England are in the Euros’ semi-finals. Apologies to Scottish and Welsh readers but I cannot help but link today’s blog with that fact. Of course, England being England, they’ve not made their route this far easy. Southgate and the team have come under heavy pressure particularly about their performances. Pundits who never made it to an international final and in most cases not even the semi-finals who have chalked up some dire games to their credit too have been quick to jump in on the bandwagon and criticise the team.
I just saw a Facebook post where the person claimed that it was only in 1996 when we had a team that played really well, united the country so that the nation stood still. That was the year when we first sung about “Football coming home.” Did you know that it’s coming up to 30 years since we first sung about thirty years of hurt? It certainly was a summer of scintillating football but here’s the thing, most of that football was between other teams. The person’s memory is deceiving them. England didn’t play that great and probably would not have made it so far without home advantage,
In reality, the team struggled to a draw with Switzerland and the game against Scotland was only made memorable by Paul Gascoigne’s wonder goal. We turned on the performance for a 4-1 win against the Dutch in the final group game. In the quarter finals, we basically got through on penalties because of a dodgy decision that ruled Spain’s goal offside. It was only in that final game against Germany that we tuned on the performance. The performance and result were similar to Italia’90 hence Gary Lineker’s famous quote.
“Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and in the end, the Germans win”
Not so much anymore of course. However, the point is that there wasn’t this golden moment when the England team were brilliant through a tournament but just unlucky. England have frequently got through to the later stages without exciting, just as other teams have done . England frequently turn on the style in the big games and have consistently then lost.
Whether it’s football, politics or Church and spiritual life, we habitually misremember. We love to create myths about golden eras to look back on. It’s the third one that I want to talk more about.
We can create the myth of a golden age when our nation was Christian and the church was thriving. The reality is that whilst there have been times of revival, these don’t necessarily coincide with what we remember nostalgically as a golden era. Often it is simply the case that we chose different idols then. I may mourn the death of morality in the wider culture and a failure of the Church to stand firm on crucial issues. However, I do not want a return to the days when Afro-Caribbeans’ were treated as servants, looked down on as second class, driven out of and even wilfully excluded from churches.
We may remember a golden period in our own church’s history and certainly there may have been more fruitful times, yet we may not be aware of the specific challenges at the time or we may even have missed how failure to deal with specific problems and postponement of tricky conversations actually contributed to the problems we face now.
By the way, it is equally possible that we can risk creating a myth about a golden age now. WE need to be careful that we neither harp back to past glories, looking through rose tinted glasses at the past. This handicaps the ability of the church to serve well and be fruitful now. We also need to be careful that we don’t leave the next generation with the myth of a golden age in the early 21st century so that we restrict the church of tomorrow..
Faithroots 