The Idea of a Twenty-First Century (Catholic Heritage) University: Part 3, The New Dark Ages

The New Dark Ages

Over the weekend, I read a review of Nigel Biggar’s latest book, The New Dark Ages. Biggar is Professor of Theology at Oxford who came to prominence recently because his earlier book on Colonialism was ‘cancelled’ by Bloomsbury before being taken up by William Collins and becoming a best seller. The current book is wide ranging, but, in part it addresses the question of free speech in universities, advocating a ‘liberal’ approach that Biggar claims to be meritocratic, race blind and sex blind, what he might want to call ‘scientific’.

Biggar suggests that universities should reinstate a series of traditional virtues including ‘temperance (showing emotional restraint), respect (holding fast to the idea that your opponents act in good faith), carefulness (being accurate in representing others), charity (taking the strongest versions of opponents’ arguments), humility (knowing that we all make mistakes), and docility or teachableness (assuming that we always have more to learn)’. These are all principles that both Newman, and I, would heartily endorse.

The reviewer, however, from the Telegraph, kept stating that Biggar was only confirming ‘common sense’. Pierre Bourdieu, among others, has noted that those who control ‘common sense’ control the thinking of society, and we have seen that very clearly in recent years from Brexit, through Trump, to Reform.

When Newman talks about theological truth as ‘inspired’, we can, perhaps, also think that this kind of truth, the moral or ethical truth, is simply given, revealed in a clear and unambiguous fashion, what we might think of as ‘common theological sense’. Newman however, like all those identified as Doctors of the Church, is abundantly clear that there is nothing common, or uncontested, about revealed truth. Theological reasoning, critical reflection and a constant questioning in the light of changing society, is difficult, it takes years to perfect, and is at the core of Newman’s theological approach.

The pursuit of moral truth is not easy, it is no less critical and robust than scientific truth, but it cannot be ignored, marginalised or treated as an optional extra in the work of the university.

It is not only in our academic work that we need to draw on theological truth. When I was asked to revise the EDI strategy at Birmingham University, some ten years ago now, I was clear that we needed to develop a strategy that took account of all the protected characteristics. I know only too well, from my own experience, how the different characteristics can be played off against each other, with religion, for example, often taking a secondary place to sexuality.

The current debate about trans rights and sex or gender is another example of the attempt to pitch one characteristic against another in an apparently zero-sum game. Beginning to think through, reflect upon, challenge, and ultimately argue for, a coherent strategy of inclusion that enables respect for all individuals is far from easy.

Theories of intersectionality go some way to recognise the overlaps between the different characteristics, but they are not focused on developing an approach where all forms of oppression, marginalisation and suffering are given equal recognition. Simply claiming that we are being meritocratic, race blind, sex blind, or blind to any other characteristic, is also no answer to this challenge.

Just because such thinking is not easy, however, it does not mean that we, as universities, should not be seeking the sociological, philosophical, moral, or even theological, truths that make this possible. We will need to draw on all those in our institutions who are steeped in these disciplines to achieve this, and doing so is perhaps one of the most urgent tasks of the twenty first century (Catholic heritage) university.

The Opiniated University

Another recent book addressing the contemporary crisis in Higher Education is Brian Soucek’s Opinionated University. Soucek is speaking to an American audience, and American universities are perhaps facing a somewhat different and perhaps more existential challenges than ourselves. There is a strong call, in America, for universities to be neutral on political and other issues, if only for their own survival.

Soucek states that this call for neutrality is missing a significant point. All universities, he argues, by their very nature, express opinions. In our research we reach, and express, opinions (hopefully well-founded opinions). More importantly, for Soucek, each time we assess an assignment from students we are expressing an opinion, that this work is worth a first, a 2:1 or whatever it might be. We cannot, as universities, get away from expressing opinions and, as such, we are really rather good at it, or at least very experienced at doing so. Why should we then remain neutral in some areas, Soucek asks, and not in others?

I have been speaking recently to colleagues in the Northeast, Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham, who find themselves in areas governed by Reform led councils and recently elected Reform party mayors. They are already finding themselves being pressured, very indirectly and very subtly, to abandon certain positions, particularly around EDI, or to question their international strategies. Students from minority backgrounds are raising their concerns with the chaplains among others. Councils are already putting in place actions to remove ‘city of sanctuary’ status from their areas.

We face local elections here in Birmingham in May. Like the rest of the country these elections are being watched very carefully. At last week’s rally in the city, Nigel Farage claimed that Reform would win a landslide in Birmingham. A local priest, in an inner urban area on the other side of the city, sees the council being split evenly between Reform and pro-Gaza independents. Whatever we think of their politics, neither group has any significant experience of running a city such as Birmingham.

As with the false dichotomy between trans rights and women’s rights, we are also being pushed, by public discourse, and increasingly by the Office for Students, to make a false distinction between freedom of speech, or academic freedom, and inclusion. These are false dichotomies and suggest a particular way of thinking, which, as with my comments on equalities above, we should aim to challenge and to do the critical philosophical, ethical and theological thinking to transcend.

We would all, here at Birmingham Newman University, recognise the centrality of social justice to Catholic thinking and its importance within the wider theological project. As Catholic heritage universities, therefore, we also need to be cognisant of this tradition and embed the search for theological truth both within our practices as universities, in our academic work with, and alongside, our staff and our students, and in our public discourses.

Summary

In summarising what I have tried to address this morning, therefore, I would highlight three points that I have learnt from reading Cardinal Newman’s Idea of a University:

First, the university is the totality of its people, its academic staff, its professional staff and its students. It is wrong to see any one of these as distinct, or more relevant, than the others. Our teaching, our research, our public engagement are all part of the shared responsibility of the community as whole. We might also want to include in this our Council, our alumni and our partners in industry, civil society and the community around us. This is what the ‘university’ of the twenty-first century must be seen as, and all our activities must be fully inclusive of the whole of that community.

Second, we must recognise the interconnection and mutual interdependence of scientific and theological, or moral, truths. One without the other is defective and open to falsehood. For this reason, and not just because of the contribution of humanities and creative studies students to the economy, we must always argue the case for a balance between science, technology, humanities and the creative arts within our institutions.

Third, we are living in dangerous times. There are those who would seek to undermine, if not to destroy, the idea of the university as set out by Newman and by many others over the last hundred and fifty years. Our position, particularly as Catholic heritage universities, is to stand up for that tradition, to undertake the difficult and critical thinking necessary to make our case. Never resorting to simplistic essentialism or to simplistic relativism. This may not always be easy, but, with the vision of St John Henry Newman to lead us, and the confidence of our Catholic faith, I believe that we can stand firm and position ourselves to lead the fight for the relevance of the university into the second quarter of the twenty-first century, and for the next hundred and fifty years.

The Idea of a Twenty-First Century (Catholic Heritage) University: Part 2, Truth(s)

Truth(s)

This takes me to the core of Newman’s argument, particularly in the lectures he delivered to the university in Dublin, the first five sections of the book. Here Newman is keen to emphasise the place of Catholic theology as central to his understanding of what a university should be. More accurately, however, and given the audience that Newman is addressing, Newman is arguing for the importance of studying science and other emerging disciplines alongside Catholic theology.

For Newman, both theology and science seek after truth. However, the truth that they are seeking is different, complementary and, in Newman’s eyes, they are both necessary to a complete understanding of the world.

Science is rooted in a truth that is based on empirical observation and the experimental method. It aims to tell us about the material world and enables us to engage with and develop technologies that allow us to solve the problems faced by this world.

Theology, for Newman, is based on revealed truth. It aims to answer very different questions, about what ought to happen, how to behave, and more specifically about the nature and value of the human person, and the created world, in the eyes of the Creator. This cannot be discovered through experiment or by any amount of scientific enquiry, but science, in Newman’s view, cannot progress without this other, revealed, truth.

Today, we are consistently being told that we must look to the evidence, that science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or medicine are the basis of economic advancement, and that they should be prioritised in our universities. Newman, perhaps, had to argue for a greater place for science in the universities (especially the faith-based universities of his own day). We are looking to a time when science is all, and ‘truth’ is equated with experimental, empirical, truth. But, as Newman would clearly appreciate, ‘truth’ is never neutral.

Truth and Untruth

I am currently writing a book on decolonisation, more specifically on the way anthropologists, art historians, tour companies and popular discourses have used the idea of the Dogon people of West Africa. The academic discourse began in the 1930s among French anthropologists. This was a very active time for intellectuals and artists within the French capital. Core to much of that debate, however, and particularly to the development of ethnology, was what we have come to know as ‘scientific racism’.

From the middle of the nineteenth century work had been underway to discover a scientific basis for racial difference, whether through the measuring of skulls, other physical features or, when that failed, of intelligence. This was an empirical science, rooted in measurements and experimentation, but also in colonialism, much of it was utterly demeaning to those on whom the measurements and experiments were inflicted.

The ‘science’ of race would have sat squarely in Newman’s field of scientific ‘truth’ but it led, among other things, to the horrors of the Holocaust. We know only too well that so-called scientific truths can be partial, destructive and morally false. Scientific truth, in this sense, cannot stand without some reference to Newman’s other truth, the theological, or we might say ‘moral’, ‘ethical’ or ‘social’, truth.

One reasons for my interest in the Dogon people is that I collect art that has been created by these people. On my shelf I have a mask, a black monkey mask. There are many truths that can be related to this mask.

We can enquire about its manufacture and use among the Dogon, about the symbolism and the stories that surround the black monkey of which it is a representation. We can also ask about how it was acquired by dealers, removed from the Bandiagara cliffs in Africa to Paris or to Brussels, exhibited, perhaps stored for a time in the collection of a museum, returned to the market and bought by myself. Each step on this journey raises difficult ethical questions and subjects the mask to a range of meanings and associations that are not always easy to identify or comfortable to confront.

For all these different truths, however, both scientific and ethical, there are certain statements about this mask that are clearly untrue. It is not, as some have claimed, the representation of a helmet worn by visitors to our planet from Alfa Centauri many millennia ago and preserved as a collective memory by esoteric priests on the isolated cliffs where the Dogon live.

We may, following the post-modern turn, want to talk of multiple truths, of different kinds of truth. We may also hear it said that any truth is possible, my truth, your truth, false news, deep fakes. In this context Newman’s emphasis on truth, or on the different bases for truth, becomes ever more important. We need to be very clear when we are talking about truth and when we talk about falsehood, or untruth and that is also part of the purpose of the university.

The Idea of a Twenty-First Century (Catholic Heritage) University: Part 1, Community

I gave a paper at an event at Birmingham Newman University to celebrate the recognition of St John Henry Newman as Doctor of the Church. This is the text, in three parts:

Summary

In summarising what I have tried to address this morning, I would highlight three points that I have learnt from reading Cardinal Newman’s Idea of a University:

First, the university is the totality of its people, its academic staff, its professional staff and its students. It is wrong to see any one of these as distinct, or more relevant, than the others. Our teaching, our research, our public engagement are all part of the shared responsibility of the community as whole. We might also want to include in this our Council, our alumni and our partners in industry, civil society and the community around us. This is what the ‘university’ of the twenty-first century must be seen as, and all our activities must be fully inclusive of the whole of that community.

Second, we must recognise the interconnection and mutual interdependence of scientific and theological, or moral, truths. One without the other is defective and open to falsehood. For this reason, and not just because of the contribution of humanities and creative studies students to the economy, we must always argue the case for a balance between science, technology, humanities and the creative arts within our institutions.

Third, we are living in dangerous times. There are those who would seek to undermine, if not to destroy, the idea of the university as set out by Newman and by many others over the last hundred and fifty years. Our position, particularly as Catholic heritage universities, is to stand up for that tradition, to undertake the difficult and critical thinking necessary to make our case. Never resorting to simplistic essentialism or to simplistic relativism. This may not always be easy, but, with the vision of St John Henry Newman to lead us, and the confidence of our Catholic faith, I believe that we can stand firm and position ourselves to lead the fight for the relevance of the university into the second quarter of the twenty-first century, and for the next hundred and fifty years.

Part 1: Community

St John Henry Newman

St John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University is probably the best known, and most widely quoted, books on what it is to be a university, although it was originally published over a hundred and fifty years ago in the middle of the nineteenth century. I was immediately struck, however, when I first read it, just how relevant the text sounds all these years later. Given everything that has happened over this time, that may sound a little strange. Have universities really not changed all that much in the last hundred and fifty years? Perhaps, but it may also be because Newman was onto something.

Newman’s book has been particularly influential in the States. Here in the UK, it is noted more as an historical oddity. This may have something to do with its age, but it is also related to the book’s very specifically Catholic, and less obviously, Irish context. Universities in the States tend to be less embarrassed by this, but even in the States the Catholic element has been largely ignored.

In the UK it may be thought that we do not have a strong tradition of faith-based universities. However, up till the nineteenth century the Anglican foundation of Oxford and Cambridge, and their position as ‘the establishment’, was taken for granted. At the time Newman was writing, in the mid nineteenth century there were challenges to this Anglican dominance with universities such as Edinburgh and, in a few more years, Birmingham and the other big civic universities, establishing a more specifically ‘secular’ stance over and against the Anglican establishment.

Newman specifically addresses the debate, that was occurring as he wrote, between the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh. This was not, however, an argument about faith. It was an argument about the purpose of the university. Oxford claimed to place research and the development of knowledge at the core of their mission while the founders of Edinburgh University saw it as serving the needs of the local economy and providing the skilled workforce required to serve that economy. Newman, given his background, came down firmly on the side of Oxford. He did not argue for the economic value of the university.

Many of our current faith-based universities, those in the Cathedrals group, and including Birmingham Newman University, had their origins in the training of professionals to serve in education and in health. This is something that is still core to our own vision and strategy, but not something that Newman himself might have seen as the purpose of the university.

Community

Before looking at Newman’s argument in more detail, however, it is perhaps worth noting the context in which the lectures on which the book is based were originally given. Newman had recently been appointed, after some persuasion, to establish a new Catholic University in Dublin. He decided that his first act, or one of his very first acts, was to set out to the university what he felt a university should be, and therefore what he expected this new institution in Dublin to achieve. He presented his vision in the form of five lectures delivered to the whole university community, both staff and students.

This may sound to us to have been something of an ordeal. To stand and lecture to the whole university is something that very few vice chancellors would consider today. Most VCs do address the staff on a more, or less, regular basis within weekly, or termly, emails. All staff open meetings are still common. Many VCs also address new students through videos in welcome week, or maybe at graduations, but little of this ever outlines the VC’s vision of what the university is about as an institution.

What this process, the delivery of lectures to whole gathered community, demonstrates, for me, however, is that, for Newman, the ‘university’ is not the bricks and mortar, the physical buildings, it is the people, and what is more it is both staff and students.

I have often heard colleagues refer to ‘the university’ as some faceless entity that makes decisions that they are not a party to. We still speak of ‘the university’ as if it were the leadership team, or at most the academic staff, what the Americans call the ‘faculty’. Students, if they are considered at all, are those who are taught by the university, those who are clients of the university or those who are served by the university, not as an integral part of the university itself.

Newman places the students at the heart of his vision. If the university is not there, as with Edinburgh, to provide skilled workers for the economy of the city or country, it is there, according to Newman, to instil ‘character’ and to develop what he calls ‘gentlemen’, and specifically ‘Irish gentlemen’. This is not language we would use today, but it is this character-building purpose of the university that many American commentators turn to when they look to Newman’s vision of the university.

I have always argued that we must focus on the kind of graduate that we aim to produce. Perhaps not ‘gentleman’, but, in the modern jargon, we might claim that we are looking to prepare, not just ‘work ready’ graduates, but graduates who are ready for life.

While this is important, I also think Newman is going further than this. It is the purpose of the university, and by that he means both staff and students working together, to study together, to grow together and to seek, in mutual collaboration, after knowledge and truth. We often speak of the ‘student voice’, of ‘collaborative teaching’, of providing research opportunities for students, but do we really see the intellectual mission of the university as a fully collaborative activity, of students and staff working together, each bringing their own expertise and experience, their own questions and obsessions, their own cultures and their own faith, to push the boundaries of knowledge? I think not, and, I would argue, it might challenge all of us to reflect on what such activity might actually look like.

Is it Time to Abandon Decolonisation?

The concept of decolonisation seems to have been particularly prominent in my mind over the last month or so. Or, rather, the language of decolonisation has been prominent. The more I have heard the word, the less I feel that I understand what it is about. Is it, therefore, time to abandon the term? Decolonisation has, perhaps, become as meaningless as postmodernism or any of those other theoretical fads that appeared to be so significant at their time, but have now been relegated to theoretical history. Let me look, therefore, at a range of uses that I have come across in the last few weeks…

The Telegraph, among other right-wing commentators, tends to use ‘decolonisation’ as a code for all that is wrong with our universities, especially with the humanities. It has not quite replaced ‘woke’. It has a different set of associations, primarily related to the downgrading of English history, but it is used in much the same way, without any specific content. The difficulty with trying to counter such usages is that we have perhaps come to a position where the term itself has very little real meaning or use within academic discourse, whatever its significance within right-wing rhetoric.

In early December I attended a wonderful conference in Cairo focusing primarily on contemporary Arabic literatures. Needless to say, the conference was saturated with ideas of decolonisation, even to the point that we had a brief argument when one of the speakers suggested that Egypt did not have a colonial past (which, of course, it did, although not like some other nations). The frame for many of the presentations was the colonial history, or postcolonial context, of many Arab nations. Decolonisation was also used to describe the way speakers sought to discover Arabic terms to replace theoretical concepts from the West, most notably that of ‘trauma’, or by questioners who wanted to challenge other speakers use of Western theoretical concepts, all without fully recognising that ‘decolonisation’ itself was a concept with a strong Western theoretical genealogy.

During the conference I read a book, written in the 1990s about African literature, including comments on the way African writers presented European colonial characters and the relationship between African literatures and Black writing from the States and writing from the African diaspora. This was what I think of as classic ‘decolonisation’ although that was not a term that was ever used within the text. More recently I have read a book about the way European economic development was dependent on the East, particularly on the Muslim world and China, and only came into a prominent position in the world after 1800, building on racist constructions of Africa, Native America and the East to create a narrative saturated by Eurocentrism. Again, this is a practical example of the decolonisation of history, without ever using the term. Currently, I am reading through the catalogue for an exhibition at the Musée Quai Branley Jaques Chirac on the Dakar Djibouti Expedition in 1931-33 earlier in the year. Once again, the aim has been to highlight the African contributions and the concerns relating to collecting and the restitution of objects associated with the expedition. Clearly a decolonising text.

What has particularly struck me, however, is the range of uses of decolonisation in a series of papers for the latest edition of the Journal for the British Association for the Study of Religion, the proofs of which I have just finished checking. Here decolonisation is used to describe the epistemicide of Muslim modes of thought, treating Muslims, even in the UK, as a colonised people almost by definition. Decolonisation is also assumed as an uncontested starting point for a course on religion and the media, with reference to the range of voices heard and the need to challenge the often-stated narratives within the classroom. It is also related to ideas of cultural appropriation in a paper about yoga. Finally, and coming back to my starting point in a rather roundabout way, decolonisation is claimed by Modi’s right wing BJP government as a justification for the destruction of a mosque in Ayodhya and the building of a temple dedicated to Rama.

With so many different uses and references, decolonisation becomes all but meaningless. The fact that books written before the 1990s could talk about many of the concepts that are currently incorporated into the term ‘decolonisation’ without using the term, also suggests that it is not necessary. Let us not continue to be lazy in our thinking, reaching out for the latest fashionable concept of the moment, and let us try to express, in our own words, what it is that we are actually trying to say. It is only in that way, I would suggest, that any true social theory can move forward.

Coming to Terms with the Cognitive Study of Religion

One of the things that came out of my recent visit to Krakow, as a delegate to the 25th World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religion (doesn’t that sound grand, and rather nineteenth century?), was a clarity on what my next book (perhaps two books) might be. I spent much of my spare time, when not attending seminars or exploring the churches, city and landscape of Krakow, reading the final version of my book on myth, The Story in Religion, which I sent to the publishers in draft form earlier today. I have now written four books that are all part of my plan to produce a Grand Theory of Religion.

I have already written books on ritual, on belief, on the way people talk about religion, and on myth (or story). I have always thought that the next book should be on religious experience. I know the core message, that has always been clear: there is no such thing as ‘religious’ experience, only experiences that different religious discourses present in ‘religious’ terms, or, to relate it to the current book, through ‘religious’ stories. My problem, however, is that I am an anthropologist, with a strong interest in discourse and text, but with no knowledge, or any expertise, in the field of psychology. How on earth am I going to tackle the question of experience? Given the fact that most of the work I have so far read on religious experience has been somewhat trite, and of very little interest to me, I had no idea how I was going to get into this next book.

We had two keynote addresses at the conference, both on ritual. Neither was brilliant (one was really bad) but both referenced what has become known as the cognitive study of religion. This is one of those approaches to religion that immediately divides the crowds, especially at a conference on the study of religion. Like marmite you either love it, or you hate it. The first keynote, by an American scholar who has just won prizes for a book on ritual that, quite frankly, I could have written in my sleep (but not felt to be even worth writing) shows the negative side of the cognitive study. This takes the experimental element of psychology and applies it to religious contexts, in this case communal rituals. By measuring heart rates and other natural responses, the presenter claimed to have shown that rituals really do bring people together and helps them to breath as one (that is perhaps being a little too simplistic, but the argument was not far from this). This is rooted in Durkheim, Turner and others who have always noted that people, in crowds, begin to think as one and that the experience of the crowd is an essential part of the experience of the ritual.

The other keynote looked at ritual and play, something that is much more congenial as far as I am concerned, although nothing very new here either. The lecturer went back to the Greeks and the Romans and had some interesting things to say about the Persians, but it was his reference to a series of authors who I have always admired that rather stopped me in my tracks. He referred to the work of Marilyn Strathern, who led the department of Anthropology at Manchester when I was a student back in the 80s, Dan Sperber and Roy Wagner, whose work I have used consistently for the last forty years as the basis of my own ideas. These, the lecturer told us, were the founders of the ontological turn in anthropology and the cognitive study of religion. If that is true, then I must also be writing in the field of the cognitive study of religion without even realising it. I can certainly see the link to the ontological turn (although this is the first I had ever heard of it) as my current book talks about the importance of entering other worlds and the creation, sustenance and challenge of religious worlds through stories. I had not thought of my emphasis on discourse, or more accurately, on how religion works, as part of the cognitive study of religion, but I guess it must be.

And so, to the next book (having got the current one off to the publishers this morning, I am already thinking ahead). Recognising that the cognitive study of religion contains both simplistic empirical psychology and sophisticated structuralist approaches to cognition (and much else besides) then I could perhaps frame the book on religious experience as a review and a critique of the field of the cognitive study of religion. I would want to draw on a wide range of theories on experience and alternate chapters on core experiences (communitas, possession, altered states of consciousness, ultimate calm and awe etc.) with investigations of specific theories within the field, including Sperber, Bouyer and others (and there is still some work to do there…). It might just work!

I mentioned two books, so what of the other one? Well, that will be a novel, with the title ‘Dragons’. I know the opening lines, but little else…

‘Do you believe in dragons?’ Nadia was pleased with the rather shocked and curious response to the opening question of her presentation at the Twenty Fifth World Congress of the International Association of the Study of Religion. Most people were surprised when Nadia, a young hijab wearing Muslim woman, said that her field of study in religion was not Islam, or even feminism, but post-soviet East European paganism, but that was the point. She did not want to be pigeonholed, or typecast…

And, of course, there are dragons under the city of Krakow…

On Being a Beekeeper

Today is apparently World Honey Bee Day. This is also the time of year when the beekeeper is busy, manging the hives and making sure that the bees have the necessary frames to build their stocks of honey. As I was cleaning out the garage, therefore, over the weekend, I noted the absence of all the supers and frames that usually fill the space. My partner, who is the beekeeper, had moved them all off to supplement his various hives across North Worcestershire. This made me think back to a presentation that I gave, as Head of College, to the senior leadership team almost ten years ago when I was working in Birmingham University.

The talk was remembered by my colleagues for the fact that I illustrated part of it with images from Peter Greenaway’s Pillow Book and they were somewhat taken aback that I was illustrating a talk on the future and vision of the College with images of naked men (albeit that they were painted with text, and it was the variety and multiplicity of textuality that I was actually trying to illustrate). For me, one of the more fruitful images came at the end when I was talking about the role of Head of College. Having set out a vision of interdisciplinarity and cross cutting themes across the College, I suggested that the role of the Head of College was to be that of the beekeeper, an image of leadership that I am not aware of coming across in any other context.

The principal point of the beekeeper in this image, at least in my presentation of it, was that the beekeeper does not attempt to direct the activity and purpose of each and every bee. A hive contains a community, a range of different roles, each working together focused on their own particular activity to achieve a common goal, the production of honey and the maintenance of the hive over winter. A beekeeper does not tell any of the bees how to do their job, or direct specific groups of bees to do this, or do that. A beekeeper cannot even tell the foraging bees where to go to find honey. The hive can be placed in such a way that certain blumes are more likely to be foraged or control the timing of the addition and removal of frames such that they coincide with the blossom of individual trees. However, to achieve a specific kind of honey – lime honey, cherry blossom honey, or whatever – is very difficult in the natural environment and takes a particular kind of skill.

The role of the beekeeper, therefore, is not to micro-manage. The beekeeper primarily controls the environment for the bees, maintains the hive, expands the number of supers as they are filled, remove them as the season ends. The beekeeper protects the hive from predators and, by careful observation, controls the work of the queen and other members of the bee community. It is this ‘framing’, or ‘facilitating’ work that is key to the role of the beekeeper. It is also their job to find a market for the honey and to let the world know how wonderful the product of this, or that, particular hive might be, to prepare honey, wax and other products for shows, recognising that the work they are promoting is not their own, but that of bees who have a mind, or minds of their own.

As with the beekeeper so with the Head of College, or Faculty, in the academy. Their role is not to micro-manage, to tell each academic what they are supposed to do and how they might achieve it. The role of the Head of College is to provide the right environment, to set the scene, to enable and facilitate, to make possible the collaborative and creative work of the academic community for whom they are responsible. This takes a particular series of skills from financial management, quality control, support for grant applications etc. etc. The specific set of tasks is probably endless and often does involve working with estates to provide the right physical environment as well as a space that is conducive to work.

The Head of College must also be aware of the relations between the different elements of the wider academic community and cannot neglect any one of them. Whether it is the academics, or the students, or the professional services staff, the most esteemed professor, or the departmental receptionist. Each has their own unique, but special, contribution to wider productivity and it is the Head of College’s task to be aware of the specific needs of each one, providing the right environment for all of them to flourish.

It is often the task of the Head of College, like the beekeeper, to have a special responsibility to market or promote the work of the hive, the community as a whole. It is the Head of College’s role to represent the College at meetings of the University’s senior team, and to represent the University position to the College. However, even beyond that, the Head of College should be involved in promoting the work of the College (and all its various members) to the widest possible audiences; other academics, potential students, the wider public and perhaps even the media. The work that is being promoted, like the beekeeper, is not that of the Head of College, but that of all the individual, and collective, members of the College, with no one individual excluded or preferred.

That, I suggested, was why I would always liken myself, in that role of Head of College, to the beekeeper. An interesting allegory, but like all metaphors, probably one that it would be unwise to push too far…

Leo: What’s in a Name?

When I was much younger, merely a child, I collected lions. They might be small sculptures, toys, pictures, whatever. It was one of those things that meant that my many aunts never had to decide what to buy me for Christmas, or a birthday. They simply found a lion, or sent me a card with a lion on it. I lost the collection a long time ago. I also spent some time just looking up all the different words for lion (probably not as many as I had thought) in different languages. I had always thought that should I ever have a son (never high on my list of priorities) I would call him Leo, or perhaps Simba (the Kiswahili word for lion).

It was with real interest, and curiosity, therefore, that I heard that our new Pope had chosen the name Leo: Leo XIV. There has, of course, already been much written on this choice and what it might mean. Pope Leo himself has drawn attention to Leo XIII, the Pope at the end of the nineteenth century who challenged the capitalism of his day and supported labour movements and the plight of the those excluded by the industrial revolution. We are now entering what has been called the fourth industrial revolution, one driven by AI. As with all changes in social and economic structures there will be winner and losers, and Pope Leo XIV is very firmly placing himself on the side of the losers, those who will be alienated and disenfranchised by this new industrial revolution.

There were, however, twelve other Leos who have held the position of Pope, and like any relatively random selection of Popes from history they were probably a very mixed bunch. Leo XIV does also reference the first Leo, Pope in the middle of the fifth century. He, among other things, reached out to Attila the Hun who was marching on Rome. Here we see the peace-making theme, something that has already been an important, and necessary, part of Leo XIV’s early sermons and statements. Leo I was also known as Leo the Great, the first Pope to be given ‘the great’ as an addition to his name. What that might say for the current Leo I am not so sure.

As a liturgist my reference here is to the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, one of the earliest documents in the development of the Roman liturgy. It is a series of prayers for use at the mass and was almost certainly not compiled by Leo the Great, although some of the prayers could well have been written by him. Who knows? Taking the name Leo the Pope has associated himself with that tradition, and perhaps more importantly, with ‘tradition’. This is a name that goes back to the earliest years of the Roman church, that is part and parcel of the history of the papacy over the years and is rooted in the worship of the church. That might just be fanciful thinking on my part, but I do sincerely hope that he has something of the tradition in his thinking and is more open to the traditions of the church, and particularly the traditions of the church’s worship, than his predecessor. 

My other reference for Leo is Leo Africanus. This Leo was not a pope, although he is named after one. In fact, he was born a Muslim, in Granada at the end of the fifteenth century. Like many others at that time and place he converted to Christianity, whether willingly or not is still a matter of debate. His family moved to Fez when he was young, and he joined his father in travels to Timbuktu and the court of the Songhai empire in West Africa. He travelled widely across North Africa, on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople and probably a pilgrimage to Mecca. He was captured and imprisoned on Rhodes before being sent to Leo X, then Pope, where he was baptised in St Peter’s Rome. He is best known for his writings on his travels in Africa and the important geographical and historical material it contains.

Pope Leo XIV traces his own heritage to Spain, Italy and France, and he has devoted much of his life, and ministry, to the people of Peru and Latin America more widely. He has chosen a name, however, with strong connections to Africa. He is an Augustinian Friar and Augustine of Hippo was also of African heritage, although from the northern city of Hippo, the modern city of Annaba in Algeria. What Leo brings together, therefore, is a global perspective, a European heritage, a North American birth, a South American mission and an African name. This again is important and significant in the contemporary climate and something that we should be celebrating.

My fascination with lions, and with Leo, also goes back to Africa, the place of my own birth and my own fascination with the continent and people of Africa. There are so many reasons, therefore, that a new Pope who chooses Leo as his name must, for me, be a good thing, with great possibilities for the future. I guess we can only wait and see just how this plays out and what this new Pope Leo has to offer the world, and the church.

The Re-Emergence of Class

Reflecting on the local elections last week I have felt – for the first time in my adult life, that is since the late nineteen seventies – the need for an analysis based on class. What might we mean by ‘class’ in 2025? It will be very different from the structures of class smashed by Thatcher in 1979. It is class, however, employment status, economic outlook, values, worldview, that, for me, makes most sense of the new order revealed in last Thursday’s elections. This cuts across any other residual identities that have, perhaps, been more important in the last fifty years. Once again, I would argue, the class that we belong to, or the class that we identify with, is more significant in determining our voting patterns than any other factor.

I would suggest that in 2025 there are five dominant classes, and two residual classes.

Tribal, Collectivist, Pro-Worker

This is the traditional working class that Labour have lost, and Reform has courted, and, perhaps I might say, re-created. These are people with lower paid jobs, many of which are highly skilled. They value the collectivism of work, shared values with fellow workers, and have pride in both their work/skills and in their country. I describe them as tribal. For many that is xenophobic (which is probably more accurate today than racist), and they want to see an ‘England First’ economic policy, supporting English industry (power, steel, manufacturing, farming). They are anti big government and distrustful of state institutions that are seen as wasting taxpayer’s money and working in other people’s interests. They are generally less well educated, but more importantly, they do not see any intrinsic value in education and tend to shun it. They vote Reform and are generally pro-Trump (not necessarily ultra-right wing or fascist). It is worth noting, however, that the leaders of this party may not (as always in the past with worker’s parties) be of this class, they simply pretend to share the values of this class.

Social, Professional, Democratic

This group are the teachers, the health workers, the social services, those who are essentially committed to the idea of shared values, redistribution of wealth through taxes, the rule of law and the idea of ‘society’. Their outlook is social rather than individual and they believe in the state supporting their citizens irrespective of income or social background. Many in this group are well educated and place a high value on education although they would never describe themselves as among the educational elite. In international relations they believe in the co-operation between states, the advocacy of democracy and the importance of international institutions such as the UN and all its various offshoots. They are strong supporters of the welfare state and find the individualism of all the other classes (including the pro-workers above) distasteful. They are usually pro equality, diversity and inclusion, but often see it in an intellectual or bureaucratic fashion. These have become the core Labour voters, although the bulk of this group, and many in the Labour party, believe that Labour should be supporting the more traditional ‘workers’.

Entrepreneurial, Managerial, Corporate

Both the traditional self-employed, or self-made, and the managers of larger companies come into this group. There is a strong emphasis on the individual, on hard work and on the ability to succeed. The values are those of the corporate world: brand identity, loyalty, company first, often transferred to the state, so essentially patriotic. They believe in low taxes, small government, the limiting of legislation, and yet they also recognise the value and importance of legal protections and can end up being very bureaucratic, multiplying legislation to protect their own (business) interests and to create a ‘level playing field’. They have more faith in insurance than welfare and tend to have access to private health care and private education. They do, however, see the need for, and value, a safety net for the ‘poor’. Their international outlook is not dissimilar to the professionals, placing a strong emphasis on the international order and collaboration between states. There is a recognition of the importance of international treaties and organisations, but only if subordinate to the nation states and if they are committed to the interests of those in this managerial group. They are also the traditional Conservative voters and may continue to vote Conservative. However, their world is shrinking as international business is being taken over by the tech giants with very different values and working practices.

Liberal, Inclusivist, Internationalists

I am using liberal here in both of its traditional senses. There is a strong commitment to liberty and individualism, especially when it comes to economics, but also to equality, diversity and inclusivity, welcoming everybody irrespective of background. These are people who we might think are self-made, dominating tech and internet-based companies of all sizes, from the small creatives to the large multi-national and multi-billion-dollar outfits. However, few of these people are ‘self-made’ and there is often independent wealth in the background, whether from family or previous work in the financial sector or law. Effectively, they are wealthy enough not to have to worry about questions of equality, social mobility or even, perhaps, government, although they are fully committed to all three. They are, above all, internationalist in outlook, citizens of the world, with a strong commitment to free movement, free flows of wealth and the downplaying of national identities (their families are often very mobile and living in many different countries). This group is also highly educated, I might even say the educated elite, even if individuals may have ‘dropped out’ of education and returned. This is the prosecco drinking crowd that we are told is now voting Liberal Democrat.

I would add two other groups to this classification: The Radical Idealists who are committed to causes, most importantly global warming and other climate related issues, but who also take proactive, often disruptive, action for other causes. They could come from any of the classes above but tend to be younger and reject the whole class-based analysis, and they vote Green. Finally, there are the Excluded and Disenfranchised, probably a sizeable proportion of the electorate but, despite some from the professional and liberal groups claiming to advocate on their behalf, they are highly unlikely to vote and have no party to support their interests.

How these groups are distributed in English society (this analysis does not work for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) can be seen very clearly in the voting patterns in last Thursday’s election. How well the groups are prepared to work together to form a working administration is, however, a very different question and one that might be particularly important if the voting patterns we saw this week are reflected in the next general election.

Would the Fairies like Elon Musk?

As I was reading round material about myth, fairy stories and the use of story in religion I came across a comment that suggested one of the purposes of fairy stories was to ridicule the rich and powerful. One particular butt of the stories was the traditional figure of the miser. This is a character, that outside of Scrooge in Dicken’s Christmas Carol, has very little place in our contemporary stories. Given the wide disparities of wealth in our society (growing year on year) this seems rather strange.

The miser, the individual (usually male) who makes lots of money and make a deliberate choice to keep it all to himself, even if he is never going to use it, is a stock figure in European folk tales and fairy stories. There is also a strong tradition of similar characters in other traditions. In Africa, where sharing with family and community is essential, the one who hoards wealth and refuses to share is among the worst of the social pariahs and comes in for serious hatred and violence, not only in stories. African accusations of witchcraft often revolve around the assumption that wealth is being hoarded inappropriately.

Fairies we are told are particularly vicious to those who hoard and do not share, with many stories about such individuals having their comeuppance and coming to a very nasty end. Among the mythical creatures it is dragons who are perhaps the most commonly associated with hoarding and sitting on their mounds of gold – just think of Tolkien’s Smaug in the Hobbit – although in the stories dwarfs are not far behind. We all know what happens to dragons in the stories from the European tradition.

One of the difficulties we face today with the image of the miser is the fact that in previous centuries the figure has been merged with antisemitic images of Jewish money lenders. The differences between the miser and the Jew have often been blurred. In a society that is, rightly, very conscious of antisemitism it is often difficult to use traditional images of the miser without crossing significant lines. However, it must be noted that the image goes well beyond the Jewish stereotype and the hatred of the miser, as miser, is well ingrained in the folk traditions of Europe and many other parts of the world.

So why do we not see so many stories, or even cartoons and jokes, about misers, and the wealthy in general, within our contemporary society? There are series like White Lotus that pokes gentle fun at the goings on amongst the rich and famous, and other satires of celebrity culture. However, there is little with the real viciousness and anti-hoarding values of the fairy tale tradition. We would almost think that contemporary fairies would be very at home in the six-star hotel, with the latest fashions and all the necessary luxury accessories, including a twenty-four-hour social media presence.

Perhaps! And I would probably speculate that it is social media, over and above all else, that provides the context for our somewhat ambiguous relationship with wealth. Social media both flaunts wealth and the influence it brings (or perhaps the wealth that influence brings) while stoking both our envy/jealousy and our illusions that perhaps, one day, we could also be wealthy, if only we had the right connections or the right number of followers/likes. There is a desire for wealth, a sense that perhaps we could all be wealthy in the right circumstances, even an admiration for wealth (if it appears to have been generated from nothing – which in reality is seldom the case) rather than a social expectation that wealth should be shared and that the wealthy should be brought down a peg or two.

We do admire philanthropy and the first generation of tech billionaires, including Bill Gates and others, have gone out of their way to plough their wealth back into medical research, education and the eradication of malaria across the world. This is admirable and has, to some extent, blunted our critique of the wealthy. A person who spends, who shares their wealth, especially through philanthropy is not, perhaps, thought of as a miser. What of the person who spends their money on space rockets and wacky ideas about sending human beings to Mars. Musk would probably claim that this is philanthropy, for the greater good of humanity. In this sense Musk is not a miser in the traditional sense of the word. But is this really good enough?

In a sense it is not the individual, whether the hoarder of medieval Europe, the dragon sitting on their gold, or the African chief who does not follow custom and share their wealth with the family, who is the ultimate target of the stories about misers and the fairies who despise them. The target is the disparity in wealth and the unwillingness to share. That is still with us, and Musk, and Trump, and all the rest of them, are both examples, and symbols, of such disparity and the corruption and rot that this can lead to. We need new stories, not perhaps about fairies and misers, certainly not perpetuating the anti-Semitic stereotypes, but certainly about the real dangers, the fundamental evils, of disparities of wealth and the unwillingness to share that wealth with society.

Elon Musk, watch out, the fairies are coming…

Facing a ‘Pandemic’ of Sexual Abuse

A speaker on the radio earlier last week, discussing the recent review of child sexual abuse across the UK and the recommendations contained in the report, claimed that we are facing a pandemic of sexual abuse. I was horrified by this statement, not because of the situation it purported to describe, but because of the hyperbolic language that the speaker chose to use. I do not find such language helpful, and I have been becoming ever more frustrated by the language associated with sexual abuse, whether in the church, in gender-based violence or in the questions raised by grooming gangs in some of our towns and cities.

I have also been reading around the idea of myth and story as part of my work on the book that I am writing. The most recent reading has been a popular text on the history of fear, and it is in the context of this book that I have found myself placing the current language around sexual abuse within a wider historical context.

Among other things, the author of the book is aiming to show how moral panics are often associated with fear and with horror. He goes back to the Middle Ages and on through the Elizabethan era, the Restoration, Revolution and Romanticism. It is, however, the section on the Victorians that forms my starting point. In dealing with Alistair Crowley, the author highlights how the shock of sexual license and sadomasochism underpinned both Crowley’s life and his writings. Crowley was set apart as a person who had rejected the civilized norms of society and had embraced ‘evil’. He was, however, portrayed as a unique and particularly depraved individual. The fact that he collected to himself a series of disciples and, perhaps more importantly, proved to be a very popular and widely read author was often overlooked. Evil and sexual depravity was constructed at the time as the province of specific individuals, it was not recognised as being widely present within society and the very idea that ordinary, decent, Christian individuals would get some kind of thrill from reading about such depravity was never really questioned.

Jump to the middle of the twentieth century, leaping over several other examples that the author dwells on, not to mention the impact of two world wars, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Holocaust, and we arrive at the sexual liberation of the 1960s. Another report on the radio referenced a programme investigating the work of those who advocated for sexual relations between men and boys in the 1960s and in subsequent decades. The emphasis in the programme is on the damage that was done by these campaigners and, as with the contemporary grooming gangs, the language was one of horror and condemnation. There was, however, a strong movement in the 1960s that saw sexual liberation as something that included children. Recent reports in France, where this was particularly prevalent, have clearly shown the damage such a position led to for the children involved, often against their will. At the time, however, this was a sincerely held position with a strong moral philosophy behind it.

Later in the century, to get back to horror and fear, we had the Satanism scares where whole communities were vilified as potential hotbeds of satanic rituals, complete with child abuse and even child sacrifice. Much of this was ultimately rooted in hysteria and fanned by media reports. These were the classic examples of moral scares that emerge from time to time and, in hindsight, are often seen to be baseless, or as having far less substance than the media at the time gave them credit for. I can clearly remember when the first reports of grooming gangs in Rotherham and elsewhere began to emerge, some in the media immediately put these down to another ‘moral scare’. This had nothing to do with racism, it was a classic case of having heard the cry of ‘wolf’ once too often. Race probably did have something to do with why the situation was not investigated as quickly or as thoroughly as it might have been, and it has since become very clear that these examples are far from the baseless moral scares of some earlier examples.

It has probably been the case that a significant number, maybe even a majority, of men fantasise about violent sexual engagements, or even sex with minors. In most times these fantasies are not acted on. It takes a level of social permission, or opportunity, to take this further. The example of the Pelico trial has shown that, if given permission (although not from the woman in this case), then a surprising number of men will act out their fantasies, and the internet is another element that makes this possible. The evidence from the police, however, tells us that the majority (just over 50%) of sexual assaults on minors are perpetrated by other minors, and here the internet and social media must be looked to for an explanation. However, a significant number of the rest, including among the 3% that are carried out by grooming gangs, are within the family. This is probably as it always has been, although that should not tempt us into inaction.

To talk of a ‘pandemic’ of child sexual abuse, however, suggests that there is something new out there and begins, once again, to suggest the moral panic of late twentieth century, or even of the accusations against Cowley, painting the situation in the gaudy colours of ‘evil’ and ‘depravity’. It is a rhetorical statement that almost appears to undermine what it is trying to achieve. I do not know whether there is more sexual abuse against young people today than there was at earlier periods, perhaps that is not the issue. The role of the internet and social media have certainly changed the context and the form in which such abuse takes place. Simply labelling it as a ‘pandemic’ however is not going to lead us to solutions, it cannot really get us beyond the moral horror and fear that the book I am reading expounds so well. I am not entirely convinced that safeguarding is the answer either. That might be necessary, but it feels too much like the kind of surveillance that Foucault warns us against to be entirely helpful.

What society needs is a change in culture, although perhaps not in the way we expect. Exactly what this would look like, and what it would take to get us there (education?) I am not entirely sure. I just feel very uneasy with where we are now and still baulk at the language of fear and of horror as used by so many, especially in the media, when talking about these issues.