Blessed are the troublemakers?

The chief American soldier in Afghanistan has pleaded with them to stop; church leaders from around the world have appealed for them to re-think; protests are building around the Islamic world, and countless Christians are absolutely appalled; yet a tiny church in Florida remains the centre of an international media frenzy because of its plans to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11.

Here are six reasons why this group should immediately call off their planned bonfire:

1. Their proposed action is deeply unChristian.

Nowhere in the Bible do we find people involved in Christian mission insulting the culture to which they are bearing witness for Christ. Rather, we find in the ministry of people like The Apostle Paul, a deep engagement with the people to whom he was sharing the message of Jesus. Acts pictures Paul hiring lecture halls, debating publicly, and drawing on local customs as entry points for his message into people's understanding. The manner in which Christians are to conduct themselves towards those outside the faith (according to the Bible) is "with gentleness and respect." (1) Furthermore, the New Testament is full of injunctions to live at peace with those with whom we share the world, "as far as it depends on you - live at peace with all men" it says. (2), likewise Jesus proclaimed, "Blessed are the peacemakers." (3) To take deliberate actions to hurt others, insult their culture and to stir enmity between peoples, is to take an unChristian stance.

2. Burning the Koran brings the gospel of Christ into disrepute

The New Testament indicates that Christian believers should conduct themselves in such a way as way as to make the gospel of Jesus accessible and attractive to others. The way in which a church, and its pastor act in the public sphere should be to inspire those who see the broadcast to want to investigate Christianity themselves. Now there is nothing wrong with speaking boldly, speaking with faith and conviction, and even saying things which are unpopular in order to demonstrate integrity; but insulting others in Christ's name in order to gain self-publicity brings the gospel into disrepute. I know several Christian people who live in Muslim-majority countries, or who live in towns in the UK in which most of their neighbours are from a Muslim background. They have many fascinating discussions about religious matters with their friends and neighbours, and they answer the many questions about Christianity which they get asked; from people who have almost no information about it. They do so politely, respectfully, gently and they listen to their friends perspectives too! The very last thing they would do would be to insult the things their friends hold to be true - how ever much they disagree, or discuss or debate. This church in Florida, I suggest has no knowledge or experience of genuine interactions or friendships with ordinary muslims. The actions of these ill-informed Floridan's simply sets the church back decades in Muslim-majority counties.

3. Burning the Koran endangers lives

General Patraeous has asked this church to halt their plans as he knows that it will be used as a pretext to stir up hatred and violence amongst radicalising Islamists across Afghanistan. His claim is that this is an act of provocation which will cost the lives of many of his soldiers. However, US troops in other countries are only part of the issue as they are a heavily armed occupying force. Of far greater concern is the effect that these actions will have on Christians who live in muslim-majority countries many of whom already face persecutions. Where states curtail the civil liberties of Christians or seek to impose Sharia law on non-Muslims, or where Islamist mobs seek to destroy Christians, foolish people engaging in 9/11 publicity stunts of this nature will threaten their safety. While such regimes or mobs are undoubtedly responsible for their own actions, the reality is that in a world containing so many extremists, exacerbating volatile situations can have dire consequences. This means that this Florida church is also extremely selfish. I doubt that in Florida they will suffer much for these actions - however, it maybe that Christians in North Africa, Indonesia, or Pakistan will pay a heavy price.

4. Koran burning plays into the cynical media's hands

In the UK today the Christian church faces a very hostile media which seems to take a peculiar interest in stories about the antics of fallen-Vicars or unrepresentative extreme groups. In the furore surrounding the BBC's decision to air Jerry Springer the Opera, the calm and reasoned voices of the Church of England media office and the Evangelical Alliance, or even the BBC Governor Baroness Amos were almost completely unheard. Instead, the ranting self-publicist Steven Green of "Christian Voice" was allowed to use the event to launch his tiny organisation to a UK-wide audience. This church in Florida, has apparently only fifty members. They are not part of any major organisation or denomination and represent no-one but themselves. Their planned actions have been rejected by almost everyone. So why have they been able to gain the attention they so obviously crave? I suggest that it is in the interests of two groups to fuel this nonsense (a) the secular media (b) Islamist radicalisers.

The secular media has a consistently hostile editorial line towards Christianity and as such wants to seize on the fringe and pretend that it is in some way representative of the whole. They also want to be free to condemn Islamic extremism without seeming to be biased, and point out that they have savaged Christians too (fair enough!). This is why a church of 50 people in Florida planning an act of insult and foolishness gain their attention, while my church in the UK of over 200 people fundraising for Pakistan's flood victims through "Save the Children" - will never be even a footnote in the regional news; never mind a national lead story! American Evangelical journalist Cal Thomas told a researcher about the way the media works: "they'd have all these professors from Princetown or wherever on Good Morning America, representing the secular perspectives, then they'd have this West Virgina hick with a missing couple of front teeth representing the Evangelical perspective... and they'd all laugh it up because all these religious nuts are... religious nuts." Likewise Christian PR man Mark de Moss complains that influential shows like Larry King Live in the USA will not carry moderate, weighty or considered Christian commentators because they want to "prop-up a stereotype" of Christians who are "red-faced, angry and wanting to pronounce judgement on the world".(4)

Islamist radicalisers obviously feed on stories like this, as it enables them to paint the whole of the West and the Christian church as seeking to destroy them. For all their public venting of anger, the only people who stand to gain from this church's actions are the radical Islamists. They have driven the propagation of the story around the world.

5. Burning books is not the act of assured people of faith; but of cultural philistines!

Book burning itself has a very dodgy history. By joining in such actions, this minority church alies itself with Stalin, The Nazis, The Taliban, Mao Zedong, and totalitarians the world over. Books are not meant to be burnt, but read, debated, discussed, wrestled with and engaged with. I have a copy of the Koran and have read much of it. I neither wish to set-fire to it, nor to embrace it as a flawless tome descended from heaven, which I do not believe it to be. But it is a volume worthy of our attention, as one of the most influential books of our age. It is a book which should be considered if one wishes to understand today's world - and to engage meaningfully with those people who seek to live by it. Destroying copies of important historical texts are the actions, not of people who are at ease with themselves in their own faith; but of the paranoid, the desperate, the agitated, and those who feel threatened by opponents. This church in Florida should engage not destroy!

6. Burning the Koran in response to 9/11 is a foolish political mistake.

It is a noteworthy fact - and one that this church in Florida do not seem to have appreciated - that on 9/11, Al Queda did not fly their plane into a church building. Washington, London, New York, all have enormous landmark Cathedrals which would have made impressive symbols if they had been targeted. Or perhaps Al Quaeda could have taken-over a plane and flown it into St Peter's square during a massive Papal mass or into a football stadium during a Billy Graham rally. But they didn't. The target in 9/11 was not the Christian infrastructure, but the heart of American capitalism and government. Part of Al Quaeda's rationale is that American Capitalism is colonial and expansionist, and one of their key demands is the withdrawal of western troops from what they deem to be 'Muslim lands'. Primarily 9/11 was a war between Islamic radicals and secular, Western consumer-capitalism. When a church burns Koran's in response to this, it abolishes the distinction between the church and consumer-capitalism, seeing the church and the American economy and Foreign-policy as two arms of the same entity. This is a political, and theological error of almost unimaginable proportions. Western Consumer Capitalism and its colonial aspirations are not to be 'baptized' by the church in this way - but critiqued by the church using the yardstick of the Bible's standards. The church should be raising up a prophetic voice against both the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism and its enormous threat to basic civil liberties around the globe; as well as to the insatiable greed of consumer capitalism and the violence and corruption of much western foreign policy. The church has no place to be the cheerleader for either side in this escalating crisis - but in faithfulness to Christ should strive to be the servant and witness to both. This church in its headline mongering stunt, has allowed the 'religicisation' of this tension from the Christian side - something which the likes of Al Queada are anxious to propagate. No wonder President Obama has called this a 'recruitment bonanza' for the terrorists.

A Christian response to this situation should be based on the teaching of Christ. Rather than, blessed are the trouble-makers, the self-publicists and the agitators; in The sermon on the mount, Jesus puts it like this: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemiesⁱ and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

____________

Notes

1. 1 Peter 3:15

2. Romans 12:18

3. Matthew 5:9

4. D. Michael Lindsay. "Faith in the Halls of Power" p 150

Film Notes: The Hurt Locker

When "Saving Private Ryan" was released it was heralded as a breakthrough in the treatment of war in movies. It's opening sequence was terrifying, gripping, distressing and (apparently) unnervingly realistic in its depictions not just of the wounds of war, but also of the confusion of battle.

'Hurt Locker' tells the story of three soldiers in a bomb disposal team in occupied Baghdad after the end of formal hostilities, in the centre of the insurgency. In constant danger from bombs, snipers, suicide attacks, far from home and in great heat - the three main characters seek to survive. Sgt William James (Jeremy Renner), the main bomb disposal expert is accompanied throughout by two specialists, Sgt JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), and Sgt Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) whose job is to keep him safe as he disarms devices. Much of the plot concerns James' maverick and dangerous approach to the task, bravery to the point of foolishness, unquestioned skill and lack of judgement.

The Hurt Locker is a very different film from 'Ryan' - yet has been lauded in similar terms, as achieving a new depth in Hollywood's treatment of armed conflict. This film is well worthy of its Oscar's for direction, editing, sound, script, and so forth - part of its power is that there are no lousy errors in these departments to distract, but the whole presentation unrelentingly seizes the imagination for the entire 126 minutes. But it is not in these things that the contrast to Ryan is most apparent, neither is it in the fact that Ryan takes place in the middle of an enormous set-piece battle; whereas Hurt Locker exists within the excruciating tension of hostile occupation and guerrilla warfare.

The key difference rather, is in fact that all the characters in 'Ryan' sanely long for home, and dream of returning to their girl back home in Pennsylvania, Alabama, or Tennessee. In a sinister, and disturbing development in this film it becomes apparent that Sgt. James, isn't merely naively gung-ho, but is deeply committed to, and indeed addicted to, the pursuit of war. If 'Ryan' is chilling in its treatment of the threat from without, the horror of war and the losses sustained; The Hurt Locker is chilling in its dealing with the threat from within - that the very act of war might actually intoxicate the human soul, and so overwhelm a personality that nothing else provides it adequate meaning - especially not the comforts of civilian domesticity.

If this is a serious message which writer Mark Boal wanted to relay (basing his writing on his time spent as a reporter 'embedded' amongst US troops in the Iraq war), then Kathryn Bigelow's film delivers it with a mighty punch. The film is a (15) certificate, reflecting some strong language and distressing scenes, which no doubt were part of the real experience that Boal wished to capture. Utterly compelling.

Charles Marsh's 'Wayward Christian Soldiers'

When does faithful contextualisation of the gospel become merely the loss of the gospel's distinctiveness, subsuming it beneath the dominant values of the culture? It is exactly that question that Charles Marsh explores in his book, "Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity", with reference to the church in the USA. This is an old discussion, but Marsh explores it in some unique and fascinating ways. Firstly his target for the critique that contextualisation has lead to sublimation has an unusual target. Usually such a critique is offered by the evangelical wing of the church -and directed straight at theological liberals, who have historically sought to minimise any differences between the church and the world, both by the demythologising core Christian belief and in adopting the ethical standards of surrounding culture as the norm. Marsh however, has white, American evangelicalism in his sights in this book, as he charges them (he is one, incidentally) with failing to critique the American national project, Imperial Economics, and expansionist foreign policy with the teachings of Christ. With many references to Bonhoeffer and the Christian resistance in Germany in the 1930s-40s, Marsh sees the American church as having failed in its primary task of loyalty to Christ, and has allowed itself to become the flag-waving and morale-boosting department of the American national project. A grave charge indeed.

Marsh argues that there have been key issues on which American Evangelicals have faced a choice between Faith and Flag, between the claims of Christ and the needs of their nation -and that on successive occasions they have chosen the flag. A particular case-study he makes is of the propaganda battle in the six months running up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, in which US Evangelicalism was a lone cheerleader for the war-effort, in the face of the near universal condemnation of the plan from the world-church. The book begins with the author discovering his local 'christian' bookshop in those days, removing Holy-Spirit, Dove of Peace badges from display, and replacing it with the Stars and Stripes!

To read Marsh's discussion of Franklin Graham's flag-waving click on the image below:

"the masses who cannot tell the difference between the cross and the flag. The Jesus who storms into Baghdad behind the wheel of a Humvee is not the Jesus of the gospels." This is stirring and provocative stuff - which needs to be said.

To read his discussion of Charles Stanley's pro-war propaganda click on the image below:

Marsh here accuses Stanley of the worst kind of theological liberalism; of reducing the gospel to the cheerleading department of a deeply non-Christian regime; of standing in the ignoble tradition of the court-prophets of the Old Testament. They were the ones who refused to deliver the ringing denunciations of Yahweh that fell to minority voices like Jeremiah - but sought the favour of Kings and Princes by the delivery of favourable 'prophecies' and declaring that their various schemes and machinations were the recipients of divine approval.

Marsh pleads with his fellow-believers to recover the integrity of the gospel message by de-coupling it from the religious-right movement (which has in fact merely 'used' gospel language and people for its own ends). He calls for the US church to listen more widely to the world church, to renounce its lust for power and seek again a commitment to quiet service - as a way of helping people see the Christ of the gospel, shorn of the unhelpful baggage of the GOP and its war-mongering foreign policies.

Reading this book as an 'outsider' was fascinating. I am convinced that his general thesis is exactly right, and that he is extremely perceptive and penetrating in his analysis. Obviously though, it is easier for me to (in the words of the old maxim) see the speck in my brother's eye more clearly than the plank in my own. If the use of the 'Prince of Peace' as a tool for war-mongering, stands out a mile as a being as bizarre as it is wicked to me; I wonder which aspects of my own attempts at being a disciple of Christ are equally hopelessly culturally compromised in ways of which I am blissfully ignorant? This book may have been 'just' a cheapo from the Oxford Uni Press summer sale - but it has got me thinking!

Book Notes: The Soldier's Return

One of our neighbours (and occasional visitor here too!) had a clear-out of books recently and amongst those that found their way down the hill to the Hideous-house, was this one, "The Soldier's Return" by Melvyn Bragg. My forays into fiction are comparatively rare, and I picked this up one rainy afternoon - having read some of Bragg's non-fiction, intrigued as to whether he could 'do' stories as well as history and ideas.

The book concerns the post-conflict experiences of Sam, a 1946 returnee from the Burma campaign and is set in Bragg's home-area of Wigtown, details and history of which he clearly delights in weaving as a backdrop to the nicely drawn characters he introduces. Bragg is presumably old enough to remember soldiers returning to Cumbria, and it seems likely that such childhood impressions fuelled his imagination here.

When Sam returns to his family he finds himself alienated and lost. His wife and son have forged a closeness and bond in his absence that threatens him; his reintegration into civilian life is problematic and he both misses and loathes the camaraderie and horror of conflict. He is haunted by the battlefield experience, something about which he is unable to speak to those who did not go through it. The story concerns the troubled demobilisation of this soldier, and his family. As such the book is driven not by narrative but by his state of mind. Simply but compellingly told its a good read - worth reading, but not really the 'masterpiece' the jacket describes.

One thing that concerned me throughout the book, (well perhaps until the final twist!) was the lingering suggestion that such excruciating post-war readjustments were being portrayed as the norm - and written in the comparatively peaceful 1990s how we imagine it should have been back then. What surprised me was the way in which real veterans of WWII spoke so fondly of their return, in comparison with the traumas of Bragg's novel. In the book three soldier's are spoken of, Sam (his struggle to re-integrate), Ian (who is killed in battle and his family left to cope) and Jackie (who has a complete nervous breakdown).

My Grandfather, like Bragg's character, must have experienced some similar emotions and transitions. In the photo above, taken during home-leave in WWII, he is pictured with my Grandma in Walworth, E. London, surrounded by buildings which are bomb-damaged. It was taken immediately prior to his return to the European conflict, where as a member of the Pioneer Corps of the Royal Engineers, he was engaged in such things as bridging the Rhine for advancing allied forces. Perhaps by the time he told me about the war, forty years of healing had taken place, and maybe we can picture Bragg's character eventually chatting to his grand-children in similar ways. Maybe though, not everyone was as damaged by the experience as all the characters that Bragg draws.

I was musing these very questions in Ullapool last week. Also staying in the Youth Hostel there was a soldier on home leave from 'a conflict zone' (I guess Afghanistan, maybe Iraq). Clearly tense, jumpy, nervous and bursting with an excess of adrenaline, he described landing back in the UK less than 24 hours before, hiring a car and disappearing into the Highlands to fish for a week - in order to calm down before he could cope with his family. He hinted darkly that he was still so 'high' from battle that he couldn't trust himself around naughty children. His regime for three weeks of leave was a week in isolation 'de-toxing' from conflict, a week with the family and then a week with the troops re-psyching himself up for the tension of war. "Three weeks isn't long enough to come-down" he said, "you never really come down in three weeks, if you did - you'd never be able to go back."

It was this conversation with the squaddie three days after I finished the book - that made me realise that it is a better book than I gave it credit for while reading.

Rowan Williams Speaks Out

On the eve of the fateful day on which the House of Commons were cajoled into committing British troops to the disastrous invasion of Iraq - on the basis of spurious claims in the infamous "sexed-up dodgy dossier", Archbishop Rowan Williams made a brilliant speech. In his lecture he drew on long historical analysis to demonstrate the disasters that have occurred even when "well-meaning" people commit to war with the best of intentions. His warning to Blair and Brown that this was not another Kosovo in which military action was overdue and would lead to personal glory was well made. The problem was that his speech was academic, his analysis rigorous, and his appeal winsome not aggressive. He has since gone on record as saying that his deepest regret is not more forcibly declaring his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

This appears to be something which he is not going to repeat, judging by the comments he has made today, directed at hawks within the Bush administration whose sabres are rattling towards Damascus and Tehran. He said, "We do hear talk from some quarters of action against Syria, or against Iran", any such action, he said, would be "criminal, ignorant...and potentially murderous folly".

May these prophetic words be heard loudly and clearly.

The Blogs of War

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/ruqlt/

The BBC has broadcast a deeply revealing documentary on Radio 4 called "Iraq Online". It reveals the way that the present ghastly conflict in Iraq is being reported daily by soldiers blogging from the front line - a completely new development in the long history of war-reporting.

Some of the soldiers blogs are factual, some political, some subversive and shut down by the military. I was not surprised to hear these, what shocked me was some of the gung-ho patriotic bloggers whose appetite for violence was admitted without any self-censorship, let alone shame.

This is worth listening to while it is still avaiable on the BBC's 'listen-again' service. Many of the blogs featured in the programme can be found by typing 'Iraq Blog' into Google.

Iraq's pain is captured all over the internet. Photos such as these are too distressing to comprehend.