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.

Benefit payments and the Living Wage

Posted on by symonhill

UK ministers and their allies are fond of talking about the need to reduce the welfare bill. They give the impression that the welfare bill goes to feckless scroungers, but almost never mention any statistics about who is actually claiming the money.

In reality, less than two percent of the welfare bill goes to non-disabled unemployed people. The biggest chunk goes to older people in the form of pensions, but a sizeable amount goes to people in work. Much of this is paid in tax credits and housing benefits.

Tax credits go to people who are in work but who are not paid enough, while housing benefit is high because there is no cap on private sector rents (so in this case, the real benefit recipients are landlords).

This week is Living Wage Week, when faith groups, unions and individuals across the UK are pushing for all employers to pay a Living Wage. Payment of a Living Wage would reduce the welfare bill and, more importantly, tackle poverty.

Currently the vast majority of the UK’s largest companies do not guarantee a Living Wage to their staff. The organisation Share Action is urging people who own private pensions to email their pension fund about the living wage.

If you have a pension, you can urge the fund to add to the pressure for a Living Wage within the companies in which it invests. Share Action have produced an online form to make the process quick and easy.

This tactic is already working. When Share Action launched their “Just Pay!” campaign for living wages two years ago, just three of the biggest 100 hundred companies in the UK paid the Living Wage. Due to the campaign, ten more of these massive corporations have now responded to public pressure by signing up.

Although I don’t have a pension myself, I wish the best of luck with this tactic to those of you who do. If you want to find out more about the Living Wage, and what you can do to promote it, you can visit the Living Wage site and Share Action.

All baptisms are royal baptisms

Posted on by symonhill

When I complained on Twitter last week about the excessive amount of media coverage given to George Windsor’s baptism, somebody replied with the understandable opinion that it was a welcome change to see Christian sacraments featuring in the news.

I can see his point, although as the week went I on I became convinced that the coverage was bad rather than good news for Christianity. The reporting reinforced prominent misconceptions about baptism, including the idea that it is about conforming to tradition rather than making a radical statement.

The media told us that George was baptised in a “private” ceremony. My idea of “private” does not involve an event that is pictured on the front pages of the next day’s newspapers, but I suppose it’s literally true in that the ceremony was not open to everyone. George was surrounded by people as wealthy and privileged as he will one day be. Media comment focused on the details of the clothes he was wearing and his godparents’ ancestral backgrounds.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of Justin Welby’s prayers, nor of the worship through which the baby was welcomed into the Christian church (although George himself is too young to have much say in the matter). He was splashed with water from the River Jordan, where John the Baptist immersed Jesus two thousand years ago.

That was a rather different event, when people voluntarily walked into a river to repent of their sins and to ask God’s forgiveness. Following Jesus’ resurrection, his disciples continued to practise baptism in water, while also experiencing baptism in the Holy Spirit, a more internal matter of cleansing and rebirth.

It is not known whether the early Christians baptised children as well as adults (the question is the subject of a never-ending debate amongst historians and theologians). What is clear is that baptism was a dangerous business. Being baptised helped to mark people out as Christians at a time when they were marginalised at best and executed at worst.

Christianity gradually became less radical, accepting dominant norms of slavery and gender roles. Then in the fourth century, the emperor Constantine sucked the power out of this once subversive movement by making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and thereby domesticating it. As church leaders were given positions of power and privilege, they found themselves defending ideas they had previously been against (think of Liberal Democrat ministers in the UK government and you’ll get the idea).

With the beginning of Christendom, the church and state became allies, offering support and sanction to each other. All parents were expected to have their children baptised. Baptism, far from being a sign of rejecting the powers of this world, became a symbol of acceptance.

Among the groups who reacted against this were the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. Emphasising that following Jesus is a matter of personal choice, they baptised each other as adult believers. In many countries by this time, refusing to hand over your child for infant baptism was a criminal offence punishable by death. Anabaptists were martyred in their thousands.

Some Anabaptists survived by fleeing to North America and a few continued to live in Europe. Their influence on other radical Christian movements, such as Quakerism and some strands of the Baptists, is debated but should not be underestimated. Quakers and the Salvation Army developed a different, but equally radical, interpretation of baptism, rejecting the use of water and focused on inward, spiritual baptism alone. The early twentieth century saw the birth of the Pentecostal movement, which emphasises baptism in the spirit as well as in water for adult believers.

To be fair, many supporters of infant baptism see it as a case of welcoming a child into a community rather than simply going through the expected procedure. They also believe they are preparing a child to make a decision for themselves at a later date, despite applying the water in infancy. I am not persuaded by their arguments, but their approach is very different to the popular conception of “christening” as something that is about celebrating birth rather than about joining the church.

It is this misconception that was reinforced by George Windsor’s baptism last week. George is starting out on a life in which – despite enormous wealth – he will be required at every stage to do exactly what is expected of him. Baptism for him looks likely to be the first step on a journey of commitment to the powers of privilege and earthly power.

In baptism, said the apostle Paul, we die and rise with Christ. We dedicate ourselves, in all our fallible humanity, to Jesus Christ. All baptisms are royal baptisms, because they mark out the participants as citizens of the Kingdom of God. Loyalty to that subversive kingdom means rejection of the kingdoms of this world.

Baptism is not about conformity. As early Christians, Anabaptists and Quakers knew to their cost, baptism is an act of rebellion – and it leads to trouble.

———–

The above article appeared as my latest column for the website of the Ekklesia thinktank. Please see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/columns/hill. 

I love Britain. The Daily Mail hates it.

Posted on by symonhill

What is Britain? This question doesn’t seem to have been asked much in the many arguments around the Daily Mail’s vicious attack on Ed Miliband’s father. Ralph Miliband, the Mail maintains, “hated Britain”.

Is “Britain” simply a geographical area? Or does the Mail really mean the United Kingdom, which is a political entity? Or the British people? We talk so much about countries that we can easily forget that nationality is an abstract and ill-defined concept.

The Daily Mail‘s deputy editor Jon Steafel now seems to have come up with a definition of Britain that few British people would recognise.

Defending his paper’s claims, he attacked Ralph Miliband’s “views on British institutions, from our schools to our royal family to our military, to our universities to the church [of England]”.

Steafel’s implication is that to oppose powerful institutions in Britain is to hate Britain. This is nonsense. There is more to Britain than its rulers. It is possible to love a country’s people, to love it as a place and to oppose its political and economic systems. Indeed, love for a country’s people should surely lead to a desire to be rid of unjust institutions that harm them.

I’m not too keen on the United Kingdom as a political entity, but I love the places and people within it. You may be surprised to hear that I also love many aspects of its politics.

I love British traditions of free speech, religious liberty and fair trials (although they’re abused). We have these things because people went out and campaigned for them, not because our rulers kindly handed them down.

I love the radical traditions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Radical egalitarian forms of Christianity became popular in these islands in the seventeenth century, just after England had abolished its monarchy (over a hundred years before France did so; sadly, it didn’t last).

I love the stunning scenery in Snowdonia and the Antrim coast. I love the mix of cultures, languages and religions on the streets of London. I love the friendliness of Cardiff and the feeling of homecoming as the bus goes over Magdalen Bridge in Oxford. I love the rural Midlands roads that I walked down as a child, greasy spoon cafes in Birmingham, the sight of the castle in Edinburgh and the passion of people whose poverty is no barrier to resisting injustice. I love the British people.

The Daily Mail stirs up hatred of the British working class, British Muslims, British LGBT people, British people who were born outside the UK and British people who claim benefits. It is the Daily Mail that hates Britain.

———-

The above article appeared as my latest column for the website of the Ekklesia thinktank. Please see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/columns/hill. 

Arms fair court case: Moved to tears by support

Posted on by symonhill

Last week, I appeared in court – alongside Chris Wood, Dan Woodhouse, Chloe Skinner and James Clayton – charged under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. We had knelt in prayer in one of the entrances to the London arms fair on 10th September.

We pled Not Guilty. We are expecting to be tried on 3rd and 4th February in Stratford Magistrates’ Court in London.

I have literally been moved to tears by the support we have received. People who had been involved in the original protest met with us before the court hearing to pray and share communion.  Several people sat in the public gallery to show their support. I had no idea that most of them would be there. Two others had made a banner the night before, urging courts to “convict arms dealers” and “not human rights defenders”. They held it outside the court as we awaited the hearing. Many people prayed for us and sent us messages of support. One person even wrote a poem about us.

I was overwhelmed. I am more grateful than I can say for all this and am quite sure that I don’t deserve it. People do far more remarkable things every day with far less support and attention. But I can’t deny that the support is helping me through this process. I can’t speak on behalf of the other four, but I know that the support has made a big impact on them too.

As a Christian, I firmly believe that it is the power of the Holy Spirit that is sustaining us. Yet I am delighted that support has come from people of many religions and none. We stand united against the evil of the arms trade and the hypocrisy that defines morality by order rather than justice.

Sorry for the (apparent) silence

Posted on by symonhill

If you’re one of the few people who keeps a regular eye on my blog (and if so, you’re much appreciated!), you’ll have noticed that I haven’t posted anything here for several weeks.

Sometimes I go a bit silent when I’m busy or stressed, but this time is different. I’ve been silent here, but making a noise elsewhere.

I’ve been rather busy, partly because I’ve recently moved house (to a Christian community) but mainly because I’ve been campaigning against the arms trade, and particularly the London arms fair that took place earlier in September. I was arrested along with four other Christians while kneeling in prayer. We were blocking the entrance to the arms fair from Custom House station.  We will be in court on Tuesday (24th September).

I’ve been really moved and uplifted by all the messages of support we’ve received, including one from former archbishop Rowan Williams.

You can read more about the case here. To follow details, keep an eye on the website of Christianity Uncut.

And I’ll be back to blogging on here shortly!