Art
Dennis took me to pick up car. Mass. Art and sketched two canvases. Mind, body, spirit was good and I managed well despite sore right toe. Christopher Somerville spoke at the cathedral hall on "Ships of heaven:the private life of Britain's cathedrals". Very engaging. I liked his child's eye view. Interesting chat afterwards with a retired black maths teacher on knife crime. Travelling cross in cathedral for 2 days only.
Watched Celebrity painting challenge landscape. Very chuffed my letter has been published in The Tablet today
No shallow response
John Milbank’s comment
about Jacinda Ardern cannot go
unchallenged (“Christians must
show there is another way”, 30
March). Her sympathetic
response to the Christchurch
shootings has been widely seen
as heartfelt and certainly not
superficial.
Of course she was right to say
that those who died are “one of
us” and New Zealanders. This
had nothing to do with race or
religion; it was compassion and
solidarity made manifest.
JOHN WOODHOUSE
LONDON SE25
Here is the original section from John Milbank's article
Deprived of religious and metaphysical goals,
they reach for land and blood, sometimes following leaders that cynically borrow religious
slogans and tropes. Genuine religion is reduced
to just another “identity” and even, insultingly,
to race – as with Jacinda Ardern’s superficial
response to the atrocity in Christchurch.
As in the 1930s, so now it is up to religious
people – especially Christians – to assert a true,
natural-law based alternative, which will put
the personal and the interpersonal before either
procedure or contract; which will refuse the
simplistic alternative of a sterile cosmopolitanism versus a bigoted belonging. Only the
sense of what we all have in common under
God, and the way this is diversely and sacramentally mediated by sacred places and their
organic linkages across borders, will save us.
Christians cannot count on, nor of course hope
for, another global war to puncture our illusions.
Somehow, we have to drag our political vision
from the margins back to the centre. Perhaps
the current crisis may provide the opportunity.
John Milbank is a theologian, philosopher,
poet and political theorist. His latest book,
co-authored with Adrian Pabst, is The Politics
Watched Celebrity painting challenge landscape. Very chuffed my letter has been published in The Tablet today
No shallow response
John Milbank’s comment
about Jacinda Ardern cannot go
unchallenged (“Christians must
show there is another way”, 30
March). Her sympathetic
response to the Christchurch
shootings has been widely seen
as heartfelt and certainly not
superficial.
Of course she was right to say
that those who died are “one of
us” and New Zealanders. This
had nothing to do with race or
religion; it was compassion and
solidarity made manifest.
JOHN WOODHOUSE
LONDON SE25
Here is the original section from John Milbank's article
Deprived of religious and metaphysical goals,
they reach for land and blood, sometimes following leaders that cynically borrow religious
slogans and tropes. Genuine religion is reduced
to just another “identity” and even, insultingly,
to race – as with Jacinda Ardern’s superficial
response to the atrocity in Christchurch.
As in the 1930s, so now it is up to religious
people – especially Christians – to assert a true,
natural-law based alternative, which will put
the personal and the interpersonal before either
procedure or contract; which will refuse the
simplistic alternative of a sterile cosmopolitanism versus a bigoted belonging. Only the
sense of what we all have in common under
God, and the way this is diversely and sacramentally mediated by sacred places and their
organic linkages across borders, will save us.
Christians cannot count on, nor of course hope
for, another global war to puncture our illusions.
Somehow, we have to drag our political vision
from the margins back to the centre. Perhaps
the current crisis may provide the opportunity.
John Milbank is a theologian, philosopher,
poet and political theorist. His latest book,
co-authored with Adrian Pabst, is The Politics
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