When I got tweeted the other day from the BBC to ask for a comment about an article in the Church of England Newspaper, I hadn’t read the piece and didn’t comment (other than to ask if they know anyone who actually reads or takes seriously the CEN).
I have now read the piece in question and can’t believe (a) that it ever got written and (b) that the CEN actually published it. The editor claims he didn’t actually read the article, but would have asked for the language to be toned down if he had. Leave aside the question of an editor not reading what goes into his (very short) organ, but how did such an article ever get published anywhere?
Basically, it compares the gay lobby in the UK with the advance of the Nazis in the 1930s. It speaks of the ‘gay Wehrmacht’ and the ‘Gaystapo’. This sort of nonsense clearly doesn’t take seriously a rational, theological or humane argument about sexuality, but merely shocks by its sheer awful ineptitude.
You would have to be brain dead to write this stuff and think that anyone in their right mind would not think it outrageously stupid. What did the CEN think it was publishing it for? Or, for whom? It is less Allo Allo and more a mockery of the gruesome bits of Schindler’s List.
Alan Wilson has done a good piece on it, so I won’t repeat or rehearse it. This sort of thing needs to be ridiculed, not argued with. But, I will shine a light on it from a different angle.
World War Two ended in May 1945. British people haven’t moved on. Our sole point of reference for anything to do with Germany is that war. History teaching has been dominated for decades by Hitler and the rise of fascism from 1933-45. Our tabloids still invoke stereotypes from war comics every time we play Germany at anything sporting. The mocking chants at international football matches of ‘two world wars and one world cup – na na na na na’ demonstrate the poverty of our understanding and the puerility of our cultural references. This is not something we should be proud of.
It is why some of us are concerned to promote the learning and effective teaching of modern languages in the UK – and to urge a history curriculum that moves beyond the easy dramatics of the Nazi period and allows Germany to grow up. I wonder what any young Brits might understand of the thinking going on in Berlin about the Euro and the EU this week – incomprehensible without some understanding of German post-war development, economic structure, political sensibilities and cultural engagement.
When Alan Craig wrote his ridiculous article he obviously didn’t consider the reality of the Nazi experience in Europe or think about how his spurious and offensive comparison might be interpreted. Or maybe he did – which is far more worrying.
Suffice it to say, despite its name, the Church of England Newspaper does not reflect the Church of England most of us know. It should apologise.
Nick Baines's Blog 
November 10, 2011 at 7:19 am
Excellent post.
November 10, 2011 at 8:11 am
Thanks for your sane response to this ridiculous article and particularly for your welcome call for a more mature understanding of German life, history and culture. The church ought to be very well placed to begin this as all of its clergy will at least have read Schleiermacher, Baur, Strauss, Wellhausen, Noth, von Rad, Pannenberg, Barth (ok, Swiss, but important to C20th German theology), Bonhoeffer, Moltmann, Bultmann, Rahner, von Balthasar and, of course, Luther (and hopefully many others) at some stage in their theological training. Perhaps even more relevantly, people from the UK have been joining in the Kirchentag for years, so there should be a few thousand advocates for the cause out there!
November 10, 2011 at 8:45 am
I agree with you. Of course, I agree. But I do wonder if even rigorously rebuking such nonsense isn’t playing into the hands of the writer?
November 10, 2011 at 9:27 am
It’s difficult to know what exactly the CEN should be apologising for? Yes it was a crass analogy and probably something that would ordinarily not have been published but for the circumstances of the editor taking a holiday with his family in half-term week (that is another discussion about whether a small, under-resourced newspaper should have a deputy editor). But it was not libellous and it highlighted some real issues of concern.
Should a newspaper apologise for hosting debate – allowing a wide range of views to be discussed. For example on evangelical views of homosexuality, when I was on the staff at CEN we provided a forum for many views on homosexuality including the late Michael Vasey’s reconsideration of the biblical evidence (even organising a conference where he could express his views). This shocked some of our readers and we published some of their responses. Even today, Catherine Fox airs her pro-gay views regularly and recently Benny Hazlehurst of Accepting Evangelicals has had articles published. In short there is considerable debate in the CEN. It just worries me that there a dangerous precedent (on freedom of speech) when a newspaper apologises for hosting such debate.
November 10, 2011 at 11:49 am
Andrew Carey, I think you miss the point entirely. Who said it was libelous? It not being libelous isn’t the point. The ‘issues of concern’ are seriously undermined by the language and terms of the article. It didn’t highlight them – it obscured them. The newspaper isn’t ‘hosting a debate’ by publishing such a piece; it is simply provoking a reaction to the form, not the content. The airing if pro-gay views is not the point either; the question is what editorial line permits an article such as this to be printed. This has nothing to do with freedom of speech and nothing whatsoever to do with setting precedents. The newspaper should apologise for a crass editorial lapse of judgement: do you seriously think that this has focused attention on anything substantial to do with sexuality?
November 10, 2011 at 12:00 pm
‘It’s difficult to know what exactly the CEN should be apologising for?’
Well, the crass and offensive analagy will do for a start. And what’s worse, it’s not even an original idea, having come, via Johann Hari from an ex gay fantasist who wroter a book in 1995 called the ‘Pink Swastika’ (the title mimicking that of a book about the gay experience of Nazism – The Pink Triangle). Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pink_Swastika and foloo9w the link to Scott Lively
November 10, 2011 at 12:29 pm
I don’t think I missed the point at all. There are certain things that a newspaper should apologise for including libel and slander. Apologising for publishing an opinion is an entirely different matter. I think we’ll have to see how the debate develops before we judge whether it has obscured the issues. You yourself have piggy-backed on this article to make some good points.
November 10, 2011 at 12:38 pm
I must add, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the CEN making some further statement. They’ve already admitted that there were problems editorially. I understand that some people have made complaints to the police and the PCC. In the light of that, this is ultimately about freedom of speech.
November 10, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Andrew, It’s not really about freedom of speech, there’s no doubt that the paper was free to publish this.
It’s about whether it was appropriate to publish the article.
Nick points out that it may well have obscured the real debate.
I would go further – a paper, any paper, that has remotely Christian pretensions should want to think very carefully whether its tone reflects Christian values or whether it causes gratuitous offense.
The latter I would expect from the gutter press only.
Christian disagreement and spirited debates are one thing.
Deliberately slinging hyperbolic insults at those we disagree with is really a huge moral failure.
The paper should apologise for that.
November 10, 2011 at 4:20 pm
All Christians don’t believe the same things! Who knew?!
November 10, 2011 at 5:10 pm
Reminds me yet again why I don’t read CEN!
November 10, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Nick, the former President of the US was regularly called “Bushitler” in demonstrations, and Al Gore called right-wing bloggers “digital brownshirts” – who condemned this?
The silly reductio ad Hitlerum is so easy and common (and more usually by the left against the right – how often was Thatcher called a “fascist” in the 1980s?), it hardly causes the deep outrage you profess to feel.
Looking beyond the rhetoric, what do you think of the CONTENT of the article?
Is there or is there not a sea shift in political attitudes about homosexuality in Britain, such that the mere expression of traditional Chrisitan views on homosexuality will lead to people losing their jobs or being sued? – like the Bulls or the housing manger demoted for his Facebook comment.
Or, in the case of the Bishop of Chester, of being “visited” by the police? It’s experiences like this that make ordinary people in Britain cry “Gestapo”. Elsewhere I guess they would say “Stasi” or “KGB”.
This is the *real question you should be addressing. Would you condemn a Christmas present if it had been badly wrapped?
November 10, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Kieran,
there is indeed more acceptance of homosexuality than there used to be.
There has never been a single case where people have lost their jobs because they expressed anti gay views. The difficulty always arises when those employed to provide services on behalf of the state refuse to provide them to one group of people, and the difficulty arises because people do not understand that the state cannot, discriminate against any particular group of people.
If you offer a public service you cannot chose who you offer it to. If you offer a private service to the public the same applies. A restauranteur cannot refuse black people, he cannot refuse women, he cannot refuse Muslims or any other group of people he has a personal dislike for. If he cannot live without wanting to discriminate against an arbitrary group of people he’s in the wrong job.
That’s pretty basic and has nothing to do with persecution.
No, the real question this article poses is a different one and it has to do with the level and the kind of organisation in the gay community. The article claims that there is a gay conspiracy to undermine civilisation as we know it, and that this immoral conspiracy it is so strong and powerful that society wil inevitable crumble and anarchy will result.
Whatever you might think of gay people and gay rights – is that really what you think they’re after? After year of listening to the debate, is that really your baseline? Are we really to take this nonsense seriously?
You can believe that God doesn’t like gay sex. That’s legitimate.
But to lie about gay people, to twist their motives and their methods, that’s despicable and deeply un-Christian and should not have any place in any respectful human discourse.
November 10, 2011 at 9:06 pm
Andrew: “There are certain things that a newspaper should apologise for including libel and slander. Apologising for publishing an opinion is an entirely different matter.”
THE EDITORS’ CODE
1 Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.
http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html
I rate myself as a reasonably sophisticated reader of texts. I found this article thoroughly misleading and, once grasped, an outrageous distortion. And before you correct me, the worst of it is that it *parades* as information … “But it’s only 1938 and Nazi expansionist ambitions are far from sated.” Pardon?!
Not Funny. Not Clever.
And what about “incitement to racial hatred” ?
November 10, 2011 at 11:06 pm
I was refused a parish appointment because I have a male partner. That is ok, is it Kieran? 1 in 5 gay people have reported being attacked, gay people are murdered on the street, as happened recently in Scotland, yet gay people are Nazis? The article is offensive to gay people, Germans and the real victims of the Nazis. It gets a bit wearisome when Christians play victim because the law forbids them from discriminating against gay people.
November 11, 2011 at 7:27 am
“You can believe that God doesn’t like gay sex. That’s legitimate.”
Well, thanks very much for this profound observation on the history of Christian sexual ethics: “what I can believe”. Otherwise we’ll have to start burning the Bible as hate literature – oops, a bit late for that, a Glasgow art gallery has laready done something very similar, inviting visitors to deface a Bible – but strangely, not with the Koran. I wonder why?
It isn’t “my belief” that counts any more than yours – it’s the teaching of the Bible and our Lord.
I dislike the reductio ad Hitlerum as much as anyone, but you could pretty much BELIEVE what you like in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia – as long as you didn’t say it or publish it.
You seem to know nothing of the housing manager seriously demoted in his job for the new sin of demurring from “gay marriage” on Facebook.
You seem to know nothing of the “chilling effect” of threats to employment or promotion for expressing now unaccetable views formerly accepted by everyone as Christian orthodoxy. I wonder if you’re following what is going on in RE in England?
Simon: yes, it is OK to refuse church employment to someone not committed to Christian sexual ethics. Christian ethics are not the same as secular ethics.
& maybe you could enquire where homosexuals are most at risk in the UK – or elsewhere in Europe, and from whom. Consider for example what is happening in Holland. Suggestion: read Bruce Bawer.
Anyway, my question was to Nick, who raised the issue:
What do you think of the rash of cases that the article ineptly talked about? What do they portend, to use “prophetic” language?
November 11, 2011 at 11:30 am
Kieran et al, thanks for comments. Kieran, there isn’t a ‘rash’ of cases – but the cases that do exist are all headlined. Most of these have to do with religious illiteracy on the part of secular authorities rather than some plot to subvert Christianity. And, yes, of course a copy of the Quran wouldn’t be defaced because some up-themselves artists are also religiously illiterate and are cowards when it comes to real ‘shock’ stuff – picking the easy targets is neither funny nor clever (and often isn’t ‘art’), These illiteracies are being challenged every day, but crass articles such as Craig’s are inexcusable on the grounds that adopting the same ignorant, stereotyping or abusive tactics as others is indefensible according to any Christian ethics. Do you really think the article was just ‘inept’?
My post was about the article, what it represents, how it clouds proper discussion, and (although you miss this) focuses on why the British ares till obsessed with the War.
I have just received an email from a friend and at the bottom was the following quote – which I thought was pertinent (although I know nothing of the author): “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott
November 11, 2011 at 11:50 am
Kieran,
distortion again – is that really necessary?
If you would like to quote me in full and engage with the point I actually made it would be really helpful.
You can believe what you like, you cannot, as a Christian lie about others and distort their motives and methods. That is absolutely not how we are meant to treat those we disagree with.
The “gay marriage” on Facebook story, like all these stories, was a lot more complicated than that and there were other grounds for dismissing the man. Really, you should not believe everything you read in the press. British employment law is pretty rigorous and no-one can be sacked for merely expressing an opinion. And if he was, any employment tribunal would have him rightly re-instated immediately. Spreading scare stories like these doesn’t help anyone.
Ultimately, if you would like opinions like yours to be taken seriously in society and in the church you have to engage respectfully and with the truth.
Anything else actually plays into our hands because people can see fear, hatred and scaremongering for what it is and simply dismiss it.
As for Christian ethics not being the same as secular ethics – it’s time we got over the idea that there is one single Christian sexual ethic. The whole reason we’re still having the sexuality debate is because a large number of Christians does not share your views and they are not just found among gay people and their families.
You may believe that all pro-gay theology is wrong, but it is not helpful to claim that it doesn’t exist and that we’re only talking about a Christian vs the rest of the world split.
Again, distortion is not helping you.
November 11, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Nick: Anne Lamott is inspired. Here’s another from her armoury:
“I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right.”
November 11, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Re Christian ethics. Could someone make a little list of them and also a list of secular ones. NB to be 100% Christian they should not be shared or agreed on by any other faith or belief system. For example I don’t believe in murdering people or lying etc. So you can’t have them to yourself.
On the article that sparked Nick’s post I have read many an article written from a religious point of view that has disgusted me (from my atheistic ivory tower). This one is in the top 10 of all time worst so awful in fact I can’t even bring myself to send it to my religious friends as part of my campaign to bring them into the light.
November 11, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Kieran: I think you’re taking a rather simplistic view of Christian sexual ethics if you think that the traditional position is entirely self-evident to all. Obviously it isn’t. As it happens I also take a traditional view on the subject of marriage, but I am well aware that not everyone reads the texts in the same way that I do.
In Old Testament times the self-evident interpretation of the usury texts was that lending money at interest was forbidden. Now it is accepted as normal economic practice by most Christians despite being contrary to the plain teaching of the Bible. In the time of Hippolytus (170-235 AD) judges and soldiers who wanted to be enrolled as catechumens in the church in Rome were required to leave their professions first because it was self-evident to the church that they would be unable to follow the teaching of Jesus if they continued in their jobs. Traditional Christianity has since become much more ‘liberal’ on these subjects.
And I think a little perspective would be helpful here. In the last century he church’s continuing endorsement of the just war theory has given the green light to millions of Christians, on two separate occasions, to go out and join in the greatest bloodbaths the world has ever seen, with no qualms of conscience about how they were to square it with what the early church considered to be the plain teaching of Jesus. By comparison with this, how harmful is it that a minority of a minority – gay and lesbian people who want to get married – want to be able to promise to be faithful to the people they love for the rest of their lives?
Sorry Nick, for taking this on a bit of a tangent, but I really think Mr. Craig and others like him need to stop majoring on the minors.
November 11, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Nick misses the point again, and sidesteps the invitation to comment on the use of police power against the Bishop of Chester – and other Christians who been “visited” by the police fro expressing unacceptable views.
Could you possibly imagine this happening in the United States?
No you couldn’t – for the simple reason that Freedom of Speech (not popularity of opinions) is protected by the Constitution – a right seriously missing in fear-ridden Britian and Europe.That is why a whackhead like Fred Phelps has the right to express his obnoxious views – and he should.
Contra Nick, the issue isn’t about “religious illiteracy” in a certain “elite” (though that certainly exists), it’s about a new revolution in sexual ethics that the secular left, now followed by the secular right (like Alan Duncan and David Cameron), have successfully accomplished in post-Christian Britain, whereby talk of ‘same sex mariaige’, which would have sounded bizarre 15 years ago, is now obvious and “natural” – indeed, enough to get you punished if you criticise it. How has this happened, witihn half a generation?
Stonewall et al know exactly what they’re doing, and they have witting or unwitting allies in church members who would sooner throw brickbats at the Bulls and others than challenge the power of Stonewall and the danger of social ostracism. Lenin had a namer for such useful people. And let me state it is not just “MY” belief that “pro-gay theology” is wrong – it is the consentient teaching of the Bible and catholic Christian tradition. Modern liberal Protestantism errs in this, as in many things.
Walter Benjamin (I think) said the future arrives on kitten’s paws, but it doesn’t stay a kitten.
November 11, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Kieran
Actually, LGBT rights activist Peter Tatchell and the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement criticised Trafford Housing Trust for over-reacting to the Facebook comment and emphasised the importance of freedom of speech. Tatchell even spoke in defence of the street preacher, provocatively homophobic though his stance was. But since Alan Craig’s absurd piece seemed to take the view that LGBT people seeking equality are a threat to British civilisation, what they actually do and say might seem irrelevant to him.
Do you really believe that ‘gay militants have been in the van of the secularist and new atheist assault on Christianity… Christian believers have been a lone voice against the resulting sexualisation, narcissism, hedonism, selfishness and materialism’? If LGBT people disappeared overnight, would strip-clubs, heterosexual pornography, avarice and indeed selfishness vanish too? The mind boggles.
November 12, 2011 at 11:38 am
Kieran, anyone who disagrees with you or looks from a different perspective is ‘missing the point’ or ‘sidestepping’. I’m not going to argue with you when you appear to have a unique capacity for self-rightness, unwillingness to listen to anyone else and an obsession with a narrow set of issues. I have told you before that I will write on this blog what I want to write and discuss issues that are interesting – your preoccupation with sexuality is one you can follow up elsewhere. The point of my original post was to question the form of Craig’s article, question what drives such crass references, and to ask about our obsession with WWII. Banging on interminably about homosexuality is not my concern, even if it is yours. I spend my life doing apologetics, challenging contemporary received assumptions, engaging with the religiously illiterate, etc., but I do so (I hope) in places you don’t go and in language you don’t use. Your world seems small – one in which you would rather indulge in nostalgia than meet people on their terms and engage with them.
I think you should find another blog on which to exercise your self-rightness.
November 12, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Well Nick, You know what they say about self proclaimed heterosexuals who are obsessively preoccupied with thoughts about gay people and what they get up to?
November 12, 2011 at 9:47 pm
A slight aside from this conversation: 25 replies and no-one has commented on “World War Two ended in May 1945″…?!
November 13, 2011 at 8:55 pm
The Anglican Church at it again, self indulgent introspection is not what Christ called the church to do.
November 14, 2011 at 9:28 am
Nick, this thread has probably gone cold by now… I haven’t commented on the substance of your post because I didn’t really know what to say. I am still trying to grapple with this war language.
I think that Britain is ignorant about Germany and in fact about pretty much all of Europe. The “European” sections of British newspapers are extraordinarily thin, the impression is that they report about something “out there” that only affects us tangentially.
But by and large, British people like “abroad”, as long as the foreigners don’t come here in too large numbers and disturb our way of doing things. Apart from the obligatory references to not having a sense of humour I have genuinely never experienced any resentment or ridicule for being German and most people talk about this or the other holiday they had in Germany and of how much they had liked it. That rarely translates into any understanding of Germany itself or into an inkling that we ought, for our owns sakes, to understand Europe better.
Older people will mention Schweinhund and Donner und Blitzen almost as a signal for how much they know about Germany – and they are invariably a little put out when told that those aren’t even proper German expressions – they had, after all, tried to be hospitable by showing that they knew some German.
I have this vague feeling that this is all much more about Britain wanting to be independent than about any animosity towards the others. And independence is prized as an absolute overarching goal, even where greater engagement and participation could be in the country’s interest.
The war language is a code, not for anything anti-German, but for everything anti-independence.
There are no other words that have the collective impact and understanding of Waffen-SS, Oberkommando, Mein Führer and Gestapo. And that’s probably to do with a.) the age of the writers and of their target readership and b.) with the fact that there has been no event since the second world war that has had such a linguistic impact on a broad majority of people. “Oberkommando” is something hugely organised and threatening, something that is aimed at taking over, if necessary with violence. What other word is there that can conjure up the same menacing threat? That is immediately understood by the widest possible readership? “Mein Führer” is all about an individual claiming the right to lead the others who have no power to do anything other than follow. It’s more emotive than “dictator” – we quite like some dictators until they turn truly evil and have to be deposed.
Gaystapo is wonderful imagery, actually quite a creative play on words that fits the overall picture. The only thing that comes close is the KGB, but once you’re in German war language you cannot quickly get out and into cold war language. And why would you, when the Gestapo is obviously code for “everything evil and violent” whereas the KGB… that’s more code for swash-buckling adventure a la James Bond and for John le Carré’s spy stories.
What would interest me is how many people still understand the German war imagery. My own children would have heard about Oberkommandos in school in the context of the war but I doubt very much that they’d be able to fill the word with the same powerful emotional content as those now in their 50s and over who have grown up with the war still having been a genuinely very recent part of their family history, affecting actual people they grew up around.
I would be very surprised if this kind of language was still used in another 50 years’ time.
And that has nothing to do with Germany, our relationships with Germany and the rest of Europe and our understanding of those countries.
I hope.
November 17, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Most Germans in 2012 weren’t born in 1945. I cannot hold citizens of Germany accountable for what happened in the past any more than I hold modern citizens of the United Kingdom accountable for concentration camps during the Second Boer War. I am an American of German descent. I don’t hold my current fellow Americans accountable for the many deaths associated with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, for the practice of slavery, for the fact that our President lives in a house built by slaves, for having a Congress which is meeting today in a Capitol Building built by slaves, or for having racial apartheid in the U.S. South until the end of the 1960s. Evil and cruelty do not always have German DNA. The Holocaust was a unique event. I wonder if bringing up the Holocaust as a moral marker for another group’s alleged sinfulness is a way of deflecting blame or avoiding reflection on one’s own personal or corporate past evils? Using the Holocaust and comparing certain modern people to Nazis certainly shows a lack of sensitivity towards the victims of the Third Reich and trivializes their suffering.. I am a sinful person. That is a claim that should be made by all humble Christians, especially someone claiming to be a voice for morality. There is no hierarchy of sinners (some to be pilloried and abused in the Church press and others given a pass). All gay people are not to be lumped together as a single group. I am gay and I intensely dislike the public behavior of some other people who are gay. I don’t want to be understood as being part of single group with a single agenda. I endorse and value free speech. As an Army veteran, I was sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution which grants free speech. I don’t think people who equate gay persons with Nazis have much credibility. Name-calling isn’t a solid basis for debate on the topic of human sexuality. In 1999 a gay friend of mine was beat to death in an American Army barracks with a wooden baseball bat, his brains and blood were slung all over that room. The building which dated from 1980s was torn down because the U.S. Army deplored the crime and didn’t want other soldiers to be billeted there. I enjoy reading various Christian publications. When I read Mr. Craig’s piece in the Church of England Newspaper, I instantly worried if the article might promote or drive someone to perpetrate violence. I also felt wounded personally. I don’t campaign for gay marriage. I don’t campaign against heterosexual married couples. In fact, I am sad that around 50% of heterosexual marriages end in divorce which gravely wounds the spouses and the children. If the Church has any concerns about the institution of marriage, I wish I heard words of pastoral anxiety about so many families (based on the lifelong union of a man and a woman) being dissolved in secular courts. I’ve toured Dachau outside of Munich and I just cannot make the connection between what happened there up until 1945 with people in 2011 who advocate same-sex marriage. I actually tend to be more of an Evangelical Anglican. I have a real sense of God’s love and mercy manifested to us in Christ Jesus. Name-calling isn’t effective evangelism and tit-for-tat antagonism won’t promote righteousness or social justice (or preserve heterosexual marriage). There are some gay people who can be very intolerant and hateful, but they have no monopoly on this behavior (and they can be intolerant to other gay people). But their bad behavior is no excuse for retaliating in kind by a Christian. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. I do wish Mr. Craig would re-think his use of certain terminology and comparisons. I have no ill towards anyone, including Mr. Craig. I refuse to call him names. If anything, mindful of my own sinfulness and rejoicing in God’s gift of salvation, I wish to express my love for Mr. Craig. I am disappointed in the editorial standards of the Church of England Newspaper. I think Mr. Craig;s article may have damaged the paper’s witness for Christ.
April 12, 2012 at 5:56 am
Thank you for this. I find our constantly mentioning the War, Keep Calm and Carry On and all that, shameful. We need pride in ourselves from another source.