The empty CV (or resume in the USA)

I was taking my turn as a volunteer teacher at the computer class. The computers were in a refurbished church vestry in Shettleston, in the East end of Glasgow. For those who don't know Glasgow, it is one of the areas of the city that always got left behind in the good times and now is suffering disproportionately in the downturn.

The students were men and women who had been sent along by the job centre with a letter containing the warning that failure to attend may result in a loss of benefits. The course was designed by a retired teacher from the church to cover basic computer skills useful for jobseekers including searching for jobs online, applying for vacancies and preparing a cv. With almost all vacancies appearing online those without the skills to access to the internet are even more disadvantaged. The church had received a grant for the computers and saw this class as a way of trying to help the local community.

The regulars at the class knew only too well that the lists of jobs that appeared from the search engines weren't real. Many were still listed after the closing date had expired. The same jobs appeared on the websites of many agencies. A driving job may require you to have and use your own van; an impossible investment for many of these people. They also knew from bitter experience that working for an agency was often a way of making sure they stayed as a “casual” on the minimum wage. And we couldn't find any jobs that did not require some basic qualifications or experience or both.

Dennis had worked in care homes but the long shifts and unsocial hours had taken a toll on his health. As a non-driver he was reliant on buses to get to work and this added over two hours to his already long working day. The few agency care home jobs on-line were all vacancies he had seen before.

Jim was the last guy I worked with. He had been sent along and told to prepare a CV. I sat down beside him and he looked blankly at the keyboard. He had never used a computer. He admitted his spelling wasn't too good and finding the letters on the keyboard was painfully slow. We started at the top of the page with his name and address and date of birth. He was thirty five and had left school at 15. He had no qualifications from school and had not achieved any qualifications since. So there was the first blank: education and qualifications. How can you put a positive gloss on such a blank?

Next we started on employment history.

Most cv's progress in a logical sequence but his cv followed a predictably depressing path from YTS (Youth Training Scheme) for a year to a temporary warehouse job and then some some labouring jobs through agencies. And that was it. He had tried. He had done stuff. But despite the efforts he had made, he had never managed to climb above the very bottom rung of the ladder. He had spent all his working life struggling up onto that rung and then slipping off again. He had not sat and watched daytime TV 24/7 as some Daily Mail type commentators insinuate about those at the bottom of the pile. But however we re-arranged the words for employment history on the page they would only fill three lines. His dead pan, stoical acceptance of his lot didn't help me to make any more of it.

So we had almost half a page of A4 by using a big typeface.

Leisure interests usually fill a few lines at the end of a cv. I asked if he had any hobbies. "I keep pigeons" came the reply. We discussed his love of birds and for the first time in the afternoon his eyes lit up and he began to show some enthusiasm. When we came to write this down it added a single line "Hobbies - keeps and breeds show pigeons".

I showed Jim how to print and we played for a short while with the formatting of the document.

At the end of the class Jim went home with three printed cvs in his pocket. But I couldn't help feel I had failed to help him as the cv was the “thinnest” I had ever seen. He had been failed by the system since he left school and before. I wish I could be optimistic and say that he was going to use this opportunity to lift himself out of his situation. I fear though that the gulf between where he is and where the world has moved on to is so wide that this task may be beyond him.

Getting home from the computer club, the first thing I read on my computer screen was the facebook status of a friend: “People were created to be loved and things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.”

Dispensationalism—a dangerous and influential fantasy?

John Darby, a nineteenth century Anglican priest from Plymouth, has a  lot to answer for in the politics of the middle east and especially in the foreign policy of the United States. He became well known after he left the Church of England and was a founder of the Plymouth Brethren.

Darby devised a system of interpreting the bible that showed the actions of God to be understandable through current events. It was a  scheme in which he explained God’s hidden plans for the world. He also offered specific guidance as to how those plans would be fulfilled in the future.

He focussed particularly on the Second Coming and offered guidance to Christians to discern the signs of the times. Before the Kingdom of God  can be realised Darby taught that the following must occur:
1. The nation of Israel must be re-established.
2. The Jews must return to the holy land and become the occupiers of the land.
3.The Jewish temple on mount Zion must be rebuilt and  temple sacrifices re-established.

Once these had happened Darby then predicted that Jesus would return and hover over the earth. Born again Christians would fly up and meet him in the air. (He called this the rapture).

The doctrine of a secret rapture was first conceived by Darby in 1827.  Darby invented the doctrine claiming there were not one, but two "second  comings." This teaching was immediately challenged as unbiblical by other members of the Plymouth Brethren. Samuel P. Tregelles, a noted biblical scholar, rejected Darby's new interpretation as the "height of speculative nonsense". So tenuous was Darby's rapture theory that he had lingering doubts about it as late as 1843. However, this theory has survived and flourished.

As a result of the rapture all nonbelievers, liberal Christians and Catholics will be left behind. 144,000 Jews converted to Christianity will oppose the evil hosts of the anti-Christ. The 144,000 will also evangelise those left behind. There will be a climactic battle of Armageddon and at the end of the seven years of the tribulation Jesus  will return and establish his kingdom in the millennium! (His 2nd Second  Coming!)

There is more — but this summary gives a flavour of Darby’s dispensationalist fantasy. I spent three years studying theology at postgraduate University level and never heard of these crackpot ideas. The worrying thing is that Darby’s ideas are taken seriously as the rationale behind Christian Zionism.

Darby’s predictions of the end times excited dispensationalists in 1948 when  the state of Israel was founded! One writer, Hal Lindsey, predicted the Second Coming would be within 40 years but revised his theory after  1998!

These beliefs cannot just be rejected out of hand because they form a very popular and influential stream of thought in American Evangelical  Christianity. The influence comes through Darby’s own “Schofield Reference Bible” and the “Left Behind” series of books of popular Christian fiction. The “Schofield” bible aims to explain the bible to the lay reader in simple terms but the underlying philosophy is dispensationalism. The “Left Behind” books have sold more than 60 million copies in the US and more than 700 million world-wide. This fiction brainwashes readers in the theology of Darby’s dispensationalism by the Christian Right. In an entertaining manner readers are led to believe that what they are reading is in line with the bible and particularly the Book of Revelation.

President Reagan’s secretary of the interior James Watt was a dispensationist. He allowed drilling for oil in national parks and overturned environmental protection policies because he believed the days of the earth were numbered. Reagan took the advice from Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson seriously and built up the US military for the coming battle of Armageddon.

George W. Bush has these same men as his spiritual advisors and his  reference to an “Axis of Evil” makes one wonder if he too is thinking of a coming Armageddon.

The “Left Behind” books portray the United Nations as an instrument of  the antichrist who is trying to frustrate the will of God. If the war in Iraq was seen as the beginning of the struggle leading up to the rapture and Armageddon then it is easy to see why the concerns of the UN were so lightly brushed off.

The US policy towards Israel and Palestine has been moulded dangerously by dispensationalists. Christian Zionists in Washington have pressurised politicians to minimise the rights of Palestinians and accept  Sharon’s expansionist policies. They believe the Jews alone should possess the land. The end times cannot happen until this takes place. Jews are rightly suspicious of Christian Zionists as they only see the state of Israel as a means to creating the rapture. In aiming for the target of 144,000 converted Jews they have made Jews targets for proselytising. Jews who do not convert will be destroyed in the Second Coming.

The theology of the followers of John Darby will set Jews against Arabs, generate a war with Islam (which is now what they predict Armageddon will be about) and lead to the destruction of Israel. Dispensationalists believe in a bloody world in which few are saved. Mainstream evangelicals on this side of the Atlantic believe in a God who loves Palestinians as much as Jews and who wants Justice for all. Christian Zionist followers of Darby are a dangerous obstacle in the road map to peace that most people of good will want for the Middle East. It seems to me that we must be aware of the influences of dispensationalism and other heresies permeating our churches from American evangelical sources and be ready to challenge them.


(this article was originally published in the December 2005 edition of the Fellowship of the Kingdom Bulletin)

Review of Warren Bardsley “Against the Tide: The Story of Adomnan of Iona”

Book Review:    Warren Bardsley “Against the Tide: The Story of Adomnan of Iona”   Wild Goose Publications Glasgow ISBN : 9781905010240 Price : £8.99

Warren Bardsley, a retired Methodist minister from Lichfield and a member of the Iona community, has written a work of faction about Adomnan (pronounced Adovnaun), the ninth abbot of Iona. Faction is the merger of facts and fiction that is appropriate here as the reliable historical facts from the second half of the seventh century are scarce. This process has been carried out with sensitivity and imagination so the result is both accessible and believable.

As a historical biography it is interesting reconstruction but the the book also has a deeper contemporary angle. The author sees Adomnan's major work, The Law of Innocents, as particularly relevant for today. This law can be seen as a very early form of the Geneva convention and was widely influential in its time. The law was to protect non-combatants in warfare, originally just women but it expanded during the process of drafting to include children and clerics.

Legend has it that the foundation for this law was a traumatic experience in his early life that made Adomnan give a solemn promise to his mother that he would work to protect women during times of conflict.

As well as being Abbot of Iona and a scholar and writer he was also a persuasive politician and diplomat shown through his persuasion of clan chiefs and kings in Ireland and northern Britain to accept and implement his law.

This was the time, after the Synod of Whitby, when the Celtic church was under pressure to conform to the authority of Rome specifically in regard to the issues of the tonsure and the date of Easter. Bardsley's book also considers the diplomatic skills that Adomnan possessed as he worked with the tension of these strongly held convictions in his community and church.

But this book is not just a historical reconstruction of a time when the monasteries were major players in the political world. Throughout the author reflects on the contemporary parallels in the church and world of our time. As with all Iona Community based spirituality the principles of these ancient Celtic texts are linked to the contemporary political agenda. The book contains a liturgy used at Faslane Trident missile base citing Adomnan's law to condemn weapons of mass destruction.

Each chapter contains a reconstruction of Adomnan's life and a reflection relating the issues raised to the present. Some of the chapters also contained a short imaginary dialogue between contemporaries about Adomnan. These were less convincing and I thought added little to the book.

I recommend this book as an easy to read introduction to the complexities of life of the distant past with deep resonances for our contemporary age. The royalties from this book are going to the Iona communities “Growing Hope Appeal”.

(This review first appeared in the Spectrum journal in 2007)