Introduction
1 Part of the last poem (Agnus Dei) in a six-part ‘agnostic Mass’ entitled ‘Mass for the Day of St Thomas Didymus’ by Denise Levertov, Candles in Babylon, 113–15; also in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, 677–8. Found in David Ford’s Theological Commentary on John’s Gospel.
2 See Enemy at the Gates from 2001 for an example of a powerful film. Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (1998) is a superb history of the battle, traumatic to read.
3 For those who do not know the story there are many sources, starting with www.coventrycathedral.org.uk, The medieval cathedral and parish church was destroyed in a great bombing raid on 14 November 1940. The Provost of Coventry, Richard Howard, established it as a centre of reconciliation from the end of the Second World War, symbolized by a cross of nails that fell from the burning timbers to the floor of the cathedral. A new cathedral was completed in 1962, at right angles to the old, and linked by a great window so that the two go together as a symbol of death and resurrection. The Community of the Cross of Nails is a worldwide association of over two hundred centres that have crosses of nails or a non-Christian symbol, which work at reconciliation in their own contexts.
4 David F. Ford, A Theological Commentary on the Gospel of John, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, MI, 2021, (hereafter Ford, John).
Chapter 1
1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/global-britain-in-a-competitive-age-the-integrated-review-of-security-defence-development-and-foreign-policy.
2 Attributed to many people, including President Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain and Dr Martin Luther King.
3 On War, Princeton University Press (date unknown), p. 87.
4 For developed discussion see Rowan Williams, On Augustine, Bloomsbury, 2016, Chapter 12, ‘Augustinian Love’, especially page 192. (Hereafter RW.)
5 RW, p. 185.
6 RW, p. 149, footnote 11.
7 RW, p. 55.
8 Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Shaped the Movement, ed. Crenshaw et al., The New Press, 1995, pp. 276–90.
9 Discussion with Revd Canon Dr Isabelle Hamley was very valuable here. She quotes Luce Irigaray as saying that Descartes seeks to ‘give birth to himself’, an act of ‘astonishingly arrogant solipsism’.
10 Seen as a signifier of PTSD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
11 A powerful examination of the nature of monastic identity and its relationship to the world and cultures around it is found in Rowan Williams, The Way of St Benedict, Bloomsbury, 2020.
12 More details on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website.
13 See discussion on Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another by Henry Venema in Literature and Theology, Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2002, around page 418.
14 Review of David Ford’s Self and Salvation by John R. Sachs in Theological Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, Washington, March 2001.
15 Williams, op. cit., especially Chapter 7, pp. 106ff.
16 Ford, John, pp. 416ff..
Chapter 2
1 The Political Dimension of Reconciliation, Ralf K. Wüstenberg, Eerdmans, 2009, especially Part III, pp. 197ff.
2 Revd Lucie Lunn, private paper quoting DeYoung (2015). Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame: A Relational/Neurobiological Approach, New York: Routledge. The next paragraphs arise out of a personal conversation, 7 June 2021.
3 Using language to create a sense of low self-worth and/or deep personal insecurity about anything from one’s abilities to one’s sanity.
4 Conrad, ‘Nostromo’, commented on in ‘Conrad and Masculinity’, PhD thesis by Emma Fox, 1995, p. 56.
5 ‘I’ll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes’, Act II, Scene I.
Chapter 3
1 The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace, Oxford University Press, 2005. Professor John Paul Lederach is a key writer in peace building. It is superbly written by one of the wisest and bravest of facilitators and thinkers about peace.
2 Lederach, Moral Imagination, p. 29.
3 Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy describes the government’s vision for the UK’s role in the world over the next decade and the action we will take to 2025.
4 Lederach, Moral Imagination, p. 165.
5 Neurosciences Roundtable, Cambridge, 4 June 2021; see notes for further reading.
6 Internally Displaced People. Technically, a refugee has crossed an international border while an IDP is still within their own country. It tends for those who have fled to be a difference without a distinction but has a major impact in international law, which governs the two categories differently giving more protection to refugees.
Introduction to Part II
1 Hebrews 4.15.
2 Matthew 5.9 (NRSV).
Chapter 4
1 Op. cit.
2 One lawsuit on pollution concluded in the Dutch Courts as recently as January 2021, holding Shell liable, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-55853024.
Chapter 5
1 1 John 4.8.
2 Of course, nothing is ever exclusively the work of one person; Religions for Peace, Bill Vendley and many others were also central and only God knows who was the most important.
3 John 13.1 (NRSV).
4 Matthew, chapters 5–7, especially 7.1-5.
5 Because of a speech by Winston S. Churchill, 5 March 1946, in Fulton, Missouri: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across Europe.’
6 His own account is in a book called God’s Smuggler.
7 For a detailed examination see The Political Dimension of Reconciliation, Ralf K. Wüstenberg, trans. R. H. Lundell, Eerdmans, 2009.
8 Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing, Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 62–3.
Chapter 6
1 Identity carefully camouflaged, including nationality and denomination.
2 In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ key miracles are referred to as signs; in other words, actions that reveal the nature of Jesus and thus the nature of God.
Chapter 7
1 Luke 15.11-32 (NRSV).
2 Dr Isabelle Hamley, formerly Chaplain at Lambeth Palace, commented in a note: ‘interesting to note that this is a very different approach to Western-centred models of justice and forgiveness, when we want offenders to make contrition (often multiple times) and victims to be able to go over their grievances repeatedly. The model here (as virtually everywhere in scripture) is of beginning with a willingness to embrace, from which other things follow.’
3 A diocese in England is a geographical area within which the churches are overseen by a bishop. The dean runs a cathedral, which is the main church of the diocese. The archbishop oversees a group of dioceses. A diocesan synod is a gathering of elected clergy and lay people led by the bishop to help decide on policy.
4 Sadly, it is yet to be invented.
Chapter 8
1 For example, William Dalrymple, ‘The Anarchy’, Bloomsbury, 2020 edition, p. 246.
2 The Political Dimension of Reconciliation, Ralf K. Wüstenberg, op. cit.
3 Glen Pettigrove and Nigel Parsons, Social Theory and Practice, Florida State University, Vol. 38, No. 3 (2012): 526; a very powerful and useful article.
4 Where the earliest Caribbean migrants to the UK were systematically deprived of their rights and even of their identities, being sent back to the Caribbean decades later.
5 Financial Times, 13 July 2021.
6 See An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, William Stringfellow, Word Books, Waco, Texas, 1973.
7 Luke 5.1-11.
Chapter 9
1 Please see Chapter 2 and the Bibliography for further sources in this area.
2 Isaiah 2.4 (NRSV).
3 Ford 2021, op. cit., p. 297.
4 Appendix x, reproduced with permission.
5 Christianity and Social Order, 1942. For an updated approach, Reimagining Britain, Justin Welby, Bloomsbury, 2nd edition 2021.
Chapter 10
1 Found at difference.rln.global, +442078981016, hello@rln.global.
2 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain used a phrase like this about Czechoslovakia in 1938.
3 Gordon Brown, Seven Ways to Change the World, Simon & Schuster, 2021.
4 Op. cit., p. 57.
5 Jonathan Sacks, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, Hodder, 2020.
6 Essays on the French Revolution, 1793.
7 Difference: Your Guide, 2020, p. 14.
Chapter 12
1 Another example of reimagining is that of Dr Sara Schumacher at St Mellitus College.
2 For an attempt at this please see Justin Welby, Reimagining Britain, Bloomsbury, 2018.
3 See a very remarkable examination of this: Dr Stephen Cherry, Healing Agony: Re-imagining Forgiveness, Bloomsbury, 2012.
4 Conference of the Parties, on facing climate change.
Chapter 13
1 Quoted by Professor John Lonsdale in an unpublished paper of 2021. The paper is a profound and superb reflection on the pre-colonial ethnic influences in East Africa. John goes on to say: ‘So I make a serious if impractical suggestion: that the Ministry of Education award an annual prize, perhaps to be called the Karibuni, “You are all welcome”, prize, to the high school student who best illustrates the multiple origins of her or his ethnic group in the style of Daniel Defoe.’ One might suggest the same for the UK.
2 Lonsdale, op. cit.
3 Government-financed and often church-/faith-group-led interaction of different communities at local levels, administered by the Church of England Church Urban Fund.
Acknowledgements