Proclaimer Blog
Culture and (not) Christianity
Had a day off this week (it's one of the Ten Commandments, don't you know?*) because of a heavy up-coming weekend. Did some real culture-things (apart from watching some of the Tour de France (Come on Geraint!) which is the epitome of culture). First, in the morning, Mrs R and I went to the British Museum to see the new exhibition on relics and medieval Christianity. It was fascinating and a little depressing.
Fascinating for a number of reasons:
- I hadn't fully realised the extent of the relic worship. It was extraordinary and a sign of the state of the medieval church leading up to the Reformation
- I hadn't fully anticipated the art of the reliquaries. They were astounding. There can be beauty in heresy.
- I hadn't realised that Charles I was the only saint ever created by the Anglican church, though a brief look at Wikipedia would have told me this useless piece of trivia. He was un-canonised by Queen Victoria. (I rather like the fact that you can unmake a saint…)
- It was nice to be reminded of Luther's quote about Saint Barbara – and I paraphrase: if all the part of the skull of St Barbara were collected together she would have seven heads!
But it was also depressing: Christianity as presented in the worship and adoration of relics is so far from Biblical Christianity it made me want to cry. In fact, the exhibition dwelt very little on an assessment of this practice – it was descriptive rather than analytical. Nevertheless, that so much power, superstition and wrong thinking could be so prevalent made me realise how good the Reformation was all over again.
I had a similar experience in the evening at the National Theatre watching Emperor and Galilean – Ibsen's play about Julian the Apostate and his struggle with doubt, eventually rejecting Christianity and trying to bring back the old pagan gods. It was a riveting play (though long – 3½ hours). Again, it was both fascinating and depressing. It was only a play of course, though Ibsen did base it on extant writings of Julian. Nevertheless, the portrayal of institutionalised Christianity just a few centuries after Christ gave me some sympathy with Julian, at first, at least. How quickly the truth gets distorted!
[By the way, the play was difficult to take seriously when Maximus, played by Ian McDiarmid of Star Wars Emperor fame shouted out in his Emperor voice "Give way to the other side. Find your destiny." Sniggers all around the auditorium.]
In both cases I saw clearly what Christianity was not…..and it made me grateful for our little local church which, though being far from perfect, seems to have to have the big things right.
* this a deliberate dig at over-working pastors who should know better…..