Elsewhere

A year ago today Alison and I were jumping on a plane bound for Europe. It was long hoped for but unexpected - it was only thanks to the wedding of a friend and the generosity of our family that we were able to go. We had three delightful weeks taking in culture and seeing friends in London, Oxford, Paris, Rome, and Florence. We even had our own hashtag: #MoffittGrandTour. For me especially, on my first European trip, and as a long time Anglophile, there was something special about being in England - gazing at St Paul's Cathedral (this hope for the resurrection which rises out of the midst of the city); drinking cider in the evening in Kensington Gardens as the fading summer light ran through the long grass; wandering through Christ Church Meadow, glistening green after a downpour. The smell of the roses, the taste of the raspberries, the 35° summer heat had never felt so good. Nor had the rabbits, the foxes, or the deer felt more in their place. - there was an allure about being in the home of my ancestors. 

It felt almost decadent to be experiencing so much beauty.

That is the allure of travel. Travel provides us with stories to tell, and experiences to gather. And yet, isn't it more than that? Are our overseas trips really just about curating the perfect Instagram collection? 

The Romantic in me makes me want to say that travel is part of our search for something more. We travel around finding the extraordinary in the most ordinary of things, and beauty in the sublime. It is this quest, this syndrome of Romanticism, which underwrites our devouring of travel. The contemporary British author Ali Smith, reflecting on a period of many overseas journeys, speaks about this search like this:

Also, the gallery had a very lovely café/restaurant; there was leek soup the day I went, very nice, and even its toilets are works of art, with little plaques outside them like paintings have next to them for their title/artist information.
But pretty much the whole time I was there, I was still trying to get elsewhere.

Amidst all the beauty and wonder that Smith saw in places like Naples and Rotterdam, she was still searching for this place - this place she calls 'elsewhere'. Even when standing there in one place, she was looking for another place of perfect beauty and transcendence. She goes on to describe 'elsewhere':

Elsewhere there are no mobile phones.  Elsewhere sleep is deep and the mornings are wonderful.  Elsewhere art is endless, exhibitions are free and galleries are open twenty-four hours.  Elsewhere alcohol is a joke that everybody finds funny.  Elsewhere everybody is as welcoming as they’d be if you’d come home after a very long time away and they’d really missed you.  Elsewhere nobody stops you in the street and says, Are you a Catholic or a Protestant, and when you say neither, I’m a Muslim, then says yeah but are you a Catholic Muslim or a Protestant Muslim?  Elsewhere there are no religions.  Elsewhere there are no borders.  Elsewhere nobody is a refugee or an asylum seeker whose worth can be decided about by a government.  Elsewhere nobody is something to be decided about by anybody.  Elsewhere there are no preconceptions.  Elsewhere all wrongs are righted.  Elsewhere the supermarkets don’t own us.  Elsewhere we use our hands for cups and the rivers are clean and drinkable.  Elsewhere the words of the politicians are nourishing to the heart.  Elsewhere charlatans are known for their wisdom.  Elsewhere history has been kind.  Elsewhere nobody would ever say the words bring back the death penalty.  Elsewhere the graves of the dead are empty and their spirits fly above the cities in instinctual, shapeshifting formations that astound the eye.  Elsewhere poems cancel imprisonment.  Elsewhere we do time differently.Every time I travel, I head for it.  Every time I come home, I look for it.- Ali Smith, The Art of Elsewhere

It's ideal. It's transcendent. It's never discovered. It's never arrived at.

Smith is searching for a place where we can be at home - we are yearning for it. If Smith is correct, then our journeys overseas, our fascination with art, our love of things which point beyond mere immanence, are fueled by our innate desire for something more. 

The syndrome Smith diagnoses experientially has been recognized theologically for some time. One of the books which we appreciated the most on our travels last year was The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis. We engaged with so much beauty as we traveled, and Lewis helped us respond to this cultural wealth as worshipers, rather than consumers. He writes that:

"...our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.

And this brings me to the other sense of glory—glory as brightness, splendour, luminosity. We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning Star. I think I begin to see what it means. In one way, of course, God has given us the Morning Star already: you can go and enjoy the gift on many fine mornings if you get up early enough. What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more— something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that “beauty born of murmuring sound” will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."

Lewis captured for us the tragedy of fleetingly taking in the beauty of this building or that artwork or this landscape: we were viewing it for a moment, before moving on to leave it all behind. To witness such things and to be parted from them immediately was melancholic. But Lewis gave us the language to process this.  Our desires weren't wrong, but were designed to direct our hearts towards the God for whom they were made, and the future he has prepared for us in Christ when we shall be united to him, and the Holy Spirit has perfected the creation. 

I read Lewis as an answer to Smith. Her 'elsewhere' is real. We live in a world which is simultaneously a world made for us and a world which we feel estranged from. We are not at home in this world. But one day we shall be, when elsewhere is brought home, and the creation overflows with the abundance of God's perfect peace. We look, as the Creed puts it, for the life of the world to come, a life that is secured by righteousness himself making his home with us. This end of the world and the beginning of another enables us to live well now, as it gives us back our present. For we know that 'elsewhere' will not be found by ourselves, but only in Jesus Christ. 

The Elizabethan Divines

This is just a theory of mine, but it feels like this second Elizabethan reign has been a golden age for British theology. Not that a British Institutes or Church Dogmatics has been written during this time - don't would be totally un-British. But over the past few decades, they has been an amazing group of theologians lecturing, publishing and serving the church in the UK and around the world. They are all theologians born during or in the period immediately after WWII: Rowan Williams, NT Wright, Oliver O'Donovan, Richard Bauckham, Colin Gunton, John Webster, Jeremy Begbie, Alister McGrath and so on. Building on the work of the like of Moule, Caird, Torrance and Chadwick, they've all contributed to the growth of the church in their own unique way.

As they start to retire, it will be interesting to see who replaces them in the church and the academy.

Why We're Still Talking About Calvin

In case you missed it, Michael Jensen had a great op-ed in yesterday's Australian on the decline of Calvin. The quote from Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson on Calvin's influence is worth repeating:

"Any reader of the Institutes must be struck by the great elegance, the gallantry, of its moral vision, which is more beautiful for the resolution with which its theology embraces sorrow and darkness.

...There are things for which we in this culture clearly are indebted to him, including relatively popular government, the relatively high status of women, the separation of church and state, what remains of universal schooling and, while it lasted, liberal higher education, education in the humanities. How easily we forget."

In reading Michael's op-ed, I was reminded of something I've been intending to mention for a while now. My friend Angus Courtney submitted his honours thesis last year in history. Not only is it a superb piece of work on the 17th Century English Civil and republicanism, but it provides a paradigm shifting argument against the weight of recent historical scholarship. Angus argues that although the puritans (a label many historians have conveniently avoided using when describing the republicans) were well versed in classics, they lived and breathed the bible and Calvinist theology. Here is an excerpt:

"The defining mark of the historiography of English republicanism is its insistence on the classical basis of English republican ideas. Drawing on the theorists of Greece and Rome––the argument goes––a handful of English writers in the mid seventeenth century articulated a vision of republican government infused with classical ideas and values. It is not an unreasonable argument, particularly considering that a number of English republicanism’s central writers, like John Milton, were prolific classicists who were widely familiar with ancient political theorists and historians. Just as significantly, they lived in extraordinary times that sparked an immense body of political re-examination.2 The result was to be a rich tapestry of republican thinking that was unparalleled in the seventeenth century. It was a unique (if fleeting) moment in English political history, in which ideas were developed that would become essential to eighteenth century political thought in England, the Continent, and America...But this approach makes a serious category error. The essential character of English republicanism was not classical. Although English republicans were familiar with classical texts and referred to––as Sidney put it––the ‘great masters of human reason’, these writers were rarely their primary authority, nor was their example primarily the republics of Greece or Rome. If we are prepared to take Milton at his word (as historians have been), this point is unmistakable. According to Milton, ‘The English people…were not inflamed with the empty name of liberty by a false notion of virtue and glory, or senseless emulation of the ancients.’ Rather, they formulated their republican vision and waged war against the king because of their purity of life and blameless character, in an effort to defend law and religion, rooted in a firm trust in God. At its core, English republicanism was a religious republicanism: a Puritan vision of total reformation that extended not only through the church but also to government. It was a vision inspired by Biblical Scripture, directed towards the godliness of the nation and the glory of God.

The radical nature of this proposition warrants its restatement: English republicanism was religious republicanism. Its central thrust was not towards classical republican government, but the government of God. Its purpose was not civic glory, but the godliness of the community for the glory of God. Regarding English republicanism as primarily classical is to overlook the context in which republicanism developed, the explicit goals for which it was used, and the clear biblical arguments that were used to justify its imposition. To appropriate a biblical metaphor, this overlooking of such a critical aspect is akin to having ‘strain[ed] out a gnat but swallow[ed] a camel.’ My assertion is not that classical republican ideas were absent from the English republican vision. Rather, it is that a much more significant aspect has been overlooked. This is an error in need of correction. We must recover the essential religious component of the English republican vision.

Missions and Empire

A common complaint of Christian mission is that it has often been a compliant agent of European imperialism. Although there is some truth in that at times, it is by no means a defining characterization of Christian mission. According to David Bebbington argues that the overriding result of global Christian missions was not the growth of empire but the implanting of Christian faith in fresh lands, often not through the missionaries themselves but local indigenous Christians. He argues:

"One of the misrepresentations of Livingstone in later legend was that he was an advocate of the type of empire that emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century. The belief is part of a broader association of the missionary enterprise with the spread of the British Empire that has become a commonplace. It is held that missions were the ideological arm of territorial expansion in the period. Certainly evangelicals saw imperial advance as an opportunity for the gospel. British Wesleyans, for instance, applauded their Australian co-religionists [sic] in 1860 for 'laying foundations of a great Protestant empire'. Furthermore, the protection of indigenous peoples from the slave trade and other forms of oppression could seem a worthy humanitarian motive for annexation. Yet there was no simple correlation between missions and empire. Sometimes, as in Nigeria at the end of the century, the British authorities discouraged evangelistic effort since it might cause public disorder. Missionaries themselves were often wary of the colonial authorities because they might do as much to corrupt the peoples under their care as to protect them. Within British territory, the advance of evangelical usually owed little or nothing to government patronage, which in a forml sense had all but disappeared by the middle of the [19th] century. There are instances, conversley, where British Christians established flourishing missions outside British territory and even outside British sphere of influence. The Baptist mission in the Congo, which became the personal apanage of the King of the Belgians, is a case in point. There was a marked difference between Anglicans, who rarely saw drawbacks to the expanison of empire, and Nonconformists, who leant to a pacific policy abroad and so commonly opposed imperial wars. Thus slaughter on the north-west frontier of India was denounced by the Nonconformist newspaper the Christian World in 1897 as 'A National Crime'. Although the distinction between the two parties within evangelicalism was eroded in the last few years of the century, when many Nonconformists were caught up in the popular imperialism of the times, here remained among them vestiges of resistance to the growth of empire. Consequently, the relationship between missions and empire is much more ambigous than it is usually supposed to be. Evangelicals were by no means consisten apologists for painting the map red." - David Bebbington, The Dominance of Evangelicalism, 2005, pp. 106-107.

English Hymns and meta-narrative

England is a story. Is a story that has come define the sceptered island and to a large part, the English speaking western world. It is a story that is full of contradictions. Notably, this story is founded upon the principles of freedom, liberty and equity; however it is fed and sustained by the story of empire.
The English story is constituted and defined by its own meta-narrative - which is most commonly expressed in the national and anthems of England.
This story tells of England, the divinely appointed vicegerent who is allotted as the steward on this globe of freedom and right, of morals and justice. Not only is this the "White Man's burden", it is every decent Englishman's burden - to bring "civilisation to the uncivilised"; to resist the tyranny of European tyrants, whether it be 1940, 1805, 1588, or 60AD; to set men free and stave off the encroaches of popery; to challenge the ugly power off rule at home (1215, 1641, 1688), and give power to those who don't have it (begrudgingly in 1830 and 1833). This is the story of Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, the Armada, Waterloo, the Charist movement and so much more. This is a land of hope and glory, where the people shall never be slaves, and the King, crowned as Solomon to the splendour of Handel, shall be sent victorious and reign happy and glorious over his new Israel.
This is the English story, well, at least what we've been told for the past three centuries. This next series of posts will analyse how famous English Hymns and Anthems were written as an embodiment of this story. Until then, ponder these words:

When Britain first at Heav'n's command

Arose from out the azure main;

Arose, arose from out the azure main;

This was the charter, the charter of the land,

And guardian angels sang this strain:

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never will be slaves!

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never will be slaves!

10 points for the identity and location of the statue. Another 10 points for the irony in the symbolism of the statue.