Stephen Hayes's Blog, page 81

Jesus is still more popular than Google

Jesus is still more popular than Google — on this blog anyway.

Every so often I like to look at what brings people to my blog, to see if there is any possibility that they might find what they are looking for. Sometimes I have to wonder, but I don't think there are many surprises this time, though in more recent searches there seems to be a marked increase in searches for Dorothy Day, which is, I think, a good sign.

Anyway, here are the top 15 search terms that brought people to this blog:

Search
Views


jesus christ
6,224


google installer
4,356


what to do on sunday
1,474


reactive policing
1,390


jesus
1,358


perelandra
1,011


what is google installer
888


makwerekwere
763


stuff to do on a sunday
751


what to do on sundays
730


dorothy day
716


khanya
696


stuff to do on sunday
670


google installer is trying to access the internet
595


wordpress porn
586

The last one, "wordpress porn", perhaps deserves a little explanation.

There was a time when the front page of the WordPress.com site had a list of "hawt posts". I was puzzled by the word "hawt", which I hadn't come across before, and so Googled it, and found that the first ten Google hits were all porn sites, so I wondered if it was a pun on "hawt pawn" or something. Anyway, WordPress has stopped listing "hawt" sites on the front page, but it looks as though some people are searching for porn on WordPress, though I doubt that they found what they were looking for in this blog.

Monasticism in Southern Africa – a fragile plant

Orthodox monasticism in Southern Africa is a fragile plant.

For the last few years there have been one or two people trying to live the monastic life, in one or other of the three "monasteries" in Gauteng (can you call it a monastery when there are no monks?)

Father Nazarius and Father Elias established the Monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Gerardville in 2000. Then Fr Nazarius died in 2008, and there were no monks there for a couple of years. Deacon Nectarius lived at Hennops Pride for a while, and then at St Nectarius, and then went overseas for a kidney stone operation and hasn't returned. Fr Seraphim, as far as we know, was the first monk to be tonsured in South Africa, by Patriarch Theodoros, in 2006, but then he was ordained and sent to work in a parish as a parish priest.

At the beginning of this year, however, Fr Seraphim returned to the Monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and has been joined by Brother Justin, who, though not quite a novice, seems as though he may become one. They have been doing maintenance work on the buildings, which had deteriorated quite a lot, and are trying to make the place more habitable. There are a couple of others living on the property, who are not monastics, but form part of the wider community.

Earlier in the week I took Tim Sparks of Durban to go and spend a few days with them. Though they are not really geared to receive vistitors, certainly not in large numbers, it is possible now for people who are interested in the monastic life to go and spend some time with them, for prayer, work and study.

Br Justin, Tim Sparks, Fr Seraphim

Please pray for them!

Have crackers brought the mighty Google to its knees?

Since yesterday, every time I've tried to read my Gmail I get the message "The server at www.google.com is taking too long to respond."

A few days ago people who read Usenet newsgroups via Googlegroups were reporting delays in posting, or even an absence of new posts. Now it seems to extend to Gmail as well.

Facebook and WordPress seem to come up quickly enough, though there also seem to be problem with Twitter. But there the main page comes up pretty quickly. It's only when I try to log in that I get them message "The connection has timed out. The server at twitter.com is taking too long to respond."

So have crackers brought even the mighty Google to its knees?

Yesterday the Vodacom cellphone network was having problems, though spokesmen for the company denied that it was connected to their switching off subscribers who had failed to register their SIM cards in terms of RICA.

Perhaps I need to register Gmail in terms of RICA as well?

Though when looking for a link to explain RICA, the Google search engine timed out as well, but Bing came up immediately. Does that mean that Google as a verb is a thing of the past? We'll no longer google for information, we'll bing for it instead?

The problem appears to extend to blogs hosted by Google's Blogspot site as well. I am able to read my Blogspot blogs, Notes from underground and HayesGreene Family History, but I can't log in to write new posts.

African Initiatives in Healing Ministry

African Initiatives in Healing Ministry by Lilian Dube

I can't really write a review of this book, since I am one of the authors, and also edited the whole text to prepare it for publication. So here's the blurb that says what it's about

Healing ministry is becoming more prominent in many different Christian traditions in Southern Africa. In the past, it was largely confined to the 'Spirit-type' African Independent Churches (AICs), where it was (and still is) a recruitment technique par excellence. For these denominations, healing is central to the mission, and the church is primarily seen as a healing institution. In the Western Initiated Churches (WICs), healing was earlier seen as peripheral, but has become more central in recent years.

This book focuses on churches' healing ministries in Zimbabwe, looking at the historical setting and the background to Christianity. The book examines the traditional religion among the Shona people of Zimbabwe, as well as the healing traditions in African independent churches in general. It consists of four case studies of healing in different Christian denominations in Zimbabwe: two African independent churches and two Western-initiated churches (Roman Catholic and Anglican). The book also looks at the wider application of the case studies, and the general implications for Christianity in Africa.

This book certainly isn't the last word on the topic, but Christian healing ministry in Africa has taken many forms, from church-sponsored clinics and hospitals practising Western medicine to travelling tent evangelists conducting healing "crusades" and Zionist prophets giving purgatives and emetics and a whole lot more besides. One can make lots of generalisations and talk in generalities, but where this book starts is with the concrete practice of four different groups, each with its own approach to healing ministry. While they are all located in Zimbabwe, one can find similar examples in other parts of the continent.

Lilian Dube looks at the Zvikomborera Apostolic Faith Church, whose prophet/healer, Agnes Majecha, is known to specialise in neutralising zvikwambo, magical objects that have got out of control. People might buy a chikwambo from a traditional healier as a talisman to ensure health and prosperity, but it tends to become a burden, and then people find it is hard to get rid of it.

Lilian Dube also compares the role of women in healing ministry in traditional African religion and Christianity, using Agnes Majecha as an example of the latter.

Tabona Shoko looks at healing ministry in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, and especially the ministry of Fr Lazarus Muyambi in the Anglican Church, and Fr Augustine Urayai in the Roman Catholic Church. One of the things I fund quite interesting here was that the Anglican healing ministry was linked to a community of nuns, and that something similar had happened about 1500 kilometres away in Zululand. Tabona Shoko also examines the role of the St Elijah Church, an African Independent Church that broke away from the Lutheran Church.

My task was to try to draw these different strands together and to compare them with healing ministries in other parts of Africa and the world.

The retail price of the book in South Africa is R170.00, and it may be ordered from Unisa Press or its overseas agencies.

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All Saints of Africa

Today we commemorated all the saints of Africa, and one of the things that stuck me is that there are so very few recent ones.

In the Orthodox Church the Sunday after Pentecost is All Saints day (that makes the Saturday after Pentecost Hallowe'en) and the following Sunday (ie today) all the saints of a particular coutnry or region are commemorated.

And one of the sad things about it is that there are so few saints in Africa after the 4th century.

There are lots of saints who died in the 3rd and 4th century persecutions, and some notable 4th century saints: theologians like St Athanasius, who was mainly responsible for eht Nicene Creed, which forms the first part of the Symbol of Faith. Monastic pioneers like St Anthony and St Pachomius. Missionaries like St Frumentius.

But after that, very few and none that I know of in Southern Africa. They're all north of the equator.

One of the better-known recent ones is St Nektarius of Pentapolis. But guess what — we kicked him out.

He was bishop of Pentapolis, and some of his colleagues denounced him to the Patriarch, and he was deposed. He was actually declaried a saint by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Perhaps that is why there are so few — the ones that the Lord does send us we treat so badly that he is perhaps reluctant to send any more.

 

Hair of the dog that bit you

"The bankers caused the disease: let them take the medicine." So read an English poster held up by one of the demonstrators in recent Greek protests over the austerity measures that the bankers' lackeys international community are seeking to impose on Greece.

The ostensible purpose of the "lifeline" that is being offered to "debt-mired" Greece it to get it out of debt. Greek debt crisis: eurozone ministers delay decision on €12bn lifeline | Business | The Guardian:

Eurozone governments have postponed a final decision on whether to throw debt-mired Greece a summer lifeline, saying Athens must force through harsh austerity measures before they will release €12bn of funds to keep the country's economy afloat and avert an international crisis.

But the real purpose is exactly the opposite. The purpose is to stop Greece spending money on life and health and peace, and get it to spend money on death and war. The aim is not to reduce Greece's debt, but to increase it. Democracy vs Mythology: The Battle in Syntagma Square | sturdyblog:

The first bail-out was designed to help Greek people, but unfortunately failed. It was not. The first bail-out was designed to stabilise and buy time for the Eurozone. It was designed to avoid another Lehman-Bros-type market shock, at a time when financial institutions were too weak to withstand it. In the words of BBC economist Stephanie Flanders: "Put it another way: Greece looks less able to repay than it did a year ago – while the system as a whole looks in better shape to withstand a default… From their perspective, buying time has worked for the eurozone. It just hasn't been working out so well for Greece." If the bail-out were designed to help Greece get out of debt, then France and Germany would not have insisted on future multi-billion military contracts. As Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the MEP and leader of the Green group in the European Parliament, explained: "In the past three months we have forced Greece to confirm several billion dollars in arms contracts. French frigates that the Greeks will have to buy for 2.5 billion euros. Helicopters, planes, German submarines."

The South African arms deal scandal has been going on for 16 years or more, but the Greek one outclasses it in every way.

The Catholic who led me to Orthodoxy

I was reminded by The Western Confucian: Simone Weil and Marshall McLuhan that next month is the centenary of the birth of Marshall McLuhan, whom the web site commemorating that event describes as

One of the most charismatic, controversial and original thinkers of our time whose remarkable perception propelled him onto the international stage, Marshall McLuhan is universally regarded as the father of communications and media studies and prophet of the information age.

The Western Confucian points to an article, "Divine Inspiration" by Jeet Heer | The Walrus | July 2011, which says:

McLuhan has strong claims to being the most important thinker Canada has ever produced. In his first book, The Mechanical Bride, published in 1951, he established himself in the emerging field of cultural studies by offering a caustic survey of the dehumanizing impact of popular magazines, advertising, and comic strips. By the 1960s, he had widened his lens to examine the power of media as a whole. In The Gutenberg Galaxy, he offered a map of modern history by highlighting the hitherto-unexplored effect of print in shaping how we think. This was followed by Understanding Media, which prophesied that new electronic media would rewire human consciousness just as effectively as print once did, giving birth to a "global village" where people all over the world would be linked via communication technology.

I first heard of Marshall McLuhan when I was a student at Durham University in the UK, and Durham was host to an experimental drama festival, which attracted university drama groups from all over Britain. Exams were over, the long summar vacation was about to begin, and the term was winding down with punting and parties. On Sunday 18 June 1967

In the evening another party, this time in Grads House garden. Afterwards went down to the Chinese restaurant for some food, Sarah's being closed, and then returned to college and sat on the pavement outside the main college, talking. Along came Mark Powell, bringing some people who were in Durham for the experimental theatre thing, and they wanted ten people dressed as priests to walk across their scene in the middle, so some of us there agreed to do this. One of the experimental theatre people, John Baldwin, came down to have coffee with us in Bow Cottage. He was doing fine arts at Leeds Art College, and seems to go a bundle on the destructive art kick. He kept dropping names none of us had ever heard of, including a cat called McLuhan who is apparently the high priest of the iconoclasts who proved to him (John Baldwin) that painting doesn't mean anything and that electronics are tactile media of art. He seems a trifle mixed-up, though.

I can't remember the other names he dropped, but the name of Marshall McLuhan stuck with me, and I bought his books on understanding media, which helped as a kind of interpretive framework for my first real encounter with Orthodox Christianity, which took place about 9 months later, in Holy Week and Easter 1968, and which I have described quite fully in Notes from underground: The ikon in an age of neo-tribalism.

So I have good reason to remember Marshall McLuhan and his message that the medium is the massage.

Book review: The secret speech

The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The protagonist of this book is Moscow homicide detective Leo Demidov, who also featured in Tom Rob Smith's earlier book, Child 44. But though there is plenty of homicide in this book, there is little detecting. This is not a whodunit.

The bulk of the book is set in the period of the "Khrushchev thaw" in the Soviet Union, when, in his eponymous secret speech to the 20th Communist Party Congress, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's dictatorship, the police state, and the Stalinist policy of arbitrary detention and sometimes liquidation of political dissenters.

During this period millions of political prisoners were released, and the liberalisation policy did not meet with the approval of hard-line conservatives. It was opposed particularly by some factions in the KGB, the secret police, and led to power struggles, with some trying to promote and some trying to hinder liberalisation. It is around this that the plot of the novel is built, and particulalry the fear of some KGB members that the newly-released political prisoners might seek vengeance on those who denounced and arrested them.

In the beginning the description of the setting is fairly convincing, and in many ways it reminded me of the atmosphere in South Africa 21 years ago, after F.W. de Klerk's speech of 2 February 1990. De Klerk's speech was not secret, but it had a similar effect on society. To some it gave hope of freedom, to others fear of vengeance.

But after the promising beginning beginning the book becomes less convincing as the author tries to move the main characters to every scene of action in the period, from the Gulag to the Hungarian Uprising. He propagates the view that the Hungarian Uprising was not spontaneous, but that it was stage-managed by a Stalinist clique in Russia to try to check Khrushchev's reform process. I'm not sufficiently clued up on history of the period to know if this was actually the case, and perhaps some historians have propounded such a view or have found evidence for such things, but it was not something I had heard of before.

Of course that would not make Smith the first novelist to manipulate history in favour of plot, and to paint "what if?" scenarios. It's just that in this case the main purpose seems to be to get the characters to the scene of the action, and it doesn't come off very well.

Another bit of historical revisionism, which is even less convincing, is Smith's use and portrayal of the Orthodox Church. The book opens with a scene clearly based on the actual demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in central Moscow. Thereafter the Orthodox crucifix reappears in the book as a symbol of the search for revenge — revenge on those who denounced, arrested and sent people to the prison camps. A priest in one of the prison camps apparently acquiesces in this search for revenge and seems to believe that it is quite justified and only to be expected.

Orthodox crucifix

Far be it from me to suggest that Orthodox Christians are such super saints as to never have any thoughts of taking revenge on those who have harmed them. But Orthodox spirituality is such that to entertain such thoughts is a sin to be confessed, the encouragement of an evil passion. In all Orthodox manuals of devotion, in all Orthodox spiritual teaching, the most serious obstacle to receiving Holy Communion is enmity with others and the desire for revenge. This is an absolute incompatibility. The fact that the priest character has no qualms of conscience about this, and sees no need to excuse his behaviour, even to himself, makes him altogether unconvincing. And making the Orthodox crucifix a symbol of vengeance and the overriding desire for revenge seems utterly incongruous.

The Orthodox approach to the exaction of vengeance for past wrongs can perhaps be symbolised by what actually happened in the case of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, demolished in the Bolshevik era. It was rebuilt in the form of a replica of the original, and so perhaps stands as a symbol, not of vengeance, but of restorative justice.

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Who makes news?

The news of two Franciscan friars who were twins, and their death on the same way, has received quite quite a lot of international publicity. St. Bonaventure Brothers Inseparable to the End – Dan Barry – NYTimes.com:

Two weeks ago, the twins died on the same day in a Florida hospital; they were 92. Brother Julian died in the morning and Brother Adrian died in the evening, after being told of Julian's death. Few who knew them were surprised, and many were relieved, as it would have been hard to imagine one surviving without the other.

But the cultivated anonymity of the twins died with them. News of their deaths, beginning with an article in The Buffalo News, traveled around the world, stunning the Catholic university's officials. Think of it: eminent Franciscan scholars die with little notice, but the same-day passing of an identical and unassuming pair of Franciscan grunts attracts international attention.

As they say in the classics, "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted the humble and meek."

Heartwarming, isn't it?

But then my cynicism kicks in, and I think that it was probably only because no notable celebs had died in the same week.

If they'd picked the same week as Michael Jackson or Princess Diana, no one would ever have heard of them.

But perhaps it's the Lord's timing, just to remind us.

Mission-shaped church

Last Saturday I went to a seminar on "The mission-shaped church" at the Dutch Reformed Church of Kameeldrif, not far from where we live. I didn't have any great expectations, but thought it might be a way of catching up with some people I know. But it exceeded my expectations and was quite interesting, and even inspiring in a way.

Bishop Graham Cray

The first speaker was Graham Cray, an Anglican bishop and leader of Fresh Expressions in the UK. What he said was mostly theoretical, about the need for the church to be missional in engaging people in their culture. In this there was little "fresh" about the expressions. I've heard people saying that kind of thing for most of my life. At one point he mentioned someone who had been trained for ministry in the UK 40 years ago, who remarked that they were trained for ministry in a world that no longer exists. I attended a theological college in the UK 45 years ago, and that world didn't even exist back then. The theory is well known, and it is almost old hat. What is needed is some practical examples of how people have managed to actually apply the theory.

He did, however, give a couple of practical examples.

One was of a large Methodist Church in the centre of Liverpool, which because of the changing demographics lost its congregation. The building fell into disrepair, and eventually it was sold, and there was no Methodist ministry in the centre of the city. So the Methodists began to look at who was actually there, and found that a lot of the people living in the centre of the city were actually homeless. So the appointed a minister to simply walk the streets and meet homeless people, which she did for a year, and suddenly God told her that they should bake bread. So she organised the ovens and got some homeless people together and they baked bread. That made a marvellous change for people who were used to eating stale bread that they fished out of dustbins. This became a regular thing, and eventually a community formed, and next to the room where they baked the bread a prayer ministry developed.

There is much talk these days of narrative theology, and perhaps this is an instance of it. The narrative theology is far more effective in getting the point across than all the theoretical stuff. It provides the inspiration to "go and do likewise" — not trying to clone other people's experience, but looking for ways to respond similarly to needs in one's own context. In the academic world "anecdotal" tends to be a disparaging term, with the implication that something is not "scientific", but narrative theology is anecdotal. It can't be anything else.

Another thing that bishop Cray said was that the geographical parish system in the UK was leaving large chunks of the world unreached by the gospel. Many people did not interact with others in geographical neighbourhoods any more, but rather in networks that are largely non-geographical. But again, people were saying that back in the 1950s and 60s. Back then they talked mainly about the alternative as being in the workplace, where most people's lives were spent. Networks are different today, because since the Reagan-Thatcher years the "workplace" is something real to a diminishing group of people. Yet the principle remains.

Willem Pretorius

Willem Pretorius then spoke on an analysis of three Dutch Reformed communities – one suburban, one periurban, and one concentrated on students. The difficulty was in having mission-minded congregations, especially since the Dutch Reformed ethos had so long being that the church was an ethnic one, it was for the Afrikaner people, so the concept of mission, and possibly bringing in people of different cultures and ethnicities was difficult, and was perceived by some as a threat.

Marius Nel spoke on statistics. and saying that while most white Afrikaans-speaking members of the Dutch Reformed Churches appeared to think of mission as being mainly among black people, statistics showed that proportionally more black people in South Africa were Christians, and that Christianity had been in decline among white Afrikaners since 1985.

A group of Presbyterians from Malawi, whose church had been planted by Dutch Reformed missionaries from South Africa, spoke about how the Reformed Protestant tradition placed great emphasis on the Word, and the reading of scripture, but Africa tended to be an oral culture rather than one of the written word, and so people did not read the scriptures much. They overcame this by a programme of getting people to read and discuss the book of Acts in groups.

I found much food for thought in all this, and much to interest me as an Orthodox missiologist.

The story of the Methodist church in Liverpool, for example, reminded me of the Orthodox Cathedral of St Constantine and Helen in Joubert Park, Johannesburg. Most of the people who attend moved long ago to the suburbs, and the church has almost no influence on the neighbourhood, Joubert Park, Berea and Hillbrow, which is a very cosmopolitan area. And lots of homeless people too. The nearby synagogue, like the Methodist Church in Liverpool, has been sold, I think to a Neopentecostal church,and a new one has been built in Houghton, a formerly posh residential suburb, which is now, however gradually being transformed into office parks, so perhaps they'll have to move again sooner than they think.

But it is interesting to see how the network/neighbourhood thing has been reversed. St Costa & Nellie is a network church, not a neighbourhood one. People are drawn to it from East, West, North and South by ethnicity and sentiment. But the neighbourhood is untouched. We have several clued-up and able Congolese church members who could walk the streets like the Methodist minister in Liverpool and get to know some of the communities of immigrants from Francophone Africa, and find out what their needs and concerns are. I once had some experience of doing that in a very different setting, in a small town in Zululand (see Makhalafukwe | Khanya, my own attempt at narrative theology). We have the resources, we are just not using them to do the right things.

However much the Orthodox Churches may differ from the Dutch Reformed Churches theologically, there are a lot of sociological (and hence missiological) similarities, and especially the problem of ethnicity in the church, which tends to inhibit mission awareness. And I was struck by how apt we were to make exactly the same mistakes, especially the temptation to be engaged in what the Orthodox call "philanthropic work" without being engaged with people as people, or with communities.

Some participants in the Mission-shaped Church seminar at Kameeldrif, 11 June 2011