Category: Current Affairs

Taking The Clocks Out

If you ran a bank and the customer queues engendered complaints, what would you do? Deploy more staff so customers waited shorter times? Not if you’re my bank, NatWest, you wouldn’t. You’d remove the clocks. Spokesman Ronan Kelleher said with classic ‘spin’ (or more likely, doublespeak) that customers didn’t think clocks would ‘enhance their banking experience’. Well, all suggestions here for schemes that would – ahem – enhance our banking experience.
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Civil Partnership Act and Gay Marriage?

The Civil Partnership Act 2004, which allows gay couples to register their relationships legally, comes into force on Monday. The General Register Office has just sent out a letter to ministers like myself who conduct weddings. It is headed ‘Changes In Terminology In Marriage Registers’. It states that ‘Civil partnership will be a lawful impediment to marriage’ (and then goes on to lay out new terms that must be used to describe a person’s ‘condition’ at the time of marriage). Isn’t this a bit rich from a government that has told us that civil partnership is not the same as gay marriage?
 
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Ake Green acquitted

Yesteday Swedish Pentecostal pastor (not ‘priest’, please, BBC!) Ake Green was acquitted of hate crimes against homosexuals. I am partly relieved, partly disturbed.
 
Relieved, because I hold to the conviction that Christian ethics require fidelity in marriage and chastity outside.
 
Disturbed, due to this extract from the BBC report:

In the sermon, Mr Green told a congregation on the small south-eastern island of Oland that homosexuals were “a deep cancer tumour on all of society” and that gays were more likely than other people to rape children and animals.

 
A website run by his supporters contains evidence that individual homosexuals are more likely to be paedophiles than individual heterosexuals. This is because although there are three times as many incidents of heterosexual child abuse than homosexual, the relative proportions of heterosexual and homosexual people makes the homosexuals more likely to offend.
 
Even if this is so, it makes me wonder about labelling homosexuals this way. All child abuse is wrong.
 
I remember a student on placement with me who told me he had given a midweek church group ‘the biblical view’ on homosexuality. I knew what he meant. But he had missed out God’s love for all people. Had he really given the biblical view?
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Buy Nothing Day

Tomorrow is International Buy Nothing Day – an annual event to expose the wickedness of consumerism. Wouldn’t you know that two of the three churches I serve are having Christmas fairs tomorrow? Rather like the way we protest against Sunday trading but have church bookstalls or fair trade stalls on a Sunday. Or more seriously, like the way too much of church culture bows down at the idol of consumerism. Christian retailers speak of ‘product’. I once saw a bookseller advertise ‘this indispensable book’ – and it wasn’t the Bible. We are dreadfully compromised.
 
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What Does The Fifth Of November Remember, Remember?

Adrian Warnock has been blogging about Guy Fawkes’ Night and his gratitude for the fact that it celebrates our Reformation heritage. (Well, perhaps just theoretically these days – rather like Christmas). Certainly the history is lost on many people, apart from cries of “Where are you, Guy Fawkes, when we need you?” at times when we are frustrated by our politicians.
 
He refers to the biggest celebrations every year in Lewes, where huge parades takes effigies through the narrow streets of the old county town. Protestants were martyred in the town in 1556 and the traditional effigy is of  Paul V, who was Pope at the time of the Gunpowder Plot. In recent years the Bonfire has had news coverage for the controversial choices of effigies. In 2003 the bonfire society from the nearby village of Firle made an effigy of Travellers, after problems there had been in the village. Prosecutions under race hatred laws were considered; the travellers were fearful, because there had been actual fire-based attacks on their communities in Sussex in the recent past; locals regarded it (as with other effigies, such as Osama bin Laden in 2001, as satire). My wife is a Lewesian and could not understand the possible prosecutions; I, having grown up in a very multi-racial area, could understand fears of racism.
 
Like Adrian, although I have many fine Catholic friends, I am grateful for a Reformation heritage being preserved. However there must be qualifiers. The word ‘bonfire’ comes from ‘bone fire’, that is, burning people alive. There is something to be deeply ashamed of here, too, as Christians. Is this the way of the Cross? Further, it was not simply a matter of the Reformation being preserved, but a particular strand of it: moderate Anglicanism, reformed in doctrine and Catholic in church order. It was a form of Christianity that would continue to persecute those it disagreed with – witness the Cavalier Parliament. It took until the nineteenth century before legislation began to remove discrimination against Catholics and Non-Conformists.
 
But having said that, there is something generally very ugly here with which all Christians must grapple: when we get into power we can do terrible things. The Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell persecuted the Anglicans and the Catholics. What is it we have failed to learn from the Cross about power?
 
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Bono On Faith, Life And Music: Rolling Stone Interview

Great link from the weekly Off-The-Map Idealab email (NB the link is only in the email, not on the website) to a new interview with Bono by Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine. Fascinating section on his religious beliefs. Christians wonder whether Bono is ‘one of us’. He explains that his beliefs do make him a Christian, he is just reluctant to use the label because he feels he doesn’t live up to the standard. There is surely more grace for the Bonos of this world.

Note for the sensitive: several profanities in the interview.

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Tributes To Rosa Parks

Some beautiful quotes from the Rosa Parks memorial service on the BBC website today:

Condoleeza Rice, US Secretary of State:

“I can honestly say that without Mrs Parks, I would not be standing here today as secretary of state.”

Bob Riley, Governor of Alabama:

“I firmly believe God puts different people in different parts of history so great things can happen. I think Rosa Parks is one of those people.”

Daniel Coughlin, Chaplain to the House of Representatives:

“Tonight, inspired by her life and leadership, as your free children, we say to Mrs Rosa Parks: Ride on, ride on, ride on in the direction of endless hope to the table of equal justice and eternal peace.”

Put these quotes together and we have a beautiful and challenging picture of holistic Christian faith lived out in the crucible of the world. May we all aspire to that.

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Unwanted Pregnancies: Contraception Or Abstinence?

In today’s issue of The Times Camilla Cavendish wrote an opinion column entitled Preaching Is No Prophylactic. Her basic thesis is that the only way to reduce unwanted pregnancies is contraception, not a crusade for abstinence outside marriage. One of her more vehement quotes is this:

‘Aid organisations say that roughly half of the $10 billion that President Bush promised two years ago to fight Aids will be wasted on futile abstinence programmes that go against human nature.’

On one level Cavendish is right: abstinence does go against human nature – sinful human nature. Jesus said some Old Testament laws were given because the people were hard-hearted, and maybe sometimes (often?) that’s how governments have to be.

However, while I’m hardly Dubya’s biggest fan, it’s supremely ironic that the same edition of the paper carries an interview with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda which notes that his nation has had some success in fighting Aids. Now just remind me, didn’t the Ugandan campaign include a big emphasis on abstinence?

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Clergy Employment Rights?

The trade union Amicus are continuing their campaign for clergy to be given full employment rights in the light of some terrible abuses that have shown the precarious employment situation we are technically in. All very praiseworthy, but it ain’t so simple.

Every time many clergy are asked questions for official or commercial purposes, we don’t fit in. Homeowner or tenant? Neither: we live in tied accommodation.

Employee or self-employed? Again, neither: we’re that rare breed known as office-holders. It puts us in a select group along with people such as registrars of births, marriages and deaths.

Salary? Er, it’s called a stipend, actually. Not the rate for the job that a salary supposedly is, but a living allowance to free us from want and give us the time to seek God’s priorities and vision for our calling.

Which is where the notion of employment rights could be dangerous. We need the protection from tin pot Hitlers at local and national levels, but imagine what they’d become if they thought they were our employers. I’ve been in a situation where people in power wanted to impose a job description on a minister. Unless this is handled carefully (and at least the Government so far is going for the voluntary approach with churches) this has the potential not only for the tail to wag the dog but for one kind of tyranny to be exchanged for another, and in it the very essence of our calling to be shattered – not by God, but by humans.

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My Brother’s Keeper?

According to The Independent churches and other ‘faith-based organisations’ are doing more in providing relief following Hurricane Katrina than the federal government. It seems to be a deliberate policy.

When I read this, my mind went back to an argument I had with an American Christian ten years ago. He was adamant that according to the Bible the only agent for social welfare in a society was the Christian Church. That state social security (let alone a National Health Service) didn’t exist in biblical times was irrelevant. Nor did he think the call to be our brother’s keeper applied to anyone other than believers.

Don’t get me wrong. I applaud the wonderful and remarkable work done by the churches in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I’m hardly arguing for them to be sidelined! It’s a wonderful witness, and it’s fascinating to read the atheist Roy Hattersley’s admission that believers are generally better human beings than atheists. I just want to know what kind of moral sophistry leads a government to abrogate responsibility for its citizens.

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