Fiona and I gave the hour from 8am to Radio Four. I had failed to gel with the Archbishop's Easter service a week ago in the same timeslot. It is my experience that the last year has been a groundhog day on steroids. Now, another week has passed, but it has seen something of a seismic shift: the Duke of Edinburgh has died. This time, for me anyway, The Very Revd Dr David Hoyle, Dean of Westminster Abbey had it just right. The absolute driver was service and Easter, whether that be the service of Christ, Him to us and us to Him or the same service informing the life of Prince Phillip. The Anglican Worship was beautiful. Some small niggle in myself was ruefully thinking that this was what made the British Empire so successful and even now makes many around the World appreciate being in our Commonwealth. On offer is a velvet gloved totalitarianism in which the concept of Service can be used to persuade people to do extra-ordinary things (remembering that we live on a piece of space rock I wonder how much that should surprise us).. It is a sort of golden deal for the powerful, one which enabled Indian Maharajas or Pacific Island leaders to see a very appealing progressive contexualisation. Where appropriate it got you a Rolls Royce. As many folk are explaining (Robert Wise), at a different plane, the life experience of the majority might diverge. As the service ended the BBC announced that in a change to the schedule Rebecca Stott would give A Point of View on Kenwood Mixers. This was inspired editing. It cut very close to my grain. She landed us in the mid 1970s and utter family chaos in which a strong woman did incredible things. MEN! Prince Phillip was let down by his father! Staggeringly so. My experience of an army officer, a parachutist was quite challenging. A person who could lead, who could see what he wanted doing but was not about always being polite nor see that there could be family divergences. Between 1974-1976 I was a teenager very keen not to be part of the British Public School system. It was a conflict finally only resolved by becoming a Christian and realising Love was the key to becoming part of a much larger context than the individual. It is clear to me Prince Phillip understood that expression of Love in bucketloads, the Queen likewise. And also millions of everyday folk. That is why Rebecca Stott's remembrances of a crowded fatherless house in Hove are so important. Despite the pain, joy was found. I am no left wing feminist who thinks men should be seen and not heard as payback for what went before. I do think that to resolve the age old tension men and women experience, their relationships should be as persons laid before Christ.
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Sunday, 11 April 2021
Saturday, 13 June 2020
Monuments and the Queen
Emma Soames ""We've come to this place where history is viewed only entirely through the prism of the present," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. " Much of me has done my best to avoid talking about the rascist controversies. I am certain George Floyd died unjustly. But I am very uncomfortable about much that has happened in the middle of a pandemic lately. Yet to argue about this, easily takes one into a corner one does not want to be in. Do not think I have not thought and prayed about it much. So hear my best offering. At the root of all this lies man's readiness to bully other people. We just love it. I hated school for this reason, dammed near suicidally. I hated workplace bullies, I found my Lady and we have tried to build our little bit of heaven on earth. On all this I hate bullies, I am clearly with George Floyd but what if rioting and civil protest, taking over precincts in Seattle itself looks like bullying? How do we get out of this? I am offering this answer. We recognise that the ultimate bully, the one who started it all is God the creator (because I will not accept the Genesis account and that because man did not consciously fault but faulted into consciousness (I am with Auden, that profound bisexual poet of the 20th c (courting controvery at several levels there))). Auden learnt that, and says so bluntly, in our Pennine backyard. So grant to me any God who created this world must bear some responsibility for the bullying. What should we do in this moment? Surely logic says in the mood of our moment, anything that speaks of God must be torn down. We must not remember we believed. Justice can only be served by removal. Destroy the churches and temples! What does that remind you of? It reminds me of what happened in England after the reformation and in the Commonwealth. Is that the world you wish to be in because we could be quite near creating it in all this monument bashing? Alternatively you might want to read the Gospel stories again and see if some saving paradox is present? So give me a protest in Whitehall today or the Queen's ceremonies at Windsor and I will be with her. A most remarkable woman of faith. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53033550
Monday, 12 September 2016
Faith Schools
A Tory government with a slim majority is not going to allow that to get in the way of an active and controversial education agenda. Grammar schools are not the only issue, so is allowing faith schools to recruit 100% by faith! It seems we in the UK will not learn good sense. I am not a fan of faith schools, however I can live with them in a way I cannot live with fee paying private schools. But I cannot live with faith schools who create a corral. The only purpose of religion today is that of expansive goodness, of offering hope and understanding. Even as far as teaching people how to be decent with no certainty of an afterlife. I am sure Jesus would teach that if on earth today. I am sure Jesus would applaud meritocracy and not the choice money can allow. It would not surprise me if Jesus could understand streaming in schools so long as merit was the only criterion. I doubt Jesus would endorse any faith school founded on exclusion. I doubt Jesus would look kindly on any religion that continues to practice child abuse (think of all the examples of this of old and new - Castrati, Circumcision, priestly abuse, it is not one religion in the firing line, it is many ( I think that perhaps the Sikhs and the Buddhists may be safe?)). So religions including the Christian Church have a terrible history to be ashamed of and then they want to campaign to create exclusive faith schools. This is madness, the folly of it is writ all over Ireland, it is a road that creates ghettos. It is a folly that enslaves children in the name of God, creating either conformity or the immense pain of defiance. Sensible progressive people of any faith or none would not want to structuralise this in future British society and I find my willingness to be positive about our new prime minister very strained. Brexit is a very important matter one might think absorbing of all the efforts for the foreseeable? http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2730420-It-gets-worse-faith-schools-also-set-to-become-MORE-selective
Sunday, 27 September 2015
My Christianity
I will point out how simple my Christianity is. Relationship is central,
that's about the Trinity. God is on the receiving end of everything,
that's Incarnation and crucifixion. Love is the parent of justice, not
the other way around. The exercise of power is about service and
stewardship. I believe those four key thoughts could answer many of the
challenges of the modern world.
Sunday, 12 April 2015
Nationalism and geography
If you don't fancy a long read, get this: we live on one group of obviously associated offshore European islands. In our long history we have generally shared one language which is not the Continent's (although they all learn it now). This accident of geography colours most of my political thinking. Ergo I am a Unionist, end of story.
The longer version.
Not many months past we went through, yes all of us, a divisive referendum, at the end of which, there was a clear result and we were all told, that was it for a generation. In the immediate aftermath the SNP saw a growth in membership which for any modern day British political party was astronomical. That has continued, for all of which the SNP only account for a proportion of Scottish voters.
However nine months later and we have a general election. Here according to Andrew Marr this morning, the SNP look set to gain 4/5th or thereabouts of the Scottish seats at Westminster. The Labour party assert there will never be SNP members in their administration. Some form of coalition appears likely. The SNP further assert that if they can exercise power they will remove Trident from Scotland. They will then campaign for a similar result at the Scottish MSP elections in May 2016. If they can repeat the performance twice, they are now saying on that mandate they will swiftly move to a second referendum.
So why should this upset me and my life in Northumberland. To be fair there is a certain gut feeling. I was always brought up (in Norfolk) as my wife was (in Glasgow) to acknowledge I was British first and then something after that. Being British in my family always trumped being English. If I hear someone from Scotland saying their only allegiance is to Scotland it makes me wince. Do you not first and foremost belong to this one group of islands? Geography was always my strong subject. Having to choose about abandoning being British and just being English goes against every grain in my body. About the one thing I am not is Welsh (or even Cornish). Otherwise I could travel from Hampshire, through Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, Shropshire, Airedale, Durham, Northumberland, the Eden Valley, Balsporran Cottages on the A9, Kingussie Churchyard, Slochd Summit, Elgin, Galloway, Ayrshire, Carrickfergus, Ballynure and Dublin, and in all these places say "I belong, it is my family right to belong".
Nor if you know me well, you might laugh and say you spent too long moving around Britain and anyway you only spent four years living in Ayrshire. Two things (of several) happened to me today. I spent a church lunch chatting to a Welsh gospel singer who lives in Northumberland, and sings with an Ulster accent. We were of one mind, we were not for this Nationalist stuff. Not because we are raving Anglophiles but because we are children of these islands. In our book what unifies is much more than what divides and for both our families, the common Ulster threads means we utterly understand about division.
The second thing about today is that my wife came back from lunch with some friends amongst whom there is a very gracious and talented couple. Some time ago the lady there said she wished to prepare a family history to give to our daughter Clare. Today was delivery day, four large hessian bags of immaculate research, CDs, typescript telling me almost everything I might want to know about our past since King William of Orange. What do you know, follow the paternal line and it takes you ultimately to a named, recognisable today, farm by Loch Ryan and back beyond that into Ayrshire.
The point being for innumerable people in Britain (think Corby), to divide our country into multiple states will be to wrench our personal identity apart. The Scots don't live in Scotland and the English in England. We are a multiplicity of ethnicity in a shared physical environment. That does not mean Scotland is not its own country. Our Union has been a very clever Union of four countries. One is self evidently the richest and is the gatekeeper to Europe and other trading partners. It has been in everyone's interest to balance the disparity. For the richer group to share its resources with the other. And that is what has happened. England does support the others. Who had to ride to the rescue when Ireland virtually went bankrupt less than 10 years ago?
This morning Andrew Marr interviewed a leading Scottish lady campaigner for the nationalists. She said she was not an economist, figures did not come into her calculation. This was an emotional decision for better or for worse, to shake off the imperial shackles. I just shake my head, I recognise none of this. England in 1707 did not take over Scotland in an Imperial action. The two countries agreed to a Union as it was in their financial and political best interests, but in many respects (e.g. in law and religion, each remained a distinct state). The actions that had brought this about (Darien) were largely the responsibility of Scots. But even if Darien was not a factor, the increasing economic pace of interaction would have brought Union. Through the rest of the 18th century, the Scottish enlightenment flourished. It was based on reason, it produced economic thinkers who are still read. The idea that Scotland in the 21st century should become independent on emotional rather than rational grounds makes me shudder. In the debate of the week the fiscal hole of independence has been raised by an impartial think tank. "Smear" the Nationalists shout when Miliband mentioned it. It struck me as cold reason and no smear.
I think rationality has left the debate. Something must explain why the Nationalists appeal? I cannot deny they do. The best answer I have is three fold: Thatcher, Social Media and God. It is clear that the years of Thatcher became the years of the divide. If indeed Britain divides (virtually down the geographical middle, you do realise this, two maps one of population, one of acreage would produce astoundingly different shapes), I will not simply blame the SNP. Mrs Thatcher will shoulder a huge percentage of the blame. She broke the consensus politics, she destroyed her own party during her Prime Ministership north of the Border. She said it was fine for London and the South East to flourish without a care for the central belt of Scotland (and the North of England). I grew up in Tory Norfolk, I went rather reluctantly to private school (it did not seem to me fair or healthy even as a teenager). I found myself working in West Yorkshire through the Miner's strike in 1984. I saw the lines of police minibuses. Two years later and I was clearing out shut collieries.
In short order I moved to Scotland: Ayrshire and Clydeside 1986-1990. I saw the hopelessness of men on street corners with no work, men I actually knew. I remembered reading L T C Rolt describing Stoke on Trent after the Kerr Stuart closure in 1930. I remembered too Auden's description of Dumbarton "The flotsam at which Dumbarton Gapes and Hungers" (May 1932). I met my wife in the shipyard he knew and in 1987, it still felt bad.
Many will read this and say, there is your answer. This abandonment of the North has gone on since the 1930s and it simply cannot be endured any more. But unless a Nationalist party has real economic plans which stack up, emotionalism will not bring happiness. The lady Marr interviewed this morning seemed to be saying independence will always be more worthwhile than what we have? Why? It seems to me a major player is revenge. Westminster has "f**cked us up", well now it is payback. Behave like this and a whole island will venture into chaos.
But what fuels revenge? Can it be the abandonment of faith? All the nations of the islands pursued different faith routes since the reformation which has not been without pain itself. But on balance the faith, the mutual understanding of purpose was Christian. That is no longer the case and I wonder whether that is feeding this?
Does that mean I think Great Britain is a God given concept? I don't but I think it was a God fearing creation. Its leaders of various centuries felt they would answer to God for their stewardship. Outstanding of those is our present monarch. Take Israel. Do I think God gives land to people and says you now have the right to persecute and expel the inhabitans? No way. Jesus gave the answer. The purpose of the people of God is to show the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, it is to be exemplars. Jesus warned of what would happen to Israel if it could not see this in 30AD and his warnings were shortly fulfilled. The Romans annihilated Israel (fact). For a second time round since 1948 Israel has had the opportunity to show how to be a model nation. One for whom its treatment of all its citizens and neighbours could showcase the performance of faith. How has it got along?
I should contrast that with a tale of optimism. A tale of the shared values of the special relationship. It comes from Boston, USA and perhaps it might even be able to make me accept the bitter pill of divorce. Have you heard of the Hoyts? Good to learn about them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Hoyt and http://www.teamhoyt.com/ . Are they Christians? Does that matter? I don't know and it does not. But get this, what was intended to be their final race was interupted by the bombing of the Boston marathon. Whatever else you think, one of the immense achievements of Western Liberal, Christian based thinking is that it is utterly wrong to bomb the innocent. It was wrong for the IRA to do this, it is wrong for Muslims to do it, and it was wrong for the USA to do it in South East Asia. However the future goes, we must keep the peace in Great Britain. We did not in the past, I live in reiver country.
A salutary tale. Does this perhaps make me more sanguine about the breakup of Great Britain. Not exactly. I do think Great Britain may breakup. NATO and the USA would be fair amazed. This would delight some others. Some could see it as a judgement of God on a nation's faithlessness. In that it would be unfair to heap all the blame on the SNP. The behaviour of corporates in London business districts does alarm many. Something terrible went wrong in banking in the early years of the 20th century, it had probably been decades in the making since The Big Bang Boys. But what went wrong in London went wrong in Edinburgh too. RBoS is a dirty word. London in England, in Britain has proven able to pick itself up. Had RBoS purely been an Edinburgh institution it would have carried off a nation with it. Vote for an anti union party on May 7th and logic and history suggests you only have to wait.
How might I end this? I think as my father did. A Christian burial in a church in a coffin draped in the Union flag. Two hymns: one from our wedding: "Be Thou my vision...................... " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Thou_My_Vision Old Irish. Celtic spirit. One from his funeral: "I vow to thee my Country........" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Vow_to_Thee,_My_Country . Now you might think this turns me into some flag waver. Anyone who really knows me, knows I am nothing like that. My country is not the country of the English establishment, it is my Britain. Don't take it from me.
The longer version.
Not many months past we went through, yes all of us, a divisive referendum, at the end of which, there was a clear result and we were all told, that was it for a generation. In the immediate aftermath the SNP saw a growth in membership which for any modern day British political party was astronomical. That has continued, for all of which the SNP only account for a proportion of Scottish voters.
However nine months later and we have a general election. Here according to Andrew Marr this morning, the SNP look set to gain 4/5th or thereabouts of the Scottish seats at Westminster. The Labour party assert there will never be SNP members in their administration. Some form of coalition appears likely. The SNP further assert that if they can exercise power they will remove Trident from Scotland. They will then campaign for a similar result at the Scottish MSP elections in May 2016. If they can repeat the performance twice, they are now saying on that mandate they will swiftly move to a second referendum.
So why should this upset me and my life in Northumberland. To be fair there is a certain gut feeling. I was always brought up (in Norfolk) as my wife was (in Glasgow) to acknowledge I was British first and then something after that. Being British in my family always trumped being English. If I hear someone from Scotland saying their only allegiance is to Scotland it makes me wince. Do you not first and foremost belong to this one group of islands? Geography was always my strong subject. Having to choose about abandoning being British and just being English goes against every grain in my body. About the one thing I am not is Welsh (or even Cornish). Otherwise I could travel from Hampshire, through Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, Shropshire, Airedale, Durham, Northumberland, the Eden Valley, Balsporran Cottages on the A9, Kingussie Churchyard, Slochd Summit, Elgin, Galloway, Ayrshire, Carrickfergus, Ballynure and Dublin, and in all these places say "I belong, it is my family right to belong".
Nor if you know me well, you might laugh and say you spent too long moving around Britain and anyway you only spent four years living in Ayrshire. Two things (of several) happened to me today. I spent a church lunch chatting to a Welsh gospel singer who lives in Northumberland, and sings with an Ulster accent. We were of one mind, we were not for this Nationalist stuff. Not because we are raving Anglophiles but because we are children of these islands. In our book what unifies is much more than what divides and for both our families, the common Ulster threads means we utterly understand about division.
The second thing about today is that my wife came back from lunch with some friends amongst whom there is a very gracious and talented couple. Some time ago the lady there said she wished to prepare a family history to give to our daughter Clare. Today was delivery day, four large hessian bags of immaculate research, CDs, typescript telling me almost everything I might want to know about our past since King William of Orange. What do you know, follow the paternal line and it takes you ultimately to a named, recognisable today, farm by Loch Ryan and back beyond that into Ayrshire.
The point being for innumerable people in Britain (think Corby), to divide our country into multiple states will be to wrench our personal identity apart. The Scots don't live in Scotland and the English in England. We are a multiplicity of ethnicity in a shared physical environment. That does not mean Scotland is not its own country. Our Union has been a very clever Union of four countries. One is self evidently the richest and is the gatekeeper to Europe and other trading partners. It has been in everyone's interest to balance the disparity. For the richer group to share its resources with the other. And that is what has happened. England does support the others. Who had to ride to the rescue when Ireland virtually went bankrupt less than 10 years ago?
This morning Andrew Marr interviewed a leading Scottish lady campaigner for the nationalists. She said she was not an economist, figures did not come into her calculation. This was an emotional decision for better or for worse, to shake off the imperial shackles. I just shake my head, I recognise none of this. England in 1707 did not take over Scotland in an Imperial action. The two countries agreed to a Union as it was in their financial and political best interests, but in many respects (e.g. in law and religion, each remained a distinct state). The actions that had brought this about (Darien) were largely the responsibility of Scots. But even if Darien was not a factor, the increasing economic pace of interaction would have brought Union. Through the rest of the 18th century, the Scottish enlightenment flourished. It was based on reason, it produced economic thinkers who are still read. The idea that Scotland in the 21st century should become independent on emotional rather than rational grounds makes me shudder. In the debate of the week the fiscal hole of independence has been raised by an impartial think tank. "Smear" the Nationalists shout when Miliband mentioned it. It struck me as cold reason and no smear.
I think rationality has left the debate. Something must explain why the Nationalists appeal? I cannot deny they do. The best answer I have is three fold: Thatcher, Social Media and God. It is clear that the years of Thatcher became the years of the divide. If indeed Britain divides (virtually down the geographical middle, you do realise this, two maps one of population, one of acreage would produce astoundingly different shapes), I will not simply blame the SNP. Mrs Thatcher will shoulder a huge percentage of the blame. She broke the consensus politics, she destroyed her own party during her Prime Ministership north of the Border. She said it was fine for London and the South East to flourish without a care for the central belt of Scotland (and the North of England). I grew up in Tory Norfolk, I went rather reluctantly to private school (it did not seem to me fair or healthy even as a teenager). I found myself working in West Yorkshire through the Miner's strike in 1984. I saw the lines of police minibuses. Two years later and I was clearing out shut collieries.
In short order I moved to Scotland: Ayrshire and Clydeside 1986-1990. I saw the hopelessness of men on street corners with no work, men I actually knew. I remembered reading L T C Rolt describing Stoke on Trent after the Kerr Stuart closure in 1930. I remembered too Auden's description of Dumbarton "The flotsam at which Dumbarton Gapes and Hungers" (May 1932). I met my wife in the shipyard he knew and in 1987, it still felt bad.
Many will read this and say, there is your answer. This abandonment of the North has gone on since the 1930s and it simply cannot be endured any more. But unless a Nationalist party has real economic plans which stack up, emotionalism will not bring happiness. The lady Marr interviewed this morning seemed to be saying independence will always be more worthwhile than what we have? Why? It seems to me a major player is revenge. Westminster has "f**cked us up", well now it is payback. Behave like this and a whole island will venture into chaos.
But what fuels revenge? Can it be the abandonment of faith? All the nations of the islands pursued different faith routes since the reformation which has not been without pain itself. But on balance the faith, the mutual understanding of purpose was Christian. That is no longer the case and I wonder whether that is feeding this?
Does that mean I think Great Britain is a God given concept? I don't but I think it was a God fearing creation. Its leaders of various centuries felt they would answer to God for their stewardship. Outstanding of those is our present monarch. Take Israel. Do I think God gives land to people and says you now have the right to persecute and expel the inhabitans? No way. Jesus gave the answer. The purpose of the people of God is to show the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, it is to be exemplars. Jesus warned of what would happen to Israel if it could not see this in 30AD and his warnings were shortly fulfilled. The Romans annihilated Israel (fact). For a second time round since 1948 Israel has had the opportunity to show how to be a model nation. One for whom its treatment of all its citizens and neighbours could showcase the performance of faith. How has it got along?
I should contrast that with a tale of optimism. A tale of the shared values of the special relationship. It comes from Boston, USA and perhaps it might even be able to make me accept the bitter pill of divorce. Have you heard of the Hoyts? Good to learn about them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Hoyt and http://www.teamhoyt.com/ . Are they Christians? Does that matter? I don't know and it does not. But get this, what was intended to be their final race was interupted by the bombing of the Boston marathon. Whatever else you think, one of the immense achievements of Western Liberal, Christian based thinking is that it is utterly wrong to bomb the innocent. It was wrong for the IRA to do this, it is wrong for Muslims to do it, and it was wrong for the USA to do it in South East Asia. However the future goes, we must keep the peace in Great Britain. We did not in the past, I live in reiver country.
A salutary tale. Does this perhaps make me more sanguine about the breakup of Great Britain. Not exactly. I do think Great Britain may breakup. NATO and the USA would be fair amazed. This would delight some others. Some could see it as a judgement of God on a nation's faithlessness. In that it would be unfair to heap all the blame on the SNP. The behaviour of corporates in London business districts does alarm many. Something terrible went wrong in banking in the early years of the 20th century, it had probably been decades in the making since The Big Bang Boys. But what went wrong in London went wrong in Edinburgh too. RBoS is a dirty word. London in England, in Britain has proven able to pick itself up. Had RBoS purely been an Edinburgh institution it would have carried off a nation with it. Vote for an anti union party on May 7th and logic and history suggests you only have to wait.
How might I end this? I think as my father did. A Christian burial in a church in a coffin draped in the Union flag. Two hymns: one from our wedding: "Be Thou my vision...................... " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Thou_My_Vision Old Irish. Celtic spirit. One from his funeral: "I vow to thee my Country........" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Vow_to_Thee,_My_Country . Now you might think this turns me into some flag waver. Anyone who really knows me, knows I am nothing like that. My country is not the country of the English establishment, it is my Britain. Don't take it from me.
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