Stephen Hayes's Blog, page 19

The lost heart of Asia

The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A travel book with a slice of history.

Colin Thubron travelled through these newly-independent countries almost immediately after they had left the USSR, and so he captures them at a unique time transition in their history. He records that moment when they were neither one thing nor the other. Some people hankered for the stable past of full employment and economic security. Others looked forward to a future which, though it might be uncertain, with unemployment and rampant inflation, at least promised them freedom.

The dilemma was neatly summed up when Thubron visited the spacious headquarters of the Writers’ Union in Bishkek, the capital of Kirghiztan, “once a bureaucratic hub of mediocrity and obstruction”. There he met a writer named Kadyr, and asked what people did there now. They don’t do anything, said Kadyr. They had hundreds of writers, but no money and no paper. At last they had freedom to write, but the publishers could no longer afford the paper to print what they wrote. “Our spiritual situation is richer, far richer, but our material one is hopeless.”

Last month I read The Road to Miran, also about Central Asia, but a little further east, in the Xinjiang Region of China. It’s a part of the world that has always been rather vague in my mind — lots of countries with names ending in -stan, but I was never quite sure of where they were in relation to each other. And what I learned about their history from this and some of the other books I have been reading was mostly new to me and quite revealing.

The four countries that are the subject of this books were the creations of Stalin in the 1920s, which I had not known. Their convoluted borders were drawn in Moscow, regardless of geography, so that now major roads sometimes cross international borders several times within a short distance. In that, and in several other ways, they resembled Dr Verwoerd’s “Bantu Homelands”, and as I read I got a new insight into why the English-language newspapers in South Africa referred the “homelands” as “Bantustans”. Perhaps the analogy came from Dr Verwoerd himself, as he tried to explain his vision in the South African parliament, but at any rate the name, and the similarity, stuck.

One of Colin Thubron’s concerns, and one that was quite widespread in the West, was that these four countries, where the majority of the population was nominally Muslim, might embrace Islamic fuindamentalism. A lot of his conversations, especially in the earlier part of the book, reflect this concern. In many of the towns he visited he would visit a madrassa and talk to the students who were studying Islam, and try to get their views on this. Most of the mosques and madrassas had been closed under the Bolsheviks, but were rapidly reopening, though for many, particularly in the northern parts, their Islam was more cultural than religious.

[image error]The landscapes he describes are also interesting. It seems that much of the arable land was turned to cotton monoculture, the the diversion of rivers to irrigate it dried up the Aral Sea, so that in one case one of the main ports was 60 miles from water. Many other places were turned into industrial wastelands, with polluted air and water.

The book was published 25 years ago, and was written a couple of years before that, so it provides a snapshot of a unique moment in the history of those countries.

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Studies show… Using racist instruments to determine racist attitudes

On social media sites like Facebook I quite often see posts that begin with phrases like “Studies show…”

These are often contradictory — studies show that drinking any amount of alcohol will kill you, but drinking a glass of red wine a day will make you live longer. Studies show that children brought up without religion are more empathetic, but studies show that those with a religious upbringing are happier.

And so it goes…

Then last week on Facebook I got an invitation to participate in a study. It was The South African Implicit Bias and Attitudes Study and was said to be “a study investigating how empathy, intergroup anxiety and contact, affect bias in the racial attitudes of White and Black South Africans” done by an honours student in Australia.

I thought I would try to participate, but I began wondering how well the survey questions would measure what they said they were trying to measure, and one question in particular seemed to me to make appallingly racist assumptions:

If you were the only white person and you were interacting with Black people (e.g., talking with them, working on a project with them) how would you feel compared to occasions when you are interacting with other White people?

And you then had to indicate on a scale of 1-10 whether you felt “extremely” or “not at all:

Impatient
Awkward
Certain
Accepted
Careful
Self-conscious
Irritated
Defensive
Happy
Confident
Suspicious

I thought that question was based on racist assumptions.

If I were working on a project with other people my feelings would depend almost entirely on the nature of the project, and my relationship with the other people, and their attitude to the project. Whether they were black or white would hardly affect it at all. And it would vary very much from project to project. There were a huge number of variables that the survey simplistically collapsed into one, assuming that Blackness and Whiteness were the only important and significant characteristics of people, and that assumption is the foundation, the essence, and the defining characteristic of racism. How can you accurately measure racism with a racist instrument?

If I thought about it, I could probably think of several projects I had worked on where I was the only white person, and all the others were black, and my answers would be different for each one. But the first ones that sprang to mind has these results. The figures show, first, how I felt working on the project where all the others were black, and second, on another project where all the others were white, on a scale of 0-9:

Impatient (0-8)
Awkward (0-9)
Certain (9-2)
Accepted (9-0)
Careful (3-7)
Self-conscious (0-9)
Irritated (0-7)
Defensive (1-8)
Happy (8-1)
Confident (8-2)
Suspicious (0-7)

Now let me describe the projects I had in mind.

The one where I was the only white person and all the others were black was planning a Partners-in-Mission Consultation for the Anglican Diocese of Zululand. We held several planning meetings and the conference was successful. The other members of the planning group were Peter Biyela, Patrick Gumede and Meshack Vilakazi, all Anglican clergy with whom I got on well. We had differing views on various topics, and could have vigorous debates, but we worked together well and happily on this and other projects.

The second project, which was at roughly the same time, was the parish council of the Anglican parish of All Saints, Melmoth, which at that stage was all white. The project was the establishment of a pre-primary school which would use the parish hall. Those who had children under 6 were generally in favour of the project, and those who did not have children of that age were generally opposed. The meetings were far more stressful than those where all the other participants were black, and the difference had nothing to do with the blackness or whiteness of the people taking part, but rather their attitude to the project and to the others at the meeting.

These racist assumptions can also be seen in a question I recently saw on the Quora web site. You can click on it to see my answer, but how would you answer that question?

Is a black person’s personality different from a white person’s personality?

That relates also to another question in the study: To what extent did you see Black people with whom you had contact as “typical” Black people?

But what is a “typical” black person? Is there a typical “black” personality? The opportunity to answer is on a scale of “Not at all typical” to “Very much typical”, which begs the question of whether there is such a thing as a “typical” black person at all. Another racist assumption.

But let’s play along with it a little.

Back in the days of apartheid I worked as a bus conductor in Johannesburg, and because of apartheid, there were separate buses for “Europeans”, “Non-Europeans” and “Asiatics/Coloureds”. So I had a good opportunity to learn what was typical (or stereotypical) of the different races. The whites tended to be grumpy. The Indians tended to be icily polite. The coloureds tended to be obstreperous and badly behaved. The blacks tended to be more variable, some chattered, some given to singing, some quiet, some noisy. And passengers (we called them “clients”) of all groups would be different depending on whether they were drunk or sober. The Asiatic/Coloured buses had both the best-behaved and worst-behaved passengers; the Indians who were mostly Muslims, were never drunk. The coloureds often were. So yes, it was easy to form stereotypes.

[image error]But they were bus passengers. I didn’t know them personally. They were clients. They didn’t know me personally. I was just some functionary to whom they handed over their hard-earned cash in exchange for a bit of coloured paper. Some times there were regulars who would catch the bus at the same place at the same time of day, and I might get a smile from them.

Then one day Desmond Tutu caught my bus. Route 79A, Parktown North Non-Europeans Only. He was going to see the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg by whom he was to be ordained the following Sunday — it was long before he became famous. So once I had collected the fares I chatted to him until he got off the bus at the stop nearest the bishop’s house. And suddenly half the passengers were talking to me, most animatedly. “Who was that guy? How do you know him? Where does he come from? Where do you come from?”

And I spent the rest of the trip chatting to the passengers, telling them a bit about Desmond Tutu and how I knew him, and for a brief moment the client/functionary relationship had been disturbed, and a bit of personal relationship had been allowed to appear on the buses. I also reflected that if it had been a “Europeans Only” bus, the “typical” (or stereotypical) response would probably have been very different.  The white madams of Parkview and Parktown North would have sniffed disapprovingly and perhaps one or two may have written letters of complaint to the manager of the municipal transport department registering their disapproval at a bus conductor being “familiar with a native”.

But thinking of people you know personally, rather than impersonally as “clients” on a bus, as being “not at all typical” or “very much typical” of black people or white people seems somehow repulsive to me.

I don’t think that all studies of people’s attitudes are bogus, but where a study has questions with racist presuppositions, as this one did, one must at least question the methods used.And it reminds me that when I read things on the Internet that say “Studies say…” I must be careful, and perhaps even suspicious at a level of 8 or 9 on the scale of 0-9.

A book to give you an identity crisis, whether you need one or not

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A very weird and rather disjointed book.

It’s a bit like The Wizard of Oz to begin with. Ann Stavely goes for a walk in the woods and finds she isn’t in Kansas Hexwood Farm Estate, any more. There’s a wizard and a tin man and a boy.

It then gets a bit like The Time Traveler’s Wife, which may seem odd, because this book was published before that one, but that doesn’t matter, because with time travel anything is possible, including books published later influencing ones published earlier.

Add a bit of Malory and King Arthur and his knights of the round table, a rogue machine that thinks it’s the Holy Grail and a bunch of paranoid control freaks at the heart of the galaxy who think that there is a problem because the earth tail is wagging the galactic dog, Finally a cast of characters who aren’t who they or anyone else thinks they are, and you have a plot that’s enough to give you an identity crisis, whether you need one or not.

[image error]I’d just finished reading The Zahir, (see my review here) where the author/protagonist recommends erasing your personal history and starting again, and the characters in this book do that several times over so that none of them lasts long enough for you to get to like them or hate them before they become someone (and in some cases something) else.

A week ago I listened to someone talking about identity politics. I’m still thinking about that and wondering if I should blog about it. But these two books perhaps add something to the mix, something more to think about.

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Reflections on Nelson Mandela Day

Today is Nelson Mandela Day and I’m spending 67 minutes preparing and writing this blog post.

One of the things the self-styled “mainstream” media were doing 25 years ago, just after Nelson Mandela had become South Africa’s first democratically-elected president, was saying that the ANC must make the transition from being a liberation movement to being a regular political party.

[image error]And now, 25 years later, I think that we can safely say that the ANC has made that transition, though I do not think the ANC, or South Africa are any better off as a result.

One thing I am fairly certain of is that if Nelson Mandela were to stand for election as president of the ANC today he wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected, because the ANC is no longer a liberation movement, but a regular political party. Nelson Mandela became leader of the ANC precisely because it was a liberation movement and not a political party.

Leading a liberation movement and leading a regular political party require completely different sets of skills.

To lead a liberation movement one needs, first of all a vision of and a commitment to liberation, and an ability to inspire other people to pursue and achieve that goal.

To lead a political party one needs the skills of building alliances and a personal support base, One needs to have something to offer people in return for political support. One needs skill in political wheeling and dealing. One needs the will and resources to reward supporters and punish detractors.

Nelson Mandela did not have the skills needed to lead a political party. He did have the skills needed for leading a liberation movement.

The leader of a political party needs the skills to put down the opposition, both personal and to the party.

Nelson Mandela’s leadership was inclusive. As the leader of a liberation movement he sought to include people in a government of national unity. This inclusiveness is not merely characteristic of a liberation movement, it is also part of the concept of ubuntu, the principle of valuing all human beings.

Back in 1994 the Democratic Party, led by Tony Leon, was the biggest opposition party, and it saw its job as to oppose anything, good or bad, done by the Government of National Unity (GNU). It was a regular political party, and not a liberation movement. In its whiteness, it did not understand or appreciate the inclusiveness of ubuntu. I wonder if the subsequent history of South Africa might have been different if the Democratic Party had embraced ubuntu and joined the GNU. Its failure to do so enabled outfits like Bell Pottinger to spread their narrative of White Monopoly Capital and to portray the crony capitalism of the Zuptas as “Radical Economic Transformation”.

And the “mainstream” media also helped this process along. In their reporting they emphasised personalities rather than policies. It was always a matter of who was being supported by whom rather than what they were supporting. And that kind of reporting encouraged the kind of wheeling and dealing rivalry that belonged to regular political parties rather than the inclusiveness and ubuntu of a liberation movement. At one point we got so sick of the personality cults in the Sunday Independent that we switched to City Press as our Sunday newspaper of choice, but it wasn’t long before they too were engaging in the same personality over policy reporting. Now we hardly buy Sunday newspapers at all.

Nelson Mandela, they say, showed the difference between a politician and a statesman. And that is perhaps also related to the difference between a political party and a liberation movement.

 

On reading unbelievably bad books

Odtaa. by John Masefield

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I actually read this book twice, even though I thought it was one of the worst books I had ever read.

I read it the second time just to see if it was as bad as I thought it the first time, and it was. The blurb made it sound interesting, but it simply did not live up to the blurb. There are a few books i have read that have been unbelievably bad — so bad that i could not believe they were as bad as I thought they were, and I’ve read two of them twice because I didn’t think they could really be as bad as i thought they were, but they actually were, and I must resist the temptation to read them yet again to see if they were really that bad.

[image error]The other one I read twice was The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard. and another, which I’ve so far resisted the temptation to re-read, is Tehanu by Ursula le Guin. I had read the Earthsea Trilogy a couple of times and enjoyed it, so when I saw The Earthsea Quartet I bought it and re-read the first three books. Somehow on the third reading they didn’t seem quite as good as they had the first time I had read them. but the fourth book, Tehanu, was utterly boring. Like Odtaa seemed to be just one damn thing after another.

Odtaa is about dictator in a Latin American country (ficitious) who proclaimed that he was God. It is strange that all British novels about dictatorship are extreme and far-fetched, like George Orwell’s 1984, or Huxley’s Brave new world, or the book I read just before reading Odtaa, Mandrake by Susan Cooper. Copper’s book was actually OK, only I’ve never seen another copy of it since I first read it.

[image error]Perhaps they exaggerate to make the point more strongly, or perhaps it is just that they have no real conception of living in a dictatorship at all. They miss completely the ordinariness of it, the complacency of the people, the acceptance of the situation as part of everyday life. They show the ordinary people as the unconditioned, who become aware of the dictatorship, while those who accept the status quo are presented as being in some way extraordinary.

I wrote the previous two paragraphs when I was in the UK, just after reading Odtaa for the first time. That was in 1966, when South Africa was still in the throes of apartheid and Verwoerd the architect of apartheid, had just been assassinated, with the prospect of Vorster, the man who turned South Africa into a police state, taking over as prime minister (which he did).

The Crystal World, like Odtaa, has no real plot, and the characters have no real motivation or goals. It is indeed just “one damn thing after another”.

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Post-apartheid writing and posthumous books

At our Neoinklings literary coffee klatsch yesterday Val and I mentioned that we had been enjoying reading books by Zakes Mda. Before 1994 a lot of South African writing was “protest” literature — protest against apartheid and similar writing. Even before 1994 people were wondering what South Africans could write about after the end of apartheid. Professor Njabule Ndebele wrote a paper about the re-discovery of the ordinary.

[image error]Well I think Zakes Mda has rediscovered the ordinary in writing about post-apartheid South Africa, though what he writes is still very much protest literature, but instead of protesting against apartheid he protests against crony capitalism and the Aristocracy of the Revolution. And what fascinates me is that he wrote a lot of these books before Zuma became president. Was he been prescient, or was he exaggerating and satirising tendencies that later became so obvious that they could no longer be satirised?

I’ve written a review of another novel by Zakes Mda, here: Black Diamond: Yuppie life in the new South Africa. Now Val has just finished, and I have just begun, The Heart of Redness. It promises to be an interesting story, and jumps between the past and the present. One of the peripheral characters is Sir Harry Smith, sometime Governor of the Cape Colony, an arrogant man, described by one of his biographers as a bungling hero.

So I think Zakes Mda strike the right note for South African writing post-apartheid. Whenever I’ve tried to write fiction, I’ve got stuck in the apartheid era. It’s the world I grew up in, the world I understand, where the line between good and evil seemed to be a lot clearer than it is today. Oh, and my children’s book about the apartheid era is going cheap this month.

Janneke Weidema noticed that the Zakes Mda book I had brought along was a library book, and it seems that a lot of the books in our local municipal library seem to be toss-outs from deceased estates, and the ones they don’t keep they sell at R2.00 apiece — we have got some interesting books that way too. And that led on to our major discussion topic for this month — what do you do with your books when you die, or what do your heirs do with them?

I recalled that in looking up wills for family history research I found the will of a Walter Bagot (who turned out not to be related), in which he named a friend as a kind of literary heir, and said he was to be allowed to “take such of the books from my library as he shall select” and dispose of the rest in any manner he saw fit.

I also recalled that I had once spent a term at an Anglican theological college, St Paul’s College in Grahamstown (now the College of the Transfiguration in Makhanda). While I was there there was a “loot”. A clergyman had died, and his heirs gave his theological books to St Paul’s College. The books were placed on a table in the library, and the students were allowed in one at a time. Each one could take one book, and this process was repeated until all the books had gone.

[image error]Another book I’ve been reading is The Road to Miran. It’s about an art and archaeology student who travelled around central Asia looking for relics and ruins of Buddhist culture on the old Silk Road, which was the main trade route between China and the ancient Roman Empire. The Silk Road split and passed to the north and south of the Taklamakan Desert, and it is inhabited today by the Uighur people, who are mainly Muslim, and ruled by China.

Christa Paula, the author, travelled by bus, train, taxi and camel. Parts of the route were forbidden to foreigners. She would ask people how to get where she wanted to go, and would be told, “It is forbidden”. So she would ask “What should I do?” and the answer would be “Buy a ticket,” so she did, on the principle that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Her journey was in 1989, the year of the Tianamnen Square massacre, even when democracy was breaking out in many countries. To those of us who grew up with the Cold War and Apartheid democracy sometimes still seems like a novelty, an impossible dream come true, and then one stops to think that that was 30 years ago. When Christa Paula wrote it she was a student, but now she would be nearing retirement. And it was interesting to read about the apartheid in China. The inhabitants of the region are the Uighur people, and there was a special celebration of Uighur-Chinese friendship. But Christa Paula once was embarrassed to find herself at an event that was strictly for Han Chinese only — no natives or foreigners allowed.

 

 

In Memoriam: Danie Steyn

An old friend, Danie Steyn, died earlier this week, after a long and painful illness.

[image error]

Danie Steyn in October 1998

We first got to know Danie when he started coming to our church, the Orthodox Church of St Nicholas of Japan, in the early 1990s. At that time we ran a bookstall at the church for a mission society, the Society of St Nicholas of Japan, which had actually started the parish as a mission parish. The bookstall was open on Sunday mornings after the Divine Liturgy, and Danie became one of its most regular customers.

Not only so, he also brought a lot of friends along, and urged them to buy Orthodox books from the bookstall. Many of those he brought were young Afrikaners from Potchefstroom University (now the University of the North-West). Danie became an evangelist for Orthodoxy, often with surprising results.

One of the people he brought to St Nicholas Church was Andrei Kashinski, a young Russian immigrant to South Africa. It was the time when the Soviet Union was disintegrating and Andrei, a member of Komsomol, the Communist Party youth organisation, was a factory manager. His wife left him, however, and like many other Russians at the time he got baptised, not knowing quite what he was doing. Because of his broken marriage he wanted to go far away, as far from Russia as possible. He looked at a map, and South Africa seemed to be far away. So he came to South Africa.

[image error]

Andrei Kachinski

One day Andrei was sitting in a bar in Aliwal North, and mentioned that he had been baptised in the Orthodox Church. One of the people there said ” I know someone from your church,” and drove Danie to the other end of the Free State, to introduce him to Danie Steyn, who was then living in Parys. Danie brought Andrei to St Nicholas Church in Brixton, where Andrei discovered what he had let himself in for when he was baptised.

After 18 months Andrei returned to Russia, and helped with the restoration of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. Now he is a priest in a village parish near Moscow, which he has been rebuilding after it was destroyed in the the Bolshevik era. Danie was able to visit him there, and was impressed with his simple lifestyle, and with his ministry in a small rural parish.

So Danie influenced the lives of many people. One day, quite soon after I had first met him, a former colleague of mine from the Missiology Department at Unisa, who had moved to the University of Pretoria, brought some theological students to St Nicholas Church in Brixton for the Divine Liturgy. At that time there were two faculties of Theology at the University of Pretoria, one for the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK) , and the other for the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk (NHK). Danie had studied theology with the latter, which was more theologically liberal, but more politically conservative than the NGK. So Danie spoke to the visiting students after the Liturgy, saying that Reformed Theology, especially that of the NHK, tended to be cold and intellectual and academic, and the experience of God in Orthodoxy was like dropping from head knowledge to heart knowledge.

[image error]

Benjamin Elisa (Gustav) Prinsloo’s funeral at St Nicholas, Brixton, Danie Steyn made the cross.

One of those who came to Orthodoxy through Danie’s witness was Gustav Prinsloo, who was baptised on Holy Saturday 1997, which we think was the first Orthodox baptism in South Africa done in Afrikaans. Nine months later Gustav was in a car accident which claimed his life, and his funeral was held at St Nicholas Church in Brixton, and after the service most of the congregation drove in procession to Petrus Steyn, about 200 km away, where the burial took place.

Danie had organised the funeral, and leading the funeral service was virtually the first pastoral task of the new priest, Fr Bertrand Olechnowicz, who had been in the parish for less than a week. The funeral made quite an impression on many of Gustav and Danie’s friends who attended, and the following Easter 11 people were baptised, most of whom had been present at the funeral.

[image error]

Fr Iakovos Olechnowicz at the funeral of Gustav Prinsloo in Petrus Steyn, January 1998. Danie Steyn in red shirt.

Twenty-one years later we gathered at the same place to bury Danie next to his friend Gustav and his stepfather Stowell Kessler, and now there are three Orthodox graves in the cemetery at Petrus Steyn.

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Burial of Danie Steyn, next to his friend Benjamin Elisa (Gustav) Prinsloo, 27 Jun 2019.

I didn’t know Danie when he first became Orthodox, but I got the impression from talking to him in the early 1990s that he had an idea of an Afrikaner national Orthodox Church. I was reminded of a similar idea that had been held by George Alexander McGuire in the USA. McGuire was an Antiquan who went to the USA and became an Episcopalian (Anglican) priest, but wanted a black independent church. Being aware that the Orthodox Church had Russian, Greek, Bulgarian and similar national churches, he approached the Russian bishop in New York, but the bishop explained to him that it was not quite what he thought. There was no principle in Orthodoxy for establishing ethnically exclusive churches (this notion had been condemned some years earlier as “phyletism”). The Russian, Greek, Bulgarian etc Orthodox Churches were all in communion with each other and were not, as a matter of theological principle, ethnically exclusive. The Russian Revolution made it difficult to continue that conversation, and McGuire formed the African Orthodox Church, of which he became Primate, but since then several branches of the African Orthodox Church have joined the Orthodox Church, especially in East Africa.

About ten years after I first met him, Danie attended a training course for church leaders held at the Cathedral of Saints Constantine and Helen in Johannesburg, with people from many different ethnic backgrouds, English, Afrikaans, Greek, Ndebele, Romanian, Pedi, Zulu and more. As much as ever, Danie saw his ministry as evangelising Afrikaners who had become disillusioned and dropped out of the Calvinist Afrikaans-speaking churches, but saw it as bringing people into an inclusive Orthodox fellowship in which people of all ethnicities would be welcome, though each could worship in their own language.

In spite of what the Russian bishop had told George Alexander McGuire, though there was no theological basis for ethnic exclusivity, there is still sometimes in Orthodox Churches an attitude of ethnic exclusivity based on prejudice, which Danie himself had experienced when reading the Book of Acts in preparation for the Easter Vigil. He was reading in Afrikaans, and was treated very rudely by a member of that particular parish, as a result of which he, and most of the Afrikaans and Slavic members of that parish left and joined the new Russian parish which was being started in Midrand.

We will miss Danie. May his memory be eternal.

 

 

I crave your indulgence…

I’m still trying to get my head around this.

A couple of days ago I saw this picture on social media.

[image error]

Back in the 16th century Protestant reformers objected to the Roman Catholic Church raising money by selling indulgences to penitents, but here is a Protestant church selling tickets to worshippers for a worship night.

What’s the difference?

I realise that churches need money to do their work, but putting a price on worship really seems a bit much..

It seems that the public image of Christian churches is that they are now primarily money-making businesses. On the question and answer site Quora people ask questions like How much do pastors make and what do they do all week?, and How much do mega-pastors make?

I suspect that a lot of people who ask questions like that are doing so to judge whether being a “pastor” is a sufficiently lucrative career. Someone once asked me how to become a church marriage officer, and I’m pretty sure that was because in some parts of the country church marriage officers of different denominations have set up a cartel, where they have agreed among themselves to charge certain fees, and agree not to undercut each other.

Back in the 19th century some Anglican parishes were actual businesses. They would raise the money to build a church by forming a limited liability company (a for-profit company, not a non-profit) and would sell shares in the company, and then pay dividends out of pew rents. But eventually people got embarrassed by that practice, and it stopped, though I still remember seeing notices in St Mary’s Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg informing worshippers that “All seats in this church are free”/

It is things like these that contribute to the image of Christian churches as being primarily money=-making organisations.

Yes, I realise that churches need money to function, that bills have to be paid and all that, but putting a price on worship? Eish!

Reading old books

A couple of years ago there was a reading challenge: Read a book published before you were born this year – Modern Mrs. Darcy.

[image error]I also read somewhere about the same time that reading books published before you were born makes you a better writer, because it gives you an understanding of other times and places, a wider sympathy, and it can deliver us from temporal chauvinism.

So I thought I would try to make a list of books I had read that were published before I was born. Some were published only a year or two before, others were published a century or more before, but they were all published before.

Of course the list is not complete. I can’t remember every book I have ever read. I do remember some of the first books I read, before the age of 7: Choo Choo, the little engine that ran away, Buzzy Wing (about bees) and Hush Wing (about owls). But they may have been brand new when I got them, and so may not have been published before I was born. I recorded some in my diary, and remember reading others, and more recently I’ve tried recording books I have read when I read them (GoodReads also helps with that).

So here is my list as it stands now:

Allcott, Louisa May 1869. Good Wives.
Allen, Roland 1962 [1912]. Missionary methods: St Paul’s or ours,
Austen, Jane 1950 [1816]. Emma.
Austen, Jane Pride and prejudice.
Austen, Jane s.a. Northanger Abbey.
Ballantyne, R.M. 1966 [1857]. The Coral Island.
Belloc, Hillaire 1939. Survivals and new arrivals.
Blackmore, R.D. s.a.. Lorna Doone.
Bront‰, Emily 1847. Wuthering Heights.
Buchan, John 1928. Prester John.
Buchan, John 1947 [1940]. Memory hold-the-door.
Buchan, John 1952. Greenmantle.
Burnett, Frances Hodgson 1977. The secret garden.
Carroll, Lewis 1965. The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Conrad, Joseph 1955 [1904]. Nostromo.
Conrad, Joseph 1960. The nigger of the Narcissus Typhoon The shadow line.
Conrad, Joseph s.a.. The secret agent.
Conrad, Joseph 1964. Under Western eyes.
Conrad, Joseph 2010. Heart of darkness.
Dickens, Charles 1981. Bleak House.
Dickens, Charles s.a.. David Copperfield.
Dickens, Charles S.A.. Dealings with the firm of Dombey & Son: wholesale, retail and for exportation.
Dickens, Charles 1962. A tale of two cities.
Dickens, Charles 2010. Oliver Twist.
Dickens, Charles s.a.. The life and adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor 2009. Devils.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor 1959. The brothers Karamazov.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 2003 [1864]. Notes from underground The double.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 2005. Crime and punishment.
Durham, M. Edith 1909. High Albania.
Eliot, George s.a.. Adam Bede.
Farmer, Edwin 1900. The Transvaal as a mission field.
Greene, Graham 1962 [1940]. The power and the glory.
Greene, Graham 1974 [1936]. A gun for sale.
Haggard, H. Rider 1887. Allan Quartermain.
Haggard, H. Rider 1965 [1910]. Queen Sheba’s ring.
Haggard, H. Rider 1979. King Solomon’s mines.
Haggard, H. Rider 1965 [1887]. Allan Quatermain.
Hesse, Hermann 1974 [1927]. Steppenwolf.
Huxley, Aldous 1932. Antic hay.
Huxley, Aldous 1949 [1921]. Crome yellow.
Huxley, Aldous 1994 [1932]. Brave new world.
Johns, W.E. 1939. Biggles flies South.
Johns, W.E. 1939. Biggles in Spain.
Johns, W.E. 1940. Biggles in the Baltic.
Kafka, Franz 1965 [1925]. The trial.
Kingsley, Henry 1909. Ravenshoe.
Koestler, Arthur 1965 [1940]. Darkness at noon.
MacDonald, George 1964 [1872]. The princess and the goblin.
Maugham, W. Somerset 1967 [1897]. Liza of Lambeth.
Maugham, W. Somerset 1970 [1930]. Cakes and ale.
Miller, Henry 1993 [1934]. Tropic of Cancer.
Montgomery, L.M. 1994 [1908]. Anne of Green Gables.
Nesbit, E. 1978. Five children and It.
Nesbit, E. 1978. The Phoenix and the Carpet.
Nesbit, E. 1986 [1899]. The story of the treasure seekers.
Pepys, Samuel 1997. The concise Pepys.
Reed, Douglas 1939. Insanity fair.
Sayers, Dorothy 1970 [1931]. The Five Red Herrings.
Sayers, Dorothy L. 1968 [1937]. Busman’s honeymoon.
Sayers, Dorothy L. 1972 [1935]. Gaudy Night.
Sayers, Dorothy 1986. Have his carcase.
Sayers, Dorothy L 1934. The nine tailors.
Sewell, Anna 1945. Black Beauty: the autobiography of a horse.
Steavenson, W.H 1933. Suns and worlds: an introduction to astronomy.
Steinbeck, John 1967 [1939]. Cannery Row.
Stevenson, Robert Louis 1948. Kidnapped.
Stevenson, Robert Louis 1947. Treasure Island.
Swift, Jonathan . Gulliver’s Travels
Vale, Edmund 1937. North Country.
Waugh, Evelyn 1955 [1930]. Vile Bodies.
Waugh, Evelyn 1938. Scoop.
Williams, Charles 1931. Many dimensions.
Williams, Charles 1955 [1937]. Descent into Hell.
Williams, Charles 1957 [1930]. War in heaven.
Williams, Charles 1965 [1931]. The place of the lion.
Williams, Charles 1965 [1933]. Shadows of ecstasy.
Wolfe, E.M 1935. Beyond the thirst belt.
Woolf, Virginia 1992 [1931]. The waves.
Woolf, Virginia 2004 [1925]. Mrs Dalloway.

I read many more Biggles books, but could not remember all the titles, nor when they were published, though I read most of them between the ages of 10 and 12. But it was from Biggles in Spain that I first learned about the Spanish Civil War, and from Biggles flies South that I first learned of an ancient Persian army that got lost in the Egyptian desert. So even from fiction one can learn some interesting things about history.

There are still many books missing from the list, since when I read them I recorded the date of the edition I read rather than the date of original publication, but I think the main point of the linked article remains — every year one should try to read at least one book that was first published before one was born. I would go further, and say one should try to read two such books each year, at least one of which should have been published 70 or more years before one was born.

And it is because of that that I chose to illustrate this post with the cover of The Annotated Alice. That was published before any of my grandparents had been born, so it was a different world, and the annotated edition explains many of the things that contemporary readers would have taken for granted, but which mean nothing to us.

Christian psychotherapy

Someone posted this cartoon on Facebook recently.

Have a look at it, and before reading any further, see what you think it is saying.

You might find it interesting to write your thoughts down.

[image error]I forget who posted it. The artist is on Facebook here.

When I first saw it, I struggled to interpret it, and three or four thoughts passed through my head within about a minute.

My thoughts were the following, in roughly this order.

The church is speaking. It had tried to use the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus wedded to modern secular psychotherapy, but was now finding them incompatible.
The church is speaking, seeking the guidance of the psychotherapist, because the church has departed from the teaching of Jesus, and there is now a. rift between them. The psychotherapist is being called upon to mediate between Christ and the Church.
The church trusts the judgement of modern secular psychotherapy far more than it trusts the judgement of Jesus, so that Jesus has been dethroned, and secular psychotherapy rules over all.

One example of the unholy alliance between Christian theology and secular Western psychotherapy can be found in the way a Swedish Lutheran missionary in Zululand, Bengt Sundkler, evaluated the theology of some African Independent Churches. He judged them not by the Holy Scriptures, not by the Church Fathers, but by the writings of Sigmund Freud — see here Sundkler deconstructed: Bethesda AICs and syncretism.

A more positive view of the link between Christianity and secular psychotherapy is Dear Church, Let’s Talk About Mental Health:

Let me start by saying that I am still a pastor, I still believe in the absolute power of Jesus to heal the heart and I’m still a huge supporter of church counseling and ministry. But I feel compelled to raise my voice and say:

Therapy is not demonic.
Taking antidepressants is not a sin.
Seeing a psychiatrist is not anti-christian.
And those who suffer from mental health problems are not a failure.

One secular psychotherapist who seems to have been discussed quite a lot in Christian (including Orthodox Christian) circles recently is a Canadian, Jordan Peterson.

I first heard of him about a year ago in a discussion at a monthly gathering where we talk about Christianity and literature. Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life was mentioned there, and I was rather put off by it, since it sounded as though he was saying that the first rule was to aim to be the top lobster in the pack. That didn’t sound very Christian to me. In fact it sounded diametrically opposed to Orthodox spirituality. It also appeared that he and Jonathan Haidt, another secular psychologist guru, had overlapping fan groups.

As I noted in my earlier post, however, have grave doubts about both of them, I have ambivalent feelings about Jordan Peterson, however, strengthened (on the positive side) by a blog post by Jé-nae Freel, in which she makes comparisons between the dragon-slaying protagonist in my book The Year of the Dragon and Jordan Peterson Dragons:

What makes a dragon? Steve Hayes challenges his readers with this question as his novel, The Year of the Dragon, unravels, and its characters are forced to face the beast in numerous ways. It stalks them down the story-line with hunger in its eyes, but it also prompts the rising up of Saint George and courage in its prey.

Once a dragon is born, it will only grow if not acknowledged. Jordan Peterson deals with this in his lecture on Slaying The Dragon Within Us, which points out the trait inside each of us to raise up the beast while pretending that it isn’t there. Peterson uses the children’s book, There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon, to draw a picture of what these creatures can become if not acknowledged, as well as the perceived naivety of those who see the dragon for what it is.

So Jé-nae persuades me to re-evaluate Jordan Peterson. What she says about the dragons, it seems to me, is compatible in many ways with what the Church Fathers say in The Philokalia, for example. In my story the dragon is mostly external to the characters, the principalities and powers, the rulers and authorities of an authoritarian state, but it is also within, in the form of the human passions that align us to the dragon. And in that context, quite a lot of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life makes sense.

The first rule, however, remains a stumbling block, as it seems to link to the modern self-esteem cult.

Self-esteem, as a psychological construct, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It has no entry in my Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, 1962 edition. It, like many other psychological constructs, is an innovation. Many of the terms that were used when I studied psychology at university are no longer in use today, and that makes me distrust secular psychology — it seems to be too much subject to the changing whims of fashion.

Jordan Peterson doesn’t actually use the term “self-esteem” a lot, not even in his advice to emulate the top lobster, but his description of the top lobster certainly fits with the traditional understanding of self-esteem in Orthodox spirituality:

There is an unspeakably primordial calculator, deep within you, at the very foundation of your brain, far below your thoughts and feelings. It monitors exactly where you are positioned in society—on a scale of one to ten, for the sake of argument. If you’re a number one, the highest level of status, you’re an overwhelming success. If you’re male, you have preferential access to the best places to live and the highest-quality food. People compete to do you favours. You have limitless opportunity for romantic and sexual contact. You are a successful lobster, and the most desirable females line up and vie for your attention (Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life)..

In Orthodox spirituality, however, such self-esteem is seen to be demonic:

Our seventh struggle is against the demon of self-esteem, a multiform and subtle passion which is not readily perceived even by the person whom it tempts. The provocations of the other passions are more apparent and it is therefore somewhat easier to do battle with them, for the soul recognizes its enemy and can repulse him at once by rebutting him and by prayer. The vice of self-esteem, however, is difficult to fight against, because it has any forms and appears in all our activities – in our way of speaking, in what we say and in our silences, at work, in vigils and fasts, in prayer and reading, in stillness and long-suffering. Through all these it seeks to strike down the soldier of Christ. When it cannot seduce a man with extravagant clothes, it tries to tempt him by means of shabby ones. When it cannot flatter him with honor, it inflates him by causing him to endure what seems to be dishonor. When it cannot persuade him to feel proud of his display of eloquence, it entices him through silence into thinking he has achieved stillness. When it cannot puff him up with the thought of his luxurious table, it lures him into fasting for

the sake of praise (St John Cassian, On the Eight Vices: On Self-Esteem, from The Philokalia).

That fits with what Jé-nae Freel cites Jordan Peterson as saying — that these demons or dragons that we battle are mostly internal. And that is the point at which Orthodox spirituality differs from much modern Western spirituality. This became apparent to me when about 12 years ago a group of Christian bloggers had a synchronised blog on “spiritual warfare”. You can see my contribution here. It seemed that many Western Protestant Christians did not see spiritual warfare as spiritual at all, but the saw it as physical.

[image error]It’s not purely an East/West thing, but it can be seen on contrasting novels about spiritual powers abroad in the world, those written by Frank Peretti on the one hand, and those written by Charles Williams on the other. Peretti’s novels show “spiritual” warfare as very material and physical, external to the characters, while Williams shows that the struggle takes place primarily within the characters themselves. Yes, there is external evil, but it is the internal response to it that is important. It seems that for many Western Protestant Christians, “spiritual warfare” means the struggle against human enemies — Satanists and practitioners of “the occult”, members of non-Christian religions, atheists and the like — the very “blood and flesh” that St Paul warned us that the struggle is not against. So please don’t get the idea that here I am saying that our struggle is against Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt. But some of the ideas that they propound do not seem to me to be compatible with Christians spirituality, and especially Orthodox spirituality.

So I’m not saying that we should write off all secular psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy as works of the devil. But look at the cartoon at the beginning again, and ask what is going on there, who is in charge here? Who is calling the shots? Who is the ultimate arbiter of what we ought to think about it?

A book that might be worth reading in this connection is Orthodox Psychotherapy by Hierotheos Vlachos, the Bishop of Nafpaktos.