The misplaced symbol and liturgical practice

I in said "I it use a word tone what a scornful, when Humpty just less choose means neither more nor Dumpty"

That does not make much sense does it.You might just realise that it is the quote from Alice through the looking glass

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone,"it means just what I choose it to mean --- neither more nor less."

but it hardly says that because the words are deliberately put in the wrong order. You see Humpty Dumpty is wrong, words are symbols and symbols get their meaning through use and relationship. That is how people use words and the various connections, rules and associations that we apply to the use of the word. Syntax and grammar are just two of these relationships.

If words are taken out of their relationship their meanings change:

A-'s a giggle now
bit on it Osiris, Ra.
An अ an er.. a cough
once spoking your valleys with light.
On it St Pancras station,
the Indian and African railways.
That's why you learn it today.
...
Get back to your language

According to Homi Bhabha this is taken from Adil Jussawalla's poem Missing Person. What Bhabha points out is the use of "अ" which is the first letter of the Hindi alphabet and takes the sound "er". It 'misplacement' make the monoglot English speaker, such as me, stumble as we do not have the skills for interpreting the symbol. Yet oddly in that stumbling might make the intended sound, showing his poetic skill. The symbol used where it is not expected causes a tension within the poem. It carries meaning but takes it at the cost of being unintelligible.

If you have travelled with me so far, you may at least be persuaded that symbols at least in part take their meaning from their use and relationships, if they are placed elsewhere they change their meaning but that change comes at a price and that price can well be incomprehension.

Let me now turn to liturgical practice. It is accepted that all acts of worship include the handling of symbols. At the most basic level because all human culture involves the handling of symbols. That meanst that within the worship setting there is a system developed of handling symbols and in doing this the symbols gain specific meanings. Quite often the meanings are left unspoken or explained and it is assumed an initiate can read them.

Now in the current ecumenical age it is often assumed that symbols may be lifted from one rite and placed into another without altered meaning or even with an alternative meaning.

It should be clear from what I have written above that actually such behaviour is an act of colonialism. That is the persons so doing it, are trying to appropriate that which belongs to a symbolic system not their own and to incorporate it into their own. To a certain extent this has always gone on and the CofE as the most powerful colonizer in the UK is a past master at it. However just because the URC is a bit player does not excuse it when it does similar. I am not going to say never but the use of a symbol from another symbolic tradition needs to be done with care. There are dangers.

Firstly the transplants tend to act rather as the अ above. That is they take on a similtude of their intension rather than the actuality. Sometimes they can even mislead. My colleague at work, someone who as far as I know is a thorough going secularist and most of the time is not bothered by religion, for a few weeks in his late twenties took to wearing a cross. He wore it upside down. I decided this could not go uncommented on so I asked him what his devotion to St Peter was.  So you need to be careful about the relationship between what the symbol means in its original symbolic system and what you intend it to mean.

Secondly the introduction of a new symbol into an already existent system has knock on effects. That is they have a tendency to smuggle in more than the smuggler intends. The result is a rearrangement in the meanings associated with the other symbols within the original system. The liturgical year is only brought into non-Conformist worship at the expense of the careful exegetical preaching through entire books that formed one of the planks that made us whole Bible people. That was not the intention of the innovators, they wanted to get away from preaching on a passage of your choice but now huge chunks of the Bible are rarely preached on.

Therefore I would suggest that care was taken when you move a symbol from one symbolic system to another. The movement should not be in such a way that it denigrates the integrity of the original symbolic system; the movement should be careful that the symbol works in an effective way within the system into which it is placed.

 We are humans, we live within a culture and are bounded by that culture. Humpty Dumpty is wrong, because our use of symbols can never solely be what we intend them to be, they will always Janus like look back towards the previous uses and on towards the future uses. The meaning never fully resolved within the instance they are performed.

Reformed Democratic Pneumatology

I started this a while ago, but with the Church of England debate and the increased discussion on how church councils should be conducted. What I am doing is outlining what I see as the important balance within the theology of discernment carried out in councils of the church from the English Reformed Perspective and the disciplines that are needed by members for that to function.

Firstly let me say that URC like the Anglicans have a lot of procedures which on the surface appear to be democratic but can often lead to things that people do not see as democratic outcomes. The grumbles within the URC tend to focus particularly on the ability of the major councils (General Assembly and Synod) to engage with the local congregations. Like the Anglican church they are often seen as the provenance of the self selecting few.

Long words I am afraid, but I think this needs to be said as the URC is going once again through the "we are governed by the people" "no we are not we are governed by the Holy Spirit". The correct answer it of course "Yes", it is not an either or situation. Firstly there are some quite specific things that English Reformed Church has adopted:

1. The belief that the Holy Spirit can and does speak to who the Holy Spirit chooses to speak, not to who we say she should speak with.
2. That the Holy Spirit diverse in its revelation,that fits with the need of the person
3. That the Holy Spirit speaks into the context into which it is sort and what applies in one context is not what necessarily applies in another.

There are however some things that equally need to be stated:

1. We have never assumed that all people speak with the same level of guidance. There are those within every congregation who have a track record of being open to the leadings of the Spirit and these carry more weight.
2. That the discernment of the Spirit is a communal act that requires that people who participate in the discernment are present.
3. That the tradition of the Church is a good tool to be used within the discernment of the Spirit. Thus those who are learned in the faith carry the extra responsibility in discernment and may be called onto advise.

This is important, because the councils of the church are not exercises in democracy but exercises in discernment in which voting is often used. Votes are restricted usually to members, present and although normally a simple majority suffices that is not the always the case. You need to be present not because of some inability to read or ascertain postal votes but because you need to listen to the debate, for what the Spirit is saying through it and also to sense the mood, well what others feel the Spirit is saying.

There is a problem, we all are very well aware of the debate and voting meeting of a secular business meeting and to an outsider that is what the form of our meetings take.

I am going to suggest we need to think about how we conduct meetings and the disciplines with which we conduct them. I am not going to suggest major constitutional changes.

First of all we need at all meetings at all times to practice hospitality. No I do not mean provide food, I mean the practices that make a good host. One is to try an anticipate the needs of others, these can be simple as using a loop system so those who struggle with hearing can hear. That however means every person who speaks in a meeting must speak with a microphone. Therefore if somebody can not easily get to a microphone you need to find ways of getting to the microphone to them. It means that we should all be patient with those who struggle with words and we should all be careful not to bore others.

However I also note that often people when they want a council to change want it to change in ways that would favour them. Everyone is different and therefore have different preferences over how the meeting should be run.  Not everyone is happy standing up and speaking in a meeting. Not everyone is happy working in small groups and feeding back. Not everyone likes to write up on notice boards. Some individuals like silence to think things through others like the cut and thrust of a debate. Some people like formal approaches others prefer informality. Some like to have information in advance and will read and digest it, others much prefer that everything is presented at the meeting. Some like the routine to be the same each time and some find variety to be more engaging. As we choose approaches so we also choose the people who are most likely to contribute. There is no easy solution but we need to be aware that the way we ask people to participate alters who is comfy participating.  God has not given a standard form that must be followed but we do need to be aware if people are feeling that uncomfortable that they are self excluding from the debate. In such situations ways do need to be sort to include them without excluding others.

Another important guideline is to keep procedures simple. That is that most people will be more content and feel more happy about contributing if they know what is going on. Having complicated methods of voting and such just makes most people insecure and edgy. Also realise that people often like to suss out how something works before they try using it. Some people will always be flustered if asked to do something for the first time. If you must have complex ways of doing things then make sure that you find at least three different ways of presenting it so people have a good chance to get hold of what is happening. That does not mean three contradictory sets of instructions. It does mean something like:

1. A written explanation given in advance that people can read and digest at leisure. Most won't but some people will and some of those who will are highly resistant to something being put on them at the meeting.
2. A clear verbal re-iteration of what was in the written explanation at the meeting. This is to catch the 90% who just glanced at the paper and have not taken it in
3. Either a video of people enacting the procedure or a trial run with a pretend issue which can be taken.

If two and three take together longer than five minutes your procedure is too complicated! Equally if people start asking a lot of questions the procedure is too complicated. It may well be better to go for a simpler form. Meeting size matters, as a rule the bigger the meeting the simpler the procedures need to be. In a group of three, it is quite easy to brainstorm, talk things through, negotiate and come to a complicated consensus. Try doing it with several hundred and you will spend several days discussing the date of the next church fair as each checks their diary.



The final one is that we should spend time and energy encouraging people to listen. The real skill of participating in a church council is not speaking but in listening, in hearing not just what is said on the surface but what is also being said below the surface. In some sense this is listening for the spirit, but it is also listening to your inner voice, seeing the way that you interpret what someone else says. Are there words you hear particularly well and also words you miss? Does it matter who says something? It is not easy to listen at that depth, I am not claiming that I do it all the time, but if we are truly to do the discernment it is what is needed. It is easier to listen at this level in a small meeting than a large one. Perhaps a good reason for having smaller meeting in which people can practice doing this. Without those among us who listen at this level we are not really in a position to weigh the material and to progress the discernment. This of course slows things down and in our quick fix society this listening is counter cultural.


Given this as you might expect I do not see form as an essential for discernment, we are human all human form will fall short of the divine, God still works through it. Nor do I think we should expect the outcome to be the same regardless of situation. Because it is not a voting democracy but an act of discernment, I am quite happy with restricting the meeting to those present, with votes that are not simple majorities and with consensus procedures if used appropriately. Votes are in the end only as binding as we make them in this procedure.

If I am honest I think the one essential is that we stop assuming that members will just pick things up as they go along and start actively trying to engage members in doing this sort of discernment and understanding what they are doing in church councils is this. That may require changes in approach, teaching within and outside of church councils and also a lot of careful chairing. It certainly will not make councils quicker initially but I suspect that until we do, people will continue to gripe about them.

Out of Our Control

A blog "Growing Green Patches" blogs about her daughters attitude to Storm Sandy and I am struck by the familiarity of the situation. The thing is her daughter who is staying near New York is unconcerned about it, while she several thousand miles away is very concerned. Many will say as she implies that this is just a mothers reaction but I want to suggest something more is going on.

I have been there, the first time I recall this was during fuel shortages during the Winter of Discontent. Our relatives in South Africa had us all frozen to death in our beds, in actual fact, my sister and I were enjoying extra days holidays from school and every time the fuel tank seemed to be on the point of running out Dad tipped it up slightly more so as to allow the oil to flow towards the outlet which was not at the lowest point of the tank.

My fathers explanation at the time was newspaper hype, but thinking back, about Storm Sandy and other occasions I do not believe that. There is as much hype where we are as anywhere else.

Then there are my experiences of stalking. The first I was involved in it was not me being stalked! I can remember being very worried about my friend who was being stalked. I can only put some of that down to the fact that I knew I was really out of the situation and did not know what was going on and could not influence it. Equally some years later I ended up with a minor stalker. I would not class it as in the same category as the previous one but this time it was me being stalked. Oddly enough it was not until others began to pick up on this that I realised that people were actually worried about what was happening. I felt no personal threat at all. The thing was I knew what was going on, I had at least some ability to determine what was going on and yes some of that was to ask for help.

So what is happening in these situations. The person involved is nearly always well aware about what is going on. They are making rational decisions on what to do in the situation and then getting on with life. Oddly this provides a cushion from the over active imagination when you start thinking about what might happen. Participating actually makes you more able to cope with things. Those outside the situation are unable to see the elements of choice within it and their dire imagination takes hold.

Or take my parents my mum has mild dementia, nothing unusual in that know that before she showed signs of developing it both my parents thought dementia was one of the worst things that could happen to a person. Now they are living with it and adapting to it. Again the perspective of being directly involved seems to make the whole thing less difficult, probably because both my Mum and Dad are finding ways to adapt and tackle it.

Come to think of it, I can see this pattern in a lot of situations. When we imaginatively think our selves into a situation we tend to concentrate on what is being done to an individual and not consider the individuals experience of agency. The response is then a largely emotional one, while for those in a situation the response is often at least in part rational  (ask now what do I do, weighing up the options and responding).

I do not think this is quite normalising things. People know the situation is abnormal yet theie agency within it enables a far more pragmatic approach than those outside of it.

God will protect

I am struggling with something and I am well aware that if I were to post my response by the posts that are there people will think it uncaring. However today a second source got me thinking more widely and I think I need to put this down before I forget.

I follow the devotions from Peachtree Presbyterian Church largely because the pastor Mark Crumpler seems to be on a similar wavelength to me and his thoughts are often enough worth hearing. Today he began with

And we know . . . all things work together for good (Romans 8:28 )

Now the simple reading of this is nothing bad will happen to Christians, and if you ask for God's protection he will give it. It is of  course from Chapter 8 a chapter with more than its fair share of Paul's purple prose (excuse the alliteration). Between that an assuring us that nothing can separate us from the love of God you'd think it was a rosy picture but...

this is also the chapter where Paul says

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (vs 18)

and

As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” (vs 36)
 
Even the nice verses sometimes have a sting in them:
and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.(v17)
The bold is mine but I think it is getting to the core thing. I am not really sure how effect praying for protection from life's ills is going to be when you are dealing with a god who got himself crucified! Somehow I do not think the protection from life's ills are exactly a high priority with God. So although I will happily pray "Lead us not into the time of trial" I am not at all sure that life is going to work out, or even that "time of trial" means times when bad things happen. I have my strong suspicion he meant something else when he told us to pray that, that the troubles of this life although unpleasant weren't exactly the trials he thought we should be asking to avoid. I think in some ways God is interested more in the bigger picture and how we fit within that.

Let me be clear the bringing out of wider purpose out of personal ill has been part of my life. Over fifteen years ago I was betrayed by someone I was in an intimate relationship with. I am not going into details, partly because I do not wish to but also because there is a sense in which I can ever only partly tell the story as big chunks are missing and I have to ability to find discover what should be in those chunks and none of the surmises really work. It left me in a state where I felt insecure in my own home and I could count on the fingers of one hand the people I actually trusted. It has left me with scars, most do not appear on the surface but scratch deeper and you will find that nothing is quite as it appears.

However it always resulted in me doing two things: firstly I needed to find a way to be able to cope with a world that I knew was largely socially created and that I could never be certain it was as I assumed it was; secondly I had spare time, did not want to invest in new relationships so went on a church study course instead. The study course eventually led to me taking first a masters and then my doctorate; the need to find new ways of understanding led me to an openness to Postmodernist theorists that I would not have had otherwise. Both of these have shaped my thinking for my thesis in many ways. If the betrayal had not happened I would not be writing the thesis I now am, I might well not even be doing a thesis.

So that I have seen but these are endings which tell of the bigger picture. Let me go back to todays devotion, it centres around Naomi, and her return to Canaan. She returns having lost her husband and both sons with Ruth. This is disaster and yet she is returning to family. Of course the story ends happily with Ruth marrying Boaz and becoming the grandmother of King David but let us not forget almost certainly Naomi never saw David, when she died she only knew of the security Boaz gave her and Ruth. She never experienced the bigger picture, the story God was involved with in all its glory.

So I am not going to be nice and pretend that if we accept God's will we will personally see the reason for the hurt and suffering. I will say God can and does work through them but how or why I am not sure. Remember Christ's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is not just that the cup of suffering would pass him by, but that in the end his father's will will be done and that meant that it did not pass him by.  Thus the prayer to take up our cross and follow Christ is a prayer to accept the suffering that will come and to still follow God. It is not easy, I suspect in part that is why so many of the psalms are angry with God but it does seem to be God's way.

Standards, we have got to have Standards

All right the title is jokey, the thing is the Reformed tradition has subordinate standards. Now don't go looking in the Westminster Confession, or Belgic or the Statement of Nature, Faith and Order of the United Reformed Church for statements about Subordinate Standards, you won't find any. The simple reason is this is self referential these are the subordinate standards. That means for all URCs that the principle Subordinate Standard for us is the Statement of Nature, Faith and Order of the United Reformed Church. So saying we don't have standards is a bit stupid!

There is one thing every one should spot I have so far and will continue to do so, use the term Subordinate Standards. They are Subordinate to scripture. The Protestant shout of "Sola Scriptura" means that practically they never ever have been the final statement on the faith. Doctrine can and is Reformed in order to bring it better in line with Scripture. This is alive and kicking in Reformed Churches. I can remember being asked how a hymn of Kathy Galloways could get into Church of Scotland hymn book where it would struggle with its feminist images into an Anglican one. The answer was simple, the images Kathy used were Biblical, therefore the question was not "Are these images feminist?" but "Are these images Biblical?" and if they are then they trump all questions about whether things were feminist or not. Many Subordinate Statements say exactly that.

Secondly Subordinate Standards are about where the faith has been. Have a look at Reformed Presbytery of North America's list and really go down them. You will find an odd bunch of documents. There are the standards such as: the Apostles Creed and the Westminster Confession, but then look what else is there like: Metrical Psalms and the Acts of General Assembly of the Church of Scotland betweeh specific dates! This does not look to me like a group trying to specify Doctrine it looks far more like a list of documents they tell where the group has come from. To ask who we are is nearly always to ask who we have been.

The picture I tend to come back to is of cairns, they normally come from places where the originating group for some reasons feels that it is a good idea to make a statement about how they see the faith. The reasons can be various; I am almost certain that the Congregationalists insisted on one when the URC was formed. They did not want any pesky Unitarians getting their hands on any property of the new united church and therefore having a statement was essential (the Unitarians won't have a statement because that might meanthose troublesome Congregationalist getting their hands on the property). I think it is instructive that the requirement in the United Church of Canada to become a member is that you assent to belief in the Trinity (not the incarnation or ressurection) and this was insisted on by Congregationalists. The memories of fights in church history die hard. However it has to be said that fresh statements at the creation of a merged denomination are common. They equally occur at times of crisis, points of turmoil and not always theological, quite a few of them are political. However most of the time we plod along with those we have got and don't pay much heed to getting new ones.

URC approach to "Substantial Agreement"

A while ago I drew two pictures of what we would mean if we required a ministers faith to be in substantial agreement with the subordinate standards. I suggested the URC's approach was like the diagram shown here. I would suspect quite a overlap with the Basis of Union, maybe with quite a bit of agnosticism about parts of it, with other bits being inconcurrence with other Subordinate Standards which we accept. In other words the tradition is defined by having a broad scope with many overlapping subordinate standards and the requirement is that the faith falls mainly within those parameters. It does not mean that all ministers sign up to the same things exactly. Indeed although I have shown three here, there are at least another six named subordinate standards. I defy anyone to know them well enough that they can recall them at an instance and say what they agree and disagree with them let alone accept them all. Then there are the ones we don't name but are included as "of the tradition" e.g. the Scots Confession. However what status is John Robinsons address to the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth.  You won't find it on the internet, I might put it up at some stage if I get hold of it, but the paraphrase in the form of We limit not the Truth of God (ignore the tune) is widely sung in the URC and I have heard quoted in theological debate. There is thus a deliberate ambiguity.

Yes I use the subordinate standards, they have been an important vehicle of my initiation into Reformed Theology, but I do not use them in a sort of lets try to believe twenty impossible things before breakfast style. I usually read them through quite quickly the first time, to try to get a feel of them, what is important and how they stand. Then and this is an ongoing process I turn to bits I see as significant and try and work out why. It maybe I disagree with them, in which case I need to work out why, or it might be a phrase gives me cause for reflection, time to look deeper at other understandings. So Subordinate standards are there to say where we have been, not to determine who we are. Remember "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Sanayana) so we need methods of remembering where we have been and knowing why we have travelled to where we are.

When two traditions collide

In 1972 the URC came into being and two denominational traditions collided. There are problems today that are caused not by the positions regarding wider traditions, these were both traditions dominated by the Reformed Tradition, but by the fact that the two traditions did not bother to find out how the other tradition worked, the Presbyterian assumed that with these sort of half toned Congregationalists they would find it easy to dominate, the Congregationalists assumed that they would continue doing things as they always did with a few adjustments for Presbyterians as they had done before. The Presbyterians assumed there was a meeting two dissenting traditions of which theirs was superior  because it was articulated. The Congregationalists just assumed the way they did things was the way it was to be done noy because it was Congregational but because that was how it was.

The mistake was made in thinking that within English Congretationalism there was a named tradition that in some way is comparable to the Presbyterian tradition of the Presbyterian Church of England. This Presbyterian tradition is that of a clear dissenting tradition that stands against the mainstream. It says "We do this BECAUSE we are PRESBYTERIAN". It is clear and defined. English Congregationalism on the whole found no need for such a tradition. Indeed may have found problems with having it. Rather with respect to tradition it relates as a dominant discourse, the tradition has no name (or rarely is named) but is referenced by how "We do it".

I suspect that this has several roots. Firstly the obvious one, the tradition is not a single strand but a loosely woven rope of many strands that are not always compatible. It is true that the Reformed strand is the core one but there are plenty of other bits. It has to be seen as an grouping that specialises in bringing the disparate together. What is more with the Independent part, for most congregations "the tradition" is primarily the tradition of that congregation and only secondarily draws on the wider experience of other congregations and the wider church. When you talk about the wider context few members have any interest. Thus there is a need to have a way of talking and holding things together without setting people's backs up. Names tend to carry baggage with them, so it is convenient if their is no name for anyone to object to.

Secondly in England there was an indicator name change I suspect at the end of the nineteenth Century. Before that all Congregational churches tended to be called Independent and Congregational used only after then. Traditions are conservative by nature, I suspect that there is a strong streek of people who still think of themselves as going to the Independent Chapel despite this. To add to this the change seems to coincide with the NonConformist Ascendancy in Late Victorian times. There were places in England where Congregationalism was the dominant tradition, so naturally it took the dominant form.

The result is that former English Congregationalists are not concious of their Congregational heritage but they are secure in it, assuming it is the way things ought to be done by any rational person. They have not had a name and feel no need for a name. For them the question was how the Presbyterians will alter the way we do things. It is a tradition based around absorbing not fracturing.

The former Presbyterians, as do former Congregational Church of Scotland, (I have not idea what former Churches of Christ do) find that what happens is that instead of their nice named dissenting tradition, they are faced with a nameless mesh of ideas that somehow resists their attempts to say what it should be like.  What is worse it uses the first person plural "We" of itself so your choice is to join it or dissent from belonging. This is not tradition as they know it, yet it assumes the dominant position.

Respect the Culture of the Internet

An incident still annoys me and it is probably ten years since it happened. I was studying Sociology and doing one of the how to courses, which had its bit on ethics and the need to anonymise. One guy did a bit on exploring internet culture and the thing that rankles is that he totally disregarded this advice, so much so I am sure I know and can get in touch with one of his informants.

He took a bit of conversation from a chat room. It was a short exchange between two people using nom de plumes. It looked to him as if people were using pen names and therefore he thought he did not need to anonymise. What is more the name was short and not a recognaisable name in any language. Surely this name was not a give-away. It is, it belongs to one specific person who has used it for the best part of twenty years or more. If I see that name anywhere on the internet I assume it is her who typed that. What is more the personna she portrays in the interaction is typical of her personna elsewhere where I do know her.

Lets go back to the beginning and to usenet boards and maybe even earlier. Names were limited, the maximum length was eight characters if you were lucky. So you could not have JohnSmith as your name. The challenge in those days was to find an eight letter code that was both memorable and not taken. Once found people tended to stick with it. In a very real sense they developed an ownership of that code. Towards the end of those days a six letters in a search engine would have got you most of my internet activity except work stuff (there it was five). Now you'd have to go down half a page to find something that relates to me as others use that code. However some have stuck with their name or code and some of those are very short.Therefore when people move from forum to forum you can look out for the same names and find the same people.

So despite what the social scientists like to think, the internet was never a lot of nameless geeks rampaging around having careless fun. The geeks from fairly early on established a culture that maintained identity across bulletin boards, message boards and discussion rooms. There was no policing except the more codes you used the more names and codes you had to do, sock puppetry (having multiple codes on a single discussion board, was looked down upon). In a stuation where discussion boards appeared and disappeared pretty frequently by doing so people often knew who they were talking to or at least knew what previous interaction they could recall.

Now with something like twenty years of being on the internet (alright so I was technically on one of its precursors in 1984 and I have very rarely been off since but using really started around 1992 with the present job). I can say that on the internet it is possible to fool everyone sometimes and some people all the time but it isn't possible to fool everyone all the time. It is simply too much effort for most people to keep two or more different consistent personas going. They normally make one of two mistakes:

1. The actually create two very similar personnas, and then some adminy type does the checking on the logs and all are revealled
2. The go for the spectacular, with heightened stories or crusading for a particular perspective (Kierkegaard the first internet troll?). These draw attention, almost certainly as much suspicious attention as any others. Such people are either unmasked or are asked to leave as they are causing problems.

To do it successfully you must keep a low key, everyday persona who is distinct from yourself for long periods of time. Its not easy, imagine trying to write fiction that is as boring to yourself as paint drying and you get some idea of what they have to do. My suspicion is the vast majority of people who try that get bored. What is the point of being , clever if no-one knows about it and if anyone knows then your game is up and you are no longer clever.


So when you investigate social behaviour on the internet, please do not fall for the simplistic assumption that pen-names are anonymous. They may be or they may be the way that individual is most widely known.

Fair Fuel: fair to whom?

I am begining to wonder if some people understand what joined up thinking is. Low tax on fuel may not be a good idea and here is why:

1. Oil is a limited resource, the consensus is that we are over dependent on it in the west and if the oil producing countries suddenly stop producing oil for some reason our own supplies are even more limited. We are an oil consuming; while not really an oil producing nation, Europe's supplies are due to run out in two years and I suspect most of those are in Eastern Europe. Some oil producing countries are very volatile politically. So long term oil will run out, short term we are rather dependent on friends where perhaps we would be wise not to be. So anything that means we should use less, being more cautious about what we use may be for our own long term health. What is more my Chemistry teacher argued that oil is such a valuable substance it should not just be burnt up and that goes back to 1980s. It seems to me it is pay now or pay more later.
2. You have heard of global warming, the theory suggests that to some extent it is related to increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The bi-product of burning oil in a combustion engine is carbon dioxide which is put out into the atmosphere. Given the effects that can cause I suspect we should be trying to minimize rather than increase the risk for the sake of the whole planet.
3. Finally we will talk about how high oil prices makes UK industry uncompetitive with other industry. Keeping oil prices relatively low in the developed world has often been a method of enabling UK industry to out compete local industry in third world countries, sometimes the need to do this had led to quite drastic situations such as Ogoniland Oil Spill

Need I point out that if paying more for our petrol, food and other goods now, weans us off our culturally high dependency on it, it may well be good for the whole planet. It seems to me that much of the present outcry is about preserving our present lifestyle at the expense of the poor and the future. Some how that seems selfish.

From Fencing to Open Communion

This is the story of a piece of folk liturgy within the Reformed tradition that is so common that we don't even see it as there. It is nice because it is tidy story that covers Reformed tradition from start to current day and probably is most influential in creating the Ecumenical movement

The story starts off in Geneva with John Calvin. John Calvin in quite a dramatic way fenced the table from libertines. His document Treatise against the Anabaptist and Libertines does suggest some more moderation:

"That is, that none be so hardy to approach to this holy table, which is not verily of the body of Jesus Christ, worshiping one God with all faithful men, and serving him in good lawful vocation. But where they come to make declaration  in their fourth Article, how a man ought to separate himself from all pollutions of the world to join himself to God: there they begin to deprave [turn out of the way] altogether"

Note that piety is indeed required but separation from all polution is not.

However in Scotland under Presbyterianism and fencing the table got out of hand. In the song Cameronian Cat you get the story of a cat found catching a mouse on the Sabbath day and the dire consequences it suffers. However under notes you get the following:
" It is by some called The Presbyterian Cat, but generally as above; and is always sung by the wags in mockery of the great pretended strictness of the Covenanters, which is certainly, in some cases, carried to an extremity rather ludicrous.  I have heard them myself, when distributing the sacrament, formally debar from the table the king and all his ministers; all witches and warlocks; all who had committed or attempted suicide; all who played at cards and dice; all the men that had ever danced opposite to a woman, and every woman that had danced with her face toward a man; all the men who looked at their cattle or crops, and all the women who pulled green kail or scraped potatoes, on the Sabbath-day; and I have been told, that in former days they debarred all who used fanners for cleaning their oats, instead of God’s natural wind." (Hogg, JR I (1819), 37, Song #XXII, + music; note, p. 209)

From what had been a sensible practice had got as unsensible as the anabaptists practice that John Calvin wrote against.

Now let enter a Scottish Congregationalist of some liturgical skill, one John Hunter. Now Congregationalists in Scotland often struggled to find their position with respect to the strong Presbyterian culture. A Reformed church that was not Presbyterian in structure just seemed odd. Now Reformed churches did not do much beyond basic liturgy whether Congregational or Presbyterian but John Hunter takes the prohibitions that are used by the Presbyterians and changes them around  in his address by the minister to the people.

"Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins and are in love and charity with your neighbours and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of the God and walking henceforth in his holy ways; draw near with reverence, faith and thanksgiving, and take the Supper of the Lord to your comfort

Come to this sacred Table, not because you must, but because you may: come to testify not that you are righteous but that you sincerely love our Lord Jesus Christ and desire to be his true disciple: come not because you are strong  but because you are weak; not because you have any claim on heaven's rewards, but because in your fraility and sin you stand in need of Heaven's mercy and help: come not to express opinion but to seek a Presence and pray for a Spirit
And now that the supper of the Lord is spread before you, lift up your minds and hearts above all selfish fears and cares; let this bread and this wine be to you the witnesses and signs of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit, Before the throne of the Heavenly Father and the cross of the Redeemer make you humble confession of sin, consecrate you lives to Christian obedience and service and pray for strength to do and to bear the holy and blessed will of God"

 It is no longer a list of who may not come, but an invite too come. Horton Davies describes it as "his greatest single liturgical invention" [Davies, H.(1962) Worship and Theology in England: From Newman to Martineau; Oxford University Press p232].

A invitation often paying service to this one, happens now in most if not all communion services. If you go back to the worship books you won't often find it, yet time after time in the actual act of worship. What is more is the invite asks people to come, more and more it has stressed that it is Christ's table not the table of any creed or sect (yes I am quoting but not sure where from).

 The thing is that this repeated at people statement has entered the conciousness of the church going public. It has become part of how we think of ourselves. I have seen it quoted in theological debate as well as during worship. Most people's understanding of the rubrics of communion come from this and not from the dry rules that technically govern such things. If a congregation of whatever tradition has some sort of an open table, I suspect this working in the background. The genie is out of the bottle, the tables have become open, I suspect no-one can put it back however much any tradition tries to apply the rules. This all because a Scot's Congregationalist needed to find a way to differentiate his congregation from the Presbyterian around it!

What is holiness

In Leviticus 11:45 we read:

For I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

”. This would not be problematic if it was not for 1 Peter 1:16 which quotes it. So at least one biblical writer thought it applied to Christians as well as Jews. But what does "Holy" mean. Initially it seems in context to have done with ritual purity but then Christians have a different understanding of what makes a person unclean see Matthew 15:11 and refers it to moral deeds done by a person. However I am going to suggest that we learn more about what being Holy entails if we see it as reflecting God. So what are the characteristics that seem to specifically define God as worshipped by Christians. I would suggest that chief amongst them is generous, faithful love.

Generous - In some ways we need to come to terms with this. God's love is never sensible in its generosity. God does not seem to give us what we think as practical or even what we think we would like. God is frustratingly the sort of person who decides we need a diamond ring when what we were looking for was a good night out. God is capricious and overwhelming. There is not saying what he will do, but you equally can't be sure that he won't permit or do something. I don't know why, but I do know that if God's action on the cross is what Christians claim it is, then no amount of prayer not answered can balance the books. The problem is that God is does not seem to keep account and give fairly. Generosity in this sense is not about amount its about openness. So our response needs to have some of the lack of calculation that God's response to us does.

Faithful - There is as saying that goes "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" and that really is the core of being faithful. God has a habit of turning up in the darkest of places. He rescues Israel from Egypt not in Joseph's day, but when they were basically slave labour. He does not decide to come in person when things in Israel are going well and turns up at the palace, he comes when Israel is occupied and gets himself killed by the occupying authorities.  Now lets be clear I don't trust God for one moment to get me out of trouble, he may, he may not; I do trust God to be there in times of trouble.

Love - forget romantic attraction, this seems to be more positive regard. Well wishing that is followed through into practical action.If you prefer unconditional regard for all of creation and all creatures with it. Another is that God enjoys creation, much as many men enjoy hobbies, the are serious about it, often  quite nerdishly so and gain satisfaction from doing it.  God does not need creation but it flows out of the very nature of God.  That is important, God's love comes first. The challenge for the Christian is to mirror this sort of connection back at God and onto creation. As we do it towards creation we become co-creators with God, as we do it to God we honour and enjoy him.