Well, what exactly would Jesus do?

A popular 21st Century mantra for Christians attempting to construct a workable ethical framework for living is to ask “What Would Jesus Do?”

Tony Campolo illustrates the technique in this exchange:

“My problem is I want to do what Jesus would do.” “Could you get in a plane, fly over an enemy village and drop bombs?”

I said, “I could get in the plane. I could fly over the enemy village. But when I was about to release the bomb, at that moment I would have to say, ‘Jesus, if you were in my place, would you drop the bombs?'”

And I remember the colonel yelling back to me, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Everybody knows Jesus wouldn’t drop bombs?”

The problem is, this is the wrong question to ask. I have spent more than 40 years earning a living by programming computers – an essentially worthless endeavour other than its fortunate side effect of providing me with an income to support myself and my family. I fell into what passes for a career accidentally; had I said to myself 43 years ago, would Jesus spend most of his waking hours writing obscure digital code that would result in millions of people banging their heads on computer screens in frustration, I would have to have answered, “no”. That would have left me with another childhood ambition: being a train driver. Obviously, Jesus would not be a train driver, so I would be left with my only other ambition – to be a tramp.

In the context it is used, WWJD is a stupid question. So when someone like Campolo uses it to justify or condemn a particular action, I am immediately suspicious and inclined to do the opposite. And that is exactly my reaction to the BNP when they answer the question by  saying Jesus would vote for the BNP; if I did not already have enough reasons for not voting for the BNP, that would be the clincher – although it’s academic, since I live in Canada.

Michael Nazir-Ali has been unable to resist the temptation to wade into the BNP WWJD idiocy:

When we talk of a society built on Christian values, it is often misunderstood as a reference to intolerance, of exclusivity. The ultimate expression of this tendency comes in a campaign billboard, unveiled in March, which quoted scripture out of context, then posed the question: “What would Jesus do?” The answer given was simple: “Vote BNP.”

This was a clear example of using Christian-sounding words to promote a profoundly anti-Christian agenda. No one should be taken in by it. The policies advocated by the BNP are contrary to our belief that all human beings, regardless of race or colour, have a common origin and are made in God’s image.

Michael Nazir-Ali is right, of course, but if Jesus would not vote for the BNP, who would he vote for? I remember, many years ago, Malcolm Muggeridge was asked for his opinion on the abysmally low voter turnout at general elections. He gave a typical Muggeridge response: he said that people who don’t vote are the flower of the population. Although I can sympathise with his answer and understand why he gave it, I would not be prepared to defend it. Nevertheless, it gives us a clue as to whom Jesus would vote for: I think he would forget to vote altogether because he wouldn’t think of it as something sufficiently important to warrant his attention.

Rowan Williams’s unwanted political advice

Anglican Archbishops Rowan Williams and John Sentamu exhorted the British public not to punish avaricious MPs by voting for the BNP.

The Daily Mail conducted a poll that illustrates just how out of touch Anglican bishops are with ordinary people – or, at least with people who respond to Daily Mail polls.

Is the church entitled to tell people not to vote for the BNP:

Vote

Is Rowan Williams doing the BNP a favour?

Rowan Williams and John Sentamu are urging British voters to shun the BNP: by this time, everyone expects political peroration rather than spiritual insight from Anglican bishops, and this does not disappoint:

The Archbishop of Canterbury called on people to shun extremist parties and to use their vote positively in local and European elections on June 4. In an unprecedented intervention, Dr Rowan Williams joined forces with Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, and other religious leaders to condemn the “deeply disturbing” tactics of the BNP.

“Christians have been deeply disturbed by the conscious adoption by the BNP of the language of our faith when the effect of those policies is not to promote those values but to foster fear and division within communities, especially between people of different faiths or racial background.”

In a sense Rowan Williams is getting a taste of his own medicine: for decades liberal Anglican clergy have been twisting the language of orthodox Christianity to their own purposes. “What is the Spirit saying to the church” is one example of many; it is  uprooted from a biblical context (Rev 2) and used to legitimise just about anything a group of wayward clerics wishes to perpetrate. Their use of it has nothing to do with the person of the Holy Spirit, nothing to do with God’s revelation of himself and nothing to do with Christianity. So, deeply disturbed Rowan, welcome to the world of frustration of orthodox Anglicans.

The Telegraph astutely notes that the political meanderings of liberal clergy are liable to drive more people into the arms of the BNP; after Rowan’s sharia law debacle, one can only assume that the BNP is secretly paying him to come up with this stuff.

Even though Dr Williams and Dr Sentamu are not politicians, like most leading churchmen they have supported the liberal consensus on Europe, immigration and national identity, so there is a risk that their appeal may make matters worse. The sort of voters who take advice from well-meaning prelates are not the sort who would be tempted to vote BNP. Those most irritated by the pronouncements of church leaders, on the other hand, may be persuaded to do just the opposite of what the Primates suggest.

Rowan Williams vs Theodore Dalrymple on the British MP scandal

Rowan Williams first of all wants humiliation of MPs to stop: he is probably the only person in the UK to espouse this position other than the politicians themselves. He seems to think that the public humiliation of the MPs is threatening democracy; I would have thought that it’s the dishonest politicians themselves who pose the threat.

The issues raised by the huge controversy over MPs’ expenses are as grave as could be for our parliamentary democracy, and urgent action is needed to restore trust. It is good that all parties are recognising this. But many will now be wondering whether the point has not been adequately made; the continuing systematic humiliation of politicians itself threatens to carry a heavy price in terms of our ability to salvage some confidence in our democracy.

And is of the opinion that something within us yearns to do the right thing, to be good, to work to become better people:

….. it connects with that sense of being glad to do certain things because they’re the kind of things they are, and because they are the way we become the kind of people we most seriously want to be. This isn’t about wanting a world of smug souls regarding their behaviour with placid approval. To be glad you’ve done certain things is bound up with being able to see that there are also certain things you do that make you less than you could be – whether or not you get “punished” for them.

For a Christian – let alone the leader of a Christian denomination – this is a bizarre assessment of humanity. Where is original sin? Where is the basic insight into human nature? Where is the Dostoevsky – whose characters do evil simply to prove their own freedom – scholar?

Religion-based morality is often castigated for imposing irrational and arbitrary rules on people. But the truth is that its primary concern is with how to encourage us to act in such a way that we can be glad of what we have done – and can also recognise that bad actions diminish us.

Religion based morality is no easier to adhere to than any other. Rowan is asking for the beneficial results of a soul regenerated in Christ without the embarrassment of having to admit to Article XII of his denomination – Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification.

The sum of Rowan’s musings seems to be, “virtue is its own reward”. True to some extent, but the problem is, if you are not caught, the rewards of vice appear at least as appealing.

Theodore Dalrymple, on the other hand, has this to say:

French sociologist Émile Durkheim maintained that criminals performed an invaluable social function: They united the members of the rest of society, who might otherwise have had little in common with each other, in their detestation.

The difference between criminals and many members of Parliament, in behaviour as in function, seems now not to be very great; indeed, there is considerable overlap. For example, at least one member of Parliament claimed as an expense the interest, to the tune of about $25,000, on a mortgage that he had already paid off. Since the redemption of a mortgage is almost always a memorable event in the life of a man, it beggars belief that this member had simply forgotten that he now owed nothing.

Members of Parliament said in their own defence that their claims were “within the rules,” disregarding the fact that they had made up the rules themselves, that many of them had broken even those rules and that some members claimed no expenses at all.

The public has reacted to the revelation of parliamentary financial skulduggery with a mixture of glee and anger, but it has missed the wider point: that behaviour of this kind is not a mere accident or untoward event in Britain. Indeed, the dissolution of the distinction between the licit and illicit, the legal and illegal, the honourable and dishonourable, has been the principal social and economic policy of the British government for a long time, since Margaret Thatcher at least. And, with everyone implicated, no one can stand out.

Dalrymple has a keener sense of the innate depravity of man. This is the reverse of what one might expect: Dalrymple is an agnostic and Williams a Christian. But, then, Williams is Anglican.

The Anglican Church: finding the middle ground that upsets everyone

The Anglican church’s obsession with what it calls “social justice” inevitably translates into making pious political pronouncements rather than actually doing anything for itself. This is largely because, having abandoned its spiritual heritage for trendy pop-culture causes, it has withered into impotence and can do little more than stand on the sidelines and whine.

In keeping with its mealy-mouthed approach to everything, it can’t actually bring itself to come down definitively on one side or the other of an issue, preferring instead to find an ersatz Hegelian no-man’s land from which it can appear to be sympathetic to all and sundry.

The result is not appeasement but universal derision. The latest example is the ACC-14  pontification on the Middle East which has equally upset the left:

Palestinian rights deserve Anglican action

A obsession with even-handedness is stopping Anglicans taking a firm stand on Israel’s disregard for Palestinian rights.

At the 14th Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting, held in Jamaica earlier this month, a resolution on the Middle East was passed, criticising the Israeli occupation. An original version of the resolution was originally submitted by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN), but as the language was felt by some to be too “strong”, a new resolution was put forward and adopted.

And right:

The Anglicans’ Ritualistic Denunciation

  1. The Anglicans, meeting in Jamaica for their international Consultative Council, ritualistically denounced “current Israeli policies in relation to the West Bank, in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions, [which] have created severe hardship for many Palestinians and have been experienced as a physical form of apartheid.”

Arab League pleas for peace were praised by the Anglicans, of course, while Israel was sternly instructed that it must “end its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” “immediately” freeze all settlement activity in “preparation” for a Palestinian state, remove the “separation barrier,” end Palestinian home demolitions, and close all military checkpoints in the Palestinian territories.

And what did the Anglican elites demand that the Palestinians and their Arab patrons offer in return? Apparently nothing.

Compare all this Anglican fire against Israel with a nearly concurrent Anglican Consultative Committee resolution about Korea, whose regime in the North often makes the West Bank seem like Club Med. It urged Korean “reunification,” commended Anglican relief for the “starving population in North Korea” without explaining why they are starving, lamented that the “political situation” in the Korean peninsula had “worsened” without explaining how, implored that “all countries” “desist from confrontation,” and urged a “permanent peace.”

Is it any wonder, then, that when the Anglican Church makes one of its rare proclamations on spiritual matters, no-one listens.

Some of the few things that can still scandalise: Bible quotes

It’s instructive to ponder the whips with which a navel-gazing super-power chooses to flagellate itself. In this particular case it is the printing of bible passages on Bush’s Iraq briefings:

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was sold as a fight for freedom against the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

But for former U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his elite Pentagon strategists, it was Add an Imagemore like a religious crusade.

The daily briefings about the progress of the war that Mr Rumsfeld gave to President George W Bush were illustrated with victorious quotes from the Bible and gung-ho photographs of U.S. troops, it has emerged.

A photograph of Saddam Hussein included a quotation from the First Epistle of Peter: ‘It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.’

The religious theme for briefings prepared for the president and his war cabinet was the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a committed Christian and director for intelligence serving Mr Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In the days before the six-week invasion, Major General Shaffer’s staff had created humorous covers for the briefings to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle.

But as the body count rose, he decided to introduce biblical quotes.

However, many of his Pentagon colleagues were reportedly opposed to the idea, with at least one Muslim analyst said to be greatly offended.

A defence official warned that if the briefing covers were leaked, the damage to America’s standing in the Arab world ‘would be as bad as Abu Ghraib’ – the Baghdad prison where U.S. troops abused Iraqis.

Since Christopher Hitchens supported the Iraq war, one wonders what he will make of this. The curious thing is not the fact that it happened – something that is really only mildly surprising – but the fuss its discovery is creating.

The fear appears to be that, in spite of the fact that the US was at war and embroiled in all the horror and mess that accompanies war, the last thing it could afford to do was offend those who are being bombed – or liberated. Could America’s standing in the Arab world be any lower? After this, I suppose Obama will have refine his ingratiation technique and bow to the Saudi King – even lower.

Saddam’s gruesome little tyranny was secular not religious so billing the Iraq war as a crusade, bible verses or not, does not hold water; the mixing of politics and religion is often a recipe for disaster, but those who are most prone to do it – the religious left – will be the noisiest critics of this discovery.

I wonder if anyone would be surprised to find verses of the Koran on the plans that led up to 911?

The World Council of left-wing elitist, no heavenly or earthly use Churches pontificates

Earth shattering news: the World Council of Churches calls for peace in South Asia and blames the lack thereof on the USA:

South Asia has become a hot bed of the war on terror and a victim of the strategic interests of major power blocs keeping the region in constant turmoil and uncertainty. The nature of its volatility and that of the conflicts has been redefined by the US-led war on terror, wherein the rulers of the region have joined together as partners.

Although the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is engaged in counter terrorism in Afghanistan, the overwhelming presence and reliance on 52,000-strong foreign forces in Afghanistan has created more animosity among the local people as well as in neighbouring Pakistan. This situation creates an atmosphere ripe for extremist groups to exploit the religious sentiments of ordinary people and involve them in committing more violence. Today, Afghanistan is plagued by a new insurgency and a deep humanitarian crisis prevails in the country. This warrants a situation where we must step forward with assistance to strengthen areas of governance, rule of law, democratic institutions and reconstruction of the country.

Naturally, the WCC:

Calls for the withdrawal of U.S.-led international combat troops from Afghanistan and appeals to the international community to ensure that the resultant power vacuum may be filled by a UN-sponsored peacekeeping force with Asian forces as major players, which will help the country’s transition towards stability;

Since no-one is quite as villainous as the US, when we get to specifics others are merely urged, appealed to and subject to expressions. However, it’s good to know the WCC has the solution for Afghanistan: a UN peacekeeping force – just like in Rwanda, no doubt.

The only real surprise here is that the WCC didn’t somehow manage to blame Israel for everything.

I like the Pope, I really do

He stands against abortion and euthanasia, promulgates unpopular views such as the ineffectiveness of condoms to curb AIDS and has done his best to upset radical Muslims. Yet he cannot resist wading into Middle East politics and getting it wrong:

While acknowledging the suffering of Palestinian people following the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Pope nevertheless urged moderation, telling Palestinians they should not use violence and extremism.

In his most sensitive speech yet of his tour of the Holy Land, the Pope sent a message of solidarity with moderate Palestinians such as Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and president of the Palestinian Authority, who welcomed him to Bethlehem.

“The Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbours, within internationally recognised borders,” the Pope said.

Mahmoud Abbas is not moderate since he has made repeated statements that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state; and a “sovereign Palestinian homeland” will solve nothing if the inhabitants of the “homeland” continue to be bent on Israel’s destruction – which they almost certainly would.

Anglican Israel bashing

One of the resolutions from ACC-14 in Jamaica displays the usual one-sided condemnation of Israel:

The Anglican Consultative Council…

laments the fact that current Israeli policies in relation to the West Bank, in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions, have created severe hardship for many Palestinians and have been experienced as a physical form of apartheid.

calls on Israel to:

end its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

freeze immediately all settlement building with the intention to abandon its settlement policy in preparation for a Palestinian state

remove the separation barrier (wall) where it violates Palestinian land beyond the Green Line

end home demolitions, and

close checkpoints in the Palestinian territories

The hypocrisy is made all the more remarkable by the tortuous series of unnatural mental acts that the Anglican hierarchy goes through in order to see both sides of the case for performing unnatural homosexual physical acts, yet has no hesitation in being fiercely and vituperatively prejudiced when it comes to Israel.

Melanie Phillips has this to say:

Yet again, the Anglican establishment has singled out Israel for scapegoating, defamation and demonisation. A Resolution on the Middle East passed three days ago by the Anglican Consultative Committee parrots, as usual, Arab and Muslim propaganda against Israel – now the default position of Anglicanism as it genuflects to the force that is intent upon destroying it. Not all Anglicans by any means support this resolution which has been passed in their name: Anglican Friends of Israel has protested:

And now, disarmament advice to politicians from pointy hats

Various church groups offer disarmament advice to Stephen Harper:

This letter comes to you, to the leaders of other NATO members and to the NATO Secretary General from the councils that represent churches across the member states of NATO, namely, the Conference of European Churches, the National Council of Churches of Christ USA, the Canadian Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.

Our letter is a joint initiative to encourage joint action. We ask your Government to ensure that the forthcoming NATO summit commits the Alliance to a thorough reform of NATO’s Strategic Concept. The 60th anniversary meeting is a welcome opportunity to begin the process of up-dating the Alliance’s security doctrine. In particular, we encourage new initiatives that will end NATO’s reliance on nuclear weapons and will engage with nuclear weapon states and other states outside of NATO in the serious pursuit of reciprocal disarmament.

We encourage NATO to consign to history the notion that nuclear weapons “preserve peace” (as claimed in paragraph 46 of the current Strategic Concept), and instead to recognize the reality that “with every passing year [nuclear weapons] make our security more precarious” (President Gorbachev’s assessment; echoed by other leaders).

A world without nuclear weapons is an attractive ideal;  so is a world without mosquitoes, minivans and hairy spiders. Something the church leaders fail to address is what they would use to deter nuclear aggressors: a bow and arrow perhaps? Or, for more thorough devastation, the threat of simultaneously broadcasting sermons by Rowan Williams, Katherine Jefferts-Schori and Fred Hiltz to the enemy nation: the resultant brain damage would be incalculable.

Even though a nuclear holocaust is not a particularly inviting prospect, the problem with a bunch of beatnik bishops urging those who would never aggressively use nuclear weapons to get rid of them, while being powerless to influence those who would, is that it would not “preserve peace”: it would destroy it.