Christmas Clips 'The Well Good News of Christmas'

First in a series of a video clip a day from now until Christmas. The very talented Dai Woolridge narrates a retelling of the old story, there's a tie-in booklet from the Bible Society

Remembrance 2016

 The Royal British Legion creates a video every year for Remembrance Day, here's the 2016 one. We will remember them.

What I learnt about November 5th

The best way to start the bonfire which marks this historic celebration of the sovereignty of Parliament is to use a copy of the Daily Mail. In some cases it has been known to combust spontaneously, mere paper unable to bear for any length of time the combination of fear, prejudice, lies, sexism and anger without undergoing a profound change in chemical composition.

On all other days of the year, members of the public are also advised to stand well back from the Mail, and if handled to do so at arms length, with gloves, away from crowds.

Confused.org.uk gay cakes and gymnasts

Louis Smith is censured and sanctioned for mocking Islam in a private video, a Christian business is found to be acting illegally by refusing to decorate a cake with a message that it disagreed with.

In both cases there are big issues around freedom of speech, the place of religion, the nature of offence, and the kind of society we are becoming. Peter Tatchell, perhaps suprisingly, backs the bakery in the 'gay cake' row, because of the free speech issues it raises:

This verdict is a defeat for freedom of expression. As well as meaning that Ashers can be legally forced to aid the promotion of same-sex marriage against their wishes, it also implies that gay bakers could be forced by law to decorate cakes with homophobic slogans.

It seems the judges have decided that businesses cannot lawfully refuse a customer’s request to propagate a message, even if it is sexist, xenophobic or anti-gay and even if the business owners have a conscientious objection to it.

Although I strongly disagree with Ashers’ opposition to marriage equality, in a free society neither they nor anyone else should be compelled to facilitate a political idea they oppose.

In Louis Smiths case, he has been suspended for two months for mocking Islamic prayer practices. Alex Morton at Conservative Home takes British Gymnastics to task for 'enforcing a new blasphemy code':  

Had Smith assaulted or deliberately abused Muslims going peacefully about their daily business I would be the first to call for action against him. But we have a longstanding division between ideas and people in this country: the latter are protected, while the former are rightly fair game.

 As a Christian I've pretty much got used to mockery of my faith as an accepted part of British culture, from Dave Allen to Ricky Gervais, to people crossing themselves 'in fun'. BBC2 broadcast 'Jerry Springer, The Opera' - this is not a country where mockery of faith is somehow unacceptable or a minority sport. So why is Louis Smith so special that he deserves a ban? If he'd dressed up as a vicar and said 'bless you my child', nobody would have batted an eyelid.

Islam is notorious for resisting scrutiny - there aren't many Muslim-majority countries where you can convert from Islam, or question its tenets, without getting some kind of sanction. It happens here. It is a far greater blasphemy to use 'blasphemy laws' as a pretext for violence towards Christians, or the inevitable chorus of 'God is great' at every rocket and bullet fired from Afghanistan to Syria, or the abduction and sex trafficking of Nigerian girls by Boko Haram, or the murder of Parisian cartoonists. On a scale of offense, these things are off the scale compared to Smiths moment of drunken foolishness. How many people are tweeting #JesuisLouis in response to the death threats he has recieved?

Behind all of this is a deep confusion about faith itself. Any belief system worth its salt has to be able to withstand scrutiny - to have the confidence to compete in public with other belief systems with confidence in its own integrity, truth and relevance. I'm aware that Christianity once took the approach that is so prevalent in Islam now - respond to questions by shutting down debate and threatening violence. That's not what Jesus did. To be honest I'm not sure what Mohammed did, and how he modelled for his followers the way to deal with questions and mockery, but the military overrun of Mecca is perhaps a pointer. Is it possible for Islam to integrate into, and embrace, a culture based on freedom of speech and religion, which is modelled more on a suffering Son of God than a conquering general? In our post-Christian confusion, there is a real danger that we carve out a criticism-free space for Islam, a privilege not afforded to any other religion, and a dangerous space in which to exist. Neither Christianity, nor Islam, nor any ideology, is at its best when there is no freedom to question, confront and criticise. 

Don't Watch This on your Mobile Phone Whilst Doing Something Else

did you?

What Will the new Bake Off look like? sneak preview of New TV Listings

some of the treats in store....

Cold Feet  new political show, featuring Boris Johnson and anyone who has ever thought about standing as leader of UKIP

Fantastical Boasts and Where To Find Them  extended coverage of the US election

The Great British **** Off  the classic show gets that special Channel 4 treatment. Moved to a 9pm slot, all the contestants are 20-somethings with dubious sexual history a short temper and a microwave. Mel and Sue are replaced by Alan and Jimmy Carr

Can't Pray? We'll Take You Away!  documentary about everyday life around the world for people who've converted from Islam.

Doctor Where?  our intrepid Time Lord travels to Africa, where the population is in the grip of an epidemic, but the only trained medical staff have been poached by the NHS.

East Emmerdale Street  The government builds a new town in the Yorkshire Dales, and local authorities in Manchester and London take the chance to relocate all their social housing tenants there, so that they can build unsold office blocks and luxury flats for tax evaders.

Two and a Half Men  documentary about the Liberal Democrats

Strictly: new UK border policy. Anyone wanting refugee status in the UK has to endure 12 humiliating rounds of elimination by public vote.

The Botox Factor  a new presenter is thrown off the show after 3 weeks because lack of cosmetic surgery 'makes her look out of place'.

The Big Bung Theory  a round of up the weeks football news.

Locker Room Talk

"What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops." Jesus, Luke 12:3

"The mouth speaks what the heart is full of" Jesus, Luke 6:45 

Warning Signs

Some pretty stark findings from a Girl Guides survey on how young girls see themselves, confirming what the Childrens Society reported a couple of months ago:

Among the 559 seven- to 10-year-olds who took part in the survey:

• 36% said they were made to feel the most important thing about them was their looks
• 38% felt they were not pretty enough
• 35% agreed women were judged more on their appearance than their abilities
• 23% felt they needed to be perfect

And these feelings were far more prevalent among the more than 1,000 11- to 21-year-olds who took part:

• 80% felt their looks were the most important thing about them
• 66% felt they were not pretty enough
• 93% agreed women were judged more on appearance than ability
• 47% believed their looks held them back most of the time
• 61% felt the need to be perfect

This follows on from last weeks news that 26% of women aged 16-24 are reporting symptoms of mental illness. Not so long ago, that was the lifetime figure - how many of us over our lifetime might suffer from depression, anxiety or other mental illness. 

This is a major crisis. Philip Hammond was highlighting 'productivity' yesterday, and wanted the Conservative conference to believe that by investing in a few key parts of the economy, we'd get it sorted. Perhaps the problem is something much more fundamental, and the solution something much more radical. No matter how well educated we are, or how fast our broadband speed, we are a nation in the grip of a mental health epidemic. It affects our relationships, parenting, rates of substance abuse, and workplace productivity, along with a whole host of other things. 

Time to Change is a commendable campaign to end mental health stigma, but don't lets pretend that once we've done that, all will be well. On the same day as the Guides survey came out, the Royal College of Surgeons issued patient guidelines for people wanting to have cosmetic surgery. This is a symptom of the same disease - women who learn to hate their appearance when children will be the customers of the cosmetic industry when they're older. 

The Bishop of Gloucesters campaign on body image among girls is timely, but there is a whole industry that needs taking out here. After Justin Welby prophetically spoke and acted on payday loan companies, the Welby Effect has been quite dramatic. It will take something bigger to undermine the structure of an image industry which involves surgeons, dentists, magazines, music, film, TV, Kim Kardashian, social media, selfie sticks, the cosmetics firms, advertising, and the devil - who doesn't wear Prada, but wants women to believe that their lives are incomplete without a brand name.

In an image-dominated society, the cultural flow is towards appearance and presentation. How do we bring into the cultural mainstream the idea that beauty is a quality of character, rather than an advertisers dog whistle? "Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgement" (John 7:24). We are so far gone it's almost impossible to imagine what UK society would look like if we took these words of Jesus seriously

We are also incredibly conflicted about this - the Paralympics (remember them?) does a great job for promoting a positive image of people with disabilities, but at the same time we enshrine in law a procedure which will lead to the abortions of more disabled children. A sense of value is based on externals - what people can do, contribute, look like, produce, or achieve (anyone for Grammar Schools?) - is spiritually and emotionally toxic. I'm not sure if a post-Christian society is actually able to come up with anything better than this, the signs are that any cultural sense of intrinsic worth as people uniquely loved and made in God's image is decaying fast. 'Because I'm worth it' is a marketing slogan, not a philosophical truth - the irony is that the slogan undermines self-worth at the moment it's delivered. 

Final thought: feminism needs to be reclaimed from capitalism. It has been colonised and trivialised. Imagine if you can the early Suffragettes sitting at the NFL final, watching Beyonce and her army of half-dressed minions waving their bottoms at the crowd, then turning to each other and saying "ladies, our work is complete." No, me neither. 

From the Girl Guides report: From as young as seven, girls feel the impact of daily sexist images of women and girls in the media, online and around them. Girls tell us that sexist objectification of women in the media makes them feel disempowered and that gender stereotypes make them feel that their gender will hold them back in life. They tell us they have to confront intense and unobtainable appearance pressures to be perfect and many say they feel they’re not good enough.