Comments for JamesPoulter.co.uk

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by Jim Poulter

Jim Poulter — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:09:01 +0000

Parallel names parallel thoughts.My family has been involved with the Aboriginal community in Australia since 1840. My great-great grandfather John Chivers came to Australia as a Primitive Methodist lay preacher with the idea of not only carving out a living for himself, but also converting the natives to Christianity. He soon gave up the idea as he realised that Aboriginal people had their own religion (Wandjinism), but to understand their religion you had to understand the stories that embodied it.In short, Aboriginal people believe in a non-interventionist God (Wandjina) who created the world as an act of imagination (the Dreaming) created the laws of nature and gave Man free will. Man therefore carries the Secret of Dreaming on behalf of all life forms and God’s only will is that human beings should care for the world and each other.In this sense then, Aboriginal religion is a humanist religion because it devotes no attention to pious worship, only how you act in the real world. Everything that happens is therefore due to human agency, either witting or unwitting. God does not cause shit to happen, it just happens because it has all been left up to us.Wandjina is therefore always drawn with eyes but no mouth. God sees everything, but says nothing. If anyone wants to know more go to my website anch check out my books. I have written the only books in the world that explain Aboriginal religion and the concepts of Spirit, Flesh and Skin. We have spent the last 200 years trying to pretend Aborigianal people had no religion and so herded them on to Missions and made them worship the white man’s God.If only we had listened to their stories properly, rather than judging them to be fanciful pagan tales of a primitive child-like people.

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by Muriel Sowden

Muriel Sowden — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:44:11 +0000

Storytelling is all well and good, but there is a danger that concentrating on story may lead to a ‘dumbing-down’ of the subject matter and a subsequent distortion of the truth.
Be a storyteller, by all means, but make sure you are a theologian first!

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by Richard Littledale

Richard Littledale — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:05:40 +0000

Theology and story is not, of course, an “either or”. However, there is a time when theology must be wrapped in story to capture the heart. The exilic prophets did NOT evince any new theology – it was all well known from before the exile. However, what they did was to re-express that theology in a way which captured mind and heart. See a further explanation here:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stale-Bread-Handbook-Speaking-ebook/dp/B00653OXPY/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323374715&sr=1-2

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by admin

admin — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:52:56 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to comment George. I totally agree that we don’t need less theology. But we do need less theologians that perpetuate the stereotype which I know a lot of people default to.
We need more theology if anything and creative, passionate and gifted storytellers to bring that theology (both historical and experiential) to the Church today.

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by @drgeorgemorley

@drgeorgemorley — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:33:29 +0000

Yeh, tell it Pete! I get tired of people saying ‘less theology’ when that’s not what they mean, and perpetuating the bad image. Don’t be cheap just for the sake of a catchy title, James etal!
Otherwise – good post! Theology isn’t just stuff ‘about’, it’s lived experience too.

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by admin

admin — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:23:13 +0000

Hey Pete – not saying in a general sense that we need less theologians – they (you) are crucial to our pursuit of understanding God.

My point here is primarily that the emerging generation has a problem with church. They view it as a dogmatic and hostile environment, not one of creativity and engagement. Our content needs to be theologically sound, doctrinally correct and argumentatively robust – but it also needs to be creative, engaging and relevant.

You are a great example of someone who gets that – just wish there were more than did!

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by Mark Howe

Mark Howe — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:05:28 +0000

My 14 year-old is working through a 3″-thick compilation of Narnia books. She had a book of letters from WWI to read for school, and was initially unimpressed, but with a few pointers on how to get behind the letters to the story of the war and its effect on ordinary people she found, to her surprise, that it was quite compelling.

I agree that the church often does a terrible job of communicating with younger people, but I’m not sure we need much creativity with the story itself. The last couple of generations have had *less* exposure to the Christian narrative than any Western generation for centuries.

Rather than trying to turn the Bible into something else, I think that simply putting people in contact with what the Bible says has genuine novelty value today, even in many churches. I’ve tried this a few times in our own parish and, without any kind of spin or guidance, people’s jaws drop open as they realise there’s a whole world of meaning in the Bible that explanatory sermons had in some cases previously explained away.

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by @tim_hutchings

@tim_hutchings — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:05:20 +0000

We definitely need stories. Stories are fun, and interesting, and memorable, and persuasive. Theologians (and sociologists like me) should tell lots of stories (and we do).

But stories also have problems. Stories are great at posing questions and hints and provoking surprise, but they aren’t honestly very good at teaching. A story that teaches is called an infodump.

Stories are also hard to evaluate. The only way to challenge a story is to step back and analyse it – with theology (or logic, or science, etc). On their own, stories can persuasively point to almost anything – alien abduction, homeopathy, pyramid schemes. If we lose the ability to step back and find other ways of thinking, we’re entirely at the mercy of the best storyteller.

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by Pete Phillips

Pete Phillips — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:04:38 +0000

Hi James
First, it isn’t a long post.
Second, it’s a good post – are you aware of narrative critical studies of the gospels which begin to analyse the gospels and other books as narratives themselves; or of narrative theology which points out that the whole theological endeavour is shaped around God’s story and our interaction with that story? Lots of people in both of these fields would argue that humanity only understands stories and so everything we think is shaped by story narratives and plotlines and so on…So if our brains are naturally wired to stories, it seems sensible to do theology through story.
But where I differ is in your distinction between storytellers and theologians. That’s the wrong distinction to make. You may want to draw a distinction between theorists and practitioners, or particularists and generalists. But we don’t need less specialists in theology or any other walk of life (let’s have less physicists and more storytellers???). Theology is talk about God and is theology whether it is a bard telling a story; a group gathered around beer and curry; Rob Bell telling winsome stories and asking hard questions; or Tom Wright declaiming kingdom truths.
Let’s not dig a pit to throw the theologians in and then have a parade of storytellers dancing on top of it. Let’s acknowledge that we need all sorts – specialists, generalists, theorists, storytellers – so that we might just be able to catch a glimpse of the mighty God we serve.
And if that is defensive, sorry. But it’s not nice to read that you want less of the very kind of person God has called me to be. Was God wrong in his calling? Was I wrong in my listening? Am I not allowed to be me?
Pete

Comment on Why we need less theologians and more storytellers by Mark Howe

Mark Howe — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:55:53 +0000

I think “On my way to church this morning” -type stories are the perfect example of form over substance. Bolting a funny story onto a deadly sermon doesn’t make sense on any level. The idea is surely that the core of the sermon is something that is in itself engaging, not that we need a narrative pill to make the theological medicine go down.

Wright is indeed a good example – he doesn’t make the story of, eg, First Century Israel exciting, he shows that the story was exciting already. That’s actually a less artificial approach than turning the First Century story into propositions and then trying to write another story to make the propositions palatable.