Author Archives: symonhill

Looking for Bible-reading notes for 2014?

Posted on by symonhill

When I became a Christian, I read daily (or almost daily) Bible reading notes, each exploring a particular Bible passage. They were helpful, at least in terms of assisting me to be disciplined about reading the Bible. They were less helpful in that they frequently jumped around the Bible and often implied that there was only one interpretation of a particular passage (to be fair, some did this more than others). They tended to assume that the reader had a rather straightforward view of biblical authority and they almost never drew any explicit social or political meaning out of the passage in question.

Of course, some were (and are) much better than others. In the last few years, it’s been a genuine delight for me not only to encounter some really good Bible-reading notes but also to have been asked occasionally to contribute to them.

I feel really privileged to have contributed to Fresh from the Word, a set of Bible-reading notes for 2014. Many of the notes have a focus on social engagement and they are intended to be useful to new Christians and to those still exploring and working out their relationship with Christianity. Each reflection is a page (or slightly less than a page) long, to help you to reflect on a relatively short passage.

I’m only one of dozens of contributors. They include Greenpeace organiser Malcolm Carroll, Christian musician Aileen Few, Baptist journalist Mark Woods, poet Nicola Slee and Quaker scholar Eleanor Nesbitt. The editor is United Reformed Church minister and writer Nathan Eddy. My contribution is a week’s worth of notes for November, around the theme of conversations with Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel.

You can order the book here, priced £8.75. Please let me know what you think!

Celebrating revolution at Christmas

Posted on by symonhill

Tonight and tomorrow, millions of people will gather in churches to tell each other a truly subversive story.

They will tell of a baby born to a semi-homeless family living under a viciously oppressive regime. They will declare that the mother’s husband was not the baby’s father; this was a very unconventional family. They will tell of how the puppet ruler of the area was so frightened by this obscure baby that he killed all the children in the town to try to get rid of him.

They will add stories about visits to the child from migrant travellers, who foiled the king’s attempts to hunt down the baby. They will say that the child was visited also by people whose work was looked down on, but to whom God chose to reveal the news of the birth.

In many countries throughout history, and in some today, the authorities have tried to suppress Christians telling these stories to each other. After all, they challenge authority, monarchy, national loyalty and family values.

Over time, the people with power have become more subtle and effective in their methods. They have found it much easier to tell these stories themselves, repeating them so often that they become familiar and disconnected from the realities of life, death, power and politics today. Some of us can be quite comfortable with this. We can enjoy the stories, but not the challenge they bring to our lives. Even those of us want to change the society we live in can still cling on to the comfort of familiarity.

No king, no dictator, no burner of books has ever suppressed the Christian message as well as those who have domesticated Christianity. Turning subversion into a fluffy story is much more effective than banning it.

At times, we glimpse the transformative potential of Christmas. On Christmas Day ninety-nine years ago, German troops on the Western Front displayed a sign reading “We no fight. You no fight.” The British responded in kind, and the opposing soldiers were soon shaking hands and playing football. The authorities on both sides responded by criminalising such behaviour to make sure it didn’t happen again. If people realise that they are fighting people who are just the same as them, they might decide that there are better causes to fight for, and better ways to fight for them. If the troops had gone on playing football into Boxing Day, they might have stopped the war.

The baby we’re talking about this week grew up, despite the king’s murderous intention. He continued to be in conflict with authority. He welcomed and challenged all whom he encountered. He declared his solidarity with the poor and marginalised, while offering just as much love to the rich and powerful as he called on them to repent. He spoke of the kingdom of God, a revolutionary notion in an empire whose emperor expected to be worshipped. He was executed after a rigged trial by the local rulers, helped by the collusion of religious leaders. Some of us have faith that the oppressive powers could not hold him and that God raised him from the dead to continue to lead and liberate us.

That really is something worth celebrating. Merry Christmas.

Alcohol and Islamophobia

Posted on by symonhill

As a teetotal Christian, I would not want to sell alcohol. If I worked at Marks & Spencer, and had politely asked a customer to pay another member of staff for her champagne, I doubt that it would have led to a national media story. Marks & Spencer’s policy on this issue has hit the headlines because of a staff member who made such a request – and who is a Muslim. This conveniently suits the agenda of the right-wing media, obsessed as they are with portraying Muslims as weird.

Ever since 2001, stories involving Islam have come to be regarded as inherently more newsworthy than stories involving most other religions. In the light of the controversy, Marks & Spencer confirmed yesterday that they would not force a Jewish member of staff to handle pork. This has hardly been reported at all. It would not, of course, suit the agenda of those who like to accuse supermarkets (and society generally) of “giving in” to Islam.

In the last few hours, I have received a stream of aggressive messages on Twitter as a result of expressing my sympathy for the Muslim checkout worker concerned. Of course, there is an argument that all staff in supermarkets should be required to handle any item on sale. While I do not agree with this argument, it can be expressed reasonably and peacefully. The tweets I have received, on the other hand, consist largely of attacks on Muslims.

One of the most bizarre tweets asked why I had not condemned the killing of Lee Rigby. Firstly, I have done (on Twitter and this blog, at the time of the murder). Secondly, how can anyone possibly compare a polite refusal to sell alcohol with a cold-blooded murder of an unarmed man in the street? This is the grotesque level of bigotry to which media-fuelled Muslim-bashing has led.

Bill Main-Ian, UKIP’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Carshalton and Wallington, tweeted me to tell me I was talking “absolute rubbish”. He added, “There is no force about it. If their beliefs are in conflict, why are they applying for the job?”

Perhaps because there’s mass unemployment, Bill, and half a million people reliant on food banks thanks to austerity policies that UKIP support.

Another tweet asked if I would support a Muslim who refused to serve gay people. One Twitter user told me it was like “refusing to assist people who are different to me”, which would lead to her being “sacked for discrimination”.

Yes, it would, and rightly so. It would of course be wrong if a member of M&S staff refused to serve non-Muslims or non-Christians or gay people or disabled people or people over 6’2”. This is already illegal (if not enforced as much as it should be). It is not the same as not wanting to handle, or deal in, a particular product. We must not confuse freedom of conscience with freedom to discriminate.

As someone who would like to see the entire economic system changed, and workers given far more control, I am not suggesting that these confusions can be solved simply by M&S (or anyone else) adopting a simple policy. However, while private corporations continue to dominate employment, it should not be impossible to expect them to be reasonable about respecting conscience and religious (or non-religious) choices.

It has long been the case that employers such as M&S might allocate Muslims and Jews, along with other teetotal or vegetarian staff members, to duties such as the bakery counter or shelf-stacking. It is also a sad reflection on our consumer-driven, alcohol-drenched society that alcohol can be bought at every aisle in a supermarket rather than some of them only.

Even the customer who made the original complaint acknowledged that the Muslim checkout assistant was polite when explaining that she could not sell alcohol. Such respect and reasonableness seems sadly lacking in much of the discussion resulting from the utterly unnecessary media storm.

Oh, come on, all ye faithful

Posted on by symonhill

My article on the appalling theology of many Christmas carols appeared in the December issue of Reform, a Christian magazine published by the United Reformed Church. I’ve copied the article below. Please click here for more details of Reform magazine.

December is the only month of the year in which you can hear the same songs in supermarkets that you’re singing in church. It’s an odd feeling, as if God and Mammon have reached a temporary truce for the duration of the season.

There are plenty of secular songs playing in shops too. You’ve almost certainly heard the one about an omniscient tyrant who punishes people for crying (Santa Claus is Coming to Town). When I was very young, Santa Claus and God became slightly confused in my mind. Both seemed to be powerful beings handing out rewards and punishments.

Sadly, many people think that Christians really believe in this simplistic, abusive idea of God. Christmas, when people who rarely enter a church often pay their annual visit, could be a time to challenge this perception. Unfortunately, we seem to respond to their arrival by singing some of the most badly written, incomprehensible and theological dubious songs ever produced.

I am not saying all Christmas carols are bad. There are some good ones, but I would be happy to see most of them never sung in church again.

Some are so badly written that I’m amazed anyone wants to sing them. Presumably We Three Kings of Orient Are is supposed to mean “We are three kings of Orient”. I realise that grammatical flexibility is needed to make words rhyme, but this doesn’t justify moving the verb to the end of the sentence in a way that never happens in English unless you’re Yoda (I annoyed by this syntax am).

In the Bleak Midwinter imposes a north European landscape on Palestine, before saying a shepherd would respond to the nativity by choosing to “bring a lamb”. What would a newborn baby do with a lamb?. Even this isn’t as baffling as The Holly and the Ivy, which draws extremely tenuous connections between plants and the birth of Jesus.

I’m not condemning writers for their imperfections. I have at least as many as they do. But why are Christians so keen to sing such songs so often? What message are we giving out? Take the old favourite Once in Royal David’s City:

“And through all his wondrous childhood
He would honour and obey,
Love and watch the lowly maiden,
In whose gentle arms he lay..”

Would he? Mary may not have thought him very obedient after he hung around in the Temple debating theology while his parents frantically searched for him. But it gets worse:

“Christian children all must be
Mild, obedient, good as he”.

It seems the claims about Jesus’ childhood are only a prelude to telling children to conform.

There are much better carols that can be brought down by the context in which they’re sung. How can we sing enthusiastically about Bethlehem without recognising the oppression taking place there today? I’m happy to sing O Little Town of Bethlehem, but let’s acknowledge that we’re singing about a real place. Ironically, the lyrics say little about Bethlehem and it has much deeper theology than most carols, asking Christ to “be born in us today” and “cast out our sin”.

That leaves Away In A Manger, a song so full of bad theology that it’s difficult to know where to start. Christian theology proclaims a fully human, as well as fully divine, messiah. Yet this human baby apparently doesn’t cry. Even that isn’t as bad as “I love thee, Lord Jesus; look down from the sky”.

Jesus is not in the sky! Jesus is here, in our midst, wherever two or three are gathered in his name. He is calling us to him today, not waiting for us on a cloud. Yet, with more people in church than we’re likely to see for another year, we decide to reinforce the misconception that Christians worship a God “up there” and are unconcerned with people’s lives down here.

We have something exciting to proclaim at Christmas. Let’s sing of a baby born amidst scandal to an unknown girl in an obscure corner of a brutal empire. Let’s tell of how that baby frightened rulers, challenged the powerful and set out to change the world with a gang of confused fishermen and prostitutes. How he lived so freely and faithfully that he was killed by a vicious government with the collusion of religious leaders. And how he has risen from the dead to meet us, heal us, free us and save us.

A song by John Bell and Graham Maule reminds us that “A saviour without safety, a tradesman without tools, has come to tip the balance with fishermen and fools”.

Happy Christmas.

Anti-Roma prejudice and an unlikely prediction

Posted on by symonhill

Come January, the right-wing media in the UK might have some explaining to do. The Daily Mail (and their friends in UKIP and the Tory Right) have been telling us that Britain will be flooded by immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, as the last restrictions on their immigration to the UK are lifted.

Some of the rhetoric gives the impression that you will barely be able to move in London, Dover or Skegness for the number of Romanians and Buglarians pouring off the boats.

I dare say that Nigel Farage and his friends will soon be brushing away the figures showing that Romanian and Bulgarian immigration is lower than predicted. Neither UKIP nor the Daily Mail let the truth get in the way of scaremongering.

Much of the coverage easily confuses “Roma” with “Romanian”. Last month, the Daily Star ran a front page attack on “Roma” immigration. It quoted the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who has suggested that such immigration could lead to riots.

I find it hard to believe that such immigration could really reach the levels of Polish immigration a few years ago; the UK was not in the middle of an economic crisis in those days.

The Sun said recently that that Romanians and Bulgarians would come to Britain for its welfare state and “generous benefits”. This is even more unbelievable, given that to get here they will have to pass through countries with considerably more generous welfare states (notably Germany).

One of the reasons that might help to draw migrants to Britain is the fact that they are more likely to speak English than the languages of certain other European countries. Ironically, the global dominance of the English language is an indirect result both of US global power and of the general British unwillingness to learn languages. These are both things that tend to be defended by the same people who condemn immigration to the UK.

In the 1930s, the Daily Mail ran attacks on Jewish migrants “pouring” into Britain. They were fleeing the Nazis.

Today, racism and xenophobia are still alive and powerful in the UK. The BNP may be disorganised and the EDL disintegrating, but the Mail and the Sun always had far more power than both of them. UKIP are considered a respectable mainstream force, as their racism comes with suits and smiles.

Decades after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and other forms or racism continue to be powerful forces. The recent cases of children being snatched from Roma parents who don’t look like them shows crude racial bigotry hovering just below the surface of supposedly democratic state authorities.

I began this blog post on a train from London to Brussels. The journey took two hours, slightly shorter than the train trip from London to Manchester. To get on the train, I was required to walk through a metal detector and then display my passport. Why is this required for Brussels but not for Manchester or even the much longer journey to Scotland? Because of a series of historical accidents that divide people up into nations and nationalities.

Corporations can largely ignore these borders, moving money and employment wherever the mood – or the profit – takes them. The rest of us are confined by them, encouraged to define ourselves by them and to rate those of our nationality as being more worthy of life and work than those who live across an arbitrary border.

Lack of housing is blamed on migrants rather than on the failure of successive governments to build decent social housing and to stop people leaving houses empty. Low pay is attributed to migrants willing to work for less, rather than a lamentably low minimum wage.

It is common to blame our problems on those who seem different to us. I know that I can do this too. My prejudices are not acceptable either. The first step to overcoming prejudice, at a personal or social level, is acknowledging its existence.

Being British is part of my identity. So is the fact that I have a beard. These two aspects of my identity are of roughly equivalent importance to me. But I am constantly told that I must rate one of them as more important than anything else about me. Indeed, we are so accustomed to thinking in this way that we barely notice we are doing it.

When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbour?”, he responded with a story about a man who showed love to a stranger despite racial, religious and cultural differences (commonly referred to as the “good Samaritan”). It’s time we recognised nationality and ethnicity for the arbitrary and trivial distinctions that they are.

Why I’m not cheering the Pilling Report

Posted on by symonhill

Two and a half years ago, I was undertaking a pilgrimage of repentance for my former homophobia when I received a phone call from Ruth Gledhill of the Times. The Church of England’s House of Bishops had just announced a two-year consultation process on homosexuality. Ruth wanted to know my view on it.

Now the consultation process has ended, resulting in the Pilling Report. It is full of language that says the church should be more welcoming alongside policies that say the opposite. I’m sorry to see some LGBT Christians welcoming it and have written a fuller response on the website of Queers for Jesus. Please click here to read it.

How is the Sun more progressive than the Independent?

Posted on by symonhill

Today is the first day on which I’ve been grateful that the Sun has far more readers than the Independent.

I was looking at the front pages of the newspapers in WH Smith’s and my heart began to sink as I saw the front of the Sun. At first glance, it seemed to involve a story about a mother’s whose child’s gender was disputed. I braced myself for an offensive story peddling prejudices against transgender people.

What I found was quite the opposite. The story concerned six-year-old George, who was brought up as a girl (called Georgia). At an early age, George had said “I’m a boy” and asked to be called George. His mother is respecting his decision and treating him as a boy. His twin sister remains a girl.

The Sun‘s report focused on the prejudice faced by George and his mother, Hayley, who has been accused of encouraging her child’s maleness for her own ends. She insists she neither encouraged nor discouraged it, but accepted George’s choice. The Sun is clearly in her favour, giving over a high percentage of the word count to her quotes and portraying the school authorities that disputed George’s gender in a poor light.

The article is not perfect. It could be a lot more helpful and clear about gender fluidity and there are some questionable statistics. But it’s great to see a paper with a history of prejudice, and with a massively high readership, making clear that gender is not obvious and can change.

Uplifted by the Sun‘s coverage, I moved along to look at the other front pages. I saw the Independent, the paper I buy most often and usually admire. This time, my heart really did sink.

“Scientists discover the difference between male and female brains” declared the paper’s headline. The standfirst that followed read, “Study reveals variation in hardwiring which may explain skills gap between women and men”.

This is the latest scientific study to “reveal” that men and women have different brains. Some of these studies have more credibility than others, although quite a few have been systematically discredited. However objective or nuanced the researchers’ intentions may (or may not) be, these studies all get picked up and celebrated by people who want an excuse for treating men and women differently and pretending that society is not to blame for stereotyping and sexism.

At the very least, the Independent should be acknowledging that this is an issue on which scientists are divided. A balanced article should surely quote someone who disagrees with the study and make clear why this is such a controversial issue. I am genuinely surprised that a paper of the Independent‘s quality and open-mindedness did not do this.

Today’s Sun gives us reason to celebrate how far we have come in challenging narrow and restrictive notions of gender. Today’s Independent is a reminder that we still have a great deal more to fight against.

Co-ops, cocaine and Christianity

Posted on by symonhill

As chairman of the Co-operative Bank, Paul Flowers shared responsibility for the decisions that led to a situation in which most of the bank is to be bought up by hedge funds. Last week, Paul Flowers was filmed buying cocaine.

Bafflingly, many people seem to regard the second offence as worse than the first one.

We can debate how much blame should be attached to Flowers for the effective destruction of the Co-op Bank (to be fair, many of the mistakes were made before he was appointed). But the massive changes at the Co-op will affect thousands if not millions of people – among them the employees facing job losses, the customers who will lose their ownership of the bank and potentially many more who will suffer if the bank weakens its ethical standards for investments.    

While I do not condone the use of cocaine, and I condemn the cocaine trade, Flowers’ drug purchase will hurt far fewer people (mainly himself) than the decisions he and his colleagues took about the Co-operative Bank.

The Mail on Sunday published the cocaine story two days ago. Later that day, the Methodist Church put out a press release saying that Flowers had been suspended from his role as a Methodist minister pending investigation. No such action was taken when the Co-op Bank went down the pan. Indeed, I don’t think there was even an official comment from the Methodist Church (I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong). But a drugs story in a far-right tabloid seems to mean that the denomination’s authorities can set to work in a matter of hours – on a Sunday – to suspend someone.

I have been hugely impressed recently by the work done by the Methodist Church to tackle economic injustice. At a national level, they have spoken out strongly against austerity policies and the demonisation of people in poverty. At local level, many Methodist churches are helping out people hit by the economic crisis. Their distorted priorities regarding Flowers and the Co-op Bank have undermined their own standing.

Today, Len Wardle, chairman of the entire Co-operative Group (which also owns the Co-op supermarket and Co-op Funeral Care) has resigned. He has said that he thinks this is right because he led the board that appointed Paul Flowers. His action was honourable, though I doubt it was necessary. He may be more concerned about Flowers’ leadership of the bank than about his drug taking. However, the timing gives the impression that he is responding to the cocaine story.

I have no interest in demonising Paul Flowers or in making assumptions about the circumstances that led him to buy drugs. I deplore his attitude to banking and co-operative business, but I a more concerned with addressing structural problems. The Co-op Bank workers losing their jobs deserve better than this.

It’s no surprise that much of the media will find a story about illegal drugs more interesting than one about the ethics of banking and business. It’s more alarming to see churches and co-operators dancing to the Mail on Sunday’s tune.

Social mobility: Cameron is ignoring Major, not listening to him

Posted on by symonhill

David Cameron has today declared that lack of social mobility is a problem. He was responding to comments by his predecessor John Major, but he ignored the main point that Major seemed to be making – the power of private schools.

Only seven percent of the UK population attend fee-paying schools. But the majority of judges, finance directors and top journalists attended them.

This grotesque reality shows how far we are from true democracy, let alone equality. Your birth and therefore your schooling play a bigger part than anything else in determining your chances in life and how much power you have as an adult.

As a child, I felt resentful of private schools. I was angry at the idea that those with the money to do so could buy a better education. I knew that my family and other working class families could never afford this.When I went to university, I came to a partially different conclusion.

I realised that some middle class parents are indeed motivated by a desire for a better education for their children. Some make sacrifices so that their children can go to private schools. But studying in Oxford, I met a good many people who had been to the top private schools – the so-called “public” schools such as Eton and Harrow. It became very clear very quickly that the super-rich who send their children to such places know that they will mix with other people like them and that the values and habits of the ruling class will be passed down (they may not put it like that themselves of course). It is not about getting a better education. It is about being in the right place. 

Private schools, particularly the most expensive ones, ensure that it is the children of the rich and powerful who become rich and powerful.

Cameron’s rhetoric about “social mobility” is not going to address that. Cameron’s policies have played a major role in ensuring that half a million people in the UK are dependent on food banks while even people on middle incomes are struggling to pay the heating bills. By talking about social mobility, he is only rubbing salt into the wound.

Those who talk of social mobility usually suggest schemes for helping some of those who are born in poverty to rise above it. It is usually the “gifted” young people who these plans are aimed at. It is rarely explained why rich people get to be rich despite not being “gifted” or why poor people who are not “gifted” should be expected to stay in poverty.

We don’t need social mobility. We need meaningful equality and democracy. We will never have it until we ban private schools.