protesting too much?

Bigbulkyanglican says it all regarding Jerry springer - there are simply much more important things for Christians to get their knickers in a twist over. I don't see my brothers and sisters protesting about the treatment of Palestinians, the occupation and theft of their land by settlers. Neither do I see them burning their tax demands outside the Treasury until we act to clear the mountain of debt keeping millions in poverty - a pverty tsunami every week as the Prime Minister put it (check out the make poverty history website).

I'm just back from the Mainstream conference - excellent - where John Drane urged us once again to listen to what people are actually saying and not think we've got all the answers, when in fact we've not really grasped the questions. As someone much wiser than me once said 'life is not a problem to be solved but a work to be made'.

Brian Mclaren has some interesting observations on protestants in his book (see New Year Reading). In a nutshell he suggests that because we started as a protest movement, protest is our prime modus operandi. The trouble is that if our identity is forged in protest, we don't actually create anything; all we do is constantly tear down. We define ourselves in terms of what we're not and who we're against - hardly a sound basis for a dialogue.

I taped Jerry Springer. I'll watch it and blog again - if I have anything at all intelligent to say about it!

In the meantime, back to Dylan and a mountain of emails...