Church & State: Another fine mess?

The parliamentary reaction to this week’s synod vote tells a powerful tale. Wearing his Garrick Club tie, the Second Church Estates Commissioner answered questions from MP's, all of whom expressed amazement and moral repugnance about the official and institutionalised sexism of the Established Church. (note to overseas readers — The Garrick Club is an exclusive Gentleman's club in the West End).

The Garrick Club Tie Gaffe (if such it was) underlined an important aspect of the problem: the Church claims to be far more than a private organisation like a golf club, masonic lodge, or Gentleman's London hang-out. It claims to be good news for everyone, and the fury of our legislators when they see it acting as though it were a private club, disconnected from society, was unmistakable.

In our present context it appears that institutionalized sexism undermines everything. If a vicar smacked his children publicly, it would radically undermine their moral authority. Saying that corporal punishment was in the Bible, as it is, or parents had a duty to discipline their children, or that it was a matter of sincere conviction that children should be beaten for their own good, would only squander more moral authority.

This is not Guardian reading political liberalism. All theology and ethics are contextual — they only mean anything, as with all aspects of the Word, when they take flesh. A society populated by people bearing the consciousness and identity our great grandmothers had wouldn't find this question urgent, but ours does. This is an assertion of realism not liberalism.

In the light of several conversations this week all round, the realisation is creeping over me, like cold water in a hot bath, that when everything contingent has been talked out, this does all boil down to sex discrimination, no more, no less. Discriminatory is as discriminatory does. We're not fooling anyone, not even ourselves any more by pretending otherwise. The failure of any male headship argument to register in the House of Commons debate implies that, politically speaking, those who hold new model Complementarian views would be better off explaining the moral value of that particular kind of discrimination than pretending it is not what it manifestly is.

Look, nobody actually believes “men are the same as women.” The question is why should we impose an artificial difference on men and women that renders women permanently subordinate? It hasn’t always been so, even in our tradition. In the Bronze Age, Deborah Judged Israel, and that was OK. Unlike possessing a womb, subordination of women is not inevitable or, these days, generally desirable. New model Complementarianism as expressed last week is an elaborate three card trick. You begin by saying (1) everyone is equal, then (2) that they're different, then (How do they do that? watch out for the Queen of Hearts) (3) it's OK if woman are subordinated because that's a difference. Innit.  Ah but you see, it's precisely the subordination that isn't equal, or acceptable to our MP's. They think it's inequality. Because it is.

Another trope that's been doing the rounds is about the state imposing its standards on the Church. This happens all the time when churches are forced to conform to the Charities Act, or fire regulations, or the National Insurance Act.

St Paul met this challenge in Romans 13. When he told the Christians to obey the civil power because it does not wield the sword in vain to accomplish right he was talking about Nero. The man who executed him. But he believed what he said.

Look, if sex discrimination is actually wrong in our context (and all moral convictions can only be formulated or expressed contextually), than for the state to stop it is no more questionable than the state preventing the Church discriminating racially, or beating children, or owning slaves. Those last two, incidentally, also came with a rich Biblical pedigree, in the days they were morally acceptable enough for the largest slave owner in England was the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel. They may have been OK then, but now they are not.

People ask, can't we all just forget this stuff and preach the gospel? It's a lovely thought, but what this parliamentary debate makes clear is that if part of the "Gospel" is treating women as subordinate, incapable of offering service as they are gifted by virtue of their sex alone, it's bad news to the people it is trying to reach, not gospel. Most people hold that sex discrimination is wrong in the Church or anywhere else not because they are wild left Guardian readers or secularists (though they could be either or both of those things), but as the natural consequence of their deep moral convictions, their Gospel as they have received it.

Change comes in such matters not by compulsion, but by a vision. That is how St Peter, on the roof at Caesarea, acquired a new approach to living by Kosher laws. Change will come from a bigger vision of humanity, in which gender is not a means to impose artificial limitations on people, either the body of the Church, or the world, or gifted and called individuals, but rather an aspect of being the way God creates us and equips us to be good news to the whole creation.

Whatever the procedural arcana of the General Synod, politically well-informed people are now saying it's probably a one-clause measure within two years or curtains for the establishment. The Church would lose its implicit broad spectrum engagement with public life but, trying to look on the bright side, could design a catchy club tie for itself.

MP expenses Chocolate Bunny Rage

Amidst a storm of understandable public anger about MP’s expenses, I think we need to remember that all these Spanish practices have been going on for years; their real heyday was probably under Thatcher, Major and Blair. When the roll is called up yonder we will doubtless discover far more heinous activity than 59p chocolate bunny allowance...
Perhaps we need to triage these scandalous revelations.

(1) Stuff that isn't really bent (but involves prominenti).
Was Gordon Brown sharing a cleaner with his brother then paying for his half actually wrong? I have met journalists claiming far more bizarre things... not to mention owners of the Daily Telegraph. That such revelations should emanate from Fleet Street, home of Spanish Practices, proves at any rate that it takes one to know one, though some will detect a faint whiff of hypocrisy.

(2) Makes a good story, but trivial.
Manure is funny stuff but people do actually use it to maintain gardens. Honestly. If I went to see an MP in their official home I'd expect it to be furnished to a decent standard, and this might indeed include a Laura Ashley Sofa.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about some of the colourful minor stuff people are expostulating about. Envy is also a sin.

(3) Second homes juggling
Furnishing properties when you're leaving parliament anyway soon, redesignating properties twice a year, etc. This sort of activity is just obviously completely bent, and the sums involved would get you sacked from any other job. As we discover people who already owned three houses in London juggling the system to maximise their values, for example, the scope of what we are talking about financially really is that of major fraud.

What's interesting is that some MP's have obviously interpreted the rules using tuned moral instinct about what it was right or wrong to claim, whilst others have had no scruples about anything, however bizarre, as long as it didn't actually contravene the rules. The “What I did wasn't against the rules” response sounds completely different from those who did have a moral compass than it does from those who didn’t.

Speaking as a voter, the remedy surely lies in our own hands. If we don't like the MP's we’ve got because they seem grasping and amoral, why don’t we all just vote for others who are less selfish and have better adjusted moral compasses? Easy. In a way the gap between what the rules allowed and what was moral helps us voters decide who’s who. When we've all stopped huffing and puffing, next election, we can take the responsiblity that belongs to us all as voters to put in people we believe in as our representatives... democracy depends on that, at least as much as it depends on robust parliamentary expenses rules.

Assisted Suicide and the Law

Statutes are crude, basic means of laying out the ground and protecting people’s basic rights. The ways they are interpreted and applied is where the action is. Remember the dangerous dogs act? It was going to stop dogs killing children, a laudable plan, but proved almost impossible to apply in practice. The devil is in the detail. Hard cases make bad laws, and one person's sensible relief is another's death warrant.

To know that in principle the law, whilst not criminalising suicide, protects life pretty absolutely, is surely no bad thing. As long as it is applied with compassion, it is surely better to know you will have to justify, formally and case-by-case, taking a life, rather than saving it. Death is the exception not the norm.

My mother suffered from dementia, which came with extended episodes of depression, over four very difficult years before her death in 1994. We did what I imagine any family would do — sold her house, and used the money to pay for the very best care for her; which towards the end was pretty total. Yet there were, even late on, some moments of comparative lucidity and even flashes of joy. Although in her depression she sometimes asked insistently to be put down, it helped and protected everyone to know that this was not really an option. Her condition was sometimes extremely challenging for her, her carers, and the family, along with me and my power of attorney. To add to the mix a legal right to assisted suicide would have made it a complete and utter bloody nightmare. And imagine what legislation must also cover, circumstances where there was less goodwill in the family, with several hundred thousand pounds riding on a decision to terminate a.s.a.p. More tea, Dr Shipman?

The fact that this is so extraordinarily complicated an area in which to legislate shouldn’t make it entirely impossible, but it involves thin ice, which it wouldn’t be wise to skate over. This is big life and death stuff, which has to stand up and protect the weak in millions of circumstances far less extreme and unusual than those on which the media is majoring just now. We need to pick our rut carefully. We may be in it for a long time.

I am a Mole and I live in a Hole

Shock horror in the Independent that young Evangelical Interns are employed as research assistants to MP’s paid for by a family life pressure group called CARE. Evangelicals in parliament are indeed a pesky lot. Ask the slavers of 1789-1807. Dave Walker demonstrates in the CT Blog how this dastardly deed is done and David Hallam, former MEP and Methodist local preacher exposes what a complete non-story this is.

MP's are in fact allowed to employ as interns whoever they believe will do the job best. It follows that people with all sorts of views, some of them varying from those of the Independent, might be found there. Everything should be declared and above board. This has been, so the editors of the Independent will just have to be brave soldiers and live with the fact that people with other views exist and are even allowed to work. There is, however, a long English Tradition of people calling themselves “Independents” experiencing discomfort in the face of Diversity...