John Martin's Notebook

Faithful unto death

Every time Christians suffer, we see in them the truth that Christ suffers too. Their blood is his own and their tears his very own and into this fellowship we are invited to share, writes Francis Omondi, chair of Trustees CMS Africa in a newly published article, Read it all

The Pope and the Foreign Office

The brouhaha about the leaked Foreign Office memo where among other things it was suggested there might be special "Benedict" condoms created for the occasion invites some reflections:

1. There's a debate presently about whether or not Christians in this country are persecuted. But make no mistake. If a memo like this had been directed to a visit by a major Muslim or Jewish dignitary there would be all hell to pay. Why the double standard?

2. It's a symbol of how despite Roman Catholic emancipation being on the statute books for many years, there remains close to the surface in British society a strong anti-Catholic reflex. It pops up quite often. It's part of the cocktail in public discourse about abusive priests.

3. The Foreign Office group assembled to work on the Papal visit didn't contain a single Roman Catholic. How in the world, then, did the FO think itself competent to handle all the nuances and sensitivities that go with a visit such as this? 

This, alas, seems to be the culture of the Civil Service. I'm told, that when DEFRA was putting together a team to tackle the Foot and Mouth outbreak it rejected people with agriculture degrees and tried to make a virtue of it. 

We get the politicians we deserve. What can we say about the civil service?

Photo: The Pope in Sydney for World Youth Day.sachman75 photo stream

He took bread (and wine)

Photo: Flickr tibchris

The Eucharist is packed full of symbolism. One point that specially appeals to me concerns the bread and the wine. Jesus made use of elements where there is an added value factor because they are the product of human manufacture, not just raw commodities - "fruit of the earth and work of human hands." By using bread and wine in the central ritual of the Christian faith Jesus is affirming the world of every day work.

So attending the Lent Course at our parish last night I found myself (unusually) lost for words. We generally use the York Course, but for a change this year decided to try the London course downloaded from the diocesan website. Week 1 was saved by a couple of very evocative poems. The quality of Week 2 wasn't nearly as good but we soldiered through.

This week we found stuff that would qualify for Pseud's Corner in Private Eye magazine. We are given the story of how St John's Church in Chatham was rendered beyond use by changes to the road system. At one stage it was put up for sale (unsuccessfully). So some bright spark decided to try using its disused space to produce grape vines hydroponically. Nice idea. The story of how the vines grew was great and apparently the wine is used at Rochester Cathedral. Why not?

But none of the lay people present could make head nor tail of why the course suggested this project added up to "a palpable ontology of loss." And why claim the wine produced has "no earthly origin" and is thus an example on how the Eucharist "can cross territorial boundaries"? Give me a good old fashioned Bible study any day.

A truer story 2: white man's burden

As I said earlier, truth telling is a big issue when writing about the missionary movement.It's a big temptation to indulge in hagiography, to over-blow the big personalities and edit out uncomfortable stuff. I hope one of my contributions at CMS has been to be create a culture that's hard-minded about the way we write about mission and the people involved in it.

For CMS, one of the biggest challenges has concerned mission and empire. As Diarmid McCullough's TV series, The History of Christianity, has shown, as often as not the expansion of the faith has been linked inextricably with imperial expansion. Canon Max Warren (left) the great CMS leader, once called the British Empire "the beloved enemy."  Empire created mission opportunities, but people within the missionary movement didn't always get things right.

The scramble by the European powers for empire presented a huge challenge to societies like the CMS. One side effect was that in the period up The Great War 1914-18, around half the missionaries of CMS were being repatriated with ill health.

Most of them were afflicted with psychological maladies. What was happening? One theory was the impact of an ethos summed up in 'The White Man's Burden', Rudyard Kipling's poem, written in 1899.

The first stanza goes thus:

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Read it all

CMS discourse was not exempt from attitudes summed up in this awful piece of doggerel. CMS's antique book collection contains a children's' book written around the time when Kipling's poem was in vogue. In Dwarf Land and Cannibal Country by Albert B Lloyd, has a preface by the then CMS President who says: Mr Lloyd ... "has been bearing his share of 'the white man's burden' of ruling, civilising and Christianising the 'silent peoples' of whom John Bull carries no less that 350 millions on his back. The duty is not a light one, but it gives an outlet for the energies of our people, an object worthy of an imperial race, a call to put forth the highest qualities of the Anglo-Saxon character."  

Now CMS works in a post-colonial ethos and the Anglicanism in which we are rooted is struggling to work out its place in a post-colonial world. More of that soon....

Telling a truer story 1

 

Illustration: Depiction of the mass execution of rebels in British India by cannon.

There are special challenges for journalists writing about the missionary movement. The point is well illustrated by a comment made to me by Dr David Barrett, one of the most fascinating people I've met on my travels. Barrett, founder of the World Christian Encyclopedia, once told me: "Too much of the literature of the missionary movement is self-congratulatory."

It's far easier to discern the speck in the eye of people from the past than in your own. On that I need to salute the integrity of a long line of CMS archivists and librarians who have seen to it that the legacy of CMS writing and publications is preserved for posterity, with all it's 'specks'. So thanks to Margaret Acton, our CMS librarian, for help here. I'll come back to this theme from time to time.

One of the treasures of the Max Warren Collection in the CMS library is a bound volume of liturgies, speeches and sermons from events held all over Britain and India, rejoicing at the defeat of the Indian Mutiny.The first sermon in the collection is by the Bishop of Calcutta, Daniel Wilson.

Here's a great example of how easily religion can be co-opted to serve the national interest. With 20-20 hindsight we might wonder how noone questioned the right of the British to be in India or the images of the World Faiths represented on the sub continent that are perpetuated. 

Top of the table for political incorrectness, and plain bad theology, has to be a sermon by the Rev R.B. Boswell BA, a former chaplain to the Bengali establishment. His sermon title says it all: 'Hope for India in England's God'.

Of course we know better these days, don't we?

 

Gateway to the Bogan

You store up a fund of pleasant memories and they stay with you. I will never forget a sensation that often entered my mind driving back home from university. Nine miles out you cross a ridge. Ahead was a first glimpse of the lights of the village of Bogan Gate. There's no feeling quite like the sense of coming home.

I will be mentioning Bogan Gate once in a while here. In fact I already have. For now, let's just consider the name. In popular Australian and New Zealand parlance, a Bogan is a hooligan, a hoodie, a yob. Local people, however, will tell you with pride that according to indigenous tradition it means birthplace of a great man (maybe even a prince). The village got its name having having grown up at one of the gates of Burrawang Station, a 520,000 acre sheep station: the gate faced the nearby Bogan River.

Burrawang still exists in cut down form. Just before the turn of the 19th-20th centuries the Australian government began to break up the great sheep stations first settled by squatters. My great-grandfather won two square miles of ex-Burrawang land in a ballot. He later bought a third square mile and named his spread Hillview. That's where I grew up.

As I often say, I pinch myself at the thought that a boy from Bogan Gate in the middle of nowhere could have had the rich life I've enjoyed. That's a story I'll follow through here from time to time.

Photo: Flickr bl1nk

 

Globalisation of cricket

A shot taken Down Under in Bowral NSW where Don Bradman the Australian cricket legend grew up. Bradman Oval and Museum is well worth a visit if you're keen on cricket. 'The Don' is without peer among many great Australian batsmen and shot to fame during the Great Depression of the 1930s where he became a beacon of hope to a generation hit by disillusion and lack of prospects.Sports heroes of all kinds have this effect on the poor but few are aware of the responsibility that goes with it..

Christians in Pakistan are at the bottom of the pile in their country. So the emergence of a young Christian batsman named Yousef Yohanna as a permanent fixture in the Pakistan test team was a huge fillip to the Christian community, in particular young men. Yousef was their Bradman.

Imagine, then, what happened to these hopes when Yousef announced he had embraced Islam, grew a beard and changed his name to Mohammed Yousef? 

I was in Pakistan at the time and I met Christian people who had befriended this young man, invited him to their homes and gave generous hospitality. They wouldn't speculate about what was going on in his heart, but pointed out that he alone among the Pakistan team had no bat sponsorship or other side earnings his team mates enjoyed.

Media pundits pointed out, moreover, that this cleared the way for him to eventually captain Pakistan, a prediction which came true.

On the international scene Pakistan cricket has a foot firmly on the bottom rung of the cricket ladder so in this world's terms who is going to blame Yousef for looking after his own interests?

Photo: Yousef, complete with beard and bat sponsorship, occupies the crease, Flickr  TreMichLan*'s photostream

What will be important to you in 30 years?

I've always been fond of palindromes  (words that read the same backward as forward). One reason for this is that my name in its original Hebrew is a palindrome. 

Click here for a very thought-provoking contra-palindrome film from YouTube. It takes just 1 min 44 seconds. Be sure you listen both forward and backward.

Leprosy stalks

There's a strange little window on the north side of the ancient St Mary's church Perivale, just down from our house. Curious I asked one of the volunteers working on restoration of the churchyard with its assortment of graves about it.

Apparently this little window was originally a peep hole that local lepers could use during service times. Leprosy is no longer a disease affecting people in the UK, but obviously it wasn't always such.

For thousands of years even breathing the word "leprosy" was enough to fill people with terror. Sufferers faced incurable disfigurement and physical disability and were cast out from their homes, families and communities.

According to the World Health Organisation it's caused by Mycobachterium leprae, "an acif-fast, rod-shaped bacillus." It attacks the skin, the periperal nerves, the respiratory tract and even the eyes, as well as hands and feet. Each year there re between 200,000 and 400,000 new cases and most at risk are rural people in south and south east Asia.

One of the marvelous things about Jesus was the way he flew in the face of all the fear and superstition that surrounded leprosy and those suffering with it. 

Great quotes on mission

"From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross." - Sadhu Sundar Singh (left)

"The Bible is not the basis of mission; mission is the basis of the Bible" - Ralph Winter

"We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God." - John Stott

"If the Church is 'in Christ,' she is involved in mission. Her whole existence then has a missionary character. Her conduct as well as her words will convince the unbelievers and put their ignorance and stupidity to silence." - David Bosch

"I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done for China…I don't know who it was…It must have been a man…a well-educated man. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing…and God looked down…and saw Gladys Aylward…And God said, "Well, she's willing." - Gladys Aylward

 Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell. I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell. – C T Studd (right)