OVER THE YEARS Ekklesia has received and requested books on an extraordinarily wide range of topics, which we have passed out to reviewers with particular and specialist knowledge.
These have demonstrated that our approach to transformations in the areas of beliefs, ethics, politics, economy, peacemaking, sustainability, sexuality and more is broad and wide. Our particular perspective has emerged from subversive and dissenting forms of Christianity. But we have also enjoyed lively conversations and points of collaboration with those of other faith or no faith (in religious terms) at all.
This final ‘bookshelf’ illustrates some of that diversity. First off, there is Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being (Birlinn 2020, reprinted 2021) by our good friend, the Quaker thinker and activist, Alastair McIntosh. This remains an essential primer and guidebook for those who wish to understand the scientific underpinning of urgent and existential concerns about global heating, especially given the misinformation and denialism that still surrounds it.
McIntosh rightly identifies climate change as the greatest single challenge to humankind as a whole today, and inherently links it to other major threats – war and conflict, economic inequality, pandemics like Covid, forced migration, and the predations of unregulated ‘free’ markets. He shows that conventional solutions and technical fixes are insufficient, weaving together a vision of humanity restored through science, politics, culture, psychology and (not least) spirituality.
To avert catastrophe, we need a massive shift in institutional and economic life. The super-rich, corporations, nation states and the military are particularly responsible for the situation we face. But there also needs to be a huge recalibrating of human thought, response and behaviour. This book brings the social and the personal, the political and the spiritual together beautifully, creatively and hopefully.
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Meanwhile, Jonathan Chaplin’s Faith in Democracy: Framing a Politics of Deep Diversity (SCM Press, 2021) both anticipates the continuing disruptions of democratic politics, and also offers hope for their development and reformation. Chaplin calls for an approach that maximises public space for the expression of faith and belief-based visions within democratic forums, while repudiating all traces of religious privilege. This is very much in line with what Ekklesia has sought to articulate over the years: a separation of powers when it comes to church and state; but shared, transformative action involving those of different convictions in civil society and in the deliberative and participatory forms of democracy which help shape representative ones.
Chaplin argues for a truly conversational and democratic citizen space, reflecting theologically on the contested concepts at the heart of the current debate about the place of belief in British public life: democracy, secularism, pluralism and public faith. I would add that democracy and subsidiarity are also about claiming back economic institutions and practices, socialising the economy by stealth, and making a people-and-planet priority of how we do local, regional, national and international politics.
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In a related way, Joseph Forde’s Before and Beyond the ‘Big Society’: John Milbank and the Church of England’s Approach to Welfare (James Clark, 2022) interrogates one of the several ‘grand narrative’ rhetorical projects which have emerged from New Labour and Tory UK governments in recent years, starting with the (some would say mythical) Blairite ‘Third Way’ between Thatcherism and social democracy. These have since included ‘the northern powerhouse’ (it disappeared) and ‘levelling up’ under the Conservatives (it never happened) – aiming to reduce the imbalances, primarily economic, between different areas and social groups.
Cameron and Osborne’s ‘Big Society’ was pivotal in all this political positioning and triangulation, which many might now think was much sound and fury signifying little, other than a deep determination by those in power to ensure that huge concentrations of wealth and control in the UK and in the global neoliberal order were not properly scrutinised, challenged, and assigned rightful responsibility for economic, social and cultural decay. The focus was on people and communities in such a way as to make them manage austerity and ‘take responsibility’, in other words. Issues of class, justice and power were sidelined.
Cameron guru Steve Hilton, who has since moved Trumpwards in his relentless search for ways of integrating right-wing populism with an individualised communalism, was a key figure in devising ‘the Big Society’ idea, though curiously he does not appear in the index of this book. The idea, according to the UK Government website at the time was that “the Big Society is about collective action and collective responsibility. We recognise that active local people can be better than state services at finding innovative and more efficient solutions to local problems. Tax-payers want better value for money, and the Big Society can deliver that.”
Forde subjects these claims to critical scrutiny, identifying positive features and acknowledging some of the evasions and problems too. I have to declare a direct interest here, because I was a signatory to the 2010 statement Common Wealth: Christians for Economic and Social Justice, primarily drafted by Steven Shakespeare and others, which forensically critiqued the Big Society as a ‘Big Lie’. It masked perpetual governmental attacks on the poor, and sought to get us to live our lives in collaborative submission to the great God of Capital with a nice neighbourhood gloss. This was an outspoken assault, and one I still believe to be essentially correct.
The main focus of Forde’s thoughtful and well-researched book, however, is the established Church of England’s social policies (which to a significant extent lined up with Big Society thinking) and the influence of the theologian and commentator John Milbank on this. Milbank, known for being the prime mover in the Radical Orthodoxy movement, has also been a significant figure in relation to the ideological underpinning of the Blue Labour and Red Tory tendencies. These are essentially overlapping critiques of aspects of neoliberalism allied with strong elements of social and cultural conservatism. There is a huge amount to be said about this, but a review is not the place for that. I may write more about it on the new newsletter Illuminations at some point. Suffice to say, Joseph Forde has supplied some very important background reading to what should continue to be a vigorous but nuanced debate.
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Next in line for consideration is a positive, optimistic and challenging read. Lesley Riddoch’s Thrive: The Freedom to Flourish (Luath Press, 2023) follows on from her acclaimed Blossom: What Scotland Needs to Flourish, issued by the same Edinburgh-based publisher ten years earlier.
Both books are rooted in an impassioned and incisive call to restore control to local communities, to learn from the social democratic and green experiments in other northern European countries, and to develop a fresh story around the case for Scottish independence which puts creativity, determination and the power of ordinary people at its heart.
Art and culture is not an unimportant part of this venture. So it is not surprising that iconic singer/songwriter Karine Polwart has commended Thrive as “an inspiring, galvanising analysis of the untapped potential of the Scottish people.”
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How should we live? This is a central question for all systems of belief and moral thought or action. It is the natural focus of Luke Bretherton’s A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live Well (Cambridge University Press, 2023). With his academic career spanning both sides of the Atlantic, Bretherton offers an innovative, narratively well-constructed and perceptive dive into the wide range and scope of Christian ethical thought over the centuries. In that regard, the book is well titled and subtitled, because its practical outworking is experiments in understanding and re-understanding how Christian faith and practice relate to living well amid both the difficulties of everyday life and the catastrophes and injustices that afflict too many across our world today.
The starting point, as Bretherton rightly determines it, is good description of the world, our engagement in it, and our responses to it at all levels – from the local to the global. Here the key is listening, and that provides the material of the first part of the book. Listening to creaturely life, to scripture (biblical texts understood as divine inspirations and warnings), to strangers, to cries for liberation, and to ancestors. Yes, we have much to learn from the past. No generation has all the answers. In fact it is the wisdom of yesteryear that our obsessively consumerist, instant, and technological society is most apt to lose sight of.
Part two then looks at the components, building blocks and interrogations involved in acting well. It begins with a recognition of our human finitude and failings, and proceeds to examine calls and commands, rules and regulations, and the vision of ‘virtue ethics’, all leading to deliberation and action. There is then a process of refection on action, repair and regalvanising.
The tradition of the virtues is one that Ekklesia has been particularly concerned with in recent years. What particular behaviours and habits can help us move more surely towards discerning the good, the true and the beautiful? How do we build character and learning among groups of people, so that they become the kind of persons capable of sustaining such actions? What is the link or bridge between interpersonal reformation, political action and economic justice? Bretherton ends up exploring the texture of ethical living and discernment in relation to intimacy, work and politics in part three of this wise and thoughtful book. Thoroughly recommended.
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Then, of course, there is insurrection. My forthcoming book Against the Religion of Power: Telling a Different Christian Story will, among other things, suggest that subversive Christian praxis – in opposition to imperial religion – should indeed be about revolt. But of what kind? Part of the origins of Ekklesia as a think-tank and change-agency came about through engagement with Anabaptism, which has its roots in the ‘radical reformation’ of the seventeenth century. In seeking to recover the levelling dynamic of many strands of the earliest Christianity, Anabaptists refused state baptism, held goods in common, refused to bear arms and rejected the judicial system as an arbiter of justice for a community of love. The historic peace churches (Mennonites, Quakers, Brethren in Christ) are among the descendants of these quiet revolutionaries and martyrs.
Yet all liberating movements have their distortions, failings, flaws and shadow sides, too. Jeffery C Pugh’s vivid, ingenious, gripping and imaginative novel, Cages: A Tale of Insurrection (Wipf & Stock, 2022), tells the history of the part of the radical reformation that gave way to violence and forced eschatology in the Anabaptist rebellion at Münster in 1534-1535. The revolt was against Christendom. The aim was to establish a communal government in the German city, then under the dominant Prince-Bishopric of Münster as part of the Holy Roman Empire. Pugh’s novel starts in 1533, and with Elsbeth Joris, who is about to be executed for witchcraft when Andreas Wagner cuts her loose from the ducking stool.
Exiled from family and village (from here on I am quoting here from the incisive blurb), Elsbeth accepts Andreas’s offer to accompany him back to his home in Münster, Germany—a decision that plunges her into a world of unhinged prophets, sassy nuns, and a deranged charlatan king. A disillusioned former monk, Andreas is returning home to confront his past, but the city is on the brink of collapse. Crowds rave hysterically in the streets, churches are ransacked, convents and monasteries empty, sacred texts are burned, and polygamy is instituted as God’s law.
To his surprise, Andreas finds that Ulrich Schlatter, a former nemesis, has also returned, seeking revenge on those who exiled him years ago. Stakes are raised for everyone when the Prince-Bishop of Westphalia calls mercenaries to besiege the city. The rebels, however, offer unexpected resistance, thwarting hopes for a quick victory. Finding refuge with one another and new friends in the ensuing struggle, Elsbeth and Andreas discover that love in the reign of a mad king is not impossible, but it does come with scars.
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Last but not least, and in a very different vein from the preceding books, there is play. How much do we need play in a world caught up in production, often in supremely deceptive, disruptive and destructive ways? These questions are never far from the surface in Dan Shenk’s You Are More Than Your Score: On Sports and Spirituality (Author Academy Elite, 2022). This book really is a labour of love. Checking in at nearly 600 pages, it is an exhaustive exploration of the relationship between loving sport and finding meaning in life through a huge range of stories, experiences and reflections.
Shenk, a copy editor who is a former church communications worker, youth minister and newspaper reporter, engaged with a large number of sports enthusiasts in compiling this comprehensive volume, which is packed with insight, provocation and questions, as well as touches of humour and surprising insight. Again, I must declare an interest, as my own small forays into this area are cited in the chapter on the phenomenon of fandom: my analogue of prayer with ‘wasted’ time, and the publication of Iain Whyte’s Football’s Faithful Fans (Siglum, 2019) which raised vital money for African development projects through the Homeless World Cup.
I will not attempt to sum up the contents of You Are More Than Your Score (an impossible task, frankly!), except to say that it probes well beyond the cliches that can sometimes overrun attempts to link sport with spirituality, and that its primary methodology is story-telling. Because we are, essentially, narrated beings, and sport is narrative. It is also transformational. Lives change, the ordinary gives way to the extraordinary, joy and sorrow are intermingled, and our journeys take on ever-new, interesting and unexpected shapes.
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© Simon Barrow was director of Ekklesia from 2016 to 2024, co-director from 2005 to 2016, and an associate from 2003 to 2005. He is a writer, educator and activist. His columns can be found here.