Category Archives: Faith

Crowd Sourced Church

Last week was a bad week at work. The bid process for the fourth and final placement of the graduate scheme did not result in the outcome I had hoped for. And the circumstances surrounding that had left me both depressed and despondent.

On Sunday evening, church turned that on its head.
Earlier in the week there had been a slightly cryptic message sent into the Twitterverse
As Al started the service he said something along these lines and it started to make sense

We don’t really have a plan, there are going to be some songs, we’ll commission St Barnabas and Ursula will preach but we want to get you contributing to the service. So, tag your tweets #smlb and text your thoughts to this number or just come to the front and share

And what that resulted in was a wonderfully diverse, and rich, stream of contributions flashed up on the screens. There were texts, there were a lot of tweets and from the front there were the voices of those sharing stories without the anonymity and complexity of technology.
A church like ours is full of talented people and is incredibly well resourced in terms of preaching and leadership. That makes for a very polished experience (even when it doesn’t finish at 8.30 on the dot) but there is a certain inevitability to our slipping into being consumers and sitting passively, waiting to be entertained and edified.
The leaders of this service have a difficult task in striking the right balance and on Sunday the crowd sourced approach really worked. It did mean that things were unpredictable but it gave God the opportunity to use a variety of channels and a number of different people to be his mouthpiece.
The whole God speaking thing is one of those things that makes Christians sound mental. The kind of suggestion that gets us thrown funny looks and underlines the delusional nature of our very existence. But nevertheless, bear with me (if you’re still reading), Sunday was a wonderful example of knowing that it’s more than just coincidence. It was one of those evenings where seemingly random activity looked, and felt, very much like the well orchestrated action of a loving saviour.
The very nature of the service – built up round a sermon on forgiveness (Ursula Simpson on top form) – addressed the stuff I had gone through last week. Dealt with it and moved on. From beginning to end the service could not have been better designed if I had sat down and thought about what I needed to hear. And it wasn’t in individual songs, or words, or music, or tweets but it was in the presence of God and the answers to prayer that was evident as a product of the whole.
The service came together from the contributions of the people in the pews but there was no mistaking a common thread running through it, a singular inspiration working through more than just those labelled ‘leader’.
We believe in a priesthood of all believers but often it’s hard to get people out of the pews. Did Sunday see the first shoots of something significant? It was certainly a great experience of being, not just doing, church.
I hope this isn’t just a random experiment but is something that can become a really important source of encouragement, praise and worship from day to day, not just on a Sunday. I think there’s a lot of mileage in exploring how some of the emerging trends in communication can work in a church context. It will be interesting to see if that’s true.

Swears

I’m doing jury service at the moment. And the courts are full of spiritual connotations. If it’s not bowing in reverence, or calling judges ‘Lord’ or ‘Worship’ it’s the very presence of an advocate interceding on behalf of someone else. Mind you, it’s hardly a surprise that an environment built to house truth and justice should remind me of God.

However, what’s most striking is the spiritual barometer of trustworthiness, the swearing of an oath on the Bible.

‘I swear by Almighty God that I will faithfully try the defendant(s) and give a true verdict (true verdicts) according to the evidence.’

All those on my jury chose to do this. I didn’t.

And you may think that’s quite strange given that I am a Christian, that I believe in a personal relationship with God and that the Bible is a phenomenal tool for equipping us to live to our potential (actually irrespective of whether you have faith or not).

I don’t know whether the 11 people who swore on the Bible would describe themselves as Christians. If they wouldn’t then it seems a little strange to start court proceedings with what amounts to a falsehood (not that this is an accusation of perjury!).

It might make the Daily Mail weep but I just don’t understand the reason for having a spiritual barometer of trustworthiness. And the reason for that is because Jesus tells his followers that oath taking, that swearing by heaven or by God isn’t necessary.

The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most well-known chunks of Jesus’ ministry (and another one of those moments in the Life of Brian where the two figures are demarcated). In amongst the Beatitudes and a warning about our thoughts rather than just our acts Jesus talks about oaths.

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. (Matthew 5:33-36)

And why shouldn’t, as followers of Jesus, we take oaths? Because Christians should ‘let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one’.

Part of being a Christian is being trustworthy, of having integrity, of being credible and living a life that reflects the person of Jesus (or tries to). This is what Jesus is saying. He’s saying if you follow my teachings then you don’t need to swear oaths to make a promise. If you promise to do something, why would you do anything other than keep it?

When I said I was affirming there was slight confusion about what that meant. Someone said it was “for those who aren’t religious”. Obviously, for me, it was actually for completely the opposite reason.

If the court system was to lose the spiritual barometer for trustworthiness there would be OUTRAGE and it would be further evidence of a creeping secularism. Would it? Wouldn’t it actually be Christians recognising that it’s in conflict with what we believe and for those that don’t have a relationship with God, or even any faith in Him, creates a situation that may actually ring hollow?

>4 Cs for #cnvrstns in 2010

>This week has seen the 2010 restart to our church, Conversations, and another new venue. Vodka Revolution might be a surprising venue for god-bothering, it might not be an obvious place for people to worship God and enjoy fellowship with one another but on the basis of this week it’s going to be a great location. There was an air of excited expectancy amongst those of us who were there on Wednesday evening and a real buzz around the venue and its public that had been lacking in some of the other places we’ve been.

One of the things that’s integral to the way we ‘do church’ as Conversations is not to leave our relationships at face value in services but to be active in supporting, praying, encouraging and seeing each other during the week. One of the ways we do that is through cell groups. That’s not cell in its negative connotations but in the organic sense – following the imagery of the Body of the Christ and recognising that we hope to grow and eventually multiply from one to more.
Thursday nights are cell night and it was great to have fellowship with each other over food wonderfully prepared by Mrs Wellers. As we digested we chatted about what the coming year might look like. The upshot of this, in a delayed New Year Resolution styleee, was commitments around 4 Cs (only because Christians need alliterative groups of cheesy words, not because we’re sticklers for grammatical accuracy):
  • Our Celves (I did warn you)
  • Our Cell
  • Our Church
  • Our City
One of the amazing things about cell is the space it allows us for accountability, relationships and confidentiality so I’m not going to blog about those except to say that together we’re going to support each other in continuing the commitments we wanted to make for ourCelves and revisit them as the year progresses.
We’ve committed to making our cell work, to ensuring that we meet for cell but beyond that we are a community, not just people that meet up once a week.
We’re committed to our church, to supporting the work it does in prayer and by turning up but also in making sure that the welcome we’ve had is true of the experience for anyone else who visits on a Wednesday night.
And in doing this we’re committed to York, to our city, to loving it and supporting it and encouraging it. By more prayer, through the work of Besom and Street Angels and in being a credible and relevant example of Jesus to those around us.
If you’re around us hold us up to those standards, help us to get the balance right between being part of Conversations, part of our cell and part of our city and challenge us if we’re falling short of these standards.
I have a funny feeling that 2010 is going to be a good year. Exciting.

>Christian Freedoms

>Yesterday we prayed for the persecuted church and Songs of Praise featured Open Doors. The figures on the number of Christians who face real, life-threatening persecution are staggering (just browse the Open Doors site). Yet the words of a lady too scared to be identified demonstrated an incredible depth of faith in a personal saviour when asked why she didn’t just deny being a Christian

Life is good but nothing compared to the beauty of Jesus

Her story was one of living under the attack against freedom to worship. A human right, by the way. We are incredibly lucky in the UK not to fear oppression and persecution like hers. However, events like this suggest something different:

“GOSPEL FREEDOM UNDER ATTACK”
Many Christians are concerned at the marginalisation of Christianity which is increasingly being experienced in society today. The case of the Christian nurse disciplined for praying with a patient, the school receptionist disciplined for asking her friends to pray for her daughter told off for sharing her faith with another child, the Equality Bill likely to force churches to accept homosexual youth workers, the hotel owners charged with a crime because they discussed their faith and criticised Islam to a Muslim guest who asked about Christianity – the list goes on.

The things listed there are problematic, that I’m not disputing, but they’re not couched in the person of Jesus. I don’t know all the details, it’s just enough of an outrage to make you gasp and shake your heads. And I don’t suggest we’re immune from threatening behaviour but so are those of other faiths, or lifestyles. Where are the similar concerns about that?

The friction apparent in that list, most of which seem ludicrous rather than threatening, is a consequence of being in the world, but not of it. Gospel Freedom is living life to the full as citizens of heaven. We’re called to model salvation, not to create and enforce Christian states, or Christian societies. So there’s space for conflict.

Pluralism, the space for people to get on with what they believe and living how they wish (within societally agreed boundaries) is Christian freedom writ large. In fact, we really want to take it further because by default we love.

That’s more than tolerating difference. And it isn’t about expecting behaviour to sit within our beliefs or else. We do not get to choose rejection over love. But it’s that freedom – to choose rejection over love – which people believe encapsulates our faith. That’s the sound they hear above the noise.

Perhaps Britain is a Christian nation, it’s probably not, but it definitely is home to people who disagree with our whole belief structure; it’s home to people who think we’re dangerous and deluded; to those who have been hurt by our hypocrisy and home to those bemused by the righteous anger we whip up towards semantics, language and individual lifestyles.

Just google “Christian Institute” to see the opinion of the world. Sadly, the apparent freedoms seen by the outsider aren’t about Jesus. And yet, everything we do should be about Him, and about those out there, not us in here.

If freedoms are under such threat why do we try so hard to keep our cocoon intact? To build Christendom-on-sea where we don’t have to make allowances for people that don’t think like us. When the Church isn’t engaged with the world it’s revelling in sub-culture. When we revel in sub-culture we get sidelined by the world, it’s inevitable. Mind you, if freedom is our passion where’s the problem? If we marginalise ourselves, we vacate the moral high ground, we lose relevance as a spiritual reference point and become complicit with the development of the dreaded secularism.

As Christmas approaches and people attempt to avoid offence (Dundee, that would be you) should we not be celebrating that people go out of their way to avoid offence, because of love and respect for others? What happens instead is OUTRAGE and the (deliberate) misconstruing of events to make headlines. Just how insecure are we that we can’t cope with the loss of a word?

The more we build sites like christianchirp.com, hold holy climate events (sorry St Mike’s) that clash with the worldly (Friends of the Earth) and put No-shave-November up against Mo-vember (Edinburgh CU are doing it for Compassion, who are awesome, but still) the more Christian freedom looks like an invitation to an exclusive club, not a relationship that will transform you, your life and your community.

The day we are prevented from living with that freedom is when we can start to identify with our brothers and sisters who face prison, torture, rape and death. That is an affront to freedom, full stop. Surely any distinction of ‘Christian’ freedoms as something distinct is unhelpful anyway. It wasn’t ‘cos God loved Christians, or the church, that he sent Jesus; it was ‘cos he loved the world.

Justice

>

Two years ago I spent some time in Sierra Leone researching my Masters dissertation. According to the UNDP’s Human Development Index it’s the poorest country on the planet. The conflict that tore that country apart is a harrowing story of child soldiers, brutal amputations and destroyed communities. My dissertation examined the gap between the ‘peace’ of Special Courts and Truth & Reconciliation Committees (TRC) and the reality of that ‘peace’ as experienced by men, women and children without homes or prospects and carrying the scars of the conflict.


Central to that debate was justice. On the one hand the belief that criminal justice equates to peace and in stark contrast the reality on the ground. The work of the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society addressed the needs of lives torn apart by conflict by seeking advocacy and reconciliation, particularly on behalf of child soldiers.


The consequence was not communities that rejected these men and women, often guilty of heinous crimes, but to actively engage in reconciliation and the rebuilding of their lives together. Clearly it wasn’t enough to try Foday Sankoh or Charles Taylor. Not only did everyone know that those indicted were guilty but most of them died prior to facing trial. So what did attempted legal restitution achieve? The lives of those I met were being pieced together by people getting together, talking and forgiving before moving on as a restored community.


This is the poorest and the least developed country in the world recovering from untold evil. Not by punishing the people responsible for those crimes but actively welcoming them back into their midst. Very challenging.


The reason this is brought to mind is the recent media attention surrounding Ronnie Briggs, Peter Connelly and Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. Briggs has been released from prison on compassionate grounds and it’s being suggested that the same thing should be possible for al-Megrahi whilst the identities of those involved in the death of Peter Connelly have this week been made public. Alongside those pictures have been discussions about giving them new identities when they are released from prison, causing outrange at the waste of taxpayers’ cash.


Predictably there are loud voices of dissent. And it’s the same whenever someone is sentenced for a high profile crime. Wherever there is the pain of loss, those responsible need to suffer in a way that ‘fits the crime’. But what punishment ever truly fits a crime on that basis? Is it like for like? One life for another?


I question whether that is a justice that gives peace? If our response is to require someone to suffer in our stead it doesn’t stop our pain or make us feel any less raw. The more you punish,the more you pursue an impossible criteria for restitution. And so we’ve developed an incredibly sophisticated justice system that provides an agreed standard of societal justice. The British hand over responsibility for justice to those who have spent their lives studying the law and analysing defendants. On our behalf, and speaking for society, these men and women declare what punishment is appropriate and what justice is.


But then we can’t accept that it has atoned for the crime.


Because the issues aren’t just with sentencing, they’re at release too. When granted freedom ex-cons have atoned for their actions in the eyes of the law (and by extension the rest of society). It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re unrepentant, or seek restitution and reconciliation with those they’ve hurt because that’s beyond the remit of a secular justice system. Except that we don’t see it that way. Former prisoners face barriers to engaging with society, which some would say should be expected. But aren’t those barriers only going to perpetuate those destructive behaviours? When Tracey Connelly, her picture widely publicised, leaves prison she will do so into the arms of a society ready to exact vengeance on her son’s behalf.


Even though justice will have been served.


Not justice in terms of what some would demand but on that day she will have done what the state demands to provide restitution to the population of Britain.


If on that day she requires a new identity it will be because the papers who first bemoan her sentence and then her false identity are the same people who give credibility to a position that says ‘the justice system is broken, it doesn’t go far enough and she needs to suffer for what she did’.


Fundamentally, British society believes that there’s something people have to do to make themselves right with us; some standard of acceptability to achieve; or some punishment that resolves the past in order to change the future.


I don’t believe that.


I found Sierra Leone an incredibly challenging experience for a variety of reasons but fortunately we don’t have to visit West Africa to see life changing behaviour in action. Gee Verona-Walker, the mother of Anthony Walker, forgave her son’s killers. She knew that carrying the pain did nothing. She knows that it is no disrespect to the memory of her son to celebrate his life rather than searching for a potentially non-existent criteria for satisfaction.


As a Christian I fundamentally believe that lives do not have to depend on histories. And I believe that forgiveness, true past-forgetting unconditional forgiveness can heal anything. Impossible? Perhaps. Hard? Certainly. But the things that I believe rotate around that central, crucial, life transforming principle.

My Sunday’s Viewing – Looking For God

So, the second show was Jon Ronson’s documentary called ‘Looking For God’ and part of the new Channel 4 series ‘Revelations’. I only discovered the programme was on at about 4.30 and that it clashed with church. Typically!

From that advert it wasn’t clear which way the documentary was going to go. Would it be positive or negative? One shot of a guy talking about being repulsed, another calling the atmosphere moving and then shots of people being prayed for.

The premise was that Jon Ronson was going to follow a group of agnostics as they followed the Alpha Course at St Aldate’s church in Oxford. In the end it clearly attempted to bring a balanced view to the story. It gave us a back story to some of them, highlighted those who had issues in their lives, where they stood with God and cut in shots of bowed heads in prayer, or being incredulous at what was happening or wrestling with the Bible. Continue reading My Sunday’s Viewing – Looking For God

My Sunday’s Viewing – Celibacy

We caught a couple of programmes yesterday as our restful weekend drew to an end.

The first was The Big Questions, from Manor School in York. Discussions included the value of Armed Forces Day and whether people should be allowed to wear the Burqa but also on the agenda was the question of allowing Catholic priests to marry.

One of the main critiques was “how can celibates advise on marriage” and there was something deeply ironic in that coming from a group of people, many of whom were married, and some of whom not Christians, who were pouring forth their judgement on celibacy.

I’m not a Roman Catholic, and I’m very happily married so I’m not really qualified to comment on the debate. Except that I think celibacy is an awesome calling.

I think there’s something incredibly powerful about celibacy. I think devoting your life, even to ‘marriage’, to Jesus is as valuable a commitment (if not greater) than the one I made to Christine. Paul is not wrong when he says that being single, realistically, allows you to serve the Kingdom far more readily than having family around you. To live a life in anticipation of glory rather than the temporal pleasures that Nicky Campbell was so keen to point out to the Fathers they were missing.

The truth is that both Christians and the world love pairing up. Celebrity breakups, and patchups sell thousands of glossy magazines a week whilst HTB isn’t called Hunt The Bride for nothing. And in that context, what happens to those called to celibacy? To those facing “being left on the shelf”? It doesn’t seem like it could be much fun, to feel like you’re missing out on something glorious, or letting the side down by not being a couple.

Certainly, when the debate is pitched at a level where people can suggest that paedophilia is the result of celibacy (as one participant on Sunday suggested), it’s difficult to approach the topic in an adult fashion that honours the commitment, that recognises different gifts and calls and that provides the scope for people to search after God’s heart for the world totally unencumbered by other intimate relationships competing for attention.

It’s a shame that no one stuck up for the Catholics, except the Catholics. Seems like the rest of the Body could learn to offer a bit more solidarity not just with our celibate clergymen but with our (temporarily or otherwise) celibate and single brothers and sisters.

Please can we have our ball back?

So, someone has written a book called ‘Killing God’. And to support its publication Penguin have surveyed 1000 13-18 year olds. The headlines? 50% of teenagers have never prayed and 16% never to church whilst 600 of them felt that religion ‘has a negative influence on the world’.

It would be interesting to know the methodology of the surveying. Whether the questions provided scope to talk about the good as well as the bad. People sometimes hold positions that are contradictory, (cognitive polyphasia to give it its grand title) and nowhere is that more true than in what they believe about spirituality. So it may be they condemn the behaviours of ‘the church’ but concurrently see Jesus as the Son of God. Or they believe religion has a negative influence on the world because they hear simplistic reporting of ‘faith based struggles’ that are realistically only about politics and power. Nevertheless, I’m not the only Christian that could find grounds for suggesting the Body hasn’t only ever acted as a source of light and hope.

Nevertheless, if two thirds of those surveyed don’t believe in God that leaves 33%. Which is not grounds for dismay given that the media is often keen to point out how few people (I’m not sure in what other context 1m is referred to as a few) actively attend church. 1m out of 60m is less than a third. By quite a lot.

Of course that conflicts with the approximately 80% who said in the last census they considered themselves to be Christians. But I don’t think we should be discouraged by the disparity between actual Christians and nominal believers. If we are ‘the rump’ then that’s because we’re committed to our faith. If we’re active in our churches and communities, it’s because we believe what we say we believe and have a relationship with God that releases us into our giftings and passions. And that’s exciting.

What’s also exciting is the challenge posed by public perception. The author of the book, Kevin Brooks said that he wrote it because he wanted to explore the personal attitudes of young people towards organised religion and traditional concepts of God. And certainly the synopsis of the book sounds like it’s cashing in on a phenomenon of literature that questions old paradigms (as though that in itself was something new). Here’s a book for parents who believe all religion to be false, dangerous and evil to give their children to ensure they can fight off the deceived. And that’s a great piece of marketing. But I predict it will sell in both camps because in commissioning such a survey here’s a marketing ploy to entice the church to pick it off the shelves. Clever, clever, clever.

“Dawn’s dad is a recovering substance abuser, a one-time child molester, and…a born-again Christian. Religion: That’s his latest addiction. But as far as Dawn is concerned, the Man Upstairs has robbed her of the father she once loved–drugs, drinks, and all. Which is why Dawn’s gone shopping for Bibles. For research. To know her enemy. Because, to get her old dad back, she’s going to have to do away with this God guy. She’d just better pray that the fallout from her father’s past life of crime doesn’t catch up to her first.”

So is this the God Delusion for kids? It’s about a 15 year old who questions the existence of God but there’s little to suggest what it ultimately concludes or information on Mr Brooks’ own experience of faith or position on it. His background as a philosopher suggests he’s wrestled with these ideas for some time but tragically, it seems he’s never really grasped what it is that Christianity is all about. In an interview with the Telegraph, he poses the question of “how can the moralities of an ancient religion relate to the tragedies and disorders of today’s broken world?”

As a Christian, I know, fundamentally, that the relevance and truth of God is timeless, absolute and personal meaning that such a question speaks of missed opportunity. When did we drop the ball and lose the discourse? How did the Body of Christ manage to create a situation where people not only see us as a negative influence on the world, but reduced to being about an ancient morality rather than an unconditional personal relationship of grace?

I don’t think that clearing up that misconception is rocket science. I don’t think that it’s problematic to explain that until Jesus tore up the rules of neighbour there wasn’t much generosity of spirit towards aliens. I can’t help but find it easy to point to groups like the Clapham Sect as the absolute embodiment of transforming the world, for good, in Christ’s name. If people see us as negative, it’s because we’ve retreated from the world, no longer giving balance to an image that is often only partially presented. Leaving aside the untold good that the church is doing (Christians Against Poverty, I saw tweet, are helping people respond to a cumulative total of over £40m debt) it’s our relevance that’s questionable; not God’s.

It’s time we climbed over the fence (which we probably erected) and retrieved the ball. Though he probably didn’t mean to Kevin Brooks has written a book for the church to engage young people with, to build youth work around. A survey on the back of it has said kids don’t pray or go to church or even believe in God but at the same time here’s a statistical sample that suggests teenagers are receptive to the idea of God in numbers that dwarf church attendance.

The key is always prayer. To pray that those kids don’t end up in 30 years’ time having never met with Jesus or experienced his body in action. To pray that they at least know what the church represents even if they reject faith. To pray that the church stops waiting for people to fall into church shaped holes in the ground but starts being community for the world, not ourselves. The alternative is nice and simple. We can carry on standing around, waiting for someone else to make the first move towards us, to emerge from our frightening next-door neighbour’s overgrown garden clutching the initiative. Perhaps we should dismantle the fence, clear the garden and love our neighbour (who is still frightening, and a little bit crazy, and smells a bit).

And, when all is said and done, y’know we might not find that ball. But, would we need to?

@chrisdjmoyles

At Pentecost the BBC broadcast a service from Kingsgate Community Church in Peterborough. I caught some of it and was very impressed that Pentecost in 2009 still looked like the fun times Acts suggests took place. But stylistically it wasn’t a surprise to me. I’ve been around the church my entire life and I know that church isn’t all BCP Morning Prayer (beautiful but a struggle to engage with if your discourse comes from post-modernity) and I know it isn’t all the guilt and despondency which quite a lot of people reckon church is.

And in that situation it’s no surprise that people could be led to believe that God is dead. Their experience of church seems to indicate a weekly mourning of his passing rather than a celebration of his living.

Anyway, I caught a bit of Chris Moyles and his breakfast show discussing this. Continue reading @chrisdjmoyles

Pedlars of Lies

I have no problem with people being given a platform from which to say whatever they want. I have no desire to prevent anyone from saying anything. We are quite capable of controlling what we listen to, distilling the value of it and either accepting or rejecting its worth. This and things like it are the beauty of the freedoms we enjoy.

I do, however, have a problem with those freedoms being used to give credence to lies. And I have a problem with the way in which we can seemingly abandon the big-picture, issue driven, needs orientated discourses in favour of the mud slinging that’s dominating Westminster at the moment.

The combination of these things is that there’s a likelihood of a big swing to the right in the elections in two weeks’ time.

This week we’ve mostly been receiving pamphlets from the canvassing teams of the parties (and from UKIP in the post from my Grandad). In amongst that was material from the BNP literature containing the perfect mix of half-truth, stereotype, fear and sensationalism to underscore the skillful way in which Nick Griffin is making repugnant views seemingly palatable. Alongside this has been a number of opinion pieces dismayed at the rise of the right but addressing the issues from an aloof position that simply deals with the BNP in the same way the BNP deal with facts. And in response there has been a staggering insight into Britain’s mind.

I’ve seen a number of statements trotted out as glib facts that are anything but.

Their pamphlet contains plenty of them whilst the comments left on newspaper articles repeat the rhetoric and expand the lies.

They’ll pull us out of Europe. I am very much pro-Europe and I fail to see what behaving like a stagnant little backwater really seeks to achieve. Isolationism might work if you’re Russia or China or even the USA because the economies of scale in such a big operation and the access to a willing and exploitable workforce make it somehow viable. Their Britain, which will have had the most exploitable workforce repatriated and already looks to the world to supply its needs is not going to be an attractive proposition for businesses, for external investment or for us.

Hearteningly though, until the BNP MEPs pull us out from Europe they’re going to give 10% of their salaries (although no word on whether they’ll follow the MEP expense abuse that far exceeds what’s happening in London) to funds that will enable community groups to properly celebrate St George’s Day. As though it’s money that is preventing people taking the initiative and organizing things. I’d suggest that a lack of community momentum to organize things that mark St George’s Day, for example, come from an insularity that is peculiarly British rather than anything else. Minority groups will celebrate their homelands when on foreign soil, the majority bumbles along comfortable in the fact that every day life is every day life and doesn’t need remembering or commemorating. Plus, it’s not as though the British really need an excuse for a piss-up, which is all St Patrick’s and St Andrew’s days have become.

Immigration, as you’d expect, features heavily. Whether it’s in the opposing moves, that are supported by the major parties, to block the borders to the 80 million low wage Muslim Turks poised to overwhelm the UK (yes, because a system that currently sees a net migration of 147,000 people is suddenly going to see 800 times that number) or having a picture of a doctor saying he’s voting BNP because the NHS is under strain from immigrants there’s no doubt specks of truth but it’s ultimately incredibly misleading.

If the NHS is under strain (ive never had a bad experience myself) it’s unlikely to be attributed to one thing alone. How about heart disease, diabetes and lifestyle connected cancers? Or drink/drug related need? Or things to do with sex whether curing disease or bringing life. It’s a statement made all the more ludicrous, and disrespectful to our medics by ignoring the valuable contribution made by migration to the NHS’ workforce (for the last 60 years) not just as medical professionals but in the auxiliary roles too.

But that must be what is contributing to our reaching retirement and then being at the back of the queue behind the asylum seekers (there were a whopping 5,000 asylum claims last year, 700 more than the previous one but not what I would call an invasion). I’ve heard this queue mentioned a lot but I’m no closer to working out what lies at its head. Schooling? That’s free for all. Health? Again free to all. Benefits? Open to anyone with need (both to be enjoyed or abused by anyone criminal enough to do so). Work? Difficult for everyone but accessible to everyone who is deemed to hold the best qualifications. Like jobs on the continent are if we bothered to learn languages or leave this sceptred isle. But it’s clearly that issue driving claims that there should be British jobs for British workers. These recent strikes are another example of British arrogance. All that striking in this way will do is encourage more companies to leave Britain because of a workforce that is petulant and expectant of more and more and more.

Then there’s the question of Iraq and Afghanistan. Dealt with in a number of ways. Firstly, Iraq was about oil and therefore wrong, Afghanistan is a foreign war and therefore we should be pulled out. They state our troops are not well equipped (and the infrequent stories that highlight this gloss over the evident disparity in kit between the rarely wounded coalition and the repeatedly pulverised enemy). Oh yeah, and that Muslims in this country don’t appreciate their sacrifice because soldiers have been abused in the streets.

It’s a clever ploy because it distances them from the fighting on the basis of faith and the source of so such foreign policy discussion and faith based discourse whilst leaving you in no doubt that Islam is dangerous and insidious. It ignores the reality that there are plenty of anti-war protesters who have diminished the efforts of the British forces by pointing an accusatory finger, backed up by the nationwide news coverage of the event, at one particular group and one particular incident.

It’s interesting though that there’s a contradiction within the party and what they believe when it comes to the interaction of faith and skin colour. A BNP candidate councillor for York said that if there is a black police association from which whites are barred why couldn’t the opposite be true. Leaving aside whether that’s what normality looks like (no majority ‘loses out’ when minorities are granted the same opportunities) he went on to say that they don’t want to talk about colour at all, just people.

So why then does their propaganda specify Muslims (twice)? Skin colour and faith are clearly very different. Although skin colour isn’t important what you believe is enough to make us build up divisions that really we aren’t interested in. Evidently this school of thought must be informing the guy who said something along the lines of ‘it’s not that we don’t like Muslims it’s just that their faith is incompatible with our Christian heritage’.

Eh?

Christianity tells of God’s love for me, for you, for creation. It points out the beauty of being in loving relationship with God and with people like us but Jesus makes it blatantly obvious that actually it’s more about being friends to the friendless, striving for justice for the downtrodden and generally pouring out ourselves in service to others particularly if the world thinks your differences are insurmountable.

Be proud that this nation of ours has played host to people from around the world forever. Be proud that in this country your human rights are not only protected but they are proactively promoted throughout the world. Be proud that we are blessed with education, health, welfare, transport, employment regimes and systems that are the envy of the world and that prompt people (without just cause to flee) to leave their homes to search for better life and offer those who have to flee a safety from the harm they might experience at ‘home’.

I work in one of the poorest parts of the UK. 6 out of 10 postcodes are amongst the 25% most deprived nationally. And we have an ethnic minority population of 8-9%.

Yet the menu of life in Hill is one of joblessness, benefits, drink, drugs, fractured families, teenage pregnancies, nationally the lowest educational attainment, some terrifying health statistics. And I could go on.

None of those problems come from immigration. None of those problems would be fixed by corporal or capital punishment. And certainly none of those problems are solved by the repatriation of anyone deemed not to be British by ancestry.

It’s not enough to say “no platform for racists”, thumb our noses and walk off with the moral high ground attached to our feet. It’s not enough to be condescending, to assume that people understand and appreciate what’s going on behind the propaganda. This is heart and mind stuff, but it’s heart and mind stuff that flows from that reluctance to engage. So let’s address the issues. Let’s talk about Britain being an absolutely mongrel nation that has thrived on immigration and covered the planet by emigration. There is no such thing as being ‘British’ by ancestry; there’s nothing that makes a 5th generation Brit more British than someone whose parents arrived in this country in the 60s, or who has recently been given citizenship.

Get off your bums and use your vote. The European elections use Proportional Representation, that makes it even more important that you do vote. Don’t lose sight of what this is really about in the immediate confusion and emotion of this talk about expenses (when really we’re splitting hairs over a small proportion of unnecessary expenses against necessary expenses). Evil prospers when good people do nothing.

“He has showed you, o man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God” (Micah 6:8)

When you go to the ballot box vote for the people who will do justice, mercy and humility. Please don’t vote for the ones who won’t.