Politurgy

Who has power in interactions...

Frost and Hirsch helpfully distinguish between 'attractional' and 'incarnational' models of mission. As a heuristic tool this language allows us to distinguish between those approaches that invite people to come to our events and those where by we go as it were to where people are.

Within a broad misional intent both are valid...in the Gospel of Mark Jesus both presences himself among people and has people enter his presence (great study by Glen Stassen on Incarnational Theory of the Cross).

As I reflect on the difference between these two missional approaches I find myself interested in the question of 'power'. As a minister I have been involved I think in a range of quite adventurous attractional 'out-reach' missional activities. Often these have sought to provide culturally relevant expressions of the gospel 'dance cafe', 'multi-media presentation', 'open-youth club' etc. yet in all of these I with others have retained the power - power of event, power over venue, power over acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour, power of inclusion and exclusion. This power has often been reinforced by the implicit and explicit conventions of the buildings used - or an already established morality.

In contrast to this as I have pursued some social and leisure activities bagpipe playing, learning dancing etc. this has been done in other peoples buildings, where other peoples rules operate, and often in a context where instead of being the person with something to share I have been the person learning and as such dependant on others. These latter activities have demonstrated for me how much power I previously exerted implicitly or explicitly even if only through my socially ascribed status as a 'minister'.

People talk about being vulnerable in mission and this I think relates to questions of power. To be sure we can 'serve' in mission but often we serve from a position of power rather than from the position of 'slave'. In this respect I note that generally we prefer to talk in our translation of the Greek 'doulos' about 'servant' leadership, ministry, mission - rather than 'slave' leadership etc. It seems to me that Phil 2:5-11 etc. resists a notion of 'servant' which retains power.

I am not sure what this means for our mission. It clearly cannot mean avoiding offering compassion and creating confrontation in calling for repentance because both were aspects of the mission of Jesus. (Stassen) Yet both of these were done on the basis of no claimed external authority (power, status, validation) other than that of God inherent in the act. Indeed the external authorities (powers) rejected these claims and crucified Jesus leaving it to God to validate through the power of the resurrection.

What am I saying...risky mission may well be when we lay down all power and throw ourselves into something where we trust in the authenticating of none but God of the compassion we bring and confrontation we cause...

Okay - my question would be - what does that look like in practice...well...go join a club and do something where you are a learner, have no prescribed social status, and just be present working out what faithful witness looks like...and trust in the self-authenticating 'power' of God that embraces death and brings resurrection...

 

 

 

Liminality and Victor Turner

I first came across the term 'liminal' many years ago in the book 'The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality' (1997) by the missiologist Alan Roxburgh. It was a good read and still worthwhile. When I engaged in further studies it was a word that appeared now and then. During my PhD studies in the first stab at what I was going to do (about 2003) the concept was going to figure quite centrally but then got dropped. Actually, I remember, vaguely attending an academic conference where I heard someone mutter that if they heard the term used again they were going to scream! Oh it was popular and not.

More recently it has reemerged into the 'evangelical' and 'missional' discourse through the work of Frost and Hirsch along with the attendant concept of 'communitas' e.g. 'The Faith of Leap'.

Basically taken together people like to talk about us living and carrying out mission in a 'liminal' period. At times some of the comments read a bit 'derivative' that is people quoting people with respect to the concept but not wrestling with the concept. That is okay and I am no expert but (having rediscovered my notes in a clear out) I am happy to share some of my ignorance and lots of my opinions in a few posts. In this I just introduce the idea a bit...

The concept of 'liminality' is generally associated with the work of Scots born anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-1983).

In developing his category of the liminal Turner acknowledged his dependence upon the earlier work of anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep.[1] Van Gennep in his work had explored in ‘simpler’ societies what he described as ‘rites of passage’, that is ‘the ceremonial patterns, which accompany a passage from one situation to another or from one cosmic or social world to another’.[2] These rites he argued could then be broken down into ‘rites of separation, transition rites, and rites of incorporation’.[3] Van Gennep classified these rites as ‘pre-liminal’, ‘liminal’ and ‘post-liminal’ respectively.[4]

In developing van Gennep’s work Turner was particularly interested in the transitional, ‘threshold’, ‘margin’, liminal period.[5] For Turner this ‘betwixt and between’ period is one when participants, ‘threshold people’, enter a period of ambiguity.[6] In such a period they experience community or better ‘communitas’ with the other participants.[7] Such an experience of liminality frees the participants from the normative controlling structures of society where status and institutional arrangements dominate.[8] As a marginal place, from a structural standpoint, liminality is a ‘dialectic’ place that has to contend with existing structures but is yet a place where they are challenged.[9] Accordingly it is a place of potentiality.[10] Acknowledged in his earlier writings Turner developed the notion of the potentiality and creative nature of ‘anti-structural’ liminality in his later work.[11]

While Turner’s anthropological studies were done among societies radically different from the West it can be argued that periods of social change and upheaval made his work appealing because of the parallels that could be drawn from the rituals in these societies and socio-political upheaval in the West.[12]

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[1] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, by Victor Turner (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995=1969), p. 94.  

[2] Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960=1908), p. 10, italics van Gennep.

[3] Van Gennep, Rites, p. 11, italics van Gennep.

[4] Van Gennep, Rites, p. 11.

[5] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, p. 94.

[6] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, p. 95.

[7] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, p. 97, italics Turner.

[8] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, pp. 96-97.

[9] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, p. 129.

[10] Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, pp. 127-128.

[11] Turner, ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, From Ritual, pp. 44-48.

[12] Abrahams, ‘Foreword’, Ritual Process, p. viii.

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Pay Day Loans and the Poor Among Us

Various churches including the ‘Kirk’ have now expressed their clear opposition to the extortionate rates of interest charged by pay day loan companies. Generally this ‘prophetic’ intervention into wider society has been welcomed not least as it has been accompanied by practical suggested alternatives. the latter is required because pay day loan companies do provide help for those who may have no other options and are better than local loan shark operators.

This prophetic intervention, however, has also resulted in some embarassing soul or at least investment seraching to ensure that churches have not been investing, however indirectly, in the sort of companies who engage in such loan activity. In turn , it has been at least interesting to see some of public discussion in relation to how different religous groups including Christianity have traditionally responded to the issue of giving loans and helping the poor etc. Scripture passages of various types have been quoted in the press including in the Herald article by Andrew McKie Churches play a blinder on the scourge of payday loans (my thanks to Doug Gay's tweet for drawing my attention to this).

All of this has to be welcomed. 

Yet this discussion poses the Church with another question. This is the question of how we respond to Scriptures which are concerned primarily with our internal life as a 'community of believers' and which at least suggest some sort of redistribution of wealth as a characteristic of Holy Spirit inspired community Acts 2:44-45; 4:34-35 so that there are no poor among us. To be sure this approach has not been dominant in the mainstream tradition of church - yet it nags away suggesting that the upper limits of some may have to be lowered if others are to be lifted up.

I find this whole thing deeply challenging not least because of my own anabaptist inclinations. Historically as Arnold Snyder argues 'Economic Sharing' was an anabaptist church practice. Radical economic sharing was the the visible sign of ones committment to the community. Sometimes as with the Hutterites this took the form of an organised community of goods. For all, however, it meant caring for the poor, the widows, and the orphans. 

This suggests to me that even as the Church seeks to transform or humanise wider society it has an internal challenge of practicing such care so that members of the Christian community need not resort to either Pay Day loan bodies or Credit Unions but find their immediate help in and from the community of faith.

In this I am not in any way suggesting the old maxim: 'charity begins at home' but rather the idea that 'Judgement begins with the house of God' and that bearing witness requires not simply suggesting a more ethical wider society but also embodying in practice a more ethical community. The salt of the earth also needs to be a light ona  stand, a city on the hill. 

 

 

Is there such a things as Christian community?

In material I read and in conversations I have I hear people express a desire for 'Christian community'. Such a desire is sometimes linked to theological themes e.g. the doctrine of the Trinity (as a communion of Love) or Christian anthropology (where we were created to live in relationship) or to biblical passages such as Acts 2 42ff. and language the notion of 'koinonia' (fellowship).

This desire is often a desire for 'authentic' Christian community over and against their present or past experience of Church and concern to embody more fully a theological and biblical expression.

It is interesting that in such conversations 'Christian community' as desired is frequently not described in the language of 'church' but rather as 'Christian community' as though this is something other than or different from church.

Now to be sure I accept absolutely that not every form or expression of church embodies Christian community. I am actually prepared to say that some particular expressions of  church can be principalities of evil rather than an expression of the body of Christ.

The above said, I am not sure that it is possible to seperate theologically and biblically the notion of Christian comuunity derived from the Scriptures from the idea or the concept of 'church' as the 'christian community' that the Scriptures bear witness to as the body of Christ as the 'koinonia' as the new humanity that Jesus Christ came to create.

As a consequence of this when people write or talk about Christian community I respond by asking - okay but are you meaning by this what the bible calls 'church'.

The reason I ask the question is because if the answer is 'no' I want to know more clearly what they mean by calling it a Christian community because I am not sure that the New Testament anticipates a generic idea of Christian community apart from the notion of Church. On the other hand if the answer is 'yes'it poses for me questions about where baptism and the Lord's Supper fits into the idea because they seem somehow pretty central to this idea of the thing called 'church' which is th type of Christian community that the Scriptures seem to bear witness to.

Here I am not arguing for a traditional understanding of 'church' but more am asking that when we talk about Christian community we bring a degree more rigour to our talk and thinking that then allows us more thoroughly to wrestlr through what it is that we are desiring and aspiring in the light of the Scriptural witness. In turn such I hink will offer a gretaer critique of that which goes under the name of church and does not display that which we call community rather than allowing Christian community to become the thing we do elsewhere and 'church' the thing we put up with.

Process Matters

Free Church (ana) baptsit Preamble

(with a nod to John Howard Yoder and Body Politics)

The Christian Church is part of society and nation in so far as it is located within that wider concept we call nation and state. Its distinct nature brings a particular 'social expression' into that society. Distinct the Christian Church has to constantly discern how it will relate to that wider society not least in those aspects that impinge upon its and its members lives. The choices open to include if not least - seeking to transform the structures of that society in keeping with Kingdom of God; seeking to humanise the brokeness of that society through care; withdrawing from engagement with that society.

It can be argued that the nature of such Church engagement as it occurs should be determined by its own inner practices in so far as they themselves bear witness to the Kingdom of God. I say in so far as they bear witness to the Kingdom of God because the practices of the Church have not historically always been on the side of Jesus as borne witness to in the Scriptures. So for example Churches that have practiced hierarchical and oppressive structures can hardly be seen as standing in the tradition and practice of the head of the Church Jesus.

Accepting at least the aspiration in its practices to reflect the way of Jesus a starting point for Church engagement with the wider society can be its own practices. To put that dfifferently, in so far as the Churches own practices in relation to the ordering of its human life and life among humans represent the Kingdom of God engagement can take the form of asking what these would like practiced iin wider society.

Of course there is a problem in the above suggestion and that is that the Church and the 'World' are not the same thing. One seeks to live consciously under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the other does not. Churches not least in the 'free church' tradition do and should recognise this distinction. This notwithstanding this does not rule out 'engagement' as variously described above for a number of reasons:

• Jesus is Lord over all things not just the Church
• The Kingdom life as is expressed in the practices of the Church is the coming reality
• While the World is not the Church there can be places where the practices of the Church at least in a 'thinner' version can be applicable to wider society.

The last point involves making an important distinction between 'thick' practices which are appropriated in all their fulness through faith and 'thin' practices which are ideas that can be applied beyond the Church although not in their full dimensions. e.g. the Church may practice through faith 'forgiveness' and as such encourage in wider society approaches of conflict resolution although without the faith dimension and committment to sustain it.

Process Matters 

 In a (ana)baptist perspective (hereafter baptist) the process of the community making decisions through conversation and consensus is held as a significant Christian practice. The process is as important as the decision in so far as it is a process that relates to understandings of power and relationship under Christ. Such a process includes a recognistion of the importance of every voice including the voice of the most marginal and perhaps even the outsider (1 Cor. 14). To follow this process is to engage in a Christian practice.

Reflecting this thick practice of the discerning Christian community to the situation of the debate on Scottish Independence has a number of implications:

1. The process of discussion and decision matters and should be carried out in an honest and open way including among people of different positions.

2. The goal should not be be to win but to get at the truth.

3. The views of those with whom we differe should be encouraged to be spoken.

4. The views of outsiders to the community should be heard.

Following on from this in respect to the process the Christian Church:

Sould call for such a discussioon and debate to be the nature of what happens in the coming year

Fascilitate community conversations around the issue for members of congregations and for the wider community

Fascilitate and participate in conversations which invite and appreciate the perspectives of other people outside of Scotland including most specifically people from England. On this latter one Scottish congregations could go on a visist to English congregations to visit and talk and engage in cultural exchange and shared worship.

In all of these ways the Christian Church could take its own thick practices of decision making, apply them as thin practice and through them bear witness to their faith.

Wallis, Gill, Caputo I thank you

I have read a few books in my life - enjoyed many etc. Yet I can name a few that I think had and continue to have an influence on me as a person shaping, defining, and redifining my theology.

One of the first was a book by Jim Wallis called The Call to Conversion the 1970 edition I think (thus not one in picture). I bought it late 70's as a young keen evangelical and thought it was about leading people to Jesus. Instead it was about having being converted to Jesus we needed to be converted to issues of social justice, the poor, non-violence. Not sure how much I got on the first reading but it resonated with my soul and entered my spiritual blood stream in a way that I am still trying to work out. The themes that Wallis raised here still resonate and inspire me and help explain why over the years it has been listening to folks like Wallis, Campolo, John Smith, Ched Myers that have helped me keep the faith when their message has not been the dominant Christian voice I have been exposed to.

 

 

A second book for which I don't have a picture was The Fringes of Freedom by Atholl Gill. Gill was an Australian Baptist and New Testament scholar. The book was published I think in 1990 and was sent to me from Australia by my friends Jeanette Matthews and David Hunter. It was a book about following Jesus, community, care for the marginalised. It involved a series of chapters and bible studies etc. It was from this book that I got the idea of 'Committed at the Core and Open at the Edges' as the ethos for Church life as was subsequently adopted at Kirkintilloch Baptist Church. Indeed if I ever get to write a book on the Church I would love to give it that title. Crucial for me is that the Jesus who defines (redefines?) holiness and sinlessness etc. could both issue to Matthew a call to leave everything and also then sit with outcasts and sinners as friends. Radical discipleship and welcoming hospitality were both features of God defined holiness. Indeed it could be argued that open hospitality is an expression and outworking of that which we call holiness as defined by Jesus. I recently read from this book in class on the theme that we find our identity in relationship with other people and was reminded what a good book it was.

A third book read much more recently and which I am presently reading again is Caputo's book: What Would Jesus Deconstruct.  Oh I love it. It is such fun as it engages the classic In His Steps with postmodern ddeconstruction centred on the person of Jesus Christ. Caputo so gets in this text the deconstructive inner power of Jesus that has the potential ever to move the Church towards the coming Kingdom the latter being something present but not fixed and always coming and therefore free from our absolutisng of it. This book merges with my own anabaptist leanings in a postmoderm mix with its emphasis on Jesus Christ as the centre of our faith and as the only credible inner source for Church renewal in the light of current missional challenges. James K. A. Smith writes in the foreword: 'Here is a book in the tradition of John the Baptist, out to make was for a Messiah who, when he shows up, will ruin all our parties'.

What all these books clearly have in common is a focus on Jesus as the centre of our faith and the example of discipleship thus leading us constantly beyond the safety our of our present into a future found in the pursuit of social justice and concern for the poor as we bear witness to the message of Jesus.

An Elemental Response to an Elemental Eucharist

At Greenbelt this weekend with Stephen. Having a good time - though muddy. This morning was communion service. This is high point of the festival from the perspective of organisers indicated by the fact that they close down all other activities to encourage people to go.

It is a big event held at the main stage. I have not always enjoyed it in past. Large numbers require organisation and skill at creating 'communion' with one another in large crowd. The use of name 'eucharist' indicates a particular idea. Not in itself an issue but one indicator of the implicit Anglicanism of the festival despite the participation in various ways by others from other traditions.

This year the theme was 'An Elemental Eucharist' making connections with 'fire', 'wind' 'water', 'earth'. Suggestion in advertisng programme is that it would be different from what happens in churches and there would be no sermon, and people would be moving around.

I did not go - though observed from a distance. Danger of advertisng that something is different or creative is that you invite critique on that - the creativity and the performance. Also puts pressure on the organisers like those on the guy who had to arrange the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games have to deliver!

Obervations: there was an attempt to include too many things and other symbols in an act that has its own central symbols that push us to the core Jesus  with the potential of past, present, future, communal re-membering.

Furthermore while advertised as 'multi-voiced' this was yet a fundamentally controlled 'liturgy' by a number of voices. This is like thinking that there is great participation in a church because you have a worship leader who does stuff along with the 'minister' where in fact what you now have is one or two controlling voices with the views and opinions and genuine responses of the people struggling to break through.

I also don't get the - we are having no sermon thing as an idea of radicalism when and where the controlling liturgists fundamentally are doing what a sermon at communion can - help people find a common way in to this event rather than simply an individual participation.  

I would like these big communions to pull back - trust the actual 'elemental event' which is not found in the creativity of the performance or the surrounding liturgy but in human people gathering around breaking bread and poured out wine trying to make sense of what it now means for them to be responding ever anew to the Jesus past present and future who is revealling his self now in this group of people.

I was not there, how do I know what it was really like, how can I judge as an observor rather than participant. I am a Scot, not an Anglican  and might not get some of this. I am guilty as charged. Guilty - but exercisng my freedom not to have to agree to all that goes on and hopeful that for all who participated it worked for them.

Starting theological reflection on Scottish Independence

Theology is:

the discovery, understanding or interpretation, and transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is. (McClendon)

The starting point for Baptist theological reflection on Scottish Independence is not Scottish Independence, nationalism, democracy, economics etc. but the faith and practice of the people of God as a convictional community.

This is the recognition that the Church should reflect the ways of the Kingdom of God as that which lives explicitly under the rule of Christ and that the world is not the Church.

This is not a two kingdom theology where Christians are allowed to act one way in the Church and another in the World because they belong to different spheres e.g. in the Church we are peaceful but in the world we use violence because well 'that is the way of the world'.

Rather it is a theology that starts with the convictional community of the Church its practices and teaching as being that which determines Christian behaviour. From this position Christians consider how they can bear witness to the world in the world as to the life of the kingdom as lived out in their own practices. In biblical language Christians seek to be salt and light through their corporate and scattered lives.

Some cautions:

To be effective witnesses the Church has to be living authentically under the Lordship of Jesus Christ - this is frequently quite simply not the case. Without this the rest falls.

The Church should not seek to 'force' on non believing people its own views which are derived from their faith in Jesus Christ - the world is not the Church. In a democracy Christians will participate in democratic processes but even here will have caution to enforce on minorities religous convictions. It is ironic that in the Church we can talk about being saved by 'grace through faith' in Christ but then want to use the secular law to enforce on other people our behaviours!!! This, however, should not prevent Christian sfrom being actively involved against situations of discrimination, violence, poverty etc. where people are being crushed: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King etc. This is quite different from arguing for self interest. The active evangelical left and evangelical right are not operating out of the same position.

In bearing witness the convictional community which is the Church will have to use 'thin descriptions' to share its 'thick convictions' for example in bearing witness to non-violence it will work with all those who are working for violence reduction evenalthough this may not come from the same basis or go to the same extent that they as Christians would and do in their own lives. To illustrate John Howard Yoder would advocate Just War Theory as preferable to indiscriminate violonce evenalthough he himself was a committed pacifist.

The starting point for theological reflection on Scottish Indepenence, therefore, is the life and teaching of the Church.

 

 

 

 

Starting theological reflection on Scottish Independence

Theology is:

the discovery, understanding or interpretation, and transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is. (McClendon)

The starting point for Baptist theological reflection on Scottish Independence is not Scottish Independence, nationalism, democracy, economics etc. but the faith and practice of the people of God as a convictional community.

This is the recognition that the Church should reflect the ways of the Kingdom of God as that which lives explicitly under the rule of Christ and that the world is not the Church.

This is not a two kingdom theology where Christians are allowed to act one way in the Church and another in the World because they belong to different spheres e.g. in the Church we are peaceful but in the world we use violence because well 'that is the way of the world'.

Rather it is a theology that starts with the convictional community of the Church its practices and teaching as being that which determines Christian behaviour. From this position Christians consider how they can bear witness to the world in the world as to the life of the kingdom as lived out in their own practices. In biblical language Christians seek to be salt and light through their corporate and scattered lives.

Some cautions:

To be effective witnesses the Church has to be living authentically under the Lordship of Jesus Christ - this is frequently quite simply not the case. Without this the rest falls.

The Church should not seek to 'force' on non believing people its own views which are derived from their faith in Jesus Christ - the world is not the Church. In a democracy Christians will participate in democratic processes but even here will have caution to enforce on minorities religous convictions. It is ironic that in the Church we can talk about being saved by 'grace through faith' in Christ but then want to use the secular law to enforce on other people our behaviours!!! This, however, should not prevent Christian sfrom being actively involved against situations of discrimination, violence, poverty etc. where people are being crushed: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King etc. This is quite different from arguing for self interest. The active evangelical left and evangelical right are not operating out of the same position.

In bearing witness the convictional community which is the Church will have to use 'thin descriptions' to share its 'thick convictions' for example in bearing witness to non-violence it will work with all those who are working for violence reduction evenalthough this may not come from the same basis or go to the same extent that they as Christians would and do in their own lives. To illustrate John Howard Yoder would advocate Just War Theory as preferable to indiscriminate violonce evenalthough he himself was a committed pacifist.

The starting point for theological reflection on Scottish Indepenence, therefore, is the life and teaching of the Church.

 

 

 

 

and its teaching and looks at how and in what ways this can 'season' and 'shine light' to use biblical imagery in the world.

Starting theological reflection on Scottish Independence

Theology is:

the discovery, understanding or interpretation, and transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is. (McClendon)

The starting point for Baptist theological reflection on Scottish Independence is not Scottish Independence, nationalism, democracy, economics etc. but the faith and practice of the people of God as a convictional community.

This is the recognition that the Church should reflect the ways of the Kingdom of God as that which lives explicitly under the rule of Christ and that the world is not the Church.

This is not a two kingdom theology where Christians are allowed to act one way in the Church and another in the World because they belong to different spheres e.g. in the Church we are peaceful but in the world we use violence because well 'that is the way of the world'.

Rather it is a theology that starts with the convictional community of the Church its practices and teaching as being that which determines Christian behaviour. From this position Christians consider how they can bear witness to the world in the world as to the life of the kingdom as lived out in their own practices. In biblical language Christians seek to be salt and light through their corporate and scattered lives.

Some cautions:

To be effective witnesses the Church has to be living authentically under the Lordship of Jesus Christ - this is frequently quite simply not the case. Without this the rest falls.

The Church should not seek to 'force' on non believing people its own views which are derived from their faith in Jesus Christ - the world is not the Church. In a democracy Christians will participate in democratic processes but even here will have caution to enforce on minorities religous convictions. It is ironic that in the Church we can talk about being saved by 'grace through faith' in Christ but then want to use the secular law to enforce on other people our behaviours!!! This, however, should not prevent Christian sfrom being actively involved against situations of discrimination, violence, poverty etc. where people are being crushed: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King etc. This is quite different from arguing for self interest. The active evangelical left and evangelical right are not operating out of the same position.

In bearing witness the convictional community which is the Church will have to use 'thin descriptions' to share its 'thick convictions' for example in bearing witness to non-violence it will work with all those who are working for violence reduction evenalthough this may not come from the same basis or go to the same extent that they as Christians would and do in their own lives. To illustrate John Howard Yoder would advocate Just War Theory as preferable to indiscriminate violonce evenalthough he himself was a committed pacifist.

The starting point for theological reflection on Scottish Indepenence, therefore, is the life and teaching of the Church.

 

 

 

 

and its teaching and looks at how and in what ways this can 'season' and 'shine light' to use biblical imagery in the world.