Stimulus Vol 18 Issue 2 May 2010 |
Table of ContentsWould a real theologian please stand up? Kingdom economics: a conversation about living out of a biblical paradigm Economics of enough Poem: Poor Tom’s a’cold Kingdom economics Global economic crisis: too good an opportunity to waste? A message to the Christian communities of New Zealand from scientists in their midst St Imulus: Chicken poop isn’t that good for the soul “Great balls of fire”: a comment on “Whole lot of shakin’ going on” Thinking about God and infinity: can mathematics contribute Book Reviews What’s God up to on planet earth Hope is our song: New hymns and songs from Aoteoroa New Zealand The God book: talking about God today Surprised by hope: rethinking heaven, resurrection, and the mission of the Church
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May 2010 |
EditorialTheology from below
To paraphrase Richard Prebble, “I’ve been listening”, to music that is. To music from below, music whose origins is in the lives and experiences of ordinary people, music that expresses their joys, fears, and longings as they struggle in a world that is clearly ruled by others for the sake of others.
In the late 1990s Smithsonian Folkways rereleased Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. This was originally a semi-pirated release in 1952 based on Smith’s own collection of 78s going back before the 1930s. The original release sprawled across six LPs. The 1997 release is now on six CDs. In it Smith captures what Greil Marcus called, “The Old Weird America”. You have probably not heard of Harry Smith’s anthology, however you probably have heard of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, and Peter Seeger. For them Smith’s Anthology was their folk music Old Testament and heavily influenced the folk music revival in the 1960s. The politics of folk music reflected the content of the music; it was largely left leaning, its concerns centred in the lives of the original singers and their struggles. Of course the irony is that the singers that popularised the music were mostly white and middle class. In Murray Lerner’s film Festival – a film chronicling the Newport Folk Festival from 1963 to 1966 – there is an interview with the white guitarist Mike Bloomfield. He talks about the blues and the singer Son House, and about how he himself was a white Jewish boy with millionaire parents, and how he had a great bar-mitzvah!
Of course English language folk music existed on the other side of the Atlantic long before it existed in the new world. In 2009 Topic Records released a book and a collection of music marking 70 years of their own efforts in recording and releasing folk music. Topic was a consciously left leaning organisation that sprang from the Workers Music Association, itself an offshoot of the British Marxist Party. The first Topic disc released in 1939 clearly signalled these intentions – it was “The Man that Waters the Workers’ Beer” backed by an arrangement of “The Internationale”! Topic was at the centre of the folk revival in Britain. They recorded singers such as Davey Graham, Ewan MacColl, Sandy Denny, and Martin Carthy, and hosted visits from Americans such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Rambling Jack Elliott. Listening to this music reminds me of how over the centuries it is the ordinary people that have had to live with the dictates of the powerful. It is the young maiden who loses her Light Horseman to the wars of King George, it is the Irish mother whose son is returned from the wars crippled. On a less grand scale it is vulnerable young women tragically preyed on by more powerful men. In North America, of course African Americans sang about their oppressed and deprived state in Spirituals and Blues.
The church in New Zealand has largely forgotten that one of its roles is to stand with these people in their suffering. We have been too connected to centres of power for too long, or at least so we thought. Many of our complaints about changes in New Zealand are actually complaints about our losing this connection to power. ”We are not being listened to!” But the recent “economic downturn” (an awful description that does no justice to the pain inflicted on ordinary people) has reminded us of how unconnected we really are. The overweening greed of a few – most notably a parasitic banking sector – combined with the “average” greed of the rest of us has conspired to bring down the whole house of cards. The real tragedy is not what will happen to us. Most readers of Stimulus will be able to sit out the “downturn” without major impact. As usual (as is the case with the results of global warming) the impact is on those at the end of the line, the kind of people who wrote many of the Smith or Topic songs, and the kind of people that Jesus self-consciously came to save. Our biblical stories tell us much about how economics should work. As Andrew Bradstock says in his article, the global economic crisis is too good an opportunity for us to waste.
David Cashmore for the editorial committee Douglas Maclachlan Publisher |
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Kingdom economics |
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STIMULUS THE NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT AND PRACTICE |