Pain in the offering - gay marriage and the Church

During my gap year in the late sixties I taught on the slopes of Mount Kenya. On arrival I was told not to be surprised. It was customary for students (in their late teens and early twenties) to go around holding hands with friends of the same sex. It was not long before I ceased to notice, it was so normal. However in England, for me holding hands was the first move of courtship; it was what you did when you were "going out" with a girl! There are different cultural norms to do with relations between the sexes. I start with this also to illustrate what a sexualised society ours is - so that we make all sorts of projections about partners, or home sharers, which may well be far from true, based on our own cultural conditioning or our imagination. 

I am returning to the issue of same sex marriage. I suspect that this will be my final post on the subject - at least for a while! But I need to write it having lain awake quite a bit last night with it on my mind. I apologise in advance as a lot of this will be derivative and will ask of you, dear reader, to follow links to secondary sources. My defence for that is partially a comment on my previous post, "I have no wish to spend money on books providing (what I see to be) wickedness. So if I'm to be persuaded, the new kids on the block have got to do the work and make their arguments available for free." Well, here are some free links, which no doubt will fail to convince my correspondent, but encourage me to consider that there may be more than one valid interpretation of the Biblical evidence. More disturbingly for me one scholar with whom I occasionally correspond recently wrote, "I have been provoked by your latest blogs to read your recommended reading, as well as the Pilling report. I have had a look at the NT discussion in Renato Lings, Love Lost in Translation. I haven't yet got into Justin Lee’s Unconditional. As yet I remain as traditionally convinced as ever, though hopefully willing to find that I might be wrong, if I am!"

First, let me ask you to take a leap of empathy which I euphemistically described as "grim" to Jane. It asks you to imagine what the world must be like to a youngster who discovers she is different from the "norm". You need 20 minutes to watch this: Love is all you need? All right, it's fiction, but as the film-makers point out it is based on real incidents and, as a writer, I would say that good stories tell the truth, sometimes more than history. 

Secondly, here is a link to the highly respected evangelical Christian pastor and teacher, John Piper, and his account of how he went from a self-described racist to an adoptive father of an African American: I was a racist. My friend, Anita Mathias, writer and blogger (anitamathias.com), who drew my attention to it, commented, "society is often ahead of the church, and the church later catches up. Examples were colonialism, slavery and racism condoned by theologians. Society is ahead of the church in the environmental movement and in animal rights, though I have no doubt the church will catch up. Society was and is ahead of the church when it comes to feminism and equal rights for women. The church tends to be conservative and reactionary as an institution, though this is not true of every individual Christian, of course." Here are two quotes from the article, the first about the black woman who helped his mother with the cleaning, the second about the implications of the gospel.

"No, she was not a slave. But the point still stands. Of course, we were nice. Of course, we loved Lucy. Of course, she was invited to my sister's wedding. As long as she and her family 'knew their place'. Being nice to, and having strong affections for, and including in our lives is what we do for our dogs too. It doesn't say much about honor and respect and equality before God. My affections for Lucy did not provide the slightest restraint on my racist mouth when I was with my friends."

"I believe that the gospel—the good news of Christ crucified in our place to remove the wrath of God and provide forgiveness of sins and power for sanctification—is our only hope for the kind of racial diversity and harmony that ultimately matters. If we abandon the fullness of the gospel to make racial and ethnic diversity quicker or easier, we create a mere shadow of the kingdom, an imitation. And we lose the one thing that can bring about Christ-exalting diversity and harmony. Any other kind is an alluring snare. For what does it profit a man if he gains complete diversity and loses his own soul?"

I can sense some of my readers by now becoming irritated and saying, "But what about the Bible? What about what it says about homosexuality? It's plain as a pikestaff there." So, here, thirdly, is my next link, which although written by a young gay man is a fair summary of the alternative informed view of the proof texts usually adduced to condemn homosexuality. It's the transcript of an hour's lecture and so I am assuming that you, dear readers, would rather I did not reproduce it in full here, but leave you the freedom to read it at your leisure: Matthew Vines, The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality. 

However, I will reproduce the critique from the blog (http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/) where I found the transcript. The reaction of the author, Rachel Held Evans, is near enough to my own for me to (mis)appropriate it!

"I confess I approached the lecture with some skepticism - not because I've never heard a strong case made for the affirming view, but because Matthew is so young and isn't exactly a biblical scholar. But I was impressed. I'm sure Matthew would be the first to acknowledge the scholarship is not his own, but the way he so carefully and skillfully puts together the argument is unique and effective. It's not perfect, but it's compelling and reasonable.

"And I confess that I always engage in these conversations 'wanting' the affirming view to make sense because of the many dear folks in my life who are gay and who I'm certain did not choose to be gay and who long to be faithful to Jesus but are understandably disheartened by the prospect of lifelong celibacy. So even though I grew up only hearing the traditional view, I have that bias based on new information about homosexuality and new relationships with people who are gay, and I'm not ashamed to admit that bias. Still, I don't want to believe something because I 'want' it to be true; I want to believe something because it 'is' true. So as a Christian committed to the authority of Scripture I've been working through these passages (and others) for a few years now, struggling to understand them better. And I confess to playing the devil's advocate in my head, no matter which perspective I'm reading. I really see both sides on this one....

"- What I like most about Matthew's presentation is that he deals with some of the lingering questions I always have after hearing the affirming view. His response to the challenge that 'all the Bible's references to homosexuality are negative', is, I think, a good one. That has always been a hang-up of mine, and while Matthew's response still leaves a question in my mind (why are there no positive examples of a homosexual relationships in Scripture?) it makes sense. I also think he responds well to the charge that gay Christians who don't want to be celibate are just trying to take the easy way out and are unwilling to commit to the sacrificial nature of following Jesus.

"- I really like Matthew's treatment of Romans 1, particularly regarding what is meant by 'natural' and 'unnatural' as they were typically used not only in Paul's writings but also in the broader culture. Having spent a good deal of time studying those head covering passages, I love that he shows the similarities between Paul's argumentation in 1 Corinthians 11 and in Romans 1. I also think his points about how homosexuality was generally perceived in the Ancient Near Eastern world (as a compulsion toward excess rather than an orientation) is worth considering. We don't fault the writers of the Old Testament texts for assuming that water was held above the earth by a sold firmament, so why would we fault them for assuming that gay sex was something heterosexual people did when they grew unsatisfied with their heterosexual partners? At what point do we allow the new information we have about sexual orientation affect how we understand the context and assumptions behind these texts?

"- Still, I'm wondering if the 'exchanging natural relationships for unnatural relationships' is a bit more general and less specific than Matthew indicates here - like that Paul is not referring to specific people denying their orientation but rather generally, to the acceptance of whatever sexual practices are referenced in that text.

"- I love what Matthew said about how we are actually being more faithful to the texts when we preserve some of the ambiguity of the 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy passages. Why assume we know exactly what the authors were referencing there when we simply don't?

"- As for the conservative responses, I think the critique from Evan Lenow in the Christian Post article regarding the creation narratives is a reasonable one. He rightfully points out that the context of Adam and Eve as suitable partners is that of procreation, something I think Matthew overlooks.

"- However, I don't think Lenow's response to Matthew's treatment of Romans 1 is as strong. He sorta just defaults to the old 'this guy doesn't believe in the authority of Scripture' line rather than seriously engaging what I believe are strong arguments from Matthew regarding the context and language of Romans 1.

"- I would say the strongest point in Lenow's response is that the language used in the 1 Corinthians passages is very similar to that used in the Leviticus 18 passage, suggesting Paul may indeed have been referring to gay sex...a point Matthew fails to address in this lecture.

"- I think both sides could have spent a little more time on Jesus - addressing both his silence on homosexuality in particular and his comments on heterosexual marriage...as well as the general inclusive thrust of Jesus' teachings.

"- I would also love to see more people bring the biblical references to eunuchs into this debate, not because eunuchs are the same as LGBTQ people, but because they were notable sexual minorities in the day who were specifically condemned by OT law, and Jesus & the early church leaders were profoundly welcoming and inclusive of them.

"And then finally, I have to admit that Christian history really looms over this discussion for me. After reading Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, I've grown somewhat wary of the idea that whoever 'wins' with the most proof texts in this debate will be on the right side of history. You just can't read the quotations from southern preachers regarding the Bible and slavery and not see the similarities in the rhetorical style and approach. Honestly, if given the task of making a clear biblical case for the abolition of slavery, I'm not sure my arguments could hold up against those armed with Bible verses that appear to support slavery as an institution. (As we discussed a few weeks ago, many of the same passages once used to support slavery are still used to support the subjection of women.)"

On Rachel's point about Jesus, it is certainly true that he broke the conventions of his time by welcoming women among his close followers and learners, touching untouchables, having dealings with Samaritans and Gentiles and consorting with tax-collectors and notorious sinners. It was only recently that a friend suggested to me that it was quite likely that the centurion's "boy" (Greek pais) whose healing we read about in Matthew 8 and Luke 7 was the soldier's protegé lover. Such relationships were common in the Graeco/Roman world. (For a fuller account see "Jesus affirmed a gay couple".) Surprisingly the centurion escapes any censure but on the contrary is held up as a paradigm of faith.

It seems to me that there is a disjunction between the "traditionalists" and those wanting change. The traditionalists look at behaviours; the radicals look at relationship. The traditionalists concentrate on the sexual acts; the radicals emphasise lifelong commitment. They each see reality in a different way. As I read somewhere, "The heterosexual complementarity of the sexes’ functions is the conservatives’ ace in the pack over the progressives’ equally ontological argument that God created 'homosexual persons' in the 'image of God'."

Almost finally today I came across this article by a pastor of an American Vineyard church who found himself asking why we mostly have no problem welcoming and affirming divorced and remarried people in churches, when Jesus' teaching was on the face of it so clear about such relationships being adulterous. He reflected on C S Lewis's marriage to divorcée, Joy Davidman, which at the time the CofE would not allow: CS Lewis' marriage & the gay marriage controversy.

"Call me naïve, but I think there’s a third way for evangelicals in the gay marriage debate, and it’s a way that honors the Bible and the power of the gospel better than 'love the sinner, hate the sin' or 'open and affirming'. Whether or not it works is another matter. But I think it’s time to give it a try, especially if it could bear witness to a risen Lord better than the current rehashed moralism that we’re calling the gospel.

"If you are an evangelical pastor who has felt the same troubled conscience that I have over your exclusion of gay, lesbian, and transgender people, you might try what the pastor who married C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman did: ask Jesus what you should do and do that, come what may."

Penultimately, I heeded this acute observation on Rachel Evans' blog by a Kristen Rosser: "There's something distressingly clinical about 2 heterosexual people discussing the happiness and suffering of LGBT people as if they were case studies and not people. I don't think it's my place to determine whether, and to what extent, other people should be happy or should be allowed to suffer. Suffering is of no value in and of itself; if anyone suffers for the cause of Christ or in order to do good, it needs to be by their own choice and not because someone else determined that they should."

So what are my conclusions from all this?

• It is possible to hold different legitimate interpretations of the Biblical teaching on homosexuality.
• There is a difference between promiscuous sexual activity (whether straight or gay) and loving committed relationships (whether straight or gay).
• Singleness (or celibacy) is an individual calling from God, not something one Christian should demand of another. All Christians are called to be chaste, in the sense of sexually responsible and loving. This has implications for all of our sexual activity.
• We now live in a society where equal marriage is the law of the land and the Church needs to accept that fact and consider its treatment of legally married lesbian and gay couples.
• The Church needs to admit and repent that it has excluded and wounded LGBT people in the past and continues to do so.
• Personally, were I still in parish ministry, I would want and welcome LGBT people, couples and single, and, more, affirm and bless them as beloved children of God for whom Jesus died.
• And yes, I trust my church introduces a service to bless gay commitment as it blesses straight marriage - before long - equal in status but not identical in nature.

From St Mary's Church, Richmond

And finally - thank you and congratulations if you've stuck with me this far! - one of my waking thoughts last night was, am I doing what I see proponents of euthanasia doing, viz arguing for something merely because it's what people I love want, because it's what I want to believe? I honestly don't think so, as my present conviction did not come from laborious argument but rather from a vivid moment of insight. But I'm reassured it's something I'm not alone in wondering. And so I ask for myself and all of us a touch of Cromwellian humility, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."

"...as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful" (Colossians 3.13-15).

PS I was interested to discover that today's Telegraph has an article headed "CofE top female cleric: I would have 'no problem' with blessings for gay marriages. The Dean of York, the Very Rev Vivienne Faull... says effect of the Church's stance on same-sex marriage is 'dreadful'".

A rainbow world

In May 2004 we travelled with our great friends Anthony and Ruth to Florence, staying in the Hotel Berchielli near the Ponte Vecchio. Jane's and my bedroom, I remember looked down on this quiet square, Piazza del Limbo, with the 11th century Santi Apostoli church opposite. That was the first time that I appreciated the relief and the hazards of wheelchair travel. It was an unforgettable four days. Among the sights in one of the large piazzas there was a peace vigil - it was a year after the invasion of Iraq with all the messy mopping up. The vigil was largely young people and students. They were selling peace ('PACE') flags, and so I bought one as my souvenir of Florence, not as beautiful as Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence sextet, but there we go. I still have it.

I remember my family asking me when I proudly showed it them, "Do you know what it means, Dad?" So I told them it was an Italian peace flag and I'd got it from a vigil in Florence. They told me it also was the symbol of the lesbian and gay movement. (In fact I have now discovered that they were wrong for reasons I'll explain.) However at that time I was - I was going to say ambivalent about homosexuality, but that's too kind to myself - I was anti-gay. ("Love the sinner; hate the sin" - that sort of thing.) I put my peace flag away in a drawer. Readers of my blog will know that comparatively recently I have repented of my ignorant arrogance, as a result of encounters, study and reflection - see here, and here, and here. I've concluded that normally sexual orientation is not a lifestyle choice but an innate gift.

I was reminded of my flag with the great celebration in the media of the introduction of equal marriage at midnight on Friday. I was very glad when Archbishop Justin Welby went on record saying, "I think the church has reacted by fully accepting that it's the law, and should react on Saturday by continuing to demonstrate in word and action, the love of Christ for every human being." Strangely, for such a moderate statement, it will no doubt have exposed him to a good deal of hate mail and brickbats, probably from all sides. Nonetheless as The Guardian commented it did represent a shift in tone, rather as Pope Francis's "Who am I to judge?" answer did. I was surprised to read about the reaction to the American charity, World Vision's decision to open employment to people in a same-sex marriage. As one blog put it, the gates of the social media were stormed by people arguing for what they felt was the truth. "Additionally, and almost unbelievably, many chose to withdraw their child sponsorships in order to send a loud, clanging-symbol  of a message to World Vision." I suppose it was not surprising, albeit shameful, when World Vision quickly reversed its decision. A friend of mine was on the receiving end of very nasty trolling when she commented, "Someday the Church will look back on the fight over same-sex relationships with same incredulity & shame as with slavery & women’s suffrage." However, I hope she is proved right - in the not too far distant future.


Meanwhile I am looking forward to joining with lesbian friends of ours who are marrying on Friday. We feel very privileged to have been invited and are looking forward to congratulating them - and I shall be praying that God will bless them as they will have made their lifelong marriage vows to each other. Every such lifelong commitment needs every blessing, I reckon.

The LGBT flag has, you'll notice, the red stripe on top and the purple at the bottom and has the turquoise missing. The stripes represent (starting at the top): life, healing, sunlight, nature, serenity/harmony, spirit.

As I sit in my chair, I still value the rainbow as the reminder of God being utterly faithful and loving us too much ever to destroy the world, despite all our attempts. It reminds me of the eternal love that is at the heart of existence. It reminds me that even I am loved by the creator of everything. Hard to credit, but apparently true. "His steadfast love - for everyone - endures for ever."

PS The reason I have been quite vocal on the issue is the harshness of the criticism heaped on LGBT people, often sadly by followers of Jesus who had nothing to say on the subject but was very explicit on judging: "Judge not, that you be not judged." This is my way of saying I'm sorry.

To my friends (part 1)

When I survey the wondrous cross

on which the Prince of Glory died;   

my richest gain I count but loss,

and pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,

save in the death of Christ, my God;

all the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to his blood.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,

or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

that were an offering far too small;

love so amazing, so divine,

demands my soul, my life, my all.                                                         

              Isaac Watts

This blog is very much my own reactions to things going on in my life, or in the news, or sometimes both. This post is particularly so. It’s written in the light of good friends who have been severely wounded, both themselves and their children. It’s written after news reportage of the Church of England’s House of Bishops’ Pastoral Guidance on Same Sex Marriage, published somewhat ironically on St Valentine’s Day, and after discussion of it on the Sunday Programme on Radio 4.

What follows is not a criticism of the archbishops whose names are appended to the guidance and both of whom I greatly admire. I understand they have an impossible course to follow, and I understand that the guidance is a holding position while the two years’ consultation of November’s “Pilling Report” on Human Sexuality takes place. And I understand the dilemma the bishops found themselves in between the Church’s “official” teaching on the subject and the more “progressive” approach of the Pilling group.

Neither is this a theological essay. I’m not the theologian of my family! I suppose it’s no profounder than a personal cry of the heart. What follows is, I hope, self-explanatory.

Dear Emma and Angela

It was really good to meet you on Friday. Of course Father Dom had told me a bit about you and what you were wanting. What he told me was clearly true. You are a remarkable pair. And in the few years of your relationship your love has withstood what many don’t experience in a lifetime. I think it was you, Ange, who said you’d tried to find something bad in your love, like something that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, or like tasting salt when you’ve asked for sugar in your coffee, in what you have. And you couldn’t find it.

You asked what Jesus would have thought of you two. That’s a very good question, but probably an impossible one, because time-travelling that perfect, utterly loving Lord into the present is beyond us. I don’t think he would have refused to welcome you, that’s for sure. However let me approach it differently. I was listening to Kathryn Scott’s beautiful version of Isaac Watts’ When I survey the wondrous cross, the greatest of all hymns, this morning – beautiful! I was struck by how wonderfully and impossibly aspirational it was, like so much of the best worship. (Charles Wesley reportedly said he would give up all his other hymns to have written this one.) Watts intended it be sung during communion. It is a highly devotional response to the sacrificial love of Christ.

I noticed phrases such as “my richest gain I count but loss”, “all the vain things that charm me most/I sacrifice them to His blood” and “demands my soul, my life, my all”. They were, I reflected, in the same vein and as radical as the demands that Jesus made to his contemporaries, about leaving, or selling, everything, about living like the birds, not worrying about the future, about observing every scintilla of the law, about absolute faithfulness to one’s spouse, about hating the members of one’s family, about taking up one’s cross daily and following him. We comfort ourselves with the assurance that they are poetic or Hebrew expressions, and that they must be taken in their context. That may well be true, but the fact is that most of us muddle through as best we may.

Sometimes, it seems to me, the Holy Spirit and the Word (i.e. Jesus’ words) come together and speak to a person in a specific way. For example, St Francis hears the call to abandon his life of luxury and takes to the road with nothing. Many others have heard a similar call. However it is a personal call. It’s not a demand made by an institution. In fact on the whole such personal calls are an embarrassment to hierarchies, whether of church or state. When the institutional Church starts to make the demands which only Christ who knows our hearts can make, it oversteps its competence. Forgive me if my history is ill-founded, but when the Church used its power to instigate the Crusades as a Christian duty it got it wrong.

There have been times in history when, for example, the Church allowed marriage for its presbyters, others when it demanded celibacy, and now in this country we have two patterns of priestly ministry. I’m married; Father Dom may not marry. In the Church of England divorcés were once barred from ministry, but now are accepted without a qualm. Once, women were excluded from the priesthood; now the C of E is on the way to what was the original (in my view!) pattern of women in leadership. In the C of E there was a time not long ago when vicars were not allowed to conduct a wedding for people who had been divorced, only a blessing after a civil ceremony. Remember Charles and Camilla? There was even a time when living together before getting married was “living in sin”. Now the Church tolerates it and is just grateful when cohabiters decide to tie the knot.

It’s tough then that those who are naturally attracted to others of their own gender should be faced with such a hard line, as your Church and mine follow. Two days ago, the Bishops and Archbishops in my Church issued “pastoral guidelines” for clergy about same sex marriage. Clergy are reminded that under canon (Church) law they may not themselves marry someone of the same sex, although they may be in a civil partnership provided they remain celibate within it. When the Equal Marriage Act comes into effect in March, of course, under Statute Law they will not be allowed to conduct a marriage ceremony for a gay couple. They are reminded that they may not formally bless a couple after a civil partnership ceremony nor after a same-sex wedding, although a “more informal kind of prayer” is permissible.(Not that you need to know all that! It's just on my mind at the moment and it's partially relevant.) 

Understandable though this all is in light of the current unresolved controversy within the Church (based mainly around a handful of hotly debated proof texts in the Old and New Testament, which I know you have looked at carefully), to my gay friends it perpetuates a rigidly negative message – which unsurprisingly strikes them as homophobic, despite the repeated assurances of love with which the Pastoral Guidance is replete. I understand them feeling less loved, less accepted and positively excluded by the Church which claims to represent Jesus Christ on earth. I wonder if the mistake we are making as the institutional Church is to demand that members of the LGBT community make sacrifices, about which the rest of us devoutly sing but fail to demand of ourselves. It strikes me that Jesus alone has the prerogative of making demands on anyone. When he walked the earth, he called for different sacrifices from individual followers.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9.57ff) 

I can’t find it in myself to say that you must give each other up or sacrifice the comfort and love that you find in each other. I think that only the Lord Jesus could make such a demand, which he would do through His Spirit and through your consciences. Not me; not any church. However having talked to you, I have no doubt that that your love is genuine, as real as mine and my wife’s, and that your commitment to each other is “for better for worse” – you’ve proved that! – and that it’s lifelong. I can see that you nurture each other’s faith. You’re good for each other. I know you don't want to get married yet, but you want to make a formal commitment to each other and to God and you’d like to have the commitment publicly blessed. You didn’t choose your orientation. In fact I know it has been an agonizing struggle, especially for you, Angela. I believe your love is a good thing, a gift. It's generous; it's unselfish. I can’t refuse to ask God to bless it. Somehow we shall find a way.

God bless you and keep you.

Michael  

PS Have you seen this moving video of the star Ellen Page speaking on Valentine’s Day? The tension and emotion as she speaks is visibly tangible, isn’t it? And she expresses her (and so many others’) pain and hope so well. I think everyone should watch it. Brave girl.

PS A very good explanation of why the guidance hurts so badly is here: http://www.acceptingevangelicals.org/2014/02/bishops-ban-clergy-from-same-sex-marriage/#comment-3852

A great day... for the world?

In an email to me yesterday, a good friend wrote about my "letters, blogs, diaries, lectures, diatribes, declamations or acclamations". I replied, "Diatribes - moi?" But let me break the habit of a lifetime to let off steam after yesterday's vote in the House of Commons to redefine the English language and the natural law.

In an item on The World at Ten on Radio 4 in the evening, there was a vox pop from a pub in Soho. One comment struck me. "It's a great day for gays, for Britain and for the world" (my italics). Well, it will certainly have momentous, and unforeseen unintended, consequences for this country, I predict. But isn't it time we got a realistic perspective on our own global importance? Along with other former colonial powers, we lost our colonies in the last century. Only we still cherish the illusion that we are a "great" power. We still presume we have so much to teach these benighted nations, who've only just emerged from the jungle or the desert. Hello! 

Isn't it time that we acknowledged that we have at least as much to learn from those on whom, let's be honest, we still look down as we ever taught them? Let's look at ourselves from outside. It would not be hard to paint a picture of a country whose media are corrupt, whose police are compromised, whose financial institutions are irresponsible, whose politicians are venal and whose aspiring leaders persistently and dishonestly deny perverting the course of justice. It might perplex the onlooker how one small off-shore island presumes to judge and intervene in other nations' internal struggles, when it would vociferously and violently resist the same happening in reverse. It might puzzle him how a country planning to spend billions of pounds on upgrading its nuclear weapons' system takes such a morally superior position over others who attempt similarly to defend themselves. 

It really is time that we abandoned the notion that we are a "great" nation - and by that I don't mean that we have to give up our national pride; but it needs to be proportionate; it needs to be real. We are not morally superior. I was unexpectedly moved last week watching the programme Make Me a Muslim, in which thoroughly secular model, Shanna Bukhari, set out to discover why more young British women are converting to Islam. The answer was not uniform, but it seemed to be a symptom of a profound dissatisfaction with our apparently enlightened culture, and something that occurred to me was whether our national unease with Islam was partly a reaction to its implied critique of this country's morality, or lack of it. Of course we dress up our Islamophobia in the guise of "It's only the terrorists we mind," but I wonder.  

Our politicians are not cut from a better cloth than all others. Our institutions are not intrinsically better than others' institutions. The realisation that we are an "ordinary" nation would save us much in terms of expenditure, of unrealistic ambition and popular discontent. I gather Chris Bryant MP was heard to say in Parliament yesterday, "The world has moved on." That may not be the best reason for redefining language and law, but is an excellent reason for reviewing and realigning our global perspective. What happens in the Commons does not shake the world.

Chameleons change colour depending where they are

I'm not going to comment on the rights and wrongs of the issue of "gay" or "equal" marriage, since I've already blogged about it here, "Humpty Dumpty or Brave new world?". As you may remember the principle that most concerned me was governments trying change reality by redefining language. I'm happy for people who love each other to live together with long-term commitment. And I readily concede that Christians, including me, have been slow to wish them well, for which I'm sorry.

However this time I'm concerned with the nature of politics and the behaviour of politicians in particular. You may remember that before Christmas the Prime Minister made a much trumpeted speech to church leaders in Oxford, of which the Daily Mail's headline was "Speak up for Christianity, Cameron tells Archbishop: PM calls on the Church to defend 'values and moral code' of the Bible". Earlier this week he made a speech (not so widely publicised) to prominent members of the gay, lesbian and bi-sexual community,  in Downing Street of which the Telegraph's headline was "We will legalise gay marriage by 2015, says David Cameron. David Cameron has given a personal guarantee to legalise gay marriage by 2015 - despite unease among his own MPs and his core Conservative supporters. The best account of what he said on each occasion was here:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2011/12/david-cameron-we-are-a-christian-country-and-we-should-not-be-afraid-to-say-so.html, and here:
http://news.pinkpaper.com/NewsStory/7584/25/07/2012/david-cameron-calls-on-churches-to-get-behind-gay-marriage.aspx. I'm sure he would deny it, but it looks very much like a case of saying what your audience wants to hear. "But surely that's the stock in trade of all politicians?" I fear you may be right, but if so it's a sad state of affairs. There once was a phrase "conviction politics". You knew what a politician stood for, what their convictions were. Now it's a case of "focus-group" or "opinion-poll politics" and politicians are merely reflections of what they think we want to hear.

For me, the comedy "Twenty Twelve" has been the redeeming feature of all the Olympic hype to which we have been subjected in an ever-increasing crescendo. Most wonderful of all, emerging from the PR company, Perfect Curve, like a star, has been the character of Siobhan, with her indomitable optimism and unsurpassed ability to do instantaneous u-turns and to create mutually contradictory concepts: Watch Siobhan Sharpe in full flow. In the final episode, which you can still watch on iPlayer, Siobhan's stream of consciousness has infected the rest of the Olympic Deliverance Team, "totally, guys. So that's good!" I even detected some Siobhanisms in the chef de mission of Team GB on BBC Radio 4 this morning. (By the way, that's a phrase that really makes me grind my teeth - something Jane's trying to cure me of - "team GB". It's not just the phrase, though why we can't just use our country's name like every other nation defeats me; it's also the religious uniformity (no, that's unfair to religions) with which commentators use it. Clearly a governmental edict has gone forth, and those who transgress and say "Great Britain" face being thrown on to the fiery scrapheap.) Oh for the return of the individual!

Kenyan chameleon - Superstock photo

With Siobhan it is great entertainment. One of my friends described her as her "fave English person", which is fine as long as she's a caricature on screen. But when our politicians adopt her modus operandi of sailing with whatever wind is prevailing at that moment, "absolutely", then it is a danger signal. In fact people responded to the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ken Livingstone because, agree with them or not, their principles were clear and consistent. When I consider the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, or the Leader and Deputy Leader of Her Government, I'm not sure I recognise any clear convictions between them, except to try to please people. They're like chameleons. I clearly remember my one encounter with one of these wonders of nature outside my temporary home in Kenya. He, or she, was a handsome creature. But I don't want my politicians to be chameleons, changing their colour according to their background. Above all, I don't want a Prime Minister named David Chameleon. Even so, I trust he's able to have a relaxing and hard-earned holiday with his family this summer. Despite the perks, he has a tough job. Bless him!

Humpty Dumpty or Brave New World?

The good old Church of England has hit the headlines today with dire warnings of the possible consequences of the Government's proposals to introduce "equal marriage" (known popularly as gay marriage). I had taken the trouble to send in a personal response to the consultation and so had spent some time reflecting on my views. I was quite surprised by my thoughts.

I found I was more worried by governmental redefinition of language than by homosexual fidelity. Promiscuity of all sorts is emphatically and fatally corrosive both of persons and of society. However couples of the same sex have long lived together and been accepted. When I was a boy, my parents took us to visit my father's cousin, Sheila who farmed in Kingsland, Herefordshire, with her friend, Mary Elliott, whom she'd met at a bull sale in 1944. They bred Royal Show champion Kerry Hill sheep, which I enjoyed photographing with my Kodak Brownie camera. It didn't occur to me that Sheila and Mary's domestic arrangement was odd, nor did it occur to my parents to comment on it. Sheila ends her book The Happy Farmers (Logaston Press, 1989) honestly and rather movingly: "Small children have called us 'The Happy Farmers'. I think that few farmers can be entirely happy in their life of incessant struggle with weather, markets and disease; while few in old age can be happy with the aches and pains, the ills and accidents, the diminishing powers and (for me) the haunting fear of the future. But we are happy in our home, our friends and our love, so maybe we have earned that touching title."

It is a shame, in my view, that same-sex friendship is now regarded as sexual (and so for some as vicious or intrinsically "immoral"). Friendship is actually admirable. Faithfulness is a virtue. Promises of commitment are meant to cement marriages. The same is true, I imagine, for civil partnerships.

There is a fundamental question about the purpose of marriage, and of sex, which lies beneath the debate. It used to be said that the first purpose of marriage was the procreation of children, then as a remedy against sin (i.e. an appropriate outlet for sex), and third for mutual society for each other. Now in the contemporary CofE marriage service the order's reversed, with companionship as number 1. Most "conservatives", I'd guess, object to gay marriage because they see it as a charter for "unnaturalness". There's an ironic conjunction between fundamentalists and Darwinians in the view that the sole purpose of sex is procreation and the preservation of the species. In that case there is no place for sex merely to provide pleasure, either heterosexually or homosexually. That logic leads either to celibacy within marriage or to procreation for as long as hormones or life allow. Somehow I can't see our consumerist society buying that. It is a pity that our society sets such a store on the sexual acts that close companionship has become such a bone of contention.

My comment to the consultation was sent in the aftermath of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. I was ruminating on the nature of the monarchy. What, I wondered, would we call an elected constitutional head of state? They might fulfil precisely the same roles as the present queen. However, without a doubt, they wouldn't be called Queen or King. Traditionally hereditary heads of state have been named kings and queens. We'd give a different name to an elected one, such as president. They have the same functions, but they're crucially different. Traditionally marriage has been between a man and a woman. We'd give a different name to a same-partnership - wouldn't we? They're the same, but they're crucially different. 

Language in this country does not change by government dictat, but by usage and evolution. I can't work out whether the government is indulging in Brave New World social engineering, or whether it's merely become Humpty Dumpty:
"`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' 
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - that's all.' "
Humpty Dumptyish redefinition of language sits rather uncomfortably with a government set on teaching our children the traditional skills of times tables, learning poetry by heart and mugging up on the solar system. They'd better beware, as every child knows the fate of Humpty Dumpty (unless they go to the PC nursery which, I learned today, has him landing safely on a bungee rope...). If you asked me for an alternative generic word, the best I could come up with is "union".

In fact, I have long been attracted to the French wedding system, as I understand it, where everyone has a civil ceremony, and those who choose proceed to a church ceremony afterwards. However, I also have sympathy for the CofE's mistrust of the European courts. Although they have ruled to respect religious freedom, because of the established nature of the Church here it's reasonable to suspect that discrimination legislation might be deemed to trump religious independence. The Church is NOT independent from the State here. It might have to face the difficult decision to cut its ties.