I attended a really interesting zoom event on Tuesday evening: the launch of the National Park in 100 seconds video made by Dan Raven-Ellison and Jack Smith.  The concept builds on previous ‘100 second’ videos they have made that show 1 second per 1 percent of landcover.  It is essentially a very effective data visualization tool that raises question about whether the land use/land cover in national parks is in the correct proportions.  For example, is too much moorland managed for grouse shooting, or too much of our national parks covered in commercial forestry?  In the discussion the participants stressed the need for a balanced approach to national park management.  One interesting point made by Alison Barnes from the New Forest National Park Authority was that by not showing more built up, human areas, the film underplays the role of people in shaping national parks.  There is a real sense that national parks aren’t doing what they should be doing at the moment, with a statistic, for example, that only 26% of sites of special scientific interest are in favourable condition within national parks, compared to a figure of over 40% outside national parks.  Change clearly needs to happen, and this is a moment for change as a result of Brexit and the new agricultural settlement. 

Patrick Laurie, Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape (Birlinn, 2020)

In many ways this is a very similar book to James Rebanks’ English Pastoral, and there is a ringing endorsement from Rebanks on the cover: ‘I love this book.’  Rather than being in the Lake District, Laurie’s farm is just across the Solway Firth in Galloway, making this something of a Scottish Borders pastoral.  The book is similarly organised in a month by month account of the year, through which weaves Laurie weaves his story of returning to the land after his father had rented the fields.  While a shortage of money is frequently mentioned, there is a greater sense of privilege in this book than in English Pastoral, and there is never really a sense of the grinding rural poverty that sometimes comes across in Rebanks’s writing.  Rather than focusing tightly on his family, Laurie is more anecdotal and wide ranging in in his tone, with frequent references to the history of Galloway and its place as an in between space.  This is partly offset by the theme of infertility and fertility treatment that runs through the book in stark contrast to the fertility of the cattle, but a parallel perhaps to the dying curlews.  The Galloway cattle and the curlews are the stars of the show (and foxes are the enemy).  I was left wondering what it means for a landscape to vanish.

Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A New Translation (Faber and Faber, 1999)

I read Beowulf at school almost 30 years ago and remember being slightly disappointed.  I liked the dungeons and dragons violence, but found the story somewhat convoluted and the language impenetrable, even in translation.  Having read about Beowulf again in Peck and Coyle’s A Brief History of English Literature, I decided to give it another go, this time reading the Seamus Heaney translation from 1999.  The language is compelling and certainly creates an atmosphere of Scandinavian warrior society.  The story of Beowulf’s three battles against dragons, starting with Grendel, then his mother and then another dragon at the very end of his life is perhaps slightly less compelling.  Despite all the action, nothing much seems to happen.  That’s probably unfair, and with more time and study the characters would probably come to life and the various subplots make more sense.  But even a fairly superficial reading reveals that this is an important work of literature, and perhaps another example of English literature’s close connection to the rest of Europe.  I’m sure environmental humanities scholars have written extensively about the natural imagery and the sense of humans against the forces of Nature, personified, in a sense by the dragons. 

David Hare, Racing Demon (Faber and Faber, 1990)

David Hare’s Racing Demon made it onto Michael Billington’s list of the 101 Greatest Plays, and since it relates to the Church of England I thought I’d read it.  This is the first play I have read since studying A Level English at School and I actually quite enjoyed reading, rather than watching (although I can’t wait for theatres to re-open).  Racing Demon tells the story of the Rev Lionel Espy, a vicar in a team ministry in inner city London.  Charlie Allen, the Bishop of Southwark has taken it upon himself to get rid of Lionel, largely it seems because a Conservative MP with whom he plays squash, objects to the liberal social gospel that gets propounded in the parish in place of a focus on the sacrament of communion.  In his efforts, the Bishop of Southwark allies with the new evangelical curate who has just started working with Lionel and doesn’t like the ‘lack of Jesus’ in his approach to Christianity.  Lionel, however, is, at least in some ways, smarter than he looks and although he gave up the freehold on his parish he entered into an agreement with the suffragan Bishop of Kensington that he would only do this if he had his full support for permanence of tenure.  Lionel is also strongly supported by his two team ministry colleagues Harry Henderson and Donald ‘Streaky’ Bacon. 

The play has obvious parallels with The Rev tv show.  But it most reminded me, albeit in fictional form, of the argument put forward by Andrew Brown and Linda Woodhead in That Was the Church that Was (2016) [Interestingly, Brown and Woodhead don’t seem to mention David Hare’s play].  There are also strong echoes of the Faith in the City report that would likely still very much have been fresh at the time the play was written.  The key dilemma, perhaps expressed best by the agnostic character of Frances in the play, is how to be religious in a way that doesn’t impose but is effective and isn’t just a form of ‘social consciousness’.  Lionel is not an altogether attractive figure, and his wife and children have clearly suffered from his large number of social commitments.  Evangelism doesn’t come out of the play particularly well.  The ‘old boys’ network of the church is exposed, and the outdated attitudes to homosexuality and women’s ordination are attacked.  It’s a fun play, but slightly disturbing for a liberal ordinand.  Perhaps most disturbing is that fact that nothing much seems to have changed over the past 20-years since the play was written. 

Damian Le Bas, The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gipsy Britain (Vintage, 2018)

This is a really interesting book about British Gipsies and Travellers, and about the author’s quest for a sense of identity.  Damian Le Bas was born into a Gipsy family, albeit a family that was already settled.  He attended private school and Oxford University that created a sense of separation from his heritage, and this book – and the journey around Britain that he undertakes – is part of his effort to come to terms with who he is.  It is very nicely written and contains lots of interesting insights into Gipsy and Traveller culture.  Stories of his Nan and Nandad are particularly poignant.  He obtains a list of old Gipsy and Traveller stopping places, atchin tans, and drives around Britain staying at these sites.  A strong sense of disconnect runs parallel to the sense of connection, and in many ways the book is an effort to come to terms with this disconnect.  There’s a notable lack of voices beyond his own family from the British Gipsy and Traveller community, but that perhaps reflects the book’s own individual sense of authenticity. 

Sam Lindo from Christian Climate Action spoke to Hazelnut Community on Sunday afternoon.  It was a similar talk to the one she gave to Resonate in November, but it was very powerful again.  The most striking images are the ones that juxtapose measures of inequality with the places most affected by climate change, and the people who have done least to contribute to the problem are the ones who are being most severely impacted.  This works on both a global and a local scale.  In Bristol, it is the people of Laurence Hill who have the highest levels of air pollution, but its residents are least lightly to own a car.  Also powerful was the commonality of George Floyd’s ‘I can’t breathe’ words, and the respiratory issues caused by air pollution.  This argument involves a conflation of climate change and air pollution, but that just serves to highlight the scale of the wider environmental crisis and its connections to inequality.  I’m fully convinced.  The big question, which we talked about in the breakout groups, is what letting go of privilege looks like.  Here is a place where Christianity might have a major contribution to make to the discussion of racial and environmental injustice, since it is, at heart, a religion founded on inverting the value system of the world.  Unfortunately, the way Christianity is frequently practiced – including by me – rarely lives up to this ideal. 

Michael Billington, The 101 Greatest Plays: From Antiquity to the Present (Guardian books/Faber and Faber 2016)

I resolved just before Christmas to take advantage of not being able to go to the theatre to learn more about the history of theatre and perhaps even read some plays.  The two books I’ve read so far (Sierz and Ghilardi’s The Time Traveller’s Guid to British Theatre and Billington’s State of the Nation) have both focused primarily on the history of theatre.  While Billington’s The 101 Greatest Plays adopts a chronological approach and is still rooted firmly in the wider historical context, it moves the focus onto the plays themselves at the same time as providing some information about the playwrights. 

The book starts with four Greek playwrights (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes) and one Roman playwright (Plautus).  Early Greek plays like Aeschylus’ The Persians and Sophocles Oedipus the King set many of the conventions for western drama, despite the long break until play writing and performances started again in earnest in the C.16^th.  Unlike Sierz and Ghilardi, Billingdon thinks the mystery plays of medieval Britain are worthy of inclusion, although he focuses on a modern adaption by Tony Harrison.  Then begins the great age of Shakespeare, Marlowe etc., which has its equivalent in continental Europe with the C.17^th ‘golden age’ work of Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca in Spain, and Pierre Corneille, Moliere, and Jean Racine in France. 

Just over half the plays discussed by Billington after from before the twentieth century, the rest have a more contemporary feel.  He pays some attention to important European (Ibsen, Chekov, Brecht), and American playwrights (Williams, Miller, Albee), but most of the focus is, understandably for an English theatre critic, on British and Irish plays.  There is a playfulness to the book, which occasionally gets a little tedious (and deliberately problematic) when he adopts an imaginary dialogue with Helen, a young female theatre critic.  But the tone generally works well and encourages readers to ask what makes a great play.  Billington’s criteria, set out in the introduction is that ‘the very best plays are rooted in their historical moment and yet have a sustainable afterlife [13].’  He prefers realist plays to more abstract works such as the post second world war ‘theatre of the absurd’ (Becket, Ionesco), and he’s keen to note that Becket’s Waiting for Godot doesn’t make it onto his list.

Something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently is church buildings.  What should we do with them?  This is question that gets asked from time to time in the newspapers, but is a daily source of concern for many people who do the work (usually voluntarily) of looking after them. 

On the one hand, church buildings are among our biggest resource.  They are often iconic, historical structures that have been preserved and cared for over hundreds of years.  They give a space to gather, and this space becomes holy simply by the act of gathering.  They are recognised as important places, even by many people who don’t go to Church regularly.  And financially, there is a tremendous amount of value in the land, although probably less so in the buildings themselves. 

On the other hand, church buildings are a tremendous drain on resources.  If we’re focusing on keeping the church roof from leaking we’re not focusing on feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless.  There is an ambivalent materialism to churches, and a danger that we might start to care more about the structure than the community inside it and outside it.  Largely as a consequence of being so old churches often have problematic histories, such as associations with empire or slavery.    

For me, there is often something very sad about a closed or repurposed church.  This feeling isn’t particularly rational and goes against my more pragmatic nature.  But it’s important to acknowledge that this feeling exists.  There’s a lot more thinking to do on this…

We had a discussion about ‘rules of life’ yesterday.  There is a good chapter about this in Justin Lewis-Anthony’s If You Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him: Radically Rethinking Priestly Ministry (2009).  The book suggests that a rule of life can serve as a public statement of the limits (and lack of limits) of a public ministry.  My sense from reading Lewis-Anthony’s own rule was that he wasn’t quite practicing what he was preaching in terms of simplifying ministry to ‘being religious’ and ‘killing’ George’s Herbert’s over-committed and over-active of priesthood.  But I did like broad point about the importance of having a rule to act as a guide to life, and there was actually much in common between the rule I have developed for myself and the rule Lewis-Anthony presents at the end of his book.  In our discussion we talked about the importance of language.  Some people prefer the idea of a rhythm or a guide to ‘rule’, since rules are there to be broken (Lewis-Anthony calls this a ‘fault’ not a ‘sin’).  There is a lot that is useful here in terms of boundaries and identity.  A key point was that these rhythms or rules need to be constantly reviewed and adjusted according to circumstance. 

Peter Mandler, The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education Since the Second World War (Oxford, 2020)

This is a really fascinating history of education in Britain from the Butler Act of 1944 to the present.  It makes a strong effort to be a bottom-up history and its central argument is that most of the changes to British education over the past 75 years have been driven by popular demand, but parents and students.  There are several key moments that the book highlights.  The 1944 Butler Act (time after the education minister Rab Butler) for the first time promised secondary education for all, and worked through Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to provide it.  [There is a really interesting religious connection here, as the Churches were resisting the state takeover of education].  The 1963 Robbins report created the principle that university places ‘should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment’ (the Robbins Principle).  The 1988 introduction of GCSEs by Margaret Thatcher’s government had a significant (if unintended) impact on causing more students to want to go to university, after her Secretary of Education Keith Joseph in the early 1980s had fought a rearguard action against the expansion of education.  In contrast, the imposition of fees from 1998 did not reduce student demand, and participation in higher education has never been greater than it is today, even

Mandler argues for a division between meritocracy and democracy, even though he admits that these concepts have been blurred in the way that they have been used.  I’m fairly convinced by his argument that most of the changes have come from the bottom up.  I’m less sure about the argument for a ‘crisis of the meritocracy’ since there is still a strong sense of selection at the university level, and some forms of selection persist.