Last night an interview with me was broadcast on Toronto Threads. It features The Poverty Truth Commission and my novel The Day of the Labyrinth. I have placed this news on my various social media sites but I am posting the link here as a place where we can open up a discussion with me on the points I make. So please do listen and engage by adding your comments and I will gladly respond!!

https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/CORU4130002005?selected=CORU6651394571

Seeing the current world scene with the eyes of the God who is like Jesus can only bring mourning. For the purpose of each tribe, people group or nation is the blessing of the other. When, according to the story of Abraham, God chose him and his future tribes it was that “all the tribes of the earth will be blessed” (Gen 12: 3). The prophets Isaiah and Micah spoke of the coming of the Messiah who will “judge between the nations, and will render decisions for many peoples; and they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war” (Is 2: 4; Mic 4: 3). At Jesus’ birth, according to Luke, the angels declared “peace on earth and goodwill among humanity” (Lk 2:14). Jesus left us in no doubt about what this peace looked like. In his spiritual manifesto Noel Moules unpacks it as shalom with God, within ourselves, with each other, and with wild nature. The centrality of the cross measures the extent of this peace as love and forgiveness to our enemies. As Jesus puts it so clearly, “You have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also” (Mtt 5: 38-39). At the end of his ministry Jesus declared “this good news of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the tribes of the earth, and then the end will come” (Mat 24:14).

So how come the current state of affairs in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank? Given that peace on earth and love for our enemies is God’s intention for the human race, how can God and we do anything but lament and mourn as the current nation state of Israel with the support of two of the nations with supposedly great Christian heritage pound the life out of their enemies, whatever horrors they have initiated? The Hebrew prophet Zechariah, Jesus’ words in Luke and the first chapter of John’s Revelation all seem to anticipate this. They speak of a day when “there will be great mourning” (Zech 12: 11), and “all the tribes of the earth will mourn” (Mtt 24: 30; Rev 1:7). This Christmas we again face the betrayal of the character and revelation of God by many of those who have the greatest reason to understand it properly, namely many of the leaders of Israel and the Church. Thank God for those with the courage to dissent from the mainstream, and there are many.

Those of us who still cling to the humble Messiah and the Father he revealed can only mourn and cry out with Jesus

“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.”

As you, my friends and readers know I have been researching and writing about how things have come again and again to this betrayal of what it is to be human. Tragically those of us who have been given the greatest gifts, calling and opportunity to demonstrate the politics of love throughout the course of history have often done the opposite. If you haven’t already, you can read my insights into how this has happened and what can still be done to remedy it in my books Church, Gospel and Empire: How the Politics of Sovereignty Impregnated the West and The Fall of the Church and in Discovering Kenarchy, a collection of essays which I co-edited with Julie Tomlin Arram (published by Wipf & Stock in 2011, 2012 and 2014). My latest attempt to provide resources to grapple with these huge challenges is, hopefully, a quartet of novels, the first of which The Day of the Labyrinth: The Blind Seer and the Gift of Love is now widely available via the main retail outlets and Amazon. You can view it here: http://www.dayofthelabyrinth.com

I am excited to let you know that the official publication date of the first novel in the Day of the Labyrinth series, The Blind Seer and the Gift of Love is this coming December 8th 2023! There are several ways that you can help me promote it.

Firstly, by purchasing an advance copy here: http://www.dayofthelabyrinth.com and if you like it, join the others who have written very positive reviews. You can post them as comments here on this site, or email them to me roger@2mt.org.uk. I am particularly looking for a young (school age) reviewer, and a bi-generational read-and-review partnership between a 10-14 year old and a parent, relative or significant other.

Secondly, by attending one of the launches in various parts of the UK and North America over the coming months, the first of which is at Ashburnham Place, Battle, East Sussex, TN33 9NF on Tuesday December 12th 2023 at 19.30hrs.

Thirdly, by organising an online event among your friends and contacts where I can introduce the novel. I am also open to speaking at face-to-face events. Do let me know of any opportunites you may be able to provide.

I have written The Day of the Labyrinth http://www.dayofthelabyrinth.com out of a heart for children and young people, a desire to explore and promote love as an alternative way of being, and the belief that historical fantasy is a natural genre for expressing this. These motives have in turn been inspired by my childhood friendships with adults who took children seriously and who were themselves motivated by the idea of a world built on radical love and kindness. Some were captivating storytellers and they showed me that narrative has the power to expose and reconstruct the world.

A heart for children and young people

When I was a youngster, I read all the fiction I could get hold of and was always building and experimenting with alternative worlds inside my head with the help of railway sets, board games and other toys and models. Now with the added advantage of virtual reality I believe that despite the assertions of some so-called experts, many children and young people can engage easily with concepts and big existential questions such as those raised by this book.  It is written as an attempt, in part, to see the world through their eyes.

I am convinced that adults can only deeply understand and reflect on life if they do so with and alongside children and young people. The book demonstrates this process, and it is designed so that while thinking children and adults can read and engage with it on their own, they can also read and enjoy it together. As a child, and then as a teacher and a parent, I experienced the magic of being read to and reading to others and this book is positioned for that. The juxtaposition of its characters, the deliberate way that it encompasses the passage of lifetimes and the provision of a glossary to enable the use of terms and language of another era is intended to inspire and help maximum engagement.

One of the tragedies of our factory-like education system is that it frequently fails to honour young people and give them the opportunity to mature creatively or contribute to the learning process alongside their teachers and their syllabus. I am convinced that children and young people need access to the deep issues of life and the universe and that egalitarian relationship with adults who value and treat them as equals while recognising their vulnerability and immaturity, helps them achieve that. This book aims to provide an example of young women and men who had close and mutual relationships with influential adults that challenged accepted norms and brought about significant social and political change. As such, it is a potential tool for this to continue to happen.

A desire to explore and promote love as an alternative way of being

I grew up in a relatively conservative and legalistic expression of Christianity where it became quickly obvious to me that there were those radically loving people who saw me and loved me for who I was, and those who were about their own religious agenda and either ignored or belittled me. The quality of life that surrounded the former and its potential to reconfigure the rest of society both inside and outside our religious community became an early driver for my life as a community worker, researcher, political theologian and activist and now issues in this novel.

The story traces and questions the interplay between the two expressions of Christianity in the days when the Roman Empire was embracing it as its official religion. I have worked hard to avoid a polemical antipathy to empire but instead to interpose the alternative way of love at a pivotal moment for the outworking of Christianity in the West. The narrative exposes and investigates key points and questions around the difference between the radical message of Jesus as testified by the four gospels, and the partnership of church and empire that impregnated much of established Christianity from the fourth century onwards.

The book explores the question of how the radical message of love and equality became a religion that affirmed hierarchy and sovereignty. By focusing on the loving protagonists of the French legend of Quentin and Eusébie and contrasting them with the contemporary historical figures of Constantine the Great and Eusebius of Caesarea, core Western symbols and myths are positioned in ways that illustrate the historical paths taken to justify control and domination over against life and freedom. The plot builds on notorious events such as the battle of Milvian Bridge and the murders of Constantine’s wife and son to expose ways that despite its radically loving roots, bullying, abuse and violence become normalised in the structures and experience of politics and the Christian religion.

Points and questions about my use of historical fantasy as a genre for today

Books that deal with alternative worlds such as The Narnia Chronicles, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series and His Dark Materials have had a massive impact on recent generations of children, young people and adults, including my own children and grandchildren, and myself.  The Day of the Labyrinth unashamedly engages the same device of alternative fantasy worlds with the genre of historical fiction to consider the different impacts on political history that the empire and love streams had or might have had and in so doing invites us to apply the same insight to our present day experiences. 

By beginning the story with an eight-year-old girl and choreographing her relationships with the adults of her family and their ensuing children across fifty years of epochal history, the novel is able to portray the potential of their inclusive strength to achieve intergenerational social change. The challenging experiences provided by the social and political upheaval of the fourth century CE allows for difficult but realistic subject matter to be introduced. Rather than positing a sentimental or utopian vision of history, the fantasy genre allows for distance while dealing with difficult, disappointing and even heinous experiences and events. However, at the same time it allows for seemingly supernatural interventions for the common good.

The narrative deliberately raises the question of how stories about imaginary alternatives to established official history help people rethink the accepted norms of our contemporary society. Readers’ pre-publication engagement with the book has already raised the question of whether the genre distinguishes adequately the difference between historical fiction and the “fake truth” so rampant on social media. It has been suggested that a résumé of historical facts could accompany the glossary in future editions. Nevertheless, my research into the relationship between church and empire reveals how our own deeply rooted assumptions about truth can skew our view of history, and fake truth might go wider than we think. Imaginative reappraisals of commonly held opinions about the facts of history and their implications for faith and politics like this novel may therefore be a good thing!

As many of you faithful net clickers and surfers know I have been working on a series of novels since the autumn of 2021 see https://rogerhaydonmitchell.wordpress.com/2021/09/10/what-im-up-to/ and have blogged only rarely since. I am grateful and glad that so many people have visited this blog and gleaned from the extensive past material nontheless. But now I am delighted to say that the first in the series of hopefully four novels will be published by Top Hat Books at John Hunt Publishing on December 8th, and will be available via the major retail outlets just in time for Christmas! The overall series is called The Day of the Labyrinth and this first one is The Blind Seer and the Gift of Love.

However, you can already buy it and read it now if you are willing to help me promote it by writing reviews or organising online or face-to-face launch events. Follow this link to purchase your pre-publication copy https://www.dayofthelabyrinth.com and if you like it, be in touch with roger@2mt.org.uk with your reviews and suggestions.

I will look forward to hearing from you!

I’ve taken some time to reflect on the passing of the Queen before setting out this brief post. Not surprisingly, given my negative approach to sovereignty which I regard as alien to the character of God, at least as the word has generally come to be understood, I’m not much given to sovereigns!

However, given that we have a sovereign in the UK and for seventy years Queen Elizabeth II was ours, it is relevant to assess what she did with her role. For sure she did not give it up or call it into question. But the general consensus, with of course some exceptions, is that she carried out her role on behalf of the people of the UK, and the other realms of which she was head of state, together with her leadership of the Commonwealth of nations, with a considerable degree of humility. Judging by her chosen readings for her funeral she did her best to find divine help in this, and seems to have understood something of God’s extraordinarily kenotic approach to leadership.

The core statement at the heart of the funeral service was from the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 24, “then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when he has abolished all rule and all authority and power.”

In other words Jesus is not about handing the Father all rule, authority and power but abolishing all of it, which is what he came to do. So how much did the Queen operate in this spirit of abolition? This is not a silly question. I have friends who have sensed extreme dominatory power in her presence. Nevertheless, there does seem to have been quite some life-laying-down loving going on by many accounts. Why is this important? Because if she sat at the heart of our system of money, status and power, which is ultimately undergirded by violence, as was obvious in the pomp and circumstance of her funeral procession, yet was doing so even some of the time in an opposite spirit to sovereign hierarchy, then it is a mark of serious hope. It means that she substantiated a measure of subversion that connected to the cross and resurrection of Jesus and what it stands for. Namely the emptying out of the toxic and destructive elements of rule, authority and power. This kind of subversive politics is what some of us configuring a politics of love call kenarchy. Was Queen Elizabeth II a covert kenarchist, at least some of the time? Well I’d like to think so! But that’s what a kenarchist probably would think wouldn’t they?

Anyway, whatever your view of the late Queen, if you want to catch up with the latest thinking on kenarchy, I’m very glad to announce that The Kenarchy Journal Volume Four is now published and can be viewed here: http://www.kenarchy.org.

This is the first edition in partnership with the Institute For Religion, Peace and Justice, http://www.irpj.org, as their academic journal, an exciting development that will extend the scope and reach of the journal. There are a new features you might find useful; a book review section and the opportunity to engage with authors on Zoom. We look forward to meeting some of you at the webinars!

Last week I presented a paper at the Oxford Symposium on Religious Studies at Queens College on the topic “The capacity of shared stories to function as myth and encourage inclusive participation.” Once I’ve put it into decent literary order you will be able to read it on my academia site and it will probably be a chapter in a book coming out of the symposium. One of the other presentations was given by Asger Trier, a Danish Jewish independent scholar and journalist, on the subject of “Woke.” He raised several important questions about cancel culture and platforming but then shocked me by suggesting that the pulling down of the statue of the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston was a step too far. I challenged him on this in the discussion after his paper with the result that we became good friends. He then asked if he could interview me for his TV channel, which we recorded the following afternoon. I think it raises interesting points about love’s response to conspiracy theories, populism and the reality of evil, as well as the Poverty Truth Commission among other things. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/cwRk_hBlYbA The brief introduction is in Danish, of course, but the rest is English.

Please feel free to comment if you wish!

As I promised in the previous post, here I explore some of the apostle Paul’s thinking in his letter to the Romans in the light of his original encounter with Jesus. This will be challenging for some of us because many of our traditions have tended to interpret Jesus in the light of Paul, rather than interpret Paul in the light of Jesus. Nevertheless, Paul’s introduction to his letter encourages us to do exactly that. The first seventeen verses of chapter one are focused almost entirely on Jesus, and it is to strengthen the Roman believers’ understanding of this that he longs to see them face to face and is now writing to them (vv8-15). Paul introduces himself as “a bond servant of Jesus Christ,” (v1), “set apart for the gospel of God concerning his Son,” (v3), “who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord, among whom you are also the called of Jesus Christ” (v4). Paul is not ashamed of this Jesus gospel because in it “the righteousness of God is revealed” for us to continually put our faith in (v17), an emphasis that he returns to whenever his discussions could be thought to point in any other direction! (See Ch 3:22ff; Ch 4:5ff; Ch 5:1,2; Ch 9:32; Ch10:6 etc).

So when Paul declares that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the unrighteousness of those who suppress the truth (v18), it is vital to beware of tripping over the word wrath and shifting away from the emphasis on Jesus in our attempt to understand what Paul is saying. For despite the prevalence of the word wrath in most translations, the primary sense of the word orgē in the Greek is ‘desire’ or ‘passion’. And Paul has just been emphasising the revelation of Jesus, in whom the desire and passion of God is revealed. So we need to remember that the passion of God against “all unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth” (v19), is revealed in Jesus who said “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” In his life and teaching this passion manifests as identification with, and salvation for, the victims of unrighteous suppression and not first of all as judgement against the perpetrators. Which passion, surprise, surprise, is exemplified in the seven core expressions of the incarnation which sum up the good news of the kingdom of God, or kenarchy. So God’s desire, God’s passion, in the face of the suppression of women, children, the poor, the stranger, the creation, the prisoner and the sick, is to bring justice and peace to them. This was of course what got him crucified, as it was the complete opposite of the unrighteousness of Rome and its puppet rulers in Israel.

It is important to remember that this was originally Paul’s own difficulty as Saul of Tarsus. He was both a Jewish Pharisee and a Roman citizen for whom Jesus’ reversal of the inequalities undergirded by the hypocritical use of law by Jewish and Roman authorities alike made him the goad that Paul kicked against to the extent of persecuting and at times even murdering his followers from city to city (Acts 26:14). So it’s hardly surprising that the relationship between the gospel of love, and law, is such a central theme in his letter to both Jew and Gentile believers in Rome. As he makes clear in chapter two, everybody suppresses the truth in one way or another, so should not judge anyone else. And what a relief to be reminded that according to Paul’s gospel, everyone’s secrets will be judged through Jesus (Ch 2:16) who did not come to punish the world but to save it!! We will look further at how Paul expands on all this in a subsequent post.

For now it is important to emphasise that the cross was Rome’s instrument of punishment, not God’s, and the place where the unrighteous suppression of the truth came to a head. At the cross Jesus was not being punished by God, but by the Romans, their Jewish puppet leaders and their oppressive domination system. God, in Jesus, turned it into the greatest transcendent meeting place of all time where God’s love and mercy soaked up with his own blood all the oppression meted out by the enemies of love and justice even though it killed him. He then demonstrated the power of love and mercy by rising again from the dead. That’s the gospel. That’s what, as I understand it, happened at the cross. It was the crunch point, the fulness and fulcrum of the incarnation and the consummation of Jesus’ messianic life-giving kenarchy. The ultimate tipping point of God’s indestructible kingdom of love and mercy. This is what we are invited to receive and live by faith!

There is nothing theoretical about this. It is why we can say with confidence that the kind of violent oppression being meted out by Putin’s cronies and armies against the Ukrainian people at this time cannot ultimately succeed. It is also why the “holier than thou” judgements of Western nation state leaders presiding over injustices other than outright war on their neighbours’ cities, tend to suppress the truth about their own regimes. Regimes which, as ever, use law to mask the deeper underlying commitment to power and money that our Western liberal democracies remain mainly about. In the face of it all, nevertheless, transcendent love and mercy remain for us to encounter and be transformed by!

I have been planning a series of blogs about Jesus and the cross for some time. Just recently my friend Keith Wilkinson asked for some greater clarity on my thinking about this, and although I’m still busy with my novel, I decided to make a start. As he put it in his email to me “I was very impressed by your attitude to Penal Substitution as came out in those Martin Scott interviews and I asked about it before, I think.” (You can find those conversations here: https://wordpress.com/post/rogerhaydonmitchell.wordpress.com/6665).

Keith continued, “But I am not sure where the line falls. After all it is an article of faith that Christ died for our sins. Is it the why? Or is it the implication that God is angry at us and takes his anger out on Jesus? I am just not clear. It is not a problem to me personally. I can accept the Kenarchy concept and its implication in the way we should live our lives but the Theology is a bit murky. I hope you can see my concern in the light of Romans.”

In order to understand why I have such a negative attitude to penal substitution I need us to take a step back and remember the key assumption of kenarchy, which is the gospel statement of Jesus’ testimony “If you have seen me you have seen the Father” (John 14: 9). This statement does not of course mean that God is male, the scripture is quite clear that human beings are created male and female in God’s image (Genesis 1: 27; 5: 3), and so God is both father and mother. In declaring that he reveals God as Father means that the affirming voice and character of the Godhead is heard and seen in the words, character and actions of Jesus. Nowhere in the words, character and actions of Jesus is any suggestion that he, and therefore God, is a judge inflicting a penalty on the human race which only a substitutionary blood sacrifice can appease. Far from it, “for God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3: 17). Some people cite Mark’s testimony to refute this, “for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). However, I suggest that it does the opposite, for there is a world of difference between a penalty and a ransom. A penalty is due to the victim themself, whereas a ransom is paid to a person holding a victim captive in order to secure their release. If this is what the Father does then it is a completely different and positive intervention that we will look at in a further post.

Jesus’ approach to those who were stumbling in the dark, lost, perishing, unable to find a way through was to meet them where they were and reveal himself to them. As John’s gospel immediately previously and famously puts it, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him, should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3: 16). Nothing less than that explains his initial encounter with his fisher disciples who simply left their nets and followed him. Probably the most explicit encounter was the one with the outcast woman at the well who in the space of a brief conversation became the first person to fully realise who he was and take on the men of her village, persuading them to recognise him too.

It follows that the Father’s desire is to meet us in a transcendent loving encounter and invite us to enter into a lifelong relationship with him. This is the good news that I encountered personally at the age of sixteen and has remained my experience in the proceeding fifty-eight years. This is the good news that the apostle Paul encountered on the road to Damascus and never forgot (Acts 9: 4-18; 22: 6-21; 26: 12-18). This was the assumed unshakeable basis of his life and ministry and his theology of the cross needs to be read through this lens, something which we will attempt to provide some examples of in the next post.

Suffice it to say at this point, that as any other father, mother, brother, sister, or friend can surely affirm, the very idea that a loving father would place his child under a legal obligation to obey him under penalty of death is unthinkable. To add to this the idea that deciding that his older son would be killed as a penal substitute for the life of his brother who broke the father’s law is quite simply wicked. Such a father would fit the image of the dreadful person who causes “the least of these little ones to stumble” in the gospel narrative (Matthew 18: 6), and such a god would be banished from the kingdom of heaven on Jesus’ own testimony.

Enough to be going on with. More to follow in a day or two!

I am aware that I haven’t blogged since June and am grateful to still have traffic nonetheless. Thank you one and all! But I thought I should explain what I’m currently up to. Basically I am head down writing the first of a series of hopefully four novels – a mixture of historical fiction and fantasy focusing on the four windows or conduits that I traced in my research as set out in Church, Gospel and Empire: How the Politics of Sovereignty Impregnated the West and the more accessible The Fall of the Church. The plan is to offer another way into the good news of the politics of love and how the church and its message became increasingly subsumed by sovereignty and empire, particularly in the West, and to point the way ahead. This is quite some task and requires time and focus. Hence my failure to blog more frequently.

However there are other places to keep up with me for those who would like to. I post regularly on Twitter https://twitter.com/roghaydonmitch?lang=en and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/rogerhaydon.mitchell, and various published articles and papers can be found on my Academia site https://wtctheology.academia.edu/RogerHaydonMitchell. Exciting research and writing that continues to explain, develop and apply kenarchy can be found in the first two volumes of The Kenarchy Journal http://www.kenarchy.org of which I am the lead editor. Volume Three is due to be published by the end of this year.

I will not be stopping blogging altogether, and from time to time I will reblog material from other sites, such as Clarion https://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/ and Perspectives https://3generations.eu/posts/, where kindred spirits to mine locate!