Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane Shaw is Principal of Harris Manchester College in the University of Oxford. She was formerly Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and Dean for Religious Life at Stanford University. She has a doctoral degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley, Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University, and honorary doctorates from the Episcopal Divinity School, Colgate University, and the Graduate Theological Foundation.

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A PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

Morehouse Publishing

Contents

Chapter One

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry. And he said to me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered, 'O Lord God, thou knowest.' Again he said to me, 'Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.'

So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And as I looked, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, 'Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.' So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great host.

Ezekiel 37:1–10 (RSV)

The Problem of Dust

In Philip Pullman's powerfully imaginative novel The Golden Compass, dust drives the narrative and governs everything. Dust, in this novel, consists of particles from another world that cause knowledge—or, in theological language, original sin. The overriding intellectual quest, and the central battles in the book, are about discovering the origin and meaning of dust; and, for some of the characters in the book, about overcoming the power of dust and thus eliminating the existence of original sin, often via cruel means.

While Pullman would stoutly disavow any Christian belief, and the church comes off very badly in the book, the novel is in many ways a working out of a verse in Genesis 3: "From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return." This phrase, repeated in the Christian liturgy on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, reminds us of our mortality. Traditionally, Christianity has used that reminder—when life was "nasty, brutish and short" as the seventeenth- century philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it—to speak of our immortality, to promise something better in a future life. But in the Western world today, where the material quality of life is so high for so many and life expectancy is long, it is not primarily the thought of a heavenly (or hellish) afterlife that determines our actions. Rather, we are guided by love, work, success, money, illness, relationships. Our lives are shaped by our attitudes to these things that preoccupy us here and now. To speak of dust, in this context, is to acknowledge our humble beginnings (literally as humus, or dirt) and discern what it means to lead a moral life, a good life, in a world beset by "dust" understood in a different but related sense, namely sin.

Pullman shares the church's commitment to the quest for the good life. But he would join many intelligent critics in saying that Christianity does not have a monopoly on morality. If anything, for Pullman, true morality must occur outside the limiting and damaging force of the institutional churches.

As a priest who for a long time worked in a university environment, my interest—shaped by my pastoral experience—has long been in this tension between those atheists and agnostics like Pullman who wish to shape a good and moral life, and a Christianity that has a choice to make: either to acknowledge or refute the credibility of such skepticism. And in my present ministry, as dean of a large cathedral on the west coast of the USA, I see that we face that same choice here, where so few people go to church—or indeed any place of worship. My own choice has always been to acknowledge the validity of that criticism, and then to find a place from within Christianity that may address the concerns of those on the margins of the church, outside and peering in, as well as those who are central to the church, but want something more, and thereby to demonstrate Christianity's particular contribution to shaping the "good life."

The questions then become, for Christians and nonChristians alike: what does Christianity offer us in this life? What does faith enable us to do and to be? Are there guiding principles in Christianity that can help us with our relationships, jealousies, and resentments; the knotty problems in our jobs or the desolation of unemployment or underemployment; exhaustion and overwork; and that fear of something—we are not always quite sure what—that keeps us awake at night? In short, how can the practice of a spiritual life help us with all those things which make daily living utterly real and often ugly and painful—our dust? And what particular resources and ideas does Christianity bring to such a life?

The Most Democratic of Substances

Dust is a biblical metaphor, and it helpfully speaks to our beginnings and our endings, to our place in this world, to the life in Christ that Christians share, and to the practical means by which we may live our lives. In the second of the creation stories in which God makes humankind, it is said: "the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground" (Genesis 2:7). Later in Genesis, God reminds human beings of their mortality in the words, "you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). The philosopher Alain de Botton writes memorably, in his book Status Anxiety, that "Dust is that most democratic of substances." It is the stuff from which we are all created.

This raises an existential question: if we all come from the same place, the same substance, and are reduced back to that substance at the end of our lives, what meaning do any of our achievements, our possessions, the things which we believe give us status (our jobs, children, the "right" address, the "right" house, an expensive car, entry into a particular social group) have? In the face of enormous social anxiety, Christianity forces us to realize, finally realize, that for all our achievements and riches, human beings are created equal, from the same substance, and, more than that, in the image and likeness of God.

Jesus himself was the one who reminded his followers that we are all equally and beautifully composed of dust. It was Jesus who washed the dust off his disciples' feet when they came for supper the night before he died (John 13:1–17). This act turned the world upside down. Dust may be that most democratic of substances: it gets in all our toes if we walk on a dusty country road in sandals, as Jesus and his disciples did, day in, day out, so whenever they entered another's house their feet would be washed by servants or slaves. But to wash the dust off your disciples' feet in a deeply hierarchical society was to engage in a radically democratic act. From Jesus' acts—this and others—there resulted a radical egalitarianism, which was a hallmark of the earliest communities of...