Sky Is Red: Discerning the Signs of the Times, The

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 1998 by Jones, Alan

The Sky Is Red: Discerning the Signs of the Times. By Kenneth Leech. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997. 279 pp. L13.95 (paper).

"We stand on volcanic not solid ground" (quoting Berdyaev, p. 188). This is a disturbing book by a disturbed man. It is disturbingly irritating. It is disturbingly challenging: irritating, because of its occasional whining arrogance, judgmentalism, and inconsistencies; challenging, because Leech's agenda is accurate and occasionally his judgments hit home. He needs enemies and he clings to conflict like a drowning man. This reader found himself in agreement and disagreement with the author almost on every page because Leech is high on discernment and low on solutions when it comes to the signs of the times. Leech is right when he says, "at the heart of the Christian task as we approach the fin de siecle is the work of discernment, diakrisis" (p. 128). It's a pity, therefore, that his presentation is often unbalanced.

Kenneth Leech and I share similar backgrounds. We are about the same age, shared similar training, were influenced by the same books and heroes, and still (if reluctantly) describe ourselves as Anglo-Catholics and traditionalists. We share many of the same passions and convictions. He's appalled with the "professionalization" of the clergy and the reduction of religion to therapy. We agree that the fate of the soul and the fate of society are intertwined. "While depression is often associated directly and exclusively with personal distress, my experience leads me to the belief that depression is increasingly a social, and rational response to the conflict and upheavals within the culture" (p. 89). He has sine things to say cz)out sexuality and his analysis of fundamentalism is masterly. We agree that the pivotal issue is power and its relation to the centrality of worship and the celebration of the Kingdom of God. Leech writes, "As a theologian, I believe that my primary theological task is praise and prayer" (p. 165). And, "The proclamation that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, the vision of a transformed society--the Kingdom of God-and the commitment to work with the incarnate, crucified and risen Christ to achieve it, through thE power cf the Spirit and nourished by word and Eucharist, is the Gospel. There is no other" (p. 139).

Where we disagree (and wish we didn't) is in the realm of politics. We both started out on the left. Leech is still a committed Socialist. I abandoned Socialism years ago simply because the Left I encountered as a young priest was racist and bigoted. I found that the sin of the right may well be greed but the sin of the left is no less deadly, envy. Socialists are good at redistributing wealth but poor at generating it. Leech nails me on page 80: "There are those liberals who have drifted to a right-wing position through lack of credible alternatives." I have drifted to the center because I see no alternative. Leech doesn't offer one. What I hope and work for is a wholesale reimagining of politics without the tired rhetoric. I kept saying to myself, after reading yet another description of poverty, unemployment, displacement and homelessness, ")es, it's awful but what would Leech do? Politically, how would he press his claims? What kind of revolutionary is he? And when we have blown up the existing order, what will be left? The response to poverty is a gospel imperative, but what response? How is it shaped?"

Leech's ideological enemy is unnuanced Capitalism. Its evil twins were and are Thatcher and Reagan. Its lazy, consumerist supporters are, of course, Americans, and its weak and pathetic opponents are bishops and other church leaders. Bishops tend to be idiots and the US a cesspool of error. The towers of Michigan Avenue in Chicago "stare aggressively and insolently across the lake at the wastes of the devastated South Side," (p. 151-152) is a typical example of the rhetoric. The USA comes in for a lot of (igs, especially our interest in "spirituality`'. He quotes, of all people Graham Leonard, the former and unconscious Bishop of London, as hearing a lot of us talking about prayer but never seeing any of us on our knees. It's true, an interest in spirituality can be yet another way of avoiding an encounter with the living God, but then so can almost anything including Leech's self-righteousness. Anything (including the poor and the oppressed) can become a project of the ego. Leech likes being on the margin but to have a margin there have to be some people guarding the center-people one can conveiently despise. He insists that we take modern knowledge (including the insights of modern psychology) seriously and yet questions those movements which pro)mote personal wholeness, imler peace, and enhanced consciousness. He admits that they may be desirable goals but insists that these are not what Christian faith is about. Well, not entirely; but....

The major weakness of the book lies in its analysis of politics (and the absence of any substantial discussion of economics). Capitalism is a downright evil There is no appreciation of its various forms (democratic, Mafia, and unbridled-to name a few) or of` its correspondence to something basic and even good in human nature. There is a great deal of information and analysis in the book: which is depressing but no appreciation of the genuinely tragic. For example, it may well be that considerations of freedom with those of equality will never be resolved. Leech is weak on civic responsibilities and, like many left-wing intellectuals, is patronizing to those with whom he claim, to stand in solidarity. He gives short shrift to the communitarians und to Amitai Etzioni in particular Etzioni does not ignore "rights," (as Leech cllaims) but correctly critiques the upwardly spiraling increase of socalled rights without reference to responsibilities.