SOCIAL JUSTICE - BLEND AND BLUR

MARTIN LUTHER KING AND BOB DYLAN - For MLK Day

MLK 2

(this is a section from my book The Rock Cries Out. It seemed right to post it again on MLK Day, this particular year...)

Long before Dylan joined the Vineyard Church’s Bible Study that was so widely publicised during his Christian conversion period of 1979 and 1980, he was working with a Church leader to bring about the justice that the Bible says so much about. Sadly, the white Church was not in tow. Indeed the Church was instigators of segregation.  The grotesque and unbelievable hypocrisy is put well by Dave Magee in his Masters of Philosophy dissertation, “The Southern Baptist Convention, an all-white body, sent millions of dollars to Africa for mission, yet barred Africans living in America with membership.” 

Martin Luther King had been disappointed with the Church’s support of his campaigning. Indeed while he thought they should be his strongest allies most were in direct opposition. For King this was a crux issue for the credibility of the Church’s place in the society of this day.  He would be strong enough to warn “that if the Church does not stop uttering its ‘pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities,’ then it will, ‘be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.’ 

How many times and in how many places has the church taken the road of status quo, a pastoring of the way things are rather than a prophetic voice of how things ought to and can be. As Northern Ireland became in the seventies and eighties, so the deep southern states of America were in the fifties and sixties. Here were places where the cross and resurrection of Jesus could be proven to the doubters and the cynics by the those who truly believed in what his the first Easter. If they had taken the power of Christ’s passion and then lived out the words that he taught about loving enemies and peacemaking they could have been a shop window for the validity Christianity around the world. Instead they maintained the divided societies that allowed the world to ignore Christianity as just another contributing factor to divided societies carrying out the most horrific of injustices. 

The Bible has constant warnings to the Church about its role in society and the danger of spiritualising the faith into a religious and pious ghetto. In the Old Testament prophecy of Amos God would in no uncertain terms highlight what his priorities for the community of faith are: 

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts;

I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings

And grain offerings

I will not accept them.

Though you bring me choice offerings

I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs!

I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

Yet, the church seems to ignore such clear Biblical mandates and spends resources and all its efforts in religious events and conferences rather than seeking that justice and righteousness in the world around them. Many times passages like these are wished away by spiritualising the meaning and somehow ignoring the reality of Amos’s context of very clear social inequalities. Particularly in evangelical circles the vast crusades of Billy Graham were held in reverential awe at the same time when Martin Luther King’s non violent campaign to bring justice were deemed at least liberal and at worst something near demonic. A look in the mirror of the Scriptures of Amos might have at the very least redressed the balance in what we perceived to have been the most Biblical of the different campaign of Graham and King in the late fifties and sixties. In 1958 when King had urged Graham not to allow himself to be used by Governor Price Daniels, a segregationist, the Governor of Texas in his re-election bid. Graham’s right hand man would write to King and say that Billy Graham never gets involved in politics. Thirty years after King’s murder Graham would speak of King as “the most eloquent spokesperson of the civil rights movement, a champion of justice for all people…” Sad that he could not have stood with someone he so admired!

As King’s brothers in Christ kept him at arms length Bob Dylan filled the gap – the (rock)folkies cries out! He sang Blowing In The Wind and Only A Pawn In Their Game at the Washington Rally in August 1963 when King made his legendary I Have A Dream speech. Others to perform included Dylan’s lover at that moment, Joan Baez, Peter Paul And Mary, who had brought him to the wider audience with their version of Blowing In The Wind, and the legendary Mahalia Jackson. It had been Jackson who inspired King’s iconoclastic speech by shouting as if to a black preacher “Tell us your dream Martin!” King had indeed begun his speech by alerting the listener to the significance of the day that he said, “will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”  

Indeed Andy Gill would go as far as to say that King was one of the connections in Dylan that drew him to understand the power of the Bible. He writes, “He has always been keenly aware of biblical discourse as a useful storehouse of mythopoeic folk imagery, littering his songs with references to parables and prophets; and as he got involved with the civil rights movement, Dylan surely recognised the commitment of church leaders like Martin Luther King, and the strength King’s followers drew from their faith. Indeed, many of his songs from this period suggest his acknowledgement that protest anthems are, in effect secular hymns, and his delivery frequently takes on a sermonizing cast.” 


FITZROY'S COMMUNITY KITCHEN - MUTUAL WELCOMING

Community Kitchen

From beginning to end The Bible calls for the care of widows, orphans and strangers particularly. The law, the prophets, Jesus and Acts remind us of this duty. For me they are signs of the kingdom.

Those who Jesus will welcome into the kingdom will be those who welcomed in the stranger. 

It wasn’t rocket science for us in Fitzroy to recognise the newcomers in the hotels beside us as the strangers Jesus was talking about.

It started with my wife Janice, David Hall and Val Bowman. Janice and the congregation knit little bears as welcome bears for the children and relationships formed. 

What we became aware of was that not only were the hotels not making food from Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, Eritrea, Pakistan, Palestine, Iran Somalia or wherever else but perhaps more difficult was that our newcomers had no access to make their own food.

We in Fitzroy are blessed with good kitchens so we thought that we might invite our new neighbours to come and cook there. We then wondered what it would be like if we joined them to enjoy the food. 

We received a grant that allowed us to buy the food for our chefs and off we went. 

It has been an absolutely joyous event. Once a month we come together. Newcomers, many waiting for asylum and others still waiting, some living in the hotels beside us and others now in houses scattered across Belfast, gather with us Fitzers and we sit around tables enjoying food from two different exotic places. 

Around the tables stories are shared, language is learned and relationships are created. The same happen at the sink as Fitzers play the role of washers up.

It is only a part of our Newcomers ministry in Fitzroy. There is a mens group and while the children come to youth clubs parents meet and engage. A sense of safe space has been built. It also does the heart good watching our Fitzroy children playing alongside every colour of God’s skin catalogue.

Over recent years the hospitality ministry in Scripture has risen up my missional priority lists. As someone has said, in Luke’s Gospel Jesus is either at a meal or going to or leaving one. I have been taking that mention of hospitality in the list of gifts in Romans 12 a little more seriously.

Welcoming the stranger. As I left our last Community Kitchen, which had entertained over 80 adults and over 40 children I realised the mutual ministry happening around me. Our Yemen and Iranian friends had shown us hospitality and welcome in the amazing food that we enjoyed as much as we showed them welcome by giving them access to our kitchens. 

It is a little microcosm of God’s Shalom where it has to be WIN-WIN!


BELFAST RACIST PROTESTS - AN EDITED SURMISE

RACIST PROTESTS

A week after the deaths of those three children in their dance class in Southport, protests and riots have hit Southport, then Sunderland and now Belfast. The protests are against Muslims in our community. The 17 year old, accused of murdering the young girls was Muslim they say, therefore all Muslims were bad and needed ejected from our society. 

However, the young man was not Muslim and Islamophobia is no answer to the migration crisis happening across the world in the 21st century. 

In Belfast the riots got so close to home today that there were attacks on two hotels just beside Fitzroy (my church). I have heard of rioters taking selfies with the damaged windows that they had broken.

Other friends are in disbelief that this can be happening to us. Some telling me that they are in tears just thinking about it. Others have real fears for their Muslim friends. My family are in constant touch with our own friends who fear attack.. 

If any community in the British Isles should know of such illogical racism it is our very selves. Let me tell you when I and my family were treated as dangerous Northern Irish people back in the 1970s when the IRA were bombing across the islands.

It was a moment that frightened and deeply affected me. I was eleven years old. We were on holidays in the south of England looking for a Bed & Breakfast for the night. We had noticed someone walking past our car with a rather cautious look. 

While my dad enquired about vacancies in the B & B the police had arrived. Our car had been reported. It had Northern Ireland number plates and therefore we might be bombers. Even at 11 I realised that on mainland Britain I was thoughtlessly labelled Irish and the logical conclusion was that I was a terrorist and dangerous.

When I first heard Paul Brady’s Nothing But The Same Old Story it rang true. 

“Living under suspicion

Putting up with the hatred and fear in their eyes

You can see that you're nothing but a murderer

In their eyes, we're nothing but a bunch of murderers”

After 9/11 I found myself lumping races and religions all together and looking suspiciously at every middle eastern person on any flight that I happened to be on. Suddenly in my eyes… “they were nothing but a bunch of murderers.” Thankfully my own story shook me back to reality.

Beyond belief call to protest in Belfast today included the words on social media - ‘well intentioned Christians’. WHAT!? Whatever this is, it has nothing to do with Jesus or his intentions as to how we love our neighbour. The Parable of the Good Samaritan itself is a prophetic blast of Christ’s teaching against this kind of racism.

From the Old Testament laws through the prophets to the New Testament teaching of Jesus, the people of God are intentionally called to welcome and look after the stranger. In Leviticus (39:34) we read, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” The people of God knew what it was to live in another country and were to treat people with love, remembering that they were not when they were in Egpyt.

In his Parable about the Sheep and the Goats Jesus said that you would know his followers by how they treated the marginalised - For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (Matthew 25:35-36) 

The stranger? "Invited in”. That is Jesus’ intention, following through from the law and the prophets. At times of heightened tension and anger we need to be careful what we say to the other. I would not want to dehumanise the protestors. We need to be attempting to connect with those who seem to have such strong feelings. However, it seems to me that the closest you can come to being furthest away from our humanity under God is to wish harm or inflict harm on your fellow human. 

It is so good that so many church leaders have spoken out. It is vital to the betterment of our society that we stand against these kind of attacks. We need to assure those being targeted that we are for them and welcome them among us. 

Shalom.


MY RESPONSE TO THE CALL TO PROTEST MUSLIMS LIVING AMONG US

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Last week’s heart breaking attack on the dance class in Southport that led to the deaths of three children was tragically followed by street violence against the Muslim community. It seems that the illogical conclusion was that if the 17 year old, accused of murdering, the young girls was Muslim then all Muslims were bad and needed ejected from our society.

A week later and I am watching fear filled social media calls for protests in Northern Ireland against our Muslim community. Even more disturbing is the suggestion that this is somehow a call of the Christian faith.

If any community in the British Isles should know of such illogical racism it is our very selves. Let me tell you when I and my family were treated as dangerous Northern Irish people back in the 1970s when the IRA were bombing across the islands.

It was a moment that frightened and deeply effected me. I was eleven years old. We were on holidays in the south of England looking for a Bed & Breakfast for the night. We had noticed someone walking past our car with a rather cautious look. 

While my dad enquired about vacancies in the B & B the police had arrived. Our car had been reported. It had Northern Ireland number plates and therefore we might be bombers. Even at 11 I realised that on mainland Britain I was thoughtlessly labelled Irish and the logical conclusion was that I was a terrorist and dangerous.

When I first heard Paul Brady’s Nothing But The Same Old Story it rang true. 

“Living under suspicion

Putting up with the hatred and fear in their eyes

You can see that you're nothing but a murderer

In their eyes, we're nothing but a bunch of murderers”

After 9/11 I found myself lumping races and religions all together and looking suspiciously at every middle eastern person on any flight that I happened to be on. Suddenly in my eyes… “they were nothing but a bunch of murderers.” Thankfully my own story shook me back to reality.

Beyond belief is that the social media call to protest against Muslims here in Belfast is to ‘well intentioned Christians’. WHAT!? Whatever this is, it has nothing to do with Jesus or his intentions as to how we love our neighbour. The Parable of the Good Samaritan itself is a prophetic blast of Christ’s teaching against this kind of racism.

From the Old Testament laws through the prophets to the New Testament teaching of Jesus, the people of God are intentionally called to welcome and look after the stranger. In Leviticus (39:34) we read, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” The people of God knew what it was to live in another country and were to treat people with love, remembering that they were not.

In his Parable about the Sheep and the Goats Jesus said that you would know his followers by how they treated the marginalised - For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (Matthew 25:35-36) 

The stranger? "Invited in”. That is Jesus intention, following through from the law and the prophets.

So I pray that these protesters will think again. That there will be no protest. If there are, I pray that there would be no violence or injury. For my Muslim friends feeling “vulnerable and threatened”, some of whom were at our Summer Club this morning, may you find home and Jesus followers who will make you feel safe in a place where you feel that you belong.


JUNE 4 - 35 YEARS AFTER TIANANMEN SQUARE

Tank Tianenmin

There are moments when you make good choices over the song to play. Way back in August 1990 I pressed the play button on the old walkman (remember them) and Bruce Cockburn’s Waiting For A Miracle started throwing images around my head that mingled perfectly and disturbingly with the bombardment of images around me.

Like the ones who've cried
Like the ones who've died
Trying to set the angel in us free
While they're waiting for a miracle.

With my ears and my eyes in harmony to the disharmony, my soul attempted to make sense of my context. I was on Tiananmen Square. It was 16 months since June 4 1989 and the place was haunted by what happened there on that day. I wrote in my journal: -

“Tiananmen Square? All my thoughts on China, before and after I came here, ricocheted around the vast emptiness of this square. I will never forget this hour of my life and I’ll never be able to write down all that I thought in that too short a time.

It seemed so calm, so still, so peaceful and yet I am asking what happened here and what are the few people scattered around me thinking. I can see all these signs of history, the Monument to the People’s Heroes and Mao Mausoleum among them. But what about signs for the future? I watched people sitting, almost reverentially where the students sat the previous year and wondered what they were thinking. Did a loved one come here with a vision of a future and die for that future? The Chinese can so easily in their friendly and gentle disposition hide from us the truth of their hopes and fears.”

I have said it before and will say it again that Cockburn’s travelogue songs are so full of his lyrical genius that you just wish he was with you everywhere you go. Add places of political injustice and even more so. Waiting For A Miracle was written about Nicaragua but it fitted here. Never have I had such a detailed soundtrack to what I was seeing around me. Cockburn’s words could have been written as I attempted to write down my own thoughts: -

“Somewhere out there is a place that's cool
Where peace and balance are the rule
Working toward a future like some kind of mystic jewel
And waiting for a miracle.”

“Peace and balance” is a very Chinese concept. Working for a future and as the next verse suggests, “How come history takes such a long, long time/When you're waiting for a miracle.” A miracle? As I sat on my own, wondering and pondering and writing, Cockburn’s song was as Tolstoy suggested art should be, “Intercourse between human and human.” Cockburn and I were in conversation but more it became a resource for me to be in spiritual intercourse with God also.

And my prayer was that these people, particularly the children who all smiled for a photograph and then moved their heads right on my click, that an interruption of God’s grace would bring a peaceful and balanced future and see the speed of history quicken. Thirty five years on... and I remember that hour as vividly as when I was there and Cockburn still converses with me. Still I pray!


EMPTY SHOES LOST LIVES DEMO

Shoes
 
EMPTY SHOES, LOST LIVES DEMO
 
STORMONT,
 
SATURDAY, 17th JUNE@3.00PM
 
 
I have become more and more aware of our homeless in Belfast down through the years. 
 
Fitzroy have partnered with Homeplus in our local area with some of our congregation doing work on the streets.
 
Then Damian McNairney introduced me to the People's Kitchen, showing us around their new buildings in the old bank at Carlisle Circus. The 4 Corners Festival Knitters contributed hats to their work.
 
At the last 4 Corners Festival the Westcourt Centre Camera Club put on the Never In My Wildest Dreams Exhibition (see some work at the top of this blog), working alongside residents in supported accommodation in Rosemount House. It was an eye opener for me, just months after a summer when we lost too many people on our streets.
 
In Belfast for the most part it is not drug takers who are homeless. The drug dealers are infiltrating our homeless, leading them into addiction and sadly suicide. 
 
Desmund Tutu has said, "There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in."
 
For me it is easy when we pull people out to concentrate on them. When we ask why they are falling in then we find the spotlight on ourselves and the society we live in. We are complicit in the falling in before we are a help in the pulling out.
 
Jesus of course told it straight. It is those who care for the homeless who will be welcomed into eternal life. That care should never be at the point of pulling out but way further upstream. 
 
Let us ask questions of our politicians at Stormont on Saturday!
 
 

COMPASSIONATE POLITICAL LEADERS

Compassion in Politics

In our Fitzroy Zoom Prayer Meeting for a few years now we have prayed for World Leaders. It’s what the Bible asks of us. Let us be honest the world could do with some leaders right now.

I started thinking about leaders. Matthew writes in chapter 9 verse 36 of his Gospel account:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

In The Message Eugene Peterson paraphrases compassion with ‘his heart broke”.

This for me is the mark of good leadership. The priority of the leader is the people. Do not get me wrong, we cannot eliminate the principle of institutionalised governance BUT those things should never be the priority. Leadership is relational, emotional and compassionate. It is about people.

I feared that some would say but this is Jesus being spiritual. It might say something for Church leaders but not for politicians. Then in preparation for a sermon on John 10, a commentator suggested that when Jesus spoke about thieves and robbers climbing into the sheep pen he was not just talking about the Pharisees but the Romans too. They were after the peoples’ allegiance. There was no compassion, therefore there was oppression. I now had a robust argument and an Independent newspaper headline “Voters want more compassionate politicians” suggested I was on to something! 

Many of us are heartbroken when 90 year old relations are waiting for half a day for an ambulance, when loved ones on horrendous hospital waiting lists, when our education system is over stretched, when working people are using Foodbank, when we see the homeless dying on our streets with hundreds of buildings boarded up. 

We need leaders with compassion for people not a greater love for principles or ideologies, never mind outdated ideologies. 

So, I am looking for the compassionate leaders. The recent budget and the cuts across our society is not the result of compassionate leadership. Some of our own politicians are to blame. The Tories trying to blame them are complicit too. 

I am looking for leaders who are looking at the marginalised in our society who Jesus cared for most; the sick, the hungry, the homeless, the refugee.

A broken heart for such people and compassion upon them will drive leaders to policies of change and care. I would add that I am looking for leaders who care for ALL, not just those in their ideological constituency.


MILD HALLOWEEN WEATHER - A JOY OR AN ALARM BELL RINGING?

Weather Oct 22

I stepped out tonight. It was around 10pm. I realised that it was the first time I had done it since March 2020. My first post Covid-19  trip to the Petrol Station. It’s almost Halloween… and I didn’t need a coat. Late October… Belfast… no coat! Whaaat!

My father-in-law has commented most days recently after he has lifted the leaves in the garden about how amazing the weather is. 86 years of late Octobers and he can hardly believe it how mild it is. He is loving it. Michaela Strachan on BBC’s Autumn Watch called the weather extraordinary! 

Then at the Fitzroy Zoom Prayer Meeting Tony started sharing in what we call our Big World Prayer Points. Tony took us to Kathmandu where there is a dengue fever endemic. The particular mosquitos that carry dengue have moved into the Kathmandu valley because of the change in the weather and temperature, making lots of people ill and killing many.

I was suddenly reminded of a few lines from the late great songwriter Mark Heard who sang on Some Folks World - 

Rain can ruin your weekend
Or rain can spare your life
Depending on who you are and what your thirst is like

It is almost an upside down version. The effects of our climate crisis gives us a warm and lovely Halloween while it is causing deaths in the Nepalese capital.

Let us not be fooled though. There are no long time winners with the crisis of climate change. Yes, I believe that for sure the poor will feel the brunt of the early changes to our weather systems. We should not be complacent. The long term results will impact us all, or at least our children and theirs.

So as we bask in crazy late October temperatures and wonder if we will ever need our heavier tog duvets let it be an alarm bell going of. This is not a glorious new world but the warning of a doomsday to come unless we act NOW!


PRAYERS FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE AND COP26

COP prayers

Lord, we worship you

Creator of the world

Sustainer of the Universe

The Lagan Towpath, kingfishers and seals

Creator of the Antrim coast

The beaches and ocean

The headlands and forests

The 40 shades of green

Creator of the Mournes

The vistas of mountain peaks

The views from there.

God, thank you for the beauty of your art.

 

Lord we ask for your forgiveness

For how careless we have been with our Father’s art

For how reckless we have been

For how we have turned our stewardship vocation

Into a miss-use and abuse of creation for our own ends

For the greed that thinks only of self and more

For the comforts we hold too dear at the cost of the ripping up of your art

For working against you rather than with you for climate justice

For the state in which your art now lies

Lord we ask for your forgiveness

 

And Lord, John tells us that If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”

 

So do more than forgive us Lord

Purify us from all unrighteousness

This particular week 

Show us our unrighteousness in relation to creation

Help us see

What has been done

What is being done

And what we can do to repent and transform and change

Lord set us free from our greed

From our diminished theology

From our violence to the earth

Set us free to be those who care for the world of our father’s hand

Who care for a creation that also groans for its full salvation

Set us free to make decisions 

In our lives

In our homes

In our places of work

In our cities to halt the environmental catastrophe

Set us free to allow political leaders meeting in Glasgow

To make decisions that might make our lives less comfortable

Less wealthy

That they might save our planet

 

Lord, start with us not the leaders

May we be the custodians of your art that you created us to be

And Jesus redeemed us to be,

 

Amen.  


COP 26 - WHAT ARE WE PREPARED TO SACRIFICE TO SAVE THE PLANET

COP 26 Boris

COP26 has us all looking at Glasgow and thinking about saving the environment. Such gatherings of world leaders can give a real opportunity for pressure groups to march and make demands of our leaders. 

The beginning of COP26 has been encouraging in the speeches made and also the commitment to stop deforestation and cut methane emissions levels. Maybe they are listening.

The truth is that, even at my most cynical, I think that most leaders would like to make big decisions. I think that most would love to be on the right side of this historical crisis.

I wonder though what the pressures are on them are. Oh without doubt there will be pressures from big business, oil companies etc. The economy is the heartbeat of the modern world. Money literally makes the world go around. It creates jobs, pays for infrastructure and prevents poverty.

So, to put ourselves in the chairs of the Presidents and Prime Ministers they must be wondering at how their populations will respond to the decisions they finally do make.

It is one thing for me to march in Belfast on Saturday, or go to a Worship and Prayer Event before it, and to be prepared for the cost that it will be to my luxury and comfort to put the breaks on the environmental catastrophe that is reigning down upon us.

To make sure that we recycle is the easy thing though I still get angry at children of the Creator who play loose with seemingly not one bit bothered about caring for his art! 

Taking the bus will be easy. 

Trying to reduce our plastic will be easy.

What about the use of our cars? I remember when my mother got a work car and we were the freak family with two cars. With a parent, a cousin and a daughter regularly living with us there can now be 4 cars outside our house! 

What about flying? Some of us have family in Australia or British Columbia. Are we prepared to limit our visits and seeing grandparents and grandchildren? 

Some of us have missional connections across the world. Might we have to limit short term mission trips? 

When we travel to visit family across the UK are we prepared to take the least environmental damaging way?

Are we prepared to eat less red meat to save forests and are we willing to buy local produce at a higher cost or do without specialised fruit that comes from thousands of miles away. We love our avocados! 

We need to understand that the decisions that we are demanding from our leaders actually happen that it is going to curtail our lifestyles. We cannot ask for them to act and then vote against them at elections because the decisions that we demanded make our lives seem less. 

The world leaders at COP26 have no magic wand on saving our planet, God’s precious art as some of us describe it. The catastrophe we are in will need massive once in a generation decisions from our world leaders BUT also a total commitment to small everyday decisions from us and a declaration of our willingness to take the hit on our way of life to leave a world for our grandchildren. 

Marching is easy… before we march… what are we prepared to sacrifice to save the planet.