RnBMail 14 July 2008

By Veronica Zundel

A story is told of the young St Francis, when he first got the call to serve God. His father felt he was disgracing the family by outrageous acts such as nursing lepers, and so tried numerous ways to stop him. Finally he got the bishop involved to try to persuade Francis to come back to his wealthy family. At this Francis took off all his clothes in front of the bishop, giving them back to his father and saying that from now on he didn’t want any part of the family wealth, but would own nothing. Some versions of the story have him doing this in the public square and standing naked before the whole town.

This is certainly a different way of ‘presenting your body as a living sacrifice’! But my question is, was this an act of humility on Francis’ part? Or was it an act of assertiveness, even public defiance? And are the two necessarily opposite?

Competitive humility

To answer that I want to tell another traditional story. The rabbi was praying in the synagogue, and he prostrated himself before the Torah scrolls which represented God’s word, and said ‘O Lord, I am nothing but a lowly worm’. Seeing this, the synagogue cantor decided to follow suit, and also prostrated himself, saying ‘Lord, I too am only a lowly worm’.

Then the synagogue caretaker joined them, beating his breast and crying ‘Lord, before you I am a mere worm.’ At which the rabbi turned to the cantor and said ‘Look who thinks he’s a worm now.’

When we think of humility, we tend to think it requires us to have a low self-image, a sort of ‘I’m the chief of sinners’ attitude. Of course the only possible answer to ‘I’m the chief of sinners’ is ‘No, I am’ which leads us into competitive humility to see who’s worth less than the other. We expect humility to be shown by always taking the smallest piece of cake, or saying ‘no’ whenever we are asked to do something public, claiming that we are much too useless to achieve anything...

ECCJ conference in Brussels update

A few of us have just got back from Brussels (29th - 31st May) where we were linking up with European partners as part of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice that we're part of. Some very clever people from the coalition have been working on some legal proposals they think could bring Corporate Justice in at European level.
It was amazing to meet such committed people from civil society all across Europe, working very hard to see companies held accountable for human rights and environmental abuse.
Download ECCJ's legal proposals for amendments to European Community Law here:

Fair Law - Legal Proposals to improve Corporate Accountability

You can also download John Ruggie's latest report (John Ruggie is the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on human rights and transnational corporations) on Corporate Accountability here:

Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights

You can read more about the "Smart Regulation" conference and ECCJ's work at: www.corporatejustice.org.
To send a postcard to Commissioner Verheugen and read more about our European Campaign go to the Cost of Disconnection campaign pages.

BIG DRESS SHEFFIELD REPORT
WE DID IT!!! Our Big Dress is officially the biggest dress in the world. Were you there? Then you'll remember this! Couldn't make it down? Here's your chance to see what you missed... Hot off the press, from the world's biggest dress, here are a few of the highlights from the week...

Walking Alongside: Alternative Methods of Nonviolent Accompaniment in Israel/Palestine
CPT, EAPPI, ISM
Saturday 27 September

Faith is a Journey: A Workshop Taster
Noel Moules and Aglaia Barraclough
Saturday 11 October

Getting Going on Growing Green
Jo Rathbone
Saturday 15 November

Training of Trainers
Venue: LMC
Bridge Builders Team
18-20 November

Threatened with Resurrection?
Simon Barrow
Wednesday 26 November

Transforming Church Conflict: A Foundation Course for Leaders
Venue: Guy Chester Centre, Muswell Hill, London
Bridge Builders Team
8-13 February 2009

by Jonathan Bartley

At first I thought it was just my imagination. Every day it seemed William and Harry were on the TV, firing guns or flying helicopters. The press releases from the Prince of Wales’ media office however, confirmed my observations as true.

Prince William is now in the ‘second phase’ of his time in the military. Initially his role was to gain experience out of the media spotlight as a young officer. But after his period of regimental service, it was announced that the future head of the armed forces was to broaden his focus to the RAF and Navy - and do so in a much more public way. The result has been a stream of news stories and photo opportunities.

And there is no doubt that this new persona suits the military down to the ground troops. The steady trickle of tales of both Wills and Harry’s exploits which makes up the new PR offensive has been accompanied by a high-profile recruitment campaign. If successful, even the £162,000 for William’s flight training will seem a small investment.

Fear or Fredom?
Why a Warring Church Must Change

Simon Barrow (Ed.)
9781905565146 Shoving Leopard/Ekklesia (2008), 139pp £12.95

The ugly public rows over sexuality, authority and the interpretation of the Bible in the Anglican Communion leave many people not caught up in internecine church conflict baffled and frustrated.

• What has this bitterness got to do with the Gospel and Jesus’ message of radical emancipation?
• Why is there so much fuss over a denomination that often appears a colonial hangover?
• What about the far more pressing issues of war, peace, development, environment, science and spirituality?
• How does such infighting impact the credibility of the Christian message in the twenty-first century?

With a short preface from Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Fear or Freedom? takes a constructively critical look at the significance of ‘Anglican wars’ in the run up to (and well beyond) the much publicised 2008 Lambeth Conference, signalling some important fault lines in post-Christendom life and faith.

Drawing on material from the religion and society think-tank Ekklesia, the book asks why many historic churches are in a mess and how they can change. Its message is positive. The churches can - and must - abandon their obsession with top-down control, and rediscover the Gospel as a subversive source of hope in society at large.

Contributors: Simon Barrow and Jonathan Bartley (Co-directors of Ekklesia), Glynn Cardy (St Matthew’s-in-the-City, Auckland, New Zealand), Deirdre Good (Professor of New Testament, The General Theological Seminary, New York), Savitri Hensman (Equalities adviser and writer, UK and Sri Lanka), Tim Nafziger (Christian Peacemaker Teams, USA), Chris Rowland (Dean Ireland Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford) and David Wood (Parish priest and university chaplain, Western Australia).

by Adam Dickson

Much lively debate has been sparked recently within Britain by Lord Peter Goldsmith, who has proposed that school-leavers be obligated to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and Country. This suggestion, which has met mixed reception from the general public, was written with the intention of improving the sense of what it means to be a British citizen within the minds of teenagers. Among the most interesting debates this has provoked thus far involves the meaning of citizenship for those of us who consider ourselves Christian.

Oaths are thought to be very powerful. For example, one might employ them to stress truthfulness, i.e., “I swear that this is the truth,” and so on. Elsewhere, an oath would be taken as an affirmation of a person’s loyalty before the State and its decrees. An important question is, could this be the way that God intended things to be? For many of us in the church, it might seem like a foregone conclusion. After all, we are naturally citizens of the country we inhabit. What, we ask, is the spiritual problem with an oath of allegiance or affirmation? On the subject of oaths in general, we find that Jesus has this to say:

Matthew 5:33-37
"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

It is somewhat intriguing that we should find a teaching about oaths smack bang in the middle of a chapter devoted to the exhortation of Kingdom values...

January 2009: Invite Christian Peacemaker Teams director emeritus Gene Stoltzfus to speak to your local group!

Pioneering Christian peace activist and organizer Gene Stoltzfus will be in the UK this January, speaking to groups around the UK about nonviolent intervention in situations of conflict and injustice.

Gene Stoltzfus was the director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) since its founding in 1988 until September 2004. CPT trains and places violence reduction teams in high conflict situations like Iraq, the West Bank, Columbia and various native communities in the United States and Canada. Teams and peacemaker delegations have worked in Chiapas, Vieques, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C. and investigative teams have visited Chechnya, Afghanistan, Congo and the Philippines.

Stoltzfus traveled to Iraq immediately before the first Gulf War in 1991 and spent extensive time in Iraq again in 2003, consulting with Muslim and Christian clerics, Iraqi human rights leaders, families of Iraqi detainees and talking with American administrators and soldiers.

Gene's commitment to peacemaking is rooted in his experience in Vietnam as a conscientious objector with International Voluntary Service during the US military escalation there from 1963-68. He recalls that watching the helicopter personnel unloading their cargo of bloodied bodies in Saigon set him "on the search to make sense of life and death where the terms of survival, meaning and culture don't forbid killing. I had to ask myself," he said, "whether I was as willing to die for my conviction as the Vietnamese and American soldiers all around me were being asked to do."

For more information, check out Gene’s blog “Peace Talk” at http://gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO INVITE GENE TO COME AND SPEAK TO YOUR GROUP then please e-mail cpt.unitedkingdom at gmail.com or leave a message on 0845 450 0214.