Author: simon cross

Simon Cross is a community and spiritual activist, theologian, and interfaith facilitator. He speaks about spirituality and progressive approaches to Christianity, and has published on the phenomenon of New Monasticism, and Nature Connection in the Christian tradition.

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This is a little ‘omnibus’ edition of the Alternative Advent posts from this week. One of them is slightly edited from the one that went out by email. If you wish to receive future emails, sign up here.

The birth of the New Mexican Whiptail

One of the things that’s hard to believe about the Christmas story (their names are legion, for they are many) is, as I said last week, the idea of a virgin birth. For many reasons I don’t personally see that as a deal breaker, but I know lots of people do. So for those people, the objection ‘but that’s not how reproduction works’ is something of an issue. Hence the recourse to the language of miracles. But is it really so absurd to think that a baby could be born without any male (ahem) ‘involvement’?

If you think so, then perhaps you should take it up with a New Mexico Whiptail lizard, or a Aspidoscelis neomexicanus as they are known to ancient Romans. And presumably some scientists. The New Mexico Whiptails have dispensed with males altogether, and reproduce by means of ‘parthenogenesis’ – and they’re not the only ones. Parthenogenesis means (to my lay person’s brain) reproduction by means of an unfertilized egg. A variety of small creatures reproduce in this way, which at least saves them from the hassle of arguing about whose turn it is to feed the baby. (I know). Apparently even some birds can reproduce parthenogenically, extraordinary stuff! Or from their perspective: ordinary stuff!

Now, I’m not saying that Jesus was conceived parthenogenically, and I don’t think anyone else is either, but there are a couple of points I think are interesting to consider here. Firstly, we (I) are (am) prone to generalising ideas about what is possible, and what’s impossible. I may not believe in miracles, but that doesn’t mean that I’m right, nor that there may not be some very good reasons to believe in them. Our beliefs are formed, in part, through our experiences – these go to form the way we see the world too, which is what shapes our beliefs. We must remain alert to that, and I think we should also be open to having our minds changed too. Second thing that I think is interesting here is gender – a hot topic these days I know, and one which I’m not terrifically well qualified to pontificate on. But I think it’s interesting to consider how we understand what a ‘male’ and a ‘female’ are – and whether, in a world where single sex reproduction is certainly feasible in certain contexts, we need to be more thoughtful about how we characterise these ideas. What are the best arguments you’ve heard against some of the beliefs that you hold dear? How have your experiences shaped the way you understand gender?

The birth of Romulus and Remus

Do you remember Mars, the miraculously born god of war? It turns out that he wasn’t a nice guy. Shocker. There’s no sugar coating it, the mythical conception of the twins Romulus and Remus is not an altogether happy story, it involves Mars raping the vestal virgin (consecrated celibate priestess of the goddess Vesta) Rhea Silvia who then fell pregnant with twin boys. Because the babies were considered a threat to the rule of Rhea Silvia’s father, king Numitor, they were supposed to be taken away and killed, but instead they were set afloat on a river (bear that detail in mind, there are certain ideas which crop up in more than one ancient myth) they washed up on a river bank and were cared for by a she-wolf who cared for and suckled the infants. Anyway, after a spell of living as adopted wolf cubs, they were found and adopted by a shepherd. Ultimately they grew up to be shepherds too. Keeping that floating down the river thing in mind, is anyone spotting any parallels with any other old story they happen to know?

Having somehow managed to survive what it would be reasonable to describe as some ‘adverse childhood experiences’ the twins went on – through some more dramatic (of course) circumstances – to found the city of Rome that would go on to be a seat of imperial power. That’s right – it’s another origin story. Whodathunkit.

That there are common trends in miracle birth stories and origin stories is perhaps not so very surprising. Stories have templates, and it is helpful to be able to demonstrate why one particular hero fits meets certain requirements expected of such figures. Saying that something is mythical, though, is not the same as saying it’s not true. There are categories of truth that transcend simple ideas of what is ‘factual’ or what is ‘fictional’. Is a great work of literature somehow less truthful than a washing machine manual? Or is it simply able to convey a different kind of truth? You might like to think about these things: What does myth mean to you? Why do we sometimes prioritise one form of truth above others? What would it mean to ‘believe’ the story about Romulus and Remus?

The birth of Kamala and Amala   

There’s more than one kind of miracle baby. There are those who are born to virgins or to women who can’t medically conceive, that’s one type. But then there are also those babies who, having been born naturally enough become miracle babies in another way. For instance, the so called ‘feral children’. Yesterday we thought about the story of Romulus and Remus, who were raised by wolves. Pretty wild. But in the millennia since there have been other stories of human children raised by wolves, and by other animals. On the one hand, wow, but on the other… yikes.

The classic story of this sort is that of Kamala and Amala two little Bengali girls who were ‘found’ by Rev Joseph Singh, the rector of an orphanage. Rev Singh said he found the girls in a wolf’s den, and that although they were human, they continued to act as though they were wolves for the remainder of their lives. Walked around on all fours, ate raw meat, that sort of thing. The trouble with the story is that it relies entirely on the report that Rev Singh wrote in his ‘diary’, which on further examination turned out not to be entirely authentic. Similarly a photograph of the girls has been dated to several years after the girls died.

In this story we find lots of interesting things – in the first place in all the ‘feral child’ stories that I’ve ever heard there’s usually an issue of neglect. There are parents who have left their babies to fend for themselves along with the animals of the household for instance. Or children who have been abandoned somehow and cared for by animals like dogs or monkeys. Often these kids have physical or mental developmental problems, potentially a factor in their abandonment in the first place. I’ve personally known children who have experienced the kind of neglect that leads them to be, if not feral, almost entirely uncommunicative with adults. I’ve known kids who would forage food from bins too, and others who would resist being touched – for good reason. Whether or not Kamala and Amala were really raised by wolves, and on balance they probably weren’t, there’s something in this idea of the feral child which asks deep questions about the way children are to be understood and treated when they aren’t “normal”. What is normality? Should it surprise us that animals might be more accepting of a human child than it’s own parents? Are there social structures that we’ve all basically agreed to which impose ideas of ‘normality’ on our children that don’t account for their individuality or uniqueness?

The birth of an alleged scam

In 2004 the Kenyan authorities began the task of trying to extradite ‘Archbishop’ Gilbert Deya who had emigrated to the UK where his thriving brand of evangelical Christian ministry continues today. Several years later, and after some serious legal battling, Deya was removed to Kenya to face trial for child trafficking. Today the trial is ongoing, having been severely delayed by Covid-19 and by various challenges from Deya’s legal team. In the meantime the Archbishop’s estranged wife has been imprisoned for her part in the scheme, which Deya has since blamed on her. As you do.

So what was the alleged crime? Part of Deya’s UK ministry involved the prayer for miracle babies, for women who were unable to conceive. For these miracle babies to be conceived the women had to fly to Kenya where, after prayer and eating certain herbs they would be taken to a ‘clinic’ where – miraculously – they would be delivered of a baby. One woman reportedly had three miracle babies in a year. As part of the investigation into the scheme twenty babies were taken from their ‘mothers’ after being found to have no biological links with them. The real mothers weren’t identified. Tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy. A British judge said congregation members were “deceived” by Deya, adding that he was motivated by “the most base of human avarices: financial greed”. One of his adverts said: ‘send your donation and expect your miracle’.

There is no doubting the deep agony that people go through when conception is difficult or impossible. It’s a tale as old and as tragic as time itself. That some people have sought to turn this agony into a fundraising opportunity is unspeakable, but has heritage. Recourse to prayer for a miracle is a natural enough reaction for anyone going through a great difficulty – I’ve done it, I can’t even rule out doing it again even though, personally, I don’t actually believe in miracles. When confronted by reporters Deya claimed: “things of God cannot be explained by human beings…” Oh really. How convenient Gilbert. Do you think that there are such mysteries? Do you have any examples of things you can’t explain? Whether or not you believe in a God, or a god, do you think there are things which defy rationality? Does it even matter?

The birth of a monster

The story of how Mary Shelley came to write what was (probably) the world’s first science fiction novel ‘Frankenstein’ is almost as famous as the story itself. Holed up on the shores of Lake Geneva in a time of a global Cholera pandemic, Mary Shelley (only 19 at the time) her lover Percy Shelley, the dissolute Lord Byron and his doctor Polidori along with a few others eventually stopped discussing death and politics long enough to have a scary story writing competition. Polidori came up with Vampyre, thereby spawning a gazillion myths of his own, and Mary created the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monster.

Frankenstein’s monster is not a miracle birth as such, because he’s no baby – not physically anyway. But in bringing together various body parts and then animating this newly assembled body with the exciting new technology of the time: electricity (the first electric motor would be invented a couple of years later, and Edison’s lightbulb was still some way off) Mary Shelley was asking what the creation of life was all about. It doesn’t take a genius to draw parallels between the description of Victor Frankenstein “my cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement” and popular imagery of the genius computer programmer hunched over a terminal developing an artificial intelligence – the exciting new technology of our own time.

There are some miracle baby stories which are clearly questions about what it means to create life – after all, the whole ‘concept’ of conception is an extraordinary one, perhaps we’re too used to it to be surprised at the idea of a baby taking shape in the way it does. It is natural, perhaps, that some people will find themselves continuing to ask about the potential for technology to give us the powers once reserved for God – the power to create life. How do you feel about the possibilities of artificial intelligence? Is it something which worries you, or are you excited by it? I’ve argued elsewhere that Frankenstein’s monster fits in a pattern of ‘green men’ – iconic depictions of ways that we can explain how humans came to exist. Can you think of other types of ‘green man’ images which might have something to do with ideas about the origin of human life?

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I write an ‘Alternative Advent’ email series every year, this year I’m going to post the text of the emails here two or three at a time, in case you miss any or simply don’t want to sign up. If you want future emails in your inbox, you should go here.

I suppose we’re all used to the Christmas story now, if you live in the UK then by the time you’re an adult you’re likely to have heard it dozens of times, hundreds perhaps. This familiarity leaves us almost immune to the bizarre and jarring details of the story. For a start we tend to combine the different gospel accounts to make one story, ignoring the fact that they are quite different – contradictory even. They are certainly written with different audiences in mind, so it’s reasonable to think that the writers are trying to make different points.

To tell the truth the whole of Christmas is pretty weird, long-time subscribers will know that I’ve tended to call it absurd. We celebrate it by bringing a tree into our house, for pity’s sake. Then, because of course trees themselves are famously ‘a bit plain’ we chuck a load of shiny things on them, sometimes we even put an angel on the top, or a fairy, which seems like an uncomfortable thing when you think about it.

One of the weird or absurd aspects of the Christmas story is the whole thing of Jesus’ miraculous birth. It has become an article of faith for certain strands of Christianity which won’t brook any talk of the Christ having been born by natural means. So the miraculous birth is a key part of the tradition of Christmas weirdness. Even a claim to uniqueness in certain quarters. But there are many stories of miraculous births or miracle children from around the world. Over the period of Advent I’m going to tell a short version of a handful of them. It’s an Advent-ure that will take us around the world and across long spells of time. Think of it as one of the less exciting Doctor Who episodes, one where the Doctor just goes around hearing about miracle births over and over again and wondering what they can tell us about our contemporary world. Because there is something, perhaps more than one thing, that we can take from it all. But there’s no Daleks. I’ll try and finish each day with a thing or two to think about or talk about with… I dunno, whoever you talk to – so for today: What does the idea of the virgin birth mean to you? How important do you think it is for Christians (no assumptions from me about whether you are one or not) to believe in the ‘reality’ of a virgin birth?

The birth of Qi

It’s quite common for a people group to have a founding myth – a story that tells them about themselves, why they are here, and how they are fundamentally different to other people. These stories need to have an origin point, where did we all come from? If you’re particularly unfortunate you may have read something I wrote about this on the subject of Green Men. I might return to Green Men later in this series, you never know your luck. Anyway, there are other creation myths, like the story of the birth of Hou Ji.

Hou Ji’s mother was Jiang Yuan, a consort of an Emperor called Ku. This was in what is now China by the way, in case you hadn’t guessed. The story dates back to around about 2400 BCE. Ish. According to the hymn ‘Birth of our people’ the virgin Jiang Yuan ‘trod in a toe-print’ made by God and became pregnant as a consequence. It was one of ‘those births’ “no bursting, nor rending, no injury, no hurt…” Hou Ji is also known as Qi, which, I understand, also means ‘abandoned’. This makes sense in the context of the hymn which also tells us that the miracle baby was cared for by sheep and oxen, and then visited by kindly wood cutters. Hmmm… sounds a bit familiar. Eventually he grew up to be a miracle worker. Pretty cool, but haven’t I heard this story somewhere else?

Hou Ji is understood both to be of the lineage of the Yellow Emperor, aka Huangdi Neijing a mytho-historical figure (in other words he is probably partly historic, partly mythological, like… I dunno, King David?) And he was also a divine figure. Again, not an altogether unfamiliar idea to those of us who have read other stories of miracle births perhaps. It makes you think though… What do you think when you hear stories like this which don’t belong to your tradition? How do the sacred stories of other cultures fit into your understanding of the way that the world works? What other founding myths do you know?

The birth of Mars

Second only to Jupiter in the Roman Pantheon is Mars, the god of chocolate. No! The god of war! Except he wasn’t always the god of war, but we’ll come back to that. Mars’ mum was Juno, the queen of the gods of course, anyway, one day Juno was touched by a magic plant (could happen to anyone) and ended up giving birth to Mars. It’s an everyday tale of divine folk.

In case you’re a bit rusty on your Roman gods, Juno was the daughter of Saturn and the wife of Jupiter. The top female deity really. She was also the protector of Rome, so pretty hardcore you might say. But Juno is a complex figure, which is the least you’d expect of a deity really, and like all these gods of classical antiquity it is what she represents that is important. Ultimately Juno is the god of fertility, in our culture fertility has become a privatised thing I suppose, but then of course it was much more of a social concern, because fertility was about wealth. Juno then is the god, or goddess, of wealth. Her first born, Mars, was conceived by a plant and therefore was the god of crops and harvests. I perceive a link…

But as time wore on Roman wealth became about something more martial than planting beans and such. It was about empire, and with that move, Mars changed role too, becoming the god of war. Juno is pretty fierce too by the way. What purpose do these deities serve in the Roman world? They stand for the things that society holds dear – the fertility of humans, animals and plants, the protection of a people, and the ability to take stuff from others by force. These gods aren’t just strange deities that sit on a mountain top, they embody the values of the cultures who worshipped them. When or how are we guilty too of making gods in our own image? How do our concepts of what is ultimately important change through our lives? What is your instinctive reaction to the idea of those classical gods?

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Learning to look on the world around us, and the things to happen to us with a sense of gratitude is a powerful thing. The link between gratitude and happiness or ‘subjective well being’ is well documented by researchers, (see example studies here: 1, 2, 3) who have found that, no matter how young or old someone may be, developing a grateful attitude is likely to make a person feel happier.

Older man smiling: image from morguefile.com

Being grateful also changes the way we interact with others, we respond to them differently, with more positivity and patience. That’s why gratitude is often called a strength. One theory about why this works is that being grateful helps us to feel like things in our lives have meaning, and meaningfulness seems to make us happy. It certainly does feel good to think that what you’re doing has some greater purpose, as David Graeber’s book ‘Bullshit Jobs‘ points out, there’s little as tediously grim as doing something utterly pointless all day long.

So how can we develop a more grateful attitude in, and to, the world around us?

Maybe you were taught to ‘count your blessings’ as a child, and certainly what is sometimes known as ‘grateful recounting’ can be a helpful thing to do. But grateful recounting relies quite heavily on the person doing the recounting to feel like they have good things in their life. It also relies on them to enjoy the process of doing the recounting, once it starts to feel like a chore, they are likely to pack it in.

A simple gratitude practise that doesn’t rely on all being right with the world, and having to rehearse the same old lists over and over again is as follows:

Think of one person who you are really glad exists.

Concentrate and think about that person for a while, think about the reasons that you are glad of them, think about the things you like about them. Think about the reasons they came to mind in the first place; the time you spent with them; the memories you have.

If you are able to, think about the sensations that you associate with them, the textures, the smells, and the sounds, as well as the things you can see. If it’s someone you don’t know well or have never even met, then think about the way that you found out about them.

Spend five minutes thinking about that person, smile, then come back into the present moment.

If you are able to, try to make this a regular practice – daily perhaps, or every few days. make sure it’s an enjoyable experience, something you’re going to want to do again. Sit in a comfy chair perhaps, or just somewhere quiet. Let it become a habit.

Let gratitude for people become a habit, and the science tells us that you are likely to feel happier, more content and more able to be deal with difficult people and situations.

If you want to take this a step further, then why not begin to let people know about your gratitude for them. If you are grateful someone exists, why not let them know? A short email, a postcard, a text message or phone call… you can even do it anonymously if you like (not the phone call, that would be creepy). Pass on that sense of gratitude to others, and help make the world a more positive place.

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Geordie musician Paul Handyside first made waves back in the 80s as a vocalist for post punk indie popsters Hurrah! who carved out a respectable career in a decade which wasn’t exactly short of leather jacket clad lads in guitar bands. Now, some three decades or so since Hurrah! went the way of all flesh and said Goodbye!, he’s a music biz veteran, playing his own brand of Tyne-tinged Americana against the backdrop of a cultural landscape which seems determined to hark back to the political desertification of his heyday.

Loveless Town, the latest release from Handyside, whose voice doesn’t so much betray his indie origins as highlight them, brings together musical stylings familiar to country connoisseurs and lyrical themes that situate him squarely in post Brexit Britain. For those who loved his 80s snarl, there’s plenty to enjoy about the way he fits his mouth around the lyrics here, but in maturing Handyside seems to have developed a strength and depth of tone which gives him, in places, an almost Gospel sound on songs like ‘Only You’ and ‘Don’t Let Your Heart Be A Hotel’.

Occasional hints of throwback jangly guitar interweave with lap steel and melodeon, piano and organ to deliver a sublime alt rock Americana sound that veers too far towards the stadium in places (‘Lord, Show Yourself’; ‘New Frontier’) to be conventionally country. The mournful tone, however, which seems to fit so well with the zeitgeist, feels as though it really is all the way from Memphis – but perhaps it’s much closer to home: the haunting folk tune of ‘Hartley Pit Catastrophe’ couldn’t come from anywhere but the deep seated cultural memories of the North East.

Newcastle and surrounding areas has managed to maintain a flourishing music scene over the years, but the Covid months have brought about tough times for Singer Songwriters, even those with the sort of pedigree and skill that Handyside has. With over a year’s worth of gigs cancelled it can’t be easy for musicians like him to keep going, but as with so many things, we’re in danger of not knowing what we’ve got until it’s gone. On Loveless Town we get a great reminder of what riches exist, even in these dark times. Album release date 21/5/21, get it, and previous releases via Bandcamp.

File under: Alt Rock; Americana; Country; Singer Songwriter

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In her famous and controversial book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ the political philosopher Hannah Arendt reflected on the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, noting that to a great extent the philosophy of National Socialism was accepted by the population. Few Germans are singled out by Arendt as having stood up against the Nazis, one is Heinrich Gruber, the protestant theologian of whom Arendt is somewhat dismissive in terms of his impact. Arendt reserves her only real words of praise for the actions of Sophie and Hans Scholl, two students at the University of Munich who along with their friends, Willi Graff, Alexander Schmorrell and Christoph Probst led a leaflet campaign against the rise of Nazism. The White Rose conspirators were captured and put to death by guillotine in 1943.

In his Graphic Novel, Freiheit! Italian artist and animator Andrea Grosso Giponte tells the story of the Scholls and their friends, revolving around the production of their fateful leaflets, and the eventual capture of Hans and Sophie as they distributed the sixth and final publication in their series. Grosso employs a subdued colour palette throughout, reflecting both the sombre nature of the story and the times that it represents. A very skilled artist, Grosso moves from impressionistic watercolour type imagery to stark photo-realist style with the ebb and flow of the story. At times the art is almost brutalist – but never quite so brutal as what took place in Germany, or what happened to the Scholls.

In form the book is effectively a short biography, making it ideal as an introduction for anyone who has never heard about the White Rose before, but it’s also an extended meditation on courage and fortitude and the moral imperative in the face of incredible odds.

Those who ‘did their duty’ and followed the rule of law in Germany at the time sometimes turned to the work of Immanuel Kant to justify their actions, claiming that they were doing their duty as citizens. Arendt and others returned to Kant to point out that the real duty of all German citizens at the time was to turn their backs on duty, and to rebel against the regime. This is a story of a small group of ordinary-extraordinary people who had the rare moral and physical courage to listen to their conscience and act accordingly.

“Offer passive resistance – resistance – wherever you may be…” urged the White Rose conspirators in their first leaflet, the text of which is reproduced at the end of the book. That these words should have had to come from a group of young people – some of the very few who managed to put up any kind of meaningful resistance to the Nazis is haunting. It’s a stark reminder to us all that the young offer more than naivete when it comes to political discourse.

“Every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure…” the group say in that same first leaflet – a message that we all do well to consider carefully.

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For the last few years I have ‘done something’ for Lent. I think it started a few years back when I took part in a 40 day fast for a food poverty campaign – I thought ‘if I can go without food for forty days, then I can probably do other things too.’ After not eating for six weeks, everything else seemed easy.

That’s how my daily emails began – as a Lent thing. That was before email newslettery things became cool again. I was just giving folk a few things to think about during the whole season of Lent. And then it just carried on for years and years and…

But then 2021 came along, and I didn’t feel like Lent was going to be a time for doing difficult things, or making people think about troubling subjects. So instead I thought I would send people postcards.

I got the idea when I saw that during the 2020 lockdown a theatre company had done a play ‘by post’ – a story told in a series of postcards. I thought – ‘that’s a good idea.’ I am deliberately remaining vague, but with my postcards there will be stuff for you to think about on the back, and the images on the front. Taken together the images will also do something interesting.

I really wasn’t sure if anyone would want to take part, so I sent out a speculative email. It turns out that lots of people do want to – I have another project on my hands.

There’s not much time before I commit to buying a certain number of postcards and stamps – so if you want to get involved – you need to click here. The whole thing will cost you £7.00. Some people have asked me if they can buy bundles of postcards to send to their friends, that too can be arranged if we’re quick – just get in touch if you want to arrange that.

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Faith after Doubt by Brian D. McLaren | Waterstones

One of the things that make Brian McLaren such a great writer is his tremendous fluidity with words – he is the kind of author who draws you along with the flow of his prose while others seem determined to trip you up with theirs. There’s a risk though, with authors who have this persuasive and easy going prose style, that their content doesn’t hit the sort of heights you might want it to. At first I was concerned this might be the case here – I’ve read many books about spiritual development and I was worried that McLaren was going to present a simplified version of other schemas. I shouldn’t have worried – not only is this a deliciously good read, it is also full of quality ingredients.

McLaren, a pastor and an educator, presents a gentle and hopeful picture of the direction in which doubt can lead us. Rather than presenting a simplified version of ideas by the likes of Fowler and Rohr, he actually improves on them – and demonstrates convincingly why those who spend a lot of time in theological reflection often find it particularly hard to find a home in the church to which they belong.

He correctly (I think) identifies key moments of crisis that precipitate movement from one stage of spiritual development to another and speaks insightfully of the ever-present split between conservative and progressive ‘wings’ of Christianity.

It feels like a very timely book – one which sets out to explain the problem that a lot of people are currently facing as the faith ‘journey’ seems to accelerate so that the kind of experiences that were once commonly faced towards the end of life are now often faced in middle age or even earlier. It is written through the lens of someone who has walked the path and has emerged with the sort of acceptance which characterises the truly spiritually mature. “I do not regret my journey of faith and doubt, because I do not regret who I have become.” He notes. Not enough of us are able or willing to talk about doubt and the part it has to play in our lives – but without it we remain stuck, for we must learn to lose if we wish to gain anything of great value. If you want that pearl of great price, after all, you must first sell all you have.

The book begins with a Paul Tillich quote which seems to serve as a touchstone for McLaren: “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, it is an element of faith… Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.”

I’ve read a number of Brian’s books – and his early work was important at a formative time in my own spiritual development. This, I think, may be his best work yet.

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A cartoon image of Joseph and Mary outside a refugee support centre.

Ever got fed up with the usual schmaltz on your Christmas cards?

Ever thought about the fact that the Christmas story is also a refugee story?

Its tough to celebrate one refugee refugee story while ignoring thousands of others though, isn’t it.

As part of my Alternative Advent project for this year I’ve commissioned some ‘alternative’ Christmas card images, to remind us of the blood and guts in the original story and to raise some cash for refugee charities.

So if you send Christmas cards, get your hands on these limited edition prints of original artworks that I’ve made into very special Christmas cards, each of which reflects something of the real Christmas story.

Artwork is courtesy of Dean Rankine (Simpsons comics), Steve Beckett (The Beano), Stu McLellan (book illustrator) and Siku (The Manga Bible), and profits will be handed over to Safe Passage, a charity which works with refugee children.

There are about 80 million “displaced people” around the world today, and the United Nations say that more than half of all the world’s refugees are children. That’s a huge number however you choose to look at it, it works out around one percent of the entire world population.

Christmas is a refugee story, and Jesus was a refugee. His family fled when they knew that soldiers were on their way to kill him, it’s an experience that too many (any is too many, but in this case we’re talking millions) children and their families continue to have.

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Tripp Fuller, the American founder and host of the Homebrewed Theology Podcast can take credit for advancing the understanding of more than just open and relational theologies among a portion of the Church. He should, however, surely be particularly recognised for his work popularising the work of amazing Process theologians such as John Cobb and Catherine Keller among his contemporaries. He is currently working in Edinburgh University on a project which addresses the apparently conflicting worlds of science and faith.

In this book Fuller demonstrates his own theological prowess, cleverly drawing out the theologies of others to develop a holistic Christology of his own. Fuller has an impressively broad frame of reference, having developed a deep understanding of and respect for the work of a range of theological thinkers and ideas. He pings off names both familiar and perhaps less familiar to progressive Christians on both sides of the Atlantic, and places them into discussion with their interlocutors. His writing is in places passionate, but remains clear and well expressed. At points he executes a really neat turn of phrase that will leave you wanting more.

Much like the rest of his work, which seems to be aimed at bringing together apparently diverse strands of thinking, the book is primarily developed around the dialogue between pairings of theologians. Throughout Fuller seeks to extend apparently contrasting approaches to develop something which he says is lacking from much contemporary theological discourse, a clear answer to the Christological question from the perspective of an informed ‘liberal’ Christianity. I agree that this is a live issue.

Where there are problems in the book, they are not due to his theology – unless that is you take ‘open and relational’ to mean something other than broadly process oriented, a mistake few serious theology scholars are likely to make. Even if that were the case, it’s unlikely that one would have room to take meaningful issue with the quality of his thought or the accuracy of his representation of the work of others.

At times though I felt there were terms which would have benefitted from some clarity of definition: I’ve already mentioned the word ‘liberal’ for instance, and I found it to be used generously but without clarity of definition. My view is that it is not so clear in its definition (at least not in the UK) as to pass entirely without comment. One might argue that in this case the meaning becomes clear in its context, but I think that some clarity on it from the start would have been an advantage. A smart editor should perhaps have picked this up. My other criticism is linked: I also found that the occasional textual editing error crept into the book – a minor issue perhaps, and maybe not even worthy of a complaint, but these errors of formatting and grammar were enough to occasionally catch my eye and thereby my attention.

That leads me to my main point about the book – this is serious theology, it’s not a book from which you particularly want your attention to be distracted. However, it’s also readable, Fuller sweeps the reader along very well, and through some reasonably complex territory. He does this partly by flicking back occasionally to short and pacey sentences, in places as short as just one word, and repeated mantra type phrases such as: “Christology is a disciple’s discipline” or “Christology is a disciple’s dogma”.

Ultimately, in his own development of an articulated and articulatable open and relational Christology, Fuller reiterates his initial challenge: that such an endeavour must be able to take into account the historical Jesus, the existential register of faith and the metaphysical ‘referent’ to God. In doing this the reader comes to realise that of course Fuller has already given them the answer they seek in his title, his Christology concerns the idea that God invests God’s self in the world. As this ‘divine self-investment’ occurs God receives back into God’s self “all that the world becomes” – ‘so far, so Cobb…’ one might say. Fuller expands on this however, developing on the idea that God shares in the travails of the world such that God too needs salvation. Here Fuller answers not just the question of what it means to call Jesus the Christ, but also Joan Osborne’s more personal and experiential question: ‘what if God was one of us?’

There is a lot to love about this book, Fuller has a beautiful way with phrasing and his comprehension of and elucidation of the work of some brilliant theologians is superb. I think I will be returning to it quite often. It isn’t necessarily a book that evangelicals will love, I feel, but for those drawn to an open and relational approach to Christianity, this may well provide the answer they need to the Christological conundrum.

by on

In his feature length film ‘Hosea’, writer director Ryan Daniel Dobson adapts the ancient story of Hosea, an axial age Jewish prophet, for the twenty first century. The original story is one of destruction and redemption, and this new take follows a similar path, but with added complexities. Crucially, rather than foreground the ‘usual’ principal character, Dobson has placed at the centre of his story the complex and meaning-laden existence of Cate a woman whose story is intended to parallel that of Gomer in the original.

Where the book of Hosea is more interested in the prophet than his troubled wife, this film is really Cate’s story rather than that of her husband. Replete with stark and disturbing themes of abuse, exploitation, self harm, addiction, and intimate partner violence, Hosea as a film and Cate as a character hold up a cracked mirror to contemporary society. Pleasingly, Dobson deliberately pulls back from offering the usual easy answers that one might expect in this sort of story, without allowing spoilers into the review I can still say that even the ending defies the conventional narrative expectations.

Cate, played by Camille Rowe, is sensitively cast and played, with some strong supporting actors in Josh Pence (particularly good) and Avi Nash among others. Her strength and fragility are at the core of the story. There is always the danger in a film like this of ending up in cliche territory at least once or twice, but my feeling was that Dobson’s script steered clear of this. There’s perhaps only the vaguest hint of polemic in his writing, although some messages come through clearly – particularly around mental illness and exploitation. The intent though seems to be to spark discussion rather than offer predigested answers, and there’s a lot to draw upon in the film: issues of religion and culture, sex and intimacy, substance abuse and mental health all spring readily to mind. Beyond that though the story explores what it really means to reconstruct, and what it means to be damaged (and indeed to damage). It asks us why we are so desperate to save things in a particular way, what is it that gives us the right and the privilege to tell others how their lives should be lived.

Hosea – the film – is really a parable, a story which lends itself to considerable amounts of unpacking and discussion. It’s a religious story for a post secular world, which turns a gentle but unflinching eye back toward the viewer.

Due to the themes and content, it’s rated 18+, and it does contain triggers and scenes which some viewers may find disturbing. Recommended.