Faith in confidence

I came to London today to sit on a panel at the Christian Solidarity Worldwide annual conference in Westminster. Other panelists were Ruth Gledhill (Times Religion Correspondent), John Coles (New Wine) and Fiona Bruce (MP for Congleton), and it was chaired by Steve Clifford (General Director of the Evangelical Alliance). It was surprisingly good fun and stimulatingly lively.

My main point was to encourage greater confidence by religious people – Christians in particular – in occupying the space they have… and not to react to everything 'offensive' in victim mode. Ruth Gledhill articulately explained the role of journalists and editors, castigated religious people for not getting 'good news' stories into the press, and told them to use the clout they already have for raising concerns about issues of religious freedom. I concurred, noting that Christians need to look first in the mirror when moaning about failures to tell our stories – asking ourselves who is to blame for this. (Earlier Os Guinness had noted that the primary casualty of religious bad news was the failure of Christians to love one another in public.)

Of course, the other media angle is simply that religious groups often simply want to 'get their message over' – which is hopeless in the new world of social media in which 'interconnectivity' and 'interactivity' are the key features of discourse. We now engage in a conversation and not in a monologue. The message emerges from the conversation and its mode.

It is always a little difficult to deal briefly and concisely with complicated issues. However, I did describe the contemporary conflict of 'freedoms' as a 'crisis of liberalism': that once we claim equality and equal validity of any opinion (including the right to be offended, etc.), it becomes hard to deal with conflicts in rights/freedoms. We are left with having to establish hierarchies of value or rights, and this is problematic. In other words, if my freedom compromises your freedom, who judges which is to have priority – and against which criteria?

I also sat there recalling silently on the eve of Remembrance Day that more religious people died in non-religious conflicts in the twentieth century than in all previous nineteen centuries put together.

Anyway, I had to leave afterwards and missed the people who were to reflect on cases of religious persecution around the world. (Of course, we had agreed earlier that 'marginalization' and the 'religious illiteracy' of media people and politicians do not constitute 'persecution'.)

And my Fantasy League team is doing rubbish today…

Posted with Blogsy

 

Persecution ‘complex’

It’s a funny old world. Last night I had a two-minute TV spot on Channel 4 and today has seen a barrage of responses.

4thought.tv has a theme for the week and this week it asks whether Christians are being persecuted in Britain today. Readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I don’t think we are being persecuted. Some Christians have responded with anger at my betrayal of the cause and some atheists/humanists have commended what I said. The former think I should be more worried about what is going on out there and the latter think I can be recruited to their cause.

Inevitably, it is more complex than that. I recorded over an hour and a quarter and it was edited into two minutes. I have no complaints and they gave a fair representation of the sweep of matters we discussed. The producer asks questions, but the broadcast piece does not indicate to which questions the statements/views were given in answer. Again, I stress, I have no complaints. However, the one statement I wish had been included was along the lines of:

Being marginalised, misrepresented or misquoted is not the same as being persecuted. And it isn’t just a matter of semantics.

Christians are being persecuted in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, parts of Africa and the Middle East. Being ridiculed a bit or misrepresented by the religiously illiterate in Britain is a pain and poses challenges – but it is not persecution. My point in the broadcast was to encourage Christians to stop seeing themselves as pathetic victims, recognise the amazing freedom we have in (and massive contribution we make to) British society both locally and nationally… and get out there more confidently with the unique gift of Christian faith, service and apologetics. As Liverpool keep discovering, playing defensively allows the opposition all the creative space to attack – and you don’t win football matches by playing that way.

The websites that are claiming me as an ally in the ‘secularist’ cause shouldn’t celebrate too soon. My stance yesterday does not mean that I don’t get fed up with (and argue against) the rather stupid anti-Christian or ignorant/irrational secularist stuff around in the public square. But, rather than bleat about it, I’d rather we took up the creative challenge and engaged seriously with it.

I had no idea about any ‘Not Ashamed’ campaign until I saw it today. Whatever I said yesterday was not an attack on it – hard to do when you don’t know it exists. In fact, you could argue that the point of my 4thought.tv piece was to encourage Christians to stop seeing themselves as victims, to be confident about their faith and its ability to stand in the public square, and to do the opposite of being ashamed.

Although flattered to be commended by the humanist commentariat, they should also be a little bit worried: this isn’t a cave-in to secularism; it is a call to get stuck in with a bit more nous and a bit more confidence in the Gospel.

 

Persecuted Christians?

There seems to be no end to the hyperbole about Christians in this country being ‘persecuted’. I pointed the other day to George Pitcher’s demolition of the notion and felt better for it. Then I keep reading newspapers, emails and letters repeating the same old hysterical claim. Am I wrong to think that

• being told not to wear jewellery (however stupid a thing to order) is not ‘persecution’.
• being given a verbal hard time because of your faith is not ‘persecution’.
• having to negotiate a place for a Christian voice amid the cacophany of other ‘voices’ in the marketplace is not ‘persecution’.
• being asked to justify our views and practices is not ‘persecution’.

Today (Maundy Thursday) Christians remember Jesus re-signifying the Exodus (from real persecution) and opening himself up to betrayal, denial and unjust execution. Now, that begins to sound more like ‘persecution’; but even Jesus himself didn’t complain about that. Tomorrow (Good Friday) we remember that blood got shed and a body got broken – and we note that in some parts of the world Christians are really getting their bodies broken and their blood spilled on account of their faith: that sounds like ‘persecution’.

Isn’t it odd  how these things are seen from the outside? In a mixed-bag of a book called Christ and Culture (Canterbury Studies in Anglicanism), one striking contribution comes from the pen of the The Rt Revd Saw John Wilme, Bishop of Taungoo in the Church of the Province of Myanmar (Burma). He describes what it is like to be the church in a country dominated by Buddhists in which there are restrictions on how Christians can proclaim their faith and do evangelism. He describes well the multifaith context and explains how the Christians fulfil their vocation in mission. Then he says this:

However, I was surprised to hear from foreigners that some believe we Christians of the Church in Myanmar are ‘persecuted’, because we truly are not. While we have suffered occasional discrimination and harassment because of our faith, we do officially enjoy freedom of worship.

Now, that is getting things in perspective. Tom Wright, in his contribution on ‘living under Scripture’, makes the point that cheap ‘victim’ language simply exposes how we have been shaped by the very culture we now claim is hurting us. In relation to relativism (not persecution) he describes “a world where the only apparent moral argument is the volume of the victim’s scream” and goes on to observe:

Genuine screams of genuine victims matter enormously, of course, and are all taken up into the cry of dereliction from the cross. But they are to be addressed, not with more screams, still less competing ones, but with healing, biblical wisdom.

He was addressing a different matter, but his expression is equally applicable here where hierarchies of victimhood are invoked and language gets cheapened.

If being subject to muddled bureaucratic and religiously-illiterate edicts from public authorities counts as ‘persecution’, then what word do we reserve for Anglicans in Harare, Christians in parts of Pakistan or the Congo – or all the other victims of brutality, injustice and innocent suffering?

 

Don’t eat the fish

I only went away for a few days and all the exciting stuff happened at once. Nothing like being in the right place at the wrong time.

A word of advice: avoid the shellfish. I was persuaded to share a bowl of the little monsters with my wife and began to feel unwell even before we left the restaurant. Two days of serious unwellness followed – not bad for a four-day break. I am still suffering and not eating. So, the moral of the story is: DON’T EAT THE FISH – STICK WITH PIZZA!

While I was away the Bishop of Rochester announced his resignation with effect from September 2009. I have caught up on some of the media comment on this, ranging from the slightly optimistic (George Pitcher in the Telegraph) to the facile (Melanie Phillips in the Mail). It would never ‘do’ to represent reality fairly, would it? People will have mixed feelings about the bishop’s departure – especially as it is so unclear to what precisely he is departing – but it should be stated that he is a remarkable man and has proven himself to be one of the sharpest brains in the Church.

I remember hearing Michael for the first time at a clergy conference when I was a curate up north. He spoke without notes and without hesitation, repetition or deviation for an hour and then responded skilfully to questions from the floor. It was remarkable and his ability to remember details is formidable. Which is a good word to use of him. He is a formidable opponent, but a remarkable ally. Whatever one makes of his stance on particular issues or his absence from last year’s Lambeth Conference, what must never be questioned is his integrity or courage.

And this is where Melanie Phillips is facile. Lots of bishops draw attention to the seriousness of the persecution of Christians in other parts of the world. I (and many others, no doubt) seem to spend half my time engaging with the ‘secular’ agenda in this country. When I represent the Archbishop of Canterbury in interfaith conferences in Central Asia, I have neither the desire nor the need to compromise the Christian faith or play ‘niceness’ games. My colleagues from different faiths will attest that I have regularly raised uncomfortable questions about such matters as persecution of Christians, lack of religious freedom in Muslim countries and the need for integrity of action, not just speech from religious leaders. The fact that many bishops do such stuff passes by Melanie Phillips because we don’t publish it in the Telegraph or the Daily Mail. I realise that serious engagement does not afford good headlines for shock-horror newspapers, but maybe that’s the point…

Melanie Phillips draws all the wrong conclusions from Michael’s resignation. Having just read Nick Davies’s expose of the Mail in his worrying book Flat Earth News, I probably shouldn’t be surprised. I, along with others, will watch this space and pray for Michael as he prepares to move on.

Anyway, the G20 summit is happening, England beat Slovakia 4-0, the Home Secretary’s husband remembered some dodgy films, everyone is getting hysterical about something, I’ve just done an interview on rock music and Christianity for the Financial Times (out on Saturday) and I have come back to a desk full of work. Damn the shellfish…