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For reasons which have as much to do with history, habit, and inertia as with conscious choice, I am a regular reader of the Guardian. That’s why I know that every Saturday the Guardian publishes a column called Face to Faith, in which someone or other writes a few hundred words on a topic which often bears some more or less vague relationship to religion, and that’s why I read the article on 4th May in which this passage appeared:
Religion in India is about seeking a knowledge that changes you within. For a Hindu, external actions need to be married to inner purity. So, for example, it’s not good enough to refrain from hitting people if you still burn with aggression inside. Hindu spiritual practice aims to transform you into a person of permanent inner peace.”
The author of the article was identified as Nicholas Bradbury, a Church of England priest in north Wiltshire.
NOTE TO REV NICHOLAS BRADBURY:
Dear Mr Bradbury:
I am about to take your name in vain in making several remarks
about you, perhaps not all of which are entirely complimentary.
My only excuse is that you did write the Guardian article, so I
have a — presumably authentic — specimen of your
opinions. While I expect that many others are in much the same
position as you, I have no specific examples, so I can’t
impute your views to others. Therefore I have to identify them
as yours.
But you might like to know that the second sentence in the next paragraph means just what it says.
That’s all I know about Mr Bradbury. I am pretty confident, from past experience of meeting people with similar job descriptions, that he’s a sensible, honest, hard-working, well-meaning Christian who probably does quite a lot more good in the world than he realises. (Yes, there are some bad apples, but they’re a very small minority.) Even so, I’d like to know how he’s come to be an ordained Christian minister without noticing that those desirable features he finds in Hinduism are here in Christianity. How about “anyone who nurses anger against his brother must be brought to judgement”? — and “the peace of God, which is beyond our utmost understanding”?
Mr Bradbury isn’t alone in holding views of the sort he describes. I’ve read several articles in which the differences between Christianity and (usually) Islam are learnedly discussed, and it is explained that, for a Muslim, religion affects all of life, not merely matters commonly supposed to be spiritual — leaving it to be supposed, or sometimes even stating explicitly, that Christianity isn’t like that. I don’t remember who wrote these articles, so I can’t blame this view on the clergy, but there’s a family resemblance between the views: they both contrast Christianity with some other religion to the detriment of Christianity, and they’re both wrong. How do these quite remarkable opinions gain currency?
But before answering that question, I shall answer another one which may have occurred to you. (I’ve been caught this way before, so I’m sensitive). ‘What does he mean’, you may be asking yourself, more or less indignantly, ‘by implying that Hinduism and Islam are inferior to Christianity? That is yet another example of typical white male Christian arrogance, etc. etc.’. My answer to that question is: ‘Calm down. I didn’t imply that at all; read it again. I asserted the wrongness of two views that certain attributes of Hinduism and Islam were absent from Christianity. That’s all. Having had many years’ experience of Christianity, and none of Islam or Hinduism, I am not in a position to draw comparisons.’ There. Now back to the other question.
There’s one sort of answer in Mr Bradbury’s article. Here’s another quotation, which immediately followed the previous example:
I found this approach to spirituality much more potent than my experience of Church of England religion, so often stuck in sterile theological argument, or cheap submission to Jesus as ‘Lord’ without any depth of spiritual encounter, let alone signs of authentic inner transformation.
Well, there you are. I’ll qualify Mr Bradbury’s remarks by adding that, while you can find that sort of attitude in the Anglican denomination if you want to, there are also very many Christians who follow the Anglican tradition but nevertheless do know what they’re doing, and why. And much the same goes for all the other denominations with which I have any familiarity. I think it’s sad that he hasn’t come across Christians who exercise forgiveness, or who perceptibly embody the inner peace he mentions in the first excerpt; I have, and I’m in no doubt as to which is the better way.
It is noteworthy that Mr Bradbury is not just any old, or young, Christian. He’s an Anglican priest, specially trained for the job. Didn’t they cover Christianity (as opposed to theology?) in his training? One sometimes wonders, and by no means only about Mr Bradbury. It is just as easy for people today to get tied up with theological minutiae to the exclusion of real life as it was for the Pharisees who got the sect such a bad press in the New Testament, and the results are similar. On the other hand, it must be hard for anyone who takes Christianity seriously to avoid the four principles which must guide us always: love God, love one another, love your neighbours, love your enemies. Neither the covert aggression nor the spirituality-only view can survive against that yardstick.
It’s interesting, though, that Mr Bradbury uses the phrase “Church of England religion”. I don’t want to make too much of it (well, maybe I do, because it’s one of the many bees in my bonnet, and I accept that the connection here may be tenuous), but I wonder whether the denominational approach has something to do with the problems. Certainly, in pursuing ecumenical interests in the past, I’ve found much more understanding from the ordinary Christians than from the various ministers — perhaps because the ordinary people just want to get on with being Christians, while the ministers know what the differences between the denominations are. And I was intrigued to find that, at the end of the combined Tang Hall and Osbaldwick churches’ Lent study programme this year, suggestions for strengthening the church’s ministry in the community included “abolish church buildings, clergy, and liturgy”. I wouldn’t want to go quite as far as that, but I sometimes think that if we could get over our obsession with denominations we’d have a better chance of demonstrating those qualities which Mr Bradbury and others have failed to find.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005