Critic Cal

“What is it again that you're doing?” Is the question I’m ever eschewing; But it’s time to face fears Cos in two-point-four years I’ve got one hundred thousand words due in… When asked what I’m up to these days, I typically reply with a confus(ed/ing) flurry of apologies and caveats. [1] So I thought I’d have a go at actually answering the question, for those of my friends who are polite enough to still be interested. Yes, so, I’m doing a(nother) PhD. [2] A sort of “activist” one, motivated by popular and (to me) troubling influences within my immediate and wider Christian circles. Three years full time, at Aberdeen University via Bristol Baptist College. I love being a part of the college and usually spend around 3 days a week there, using the library and exploiting the friendliness and wisdom of staff and fellow students. I have an excellent supervisor here in Bristol and an also-excellent co-supervisor with whom I interact remotely. The Baptist college is partnered with a nearby...

Jordan Peterson gets ALL the YouTube views but PLEASE don't think that makes him emulation-worthy!  I recently received an email invite to an event named "Preaching like Peterson: Can a preacher learn anything from the rhetoric of Jordan Peterson?" Now, I don't know how the event organisers plan on answering this question. I am quite willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they have prepared something rigorously critically attentive and resistant to Peterson's toxic and dehumanising ideologies.  I'm considerably less willing, however, to actually go and find out for myself... My own answer to what Christians can learn from Peterson about preaching is quite simply "how not to do it." Dog-whistling, contrarianism, fear-mongering and distorted, reductive, pseudo-intellectual, agenda-serving interpretation of the Bible and other venerated sources of authority? Nah, yer alright thanks.  In fact, the very first essay I submitted for m...

Right from the start of my MA I knew I wanted to "get to grips with" biblical hermeneutics – what it is I think Christians are  doing (or should be) when we read and interpret the Bible. And though I've got more than enough remaining questions to keep me going through a PhD (and no doubt the rest of my life whatever I do afterwards), the course was a great help towards making sense of sense-making. I've said before  that I'd like to write down some of the things I've come to understand about hermeneutics as it relates to LGBTQ+ inclusion within the Christian community. Because I strongly believe it's vital to begin with an appreciation of the complexity of the Christian canon and of the weighty task of receiving it in diverse, Spirit-led community together. There's no single definitive "biblical position" and no "safe side" answers: all interpretations involve interpretation, and all of them have consequences.  Realistically, it fee...

Graham Adams’ new book had me at the title: Holy Anarchy . It’s his deliberately disruptive re-description of the Kingdom of God – “Kingdom” being a metaphor that has lost its tension to the point where we forget the profound ways that the realm of God is not  like the top-down, power-over kingdoms of this world. “Holy Anarchy” stands in opposition to the totalising, dominating impulse of Empire, defying the “False Order”-sustaining lie that “There Are No Alternatives”...a lie that Christian communities, in our preference for certainties and our uncritical valorisation of "order" for order's sake, too readily remain entangled with.  TANA is a pretty apt encapsulation of what I was railing against when I wrote this poem... [1] PLEASE PUT YOUR SEATS IN THE UPRIGHT POSITION The skies were never ours to start with – So, you see, we simply had to have them. “Fill the earth,” He said; we said, “but first, the air.” He put a stop to that, initially. But look at us today, Ten t...

Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:5-8) CONTRACTIONS The Spirit gives birth to spirit. The Spirit gives birth. Except a man be born of water and the Spirit he – Except – And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And the Spirit is not 'It,' they said. Amen! The Spirit is 'He.' The Spirit gives birth. You must be born again. Look, here is water – Darkness is upon the amnion. Let fall the form and content I would hold regardless; Spirit Who gives birth, Deliver us. Carolyn Whitnall, 2019/21. The word the Hebrew Bible uses to describe God's Spiri...

Poetry is what happens to you when you really should be writing essays... I'm rather fond of this one though. Enough to have a go at recording it (full text underneath): CHRISTMAS 2020 Please wait, the host will let you in; The meeting is about to start – You’ve got your Christmas jumper on, A rigid grin, a grudging heart,  A drink that you don’t want in hand, An exit strategy pre-planned. You love the faces on the screen; You’ve loved them, every day since March A little more – and even then You leave them daily in the lurch;  It feels as much as you can do To keep on top of keeping you. And meanwhile all the web-wide world Is page refreshing for a sign Of AstraZeneca’s brainchild, Or one, perhaps, of Pfizer’s line; A saviour in a chilled pipette By which our hopes and fears are met. For now, it’s carols from our doors, And reindeer in the windowpanes That rainbows graced not long before, And charitable food campaigns For jobless households scraping by, As businesses are l...