The life and death of Barry Jones

Despite his doubts, Jones eloquently describes himself as a Christian:

I define myself as a sceptical Christian fellow traveller of the school of Pascal, a follower of Jesus, hovering on the margins between religious experience and aesthetics: an ecclesiastical voluptuary transformed by the impact of music, architecture, liturgy and text.

The emphasis here is on the connection between sublime experience and spiritual realities. Jones’s internal religiosity seems dependent on elevation to counter the scepticism; his external religiosity is shaped by a desire to provide that richness for others as well. In an interview on the television talk-show, Talking Heads, Jones summarised his political vision in religious language:

[M]y commitment, really, is to adapt something that Jesus said. I'm very much committed to the concept of the abundant life. And that was what drew me into politics. To take people out of poverty, but not just material poverty. Intellectual poverty. Spiritual poverty. Aesthetic poverty. All those things. That's got to be the central point of our politics.

I was intrigued by this book (though I hardly expect it to strike a chord with everyone), and felt a strong thought-world connection to its author (whom I’ve never met).

But as I read I was increasingly aware of a difference between us (and it’s not just a rather large number of IQ points). Like Jones, I’m horrified by death and baffled by injustice. But the crucifixion of Jesus is for me an incredibly liberating event, an answer to the otherwise insoluble problem of justice, where wrong must be addressed and atoned, and yet love and mercy must prevail.

Barry Jones’ dread of death and his horror at human injustice seems to lead him away from the cross as the focus of religious life, in search of something more experiential and rapturous which is nearly always elusive. Were he to pursue a rigorous theology of the cross, as so many reformers have before him, I wonder whether he would find a greater sense of certainty to ground the religious instincts that drive and nourish him.