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>Christian Freedoms

November 16, 2009 / / 0 Comments

>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.

>Hugh Bayley on 10:10

October 30, 2009 / / 0 Comments

>On October 21st the Lib Dems asked their fellow MPs to commit Parliament to reducing its carbon footprint by 10% by the end of 2010, following a huge wave of support that saw almost 10,000 emails in 48 hours and 96% of MPs receiving a phone call asking for them to support the campaign.

In the event Labour stymied the vote with the Noes containing only a solitary DUP member and a sea of Red. I had emailed my MP, Hugh Bayley, asking him in the first instance to personally commit to the campaign and subsequently to support the motion brought before the house.
Sadly Hugh voted with the rest of his party (save for the twelve noble exceptions) in rejecting Simon Hughes’ motion and not committing Parliament to a 10% reduction by the end of next year.
To say I was disappointed was an understatement, particularly from an MP who has been so prominent within International Development (the world’s poorest suffer the most from a changing climate) so it was with interest that I received his response in the post (no postal strike impact here as yet).

On the personal front he’s in.

I shall work to reduce my personal carbon consumption by 10 per cent in 2010 compared with this year. It is important for MPs to practice what they preach, so I will report on how well I do on my website at www.hughbayley.labour.co.uk as 2010 progresses.

However, he did not vote for the motion because

I did not support it because it included an unrealisable commitment for Parliament to cut its emissions by 10 per cent in 2010. I wish the Houses of Parliament were in a position to make and implement such a pledge, but I am afraid we are not.

The House of Commons Commission, a committee of six senior MPs, had discussed 10:10 on the Monday before concluding that it was impossible to speed up or add to the we work of emission cutting to achieve 10 per cent in 2010.
Fair enough, the reason we didn’t see Parliament adopt 10:10 was because they didn’t want to make a promise they couldn’t keep. Given the last 12 months that’s not a stupid decision, in Hugh’s words
the Commission is right not to make a promise it feels it could not keep. If it did so it would increase public cynicism about Parliament and politicians
However, what’s revealing is the letter that Hugh Bayley sent to the Commission. In it he lists 10 things. I’ll let you make your mind up over whether or not these are achievable and leave you to the incredulity that behaviours within Westminster should be so blase…
  • Every kitchen on the estate should be equipped to recycle paper, plastic, glass and cans. Currently, this is not the case
  • Food waste – rotting food waste contributes massively to our greenhouse gas emissions. We could consider ways to start recycling this
  • I have noticed walking around the Parliamentary estate that radiators are turned up to maximum temperature, with the windows open. There should be a cap to ensure the temperature on radiators is only as high as we need, and cannot be turned up.
  • We should have a ‘lights off’ policy and should install more movement-sensitive timers so that lights are not left on when rooms and corridors are not in use
  • We should be encouraging staff to turn their computer monitors and printers off when not in use
  • The monitors around the estate remain on throughout recess, and when the House is not sitting. This is unnecessary and they should be turned off if there is no business to display
  • Most plastic does not biodegrade and this is very damaging to the environment. The House should limit the use of plastic where possible. For example, we could switch to using takeaway wooden cutlery instead of plastic, and encourage people to use their own mugs, or biodegradable cups instead of the plastic filmed paper cups
  • The House of Commons gift shop could adopt a no plastic bag policy, and instead use paper bags
  • We should go back to providing tap water, and not bottled water in meetings
  • We should switch to environmentally friendly cleaning products, which are less polluting than chemical products.

Justice

August 13, 2009 / / 1 Comment

>

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

June 29, 2009 / / 1 Comment

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 – Celibacy

June 29, 2009 / / 0 Comments

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?

June 23, 2009 / / 0 Comments

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

June 12, 2009 / / 0 Comments

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

Transparency = Clarity = Trust?

June 12, 2009 / / 0 Comments

At the heart of this furore about expenses is a breakdown in trust.

We think that our politicians have been shafting us and getting away with naughtiness for years. The activities of 20 to 30 of the 650 elected members in Westminster is provoking the kind of outrage and, at the same time, apathy, that has sent Nick Griffin (“RT @TiernanDouieb: In mythology, the Griffin is part lion, part bird. Yet Nick Griffin of the BNP is all cock”) and his odious ideas to Brussels on behalf of the British.

The solution, we cry, is for political reform; for shining brighter lights onto the activity of government and scrutinising everything that our political leaders do. In the attempt to find a way of governing the nation that works, we want to ramp up and ramp up the organs of checking up on it. Continue reading

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