Easter people or besieged minority?

Well I can tell it’s another major Christian festival.   I’ve woken up to another church leader banging on about gay people.  This time it’s George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury.  Last time it was Cardinal Keith O’Brien, whose career as Britain’s leading anti-gay ranter was cut short when he turned out to be, possibly, maybe, allegedly, well, er….

My point here is not to object to a reasoned debate on gay marriage, but on why the Church, time and time again, obsesses with homosexuality as if it’s the only thing that really matters.   I’ve blogged before on my wider views on why this might be so I won’t trot round that field again here.

But George Carey’s comments betray a starting point that I believe is another major issue: siege mentality.  There is a sad strand of Christians in the UK  who feel they are being persecuted, and who would go so far as to actually use the word.

Research quoted by George Carey suggested that two-thirds of UK Christians now feel they are part of a persecuted minority. This is to misunderstand so much: not least, the nature of true persecution.  Around the world, people are being killed for what they believe, or burnt out of their homes, or locked up, or having to meet in secret for fear of arrest or death.

That’s real persecution, not the “persecution light” suffered by siege mentality Christians in the UK and elsewhere in the West.   Put simply, they seem to perceive it as persecution when their views no longer hold sway in wider society.  They’re driven by fear: fear of gay people or Islam or Richard Dawkins or change or, as in this case, the particularly scary “aggressive secularism”.  Or perhaps simply by the fear of insignificance.

This is particularly strange when Jesus himself issued frankly blood-curdling warnings about the type of persecution his followers would face.   He foresaw death, betrayal, being ostracised from religious circles.  In broad terms, he warned his followers to expect suffering – real, actual suffering, not waking up to find that your views are no longer mainstream.  He told them to take up their crosses and follow him.  Today’s battle seems to be about wearing the cross, not carrying it.

George Carey says David Cameron has fed Christian “anxieties” more than any other political leader in recent times.   Jesus told his followers not to be anxious about anything.  So if Christians are getting anxious, I might suggest the problem is with them, not with the government.  The concept of “anxious Christians” ought to be an oxymoron.

Siege mentality Christians would believe that the 1950s spiritual map of the UK looked healthier than today’s.  Yes, if you had colour-mapped churchgoers then, it would have looked a good solid block across the whole country.  Today’s map would be a very patchy affair by contrast.

But if you painted it differently, say a coloured blob for each person who truly believed what they were doing, was committed to discipleship and, if necessary, death, I don’t think the 1950s map would look that different from today’s.  I suspect that the blob-map is closer to the God’s eye view of the world.   The blob-map would offer a glimpse of the spread of the kingdom of God, rather than the churchgoing public. The two are not the same.

I can’t help reflecting that some people in the Christian faith remain drawn by the desire for moral certainties – the people I call the Taliban Tendency, who broadly think that other people are the problem, and are likely to get their theology from the Daily Mail.  Other Christians are drawn by the realisation that THEY are the problem, and are likely to get their theology from Philip Yancey’s fab book What’s So Amazing About Grace (or indeed, dare I say, from Jesus).

Going back to George Carey, I would have thought he might have found more to object to in the impact on the poor and vulnerable of current government policies.  And going back to Keith O’Brien, I have actually started to feel a certain compassion for him, if what was driving him all along was the awfulness of not being able to be who you are.

Either way, this Easter, I hope someone in the Church decides to bang on about a man who thought he was the Messiah, was killed for it, and whom people say they saw again afterwards. Now that’s a much more intriguing story.

Weathering the changes

It’s a lovely Christmas card scene.  Snow is falling, snow on snow.  A robin puffs itself up on the garden fence.  The logs are stacked by the fireplace and the coal scuttle is full.  The evocative smell of coal smoke hangs heavy in the high street.  The only problem, of course, is that this is March.

The chaffinch is sulking on the orchard bough, in England now.   OK so it’s only a plum tree but you get my point.  The snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils are once again vanishing slowly from sight.  The seed tray that should have veg growing in it has instead been filled with bird food and sunflower seeds, and has been drawing finches and tits to the patio table in big numbers. Even two male blackbirds have apparently declared a truce and are sharing it with each other.

Spring flowers have spent much of March battling their way through snow

“So much for global warming,” people are muttering, as if this miserable, interminable winter offers some kind of proof that it doesn’t exist.   Everyone seems to have translated the concept of “Global warming” into “My back garden warming”.  If only.

Global warming in reality means less predictability, seasons that wobble and waver, wetter rain, hotter sun, thicker snow.  Put simply, it means extra moisture in the atmosphere, which translates into more extreme weather on the ground.

It means all the right seasons, but not necessarily in the right order.

The current wintry weather is being directly blamed on the jet stream being in the wrong place.  At this time of year, its high-level air flow should be streaming west-to-east over Scotland.  Instead, it’s way south, nearer the Mediterranean than the North Sea.  It’s not just the UK being hit by severe winter weather in spring.  Roughly speaking, if you’re north of the jet stream you’ll be cold. If you’re south of it you’ll be warm.

Last year’s appalling summer was also blamed on the jet stream being off kilter for most of the season.  It resulted in the constant pounding of the UK by one weather system after another.  The soggy south-west bore the brunt.  It was the wettest summer in 100 years.

Some scientists are now directly linking the wanderings of the jet stream to global warming.  The theory is that Arctic warming makes the jet stream move more sluggishly, so making it more prone to being knocked off course by other variables in the atmosphere. This seems plausible to me (although I must admit my serious reading on climate change amounts only to Ian McEwan’s bizarre novel Solar).

Accepting that the world’s climate, and the predictability of the jet stream, are changing is, of course, completely different from accepting that it’s man wot dunnit.  The concept of manmade climate change, is still, to coin a phrase, hotly disputed, albeit by a vocal minority.

Either way, it seems to me a simple matter of common sense that we should have greater respect for the planet – whether driven by faith-based reasons of good stewardship, the legacy we’re leaving for future generations, or a simple sense of living less selfishly and gluttonously.

Most of us are happy to mutter about the weather without expecting to make any changes to our own lifestyles.   It’s a tricky one to judge.  Hopping on planes as if they’re buses is great and liberating, but is it really wrong?  I heard a young woman on the train a few weeks ago working out how to pick up a visa in London.  “I’ll only be in Switzerland,” she said.  “I can literally just pop back for it.”

Having perfect fruit, veg and meat flown in from the furthest reaches of the planet is also great, and provides income for farmers and growers.  Is that so wrong?   Tearing down rainforests to provide grazing for cattle for cheap meat does seem wrong. But does that make every single burger consumed an act of planetary violence?

You can’t uninvent the global village, or the jet engine, or the meat-eating millions, or the huge growth in developing economies. I still think we do bear some individual responsibility for our choices as consumers.  Ugly local veg get my vote every time.

But on a more practical level, rather than being shocked every time it snows in March or the sun fails to shine in summer, or there are droughts, downpours or tornadoes, we should perhaps accept one simple fact. That climate change, like constant change, is here to stay.  We’d better get used to it.

Spring rudely interrupted

A vicious nor’easter is howling through the house and snow has been blowing horizonally past the front window all day.  The green shoots and yellow flowers of spring are lost to sight.  The White Company has painted the world.

The daffodils are battered; the snowdrops are buried

But for the weather, the allotment would have been calling. Some early work has already been accomplished: the tumbledown shed has been patched up and Creosoted; the rhubarb has been freed from its tangled web of couch grass.  The potatoes are chitting on the windowsill, and leeks and sweet peas are in the propagator.

But much remains to be done, and at least a week will have been lost by the time the cold snap eases.   The ground will be cold for planting too, with night-time temperatures plunging several degrees below zero.   Finding some giant plastic sheets to warm the ground will be a good idea.

The plum blossom had just burst too, so this year’s harvest may already have been compromised.  No jam tomorrow.

But as always, weird weather brings benefits too.   A hectic weekend has given way to a day of enforced rest.  The late burst of winter has brought hungry birds back into the garden too:  a chaffinch tucking into seeds on the patio table; mob-handed starlings driving dainty bluetits from the fatballs; a robin trying to balance on the feeders;  blackbirds hanging out gloomily near the house, forced to think about food when their minds had been on other matters.

Camellia nobilissima is braving the snow

And not just the blackbirds: we’d all allowed our thoughts to turn to spring, led astray by last week’s burst of warmth.

The Met Office is now musing about a possible colder-than-average run right into April.  As my mum has been pointing out for years, in the face of snow-strewn Christmas cards and popular psychology, Easter is often colder than Christmas.  This year, she may well be right again.