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.
Monday, 19 April 2010
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Happy 120th Birthday, Servette
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.
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.
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
A mea culpa from the Pope?
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.
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.
Saturday, 13 March 2010
'Christianity led me to the party’
‘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.
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.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
No-cost conscience
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.
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.
Monday, 15 February 2010
‘Ready Steady Cook’ Worship
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.
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.
Friday, 29 January 2010
Don’t blame the exam protesters
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.
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.
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