Tag Archives: Rabbi Sacks

Church “of England”?

08 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Church/State, Faith

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There are times when responses to what I post don’t surprise me, and times when they do, and the response by Alys to my last one fits into both categories.

I remain unsure why an admiration for Pope Francis on issues of catholic social teaching should mean I should cross the Tiber. My own Church has a long and laudable history in the same sphere. Not only is there no economic dogma in the Bible, there is also nothing in what it has to say about the poor and marginalised to suggest that a free market in modern terms was the sole answer, still less that an individualised approach to these these things is to be preferred. How we are to help the poor and marginalised is a moot point, and any economic system which does so is to be commended, but none of them can work for Christ unless it is informed by him.

The Incarnation is essentially a message of hope. In becoming Incarnate, the Eternal Word who was with God and was God in the beginning, showed the concern He has for what He created and whom He created. What follows from that, certainly for a man like Temple, is certainly not socialism. After all, as he wrote in Christianity and the Social Order:

A statesman who supposes that a mass of citizens can be governed without appeal to their self-interest is living in a dreamland and is a public menace. The art of government in fact is the art of so ordering life that self-interest prompts what justice demands.

In short, he believed what St. James wrote about true faith producing good works.

Temple may have flirted with it, but he was no collectivist. One of his three principles was the importance of ‘freedom’. This was why he was so passionate about education. Ignorance prevented men from reasoning as God wanted; ignorance was not freedom, it was bondage. In his early life he had flirted with collectivism as a way of ensuring that men and women realised they had responsibilities as well as rights, but by the late 1930s he had moved to the position just described. He opposed both fascism and communism, writing that: ‘Man has a status which is independent of nay earthly society and has a higher dignity than any state can confer.’

Nonetheless, mankind is not a solitary beast, and society existed in part to enable men and women to supply needs they could not fulfil themselves. The State was necessary, but people did not relate to it the way they did to their church, their football club, their trade union or their school. What Edmund Burke called the “little batallions” were critical to a healthy society and freedom – hence Temple’s second guiding principle, ‘Fellowship.’ That led directly to his third principle – ‘Service.’ If man did not live by bread alone, he did not live for himself alone – the very word ‘church’ derived from the Greek ‘ekklesia’ which meant a gathering; literally, you could not be a Christian by yourself. Nor could you live the life God meant if you focussed solely upon your own needs and wants. That was not a call to be a ‘do gooder’. Temple recognised the call family and fellowship made, but stressed the need to serve those needs in a way which did not damage those of others.

If we set before ourselves, or there is set before us, a creed of ‘enrichissez vous’ in which we find our highest satisfaction in piling up riches and consuming, then Our Lord is quite clear that this is a foolish aim – ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee:’ [Luke 12:20] And yet, as a society, does the modern West have any higher aim to set before us? The sop of ‘trickle down’ economics is just that, and given the lack of social mobility in the last decade or so, there is little sign even of that.

Christ’s charge to us is a moral, not a political of economic one, and a political or economic system which is not charged with them may deliver many things, but those things will not be of Christ, but of the ruler of this world. Love your neighbour as yourself; love the stranger within your gate; feed the poor; care for all; let those who have share with those who have not, heal the sick in mind and body. Do these things because we are all children of the One God and are redeemed by Christ if we will follow him, regardless of colour or class.

As that great and good man, Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (RIP) wrote in his last book:

Societal freedom cannot be sustained by market economics and liberal democratic politics alone. It needs a third element: morality, a concern for the welfare of others, an active commitment to justice and compassion, a willingness to ask not just what is good for me but what is good for all-of-us-together. It is about ‘Us’, not ‘Me’; about ‘We’, not ‘I’.

If we focus on the ‘I’ and lose the ‘We’, if we act of self-interest without a commitment to the common good, if we focus on self-esteem and lose our care for others, we will lose much else. (Jonathan Sacks, Morality 2020, p. 1).

In the circumstances in which we find ourselves, someone or something needs to speak for something wider then the self – for freedom, for sure, but also for fellowship and service. Here the Church shows it is ‘of England’ by continuing to do just that. Nearly half our churches ‘are running organised activities to tackle social isolation through programmes such as youth groups, parent-toddler groups or lunch clubs.’ Two third of our churches are involved in running foodbanks, the need for which is growing exponentially. As Tim Thornton, the Bishop of Truro, has said: “social action is deeply embedded into the mission of the Church of England.”

Do you read any of this in the press, or see it on television or hear it on the radio? No, of course, not, but the Church is there all the same, doing the work which the Word Incarnate wants. Socialism? No, it is Christianity doing what it has done from the time of Christ. Getting on with building the kingdom, brick by brick, sometimes with precious little straw.

Not in God’s Name: a review: part III

14 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by in Faith

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Francis and Jews

The propensity to violence in fallen mankind is undeniable: the idea that it was ’caused’ by religion led to Enlightenment thinkers supposing that other ways of organising mankind – by nations or by ideas – would beak the propensity; that did not happen; the notion that free-market individualism would do the trick has also not worked. Indeed, as Rabbi Sacks put is ‘Religious extremism, profoundly hostile to the values of the West is growing’ (p. 179). He also notes that even the most altruistic religions have proved to be capable of seeing those outside of their faith as Satans, infidels and anti-Christs, and of subjecting them to extreme violence. He suggests that only if we are capable of ‘role reversal’, that is of putting ourselves in the shoes of others, can we escape this tendency, and cites the example of a former Hungarian nationalist anti-Semite, who, after discovering he was, himself, Jewish, underwent a change of heart and now works to combat what he once worked to promote. Read as he advises us to read them, the great OT narratives invite us not to condemn Ishmael and Hagar and Esau, but to empathise with them and to understand them. Biblical heroes, he suggests, subvert the narrative of simple goodness versus pure evil, showing us that even great men like King David and Moses, have serious flaws in their character. If we will really ‘love our neighbour’ as ourselves, we will recognise our common humanity – even in the presence of the stranger. it is not, he suggests, accidental that so much of Exodus, and the post Exodus teaching emphasises that Jews, who once were strangers in exile in Egypt, should remember the stranger in their own gate and be welcoming to them. Even those outside the Covenant are children of God and are to be loved.

Although, of course, he does not cite it, Rabbi Sacks’ point is driven even further home by Christ’s parable of the Prodigal, which extends understanding and forgiveness even to those within the covenant group who have sinned. But, of course, given Christianity’s record of not following Jesus’ teaching here, Sacks’ main point stands – which is that if we cannot identify the others as equally children of God, then we will end by committing violence of one sort or another against them, claiming we act in God’s name.

Examining the Babel and the Flood narratives, Rabbi Sacks suggests that we misread them. The Flood really shows what happens in a society where there is no over-arching law – a state of sinful chaos. But Babel, he suggests, shows the opposite problem – what happens when men seek to destroy God’s diversity by making everyone speak and think alike: we cannot have freedom without order, he suggests, but neither can we have order witout freedom (p. 193). Diversity is created by God, it is part of what makes our lives here on earth fuller – we sin against His will when we seek to destroy it. We can have our own covenantal relationship with God as a group, but there is, he suggests, a common ethic which all humans need to observe – it is to do with fairness, justice and not causing harm to others. There is Justice, but there is also Love. As Christians, we can go one further than Lord Sacks, because we know that God is love, and we know from the revealed Word how much God loves us. We cannot, and do not know why there is such diversity of belief among the children of God, but even if we believe our own covenanted group is the chosen one, we should not mistreat others in God’s name – that is blasphemy.

In the end, he suggests, the holding of real power by religious groups has never worked to their ultimate advantage, or that of the God they proclaim; they have succumbed to the temptation to use power to coerce belief and close down dissent; they have also succumbed to the other obvious temptations offered by power in the form of money and luxury – and fractionalism over who should weild power.  As a Jew, the Rabbi is not arguing for powerlessness, no one who has suffered as the Jews have could think that state a good thing, but he is arguing for something like the original American model of a Government which respects and recognises religion, but which keeps it at arm’s length: ‘religion and power are two separate enterprises that must never be confused’ (p. 225). The best war we can wage of the children of darkness is to be the light.

Lord Sacks ends on a note of warning. If, as he does from time to time, he mentions anti-Semitism, it is not for the obvious reason, it is because it is the carary in the mine – it is the early warning side of a toxic attack. It is ‘the first warning sign of a culture in a state of cognitive collapse’ )p. 259). Can mankind really change though, or are we doomed to repeat the cycles of violence? Here, he sees the work of the Catholic Church is reconciling with the Jews as the sign of hope. If, as happened under the last four Popes, the Church can move beyond milennia of hatred and mistrust, then yes, he thinks, mankind can change – if the will is there, if we recognise each other as children of God – and act accordingly.

 

Not in God’s Name: a review: part II

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by in Bible, Faith

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hagar

Rabbi Sacks’ core argument is that violence exists because we are social animals. We find our identity in the groups with whom we live, and these groups fight over resources; religion plays a part here only ‘because it is the most powerful source of group identity the world has yet known’ (p. 101). The ‘fraught relationship’ between Judaism, Christanity and Islam (p. 87) has much to do with sibling rivalry – which we see portrayed from the beginning in Genesis with the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac. We can, he suggests, and often have, read these stories as a simple case of the younger inheriting and the elder being disinherited, but, surveying this, and the stories of Esau and Jacob and Joseph and his brothers, Rabbi Sacks suggests a not only the need for a more careful reading, but he also gives it to us.

In terms of the story of Hagar and Ishmael, Sacks reminds us of how badly sarah comes out of it all. She, it was, who suggested that Abraham slept with Hagar, and she it is who insists the slave-woman and her son are cast out to die. Abraham is unhappy, but as God tells him to do as Sarah says he does so, with a heavy heart. Sacks invites us to a closer reading, pointing out that God sends an angel to save Hagar and Ishmael. The angel also promises her that Ishmael’s descendants will form a great nation. The name ‘Ishmael’ means ‘God has heard’, and if we read with attention we see God did not reject Ishmael, indeed he allows him to be the ancestor of many nations; but the covenant is made with Isaac. However, we are made to sympathise with Hagar, and by being invited to enter into her thought-world, were are encouraged to identify with the other rather than to demonise them. He reminds us of Genesis 25:8-9 where Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury their father. He reminds us that Beer Lahai Roi (Genesis 25:11) where Isaac was living, was the place where God had spoken to Hagar, who had named it ‘the well of the living one who sees me’, and suggests that Isaac had been on a mission to reconcile his father, Hagar and his half-brother. So, once Sarah had died, there was a reconciliation, which is how the two brothers came to be there at the end of the Patriarch’s life. So, here, he suggests there is a counter-narrative to the usual interpretation, one where God chooses one son for one thing, for which he is suited, and the other likewise.

Rabbi Sacks goes on to suggest that with the Isaac/Esau story, and that of Joseph and his brothers, a similar counter-narrative can be seen, in which Jacob and Joseph, like Esau and the brothers, come to a wisdom through trials which allows them to grow spiritually by coming to understand what it was like to stand in the place of the others. There is, in every case, he argues, a reconciliation – after repentance. That is the key – the change of character that comes through true repentance. Yes, God could have created a race of obedient robots to love him, but he preferred the free worship of free human beings. We can change through repentance, and if we can, then there is no reason why the future has to be an action replay of the past. Sibling rivalry ‘is not written indelibly into the human script’, and Genesis, as well as telling the story of man’s faith in God, tells the story of God’s faith in mankind.

There is here, he argues, evidence that a relgious vision has the power to reframe history and to liberate ourselves from ‘the otherwise violent dynamic of revenge and retaliation’ (p. 157). Part III suggests what we can do with this insight.

[Some thoughts on legislating on Religious Extremism’ can be found here:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/august-14th-2015/david-camerons-british-values-agenda-is-anti-christian/ ]

Not in God’s Name: a review: part I

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Faith, Islam

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We don’t generally ‘do’ reviews of books here, but as Lord (Rabbi) Sacks’ Not in God’s Name is an exceptional book, it is right to make an exception for it. In fact, the book is so rich that it demands either an extended review – which will make it rather longer than the usual posts here (which tend to be between 5 and 600 words) – or several posts. For the convenience of the reader, I am opting for the latter – although it does mean you will have to wait a day or so to get the full story; if you get impatient, do just go and buy the book!

Our American readers may be less familiar with Lord Sacks, so a few brief words by way of introduction. Jonathan Sacks was Chief Rabbi of the of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. He became well-know in the UK through his radio and TV appearances, not because of any showiness – he is the least showy of men – but because his quiet wisdom impressed people;even those with no spiritual beliefs could see they were in the presence of a wise and holy man. I have linked to his website above, so you can find out more there.

Not in God’s Name is a timely volume in some ways – and a timeless one in other, more important ones; those who read it only for the timeliness will be disappointed; those who come to it for the wisdom it contains will not be disappointed.

The first part of the book, whilst interesting, was, for me, a puzzle. It is a very good synthesis of work done on why mankind resorts so readily to violence, and why do much of it is done in God’s name. We are social animals, we form groups, we are tribal, and these tribes, nations, languages, cultures and codes of religion are the bases of our identity; it is a mistake to assume there is something called humanity in the abstract. People always exist with an identity they take from whatever group they belong to – and part of that entails an innate distrust of those who do not belong to that group. This leads to violence. The world is divided into ‘us’ and ‘them’; at extreme times it leads to what Rabbi Sacks calls ‘pathological dualism- -where we see our opponents as something less than human and try to exterminate them. Interesting as all of this is, there was nothing in the early pages which suggested why Rabbi Sacks was the man to comment on this – what did it have to do with his main areas of expertise – religion and philosophy? If, like me, you feel that in the first chapter, don’t worry because when the answer comes, it is worth the short wait.

He suggests there have been three main attempts to escape from this identity politics by creating a universal ‘tribe’ is you will: Christianity, where there is neither Jew nor Gentile; Islam, where all the faithful are one; and the Enlightenment project which was the European secular alternative after it had become clear that the principle of One God, One Truth and One Way, had not actually brought peace. Science and philosophy would, it was assumed, succeed where religion has failed. After nearly three centuries of warfare caused by nationalism and philosophies such as Communism and Fascism and Racialism, Two World Wars, a Holocaust and the Gulag, it takes more optimism than most of us have to believe this is working. Its failure has led to the third attempt – which is to dethrone the group in favour of the individual, creating an atomised society, with the collapse of the traditional family, the erosion of community and – in reaction to this, the rise of religious extremism whic insists on the group identity in the face of alienating individualism. The attempt to do away with the tribe is not only not working, it may actually be making things worse.

Part II of the book is where the pulse really quickens, as Rabbi Sacks gets into the question of how the Bible treats questions of sibling rivalry, which is at the root of the quarrels between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. That will be the subject of a second post.

The dangers of literalism

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Bible, Early Church, Faith

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Joseph

‘Religion leads to violence when it conscrates hate’, writes Rabbi (Lord) Sacks in his excellent ‘Not in God’s Name’ (which will be reviewed here later this week). The Bible contains much in it which, if read literally and out of context, could be thought to consecrate hate. One of the most foolish things anyone can say is that any text interprets itself; all that means is that the individual, instead of trying to read the text in context, has decided to read it in a way which aligns with his, or her (usually his) views. Deuteronomy, after all, even has a law about a rebellious son being stoned, but we know, from the Talmud, that this law was never implemented and was interpreted within the context of God’s love for all his children, and was therefore used only as an example of how God regarded rebellion against a loving father. Every text-based religion develops its own interpretation of traditon.

It is clear from what St Paul writes to Timothy that the traditions passed on were not partial and incohate, but a system meant to serve Christians; not one word of it was yet written in a Gospel. By the time he is writing to the Thessalonians, that tradition is both written and oral. When St Peter writes his second epistle, he refers his listeners (and remember the letters were meant for reading out, not private study) to remembrance of the words of the prophets and the Apostles, whilst St John refers to the words they heard and handed down. The notion, which is now very common, that we, as an individual, can ignore this context and replace it with one of our own devising, is, at best, myopoic, and at worst arrogant, as it effectively ignores what two thousand years of witness has written. When St Paul says that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life, we might bear this in mind.

From the very beginning of the Christian revelation, there has been the need for interpretation. St Peter (or his continuator) writes about those scoffing because the second coming has not happened yet, and has to point out they have misunderstood what Jesus was saying; this has not stopped Christians periodically deciding they know that the end is nigh, of course. The ‘unlearned and the unstable’ misread Paul’s letters, which, Peter admits, can be hard to understand; but that is why they need reading within the tradition which produced them, it is why it is simply wrong to say that the Bible needs no interpretation; even saying that is to provide your own, very modern, and very man-made, interpretation.

The application of any ancient text, even the inspired word of God, to the present age, requires interpretation, which is why Judaism, Christianity and Islam all read their texts within tradition. Shakespeare was correct when he noted that ‘the devil can cite scripture for his purpose.’

Unfortunately, fallen mankind has a tendency to think it knows better. Men who see the corruptions that power, and perhaps wealth, have had on their own religious establishment, fail to note the beam of pride in their own eye, and, concentrating on the mote in the eyes of others, decide they need to live by the holy word as it was before it was interpreted, and, indeed, that interpretation is a main cause of what they call ‘corruption’. They can usually call in aid texts from what Rabbi Sacks calls the ‘confrontational reading’ of any holy book – thus Jesus saying he brings a sword, or the driving of the merchants from the Temple. They focus on a literal reading of texts which support their own view, which is why, so often, such people cite a limited number of texts repeatedly; ignorant of what others have written, they excuse their ignorance because they are convinced they are inspired and others, even if they have died for the faith, were not. As Rabbi Sacks concludes (p. 219):

That is what makes fundamentalism – text without interpretation – an act of violence against tradition. In fact fundamentalists and today’s atheists share the same approach to texts. They read them directly and literally, ignoring the single most important fact about a sacred text, namely that its meaning is not self-evident. It has a history and authority of its own.

For the Christian, the texts are, as Saints Peter, John and Paul all testify, part of that tradition. Read them outside the tradition and read them by the light of one’s own intellect, and you will get from them what you put in; read them inside the tradition and by the lights of a thousand saints, and you will uncover more of what God put there. But, like the Israelites of old, we can be a proud and stiff-necked people – not even learning from what happened to them because of their pride.