The Matthew’s House Project | culture

culturing your culture

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:35:30 -0400

Go to the website of any major Christian publisher and search for books on “culture”. What you receive is a virtual Noah’s flood of materials. We’ll use IVP as our example since the book touted in this piece hails from their hands, but any of them - Zondervan, Tyndale, Eerdmans, Baker - have warehouses of titles.

Here’s a IVP pick list: Emerging Culture, How to Win the Culture War, Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture, Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment, Thinking about Pop Culture, The Hip-Hop Church, Jesus Made in America, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Or should we say, “Yadda, yadda, yadda” and invoke Seinfeld’s Kramer. For it’s Andy Crouch’s new book Culture Making that attempts to be the coffee table book about coffee tables. I suggested that there should be a package of clay that accompanies the book much like the little stand that Kramer’s book uses to become an actual coffee table, but this was likely cost prohibitive. At any rate, the world of culture books, let us say, is a Christian Charlie Foxtrot of dormant ideas that pass as passe when the sun rises the next morning. (And IVP’s list is a tame one.)

Account for all those hip sermon series by emergent church types, and we’re saps at the whims of culture.

Andy Crouch’s book is a bit different. It wants us to slow down our analysis and legions of criticism about culture and our interaction with it and actually create some of it... actually participate in the making of art and other expressions. He also seems to temper - in spurts at least - this idea that our actions should be directly related to evangelism, and world changing in the sense of a cross on every hillside.

In his chapter “Why We Can’t Change The World”, Crouch says:

... I sometimes wonder if breathless rhetoric about changing the world is actually about changing the subject - from our own fitfully suppressed awareness that we did not ask to be brought into this world, have only vaguely succeeded in figuring it out, and will end our days in radical dependence on something or someone other than ourselves. If our excitement about changing the world leads us into the grand illusion that we stand somehow outside the world, knowing what’s best for it, tools and goodwill and gusto at the ready, we have not yet come to terms with the reality that the world has changed us far more than we will ever change it. Beware of world changers - they have not yet learned the true meaning of sin.

Although there is a back-and-forth on how to qualify and quantify culture and cultural expression. Many times the classic spheres of influence and long range effects of what we do are used as measures for successes or failure. For, Crouch says, “Culture is what we make of the world.” And certainly that’s part of it, but perhaps it’s less intended than actually setting out to sell a billion copies, oiling that marketing machine to osteen the masses.

For example, J.K. Rowling certainly had little thought of record book sales when she gave life to Harry Potter, but as an author she took pleasure to create a new world. Is it not in these types of co-creator acts that we find worship and celebration with the Arch Creator, who proclaimed his work “good” without need for audience? That’s not to belittle the fact that Harry Potter topped every sales record, but the beginning was not to produce a merchandising monster. Would not that be a most beastly motivation, the act of culturing your culture? Left Behind art?

I think Andy would agree. In his survey of cultural postures, he lands his claymation in this one line: “like our first parents, we are to be creators and cultivators...artists and gardeners.” Yes! Those gestures of condemning, critiquing, consuming, or copying are no good, he says, unless we are postured rightly.

And for the most part the posture of Culture Making is not the hunchback of other Christianity and culture books. A few weeks ago, I called Andy and we talked about his new book.

MHP: You say that culture is inescapable whether it be in my omelet or on my highway- so it's in everything. So what? For a person who doesn't analyze omelets or roads what is the message?

Andy Crouch: Culture, whether omelets or interstates, creates what I call the "horizons of possibility" for human beings. And Christians, at least, care very much about those horizons—both because we believe they are distorted and misplaced by sin, and because we have glimpsed another set of possible horizons. The biblical word shalom is one way describing a world where the horizons are in the right place. So if we're called to love our neighbor, we can't simply take the existing horizons for granted. Culture is cutting them and us off from God's shalom. So we're called to participate, in order to contribute to moving the horizons at least somewhat toward the reality that is disclosed in the gospel.

MHP: How does this message sit with a culture that is growing in its lack of literacy. Is the first act of culture cultivation helping people understand before they even try out avenues of adding to culture? Is that why there's a list of culture books like yours out there? Christian, it's not Kinkaid that we're after here. It's not Stryper... it's... what is it?

AC: I do think that one danger of my book and the title is that Christians might rush uncritically to create and contribute to what they think will change the world. Christian culture making requires a certain amount of preparation—a scriptural framework as well as cultural literacy. We haven't paid as much attention as we should to the need to patiently, seriously conserve culture, which after all is always only one generation away from extinction. It's amazing how fragile culture really is. There is a serious debate, for example, about whether the United States could land human beings on the moon today, because the generation that engineered the Apollo missions is retiring and all their tacit knowledge is being lost. The challenge is that this kind of knowledge is so much more about skill, discipline, and cultivation than simply analysis or awareness—you can have a cupboard full of recipes and yet not really know how to bake bread. So I hope that my book will not just add to the groaning shelves of Christian writing on culture, but encourage people to take up very specific disciplines of culture keeping, as well as culture making.

MHP: You talk about the workings of God and I wonder how these important cultural moments like the exodus and resurrection might play out in a global culture like our own... meaning, since so many points of information are splintered every which way, would the message be as monumental? And if not, does that effect the way in which God effects culture today... because certainly the resurrection was not the end but the dawning of more.

AC: Perhaps it is more difficult today to imagine a grand social movement. There is a sense in which our forebears picked some of the low-hanging fruit, so to speak: founding hospitals, establishing universal suffrage, ending chattel slavery. (Not that there isn't work still to be done in many parts of the world on every one of those fronts.) Today the mechanisms of culture are more fragmented and paradoxically both more global and more local. Our relationships are thinner, too. Facebook is great, but it doesn't substitute for being in the same town, working patiently together on change in that one place for many years. But I still firmly believe that the pattern of exodus and resurrection—God bringing life out of death, something out of nothing, raising the valleys and lowering the high places—is at loose in the world and in our human cultures.

MHP: Does God have a culture?

AC: I think culture was certainly God's idea—in a way, God's biggest idea—but it names the task that is distinctly for creatures made in his image. Culture is for us: it is what we are called to do. It is our response to the created world, and it has a cumulative quality that can only unfold over time. So God certainly has society, if you will—a relational reality that is the embodiment of Shalom—but because God is the eternal Creator, rather than a timebound creature, I don't think we can really say God has a culture.

MHP: The biblical vision of culture... does that involve miracles, plagues, white beards and concubines?

AC: Well, certainly the biblical record is chock full of cultural specificity, including some wild and crazy turns and twists, which I suppose is what you're getting at by mentioning white beards and concubines. Scripture tells a long, complicated story, especially in the pages of the Hebrew Bible, of a particular culture trying to work out this astonishing idea that our one god is not just our national god, but the one true God. It has all the particularity of any cultural story, and that's part of our heritage as Christians—but I would say that the biblical vision of culture, precisely as the universal nature of YHWH's identity sinks in, goes beyond any one culture to encompass all of humanity in its cultural diversity.

MHP: Does culture carry a dogma?

AC: There are some non-negotiable realities about culture, sure. Culture always happens between people. It also always happens through time. You could say there's a synchronic dimension—it has to be shared—and a diachronic dimension—it has to be handed on. For my children, for example, the world has never had anything but wireless phones. I don't think they've ever seen a phone with a cord attached. Unless I expose them to a corded phone someday, that part of culture simply won't exist for them. The other non-negotiable thing about culture is that although it is made up of concrete cultural goods, those goods always carry meaning along with them—often ultimate claims about the meaning of the world.

MHP: As believers, aren't we surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses... is that a public, a community? Is time perhaps part of culture and less so for the cultural landscape of Christians?

AC: Yes and no. It is certainly true that we are part of the communion of saints, living and dead, and in that sense we have a "public" that transcends time. And to the extent that we know their stories, know their work and writings, and most of all know the God who knows us all, they can shape our own culture making.

I remember being on the island of Lindisfarne off the coast of England a few years ago and feeling an extraordinary sense of my fellowship with, and accountability to, the great monk Cuthbert. At that moment he was as real to me as any contemporary. And yet in another way, we only know about Cuthbert because someone—a long chain of someones—passed on his story down to our time and place, through culture. The communion of
saints gives us a perspective on our moment in time, but it does not lift us out of our moment in time—we are still, like our neighbors, responsible for this place, here, now, and no other place or time.

Our culture making has to happen in response to our present world and moment, because, to paraphrase Tolkien, that is the only moment we have been given.

8 August 2008 | For more information about Culture Making by Andy Crouch visit InterVarsity Press.  -----------------------------------------------------
Interview and opening comments by Zach Kincaid

is orthodox feminism like military intelligence?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:21:48 -0400

Orthodox Judaism has a reputation for being very patriarchal and unequal towards women. I certainly feel like a lesser member of society when banished behind the mechitsa (barrier to separate men and women), not allowed to sing in synagogue (because a woman's voice might tempt the men), and not allowed to become a rabbi.   Not everyone feels that traditional Judaism is misogynistic--those people primarily being the Orthodoxy themselves. Women are regarded as being inherently more spiritual beings than men. Following that reasoning, women don't NEED to read from the Torah in the synagogue, be counted in a minyan (10 men must be present for prayers to be held), or take part in other aspects of public religious life. Unlike much of the rest of the world, in Judaism women were never the property of their husbands. A woman can never be forced to have sex against her will, even within marriage. And women have always had the right to work outside the home (sometimes this is a necessity, as when their husbands are studying Torah all day).  The battle that is being waged has very clear boundaries, although they are extremely complicated for an outsider to decipher. First, one has to understand the nature of Jewish law. There is the written law (the Torah and other holy writings.) Second, there is the oral law which was supposedly also given to Moses on Sinai and then passed down through the years by various rabbis. It was codified into the Talmud. Basically, the written law is the big cheese not to be messed with at all, and the oral law is a fluid set of laws that can be argued about. Legal precedent is a big deal (ever wonder why there are so many Jewish lawyers?).   Some things are outright prohibited (eating pork or lighting a fire on Shabbat, for example). Some things are required (men must produce children). Some things are not required but encouraged (women having children). Some things are not forbidden by law but not outright permitted (MTV or lesbian sex). Some things are required for men but optional for women (wearing a prayer shawl). For Orthodox feminists, they are interested in the things that are not outright forbidden but, due to cultural reasons, are no longer done by women. They comb the texts for examples of Jewish women giving sermons, being kosher butchers, or wearing prayer shawls.  So why can’t we just observe at the level we feel most comfortable? In Jewish law, when something is optional but a critical mass of people feel it is necessary, it becomes obligatory. For example, there is no law saying that Jewish men should wear a kipa (yarmakule or skullcap), but you won't find a religious Jewish man without one. In the same sense, women who want to "be better Jews" by following more of the Jewish law run up against opposition by other Orthodox women. These women have a lot of children, most are the sole breadwinners in the family, and they frankly don't have the time or energy for additional obligations. The idea of "live and let live," letting the women who want additional responsibility have it and letting others stay the way they are, is an idea that simply does not work for the Orthodoxy. If the feminists believe in live and let live, it weakens their position. If a woman truly believes it is a powerful blessing to perform additional duties, then logically she should want all women to do it.  In Israel, Orthodox feminism has focused on two spheres: religious education and legal issues. In America, Jewish feminism has focused on the public sphere, specifically prayer services. Even if one works within the framework of "permitted but not done," such as reading from the Torah in public prayers or giving a sermon, they have met with fierce opposition. Many women are extremely frustrated and find they cannot both be part of the Orthodox movement and the feminist movement.   Partially in response to the American approach, Israeli Orthodox feminists have focused on the private sphere. There is the belief that anything fought for in the public sphere has some element of egoism and self-interest, whereas things in the private sphere have a purer intention. These women have argued for studying the Talmud (Jewish oral law). Orthodox women almost never receive a formal education in Jewish law--even though it is their responsibility in the family to pass on Judaism to the next generation. Many Orthodox men object, but others don't see the harm in women learning the rules of their own religion. Many have become Talmud educators, all within the Orthodox sphere--and it has been a big success. Fighting to learn Jewish law has had massive advantages when dealing with the legal sphere.  Even though parts of Israel are modern, part of the developed world, and players on the world sphere, much of Israeli family law is governed by the ultra-Orthodox, grounded in documents that were written thousands of years ago. No other society I know of--not British, not Chinese, no one--relies on laws that are that old. Regardless if you are religious or secular, in Israel you obey the Orthodoxy when it comes to family law. This includes weddings, divorces, inheritance, and other similar matters. So you can parade around in assless chaps all over Tel Aviv or never set foot in a synagogue in your whole life, but on the day of your wedding it will be presided over by an Orthodox rabbi.   First, a success story: under Jewish law, sons and daughters should not inherit equally. However, the government of Israel takes the position that progeny should inherit equally. Because this is a Jewish country, one cannot simply disregard a Jewish law. So in Israel, wills can be written that "gift" equal portions of an estate to their children. It's similar to how some Americans try to get out of paying estate taxes by deeding or gifting things to their kids.  Now, one of the big problems: under Jewish law, a woman cannot get a divorce unless her husband grants it. However, you cannot force a man to get a divorce or it is invalid. This has been a big problem for years--men disappear for whatever reason (accidents, MIA in the army) or outright refuse to grant a divorce, and there's nothing the woman or the state of Israel can do to grant that woman the right to remarry. The husbands who outright refuse present a particularly frustrating problem. Maimonides, one of the most famous Jewish scholars, advocated beating the crap out of a man until he agreed to a divorce. His argument is that a man isn't just holding a woman hostage, not letting her remarry or move on with her life, but he is holding the entire community hostage.   In Israel, they don't beat the crap out of people, but they can take away a man's money and chuck him in prison until he grants a divorce. Even at that point, some men still refuse, so there is a small population of women in Israel who are really at a loss as to what to do. The feminists took a very creative approach to this dilemma--they can't change Jewish law, but they can advocate that women ask for a pre-marital agreement in which the power of granting a divorce is turned over to the Jewish courts. Again, because they studied their Jewish laws, these women have precedents. Apparently, King David ordered all of his soldiers to write declarations that if they didn't return home within a certain period of time, their wives are automatically granted a divorce. And if it's good enough for King David, it's good enough for Joe Shlomo.

8 July 2008

tracing continuity

Sun, 8 Jun 2008 22:40:04 -0400

The park (Finsbury) we walk past to get to our nearest tube stop has a curious feature, an entire field set aside exclusively for the playing of American sports. Moving back to London from Michigan it was rather surprising to go for a walk and see kids playing Little League along the way. I've not yet made the time to go and find out if those using the facility are primarily ex-pats and their children, but based on conversations I overheard on the bus it seems quite a few are English kids fascinated by US culture.

That pocket of American culture is one of the less remarked upon features of what is widely considered the most ethnically diverse borough in one of the world's most culturally varied cities. Most of the attention goes, like that in a recent Time Magazine article, to our neighborhood's vibrant Turkish, Cypriot, Polish and Bulgarian populations, or perhaps to the large North African community a little further up the road. Such diversity is a key part of what drew us to Haringey when we left the American Dutch enclave that had been home for the past few years, and quite a stimulus for trying to work out what it means to be English, British, and European in the early 21st century.

Conversations about identity almost inevitably get framed in oppositional terms. The Rupert Murdoch owned press that dominates so much of the UK's national consciousness has driven much recent debate by focusing on the supposed perils of being part of the European Union (and therefore ceding some power to structures we share with our neighbors) and of what they characterize as a liberal attitude to immigration. And internally, questions of English identity often arise either around sports matches or in response to the strong national identity of many Scots. In an effort to seize some political leadership, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently called for a variety of measures that would strengthen our sense of national identity, frustrating many of us on the more liberal side of his constituency by suggesting a day celebrating our armed forces (as if it's our military stance that makes us who we are).

Britain has a long and complex history. For much of that history England has dominated the other countries and, as is so often the case in such situations, its identity has never had the clarity of its smaller neighbors. Studying medieval history, even past the point where England became unified as a single kingdom, it can be hard to know where the borders between it and France lay as power moved back and forth through countless wars. All the countries of the British Isles have seen waves of newcomers, whether invaders as in 1066 and before, or immigrants, and at each juncture the national identities have shifted along with that of its population.

But the English seem to have the most trouble tracing any continuity or distinctiveness through it all.

In our post-colonial world those shifts take a new form. Whether it's refugees moving in Africa or the Middle East (or from South Pacific islands suffering the ravages of global warming), or members of the new Eastern European members of the EU coming to Britain to stretch their horizons, massive movements of people can happen at a very rapid pace--despite lacking the freedom of movement and lax borders afforded to the movement of money. Scare stories abound about the dilution of our national identity as if it sat somewhere becoming stagnant in a glass, and of overcrowding as if we were approaching the density of the vibrant cities of Southern and Eastern Asia. The pace of change puts many on the defensive and gives such lore an easy welcome.

That rapid pace of change gives us little space to take a long term view of where things are really heading. Statisticians' work is reported in such differing ways that it's very hard to know whether between those coming in and those leaving Britain there is a net growth or fall in its population. Just as many who aren't born here move into the country, there are many British people moving abroad for a wide variety of reasons. Recent experiences of many Polish immigrants, for example, returning to their homeland because of its booming economy hint that the same may happen with many other recent immigrants. However that turns out, as we look at the impending reality of massive resource shortages, it's likely that strong trends won't be visible for some time to come.

A recent piece on the BBC's excellent From Our Own Correspondent interviewed some of those Polish people who had moved to Britain and then subsequently returned to Poland. There were various reasons for their departure, but the combined forces of a robust Polish economy and the desire to be near family as they raised children seemed chief among them. It was clear that the reporter saw in those Poles a hybrid identity -- their time in the UK had affected who they were and how they saw the world. It probably isn't as simple as saying they were European, but instead, that their sense of self had yet another layer added by their experience as immigrants.

The nation state has proven a pretty good unit for government. Certainly states as they've existed for the past couple of hundred years (since a group of insurgents declared independence for the United States) seem to be the most stable form we've yet found. But as Europe saw through the 90s they're not secured by any guarantee, and increasingly geopolitics seems to be focussed on cities and their regions as much as on nations. Whether you're looking at the relationships between the mayors of London and New York, the way US cities rallied around the Kyoto treaty after it was dismissed federally, the victory of the London Roller Derby team over the Canadian national team, or the way South East Asian mega-cities define their populations more than any national boundary, the city is definitely on the rise.

That is easily seen if you look around our neighborhood. While I spend much of my time racing across the city, for many of those around me their lives are entirely focussed in this neighborhood. Their identities may be formed on a base of being Turkish, Bulgarian, Cypriot, or whatever, but they are residents of Harringay, part of the tapestry of London, and resident in the UK. They, like myself, become shaped by cultural forces that are pulled from a vast array of intersecting ones. Our identities as people and as a group can't be understood in purely tribal or classical geographical terms; we are all composites.

Nations, cities, and other units of identity and governance are dynamic entities, responding to pressures inside and out, shifting and evolving over time. And so is the identity of their residents, citizens, subjects or otherwise. As the hazy words above will indicate, despite thinking long and hard about it I don't know whether to call myself English, British, or European, and I increasingly think that that uncertainty--or at least the complementarity it hints at--is a core part of my identity, to be worked out in a changing landscape of diverse neighbors.

8 June 2008

disappointing psalms

Wed, 4 Jun 2008 09:20:05 -0400

Brian Clements is best known as the editor of the prose poem magazine Sentence, and is a fine practitioner of the prose poem himself, so it's a bit of a shock to find him working in a kind of lyrical confessional polemic form.

The narrator of Disappointed Psalms is a contemporary Job, ranting against politicians, against wars, against God himself; he is also a sorrowful psalmist, lamenting the fact he finds himself doing so. This, of course, is one of the contradictions of the book: how to shout at the God you no longer believe in. Another would be the perennial question of whether shouting out loud at politicians or readers actually changes anything.

These were my first thought as I read through the book, and they are thoughts that have remained. This is righteous anger, and it's well-shaped poetry (perhaps given the subject and context a little too worked on) but what or who is it for? I struggle with polemical poetry however much I agree with the content (more so when I don't), and even though the coldness, the distance and control in these poems mean they've been considered and shaped, they've actually cut out a lot of the emotion and feeling that just might have carried them along.

The fourth section, a four-page poem entitled “Without End”, is the most successful. The you in the litany or list that shapes the poem is inclusive, so the reader feels as complicit, as judged, as got at, as anyone else. There's a jumble of personal, spiritual, political, domestic and national in the work, and a motorik rhythm that keeps us reading, interested and involved:

    You start the oven and there is no end.
    You start to dance with mammon and there is no end.
    You start to love you long time and there is no end.
    You start mowing and there is no end.
    You start to withdraw and there is no end.

And on and on. Hypnotic. Brilliant. But...

But, how do we read phrases like “dance with mammon”, do they mean anything? Even using phrases like this to reject their subject and argue against them aren't poets complicit in their meaningless? You don't dance with money or the love of it; you don't actually love money - you simply become involved with greed and corruption, desire and deceit.

I have similar feelings about the three earlier sections, which are rooted in religious language, but also incorporate real or imagined political talk and news reportage. Does using the language of the Psalms to reject the God they are written for work? What does using religious intonation and vocabulary, tone and phrase to critique war and political irresponsibility achieve? The USA is, of course, still grounded in church-bound Christianity far more than the UK, but apart from a fairly obvious alignment of the political right with born-again and shopping channel religion, is it possible to critique in the language of what you critique?

There may be a sense of satire, of decontextualization and of satire by association, but for me it's all a bit shallow. And the loss of the narrator's faith, his rejection of a supreme being complicit in war, also seems distanced and fictional, because it comes in the guise of a distanced, almost philosophical discussion of that rejection. The root of this disbelief is clearly the war, but all too often that subject is clunkily inserted into a poem as though merely by word association the political and religious are synonymous:

    When I say "Lord" I mean
    The constant that peels the stars apart (I mean limbs)
    The force that drives bees into the hive (I mean bullets)
             but I mean nothing
    That constant.

This certainly shows a sense of confusion and implied despair, but in what way do limbs peel the stars apart? Theologians have been discussing war (the ethics and morals of), and the nature and constancy (or inconstancy) of God for centuries; poets too. Which probably doesn't help Clements in his personal struggle to think these things through, meld contradictions together, but perhaps does remind us that the most abstract, political, confessional or opinionated poems need to be rooted in the physical, in the detail around us, not in abstract thought:

    You start embracing uncertainty and there is no end.

8 June 2008 | Disappointed Psalms by Brian Clements is new from Meritage Press.

england: dnalgne

Tue, 6 May 2008 18:23:18 -0400

MHP addresses this idea of identity with some regularity. What makes Americans define themselves a certain way? What makes Exit 200 on I-75 different from Exit 210? How does love work without identifying enemies? In a global market that is strung up and out on technology, does place make any difference? Lee Snelling teaches classes on cultural issues in Georgia today but he grew up in England and identifies himself as an Englishman (in the South, I suppose though New York has an identifiable ring). I spoke with Lee about his homeland and his concerns about what “being English” might mean.

MHP: Where are you from in England?

Lee Snelling: My hometown is Ipswich, England. We are near the southeastern coast of England in an area known as East Anglia (the East Angles – a reference to our German ancestry).

MHP: What does it mean to be English these days? And how does that compare with your perceptions on what Americans mean when they sing their proud to be an American? Isn't there an identity crisis everywhere... except for China perhaps?

LS: Being English (or some prefer British) isn’t what it use to be. You would think that a country that has such a rich history would be more proud of it. Growing up in English schools we were taught about English history and how proud we should be of it. If you expressed that sense of pride these days you are deemed a nationalist, a troublemaker, anti-immigration/xenophobic.

Of course there are numerous stereotypes that go along with being English – the funny thing is many of these are true. We do indeed drink a great deal of tea (hot of course). Many of us do have bad teeth – not sure why that is the case. We are brought up to love the Queen. There are many more of these of course.

About identity crisis, I am not sure. I have lived in the U.S. for fifteen years, but I am still quite aware of who I am as an Englishman – God, Queen and country all the way. It is the government that causes an identity crisis. The push for being more European and being a leader in the European Union has facilitated this identity crisis. That is a whole other matter though.

MHP: Explain a bit of the history related to immigration and England. Certainly it has something to do with the former (or current) Empire and the acceptance that modernity seems to demand in its tolerance statements.

As a former colonial power we have experienced a huge influx of immigration from all over the world. In the 60s, 70s and 80s much of this was from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean. In more recent years we have seen a wave coming from Eastern Europe, Turkey, and war-torn countries, etc. It has caused some real animosity in England. We are encouraged to not be too proud of being English because it is unwelcoming to these other groups. There has been a resurgence of nationalist political movements, which is both scary and embarrassing really. But it is a reaction to a lack of governing by Parliament.

People too often forget that England is an over-populated island. We don’t have that much room to expand after several thousand years of civilization. Our current population (just England, not the British Isles) is 50,000,000 and we are comparable in size to the state of Louisiana (whose population is 4,500,000). So imagine packing 45,000,000 more people into the Bayou State. England can’t keep absorbing the amount of immigrants we are taking in. Yet, the Labour Government is very reluctant to tackle this issue.

MHP: You can't simply exile these groups from your country, can you?

That method has certainly been tried and found effective in history, but today that would be taboo... same thing with assimilation, right? So where does that leave us? Learning Arabic?

Exiling people just isn’t England’s style these days. That would take initiative and strength – two things lacking in recent years. Gordon Brown – the current PM that replaced Tony Blair – has a great deal of work to do in the next few years. Exiling certainly doesn’t mesh well with the mission and vision of the European Union. With the policy of open borders and the free movement of people this simply isn’t an option.

Another reason this would be dangerous is the growing resentment within immigrant communities. Remember many of the 7/7 London suicide bombers – if not all of them – were homegrown terrorists. These were young men that grew up in England, but since 9/11 had become disillusioned with the marginalization of the Islamic community. Exiling Islamic “troublemakers” will only legitimize their angst with the Establishment and English society in general.

MHP: I heard about the French prime minister visiting with the queen. So what? Isn't the queen just a remnant of old like the Church of England seems to be for the country - a remembrance of what England used to be like you said?

LS: Having the rich history England as we do, a great deal of things out of “pomp and circumstance.” Queen Elizabeth is merely a figure head of state more for symbolic reasons. Technically, she still holds a great deal of power; but doesn’t actually execute it (need to be careful with the word execute when talking about the monarchy). She can dissolve Parliament if she elects to, but whether this will ever happen is another matter. She opens Parliament each year and delivers a speech, but she doesn’t actually write this speech herself – she is assisted by the ruling party in the House of Commons.

As for the Church of England, I would venture to guess that many English people would have a tough time remembering the last service they sat (or slept) through. Growing up in England I went to two services – both at Christmas. My father took us both times thinking it was a fatherly obligation to expose us to church. The Anglican Church – Episcopalian in the U.S. – has truly seen a drop-off in attendance. I have seen statistics as low as 7 percent of the English population attending a service on a regular basis. It’s a shame to think of all of the local parishes that dot the landscape of England and they are scarcely visited on a Sunday.

MHP: Talk about the icons that you point to that makes you proud to be English... is it Australia's loyalty or Big Ben? Is it Stonehenge or Oxford?

LS: Icons . . . well it definitely isn’t Stonehenge or Oxford. Stonehenge is a group of rocks in the middle of a field to most English people. It’s there for the tourists! Oxford – as beautiful as it is – certainly isn’t an iconic symbol. Attending a university back home isn’t an experience kids grow up thinking about like it is here in the States. And Oxford is for the cream of the crop, so we don’t aspire for something that’s well beyond our place in English society. Oh and by the way Big Ben is a bell, NOT A CLOCK!

MHP: Talk about Northern Ireland. Why do you care about retaining it?

I don’t care about retaining it from a personal point of view. We keep hold of it because it is a reminder of our days as the glorious British Empire. Of course the trouble is a majority of the population in Northern Ireland is Protestant so they want to remain part of Britain. To be honest, for a country that lacks natural resources and isn’t exactly a tourist destination I don’t understand what the fuss has been about. To think of all the lives that have been lost for the sake of what exactly? I look forward to the day that devolution truly takes place and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland acquire 100 percent sovereignty. In my opinion their right to self-determination is long overdue.

MHP: So, how does an Empire become un-empirical? Would you consider America an Empire? What are the similarities?

LS: How did England become un-empirical? Greed perhaps? The Indians (not of the Navajo or Cherokee variety) got tired of us taking all of their tea and politely asked us to leave. Speaking of tea and former colonies – we still have a score to settle with the city of Boston concerning a little party you had a couple of hundred years ago.

We had a good run as an empire and our time came to an end. The sun has to set at some point right? This will surely happen to America, not that I am insinuating that America is an empire. England just spread itself too thin. After fighting the Crimean War, World War I and World War II we just couldn’t keep on to all of the various territories we laid claim to. Economically, politically and militarily we couldn’t handle it anymore. It was only natural that it would all come to an end. But look at the other empires through history and didn’t they all do the same? They bit off more than they could chew. Perhaps America will learn from this.

MHP: What are the similarities between England and America, in regards to empire building?

LS: Arrogance – simply stated! Is it really necessary for me to explain this?

8 May 2008 | Interview and opening comments by Zach Kincaid

outspoken demands: xv by king’s x

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:09:21 -0400

I’ve never really been one for heavy metal, nor much “christian” music. Combine the two and I conjure up the nightmare of bands like Jerusalem and their kith and kin from the 1980s: lumbering coiffured dinosaurs chanting invitations to be born again over the already clichéd riffs. Quite rightly, most of these bands were consigned to the dustbin of christian rock history, where they remain to this day; even the current rise in the internet distribution of obscure “gems” [ahem] from the past hasn’t deigned to dig that deep.

Most of these bands stuck to the christian music circuit as it was then, and which to some extent remains [moreso in the States than England]. Over here the main event for christian bands was the annual Greenbelt Festival, which bands could take either of two ways. Some, such as After the Fire, saw it as a welcome break from the endless grind of playing secular music venues, a chance to be headliners instead of wannabes, a chance to party with their christian fanbase. One year they got canned off at the Reading Festival in the afternoon, and were top of the bill at Greenbelt the same evening, complete with firework finale and mass adoration from the crowd. Others saw it as the pinnacle of their careers, the world outside didn’t count. Their world was one of church halls, youth clubs, services and schools; their music was made by christians for christians, and put out by christians on christian record labels. Maybe the end result was the same – bits of plastic you could play on your record player – maybe it wasn’t. (I like to think music is important in the scheme of things.)

Greenbelt always had a number of bands in vague orbit, bands that christian music lovers were often aware of but who were unlikely to play at the festival. U2 of course surprised everyone with an impromptu 20 minute set early on in their career; Bruce Cockburn was a regular; otherwise it was mainly rumours that T-Bone Burnett or King’s X might, would, were definitely, playing this year.* I confess I was one who always enjoyed passing along the “Dylan is here” whisper that always seemed to circulate. Sometimes big name bands would deign to play, sometime because of their religious connections (Deacon Blue, The Call), sometimes, I’m sure, because they realised that 20-30,000 people at a festival was an audience not to be ignored (Mike Scott, Billy Bragg, The Proclaimers). Call me cynical, but it seemed at one point that anyone could be justified as discussing “spirituality” in their work, and therefore eligible to play.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, cartoon capers with guitar solos… Remember Stryper anyone? (Stop laughing at the back.) I remember being one of three people asked to go along to Hammersmith Odeon to see them and help decide if they should be invited to play at Greenbelt. I also remember the mirth they provoked in the three of us: the lycra bee costumes, the screaming, the endless guitar solos, and – ah yes – the ritual throwing of band-branded bibles into the audience as an act of “witness”. Afterwards, in the pub across the road, Turner chatted to fans, who were mostly oblivious or uncaring about Stryper being christians. They just wanted to rawk. Funny old thing, I don’t think they did get invited that year.

Put all that aside. Forget distressed leather and ripped jeans, forget socks down tights, forget flicked hair, strutting solos, and forget boring, grinding music that gives you a headache. Think King’s X. A power trio who managed – and still do, despite some detours along the way – to combine melody and tunes with pumping rock. The nearest comparison might be Thin Lizzy, but that’s not even close, although the bass player is the lead singer. They came to my attention, like many other christian listeners I imagine, because of their 1990 Faith Hope Love album.

Careful research, or even a bit of insider knowledge would have revealed that they already had two albums out, one of which appropriated a CS Lewis book title (always a good sign, eh kids?) and that at least two of the band had played in the backing bands of mainstream christian artists. But I didn’t know that then, and I don’t care now, I just knew there was something intelligent, interesting and infectious about their music. Interviews appeared at the time in various christian zines, and although they never made an issue about it either way (and in the main kept their distance from the christian music circuit) it was clear from their lyrics and those interviews that they were rooted in the christian faith.

Pretty soon they moved out of that orbit, firstly more into the heavy metal scene courtesy of signing to a metal record label, later producing albums that flirted with grunge, funk and psychedelia (check out the wonderful Ear Candy disc) for various independent companies. Their music always sat uneasily among the stuff I normally listen to (improvised jazz anyone?) but it also continued to interest me, and I was always pleased to come across a new release of theirs. The obligatory live double, Live All Over the Place, is pretty stonking too – what it loses in subtlety it more than makes up for in dymanics and energy.

Somewhere along the line, however, I found out that lead singer Doug Pinnick had spoken openly to a christian magazine about his gay sexuality. No problem, you think, in this day and age? Even among metal fans, let alone liberal christian music lovers? Wrong again! Instead of acceptance and support (not that Pinnick was asking for any favours), King’s X were met with outright condemnation and hostility, leading Pinnick to his faith renounce totally and go on to produce a number of wild dope-laden funk-blues solo projects. King’s X, of course, didn’t care; the CDs kept on selling, but I’m sure I wasn’t alone in feeling sad that someone prepared to seriously debate doubt and faith in public no longer did so.

Believe it or not, this was going to be a record review. King’s X have a new CD out, cunningly entitled XV, which – unless they are now a rugby team – I take to mean is their fifteenth album. I certainly haven’t got fifteen on my shelves, but let’s assume that’s the case. So why write about them for Matthews House? Well I was struck not only by the fact that in my opinion it’s their best album yet, but by the return of the spiritual into their work. I don’t want to sell it to you as “sheep returned to the fold” nor “return of the prodigal son”, but from the opening song onwards it seems Pinnick is back searching for salvation, and that his vitriol toward the church has been reduced.

“Pray”, the opener, is just brilliant. Pinnick manages to keep his distance from those he describes in the lyrics as they go about their praying and worship, but then the chorus kicks in, a plea to those described: “don’t forget to pray for me”. I listened several times to make sure it wasn’t sarcasm or hate, but no, it’s not. Pinnick may have abandoned his faith, but it hasn’t abandoned him. Elsewhere on the album there are acoustic interludes, gentle tunes and mind-bending rock. Many of the songs play the game of not being easily pinned down: are they love songs in the human or spiritual sense? Is the “you” in the song a specific character or God? How can metal sound so fragile? How is it that depression, doubt and delight can co-exist in this way? And isn’t it great that they can? It’s certainly the kind of mental space I live in.

“So what?” you say. “Is this guy on commission to sell King’s X albums?” Well, really I wanted to say something about God keeping his promises, about not letting go of people, even when they let go of him (or try to). Something about how so much art and music continues to be informed by loss and a search for the spiritual, despite the postmodern claim that all our meta-narratives have gone and that we simply can’t believe in God anymore. It’s also to pass on the challenge I found in “Pray”, one I will find difficult to keep, but can’t not attempt:

If you think that Jesus has saved you
Mother Mary’s waiting there for you
If you think that God has spoke to you
Then don’t forget to pray for me

Prayer time? I feel I’m back in Sunday school, or putting the kids to bed. But here is a black, gay, outspoken rock rebel demanding that we do. Let’s get on with it. On your knees!

 NOTES
*To be fair to the Greenbelt organisers I think both these bands were actually booked at least once and for some reason or another didn’t actually turn up and play.
^No, I’m not. Amazon or a normal retail outlet will sort you out.

8 May 2008