andygoodliff

A tribute to Brian Haymes (from Sean Winter)

Baptists can be a rough bunch: sometimes passionate; not always given to nuance or sophistication; an often strange mix of the deeply conservative and the deeply radical. In the midst of all of the spiritual vitality, ecclesial complexity, and ecumenical obstinacy that marks out much of Baptist life, Brian Haymes, who has died, was class.

 

He was the product of an extraordinary generation of Surrey (Sutton), suburban Baptist upbringing, part of a family related (if I recall correctly) to John Le Carre (whose spy novels betray regular acquaintance with Baptist chapel life). Brian trained for ministry at Bristol Baptist College at a young age (one of Len Champion's 'men') which prepared him for life-long ministry within and for British Baptists. Two things stood at the core of that ministry: the importance of preaching and the need for a constant recovery and ongoing interrogation of what being Baptist actually meant.

 

Brian was a remarkable preacher, perhaps the best I have heard with any regularity, with a voice that somehow managed to convey intelligence, authority, and deep pastoral sensitivity at the same time. There was a tremor, just at the edge of the voice that may well have been cultivated but that held your attention. But what was so compelling was the way that the full weight of his intellectual and communicative gifts were offered in service of conveying the mystery of the gospel in ways that connected it to the deepest complexities of human experience. That is as preaching should be.

 

And Brian was a quiet but consistent advocate for a vision of Baptist identity that, frankly, has helped to keep many of us Baptist over the years and that, again frankly, he came to fear was being lost.

 

He did it all with grace and humility, with a certain patrician elegance and a wry sense of humour. I initially encountered him as a senior leader in Baptist life, sought him out as a mentor, shared membership of the same church for a while, and came to regard him as a friend. In my own journey there are a small handful of people that have been a constant reminder to me of why I remain an ordained Baptist, and Brian was one of them. He was always very clear that the Christian life was a matter of 'seeing in a glass darkly', with much that is mystery and far less than we would want that is certain, but he now sees 'face to face'. Thanks to God for a life that was lived 'worthy of the gospel of Christ.'

On the news that Brian Haymes has died

Brian Haymes (b.1940) was one of the most important English Baptist ministers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. He pastored 4 churches (from 1965 to 2005 in Bristol, Exeter, Nottingham and London), with a period as principal of 2 our Baptist Colleges (Northern and Bristol), and was a President of the Baptist Union (1993). In addition to his written work, both individually and as part of a small writing group, he offered Baptists some wise and important thinking about their identity (see here), which deserves still to be read.

A passionate Baptist (and at the same time a committed ecumenicist) he argued for the importance of a Baptist way of being church, which he felt was in danger of being lost. He saw small glimmers of hope among those that continue to offer theological thought and offer his encouragement. 

Brian's place among Baptists was recognised in 2011 when he was given a festchrift, Questions of Identity, edited by two of his friends Ruth Gouldbourne and Anthony R. Cross, and with many more friends contributing, including Paul Fiddes, Faith Bowers, Alan Kreider, Robert Parkinson, and Sean Winter. The title was play on a small influential booklet called A Question of Identity, which had been a set of talks he had given for the 1986 ministers conference in the Yorkshire Baptist Association. (The booklet was reprinted with a new coda in the Journal of Baptist Theology in Context in 2021.) 

I did not know Brian well, but several years ago he very kindly invited me to his home and offered me books from his library. Many I took were Baptist related, each with his name written inside. He stayed in contact, sending emails of encouragement to press on with the bits of work I was doing.

In the last few months he was working on a manuscript which brought together many of his essays and articles into one place. It will now be published posthumously, and one of the best ways to honour his legacy will be to take the time to hear his voice — bold, clear, coherent — speak to us again.

Baptist Union: Does the Future (Still) Have a Denomination?

Over the last year I've written several pieces that seek to help the Baptist Union as it has faced difficult conversations around ministerial rules and same sex marriage.

The latest piece is for the Baptist Ministers' Journal entitled 'Does the Future (Still) Have a Denomination?' out this month.

It argues for 5 Core Principles that churches, colleges and associations might gather around going forward: Jesus, Scripture, Baptism [and History], Mission, and the Holy Spirit.

Let me know if you would like to read it. 

It is supported in part by an (open-access) article in the Baptist Quarterly: 'English Baptists Confessing the Faith in the Twentieth Century'

and also two other open access articles:

— 'Baptists and the Bible in the Last 100 Years', Journal for Baptist Theology in Context Issue 9 (2023)

— 'The Politics of Disagreement in the Body of Christ', Journal of European Baptist Studies  23.1 (2023)

 

A Sermon for Good Friday

This week I was reading an article. Robert Colls writes about Westoe Methodist church in South Shields where he went as a child and young adult in the 1960s, and which closed in 2022.[1] He reflects on the ‘world within a world’, where a vibrant community life centred around the worship of Jesus took place. He reflects on Sunday mornings for worship and Saturday evenings, his parents dancing, 'where in the break you got a home-made supper that proved the parable of the loaves and the fishes.' He reflects on being part of the Boys Brigade company — 'Silver pips, stripes and badges came and went for all these things, but the cadences of the Bible stayed. They come easy to me now. Best of all, there was lots of football and cricket, although the kit was something else.' Older, he joined the Young People’s Fellowship. 'If you wanted to meet the girls, you had to go church.' He says 'The YPF was important in ways I’m still trying to figure out . . .  Sundays provided the venue. Bible and hymnbook provided the wonder. Local preaching provided the ‘oracy.’ The minister provided leadership, and the books.' He says, ‘Clubs’ and ‘squashes’, ‘fellowships’ and ‘sisterhoods’, ‘Packs’ and ‘leagues’, choirs and Sunday schools, Communion and ‘contact’ groups — the names said it all in a common round that brought people into regular and informal union.' He says, 'we talked about Jesus Christ almost as if he was a member away at university (long hair, at Oxford, probably).' The article is called The Death of the Church. He says the closing of churches ‘leaves a gap in who we are . . . Scanning a screen is not the same as belonging to anything as complex as a church.'

Last Friday, I took the train to Streatham in South London. This is where I group up. We lived in Thornton Heath, but church was Streatham Baptist Church, known by everyone who went as Lewin Road. The church was a second home. Being back in the building — which had a big redevelopment after we moved as a family to Stevenage in 1992 — I could still remember places I sat in a service; where a door and steps down into a small garden area had been; where an outside staircase that went up to the room I went into for Sunday school. The hall was still the same where I attended playgroup as a toddler, and 7ups as a junior aged child. Being in the building also brought to my mind a community of faces, who had been part of the congregation, who had been part of my life, a community of generations, from 0 to 90 — so many names. My life, my faith, owes a lot to that church, in ways I can only recognise now. I could tell a similar story about the church I joined in Stevenage, Bunyan Baptist, in which I spent my teenage years, and early adulthood. There again was a community that loved me, encouraged me, took an interest in me, prayed for me. I can tell another story of the last thirteen years being here, at Belle Vue.

Today is Good Friday, why am I sharing this? Partly because it has been on mind this week, but more importantly it reminds me of the power of the cross. The cross of Jesus is the beginning of the church. From the death of Jesus comes something new. And we see it in the words of Jesus to his mother and the beloved disciple. The last time we met Jesus’ mother was in Cana. Jesus said then ‘My hour has not yet come.’ On the cross his hour has come. If the water into wine was the first sign of Jesus, the cross is the supreme sign [2], to be equalled only by what happens on Sunday morning. The supreme sign of God’s love for the world and for his only Son being given for the salvation of the world.

Ahead of his arrest, Jesus had said, ‘when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.’ Here at the cross he is drawing a new community together. Here on the cross, Jesus is the vine, and he is creating branches which will bear fruit. A new family is born at the cross who share the same blood, the blood of the cross [3] The impact of Jesus’ words, are that the beloved disciple receives this woman as his own. This has been the good news from the beginning. Jesus comes to his own, and to all who receive him, they become children of God, born not of natural descent, but born of God. The community of Jesus — the church is where we are thrown together by Jesus and freed to call these people whom we have no natural affinity, nothing in common, ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’[4]

This is the work of Jesus, the work the Father gave him. This is what Jesus says is now finished, It is the creation of a community of love, a new family of grace and truth, a fellowship centred on abiding, receiving, living. Its source is Jesus, and its power is the cross. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground a dies, says Jesus, It remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds.

I was speaking to someone from Lewin Road this week. Someone I’ve not seen in over thirty years. She told me how her family came to the church. A few years later, when she was not even ten years old, her mum died. Afterwards her father struggled to cope. One day she came home from school, to find the police there, her father was having to be committed, and they asked her did she have anywhere to go? (This was the 1960s!) She ended up going to the home of a woman called Lois, by then in her sixties. And later she was fostered by a couple in the church. This young girl was loved, as a daughter, as a sister: from that hour she was received into a home. This was salvation in its fullest sense, a kind of heaven on earth. She went on being welcomed at Lois’ home, and later when she was older, married, and had a child of her own, she would visit Lois with her own daughter. Lois then much frailer, then in her eighties.

That’s the gospel. That’s the power of the cross. That’s why we call Good Friday ‘Good.’ The Good Shepherd lays down his life for us. The Good Shepherd who knows our name. The Good Shepherd who says, ‘here is your son’, ‘here is your mother’, ‘here is your brother’, ‘here is your sister.’

 

[1] Robert Colls, 'The Death of a Church', New Statesman 22-March - 4 April 2024

[2] David Ford, Gospel of John (Baker Academic, 2021)

[3] Timothy Radcliffe, Seven Last Words (Burnes and Oates, 2006)

[4] William Willimon, Thank God's Friday (Abingdon, 2004)

Book Review: Conversations by the Sea: Reflections on Discipleship, Ministry and Mission by Andrew Rollinson

Andrew R. Rollinson, Conversations by the Sea: Reflections on Discipleship, Ministry and Mission (Handsel Press, 2023), 194 pp. £10.00

Reviewed by Rev Dr Paul Goodliff.

This is a wonderfully rich, eminently readable and wise book by one of the most experienced and gifted of Baptist mInisters, Andrew Rollinson. After pastorates in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Edinburgh, Andrew was Ministry Advisor for the Baptist Union of Scotland, overlapping for much of the time with me while I was Head of Ministry at the Baptist Union of Great Britain (which meant we often 'chewed the cud' together on matters ministerial), and finally a fruitful ministry in St Andrews before retirement (although I can hardly imagine Andrew 'retiring'!)

Structured as meditations around John 21, each chapter takes a different scene from that narrative, and takes a look at matters as diverse as discipleship, resourcing a missional community, leadership, unity and failure. This is the accumulated experience and wisdom of half a century of ministry, and we are all the richer for it.

If I take a sample of the voices which speak into this book, you'll see how broad are Andrew's interests and how wide his reading: Colin Gunton (oh, hurrah! and his Bampton Lectures, The One, the Three and the Many to boot,) Bonhoeffer, Eugene Peterson, Michel Foucault and Miroslav Volf. Here is the evidence of a pastor who has continued reading widely throughout his ministry — a vital resource for the feeding of the pastor and an almost absolute necessity for every minister, both in its continuation and its breadth.

It is also a deeply theological book, written by one who has engaged throughout his ministry with the great themes (and writers) of theology. It is by no means a purely pietist meditation on discipleship and ministry, but Andrew does not shy away in embarrassment from the evangelical giants of the spiritual life — Richard Baxter or A W Tozer, for instance — or those from wider traditions, such as Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, or Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. Here is evidence of a truly ecumenical spirit at work, ready to draw from the treasury of wisdom, wherever its roots may lie.

I found the chapters on leadership and power; ministry starvation and its remedy; ministry failure and restoration and self-awareness and self-deception in ministry of particular significance. I wish every pastor might read them and benefit from them. Their ministries would be safer and richer for it.

I hope that Andrew continues to read and write in retirement for many years, but meanwhile we have Conversations by the Sea: a book that ought to be on the reading list of every newly-ordained minister and minister in formation, and near the top of the list of books that more experienced ministers read in their sabbatical (if not sooner!) in order to feed both mind and soul. This is, in short, one of the best books on ministry and discipleship I have read in many a long year.

12 Books for 2024

 

1. Mortal Goods by Ephraim Radner (Baker)
2. Passions of the Soul by Rowan Williams (Bloomsbury)
3. Resurrection and Renewal by Murray Rae (Baker)
4. Lamb of the Free by Andrew Remington Rilera (Cascade)
5. Beyond Justification by Douglas Campbell and John DePue (Cascade)
6. Romans by Beverly Gaventa (WJK)
7. The Fire and the Cloud: A Biblical Christology by Chris Green (Baylor)
8. God's Patience Our Work by Ben Fulford (SCM)
9. The Broken Body by Sarah Coakley (Wiley-Blackwell)
10. Revolution and Resistance: English Baptist Life in the 17th Century edited by Karen Smith and Stephen Copson (Baptist Historical Society)
11. Theologies from the Inside Out: Critical Conceptions of Pregnancy and Birth edited by Karen O'Donnell and Claire Watkins (SCM)
12. The Contestable Church: Dissent, Democracy, and Baptist Ecclesiology by Christopher Schelin (Mercer)

X Marks the Spot: A Christmas Sermon

Earlier this year Tim and I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. You might have read it too or seen the Muppet version. I remember as a child having it on cassette tape. A young boy called Jim ends up with a map that identifies an island where a pirate’s treasure is buried. It’s a great story, and so for those who don’t know it, I won’t say anything more which might spoil it. Treasure Island was one of the first stories written where there is a map with an ‘X’ that marks the spot. Treasure maps always now have an X that marks the spot.

There’s something in our imagination that likes the idea of a map leading to hidden treasure. I wonder how you’d feel if someone this morning gave you a map and said you need to follow this to find your presents? But more than presents, I wonder what is, or who is, the treasure you are searching for? What is it in life that you most want? What promised treasure would make you go to any length to find it?

The Christmas story is a story of treasure being found.

We might think of the Old Testament as like a map, a map with an X that marks the spot. The story of Israel is a map of promises: a child will be born — a prince of peace (Isa 9.6); a new king from the line of king David (Jer 33.15); a new shepherd of God’s people (Ezek 34.23); a new prophet like Moses (Deut 18.18); a ruler who will come from Bethlehem (Micah 5.2); a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven (Dan 7.13); a king riding a donkey (Zec 9.9); a servant who will bring God’s justice (Is 42.1); and a baby born to a virgin, and given the name Immanuel (Isa 7:14). God leaves clues to this treasure. It’s a map that wasn’t a straightforward to follow, but makes more sense after the treasure is found.

The Christmas story includes magi or wise men, who make a long journey from the east following a star — this is their map — they cross deserts and rivers, they travel through cold nights and scorching days, seeking the ‘x’ — the final destination of the star, believing it will lead them to someone to be treasured, to be worshipped. ‘Go and search carefully’ for the treasure they are told by one person they meet on their journey. They wonder where the star will stop. The ‘x’ ends up being in Bethlehem.

The Christmas story also includes shepherds who aren’t looking for anything, just going about their business, watching their sheep, perhaps warming themselves by a fire on a cold hillside. But angels appear and give them a map, a destination, and a sign to know when they’ve found the treasure. ‘You will find’ the angels say talking about the treasure. And off the shepherds hurry with their map.

God brings his greatest treasure, from heaven all the way to tiny Bethlehem. This most wondrous gift, full of grace and glory and truth, wrapped in cloth and laid in a manger. X marks the spot. Angels longed to see, prophets searched to find and after all the waiting, following, and searching God’s treasure is now revealed.

God’s treasure is nothing less than God himself. All this following and searching leads to God in human flesh. This is the great joy for all people including you and me. This is God’s gift of peace to the earth. This is Immanuel. This is the X on the map. Jesus Christ, or in Greek Xristos — the first letter being a ‘X’. Some people like to shorten Christmas to ‘Xmas’ and for other people this gets them really cross, and they say ‘its Christmas not Xmas.’ But in the letter X we are reminded that in what we are celebrating today is the greatest treasure the world has ever and will ever know. This is where it all leads, to this place, to this day, to this moment: a child lying in a manger in Bethlehem. This child who is the ‘Christ’ — the promised Saviour, the glory of God among us. The birth of Jesus marks the spot 'where God determines to be with us for ever, come what may. This is the heart of it all.' This is mystery of it all. This is wonder of it all.

What do you do with this treasure? Finding the X on the map, finding the treasure buried, is not the end, it’s a new beginning. The journey doesn’t end with Christmas, it goes on, in a new way. In his famous poem about the Magi, T. S. Eliot ends with the magi returning home, but no longer at ease, because finding Jesus had changed them. They were different people. This treasure has the ability to change our lives. In finding Jesus, we have been made rich beyond measure; rich not in terms of money, but rich in love, rich in mercy, rich in a different way of living. X marks the spot. The spot where God says here is my greatest treasure, now what?

May you know the riches of Jesus. May you find the treasure of God. And of course let me wish you a very happy Xmas!

British Baptist Theologians 24: Richard L. Kidd

DPhil 1987 (Oxford): Human fallenness : a comparative study in the theologies of Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner

Tutor, Northern Baptist College, 1986-94
Principal, Northern Baptist College, 1994-2009
Co-Principal, Northern Baptist Learning Community, 2009-13

Editor, British Journal of Theological Education, 1994-98

Publications

'The Christian Hope', Fraternal 185 (1979)

'The Call to Be' in A Call to Mind: Baptist Essays Towards a Theology of Commitment (Baptist Union, 1981)

'The Documents of Covenant Love' in Bound To Love: The Covenant Basis of Baptist Life and Mission (Baptist Union, 1985)

'Christianity and Culture (2) Science: Religion and Science: One World orTwo?', Fraternal 219 (July 1987)

'Creation: the How and Why?', Theology Themes 1.1 (Spring 1992)

'One Jesus: Many Faces', Theology Themes 1.2 (Autumn 1992)

'The Holy Spirit and Liberation', Theology Themes 11.3 (Spring 1993)

'Out of the Depth', Theology Themes 2.1 (Autumn 1993)

'The Churches' Response to Disability', Theology Themes 3.1 (Autumn 1994)

'Why 'Covenant' Remains a Crucial Word for Baptists', Theology Themes 4.1 (Autumn 1995)

'Baptism and the Identity of Christian Communities' in Reflections on the Water: Understanding God and the World through the Baptism of Believers edited by Paul S. Fiddes (Smyth and Helwys, 1996)

(ed.) Something to Declare: A Study of the Declaration of Principle (Whitley, 1996)

(ed.), On the Way of Trust (Whitley, 1997)

'Baptists and Theologies of Liberation' in Doing Theology in a Baptist Way edited by Paul S. Fiddes (Whitley, 2000)

with Graham Sparkes, God and the Art of Seeing: Visual Resources for a Journey of Faith (Smyth and Helwys, 2003)

'Spirituality in Suffering: A Defining Experience' in Under the Rule of Christ: Dimensions of Baptist Spirituality edited by Paul S. Fiddes (Smyth and Helwys, 2008)

Memory and Communion' in Baptists and the Communion of Saints: A Theology of Covenanted Disciples by Paul Fiddes, Brian Haymes and Richard Kidd (Baylor, 2014)

'Hope, Strangeness and Interconnections' in Baptists and the Communion of Saints: A Theology of Covenanted Disciples by Paul Fiddes, Brian Haymes and Richard Kidd (Baylor, 2014)

'On Realizing "The Dance"' in For the Sake of the Church: Essays in Honour of Paul S. Fiddes edited by Anthony Clarke (Centre for Baptist History and Heritage Studies Vol 3; Regent's Park College, 2014)

with Rosemary Kidd, 'Freeset', Baptist Ministers' Journal 331 (July 2016)

'An Ongoing Apology' in Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition across the Black Atlantic edited by Anthony Reddie, Wale Hudson-Roberts and Gale Richards (Paternoster, 2017)

'Bringing our Concerns' in Rhythms of Faithfulness: Essays in Honor of John E. Colwell edited by Andy Goodliff and Paul Goodliff (Pickwick, 2018)

'The Art of Seeing', Journal of European Baptist Studies 19.2 (2019)

'Perceiving an Absent Presence: The Visual World of Paul Nash' in Communion, Covenant and Creativity: An Approach to the Communion of Saints through the Arts by Paul Fiddes, Brian Haymes and Richard Kidd (Cascade, 2020)

'Telling Little, Revealing Much: Transcendence Through the Art of Mark Rothko' in Communion, Covenant and Creativity: An Approach to the Communion of Saints through the Arts by Paul Fiddes, Brian Haymes and Richard Kidd (Cascade, 2020)

'Hiddenness' in Communion, Covenant and Creativity: An Approach to the Communion of Saints through the Arts by Paul Fiddes, Brian Haymes and Richard Kidd (Cascade, 2020)

'Intimations of Transcendence: A Legacy of the "Scottish Colourists"' in Re-Membering the Body: The Witness of History, Theology and the Arts in Honour of Ruth Gouldbourne edited by Anthony R. Cross and Brian Haymes (Pickwick, 2021)

New Books on Baptist Theology/History

2023 is looking a good year for Baptist theology and history with four new books to look out for:

British Baptist Biblical Scholars 12: Helen Paynter

Director, Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence, Bristol Baptist College

 

Publications

___ Reduced Laughter: Seriocomic Features and their Functions in the Book of Kings (Brill, 2016)

___ 'Ahab: Heedless Father, Sullen Son: Humour and Intertextuality in 1 Kings 21', Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 2017 vol. 41(4): 451-474.

___ Immigration and the Church: Reflecting faithfully in our generation (Grove, 2017)

___ ‘Revenge for my Two Eyes’: Talion and Mimesis in the Samson narrative', Biblical Interpretation, 2018 vol. 26: 133-157.

___ 'Participation and goal: Creation and the church’ in Rhythms of Faithfulness: Essays in Honor of John Colwell edited by Andy Goodliff and Paul Goodliff (Pickwick, 2018)

___ ‘Make yourself at home’: Tensions and Paradoxes of hospitality in dialogue with the Bible', Bible and Critical Theory, 2018 vol 14(1):42-61.

___ Dead and Buried: Attending to the voice of the victim in the Old Testament and today: Towards an ethical reading of the Old Testament texts of violence. Oxford: Regents Park College, Whitley Publications, 2018

___ The Strange World of Elijah and Elisha (Grove, 2019)

___ God of violence yesterday, God of love today? Wrestling honestly with the Old Testament. BRF, 2019.

___ 'The Gadarene swine and the conquest of Jericho: an intertextual reading',Pacific Journal of Theological Research, 2019 vol. 14(2): 13-24.

___ 'Porous Borders and Textual Ambiguity: Why ancient Israel is no model for modern nationalism', Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2020 vol.20(1): 117-130.

___ The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So: Why you don’t have to submit to domestic abuse and coercive control. BRF, 2020

___ 'Towards a Thick Description of Biblical Violence’ in Bible and Violence: A Thick Description edited by Helen Paynter and M. Spalione (Sheffield Phoenix, 2020)

___ Telling Terror in Judges 19: Rape and Reparation for the Levite’s Wife (Routledge, 2020)

___ 'Who is the Wife Whose Virtue is Tested in Numbers 5?' in Attending to the Margins: Essays in Honour of Stephen Finamore edited by Helen Paynter and Petter Hatton (Oxford Centre for Baptist Studies, 2022)

___ ‘Redeeming the Prostitute? Babylon and her fate in Revelation.’ In Violent Biblical Texts: New Perspectives edited by Trevor Laurence and Helen Paynter (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2022).

___ ‘Land, Seed and Promise. Jacob as Mise en Abyme to Israel.’ In Trevor Laurence and Helen Paynter (eds),Violent Biblical Texts: New Perspectives edited by Trevor Laurence and Helen Paynter (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2022)

___ ‘Apologists and Appropriators: Protestant Christian reckoning with biblical violence.’ In Violence and Peace in Sacred Texts edited by Maria Power and Helen Paynter (Palgrave McMillan, 2022)

___ ‘Erasing the troubling teens? What happens to the conquest of Canaan when the non-Deuteronomistic biblical writers tell the story?’ In Map or Compass?: The Bible on Violence edited by Michael Spalione and Helen Paynter (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2022)

___ 'That the Next Generation Might Remember: The Conquest of Canaan in Israel’s Collective Memory and in the Psalms', Journal of Baptist Theology in Context 8 (March 2023)