Methodius Hayes's journal

Book launch: "Die Onsienlike Son"

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 03:44:54 GMT

Die Onsienlike Son by Jacobus van der Riet

Last Saturday we went to the launch of a new book, a book of Afrikaans poems on the lives of the saints.

That in itself is a fairly unusual thing.

There was a time, not all that long ago, within living memory of some of us, when those in power defined an Afrikaner as someone who was white, spoke Afrikaans, was a member of one of the three Dutch Reformed Churches and supported the National Party.

Fr Kobus chatting at his book launch

Back in those days, none of the Dutch Reformed Churches did saints, though things may be changing now. Some of them do candles nowadays, which they didn’t do back then, so can saints be far behind?

But these poems are by Fr Kobus van der Riet, an Orthodox priest. Or, to give him his full title, Archimandriet Jacobus van der Riet. At the back of the book are brief hagiographies of the saints who are the subjects of the poems, and who go back as far as Abraham, but also include 20th century saints like St Nektarius of Pentapolis and St John of San Francisco.

The book is also illustrated with ikons painted by our daughter, Julia Bridget Hayes.

Fr Kobus signing copies of his book “Die Onsienlike Son”

Fr Kobus was originally from Harrismith in the Free State, and was educated at Stellenbosch. He was receiuved into the Orthodox Church in 1994, and was ordained as a priest in 2002. He has visited Greece, Russia and Romania, and spent about a year at a monastery in the Peleponese, and about 3 months at monasteries on the Holy Mountain. He studied theology at St Tikhon’s Seminary in Pennsylvania in the USA.

In introducing his book of poems he said that he had written mainly about saints in countries he had visited, so that he could get a feel for their lives and circumstances.

People asked questions about the role of saints in the life of the Orthodox Church, and the place of ikons. Fr Kobus explained that people were recognised as saintsa in the Orthodox Church because people could see the glory of God in them, either in their life and ministry, or sometimes even after their death. For example, there is St Phanourios, who was a lost saint, and was rediscovered when people found an ikon of him. People ask for his prayers when they have lost something, and sometimes make cakes, which he asked people to make for his mother, and pray for her, since she lived an immoral life. He is commemorated on 27 August.

The saints are thus like friends, whom we can ask to pray for us, and, as in the case of St Phanourios, we can sometimes honour their prayer requests too.

These kinds of themes and subjects are unusual for Afrikaans poetry, so it will be interesting to see how the book is received, and whether it makes a lasting contribution to Afrikaans literature. There is some very good poetry written in Afrikaans, which is in some ways much more expressive and poetic than English, which seems more suited to prose than poetry.

There were about 40 people there for the occasion, at the premises of the Protea Boekhuis in Clydesdale, Pretoria. Some came from St Nicholas Parish in Brixton, Johannesburg, where Fr Kobus was received into the Orthodox Church in 1994.

Fr Kobus with some of the Orthodox Christians present at the book launch: Dn Stephen Hayes, Marios Joseph, Carol Hamman, Fr Kobus, Rita Sullivan, Zoe Joseph, Val Hayes

I’ve written about this in English, though really someone should write about it in Afrikaans, and I hope one or more of my Afrikaans blogging friends will do so — there is one blog mention here. You can find more about the book here: Jacobus van der Riet bespreek sy gedigte oor heiliges in Die onsienlike son. And you can buy a copy in various bookshops, or here: loot.co.za or in other online book shops.

You can see the original version of this post here.

Orthodox Church in Edendale, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 04:50:53 GMT

The Orthodox Church in Edendale was built, as far as I know, by our Bishop Damaskinos when he was a parish priest in Durban about 10-12 years ago, and is in the care of Reader Timothy Madlala, who attended the seminary in Nairobi. I had heard a lot about him (and the church) from other people, and so was pleased to meet him in person for the first time.

Michael Carstens, Reader Timothy Madlala & Val Hayes at Edendale, KZN

There is a house on the land, where Reader Timothy lives, and the church is built in the same style. There is also an outdoor baptistery, which can just be seen in the background of the picture above, with a cross-shaped font set into the ground.

Orthodox Church, Edendale, near Pietermaritzburg

Edendale has an interesting history. The land was bought and settled by black Methodists before the passing of the Natives Land Act of 1913 (which made it illegal for black people to buy land in “white” areas). But because it bordered on a black reserve, it was never expropriated by the apartheid government, and the people were never ethnically cleansed. It remained one of the few places where black people could own freehold land in South Africa right through the apartheid era.

While we were talking a group of young children came in and ran up and greeted us all with hugs and kisses. Michael Carstens remarked that such behaviour was very unEnglish, implying, I think that the hugging and kissing common in Orthodox culture was a little strange to the more reserved English-speaking cultures.

Reader Timothy with some of his young parishioners, 13 July 2012

I think it would also seem strange in traditional Zulu culture as well, where children do not rush to greet strangers, but rather keep in the background, and are still, in many households, expected to be “seen and not heard”. I took it as a sign that these children felt secure and loved, and at home in the church.

You can see the full post (with more ;pictures) here.

Jack Kerouac's American journey (review)

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 08:51:15 GMT

Jack Kerouac's American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey of On the Road by Paul Maher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On the road is not my favourite book by Jack Kerouac so I might not have bought this book if it had not been going cheap on a sale. I'm glad I did buy it, though, because I found it more interesting than On the road, and it explains how that book was written.

I recently read Neal Cassady: the fast life of a beat hero (review here), and found several details in this book that three more light on Cassady's character and behaviour than his biography did. Perhaps Paul Maher had access to more sources. After reading the biography, I was at a loss to know why people like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were attracted to Cassady, though in Ginsberg's case the initial attraction was sexual. Maher manages to explain it better, though he still does not portray Cassady as a particularly attractive character.

That still doesn't explain why I liked this book better than On the road itself. Perhaps it is because the real life of authors is often more interesting than the characters they write about. My favourite among Kerouac's books is still The Dharma bums, and perhaps that is because it is more about the influence of Gary Snyder than that of Neal Cassady, and Snyder is a more sympathetic character.

One thing that almost put me off reading the book was odd errors in language. I suppose having been an editor makes me rather intolerant of slip-ups (even though I make plenty of my own). One of the more egregious ones was on page 133, "Carolyn Cassady received a letter from her husband, postmarked January 11. In it he promised her regular installments of cash from working two jobs in New York, neither of which he had yet to procure." I presume the author intended to say either "both of which he had yet to procure" or "neither of which he had yet procured", but as it stands it is a strange piece of nonsense. There are other similar errors, writing "principal" where "principle" was meant and so on. But I'm glad that these didn't put me off, because the book is worth reading, at least to anyone who has enjoyed reading any of Kerouac's books.

View all my reviews

Tales from Dystopia

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:06:18 GMT

Tales from Dystopia is a series of blog posts I am writing of memories of the apartheid era in South Africa.

I started it because of some comments made by some South African Christian bloggers about the need to remember history so that we are not tempted to repeat the mistakes of the past. Some were also too young to remember what the apartheid era was really like. And some noted a tendency of some, even those who had lived through it, to say that it was not so bad, and that it had good intentions, and that in any case we should forget about the past and "move on".

But it is not so easy to "move on" if we forget about the past, because the past is also a great weight to which we are tethered, which keeps us from "moving on".

So here are some memories. They are just one person's memories, but if others follow a similar idea and write about their own memories, we may get a fuller picture, and be better able to come to terms with the past.

Extreme economic inequality

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:03:35 GMT

Now I know that "whiteness studies" is bourgeois, capitalist and racist.

A number of young white South African Christians, who used to be interested in the "emerging church", have recently become abosorbed in "whiteness studies", a pseudo-academic discipline that seems just as racist as the "Christian Nationalism" it claims to be trying to counter. They claim that "whiteness studies" is the solution to the problem of racism that, eighteen years after the official end of apartheid, still bedevils South African society. I invited them to take part in the Synchroblog on Extreme Economic Inequality, in the hope that they might be able to show how "whiteness studies" was relevant to that, but it seems that nont one of them has done so.

For those who are interested, here are the contributions to the synchroblog, most of them from North America. It seems that South African bloggers just don't see this as a problem.

Marta Layton - Fear Leads to Anger. Anger Leads to hate …
Kathy Escobar - Pawn Shops, Empty Refrigerators, The Long Hill Up
Carol Kuniholm - Wondering About Wealth
Glenn Hager - Shrinking The Gap
Jeremy Myers - Wealth Distribution
Liz Dyer - The First Step Is Admitting There Is A Problem
Ellen Haroutunian - Economic Inequality: Coming Back To Our Senses
K.W. Leslie – Wealth, Christians, and Justice
Abbie Watters – My Confession
Steve Hayes – Obscenity

Calling us out of numbness

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:18:59 GMT

Richard Rohr says “the role of the prophets is to call us out of numbness.” Since the beginning of time, prophetic voices both in and outside of
scripture have been calling us to consider change of some sort. Sometimes it is spiritual change, other times it may be economic,
political, or systemic change. Regardless of the emphasis, prophets challenge us to consider a better future. Right now there’s a strong
sense of change brewing in the church, the world; people are rising up and calling individuals, communities, nations, and everything in between out of numbness and toward justice, mercy, equality, and love.

So the theme of the November Christian Synchroblog is "calling us out of numbness".

Here are the links to the posts:

Joy Wilson at Solacetree- The Blessing of Losing Your Faith
Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – I Have a Dream
Glenn Hager at Breathe – Uncomfortably Numb
Linda at Kingdom Grace – On Earth as it is in Heaven
Sally at Eternal Echoes – Where are the True Prophets?
Tammy Carter at Blessing the Beloved – No Compromise
Alan Knox at The Assembling of Church – My Word of Prophecy: Quit Listening to Prophetic Voices
Liz at Gracerules – Listen
Christine Sine at Godspace – Surrounded by Prophetic Voices: Clouds of Witnesses That Call Us Out of Numbness
Amy Martin – The Window of Suffering, the Beginning of Hope
Kathy Escobar at The Carnival in My Head- Rising Up From Below
K.W. Leslie at More Christ – What is God Challenging You to Do?
Katherine Gunn at A Voice in the Desert – Where is Your Heart?
Steve Hayes at Khanya – Murder of the Cathedral
Leah Chang at desertsspiritsfire – Wall Street, Our Street
Bobby Aunder at Deconstructing Neverland – Shift

My own offering, Murder of the Cathedral, deals with the closure of St Paul's Cathedral in London, for the first time since the Second World War, because of a feared "health and safety" threat from the "Occupy London" protesters. That was a fine example of numbness! And comparing it with the actions of downtown churches in other cities that were somewhat less numb.

T

Racism and "Whiteness Studies"

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:39:01 GMT

I recently discovered a new academic discipline, or pseudo-discipline, called "Whiteness Studies", through some friends who appear to take it seriously.

From what I've been able to see, it seems that this discipline proposes to cure racism by encouraging racist thinking, which, it seems to me, is a bit like an alcoholic thinking that the cure for his craving is another drink.

If any of this interests you, I've written a series of four blog posts on it, here:

Comments welcome, there or here.

British riots: great is the temptation to Schadenfreude

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:52:08 GMT

In London (the city that is to host the 2012 Olympics) groups of young people rampaged for the third straight night.

It is difficult to resist the temptation to schadenfreude when one recalls the way the Brit media behaved over the football World Cup in South Africa in 2010, where every petty crime that occurred in South Africa was gleefully and prominently reported with the reminder that South Africa was to hold the World Cup in 2010.

So when I read stories like this, I recall those days.

Market Inline - British riots spread through more cities on the third night of violence:

In London, groups of young people rampaged for a third straight night, setting buildings, vehicles and garbage dumps alight, looting stores and pelting police officers with bottles and fireworks. The spreading disorder was an unwelcome view of London’s volatility for leaders organizing the 2012 Summer Olympics in less than a year.

In 2010, the Daily Mail was particularly bad in this respect. See, for example Notes from underground: Legends from a small country: 'Kill a Tourist Day'. But other papers joined in, sometimes even making up completely bogus stories and headlines for the purpose.

So as London (the city that is to host the 2012 Olympic Games) burns, many South Africans might be tempted to think "serves them right."

We'll probably resist the temptation, but watch the South African tabloids to see if you can catch a glimmer of Schadenfreude. You never know.

A bear of very little brain

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 05:03:48 GMT

I seem to recall a story about Winnie the Pooh, in which he visited Rabbit, who had a jar of honey.

Pooh ate the honey, and his girth expanded to such an extent that he got stuck in the exit to Rabbit's house, and remained there until he had slimmed down sufficiently to get free. This enabled Rabbit to exploit him as an unsalaried towel rack for a week.

Such lack of foresight is only to be expected in a bear of very little brain, and also, apparently, in the person of very little brain who made the following comment on the previous post:

wаll mount pаper towel holder hаs been а preferred selection owing а
lаrge multitude of yeаrs аnd it is one series thаt continues to adorn
come of more populаr every isolated yeаr. Homeowners who request to tаke
аdvаntаge of а kitchen product thаt hаs the аbility to minister to
numerous conveniences, this is the group thаt you wish beyond the shadow
of a doubt wаnt to mаke in this predetermined category of kitchen аid
product. People of the biggest fаctors this particular provides thаt а
lаrge integer of individuаls dig tаking аdvаntаge of would perhаps be in
the wаy thаt this pаrticulаr plot cаn be instаlled in аny unambiguous
аreа thаt pass on forearm your fаmily with the lаrgest аmount of
convenience...

It goes on and on with more of the same sort of meaningless garbage, showing that spammers are bears of no brains at all.

Religion, irreligion, atheism, secularism and failure to communicate

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:24:07 GMT

There was a discussion on Christopher Hitchens on the journal of poliphilo , one of one of my LJ friends, the other day. Christopher Hitchens is one of the "new atheists", who, along with others like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, are the atheist equivalent of Christian Fundamentalists like Fred Phelps, a kind of atheist Taliban.

I followed it with only mild interest, since the repetition of tired slogans becomes boring after a while, but I then noticed chiller 's contribution to the discussion. It was the usual kind statement in such discussions, that religion is responsible for all the evils in the world and that if religion is removed, all these evils will disappear.

According to chiller, religion is "responsible for war, child rape, witch beating, the stoning of women, the murder of homosexuals - I could go on," and he/she goes on to say "I want to see all organised religion dismantled, and I believe it will inevitably happen. I think we're evolving away from it, and it can't happen fast enough."

Now I've heard all this sort of stuff before, but I still want to (and in this case did) ask whether the record of irreligion was any better.

Enver Hoxha, the former ruler of Albania, took much the same view, and claimed to have abolished religion. For 23 years, from 1967 to 1991, Albania was the world's first and only officially atheist state, in which religion had been abolished. According to chiller's theory, those (and other) evils ought to have disappeared. But did they?

There were other states that, while not officially atheist, were run by atheists who did not actually succeed in abolishing religion, though it wasn't for lack of trying. Were those states free of all the evils attributed to religion?

Even to ask such questions makes at least some atheists lose all semblance of reason (which they often proudly lay claim to) and resort to emotional outbursts. I once asked a similar question in a Fidonet discussion forum called "Holy Smoke" and the atheist friend who had invited me there vowed never to speak to me again, and said he was unspeakably angry with me.

To me the question is scientific, at elementary school level. I'm not up on particle physics and quarks and string theory and quantum theory and all that. But at school we did an experiment to find out if oxygen was responsible for burning. We put a burning candle floating on water inside a gas jar. As the oxygen was used up the water level rose, and when the oxygen was used up, the flame went out. If you remove oxygen, things don't burn. So if you want to see if religion is responsible for war, murder, rape and all the rest, then if you remove religion from the environment, as Enver Hoxha claimed to have done, then all those things should be snuffed out like the flame in the gas jar. If they are not, then there are two possible explanations: (1) religion was not completely removed from the environment or, (b) they were caused by something other than religion.

But most atheists I have enountered go to extraordinary lengths to avoid discussing that. They prove to be expert herders of red herrings, erectors of straw men, and purveyors of emotional outbursts. In the case of the discussion on poliphilo's LJ, it was sidetracked into a discussion of the merits of the secular state, which simply evades the question.

But then it appears that it is not quite as innocuous as it seems. I have to say that I have no problem with the idea of a secular state, though I think that freedom and democracy rate somewhat higher in my scale of importance than secularity does. It is quite possible for a secular state to be decidedly unfree and undemocratic.

But at this point it appears that some people do not know the difference between a secular state and a secularist state. A secular state can be at least to some extent, ideologically neutral. It does not impose a theology, or an ideology on citizens, though there is a rudimentary ideology about the form of the state itself. Liberal democracy, which is the kind of state I favour, is a kind of ideology at the political level.

But it is at this point that things get scary, because it appears from the discussion on Poliphilo's LJ, that some, at least, want not merely a secular state, but a secularist one, in which the ideology of secularism would be imposed on citizens, and "religious" people deprived of civil and political rights, and prevented from influencing the political process in any way.

And so there's the problem. The advocates of secularism resent any suggestion of a comparison between what they want and authoritarian regimes like those of Enver Hoxha, Stalin, Mao and the rest. Yet I fail to see how the aims expressed by people like chiller can be achieved by anything other than authoritarian means. "I want to see all organised religion dismantled, and I believe it will inevitably happen. I think we're evolving away from it, and it can't happen fast enough." So did Lenin, so did Stalin, so did Enver Hoxha. chiller may think it possible to achieve that without gross violations of human rights, but I very much doubt it.

Writer's Block: Father figure

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:04:57 GMT

What's the most memorable piece of advice your father has shared with you?

View 1497 Answers

I can't remember.

Recent activities and pictures

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:32:08 GMT

I've been away on holiday, and so haven't written on LiveJournal for some time. Also, since much of what I have posted has been pictures, and it's easier to post pictures on other blogs than on LibeJournal, that's where you'll find them.

There's nothing more boring than other people's holiday pics, but if you fancy having a look, I've put the best in the first link. If you feel like going further, be it on your own head.

And for those interested in church stuff, there are:

Requiem for Father Johannes
Orthodox Centre at Robertson, Western Cape
Holy Saturday 2011 (photos by my son Jethro)

And because of being away I haven't had much time to read other people's LJ entries either, so few comments.

Threescore and ten years

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:38:55 GMT

Yesterday was my 70th birthday, and I spent it dealing with news of the death of one of our priests, going to a funeral, and ending up at the Presanctified Liturgy at St Nicholas in Brixton, Johannesburg, where I served with Archimandrite Kobus van der Riet.

For more details see Birthday — deathday | Khanya

Experiences in the wilderness

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:49:45 GMT

This month's synchroblog, in the week in which Lent begins, is on Experiences in the wilderness. March Synchroblog – Experiences In The Wilderness – 3/9/2011 | synchroblog:

During the season of Lent we are reminded that all of us experience wilderness times in our lives – times of searching, of mourning, of anticipating, of waiting, of watching, of unknowing, of struggling, of preparation. Join us during the season of Lent for this month’s synchroblog as we reflect and share insights and thoughts about “Experiences In The Wilderness”.

Here are the links to the posts:

Patrick (at Dual Ravens) was prolific with a four part series called “Musings” and they can be found here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four
Katherine Gunn at A Voice in the Desert writes What is Wilderness?
Wendy McCaig giving us a View from the Bridge brings A Voice Calling in the Wilderness
EmmaNadine who describes Life By List wonders about Life in the Wilderness
Tammy Carter of Blessing the Beloved is taking a rest as she Puts down the axe
Jeremy Myers writing at Til He Comes ponders The Gaping Chasm of Suicide
kathy escobar shares the carnival in my head and writes about belonging
Steve Hayes of Notes from underground describes Anatomy of exile
Marta Layton at Marta’s Mathoms writes On Sabbaths, Mountain-Tops… and Brothers’ Keepers
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules discovers Beauty In The Wilderness

Book review: a history o0f the English-speaking peoples

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:03:27 GMT

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 by Andrew Roberts

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a strange book. It purports to be a continuation of Winston Churchill's work of the same title, which ended at the end of the 19th century. I haven't read Churchill's work, so I can't compare it with that, but the point of view of the author seems to be set at the end of the 19th century; I can only describe it as "neojingoism". It's the kind of outlook I could imagine my grandfather having, if he'd been alive today, and not experienced any of the intervening period since the beginning of the First World War. Perhaps one could also call it neo-Edwardian. It reminds me of the song, I think by Flanders and Swan:

The English, the English, the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest.

And that is the viewpoint that permeates the whole book.

In spite of this quaint anachronistic approach, however, the book is quite well written, and for the most part, not boring, and at times entertaining. At least, since the author makes his own point of view obvious, one is forewarned about some of the biases. There are quite frequent asides for sermonettes on the virtues of capitalism or the English-speaking peoples, or pointing out the vices of lesser breeds who don't share the virtues of the English.

Roberts rightly deplores the use of hyperbole in describing atrocities committed by English-speaking peoples. I must say I agree with him about the too-easy flinging about of terms like "Holocaust" and "genocide" for events that are nothing of the kind, and that the over-use of such terms diminishes the seriousness of the events that such terms were coined to describe. But Roberts spoils his argument by his own exculpatory descriptions, when he says (on page 312f), "However bad the late-Victorians might have been it is a gross error of judgment to compare anything they might have inadvertently done to the deliberate Holocaust against European Jewry in the 1940s." It's the "might... inadvertently" that gives the game away. The message is clear: they couldn't have done it, because they were English, of course, and even if they did do it, they did it in a fit of absence of mind.

Roberts describes in considerable detail the horrific injuries caused by the poison gas Saddam Hussein used against Kurdish insurgents, but glosses over the injuries caused by the atomic bombs dropped by the English-speaking people on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (justified, of course, since they were English-speaking). And not a word about the response of the English-speaking peoples to insurgents in Fallujah.

Towards the end of the book (p. 636) he posts a disclaimer: "It is emphatically not that the English-speaking people are inherently better or superior people that accounts for their success, therefore, but that they have perfected better systems of government, ones that have tended to increase representation and accountability, while minimising jobbery, nepotism and corruption." Unfortunately, however, in the other 647 pages he seems to be trying to create the impression that it is precisely because of their innate superiority that the English-speaking peoples have done what they have done.

One of the other curious things about the book is that when dealing with Commonwealth participation in the two world wars, South Africa has been almost entirely written out of the story. There is mention of Australia, and New Zealand, and the place Gallipoli in WW I holds for them. There is mention of Canada and Vimy Ridge. There is mention of the West Indies and Eire. But not a word about South African troops, of Delville Wood or the sinking of the Mendi. This omission is so consistent that it sticks out like a sore thumb.

All history is selective, and historians select and emphasise the points that seem most important to them, and give less emphasis to other points. But this is not merely a matter of less emphasis; it seems to be a conscious and deliberate exclusion, and one wonders why.

The book is hardly a history, in the sense of a coherent narrative. There are occasional illuminating stories about particular historical incidents, but little to connect these with others. Huge chunks of history are skipped over, and anyone reading this to get a view of an era is likely to get a very distorted picture.

Throughout the book the author seems to be wanting to have his cake and eat it. He argues that realpolitik is more important than occupying the moral high ground, but then says that realpolitik IS the high moral ground, if its practitioners are English-speaking, of course. So, for example, he says of the detente policies in the Cold War in the 1970s:

Detente had anyhow meant very different things in the East and the West. The West saw it as a way of lowering tension, 'in the hope that it might disengage from the dreadful and even apocalyptic tests of strength it was inflicting on the rest of the world'. By contrast, in 1976 Leonid Brezhnev stated, 'Detente does not in any way rescind, nor can it rescind or alter, the laws of class struggle. We do not conceal the fact that we see in detente a path towards the creation of more favourable conditions for the peaceful construction of socialism and communism.'

But where is the contrast? It is clear that both sides saw it as a breathing space that might create the possibility of getting what they wanted relatively peacefully without Mutually Assured Destruction. Brezhnev's words could be paraphrased to precisely express the attitude of the West: 'Detente does not in any way rescind, nor can it rescind or alter, the laws of the free market. We do not conceal the fact that we see in detente a path towards the creation of more favourable conditions for the peaceful construction of capitalism and the market.'

And in the 1980s it was the West, under Reagan and Thatcher, that resumed the arms race -- something that Roberts clearly approves of, since they were English-speaking and Brezhnev was not.

Towards the end, the "history" label wears very thin indeed. It is an undisguised political rant. The author says very little about what happened, and a great deal about why it was right that it should have happened the way it did (if the English-speaking people were responsible). The contradictions multiply. It is a good and noble thing to speak the truth to power, unless that power happens to be American, Then it becomes anti-Americanism, which is, in the author's view, a Bad Thing.

So reading the book gives me the queer anachronistic feeling that a contemporary of my grandfather (who served on the British side in the Anglo-Boer War in an irregular unit called Loxton's Horse) had fallen asleep on 31 December 1900 and, like Rip van Winkle, woken up a century later with his Victorian-Edwardian jingoism intact, and decided to write about the previous century from that point of view.

It's like a parody of a parody. There are several books that parody the simplistic history of school history trextbooks. There was an English one called 1066 and all that and a South African one called Blame it on van Riebeeck. The latter noted that in the 19th century in the Eastern Cape there were nine Kaffir Wars, and that tyhese wars had Causes and Results. And it tabulated the wars with their causes and results:

1st Kaffir War - Cause: the Kaffirs

2nd Kaffir War - Cause: the Kaffirs

and so on for all nine.

And yes, there were school history books in the 1940s and 1950s that took that approach.

But Roberts is writing a book for adults, yet adopts the same kind of simplistic approach. In any war that the English-speaking peoples were involved in, there are no nuances, there is no ambiguity, there are Causes -- the non-English-speaking people (the Boers, the Germans etc), and there are Results: the English-speaking people won, and saved the world for democracy, capitalism, and realpolitik.

View all my reviews

Four books

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 04:53:24 GMT

I’m pretty busy right now, working on four books at once:

Fr Athanasius’s thesis on Orthodox dialogue with Bunyore culture
Michelle Coetzee’s book on the filioque impasse
Revising my own doctoral thesis on Orthodox mission methods for possible publication
Writing book on the history of the charismatic renewal in Southern Africa with the provisional title of Phased, challenged and zapped

Fr Athanasius has already got his degree, but has to hand in final copies of his thesis. It was written in MS Word, but he went to a free course for doctoral students arranged by the university and the people running the course installed Open Office on his computer and said he should work on that in future. All very well as advice for students who haven’t written a word, but in his case that, as well as switching to an Apple Mac, meant that his thesis has been converted back and forth between different word processing programs so many times that it lost the index and developed styles like they were going out of style. there are two “Heading 1” stiles, as well as heading 1 (with lower case h), Heading 1 A, Heading 1 A A, and so on with all the other heading styles. So I’m going through it trying to clean up the mess before he presents his fair copy to the university library, and to be microfilmed for other libraries.

Michelle Coetzee, a member of St Nicholas of Japan Parish in Brixton, is preparing her Masters thesis for publication, where she compares Eastern and Western unstersandings of the filioque. She gave me as a reference, even though dogmatic theology isn’t my field, so I’m reading it to report to the publishers. It seems quite informative to me, but I’m not sure that I’m the right person to judge.

And then I’ve been reworking my own doctoral thesis on Orthodox mission methods for possible publication.

And finally I’ve been working on a 30-year-old unpublished MS by John de Gruchy on the charismatic renewal movement in South Africa, and updating it with my own research. It was an interesting period in the history of Christianity in South Africa, and most of the books I’ve read on the period don’t tell half the story, so in another 30 years time no one will have a clue what it was like. The provisional title is Phased, challenged and zapped, a phrase that those who lived through that period of Christian history will immediately understand, and it will probably be incomprehensible to those who didn’t live through it.

“Phased” refers to something variously called group dynamics, sensitivity training, T-groups, experiential education or Christian Education, which, starting in the Anglican Church in Zululand in the mid-1960s, spread to other parts of the country and other denominations. It began with a “Phase 1” and went on to a “Phase 2”, and so people would ask one another “Have you been Phased yet?”

“Challenged” refers to a specifically Anglican response to the World Council of Churches Programme to Combat Racism, which got the South African government pretty uptight, and got tyhe Anglican Church in South Africa starting “challenge groups” all over the place to challenge instances of racism in the church, with varying degrees of effectiveness.Other denominations developed similar programmes, though with different names, though they usually included words like “justice” and “reconciliation” in eaither the titles or descriptions.

And the charismatic renewal also started in the Anglican Church in Zululand in the 1950s, and was popping up all over the country by the late 1960s (partly spread by people who had gone to Zululand to be “phased” and ended up being “zapped” by the Holy Spirit as well), where people in non-Pentecostal churches were having Pentecostal experiences.

We’re hoping to go to the Western Cape on a kind of working hoiliday after Pascha, and I hope to spend a few days with John de Gruchy discussing the project and harmonising our contributions.

All this keeps me pretty busy, so I don’t have time to be bored.
___
Originally posted on Marginalia.

C

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 03:59:00 GMT

omment spam

I see that comment spam has no struck LiveJournal.

Every one of the comments on my LJ for the last couple of weeks has been spam of one kind or another.

Christianity and creativity

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:24:10 GMT

There's a new synchroblog this month on Christianity and creativity, with the usual variety of posts from different points of view.

Bethany Stedman – How God Creates
EmmaNadine – Creativity and Christianity
Bill Sahlman – Created, Continued Creativity
Heidi Renee – Synchroblog Creativity and Christianity
Annie Bullock – Old Things are New
John O’Keefe – What is Half of 11
Kathy Escobar – open.
Tim Nichols – Artist-Priests in God’s Poetic World
Maurice Broaddus – The Artist and the Church
Jeremy Meyers – Creativity First Christian Act
Steve Dehner – The Divine Projectionist
Ellen Haroutunian – Creativity and Christianity: It Matters
Tammy Carter – His Instrument His Song
Steve Hayes – Creativity and Worship
Marta’s Mathoms – Mythos and Create-ivity as a Spiritual Act
Peter Walker – Creativity and Christianity?
William Lecorchick – Heaven and Hell
Jacob Boelman – God’s Magicians
Liz Dyer – Divine Seeing
Minnowspeaks – DNA
Christine Sine – God Created the World by Imagination

Zacchaeus Sunday prompts sermon posting

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 01:33:23 GMT

I looked at my blogroll this morning and found at least two blogging friends had posted sermons on blogs for the occasion.

seraphimsigrist posted his here, and Fr Ted Bobosh wrote on Receiving the gift of Christ.

And this time evem I got in on the act, as people in our parish asked me to post mine on Casting away the ancestral curse.

I don't usually blog my sermons, and nor do most others I know do so, but this time everyone seemed to think it was important.

Writer's Block: Super Bowl XLV

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 01:14:53 GMT

Are you watching the Super Bowl this year? If not, how will you enjoy the day? If you are watching, how will you be celebrating the game?

View 899 Answers

I'm not even sure what the Superbowl is, other than some kind of sports event in the USA. And I've no idea which day it's on.

Seeing through the eyes of marginalised people

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:25:01 GMT

Seeing the world through the eyes of the marginalised, or even just actually seeing marginalised people - that's the topic of this month's synchroblog, where people blog about the same general topic at the same time, and post links to the others, so that people can surf from one to the other and get different views on the same question. So here are some of this month's contributions (including mine):

Kathy Escobar – Sitting At The Rickety-Card-Table-In-The-Family-Room For Thanksgiving Dinner
George at the Love Revolution – The Hierarchy of Dirt
Arthur Stewart – The Bank
Sonnie Swenston – Seeing through the Eyes of the Marginalized
Wendy McCaig – An Empty Chair at the Debate
Ellen Haroutunian – Reading the Bible from the Margins
Christine Sine – Seeing through the Eyes of the Marginalized
Alan Knox – Naming the Marginalized
Margaret Boehlman – Just Out of Sight
Liz Dyer – Step Away from the Keyhole
John O’Keefe – Viewing the World in Different Ways
Steve Hayes – Ministry to Refugees–Synchroblog on Marginalised People
Andries Louw – The South African Squatter Problem
Drew Tatusko - Invisible Margins of a White Male Body

15 authors (meme)

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:50:17 GMT

15 Authors (meme)
Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

This comes from A mule in the chapter house, who was inspired by sheherazahde , and who asks to be included among the tagged ones, to see what others say. I wasn’t tagged, but thought it might be interesting to join in. I also posted this on my Khanya blog.
So here’s my list:

Alexander Schmemann
C.S. Lewis
G.K. Chesterton
Charles Williams
Jack Kerouac
Roland Allen
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
J.R.R. Tolkien
G.B. Caird
Gustav Aulén
Alan Garner
Nicolas Berdyaev
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Samuel Beckett
Jonathan Swift

I didn’t choose them because I liked them the most or that I’ve read most of their work, or that I own all their books, but simply because their writing has influenced me and shaped my thinking at various times.
1. Alexander Schmemann
I put him first because his writing probably made the biggest change to my life. It was reading his For the life of the world (or rather the shorter version, The world as sacrament)) that crystallised my dissatisfaction with Western theology, and made me seriously consider Orthodoxy as an alternative.
2. C.S. Lewis
It was Lewis’s fiction, initially the space trilogy, and later the Narnia stories, that influenced me most, and enabled me to experience what Berdyaev (q.v.) meant when he said that “myth is a reality immeasurably greater than concept”. It also prepared me to understand what G.B. Caird (q.v.) wrote about.
3. G.K. Chesterton
His Orthodoxy also influeced me a great deal in seeing the value of myths and fairy tales in communicating truth.
4.Charles Williams
I began reading his books at about the same time as I read Lewis’s space trilogy, and though I didn’t then know that they knew each other I liked them for the same reasons. His The place of the lion showed the influence of spiritual power in everyday life.
5. Jack Kerouac
I’ve only really liked one book of his, The Dharma bums. I’ve reread that many times, but haven’t really been tempted to reread most of the others. The idea of a “rucksack revolution” appealed to me. I was turned on to Kerouac and Charles Williams by Brother Roger, of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection, who was a kind of guru to me in my late teens, and whose paper Pilgrims of the Absolute probably influenced me as much as any of the authors listed here, and he wasn’t included in the list only because it wasn’t a full-length book.
6. Roland Allen
Roland Allen’s Missionary methods: St Paul’s or ours helped me to clarify my understanding of the role of the ordained ministry in the church. Roland Allen, an Anglican, wrote about a century ago, when many Anglicans still believed that there were three orders of ministry in the church — bishops, priests and deacons, and Allen explained what their role should be within the Christian community. Nowadays, however, most Anglicans have abandoned that notion, and seem to believe that the three orders of ministry are bishops, vicars and curates. and clericalism is as rife as it was in Allen’s day.
7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
His Cost of discipleship still scares me, and his Life together remains a good guide for Christian intentional communities (sometimes referred to as the “new monasticism”).
8. J.R.R. Tolkien
In 1966 I went to Oxford to be interviewed by a group of trustees about a bursary I had applied for. Another interviewee was a friend from the University of Natal, John Henderson, who told me about Tolkien’s books, and also told me that Tolkien was a friend of C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams and that they gathered regularly in that very city to read their works to each other. That was sufficient recommendation — any friend of Williams and Lewis had to be worth reading, and when I got back to my digs in Streatham, I began reading The hobbit. I bought the first two volumes of Lord of the Rings and finished the second late at night, so I borrowed a friend’s copy to continue reading, and didn’t buy the third volume for several years. But I’ve read it several times since then.
9. G.B. Caird
In a New Testament class at university our lecturer, Vic Bredenkamp, was talking about “principalities and powers”, and I didn’t understand what he was saying. I thought of “principalities” in terms of places like Monaco and Liechtenstein, and “powers” in terms of the USA and USSR. Vic recommended that I read Caird’s eponymous book, and suddenly everything fell into place. The Oyarsa of Malacandra; the Lion, the Serpent and the Butterflies of Williams’s The place of the Lion, and what lay behind the peculiar and mundane battles between the Liberal Party and the Special Branch. Our struggle was not so much against Van Rensburg and Dreyer, or even against Vorster and Verwoerd, as against the principalities, the powers, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies. In rural hamlets in Natal, like Hambrook and Stepmore, a conflict was being enacted whose roots reached the depths where angels and demons were locked in mortal conflict. Caird opened my eyes to that. At one time I wanted to write a book about it, but then Walter Wink published first. I haven’t included Wink here, because his writing didn’t really influence me, but he said a lot of the things that I wanted to say about it, based on Caird, Lewis and Williams.
10. Gustav Aulén
Following on from Caird, Gustav Aulén’s Christus Victor helped me to understand the atonement in Christian theology, and also helped to predispose me towards Orthodoxy. Aulén wasn’t Orthodox, he was Lutheran, and his explanation was not complete, but it was more coherent than most of the others.
11. Alan Garner
I loved Alan Garner’s first three books — The weirdstone of Brisingamen, The moon of Gomrath and Elidor. They were Charles Williams for children. Someone described Charles Williams’s books as “supernatural thrillers”. Garner’s first three were supernatural thrillers on steroids.
12. Nicolas Berdyaev
I’ve already mentioned Nicolas Berdaev in connection with what he said about myth. He wrote a lot of stuff, most of it interesting, though not all of it I would agree with, but what he said about myth bears repeating:

Myth is a reality immeasurably greater than concept. It is high time that we stopped identifying myth with invention, with the illusions of primitive mentality, and with anything, in fact, which is essentially opposed to reality… The creation of myths among peoples denotes a real spiritual life, more real indeed than that of abstract concepts and rational thought. Myth is always concrete and expresses life better than abstract thought can do; its nature is bound up with that of symbol. Myth is the concrete recital of events and original phenomena of the spiritual life symbolized in the natural world, which has engraved itself on the language memory and creative energy of the people… it brings two worlds together symbolically.

13. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky’s novels have taught me a great deal about compassion, forgiveness and repentance.
14. Samuel Beckett
It was Brother Roger, CR (see above) who turned me on to Samuel Beckett, and lent me most of his books and plays. I suppose that unlike many of the other books I have mentioned, which seem to emphasise premodern themes like angels and demons, Beckett was modern, and his books deal with modernity, but especially the bleakness of modernity, which is the complement of some of the others.
15. Jonathan Swift
When I was at school, and encountered bullies, I would become quite misanthropic, and then I would read Swift’s Gulliver’s travels, because it suited my mood. The more I saw of some people, the more I liked my horse. But Dostoevsky’s compassion trumps Swift’s misanthropy, so I don’t read Swift so much nowadays. I did read a biography of him, though.
And now I have to think of fifteen people to tag.

1. Bishop Seraphim Sigrist
2. Macrina Walker
3. John Morehead
4. Jim Forest
5. Matushka Donna
6. Malcolm Guite
7. Matt Stone
8. Reggie Nel
9. Tinyiko Maluleke
10. Cobus van Wyngaard
11. Arthur Stewart
12. Jenny Hillebrand
13. Terry Cowan
14. Sue Fairhead
15. The mule in the chapter house

[Bad username: <br ></lj>15. The mule in the chapter house]

Synchroblog on same-sex marriage

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 06:03:41 GMT

This month there is a synchroblog on homosexual marriage, and you can find my contribution at Synchroblog on same-sex marriage, with links to the other participants.

Actually my own contribution consists of links to three old blog posts of mine, since they were already available and I didn't have anything new to say.

The first was a paper I wrote at the request of our Archbishop, Metropolitan Seraphim of Johannesburg and Pretoria, on the theology of Christian marriage.

The second was a proposal I made when the constitutional court ordered parliament to revise the Marriage Act to make provision for homosexual marriages. I proposed that the Marriage Act be repealed and that the state get out of the marriage business altogether, and leave it to civil society.

The third was on homophobia, and touched on things like the distinction between homosexual marriage and "gay marriage" (which is a different thing altogether). Here are the links to all the contributions, including mine.

Kathy Baldock at Canyonwalker Connections – Marriage “I Do” For Who
Dan Brennan at Faith Dance – Sexual Difference, Marriage and Friendship
Steve Hayes at Khanya – Same Sex Marriage Synchroblog
Sonja Andrews at Calacirian – In Defense Of Marriage
John C O’Keefe – Exactly What Is Gay Marriage
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – Nobody knows why or how same-sex marriage is harmful
Herman Groenewald at Along The Way – Same Sex Debate
Margaret Boelman at Minnowspeaks – What Have We Done
David Henson at unorthodoxology – ban marriage
Erin Word at Mapless – Synchroblog: Legalizing Same Sex Marriage
Joshua Jinno at Antechurch – The Church Is Impotent

Bear in mind that the participants come from a wide variety of backgrounds and traditions, and so there are a lot of divergent viewpoints.

If you have comments on any individual contribution you can use the blog comments section, but if you want to make more general comments on two or more contributions, a good place to to so is the chris_soc : Christianity and society discussion forum.

Fellowship and food

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:08:02 GMT

An interesting day out with Fr Ciprian Burlacioiu, a Romanian priest teaching at Munich in Germany, and Macrina Walker, a former Cistercian nun who recently became Orthodox.

We ended up having dinner at a restaurant in Norwood, Johannesburg, with Fr Athanasius Akunda, the parish priest of St Nicholas of Japan, Brixton, Johannesburg. Read the full story here.

The towers of Trebizond: book review

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 12:55:28 GMT

The towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A delightful novel about a High Anglican attempt to reclaim "the abandoned places of empire". The narrator Laurie and her (her sex is unclear until near the end of the story) aunt Dot, together with her aunt's Anglo-Catholic chaplain Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg, set out for Trebizond, the site of the last Roman empire, with a camel. They are joined by a Turkish feminist who they hope will help to liberate oppressed Turkish women by converting them to High Anglicanism.

They meet interesting people, including other British travellers writing Turkey books, and eventually Laurie's friends go their separate ways, leaving her with the camel, and rather short of cash. She has begun to doubt the sanity of the camel. But eventually crosses Turkey and travels through much of the Levant with it.

I've just finished reading it for the third time, but as the first time was nearly fifty years ago, and the second time about thirty years ago, I'd forgotten much of the story. But in the intervening time I've learnt quite a bit more about the places visited by the characters in the novel, and some of their history. William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain covers much of the same ground, and also gives some of the history of the places, and so reading it a third time made some of the obscurer bits come to life.

It is all interspersed with the protagonist's observations of people, and thoughts about life, the universe and everything, which are sometimes funny and sometimes bitter-sweet sad. Much of this is semi-autobiographical, because, like Laurie in the story, Rose Macaulay was herself torn between the Christian faith and adultery.

Another interesting thing about reading it again after fifty years is that the world has changed and the Christian church has changed, or at least the Anglican Church that the main characters belong to. I can read other books of the same vintage, such as The Dharma bums by Jack Kerouac and scarcely be aware that more than fify years have passed since the book was written. But in The towers of Trebizond one is far more aware of the changes. Travellers in the Levant needed two passports, one for Israel and one for everywhere else. The Six-Day War had not taken place, and much of Jerusalem was not in Israel. And on the eastern border of Turkey was the USSR, or the U.S.S.R., as they wrote it in those days, with the Cold War in full swing. It was a world in which Islamophobia wasn't even thought of, and perhaps the word itself had not been invented yet.

The church scene was even more different. For the Roman Catholic Church, Vatican II lay in the future, while the Anglicans have changed in ways too numerous to mention. This can be seen in a conversation between Aunt Dot and a Roman Catholic, where Aunt Dot is saying that Roman Catholics could at least be polite in Anglican churches, even if they don't believe they have the Mass, altars, or real priests.

Aunt Dot ended by saying that even if we had no altars and no Blessed Sacrament on them, it would only be polite of outsiders to bow where we thought we had them, especially at Requiem and Nuptial Masses, and also to join in the Creed and the Lord's Prayer at christenings instead of shutting the mouth tight as if afraid of infection, which looked so unchristian and stuck up.

"I suppose," said Aunt Dot, "you would walk into a mosque with your shoes on," which was not really fair, as Roman Catholics do take off their hats in Anglican churches, and even, I think, in dissenting ones.

"And I suppose you," said the Roman Catholic, "would, if you had been an early Christian, have offered a pinch of incense to Diana, out of politeness to the pagans."

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancour.

There is just so much in that conversation that would be quite unimaginable today.

One of the more amusing parts is where Laurie, left on her own, and unable to speak Turkish, memorises some phrases from a phrasebook, and one that she uses frequently, "I do not understand Turkish," seems to produce strange reactions in the hearers. It was some time before she realised she had copied the Turkish for the wrong phrase in the phrase book, and that what she had been telling people was "Please would you telephone immediately to Mr Yorum."

The thing that persuaded me to reread the book this time was the curious desire, expressed by advocates of the "New Monasticism", to "relocate to the abandoned places of empire", in conjunction with a report of the Divine Liturgy being celebrated, for the first time in 88 years, in an abandoned monastery near Trabzon, the Turkish name for Trebizond. Though it wasn't Anglican, that seemed, in a way, the fulfilment of the vision of Aunt Dot and Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg, and in a photo of the monastery, the scenery was spectacular. I blogged about it at Reclaiming the Abandoned places of Empire | Khanya, and, in a more general sense, at Notes from underground: Abandoned places of empire. And for that, it seemed that it might be worth reading the book again.

It was.

View all my reviews