LAUREATION ADDRESS
Rev. Joel Edwards D.D. Honoris Causa
Given by Professor Mario I. Aguilar on Friday 22 June 2007 at 2:30 p.m.
Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa, the Reverend Joel Edwards.
Joel Nigel Patrick Edwards was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1951. Married with two grown-up children he studied theology at the London Bible College and was ordained minister in one of the UK’s major Caribbean denominations, the New Testament Church of God. In 2001 he was appointed one of the first honorary Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Throughout his life he has combined service to the church and to society at large, thus before being elected General Director of the Evangelical Alliance in 1997 he worked as probation officer with the Inner London probation service from 1975 to 1988. His service to society has continued and he has been a member of the Prison Service Race Steering Group, and currently serves as a member of the Faith & Government Liaison Steering Group of the Home Office, as a member of the National Policing Forum and as Home Office Independent Advisor to the Metropolitan Police.
Crossing cultural divides and coping with ‘daily culture shock’ since he arrived in the UK at the age of 8, Joel Edwards has become one of the foremost protagonists within the Christian church scene. A respecter of diversity, he is also passionate about unity within the church but unity with a purpose; the purpose to see real change for real lives and real communities.
Chancellor, Joel Edwards has led the Evangelical Alliance as their General Director since 1997, 151 years after its inception. The Alliance now represents a million evangelical Christians and aims to unite evangelicals to present Christ credibly and demonstrate evangelicalism as good news in order to be a transformational movement within, and for the good of society. Throughout his working life Joel Edwards became convinced that society functions best when it fully understands its need for shared values. Consequently, he now spends much of his time wrestling with what it means to be fully human in today’s complex world. He attempts to publicly talk up the biblical values of faith, hope and love in contemporary conversations about trust, hope and respect.
As a result, he is also committed to seeing long-term change for the world’s poor and is happy to devote a big portion of his life to champion their cause. As an expression of this, he is Co-Chair of the Micah Challenge International Council – a group of senior figures across the globe who make every effort to hold governments to account for the Millennium Development Goals, and to engage Christians with their God-given mandate to care for the poor and the marginalized. Refreshingly, despite his unswerving commitment to his Pentecostal and evangelical roots, his passion for justice and grace outweighs his concern for Christianity with a purely moral agenda.
A regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, Sky News and other current affairs-related programmes, he is keen for the Christian church to be recognised as relevant in all areas of life and not sidelined solely to religious issues. Aptly, he was appointed Chair of the Churches Media Council in 2006, giving him further opportunity to illustrate that the church in the UK is a vibrant community, with good news stories to tell and an important voice to be heard on contemporary issues. Thus, in one of his latest statements under the title ‘Keep the faith Mr Brown’ he has challenged the incoming prime minister to meet the Millennium Development Goals of the year 2000 and to continue his undertakings on behalf of the poor.
In 2006 he received an honorary doctorate from the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology in his hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. Fittingly, this first honorary doctorate of divinity was bestowed by the country to which he refers to as ‘God’s Official Residence’, and in which he has spent much time and energy working with church leaders, politicians and the media to help position the island for long-term spiritual and social change, mirroring his work within the UK. Previously, he was also presented with the Prime Minister’s Medal of Appreciation for Services to Jamaica in 2003.
Chancellor, it is all fitting that his second honorary doctorate be awarded by this university in which the study and research on the public face and the service of theology to society at large remains one of its important research activities and from where yearly theology students graduate in order to bring their knowledge, their skills and their dreams to society at large.
Chancellor, in recognition of his major contribution to the public understanding of religion and politics I invite you to confer on Joel Edwards the Degree of Doctor of Divinity honoris causa.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
A Common Humanity: The Dalai Lama
In the words of the 14th Dalai Lama's Nobel Prize Lecture in 1989:
I am always reminded that we are all basically alike: we are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different colour, or we speak different languages. This is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other [1].
[1] The 14th Dalai Lama, ‘The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Oslo, Norway’, in Sidney Piburn, ed., The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness – An Anthology of Writings by and about the Dalai Lama (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1990), pp. 15-25 at p. 15.
I am always reminded that we are all basically alike: we are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different colour, or we speak different languages. This is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other [1].
[1] The 14th Dalai Lama, ‘The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Oslo, Norway’, in Sidney Piburn, ed., The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness – An Anthology of Writings by and about the Dalai Lama (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1990), pp. 15-25 at p. 15.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Theology As Fear
From M.I. Aguilar, The History and Politics of Latin American Theology vol. III, London: SCM Press, 2008, chapter 4.
When in 1977 I ventured for the first time on a large urban area of Santiago that I still remember as dark, always muddy and with shady characters on the street corners I felt fear. It was the fear of the political activist who feared to be caught but the physical fear of walking in places where if I were to be attacked by someone with a knife I would not have had a chance. I noticed that many times people walked with me from an urban shack to the bus stop but inside the bus I also felt fear. I learned to live with fear and the fear didn’t go away. It was like a performer who feels the adrenaline pumping before the performance, but the fear I felt was intense because I felt on my own and without agency. Yes, on arrival at the entrance to the shanty town I could chose not to walk further but it was an abandonment of my own choice and will that led me there, in order to share a few thoughts on the biblical text or try to support a youth outreach towards drug addicts. After a few weeks I felt myself supported by those youth and the values of solidarity and companionship came from the poor not from my own strength. In 1986 and as General Pinochet escaped assassination I was urged by a priest to get into a van because I was on the wrong side of the city, the police were searching and there was no way that friends were to allow further repression. Indeed, I was brought to my mother’s flat in the respectable side of the city as the following morning news reported that several men had been shot by the security forces, one for every military escort that was killed on the ambush on Pinochet’s entourage. This is what I wouldn’t like anybody to experience but there are the experiences that make the theologian realize that the poor and marginalized have an agency and strength for solidarity and for the Kingdom that those of us who were raised in better economic conditions lack.
It is that immersion in the periphery and in history that makes for a theologian the God of Life present in the agency of the poor and the marginalized. For ‘the God if life is present in human history; this presence reaches its supreme and unsurpassed expression in the incarnation of the Son’.[1] The incarnational principle of servanthood is the example, God sent his Son into human history, and thus all his followers must live there where he was immersed, with the needy, the poor and the lonely. In other words with the losers of this globalized community, those who do not count within the statistics apart from the fact that they ruined the possible promotions of politicians and technocrats by hindering better statistics on wealth and prosperity.
[1] Gustavo Gutiérrez, The God of Life, London: SCM Press, 1991, p. 2.
When in 1977 I ventured for the first time on a large urban area of Santiago that I still remember as dark, always muddy and with shady characters on the street corners I felt fear. It was the fear of the political activist who feared to be caught but the physical fear of walking in places where if I were to be attacked by someone with a knife I would not have had a chance. I noticed that many times people walked with me from an urban shack to the bus stop but inside the bus I also felt fear. I learned to live with fear and the fear didn’t go away. It was like a performer who feels the adrenaline pumping before the performance, but the fear I felt was intense because I felt on my own and without agency. Yes, on arrival at the entrance to the shanty town I could chose not to walk further but it was an abandonment of my own choice and will that led me there, in order to share a few thoughts on the biblical text or try to support a youth outreach towards drug addicts. After a few weeks I felt myself supported by those youth and the values of solidarity and companionship came from the poor not from my own strength. In 1986 and as General Pinochet escaped assassination I was urged by a priest to get into a van because I was on the wrong side of the city, the police were searching and there was no way that friends were to allow further repression. Indeed, I was brought to my mother’s flat in the respectable side of the city as the following morning news reported that several men had been shot by the security forces, one for every military escort that was killed on the ambush on Pinochet’s entourage. This is what I wouldn’t like anybody to experience but there are the experiences that make the theologian realize that the poor and marginalized have an agency and strength for solidarity and for the Kingdom that those of us who were raised in better economic conditions lack.
It is that immersion in the periphery and in history that makes for a theologian the God of Life present in the agency of the poor and the marginalized. For ‘the God if life is present in human history; this presence reaches its supreme and unsurpassed expression in the incarnation of the Son’.[1] The incarnational principle of servanthood is the example, God sent his Son into human history, and thus all his followers must live there where he was immersed, with the needy, the poor and the lonely. In other words with the losers of this globalized community, those who do not count within the statistics apart from the fact that they ruined the possible promotions of politicians and technocrats by hindering better statistics on wealth and prosperity.
[1] Gustavo Gutiérrez, The God of Life, London: SCM Press, 1991, p. 2.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Dr Tina Beattie on Jon Sobrino SJ
I bring to your attention a letter written by Dr Tina Beattie, President of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain that was published in The Tablet 24 March 2007. She writes:
“Fr Sobrino has always made clear that his primary concern is not to do with technical questions about the nature of Christ, but with questions about the significance of Christ for the lives of the poor and oppressed. While no theologian’s work is above criticism, the Notification fails to demonstrate convincingly that Fr Sobrino’s Christology is doctrinally unorthodox, or that any errors in his theological thinking are sufficiently serious to justify this intervention by the CDF. Neither does it make a clear enough distinction between doctrinally binding claims about the nature of Christ and interpretations which properly belong within the sphere of theological debate, for example, concerning the self-consciousness of Jesus. Moreover, in its appeal to historical, scriptural and doctrinal sources, the document fails to address hermeneutical and exegetical questions which should inform the theological interpretation of texts”.
“Fr Sobrino has always made clear that his primary concern is not to do with technical questions about the nature of Christ, but with questions about the significance of Christ for the lives of the poor and oppressed. While no theologian’s work is above criticism, the Notification fails to demonstrate convincingly that Fr Sobrino’s Christology is doctrinally unorthodox, or that any errors in his theological thinking are sufficiently serious to justify this intervention by the CDF. Neither does it make a clear enough distinction between doctrinally binding claims about the nature of Christ and interpretations which properly belong within the sphere of theological debate, for example, concerning the self-consciousness of Jesus. Moreover, in its appeal to historical, scriptural and doctrinal sources, the document fails to address hermeneutical and exegetical questions which should inform the theological interpretation of texts”.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Condemnation of Jon Sobrino SJ March 2007
12 March 2007
2007/57
Dear Friends,
Jon Sobrino SJ
It is with great sadness that I received the news this morning that the Latin American theologian and Jesuit Jon Sobrino SJ has been under doctrinal investigation by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Further, on the 10th March several Spanish newspapers announced that he and the Jesuit Superior General have decided not to appeal to such condemnation that will be made public this week. The effect on a frail and ill Sobrino would be difficult to predict but he has been forbidden from writing and speaking in public about his theology. The main accusation is that he has not stressed enough in his writing the divinity of Christ and has put too much emphasis on the historical Jesus and the Jesus of history.
I have studied his theology and have written a full chapter on his life and theology for volume II of The History and Politics of Latin American Theology, SCM Press, 2007. He remains a dear friend and an example of commitment to the poor and the marginalized in El Salvador, his land of adoption. He had all his Jesuit community at the University of Central America assassinated on the 16th November 1989 and despite that he returned to El Salvador and to his theological work.
The condemnation by the Vatican is particularly disheartening as all the Latin American Bishops prepare to gather at Aparecida, Brazil, for the 5th General Meeting of the Latin American Episcopal Conference in May. Pope Benedict XVI, previously Cardinal Ratzinger, who humiliated Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff in the same manner, will open the conference. I ask for your solidarity with Jon, on behalf of Gustavo and others who like me are in shock. Jon Sobrino has decided not to defend himself and he is too tired and ill to challenge those accusations while he has the full backing of the Jesuits.
In hope and in sadness,
Mario
2007/57
Dear Friends,
Jon Sobrino SJ
It is with great sadness that I received the news this morning that the Latin American theologian and Jesuit Jon Sobrino SJ has been under doctrinal investigation by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Further, on the 10th March several Spanish newspapers announced that he and the Jesuit Superior General have decided not to appeal to such condemnation that will be made public this week. The effect on a frail and ill Sobrino would be difficult to predict but he has been forbidden from writing and speaking in public about his theology. The main accusation is that he has not stressed enough in his writing the divinity of Christ and has put too much emphasis on the historical Jesus and the Jesus of history.
I have studied his theology and have written a full chapter on his life and theology for volume II of The History and Politics of Latin American Theology, SCM Press, 2007. He remains a dear friend and an example of commitment to the poor and the marginalized in El Salvador, his land of adoption. He had all his Jesuit community at the University of Central America assassinated on the 16th November 1989 and despite that he returned to El Salvador and to his theological work.
The condemnation by the Vatican is particularly disheartening as all the Latin American Bishops prepare to gather at Aparecida, Brazil, for the 5th General Meeting of the Latin American Episcopal Conference in May. Pope Benedict XVI, previously Cardinal Ratzinger, who humiliated Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff in the same manner, will open the conference. I ask for your solidarity with Jon, on behalf of Gustavo and others who like me are in shock. Jon Sobrino has decided not to defend himself and he is too tired and ill to challenge those accusations while he has the full backing of the Jesuits.
In hope and in sadness,
Mario
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Dr Sheila Cassidy
Sheila Cassidy, medical doctor and Christian writer published her memoirs last year. A very refreshing, down to earth and sometimes surprising volume. On the final chapter and writing about God she writes: "He or she has led me a merry dance into the torture chamber and out, into the convent and out, and then through twenty years of the most satisfying work a woman could wish for. Now I have emerged into a sunlit meadow and I feel God's love like the sun on my back. I have no idea what joy or suffering the future may bring but I am ready for either" (c) Sheila Cassidy, Made for Laughter, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006, p. 211.
Friday, February 2, 2007
Los Rosales de la Humanidad
Los Rosales de la Humanidad
© Mario I. Aguilar
[Dedicado a todas las compañeras que pasaron por el Cuartel Terranova y a una en particular …, desde St. Andrews en Escocia, 2007 ]
El terror continuaba
En las entrañas de la casa
Y en la oscuridad de los sarcófagos
Sarcófagos de muerte y sepultura.
Y entre aullido y penumbra
Algunos de los fantasmas
Fantasmas adormecidos
Salían a la luna y al día.
Humanidad hedionda y carcomida
Humanidad sangrienta y vomitada
Sentías su presencia y su amargura.
Sentados en la oscuridad empañada
De los ojos salientes de locura
Se olía un aroma divino,
Un aroma de plata y de medusa.
Villa, te lo conté y no me creíste
Te grité y no me contestaste
Lloré y sentí el gozo de la presencia
Olorosa de mujer y de rosa.
Te lo dije, te lo grité:
“Hay olor a ángeles malditos,
A criatura celestial, a doncella
Querida y deseada”.
Pero no me creíste, ni me amaste
Villa maldita de olores de muerte
Y olores de doncella.
Eran rozas como en los días de antaño
Espinudas pero tiernas de capullo
Espinudas pero humanas de seres queridos,
De seres humanos.
Humanidad perdida, te encontré finalmente
Con los ojos vendados y las manos doloridas
Los rosales humanos que llamaban
Y te llamaba, pero sin respuesta
No fue un sueño o una pesadilla
Fue el aliento doloroso de mi amada
Que me acompañaba por momentos,
Momentos de gozo y de alegría.
No las vi pero existían
No las toqué pero me hablaban
No las contuve pero me apoyaron
Villa maldita, de olores rasurados.
Hoy te lo cuento Villa maldita
Ellas estaban y existían
Ellas tenían ese aroma de mi amada
Que nunca volvió, que me quería.
Hoy te lo grito Villa maldita
Ellas se fueron pero se quedaron
En el viento, en la tierra y en los rosales.
Rosales benditos, rosales divinos
De muerte y de vida
Esperanza y alegría,
De algún día y de hoy día.
© Mario I. Aguilar
[Dedicado a todas las compañeras que pasaron por el Cuartel Terranova y a una en particular …, desde St. Andrews en Escocia, 2007 ]
El terror continuaba
En las entrañas de la casa
Y en la oscuridad de los sarcófagos
Sarcófagos de muerte y sepultura.
Y entre aullido y penumbra
Algunos de los fantasmas
Fantasmas adormecidos
Salían a la luna y al día.
Humanidad hedionda y carcomida
Humanidad sangrienta y vomitada
Sentías su presencia y su amargura.
Sentados en la oscuridad empañada
De los ojos salientes de locura
Se olía un aroma divino,
Un aroma de plata y de medusa.
Villa, te lo conté y no me creíste
Te grité y no me contestaste
Lloré y sentí el gozo de la presencia
Olorosa de mujer y de rosa.
Te lo dije, te lo grité:
“Hay olor a ángeles malditos,
A criatura celestial, a doncella
Querida y deseada”.
Pero no me creíste, ni me amaste
Villa maldita de olores de muerte
Y olores de doncella.
Eran rozas como en los días de antaño
Espinudas pero tiernas de capullo
Espinudas pero humanas de seres queridos,
De seres humanos.
Humanidad perdida, te encontré finalmente
Con los ojos vendados y las manos doloridas
Los rosales humanos que llamaban
Y te llamaba, pero sin respuesta
No fue un sueño o una pesadilla
Fue el aliento doloroso de mi amada
Que me acompañaba por momentos,
Momentos de gozo y de alegría.
No las vi pero existían
No las toqué pero me hablaban
No las contuve pero me apoyaron
Villa maldita, de olores rasurados.
Hoy te lo cuento Villa maldita
Ellas estaban y existían
Ellas tenían ese aroma de mi amada
Que nunca volvió, que me quería.
Hoy te lo grito Villa maldita
Ellas se fueron pero se quedaron
En el viento, en la tierra y en los rosales.
Rosales benditos, rosales divinos
De muerte y de vida
Esperanza y alegría,
De algún día y de hoy día.
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