Lessons from the YES Vote

As a Christian in favour of Gay marriage being legally available to those who want it (though ineligible to vote in yesterday's referendum), I offer the following reflections on what a YES result indicates:
(i) There is now a real prospect that we are moving from mere tolerance (or worse) towards equality; this vote won't stop homophobia, but it will help to make it as unacceptable as racism or sexism. The law can't change attitudes, but it can hel...p to limit the damage done by those who harbor, nurture or promote homophobia.
(ii) Some Christians ARE homophobic; many are not, but follow a particular understanding of the nature and purpose of the Bible and the way in which they believe it ought to be interpreted. It is entirely right that they ought to be free to express their opinions on this basis (even though I disagree with them) without being ASSUMED to be homophobic. However, they ought to recognise that the basis for their opinions (as well as the opinions themselves) are not accepted by many other Christians and by almost all those who are not Christians. Consequently, their attempts to influence the debate from this narrow base are likely to remain futile. Simply claiming to have the truth is not the same as having it. The onus, is also on them to indicate that comments that can easily be read as being homophobic, are not; otherwise they ought not to be surprised at the reaction.
(iii) Very many Irish people have firmly broken away from the Church (or churches) when it comes to seeking a moral base for their decision-making. THIS IS A GOOD THING; people ought to think for themselves and ought not to be badgered/cajoled/threatened/blackmailed into following religious dogma. Given the gross moral failings of churches and some Christian leaders with regard to child sex-abuse, a greater degree of humility during the same-sex marriage debate would have been helpful.
(iv) All churches are in danger of sinking into irrelevance; 'Church' is rapidly becoming a toxic brand. This is not the fault of those who are wearied of the church's former dominant position in society or unconvinced of its current value to society: it's the fault of the church.
(v)....finally (a little tongue in cheek): given all the prayers offered for the 'right' result in the referendum....maybe GOD IS LOVE, after all....

An End to Martyrdom?

Earlier this week I heard two stories recounted by Andrew White, the ‘Vicar of Baghdad’. To his credit, he told them without commentary or elaboration, simply offering them to his audience as examples of life in Iraq.

They both concerned fathers named Josef, both of whom had phoned him in great distress. The first father was distressed because members of the Islamic State had burst into his home, demanding that he recant his belief in Christianity and declare belief in Islam. If they did not, his children would be shot. He recanted, his family was spared and he was filled with guilt at ‘denying’ Jesus. He wanted to know if he could be forgiven; Andrew assured him that he was.

The second father phoned Andrew a week later, sobbing on the phone as he talked. The Islamic State had entered his home in a similar fashion and demanded that all family members recant their Christian faith. His children held hands, refused to do so as they declared very personal faith in Jesus and they were shot one by one. The father was left alive to suffer his loss. Andrew comforted him as best he could.

The barbarity of the Islamic State, the distress of both men and the courage of the children are all beyond doubt, but these stories raise troubling questions not only for Christians but for any followers of a belief system, from Buddhism to Communism.

If, as is surely right, the first Josef was not culpable for pretending to convert in order to save his family, was the sacrifice of the second Josef’s family unnecessary or even misguided? At the very least, is this sacrifice in some way not devalued if a public denial (albeit a false one) of faith can be dismissed because it was effected under duress.

Equally pertinently, is it right even to suggest that God (if we allow for the moment that God exists) connives in human evil by expecting children to confess faith in the face of threatened execution? What sort of God would that be? If, however, God does not collude in such appalling human ‘tests’, does that diminish the sacrifice of courageous martyrs down through the centuries?  Again, similar questions can be asked of secular causes.

I feel that I need to state again that I am not devaluing the distress of the victims involved, the courage of the children who were killed or the barbarity of the Islamic State, but I can’t help but wonder….

Animal Rights: Food for Thought

Not so long ago animals were habitually treated with casual cruelty. They were viewed as little more than flesh and blood robots; this is spite of the fact that it was obvious that they could feel pain and pleasure and that they were capable of forming relational bonds.

In much the same way that public executions fell out of favour as our tastes refined, gross cruelty to animals fell out of vogue: animal welfare was born. It was, at first, patchy and selective: flogging cart horses in the street was frowned upon as was working donkeys in mines until they were arthritic and blind, but slaughter house practices went largely unreformed, farmers were left to their own devices as to how they treated their animals and foxes were fair game for the velvet jacketed classes to hunt, corner and savage, albeit vicariously via their hounds (most of the time). Eventually the scope of animal welfare widened, poking its often unwelcome nose into aspects of the food industry with varying degrees of success.

I welcome this movement, but a deeper question underlies this slow progress: as well as meriting welfare do animals have rights? For many years I thought not, but I have recently revised my opinion.  I have been an advocate and supporter of human rights for many years; I based this, in part, on the belief that rights were necessarily bound to personal autonomy.  In other words, individual humans have a will with desires and intentions that ought to be respected and defended through a code of rights. This much remains true.

Another, complementary, basis of rights, however, is found in the idea of ‘interests’. In other words, certain things are in human beings’ interests and these things ought to be enshrined in rights. For example, it is in our interests to be protected, nurtured and to be given freedom to develop to the best of our potential. In this understanding of rights, babies, the comatose and the severely mentally disabled are afforded rights even though they have limited, if any, personal autonomy.

This argument, however, can be extended to other sentient creatures. Animals too, have interests; they benefit from nurture, protection and conditions that enable them to fulfil their natural potential. This transforms the ways in which we think and treat animals; perhaps annoyingly so.

At a personal level it has underscored by decision, a little over a year ago, to become vegetarian. My thinking runs that either animals enjoy their lives and have an interest in staying alive or else they do not enjoy being alive because of the misery of the conditions in which they are kept in which case I do not want to have any part in the process of their ‘production’.  Of course, as with all rights, there are many instances of rights conflicting and it is by no means a simple matter to respect, protect and promote the rights of all, especially if animals are included, but nonetheless, food for thought?

The Eye of the Beholder: Should we watch ISIS videos?

The actor Sean Penn raised a few eyebrows and some hackles this week when he said that he watched ISIS videos of beheadings out of ‘moral responsibility’. His argument was that he has an obligation to face the actual horror of what ISIS does rather than allow himself the less uncomfortable option of viewing ‘sanitised’ versions broadcast by mainstream media. He also suggested that anyone who claimed that watching simulated violence in movies has inured them to actual violence was either ‘intellectually dishonest or existentially un-present'.

Counter arguments include the opinion that watching such videos plays into the hands of ISIS and their slick and sick propaganda machine, the contention that to do so has the potential to degrade those who watch and the danger of becoming entrapped in voyeurism and the ‘pornography of violence’. All of these are valid arguments and ought not to be dismissed lightly, but I have sympathy with Penn’s viewpoint.

I do not think that it is necessary to watch every real-life horror video released by ISIS, nor do I think that it is wise to access its websites directly (feeding the already inflated egos of ISIS activists), but I do think that there is a place for viewing some unedited videos on reputable news websites.

I say this because I think that there is a need to identify as closely as possible with the suffering of ISIS victims, to understand the stark and brutal reality of ISIS actions and to respond at a visceral, as well as at an intellectual level, to these horrific events. In the same way, it is necessary to view footage of the holocaust, the aftermath of blanket bombing, the human face of ‘collateral’ damage and actual battle scenes. I don’t think that we should allow ourselves the ‘luxury’ of protecting our sensibilities or of sticking our heads in the sand. Life is often truly horrible and brutal; if we are fortunate enough not to experience it at first hand, we ought not to keep it at arms-length just because it is happening to others. I don’t buy the explanation of some that they don’t need to see any of this in order to know how terrible it is; that might be true intellectually, but I doubt if it is true emotionally and psychologically.

Of course there are limits to this approach. There is a fine line between desiring to empathise with victims of violence and becoming complicit with those who perpetrate the violence. Serial video viewing is both unnecessary and unhealthy, some acts of violence and degradation such as rape are so personal that it is hard to see how viewing them does not make one complicit in the crime, but with these caveats acknowledged, I think that Sean Penn makes a reasonable case; more than beauty is in the eye of the beholder….

An Apology To All LGBT People

There are times when being a Christian makes me struggle to my core and today has been one of those times.

In what would have seemed the answer to many prayers a generation ago, representatives of the Catholic Church and the Democratic Unionist Party met in Stormont, the seat of ‘Power’ in Northern Ireland and, amidst a plethora of smiles, came to an agreement. This would have been dismissed as the stuff of fantasy a few years ago, but there they were and united they stood.

So, why am I not dusting down my tambourine and rejoicing? They were united in wishing to see a ‘conscience clause’ inserted into Northern Ireland’s equality legislation, effectively allowing an ‘out’ for those with ‘strongly held’ religious views. The catalyst was the on-going battle over a ‘Christian’ bakery being taken to court for refusing to provide a cake with a pro-gay marriage message. On the back of this, these Christians who agree on very little else (do most DUP supporters even believe that Catholics are Christians?) want religious opinion to trump equality. Such, it seems, is the danger lurking in gay pastry that equality can go out the window even if that means that some visionary can subsequently refuse to provide services to a disability charity because he genuinely believes on ‘strongly held’ religious grounds that disability is a punishment from God, or bad karma, or a failure to say the Lord’s Prayer seventy five times a day or whatever other nonsense might be covered by the expansive skirts of ‘religion’. This is only a mild exaggeration: the author of the conscience clause has stated that it will protect Christian photographers from having to take photos at a civil partnership ceremony.

I believe in God, but I am certain that refusing to provide ‘certain services’ to people because of their sexuality (or their desire to celebrate it) has little to do with God.  I am as committed as my fickle human nature will allow to following (rather badly) the example and teaching of Jesus, but I can’t equate that with the belief that refusing to bake a ‘gay cake’ is more godly than treating everyone with generous degrees of love, respect and equality.

….and don’t give me the ‘It’s not the people; it’s what they do that we object to’ line. That’s the same as saying it’s alright to be a Christian as long as you don’t pray!

‘God is love’ is not a woolly, fuzzy, feel-good, twenty-first century advertising slogan; believing it is a demanding, costly invitation to being misunderstood, mistrusted and marginalised. Believing it leads genuinely to empathising with others, to refusing to condemn or discriminate, to seeing the image of God equally in everyone else. It leads to the cross.

So, for what it’s worth, I apologise to every LGBT person….and to everyone else hurt and abused by narrow, bitter, sanctimonious religion. It’s enough to make God wish there wasn’t a God!

'We're Racist And That's The Way We Like It!'

This was the chant on the lips of a small group of Chelsea football fans as they abused a black resident of Paris in the city’s Metro after their team had drawn with Paris Saint-Germain. Condemnation from politicians, football administrators, supporters’ groups and Chelsea Football Club has been swift and united; rightly so.

This odious behaviour was perpetrated by a tiny fraction of the many thousands of fans who (strangely) choose to support Chelsea, but it is symptomatic of an emerging problem: groups and individuals who not only fail to ‘live by the rules’, but who glory in their perversity.

I am not talking here of benign individual preference or healthy freedom of expression, which I should like to think I champion, but of destructive unethical, tribal behaviour.

What is to be done when people simply reject the principle that racism is evil and refuse to believe that there is anything wrong with this stance? What is to be done when humanitarian principles are cast to one side and prisoners of war are burned to death? What is to be done when tanks, artillery and troops are supplied by a sovereign state to rebel forces within another sovereign state and then the entire enterprise denied as if such weaponry could be bought on e-bay?

My questions are aimed not so much at what might be done by way of immediate practical remedy. We can ban the racist football fans from attending other matches, we can attempt to supplant ISIS from its strongholds and we can employ diplomacy and economic pressure to curtail further Russian involvement in Ukraine. My questions are aimed at the underlying malaise that enables people to believe that racism, torture and aggression are all OK. How do we counter this type of mentality?

I hate to talk of ‘moral compasses’ that have been lost, but I can’t ignore the fact that many of the ethical and social mores that have contributed much to civilising human behaviour over the last half-century or so are under attack; not by reasoned argument, but by dismissive, populist groups who simply act out of tribal loyalty and self-interest.

At the core of the problem is a significant rejection of the maxims that all people are of equal worth, that our shared humanity is important and precious; a rejection that there is anything wrong with naked self-interest and narrow group-identity. Religious underpinning of morality has been largely rejected, humanism has shown itself to be as effective as whistling in the dark; where and how do we find grounds for opposing this dangerously growing trend? Anyone seen a moral compass anywhere?

Stephen Fry, Russell Brand and ISIS

The recent emotionally charged and challenging comments of Stephen Fry on the possible existence and nature of God might seem far removed from the horrific actions of ISIS in burning alive its Jordanian captive and then issuing a sickeningly professional video of the atrocity, but a worrying thread runs between them: acceptance of a simplistic understanding of God and a literalist interpretation of ‘sacred texts’.

The attempts of ISIS to justify its barbarity through a fundamentalist understanding of ‘an eye for an eye’ is utterly unconvincing. The concept was originally introduced to stop disproportionate punishment, but it has been twisted into a call for bloody revenge. Equally disconcerting has been the criticism of ISIS by some Muslim scholars who have claimed that Islamic law teaches that the perpetrators of the barbaric act ought to be crucified or ‘have their limbs chopped off’ by way of punishment. Others have argued that burning by fire is a punishment only God can apply.

It is this approach to God and religion that Stephen Fry has embraced as being authentic when he criticised God for acting like a despot, causing the suffering of innocent children while demanding cringing obedience and sycophantic worship from his hapless creation. Stephen Fry is an intelligent man, capable of wrestling with the intricacies of philosophy and theology; that he should vent his spleen on a fundamentalist, Sunday-School cardboard cut-out version of God is beneath him. It is precisely this that Russell Brand identified in his much more expansive attempt to wrestle with the nature of ultimate reality.

People are, of course, free to believe whatever they want, but there is real danger in otherwise thoughtful people, used to taking nuanced views on serious issues, buying into fundamentalist rhetoric. Some scientists, philosophers, teachers, footballers and bus-drivers believe in the existence of God; some don’t, but it is essential that everyone explores concepts of God and ultimate reality that do justice to the full range of possibilities that exist.

To fail to do this is to play into the hands of fundamentalists, be they Muslim, Christian or atheist. An ‘all or nothing’, black or white analysis of reality feeds extremism, fuels conflict and can even give a spurious veneer of credibility to crusading maniacs who see themselves as upholding the truth against a sea of error. Stephen Fry, I am certain, is the last person who would want to give any succour to those joining the ranks of ISIS, but in adopting a monochrome, simplistic understanding of God, he is, paradoxically and unintentionally, in danger of doing precisely that.

Heroes and Villains: 'Charlie Hebdo' and 'The Sun'

A week ago, the French magazine, ‘Charlie Hebdo’ was widely lauded in Western democracies for its decision to print copies containing further cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. One week later, the British newspaper, ‘The Sun’ was roundly castigated for its continued policy of posting photos of topless young women on its infamous/famous ‘Page Three’ after it had earlier appeared that it had brought this forty five year old practice to a halt.

I am in favour neither of Charlie Hebdo’s approach to religion nor of The Sun’s approach to women, but I support both papers’ rights to freedom of expression, which includes their right to offend. I wish that neither paper would use their freedom in the ways that they do, but I do not want their freedoms to be curtailed. Censorship is a death-knell to liberty.

This begs the question: how far should freedom of expression go? Jurisdictions take widely varying approaches to this issue. At one end of the spectrum, countries like the USA set freedom of expression as an almost absolute principle while at the other end, states such as Saudi Arabia flog bloggers who dare to question prevalent social norms. The UK sits somewhat uncomfortably in the middle, agonising over how to strike the balance between respecting freedom of expression and penalising hate-crime.

It is tempting to think that ‘our’ country has got it right, but a greater danger than simply following our particular state’s laws and social norms is the temptation to promote freedom of expression when we agree with what is being said, but to oppose it when we find words or images objectionable. This, of course, is not something to which we are readily going to admit. I suspect, however, that many people agreed with Charlie Hebdo’s stance because they wanted to give religion a bloody nose while some of the same people want ‘Page Three’ to be outlawed because they find objectification of women abhorrent.

Such feelings are understandable (and, in part, I agree with them) but they ought to be pushed firmly to one side.  We need to decide what criteria we establish for determining when, if at all, freedom of expression ought to be curtailed and then adhere to those criteria, regardless of our personal opinions on a given topic.

My view is that as long as participants are acting consensually, freedom of expression ought not to be curtailed, subject to potential audiences being made aware of the possible content of the magazine, film, book or play in question. Those who object to what is being said or portrayed are free to express their objections with equal liberty. Vive la liberté.

Pens and Swords

‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ has found new expression in the ‘Je suis Charlie’ slogan adopted my thousands in the aftermath of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris by individuals linked to Al Quaeda.  These murders, and those of police officers and shoppers in related incidents, are inexcusable.

They have also served to turn the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo into modern martyrs for freedom of speech, over against repressive ideologies that would seek to impose restrictions not only on actions and speech, but even on thoughts, if only they were able.

I am entirely in favour of freedom of speech and I am entirely opposed to repression, particularly (given my belief in the existence of God) repression that is religiously motivated. The fact that I disagree with the doctrines and the methods espoused by Islamists does little to ease my sense of discomfort.

I am, however, also made uneasy by the ‘Je suis Charlie’ slogan. I understand that it reflects a desire to protect freedom of speech and to that extent I go along with it, but while I defend the cartoonists’ right to publish what they did, I do not want to be associated with their ideas or methods.

Paradoxically, both Al Quaeda and Charlie Hebdo advocate restrictive societies, one by the sword and the other by the pen. Al Quaeda wishes to establish a monochrome Islamist state while Charlie Hebdo promotes a monochrome secularist state. Both want ‘public space’ to be ideologically regulated. Of course, there is a world of difference in their methodologies: scatological humour might well be offensive (and some of their cartoons such as that depicting Jesus engaged in anal sex with God the Father was deliberately meant to be offensive), but such offence does not compare with the abomination of murder.

I readily agree that a modern secular society is preferable to a fundamentalist religious one, but these are not the only options. Inclusive pluralism, in which all individuals and groups, religious and secular alike, are welcomed and valued is the hallmark of a truly liberal and open society. Of course, there are limits to pluralism; it can only work if disparate groups are prepared to be inclusive in the sense that they value others and do not seek to impose their ideologies on others. Fascists (secular or religious) remain beyond the Pale, but there is ample room for public expressions of Islam and other religions just as there is for expressions of non-religious ideologies.

There can be no place for ideologically inspired terror and murder in an inclusive pluralist society. There is room for offensive humour in an open society so Charlie Hebdo must be protected and permitted to publish, but I have to say that I much prefer mutual respect to mockery.

Je suis Charlie? I’m afraid, that with a heavy heart, I have to say ‘Non’