Last night, I had the opportunity to attend an informal men’s evening with Bishop Tom Wright hosted by St. Nic’s Church. The first forty-five minutes was structured around four pieces of music that meant a lot to Bishop Tom over the years. In between each song, he shared a story from his life about why this piece of music was significant.

Here are the four pieces:

Sibelius – Symphony No. 3

Bob Dylan – When the Ship Comes in

Beethoven – Opus 59 No. 3

Bach – Christmas Oratorio

One story that Bishop Tom shared was about his time in Princeton recently. He said that he spent one day writing for 8 hours straight and cranked out a major section of about 8,000 words for his upcoming book about Paul. He said he got up to make a cup of tea and he did a word count. When he came back from his tea break, all of what he had done was completely gone. A whole day’s work gone in a flash without backing any of it up. He said that he had a choice at that point: to either call it a night, grab a pint, go home, and try again the next day; or to fix another cup of tea and do it over. He chose to stick it out and he said that what he ended up with was a bit more than what he had previously written and it was much better. Afterwards, he came home and put on Bach’s Christmas Oratorio to celebrate. He told the group that he should have done that with all of his other books he has written. Another interesting thing that he said was that he felt that he didn’t come into his own voice in his writing until he was about 40 years old. He said it was around that age that he stopped feeling like he had people looking over his shoulder and could write what he had to say.

All in all, it was a great evening. The second forty-five minutes was a Q&A from the audience. Questions ranged all over from political to environmental issues. The church also kindly provided free beer from the local Durham Brewery which had made up a special label for the evening in honour of the Bishop. The special label read, “Tom’s Tipple”. Good times…

The Gala Cinema and the Department of Theology & Religion at Durham University have teamed up to sponsor a series of films next month.

Here’s the schedule:

Silent Light: Faith on Film
A season of films exploring aspects of faith, conscience and enlightenment

Some of the greatest art films of all time, with lively introductions by film experts from the University of Durham

Wings of Desire (15)
Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Wings of Desire is both a love-letter to the German capital and a rumination on human existence, and remains one of the most vital films ever made. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts – fears, hopes, dreams – of all the people living below. He finds himself entranced by a trapeze artist whose eloquent expression of her doubts and fears makes him yearn for a life where he can feel happiness and love.

Monday 3 May | 8.00pm | dir. Wim Wenders, 1987, 128 mins

A Serious Man (15)
“Why does Hashem make us feel the questions if He’s not gonna give us any answers?” Questions of existence and religion only touched on or hinted at in previous Coen Brothers movies are given a full – and darkly humorous – treatment in this terrific, Oscar-nominated film. It’s 1967 and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife that she is leaving him for one of his colleagues. Larry’s unemployable brother Arthur is sleeping on the couch, while his children eschew any sense of responsibility. With these trials of life, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis but can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person – a mensch – a serious man?

Sunday 9 May | 3.00pm | dir. Joel & Ethan Coen, 2009, 105 mins

Three Colours: Blue (15)
This penetrating, hypnotic meditation on loss stars Juliette Binoche as the sole survivor of a car crash that killed her husband, a celebrated composer, and their only child. Dealt the cruelest sort of freedom, she sets out to purge all remnants of her former existence in an attempt to sever her ties to the past. Though she tries to live a numb, anonymous life, old feelings and responsibilities bubble to the surface and the music that still surrounds her eventually draws her back from a ghostly existence into the realm of humanity.

Monday 10 May | 8.30pm | dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993, 98 mins

Lourdes (U)
This low-key Austrian comedy is nestled somewhere between religious satire and redemption story and approaches questions of faith through the eyes of a disheartened doubter. Christine, a wheel-chair bound young woman, agrees to a church trip to Lourdes mostly to escape her solitary life. Though she finds Lourdes touristy, Christine is conveyed to grottos, baths, and ceremonies by her roommate, a devout older woman, and the starchy group leader, Cecile. Do both sense a miracle?

Monday 17 May | 8.30pm | dir. Jessica Hausner, 2009, 100 mins

Andrei Rublev (15)
Immediately suppressed by the Soviets in 1966, Tarkovsky’s vast, freeform fresco on the life of Russia’s greatest icon painter is one of the few true epics of modern cinema, ranging from the brutal invasion of the Tartars to naked pagan rituals. Religious feeling is the emotional core, rather than the subject, of this film, one of the most gruellingly beautiful ever made.

Monday 24 May | 7.20pm | dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966, 182 mins

Season co-organised by Gala Cinema and the Department of Theology, University of Durham

Tickets £4.50

Gala Theatre & Cinema, Durham
Box Office: 0191 332 4041 | www.galadurham.co.uk

Thanks to my good aussie friend Adam, I got my hands on a copy of Bishop Tom Wright’s latest book After You Believe (UK Title: Virtue Reborn).

I’m only into the first chapter, but I’ve already been prompted to share a bit here to whet your appetite.

In the opening chapter, Bishop Tom talks about “James” knocking on his door and saying that:

“he wasn’t satisfied with the answers he’d been getting from his friends and from people in the church he was attending. All they could say was that God called some people to particular spheres of Christian service–into full-time pastoral ministry, for instance, or to be teachers or doctors or missionaries or some combination of these and other similar tasks. But James had no sense that any of that was for him. He was finishing his doctorate in computer science and had all sorts of career options opening up before him. Was all that knowledge and opportunity simply irrelevant to the ’spiritual’ issues? Was he basically going to be hanging around for a few decades, waiting to die and go to heaven, and in the meantime using some of his spare time to persuade other people to do the same? Was that really it? Isn’t there anything else that happens after you believe and before you finally die and go to heaven?”

In this last contribution, which is preceded by Simply Christian & Surprised by Hope, Bishop Tom brings New Testament studies into conversation with wider, philosophical discussions about virtue. Wright mentions being influenced by a number of important works like MacIntyre’s After Virtue, although he doesn’t explicitly engage it. All in all, I’m looking forward to reading this book as I have thoroughly enjoyed his others in this series.

Make sure and pick up a copy!

Have you ever heard your own voice on tape? There’s usually an uncomfortable feeling that accompanies this experience as you try and place what you hear between your ears with what comes out of your mouth. What normally happens is that you decide that it doesn’t sound like you—but it is. What may be even weirder is hearing your own voice on tape from when you were just a toddler learning to speak. It’s even harder to place the high-pitched voice on the tape with your own matured one. But what if a crazy thing happened like both tapes, the toddler version and the mature, recorded you saying the same exact thing? That would be eerie, wouldn’t it?

I couldn’t get this out of my mind as I watched Gina Welch talk about her new book that came out last month called, In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church. What struck me about this book is that Welch went for two years undercover as a Christian to get this story. Not as a Christian undercover, but an undercover Christian. For TWO YEARS! In the book, she respectfully lets the reader into the personal world of Jerry Fallwell’s church.

In this video, Gina reads two excerpts from her book. One is about enduring an evangelism class, the other is about a mission trip to Alaska. As the audience asks her about the ethical ramifications of deceit, Welch shares about how it affected her and how she eventually returned to the church to tell them the truth. What drew me into this video was how she explained “Evangelical-speak” to her secular audience. She did this respectfully, and this is why I think there is an immense value to this book. I think it’s safe to say that most Evangelicals don’t find themselves in secular audiences very often. In fact, these kinds of audiences are seen as hostile and sometimes this is true. But what Evangelical Christians don’t normally have the benefit of is hearing how they sound when they speak from an outsider’s perspective. Welch’s book is a kind of tape recorder that lets the faith community hear what their message sounds like to the world. Being self-critical isn’t always easy, but I’m inclined to think that if more Evangelicals were to listen to people like Welch, some would have that eerie feeling of unease that is needed to improve their speaking.

St. Deiniol’s Library

Friday 23rd – Sunday 25th April

The 12th annual Film and Theology weekend explores the complex relationships that exist between film, religion, theology and the Bible. In a relaxed and convivial atmosphere, participants will reflect upon the ways in which film represents belief and religious traditions. This year, the films that will be viewed and discussed are:

A Serious Man (The Coen Brothers, 2009)

Alien 3 (David Fincher, 1993)

Blackboards (Maysam Makhmalbaf, 2000)

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)

Anti-Christ (Lars von Trier, 2009)

Month Python’s Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)

The cost of attending this course is just £133 on an all-inclusive basis. This includes course fees, two nights accommodation on a dinner, bed and breakfast basis, lunches as well as teas or coffee. The non-residential cost is just £89.

To book or for more details please visit the website or email us at: enquiries (at) st-deiniols.org

Yesterday, April and I walked from our doorstep to Durham Cathedral (in about 45 min!) just in time for the 11am easter service. Once we got inside, we had to stand at the back by the baptismal font with a huge group of people. The service had already started and just about finished! Bishop Tom was up front finishing up the liturgy and then it was over. I was so bummed because I thought we had missed out on easter!

It turned out that we had just missed Matins and the group we were waiting with was the right group, but they just hadn’t let people in yet. So they finally let us in and we got to sit way up in the front. I leaned over and told April that the past two Easters have been really special to me. Last year, we celebrated midnight mass at Montefano with the friars who conducted a hybrid liturgy of the Catholic and Orthodox celebration. This year, we get to celebrate easter with N.T. Wright.

During his homily, he told a story about a taxi driver that he spoke with who said, “If Jesus is raised, then the rest is just rock n’ roll.” Bishop Tom laughed and took this statement to heart. He talked about how Paul said something like this, but in the negative: If Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain.” But the taxi driver flipped this into a positive statement, which Bishop Tom explained how it creatively describes what the Bible refers to as “New Creation.”

Hearing Bishop Tom yesterday made me want to pick up his latest book entitled, Virtue Reborn (US title: After you believe).