BlackPhi Webitorial Ramblings

News & Comment From A Christian's Perspective

Time For Change - Posted 18th October, 2008

A couple of years ago, I started running two blogs in parallel. This one, which had started life as part of the Caversham Baptist Church website (until they tried to censor it on racist grounds), and a new one I started on Blog City. Both blogs seemed to be attracting their own readership, and I have got things set up so that it is fairly simple to transfer posts between the two (it is also handy for proof-reading: for some reason errors are easier to see in a slightly different layout), so I have continued running the two.

However, if our house move goes ahead then I won't have as much space for computery stuff. The PC I use as a server for this blog is an excellent PC but very old, and I don't have any Windows 2000 PCs that I support any more (excellent though W2k is as an operating system). I could move Apache, etc to another PC, but I really think there'll be too much else to do: it's well over 16 years since we last moved house, and back then we didn't have kids. So it's time to mothball this blog - I'll move it into some online space and leave it there. It can rest out its days in peace, like an old warhorse.

If you've been following this blog, then thank you for reading. I hope you'll try the blog-city one; it has facilities to comment (hint, hint).

* * Grace and peace to you. * *  

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Local Councils & Icelandic Banks - Posted 18th October, 2008

It looks like local councils in the UK have/had a little under a billion pounds of taxpayers' money invested in the Icelandic banks which have collapsed. Hopefully they will get it back in the end, but I am puzzled how so much got invested there in the first place.

One thing I wondered is whether this was a 'New Labour' wheeze: keeping local taxes down by 'playing the market'. Thanks to the PJC Journal I was able to check that out. Of the 102 affected councils he lists, only 12 are Labour controlled. The vast majority of the rest are Conservative, together with a 8 Lib Dem and around 22 NOC (no overall control) councils affected too. No wonder the Conservative party isn't making a fuss about spendthrift councils.

The worst affected council appears to be Kent, with 50 million pounds invested in Icelandic banks. Nick Chard, the councillor responsible for finance, is said (according to comments on both Ian Parker Joseph's and John Redwood's blogs) to have claimed that these investments were made on the recommendation of 'special advisers'. I wondered, as one does, who these advisers actually were. It seems that actually they were advisers employed by Kent County Council, so still his responsibility. One thing I spotted was that many other councils' advisers were advising them to stay away from Icelandic banks (see here and here), so you wonder if Kent's advisers were really worth their fees.

Of local councils around here, it looks like S. Oxfordshire has £2.5 million at risk, Bracknell and Wokingham each have £5 million, and Reading appears to have nothing in Icelandic banks. I'm not that big a fan of Reading Borough Council, but they do seem to have been on the ball over this.

A billion pounds sounds like an enormous amount of money, and in many ways it is, but actually it's only a small part of the total amount that UK local government controls. When using 'spare' funds (ie funds that may not be needed until a later date) it is not, in itself, unreasonable to risk a small part of those funds on investments which give a higher rate of return but carry a greater risk. It is, however, responsible to make sure you keep a particularly close eye on these riskier investments. Just watching credit ratings isn't enough: when you are dealing with these sorts of sums you need to watch the underlying problems (note the date on this link).

I still don't really understand why Conservative councils were disproportionately caught out on this. I do know, though, that the lesson to be learned is an old one: if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

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Petition Against St Saviours - Posted 18th October, 2008

Some Coley residents have raised a 350-signature petition against plans by St Saviours Christian Centre to rebuild its Victorian church building, to better serve the needs of both church and community. A number of elderly residents have complained that they have memories of life events there back in the 1940's and '50's. Norman Dawson, 83, a retired carpet fitter born in nearby Wolseley Street, has said:

"I was christened in St Saviour's, I was in the cubs and scouts there and before and after the war I sang in the choir. It's been my life. I hope they change their minds and it doesn't get knocked down."

St Saviours used to be a part of the Church of England, but 20-odd years ago they declared it redundant and would have closed it because the congregation had dwindled away. Reading Elim Church took the building over and renovated and extended it. According to the Rev Billy Fenning, senior leader of the church:

"I am pleased to say that it now houses a congregation of 250 and has a thriving programme of community activities including mums and toddlers groups, youth groups, children's groups and lunch clubs. We are also active on weekly basis with the community centre in Coley, we have links to local schools, provide a fun day every July totally free of charge and provide open air services in the town centre

"The truth is that the current building is no longer able to accommodate the growing needs of this community church. For example, our youth and children's activities are curtailed by the layout of the church and with the burgeoning costs of maintaining the building it will take away from our ability to resource other aspects of our outreach."

What none of the newspaper reports seem to mention is that CIRDIC, the Churches In Reading Drop-In Centre, which is an organisation providing much-needed support to Reading's homeless, is based in St Saviours church hall.

Minster Ward councillor, Terry Byrne, commented:

"The church does attract a large congregation, not only for services but also for a range of faith-related group meetings throughout the week. In these days of mounting social problems I think anything that encourages the growth of a thriving Christian centre with youth and community facilities as well as space for worship is to be welcomed."

I particularly noticed these reports after my DHMO post highlighting how petitions tend to reflect the coercive abilities of the person collecting the petition, rather than the petition-signers' real interest in the subject. One feature of Reading is that we have a lot of Victorian brick-built churches - I worship in one, for a start. In a town with churches going back well over half a millenium, they are really not that interesting historically. What they are is expensive to heat and maintain, they tend to have unhelpful acoustics, and they are difficult to adapt to modern needs.

I have no sympathy at all with the heritage argument over this. I do have a little sympathy with elderly folk who have old memories tied up in a church building. However, you have to remember that if it hadn't been for Elim Pentecostal the church would have long been closed. In my opinion the job of a church is to worship God and to serve the community, not to caretake a museum. If the redevelopment helps St Saviours to do this, then it should go ahead.

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DHMO: Cause For Concern - Posted 2nd October, 2008

There was a rather worrying report in last week's New Scientist about "the ubiquitous pollutant dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO)":-

• DHMO contributes to the greenhouse effect and is a common cause of soil erosion
• DHMO contamination is worldwide: it is present in every stream, lake and reservoir in America today
• DHMO has been detected in many varieties of cancerous tumour
• Accidental inhalation of even small quantities of DHMO may cause death
• Exposure to solid DHMO can cause severe tissue damage

I've been doing a bit of research myself (although finding information about DHMO is surprisingly difficult). It seems that DHMO is the direct cause of death for over 400 people a year in the UK alone, and a contributory factor for many more. Also DHMO is widely used in the food processing industry: pretty much all the processed food you can buy in supermarkets from major food manufacturers contains DHMO (although you will rarely see a label that tells you that).

There is a lot more information about DHMO and its effects here.

In the UK there seems to be a surprising amount of apathy about this dangerous chemical; in the USA there is the National Consumer Coalition Against DHMO (NCCADHMO), which "was founded in 1997 in an effort to raise public awareness about the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) in our daily lives. The secondary goal of NCCADHMO is to act in the public interest as a lobbying agent in Congress to affect public policy regarding the safety and uses of DHMO". Although it has to be said that, in spite of such lobbying, DHMO remains just as prevalent in the US food chain as ever.

As part of an awareness-raising campaign, in February this year activist Ryan Serrano surveyed Hoover High School in Alabama. When presented with facts such as the above 56 of 62 students surveyed signed his petition in support of a ban on DHMO. An earlier, larger, survey at Eagle Pass High School, Texas, reported that only 319 out of 518 students supported a ban on DHMO - apparently this is an unusually low proportion for such surveys. Quite why Eagle Pass students were so complacent (or apathetic, maybe?) isn't made clear.

Attempts to raise this issue with government departments have consistently failed. In New Zealand last year, I understand, National MP Jacqui Dean attempted to get the NZ Health Ministry to consider banning DHMO, but Associate Health Minister Jim Anderton flatly refused to even consider the issue. DHMO has insidiously become too important to Western economies for them to even think about banning it!

This is clearly a worrying issue, but it's hard to see what is best to be done. What do you think?

Update: In case it isn't obvious, the 'Cause For Concern' of the title is the way people sign petitions. Apparently, when presented with petitions giving these sorts of data about DHMO, typically 80-90% of people will put their names to a petition banning water. Signing a petition has no real cost associated with it, whilst refusing to sign carries a social cost. So people will just sign without thinking through what they are signing, never mind trying to find a more balanced view on the matter. So what does a petition tell us? Very little about the issue, much more about the coercive skills of the people asking for signatures. Signing a petition is a cheap, and therefore essentially meaningless, form of protest. I wonder how different blogs are?

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Homes, Food & Oil - Posted 30th September, 2008

For several years it's been obvious that house prices in the UK were much too high. I understand that there were similar housing bubbles in the US and many other countries. Over the past year or two these have finally started to decline, although rather slowly; suddenly this is seen as a major problem.

Massive agricultural subsidies in Western nations had forced world food prices down to unsustainable levels. This had the effect of forcing many small farmers out of business, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and in India, which actually makes hunger and vulnerability to famine worse. As world food prices have risen, this should be encouraging small farmers, and helping to at least slow the mass migration from the countryside into cities.

World dependence on oil and coal is destroying our environment, and has severely distorted world economies and politics. Yet, because oil has been so cheap, we have just lived with it. The only way to reduce that dependence is to make oil significantly more expensive than less harmful alternatives. That had been happening, although as many economies go into decline oil prices seem likely to come down again, for a while.

Cheaper houses, better returns for farmers, and a more competitive environment for alternative energy. These are all good things, aren't they?

The trouble is that these advantages are in the medium term. In the short term there are challenges: more expensive food hits poor consumers straight away, but investing in small farms and better distribution takes time. Houses bought at inflated prices will lead to negative equity as prices move to a realistic level; this isn't actually an immediate problem in a home but it does make people very vulnerable to other problems. An economy based on cheap oil will take time to move to a sustainable economy based on renewables. Benefits take time, whilst short-term pain is immediate.

The biggest problem, though, is globalisation. In its current form, globalisation acts to amplify short-term effects. Everything is so interconnected, and so optimised for maximum short-term profits, that a relatively small perturbation causes a large shock to the system. In effect the whole global system is horribly oversensitive. A reduction in the supply of oil ought to lead to a proportionate increase in its price; yet over the past few years oil prices have been all over the place, as futures traders play games to maximise profits - futures trading is meant to make markets operate more smoothly and efficiently, but they have become massively distorted.

Bad interest rate decisions in the US can reasonably be expected to affect those who took out mortgages at one rate and couldn't afford it when rates rose five-fold, plus those companies who sold those mortgages without making the risks clear. But the savagely distorted global financial market passes the infection around, so that all sorts of different companies find themselves affected; plus the enormous size of these global financial players means that the fallout from their problems affects everyone.

In the UK, the Bradford & Bingley bank failed over the weekend and had to be bailed out. The B&B used to be a successful building society - owned by its members/customers, who put money in in the form of savings and took it out in mortgages. The board wanted to carry on as a building society, but the members were greedy and wanted the one-off payment that would come from converting to a bank owned by shareholders. That bank has now failed - the last of the building societies that demutualised, all the others had already failed or been taken over. The point about the B&B is that it wasn't the 'fat-cats' on the board who screwed it up through their greed , it was the 'ordinary' people.

Globalisation can be a beneficial thing, but not when too many people are too greedy - people at all levels of society. People who control budgets of billions and people who control household budgets of tens of pounds or dollars or euros. When what is cheapest matters more than what is most ethical or most sustainable; when what is convenient matters more than what is right; and when cheap ideology, of left or right, trumps common sense: then the weak will suffer and the strong will be empty and worthless.

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?

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Democracy In West-Coast Africa - Posted 26th September, 2008

Earlier this month the results of Angola's parliamentary elections were accepted by the losing side, Unita. The last elections there were in 1992, when Unita refused to accept defeat and resumed their civil war. This is still some way short of fully-functioning multi-party democracy (I'll believe that when the ruling party loses an election and hand over power peacefully); nevertheless it is a major step forward. Angola is one of several African countries with a wealth of natural resources, but crippled by internal division, nurtured by other countries' regional power politics.

Over recent decades, countries down the western side of Africa seem to have struggled most with the transition to democracy. But over the past couple of years there have been a number of hopeful signs.

Back in December 2006, I wrote about fragile signs of hope in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after they swore in Joseph Kabila as their first democratically elected president in forty years. Nearly two years on, Congo remains mostly at peace - although fighting still continues in the far east of the country, mostly as a result of rebels from Rwanda and Uganda coming over the border. Nevertheless, there has been no sign of a return to the bloody civil war that claimed 4 million lives there. Overall there has been political stability (although I'm not sure what to make of yesterday's announcement that the prime minister is retiring 'for health reasons'), and there has been some investment in the infrastructure. It is all progressing so slowly, but it is progressing.

Meanwhile, Ivory Coast also remains fairly peaceful, although far from democratic. Elections are planned for 30th November, but too much of last year's peace deal remains unimplemented, so delay seems inevitable. I've no idea how much effect the relative calm has had on the issue of slave-grown chocolate there; I don't suppose the big chocolate manufacturers do either.

Last year, Nigeria managed the next critical step in democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one civilian head of state to another. However the elections were far from 'free and fair', so there is some way to go. Although Nigeria has the resources to be an economic powerhouse, its ethnic divisions and history of corruption make that unlikely in the near future (although corruption is reported to have significantly improved over the past year). Troubles in the oil-rich Niger delta region have been in the news recently.

Down in the south, Namibia hasn't been in the news for a while - always a good sign. They have a democracy that seems to be functioning well, although that might just be because the voters continue to vote for SWAPO. The real test will be when the opposition are in a position to actually win an election.

To the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo are the Republic of Congo (aka Congo Brazzaville), Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon - all following the old African strongman approach, although they pay lip-service to multi-party democracy.

West of Nigeria, Benin has a healthy-looking multi-party democracy and a free press. It also has a weak economy and too much corruption. Togo finally moved toward democracy with relatively free and fair legislative elections in October last year. I've heard nothing since, which I guess is good news. Ghana is another multi-party democracy, with a free press, which has elections in December this year. Hopefully they'll go well.

After Ivory Coast you have several relatively small countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea Bissau; about which the best you can say is that there's been no news reports of major fighting for a couple of years. Then you have Senegal, which is a well-established democracy, and The Gambia, which isn't. Mauritania had a military coup last month, Western Sahara is under occupation, and Morroco is ruled by a monarch with sweeping powers, King Mohammed VI.

Phew! That was more of a marathon than I'd intended. I think it is fairly clear, though, that over the past two or three years there have been big improvements in the governance of many countries down that west African coast, although there are exceptions and there is still a long way to go. Given that most of the news we see out of Africa tends to be bad, this is worth remembering. It is also worth noting that Western pressure for improved goverance, backed by aid and investment, does seem to be having a generally beneficial effect, as long as it is left to the citizens themselves to actually implement reforms.

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Speech Worth Setting Free - Posted 16th September, 2008

The Malaysian government has moved against bloggers and journalists this week, detaining them under its draconian Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial at the whim of the Home Minister. As the Home Minister is part of a government which is in a political crisis, it is clear that these moves against free speech are political in nature and intended to help an unpopular ruling coalition cling on to power.

Meanwhile, here in the UK there seems to be a developing fashion for church leaders from evangelical and charismatic groups to complain that their religious groupings are being persecuted and their freedom of religion and of speech blocked. Why? Because of new anti-discrimination laws here which limit hate speech against homosexuals. Realistically, the laws should not stop anything which any mainstream church leader is likely to say - they are aimed at speech intended to inspire hatred, not at value judgements about people's behaviour.

To me, there is something deeply unpleasant about groups in a comfortable, even privileged, position in a democratic society complaining of religious persecution when Pakistani and Indian Christians are being raped, beaten and murdered for their faith. Or when local Christians in a whole swathe of countries are prevented from building churches, or gathering together to worship except in the churches they are not allowed to build. Similarly, to moan about restrictions on just how abusive they are allowed to be about people whose lifestyles they dislike, when Russian journalists (among many others) are being murdered and Malaysian journalists (among many more others) are being imprisoned, seems frankly disrespectful.

Two thousand years ago, more or less, the greatest military superpower the world had known marched around the Mediterranean, into the Middle East and up through Western Europe. They ruled by naked power and they didn't care about freedom, neither of choice nor of speech. Not for non-Romans anyway. Their motto was simple: "Caesar is Lord!"  Coercive power ruled, and that was that. "Resistance is useless", as the Vogons say. If you wouldn't accept Caesar as your Lord freely, you were crushed until you accepted him anyway ... or died, another helpless victim.

There was an itinerant preacher, in an obscure but strategically important corner of the Empire, who said that there was another, better, way. He said that you should treat people as you would like to be treated. He said that you should love God and your neighbour, and that his followers should love one another even when they disagreed. And he said that true power is about service, about helping others, not forcing them to obey you. The local religious leaders used their power to try to stop him, but he refused to be a victim. So they called in the Romans, who used the ultimate symbol of their coercive power: they crucified him on a cross. But he still refused to be a victim: he forgave his killers and gave up his life willingly ... and then took it up again a day and a half later.

His followers were inspired, and began living out the better way. The religious authorities tried to crush them, and the movement spread. The Romans tried to crush them, and the movement spread more. The full coercive power of a military superpower was used against them, and they kept on growing and showing that there is a better way. That people don't have use force to make a difference. That God actually favours big hearts over big battalions. That love is stronger than hate, and compassion stronger than coercion. These followers had a motto, a proclamation of their faith: "Jesus is Lord!"  Not Caesar, not those who follow in Caesar's path, but Jesus. Jesus' is a different sort of lordship - one that doesn't lord it over others.

In the modern-day military superpower, religious authorities and secular powers alike follow Ceasar, and have absolute faith in coercive power. Ironically the religious authorities use Jesus' name to do so, but most don't follow his way. And in the nation that was a military superpower a century and a half ago, religious people whine because their coercive power is restricted. There is a better way:-

"Jesus is Lord!"

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Caversham Festival 2008 - Posted 7th September, 2008

Not terribly relevant to anyone living much outside Caversham, I guess, but next Saturday (13th) is the fifth Caversham Festival. Based at Westfield Road Rec., this is an event “Organised by Caversham People for Caversham People”, designed as a showcase for local Caversham groups. The CADRA website for this year is less than informative (at the time of writing), but in previous years there have been stalls from a variety of local groups, a stage with live music, a Traidcraft tent, and a variety of activities arranged for young and old. Last year there was a tea tent, a beer tent, freshly squeezed lemonade, barbequed meats and ice-cream to satisfy visitors' gustatory desires, as well as local arts and crafts and spiritual groups for those whose minds were set on higher things.

Caversham Baptist Church has a tent, where we will be doing children's crafts and other stuff (he says, vaguely) for older visitors. I'll be there between 1 and 2pm so, if you're in Caversham on Saturday, pop in and say hello. Maybe by then I'll know what we're doing ;-)

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So How Close Was World War Three? - Posted 4th September, 2008

Back in April, President Bush was pushing very hard for expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia. Several European members of NATO blocked the move, at least for the time being.

In August, Georgia launched an attack on its breakaway province of South Ossetia, apparently killing some Russian peacekeepers stationed there. Russia responded by sending in the Russian army, which rolled down through South Ossetia and onward through the whole of Georgia.

According to the North Atlantic Treaty, which is the basis of NATO membership:-

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Thus, if Georgia had been a member of NATO, then the Russian invasion should have been treated as an act of war against the whole of NATO, which should have responded. In practice NATO was never likely to go to war over Georgia, so they would have had to find a diplomatic way of failing to honour the treaty. The choice would be World War 3 or a severely weakened NATO.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has a large pro-Russian minority, and a very unstable pro-Western government. It also has the Russian Black Sea Naval Fleet based in Crimea. If Ukraine were to become a member of NATO, it is entirely plausible that Russia could manipulate affairs such that their army was invited into Ukraine in a way that made a nonsense of that NATO membership, again weaking the alliance.

What Bush and his supporters don't seem to recognise is that NATO is a miltary mutual defence treaty. If you incorporate unstable states into that treaty, or states that are liable to deliberately provoke Russian attacks, then all its members are put at risk. While Bush tries to manipulate NATO in order to play political power games, he seems to fail to recognise that he is risking the very organisation which has been so instrumental in keeping peace in (most of) Europe for the past sixty years. In so doing he risks triggering a war which nobody can win.

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Any Questions? - Posted 25th August, 2008

Our Not Just Sundays series at Caversham Baptist Church finished yesterday with an 'Any Questions' session. Basically we put a big box at the front of church (see picture) and encouraged people to put any questions they had into it. Then, during yesterday's sermon slot, part of the preaching team gave brief responses to as many questions as there was time for, with the congregation adding their thoughts on some. We got through the first five questions (out of eighteen). It had been obvious that we wouldn't get through them all, so in the week beforehand the pastor and myself came up with our own brief written responses to all the questions, which have been posted on a noticeboard (and now here). The two of us approach these sorts of questions in very different ways, so the hope is that people will be able to relate to at least one response to each question. Steve, another member of the team, sent me a response to a question on evil, which is also included.

Note that these are only brief responses to some difficult (and often interesting) questions. If you want to take a response further then comment or email me. Note also that a response is not necessarily the same thing as an answer.

The following is the list of questions; click on the question to see the responses:-

Q1. Why does Christianity seem to be increasingly irrelevant to many people in the West today?

Q2. What happens to a baby or young child who dies when they were too young to become a Christian? Do they have eternal life? Does it make a difference if they have a Christian mother (cf 1Cor 7:14)?

Q3. What’s the point of living on earth when you know you’re better off dead, in heaven with Jesus Christ?

Q4. Is a prayer more likely to be answered if a) it is prayed by more than one person; b) it is prayed more than once by the same person?  If not, what is the point of a prayer meeting or of being persistent in prayer?  If God knows what we need before we ask it, why do we pray about our needs at all?

Q5. Why does a loving, caring God allow so much suffering in the world? / Why does God allow disasters (floods, earthquakes, famines, etc)? / Why do bad things happen to good people?

Q6. Did God create dinosaurs? When? Isn’t there scientific proof they existed?

Q7. What do you think Christ would say to those who are dividing the church with debates about ordination of women, gay marriage within the church, etc?

Q8.  God commands the Israelites not to murder, but then commands them to kill large numbers of people in taking the Promised Land, including women and children.  In Joshua, they are ethnically cleansing whole areas e.g. Jericho and Ai.  How can this be reconciled?

Q9. Why do we use the name “God” with a capital ‘G’ and not Jehovah or Yahweh? The term “God” seems too general a term.

Q10. How can we know that God exists?

Q11. Several religions believe in one God. What is so special about the Christian God? Can all religions be different paths to the one God?

Q12. Where does evil come from? How can we say that God is in charge of the world when evil exists as it does?

Q13. How can we have free will when God already knows what is going to happen?

Q14. Won’t all good people go to heaven? How can a loving God create and send people to hell?

Q15. How do we know that there is a spiritual world, when we can’t see it?

Q16. How do we know that the Bible can be relied upon? Doesn’t it contradict itself? Who decided what books would be included and why? How reliable are our modern translations? Why are there so many of them?

Q17. How do we know that re-incarnation is false, when many people seem to talk of past lives?

Q18. Why is there no record of Jesus’ life as He grew up?

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Clutter - Posted 19th August, 2008

These past couple of weeks we have been looking to move house - as the kids get older the layout of house needed has changed, and our local council bureaucrats won't let us make changes to this one. As part of the process of selling this house, we have had a massive declutter - taking carloads of stuff to recycling, to charity shops and to the local dump. We have finally reached the point where the house is merely crowded, rather than so stuffed that people could barely get in, never mind look around. This process has caused wife and daughter massive emotional trauma, and has left me (and I think BlackMatt, although he remains noncommittal) wondering at how much more attractive the house looks and feels without all that stuff.

The trouble is that I can't claim an impartial view - I was a forces kid, so we moved every three years, so stuff just didn't accumulate. The downside of that is that friendships didn't accumulate either; you get to accept that friendships are short-term things that you just have to let go of at short notice.

The house we are moving to, all going well, is slightly smaller - although better laid out - so we have a lot more decluttering to do yet. I think we'll all be much better for doing it. People matter much more than things, and too strong a relationship with material stuff gets in the way of our walk with Jesus, I reckon.

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How NOT To Use Statistics - Posted 11th August, 2008

“We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do. The most devout Christians beat their wives ... many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally acceptable to beat your wife. In that regard, it makes the conversation quite difficult.”

So wrote (apparently) Rt Rev Catherine Roskam, Suffragan Bishop of New York, in Integrity's Lambeth Witness newsletter. This was following a plenary session at the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference, led by the bishops' spouses, on the abuse of power.

I say 'apparently' because she claims to have been "quoted very selectively" after her comments hit the mainstream press over here (you can see her response on her blog, scroll down to entry #9). Unfortunately she omits to put the record straight by printing what she actually did say.

Her words (however 'selectively quoted') brought back the wonderfully colonial views of another 'liberal' New York bishop, John Spong, at the last Lambeth Conference ten years ago. Bishop Spong reckoned that African Christians had only just "moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity", which was why they were so "superstitious and fundamentalist". He's also said to have compared conservative African bishops to advocates of slavery in the 19th Century - I can't find his actual quote on that, but it was a remarkable thing to say if so.

The problem with Ms Roskam's analysis, though, is that she apparently doesn't understand statistics. If, for example, 11% of a random selection of North American couples report spouse-on-spouse violence, that does not mean that if you take a selection of Roman Catholic priests then one in ten of them is a wife-beater! The latter may or may not happen to be true (probably not!), but the point is that you are not comparing like with like. Statistics about an overall population tell you nothing about the behaviour of a small, highly selective, subpopulation. I've no idea if the figures for wife/husband beating in the general population of Africa are any better or worse than those for North America; but I do know that they tell us nothing about the behaviour of bishops, African, North American or otherwise.

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Faith, Hope & Love - Posted 25th July, 2008

For various reasons (including giving a talk on the Book of Job), I have been thinking about death and bereavement recently. In particular, about what Christians might have to offer in such situations. Not just Christians, perhaps, but that was my starting point. I ended up by organising some brief thoughts on the themes of Faith, Hope and Love:-

Faith: the trust that whatever you are going through, God is there with you and will see you through. And if the person going through it is a non-believer then your job is to be their faith for them – to hold onto the firm belief that God is somehow in this situation, however bad things may be or may get – and to be Jesus’ presence for God. Even if they cannot see Jesus, they can see you. How can you be Jesus’ heart and hands and feet and voice for them?

Hope: bereavement is for a season. That season may be cold and hard and lonely, but for those who belong to Jesus there will be a reuniting: relationships built on the foundation which is Jesus will endure. How can you prepare, ready to hang on to hope when times are bad?

Love: how can you show God’s love to someone in real need? Quite likely not in words, they are so often inadequate, but maybe in simple practical actions (what do they find difficult? do they like home-made cake?), or maybe just in being there.

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