2011/10/31

on the protesters

Anne Atkins on Newsnight: "if the protesters had encamped outside St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, instead of St. Paul's, they'd have been evangelized within five minutes".  How true! Would they still be in place, one wonders?

I genuinely don't know what to make of the protests.  It seems that the poor erstwhile Dean and Chapter are confused also.  It has been amusing to see politicians of every stripe trying to put their oar in, and entirely failing to understand what the issues are.  The letters to the Daily Telegraph never fail to amuse - and miss the point, it seems.

Followers of Christ are called to seek justice for the poor - but whether that is the same thing as finding common cause with those camping in front of St Paul's is, well, unclear.

2011/10/22

by their fruits

alternative title: to whom would Jesus send a cease and desist notice?


Apparently, Mars Hill Church in Seattle has set its lawyers on to Mars Hill Church Sacramento.  The combination of the name and logo is claimed to be too close for comfort.  We're not talking about hamburger franchises here, we're talking Christian congregations. I nearly swore there.  Sorry.

I was going to reproduce the logos here, for comparison, but that turns out to be difficult for silly technical reasons. You can see them here:

http://marshillsacramento.com/
http://marshill.com/

Is really the fruit of the gospel that Jesus had in mind?  Are these Kingdom values?   Somehow it's not surprising, but it seems desperately sad.

2011/10/16

on gay marriage

My blog post of last week left a loose end over the issue of gay marriage - or, as the advocates would prefer, marriage equality for gay people.

It does seem to have become a terribly polarizing issue - but my reaction is to want the middle ground.

In America, reactions to calls for people to be allowed to marry others of the same sex have certainly fallen out on largely political partisan lines - though by no means all Democrats are on one side, and occasionally a brave Republican will break ranks to call for change.  In Britain, the Prime Minister (Conservative) recently suggested that having gay people marry each other was a thoroughly Conservative thing to do (since it tends to promote commitment, fidelity, stability; all [C]conservative values).  Much of his party might disagree.  Meanwhile, the Australian Prime Minister (Labor) seems  to regard the idea as anathema, whereas her party appears largely to accept the idea.

Churches seem largely to be opposed - but my gripe with the EA last week was of course that the reasons for this seem to have more to do with either the practice of homosexual sex (which is not immediately relevant to he question), or to a somewhat circular argument that "marriage is defined as the union of a man and a women, so two men cannot get married".  The bible largely takes man-women marriage as a given, but does not teach a great deal about it, and certainly doesn't set out to define it.

Undoubtedly, the first of those two positions is significant: it's a kind of rearguard action against society's broad acceptance of gay lifestyles.  It's as if some want to say "well, we lost the argument long ago, but we want to continue to express our dislike."  That's a powerful piece of prejudice, and leads to the rather curious argument which suggests that if gay people are married to each other this will somehow diminish the marriages of straight people.  I can't quite fathom why.  Undoubtedly, the aim is indeed to redefine the meaning of the word "marriage" to encompass more than it traditionally has.

There is additionally a red herring argument suggesting that whilst churches are not expected to be required to participate in solemnising marriages of gay people to each other (and, indeed, they may not be permitted to do so), some have thought that it will be only a matter of time before this is reversed, and equality laws will be invoked to force churches to act against their consciences.  To this we might say that firstly if equality law were being invoked, the difference between marriage and civil partnership would be irrelevant - and even less speculatively, every church (perhaps excepting the CoE) has the right to marry whomsoever it chooses and deny marriage to whomsoever it chooses, according to its own criteria. That seems unlikely to change.

So the naming issue seems crucial, at least in the UK context.  Civil Partnerships exist for gay people.  They've been around for several years, and quite a few thousand people have taken advantage of that opportunity.  Civil partnerships convey just about all the same rights and responsibilities upon those partnered and those who interact with them as civil marriages do.  And many, colloquially, talk of them with the same vocabulary as is used for marriage - wedding, husband, married, and so on.

So it seems to me that all we must ask is "what's in a name?".  To the gay community, I would have to ask whether it really matters what it says at the top of your certificate.  the difference between "marriage certificate" and "civil partnership certificate" doesn't seem so very great to me - especially when your friends and family can and will call it the first anyway. There are many areas in society where the official wording differs from the vernacular.

But the same argument works in the other direction: it really is just a change of name, so why should anyone get upset about it happening?  Of all the things to expend energy over, the use of one word instead of another seems among the most foolish.  To say "it can be a partnership but not a marriage" really doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you want to argue that civil marriage is somehow sacred (which sounds like a contradiction in terms).

So, essentially I see no particularly strong reason for a change, and no particularly strong reason to deny a change.  The difference is that making the change will make a few more people happy, and at least in their own judgement, reduce the total sum of iniquitous discrimination.  That, in itself, seems a good enough reason to support the change.




2011/10/09

a little milestone

This weekend, I resigned my membership of The Evangelical Alliance.  I've been a member for most of the last twenty years, so that seems quite a big deal, somehow.  I did it with a heavy heart, but it's been becoming an inevitable step, for a while now.

The EA often seems to be a force for good.  It has generally avoided narrow sectarian positions, enabling it for a long time to claim to speak for one million UK residents (through personal and church memberships).  They've dropped that line from their promotional material now, but they still seem to have a large following.  In general, the EA promotes the positive things its members have been doing, and frequently undertakes sensible lobbying positions in speaking to government.

There was a time when I thought those approaches were spot-on and just right: I was proud of the EA and proud to be a member.  But somehow the things it does have become increasingly marginal to me - and, I'd suggest, to a lot of other people who might live with a label like emerging or post-evangelical.  I know that I have moved in an inclusive direction - I rather suspect that the EA has moved in the opposite direction.

In thinking about membership, one might start with the basis of faith, since this is the thing that all members must agree on.  It is an unexceptional list - and widely adopted by EA affiliates as their own basis also.  Do I still believe it?  Well, that depends what you mean.  If I wanted to claim that I did, I would need to re-interpret several of the clauses to imply something other than what most would agree upon as their "plain meaning".  But more than that, my problem really is with making such a list the basis of unity: it seems a category mistake.  Where in that list is the teaching of Christ?  Even is command to love our neighbours is relegated to something of an after-thought in clause 11, where the outworking of that command is given largely to the Spirit, not to the believer.  Surrounded by people in need, is it really so important that we unite around the abstract idea of the Virgin Birth?  And so on.  The clause on the authority of Scripture is delightfully vague, but seems to mean something which I don't think I share.

Reaching the conclusion a while ago that the basis of faith was rather irrelevant, I wondered if I could continue membership.  I decided to keep an eye on news, and decide whether I would wish to be publicly associated with the EA's positions.  And so, on Friday, I came across two recent news articles:

Gay marriage will have to be the subject of a separate blog, but the linked article not only seems to take an unnecessarily argumentative position, it doesn't even have any evangelical methodology to it. I'm suspicious of evangelical methodology today, but even that would be much better than this statement based on prejudice.  The other article seems to suggest that all points of view be given equal balance in the classroom - a position which would plainly do more to confuse than to educate.

I'm not leaving the EA on the strength of two short articles, but they are the proverbial last straw.  Sorry EA, you don't speak for me.