Memory ~ Shame and Guilt
My memory serves me rather irregularly, but one thing it does well is to serve me up flashes of the past when I have done something to make me cringe with shame. I might be driving along, riding my bicycle, or waiting to go to sleep, when suddenly I am visited by memories of a time when I embarrassed myself. Embarrassing myself when alone is no problem, but before another I feel the most acute mental anguish. I then store that occasion in my memory banks ready for instant recall, undiminished over time, when my mind might later catch me unawares. I don’t know whether I am unique in this affliction, or whether others experience it. Perhaps I will never know, for I suppose none of my friends will discuss this inner secret any more readily than I.
Funnily enough, the same thing does not happen over past conduct when I was guilty. Like all sinners I regularly do things that work to separate me and/or others from God. Of course, I confess these sins in my church worship and the priest absolves me. This absolution does not cause me to ‘forget’ these incidents. Rather, I think that at a deep psychological level my personal embarrassment means more to me than the guilt of a sin committed. Shame damages my ego, makes me insecure about my self-control, and probably lowers my status in the group. Guilt seems abstract, but shame is so much more palpable.
Someone mentioned to me once that all humans have a natural sense of shame, but that the Jews discovered the concept of guilt, which we have inherited through the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Perhaps God is not worried about our pride suffering in shame, but the Jewish/Christian faith teaches that God is radically concerned about our guilt. The salvific acts in the Scriptures, especially the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, when Christ takes upon Himself the Guilt of all humankind, show that God is literally prepared to do anything to remove us from the stain of guilt. How sad that my memory, so ready in the case of shame, is so uninterested in the case of guilt.
Barrie Baker is a Senior Friend and member of the WA Area Council.
Remember Me
One of the most popular English-language chants of the Taizé community also happens to be the one that I find most difficult to understand. I struggle with its meaning every time I sing it:
Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
My focus here will be on the request “remember me”. It seems to imply that God can (choose to) forget us. Yet surely this cannot be the case if “even the hairs of [our] head are all counted” [Matthew 10:30], if God knows us as intimately as the psalmist describes [Psalm 139]?
Being reminded of the Biblical source of the chant’s lyrics helps a little: Luke 23:42. Luke is the only Gospel to elaborate upon any dialogue between Jesus and the two men crucified with him at Golgotha. Whilst in Matthew and Mark both men taunt Jesus, in Luke one of the men states that they have been condemned justly, and proclaims Jesus’ innocence. He then makes the above request, to which Jesus replies “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”.
What exactly was the anonymous man asking of Jesus? Was he simply asking Jesus to keep him in his memory, to not forget him, to bring him back into his thoughts? These are the most common uses of remember in English. As a student of Italian linguistics, I know how inadequate translation from one language to another can be. So I ought to double-check that remember is an accurate translation of the Greek word μνήσθητί in this verse. Most of the Greek-English lexicons I have consulted indicate that remember in the aforementioned senses is an accurate translation. Yet doesn’t the man’s request seem to be asking more of Jesus than a promise not to forget him?
At a recent WA SCM Shared Space, and as a stimulus for this issue of Jubilee Grapevine, we discussed the topic of ‘memory’. I remember being struck by the suggestion that remember could be interpreted as ‘re-member’, that is, as the opposite process to dismembering. I have heard others conceptualise ‘remembering’ as putting bodies and memories back together1, a sense that we are journeying (back?) to wholeness. In some ways it reminds me of a puzzle. You start out with a thousand small knobbly- shaped pieces but the understanding that they can be put back together. Some of the pieces will fall into their rightful place quite easily. Some will take much time and effort. Some will require the assistance of others. Eventually the whole will be recreated.
I have since discovered that this usage of remember is not entirely without precedent. Using the hyphenated form re-member, the Oxford English Dictionary cites two late 19th century instances of the word, one in the sense of ‘to put together again’, the other meaning ‘to supply with a new member’. However, this usage is not particularly common. In fact, ‘re- member’ is listed as a ‘nonce-word’, that is, a word invented for one-off occasions2. So it would not appear to be the case that the anonymous man was asking Jesus to ‘re-member’ him. This does not, however, preclude us from re-interpreting remember as ‘re-member’ in the Taizé chant.
The word remember came into the English language via the Old French remembrer which in turn came from the Late Latin rememorari, a combination of the Latin re- ‘again, back’ and memor ‘mindful’. Dismember came into English via the Old French desmembrer, which in turn came from a combination of the Latin dis- and membrum ‘limb, part of the body, constituent part of anything, member of a body of people’. The word member also came into the English language via the French membre, which also came from the Latin membrum. So whilst it does not appear that remember ultimately derives from the Latin membrum, we can also see that this is not essential for its re-interpretation as ‘re-member’3. Jesus, put me together again now and always4 (even if it does not fit the music). Some of us may find this to be a more useful interpretation of the Taizé chant, yet it still leaves unresolved the meaning of the anonymous man’s request.
Back to the original Greek. Arndt and Gingrich (1957) offer a broader interpretation of μνήσθητί in this particular verse: remember, think of, care for, be concerned about. Yet even this does not seem to fully capture the nature of the request. Some have argued that the man “has deep faith that the dying Jesus is truly a king and can dispense the pardon and mercy which only a king can” (Brown et al. 1992:719). Or is it actually the case that we ascribe a deeper significance to the request because of Jesus’ response to it? Metzger and Murphy (1994) argue, in fact, that “Jesus promises [the man] much more than he […] asked”. We cannot be certain of what the man knew about Jesus or of what he was asking of him. What is certain though is the generous response. Perhaps that is what we should remember.
Footnotes
- I have been told that the Hebrew concept of 'remembering' is quite different to the English-language one but I do not have space to explore this here.
- A quick search at www.dictionary.com suggests that this usage is being taken up again but usually in specialist areas such as engineering: ‘to return to an original shape or form after being deformed or altered’.
- Interestingly, the modern Italian equivalent of ‘remember’ is actually ricordare, a combination of the Latin re- and cor ‘heart’, a legacy of the heart having been considered the site of memory. There are, however, literary forms that are of similar origin to the English: rimembrare and rimemorare.
- The request is imbued with a sense of futurity that I also find difficult to comprehend but a discussion of Lucan theology on teh ‘kingdom’ would be a whole other article.
References
- Arndt, W. and F. Gingrich (eds) (1957) A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Ateliers et Presses de Taizé (1998) Taizé: Songs for prayer, London: Harper Collins.
- Brown, R., J. Fitzmyer and R. Murphy (eds) (1992) The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Student edition, London: Geoffrey Chapman.
- Marshall, A. (ed.) (1976) Interlinear Greek-English New Testament: The New International Version, Michigan: Zondervan.
- Metzger, B. and R. Murphy (eds) (1994) The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version, New York: Oxford University Press.
- Moore, B. (ed.) (1999) The Australian Oxford Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Moulton, H. (ed.) (1978) The Analytical Greek Lexicon Revised, Michigan: Zondervan.
- Oxford English Dictionary online
- Sabatini, F. and V. Coletti (eds) (1997) Dizionario Italiano Sabatini-Coletti, Florence: Giunti.
- Simpson, J. and E. Weiner (eds) (1989) The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- www.dictionary.com
Narelle McAuliffe is completing a Masters in Italian linguistics at UWA.
Resurrection as Memory
In seeking to understand theology from first principles,1 I have found it helpful to identify God with the ecological ground of reality, as the background unity that brings everything together as a living whole. This ecological perspective clashes with some traditional Biblical doctrines but I believe it is compatible with the intent of Christ, and with Paul’s teaching in Romans 1:20 that God is on display in our cosmos.
Memory is central to such an ecological theology. We can only engage with the complex system of our cosmic ecology by understanding how our present emerges from our past, and by retaining the life of the past in our present through memory.
Christ and Paul taught that the main thing stopping us from confronting the problems of our world is the drift of human values away from our true purpose, which is to love God and neighbour. As Christ suggested in John 15:1, we can only flourish when we stay connected to our divine source. Life disconnected from reality is not sustainable, whereas life grounded in reality can continue. Religion itself means a ‘re-binding’ with the real source of life.
Christ used this idea of connection to reality as the basis for his long term vision of the Reign of God, studied by eschatology. Belief in a literal eschatology is central to my faith, not in the magical fundamentalist sense of the rapture, but in a scientific conviction that there is little hope for our world unless we establish a public global reconnection to God through Christ. I know this is not a very palatable or popular way of thinking, but I hope you will be interested in this attempt to explain why it makes sense to me. See for example Christ’s comments in Matthew 24, 25 and 13:24&ndash30;, which predict that our drifting self-centred ways will be brought to a sudden halt by the intrusion of the divine reality of God into our falsely constructed world. In light of these texts I like to think of the Reign of God in the terms Paul put in 1 Corinthians 15:28—“that God may be all in all”. To me this implies that the Reign of God will require an understanding of the past as the basis for life in the present, through a new sense of wholeness and integrity in which cultural heritage is properly valued.
The idea of eschatology is that God will become obvious, much as a rock under the sea becomes obvious when a ship drifts off course and runs into it. God is always there, just as rocks are always there despite the ignorance or denial of a ship’s passengers and crew. The ecological approach sees eschatology as the future meeting between our world and its underlying reality.
The eschatological predictions of the Bible tell us that when the drifting ship of our world hits the rocks of fate, we will be forced to re-work our systems and values. We will be confronted by an understanding that we cannot live just for the moment, but can only find sustainable life and salvation in continuity with past and future. Instead of valuing transitory pleasures, we will see the wisdom of Paul’s prophecy in Romans 2:7 that God will give eternal life to those who seek glory by doing good. The sense of eternal life not as an external heaven but as life in full continuity with the past and future must centre on memory of the past. I personally believe this was what Jesus intended in saying the Reign of God would involve the resurrection of the saints—that our world will come to celebrate their memory to keep alive their spirit. Making memory central will re-focus our priorities away from matters such as military security towards understanding the eternal human spirit of love.
To understand eternal life in ecological terms, without the pre-modern myth of a separate heaven, we need to interpret our soul energy entirely within the laws of physics. On this basis, my view is that our life is only eternal to the extent that we transform the future. When Christ prayed for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven (Matt 6:10), he was calling us to transform our world in line with the divine ideals of love and peace and justice. Christ himself achieved eternal life by preaching and living a holy and sustainable vision. His death and resurrection reflect his complete dedication to God before self. The resurrection of Christ continues its work today primarily through our memory, as his eternal holy spirit works to realise his divine ideals. Similarly, we can say the eternal life of Augustine or Plato or Buddha is in their ongoing influence on the world, through the direct and indirect memory people have of them through use of their ideas.
Jesus Christ told Pontius Pilate he had come into the world to bear witness to the truth. I interpret this as calling us also to bear witness to truth, and to remember our past and celebrate truth in all its moral dimension as much as its scientific side. In calling to us at the last supper to share the eucharist in memory of him (Luke 22:19), Christ taught that memory has a sacramental character. The simple ritual of communion actually presents a deep critique of our superficial society, which has forgotten and destroyed so much of our cultural heritage that people have lost their understanding of reality. Our world puts itself in peril when we forget that memory of history and culture and ritual gives people roots and meaning and identity and should be central to our lives.
Memory must be broadened beyond narrow cultural bounds. Here in Australia, the destruction and belittling of the ancient wisdom of Aboriginal culture has scarred our collective soul, producing a shallow falsity in our public life. Major effort is needed to resurrect and remember Australian indigenous spirituality after its attempted erasure. This will surely be a way to realise Christ’s prophecies that many that are last will be first (Matt 19:30) and that the stone the builder refuses will be the head of the corner (Matt 21:42). In this context, I believe Christ’s vision of the Reign of God is not only for believers in a narrow set of doctrines but has to honour and respect the memory of non-Christian cultures such as those of Aboriginal Australia. I strongly believe that the spirit of Christ has been present as the way the truth and the life (John 14:6) even where the explicit message of Christ was not known.
Christ calls us to sift through the neglected rubble of our world to find and restore and remember the things and people and ways we have forgotten. Perhaps this effort to resurrect our past through memory will give us the basis to find the depth of identity we will need to engage with the Reign of God.
Footnotes
- The concept of ‘first principles’ is used in mathematics and philosophy to mean a simple starting point for development of a coherent logical system.
Robert Tulip is an SCM friend in the ACT.
The stories we tell inform us and by constant repetition form us.
Anne Thurston, Knowing Her Place: Gender and the Gospels, p.71.
Memories
When we were there
It was different
The people were more
The trees were less
The sea was bluer
The sky was
The sky was different
We were different
It was then
And now we are no longer there
Memories
They pretend to us
That what we recall
Is what it was
Slyly and subtly they suggest
Things that never were
They are only our memories
The way we have chosen
To remember
And is this any more real
Do we know now better
Than we remember then
What was it you said
Just now
Or was that what you said
Yesterday
Or when was it
Was that what you said
Is that what you meant
How have I remembered
The talk, the days, your touch
Can it be like that, like this
How do the minutes, the images
Come back to me
Echoes, reflections
True impressions
Lies my mind tells me
To hide the past away
Softening the pain, the hurt
The love
Too sharp to hold, to keep
Soon, soon this time will go
Soon it will be only memory
And I will recall it
Like this, just so
Time will tell
I know it will
There’ll be memories
To remind me
Roger Horton is an SCM Senior Friend and member of the WA Area Council
A Grandma Who Forgets
Have you ever noticed that Dory from Finding Nemo is a perfect representation of some elderly people? Seriously, you’ll tell them something and five minutes later they will have forgotten it! People say that’s it short-term memory loss, but have you got that kind of Grandparent whose length of the walk to school changes all the time? I unfortunately do. Don’t get me wrong: I love my grandmother and all, but sometimes it can be so frustrating. I find being around elderly people really hard sometimes. It’s so scary to think that I might one day become like that.
Memory loss is really hard on elderly people—well, on everybody—as it is a loss of independence. I think what most of us don’t realize is that they came from a generation where to be dependent, or in a wheelchair, or disabled was a shameful thing. What’s really hard for my Grandmother is that when I was little she had to look after me sometimes, but now that has changed I am now the one that has to look after her. What makes it even more difficult for her is that she still thinks that I’m ten years old and that she should be looking after me. I find this very frustrating as many times she’ll try to tell me what to do, and if I start talking about the ‘old days’ she’ll say I don’t know what I’m talking about. I know I’m supposed to respect elderly people and listen to the advice that they give me but it’s very hard to respect somebody when they can’t even remember what day it is. What’s really sad is that Grandma knows she’s losing her memory and independence so she’ll try to prove her authority to other people by bossing me around and telling me off for doing stuff that she doesn’t tell me off for in private. It’s really hard when the elderly start losing their memory especially for the people around them as unfortunately they have a tendency to become difficult. Their common sense seems to go too (like Grandma put plants on the TV and then watered the plants and then the TV broke cause the plant leaked water all over it) and their health goes too. It’s really hard to see a loved one waste away and become a vegetable, knowing that nothing can be done. Although their memory goes they’re still there and a human being. My Grandmother may be really forgetful but she still has the same personality and is as cheeky as ever. I think the fact that elderly people with memory loss keep their personality is why they are often very difficult.
For information and support for patients with Alzheimer’s or Dementia and their families and carers, refer to Alzheimer’s Australia’s website.
Charlotte Watts is currently in Year Ten at Armadale Christian College, WA.
A pleasure is full-blown only when it is remembered. You are talking as if the pleasure was one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing … What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure.
C.S.Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet.
Remembering ASCM
I want to tell you something of the Student Christian Movement as I and some of my friends knew it in the 1940s and fifties.
It was the post World War II period. There was a strong movement towards unity—certainly among European nations that had the hideous results of the opposite all around them. This desire for unity was expressed in the creation of the U.N. and of the European Union.
In the Churches, too, unity was a strong current. Indeed the tide had been coming in before the war. There was a feeling that the nineteenth century missionary fervour had been largely negated by a divided message and competing efforts resulting in confusion for some and skepticism for others. In the twenties and thirties bonds forged in ecumenical fellowship were sometimes stronger than national or denominational ties. It was some of these pioneers of the movement who articulated the clearest theological basis for opposing Nazi doctrines and policies. As early as 1933 Bonhoeffer, Niemoller and a few others fought ideas with ideas. Theology was their weapon and they looked to their ecumenical friends for support when their own Church hierarchy temporised or worse.
In the forties we saw these men as heroes of the faith and we wanted to stand where they stood. ‘A safe stronghold our God is still’ was like a battle cry for us ‘That they all may be one’ was the shared vision of the WSCF, the World Council of Churches and the YMCA and YWCA. They shared the same root.
The informing idea was that Christians were called to be ‘in the world but not of it’. We did not see Christ’s followers manning a series of fortresses each flying its own flag and trumpeting its own message to the world but, Bible in one hand and newspaper in the other, the student Christian was called by God to be a student in the place where we were, the University. It was our calling—our vocation.
Study was the life-blood of the Movement: study of doctrine, of the Bible, its applicability to the social and political ills of the day.
Out of study groups came social action. The Volunteer Graduate Scheme was begun in 1951 by SCMers who contacted the Australian and Indonesian governments. The aim was to provide middle-level technical aid—to be a gesture of identification with our Asian neighbour, to build friendship and demonstrate racial equality. Local rates of pay applied. Accommodation was in Indonesian homes or hostels, and volunteers worked wherever they were sent. The scheme still goes on and is called Australian Volunteers International.
Life in the SCM introduced us to different forms of worship, most strikingly at WSCF conferences. The mysticism of the Russian Orthodox was a revelation and enrichment to the French Calvinist. The early days of the Church of South India brought us in touch with an Indian spirituality. Yet we found we spoke a common language. We were not strangers to each other.
Local conferences at the end of each term were moving and life-changing experiences. The best of our Church leaders and scholars gave of their time, their learning and insight.
Questioning our faith was not something to be ashamed of, but our business. Despite that, we knew where we belonged. We were not an alternative church. Our place was in our parishes on Sunday.
Because we questioned, others were ready to question us. We had great dialogues with the Rationalist Society and with the Communists. At that time Robert Menzies was seeking the banning of the Communist Party. The late Forties were a time of great vitality in the universities. Ex- servicemen had urgent questions and they wanted answers that spoke to their, often bitter, experiences of war. We found the SCM a great enlargement of our experience—a part of the Church in action within the University. It was like a university within a university.
The work goes on, under new difficulties but with new opportunities. Students have less time, for most work to make ends meet. Lack of a common lunch-hour makes it near impossible to run the range of activities, particularly study groups, once considered normal. Email, however, fills a little of the void. Conferences are again taking place, providing an opportunity for in-depth discussion and worship together, and so community is built.
Certainly, to make Christians thinkers and thinkers Christian is not to be achieved by debate alone, but the thinking is part of the process.
Today we ask your prayers for all students that, by God’s grace, they may be true to their calling.
Bronwen Sissons is a Senior Friend in Canberra. This is the text of an address given during morning service at St Margaret's Uniting Church, Hackett, A.C.T. on World Day of Prayer for Students, Sunday 15 August 2004.
Memories of God
One of my earliest God memories relates to playing cards with my mother. We often played games like sevens and snap and, as I got older, canasta and cribbage. I was about six years old and unable to place a card down in a sevens game, so I had to pick up. I desperately wanted a certain card and thought I might petition God to help me. I wasn’t sure, however, whether praying to get a certain card was the done thing, so to speak. I wasn’t sure what my mother would think, so I told her there was something I had to do “under the table” and she wasn’t allowed to peek. I ducked under the table and whispered a fervent prayer “please, God, let the next card be xxx” … but my mother peeked while I was praying and seemed to find the whole thing quite amusing. “Oh,” she laughed, “is that what you’re doing? I don’t think praying will help you. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Well!” I distinctly remember thinking “how does it work then? Because this whole prayer thing is a big FAKE!” For years I would sit in church as we prayed about things—like for someone to get better who then died, and so on—and I used to think that everyone at church knew that prayer didn’t really work but for some reason everyone kept quiet about that. Thinking that prayer was a fake seemed to be one of those things you shouldn’t admit to thinking.
It was years later that I was in an SCM meeting and the focus was on prayer. The speaker talked about why we pray. I don’t remember many details of what he said, but I know that it was at that meeting that I began to understand that prayer was actually something I could believe in. I do remember that the speaker talked about how important it is to connect with each other, about and about how prayer is a sharing of concerns that enables us to better connect with and serve each other. I suddenly understood that prayer did not imply an understanding of God as a puppeteer pulling strings, but that the loving God my church upbringing had shared with me was present also in prayer.
Tiffany Winn is almost finished a PhD at Flinders Uni, SA.
Reviews
Book
Shot: A Personal Response to Guns and Trauma
Gail Bell (Picador, 2003) RRP $28
Shot is an example of how suffering can be transformed by the power of storytelling into healing. This is a courageous and compassionate reflection in which the author recalls how she was shot in the back, seemingly at random, in Sydney’s western suburbs in 1968. It took Gail Bell more than three decades to write this memoir, during which time she wrote short-stories as well as the award-winning book The Poison Principle (Picador, 2001). In Shot Gail uses her craft of writing, her scientific passion for investigation, and her literary instincts to make meaning out of her collision with evil. Shot is not, however, an exercise in therapy or sociology: it is a powerful meditation on coercion, weaponry and the psychology of cruelty. As she describes her personal struggles with trauma, lead-poisoning from the bullet which remained in her body for five years, and the emerging hyper vigilance of her personality after 1968, Gail Bell reveals much about the physical significance of memory. While not writing from an explicitly religious or mystical framework, Gail’s story nevertheless addresses the profound questions which many people ask at the breaking-points of their lives—‘why me?’, ‘why now?’ and ‘where do I go from here?’ Pastoral care teachers, retreat leaders and study groups would do well to include this book in their quest to understand a contemporary theology of healing.
Mark Young is an ASCM Senior Friend from Brisbane. He owns a Devon Rex called Fitzroy (that’s a cat).
Film
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
Director Michal Gondry, Scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman (Focus Features, 2004)
How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot:
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resign'd.
Alexander Pope
Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like if I could just forget some of the things that have happened in my life that make my gut wrench when I think of them. I guess there are things like that in everyone’s memory: times we’ve been hurt until we become bitter, times when we’ve done something so humiliating that we can’t imagine anyone else being that stupid, times when we’ve been so heartless as to distress somebody who was dear to us. The worst thing is, these memories just seem so pointless. Wouldn’t my life be better and my character be more wholesome if they didn’t exist? Wouldn’t I leap at the opportunity to have them erased if I had the chance?
Meet Joel Barish (Jim Carrey), reserved, slightly nerdy main character of scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman’s (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Joel is the recently embittered ex-boyfriend of Clementine (Kate Winslet), freedom-lovin’ chickadee with an electric personality. When Joel finds out that Clem has had their prior relationship erased from her memory by an innovative new medical procedure, he seeks out the team at Lacuna Inc in a fit of rage and revenge in order to undergo the process as well. This inspiring, visually stimulating and sometimes eerie movie is an exploration of what it would mean to lose the memories that cause us so much anguish. It follows Joel’s consciousness backwards through his memories of Clementine and his initial spiteful delight at her erasure. Gradually, however, he encounters moments of their relationship that he treasures, those precious moments that only two people have experienced, and he begins to understand the full extent of what it would mean to have her entirely erased. In desperation, he tries to find ways of stopping the procedure and hiding Clementine in other parts of his consciousness as the worlds around them fade into blackness. Does he succeed in preserving her legacy in his life? Well, I guess you’ll just have to watch it for yourself …
There are so many things I love about this movie. It’s beautifully constructed, the characters are hopelessly real and it shows that sometimes, what we think is the best and most humane thing to do is a dreadful mistake. For me, it is also a dramatic statement of what it means to be alive. Can we really only hope to take the good from life and forget the bad, or is it both that makes us the beautiful and tragic human beings that we are? Ultimately, I think it points to our brokenness and the things that contribute to that—our pain, our bitterness, our despair—and suggests that denial of these things is fruitless, but that the embracing of our broken memories is the true path to wholeness.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes out on DVD on the 27th October. Check out these websites—www.lacunainc.com and www.eternalsunshine.com.
Sarah Mills is completing her Honours in Psychology at UWA (Perth).
Moving on (again)
Reflections of an Out-going National Coordinator
As I sit down to write this, in Seattle of all places, the ASCM feels strangely distant. ‘Strangely’, because it was a central part of my life from 1989–97 and again from 2001–04. During the last couple of months as I have gradually spent less and less time reading and responding to SCM emails, planning or reviewing meetings and minutes and so on, I have felt both relief (to have some time and mental space back) and sadness or loss, a kind of ‘post conference blues’ for a conference that has lasted many years.
On the other hand, I proudly wore my new ASCM T-shirt to a very cool church here in Seattle and also down to the Pike St Markets. Everywhere I went, people wanted first to read the shirt and then to comment on how great it was. One guy, the minister at the church, even wrote down the web address. (For those who haven’t seen it, the T-shirt reads ‘Is God … political? an environmentalist? purple? a feminist? war-torn?’)
Wearing the shirt was a great reminder to me of how important our little movement is, how significant the questions are that we often take for granted because we raise them so often, how a few of us (to paraphrase Margaret Mead) really can change the world. I’m also mindful that this awesome T-shirt was created without any work on my part, so yes I can let go and you’ll all do just fine without me!
We’ve done a lot of great things during the last few years, and in recalling some of them I’m in danger of forgetting others (especially as I’m in a strange place with no notes to guide me!). But here are some of the standout things in my mind, together with a couple of ‘looking ahead’ suggestions.
Decentralisation
In 2001 we set out to develop a new ‘staffing model’ for the national movement, and ended up getting all excited about the seemingly crazy idea of having no paid staff at all, but sharing the key national tasks around a group of volunteers (friends and students). We felt like we were taking a huge leap of faith, and I must say it really did feel to me like the Spirit was blowing a breath of fresh air into the national organisation. Three years later, we have had no hassles with national staff, all the essential things have been done, people have been able to focus more on working at the local level, and I see from the JGC minutes that we have just released a grant of funds from the national accounts to support Ruth’s excellent work in the ACT.
All of these were the kinds of things we were hoping to achieve, so I say: well done ASCM! I think all that’s needed to keep this model working well is for the national co-ordinator to keep in close contact with the other national task bearers, and for everyone to give them some informal support and encouragement. A quick phone call or friendly email every now and again can work wonders for their spirits!
National Conferences
About the same time (Adelaide January GC 2002, if I remember right) a few of us were also very keen to re-establish the tradition of annual national conferences. In a smaller movement, we figured, it should be possible to organise a low-key conference without too much trouble—and the ‘recharging’ effect of attending would arise from the simple joy of being together. Since then, we’ve had Melbourne (the ‘semi’ national conference that grew!) and Perth and now I see we’re planning ACT. Meanwhile, there have been some great state-based mini-conferences, which was also part of the plan.
In 2002 (and again when adopting the new constitution in 2003) we were very deliberate about maintaining a moderately sized Executive Committee that would meet each January (ie. in between the GC meetings each July). I thank those who had the wisdom to spare the surgeon’s knife from this part of our budget, as the face-to-face meetings have been invaluable for keeping us all connected. These meetings, even in their traditional business-oriented form, have not only been rewarding (in a good-results-for-hard-work kind of way) and fun (at least in the evenings and the occasional spontaneous outbreaks of hilarity), they have also developed vital group leadership skills. This becomes more and more apparent to me the more I see of ‘normal’ business people’s skills in managing meetings and group dynamics. I encourage Bronwyn in her goal of making these meetings more like workshops or mini-conferences, taking advantage of the reduced workload and building on the value of having quite a few SCMers together from around the country.
Small is Beautiful: confidence in ourselves
During my term, we had a visit from Beate Fagerli, co-secretary general of the WSCF. Our few resources had been so stretched at the time that we almost missed this chance – I sent her an email saying we could hardly manage to organise anything for her but if she came at the right time she could at least attend a conference. Fortunately, she understood! Attending the Melbourne conference, she reminded us that small really is beautiful, and lifted everyone’s spirits immensely. Since then, we’ve been pretty careful to be realistic about our numbers and what we can do, and to make the most of who we are.
Looking ahead, we do of course need to keep an eye on the importance of bringing new people into the movement. Of course, this task is harder when our own resources are small, and, as others have noted, the student culture has changed significantly in the last decade, such that fewer students are looking to join any groups at all. Still, I wonder whether a carefully managed and creative focus on ‘the numbers’ might be a helpful thing at this point in our history.
Fixing up a few little administrative nightmares
I’m so glad that these are over that I don’t even want to write about them again! In case anyone has missed the news, the ASCM is now reincorporated and has fully discharged its ASIC obligations; Ian Telfer’s legal millstone has been lifted; the ASCM Endowment Association (ie the Centenary Trustees) are powering along under the able leadership of John Ball; and, our task bearers are now free to focus 100% on the future.
There are a few ongoing administrative requirements, including sending a (much simpler) annual financial statement to the Victorian Dept of Consumer Affairs. And as we look towards a handover of the Treasurer’s role, it will be important to ensure that organisational systems and knowledge are maintained. But all in all, things are looking very good on the administrative front, and it’s a great relief to me to hand things over in this state. For those who don’t know, I will continue to be the ASCM’s Public Officer, which is mostly a formality but which means I’m always here to answer any questions about administrative things.
Well, little Daniel is waking up and that’s probably a good point to wrap up these reflections. Thanks once again to everyone who has been part of ASCM these last few years, you have enriched my life immeasurably. Keep up the good work.
Shawn Whelan lives in Melbourne with Natalie and their son Daniel.
Meet your New National Coordinator
Jubilee Grapevine interviewed Bronwyn Hatwell, who took over from Shawn as National Coordinator in July.
JG: Bronwyn, what crucial background information do people need to know to get a feel for who you are?
BH: I am from a rural background so love the outdoors and most things natural. I am very close to my family and friends, though some of them I don’t see very often due to the size of WA and their dispersal. I have only been attending church regularly for the past 2 years, so my understanding of theology can be a little thin, but having SCM parents and family friends I am a very spiritual person.
JG: What and where did you study at uni?
BH: I completed a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture and a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Corporate Finance and Marketing in July this year at the University of Western Australia. And after five and a half year I still hadn’t had enough of the place, so will be going back in October to start a paid Research position, doing the leg work for someone else’s Agricultural Economics research.
JG: What were the most interesting or challenging aspects of your studies?
BH: I love my field, Agricultural Economics, so most of the time I found uni very interesting. I particularly enjoyed and suffered through my Ag Econs honours last year. The freedom was great but the workload was never ending. Challenging aspects would be staying motivated during my commerce units. Learning how to sell toothpaste can be a very dull topic!
JG: As a recent graduate, what are the vivid memories of uni that you think you will carry with you for a long time?
BH: The fear. When I began uni that is the one emotion that was the strongest and I will never forget it. I was afraid of all sorts of things: not being able to find the toilet, not knowing where my class was, getting lost, having no friends, being laughed at … unfortunately some of them came true and I still manage to get lost and go to the wrong class 6 years on.
JG: How has your faith impacted on your life while you’ve been a student?
BH: My faith journey and my student life were very interconnected. Whilst studying economics the idea of what is ‘ethical’ and ‘morally correct’ has often crossed my mind - how the world’s money moves and why, where it should go, etc. I think the way I question is very much coloured by my faith.
JG: Do you identify with any particular approach to Christianity (denomination/ theology/ lifestyle etc) and if so, what is it that attracts you to this approach?
BH: Technically I attend an Anglican service most Sundays. However, I’m not sure if the Sydney Anglicans would consider our bunch an Anglican Church. I love the community at St Margaret’s because they are open and accepting of who I am and my questions. We discuss the bible in what I would consider a very SCM way, with no right or wrongs, only respect for each perspective.
JG: What do you see as the biggest challenges to faith in present Australian student cultures?
BH: It is really the combination of world changes, from my point of view. Students have less time due to needing to work more and spend more time studying, which also means they aren’t about to take on serious issues in their only down time. The university structure does not support small groups such as ours, creating a lack of funding, publicity, resource people, and space. The larger Christian groups on currently campus often project a very judgmental view of Christianity, that of God the big boss man. This all combines and produces a student body that doesn’t have the time and/or interest in faith.
JG: What do you see as the greatest opportunities for living out Christian faith in present Australian student cultures?
BH: I see our freedom as our greatest opportunity. We are able to speak our mind in so many ways. I am always inspired by Trudi and Len’s efforts to live simply by buying organic vegies and only having one car. I have great respect for the many vegetarians among the SCMers. The WA SCMers’ involvement with the Christian Centre for Social Action is amazing. Shawn and Natalie’s approach to lent challenged and inspired me. People are able to live their Christian faith in so many different ways, which is brilliant.
JG: Can you give me a little background as to how you discovered ASCM?
BH: I knew about SCM for a long time, being the child of two SCMers. I attended my first National Conference at age two. Of course, I did the independent teenager thing and came to SCM against my will in some ways. I went to the World Day of Prayer for Students at St Margaret’s back in September 2001 and Trudi convinced me to attend a Shared Space dinner at the Westminster St House. It was a bit overwhelming for someone who had never really been involved with mainstream religion but Trudi convinced me to keep coming to stuff and still am.
JG: What has your involvement with SCM been up until now?
BH: I’ve been to the last 3 National Conferences, even organising the last one with Kate. I took on the role of Environmental Project Officer in 2002 but as you may have noticed I haven’t done much yet. I was the WA Staff Worker from Dec 2002 to July this year and really enjoyed this challenge (most of the time). I am really looking forward to being National Coordinator as it means I get the joy of talking SCM with people but without the pressure of a job. I was also appointed as a proxy member of the WSCF Executive Committee for the Asia Pacific Region at the recent WSCF General Assembly in Thailand. This means if the current Asia-Pacific Executive Committee Member, Nina from Indonesia, is unable to attend, I will be asked to go.
JG: What dreams or hopes do you have for the ASCM?
BH: I love the ASCM I am part of, so I want to maintain and grow the spirit of openness and support that exists. Our own smallness is our greatest asset but can also be our downfall. I would like to see the ASCM grow in number so that it can maintain itself but not such that it losses its essence. We are able to grow more in our faith due to our size and sense of community. I want to share this with more people.
JG: What do you see as the greatest challenges to the movement?
BH: Sharing how great we are! I’m not sure if we are scared that if the SCM grows we will lost the sense of community or if there are other reasons we hide under a bushel, but we need to share what we have with others more, I believe. There is no other group that can offer the amazing faith experience we do and I think it is needed more by our world today. So lets tell everyone about ASCM!!
JG: Would you like to share some thoughts on preparing for a wedding?
BH: I am still having the ‘should the bridesmaid dresses be light purple or periwinkle?’ stress out but otherwise things are going well. Planning a wedding is one of those once in a lifetime events that let you know what people are really like. Interesting way to start a new family! I have a church, a reception and a dress, and a groom thank goodness! I just don’t have a minister to marry us at this stage and my bridesmaid isn’t allowed in Australia but I’m hoping those things will work themselves out in time. More updates to follow I’m sure.
Election Reflections
Following the Federal election on 9 October, a flurry of discussion raced around the SCM chatlists. Here a selection of comments.
You know how when you have a break-up with someone and then in the weeks after the break-up you wake up each morning and you have a few moments of peace before you remember the break-up and then your heart just sinks? I had the same experience this morning before I remembered the election results.
Sophia Wooldridge
It does seem that we as a nation have finally accepted that ethics are no longer important. It really is every person/ social unit for themselves. This is J-Ho’s greatest achievement. Nietzsche wrote a series of ‘untimely meditations’ - untimely because they critiqued the times that he was writing in. We have become untimely people, which means the very terms and concepts that our language is based on are no longer valued. The basis for our arguments has been eroded. I feel like burning my Oz passport. Certainly if I travel overseas in the next couple of years I am going to travel as an Irish citizen. Of course, these are just reactions expressing the depths of embarrassment and despair that we’re feeling. In times like these I seek a sense of purpose and challenge to focus my energies and work toward revolution. By revolution I mean facing the challenge of confronting the politics of narrow, unenlightened self-interest and fear, and offering real, practical alternatives to it. How to do this is the question I’m left asking.
Chris Albone
While the extent of the Coalition victory in the House of Reps may have surprised many, the most significant outcome of the election was its effect on the Senate. If Howard is able to gain a majority in the Senate within a year’s time, then it will not only be possible for him to push through controversial legislation such as the sale of Telstra and further industrial relations reform, but the operations of the Senate itself are under threat. The Howard Government would be tempted to can all inquiries that are likely to call into question his policies, particularly in areas related to international relations and welfare, or even to abolish the Senate itself. There will be an increased burden on already strained resources of progressive voices such as the churches and NGOs to ensure that reports into the state of the nation are released and acted upon. And while you’re at it, watch out for changes to those media ownership laws. Time to emigrate? NO! While New Zealand may look attractive – stay and work for a better future. It’s your Australia.
Julia Pitman
I’m told there’s a Jewish tradition in which men shave off their beards to signify when they are in a period of mourning. With this in mind, I decided to shave off my goatee on Sunday morning (my poor beloved Senate …
) Mark Baumgarten
The election result has shown me that I live a very sheltered life where most people I hang out or discuss politics with were voting Green or ALP. The rise of the religious right in Australia is also frightening. It’s hit home that as much as I like hanging out with like-minded SCM people and others and as much as I bemoan the lack of local congregations which share similar visions and actions, it really is urgent and vital that at least some of us actively engage with the conservative end of the church or hang in or join such communities/study groups so they can keep hearing the prophetic call. I don’t enjoy the role of being the “resident irritant”, but maybe that’s what’s necessary.
Carolyn Tan
Carolyn’s thoughts made me think that Christians with a different take should be louder about it all. Write articles for newspapers and try to shift the debate ourselves, because the Labor party sure isn’t going to by themselves, and the Greens are running the risk of being deliberately marginalised the more they are feared by the big two. We have to do it ourselves: speak about our convictions and link our faith to our belief in pluralism and generosity. If we don’t, Christians who have had fewer opportunities than we have to reflect on the social gospel will end up following the right wing. Perhaps we simply haven’t had enough suffering yet to force a change.
Andrew Francis
Being louder is actually very tricky. Have a look at the Uniting Church Assembly website election information pages
http://nat.uca.org.au/unitingjustice/resources/election2004/, look at the media statements made by the Uniting Church in the lead-up to the election and then reflect on how many of these isues were taken up by the media … It wasn’t for a want of trying that Christians who aren’t taking the religious right position didn’t get media space. Maybe us writing articles might work better than statements from Uniting Justice etc. I was horrified but not surprised to hear that Hillsong got behind the Liberal candidate for Greenway, and that media commentators were touting this and Family First as the Christian perspective. Surely there are some ‘practising Christians’ who stand for the Greens, the Democrats and Labour. It would be really nice if they said so occasionally, so that the public understanding of what Christianity stands for wasn’t so skewed. Maybe they do but it doesn’t make news. Grrrr.
Judy Redman
A Greens Media Release of 6 Oct should have received more press coverage. It was headed ‘Greens’ Christian candidates say no to fundamentalism’. In part, the statement read: Greens NSW candidates who are practising Christians have united to condemn attacks on their party by religious extremists. “The politics of fear, division and bigotry perpetrated by Fred Nile and Family First are un-Christian, and totally out of step with the proper Christian emphasis on peace, love and compassion,” said Greens MP for Cunningham Michael Organ. “The teachings of Jesus stress compassion, tolerance, concern for the poor, non-violence and care for the earth. The right-wing religious parties’ vilification of homosexuality, their tough line on law and order and their discriminatory attitude to Muslim Australians do not exhibit this tolerance or compassion. The Greens call on thoughtful Christians to consider whether Fred Nile and Family First represent the real spirit of Christianity.”
Claudine Chionh
I was at a Greens meeting last week where people were having a tentative discussion about religion. One woman, somewhat nervously, mentioned that she used to go to church, and that up until the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, she used to wear a cross as a symbol of her Christianity. Now, she said, she was ashamed of being associated with all these pseudo Christian causes, and no longer wears the cross or going to church. She said that she was a bit confused though, and wasn’t really sure how to reconcile her Christianity with her growing political awareness. She was immediately jumped on by an outspoken academic, who assured her that ‘religion’ is a ‘phase’ that a lot of us have to go through on our path to understanding the world - don’t worry, she would ‘get over’ her religion soon. The growth of these very conservative fundamentalist powers is completely alarming, and it does seem tempting to dissociate with Christianity because of them.
Claire Vincent
On the topic of leaving Christianity because of the abuses perpetrated in its name - I guess that it is in some respects entirely understandable. The problem with choosing that path is that you abandon the tradition to those who soil it, and can lose access to the wonderful resources that it provides for one who does seek for justice and mercy in this world. I also can understand the woman’s tension. Its like my feeling of wanting to renounce being Australian because I’m embarrassed by this election result. It’s an honest feeling, but really, in the end I do care about Australia sufficiently to want to continue to stick it out. One really does have the responsibility to demonstrate that not all Australians (or Christians) are the nasty sort that seem to be dominating at the moment.
Chris Albone
I got an alert from the Age that shows we can’t make assumptions about Family First being totally reactionary. The Age reports that FF’s president is “Australia’s first ever female indigenous party leader” and she would like the government to apologise for the stolen generations. I’ve been trying to, ostrich-like, pretend that FF was not a force to be considered, so I haven’t been paying any attention to them and this report took me completely by surprise.
Claudine Chionh
Speaking of Family First I went to their website last week, wanting to find out some more. It’s www.familyfirst.org.au. One of their policies that surprised me most was their asylum seeker policy, which was that they were supportive of well managed & compassionate intake of refugees, supported our international commitments, believed that the process of determination should be quickened & most importantly that mandatory detention should be applied only initially to assess health/security issues. I was however worried about their family law policies, such as the assumption that after marriage break-up children’s “custody” should be divided 50/50 between separating parents. Such policies make children sound like possessions. I don’t think these kinds of policies are pro child at all: they are pro parents who believe their children are possessions which must be divided fairly upon separation, and whilst I think its a prevalent view its a very dangerous & unprecedented concept in my view.
Edwina Hunter
Someone suggested that we should stop mixing exclusively in lefty circles and I completely agree. I decided recently to go back to my old school’s Christian group, which was pretty conservative, and to try and “broaden their horizons”. It turned out to be much harder than I thought, because I had to take a “softly softly” approach. I had expected difficult, maybe even emotional, debates about “controversial” stuff like homosexuality but that’s not how it worked out and probably not the best way for change anyway (well in this instance). Instead I think I need to try and encourage them to question what’s provided as “The Answer”, without providing my own Answer (although I can’t resist asking if they think this passage might possibly, just maybe, have some social justice implications...) This process is tricky but I guess I’m optimistic that it will work. Then they can become more aware of our humanity and us of theirs! I’ve also been thinking about the idea that people rejected ethics in this election, and though I don’t know many Liberal voters, those I spoke to did seem to agree with me on refugees and the war. So I don’t think they don’t care … maybe its selfishness but I’m wary of saying ‘we’ are not selfish voters and ‘they’ are.
Bronwyn Lee
I came across another view yesterday in my conversations with people who voted for Howard. One man told me that as a middle class person he had to vote for the Liberals because Labor was for the working classes. Several people agreed. When I questioned this in relation to both parties’ economic policies he could not justify his view - it was just a gut instinct!! Clearly the fear mongering had worked. What was more disturbing though was that he said he would always vote Liberal for that reason.
Shehara Viswanathan
I think that next election needs to sell a vision of an Australia that’s different and not selfish if it’s going to win over the Liberals. As such I’ve developed a motto for the next election’s campaign: “IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU” In relation to the environment policies someone might ask about MY job, to which the appropriate response would be: It’s not about you. In relation to increasing taxes the appropriate response would be: It’s not about you. In relation to border protection the appropriate response would be: It’s not about you.
Darren Wright
Editor’s note: the political bias of these comments is a fair and accurate representation of the views expressed on the chat list. No positive comments relating to the Liberal, National, Family First or Christian Democrat parties were edited out. Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
We Are Family
On Family First, Christianity and Queer Australia
The new political party, Family First, is, at the time of writing, in a solid position to secure the balance of power in the Senate. Its affirmation of traditional family values has found wide support from the general public. This affirmation may be directly linked to the religious convictions of the party’s administration and volunteers: its founder and leader are members of the Assemblies of God. The party is funded by Christian businesspeople. Its charter, then, is to uphold what it regards as intrinsically Christian ideals about the family.
Admittedly, this does not account for the extraordinary confidence that the electorate has placed in Family First, which acquired votes from non- Christians as well as Christians. Unlike Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party, Family First wears its Christian affiliations lightly, endeavouring to promote the affirmation of family values – that is, in putting ‘family first’ – without alienating families from any particular religious or even non-religious background. Moreover, it has vigorously asserted the importance of addressing the specific needs of different communities – rural, metropolitan, indigenous and white—while also bringing those communities together in social harmony. It differs from the official line of the Liberal Party (with whom it exchanged preferences), insofar as it regards reconciliation between indigenous and white Australia as a major issue. The party successfully speaks to the concerns of a wide range of communities while refusing to privilege one community over another. This is done without apparent contradiction, articulating principles with clarity.
But against what and against whom does Family First seek to defend such principles? Much of the party’s centripetal energy derives from the manner in which it has excluded certain people and groups from its definitions of ‘family’ and ‘community’. Indicative of this exclusionary manoeuvre is its attitude towards homosexuality. Earlier this year, the party supported the proposal to amend the Marriage Act by restricting marriage to the union between a man and a woman. The amendment was intended to pre-empt the legislation of same-sex marriage, an issue that has raged in the US but which has attracted muted interest from Australian gay rights advocates, who tend to cite other matters of social justice for gay citizens as more pressing issues. Family First, along with other conservative groups, petitioned senators from the major parties to endorse the amendment during a demonstration at Parliament House. During that demonstration, some party members openly decried homosexuality as a depravity and an illness. (The proposal was passed, having secured endorsements by both the Coalition and the ALP.)
More recently, one Federal election party volunteer (who was set up by Greens campaigners) infamously advocated the burning of lesbians at the stake. Although this terrible comment shouldn’t be taken as a literal representation of Family First’s official policy on homosexuality, it seems to reflect anxieties that animate the party – anxieties about the kinds of people who stand in putative opposition to the ideals of family and community. Claiming to seek reconciliation between different communities, the party is effectively citing irreconcilable differences between itself and queer people. In doing so, it ignores what queer Australians nonetheless continue to declare: that we belong to the nation’s families and communities, and that we are legitimate citizens. We might also add that many of us are Christian.
Adrian Phoon is a PhD student in the English Department at the University of Sydney, and recently joined MCC-Sydney.
Letters to the Editor
I am a 63-year-old Anglican parishioner in a geriatric parish. Many of us have (tried to) run loving, faithful Christian families and seen most of our children walk right away from any overt expression of their traditional spirituality, and we are terribly hurt by that; hurt, not because we feel in any way that we have been betrayed, but because we are the ones, who, in 2000 years of a continuous transmission of the Faith, have failed to do what all our forebears did. We have broken the sacred chain. It is a really terrible burden!
Our attitudes to the young who come into our orbit are:
- We don’t care about the noise, the clothes, the ignorance of the traditions, etc. We want you to stay and love God with us
- We want you to join the chain and pass on the Gospel (in whatever way works for you) to your children.
- We may be totally repellent in behaviour and attitudes, but we are people, and anyway, God is ineffably greater than we are.
- Look past us to the divine.
- The last thing we want is to see the void where you were again.
I have just finished reading the last issue of the Friend’s newsletter with the accompanying JG. I was interested in the report of this year’s National Conference with its strong inter-faith emphasis. This is great. Incidentally, I would be interested to be given some identification of the symbols in the picture on page 23. I can place the empty cross, the Sikh and Jewish symbols, but am unsure about the rest.
I have a member of my congregation who had a stroke a number of years ago, and is slowly declining in memory etc. His fondest memories are of SCM and singing the great old songs like ‘I bind unto myself today’. He remembers and tells me in exact detail of his participation at an SCM conference in Armidale (NSW) when he met lots of people he speaks about fondly who have become church leaders in later times. He was from WA and from Adelaide where he taught for some time. His name is Trevor Hickmott so if anyone remembers him he would be thrilled to get a message from them.
Robert Tulip’s article, ‘Global Resurrection’ (JG Winter 2004), is interesting for its re-reading of Revelation as a hidden Zodiac message of world peace. I agree that the church should be inspired by the New Jerusalem to address the problems of the world. I also agree that Jesus’ resurrection is the firstfruits of the renewal of all creation, as depicted by the New Jerusalem.
Yet this re-reading seems to ignore contemporary scholarship (the reference to Barclay doesn’t count!) to impose a fundamentalist hermeneutic which is actually very similar to that used by Creation Scientists at the other end of the Bible. Both try to find scientific explanations in the Bible, and try to answer questions the Bible doesn’t address.
If Mr Tulip is right, Revelation was not written to comfort and provoke first century churches to keep the faith in the face of persecution. Neither should it be understood in the Jewish-Christian genre of apocalypse represented by Daniel and many non-canonical works.
Instead, it is a scientific prophecy that has lain dormant for nineteen hundred years waiting for the right key to unlock it - that is, someone with a thorough knowledge of the Zodiac. Did John of Patmos have this knowledge? Did the early church? If it did not, why did it bother preserving Revelation?
Revelation itself indicates that the twelve foundation stones represent the twelve apostles (21:14). Furthermore, the timescale suggested by Mr Tulip contradicts Jesus’ repeated insistence that he is returning soon (22:12; 22:20).
To my understanding, the wonder of the New Jerusalem is in the fact that it descends from heaven. It is not like the Tower of Babel, built by humans aspiring to touch heaven. It is not the nineteenth century millenial vision of humans achieving heaven on Earth. It only comes when the first heaven and the first earth pass away (21:1). It comes as a final miraclous intervention of God in history.
I think we would be better served seeing Revelation as theological poetry, with a grand vision of the renewal of all things, but without a scientific prescription for it. As the church creatively improvises its place in the grand salvation narrative, Revelation gives vivid symbolic expression to our eschatological hope and present suffering.
Robert Tulip responds:
I very much appreciate Nathan’s thoughtful and well-informed comments, and make the following points in response, offered in a spirit of open dialogue:
1. The comparison Nathan draws between my ideas and creationism is entirely wrong. Fundamentalism applies an anti-intellectual literalism and supports claims which have been disproved by science. My approach is the opposite. While I do suggest there is more to the Bible than has previously been seen, I also maintain that my ideas are fully compatible with science and challenge anyone to prove otherwise.
2. My criticism of the usual scholarly views of Revelation is that modern theology, in restricting the meaning of this difficult book to its message to the early churches, tends to dogmatically reject the eschatological dimension of the second coming. I agree with Nathan that the message to the churches and the link to other apocalyptic literature are important, but I argue these messages sit alongside the longer-term prediction of the return of Christ, and are entirely compatible with this real prophecy.
3. My reference to Barclay was simply to prove that the reverse zodiac interpretation of the twelve jewels in Revelation 21:19 is an ancient tradition, as a point of historical fact. My new element is only to interpret this in terms of the astronomical observation of precession.
4. I do believe the author of Revelation must have been aware of the idea of precession, which was central to the ancient star religions of Egypt and Chaldea – see for example Graham Hancock’s great book Heaven’s Mirror. As Nathan observes, I do believe this coded interpretation has lain dormant awaiting the right key. There are a range of complex reasons why this scientific view has not been visible, notably the hostility of church, science and state to any whiff of astrology and the lack of scientific information in earlier times.
5. Texts can have multiple meanings—especially ones as profound as the twelve jewels, which can easily symbolise the twelve apostles just as much as the zodiac signs. Regarding Nathan’s comment on timescale, Jesus actually contradicts himself in the Bible about the time of his return. Clearly it has not yet happened, so the line of Matt 24:34 ‘this generation shall not pass away’ is wrong. I believe the key text is Matthew 24:14: “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached to the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” To me this suggests the global communication of modern times is a precondition of the return of Christ. Jesus also describes the eschaton in Matthew 13:40 as “the end of this age” something which to me only makes sense as meaning the end of the age of Pisces, due in about the year 2150.
6. Nathan’s description of the new Jerusalem as “a final miraculous intervention of God in history” seems to me to involve a slippage into magical fundamentalist thinking. Sure, I agree the new Jerusalem will be inspired by God, but if the holy city isn’t built by people it isn’t going to happen. The difference from the tower of Babel will be that the new Jerusalem will be dedicated to worship of God, not of idols.
7. Nathan’s restriction of Revelation to “vivid symbolic expression” is to me a form of atheism, a belief that God does not really exist because the predictions in the Bible are only symbols. I prefer a maximal interpretation of the possibility of a real God who used old forms of thought in the Bible, and is calling us now to fill and realise and critique these ideas through scientific understanding.
If you missed Robert’s article in the Winter issue of JG, check it out online here.
Do you have a comment to make about anything you have read in Jubilee Grapevine? Do you have a burning something that just needs saying? We would love to hear from you! Please address all letters to jg@ascm.org.au or the slow way to The Editor, Jubilee Grapevine, 128 Westminster Street, East Victoria Park WA 6101. Letters are printed at the editor’s discretion and may be edited for length or clarity.
If time is the problem, the destroyer, what is the solution? Memory. Memory is the way of healing, of overcoming time.
Many religious ceremonies are ‘festivals of memory’, telling us ‘who we are’, among other things. They provide identity. ‘Forgetting’ is the sacrilege! ‘If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!’ (Psalm 137:5). In Greek mythology the dead are those who have lost their memories.
Wallace B. Clift, Jung and Christianity: the challenge of Reconciliation, pp.61–62.
Remembering is not just a personal need bit a national and even an international one in the face of a general international, national and personal cult of forgetting.
Joy Hooton, ‘Women’s Life Writing: Power and Alterity’, in Shaping Lives: Reflectionson Biography, ed. Donaldson, Read & Walter, 1992.
From the Editor
Several years ago while on holiday I went to visit the old country graveyard where my Dad’s parents are buried. Mum said she didn’t think she had ever been there before, although it was not that far from where she grew up. Some time later as we walked up and down rows of old headstones Mum stopped and said quietly, oh yes, she’d been here. The grave was for someone she had known through church youth groups as a teenager, who had died when thrown from the back of a ute. With the headstone to remind her, Mum recalled the cemetery full of stunned young friends farewelling a mate who had just been mucking around having fun and then—gone.
I was astonished that my Mum, who is a deeply compassionate woman, had so completely forgotten that funeral, and perhaps also the friend. Would I also forget the people and events that were shaping me so powerfully at that moment? I too was grieving a tragically lost friend – would I forget Angie as other people and places and concerns filled my life? And if I forgot her – would she cease to be? Would her impact on me vanish if I couldn’t recall it? Would I walk into Mundaring Cemetery in thirty years time, stumble across the white marble angel and ballet slippers, and have her back for the first time in decades? Searching for quotes relating to memory in preparing this issue of JG I found many variations of the claim that we live on after death in the memories of others. It disturbed me, because if it’s true then we also slowly erase people as their memories fade.
It all got me thinking about how and what we remember, and what it means. I have kept a journal for years, and often when I reread an entry I find myself thinking ‘that’s not how I remember it!’. I live out of my memory of my life, and yet it seems that changes as I go. Later experiences colour the past. People who I become close to I retrospectively remember well back into periods when I barely knew them. If I am in a good mood, I remember certain experiences as having been positive. If I am not feeling positive in the present moment, I often recreate my past into darker shades. It seems that not only can I erase people from existence by slow forgetting, but I can also remake them in my own image depending on what suits me now.
As often happens, I decided to thrash out my musings about memory with Perth SCMers at a Share Space earlier in the year, out of which grew the ideas for this issue of JG. As we wrestled with the way memories shape and reshape depending on the present, someone commented that God’s must also have the freedom to change the way God remembers. God, however, always chooses to remember us in the best light possible. God’s grace manifests as God remembering us well. As I seek to follow the way of Christ, it sounds like a call to me too: Clare, you have the power to reform your memories—shape them with love.
ASCM General Exec meetings in January 2005 will discuss the possibility of changing the name of the national publication from Jubilee Grapevine. We are seeking suggestions for alternate names for the magazine. Please send your ideas to either the national SCM chatlist, the friends chatlist, or JG. To join an SCM chatlist, either in your area or at a national level, go here.
ASCM previously had a more formal magazine-style publication called ‘Across the Currents’. When it was changed to a more informal newsletter style in the 1980s, one of the editors, Scotty McDonald, invented the name Jubilee Grapevine. Scotty comments on the choice of name:
The name was taken from the year of Restoration described in Leviticus in the Hebrew Scriptures. To me the concept of every 49 years, cancelling debts, freeing slaves, and ensuring that families cannot gain a permanent advantage over the less fortunate through property is truly subversive and one of the more powerful statements of economic justice I had up to that time read in the Bible. The Grapevine has the obvious "heard it on the grapevine" connotation, but is also the grapevine that is to grow wild and which landowners are to make available to all, for no profit, not only every 49 years but also every 7th year as well. A symbolic example of equalising justice that was probably as counter cultural in biblical times as would be if applied in a modern form today.
In the context of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which had a built-in use by date, Jubilee Grapevine may now sound passé. If I was dreaming up a name today it would probably be something like "Christian Adventures in an Alien Land", "The Other Alternative", or "Think and Resist".
Events
Thailand Memories
It is strange how a small thing can spark a memory, able to bring back a flood of emotions and experiences. It’s also strange what becomes the trigger for the memory. Sometimes the trigger makes little sense, as a small, insignificant object can throw us back into the very heart of the experience. I found this to be the case after my visit to Thailand, as a rep for the women’s regional pre-assembly for World Student Christian Federation Asia Pacific (WSCFAP). The wooden puzzles I randomly fiddle with, which smell of the barely treated wood, spark no associations, nor does the Thai silk bedspread, which every night I touch as I fold it back along my bed, and neither does the Thai baht which somehow managed to find its way into my purse.
What I find so strange about this is that I am by nature a person moved by tangible items. A scent or brief glimpse of something are far more likely to send me back than a written piece or even a photo. Things, which by all evidence so far in my life should be screaming memories back at me, give little more then a pale blurred ghost of something not quite reachable.
No, what bring Chiang Mai back to me, are items not even from Thailand. Gifts from the people I met there, and became friends with. Songs we sang, games we played and the scar on my Grandma’s forehead that she got just before I left. Reflecting and puzzling over this I’ve come to realize visiting another culture, exploring a different wilderness, actually being in the northern hemisphere, while all being exciting and a fantastic opportunity are only of secondary importance to me. It was people who made the trip for me. Not just the ones I met there, but the support bases I have in Perth and ASCM. Representing my country to the Asia Pacific, I was also able to become a part of the regional collective memory.
Talking with people from different movements who knew people in Australia and learning the history of the WSCFAP was an amazing experience. Being surrounded by people who held those memories first hand yet were so willing to share them really highlighted the strengths of SCM for me. In Australia I also find this to be the case: each generation hands on their memories and experiences to enrich the next. I found it even more prominent at the regional level, as different cultures mixed and people who had not seen each other for long periods reunited. All had come together in the name of Christ and were working towards social justice and ready to embrace new cultures and friendships.
Kate Watts is ASCM’s National Women’s Officer, and also a student in Perth.
Big Fish Meeting in Chiang Mai
It must have been a game played during the pre-assembly or Asia Pacific regional meeting, but I only learnt about “Big Fish – Small Fish” in the back of a songtaew on the way home from the markets one night. From then on certain people attending the General Assembly were referred to as the “Big Fish” by the students. The Big Fish include Ahn Jae Wong, Yong Ting Jin, Michael Wallace, Marshall Fernando, Lee Wei Meng, Stephen Hsu, Fung Chi Wood, Taku Kumakiri, Glenda Rocas, Philip Mathew, Ken Guest, Rev Shin and Wong Yock Leng. I’m the little big fish.
The WSCF Friends’ Support Network (also known as the Financial Support Group) was established last year with one Friend from each of a handful of financially stable movements. The objective of this group is to increase the funds given annually from Friends to WSCF-AP in order to sustain the level of leadership development programs and publications that the region produces. The Asia Pacific region leads the WSCF in the number of leadership development programs run regularly including SET, SELF and the Women Doing Theology programs.
During the recent 33rd General Assembly of the WSCF in Chiang Mai the big fish gathered to discuss the financial status of the region and how Friends can contribute. This year the ASCM has a target of US$1500 to contribute to the regional budget along with similar contributions from Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong. If you wish to donate please tick WSCF on your donation slip during the ASCM general appeal.
Georgia Yam is the ASCM representative on the WSCF-AP Financial Support Group. To donate to the Friends of WSCFAP appeal, go here.
Mary Mary
In September, ASCM helped to run ‘Mary Mary’, a joint initiative with the National Council of Churches. The event aimed to introduce young women to theology, reading women’s stories and including feminist perspectives. Mpho Mere, a student from Botswana currently in WA studying education, attended the event on an NCCA scholarship, and shares her experience:
From the 24 to 26 September 2004, I attended a conference organised by the National Council of Churches in Australia, representing SCM in Western Australia. The conference was held at Mt Martha, Melbourne and was entitled Mary Mary. It gathered together ecumenical women from all states in Australia. The conference was very inclusive, welcoming and very much encouraging. I was impressed by the way we managed to bond together quickly and easily, as if we had known each other for a long time. The lessons were exciting and of high standard, such that the time allotted to the whole conference was not enough.
We started the conference with circus stuff where we were asked to put our bodies in different positions combined with different movements. This helped us in acquiring relaxation and confidence as well as acquiring leadership skills, learning trust and developing higher self esteem. We spent most of the time worshiping together, doing bible studies and discussing the roles played by Marys of the Bible. Some of the many texts we considered on the subject of Mary’s of the Bible include Mary Mother of Jesus (Matt 1–2, Mark 3: 31–35, John 2: 1–12), Mary of Bethany (Luke 10:38- 42, Mark 14: 3–9, John 12:1–8, and Mary Magdalene (Mathew 27:55–61, 28:1, Luke 8:2)
We researched to see whether there was a woman’s point of view in the texts, and questioned how women are portrayed in the texts, if they have a say, and whether we are given access to their point of view. Other questions we were taught to use were ‘what hidden gender assumptions lie behind the texts?’, ‘Who has the power and how is it distributed?’, ‘How have women’s lives and voices being suppressed by the text?’, ‘Are women made to speak and act against their own interests?’, ‘Does the text betray any anxiety about changing gender roles?’ and ‘Whose interests are being served?’.
Lisa from Sydney resourced the conference on Indigenous people. She stated that the Aboriginal people originate in Western Australia and that the only thing they have in common with each other is that they are all Indigenous but that they have about 600 languages, different religions, cultural backgrounds, and that they don’t even intermarry. This was a new insight for me into Australia’s indigenous people.
In conclusion, the conference was worth it. It was indeed resourceful and an eye opener. Spiritually we were all edified and our Christian family widened. May God bless conferences of this calibre and make them a blessing upon us.
Ms M. M Mere is Youth Coordinator for Wesley International Fellowship, Perth WA
National Conference
In July, the ASCM National Conference was held at Eagle’s Nest Youth Formation Centre, Gidgegannup, 40 km north east of Perth. Its theme was “Inter-Faith Spirituality, and it was attended by 26 students and friends representing five states and the ACT.
After attending various Sunday worship services around Perth to begin, the group then set off for Gidgegannup, via lunch at Noble Falls in the hills. The first guest speaker was Mr Balba Singh, a leader of the Perth Sikh Community. He spoke of the history, theology and customs of the Sikh religion. He explained that the faith was localised to the Punjab and was not missionary, but had spread as Punjabis had migrated all over the world. We were fascinated that dress was an important part of the discipline of the religion. It had an admirable moral code.
Later in the week, Deacon Theo Issa of the Syrian Orthodox Church, accompanied by three members of his family, gave a very interesting account of how the Oriental churches came into being after the Council of Chalcedon, and of the difficult times they have had over the centuries.
Fr Abdulmalik of the Coptic Orthodox Church, accompanied by his wife, spoke about the tradition of the church being founded in Alexandria by St Mark, and the church’s troubled history in Egypt. He explained its emphasis on adherence to discipline and the importance of the family. Like the Syrian Church, it has spread worldwide through migration.
Three Baha’i young women, Venus Rahnmani, Shirin Reyhani and Carmel Croft, gave a combined presentation of their faith (easily the most modern, founded in 1849) and how it had very detailed scriptures written by the founder Bah’a’ Ullah. They spoke about the persecutions he and his followers in Iran and Syria had suffered, and how the faith had spread around the world. This faith is organised with a high moral tone. The three guests entertained us with harmonious singing of two of their hymns.
Sheikh Omram of the Perth Muslim Community, together with a young married couple, Mr Katif and his wife Aisha, conducted a very frank and interactive session. Particularly interesting input was given by Aisha, a convert from a Polish Catholic family. All learnt a lot about Islam, especially Jihad and marriage laws.
Fr Jonathon Jones, assisted by Tim Ngui, of the Metropolitan Christian Church in Sydney, conducted a very enlightening and stimulating bible study on texts relating to “queer matters”. Tim generated a lively debate about the relation between sexuality and gender and how these might be socially worked out.
There was a lot of worship and meditation. It was a very happy occasion and all ages and backgrounds learned a lot about each other and how we are united in a special (SCM) way with one another in Christ. Kerensa and Jacquie did a marvellous job doing nearly all the food preparation. Special congratulations to Kate Watts and Bronwyn who organised and led the conference.
An earlier version of this report was printed in the final Friends Newsletter.
News from the Movement
From ACT:
The year began well for the branch with a viewing of the film “In This World” (about the journey of two Afghan refugees to the UK), production of a second, very successful edition of JG for O-Week 2004, an O-Week Market Day stall, and a well-attended branch Welcome Dinner. As a result the ANU Branch now has a number of new members, including two students who have demonstrated enthusiastic commitment to the SCM and branch activities. Some branch members (and the mother of one new branch member!) also participated in a joint SCM Friends-Students evening to view the recent documentary “Bonhoeffer”, followed by a very stimulating large group discussion. At the end of first semester, those branch members who hadn’t been serious filmed out went along together to a screening of the excellent (but somewhat depressing) “Osama”.
Lunchtime meetings have continued this year and, as decided earlier in the year, these meetings have generally been an opportunity for members to get to know one another and ‘catch-up’. Some of these meetings have had a specific focus for discussion –including an SBS documentary on the Nauru detention centres, Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet”, the ACT Bill of Human Rights – and we also attended a ‘Field of Hearts’ exhibition in preparation for UN World Refugee Day.
Semester 2 included a Weekend Conference and the International Day of Prayer for Students.
As JG was being put together, word was received that the detained Iranian- Christian family with which the ANUSCM has been corresponding have been given a visa.
Anastasia Dalziell writes: This is after four years in detention starting off in Curtin (Port Headland) and Baxter detention centres. More recently the family was separated with half the family being detained in the Woomera housing project, (the father and brother were still in Baxter). Currently three of them are in the Port Augusta housing project while the father is still at Baxter. The youngest child is just about to turn 12. They are overjoyed at this result but are very apprehensive about the future. Four years of unjustified detention will take a long time to recover from and they know little of life in Australia outside detention centres The family intends to settle in Melbourne.
From QLD:
Queensland representatives at the General Exec meetings in Perth in July reported that approximatly 30 people are involved in the Queensland Area Council, some of whom also attend branch meetings. The main branch is at the Australian Catholic Uni, and its main activities have been dinners at Ray & Dorothy Barraclough’s house, with various speakers. Queenslanders are also trying to establish ASCM at Central Queensland Uni and some Senior Schools.
From VIC:
ASCM in Victoria enjoyed having Leni Valeriano, an intern from the Philippines, for a year. Leni’s visit lead to many other contacts being established, which SCM VIC hopes to continue to build on. Melbourne Uni Branch has cut affiliation to Student Union, as problems of affiliation outweighed benefits. A renegade O-Week stall at the start of the year was very successful, with other like-minded groups involved. Victoria Uni SCM has been hosting various speaker-based meetings once a month. ASCM is the only ‘Christian’ Group on campus, and most members are Overseas Students.
From WA:
SCMWA is in transition, with a new staff-worker being appointed in July. Full of enthusiasm after hosting a successful National Conference, SCMWA has been approached by other young, ecumenical faith groups to co-host events.
The UWA group campus group holds fortnightly meetings over lunch with discussions so far on refugees, homosexuality and women’s roles, with some bible study. We have also begun planning for a Visible Language-Community Arts / Social Justice Project to raise awareness and profile of ASCM across campuses, and a World Student Day of Prayer event with Trinity Uniting Church. Anglican Chaplain Anna Killigrew has been a fabulous mentor and encourages myself and SCM to activate its mission in community. UWA campus group is now affiliated with the Guild and moving to affiliate with the Public Affairs Council. In addition to allowing SCM to advertise on campus, this will enable ASCM to actively participate in the Faith Fair, Social Justice Week, the Fringe Festival, Music Week, Reconciliation Week, Environment Week etc, and to further network with other clubs to present ASCM issues at events of culture and conscience.
Shared Space continues as an off-campus opportunity for students and friends from all campuses etc to meet, laugh and share a meal. ASCM was represented at a Youth Inter-Faith Event at Kulcha Club (Multicultural Arts WA) that was a huge success with a vibrant, multicultural community sharing stories about faith and celebrating their diversity of faiths. ASCM was invited to co-host future events. ASCM was also represented at a youth Taize event with Br.Ghislain from Taize in France.
ASCM is active in NSW, but the JG editor was unable to scrounge up any information about recent goings on there.
From the region and beyond:
World Student Christian Federation-Asia Pacific (WSCF-AP) has announced a job vacancy for the position of the full-time Regional Secretary of WSCF-AP region.
The Asia-Pacific regional secretary is part of the WSCF’s executive team of 8 staff – the two Co-Secretaries-General in the Inter-Regional Office in Geneva, and the five other regional secretaries located in Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, Europe, Middle East and North America.
The regional secretary is employed by WSCF’s Executive Committee and supervised by the Asia-Pacific regional committee.
The regional secretary implements the programme of the region as decided by the student members of the national movements. The position combines smooth and efficient management of the Hong Kong Regional Office with travel to support the implementation of programmes in many parts of the Asia-Pacific region.
Interested individuals may get a copy of the job description and application form at the WSCF-AP Regional Office or from any SCM office.
Completed applications should reach the WSCF-AP Regional Office by
January 15th 2005. A start date of June 1, 2005 is strongly preferred to allow for a hand-over period. Term of Office is two years, renewable up to three times.
For more information, please contact
Rev. Shin Seung Min, Regional Secretary WSCF-Asia Pacific Region
Rm.1-2, 18F, 280 Portland St. Commercial Bldg., Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Tel (852)23852550 Fax :(852)27823980 E-mail: wscfap@netvigator.com
The new Regional Council is made up of people from India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Mr John Biswas from Bangladesh, who now lives in Australia. The new Woman’s Committee is made up of the regional women’s coordinator, women from Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Indonesia, Leni Valentino from the Philippines (recently in Australia for a year) and Kate Watts from ASCM.
The new General Secretary of WSCF (International) is Michael Wallace a third generation SCMer from Aotearoa New Zealand
From students and friends:
Anthony and Ruth Dunnicliff-Hagan (ACT) are expecting their first baby in February.
Xanthe Heather Lamont was born to Sophia Wooldridge and Matt Lamont (NSW, formerly of WA) on 2 September.
Edwina Hunter (NSW) will marry John Biswas (from Bangladesh SCM) on November 14 at Paddington Uniting Church in Sydney (11:30am). All are welcome to come along!
Rev. Jonathon Jones, who has for a number of years worked at the youth desk for NCCA, during which time he has been involved in SCM NSW, while also working as a youth minister for MCC (Metropolitan Community Church) in Sydney, recently relocated to Alaska to take up a position as pastor of an MCC church there.
John Langmore, a longstanding ASCM friend, has returned to live in Melbourne from working in the USA for the UN.
Please send any snippets of news that you would like to share to jg@ascm.org.au (otherwise I have to make it up and I only know a small handful of you, so you’ll just hear what’s going on with my friends.)
D. Beryl Phillips, an ASCM friend from Victoria, has prepared a 16-page A4 booklet for Pax Christi. Entitled ‘Celebrating Difference’, it seeks to counter sectionalism and fear engendered by recent world events and attitudes by tackling distrust and division between different faiths and cultures, especially Christians and Muslims. The booklet is intended for individual reading as well as group discussion. It is available for $4.00 (plus $1.00 postage and handling) from Pax Christi Victoria, PO Box 31, Carlton Vic 3053, pax@christi.org.au (03) 9379 3889 fax (03) 9379 1711.
Jubilee Grapevine is a publication for students across Australia, and friends of the Australian Student Christian Movement, to provide a forum for discussion, stimulation and challenge in a Christian context, encouraging a student voice with an emphasis on being open, ecumenical, active and critical. This document is the web version of that publication.
Opinions expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or of the movement as a whole.
To subscribe to Jubilee Grapevine, please fill in the subscription form, print it and send it to us. The magazine is produced three times each year, and annual subscriptions are $15. Jubilee Grapevine is free for students. Back issues are available online.
Please send submissions and comments to the editor. All submissions are to be respectful of all persons and opinions. They will be accepted at the editor’s discretion and may be edited for reasons of space or clarity. Submissions need not be related to the theme of a particular issue to be considered for publication.
As requested by the Council of Christians and Jews, JG uses the terms Hebrew and Greek Scriptures instead of Old and New Testaments.
This page is maintained by the webweaver and hosted by Ilisys.
