Archive for Books

THE ROAD TO CANTERBURY

May 11, 2013 at 9:50 pm · Filed under Books, Spirituality/Philosophy, Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Road to Canterbury

The Road to Canterbury

Andrew Atherstone. Darton, Longman + Todd. ISBN:978 0 232 52994 4. £7.99

When Rowan Williams announced last year that he was retiring the media was abuzz with speculation over who would succeed him as Archbishop of Canterbury. The eventual choice – Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham – came as a big surprise to most observers, not least because Welby had only been a bishop for four months when Williams announced his intention to step down.

Who is Justin Welby? Where did he come from? What makes him tick? Will he be up to the job of holding the fractious Anglican communion together? Oxford don Andrew Atherstone makes a fine attempt to answer the first three questions. The jury’s out on the last one as he will need the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job and a lot more besides to sort out that mess. However, his reconciliation work in Nigeria, his background in business and his ministry in several parishes to date do allow for a certain cautious optimism.

Welby grew up in a family that had been long a part of the Establishment. One of his great uncles had been a leading post-war Tory, R A B Butler. Butler had been Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary in the 1950s and 60s. His mother, Jane Portal, was a secretary to Winston Churchill and in that role typed up the drafts of his six-volume history of the Second World War. His father, Gavin Welby, was a bit of a rake, once competing with Errol Flynn for the attentions of a millionaire heiress. Gavin and Jane eloped to America.

Justin was a honeymoon baby who parents’ marriage soon failed. Justin stayed with his father and was packed off to boarding school at the age of eight. He attended Eton from1969 to 1973 when the school was at a low ebb and headed off to east Africa for a short gap year before beginning his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. In Kenya he spent six mont hs teaching in a secondary school under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society. He had previously shown little interest in spiritual matters, but in Kenya he met and talked with Christians and began to read the Bible and think about questions of faith.

In the months before Welby’s arrival at Cambridge in 1974, there had been a flurry of conversions to Christianity among the students. The local Christian Union was very lively, hosting visits from leading preachers, notably Rev David Watson from St Michael le Belfrey in York who led 12 people to make professions of faith in a single evening. Welby held out for over a year despite the efforts of many of his Christian friends until ‘the penny dropped’ for him and he ‘asked Jesus to be Lord of my life’. Shortly afterwards, he received a real sense of the deep love of God and began to sense a calling to ministry.

As a young Christian, Welby attended the Round Church in Cambridge which plugged him into a network of leading evangelicals in the Anglican church, notably John Stott and David Sheppard. While at home away from university, he began to worship at Holy Trinity Brompton which had become a mainstay of the growing charismatic movement. Here he was introduce to a Cambridge student who was another new Christian, Caroline Eaton, who was to become his wife.

After graduation and marriage Welby took a job with an oil company in Paris. During the holidays he became involved with a Christian group that smuggled Bibles to persecuted Christians in Hungary and East Germany using a campervan with secret compartments underneath a false floor.

The Welbys know the pain and grief of losing a child. On the way back to England, their seven-month-old daughter was fatally injured in a road accident near Amiens.

During his time as group treasurer of the recently privatised Enterprise Oil, Welby honed his management and leadership skills and began to think deeply about the ethics of finance and responsibility in business. He argued that companies are moral agents and are just as prone to sin as individuals. Biblical justice must include a sense of corporate accountability.

Although well settled in a very well paid job which he enjoyed, Welby had a growing sense of call to the ministry. In 1988 he attended three days of interviews at a Derbyshire retreat house. He was asked by a bishop why he wanted to be ordained and replied that he didn’t as he was enjoying the job he was doing. Well, why was he there, then? Because he had been called by God. What would he do if he was turned down for ordination by the C of E? He’d go back to London and take the wife out for the most expensive meal he could afford to celebrate! He was accepted. His annual salary dropped from around £100,000 to less than a tenth of that; £9500 in 1989.

He studied for the ministry in Cranmer College, part of the University of Durham. Here he became open to a wider variety of theology, worshipping and finding placements with churches that were mixed in theology, Anglo-Catholic or Charismatic in outlook.

After ordination at Coventry Cathedral in 1992, his first parish was in a working class suburb of Nuneaton in Warwickshire. Here he launched youth work, children’s holiday clubs and pioneered the use of the Alpha Course, a basic introduction to Christianity that began in Holy Trinity Brompton and went nationwide in 1993 as a way to reach the unchurched. This trend of turning declining congregations around continued in his next charge, Southam, a rural market town in the same diocese. He restored the 700-year-old building, and introduced more modern forms of worship in the morning service in tandem with traditional Book of Common Prayer early morning communion services and evensong services. Part of this church growth strategy was also due to a revival of children’s and youth outreach and rolling Alpha Course programmes for adults.

An interesting insight to Welby’s worldview can be gleaned from his regular ‘thoughts for the month’ published in the Southam Parish Church News. In this Welby expounded the line that, ‘The church is not a home for saints; Christians do not claim to be better than other folk, but they do claim that God has touched their lives and given new meaning to them.’ He had a high view of God’s grace and the necessity of forgiveness and the power of redemption and ‘a fresh start’ in the gospel message. Welby was orthodox in his view of Christ’s resurrection and made it clear that it was the job of the church to speak out on issues of social justice and in opposition to moral relativism.

Welby was in great demand for his expertise in financial matters. He had been involved with the Association of Corporate Treasurers as its personal and ethics advisor and was invited to join the finance ethics group of the Von Hügel Institute. This Cambridge-based Catholic research organisation sought to apply the principles of social justice, human dignity and ideas of the ‘common good’ in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum (published in English as The Workers’ Charter) to everyday life. This brought him into contact with Catholic economists and theologians in Europe and give him a higher view of the power of the sacraments than he had hitherto been familiar.

In 2002 he moved to Coventry Cathedral in order to direct the cathedral’s International Centre for Reconciliation. This brought him to conflict zones in Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Nigeria and Burundi. Welby focused on reconciliation work in Nigeria which he already knew from his time as an executive with an oil company. At times his life was in real danger from AK47-toting gunmen. Welby argued that the church ought to be ‘the body of reconciled reconcilers’ and Christians should not just receive reconciliation but become sources of ‘rivers of reconciliation’ to places of conflict and trauma.

By 2005, the funding ran out for Coventry’s ICR and it collapsed. The international ministry was drastically cut and a new focus was sought. This was one of the greatest disappointments of Welby’s ministry to date. He began to work out a means of reconciling differences between Christians and conducting arguments and disagreements in the spirit of 2 Timothy 2: 24-25, ‘the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone… correcting opponents with gentleness…’(Welby’s emphasis).

In 2007, Welby was appointed as the Dean of Liverpool Cathedral. Welby’s task was to overcome financial shortfalls and division and disharmony in the cathedral’s Chapter. Sorting this out was a challenge to his background in finance and his ministry of reconciliation. Some of his ideas were controversial but he did raise the cathedral’s profile in the city, reach new people and introduce a variety of forms of worship, m anage to start a theological school and envisage an ecumenical religious community. During this time he acted as an envoy to Kenya in the aftermath of violence during the 2008 election campaign and he became involved with Anglican Communion affairs in an attempt to deal with its own deep divisions and conflict. He became Archbishop Rowan Williams’ special envoy to American Episcopalians, Nigerian Christians facing persecution and murder and he facilitated a meeting of primates in Dublin in order to tackle some of the serious issues threatening to tear worldwide Anglicanism apart most notably the ordination of woman bishops and attitudes to sexuality.

After just three and a half years in Liverpool, Welby was appointed as Bishop of Durham in October 2011. He used his maiden speech in the House of Lords to call for economic regeneration in the north-east of England and for Christians to build alliances with politicians, financiers and businesses in order to bring about justice and community renewal. He made many contributions to the debate on the Financial Services Bill in which he favoured the establishment of credit unions and limits on directors’ pay and bonuses. In July 2012 he was appointed to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards where he gained a reputation as a formidable operator who took no obfuscation, waffle nor double-talk from the former ‘masters of the universe’ who ran the banking system like a Las Vegas casino. He wasn’t against banking and bankers as such, however, as he made cleare in a lecture in Zurich last October when he called for the European banking sector to be re-imagined in such a manner as to resurrect it from, ‘the wreckage of a hubris-induced disaster, to retrieving its basic purpose of enabling human society to flourish effectively.’

Welby’s time at Durham was too brief for him to have made his mark as a newly-minted bishop. He seems to have a realistic view of the parlous state of the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion, ‘We are divided, often savagely. We are battered. We are weak… The church is not a rest home for saints, it is a lifeboat for sinners. And when you stick loads of sinners together, perhaps especially Anglican sinners, you don’t get a saintly church…’ He was quite impressed by the American Episcopal Church after attending its July 2012 gathering of its House of Bishops. He thought that they managed disagreement better and were closer to his own motto of ‘diversity without enmity’.

The thorny issues that plagued his predecessor haven’t gone away. Welby might be able to sort things out. He might not. Time will tell whether or not Welby will be a reconciling Archbishop of Canterbury or the man who presides over the final fracturing and schism of worldwide Anglicanism.

DAVID KERR

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Review: Notes from the Borderland – Issue 10

February 24, 2013 at 2:58 pm · Filed under Books, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NOTES-FROM-THE-BORDERLAND_10NOTES From The Borderland, (NFB), is a long-established journal published and edited by the researcher Larry O’Hara and styles itself ‘The Parapolitical magazine’. On its website, it gives a brief definition of the term “parapolitical”, including others’ variations on it, but for the purposes of this review of issue number ten, which was published during 2012, we will confine ourselves to theirs: “For us, parapolitics refers to the social reality of conflicting forces and their-oft hidden agendas. It is by analysing these conflicts and tracking their trajectory/outcomes that parapolitical research advances”. Thus we have the ethos underpinning the magazine.

The lead article by Larry O’Hara is Gareth Williams: Murdered Twice. Most of us no doubt remember the strange, and to this day, unexplained death of Gareth Williams in August 2010. He was found inside a locked holdall after what may have been some kind of sex-game gone wrong, or was it murder? That the deceased worked for GCHQ and had been living in London on secondment to MI6 at the time of his death was not surprisingly seized upon by not only the tabloid press but other more respectable papers and subject to much speculation, much of which was lurid insinuations about his private life.

O’Hara does a fine job in going beyond the sensationalism surrounding Williams’s death and looks at various factors including what exactly did Gareth Williams do? Was his death linked to his work? If it was, has there been a deliberate campaign of dis-information to obscure any such connection? What is actually known about Williams’s private life and activities outside of work as opposed to what the media might care to infer/speculate? The roles of the media, the police and the security services in this case are meticulously examined in this article and it includes a very helpful timeline of events. Critically examined is one of the more far-out theories linking Williams’s death to the most likely accidental one of an Oxford lecturer that occurred the same month. It serves as an object lesson of how speculation and debate on unexplained events can descend into the realms of fantastic conspiracy theory.

Pandora’s Pox: How Far Right Labour Hijacked The Hope Not Hate Campaign by Larry O’Hara and Heidi Svenson charts the internecine squabbles between self-styled “anti-fascist” journal Searchlight and its former ally, the Hope Not Hate campaign group. O’Hara has been a keen observer of the Searchlight scene for over twenty years now so he is uniquely qualified to comment on this tale which is almost reminiscent of what happened with Dr Frankenstein and his monster! On the one side, we have what might be termed the traditional Searchlight group headed up by the husband and wife team of Gerry and Sonia Gable, and on the other, the Hope Not Hate team which while it contains the former Searchlight editor and long-time employee Nick Lowles, is largely comprised of relative newcomers to the Searchlight scene.

The backgrounds of these newcomers are quite interesting and could easily fit into the pages of a thriller. They include a merchant banker, a person named in Wikileaks as a source to be protected by the US Embassy and a former ‘far-right’ activist who moved to Australia for a bit after changing sides and then returned to the UK to work for the Searchlight group. Now it is open to the judgement of the individual reader whether or not O’Hara and Svenson make a convincing case for the cause of the split being an attempt by failed New Labour, (or should that be Neo-New Labour!), types to re-launch their careers by adding a bit of street cred to their CV’s through their involvement with Hope Not Hate, not a totally unrealistic proposition given the group’s cosy relationship with various elements of the establishment. Other factors to take into account include the dispute over whether or not the septuagenarian Gable actually set a date for his retirement, (both sides dispute what was said on this and NFB provides excerpts from e-mails and letters on the issue), and whether the less noble motivation of competition over the various sizeable grants available from both local and central government for work in local communities to tackle “extremism” played a part in causing the rift. Strange dealings such as the removal of the Searchlight archives, some twenty filing cabinets’ worth, are also covered.

On a more general note, O’Hara and Svenson look at the work undertaken by Hope Not Hate and highlight the modern phenomenon of “clicktivism”. This comprises various activities undertaken in the virtual world such as online petitions and their conclusion is that such work does not achieve much. Perhaps there is a lesson there for groups across the political spectrum? The article also looks at the various projects undertaken by Hope Not Hate in the real world and gives a serious and in-depth analysis of it. Again, it is up to the reader to decide whether or not this work has been effective, but it is hard not to conclude that a lot of money has been spent with not a lot in the way of results in return.

There are a number of shorter, but nonetheless very informative articles in this issue, of which we will mention but one. In Not Over Till It’s Over: The BNP and the 2012 Local Elections, Larry O’Hara gives his rather perceptive analysis of the BNP’s electoral performance in that poll. His debunking of the conventional left mantra that the BNP is finished, bust, etc. can, in light of more recent developments, be seen as somewhat prescient and places him above the less sophisticated analysis of those writers on the left who based their predictions of oblivion for the BNP more on wishful thinking than actual facts.

Finishing with an update section on stories carried in previous issues and at a total of eighty-seven pages, issue ten of Notes From The Borderland is a considerable read. Whilst the writers do not make any secret of their own political leanings, they manage in the main to avoid being tendentious and thus make the journal readable to a wider audience that does not necessarily share their views. This reviewer would recommend picking-up a copy by mail  or ordering online.

- Reviewed by Andrew Hunter

 

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Unapologetic

December 17, 2012 at 2:21 pm · Filed under Books, Spirituality/Philosophy ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

UNAPOLOGETIC: Why, despite Everything, Christianity can still make Surprising Emotional Sense

by Francis Spufford

Faber and Faber £12.99 ISBN 978-0-571-22521-7

Book cover of Unapologetic

Click on image to buy this book!

The author of Unapologetic isn’t a bit sorry for offering this entertaining polemic. He makes an impassioned case for Christianity making emotional sense, ‘despite everything’. He is withering in his criticism of vapid nonsense like John Lennon’s Imagine – ‘the My Little Pony of philosophical statements’ – and similar offerings that assume that peace and harmony would be the spontaneously arising natural order of things between all human beings if there was no such thing as religion. As the author opines; ‘Yeah, Right!’

Don’t expect to read one of those Josh McDowell-type Evidence that Requires a Verdict tomes that try to defend traditional Christian teachings in the face of modern criticism. Curious outsiders wondering what makes believers tick are much more likely to find an answer here than in a whole stack of theological books and strident critiques from Richard Dawkins and A C Grayling. Those readers who are stumbling along the pilgrim path are very likely to find a mirror into their souls, (or maybe that’s just me).

Spufford was inspired to write Unapologetic when he realised that his six-year-old daughter is soon going to discover that her parents are weird. Every Sunday morning the go out to church. As she grows up she will hear that Christians are a pretty bizarre bunch. According to those who care enough to object, these churchgoers are weird followers of some imaginary sky fairy, but for most people in Britain, church goers are just embarrassing. We’re ‘not weird because we’re wicked. We’re weird because we’re inexplicable.’

In their eyes, ‘Believers are the people touting a solution without a problem, and an embarrassing solution too…’ We just can’t allow things to be what they are; ‘They always have to be translated, moralised – given an unnecessary and rather sentimental extra meaning.’  We just can’t tell the difference between stuff that exists and stuff that is made up; ‘Our fingers must be in our ears all the time – lalala, I can’t hear you – just to keep out the plain sound of the real world’.

Yet, in fact; ‘It’s belief which demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires, continual, fluffy pretending.’ In examining this, he turns to the famous atheist bus slogan that raised a lot of controversy recently, ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ Does the implication stand that enjoyment would be the natural state of anyone who wasn’t being ‘worried by believers and their preaching’? ‘Take away the malignant threat of God talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? It buys a bill of goods, sight unseen, from modern marketing’ – the world of advertising and beautiful Gold Blend coffee-sipping people with good looks and plenty of cash – who can get all they want by going shopping.

Spufford argues persuasively that peace is not the norm, ‘the default state of human beings’, but that it is rare. So the atheist bus slogan might be fine for such improbable people but it is totally inappropriate for those many folk who don’t fit that definition. If the slogan is true then you’re on your own if for some reason you’re not enjoying yourself. ‘What the atheist bus slogan says is: There’s no help coming.’ There’s no hope, no consolation in this ‘cruel optimism’.

To Spufford, the notion is false that the emotions involved in religious belief must be different from all other kinds of imagining, hoping and dreaming that we do; they are ‘deeply ordinary and deeply recognisable to anybody who has ever made their way across the common ground of human experience as an adult.’  Spufford seeks in this work to decode the technical jargon and theological in-talk into plain (and often profane) basic English. Sin, for example is not a list of prohibited actions you can avoid or self-indulgence in sexual conduct or doing vaguely ‘wrong’ things like eating too much chocolate. To Spufford it’s simply the Human Propensity to Fuck things Up – the HPtFtU.

This distils in a short phrase the root of the problem with people; a problem ignored by humanists, atheists and sadly, many religious liberals too who have too rosy a view of human nature. Bad things don’t just happen to guaranteed 100% bad people. Christianity recognises the real truth; human beings are neither perfect nor perfectable, we’re all prone to fuck things up. We’re all bad people who need mercy. Spufford argues that this is a much more realistic starting points for us than awe at the stars and sunsets. You can’t live in a constant State of Awe. Recognition of the HPtFtU is the start of the way back, an admission of self-discovery that you really are guilty and in need of Grace and Mercy. Everyone fails. Nobody only means well. Nobody means well all the time.

For this reason, Spufford argues, the Church is not a cosy club of really good, holy people, or weird followers of a mythical sky-pixie but a ‘league of the guilty’. The International League of the Guilty has littered the landscape with useful buildings where people can find help to strip away self-delusion and comforting illusions; we call them churches.

This book gets off to a roaring start, so it’s slightly disappointing that it loses a bit of steam towards the last couple of chapters. Still, it really picks up again near the finish. That said, it’s still a cracking good read with a great message of hope from our ‘awkward sky fairy’ who says, ‘Don’t be careful. Don’t be surprised by any human cruelty. But don’t be afraid, for more can be mended that you can know.’ If you only read one ‘religious’ book this year, make it this one.

Reviewed By David Kerr

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Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?

June 21, 2012 at 8:54 pm · Filed under Books, Spirituality/Philosophy ·Tagged , , , , , ,

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE?

Smile or Die; How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the WorldSmile or Die; How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World

I HAVE often wondered what it is about dictators that cause them to misread their situation so completely.  The late Romanian dictator Nicholai Ceaucescu and the Libyan leader Colonel Qathafi were both surprised at the hatred they inspired in a large number of their people.  The answer seems to be that they had both become isolated in their own little bubbles and had become ‘Masters of the Universe’ in their own eyes.  They thought that they could reshape reality by the force of their own will.

This delusion was reinforced by a coterie of fawning hangers-on who either would not or could not tell them unwelcome truths.  In such societies optimism was compulsory; to point out otherwise was considered unpatriotic, defeatist or counter-revolutionary. Naturally people told their leaders what they thought they wanted to hear.  We hear similar rhetoric from the coalition government; when those posh boys David Cameron and George Osborne – despite mounting evidence to the contrary – insist that their austerity policies are doing us good, really and that we should all knuckle down, get with the programme and like it.

This delusional thinking, though, is not restricted to dictators and out-of-touch prime ministers and chancellors of the exchequer. A glossy best-selling book, The Secret, has convinced many people that getting the things you want is primarily a question of ‘the law of attraction’, visualising what it will be like when they are yours, whether it’s a new partner, that dream job, a fancy car or a lovely necklace or handbag. You will ‘draw’ these things to you. Just ‘name it and claim it’.

In Smile or Die; How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, Barbara Ehrenreich examines the roots and the effects of the cult of blind optimism known as ‘Positive Thinking’.  This notion has gained a large foothold in American popular, religious and corporate culture.  Positive Thinking sounds attractive for a number of obvious reasons; nobody likes to be a misery or to be thought of as a misery. People are generally happier to be around individuals who light up a room by their presence than those who are constantly moaning, complaining and cursing their rotten lot in life. That’s fair enough. So far, so good.

However, basic cheery natural optimism is not what Ehrenreich is targeting in her wittily written polemic. ‘Positive Thinking’ the ideology is much more pernicious. It’s positively delusional.  The reckless optimistic bias involved undermines preparedness and invites disaster.  Its deep penetration of American popular culture, especially in the corporate world, may well have helped to precipitate the financial disaster that began to hit the world in 2007.  After all, why would you bother about debts and ruinous exposure to defaults when all good things come to those who are optimistic enough to visualise success and to expect it?

The truth is, things don’t get better by wishing them so. Positive Thinking of The Secret kind encourages its practitioners to treat other people as if they don’t matter, mere ciphers and bit players in their own ever so important life, rather that independent, thinking, breathing beings with a will, hopes and fears of their own.

Barbara Ehrenreich exposes the cynicism, delusion and greed of those who sell this stuff at society’s most vulnerable sections, some of whom are seriously ill with cancer, or who have lost their jobs owing to corporate ‘downsizing’.

Ehrenreich opens with a frank account of her own diagnosis with breast cancer, and her dismay at being almost buried in an avalanche of pink ribbons, pink teddy bears and sugar-coated therapy sessions in which there was no room for anger or sadness. Although it’s a popular theory, there is no scientific link between having a ‘positive’ outlook in the face of illness and rates of cancer survival.  As she says, ‘We really should question whether it is valuable to encourage optimism if it results in the patient concealing his or her distress in the mistaken belief that this will afford survival benefits.’

The undercurrent of always having to look on the bright side, so that your recovery may be undermined by your own poor ‘negative’ attitude if you don’t do so, is pernicious. It is disturbing to discover that some American cancer survivor groups have hounded out those whose cancer recurs in case any association with this ‘negativity’ might prove contagious. Such groups can properly help people come to terms with the consequences of their illness.  This may offer the patient social and emotional benefits but it will do nothing to overcome cancer or extend his or her life.

Ehrenreich traces the origins of positive thinking to reaction against traditional Calvinist doctrine in the nineteenth century.  She analyses the development of Positive Thinking through early self-help books to the slicker, more persuasive motivational speakers and their books and DVDs around today. She exposes the dangers to business of reckless optimism as all too often anyone who doesn’t fully sign up to the mantra is dismissed as ‘negative’ or having a bad attitude when they may just be more realistic. This notion also conveniently shifts the burden of responsibility for illness and unemployment on to the individual.

The author cites one self-help classic Who Moved My Cheese? when a worker wakes up to find that his “cheese”, or job, has disappeared, he should immediately “paint a picture . . . in great realistic detail, [of] sitting in the middle of a pile of all his favourite cheeses – from Cheddar to Brie”. And magically, a delicious new employment opportunity will arise. Don’t blame the system. Don’t’ blame the bosses. It’s your own fault if you don’t land another job. It’s no wonder that American corporations are buying this book in bulk and handing it out to the workers they are paying off.

Ehrenreich’s alternative to Positive Thinking’s bastardised mixture of personal insecurity, narcissistic self-absorption and blind acceptance of the status quo isn’t that we all become curmudgeonly Victor Meldrews; grumpy old men or women. All she suggests is that we look at how things really are, not how we would wish them to be and that we use a little critical thinking. To put it another way, don’t moan, organise to put things right. That’s true positivity for you.

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Putting Away Childish Things

December 28, 2011 at 2:29 pm · Filed under Books ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Putting Away Childish Things

Putting Away Childish Things: a tale of modern faith

Marcus J Borg

Marcus J Borg; author of Reading the Bible for the First Time, Again and Meeting Jesus for the First Time, Again and a host of other works of popular theology has turned his hand to writing fiction.  This isn’t any old fiction, either; it is didactic fiction; a thinly-veiled attempt on the author’s part to promote his own theological perspective.

Not that there’s anything underhand or sleekit about this literary form.  The author is completely upfront and transparent about this.  He even provides suggestions for reading groups in an appendix which offers questions for readers to discuss among themselves.  That impressed me greatly, as the author has deftly managed to smuggle a lot of deep stuff into this compelling novel.

Professor Kate Riley is a popular religion teacher in a college somewhere in the American Midwest.  Her students love her classes. She loves her work, she is happy with both her personal and her spiritual life and she has had some success with a couple of her books; a scholarly look at the Epistle of James and a new one examining the differences between the two Christmas narratives in Matthew and Luke’s gospels.

It’s just in the middle of Advent that things start to go off the rails for Kate.  Her publisher has set up a number of interviews with radio stations up and around the country in order to promote her book.  These question and answer sessions introduce the reader to Kate’s liberal Christian perspective, but she falls foul of a husband and wife tag team on a Christian talk radio show, Rise and Shine, who accuse her of seeking to ‘debunk the truth about Jesus’.

Before long, she is named as Number One Un-American of the Week by an inflammatory pundit on a conservative network for ‘a secular humanist apology of a book’ that trashes ‘one of the most sacred parts of our country’s Christian heritage… at Christmas, of all times.’

Ironically at the same time Kate is beset with another problem.  One of her colleagues on the college faculty is a bit sniffy about her latest book. It’s too popular and too Christian.  He is one of those illiberal ‘liberals’ we all know; the kind who don’t want to see others doing things of which they disapprove.  This man notes that she attends church regularly and claims that this could be interfering with her teaching of religion in the college. She is condemned, not for what she actually does, but what she could do.  The reader gets to sit in on Kate’s classes and her one-to-one sessions with individual students, so we know that it ain’t so.

In the midst of all this, Kate receives an invitation to teach in a seminary as a visiting professor of New Testament Studies for a year. Conflicted and confused by the reaction of her colleagues and an organised campaign by some parent to deny her tenure at the college, Kate finds her faith coming under pressure as she wrestles with the possibilities in front of her.

As the story develops, we get to meet some other characters; Geoff,  her gay colleague on the faculty and her soulmate and confidant (every girl should have one); Frederika her minister; Martin, a professor at the seminary in question, her mentor and one-time lover (a long time ago) and Erin, a student who is a member of a conservative evangelical group on campus.

I rather suspect that any reader of this book will come with their own personal baggage, or to mix the metaphor, may read it through lenses tinted by the events and understandings of their own lives, I really identified with Erin in this story as she struggled with her faith when what she had been taught to believe came into conflict with the real world of flesh and blood human beings.

This is stirring stuff. Borg is didactic but it’s anything but preachy. I hope there’ll be a sequel. Borg introduces readers to some wonderful stuff too, as Kate goes through her daily devotions and her lectures. Not only are we treated to Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach but to a moving poem by Denise Levertov called The Avowal.  This is so powerful that it reduced me to tears.  Here it is…

As swimmers dare

To lie face to the sky

And water bears them,

As hawks rest upon air

And air sustains them;

So I would learn to attain

Freefall, and float

Into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

Knowing no effort earns

That all-surrounding grace.

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Book Review: Is there Life After Death? The Extraordinary Science of What Happens When we die

December 12, 2011 at 6:52 pm · Filed under Books, Spirituality/Philosophy

Life After Death Cover Image

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Is there Life After Death?

The Extraordinary Science of What Happens When we die

By Anthony Peake

Review: Tim Bragg

(Part of Body, Mind, Spirit & Time)

Am I treading the same road that I have trod so many times? Am I alone on my wanderings – have I walked this way before so often that I am in an inescapable rut – or – is there a guide, placing signposts for me to veer onto new lanes? A guide that has intimate knowledge of my many intended or worn trails…

What a curious mesmerizing book this is! Gripping, thought provoking and unsettling. Great – my cup of tea! With ideas fashioned around the theories of Many Worlds; Multi-Universes; Quantum Theory…Time itself (and the nature of its and our subjective perceptions); shared consciousness; neurology; psychiatry and more – the reader is guaranteed a stimulating read. A book that provokes thought and a thoughtful response.

For some time now (well this is my subjective perception!) I have had this rather clichéd and simple notion that “Time is the Answer”. And yet this notion has deepened and become deeper and been given more credence through reading Peake’s book. Time – subjective – bending to the occasion…speeding up and slowing down…and fragmenting? Time stretching so that at death we cease to be ‘time-full’ but enter a new relationship with it. Does time cease or are we catapulted back to its (our) beginning? What is the relationship between Time, Matter and our Consciousness?  Has our universe and human consciousness sprung from a time-less and matter-less place? Although Peake doesn’t answer this last question he does give his coherent idea of what happens to (our) time as death approaches…

Is there life after death? Existence after death – a continued existence…if you’re looking for reassurance about conscious existence after ‘death’ then you’ll be both excited and – perhaps disappointed by this book. Excited because through its pages we learn about Quantum Theory – about how we bring into existence external reality through our sensory perceptions – that we are subjective beings in a subjectively made reality. There may not be an identifiable, objective reality – at least to us subjective beings. But more than this – we might not even be alone. And when I use the word ‘we’ I don’t just mean the consciousness reading these words  – there is also a ‘we’ that is ‘us’ – a dual consciousness within that we all seem to share. The brain divided and mirrored – holding two different ‘mind-beings’.

I am not going to use Peake’s scientific or esoteric words in this review – this is my review (and accordingly may only exist in ‘my’ reality – and in your reality I may not actually exist!) – but respond simply as a reader who has been affected by and has given considerable thought to the ideas. I am also aware that I don’t want to spoil the unfolding of the book’s ideas by giving too much away – because you need to be taken on its journey (as was I). Also, I am not without criticism or further questioning of ideas within it and, ultimately, not without a sinking feeling that what Peake’s research and originality offers is no more comforting than the traditional idea of reincarnation.

In Western societies the concept ofre-incarnation can sometimes be used to make sense of our existence and offer the hope of rebirth and re-existence rather than a one off life followed by annihilation…and yet, I, the ego am not aware of this pre-existence except through unusual “flash backs” to a supposed previous life. Thus the ‘I’ – the ‘me’ that I am fully aware of – will face obliteration. Now, without giving too much away (I hope) Peake argues for (and there is always enough scientific corroboration to make his points) that each human has indeed dual consciousness – that there is a Higher and Lower self…and that these entities exist in a form of communion, but that the Higher Self is only manifest (seemingly) at certain times – including in dream states and during hypnotism. This Higher Self also plays its ultimate significant part at the approach of death. This is where the possibility of “life after death” comes – though technically there is no death – only the perception of one’s death by other folk!

All sounding a bit much? Well you will discover the strange world of quantum particles and their unresolved existence until brought into ‘focus’ by sentient life…you will glimpse into the world of the schizophrenic which might be the world of your other consciousness (Higher Self) – an unfiltered world that our lower self finds overbearing; a world where ALL is perceived…why do we perceive all? You will have insight into those who experience Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and the idea that life is experienced between epileptic fits at birth and death…And how our mind has (perhaps) evolved to cope with the dying experience.

Sometimes we are treated to great rabbit-holes of fun and imagination that ultimately lead nowhere. We rush off after the White Rabbit – constantly eyeing his watch – “I’m late, I’m late!” – but find that though this pursuit is fascinating we are left somewhat perplexed and unfulfilled. This might result from my own intellectual failing. I have to state again: I LOVE this book. I love how it takes me into my own mind and for my mind to question itself and its very reality – but the ending felt a touch like bathos with questions seemingly left unanswered: what is the point of the eternal return (if any); is this reliving simply a product of a peculiar universe and mortal existence or is there some higher hand at work; can we escape this reliving – and if so how? …Perhaps there’s another ending waiting to be written – it felt a little unbalanced. I appreciate Peake’s desire to fuse science with areas of enquiry normally dealt with by religion or philosophy – but there’s so much more to delve into surely? I prefer to fuse science with spirituality – looking to science to answer WHY as well as HOW (however beguiling that HOW is!). It is in that WHY – that questioning that the spiritual element will be found – if we are the way we are and we are programmed to an eternal return – then WHY? Why does that mechanism exist?

The brain and the mind (co-dependent?!) are fascinating – figures given in the book reveal the brain’s amazing complexity. It’s a wonder people can manage to be so ‘un’ conscious having such a tool! Can consciousness exist apart from the brain – and if so – how? What can/could sustain it? Are “out of body experiences” proof of the ability of consciousness to exist independently? I have had an OBE – but was it within the capacity of my mind to PROJECT such a reality at an extreme type of stress…thus I wasn’t “out” of anywhere – just experiencing a different perspective?

Perhaps, as Peake suggests, we all eventually “fall out of time” – perhaps we stretch time into a kind of infinity…perhaps we re-tread this life over and over and over again. But if there is an escape to this mundane repetition it is an escape denied to ‘us’ (the ‘us’ that is connecting with these words) because the escape itself will exist in another universe, in another reality. Trillions of versions of us – like a mirror reflecting upon itself – like an infinite number of mirrors reflecting infinitely! And even the word ‘infinite’ is useless here because it suggests Time! And the BIG question – what for? Is there any profound reason behind all this? Becoming Perfect?  – How close to perfection would we need to come to escape this Eternal Return? Has anyone ever achieved perfection? Jesus gave into anger, was he forced to return and, if so, why didn’t he become Greater Than Jesus – or did he – yes you’ve got it – manifest in a different reality/world/universe? Not so much a Second Coming but a long time coming.

 Déjà vu, that notion of being here before, of experiencing the same feelings and senses before, is perhaps the key to unlock our sense of return…but – for “us” who have but an inkling of a re-run – so what? And even those in Peake’s book that seem to re-live their lives – and be aware of such – there is no comfort or satisfaction. There doesn’t seem to be a sense of justice in getting things right simply for a version of ourselves to exist in another Quantum Leap. And if ALL has happened to ALL then any sense of meaningful independent reality is lost! The subtlety of difference between ‘this’ and ‘that’ choice would be diluted in a vat so large that any such choice would be rendered meaningless! And given that people seem to go on making the same mistakes, are some ‘souls’ bound to re-live nightmare lives that are short and brutal over and over again!?

There certainly is more to Heaven and Earth than meets the eye, it seems. Quantum physics shows us a micro existence without common sense. But can we extrapolate into the world of Here and Now? Are there realms of the brain we can lose ourselves in? When we dream are we dreaming a reality? Perhaps this is evidence for survival of death – when I dream I certainly am in a ‘reality’ and though it is me – this ‘me’ is unconnected to the me that wakes into my apparent ‘normal’ reality (but only made ‘normal’ by the act of waking and of a sense of repetition). There is a connection at times (lucid dreaming fuses these two realities) but normally ‘I’ can live in two very different experiential worlds that have similarities – each seemingly with its own integrity and continuity – but that are DIFFERENT! And passing from one state to the other is unconscious – I am unaware of slipping through that ‘twilight’ world between wake and sleep.

Finally, though I can see and understand Peake’s idea of consciousness and its perception of time as one’s death looms, I wonder about those folk who have lost contact and consciousness with this world…did they see their mental death approaching – was any mechanism in place for them? If there is a ‘breather’ between returns – in which existence is it to be found? Again I apologise for being a tad cryptic – but you need to work through this book – take in the various speculations and new scientific research it provides and explores, and get led down Peake’s rabbit-hole world. As he says – he may not even exist in our world – well, my world – well, your world. Just as I might not exist in the world of whomever is reading these words. So in which case – who wrote them?

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On the Trail of William Wallace

October 1, 2011 at 12:05 pm · Filed under Books, Culture ·Tagged , , , , ,

Book coverOn the Trail of William Wallace

by David R. Ross.

WHETHER you are just starting out on your quest for knowledge about arguably Scotland’s greatest hero or are an old campaigner looking to gleam something extra, this is a must have book for your library.

It is written in an easy-going natural style that will hold you there until you have read through from cover to cover. The known chronological facts about Wallace are documented and others debated, but what really makes this book special is that unlike any other book on the subject, it takes you on a visit to the sites where Wallace walked and fought and died.

There are maps and detailed descriptions of sites from the past and present and sadly some no longer with us. There are also many beautiful line drawings of monuments, plagues and buildings connected to our hero.

The story of William Wallace has continued to inspire patriots even over 700 years after his cruel end. This book will help his legend grow as more folk follow on the trail of William Wallace and feel his indomitable spirit touch them at each stop along the way.

Printed with acknowledgements to Scotland First http://www.scotland-first.org

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Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism

September 4, 2011 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Books ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism.  Jack Ross. Potomac Books.  2011.  296 pages.

Reviewed by Thomas Kolsky

RABBI Elmer Berger, the leading ideologist and main strategist of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), the American Jewish organization created in 1942 specifically to oppose Zionism, is the subject of Jack Ross’ sympathetic and well-researched.  In this biography, Ross ably portrays and analyzes the sources and evolution of Berger’s anti-Zionist thought and traces the rabbi’s career as probably one of the fiercest and most enduring American Jewish anti-Zionists.

From his early thirties until his death at the age of eighty-seven, Berger dedicated himself totally to an unrelenting campaign against Zionism.  In the course of this endeavour, he constructed perhaps the most systematic, aggressive, and persistent Jewish ideological and public assault on Zionism and its partisans in the United States.  Between 1942 and 1967, his most productive years, Berger played a leading role in the ACJ.  As the organization’s executive director and chief ideologist, Berger closely supervised the formulation of almost every official ACJ document and organizational policy.  Despite Lessing Rosenwald’s and Clarence Coleman’s formal leadership as the presidents of the organization, it was Berger who played the commanding role in shaping and guiding the ACJ’s anti-Zionist campaign.

The ACJ came into existence in 1942 as the response of a group of Reform rabbis and lay opponents of Zionism who were alarmed by what they considered to be the rapid growth of Zionism in the U.S. and its intrusion into Jewish communal and religious life.  Theirs was a direct reaction to a February 1942 resolution of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the one-time stronghold of Reform anti-Zionism, favoring the creation of “Jewish army” in Palestine as well as to the gathering of the Zionist Biltmore Conference in New York in May in which the Zionist movement openly declared its end-goal—the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Shocked and angered by the turn of events, the dissident rabbis and their lay supporters, who were committed to classical Reform’s 1885 Pittsburgh Platform that affirmed the purely religious identity of Jews and rejected the creation of an exclusively Jewish state, founded the ACJ as an act of defense against Zionism.  The organization’s platform, based on the tenets of nineteenth-century Reform Judaism (classical Reform), emphasized the purely religious nature of Judaism and unequivocally rejected Jewish nationalism.  It repudiated the establishment of a Jewish state as regressive, undemocratic, and contrary to Jewish interests.  For the ACJ, Zionism represented a philosophy of despair, a retreat from and loss of faith in emancipation, and above all, self-segregation.  Instead of a Jewish state the ACJ supported free Jewish immigration and equal rights for Jews throughout the world. For Palestine, specifically, it advocated the establishment of a democratic state wherein all citizens, regardless of their religion, would enjoy equal political rights.  This platform and the principles that it embodied, which Berger helped to formulate, guided him throughout his career.

Berger’s campaign against Zionism may be divided into three major phases.  From 1943 to 1948, he led the ACJ’s relentless fight against the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.  With the vast majority of American Jews rallying behind the Zionist program as the result of the emotional impact of the Holocaust, the ACJ failed to make significant inroads into the Jewish community.  While remaining largely isolated among Jews, it maintained contact and closely collaborated with the State Department, the main opponent of Zionism within the U.S. government.  Berger, a steadfast and enthusiastic proponent of cooperation with American governmental agencies and international agencies, maintained close contacts with Loy W. Henderson, the person in charge of Middle Eastern Affairs in the State Department, and worked energetically until the end to prevent the creation of the State of Israel.

On the domestic front, Berger focused on fighting Zionist efforts to capture the support of the Jewish community, their claim to speak for all Jews as well as their drive to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.  He repeatedly warned of the dire consequences for Jews in the United States and the world, if a Jewish state did come into existence.  The ACJ’s efforts to prevent the creation of Israel obviously course failed.

From 1948 to 1967, following the establishment of Israel, Berger turned to what he called a “second line of defence” in his encounter with Zionism: defending American Jews from Israeli intrusions into American Jewish life.  He constantly stressed that Israel was a foreign state and repeatedly emphasized the need to clearly distinguish between “Zionism” and “Judaism.”  To promote his line of defence, Berger oversaw a three-part anti-Zionist campaign, focusing on public affairs, religious education, and philanthropic programs, all designed to counteract American Zionist and Israeli efforts to bind American Jews to Israel.  Every Zionist or Israeli political pronouncement or action that could be interpreted as interference in American Jewish life drew vigorous protest from the ACJ.  Berger carefully scrutinized Israeli foreign policy and frequently criticized it.

From time to time, he would appeal to organs of the American government for support in his repudiation of Israeli policies.  For example, he sought a probe of the United Jewish Appeal by the State Department.  In the 1950s, he even volunteered to offer advice to Assistant Secretary of State Henry Byroade on how to deal with Israel, earning him the nickname “Mad Rabbi.” In fact, some of Berger’s most gratifying activities during the 1940s and 1950s seem to have been his dealings with State Department officials.

The June 1967 War created an acute crisis within the ACJ that resulted in Berger’s break with the ACJ.  Berger’s vehement condemnation of Israel as the aggressor and his extremely critical comments about the American Jewish community’s “hysterical” response to the war deeply upset most of the ACJ leaders, who were overwhelmed by the intense emotional response of American Jews to the war.  His ensuing conflict with the ACJ leadership resulted in Berger’s divorce from the organization.

With his separation from the ACJ began the third and last phase of Berger’s anti-Zionist crusade.  Within two years, free from the constraints of the ACJ, he created the American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism (AJAZ), an organization with a small membership, consisting mostly of his ardent ACJ supporters, but which served as an outlet for his anti-Zionist activities.  His remained a bold, but quixotic and lonely, journey.  In the remaining almost three decades of his life, Berger focused primarily on criticism of Israeli foreign policy.  During those years, a virtual pariah in the Jewish community, he associated mostly with his Jewish anti-Zionist ardent supporters, non-Jewish anti-Zionists, Arab American organizations, and representatives of Arab states.  As for his attitude toward the Arabs, Berger claimed that it was shaped by his commitment to the principles of classical Reform Judaism and to the teachings of social justice inspired by the Hebrew prophets.

The essence of Berger’s anti-Zionist ideology was that Judaism was a religion, not a nationality; that there was no such entity as “the Jewish people;” that no Jewish organization was entitled to speak for all Jews; that Palestine was not to be a Jewish state, but a state of all its inhabitants as equal citizens; that the creation of a Jewish state would have harmful consequences for Jews in Palestine and throughout the world.  The solution for the persecution of Jews was to be full emancipation—their integration into the societies in which they lived.  Only a truly enlightened, liberal world would make Jewish life secure.  Although Berger’s main work as the ACJ’s chief ideologist for twenty-five years and subsequently as a solo spokesperson for AJAZ did not bear tangible results, he did establish a record of rational dissent vis-à-vis Zionism, of which he was proud and which he saw as his legacy.  In fact, many of his predictions about the consequences of the Zionist venture, especially those related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, did materialize.

Recently, a growing number of concerned Jews, such as the distinguished historian Tony Judt, have been coming to views reminiscent of the concerns and predictions expressed by Berger.  In his informative and engaging biography of Berger, Jack Ross resurrects the memory of an important Jewish dissident, a man with whom many may disagree, but whose important insights into the nature and consequences of Zionism may be ignored only at our own peril.  In so doing, he makes an important contribution to the understanding of American Jewish anti-Zionism.

Thomas Kolsky reviews books for the History News Network http://hnn.us and is Professor of History and Political Science, Montgomery County Community College and the author of Jews Against Zionism. (Temple University Press).

Printed with acknowledgements to The Cutting Edge News http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=52393

For another review of Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism by Jack Ross, see here: http://thirdway.eu/2011/06/24/rabbi-outcast-elmer-berger-and-american-jewish-anti-zionism/

 

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Images of Ireland – North Belfast

July 27, 2011 at 8:42 pm · Filed under Books, Culture ·Tagged , , , , , ,

North Belfast images

Images of Ireland: North Belfast

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By Peggy Weir.  Nonesuch Publishing,Dublin,Eire.  1999.  £11.75.

ISBN 978 1 84588 915 9

 

THERE’S a fair chance that many folks who currently live in South East Antrim originally hail fromNorth Belfast.  Indeed, some probably still have relatives in areas such asTigersBayor theYork Road/Shore Road area.

With this in mind, I’d recommend an excellent book called Images of Ireland – North Belfast by Peggy Weir.  This book consists of nearly 130 pages crammed full of good, clear black and white photographs.  Ten chapters – including Industy and Transport, Troubled Times, Churches and Houses – examine various aspects of life in North Belfast.

However instead of giving North Belfast a full written review, I thought I’d just decide to echo the thoughts of Fred Heatley.  In his brief but thought-provoking Introduction, Mr Heatley – President of the North Belfast Historical Society – notes:

“The adage ‘one photograph is worth a thousand words’ holds true.  Even the most eloquent speaker finds difficulty in explaining past social conditions without adequate illustrations.  This collection of photographs proves that.  School or wedding photographs may appear of interest only to those in the picture or their descendants, but for us they show the alterations in the dress, style and the modes of the times.  Buildings, streetscapes, transport and places of entertainment are unimaginable without the camera’s product.  Each illustration tells of an age now long gone but for memories”.

 

-         John Jenkins

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Tales from the Castle Gate

June 5, 2011 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Books, Culture ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Tales from the Castle Gate

“THERE is perhaps no more fruitful form of education than to arouse the interest of a people in their own surroundings”

- Joe Baker, Glenravel Local History Project, North Belfast.

I THOUGHT I knew a bit about local history, but even I was stunned to hear that French forces had invaded Carrickfergus! Indeed, from 21st February to the night of 25th – 26th February 1760, Carrickfergus was an overseas territory of the French realm of King Louis XV!

This event – and much more besides – can be found in an excellent book written by Charles McConnell (and published by Carmac Books, Carrickfergus in 2002). Called Tales from the Castle Gate it attempts to provide as much information as possible about the castle. As McConnell notes: “There are few buildings in Ireland with such a well-chronicled and long history as the town’s most compelling landmark and it was the strategic importance of the Castle as a military fortress that led to the succession of memorable events associated with the town’s history”.

There is so much to read in this remarkable book – chapters include The Castle Builder, Lord Edward Bruce, Roundheads and Cavaliers, The castle and the Williamite War – but the day Carrickfergus became part of France really captured our imagination! This is dealt in reasonable depth with a chapter entitled Under a Foreign Flag. It really is a fascinating account of the French invasion – and subsequent capture – of Carrickfergus.

On 21st February 1760 around 600 French troops – under the command of Commodore Francois Thurot – landed at Kilroot and advanced towards Carrickfergus. The castle and town were put on alert as soon as the French were spotted. Around 300 French Prisoners of war, captured from previous land and sea battles, were being held in the castle. (They had originally been held in Cork for two years. However, because of rumours of a French invasion of the southern coast of Ireland, they had been moved. These prisoners were first moved to the Irish midlands and then on to Belfast. Three Hundred were held in Barrack Street in Belfast and the remaining 300 held in Carrickfergus). When Thurot’s fleet was spotted these prisoners were mustered and marched off to Belfast!

During this period Carrickfergus Castle wasn’t as militarily impressive as it had been. Tales from the Castle Gate states that in “the relatively peaceful times of the first half of the 18th century in Ireland, complacency had developed about the Castle’s military role”. Thus it had fallen into a state of disrepair – indeed; there was fifty foot breach in the outer curtain wall where a section had collapsed six years earlier in 1754.

The only military forces defending Carrick at the time was a detachment of General Strode’s regiment, the 62nd Regiment of Foot. This consisted of about 160 young recruits undergoing training. There was barely only enough ammunition for each soldier’s training and there were no guns mounted! They were under the command of Colonel John Jennings. (According to Tales from the Castle Gate, the commander of Carrickfergus Castle, Colonel Jennings, later described it as “an old fortress little better than a heap of ruins”.)

The majority of those soldiers defending Carrick – the 62nd Regiment of Foot – were deployed at Joymount where the main French attack was expected. Others were deployed at North Gate, West Gate and the castle itself. A lack of ammunition saw the British troops retreat to the castle. And a series of running battles saw some of the French invaders get into castle. The bulk of the French troops had marched into Market Place. Some were then deployed on to West Street then to Cheston Street where they could fire directly at the outer castle gate. Other French forces were concentrated in Castle Street. The web-site of Carrickfergus Borough Council http://www.carrickfergus.org also notes that whilst the French were on route to the castle “the silver in St Nicholas church was stolen”.

Those defending Carrickfergus castle found themselves in an impossible situation. The lack of ammunition (which had prompted their initial retreat) meant that there was more powder than ball. Therefore, half the powder from each cartridge was fired with the bullet – the other half was used to fire a metal button from their tunics!

It wasn’t too long before the French invaders charged. Led by Captain d’Esterees they attacked the castle door, which had not been closed properly. This led to hand to hand fighting in which d’Esterees was the first to fall. Senior British officers – including Colonel Jennings – and about fifty men with fixed bayonets repulsed this initial French attack. They were aided by their comrades who although they didn’t have any ammunition threw stones and bricks at the French!

Given the inadequate state of the British defence, it’s surprising that they were able to hold off the French for several hours. However, it was clear that Colonel Jennings would have to surrender. His men were outnumbered three to one and were completely out of ammunition. Despite fighting against overwhelming odds the British defenders had two killed and five wounded. At the same time, the “French lost a surprising number of, about fifty being killed, including three officers, and about the same number wounded”. (Interestingly, one of those wounded during the fighting was Brigadier General Flobert. He originally wanted the diversionary invasion abandoned but was overruled by Thurot. Flobert was so badly wounded that he had to stay ashore to recover). Additionally, it was only a matter of time before the French discovered the massive breach in the defensive wall. This would have led to the French completely overrunning the castle and possibly killing all of its defenders.

In Tales from the Castle Gate, McConnell notes that the terms of capitulation were generous. “The garrison were allowed to march out with drums beating and flags flying and be on parole till they were exchanged for an equal number of men. The Castle was to be delivered up with the stores in it. The town was neither to be plundered nor burnt, nor the inhabitants misused.”

Once the French had occupied Carrick Castle they demanded provisions and stores from Belfast. They stated that if nothing arrived they would burn Carrick to the ground and kill all of its the inhabitants. The provisions were slow in coming so Commodore Thurot threatened to march on Belfast. The local authorities relented and met his demands – enough food and fresh water was supplied to see them back home. The French invaders also took what they could from Carrick – including any clothing they could find to protect them from the bitter winter. To ensure their safety they took some local dignitaries as hostages.

The brief French occupation of Carrickfergus ended when – on the night of 25th – 26th February – Thurot’s forces left just as the advance guard of the British reinforcements approached. However, Because Carrickfergus lies within Belfast Lough, they had to wait two days for a favourable wind to take them out to the open sea.

However Commodore Thurot never reached home. Three ships of the British fleet having been alerted, intercepted the three French ships off the Isle of Man and in the ensuing battle the French were defeated and Thurot killed.

Reviewed by John Jenkins.

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