Charisma, Abuse and Learning from Second Century Christians.

There were two stories that struck me from last Sunday’s BBC Sunday programme. The first, almost inevitable given recent events, was a piece on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s resignation. The programme chose to ask whether there was something specifically about evangelical theology and practice that allowed John Smyth to get away with his abusive behaviour for so long, or something that prevented those in power from asking too many questions. The answer that was given revolved around the place that evangelical practice appears to give to powerful speakers and the awe in which such people (usually men) are held within the tradition, and hence the difficulty of challenging them. There was more about the place of charisms, authority and truth, but I will come back to that later.

The second story was a report of the death of Anthony Campolo, a Baptist minister from the States who was spiritual advisor to Bill Clinton. The person interviewed went on to praise Campolo for his powerful speaking, his ability to move people to action and his closeness to people with power. Nobody at the BBC seems to have seen the irony of placing these two items so close together or suggested that there might have been an interesting discussion in looking at Smyth and Campolo through the same evangelical lens.

I see no difficulties in recognising that evangelical traditions tend to encourage powerful speakers and give such speakers considerable authority and, we might say, licence. This is hard wired into the system and has long been recognised. It has also long been recognised that while most evangelical super-preachers are upright, devout and inspiring people, with a strong message of hope and love, there are those who use, or misuse, the position powerful preaching brings them to abuse others, whether they see what they are doing as abuse or not. The potential for very serious abuse is built into the system with a strong internal motivation and justification for the abuse.

Does this mean, however, that all evangelical preaching and preachers must be treated as suspect until they are proven to be otherwise? I am not sure that is what was being suggested, but that might be a line that follows logically from this kind of analysis and might be ‘safer’ for the church rather than always assuming for the best (unfounded optimism was something that the interviewee did accuse the evangelical tradition, and the Church of England, of encouraging, and something that he found to be particularly problematic).

This is not, however, a new question. Even Paul, in one of his letters, says that it is important to ‘test the spirits’ when individuals claim direct communication, or power, from God. This came to a head in the second century, at a time when the Christian community was made up of many competing forms, when a man called Montanus, in southern Asia Minor, recognised his daughters as prophets and encouraged his followers to base their behaviour on the messages from this prophecy, as a direct command from God.

Many other Christian opposed the Montanists, as they came to be known, and argued against the possibility of new revelation in prophecy, often accusing the Montanists of abuses that would be very familiar in today’s debates. While we do not know the truth of such accusations, it is interesting to note that most scholars take them as the unfounded scandal mongering of the movement’s enemies. Given what we now know we should not perhaps jump to such simple conclusions.

The problem with the Montanist movement, as far as other Christians were concerned, revolved around the question of authority. Who had the right to speak on behalf of God? Revelation, for the opponents, was to be found solely in scripture and could only be given by those who (correctly) interpreted the scripture. For Montanus and his followers, authority lay in the direct and continuing revelation of God through prophecy. It is possible to argue that prophecy can be valid if tested against scripture (a position taken by some charismatics even today) but that still places the final authority on the interpretation of the text. Montanus and his followers lost this battle, and the result was both the emergence and reinforcement, of the authority of bishops, local church leaders, and the decline (even eradication) of the place of women in the emerging church.

Going back to the present, it was interesting to hear the commentator on evangelicalism and abuse suggesting that hierarchy, and the excessive role of bishops, was part of the problem, rather than, as with Montanus’ opponents, part of the solution. This speaker was almost arguing for no point of authority, or, in the case for an independent reviewer of safeguarding, an authority external to the church or the wider Christian community. That is a position that would have been untenable, even unthinkable, to the early church.

I am not sure I have any answers that derive from this analysis, except to highlight the complexity that comes out of trying to define and enact authority within the church. Both the individualistic power of the evangelical preacher, and the collective power of the system as expressed in bishops, archbishops and all the other paraphernalia of the church, are open to abuse, neglect, corruption, and cynical exploitation. Bishops, like charismatic prophets, are only human and, as such, capable of abuse.

No one system, I would suggest, is better or worse than another. It is the people that matter and when one individual (preacher, prophet, bishop, or whoever) is allowed to ‘go it alone’ and is no longer challenged and tested by the community, then trouble will not be very far away. In this case the praising of powerful and inspirational preachers who have influenced presidents and motivated thousands of people to commit to the poor is probably just as problematic as ignoring systematic abuse that is happening in plain sight in the name of God.

The (Latest) American Revolution

What we have just seen in the USA in the last couple of weeks is an almost classic case of a Marxist revolution, albeit one that was disguised as the election of a new president. I am no Marxist, but his analysis of the evils and dangers of capitalism was pretty accurate. Where he was mistaken, I believe, was in his solutions and in his predictions, particularly in his thoughts about who would lead the revolution. The political left, however, has also been wrong, primarily in moving away from Marx’s core thesis and seeing alienation, oppression and liberation as occurring far beyond the economic arena where Marx positioned it.

Let me begin, therefore, with the left. Marx talks about the alienation of the labouring classes from the product of their labour and, by extension, about economic inequalities and economic injustices. The economic inequalities within our current society (on both sides of the Atlantic) is as big as it has ever been, perhaps at record levels (I am not an economist). Across both countries, UK and US, there are many people who are struggling to survive and living in real, not just relative, poverty. Those numbers have also been growing recently. If many of these people are not working due to ill health or lack of jobs that does not negate their sense of alienation from the wider economic system, it simply reinforces it. Many in this group do not immediately blame the super-rich, or even the system for their situation. They project their misery onto others, scape goats, and in most cases onto migrants, those they claim are taking their jobs and reducing them to poverty. That this is not the case is, for political purposes, beside the point.

Meanwhile, however, those on the left in politics have decided that they want to support all those who are oppressed, suffering at the hands of the system, alienated for whatever reason, and lacking opportunities. They portray a society that is institutionally racist, sexist, homophobic etc. They are not essentially wrong in their analysis, but in focusing on the different forms of oppression, talking about liberation in terms of particular and specific characteristics, they are missing the fundamental, and most basic, form of subjugation, that of labour and economics, that of poverty.

Of course, many of those who are minority ethnic, women (and children), LGBTQ and so on are also victims of economic injustice, but to simply subsume this particular fact under intersectionality (however important that is in other contexts) and to underplay economic oppression while trumpeting the rights of those who are victims in other ways, many of whom are increasingly comfortable economically, is beginning to look somewhat problematic, particularly to those from the white working class who continue to suffer neglect and alienation, a position that (to them at least) is only exacerbated by the focus on those with protected characteristics. We are not all in this together!

So, what about Trump? One of the things that Marx clearly got wrong, or failed to understand (and probably even failed to reflect on) is that it is very rarely those who suffer alienation and economic injustice who lead the revolution. Leaders invariably come from privileged backgrounds although they often do all they can to disguise that privilege. We have had enough revolutions over the last couple of centuries for the mega-rich to recognise that it is probably to their advantage to lead a revolution of the economically oppressed or at least to give the impression that this is what they are doing.

The mega-rich gain credibility with the economically disadvantaged, not by denouncing capitalism, but by demonstrating how they have manipulated it and broken the rules to make it work in their favour. This is what those with nothing, with no personal investment in the system, want to hear. Thy want to know that the system can be fooled, that it is possible to beat the system, even if the means of doing that is neither legal nor moral (and perhaps even more so if it is neither legal nor moral). Above all they want to know that it is possible to get away with putting two fingers up to the system. Popularism plays on this sense of playing the system at its own game and winning, although never doing anything that would, ultimately, damage the system, as the leaders actually gain so much from it.

Trump told people they were better off under his previous administration. He played the economic card, and the fact that he, and his supporters (Musk included) are mega-rich only shows what might be possible. Those of us from intellectual, liberal, well-meaning backgrounds torture ourselves over asking why so many ordinary people are so gullible, and then feeling guilty at dismissing those who are economically disadvantaged by accusing them of gullibility. Intellectual liberals have always found it difficult not to see the oppressed as ‘ignorant’ or ‘gullible’ or whatever other term we might choose to use. The leaders of the new revolution simply tell them what they want to hear, that they are poor because of the system, and that together they can beat the system.

Meanwhile identity politics begins to look increasingly like a side show, fiddling while Rome burns as somebody has put it. It is not that the oppression of those who are different is not important, it is just that we have focused on race, gender, sexuality etc. while often ignoring the more fundamental issue, that which is most important, economic justice. In that, I have to say, Marx got it right!

Teaching Critical Thinking or Teaching Empathy

I noted over the last week that the government is suggesting that one of responses to the recent riots should be to teach young people, from the earliest possible age within schools, how to engage critically with social media and how to recognise false news. Effectively this is a call to introduce critical thinking and the hermeneutics of suspicion into the curriculum from infant schools upwards. I am certainly not against this, so long as the teaching is age appropriate. This assumes, however, that the core problem in relation to the riots are those who choose to incite others on social media, or perhaps the failure of the social media companies not to block such information. Racism and right-wing ideologies have been around much longer than social media.

What such an approach fails to recognise is that it is often very difficult to recognise false news, or at least false arguments (those which you do not happen to agree with?). At the extremes, in a small number of cases, this might be possible. However, most commentators do believe what they are writing, and do believe that they have arrived at that position rationally and through a process of critical thinking, a position that, if the other side had all the facts, they would also agree with. It is obviously the case that those who post on social media use dog whistle phrases and sensationalist statements, with little care about their veracity, to incite others and to stir up trouble. The only people who respond to this, however, are largely those who agree with the positions that the commentators are propounding.

No amount of critical thinking, without either coming from a specific (and different) perspective, or without creating a cynical attitude to all online information, can really stop any of us being attracted to those posts, and those commentators, or those arguments, that already support what we are thinking. And when we do find these posts, we are far from likely to want to engage in a critical analysis of what the writer is saying (and that probably includes those of you who are reading this and share my, rather bizarre, perspective…)

I emphasise again, the teaching of critical thinking skills, the basics of hermeneutics, and an understanding of ideology is valuable and essential. I would clearly endorse that, but I would also say that that is only half the battle.

It is well known that both the algorithms contained in social media, and individual’s natural attraction to sites and to information, mean that most of us are drawn to, and shown, primarily that material that already conforms to our own interests and values. It is also clear that we are far less critical of that material that does reinforce what we already think. Critical thinking, therefore, can only take us so far. None of us really have the detachment necessary to be critical of all that we read, and that level of disengagement is very difficult to teach, even if we think it might be desirable.

Alongside critical thinking, therefore, we also need to teach empathy. I had originally thought to say that we needed to teach ‘values’, and part of me still wants to say that. ‘Values’, however, does not fully capture what it is that I am trying to suggest. There are clear ‘values’ that underpin empathy, including openness, tolerance, respect of the other, etc. and we cannot teach empathy without inculcating these values. However, it is empathy, the willingness and ability to listen to, and to hear, the views and perspectives of the other, that I think is what we need to be teaching. Empathy, and the results of engaging empathetically, can also provide the first step in critical thinking, in recognising what a statement or post is trying to say and engaging with it appropriately.

Some people say that empathy is taught primarily through the arts and the humanities, and that this is one reason we need to sustain these disciplines within our universities. I agree with that, but I have also met many scientists who show exemplary empathy and know of many sciences that benefit from the application of empathy, including social sciences such as anthropology, but also many others. It is also the case that many products of the arts and humanities express something that is antithetical to what I might call ‘empathy’, but that is probably a different discussion. Empathy, therefore, is not the preserve of the arts and humanities, but they may certainly be a good place to start.

Finally, therefore, just a reflection on my own experience. I have found that there are two groups in society for whom it is particularly difficult, but perhaps particularly important, to teach empathy. The first are those who are already excluded and ostracised. If others do not recognise a particular group, engage with them through stereotypes and expect nothing but trouble from them, then they are far less likely to be empathetic to the ones who are excluding them, and nor, perhaps should we expect them to be so. There are, of course, many in such situation who do show exemplary skills at empathy, especially for others in a similar situation, although perhaps of a different group from themselves, but my point that it becomes so much more difficult to teach empathy for those who are not the recipients of it from others. There are many in society who fall into this category, but young men from our more deprived communities are perhaps the most obvious group.

The second group may be more of surprise. This is the group of those who are privileged. Not all privilege is white. By ‘the privileged’ I am thinking of all those who assume, without reflection, that society is organised in a way that will benefit them, those who have the knowledge, experience and social capital to expect everything to go their way. It is a very difficult concept to define, but we do all know it when we see it. Such privilege often means that those who have it do not recognise or even see those who are excluded. It is this self-containment, perhaps even self-satisfaction, the assumption that everything is as it should be simply because that is what they have come to expect, that makes it difficult to teach ‘empathy’. However, we must attempt to do this among this group, just as much as amongst the dispossessed, if we are going to begin to reduce the levels of intolerance and violence within our society.

Suffering

In working through a very wide range of disparate material to write my book on the story in religion, I have been reading some of Michael Jackson’s work. He worked in West Africa, in Australia and elsewhere, as an anthropologist but much of his work, particularly his most recent work, draws on personal and individual reflections. In his very recent work, he has also been exploring the experience of migrants, especially those journeying from West Africa to London. One of his common themes is suffering, deriving in part from his experiences in Liberia and the impact of the civil war, and in part from elements of his own life and the lives of those around him.

Like many writers Jackson is interested in the way we talk about suffering, the way in which we try to express the inexpressible. No two people can know that they experience suffering in quite the same way and so the language of suffering is rarely precise. Story is the primary means of talking about suffering. Extremes of suffering, in the brutalities of war, in the pain of depression and cancer, in the experience of migration and dislocation, often makes even the telling of stories impossible. Drawing on the work of Hanah Arendt and others, Jackson asks how we can recall, live with, and talk about suffering.

This work is vitally important, especially given the events of the last few weeks, both in the experience of the young girls, their dance teachers and their families in Southport, and in our response to the rioting that followed, drawing on messages of hate and mob violence. How to talk about pain, about suffering, about loss, without giving in to despair and losing all hope.

The most recent work I have read is Richard Kearney’s book on Strangers, Gods and Monsters. This is the last of three volumes on philosophy at the limit (the middle volume is on the story). Here Kearney is asking not just about suffering, where language fails in the face of human cruelty, but also about the other and the impossibility of talking about the other, of our tendency to construct the other, particularly the stranger, as monster, and the narrowness of the boundary in our language of the sublime, whether of monsters or of gods. It is a highly complex argument that brings together many different ideas with threads of psychoanalysis, deconstruction and apophatic theology running through it.

What this work suggests is that we cannot begin to talk about suffering without also talking about those who inflict suffering, the perpetrators as well as the victims. While the enormity of the pain is often beyond words, so also is the enormity of the cruelty inflicted by other human persons, or of our existence. The Holocaust is, without doubt, the limit case in both these discourses and is often used to conduct the debate about what is sayable, what needs to be said, and what remains beyond saying, beyond comprehension, beyond words.

We have seen the cruelty that human beings can perpetrate on each other on our streets, both in the violent and incomprehensible act of an individual wielding a knife among a group of very young girls at a dance event, and in the mass hysteria of the mob, whipped up by reinforcing messages of hate on social media. Words fail us. We cannot comprehend the motives. We have nothing to say to those who suffer and to those who survive.

There is a discourse in the academic literature about those who are caught up in a collective culture of violence, whether that is the rage of the mob or what is called the banality of evil, a widespread acceptance of hate and of violence against specific populations. A particular place in this literature is given to those, like the children caught up in the many African wars, who are victims of the violence just as much as those they maim and kill. There is also a much larger literature on those who are considered truly evil, stressing their otherness and the inexplicable nature of their actions, whether political leaders or serial killers. Finally, there is also a literature on the bystander, the ones who look on, often feeling helpless but, perhaps, not as innocent as they might believe themselves to be.

What is missing, perhaps, is another group, and one that more of us might fit into than we at first imagine. These are the people who recognise the violence around them, would condemn it if asked, but ultimately bracket it out and proceed to profit from it. There are those, very close to the suffering and violence, who do this consciously. Many in the African civil wars, trying to make a living in impossible circumstances, end up in such a place, or one very similar. For most of us, however, it is the structures of society, or the distance between ourselves and the suffering (whether mediated through electronic media or not), that enable us to get on with our lives without recognising the way in which our everyday actions support, and certainly do not aim to engage with or challenge, this violence. There is an almost deliberate ignorance, even indifference, in such a position, but it is one that those writing about suffering, or about the explicitly violent few, often fail to recognise.

Images of Violence

I recently attended an excellent conference at the Northumbria University organised by the sociology of religion group, Socrel, and focused on Religion, Justice and Social Power. Alongside some wonderful papers and a chance to hear about faith-based action for social justice in the Northeast, it was also great to catch up with colleagues and to look around the city of Newcastle. On the way to the conference centre from my hotel I passed both the buildings in the picture above and the Laing Gallery. It was here that I was confronted with two images that have made their mark on me and have remained in my memory long after the rest of my experience of Newcastle and the conference have begun to fade. Both are images of violence, but from different centuries and engaging with violence in very different ways.

The first was Otter Speared by Edwin Landseer, the famous Victorian painter of animals. I knew of the image. In fact, we have a small black and white photograph of it on our ‘Otterhound’ wall. The image is of the Earl of Aberdeen’s otterhounds surrounding a hunter holding a spear on which an otter, still clearly alive, is squirming and lashing out while the hounds salivate and reach out to finish it off. The Guardian in 2010 noted its presence in an exhibition or sporting images at the Bowes Museum in Barnards Castle and makes the case for not exhibiting such a ‘gruesome’ painting. At the time, the newspaper notes, it was taken off permanent display by the Laing because of its ‘gruesome’ and politically incorrect subject matter. Somebody has clearly decided to return it to public display, and I am very glad that they have.

The painting, painted in 1844, is not small and in its original context it was probably something to be seen at a distance, up high on the wall of some baronial manor or another. In the exhibition at the Laing, it was close up, at eye level and very much in your face. The hunter in the image was life-size and the hounds, not all of whom are focused on the otter, appear to tumble out of the picture onto the floor before us. It is a very powerful image and the note on the wall recognises that some people would find it difficult, even offensive. There is so much movement, action and pure lust for blood in the picture. However, it does benefit for being looked at close to, not only for the many beautiful hounds, but also to note, for example, the two trout on the bank that otter has recently hunted and left, sliced open and oozing blood. The hunted is also a hunter and far from a simple expression of the ‘joys’ of hunting, this is a complex image of violence, both human and animal, in many different forms.

Landseer’s Otter Speared is a disturbing image. However, the image that I found particularly compelling, and in many ways even more horrific, speaking much more to the violence of our contemporary cities, was a recent work by Ken Currie. Shot Boy is a ghostly image of a twelve-year-old boy, painted in oils, but looking more like an overexposed photographic negative against a deep blue background. It has the feel of the Turin Shroud as the boy lies, presumably on the mortuary slab, the face hardly discernible but with a series of very clear and obvious gunshot wounds across his chest. It is rare to find a contemporary painting of a dead body and at one level the response is to death. But this is so clearly a violent death that we are forced to confront the events that brought that boy to mortuary slab.

The painting was completed in the mid-1990s, but of course the death of young boys (older boys and some girls) on our streets is still a very real issue. Knives are probably the weapon of choice today, although boys are still shot. I remember, however, in the mid-1990s visiting Chicago with the Department of Theology in Birmingham. One of the key memories of that visit was the response of many churches and others within the inner-urban areas, to a recent rash of shootings, primarily of boys and young men. Much of the response came in the form of art, attempts by the different communities to come to term both with the loss of young lives, but also with the violence (also perpetuated by boys and young men) on the streets around the churches and the residential blocks of the more deprived neighbourhoods of the city. There was an element of hope in those images, or at least of defiance. Never again, they seemed to say, or not in our name. The stillness and finality of Shot Boy does not declare any kind of hope, or even of defiance. It is a very different image of violence to all the noise and action of the Landseer, but it is equally disturbing and perhaps far more resonant of our contemporary society.

NSS and the Cathedral’s Group

I have been waiting for this moment for many years. As I looked at the league table provided by THE for the latest NSS scores it was dominated by a new group of universities, mostly new universities and predominantly from the Cathedral’s group. It is something that I have been expecting, and hoping for, for a number of years and I am very pleased to see that we have finally arrived.

When I moved to Swansea University in 2014 it was clear that those universities that topped the NSS overall satisfaction table (including Swansea) were those that were ‘at the end of the line’. In other words, they were at the end of the railway line, relatively isolated, self-contained, of a particular size, and absolutely committed to the experience of their students. Swansea was able to benefit from this for several years, constantly seeking to be better than Bangor and Aberystwyth, who were in a very similar position and were similar kinds of university.

There was some disruption in the early 2020s, not least because of COVID, but there were also other changes. Many of these universities, like Swansea, were growing (Swansea grew from 14,000 students in 2014 to over 20, 000 only five years later), were aiming to establish themselves as ‘research universities’ and were therefore losing their focus on student satisfaction and struggling with massified education. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain their position at the top of the NSS league tables. The NSS itself was also coming in for criticism and change, not least with the removal of the overall satisfaction question (if only in England).

At the same time the smaller, newer, universities, most of which belonged to the Cathedral’s group, were establishing themselves and learning how to play the system. These universities have a heritage that places the student at the centre of their work, look back to values (often faith based) that underpin the culture of the university, and are of a size that can continue to be attractive and relevant to individual students without feeling overwhelmed. It is of no surprise, therefore, that in this year’s NSS results, it is universities from this group (with a few notable exceptions) that have topped the THE league table based on overall satisfaction.

In part, this is because NSS, despite the various changes in recent years, is still a measure of satisfaction. The questions might be about teaching quality, feedback on assessments or whatever it is, but the scores that students give will reflect their emotional commitment to the institution rather than any rational understanding of quality or feedback (most students have no criteria for measuring these or comparing their own experience with that of other institutions). Placing a strong emphasis on engagement with students and individualised care (something that is always easier with a campus based, smaller, institution) will always score more highly, particularly once all institutions have learnt how to engage with students in a way to encourage positive responses.

This is not to denigrate the significant amount of work, attention to detail, and real care for students that is still needed score highly in the NSS. It is far too easy for a few simple mistakes, organisational failures, or negativity from staff, to really damage the scores, as I have seen in particular departments over the years. There is also a correlation between staff morale and that of the students, and hence of student scores, that must have been impacted by all the strikes and other concerns that staff across so many institutions have faced in recent years. It is still very difficult to score well in NSS and Bishop Grosseteste, Trinty St David, Liverpool Hope, Plymouth Marjon and the others should be congratulated for their result and the hard work and commitment of their staff should be clearly recognised (my own university, where I am now a member of the council, is Birmingham Newman, ranked 13th which is an excellent score).

The real question, however, is whether this is going to make any real difference. The public view will still be that the Russell Group are the premier division of the higher education sector, and if we take the rounded view, including research and global impact that may be appropriate. However, for students looking for the right university it is difficult to argue that the Russell Group, or any other group, is always going to be the right choice. Will the higher ranking for Cathedral’s group university lead to greater interest from potential students, or perhaps their parents and advisors, and to increasing numbers? Perhaps, it is difficult to predict. My hunch, however, is that it will not. Many schools are still measured on the number of students they get into the Russell group. That must now be even more inappropriate than it ever was.

Will the table also mean that values and the placing of the student at the heart of the university move back towards the centre of university missions? I also doubt that this will be the case. Those universities with a faith heritage are at an advantage here and should be marketing themselves based on their values. I have always argued that a faith base should be reflected in the focus on, and care for students (as well as excellence in teaching and research) and I do think that, for now, that is just beginning to be seen in these latest NSS results. Let’s hope, perhaps against expectations, that this will see a realignment of the sector as a whole.

The End of an Era

Last week I attended the funeral of a dear friend. He was the parish priest of the church my partner and I attended whilst at university in Manchester. My partner also lodged at the church for a couple of years.

We were associated with the church for about ten years in total, from 1984 to 1993, during my partner’s undergraduate years, my postgraduate years and my subsequent work in the area as a church related community worker, before I got a post in the Department of Theology at the University of Birmingham. I am not sure that I would say that this was the golden age of the church.

It was part of the tradition of Anglo-Catholic churches that were built in deprived parts of our major cities to provide support and faith, and a glimpse of heaven through the glorious worship of the church, for the people of the area. This was also a tradition that both my grandfather and great-grandfather had also been a part of.

Like so many of these churches the community had declined, in this case the old slum housing had been demolished, the people moved out and a scattering of new houses built with a mixture of people, moved in from different parts of the city. Many of the congregation had once been part of the parish but at the time that we were there they also travelled in. The church also attracted a small number of students who were drawn, like us, to the worship, the theology and the tradition.

I was honoured to serve at the church and, for much of the last five years, as MC (master of ceremonies) at the weekly mass and major festivals. The priest we knew retired in the mid 1990s and the church itself was closed a few years later, all part of the fall out from the vote for women’s ordination in the Church of England.

The priest, our friend, died just short of his ninetieth birthday and the community that gathered to attend his funeral was drawn largely from those we knew during our time at the church in the 1980s. There were a few from his current place of worship, where the funeral was held, and some clergy, both Anglican and Catholic, who had known him over the years. It was, however, meeting up with those we had known, and had largely lost contact with, over thirty years ago that probably left the most lasting impression on me.

We were all older, but I was still shocked by meeting a group of those who had all been children during our time at the church, many of whom had served with me, and who were now in their forties. I found it difficult to recognise just who was who. Many of those who had been part of the congregation have also died and I was very aware that those who had gathered were something of a remnant. This community, however, is unlikely ever to meet again and there was a strong sense, mentioned by a number of those I spoke to, of the end of an era, a final farewell to the church, its ministry and its people.

It was not just the end of an era for this particular church, however. The tradition that this church represented has all but disappeared from the Church of England. Practically all the churches that I knew from this tradition in and around Manchester have closed, been repurposed or demolished, and most of the clergy have either died or moved on.

There was already a sense, in the 1980s, that was a dying tradition. The priest whose funeral we attended always put this down to a decline in the teaching of the faith in the churches, a focus on the peripherals, the liturgy, the ceremony, the colour, the music, and an unwillingness to teach clearly what these elements meant and why they we so significant and so central to the faith.

In the nineteenth century, and the early years of the twentieth, clergy and people had had to fight to establish and maintain the Catholic tradition within Anglicanism. Many had turned to the new parishes of the inner cities, not just because of the call to serve the poor, which was significant, but also because the mainstream of the Church did not want them anywhere else.

From what had begun as an outward facing missionary tradition with strong emphasis on the social gospel, the Anglo-Catholic movement had become somewhat inward looking, obsessed with issues of authority and torn apart by the debates around women’s ordination and other matters in the wider Anglican Church. There were few, if any, significant leaders and fewer still that earned widespread respect within the movement. The writing was on the wall long before the vote in synod scattered the community and its tradition and marked the end of another kind of era within the church.

The funeral was held at the Oratory in Manchester. My partner and I attend the Oratory in Birmingham. There are some significant similarities between the Oratorian tradition and that of Anglo-Catholicism, and not only a shared devotion to St John Henry Newman and his work.

The Oratory of St Philip Neri grew out of a commitment to prayer and to the service of the poor of the city, in this case of Rome in the seventeenth century. Some of that tradition has been retained. The devotion to the liturgy, the need to use the very best in terms of music and art that in the service of the liturgy, is common to both traditions, as is the somewhat detached response to formal church authorities.

Some of the various Oratories in the UK today still exist in the more deprived areas of our cities but it would be difficult to say that ‘the social gospel’ is still a strong part of the current reality, although it is still seen occasionally.

It was fitting, however, that the funeral of our friend was held in an Oratorian church, with well performed liturgy, an incredible choir, and a recognition of the tradition. He would probably have appreciated it. And while the Oratorian tradition continues to thrive, at least in Birmingham, I still cannot help seeing the whole event of the funeral as an end to a very important era, in my life, and in the wider life of the church.

The Structures of Racism

I have just finished reading David Aaronovitch’s book on conspiracy theories. There is much of interest in the book and, especially in the present climate, it is very thought provoking. What is perhaps most interesting is that Aaronovitch takes the discussion back to the end of the nineteenth century and shows that the conspiracy theory is not something new or a product of the internet, let alone social media.

The element that stood out most, for me, however, was the recognition of just how deep rooted and how consistent the level of antisemitism has been for the last hundred and fifty years. What also struck me, was the way in which antisemitism has been constructed and, on reflection, just how different this is from the kind of racism that we see aimed at Black, African, Caribbean, or Afro-American communities.

One thing that is clearly common to all racisms is the construction of the other as less than human and the use of animalistic and crude naturalistic comparisons to dehumanise the members of a particular community. The names, the slurs, the hatred, is common to all kinds of racism and no one can be highlighted as ‘more’ or ‘less’ than any other. The differences that I saw in the way Aaronovitch constructed antisemitism are what I would describe as ‘social’ or ‘structural’ differences, the place of the ostracised group within society or the expectations of that place on the part of the racist speaker.

If I start with antisemitism, this has always had a fundamental contradiction at its heart. At one level the Jews are constructed as a despised and inferior people, the product of the ghetto or of peasant communities. On the other side they are constructed as wealthy, powerful, and plotting to take over society. The wealth or power may be ill-gotten, the product of magic and supernatural power, including the blood of babies etc. but the core document, which Aaronovitch skilfully unmasks and deconstructs, talks of a global plot among super rich and super powerful Jews to take over the world. Structurally, antisemitism is built on the idea of the enemy within, a group within society who, when not clearly distinct (and their perceived lack of assimilation in the ghetto/peasant form is transferred to the wealthy and powerful even where it patently does not exist in reality), then still placing loyalty to the group, the different, above that of society as a whole and, in extremis, intent on undermining everything that society (democracy/capitalism, call it what you like) stands for, again despite often being the greatest advocates of the values underpinning our western society.

The racism against the African, on the other hand, has its roots in slavery, but is also, undoubtedly, among the causes of slavery. Structurally it sees the other, the black in this case, as naturally inferior and subservient, reaching back in Christian terms to the story of Noah and his sons, and seeing the black races as born to be slaves of the white. There is no discourse in racism against the black that constructs the African or other diaspora peoples as superior, as wealthy, powerful or out to undermine Western society from within. Racism against those with African heritage is one of the powerful in society, the privileged, assuming (and constructing) a natural superiority that defines all black peoples as naturally lesser. This works even when those of African heritage take on positions of power. The only real exception could, arguably, be sport, but this is, in practice, simply an extension of the discourse of inferiority. Power, prestige, and superiority are all understood in all Western constructions as being intellectual, the power of the mind. When power is seen in brute physicality, it is equated with the animalistic and, once again, seen as inferior, lesser, naturally subservient, the beast of burden, when seen in relation to the intellectually superior white peoples.

The Jew, of course, is often constructed as being an intellectual, often too much so, using their natural cunning and superior, if twisted, intellect to dominate others. Once again there is an inherent contradiction in our structures of racism. The other can be either too intelligent or not intelligent enough. Both are barbs. Both can be used demean the other.

Islamophobia sits in an interesting position when understood in terms of the structures of racism. There are elements that place the Arab, the archetypal Muslim, alongside the peoples of Africa, perhaps a little higher, but equally inferior to the European, and on the same basis. More significant, however, is another structural type, not the enemy within, or the downtrodden masses brought in from outside, but the dirty foreigner. There is part of our construction of Islamophobia that is equivalent to the English ‘hatred’ of the French, or other Europeans (or even the Welsh or the Scots) and the American distrust of the Canadian, they are simply, and excessively, other. However, as Islam has become more embedded in our society, we can see elements of the structures of antisemitism creeping into our constructions of Islamophobia. The Muslims, we hear, are plotting to take over our society, to undermine our values, they are becoming a home grown other, a danger from amongst us, knowing us too well and using that knowledge, their intelligence, their cunning, their commitment to a greater Other that is not of us, to take over and to destroy us from within.

To understand, and I guess to challenge, racism, we need both to understand the history and the roots – these almost all go back into the middle of the nineteenth century, if not before – and to understand the structures and forms that underpin it. However, we must recognise that the many forms of racism that exist in our society have different roots, and very different structures, and we cannot simply compare one with another, or tackle all of them through the same methods and policies. Things are so much more complicated than many, particularly those at the extreme of politics – left or right, woke or extremist – would care to admit.

Negotiating University Growth

Throughout my time at Swansea University, we placed student growth at the centre of our strategy. There were very good reasons for this, but it also presented us with several very significant challenges. In what follows I want to highlight some of the lessons that I personally learnt from that experience.

We want to grow for two very clear reasons: –

First, to be seen as a truly global university we need to be able to offer a full range of programmes to an excellent standard and to be recognised as a leading player in research, not just across two or three disciplines, but across all the subjects that we offered. To do this, it was essential that we invested, primarily in the very best academics available, but also in the facilities we needed to support those people and the students they attracted. To invest we needed resources, and it is still the case that the primary source of income, for all universities, especially in the current climate, and the one that we had most control over, was that which we received from student fees and particularly the income derived from international student fees.

Second, and closely related to the first reason, was that the university needed to get into a position where we were financially sustainable. At our original size we were entirely dependent on contingencies and found it difficult to release funds to invest in student support, the estate, research support and other factors to the level that we would like. If we could grow, we reasoned, and therefore in overall income, we would know where we could achieve efficiencies (both in professional services and elsewhere) and therefore we could release funds to improve the services that are available, as well as providing resources to invest in new initiatives for the future. It was essential, therefore, that this growth did not just happen in an uncontrolled fashion, but that it was carefully planned and managed. This is what we aimed to achieve through the development of a ten-year strategy, leading to financial stability and sustainability and providing us enough head room, in three, five- or seven-years’ time to do what we needed to do to be the global institution that we aspire to be. That, at least, was the plan.

Growth, however, offers many challenges, even if the students are there to be attracted. Core to these challenges was the inevitable time lag between any immediate growth in numbers and the subsequent investment needed in staff and student support. We were committed to provide the necessary investment in those areas where growth was planned and was seen to be at its strongest. However, it was not always possible to predict precisely where these were going to be. Beyond this, however, there were three other, more specific challenges that I want to recognise, and to offer some insight into what we did to meet them.

The first is that there are always limits on growth that is focused simply by doing more of the same. Many programmes across the University were already reaching the limit of the numbers they could achieve (either because of the number of students available, or because of practical limitations internally). Growth in these areas, while still possible, is always going to be marginal. We recognised, therefore, that growth demands doing new things. This may be through new programmes (new masters and undergraduate programmes within existing subject areas, linking with institutions overseas in joint or dual degree programmes, or developing whole new areas such as Chemistry and Education at Swansea). This was planned through the annual Business Planning Round and each College was asked to produce a list of new programmes that it was intending to develop over the next five years. This could never be fixed in stone, and we were always open to changes in the market and to initiatives from individuals who saw opportunities for development. It was the role of the Programme Management Board, however, of which I was chair, to manage this process and to oversee the strategy for growth through the development of new programmes.

The second challenge comes in delivery. Class sizes will inevitably grow, there is a premium on space, across both campuses in Swansea, and there is inevitably a limit to what is possible unless we begin to take significant action to plan well in advance. Building work will never keep pace with the growth in student numbers, but that is only an issue if we assume that the growth will only come through doing more of what we already do at present. Teaching is changing. New technologies are opening up new possibilities. Students are engaging in learning in very different ways to the way they did when I started out in this profession. Learning technologies, however, are not a simplistic answer to all our problems of growth.

We do need to recognise the changes that are happening and the ways in which new technologies can help to improve the learning experience of students, while also perhaps challenging our need for lots of time spent in large lecture theatres or in individual face to face interactions. There are also things can be done structurally, in terms of the academic year, changes to regulations, rethinking assessments etc. that can both bring benefits to student experiences while also enabling us to manage larger student numbers more effectively. At Swansea the Go Beyond project was aimed, in part, at looking at all these issues and we explored several of the options that were available.

The third challenge, however, is student support. We all recognise that the stresses and strains on students are probably more significant today than they have ever been. We need to be aware of the impact of all these policies on the student body, and we were always very grateful at Swansea University that we were able to work alongside the Student’s Union as we aimed to address these impacts. Student support, however, in terms of personal tutoring and fundamental welfare provision was among the first things that we reviewed during my time at Swansea. We worked with the Student’s Union, academic and professional services staff, to put forward a strategy and proposals that radically rethought this area of our work, providing a much clearer view of what academic tutors were expected to do, for example, and attempting to provide the appropriate support mechanisms in terms of both welfare and academic skills that were necessary to underpin the anticipated growth. I am not entirely sure, however, that we always got this right.

Clearing was something that Swansea University always did well, and I have great memories of the way the whole team, the whole university, pulled together to make that work. Growth in student numbers happened, practically every year, and it offered us many exciting opportunities and challenges. The whole University community was involved in, and committed to, the recruitment process and were fully behind our objectives. But this was the kind of work that never seemed to stop. Each year we all had to work together, to reflect on the challenges, and to see how the next few years could be transformed into opportunities to develop new ways of working and new opportunities for our students. Growth in student numbers never did answer all our problems, but the work we did to tackle it, and to learn how to cope with it, certainly made for a better university.

The Fickleness of Scholarship

This is the first of four blogs that will allow me to look back on the different threads of my quartet. It has been about a year since I began this blog in earnest, and so I thought this would be a good point to reflect and sum up something of where I have arrived.

Religion, the first of the four strands, is what I research. Religion is what I write about, and it is what I have been writing about for thirty or more years. I have five books to my name and numerous papers, enough to make sure I am recognised as something of a leader in my discipline. I have written the sixth book and have spent the year trying (unsuccessfully) to get it published. I am currently writing the seventh (on stories and on myth as I have mentioned many times in these blogs). However, I somehow feel as though I am just at the start of my career and that I am, after almost ten years in senior leadership roles, having to make an academic name for myself all over again.

I am currently reading a wonderful thesis from a Lebanese scholar, Rima Nasrallah, who achieved her PhD from the Protestant University in Amsterdam in 2015. It is a study of the worshiping lives of women in Lebanon who have grown up Orthodox or Maronite and have married men who belong to the Lebanese Protestant Church. This is a work that is based on ethnography and that has a real eye for detail within the daily lives of these women as they negotiate their various liturgical traditions. I would highly recommend it, I can immediately think of three colleagues to whom I would have liked to send a copy for Christmas, and I will certainly be using it in teaching later in the year.

This is a thesis about the ethnography of worship, and it is a study of lived religion. These are both areas in which I have written, and they are both areas where I would like to think of myself as something of a pioneer. None of my books, however, appear in the bibliography. That does not worry me as such. Rima is not dealing with quite the same areas of experience that I was writing about. However, in both cases Rima references other works that have become recognised as the founding texts of these two sub-sub-disciplines, other writers whose work has, in some way superseded my own.

Earlier in the year I helped a colleague at the University of Birmingham to teach on a course on Lived Religion in Birmingham. The course itself is the direct inheritor of a very similar course that I taught in the years before I left Birmingham, also in 2015. What is interesting, however, is that my own work was completely overlooked in the previous version of the course and the two books that are most directly related, one on lived religion and one on religion in Birmingham, were not included in the bibliography.

I can prove, very easily, that the work done by the student in Amsterdam has a direct line of descent from my own writing, through the work of colleagues in the Netherlands, Rima’s supervisors, who have always recognised their debt to my work. They are now the leading exponents of this kind of approach, and I am proud of the part I have played in supporting them and encouraging them to develop far beyond my initial exploration of this world. Likewise, the course in Birmingham, is a direct inheritor of my previous work, both in the department and in the city.

The work that is quoted, in all these cases, as the core texts and perhaps even the founding mothers and fathers of the sub-sub-disciplines, were texts that were being written at about the same time as my own books, and in most cases in the States. These were career academics who continued to write, to attend conferences and to publicise their work. This is related to what has been called the ‘Matthew effect’. Once one person has quoted them, others follow, quoting them in turn as the definitive work, and so it continues. The texts that surrounded them and that often inspired them have therefore largely been forgotten. You can see that happening throughout the history of scholarship. This has enabled certain scholars to be established as the ‘founders’ or ‘core texts’ of the discipline. I am perhaps just a little surprised at how quickly this has happened in this particular context.

So, do I want to rebuild my reputation, shout from the roof tops ‘look at me’, ‘over here’, ‘it is my ideas that you are using!’? No, I don’t. Scholarship moves on and I continue to be very proud of the very wide range of scholarship, in the UK, in the Netherlands, in Scandinavia and even in Australia, Canada and the States that my own work has made possible. I am not looking for recognition in that sense.

The point for me, here and now, however, is how to move forward. Because I am no longer being referenced, it is much more difficult for me to get published. Once I get back into the machine, however, with a book in publication and a series of papers based on collaborations and conference presentations then I will hopefully be back in circulation, and I can begin to plan out the next stage of my goal.

Lived religion, still less the ethnography of worship, was never what I wanted to be known for. Both are simply steps along the way. The reason I stepped back from my role at Swansea University was, in part, to give me the space and the time to get back to that bigger project, the development of a ‘general theory of religion’. That may also sink without trace, almost inevitably so, in time. However, I do believe there is something of value to be said about the nature and working of religion. I have written three volumes of this already, I am working on the fourth, and I will continue to work on the other volumes that go to make up the general theory over the next few years. Only five more volumes to write so I had probably better get on with it…