postmodernbible

Funded PhD and Postgrad Study

 Last year, CODEC launched a process to find a PhD student and we eventually appointed Rich Wyld who is currently doing a MA at Durham University in preparation for his PhD studies looking at Community, Ethics, New Testament and the Digital Environment.  It is looking very good.

Well, we have now teamed up with the Wesley Study Centre, the Methodist Church and another para-church agency to offer another couple of opportunities...

1: A PhD Research Project

Developing Young Leaders in the Christian Church

c.£10,000 bursary per annum (plus fees paid)

The Wesley Study Centre (WSC) has been awarded funding from The Methodist Church of Great Britain to conduct some doctoral research (either DThM or PhD, preferably full-time), exploring either resources and methodologies for the development of young leaders within the Christian Church.

2. Postgraduate Research

The Bible in the Digital Age

c.£3,000 per annum towards fees

CODEC are working with a major para-church organization to develop our understanding of how we use the Bible within the digital age.The research will engage with the ongoing work with CODEC and its developing links into new media and media literacy, as well as exploring new possibilities for making use of digital media in the life of the Church. This award does not currently contain a bursary to cover living costs and is limited to a contribution towards fees.

General Information:

We are seeking two students with outstanding potential to pursue research, preferably to PhD standard, in the above areas based at St John’s College at the University of Durham in collaboration with the Department of Theology and Religion.

The research will be linked to the Wesley Study Centre, a Methodist Church training institution, or with CODEC, a research centre exploring new media and theological engagement within the digital environment.

St John’s offers a wealth of research collaboration opportunities and the research supervisory panel will bring together support from each of these centres. While pursuing this research you will be expected to work together with other researchers, academic members of staff and ordinands at the various associated centres. You are expected to have a Masters degree or at least a good 2.1 BA (Hons) in Theology or a related subject. It is desirable that candidates for the first programme are members of the Methodist Church in Great Britain or have knowledge of with its theology and practice and are in sympathy with these.

The successful candidate will be expected to complete the PhD/DThM programme, while being resident in Durham, including the publication of relevant research papers and academic articles, as well as contributions to academic conferences and the dissemination of the conclusions reached during the research. Candidates will provide a formal research proposal as part of the application process.

Interviews will involve the presentation of this research proposal to a panel.

For an informal discussion or an application form and further particulars please contact

Dr Peter Phillips, CODEC
Tel: 0191 334 3896 
email: [email protected]
Twitter: @pmphillips

Closing date: 19 April 2010

Blogging

Sorry not to have managed to blog for a few days...life's been a bit hectic!  Getting back to it now.  Honest.

Prepare for the flood!

Pete

Wounded Bird: HOW TO LICK A BOWL

Simply gorgeous!

via thewoundedbird.blogspot.com

Some Comments on The Church Mouse's guest post from +Christopher Cocksworth

Thanks to Church Mouse for arranging for Chris Cocksworth (+Coventry) to put a guest post up on his site.  The post is a mostly a re-statement of a the Church Times article which Chris and Peter Howdle published a couple of weeks ago which I discussed here.  It recounts the main points of the Joint Implementation Committee's report Embracing the Covenant, including the issue of how Methodism might embrace the historic episcopate - an issue which makes too many Methodists think in terms of becoming Anglicans rather than moving towards a new combined Church.  

I think there is a still a good deal to be done within the Methodist Church about the whole bishop agenda.  

But there also needs to be more talk of what a united church might look like - in other words not yet more talk of convergence but instead some talk of revolution.  Can't we just re-imagine an ecumenical future which isn't simply where Methodists look more and more like Anglicans (us merging into the bigger church like the Prodigal returning home); where ecumenism isn't a set of demands (do it like us and then we'll come and play with!); or a set of unequal conditions (if you make this jump, we might make a slightly less important jump!)?  

One of my issues (unofficial issues, not a statement from the Methodist Church at all) with the whole bishop issue, which is repeated by Chris, is a link between Methodists accepting the historic episcopacy being linked to CofE adoption of women bishops.  But that's not the case.  The Church of England's arguments about women bishops is an internal discussion which we have no leverage in whatsoever.  The Church of England would be discussing this whether the Methodist Church existed or not.  We'd like to think that our enthusiasm for female leadership has paved the way for the Church of England to follow.  But that's probably overplaying the importance of British Methodism to influence the Church of England and also our own commitment to women in leadership - which is patchy to say the least.

However, when it comes to Bishops in British Methodism, I think the ONLY reason for us to be discussing them is the Covenant with the Church of England.  I cannot think we would be discussing bishops for any other reason.  They don't make a difference to Connexional ecclesiology; they don't affect the mission of the local church; they don't help promote fresh expressions; they don't help with a lay-centred concept of authority and oversight.

Well, I suppose they could.  

But my point is that they don't within the life of the church at the moment.  Or not in the life of the Church of which I am part and which I spend so much of my life.  I suppose I am very low church and so people I mix with day to day are going to mention bishops less than some of my more 'catholic' colleagues.  But my experience of so much of Methodism is that this is a non-issue for most Methodists.  Not an 'Elephant in the Room' but simply a non-existent elephant of any colour or size at all.

Nowhere are people saying that bishops are the answer to our problems.  

When we discuss senior leadership in the Methodist Church, the commission doesn't suggest bishops as the way forward; when we discuss discipleship, there is no call for bishops; when we explore the budget, bishops aren't on the agenda; when we look at the stationing of ministers, bishops won't be mentioned; when local churches explore how they can call more people to follow Christ, I'm betting (though I shouldn't) that 'bishops' won't be on the tip of people's tongues!  

In other words, in the general life of the Methodist Church from day to day and moment to moment and committee to committee and paper to paper, all talk of bishops and episcopacy is simply absent.  They are not on anyone's agenda.

Except in ecumenism.  Except in Covenant conversations.  Except in meetings related to those two subjects.

I have said in the past that the only way we will ever get bishops in the Methodist Church is when we prove to people in chapels and churches across the Connexion how bishops can change the Methodist Church for the better; how they can make a difference in terms of mission; how they can bring revival and renewal; how they can help us change from being an institution back into a movement; how they can drag us out of Victorian obsolescence into 21st Century engagement; how they affect each and every chapel and re-form the passion of Wesley's missionary zeal.

In other words, the call for Methodism to receive bishops needs to be linked into the life of the Methodist Church and not limited to the limited discourse of ecumenism.  Otherwise it's just going nowhere.  

Certainly, we need to avoid saying that Methodist acceptance of bishops is somehow a response to the Church of England accepting women bishops.  Actually in Embracing the Covenant there is no direct response suggested - it's a one way deal - it's about Methodists becoming more like Anglicans - or somewhat more fairly, like the vast majority of churches across the world.

I still don't hear the reply I'd like to hear: "Thank you, David!  We are willing to cease to exist too!  Let's begin to plan for the future church together, shall we?"

Pete

a special offer for your friends

I decided (thanks to @chrisdenham) to try out one of Graze's nibble boxes - looks very nice indeed. They sent me an email saying other people could get a free box and so here are the details - if any of you sign up for the free box, I will donate the £1 to the Rainforest Alliance.

Just forward on this special promotion code to give all your friends a free graze box and another half price…   free box code: R8TCNX4N they enter at: www.graze.com >   For every friend you feed, you can get £1 off your next graze box or donate £1 to the Rainforest Alliance.   In the meantime, if you have any questions please get in touch, we love to hear from you. Alternatively, most people find their queries are answered on our FAQs page. All the best,  

via www.graze.com

Passion at the Cathedral

Tonight St John's spent the evening in Durham Cathedral.  It was fantastic - a retelling of the passion story by different characters who tend to be on the periphery of the biblical narrative.  Written by two students, it was absolutely fantastic!  Very moving.  A bit like Jesus of Montreal mixed with Oberammergau.  Good acting, wonderful music from among the WSC/Cranmer community, a harp playing in Cuthbert's Shrine.  Wow!  Such creativity.

I was delighted to be asked to open with a brief meditation and thought I would include it here...with a picture of the Neville Screen which is mentioned at the beginning and end.  

The Neville Screen is a beautiful example of high gothic architecture.  It’s vertical forms, the delicacy of the tracery, the beauty and purity of the Caen stone.  It was built at the end of the fourteenth century – over a hundred years after most of the Cathedral was finished.  A gift from the Neville family who would become so influential in the years of the Plantagenet and Tudor kings.  A gift of power and the promise of controversy all rolled into one.

The screen housed 107 statues and would have been full of colour and character – a feast for the eyes. It still is and yet without the statues it seems robbed and colourless and empty.  Apparently the statues were all carted off before the reformers arrived.  The screen had been made in London and assembled in Durham, now a parliamentary based reformation disassembles it and tear its heart out.

But I think Cromwell and his minions were doing something similar to what we are doing this evening here in the Cathedral.  Like them, we are looking for Jesus. Like them, we are preparing for his passion.  Like them, we are casting aside the normal everyday story and instead trying to get a fresh glimpse of what it is all about. Looking through the eyes of the people of the day.  Casting a glance back to the ordinary folk and what they must have thought of what was happening around them.

For the reformers that meant stripping everything back to the bare stone.  It meant letting nothing get in the way of Jesus.  It meant imagery and finery and ceremony, pomp and grandeur were to be brought low so that the dying, rising saviour could stand supreme.  The reformation was, after all, all about Jesus – all about getting back to the purity of a Christocentric vision of our faith.

Paul did it too.  In 1 Corinthians 2 (here from The Message):You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s master stroke, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did — Jesus crucified.

Strip back the rhetoric. Strip back the finery.  Strip back everything. There in the heart of it all lies Jesus.

Although perhaps not. Because Paul didn’t really mean what we think he meant.  He was as rhetorical as the rest – and in fact much more rhetorical.  And the reformers only replaced one form of visual reality with another, one form of ritual with another, one form of belief with another. 

The point is not necessarily stripping everything back to get the plain and simple truth.   The truth is never plain and rarely simple.  The truth is multicolour, technicolour, resplendant in beauty and abounding in wonder.  It is dappled and wondrous and lifegiving and nourishing and vibrant and refreshing and deeply deeply grounding.

As Hopkins was to write:

Glory be to God for dappled things 

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; 

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; 

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; 

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; 

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 

All things counter, original, spare, strange; 

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?); 

With swift, slow; sweet, sour, adazzle, dim; 

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change; 

Praise him.

The passion of Christ is never pure and never simple.  It is a picture painted in desert browns and blood reds, of corpse white death and blackened tones of the tomb.  A scene painted on a canvas of oppression and persecution.  Its mood music hints of betrayal, of confusion, of lament, amidst the themes of anger and fear, with clarion cries of pain and anguish and torture.   Of a mother weeping for her child, of the silence after the passing of a storm.

Such a story deserves to be retold again and again.  It deserves to receive new attention from renewed eyes.  The characters that make up the rich backdrop, the music which it has inspired, the poetry which seeks to plumb its depths. And there are those who say that this retelling is all that church is called to do - to retell the stories of God's love and passion.

The Gothic splendour of the Neville Screen is even more splendid when seen in its purity.  Its  architecture points forever upwards – seeking to scale the skies in defiance of the solid sanctity of the earth-bound Norman stone.  As we hear the story retold, in blunt,Norman, unseeing tones, I wonder if like the screen, our souls will be carried into the heavens?  To strive to see again the beauty of the old old story.  To see with fresh eyes.  To repaint the masterpiece in our own minds.  To appreciate the wonder all over again. To be drawn to the beauty and the wonder and the love that is at the heart of Christ’s passion.

A precious gift.  A costly gift.  

Not the gift of nobility.  But the gift of a plain and simple saviour.  

Not a gift of stone and statue.  But the gift of a life and a gift of life to come.

Power 2010 goes bad: MPs WANTED: FOR CRIMES AGAINST DEMOCRACY

With just a few weeks left until a general election is announced, it's time to call out those MPs who have consistently stood against reform of our democracy preferring the corrupt, top-down politics of the past.

via www.power2010.org.uk

Can I just say that I really don't like the idea of personal vendettas against individual MPs or politicians. I thought Power2010 was about democratic change, power for the people, changing the system - I didn't realise I had signed up to a virtual lynch mob!

Pete

Huffington Religion: Sane Christians: Who We Are and Who We Do Not Want to Be

When we launched the Religion section of the Huffington Post one month ago, I wrote a letter addressed to "Religious (and Sane) America." Since that time, we have had extraordinary contributions from across the religious landscape including Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Main Line Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhist, and Atheists as well as those who defy easy definition. The conversation has been enlightening, honest and, of course, impassioned. But perhaps most promising - it has been sane. Our discourse has been has healthy and productive and the language has been intelligible across religious divisions and beyond simple the categories of religious vs. non-religious.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

BBC News - The top 100 sites on the internet

Explore this interactive graphic to find out which are the biggest sites on the internet, as measured by the Nielsen company. This feature is part of SuperPower, a season of programmes exploring the power of the internet.

via news.bbc.co.uk

Internet Evangelism Day - a resource guide for online evangelism and ministry

There are 1.7 billion web users, and over 3 billion people use mobile phones (increasingly these are web-equipped). The Web is not just another means of communication, but a hyper-medium that subsumes, links together, and enhances all previous media.

via www.internetevangelismday.com