Email sent to Lu Skerratt-Love of the Church Army Research Department on 8 September 2021 but not received by her - evidence that the email never reached her, as the result of blocking of all emails to Lu Skerratt-Love and other members of the Church Army, action authorized by Tim Ling of the Church Army Research Department. Her claim that she received any emails from me is false.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The material in this column is very new. It will be revised and extended.

 

Dr Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth) was an Archbishop of Canterbury - the one before Justin Welby. He was never an intellectual, except in a very restricted sense: an ecclesiastical intellectual.  He studied theology at Christ's College, Cambridge, and the experience has left its mark. What it didn't do is give him any advantages whatsoever in defending the doctrines he believes in against reasoned criticism, as I can show very easily.  He gained a PhD with a thesis entitled 'The theology of Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky: An Exposition and Critique.'

 

 This is yet another senior Church functionary who has led an (intellectually) sheltered life, someone to whom evasion is second nature, evasion so quiet and undemonstrative as to be confused with very different things.  The evasion techniques of Rowan Williams are relatively genial, unlike the ones used by Dr Tim Ling, of the Church Army Research Unit, whose evasion techniques are grotesque and convoluted.

 

Rowan Williams is the President of Church Army. He has described Church Army as a 'gift to the church.'  The information is on the page

 

https://churcharmy.org/who-we-are/our-team/

 

The presidency of Rowan Williams is a gift to the Church Army, a reassuring presence, in particular, reassuring potential donors that this is an organization which thoroughly deserves their support. I show that this is an organization which doesn't deserve their support in the least. If Rowan Williams values free expression, then he won't want to have anything to do with the Church Army. This is an organization which goes in for banning, blocking, outright censorship - or attempts to censor.

 

 Intellectual standards at Cambridge University can be very relaxed - not in fields such as pure and applied mathematics, natural science, engineering and many others, but certainly in 'divinity.' He was 'admitted' a Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge and was even appointed (Honorary) Professor of 'Contemporary Christian Thought' by the University.

 

In the column to the left, and in pages cited, with links, in the column to the left, information about the Church Army's interference with free expression, its banning and blocking activities, instigated by Dr Ling and still in force.  These have had far-reaching effects and have involved South Yorkshire Police.

 

The Website of Church Army has two sharply contrasted faces. It can be described as 'two faced.' The more prominent face is about its range of 'philanthropic' activities, many of which aren't what they seem. The  less prominent face is the face of Christian orthodoxy, the Church Army's promotion of a theology which divides humanity into two, the saved and the damned. The supposedly philanthropic side, such as 'poverty alleviation' (which is overwhelmingly the business of the state, through benefits and other measures, and the economy, through wealth creation which does infinitely  more to alleviate poverty than the negligible efforts of Church Army) is a cover-up. Giving money to the Church Army would be - is - badly mistaken. Some of the money donated may go to useful or moderately useful projects, but the context is inescapable. Most of the money is directed to 'Mission,' based on Biblical foundations, if these rickety, contradictory texts can be called 'foundations.'

 

 For Church Army, no other issue can be compared with issues to do with salvation by faith in Jesus. 'Family work,' 'Recreation activities,' 'Mentoring,' Schools work,' 'Building community,' 'Youth / Kids' and other activities may keep the donations coming in - the section of the site 'Ways of Giving' is on a lavish scale befitting its importance for Church Army - but so much of the money received by Church Army goes to attempts to convert 'the lost,' saving 'the lost.' The Research Department, statistically minded but in most respects clueless, , produces world-class dross, grotesquely misguided attempts to show that converting most people (or all people) to faith in Jesus Christ is a realistic objective.

 

This is the section, 'My Favourite Bible Verse ...' the choice of Andrew Horton, the Church Army's Head of Communications and Digital Engagement:

 

'A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to pleas their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life ... '

 

This doesn't in the least imply that bad people go to Hell and good people go to heaven. It means that people who have accepted Jesus as Saviour go to Hell and all the others go to Hell (or some form of eternal separation from God), including devoted parents, the Jews who died in the Holocaust ...

 

This is from my page Church Donations, the first part of a much longer section.

 

The belief that non-believers go to Hell (or are separated from God for eternity) is common knowledge. Vast numbers of Christians, at vast numbers of churches, have this belief, and not just  Conservative Evangelicals.   Not nearly so common now: the belief, held by 'St' Augustine (of Hippo)  that deceased babies who never receive baptism go to hell, that baptism is essential for salvation.

 

Not discussed anywhere in the Bible, the fate of non-believing children - and babies. No age limit for redemption is mentioned in the Bible. Can very young children and even babies share the fate of adult non-believers?

 

So far as I know, I'm the first person to draw attention to this massive, shocking problem for orthodox believers.  This is a problem for 'liberal' Christians and 'progressive' Christians as well. They have some explaining to do.

 

What does Rowan Williams think? Does he have any answers? In many places on this site, I write about miners and about children in mines - including a poem of mine about child miners, and one about children working in factories - in the section 'Child Labour' of the page Poems. For convenience, I provide copies of the poems in the short section:

 

 

 

The poem 'Mines' is an example of 'concrete poetry.' In concrete poems, there's a link between verbal form and visual form. My page on concrete poetry  has background information on 'Mines' and general analysis of concrete poetry. This is the section on 'Mines.'

 

The word 'mined' is a play on words and a reference to explosive mines used in warfare - land mines, aerial mines and sea mines. The gas firedamp in mines, mainly methane, is explosive when mixed with air. After firedamp has exploded in mines, the poisonous gas afterdamp, made up mainly of carbon monoxide, is formed. Children worked in mines in this country until the passing of the Mines Act of 1942, which prohibited the employment of girls, women and boys under 10 years old.

 

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright had 'an obsession with strata of rock as an inspiration for horizontal stratification in buildings' and a consuming interest in 'the larger theme of "Nature" as a model for architecture.' (From the fine review by William J. R. Curtis of 'The essential Frank Lloyd Wright: critical writings on architecture' in the Times Literary Supplement.)

Poetry has very often taken the larger theme of "Nature" as a model, but I make use here of the linkage between strata and lines of poetry.

 

In the representational poem above, the strata are the seams of coal, the lines of the poem are the low tunnels dug into the seams. The strata are also layers of suffering, penetrating deeper and deeper into a world of almost unimaginable harshness. Concrete poems are often playful, sometimes no more than technical exercises, sometimes as trivial as doodles, but I see every reason to use concrete form for the most serious ends.

 

It shouldn't be thought that I oppose industrialism or think that the industrial revolution was a false turning in human history. Quite the opposite. I explain why in many, many places in the site. The industrial revolution inflicted a vast amount of avoidable suffering, unavoidable suffering, and has spared vast numbers of people in later ages the suffering which is inevitable when nature is insufficiently controlled. Our age, which is very much aware that nature can also be controlled far too much, would not benefit overall if this progress were reversed and we had to live in a state of nature, life, in the words of Hobbes, 'nasty, brutish and short.'

 

Faulting in poetry is a technique which can be applied to the line-strata. Poem-faulting has a linkage with geological faulting: layers of rock are fractured and a block may move vertically downwards. In the same way, in faulted poetry some or all of the lines are fractured and a block moves downwards, so opening up the interior of the poem, with significant effects upon poetic texture.

 

In a poem with an appreciable number of lines and with lines of appreciable length, there's zoning, the contrast between the border region and the interior. Words deep in the interior of a poem may be denied their full force. Faulting opens up the texture of the poem. The challenge is to ensure that the faulting of the lines is the result of emotional, poetic force.

 

South Yorkshire, the County where I live, like South Wales, the County where Rowan Williams lives, has strong roots in mining and industry. Does Rowan Williams believe that the miners killed in mining accidents, the children killed in mining accidents were doomed to Hell for eternity? Can he explain his views on the doctrine of redemption? Can he give a response to the issue I explain above, the lack of any guidelines in Christian doctrine regarding the age of those who fail the Redemption Test?

 

I claimed that Rowan Williams is evasive. It would be good to think that he is capable of giving honest answers to simple questions. But is he capable or not?