Category: Politics/Metaphysics

Posted on

Two types of church

It used to feel really strange coming to a country so full of seemingly Christian language and yet feeling so utterly alien to it all. It was on about my second or third visit to California that I noticed that I felt considerably more affinity with the honest searching and questioning of the hippies, new agers and agnostics that I met than I did with much of the overly-confident, divisive nonsense that I heard coming from a lot of the christians I met. More often that not, the reasons that people had for disregarding all-things-Jesus-esque were reasons that I wholeheartedly agreed with – the sanctimoniousness of so many of the Christians they’d met, the hideousness of how God’s name is invoked to back up all kinds of horseshit in US governmental circles (‘God told me to go to war‘ etc.), and the gross circus-like game show that passes for so many church services here, and all the televised acts of Christian worship I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness…

I mentioned in one of the tour blogs that Downtown Pres in Nashville is one of the very few churches I’ve been to in the US that I could go to again. I’m just trying to remember where the others were – I quite enjoyed the Presbyterian church I went to in Hollywood, and the Catholic church I visited in Orange county, but I’m not sure I’d go regularly to them if I lived there… But neither of them actually left me feeling alienated in the way that some of the others I’ve visited have done.

There seem to be two very different understandings of what church is at work here – the kind of church I want to go to is one that challenges me to love, to care for the poor, to seek justice, to hold the powerful accountable for how their actions affect the powerless. Church should be a place where I’m encouraged to live a life that’s different in as much as I’m focusing my time on what I can do for other people, rather than obsessing about expanding my piece of the pie. A place where I can be honest, where I can be open about my failings, but also not be able to escape the consequences of my actions, where prayer is about aligning myself with the kind of things that God is concerned about, rather than about some screwed-up spell-casting bullshit where I try and twist God’s arm into giving me a good parking space and sorting out my shit life when I’m not willing to make any changes myself. It should also be a place that encourages me NOT to surround myself all the time with people who believe the same things I do – that, my dear friends, is a cult, and having ‘unsaved’ friends just so you can ‘witness’ to them doesn’t count. That’s the kind of freaky double standard that we find so creepy in people who turn up at our front doors telling us how to live (full disclosure – I once did a ‘door to door’ thing when I was in my teens, with the church I was at – at the time I thought the discomfort I felt doing it was just my resisting God’s call. Now I understand I really should have listened to the voice that told me that a 17 year old turning up at your door trying to tell you ‘the Good News’ is just about the stupidest thing that can happen – it would have made much more sense to go round and ask for advice and listen to people’s stories, but anyway…)

Instead, so often the church is full of people who spend no time with people outside of their church circle, who are all implicity encouraged to dress the same (there are few things that annoy me more than the idea of Sunday best – not that I mind people wanting to dress up for church; each to their own – but the idea that you ‘should’ is pure bollocks), it’s a place where misogyny and homophobia are encouraged and entrenched, where nationalistic pride is fostered (I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of crap gets preached in so many US churches around Memorial day and Independence Day, in a ‘US = God’s chosen nation’ kind of way). Church should be a place that challenges our prejudices, our pride and our complacency in speaking out in favour of any oppressed group, whether that oppression is on gender, sexual orientation, race or class lines. Instead all those prejudices are confirmed

Posted on

A rare moment of god-botheringness on the blog…

I don’t often post God bothering things on the blog, but today’s ‘verse of the day’ on the Sojourner’s blog really caught my eye –

“You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.”
– Deuteronomy 24:14-15

Back in the 80s people used to talk about believing in a ‘social gospel’ or some other euphemism that suggested there was any other way of reading what it means to be inspired by jesus… with the wealth of stuff in the Bible that relates looking after the poor, looking after immigrants, not pursuing wealth, the dangers of greed etc. etc. it’s a wonder that some people claiming to be Christians can sleep at night…

There’s a magical bit in Amos that says (in The Message) –

” 21-24″I can’t stand your religious meetings.
I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”

No wonder so many people are turned off from anything Jesus-related, following Gandhi’s route of being inspired by the sermon on the mount but seeing the church as an agent of the hideous status quo rather than a radical organisation with a deep concern for the poor, for justice… it’s there in the book, just not there in the behaviour of the Bushes and Blairs of this world, making a total bollocks-up of anything remotely justice-oriented, talking a load of shit about their concern for poverty reduction and ‘fairness’ whilst waging illegal wars and backing the IMF and World Bank in their schemes to trap yet more third world countries into privatisation schemes and debt cycles…

grrrr…

Posted on

Throwing down the eco-monkey gauntlet…

Just heard about this company via Jonny Baker’s Blog – it’s Belu, and they make bottled water… or rather, they bottle water; you can’t make water…

But anyway, the USP is that their bottles are made from corn, are fully biodegradable and the company is carbon neutral. Apparently Tescos and Waitrose are both stocking it.

So, three challenges then, I guess – one is to buy it if you drink bottled water, two is to stock it if you sell bottled water and three is to switch to corn-made biodegradable compostable bottles if you make or sell stuff in plastic bottles. Someone else has done the hard bit, now all you need to do is play catch up.

C’mon, we’re already far too late on the whole climate thing, globally, so let’s not faff about, let’s switch plastic bottle production over to these lovely new eco-monkey bottles and get those carbon emissions down!

Posted on

Petition Fever

Ah, I bet whoever it was who suggested putting petitions on the Downing Street Website is getting some serious flak now from the rest of the staff there… Lots of pissed off people are venting their spleens via numerous petitions there. Some are vital, some are nonsense.

But this one is clearly the most important of all. Sign it, now!

Posted on

Flying used to be so much fun…

As I’ve said before, I love travel. Love it.

However, airports are now stretching that resolve. Dubya and his made-up War on Tourism (brown people who do bad things in planes) have completely screwed up the process, holding people up for trying to take a tickle-me-elmo onto a plane that’s not in its box, and confiscating toothpaste… I guess you could overpower a pilot with a tube of toothpaste… if the pilot was less than 4 years old and had a severe toothpaste allergy…

The only upside is it might make more people realise what a great way to travel the train is (screwed up Irish Sea ferry things notwithstanding) – as the 80s advert said – this is the age of the train…

But anyway, if you are flying, please give a smile to the poor people who work in airports these days – it’s got to be a seriously thankless task, and one where they need to be obsessive to the point of it being clinical, about things they almost certainly don’t really give a shit about. So smile.

See you on ‘tother side of the atlantic!

Posted on

Saddam…

So Saddam Hussein has been executed. Tried in an Iraqi court for one of the many crimes he was clearly very very guilty of, and then sentenced to death. Killed for killing. The act of killing brutalises the killer, whether that be the government who sanction it, or a murderer who slaughters in cold blood. Iraqi democracy hasn’t been promoted through this, Saddam hasn’t ‘paid’ for his crimes, none of those he committed such atrocious acts against have received any restitution, and to delight in someone’s death is to allow yourself to be drawn into the brutality of their actions… Should be forgive Saddam? That’s not for me to say, as someone personally unaffected, but as someone who thinks the death penalty is a profoundly immoral law, I can’t possibly take any pleasure in his death, and am sickened by the celebratory way it’s been reported…

I was initially also sickened by the comment from the government, reported on the BBC site , but as the full quote taken from the CNN site below shows, she was grossly misrepresented on the BBC site…

“I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people. He has now been held to account. [the next bit was missed from the BBC site] The British Government does not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else… We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation.”

If you miss the second half of that, it’s a completely different quote…

Anyway, Saddam’s execution is no cause for celebration, but it may be one for reflection for those who still see killing as a suitable punishment for killing. I hope and pray that the predicted upsurge in violence in Iraq is a misjudgement… As with so many of these things, there’s no pleasure at all in the doom-mongers on the left being right. I so hope they are wrong. People being killed and injured is never a good thing, least of all to prove a point.

Posted on

more great thinking and writing on Climate Change…

No, that heading isn’t me bigging myself up for some super new poorly researched fanciful idea that I’ve come up with, it’s a reference to MarkLynas.org – Mark is the New Statesman’s chief writer on all matters climate change-related. He’s a great writer, and a very honest blogger by the looks of things.

I’m sure you’ve all by now book-marked monbiot.com for George’s weekly stuff about the same subject. Put Mark’s in alongside it… great stuff, and hopefully some inspiration to change the way we live a little…

Posted on

When Climate Change starts to sting…

Ok, this is a tough one to write, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, to echo the words of Hugo Schwyzer in his post about this subject, I love flying. I love travel, I love the feeling of limitless possibility that one has in airports. It’s my one major concession to hyper-modernity – the sleek lines, shiny metal and monorails make me feel like I’m in the Jetsons. I’m a travel junky, and I’ve benefitted hugely from my experiences when traveling.

However, it’s quite clear that aviation is one of the biggest – if not THE biggest – factor in the climate change disaster in which we currently find ourselves. So what do we do? Hugo, in his post above says, basically ‘nothing’ – flying’s great, travel’s great, so fuck it, we’ll just have to go on feeling guilty and hope guilt soaks up some carbon (that’s a fairly unfair paraphrase, but that’s the gist…)

OK – firstly, full disclosure – I’ve got two transatlantic flights coming up – I’m flying to NYC in Jan, then to LA and then home from SF. That’s a lot of flying. It pretty much uses up my carbon allocation for the next year. So what have I done to change things? Well, I’ve pretty much sworn off short-haul flights (I say ‘pretty much’ – I haven’t been faced with a really good paying gig that I’d be required to fly to in order to accept it.. I’ve no idea what I’ll do if that comes up, to be honest) – but I’ve completely changed the way I do gigs on the continent – it’s now all about doing a month at a time, and doing it all on the train. And as my October trip proved, it works. Well, even as a solo artist. As a duo, it’d be a cinch.

So – I really need to think hard about how the transatlantic thing works. I’ve looked into boats, honestly, but it doesn’t seem possible for less than a couple of grand… So where do I draw the line? Allow myself a couple of transatlantic flights a year? I dunno, I’m struggling here, but I am going to get the train and boat to Belfast over new year, so that’s one short haul flight I’ve foresworn… it’s much cheaper on the train/boat anyway!

For now, though, go and read what George Monbiot is writing about this – Monbiot is without doubt one of the most important thinkers on climate change, and the things we need to do to combat it. A lot of people are desperately trying to discredit him, but it’s not working. And while you’re there, check out TurnUpTheHeat.org – and why not write to Gordon Brown about taxation of aviation, or Douglas Alexander about the airport expansion policy? And how about signing up to the year of living generously, in order to look at the myriad ways we can cut back our global footprint…

Posted on

World AIDS day… (two days late)

Friday was World AIDS day. A day that shouldn’t have to exist, shouldn’t have to be marked. But it does, because AIDS is spreading, particularly in the developing world, and is destroying entire countries, as huge sections of the population are wiped out.

Every 11 seconds, someone dies an AIDS/HIV-related death. That’s a lot of deaths. Many of which are preventable, if only the right drugs were available. That they aren’t is a blot on the collective conscience of the world’s developed nations that as this quote from the president of World Vision highlights, is our own preventable holocaust –
“I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation. I look at my parents and ask, where were they during the civil rights movement? I look at my grandparents and ask, what were they doing when the holocaust in Europe was occurring with regard to the Jews, and why didn’t they speak up? And when we think of our great, great, great-grandparents, we think how could they have sat by and allowed slavery to exist? And I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 years from now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?” — Rich Stearns, President of World Vision, US

There are lots more quotes about AIDS here – we used quite a few of them in a service for World AIDS Day in the Soul Space service at St Luke’s this evening. It’s sobering, challenging, and enraging all at the same time. How is this still happening? Fortunately, there are organisations that are doing something, right here in London, as well as around the world.

Support, donate, campaign, pray, write letters, volunteer.

Posted on

More on Friedman…

Ok, I didn’t explain what I hate about this quote, ” In an essay titled “Is Capitalism Humane?” Friedman said that “a set of social institutions that stresses individual responsibility, that treats the individual … as responsible for and to himself, will lead to a higher and more desirable moral climate.” “

The huge issue is the fallacy of ‘individual responsibility’. The assumption that all-powerful personal autonomy is a healthy way to live. It also assumes that (as most people with some kind of heart would agree, even if they like Friedman) there are a handful of people who will struggle, and so we need systems in place to help them, because they are disabled, or mentally ill, or whatever, but everyone else can just get into a scrap for the top of the heap.

It’s bollocks. Indefensible bollocks. Because if it was true, rich people would be happier. It’s as simple as that. And they aren’t. Not even close. In fact, the opposite is often true. I know of people earning $2 million a year, who talk about what they want to do ‘when they get rich’. How fucked is that? I also know people with nothing who give what they have to help others, and are rewarded richly for it.

So, a system that promotes the rights of those at the top, who already have more than they’ll ever need, over those at the bottom who aren’t just devoid of luxury, but can’t get basic food, medical care, education etc. is clearly screwed. I’m baffled how anyone could think otherwise.

So, to suggest that the ‘moral’ aim of economic systems is to facilitate the right to acquire any level of person fortune, to encourage people to strive for that because of some screwed up ‘trickledown’ concept, is mendacious.

It seems clear from the failure of most Communist government experiments that that isn’t the answer. I very much doubt that Soviet Russia scored too highly on a contendedness/happiness/shalom rating. I think there’s genuinely a ‘third way’, it’s just a shame that the third way we’ve been presented with post-Clinton is just the same old shit with a few crumbs being thrown to the poor.

Politics as if people mattered. What a lovely thought.

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top