BlackPhi Webitorial Ramblings

News & Comment From A Christian's Perspective

Another Apartheid - Posted 14th May, 2008

Sixty years ago, the State of Israel was founded. During the subsequent Arab-Israeli War, Israel was able to greatly expand its borders beyond those allocated by the UN, and to drive out a large proportion of the Palestinians living within those borders.

This latter was particularly important as the Zionist leaders of the time (I am using 'Zionist', incidentally, to mean someone actively promoting a racially Jewish state within the historic region of Ancient Israel) did not want to go down the apartheid path taken by South Africa - a settler minority lording it over a larger, exploited native majority. But the borders proposed by the UN both failed to meet the Zionists' minimum territorial desires, and would have contained a population which was around 40-45% Arab; with the Arabs said to have the higher birth rate. The Zionists' solution was 'transfer' - moving Arabs out of the Israel in some way. This had been a stated objective for at least 10 years: according to Jewish Agency records (held in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem) in June 1938 Zionist leaders were looking for "maximal transfer" of Arabs out of a future Jewish state. David Ben-Gurion is recorded as stating: "I support compulsory transfer. I don't see in it anything immoral."

In the event, an official policy of compulsory transfer wasn't needed - between the Israeli Defense Forces clearing certain areas of Arab inhabitants (particularly on the Northern Front), and the actions of Jewish terror groups such as Haganah, Irgun and the Stern Gang, about 80% of the Arab population fled the country. That gave ethnic Jews a clear majority in the new state, a situation which could be maintained through overtly racist immigration policies, such as the Law of Return, and the more recent Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law.

In 1967, following the Six-Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which changed this population balance. The present population of Israel is 7.28 million, around 20% of them Arab, whilst the West Bank and Gaza Strip have over 4 million Arabs. In addition there are around 4 million registered Palestinian refugees who, under UN resolutions 194 and 3236, have the right to return to their (or their father's/grandfather's/...) homes and properties. So those Zionists who want a pure, or near-pure, Jewish state are back to their original problem - proper democracy would give power to non-Jews. Meanwhile, in Israel itself the old liberal attitudes were fading.

Back in 2002, Desmond Tutu, who knows a thing or two about injustice and apartheid, caused a stir by writing a number of articles (see, for example, here and here) comparing the situation of Palestinians in the occupied territories with that of blacks in apartheid South Africa:

I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.

And:

Yesterday's South African township dwellers can tell you about today's life in the occupied territories. To travel only blocks in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in Israel's cities, but their luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralyzing an entire people. The indignities, dependence and anger are all too familiar.

He calls for divestment from Israel:

The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure--in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation. Divestment from apartheid South Africa was fought by ordinary people at the grassroots. Faith-based leaders informed their followers, union members pressured their companies' stockholders and consumers questioned their store owners. ... Similar moral and financial pressures on Israel are being mustered one person at a time. Students on more than forty US campuses are demanding a review of university investments in Israeli companies as well as in firms doing major business in Israel. From Berkeley to Ann Arbor, city councils have debated municipal divestment measures.

Inevitably, Tutu was promptly labelled "anti-Semitic" by the so-called 'Jewish lobby' - who presumably don't realise that Palestinians are Semitic too. I don't know who this 'Jewish lobby' really represents - it can hardly be the Jewish voices throughout the world who have spoken out against the brutality of the Israeli regime and its treatment of its neighbours. Whoever it is, they have generally been an effective block on discussion of Israel's behaviour in much of the US and European media. According to Wikipedia, Tutu "has drawn attention to a letter signed by several hundred prominent Jewish South Africans drawing an explicit analogy between apartheid and current Israeli policies", which ought to have given pause to those who throw the "anti-Semitic" slur around so easily.

There are, of course, significant non-parallels between the Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa - most notably that the minority of Palestinian Arabs who are Israeli citizens do have normal democratic rights within Israel (apart from some aspects of immigration policy). The main true parallel seems to be around the apartheid policy of offloading its black majority into citizenship of "bantustans" as a way of denying them democratic rights in the South African state, whilst still grabbing the best land for the white minority, plus all the paraphernalia of state oppression required to suppress black political rights and divide and control a subject people. For apartheid South Africa, to some extent, and for Israel most emphatically, massive political and economic support from the US help them to do this.

One of the depressing aspects of discussion about Israel and justice is the attitude of the religious right, in both the US and the UK. They claim the Bible gives the Holy Land to the Jewish people unconditionally and without accountability. As so often, I can only assume that they are reading the Bible with their eyes shut. Israelite possession of the Holy Land was conditional on their keeping their side of the bargain: the Torah. Jesus summarised the Torah in two ways: firstly as the Golden Rule, "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."; and secondly as the two great commandments, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbour as yourself".

As Desmond Tutu put it:

Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgement.

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Threats To National Security - Posted 6th May, 2008

Sami Al-Hajj, the Al-Jazeera cameraman held by the US since 2001, without charge or trial, was released last Friday. After well over a year on hunger strike he was very weak and was carried off the plane by stretcher, at Khartoum airport. Curiously, four cartoons he had drawn about his experiences in Guantanamo Bay were not released - they had been censored, supposedly as a threat to US national security.

Descriptions of the cartoons, entitled Sketches of My Nightmare, had previously been given, so cartoonist Lewis Peake has reproduced at least two of them.

The one on the right, Scream For Freedom, is about the force feeding of prisoners on hunger strike, in the so-called 'torture chair'. Al-Hajj describes it like this:-

The first sketch is just a skeleton in the torture chair. My picture reflects my nightmares of what I must look like, with my head double-strapped down, a tube in my nose, a black mask over my mouth, with no eyes and only giant cheekbones, my teeth jutting out – my bones showing in every detail, every rib, every joint. The tube goes up to a bag at the top of the drawing. On the right there is another skeleton sitting shackled to another chair. They are sitting like we do in interrogations, with hands shackled, feet shackled to the floor, just waiting. In between I draw the flag of Guantanamo – JTF-GTMO – but instead of the normal insignia, there is a skull and crossbones, the real symbol of what is happening here.

The second, In Hospital, is briefly described by Al-Hajj like this:-

Again it is a skeleton, but with a face this time. The top of the skull is dotted with tracks, tracks of pain. This is the hospital gurney prisoner. He sits completely still, his hands and feet shackled to the side of the bed. ‘In Hospital.’

Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, a British charity that provides legal representation to Guantanamo detainees, added (back in March):-

Sami al-Hajj has often spoken to me of the nightmare that is the hospital in Guantanamo Bay. He is not only suffering from his hunger strike, but he has also been told he may have cancer in his kidneys, and that no doctor can see him until May. Even then, he was told, perhaps the right doctor will not come to the base. It is no wonder that he portrays his own dark vision of the hospital in this way.

You have to question, I have to question as an American, why the US government thinks that free speech in the form of this picture is a somehow a threat to US national security. I have seen plenty of evidence that is extremely embarrassing to the American government, and that's because this sort of picture gives you a visual image of what poor Sami goes through twice a day. I think a picture sometimes paints a thousand words, and I think that is what the US government is afraid of.

Maybe Stafford Smith is correct about the impact of pictures, but I think that cartoons are an important part of free speech (including these, which contributed to my quitting as editor of our church website). Mind you, when Al-Hajj was originally arrested he was an accredited cameraman covering the war in Afghanistan, so I guess 'free speech' isn't something the US authorities care too much about.

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Reading Beer Festival - Posted 2nd May, 2008

Around 450 beers from all over England, Wales and Scotland, plus over 120 ciders and about 35 perrries, plus about fifty German beers, plus an unknown number of other continental beers and English wines. That is the (liquid) fare available at the CAMRA beer and cider festival in Reading this weekend.

There are also several food stalls on the site, but, to be honest, the sausage baguettes and bacon baps from Splendid Meat are so good that I've never got around to trying the rest.

There's kind of a memorial feel to our visits to the beer festival these days. A few years back there were four of us used to go, either Thursday or Friday evening. The healthiest of us, we would all have taken bets, was Tyrone. Yet he was the one who died of heart failure. So now there are three, and it still feels strange.

This year, for no particular reason, the three of us were drinking milds and stouts - there were around 50 different milds at the festival, and probably a similar number of stouts - so we weren't able to make much of a dent in the selection available, but it was enjoyable trying.

If the weather isn't too bad tomorrow, the Blackxxx family will probably pop along at lunchtime - Blacksar likes the shandy they sell at the festival; BlackMatt isn't a drinker, but does like good sausages; BlackLin likes cider and perry; and I can always try a different beer - there's around 440 more to choose from!

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What Is A Biblical Worldview - Posted 22nd April, 2008

I've recently started reading unChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, which looks at attitudes to Christianity among young adults (16-29) in the US. This is a group among whom respect for Christianity has plummetted over the last ten years - which I think is hardly surprising. Between the political antics and abuses of the religious right since they got influence; the US Episcopal Church tearing itself apart so unlovingly; the Southern Baptist Convention doing its own arrogant thing; and a general anti-religious trend after 9/11: it hasn't been a good decade for US churches (nor indeed for the rest of us).

Kinnaman is president of The Barna Group, a religion-focussed market research organisation, so the book has plenty of facts and figures. But the problem with Barna has always been that they filter everything through their own, strongly evangelical, approach to the world, which makes their data difficult to use. This book has the same problem.

One glaring example is where he analyses peoples' responses according to whether they have a 'biblical worldview', which he defines by saying "A person with a biblical worldview experiences, interprets, and responds to reality in the light of the Bible's principles". In market research terms, he then defines that in terms of eight statements which such people agree or agree strongly with:-

• Jesus Christ lived a sinless life;
• God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and he still rules it today;
• Salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned;
• Satan is real;
• A Christian has a responsibility to share his or her faith in Christ with other people;
• The Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches;
• Unchanging moral truth exists;
• Such moral truth is defined by the Bible.

Whilst I don't have a great problem with any of these statements in themselves, they do not constitute, or even come close to defining, a Biblical worldview; what they do is simply reflect the worldview of a particular conservative US evangelical tradition. A true Biblical worldview has to start from what the Bible says and emphasises, not just echo the cultural beliefs of a religious tradition.

I know several readers of this blog have a good working knowledge of the Bible, so what do you think defines a 'biblical worldview' - in eight or less agree/disagree statements? And why?

Here's my stab:-

• God created the universe and remains actively involved in caring for it today;
• There are all kinds of philosophical issues with an activist God, but that's what you find throughout the Bible;
• Other people are to be treated with justice and mercy, especially the poor;
• The law, the prophets and much of the New Testament focus on the way we treat others and on justice, although the history section of the OT does a rather poor job of illustrating it;
• Jesus is God's anointed king and ruler of all God's people;
• That's what 'Christ' or 'Messiah' means - it's a title rather than a surname - and this is a focus of the OT prophets and of much of the NT;
• The job of the church is to point people to God by its unity and its love;
• If only they would! This is mostly from John and Paul, but it is a big theme in both;
• The world and its inhabitants are in a mess;
• From chapter 3 of Genesis to chapter 20 of Revelation this is the underlying theme ...
• God has decisively intervened through Jesus' death on a cross to sort this mess out;
• ... along with God's working to change things ...
• Jesus will return to bring a 'new earth' of justice and of peace, where sickness and death will be no more;
• ... and the underlying hope, from prophets and letter-writers, that the time will come when the world will be remade as it should be - as it was in the beginning, when God looked at all that He had made and "it was good";
• The Bible is God's gift to us, given in love to help us, not to condemn us;
• This should be so obvious, but seemingly isn't.

What's your list?

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LoveFilm Reviews - Posted 19th April, 2008

A friend of the family bought us a three-month subscription to LoveFilm for Christmas. I didn't really think we'd get that much use from this, as we generally seem to have a million other things going on, but we signed up and gave it a go. The basic concept is that you keep a list of ten DVDs that you are interested in seeing, and they send you two of them. After you have watched them, you top up the list, send the DVDs back, and they send you two more.

Actually it has worked quite well, so we have kept the subscription going. I put various recommendations fellow bloggers and commenters here have given me on our list - along with things the kids fancy seeing and a few other films that look interesting - and have had several films that we have enjoyed watching together. I did think about reviewing the films individually, but there are too many, and I couldn't be bothered, so here are several short reviews together.

Casino Royale    

What do you do with a franchise that has become so silly and so jaded that you couldn't even satirise it? The revolutionary approach here is to hire some decent writers and actually spend money on a good script, rather than ever more special effects. This film still has a long and pointless chase scene - ironically recognised as such - it has action and it has humour. But most of all it has good writing and good acting. It works as a film in its own right, as well as working as the prequel to the Bond legend. I am surprised to say that I really enjoyed this film. So much so that I went to the public library to reread the book (which I last read in my early teens). The book was rubbish, but they made a very good film from it!

The Incredibles    

I expected this to be better. It was all right, I suppose: cartoon action, family values, pulling together to defeat evil, some humour; but in the end the flavour was bland and disappointing.

The Game    

Interesting film. Immensely wealthy control freak, Michael Douglas, gets a weird present from his brother - a 'game' that strips him of his control over his life. Excellent writing and excellent acting make this a must-see film. Even the predictability of the ending is mostly overcome by the pace of the disintegration that gets him there. There was just a bit more suspension of belief required by the end than I was willing to give, otherwise this would have been worth the full five smileys.

Bewitched    

Grim. Exploitative film about an exploitative remake of the old TV series Bewitched. They hire an unknown to play Samantha, and guess what ... she's a witch! Except that she wiggles her ear not her nose. Wow! The characterisation is totally unsympathetic, the dialogue is dull, and the ideas are non-existent. Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine all fail to get anything out of the leaden writing. Not worth the time.

Dogma    

Another interesting film. The comic book style and the language take a while to get used to, but this is a film that just fizzes ideas. In many ways this is a one-man film: writer and director Kevin Smith's vision and humour dominate. But what makes it really work is an incredibly strong performance by Linda Fiorentino as Bethany Sloane, an abortion clinic worker called on to save the world when God goes missing. Through all the insanity and strangeness, she keeps the whole thing solidly grounded; she is the realistic, relatable character who makes all the weirdos stranger and more interesting. The film has banished angels; a thirteenth apostle (left out of the official records for being black); two prophets - one foul-mouthed, the other silent; the voice of God; a pole-dancing muse; and Alanis Morissette as God. The whole film is based on a misunderstanding of Roman Catholic doctrine concerning plenary indulgences, but never mind. One to watch, but only if you don't mind a lot of swearing and scatological jokes.

Miss Potter    

A film telling the story of Beatrix Potter's relationship with Norman Warne, who first published her children's books. The books themselves, with their charming illustrations of Beatrix's 'friends', are the stars of the film; but Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor put up a good show too. The stifling respectability of Beatrix's upper-middle class London upbringing is painted in heavily, but given humanity by Bill Paterson's Rupert Potter, her father, who clearly wants the best for his daughter, but can't break away from his assumptions to see what that 'best' really is. This is a very good family film, but its (probably inevitable) flaw is that the real Beatrix Potter was so much more than just a children's writer. The film deliberately only deals with one part of her life, as it has to realistically, but the incompleteness does show. This is the best 'family' film that we have had from LoveFilm, by a mile.

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Laptop Blues - Posted 15th April, 2008

Oh, my laptop done gone left me \ Gone to that place in the sky \ and the new one sure is so hot \ gonna burn a great hole in my thigh.

Okay, so I'll never make a lyricist.

My laptop decided to die on me last week - the one house PC which is mine (all mine!) and which I use for everything: work, blogging, Bible study, you name it (well, not so much games, 'cause it was getting a bit old). Not only did it die, but it did so thoroughly, taking the hard disk with it. No big deal, in one sense: I have other computers (they are my job) and everything is backed up.

What I hadn't appreciated, though, was the extent to which I had my laptop tailored to the ways I work. Anything I needed to do, I could still do ... but to do one thing I had to go to one computer, and find the program I needed behind all the family's stuff. Then for the next thing I needed to go somewhere else, 'cause it needs a password and I've never needed to enter the password on that first PC, so it isn't saved (and I don't know what it is - the laptop always remembered it for me).

Actually, there is one PC which is set up fairly close to the way I work - the one out in my workshop. Imagine a large garage cut in half, with lots of power sockets and workbenches (although never enough). Then imagine the amount of insulation a normal garage has. Then look at the picture above - the first proper snow of the year ... in April! Workshop wasn't such a good place to work last week.

Fortunately Dell Outlet were very quick with delivering a replacement. I've been reluctant to use Dell Outlet after the occasion when they delivered me a lemon (not even a properly cleaned lemon) and then gave me the runaround when I tried to get them to fix it, at a time when I was very busy and just didn't have time. But this one did look just the spec I wanted, at a good price, so I thought I'd give them another go.

The new laptop looks very pretty, and is very well-endowed. Unfortunately, it's also bone idle. After an hour or so it turns its screen off. The first day I tried it, it also gave me a nice scent of hot electrics. Fortunately, I know why Dell never call these things 'laptops' - always notepads - so I had a nice hard flat surface between its base and a part of my anatomy I would rather not roast. Dell support were very quick getting back to me - and they even seemed to have read my first email, which was a shock. So I installed Vista service pack one and the overheating stopped. Unfortunately the enforced breaks didn't - it still shuts the screen off after an hour or so. It seems to think the lid has been closed.

It'll be interesting to see how Dell do with these other problems. If they sort them then using Outlet was worth it.

This does serve as a reminder that sometimes I take things for granted. That, and new and flashy can also mean hassle.

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Anomalous Albums - Posted 31st March, 2008

I was listening to Planet Rock yesterday when I started to wonder about bands where one album is in a different league to the rest of their work.

Wishbone Ash is an obvious example: before Argus they were a fairly run of the mill British rock band with some interesting ideas; with Argus itself they hit a creative, coherent seam of genius; then they just faded away into an obscurity of bland US jazz-rock.

Or consider Al Stewart. As a singer-songwriter in a folkie style he was entertaining, but not really that special. Past, Present and Future suddenly showed that he had the potential for something more - Roads To Moscow is a fantastic track - but neither it nor the successor album Modern Times came close to realising that potential. Then he released Year of the Cat - the perfect Al Stewart album. And that was it - subsequent albums were, frankly, dull. It was as though he realised he'd done the best work he could do, so he had nothing left to aim for.

Or again - how about Meat Loaf. A fantastic first album, Bat Out Of Hell, then every other album an also-ran.

Yet there's a pile of other bands - Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath spring to mind - where you can have a sensible argument over a pint of beer about which is their best album. You can make a case for any one of Zeppelin's first six; and comparing Paranoid, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Heaven and Hell has long been a kind of bottom-sniffing ritual for Sabbath fans. Pink Floyd had a clear peak (in my view) with Dark Side of the Moon, but Wish Year Were Here is in the same league, as is the flawed genius of The Wall and even, in rather different styles, The Division Bell and The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.

The song that got me thinking about this was The Who's Baba O'Riley. I reckon that Who's Next is vastly superior to every other album The Who released but, if I'm honest, this is an opinion that I can't really stand up. I think there is a good case that this was The Who's best album, but it's not really in a different league to the rest. I just like the style a lot more than their other albums, but that's a different matter.

There must be a pile of other bands who excelled themselves on one album only (remember Budgie, anyone) - any thoughts?

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Skanking In The Light Of God - Posted 23rd March, 2008

Massive energy at Caversham Baptist Church last night: Sounds Of Salvation were the final course in our Easter Saturday celebration. I'm told they play "third-wave 90's ska". To me it sounded like 2 Tone OD'ing on Red Bull.

School holidays are a bit weird this spring. Normally Caversham Baptist run a holiday club for local kids in the week before Easter, but this year they were all still at school. So instead there was a long day yesterday: under-fives activities in the morning, primary age in the afternoon, and Sounds Of Salvation ska-ing away in the evening. BlackMatt was a star - he was there all day in spite of feeling stuffed full of cold. And BlackSar is wrecked this morning: she was helping in the afternoon and dancing (sorry, skanking) all evening.

Sounds of Salvation played a mixture of well-known worship songs (and some even better know old hymns) in a fast ska style, plus some of their own compositions. The worship songs were fun and very danceable, but I preferred their own songs. "I am not a guinea pig" was fast punk with audience participation, whilst "Anthem for a broken world" is more thoughtful (you can hear the latter on MySpace).

All in all, a fun evening, if exhausting (and I was only watching). If SoS play in your area, they are well worth a visit.

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That We Might Go At Last To Heaven? - Posted 22nd March, 2008

There Is A Green Hill Far Away is a typical Mrs CF Alexander song: catchy tune, sentimental lyrics, and horrible theology. That it has become a part of Easter in many churches is a typical irony - who says God doesn't have a sense of humour?

Yesterday, we went to a lovely Good Friday family service up at St Andrew's Church, in Caversham Heights, where we sang this song, as well as the Graham Kendrick song Come and See. Graham Kendrick songs tend toward strong lyrics, powerful tunes and good solid theology - so I don't know what happened with the final verse of this one: "Man of heav'n, born to earth \ to restore us to your heav'n". This completely undermines the final line: "By your resurrection power we shall rise" - making it sound like the guff in the Left Behind series. Don't get me wrong: it was a good service, which did a fine job of opening up the Good Friday story; but songs like this just add to the confusion that already exists around the idea of resurrection - Jesus' or ours.

Then we got a beautifully printed leaflet put through our door from another local church, inviting us to their Easter Day service. It is very attractively presented, and if we didn't have our own home church to go to I would be tempted. But then they go and spoil it all with their explanation of the meaning of Jesus' resurrection:-

The resurrection means that Christ is still ALIVE. This means that we can have a LIVING relationship and interaction with him! If he has this kind of power, surely we can trust him when he says that he will raise Christians back to life, to live with him in heaven?

This from a supposedly Bible-believing church - no wonder people are confused! It's not even as if the Bible is particularly obscure or unclear on the subject; yet somehow two thousand years of tradition have badly muddied the waters.

The Bible tells us that on that first Easter Sunday Jesus was physically raised from the dead - his body was raised and, in the process, transformed. But it was still a material body: he could touch and be touched; he could eat and talk. The Bible also tells us that those who have life in Jesus will be physically raised when Jesus returns - if they have died they will be raised from the dead in transformed bodies; if they have not died then their bodies will simply be transformed in situ, so to speak.

This is all nicely summarised in chapter 15 of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, although you have to do a bit of unpicking because the Corinthians' worries then were rather different from our concerns today. You also have to be careful not to get thrown by the terminology of 'natural' bodies and 'spiritual' bodies - psychikos and pneumatikos in the original. I've thrown in the Greek words for two reasons: firstly to make it clear that these do not correspond to material and non-material bodies - psychikos comes from the same root as psychology or psychic; and secondly to point out the 'ikos' on the end of both. An 'ikos' word describes how something is powered or driven. Electric toothbrushes are not made of electricty, they are driven by electricity; in contrast to manual toothbrushes which are hand-powered. Similarly, when Paul talks about 'natural' bodies he means those driven by the natural impulses of people belonging to a mixed-up, messed-up society; as opposed to 'spiritual' bodies which will be driven by the spirit of God. Either way they are physical, material bodies ... although resurrection bodies will be changed.

And these transformed bodies will have a transformed world to live and work in. The book of Revelation describes it, in chapter 21:-

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

Mrs Alexander got it the wrong way around: it's not about us going to heaven; heaven is going to come to us. All because of what Jesus did, one Friday in the Judean springtime.

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Two Cavershams - Posted 15th March, 2008

I find Caversham an interesting, if slightly disconcerting, place. I was a forces kid, so I spent my childhood moving from place to place on three year postings. Shallow roots. My father-in-law went to the primary school just over the road from where we live, back in the '30s and '40s. I don't know how long his parents lived in Caversham before that. It's a different world.

There is one Caversham that still retains the sense of old-style community. It is a network of people who have lived here all of their lives and who are deeply committed to the village and to its distinct identity. Then there is the other Caversham, larger but much more transient: people who are moving through, people who have moved here and may stay or may not, and people who come here because it's a nice area and they want to stay and become part of it. And, of course, people who have married into the old Caversham community.

The tricky problem is that there are not that many places where the two Cavershams really intersect. Schools, for the kids; in principle for the parents as well, although a lot of parents don't have time to get involved. Some of the community groups get newcomers involved too, although the bulk of most is old Caversham. And churches. The older churches have a backbone of old Caversham, but to survive must involve new Caversham. Building a church community from both groups can be difficult, but that is what churches are about: building community where community is missing.

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Live Jazz At The Prince Of Wales - Posted 8th March, 2008

I still haven't really got my head around the idea that our kids are now old enough for us to go out for an hour or so in the evening without having to arrange baby-sitters; so when I had a pig of a working day Thursday it felt good to be able to say to BlackLin, "How do you fancy popping down to the Prince of Wales to see what their new live jazz evening is like?". And then just go.

Actually I didn't find the jazz that exciting. Jazz comes in a lot of forms; if I'm in a pub I prefer the music to be either 'mood' music - quiet enough to be an interesting background for conversation - or exciting enough to be worth focussing on. This was what I call 'twiddly jazz' - the sax plays a melody line, then the guitar does lots of clever twiddly stuff, then the keyboard has a twiddle, then the drum, then the sax; repeat three or four times and end. Too loud for easy conversation and not (to me) that interesting. The beer (Brakespear's ordinary bitter) was spot-on - as it usually is at the Prince of Wales - but we moved on after a while, down to the Clifton Arms. That's the nice thing about Caversham: there's lots of pubs in easy walking distance. The Clifton looks like it has been redecorated since I was last there - it looked very smart, and we got a seat near an open fire (gas through artificial coals, but still very pleasant). They had an organic bitter from Brakespear, Oxford Gold, so I tried that. It wasn't quite right, but still okay.

Even though the live jazz wasn't my cup of tea, I'm still glad the Prince of Wales is featuring it. There's really not that much live music around here, and it did bring in several people who clearly were getting into the music. If you live near Caversham and this is your sort of music, I do urge you to give it a go: Thursday evenings 8:30 to 11pm, at the end of Prospect Street (just a little north of the arrow on this map). I'd like to see The Covers back one night though.

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Do Artificial Sweeteners Make You Fat? - Posted 1st March, 2008

Studies in rats suggest that they may well do so, which might go some way toward explaining the modern rise in childhood obesity. New Scientist reports:-

Susan Swithers and Terry Davidson at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, gave rats set amounts of yogurt sweetened with either sucrose or saccharin, plus an unrestricted supply of ordinary rat food and water. Five weeks later, the saccharin-fed rats had eaten more food, gained more weight and put on more body fat than the others.

The researchers also found that giving the sucrose-fed rats a high-calorie chocolate pudding treat made them eat less afterwards, whereas the saccharin-trained rats showed less restraint in what they ate next.

The full write-up of the study is here (pdf file, 667kb), and concludes that:-

Animals may use sweet taste to predict the caloric contents of food. Eating sweet noncaloric substances may degrade this predictive relationship, leading to positive energy balance through increased food intake and/or diminished energy expenditure. ... These results suggest that consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes.

It has been clear for a while that weight gain or loss is much more complicated than just how much you eat and exercise. Some years ago I joined a gym which I used for about 3 months - during which time I put on about 1/2 stone (3-4kg) - until I mangled my back. After another three months - of rather cautious lack of exercise - I was back to my old weight again. The reason for the weight change was simply that I came out from a gym session ravenously hungry, so I ate more.

In my rather simplistic way, it seems obvious to me that if you don't want your kids to drink so much sugar in sweet drinks, then you give them drinks which are less sweet - milk, water, even fruit juice. You don't go and stuff them full of even sweeter drinks packed with strange, nasty-tasting chemicals. Looking at my local supermarket's shelves, it seems I am in a minority. You even get 'diet' or 'lo-sugar' versions of drinks marketed as 'healthy', for goodness sake! Are people really so daft?

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Half Term Ramblings - Posted 24th February, 2008

Not the best of half-terms: the whole family has had a nasty coldy bug which is taking ages to clear and leaving us all feeling decidedly washed out. BlackMatt recovered quickest - a walking (well, lounging) advert for the benefits of eating lots of fruit (how many other teenagers are there around who have to be discouraged from eating more fruit?).

Not long ago I had an example of the effects of differences in the way people do things. For a while now, I've been pushing my local church to look more outward, and to focus more on 'real-world' issues. Recently I found the results of a survey among regular church-goers to see where they found their church's teaching and activities helpful and where not. Basically the results were that issues to do with their spiritual walk they felt helped with, issues to do with their work and their family lives they did not feel helped with.

So I took the various issues that these churchgoers didn't feel helped with to our preaching team, basically asking whether Jesus and the cross and all that stuff was just a matter of 'Sunday stuff' or whether they thought it was relevant to the whole of life. And if the latter then shouldn't they be applying their preaching to themes relevant to these important areas of life.

Cue discussion and general agreement that yes, these issues should be areas we address in church. Then, all of a sudden, the pastor is proposing a sermon series on a dozen such issues, backed by housegroup sessions on the same topics midweek, starting in May. And I'm thinking "Hang on, that's not really what I meant ... it'll never work ... what about the underlying themes ...", and various other less-than-constructive thoughts. There's a huge gap between having a vision of what should be happening, and actually making something happen in reality. Fortunately we have a pastor who is very good at making things happen - even if I do find myself thinking something has been lost in the translation.

The lecture by the Archbishop of Canterbury (hereinafter known as ABC) continues to bounce around the Internet. Irritatingly, I now cannot re-find a really good article I read pointing out that a lot of the fuss arose after the BBC reported his speech under a sensationalist (and inaccurate) headline. What I can still find though is this post by the 3 Minute Theologian, which gives the text of ABC's lecture with annotations for those who find ABC's style unclear. There is also an excellent analysis given by The Independent's Paul Vallely here.

Probably the most ignorant (and most repeated) comment I have seen on this matter is variations on the theme of "There is, and should only be, one law which covers all people and to suggest it can be otherwise is to seriously damage our rights":-

1. Sharia councils already exist, and are used by their local communities, throughout the UK. These are generally only answerable to either the local communities or, in the most worrying cases, to the foreign (frequently Saudi) groups that fund them.
2. In most cases, UK law doesn't actually kick in until someone makes a formal complaint. So if someone in a community takes an issue to their local Sharia council, and not to the police or civil courts, then there is already a 'parallel jurisdiction' operating. Is it better for this to continue outside the system, or should we at least explore ways of integrating such communities into the overall legal system - in particular human rights legislation?
3. The Jewish Torah is similar to Sharia in that it originally was meant to apply to the whole of life, it tends to disadvantage women, and it includes ancient punishments which are considered barbaric in a modern context. Yet, as the Beth Din courts illustrate, an accommodation can be reached. In effect, as I understand it, this involves the Jewish community delegating criminal law to the state, whilst the state delegates certain civil matters (where all parties consent) to the Beth Din. It seems to work for them.
4. English law is actually full of exceptions and special cases. Just one example is that the Church of England has a totally separate area of planning law.
5. The law in Scotland is distinct from the law in England, even though both are part of the UK. The law in Northern Ireland is also different, although less so.
6. Whatever the theory says, in practice English law operates in a very different way for those who can afford expensive lawyers - see this post from a while back as an example. It also operates rather differently, the other way, if you can perm any two of: very poor, black, mental health issues, homeless.

On a totally different subject, I have been enjoying playing Neverwinter Nights 2 over the past couple of weeks. This is an example of a PC game which is fairly horrible from a technical point of view, particularly the user interface, but once you get used to actually making it work, the storytelling aspect becomes deeply engrossing.

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Rowan Williams & Sharia - Posted 10th February, 2008

It's depressing really. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, makes some thoughtful comments in a lecture to lawyers about how English law relates to religious pluralism in the UK, with particular reference to Islamic law. Cue outraged anti-Islamic responses from politicians, right-wing newspapers, secularists, and, inevitably, voices from within his own church, the Church of England. Plus, to be fair, some outraged anti-Sharia responses from liberal Moslems.

The actual content of Dr William's lecture is available here (pdf file, 54kb).

In the UK at present there are the general laws of the land, which apply to everyone, plus a variety of areas where English civil law allows a third party to arbitrate. For example, the Beth Din - Jewish courts - have been in operation in Britain for centuries. They can arbitrate on civil matters, such as business disputes and divorce, where both parties are Jewish and both agree to be bound by their decision. See this BBC page for more details.

There is already a network of Sharia councils throughout the UK which carry out similar functions, but unofficially and in a poorly regulated way. Dr Williams both makes the point that more formal incorporation of such councils into the operation of civil law in England is inevitable, given the Beth Din precedent; as well as the point that lawyers really need to start thinking about the possible pitfalls and protections needed in this. How do you protect people's freedom to practice their religion, without allowing their human rights to be violated by authoritarian community leaders? Particularly women?

Dr Williams' lecture focuses more on raising these issues than answering them, but they are important issues that do need addressing. What they don't need is idiot rent-a-gobs who just want to use his words as an excuse to shout out their own fears and prejudices.

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Remember Chocolate? - Posted 7th February, 2008

I was pleasantly surprised last week to receive an email from a lady at Cadbury Schweppes - Alison Ward, Head of Corporate Responsibility.

Almost a year ago I did a post about the use of slave labour by the big chocolate manufacturers in sourcing cocoa for their chocolate, and contacted the main UK manufacturers to see what they had to say about this. I later did a round-up post of the responses I received. My conclusion was that henceforth I would mostly buy explicitly 'fairtrade' chocolate, but that Cadbury seemed to be the only big manufacturer whose chocolate isn't tainted by slave labour. So Cadbury is the brand I go for if I want mainstream chocolate products. Mars never bothered to get back to me at all, which was disappointing.

The reason Cadbury have just contacted me was to tell me about their new initiative in Ghana (mostly, it also affects their suppliers in India, Indonesia and the Caribbean): the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership. They describe this as follows:-

This ground-breaking initiative, which will be carried out in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other partners, marks 100 years since the Cadbury brothers first began trading in Ghana and aims to holistically support the development of sustainable cocoa growing communities.

They are putting serious money into this - a million pounds this year, rising to five million pounds a year (2m US dollars rising to 10m US dollars) - focussing on:-

1. Improving cocoa farmer incomes: by helping farmers increase their yields and produce top quality beans
2. Introducing new sources of rural income: through microfinance and business support to kick start new rural businesses and introduce additional income streams such as growing other crops
3. Investing in community led development: to improve life in cocoa communities e.g. supporting education through schools and libraries, supporting the environment through biodiversity projects, and building wells for clean, safe water
4. Working in partnership: developing a pioneering model which will be led from the grass roots. Farmers, governments, NGOs and international agencies will work together to decide how the funding is spent and work with local organisations to turn plans into action.

There were a number of points that I found interesting in this. The first is that these are very much the kind of objectives that fairtrade schemes work towards. So why not go fully fair trade? I found an article, here, where Cadbury give their response to this question.

The second point of interest is that Cadbury give sound commercial reasons for this investment: the distinctive flavour of Cadbury chocolate comes from their use of Ghanaian cocoa, yet Ghanaian cocoa yields are falling and younger Ghanaians are leaving the industry. It has long been my view that good ethics are also good business, if looked at in the medium to long term. Too many businesses, especially the big corporations, seem only concerned with short-term bottom line, rather than long term, sustainable business growth.

It was also interesting that the MD of Cadbury Ghana, James Boateng, claims to have grown up on a cocoa farm, implying that he has worked his way up the organisation from the bottom - which I think is the sign of a good company.

The President of Ghana, John Kufuor, whilst welcoming this initiative, did raise the question of local processing: "Come here and process the beans here in Ghana, so we know the partnership is not limited to the farmer alone." This is an important issue because Ghana, like much of Africa, remains locked into the bottom layer of the global business pyramid: commodity supply. Local processing would bring extra money, but more importantly manufacturing skills and employment. The trouble is that the big multinationals have the more profitable layers of the pyramid locked up: economies of scale mean they can squeeze out small local industries any time they want to.

Nevertheless, I think this programme by Cadbury Schweppes backs up what I said last year: that Cadbury appears to be the only big-name chocolate supplier concerned about ethical sourcing of its raw materials. Nestlé, Hershey and Mars still, as far as I can tell, use slave-grown cocoa in their chocolate, and still hide behind excuses and ineffective and discredited 'joint initiatives' instead of actually doing something about it. I still think that they will only act when enough people stop buying slave-grown chocolate to visibly hit their bottom line.

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