the part of the liberals. On the single-question test of orthodoxy — "What is your attitude towards homosexuality?" — their silence and ambivalence show more sympathy for the dangerous cult of contemporary fundamentalism than concern for the truth or for the good of the world and its people. The truth, and the dignity of homosexual people everywhere, have been sacrificed "for the sake of unity" to the cult of fundamentalism. The latest sacrifice at the time of writing is the Anglican Communion, now officially a worldwide anti-homosexual organisation. It has carried out the first two expulsions in its history — the United States and Canada — for refusing to discriminate sufficiently against homosexuals [...] This is not a price worth paying "for the sake of unity": it is a betrayal of the very heart of the gospel.

My anger at this situation, which is never far from boiling over, was further heated by a conversation with someone from the Dunedin Diocesan Office at Selwyn's High Tea a few weeks ago. I had explained why I thought the "evangelical" position on homosexuality was morally bankrupt. The response of my interlocutor was: "But don't you think they believe it?" I was dumbfounded at the sheer spinelessness of this attitude — as if the legitimacy of bigotry should be assessed only by how sincerely it is held. But sadly, it is a spinelessness that has been led from the front. The evangelical wing of the Church must be held responsible for their (successful) attempts to blackmail the entire institution over the appointment of Jeffrey John. But Williams should be held responsible for giving in to these attempts by forcing him to step down. What Williams clearly believes in his own theology is that, in that situation, the gospel called for a moment of judgement. In his own words, "The Christian is involved in seeking conversion — the bringing to judgement of contemporary struggles, and the appropriation of some new dimension of the transforming summons of Christ in his or her own life." Where was that faithful act of judgement in the Jeffrey John saga?

Well, Dunedin has recently faced its own moment of judgement and the result is not particularly encouraging. Dunedin priest Juan Kinnear has given an interview this week quietly lamenting the rise of a "conservative" to the Otago & Southland bishopric. Kinnear's ordination took place a few years ago against the backdrop of similarly ugly scenes to those witnessed during the Jeffrey John saga. The word "conservative" introduces a new dimension to this debate. That any Christian could identify with the term "conservative" is a fact that I find risible. What does the gospel have to say about "conserving" anything? It is a message of generosity, openness, but also judgement. Conservatism, by contrast, is about keeping what you've got, sticking to your thoroughly parochial certainties, and condemning change on the basis of its sheer novelty. It assumes its own penchant for condemnation to be a legitimate expression of the gospel imperative to pass judgement.

Earlier in the same essay, Williams writes:

The Church may be committed to interpreting the world in terms of its own foundational narratives; but the very act of interpreting affects the narratives as well as the world, for good and ill, and it is not restricted to what we usually think of as the theological mainstream. Something happens to the Exodus story as it is absorbed into the black slave culture of America. Something still more unsettling happens to Abraham and Isaac when they have passed through Kierkegaards's hands — or the hands of the agnostic Wilfred Owen, writing in the First World War of how the old man refused to hear the angel "and slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one". [...] Owen's savage transformation of Abraham's sacrifice points up what we might miss in Genesis: the final drawing back from slaughter is an act of obedience as great as or greater than the first decision to sacrifice Isaac. It also points up the impotence of the narrative in a world that has lost the means to forgo its pride. Not sacrificing Isaac is a necessary humiliation; the righteous old men of Europe in 1914 are strangers to such a possibility. This is indeed a discovery of scripture and world, and of the gulf between them; and it is now — or should be — part of what the Church reads in Genesis 22.

Scripture, the gospel itself, is changed by our collective cultural experiences of gay liberation. It is not an experience the gospel-writers could have known; so it is not good enough to fall back on old certainties with the pathetic pseudo-liberal justification, "But it's what they believe". Liberals must fight relentlessly for views from all perspectives to be voiced and heard; but this is not the same as making an apology for relativism. Rather, liberals must then fight equally relentlessly for the values a truly progressive and liberal theology stands for, and directly challenge those whose beliefs betray the gospel. If it cannot do this, it seriously begs the question if these so-called "liberals" stand for anything at all. The kind of "liberal" Hampson describes, the kind of "liberal" I conversed with at High Tea, is really an old-fashioned conservative in some fashionable clothes, more interested in the structural integrity of an antiquated institution than in discerning a truly Christian response. So I give the last word to Williams, in the hope that he might start to enact his own theology.

In judging the world, by its confrontation of the world with its own dramatic script, the Church also judges itself: in attempting to show the world a critical truth, it shows itself to itself as Church also.

Labels: christianity, church, dunedin, homosexuality, newzealand, theology

Tonight was High Tea at Selwyn College, the place I have been living and working for the past nine months. This annual event brought together all the present residents of the College, as well as Fellows, board members, representatives from our rival Knox College, the Bishop of Dunedin, and the Mayor, Peter Chin — a very messy bunch. It is also a day when the retiring student committee hand over to their newly elected replacements. We celebrate the year that has gone, and look forward to the promise of a new community still to be formed. It is a day which blurs the old and the new, mingles continuity with change — a very messy day.

On a night when the year seems to be drawing to a close, I feel privileged to have been invited to be a part of it all; but I also find myself pondering the meaning of a community like this. How can it be that such a special corner of the world, which I have gradually come to understand and appreciate as time has gone one, is also a place in which I have struggled to feel at home?

A community of mutual friendship

To explain a place like Selwyn to an outsider is a difficult task. It combines a genuine spirit of community with an openness to individuals who break the mould; it mixes exceptional hard work with real humility; and above all, it embodies a Christian ideal of mutual friendship in a way I have experienced nowhere else. It is not the kind of elective, reciprocal relationship we usually mean by the word "friendship", but rather a latent awareness that I am responsible for the least of my neighbours, whether I like him or not. I have no doubt that, in one way or another, all Selwynites take this ideal of serving others into the wider world and into their future lives. Of this the College is rightly proud.

Selwyn, then, is a strong and healthy community. But strong group identities come with their dark side. When groups of people form tight networks of trust and care, they become exclusive by definition; paradoxically, the more intimately a group shares in its life together, the bigger the risk of alienating others. I suppose this is really the biggest thing I have struggled to make sense of this year — how could such a tight community ever exclude the need for conformity? In the first weeks here my sense of disorientation was extreme: I saw a succession of bizarre rituals, and I had no matrix of experience into which I could integrate them. The only advantage of being thrown into this situation is that I could empathise absolutely with newcomers to the College. Yet those early events ultimately bound the community together and enabled its members to flourish as individuals. When residents repeat the Selwyn motto, "vitai lampada tradunt", they are not passing on a torch of empty initiations, hollow ceremonies, and cold formalities. Instead, Selwyn's torch represents its core value of mutual friendship, and it is this which is passed on to a new year. College traditions are valuable only insofar as they serve this purpose.

Messy Communities

If this year has made me realise one thing, it is the inherent messiness of community life, in all its manifestations. I came to Dunedin having worked for seven years in a different kind of Christian community, a tightly-knit network of about a hundred people who attend a church in Blackley, Manchester. I think back to that place now and recognise that the key to its success is its total embrace of messiness. The church has a busy schedule of events which nourish relationships between businesses, schools, other churches, and the local residents that the church ultimately exists to serve. Being a church should be an avowedly messy experience; there is always something going on, and you try to do your bit without ever having all the information; you take on small tasks which you know will make some bigger thing possible, without yourself ever truly catching sight of the whole picture. Similarly, conversations with fellow church members are fragmentary, messy affairs; interrupted snippets by which we know and care for one another. So for me church in Manchester was a mess of activity; an unfathomable dis-order that can only come from an organism that grows, vibrates, bears fruit.

At Selwyn my job brief is essentially to care for students and to keep them in line. Both of these aspects encourage you to think in terms of systems and rules: What problem is this person having? What rule is this person breaking? I had to learn new skills quickly; in particular I rapidly discovered that discipline is an important part of pastoral care, and is not set at odds with it. I learned that, so long as discipline does not creep into the realms of outright control, it is a legitimate, indeed a necessary, feature of friendship. Good friends hold each other to account; true friendship is judgemental, not just affirmative.

What it took me longer to recognise is that Selwyn, too, is a place governed not just by systems and rules, but by messiness. Holding each other to account, caring for one another, is as much a creative as a procedural act. What makes this community is not its ability to impose commands on itself, but rather its capacity to change, its flexibility. Traditions are a kind of command from history; but we are not in this world to take orders. Traditions challenge us to change them, to make them suit our purposes, to improve them. This is messy work; and it is lived out in the unplanned conversation, the uninvited guest, the unexpected embrace.

Integrity and disintegration

The community of Selwyn College 2009 will, over the next few weeks, disintegrate. Its energy will dissipate into an inconceivable network of new relationships. It will not be possible ever to reassemble the pieces of this community's identity, which is bound to this place, at this moment of time. The meaning of tonight's events at High Tea is in their very contingency, their transience. The messiness of this community's disintegration mirrors the messiness of its formation. And for me, the meaning I take from a difficult year is this: embrace the mess. A community obsessed with the integrity of its own heritage forgets that the outsider is always there, just out of sight. The stranger, the newcomer, is the real test of our heritage's hospitality.

May Selwyn College 2010 be not just a tidy home, but also a hospitable mess.

Labels: collegiatelife, dunedin, newzealand

Labels: dunedin, newzealand

Labels: dunedin, newzealand, photography

[February 7th]

Our spot in the press today:

Tags: dunedin, otago, ordinarystorm.

Labels: dunedin, music, newzealand, theatre, travelling

[February 6th, Waitangi Day]

Today is Waitangi Day in New Zealand — a public holiday, which used to be known as "New Zealand Day" until the 1970s. It is still a source of some controversy, mainly, I learn, in the north of the country. Some of the controversy apparently concerns the payments that Maoris receive from the state (in a similar way to, for example, German minorities in Italy). Opposition comes from some Maoris, who view the subsidy as patronising, as well as some settlers, who view it as unfair.

In the midst of these largely civilized disagreements, I read the following very sober leader piece in the Otago Daily Times today. Surely those arguing about multiculturalism in Britain could consider the words of former Prime Minister Norman Kirk:

It was Norman Kirk who promised, during the 1972 general election campaign, to create a national holiday set down on the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, on February 6, and to be called New Zealand Day. It was a step along the road of nationhood, the beginning of a self-conscious embracing of a bicultural entity in which each contributing culture was to be respected for its inherent qualities. As he put it in 1974: "We are not one people; we are one nation. The idea of one people grew out of the days when fashionable folk talked about integration. So far as the majority and the minority are concerned, integration is precisely what cats do to mice."

Tags: dunedin, newzealand, waitangi, waitangiday, travelling.

Labels: dunedin, newzealand, politics, racism, travelling

[February 4th]

Went and sang Evensong yesterday (Wesley, Thou wilt keep him; Sumsion in A; Neary Responses), which was really fun. I've still not got over the fact that here you can just rock up to places and people will be friendly, warm, inviting, non-suspicious, as a matter of course. It's refreshing, and creates virtous circles of trust so quickly.

Tags: newzealand, dunedin, cathedral.

Labels: dunedin, music, newzealand, politics

[February 3rd]

Maoris and Music

Urgh. I went to bed at 5pm yesterday for a "snooze", and slept through till 2am. I thought I'd avoided the jetlag, but obviously not. I spent the small hours practising on the ridiculously antiquated keyboard I've installed in my room, sent a few text messages, and then decided to head back to the botanic gardens at 6am for the dawn chorus and sunrise. The birdsong was really beautiful.

At 10am I went to the Eucharist at St Paul's Cathedral in The Octagon (the central "square" in Dunedin). It reinforced an impression that has already been made quite strongly upon me: that New Zealand as a nation has done a very good job of reconciling and integrating "white" and "indigenous" "cultures".* And what's more, they seem to have done so without the patronising romanticism in which "outsiders" try to "preserve" (sometimes by cynical, even forceful, methods) "native" traditions. Such a romantic outlook often pretends that there was some time of pure, "unspoilt", heritage. But indigenous traditions can only be understood as "heritage" once there is some kind of threat -- and threat did not originate with Western colonial invasions. We are never without threats -- but without threats there is no change, and without change there would be no life. New Zealand seems to have got the balance right: a balance, that is, between the dignity of freedom and respect for the history people want to live from.

How is this achieved? Maori culture and history has a constant public face here. In the cathedral, many of the liturgical lines are delivered in English and Maori together. On the doors in the university, all the room names are translated into Maori. There are postcards of "traditional" looking Maori families, but they are photos set against the backdrop of a modern nation state, not some ridiculous hut put up for gawping tourists. New Zealand seems to me to be setting an example here far superior to anything I've experienced before. Of course there are problems here, more pronounced in the north of the country, but there is nevertheless a genuine difference in attitude: a welcoming of your friend and neighbour on his own terms.

After the morning service, I was cornered (in a pleasant way) by a member of the choir. The cathedral is a very open place -- perhaps because they seem to be a community of English and Australian ex-pats themselves, and perhaps, also, because the cathedral community experienced its share of unrest about ten years ago. Somehow, though, they figured out I am a musician! We went for coffee and they've invited me to go and sing at Evensong tonight, which is kind. They were also trying to persuade me to stay and be their organ scholar (their last one apparently went back to Britain (or was it America?), got a girlfriend and never returned). But I suggested the commute to university in Manchester might be a little difficult.

* Eventually every utterance on this blog will be "in" "inverted commas".

Tags: dunedin, newzealand, music, cathedral, stpauls, maori, integration.

Labels: dunedin, music, newzealand, politics, travelling

[February 2nd]

After arriving yesterday and checking in to my accommodation, it immediately began to rain. Auckland was hot, heavy and humid at 6.30am, but Dunedin by midday was pretty cold. I wandered off towards what I thought was the Humanities building, but I was actually going in the opposite direction. Happy accident though, as I found the city's beautiful botanic gardens instead, full of New Zealand's amazing, diverse, and very noisy birds. I phoned home, hopefully quite cheaply thanks to Vodafone having an NZ service, then got more and more lost and soaked by the rain. (At least I'd had the sense to take my sandals off before I set out.) Eventually found my way back to campus, and into a cafe, looking completely ridiculous.

Crashed to sleep at 7pm, woke up today at 5am and went wandering around the city. Was surprised to find some dodgy streets ("LOCALZ ONLY" graffitied down a 300m stretch -- I walked quickly). Spent the rest of today working on music, about which I am still very apprehensive...

Tags: dunedin, newzealand, auckland

Labels: dunedin, music, newzealand, travelling

Due to an official secrets pact, these posts are only being released now.

[February 1st]

It was an epic journey, but I've arrived in Dunedin. This was my itinerary, after a missed connection in Auckland:

Wednesday January 30th

• 0644 Train from Stockport to London Euston
• 1010 Train from London Paddington to Heathrow Airport
• 1425GMT Flight to Los Angeles

Thursday January 31st

• 0200GMT Arrive Los Angeles
• 0400GMT Flight to Auckland

Friday February 1st

• 0545 NZ time Arrive Auckland
• 0800 NZ time Flight to Dunedin via Wellington
• 1100 Arrive Dunedin Airport
• 1130 Shuttle to Dunedin City
• 1215 Arrive

That's a good forty hours of continuous travelling. The worst part was the effect of cabin air on my already deteriorated skin; I'm frantically covering myself in emollients and steroids and things are beginning to improve. The second worst part was, on reflection, the airline food, although I had thought it fairly okay at the time. The third worst part was the chaos at Auckland domestic departures. The fourth worst part was opening up my free Air New Zealand bag on the Dunedin flight (which contained: Red Bull, bottle of water, indigestion tablets, mints, safety information, adverts, sunscreen, sunscreen lipstick, and... A SACHET OF TOMATO KETCHUP) only to realize that the tomato ketchup had exploded, covering everything. (They had no more bags, but did give me some tissues.)

The best part was chatting to a Year 12 exchange student from Lübeck. He was good fun - he broke a seat on the final connection to Dunedin, to which the flight attendant's response was to give him more Red Bull and a children's comic. He had a very good sense of humour, considering his age and the fact he's spent his whole life in a very quaint upper-middle class town in northern Germany. The second best part was swapping seats with a seven foot tall guy on the flight to Auckland. I only realized once I arrived here and saw him in the newspaper that he is an American basketball star, whose name I can't remember. But why was he flying economy?!

Tags: dunedin, newzealand, flight

Labels: dunedin, newzealand, travelling