The Untouchables

Recently, I was having a conversation with a fellow clergyman about that perennially controversial liturgical action, the Peace. I mentioned that I preferred the approach of my former college, where each of us exchanged a somewhat stylised embrace with our near neighbours, rather than shaking hands. I prefer it for two reasons: firstly, because it is a liturgical action, a continuation and extension of what is happening at the altar, rather than a break in it. But secondly, we hugged each other because we genuinely felt we were a community, even a family – albeit a sometimes dysfunctional one. A handshake, by contrast, is the greeting between strangers who have just been introduced.

My interlocutor laughed, as people tend to do when I suggest that anything I learned at college might be relevant or applicable in the parish, and said “Soon you won’t be able to hug anyone. Dave Lee Travis has seen to that!”

It was a throwaway comment, but one that horrified me. Are we reaching a point when human touch – the incarnate expression of our relationship with one another – becomes inherently suspect? Linguistically, we already have. I remember a training day at my old workplace where we had to select from a list behaviours which were not appropriate, and several picked “touching”. We had to be reminded that “touching” can have a perfectly innocent meaning. And I think you can imagine the amused horror when a friend at college found a book on children’s ministry, entitled “Touching the future”!

I’ve recently noticed a practice, both at my church and elsewhere, of priests blessing children by laying their hand on the child’s shoulder rather than their head (I’ve even seen somewhere a warning that a hand on the head could inadvertently take the child’s eye out… I think we’ll file that with the time a teacher told me to stop chewing my hair lest I die of hairballs.) It’s still touch, of course, so we have not entirely lost that sense of the sacramental and incarnational value of human contact. But the laying on of hands on the head is an ancient tradition going right back to the Bible. A hand on the shoulder is more like a sports coach about to pronounce a moving platitude in a coming-of-age movie. It’s right there with the handshake and the backslap as repressed English male affection.

If we shy away from touch, what are we actually telling our children? That bodily contact is scary? That *they* are scary? In cultures where men are not permitted to touch or look at women, the implication is that the women are the problem – they are too dangerous to be seen or touched. Is that the attitude to our bodies we want to grow up with?

I’m not suggesting we should go around inflicting uninvited hugs on newcomers to church – that did happen to me once, complete with badly-aimed air kiss that landed on my ear, and I can’t say it particularly made me feel at peace with the individual concerned. I am English and I have English ideas of personal space. Yet it seems there is a tension when we talk about the church in terms of the imagery of the body, yet are fearful of the bodies of our fellow Christians. Should our behaviour be determined by the worst that human beings do to one another, or should it affirm and reclaim that which is good?

The evensong readings this week have told the tale of Creation and the Fall. “Who told you you were naked?” God asks. Who taught you to be ashamed of your bodies? We can’t ignore the fact that we are fallen, and our physical relationships are open to sin and distortion – the kingdom cannot be a return to the naivite of our first paradise but the hope of a new creation. Yet they are also open to redemption and transfiguration. The challenge for the church must be to live in that tension – not to ignore fallenness, or to fail to protect people from its consequences, but to model the hope of something better.

Je suis pas exactement Charlie…

#jesuischarliehebdo #jenesuispascharliehebdo… In the scheme of things, one hashtag either way is a trivial decision. Insultingly trivial, perhaps. Nevertheless, there is something about the Paris shootings which has made people feel that they have to respond, to pin their colours to the mast one way or the other. Not, of course, for or against the terrorist attack – nobody is for that, except presumably the gunmen’s fellow militants – but for or against a particular interpretation of its significance. Is this an attack on free speech and an attack on all of us? Or can we defend the right to life – the right of a cartoonist, or a policeman, or a Jewish supermarket worker, to turn up to work in the morning and go home safely in the evening – without endorsing Charlie Hebdo’s particular brand of satire?

At the end of last week, in that mood of almost euphoric defiance, my initial instinct was #jesuischarlie. An attack on the freedom of speech is an attack on each and every one of us. But I paused when I realised that sounded close to the mentality which drove the gunmen – that an insult to Islam was an insult to every Muslim and should be avenged as such. That failure to differentiate is a dangerous one.

I was further concerned by the reaction of the political contributors on this week’s edition of Any Questions? on Radio 4. All the panellists agreed that this was not about Islam per se, and that the Muslim community as a whole should not be demonised. They even confidently asserted that most Muslims in Britain must feel exactly the same way about this incident as non-Muslims (although other reporting on the same station suggested that might not be the case). Yet they all went on to agree that an appropriate response would be for all British newspapers to publish a cartoon of Mohammed on their front pages. In other words, to make it precisely all about Islam and to do something which would be perceived as a slap in the face for Muslims in general.

Now, I certainly don’t think news outlets should have a blanket ban on depicting Mohammed, as apparently was formerly the policy of the BBC. Non-Muslims cannot be obliged to follow Islamic law on pictures any more than we are obliged to follow Islamic law on food. If a cartoon of Mohammed is in the news, then news outlets should feel able to reproduce it; if there is controversy, we have to see what the controversy is about. We can, and should, respect people’s feelings, but we should not privilege one group over another simply out of fear. And in the end, I thought the cartoon Charlie Hebdo chose was rather clever and sensitive, suggesting that the attack was as much against true Islamic values as against Western ones. It’s ironic that the original reason for the prohibition on images was to avoid idolatry – because Mohammed is a man the same as any other, and not to be worshipped like a God. Now his non-depiction risks becoming its own idolatry. (Christians, since the 9th century, have by contrast seen images of Jesus as precisely a defence of his full humanity).

But I think it’s also healthy that we’ve started a debate about the real meaning of free speech, and what if any are its limits. The French government has been basking in the new national identity as bastion of free speech, but there is a certain irony in the arrest of comedian Dieudonne for saying something offensive about the Charlie Hebdo rallies – the rallies which were supposed to be about the ‘right to offend’.

So I’m going to exercise my free speech and suggest a few principles that might guide us.

1. Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom of expression. There is what you say and then there is how you say it. It’s generally agreed that there’s a difference between expressing an opinion (which is accepted as a right) and acting on it (which may not be). But when does the use of words and images become an action? A book is only a book when it is read; when it is hurled at somebody’s head, it is a missile. There is language which conveys information or opinions, and then there is language which is ballistic, which is intended to wound rather than to enlighten.

2. Where is the power? Are the people being offended those who are most powerful in society – either in wealth or political clout or in numerical majority? Or are they, as is disproportionately the case with France’s Muslims, a group already disadvantaged? We are so used to freedom of speech as a bulwark against tyranny that we may forget that “having a voice” is itself a form of power and privilege.

3. Who are we not hearing? The justification for freedom of speech is not that it’s nice for the individuals concerned but that it is good for society and for the cause of truth that there should be a healthy debate. One early defence of free speech appears in the New Testament in the mouth of the rabbi Gemaliel, who convinces his colleagues that the truth or otherwise of the Christian sect will be better determined by the test of time than by suppression.

It is axiomatic in the recent debate that people have the right to speak but not the right to be listened to, that they should be protected from any political or violent suppression but not from any other consequences such as criticism, ridicule, insults, or implications for their reputation or professional life. If a person is confident in their beliefs, we are told, they should be prepared to face robust responses. But take for instance the way in which women who have spoken about sexism in certain fields have faced the cyber equivalent of a baying mob outside their door. Their opponents are exercising free speech – but in order to close down the debate, not to open it up. If we really want a debate, do we need to do more to actively cherish and protect minority voices?

4. What is really unsayable in our society? I’ll give you an example – and watch closely, because I’m about to partly defend Richard Dawkins, and it’s unlikely to happen again! He makes a habit of inflammatory tweets, but perhaps the most controversial was when he suggested that some rapes are more serious than others. The details of what he said were certainly wrong, but this overall principle is the official position of our society. What do I mean? It’s built into our legal system, in the form of sentencing guidelines. Why is it unsayable? Precisely because it exposes that hypocrisy in our society.

The debate in the past few days has often been phrased as “is the pen mightier than the sword?” But maybe freedom of speech doesn’t have to be about might, about the pen-as-weapon. Is free speech the right to hear our own strident voices? Or is it the privilege of engaging in debate and learning from all voices – including the quiet, the weak, and the ones we would prefer kept silent?

Vote Christ!

So, the election campaign is underway. Labour have publicly declared their strategy: they hope to win the election vote by vote, doorstep by doorstep. They hope that face-to-face contact and personal relationships will swing it for them.

This is pretty much the same approach advocated by the Church of England. I have to say I’m not a great one for ‘visiting’ in the traditional sense of popping in unannounced, “more tea, vicar?” etc. I’m always wary of intruding on people’s private space and time, since the first time I was ‘visited’ myself, as an unchurched person, I spent the entire conversation in a state of petrified embarrassment that he’d notice the stains on the tablecloth. But, the evidence does seem to suggest that face-to-face relationship building is indeed the key to evangelism… however much those of us who are better with words and ideas might regret it!

According to a piece on the Today programme this morning, most voters ultimately make their decision based on the person more than the policies. The policies may be a starting point, but what will actually get their vote in the bag is whether the candidate is trustworthy and whether they appear competent to do the job. The first time I was old enough to vote, I read the full manifestos of all the major parties and found myself at a hopeless impasse, because all of them had some good ideas but none of them could I support 100%. This isn’t about superficial ‘personality politics’ – it’s about the way human beings make decisions, and the fact that we seem to find it more instinctive deciding whether or not to trust somebody than we do assessing a list of ideas.

Again, we in the church are in the same boat. We’re not asking people, first and foremost, to choose a bunch of ideas but to choose a person: Jesus. Jesus, if you like, is our candidate, and his credibility has to be shown through our credibility.

But the problem both we and the politicians face is persuading people that they need to make a choice at all. The political candidate is not just in competition with his or her rivals, but also with everything else a voter might rather be doing on a Thursday in May. If “didn’t vote” were a political party, it would have won the last election. I’ve heard it said that more people vote in TV talent contests than general elections – often with the implication that we have become shallow, more interested in celebrity than the future of the country. I think that’s unfair. If we’ve established that people are trying to judge ability and character, you’re probably on firmer ground with someone you’ve heard singing every Saturday for the past several weeks than you are with an untried political candidate you’ve never seen.

At least in the general election, though, everybody knows what their options are and what the date is by which they need to make up their mind. When it comes to choosing Christ, we struggle to convey that sense of clarity and urgency. When John the Baptist called people to ‘repent’ he wasn’t just telling them how they should vote: he was telling them that they had a vote at all – and that polling day was coming close.

Cometh the year, cometh who? A thought for 2015.

According to the Times, 2014 was Nigel Farage’s year. It was a predictably controversial choice, with some trying to set up William Pooley – the medical worker who contracted ebola – as an alternative more worthy candidate. But worthy of what? I have not been able to read the original article – the Times paywall has cut its circulation more effectively than any boycott! – but large chunks were reproduced by the BBC and I suggest there has been some misunderstanding. Nowhere in the title “Briton of the year” does the word “best” or “greatest” appear. If Farage thinks he’s won some kind of accolade, he should remember who was Time magazine’s Man of the Year 1938…

The point of these “of the year” things is to sum up the year’s news. Not necessarily news as in things that happened, but things that were reported. It’s a prize for “sold most papers” (or, it might be now, generated most clicks). They’d probably have to give it to a cat with a funny face, if cats could have British citizenship. Whether we like it or not, many of us couldn’t actually remember Pooley’s name, even though we were inspired by the story. But you can’t get away from Farage.

It’s the same thing when people complain that the BBC are biased in favour of UKIP. Of course they aren’t. And I’ll put my cards on the table here and admit I voted Green in the EU elections. More likely the BBC is staffed mostly by liberal cosmopolitan folk who goggle at opinion polls in Farage’s favour with the same horrified guilty fascination they might have reading a Buzzfeed list of 15 Worst Plastic Surgery Fails. No – the media are biased in favour of a good story. He must get as many negative stories as he gets positive ones, but it doesn’t matter. They all add up to an impression that something important is happening and that he’s in the middle of it.

2014 was Nige’s year because his was the story we were telling ourselves about our country last year. It was a story the media loved to serve up to us but also a story we loved to tell ourselves, whether as a comedy or a tragedy. Pooley’s story, on the contrary, inspires precisely because he is not representative but extraordinary. We know we wouldn’t have the courage to do the same. Everyone admires him… and yet more than 50% of us would actually cut the budget for international aid. Which is the “real story” about who we are as a country?

Another story that caught my eye this year was from Russia. A Russian newspaper decided that one day’s edition would contain only good news – and of course sales plummeted. The stories we tell ourselves matter – not least because sometimes they come true. At Epiphany we remember the revelation of the Good News: God’s bid to give humans a new story to tell one another about who we are.

We don’t get to vote for Briton of the Year. But we do choose the stories we tell, the stories we share, the stories we live. If in 2015 we want a Briton of the Year we’re proud of, then we’re the ones who have to live up to it.