It’s not just the one word judgements that hurt me. It’s that he’s inconsistent when he makes them. We’ve been together supposedly since 1992 – but it still feels like a very one sided relationship. His modus operandi is to leave me for long times, then when he comes back it’s just for a couple of days. He never says when he’s come. At best he gives me a ‘window’ when he might phone and say “Tomorrow. Get everything ready for me.” And when he calls I am expected to drop everything and be at his beck and call.
When he visits I try to talk things through – but he’s always the one in control. He’s the one who will sometimes just tell me to stop talking to him, even when I’m trying to explain my feelings to him. He calls this a “partnership” – always saying how he wants to do this with me and “Partnership”..i.t doesn’t feel like one
There is no consistency to how he behaves.. When he calls I have no ida what he’ll be like when he turns up. Sometimes he’s frosty and cold and at other times he’s charming and smiley. How he appears has no bearing on what he’ll say when he leaves.
He always judges me. Whatever he says about caring and supporting me, the judgement is always the loudest word. Sometimes it may be that he thinks I’m ‘good.’ I dread the days he calls me ‘inadequate.’
I would love to break it off, but he has all the power. It’s been very clear since ’92 that if I don’t play along he would destroy me – financially, reputationally. I’d be ostracized or even institutionalized.
Dear Marj, does this sound healthy?
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Huw Thomas Thanks for reading. You can subscribe here:
This week a high court judge upheld the ban issued by the Michaela School, in London, on pupils praying on their school yard. The school was sued by a pupil asserting that the school’s rule banning Islamic prayers on the school yard was discriminatory.
Michaela is a phenomenon as is its founder and headteacher, Katharine Birbalsingh. The school’s outcomes are impressive, as is the head. Dubbed the country’s “strictest headteacher” – a title she embraces – Birbalsingh enthuses about that school with a distinct sense of love. In a challenging context she has worked wonders. Ms. Birbalsingh is also committed to her small ‘c’ conservative values and her view that “aggressively promoting integration” means that the school has to be wholly secular. As such, when faced with a cohort of pupils praying during Ramadan in 2023, the school banned the activity, stating this was due to concerns that pupils were being segregated and even intimidated by the practice.
When it comes to the ruling, narrowly and legally, the court have it. What doesn’t seem right is the judgements that surround the court case – those that govern the school’s handling of the matter, namely the form of integration suffused with a lack of understanding that underpins the school’s policy.
Firstly there is the idea that integration comes through the restricting and reducing of religious difference. In actual fact, integration comes not from avoidance of difference but through a wholehearted embrace of it. The learning and celebration that follows is where difference becomes diversity.
Muslim teacher Nadeine Asbali challenged the idea that to get on we must suppress the differences between religions and cultures, and: “the bleak and frankly insulting assumption that, in order for all of us to live harmoniously, we must become robots with no beliefs or ideas of our own, this also poses questions about what kind of school environment could so easily be destroyed by one group of students publicly expressing their religion for a mere few minutes a day?”
The notion that a school can lose all vestiges of religion is misguided, for this could only become a reality if the school were to lose all those within it who are religious. Instead, that rainbow of diversity should be encouraged.
The case has generated that most irksome of chatters that can burble around these matters, namely people who are not from a religious tradition telling those who are from it what they believe and how they are meant to worship and whether prayer times can be managed differently. In rows like this a lot of the rhetoric often involves non Muslims telling Muslims how to be Muslim. For example, the response that what is being banned is not prayer, but just the practices connected, is the sort of hokum that could only really be said by someone who isn’t Muslim, but is ignorant. The idea that you are free to have a belief provided it is just held in your own thoughts and views but not to wear something or do something that publicly evinces may sit easy with a small strand of Western culture but is alien to huge swathes of the religious world.
Ironically Michaela school does have a creed that sounds a bit religious. Birbalsingh makes the case that to achieve excellence “our school must be a place where children of all races and religions buy into something they all share that is bigger than themselves: our country.” Even more ironically, in a school that says it has removed religion, they still sing “Jerusalem” and “God Save the King.”
Secondly, alongside the banning principle there is a real problem with the fact that it has been enforced.
It is worth noting that this started on the school yard, not as a school procedure. What is at stake here is a child who, inspired by Ramadan, had begun praying at break time and was then joined by others. The tipping point in Michaela came, not when pupils started praying but rather when other pupils seemed pressurized into also conforming to the religious practices of their more zealous peers. Understandably, that needed tackling, but is banning the practice the way to do this? Surely all the school has done is ended a situation where some pupils are putting religious pressure on others. In doing so it has failed to work with the zealots on why this is wrong and with the victims on how to respond. I suspect the school may not have removed religious pressure but rather just driven it underground and avoided tackling it. Instead the school has modeled its own form of religious intimidation, using its power to ban the practice. That’s a sorry message to send to young people – that the way to deal with difference is to forbid it.
Schools need policies. However, writing about diversity, Walter Brueggemann, contrasts the ways in which: “our knowledge and perception are either tilted towards “stories” that specify or towards “lists” that summarize and dismiss.”[1] His belief that every neighbour counts leads him to affirm the former, even in the face of the necessary summarizing required by policy formation. He advocates a policy making that is “flooded with stories about individual persons who have names” concluding: “We may generalize only after we have individualized. And after we have individualized with specificity, we can again generalize for the sake of policy.”[2]
Let’s give an individual the last word, namely the pupil, whose response to the ruling was: “Even though I lost, I still feel that I did the right thing in seeking to challenge the ban, I tried my best and was true to myself and my religion.”
Huw Thomas Thanks for reading. You can subscribe here
The move will come from the political side. The risk is not that religious leaders will use the faith to gain political power….extremists on the Right will do what Anderson and others sought to do at Easter time.
There was one particular sacrificial lamb worth noting over Easter…
Poor little lamb…
The photograph of Liz Truss wrestling a poor beast with about as much compassion as she showed while joining Steve Bannon lauding Tommy Robinson. This stood alongside the cultivated use of Easter in imagery and word from others, including Lee Anderson, whose home is currently the ‘Reform’ party. Anderson tweeted a Good Friday greeting, depicting the cross – a symbol of love – in an advert for a party with Reform’s record.
Anderson’s use of Good Friday resembled his similar use of Christianity in an attempt to peg his “want my country back” populism to the faith. Writing in the Daily Express”[1] Lee got a bit upset at Ramadan lights being put up in London, bleating: “The last time I checked Britain is a Christian country, it is enshrined in our law. So why is it that one of the most important religious festivals in the country is not proudly celebrated in the nation’s capital?” He ascribed this to: “A disastrous mix of uncontrolled low-skilled immigration and a well-heeled woke elite in our institutions” resulting in “rapid cultural change.”
Of course sending an Easter message is generally a fine thing . It’s just that using the faith that opened wide the arms of love as a means of promoting a party of xenophobia is a bit ironic.
Such faux-faith also featured on the GB News coverage of Ramadan lights, in which the presenters made it clear that, while not of a religious hue, they wanted cultural Christianity. Someone enlighten me: when did we ever put up Easter lights in this country? Is Easter that sort of festival? Maybe it is in “cultural Christianity” but in the churches across the capital that all celebrated the weekend, there is a journey from darkness to light.
However, the appeal of populist Right wingers to Christianity is worth a careful watch, particularly if we are about to enter one of those times when a party that has been in government goes into opposition. Here’s a prediction: in the coming years, the extreme Right wing of politics will exploit the turmoil they enter after an electoral defeat and attempt to manufacture, something similar to the grotesque effigy of Christian faith that has been on the rise across the Atlantic for some years now.
Disturbing links are already there. The recent investigation of Paul Marshall, owner of GB News and major contributor to the Conservative Party, listed some of the hateful extreme material he has been re-tweeting. The Newsagents Podcast and Hope Not Hate catalogued Marshall’s sharing of disturbing, extremist opinions, such as “Civil war is coming. There has never been a country that has remained peaceful with a sizeable Islamic presence” (You can find his other tweets here). This has just been followed up by Andrew Graystone’s excellent article for ‘Prospect’ magazine, highlighting Marshall’s influence and connection within the powerhouse of a church that is Holy Trinity Brompton, including his influence within the Church of England’s national strategic development and within Lambeth Palace itself.
Graystone meticulously explores the theological roots of Marshall’s activity. He calmly suggests: “we’re not likely to see the emergence of a religious right in Britain comparable with the evangelical movement in the US any time soon.” His reasoning is that “The historic social liberalism of the Church of England means the identification between evangelicals and the political right is nowhere near as potent.” However, it’s worth remembering that when Trump first promoted his candidacy for the presidency he was given a somewhat cool reception by the mainstream fundamentalist Christian leaders. It wasn’t long before they were chasing him for photo-ops.
Just to be clear, the move will come from the political side. The risk is not that religious leaders will use the faith to gain political power. That actually seems less likely than the more potent possibility that extremists on the Right will do what Anderson and others sought to do at Easter time and use Christian faith as a means of gaining support. In the first instance, this won’t involve identification between evangelical leadership and the political right but rather, in a manner akin to the way such populist thinking infected the voters of the Red Wall, church leadership may find their congregations change in this direction – and this, before they wake up to that shift. As with the rise of Trump, it will come from below and surprise those who lead. The risk is not an embrace from conservative Christianity towards the political right; its in the potential of the latter to use the former.
If this is worth keeping a look out for, where is it worth looking?
One place to watch was already indicated by Anderson and others over Easter. Watch out for a creeping Islamophobia that has little to do with Islam but a lot to do with misguided definitions of a “Christian country.” In an echo of the bonkers Great Replacement conspiracy theory, “I want my country back” will be made to sound like a place that needs to displace to be regained.
The other hook baited to catch Christianity will be the various culture wars. Watch as the emerging right first whip up and then exploit matters surrounding gender, race and tolerance. These will get tied up with a nostalgia for the way things were when kids were smacked and criminals hung. “I want my country back” will be made to sound like a clock that needs to wind backwards.
Interesting to note that the church in the background of Truss’s photo is closed and derelict. In the years ahead Christianity in this country will see a few more buildings go the same way. There is a need to guard against false religion that sees such shifts as the fault of others, rather than something that we need to explore within our own faith – the possibility that weakness and actual dying of some of that cultural or national religion may be how we renew this faith. The possibility that this is the way to renewed life, the possibility of Resurrection. That may be the Easter message.
Huw Thomas
Thanks for reading. You can subscribe here:
If this was of interest then this one on migration may be and this one is a bit sillier, about that Reform moment when they ran away.
[1] “Britain is a Christian nation – it is time to demand our country back, says Lee Anderson” 28th March 2024
The distinction between story and narration creates some of the best moments of narrative, one prime example being the elliptical gaps that put the audience to work. These moments – sometimes huge ones – occur within the story but are not in the text or film.[1]
The TV series “Succession” was presaged on the fact that Logan Roy would one day die. When he did, that event was not shown and we, as viewers, shared the separation from that moment with his children. A similar thing happens with “Bambi” when his mum is killed. In “Oppenheimer” we never see the bomb go off, we wake up after the “28 Days Later” and in “Abigail’s Party” we’re never taken to the eponymous event. Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” happens alongside Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” taking place elsewhere.[2]
In miracles like the water being turned to wine and the feeding of the 5,000, if you look closely, the actual miracle is not recounted. Instead we, the readers, are party to what characters experience after fish somehow become more fish or water presumably changes colour. Possibly the biggest, best and spiritually most significant example is the Resurrection.
Mark chapter 15 recounts the death of Jesus and ends with two Marys seeing where the body of Jesus is laid” (Mark 15:47). Chapter 16 opens with them returning to the tomb wondering how they will roll the stone away only to find its rolled back and some fella inside the tomb tells them Jesus has already headed off.
In Luke chapter 23 after Jesus dies the women see his body into the tomb and “On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment” (Lk. 23:56). Next thing: “the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.”
Gospel of John chapter 19 ends with: “it was the Jewish day of Preparation and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.” Then in chapter 20 Mary is coming to the tomb and the stone has been removed from the tomb.
The exceptional one is Matthew. Here two Marys approaches the tomb and it all goes very mythical (Matt 28:2-5) with an earthquake, an angel petrifying the guards and rolling the stone away. But even here the angel reports: “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.He is not here.”
It’s worth noting these are distinct stories each with their own emphasis, but each leaving a gap. The verse that reads: “Jesus sat up, stretched and said ‘Must be Sunday’” or the one where “Jesus walked out of the tomb and said to himself “Now, where am I?’” – such images are there for the imagination.
These are instances of narrative ellipsis, the word also used for three dots…something ellipted. Elliptical moments exist in a lot of narratives and films in which a key event is itself omitted but the narrative either side creates a gap readers fills with our own understanding of what took place. Think of “Mamma Mia” when Donna’s diary is discovered, and Sophie reads it to her friends: “July seventeenth, what a night. Sam rowed me over to the little island. We danced on the beach, and we kissed on the beach, and – dot dot dot”
An ellipsis can simply cut time.[3] It can also make a point, as when an early human throws a bone in the air and in the same scene it is thousands of years later and the object in the sky is a spaceship. There are also plot-based needs for an omission. If every Agatha Christie whodunit depicted the moment where the murderer does the deed we wouldn’t need a Poirot or Marple.[4] Common to all examples is the way they get the audience or readership doing the storytelling work.
In the Gospel accounts of that first Easter, that work invites us to connect these conflicting twists in the narrative to the life experience on offer within the faith founded by Jesus. For one thing, the gap liberates us from ever having to think we have to take such stories literally to experience what they offer. These narratives root the experience of the resurrection, not in some resuscitation of a corpse but rather in the experience we share with those characters who are, like us, working at the fact that something has happened.
Something happened to those first followers and whether there was an empty tomb or whether that is a story created out of those first experiences, the fact is something happened. We just don’t know what actually did happen. The appearance stories are full of mythical moments and the reported appearances that dance between the visionary and the tactile. There is even one story, on the Emmaus Road, that deconstructs itself: Jesus appears and is not recognised until the two disciples in the story gain their own conviction that he is alive, at which point he ceases to be present.
The gap allows us to bring however much or little we find ourselves able to believe about whatever happened: did they actually meet a bodily Jesus walking around or are those stories created to account for very real visions they experienced? The third option is that, having spent the time they spent with Jesus, the inspiration to love and share his message continued even after his death. But something happened, otherwise they would have fizzled away like all the other 1st century somebodies forgotten to history.
There is a gap in the narrative of Easter and it replicates a gap in the experience of those who encounter God through Christ, and these narratives in the present day. The experience of finding something in Christ that indicates something about life and guides to things about God is as open as that. We can read these stories as joyous and renewing tales that resonate with the sense we have that there is something of the spirit alive and present in life. Something happened becomes something happens.
Huw Thomas
Thank-you for reading this. If this was of interest, there is a lot more about Biblical narratives in “In the Way of the Story,” here . There is also a talk on ‘In the Way of the Story’ in the Talks bit of the web site and a few thoughts in this interview. As ever, if you have any similar thoughts and insights, comment is much welcomed.
[1] Thanks to Pete, Dave, Steve, Richard, Malcolm, Kim, Julia Claire, Ben, Mark, Barney and Mr Lamb for examples. [2] The current West End hit “The Motive and the Cue” does something slightly similar with the same Shakespearean tragedy. [3] sometimes in narratives you need a montage [4] ‘Columbo’ was the honourable exception: we needed to see the ingenious crime to wonder how our detective would figure his way through this one
We cannot know for sure what Jesus cried from the cross, in his dying moments. The Gospel accounts are a mix of history and Gospel – the shaping f the narratives by and for the communities from which they sprang. That’s why there are so many bits of the story that draw on the experience of suffering, as expressed in the Hebrew scriptures those early Christians would have known.
However, there is this stand out cry.
He cries a quote from Psalm 22, the opening line of which he would have known. It’s recounted in the Aramaic Jesus would have spoken: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” Whatever else we have over the Easter period, these are words worth contemplating for the grammar of their anguish: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The Crucifixion, from The Passion (copy) (n.d.). Accession number: 66.521.65
It speaks to the heart of faith, on a Good Friday. It’s the day when we spend time thinking of the pain and problems of the world, and it is not uncommon to talk to folks on this day who, while contemplating the final moments of Jesus, are also holding the suffering of loved ones or the anguish of places like Gaza and Sudan in their hearts. And it makes for a credible historical remembrance partially because it is hard to imagine the early church shaping such a tradition – in which the Jesus they saw as so united with God yells out about the gulf that has come between them. Worth noting, the Gospel of Luke tones it down a bit.
A gap, between the tender familiarity of ‘My God’ and the forsaken or abandoned ‘me’, is captured in that line, and in that moment. In doing so it captures a day that captures the whole of creation. That tension between the creator and the experience of a gap between us. In various ways and shapes of anxiety, fear, temptation, tension and mourning, the gap between the ‘my’ and the ‘me’ is not uncommon in the experience of the believer. Indeed it has resonance beyond that, in other experiences and expressions of alienation and angst: the gap between the ‘my’ I hope for and the experience the ‘me’ is undergoing
The thing about an Easter faith is it gives us permission to hold it there. To know that this is part of life. That if he could experience it – albeit at that final cry – then it is yet another moment shared between us and God.
Today’s the day we encounter and meditate on that gap.
Huw Thomas 