Counter Ideology

Did you know that the British Government has a ‘Counter Ideology Team’? Until last week neither did I, until I spent a fascinating half day working with them as part of my ‘professional’ job as a consultant advising the Foreign Office on change management.

The Counter Ideology Team’s objective is to “challenge the violent extremist narrative and support the voice of the majority”. Their focus is on British Muslims, and they fund a variety of initiatives to ensure that moderate voices get heard and militants become marginalised.

The very existence of this team raises a whole load of fascinating questions about the likelihood of their success and the implications of their methods. I was still thinking about this when I came across a brilliant quote in Brian McLaren’s thought provoking book on faith and politics “Everything Must Change: Jesus, global crises, and a revolution of hope.” Get this:

“When groups of seemingly disparate people defect and band together in the way of Jesus, they form what we might call unterror cells. They secretly plot detonations of hope. They quietly conspire to set off explosions of spontaneous kindness. They plan gentle coup d’états to replace regimes of domination and oppression with movements of empowerment and service. In a complete overthrow of violent terrorism, they fly airplanes of generosity into towers of need and plant improvised encouragement devices by roadsides in neighbourhoods everywhere, seeking God’s kingdom and God’s equity.”

The answer to radical evil is not moderate anything, but radical good. I dream of a movement whose passionate commitment to the cause of Christ leads them acts of kindness more extreme and audacious than anything the kingdom of darkness can muster. And when the Counter Ideology Team come after me and accuse me of ‘radicalising young people’, I want the charges to stick.

Reportage

It's been a good year for... reports on the role of Christianity in public life. We have endured a long period in which much of what was coming out either seemed to be divorced from the 'real world' or so heavily rooted in it that it was incapable of understanding what faith was really all about. In the last 12 months there have been a number of challenging contributions which at last seem to be hitting the spot.

The Theos think tank launched themselves with 'Doing God', whose title was inspired by Alistair Cameron's infamous 'we don't do God' statement that defined the Blair era. Nick Spencer does a thorough job of clearing up a lot of the misconceptions that plague our understanding of Christian involvement in the public square (on both sides of the debate). The new sequel 'Neither Private nor Privileged' builds on this foundation by offering a vision of exactly what form this engagement ought to take. The conclusion is ambiguous but important: the church must remain faithful to her vision and calling, regardless of the political climate. Where she can succeed in demonstrating and convincing people that this vision embodies the 'public good', there will be significant opportunities to participate in the mechanisms of society.

Closer to the political sharp end, a committee of Christian MPs recently published 'Faith in the Future'. Their aim was to look at what contribution Christians can make in creating a better future for our children. Being a cross party group they fought shy of detailed policy proposals, but do offer a framework against which policies advanced by any of their parties ought to be judged. The report may have lacked the spice of controversy, but I suspect that it will prove a valuable compass for the longer term.

Avoiding controversy was clearly not a priority for the authors of 'Moral but No Compass', a hard hitting study into the relationship between Government and the church (primarily the Church of England). Their conclusions pull no punches: the Government is accused of under recognising the contribution the church makes, of distorting the figures to make this contribution less visible, of deliberately favouring minority religions over mainstream Christianity, and of creating a culture of institutional atheism which discriminates against Christian proposals in the delivery of public services. Their research is thorough, and left Communities minister Hazel Blears furiously denying while appearing very much in denial on the whole issue.

Between the four there is an emerging sense of an objective, a strategy, some tactics, and plenty of ammunition. Uneasy metaphors for followers of the 'Prince of Peace'. It will be intriguing to see how they are put into practise.

No such thing as a free lunch

May 27th: a small group of us had lunch with legendary American Christian political activist Jim Wallis. Whether you entirely agree with Jim's politics (or his theology), it is hard to deny that he is one of the most enduring and effective voices on the U.S. scene right now.

I wrote an article summarising our conversations for the the 24-7 UK website. You can read it here, but it ends as follows:

"24-7 started by praying for the lost; we soon found ourselves propelled onto the streets of Ibiza and Macedonia and Manchester. We started praying for the poor; we felt compelled to go to addicts in Vancouver and prostitutes in Boystown. Now we are feeling a growing sense of urgency to pray for parliament and government. It doesn’t take a grade 1 prophet to work out what happens next. Our vision is ‘to transform the world through movements and communities of Christ centred, mission minded prayer’. We know that politics on its own is not the key to transforming the world, but it looks like it’s definitely going to be a part of the mix."

The ravings of Sindy

The Independent on Sunday (aka the 'Sindy') cused quite a stir yesterday by running a front page article on the 'Evangelical conspiracy' to influence parliament.

It turns out that their gripe is with CARE, the Christian campaigning group who (amongst other things) have about a dozen young people working as interns in MP's offices in and around Westminster.

I know a number of the CARE interns, who must have been surprised (to say the least) to find their names splashed across the front page of a national newspaper yesterday. On the face of it, it is difficult to work out why they have been singled out for such harsh treatment. There are well over a thousand interns working in and around Westminster. Labour MPs frequently have staff members provided by trade unions, Conservatives get their assistants funded by private industry, campaign groups provide researchers, and so on. This is simply how the system works; MPs get resources to represent effectively on their issues of interest, and groups get a chance to participate in the democratic process and ensure their views are heard in the debate. Far from roaming the corridors of power seeking to manipulate unsuspecting MPs (even if such a thing existed), most interns work hard on the mundane aspects of an MP's role: administration, correspondence, and trying to assist ordinary constituents like you and I.

The only question of any substance in the Sindy's rant is that of charitable status. The Charities Commission are already looking at this as part of their review of religeous charities and public benefit. It would be deeply concerning if they concluded that engaging via democratic institutions is no longer deemed to be 'in the public interest'. This is the exactly the kind of social exclusion that extremists of all shades thrive on. However, the impact on CARE would be negligible. The £70K they spend on the intern programme is less than 4% of their budget, and moving it into the 'non-charitable activities' category would be a purely technical adjustment with no real-world effect.

The only explanation for why such a non-issue could make it to the front page of a national newspaper is that the secularist lobby are getting nervous. It is already clear that, far from being a spent force, religeous thinking will be one of the key influences shaping global politics in the 21st century. Despite the best efforts of militant atheist Evan Harris MP to nobble the committee stage, Gordon Brown has already had to make unprecedented concessions in allowing a free vote on the morally controversial Human Fertilisation & Embryology bill.

As Mahatma Ghandi said: 'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win'. For those of us who are used to having our faith ignored or laughed at, the Sindy have just declared that stage 3 is about to begin. It's going to be a rough and uncomfortable ride, but we can at least take comfort that there is only one more stage to go.

Moses and the credit crunch

14th March 08: today I got a 'phone call from my bank asking if I could lend them some money. They didn't quite put it that way, of course. The actual offer was 'would you like to pay less interest each month?', which it turned out would require me to agree a new, lower borrowing limit on our (partly paid off) flexible mortgage. Evidence (if any more were needed) that the banks are feeling the chill winds of a global credit crisis, and are resorting to ingenious ways to escape from their existing lending commitments in order to release precious cash for use elsewhere.

Moses (circa 1500BC) affirmed that to 'lend to many and borrow from none' would be a sign of God's blessing on a nation. The opposite (becoming an indebted borrower with nothing to lend to others) was bluntly described as a curse. In modern Britain, we seemed to believe that we had managed to reverse this biblical wisdom, with unrestrained consumer spending regarded as a sign of economic health. The resultant 'have whatever you want and have it now' culture has led us to run up an incomprehensible trillion pounds of household debt. Now I am forced to watch people I care about starting to suffer the consequences of their ill-advised spending sprees. Whether you blame cynical commercial organisations or complicitly naive individuals, the result is going to be real hardship for some and financial stress for many.

I declined the bank's kind offer to halve my credit facility in return for saving me a couple of quid a month. This doesn't mean that we are 'safe' as a family; in our interconnected global economy, when one group suffers the pain gets widely distributed. Our best protection is probably to return to some of the oldest economic principles of all. No one individual can solve our economic woes on their own, but with courageous and visionary leadership it is still possible that we can all do so by acting together.

Psychotically Godly Bad-Ass Dude

Feb 08: In the space of a week, I just got paid what I am taking to be a pair of back-handed compliments.

First off, and to the great amusement of our church, Pete Greig described us as a 'psychotically godly family'. While psychosis is not normally regarded as a good thing, there is a one definition which runs along the line of 'perceiving reality in different ways and acting accordingly'. And on that definition, I guess that we are probably guilty as diagnosed.

Then on the Thursday, Lise and I were doing our weekly evening shift on the bar'n'bus, a mobile youth centre run by local Christian volunteers. One of the things that the kids struggle to get their heads around is that we all give up our evenings without being paid, just so that they can have somewhere safe to hang out. On explaining (again) that we do it because Jesus cares about them and therefore so do we, one teenage girl came back with the direct challenge: "so are you a Christian then?" I confirmed that I was. "You don't look like a Christian", she retorted. "You look like some kind of bad-ass dude" (I guess it must have been the leather jacket). Unlike Pete, she then expressed concern that this observation might have offended me, to which I was able to reassure her that it was possibly the nicest thing anyone had said to me all week.

On the bus team we are priviliged to have several kind, gentle, deeply spiritual older ladies. They represent beautifully one aspect of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. But wilder examples like the Celtic Church, the early apostles, and the 18th century missionaries prove that this is not the only aspect. And in the challenging, exposing, often confrontational world of political life, maybe what we need right now is band of psychotically godly bad-ass dudes...

The ayatollah of Canterbury?

Furious controversy this week after Dr Rowan Williams, the head of the Church of England, was apparently quoted as supporting the idea of introducing elements of Islamic Sharia law into the British legal system.

Despite sharing a taste in beards with the spiritual leaders of revolutionary Iran, it appears on closer examination that the Archbishop was not advocating hand chopping as an alternative to community service for first offences of shoplifting. His gripe is with the one-size-fits-all secular legislation that has increasingly started encroaching into areas that used to be regarded as matters of conscience (often religious conscience).

He has watched with alarm as respected Christian adoption agencies have been threatened with closure if they do not comply with new regulations requiring them to place children with gay couples. A similar issue is brewing over the human fertilisation and embryology bill currently passing through parliament.

Dr Williams' solution seems to be a more flexible legislative approach which makes space for religious belief through providing opt-outs and statutory alternatives. And if he is going to advocate this for Christians, he senses that he would also have to support it for Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and everyone else.

This week's reaction must surely show that his approach, whatever its merits, is dead in the water. The British commitment to 'one law for all' goes back to Magna Carta. And thus yet another nail is driven into the coffin of the sacred-secular divide.

The message is clear. If Christians are going to be free to live according to their conscience in modern Britain, they will need to strive vigorously to ensure that the laws of this country continue to reflect broadly Christian values. This can hardly be a bad thing: Moses first made the point that righteous laws are a blessing to any nation. But it seems that the alternative is not just social sub-optimisation but creeping religious persecution.

Putting faith in diversity

Tuesday 15th January: Today I went along to a Foreign & Commonwealth Office consultation on 'age and belief as aspects of diversity'. I normally try to give the diversity fundamentalists a wide berth, but given the subject matter it seemed prudent to get involved at an early stage, to help avoid any strange ideas on religious belief finding their way into official policy.

The hour-long discussion was mostly uncontroversial; good points about the need to avoid fostering a 'victim culture' and the potential for conflict between the agendas of different special-interest groups. However, the biggest stir seemed to be caused by a comment that I made near the end.

I suggested that, rather than trying to identify more and more strands of diversity requiring special treatment (adding age and belief to their existing programmes on race, gender, and sexuality will bring the FCO's total to 5), we should instead agree some core principles and apply them equally to everyone. Thus, discrimination in pay or promotion on grounds unrelated to doing the job is unacceptable whether the individual is black, gay, female, octogenarian, zoroastrian, or has any other salient trait that might be considered a factor.

I admit that I didn't come up with this on the spur of the moment. I have been reflecting on how to balance personal freedom and the protection of individuals since the notorious Big Brother racist bullying incident brought it into the public spotlight. I believe that what Jade Goody was guilty of was foul mouthed, mean spirited bullying. It was wrong when directed at Shilpa Shetty (using some of the language of racial stereotypes in the process), it would have been equally wrong directed at any other human being, and it was wrong of Channel 4 to package and distribute it as entertainment. We teach children that bullying has no place in our schools, and we should be similarly intolerant of it in adult life.

This seemed to strike a chord with the FCOs consultation group. The fact is that very few of us still believe that our social ills can be addressed through divisive political correctness. A return to a values-based agenda (which leans heavily on biblical and Christian ideas about the value and dignity of every individual) is long overdue.

...and a blasphemous new year

The BBC have had a strange Christmas season this year.

They began advent by narrowly avoiding prosecution for blasphemy, following a case brought by Christian Voice over their 2005 screening of 'Jerry Springer: The Opera'. Having made a heroic stand for freedom of artistic expression in the courts, they then immediately threw it out of the window by voluntarily choosing to censor out the word 'faggot' from the popular Christmas hit 'Fairytale of New York'. The late Kirsty MacColl's acerbic lyrics were only saved by a public outcry and subsequent climbdown by the bosses of Radio 1 (the fact that Radio 2 had continued to play the song in full couldn't have helped much either).

All this merely goes to demonstrate what most of us already knew. Blasphemy laws (or their modern descendants, political correctness regulations) have never had much to do with protecting God from insult. They do however have everything to do with guarding the sensibilities of the current ruling elite. Whether 17th century ecclesiarchs or 21st century liberal authoritarians, the message is clear: you challenge the official view of the world at your peril.

In light of all this, I was intrigued to see what noted atheist Russell Davies would serve up for the eagerly awaited Doctor Who Christmas Special. Certainly the visually lavish offering was short on peace and goodwill (killer angels very much in evidence), and we were denied the satisfaction of moral justice (the bad guys didn't win, but most of the good guys didn't make it either). Lines like "She's just atoms, doctor... an echo of the ghost of consciousness" and "if you could decide who lives and who dies, that would make you a monster" are familar atheist mantras. Yet in spite of this, Davies portrays a world in which good and evil are very real and actions have clear moral consequences. And as the character Astrid chooses to sacrifice her own life in order that humanity might live, we are presented with a parable of redemption that is about as biblically rooted as they come.

Kylie Minogue as a 'type' of Christ?? To quote my girls' other TV favourite of this Christmas, The Railway Children, "Very beautiful and wonderful things do happen, don't they? And we live most of our lives in the hope of them."

Great expectations

14th December 2007: This morning, my friend Pete Connor and I had breakfast with the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England (OK, us and 150 other people).

With a credit crisis looming and the unprecedented announcement yesterday that a group of central banks are to inject £50 billion into the economy to steady the markets, the timing could hardly have been better. Rachel Lomax comes with one of the most impressive CVs I have ever read (is there anything this woman hasn't done?), and as expected she was infomative on the underlying state of the economy and what the bank is doing to address the short term crisis.

However, the comment that really struck me was in response to a question about consumer confidence. Ms Lomax concluded that "it should remain quite resilient in the short term, because consumers tend to base their spending on expectation of lifetime earnings". Firstly, I have a problem with the idea that credit-card fuelled consumption of more material goods offers an answer to anything (it just so doesn't). But that aside, Lomax's analysis of consumer attitudes is truly frightening. It would appear that we have all already mortgaged our futures in order to fund our current lifestyles, and are effectively committed to spend the rest of our working lives paying them off.

Suffering from stress? Want to spend more time with your family? Like to travel? Want to respond to the call of God on your life? Well sorry - we gave you the money for that house / car / holiday / gadget on the basis of your 'expected lifetime earnings', so now you'd better get on and earn them. No excuses. Go read the small print. Lomax has unwittingly revealed the blueprint for a modern form of slavery. We are slaves not to another human being, but to an even harsher master: our own and everyone else's expectations of the kind of lifestyle we 'ought' to have. No wonder Jesus says that we have only 2 choices: serve God or serve money.

200 years ago, William Wilberforce dedicated his political life to 'the abolition of slavery and the reformation of manners' (ie morals). He was famously successful. According to the Deputy Governor, however, it seems that the old enemy may be back on its feet and ready for a re-match.

One Nation under God?

4th December 2007: tonight I went to St Brides in Fleet Street, a historic church (designed by Christopher Wren, architect of St Pauls Cathedral) which has a specific outreach to journalists and the media. The occasion was a forum run by the Theos think tank entitled 'faith in our media?'. Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, offered a thougtful critique of the relationship between church and the press.

Over drinks afterwards I got chatting to Stephen Backhouse of Theos, author of their recent report on citizenship and patriotism. Stephen's basic argument is that the biblical model of loving your neighbour provides a better basis for good citizenship than either nationalism or the civic patriotism favoured by Gordon Brown. On this point I agree wholeheartedly, but my gripe with the report is that it seems to write off the strong sense of national identity that many people feel without giving serious consideration to its origin or value.

On reflection, there seem to be four kinds of response that Christians make when approaching the nationalism debate:
1) Rejection. "Nations were not part of God's original plan, and represent an aspect of the fall of humanity from grace".
2) Subsumption. "National identity is part of a God-given human diversity, but must take second place to our citizenship in the 'Kingdom of God'".
3) Redemption. "There are aspect of national character which are God-given, inherently good, and should be redeemed and celebrated".
4) Election. "God chooses and appoints specific nations to carry out his will at particular times in history".

To me, the story of God's relationship with human beings in the bible is clearly played out at every level from individuals to communities to nations. On this basis, #1 looks like a non starter (even taking the babel story into account, which I read as judgement on nations rather than nationhood as a curse). I am deeply suspicious of #4, in spite of God undeniably acting through nations in history. This fact should surely be a cause for humility, not pride-filled assertion that any particular group are 'God's chosen people for this hour'.

When I read in Revelation of 'people from every tribe, tongue, people and nation standing before the throne of God', I am drawn to a vision which combines #2 and #3. Here there is no sense of division or strife; humanity stands united under the benvolent rule of Christ. However, the diversity of races, languages and cultures remains as testimony to God's lavish creativity.

If this vision is to be taken at face value, I had better start identifying what aspects of my 'Britishness' are God-given and worthy of nurturing and redeeming. Because on balance, it looks like I am still going to be English in heaven.

Prayer for parliament

29th November 2007: today was my first chance to participate in prayer for parliament, a group that meets every Thusday lunchtime to pray for the UK political scene and Christians who are involved in it.

We meet in Portcullis House, the new building opposite Big Ben where many MPs have their offices. After passing through airport-style security, you can walk freely round a gallery above the central plaza until you arrive at a smart but functional meeting room which overlooks Parliament Square.

The group consists mostly of parliamentary workers; assistants, researchers, support staff. My friend and 24-7 co-conspirator Phil Togwell has already been involved for a couple of years. I certainly won't be 'taking over' from Phil (whose contribution is, how can we put this, 'unique'), but I do hope to come alongside and offer practical support and encouragement as well as simply 'being there'.

We had a good time of prayer and I met some great people, but the overwhelming sense was that this was the start of a marathon, not a sprint. I intend to be here now, every week, until I sense that God is saying otherwise.

First day of the rest of your life

26th November 2007: after several weeks of frantic 'are we really going to do this?' conversations, today I took the train up to Westminster to start my new 'life' working inside Parliament for 24-7 prayer. My first meeting was with the irrepressible David Landrum, a great friend of 24-7 and co-ordinator of Prayer for Parliament, who is to be my sometimes-boss and guide into the jungle of political life.

I guess it's fair to ask at the outset, 'why is a prayer movement getting involved in politics anyway?' Shouldn't we be concentrating on 'spiritual matters' and steering clear of the messy and controversial world of public life? For me, the answer lies in a full understanding of our 3 primary aims: prayer, mission, and justice.

Prayer is the heartbeat, the place where everything starts. Our society is at a crossroads, the GPS is on the blink, and the moral compass got lost under the seat a while back. There is a woeful lack of vision in politics, with all the main UK parties seeming to have 'winning power' as their only discernable goal. There has never been a more important time to take seriously the biblical command to 'pray for rulers and those in authority'!

Jesus call to mission was all embracing. He sends his followers out to every nation and in to every area of life. The political arena is as valid an area for Christian mission as any other; just as broken, just as hurting, just as in need of redemption, and uniquely visible in terms of a place where the Gospel message can be put on display for all to see.

A heart for justice means a heart for individuals; the poor, the oppressed, and the forgotten. However, the causes of injustice in our world are complex and at least some of them can only be addressed at the level of society as a whole. For me, it's time to take a break from pulling drowning people out of the river, take a walk upstream, and try to stop them falling in.