Equalities and discrimination 101

I am puzzled when Christian people speak of equality as some godless imposition on a Church whose duty is to preserve tradition by contending for, well, inequality. Have they not read the New Testament? Jesus taught we are all sisters and brothers, and we have one father, and should “call no man father.” He opened up and subverted attitudes to women and children in his society in a way that still reverberates today. His early disciples held all property in common, refused to stigmatise disabled people or women, and developed a glorious vision of a body in which every part was equally valued, whether held in greater or lesser customary honour. This body was to think of itself as the firstfruits of the whole human race.

This radically open society, the Church, looked forward to a day when Christ would be all in all, above every rule, authority, principality and power of the present age. The apostles were severally and corporately agents of this process, and were to structure their life around service not status. These are not isolated soundbites, but major themes of our Scriptures that we may not have fully grasped and inculturated in our context, but we are charged with nevertheless.

Therefore we need to recognise that the struggle against wrongful discrimination is a moral struggle, recognised as such by most people around us of all faiths and none, and if the Church has fallen behind the values of the Kingdom in this regard, shame on us. Our task is not to remodel kingdom values to suit our cultural prejudices, but to embody them in our lives. We contend against inequality because we believe in the Incarnation.

Is all discrimination wrongful? Well, choosing particular people can be justified. A football team agrees freely only to have members of one gender because without such an agreement they could not play football against other similar football teams. A sickle cell anaemia self-help group can choose only to enrol people with sickle cell anaemia. A religious order can agree to be gendered because of a voluntary commitment to celibacy, and if people disagree they can leave at any time. A political party only signs up people who are willing to agree with its founding principles. All these are private commitments, freely undertaken.

But even they have limits. If a football team tries to exclude players on racial grounds, society intervenes and says that fairness and openness cannot be served by that degree of discrimination, so their freedom must be limited for the good of all.

The other core awareness is that discriminatory is as discriminatory does. If I refuse to serve people of a particular racial group people in my Café, it is no defence to say

• I gave them fair warning, they could start their own café,
  nor
• that I did not intend to discriminate or consider that I have
  nor
• that I’ve never served such people in 2,000 years,
  nor
• that God told me to do it,
  nor
• that some of my best friends are x and agree with my policy,
  nor
• there are other parts of the world where such discrimination would be acceptable
  nor
• I say my behaviour is not discriminatory, so it’s not.

None of these defences stack up because however reasonable they may sound to the people concerned, they compromise the fundamental possibility of equality.

In many of our parishes we govern schools in which these principles are implemented throughout with ease and grace. The reason is that our leaders, many of them inspired by Christian commitment of one sort or another, have turned what was originally an eccentricity of the enlightened into a social norm.

How sad if the Church that is supposed to be the corporate expression of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, whose words undermined all injustice and inequality, then and now, has to be dragged along as an afterthought, kicking and screaming. So we sometimes see the last first, and the first last — another gospel principle that implies fundamental equality for all God’s children, and the necessity of social as well as spiritual transformation in the Kingdom...

Charity and Daily Bread

A busy, foodie week, in the worlds of media, local charity, and academia. A lot of time has gone into work with my friend and colleague Carole Peters, devising and preparing the BBC Radio 4 Sunday morning service next week on Lammas — the original havest festival. Our theme has been Bread of heaven, with music, readings and a meditation — all UK insomniacs not in Church at 8·00 next Sunday welcome!

Meanwhile, yesterday, I spent a morning with Sue Wall, who runs Milton Keynes Food Bank. I’ve often noticed the food pantry ministryies of US Churches and wondered why they didn't happen more in the UK. Perhaps, I thought, it’s because the welfare state means the need is less. That’s a nice thought, but way off base with reality.

It’s a disturbng fact, but even in an outwardly prosperous city like MK, many ordinary people, especially at times of crisis, struggle to feed themselves and their families. We live in a welfare state, but the largest single cause of temporary need is delay in benefit payment; for example if someone on benefit gets a part time job, it can take two weeks and more whilst benefit is adjusted, whilst they have no money coming in at all.

MK Food Bank provides a limited number (up to 6) short term (3 day) packs of simple but high quality food, made up to a standard nutritional specification. It began as a ministry of MK Christian centre, a thriving non-denominational Church in the city, and now engages all sorts of volunteers, mainly but not exclusively from the whole range of churches.

People are referred through a variety of agencies, and parcels can be collected from various local collection points. The work began in a Church cupboard, moved into a sea container, and now has its own warehouse unit in Stacey Bushes. Food comes from donations, including some from leading supermarkets. Local businesses, especialy Mercedes Benz, whose HQ is in the city, have also backed the project with sponsorship and services. So far this year over 4,400 packs have gone out. MKFB began as part of, and still operates in close collaboration with the Trussell Trust, an Evangelical Christian chatity that fights Poverty, deprivation and despair in the UK and abroad. It was an immensely moving privilage to spend a morning with Sue and some members of her team, to see how many parallel lines our passion run along, and to pray together.

Finally, yesterday, an afternoon teaching in the Business School of the University of Buckingham, where a wonderful colleague, Andrew Lightbown, is conducting fascinating doctoral research with which I’ve been helping into the meaning and dynamic of Agape (Love). After my lecture we reviewed his work together, including an emerging working definition of Charity which struck me as relevant to MKFB, as to all expressions of Christian love in action:

To exercise Charity is to act intentionally to promote wellbeing in solidarity with, and reverential response to the other.

Dignity at work: Systemics

A few things are becoming clear to me from the excellent discussions we have been having on clergy bullying (of and by):

1. The doctrine of original sin happens to be true, and reveals itself esoecially at work, like it does among drivers. Bad stuff goes on everywhere and at all times. I met a postie recently, who told me his Union took a less than laid-back Buddhist attitude to his refusal to join in a recent strike. One of the worst and most disturbing example of bullying I’ve encountered was of a member of the clergy by a journalist from a national newspaper. So we’re all in this thing together. There is none guiltless, no not one — why should we wish to be deceived?
   
   
2. Christianity is a social and personal means of redemption — a process of grace working through real people. Therefore this phenomenon does matter, and does, continuously, need to be addressed. Failing to engage with it denies dignity to the victim and the possibility of redemption to the perpetrator. G. K. Chesterton was right to say, in his quaint way, “we are sick and very sad who bring good news to all mankind,” but that can never be the last word. Jesus said “by this shall all know that you are my disciples, by the love you have... love one another as I have loved you.” That is the Gold Standard — not a discussion starter, but a way of life.
   
   
3. Whistleblowing and transparency are essential weapons against abuse. They can never, however be the whole answer, because making them so puts most, if not all, the responsibility on the victim, as though it was somehow their fault. This is morally wrong, because it leaves control (with diminished responsibility) in the hands of the institution, not the victim.
   
   
4. Therefore those who lead the institutional Church, fallen people that we are like everyone else, need to do serious intentional work to create a consistent culture of respect and justice within our own spheres of influence and authority. That defends the faith much more effectively than making snarky comments on atheist websites. Throughout the organisation, in every way, as far as lies in us, we have to express values that support human dignity. I have disussed this question carefully with some vastly able big hitters who have led particular UK public institutions through the transformation of their cultures of equality and diversity. This has convinced me that the only way we can transform ours is by producing and enforcing, in a publicly accountable way, routines that express these values. This will sometimes mean the organisation moving ahead of people. So be it. It’s only as this is done that decency becomes the shared norm in any organisation.
   
   
5. The basis for real Church life is not Instutionalism. It’s repentance and faith. As I read the NT I ask “what kind of attitude to relationships would you expect in a community which existed on this basis, and was trying to do it now as a way of life together?” the answer is mutual accountability — each to the other, all to each, each to all, corporately to God. This is the NT principle that is sometimes quaintly called “mutual submission.” We all have eccentricities. One of mine is that when I put a new priest in, and they make their declarations and oaths, I often express publicly my view that this ceremony marks me as being as accountable to them as they are promising to be to me. Ministry is fruitfully exercised with mutual accountability — anything less is a control game that leads easily to abuse.
   
   
6. Finally, please help me out. We are currently considering how to further the work of our Diocesan Committee for Racial Justice to advance Equality and Diversity best practice. The new Equalities Act will bring various strands together, and it’s important for our work to reflect reality and opportunity, and to be morally cogent and consistent with our values. This process of discernment makes me ask, “Prcatically speaking, what kind of a body, involving who, how, will best secure and advance in our diocese our accountability to values of equality, diversity and justice?” all answers, please, gratefully received...
   

Conversion: Seeing from Inside out

We see everything, even ourselves sometimes, from the outside in. God sees us from the inside out, knowing all we could be. Faith shows us ourselves from God’s point of view. Nice middle class people like me have relearned from Jade Goody that you have to see the person for all they are, and not be taken in by appearances. If she had never had Cancer, how would we have learnt to respect her? Only by questioning our own assumptions, and thinking different. Magdalene is

a two year residential and support community for women coming out of correctional facilities or off the street who have survived lives of abuse, prostitution or drug addiction. Begin in 1997 in Nashville TN, Magdalene offers women at no cost a safe, disciplined and compassionate community in which to recover and rebuild their lives.

Two things particularly interest me about this community.

1. This is not a Michael Palin “Missionary” or Lady Bountiful operation. The energy and resource come from within members themselves, released and developed in community. Thistle Farms is a business venture connected with it, but internally the strategy is not to get trained experts to engineer better outcomes, but to grow organic sustainable communities of grace, which provide a context in which members can grow and address their own particuar challenges.
2. Magdalene has taken as its model the Rule of Benedict. This doesn’t mean founding a Benedictine house, but finding a way to express the base Benedictine values of conversion, stability and obedience in an authentic but accessible way for women off the streets to use as part of the process of recovering what they could be from what is sometimes the wreckage of what they have been.

Magdalene was founed by Becca Stevens, a priest then working as a University chaplain at Vanderbilt. Now it’s run for 10 years, this work has things to teach us all about discipleship, community and personal transformation — in other words, the Gospel we profess, but realise so imperfectly. The community has boiled what they are about down into 24 basic principles, formulated in plain English and illustrated by experiences from members.

Everything begins with a willingness to see others, eventually even ourselves, differently. Doing this expresses the Benedictine Value of Conversion. The call to do this reminds me of an old poem by Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

A Gentleman

“He has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury
Can't give him more than he undoubtedly
Deserves. The scoundrel! Look at his photograph!
A lady-killer! Hanging's too good by half
For such as he.” So said the stranger, one
With crimes yet undiscovered or undone.
But at the inn the Gipsy dame began:
“Now he was what I call a gentleman.
He went along with Carrie, and when she
Had a baby he paid up so readily
His half a crown. Just like him. A crown'd have been
More like him. For I never knew him mean.
Oh! but he was such a nice gentleman. Oh!
Last time we met he said if me and Joe
Was anywhere near we must be sure and call.
He put his arms around our Amos all
As if he were his own son. I pray God
Save him from justice! Nicer man never trod.”

This is the first of three posts about the core Benedictine virtues of Conversion, Stability and Obedience, reflected in the Magdalene Community of Nashville, TN.
mirror photo: credit Michelle’s Photoblog

Mortgages — forever blowing bubbles?

Talking to a surveyor about the near collapse of trade, I wonder about the impact of the current housing bubbleburst on people’s lives. And about debt and oppression — a classic Old Testament theme.

Even non subprime backloaded US mortgages are funny old things:

The UK government has announced some desperate measures this week to try and ease things, including a stamp duty holiday for houses under £175,000 and 100% loans. It’s hard to see what they could have done, but:

1. When you look at the trillions involved in the bubble, how could any realistic fiscal measure make much of a dent in the real problem? Will four times as many people now rush out and buy houses, given all the other pressures on them from accumulated personal debt, rising energy prices, 2% pay settlements, etc? I think not, Holmes.
   
2. Stand by for one unintended consequence — all low end asking prices (say up to £300,000) now nosedive to £175,000. Shome mishtake? If there were a miraculous mass recovery in low-end house prices, guess where it will be pegged? £175,000?
3. Just as all sensible financial institutions decide subprime 100% lending is a mug’s game, part of the problem, not the soluton, jolly UK taxpayers (= us) dive in headfirst bigtime... I feel a Homer Simpson “D’uh?” moment coming on.

Or have I missed something, here?

Cows Come Home Shock Horror

Glorous afternoon at Bolter End Farm, near Lane End. There are only four proper working farms left now between Stokenchurch and Marlow. The Lacey family have been farming here over 7 generations. There’s a fine herd of 120 Guernseys, some chickens and around 400 acres.
The situation of tenants, which the Laceys used to be, is often even more desperate. It’s hard work, but brothers Gideon and Daniel have stuck together and got on with it through thick and thin.

Interestingly, 18 months ago they took the incredible risk on bringing everything back home onto their farm. There are no food miles involved now. From bull to birth, from the field to the bottle, everything is done on the farm. This has involved significant borrowings, and the need to go out and market their own produce locally.

The scriptures picture farming as a picture of faith. Church people talk about faith as what you believe in your mind. But, as the man said, faith without works is dead. It’s is about life as much as religion; patience as much as politics. Here’s real faith, staking your whole family future on a vision for working the land, and a way of life that’s becoming more and more unsustainable in this country.

In France, is quelque different. There are far more small farmers, and the supermarkets and banks are less greedy. Any connerie and ten thousand small farmers drive up the champs elysées and deposit several tonnes of Merde on the Minister of Agriculture’s desk. In the UK, with the best will in the world, we don’t even have a proper minister of agriculture any more! The government’s rural policy feels to many farmers like “go out and get a proper job.” And they thought this was a proper job.

The grim fact is that UK supermarkets and banks have beggared thousands of English dairy farms into extinction over the past ten years. Like all world food prices ours are rising now, but fuel, energy and feed costs are soaring. There may be one or two corn barons in East Anglia, but, as with other media lost causes, beware stereotypes about farmers.

Let’s zoom in on the dirty truth about dairy. The Blue is the farm gate price. The Purple is the distributor/ processor element. The Cream, in every sense, is Lord Tesco’s Cut. In 1995, the farmer got about 24 pence a litre, the distributors got about 18, and Lord Tesco and chums got 1 and a bit. That may sound low, but of course he sold many litres compared to the farmer, so he wasn’t exactly short of a few bob. Can you believe it, but these days the farmer gets a bit less, and the distributor much the same, whilst UK supermarkets are taking a huge cut — 10 times as much as back then! The argument for going local is to try and bring some of that margin back to the people who actually do the work. Otherwise some are actually being paid less than 10 years ago. Cut out supermarket Shareholders and for roughly the same price, the farmer gets a living wage. So why doesn’t everyone go local? Well it’s a hell of a risk, but the Laceys are going for it. They had no option when the costs of fuel and feed started soaring. It was that or bust. As consumers we have more options to go local than we might think — They’re doing it in Totnes, our diocese has been pushing the idea of going local, and all sorts of people are beginning to do it here in the Thames Valley.

It was gratifying to be told that during the awful foot and mouth outbreaks of recent years, many farmers found it was the church that was there for them as a solid network and support. I know Linda Hillier did fantastic work in Slough during last year’s government induced foot and mouth cockup. Glyn Evans is deeply involved with Farm Crisis network and a host of other rural causes. Unless and until we turn the whole country into a theme park, farmers are the backbone who sustain the basic fabric of our rural communities as employers, councillors, and churchwardens. Here’s thanking them.

As Daniel and I put the world to rights, standing on the hillside, I realised nobody would do this for the money, but it’s a way of life that blesses all of us. Like the lady walking on corn starch, it’s real faith in action— not sabre rattling with your student union chums, but getting out there and taking risks in the real world; staking the farm, literally, on weather and land and hard work. Beautiful as they are, the chiltern hills are too chalky to be bountiful — it was the installation of piped water that transformed them for cow farming. That and hard graft. Throwing it all away for short-term bank and supermarket profits would be a crime and a waste.

God’s highway — Thinking Different

When I was vicar of a St John the Baptist’s Church, 24 June was the big annual knees-up. The ancient Collect for today pretty much puts it on the line:

Lead us to repent
according to his preaching,
and accordng to his example,
Constantly to speak the truth,
Boldly to rebuke vice,
and patiently to suffer for the truth’s sake.

For as long as I’ve known it, I’ve found this a very disturbing, but compelling vision of how we are called to live. What does John the Baptist have to say to us?

I suspect he would incisively question us over issues we are complacent about, but his big critique would be for the self-satisfied way we approach living itself. We all know about Western comfy suburban religion, but Riazat Butt’s shocking report of the Gafcon presser gave an equally disturbing vision of people subjected to violence and intimidation simply for being who they are, whilst bishops close their eyes and their hearts, simply because the victims are homosexual. If true, what kind of sell-out to prevailing culture is that?

I hear the authentic voice of John the Baptist in some words from the Mennonite tradition, from Rudy Weibe’s 1970 novel The Blue Mountains of China:

The whole idea of Jesus just talking about people being “saved” and feeling good about it is wrong. Quite wrong. He was alive on earth to lead a revolution! A revolution for social justice. The terrible question of his day as it is in ours was and is social injustice to the poor, to the racially oppressed, to the retarded and helpless.

Mary said, “All people will call me blessed because of the mighty things God has done for me, he stretched out his mighty arm and scattered the proud people with all their plans, he brought down mighty kings from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly, he filled the hungry with good things.”

That’s the good news Jesus came to bring and do. And he didn’t do it all by setting up a church that can never change no matter where on earth or in what century it is, a church that’s never as important to us as living, as eating, as making our pile, that’s there for a few hours a Sunday and maybe a committee meeting during the week to keep our fire escape polished, to keep us decent as our parents all told us.

No! The church Jesus began is us living, everywhere, a new society that sets all the old ideas of man living with other men on its head, that looks so strange it is either the most stupid, foolish thing on earth, or it is so beyond man’s usual thinking that it could only come as a revelation right from God.

Jesus says in his society there is a new way for man to live:
You show wisdom by trusting people;
you handle leadership, by serving;
you handle offenders, by forgiving;
you handle money, by sharing;
you handle enemies, by loving;
and you handle violence by suffering.

In fact you have a new attitude toward everything, toward everybody. Toward nature, toward the state in which you happen to live, toward women, toward saves, toward all and every single thing. because this is a Jesus society and you repent, not by feeling bad, but by thnking different. Different.

This is the new society of the “church,” and Jesus is its Lord. “The kingdom of God is within your grasp, repent and believe the good news!”