Meanderings, 6 January 2023

Good morning, friends. Here are some meanderings through links and articles that crossed our desk this week. Enjoy!

Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash

Thank you:

Despite the on-going decline in church-going, the last 20 years has seen a significant rise in church-based social action initiatives. Food banks, pantries, community supermarkets, larders, debt centres, Street Pastors, night shelters, warm hubs and community meals have all expanded at significant rates. The number of new homeless charities has rapidly expanded with the growth of church-based night shelters and more generally, there has been a boom in Christian-led initiatives engaging in poverty.

I have been involved in this growth through my professional roles. I worked for 8 years for the Shaftesbury Society and led their Community Mission team whose aim was to help urban churches set up community projects. When I was CEO of the West London Mission (part of the Methodist Church) I helped set up the Westminster Churches Night Shelter. And now my work for Hope into Action is to house people affected by homelessness in partnership with local churches.

In many ways, I applaud this growth of initiatives because its evidence of a growing social conscience, especially within the evangelical tradition of the church. Thirty years ago, I used to attend events such as Spring Harvest and hear very little relating to poverty or community engagement. But times have changed with a significant shift in a theological commitment to addressing poverty and a host of practical models which churches can replicate.

Just over twenty years ago, Faithworks, fuelled by the energy and vision of Steve Chalke galvanised and popularised the social action movement. It was a high profile addition to the networks of agencies such as Shaftesbury, Church Urban Fund, Church Action on Poverty and the Churches Community Work Alliance. It coincided with the New Labour years when a significant amount of money was invested in communities.

Since 2010, in the wake of austerity and David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, there has been the rise of franchises and replicable models such Street Pastors and Christians Against Poverty’s debt centres. The Cinnamon Network have championed these and a host of other models for community engagement. The largest and most politically significant of these franchises has been the the Trussell Trust’s food bank network. I first heard about food banks when I met Chris Mould at a conference back in 2004, but I never imagined the scale and significance they would achieve.

But the growth of such initiatives and schemes must pose questions. I believe that those involved in Christian social action need to be self-critical and honest and grapple with questions such as:

• Have these forms of social action been effective in reducing poverty?

• Have they equipped Christians with a greater sense of justice?

• Have they been an effective way of witnessing to the Christian faith?

I believe that the growing poverty, homelessness and destitution in the UK means we are standing at the crossroads that Jeremiah speaks of. What is the ‘ancient way’ that God calls us to seek and walk in? What should be the future direction for Christian social action?

AI Birds:

Last week, a friend tagged me in a post about a weird bird. I’m used to it—as a known bird guy, friends are constantly making me aware when some new study comes out or a rare bird shows up. But this post was different.

From a Facebook page called “Route 370—Newfoundland News & Weather,” the post had what appeared to be a photo of a red-and-white bird perched on a snowy branch. The text read: “A rare Red and White cardinal in its festive colors makes an appearance in Canada. Its unusual look is caused by Gynandromorphy.”

I’ve seen northern cardinals with gynandromorphism (meaning that an individual exhibits characteristics of both sexes), and they don’t have any of the same colors as the Facebook “Santa cardinal” bird. It also had a thin, yellow bill like a chicken instead of the thick, orange bill of our northern cardinal—a trait that gynandromorphism wouldn’t alter. This wasn’t a cardinal, clearly, but what was it?

Reverse image search was no help, but when I looked closer, the answer was obvious. The bird appeared to have three feet, and the end of its tail was somehow covered in snow. This wasn’t a real photo at all—it was a photorealistic fantasy created by A.I. Ugh.

I posted a quick response to my friend, taking care not to make him feel bad for falling for the hoax, but scrolling down through the more than 2,000 comments, I could see he was hardly alone. With more than 10,000 shares and 24,000 likes, this imaginary bird was a viral hit for a group used to more modest numbers for posts like Garfield saying “Happy Monday!” or warnings about moose on the highway.

Scented candles, not good:

Candle lovers, beware: Burning your favorite scent can be more harmful to your health than previously known.

While burning a scented candle for a few hours here and there in a ventilated room is not a major health concern for most people, researchers told The Cut, a new study published in the Annals of Medicine and Surgery found that some people experience physical ailments after being exposed to a burning candle.

The research, “The unknown risks of scented candles! What Science has to say: An Editorial,” looks into the effects of a burning candle on the human body. Scientists discovered that some people experience vertigo, headaches, respiratory issues, watery eyes, sneezing or a stuffy nose after burning a candle.

The actual fragrance of a candle can also trigger headaches and allergy symptoms if one has a sensitivity to it, Verywell Health reported.

The study’s authors suggest that people who often feel symptoms after burning candles avoid them in the future.

The Cut reported that two problematic candle ingredients can cause issues for folks with underlying health concerns: Toluene and benzidine.

Toluene, a volatile organic compound, is released into the air after burning candles made of paraffin wax.

Jesus’s favorite topic?

Just as a reminder, if you couldn’t tell from all of my posts last year, Jesus’ favorite topic and the recurring theme of mine is greed. Happy New Year! …

After Luke gives an account of children being brought to Jesus, he tells us that someone asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Matthew tells us the man is young, Mark just tells us that he’s a man, but Luke tells us that he is a “ruler”, some kind of official. They all agree that he is rich. Unlike some of the questions Jesus received from religious leaders, this question appeared completely genuine and Jesus treated it as such. The Son of God affirmed the man, outlining the commandments that He knew he knew. The ruler then replied, “I have kept all these things since my youth.” Then Jesus hit the young man where it hurt with words that the Church has been running from since the first century: “There is still one thing lacking. Sell everything, as much as you have, and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” …

While much of the Western tradition appears to see wealth and riches as a tool and boon to steward, it seems to be the case that Jesus frames them as enemies to be defeated. In fact, Jesus commends those who leave such things behind for the sake of the kingdom of God. But that leaving is not a naked leaving; the one who does those things is promised that they will receive many times that amount now, as well as eternal life. Rather than a perverse promise of the prosperity gospel (just sow a seed, give everything you have, and God will make you rich!), we ought to see this as Jesus’s description of the kingdom itself, especially the community that is called to bear witness to it, the church. That is, when you join this community and give your resources to the poor who are among you, you gain the resources of the community. You gain gifts you do not have, resources you could not have dreamed of, and relationships and connections that enrich your walk with the Lord. But this only happens if we see this text not as a text about attitudes but about action. 

The American university’s direction?

It has quickly become a commonplace that American elite higher education is in a more perilous position than it has been in recent memory. Long-standing conservative discontent has crystallized as a result of recent events; multiple proposals targeting universities’ pocketbooks have been floated by lawmakers in the past weeks. Republican officials have made clear that they will no longer defer to private universities’ conventional autonomy from government scrutiny.

But what really is the peril that these elite universities confront? Unlike lesser-resourced institutions, they face no real prospect of financial catastrophe, even if they lose some big donors. Ivy League universities have effectively entered what social scientists call (referring to the post-working-class left) a “postmaterialist” phase: wealthy enough to prioritize all manner of values that are plausibly averse to their bottom line. Despite this recent rough patch, I would still put my money on Harvard outliving the United States of America by at least as long an interval as it preceded the nation’s founding. 

However much right-wing actors might wish to remake these institutions in their own image, that eventuality also has little chance of coming to fruition. For one thing, our legal and political system, with its solicitousness for “private” institutions, wouldn’t permit it. (Given the vital role they play in training the elite and the massive financial and legal privileges that universities like Yale and Harvard and Stanford receive, they aren’t well understood as “private” at all, but should be seen as public but nongovernmental institutions, or at least as existing between the public and private spheres, as the political theorist David Ciepley argues about corporations in general.) Accomplishing any such thing would anyway involve a sustained period of top-down revolutionary activity spurred by a cohesive central authority on the order of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries; but no one would mistake Mike Johnson for Thomas Cromwell.

Acknowledging a few exceptions among conservative commentators and public officials, we can still say that universities are to Republicans what guns are to Democrats: an issue they are certain is at the root of great evils, but about which they face a massive knowledge gap that hampers their ability to do anything effective, even within the limited space our legal order allows.

The real peril to elite higher education, then, isn’t that these places will be financially ruined, nor that they will be effectively interfered with in their internal operations by hostile conservatives. It is, instead, that their position in American society will come to resemble that of The New York Times or of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Which is to say that they will remain rich and powerful, and they will continue to have many bright and competent people working within their ambit. And yet their authority will grow more brittle and their appeal more sectarian.