Home Page tbc banner
Richard Littledale

Richard Littledale's
Views on the News: September 2010

previous month | index | next month

eyeline

A camp called hope

It has long been my contention that not only should the news be interpreted by the Bible, but the Bible should be interpreted by the news. There is a great example of this being played out before our eyes right now. Hebrews 10:24-25 describes the church as a community of hope and mutual encouragement. To many Christians that is a given, it is woven into our credo and sits as part of our ecclesiastical wallpaper. What does it actually mean, though?

A quick look at Camp Hope on the slopes of the mountain over the San Jose copper mine will tell you. Here are a group of people whose circumstances give them little cause for rejoicing. Their loved ones are trapped over 2000ft below the ground and they have no prospect of seeing them for weeks, or even months. And yet, the camp is aptly named. In the few days they have been there its residents have been ensuring that it lives up to its name. The camp is decked with shrines and prayers. On Sunday its residents were parading through the camp in a show of their defiant faith and hope. When thrust into the unwelcome glare of the media spotlight, their vocabulary is suffused with the language of hope and the reality of faith.

Are we learning yet? In our permanent buildings our faith often looks like a very temporary thing. In their flimsy camp their faith looks as solid as the mountain beneath which their men are trapped. In our tidy buildings our religion often looks like a very ordered and sanitised thing. In their camp faith is painted in the spidery writing on the prayers and demonstrated in the quirky mannequins dressed as miners which sit on the shrines. In their rugged encounters with the media their faith sounds rough and unpolished, like the rocks which fell in the mine. In our encounters with the media our care to avoid saying the wrong thing often means that we say nothing.

Of course these people are not perfect. If we set them on a pedestal we insult their faith, not mimic it. However, as the story at San Jose unfolds, it is to be hoped that many Christians will reflect on whether their church could reasonably be nicknamed "Camp Hope"

rjl signature

Richard reflects further on this story in his blog

eyeline
Home Page
This page is maintained by Colin Hicks; Comments by e-mail are welcome;
Return to the TBC Home Page;   Copyright information;