Tag Archives: religion

Cathedral no. 3 and Mosque no. 1

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Once upon a time I had an interview at Warwick University – which turned out quite well – which meant having to spend the previous night in Coventry. So I had an evening in a new town to myself, and did some wandering around, and came across the two cathedrals – the gleaming new post-war barn and the stone skeleton of the old one next to it, burned out by Luftwaffe incendiary bombs. And as I learned the story of the new cathedral, and how German volunteers helped with the work and how it has developed a worldwide ministry of reconciliation, I fell in love with it and decided I simply had to write a story about it.

It took a few years – had to become a writer, first – but I did write it, and it was awful, thrumming with love and Christianity and general goodness, and for sheer ickiness it broke all known records. Fortunately I could tell it icked and sat on it.

Many years after that, by a miracle, good friend Gus Smith (who writes as Gus Grenfell) suggested a way it could be de-icked, at least a little, and I’m eternally grateful to him for the suggestion, which a character takes up in the last few paragraphs. In fact I would go so far as to say atheist Gus (albeit with a Methodist minister father) came up with a much more Christian solution than I was managing: I love these little ironies. Residual ick may lurk in some sentences but overall it is much, much stronger than it used to be. The story finally got written, and published in Interzone, where it came 46th= in the annual readers’ poll, but what do they know? I called it “Cathedral No. 3”, unaware (after three years living in Coventry) that in actual historical fact any new cathedral would be cathedral no. 4.

All this brought to mind by the move afoot in New York to build a mosque near to the Ground Zero site. “Near” is a relative term: one of the comments over at Making Light’s take on the story reminds us that in a city anywhere is “near” somewhere else.

Not dismissing for one second the pain felt by those who lost loved ones on 9/11, it’s this kind of spirit that always lets society move on and improve upon the past. Whenever dictatorships are replaced with stable democracies, or people of different races accept integration as the norm, or no one cares any longer if you’re Protestant or Catholic, it’s because people let go of the hurt. Or, failing that, just shut up and don’t talk about it and go to their graves bitter and wizened but they keep it to themselves and the poison doesn’t leak out into a new generation.

I think a mosque near Ground Zero would be a jolly good idea.

Present danger

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Finish this sentence from a classic hymn, concentrating especially on the next noun you’re going to use.
“Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were …”
You’re an intelligent reader (look around you on screen: QED) and doubtless went for “an offering far too small.” Which is the right answer. Well done. I won’t insult you by reminding you that this is of course the last verse of “When I survey the wondrous cross”, and it finishes:
“Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my life, my soul, my all.”
Oh, drat.
Sadly, you are not the fool who wrote the version displayed in church this morning that would have it as “… a present far too small.”
A present? A present? Can you honestly not tell the difference between a present, a token exchanged between friends, and an offering, a sacrificial presentation with the potential range to include absolutely everything you have? Who gives God presents? (Apart from these guys.) Can you not see what Isaac Watts was trying to say? Can you really not?
Anyhoo. I’m very glad to report that the congregation was far more old school than I would usually have given them credit for and most seemed to sing “offering” too. As it should be.
Present. Honestly!

If I’m ever this publicly wrong, I hope I can be as publicly graceful about admitting it

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A.N. Wilson has been one of my least favourite individuals for a very long time. A man with nothing whatsoever useful or informed to say, he has epitomised all that is wrong with luvvie-journalism amongst the Hampstead set, in particular with his habit of popping up as an ever reliable prissy, over-enunciated talking head to do down any kind of religion that doesn’t match his aesthetically perfect high church atheism. He has been religion’s Brian Sewell, another example of the kind of man Gilbert & Sullivan might have had in mind:

“Of course you will pooh-pooh whatever’s fresh and new
and declare it’s crude and mean,
For Art stopped short in the cultivated court
of the Empress Josephine.”

There’s a new translation of the Bible? A new prayer book? Get A.N. Wilson in to be rude about it! I would find myself yelling at the radio as the Today programme played: “you’re an atheist! What’s it to you that people who actually want Christianity to mean something have written a liturgy that people born this century can understand? You want to dress up in silly robes and spout 17th century English? Be my guest! There’s no law to stop you! Have a party at your house! Invite a friend! Invite both of them! But belt up about the rest of us.”

Except that … apparently he’s not an atheist any more and I find his account of his reconversion, or deunconversion, really quite moving.

Probably because I happen to agree with a lot of it. Consider lines like:

“… the existence of language is one of the many phenomena – of which love and music are the two strongest – which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true. As a working blueprint for life, as a template against which to measure experience, it fits.”

Well, quite! What more can I say? (Later edit: the bit that I especially agree with is in bold. The evolution of language and music may or may not have a bearing.)

On other matters I suspect we never will see eye to eye this side of the hereafter, and I’m pretty certain neither of us would ever enjoy having the other to dinner. But this is a very good start.