Some links

[tree_and_leaf]

Rowan Williams on the challenge of presenting religion in a world interested in 'spirituality' (and no, this has no connection to Doctor Who, before anyone asks): if we who adhere to revealed faith don't want to be simply at the mercy of this culture, to be absorbed into its own uncritical stories about the autonomous self and its choices, then we need to examine the degree to which our practice looks like a new world. It's a Rowan Williams article, so it's fairly dense, but he has some interesting points about the tendency of such fashionable concepts as 'spiritual capital' to end up confirming existing behaviour and/or social patterns.

On the subject of faith being absorbed by the culture surrounding it, Indian bishops attack the prosperity gospel and the treatment of the Church as a product to be marketed (as well as good old fashioned simony).

Finally, the RC Bishop of Brentwood has been talking about migrant workers, and why Britain has a responsibility to them.

Comments

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

Your tags are a bit funky and don't display for me :(

[tree_and_leaf]

That's very odd. I can see them!

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

... and the issue seems to have resolved itself. Stupid firefox.

A slightly more sensible response to your post is here (http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GodGrandchild.HTM); a fun essay about how religions are corroded away by their surroundings.

[tree_and_leaf]

Thanks, that was an interesting read!

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I am glad you liked it; he's a favourite of mine.

I think that one could chart the history of this by looking at the foundations of religious orders within the Church; new ones get founded to correct the sloth that has crept into the old ones, and for a while they're more rigorous, but then they become slothful too, so another new order is founded ... and so it goes on.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yeah, that's a very common paradigm. Though it's not entirely straightforward - you also get internal reforms: one of the classic examples being the Dominicans in the 14th/ 15th century. And, of course, sometimes one wonders if the reformers were always right, and whether they trampled over perfectly valid forms of the religious life, just because it didn't fit their idea of what the founder intended.

[ms-wanderlust.livejournal.com]

Prosperity gospel was a problem in Nepal sometimes. And also, because it is a relatively young church (not much more than 50 years old) it combined the enthusiasm and passion of the early church we read of in Acts and a predisposition to split given the slightest provocation. An argument between two leaders? Start another church!

[tree_and_leaf]

The latter characteristic sounds a bit like the Church of Scotland, at least historically....

[ms-wanderlust.livejournal.com]

PS I will read the Rowan Williams article when I have slightly more brain spare....

[tree_and_leaf]

Very sensible - I'm going to go back to it later, as I definitely missed things on the first read-through.