A new personal blog .. just gone live on William Temple Foundation site .
With seasonal best wishes to all our readers
Ranters of Mow Cop
Wednesday, 9 December 2015
Friday, 20 November 2015
Woe to the Rich
Warning to rich oppressors - James 5 (NIVUK)
5 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
This week our church home group tried to tackle this passage. It is indeed fiery stuff, though it's not the only place in the Bible such thoughts are written. (e.g. Amos 4;1 5;10-15 Isaiah 3;12-17 Luke 6;24-25). And even this weeks SU Word Alive Bible notes dealt with the rich young ruler and Jesus' one-liner about camels and the eye of a needle.
So how do we apply this stuff today. Indeed who are the rich and oppressors we may encounter today. Here's a possible list:
- The Saudi Princes wallowing in their oilfields
- The Russian oligarchs buying up the Premier League and half of
- The merchant banker gamblers who were responsible for the great crash of 2008
- The arms traders who sponsor war and terror
- The people traffickers who profit from human misery
- The politicians with mansions and duck houses funded at public expense
- The employers who put their staff on zero hours contracts and fail to pay the living and often the minimum wage
- The petty loan sharks and pay day lenders who profit from the desperate poor
- The DWP job centres who sanction desperate benefit claimants for trivial reasons
- The consumers who want a bargain regardless of who has been exploited in the process
- The affluent pensioners who rely on investments in less than ethical funds
- Every reasonably comfortable family who benefits from the global economic system
- and not least chiefly ourselves
We discussed in our home group whether, since James was speaking to "you rich" whether there were any rich oppressors in his audience in the early church. We didn't come to a conclusion about that, but we agreed it is clear that just being a Christian does not in itself protect you from the possibility of behaving like this. There is actually and potential sin in each one of us - perhaps it takes the commandment "Thou shalt not covet" to make it clear. And as James wrote in 2;10 whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it .
However, if James and Amos and Jesus were divinely inspired to cry out against the rich who oppressed "the least of these" then it seems obvious that we too have a right, and probably a duty, to denounce and warn the perpetrators when we see injustice and oppression in the church and the world around us. We may be less than perfect and less than pure ourselves, and as long as we are humble enough to admit that and rely on God's grace and forgiveness we are still called to cry loudly for justice anf freedom from oppression.
That of course may lead to denial, opposition and even martyrdom, but we are called to speak truth to power, and to pray that oppressors might repent and change their evil ways.
Friday, 6 November 2015
Saturday, 17 October 2015
On not keeping pure....
A while ago I blogged on the issues currently shaping the activities of
Our Second-Rate Third Sector? Charity in the Age of Austerity
I endorsed the view of
National Commission for Independent Action (NCIA) (that) , voluntary services face a bleak future as 'servants of the Government'. The NCIA challenges voluntary groups to take urgent action to fight for the rights of the people they serve, protect their independence and resist the privatisation of public services.
Subsequently there has been an extended discussion in the mailing list of the network that emerged from NCIA about the reality that
that mainstream think tanks and 'sector leaders' are slowly 'waking from their dogmatic slumbers' about the fundamental shift that appears to have overtaken the voluntary sector in the welfare field
and debates about how radical practitioners and academics should deal with this mainstreaming of concern
and the blog articles on the theme at
I wonder if the elephant in the room is that all of us who work in the sector (whether as service delivery practitioners, academics or agitators/connectors) actually have vested interests in that we need to find a livelihood - unless of course we have private means such as a pension or a fortune... or unless we are willing to earn a tiny living by a minimum wage job... gone are the days when you could finance your subversive activity by being on the dole...
That means that most of us are beholden to funders (be they statutory, charitable or private sector) if we want to keep and fulfill the roles we have in our jobs. That means that it's impossible to be totally pure and uncompromised...though we can all make some attempt to stand up and be guided by the fundamental values we believe in..and shape our work activities according to them. But it's a familiar problem as Jermy Corbyn among others has discoverered... Not everybody will agree with you...and people are going to take different stances... some are going to be more opportunistic in taking funding or power when it comes...
Yes, it is very frustrating when those in the vanguard of a movement find late arrivals at the ball, better resourced and either reinventing the wheel without acknowledging the previous work or domesticating the issue with mild reformist rather than radical measures.. But in a sense that's just life and politics and we need to get on with it...
And some of the getting on with it is about organizing and trying to built a movement.. I've been dipping in and out as an observer rather than a convinced follower to the broad based Community organizing movement over the years.. and recently been reading Luke Bretherton's book
Resurrecting Democracy
Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/resurrecting-democracy-faith-citizenship-and-politics-common-life
It's quite deep and academic in political theory and theology but it covers a lot of relevant issues.. What I like about the BBCO approach is that it works out a way to be confrontational on issues yet relational with the enemy at the same time... What I find frustrating is that by building a movement by consensus it can lose the radical cutting edge and fail to see or make use of the clear analysis that shows the hegemoniuc system is rotten...and you end up in reformist mode.. just chipping away at winnable issues
Ther is an interesting reflection on this in this blog...
https://syndicatetheology.com/commentary/ecotones-and-the-arts-of-radical-ecclesia-and-radical-democracy/ which is a review of Rieger & Lan "Occupy Religion" https://syndicatetheology.com/symposium/occupy-religion/
Have read and see what you think...
Wednesday, 2 September 2015
It's Not Easy Being British
My New blog for the William Temple Foundation
http://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/not-easy-being-british-terrorism-values-greg-smith/
In a new post, our Associate Research Fellow Greg Smith considers Christian responses to immigration, the British values project and religious freedom.
Thursday, 18 June 2015
My latest Blog on Immigration
Multi-layered and informative: the latest blog from Greg Smith for the William Temple Foundation on some of the political, economic, ethical and theological responses to immigration - attempting to bring some light to the heat and as ever, based on extensive personal experience in the field.
Wednesday, 3 June 2015
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