I have a pilgrimage to make; and the most important think about a pilgrimage is the moving from, not the moving to. We make pilgrimage to anywhere, so long as it gets us away from the habitual, the run of the mill, the normal. It is a substituting of the everyday for the extraordinary. What is the everyday? What is the ordinary? Why must it be escaped? There is much still to be learnt about what we assume to know already. At the same time, therefore, pilgrimage must also be a deeper immersion in what we already have. On the one hand, Catholics go to Rome because it is a once-and-for-all statement of something different, but, on the other hand, because it takes them deeper into what they already are. All roads lead to Rome, as it were.

Unlikely to post much over the next couple of weeks. Term papers to write for my Masters and the general emotional mess otherwise known as my life to be sorted out. Happy new year everyone, and check back before too long!

Shami Chakrabarti on carol singing in Parliament Square:

Welcome to the ghost of Christmas present in Britain - Singapore-style. Police are required to investigate carol singers and free speech is considered anti-social behaviour.

Technorati tags: Parliament, Chakrabarti, Britain.

You love Christmas. You know you do. And if you say you don't, you're just being like the saddos who read (and write) things like this and be so irredeemably negative about the world that I want to slap them in the face with a herring and tell them to get real. Things are winding down today, I suppose; the last working day before Christmas; everyone's getting their shopping at the supermarkets; and what remains of the corporate feelings Christmas invokes is, in a way, comforting. For all the crap and commercialism which comes with Christmas, there's plenty of real love, of real gifts, of real hope that we should be thankful for, and appreciating that enables us to get the shoddy canned music and nauseating decorations in AsdaWalmart in perspective, laugh at them, and look forward to a few days of overindulgence in the brightest and best of human sentimentality.

A happy Christmas from Newfred to all who pass this way!

Technorati tags: Christmas, Commercialism.

• Paper boy who's worked without a day off in 28 years. He says "you have to put your heart and soul into it," but I say he's probably a completely psychotic victim of the misnamed American Dream.

• Economist article on "churches as businesses" & the huge evangelical churches in the States.
  Technorati tags: Church, America, Evangelical.
• ...and from the same issue, an article on social Darwinism & the tension between altruism and self-interest.
  Technorati tags: Darwin, Evolution, Economics.
• Pennsylvania court rules against teaching of Intelligent Design (BBC News).
  Technorati tags: Christianity, America, Intelligent Design.

Untitled

Under the vastness of stars and sky,
You and I must still be one.
But from here to you's an eternity.
A distance that I dwell on.

And here I lie in a different life,
With drawers half-open and clothes thrown down.
I dream of taking a train through time
Of feeling your warmth again.

Labels: poetry

Sorry I've been out of circulation for the last few days. It's that time of year for a church musician! On Friday I spent most of the day practising, and most of the evening doing the last Bacardi gig in Manchester. Some complete nutjob came up to me on Canal Street (while I was wearing my Bacardi poncho!), took his trousers off to show me bruising, started crying, then started saying how he wanted his parents back because they are both dead, etc. Very sad, but very odd, and I favour an explanation of complete psychosis over actual grief. But how would I know.

Saturday was our Christmas concert at KEMS in Macclesfield. It went quite well, considering how last minute my practising was done. Sunday was the carol service at church, for which I was lucky enough to be helped out by one of Radio 4's Daily Service singers and a couple of other very able sopranos. As a result, it went very well... probably the best that the carol service has gone since I joined. Anyway, so that's me. What have you been doing?

• I've been saying for years that they should ban this sweetener. Apart from anything else, it tastes of crap.
  Technorati tags: Aspartame, Sweetener, Carcinogenic.

Politics pervades university life; sometimes "real" politics, sometimes quasi-political (but really conforming) Stop-The-War style "politics", sometimes a politics of the type belonging uniquely to universities. And all of these are good, because a depoliticised university system would be a depoliticised country; through history, we see that in universities is political activity most intense. I was fascinated by a postgraduate staff committee meeting I attended last week. There is quite a lot at stake in higher education at the moment; the growth of individual responsibility for student fees inevitably means that students at all levels are going to begin to demand more for their money, or at least a course which meets their own terms. The danger of this is that the quality of courses is diluted in favour of offering what is profitable and what is Good Publicity. (This is happening to an extent at Manchester; whole programmes are being dropped on the grounds that they are uneconomical, in spite of the fact that the cuts being made will almost certainly reduce the quality of research intake for the institution.) It's important for universities to remain moderate in this period of change, I think. The meeting I attended was divided between those who felt there should be more lecturing, more seminar time and more essays; and those who felt (these were in the minority) there should be minimal contact time, mainly directed reading courses, and a combination of strict examination and essay-writing.

On the one hand, I agree with the latter's attention to standards. But taking this to the extreme of making all courses glorified reading courses makes all things postgraduate far too clinical, and fails to allow for human relationships to develop properly in the course of discussion (this being probably the most important stimulus for further research). Furthermore, people like me often use MAs in order to advance our understanding of an area we haven't previously studied. A complete lack of teaching would undermine this perfectly legitimate approach, and discourage anything interdisciplinary (again detracting from the possibilities for research).

On the other hand, there is a rampant paternalist softly-softly thread particularly in British universities which means that students are spoon-fed material through heavy lecturing and weak seminar and discussion skills throughout undergraduate courses. Postgraduate students suffer from this, and I have found it hard to adapt to directed reading courses, this in spite of the fact that my BA offered more time than most for discussion and independent reading. Therefore, the changes probably need to be made at BA level, and we need to demand more of students from week to week. It is a travesty, really, that I should have succeeded at my degree in spite of not putting in any work until the last few months, since assessment should have been as much skills-based as knowledge-based. At the same time, for most taught MAs, I feel there should be at least one hour of contact per week (at the moment at Manchester the guideline is for one hours per fortnight), because without the facility to develop relationships between staff and students, the outlook for university research is pretty bleak.

Technorati tags: Politics, University, Manchester.

The front page and any new content should now always checkout as valid XHTML. I'm working on the archives, and CSS should validate soon too CSS now validates, too.

• Tookie Williams is executed. If anyone had any doubts about the inhumanity of American "liberal democracy," this should allay them.
  Technorati tags: Execution, America, Williams, Tookie, Tookie Williams.

My family, although traditionally upper-class, is poor. My dad received, with his brother and sister, an equal share of the huge estate of his father; but he blew it all in dodgy retailing and self-publishing ventures and was close to bankruptcy for most of the time that he figured in my life. As a result, I've always received very modest Christmas presents. What about my other, richer, relatives, you ask? Well, true, most of them almost certainly have estates well over £1 million. But the rich stay rich for a reason, and Christmas gifts from them were never notably expensive. Or perhaps they just didn't want to embarrass my parents, since, I must admit, I have been very well provided for through university, and for this I am very grateful.

Always at this time of year, as I suspect we all do, I think back to past Christmases, to childhood Christmases in particular. We (me, my mum, and my brother) are all better off these days. We probably don't care so much about money as we used to either. But we still don't give big gifts. The smaller the gift, I think, the richer its symbolism. So an old memory came to me tonight: of wrapping up a chamois leather for my dad (it had been bought from Wilkinson's — a fact I only remember because most of our presents were bought from Wilkinson's (ironically, since my father went to school with the guy who started the firm — he was rather more successful in retailing than my dad)). I bought it because he used to wash the car every Sunday afternoon, and it was a gift I'd put some thought into choosing. I tried to place the memory, and it occurred to me that that was probably the last gift I ever gave to my dad. It cost about £2. But I bet he understood my love for him all the more completely for it.

Technorati tags: Christmas, Presents, Childhood.

Rehabilitation

There you are, asleep, I guess;
Tucked up like a pink Princess.
Here I am, awake, I know;
Sick, because I love you so.

Where I hugged you, where we kissed,
Where I held you by the wrist,
Are they to be fictions, then?
Erased, with an Eraser Pen?

Yes, I love you, yes, I cried
Tears which only flow inside.
Must our love a fiction be?
Kommt her, sweetheart, come to me...

Technorati tags: Poetry, Wilshere, Love.

Labels: poetry

• Excellent article on Bach by John Butt (Guardian). Only a few days to go until the BBC is taken over by late-Baroque music for a whole ten days. Heaven!
  Technorati tags: Bach, John Butt, BBC.

So I've spent the last two evenings singing dodgy, on-the-cheap à cappella arrangements of such classics as Hey Ya, Crazy in Love and I Predict a Riot with a bunch of other professional musicians. Oh, the shame, the humiliation, the embarrassment; as we docked the Bacardi ponchos (since this was all in aid of an 'easy' £210 job for their latest promotion [and why they thought this would sell rum, I don't know]) our souls slid away (to quote one of our numbers) and we all felt irredeemably dirty; dirty in a way that no detergent could ever wash away. We were in Leeds last night, which was infinitely better than Liverpool. The highlight from Liverpool was seeing a load of pissed-up Scousers (about twenty or thirty of them, I'd say) rummaging through a skip. A sports shop had closed down and thrown out hundreds of pairs of new trainers. "Eh, they're all odd!"; "Eh! Tina! 'Av you godda green one?" etc. etc. When we returned later in the evening, the remaining shoes has all been neatly replaced in the skip. Mental.

Technorati tags: Liverpool, Leeds, Bacardi.

This essay (re-)appears here for the purposes of streamlining Newfred Rebooted's content into uniform Atom/RSS format.

Abstract

The context of this study demands a methodology which allows for the ambiguities and biases a theological standpoint issues. Urban life today is postmodern, postindustrial, and undergoing technological and cultural changes which are gradually implicating and transforming cities in and through a global "network society". New forms of local church are emerging both within and without traditional and denominational frameworks. Those best suited to an emergent urban network society are those which are able to address both the uniquely local context which derives from the postmodern collapse of metanarratives and also the global concerns which amount from the technological advances of international economy, global media, and the internet.

Introduction

Most studies focusing on the relationship between theology and society start with a passage which places what is about to be said within a social, economic, and philosophical context. The many urban theologies of the last two hundred years have summed up this context in all sorts of ways, ranging from the industrial to the secular, from the technological to the postmodern. The delineation involved in such descriptions unavoidably reflects the theologian's personal and institutional priorities. One prominent theologian has recently demonstrated that all theologies speak from a certain standpoint (Ward, G.: 2005, 12-60): the context which the theologian claims to deal with, and the true context that he or she is implicated in, may not be the same thing (Ward, G., 2000, 5). This is a characteristically postmodern analysis: it rejects as arbitrary classical, isolated theologies on the grounds that contextual considerations are essential to a practical and effective methodology. These observations are relevant to this study for a number of reasons. As will shortly be discussed, Castells' "network society" dissolves, in the postmodern turn, the kinds of grand narrative which once guaranteed cultural truth. The unavoidably plural, global, and postindustrial nature of the contemporary city means that postmodern theologies can afford only to be contextual. But before we can discuss what form these theologies will take, the question must be addressed: what is this postmodern context?

1: The "network society" and urban transition

Cities are changing. A postmodern approach does not deny this; rather, it redefines how we are to understand the changes that are taking place. Postmodernism's "incredulity towards metanarratives" (Lyotard: 1984) suggests a reading of cities in their own terms, rather than as actors in the "grand narratives" of economics, modernism, or religion (Atherton: 2003, 36-37; Butler: 2002, 13). Manchester is a prime example of such a changing city, and its utility for socio-economic analysis has been experienced by a number of authors over the years, from Engels (1845) through to Atherton et al (2005). Having suffered the consequences of manufacturing decline in the 1970s and 1980s, the city has become one of the most prominent postindustrial cities in Britain and, indeed, Europe. The unique history of Manchester as the world's first industrial city also places it at the crest of the next economic wave, which Mandel describes as "late capitalism" (Mandel: 1978), a stage characterised by the rise of tertiary industry and increasing domestic and international liberalisation of markets. However, as is so evident in Manchester, late capitalism can also embody sharp contrasts of wealth and poverty; a hangover from the division of labour during the industrial era (Giordiano & Twomey in Peck & Ward: 2002, 50-75). Running parallel, and in conversation, with the dawn of postindustrialism have been the technological advances which brought about the new space of the internet and sophisticated networks of global commerce. It is chiefly these developments which have inspired Manuel Castells' coining of the "network society".

The "network society"

Castells focuses on these technological developments of the late twentieth century, and places them in this postindustrial context. He is by no means the only theorist to deal with the "information technology revolution" (Castells: 1996, 28). Indeed, Ward identifies the emergence of cyberspace as a root metaphor for the late capitalist culture to which theology must respond (Ward, G.: 2000, 225-260). Castells asserts that it is "at least as major an historical event as... the industrial revolution, inducing a pattern of discontinuity in the material basis of economy, society, and culture" (Castells: 1996, 29). Where fuel, labour, and raw materials were the key demands of the industrial revolution, it is information which drives this one (ibid, 30). The production, consumption and communication of this information is at the heart of the "new economy" of the network society (ibid, 77). Global networks of information technology provide the means for rapid, efficient, and productive relationships between companies and governments in different countries, and it is no coincidence that these technological developments were accompanied (not only in Western, but also in far-Eastern and south-east Asian, economies) by the kinds of economic liberalisation mentioned above (ibid, 96). Furthermore, the development of the internet during the 1990s as a form of media for wider public consumption has begun to transform the way people relate to and communicate with one another (ibid, 365-371). There is disagreement whether such a network society strengthens people's social ties or encourages alienation, but Castells concludes that internet-based communities

are communities, but not physical ones, and they do not follow the same patterns of communication and interaction as physical communities do... They are interpersonal social networks, most of them based on weak ties, highly diversified and specialized, still able to generate reciprocity and support by the dynamics of sustained interaction. (ibid, 389, my emphasis)

What place, then, does the city have in an increasingly network-based society? The reality of internet-based human relationships substantially collapses the meaning, perceptions, and limitations of space and place because of the simultaneous diversity and immediacy of connections in cyberspace (Castells: 1989, 33-40). Massey writes in her essay on Wythenshawe, "This 'spot,' this 'location,' is a palimpsest of times and spaces. The apparent securities of longitude and latitude pin down a mobility and multiplicity that totally belie their certainties of space and time" (Massey: 2001, 463). It is certainly possible to envisage a radically different role for cities in the future: perhaps as informational hubs rather than physical centres of residence and employment. On the other hand, it is important not to overplay Castells' case. His analysis is deeply researched and his arguments compelling, but by all accounts typical internet usage today is concerned with supplementing and facilitating 'real-world' relationships rather than superseding them (Field: 2003, 105). There is no suggestion that the virtual will replace the physical. The network society does not directly require the proximity of the centralised urbis so essential to nineteenth-century industrialism, but to announce the "end of cities" (Castells: 1996, 424) would be to underplay the myriad other significations produced by lived identities in every city (Massey: 1994, 157-173). Definitions of deprivation, space, and place are being reworked in terms of an individual or community's access to and mobility within networks, superseding understandings which were previously material and geographical (Church of England (CofE): 2004, 6-7).

Urban transition

Cities in the West are in transition. Soja's description of the postindustrial city as "postmetropolis" has the feeling of today's urban context as a work in progress (Soja: 2000, 396-407), and some of his dystopian language reminds us that the current "urban revolution" (ibid, 4-6) remains a contested process in which power struggles continue, particularly in the light of widespread urban and social deprivation. Anyone experiencing the broken video of streaming internet connections or the incompetence of relatives at reading their email knows that we are not only a network society, just as anyone living in Manchester and experiencing the proliferation of postmodern architecture or growth of the huge Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, and Marks and Spencer stores knows that this is no longer the industrial city it once was (Wilshere: 2005, 5). Manchester, along with many other international cities, is between places; because the city is no longer spatially, ideologically, or culturally homogenous, the churches have come to recognise that such a dynamic, contested and potentially transient context demands new ways of being church which can react in realtime (Atherton et al: 2005, 26-28). So what is theology to make of this changing context? It is the ecclesiastical response to which we now turn.

2: Being church after Faith in the City

To compare Castells' description of the network society with the Church of England's Faith in the City (1985) is to encounter a sharp contrast. Faith in the City treats urban life as a coherent socio-economic entity to the extent that it can confidently identify "urban priority areas" (UPAs) and make its opening gambit: "Urban life increasingly dominates human society" (Church of England: 1985, 3), while Castells' project is rather to show how such coherence and urban dominance is passing, asserting that "the informational city is not a form but a process... characterised by the structural domination of the space of flows" (Castells: 1996, 429). The two projects are, however, separated in time by little more than ten years. So how, and why, has the Church's approach changed since 1985?

Being church in theory: from modernism to postmodernism

In 1994, the same year that Church House published Breaking New Ground, John Reader identified "the local as the context for theology" and argued for local theologies which can then move out into a wider national and global arena. "Instead of starting with doctrinal statements that then have to be applied to contemporary life, it begins with local activity and encourages a process of reflection, drawing on whatever sources seem appropriate" (Reader: 1994, 129). This sentiment was more radical than it sounds today; although both Faith in the City and Breaking New Ground contained the seeds of the postmodern turn in the Church's theology, there was still an underlying sentiment that any new approaches to "church planting" were still geared towards revival of the traditional established church (CofE: 2004, 23).

The Church of England's report Mission-shaped Church (2004) accepts that the days of such top-down institutionalism are over, and certainly contains echoes of Reader's Local Theology (1994). Its public prominence is nil by comparison to Faith in the City (1985); Norman Tebbit has certainly not called it Marxist; but it sums up the wholesale change in approach that the Church has taken over the last two decades. Rather than asserting the increasing dominance of urban life, it adopts Castells' description of the network society (CofE: 2004, 4-5) although arguably the report's presentation of these networks is slightly broader than Castells', reminiscent also of Putnam's description of social capital (Putnam: 2000).

The insights of Ward, identified at the start of this essay, help us in understanding both the nature of and the reasons for the difference in methodology between the 1985 and 2004 reports. Faith in the City was full of clarity, univocity and institutional self-assurance. Resonant with the Industrial Mission approach (see Brown, 2004), its homogenous treatment of UPAs through a standardised "national system" of UPA parishes was strongly institutionalist, and echoed the modernist and early Christian socialist ideals of the nineteenth century (Atherton: 1992, 117-155). By the Church's own admission, such clarity and univocity is untenable and unrealistic in a postmodern context (CofE: 2004, 16-28). The very plurality of British society prohibits the dominance of such a theology, as the present Archbishop of Canterbury has suggested (Williams: 2000, 29-43), and Mission-shaped Church encourages theological polyphony, contextualism and local solutions (CofE: 2004, 11). The centralised feel of Faith in the City is giving way to theologies which can respond with versatility to the multilayered demands of a network society. As Davey puts it:

Urban theology will straddle the global and local arising from the reflection and experience of people in real, concrete situations, and analysis of all the forces that are shaping their community. (Davey: 2001, 11)

Having seen how theoretical understandings of being church have changed through the Church's publications and the postmodern theologies informing them, we come to the question, how does this theory translate into practice? I will now address three threads of church at work in our postmodern network society: evangelical, established, and emergent.

Being church in practice: evangelical, established, emergent

Mission-shaped Church is a report aimed at transforming the way the Church of England as an institution approaches mission by rethinking "how we are called to be and to do church" (CofE: 2004, 1). Much evidence of "fresh expressions of church" (ibid, 43), however, comes from outside this denominational framework. The Eden Project, which operates around Greater Manchester, announces itself as "creative and urban evangelism" (The Message: Spring 2005, 1) whose central commitment is "to Manchester's young people for life" (ibid, 8). It is profoundly incarnational and evangelical, but combines mission with pop music, pastoral ministry, and worship on double-decker buses. The Eden Project's approach is characteristic of Pete Ward's description of "liquid church": full of versatility, innovation, and informality in response to a perceived "spiritual hunger" in deprived areas of Greater Manchester (Ward, P.: 2002, 3).

Traditional models of the built parish church suffer from their physical immobility when compared to the versatility of programmes like the Eden Project. The Parish of St James and Emmanuel, Didsbury, is a prime illustration. Their Parish Project asks the question: "How are we going to do church?" and identifies three foci for its mission: youth, the local community, and the global community (Didsbury Parish: 2004, 2). However, the project suffers the limitations of its buildings. The latest estimate for a new hall and "integrated parish centre" is between £1.3m and £1.5m (ibid). Emmanuel Church is a forward-thinking community which in recent years has gutted the church building in order to facilitate a number of different types of worship, incorporating music from Gospel to Orlando Gibbons, but maintaining and developing a building is cumbersome, bureaucratic, and expensive. For all the parish's efforts, in the context of a network society, its mission is limited by the very buildings that once embodied it.

'Emergent church', one of many terms coined to describe internet-based modes of being church, is perhaps the most original source of ecclesiastical expression in postmodernity. Emergent churches are diverse, employing not only information-based websites but also bulletin boards, weblogs, and 'real-world' gatherings. Emergent Village lists its affliliates as "churches, bloggers, publishers, consultants, speakers, scholars, mission agencies, bands, arts groups, [and] friends" (Emergent Village: 2005, 'Structure'). The structure of Emergent Village is an inversion of traditional institutional churches; it places its modest "organizing group" at the lowest level, and puts "church and world" at the top (ibid). The focus of Emergent Village, therefore, is not an authoritative theological administration; rather, the church's mission is the means and the end of the church's very being. Another internet-centred church, Emergentchurch.info, is a prime example of how 'real-world' communities can overlap with such network churches. One pastor writes, in an article named 'Post-missionaries', about her emergent church's Easter triduum — a "worship party" taking place in a café with the co-operation of an episcopal church in Medina (Emergingchurch.info: 2005, 'Post-missionaries').

There can be little doubt that postindustrial Manchester, comprising as it does peaks of wealth and troughs of poverty, is home to a whole range of church projects which operate firmly outside the established church. The Eden Project, which more obviously incarnational and evangelical, does draw on many of the resources models of emergent church offer. A longer account could also address the pentecostal projects in Longsight and Moss Side, or the physical transformation of Holy Trinity United Reformed Church in Cheetham Hill to create a community worship space and refugee welcome centre. Mission-shaped Church addresses the possibility of the dawn of a post-denominational era in Christianity (CofE: 2004, 25). The Eden Project hints at this; it is willing to work with any churches committed to its vision (Message Trust: 2005). The postindustrial marketplace certainly offers a choice of religious and spiritual packages which the religious consumer can mix and match. To announce the death of denominationalism would be premature, however; Ian Stackhouse rails against the short-termism and "faddism" which "stultif[ies] serious theological and cultural reflection" (Stackhouse: 2004, 257), and Mission-shaped Church is evidently keen that finding fresh expressions of church should not lead to any dilution of the gospel (CofE: 2004, 81-82). The imperative is therefore to diversify ways of expressing the same Christian message in different contexts. Stackhouse concludes that "the root of the problem is not structural, nor cultural, but a crisis of faith and a loss of gospel speech" (Stackhouse: 2004, 275). Even so, emergent churches offer distinctive, popular, and accessible means of dispersing the gospel. So what conclusions can we draw from this evidence about being church in a network society?

Conclusion: The "glocal" as multilayered church

Castells' network society is multilayered, diverse, and dialectic. The postindustrial city is both an example of and a metaphor for Castells' model. The collapse of metanarratives in postmodernity makes the one-size-fits-all models of church persistent particularly in established Christianity cumbersome and impractical, if not suspicious, but finding new ways of being church is not as simple as appealing to a global or local paradigm. In a network society the coherence of the physically local is made unstable by the inevitable implication of all communities and regions in wider webs of global economy, international politics, as well as cyberspace. Schreiter (1997) and Davey (2001, 88) both speak of "theology between the global and the local," and it is this 'glocal' metaphor which most aptly sums up the place of theology in the city today. The most suitable forms of 'local' church, in its broadest and most centextual sense, are those able to perform the balancing act which positions churches between the isolation of localism and the homogeny of globalism. Atherton has called for a "performative" affirmation of Christianity in the light of postmodernism (Atherton: 2003, 105-107). Emergent churches, in conjunction and conversation with 'real-world' incarnational missions such as the Eden Project, offer real opportunities to succeed in this imperative in the context of transitional, contested, and often divided cities whose futures are still to be shaped.

Notes

[1] Ward cites Matthew 16.3 to endorse the imperative to be able to read the social, historical, and cultural context: "O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?" Ward also uses Barth as an example of the theologian's embeddedness in a unique and partially determining subject position (Ward 2005, 16-57).

[2] I discuss the Eden Project and Holy Trinity, Cheetham Hill in greater depth in my BA dissertation, (2005) 'How do faith communities contribute to civil society?', unpublished.

Bibliography

Books cited

Atherton, J.: (1992) Christianity and the Market: Christian social thought for our times, SPCK, London.
—(2003) Marginalization, SCM Press, London.
—with Baker, C. & Graham, E.: (2005) 'A "Genius of Place"? Manchester as a Case Study in Public Theology", in Graham, E. & Rowlands, A. (eds.): Pathways to the Public, Lit-Verlag, Münster.

Brown, M.: (2004) After the Market: Economics, Moral Agreement and the Churches' Mission, Peter Lang, Bern.

Butler, C.: (2002) Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Castells, M.: (1989) The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process, Blackwell, London.
—(1996) [2000] The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell, London (2nd edition).

Davey, A.: (2001) Urban Christianity and Global Order: Theological Resources for an Urban Future, SPCK, London.

Engels, F.: [1845] (1987) The Condition of the Working Class in England, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Field, J.: (2003) Social Capital, Routledge, London.

Massey, D.: (1994) Space, Place and Gender, Polity Press, Cambridge.
—(2001) 'Living in Wythenshawe', in Borden, I. et al. (eds.): The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space, MIT Press.

Mandel, E.: (1978) Late Capitalism, tr. de Bres, J., Verso, London.

Peck, J. & Ward, K. (eds.): (2002) City of Revolution: Restructuring Manchester, Manchester University Press, Manchester.

Putnam, R.: (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York.

Reader, J.: (1994) Local Theology, SPCK, London.

Schreiter, R.: (1997) The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local, Orbis, New York.

Soja, E.: (2000) Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions, Blackwell, London.

Stackhouse, I.: (2004) The Gospel-driven Church: Retrieving Classical Ministries for Contemporary Revivalism, Paternoster Press, Milton Keynes.

Ward, G.: (2000) Cities of God, Routledge, London.
—(2005) Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Ward, P.: (2002) Liquid Church, Paternoster Press, Milton Keynes.

Williams, R.: (2000) On Christian Theology, Blackwell, Oxford.

Wilshere, A: (2005) 'Manchester: A Polarised Polis', unpublished.
—(2005) 'How do faith communities contribute to civil society?', unpublished.

Reports cited

Church of England (CofE): (1985) Faith in the City: A Call for Action by Church and Nation — The Report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Urban Priority Areas, Church House, London.
—(1994) Breaking New Ground, Church House, London.
—(2004) Mission-shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context, Church House, London.

Websites and journals cited

Didsbury Parish: (2004) 'Parish Project: Keeping you informed', Parish of St James and Emmanuel, Didsbury.

Emergingchurch.info: (2005), accessed 4th May 2005.
—'Post-missionaries' available at http://www.emergingchurch.info/stories

The Message: (Spring 2005), Message Trust, Manchester.

Message Trust: (2005), accessed 1st April 2005.
—'A partnership approach' available at http://www.message.org.uk/projects.cfm?id=11.

Emergent Village: (2005), accessed 4th May 2005.
—'Structure' available at http://www.emergentvillage.com/Site/Explore/Structure/index.htm

Andrew Wilshere is hereby identified as the author of this essay. Reading, citation, credited distribution welcome. Otherwise, please contact the author for guidance and permissions.

Technorati tags: Church, Theology, Postmodern, Urban Planning, Network Society, Economics, Castells, Ward, Sociology.

• Guardian's take on Pinter's polemic last night.
• ..and the full text of the same.
  Technorati tags: Pinter, Polemic, Bush, Blair, Nobel.

Edgeley, Stockport at 11am: The domain of cats, dogs, children and postmen. The narrow Victorian streets are emptied of the parked cars which block them like deep vein thrombosis during the night. A cat jumps over a fence and climbs up a tree in a flash as a stray dog chases it down an alley; an old black labrador barks mercilessly from behind a fence; and at the window of every other house I pass a dog paws at the window, wanting to be free. A stream of children cross the road and bark back in conversation with the labrador (who is momentarily confused at this uncommon response), while another cat quite literally follows the postman on his round, apparently checking the post as he passes it through those ever-so-impractical ground-level letterboxes. I imagine all those dogs sat behind the window thinking, "Why don't the people ever want to get out?"

Technorati tags: Edgeley, Stockport, Dogs, Cats.

• Simon Starling won the Turner Prize. I loved the bit on Channel 4 where he fell off the stage, walking in the wrong direction. I think I'd have picked Gillian Carnegie though — her paintings are just so attractive, and undoubtedly the fact that her work is "traditional", in the sense that it is centred around drawing and painting, will have held her back from winning this prize. Nevertheless, it's important that the Turner remain at the forefront of modern art. It says something that a painter was shortlisted at all.
  Technorati tags: Turner Prize, Simon Starling, Art.

"The heinous aspect of music is that it disintegrated real time with ideal times in its desire to be pure. To be absolved from this crime, it would have to allow itself to be conducted out of its Beyond into the here and now of time; it would have to integrate its ideal time into real time. This would, however, imply the transition of music from concert hall to church. For the time in which the events of the world ensue is exactly like the space into which the world is created; it too is merely "ideal," merely "cognitive" and thus without beginning, middle, end: the present as marker of the standpoint of cognition is perpetually shifting. [...] By integrating itself in these [annual church] festivals and in the Church year as a whole, the individual piece of music alights from the artificial frame of its ideal time and becomes wholly alive, for it is grafted onto the rich-sapped tree trunk of real time. He who joins in singing a chorale, or who listens to the mass, the Christmas Oratorio, the [Easter] passion, he knows very exactly what time is. He does not forget himself and does not wish to forget himself." —Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, tr. W.W. Hallo (Notre Dame 1985), p361.

Technorati tags: Rosenzweig, Music, Theology, Philosophy.

• The conservatism of the new Narnia film (and the politics of its release) over at The Chronicle.
  Technorati tags: Narnia, Conservative, Film.

Just got in from my first concert since Bolton Chamber Choir reconvened, under new direction, in October. We sang at Martham Church (near Ollerton, near Knutsford), highlights being the Quatre Motets pour un temps de Noël by Poulenc, Frohlocket ihr Volker auf Erden and Heilig motets by Mendelssohn, Lullay, lullay by Leighton, and The Lamb by Tavener. I also played a couple of organ solos, and didn't get very nervous, so that was good.

I'm tentatively looking forward to Christmas, and going home. For reasons I've not yet mentioned on this blog, the last three months have been very hard and confusing, even though they've also been some of my most successful and enjoyable. A whole story is always double-sided. We've had a great evening, but one of our sopranos is extremely ill — a second attack of an aggressive cancer. She's only in her early thirties and has a two-year-old boy to bring up. It is on her situation that I must dwell this Christmas, bearing witness to the dystopian Nativity of Christ, over which the shadow of death hung from the beginning.

Technorati tags: Bolton, Poulenc, Leighton, Mendelssohn, Knutsford, Martham.

Short Nonsense

Rasputin and Tsarina in a jar
With solemn spoons of ice
As bang bong bang bing pling plang cling
Go my pyjamas twice.

Technorati tags: Poetry, Wilshere.
Read the small print. ©2005.

Labels: poetry

• Richard Dawkins' letter to his daughter. Richard Dawkins really pisses me off these days. At least I can comfort myself with the knowledge that he will be forgotten within years of his death (if not before).
  Technorati tags: Richard Dawkins, Biology, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy.
• Today, someone reached this web site with the query: "are tie rack connected to the mafia". Hmm. I wonder!
  Technorati tags: Tie Rack, Google, Mafia.

Here's a flyer that was being handed out yesterday at the Union:

FREE LUNCH TODAY! with a short talk and question time on: Are there many ways to God? ... University of Manchester Christian Union

Now who ever said there's no such thing as a free lunch? Just a shame I'd have to be paid to go near a CU meeting.

Technorati tags: Christianity, Christian Union, University Politics.

Jacques Derrida, who died just over a year ago now, is a philosopher whose legacy is currently positioned somewhere between incredulity, greatness, and ridicule. Often derided, regularly quoted, and little understood, Derrida's work promises to assume a reputation in the Western philosophical canon which will only grow. But who was this man? What was his work? Why is it important? The thought of approaching Derrida's texts cold was a threatening one, and so I turned to Nicholas Royle's introduction to Derrida for help.

Halt: you are about to "read" about Derrida; you must check all intellectual baggage at the door. If such a thing was possible, it would certainly help; but Derrida, Royle informs us, is about complicating all our "key ideas" rather than coming up with easy answers. Royle takes us on a whistle-stop tour of deconstruction, "the supplement", "differance", (and plenty besides), and introduces us to what could anachronistically be described as "Derrida's influences," since the diffusion of influence on any person's thought and action in any time is itself a substantive theme of his philosophy.

It's a couple of weeks since I read Royle's introduction. The book having sunk in a bit, the attitude I am now left with towards the importance of Derrida concerns nothing less than the entire approach we adopt towards text(s). The reason Royle can't be crystal clear about any of D.'s "key ideas", "influences" or implications is that D.'s own approach to text(s) itself destablilises all of these categories. Although Royle can say that D. in some way admired and respected the work of Freud, for example, it is not feasible to say that D.'s work is at all Freudian, for where does Freud end and another thinker begin? To what extent can Freud's writings be truly considered "Freud's writings?" What has been supplemented to Freud over the years that now renders Freud other-than-Freud, more-than-Freud?

Deconstruction is the term most commonly associated with Derrida, yet he was enigmatically vague about its definition. Royle proffers the following thought-provoking summary:

deconstruction n. not what you think: the experience of the impossible: what remains to be thought: a logic of destabilization always already on the move in 'things themselves': what makes every identity at once itself and different from itself: a logic of spectrality: a theoretical and practical parasitism or virology: what is happening today in what is called society, politics, diplomacy, economics, historical reality, and so on: the opening of the future itself.

All of these aspects of deconstruction are explained and explored in the book, but it is important not to dismiss such a definition on account of its abstractness. Although the phrasing of Royle's definition is in the first instance quite opaque, deconstruction is, by constrast, a very simple idea; so simple, in fact, that it is hard to describe at all. It is a calling into question of everything which makes our perpectives on a text (in the broadest sense) coherent. It is, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, "a strategy of critical analysis... directed towards exposing unquestioned metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophical and literary language." But Royle's point is that deconstruction goes further than the OED definition would suggest. The unity of the OED definition does not account for such quirky and irrational diversions as Derrida's deformations of his own name into der (German: the), id (Freud, or "idiom"), da (German: there). This example seems arbitrary because it is, but it illustrates the depth to which deconstruction goes. Royle tries to demonstrate that the practice of deconstruction can be so pervasive that the tiniest inflections in words, sounds, images (texts) all becomes more important. Furthermore, the further deconstruction proceeds, the further categories impinge on one another's territory and the whole categorical system collapses (this is the notion of "parasitism" in Royle's definition).

Royle's discussion of the supplement (which is meant in its fairly conventional sense) is fascinating. From director's cuts and deleted scenes on DVDs, to Sunday newspaper sections and authorised biographies, Royle introduces us to Derrida's thinking of the supplement as the relentless adding-on, augmentation of texts through texts-about-texts, editions, introductions, prefaces, indexes, ad infinitum. There is plenty more to say about the merits of Royle's discussion, but hopefully I have said enough to give you a taste for more.

The great strength of Royle's book is its clarity of language and competence in explaining concepts which I would have found impossible to get my head around without first approaching an introduction such as this. Royle earned the appraisal: "Excellent, strong, clear and original," from Derrida himself. Undoubtedly this will be an invaluable resource for anyone new to the work of Derrida, and interested in secondary material which can be considered "faithful" to Derrida's "intentions". Highly recommended.

Technorati tags: Derrida, Deconstruction, Royle.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Is your tea a chicken pie,
All the way up in the sky?
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
Bet you buy your food from Spar.

I agree. Ridiculous. I mean, how could two sisters get so fat in the first place? I put it down to depression resulting from reading the Express. Ridiculous.

Technorati tags: Express, Crime, Britain.