John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

John’s Notes: Can Jeff Bezos save me?

Clapham and District Village Newsletter, October 2024

Can Jeff Bezos save me? The Amazon oligarch is investing millions in anti-ageing research which aims to “make 90 the new 50 by 2030”. His delivery service brings the world to my door in no time: which is wonderful, except when his courier leaves the package on my step in the rain, forcing me to go through the whole vexing ‘returns’ process again.

Maybe Elon Musk can save me? The Tesla billionaire is developing a self-driving car which will get me to Morrisons without my having to steer, accelerate, brake, or navigate. His Twitter once kept me in good conversations with friends, colleagues, and interesting influences: but now X embroils me in a chilling world of paranoid conspiracies about the NHS being part of a genocidal ‘hygiene dictatorship’.

Or perhaps Richard Branson can save me? The Virgin magnate is funding spaceships which in future will let me escape this exhausted earth and take a trip to the Moon, or to live on Mars. I loved his early work, especially ‘Tubular Bells’: but my Virgin Broadband box keeps recording unrequested TV programmes from BBC Wales.

It resonates with me that Jesus never presented himself as a messiah. When his closest disciple Peter called him that name, Jesus said, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ and described himself instead as a ‘son of man’, a ‘suffering one’. Meaning that his affinity is far less with the tech oligarchs, and far more with the ones who feel - and are made - powerless in the face of all this invasive technology.

To me, this makes the ‘son of man’ one with the 17-year-old first-time driver whose insurance company threatened him with debt collectors when his car’s black box reported him as driving his 18-year-old VW Polo at 540mph. It makes him one with the treasurer of the little rural church pressured to pay ridiculously inflated electricity bills because the smart meter readings bear no relation to reality. 

He’s one with those exhausted by the ceaseless task of displaying their public face on social media to keep up appearances; and he’s one with those who worry about what the corporations are doing with all the data about them extracted by their mobile devices, their Alexa or Siri, their TV set and digital doorbell; he’s one with those troubled about which emails are genuine and which ones are ‘phishing’ to flush out our bank account.

Digital technology now dominates education, the social security system, seeking job opportunities and signing up for cheaper gas and electricity. ‘Digital poverty’, not being able to afford to interact with the online world, is many people’s everyday experience. Through groups like Church Action on Poverty and the APLE Collective, people at grassroots are seeking to redress this balance.  

We all benefit from the good side of digital tech, but it can cause people to feel alone in this world, it can separate us from others, it does make people vulnerable to the whims of the powerful forces of the corporations which rule our lives. Which is why it is good to see how many people, from the margins, are working hard to rebuild community, to unite with others to resist all which frightens or diminishes us.

If there’s time for the loud, there’s time for the quiet. If there’s time for the fast, there’s a need for the slow

Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.163, 4 June 2023

I think our having grandchildren around this half-term week, and my upcoming birthday, have combined to get me brooding over my age.... and being encouraged by what the next generation are achieving. One whom I’ve been thinking of is Sarah Corbett, who I used to chat with around the kitchen table of her home in the vicarage of St Peter’s, West Everton, when she was a schoolgirl and I was a community worker alongside her mum Jane. Sarah’s dad Henry recently retired after over forty years of ministry in one of Liverpool's lowest income communities, and Jane went on to become West Everton's city councillor and a Deputy Mayor. Sarah has said,  "All we ever do around the kitchen table is talk about religion and politics."

At the age of three Sarah joined her local community squatting in social housing to save them from demolition (they won), and with her parents she later visited South Africa to learn about the Peace and Reconciliation work of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. She became a professional campaigner for NGOs including Christian Aid and Oxfam GB, and the UK Government Department for International Development (DFID). But something wasn’t quite right. In 2008, Sarah, a self-described introvert, "burned out from too much confrontation, and, doubting the effectiveness of many elements of conventional activism, starting looking for alternatives." She discovered craftivism – a term coined by American writer and crafter Betsy Greer in 2003 – and decided to have a go at creating her own craftivism projects.

Craftivism is a combination of 'craft' and 'activism'. There are limitless possibilities to what craftivists do, including hand-sewing positive messages to post to MPs, crafting colourful mini-banners for public display, helping kids create bunting expressing their  desires to improve the world, and leaving crafted Valentine’s cards for people to find, containing messages inviting them to ‘brighten up someone’s day’.

Sarah says, “If there’s time for the loud, there’s also time for the quiet. If there’s time for the fast, there’s also a need for the slow. In everyone’s heart is a desire to change things for the better – it is essential that there is an activists toolkit that is as diverse as humanity.” Sarah’s unique ‘Gentle Protest’ approach to craftivism gained a following of friends and strangers around the world who wanted to get involved. And so, in 2009, the Craftivist Collective was born.

Today the award-winning Craftivist Collective has thousands of members, who Sarah supports by developing tools and projects that they can undertake as individuals or by organising their own small group 'stitch-ins'. Sarah has also delivered events, talks, workshops and events to over 12,000 people around the world. Her first book, A Little Book of Craftivism, came out in 2013, and she has since published a more in-depth guide, How to be a Craftivist: the art of gentle protest. In July 2022 Sarah was presented with an Honorary Fellowship from Goldsmiths, University of London for her "contribution to design activism and public engagement.”

This week Sarah sent news of her plans to publish The Craftivist Collective Handbook, which “is going to be a beautiful, hardback book of 20 craftivism projects and tools to help you on your journey as a positive and effective change-maker. Each project explains ‘How To’ create these ethical craftivism projects, and just as importantly ‘Why To’, so that you can fulfil the potential of your campaign with both a strong strategy and mindful process.” Being a full-time craftivist is hardly lucrative, thus Sarah’s request for supporters to finance this project. If you’re interested to read more about craftivism, or to donate towards Sarah’s work, please click over to the Craftivist Collective website.

A duty to the truth

Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.160, 14 May 2023

Why are farmers in southern Malawi switching from maize to pigeon peas? The answer is simple. They are increasingly losing their livelihoods to droughts and floods. To adapt, they are turning to pigeon peas, a tough crop that’s better able to withstand extreme conditions. Although farmers can now earn a more stable income and better feed their families, they’ve had to say goodbye to culturally important maize-based dishes. Imagine our having to give up fish and chips because our potato supplies have run out.

Jen Bishop and her husband started to grow pigeon peas in 2016. Today, they grow two acres of it. They’ve used their increased income to send their son Innocent to university. But now erratic weather patterns, caused by the climate crisis, threaten their financial stability. Because when it does eventually rain, it rains so hard that it causes flooding and damages the peas.

In March 2023, Cyclone Freddy caused heavy rains, floods and landslides in almost half of Malawi. By 20 March, nearly 500 people had died and over half a million people had been displaced. Freddy washed away part of Jen’s field. She lost the equivalent of two bags of yield, worth at least £79; vital funds which she’d planned to use to pay the secondary school fees for one of her children.

The climate crisis is robbing Jen’s children of their prospects. ‘It’s a price no child should pay,’ say Christian Aid. ‘This is loss and damage. It’s the scandalous loss of life, livelihood, land and culture. And those most impacted are left to pay the repair bills themselves.

Meanwhile, polluters continue to burn fossil fuels, profit from the poison they produce, and turn their backs on the damage they’ve caused. It’s time for polluters to pay up to repair what they’ve damaged.’

At the COP27 climate talks in 2022, governments agreed to create a Loss and Damage fund to compensate communities affected by climate-change-driven losses. But right now, the fund is empty. Campaigners including Christian Aid are asking that the UK Government make polluters pay into this fund - the companies who cause loss and damage whilst generating massive profits and enjoying great wealth. [1]

Is it right for Christians to protest? I’ve been turning this question around in my mind a lot since last month, when my good friend and erstwhile colleague Revd Mark Coleman was imprisoned for public nuisance, having taken part in a central London road-block on an Insulate Britain protest last October. At his Crown Court trial in January, Mark’s three character witness statements read to the court were from his bishop, the former mayor of Rochdale (where Mark was parish priest before taking early retirement due to Parkinsons), and an imam. Each was positive about him, he said, and, ‘I particularly liked the imam’s comment that I had a “duty to the truth”.’ [2]

I have told Mark that I respect and admire his course of action, a sacrificial witness to the truth of a global situation which connects those in fuel poverty in the UK, with Jen Bishop, affected by crop-destruction in Malawi. But I’ve also admitted to him that I am unsettled by his actions, for reasons I can’t quite explain. 

Maybe this present crisis ought to unsettle us, and shake us into action: whatever that means. For a few that will mean taking to the streets in peaceful protest; for a few more that may mean writing to those in power to ask for changes in law to protect people and the planet; for others, supporting campaigns which do this work; and for many more of us it may mean simply praying: giving thanks that governments have agreed to create a Loss and Damage fund; and asking that the UK Government make polluters pay into this fund so that affected communities can repair physically, culturally and emotionally.

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said: ‘In a time of crises, we must reveal the heart of Christ. We must reveal the love of God. We must reveal His grace towards humanity. We must use our voices. We must stand by our values and do something for communities on the frontline of the climate crisis.’

 

Notes

[1] Christian Aid Loss and Damage Campaign.

[2] Mark Coleman, I have a duty to the truth — even if it puts me in prison. Church Times, 5 May 2023; Rochdale News: Insulate Britain supporter Revd Mark Coleman jailed for vowing to continue in civil resistance. Rochdale Online, 21 April 2023.

 

 

 

Means of survival

Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.157, 23 April 2023

Everyday I think about dying,
about plague, war, famine,
global warming, the end of the world.
It helps keep my mind off things.

It made me happy when my selection of Roger McGough's verses were well-received, among the many excellent presentations, at last week's Poetry, Prose, Pies, Peas and Puddings evening. So here's a couple more. 

Survivor, above, typifies McGough's quiet wit and gentle wisdom. The last line's playful reversal offers us release from the anxiety of living in a broken world we feel helpless to change, whilst quietly suggesting that it's enough that we deal with those 'things' which test us every day. Echoes of Jesus' soothing end to the Sermon on the Mount:  “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

In another poem Roger McGough expresses gratitude towards his Liverpool-Irish Catholicism, in celebrating one thing which helps him get through each day. We might relate to this too....

To Religion

Thank you, Religion, for helping me believe
that I am living a charmed life.
Touch wood, no disasters so far. I've

more friends than foes, four children and a wife
who is always at the heart of things.
Pay my dues and chance a prayer to keep them safe.

In times of despair an alarm bell rings
and I wonder if perhaps it's all a con.
But then somewhere within, a small voice sings.

Mumbo jumbo? Before I can tell, it's gone.
Brainwashed? You're in my DNA? We've
no idea. Against the odds we soldier on.

People cleverer than me think I'm naive,
that God is dead. That when it ends, it ends.
But thank you, Religion, for helping me believe.

'Survivor' is published in Roger McGough, Collected Poems, Penguin 2004.
'To Religion' is published in Roger McGough, That Awkward Age, Penguin 2010.

The dead are not under the earth

Churches Weekly Newsletter: No.156, 16 April 2023

Those who have died have never, never left
The dead are not under the earth
They are in the rustling trees
They are in the groaning woods
They are in the crying grass,
They are in the moaning rocks
The dead are not under the earth.

– Ysaye Barnwell, 'Breaths', Sweet Honey in the Rock, 1988

This time each year my mind always turns towards my grandmother Edna Jones whose birthday was 15 April. My Yorkshire grandmother, the daughter of a Bingley cobbler, who as a young woman moved with her parents to Liverpool, where they set up a shoe shop in suburban Waterloo: my eventual birthplace. 

When Ysaye Barnwell sings “The dead are not under the earth,” she is of course being figurative. Edna's ashes went to earth back in the 1980s, mercifully some years before that other indelible 15th April event, the Hillsborough Stadium disaster of 1989, which shook our community to the core, and would have shaken Edna so, as she loved her sport, its people and its traditions. Each FA Cup Final day Edna would gather the family in her living room where we would watch the game together, followed by a ham tea.

But in her song Barnwell is inviting us to consider these questions: Where do you find your ancestors? How do relationships with generations back continue to nurture your life? What traditions do you hold around your ancestors, practices which are still part of your life?

These are good Eastertime questions, encouraging us to look for signs of resurrection in the details of our daily lives, to consider how those who have gone before us continue to shape some aspects of our characters.

I find Edna less in 'the rustling trees... the groaning woods' of this place, and more in the inflections of some West Yorkshire womens' voices, their terse and vigorously expressive ways of speaking; and I find something of her spirit too, in the solidarity I have (and I'm certain she would have had) with the families of those whose loved ones went to watch a football match that April day, and never returned, in their search for recognition and justice in the face of 'the patronising disposition of unaccountable power', as Bishop James Jones later put it in a government report. Now, years after that report's publication, there are plans to introduce a Hillsborough Law, with a so-called Independent Public Advocate to support families caught up in major disasters.

(thanks to Geez magazine for the 'Breaths' references)

The process of historical remembering: that is what Holy Week is about

Churches Weekly Newsletter: No.154, 2 April 2023

Jesus was no innocent victim, lest we forget. His crucifixion was the outcome of his dedicated mission to promote the values of the kingdom of God over and above the values of the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman Empire, which dominated his society. He constantly challenged the priests for the way their regulations crushed the ordinary people; and his heresy that there was a greater God than the Emperor called into question the hegemonic power of Rome. 

Whilst his crucifixion aligns him with every other victim of political killing through history, his resurrection has always offered hope to people whose lives are blighted by such powers. Hope, and the impetus to work for change-for-the-better in the world. If we forget this history we reduce Jesus' mission to something abstract, spiritualised, and uprooted from his - and our - lived experience.

Historical remembering and forgetting is a current issue in our public life. Whether the subject is war crimes, or slavery, or empire-building genocides, or corporate injustices, the 'debate' is too often reduced to a push-and-pull between those who say 'we should leave the past in the past', and those who want to kick over the statues.

The Christian gospel insists that we can't remain neutral on this. For the Jesus tradition (informed by the prophetic works of the Hebrew Scriptures) is clear where it stands on the ground between the poor and those who oppress them. The Jesus tradition is rooted in history, and it demands that we open our eyes to what we know. 

“You already know enough. So do I,” writes Sven Lindqvist on the first page of Exterminate All the Brutes, his exploration of the consequences of European imperialism. “It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.” This is no easy task, complications and discomfort abound as we peel back the many layers of our thorny histories, as we trace back the capital in our homes, churches and businesses to its potentially immoral sources, and process how to respond to what we find.

The gospel warns us that if we travel such paths there may be crucifixions along the way. But the gospel does not stop at crucifixions. It insists on resurrections. The hope is that the process of historical remembering can bring to life new ways for us to flourish on this earth together. The process of historical remembering: that is what Holy Week is about.

Every hour an ever more satisfying discovery

Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.153, 26 March 2023

Pippa Foulds, Couched and knotted. From facebook.com/pippafoulds/photos

Gillian Hazeldene, John Cage: Begin Anywhere. From gillianhazeldine.co.uk

 

Our Afternoon Fellowship is blessed to have gifted local people taking time and care to generously share their interests and crafts with us each month. This week Pippa Foulds described to us her journey from having been a lawyer to now being an active member of the Royal School of Needlework (RSN), teaching and undertaking commissions of all kinds in many places, worldwide. 

Pippa works with Durham Cathedral Broderers, and was appointed Head Broderer at York Minster in 2018. She showed us examples from a number of private commissions, commercial, ecclesiastical and conservation, and described in detail her restoration of the white altar frontal at Austwick Church (which will next be on display on Easter Day). Starting by taking a pair of scissors to vintage (if threadbare) silk, to crop out the needlework designs to be restored (onto new silk), must require quite some nerve. The meticulous work of creating, or re-creating, detailed shapes and forms clearly requires a steady hand and keen eye.

Pippa also showed us her work on one of the pictorial panels on ‘The Magna Carta, An Embroidery’ for artist Cornelia Parker, on ‘The Hardhome Embroidery’ for HBOs Game of Thrones, and of her project for RSN at Burberry’s Makers House, among exhibitors described as "some of Britain’s most exciting creators, (showing) the innovation and inspiration behind their work.”

The image above, of a recent piece, shows how Pippa’s interests in embroidery are now embracing more experimental forms. I found myself reflecting on how this mirrored Jilly Hazeldine’s presentation to the Fellowship in January, where she described a similar ‘journey’ which she is making from conventional, into increasingly abstract, styles of lettering, as demonstrated by the image above. 

“With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling / We shall not cease from exploration,” wrote T.S. Eliot in Little Gidding. Eliot was describing the progress through life of an engaged Christian faith, but his words might equally express something which artists and craftspeople who love their work also find to be true, and which we may each find true with whatever it is we’re passionate about. If we love something in that deep way, then every hour we spend with it is a time of ever more satisfying discovery.

Our warm welcome

Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.152, 19 March 2023

They come, they come; we may not always see their face, but this is their space.

Their space to breathe, their space to be.

They come, they come; in times of joy and times of sadness, shedding tears of grief and gladness.

Their space to breathe, their space to be.

They come, they come; keep the doors open wide, welcome them inside.

Their space to breathe, their space to be.*

It was encouraging that despite heavily falling snow and sub-zero temperatures, there was a high  attendance at our Deanery Lent Meeting at Settle Parish Church on Tuesday evening. It's clear that many want to engage with the Lent series' exploration of the interaction between 'Rural Life and Village Church'.

We considered 'Our Warm Welcome' to all those who visit our churches: tourists on a day out; walkers; people visiting graves; members of the congregation; families; guests to weddings, funerals or baptisms; local school children, their teachers, staff and parents; people looking for a place of peace or solitude; elderly visitors, young children, and visitors with restricted mobility. 

The Very Revd John Dobson DL, Dean of Ripon, gave an informative and stimulating presentation about how the people of Ripon Cathedral are working out their mission to be 'a mother church of the diocese ... proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom to the region'. He helpfully linked the cathedral's 'welcome ministry' to that of our parish churches, for whilst there are differences in scale, of course, there are many similarities. Many of us left the meeting keen to find ways to further extend our welcome to all.

Dean John reminded us that Jesus came ‘that they may have life, and have it abundantly…’ We should be proud of, and give thanks for the abundance of life which overflows from our churches: in their worship, in their history, in their life-in-community today. We can be grateful for the many opportunities which our churches afford, to extend a warm welcome to all. May each of us know that we can play a part in willingly welcoming all who are looking for something in these places for which we care, so that they will be blessed to find that something in them.

* from the excellent Welcome Guide from Exeter Diocese which 'helps churches look at their buildings with fresh eyes. This guide is full of lots of ideas as to how we can warm up our welcome and show our churches are open to all.' Recommended.

Dignity, Agency, Power

Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.148, 19 February 2023

To mark Church Action on Poverty’s 40th anniversary in 2022, Dignity, Agency, Power, an anthology of stories, prayers, reflections and liturgy, was published by Wild Goose Publications (Click here for details of the book). Here is the Foreword to that book, by Kathy Galloway, former head of Christian Aid Scotland.

"'Dignity', by the Scottish band Deacon Blue, is one of Scotland's most popular songs, sung at the closing ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Wherever the band perform it, audiences join in fervently. As well as being a great song with a great chorus, it expresses the human yearning to be treated with dignity, to live dignified lives, and most people can relate to that.

"The glory of God is a human being fully alive. So said St Irenaeus, and made explicit the link between human dignity and God's creativity. Dignity is non-negotiable and unconditional. It does not depend on the criteria the world uses. The word 'dignity' itself derives from the Latin dignus, meaning 'worth.' Market forces do not set our value.We do not require value addition in God's economy. We have intrinsic worth.

"It has always seemed to me that an unshakeable commitment to human dignity, and challenging the poverty that is a violation of that dignity, has been at the heart of Church Action on Poverty's vision, values and practice for its 40 years. And agency, an act of trust in the right or capacity of each person to act and give, is an expression of human dignity. When it comes to confronting poverty, people who struggle against it day by day, who really know what it feels like, have insights and understanding that no one else does. It gives them the right to speak and act. Their ideas for action are a gift that no one else has. 'Nothing about us, without us, is for us.'

"Church Action on Poverty has enabled people to come together, often crossing social, economic and political boundaries, to share, to listen, to learn. It has done this in imaginative and fruitful ways. Building solidarity in this way can be slow and painful and frustrating, but it builds confidence in the possibility of change and transformation, in the belief that 'yes we can!' When it seems that everything is against you - hostile public discourse, uncaring and uninformed policy decisions, remote and unaccountable institutions (and there are plenty of all of these in the current climate) believing in the possibility of resisting injustice and making effective and practical change is essential. This is power; not power over but power with and power to, the power to live fully human lives.

"A religious community which does not hunger and thirst for justice to be done bears false witness."

   In the UK, poverty is strongly associated with public attitudes of stigma and blaming individuals for their own poverty. Professor Ruth Lister describes this in terms of the 'othering' of people living in poverty. Over many decades, this attitude has been embedded not just in the welfare system, but in the way many professional agencies exercise moral judgements and highly intrusive methods of controlling the behaviour of people living in poverty (for example, the energy companies' enforcement of prepayment meters onto vulnerable customers). These attitudes have also been internalised by people in poverty themselves, to the extent that they describe a sense of shame, or in the words of Wayne Green, who spoke at CAP's first National Poverty Hearing in 1996 (which I attended): "What is poverty? Poverty is a battle of invisibility, a lack of resources, exclusion, powerlessness; being blamed for society's problems.’

The Churches have not been immune from these attitudes, too often treating poverty as a problem to be addressed through individual behaviour change, or in more theological language 'saving' people from their self-inflicted poverty. Meanwhile pioneering new research from CAP draws attention to the structural causes of poverty within church institutions, showing that church closures in recent years are disproportionately high in low-income neighbourhoods.

 This is the context in which poverty - and even many conventional attempts to tackle it - rob people of their dignity, agency or power over their lives.

In spite of this, Church Action on Poverty affirms the belief in the transformational possibilities of people coming together to reclaim their dignity, agency and power.

The bishops' apology: 'text book abuse'

Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.144, 22 January 2023

I spent much of Tuesday this week on two Safeguarding courses: one with the diocese, the other with the county education department. Compulsory and time-consuming, yes, but far from just box-ticking: these were valuable reminders of the need to listen hard, and very well, to people who might be being seriously mistreated by others; of the importance of paying utmost attention at all times to those around us who are especially liable to be ignored and misunderstood - or abused. This insight comes from the secular world but I think it agrees entirely with the overarching spirit of our Judaeo-Christian scriptures: that God’s heart is especially for those who society treats as outsiders, and that God would have us demonstrate that in our life of faith.

Then came the news that the Church of England‘s bishops have rejected demands to allow clergy to conduct same-sex marriages, but will be proposing to next month’s General Synod that same-sex couples will be able to come to church for a blessing after their civil marriage or civil partnership ceremony. Alongside this, the bishops apologised to LGBTQI+ people for the “rejection, exclusion and hostility” they have faced in churches and the impact this has had on their lives.

Thus, among all the reactions which followed, the one which stood out and  impacted me most was one from a friend of a priest-friend of mine who, on ‘coming out’ as gay had been so appallingly treated by his congregation and poorly supported by his ecclesiastical seniors that he, in anguish and at great cost, quit church ministry (and has since reinvented himself as an independent celebrant). This friend responded to the bishop’s double-edged statement by saying,

“It’s a text book abusive relationship. ‘We love you, we’re sorry, it’s your own decision to make us treat you like this’ … ‘We love you, we’re sorry, we promise that next time it will be different’… It never is and they never stop hurting people and breaking promises to lovely trusting people who deserve better.”

The bishops urged all congregations in their care to welcome same-sex couples “unreservedly and joyfully” as they reaffirm their commitment to a “radical new Christian inclusion founded in scripture, in reason, in tradition, in theology and the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it – based on good, healthy, flourishing relationships, and in a proper 21st Century understanding of being human and of being sexual”. 

This statement came at the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and this whole episode invites our prayer that the churches will develop a culture that doesn’t see faith as a war to be won, but as a world to be explored; that doesn’t regard ‘different’ people as enemies, but as people to be loved.

For some Christians this debate may seem like an irrelevance compared to some of the other pressing issues of our day. But for many others it cuts to the quick, it is a raw subject reaching to the core of who they are. I’m especially aware of the pain suffered by the many LGBTQI+ Christians who feel unwelcome in both the communities which they ought to be most at home: the church, with all its “rejection, exclusion and hostility”, and the gay community which is understandably wary about Christians. To be rejected by those closest to you must be agonising to bear. 

I am glad to say that in our congregations there is already welcome towards those of different sexualities, but we are some distance from the highly-charged politics of Synod. 

Is it time to admit that this is not a ‘debate’ which must be ‘won’ on micro-points of scripture, but rather that a culture of “radical new Christian inclusion” can only be achieved when we practice scripture’s overarching spirit of being attentive to those usually ignored, when we learn to listen hard to those usually misunderstood, and especially, when we stand with and for those we realise are being abused?

 

It's about why we matter

Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.141, 25 December 2022 / 1 January 2023

Would Mary and Joseph have wanted to go to Bethlehem that night? if you think about it, given Mary's vulnerable condition and their being among the struggling poor, it's unlikely that they would. The gospel makes it pretty clear that - like everyone else who'd made that physically demanding, financially costly journey - they were given no choice.

Luke doesn't record with what punishment Governor Quirinus threatened non-compliant taxpayers, but we can judge from the narrative that his census was aggressively enforced. If you're barely subsisting, why would you want to go to Bethlehem at your own crippling expense to sign up to a new tax regime which you knew would impoverish you even more in the future? In the distressing knowledge that in your absence your home might be torched by followers of the Zealot tax resistance movement?

The Christ-child was born into a struggle which persists to this day: the struggle of ordinary people to get by in situations of extreme duress forced on them by rulers who treat the working classes contemptuously.

It's a Wonderful Life

It's a struggle poignantly portrayed by James Stewart as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. Bailey is an honest man driven to attempt suicide as he faces ruin at the hands of avaricious banker Henry F. Potter. Like the nativity story itself, the film is a Christmas favourite, of which Matt Haig writes, 'It's not schmaltzy. It's raw. It has incredible power. About the big importance of small lives. About the dehumanising cruelty of capitalism. About why we matter. About the difference a life can make. About why we should stay alive.' This could also perfectly describe the nativity stories told by Matthew and Luke. 

A vice-president of Humanists UK, Polly Toynbee, this week observed that 'In all Christmas messages, the poor inherit the earth, the stable stands for the homeless and refugees'. Toynbee finds it 'a mystery ... why so little of this goodwill gets beyond the tinsel into politics.' She neglects to mention the numbers of Christians who are active in feeding the poor and supporting homeless people and refugees, and the many who campaign for changes in law and practice to improve the well-being of those who are struggling.

But I think it is fair to ask: if we do believe that the nativity story holds truths which are relevant to our world today, then how in our homes this Christmas might we celebrate 'the big importance of small lives', how as individuals and communities this coming year might might we resist 'the dehumanising cruelty of capitalism', and how as churches might we stand with ordinary folk like Mary, Joseph, and George Bailey to affirm just 'why we matter'?