Living Wittily

Brand, Ross, the BBC and the ethical boundaries of humour

The furore over that broadcast by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross has several subsidiary themes worth a second thought. The following are my second thoughts, offered for reflection and not pushed as anything other than how I think and feel about all this.

Much is made of the fact that the night of the broadcast only 1 complaint was registered, with a few more the next day. Then a tabloid paper ran the story as front page news and the complaint count took off. By last night, with Brand's resignation and Ross's suspension confirmed and the Radio Two controller resigned, the tally reached 30,000+. This has led to a backlash suggesting that since most of those complaining hadn't heard the broadcast, and never listen to the programme, their sense of offence is hypocrisy and their complaints invalid.

Sorry. But having had full and unchallenged reports on the BBC itself of what WAS said, and to whom, and that it was broadcast, comes as information that entitles any responsible person to challenge the morality, even the legality, of such misjudgement of taste. When would an episode of suggestive crudity and thoughtless comment on potential suicide EVER be acceptable? And in what other circumstances could such a series of messages be left on an answering machine without incurring prosecution?

Further. Even if this episode had not been broadcast - what thought was ever given to how such messages on an answering machine would be received by an elderly man who had made the mistake of agreeing to particpate in a show sponsored by the supposedly responsible, publicly funded BBC? Sure the Controller had to resign for approving the broadcast. But had it not been broadcast then presumably that was to be the end of the affair. Not sure that's how I feel - I expect at least a minimal awareness in those entrusted with an audience of millions, of the impact on any individual subjected to their particular brand of 'pushing the edges' comedy. Did no one even consider the possibility that a Grandfather might be offended, and a young woman humiliated, by explicit and obscene references to her sex life? 

It is also claimed that it is all about audience. A quick poll of audiences queuing up for BBC recording of programmes revealed a sharp distinction between those attending Never Mind the Buzzcocks and a more sedate crowd queuing for a much less 'pushing the edges' programme. The Buzzcocks folks were unanimous in their opinion that the broadcast was not offensive, and that we all needed to lighten up, and that if you don't like the content of the programme no one forces you to listen to it. But that also ignored the fact that people are victims of such brutal humour, and that the audience's laughter is at someone's expense, which should always be within acceptable moral and humane limits. It also betrays a too often forgotten feature of humour; frequently one of its key components is cruelty, the capacity, even the compulsuon, to laugh at someone else's hurt. Thomas Hobbes that bleak realist was not wrong when he defined laughter as the grimaces of the face when we witness the misfortune of someone else.

Then there is the claim that the furore was all about salary envy. Jonathan Ross is paid £6 million a year to work two days a week for the BBC. To require extremely high standards of professionalism, maturity and reliability in enhancing the reputation of his employer seems to me to be a reasonable, even minimal ask for such a salary. Whether any TV celebrity fronting a twice weekly programme is worth an amount per annum that would pay 240 nurses' salaries is a separate matter. Salary envy is a rather hard charge against those who complained since the BBC is in fact a public service, funded by its own audiences, and is therefore publicly accountable. That public called it to account this week. Implied in that accountability are questions about the judgement of those who agreed to pay such a salary, and who when it went wrong took over a week to deal decisively with it.

All of which said - I listened to all of Russell Brand's statement of apology, and recognise the genuine remorse he expressed. No similar public statement has yet been released by Jonathan Ross. The codes of discipline and professional standards in broadcasting are hard to get right. I for one don't want humour, comedy, satire to be so domesticated that they lose their capacity for important social critique, as important vehicles for presenting alternative perspectives, and their long history of subverting assumptions that can often be oppressive, bigoted, abusive. What they must not do, and certainly not on public broadcasts, is make people targets for precisely that abusive and humiliating ridicule which diminishes and degrades, so that laughter becomes a way of desensitising our humanity.I don't think that was the intent of either the two comedians or the Radio Two Controller - but that they seemed unaware of that consequence suggest the need for some education on the ethical boundaries of humour.

Thanksgiving Conference for Thomas Torrance

Yesterday I spent the day in two places - the M8 and New College, Edinburgh. I was four and a half hours on the M8 and 7 hours in New College attending the Thomas F Torrance Thanksgiving Conference. And the 7 hours in new College made the 270+ minutes on the M8 well worth it. But just to make sure blog visitors appreciate the rhetorical force of the comparison, the M8 without roadworks is like a slow release anxiety enhancer. The M8 with roadworks you have a choice - be miserable, be very miserable, or make sure you have good conversation partners in the car and a stack of your favourite CD's. Yesterday I had both.

On the way there in Andrew's car, the state of the central artery road system provided Graeme and I with an endless supply of discouraging and demoralising comment. Andrew's sanctification levels have thereby been considerably augmented. 

On the way home, driving my own car which has been having a holiday with Aileen, I discovered some of her CD's including a supply of Johnny Cash. The mixture of snarling defiance and sentimental regret, sung by one of the greatest Country performers of my generation kept my own levels of sanctification at least this side of going subterranean!

And it was worth it for the following reasons
I met Jason Goroncy, my virtual and blogging friend and now I can call him a real friend whose face I recognise, whose voice and accent I recognise, and who unfortunately is leaving Scotland for New Zealand three weeks after actually meeting me.. though I'm assured the move has been planned for some time.

At the conference I met and spoke with several others including a Church of Scotland minister from Cyprus who is a friend of Steve Chalke, which led to interesting discussion about Torrance on Atonement; a retired minister who experienced Torrance's lectures halfway through his degree (1949-52), and whose preaching had been sustained by fires ignited over two brief years of Torrance dogmatics; Robin, a key player in Paternoster publications and someone whose theological awareness of 'what's going on' and 'what works' is both impressive and generously shared; Stuart the Edinburgh post-grad (not my Word from the Barricades friend and colleague), with whom I shared coffee, brief discussion of high falutin theology and memories of standing together at Hampden on that Saturday when Queen of the South gubeed Aberdeen 4-3; several other friends I already knew but had a chance to talk to while juggling a plate of chicken tikka sandwiches, a cup of coffee and a mini choc muffin!

Registered members were given a complementary copy of Torrances new book on the Incarnation, beautifully produced by Paternoster / IVP, and already slotted in to be my main reading during Advent in a month's time - on which I'll blog. This, and a second volume on Atonement to be issued next year, contains much of Torrance's lectures on dogmatics, revised and rewritten over the years and now issued to a wider audience, edited by Bob Walker who is uniquely qualified to do this sympathetically, thoroughly and as one who knows the peculiar excellencies of Torrance's mature theology.

Then there were the papers, all of them good, a couple of them outstanding, and at least one contribution from a recently retired minister that was deeply moving and reminded me how it could be that any of us ever thought we might just be able, by the grace of God, to preach such a Gospel, serve Christ in his Church, and express in pastoral care the self-giving love of the Triune God, incarnate in Christ crucified and risen, and actively redemptive throughout Creation, in the power of the Spirit. 

The epilogue to such a full day was a Pizza and Wispa night watching the fitba with my son Andrew, home from Uni and reminding me of the importance of self-indulgence. As if.....

"The Sunday School Treat"

This post is for the benefit of Lynn "who works with children", recently decanted to Edinburgh, and who visits this blog and occasionally comments. During our visit to Cornwall Sheila and I visited Penlee House in Penzance and in the art gallery I was fascinated by this picture. It is of an early Sunday school trip, and is an important and early piece of social documentation of what became for many years a highlight of children's lives.

The painting is called "The Sunday School Treat", and the artist was W H Y Titcomb, one of the Newry school of Cornish artists who flourished in the late Victorian period. This painting shows how Sunday School treats were done on the Cornish coast and estuaries. Despite the unfashionable subject matter some of Titcomb's best paintings document religious themes such as Primtive Methodist prayer meetings, pastoral care of the dying, and the prayer and devotions of the Cornish fishermen. Incidentally Thomas Cook started his travel business by organising day trips on trains (with food included) for Sunday Schools and Temperance gatherings.

Now Lynn - with all the health and safety, risk assessment, child protection and other essential legislative safeguards, I don't suppose we're ever likely to see the likes of these outings again. Anyway - it's so idyllic I thought I'd share it to encourage you and and all those whose ministry and vocational gifts are poured into the high energy demands of working with children. I reckon Jesus probably put such ministry into the higher echelons of good long term Kingdom building.

"Scottish Baptist Theological Study Group" - who are they when they're at home?

In yesterdays post (below) I mentioned the inaugural meeting of what I called 'The Baptist Theological Study Group'.

A fuller post at the College blog prompted several questions from Margaret which make it important to clarify what is envisaged. Here is Margaret's comment / questions, and the response I posted on the College blog. I am answering only for myself as the occasion is being organised by Andrew Rollinson - but in our conversations about it I have a good idea of what Andrew is envisaging and hoping for.

Margaret

"What's the Scottish Baptist Theological Study Group? Where and when do they meet? Who is "in the group"? How do you get to be "in the group"? Just curious....."

My reply

The name is provisional Margaret - and likely to change because it's hard to avoid words like 'group', 'society', but they have a kind of closed feel to them that is entirely unintended.

The initial meeting was set up by Andrew Rollinson, our Ministry Advisor at the Baptist Union of Scotland, by an email circular inviting expressions of interest - not sure who was on that first list. But the intention is to get such a discussion forum under way and make it into an inclusive place for creative reflection, responsible discussion and respectful listening about issues and themes important for the ongoing life and health of Baptist thought and practice.

At this first meeting, as well as the lecture, we hope a broader discussion will help clarify what we want to be about, and how best to develop through thoughtful, informed discussion together, Baptist ways of thought and practice that arise out of such a process of theological reflection.

So I guess the invitation is to all those who are open to and supportive of the intended ethos of "an inclusive place for creative reflection, responsible discussion and respectful listening about issues and themes important for the ongoing life and health of Baptist thought and practice". At this stage it is only being initiated - what it becomes will largely be determined by those who want to make this journey together.

My personal conviction is that such a shared journey can only be taken if the journey itself is inclusive and welcoming, accessible and jargon free, contextually sensitive but challenging, and therefore enabling practice which arises out of shared learning 'in the school of Christ'; and that such a journey of learning and discovery means our willingness to travel together in conversation, companionship, and commitment to live together  'under the rule of Christ'. 

Hope that helps with the 'just curious' questions - for which many thanks!

Dimensions of Baptist Spirituality: Under the Rule of Christ.

It's here. Just received in the post my copies of the most recent Regent Study Guide entitled Under the Rule of Christ. Dimensions of Baptist Spirituality, Paul Fiddes (Ed.), Smyth and Helwys, 2008 (ISBN: 978-095397 - 4-1). The book arose out of a request from the Baptist Union Retreat Group to the UK College Principals to write something on spirituality amongst Baptists. The result was a series of papers which we wrote, reviewed together, revised in the light of our discussions, and then offered for publication.

Here's the blurb from the publisher

In this book the Principals of the six Baptist colleges in Great Britain take up a request to write about Baptist spirituality. They propose that the spirituality of Baptists, in all its diversity, is characterized by living ‘under the rule of Christ’. While all Christian spiritual traditions affirm this truth, they suggest that there is a particular sense of being under Christ’s rule which has been shaped by the story of Baptists and by their way of being church through the centuries. Elaborating the main theme, chapters explore various dimensions of spirituality: giving attention to God and to others, developing spirituality through suffering, having spiritual liberty within a community, living under the rule of the Word in Christ and scripture, integrating the Lord’s Supper with the whole of life, and engaging in the mission of God from an experience of grace. Together, the writers present an understanding of prayer and life in which Christ is both the final authority and the
measure of all things.

Chris Ellis is Principal Emeritus of Bristol Baptist College; Paul Fiddes is Principal of Regent’s Park College, Oxford; Steven Finamore is Principal of Bristol Baptist College; James Gordon is Principal of the Scottish Baptist College, Glasgow; Richard Kidd is Principal of Northern Baptist College, Manchester; John Weaver is Principal of the South Wales Baptist College, Cardiff; Nigel Wright is Principal of Spurgeon’s Baptist College, London.

Ive a lot more to say about the Bible, Baptist principles and Baptist spirituality on the College blog here. You can find it just after the publisher's blurb. There is a big conversation to be had about what it means to be Baptist in such a distinctive way that it actually makes baptist people distinctive! Such distinctiveness doesn't necessarily make baptists more right, more spiritual, more theologically sound - it does indicate what it is we are called to be, and to be faithful to, within the diversity of the church universal.

Life returning to a more bearable abnormal - SPOOKS is back!

Sub Prime Mortgages. The run on Northern Rock. Credit Crunch. HBOS takeover. Major Banks bail out. Recession inevitable. The sequence of significant moments affecting the future welfare of the planet since last year, hasn't finished yet.

But, some of us who live on more than one level of unreality will find with apologies to Boethius, The Consolation of Spooks. The scarily plausible, brilliantly acted Spooks are back.

I have every intention of marking the occasion with whatever calorie laden sweetie I fancy at 9.00pm Monday night. And for the next 10 weeks there will be at least one TV programme I can be sure posits a worse case scenario than is being painted for the global financial markets - I think.

"here's tae us, wha's like us" - Is there a Scottish spirituality?

 
An area of increasing interest for me is the way a spiritual tradition grows out of its native soil, and takes on the characteristics of its environment. The question of what is distinctive, even unique, in a spiritual tradition depends on the particularities of context - historical, political, cultural, religious - perhaps even geographical.

The term "Scottish piety" (not sure about the continuing usefulness of the ubiquitous descriptor "spirituality") needs some clarifying.
Is there a uniquely Scottish stream of Christian faith as it has been experienced, thought and lived? If so what gives Scottish piety its distinctive flavour?
What in the Scottish context, over centuries, shaped and gave specific Scottish content to Christianity in Scotland, as through processes of revolution and evolution, it developed and changed?

And what is meant by piety? In Scotland, amongst other things the impact of religious experience, doctrinal developments and doctrinal fixity, the role of the Kirk in discipline, worship, liturgy and community and people's experience of all of these. But also the relation of people to Bible, prayer, preaching and the hard to measure extent that such piety and faith exerted on and influenced daily life.

All of this - but even then, "Scottish piety" remains unsatisfactory as a catch-all. For Scotland itself has a religious history and representation as varied as its own georgraphical landscape - Prebyterian and Catholic, Episcopal and Dissenting, Highland and Lowland, West and East - and in all this variety a gift of fractiousness that made fragmentation inevitable, bringing both blessing and loss.

The research part of my current sabbatical is focusing on how to explore all this in a way that will help Scottish Christians to 'look to the rock from which we are hewn". Such an exercise involves a long ponder about what in our tradition, our way of following Christ, is of lasting significance and value, what can be appropriated and what now needs to be relinquished, in order to clarify what faithful following of Christ means in contemporary Scotland. If context is decisive in how a tradition is formed, it is also decisive in how that tradition changes, adapts and stays healthy. Quite straightforward really - not!

A subsidiary interest is the way Scottish Baptist communities have emerged, developed, declined and yet continue to feature within the Scottish ecclesial landscape. Again, the focus of my personal interest is the way Scottish Baptists have experienced, thought and lived out their way of following Christ. The suggestion there is such a disctinctive thing as "Scottish Baptist piety" might be even more contentious. And for that very reason even more interesting, as a route to self-understanding and renewal for communities sharing in the experience of decline, and badly needing to recover confidence in a Gospel which never promised us a rose garden - or an assured place at any table, political or religious, other than the one where bread is broken and broken hearts are healed.

Anyway, that's what I'm about these days.

The unbearable heaviness of hailstones

Now I know it's possible to take things too personally. And that when we begin to do that, we are assuming that we are the centre of attention, which is a bit self-obsessed. So I'm trying not to take it personally, that when I return from a few days on the East Coast (Crail), I'm just getting out the car in Paisley when the heavens open and malteser size hailstones start bouncing off my unprotected skull. And they fell with volume and venom for several minutes. No wonder Pharaoh hated hailstones- especially if he was bald and no one was areound with a palm leaf umbrella.

Anyway, Crail was both fun and fruitful. Some anecdotal evidence:

walking up the road from the centre of Crail we met an elderly woman pulling her shopping trolley. She liked the sound its wheels made, she said. "Makes it sound like a skateboard and people move out the road."

Bought a beautiful pottery vase for our wee hoose. The colours, shape, size and the overall Scottish feel to it appealed to both of us so the decison was unanimous. I love unanimity in a marriage - balanced with an equal amount of equanimity about differences.

Read chunks of the Apostolic Fathers in the new Michael Holmes edition that has the Greek text and the English translation. Just to be clear, I read chunks of the English translation, and occasionally deciphered a Greek sentence or two. But I've liked these early Christian thinkers and writers ever since Maxwell Staniforth's translation was published by Penguin in the 1970's. My aged Penguin was brown, split into looseleaf and recently recycled - so I bought this new edition that matches the format and size of my Greek NT.

Discovered at least three good coffee shops, and one where you get home made clootie dumpling with fresh thick cream, which I haven't had with coffee before but will have again - soon! The photo is the clue - after a 7 mile round walk from St Monans, what's a dollop of cream here or there?

Rediscovered the local practice of the Wednesday half day. As a sabbaticaling visitor I readily approved of the idea that if you have to work on a Saturday (or Sunday), there is a need for compensatory time - and a need to protect it. An incoming resident complained to the butcher that he was shut when she came the day before to buy the victuals for tea. His answer was enigmatic and emphatic 'Aye, but this is Crail". Which had me inwardly seconding the motion, "Aye, so it is".

Walked several chunks of the Fife Coastal Walk, and apart from the usual ornithological suspects, saw redstarts, linnets, goldfinches, a heron standing like a grey obelisk, and close ups of hunners and hunners of geese strip-mining a recently harvested field.

Read around John Wesley's theology and especially those theological traditions which most influenced him including the Moravians, the Greek Fathers, the Puritans, and various other contributors to the eclectic mix that makes Wesleyan theology both rich in its diversity and frustratingly elusive for those who insist on theological consistency.

Spoke with the proprietor of the wee Picture Gallery in Pittenweem, whose wife is a superb painter, and whose daughter is both a primary teacher and a painter in her own right. One of her paintings was beautiful - just what I'd like to have bought and looked at endlessly - but it was too expensive, so I was left to battle with my covetousness. He told us about some of the local artists some of whom are pretty good, and some of the more pretentious ones who see themselves as 'serious' artists. Art is largely a matter of taste, but I do find myself at times baffled by some abstract work which is given a very specific name - and I can't for the life of me get the connection between the name and the picture. Perhaps a conversation of the obtuse with the obtuse. But what a nice man to talk to.

So - Crail was great, and the break a generous gift - and our thanks to the givers.

The Fife Coastal Walk, the Equinox and Psalm 93

Going here (to Crail, Fife), to do walking, reading and thinking. Sheila likewise and taking her watercolours too. The weather forecast is "none of this over-rated and boring blue skies with day on day constant sunshine, but as we move towards the equinox there will be high winds, rain and the usual seasonal challenges." Once had a holiday in the East Neuk during the equinox and the seas were mountainous - I love big seas crashing in on the shore. I can well understand how in the Wisdom Literature the image of humanly uncontrollable waves points to the immensity and mystery of God, and makes human beings feel small, relative to the vast dynamic reality of the God whose love and power is imaged in pounding waves. Taking my waterproofs and probably not my Factor 40 sun cream. Taking my wee NT and Psalms as well - and if there are big seas, I'll read Psalm 93 on the shoreline - perhaps as a reminder there is a power greater than all the Market Forces of discredited globalisation!

1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
       the LORD is robed in majesty
       and is armed with strength.
       The world is firmly established;
       it cannot be moved.

 2 Your throne was established long ago;
       you are from all eternity.

 3 The seas have lifted up, O LORD,
       the seas have lifted up their voice;
       the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.

 4 Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,
       mightier than the breakers of the sea—
       the LORD on high is mighty.

 5 Your statutes stand firm;
       holiness adorns your house
       for endless days, O LORD.

    

Sabbaticaling Continued

 Amongst the sabbatical benefits so far:

1. a sense of being rested - which is what Sabbath is for; and therefore a regular necessity
   
2. a fresh perspective on other important aspects of life beyond immediate vocational responsibilities
3. a recovering of physical fitness with a regular exercise programme
4. time with people usually squeezed into odd 'windows of opportunity' - meals, conversation and laughter - kind of what friendship is about.
5. specific reading keeping up with recent work on Evangelicalism, its own internal critique and history, the ongoing search for definition, the problem of politicisation especially in the US, and that bright elusive butterfly of an agreed evangelical identity. The relationship between Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism is currently under scrutiny and itself raises important issues about Evangelicalism's relation to culture, the nature of biblical authority and the straightforward equation of Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the popular mind, often in the writing of journalists, and less excusably in some academic work in sociology and theology.
   
6. a range of reading not limited to the funtional but intentionally recreative - this includes poetry of Levertov,Dickinson and the later R S Thomas; Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me, with some sorties into Desert Spirituality; some of Tom Torrance's later work, Christian Doctrine of God, The Trinitarian Faith,(in preparation for the day conference at the end of the month, and several novels which don't feature on any academic list I can think of!
7. some jobs done to the house, either by ourselves or organising for them to be done by those who can them properly.
8. listening to music that is new and old, from Eternal Light by Goodall, to Beethoven's Symphonies (is there anything more wildly manic than the lst movement of the Seventh which one contemporary reviewer explained by the accusation Beethoven was drunk when he composed it), and then Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bruch, violin concertos all of which I've listened to loadsatimes!!
9. Several periods of longer change and holiday, a week at St Deiniol's, 8 days in Cornwall, and next week mostly at Crail doing amongst other things the Fife Coastal Walk, or parts thereof. A couple more such jaunts are planned, including a still to be arranged pilgrimage to Manchester to commiserate with Sean the Baptist about the amount of sunshine he'll have to get used to in Australia!
   
10. Alongside this some preliminary work towards Advent when the later part of this sabbatical will be spent exploring the images of Jesus in art, music, icon and film - in preparation for return to College and a new course, but at this stage an opening up of mind and heart to the unique glory of that grace and truth that dwelt among us.

Now and again I recall the important disclaimer of A J Heschel probing at the pride that drives our drivenness:

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world already has been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world; on the seventh day we try to dominate the self. (Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath)