\nFROM THE FLOOR: Could I ask\nPeter to say something more about Noah Harari? It is a name\nwhich I have not come across.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nTHE REVD FR PETER ALLAN: Noah\nHarari is, broadly, an historian. He teaches at the Hebrew\nUniversity of Jerusalem. He has written two very wide-ranging books.\n The first is called Homo\nSapiens<\/em> and the\nsecond, Homo Deus<\/em>.\n They have caught the public imagination. They have been\nbestsellers. People like the CEO of Google and so on read them. \nHarari is looking at our present experience of being a human being in\nthe context of the whole evolution of homo\nsapiens <\/em>and where\nhomo sapiens\n<\/em>sits in the\nevolutionary story, and then looking ahead to what is going to happen\nnext \u2013 some of the consequences of the emergence of AI and all the\nrest of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nFROM THE FLOOR: I wonder if\nFr Peter could enlarge a little bit more on the concept of openness\nand participating in a shared understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nTHE REVD FR PETER ALLAN: \nThose are, of course, two very different issues. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nIt is possible to be both\npositive and rather negative about the quality of openness. It can\nsometimes look simply as though you have a tabula\nrasa <\/em>\u2013 people\ncoming with absolutely no idea, nothing there \u2013 so there is an\nopenness. They do not know what not<\/em>\nto be open to. That requires tremendous responsibility of the\ntheological educator in not abusing or presuming; but it is a quality\nin most of the ordinands who come to us now, which I do find\nattractive. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nA shared practice. I think\nthis is where, once again, we have not sufficiently taken into\naccount the consequences of the journey that has brought us to this\npoint. It is a bit like that wonderful Russell Hoban story for\nchildren, The Mouse\nand His Child<\/em>,\nwhere the great goal of the clockwork mouse is to become\nself-winding. We have reached the point where we believe that we\nhave become self-winding. This applies as much to Christians as to\nothers. We negotiate with God on the basis of our\nself\u2011winding ability. The problem is how we confront\nthat. That is the bit that concerns me. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nFROM THE FLOOR: I have a\nquestion for Peter, which might be slightly beyond the remit of\ntheological education per\nse<\/em>. In terms of\nthe importance and visibility of Catholicity in the Church of England\ntoday, would you say a little bit about the present state of\nreligious life in Anglicanism \u2013 its present state and its\nfuture prospects?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nTHE REVD FR PETER ALLAN: \nThank you. Of course, the first obvious sign of the Anglican\nreligious life is decline. That is part of institutional life. \nInstitutions come and go through cycles. Having been important in\ntheir generation, many of them do not have the seeds for renewal. \nThere are some communities still which have the seeds of new life\nwithin them. What is interesting for me is that the candidates\napproaching communities at the moment of a very different kind. They\nare almost all lay. Many of them have very little connection or\nassociation with the Church, but they recognise in community life\nsomething which calls them. That is a huge challenge. How does a\ncommunity like ours, with over 100 years of history, welcome and form\nsomebody from such a different world? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is another element which I must say something about: the emergence of what is called \u2018New Monasticism\u2019. I have to say that I think this is a symptom of the confusion of the age. I see almost no connection with monasticism in it. I\u00a0see a desperate hankering for what we would recognise as the baptismal life. If only we had not lost our confidence in baptism, we might not be having the problems we are having with communities more concerned with writing constitutions than with living the life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The following paper was by Cally Hammond<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FROM THE FLOOR: Could I ask Peter to say something more about Noah Harari? It is a name which I have not come across. THE REVD FR PETER ALLAN: Noah Harari is, broadly, an historian. He teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has written two very wide-ranging books. The first is called Homo Sapiens … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-98","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catholicity.societyofthefaith.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catholicity.societyofthefaith.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catholicity.societyofthefaith.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catholicity.societyofthefaith.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catholicity.societyofthefaith.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/catholicity.societyofthefaith.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/catholicity.societyofthefaith.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catholicity.societyofthefaith.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}