Ash Wednesday - Pray, Fast & Give to Zimbabwe

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7909133.stm - This is a link to BBC video of John Sentamu & Rowan Williams calling on the world to fast, pray and give to save lives and stand in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe.

It is a simple message - pray, fast, give - for the start of Lent it is a reminder that true worship, true prayer, true fasting, lead to true justice [Isaiah 58:5-10] -

with acknowldegements to Christine Sine and the God Space Blog.

God Bus Wars III

Now it looks as if we are going to get "Atheist Unions" on UK University Campuses and atheist bus campaigns across Europe.

Ah well, all power to them - I doubt either initiative will sway people one way or the other. Faith or its loss are usually grown in the context of family, friends and community, not bus ads or little University cliques. Having been part of a couple of Christian Unions in my student days, I have seen several of my contemporaries lose faith once outside of the comfy clique of CU life, and several others find faith once they were out in the "real world".

And like my most people, I only read adverts to laugh or scoff at their absurdity.

The New Localism?

I'm not given to party politics, but I am detecting some interesting new noises coming from the Tory party, noises that chime with my thinking and concerns about how we live today from a Biblical worldview.

I should qualify that of course – I am a Thatcher Child – I came of age under a Tory Government, I was out there as a young man protesting against the Poll Tax. I grew up mistrusting the Tories as the party of the rich and the powerful, of self-interest. Thatcher's famous "there is no such thing as Society" quote was the death knell for my sense that the Tories were a party that had anything for me or ordinary people of my generation. For most people of my generation, the idea of even engaging with Tory policy, let alone voting for them sticks in the craw and makes the flesh creep with horror!

And the legacy of Thatcher era Toryism is with us still, in the collapse of families, the atomisation of society, fear and mistrust of strangers, etc. It is also with us in the legacy of Reaganomics and the New Right, with the increasing monopolisation of financial systems and markets by a hard right, neo-liberal consensus that encouraged the sort of cavalier risk taking that helped stoke our current financial meltdown.

In short, Thatcher era Toryism, and it's bastard spawn, New Labour, have promoted a system that is, frankly, Godless, self focussed, and ultimately as ethically and financially bankrupt as communism and fascism were before it, albeit with a thin veneer of liberal democracy instead of brutal totalitarianism (although Labour's control & command approach to social policy is creeping in the direction of the totalitarian).

Globalisation was the proudest achievement of this way of doing things, but with it came an increasing impoverishment of marginal and developing world communities, reactionary religious and then secular fundamentalism, and ultimately exposed the economies of nations little involved in US or European financial systems to the catastrophic collapse of US, Japanese and EU markets and economies.

But there are signs of something changing. Two articles in this month's Prospect Magazine illustrate an interesting take on the way local communities are beginning to rest political, financial, and cultural control from the old centres of power. Phillip Blond argues in "The Rise of the Red Tories" that the Conservatives need to rest the discourse away from the consensus that they and Labour have built up, and move towards recognising local communities as the political, cultural and economic power bases of society. In the same edition, Peter Bazzlegate argues something similar with respect to Public Service Broadcasting – getting local, web based PSB publicly funded and moving away from the monolithic structures of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

The Tories have just launched a series of policy initiatives that is moving in that direction as well (see below)

Now, I am not jumping on board and saying this is it, wow, let's all vote Tory. I am still waiting to see the fine print and how this might work in practice. But I am excited, because we need to build community again in this country, and every political, economic and social trend over the last four or five decades has systematically eroded this. Anything that seeks to reverse that trend, and move us towards a more healthy and human way of functioning as a society is worthy of serious consideration.

The Biblical model is useful to consider – because it emphasises relationships. Justice is relational, compassion is relational, faith is relational – we work these things out through communities, congregations, shared stories of what God has done, what He has asked of us, what He has promised us. We grow in all ways together, not in isolation, and our salvation, while not a result of birth or group membership but born of a one-to-one relationship with God, is mediated and outworked in practice in the context of a congregation, a family, and a community.

The impersonal, the money driven, the self centred are all condemned throughout Old and New Testaments, time and again. But what is lauded in scripture is not community for its own sake, but a community that is in right relationship first and foremost with God, and then with one another, with neighbouring communities, and with the environment. All relationships are contingent upon one another, all start and end in our relationship with God The Hebrew word for this is Shalom, which we often translate as "peace".

Will the churches engage with this new localism? Is it just another fad that will pass, or is it the start of a new, dramatic paradigm shift in British society and politics? Time will tell, but I for one do not want to see this opportunity to see a profound change slip past.

God Bus Wars II

Just for fun, discovered this random generator for new atheist (or other) bus ads - http://is.gd/iQp3

God Bus Wars

While the atheist adverts doing the rounds on London buses stirred up a bit of a buzz a few weeks back (quote: "There Probably is no God: so stop worrying and enjoy your life"), they would probably be largely forgotten about now. But rather than letting the ads lie and treating them with the humour and disdain they richly deserved, some rather sad (and humourless) Christian groups have launched their own versions, and they are as ever embarrassingly bad.

I preferred this one myself, more topical and more inclined to raise a smile on a snow & fog bound London on a Friday morning

(with acknowledgements to St. Aidan to Abbey Manor blog and Kouya Chronicle)

Keep Calm and Carry On

Somehow or other, this old war time poster has become a bit of a cult image it seems, according to BBC Online Magazine

This is a bit of a "British Thing" - that sense of pragmatism in the face of adversity, the famous stiff upper lip and the belief that what one really needs in a crisis is a good cup of tea.

Given the fact that the UK economy is (to quote an oft overused phrase) "going to hell in a hand cart", our children are the most physically and emotionally unhealthy in Europe (thanks to us selfish adults) and that we are stuck in the midst of the worst winter weather in eighteen years, it is perhaps more timely than ever. In the face of everything, let's just keep calm, not make a fuss and get on with it.

From a Christian viewpoint it makes particular sense (to me at least) - if God is in charge, why panic? We are reminded time and again in scripture to fear no evil if we trust in God. It is sound advice, because panic seldom achieves anything.

And on the subject of not panicking - "don't panic Mr Manwaring!" being the famous cry of Corporal Jones in 'Dad's Army' and of course "Don't Panic" the wonderfully British soothing words on the cover of the 'Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' - panic remains an essentially foreign idea to British culture.

We prefer to moan instead. As Stephen Fry recently pointed out, when Americans say "Only in America" it is an expression of national pride, when we say "only in Britain" it is invariably the start (or end) of a long moan or rant.

So maybe keeping calm and carrying on are good messages, but maybe we need some more positive messages as a nation too. Because like so much in British culture, this poster is about facing hardship with stoicism, and not about seeking change and transformation - about bearing the problems rather than finding solutions.

We need first to believe in the possibility of change if we are to change things or be changed ourselves. That, maybe is something missing in British culture, and needs restoring.