Abstract
Christopher Baker, Beth R. Crisp and Adam Dinham (eds),
Professor Adam Dinham is director of the productive Faiths and Civil Society Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, which has a particular focus on policy issues involving faith communities within modern, pluralistic societies. This interesting collection arises from research done under the auspices of this unit and encompasses Dinham’s own emphasis on the need for greater religious literacy among policymakers – especially given recent clashes within and between faith communities and between them and determined secularists. To this end, three of the contributors look at clashes involving the law (for example, whether or not a nurse or teacher should wear a cross or niqab). Their findings add fuel to Lord Jonathan Sumption’s concerns about lawyers being increasingly burdened with what might more properly be seen as ethical or political decisions. Two of the other contributors look at the role (or non-role) of faith concerns within modern social work and welfare agencies. Inevitably a complex picture emerges, with many Western countries now appearing as both increasingly secularized and residually religious. In a very helpful Afterword, Professor Grace Davie compares these findings with her own similar experience of working with the International Panel on Social Progress (summarized last September in Theology, Vol. 122, no. 5, p. 398). She needed to work hard to convince other panellists that faith communities were not simply to be dismissed, either as wholly irrelevant within a secular society or, paradoxically, as dangerous and anti-progressive. She detects quite a gap between largely secularist policymakers and ‘street-level ecumenism’.
Paul Bickley and Nathan Mladin,
The freshly commissioned attitude survey at the heart of this new Theos report confirms that London is a significant example of a population that is increasingly both secularized and religious. It shows that, like the rest of Britain, the proportion of those reporting that they have ‘no religion’ is growing rapidly but that self-reported attendance rates among Roman Catholic and non-Christian faith groups are substantially higher in London than in the rest of the country. Among other factors, London does indeed appear to have benefited (in religious terms) from incoming migrants. And those who report that they are frequent attenders are more civic-minded and charitably disposed than others. They are also more conservative on sexual issues and more in favour of censorship. However, support for capital punishment is strongest among those who think of themselves as ‘Christians’ but never attend church. All of this fits in well with data known from other sources. The authors have produced another excellent report for Theos.
Tony Bayfield,
This good-value hardback is a very accessible and, at times, humorous account of an inclusive form of Judaism that Rabbi Tony Bayfield has long championed. His humour, for me, is less in his well-trodden Jewish stories than in the bold-type punctuations of his text with the voice of God objecting whenever he becomes too rhetorical or pompous. For instance, following a florid secular analysis of Judaism, this voice declares:
Sandra L. Richter,
This is a very welcome book. Dr Sandra Richter has taught Old Testament at Wheaton and Westmont Colleges and admits, at the outset, that conservative evangelicals (especially in the United States) have not always identified with environmental issues. As a passionate environmentalist and evangelical herself, her voice is particularly significant. In her bibliography there is (unsurprisingly) no mention of books by the non-evangelical Michael Northcott, Stephen Clark or Celia Deane-Drummond, but her concerns and biblical references are very similar to theirs. She argues at length, for example, that Deuteronomy is deeply concerned with environmental sustainability and she offers helpful case studies of unsustainable and destructive human practice in the modern world – including deforestation, factory farming, wild animal extinction, and mountaintop removal coal mining. The last of these is not always noted by other theologians, but has profoundly and, perhaps, permanently scarred parts of the North American landscape. She writes well, accessibly and with knowledge. I warmly recommend this short and engaging book.
Emma Pennington,
This is another short, accessible and well-priced book to be welcomed. As a bonus it comes with some striking photographs in colour of beautiful fourteenth-century objects and paintings. Emma Pennington wrote her doctorate on Julian and is now canon missioner at Canterbury Cathedral. Her online meditations from Canterbury on Julian can be found free of charge at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEe8HSQhOI>. In addition, as background historical information on Julian’s social context, the e-version of Janina Ramirez’s Julian of Norwich: a very brief history can be accessed at <https://spckpublishing.co.uk/julian-of-norwich>. Both authors agree that today Julian’s courtly virtues do seem anachronistic, as does her focus on the copious blood and gore of Christ’s Passion – a focus that both believe connects strongly with the horrific experiences of the Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe (with seven out of twelve people dying from it in Norwich – an almighty catastrophe compared with Covid-19). Yet, beyond this, Emma Pennington sees an Anselmian form of redemption within Julian’s influential writings, where ‘the darkness becomes our light’ (p. 154). In a brief conclusion, she relates this to her own chronic suffering from trigeminal neuralgia.
Stephen E. Fowl,
Dr Stephen Fowl teaches at Loyola, Maryland, and, like Richter, is a biblical theologian with an affection for Deuteronomy (and Paul). Despite the catchy title, Fowl’s focus is on a very specific aspect of ‘idolatry’: namely, ‘a process of slowly turning and directing our love and attention away from the one true God toward things that are not God’ (p. 29). This a process that, potentially, affects all ‘believers’ – luring them away from love and attention to God, through forgetfulness (as in Deuteronomy 6), unbounded desire and greed (as in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3), insecurity (as in 1 Kings 12—13), or simply through curiosity (as in Deuteronomy 12 and Acts 17). He has little interest in idolatry as the worship of, or through, objects – noting in passing Paul’s tortuous advice in 1 Corinthians on the propriety of eating sacrificial meat and the Torah’s condemnation of the golden calf but acceptance of the fiery serpent of bronze. This is a carefully written book, but its style is less engaging than that of Richter: even one of the commendations on the back cover depicts it as ‘a sobering spiritual exercise, a guide to deep self-examination and a prophetic summons to purge our own idols’. Walter Brueggemann this is not.
Darryl W. Stephens (ed.),
The nine articles reproduced here first appeared over the last two years in the online journal Religions. In the first, the editor puts the other articles into context. This is followed by: Antje Schnoor on ‘Transformational ethics: the concept of obedience in post-conciliar Jesuit thinking’; Kevin J. O’Brien on ‘The scales integral to ecology: hierarchies in Laudato Si’ and Christian ecological ethics’; Kate Ott on ‘Taking children’s moral lives seriously: creativity as ethical response offline and online’; Ilsup Ahn on ‘Reconstructing an ethics of credit in an age of neoliberalism’; Tyler B. Davis on ‘Liberating discernment: language, concreteness, and naming divine activity in history’; Shaji George Kochuthara on ‘Challenge of doing Catholic ethics in a pluralistic context’; James Francis Keenan on ‘Pursuing ethics by building bridges beyond the northern paradigm’; and Luke Beck Kreider on ‘Christian ethics and ecologies of violence’. This interesting collection – with a significant Catholic input – offers some sharp critical insights. I particularly enjoyed Kreider’s critique of recent environmental theology, arguing that it needs to relate more closely to war/peace discussions within Christian ethics: Having developed in mutual isolation, and now facing problems that outstrip their respective ethical competencies, in part by crossing into the other’s domain, each stands to learn from the other what a Christian response to ecologies of violence might entail. Paradigms of war/peace ethics each have practical repertories for criticizing violence, for limiting, preventing, and even healing it. They can stimulate debate about the acceptability, scope, ends and means of violence and warfare. Paradigms of environmental ethics have capacities for criticizing environmental degradation, and have shown themselves especially creative in working with inherited moral traditions to develop new forms of ethical responsibility. They also have experience articulating forms of responsibility that cross social, political, ecological, and bio-physical spheres. (p. 130)