Faith in Action, Part 1: Conversion

(a second follow up from holiday – most of the time we went walking, honest)

When my friend set up a church community project seven years ago he used to tell secular agencies that ‘faith is our motivation, not our hidden agenda’. He aimed to alleviate people’s unspoken concerns that we might be raving bible bashers, whilst not apologising for our faith. I appreciated the fact that he raised the issue directly, but still felt uncomfortable that we weren’t getting to the root of non-Christians’ feelings or being completely honest ourselves.

The general gist of the secular argument goes something like this: If you are helping vulnerable or young people from a faith motivation then by helping them they might feel indebted to you or psychologically or sociologically pressurised to become a Christian. A faith based charity might have some groups which are ‘non religious’ but there is always another group or event which you need to ‘believe’ to be a part of. Vulnerable people who have experienced friendship and acceptance for possibly the first time will not want to miss out and so will conform to gain acceptance. If evidence of this pressure is limited the sense of unease remains - ‘well, you’re still setting out to convert people’.

And this is the heart of the matter. Yes. Christian based organisations love to see people become Christians. Christians love to see people discover that they are valuable in God’s eyes – to recognise that they were created with a purpose which no other person can fulfil. To hear the excitement in someone’s voice as they tell the story of how God met with them and filled them with His Holy Spirit, about how the anxieties and sin that had held them and weighed them down for years begins to lift from them. To see people’s confidence grow as they start contributing in a meaningful way to a community.

How could any sympathetic onlooker - Agnostic, Muslim, Hindu or Atheist have a problem with this?

It is clear that that person’s life has changed for the better – they are happier, more content and a more active participant in society. Any funder looking to measure the effectiveness of a charity would be delighted to hear of such a ‘success story’.

Unfortunately for some non religionists there is still a problem. The person now believes the wrong thing! They haven’t changed their life to become an ordinary middle class secularist like them, but now fervently believes all kinds of religious mumbo jumbo. They’ve been hoodwinked into happiness and that’s worse than living their former life of poverty and desperation.

I’ve got two suggestions at this point.

The first is go and persuade people by word and deed that your way of life is both attractive and true ( I appreciated Duncan’s comment here) .

The second is: get over it. Christianity’s either true and they’ve hit the jackpot or it’s false and they’re living a life of more-blissful-than-before-ignorance. If it’s not true they may even grow out of it.

Either way there is no third option: people are entitled to choose to receive support that they think transforms their lives without being patronisingly told that they are being converted to something that isn’t in line with the current intellectual hegemony.

Of course not all strands of Christianity are the same; of course there are occasions where people are manipulated or even abused in the name of or under cover of religion. Of course there are churches which promote unhealthy guilt in their congregations.

Sadly there are abuses of power and trust in all walks of life – secular and religious, some deliberate some without even realising it. Nursing homes and schools, shops and billboards, peer groups and parliament – none escapes the scourge of evil and twisted humanity. If you’re concerned about a particular faith organisation or charity and the impact it may be having on vulnerable people then go and see them. Are they open and transparent or trying to hide their practices away? What do those who are helped by the organisation say about it? If you’re still concerned inform the appropriate authorities – we must all look out signs of abuse.

However, the overwhelming majority of churches or Christians who want to set up a faith based organisation whether it be school, charity or hospital are acting from a rubric of compassion and care. They genuinely want to relieve poverty and distress in a broken, lonely society. They are prepared to put time and money into their efforts. True, some churches have the desire to help, but not the expertise producing poor efforts, but that is why we have inspection regimes and frameworks in the UK to regulate and protect.

Many churches have another motivation which is the transformation of people and society’s lives by the power of Jesus. Or as most would call it, conversion.

Occasionally, the two motives are contradictory because people are seeking conversions as trophies and for protection against the long term decline of their dying rules and rituals. But don’t worry as such groups are unlikely to be very successful – few people choose to board a sinking ship where their only value is as a number on a pew.

Often the two motives take time to work through as church’s grapple with their responsibility to proclaim the Good News with sacrificial actions and efforts as well as words.

Most times the two motives come to mingle together in a powerful and passionate way. Both unconditional compassion and a desire for conversions that change lives day in and day out – for good.

History, hypocrisy and Henry the Eighth.

I’ve been away on holiday with friends (including one of my honourable co-bloggers) for the past week. As well as the usual bouts of walking, drinking and rabidly competitive connect 4, we managed to make time for some middle class, liberal dinner party conversations a la Bremner, Bird and Fortune which are likely to provide a good deal of fodder for this blog in the next couple of weeks.

So rather than fight the urge I am going to jump straight in, with a topic that irritated me so much at the time I was rather reduced to incoherent grunts of rage… and sure as I am that I’m right on this one, that probably isn’t the best way to win an argument. Here is the hopefully more coherent version:

David Starkey is an idiot. He is an idiot because of these (argh, can't believe I am linking to the Mail!) comments, in which he argues that some seething and apparently threatening mass of woolly minded female historians have shifted the emphasis away from poor ickle Henry the Eighth and onto his wives. He is an idiot despite (and in part because of) the fact that this whole diatribe was inarguably made for the sake of some cheap publicity, and may not be truly felt at all. He would like to frame his arguments as ‘pay more attention to Henry’, but in fact, what he really means is ‘pay more attention to me.’

Where I parted company with my dinner companions was over the idea that Starkey, however sensationally expressed, might have some kind of point. Henry, they suggested, has been rather reduced to his relationships with his wives. He should be centre stage since he was the monarch, he was the decision maker and he was the instigator of everything.

Fair enough. Henry is interesting and certainly worth studying in terms of his religious and political significance. What I don’t understand however is why Henry’s worthiness as a topic of historical interest renders his wives obsolete. What’s wrong with a book about the life of Anne Boleyn, or Jane Seymour? Beyond their names and the rather gruesome little rhyme detailing their fates I don’t actually know much about them - and I say this as one who studied the Tudors at both GCSE and A-level. To say that Henry has been reduced to his wives is ridiculous as they remain largely silent victims in the face of Henry’s own larger than life personality and legendary, machismo fuelled drive for a male heir.


The thing is, history is subjective and at least partially driven by those elements of the past that interest us the most. And people are often interested in the human side of things, the relationships and personalities that inform events as much as the events themselves, not to mention the importance of the experiences of people from the past, regardless of their cause and effect. What bothers me about Starkey’s comments is his attempt to establish some kind of historical hierarchy in which women are inevitably reduced to bit parts… if you want to argue that only the powerful and famous are really worth studying then inevitably only a handful of women make the cut. A 'proper' history of Europe, according to Mr Starkey, is one of white males, but who exactly put him in charge of defining such a thing?

The bottom line is that many historians have their own private cause to champion, a particularly neglected or misunderstood corner of the past that they are seeking to bring to greater public attention. Seen in the most charitable light possible Starkey’s obsession with Henry could be seen as a particularly eccentric version of this. But it is categorically not necessary to champion one area of history by degrading and belittling another. And to make it about gender smacks of the large scale disenfranchisement of women’s history. Given that until very recently you could be forgiven for thinking that women only arrived in the world in their current numbers after the advent of the twentieth century arguing that the scales have already swung too far in the opposite direction is frankly ludicrous.

Ironically the government are desperate to get children more interested in history, so much so that there are changes proposed to history GCSEs that would see students considering the making of television documentaries about history as much as history itself. Is David Starkey ready to take up the cause of his oppressed patriarchs against such another shift in focus?

Ummm. No.

Pink pressure.

Following Jon's post...

As aforementioned 'interpid co-author' (I want a t-shirt with that on!) I thought I would elaborate a little on what I found most distressing about pretty much every high street baby store I tried. (And I speak as someone who *loves* going into baby stores and cooing over every tiny item).

The pink/blue divide was, as Jon says, absolute and undeniable. And I'm not buying (literally or metaphorically) any of the biological determinism that would have us believe that little girls just prefer pink. The truth is babies couldn't care less what colour they are dressed in, busy as they are concentrating on milk and mummy and all of the rest of the wonders of the world. In fact, not so long ago it was the boys who were presumed to be naturally pretty in pink, and some arguments suggest that we have Hitler to thank for the current situation, after he associated pink with homosexuality and femininity during the Holocaust.

The thing is, we *teach* children that certain colours are and are not for them, which might not be such a big deal were it not for the fact that we sneak some pretty dubious attitudes along with the colours. Those tiny pink t-shirts sporting slogans like 'mummy's little princess' and 'daddy's little flower' are training girls for a life of decoration and fragility while the boys are off being 'little explorers' or even 'little monsters.' Neither sex gets a particularly good deal out of this.

And pink can take on an even more sinister hue according to the lovely people at Pink Stinks (check it out), who argue that the princess culture trains little girls for a lifetime of sexual objectification. It would take someone far less cynical than me to argue that the fluffy bunny ears of the playboy stationary brand are pink by mere co-incidence. Or that their Barbie hue is irrelevant to the pre-teenaged girls who fall for them because they are 'cute and girly'.

Don't get me wrong. Like Jon, I like pink. It's a pretty colour. But is has been horribly used and abused and appointed puppet ruler for all kinds of attitudes and ideas about what it means to be a girl. The pink and blue divide begins in babyhood but it doesn't have to be this way. If we stopped teaching babies how to be boys or girls we would have more time to teach them to be human beings.

The campaign against pink

Wearing a fluffy pink dressing gown has taken on an unusually subversive edge recently.

When my young daughter burst into the world a few months ago we were showered with the kind cards and gifts of our friends and relatives. But not just any old cards and gifts - pink cards and gifts. Now I've got nothing against pink - as the dressing gown wearing suggests - I might even say I like it in moderation, but I was shocked by the unremitting quantity.

New parent or not, I'm not someone to pass up on the opportunity to investigate a social phenomena. So I sent out the intrepid coauthor of this blog to investigate. Were people choosing pink or was there no option?

The resulting reports made desultory reading - well known baby stores were parted into blue and pink as starkly as the...Red sea.

The initial shock of parenthood has now worn off and I have managed to visit a shop myself. We were in a popular supermarket chain that shall remained unnamed beginning with S, looking for a sunhat for Abigail. Being novices we didn't know where to find baby things so we asked an assistant and waited for them to return:
" I thought she was a girl so I bought this one." A pretty pink number was produced.
We followed the assistant to the hats for tiny heads and immediately fell for a sky blue offering with (environmentally friendly) cars stitched around the edge.

Having paid for our hat I happened to glance at the receipt. The description read:
"BOYS CAR FISHERM[AN HAT]"






Unbelievable.

Let's hope Abigail likes sky blue. I have a feeling she might be wearing quite a bit.

A Fairtrade Future - Kick out the Cowboys

One of the most important and exciting announcements of the week has been that Cadbury's are going to make all of their dairymilk bars out of fairly trade cocoa, with a commitment to transferring the rest of their products when they can. In one fell swoop the amount of fairtrade chocolate sold in the UK will almost double.

This major step raises an enticing prospect. Whilst munching on a gloriously milky bar of chocolate with a newly clean conscience it becomes possible for the first time to realistically imagine a nation where all raw food and cotton products imported are fairly traded.

Time and again you can ask oppressed producers and traders the world over and they will tell you they want not charity, but justice. It is no longer acceptable for us to complicit in trading and working practices that is oppressive just because we can't see them. If cost is an issue I challenge you to reduce the amount you give to 'good causes'. Instead, prioritise buying products that aren't about benevolently distributing philantrophy whilst holding onto power, but that fundamentally shift the way our global society operates - for the better.

Why allow plcs to get away with a few kind words and a little charity around the edges? Why should we put up any longer with bullying companies that grind down peoples' humanity for the sake of a cheap chocolate bar? Such thieves and cowboys should be chased out of town and out of business.

And yet life is rarely simple...

Since this is a bit of a departure from the feminist canon, I want to make clear before I begin that I in no way believe that women are responsible for their own rapes. See my previous post for further proof. I have absolute contempt for arguments that attempt to shift blame away from rapists, or downplay the enormity of rape as a crime against another human being.

All of that said, there was one element of the study mentioned in my previous post that I can't help but consider in a more ambiguous light. Participants were asked about the varying degrees of responsibility of a woman who fails to offer her assailant a clear 'no'.

Now, obviously there are many cases where it is assumed that the victim of a rape is simply not capable of giving her consent to a sexual act, and in cases like these whether a 'no' is actually stated or not is redundant. A child has no need to reject any sexual advances, since they are not legally capable of welcoming them. Similarly someone with mental disabilities, or even just temporarily incapacitated by drink or drugs, cannot say yes and so should not need to say no.

We protect these groups with a blanket ban on ability to consent for good reason. And this protection limits their personal autonomy, but safeguards their personal security. It would be massively offensive to suggest that mentally capable, adult females were incapable of giving informed consent to sex. For this particular group freedom and self-determination comes first, and rightly so.

But, if we can say yes, should we not also be able to say no? To say no, once, clearly, should be all that is needed to stop any unwelcome advances (in an ideal world) and there is part of me that feels this is a reasonable thing to expect of women, allowing us to actively assert our desires or otherwise, rather than waiting passively for a man to attain consent.

There are of course cases where a violent or agressive attack could cause fear, and in cirumstances like these, where the lack of consent is pretty much the whole point of the rape, whether the word 'no' has been said or not is fairly irrelevant.

But, in cases where rape does begin as a misunderstanding before evolving into something more sinister isn't it reasonable, and indeed respectful of women as agents rather than victims, to expect that a woman does have some responsibility to tell a man 'no' if his advances are unknowingly unwelcome?

Men who badger or pester women into sex are unscrupulous bastards who in my opinion should still bear the label of rapist. After all, all rape is a crime and all rapists should bear responsibility for committing a crime, but not all rapists are equal. I don't believe it's a betrayal of my sex to state that a woman should clearly tell a man 'no' if this is what she means. After all, I firmly maintain that a woman should have the right to withdraw consent at any moment, at which point sexual contact should instantly stop. For this to be possible either we have to endow women with enough power to state their preferences, or expect men to ask repeatedly if consent is still given. Not exactly a recipe for uninhibited rewarding sex.

None of this however is designed to let men off the hook. If you are playing with boundaries of power and desire you should be pretty damn sure you know the woman in question well enough not to need a clear 'I want this'. After all, asking is just as easy as telling.

Rape, responsibility and the blame game.

Rape. Not a good thing I would imagine we can all agree. Even more black and white than murder, in many ways. Whilst it's possible to concieve of a situation where the taking of another human life might be the best course of action (self defence, mercy killing) it's impossible to envisage a situation where rape might be the morally correct response.

But for such a cut and dried subject rape has an amazing ability to create controversy. For some men the spectre of false accusation seems to loom large, whereas a majority of women are understandably touchy about anything that suggests that rape is somehow all their own fault.

And there are, unfortunately, plenty of people who do seem to think that rape is women's fault. At least partially. Another study out on the subject last month has revealed that quite startling numbers of students (more than a third in some cases) still believe that a woman is somehow responsible for her own assault if she commits any number of transgressions. From the minor (wearing a short skirt) to the bizarre ( a 'flirtatious' manner... however the hell you quantify or recognise such a thing).

These attitudes are damaging and nonsensical and treated with horror and derision by the feminist community for good reason. Aside from anything else the facts show that wearing short skirts, sleeping around, even (gasp) drinking alcohol don't actually raise your chances of being raped. Living with a man on the other hand most certainly does, and having male friends? - You might as well lie on your back now. Where are the jeering baying crowds declaring that wives and mothers are bringing it on themselves? And why do you never see government initiatives warning women against the perils of allowing a male friend or boyfriend to walk them home after a night out?

The fact is, there are plenty of people who still seem to see rape as a social problem rather than anything else. An inevitable consequence of men's libidos and women's inability to be other than objects of sexual desire. And if you think like this then of course you are going to lay some of the blame at women's feet. If it's a fact of life that men can't control themselves then putting yourself in temptation's way is stupid and naieve. And if the boundaries get a little blurry as a result of this, then it might be unfortunate but really, what did you expect to happen?

The idea that rapes occur when an irresponsible woman and an over-excitable man somehow cross paths decriminalises rape and reduces it to the level of a pair of naughty children both deserving of a slap on the wrist and not much more. The idea that she was silly and he was boisterous and they are both as bad as the other is offensive and ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as those arguments that compare women who go to parties or walk home alone with expensive cars... if you don't lock your car then of course you are partially to blame if it gets stolen. And if you refuse to sit at home, covered from head to toe in black and avoiding eye contact with any male whom you do accidentally come to meet, then you have to accept the possibility that you will be raped. Except, women are people, not cars. And I believe that every woman has the right to live her life as she sees fit without the fear that she will be afforded less support and protection should she fail to adequately protect the property that is her own body.

In truth, while it might take two to Tango, it actually doesn't take two to commit a rape. To be involved in a rape, yes, but to actually commit the criminal act one person and one person alone is responsible. And because I don't actually believe that men are no more than drooling, gibbering idiots unable to control their own rampant sexuality then this is where the responsibility must be placed. The blame game ends on the doorstep of the actual rapist. To suggest otherwise is to do both men and women a massive disservice. Let's be thankful that, depressing as the figures sometimes appear, a majority of people do seem to recognise this.