The faith that moves mountains. But not apparently nations

The head of the Catholic Church visits a country which has a majority of Buddhists, representatives of a religion that is a byword for peacefulness and tolerance, but who are busily exterminating members of another of the world’s great faiths, Islam. The Pope carefully avoids naming the victims as Rohingya, because that might further inflame those gentle Buddhists and turn their attentions to Christians as well.

The Pope in Myanmar: don’t mention the Rohingya

Those Rohingya are members of a religion that believes that to save a single life is tantamount to saving the entire human race. And yet members of that religion, Islam – admittedly a tiny minority of it – seem to have convinced themselves that it is holy work to kill large numbers of people in its name.

The behaviour of that minority has inflamed many in the West into passionate Islamophobia. Some of those justify their hatred on the grounds that they are Christians, or belong at any rate to countries that are Christian in their roots. This is a curious notion, in many cases.

In Britain, for example, only around one in twenty people regularly attends a church service of any Christian denomination. But then, maybe they’re thinking of the underlying values rather than actual Church practice. Principles such as

Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him

or

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God

or

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these

The first of those is a little hard to reconcile with Britain’s long love-affair with weapons, a little reduced these days but only because austerity is enforcing cuts even on the military.

The second is just as hard to reconcile with the other side of the austerity coin, which has been to enrich the wealthiest members of society still further, making it, I assume, harder than ever for them to get into the kingdom of heaven.

As for the third, that commitment to children is proclaimed by most Brits, but rather subverted by the discovery that the country has one of the worst rates of stillbirth in Western Europe. Why? Here are the words of Gill Walton, Chief Executive of the Royal College of Midwives:

We’ve got a real concern about staffing levels… we really need more staff and more capacity in order to safely care for mums and babies.

Austerity hammers children too, it seems. As we find in the recent reports that two-thirds of English children referred for mental healthcare remain untreated. And it’s not just children: refuges for women escaping domestic violence are being forced to close through lack of funding, hospital Emergency Departments are being increasingly staffed by unqualified doctors, and the hospitals themselves are, in greater numbers than ever before, facing bankruptcy without more finance.

It seems that our Christian values aren’t strong enough to insist on the support the vulnerable. Instead we prefer to elect and re-elect a government committed to serving the wealthiest by imposing these cuts on services that would otherwise protect the poor. Perhaps our supposed Christianity has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ, and merely provides a justification for our dislike of the other, the foreigner, the person from outside our community.

Faith without compassion. Whether in Myanmar, in ISIS or, sadly, in Britain.

Countdown to War, Day 36. 2 August: as Germany goes to war against Russia, does God require Britain to fight?

One hundred years ago today, on Sunday 2 August 1914, the Methodist Minister wore a bleak smile when he dropped in on Martin to give him his Observer. The paper confirmed the worst fears of the previous few days.

Germany has declared war with Russia, and France and Germany have both ordered a mobilisation.

Thus has vanished the last hope of European peace, for although, curiously enough, a state of war does not yet exist between Germany and France, or Russia and Austria, it must only be a question of some hours before these Powers take sides in the quarrel.

Russian trenches

The Observer didn’t share the Manchester Guardian’s commitment to neutrality. Nor did it have any ambiguity about which side to choose: the villain was Germany. 

Let us not blind ourselves for a moment by illusions. Our neutrality is impossible. It would be an act of desertion which would prevent any country from ever trusting us as an ally or a friend again... He who is no friend will have no friend. The original cause of the smaller war is nothing. That squalid and hateful pretext has been used with open eyes to force a vaster issue. The Great War is fought by the Central Powers for one object. It is fought for the mastery of Europe under conditions which, if we stood aside, would assure for Germany – by direct and indirect means – the eventual and perhaps the speedy mastery of the Low Countries and the narrow seas.

“We’re expected to fight for the Low Countries?”

“Look at the map, Martin. Belgium’s a stone throw away. That’s why its neutrality matters. We can’t have Germany encamped there.”

But Martin was irritated with the paper. In its previous issue, the Observer had argued that “the moral point to remember is that in this business Austria Hungary is fundamentally justified and Servia is fundamentally wrong.” Seven days on, it was convinced Britain should fight on the Serbian side of the dispute.

It was down to the government now. What would it choose? Again unlike the Guardian, the Observer wasn’t keen on the Liberals.

What will our statesmen do? Our leaders at the moment are the chief members of a Radical Government which, as a whole, is not the best fitted by traditional or political circumstance to uphold the vital interests of Britain with sound judgement and unwavering resolution at this hour.

If the paper felt that the Tories were better suited to take Britain into war, that only strengthened Martin’s inclination to stay well clear of it.

The US was staying out. As was Italy, and it was an ally of Germany’s and Austria-Hungary’s: “her obligations under the Triple Alliance only applying to a defensive war, Italy considers herself to be released from her engagement, the war being waged by Austria, supported by Germany, being essentially an offensive war.”

“We’re like the US,” Martin exclaimed, “without a treaty to oblige us to fight. Why would we?”

“Because it means defending our friends and justice. That is an obligation, Martin, whatever alliances or treaties may say.”

“So... thou shalt not kill means nothing?”

“It means a lot. But it has consequences. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in His image did God make man’. By the hand of man, Martin. For shedding the blood of other men. Sometimes the Lord requires that we shed the blood of our fellows.”

“But... what about beating your swords into ploughshares... about blessed are the peacemakers?”

“All that’s true, Martin, in the right time and place. But the Lord also said ‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’ The gospel isn’t a work of milk and honey, it’s a work of fire and and iron too.”

“And you think it’s a time for fire and iron now, then?”

“I fear it may be. And don’t forget the Lord’s promise: ‘...he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it’.”

Martin looked at him steadily and saw in the Minister’s eyes a light of belief he wasn’t sure he shared. And he saw a man of – what? – fifty or more. He wasn’t likely to be called on to lose his life in this cause.

German troops in Łowicz, in then-Russian Poland
occupied soon after the outbreak of war

After the Minister had gone, Martin sighed and read on. Serbia was having a torrid time.

...the Austrians continued yesterday heavy artillery firing in the neighbourhood of Belgrade, but have not yet succeeded in crossing the Danube or Sava. Fierce fighting is stated to have occurred between Foca and Selitza, in which the Fourth Servian division and two Austrian divisions were involved...

Other longstanding problems hadn’t gone away, though it looked as though the disaster of a general European war might put them in the shade. The Observer thought that there could be some reduction in tension in Ireland, especially thanks to the attitude of the Unionists – and there were Unionists on both sides of the Irish Sea, the Opposition Conservatives (the Tories) being their British arm.

The Unionist leaders responded with that undeviating patriotism which the present Opposition has invariably shown in every issue of foreign policy...

Unionists had dropped the demand for an immediate election.

Upon the other hand, the question of presenting the Home Rule bill for the King’s signature is deferred...

Great Britain well knows the Ulster Volunteers, in face of foreign danger, to be an Army in reserve for the Union Jack. If the Nationalist Volunteers show anything like the same devotion... to the common cause of the United Kingdom, they will... open up for Ulster, for the rest of Ireland and for their ultimate reunion, hopes which even a week ago seemed unthinkable.

Would the Irish nationalists put aside their demands to make common cause with the mother country at its time of danger? He couldn’t really see it. Especially with Home Rule back off the table. Another news item suggested there would be no let up in their desire for separation from that mother:

The Irish National Volunteers, says a message from Limerick, claim to have succeed in landing 150 rifles at Foynes from an American yacht on the River Shannon, without the intervention of the authorities.

He noticed that the suffragettes, or at least those in Mrs Pankhurst’s group, were showing no inclination to ease their pressure on the authorities. Ironically, they were operating in Ireland too, and with the ferocity typical of that island’s quarrels.

The Women’s Social and Political Union contradicts the statement that instructions have been given for the cessation of Suffragette militancy during the crisis.

Early yesterday morning a charge of dynamite was exploded under the chancel window of the old cathedral at Lisburn, damaging a valuable window and masonry.

Meanwhile, just as international relations were collapsing in general, in London the Transport authorities were still doing their best to improve them.

The sixteen interpreters appointed by the London General Omnibus Company to attend at railway termini connecting with the Continent and other busy traffic centres, commenced their duties yesterday, and their services were much appreciated by foreigners arriving as strangers to London.

Across the Continent, divisions were mobilising against each other. But in London, the bus company had deployed sixteen people to make life easier for tourists. Now that was worth a smile on a sad, tense Sunday evening.

Esther: a light in the darkness

The British Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has raised funds from philanthropists to distribute copies of the King James Bible to schools throughout the country. The initiative marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of what I’m frequently assured is a great work of English literature.

I imagine there will be queues of kids in every school waiting to read their school’s new bible and be uplifted by it. 

Some of them might even gain moral guidance by reading the book of Esther. And what a story it contains.

Ahasuerus was a great Persian King. Some of us like to think of him as Xerxes but, hey, I’m not picky. Ahasuerus will do.

It seems that he decided to hold one hell of a party, inviting all his friends and all his servants to seven days of carousing. From the account in the bible, they got well and truly plastered, and Ahasuerus decided that his friends deserved a treat. He had a particularly beautiful wife, so he called for her to come and be paraded for the revellers.

It’s hard to believe, but she refused. And after being dissed like that, what option did he have? How could any wife reasonably refuse to be shown off to her husband’s friends by her husband? Particularly if that husband is an Emperor? So naturally he divorced her.

That unfortunately left his bed empty, not a desirable state of affairs, particularly for a lustful emperor. Fortunately, he had servants who knew how to look after his every need. So they brought in a bunch of virgins from whom he could take his pick. Of course they were virgins. You expected him to accept someone else’s seconds?

Now one of the virgins particularly attracted him: Esther daughter of Mordecai. Father and daughter had decided to keep it quiet that they were Jews, because as so often since, it wasn’t particularly good news to be known as Jewish around then. 

How Asuaherus fell for it I’ll never know, given they were called Mordecai and Esther, but I suppose the kind of guy who goes on seven-day binges isn’t likely to be sharpest knife in the drawer.

Someone else who fell for the deceit was the king’s adviser, Haman. He decided a pogrom against the Jews might be a good idea, and organised one. He ordered all the Jews to assemble in various places at a particular date so they could be conveniently massacred. This wasn’t news that they took to with any particular enthusiasm. Just so that you have at least one sample of the beautiful writing which so many claim is the hallmark of the King James Bible, here’s how it describes their reaction:

‘And in every province, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, [there was] great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.’

Mordecai was one of those put out by Haman’s decision, especially when Asuaherus endorsed it.

‘You’ve caught the King’s fancy,’ he told his daughter, ‘time to make something of it.’

It turned out that the King was indeed totally smitten with her. She could twist him round her little finger.

‘What would you like? It’s yours,’ he kept saying.

She wasn’t backward in coming forward. First she had the head of the adviser Haman, which presumably taught him he should have been more careful in finding out the background of the people around his boss. Next she had the heads of Haman’s ten sons. And then she really got going. Instead of everyone else getting a day to wipe out the Jews, she obtained from the King that the Jews would get the chance to wipe out their enemies. And when just one day wasn’t enough in the capital – they’d only killed 500 – Esther got them a second day when they could massacre another 300.

What fascinates me about all this is the way it captures the spirit not just of those times but of our own. Binge-drinking. An attitude towards women free of any trace of hypocritical political correctness. And a salutary endorsement of the principle that the best response to anyone who threatens your people is to wipe out rather a lot of theirs.

No wonder that as well as being celebrated in the Jewish festival of Purim, this fine story has inspired many of our greatest Christian artists. One of them, Aert de Gelder, kept returning to the theme. It was one of his paintings, in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, that first put me onto this edifying story.

Aert de Gelder's Esther and Mordecai:
a real inspiration to me, as it should be

What a good move, in this confusing age, that Michael Gove has made sure this kind of material is available to more of our young people. Won’t it provide just the light they need to find a way out of the moral darkness that afflicts us all?

A merry Christmas in a Christian country

Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, declares that ‘it is one of the happiest characteristics of this glorious country that official utterances are invariably regarded as unanswerable.

So when it was announced the other day, by no less a figure than David Cameron, our great British Prime Minister, or at any rate Prime Minister of Great Britain, that the country we shared was Christian, how could I possibly answer the claim except by immediately concurring?

Cameron was speaking on Friday 16 December, at Oxford, addressing churchmen at an event to celebrate the fourth centenary of the King James’s Bible. This is the one I'm always being told is admirable for the quality of its poetry. So I opened my Bible at random and found myself reading 2 Samuel 8:2. Let’s see how the uplifting message blends with the glory of the language:

‘And he smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting them down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive. And so the Moabites became David’s servants, and brought gifts.’

Too right: I’d become a servant and bring gifts if I’d just watched two thirds of my people cast down. Still, in that event I might perhaps console myself with the thought that it had at least been described in limpid and moving language  –  if that was my idea of limpid and moving language. 

But back to the other saintly David: ‘...what I am saying is that the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today.’ Well, I’m sure he’s right. We don’t actually measure people in lines before we mow them down in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the rest we follow to the letter.

So it’s about values. Cameron made that explicit. And values matter to our Dave. As David Edgar pointed out in the Guardian on Monday 19December, Cameron’s speech contained a particularly telling passage:

‘A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values. But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them. We need to stand up for these values.’

So that’s the hidden agenda. The government’s going to tell us what our values are. Amazing how these enthusiasts for small government love to tell us how to think as soon as they get into office themselves.

‘We are a Christian country,’ Cameron assured us.

Interesting comment that. Lots of people say it, and I’ve often wondered how they measure it. Even Tearfund, which is a Christian charity with no obvious interest in understating religious practice in Britain, claims that only 15% of the population attend Church regularly (at least once a month). But if as he suggests, it’s values that matter to Cameron, perhaps what he means is that our society lives by Christian principle.

On the radio the other day, my favourite Churchman, Giles Fraser, quoted Luke 1:53. Luke being a book of the New Testament, as opposed to Samuel that I quoted above and which is in the Old, makes it perhaps a better test of what is specifically Christian. So what does it say? ‘He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.’

Well, you be the judge. Unemployment is approaching a thirty-year high. Among young people it is particularly disastrous, condemning a large portion of a generation to a life of employment insecurity. Social benefits are being withdrawn – one recent measure had the effect of plunging 100,000 children back into poverty. Meanwhile, bankers’ bonuses, after a brief dip in 2009, are back up to the pre-credit crunch level. And last year top executive earnings rose by an average of 49%.

Filling the hungry with good things? Sending the rich away empty?  Not sure that’s exactly what’s happening.

Still, it’s Christmas Eve. Not point in being a killjoy. Have a merry Christmas, all of you! Whether you’re Christian, of some other faith or of no faith at all. And whatever you think Christmas may actually mean.

Suitably Christian image for the season

... and a happy 2012! Which means one that proves the economists wrong...