Corruption, greed and the Beautiful Game – by Steve Couch

Posted on May 30, 2012 by

In December 2010, FIFA announced that Qatar had been chosen to host the 2022 football World Cup. Not so much a footballing hotbed as just hot, it remains a controversial choice. Qatar has an appalling record of human rights but still, it fills the FIFA coffers, so that’s all right.

Closer to home, players earn not-so-small fortunes – this year Manchester City paid Emmanuel Adebayor £100,000 a week to play for another team – and the FA Cup final kicked off over two hours later than normal just to suit the television companies. Throw in leading players accused of racial abuse and it’s hard to dispute that the game has lost its soul.

And yet…perhaps things look a little different when we take a more childlike perspective.

Through my son’s eyes

My eldest son’s first visit to see our team, Fulham, was back in November 2009. 1-0 down at half-time, the second half saw Fulham constantly attacking the end we were sitting. Tension grew as Bolton defended doggedly while Fulham searched for an equaliser. Finally, late in the game, Damien Duff drove the ball low into the corner of the net, prompting an eruption of joyful noise all around us. It was a great introduction to the range of emotions that football brings and a memorable first match for Peter.

Even more memorable was Peter’s reaction as we took our seats. Climbing the steps at the back of the Hammersmith End and stepping out wide-eyed at the top of the stand, the whole stadium was laid out before him. Peter took in the lush green turf, framed on four sides by mountains of steeply-banked plastic seats, and gasped. On the way home he said he hadn’t expected the scale of it, adding that it was big enough ‘for two giants to lie down on’.

The bad old days

The bright, modern Craven Cottage that captivated Peter’s imagination was very different to the one I regularly visited in the early 1990s. Back then Fulham weren’t a Premier League team on the brink of a European final – we were a mediocre lower division side fallen on hard times. The ground had seen better days too. I used to stand – not sit – behind that same goal back then. Opposite stood the Putney End, where pockets of away fans huddled together on a vast concrete terrace, praying for fine weather (we had a roof, they didn’t). Towards the back and sides of the terrace, weeds pushed through the concrete, some growing into sizeable bushes. As I said, the ground had seen better days.

Roots of renewal

Those weeds have something to say to current events in football. On the one hand, they speak of a game in decline, uncared for and shabby. On the other, they are a sign of life, blooming against all the odds. For all the egos and money and cynicism of modern football, something of the game’s soul still breaks through the concrete and grows.

My contention is that despite the scandals that dog the game, there is still a healthy resistance to the materialistic onslaught.

If fans sometimes descend into tribalism, they are just as capable of community and bond-building. When Wimbledon FC was moved lock, stock and shin-pads to Milton Keynes in 2002, disgusted supporters started again in the grass roots. The return of AFC Wimbledon to the Football League in 2011 shows that activism can still work.

On an individual level, players (and not always the one’s you would expect) devote hours to charity work and social projects. Organisations like Kick It Out use football to widen understanding about racial issues, to end ignorance, prejudice and discrimination.

Everywhere the renewal of football is breaking through the concrete. The signs are all around us; football is alive and – yes – kicking, for those with eyes to see.

Steve Couch is the author of Humbled for a Season: In defence of football (Damaris Books).  Buy it here from either Amazon or iTunes

Steve lives in Bournemouth with his wife Ann and their two football-mad sons Peter and Daniel. He works as a writer and editor for the Damaris Trust.

Posted in Sport | Tagged | Leave a comment

Sex and the Spa Town

Posted on May 27, 2012 by

Shades in Leamington Spa

 In the last three months two nightclubs in my home town of Leamington Spa have applied for ‘sexual entertainment licences’ that allow them to run strip clubs and other ‘adult entertainment’. With the Green Party and others from across the political spectrum I’ve been campaigning to stop the licences being granted. Similar battles are going on up and down the country.

The first period of work for us is now over -  The first club, Shades had their application refused, but Amara have had theirs granted for a 12 month period.

No Sex please…

Visiting shops and residents to talk about what’s going on in their area has been…an interesting experience. Talking about our attitudes and sexual behaviours isn’t something that us Brits do confidently, especially with someone you’ve just met on your doorstep.

Some want to talk round the subject and leave as much as possible unsaid. Others rightly want to articulate a gut instinct that people should be free to do what they want as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else:
“As long as it’s not causing a problem…”
and then rush to clarify their own position
“…not that I’d go there myself you understand…”

These slightly elliptical conversations mean that when trying to stop a strip club you have to fight against coming across as an interfering holier-than-thou-sex-prude trying to ban other people’s fun and freedom of sexual expression. 

No person is an Island

I try to start from the place of recognising that all of us, including me, are a long way from perfect and need the support of everyone around us to become the people we’d like to be.

Sex venues often justify their activity saying that they’re ‘giving people what they want’. This misses the point. We all have conflicting desires within us, some destructive, some positive. Some that feed our selfish parts, others that build up our relationships with each other.

Not only are our choices as rational as we like to think, but our choices are not completely our own. The reality is that we are constantly pulled back and forth by the culture and opportunities around us.

Our lives and decisions are woven into those around us whether we like it or not.

Sex in healthy relationships

I want to live in a town that promotes sex as part of healthy, respectful relationships.

Each day, I want to pass businesses and organisations that send signals that feed my positive, unselfish desires. That support me to see female friends and passers by as people with unique gifts and talents, not as objects there for me to ‘use’ in whatever way pleases me. To point me to new ways to invest and receive deeply in relationships with those closest to me.

Character

The Shades application for a Sexual Entertainment Licence got refused partly because of its impact on the ‘character’ of Leamington.

The style of buildings and the ambience of a place play a part in a town’s character  – Leamington Spa’s character is strongly connected with its Regency architecture.

But there’s something more important for a town’s character - Us. How do we treat each other in the queue at the supermarket or in the pub with our friends? Our lives constantly brush against each other and leave their mark whether we’re strangers or known each other for years. Life’s tough enough. We need a town ‘character’ where we don’t put each other down but rub each other up the right way.

No more sex clubs?

Sex clubs take us away from the best of ourselves. They leave us feeling unsafe, divided and undervalued. The local Council made the right decision with Shades and we’ll continue to fight to keep Sex clubs out of our towns.

Posted in Ethics & Christian living | Tagged | Leave a comment

Should Christians send their children to private schools?

Posted on May 10, 2012 by

The Education Secretary Michael Gove, today gave a speech where he said that the segregation between rich and poor children was ‘morally indefensible’.  The Evening Standard tonight quotes his comments at length: 

“It is remarkable  how many of the positions of wealth, influence, celebrity and power in our society are held by individuals who were privately educated…on the bench of our Supreme Court, in the precincts of the Bar, in our medical schools, at the helm of FTSE 100 companies and in the boardrooms of our banks.”

He also said:

  • Privately-educated people dominate all aspects of life in Britain
  • Half of the UK’s gold medallists at the last Olympics were privately educated, compared with 7% of the population
  • Children who are born poor are more likely to stay poor in the UK than any other comparable nation

He went on to say:

 ”The sheer scale, the breadth and depth of private school dominance of our society points to a deep problem in our country – one we all acknowledge but have still failed to tackle with anything like the radicalism required….

We live in a profoundly unequal society.  More than almost any developed nation ours is a country in which your parentage dictates your progress.  Those who are born poor are more likely to stay poor and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege in England than in any comparable country…for those of us who believe in social justice this stratification and segregation is morally indefensible.”

Maintaining inequality

I think private education is one of the key factors in promoting, maintaining and deepening inequality of opportunity in the UK. 

Whenever I drive past Dulwich College (pictured above) the massive contrast between its ostentatious facilities and the local  comprehensive schools turns my stomach.  And a quick check on their website confirms that their lovely facilities don’t come cheap – its over £15k a year for day pupils and over £32k a year for them to board. 

A Christian perspective?

There are loads of discussions that could flow from his comments about what the Government should be doing about education.  But lets go a bit closer to home and focus some discussion on one specific aspect - if Christians care about social justice – and there’s enough in the Bible about it to suggest we should (check out the Poverty and Justice Bible if you need convincing) - what should our approach to private education be?

The Church has not been short of Bishops and leaders who talk fluently about equality and justice but find the lure of private education hard to resist when it comes to their own children.

What do you think – should Christians send their children to private schools? 

(Please leave comments below on why you voted as you did)

Posted in Ethics & Christian living | Tagged | 26 Comments

Going Beyond ‘the Project’: why we need to be less professional and more radical – by Anna Hembury

Posted on April 26, 2012 by

The defining, shaping character of Christian youth and community work is the Incarnation – Jesus’ birth, life death and resurrection. This presumably means we are confident that Jesus had a pretty good grasp of what constitutes “good practice” so the standards by which we might measure “being professional” should first and foremost be from an interpretation of Jesus’ practice in our own context, not the standards set by the National Youth Agency or anyone else.

The cancer of ‘professionalism’

Being professional is a cancer which has reached epidemic proportions in the damage it has caused youth and community work.  It presents symptoms which include prohibitive tumours such as health and safety, equal opportunities and child protection – all of which started as healthy thriving cells and have parasitically grown into unmanageable proportions, inhibiting movement and sucking nutrients, energy and life out of the host.

In its advanced stages it affects the brain’s ability to assess risk, leads to loss of sight of the starkly obvious and reduces the body’s functions to a limited set of paperwork-heavy and gumption-poor activity.

Self-delusion is a commonplace secondary tumour – resulting in a sense of success and achievement over forms filled, activities organised and boxes ticked. 

Another secondary tumour is a need for control, so that satisfaction is achieved with smooth running, good behaviour and the retaining of power to define and deliver measurable outcomes.

Unchecked the cancer invariably proves fatal, tightening its grip on the host bodies major organs so that eventually breathing becomes impossible and the heart’s capacity to love, to trust and to put others needs before it’s own sense of self-preservation is diminished to ultimate arrest.

A deeper healing

The standards which Jesus, the Great Physician, prescribes for restoring health are demanding not least because they have to be ministered over a life time: quality of relationships, depth of care, wholeness of transformation and fullness of life – no short course of a blast of chemo (otherwise known as Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-scaled projects) will bring about the kind of healing He offers.

Sharing God’s vulnerability

One of the hallmarks of the Incarnation, the guts of what “moving into the neighbourhood” (Message, John 1:14) is about, is vulnerability.

Taking on the nature of a servant (Phillipians 2), being bound in swaddling cloths, his death on a cross, are all evidence of God’s call, and Christ’s example, to vulnerability. We show the kingdom, we bring in the kingdom, we are the kingdom of God when we are vulnerable, when we relinquish power so that we are no longer in control.

It allows God, who chose to partner rather than control, the space to shape things, it allows others to find their feet as partners with God so they too have the opportunity to give and to serve and to make decisions and to freely live out their story with God.

Being professional, on the world’s terms, tends to be about limiting or removing vulnerability on the part of the youth / community / family worker as much as possible – keeping us safe from harm , from litigation, from our ability to think for ourselves lest we make a mistake. (Mistakes are always bad, displaying further proof of our vulnerability and therefore unprofessionalism.)

Unprofessional transformation

We are called instead to “be not conformed by the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:2), bringing the light of the Gospel rather than the paranoia of the age to bear on all our actions.

In these times, when professionalism is the common currency of all interactions in the “caring” sector it is perhaps even more vital that our expression and outworking of the Kingdom of God be as unprofessional as we can get away with, as a mark of our Christ-guided morality.

Anna Hembury works with young people and families for Hull Youth for Christ – watch a short film about their work on the Church Urban Fund website

Posted in Social action | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Don’t buy the lies about Executive Pay: Reward people for the contribution they make

Posted on April 24, 2012 by

“Did you know that the Chief Executive of Warwickshire County Council gets paid £173,000 per year, which is over 14 times the least well paid person in the Council who get by on £12,145?”

Over the last month, I’ve been knocking on peoples’ doors asking them if they want to sign the local Green Party‘s Fair Pay campaign for Warwickshire. We want to raise the bottom earners to a living wage of £7.20 ph (benefiting well over 1.5 million  people) and have a ratio between highest and lowest earner in an organisation of no more than 10:1.

Rightly Rewarded?

Every time I repeat the figures the injustice hits home harder and harder. The incredulity in my voice as I say one hundred and seventy three thousand pounds is not put on – it becomes more and more pronounced.

People say that the top earners are rightly rewarded for doing a stressful, difficult job – true. Others  point that we need pay ‘ladders’ to recognise and motivate – absolutely. And in a market place some accurately argue, the best, most sought after people can command the highest salaries.

The trouble is that for all the truth in these arguments they are selectively used to justify the status quo of exorbitant executive pay. Apply the same principles of hard work, value of contribution and supply and demand to every job across the piste and the result is very different.

Calls Centres and Care homes

We all know the frustration and ever increasing desperation of ringing a call centre. You’re stuck on hold for 45 minutes before the first person fobs you off, the second person doesn’t know what they’re talking about and the third hangs up on you.

But do you know that other feeling – when you happen to come across the person who actually sorts things out for you? The feeling of relief, of satisfaction, yes even of joyful exaltation when someone listens to you and advocates on your behalf, is efficient, competent and prepared to go the extra mile to make the system work for you.

And do you know the person who works as an assistant in a care home for people with dementia?
Working 50-60 hours a week at unsociable times, juggling the needs of sometimes unpredictable, aggressive people but that still remembers that your nan/mum/other relative prefers cranberry sauce with her chicken rather than gravy on a Sunday evening because that’s what she’s always had it; and then goes out of his/her way to make sure your relative gets it, with the caring question and dollop of dignity.

Gold Dust

These are the people that make an organisation tick, that give it a good name, that keep the profits coming in.

They’re like gold dust.

If these people were treated like executives they would be head hunted and fought over and extolled. Their pay rise and bonus would come in each year, recognising their phenomenal contribution. Instead they’re probably paid no more than an average salary alongside their other less exceptional colleagues.

In contrast executives get a salary ten, fifteen, twenty times more. Is their contribution to the organisation really that much greater?

Fair rewards

There are other reasons why executives get paid so much, especially in the private sector. Yes, we should talk about entrepreneurial risk and reward, who sets pay levels and the exercise of power and the belief that ‘things can never change’.

But let’s not pretend that pay levels are because executives  work harder or have a more stressful job. Let’s not buy the lie that organisations actually financially reward people in proportion to the value they offer the company or that supply and demand  is the sole driver of pay across society.

We need to reward people for the contribution they make. We need fairer pay.

Posted in Politics, Poverty | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

John Bunyan’s warning to bloggers (and R&R’s first birthday)

Posted on April 17, 2012 by

Recently I read John Bunyan’s classic tale Pilgrim’s Progress.  Published in 1678,  like some of the most powerful Christian writings (e.g. MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters from Prison and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians) it is a book written from a prison cell.

What makes it such a brilliant book is the characters who the three pilgrims, Christian, Faithful and later Hopeful, meet on their journey.  On their path to renewal, they meet plenty of characters who need to be resisted.

Talking a good game

One of my favourite characters is a man they meet called Talkative.  He has an earnest desire to discuss Christian doctrine and ‘the things of God’.  Talkative loves theology for ‘by this a man might learn to refute false opinions, to vindicate the truth, and also to instruct the ignorant.’

Initially, Faithful is very impressed with Talkative’s fine words.  But Christian sees through his deceptive and shallow front and warns his fellow pilgrim about their new companion: ‘He talketh of prayer, of repentance, of faith and of new birth; but he knows only to talk of them’.

A world of words

Reading Pilgrim’s Progress coincided with the first birthday of Resistance & Renewal which started last Easter.  It made me think that Talkative sums up the danger for anyone who writes a blog – because online its especially easy to become consumed in a world of words and debate and lose sight of what is really important. 

This is all the more dangerous when you are writing about faith in God.  As Christian says in a devastating challenge to armchair believers:

“The soul of religion is the practic part: pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.  This Talkative is not aware of, he thinks hearing and saying will make a good Christian and thus deceives his own soul. 

Hearing is but as the sowing of the seed; talking is not sufficient to prove that fruit is indeed in the heart and life; and let us assure ourselves, that at the day of doom, men shall be judged according to their fruits.  It will not be said then, ‘Did you believe? but, ‘Were you doers, or talkers only?’ and accordingly you shall be judged.  The end of the world is compared to a harvest, and you know men at harvest regard nothing but fruit.”

The Church is already full of words – prayers, songs, Bible readings and endless books.  Blogs can easily into this danger too: they might be jammed pack full of words but do they make any difference in the real world? 

It’s a challenge we want to keep in mind.

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Posted in Ethics & Christian living, Recommended books | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Who will be the fathers?

Posted on April 15, 2012 by

This story was told at my church a few weeks ago:

“Elephant herds are formed of an intrictate social web of the extended family. Two or three generations of parents and cousins all play their part – it really does take a whole herd to raise an elephant child.

Adolescent male elephants go through a period of Musth, which normally lasts a week to ten days. Massive hormonal changes and a period of separation from their mothers and grandmothers mark the change into Elephant adulthood. During this time the bull elephants can be unusually aggressive and violent.

Back in 2006 Park Rangers in the Pilanesburg and Addo areas of South Africa noticed that the elephants on their patch were taking far longer than normal to emerge from their period of Musth. A few days, a week and a month passed and the destructive aggressive behaviour continued with no sign of them emerging into adulthood and returning to the herd.

The Rangers were aware that the young elephants were orphans. Not only had their parents died in the rush for ivory or capture for the entertainment industy, but there were no older adult males left in the herd at all.

The Park Rangers took the unusual step of introducing older males. Within a short time the young bull elephants left their prolonged period of Musth and matured into adult males, rejoining the extended society of the herd.

The young bulls needed their older counterparts to ‘father’ them and show them the way into their new role.”

 In the wake of the riots last year the role of fathers is starting to come into the spotlight. Actor and DJ Reggie Yates made a programme for Radio 5 Live broadcast this week asking ‘Is Mum Enough?’. (on BBC iPlayer until 16 April)

Reggie “was very close to his Mum and believes he had all the support and love he needed, but is now starting to question whether he was one of the lucky ones and wonders how not having a father in the home has shaped him.”

One of the contributors poignantly added that they had sought “bits of dad from wherever they could find them.”

The older elephants introduced onto the plains of South Africa weren’t  fathers by themselves, but together provided what was needed to bring the younger males through into their new roles in the herd.

The challenge for us is not to ‘replace’ people’s biological fathers, but to creatively seek out our responsibilities to father those around us and take joy in seeing people mature into playing their new part.

Posted in Social commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Church has forfeited the right to have a say on gay marriage

Posted on April 14, 2012 by

For as long as I can remember the church in the UK has treated people who are gay horrifically. We have denied, we have judged, we have excluded, we have hurt, we have silenced.

The vicious aggression of the recent banned bus ads  doesn’t represent the approach of all Christians, but the church as a whole shouldn’t be reaching for their comparative halos.

Weapons

The worst part of it is that ‘the gay thing’ has been an argument. An issue. A topic. We’ve gone to our Bibles or our church traditions and pronouced and debated on what they say and what they mean in today’s society. In doing so we forgot or ignored that we were talking about a profound part of the identity of real people.

We have failed to see people as people loved and created by God. As soon as we have heard the word ‘Gay’ ‘they’ stopped being human and became a target or a weapon. A target to cajole or convince into abstinence, reorientation or silence. A weapon in our debates about the rights and wrongs of our positions. Again and again people who are gay have got caught up in the cross fire in churches, because we couldn’t have a sensible conversation about how we read the bible without launching the missile of sexual orientation.

Radical love

For a faith which claims to place such value on each person’s innate worth no matter who they are or what they’ve done we have failed. We thought that by being ‘set apart’ on this ‘issue’  from society that we were therefore doing the right thing. But it is our love that should be radical, different and offensive not our fear.

Giving up our rights

Therefore the church has forfeited the right to have a say in the current public discssion on gay marriage.

The church has lots of really helpful and constructive things to say about marriage in general – healthy living traditions from down the ages. The church may have some insightful things to say about gay marriage as well. The tone of the coalition for marriage petition has generally been positive.

But it doesn’t matter.  We’ve blown it.

Whatever we say will be heard as a judgemental scream from a group trying to defend their own rights. In the unlikely event that the church prevented the reforms it would be seen as a dictatorial minority imposing their will.

Lament and forgiveness

The church should give up their right to participate in the discussion. We must trust that God will find other ways to bring His will (whatever it is) into this area. The organisations spearheading the ‘coalition for marriage’ should announce the withdrawal of their petition and lobbying efforts and instead enter a period of lament and seeking forgiveness. Maybe God will call us to influence this area of our national life in the future, maybe not.

This does not mean that everyone has to suddenly (or ever) become pro gay marriage or the blessing of same sex relationships. This is not about people having to toe  a ‘politically correct’ party line or feeling coerced into changing deeply held views.

It does mean finding ways of seeking forgiveness from the people we have hurt and targeted. It does mean ensuring that we never again divorce our doctrines and beliefs from the realities of people’s lives around us.

Peoples’ sexual identities are not our theological weapons. It’s time to stop the warfare and lay down our arms.

Posted in Ethics & Christian living, Theology & Church | Tagged , , | 20 Comments

Sex, chocolates and a lie in for Easter…or is Christianity worth getting out of bed for?

Posted on April 9, 2012 by

The vicar of All Saints Church in Hove, Father Phil Ritchie, hit the headlines The Daily Mail and The Sun this weekend when he made these comments to his local paper:

‘The problem with the church is that we stay inside our building and occasionally come out and say “Why don’t you come to our church, it’s cool and funky”. To be honest, it’s not.  I would love more people to come at 10am on Sunday and I would welcome them to All Saints. For Christians this is the most important day of the year.  All life and all hope flows from it. But there are plenty of ways to celebrate without coming to a draughty Victorian building. So why not stay at home, have a lie in, have sex and eat some chocolate.’

Fr. Ritchie has said that his comments were meant to be light-hearted and some of his congregation have defended their ‘wonderfully witty’ vicar.  The coverage his comments got shows the continuing appetite the media have for anything slightly naughty said by someone in a dog collar. 

Boring and irrelevant?

So is the Church just a boring and irrelevant institution which meets in old, cold buildings?

Well often it is, especially when Christianity becomes ‘Church-ianity’.  When the core message becomes shrouded in rituals that only hold meaning for those ‘within the club’, churches do become boring and irrelevant.  This kind of church is not worth getting out of bed for. 

The problem is that Fr. Ritchie’s comments sound cynical and resigned to the decline of the church.  Why not speak about how these challenges are being overcome? Surely it’s the task of all Christians, and especially church leaders, to connect people as well as possible to our message.

Surprised by hope

Over the last few years Easter has come alive to me in a deeper way than previously.  One key reason was reading Tom Wright’s seminal book ‘Surprised by Hope’ where he attacks the idea that Christian hope should focus on going to heaven when you die.  Wright unpacks a far more radical and biblical concept of resurrection into a New Heavens and a New Earth.  Our hope is not in floating around in clouds but in a creation which is fully restored, renewed and ‘put to rights’.  The resurrection of Jesus at Easter is the start of this new creation – Jesus is the first to be resurrected and offers everyone the hope of new life.

This has led me to taking Lent far more seriously and consequently grasping more deeply the significance of Jesus’ death and especially his resurrection.

The best illustration of this new life is the baptisms which take place in churches all over the country on Easter day – like the 6 that took place at my church yesterday.  As ever, baptism is the most exciting example of transformation and hope because people publicly declare their new life in Christ. 

A healthy church?

The Guardian on Saturday had an interesting double-spread feature on both the challenges and the opportunities for the Church of England as people search for hope, meaning and a sense of transcendence.  The article ended with this summary about the current state of the Church:

‘Away from the synods and all the archaic brittle grandeurs of establishment, it still seems to be alive, and even putting out fresh strong shoots’

The death of Church-ianity

The church is not in terminal decline.   Churches which have passion, commitment and faithful energy to share the ‘full message of this new life’ (Acts 5:20) will continue to grow whether in size or impact. 

On the other hand, congregations which embody ‘Church-ianity’ will continue to fade.  This will mean more empty church buildings and whole denominations coming to an end.  But I don’t think that’s a bad thing and it does not necessarily signal a decline of authentic Christianity.  It is more a necessary rationalisation – for there is too much institutional structure, too many grand buildings and too much religion.  Perhaps pruning will help us be more fruitful.

Focussing on the message

God’s Church needs to travel lighter so it can focus on its transforming message.   We have a story to live out and share with others.  It’s a truly inclusive story which everyone can participate in and in which they can truly find themselves.  It’s what the world is waiting for.

Going back to Fr. Ritchie’s controversial comments – all Christians and especially our leaders need to ensure that what happens in church buildings reflect the life and hope that flows from the resurrection of Jesus.  When we do that, we really do have a message that is worth getting out of bed for.

Related posts: Tom Wright For Everyone by Stephen Kuhrt

Posted in Theology & Church | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Why I signed the ‘Coalition for Marriage’ Petition – by Lizzie Schofield

Posted on April 7, 2012 by

A week or so ago I shared a link on Facebook to the Coalition for Marriage Petition. Its aim is to preserve the ‘traditional’ marriage unit of one man and one woman. It’s a cause I support, and many of my Facebook friends oppose. I wanted to write this article is to outline in more detail my reasons for doing so.

Firstly, I don’t like the term ‘traditional’. ‘Traditional’ marriage means polygamy to someone living in Saudi Arabia. Nor is tradition always right; it should be subject to scrutiny.  Secondly, there are lots of arguments in support of marriage that I won’t go into here, for example, the benefit it affords children and its role in procreation.  I broadly agree with these views, but they have already had considerable airtime.

Christian convictions

My primary reason for wanting to preserve marriage stems from my Christian convictions. I became a Christian when I was 23, after much investigation. I didn’t do it lightly. Sexual ethics were a sticking point. I myself had had sexual relationships. And yet I concluded Jesus must be who he says he is – God incarnate and Saviour – and therefore his teaching on sex and marriage was authoritative (though I didn’t like it much at the time.)

Jesus’ identity?

Jesus’ identity is of critical significance. If he is God and Saviour of the world, what he says matters profoundly to all of society. If that is not true, then what Jesus says is irrelevant. Perhaps not irrelevant. But no more relevant than your and my opinions, and the opinions of psychologists, campaigners and politicians.

Here is Jesus on the subject of marriage:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’, and said ‘for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, man must not separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

Marriage is exclusive

He asserts the complementarity of both genders: ‘male and female’, ‘mother and father’, ‘man’, ‘wife’. Sex today is considered an appetite or a function, but Jesus highlights the profound bond it creates: “no longer two, but one flesh.”  This bond is for life: “what God has joined together, man must not separate.”  If Jesus’ blueprint for marriage sounds exclusive, that’s because it is exclusive. It excludes all pre-marital and extra-marital sex, co-habitation, bigamy, polygamy, as well as homosexual relationships. It demands absolute chastity without and absolute faithfulness within.

Tough call? Absolutely.  

Jesus himself says marriage is a calling not everyone can accept. (Mt 19:11)  God is also referred to throughout. “The Creator made them male and female”; “what God has joined together, man must not separate.”  So it is not just a calling, but a sacrament; a gift from God.

Legally equal

In the UK, our concept of marriage stems from our Judeo-Christian heritage. Some atheists decide not to marry on the grounds that it is in origin, a religious institution. Now you don’t have to believe to get married: both marriage (religious and non) and civil partnerships come with exactly the same rights and responsibilities. They are equal in the eyes of the law (which I think is fair and right) but for reformers, this is not enough.

A new definition?

People recognise that “I’m married” has a different ring to “I’m in a civil partnership.” (“I didn’t ask her to ‘civil union’ me” reads a placard from oneUSdemonstration.) Why not re-define it so no-one feels left out?  Because then it would not be marriage according to how Jesus defined it.

Is Jesus a killjoy and out of date on sexual ethics?

In all this we need to consider the person who spoke these words as well as what he said. Although his teaching underpins much of our society and culture, Jesus wasn’t a holier-than-thou moralist. He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind and raised the dead. No-one is beyond reach of his transformation and forgiveness. And I know from experience, he is trustworthy.

Lizzie Schofield used to work with Jon Kuhrt at the youth homelessness charity Centrepoint about a hundred years ago. She is married to Rob and is currently looking after their three daughters aged 7, 6 and 4.

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