MetaCatholic

Michael Gove of The Times comes up with the three political answers to journalist’s questions. Brilliant.

1. My statistics are bigger than your statistics. Whenever challenged on the facts, simply come up with your own list of numbers and try to browbeat the listener into submission. For example: “Well, you may think its wrong of Lord Voldemort to use his third term to target the muggle-born Sarah, but since we established Death-Eater rule this country has won more Quidditch matches at international level than any other major EU nation, so I think that shows our Snitch Strategy is working.”

2. I may smell, but the other guy’s a skunk. Whenever challenged on your record, point out that your predecessors were worse and they would, if they ever returned, wreak havoc on our green and pleasant land. For example: “Yes, under Lord Saruman we haven’t been able to put as many uruk-hai on the beat as we would have wanted, and we’re working on that, but issues around orc welfare were completely neglected under the old Gandalf regime, and if he and the Fellowship of the Ring get their way we can expect massive cuts in orc provision and a return to the bad old days of two-tier public services with a sheep and goats, elves and orcs approach to policy.”

3. I refuse to recognise your premise and will say what I want anyway. Whenever presented with facts (or an argument) that are inconvenient and there are no bogus stats to hand and you can’t recall just why the other guys are worse, then just bulldoze. For example: “So, Lucifer, you said your rebel angels would create a new Jerusalem but instead you’ve built a pit of flames and suffering - why?” “What we’re seeing across creation is a massive upheaval of the kind I think no one predicted, but it’s important to bear in mind we’ve got policies for the long term, with nuclear furnaces replacing the old sulphur-fired ones, training for imps, demons and dark angels as well as a new hellfire to work strategy for the long-term unrepentant. So we’re focused on the issue that souls in torment really worry about.”

Apparently the Lord Chief Justice has now come out in support of Rowan Williams’ earlier controversial (and in my view poorly presented, and wilfully misunderstood) remarks about Sharia and UK law. The bit of the Telegraph’s report that got my attention, however, was this:

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster and leader of Britain’s Catholics, said that people should live under the laws of the UK.
His spokesman said: “As the Cardinal has consistently said and indeed said earlier this year, was that Britons should abide by and be subject to the law of the land.”

And where, precisely does this leave the whole apparatus of Canon Law and marriage tribunals, which refuse to recognise as valid at least any second wedding (if not any first secular wedding) contracted by the state, and likewise refuse to recognise the state’s divorce law as ending a marriage, unless a couple have also followed the Church’s annulment procedures? This is, it seems to me, exactly an example of a religious community adjudicating certain practices by a a separate and different code of law to that which is enshrined in the law of the land.

I have no intention of disputing the second amendment to the US constitution. If Americans wish overall to live in a society which encourages the possession of easy means of slaughtering one another to be seen as a citizen’s right, then they’re free to do so (or not to do so).

However to many of us outside the US, John McCain’s welcome of today’s Heller ruling by the Supreme Court combines stupidity and blasphemy in equal measure.

today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right – sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.

It is hard to argue that the possession of a weapon whose earliest portable predecessor dates from around the 13th century is a “fundamental right” on a level with free speech and assembly. If it is a fundamental right, then surely the government should make sure every citizen is equipped with one, presumably free of charge, and only stripped of it after due legal process. part of the same process that restricts constitutional liberty.

But to go on and describe this “right” as sacred in a country that claims to follow the crucified one is to move beyond stupidity and into blasphemy.

The way to get rid of the McBrother? (Gen 4)

Who said politics was dull? There has been a variety of reports on the bizarre resignation of the UK’s Shadow (i.e. opposition) Home Secretary, a move that is presented as taking the argument on civil liberties to the people.

Most of these reports seem to work with a (false) dichotomy: is he principled or a showman? But why can’t he be both? This does seem to me to be principled. He really believes in what he’s standing for. It also seems to me to be stupid: he is totally messing up what he stands for.

• Consider (1) that he was on track to being Home Secretary after the next election, when he would have been able to reverse this legislation, even if it had been brought in (which is unlikely).

• Consider (2) the possibility that no-one from a main party will run against him. How long can he gain any attention for his views, without expressing them in more and more extreme ways, if there is no contest? How likely will that be to help him?

• Consider (3) the possibility that no-one from a main party will run against him and that he ends up campaigning only against the official nutters (the monster raving loony party) and the unofficial nutters (UKIP and others).

• Consider (4) the possibility that Labour will run against him (as Paul Linford is encouraging them to do). Currently everyone expects Labour to be not only defeated, but badly defeated, in any election. Any result short of absolute humiliation for Labour (even a defeat only a bit worse than before) will be spun (with some justification) as a victory.

This is so bizarre a strategy that one must question David Davis’ judgement. I think he is principled. But there are reasonable grounds for thinking him either vain, ambitious, or unbalanced. I see no reason why a person of principle may not also be the teensiest bit stupid as well.

Conservative blogger Iain Dale and Labour blogger Paul Linford agree on their reactions to a leaked report on the future of British politics, although rather predictably they put a different spin on who’s to blame. Interestingly just as there’s a growing confluence in favour among many who only have to express opinions on an English Parliament, there seems to be an equally firm all-party resistance amongst those who would have to devise how to make it work.

It’s very easy to feel both the simple logic of equality and the emotional pull of an English Parliament. Gordon Brown’s slogan might be “British jobs for British people” but his party at Westminster looks more like “English votes for Scottish people”. To be honest, I’m one of those who feels the pull of a Federal Britain. I can‘t help but think, however, that the amount of time and work that would be involved in unpicking and reshaping the constitution might be disproportionate to the benefits to be gained. I suspect a program of moderately simple measures like English votes, coupled with a rebalancing of the bias that gives Scotland an undue proportion of public money, might in the end be a better place to start. Creeping federalism may in the end be a more easily achievable answer than a major constitutional settlement. (Slow creep is producing a relatively painless disestablishment, after all.) I’m open to be persuaded otherwise, however.

I’ve been meaning to comment this week on a slightly odd story reported in the Sunday Telegraph. As reported:

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a “hate crime” and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that “no-go areas” for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.

Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.

…

West Midlands Police, who refused to apologise, said the incident had been “fully investigated” and the officer would be given training in understanding hate crime and communication.

For those who aren’t familiar with the UK scene, a “police community support officer” is sort of equivalent to a teaching assistant in a classroom. 

I want to offer a few observations:

This story seems to have sunk from view like a stone. That makes me think there may be rather more to it than reported, and that journalists investigating further decided it was less news-worthy than they thought. The “evangelists” concerned seem to be seriously fundamentalist. Of the Bible they believe that “Every Word of the original manuscript [sic] is inspired”, but they are also keen to state:

What We are Not
We are not ecumenical, Charismatic, Arminians, Calvinists or denominational.

That doesn’t seem to leave a lot of room for manoeuvre.

A large part of this story’s power comes from the bigger immigration narrative. Without wanting to downplay any of the issues involved, I want to highlight what I see as the biggest danger for the way some people want to enlist Christians to their aid on immigration. The implicit subtext is that Christians are white and native, and if you’re foreign and black you must be Muslim or some other religion. (Something similar seems to have happened in the US in the way some people regard Obama as Muslim.) This is not only politically dangerous, but, from a Christian viewpoint, profoundly heretical.

Churches that don’t evangelise ought to be seen as a contradiction in terms. Mission more generally is of the essence of the church. There are, however, good and bad ways to do it, and (as far as I can tell) what these particular preachers were doing is such a bad way of doing it it’s doubtful that it can be seen as evangelism at all. It looks rather more like an aggressive act of religious and racial hostility, than a generous sharing of the love of God. The preachers’ readiness to pose for a photo and take their story to the paper to tell a story of Muslim no-go areas for Christians encourages me in that suspicion.

It is interesting that nowadays the cases that may most test “freedom of speech” are religious ones. Christians probably need to remember that historically, they have approved of this no more than many Muslims today would, and that effectively it evolved more to protect those outside or against the churches from Christian totalitarianism. Its transformation into a basic Western value that Christians now appeal to both against the secular state and in favour of the freedom to evangelise, is deeply ironic.

I think we will see more and more of this sort of story, and we will need to be very careful about how we read them. They raise quite complex questions of civic polity as well as inter-faith relationships, dialogue and mission. They also suggest that there’s room for far more theological reflection on methods of evangelism that are appropriate to gospel and culture in the early 21st century West. How much power does the method used have to stop it being good news at all?

In a comment Stephen continues to make his point about post-modernism based on the ethics of torture. I haven’t got time right now to offer a major argument on the whole post-modern debate. But I do want to point up what I see as the problem with Stephen’s position as I understand it.

(Note: I am aware that there are some people who try to argue that water-boarding and the like are not torture. I think that’s rubbish – proving just how un-post-modern I am by such a blanket statement. As far as I can see, Stephen and I agree with the premise that the US Government is engaged in torture.)

I hope this isn’t a caricature, but it seems to me the argument goes a little like this:

1. Torture is wrong (initially as a strong objective statement)
2. When the US starts engaging in torture, many Christians not only fail to condemn it, but actually condone it.
3. There is no agreement among Christians on what seem such clear matters of right and wrong.
4. Therefore there are no clear matters of right and wrong, since those who claim to have the truth show they can’t agree.
5. Therefore, torture isn’t objectively wrong and Christianity isn’t objectively true.

I am baffled by this argument, since I can see several different options for stages 3 and 4 (combined), such as:

• Some Christians are seriously wrong, and need to be persuaded of the truth.
• Some people are inadequately Christian, because they give a higher allegiance to the State than Christ.
• Torture is always sinful, but there are some cases where it is the lesser of two evils, and this is a practical and political judgement as well as an ethical one. (I think there may be extreme cases where that possibility could be entertained. I don’t think the present circumstances even come close.)

I can’t see how or why disagreement among those who call themselves Christian automatically leads to an acceptance of post-modernism.

The school opposite me is shut because a minority of teachers still belong to a union led by a left-wing militant loony. Christine Blower gets the support of people who believe it or not, still call each other “comrade.”  The NUT’s members probably ought to be known as NUTters, not least because they have been quite content to let a handful of militants run their union, and paid no attention to what was going on. The problem with the NUT is that it really wants to run schools for the benefit of teachers – children are well down the list. That’s why Blower can say that she sees this strike as a mark of respect to her dead predecessor. It’s not about the kids’ education at all.

As Andrew Sullivan so aptly points out to this anti-Chinese protestor …

Er …