The US

Written on 15th September 2016. America. Virginia. Christian college - Regent campus.

Donald Trump is against Hilary Clinton to get into the White House, but sexism is still alive and kicking. I suppose the thing which has really interested me is the way that faith issues are talked about so openly in all the US media. It seems healthier than the UK in that respect.

I am sitting on a kind of picnic table on the Regent College campus where a friend works in the School of Divinity here. I have been lucky enough to have a holiday in America. It is a Christian college founded by Pat Robertson who lives in a huge house nearby. His house is protected by the police 24/7 as he has received death threats recently. He has employed his family to work at the TV station here - CBN, one of the largest Christian TV news stations in the world. In some ways it is like old Constantinople, and may be the closest I have been where a Christian community is in the majority, apart from Christian festivals and churches. As such, I am interested to see how the place feels and whether it really is the utopia I have imagined a revival might be.

I have been told that I have romanticised what a revival is. Usually, a person will romanticise the past but it looks as if I am perceived to romanticise the future. Not a comfortable place for someone with a pessimistic bias. If a revival is an abundance of Christians, then you could say that this Bible belt area is in a kind of revival. But do the believers also need to change their ways?

I asked my friend if things were better here. He thought that there were a whole new set of problems and that poverty and unemployment, drug use and alcoholism were still major issues. As if to bring this message home I was taken to a kind of faith-based soup kitchen. There was a service before the meal and I was asked to give a brief talk about my life story. I wanted to keep it short, aware that the congregation were hungry and had come for the clothes and food. As I spoke, I wondered why people were wandering around, talking and why there was some disruption at the back of the hall. It turned out that the microphone wasn't working and they had missed most of the life story. The story of my life. When the microphone began to work and I realised what had happened, I managed to say a few words about Christ helping me to be drug-free. I said that Jesus can make people's lives better and that when suffering we need gentleness and love. My nerves betrayed me and I had clutched the microphone like it was a cliff-top. It was the usual anti-victorious-Christian scene I am so good at. They clapped politely. Afterwards, the preacher went on too long and the people were hungry. I remembered Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London where he was so scathing of the do-gooders who made people listen to long sermons in exchange for food and accommodation.

I helped to hand out bread and vegetables tied together in heavy plastic bags, aware of the humiliation of being a black person accepting help from a relatively privileged white guy. The stained polystyrene roof sparkled with a kind of ironic glamour, like the glamour of the pound stores at Christmas time in the UK. One female volunteer at the soup kitchen said that there were miracles among the poor. But she was hunched and in need of healing herself. It was a rumour. A man named Ali, a thin black man with a face that suggested a life story better than mine, came for food.

"What is it like to live here?" I asked.

"There isn't that much racial tension or violence," he replied, before asking what the Queen was like.

But I only saw the poverty and contrast between rich and poor in this place. And as I write, on the Christian campus which charges students large sums for education, between Pat Robertson's huge house, TV station and college campus where he employed his family in what seemed like more of a business than a ministry. Perhaps it was a simplistic view - that the glamorous chandeliers and mansion-like staircases at the college were necessary to gain students, to get customers, to make money. That the nepotism was fair and right and good. I dont think nepotism is always wrong or a sin, but it can be if there is a more qualified candidate. It is so widespread in the world and the Church anyway. It was a simplistic view of a far more complicated reality, and yet I wondered why that view was always refuted. And seeing the contrast between rich and poor I concluded that yes, I really had romanticised revival. It was not what I wanted to believe. There were huge problems here.

"Why are Christians so weird?" asked a student at the college coffee store. And if I had dug deeper, if I had really, really dug deep, would I have found what I was looking for? 'Seek and you shall find' being a spiritual law. But I hadn't wanted to find a community which had so many problems. I had wanted to find, been seeking for, a utopia. And now I had to face facts. Revival is not utopia. There would still be great problems. And every ideal feels like that, like some kind of compromise or a lowering of hope. And that is hard. And once again the question:

'But would it make things better?'

A Buddhist Perspective

2015

Of course, there were other faiths which I didn’t encounter so much. I could spend 25 more years finding the views of so many other faiths. From animists to Mormons, I would be spending my life asking for new perspectives. It was confusing enough as it was. For example: ‘What is the view of those who are male family members of those who have spontaneously combusted before the age of 50?’ – a trite question like that illustrated the plethora and range of perspectives out there. Literally, every human being has an opinion on it – even if that opinion is ‘I don’t really think about it much.’

But there are other faiths which have significant memberships and which needed to be covered…

I asked a Buddhist what he thought about the subject… he was a convert and highly intelligent, particularly skilled in his knowledge of history.

James

“We don’t need a Christian revival... although you might. We need to work out where our future lies now that we are no longer the world’s pre-eminent power, and create a new social compact to replace the old one that broke down irretrievably in the 1960’s. The days of deference to the old class-based structure have gone, and with it came a challenge to all established authority such as the Church and crown. 

The task for all post-Christian nations is to work out a civil morality to replace a Christian one that most of the population no longer believe in. That is already happening, and Christian thinking will be a major part of it because it’s what we know. However, if the churches try to impose it then Christianity will be marginalised just as the old religions of Britain were when Christianity arrived on these shores.”

Do we need a revival? Or is it just a preference? There is a sense in which it is not absolutely necessary for some... but it is absolutely necessary for others. In some ways it can even be a life and death issue. There would still be bad news and awful things happening, but as very few of us have lived through a revival, it is hard to do more than speculate at this point. Perhaps a better question is 'Would it make things better for most of the people, or would it be better never to happen?'

But even those who are set against it might find some interest in the lively debates which would occur. At the moment, many of those debates (often online), tend to be grim, graceless flame-wars. Perhaps a revival would temper those wars and make them a little more enjoyable. Life, after all, would be hideous if it were not tempered by love.

Next week I will be changing the style of this blog and moving on to some wider unexplored issues.

The Economists' Perspective

 

2014

 

This is going to be a dry entry. Basically, we are talking money and law. Please feel free to stop now if you are not interested… I'm not going to be talking about World War III and weapons of mass destruction here...

I'm not sure how we can make something which is so intrinsically interesting, so boring, but somehow we manage it. For those who still remain, thank you. As far as I could see, I was the only one writing about the economic and social impact of a modern-day revival. I was also in the minority among revivalists in being a liberal Christian. Think about it – if there was to be a modern revival, there would be an impact on society, a knock-on effect on laws (even if the new Christians were simply petitioning and lobbying). There would also be an influence on the economy because the revival would probably be coming from a grass-roots level. The more people who became Christians, the more people would support charities. The fewer people would be involved in things like drugs. And what would be the influence on the alcohol and nicotine trade? Historically, people drink less during a revival. Christians still drink, but there is a knock-on effect on these trades.

It's a minefield. People feared what should happen, if they ever thought about it. They assumed it would be a little like the US where abortion was eventually discouraged. Would the pro-lifers here also gain support? Probably. But what about the pro-choice Christians? I will write about the LGBT+ community later on this blog.

In October 2014 I went to see Robert Peston speak on economics at the Cheltenham Literature festival. I found the lecture boring, full of significant, yet dry graphs showing how precarious the economy was after the collapse of 2008. Strangely, the only thing that really struck me were the words of the man who introduced Robert Peston. The compere said: “It’s Sunday morning and the local churches want to know where everyone is.” The hall was full of around 500 people. There were probably a lot more people at churches but there were also a lot of people shopping or simply in their homes. Why did people seem to be everywhere but in churches (or reading my blog)?

And that was the problem among economists. There was speculation of all kinds of financial situations. Recessions. Boom and bust. Various countries economies growing. The cost-of-living crisis.

But no-one really took account of the black swan theory. A black swan among economists is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation. It does not come up on financial forecasts for a company or a country, because no-one expects to see it. Just like a black swan. But black swans exist, though they are rare. In hindsight, people often say they were obvious all the time.

In this case, the black swan was a Christian revival. People simply didn’t expect it.

 

The economy is complex and influenced by all kinds of factors, property, unemployment, tax, etc, etc, etc. I’m not financially illiterate but I was bored senseless by most of it. Presumably a revival would be good for the economy too as God blessed the nation? You would think so. But in the cost-of-living crisis which began proper in 2022, hot on the heals of a pandemic, almost everybody was having to cut back on luxuries. And once again, it was the poor who lost out the most. How were they supposed to weather the storm? Revival is good news for the poor, to put it simply, because people help each other more during one and have more concern for them. It’s not necessarily that people work harder and that there is a knock-on effect on the economy. Some people can’t do that. It is because there is more compassion within society and people help each other out. There is much historical evidence for this. And as a result, though shares may not rise and the country may still be in debt, individuals get help with their personal debts and their personal affairs. Sometimes the church helps, through organisations such as Christians Against Poverty. Or food banks. And then the emergency measures become measures to tackle the root causes of the problems – some of which stem from a lack of meaning among the general population. When meaning is found, even if that meaning is simply the compensation of eternal life and a better life this side of eternity, people start to feel more motivated in whatever they choose to do?

As I say, a dry post. It’s only money.

 

 

 

A Jewish Perspective

October 2010 University of Birmingham

 

I went to see the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks for his talk on the role of faith in modern day Britain, in an event organised by the Jewish Society (JSoc).

He stated that he saw faith as a force for good in society. As he entered the room everybody stood up out of respect... except for the Jewish lady sitting next to me. Quite impressed by her rebelliousness I sat back down and said how standing to show respect was such an outdated tradition. She informed me that she was disabled.

The chief rabbi saw secularism as the enemy and wanted all faiths to unite against this force. He spoke with an assured authority and the lecture hall was entranced by him. And it became clear that revival was a term understood by all faiths, not just Christianity. There could just as well be a revival of Judaism, a revival which seems to be prophesied in the Bible. 

Palestinian and Jewish tensions continue, especially at the moment, and those on the political left and the pollical right will select their camp into which to support (most right-wingers supporting Israel, most left-leaners supporting Palestinians. Moderate voices just hoping that the whole situation can be resolved peacefully.) It's a bit of a minefield.

Living in the Midlands, my exposure to Jewish people was significantly low for my childhood and most of my adulthood. I simply knew so few Jewish people. I was friends with a handful of Messianic Christians (who, in their own community, lost a lot of things by becoming believers in Jesus, facing discrimination even in Israel if they went there).

But of course, the Christian faith and the Bible are very much concerned with Jewish people. I maintained that a Jewish person was my best friend, after all. My faithful invisible friend.

Significantly, apart from the first revival in Israel of Christian believers among the Jewish people through the disciples, there had not really been a historic revival of Christianity in Israel. The consensus among Christians was that it would come, but not until the last of the last days. Meanwhile, Israel itself was prophesied to thrive again and perhaps we have seen the beginnings of this since it was re-established. But, in a way, they are still in survival mode and peace does not always come out of Israel. Furthermore, we have a very dubious belief set within Christianity that whoever blesses Israel will be blessed and whoever curses Israel will be cursed. Is it all really that simple? As I say, it's a minefield.

The issue is so complex and problematic that it is hard to write about and bring anything new to the table. All I would say is this – if a Christian revival is good for any gentile country, then why would it not be good for Israel too?

It seemed safer to boycott the thought…

The Chief Rabbi finished his talk about faiths uniting against secularism. I had taken notes and the lady next to me gave me a look as if to say... 'You ignorant gentile arse'.

Sometimes I fear I will never get my Righteous Among the Nations medal...

 

Some Atheist Points of View

 

2008

Concerned that I had maybe written off atheists, I joined a debating group on Facebook and asked: ‘Am I being prejudiced by not liking atheists?’

The consensus in response was that, yes, I was being prejudiced in not liking them. Never happy with personal prejudices I adjusted my perspective and considered that maybe, in person, atheists were just as likeable as you and I and were acting out of conviction.

But I struggled with this one. I was told, repeatedly, in between being laughed at, that atheism is a spectrum and that few atheists are totally convinced of their position. They were also very chagrined to be repeatedly told that they were going to hell or that they were ‘fools’ by believers. Atheist/Christian relationships remained strained with excesses on both sides.

Usually the atheists are scripturally literate, much to the annoyance of many Christians. But often debates are around a kind of caricatured Old Testament God which only the atheists recognise. ‘Your God destroyed millions in the flood did he? How is he good and loving then?’ And every single verse in the Bible picked up and analysed for further evidence that the Christian God is a complete tyrant and monster.

Sometimes they will have a point. For example, their emphasis on the question of suffering (which can never be answered satisfactorily this side of eternity), is the evidence which they keep bringing to the table that a good God does not exist. It is compelling evidence too. Because what it shows is that God either doesn’t exist, or that he is neglectful or that he has other reasons for not righting wrongs or alleviating suffering. If the good news is that God is love - then the atheists want more evidence than the cross.

But your friendly atheist is not always friendly online. Sometimes he, or she, is brutally nasty. The atheist response is that they are only responding in kind to some of the things they have to put up with (the being called ‘fools’ and the hell threats).

Over the years I have asked some of them what they thought about Christian revival... so their responses here are usually about the UK around 2008...

Stephen said: “71% of the country say they are Christians. The Prime Minister is a Christian. The previous Prime Minister is a Christian. Atheists are a very tiny minority.”

Carl said:

“I think we should get rid of all the religion and the theists from our country. Christianity has had 1700 years to get its act together and look at the state of the country.

We have a Christian Monarch, A Christian Prime Minister with two previous Christian Prime Ministers, We live in a Christian state with a Christian Legislature. We've had dozens of Christian rulers imposing Christian values on us and the country is now completely broken. Christianity has ruined our country.

Look at the USA. North American Indians inhabited America for thousands of years. They lived in harmony with nature. When the Christians arrived, America was completely unspoiled. Thousands of years of living in harmony with nature was wiped out in a mere 300 years. Because that's how long it took Christianity to turn it into a sh*thole of crime, bigotry, war-mongering, gun-loving, drug-infested, immorality.

Christianity has had its chance. It's time to move over and let Secular Humanism fix the damage caused by Christianity. We could once again be a green and pleasant land.”

In the end I became persuaded that yes, I was being prejudiced against a community and that the OT perspective of God as a monster was not entirely without some evidence. In fact the God presented in the OT seemed to be a completely different character to the God of the NT. I concluded that the 'good news' or gospel had to be that God is, in fact, love - or else there is very little good news to be found. The evidence for that, when there is so much suffering for so many of us is hard to find. Perhaps the only real evidence believers have are the accounts of Calvary. And ice cream of course.

But surely some kind of revival might help persuade us that God is not this angry, monstrous character so many of us still fear could exist?

An Agnostic View

2008 

I asked agnostic Jason (June 2008) if he thought a Christian revival was possible. He also understood the idea immediately but was sceptical about revival phenomena such as miracles of healing. I asked him what the church needed to do. He said: “The things any religion needs to have a revival are patience - unity and patience.”

It echoed what my old pastor had once said, ‘If you want to save souls, you will need tonnes of gentleness and tonnes of patience’.

I have a sneaking respect for agnostics. Sure, they are on the fence over the whole existence of God thing, but they sometimes take a no-nonsense approach to life. Plus, rightly or wrongly, they are trying to keep their options open. They also tend to happily keep alive the tradition of blaming God when things go wrong without feeling that they have committed some cognitive dissonance in doing so. Usually less scripturally literate than the atheist, they are still a much-misunderstood community. As I’ve mentioned to more than one of them before, ‘Blaming God is actually an act of base faith’. Your friendly agnostic is not usually going to have much trouble over-thinking why the scraping of his car window free of frost one bitter winter morning is not a good reason to blame God. And let’s face it – it’s a good reason to blame God. That frost didn’t get there for no reason and let’s bet those neighbours can afford some gadget which prevents their car windows from freezing up. Or else, their car windows are clear and free of all frost completely! That would be just like God, to single us out for a very special frosting of the windows. And this on top of everything else! It’s not what I need right now!

I find this train of thought compelling and am sometimes party to it too. It makes absolute sense at the time before people start complicating things with issues like global warming and ‘putting things into perspective’ or ‘counting your blessings ™’.

The agnostic position is, of course a spectrum – some veer closer to the idea of there being no God at all. Others are half-persuaded, but unwilling or unable to make a greater commitment.

Concerning the agnostic relationship to a Christian revival, I have found that they understand the concept, but not the specifics. There is always an opinion on God, on Jesus, on revival, on churches, on prosperity preachers and on the meaning of life or the existence or otherwise of the soul. There are various perspectives. Most will see Jesus as a good man who they really don’t want to get on the wrong side of. They will happily criticise Christians, especially those with power. Some of them, of course, barely give any thought to faith issues at all. The idea of agnostics finding a book or blog about revival as particularly compelling is not likely. The response would be ‘It’s just religion, isn’t it?’ I could say, ‘Yes, but it is so much more than that, it is concerned with issues like the meaning of life and whether God exists and miracles and issues at the core of what it means to be human’. And they would answer, ‘That’s right, religion.’ It’s a nice box to put mysteries in if you are undecided on these issues.

So, our agnostics will, of course, believe in revival. It’s hard not to, being as they are historically verifiable events. But they will doubt whether they are really from God and may see them as a form of mass hysteria or hallucination. There are so many perspectives within this one group (which encompasses so many other races and communities) that it is hard to say that there is a consistent position. If there were it might be expressed in a similar way to this:

‘If your Christian revival would make things better then why hasn’t God sent one to us? Is it because he doesn’t exist? And why is that frost only on my car windscreen?’

Of course, when I choose the frost analogy, I’m not really only talking about frost…

An Orthodox View

In 2005, interested in all things Russian, I decided to attend a small Russian Orthodox Church in Birmingham. In the past I had visited numerous different church denominations – many different Protestant denominations and some Catholic churches. But I had never visited an Orthodox church. It was close to Bonfire Night and I drove to the church, not sure of what to expect.

When I arrived, it looked like any other house on the outskirts of Birmingham. There were no signs and no crosses to show that it was a church. I knocked on the door. A bearded man in black robes welcomed me and I was led to a room. The room was full of incense and icons of saints along with some seats for the small congregation. I think perhaps there were ten or fifteen people there, I can’t say for sure because I was almost overwhelmed by a feeling that God was in the room. As I prayed, I got the feeling that God was either puzzled or surprised. It didn’t make sense. That can happen in some church services, but I have never felt it to the extent that I did at that small Orthodox church on a housing estate.

I stood at the back and the service began. I didn’t understand a word of it because it was all in Russian. At the end of the service, I was kindly offered communion, I think out of politeness. I refused it as graciously as I could.

After the service, some of the churchgoers sat at a table in another room along with the priest. They all spoke to each other in Russian and it felt like a community gathering of the local Russian diaspora. I will still feeling awe-struck by the whole thing when the priest asked me:

“What did you think?”

“Thank you, it was a very good service.” I replied.

And I completely forgot all intentions to ask about revival or anything else.

My reply seemed to please those around the table. It was ironic that I most felt the presence of God in a service from which I could barely understand a single word.

It should be noted that the Orthodox church had gone through a revival in Russia at least. In the same way that places in Africa and Asia were going through an increase in the number of Christians, Russia too, was experiencing an increase following the collapse of the USSR. There were many reasons for this, but mostly it was because they were no longer being persecuted at such an intense level. It is hard for revivals to happen during persecution – maybe China could be said to be experiencing one, but this is at the same time as a persecution from their Government. Some believed that a revival could only happen if there was a persecution at the same time, but historical evidence didn’t make this a necessity.

As for the Orthodox – my experiences with them were almost completely positive. If I were to change denomination at all, it would be to Orthodoxy. They claim that when the Church split in the Great Schism of 1054, they were not the ones who strayed from the original faith. So, between the Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, it is Protestantism which has the least claim to being the legitimate successor from the original church.

Orthodoxy has no pope. They believe that they are all brothers and sisters. But there are leaders and patriarchs. The icons which they use are no more idolatrous than the Catholic statues of Mary. They are an aid to worship, in the same way that a stained-glass window or any other Protestant paraphernalia is.

I have an Orthodox icon on my writing desk. I love it. It shows Jesus in a thoughtful, if slightly distracted, mood. He is holding a book and he is dressed in a green and red. He looks a bit like Robin Hood. Behind him is the usual gold colour of icons. On the other side of this small foldable (to close when I want nothing to do with him) is a representation of Mary. Mary looks calm and holds a child, who, in the way of many icons, is not so much a baby as a miniature human being. I got the icon cheap from an Orthodox Christian bookshop, before it closed down. The outside of it is carved in a pattern but the varnish is flaking away from sun damage, hence the discount. When I went on holiday to Greece, I saw a shop selling the same icon in a box. There were piles of this same icon for sale (at which point I didn’t feel very special at all).

But the Orthodox church in the UK is great. They are a powerhouse of prayer and action.  If there is a full-blown revival coming then we cannot write off the Orthodox church.