John Heron Project

Anne Primavesi is a feminist/ecological/radical theologian. On 23rd February this year, she presented a talk to the SCM conference. I’ve been transcribing it so that I can put bits in Movement. It was a really long talk, and very little of it is making into the magazine. But these, I thought, seem appropriate for Easter, where we remember violence and dispossession, and the act of making something good come out of the worst of things.

Very few of the people who really need to read these three excerpts will read them; those who do will not take them seriously. But then, that’s the way with all this stuff. You only preach to the converted on the internet. (more…)

My friend Pete Green wrote this somewhere you can’t actually read:

It is one of capitalism’s massive perversities that, while the amount of human work that needs doing to keep us all healthy and happy has declined enormously over the past century, rather than even considering a change to the completely arbitrary pattern of ‘five days on, two days off’, we just fill the gap by inventing stupid pointless jobs which wreck the planet and our souls.

Which is true. Pete’s song “Everything’s Dead Pretty When It Snows” (download here) is, in fact, about this sort of thing. Since I’m in full plug mode, I should mention that Pete’s also recently released a single.

So yeah, my Star Wars rant got a lot of comment, some of which turned out to be far too vitriolic and personal for me to allow it to appear on the site (hurrah for comment moderation, say I).

People care about it far too much.

Anyway, I quoted Daniel Berrigan’s review of the film.

Here’s a much longer quote from his review, written after he saw it in the cinema in the company of a group of enthusiastic priests and nuns in 1977. (more…)

This was written by the late Colin Winter, Bishop of Namibia in exile and anti-apartheid campaigner, in Movement, back in 1980.

…Here we come to the important theological question. The very nature of God is revealed in his attitude to the poor, and this is basically a prejudiced God I am describing. This is a God whose prejudice is always towards poor people. Is this the God you’ve had described to you in your theology classes? No, you’ve had both, you’ve had a God who can love the murderer as well as the murdered, who can love the exploiter in the same proportion as the exploited. This drives poor people nuts, and it isn’t the God of the Old and New Testaments.

What then is your future as [activist Christians]? You are either for the rich in Britain, and all that your university education can claim for you, or you’re going to do an amazing, sacrificial leap of love. It’s called kenosis in Biblical terms, stripping yourself of privilege in order to identify yourselves with those who are marginalised, unwanted, exploited. This is what it means — solidarity with the poor. Our task, it seems to me… is to be aware of the causes of poverty and to struggle against them.

Yes, I still believe in God, and I believe that God is prejudiced. And I may have to accept the possibility that one of the people against whom He is prejudiced is me.

Bryan gives us a mildly heretical thought on that most New Testament writers:

Consider the following hypothesis:

The ‘apostle’ Paul was not a Christian convert in the sense that he believed in Jesus as the Christ. Rather, he was an persecutor-turned-infiltrator who knowingly and intentionally subverted the Christian spiritualistic cult of tongues, miracles, healing, and apocalypses into a pseudo-Platonic philosophy more palatable to his cosmopolitan sensibilities and less offensive to his Jewish heritage.

It’s not new, of course—the idea goes back to the second century. But (apart from that last clause—Paul’s staunchest opponents were Jewish Christians) you can’t help thinking it sometimes.

I’m going to republish my legendary* rant about why Star Wars is crap sometime soon. In the meantime, here’s science fiction author Ursula LeGuin on the film, from 1978:

What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hideyhole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luck Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there’s a message there, I don’t think I want to hear it.

__________
*As in, a couple people like it.

Falwell.

Bear with me for a bit before I get to the good stuff, because this is relevant.

My current work involves researching a lot of late Roman and Byzantine stuff, and I have a big fat book about patristic theology in front of me on my desk right now. So here’s an only slightly abridged quote from the Obituary of St. Cyril, (supposedly) by the Christian bishop Theodoret, who in his lifetime was renowned, believe it or not, for being a thoroughly decent, forgiving sort of chap. After his death, he got anathematised as a heretic, but that’s OK, because I’m a heretic too. Look him up.

It was originally written in AD444, but — bearing in mind a few patristic quirks of style and 1600 years of distance — it perfectly encapsulates my thoughts on Falwell. Yeah, old Roman stuff, but go on, read it. It’s worth it. It really is.

At last, and with great difficulty, the villain is gone. The good and the gentle pass away all too soon; the bad prolong their life for years.

The Giver of all good, I think, removes the former before their time from the troubles of humanity; he frees them like victors from their contests and transports them to the better life… They on the other hand who love and practise wickedness are allowed a little longer to enjoy this present life…

This wretch, however, has not been dismissed by the Ruler of our souls like other men… Knowing that the man’s malice has daily been growing and doing harm to the body of the Church, the Lord has lopped him off like a plague and taken away the reproach from the children of Israel. His survivors are indeed delighted at his departure.

The dead, maybe, are sorry.

There is some ground of alarm lest they should be so much annoyed at his company to send him back to us, or that he should run away…

Great care must therefore be taken… to tell the guild of undertakers to lay a very big heavy stone on his grave, for fear he should come back again and show his changeable mind once more. Let him take his new doctrines to the shades below and preach to them all day and all night.

We are not at all afraid of his dividing them by making public addresses against true religion… He will be stoned not only by ghosts learned in God’s law, but also by… God’s enemies.

But I am wasting words. The poor chap is silent whether he wants to be or not… I really am sorry for the poor chap. For the news of his death has not caused me unmixed delight, but is tempered by sadness. On seeing the Church freed from a plague of this kind, I am glad and rejoice; but I am sorry and I really do mourn when I think that the wretch knew no rest from his crimes, but went on attempting greater and more grievous ones until he died…

Be it then granted to [your] prayers that he may obtain mercy and pity, that God’s boundless clemency might surpass his wickedness.

—Theodoret, Ep.181.

Becky on the sanctity of life (also, cows):

And it got me thinking, too, about the Christian writer Albert Schweitzer’s doctrine of the Reverence for Life, which I was reading in bed last night. He talks of the three temptations we all must face when trying to protect and conserve life and live an ethic of compassion - the sense that we cannot do anything about causing suffering, and that it is better to simply accept it, the fear of being involved in the pain of others (but to be involved with their pain is also to share in their joy - is it possible to love without also sharing in pain?) and the temptation to desensitize ourselves to the suffering around us, as a method of coping with the necessary pains of the world.

He concludes: “Wherever you are, as far as you can, you should bring redemption from the misery brought into the world by the self-contradictory will of life, redemption that only he who has this knowledge can bring. The small amount you can do is actually much if it only relieves pain, suffering, and fear from any living being, be it human or any other creature. The preservation of life is the true joy.”

Labour held the Swansea West seat, but didn’t do quite as well for them across Wales.

The BNP got a scary number of votes, but not enough to get a seat. Still, that’s not good news.

Becky writes about democracy and idealism:

Now, I’m more realistic. I don’t believe any one political party is the answer to all the nation’s problems. In fact, I don’t think any of us can afford to believe so. Politicians, like the rest of us, are subject to corruption, and pride and hubris - and it is up to us, the electorate, to keep their feet on the ground and remind them of their responsibilities.

I never stopped believing in a world of peace, tolerance and equality - the difference is that, now, I believe that it starts at home. If I want my nation to aspire to these values, then I have to start by living them out myself.

If our politicians no longer see the need to work for the age-old values of justice, mercy and peace, then, perhaps, as an electorate, it is time we gave them back their sense of vision and, instead of being hopeless cynics, started being hopeful, idealistic activists. Just a thought.

Thomas Sutcliffe in today’s Independent, brings up the recent film Amazing Grace, and asks the question: if we really want to follow in the steps of Wilberforce, what battles should we actually be fighting?

The proper question to ask, is what would be the modern equivalent of Wilberforce’s crusade. Which political campaign today would replicate the scale of the task he took on? It would have to be a practice so woven into the economic life of the nation that its abolition appears impossible. It would also have to be an institution that is defended as an unpleasant but pragmatic necessity. And opposition to it would have to appear almost childish in its idealism… an expedition to cloud-cuckoo land.

…

The best candidate I can think of would be to propose that Britain abandon all involvement in the arms trade - from handguns up. Couldn’t possibly be abolished, the government would say - thousands of British jobs depend on it (just as they said of the slave trade). If we didn’t profit it from it, they would argue, far less responsible nations would get rich filling the gap (just as they said of the slave trade). It would, they might conclude, gravely imperil the national interest (just as they said of the slave trade). If you want a share of Wilberforce’s glory, that’s what you have to imagine taking on - rather than signing up for a battle won 200 years ago.

How much do I agree with this chap? Ooh, take a wild guess.

Campaign against the Arms Trade
Fellowship of Reconciliation

thanks to

…according to Stephen Colbert. He’s all right, he is.

Anyway, this is quite old, but I found this today. It’s by one Ron Suskind, and it appeared in the New York Times Magazine on 17th October 2004.

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

I wonder if that really happened. Because it’s bloody terrifying.

On March 17th, an anti-war protest assembled in front of the Pentagon, the home of the US military’s central command. A political rapper with the unlikely stage name of Immortal Technique was on his way to the protest, where he was going to perform. He got stopped on the way.

Here’s his statement. Mostly, it’s nothing you haven’t heard before. But the PS is interesting:

“But the sad truth is that 3000 years from now if humanity still exists people will probably look back on our society and say, “look at these people they prayed to a man nailed to piece of wood, and the saddest part was that they couldn’t even follow the most basic commandment of what he said, which was treat others the way you wish to be treated.” …

“Knowing how Jesus brought drama to the Holy Temple back in the day because of the way the people had made the name of God into a mechanism to increase their own personal wealth… I think that the people who work for the administration and more specifically the president that are reading this right now should let him know that if Jesus was alive, he’d probably spit in your face.”

Would he? Maybe. Hard to tell. I’m not sure the Jesus I read about would express contempt exactly like that. But the sentiment? That I can get behind. Not that I think the President’s going to be reading it.

via

(PS: further to that, Mr. Technique’s statement also contains a link to what must be one of the vilest things I have seen for a long, long time.)

Every night, I read my little boy a story. Or a poem. Like the poems by AA Milne, which portray a world that never really existed for most people, but which still sometimes say things that are true. Like this one, which could be about me:

If people ask me,
I always tell them:
“Quite well, thank you, I’m very glad to say.”
If people ask me,
I always answer:
“Quite well, thank you, how are you today?”
I always answer,
I always tell them,
If they ask me
Politely…
BUT SOMETIMES

                  I wish

                              That they wouldn’t.

I’m not the only one who hates the Mac adverts featuring Mitchell and Webb (I mean! Mitchell and Webb! Lads, what were you thinking? Actually I’ll tell you what you were thinking: you were thinking of the paycheque). Charlie Brooker, the most reliable and funniest misanthrope in journalism, writes:

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, “PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.” In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

Many of my friends and clients use Macs. I still like them, though. The people. Not the Macs.

I posted this over on Polizeros as well, but it’s good enough to be mentioned twice. It’s from an old article by the redoubtable Umberto Eco. I love that guy. He combines great writing with humanity.

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

I think this is truer now than it was in 1995 when Eco wrote it. And no, not just in the US.

ee expresses the paradox of the liberal Westerner’s concern for the environment in a thoughtful post on the Stern report.

I cheered the need for green taxes, whilst looking anxiously at the £s mounting whilst I filled up.

I applauded the man who said that we need to cut food miles, whilst munching my blueberry muffin.

I scorned the scientist who said climate change might be ok really (we’ll just be a little cosier) from my comfy armchair by the gas heated radiator.

It’s funny because it’s true.

You may know I read the ForteanTimes. Anyway, this months it’s their D* V**** C*** special themed/blatant cash-in issue. Hoo-ray.

Now, like I’ve said before, the FT wildly varies between lunacy and hard-headed scepticism. This month is no exception, what with career nutjobs Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince writing on the Priory of Sion (it’s real!) and social worker-cum-voice of reason Kevin McClure writing about why something else these same people wrote is very silly indeed. And then there’s the Hierophant, who writes, among other stuff:

That anyone would trust in the validity of anything in the Da Vinci Code smacks of grim proof of a paradox: the reading public’s abysmal illiteracy. As reviewer Simon Brooks suggested, the novel seems to have been written for “Americans with the attention span of a gnat and the depth of cultural knowledge of a sea cucumber”. In short, if you treat Brown’s book simply as a text, it starts to crumble away.

Anyway, there’s also, every month, a rather ghoulish section which rounds up unusual deaths in the news. I tend to skip it, usually. However, I didn’t this month, and I saw this:

ABBOT ALAN REES, 64, LEAPT 30ft (9m) onto concrete from a second-storey balcony at Belmont Abbey last October and died of head injuries the following day. He had been reading the Da Vinci Code, which made him question his faith. The Swansea-born Catholic monk, who wrote music for Pope John-Paul’s visit to Wales in 1982, had suffered depression since a mental breakdown in 1993, but Dan Brown’s potboiler was evidently the last straw. Western Daily Press, 21 Mar; D. express, 22 Mar 2006.

Observing that having to get through Brown’s prose is enough to drive anyone over the edge would be tasteless, so I’ll refrain.

Ashley’s bought some new shoes. In her meditation on this momentous occasion, she sums up, in one sentence, the whole phenomenon of fashion.

They make me feel sexy and cool and powerful and brave and feminine and interesting and provocative and just a little bit wobbly when walking down a slope.

Why the hell aren’t you reading Madeleine’s blog? It’s ace and you have no reason to be ignoring it.

Here’s a recent entry about haircuts, which is par for the course: a blog entry, entirely in rhyme, which works for me because it makes the minutiae of life funny and interesting, as it should be. Madeleine’s voice is tremendously individual. She works hard on her poetry, making it look easy in the way that only someone who cares about it can.

And then there’s that link hidden in the middle of the poem, to something else, something more personal and perhaps more serious. It’s written in the same breezy way, making it honest and funny and sad and true.

So, you got out alright, but you’ve got to go back
Every other week for a chemical attack
They put a tube in your arm and the world goes black
Check it out, you’re the leader of the Hodgkin’s pack.

Syringes and swabs round a girl so blue
Fourteen shots of Neupogen just for you
A jab in the belly, a wince, or two
Now throw all the used ones in a needle stew.

There are chunks of hair all over your bed
So you’re going bald — what — you’d rather be dead?
But some jackass asked you why you wore a napkin on your head
Well, would you prefer to do a combover instead?

Go read the rest of it. You won’t regret it.

Via Dadology:

Tom Cruise is going to make Katie Holmes keep quiet during the birth of their kid…

Scientology couple JOHN TRAVOLTA and KELLY PRESTON are urging KATIE HOLMES to have a ’silent birth’ when she delivers fiance TOM CRUISE’s baby next year (06) and follow the church’s strict doctrines.

Scientologists believe children should be brought into the world without any fuss and be allowed to quietly get used to their surroundings. That means no music, no chatting and no expressions of pain from the mother.

Preston explains, “It’s just because everything in moments of pain is really recorded and you want to have that (the birth) peaceful and clear of sort of suggestions or different words that can then affect them (babies) in their future.”

Ri-ight. That’s nuts, that is. Dadology puts it like this:

…any man who can suggest this to his wife is either under the influence of a very bizarre cult or a total tosser.

Now I’m with my paternal colleague in this.

But, you know, when I was in LA back in February, I met about four people who had Tom Cruise stories. Apparently, if they’re true, he is a) a really nice bloke although b) not too bright. I also own a copy of L Ron Hubbard’s book, which has a disclaimer in the front cover, saying that if the book screws up your life, it’s your responsibility and not the Church of Scientology’s fault, and you can’t sue them.

So, I’d probably have to settle for the former, given the evidence.

Two Drunk Moose Invade Home for Elderly.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden Nov 8, 2005 — They rarely have problems with drunks or rowdy animals, but residents of an elderly home in southern Sweden had to deal with both when a pair of intoxicated moose invaded the premises.

The moose, a cow and her calf, had become drunk over the weekend by eating fermented apples they found outside the home in Sibbhult, southern Sweden, said Anna Karlsson, who works there.

Police managed to scare them off once, but the large mammals returned to get more of the tempting fruits. This time the moose were drunk and aggressive, forcing police to send for a hunter with a dog to make them leave.

Police did not pursue the culprits, but made sure all apples were picked up from the area, local police chief Bengt Hallberg said. No one was hurt.

Thanks to Sue for the link.

An aside from Saturday’s Guardian:

… a friend of mine once worked in Yellowstone National Park - would-be home of Yogi and Boo Boo - and as part of his training he was shown some genuine, no-holds-barred, When Animals Attack nature-porn. In this hugely unnerving home movie, a Korean tourist, no doubt sated on bad Disney movies about placid beasties, approaches a full-grown moose and, quite insanely, puts his baby daughter on its back and poses for the movie camera. The moose, huge and fearsome, tosses the baby 20 feet in the air - miraculously, she survived - and then, with astounding violence, mauls and stomps the father to death. A moose’s head alone is the size of a tall man’s torso - and that’s without the oar-sized antlers. The moose was later shot for exercising its instincts. The man died from being a moron. If only that moose could have talked.

Another one from Gibbon, describing where, in his opinion, the emperor Julian went wrong:

The conduct which disclaims the ordinary maxims of reason excites our suspicion and eludes our enquiry. Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity.

Funny how something written about the fourth century by someone in the seventeenth can have so much resonance for the twenty-first, isn’t it?

I’m back, then (thanks to Becks for holding the fort while I’ve been away - hope the story continues as well as it’s begun).

Anyway. This year’s holiday reading has been Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is not nearly as dull as you think it is.

It’s eminently quotable. Take for example the passage on the aftermath of the shock Roman defeat by the Goths at Hadrianople [sic] , where Gibbon talks about the effect this had on the Roman psyche, leading to vile treatment of Gothic prisoners by the Romans in the name of “homeland security”, and compares this to his own age:

(How far) the urgent consideration of the public safety… may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.

You and me both, Edward. You and me both.

From Charles Kingsley’s painfully didactic yet compassionate and policy-changing Victorian kids’ classic The Water Babies:

And first he went through Waste-paperland, where all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and there he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books out of bad ones; and a very good trade they drove thereby, especially among children.

And also, presumably, among fans of religious-themed conspiracy thrillers…

I wrote about this ages ago, but two things brought it back to mind.

Here’s one: My mate Bob thinks nonviolence is a mug’s game.

Hmm. Dunno about that. Sometimes I agree with Bob, sometimes I don’t. Here, I think he’s right out (apropos to nothing, Bob’s about thirty years older than me. I keep feeling like a Young Fogey to his Old Turk).

Now, It seems to me that there’s this current in Western (OK, specifically American) culture, on both left and right, conservative and liberal axes, that believes that violence is an adequate and complete solution, that it fixes things, that it sorts things out. Walter Wink called it “the Myth of Redemptive Violence”, and it boils down to the idea that violence is the only real solution for a greater, less principled, chaotic violence that it opposes.

I blame Hollywood. And Zane Grey, maybe. But mostly Hollywood. But then, look, I am still, believe it or not, a Christian, and to be honest, the evidence of the world around me only underlines my belief that violence’s only legacy is more violence, and that violence is no way to win anything.

Russian revolution: violent. Result: tyranny.

Gandhi’s revolution: nonviolent. Result: world’s largest democracy, still going just as strong as any of the other democracies, sixty-odd years down the line (compare Pakistan, whose founding was decidedly violent).

Yeah, I know. It’s a vast oversimplification. But dammit, Jim, I’m a talentless lickspittle hack from Swansea, not a political commentator in the Guardian.

Anyway, I got my complementary copy of this term’s Movement, in which my colleague David Anderson reviews Zhang Zimou’s beautiful but politically appalling film Hero.

(more…)

Yeah, I know. Song lyrics. Adolescent, tacky, banal. But wait: I heard this, and I thought. yes. This is exactly how it feels to suffer from depression.

I make no apologies for the language used.

Sometimes in the morning, I am petrified and can’t move
Awake but cannot open my eyes
And the weight is crushing down on my lungs, I know I can’t breathe
And I hope someone will help me this time

And your mother’s still calling you insane and high
Swearing it’s different this time
And you tell her to give in to the demons that possess her
And that God never blessed her insides

Then you hang up the phone and feel badly for upsetting things
Crawl back into bed to dream of a time
When your heart was open wide and you loved things just because
Like the sick and the dying

And sometimes when you’re on, you’re really fucking on
And your friends they sing along, and they love you
But the lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap
And it teases you for weeks in its absence

But you’ll fight and you’ll make it through
You’ll fake it if you have to
And you’ll show up for work with a smile

And you’ll be better, you’ll be smarter,
More grown up and a better daughter
(Or son) and a real good friend

And you’ll be awake and you’ll be alert
You’ll be positive, though it hurts
And you’ll laugh and embrace all your friends

And you’ll be a real good listener
You’ll be honest you’ll be brave
You’ll be handsome you’ll be beautiful

You’ll be happy

Your ship may be coming in
You’re weak, but not giving in
To the cries and the wails of the valley below
And your ship may be coming in
You’re weak, but not giving in
And you’ll fight it, you’ll go out fighting all of them.

-Rilo Kiley, A Better Son/Daughter (Sennett/Lewis)

Another day, another dollar…

…another irreplaceable chunk of a finite and rapidly passing lifetime.

-Calvin’s Dad, Calvin and Hobbes

Liam Purcell of SCM writes:

The atheists I know are prone to making sweeping dismissals of religion. I see similar comments in the media (quite often, in fact, being a Guardian reader). Even the British Humanist Society, an organisation I respect, has recently run a series of adverts which suggest their main function is to slag off religion, not to offer a positive alternative. I try to avoid getting into theological or sociological arguments all the time about this, but it bothers me.

It bothers me because people seem to suspend their rational approach when talking about religion, and make sweeping statements which lump in every religious believer with the fundamentalists. It seems divisive and unhelpful, and I know the same people would be far more reasonable when talking to an individual rather than making generalisations.

It bothers me because they’re missing what is, for me, most of the point about religion. I don’t think religion is purely an attempt to explain the world and provide a ‘factual’ explanation of how things work. Since the Enlightenment, most religious people (at least in the West) have accepted that science does a much better job of that. They look to religion for community, ethical guidelines and a shared story and worldview that can inspire them. The historical, factual truth of religious stories is less important than their power to bring people together. The only people nowadays who think religion is primarily about claims to factual truth seem to be religious fundamentalists - and atheists. I don’t want to be an apologist for organised religion - a lot of it is fundamentalist and needs to change. In fact, as a questioning agnostic person who’s interested in religion, I should find common ground with atheists against religious extremism. Instead I often feel I’m being lumped into the same category as the fundamentalists.

From Angela Carter’s short story “The Lady of the House of Love”:

To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them. Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man’s welfare and nothing at all to his bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only the most decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an instrument of harm?

Of course, quoting Angela Carter out of context is never really all that helpful (this is from a vampire story, found in The Bloody Chamber) but it’s still my Other Favourite Bicycle Passage.