In 1967, a year before his assassination, Martin Luther King preached a sermon about the parable of the man who knocks at his friend’s door at midnight to ask for bread. He said, “Millions of Africans, patiently knocking on the door of the Christian church where they seek the bread of social justice, have either been altogether ignored or told to wait until later, which almost always means never.”

He added, “And those who have gone to the church to seek the bread of economic justice have been left in the frustrating midnight of economic privation”.

A year ago today, the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp came knocking on the door of St Paul’s Cathedral. They were there because the police had prevented them from camping any closer to the stock exchange. After an initial welcome, the door on which they knocked was shut in their face. The cathedral staff were split and three clergy resigned, but the cathedral gave evidence in court in favour of evicting the camp. On the night of the eviction, occupiers retreated to the cathedral steps, which were not covered by the eviction order. The police insisted that they must leave the steps too.

Along with four other members of Christianity Uncut, I was dragged from the church steps as I knelt in prayer. The cathedral authorities dodged journalists’ questions about whether they had given permission for this. Then the City of London police commissioner stated in writing that they had indeed done so.

I have long been angry with the failure of Church leaders to follow Jesus’ example of siding with the poor, especially at a time of austerity measures that punish the poor for the sins of the rich. As a Christian, I seek to love my opponents. But I had generally not counted church leaders among my opponents. That all changed on that cold February morning, when it became clear that the leadership of St Paul’s Cathedral had finally taken sides in the economic crisis. They were siding with the rich.

Even then, members of Christianity Uncut were keen not to be diverted into attacking St Paul’s Cathedral. In internal discussions, we reminded each other that we should focus on challenging government, corporations and the systems that uphold them, and not put our energy into attacking the church. Any challenge we made to the Church must be about challenging them to join us in our struggles, not condemning them for the sake of it. The five Christians who had been dragged from the steps asked the senior staff at St Paul’s for a meeting “in a spirit of love and respect”. Our letter was counter-signed by twenty clergy. Michael Colclough, the cathedral’s Canon Pastor, wrote back, refusing to meet us.

Meanwhile, the cathedral broke its own promises about engaging with economic issues. They had appointed Ken Costa to lead an investigation into financial ethics. The fact that he was an investment banker undermined their claim to share many of Occupy’s views. But Costa has produced nothing in all that time. Nor has the leadership of St Paul’s managed to make clear statements about any specific aspect of economic transformation. To mark the first anniversary of Occupy London Stock Exchange, they allowed one occupier to read out one prayer in an afternoon service, a gesture whose tokenism speaks for itself.

In short, the act of witness that was carried out yesterday at St Paul’s Cathedral followed a year of intolerable behaviour from the cathedral’s leadership. It was organised jointly by Christianity Uncut and Occupy London, with a commitment to active nonviolence and a rejection of verbal abuse and personal hatred.

Yesterday, I joined with other Christians, and non-Christians, to display a banner on the steps of St Paul’s, depicting Jesus throwing moneychangers out of the Jerusalem Temple. Inside, four women – Siobhan Grimes, Alison Playford, Josie Reid and Tammy Samede – calmly and peacefully chained themselves to the pulpit and read out a statement about economic injustice and the need for the Church to challenge it.

They did not, however, do many of the things inaccurately reported in the media. They had not “stormed” into the cathedral, as the Daily Express alleged (storming would be hard, as you would have to get past the counters at which you have to pay for entry). Nor had they “invaded” St Paul’s (Daily Mail), as they peacefully joined evensong at 3.15pm. They did not prevent anyone praying or otherwise engaging in worship. They certainly did not interrupt a wreath-laying for a dead soldier (as the Daily Telegraph reported). Indeed, some of the soldiers who were at the cathedral for the wreath-laying – which took place later in the day – told the group of women that they were supportive of many of the Occupy’s movements aims. To be fair to the Daily Telegraph, they did at least point out that two of the women concerned belong to the Church of England. Much coverage did not mention that most of the protesters were Christians, nor that the action was organised by Christianity Uncut as well as Occupy London.

Alison, Josie, Siobhan and Tammy endured six hours in cramped positions, without eating or using a toilet. Their smiles to encourage and comfort each other were used in photos to illustrate “smirking anti-capitalists” (the Sun) and the claim that they regarded the protest as a joke (Daily Mail).

This was no joke. The economic crisis is no joke for the thousands of people made homeless by government policies (according to homelessness charities). It is no joke for unemployed people forced to work for their benefits rather than a proper wage, or for those who find it harder to find work because these workfare schemes reduce real vacancies. It is no joke for the hundreds of disabled people who have died shortly after being declared fit for work by Atos, for working class people priced out of higher education or for future generations who will reap the consequences of the environmental devastation sown by multinational corporations and the worship of economic growth. It may be more of a joke for the top one percent of the population, whose income tax has been cut, and whose tax-dodging practices have drawn nothing more than empty words from ministers.

In this situation, thousands of Christians are seeking to follow Jesus’ example of siding with the poor. Church leaders are amongst them. Sadly, other church leaders either defend the cuts or seek to remain neutral. But there can be no neutrality in a situation of injustice. As Desmond Tutu put it, if an elephant is standing on the tail of a mouse, and we say that we are neutral, it is the elephant and not the mouse who will appreciate our neutrality.

David Ison, the Dean of St Paul’s, responded to yesterday’s protest by suggesting that we should have engaged “constructively”. Our request for a constructive meeting was refused seven months ago. He said we were pursuing an agenda of “conflict” with St Paul’s. The cathedral had already pursued an agenda of conflict with us when it called in police to drag us from its steps. He accused of abusing the cathedral’s hospitality, as if a church belongs to its leaders rather than to Christian people as a whole. That magnificent building was, after all, built with our ancestors’ tithes.

In his sermon yesterday, the Dean said that people should work together to achieve economic change. I agree. But this cannot involve an alliance with people who are themselves driving exploitation, inequality and environmental destruction. I do not want to hate the rich, or to pretend that I am any less sinful than they are. I want to talk with them and listen to them. But if they are exploiting the rest of us, I will still resist them.

Jesus said he had come to “bring good news to the poor”. He challenged the rich to share their wealth. He did not encourage hatred for the rich and powerful. He talked with them and listened to them. But when the time was right, he used other tactics too. He was arrested and crucified following a protest in the Jerusalem Temple. His protest was against those who exploited the poor and justified it with religious hypocrisy.

Martin Luther King’s words of 45 years ago continue to resonate down the years. Millions of people are still knocking on the door of the Church, seeking social and economic justice. If church leaders such as those at St Paul’s Cathedral refuse to open the door, then other Christians must do it for them.

The ethics of capitalism is this year’s topic for the annual Bishop of Salisbury’s Debate, which will take place this evening (Wednesday 19 September) in Marlborough. I’ve been asked to be one of the speakers.

The title is “Can capitalism be made good?”. My answer will be “no”.

I’m very pleased to have been asked to participate in the debate, which I hope will relate general issues of ethics and economics to concerns that affect everybody’s daily lives. Other speakers will include Stewart Wallis of the New Economics Foundation. Arguing in favour of capitalism will be Will Morris (chair of the CBI’s tax committee, tax policy director for General Electric and a Church of England priest) and Hugh Pym (BBC’s chief economics correspondent). Nicholas Holtam, Bishop of Salisbury, will be in the chair. I hope there’ll be plenty of time for audience engagement and discussion, as that tends to be the best part of any debate.

The event is free and open to anyone. There are details here. I’ll blog tomorrow about how the discussion went. Many thanks to people who have encouraged me so far!

A week ago, I returned from BiCon, the UK’s national Bisexual Conference. I’d been meaning to go for years and it was brilliant. In particular, I was delighted by the reponse I received to a workshop on Queer Christianity. I’ve blogged about the experience at the Queer for Jesus website. You can read it by clicking here.

Have you been involved in an Occupy camp, the Indignados movement or campaigns in support of Occupy? If so, please take a moment to answer a few questions (mostly multiple choice) to help with a book I’m writing about activism. The questions can be found here. You may be quoted in the book, but only if you give specific consent.

The book will be called Digital Revolutions: Activism in the age of the internet. It will be published by New Internationalist in spring 2013.

Please pass on the questions to anyone you know who might be interested. If you’d like to share your experiences of Occupy/ Indignados at more length, you’re welcome to email me at symonhill@gmail.com.

Thanks very much!

Have the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church got no sense of irony? Jesus was arrested after leading a protest in a religious building.

Members of the band Pussy Riot briefly sang a song in a cathedral, attacking Putin and the Orthodox Church’s subservience to his regime. Amongst other offences, they have been accused of inciting religious hatred. In this context, this seems to be a euphemism for “having a go at the dominant religion”.

While the trial has been criticised around the world by civil liberties campaigners, politicians and singers, there’s been a marked lack of comment from the world’s religious leaders. Many of them doubtless regard the Russian Church’s reaction as ridiculously over-the-top, but probably don’t want to be seen to be attacking another faith group. They could avoid this by giving their backing to those members of the Russian Orthodox Church who are speaking out against their leadership.

Sadly, the Church of England might not be in much of a position to offer criticism, given its role in the eviction of Occupy London Stock Exchange. It is now clear that the authorities at St Paul’s Cathedral colluded with the police to remove peaceful activists from the church steps in the final hours of the eviction. Along with several others, I was dragged from the steps as I knelt in prayer. But horrible as that experience was, it’s very different to the prospect of three years in prison, which will await the Pussy Riot singers if Putin and the Russian Orthodox leaders have their way.

The Church’s leaders have been criticised by Russians who say that a Christian response would be to forgive the singers, or at least to call for more lenient sentences. There is some truth in this, but it understates the Christian case against the prosecution. The reality is that the Pussy Riot singers followed the example of Jesus far more than the Russian Orthodox Patriarch they were challenging.

Jesus’ protest in the Jerusalem Temple was a key event in his life. Historians differ over the various events described in the gospels; there are a range of views on the historical accuracy of particular incidents. However, the protest in the Temple is regarded by most scholars as one of the events most likely to be historical. It seems to have led, either directly or indirectly, to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.

In protesting against the commercialisation of the Temple, Jesus was not resisting a one-off misuse of a religious building. Commerce was central to religious buildings in a number of cultures (and still is).

He was attacking those who exploited the poor, particularly those who benefited from religious hypocrisy. For example, the gospels say he turned over the tables of those selling doves. Doves were the cheapest animal to sacrifice in the Temple. Poor people were spending money they could ill afford on ceremonial sacrifices. Jesus knew very well that the prophetic traditions in the Hebrew Bible declared that God wants lives of love and kindness, not religious ceremony.

Similarly, the moneychangers, who exchanged Roman money into Temple money at exploitative interest rates, were benefiting from the actions of those religious leaders who colluded with the Roman occupation and were prepared to ignore the oppression in return for their own position and privileges.

In short, Jesus was attacking political oppression, exploitation of the poor and a religious leadership that colluded with both. He staged a protest in a religious building in a way that would have shocked those who heard about it. If you’ve been reading about the Pussy Riot trial, this might sound familiar.

Jesus refused to go along with oppression and hypocrisy, living by the power of God within himself and free from the powers of the world. They killed Jesus because he was too free. One of the Pussy Riot defenders, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, said at the trial yesterday, “We are freer than those who are prosecuting us. We can say everything we want, and they have their mouths shut and are puppets.” Every Christian in the world should be cheering her on.

I’m pleased to report the launch of a new radical blog site: Queers for Jesus.

Queers for Jesus aims to challenge both the legalism found in many churches and the shallow, exploitative and consumerist attitudes to sexuality that are so dominant in our society. It operates with a broad definition of “queer”, seeing queerness as being about asking questions, crossing boundaries and challenging legalism with love.

I’m honoured to be co-editor of the site, along with Jay Clark, a genderqueer Christian-Quaker activist, who writes on issues of gender, art and spirituality and edits Movement magazine.

Since we began the site a couple of weeks ago, I’ve written about the reality of the “Keep Marriage Special” campaign and the bizarre claims of Christian Voice regarding Tesco and the Pride festival. Jay’s written on “queer bouncy castles” and the need for queers to stand alongside disability activists. Today we have a post from Susannah Cornwall, a theologian at Manchester University, pointing out that the existence of intersex people challenges assumptions about sex and gender and poses a challenge for opponents of same-sex marriage and women bishops.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome!

Rabbi James Baaden has written a very challenging and helpful blog post in response to a recent article I wrote same-sex marriage. James challenges aspects of my approach to the issue, particularly as they concern Judaism and the Hebrew Bible.

My article – written in response to the Church of England’s statement on same-sex marriage – appeared on the Ekklesia website. James’ article has been posted on the blog of Ray Gaston, an Anglican priest and activist who I have long admired. I am sorry that James and Ray have had to wait a while for my reply. I wanted to wait until I had time to reply carefully and in detail.

James describes my article as Ekklesia’s contribution to the debate on same-sex marriage. However, Ekklesia has made a number of contributions to this debate. This article is a response from me, written as my Ekklesia column on the week in question, rather than an official response from Ekklesia. It is in line with Ekklesia’s general response to the issue. However, any blame for inaccurate portrayal of Judaism or the Hebrew Bible really lies with me rather than with Ekklesia as a whole.

I agree with about ninety percent of James’ article. I have also learnt quite a bit from it. It has challenged me to rethink some of my assumptions and to be careful about the language I use. However, I also have to say that I think James has misunderstood some of my views. At points in his article, he associates me with views that I have not expressed. I very much hope that nobody would regard me as anti-Jewish. I am also delighted that Jews and Christians are campaigning together – and with others – in favour of legal recognition for same-sex marriage. I remember how delighted I was a few months ago when I heard the news that the Movement for Reform Judaism had decided to support marriage equality. Had I been at home – rather than in the office of The Friend magazine – I could quite literally have danced around the room. I remember remarking to a colleague that Jews seemed to be making more progress on the issue than Christians.

James’ article includes some fascinating observations about the lack of anything we would recognise as “marriage” in the Hebrew Bible. I find this really helpful and would like to hear more from him (and others) about this. I admit that I am no expert on the Hebrew Bible and would never claim to be. I am inspired by his observation that “this creates a blank space – a space in which people had to and have to respond to the needs of their times and create new institutions, new possibilities, new practices”.

I also agree that the Hebrew Bible includes many powerful, independently-minded women who are, as James puts it, “independent agents”. It also includes far less positive portrayals of women. The picture is mixed. However, I would be the first to acknowledge that this is also true of the New Testament: Jesus treats women as equals and Paul says that “there is no longer male and female”, but the writer of Ephesians (who most scholars believe was not Paul) tells women to obey their husbands.

I acknowledge the diversity of views and images found within both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. This is important. It is a different position to one with which James seems to associate me early on in his article. He writes:

“As in so many areas, the implication is that the religion of the Old Testament was something rather nasty and was replaced by something thoroughly nice in the form of the changes introduced by Jesus. This is a very common model and maybe it helps advance Ekklesia’s cause and its concerns, but I don’t like it – and I don’ t think it’s accurate.”

This is indeed inaccurate, as well as simplistic and ridiculous. However, I was not not proposing this model. It is not something that I – or Ekklesia – would ever endorse. Nonetheless, I can understand that James is used to coming up against people proposing this model and that what I wrote may have inadvertently given the impression that I was coming from a similar perspective. I am sorry for my poor choice of words.

I want to make it clear that I think that both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, both Jewish tradition and Christians tradition – as well as the scriptures and traditions of many other religions – include a mixture of oppressive and liberating elements, of teachings that uphold injustice and teachings that resist it, of excuses for the love of power and calls for the power of love.

I think James misunderstands my position on the issue of legalism and power. He writes:

“Ekklesia in its statements clearly seeks to depict history in this way – with Jesus as a reformer who rejected the ‘legalism’ and ‘power’ of the ‘Old Testament’. I am not comfortable with this characterisation – and I do not think it serves this particular cause very well.”

I have just re-read my article. It is true that I suggested that Jesus challenged legalism and relationships based on power. But at no point did I suggest that this legalism and power was based on the Hebrew Bible. My thanks go to Keith Hebden, a Church of England priest, who wrote in a comment on James’ post that “Symon doesn’t set up an OT/NT binary in that article. He refers to ‘culture’ obliquely.”

In response, Ray Gaston – who clearly agrees with James – made his own comment, quoting from my original article. However, I would like to suggest that the quote reinforces Keith’s observation that I was referring to “culture” obliquely and not talking about the Hebrew Bible. The passage I wrote, and which Ray quotes, is:

“In a time when only men could initiate divorce – often throwing their wives into social disgrace and even poverty – he [Jesus] criticised casual divorce. In a culture that blamed women for giving men lustful thoughts, he encouraged people to take responsibility for how they dealt with their own thoughts, and be aware of what they did in their hearts.

“In other words, Jesus challenged relationships based on power and money in favour of relationships based on love, equality and self-control. It might be said that he redefined marriage.”

There is nothing in these paragraphs about the Hebrew Bible. I did not suggest that what Jesus was challenging was an authentic interpretation of the Hebrew Bible’s teaching on marriage and relationships. I did not suggest that Judaism is (or was) inherently legalistic, oppressive or sexist. I think Jesus was following the prophetic traditions of the Hebrew Bible in calling his listeners to a deeper and more liberating understanding of scripture. I am, however, truly sorry if I did not make this clear. I also accept that, while the New Testament shows Jesus debating marriage with Pharisees and Saducees, historians differ on the extent to which they consider these two groups to have been representative of Jewish society at the time. I should perhaps have written about Jesus challenging certain groups of people and been a bit less vague when I wrote about the “culture” and “society” of his time. I also readily accept that – as James points out in his article – early Jewish rabbis also sought to make divorce rules fairer.

It seems to me that many societies – including most that have considered themselves Christian – have upheld relationships based on power more than those based on love. I believe that Jesus posed a challenge to this situation, as did many prophets in the Hebrew Bible, later Jewish teachers and many prophets and teachers from outside both Christianity and Judaism.

In saying that Jesus arguably “redefined” marriage, I was not suggesting that he changed the Hebrew Bible’s understanding in favour of something better. I was trying to challenge the perception that marriage has always been the same. I was seeking to satirise the language of Christian opponents of same-sex marriage, who argue that it “redefines” marriage. I was pointing out that understandings of marriage have varied widely over time and space and that Jesus challenged people who seemed to think that their understanding was true for all time.

Please note how I am quoted in Ekklesia’s news story on the Church of England’s statement on same-sex marriage:

“Hill said that Jesus had arguably ‘redefined’ marriage when he challenged casual divorce and disputed the views of some who used selective quotes from the scriptures to back up their own position. He said, ‘In all areas of life, Jesus upheld relationships based on love, equality and respect, rather than on power or legalism’.”

When I say that Jesus’ opponents used selective quotes from the scriptures, I am of course comparing them to those Christians who do the same thing today to justify opposition to same-sex relationships. In my experience, their selective quotes come much more from the New Testament than from the Hebrew Bible. For me, the contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees is not about a Christian versus Jews (Jesus was as Jewish as they were). It is about approaches to scripture, tradition and life that are liberating and honest, rather than those that are legalistic and oppressive.

As we look at Jesus’ words today, the primary challenge is for those of us who consider ourselves to be his followers but who too often fall back on trusting in human institutions rather than recognising the “blank spaces” and seeking God’s guidance. Sorry this post is so long! I feel I have a responsibility to make my position clear. I suspect that James and Ray may still disagree with me after reading all this, but I hope that they will understand my position better. Many thanks to them both for encouraging me to think more deeply about this issues, to question my own assumptions and to be more careful in future about choices of wording that may give an inaccurate impression of my beliefs. I look forward to working alongside them on both marriage equality and other issues.

There’s more than three months to go until the Greenbelt Festival gets underway, but a pre-Greenbelt event will take place this Sunday in London. I’m really pleased to be one of ten speakers who will talk for 8-10 minutes each on an aspect of the theme of Greenbelt 2012, Paradise: Lost & Found.

My topic will be The Occupy movement – a signpost to paradise? I’m also looking forward to hearing the other speakers, who include Tamsin Omond, Lucy Winkett, Paul Vallely and Ann Pettifor.

I was one of several Christians to be dragged by police from the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral as I knelt in prayer during the eviction of Occupy London Stock Exchange. My emotions took some time to settle, and the controversy over the cathedral’s complicity in the eviction is still unravelling.

This experience will be my starting point, as I look at what the incident says about the future of Christianity in Britain. I’ll consider the Occupy movement’s challenge for Christianity and whether it can tell us anything about the kingdom of God. A lot to cover in 10 minutes!

Tickets are still available and can be bought online. If you can’t make it, I understand that videos of all ten short talks will be posted on the Greenbelt website.

Wallace Benn, the Suffragen Bishops of Lewes, has sent me an apology for his endorsement of a booklet the promotes the legalisation of rape within marriage and the criminalisation of same-sex relationships.

Along with several other bloggers, I drew attention two days ago to Benn’s endorsement of a booklet called Britain in Sin, written by Stephen Green of the fundamentalist group Christian Voice. The booklet opposes the welfare state, legislation guaranteeing equal pay to men and women, power-sharing in Northern Ireland and the UK’s membership of the United Nations.

The following morning (yesterday), I received an email from Wallace Benn’s office, saying that he wanted to “completely and absolutely disassociate” himself from the booklet. I blogged about this, saying that I very much appreciated the complete withdrawal of his endorsement but that I was disappointed by the lack of an apology.

This morning, Wallace Benn’s press officer sent me an email, saying that the bishop was responding to my blog post by issuing an addendum to his statement of yesterday. It reads as follows:

“I have asked Stephen Green of Christian Voice to immediately withdraw my apparent endorsement of his booklet. I apologise for any hurt caused or misunderstanding given”.

I’m very grateful to the bishop for apologising, although he has still not explained how he came to endorse the booklet in the first place or which part of it (if any) he agrees with. The endorsement still appears on the Christian Voice website, though it seems that this is Green’s fault for not responding to Benn’s request to remove it.

In response to some comments I’ve received about my blog, I should emphasise that I’m not trying to whip up personal hostility to Wallace Benn. I believe in forgiveness. This does not mean the issue should be ignored. If the bishop’s apology leads to fewer people trusting Green’s booklet, that will be a good thing.

I remain alarmed that a situation can arise in which a Church of England bishop can endorse a booklet that encourages rape, apparently without this being a major disciplinary offence or a big media controversy.  In 2010, the Suffragen Bishop of Willesden, Pete Broadbent, criticised the monarchy and made some ill-judged personal comments about members of the Windsor family. Despite apologising, he was lambasted in the right-wing press and temporarily suspended from his job. Is it is worse to criticise the monarchy than to sanction rape?