(I was going to call this 'Teddy Bears Pig's Ear', but didn't in case I got arrested by the Sudanese police.)
It's been reassuring to hear the consistent opposition from British Muslims and Muslim groups to the arrest and charge of Gillian Gibbons in Sudan for allowing her class to call a teddy bear Muhammed. How on earth such an act can 'incite religious hatred' is beyond me. In fact the actions of the Sudanese legal system are much more likely to incite hatred. Many Muslim groups have recognised the damage this case could do:
in Britain, the Islamic Human Rights Commission was among Muslim groups to call for her immediate release.
Chairman Massoud Shadjareh said: "Both the Sudanese government and the media must refrain from using Islam and Islamic principles to legitimise this fiasco, which may result in the unjust conviction of an innocent person, and which will only lead to the promotion of Islamophobia and further demonisation of Islam."
And a spokesman for the Muslim youth organisation, the Ramadhan Foundation, said "this matter is not worthy of arrest or detention and her continued detention will not help repair the misconceptions about Islam." . from the BBC website.
The trouble is that it's very easy to make the 'tip of the iceberg' argument. Yes Sudan is an oppressive rogue state, but it's not the only one with the death penalty for Muslims who convert to other faiths. Only recently a rape victim in another Muslim state was given a punishment after her appeal for a higher sentence for her abusers. However, as a Christian once you make this argument you discover a very large plank in your own eye with words like 'Crusades', 'Inquisition', and 'Cromwell' written on it. Which is exactly the argument that secularists make: trawl through any online debate about the merits of religion and you'll find plenty of 'plague on all their houses' comments.
Tricky one: at one level, getting into a 'my faith is better than your faith' argument looks petty. But at another level, Jesus and Mohammed can't both be right. It's one, the other, or neither. So if you do believe in God, then there is a debate to be had over the relative merits of Christianity and Islam, both the teachings of their founders, (and the historical basis for them), and the effect they have on people who embrace them.
Back at the centre of all this is an ordinary primary school teacher, who has suddenly found herself at the centre of an international storm through a purely innocent action. Anyone who's ever been on the wrong end of the village gossip know what this feels like, but now the village is global.
Grow up. Let her go. Leave her alone. And may the children in that class resolve never to be like their elders.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Great Curry in Yeovil
The Viceroy on Middle Street was chosen as one of the top 100 curry restaurants in the UK at the 2007 British Curry Awards, and deservedly so. Excellent meal there last night, very good service, it really does put the mass produced supermarket takeaways into perspective. End of digression into being a food critic.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Ideas for Christmas Outreach
As an ardent believer in recycling (oops, nearly forgot, it's brown box night tonight in Yeovil. Not that ardent then.....) here's an extract from 'Biscuit Tin', a 3x-a-year- thingy I produce for local churches, with ideas and thoughts on mission. As Advent draws near, it seemed a good time to post it:
Ideas for Christmas outreach
- Christmas services in secular venues: e.g. Christingle in a garden centre (Brimsmore hosted one last year), or a supermarket foyer/café coupled with a till collection. Darlington ASDA let us do a Christingle on Christmas Eve – it drew nearly 200 people and raised hundreds of £ for charity, as well as being a great community event.
- Carol singing – house to house, in local pubs or local gathering places.
- Blue Christmas: a Christmas service for people who don’t like Christmas, either due to bereavement or for other reasons. There are resources for this at http://www.ottawa.anglican.ca/blue.shtml .
- Posada (where figures of Mary and Joseph journey from house to house during Advent). A set of resources have been developed by the Church Army: see www.churcharmy.org.uk/posada
- Giant Advent Calendar: an idea pioneered by churches in Warwick (http://www.advent2005.co.uk/), having Advent windows opening at various places in the community, along with various workshops (wreath making, Christingle making) run by the churches. Would work especially well in a town centre, or in a compact village community.
- St Nicholas Day Biscuits A Dutch tradition of making biscuits on St. Nicholas Day (5th December) and taking them round to the neighbours. Great way to get to know people in your neighbourhood, something pretty much anyone in the congregation can do.
Having tried a couple of experiments last year - a Christingle in the garden centre and a Christmas service for kids at the local nursery - both have invited us back to do it again this year, which is nice. The Biscuits idea worked a treat in our road, as many folk had not long moved in, and if you've got children then it's a great family activity.
Ideas for Christmas outreach
- Christmas services in secular venues: e.g. Christingle in a garden centre (Brimsmore hosted one last year), or a supermarket foyer/café coupled with a till collection. Darlington ASDA let us do a Christingle on Christmas Eve – it drew nearly 200 people and raised hundreds of £ for charity, as well as being a great community event.
- Carol singing – house to house, in local pubs or local gathering places.
- Blue Christmas: a Christmas service for people who don’t like Christmas, either due to bereavement or for other reasons. There are resources for this at http://www.ottawa.anglican.ca/blue.shtml .
- Posada (where figures of Mary and Joseph journey from house to house during Advent). A set of resources have been developed by the Church Army: see www.churcharmy.org.uk/posada
- Giant Advent Calendar: an idea pioneered by churches in Warwick (http://www.advent2005.co.uk/), having Advent windows opening at various places in the community, along with various workshops (wreath making, Christingle making) run by the churches. Would work especially well in a town centre, or in a compact village community.
- St Nicholas Day Biscuits A Dutch tradition of making biscuits on St. Nicholas Day (5th December) and taking them round to the neighbours. Great way to get to know people in your neighbourhood, something pretty much anyone in the congregation can do.
Having tried a couple of experiments last year - a Christingle in the garden centre and a Christmas service for kids at the local nursery - both have invited us back to do it again this year, which is nice. The Biscuits idea worked a treat in our road, as many folk had not long moved in, and if you've got children then it's a great family activity.
Advent Cartoon
A new one from Dave Walker
Meanwhile there is an online Advent Calendar c/o the Bishop of Kensington. Less calories than that one with the chocolates. Given that Advent is supposed to be a time of fasting and preparation, and that most of the fun is deferred gratification - waiting for the candle to burn down to day 24, or to see what's in tomorrows window, a chocolate Advent calendar is the exact opposite of what Advent is supposed to do: build anticipation.
Monday, November 26, 2007
It's like this for normal Sudanese all the time
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article2947734.ece - the story of the British teacher in a Sudanese school who is being charged with blasphemy for naming a teddy bear Mohammed, after the children in her Year 2 class (7 year olds) voted for it. I blame the parents.
If Wikepedia is right, then the Islamic conception of blasphemy covers pretty much any criticism or critique you could make of Islamic religion. Nice trump card, a bit like Freud saying that anyone who disagreed with him must have a neurosis.
If Wikepedia is right, then the Islamic conception of blasphemy covers pretty much any criticism or critique you could make of Islamic religion. Nice trump card, a bit like Freud saying that anyone who disagreed with him must have a neurosis.
Blair and faith
Haven't got round to seeing the full video of last nights 'The Blair Years' - interesting that the BBC themselves chose to lead on the 'any public figure with a faith is seen as a nutter' comment.
Blairs words have led to a round of comment from pretty much anyone with an opinion. So here's mine.
1. Fair play to him for admitting, whilst still a public figure (though not PM) to how important his faith is to him. For Blair to make the effort he did to read the Bible daily and go to church wherever he was in the world, takes quite a bit of organisation and commitment.
2. I can't help making the comparison with depression, and other forms of mental illness. Several people I know with mental illness have found it very hard to go public, because they fear being stigmatised and thought of as 'nutters'. But it is only ignorance which leads to this stigma. If we all knew someone with depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder etc., then we'd not label them as 'nutters', because we'd understand. Similarly, religious people only get labelled as 'nutters' because people are ignorant. To some extent this ignorance is deliberate - many are quite happy to let the Daily Mail shape their understanding of religion and what it does to people, rather than trying to get to know people with Christian (or other) faiths to find out how it makes them tick, and how they relate to God.
3. Though how much of this fear is genuine, and how much imagined by Christians? Ok, for Blair, he knew the media would sieze on it. But in real life, people often find faith quite intriguing. When I quit my job at Clarks Shoes to train as a vicar, several of my meetings with the marketing folks turned away from shoes to more interesting stuff like whether I supported women vicars (it was 1991), people were clearly fascinated to have a real live Christian specimen, of their own age and background, who was willing to answer questions.
4. It's interesting that most of our political leaders are happy to be slightly religious - Thatcher was a Methodist, Brown played on his Presbyterian upbringing (but note - upbringing is the past, not the present!) David Cameron is a bit more measured - he supports church schools and is a member of the 'relevant faith' - though he'll probably have to put it a bit stronger than that when God asks him where he stands. But overt faith, US-style, is beyond the pale for us Brits. Bizarrely though, we're quite happy to get carried away with other things - shopping, football, Deal or No Deal. The less serious it is, the more seriously we take it.
Blairs words have led to a round of comment from pretty much anyone with an opinion. So here's mine.
1. Fair play to him for admitting, whilst still a public figure (though not PM) to how important his faith is to him. For Blair to make the effort he did to read the Bible daily and go to church wherever he was in the world, takes quite a bit of organisation and commitment.
2. I can't help making the comparison with depression, and other forms of mental illness. Several people I know with mental illness have found it very hard to go public, because they fear being stigmatised and thought of as 'nutters'. But it is only ignorance which leads to this stigma. If we all knew someone with depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder etc., then we'd not label them as 'nutters', because we'd understand. Similarly, religious people only get labelled as 'nutters' because people are ignorant. To some extent this ignorance is deliberate - many are quite happy to let the Daily Mail shape their understanding of religion and what it does to people, rather than trying to get to know people with Christian (or other) faiths to find out how it makes them tick, and how they relate to God.
3. Though how much of this fear is genuine, and how much imagined by Christians? Ok, for Blair, he knew the media would sieze on it. But in real life, people often find faith quite intriguing. When I quit my job at Clarks Shoes to train as a vicar, several of my meetings with the marketing folks turned away from shoes to more interesting stuff like whether I supported women vicars (it was 1991), people were clearly fascinated to have a real live Christian specimen, of their own age and background, who was willing to answer questions.
4. It's interesting that most of our political leaders are happy to be slightly religious - Thatcher was a Methodist, Brown played on his Presbyterian upbringing (but note - upbringing is the past, not the present!) David Cameron is a bit more measured - he supports church schools and is a member of the 'relevant faith' - though he'll probably have to put it a bit stronger than that when God asks him where he stands. But overt faith, US-style, is beyond the pale for us Brits. Bizarrely though, we're quite happy to get carried away with other things - shopping, football, Deal or No Deal. The less serious it is, the more seriously we take it.
Rowan Williams in Athens
Well, not literally in Athens, but the ABofC's interview with a Muslim magazine put me in mind of Paul standing before the Athenian council in the book of Acts, preaching the message he had always preached, but using completely different vocabulary to his normal Jewish audiences, because the Athenians had different cultural reference points. Williams tries to use neutral language, rather than Christian house vocabulary, to communicate with his audience.
There is a lot of fascinating stuff in the interview, for example:
Beyond the tensions of international disputes, we discuss the more fundamental conflict between religion and modernity.“There is an essential clash somewhere. It is to do with the functional view of human beings. What are humans for? The Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu, the Sikh, would say that we are for the glory of God; so that God’s light may be reflected and God’s love diffused. It is never just about how we fit into the cogs of society, or about economic production. The more our education system is dominated by functionalism, skills, productivity, and the more our whole society is determined by that kind of mythology, the harder it is for the religious voice to be heard. There is a real abrasion between lots of the forms of modernity and religion.”
This is a crucial insight to hold onto - since the Industrial Revolution, the economic point of view has increasingly held sway over any other in terms of our understanding of people. The UK education system is explicitly geared to creating a well trained workforce for the economy. Immigration policy is organised around economics, so is international policy. We are defined as 'consumers' - there was that symbolic tipping point many years ago when British Rail changed from speaking of 'passengers' to speaking of 'customers'. There was a lot of annoyance at the time - we just don't like being defined economically, but over the years we've got used to it.
and this, on the connections between the pace of life, fear, anxiety, and faith:
However, ultimately he believes that “thereis a conflict at the essential level. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul. If the soul is, to give the most minimal definition, that dimension of us which is most fundamentally in conscious relation with the Creator, then those things which speed us up and harden us are going to get in the way of the soul. We don’t know how to talk about it any longer but it is language that we still reach for. The worst message we can give off is compulsive anxiety, ‘I’ve got to fix everything’.” Throughout our discussion the themes of fear and anxiety are played out in different ways. Increasing fanaticism and obsessions with “the uncontrollable other” are due to fear and anxiety which ultimately he believes is a lack of faith in God. “When belief is weak we are not willing to let things rest in God’s hands because we are not sure that they are there. We can’t trust God sufficiently to rest in what we are and who we are.” For the Archbishop, “confidence is a key; the right kind of confidence; not arrogance, but real trust in God.”
Thinking Anglicans has links to various press reactions to the story, Ruth Gledhill, unfortunately, has decided to headline with the ABofC's comments about the USA. There is so much more in the interview than this, and anyway, what he says about the US is broadly right and deserves to be heard and thought about.
There is a lot of fascinating stuff in the interview, for example:
Beyond the tensions of international disputes, we discuss the more fundamental conflict between religion and modernity.“There is an essential clash somewhere. It is to do with the functional view of human beings. What are humans for? The Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu, the Sikh, would say that we are for the glory of God; so that God’s light may be reflected and God’s love diffused. It is never just about how we fit into the cogs of society, or about economic production. The more our education system is dominated by functionalism, skills, productivity, and the more our whole society is determined by that kind of mythology, the harder it is for the religious voice to be heard. There is a real abrasion between lots of the forms of modernity and religion.”
This is a crucial insight to hold onto - since the Industrial Revolution, the economic point of view has increasingly held sway over any other in terms of our understanding of people. The UK education system is explicitly geared to creating a well trained workforce for the economy. Immigration policy is organised around economics, so is international policy. We are defined as 'consumers' - there was that symbolic tipping point many years ago when British Rail changed from speaking of 'passengers' to speaking of 'customers'. There was a lot of annoyance at the time - we just don't like being defined economically, but over the years we've got used to it.
and this, on the connections between the pace of life, fear, anxiety, and faith:
However, ultimately he believes that “thereis a conflict at the essential level. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul. If the soul is, to give the most minimal definition, that dimension of us which is most fundamentally in conscious relation with the Creator, then those things which speed us up and harden us are going to get in the way of the soul. We don’t know how to talk about it any longer but it is language that we still reach for. The worst message we can give off is compulsive anxiety, ‘I’ve got to fix everything’.” Throughout our discussion the themes of fear and anxiety are played out in different ways. Increasing fanaticism and obsessions with “the uncontrollable other” are due to fear and anxiety which ultimately he believes is a lack of faith in God. “When belief is weak we are not willing to let things rest in God’s hands because we are not sure that they are there. We can’t trust God sufficiently to rest in what we are and who we are.” For the Archbishop, “confidence is a key; the right kind of confidence; not arrogance, but real trust in God.”
Thinking Anglicans has links to various press reactions to the story, Ruth Gledhill, unfortunately, has decided to headline with the ABofC's comments about the USA. There is so much more in the interview than this, and anyway, what he says about the US is broadly right and deserves to be heard and thought about.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Buy Nothing Day
Today has been Buy Nothing Day, which is fine by me - see this interesting article on the BBC website of the psychology of bargain hunting.
Whilst we're on shops, we're planning to show the film 'Wal-Mart: the high cost of low price' next weekend, just in time for the Christmas rush, along with a Fair Trade stall. It's not what you'd call a balanced movie, the format is a series of episodes which take the words of the Wal-Mart bosses, and measure them against reality on the ground.
If you want a UK perspective on the same issue then try Tescopoly, a web watchdog on the impact of the Big 4 supermarkets on UK communities. Their 'local campaigns' section details what's happening near you. Good to hear, by the way, that the Tesco plans for the centre of Darlington were overturned after popular protest, well done folks.
Whilst we're on shops, we're planning to show the film 'Wal-Mart: the high cost of low price' next weekend, just in time for the Christmas rush, along with a Fair Trade stall. It's not what you'd call a balanced movie, the format is a series of episodes which take the words of the Wal-Mart bosses, and measure them against reality on the ground.
If you want a UK perspective on the same issue then try Tescopoly, a web watchdog on the impact of the Big 4 supermarkets on UK communities. Their 'local campaigns' section details what's happening near you. Good to hear, by the way, that the Tesco plans for the centre of Darlington were overturned after popular protest, well done folks.
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