I have now received on a circular an official statement from the Company Secretary of the Royal Mail concerning the rumour of the last few days. It is prefaced by some words from a non-stipendiary Anglican priest who works for the Post Office. (I have edited out some of her references to particular individuals.) I think this confirms my initial suspicions, namely that there was no official conspiracy. It feels like the old false allegation that Procter and Gamble were in league with Satanists.

The rumour that the Royal
Mail may be encouraged to stop printing religious stamps at Christmas is completely
unfounded; and the request to circulate it has been extraordinarily unhelpful.
I and other colleagues involved with the Church have now received copies of the
‘offending para’ from outside of St Albans
diocese; (I don’t know where it started from but it is doing the rounds). And
it has probably taken the best part of the the last 48 hours to contain this –
as the Mail on Sunday got hold of it too. ……

I think what concerns me most is that the
email came from and was circulated to Christians/ ministerial colleagues – and
until [names] got in touch, there was an assumption that the note was
true. No-one in Royal Mail group gets up in the morning with the negative
motivation implied – and certainly not the directors who take these decisions.
You would not believe the contortions we go through to try to support and to
please the particular community we are trying to serve – in this case the
Christian one. (Many of us are Christians and our faith is critical to the way
we do business.)

What follows below this note, is our response
statement. We took a decision after last year, to have Christian stamps every
year at Christmas (see below for a brief explanation). It is difficult to
ensure that our external communications reach all audiences and so I would be
happy to answer any queries on this; and time permitting, come along and speak
to the diocese, if you feel people may like to know more about the Christmas/
postage or community impacts (Post Office closures, etc) of the Post Office/
Royal Mail Group.

But in the meantime, as we say below, any help
you can give in restoring the balance would be much appreciated. I don’t have
all the addresses of those who received [the] original mail …… Please could you
pass on the statement below (and this note if it helps) to anyone you or they
may have copied the original mail to.

Thank you in anticipation of your support and
best wishes for a very Christian Christmas!

Paula.
The Revd Paula Vennells, Network Director, The
Post Office

(Incidentally, we were rather surprised at the
suggestion that the angels were only “vaguely Christian”. I’m sending
you a presentation pack of the stamps. Have a read inside and let me know what
you think.)

Royal Mail statement:
‘We have become aware of an incorrect
assertion being made about the motives behind the sales of our Christmas
stamps.
There is absolutely no intention on our part to suppress sales of the Madonna
and Child stamps in order to be able to claim there is low demand for religious
stamps in future years.  Indeed, we have produced tens of millions of
them, and we want to sell them!!  We have given publicity to both types of
Christmas stamps, and the availability of both has been widely covered in the
national and local press.  Furthermore we plan to have the Madonna and
Child stamps available every Christmas in future, alongside each year’s
“special” set, which will continue to alternate between religious and
secular themes.

Any help you can give in restoring the balance would be  much appreciated.

Jonathan
Evans OBE, Company Secretary, Royal Mail Group

Technorati Tags: RoyalMail, Christmas

A powerful meditation for one woman’s ordination into the Baptist ministry:

God’s Politics – Jim Wallis blog, faith blog, religion, christian, christianity, politics, values

Technorati Tags: ordination, ministry, Baptist, JimWallis, GeorgeWilliamson, GiniLohmannBauman

I went to a coffee morning at one of my churches this morning. Our building is next to the Post Office. Someone was going to call next door for some stamps, so I told him the background of the last two days. When Geoff was served, he was given the angel stamps. He then queried why he hadn’t been offered the Madonna and Child stamps and was told, ‘You’ll have to wait four minutes while we open the safe.’ So he let some other customers be served, and he waited the four minutes.

Having received his more overtly Christian stamps, he explained to the staff and asked why they weren’t offering both types of Christmas stamp. They said they simply kept the angel stamps out, because they were on top when the delivery arrived. The Madonna and Child stamps were put in the safe for reasons of space.

If you want to have a conspiracy theory, I guess you could wonder why the latter stamps were on the bottom of the delivery, but one set had to be, and I still suspect there is an innocent explanation for this. Certainly the postmistress told Geoff there had been no instructions from on high to favour one set of stamps over the other, and we know her quite well. I would tend to believe her.

Technorati Tags: RoyalMail, Christmas

My Chair of District assures me she sent the email (see last post) after hearing that a colleague had had this experience at a post office. Today I went to buy some stamps. I just asked for first class stamps. I thought I had been given the religious ones, but when I inspected them at home found I had just been given the generic ‘angel’ stamps, rather than the Madonna and child. Not noticing this important difference at the time, I thanked the post office clerk and told her about the email. She told me there were no instructions to withhold religious stamps. Rather, people were being sold Christmas stamps and if they objected, were being given ordinary stamps. However, in the light of what I now realise, I have emailed the following complaint on the Royal Mail website:

I went to a post office today to buy some first class stamps. While I was sold the ‘angel’ stamps, I now discover that had I wanted something more religious I could have been offered the ‘Madonna and child’ stamps. I am surprised at this reticence to offer the overtly religious stamps after last year’s furore. The angel stamps are hardly religious, with such generic words as ‘goodwill’ stripped of their Christian content. A friend of mine commented that he went to his post office in Hertfordshire, and he was not offered the religious stamps, either. I am puzzled why you do not have a policy of offering customers a choice. I hope you are not trying to make it look like there is little demand for religious stamps at Christmas. I would be grateful to know what your official policy is. I’d appreciate a written or emailed reply rather than a phone call, please. Many thanks.

Technorati Tags: RoyalMail, Christmas

My Chair of District has just forwarded an email, which she received from someone in St Albans Diocese. It contains some copied and pasted text, alleging that Royal Mail have instructed its staff only to sell this year’s Christian-themed Christmas stamps to customers who specifically request them, so they can prove there is no demand for religious stamps. There is no quoting of a source for the story. It may or may not be true. However, I can find no corroborative allegations or evidence online. Without such evidence, I am inclined to think this is another ‘scare’ email that will give Christians a bad name, rather like the petition against a supposedly Government-funded mega-mosque in east London.

Here is the text in question:

Does anyone know anything that would back this up, or are my suspicions justified?

Technorati Tags: StAlbansDiocese, RoyalMail, ChristmasStamps2007, petition, megamosque