World Cup Churches: 27. Serbia

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Writing on a day when the 2021 Census revealed that slightly less than half the population of England and Wales identified as Christian, it might be tempting to think of Serbia as an antidote.  In Serbia over 91% identify as Christian, a remarkable figure for a (small) European state.

Unfortunately, this is not necessarily a sign of a deeper Serb spirituality.  The Serbian Orthodox Church is regarded as nearly synonymous with being Serbian.  This part of Europe has been through centuries of turmoil of all kinds, as anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of the Balkans knows.  For two centuries the area was Islamic within the Ottoman Empire, and a significant factor in the nationalism associated with the Serbian Orthodox Church is the sense that it was and is a bastion against Islam.

This leaves all other religions and denominations firmly on the margins, but one interesting margin has the Basilica of St Demetrius in Stremska Mitrovica.  Despite its very Orthodox-sounding name (Demetrius was a soldier saint from Thessaloniki in Greece) it is a Catholic Church.

Why is it interesting?  Because it represents something about Stremska Mitrovic which long predates the existence of Islam or the Orthodox Church.  This was once Sirmium and this ancient Roman city became one of the Capitals of the Roman Empire when the administration was shared out upon Rome's decline.  In the third century ten of the Roman Emperors came from the area around the city.

As the Empire turned Christian Sirmium naturally became important in the Church too and to cut a very long story short that is why it hosted no less than four (some think three) Church Councils.  Yet strangely anyone may have heard of the Council of Nicea and/or the Nicene Creed.  Or even the Council of Constantinople (more nerdy that).  But few have heard of any of the four Councils of Sirmium.

The reason is quite simple.  These were councils called to try and incorporate a heresy - Arianism - in the Church.  (Arius himself had been previously exiled to this area from Alexandria).

Next week we'll be singing carols in the street about God becoming Man.  Over the road the Jehovah's Witnesses will be proffering their literature - but no carols of course.  Their views are somewhat like those of the Arians regarding Jesus - a man not God.  When we talk of the Grinch that stole Christmas, that Grinch might easily have been Sirmium!

World Cup Churches 21. Belgium

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

When I first visited Bruges (Brugge) I was, like many visitors, attracted to its canals, wonderful atmosphere and architecture.

I was not attracted by the church tower in this photo, made entirely of bricks and soaring far into the sky.  Yet as you see, I photographed it. I did so because it is such a monumental thing - far higher, for example, than Big Ben/the Elizabeth Tower of the British Houses of Parliament and far higher than any other building in Bruges.

'Being monumental' is not a great Christian virtue, and this tower is a monument to the enormous commercial wealth of Bruges mid-millennium.

Like any Catholic Church of size it is also relatively full of monuments (or in Protestant parlance perhaps idols) inside.  Yet this is where this church has a feature that says something significant about the confusion that is Belgium.

Belgium is about a third of the age of this church and is arguably at least two countries still, the Dutch and the French, plus a small German section.  When this Church was built it was part of the County of Flanders belonging to the House of Burgundy. Later it was under the Spanish, later the Austrians . . . you get the idea.

The feature in question, however, is Italian.

Michelangelo's Madonna and Child was the first of his sculptures to leave Italy and the reason it left Italy was the same reason the ludicrous brick tower was built - money.  No Italian patron could match the offer from Bruges and so this amazing statue has stood . . . no, wait a minute, it has NOT stood for 500 years here.

Three hundred years later the French Revolutionaries were in town and it was shipped off to Paris.  There is stayed until Waterloo, when Napoleon's defeat and demise enabled its return.  It lasted a hundred years or so until the Second World War.  

Peculiarly it became a 'victim' of D Day as retreating German forces retreated with the statue in tow.  Where had it gone?  A year or so later it was found in a salt mine in Austria.

Perhaps the lesson in all this is that although this is a monumental statue in a monumental church (The Church or Our Lady [Eng]) there can be relatively few churches or statues that have changed hands or countries as often as these!  Human things are never changeless things.

World Cup Churches 12. Poland

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Poland is rare among European nations in having increasing numbers of churches.  The land of Poland has an unfortunate story of being a very suitable place to wage war, and as everyone knows, war is a historical preoccupation of Europeans.  Even as I write this blog, Poland is only over the border from Europe's latest war in Ukraine.

Perhaps it is heartening that such a troubled area has increasing numbers of Christian (mostly Catholic) sites.  Here is on such church, in a former Nazi SS Headquarters building:

This Church at Birkenau is, however, very controversial.   It is just down the road, as it were, from the infamous Birkenau Camp - also known as Auschwitz 2. Whilst, looked at from the perspective of Christian - Catholic - tunnel vision it is surely heartening to see a place of such dishonour being redeemed for Christian worship, this is most certainly not how it is perceived by the Jewish community.  And as such it brilliantly illustrates the problem of Church History.

There were, of course Catholic Christians (and other Christians) who died in Nazi Concentration Camps.  But the broad sweep of the Catholic response to Nazism was ambiguity - at best.  Pope Pius's attitude has been the subject of volumes of claim and counter-claim but that his official position was largely neutral is the best that can be said for him.

Hence the problem with this church.  Had it met in the building when the Nazis were there - and challenged them - it might have its rightful place.  But for the Jews it simply reminds them that they were ignored then and ignored now.

Churches need to be good news first and buildings second.

World Cup Churches 11. Mexico

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

The three countries with the most self-identifying Christians are at this World Cup.  We have already seen a church in the nation with the most - the USA.  Here is the nation with the third most Christians - Mexico.  Overwhelmingly - though cracks are showing - Mexico is a Roman Catholic country.  Like some of its cousins in this respect Mexico entertains some of the more unlikely Christian features of overwhelmingly Catholic communities.  The local expression of this we are featuring is Iglesia del Honguito.

If your Spanish is no better than mine you may feel that this is the Church (Iglesia) in the town of Honguito.  But this Church is in Chignahuapan.  

Honguito is the Spanish for 'mushroom'.

The Church of the Mushroom is not very big (though Mexico has plenty of vast churches).  It gets more visits than might be expected though because it contains - you guessed it - a mushroom (which is itself not very big).  Found in 1880 by a local farmer it has markings that, with the help of a magnifying glass, has a representation of the crucified Christ:

To answer the obvious 140 year old question, the mushroom is now petrified.  It is a popular object of veneration in true Mexico-Catholic fashion and, whatever it does for local Catholics, it leaves an English Protestant like me with nothing left to say but with eyes slightly agog.

World Cup Churches 7. United States of America

It's World Cup year - taking place in November/December in Qatar instead of the Northern Hemisphere summer as it has always previously done.  Heading round the 32 qualifying countries I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Well, this is the biggie.  A vast country, a huge population and hundreds of thousands of churches.  Can we possibly find one that epitomises something American?  As with England I found selecting one church surprisingly easy.

Christ Cathedral is the Cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in California.  As such it is a reminder of the hugeness of the Catholic Church in America (including of course the current President), not least in California (reference Sister Act) and its burgeoning Hispanic population.

For all that it is very glitzy in Californian-American style - and that is for a reason. Until not so long ago it was called the Crystal Cathedral and the home of Reverend Robert Schuller's Positive Thinking TV empire.  Technically a Presbyterian Church it was more accurately a Television Church and its Hour of Power, birthed out of a 1960s Drive-Thru church, was vastly popular across the English-speaking world and beyond.  You can't get much more American than all that.  I thought that one day as I walked through the glass building alongside the fountains gently spurting out water in the middle of the aisles as the sun beamed in.

'If you can dream it, you can do it.'

'Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.'

'Problems are never real problems unless they cause you to take your eye off your goals.'

It's not necessarily straightforward to derive these maxims from the carpenter of Nazareth and his disciples, followers, martyrs, prisoners, missionaries and attendant Holy Spirit- inspired operatives.  But in sunny California they made a whole lot of sense.

Until they didn't.

Because for all the positivity stamped on the side of free pens, glasses, eagle ornaments and handkerchiefs - and written in an endless stream of best selling books - some of the problems WERE real problems, whether you thought about your goals beyond them or not.

This whole caboodle cost an awful lot of dollars - orchestras, high-level staffing and prime-time level programming don't come cheap.  And in a long story played out in court and public the ministry filed for bankruptcy.

Unfortunately there was a marked lack of positive thinking in the family.  Firings and hirings, Schuller himself suing the ministry he had founded and energetic divisiveness from an angry, diminishing, and now online congregation.  In many ways among the most negative decades in any church's story in America from a church that had steadfastly refused to countenance sin in the interests of thinking positively. That is one great irony.

Another irony is that a building christened a cathedral simply to make itself sound important (a Presbyterian Church remember) has now actually become a Cathedral - the seat of a Bishop - in the Roman Catholic Church.

It happened in America.

World Cup Churches 3. Senegal

It's that year again - the World Cup.  Scheduled every 4 years this year it is in Qatar,  Qatar is very hot so it will take place in November instead of the Northern Hemisphere summer as previously.  This gives me nice time to head round the 32 qualifying countries and this time I want to pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label World Cup Churches.

Senegal's churches are found mostly along its coast, the part of the land in which various colonials made their homes.  This is often a sad story, however, of the ultimate exploitation of any people - human slavery.  Today there is a significant, but small Christian presence in a largely Muslim nation.  Today the Christian presence is itself African.

On the very edge of Atlantic Senegal is a (Catholic) Church in an astonishing setting which I remember reading about some time ago.  The church in Fadiouth.

Fadiouth is no ordinary island.  It is made up of clam shells.

And there on the island is a church - itself and its graveyard made largely of shells too.

Though it is a construction phenomenon in a unique setting, perhaps the deeper and happier fact of the island is that it is, rarely for west Africa, a close-knit community where heritage Christians and heritage Muslims co-exist in proper peace - sharing life together as well, not merely putting up with each other tolerantly.  

If only that were true for larger parts of the the continent and the wider world.

World Cup Churches 1. Qatar

It's that year again - the World Cup.  Scheduled every 4 years this year it is in Qatar,  Qatar is very hot so it will take place in November instead of the Northern Hemisphere summer as previously.  This gives me nice time to head round the 32 qualifying countries and this time I want to pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label World Cup Churches.

So let's start with the hosts, Qatar.  Unlike some of its Arabian neighbours, Qatar has been accommodating to Christian Churches (for expats of course).  There is a Religious Complex in which different churches are sited but the striking one that first grabbed headlines is the Roman Catholic church that services expat workers from Catholic countries.

It gained attention because this is not a small church that Qatar has permitted in an unassuming building as the picture shows.

Nor is it one that is in occasional use:

Qatar has had its critics and many Western commentators have bewailed the (stunningly obvious) fact that Qatar doesn't operate like the EU.  But at least in regards to religious tolerance Qatar offers light that is not often found in its part of the world.

St John Roberts

Today is the Anniversary of the execution of one of the many namesakes of mine.  Saint (for that is how he has become known) John Roberts was Welsh (as Robertses always ultimately are), born in 1577 to a farming family.

Namesake he may have been, but in very many ways our paths seem quite opposite.  Born into a Protestant home John was converted to Catholicism in France.  In the febrile world of Reformation and Counter-Reformation religious politics he found himself in the wrong religion in the wrong place.

In returning from Europe to London he knew he was in mortal danger, but he wanted to work among London's poor anyhow.  From this act of foolery or bravery came his execution.  Yet even at his Tyburn execution the usual cruelties of that age were mitigated by his popularity with the poor.  They would not permit the authorities to treat his body with quite the cruelty they normally would have done - at least not before he was dead.  London has a very long list of cruelties on its hands;  it has also, as Charles Dickens for one reminds us, always had plenty of The Poor.

From his village birth to die at 33 years of age in the capital city after having a reputation for looking after the poor?  Well, for all my Protestantism I can see some reasons to think of him as saintly and a reminder of Someone else.

Martyring

The killing of Father Jacques Hamel while conducting morning mass in his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray is appalling at every level.  Except one.

It is appalling because of the even-greater-than-usual contrast between the savagery of the attackers and the fragility of the attacked.  It is appalling because of the religious framework of the attackers pitted against the religious framework of the attacked.  It is appalling because it crosses so many boundaries that are rarely crossed outside conventional war (and then quite rarely) - the young against the elderly, the cruel against the kind, the neighbour against the neighbour, the strong against the weak - I could go on.

In one respect this killing was, however, immediately given a different character.  Where the Press and the politicians used the words killed or murdered, some Catholics started to use the word martyred.  

Not only so, but the line of succession of being violently killed at the Eucharist or Mass has been traced through through Oscar Romero (1980) and Thomas Becket (1170), two famous martyrs.

Now there is a considerable theological gulf between Father Hamel, French Catholic Priest, and me, an English Baptist Protestant.  As to that gulf, God is for both of us the judge.  Nevertheless I like the sheer subversion of 'yet another killing in mainland Europe' being transformed by the word martyr.  For the deaths of all Christians who die because they are Christians are a testimonial of their crucified Lord.   "Can you be baptised with the baptism I will be baptised with?" the Lord enquired of his disciple.

To put it another way, very many Islamic leaders will be rushing out disclaimers that the extremists (yet again) in no way represent Mohammed, God or Islam or them.  Meanwhile, all the current Bishop of Rome needs to say about Jacques Hamel is that on that wretched morning he represented the story of the Lord and His love   Three men died, but only one of them died successfully.  Two of them wasted their lives and their deaths.  One I guess hadn't wasted his life, and certainly didn't waste his death.

It's Missing 3. The Lord's Prayercut

Hymns and songs almost invariably have bits missing, and even if the printed version doesn't then the performed version will.

More extraordinarily the central prayer of the Christian Church has a bit missing.

Our Father, which art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come. 

Thy will be done in earth, 

As it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive them that trespass against us. 

And lead us not into temptation, 

But deliver us from evil. 

For thine is the kingdom, 

The power, and the glory, 

For ever and ever. 

Amen.

Here's the Roman Catholic version:

Our Father who art in Heaven, 

Hallowed be thy name; 

Thy kingdom come 

Thy will be done 

On earth as it is in heaven. 

Give us this day our daily bread; 

And forgive us our trespasses 

As we forgive those who trespass against us; 

And lead us not into temptation, 

But deliver us from evil.

My attendance at RC services is almost non existent - the last time I was left hanging by this version of the Lord's Prayer was in a fiercely evangelical church and the time before that in a middling cerebral Anglican church.

The rationale for the haircut prayercut seems simple enough - the oldest transcripts of the Gospels (usually but not universally deemed to be the most reliable) don't have the final doxology in.  

To me, the question is: What do we gain by taking it out?

The answer cannot be that it gives a better ending.  Mostly, when I've heard it in its truncated form, the leader adds Amen which is an unconscious admission that the truncated version doesn't feel that it ends right.   

The answer cannot be that the doxology doesn't fit the prayer.  The meaning of the doxology echoes the opening lines of the prayer about the kingdom and divine glory of God.  It reflects the grounds of confidence that we might be delivered from evil.

The answer must be that it is more Biblical.  This seems simple and straightforward enough.  Until we ponder that in the Roman Church being Biblical is hardly a stated priority with its varied forms of  hierarchical authority.  A Church that has in central liturgy a prayer

Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.

Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her Glorious Assumption.

Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.

Blessed be St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse.

doesn't really need to exercise itself too much about being exactly Biblical!  Similarly, by his writings I am fairly sure that the Lead Vicar in the cerebral Anglican church I gave as an example doesn't believe the Lord's Prayer was actually uttered by the Lord.  So his problem with it is hard to understand too.

That leaves us with the Biblicist church who may have some grounds for leaving it out because it's not in the Bible (though surely most of our other prayers aren't either?)  But even that isn't straightforward because this doxology IS in the Bible - 1 Chronicles 29:

11 Thine, O Lord is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.

Shall we just keep saying it, eh?

Focus

I was delighted to read that someone of international standing has recommended my car!

 

Pope Francis said: "It hurts me when I see a priest or a nun with the latest model car, you can't do this.  Cars are necessary. But take a more humble one. Think of how many children die of hunger and dedicate the savings to them."

Further investigation proves, allegedly, that he practices what he preaches. The Pope himself shuns comfortable expensive transport and when driving around his city he uses . . .

. . . a humble Ford Focus.

I was really feeling quite good about this.  Though not under Pope Francis's administration or tutelage I was conducting my ministry from the same humble transportation that he himself uses by way of example.

 

Then something bothered me.

 

When, in something of an emergency as my previous car clapped out, I bought my Ford Focus I thought it was a nice car, a good one that made me wonder whether, well, I should have bought something more humble.

 

Which only goes to show that a Pope's humility is a Baptist Pastor's luxury (at least in Britain!).

 

There again, Jesus walked . . .

Simple really

Here we are in the midst of Mr J.A. Ratzinger's visit to the UK.  I am listening to Latin emanating from the middle of golden pillars shrouded in clouds of incense.

For me the most telling thing about this visit is how good it is at its simplest and how, as it moves into higher things political and ecclesiastical, it moves further away from the Carpenter of Nazareth.

Here are the wonderful words the Pope spoke to schoolchildren yesterday;

"Happiness is something we all want, but one of the great tragedies in this world is that so many people never find it, because they look for it in the wrong places. The key to it is very simple -- true happiness is to be found in God," he said.  "God wants your friendship. And once you enter into a friendship with God, everything in your life begins to change."

Or to put it another way, Sic enim dilexit Deus mundum ut Filium suum unigenitum daret ut omnis qui credit in eum non pereat sed habeat vitam aeternam.