Woolwich

A soldier is attacked in Woolwich and brutally murdered. The men who did it seem determined to be caught. Seeing the footage, they look familiar – speaking with the same deluded dysfunctionality that is not uncommon in some inner-urban areas. Criminal.

But, why is this being deemed a terrorist attack? If someone did something similar whilst shouting about being Jesus, would it be seen as criminal or terrorist? And would the EDL response – to attack mosques – be paralleled by attacks on churches by angry atheists? And would anyone try to legitimise or explain it, rather than simply condemn it outright?

The labels we attach, the language we use and the framework within which we understand such phenomena are shaped by the unarticulated assumptions we bring. Does anyone seriously think these guys are motivated by Islam any more than the Provisional IRA or the UDA were motivated by a rational reading of the Gospels?

In a week framed by Muslims taking responsibility for crimes such as child sexual exploitation in their own communities and the appalling murder of this soldier in Woolwich, it might be worth pausing to examine the assumptions behind the language and the judgements of those politicians and reporters who are doing their best to articulate what this attack represents – and to question whether another narrative might be more appropriate. At a time such as this we need wisdom.

In the meantime, behind the horror, we pray for the family of the murdered soldier, the people who witnessed this dreadful, violent crime, and those now dealing with it both socially and politically.

 

Never boring

Since returning from the big gig in Germany last week there hasn't been much time for blogging. Life is full and the days are demanding. But, Alex Ferguson has retired, so a new world beckons.

But, even this causes me a problem. David Moyes, Ferguson's successor as manager of Manchester United, is hugely impressive in every way – despite having spent over ten years with Everton. How can I now start dissing him just because he's going over to the Dark Side? I realise that there are more complex ethical issues, but this is a tough one for a Scousers like me.

Anyway, I haven't had time to recover from the exertions of the wonderful Kirchentag in Hamburg. Today, for example, I met with the police early in the morning. Then I went to a brilliant primary school and taught over 400 children a couple of songs in their assembly. Having toured the school with two children, I then went back into Bradford to be one of the speakers at the national launch of Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE). Back to this in a minute, but just to complete the diary stuff… I took a couple of excellent education people to lunch before meeting a vicar at home, doing diocesan finances with the Chair of the Diocesan Board of Finance, having a diary session with my secretary, writing a piece for the June edition of the Bradford Diocesan News, then joining the Sikh Forum for wonderful hospitality at their big Vaisakhi celebration.

The big news, however, was the launch of CAASE. This body has been founded by various bodies such as the Islamic Society of Britain and Hope not Hate. They reined in the police, local councillors, community leaders and me. Despite problems of communication and association in the planning of today's event, it marked an important development. And why is this significant?

The grooming of young girls for sexual exploitation is appalling and news is constantly breaking about such shocking predatory criminality. This is a human problem and a male problem (principally). Yet, there is always a particular cultural context to every instance of such abuse. In West Yorkshire the pattern is broadly that online grooming is a white phenomenon, whilst street grooming is almost entirely the domain of Asian men. And here we need to sound a loud note of caution.

Much reporting of sex grooming is loose with the language. 'Asian' is a broad term and many Asians are fed up with being lumped in with criminal cultural behaviour from other parts of the continent. Secondly, to confuse religion (Islam) with ethnicity (Pakistani Kashmiri Mirpuri, for example) is not only a category error, but can lead to serious misrepresentation and misunderstanding. When using language in such circumstances we must be clear and precise.

My contribution was simply to commend the Asians and Muslims who have had the courage to grasp this difficult nettle. Demonstrating maturity and courage, bodies such as the Bradford Council for Mosques, the Bradford Muslim Women's Council and the Bradford Imams Forum have refused – against pressure from some who find it too hard to face the reality of such shameful criminality in their midst – to hide from their responsibility. When it comes to the particular forms of exploitation carried out by Asian men, then it is the Asian and Muslim communities that need to take the lead in addressing it.

This is not my line; rather, it is the line given to me by Asian Muslims. I will stand by them and support them, but they have to take the lead here. And they have recognised that if they don't shape how they handle this phenomenon, they will always be reacting defensively to the lead taken by those who wish to make political points out of the situation.

Yes, sexual grooming is not an 'Asian' issue; but, there is an Asian issue with grooming here in West Yorkshire and elsewhere. The particular must be addressed and not hidden behind the general. (Something the church knows a good deal about…)

Facing this challenge here in West Yorkshire requires mature and confident leadership – and we are seeing this emerge. It also raises challenges for patriarchy and the treatment of women by men generally. Cultural behaviours that diminish women must be challenged. In fact, we heard from a Muslim woman that although their girls are taught about spotting the seductions of potential exploitative approaches and relationships, the boys are not. Models of patriarchal mysogeny are perpetuated.

Here in Bradford there is a really encouraging waking up to the realities that need to be tackled here. This offers immense hope for the future and I end the day encouraged.

 

Posted with Blogsy

 

Three books of words

Richard Littledale is a Baptist minister in Middlesex and has built a following on his blog, Twitter and through broadcasting on BBC Radio 2. Having published two books on ‘preaching’, his latest book goes back to the basics of good communication. Who Needs Words? takes the reader into the rich world of modern communications, addressing themes around ‘fundamentals’, ‘practice’ and ‘how to make progress’.

I wrote the Foreword to the book, so it might seem obvious that I would commend it. But, I do so because it is the sort of book to give confidence to those who feel a bit daunted by the plethora and complexity of modern communications media. It is intended to be a handbook, written from a Christian perspective, but offering good stuff to anyone interested in communicating better.

Richard offered a good example of how media interconnectivity works by heralding publication with weeks of tweeted quotations, blogged extracts and a wide range of tempting questions – making the book itself land on fertile ground. It’s good to practise what you preach!

Reading this has also opened my mind to wider questions of culture, theology, world view and communication. These questions never go away, but sometimes the stimulus peaks. I have just ordered (but, obviously, not yet read) the new book by Stanley Hauerwas entitled Learning to Speak Christian.

The review I read of it reminded me of Walter Brueggemann’s great book Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles. In it he reminds the Christian community, now ‘in exile’ in a strange post-Christendom land, of the need to keep alive the ‘language of home’. This itself echoes the cry of the exiles in Babylon (Psalm 137): ” How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” This isn’t just a plaintive snivelling by self-pitying losers; rather, it is the gut-wrenching soul-searching of a people for whom the evidence of their eyes and of their immediate experience denies all that they have believed about God, the world and meaning. Their understanding of history, the assumptions about their identity, even the language they use is called into question by their predicament.

The same question is a real one today. How does the Christian community keep its confidence and it’s language alive when both are threatened by a changed and changing culture? It is not enough to simply retreat into nostalgia or to bemoan current conditions; instead, we need to grapple intelligently and creatively with the roots of the Christian world view and learn to use a language that expresses what Brueggemann calls ‘newness after loss’.

The third book is one that uses words so well that it cuts across much of the mythologising, generalising and complexity of the world’s inter-religious coexistences and conflicts. The Tenth Parallel by Eliza Griswold is subtitled Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. The book comprises 34 journalistic dispatches from Africa (Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia) and Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines). The research is detailed as well as academic and relational. She puts flesh and blood onto the histories of these conflicted countries and exposes why they are the way they are. She is both critical and generous in her judgements, seeking always to understand and interpret, not simply to judge or categorise.

Reviews were mixed because she leaves implicit what many would want to be made explicit; but that is, I think, a strong point of the narrative. Anyone involved in or interested in the modern world should read this excellent book. Contemporary conflicts (I am most interested in Sudan because of the diocesan link between Bradford and Northern Sudan) are explained and illustrated – and all in an accessible way. It is the most helpful and explanatory book on the subject that I have read for a long time.

In her Epilogue she says:

Religious strife where Christians and Muslims meet is real, and grim, but the long history of everyday encounter, of believers of different kinds shouldering all things together, even as they follow different faiths, is no less real. It follows that their lives bear witness to the coexistence of the two religions – and of the complicated bids for power inside them – more than to the conflicts between them.

This observation is one well illustrated also in William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain.

 

On becoming a Muslim

The world was clearly shocked recently to hear that Lauren Booth, sister of Cherie (wife of Tony Blair) has become a Muslim. The news unleashed a storm of criticism and abuse on Booth.

Or did it? And from whom?

My guess is that most of the world read it and moved on to the sport pages. The people who got stroppy about it were simply the usual suspects who spotted a good source of a few more ranty words for their newspaper columns… and a pile of vituperative islamophobes who are characterised by their staggering ignorance and sheer nastiness. There are two elements of the story that I find interesting: (a) media coverage of it, and (b) the reasons for Booth’s conversion.

In today’s Mail on Sunday Lauren Booth gives her side of the story. Credit to the Mail for giving her the space, but it is set amidst the usual xenophobic content we have come to expect. The headline speaks volumes: ‘Why I love Islam: Lauren Booth defiantly explains why she is becoming a Muslim’. I defy you to read what Booth actually writes and call it ‘defiant’. ‘Defiant’ suggests stubbornness, arrogance or deliberate contrariness; yet, she writes calmly, clearly and honestly to explain why she has converted. She doesn’t pretend to know more than she does and she doesn’t overstate her case.

However, she does give an account of how prejudiced she (and other Western) hacks can be when reporting or commenting on Islamic matters. Try this, for instance:

But it makes more sense to go back to January 2005, when I arrived alone in the West Bank to cover the elections there for The Mail on Sunday. It is safe to say that before that visit I had never spent any time with Arabs, or Muslims. The whole experience was a shock, but not for the reasons I might have expected. So much of what we know about this part of the world and the people who follow Mohammed the Prophet is based on ­disturbing – some would say biased – news bulletins. So, as I flew towards the Middle East, my mind was full of the usual 10pm buzz­words: radical extremists, fanatics, forced marriages, suicide bombers and jihad. Not much of a travel brochure. My very first experience, though, could hardly have been more positive…

You’ll have to read the article to see the experience of generous hospitality that impressed her. And it is this that provides the most interesting element of the story.

The factors in her conversion were: (a) unexpected generosity from a stranger; (b) experience of hospitality and community; (c) an intense spiritual experience. Interestingly, she is only now learning to read the Qur’an and understand the faith that has grasped her. Didn’t someone once speak of ‘faith seeking understanding’? And someone else of ‘believing before belonging’? The message is meaningless without a community in which to see it lived.

Now, some of the usual suspects are going to take her admitted ‘life crises’ (current divorce, move of home from France to England, emotional vulnerability and questions of existential identity) and smugly conclude that she has simply found a crutch with which to limp unthinkingly through life. Let them – they’re becoming tedious. But consider the challenge her experience offers to the fragmented society the Mail bitterly complains about (and promotes?) -  a culture dominated by loneliness, idolatry of celebrity, xenophobia and judgmentalism.

Christians find that conversion rarely begins with intellectual conviction, but, rather, with experience of God (spirituality), community (people who love you and care for you regardless of who you are or where you come from) and generosity (self-giving in expectation of no reward or reciprocity). I am sad that Lauren Booth has not found a Christian community that provides this – which is decidedly not the same as saying that such is not to be found.

I can point you to hundreds of Christian churches of all complexions where people have become followers of Jesus (and reflectors of the Jesus we read about in the Gospels) because of their experience of loving, giving, sacrificial and celebratory communities of faithful Christ-ians.

Just as Islam is fragmented and contains a spectrum of ‘believers’ – from the mad to the wonderfully wonderful – so is Christianity. Just as I want Christianity to be judged by the best examples of Christian expression and community, so I want the same for Muslims. I wonder if the Mail plans to give any thought to, consideration of or coverage of good Christian stories that speak for themselves – or are Christians only useful if they are pitted against ‘the others’. Certainly, to depict Christians as white, Anglo-Saxon victims of persecution in the UK is ridiculous… but it sells well.

 

Sharing our ignorance

It would be hard not to draw attention to the unsurprising but embarrassing outcome of the YouGov poll commissioned by the Exploring Islam Foundation. Apparently, 58% of respondents linked Islam with extremism while 69% believed it encouraged the repression of women. 40% disagreed that Muslims had a positive impact on British society.

Not really suprising, though. Islam is represented negatively in the media and with an ignorance that would be deemed embarrasing in any other discipline. See Bishop Alan Wilson’s blog today for just one example – and it doesn’t even come from the nightmare Daily Mail. Alan remind sus of the ninth Commandment:

You will not bear false witness against (lie about/misrepresent) your neighbour…

However, this is simply a symptom of a wider religious illiteracy in our society… and perpetuated in the media (with some exceptions). Perhaps it isn’t coincidental that yesterday saw a further report of the ineffectiveness of some Religious Education teaching in British schools. According to this research, the problem lies with teachers who don’t understand Christianity in particular and can (for example) tell the Nativity story, but can’t say what it means.

The response in some quarters was predictable. For them the problem lies with the requirement to teach anything religious in the first place. But, that misses the point completely. This is not about believing or defending the content of any particular faith (which would demand commitment of some sort), but, at the very least, understanding it.

This harks back to a long discussion last year about the (then) Poet Laureate Andrew Motion’s argument that people need to understand the Bible if they are to stand any chance of understanding art, literature or music. He was not saying that people have to believe it or live by it, but simply to be familiar with it and understand something of it.

The same goes for religion in general. Whether the secularists or so-called New Atheists (they are hardly new…) like it or not, religion is a phenomenon without which politics, economics and culture cannot be understood.

• If, as they attest, religion is purely dangerous fantasy, then it needs to be understood if only to be countered.
• If, as they attest, religion is a loaded worldview whose followers sit somewhere up the loony scale (away from their assumed ‘neutral’ space), then it is all the more vital that it be explored in order to be rubbished intelligently.

It is shocking to encounter some of the popular ignorance in the media and government. All religious groups are lumped into a single misleading category called ‘faith’ and seen as a minority interest for inadequates. Ignorance of finance, business economics, etc on such a scale would not be tolerated and would be a source of some shame. But, when it comes to religion in general – and Christianity in particular – the usual informed, intelligent and curious mind turns to incomprehending blancmange.

I don’t believe for one moment that Hindus have got it right, but I do need to understand Hinduism if I am to understand the politics, culture and societal shapes of countries where Hinduism shapes not only what a large number of people believe, but also how they live, vote, fight, etc.

Islam needs to be taught with integrity (as seen through the eyes of a good Muslim). Christianity needs to be taught with integrity (as seen through the eyes of a good Christian). And the truth claims of these faiths need to be taught – not as commanding inevitable allegiance, of course, but in order that people know (a) what they are dealing with and (b) how such believers are to be understood.

This is an appeal for intelligent and informed understanding – prior to any thought of commitment. The appeal to commitment is the job of the church – those Christians who can do no other than commend and defend their faith. The church has to be evangelistic; schools should be informative. And the media should pay attention to reporting religion accurately and intelligently – unlike the examples given by Alan Wilson and a myriad of others across recent years.

During an interview last Saturday one of the candidates quoted someone as saying

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Unfortunately, we should care (deeply) how much we all know – shoddy understanding, reporting or commentary simply means we don’t care a toss about those with whom we are trying to communicate.

Which is also why I keep urging my clergy and churches to renew their commitment to learning, understanding and growing in confidence in the content of the Bible and Christian faith… which we don’t usually learn by means of (what I like to call) liturgical osmosis.

 

The Russians are cunning…

It has been a strange week. Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, grand imam of the Al-Azhar mosque and head of the Al-Azhar University in Cairo (Sunni Islam’s pre-eminent centre of learning), died on Wednesday 10 March while staying in Saudi Arabia. Tantawi was an enigmatic man – but be careful of quotations taken out of context - and one of courage and vision. He was one of Islam’s leading spiritual authorities to champion Islamic moderation across the globe – incurring the wrath of Muslims who took a more militant approach to their faith. A good obituary can be found in the Guardian.

I met Tantawi several times in Kazakhstan at the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. He was always rather inscrutable, but he handled challenge extremely well. In July 2009 when the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, stood to speak – driving the Iranian delegation to loudly evacuate the room – he maintained his presence and took what could have been seen as provocation in his stride (at least publicly). Several years ago he refused to rise to the deliberate provocation by Chief Rabbi Metzger and maintained his position. Whatever differences some of us might have had with some of his views, he certainly gained respect by his behaviour in such circumstances.

Tantawi will be missed. It will be interesting to see if his shoes will be filled by someone of equal spiritual authority, political wisdom and personal courage. Moderate Islam needs it and so does the rest of the world.

Last night I went from ruminating on Tantawi to the presentation by the Russian Ambassador to Archbishop Rowan Williams of the Russian Order of Friendship, for his “outstanding contribution to the cooperation and friendly relations between Russia and the UK”. The Archbishop

The honour, which was awarded by Russian presidential decree by President Dmitry Medvedev, was presented by the Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, His Excellency Mr Yury Fedotov, who said “What the Archbishop is doing helps tremendously to establish better understanding and to set a better climate in relations between Russia and the UK.” Dr Williams is hugely respected in Russia for his interest in and mastery of Russian religious philosophy. He has written and spoken widely throughout his career, notably in his doctoral thesis on the theology of Vladimir Lossky, on Sergii Bulgakov (Towards a Russian Political Theology, 1999), and his recent book on Fyodor Dostoevsky (Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction , 2008).

It was – as they say – a good gig at the Residence of the Russian Ambassador in London. The honour, which was awarded by Russian presidential decree by President Dmitry Medvedev, was presented by the Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Mr Yury Fedotov, who said

What the Archbishop is doing helps tremendously to establish better understanding and to set a better climate in relations between Russia and the UK.

 Rowan responded with (as usual) an erudite and witty speech (without notes), remarking that:

The depths and challenges of the Russian world have continued to play a crucial part in my own life, in my mind and in my heart… It is a very special personal honour, and an immense personal privilege to be recognised in this way so unexpectedly.

 My wife and I went to support Rowan, but also because I continue to be intrigued by what Rowan referred to as “the new Russia still being built”. My own background in Russian language and politics was something best kept quiet about, but it was a really good evening among some very interesting and nice people. The Russian diplomatic hosts were generous, welcoming and open to all the questions I (at least) asked. A nice touch came at the end when the Director of the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, Dr Ekaterina Genieva, surprised the Archbishop with the presentation of a special bilingual edition of his selected poems printed in Moscow for the occasion. All guests came away with a signed copy – and I am already struggling with the Russian translations. I have forgotten too much…

Just for the record, my conversations with Rowan about Russia have usually ended up with me being embarrassed. After a dinner several years ago during which we discussed Zimbabwe, we eventually got on to Russian literature. I could blag my way through Tolstoy, Lermontov and Turgenev, but then blew my cover with Dostoyevsky. I mentioned that I had attempted Crime and Punishment three times and never got beyond page 82: it was boring and nothing seemed to happen except in the head of the ‘hero’. After a short – pregnant – silence Rowan said: “I’m about to write a book on Dostoyevsky…”

I’m sure he’s been suspicious of me ever since…

I decided that my next conversation had better be a bit better informed. So I have now read everything Dostoyevsky wrote – OK, I’ve got the last half of The Brothers Karamazov to finish.

 

The shadow of the prophet

We live in interesting times. While debates continue to rage about whose human rights trump those of others, it emerges that huge wads of money are currently being spent on religious films – or, more specifically, on films about Muhammad. One new biopic – by the Oscar-winning producer Barrie Osborne – has been budgeted to cost around $150m (£91.5m). (Another film is the planned re-make of  the controversial 1976 The Message – to be entitled The Messenger of Peace.)

Apparently, Ahmed Abdullah Al-Mustafa (chairman of Qatar-based production company Al Noor Holdings) spotted what Mel Gibson ‘achieved’ with his Passion of the Christ and decided it was time to do something similar with the prophet of Islam. According to an article in the Guardian, he said:

The film will shed light on the Prophet’s life since before his birth to his death… It will highlight the humanity of Prophet Muhammad.

And, according to the producer Barrie Osborne (Matrix, Lord of the Rings, etc.), the film will be “an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam”.

Of course the interesting thing about this is that the story of Muhammad will be told without actually showing the prophet himself – in accordance with Islamic law. So, any comparison with Gibson’s Passion of the Christ ends right there. I still haven’t seen Gibson’s bloody epic – partly because I don’t like watching violence and also because I hated the way many Christians who would normally oppose violence in the cinema excused this one because of the subject.

It will be interesting to see (a) how Osborne’s film, particularly, will handle the person of Muhammad without showing him and (b) how interested people will be in seeing it: after all, most people think they already know everything about Jesus (wrongly), but might be intrigued to have their ignorance of Muhammad corrected without having to read the Qur’an. It will also be interesting to see just how brave the critics are when it comes to pouring their scorn on the subject-matter – as they happily do with anything Christian.

But, there is a sort of parallel in the Christian world. I often offer congregations two options for understanding the society and context in which Jesus lived and died (and was raised): Monty Python’s Life of Brian or Gerd Theissen’s Shadow of the Galilaean. The former is a film, the latter is a book by a German academic theologian who writes for ordinary people like me. (I was asked by a BBC interviewer recently whether I thought the Life of Brian was blasphemous and offensive; I responded that the clue is in the title and that the name is the give-away.)

Theissen tells the story of Jesus without ever bringing Jesus himself into the picture. We learn about Jesus from the impact he has on the people around him. It is a brilliant, evocative, challenging and moving book – and allows Theissen to play some games with academic approaches to biblical texts along the way.

In the end the credibility of the Christian community depends on the extent to which that community resembles the person whose shadow falls across the real world – and Muslims might like to be the judges of that. Equally, the Muslim community only has credibility insofar as it reflects the person of Muhammad – and maybe Christians should be the judges of that. It is only from the outside that any community can be truly judged – ‘insiders’ rarely know what it feels like to be ‘outside’ the camp.

So, if Muslims are perceived as aggressive and violent, it will not be surprising if we assume Muhammad to have been aggressive and violent. And if Christians are perceived as thin-skinned wets, then it should not come as a surprise if Jesus is thought by ‘outsiders’ to have been a thin-skinned wet. But, perhaps if humility is allowed space in both communities, each might learn to regard the other through fresh eyes – generously allowing their own faith and the other to be judged by their best examples and not their worst.

Maybe the films might help?

 

Present, engaged and hospitable

Having got back from the Communications Conference in Rome, I am now chairing the annual meeting of the Meissen Commission at Whalley Abbey near Blackburn.

The Meissen Commission was set up almost twenty years ago with an agreement between the Protestant Churches of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and the Church of England (neither federal nor democratic!). The national committees meet three times a year, but we join up once a year, alternating between Germany and England. Last year we were in Meissen, this year in Blackburn.

One of the focal points of our work at the moment is to learn from our different experiences how we address and live with Islamic communities in our respective societies. Following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture on Sharia a couple of years ago, I was in Germany doing meetings and promoting one of my books that had just come out in German. Hard questioning and discussions made me realise why the Germans were so upset at what they thought Rowan was proposing. (In a 45-minute radio interview in Hannover I kept repeating that he hadn’t ‘proposed’ anything – he had posed a question…)

Germany has a written Constitution (Verfassung) – a Basic Law (Grundgesetz). This means that everyone is subject to the same law and this renders this element of ‘public space’ neutral. I had to explain that in England we have no written constitution and that we have what can best be described as a ‘negotiation based on precedent’. Furthermore, Islam in Germany derived from the (mainly) Turkish Gastarbeiter, whereas in England Islam is connected with the consequences of colonialism and involves communities from a wide variety of countries. (Yes, I realise it’s a bit more complicated than that, but sometimes you have to simplify it to understand it.)

The central theme of this Meissen Conference is Islam and our engagement with Muslims in our different contexts. So, we visited Blackburn Cathedral this afternoon and had a long and stimulating session with Canon Chris Chivers and Anjum Anwar, Dialogue Development Officer and the first Muslim employee of a Cathedral. This was followed by a rivetting session this evening with Dr Michael Ipgrave back at base. I now feel a renewed sense of pride in and gratitude for the Church of England – for three main reasons:

1. We still try to maintain a presence in every community in the country (in some form or other – including buildings, schools and people). We don’t just go where we think we’ll ‘grow’ our numbers, but stay where we need to serve. Anglican ecclesiology starts not with ‘the church for the sake of the church’, but with ‘the church for the sake of the world’. So, when an area becomes inhabited almost entirely by people of another faith such as Islam, we don’t leave and go away. Presence matters – even when it is immensely costly – which is why we have C of E schools with 100% Muslim population. Christian presence is important in such places – and it also gives us an unparalelled understanding of what is going on at the grassroots of our communities.

2. Presence by itself doesn’t do much. So, we engage in our communities and work hard to know and love our neighbours. This sort of engagement is risky business; any genuine encounter leaves you open to change and some people don’t want change (unless it is in those with whom they disagree). Engagement in such areas does not bring the great rewards of big numbers of bums on pews, but it is vital to the witness of the Christian Gospel that Christians engage fully in their communities in terms of service and love. Engagement creates relationships.

3. Such Christian communities – often very small – bear witness to the great Christian gift of hospitality by sharing themselves, their time, their lives with communities of people who are not like them. This is, again, where hospitals and schools come in.

There are too many stories to tell about what this looks like on the ground. But it is late and I’ve said enough for now.

A couple of years ago the Church of England produced a short booklet as an attempt to describe its theological approach to Presence and Engagement. Called Generous Love - an Anglican theology of Inter Faith Relations, it is more than worth a read.

 

Rochester opens up

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, retires this week after 15 years in post. He will now devote his time to supporting Christians facing persecution in some tough parts of the world. I have no idea what this will actually mean from day to day – or how this will be funded and Michael and his family supported – but he has made a brave decision to move on at this point and enter an unknown world for the last five or ten years of his ‘paid’ ministry.

As I have said before, I heard Michael speak when I was a curate in Kendal in the late 1980s and was astonished at his fluency, intelligence and memory. He didn’t once appear to refer to a note or script, he quoted theologians and thinkers I have trouble even remembering, and dealt with questions with a gracious eloquence that didn’t expose how silly some of them were. Michael has never lost that amazing ability and has used it to great effect for the sake of the Gospel and the Church. Being on the receiving end of his eloquence and forensic analysis is not always comfortable (which is an understatement), but his passion and integrity are unquestionable.

In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph he gave his final interview before moving on. Predictably, the thrust of the reported interview highlights the perceived concerns of the Telegraph itself, focusing on the need for the Church of England to “do more to counter twin threats of secularism and radical Islam”. Apparently, he warned us that “traditional British society is under threat from the rise of aggressive secularism and radical Islam”. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the interview itself – only the report of it. So, it isn’t clear what else Michael might have talked about in the interview. (Update 3 September: Martin Beckford has very helpfully written up the interview.)

I agree with Michael that ”the Church of England, which is used to working with society, should speak up … to defend the country’s customs and institutions, most of which are based on Christian teaching”. But I do not agree with the bit I excluded from that quotation: “more often”.

The first question this begs is: who is the Church of England? Is it the bishops or the Archbishops’ Council or the clergy or…? The fact is that the Church of England – in its parochial clergy, its chaplaincies, its bishops, its synods, its reports, its bloggers, its representatives in the House of Lords, etc – is always ‘speaking up’ and questioning the drifts of society when they need to be questioned. But not everybody gets listened to as Michael does. I am constantly surprised to hear that the Archbishops of Canterbury or York have been silent on something when a cursory look at their speeches, sermons and writings tell a different story.

I regularly get asked why I have not ‘spoken out’ on something or other when I have preached, blogged and debated the matter openly. What is really meant is: ‘you weren’t reported as saying what I want to hear you say in my newspaper.’

The same can be said of : “I think it will need to be more visible and take more of a stand on moral and spiritual issues”. What would such a ‘stand’ look like? And which ‘moral and spiritual issues’ will be regarded as those most important for the Church to be heard on? We are accused of not ‘speaking out on moral issues’ when it has to do with sex or relationships, but not often when it is to do with climate change, banking/finance or media misrepresentation.

I think there’s a double jeopardy – on the one hand an aggressive secularism that seeks to undermine the traditional principles because it has its own project to foster. On the other is the extremist ideology of radical Islam, which moderate Muslims are also concerned about. This is why there must be a clear recognition of where Britain has come from, what the basis is for our society and how that can contribute to the common good.

Michael has been well-heard on these matters, but he is not and has not been alone in speaking on them – either at parochial, local, national or international level. (I raised questions about persecuted Christian – and other religious – minorities during the Congress of Leaders of World and Tradional Religions in Kazkahstan in July this year…) I hope he will continue to bring his unique perceptions and perspectives to bear on these and other issues, but I also hope that others will get heard when they do what he is asking for, but don’t have the same facility as he does for getting reported.

 

A cuckoo in the nest?

Recently the BBC appointed Aaqil Ahmed to be its new Head of Religion and Ethics and Commissioning Editor for Religion TV. This appointment has provoked a good deal of heated response and debate, not least in the media. It seems now that a motion has been put down for the forthcoming meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England in which the appointment of Ahmed will be questioned as part of a wider complaint about the diminution of serious religious broadcasting in the UK.

According to reports in today’s newspapers (heralded in a fair piece on Friday by Jonathan Wynne-Jones of the Telegraph), the following seems to be the case:

1. The motion before the Synod calls on the BBC to explain the decline in its coverage of religion and its failure to provide enough programming during key Christian festivals.

2. The document accompanying the motion criticises the lack of regular religious programmes on BBC television and alleges that Mr Ahmed, a Muslim, displayed anti-Christian bias while in charge of commissioning at Channel 4. “The regular BBC Television coverage of religion consists of just two programmes… BBC 3 tackles religion rarely but does so from the angle of the freak show, and many of the Channel 4 programmes concerned with Christianity, in contrast to those featuring other faiths, seem to be of a sensationalist or unduly critical nature.”

3. Concern is then expressed that “from this point of view it is worrying that the Channel 4 religion and multicultural commissioning editor, Aaqil Ahmed, who is a Muslim, is soon to be responsible for all the religious output from the BBC.” Why? Read on…

4. Last summer, Channel 4 screened a week of special programmes on Islam including a feature-length documentary on the Quran, and a series of interviews with Muslims around the world talking about their beliefs. The main Christian documentary broadcast for Easter that year, called The Secrets of the 12 Disciples, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Pope’s leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.

5. This shows that traditional religious broadcasting is under threat and that ”the appointment of Aaqil Ahmed gives rise to an element of concern… He has been involved with programmes that have tended to look at the fringes of Christianity where it can be brought into disrepute.”

6. While the BBC’s total output of television hours has doubled over the past 20 years, the amount of religious coverage has fallen by nearly 15 per cent, from 177 hours in 1988 to 155 in 2008.

Well, I met Ahmed briefly after the Sandford St Martin Awards at Lambeth Palace recently. He was displeased with my lack of overwhelming welcome for his appointment during my keynote speech at the event and tried to leave without speaking to me. I can well understand his misery at the way his appointment has been received in some quarters, but I had actually gone out of my way to note his appointment (and the promotion of Christine Morgan in the same department), offer critical friendship and say the blindingly obvious: that I would be watching to see how things develop. This was heard negatively, but the petulence that followed was a bit sad. Ahmed needs friends and allies and won’t win them by responding the way he did.

But, the appointment of Ahmed as a Muslim is not the problem. It is entirely possible that a non-Christian theist will give better attention to Christianity than an atheist. What matters is that a good commissioning editor does his job properly, recognising that religion matters, that this country has a deeply Christian heritage, that most of the population have Christian roots (if not commitments) and that Christianity has to be taken seriously.

Indeed, according to the Telegraph report, Samir Shah, a non-executive director at the corporation, said that the programme-maker’s critics might be surprised to find that he raises the profile of religion at the BBC. “I think that they’ll find that ultimately it will be a Muslim who drives up the amount of Christianity on the schedules,” Mr Shah said.

But the real question is this: will Ahmed bring to coverage of Christianity the same intelligent and explanatory approach he has brought to coverage of Islam and the Quran at Channel 4? It seems to me that coverage of Islam assumes ignorance on the part of viewers and, therefore, seeks to explain before offering a critique. When it comes to Christianity, however, understanding is (mistakenly) assumed and the critique is almost always wholly negative – and frequently weak. Why, for example, does coverage of the Quran use sympathetic voices whereas the series on Christianity gives voice to critics – not to people from within the faith? A series on the Bible planned for 2011 (the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible – which shaped the English language and people) has now been ditched.

Even Don Maclean has joined in the fray. According to a report in the Mail on Sunday (!), he commented that “you don’t see any programmes on Anglicanism that don’t talk about homosexual clergy and you don’t see anything on Roman Catholicism that don’t talk about paedophiles… They seem to take the negative angle every time.”

A satirical take on this can be read on the Ship of Fools website in an article following the ‘sacking’ of Michael Wakelin from the job that Ahmed will now assume (in revised form):

For almost 70 years, the BBC played it far too safe when it came to religion. It’s hard to believe, but only people with a long-term commitment to religious broadcasting (and a devoted faith) were appointed head of BBC Religion. Canon David Winter, Rev Dr Colin Morris, Rev Ernie Rea… an endless procession of dog collars ran the show.

But the new millennium heralded a fresh, enlightened dawn. In 2001 Alan Bookbinder, avowedly agnostic and (refreshingly) with no particular commitment to religious broadcasting, was given the hot seat.

Some doubted the move, but the thinking of the BBC’s top brass was visionary. They took as their model Sir David Attenborough. He has absolutely no interest in wildlife and conservation, and that’s what makes his programmes so compelling. And Alan Titchmarsh is a self-confessed, feet under the desk, office type who can’t bear the outdoors. His highly popular programmes on gardening and the natural world are the result.

I hope the Synod will avoid silly scaremongering about religious broadcasting and that only people who know what they are talking about will be allowed to speak in the debate. The media world is changing rapidly and protected space will lead only to acquiescence to religious narrowcasting. It is not enough for the Synod to repeat well-meant mantras deploring falling standards without offering serious proposals for how religious broadcasting ought to be shaped in the new and emerging worlds of digital media.