Category Archives: Society

Why I am a (straight) pro-gay Christian 

So, let’s start with some definitions:

  • Straight. In this context this means heterosexual. Which I definitely am. And married. But straight could also mean normal, conforming to society. I’m not sure I’m that.
  • Pro-gay. I struggle with generalising about groups of people. But I am definitely pro the gay people I’ve known. And the ones I know about from the media and those I will get to know.
  • And Christian. In some ways the hardest thing to define. It’s a word with a great deal of baggage. Maybe it’s easier to say I’m a follower of Jesus and a member of a church. The two go together and one feeds into the other but they are not exactly the same.

In some ways I wish I didn’t need to write this blog. It will upset some people I know and I’m sorry for that. But the stakes are very high. There is a battle going on for the very soul of the church in the UK. At the moment it could be lost because we are simply too polite to have an argument.

Before I answer the question I would like to clarify what seems to be the orthodox Christian position on homosexuality. Recently I had a long conversation with a well known Pastor and this was his position. It certainly won’t be every Christian’s opinion and I think it is at the extreme end of Christian thought but here it is:

  • Sex between two men or two women is always wrong under all circumstances. 
  • Gay marriage is not marriage at all. Marriage must always be between a man and a woman.
  • Homosexual sex is such a serious sin that any gay man wanting to become a Christian must either be ‘cured’ of the condition or agree first to to complete celibacy.

Our conversation went on for a long time and involved a lot of complicated theology. But as it went on I became more and more convinced that all the anti-gay arguments didn’t add up to anything. A quick google search will find them for you if you’re interested. So, why am I a pro-gay Christian?

Firstly, because God made us and He made us sexual beings. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful, considerate and faithful sexual beings. I’m a great believer in marriage. But he made us gay and straight and all shades in between. As Christians we should be helping people be the best they can be, whatever that is, not turning them away.

Secondly, because I know what it is to grow up feeling very different and out of place. I used to look at the popular pretty girls and think ‘How do they do that?’  Because I wasn’t popular and pretty. I was awkward, clever, plain and argumentative. It’s really hard not to fit in, especially when you are young and for that reason those who grow up gay, who often find themselves in a hostile world that they don’t fit into get my compassion not my condemnation. Jesus didn’t give many commands. He taught more using stories and also by example. But, less than 24 hours before he hung on a cross, He gave this command: Love one another as I have loved you. He loved without barriers, even thieves and prostitutes. There is no record of Jesus meeting a gay person or talking about homosexuality but I don’t know of any reason why he wouldn’t have loved them too.

And thirdly because it is simply not our place to judge. This Jesus talking again, from the Message version which is very vivid but all translations have the same sense.

““Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭7:1-5‬ ‭MSG‬‬

This isn’t easy ‘liberal’ theology. This is hard Jesus theology because we love to judge. Gay people are easy to identify, easy to see but that doesn’t mean we should judge them either.

I want to end with a little thought experiment. Imagine one Sunday all the people coming to church had all their sins for the week written in brightly coloured letters hovering over their heads. Here is a selection:

  • I shouted at my kids because I’d had a stressful day at work.
  • I had a minor accident with a parked car and drove away without leaving a note.
  • I had sex with my long term boyfriend even though we are not married.
  • I spent £300 on a treat for myself and didn’t give anything to the church.

Just for this week it’s the job of the stewards to decide who gets in and who is too sinful even to enter the church. Of course it would be horrible both for the judges and the judged. When I think of our lovely stewards I think they would just let everyone in and, after reading the first few lists, would refuse to even look. And that would be the right Christian response.  It is simply not up to us to refuse entry to God’s kingdom on the basis of any sin.

I know there are a lot of Christians who share my views. I’m sure to get a lot criticism for writing this but if you agree with me please let me know.

A picture for the referendum

image My blog output has been really light recently. This is partly because the technology at home has been getting slower and also because I have been spending more time doing art. But now I have an iPad I can combine the two. This is an image I’ve had in my head of what Europe could be. No more explanation. Just look at the picture.

Notes from a Political Mum on Polling Day

Today we all go and vote. Or do we? Many people who are entitled to vote won’t bother. I’m just one blogger with a few readers (and many of you are not in the UK so I will let you off) but this is my message to them:

Firstly, if you are woman, shame on you. People died so you can vote. They gave their lives, wrecked their health in prison. Even if you go to the polls and put in a cross at random, use your voice. Or it won’t be heard.

Secondly, if you are a young person, shame on you. The more people of your generation who go and vote the more your views will be taken into account. By not voting you are letting down your generation.

‘But they are all liars and cheats.’. I’ve heard this said by otherwise intelligent people. I’m sorry but I think this is a myth. Its a good story for the front of newspapers. Better news by far than ‘Good people doing their best to improve the lot of society’. If your view of politics is through the media then it is not through rose tinted glasses, it is through glasses that are cracked and stained, they are practically encrusted with the mud thrown at them.

How do I know this? Because I am a political mum. Every week I get an update right from the heart of politics, a personal account of what is going on. And I’m not shocked by what I hear. I’m amazed that these people have so much energy and drive. I’m amazed that they can keep their beliefs intact in spite of everything that is said to them and about them. As a mum I have never, for one moment, wanted my son to choose a different career. It seems a grand and fine thing to serve his community and country in this way.

So, go and vote!

A good reason to welcome people from Eastern Europe. A viewpoint from history.

One of the advantages of getting older is that you begin to remember little bits of history as it happened. I have a vivid memory of a TV program from the early 80s. It was a documentary of a piano competition. The unusual thing about this broadcast was that it was from behind the Iron Curtain, as the competition was in Poland. The final 10 minutes or so was a complete rendition of the slow movement of Chopin’s second piano concerto. This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, almost like a lament. In between seeing the pianist playing there were pictures of rows of bodies lying in fields, lines of ragged people walking along roads with only what they could carry. This was the reality of Poland in the second world war: A fifth of its population died in the war; whole areas forced to move to different parts of the country; most of the Nazi concentration camps were built in Poland and millions of Polish people were put to death, not just Jews but intellectuals, homosexuals, anyone whose face did not fit.

Then, after the war, there was no NHS, no swinging sixties, no 80s financial boom. What the Poles had was the heavy hand of Soviet communism. In Great Britain we take it for granted that we can think and do what we wish. This was not the reality for the Poles: Before, during and after the war, their country was not their own.

‘So?’ You might say, ‘Its not our fault’. Which is true, of course. Even in the strange fault finding of the 21st century the problems of Poland cannot be laid at the door of the UK. But does that make a difference? Surely the Christian point of view is to help those who need helping, even if we have not caused their problems. Poland’s economy is growing now and they are finally able to be themselves. Europe is not perfect but the Poles are being offered something honest and worthwhile by being part of it. We, in the UK, should feel proud that we are contributing to this. By welcoming workers from Poland and other Eastern European countries we are playing a small part in the rebuilding of their country.

I thought about putting some stories in this blog of people I know from Romania and Poland but the truth is we all have these stories. They are stories of honest, hardworking people. Some go back and some stay but I don’t know anyone who has a bad word about an individual they have known from these countries.

When we were in Berlin in August I was struck by something unexpected. It seemed to me that the European project was partly about healing the wounds of the 20th century. Initially this was the second World War but also the Cold War. If we want, we can be part of that healing process.

Its been a good year for teenagers. Lets give the vote to all 16 year olds.

The problem with giving people the vote is that you can’t take it back. We have a general election next year. Are all the teenagers in Scotland going to be told: ‘You’ve had your chance at being grown up, just settle down and be kids again’? I hope not, I really hope not. So, here is a radical idea. Why not give the vote to 16 year olds in the rest of the UK? Why not even go further and extend it to 14? At this age young people are deciding on their GCSE subjects. Why not also give them a say in how the country is run? Who knows, it might shake things up a bit.

I see teenagers doing amazing things. Don’t we all love Martha on the Great British Bake off? At the same age my own son gave his first speech to party conference. I see them making music, doing sports and making a difference in their communities. In a few years time we will be celebrating 100 years of women being given the vote. This has helped to make a huge difference in what it means to be a woman. Maybe it is time to talk about the same sort of emancipation for teenagers.

Why bother with Apologetics? A short very personal answer

A few months ago a friend of mine asked a question I struggled to answer. The question was ‘Why bother with Apologetics?’ . My answer is in this post.

On Saturday morning I had an hour to kill in Guildford. So I spent it walking around Stoke Park and considering how to make Christian Apologetics real to my readers. I also spent time looking at the park, the trees, the people walking and running on the grass and the Cathedral on the hill in the distance. Then I thought about the way I see the world. Full of meaning and promise. Full of pattern and the joy of God’s creation around us. I love science so my view includes that too.

Then I thought – How would a true atheist see this scene? Very differently I think. In the pictures below I’ve tried to capture this.

Stoke park 1

Every year the BBC puts on a series of Christmas lectures aimed at young people interested in science. In one of these Richard Dawkins said the following:

The universe is nothing but a collection of atoms in motion, human beings are simply machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self sustaining process. It is every living object’s sole reason for living.

And that is it really. We live, apparently, in a world stripped of meaning. The grass, so carefully mowed to a huge lawn, is no more than self replicating small plants. The trees are just large plants which have a utility of keeping oxygen in our atmosphere. The cathedral is a completely pointless building built by delusional human beings who choose to believe in an imaginary ‘Sky God’.

And what about the young woman walking across the grass? I don’t know who she is or why she was there but Francis Crick (one of the discoverers of DNA) has something to say to her:

You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

Which is pretty bleak. But I can hear my friend saying: ‘Does it really matter what a few academic scientists say?’. I’ll come back to that. But first I want to present the picture again.Stoke park 2

Its the same scene but understood completely differently. The trees are still using photosynthesis to survive and produce oxygen but they also create amazing patterns of light and colour, each one perfect and unique.

The young woman walking across the park still has DNA (which she may or may not use to replicate in other human beings), her brain is still made of nerve cells but she is able to grow and change and become so much more than just a human animal.

And the whole morning was so perfect: cool, bright and peaceful. There were quite a lot of people in the park: walking, running, chatting. It was as though God had packaged the whole thing up and offered it as a gift, perfect at that moment.

Before I get back to my friend’s question I want to talk about the Cathedral. I have to admit I knew very little about Guildford Cathedral before I wrote this post but I did a bit of research and discovered its remarkable history. The building was started in 1936 but was interrupted by the war. After the war there was very little money to complete it so a campaign was started to buy a brick. Each brick cost 2s 6d (12 1/2pence) and 200,000 of these were bought by all sorts of people, including the Queen but also including people who had very little to spare. The church was finally finished in 1961 and is a vibrant and living part of the community.

So, why does it matter when a group of Atheist academics declare that God doesn’t exist? It matters because it has become part of our culture here in the UK. Every culture has a source of information that people go to for their views on the world. In this country a large part of that role is taken up by TV stations but especially the BBC. I cannot remember ever seeing a program on the BBC that shows modern Christianity in a realistic, positive light. The only regular Christian program is ‘Songs of Praise’ which shows a soft focus, artificial image of Church which would certainly not tempt me to go. This leads to some curious ideas. Matthew Parris in the Times (25th June 2014) declared:

Most modern Christians and Jews, we surmised, don’t really believe their religions

As though this was the most self evident truth, not even worth discussing (this was especially unsettling as Matthew Parris is a writer I generally read and admire)

So we have a generation, with no church background, who are being told that faith in God is either an effect of belonging to a cultural minority or a kind of weak delusion that no sensible person should contemplate. Of course, thank God, there are some people, like myself and many of my family and friends, who manage to break through this barrier but many do not. And what are they left with? At best a faith in family and friends (which is not a bad thing, but can other human beings bear that weight alone?) or a muddled ideal of ‘self realisation’, or they are left with the first picture: that there is only matter, only ‘stuff’ and nothing else.

I’ve quoted a lot of people who don’t believe in Jesus but I want to wrap up with the immortal (well they have lasted almost 2,000 years without loosing any of their potency) words of St Paul:

 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

1 Corinthians 13: 12-13

In a world without God there is not a lot of trust in anything. The faith my parents had in progress and technology has proved a dead end. Nothing has sprung up to take its place.

Hope is too often replaced with the contents of a bottle or a packet of pills. Hope dies early in many people’s lives, once the first dream bubble has burst.

And love. We all, Christians and non-Christians, need to love and be loved. But the difference is that we know we are loved by God and that makes it easier to love other people. We can love them as the frail, imperfect human beings that they (and we) are, without expecting them to make our own life perfect.

So: Why bother with Apologetics? The Greek word ‘Apologia’ means defence and we need to learn to defend our faith against the attacks on it. We are not alone and, in academic circles, it seems the tide is turning against the New Atheist thinking. But it is a battle that will not be won until ordinary people know they are truly free to come and learn about Jesus.

Sources:

The atheist quotes are taken from:

God’s Undertaker. Has science buried God? by John C Lennox. This is a brilliant book defending Christianity against the New Atheist, scientific thinking.

The Bible quote is from ‘The Message’ version translated by Eugene H. Peterson

If you are interested in a more theological defence against New Atheism then I would recommend:

The Dawkins letters – by David Robertson. He explains why he wrote this book in this short video

 

 

New Wine 2014

I promised to write a post every day but with so much to do and so little internet access it hasn’t happened. So, what is my experience so far? We have about 8,000 Christians here, what are they thinking, what are they doing?

First, there seems to be a new confidence I haven’t felt before. The Church in the UK is tiny compared with many places in the world but we are so strong. Many of the talks we have been to have been brimming with confidence. Confidence that the country is full of dysfunction and unhappiness and Jesus does have the answer. Confidence that the atheist experiment has failed and people are looking for spiritual answers to the problems in their lives.

I went to a talk yesterday by one of my personal heroes, Shaun Lambert. Shaun is the Vicar of a church in Stanmore, North London. He spoke on the topic of Christian Mindfulness. This is a way of being mindful of ourselves, mindful of the world and (last but, of course not least) mindful of God. This sort of practise, involving meditation and self help can seem self indulgent to many Christians but, if we are going to be a healthy church, we need to be full of emotionally healthy people.

And it is a chance to reconnect with God and with other people. To re-commit to many things in my own life, including writing this blog. Some of the people I went on pilgrimage with are here, its been great to spend time with them and with other people from our church.

Liberal Democrats Do God

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a dutiful citizen. From that first time proudly walking out the school gates to the latest European Elections I have always voted. And I even go to hear the candidates speak so I can decide who to vote for. But, between elections it didn’t have much impact on my life. Until last year…

Politics came crashing into our lives last year when our son, William, stood in the council elections. Suddenly, we were Liberals: putting leaflets through doors, going to the count in the local sports hall. He was the youngest candidate standing anywhere so he had quite a lot of press attention. I remember getting him up at 6am to do a radio interview (on the phone, in his dressing gown, sitting on the sofa). Even as parents it was quite an intense experience. He came a good second and, after saying ‘Well done’ to him, I went to congratulate the winning candidate. ‘Oh thank you, Monica,’ she said and gave me a big hug. Well Reigate is a bit like that.

Liberal Democrats Do GodWhen this book was published it caused a mild media flurry. The title is based on the famous comment from Alistair Campbell following an interview with Tony Blair that ‘We don’t do God’. It is encouraging that many politicians (including our current Prime Minister) are prepared now to publically declare their faith and the effect it has on their life. My feeling is that the attempt (by the ‘New Atheists’ and others) in the late 20th century to ‘Kill off God’ may have had quite the opposite effect. It has encouraged people from all walks of life to be honest about their faith in a way that has not been possible for some time.

Although this is quite a short book there is a lot in it and my choice of what to comment on is entirely personal. My focus is more on the Church than on the world of politics and I suspect that everyone reading it will have different things they feel are important. Each section is written by a prominent Liberal Democrat politician and the range of issues is enormous. I’m going to start with Sir Andrew Stunell:

Three reasons to Thank God – and not the usual ones

While I was reading this a tune kept on turning round and round in my head. Most of my generation will know this tune. The words are:

God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year,
God is working his purpose out and the time is drawing near;
Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be,
When the Earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

Because the sense of this short essay is that God is working his purpose out. Maybe not in the way we would expect. Possibly not in the way that many Christians would want but it is happening. Sir Andrew’s first thankyou is:

Let’s start by thanking God that we live in a secular and pluralist society.

Within a few hundred years of Jesus’ death on earth attempts were being made to control and manage the Christian faith. This reached its peak in the late middle ages but, even by the year 1800, it was still impossible, in the UK,  for anyone who did not belong to the Church of England to enter parliament, get a University degree or hold public office. Of course, you also had to be a man and of reasonable personal wealth to do most of these things. Even those following other flavours of Christianity such as Baptists or Catholics were excluded. As Sir Andrew says: ‘We have never been all one great big happy Christian family’.

This level of control had some unexpected consequences. One of these was to force Jews and non-conformist Christians into other areas of public life, such as banking and manufacturing. But a less positive effect was to weaken the Church in this country, to the point where going to a church service was not seen as a act of faith at all, but merely ‘doing the right thing’.

The second ‘Thankyou’ is:

Lets thank God that the Holy Spirit has been at work through the ages

He continues:

… the Holy Spirit didn’t stop work when the Book of Revelation was sealed. Not according to scripture itself, and not according to the subsequent evidence – of which Wilberforce’s successful crusade (against slavery) is a landmark piece…

Stunell mentions a whole list of things that have improved in our society: Slavery, women’s rights, care for the disabled, relaxation of dress codes, but I would like to highlight another improvement in our society and in our churches that we now take for granted.

A friend of mine was divorced about 40 years ago. Added to the pain of ending her unsuccessful marriage was a virtual exclusion from her normal society. The church she belonged to was unwelcoming and certainly offered no help. All her friendships and clubs depended on her being part of a couple. We have come a long way since then. Churches offer ‘Divorce and separation’ courses and actively welcome divorced people and remarried couples. People generally are more relaxed and accepting of divorce and its consequences. The failure of a marriage will always be painful and difficult but at least the people involved can now start again much more easily.

Which brings us to the third ‘Thank you’:

Let’s thank God that he has yet more truth to break forth from his Word

In ten years time Christians will look back at the fuss we made about Gay marriage and wonder what it was all about. We will wonder how we could not have opened our church doors and our hearts to those who had struggled to find their place in society; who were, after all, our neighbours. We will wonder how we could have denied the love of God to so many people. Not just our gay neighbours but all the non-gay people who could not accept a church that seemed to pass judgement on people just because of who they were.

I’m with Andrew Stunell on this. He says:

In this generation it is rights for gay people that seem so hard to acknowledge and so readily denied.

In contrast to that, in all my years as an MP and a councillor I have never once had a letter from any Christian asking me to make committing adultery a criminal offence, or to introduce a law to stop adulterers adopting children, or prevent them from teaching children or repeal the Civil Marriage Act that permits them to remarry, or to require them to have medical treatment to prevent a recurrence of their sexual behaviour. I have had all of those things recommended to me about gay people. That is despite the fact that adultery is unambiguously condemned in Scripture in a way that goes far beyond the somewhat iffy references dredged up about gay behaviour. It unambiguously causes far more harm to far more children than gay behaviour, and is unambiguously very much more damaging and destabilising to families, and of course the institution of marriage, and society at large. Just ask any MP about their Child Support caseload.

In my opinion, things are about to change. The silence from the leadership of the Church of England is deafening on this subject. The dam will burst from the top. But it may take a change to the structure of the Church to achieve this. Which brings us to Lord Tyler’s essay on:

Faith, Society and the State

He says:

 My plea would be for more consistency and more transparency. Treat our fellow citizens as grown-ups, by acknowledging that we are now a multi-faith nation with strong intra-faith links at all levels of society. If that means disestablishment for those of us who live in England, so be it. If that means that King Charles III decides to call himself “Defender of the Faiths”, well why not?

I understand that since the Swedish Church was disestablished in 2001 it has gone from strength to strength, with new commitment to its mission and increasing membership. I have no reason to believe that the English sky would fall in, any more then it did in Wales.

I think we, as Christians, need to reclaim the debate on disestablishment of the Church of England . I was cooking macaroni cheese on Friday and pondering how to make the separation of the Church and State seem at all relevant when I heard a rather sad little story on the BBC News about bats. The journalist was talking to a Church warden from a church in Norfolk. More than 300 bats were roosting in his church. As they are protected he was unable to get rid of them. He described putting down sheets every night and coming in every morning to find them soaked in urine and dotted with poo. The stink was putting people off coming to church at all! What was not mentioned was that he was unable to just close down the church building and set up in a school hall (or other practical venue). Of course not, the parish church is the parish church.

This little story seemed to show in miniature many of the problems with the Church of England: Ancient, impractical buildings, inflexible structures that do not allow change, an insistence to be a ‘special case’ and often outside the law. Lord Tyler says:

Above all, I hope to those of us who remain Anglicans can soon find a way to return to Christ’s own teaching and stop agonising over the dated views of my namesake Paul of Tarsus… Sorting out a speedy way to implement the clear majority view of the Church that the “Stained glass ceiling” of women priests is ludicrous, and offends all our Christian instincts would be an excellent first step in this direction.

I am an Anglican. In many ways the Church of England is stronger than ever. Those who belong to this organisation are really committed to both the Church and to God. There are very few ‘Pew Fillers’ any more. And in Justin Welby we have a really remarkable leader. But, to fulfil our potential we need to break the shackles from the state and stand free.

How did England lose its Faith?

To most people in this country the answer would be: Why not? We know better now than to believe all that superstitious nonsense. But I knew there had to be an answer. It just took a long time to find it.

It came to me at the beginning of the hot summer of 2011. I was called to do jury service and it was altogether an odd experience. I was warned that there would be quite a lot of waiting around so I brought a book to finish. The book was one of my favourites ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’ by William James. So I sat on the bank of padded, but not too comfortable chairs and read. ‘What are you reading?’ The tall, thin man opposite asked. I showed him and explained it was about the way that people experience God. ‘Oh, I’m a born again Atheist’, He said, ‘God is just something you have constructed in your mind because you need an authority figure’.

Now it seems very interesting to me that someone can be so certain that something is not true. For instance, I rather like the idea of UFOs. I’m fairly sure they don’t exist but it seems intriguing  that so many people believe they do. This man (his name was Alex) had all the arguments and had obviously read ‘The God Delusion’ with attention. But what Alex, and Dawkins, never seem to take into account is that many people experience God in very direct ways. But I am getting off the point…

One major difference between doing Jury service and my normal existence was the amount of free time I had. During long lunch breaks I would wander round Guildford looking in the shops and, of course, ended up in the local bookshop. It was quite a large bookshop but had the usual measly couple of shelves on Faith matters, perhaps 100 books altogether. Many of these were arguing against God rather than for Him. Initially, the book I picked up looked as though it was one of these. It was called ‘The Rage against God‘ by Peter Hitchens. As I looked through it seemed the ideal book to give to my new friend Alex.

I never gave it to him. As I read it on the train, moving through the parched Surrey countryside, I realised it was saying something unique and important. That the English people, even while they sat comfortably in their beautiful old churches, were worshipping the wrong God. As Hitchens puts it:

I hope to show that one of the things I was schooled in was not in fact religion but a strange and vulnerable counterfeit of it, a counterfeit that can be detected and rejected while yet leaving the genuine truths of Christianity undamaged.

The relevant Bible text is from Exodus 20:

No other gods, only me. No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don’t bow down to them and don’t serve them because I am God, your God, and I’m a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I’m unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments. (The Message translation)

Which is the first commandment. Its strange really but even completely non-religious people are comfortable with most of the 10 commandments. Some are even written into law. Others, such as the prohibition of adultery, they know to be right even if inconvenient. But this first one appears to be uncompromising to the point of cruelty. I’m going to come back to this later but first I want to continue with Hitchens view of English religion. He talks of the ‘Faith in Science’:

The Christian conservatism of my schools did not protect me from the rather Victorian faith in something called ‘Science’ which was then very common. Perhaps this is because Christianity was not implied in every action and statement of my teachers wheras materialistic, naturalistic faith was. This faith did not require any great understanding. Mainly, it was just an assumption, a received opinion we all accepted.

But faith in science can only dilute and misdirect religious faith (and taken seriously it can even strengthen it, but that is for a future post…) . It takes something stronger to poison it. He comes to this in chapter 5:

Now we come to the very heart of the cult that enthralled us all, especially children… I possessed for many years a comic book biography of our Great Leader, called ‘The Happy Warrior’, one of thousands of more or less idolatrous publications which concentrated rather heavily on Mr Churchhill’s good side. I knew more about his life than the life of Christ. He was our saviour.

Hitchens describes the central ritual of the year:

As pseudo-religions go, ours was attractive and elegant, and it contained many decent and godly elements. Its central ceremony was Remembrance Sunday, the Sunday closest to the 11th of November…In the very depths of this season of universal drab coloured gloom we were marched in ranks and files down to the town war memorial, absurd caps on our heads, for the crowning ritual of the year.. A Vicar in austere black and white vestments intoned uncompromisingly Protestant prayers, we kept in silence, a quavering bugle blew, we sang ‘Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past’, a hymn that seemed to have been carved from granite much like that of the memorial itself. It was a deep evocation of everything we liked about ourselves, an indulgence in melancholy and proud self restraint. No outsider could possibly have penetrated its English mysteries, or imagined that we were, in fact enjoying ourselves. But we were.

There is a great deal more in the book about the cult of the Second world war and it is well worth reading but I will end my quotes on this subject with this summing up:

… the proper remembering of dead warriors, though right and fitting, is a very different thing from the Christian religion. The Christian church has been powerfully damaged by letting itself be confused with love of country and making of great wars.

There was a sort of double whammy effect here. On the one hand the content of what was being offered by the Church became thinner, less convincing and more boring. Also, the Church (especially the Church of England) became associated with increasingly old fashioned values. The generation born after the war wanted to move on and the Church was not moving with them.

Timothy Keller, in his book ‘Counterfeit Gods’, describes something similar happening in the USA.

Why did our culture largely abandon God as its Hope? I believe it was because our religious communities have been and continue to be filled with these false gods. Making an idol out of doctrinal accuracy, ministry success, or moral rectitude leads to constant internal conflict, arrogance and self-righteousness, and oppression of those whose views differ. These toxic effects of religious idolatry have led to widespread disaffection with religion in general and Christianity in particular. Thinking we have tried God, we have turned to other Hopes, with devastating consequences.

But, you may well ask, why didn’t I realise this? I was born and raised in England, why did I spend 15 years pondering this question? Well, I was raised in this country but my parents were not. My mother rejected the rather austere Dutch Protestantism she was raised in. My fathers parents had already ceased to be practising Jews by the time they arrived in England, from Germany in the late Thirties. As a girl, Churchill was no more than an interesting historical figure to me. The fact that ‘we’ had won the war was no more to me than a fact. When the bugle blew and we stood in silence I was remembering quite a different war.

Last November I turned on the TV on Saturday night expecting to watch the usual hospital drama. Instead there was a program from the Royal Albert Hall. Groups of various parts of the armed services were processing into the centre of the Hall with great ceremony. A Welsh newsreader was describing the function of each of these armed services with great dignity and ceremony. A glittering brass band played sombre music for the men and women to march to. It was all very touching, just like a religious ceremony. But who was being worshipped? Was it the actual men and women there? Or those who had died? Or some abstract noble warrior? Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against soldiers. Those who I have met are fine, courageous people and they do a difficult job. But so do a lot of people and when it comes down to it they are just people. To put them in place of God is certainly wrong.

By the time I was an adult the cult of Winston Churchill had faded but it was to be replaced by another, equally potent, figure. Diana Spencer was married to Prince Charles at 19. She was a year older than me. The summer I left school I watched her arrive at her wedding on the TV with millions of other people but she did not figure much in my life after that. When her marriage fell apart I can remember thinking how sad it was. She was badly treated, a genuinely tragic figure. So, it wasn’t until her death in 1997 that the scale of the focus on her became apparent. I remember the morning she died. We were preparing to go on holiday. I was hoping that our 3 year old son would be happy watching kids TV for an hour while we did the last of the packing. But instead of Teletubbies and cartoons there was only an endless reel of a wrecked car in a Paris tunnel. I switched the TV off and spent the next fortnight in a campsite on top of a hill in Dordogne. While we were there we found out that Diana had died and, of course, this was a big story but it wasn’t until we returned to England I realised just how big. It seemed the whole country was in mourning. I just kept quiet and watched the TV news: The weeping mourners, the young Tony Blair talking to camera, the acres of flowers outside Kensington Palace. I had started going to church the year before and there was a prophecy being spoken at our church in Reigate…

I said I would come back to the passage from Exodus. Churchhill and Diana are not the only gods revered by the English people. You only have to wander through the cathedrals dedicated to shopping or corporate success to realise that. It seems incredibly harsh for generations to be punished for worshipping the wrong god but the problem is that it is true. Sin is an odd word but, in this case, I would call something a sin that hurts other people. And we all know families that repeat hurtful actions generation after generation. It could be addiction, alcohol abuse, pride or anger. And these families can look to their ‘gods’ all they like but, you know something, they are not going to help. Some people reading this may say that God won’t either but He seems a much better bet and Jesus offers us the hard, deep magic of forgiveness that we must offer first before we receive it. In the ‘Rage Against God’ Hitchens describes a Russian society that has almost completely forgotten God. It is a bleak and hopeless picture and he says that we are heading the same way. I don’t agree.

The prophecy I heard went something like this:

Before the flowers have faded around Kensington Palace God will have started something new.

I don’t know if this was just something said in Reigate or was more widespread. At the time I dismissed it. After all there were no accounts of people flocking to Church. But, by 1998, the Alpha Course was successful enough to be described as a ‘cult’ by the newspapers, thousands of people were spending their holidays at New Wine or Spring Harvest Christian conferences,  many new churches are being started in school halls and ordinary people’s front rooms. Something was starting. The installation of our current Archbishop of Canterbury is another sign of the rebirth of Christianity in this country

But we need to be careful. Jesus did not insist on his ‘rights’. He did not define himself as better than those categorised as sinners in his society. When we define Gay people as sinners we hurt ourselves as much as them (especially those who wish to become Christians). I will end with a quote from Sir Andrew Stunell MP.

Making Christians angry is easy. Making Christians think is the hard part.

Suggested Reading:

‘The Rage Against God’ by Peter Hitchens. Well worth reading, if only for the description of modern Russia.

On Forgiveness: ‘What’s so Amazing about Grace?’ by Philip Yancey.

On modern ‘gods’ (but from an American point of view): Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller.

The quote from Sir Andrew Stunell from ‘Liberal Democrats do God’ – Edited by Jo Latham and Claire Mathys

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