Charity concerns

Charities are suddenly under fire. Any misdemeanour (and there clearly have been a number, charity workers being as human as the rest of us with less altruistic occupations) is now leapt upon with the pharisaic zeal which seems to be the mark of this age. However I wonder whether charity workers are any more prone to sexual exploitation than, say, businessmen. Are the media up in indignant arms over people at a sales’ conference in the developing world using and abusing local women and minors? I suspect it happens.

I understand that there is a peculiar dissonance between the altruistic aims of an aid charity and such behaviour. Yet is there an element of foreign-aid bashing in the obsessive focus on a systemic failure in Oxfam? Is it a coincidence that it comes within weeks of the Oxfam report released at Davos, which pointed out “Eighty two percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report released today”? Discrediting charities which speak uncomfortable truth to power would allow some very rich and powerful people to sleep more easily at night. It would also suit right-wing newspapers which campaign to reduce our country’s overseas aid budget of a mere 0.7% GDP. And of course politicians of an insular persuasion will use it as fuel to divert money from the ethical, and self-interested by the way, relief of our fellow human beings.

I trust that the overwhelming good performed by such charities will not be obscured by the fallibility of their human employees. We create enough misery throughout the world in one way or another. It would be an even bleaker place were charities such as Oxfam and Save the Children not to exist or were starved of support. It's tragic that 7000 donors have cancelled their subscriptions to Oxfam. Who will suffer? Not the donors.

Nevertheless, even before the Oxfam news, I had been thinking about the role of charities, maybe because I’d been reading Bob Holman’s biography of Keir Hardie (http://www.lionhudson.com/page/detail/?K=9780745953540). He famously had a contretemps with Lord Overtoun, the Scottish industrialist whose much lauded philanthropy did not extend to his own employees.

I wrote to a theologian I know:

“Do you think churches setting up things like food-banks, homelessness shelters and street pastors is a good thing? 
“What I’m wondering is this. Were they not there, the true effects of government cuts in the name of financial responsibility would be acutely obvious and politically intolerable. As it is, the churches’ benevolence mitigates the effects of cuts in benefits and cuts to policing, and the vulnerable suffer, so that the well-off can remain comfortable. ‘Let them make do with sticking plasters.’
“It suddenly occurred to me.”

He sagely replied, “There is a danger in providing permanent sticking plasters instead of sorting the problem; but I don't see how Christians can pass by on the other side when the man is lying there mugged. But if it becomes an excuse for not pushing on the political structural fronts, eg working for proper policing on the Jerusalem-Jericho road or a health service that is meeting the needs, then we are at fault.... And that easily happens with conservatives.”

As far as I know, this theologian is not a socialist. Keir Hardie (1856-1915) who shared his Christian faith certainly was. He was, as Professor Holman suggests, possibly Labour’s greatest hero. Hardie rightly wrote, “Poverty can never be remedied by charity, but only by justice.” That was his political motivation. “The Labour Party stands for something which no other party does. Its aim is the abolition of poverty.” What a great aim! Oxfam's vision is "We won't live with poverty". Little wonder some people would like to undermine it.

Thankfully, looking back

Well, it’s been quite a year, in my book.  Internationally, it’s been a bit of a mess, with seemingly endless blood-letting and just some hopeful glimmers such as the breakthrough in the Iranian nuclear talks.  Nationally, it’s hard to know what to think, with, apparently, economic recovery on its way (hurray!) and yet, clearly, standards of living still falling and food-banks multiplying.  So leaving things too complicated for me aside, let me reflect on my own past twelve months.

Early in the year, the two big ecclesiastical appointments caused me to suspect that the Almighty hadn’t nodded off.  He’s the one to break the mould – and in Justin Welby first and then in Jorge Mario Bergoglio the world was suddenly faced with an Archbishop and a Pope of very different characters from any of their predecessors right back to the first century.  Justin Welby today concurred with Time magazine’s identification of Pope Francis as Man of the Year.  I must say for me they are both outstanding examples of Christian leadership, men with the moral mettle to practise what they preach.  Francis “almost persuades me” to be a Catholic - good thing Justin's there too! 

I’ve been kept quite busy talking about ending life well, a number of times at St Mellitus’ College in West London and a couple of times on TV.  The former I especially enjoyed.  I suppose it was partly the erstwhile teacher in me; and it was partly having a sympathetic audience prepared to take the trouble to understand my gob-stoppered speech.  It’s something, as you know, that I feel strongly about, and which I think is under threat in the very country where the hospice movement began.  As Dame Cicely Saunders, its pioneer, once said, “You matter because you are you. You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.”  That should be the motto of all geriatric and terminal care. 

Well, certainly, helped by Jane and family and friends, this year I have continued to live – and to live a fulfilled life.  I have had moments of desperate frustration, part and parcel, as a friend of mine recently put it, of  “The joy and depths of this terrible, painful and yet wonderful journey of loss, disability and dependence - the gift that has been given to us.”  Yet I have had times of great joy, such as the week’s holiday with all our family in the middle of Devon in the sunniest August for years; getting down and into the sea perched on a bulbous bouncing beach wheelchair; getting to know our daughter’s rapidly growing special needs’ therapy puppy, and getting to know new friends.

Two particularly special friends we made this year are Esther and her partner, Julie.  It’s not often that a chance encounter completely changes one - I'd call it a "God-moment".  But hearing Esther explaining vividly the prolonged pain and exclusion she’d endured among Christians because of her sexual orientation was the final confirmation for me that I and many like me had long been responsible for a gross injustice in the very community which should be marked by justice and love.  Followers of this blog will perhaps remember that I have long admired faithfulness in same-sex friendships.  However now I believe something more, and that is that sexual orientation is not a lifestyle choice, but an innate given, or gift.  How can we withhold love and welcome from our sisters and brothers?  I think we should bless them.  It will for many seem an unremarkable conclusion.  Equally for many it will seem heresy.  There it is.  It seems I keep on learning - slowly. 

I’ve not been able adequately to express the power of that meeting and my present conviction.  The best I can do is recommend my book of the year, given me at Christmas: Unconditional by Justin Lee (subtitled “Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs-Christians Debate” published this year by Hodder & Stoughton, also published as Torn in the US).  If you don’t understand the hurt gays endure in the Church, this will give you some idea.

My DVD of the year has to be Les Misérables, that remarkable achievement of performance, cinematography and, of course, of story-telling.  I forbad myself seeing it in a cinema suspecting I would weep uncontrollably and loudly, and so waited for the DVD to come out.  I didn’t weep uncontrollably, although I confess Anne Hathaway’s extraordinary "I dreamed a dream" did reduce me to tears.  However it’s the film’s unbearably potent message of forgiveness and love that most moved me and conjures the dream of how radically revolutionary a society based on it would be.  It would be the Kingdom of heaven.

My woman of the year, apart from members of my family, is, I think, Jack Monroe, a deservedly popular blogger, A girl called Jack looks back, who in her own words “started this year living – existing – on a £10 a week food budget topped up with five items of food from the Storehouse food bank once a week. (And) ended it with a recipe book deal, baking biscuits on Woman’s Hour, with a Guardian column, a debate in the House of Commons and regular political and campaign pieces in the Daily Mirror.”  She came across my radar when she was campaigning for the poor and petitioning for a parliamentary debate about the rise in food banks.  I just like her.

My man of the year, apart from members of my family again, is – sorry to be predictable – Pope Francis.  Here’s quite a good summary of why (not mine): Why Pope Francis is person of the year.  I’m sure there are thousands of less high-profile people who are equally acting out the good news of Jesus Christ, but it is quite something to be in a position of such power and temptation and to maintain one’s integrity and humility.  No doubt he has made and will make mistakes.  After all he is human.

Talking of the all too human, my sporting flop of the year has to be the England men's cricket tour of Australia this winter. What a craven capitulation!  The less said the better.  And is the sporting triumph the second consecutive “British” win of the Tour de France by Chris Froome, or the “British” Men’s Singles victory at Wimbledon for Andy Murray?  I guess I'd go for the Scotsman.

My outing of the year - well, I'll choose our two to Stratford on Avon, first to see As You Like It, with Pippa Nixon outstanding as Rosalind, to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and secondly to see Nancy Meckler's brilliant production of All's Well that Ends Well in company with our delightful out-laws.

So another year ends.  And I’m looking forward to my favourite morning.  Tomorrow, I hope to wake up beside my lovely wife and realise that I’ve been spared to enjoy yet another year of discovery, starting with the Vienna New Year's Day concert, coffee and croissants..., and then who knows what surprises and new or renewed friendships?  Lord, bring it on! 

Keeping religion out of politics

It's commonly claimed that religion should be kept strictly private. There's a long tradition of that view stretching in this country at least back to Thomas à Becket whom Henry II famously called "a low-born cleric" or a "turbulent priest", because he would not put the King's interests above divine ordinance, leading to his assassination in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. In more recent times it was echoed by the Thatcher government when Robert Runcie prayed both for British and Argentine casualties after the Falklands' conflict and then put his name to the 1985 Faith in the City report (a government "source" rubbishing it before publication as Marxist propaganda). It was particularly puzzling and galling that former Scot's Guard and Military Cross winner, favoured Tory choice for the archbishopric, should be so turbulent as to suggest that the individualistic policies of the government might have contributed to poverty in the cities of Britain. And of course Rowan Williams got up the nose of successive governments, including Mr Blair's, with his rigorous questioning. And now David Cameron must be having similar thoughts to Margaret Thatcher concerning Old Etonian, Justin Welby. Of all people, the former oil executive, "within a month", questioning how benefit cuts would affect the poorest children - what is it about the post of Archbishop that suddenly turns sound men into bleeding-heart liberals? Certainly arch-conservative columnist, Melanie Phillips, who sometimes talks good sense, is at a loss to explain it and can only vent her spleen on such meddlesome men.

Strangely enough I heard her on The Moral Maze last week maintaining, I think, that belief in God was needed to underpin ethical behaviour; I recall her mentioning "conscience". It might occur to her that the way we treat the vulnerable, such as children, in our society is, or should be, a matter of conscience. I guess it certainly is for Justin Welby and his 44 merry colleagues. It seems to me that they are doing no more than their Christian conscience demands, as paralleled in the early equivalent of a welfare state. "They only asked us to remember the poor - the very thing I was eager to do." In this case, the Children's Society, because it is that admirable charity which has, I suspect, enlisted the bishops' and other church leaders' support, is asking for the welfare uprating bill to be amended in the House of Lords next week in order to protect children in particular from the ravages of inflation, which the financially robust are able to ride. The letter written by the bishops and published by the Sunday Telegraph seems to me a justifiable request to a still well-off government to remember the poor. And it seems to me that faith without a public conscience is dead. So I am glad that the new Archbishop has already indicated his intention to follow Jesus in being "on the side of the poor" and powerless.

Having said that let me add a postscript concerning the plight of politicians. It is all too easy and all too frequently done to indulge in government-bashing. After all the High Court of Parliament is adversarial, and it is right that governments be held to account. However on Saturday I was talking to someone who has had the closest contact with the highest ranks of government, and he said that ministers have an impossible job; their days are filled with meetings and briefings from civil servants and advisers. They really have no time for quiet reflection about the big issues. Once in power they hardly have time to think. The implication of what he said, I take it, was, "Have some sympathy for these people. They're trying their hardest with impossible jobs."

On Saturday, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, who's not a politician I readily warm to, gave a speech looking to the next General Election. It was mischievously cast by the media as a leadership salvo. For me, more interesting because I suspect more genuine, was what she said at the outset: "It’s often said that politics is about public service, and of course it is. But to me, it’s about much more than that. Politics is a passion. A passion to make a difference. To change lives for the better. To stand up for people who work hard and want to get on in life. To help people to help themselves and their families. To help those in genuine need." I do appreciate that there's a bit of coding about strivers and skivers in those last phrases. Nevertheless the phrase "a passion to make a difference" does, I reckon, reflect the initial and fundamental motivation of the majority of those who enter the risky front line of politics, with its minefield of corrupting power. I guess that's why St Paul urged, "Pray every way you know how,... especially for those in power to govern well".

Pledges, pledges, pledges

I was wryly amused by the juxtaposition of headlines on this morning's BBC website. Two pledges were reported one immediately above the other: "Osborne to pledge 'growth' budget" and "Defiant Gaddafi pledges victory". Now, as I sit out here in the garden in my shirtsleeves (!) at 4.30 in the afternoon, I've not really digested the budget - but who has yet, except the Treasury boffins who put it together? I gather there are crumbs of comfort for charities and a small refund of the money taken from science research in the autumn spending cuts, which sounds like long-term good news for the MNDA. Mark you, the growth forecast sounds pretty long term as well. As I understand it's particularly good news for the large multinationals, rather than small businesses. Maybe freeing up planning and other regulations might help them, though it sounds a bit worrying to me. However as one commentator, Niall Cooper, pointed out there was not a single mention of people in poverty - which is sad from a government pledged to protect the vulnerable. (Budget ignores plight of the poorest)

However I enjoyed my time in the sunshine. Jane's bulbs are out again, the scent of hyacinths surrounding the new French windows. Talking of which, last week we had our windows replaced by the excellent Nick Ponting and his merry men. We've had to sacrifice the bowed tops to the windows and have replaced wooden frames with plastic - against my professed aesthetic principles. But practicality won in the end. The workmen, I must say, were wonderful. Highly recommended. Here are two pictures. In the first you can see old-style downstairs with replacements upstairs; in the second work in progress downstairs. 

We're pleased with the result. It made an immediate difference in warmth and light, we thought. That's been appreciated as, before the sun shone on us, our boiler's been misbehaving again and the heating unpredictable. Not that that worried our guest at the weekend, the towering Tony Cheslett, our energetic friend from Stockport who introduced us to the joys of the Lake District. He's bagged all the munros. He is well known around the UK for corny stories and for the advice, "If you've got cold feet, wear a hat."