Have You Ever Wondered?

Well here’s a new one for me! I’ve been involved, alongside Andy Bannister, in putting a book together which will be launched in early April — and is now available to pre-order. Have You Ever Wondered? Finding the Everyday Clues to Meaning, Purpose and Spirituality is designed to gently start spiritual conversations with friends, family, and colleagues. I’ve loved working with Andy, 10 Publishing and eight other authors to pull this together!

Beauty. Justice. Identity. Love. Stories. Nature. Hope. These things intrigue us, move us and prompt us to ask big questions. Could there be clues in our deepest desires that point to life’s meaning?

Have You Ever Wondered? invites you on an immersive tour through the issues that matter. This book is for anyone who has looked at a landscape and contemplated why we are drawn to beauty; or wondered why we are so insatiably curious about our universe, or even for those who have simply looked up at a million stars in the vast night’s sky and just wondered.

Have You Ever Wondered? will fascinate anyone who is interested in questions of life, but is searching for answers. It is will appeal especially to anyone who is interested in spiritual questions but perhaps has never considered or thought about Jesus and the Christian faith. Starting from where they’re at and showing how the things they care deeply point are clues pointing to a bigger story, Have You Ever Wondered? is an unusual, perhaps unique book.

How can you get a copy?

Pre-order it from 10ofThose — you can buy a single copy, or get massive discounts for buying multiple copies. Why not give it to all your friends; or if you’re a church leader, give it out at events or to visitors?

Sign up to support the work of Solas for just £3 / month. We’ll then send you a free copy as a thank you when it launched.

Buy it from your favourite (ideally independent!) bookstore

Book Notes: The Best of A.A. Gill

The back cover of this anthology of the late journalist's columns reads that it is: "by turns controversial, uplifting, unflinching, sad, funny and furious". It is also ranges through being deeply sad, beautifully observed, and written; vulgar, offensive, nasty and brilliant. That's quite a stack of adjectives for one writer!

The book begins with a series of articles from Gill's celebrated food column. There are some terrific bits in here, such as his wonderfully evocative description of life in a busy high-end London restaurant kitchen; his hilarious diatribe against vegetarianism, and his written skewering of certain over-priced, over estimated and under-performing restaurants. This section of the book is rather good fun.

The best section of the book by a country mile is his travel writing which forms its second section. Gill's descriptions, especially of Africa are so moving, vivid and brilliantly observed (both in terms of what he sees, and his own responses to what he sees). His poise, sight and ability to respond to Africa in the most brilliantly chosen words - is at times breathtaking. Quite remarkable. It is in fact the section of the book I will return to again.

The TV section which follows, sees Gill appreciating the good and excoriating the dreadful in popular culture (just as a clue, Alan Bennett = good. Peppa Pig = bad). While the final section entitles "Life" is an odd collection of unlined pieces on things as diverse as Fatherhood, Death, Dyslexia, Pornography, Glastonbury and ageing. On Fatherhood, Gill is quite brilliant, on Glastonbury utterly depressing and on pornography so crude that I honestly couldn't read it - it was actually really unpleasant. 

I picked this book up almost by accident, in search of well-crafted, powerful (even beautiful) prose. Despite the inclusion of a couple of pretty grim articles, the book as a whole didn't disappoint. The writing about Africa in particular was so vivid and compelling, that the reader call almost smell the place. These travel pieces were worth the price of the book alone.

Book Notes: Molotov's Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky

The Russian writer Danil Granin used the word 'tosca' to describe the villages outside Novgorod, writes Rachel Polonsky. Russian-English dictionaries, suggest that there is no direct English equivalent for this word but Polonsky goes on to say, tosca a word which "besides melancholy, contains shades of yearning, nostalgia, even anguish", (p158).

Molotov's Magic Lantern is a book which is overflowing with tosca, positively brimming with it in fact. It's a book without a plot, and without any central characters, and almost no dialogue! It's really a stunningly written travel book, in which the author immerses herself in the, cultural, political, economic and literary history of each place she visits. The way that she does this is so compelling, absorbing and Russian, that the reader is made to feel that they have been touched by these places too.

Polonsky's travels begin in Moscow, where she was living. The flat she rented in the 1990s was however no ordinary dwelling; but a former Nomenklatura residence, reserved for the upper echelons of the Soviet hierarchy, throughout the seven decades of communist rule. The list of people who lived at 'number 3', reads like a roll-call of the cream of the Old-Bolsheviks of Lenin's revolutionary party, like Trostky and Vishinsky; through to latter characters such as the deposed Krushchev. Most significant for the book however is the fact that Vyachaslev Molotov, and his wife Polina, lived in the flat above Polonsky's; from his reign as Stalin's Foreign Minister, until his death in 1986. What's more, Molotov's flat was largely unchanged from the days when he negotiated the non-aggression pact with Hitler, signed the death-lists in the great purges, or flew off to Yalta with Stalin. Most fascinating of all, his library full of his heavily-annotated books was present too; and which Polosnky delved deeply into. The purges, gulags, The Lubyanka and the death squads of the NKVD reached deeply into "number three".

In succeeding chapters, Polonsky travels around the part of Moscow in which she lives, then down to the Sea of Azov, through the strange history of the traditional Russian banya, up to Murmansk and Barentsburg, and out through Tunka into Siberia. In each of these places she digs deeply into the lives of the people who have lived there, and into the political and literary figures who forged history and responded to it. One reviewer called it a 'delicious celebration of Russia.... from Pushkin to Putin." My knowledge of literature is very poor compared to my understanding of Russian history and politics; which I studied at university. So while most of the historical-political references made sense to me; some of the literary illusions were harder to follow. Nevertheless, when describing the physical, political, cultural and ideological landscapes in which the writers she follows operated, Polonsky evokes such profound moods that even the more obscure references are swept up into the whole. Some scenes, such as her exploration of the abandoned Stalinist scientific research centre where the ideologically Stalinist,  but Scientific charlatan Trofim Lysenko operated, are vivid:

Here, where biology once grew freely as a natural science, Stalin's favourites degraded into an ideological farce. Not all the Lutsino dachniki were natural scientists, some were in the social sciences. On the way back from the Biostation, I took the loop in the road that leads past dacha No.7, whose grounds are grander than most in the colony. Said to have a parquet floor, the dacha was given to Andrei Vyshinsky to mark his years of scholarly service to the Soviet state.... [but this was only] his reserve dacha, and visits of the chief prosecutor were rare. I had found Vyshinsky in Moscow, amongst Molotov's books and here he was again, at his property in the country. (p125)

Vyshinsky was the legal mind behind the great purges, show trials and horrors of Stalin's 30s. He was the person, who as head of the USSR's legal system declared that legal representation for the accused was bourgeois and corrupt. 

The historical references never seem to stray far from the gulags, and the purges, of course. When they do, the toska inevitably returns with a throwaway comment such as, "this is before he was arrested in 1937, tortured by the NKVK and shot in 1939", and could refer to a peasant, a politician, a writer, actor, scientist, doctor or soldier. When Polonsky follows the route of the exiles from Moscow/Leningrad out into Siberia, the sorrow of Russian history from the Okhrana to the Cheka, the NKVD, GUGB etc. is powerful.

I went to Russia during Gorbachev's era - and the country left a permanent impression on me. Although by then the communist system was ailing; the party itself had lost the will to impose itself upon the largely reluctant populace any longer; it was possible to still 'smell' the past - and imagine the state terrorising its own. The body of Lenin was still on display in Red Square, though Stalin's had been removed. Driving past the Lubyanka, was still enough to cause the tour party to shudder and imagine Beria and his ilk arriving to commit their crimes against humanity. This book is so evocative and stirring, that it is almost like a visit to Russia, in the mind; from the reading chair. For anyone who has an interest in all things Russian this is a tremendous read.

Book Notes: 50 Shades of Hillwalking by Ralph Storer

Despite the rather dubious title, this is a great little book. Ralph Storer has written a lot of mountain related books, some of which are his excellent route guides such as "100 Best Routes on Scottish Mountains", others memoirs and reflections on days and adventures in the hills such as "The Joy of Hillwalking." This book is one of the latter type, a series of stories, reflections and recollections from a lifetime spent exploring mountains all around the world.

As the title suggests there are fifty little chapters to this entertaining little volume. Some  focus on new places, and strange adventures (such as trekking the Grand Canyon), or exploring the Tatra Mountains. Other chapters are more thematic, looking at things such as peak 'bagging' or the creation of iron-runged walkways through the hills, which open extreme scenery to ordinary walkers. Still further chapters focus on friends and companions with whom Storer has shared days and nights in the mountains, or potholes of the world. Two of these are memorials to climbing partners who have perished in the hills, one in middle-age; the other a girl with whom he was very close at university.

Like me, Storer is an Englishman who has lived all his adult life in Scotland, a country which he loves and has learned to call home. My mountain expeditions and experience is tiny compared to Storer's epic explorations of the Rockies, the Alps and Reunion, however. I can only marvel at some of his exploits and wonder how he managed to have so much time and money to spend his life travelling, climbing and writing.

It's a delightful little book, full of real appreciation for the hills; and quite a few unorthodox views about some of the current debates about access and preservation too. I have to say that I'm rather grumpy reading it though, and that's not the book's fault. I sprained my ankle badly just over a month ago and currently can't walk far or cycle at all. I read this book whilst marooned at home on what should have been a weekend away in the far North of Scotland in the hills.

Book Notes: White Mughals by William Dalrymple

In "White Mughals", William Dalrymple once more delves into the history of India, his adopted home, and place he clearly loves deeply. He has spent decades exploring the cultural, religious, economic, political and military history of that vast and infinitely complex country. I say "once more", in that I have previously written here about the way that Dalrymple's books have been a gateway for me into the unknown world of Indian history, in books such as The Last Mughal. However White Mughals was written before most of the Dalrymple books I have reviewed on this blog.

Dalrymple sets out in this book to celebrate a lost world of pluralism and tolerance, in which the people of India, and the incoming waves of British settlers, intermingled, intermarried and moved freely between cultures, religions, languages, dress, customs and so forth. This book is set in the late 18th Century, when attitudes were yet to harden into the sort of religious and cultural fundamentalisms which later divided India. India itself in this period was not a united country, but a series of 'kingdoms', which jostled for power. Alongside this, were foreign armies, such as the French vying for colonial influence, along with "the Company". The Company in question, of course, was The East India Company, one of the strangest organisations ever to pass through the pages of history. While formally a private company, it had tradesmen, diplomats, governors, and standing armies through which it negotiated with governments and acted more like a state than a business. From Calcutta to Hyderabad, the cities were ruled by two authorities, the King and the "resident", the Company chief, in a governmental palace. 

The central story in this enormous book is of the romance between the company resident in Hyderabad, Major James Kilpatrick and Khair un-Nissa, a teenage beauty, reputedly a direct descendant of Mohammad. Dalrymple goes to inordinate length to set the political and cultural scene before he gets to this main storyline. At times, in the opening chapters, the detail becomes overwhelming, with little structure to hang it on. I pressed on with reading it on the strength of his other books, and was glad I did, because it gets better as it progresses.

The Kilpatrick-affair was a major scandal at the time, because while many British people in India lived their whole lives there, and took on facets of culture; Kilpatrick seemed to reject many aspects of his heritage and thoroughly embrace Indian life. He was accused of seducing, of even raping the girl; charges of which he was cleared; the truth is that he so loved her that he actually risked his entire career in order to marry her; even formally converting to Islam in order for the wedding to go ahead. 

While the Kilpatrick family are the central spine running through the book, across several generations; the narrative exposes and explores an amazing array of facets of Indian and British life in this period such as; relations between the sexes, religious views, festivals and practices, trade, travel and transport, politics and colonialism, health, medicine, agriculture, architecture and language. Of course, as it comes from the meticulous research and wonderful writing of William Dalrymple, all this serves as a remarkable window into another world.

The story of the children of Kilpatrick and Khair un-Nissa is traced through a remarkable archive trail of letters and documents in England where they grew up and lived, married and flourished. This intergenerational story, full of heartbreaks and tragedies, is a remarkable one worth telling. The book though ends with a lament for the lost age of tolerance in which English settlers would learn the languages, smoke the hookah's, ride elephants and keep harems of local women (!). By 1860, says Dalrymple, harder forms of trade, colonial aggression, and closed cultures would drive wedges between cultures, races, religions and people which would set a trajectory which would culminate in the violence of the post-Colonial partition of India.

Of all Dalrymple's book, I think this one might be the one I have enjoyed least. It's still a very, very good book from which I have learnt huge amounts. However, it isn't as gripping as The Return of The King or The Last Mughal, and does get bogged down in unmanageable detail in the first few chapters. Wading though that is worth it, though, for the hugely insightful wealth of things which follow. I am very much looking forward to Dalrymple's forthcoming history of the East India Company, which he is currently researching.

Book Notes: C.S. Lewis - A Life by Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath, is the latest of a long line of both admirers and critics of Clive Staples Lewis, to have write a biography of the writer, scholar and eccentric. McGrath notes early on that he has some similarities to Lewis, in that he is Irish, came to Oxford to pursue a successful academic career, converted to Christianity in part due to his academic interests, and as a result has written both academic tomes, and popular Christian books. There the similarities end, McGrath is a scientist-theologian and Lewis was scholar of medieval literature; yet their worlds overlap again in the field of Christian apologetics.

McGrath has produced a meticulously well-researched, and fluently written biography, which covers all aspects of Lewis' rather odd life. He positions himself as a friendly critic of Lewis, seeking to avoid some of the first generation of biographies which were from friends and admirers, or hatchet jobs by later critics. Intriguingly, A.N. Wilson describes McGrath's as the best biography yet, which is surprising as Wilson penned a particularly scathing one several years ago (his varying assessments perhaps saying as much about his varying personal convictions at these two times, as about the books!). 

McGrath guides the reader through the early life of Lewis, the loss of his mother, and the series of hated boarding schools which Lewis railed against in his autobiography Surprised by Joy. The advent of the First World War, and Lewis' participation in trench warfare on The Western Front is documented, along his battle injury which led to discharge from the forces. The fact that Lewis barely mentions this either in his autobiography, subsequent writings or correspondence is one of the more surprising things that McGrath relates. He points out that Lewis spends much more time denouncing the evils of failing boarding schools, than the murderous brutality of  machine gun fire which killed most of his pre-war friends. Such compartmentalism is clearly not a normal or healthy response, and quite the opposite of the war poets who processed their grief in ink - something Lewis wouldn't do until he was widowed in 1960.

Lewis's academic career and credentials are mapped out next, along with his eccentric private life in the 1920s. McGrath takes a careful line, in that while he neither avoids the question of Lewis unconventional relationship with Mrs Janie Moore, he doesn't take an excessively prurient interest in the details either. Of more interest to this biographer is Lewis progress in languages, philosophy and literary criticism; the field in which he would eventually become an Oxford tutor and then Cambridge professor.

McGrath writes more sympathetically then some biographers about Lewis' celebrated conversion to Christianity at Oxford. Although McGrath takes great pains to point out that he doesn't accept Lewis' own chronology of these events - he does accept the substance of them; presumably partly because McGrath himself also moved from atheism to theism to Christianity while at Oxford! 

Lewis' writings are all assessed here, from his academic works on literature, through to his first forays into Christian popular works. McGrath weighs and assesses them all from his early Pilgrim's Regress all the way to A Grief Observed, via Mere Christianity, Narnia and the rest. Again McGrath writes not as a 'groupie' or someone out to destroy a reputation, but offers a good guide to Lewis varied output. He finds, for example, Lewis' treatment of the Problem of Pain or the Argument from Desire, far more compelling that his famous Christological Trilemma, which he finds, somewhat hurried, poorly developed and lacking.

The Inklings, and Lewis' other literary companions (most famously Tolkein) are considered, along with the decline of Lewis as an apologist, and his later carer as a writer of fiction. McGrath is very careful to debunk the myth that Lewis abandoned the quest for a rational exploration of questions of faith, after a bruising debate with Elizabeth Anscombe at The Socratic Club in 1948. Rather he points out that the two agreed on much of the substance of natural theology, and that Lewis went on to rework his arguments in the light of the debate. The spiritual, intellectual and cultural environment from which both Narnia and Middle Earth sprung is nicely explored.

Lewis' later life, including his unusual marriage to Joy Davidman, his move to Cambridge, estrangement from Tolkein and his bereavement and crisis are all well examined towards the end of the book - along with his decline and death (on the same day as JFK) on 1963. A Grief Observed, is of course a controversial book in the Lewis canon. McGrath lines it up alongside The Problem of Pain as an obvious contrast. While The Problem of Pain presents a rational case for understanding human suffering in the face of suffering, in McGrath's view is that it seems distant and clinical compared to the raw emotion of A Grief Observed, Lewis' grief-stricken account of losing his wife Joy to cancer in 1960. Yet McGrath offers a careful rebuttal to those who have suggested that grief made Lewis into an agnostic. He shows the way in which Lewis probes every possible avenue including atheism and agnosticism, before finally settling into a Christian faith which was profoundly altered by the experience.

McGrath has produced a highly readable, wonderfully researched biography which is clearly deeply embedded in the primary sources (a principle which Lewis embodied in his study of medieval literature). He leaves the reader in no doubt as to Lewis' gifts, sincerity, joys, struggles and successes as well as his legacy. He also lets the reader see something of the extent to which he was also a rather odd chap, who's life contained great strains, loyalties, and sadnesess too. If like me, you were transfixed by The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Voyage of The Dawn Treader, or Prince Caspian, this is a great place to explore their origins. It's a highly enjoyable, and at times rather moving read.

Book Notes: The Last Wilderness by Neil Ansell

Neil Ansell's "The Last Wilderness" is simply a charming and rather wonderful book. There isn't really any kind of plot, there aren't any characters other than himself, and there aren't any pictures (not that you'd notice that). The premise is simply that Ansell took five trips to North West Scotland during a year, and walked through the landscape, recording his impressions of the landscape, the wildlife, the vegetation, the weather and his responses to all these various stimuli.

It is in reading books like this, or Jim Crumley, or Nan Shepherd that I realise that although I love long days spent in the Scottish Highlands, I hurry too much. My tendency is to plan a route, and demolish the miles to and from a goal, and as a result I often miss the richer experiences that are available. This is the sort of book in which the author describes picking his way slowly along an unpathed lochside, enjoying the shape of the trees, resting quietly, until otters tumble out from the rocks and scamper around him.

Ansell clearly has had a lifelong love of nature, and describes being the odd-one-out at school where team sports were the prevailing obsession. He, it seems, was happier wandering in the woods, watching, listening and learning. Writing in middle-age, that lifetime of absorbing knowledge is gently unpacked to the reader as he shares his insights into geology, conservation, history and the changing landscape. From time-to-time he wanders off into reminiscence, and tells whimsical and improbable stories from a lifetime of exploring landscapes all over the world, before resuming his narrative of trudging little-known backwaters around Loch Morar.

I was a little saddened when he threw in the comment about environmental harm, "It is a rather biblical outlook; to see the world solely as a resource placed there for our own benefit" (p83). While it is often assumed that the 'subdue the earth' text in Genesis and Peter's meat-feast vision suggest that the earth exists solely for human pillaging; this is a serious misreading of the text. In biblical terms the earth exists primarily to display the glory, generosity, and goodness of God to his whole creation of which we are a special part. The story starts with God making it, and ends with God renewing it. So, unless we are to suggest that the way to honour an artist is to destroy his art; this is a sorry slur on the bible's view of our environmental responsibility. (For more on this see arocha.org)

I especially loved the chapters about landscapes that I know, or have been in. As I said, I have marched through them too quickly, but his descriptions of places I know were especially pleasing. I found that I needed to read the book with a map in hand, to trace his routes and see where he had diverted from the busy, 'trade-routes' and just wandered. Like me, he usually walks in the remote parts of Scotland alone and positively enjoys this. Not that he is anti-social, he documents some lovely days spent with girlfriends, fellow-walkers and people he meets in Bothies or in the wilds. Rather, the landscape is the point of his adventures, not merely the context for a social activity. He is certainly a more courageous walker than I am, in terms of isolated wanderings when in ill health, far from help or rescue. While I would walk with a sniffly cold, Ansell was happy enough to wander far from home while awaiting heart-surgery!

It was only when I was about three-quarters of the way through the book that I realised that it was picture-less. That is a tribute to the wonderfully rich, and vivid prose which paints pictures in the mind, rather like the old adage about radio having better pictures than TV.

One of the most moving threads running through the book is Ansell's reflections on his declining hearing. He is aware that certain ranges of sounds are becoming lost to him, as time progresses, and that some of the bird-songs he has loved since childhood are now lost to him - in all but long-held memories. His adjustment to this sadness, as his world becomes progressively quieter is a beautifully observed lament, which partly explains the subtitle of the book: A Journey Into Silence.

This is the kind of book that makes me yearn to be in the hills. Sadly, I sprained my ankle rather badly on Sunday, and won't be there for some time. Thankfully though, even at home on a dreich grey night in May, with a dram in one hand and Ansell's book in the other, I am transported there in my mind.

Book Notes: Paul by Tom Wright

Tom Wright's biography of Paul (also known as Saul of Tarsus, Saint Paul or Paul the Apostle) is a brilliant read. I took it on holiday a few weeks ago, and couldn't put it down. One doesn't need to be a fully-signed up devotee of every nuance of Wright's sometimes controversial interpretations of Paul's theology to get a huge amount from this book either.

Wright has done a brilliant job at piecing together the known facts about Paul into a seamless narrative which takes into account his background, training, work, "zeal", transformation on the Damascus Road, periods of silence, the development of his circle, churches, ideas and mission; the Acts narratives and epistles. If working all that into a coherent story wasn't an achievement in itself, Wright adds a layer of complexity to this, by interacting masterfully between the biblical story and theology, and the historical and cultural background in which it is set.

Paul emerges from Wright's treatment as both a more human figure and more sympathetic figure than many previous attempts to understand him. Luke's account is so action packed, and Paul so 'heroic' that it is only when we engage with his letters and how he was processing his challenges and struggles, that the man himself comes into focus. Wright's view that Paul endured a long and painful Ephesian imprisonment, which wounded, humbled and matured the 'later Paul' is highly probable, and adds great light to some of his subsequent 'flesh-thorned' words. The struggles with the shifting loyalties of some his churches, both to doctrine and to him personally are likewise woven into the story of this vulnerable, driven, brilliant man. Wright's speculations about Paul's inner struggles (is my mission all worth it, will there be anything to show for it?), are as he admits, extrapolations from the evidence; but not far-fetched or ludicrous ones, and all add to the drama, and indeed pathos.

The insights into Paul's theology, of course revolve around Wrights angle on the so-called 'New Perspective'. However, there is much, much more to the ideas woven through  this book than that. Wright might somewhat overdo rehearsing his contentions that justification by faith is a badge by which to identify those loyal to Christ, rather than a method of achieving reconciliation with God; and his debunking of gnostic soul-only visions of other-wordly non-physical salvation; but that repetition aside, it is tremendous. From time-to-time, critics have appeared who have attempted to drive a wedge between the message of the four gospels and Paul's gospel. In some ways, this book might actually form the perfect rebuttal to those critics. Wright has done a stunning job of demonstrating the deeply, profoundly and completely Jewish/Old Testament saturated world-view of Paul, both before and after the Damascus Road transformation. Another theme that Wright expands on rather well are the debates surrounding the transmission of this message about Jesus the Jewish Messiah into the Gentile world of Greeks and Romans. Paul's insistence that Gentile believers did not have to become culturally Jewish in order to have table fellowship with what might today be called 'Messianic-Jews' is profoundly explored, alongside  the Acts narratives of disputes, and the relevant combative sections of the epistles - notably those to  the Galatians and Romans.

What makes this book even more pleasing is the fact that Wright's easy prose enables the reader to easily immerse themselves in the cultural, religious, doctrinal, political world of the 1st Century without feeling as if they are working too hard! I continue to have some reservations about whether we really have completely misread Paul through the eyes of Luther- and if Wright isn't over-compensating rather a lot to any error there; but that doesn't change the fact that this book has brought the world of the New Testament alive in my understanding and imagination like few other reads. It is well indexed by topic, author and scripture too, making a resource to which I can return again and again. 

Book Notes: From Anger to Apathy - The British Experience Since 1975 by Mark Garnett

In this fast-paced, lively and hugely enjoyable book, Mark Garnett (a politics lecturer somewhere or other), takes the reader on a rollicking roller-coaster tour through British politics and culture covering almost five decades in a mere four hundred pages. In his tour de force, Garnet ranges easily between tiny details of stories, elections, characters and incidents on one hand - and generalisations about the country as a whole on the other.

Rather pleasingly, Garnett refuses to be drawn into the standard stereotypes that trap lazier historians; the most obvious is that (a) the 70s were a ghastly time to be alive, with strikes, three-day weeks, rampant inflation, and the Northern Irish troubles; and that (b) Thatcher then came and screwed up our previously wonderful nation. Such poor, but oft-invoked shoddy readings of history fail to satisfy the reader simply on the grounds of lack of internal consistency! Garnett is instead, suitably tough in his analysis of everyone.

His overarching argument (if there really is one), is that Britain has changed since the 70s, and while some of these changes have been good - many are to our detriment. While he paints a bleak enough picture of 70s Britain, he doesn't do it in a 2-dimensional way, but is rather more sympathetic to an age in which there were stronger community, class, union, family and social bonds holding people together.

The layout of the book is interesting too in that the material isn't arranged strictly chronologically, but in themes' with the themes being addressed in a logical order which does represent the times. The anger of the 70s, of the class-conflict and economic and social strife, and the racial riots which filled the headlines, boils over into the early 80s, and on to the miners strikes and poll-tax riots; but we find the anger levels lower at the start than the end of the period. In turn Garnett examines "Fear" (Cold War, Foot and Mouth, Millenium Bug, Aids); Charity Faith and Hope (Live Aid, and Secularisation), Greed (were the 80s really more greedy than other eras?  - not really!), Lust (sex, morality and scandals) and finally Apathy - where he leaves us. Here he is really bleak in his outlook, alleging that we have become stultified consumers, radical post-modern consumers, staring bleakly at moronic 'reality' TV shows, detached from 'reality' itself. He's not that impressed with our democracy, New Labour or the Iraq War either.... but then again, who is, these days?

The book is not just stimulating and sometimes surprising in its various assessments of people movements and ideas; but hugely enjoyable to read too. There were many events detailed here, which I vaguely remember, from childhood - nicely summarised and explained here too. It would be hard to imagine anyone agreeing with everything Garnett has to say, he's simply to much of a maverick to interpret all the events he discusses through a singly party-line; but I defy anyone not to find this book absorbing, gripping and thought-provoking.  

Book Notes: The Crucified Jew: Twenty Centuries of Christian Anti-Semitism by Dan Cohn-Sherbok

As readers of this blog will be aware, over the years, I have read about and reflected often on the Shoah, the Holocaust of the European Jews in the 1940s. You can read some of these posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Until now, however, I have never read anything which really tries to examine the Holocaust as part of the long history of Anti-Semitism in general, and the role of Christianity within that. The Crucified Jew: Twenty Centuries of Christian Anti-Semitism by Dan Cohn-Sherbok is exactly that. As a book reviewer who is part of the Christian faith, my response to such a work is simply this: read it and weep.

The first half of the book is divided by eras, with a mass of information on Anti-Semitism gathered under heading such as "The Greco-Roman World", or "The Church Fathers" or "Medieval Anti-Semitism". As the latter half of the book moves into the modern era, and so presumably sources become more abundant, the material is subdivided by nations, and specific historical incidents, such as Nazism, and post-Nazi Europe. While there are some criticisms to be made around the margins of the book; the main theme and thrust of what Cohn-Sherbok amasses here is as undeniable as it is disturbing. The litany of libels, pogroms, expulsions, murders, demonisations, and all manner of hate-crimes recorded here, is shocking. What is appalling, and disgusting, is how many of these were committed in the name of the Christian religion - at times with the collaboration of church leaders. While many people will be familiar with the accusation that the papacy was morally tarnished by its dealings with the Third Reich; what is perhaps less known is how far this was a part of a trend which reared its ugly head at regular, sorry intervals throughout history. This is truly grim reading.

The quibbles I had with a few aspects of the book, should not be, in any way whatsoever, seen to be detracting from the importance of the central thesis it contains: that Jewish people have been systematically mistreated  in the name of Christianity from Britain to Russia via most most points between them. They are however worth noting in passing, inasmuch as this is a book review, not a historical essay. The first is that there is a dreadful lack of referencing in the book. Even whole inset paragraphs, attributed to an array of writers, are not referenced! In terms of historical writing this is poor, not just in terms of fact-checking, but also further reading.

The element I struggled most with however, was Cohn-Sherbok's repeated assertion that the New Testament documents are intrinsically Anti-Semitic, because of the theological premise that God's salvation is found uniquely in Christ, and that He is the fulfilment of scripture; the implication being that to reject Christ is to reject YWHW. Furthermore, Christ's battles with the religious authorities of his day, referred to as 'The Jews', whose false legalistic righteousness is contrasted poorly with those who repent and follow Christ - is interpreted as a pro-Gentile anti-Jewish text, which prepares the way for prejudice and violence. There are numerous problems with this. The first is that the context of these documents is a largely Jewish early church wrestling with these questions amongst themselves; whilst being persecuted by the Jewish authorities of their day. They were no more anti-Semitic than Jeremiah or Amos were as they warned Israel and Judah about their apostasy back in the Hebrew Bible in centuries "BC". Likewise the righteous who appear in the gospels in contrast to the religious leaders were categorically not gentiles, but the poor from amongst Israel. That such texts were misappropriated by Anti-Semites for thousands of years, is not in any doubt; what I am not convinced by is the suggestion that these texts in any way justify any form of Anti-Semitism. Whilst someone reading these words in the context of The Spanish Inquisition might have read them that way, is possible; but what I can say is that being brought up on these texts in the post-Holocaust era; I never found even the slightest inference of prejudice in them. In fact, in the conservative church in which I grew up, the age-old slander that the Jews were "Christ-killers", was never even allured to. Rather, at communion services, we were constantly told to reflect on our own unspeakable sinfulness; for which Christ offered his own life on the cross.

We must be able to debate and discuss ideas, with rigour; without hating, or despising, or persecuting people. That distinction is under increasing threat in today's world. In a couple of places, Cohn-Sherbok seemed to come close to implying that to critique Jewish theology was essentially racist. The charge that 19thC Higher Criticism, and the application of techniques such as form and redaction criticism, were Anti-Semitic, because they undermined trust in the Hebrew Bible, I found very odd indeed. For a start such methods were applied to the New Testament as well, casting doubts (for instance) into the Pauline authorship of Ephesians; so singling out literary critical methods as prejudice-inducing, is misplaced. Another problem, is that while Cohn-Sherbok amasses a case against Christianity, he muddies the waters by including the writings and actions of many westerners who are far from Christian; Voltaire, Wagner, Marx, Hitler and Hegel for a start. This does not negate, his argument but confuses it a bit. Finally, there is inadequate discussion of the nature of church-state-identity relations in the 'Christendom' era; which explains why Judaism was seen as intolerable. Historians of these era, have shown that religious compliance was a matter of loyalty and identity more than belief and conviction; and that all dissenters (such as the Anabaptists) were brutally suppressed along with the Jews. Now, this does not, justify the evil actions of the perpetrators, any more than it mitigates the suffering of the victims. It does suggest however that the historical processes were more nuanced than Cohn-Sherbok's 'Christians have always hated Jews' thesis allows.

But please note; these quibbles do not detract from the central thrust of the book; that Jewish people have suffered appallingly, across the centuries, and across cultures; suffering many persecutions at the hands of those who claimed to be Christian. The main sections of this book are as disturbing, as they are essential reading.

The conclusion of the book, after an especially harrowing account of the Holocaust (but a weak attempt to implicate Christianity in it); is a really interesting essay. In 'towards reconciliation', Cohn-Sherbok writes about shifts in Christian thought which have reduced tensions between the two-faiths; despite such a long history of misunderstanding, prejudice, and bloodshed between them. Helpfully these include (i) official denunciations of Anti-Semitism from church bodies and Synods, (ii) a theological rediscovery of the Jewishness of Jesus of Nazareth - a very rich area of research and now common currency in the church, and (iii) alternatives to strict 'replacement theology' being proposed, not least by Messianic Jews today and (iv) Christian theological responses to the Shoah, such as Jurgen Moltmann's Crucified God, which while distinctly Christian in nature and Trinitarian in structure, suggests profound ways of engaging with the presence of God in a world marked by unrestrained and demonic evil such as the death camps. Perhaps less helpful, were the suggestions that Christians should dilute their theology into a Jon Hick style plurality, or Liberal Anglican disdain for proclaiming Christ to the whole world. Obviously the threats or bribery which sought external compliance with Christendom, are as unacceptable as they are redundant; but the UN Declaration on Human Rights (Article 18 - Freedom of Religion), was written in response to the terrors of the 30's and 40s, and applies to all. Increasingly, of course, the context of the Christian witness to Jewish people is that of Messianic Jews, who join the debate about whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was the Jewish Messiah, from within the Jewish people - and that looks a lot more like the New Testament anyway.

As I write, the Labour Party in the UK is involved in a bitter internal dispute about Anti-Semitism. The suggestion that the radical left's unquestioning commitment to the Palestinian cause, and the large Muslim vote in the English cities, is fuelling such a problem is made almost daily in the press. Six years ago I went to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. Deeply moved, walking above the stelae above ground, we then went below to see the records where the names of every known Jew who perished at Treblinka, Sobibor, Birkenau, Ravensbruck, Auschwitz and the rest, are kept. Even then, I shuddered at the enormity of it. After reading The Crucified Jew, I suspect that the feeling would be greatly amplified; standing as I do, in a faith which has been so deeply implicated in their suffering over the centuries. Now, I am not personally responsible for the pogroms, any more than the Jews of 13th Century England caused the death of Christ. Nevertheless, we are branches on trees with very deep roots; defined by and both united and divided by our respective histories. The weight that presses down on us is therefore not so much personal guilt, more the sense of responsibility to prevent such things ever happening again to anyone of any creed. It was possibly the greatest of the all the writers to have escaped from the camps, Primo Levi who wrote; "It happened, therefore it could happen again; this is the heart of what we are saying." Indeed it could.

This is disturbing reading. Sometimes though, I think we need to be disturbed.

Book Notes: Fools Rush in Where Monkeys Fear to Tread (Taking Aim at Everyone) by Carl Trueman

Trueman is, I think, a one-off. A serious academic, working currently at Princeton; a British minister in the American Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a historian engaged in the development of ideas, a reformed conservative who engages meaningfully with Roman Catholicism, and a robust defender of his savage critiques of ..... well, everyone really. He might also be the first really funny Calvinist since Spurgeon! He has opinions, very strong opinions, which he seems more than willing to put into print too. I spoke to him once, and found him witty, engaging, and thoroughly good company - and his passionately held opinions, love them or loathe them; are actually the result of serious thought and engagement with the issues.

When I picked up a Trueman book last week which was subtitled "taking aim at everyone", I knew it was going to be a read which would at times involve several laugh-out-loud moments, several sharp intakes of breath and several derisory snorts. I was not disappointed on any of those criteria! In fact, Fools Rush In, like a theological edition of Private Eye, succeeds in both entertaining and informing the reader, while skewering the unwise, the pompous and the hypocritical. Trueman has the disarming ability of not appearing to take himself to seriously either, which makes his stinging critiques of others easier to bear - as he seems to have no problem reflecting on his own sins, follies and foibles and those of his fellow Reformed crowd, as he does on those of other people and groups. In fact, if anything it is people who profess Reformed theology but indulge in worldy, or pragmatic foolishness who are the 'lucky' recipients of the most pointed helpings of Trueman's spicy invective.

Amongst the targets Truman demolishes in this book are self-centred 'Christian' bloggers and their (my! :-)) ) pointless outpourings; worse those who use them for self-promotion, constantly re-tweeting praise about themselves. He berates adults who cannot grow up, handle criticism, and are permanently adolescent, in comparison with his Grandfather, who was a working man aged 13. He throws out the charge that the celebrity culture has infected the church, especially the young trendy Reformed churches who ought to know better. His description of a wishy-washy ecumenical multi-sensory service; packed with high-brow academics with their brains firmly in the 'off' position is as hilarious as it is naughty. The insights he offers into the nature of Christian service, in 'welcome to wherever you are' are really wise and helpful, while his assessment of the notorious Chic tracts is as funny as it is sadly accurate.Catholicism, it's greatness and its folly is analysed; and the (sadly unnamed) Christian writer who used a ghost writer for his book is excoriated. 

One chapter stands out as especially relevant to today's debates - especially those which take place on social media. His essay "Am I bovverred?" analyses the role of 'hurt' and 'pain' in contemporary debates, Although written maybe a decade ago, this piece has become more important over the intervening years. His basic argument (written with his usual verve), is that the categories of 'hurtful' or 'affirming'; are replacing the categories of  'true' and 'false' in public discourse. As such, people hold their opinions as part of themselves; and therefore beyond reasoned debate. They state their views, along with their biography explaining why it matters; but then cry 'hate-speech', if anyone dares to engage critically with their work. This has happened again this week. A well-known author has published a theologically charged memoir, and when theologians have questioned the ideas in book; claimed victim-status as a way of shutting down the debate. Trueman, his critics should note, saw this coming. 

In turns wise, funny, outrageous and principled; Fools Rush In is a cracking good read. 

Book Notes: The House of Elrig by Gavin Maxwell

I have very distinct memories of reading Maxwell's famous "Ring of Bright Water", many years ago while sitting in the Arizona Desert. The intensely dry heat, the crumbly sand between my toes. the desert insects and the bold cacti, formed a strange accompaniment to Maxwell's easy prose, as he spoke of his life with otters, and the sea, and the lush green rain-soaked western isles of Scotland. I remember the book as disarmingly charming, whimsical - and creating in me a strange longing for the familiar shapes of Scotland; and for the sensation of cold rain on my face.

I picked up The House of Elrig, Maxwell's memoir of childhood, simply having enjoyed his other work so much. Although undoubtedly the work of the same writer, there is a vast world of difference between the two volumes. Bright Water is hugely enjoyable, and while it references a unique lifestyle - it does so in places I know, and takes place not that long before I was born. The House of Elrig, on the other hand seems to come from another time and place quite outside my experience, or really my understanding. That's not really the biggest difference though, which is that while Bright Water is delightful; The House of Elrig, I found if anything, slightly disturbing.

My initial impression of the book was that it was a window into a world I knew nothing about. I hadn't realised that Maxwell was of such aristocratic stock, and that he had grown up in a mansion in Galloway. The early stories are all of grouse-moors, tweed-clad shooting parties, servants, ghillies and roaming the estate in the company of a bizarre cast of eccentric titled relatives; some of whom I have stumbled across in history books, as they were members of various cabinets in Westminster governments between the wars. His yearly commute between great houses around the country, was described in detail - and something I found most odd. 

Strangely, Maxwell dwells little on the absence of his Father, who was killed in the opening salvos of the First World War. He tries to explain that this absence was simply his childhood normality, and that he thought little of it - other than seeing the physical memorabilia in the home. Yet - the absence of his father seems to be the unspoken central theme of the book, whether he intended this or not. His oddly intense relationship to his mother, was the first sign of this; followed by the separation from her for boarding school which reads almost like a bereavement. This reads like the start of a  psychcologists case-study.

I found the descriptions of the English public schools of the mid-Twentieth Century very weird indeed. As the product of a weak comprehensive education, I sometimes looked in envy at the perceived advantages of the exclusive education of the privileged elites who lived in our town. Maxwell's reminiscences of anxiety, loneliness, rituals and a veritable cast of misfits or weirdos amongst staff; make me think that Abbotsford Comprehensive, wasn't so bad after all. Maxwell's descriptions of what passed as 'sex education', which mostly amounted to veiled, incomprehensible warnings against masturbation; are beyond dreadful, and maybe as embarrassing to read, as they were for young Maxwell to endure. Maxwell's search for a father-figure amongst older boys, teachers, and uncles, again almost unacknowledged, seems to also be a profound, and unsettling subject in the book. He hints at, but simultaneously denies, that there was a sexual element to these relationships. It's hard to say whether he is inviting the reader to read more that he says into his words or not - what we can certainly say is that some of this (such as secret nighttime meetings with a teacher), would be absolutely in breach of current standards of child protection. His later teenage obsession with his sexual awakening might not be anything unusual, but he writes about it with a curious candour, perhaps telling us more than we might want to know in what sounds like catharsis.

While school was often miserable, Maxwell projected most of his longings on The House of Elrig, which represented belonging, freedom, home and the opportunity to spend time with animals (keeping them, killing them, catalogue-ing the, and drawing them). This love of animals which would so much shape his later life was formed here, in the Galloway Hills. The suspicion that he was more at ease with animals than people is also never that far from the surface of the narrative. School life came to an end after a life-threatening illness almost took him, as a seventeen year old. He was administered the last-rites as Henoch's Purpura gripped his adolescent frame, and internal bleeding sapped his energy. Surprisingly, he survived - despite the misdiagnosis of his birthmarks as ecchymoses by the celebrated Dr, Lord Horder! (Many readers of this blog will have come across Horder from the biography of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the noted Welsh preacher, who was Horder's assistant prior to his Christian ministry).

Lurking in the background throughout this strange tale is the family religion of the Maxwell and Persies. Maxwell makes frequent references to this, but doesn't name the sect in question until the very end of the book. What we learn is that his family, while happy to attend mainstream churches when away from home, were ardent adherents of a Christian group which was tight-knit, and specialised in producing ecstatic experiences, trance-like states, and strange prophetic utterances, in their congregations; they required members to pray from their incomprehensible prayer-books, and frowned upon such things as contraception. While basically orthodox in their core Christian theology, their innovation was an insistence that they were the restored supernatural New Testament Church, and their leaders Apostles. Bear in mind that this was home life, while starchy, formal, rigid stiff-upper-lip Anglicanism was Maxwell's term-time experience. No wonder, he found the whole thing mistifying! Only at the end of the book does he reveal that "our church", was the Irvingites (formally the Catholic Apostolic Church), a very eccentric and now defunct sect, which in some ways pre-figured contemporary Pentecostalism.

Finally, it's rather a sad book. Maxwell appears as a shy, embarrassed, confused, insecure, unwell young man who longed to go back to Elrig and ascend the moors. The glaring absence of his father seems to be the great elephant-in-the-room (or is that the elephant on the page), which would make Maxwell, another victim of the Great War. Although the book ends, with Maxwell and a friend, roaming the Elrig estate, it's hard not to imagine that the road ahead will not be easy for this youngster, after all that the War, the dreadful schools, the strange people, inflicted upon him.

"Inventing the Universe" - A Conversation with Prof Alister A. McGrath

A while ago, I had the pleasure of speaking to Dr Alister A. McGrath, who is Prof. of Science and Religion at Oxford University, about his new book. While some of this was published in Solas Magazine, this is the whole interview,  reproduced here with permission, following the demise of that publication.

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Tell us about your new book, “Inventing the Universe”. What is it about? Why did you write it, and who is it pitched at?

AEM:  I wrote it because I wanted to explain to people the kind of journey I made from being an atheist, who thought that science explained everything – and that was it; to a Christian, who sees science as very important as filling in parts of a picture, but that there is a bigger picture as well. So I am writing this for anyone who is interested in the whole area of science and faith, I think particularly for scientist who are Christians who want to articulate the way they think more clearly, or for other people who just want to know that there are other ways of holding science and faith together – which is why I use the language of “enrichment”, which is effect allow us to see a bigger picture of reality in which both science and faith have very important roles to play.

Something of an intellectual autobiography as well, then?

AEM: Well, it is actually, yes! So its really me saying that over a 40 year period, this is what I have come to think – does this help you!? It’s not saying, “this is right”, it’s saying, “this is what I have found my way towards, and if it helps you, I’ll be delighted!”

I notice that in the book you often refer to the “warfare model”, of Science versus Christianity. Why do you think that has come to dominate – at least in the public discourse, so much, and seize people’s minds, and create such a problem for giving the Christian faith, or Christian apologetics, even a fair hearing?

AEM: I think it’s become a defining narrative or our culture. In part, because it’s been propagated by a media who tend to just repeat what everyone’s said in the past. But more importantly, I think, the New Atheism, has made this conflict narrative as normative, in other words “this is the way it is”. And I think that when you have very influential cultural figures supporting this, its quite difficult to break that stranglehold. And so, one of the things I say, is that we need to tell a different story and show that, a) it makes more sense of things and b), it’s much more exciting and attractive.

How do we help people to hear Christian apologetics when their plausibility structure has already told them that what we are saying is irrelevant?

AEM: Well what I think you need to do is to say, “look, here is a narrative which has been suppressed, here is a way of thinking that people are trying to drown out”. They find it threatening, they find it challenging, and we need to say that they may not like it, but they’ve got to hear it. You owe it to us to give us a hearing. I think that is something we need to say. C.S. Lewis; I don’t know if you know his sermon called “The Weight of Glory”?

Yes!

AEM: Well in it, he says, look, the dominant narrative in our culture is, ‘what you see is what you get’, and he says we have been ‘entranced’ by that, and we need to break that spell! And then he says something interesting, he says, the way of breaking a spell is by casting a better spell! What he means by that is portraying Christianity in an attractive, intelligible, and an imaginatively compelling way, so that people stop and say, ‘we’ve got to think about this’. And we haven’t done that very well.

And the media is encaptured by this vision? And prevents people like you being heard at the public level, I suppose?

AEM: It’s become the dominant media narrative. If you read Charles Taylor’s book, “The Secular Age”, he talks about how this sort of thing happens, and the difficulty is that once a narrative takes root, anyone who contradicts it is seen as being irrational. And Taylor says, that once that mindset develops it’s very, very hard to break it. So we’ve got to see ourselves as a counterculture, a fifth-column, (or something like that), but we are subversives who are challenging the dominant narrative – a) because it’s wrong but b), because it’s pressing a much more meaningful and exciting narrative.

And your book is going towards doing that..

AEM: Well, it’s a small step in that direction, I mean, scholarship disproved this ‘conflict narrative’ a generation ago, but it’s taken ages for it to filter through to the media who keep on repeating this old fashioned out-dated approach.

Is this a book you’ve been wanting to write for a long time? I notice that previously you’ve published books addressing particular New Atheists and their thought, or about CS Lewis as a Christian apologist; but this is drawing back and looking at the bigger picture? Is this something you’ve been working towards for a while?

AEM: It is! (we’re just getting into a cab, so there will be a gap for a minute or so). Yes, basically this is a book I have been meaning to write for ages, and it is cast as a personal journey because that is much more interesting format – and it does raise all the intellectual issues I’ve raised elsewhere, but it does it in a much better form and I introduce a lot of new material that I think people will find really interesting.

I was impressed because I’m not a scientist (my background is in history) but it did make a lot of scientific ideas accessible to a non-scientist reader like me which was one of the things that I found so exciting about it.

AEM: Well, it is written for a general audience, although I think scientists will particularly like it. In fact we’ve just been doing a programme here at Premier Radio in which I’ve been debating with a leading British physicist – who is also president of the British Humanist Association, and actually we had an incredibly civil and interesting conversation because basically my science is right, and that makes it much harder for atheists to write it off. But also because it gets a really good conversation underway.

Interesting you were speaking to a physicist, One of my friends who is a physicist asked me to ask you, “Is it harder to be a biologist who is a believer than a physicist”? Because he knows so many  people in physics and maths who are believers and so few in life sciences/biology..

AEM: And that’s my experience too. I think the answer is ‘yes’, and that’s partly because if you think of someone like Richard Dawkins, Biology has been ‘weaponised’, (if I can use that phrase), whereas Physics has not, if anything Physics is going in the other direction. Physics is very, very, supportive of a generally theistic world-view. Whereas Biology, precisely because, if interpreted in a certain way, seems to be anti-theistic, is being seized upon and in effect being made the weapon of choice by those who want to continue the conflict narrative and also offer an atheist apologetic.

Delving a little more into the book. The idea of ‘multiple maps’ seems to be a key idea in the book, to reconcile the supposed conflict between science and faith. Can you tell us what you mean by multiple maps, what did you have in mind here?

AEM: What I mean is, let me put it like this, assuming there is a big picture, science gives us one bit of that picture – religion gives us another bit. We want to see the full big picture, that means that we need to recognize that science is going to tell us some things, but not others and its really saying, ‘Look you can approach things from only one perspective and say that’s all there is to it’; but that’s simply unacceptable because if you are simply a scientist and you say that’s it. then you leave out massive things like the issue of meaning, the issue of value and so on. And so the idea of ‘multiple maps’ is to ensure that you have a full palate of colours to do justice to the richness of the world, our experience and so on,  and it seems to me that that is a helpful metaphor for people to get into their heads the idea that any approach that says there is only one map and that’s it – is simply going to miss out on a lot of interesting stuff.

Which also would not just be an assault on Atheist Scientists, but also on Christian Fundamentalists, I suppose?

AEM: Absolutely. I think that what they’re doing is in effect locking themselves into a very small area and saying ‘this is it’ and I’m not able to dialogue with anyone beyond that. The method I’m adopting in effect is a wonderful platform for apologetics because it is saying, ‘look, we can talk and a very good conversation is going to be had here’, and in effect Christianity has a marvellous contribution to make, and it cannot be ridiculed, it cannot be ignored, there is something very significant here which needs to be heard.

Was I right in thinking that ‘multiple maps’ are the big idea of the book? A centralising thought?

AEM: I think it is a big idea – I supplement it with other approaches to make sure that there are other approaches that I personally find helpful. But I know from talking to people that the ‘multiple maps’ idea is so accessible that people find it very, very useful and I think in apologetics it has got a lot to offer.

And thought if multiple maps were a big idea in the book, “Scientism” was the big target in the book, Can you tell me (our readers), what do you mean by ‘scientism’, and the overreach of science/

AEM: Sure. Scientism is a non-Scientific viewpoint which says that science answers all meaningful questions and that if science can’t answer questions then they are not meaningful. So – in effect science tells us what the meaning of life is, it tells us what is good and what is bad. And you do find people like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris particularly – I don’t know if you’ve read his book on moral landscape, that’s very much the line that he’s taking. And my point is simple this, that this is an abuse of science! Science is science, you’ve got make sure that you respect it, not convert it into something else, and when science is done properly it has limits, and that is the best way of preserving its identity, its integrity, by forcing it to answer questions which its methods don’t allow it to do. So what I am saying is, I am protesting strongly against those scientists who exaggerate the explanatory capacity of science and I know the scientific community would do the same.

So why is there this persistent element among some quarters of science that wants to over-reach, into scientism. Is it purely a power-play or … what is driving that agenda?

AEM: It’s partly a power-play because some scientists feel threatened by cultural developments which they see as marginalising themselves. But the real answer goes back to that conflict narrative. It’s all about an understanding about intellectual history which sees a trajectory from the dark ages, to a modern, enlightenment period in which reason and science, are the drivers of progress and therefore science is the guarantor of rationality and progress, and anything else such as religion is seen as backward and unhelpful. And that is a world-view, not an empirical observation. That is in effect the imposition of a world-view and science is being ‘weaponised’ to consolidate that world-view.

 ‘Weaponised’ that word again! But are there any other key things from the book, that you’d like to mention, which I haven’t asked you about?

AEM: Well I think there are two things to emphasise. One is that I do not in any way criticise science. I think science is wonderful, I think it is great, but incomplete. We need a full picture, not just a partial picture. That’s very important.  And secondly, I do hope that the book will encourage Christians to talk about these things, to feel more confident about their faith, but also to begin to really open up some of the questions I raise in that book, in public.

And where is your research and writing going to take you next?

AEM: Well, the next big book, written for an identical audience, is going to be on ‘what are we?’, ‘what is human nature?’, and that is a big debate in today’s culture and its going to be looking a scientific insights, cultural insights, philosophical insights, and in effect saying, ‘look there is a big problem in the naïve enlightenment view of humanity, which still dominates Western-culture, and here’s a better way of looking at it.’ And it will be very sympathetic, very friendly towards traditional Christian ideas of ‘The Image of God” and sin and so on, so in effect it will be absolutely rigorous in terms of engaging with where we are, but at the same time it will offer a perspective which often isn’t heard. And that will enter into a debate… I don’t know if you have read John Gray’s book, “Straw Dogs”, things like that. It really is entering into a big discussion underway right now about what is human nature that’s essential to so many political, social, and religious debates.

So is that a book-length treatment of what you probed at in Ch6, of the present book

AEM: Yes – that expanding it to a complete book, and taking off into new directions as well. Same readership, same length book, but the big topic is what’s in ch6 [of Imagining the Universe], but that will be expanded massively.

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Alister McGrath is the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University, and Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford. After initial academic work in the natural sciences, Alister turned to the study of theology and intellectual history, while also engaging in broader cultural debates about the rationality and relevance of the Christian faith. He is the author of many academic and theological works, as well as the bestselling The Dawkins Delusion and his acclaimed C. S. Lewis - A Life.

Book Notes: The Varieties of Religious Repression by Ani Sarkissian

It is sixty-eight years since the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights was signed. 

The lofty aspirations contained in that document have not been fulfilled, no more so, than those of its eighteenth article, which states: "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion." Outright persecutors of believers, such as the North Korean regime, are the obvious perpetrators of such human rights abuses. Less visible is what Ani Sarkissian calls “religious repression”. That is, violation of religious freedom by governments, which while not constituting full persecution, involves ongoing restriction, control and interference with religious people, organisations and activities. Her book, “The Varieties of Religious Repression: Why Governments Repress Religion” is an intelligent, rigorous and highly revealing study of the politics of repression implemented by non-Democratic governments, and is a most welcome addition to our understanding of a neglected field.

Sarkissian’s book uses an innovative typology of regimes which adds sophistication to our understanding of how governments behave. Regimes have traditionally been placed on a scale from fully-democratic, to completely autocratic. Sarkissian notes however, that while there was a tendency for more democratic regimes to repress religion less, “many states with low levels of political-competition… chose not to impose a large number of restrictions on religion, while some…. with relatively higher levels of political competition impose a large variety of restrictive regulations.” (p182). Instead she groups regimes into four categories; those who (i) repress all religion (e.g. China); (ii) those who repress all but one religion (e.g. Russia); (iii) those who repress some religions (e.g. Singapore) and (iv), those who do not repress religion (e.g. Albania). Using this schema, Sarkissian is able to demonstrate that it is not just levels of democratic participation in government which dictate the extent of religious freedom; but it is these in combination with the levels of religious division within the society which provoke governments to repress in the ways they do. 

Non-democratic regimes appear to repress on a basis of their own rational choices in their particular circumstances as follows; “states with very low political-competition that are religiously divided tend to repress all religious groups, while those with higher levels of political competition but less religiously divided societies repress none.” (p183). Then, “States in the middle of the political-competition and religious division scales, repress some religious groups”, while a “subset of states that have higher religious divisions but more competitive political systems target repression at all but one religious group.” (p183). The final conclusion is that some highly  autocratic regimes find it rational to allow genuine freedom of religion. The sixteen national case-studies with which Sarkissian illustrates her thesis are informative, well-crafted and compelling; and form the heart of the book.

The implications of Sarkissian’s work are important. Much western rhetoric and policy seems to assume that democratisation is an automatic route towards the flourishing of a full civil society, apart from the state. If that was true in the Cold War, it certainly does not reflect the complex realities of today’s world. Also, people of all faiths should beware of assuming that they have a monopoly on victimisation too, as state-repression by non-democratic governments affects all. Christians are, I think, provoked to move beyond simply invoking the inevitable enmity of the world to the church, to see that such tensions are mediated through political systems which can be understood and therefore reckoned with more wisely. She also notes that while she has studied non-democratic regimes, her work suggests that a democracy containing major religious divisions, and a single dominant political party, might equally begin to limit religious freedom (p185).

Sarkissian has done a great job in enhancing our understanding of the often fraught relationships between faith-groups and non-democratic regimes. She has done this by adding a vital layer of complexity to the ‘state’ side of the relationship. If the book has a weakness, it is simply that she has not done the same for the ‘religion’ side of the equation. There is a tendency throughout the book to treat ‘religion’ as a single phenomenon. That such a method is overly simplistic, in a world in which ‘religion’ leads some to armed jihad and others to pacifism, is obvious. Sarkissian acknowledges this in her closing remarks in which she both adds an afterword about the current problems in the Islamic world, and suggests that future research might nuance her model perhaps around a classification of religious behaviours. (p187) The reader is left hugely informed about how governments act, but also wondering how differently varying religious systems operate in this arena. Perhaps categorising religious groups according to their understanding of the state-religion relationship, would make a useful next step. Likewise, while this intriguing work of political science explains why regimes repress; it generally avoids the questions of political philosophy, such as what the legitimate limits of freedom are; and when governments are justified in imposing them.

Sarkissian’s “The Varieties of Religious Repression”, is an astute and penetrating analysis of one of the most critical contemporary issues. 

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First published in Solas Magazine. Used with permission.