August Riots: Sous les pavés, la plage

I was visiting the US for the first time when the Brixton riots happened, so there's some element of déjà vu as I wonder what future historians will make of our current curiously British evènements. Perhaps it’s too early to say anything until after Thursdays grève generale, but here goes.

No excuses — Violence against innocent people and gang thuggery is a matter for the full rigour of the law, and no amount of sociologizing it away will help its innocent victims — vulnerable people of all ages whose lives are tarnished by fear, who have nothing to gain from what is going on, and whose anxieties and issues are of no interest to the probably surprisingly small gangs driving all this.

I feel very sorry for members of the Police Service, no crew of plaster saints, but by and large good and decent people whose function in British society seems to be either lightning conductors or ham in the sociological sandwich.The only thing worse for them to be seen to be dong than nothing, is anything; and everyone's a ruddy expert on what they ought to have done. So I'll rejoice in my ignorance about the localities and pragmatics, and just voice what I know the vast majority of people will offer, thoughts and prayers for those at the sharp end of sorting the whole bloody mess out.

Some historians of France point out that rioting in nineteenth century Paris sometimes happened because ripping up pavé stirred memories of earlier and more stirring times — a ghost image in the collective mind that bubbled up surprisingly often when the forces of law and order were out of town. But that of course is the French for you.

The adjective the English use is “mindless.” On one level it's true, of course. Generally low levels of intelligence are at work here, and misdirected youthful testosterone, catalysed by a desire for significance on any terms, no doubt. However, as a sage churchwarden used to remind me frequently, things do happen for reasons. Reasons do call for understanding. It seems there’s a youth and gang culture in some urban areas that is deeply disturbing and needs to be understood then challenged at a very basic level.

Two big historic structural questions marks lurk in the background.

One is about social purpose. In the last century, young men derived a sense of larger purpose from progress, then Empire, then war, then having saved Freedom, then the white heat of technology, then help yourself loadsamoney Thatcherism, then celebrity, then... ? There's a vacuum out there. Some wheels are wobbling on the axle if not clean off the wagon.

If the only point of being alive is to have designer things and feed your face and get away with it, and that’s pretty much the only public belief we own up to, people without stuff will pinch it when the constraints come down. Looting offers a radical form of selfishness, banality and materialism. British secular society is profoundly uninspiring. People see those in high places helping themselves, and leaders who have abandoned as obsolete the notion that “Thou shalt not steal” as part of the bedrock of life. If it is no more than a quaint conviction for a minority of religious people, here’s one result.

Secondly, the more unequal a society becomes, and we are currently shooting inequality rates that take us back to the nineteenth century, the more frustrated everybody becomes at one level or another — a point well made by The Spirit Level. Subterranean violence, born of boredom, social humiliation and frustration, will out in bad ways as well as ambitious ones.

When it does criminal behaviour should, of course, be met with the full rigour of the law. But is it too much to hope that someone will pick over the history of the past few days sometime when it becomes possible to do this, address the Moral Vacuum it indicates, and draw from it raw materials for a strategy of reinspiration as well as anger and mere containment?

UK General Election: bringing it on

History is on the march. Tonight sees the first UK television debate in a general election. As a Christian leader I want to encourage people to seek the common good, to get out, engage and vote. In addition to the CTBI Faith in Politics briefing, I recommend the Ekklesia Ethics election initiative for jaded electoral palates, as well as its resources briefing. Among declarations promoting faith in the public square the Faithworks 2010 declaration seems to me the most positive and realistic.

So far however, I regret to say, the story I’ve been picking up has been fairly massive public indifference to the whole business, certainly compared to other elections over the past forty years. Public participation rates have been sinking since the sixties. A recent poll in the Times reported that more voters want a hung parliament than government by any of the three established parties. You can drive along whole swathes of road without seeing any evidence that there’s anything going on at all.

It may be that everything will ignite tonight in Manchester — midget wrestling has a curiosity value, if nothing else. However there are three massive facts about UK general elections which may go some way towards accounting for the absence of public interest:

1. Such is the UK parliamentary voting system that the vast majority of results may be assumed before the thing begins. Whilst politicians piddle about with constituional reforms that are, frankly, irrelevant, like the composition of the House of Lords, they mask the fact that the system for electing the House of Commons renders the majority of votes cast irrelevant. The problem began with the abolition of the old Victorian multi-member constituencies, and has been acknowledged since the 1930’s, but it’s never been in the interest of the political nomenklatura to do anything about it. Sure it’s not fair, but they’d rather the other lot won for a season, as long as they got their shot at what Lord Hailsham called “elective dictatorship” another day. Not very surprisingly, the public become jaded about a process in which 25 million of their votes seemingly make no difference to the result. Polls consistently exhibit an eerily similar majority in favour of electoral reform to the proportion who opposed the Iraq war — around 60%. Frankly, the outlook is not encouraging. There’s a website which can tell you how powerful your vote is here. On it I discover that the average UK voter has five times more chance of their vote making any difference than I do.This fact in itself is not exactly going to bring people out onto the streets, is it?
   
   
2. People think they see a professional political class getting fat on ther earnings, and this breeds cynicism. Actually I don’t think this is entirely fair — most MP’s point out they could have earned as much and more money doing something else, but the expenses scandal revealed an astronomic degree of public anger and frustration. This is about more than just garden gnome allowance. It was instructive to hear Mrs Blair asked why she needed six houses. Her answer was that the Blairs, in fact, only have five houses. They had bought six, but one was far too small, and had had to be bashed into the one next door. Talk about missing the point.
   
   
3. Looking at the manifestos, the contest is not about where the ship is going, as much as how the ship is running. The manifestos are basically management pitches, and, frankly, my dear, most people don’t ignite about such stuff, especially now UK governments have developed a whole web of agencies, quangos and outsourcing to avoid taking any real responsibility for anything. They all talk the same language about public services. They all refuse to be honest about their values or lack of them. They all get bogged down in policy detail and there is some evidence that people have no idea whose policy is what. A recent Times Poll discovered that voters could only identify 50% of key pledges with the correct party. I learnt yesterday, for example, that if I vote Conservatve they will “use pupil level annual school census data to include service children for a pupil premium in schools ensuring they attract extra funding.” It’s not quite the Gettysburg address.

PS The 1960’s midget wrestlers names are all genuine, and any similarity to any Politician is merely coincidental.

Mercy seasons justice?

Is the world just an eternal irrational game of hardball/softball? Some people, “Liberals” choose, just for the hell of it, to be absurdly nice to evil people, whilst others, “Conservatives” secretly enjoy the crisp whip of the lash, especially aimed at someone else’s back. What kind of mercy, actually, seasons justice? Jesus came to fulfil the law, not abolish it. What kind of fulfillment? a car clamp operative is, in a wooden sense, fulfilling the law — binding the burden, doing nothing to ease it it. But so is a Justice of appeal, or a legislator.

Wondering how mercy relates to justice, I came across an old Islamic folk tale. It is told of the seventh century Khalifa Umar Bin al-Khittab, who you will remember was the successor of Abu Bakr among the Rashidun Khalifas, known as “al-faruq” — one who judges aright. From his sword of Justice, above, you will understand Umar was no soggy Liberal.

A young man was arrested for murder, and brought by the victim’s sons before the Khalifa. He pleaded guilty, and submitted to an “eye for an eye” death sentence the family were entitled to demand, according to primitive justice. He asked however, to delay the execution three days. He was guardian to an orphan, and the lad’s inheritance was hidden somewhere only he knew. It wasn’t fair to punish the child for his sins, so three days compassionate leave was arranged.

Someone, however, had to stand proxy for the convict in case he failed to reappear for execution — someone willing, if necessary, to die in his stead. Old Abu Dharr, companion of the Prophet offered, and the young criminal went home to sort out his family affairs.

Three days later, he had not returned. Amidst a certain amount of “told you so,” but also great sadness, Abu Dharr prepared for beheading in the town square. The executioner sharpened up his axe, and got his red tights that didn’t show the blood, ready for the wash. Actually I'm not sure about the red tights, but you get the idea.

At which point young criminal returned, huffing and puffing. “So very sorry,” he said. “Caravans on the road — but I’m here now, so let’s get on with the beaheading.”

The crowd were amazed. “Why the hell did you come back? You were free. We’d all have legged it!”

“Oh no!” said the young criminal. “I am a Muslim, and it would be intolerably shameful to me to have people saying, on my account, that Muslims do not keep their word.”

So the crowd turned to old Abu Dharr. “You’re a lucky old fox, Abu Dharr. You must have known this criminal was a man of his word at heart. More than we did!”

“Oh no!” said Abu Dharr. Never seen the feller in my life. But I am a Muslim, and it would be intolerably shameful to me to have people saying, on my account, that Muslims have no compassion.”

At which point the victim’s family went back to Khalifa Umar and asked him to call off the execution: “We are Muslms, and it would be intolerably shameful to us to have people saying, on our account, that there is no forgiveness in Islam.”

OK, “Liberals” and “Conservatives.” What would it be “intolerably shameful” to have people say of us, Christians that we claim to be...?

Shrinking the Footprint

The Church environmental campaign (Website and resources here) held a launch day at Lambeth Palace, led by the Bishop of London and Joan Ruddock, UK Minister for Climate Change and Energy. People were there from every part of the country, with interesting local presentations from Exeter, Newcastle and London dioceses. This took me back to our various awareness raising sessions in the diocese in 2007, and reminded me how far we have to go.

It’s now over 30 years since the Lambeth Conference called for “Urgent and Instant Action” on this one. That call was followed by 20 years of doing almost nothing! These were the days of Mrs Thatcher, with her famous ignorance and antipathy about alternative energy. The outlook now is entirely different, as exactly the events the scientists indicated would happen are unfolding around us.

There has been real progress in the past 10 years, and scientific arguments which seemed so notional in 1978 is obvious and almost universally accepted now. This is a whole world issue — the UK only contributes 2% to the whole, but someone's got to give a lead. Copenhagen is absolutely crucial. To get it right world leaders need to pitch something real, but also doable. After years of childish denial and idiocy from US Governments, Obama is on the case, gathering the 16 nations who account for 80% of global emissions. This has to be encouraging.

People stick heads in the sand because they fear the consequences of confronting our fantasies about infinite growth and consumption, which has been the only show in town. Theologically, Christians have a rich tradition. It’s not just our measured pattern of feasting and fasting. There are big Scriptural concepts there — Shabat, Noachite Covenant, Shalom, Jubilee, Proportionality in reaping, Usury as a sin, Stewardship, and the vision of a whole earth groaining in futility for redemption. These are core messages of our theology, even if we’ve rather lost sight of some of them in the last century. It’s obviously time to focus on them again.

So what do we do? As well as joining anyone willing to come along on a public awareness changing exercise, the Carbon Trust, with whom the Church has been working closely, has developed a 5 Stage response model:

1. Mobilisation
   
2. Case for action
   
3. Opportunity assessment
   
4. Implementation Plan
   
5. Manage Implementation

We need to run several cycles of such processes at every level in our operations, building numbers of Eco-congregations, backing change in our schools (which account for a huge proportion of our emissions), managing buildings in new ways, changing our ways of life.. People need a bit of leadership and it’s all hands to the pump. Actually, there’s an immense amount of awareness and common sense in the UK about this, and the Climate Change Act was carried through with careful cross party preparation on the basis of common understanding.

We just have to get our rear ends into gear. The Enemy is Whinging Pom Cynicism, both corporate (“Anything that doesn’t solve the whole problem instantly is only a futile gesture so we’ll all have a good laugh at it”) and personal (“What I do doesn’t make a difference, so I think I’ll just carry on doing nothing”).

Pragmatically, the choices seem to be

• Mitigate,
• Adapt,
• Suffer.

The fact is we will have to do some of all three. How much of each is, to a certain extent up to us. Inaction like that which followed the 1978 Lambeth Conference call for urgent action will not get anyone anywhere, and there is time to make up.

The Gospel: Ethics or Hope?

Challenging sermon this morning at the Kirchentag closing service. Looking forward to dong a proper write up of it in the next day or so. For now the Peacher, Dr Danielle Garrone, a Waldensian from Rome, called us to hope in Christ, not Christendom, or ourselves. He suggested that a Church losing the script comes off the message of the gospel, and starts banging on about collateral moral issues that it thinks will engage people outside, but never seem to:

I fear ethics has become the area that we hope will attract people's interest, because we do not have enough hope to expect such interest in the gospel itself. Protestants tend to prefer to do social ethics, and Evangelicals to concentrate on sexual ethics, whilst Catholics engage in both. All of us are open to the temptation to use ethics as a way to gloss over our own lack of giving account of the hope that is in us...

The Not-very-magnificent Seven

Good Bible Study yesterday with Jim Wallis: His trumpet’s sound is not uncertain. Don’t waste a good crisis. We need to remember things we have been lightpedalling, if not ignoring or even forgetting hard these past 20 years: Gandhi’s Seven Social Sins:

1. Politics without Principle
   
   
2. Wealth without Work
   
   
3. Commerce without Honour
   
   
4. Pleasure without Conscience
   
   
5. Education without Character
   
   
6. Science without Morality
   
   
7. Worship without Sacrifice

so that’s the next year’s sermons looked after, anyway...

Man and Superman with Richard Rohr

Thursday begun with an excellent Bible Study on Gensis 3 by Bishop Wolfgang Hüber, (Ratsvorsitzender EKD, Berlin). The afternoon was taken up with some rather extraordinary learning about the meaning of gender and life with Richard Rohr, Franciscan and all round good guy from Albuquerque, USA. In addition to establishing a reputation as a weltberühmt Enneagram Wonk, he has done some serious thinking about the meaning of being male. I listened up and I learned this, I think.

As a priest, the young Fr Rohr noticed around him, inside and outside Church, men with a desperate need for father figures, and a sense of spiritual hunger and disconnectedness.

A rather listless and irresponsible, shallow sense of maleness pervaded the US tribe. Responding to that as a Catholic priest and a Franciscan, he has developed a way of understanding what this is about, and what to do about it.

So here’s the deal. We all have to grow up, as mind, body and emotions learn from reality — experience that yields increasing wisdom. Women have the same learning to do as men, but it helps instill realism within them that physical processes, menstruation, child-bearing, and menopause, entail regular inescapable engagement with corporeal reality. It’s harder for women to kid themselves they are superman. This doesn’t mean all women get it all the time, but it makes it easier for most of them to get it, most of the time. Men have to learn the hard way what their lives are about, and who they are, and how to live in a way that is understanding, confident, truthful and fruitful.

The meaning of men’s lives falls into two necessary phases, a survival dance to establish themselves and a sacred dance, to express fulfil the purpose for which God created them. In basic societies challenges are all around to enable young men to show off whilst becoming increasingly aware of how to handle the business of life as men. Male role models at hand show the way. The process is often expressed, sealed and celebrated by rites of passage in which the young man is wounded or humiliated, and has to show he can handle it — forgive me, Richard Rohr, for putting it this way, but a kind of Lion King process is how people learn to accept responsibility and move from survival dance to sacred dance.

The effect of living in Western societies, with their high levels of detachment from nature, easy availability of information, spiritual immaturity and fantasy, with material abundance and ease, is to prolong male adolescence. Average ages for achieving its goals are rising fast, currently to a mid thirties average. A few are forced there early by traumatic experiences like loss of a parent, chronic illness, or poverty. Some never make it.

Most sail on, playing the games of the survival dance, posing for anyone silly enough to be impressed, sometimes until their fifties and beyond, as though the one with the most toys at the end of the game wins. Life is consumed in emotionally immature, driven, acquisitive, and ultimately irresponsible behaviour. Hearts and minds are not connected up right, if at all, and men become anxious and withdrawn from life — vain and shallow, incapable of being what God created them to be. A young man who cannot cry is a savage, an old man who cannot laugh is a fool. We have plenty of both out there. Often the transition from survival dance to sacred dance comes from a mid-life experience, and is sealed by an experience of loss, such as career collapse, first marriage failure or bereavement — some place where the game breaks down, and men become aware of their limitations, capacity to feel and humanity.

Most men engaged in the survival dance are disdainful or disconnected from religion; they get by in life pragmatically on limited wisdom. Their lives exhibit spiritual emptiness, insensitivity, and an occasional will to acquire (as fast as possible) secular or sacred ideologies in shallow ways that shore up the ego temporarily but are ultimately silly, meaningless and unreal. Men with a streak of cruelty know how to acquire power, but not how to use it. This is the way to gross abuse. All great spirituality tells you what to do with your pain. If you cannot transform it, you will transmit it to your wife, children and others around you; and you'll be the last to know what you're really doing. If anything disturbs you, you cover up and lie.

Religion can articulate and enable people to access human and spiritual reality — a supreme expression of the sacred dance. Unfortunately it also provides games and routines which are easy to take as the metier for survival dances. Rather than engaging with reality, religion can be made an insulation against reality. People can enter into religions and use them to shore up personal insecurity, in a passionate but immature way. This is desperation and paranoia, more than connection with God or creation.

In this state, Devotion becomes immature, driven and even paranoid; this is the world of parade ‘n trophy religion with its manifold opinionated fundamentalisms. Most men shun such religion, but a few embrace one of its many forms in absolutist ways. You can tell this process is going on, not by the content of their belief systems, but by the unreflective, obsessional and immature ways in which young men follow such faiths. One tell tale sign that this is going on is a disconnect between religion and spirituality.

Men who make it through the survival dance to the sacred dance have met their fears and fantasies and achieved, in the main, a state of realism where they mostly know their strengths and know themselves. From that unfolds deeper knowledge of God. Men engaged on the sacred dance become increasingly open to wisdom, and do not have to prove their validity to themselves all the time, because it is real enough to them to be able to own it joyfully and truthfully. Faith which integrates spirituality and religion is an articulation of this sense of belonging, and a framework to support real living.

I find Rohr’s hypothesis fascinating. Is he right, or is he right?!

Rebooting

Madness is doing something over, thinking it will yield different results next time:

If all you do is what you always done, all you’re ever going to have is what you always had. (Def Leppard)

Saturday’s Board of Social Responsibility reflected on the need to reboot, using excellent materials from the CTBI Conference in January. At the centre of these was a paper by Bob Goudzwaard, Dutch economics professor, on money and idolatry.

Even in narrow financial terms, some wondered why we are now loading money so freely into the top of a discredited system, rather than financing businesses on the streets, refloating the economy, as it were, from the bottom up. Perhaps it’s time to re-read our own Scriptures in the light of experience, including such concepts as Jubilee, Shalom, and household. This might even mean challenging usury — the making of money out of money alone, with no added work. This cornerstone of recent practice is consistently condemned in the Hebrew Scriptures as unjust, immoral and oppressive in itself.

We need to reboot. But how?With the question ringing in our ears, and the Scriptures at our right hand, it’s interesting to begin by remembering that everything impacts everything else in interesting ways:

Evil through the eyes of a child

Way back, the Go Between explored how adult games look through the eyes of a child, vivid, simple, utterly pragmatic. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is Auschwitz through innocent eyes — good script, brilliantly cast, beautfully made, well acted, almost impossible to watch.

This film does not ham things up, preach, sentimentalise, or demonise. The unvarnished tale is more disturbing. The horror is in the substance not the way it’s served up. Conventional war movies, even compassionate ones like Sergeant Ryan, are all well and good, but all the wrong things steal the show. They’re like sermons where the circumstantial illustration smothers the point. This one is painfully right on the button.


The “Bloody Fool” school of history has answers to everything, but understands nothing. It’s too ready to believe that people in the past were just utterly different, that‘s all. Big labels like “Evil” do not answer the basic question that matters — “how do people do such things?”

Filling in faces of the holocaust is a painful necessity, or it simply becomes incomprehensible or, worse still, the stuff of prurient curiosity or myth. We have to try to understand what there is in us what blinds us to what we don’t want to know, our own capacity for “Don’t ask, don’t tell”.

The audience we were part of in Wycombe was slightly stunned. So we bloody well should be. I suspect this film will not pack the cinemas this autumn, but people who can bear to watch it, may understand a little bit more, and, in the end, be glad they did.

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.