Simon Says

The victory of schooling?

2011-11-01T16:16:00.001Z

It wasn’t that many decades ago when the landscape was clear. Schooling was for the majority – to equip them for their social position and economic role in society. Education was for the few - to make them the cultured and knowledgeable masters, if not of the universe at least of the empire. By their own efforts and by associating together, often in the non-conformist churches, ordinary people claimed education as their right too. Whatever the faults of the education reforms of the inter-war and immediate post-war periods, it might have been thought that things were moving in that direction. Melissa Benn’s excellent descriptive and analytic School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education exposes what a mess we find ourselves in, particularly after the efforts of the current and two previous governments.

My own conclusion, which has been reinforced by the book, is that schooling has won and education has lost, at least in the medium term. England (the Scottish and Welsh devolved governments may prove wiser) seems to have set itself on a course where we will end up with the majority going to schools which are run by for-profit bodies but paid for by the state. At the other end of the scale a few will go to schools run by non-profit foundations (such as the current independent schools) paid for privately by high fees. There will, of course, be some schools that fall somewhere between the extremes.

The schools for the majority will concentrate on useful subjects (that is useful to employers) with measurable results and with a regime that will emphasise unquestioning compliance. If you thought it is bad now, you should look closely at what some ‘flagship’ schools are doing. Financially, they will be squeezed by the desire for providers to pay dividends to their shareholders and the state’s desire to pay as little as possible. An education will be offered by the better independent schools where it will be possible to have resources for music, drama, art and sports; to learn religion and poetry and so on. In other words, all those areas and interactions that enrich our lives and enable us to be whole persons. Already such schools charge fees above the level of most families’ total annual income and that disparity will only increase in the future.

So the future begins to look like the past, though without children suffering from rickets – except that a recent news report revealed that rickets was re-emerging as a childhood disease in England. Shame on us.

A symbol for the church – solid historic building or transient camp?

2011-10-28T09:04:00.001+01:00

The 400th anniversary of the King James Version, as it seems we must now call it, has reminded us of several aspects of the translation. Not least of these was the production of a version that would support the Church of England against dissenting forms of church. (Also, strangely given the love of the KJV by conservative Christians in the USA, support for the divine right of kings.) Thus, the Greek ekklesia was translated as ‘church’, which people associated with the structured, hierarchical Church of England, rather than its root meaning of assembly or gathering, as often used by other Christians. The word church won out and now appears in most modern versions which makes it very difficult to think of Jesus or St Paul speaking about anything other than a particular organisational structure in a building.

The surrounding of St Paul’s by the Occupy camp makes me ask which is the better symbol for the church – the wonderful historic building or the messy transient camp? Now let’s be clear, I’m not making any claims for either to be truly representative of the Gospel so it’s not about a tick list of values and actions.

The church sometimes appears to be trapped in its buildings, historic or modern. They seem to have an infinite capacity for consuming resources. They can distort our priorities when we become more concerned about them than what we believe to be God’s mission. They can offer an illusion of protection. Yet they give a sense of seriousness and presence, and sometimes we do use the space creatively.

A protest camp is transient by its nature. It can be moved, either at the will of the participants or the force of the authorities. It can easily spring up somewhere else it is needed. It is vulnerable – not a weakness for those who believe in a God who becomes human. If there is permanency, it lies in fundamental values rather than physical structures.

Our tragedy as Christians is that we only seem able to see church in terms of buildings and organisational structures. We need to recapture the sense of ekklesia in terms of an assembly or gathering of people – more a camp than a building.

Have faith in the city?

2011-10-27T10:07:00.002+01:00

In the course of the massive project that is tidying and rationalising the study (partly in order to make the spare ‘bedroom’ fit for purpose – ie not filled with books), I came across my copy of the 1985 Church of England report ‘Faith in the City’. The focus was on the urban priority areas where people were suffering deprivation and the churches were weak. Popular interest in the report was built up by the anger of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative government. These urban areas are still the most vulnerable, especially in a time of reduction in national and local government spending. We still need to be considering the presence and role of faith in the city.

However, having faith in the city, in a different sense of the word, also raises the question posed by the occupation that has led to the temporary closure of St Paul’s. The Occupy protest is a cry against corporate greed. We are all against corporate greed. Except that it is the generosity of corporate greed that funds many of our church buildings and projects. Every employee of the churches has faith in the city (in the sense of the activities of the square mile) that the stock market will rise and large corporations will pay good dividends. Our pensions depend on it. And with all our pension funds in alarming deficit we need to have a lot of faith.

So it’s not just an issue for St Paul’s whether they put the financial support of their building and their mission above that of the wider challenges of the gospel. An issue that has caused the resignation of Giles Fraser as canon chancellor. It is one for all of us involved in the church. Are we so hopelessly compromised by our buying into a particular economic system that we have no grounds for singing the song that heralded the birth of Jesus – bringing down the powerful, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry, sending the rich empty away?

Or are we about challenging the city with such values? We can’t expect them to pay for us to undermine them. (That’s an issue we are exploring in the MA module I’m tutoring – whether chaplains who are employed by secular bodies are expected to offer individual sticking plasters or a questioning of employment practices.) Are we prepared to take the hit ourselves in our pensions and savings, for past economic success has been clearly related to the effects of corporate greed?

For the people

2011-04-27T20:17:00.001+01:00

I hadn’t visited the People’s History Museum in Manchester for almost 20 years. Whilst I’ve been away it has expanded from its original home in an old pump house that used to supply the city with drinking water to include a modern building alongside.

Its displays trace the struggle for democracy so that all men and women had a vote. It puts to shame a society in which only a minority bother to exercise their right to determine who represents them in national and local government. It also charts the struggle for workers rights from the formation of illegal groups of workers to the establishment of trade unions. These struggles cost people their livelihoods and sometimes their lives. So much that is taken for granted was only obtained at great cost.

The large, colourful banners of the unions, carried in processions and rallies, proclaim their pride in their work and a commitment to unity. They believed that their battles against injustice could only be won by standing together. Their view of the world was communal not individualistic. Not my rights, but our rights.

Among the cartoons displayed from several generations are those which challenge the rich and powerful for not paying their fair share (or any) tax whilst the poor pay the cost – nothing changes.

A kind of motto of the People’s Museum is ‘there have always been ideas worth fighting for’ and its displays illustrate that. Going round them is an exciting and moving experience. It’s also disturbing as I wonder if in this age in England many are so materially comfortable and the rest are so dispirited that the struggle for justice fails to engage us.

No excuse for not owning up

2011-04-14T10:45:00.001+01:00

Shame on the UK that we cannot even take moral responsibility for the horrific behaviour of those who acted in our name in Kenya in the 1950’s. At a time when we are prepared to exercise our military muscle to ‘protect’ people in Lybia from abuse by their government, we wash our hands of horrific behaviour by our colonial administration not that many decades ago.

I had come to know a little of this British behaviour in Kenya from visits there and conversations with Kenyans with whom I worked. However, to say that the reality revealed by recently released documents has shocked me is the understatement of the year. Not just the scale of beatings and killings but the documented torture and castration through to roasting alive. The detail is too disgusting to describe. No one should pretend that the Mau Mau uprising against colonial rule did not produce its own atrocities. That may be the context of the colonial administration’s response but it is not an excuse.

The papers reveal the endemic nature of abuse and that it was condoned and, even, encouraged. The existence of abuse was officially denied and officials who raised concerns were publicly denounced. The paper trail leads out of the colonial administration in Kenya to the government in London.

In the mid-50’s Colonel Arthur Young, an experience police officer and a Christian socialist, was appointed as commissioner of police for Kenya. In a letter to the Governor, forwarded to the Secret Registry of the Ministry for African Affairs, he observed that the Screening Camps (ostensibly for sorting out the active dissidents from innocent bystanders but in fact a dumping ground for anyone who came to official notice) presented a ‘state of affairs so deplorable’ that they should be investigated. Police were diverted from law and order issues to being agents of repression. Africans who suffered from ‘the brutalities that are clearly evident’ had no one to whom they could appeal for justice because the whole colonial structure was complicit. He called for the ‘elementary principles of justice and humanity’ to be observed. In his measured tones it is a damning letter. Young resigned in disgust after eight month’s service. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/52818588/Col-Young-Letter)

Very often people make excuses for not dealing with such things. I’m told that we shouldn’t judge actions in the past by the standards we apply now. This is why Arthur Young is an important witness. His appeal in situ for justice and humanity is the one we would make today. If we fail to name the behaviour of the colonial regime and its agents for what it was, we become complicit. The challenge of Arthur Young and those like him who were prepared to risk opprobrium and loss of job will have fallen on ears equally as deaf as those of the civil servants and politicians in the 1950’s.

I have no idea whether the legal responsibility now lies with the UK government or with the Kenyan government as successor to the colonial administration. I am certain where the moral responsibility lies.

A fragile flower being crushed by heavy agendas

2010-11-15T09:17:00.001Z

The poppy may be persistent in appearing each year but it is a fragile flower. It is not a chunky, robust flower. Its petals are light and open wide. The red petals may be redolent of the bloodshed of battle but its structure speaks of vulnerability.

The Royal British Legion has taken ownership of the poppy as a symbol. The British Legion is a charity which must maximise its income in order to fulfil its objectives. I have strong feelings about a country that sends women and men to be maimed and killed and then fails to take full responsibility. However the question why so much care has to be undertaken by fundraising is another issue. The reality is that many of those we have willed to suffer rely on the work of the British Legion. One must admire the way the marketers of the charity have re-energised their fundraising, particularly under the challenge of newcomers like Hope4Heros who are competing in the same sector. Those former and present members of the armed forces who have protested against the increasing show-biz aspect of remembrance are right and wrong. Quiet reflection does not put money in the bank. Concerts, celebrity endorsements and attention grabbing events do. The red poppy now takes its place with the wristbands and pins of other charities.

There are those who are intent on getting us to accept (or at least not criticise) involvement in Afghanistan and before that in Iraq. To question, the subtle message is, would be to deny the bereaved a sense of noble purpose in death and to say to those who have been terribly maimed in body and mind that it was all for nothing. This says much not just about a cynical ability to manipulate public opinion but about our general paucity of understanding of meaning in living and dying. The red poppy used to legitimate wars.

Remembrance is both passive and active. It is about bringing into the present the things of the past. It is also about reshaping the present in the light of the experience of the past. The poppy, red and white, calls us to be quiet in the face of the horrors of war both for combatants and for the myriad others affected directly and indirectly. The human lust for power and economic advantage takes us into war and it does us good to shut up and reflect. The delicate, fragile poppy calls us to go on to ‘seek the ways that lead to peace’. Is that the poppy that we have crushed by the other agendas?

What's the real question?

2010-11-03T11:11:00.003Z

There are some questions it is difficult to answer because of a wrong set of assumptions behind them. When the issue was newsworthy, I was asked whether I was in favour of the ordination of women. It was assumed that the problem at issue was the women part of the question. For me, though, the question was about the baggage that accompanied the idea of ordination. I am not in favour of men or women being ordained if it is seen, for example, as conferring power and privilege over other Christians. There are what I would consider to be unhealthy view of ordination among the churches. The concept, implications and content of ordination need to be thought through. Women should be equal in aspiration and opportunity in their vocations. It is how the churches often package those vocations that’s the problem for me. So a question about whether women should be bishops would raise the same problems.

I feel a similar response to the current challenges in England to a legal framework that allows civil partnerships but prohibits marriage to same sex couples. Am I in favour of same sex marriage? I cannot just say yes or no - which is fortunately really because as a minister of the Baptist Union of Great Britain I am not supposed to advocate such things. Such a question almost certainly assumes that the problem is the same sex bit and the marriage bit is unproblematical. There are many views of marriage in the churches and in society and some of them are downright unhealthy for women and men or for same sex couples. A trend for marriage to be seen as lovey-dovey happy-ever-after needs to be examined if relationships are to survive. Older traditional views of marriage as being about property and control are equally in need of examination. Husband and wife are not neutral words that just happen to be applied to a man and a woman. They each carry with them unspoken sets of assumptions about the nature of the relationship. These are just examples of the need to be clear what we think marriage means. Until we are clear what we mean by marriage, questions about who should get married are unanswerable.

That God’s love is inclusive and that healthy community requires equal opportunities to participate seem to me to be unexceptionable. It is how we package our roles and relationships that we need to think through.

Desmond Tutu at Porto Alegre

2010-10-08T12:44:00.002+01:00

As Desmond Tutu steps out of public life, a particular memory comes to mind. It was at the WCC 2006 Assembly in Porto Alegre and I was sitting in an area that allowed me to watch those gathered in the hall – sometimes more interesting than the presentations.

Desmond Tutu contributed to a session on church unity. He received a universal standing ovation as he took his place to speak. The Assembly newspaper records: “A united church is no optional extra,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu in an impassioned speech to the Assembly on Monday. It is “indispensable for the salvation of God’s world.” ... Apartheid had continued so long, he said, because the church was divided, and God called it to unity. “Jesus was quite serious when he said that God was our father, that we all belonged to one family, because in this family all, not some, are insiders.”

So far, so good. A spirited performance but not saying anything unexceptional for the occasion. But then he went on to spell out what ‘all are insiders’ meant. For example, “Bush, bin Laden, all belong, gay, lesbian, so-called straight - all belong and are loved, are precious.” All those people whom society and the church love to demonise and exclude. It seemed very clear from some faces at that point that they didn’t think that God ought to love such people and that such people were definitely on the outside of any family they belonged to.

Desmond Tutu left to a standing ovation but there were some who deliberately stayed seated. It’s an interesting thought that church representatives might protest against the idea that Jesus actually meant what he said. It was Tutu’s gift to be able to confront us with uncomfortable truths not with some economic or social theories but on the basis of the gospel.

40 Years On

2010-09-07T10:21:00.002+01:00

It only seems like yesterday, but 40 years ago on 6 September 1970 I was inducted as a member of the ministry team of what was then called the North Cheshire Fellowship. Never being one to do the simple and straightforward when something more complex was possible, the whole thing had its peculiarities. The service was also the closing service of the church building where it was held, which bemused the local press.

Leaving aside the question as to why anyone should have thought that I was a suitable person to be a pastor in a local congregation, there were things about the situation that were controversial in Baptist circles. Baptists organised themselves in individual (and often individualistic) congregations. A group of 8 congregations, one of which was Congregational, was too radical for some in the denomination. Through rationalisation, overcoming some divisive history, the group settled down to being 5 congregations, one of which was a Baptist/URC LEP. Team ministry was also too much for many devoted to the one man(!), one church model. When my Baptist Union probationary period came to an end, I felt that the committee interviewing me expected an apology for not being in the traditional mode. Of course, I didn’t make matters easier by saying that putting me as the sole minister of a church would be stupid.

It was the group and team working that had attracted as well as the context of the small post-industrial towns which had been absorbed into Greater Manchester. The early 1970’s were challenging times economically and socially. Ugandan Asians expelled by Amin arrived in the area. Local government reorganisation gave opportunities for ecumenical engagement with the emerging Tameside Metropolitan Borough. Demanding, frustrating, exciting - I would not exchange those five years for anything.

Looking at the Order of Service for the Induction, I am struck by the rightness of one of the hymns:

SING we a song of high revolt;
Make great the Lord, God's name exalt:
Sing we the words of Mary's song
Of God at war with human wrong.

By God the poor are lifted up;
God satisfies with bread and cup
The hungry folk of many lands:
The rich are left with empty hands.

Sing we of God who deeply cares
And still with us our burden shares;
God, who with strength the proud disowns,
Brings down the mighty from their thrones.

God calls us to revolt and fight,
To seek for what is just and right.
To sing and live Magnificat
In crowded street and council flat.

40 years on, I’ll still go with that.

Clapping for all occasions

2010-08-13T09:07:00.003+01:00

Are we becoming more limited in our repertoire of emotional responses? I have sat in audiences where the desire to express appreciation through clapping has revealed an insensitivity towards the performance. The mood or thread of a drama is broken. At orchestral concerts, even when the conductor has suggested that immediate clapping is not appropriate at the end of an emotive piece of music, the last note is not even allowed to die away before the applause kicks in. Of course, we should show appreciation for what we have experienced. Clapping and cheering is absolutely right in context. But where, in other contexts, has the profound silence gone - not the silence of apathy but the silence that is so thick that you could cut it with a knife? Performers are rewarded by the audience recognising and responding to the emotional atmosphere that they have created.

The two minute silence to mark death on occasions like football matches has been replaced by two minutes applause. Public funeral processions, like those for troops killed in Afghanistan, are marked by applause. If we want to be seen as doing something to show sympathy and respect, how is applause an appropriate action? Standing in silence is doing something and, for my money, has infinitely more emotional power.

Are we becoming so hyperactive and so much in need of being surrounded with noise that we no longer know how to do silence?

Confessions of a tactical voter

2010-05-04T15:02:00.000+01:00

The news today (4 May) seems to be dominated by calls for and against tactical voting in the General Election.

I confess that I have been a tactical voter ever since 1984. Before that I had always voted for my party of choice. What happened in 1984 was that we moved from Rusholme, Manchester to Warlingham, Surrey and nothing changed when we moved back to Greater Manchester in 1992 to Cheadle Hulme. The real, sometimes only, choice in both Warlingham and Cheadle Hulme was between Conservative and Liberal Democrat.

For me, that was no choice because my instinct has always been and remains anti-Tory. Performance in office is another matter. The Conservatives have taken some counter-intuitive decisions like making non-selective education the norm (undermined by governments of both colours ever since). Labour have taken the UK into the disasters of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (albeit needing the support of Conservatives because of the resistance of many of their own MPs).

My anti-Tory bias is a matter of personal principles (or prejudices). Even though I am irredeemably middle class, I do not forget my working class connections. I have met relatives who knew what it was like to sweat on the factory floor or on the land at the whim and to the benefit of their masters. Some relatives are still trapped in social deprivation. The Conservatives are a party of privilege where even the demeaning principle of noblesse oblige has withered.

I am from a non-conformist Christian tradition and, therefore, from a radical social/political stream that was opposed to the ruling class mentality of the Church of England and the Tories. Things may have changed with part of the Church of England embracing a more critical approach to the state in one direction and an individualistic faith encouraged by evangelicism resonating with a market economy in another. Embracing the radical non-conformist tradition probably may make me one of a dying breed but it does mean that I have an anti-Tory bias.

I fail to live up to the demands of the gospel but I do believe in them. I want to see the powerful brought down from their thrones, and the lowly lifted up; the hungry filled with good things, and the rich sent away empty. Political decisions may have to be pragmatic but they should be based on principle. So I want to know where the heart of a political party is as measured by the gospel. I do not say that the other parties embrace the values of God’s kingdom, even (especially) so-called Christian parties. However, my judgement is that the heart of the Conservative party, even as made user friendly by David Cameron, is not in the right place.

So, on Thursday my vote will be cast tactically. I can do no other!

Premium experience - an insulting offer?

2010-04-26T10:18:00.002+01:00

It’s that time of year when Manchester City inform their supporters how much they will have to pay for their season ticket for next season. The City website carries the information that the area where I currently sit will be upgraded to offer ‘a premium experience for supporters’. This wonderful news carries with it the privilege of paying more and probably increasing amounts over subsequent seasons.

So what might be a premium experience? Well, quaint old fashioned thing that I am, for me it would be open attacking football that pleases the eye and excites. It would be skilful and committed players and creative tactics. I don’t expect City to win every match providing they lose to a team that’s better on the day. I know that a 0-0 draw can be exciting. The experience I seek when I go to the stadium is watching football – with all its ups and downs. What more could you want of a premium experience?

I’m not looking for a shopping experience or an eating and drinking experience. My boredom threshold is not so low that I need to be entertained before the match or at half-time. I feel quite insulted that the club I’ve supported in good times and bad, as ‘owners’ have come and gone thinks I am so shallow that I need that kind of premium experience.

The club did offer supporters a chance to participate in a survey and I answered their questions about what I want. I would be interested to see the results but I doubt they will be published. So I’m left with the suspicion that this was a sham consultation when the decision to offer this kind of premium experience was already planned. And that is doubly insulting.

The cloud that could corrode and destroy us

2010-04-19T11:32:00.002+01:00

Not the cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland that has grounded air travel and caused anxiety and frustration for those trapped far from home. Instead, another cloud hanging over the UK General Election. It is sometimes seen in the British National Party and the UK Independence Party but is mainly hidden in the so-called mainstream parties. But it is there with its potentially corrosive and destructive effects.

We can describe it as xenophobia, racism, ‘me and mine’ism etc but to attach such labels isn’t really helpful. The cloud panders to a perceived base instinct of people as interpreted by popular papers, who are more interested in headlines that sell their papers than any principles. It manifests itself in a desire for a UK that is ‘cut off’ from the rest of the world, particularly mainland Europe. It parades commitments to the UN 0.7% spending on overseas aid yet talks of delivering that in ways that support particular ideologies and of benefit to the UK military-industrial complex as much as anyone else. It holds on to the mega-expensive Trident missile system for its symbolism of being a powerful nation, even against military analysis. It defends dubious military enterprises by unproven appeal to safety on our streets. All examples of a small and mean political discourse which will do us more harm than good.

And it’s all so irrational, even on the politicians' own terms. Without the immigrants we are encouraged to despise and shut out, the health and care services would collapse – a significant proportion of surgeons, doctors, nurses, care assistants and cleaners come to contribute to our well being. Even our football would be diminished by the absence of those who come from other countries – mercenaries, maybe, but ones that contribute to our entertainment. And we British enjoy the opportunity of working or retiring in other countries – yet still often see our hosts as the foreigners and not ourselves as migrant workers or immigrants.

Facts don’t count in a discourse of emotion. We are encouraged to huddle together in fear instead of being engaged with a large and generous political vision than can excite.

Happy 120th Birthday, Servette

2010-03-20T09:33:00.003Z

It may be difficult for some people to understand but it really isn’t possible to live without football to watch and a local team to support. All the so called Manchester United fans who live in London and Arsenal fans who live in Leeds, who only watch any football on tv, haven’t got it. I need football to hand to feel at home in a place!

So when I got an interview in 1995 for a post with the World Council of Churches, I checked out the football possibilities. Servette FC had a good history in the Swiss league and European competitions. So my visit to Geneva included my personal intention to visit their ground to get a feel for things. However, I found they had a home match so I went along. Yes, I thought, I’d be OK here. So the decision to accept the WCC job was easy!

In the 13 years I watched them (when the fixtures didn’t clash with Man City’s home matches) I was able to enjoy a league title win and a cup final. Lots of European matches too. Then came the curse of the new ground. The old characterful stadium was replaced by a new stadium in preparation for the 2008 European Football Championship hosted in Switzerland and Austria. At the same time the club fell into the hands of the incompetent, having goodwill but lacking resources, and finally a fraudster (later convicted). The club went bust. It was reformed and, for complicated reasons, was able to resume in the third level rather than lower down the pyramid. Servette quickly climbed back to the second level where it has become becalmed.

So thank you, Servette for giving me the kind of excitement and heartache that is the lot of the football fan. Thank you for giving me something I could share with people who weren’t ecumenicalists or part of the international community.

Happy Birthday, Servette! May the next years be more pleasure than pain.

A mea culpa from the Pope?

2010-03-17T16:13:00.000Z

Hans Kung has his own complex agenda with the Vatican. However, he is surely correct in calling for the Pope to admit his complicity in the scandal of paedophilia in the Roman Catholic church. “Protecting their priests seems to have counted more for the bishops than protecting children,” he said according to the agency swissinfo.ch reporting an interview published in Süddeutsche Zeitung today (17 March). “Decency requires that the primary party responsible for the concealment [of the cases], namely Joseph Ratzinger [the pope], makes his own mea culpa.” Those who have been concerned about abuse in the churches have been aware of the Vatican policy of gaining the silence of the abused and moving on the offender. Not only failing to address the incidents of abuse but setting up new possibilities. This behaviour is sadly not unique to the Roman Catholic church.

His call for a reconsideration of the celibacy of priests may be correct for all kinds of reasons. However, sexual abuse is far more complex than just sexually frustrated men working out their drives on children. It would be very dangerous for the church to reconsider celibacy on such a ground – particularly for children.

'Christianity led me to the party’

2010-03-13T15:27:00.002Z

‘God is not a Conservative, but Christianity led me to the party’ – not my testimony but that of Tim Montgomerie, founder of the unofficial but highly influential ConservativeHome website. It’s the headline for an interview in this week’s New Statesman (15 March 2010).

And how did Christianity lead him to the Tories? The answer was ‘because of what I believe about family and individual responsibility’. Not, apparently, the radical message of the gospels in the magnificat, the beatitudes or Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God. If anything about Christian faith could provide a basis for involvement in politics, I would have thought it should be that.

Many Christians do go on about the family. According to the gospels, though, Jesus himself had questions about the family because of its potential to get in the way of the priorities of the kingdom. It wasn’t that Jesus was against loving, committed relationship but just that he wanted to blow it out of the narrow confines even of extended family, let alone our nuclear families - to universalise it. Family values is too small a vision for Christian faith.

Individual responsibility – that’s not good even for a ‘me and God’ kind of faith. It smacks too much of ‘there’s no such thing as society, just individuals’. There is a communal or collective aspect to Christian faith. Churches recognise that, for example, in baptism and communion. We collectively, rather than a collection of individuals, are the body of Christ. There is a personal responsibility for our actions and relationships but that is not the same as individual responsibility.

How tragic for Tim Montgomerie and for those he influences that a faith once experienced as turning the world upside down should come to be reduced to family and individual responsibility.

No-cost conscience

2010-03-02T11:05:00.001Z

170 nonconformists went to prison in England in the early 1900s for refusing to pay their taxes. The issue was that the 1902 Education Act had integrated most denominational schools into the state system. As the majority of these schools were Anglican, the nonconformists objected to their taxes paying for a kind of religious education they found unacceptable.

Jump forward to 2010 and we have two issue where churches in England want their consciences (or prejudices) assuaged by the taxpayer. On the whole Christians have a good record in promoting legislation for people’s rights – see the story of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s just that in reality churches don’t want it to apply to them – so the anguish about employment legislation on having to treat women or gay people fairly. The state has to bend the rules, apparently, to allow for the churches’ conscience in such matters. Nowhere in the discussion have I heard it recognised that there might be a price that the churches had to pay in maintaining their conscience, if they wish to do so.

Likewise there seems to be a feeling amongst many religious people that there is nothing wrong in the state funding their schools and religious education. Although it is wrong to call it religious education, more like specific faith nurture very often done by emphasising the quality of one faith against the deficiencies of others. You don’t, I think, build a tolerant society by using taxes to fund divisive education – a lesson still not yet learnt in Northern Ireland. The creeping religiousification of the state school system in England by taking schools out of local community ownership and into the hands of people with particular religious agendas, however benign some of these may be, is dangerous for the well being of society. If your conscience tells you that you want to nurture children and young people in faith or you want to bring new people into your fold, you are free to do it – but you should pay for it yourself.

Having a no-cost conscience is a strange thing to be thinking about in Lent.

‘Ready Steady Cook’ Worship

2010-02-15T11:26:00.001Z

For those not familiar with the BBC tv programme Ready Steady Cook, it is based on chefs being required to produce a meal from sets of ingredients purchased by non-chef participants. Sometimes it looks as though the items were bought with an idea of what might result, sometimes they appear to be a completely random selection.

Preparing a service of worship is never easy. It is difficult enough when one is only confronted with the lectionary readings and, of course, the context in which the worship will take place.

Sometimes though, it feels as though the ingredients presented are so disparate as to make the worship preparers task a real challenge. This last Sunday, deputising for the pastor, was a case in point for me. The lectionary demanded that attention be paid to the transfiguration of Jesus. It was Valentine’s Day – it’s a reality even if you think it is more a commercial than romantic opportunity. The congregation were to be engaged with the youth group’s project for the year – 10:10 (the campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 10% in 2010 - www.1010uk.org). For what it’s worth, it struck me that for all the extraordinariness of the experience on the mountain top and the desire to permanently memorialise it, when the disciples returned to everyday life they had not been able to be inspired or empowered to respond to the situation that confronted them. The plaintive complaint of a distracted father to Jesus is a powerful counterpoint to the mountain top – We begged your disciples to do something but they could not.

So my conclusion (at least according to the scrappy notes I preach from – I have no idea what I actually said!) was:
It’s all very well to get romantic on Valentines’s Day but it’s how the relationship works for the other 364 days of the year.
It’s all very well rejoicing in the world we have been given to enjoy but it’s how we live responsibly in it every day.
It’s all very well coming to church and rejoicing how much God loves us but it’s how faith shapes and enables our behaviour the other 6 days, 23 hours each week.

Unless worship is prepared on the Ready Stead Cook principle, attempting to integrate all the ingredients that come from different directions, it will always run the danger of being a great experience (sometimes) but one which makes no difference beyond the moment.

Don’t blame the exam protesters

2010-01-29T10:25:00.000Z

A Facebook protest group about a recent A Level Biology exam has attracted thousands of members. The complaints seemed to be that the questions did not give students a good enough opportunity to reproduce the content of the syllabus they had sweated to learn. It was hard, apparently, to discern what the right answer to the question was. They were annoyed and fearful that all this would result in a poor mark which would spoil their chances of their desired university place.

Only having second hand information, I’m in no position to comment on the specifics. However, it seems that these students have learnt one lesson very well. Education is about preparing for and taking exams. Exams are the opportunity to show that you have learnt the content of a syllabus. It doesn’t matter too much if you can’t understand providing that you can describe how something works or what happened and the consequences of that. To be honest, I have passed exams by simply reproducing what I’ve been told without having any understanding. This view of education has been pushed by politicians of both major parties when in government and society has gone along with it. The beauty of it for an instant results oriented culture that it is measurable. Results can be analysed and we can congratulate ourselves on how much better schools and universities are doing or blame someone when results decline. But it isn’t education!

A defender of the Exam Board suggested that questions in this particular instance had been designed to get students to apply the principles of what they had studied rather than only reproduce ‘facts’. Exactly the right approach in my view. Education isn’t a memory trick. It is about understanding, knowing how to use, critical thinking.

But don’t blame the exam protestors. They’ve only bought into our delusion.

Different takes

2009-12-18T15:59:00.002Z

On opposite pages of The Guardian ’s obituary section yesterday (17 December) were Oral Roberts and Sir Richard O’Brien – US evangelist faces the author of the Faith in the City report. You couldn’t get two more different takes on Christianity or on a particular verse of the Bible.

Oral Roberts was not tripped up by sex, like several other high profile tele-evangelists, thus saving the world from some unseemly jokes. The obituarist remarked that instead he ‘always devoted himself to money – and, occasionally, God’. Apparently his Bible fell open at 3 John verse 2. Of course if Roberts had anything other than the King James Version which uses the word ‘prospering’, he would have read about things being ‘well with you’ – that’s what the original Greek means and, to be fair, probably what the KJV writers had in mind.

But he took prospering to be strictly in the financial sense and had a lucrative line in equating faith in God (= donations to his organisation) as bringing its monetary rewards in the life of the believer. Roberts (not to be called Dr Roberts, according to the strict obituarist, ‘only having honorary degrees’) was described as treating religion ‘the way that Tulsans went into oil: to make money’. The obituarist did not point up any redeeming features. Tragically Roberts’ family suffered early deaths and financial scandals.

The sub-title of O’Brien’s obituary was ‘Industrial relations expert at odds with Margaret Thatcher’. O’Brien was in many ways an establishment figure – distinguished war service, involved with the Confederation of British Industry, adviser to the Department of Economic Affairs, Chairman of the Manpower Services Commission. He argued for greater worker participation in management and a better equipped, qualified and motivated workforce. He suggested that an ‘imbalance of status and privilege’ between boardroom and employees was the root cause of many problems (British Airways and banks might take notice). Margaret Thatcher not surprisingly sacked him from the Manpower Services Commission.

What really put him, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, on her list of enemies though was the Faith in the City report in 1985, produced by a working group he chaired. This had the nerve to suggest that much of the blame for growing spiritual and economic poverty in British inner cities was the result of Thatcherite policies. If ever the Church of England could be said to have attempted to speak a prophetic word for the people of the country, this was it. Things being ‘well with you’ for the whole of society, not just the elite, and in a total, not just financial, sense.

The importance of leaving

2009-11-18T09:38:00.002Z

I preached this sermon at an occasional service held in the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva to welcome new colleagues and valedict those leaving. My thoughts were occasioned by my own imminent leaving the pay of the WCC and a desire to encourage others to consider whether it was also time for them to go. Sometimes people develop false perceptions of their own significance and benefit to their work. And there is always a temptation to hang on to a well paid job, even if others see you as a time server. We should always be asking the question of whether we are in the right place.

These notes don’t contain the more pointed extempore commentary delivered on the day.

Notes for a sermon at the Service of Welcoming and Sending Out, 17 November 2008 in the Chapel of the Ecumenical Centre

A question that is frequently put when people know you are leaving, as I have experienced these days: What are you going to do? The presumption that we only leave because there’s something to do, somewhere to go. Like all presumptions it should be questioned.

Is it only a man thing or a cultural thing that there is also a presumption that moving on is to something more significant, better paid, higher status? Even pastors get infected with this – if the new congregation to which they are moving is not bigger, it has to have special circumstances or immense potential.

Of course, moving on to something or somewhere is an important topic for reflection – and I could preach at great length about it, often! But this morning I want to concentrate simply on the significance of leaving in the context of this Welcoming and Sending Out service.

The two passages we had read for us this morning can help us – Genesis 12.1-10 and Matthew 17.1-5.

Abram’s family had moved to Haran from Ur of the Chaldes. They were wealthy with much livestock. There was no particular reason to leave Haran (war, famine, lack of pasture etc) and probably every good reason to stay and prosper. Then Abram gets this feeling that it’s time to move on – some God who he didn’t know had things for him to do. And he didn’t even get to settle where he thought he might be going – passing through and ending up as a refugee in Egypt.

The experience of the transfiguration was so powerful that Peter wanted to preserve it and stay living within in, keeping it for themselves. He proposed a building project – a tendency followed by Christians throughout the ages who spend far too much time being preoccupied with buildings. However, Jesus led them off the mountain into the pain and messiness of everyday life where his love and power were to be found.

So, why is leaving so significant?

Sometimes we should leave because it feels the right thing to do, even when it is not clear where we will go or what we will do. The faith-full act of leaving may open up possibilities that are closed while we are where we are.

Sometimes we should leave to break out of our comfortable existence which inevitably will undermine our creativity and commitment and lead us into unconscionable compromise to maintain our status quo. Living in Geneva may be a snare and a delusion. Yes, we can glory in God’s creation when we see the rising sun shine on Mont Blanc from one window and the setting sun glowing behind the Jura mountains from another. Yes, we can do good with our comfortable monthly pay cheque. This is real life, but not as the vast majority of the world know it.

Sometimes we should leave because we cannot prolong an amazing experience for ever and keep it to ourselves. And it is an amazing experience working here at the Ecumenical Centre. Where else will we come into contact with such a variety of sisters and brothers in Christ with all their variety of tradition and culture? Where else will we have opportunities of understanding how we, our nation, our church, our theology etc. are seen by others? Where else can we begin to understand why others say and do what they do? But all this is to be experienced in the life of the whole world, not just to be the experience of a few fortunate people.

Sometimes we should leave because we have given what we can give and new insights, experience, knowledge and energy are need. It’s a matter of self-knowledge, awareness of needs and, most of all, a matter of personal integrity.

Perhaps most of all we have to leave, sooner or later, because neither I or you are all that important. Before you start protesting, I’m not speaking of the way God loves and values each one of us no matter who we are or what we have done.

It is exceedingly dangerous when:
churches or the ecumenical movement begin to think that they are more important than, or indeed somehow control, the gospel, the good news, embodied in Jesus Christ;
individuals begin to think they are more important or significant than the churches and ecumenical movement and than the gospel, the good news, embodied in Jesus Christ.

The act of leaving reminds us that none of us is indispensible. That even though we have been given a unique opportunity to contribute and to benefit, there are others who will come after us and make their contribution.

Throughout the scriptures we are reminded that the fulfilment of God’s loving and just purposes involves our faithful response – but it always is God’s purposes and ultimate glory – not ours.

Inter Faith Week

2009-11-15T16:49:00.002Z

Like any designated week, Inter Faith Week will only be of value if it helps us the other 51 weeks of the year. Making the space to encounter people of different faiths with mutual respect has many benefits for us as individuals, for local communities and for society as a whole.

It shouldn't just be about learning what 'they' believe, as though faith was a collection of intellectual propositions. It shouldn't just be about how they practice their religion. Faith is a word which may be owned by many very different religious communities. But we should be careful because we all interpret it from our own experience and culture. A Muslim or Buddhist does not mean what a Christian means when they use the word, not that all Christians understand it in the same way. The most obvious dimension of meaning is whether faith is inherited or whether its is believed as a conscious individual decision.

Encounters with people of different faiths should help us understand how they believe as well as what they believe. It should help us understand what it means to see their religion and the world through their eyes. What it means to be a Hindhu or a Jew in British society. And equally importantly to understand how they see us.

In this way we don't just learn about other people, we learn about ourselves.

When I was working in Manchester before going to Geneva, I was part of a group of Christians meeting with a Hindhu and hearing about his faith. In talking about reverence for life he made the remark that he had to exercise his faith from the moment he put his foot out of bed each morning and casually added that we Christians only had to bother about faith on Sunday mornings. In later reflection, the group felt that they had learnt more about the living practice of Hindhu faith in Manchester. However, what really grabbed them was the genuine perception of this man of what the practice of Christian faith meant.

As Robert Burns said:
O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!

We learn to live in community by knowing ourselves as well as getting to know others.

Vote Christian - pay less tax

2009-11-14T17:49:00.003Z

An advert for the Christian Party (political, that is) in this week’s Baptist Times has as its number one enticement “Do you want lower taxes?” – presumably on the basis of Jesus’ memorable saying “Blessed are the taxpayers for they shall pay less”. You would be disappointed if you ran down the list of reasons to be interested in the Christian Party expecting to find anything like the words Jesus as actually recorded in the Gospels. In fact, their language of less state interference or to have “once again” a just legal system might come from advertising for the Conservatives, the UK Independence Party or even from the non-racist parts of the policies of the British National Party.

But it’s the lower taxes bit I want to stick with. It’s a hook of self-interest – I get to keep more of my money to spend as I want. The Christian Party would probably argue that it’s more money to give away and I expect many of their supporters do work on the biblical principle that a tenth of one’s income is for God and giving only starts beyond that. But they would be the exception among the whole population.

As is the young man I saw interviewed who had studied ethics and on starting a well paid job (£33K he said) was giving away over 50% of it each year. He reckoned that his giving would save 1,000 lives each year and that was more satisfying than consumer expenditure. What can one say? Those of us who say we actively care about our fellow human beings and the environment don’t go that far – not by a long way. The majority of the population do give to charities but in the pounds not hundreds of pounds, let alone thousands of pounds each year.

Charitable giving is a fine idea for motivated and committed people. I don’t want to knock it and neither would those who benefit. Undoubtedly, the tax system could be improved, especially in respect of the rich who at the moment pay a smaller proportion of their earnings than lower paid workers. Undoubtedly, governments are wasteful and spend money on the wrong things. However, taxation is the best way we have of ensuring that we all pay our fair share. If we want all our citizens to have decent lives and we want to do the same for the poorest of the poor elsewhere, then taxation is a must.

Vote for a more equitable tax system but don’t vote for lower taxes – we may enjoy the extra money in our pockets and we may even give some of it away. If we earn enough to pay tax, we won’t be the ones who pay the price.

PS Jesus didn’t really say “Blessed are the taxpayers for they shall pay less”, I made that up. Of course what he did say was “Sell what you own and give the money to the poor”. If you object to paying tax, perhaps that’s the best thing to do!

Even by their own logic

2009-11-09T16:07:00.002Z

Colonel Bob Stewart, who came to public attention through his service in Bosnia, had a background in military intelligence. I’ll pass on making the usual joke about that because, even though his post-army career may take him to being a Conservative MP, he is an intelligent man. So it’s usually worth listening to what he has to say, even if you happen to disagree sometimes.

In the course of a rather busy weekend, I caught a tv interview with him where he drew attention to the ‘intelligence’ relating to military operations in Afghanistan. The numbers were:
‘persons of interest’ (what interesting language the intelligence services use) in Afghanistan = 100,
‘persons of interest’ in the UK = 2,000.
If it raised questions for him, it did even more for me.

I also heard Gordon Brown saying that a clear connection between the Afghan/Pakistan border and the streets of Britain was the reason for the Afghan mission. How interesting. If it is true that the border region is a source of incitement to terrorism in the West (and we should stop continuing to conceptualise al quaeda as being like an enemy nation or even like the IRA), what are we doing trying to bring our style of political discipline to a whole national territory that has never achieved it, or even wanted it, for themselves or had it imposed by successive invaders. There are many reasons not to like the Afghan Taliban but to regard them as the same as the Taliban over the border is a dangerous over-simplification.

Logic would suggest that if they want to ‘deal with’ any state, it should be Pakistan – but there is another discourse about that country, particularly around nuclear weapons. Is Afghanistan somewhere where a UK government can be seen to be ‘doing something’ where it won’t cause too many other international problems? Because even by their own logic what we are doing there lacks credibility.

If so, why should young people be sent there to die or suffer horrific physical and mental injuries on behalf of the rest of us. Sometimes attacks on people on our streets are called ‘senseless acts of violence’ – isn’t the Afghanistan mission a state-sponsored senseless act of violence on our own young people as well as on the local victims?

Because I'm worth it?

2009-11-06T14:27:00.001Z

Why is it that sometimes those who achieve high office or responsibility develop such a strong sense of personal entitlement that they lose their moral perspective? And it’s not just dictators, bankers and MPs.

The question is prompted by a story today of resignations, sacking and suspension for disciplinary reasons of the senior leadership of a school and its governing body “after senior teachers allegedly paid themselves £1m in bonuses” http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/06/headteacher-resigns-mismanaged-funds-copland-school. Yet another high profile, much lauded head teacher bites the dust.

What gets into the minds of people responsible for running values-based organisations that they can behave in ways contrary to that which they espouse? We might expect it of bankers who after all only practice what they preach in making money. Schools work, or should do, on the principle that their own practice of communal life expresses the values they want to promote. I don’t think that many schools get their students to read Animal Farm to help them see the importance of getting their snouts first in the trough filled at the expense of everyone else’s rations.

It’s not only self-delusional head teachers. I’ve seen too many church leaders filled with a sense of personal entitlement, demanding five-star treatment, often at the expense of their own impoverished communities. I’m afraid that their saying that this is a way of showing respect to God does not wash with me. Perhaps following the example of Jesus in a less ostentatious lifestyle would be better.

The human mind is an amazing thing. It can believe and advocate fine sounding values and practices. At one and the same time, it can create a story about what I’m worth, how I’m entitled to that and how it is actually important for the people who pay the cost for me to be treated in this way. And it doesn’t make any connection between the two! But that’s no excuse.

What’s the good of higher education?

2009-11-03T11:28:00.001Z

On BBC Radio 4 today, Lord Mandelson, discussing soon to be announced proposals for higher education in the UK, said that universities are there “to provide us with both civilisation and competitiveness” (bbc.co.uk). Well I couldn’t have put it better myself, especially the order in which civilisation and competitiveness appear. Nice soundbite and very pleasing to those who believe in education as a good in its own right and not merely an economic instrument.

However, the bite of the soundbite comes in the surrounding discussion. This seems to be all about giving businesses more say in higher education. Giving students information about the different levels of salary they might expect by taking different degree courses and even allocating funds according to the economic productivity of courses. So education primarily serves as an economic good for individuals and society alike. Nothing about the civilisation mentioned in the soundbite!

Now I’m all for developing people’s knowledge and skills. That does lead both to productivity and job satisfaction. We don’t have enough of it. But it’s a career long process and people may have more than one career in their lifetime. It’s not a front loaded process where people begin their working life equipped for everything in the future. It is both before and during – with the during, as contextual learning, being most effective.

But education is, or should be, so much more than learning knowledge and skills. It is about the whole people we become, not just our economic activity. Mandelson, who did benefit from education rather than training, has obviously not learnt from his own experience. Or does he regard it as only for the cultured few? Successive governments have starved non-work related adult education of funds. The Workers Educational Association thrived because ordinary people wanted to learn history, art, science, politics etc etc because they were interested and it gave them personal fulfilment – and contributed to the quality of community life. Thousands of people devote hours of study through the Open University whilst doing fulltime jobs because they believe in the non-economic benefits of doing a degree. And, if you think Mandelson is bad, just see what the Conservative party believe!

However, there is something that unites personal, communal and economic benefit, and civilisation and competitiveness. Something which is, I think, a primary function of higher education – no matter what the subject matter of the course. That is critical thinking – the ability to access, analyse and evaluate evidence, to put together arguments or cases and to be able to deconstruct those put forward by others. It involves self-awareness and the ability to see bigger pictures, including understanding that others may see and interpret life differently. It makes people both confident and open.

Higher education is good for us but not just to make money.

Political expediency insults us all

2009-11-02T11:47:00.002Z

The very public spat between Alan Johnson (UK Home Secretary) and David Nutt (now ex-Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs) makes for entertaining political theatre – but it is profoundly depressing.

Professor Nutt had the temerity to state publicly that alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than cannabis (something I thought was common knowledge) and that it was a nonsense to have cannabis classified in the middle rather than lower category of drugs with the consequent penal consequences for use. Professor Nutt is no libertarian hippy but is rather against the misuse of harmful substances. His trouble is that he is guided by research on the actual effects of different drugs and the demonstrable results of policies to deal with misuse.

The problem for Alan Johnson, who is equally against the misuse, and that’s the irony, is that political expediency means that he wants to play the hard man on drugs because they are perceived as the preserve of low-life who will only respond to punitive measures. (Middle class people may suffer from problems but we’re OK with that if they get help and we recognise that celebrities and aristos are different creatures altogether who need to be indulged - or at least we appear to.) He doesn’t want to go with the evidence (a) because it would seem weak to downgrade some drugs and (b) because logic would dictate an attack on the availability and use of alcohol. It’s been hard enough to tackle smoking and that was only possible because by-and-large middle-England had turned against it. Alcohol’s a different matter because voters like it and because like many other substances it is not harmful in reasonable quantities. There is a real issue here which needs to be openly discussed and probably no legislative solution that will solve the problems.

What is insulting is that Alan Johnson would prefer us not to be aware of the evidence. He wants to maintain a deceptive line that will scare us away from drugs. If the message is not politically expedient he and his colleagues shoot the messenger and rubbish the message.

We have had another example in recent weeks. A carefully researched report suggested that formal learning should not begin in primary schools until 6 – that young children learned best through play (actually play is a significant means of learning for all ages and should not be demeaned). Ministers dismissed the report before it was published and disingenuously characterised it as saying that children should not attend school until 6. They think that the public believes that teaching automatically results in learning (far from true as many of us can testify) and therefore children must be sat down and told. Accepting the report, even for discussion, might make them look weak. Another opportunity for public reflection lost.

Alan Johnson, one of the few senior politicians in any party not from an elite background, ought to be someone who trusts people's ability to understand that issues may be complex. But no, he seems to want to place us in a position of an uniformed choice of agreeing or disagreeing with what he says. It would be no better (and, on the evidence of history, worse) were the Conservative party to be elected next year. Political posturing and expediency insults us all.

Changing my climate

2009-10-15T10:09:00.001+01:00

Blog Action Day unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day – 2009 is Climate Change www.blogactionday.org

Climate change – been there, done that, boring, let’s get excited about something new. My former employers, the World Council of Churches (WCC), began raising the issue of climate change in the late 1980s, partly because part of their constituency in the Pacific region was disappearing under the sea. Not many people were interested, even environmental groups. But in the end it became fashionable and lots of people were agitating about it. Now I wonder if climate change fatigue is creeping in.

We’ve said all there is to say. International organisations, governments, pressure groups, even industry and commerce have made fine sounding statements. Case proved, for all except for a few contrarians. Thank goodness for them - in their attempt to stamp out what they see as a pernicious falsehood they keep the issue alive.

The problem is we have hardly begun to do what we need to do. I’ll begin with a soft target. If you search the WCC’s website you find around 4,500 references to climate change, most of them raising the issue and calling for change. Yet you will find it hard to discover the WCC’s own environmental policy. I know that the organisation has thought about environmental risk assessments in planning meetings that bring people together from all over the world, an annual environmental audit to accompany the financial audit and measures to incentivise staff use of public transport, to give some examples. Yet, understandably if not forgivably, it finds it hard to grasp the total change in organisational culture and style of working that such actions would imply.

The 10:10 campaign, supported by the Guardian newspaper - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/10-10 - challenges us to commit ourselves to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010. A UK survey quoted suggests that ‘81% of adults were very or fairly concerned about climate change and three quarters said they were willing to change their behaviour to help combat it’. Well, I’m part of that three quarters. But am I part of what they describe as ‘a small, saintly portion of the population’ who do anything significant?

If the WCC was a soft target, I must take aim at the hardest target of all. That is me. I have to change. It’s not just up to other people, organisations and governments, it’s up to me. I have to change the climate of my own way of life. And I suspect that just spending an extra 10% of time in bed doesn’t count.

Challenging the orthodoxy

2009-10-14T21:10:00.002+01:00

What have Elinor Ostrom and Metropolitan Geevarghese Coorilos in common? Who, you may ask. If you weren’t aware of the award of the Nobel Prize for economics or the meeting of the WCC Faith & Order Commission (mutual understanding of what the churches believe and organise their life) this week, you may be forgiven. These two people, eminent in their own spheres, but not well known outside have each put forward views that challenge commonly accepted wisdom. In describing their views briefly from my reading, I probably do an injustice to them.

Ostrom, a political scientist from Indiana University, USA, has researched how people maintain fish stocks in India, Kenya and Nepal as well as researching other resources such as pastures, woodlands and lakes. Current orthodoxy in such issues suggests that this is best done either by the state or, more commonly these days, by privatised enterprises. Ostrom’s research indicates that when individuals join together and form collectives resources are better maintained and protected. She is interested in how people co-operate rather than compete - and the beneficial results that stem from that.

Metropolitan Geevarghese Coorilos of the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church in India gave a critique of a document that had been prepared by the Faith and Order Commission on the Nature and Mission of the Church. The methodology of such exercises he described as being from above – the experts and the specialists. He pointed to the absence of any involvement from below. This meant that the world of the poor and dispossessed, particularly the Dalits in India, found no resonance in the document.

What these two have in common, to answer my own question, is not just that they have challenged the orthodox positions in their own areas. It is that they do so on the basis of the participation of people, not just those who are powerful or experts. In the one case, people are not so irredeemably selfish that they cannot act collectively for the common good. In the other, it is people (especially including the poor and excluded) who ask the real questions about the nature of the church.

Answers to issues that confront the whole life of the world may not just be found in what the Metropolitan describes as ‘esoteric and intellectual’ discussions but closer to home.

Talking like

2009-09-19T16:41:00.001+01:00

Avast there, me hearties, ‘tis the International Talk Like a Pirate Day today (Saturday 19 September). Shiver me timbers. The eyepatch keeps slipping so I can’t keep on writing in this vein. Of all the worthy international days that overfill the calendar, this is probably the unworthiest and perhaps the most fun.

From Treasure Island to Pirates of the Caribbean, pirates make a good swashbuckling story. The reality was certainly more dark and bloody and modern-day piracy of all kinds is nothing to celebrate. However, it’s fun to talk like a pirate and even to image who you would make walk the plank. I have got a little list!

However, some international days are much more demanding because they challenge us to actually change the way we speak and act for good (Didn’t you just know it would turn serious). So two days later, 21 September, is the UN International Day of Peace which for the churches is also the International Day of Prayer for Peace.

I certainly find it easier to talk pirate than talk peace. But if we really do want to give peace a chance then someone has to learn to talk and act peace. And it really does need to be us, all of us.

Disrespectful idealisation

2009-09-02T16:14:00.002+01:00

I don’t know why but over the past few weeks I’ve become conscious of the fact that the world is now only populated with wonderful people, apart from a few monsters. Every death, every retirement, every occasion where people pay tribute that I’ve come across has demonstrated this to me. No one was or is less than perfect.

Why are we finding it so difficult to respect and honour people for what they actually are or have been? To do justice to them, not some idealised, airbrushed image?

Remembering back to a time when I frequented funerals (in a pastoral capacity, I hasten to add), there was a loving realism about the way in which people spoke of the deceased. They recollected times when that person had proved to be all too human, even laughing at their foibles. They were mourning a real person whom they had known and loved, not a perfected construction of their imagination. The trend to idealisation is neither healthy for those who have to work through their grief nor respectful of the person.

The other day I almost choked on my cup of tea as I read what had been said about someone I knew reasonably well. Some things were truthfully said, and it was right to say them. Some other things were manifestly exaggerated if not actually untrue. I cannot imagine how they were said even with tongue firmly in cheek and fingers crossed. How was that respectful of the person to whom tribute was being paid when most of those gathered would have known the reality? Would it not have been better to stick with the things that properly and deservedly could be said?

So it was with a sense of relief that I watched and read the tributes to Senator Edward Kennedy. A realism both about his personal flaws and his political achievements. That was respect.

Compassion

2009-08-23T15:47:00.003+01:00

The waters are so muddy. A dying prisoner. Bereaved relatives with emotional wounds still sore. Questions over evidence, trial and other perpetrators. A pariah state being brought in from the cold. Possible trade trade-offs. Celebrations and anger. Different views of what state justice requires. The list could go on. About the only thing agreed by everyone is that Pan Am Flight 103 fell out of the sky on 21 December 1988 with the loss of 270 lives from the plane and on the ground.

So there will never be agreement on whether the decision of the Scottish Justice Minister to release al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds was correct. Anyway, much of the political posturing from inside and outside the UK is the usual exploitation of an issue for other ends.

In all of this storm we seem to have stopped thinking about what the Justice Minister said. "Mr al-Megrahi did not show his victims any comfort or compassion. They were not allowed to return to the bosom of their families to see out their lives, let alone their dying days. But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days." We may recognise someone’s inhuman beviour but not regard that as an excuse not to express our own humanity. Receiving compassion is not to be deserved or to be a right. It is something to be given because it is needed. Being compassionate is a strong thing to do not a weakness.

The Justice Minister’s words ought to appeal to all those who call themselves Christian – it is of the essence of the gospel that God’s love in Jesus Christ is for those who need it rather than deserve it. You have to be absolutely sure of your own righteousness to believe in a vengeful God rather than a compassionate God! From its earliest days Christianity has had to put up with being called weak because of the primacy of compassion over pay-back. So much so that some have developed their own forms of hard-man/hard-God faith - presumably because they do not feel strong enough to live with the perceived weakness of the gospel. Personally, I'm glad of a compassionate God.

Whether the decision to release the prisoner was expedient is a question that will go on being raised. But I want to affirm the strong principle of compassion and to applaud the Scottish Justice Minister for putting it so bluntly.

The day of reckoning draws nigh!

2009-08-14T08:07:00.001+01:00

At 3.00pm on Saturday afternoon Manchester City will take the field away to Blackburn Rovers in the first match of the 2009-10 season. For Manchester City fans it’s not just another start of another season. Over the past few months around 100 million pounds has been spent on new players. The oil-rich owners of the club have invested what is small change to them. They have not put their expenditure as a debt on the books of the club like other owners of English Premier League clubs – at least not at the moment. But they will want something in return – their money is an investment rather than a gift. It is not quite clear exactly what they want, but a good image, certainly. So the first return on their investment has to be success.

Pity the poor manager if the result at Blackburn is not a victory for City or at least a ‘we was robbed’ draw. The press pack would be howling that the manager has only a few days to save his job, if not to be sacked forthwith. There will be no excuses for failure to be at the top of the league table or thereabouts after the first few matches and to remain there until next May. So no pressure there, then!

I’m old enough to remember City carrying all before them, playing flowing football. But even in those days, if there was a banana skin to be slipped on, City found it. One of their great players once remarked: “If there was a cup for cock-ups, we’d win it every year”. It has been City’s endearing, if frustrating, all-too-human qualities that has made them such fun to follow. Even down into English football’s third level where the home crowds were still larger than those of most teams in the top division. The great quality of the fans was they could laugh at themselves in their chants and songs.

Some clubs have now almost reached the point where playing football is the means to promote their merchandise – replica shirts and a whole catalogue of branded goods. Winning increases sales. The commercial revenue stream becomes more significant than the income from spectators. Their desire is to become a global brand, as well known as Coke. Real fans, that is those who actually watch matches, don’t just become customers, they pay out good money to participate in someone else’s money making scheme.

So the day of reckoning is not just about success, it’s also about style, at least for this fan. Will City become a team that grinds out results through superior players, where the three points when the final whistle blows is all that counts and the notion of football as an entertaining spectacle - the ‘beautiful game’ and the ‘workers’ ballet’ - is relegated to obscurity? Something tells me, and I hope it is true, that fallibility is in the DNA of the club. Otherwise, all the fun will go out of being a City fan.

Of course, I do want City to beat clubs like Chelsea and Manchester United. I just don’t want City to become like them.

Am I still in favour of ecumenism?

2009-08-13T09:59:00.002+01:00

The other day I was asked if I was still in favour of ecumenism, now that I have left the employ of the World Council of Churches. Not an unreasonable question as I expect you'd ask someone if they were still in favour of junk food once they'd stopped working for McDonalds (before BigM calls its lawyers, I will point out that the lettuce and tomatoes are healthy).

My answer is that I am in favour of ecumenism but, to misquote Star Trek, not as we know it. Too much of churchy ecumenism is focused on churches reaching an accommodation with each other. Formal agreements and covenants between churches exorcising past fights are all very well. Christians of different traditions being able to talk and pray together is good. Working together on issues of justice and peace is essential. Don't get me wrong, the church and the world are better for such things.

The danger is that it misses the point. The ecumenical movement is, or should be, a protest movement against what Christianity and the churches have become - of which, division and disunity is a symptom not the cause. When we are ill, it's always nice when distressing symptoms are alleviated but we always hope that the doctors will concentrate on dealing with the basic problem that causes them. Ernst Lange (1927-74), in And Yet It Moves: dream and reality of the ecumenical movement, describes the ecumenical movement as:
the most massive domestic Christian protest against the way Christianity, by its alliance with the powers that be, had been transformed into its exact opposite (p5).
Christianity, in other words, has allowed itself to be (even encouraged itself to be) subverted and corrupted by being more interested in power, influence, status and wealth than with the diametrically opposed values of Jesus Christ. The purpose of the ecumenical movement is to change, renew, transform the churches as the living embodiment of Christianity - not make them nicer to one another but basically unchanged.

I am in favour of ecumenism as a church-changing movement but not simply for the sake of some better form of church (the church is only a symptom of Christianity!). Such an ecumenism engages with the causes of disunity and doesn't paint over the cracks. Such an ecumenism ought to set us free from being defensive and protectionist - a faithless position, if ever there was one. Once we give up on agonising about ourselves we will have more energy to engage with the agonies of the world.

Holiday reading - if you dare

2009-08-09T15:52:00.003+01:00

This weeks's issue of the New Statesman (left leaning current affairs weekly) has the obligatory suggested holiday reading list, but with a difference. Not the usual list of worthy biographies or the latest in political science but oldies that are worth (re)reading. I was glad but not surpised to see among the de Beauvoir, Marx & Engels, Orwell, Dickens, Gaskell, etc etc, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - a must-read, if ever there was one.

The surprise came at book 4 - The New Testament. "If ever a man appeared today who preached pacificsm, who urged setting no store by status, told the wealthy to sell everything they have and give the proceeds to the poor, and freely associated with those respectable people considered outcasts, we would consider him a radical." The article recognised that, almost inspite of the church, the New Testament has inspired many left-wing politicians more than theoretical socialist texts. The New Statesman speaks no more than the truth. The New Testament tells a radical story and the teaching of Jesus calls for a radical response.

Unfortunately, the churches have often failed to live out all four of those qualities listed - supporting war rather than peace; being obsessed with hierarchy and status; amassing wealth; excluding those who don't fit. The New Testament has been used to support an unjust status quo rather than drive transformation. On an individual level the New Testament has been abused by those who agressively proclaim faith yet who are so unsure of the love of God that they are fixated on their own personal salvation.

The New Testament as holiday reading - perhaps even (especially) for church people? Safer to stick with the romance or thriller, no danger of anything radical there.

Never spotted

2009-08-02T21:31:00.002+01:00

The news of the death of Bobby Robson, probably the best English football manager of his generation and a good, but not perfect, human being has saddened me. As the manager of my home town team, Ipswich Town, he had a decade of achievement in the English league and european competition. His service there was at the time I and my friends were at various universities and colleges.

Each vacation we used to reunite in a local park to have a kick around most mornings we hadn't got anything better to do. Jumpers for goal posts. Rain, snow, sun - didn't matter.

Bobby Robson lived not very far from the park and it was said that he often walked his dog there. For obvious reasons we weren't much in favour of people who walked their dogs where we played. Well, it would have been OK if walking was all the dogs did. But we made an exception in our minds for Bobby Robson.

There was always this hope that one day he would walk past with his dog and be so impressed with my football skills that he'd sign me up for Ipswich Town there and then. If he'd have valued all of us, the world would have lost a teacher, head teacher, university researcher etc and whatever it was that I became and instead we would have been bright shining stars of the football firmament.

But we were never spotted. Like Godot he never passed by.

Just as well really. He would have smiled our passion for the game but laughed at my delusions - as I did in rare moments of honesty.

War is organised murder

2009-07-26T15:33:00.001+01:00

Harry Patch, the last living British soldier to have experienced the trenches in the First World War has died at the age of 111. The last of a generation of young men most of whom did not come home in one piece. They deserve our respect.

Politicians and royals such as Prince Charles (who boasts a chest-full of medals, for what one wonders) have been quick to comment. But then, these are mainly people who have a history of and vested interest in glorifying war – usually whilst keeping themselves and their families well away from the carnage.

No glory in the experience or words of Harry Patch though. He said ‘War is organised murder, and nothing else.’

He didn’t quote the Roman poet Horace on war: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori [How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country]. He didn’t echo the war based sentiments of Cecil Spring-Rice’s hymn ‘I vow to thee my country’:
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
No, Harry Patch said that war is organised murder. And he knew what he was talking about.

So, organised murder is a strange thing to be celebrating at Westminster Abbey as apparently will now happen. Or perhaps not given the history of much of the church in enthusiastically supporting war. Harry Patch faithfully and rightly joined in commemorations of his fallen comrades but what’s the betting that his view of war will be conveniently forgotten at the service. Would Westminster Abbey host a service for serial killers – a crass suggestion if there ever was one. Yet murder is murder whether it is organised by the state or individuals.

The ultimate respect we could pay to Harry Patch and his comrades would be hear his words.

Come fly with me?

2009-07-25T16:44:00.002+01:00

Today, 25 July 2009, is the 100th anniversary of the first flight across the English Channel. Louis Bleriot flew his flimsy aircraft from Sangatte and crash landed near Dover Castle. The Airbuses and Boeings of today are recognisable evolutions from that plane. From a do-or-die hop across the Channel (Bleriot couldn’t swim) to flying to the other side of the world in one of the safest forms of transport - an amazing century.

Air travel has enabled us to see places most of us would have only read about before and to meet people who have enriched our lives. We shouldn’t underestimate this. But there is a down side to it as well. Forbearing to mention the spread of nasty viruses, I refer to climate change to which air travel makes a contribution.

I get a bit tired of people who tell me that the churches are jumping on a politically correct bandwagon when climate change is mentioned in sermons and resolutions are passed about it at church assemblies and councils. To its great credit, the World Council of Churches was raising issue this many years ago, before even some environmental groups took it up. Not surprising really as some of its constituency in the Pacific region are seeing their islands disappear under the rising sea.

However, the World Council (and most other international organisations) is confronted with a dilemma which I don’t think it has really faced up to. One the one hand, its style of operation relies on vast amounts of air travel – staff going out from Geneva and people being physically gathered together from all over the world for meetings. International organisations are addicted to air travel. And, I will confess that I have done more than my fair share. On the other hand, actual behaviour rather than fine words give moral authority. Perhaps there should be some act of repentence for relying so heavily on such destructive behaviour and a commitment to new ways . After all, who is going to take any lectures about climate change from air travel junkies?

Tired of living, scared of dying

2009-07-23T15:08:00.001+01:00

There’s one person I know who isn’t scared of dying. That’s my mother. At 96 she says she has no qualms about dying, and I believe her. She easily gets tired by the physical process of everyday life and the effects of advanced age but she isn’t tired of life. She has a constant procession of visitors to her room who tell me that visiting her makes them feel better.

I sometimes wonder whether western society has got itself into a way of thinking that death is unnatural and have become scared of it. Death can be untimely and it can feel unjust. But death is the one certain thing about life. We now seem to have convinced ourselves that doctors should be able to cure every disease and repair every damaged part of our bodies. When they don’t, they have failed. No matter how clever we are in medical science and health care, we can only extend life not ultimately deny death.

As the swine flu pandemic takes a firmer hold, we may be in danger of scaring ourselves to death through being scared of dying. The more we are told ‘don’t panic’, the more we panic. After all they would only tell us not to panic if there really is something to panic about – that’s the way our perverse logic can go.

Christian Aid has the telling slogan – We believe in life before death. Perhaps we should all apply it to ourselves rather than only see it in the context of those who go hungry. Live life, enjoy being alive each day. Stop being scared of our own dying and only worry about those whose deaths we cause through wars and the unjust systems we support.

I once heard Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, being interviewed on BBC Radio 4. He has to live with death threats from those who feel threatened by the fact that he is gay. His words have stuck in my mind – death is not the worst thing that can happen in life.

[If you are wondering where the heading ‘Tired of living, scared of dying’ comes from, it is from the song Old Man River from Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat – saves you having to Google it!]

Anxiety

2009-07-18T10:27:00.002+01:00

Parents are naturally concerned for the wellbeing of their children. So it’s not surprising that the media have made their way to the school gates to get some reactions to increased numbers of deaths from swine flu. It’s also not surprising that a high level of anxiety is revealed, probably increased by the interest of the media.

Yet the school gates scene raises some questions in itself. Try to drive down any road adjacent to our local primary school and you find the way blocked by cars parked either side as parents drop off their children or wait to pick them up in the afternoon. If we are going to be worried by statistics, why aren’t we more concerned about the deadly effects of childhood obesity which is partly fuelled by being driven around rather than walking? And if you want a more statistically certain way of being killed or suffering serious injury, then use the roads.

It seems strange that we panic over something like swine flu that we cannot control, and only mitigate at best. Yet we constantly accept higher risks, seemingly without a second thought, when they are entirely under the control of our own behaviour.

But then dealing with our anxiety about our wellbeing by taking Tamiflu tablets is one thing, changing our lifestyle is too much to expect of us.

Staying alive

2009-07-14T09:48:00.002+01:00

Thirty-nine years ago fresh out of theological college I joined the team ministry of a group of six churches, four of them in the area which became the Borough of Tameside and two just over the border in the City of Manchester. The two Manchester churches were in Openshaw and, as is the way with these things, were the result of a split. Thus there was one in Cornwall Street and one in Mersey Street – their locations accidentally symbolic of the psychological, if not physical, distance between them. So I began by preaching regularly in both churches. They were faithful people but small in number. Then they reunited, probably more responding to economic reality than anything else, at Mersey Street. I continued my contact with them as a visiting preacher for almost ten years after I left that team ministry.

The area has had times of difficulty ever since fields were first built on in the industrial urban expansion of Manchester. Many other churches in the area have closed, their denominational authorities preferring to put their human and financial resources into areas where there is a better immediate return on their investment. I suspect there were many times when shutting up shop at Mersey Street seemed a more attractive option than hanging on in there. Put like that it doesn’t seem either creative or attractive but being present gives an opportunity to do things that those who drive in and then drive off again cannot. For such a small congregation it has, over the years, been involved in all kinds of projects from bikers to credit union, from health to urban spirituality.

On Sunday afternoon I returned to Mersey Street. The houses in the area immediately round the church were all boarded up – even some which had been rebuilt about 10 years ago. The area is being regenerated so the church building had been compulsorily purchased by the City Council. It was the closing service of not the church but the building. In the midst of physical desolation and disruption, the service looked joyfully to the next steps for the church – first to continue to work and worship without their building, then to make creative use of the compensation.

Their new logo features a tent – one of the best images for the church. The logo also features a dancing scarecrow. If that intrigues you, look at www.dancingscarecrow.org.uk.

We’ve been here before, and before, and before

2009-07-13T12:16:00.000+01:00

A piece of family history on my mother’s side is that one of my great-grandfathers was General Roberts’ drummer boy in his youth. Who was General Roberts and what has it got to do with anything? The answer lies in Afghanistan in 1880.

political manoeuvres were being made to pull British forces out of the bubbling cauldron that was Afghanistan – not from today’s news but an account of what was happening in March 1880.

General Roberts became a popular hero in Britain when he led a forced march from Kabul to relieve the garrison in Kandahar in August 1880. British army engagements with what we would now call local militias had resulted in heavy losses and the survivors made their way to Kandahar. The garrison came under siege and needed to be rescued. The troops had to cover twice the normal daily distance on foot in the conditions we see regularly on the tv news. The garrison was relieved and the local enemy faced and routed (only to regroup and attack another army in due course). The British buried their dead and had completely retired to India in six months.

Britain had made three attempts to control Afghanistan in the 1800’s all of them ending disastrously. From 1979 to 1989 the Soviet Union also tried but in the end cut their losses and withdrew.

Do we learn nothing from previous follies? More importantly, divine and human wisdom tells us that trying to subdue people never ultimately works. There is, as St Paul reminds us, a more excellent way.

Leaving it all to 'them'

2009-07-10T14:27:00.003+01:00

An articulate young woman in the audience of the BBC’s Question Time last night commented on the panel’s discussion on alcohol fuelled problems in city centres. Young people should be provided with more things to do, she suggested. Why, I asked the tv screen, can’t she and her friends organise something for themselves? How much imagination and resources would it take (less money than buying drinks all night, probably)? Why expect the local authority or government to do it for you?

But I shouldn’t be too hard on her. In general, we seem to expect that ‘they’ will do it for us. And ‘they’ (the experts and the authorities) have been only too happy to encourage us to think that way. So the responsibility for peaceful community life becomes that of the police. When they talk of policing with the consent of the community, they get it wrong. The community doesn’t exist to assist them in keeping law and order, their role is to assist the community. It’s primarily our responsibility. Likewise with schools, it’s the community’s responsibility (not just parent’s) to nurture and educate children. Schools assist and support. But we seem to prefer to hand children over to the professionals – and then complain if they get it wrong. In churches, there seems to be an increasing tendency to leave it all to the minister instead of recognising that the ministry of the church is collective not individual. Churches should be caring communities not self-centred groups who employ someone else to look after their spiritual needs and do a bit of good in the community.

Do we pay our taxes and make our church offerings so we don’t have to be bothered? So ‘they’ can do it for us?

Subsidiarity

2009-07-10T14:22:00.001+01:00

Now there’s a word to make you disinclined to read this! It’s going to be about ecumenism too!

Listening in on other people’s conversations may be considered rude but it is often fun to try and work out what lies behind what they are saying. It was a bit like that when I read a report of the address given by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the USA to its General Convention. In fact, I had to check out what she said on the ECUSA website. It was:
Some of the ecumenists in here will twitch at this word, but we should be in the business of subsidiarity – the church as a whole should not be doing mission work that can be done better at a more local level. http://www.episcopalchurch.org/78703_112035_ENG_HTM.htm

Not knowing the hinterland of her use of the word, I will take it at face value. And it bothers me. Subsidiarity is defined by the online Cambridge Dictionary as:
the principle that decisions should always be taken at the lowest possible level or closest to where they will have their effect, for example in a local area rather than nationally. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define_b.asp?key=79454&dict=CALD Not, as another online dictionary does, to be confused with subsidiary.

Why should, as she suggests, ecumenists be bothered be subsidiarity? Only, I think, if ecumenism is simply equated with relations between churches and with the engagement with issues by experts at the national or global levels. Ecumenism is not just about bilateral or multilateral ecclesiological dialogues between Christian traditions or engagement with the World Trade Organisation, the Human Rights Commission and all the other United Nations organisations. If ecumenism is to be anything, it is not as a set of organisations but a movement of people. Its energy, legitimacy and moral authority should come from the commitment of people not by resolutions of church governing bodies. Subsidiarity should be a good word for ecumenists. The churches as national organisations should be playing catch-up with what is happening on the ground. Not the other way around!

Looking at it like this, makes me feel that it is perhaps those who have a vested interest in the church structures who are most afraid of subsidiarity. People deciding and acting locally is probably the last thing they want. People might decide that all that stuff that keeps Christians apart is less important than the demands of the gospel in their context. People might decide that radical new ways of being the church and transforming society should be adopted. Where would we be then!

Pragmatism - is that all?

2009-07-08T14:50:00.001+01:00

As is their custom, the World Council of Churches (WCC) has issued a statement welcoming the agreement between the USA and Russia to cut their stockpile of nuclear weapons.

We urge them to stand side by side in that shared responsibility and make urgent and unambiguous progress together. In fact, we believe that by doing so they will gradually gain the moral authority needed to encourage other states in eliminating these weapons of mass destruction. http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=6928

Well, of course, who wouldn’t welcome the agreement? It’s pragmatic international politics and, on that level, let’s hope for more of it. The churches, and all people who value their lives and life in general, should encourage it.

But is the role of the World Council of Churches simply to support pragmatic political approaches to which everyone will sign up? Who takes this opportunity to say clearly, unambiguously and loudly that nuclear weapons are obscene and an offence to God? Who reminds Russia and the USA that that they have conveniently left themselves with enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other and the rest of us with plenty left over to do it all over again, without the cost of keeping the surplus stockpile safe and in order? Why should the WCC do little more than pat them on the back?

My former colleagues in the WCC know well that I have problems with this kind of statement. Inoffensive statements may win friends in high places but it has always seemed to me that the gospel is more about pulling the powerful off their thrones than encouraging them to think more highly of themselves than they should.

I want a WCC that isn’t afraid to offend by offering a radical vision in its statements that reflect a faith that should turn the world upside down – or perhaps the right way up.

The performance not the performer

2009-07-07T17:04:00.001+01:00

If we expect our entertainers, politicians or even church leaders to be perfect human beings, then we are bound to be disappointed. For better or for worse, to be human is to be fallible. It applies to us all, whether our lives are lived in the public eye or in relative obscurity. The popular media make a lucrative but unsavoury living from building people up one minute and then exposing their weaknesses the next. Shock, horror - the person is only human after all as they yield to this or that temptation.

Yet where do we draw the line? When does being fallible become unacceptable? For so-called celebrities, we seem to tolerate or are even amused by drunkenness, drug taking, bed hopping and riotous behaviour. How about murder? Well OJ divided us on that. How about paedophilia? Gary Glitter was left in no doubt about popular sentiment.

Am I the only person in the world who finds it bizarre, if not obscene, that the news that a 12 year old finalist from Britain’s Got Talent (it turned out not to have very much) is performing at the Michael Jackson Memorial has been hailed as wonderful by the British media. Michael Jackson may have cleared of particular charges by a court in one instance but his own words as well as the court papers reveal his paedophilic tendencies. The lure of the global exposure and the performance fee probably drown out the irony for the boy’s parents. I doubt they think that it’s OK for boys to be abused, even by a superstar.

The second BBC channel has cleared its schedule to show the Memorial. He was a talented entertainer, perhaps not the genius some claim, and the pleasure his music and performance gave to millions should be celebrated. But Michael Jackson was who he was for all his talent – a deeply troubled man who worked out his problems on others who themselves were vulnerable. We have to remember that too.

The Bishop and I

2009-07-06T14:19:00.000+01:00

The reports on the controversial remarks of Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali on homosexuality and on his involvement in a renewal/secessionist (you choose which!) movement in the Church of England reminded me of one encounter with him.

I once had the pleasure of meeting with a delegation from the Church of England to the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva. I knew some members and my previous experience had meant working for and with the C of E so I thought I was at home amongst them. My presentation seemed to be well received and the initial questions were sharp but friendly.

Then Bishop Michael spoke up. Why, he wondered, didn't the World Council of Churches have anyone from England amongst the executive staff. I have since thought of all kinds of retorts I might have offered - but perhaps it was as well that they didn't come from my lips at the time. I simply and rather humbly offered myself as the proof that there was someone from England. But, no, no, I didn't count. English representation only counted, apparently, if it were by someone from the C of E.

Even though I stand in a tradition that did break away from the C of E, albeit centuries ago, I hope that if that particular story replayed itself, I wouldn't have to ask "Which Church of England would that be then, Bishop?"

An act of solidarity

2009-07-06T13:38:00.000+01:00

Thank You, Mr President - an anniversary tribute to Abraham Licoln was the title of the concert by the Halle Orchestra and Choir on Saturday evening, 4th July, to celebrate Lincoln's 200th birthday. But why should Manchester celebrate Abrham Lincoln? The answer is a great act of solidarity.

The blockade of the southern states during the American Civil War led to the drying up of the raw cotton that fed the cotton mills of Lancashire. This caused considerable hardship amongst the workers. No cotton, no work, no pay. The cotton workers held a meeting in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on 31 December 1862. Instead of urging the breaking of the blockade, they sent a letter to Lincoln in solidarity with the fight against slavery. Their hope was for the erasure of that foul blot on civilisation and Christianity - chattel slavery. Lincoln replied, deploring their sufferings. He said, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances on the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice humanity and freedom.

That puts my efforts for trade justice into perspective - I just pay a bit extra for faitr trade products, not go hungry. All honour to the cotton workers who were prepared to pay a high price for a just cause.

PS It was an excellent and moving concert too.