The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity - more by Mark Greene

Changing Politics for Good?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:38:59 +0100

Mark Greene wonders whether Obama can restore our faith in politics

Barack Obama could well become the next President of the United States and, as far as much of the world’s ordinary citizens are concerned, that is much better news than the alternative. Indeed, apart from Mandela, no politician over the last ten years has caught the imagination of people beyond his own country more than Barack Obama, and no politician in the top 21 economies has managed to re-invigorate an interest in politics in his own nation in the way Obama has.

Nevertheless, Obamamania has caused hundreds of thousands of previously disengaged Americans to register to vote in the Democrat leadership race. Similarly, though McCain’s Republican fundraising machine has raised more than the Democrat Party machine, some 500,000 individuals gave money to Obama’s campaign in August alone. In fact, he goes into the closing weeks of the Presidential race with considerably more in his campaign treasury than McCain.

In sum, Obama has not only rebuffed Hilary Clinton’s considerable challenge but has overcome the cynicism or the apathy of many US citizens. And he has done it with a combination of breathtaking rhetorical skill, adept campaign management and a consistent, focused message that centres on two linked concepts – change and hope. And it is in their linkage that their power resides.

After all, it is one thing to call for change – every opposition party does the same – it is quite another to actually make people believe that it is possible and that it will be the right kind of change. And that is why Obama’s focus on hope is so important. In his Iowa acceptance speech, he put it this way:

“Many months we’ve been teased, even derided, for talking about hope but hope is not blind optimism. It is not ignoring the enormity of the
tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists that despite all the evidence to the contrary that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and work for it and to fight for it…”

The Invitation Christmas Card

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:28:15 +0100

LICC’s 2008 Christmas card features a previously unpublished and inspiring poem by Mark Greene – ‘The Invitation’.

It’s perfect for those wanting a card that captures the essence of Christmas in a way that is clear and contemporary, and that will capture people’s attention amidst the festive bustle, giving them cause to stop and reflect on the reason for the season.

Mis-Lit for Miserable Times?

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:28:33 +0100

You can tell a culture by the stories it tells.

So here’s a question: what can we tell about a culture that has suddenly developed a penchant for books and books and books of true stories about awful childhoods, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, serial rape, and criminal neglect?

What kind of sign of our times is it that there is now a section in Waterstones called ‘Painful Lives’. Borders, incidentally, are a mite more restrained and have dubbed their ‘Painful Lives’ section ‘Real Lives’, perhaps to distinguish it from Celebrity Biographies which they presumably consider to be about ‘Unreal Lives’. You may not be surprised to learn that there is no section called ‘Joyful Lives’ or ‘Worthwhile Lives’ or ‘Broadly Speaking, Quite Contented Lives’. No, the latest model on the bookshop catwalk, close, if not fast on the heels of Chick-lit and Lad-lit and no doubt Twit-lit, is Mis-lit, hobbling but still moving, bloody but unbowed.

A Plea for Modest Mission

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:21:33 +0100

The trouble with the word ‘mission’ is that it sounds too grand for ordinary life. Fine for high elves and kings in ranger’s clothing but for ordinary hobbits of the shire, ah, well, no, not for us. We know we’re meant to be involved in it, we know we’re meant to support it but it’s oh so associated with special events, special people and special places.

Still, not so long ago I found myself on the platform at Bond Street tube station. I don’t mean to imply by the phrase ‘I found myself’ that I had no consciousness of how I got there, or that, just a nano-second before, I had actually been on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza talking to an Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah and then was suddenly taken up by the Spirit of the Lord and deposited in Azotus. No, the first thing I mean to say by the phrase ‘I found myself’ is that I was there, as indeed I am wont to be four or five days a week. The second thing I mean to say about the phrase ‘I found myself’ needs to wait for its moment.

Anyway, there I am standing on the platform with a colleague and listening to the London Transport employee in her blue and orange uniform telling us about the next train. And I’m thinking, “She’s got a good voice and she’s using it well.” The announcement is clear, beautifully enunciated without officiousness, pretension or embarrassment. I’m impressed. As the train starts to trundle in, I walk up to her and say, “You’ve got a great voice.” In case you’re worried for me, I have, I think, got to the age where such actions are unlikely to be viewed as the tactics of a predator.

Education, Education, Education?

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:47:00 +0100

As the school year begins Mark Greene offers a vision for mission in education

A couple of years ago they let me into Yorkshire.

It was only a tourist visa and it was only for a few days, but, hey, some things mark you for life. I was visiting a community called New Life Baptist Church and discovered that their teenagers were engaged in forty days of prayer and fasting, some from food, some from texting, some from TV. They were doing it for the salvation of their non-Christian school friends. It struck me as remarkable, inspiring, and, at the same time, entirely natural. Why not seek God’s face for the salvation of the people you spend 40 hours a week with?

Indeed, for that group of teenagers and their leaders, the key people to engage in mission in the local secondary schools were not youthworkers and schoolsworkers but Christian pupils. After all, this was where they ‘worked’. This was where they had relationships. This was the primary arena for their discipleship and cultural engagement. And they were taking it seriously. Shouldn’t we all?

None of God’s Business?

Wed, 14 May 2008 21:15:46 +0100

Mark Greene reflects on the role of business

Every age has a dominant institution – the one that drives all the others. In the Middle Ages it was the Church. In the nineteenth century it was government and in the 21st century it’s business. As Anita Roddick, founder of the Bodyshop put it:

“I don’t think that anyone would argue that business now dominates the world’s centre stage. It is faster, more creative, adaptable, efficient and wealthier than many governments … So in terms of power and influence you can forget the Church and forget politics, too. There is no more powerful institution in society than business. It is more important than ever before for business to assume a moral leadership in society.”

Oscars for the Academy

Wed, 14 May 2008 21:08:25 +0100

Mark Greene finds Hollywood calling us to make a stand.

Last week, a friend of mine resigned from their job. They’d been there over four years.

They didn’t have another job to go to, they don’t have a lot of money in the bank and they aren’t prone to self-destructive, melodramatic gestures. However, the organisation was putting them in a position where they couldn’t do the work in a way that appropriately protected the people they were there to serve. Warnings had been given about falling standards. The warnings had been ignored. So, regretfully, painfully, the resignation letter was written – short, gracious, clear, legally careful.

Hope, Hope, Hurray?

Wed, 14 May 2008 21:02:22 +0100

Despite the data, Mark Greene finds reasons to be cheerful

“Woe, woe, three times, woe”, so beat the drums of doom on almost any measure of the social, emotional, physical or mental health of contemporary Britain… overworked, overtired, overspent, overweight, overdrugged … Is there hope for our muddled education system, careening from new initiative to new initiative, desperately trying to claw its way up the EU league tables? Is there hope for our children, the most miserable in the ‘developed’ world? Is there hope for our slave new world of work where the rich do indeed get richer and the rest of us get wearier? Is there hope for our community relations as the mounting fear of Islam builds an ever higher wall, razor-wired with suspicion and resentment on both sides? Is there hope when terrible events like the Bridgend teenage suicides no longer seem to be ghastly anomalies but harbingers of deepening darkness?

The Perdition of Happiness

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:24:21 +0000

Mark Greene explores why society in Britain is so miserable.

Oliver James’ new book The Selfish Capitalist, published in January, may prove to be one of the most important books of the year. It explores one of the most pressing problems facing British society in particular, and English-speaking nations in general: why are Britons and Americans and English-speaking nations so much more miserable, indebted, divorce-prone, drug-addicted and obese than our Western European counterparts? And what might we begin to do about it?

But first I need to tell you something: I’m a ‘Tigger’.

The culture of outrage

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:19:36 +0000

The British media suggests that Christians are better known for what they are against than what they are for. In an age of supposed religious tolerance, Mark Greene asks, when did we get so angry?

A pope gives a lecture in Europe and nuns are murdered in Ethiopia. A writer publishes a novel and is forced into hiding. A teacher allows her class to name a teddy bear after a popular pupil and a Sudanese crowd call for her death. A Milanese football team wear a strip with a red cross in it at their home ground against a Turkish team and a Turkish lawyer sues them, grieved by the shirt’s similarity to the Templars’ garb and its associations with the Crusades. A company throws a party offering a champagne prize in its raffle and some of the Muslim employees sue them.

With all these people being offended, with all this intensity of response to what for the most part seem rather minor infractions, or no real infraction at all, it is tempting to be outraged oneself. Where is the forbearance in any of this? Where is there any understanding of other peoples’ cultures on the part of those apparently so deeply offended? Where is there any acceptance that others too have an identity, traditions, a God they may love?

Indeed, do not many of us now feel that a policy of appeasement towards minority but vocal, influential, Muslim sensibilities is doomed to failure? On the one hand, we are busy being told that the cross is offensive pretty much wherever it appears. On the other, a section of the Muslim community want to build the biggest mosque in Europe, presumably with a minaret to match and a crescent atop it, right next to the Olympic village. And is anyone allowed to build a church the size of a phonebox in Saudi Arabia? How easy it would be to get into a confrontation about ‘rights’, rather than a conversation about mutual respect, acknowledged difference and community-building.

In this highly combustible atmosphere of intense offence, intimidation and double standards, how are we to live? Skulk away in fear? Get outraged ourselves? Outrage is tempting. After all, feeling offended gets your cause airtime, the deference of politicians and the sympathy of community leaders, so why not get hot under the collar yourself?

Opening Doors and Opening Hearts

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:16:14 +0000

Mark Greene discovers the power of badges and titles to open hearts in surprising places.

I’m in a car on my way to Whitworth with a friend. We stop at a crossroads in Rochdale. There on the far side of the road stands The Cemetery Hotel, sombre in its black and gold paint. Given that it’s right across the road from a cemetery, I’m sure the locals don’t give the name a second thought, but to an outsider like me, it has a macabre ring to it, the kind of place you check into, but never check out of, like the motel in Psycho. Who, apart from a vampire, would fancy a night at a Cemetery Hotel, particularly a Cemetery Hotel that is located on the Bury Rd? They probably promise you the longest night’s sleep you’ll ever have. And don’t have a breakfast menu.

Into the Dragon’s Den

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:48:40 +0000

I’ve never quite worked out whether BBC2’s Dragon’s Den is so-called because the particular business people involved have fiery temperaments or because they are sitting on large amounts of gold that they have ruthlessly acquired by raiding the assets of vulnerable humans. Whatever the rationale for the name, more of the investment ideas are met with a snort of flame than a chest full of doubloons.

So, with that sobering thought in mind, here’s an investment proposal for your dragonesque consideration. Right now you receive two email thoughts a week from LICC. Come May we’d also like to offer them as podcasts and we’d like to add some regular extra material that not only goes a bit deeper but explains the principles and sources we’ve used to come to our conclusions. And that we hope will enrich your own reading of the Bible and your own engagement with culture. We’d also like to do some webcasts. Some will simply be filmed discussions about key issues, some will be two to three minute encounters of the YouTube kind that you might use in a housegroup or a church service. And some, we hope, could be the kind of thing that you might even pop on your office computer screen for your colleagues.

We think that these new formats have the potential to increase the reach of our ideas to new audiences across the world and help people like you share those ideas in fresh ways. Still, this particular idea needs some investment to fly. Supporters have generously given us a new server and the lion’s share of the web re-design costs but we need £10,000 for the camera, rig, editing hardware, accessories and training to start producing the film material.

Of course, we can’t promise you a direct financial return on your investment – how do you measure changed hearts and transformed lives? But we do know that the Lord loves a cheerful giver and we can promise to seek to use your investment wisely and prayerfully. Please help get this creative initiative airborne if you can. Or if you appreciate the emails you already receive, you might consider supporting us regularly by becoming a Friend of LICC. We’d be very grateful and so, we trust, will many others.

Mark Greene

An Atheist’s Atonement?

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:11:05 +0100

Mark Greene finds much to admire in a fine film adaptation.

Ian McEwan has come a long way since the days when his menacing, somewhat morbid tales of deviancy and dysfunctionality earned him the nickname ‘Ian MacAbre’. Today, ten novels and five film adaptations later, he is regarded by many literary critics as one of Britain’s finest living novelists. Amsterdam won the Booker Prize in 1998 and his new novel, On Chesil Beach, is shortlisted for this year’s award.

Uncalculating Generosity

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:16:01 +0100

It’s interesting how quickly people tend to make assumptions about other people based on their jobs: nurses are caring, journalists are untrustworthy, advertising executives are serpentine manipulators … Twas ever thus.

In the first century AD, most Jews in Israel would have assumed that Zacchaeus, as a tax collector, was a treasonous collaborator with a pagan enemy and a corrupt exploiter of his own people. Certainly that’s what most preachers have assumed since. However, the story of Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus is not the story of a deeply corrupt individual who is utterly unlike most of us, but the story of a man running an outsourcing business in the context of a difficult and flawed economic and political system.

Harry Rises to the Occasion

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:18:26 +0100

Mark Greene is enchanted by Harry’s last hurrah.

We have perhaps now got used to it but as cultural events go, there’s very little to match the launch of a Harry Potter book. It’s not simply that 2.6 million copies of the UK edition were sold in the first week, it was the palpable sense of expectation, the ubiquitous speculation about which characters would live and which would die, and the determination by so many people to get a copy as soon as possible and to read it as rapidly as possible. Indeed, whilst hundreds may turn up to watch stars arrive for a film premier in London’s Leicester Square, thousands of kids all across the land queued in droves, and often in fancy dress, outside bookshops counting down the seconds to midnight like revellers in Trafalgar Square on New Year’s Eve. Furthermore, the primary engine for this interest has not been a well-oiled publicity machine or a huge marketing budget or a Jesus-was-a-space-man controversy but simply the compelling nature of the stories themselves.