The dangers of slacktivision

Well, mister biscuit is now following me on twitter.  I imagine that he's only doing it out of morbid curiosity but he did send me a link to a this intriguing track he's posted on you tube. It raises some important questions about the Kony2012 phenomenon that are linked to the easy use of social media.

Via twitter and you tube, mister biscuit is raising the question whether slacktivism - taking stands, even sending small amount of cash from the safety of your own smart phone - is really going to change the world.

I think social media are a great way of raising awareness of issues and of putting people in touch with one another so they can find common cause. But Occupy has shown us that it still takes bodies on the ground to effect real change or even provoke real debate about the issues that matter. It still seems to be important that we gather in the same place to hone ideas and draw strength from each other (maybe this has something to say about church too).

Having said that, you'll all be aware of the young woman, Claire Squires, who died at the London Marathon. She had pledged to raise £500 for Samaritans. This morning, as a result of the media coverage of her death and the explosion of sympathy on social media, donations in her name have passed £200,000. This is money that will be well used by the Samaritans supporting the desperate. The raising of it is yet another illustration of the power of social media to do good.

So, thanks mister biscuit for the reminder - and the cool track - I'll follow you with interest

Why paying our dues is a sign of love

Richard Murphy is an interesting accountant. That's a sentence I don't write very often! Murphy has been quietly gaining a reputation as a commentator on what is happening in our economy and wider society from the perspective of taxation. Now, this doesn't sound riveting but just consider these two observations.

First, the Greek financial crisis is partly - if not mainly - a crisis of the non-payment of tax by the rich, by businesses and, by example, of anyone who can get away with it. If government coffers are denied income, spending will inevitably lead to problems.

Second, that the £50bn evaded or avoided by UK tax payers - corporate and individual - would go quite a long way to solving our own deficit problems without punishing the poor for the sins of the wealthy.

I believe that paying tax is a sign that we love our neighbours - as Paul says in Romans 13:6-7 as he reflects on what it means to love one another. So, I confess that I read the  article and commentary by Nick Cohen in yesterday's Observer with my jaw in my breakfast cereal this morning (you can read it here and here).

In short, he is reporting a pretty significant spat in the House of Commons over the behaviour of the head of the Inland Revenue. MPs on the Public Accounts Select Committee have accused Dave Hartnett of lying to them and called on Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, to sack him. Why? Because he has cut deals enabling some of the richest institutions in the UK so they can avoid paying billions of pounds worth of tax. The list of beneficiaries includes Goldman Sachs and Vodafone. The fact that he has enjoyed 107 lunches over the past two years with large corporations, the big four accountancy firms and countless merchant and investment adds to the picture of a somewhat cosy relationship between Britain's tax collector-in-chief and many of the groups who pay little or no tax.

This at a time when a number of PAYE customers of HMRC are being hounded for underpaid tax because the Revenue seems incapable of doing something as simple as programming its computers correctly. We should not be surprised if people lose faith in the tax system because they feel they are paying their due while those with influence and sharp-suited accountants are robbing us blind. Isn't this what has happened in Greece?

Which brings us back to Richard Murphy, a man who thinks that we need to bring capitalism back under democratic control. We need to note that he's not anti-capitalist (a term that is so devoid of meaning as to be completely useless in describing anything or anyone). He thinks that this begins (though doesn't end) with a just, accountable and transparent tax system where people and corporations pay what they owe. He blogs here and anyone interested in charting a way to a saner, more just society ought to read his stuff.

Is it 1968 again?

I was too young to take to the streets in 1968 - though I remember the heady days of that year quite well - and I'm probably too old to occupy the City now (though, I'm not sure of that).

It is heartening to see countless thousands of young people taking to the streets in cities across the globe. And totally understandable: in Spain, where the movement started in May, unemployment among the young is touching 50%; even in the UK it's almost 20%. In virtually every economy the young and the poor are paying for the reckless activities of the so-called masters of the universe.

It's a shame that the demonstrations in Rome turned troublesome, with tear gas and water canon being deployed. But it is still thrilling to think that in 80 cities across the world, people are standing up (or should  say, sitting down?) and saying enough is enough. And that the young are leading the way for all of us. We cannot continue running the world in the interests of a minority of rich people, arguing that their profits will generate funds that will trickle down to the poor at their gates. It's time to nail this lie: trickle down doesn't work, it never has and never will.

It's also time to say that ordinary workers and young people at the start of their working lives should not be asked to pick up the bill for an economic meltdown that arose in the financial sector because of the actions of a small group of people who got above themselves.

We'll know we're approaching 1968 when the airwaves fill with songs about the possibility of a new world order and the movie theatres run films that offer an alternative to business as usual (sadly Hollywood seems incapable of producing anything with a brain at the moment). There are hints of this. The new BBC drama Hidden appears to be asking questions about the rich and their effect on the rest of us. But one swallow doesn't make a spring. Has anyone heard any political pop recently?

At least what today's news shows us is that not every young person on planet earth is gripped by apathy and sitting in front of the X Factor!

The wider lessons of the Fox hunt

I've not blogged about Dr Fox. I'm glad he's resigned but I haven't felt that I've anything to add to the acres of comment that is available elsewhere. The Guardian has done a good job chasing this one down but so has the Times and the FT.

What really swung it for me was the evidence that Fox and Werrity were effectively running an alternative foreign in their meetings in Sri Lanka. There is a government that we need to be very cautious of, a government that still has questions to answer about the death toll at the end of the civil (questions that it doesn't seem to want to ask, let alone answer). And here are messers Fox and Werrity lobbying for influence and possibly contracts in a way that contradicted what the Foreign Office is trying to do.

It seems to me that one of the key things that this whole sorry affair raises is about the role of the civil service (who Fox and Werrity appear to have sidelined on a number of occasions). And this issue comes into even starker relief with the news from earlier this week (all but lost in the frenzy over the defence secretary) that Gus O'Donnell is stepping down as Cabinet Office Secretary and head of the home civil service and his job is being split up.

This is a major constitutional change and just appears to be being nodded through. It takes from the heart of the government machine a single pair of eyes watching over how the civil service and ministers are working together. Even Peter Oborne - not a man I often agree with - sees the danger of this as he explains here. He is also hugely critical of the appointment of Jeremy Hayward - a man as much a banker as a civil servant - to the role Sir Gus is vacating.

The Fox affair reveals a government at risk of blurring the lines between government and business, between a division of powers carefully balanced in our constitution and policy increasingly driven by lobby and special interest groups.

Whatever way we vote, whatever we think of the government, we need to be concerned when it seems that unaccountable people have more power and influence in our system than those properly recruited and trained to run the government machine alongside ministers.

The place of faith in public life

Two great pieces in today's papers about religion in public life. There's a superb interview with Rowan Williams in the guardian magazine conducted by David Hare which is online here and there's a great piece on Maurice Glassman, the man behind Blue Labour in the Times. It is on-line but behind the Murdoch pay wall.

Both make a strong case for the involvement of Christians - and religion more generally - in public life. Williams is very moving on his recent visit to Congo and Kenya and the vital role that the church plays in creating civil society and safe places for those caught up in the horrors of violence in those countries.

In his speech to General Synod last week, reflecting on that trip, he said: ‘If it wasn’t for the Church, no-one, absolutely no-one, would have cared, and they would be lost still.  It was almost a fierce sense, almost an angry feeling, this knowledge that the Church mattered so intensely.' (you can read the whole speech here).

Glassman is an orthodox Jew and stresses in the interview in the Times how important religion is in shaping his life and in shaping the labour party. We all knew the latter but he goes on to say that religion is vital for reshaping and renewing the Labour Party now. It's a bold thing for a man of the left (even the centre left where he is) to say but it's really good to hear it being said. More power to his elbow, I say

Protesting the big society

I got an email from the Evangelical Alliance just as I was finishing preparing for Sunday evening. The email concerned the big society and how it was a great opportunity for churches - and asking for money to help make their version of the big society a reality. The sermon I'd just finished is about spurring one another in to love and good works and focuses on the fact that our faith is for the world and not just us. So, I should be putting two and two together and saying let's all leap on the big society bandwagon...

Well, no, I'm not doing that. I'm actually working on an email to send to Christians in the area asking if they'll support the youth charity I chair because local authority spending cuts have put its future in grave doubt. And that's the big society dilemma for me.

In good years, when government spending was available to forge real partnership between the statutory and voluntary sector, I'd have been pretty supportive of much of the thinking embodied by big society propaganda. I think local groups are better at shaping the services to be offered to their locality; I think voluntary sector organisations offer the flexibility and fleetness of foot that's needed to meet the real needs of people as they change over time. But that can only happen if there's statutory support in the form of funding, not to mention the flow of funds of grant making trusts. Sadly the savagery of the spending cuts means that not only is there no local authority grants but bids to grant making trusts - themselves seeing reduced assets because of the shenanigans of the bankers - outstripping supply of money.

A sensible government would have put the big society transition arrangements in place before local authorities took the ax to support of the voluntary sector. A sensible government would have established the big society bank on a sound financial footing - probably using the proceeds of a robin hood tax on the banks that would see £10bn+ a year flowing into its coffers - so it could fund the transformation of our communities. But it didn't. So we will see many good voluntary sector groups go to the wall as the funding dries up.

So the church has a dilemma. Government says join us in the big society and we want to say this is what we've always done, so of course we'll join you. And like the good Samaritan, we will bind up the wounds of those damaged by life, mugged by misfortune. The church has always done this. it will continue to do so. But in the coming months it might find itself expected to do vastly than its meagre resources will allow. Can we provide care for the vulnerable, training for NEETs, support for struggling families, food for the hungry, utilities to those priced out of the market, care for those struggling to live in the community with mental health problems...? In short, can we make good the effect of the most savage spending cuts ever envisaged in a single spending round? I doubt it.

Paul says that we should pay our taxes as a sign of love for our neighbours. This implies that government has a responsibility to the vulnerable. It implies that one of the ways in which we order the big society is through the election and action of good government, charged with gathering and distributing tax revenue fairly. So, yes, Mr Osbourne, close the VAT loophole on goods brought in from the Channel Islands (I will willingly pay the correct price for my Cd's and DVDs from Play or wherever), but also do something to claw back the £25bn lost each year to tax 'avoidance'.

So, I think we should help out where we can by bringing aid to the vulnerable and protest the fact that we have left in the mess we're in by a financial system that is still out of control (how can a bank that makes £1 in losses be paying out just shy of £1bn in bonuses to the incompetent?). I think a few occupations of the places that are still part of the problem would be a good way of churches showing that they are part of the solution. If the EA is raising money for such a campaign of protests, I'll donate to that.

The light dawns over the Nile

Great news from Egypt this evening. As one of the demonstrators in Tahrir Square said 'Pharoah has let his people go'. Let's pray that in the wake of Mubarak's departure, the forces of democracy, justice and freedom are stronger than the forces of chaos and authoritarianism.

One of the things that has been striking over recent days is how president Mubarak has gone from being a key western ally in the search for middle eastern peace to being an obstacle to modernisation and the transition to democracy. I should applaud conversions, however late, but it is a bit rich for those who have kept Mubarak in power to side with his people only when those people seemed likely to get rid of him.

We bang on a lot about democracy but we really do have to be more consistent in our determination to see democracy flourish everywhere. Our selective support for unpleasant regimes does our interests in the world no good in the long term.

But maybe our relationships with the world should always be founded on something more noble than what is in our interest. I know Robin Cook's notion of an ethical foreign policy was somewhat tarnished by the government within which he served, but it seems to me that at the very least we should not expect the people of another nation to put up with a regime that we would not live under just because it's in our 'national interest' defined as militarily expedient or necessary for our economic well-being.

And the Middle East peace process ought to be aided by Arab democracy rather than hindered by it. Israel is always trumpeting its democratic credentials in a region of authoritarian governments. It should rejoice that Egyptians could soon share the same rights. 80 millions Egyptians could be voting alongside 7.5 million Israelis and 10.5 million Tunisians. Who knows, that common experience might help them to listen to and live at peace with one another in the coming years.

And this is one of the great pictures of hope to have come out of the Egyptian uprising. Last thursday as demonstrators were being attacked by pro-Mubarak factions, Christian Egyptians linked arms and protected Muslim Egyptians as they prayed.

It's pictures like this that give me hope that young Egyptians - the overwhelming majority of the population - will be able to live together in peace and harmony despite their religious and cultural differences.

It's a picture that inspires prayer - and joy.

The shrinking big society

More big society waffle this morning - especially from the minister for civil society (what kind of job is that? If ever there was a quangocrat who needs to be culled he was it!) - nailed by Dame Elisabeth Hoodless. She makes the simple link between the voluntary sector and money that few have been willing to make.

The simple fact is that as statutory funds available for the voluntary sector reduce, voluntary sector organisations will go to the wall. It's not enough for there to be good will about volunteering or for there to be a review of the red tape affecting charities (very welcome) or even that there be a campaign to recruit more volunteers (excellent).

What the big society waffle fails to comprehend is that voluntary organisations need money to function. I am chair of a relatively small youth charity that works with more than 500 young people in various settings over the course of a year, operated by 8 staff and 50+ volunteers. We need £150,000 a year to run - a big sum until you compare it with the cost of keeping a single young offender at Feltham (and many of the young people we work with are at risk of ending up there or somewhere similar).

Our funding hangs on a delicate web of cash that relies on the statutory sector being a player. It works like this. Grant making trusts will often make grants only to organisations who are endorsed by their locality through attracting local authority funding. Remove the latter and the former is often less forthcoming. At the same time, the economic circumstances - especially the collapse of investment returns over the past couple of years - means that those grant making trusts have less money. It also means that there are fewer individuals prepared to make significant donations to charities - especially those working in difficult areas (animals attract cash but young people don't).

So Dame Elisabeth is quite right when she warns "there are a lot of very worthwhile programmes - for example volunteers working in child protection as promoted by the minister for children - which are now under threat of closure."

Faith in the City and losing my religion....

I'm reading a fascinating account of faith in England at the moment. Called Is God Still an Englishman: How we lost our faith (but found new soul), it's author Cole Moreton, tells the story of the last twenty to thirty years of English church life, trying to account to the collapse in attendance and emergence of a new English identity (Thanks to Glen Marshall for the tip about this book sometime ago).

Moreton writes as a player in these events, not just an observer. A self-confessed teenage fundamentalist, he marched for Jesus in the 1980s, working for a US-based youth organisation that sends young missionaries across the world to share their faith. He was evangelical, charismatic, committed, passionate. Now he is a sceptic.

Part of his book is an attempt to account to himself - and anyone else who's interested - what happened and why, and whether it matters. There are profoundly moving bits of this story and much to think about.

Last night I was reading his account of the publication of Faith in the City. I remember as a young journalist, buying my copy of the report from the book shop in Liberty's on Regent Street on my way to work. I remember talking about it with my editor, partly because we were wondering if there was a story in it for us (I was business editor on Marketing Week at the time, so it seemed unlikely) and partly because he was intrigued with the idea that the church still had something to say about the world we all lived in.

Last night this quote from the report stood out: 'it is the poor who have borne the brunt of the recession, yet it is the poor who are seen by some as "social security scroungers" or a burden on the country preventing economic recovery.' Plus ca change, hey?!

Faith in the City helped to cement my call to ministry - a year after its publication, I was beginning study at London Bible College, en route to ministry in Peckham, a community savaged by the 1980s recession and still suffering its effects when I arrived there in 1989.

Later, in the mid-1990s, I had the huge privilege and joy of working with David Sheppard, the Bishop of Liverpool, one of Faith in the City's authors, on the Churches' Enquiry into Unemployment and the Future of Work (I was representing the BUGB on the steering group of that investigation).

Faith in the City helped to shape my understanding of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world in which we live. it wasn't a perfect piece of work by any means. But it was a challenge to the followers of Jesus to take seriously their call to be a transforming presence in their communities.

For Moreton, it was one more fault line indicating that the church was losing its place as the moral conscience of our country. Its publication co-incided with Live Aid, a clear demonstration that you didn't have to faith to change the world. It was evidence that England's God was losing his grip on the English - in particular on him.

Does common language really lead to integration?

Radio 4 broadcast a very moving documentary in its 9:00am slot this morning about twin sisters who have converted to religious faith from an agnostic upbringing - one to Christianity, the other to Islam. The programme followed their journey over the course of a year when their mother was diagnosed with cancer and they were each expecting their second children.

The dialogue between the sisters was fascinating and the eventual awakening of their terminally ill mother to the possibility of God was amazing. It's well worth checking out on iplayer if you haven't heard it before.

It followed a report on the Today programme about the integration of Muslims into German society following the publication of a controversial book arguing that the wave of Islamic immigration into Germany has not brought any benefits and Angela Merkel's recent speech announcing that multi-culturalism had failed.

I was left scratching my head at the end of it. Didn't the Germans invite Turkish 'guest workers' to their country to take the plethora of factory jobs being created in the sixties and seventies by the then West Germany's economic boom?

One of the points being made was that migrants were slow to learn German or in some cases were not learning German at all. It's an example of the tendency to judge the success or failure of integration purely on the language issue. We think that if people learn our language, they integrate. I think what the Radio 4 documentary this morning suggested was that sisters with a common language and common upbringing were not 'integrated' in the sense that they saw eye-to-eye on some pretty fundamental issues arising from their different faiths.

Common language helps but it is not the touchstone of integration. I note the fact that the early Christians spoke Greek which was OK in the Greek speaking parts of the Roman empire - Greece, Asia minor (though even there Greek was not the native language, it was an imperial imposition); but what about in Rome? Rome was a Latin-speaking city yet when Paul wrote to the churches there, he wrote in Greek. He was writing to a migrant cult that had taken hold in the slums where the 'guest workers' lived, those who had come seeking a better life in the imperial capital.

Paul didn't tell the Roman followers of Jesus that the key to success in mission was learning Latin. It would probably have helped. If Robert Jewett is right, one of the reasons Paul wrote to the churches in the city was get support for his mission to Spain that was being funded by Phoebe. The support in question could well have Latin speakers who would have helped smooth Paul's passage into that part of the empire.

Clearly speaking the host language helps integration at the some pretty basic levels - shopping, accessing health care and education. So maybe the Germans should have been welcoming their guest workers with help to acquire the necessary language skills; basic hospitality would suggest that.

But I'm not sure that lack of common language is the reason for opposition to migration across Europe, a continent whose history has been made by wave after wave of migration. We need to look elsewhere to find that.

The gossamer threads of social solidarity

I've hung back over recent days from commenting on what's happening politically - largely due to a mixture of disbelief and incandescent rage that means my fingers don't kiss the keyboard properly! But following the publication of the Browne review into higher education, a thought that has been taking shape over the past couple of weeks finally became expressible.

It's not the hypocrisy of Vince Cable accepting a proposal to more than double tuition fees barely six months after signing a pledge to oppose any rise in fees. It's not the mantra of the government saying they have no choice because they didn't know how bad the deficit was until they took office, despite the fact the size of the deficit hasn't changed since last autumn's pre-budget report (as the Insttitute for Fiscal Studies keeps pointing out). Sadly, such things are just par for the course from politicians. And we can forgive that.

What has struck me is that the debate about benefits, tuition fees and public services is couched in entirely consumerist terms. It's all about 'what's in it for me?' and 'what am I as a tax payer prepared to spend on other people?' (as though we are preparing a Christmas list and totting up how much uncile Bill is worth against cousin Eileen).

There is precious little sense of society (so maybe Mrs Thatcher was right!), barely any notion of our solidarity with one another.

Child benefit is universal because it reminds us all that we are collectively responsible for raising the next generation - the benefit is merely a token of our solidarity in that task; it says that as a society we think raising children matters more than anything else and we'll all poull together to ensure parents are supported in it. We invest in education because it is good for the country to have a literate and skilled citizenry not just in economic terms but in cultural and social terms as well.

There was a great example of this in last week's Sunday Times. Eleanor Mills wrote a think piece in the News Review section headlined 'without God, culture is lost'. Now this was not a rant by a Christian feeling marginalised, wanting a return to the good old days when we told everyone how to live their lives rather than Richard Dawkins. It was rather a piece based on the simple observation that without some knowledge of the Bible and Christian tradition, vast amounts of our cultural heritage are simply incomprehensible. Can you read Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, our great poetic and literary tradition without knowing the broad Christian culture in which their talents flowered? Can you 'see' the art on the walls of the National Gallery and other great institutions without some understanding of the theological palette of the artist?

I think Ms Mills answer was that we need to educate people so they understand this or something very important about our culture will be lost and we will the poorer in all sorts of ways - and not just economically, though it will have economic effects. And who pays for this? We all do because we all think our culture is worth investing in. And that's best done out of general taxation, managed by those people we have elected to be guardians of the things we value.

Well, it struck me listening to Vince Cable yesterday, that this argument applies across the piece. Our society is knitted together on gossamer threads of obligation and common interest. It's not for nothing that we talk about the body politic; and if society is a body, then when one part is unhealthy, the whole body suffers. It's a notion derived as much from Pauline theology as it is from Plato and Aristotle.

It's easy to cut spending - though as Mrs Thatcher and all who've attempted to slash and burn in her wake discovered, not as easy as talking about it on party platforms; it's much harder to repair the torn ligaments, ruptured muscles and broken bones that can result if it's done without care for the fragility of our social solidarity.

Swift to judge

It's interesting listening to the reaction to Ed Miliband's speech.

Every word is being seized on, every phrase chewed over for what it tells us about the man, his history, his thinking, his values.

Yeah, it was an important speech. But it's not the be-all and end-all of Ed Miliband; not the last word on what the opposition will stand for in the coming months.

His speech reads very well - and you can read it here. The advantage of reading a speech of this kind is that you look at and think about the words without the distractions of the audience response or the commentators opinions.

Part of it talks about the need for a new politics, a new way of talking about the issues we face. So let's begin to have that conversation and not write each other off on the basis of a sound bite or a speech. We need everyone joining the task of bringing ideas to make our big society a good, equal, fair and just society.

It seems it's not only the church that rushes to judgement, after all...

Cutting the future to pay for the past

So the first round of spending cuts were announced yesterday and it looks like they'll do exactly what many feared they would. With Russell Crowe filling our screens as the latest incarnation of Robin Hood, maybe it's time to see his tax ideas enacted across the globe.

Owen Tudor, a spokesperson from the Robin Hood Tax campaign, put his finger on the issue when he said: “The spending cuts spelled out by George Osborne represent a profound sign of injustice. Those who bear no responsibility for the global recession will have to pay the price, while the financial sector, whose reckless behaviour has largely contributed to the mess which we are in, can continue business as usual.

The banks in the UK have been bailed out to the tune of £850bn and yet it is probably young people in my neighbourhood who will pay the price for their casino activities. Bonuses show no sign of abating but local authority spending had been slashed by more than £1bn. This means that a lot of projects offering front line support to some of our society's most vulnerable young and old people will be axed.

Something feels wrong about that. It's hard to see how a slash and burn approach to public finances fits with all the talk of a big society. The thing about a big society is that communities and churches can rise to the challenge of meeting real social need more efficiently than government can. But they can't do it for nothing. They rely on statutory funding as well as charitable giving to pay for their activities. Perhaps Goldman Sachs executives could make a start by donating their entire bonus pot (a smidgen over $16bn) to projects working with the poor and vulnerable in our communities.

“Cuts will not only affect a significant portion of public sector workers who will lose their jobs or see their pay frozen,' says Tudor, 'but also the general public who will no longer be able to rely on essential public services. One way of avoiding these large-scale cuts would be to introduce a Robin Hood Tax on the financial sector, which would raise at least £20 billion a year in the UK alone. Such a tax would be fair as it would target a sector that played a pivotal role in the economic crisis and that has the financial resources to cope with a levy.”

Robin Hood Tax campaigners say that the revenue raised would help reduce the public deficit, protect public service jobs, tackle poverty at home and abroad, as well as fight climate change. You can find out more about Robin Hood here

Good listening

Michael Portillo has just started an excellent new series on democracy on BBC Radio 4. You'll be able to catch it on the iPlayer and I recommend that you do.

His first programme was a fascinating look at the progress of democracy since 1945 and the threats that it faces today. Interesting one of the things he said was that income inequality within established democracies such as ours was one of the key threats to democracy that any incoming government would have to address.

From thatcherite poster boy to mature political thinker....

Tom Wright lecture on government

The Tom Wright lecture mentioned last week can now be downloaded here (scroll down to find the link). It's well worth reading carefully and even using as the basis for a group discussion in church in the run up to the election.

Wright's lecture is a robust analysis of the issues facing British democracy seen through the lens of the Biblical narrative and the post-enlightenment history of the West. There's nothing in the lecture about the biblical story and especially that of Jesus as the bringer of the Kingdom that is emphatically for this world, for the here and now, that we haven't read in Wright before. But here it's delivered as a brief and accessible overview that's then applied to how Christians might think about the contemporary political process.

More salvoes in the election campaign

There's an interesting page in today's Times that says something about the forthcoming election and how Christians will be challenged by it.

At the top of the page the ever-sensible Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, expresses concern that God is being squeezed out of politics by the way the current government does business - though he does reckon this process started under Mrs Thatcher.

At the foot of the page is a report of a David Cameron interview in the gay magazine Arena where he says that churches have got to accept gay people into their ranks as equals.

For some Christians this could well leave no party worthy of consideration when it comes to casting their vote!

Clearly that's not a sensible position, so there's going to be a need for some really careful thinking to take place between now and 3 May. Deeply held opinions need to be challenged and fresh reflection on what scripture and Christian tradition says about crucial issues will have to take place.

That thinking will undoubtedly be helped by the lecture that Tom Wright is due to deliver at the synod next week and a book co-authored by Nick Spencer and Jonathan Chaplin that's coming out this week.

Resources are one thing, but I also think we need to be serious in prayer for our civic society. There are fault lines that can become fractures; there are deep differences of opinion even within congregations that need to be prayed about and talked out.

So, let the conversations begin - and those that have already started (and there are lots, I know), spill over into the public domain so we can all benefit from them.

Want to help Yemen? Leave the car at home...

I'm still looking for offers to host a Bill Mallonee gig. But I've also been thinking about Yemen and Thomas Friedman in between completing another chapter of the book.

There was a summit on Yemen in London today, featuring the foreign ministers of a number of interested states wringing their hands about what to do for this failing state.

Friedman knows what to do. Go green. His argument brilliantly links global weirding, petro-dictatorships and the war on terror. His argument is that our dependence on oil makes us dependent on the good will of those who sell us the oil and skews our foreign policy as a result.

Indeed he argues that every time we fill our tanks, we donate money to Al Quaida. So if we want to reduce the threat of militant islamism, we need to reduce our dependency on Middle Eastern oil and the only way we can do that is to 'go green', generate our electricity using renewable resources and innovate in the area electric vehicles. This does not just make climate sense. It's also the only sensible anti-terror policy.

Now, you need to read Friedman's argument because there's a ton of statistics and good sense that is missing from my stripped down version of it. And, of course, such a thing couldn't happen overnight. But it has to start or Yemen will just be the latest not the last failing state we have to hold a conference about.

Theologically I reckon his ability to link things that the media and our politicians generally don't link, is very important and suggestive. And is something we should be doing at church rather more than we're prone to.

With that in mind, St Arbuck's this coming Sunday is thinking about 'why vote?' the first of a number of gatherings this year that will have a political focus and feel. come along if you're passing Starbucks in the Market Square in Bromley at 2:30pm on Sunday.

Where the sun shines its light

So the Sun has switched allegiance. Is anyone surprised? Does anyone really care? Do newspapers really decide what we think or how we vote? If so, then we truly get the leaders we deserve.

It is part of a larger pattern within the Murdoch empire, of course. James Murdoch's speech at the Edinburgh TV festival shows that the Sun's owners continue to think media is safe only in the hands of unaccountable billionaires.

It's enough to make you even more grateful for the riot of views, opinions and facts in the blogosphere.

I guess if nothing else the Sun's move confirms that the general election campaign has started!

Lessons from the widow at the temple

One of the stories in this evening's chunk of Mark (12:18-44) is the one about the widow in the temple.

I've always found this a complex and fascinating episode. Traditionally, she's seen simply as a model of self-sacrificing generosity. And that's how Jesus commends her to us. But just a couple of sentences before, he's drawn our attention to the scribes getting rich because 'they devour widows' houses' (12:40), leaving them in the state exemplified by the widow in this scene.

So, here's a picture of this devout woman dropping her last two coins into the treasury to pay for the upkeep of the scribes' power base and relieve the poor of Jerusalem. It's a somewhat more nuanced scene than we often see.

I think it serves both a negative and positive example.

She is an example of a widow being ripped by a system built on religious hucksterism. She's the victim of the worst kind of telly evangelist-style exploitation; the sort that says if you send a dollar, God will bless and heal you; a victim of the devouring of widow's houses that Jesus has just condemned.

But she is also an example of self-sacrifice, a picture of Jesus in giving her all for the good of others - even others who do not deserve it. Jesus is about to offer his body as a sacrifice on behalf of sinners - like the scribes, like the temple authorities who hound him to death, like this widow, like you and me.

We assume the audience of the teaching in v38-44 is primarily the disciples. Jesus is telling his friends not to be like the scribes, motivated by money, using religion as a means of making a fast buck at the expense of the vulnerable. Sadly it's a lesson we need to learn in each generation.

The lesson probably ripples wider to those in any kind of public service. After all, the scribes were among the political elite and rulers in Jerusalem. The widow is a lesson for all who enter politics - that it's about serving not being served.

And it's a lesson for us who are privileged to live in a system where we're allowed a say in who governs in our country. Are we looking for people who live lives of self sacrifice, seeking the welfare of their communities, paying particular attention to the poorest, the most vulnerable, the marginalised and weak?

Judging by the results of our recent round of elections, that doesn't seem to be the case. we still vote only for those who offer us the best deal, promise to protect our standard of living. We who have enough ought to be looking at the poor widows giving everything they have to keep their communities alive, get alongside them and share our fortune

On the need for Christians to think better

I've been watching the US election campaign with a mixture of fascination and bewilderment. I don't think I really get how the system works or how American voters function at an emotional level. But I've been helped by Simon Shama's spectacularly good documentary series on BBC2 - you can still catch last week's on iPlayer.

Today's paper has an alarming report from Colorado on how evangelicals are facing up to a possible victory by Barak Obama. It really doesn't make for comfortable reading by this evangelical.

Apparently one church is fasting and praying this week for a McCain victory. I'm not sure what the pastoral case load will be like if this doesn't happen and Steve Holt, the pastor in question, has to visit members of his flock to talk about how we cope when God doesn't say 'yes' to everything we ask him.

More worrying was this comment from a church member: 'has Obama through mass hypnosis, figured out a way to bypass the critical faculties of all Americans?'

Is this guy for real? Could it be that Obama has found a way of asking searching questions of all Americans that has resulted in them answering that there could be a better way of conducting ourselves in the world than the way we've been behaving over the past decade? Perhaps elections need to be fought on issues other abortion and gay marriage. Perhaps Christians ought to be as concerned about global poverty and the use of violence to settle regional disputes.

Maybe Obama has tapped into those concerns and people are thinking about what kind of presidency they want, what kind of America they want to live in.

Sadly, some Christians arrogantly think that if people disagree with us it's because they're stupid and sinful. Often it's because they've thought about issues more deeply and carefully than we have and they've found our fortune cookie answers to be wanting. When it comes to mass hypnosis, I think the church member from Colorado ought to ask whether he's been a victim of it for who knows how long and might find an Obama victory is the jolt he needs to snap him out of it.

The disappointing thing about the press report was that there's no mention of Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo or Shane Claiborne - all significant evangelical leaders who are campaigning for Christians in the States to decide their political allegiances and voting intentions on more than abortion and blind support for the secular state of Israel. In the interests of balance, it would be good to see them represented in the reporting of the US election over here.