The Ten Commandments Show

UK Channel 4’s original mission was be innovative, naughty, alternative and provocative. In a week General Synod probes the state of religious broadcasting in Britain, I was interested to catch the latest in C4’s new series on The Bible: A history — Conservative MP and RC convert Ann Widdecombe exploring the Ten Commandments. I speculate that this series was commissioned by Aaqil Ahmed before he left Channel 4 to become head of Religion and Ethics and TV Commissioning Editor at the BBC. My first impression, drawn from the figures for hours output was that the BBC had reduced the quanity of its output on the sly — oh dear — but what about the quality?

The series isn’t quite what it says on the tin, but it’s a worthy concept. It gives a 40 minute platform to various people left right and centre, to pick a Biblical theme and trace it from its origins to a question for contemporary society. Novelist Howard Jacobsen did Creation, seeking to find a way between reigious and secularist fundamentalism. War Correspondent Rageh Omar did Abraham as a source of division or peace in the Middle East. Still to come is writer Bettany Hughes on Women in the Bible.

It used to be said that a well known make of Italian automobile was built by robots and driven by morons. Is UK religious broadcasting built by Secularists, and driven by Dumb-down Celebs? I poured myself a Ricard, opened a bag of pistachios, and settled down on the couch to find out.

Within its chosen genre, the show blended personal and informative elements very well. It gave its presenter a fair platform to make her points. I’m not an Ann Widdecombe fan in principle, but if you could get over her rather reedy voice, her content seemed sincere, candid and forthright. She had grown up with the ten commandments, and after examining their origins and uses in Judaism and Christianity, she went on to confront militant atheists, liberal scholars and fashionistas with their shortcomings measured against the standards of Torah.

There were holes and howlers. One why-oh-why?” comment on divorce rates rather obscured the fact that UK divorce rates are currently the lowest they have been in 35 years. She described Puritans as “a Protestant Sect” and ventured the suggestion that Henry VIII founded a new Church — a solecism for which His Royal Grubbiness would surely have beheaded a woman in 1545. More serously, she didn’t engage at all with source theory about the books of Moses in the texts themselves, preferring to see it as a liberal aberration, but one she was wiling to tolerate.

Nothing’s perfect, then. But this show was well above average telly, watchable, provocative and intelligent. Ann Widdecombe’s great exemplar of Puritan social action inspired by the ten commandments, the Revd John White of Dorchester, was absolutely on the money. She hinted at, but didn’t quite explain, an interesting theory that strong confident societies have to learn to control their desires to develop strength and confidence. I think I buy that.

Unfortunately the atheists on the show seemed high on testosterone from a public disputation and rather let themselves down. Christopher Hitchens running away through a door stopping his ears was an interesting sight. I’d like her to have taken that segment of the show deeper, to examine how the critique offered of the Church was actually one that rather assumed Judaeo-Christian values based on the ten commandments.

But these are minor reservations. This was a fine and informative show, which critiqued the erection of personal freewheeling into the only absolute value left, and was well presented and entertaining. Kudos, then, and Round 1 of the Great Broadcasting Debate to Ann Widdecombe and Aaqil Ahmed. If I can get the Channel 4 on demand site in India (off on a schools development visit), I’d certainly like to see the others. If this series indicates the kind of stuff we’re in for from the BBC, I think I could live with that, all things considered.

Anonymous Tosh?

Every now and then an envelope arrives like this one from Slough yesterday. I tear it open expectantly, and the first thing I look for is the address at the top and the name at the bottom...

Oh dear! I am disappointed because, to put it as kindly as I can, although the writer has rather trenchant views about a Vicar in Bucks, s/he seems to have forgotten to give a name or address.

I used actually to read letters like this, but these days I don’t. Out the back of the Chaplain’s office lives a good and faithful servant called Erik the Shred. These days I invariably take letters which people have forgotten to put their names or addresses on out to Erik. He shreds them so that they can be turned into compost and Lucy uses that to grow delicious runner beans. We find that is a life-giving use for anonymous letters.

This may seem like a slightly extreme thing to do. After all, I’m a nosy person and would love to know what everyone has to say, surely. The trouble is I can’t not know what I do know, even if it’s wrong, if you get my drift.

I believe I owe my colleagues a basic loyalty where if someone was ashamed to put their name to their letter, that’s the end of the matter.

I remember people saying to me when I was a parish priest “Rector I shouldn’t be telling you this.” The simple answer, which accords with my Scots Presbyterian genes, is “well don’t, then.” Bitterness, slander, gossip, words that say “Raca” arising from thoughts that breach the ninth commandment, grow from such roots. best strangle them at birth.

It may be that the letter I never read was the sort of letter that made the writer feel better to have written, but should, in fact, never be read in its original form. There are letters like that. I hope this is one of them. It may be that they really want to draw to my attention to something with words for which that they can take responsibility, in which case I’d be delighted to hear from them. It’ll get here even quicker with the correct postcode (“9BG” not “9BD”)

Erik is a hungry lad. He has only had two such snacks in the past five years, which, given the amount of mail we get, is high testimony to the basic character and decency of people out there. I wonder if my “straight to the shredder unread” policy is a bit hard-nosed, but suspect it’s the correct thing to do... surely?

None righteous, no not one...

New Horizons in Infamy, as the Telegraph reveals that one Labour MP tried to claim £5 to put in the plate in Church. The whole country is now one seething cauldron of self-righteous rage and scorn, aimed at MP’s. Now we know all about their garden gnomes, tennis courts, staplers, dictation machines, chocolate santas, envelopes, and dogfood. Hang on, staplers dictaphones and envelopes, are legitimate office expenses. But what the hell, they’re MP’s and they should pay it all back anyway.

MP’s allowance fraud is a really significant story, and it was very important to draw it to public attention, and all dishonest politicians everywhere should be held to account, espeically the ones who have been playing hooky with houses. That said, Some of our boldest crusaders for righteousness have their own dirty underwear, and I don’t just mean their lunch expenses.

The last owner of the Daily Telegraph, for example, has been inside for fraud, having charged such items as FDR memorabilia and Cardinal Richelieu costumes up to his expenses. The way in which various present Fleet Street owners flip their homes for tax purposes is not as well known as it could be. It takes one to know one, I suppose. Squirming under a shower of filth, England tried to cheer itself up by following the antics of breakdancing East End pensioner Fred Bowers:

But now we learn, allegedly, Fred has been claiming £70 a week Disability benefit. He says his left leg is in fact disabled, a kind of still point in a turning world thing. This is giving me some misgivings about flooding parliament with unknowns and retired celebs.
People who aren’t atually MP’s can apparently be as bent as people who are. The Fall turns out to be stone cold sober truth; to quote the late great Noel Coward “Everybody is bent, Camp Freddie.”

Here’s the heart of the matter. We could develop yet more labarynthine and draconian regulations, guidelines and allowances to stop this kind of behaviour, but I’ve another suggestion. Brits have gotten into the habit of treating the ten commandments as obsolescencies in our Secular Brave New World, but they do have a certain resonance just now. “Thou shalt not steal.” “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” “Thou shalt not covet.”

Not exactly rocket science, are they?

But they do seem to reach some of the parts that regulations, guidelines and codes of practice don’t.