Walking on the Moon - 50 years on

Earlier this week there was a full moon. I was alerted to this as I travelled home by train from Newcastle up the Tyne Valley. I noticed how high the river was that afternoon. It was not that it had rained, simply that the tide was unusually high. Then I remembered that there was due to be a partial eclipse of the moon that night. The full moon explained the spring tide. Soon the train passed Wylam which marks the river’s tidal limit. At once the flow reverted to its languid summer self beyond the reach of salt water.   

We’re all thinking about the moon in this week of the 50th anniversary of the day a human being first set foot on it. “That’s one small step for a man” - surely you can just hear that endlessly-discussed indefinite article in those immortal words, a mere breathing but it makes all the difference to the sense - “one giant leap for mankind.” If you were alive fifty years ago, you will never forget what seemed like the most momentous event of our lifetimes.

The Church Times invited me to contribute a piece for a feature celebrating the landing. Here it is.  

I was nineteen in July 1969 when the first men walked on the moon. As I look back, I remember it as if we stood at the threshold of a new era in history. I echoed Wordsworth: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.” 

But my clearest memory is not the day of the moon walk itself. We didn’t have a TV so I followed it on the radio and in the papers. (Which made it an oddly aural and literary experience while it was the video footage everyone else was talking about.) What I recall as if it were yesterday is walking along a north London street one evening. The full moon hung in the darkening sky. My companion nudged me and pointed to it. “Isn’t it amazing that we have walked there?” he said. I distinctly remember the pronoun. We, not other people. This was about us. 

I gazed up with a kind of religious awe, experiencing a youthful version of what Freud calls “that vast oceanic feeling”. I echoed the psalmist’s ecstasy at the sight of the starry skies above: “O Lord our Sovereign how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8.1). 

Memory plays tricks. Until writing this I assumed I’d remembered the night of the moon-walk itself but I can’t have been. My 1969 diary tells me that the moon was only in its first quarter. It must have been the following week. Does it matter? 

What did matter was this mystic sense of wonder that took me by surprise. As a student reading maths, I was bound to be moonstruck by equations that laid the foundations for this dazzling achievement of science and technology. But it was more than that. I was gazing at the most familiar object in the night sky, but it looked different. I was connected to it in a new way because we had walked there. That made me a citizen of the cosmos. 

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them?” asks the psalm. As a recently baptised Christian I was pondering what my life should be for. Among the lights shed on the path I would follow was moonlight. A few months afterwards the age of majority was lowered from 21 to 18 and I became an adult. The moon-walk felt part of growing up, an unforgettable moment in a key rite of passage.

Since 1969, our horizons have been hugely enlarged. I’ve blogged at times (here, here and here) about some of the most inspiring events in astronomy in recent years. In all of them, I’m aware of a theological and spiritual response that echoes what I felt about the moon landing. It’s a cliche to talk about the “wonder” or “beauty” of creation, but that’s what it comes down to, and it’s not restricted to people of faith. If you’ve watched Brian Cox’s TV documentaries (the recent marvellous series on the solar system for example) you’ll recognise the same poetic and mystical response to the cosmos that you find in the creation narratives and the psalms. And he is, I think, a self-confessed atheist. 

What’s so beautiful about the cosmos? Why should the study of astronomy and cosmology not only stimulate our imagination but make us feel we are treading on holy ground?

It’s more than an aesthetic response. Yes, the moon looks beautiful in all its phases, or when it is half hidden by cloud, or eclipsed by the earth’s (ie our own) shadow, or when we admire those famous images of the lunar landscape with blue planet earth hanging serenely in the black sky above. How could we not be moved by the sheer artistry of what lies beyond us and which, fifty years ago, we touched for that brief moment in our story?

But I hinted in the piece I’ve quoted that there’s an intellectual dimension to it too. As a former mathematician, I’ve forgotten most of what I ever learned as an undergraduate. But not the elegance of the deep structures of mathematics, the equations that lie at the heart of how the universe is (and how other universes might be). I remember a charismatic maths teacher at school proving a theorem to us A-level students (I wish I could remember which theorem it was), writing QED with a flourish on the blackboard, stepping back to brush the chalk dust off his gown and acclaiming triumphantly, “That, my dear friends, is poetry in its highest and purest form”. Who’s to say he wasn’t right?

Immanuel Kant wrote about the two things that fill the mind with awe and admiration: “the starry skies above me, and the moral law within me”. The wisdom writers of the Hebrew Bible never tired of pointing out that one of the best incentives to live well is to emulate the pattern and order of the created world. Contemporary physics and cosmology have shown us that the universe is infinitely more mysterious than we could have imagined. Which suggests that “the moral law within” should be informed by a mystical attitude that recognises that the good life, holiness, is as much about what we don’t know as what we do, and the “awe and admiration” that comes from both knowing and unknowing. 

The moon landing fifty years ago was, for me, a gateway to glimpsing this, and finding in these new perceptions what I can only call joy. I like to think that I was taking “one small step” for a young man who wanted then, and still wants late in life, to find his place as a creature of God and a citizen of the cosmos, and learn how to inhabit it wisely. 

“Enlargement”: a Biblical and Theological Case for Equal Marriage

This blog first appeared as an article on the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England website.

What is the intellectual basis of equal marriage as we campaign for its adoption in the Church of England?

As far as the law is concerned, many people are content to argue for equal marriage on the basis of human rights. Discrimination of any kind subverts the principles of justice, equality and inclusion. So in marriage as in everything else, citizens should be treated in the same way, without distinction. The same goes for civil partnerships. Both should be open to all, regardless of their sexual orientation. And this is the direction of travel across the entire nation, including Northern Ireland following this week’s welcome vote in Parliament to bring marriage law there into line with the rest of the UK.

The exemptions provided under the equal marriage legislation for religious institutions, including the Church of England, are in my view extremely unfortunate. Churches should be beacons of equality and inclusion, not obstacles to it. I do not remember that the Church of England’s governing body, the General Synod, was consulted on this point. But I did hear bishops and others comment as follows. The equal marriage legislation is established purely on secular, rights-based assumptions, not on theology or ethics. Its premise is utilitarian, “the greatest good for the greatest number” rather than any rigorous understanding of what marriage really means. The church should therefore protect the theological principles on which marriage is founded in the Christian tradition. Human rights don’t come into it.

The common idea that a rights-based ethics is sub-theological needs challenging. I want to argue that its origins lie in the Hebrew Bible, whose teaching that we must love our neighbour as ourselves is affirmed by Jesus as the second of the two great commandments. That teaching itself goes back to the equality that belongs to human beings in creation. It is the divine image in humanity that is the theological basis for treating all people equally and affirming that all have the same rights before God and one another. I think there is a good case for claiming that the emphasis in the gospels is on defending other people’s rights rather than my own. That seems to me to be the thrust of the prophets’ call for justice. But it’s telling that the Enlightenment principles of “liberty, equality and fraternity”, and of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” emerged in Christian civilisations that had been schooled in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. 

If the idea of an “inclusive church” in which equal marriage, the ordination of women and a Christianity that transcends differences of ethnicity, culture, sexuality, education and class flows out of Enlightenment principles, that is theological enough for me. At the same time, it’s important that we should examine the individual aspects of inclusive Christianity so as to understand how they sit in relation to one another and to the tradition as a whole. Let me explore equal marriage in this way. 

Those who oppose equal marriage often do so on the grounds that marriage is heterosexual by definition, the union of a man and woman. This is of course how it has traditionally been understood. The Bible does not know of same-sex marriage (though it does recognise at least one covenanted same-sex relationship, that of David and Jonathan, though the text is reticent as to the exact nature of their friendship). 

But the question of whether heterosexuality is of the essence of marriage can’t be answered by appealing to the history of the institution. It all depends on whether by definition it is intrinsically capable or incapable of being “enlarged” in its scope. At first sight, the Bible appears to rule this out according to the aetiology of marriage in the creation story where the man recognises the woman as “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” and “leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2.18-25). 

But what if the point of this story is not to make a statement about gender complementarity so much as about the union of two human beings in a covenant of loyalty and fidelity? In the Hebrew Bible, “flesh of our flesh” is synonymous with the closest of relationships that it is possible to have, whether through kinship or affinity. “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The answer to his loneliness is the companionship of another. And it is to this “other” that the pledge of faithfulness is made. The complementarity of the relationship is, I believe, not, or not only, a matter of gender. It’s about reaching out across the gap that separates every human being from the “other” and recognising in that chosen “other” the deepest possible answer to his or her need of intimacy.  

I’m suggesting that the essence of marriage is the vow of covenanted fidelity. The ceremony, by being contracted before witnesses, affirms the vow and gives it a public character. That makes it the proper business of society. And since modern marriage rites affirm that the primary purpose of marriage is companionate, then enlarging it so as to see it as a union of “others”, whatever their gender, is not at all to compromise its intrinsic nature. On the contrary, it could be argued that equal marriage was always the destiny of this public institution, laying bare its essential character as a companionate publicly covenanted union in which the begetting of children, traditionally its primary purpose, may, but need not necessarily, play a part. 

Christian theology and practice are in fact familiar with this idea of “enlargement”. In the lifetimes of many of us, the Church of England has found it possible to permit the solemnisation of marriages where either or both of the parties is divorced and has a partner still living. If like me you believe that the life-vow is fundamental to the meaning of marriage, then this was actually a very big step for the church to make. This is because the remarriage of divorced people directly raises the status of the vow that lay at the heart of the previous marriage. This isn’t the place to rehearse those difficult arguments. I am simply saying that the church has found a way of acknowledging both that a vow is a vow, and that as facts on the ground, marriages break down and are dissolved. What was unthinkable only a couple of generations ago has happened. The Church of England “enlarged” its understanding of marriage – in some tension with the teaching of St Mark’s Gospel, some might say - so as to allow divorced people to solemnise second or subsequent marriages. And it did this all the while continuing to affirm the sanctity of the marriage vow, including the pledge of lifelong fidelity. 

Equal marriage, then, challenges the church to continue this process of what I’m calling “enlargement”. Indeed, because it does not call into question the character of the lifelong vow of marriage but affirms the fundamental meaning of the covenant, it is to me at least, less problematic than the remarriage of divorcees. Far from subverting the institution, equal marriage strongly affirms it. Which is why I am puzzled that the leadership of the Church of England apparently regards it as subverting marriage rather than, as I see it, placing a massive vote of confidence in it. 

What I am calling “enlargement” is simply one more example of how since earliest times the boundaries of Christian understanding have been stretched both by circumstances and by the inner logic of its own theology. The New Testament debates about circumcision are the template here. One reading of them is to say that the early expansion of the church into the gentile world of the Roman Empire urgently demanded a renegotiation of circumcision as a rite of passage into the covenant community. I conjecture that this force of circumstance came first, this pressure for the inclusion of gentiles into the church. Subsequent theological reflection led to the recognition that this was not only allowable, but required by the logic of a message that proclaimed itself to be good news for all. Where a universal gospel is proclaimed, inclusion is the only possible theological response. 

Which brings me back to where I began, with the love command in the Bible. Universalism and inclusion are ultimately about love: God’s love for all his creatures and for all humanity; and how our love as human beings for one another reflects this. So the tendency of Christian thought and practice to “enlarge” its thought and practice is, I think, a necessary consequence of working out what this truly means in contexts and circumstances so different from those in which the command to love was first given. When difficult (which usually means untested) ethical choices have to be made, situation ethics asks: what is the loving thing to do here? And while the church may often struggle to answer that question well, taking a long time and following many a false trail in the process, it is at least being true to its best self when it recognises where that question comes from. If discernment follows the theological direction of travel enshrined in its charter texts that embody the love command, then we can be hopeful of an outcome that is not only good in itself but has the integrity that comes when a genuine exploration has been undertaken. 

I’d like to think that the Church of England’s current process Living in Love and Faith is a genuine exploration of this kind. Is it capable of contemplating “enlargement” when it comes to same-sex relationships and equal marriage? And if so, will our churches one day not only acknowledge but celebrate what is true for so many of our Christian brothers and sisters, that to love a person of the same sex is to find the “bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh” that Genesis speaks about? And will it not only affirm the goodness of loving same-sex relationships among both laity and clergy, but solemnise them publicly? 

I have no hesitation in saying that that day will come. It would be foolish to imagine that it will happen very soon. The forces of aggressive conservatism in both religion and politics will make sure that this ground continues to be contested for a while yet. Nevertheless, in the arena of personal and social ethics, history is on the side of generosity and inclusion. That is why the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England will be successful in the end. This blog has, I hope, demonstrated that the campaign is a principled one because its case is built on a solid theological and ethical foundation. Which is why we have every reason for hope. 

Assisted Dying: “Compassion is not a Crime”

Three years ago this month I watched my mother die. It was brutal for her and for me. She had recently been admitted to a care home following a short spell in hospital. A few weeks before, she had still been living at home in her ninety-fourth year, glad to have retained her independence for so long.

It was becoming clear that the end would not be far off. Like any son, my hope for my mother was that it would be quick, dignified and free of pain. But the reality turned out to be none of these things.  When she lost consciousness, the presumption was that death would soon follow. But it didn’t. She clung on to her life for a full two days, contorted by a pain the morphine administered by the medical staff seemed unable to assuage. I sat with her in the darkness through her last night with my memories and my prayers while she cried out in distress. Next day the morphine ran out, so I was dispatched to the hospital pharmacy to get some more. While I was gone, she died. 

The previous week in the hospital, she had asked the young doctor who was looking after her, “why can’t you give me something to help me cross this final threshold?” He replied, gently, “no, I can’t do that, but when the time comes for you to make that journey, we won’t get in the way”. She knew that he had no choice about his answer. She accepted it and didn’t argue the point. She knew that he had her best interests at heart. But she also knew that prolonging her life by not intervening to bring it to an end was not really about living at all. It was simply prolonging her dying. To her and to me, this was heartless.

My mother had long been an advocate of voluntary euthanasia. I found this out by chance one day when I was rummaging around the upper levels of a bookcase in the living room. There I came across a publication that bore the intriguing imprint EXIT. I asked her about it. She told me she believed that there were circumstances in which to choose to die was not only permissible but responsible. What circumstances, I wanted to know? Terminal illness for one thing, she said. Or the loss of your mental or physical faculties. Or any situation where your quality of life would be so diminished that death was preferable. I now think she had the Nazi death-camps in mind, in which members of her family had perished.

I can’t have been more than about twelve when we had that conversation, but I recalled it as I sat by my mother’s death bed. And I wondered what could be said for a law that prevented her from being relieved of her suffering had she chosen in advance, as she assuredly would, that in these desperate circumstances she would want her life to be terminated. I wondered why anyone would think that my mother’s pitiful condition during this ordeal was a good way to die, a dignified and compassionate way to bring a long human life to its close.

I could rehearse the ethical and theological objections to assisted dying and euthanasia, of course. I had (still have) every sympathy with those who argue that reverence for life must underlie all our decisions about palliative care and what we used to call the end of life pathways on which terminally ill patients were set. In all things there must be the imperative to “do no harm”. I understand the risks inherent in changing the law, the abuses that could follow bad legislation, the fear that the right to die could slide into a duty to die on the part of elderly people who could come to feel they had outstayed their welcome on this earth. 

But there’s another side to this. For one thing, at a time when every moment of human life can be, and is, managed by decisions we make for ourselves, including life’s beginnings by planning whether and when to give birth, it seems artificial to exempt life’s ending from this good and wise decision-making. Indeed, we don’t do this - in a case like my mother’s, every aspect of care in the final days and hours is highly managed until the end comes. But not the end itself. Yet in the face of terminal illness and the collapse of our mental or physicality capacity, not to be permitted to make a free and informed decision about bringing our life to a close is to subvert an aspect of our human responsibility to make moral choices. We make decisions about our healthcare throughout our lives, advised by professionals we trust. Why should the ultimate decision, the awesome choice whether to go on living or to die be denied us?

But a pastoral theologian wants to go further. It seems to me that this is fundamentally a matter of loving your neighbour as yourself or, as the Golden Rule has it, to treat others as we would have them treat us. We do not want to see other people suffer. We do not want to suffer ourselves. Contrary to how the Christian tradition is sometimes presented, there is surely no virtue in pain per se, which is why people of faith don’t regard relieving suffering as somehow frustrating the will of God. On the contrary. To alleviate suffering wherever we find it is an act of love and compassion that is motivated by the very same reverence for life that is often invoked against assisted dying. 

This week Parliament has once again been debating assisted dying. This debate will not be concluded any time soon. And it is right not to rush to conclusions, for these are matters literally of life and death. But I’d like to think that the churches’ contribution to it would not be implacable a priori opposition. I believe as a matter of Christian ethics that legislation could be enacted that would allow people - if they chose - to be spared the kind of suffering I watched my mother go through in her final hours. In an important book, Professor Paul Badham* considers the arguments for and against assisted dying in the light of biblical, theological and ethical considerations. He also presents evidence from places (such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, the State of Oregon) where the law permits assisted dying. He concludes that there is a Christian case for it that needs to be taken seriously. Which is why I support the Campaign for Dignity in Dying in pressing for legislation that will permit it in this country. As they say, “compassion is not a crime”. 

Sitting with my mother as she lay dying, while being profoundly aware of my own helplessness was not what brought me to this conviction. I had come to it long before that. But my belief about a principle had now acquired a personal dimension. What she suffered at the end of her life was in no way what she would have wished, in no way what I or anyone else who cared for her could have wanted. We ought to be allowed to be spared such an end. All our pastoral instincts surely point in that direction. It’s often pointed out that we are kinder to our pets when they reach the end of their lives than we are to our fellow human beings. Are we not of (even) more value than they?

It’s true that in all things, l’homme propose, Dieu dispose. We don’t know how we are going to die. But as I grow older I find myself echoing the petition in the Litany that we may be protected from a sudden catastrophic death. How much better to die peacefully, and whatever the poet says, to go gently into that good night. How much better to allow the artistry with which we have tried to shape our lives to help shape our deaths too, to the extent that is possible. This is what assisted dying is about, in the settings I’ve described.

So for myself, I hope to be able to make the decision while I am of sound mind to ask, if I need it, to be helped across that final threshold with dignity and grace, in the presence of those who love me and before my God who I trust will help me to pray, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”.

*Paul Badham, Is There a Christian Case for Assisted Dying? Voluntary Euthanasia Reassessed (SPCK, 2009).