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...

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...

Of all my poems, this might be the one that’s closest to my heart. I wrote it in the aftermath of Christmas 2018, and was chuffed to have it appear in the  Winter 2019 edition of Preach magazine . THIS HOUSE   Oh come, oh come Emmanuel, and hurl Our order into holy disarray: Upend the tables where we wheel and deal, And scatter our accrued prosperity. Awake us, dancer on the dancing deep, From placid slumber; rock the boat; disturb The peace that we content ourselves to keep, And make us see the chaos we transfer. Confound our clarity, cut short our too long Prayers, take back the narrative and heckle Sermons preached to itching ears. Throw down Each stone in every separating wall. Do what you’re here to do … but, come what may, Rebuild the ruins of us, please – and stay.  Carolyn Whitnall, 2019. And then the pandemic. And the stuff of it all got a bit real. And no, I don’t mean any of the following: that “God has done this,” or that I wished f...

I want you to understand that, if I seem to have rather a lot to say about the current US administration, it's because, as a white evangelical Christian – albeit one with a different set of cultural baggage and without a vote – I consider myself implicated. It's my theology that has elevated Trump. It's scriptures that I revere as holy that are being used to justify the policies and behaviour of him and his associates. Songs I sing on a Sunday morning are being sung six or so hours later by Christian sisters and brother who voted for him and are openly celebrating his advancement of their cause. Books and articles and YouTube clips that do the rounds in my social networks have their origins in the minds of Christian elites whose allegiance as events unfold have proven frighteningly unswerving. There is no detaching myself. And, to be honest, the apparent detachment of other evangelicals rather disturbs than inspires me. Especially as I have a hunch that this detachment ...

            THEN                         Later, there would be doctrine.                         After whispers and mayhem;             After dinner in a locked room and a show of hands;             After “mass hallucinations”, private consultations,             Promises and re-commissions;             After sea and sand and sunrise,             And a parting in the clouds.                         After fire falling, filling, overspilling;             Raging and enraging;             After news and bread and bodies breaking.         ...

Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day,         or like vinegar poured on a wound,         is one who sings songs to a heavy heart. ( Proverbs 25 :20) A particularly low point of the particularly dark advent just gone was finding myself in the middle of a particularly jolly Christmas carol knees-up at one of the bigger, shinier, more musically-polished churches in my local area. Don't get me wrong; it was an excellent evening on all objective counts. There was dancing, and whooping, and banjos, and mulled wine, and affable friends of friends I don't get to see very often. Only, to me, this was all so much coat theft and vinegar the way I was feeling, and I shivered and winced my way through just enough of the service to justify taking up a much-sought-after seat before heading for the quiet and solitude of my comfortingly un-festive house. I've more than  adequately documented my annual set-to with the season already. Pa...

I was ten when O.J. Simpson's former wife Nicole and her friend Ron were found stabbed to death outside her LA home. It was the talk of the playground, handled with all the sensitivity and nuance that ten year olds typically bring to matters of mortality and justice. He definitely did it; he definitely didn't do it; he's best mates with my brother and he'll do it to you too if you don't give me your Kit Kat; say his name five times in a mirror and he'll come after you in your dreams in the guise of a chubby-cheeked children's toy carrying a machete... [1] I knew nothing about sport. As far as I was concerned, O.J. was just some guy on a baseball card. And I knew still less about race. Racism was black kids and white kids not wanting to play together, just like sexism was girls and boys refusing to sit next to each other. So the case made little coherent impact on me at the time. And even though I hope I've started to get the hang of a few things in r...