sojourner2915

Radio silence

2010-07-24T14:49:00.002+01:00

If you haven't noticed already blogging has been fairly light the last few months. That's not because I don't have anything I'd like to say but because I have a PhD to finish (not too long to go now!). I hope to recommence blogging in the not too distant future.

Deutschland über Eltern: The case of home-schooling in Germany

2010-02-02T01:17:00.058Z

As various media outlets have reported, a German family has been granted political asylum in the United States. (HT: Ed West; for English-language coverage see here, here and here; for German coverage of the family's application before the court's decision see here and here and for coverage in German after US court had granted the family asylum see here, here, and here.) Now of course the decision is subject to a possible appeal by the US Government but unless or until that happens the Romeike family are legitimate asylum seekers in the United States, having fled state persecution in Germany. What on earth is a US court in 2010 doing granting Germans political asylum for persecution by German authorities? Isn't this the stuff of objectionable regimes such as Nazi Germany (1933-1945) or modern day North Korea or Zimbabwe and not modern liberal democracies? Surely Germany in 2010 doesn't persecute a subset of its citizens on the basis of their religious, philosophical or political beliefs (or even worse their race), I hear you ask. What's all the fuss about?

Well, Herr and Frau Romeike want to home school their children. And home-schooling happens to be illegal in Germany. In the United States, however, it is not only legal but also quite popular (in most countries only a handful of children are home schooled but one study puts the number of children home schooled in 2005-6 in the United States at between 1.9 million and 2.4 million). Many (but certainly not all) of the people who home school (or wish to home school) their children do so for "religious" reasons. Dissatisfied with the idea of their children being educated in a (to their mind) godless and malignant state education system, some Christian parents (typically evangelical Protestant Christians) wish to educate their children outside of the state sector. Many do so by sending their children to private schools more in line with the parents' own values but a minority choose to educate their children themselves at home. As devout evangelical Christians dissatisfied with the German state education system the Romeikes fall into this category. In most Western countries, home-schooling is legal. Germany, however, is an exception among western nations, and an interesting one at that. Obviously Germany has the scar of the abhorrent Nazi totalitarian regime and the persecution that took place thereunder. One might be forgiven for thinking that in light of the fact that compulsory school education was used as a means of indoctrinating Germans in Nazi ideology that modern post-war Germany would be alert to the reality that compulsory school attendance can be used as a means of inculcating children in a particular ideology and therefore eschew "totalitarianism" in matters educational, instead allowing parents the freedom of choice as to how they educate their children, so long as they do it (and do it well). And unlike many other European countries, Germany also has a significant indigenous tradition of evangelical Protestant Christianity. It's not as if families with a world view like that of the Romeikes are something unusual -- "off the chart" one might say -- in Germany (as they might be in a traditionally Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox country). Yes, modern Germany is a largely secular country and institutional Christianity is dominated by the two large churches -- the largely liberal state Lutheran-Reformed Church and the Roman Catholic Church. But there has long been a significant minority of "evangelicals" (in the modern English sense of that word) in Germany both in the state Lutheran-Reformed church as well as in a number of Protestant free churches. Given the history of Christianity in Germany you would not expect Germans to think "what? there are people in Germany who believe that?" but rather "yes, that is a viewpoint that has a significant historical pedigree in our society and these people are generally good citizens". I'm certainly not saying that evangelical Protestants are the only group who wish to home school their children. Far from it. What I am saying is that modern day recognition of such "rights" doesn't simply come into existence ex nihlio but often out of the history and underlying ethos of a society and one might expect countries with a significant evangelical Protestant history to have more sympathy for the position of families such as the Romeikes than countries with no such history and where the rest of society has more trouble understanding their position.

Now as I mentioned, home-schooling in Germany is (with a very few limited exceptions) illegal. While most western nations have compulsory education (leaving parents the option of sending their children to school or educating them at home) Germany has compulsory school attendance (rendering home-schooling illegal). Furthermore, parents in Germany who refuse to send their children to a state school or a state-approved private school (and until recently private schools in Germany were quite a rare phenomenon and in comparison to the English-speaking world still are) are subject to criminal prosecution which if found guilty means being fined and, if the parents refuse to repent of their ways, jailed. In extreme cases the state can even remove children from the care of their parents, taking them into the care of the state (although in the case of the Romeikes it didn't come to that; what we had were police turning up in the morning and forcibly taking the children from their home and bringing them to school). The current ban on home-schooling in Germany has an interesting pedigree. Universal compulsory school attendance was first introduced in Prussia in the 18th Century (at a guess I suppose it was designed as an efficient means of bringing education for the first time to the masses although I do not claim to be an expert on this aspect of German history) while the current post-WW2 German ban on home-schooling can trace a direct link to a pre-WW2 law from the time of the Third Reich. The 1938 Act in fact stated an overtly ideological and totalitarian justification for universal compulsory school attendance:

§ 1. Allgemeine Schulpflicht. Im Deutschen Reich besteht allgemeine Schulpflicht. Sie sichert die Erziehung und Unterweisung der deutschen Jugend im Geiste des Nationalsozialismus. Ihr sind alle Kinder und Jugendlichen deutscher Staatsangehörigkeit unterworfen, die im Inlande ihren Wohnsitz oder gewöhnlichen Aufenthalt haben.
(2) Die Schulpflicht ist durch Besuch einer reichsdeutschen Schule zu erfüllen. Über Ausnahmen entscheidet die Schulaufsichtsbehörde.

which translates into English as (and the translation is mine):

§ 1. Universal Compulsory School Attendance. In the German Reich there shall be universal compulsory school attendance. This ensures that German youth will be raised and instructed in the spirit of National Socialism. All children and youth of German nationality whose domicile or usual place of abode is in Germany shall be subject to compulsory school attendance.
(2) The duty to attend school is to be discharged by attending a school of the German Reich [i.e. a state school]. The school supervisory board shall have the power to to make exceptions.

In other words, before the war the reason given for compulsory school attendance in Germany was to enable the Nazi totalitarian state to control education and indoctrinate children in the subtleties of Nazi ideology. Of course in the aftermath of World War II the overtly Nazi rationale for compulsory school attendance in Germany was quietly dropped, but the substantive provisions of the 1938 law remained in force. Over the years the law has gradually been amended in other regards but to this day school attendance is, with very limited exceptions (such as disabled children whose disability prevents them from travelling to school) compulsory in Germany and home-schooling is illegal. While the Nazis made school attendance in Germany compulsory in order to "ensure[] that German youth will be raised and instructed in the spirit of National Socialism", and while post-Nazi Germany may have dropped the abhorrent Nazi ideology and the rationale for compulsory school attendance of indoctrinating youth in this abhorrent ideology, the compulsion to attend a state school (or a state approved private school) remained. What possible justification could the modern German state have for such a ban? And does this violate the rights of parents such as Herr and Frau Romeike to educate their children in accordance with their own values and wishes?

Well, first of all it should be pointed out that some German states (although not all of Germany as far as I can tell) had a history of compulsory school attendance (as opposed to compulsory education) before the 1938 law so I am not meaning to suggest that the Nazis are entirely responsible for this practice. Moreover, Article 7 of the current German Constitution (Grundgesetz) guarantees (1) that (except in special non-confessional schools) religious education shall be part of the ordinary curriculum in state schools, (2) that parents have the right to decide whether or not their children attend these religious education classes and (3) that (subject to some important qualifications) there is a right to found private schools, including schools with a particular religious or philosophical orientation. So there is still some level of official recognition that parents have rights in regard to their childrens' education. The German state would no doubt argue that because of this it is respecting the "rights" of families in relation to the education of children. On this view yes, parents have a right to their religious beliefs and they have a right to see that their children are educated in accordance therewith. But (and this is an important but) this does not amount to parents educating their children themselves. The state has an interest in educating children and compelling school attendance. So there is a "balancing" of interests here with the result that parents can either send their children to the local state school where they will receive religious education as part of the curriculum or they can send their children to a state-approved private school of the parents' choosing. Reasonable? Well there's the usual modern platitude to the "balancing" of individual and state interests and most people in modern Germany as well as in several other liberal democracies would consider this approach an eminently sensible "compromise" and stop at that.

On closer inspection, however, this episode is not really about religion at all but about the role of the state vis-à-vis parents in the education of children. This is not really a question of a person being targeted because of his religious beliefs. It is much more general than that. It is about who has the ultimate say in how children are educated: parents or the state? It really is that stark a choice. "Religion" was the "trigger" in this case and tends to be in most cases for the simple reason that it is by and large "religious" people (typically conservative evangelical Christians) who want to "opt out" of the state system and educate their children at home. But if German atheists or agnostics wanted to educate their children at home (not that any to my knowledge do) then presumably they would run into similar difficulties as these (and many other) German Christians.

Germany (and I have lived there) simply does not believe in the fundamental right and responsibility of parents to educate their children. Most Germans -- and probably most Europeans -- don't think like that. For most Germans education is the task of the state and not of parents and, moreover, the state has a legitimate interest in forcing parents to send their children to state or state-approved schools (even if the parents strongly object to what is being taught in those schools). Talk to a German about this issue and the main argument for forcing children to attend government-approved schools is a desire to prevent the emergence of what they (not I) term religiously or philosophically (weltanschaulich) motivated "parallel societies" (Parallelgesellschaften). This too is essentially the rationale given by the German courts when German home-schoolers have gone (or been dragged) before the courts in that country (see for example here [especially paragraphs 7-9] where the German Federal Constitutional Court gives exactly this justification).

What was a superficially plausible justification (the need to balance the state's interest with parents' wishes) is on closer examination nothing of the sort. Germany has rejected the overt totalitarianism of the Nazi era and replaced it with a kind of "soft totalitarianism" where the state still controls the ideology of the education of children. Parents educating their children in accordance with their own religious and philosophical (weltanschaulich) views is a direct challenge to the authority to state-approved ideologies. That is what the "parallel societies" argument boils down to. Parents cannot be trusted with the education of their children lest they be taught something other than state-approved ideology; if not the Vaterland itself then certainly the Vaterland's liberal progressive establishment knows best. One Thomas Vitzhum opined in the German newspaper die Welt in an opinion piece headed "Die Romeikes schaden ihren eigenen Kindern" ("The Romeikes are harming their own children"):

For a long time it was difficult for parents in Germany to have their children educated differently from that which was prescribed in the state syllabuses ... But over the years much has changed. The private schools are flourishing, increasing in number and often based on a particular religion or the pursuit of other ideals. Government grants and official exemptions make it possible even for poorer people to attend these schools. Why didn't the Romeikes spare their children a lot of trouble and look for a school here in Germany? The suspicion remains that they weren't just thinking of what an ideal school can be but rather of what the ideal society must be. Even in Tennessee they'll need more sangfroid. [Translation mine; click here for the original German.]

I find this sentiment highly objectionable. It elevates "school" over "education" and society over parents. Simply put Vitzhum thinks the state -- and he of course -- knows better than Herr and Frau Romeike about what is in the interests of their children. The interest of society trumps the right of parents. To Vitzhum's mind the Romeikes have put their children through an ordeal by needlessly shifting continents and subjecting them to home education when the benevolent Vaterland deigns to allow a few educational ~~wackos~~ visionaries and religious ~~nutcases~~ minorities their own "schools" (strictly supervised by the Vaterland's thought police of course). By all means feel free to dissent on what the ideal school might look like, but do not ever suggest that education might ideally be carried out in a context other than that of a state-approved school. For Vitzhum and the German state the idea of home-schooling is simply too subversive to countenance.

Compare this, however, with the reported remarks of Judge Burman, the American judge who granted them asylum:

We can't expect every country to follow our [i.e. the US] constitution. The world might be a better place if it did. However, the rights being violated here are basic human rights that no country has a right to violate.

Judge Burman, moreover, was critical of the German authorities' justification for the ban on home-schooling in its desire to stamp out "parallel societies", calling this "odd" and "silly", concluding that while Germany is a democratic country and an ally, its particular policy of persecuting home-schoolers is "repellent to everything we believe as Americans".

While I'm not American I would join His Honour and add that it's repellent to everything I believe as an Australian and as a human being. The vast majority of Germans, however, are comfortable living under such a system where the state usurps the role of parents in the education of children. What is expedient for the state trumps the right of parents. In other words, the Vaterland knows best and parents be damned. The only exception to this in Germany is in the very specific area of religious education whereby parents are granted a right under Art 7 of the German Constitution (as I have already mentioned above) but even here the right is limited in that the state gets to say who is a recognised religious community (jediism doesn't count!) and, even assuming a religious community is recognised by the state as a legitimate religion, what persons are qualified to teach religious education (I couldn't for example teach it even if parents were happy to have me teaching it to their children or indeed my church was happy to have to me teach religious education in its name). Germany is a totalitarian country when it comes to the education of children. It really is as simple as that -- there are no two ways about it. The German Vaterland replaces German Eltern (parents) and the German Familie (family) in its decisions about the education of its children: "Deutschland über Eltern".

Like Gerald Warner, I find this kind of statism objectionable and inimical to basic human dignity but when I have tried arguing this position with my German friends (or other statists more generally) most of them struggle to understand the position that parents are the proper educator of children and not the state. A state does not own the children living within its borders. Yes, society has an interest in seeing that children are well educated and will grow up to be conscientious members of society, but that interest does not displace the right (and responsibility) of parents to educate their own children. So of course the state can play a role in education, but it is a mistake to argue that it must, let alone that it must to the exclusion of families. The only authority the state has in the education of children is a derived authority: The right and responsibility of educating children lies with parents and not with the state and in discharging this responsibility parents have a choice of how to educate their children. One possibility is by educating them at home (either the parents themselves acting as teachers or by hiring outside help such as a private tutor). Another option would be to send them to a school (either a state school or a private school). In today's world the vast majority of parents choose to do the latter. When parents do this (or hire a private tutor) they are delegating the education of their children to a third party. That is their right and we should respect that. Importantly, however, parents remain responsible for what their children are taught even when they choose to delegate their child's education to a third party such as a school or a private tutor. Some parents (admittedly a very small minority) will choose to exercise their responsibility of educating their children in a more direct manner by educating them at home. That too is their right and the state should respect that.

Long before there was any such thing as the modern nation-state or state education parents were having children and educating them. And as a Christian I would also contend that the right and responsibility of parents to educate their children is divinely ordained and simply cannot be legitimately usurped by the state. Of course a state can in practice do this, but to do so is to exceed its legitimate authority. A state which compels attendance at one the schools on its approved list, denying parents the possibility of educating their children at home, exceeds its legitimate God-given authority. The state is not omni-competent. And nor are the family or the individual for that matter. God has ordained each to its own end. The state can certainly assist parents in their task of educating their children and parents are free to send their children to state schools (or state-subsidised private schools) if they wish but how children are educated is fundamentally a matter for parents and not the state to decide.

There is a question of principle involved here. What, after all, is the difference between the state schools of the Third Reich and those of modern-day Baden-Württemberg (from whence the Romeikes fled), Tennessee (to which the Romeikes fled), New South Wales (where I was educated) or anywhere else for that matter? That they are not ideologically "neutral" should not be in dispute. The modern Baden-Württemberg or Tennessee or New South Wales state education systems are every bit as ideological as the state education system of Nazi Germany ever was. The difference is, of course, the ideology on which the systems are based. Now obviously modern German schools are not based on an ideology anywhere near as pernicious as Nazism. Please don't misunderstand me on this point. But modern state (whether in Germany or elsewhere) schools are inescapably "ideological"; there is simply no such thing as ideologically "neutral" education. Once we realise this the question becomes one of who decides the underlying ideology of a child's education: Parents or the state?

As a thought experiment consider the following: What if the schools of the Third Reich had offered "religious education" for Christians and Jews and exempted the children of atheists from attending them? Would you say that that education was an acceptable education? Could Christian, Jewish and atheist parents be satisfied with the education their children were getting? I certainly wouldn't. Chance are the religious education classes would be abused by the state and become outlets for Nazi propaganda. As a Christian I would not be confident that my children were being taught the Christian faith I embrace and want them also to embrace. But even if the religious education classes were not an outlet for Nazi ideology, the rest of the curriculum most certainly would be. Children would be subjected to Nazi ideology in their biology classes, their history classes, their economics classes, their German classes and so on and so forth irrespective of what is or isn't taught in the name of "religious education" It's not about whether you offer religious education classes to those parents who want them for their children or exempt from attendance the children of those who do not want them. It's about the entire underlying ideology of the rest of the education. The point is that all education is "ideological" -- not just (so-called) "religious education". What is the underlying ideology in your physics classes or history classes or sex education?

Why should children be subjected to that kind of Nazi ideology in the name of physics or history or sex education or what have you? And why should parents who object to this ideology be forced to have their children subjected to this ideology in the name of those subjects? And if you concede the point that forcing parents to have their children subjected to Nazi ideology by the state is bad then the question arises about other ideologies. What is the difference between forcing parents to send their children to a state school based on Nazi ideology and forcing them to send their children to a different ideology (such as modern aggressively secular politically correct "progressive" multiculti moral relativism)? Is it merely that one is wrong and/or malign while the other is right and/or benign? Here too I would say no. For what it's worth I think both are wrong and malign. But even if I thought modern aggressively secular politically correct "progressive" multiculti moral relativism was right or at least benign I would still say that the state has no business forcing parents to have their children indoctrinated according to this ideology in a state-approved school. Who after all is to say that the prevailing ideology (or value-system if you prefer a less charged word) in state schools (or the available state-approved private schools) is "right" for a child's education? Is it the state? Or the child's parents? That is my point.

Education is not ideologically "neutral" -- and that applies as much to the teaching of history, economics, biology, "sex education" etc as it does to "religious education" -- and I suspect the modern German state knows that all too well. Its stated reason for forcing children to attend one of its approved schools is not to ensure they are receiving adequate instruction but rather to suppress religiously and philosophically motivated "parallel societies". The reason the German state wants a monopoly on education is ultimately to control the world view of individuals. It doesn't want people thinking (too) differently from the official state line on a whole range of issues. When it boils down to it this really isn't that different in principle from clearly totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany (1933-45), communist East Germany, the Soviet Union or modern day North Korea. While it may not be as "hard" a form of totalitarianism as those examples, it is still a form of totalitarianism nonetheless.

Sadly this kind of statism (or "soft" totalitarianism) in education is not restricted to Germany. It is increasingly the common paradigm throughout much of the Western world. Have we learnt nothing from the tragic experiment with various forms of totalitarianism in the twentieth century?

Yo, waddup wit da E-con?

2010-01-26T14:56:00.005Z

This one goes out to all my homies in Bruges (if you get what I'm saying) (HT: Cranmer) :-D

Stick that in your blunt and smoke it!

For your listening pleasure

2009-12-01T19:48:00.010Z

Along with the rest of the Choir of the Queen's College Oxford, I shall be appearing on BBC Radio 3's Choral Evensong program later this month.

The initial broadcast in the UK will be on BBC Radio 3 at 4pm GMT on Wednesday 23rd December 2009 and the program will be repeated at 4pm GMT on Sunday 27th December 2009. As well as listening on the radio in the UK, for those both in and outside the UK you can also listen to BBC Radio 3 live online via the BBC website and individual programs (such as the one featuring the choir) are available on demand via the website for -- I think -- up until a week after the repeat broadcast. This last option is particularly convenient for those located in a time zone not conducive to listening to the live broadcast.

The music will be mainly Iberian renaissance polyphony:

Versicle and Response: Deus in adjutorium (Padilla)
Rorate caeli desuper (Guerrero)
Psalms: 110, 147 - Dixit Dominus (Padilla), Lauda Jerusalem (Patiño)
First Lesson: Isaiah 55
Office Hymn: The Angel Gabriel (Basque trad., arr. Pettman)
Magnificat (Morales)
Second Lesson: Matthew 1:18-23
Nunc Dimittis (Coelho)
Homily: Prof. Christopher Rowland
Anthems: (1) Ave Maria (de Cristo); (2) Pastores, si nos queréis (Guerrero); (3) O magnum mysterium (Victoria)
Alma redemptoris mater (Fernandez)
Verbum caro factum est (Lobo)
Organ Voluntary: Tiento y discurso de segundo tono (Correa de Araujo)

Double vision

2009-11-23T16:11:00.001Z

HT: One Salient Oversight

One rule for us and another for you

2009-11-16T16:19:00.021Z

Gerard Henderson has raised a good point about double standards in the reaction by the mainstream media to the recent interference by the British High Commissioner "Baroness" Amos in Australian politics compared with a similar incident in 2003 by the then US ambassador to Australia. In 2003 our leftist media doyens got positively apoplectic when the American ambassador was seen to interfere in Australian politics by criticising former ALP politician Mark Latham. Yet this time round there was a notable silence. Of course the difference is that the American ambassador at the time was representing that Great Satan the United States, led by that spawn of Satan himself Dubya and the context was the Iraq War. Now we have a Blairite British Labour Party hack insulting the Australian people for daring to have a democratic debate on the issue of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). As I said, hardly a peep from the Ministry of Truth and their media acolytes on the conduct of the "Baroness". Apparently it's verboten for the American Ambassador representing a conservative US administration (one universally hated by our leftist media darlings) to take pot shots at a leftish (he was from the right wing of the Labor Party and was a bit of a maverick by current politically correct lefty standards) Australian politician who dared to question the Australian-US military alliance at the time of the Iraq war but it's fine for a Blairite British Labour party hack extraordinaire on an all-expenses-paid extended holiday to sunnier climes in the former colonies to put those impudent colonials (especially conservative politicians) in their place by attempting to silence a democratic debate about a question of great concern and tell those pesky colonials to just "move on" to her more enlightened way of seeing things. Just what we need more of in Australia: rule by British "baronesses" appointed High Commissioner for nothing more than their unfailing loyalty to the dear leader Blair. Oh the irony it all. Our vociferous ~~pommy-bashing~~ republican movement spends its energies trying to remove a woman with a royal title from Australian public life while they fail to see the real threats to the Australian res publica including the unwelcome remarks of a certain British High Commissioner complete with a sham aristocratic title (what's the British Labour Party's going rate for a knighthood or peerage these days anyway?). And to top it all off, hardly a word of censure from our self-appointed guardians of public morality, truth and right thinking in the media (especially the self-absorbed Mike Carlton who is never short of a dose of personal rancour for anyone with an aristocratic title -- in this instance inherited -- who happens to disagree with His Omniscience but who strangely has nothing critical to say of decidedly pinko members of the nouvelle aristocratie such as "Baroness" Amos). Sadly I'm not surprised at any of this. The Australian media for the most part is about as unprincipled and partisan as they come.

If "Baroness" Amos really believed in the value of democracy, she would never have made the comments she did. And if our journalists really believed in the value of democracy they would take "Baroness" Amos to task for her improper intrusions into the Australian democratic process. Sadly most of our journalists are nowhere near that principled. The media get full marks from me for taking the US ambassador to task in 2003 for his criticism of Mark Latham. The US ambassador was sticking his nose where it didn't belong and interfering in the Australian democratic process by publicly criticising an elected member of of the Australian House of Representatives is not his job. But this time the media failed abysmally in their task. They should likewise have taken "Baroness" Amos to task for her inappropriate meddling in the Australian democratic process.

One's view on the truth or otherwise of AGW is completely beside the point and I would hope that those who believe in AGW but are friends of democracy would be incensed at the behaviour of "Baroness" Amos. Imagine the reaction by the pro-AGW side (whether in Australia, the UK or elsewhere) if a foreign ambassador had done what Amos had done but instead took the opposite line telling her host nation to "move on" from its obsession with Anthropogenic Global Warming and accept the position that climate change is not caused by human beings and that debates about emissions targets are therefore a waste of time!!! There would be outrage and the media would be unforgiving on any diplomat who dared to make such a comment or anyone who tried to defend her. If only the media were as principled in criticising such abuses when coming from the other side.

"Straight" civil partnerships?

2009-11-15T23:14:00.023Z

Now this is interesting (HT: Archbishop Cranmer) A different-sex couple (i.e. a man a woman) are claiming that the UK's civil partnership legislation is discriminatory because civil partnerships are only open to same-sex couples. This couple would like to enter into a civil partnership but can't because the two parties are of the opposite sex and thereby forbidden from entering into a civil partnership. Ah, the irony of it all. This is exactly the kind of argument that many homosexuals (and others enchanted by their flawed logic) make about the "discriminatory" nature of the institution of marriage. (In fact this is the perverted logic the couple is making! They are doing it as a protest to say that same-sex couples should be allowed to "marry".)

I have to say that this couple's argument is rather predictable and I'm surprised it's taken someone this long (the legislation has been around for five years now) to get their 15 minutes of media fame by pulling this kind of publicity stunt. I actually saw this coming some years ago. I can remember sitting in a graduate law seminar at Oxford debating the issue of homosexual "marriage" with a visiting Canadian professor (who was very hostile to anyone who didn't see things his way and not at all accustomed to debating these issues in a spirit of detached equanimity, instead seeing the purpose of the seminar as "educating" us all about the need for homosexual marriage and excoriating those "bigots" who dared disagree with him). The argument that marriage is "discriminatory" because by definition it excludes same-sex couples is deceptively simple but fundamentally flawed. Of course restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples above a certain age is also "discriminatory". Anything that includes some people (or things) but excludes others is "discriminatory". But the fact that something is "discriminatory" is neither here nor there. The rule that you need a mark of 50% to pass an exam is also "discriminatory" in that those who score under 50% do not "pass". This regime quite clearly "discriminates" against those who score under 50%. But that's not a bad thing. Now there is of course a degree of "arbitrariness" in setting the pass mark. You can set it at 50%, or 70% or 40% and still have a meaningful exam. Assuming you don't set it at 0% then no matter where you set it there is potentially someone who is going to "fail". If you set your pass mark at 0% so everyone by definition "passes" then you have in effect nullified the concept of having an exam in the first place. And, what's more, once you do this you devalue the "passes" of all the people in the past, present and future who actually scored over 50% (or whatever pass mark you would have chosen).

Now none of this is by any means a knock-down argument against homosexual "marriage" or civil partnerships. There may be good arguments for these (personally I'm not convinced) but the point I am making is that you can't just say "marriage discriminates against same-sex couples and should therefore be changed to allow them to 'marry'". In all societies the rules about who can marry also "discriminate" against a whole host of other people, animals and things who might potentially want to "marry". It is no answer for the advocates of homosexual "marriage" to say "ah, but no-one is seriously suggesting that man should be allowed to 'marry' his dog or a 9 year old girl or his pet rock or 3 wives at once etc". First, it is no answer for the simple reason that there are people (albeit a minority) making exactly these claims. Secondly, it's no answer because it completely skirts the main issue. No matter how you define marriage you have to give a reason why you define it to include X but not Y. The homosexual rights lobby's proposed definition of marriage is also "discriminatory" by excluding some situations from the definition of "marriage" and they need to justify why their proposed redefinition should be accepted but not the polygamists', paedophiles' and the zoophiles' etc. Aye, there's the rub. As it happens I think there are very good reasons for restricting marriage to different sex couples above a certain age but that's a topic for another post.

If nothing else this episode of the different-sex couple arguing that they too should have the right to enter into a civil partnership shows the folly of the kind of logic which cries "discrimination" because a civil partnership is defined in a way which excludes different-sex couples. The man and the woman in this episode are each free as individuals to enter into a civil partnership with a person of the same sex. The law of civil partnerships does not discriminate against them as individuals. As individuals they are in exactly the same legal position under that act as every other non-married person not already in a civil partnership. Under that law each of them has the legal right to enter into a civil partnership. And their sexual "orientation" or "preference" is completely beside the point. Two "heterosexual" men or two "heterosexual" women can enter into a civil partnership if they want. And likewise every "homosexual" or "lesbian" person is free as an individual to enter into a marriage with a person of the opposite sex. The law of marriage does not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference or orientation. Every individual above a certain age who is not already married is free to marry. A "homosexual" man and a "lesbian" woman can enter into a marriage if they want just as a "heterosexual" man and a "heterosexual" woman can. Their "sexual orientation" is completely beside the point. The problem here is not that the law of civil partnership (or marriage for that matter) discriminates against them as individuals. The problem is that particular law doesn't allow them to do what they want. Well duh. Whoever said that it should? Saying that the law 'discriminates' against you when in actual fact it treats every individual equally but doesn't happen to allow each individual to fulfil his or her personal desires is at best fundamentally flawed and at worst downright dishonest.

My advice to this different-sex couple who want to enter a civil partnership with one another but can't is exactly the same as it is to same-sex couples who would like to "marry" one another but can't: Get over it. Yes of course marriage "discriminates" against same-sex couples just as civil partnerships "discriminate" against different-sex couples since marriage by definition involves a partner of the opposite sex and a civil partnership by definition involves a partner of the same sex. But importantly marriage does not discriminate against homosexual persons as individuals and civil partnerships do not discriminate against heterosexual persons as individuals. Everyone over a certain age in the UK has a legal right to marry -- regardless of sexual preference. And similarly everyone over a certain age in the UK has a legal right to enter a civil partnership -- regardless of sexual preference. Whether you as an individual are "gay", "straight" or something else is completely beside the point. The law doesn't want to know it. Every person in the UK is treated equally under both the law of marriage and the law of civil partnerships and saying that the law doesn't allow you to marry or enter into a civil partnership with whomever you want because the definition of these institutions limits your choice of potential partner just doesn't cut it I'm afraid. And yes in a sense the law of both marriage and civil partnerships in the UK "discriminates" against people under the age of 16 and animals and people wanting to "marry" or enter into a civil partnership with a person under the age of 16 or an animal etc etc. But only in a sense. Every 15 year old is treated alike under the law. And every person who would like to marry or enter into a civil partnership with a 15 year old is treated alike under the law. There is no discrimination on an individual basis. Just the kind of definitional "discrimination" which will always be with us so long as we define marriage or a civil partnership to mean X but not Y.

Now society is full of private organisations etc that certain people are ineligible to join. So yes of course all-male institutions in a sense "discriminate" against females who would like to join and all-female institutions in a sense "discriminate" against males who would like to join; organisations exclusively for wealthy people in a sense "discriminate" against people below a certain income; organisations for senior citizens in a sense "discriminate" against young people and organisations exclusively for youth in a sense "discriminate" against older people. If you can't join one of these institutions, because you don't fit the bill get over it. Go and form your own association if you can't join someone else's. If you can't join the local youth club because you're too old then go and find some like minded people and form your own association. In modern western societies there is nothing stopping two people of the same sex or 100 people of one or both sexes forming a common living arrangement. It's not criminal so if you want to do it just go and do it. There's no need to cry foul about not being able to "marry" (or enter into a "civil partnership" with) the person of your choice. And if these two or 100 people want to have joint or common ownership over their property this can be arranged without having to redefine "marriage" so that they can enter into it with the persons of their choice.

Oh and by the way, as far as the law is concerned this different sex couple that wants to enter into a civil partnership doesn't have a leg to stand on. This is just a cheap publicity stunt. First, they have acted deceptively in seeking their civil partnership by simply giving their initials and not their full names and once they turn up for the ceremony the registrar would be legally obliged not to perform the ceremony if he was not satisfied that they fulfilled the legal requirements for a civil partnership (which obviously includes both parties being of the same sex). And even if they manage to dupe the registrar (or the registrar is not fooled but simply ignores his legal obligations and perform the ceremony) the civil partnership would still not be legally valid. Simply going through the ceremony does not a civil partnership (or a marriage for that matter) make. These things have to be done "according to law". I can declare myself king and even have the Archbishop of Canterbury "crown" me king in Westminster Abbey but that still wouldn't legally make me king. Why so? Because kingship is governed by law and I don't satisfy the legal requirements for kingship. Going through the motions of a proclamation and a coronation ceremony won't make me king in the eyes of the law. In the same way a couple which goes through the motions of a civil partnership ceremony but does not satisfy the legal requirements are not members of a civil partnership in the eyes of the law.

Comment dit-on «ironie» au Québec?

2009-11-11T21:49:00.028Z

News to hand from the Times of London: On a royal tour to Canada eggs were thrown by protesters in the direction of HRH Charles, ~~Prince of Wales~~ Prince de Galles. Some people in Quebec (or is that Québec?) would prefer to be independent of the tyrannous yoke of HM Elizabeth II and go it alone. I get it. That's their right in a free and democratic society and I support the right of them to hold the political opinions they do and to express them. But throwing eggs? Come on. It's not as if the people of Quebec are prevented from expressing their sentiments through the political process. Over the years there have been referenda on this question (in 1980 and 1995) and there are secessionist political parties Quebecers can vote for if they want to make their separatist dreams a reality. Throwing eggs at the heir apparent and members of your country's armed forces is just plain silly -- not to mention bad manners -- and doesn't achieve anything.

So why the blog post when surely a protest by Quebec separatists on the occasion of a royal visit is on the level of "dog bites man"? Well, two photos of the protesters particularly caught my eye in the irony stakes.

First, this:

Quelle ironie! The suggestion that the British (now Canadian) Crown is responsible for "cultural genocide" in Quebec is simply risible. Quite the opposite, it has actually served to protect Quebec's cultural identity and francophone status amid more populous anglophone communities to the west and -- more significantly -- the south! Two words to Quebec separatists: Louisiana Purchase (in French it's a lot longer than two words: La Vente de la Louisiane). Just look what happened to the French presence in the rest of North America. Where are the millions of francophones in the United States with their own proudly distinct culture distinguishing them from the English speaking majority around them? Nulle part, that's where! Gobbled up by the insatiable appetite of the expansionist yankee machine. The defeat of the French at the hands of the British on the Plains of Abraham was the best thing that could have happened for the preservation of the French language and the unique Quebec and Acadian cultures in North America. The only reason why Quebec is still overwhelmingly francophone today is because the British defeated the French. Had Quebec stayed in French hands it would most probably have been sold off to the United States at the soonest convenience spelling the gradual demise and eventual death of their language and unique culture as happened in those former French territories which were incorporated into the United States. But it's much easier to throw eggs at the heir apparent than own up to reality. As they say, ignorance is bliss.

But this one surely ~~prend le gâteau~~ takes the cake in the irony stakes:

What's that? Les souverainistes québecois displaying signs in English? Quelle ironie du sort! And here I was thinking there were laws against this sort of thing to protect the status of French from the encroachment of English (sere here for an instance of the law in practice). How silly of me!

Stones for bread?

2009-11-09T20:45:00.026Z

Update: The number of other bloggers commenting on this topic is legion. Archbishop Cranmer, however, not only speaks much sense, but also does so with much wit.

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? -- Matthew 7 :9-10.

For some weeks now the Anglican (and arguably wider Christian) world has been buzzing with the news of the Bishop of Rome's offer to Anglicans to join his "ecclesial community" all the while keeping "aspects" of their Anglican "patrimony". In other words the Church of Rome has made an offer to Anglicans to join the Roman flock but keep elements of their Anglican identity. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, but I have been more circumspect in my reaction and that is not just due to the fact that my Anglican "patrimony" (and "theological convictions" compel me to view the Church of Rome as having erred in important matters such that separation from Rome is a necessity. But even trying to see things through the eyes of Anglicans more sympathetic towards visible reunion with Rome I was hesitant to view this as something that would be acceptable to many of those it was aimed at.

I don't for a minute doubt Rome's sincerity in this and I certainly don't see this as some underhanded scheme. Rather, Rome is responding to pleas by individual Anglicans and sincerely laying its cards on the table and saying, "come and join us if you can". In the scheme of things this is a sizeable step for the Church of Rome to undertake. The significance of Rome approving structures whereby former Anglicans can run their own churches with their own (married) clergy according to their own distinct liturgies with their own lines of authority distinct from (but not entirely independent of) ordinary diocesan structures is duly noted on my part. In that respect I guess the offer is fairly "generous". Previously, Rome's call was essentially "we're the true church, the one Christ founded and you're not so come and join us for the riches of the catholic faith, giving up what you currently have in Anglicanism". Now Rome's call is slightly more akin to "while we're the true church founded by Christ, God has blessed you too and is now calling you to come and join in the fullness of the catholic faith while retaining some aspects particular to your Anglican heritage." When viewed in this light, I would accept that this is a more generous offer than Rome had previously been making.

But is it generous enough? The devil, as they say, is in the detail and I -- along with just about everyone else -- have been saying that it was simply too early to speculate about the effects th announcement would have on causing Anglicans to "swim the Tiber" and join the Church of Rome and that we would need to wait until Rome had formulated the "Apostolic constitution". Well, having now waited for this document it is now on the table as Anglicanorum coetibus and available to be picked apart with a fine-toothed comb. And my initial scepticism has been confirmed. Despite the fact that Rome has gone further than it was previously willing to go in order to attract Anglicans across to Rome, I suspect that for most the offer will be one of "thanks but no thanks".

Anglicans are not a monolithic bloc and (so-called) Anglo-Catholics (the only group of Anglicans likely to make the move to Rome under this offer; most other Anglicans are not terribly interested in joining the Church of Rome) are no less monolithic. For evidence of this just compare the differences between Forward in Faith in the UK and the US or indeed the differences among many of the "continuing" Anglo-Catholic groups. The following "field guide to Anglican churchmanship" provides an enlightening look at the differences that exist within (so-called) Anglo-Catholicism. In the opinion of that author we have:

a. Anglo-Papalist -- Tridentine
b. Anglo-Papalist -- Modern (a peculiarly English breed of cat, he uses the Novus Ordo, the current RC services)
c. Payer Book Catholic
d. The modern version of Prayer Book Catholic, not papalist and using the Anglican prayer book that's the standard where he is (Common Worship, US 1979 BCP, etc.)
e. Anglo-Orthodox. Rare as hen's teeth, more so than Tridentine ACs, but they're out there. Also, c and d often see themselves as 'Western Orthodox' analogues to the Eastern Orthodox.

Groups (a) and (b) are basically already Roman Catholic in all but name and with the exception of Rome's views on married clergy would have little pangs of conscience moving to Rome -- with or without any "apostolic constitution" for former Anglicans. They have long since given up on most of their Anglican liturgical "patrimony" (to use Rome's choice of language) and are already using Roman liturgies. Groups (c), (d), and (e), on the other hand, have retained much more of their Anglican liturgical heritage and my main interest is in where they would fit in the scheme of things.

The problem for Anglicans joining the new Anglican "ordinariate" is, as I see it, at least twofold. First, there are matters of doctrine. Unlike groups (a) and (b) there are still a few significant differences in doctrine between (c), (d) and (e) Anglo-Catholics and Rome. I'm not saying that an individual in one of these groups could not in good conscience join the Church of Rome. What I am saying is that many will not be able to. The apostolic constitution sets out (I§5) that for all those joining the new ordinariate -- i.e. clergy and laity -- the Catechism of the Catholic Church is the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the Ordinariate. Many Anglo-Catholics will have problems with some of its provisions and may not in conscience be able to join. Secondly, there is a question of just what aspects of the Anglican liturgical "patrimony" will be retained. My initial thoughts were that much of the 1662 Prayer Book -- especially the Order for Holy Communion -- would not be acceptable to the Church of Rome and would have to be heavily edited which leaves one asking whether what is left still expresses their Anglican patrimony in a way acceptable to them. You could not simply have a formerly-Anglican-now-Roman priest run a Book of Common Prayer 1662 communion service since it would offend against the doctrines of the Church of Rome. It's not just a question of cutting out a few phrases such as "by his one oblation of himself once offered" or "Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving". The eucharistic theology of the Book of Common Prayer doesn't just arise from the words that are said; rather, it also arises from the structure of the service and this structure would also have to be altered in some respects for use in the Church of Rome. A good example of a Roman Catholic liturgy approved for former Anglicans is available here (this liturgy is for former Anglicans in the United States and has not arisen out of the current announcement to set up personal ordinariates for former Anglicans). Looking at this service there are of course some clearly Anglican resonances in the wording, but unsurprisingly there are also some recognisably Roman words that offend against Anglican doctrine (which is not such an issue if you overcome the first problem I mentioned and assent to Roman doctrine). More importantly, the structure of the service has departed significantly from the classical Cranmerian approach. For some this won't present much of a problem, for others it will. One thing I would be interested to see is whether those who make the move can convince Rome to adopt an order for Holy Communion basically akin to the 1549 Order or indeed the Sarum Missal (since the eucharistic theology of the 1552, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books is more explicitly Reformed than that of the first English Prayer Book of 1549 and its predecessor the Sarum Missal). Beyond Holy Communion, however, I think former Anglicans will have more success in keeping distinctive Anglican liturgy. I can imagine the Church of Rome giving permission for former Anglicans to run services of Evening Prayer with very few alterations rather than requiring them to run a Roman service of vespers. Will we see services of choral evensong in the Church of Rome? Who knows.

So in sum, although I have no intention of joining the Church of Rome I'm still interested in the liturgies they finally approve and how close a resemblance these will bear to classic Anglican forms of liturgy. At this stage I can only conclude that the resemblance will be much slighter than many would wish.

The Creative Genius of Triple Filtered Films

2009-11-09T14:43:00.013Z

Well it looks like I'm turning into an advertising agency myself, with all this promotion for Stella Artois' homage to 1960s cinéma français (see here for the first post on this topic). The London-based advertising agency that made the advertisements in my last post (well at least the first two; I've seen both of those on the big screen in the UK -- the third one I saw for the first time on youtube and is supposedly a Canadian advertisement; I have no idea if it's a product of the same London advertising agency or not) has also made a series of short films in the same 1960s French style, parodying the plot of more recent Hollywood offerings. Even though in posting this I might be complicit in some cunning viral marketing campaign for Stella Artois I don't care. These filums are wonderful creations and worth watching in their own right. Stella Artois, my opinion of you is on the up.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did:

1) Dial Hard -- "Inspector Meqlain plays a deadly game of Simon Says in Dial Hard"

2) 8 Kilomètres -- "2 poets face off in a battle of rhyme in Huit Kilomètres"

3) 24 Heures -- "The clock is ticking for Jacques in Vingt-Quatre Heures"

And while we're in a 1960s French mood, here's a clip of France Gall singing one of my favourite French songs from that era Laisse tomber les filles.

Average beer, great ads

2009-11-09T12:48:00.015Z

For a long time now I have entertained the idea that I'm fairly immune to advertising. Rarely if ever will I buy a product because of an advertisement I've seen. And because I'm not really the person who is easily swayed to buy a product because of an advertisement I tend to "switch off" during the ad breaks on television or during the advertising segment before catching a movie at the cinema. But every now and again the advertising profession comes up with something that catches my attention. Some advertisements manage to rise above the drudgery of the rest and display a certain creative flair. Stella Artois is far from my favourite beer -- a distinctly average lager that is marketed outside of its homeland as a "premium" international lager at a correspondingly "premium" price. And yet, they come up with some great ads like these.

For some time now, Stella Artois has been adopting a classic European cinema motif for its advertising (these ones hark back to the 1960s; for one reminiscent of an earlier era see here). I'm very much a fan of 1960s European -- especially French -- cinema (a young Brigitte Bardot strutting about carefree on the French Riviera: oh la la!) and seeing these creative efforts by Stella Artois' advertising agency on the big screen at the cinema is a sight to behold. They have recreated the feel of the films of this era so wonderfully.

Of course, not everyone will "get" this kind of ad. I imagine that it would be wasted on a lot of beer drinkers, yea even Stella drinkers. When I think of most of the fellows I grew up with or those with whom I would sometimes go to the pub after work, I suspect that most of them have probably never seen a French film in their lives and would not be the slightest bit interested in seeing one. So while I don't think the beer's anything special (it's not bad, but it's not that great either; just average) and I wonder whether these ads will have the effect of getting people who otherwise wouldn't drink Stella to drink it, I am greatly appreciative of these ads' creativity and artistry. I might even just break my own rules once and buy a Stella as a way of saying thank you for rising above the drudgery of most advertising and putting a smile on my face with these gems.

Popularity

2009-11-08T22:37:00.010Z

I started off this blog basically as a way to "think out loud" about some issues of interest to me. Unlike a lot of other blogs this one doesn't really have an overarching "theme". I'll blog on philosophy or sport or art or theology or just about anything really. I suspect that this makes it harder to build up a readership. If you're really interested in one thing I have blogged on once but not the rest of the stuff I have blogged on then you're probably not going to want to read my blog. That's fine by me. I'm happy if I don't have any regular readers. Back in August 2008 when I posted my "almost-first" post (i.e. my first post after a false start to the blog) and had a readership of zero I had this to say:

I am under no illusion as to the significance of this blog or indeed my life in general. Blogs come and go, people come and go, the world keeps turning and God keeps working his purpose out as year succeeds to year. In the grand scheme of things my life here on earth and this blog are fairly insignificant. In other words, if no one reads it I won't be too disappointed.

And that's still the case today. I don't write what I do it with a view to becoming popular. And I'm not the slightest bit interested in trying to earn money from this blog via advertising (although I've got nothing against those who do place ads on their blog).

Rarely if ever do I get feedback on anything I post here (most posts have zero comments!) so until fairly recently I was completely ignorant about the number of people reading this blog. Then I came across this nifty application which records the number and locations of hits to my blog. Of course technically speaking this still doesn't tell me the number of people reading my blog. Someone can of course visit the blog without reading it.

After adding this feature I still only had a paltry number of hits but I now suddenly find myself in unfamiliar territory, shooting up the charts of popularity. I suspect that the sudden increase in web traffic has come because I posted a comment or two at a very popular blog and curious readers of those comments then clicked on my link there and wandered over here to my blog. What's particularly interesting is where the hits are from. As well as visitors from various English speaking countries I have even had hits from places such as Poland, Chile, Nigeria and Tunisia to name a few! While I know a few people in Poland and it's possible that one of them clicked on a link to this blog from my facebook profile, I don't think I know anyone in Chile, Nigeria or Tunisia. I am truly humbled that complete strangers -- wherever they are in the world -- would want to read my ramblings.

Visits as of 8 November, A.D. 2009

Practising what you preach

2009-11-07T21:44:00.005Z

I'd never heard of the Miss Earth beauty pageant until recently skimming an online newspaper and coming across a photo gallery of the contestants strutting their stuff in their bikinis while preaching to the masses about "environmental awareness". Personally I found the whole experience of seeing a bunch of women parading around in bikinis sporting placards complete with clichéd slogans prepared by pageant organisers rather cringe-worthy. But one photo stood out above the rest since there's nothing like a bit of irony to lighten up one's day.

At least you can't fault her for practising what she preaches!

Stretching the definition of privacy

2009-11-02T12:55:00.019Z

As a country still true to its common law roots, Australia does not have any general legal right to privacy. There are of course specific legal provisions that protect aspects of what may be called a person's "privacy", but the notion that privacy as such is worthy of general legal protection is foreign to the common law way of thinking. Doubtless to say, there are calls to change the law and for years now various legal reformers and other do-gooders have been proposing the introduction of some general and ill-defined right to "privacy". Now is not the time to get into that debate (I actually think that provided we have a fairly clear demarcation between public and private life some added legal protection to a person's "privacy" wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing), but the following incident is a classic example of the dangers of the woolly human rights mentality where the definitions of concepts protected in general rights (such as "privacy") are twisted beyond all recognition. (For a classic example of this woolly thinking you may want to read this previous post of mine on how the right to "respect for" one's "private and family life, [...] home and [...] correspondence" under Article 8 ECHR has been contorted beyond all recognition to include a right to kill oneself). Any legal right to "privacy" -- if it is going to be recognised by the legal system -- should not simply mean a person has a right to prevent a newspaper from publishing a story because she doesn't like what the story says about her or because it says something about her and she disagrees with its factual content. And yet that in essence is exactly what former Prime Minister Paul Keating has called for (and indeed many others are calling for) in the name of a right to "privacy"! This incident is a perfect example of so much that is wrong with the modern "rights mentality". Generally speaking, those pressing for the introduction of a bill of rights in Australia are not doing so out of some well thought out commitment to the protection of individual rights but rather are doing so as a smokescreen for personal gain or the imposition of their own (generally leftist and secularist) political agenda.

Following the publication by a newpaper of an allegation that his (adult) daughter Katherine kicked a photo journalist at a public event in the presence of witnesses, Mr Keating has argued that we need to introduce a legal right to "privacy" to prevent newspapers from publishing such stories. But what part of the word "privacy" does Mr Keating not understand? There is nothing "private" about this saga whatsoever. I have no idea whether Miss Keating actually behaved in the way alleged but what Miss Keating was alleged to have done was (a) criminal, (b) in public and (c) done in the presence of independent witnesses (i.e. neither the complainant nor Miss Keating). For crying out loud, she is alleged to have kicked a man in public in the plain view of independent witnesses. If proven in court then her conduct would amount to the crime of assault and be subject to a maximum of two years' imprisonment. Whether or not charges have been pressed is beside the point. Criminal conduct is still criminal conduct whether it the subject of formal police complaint or not. And to argue that publication of allegations of criminal conduct done in public in the view of independent witnesses is a breach of one's privacy is just plain crazy. It is stretching the definition of "privacy" beyond all reasonable bounds.

Now of course there is a need to recognise the principle that a mere allegation does not prove the fact and also that in the eyes of the law a person is innocent until proven guilty but this is easily done. The newspaper can publish the allegations against Miss Keating with a statement indicating that independent witnesses have corroborated the complainant's version of events and then indicate Miss Keating's reply to these allegations with a statement such as "Miss Keating denies the allegations" or "when approached Miss Keating declined to comment on the allegations" or "Miss Keating was unavailable for comment". And if the allegations were made maliciously etc then she can exercise her legal right to sue the newspaper for defamation. There is no need to silence the reporting of allegedly criminal conduct done in the public view out of concern for some right to an individual's "privacy". Now if of course the photo journalist had been snooping on her conduct in her own home then that would be different kettle of fish. In such a case there may indeed be a genuine case for a right to respect Miss Keating's "privacy". But that is not remotely related to what was alleged to have happened here. In the words of the late, great Stan Zemanek:

"Paul Keating, give yourself an uppercut!"

Language and "jargon" in the church

2009-10-31T12:09:00.064Z

There is a view commonly held among evangelicals that Christians should avoid the use of distinctively Christian "jargon" (their term of choice, most certainly not mine as will become apparent). A good example of this thinking can be found here in a piece by Mr Jodie McNeill of "Youthworks" in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney (HT Creidamh A-mhàin where I commented on this topic before composing this essay here). Perhaps the irony of such a comment coming from a man who heads an institution whose very name itself might be considered a prime example of unnecessary evangelical "jargon" is lost on Mr McNeill (what is now called "Anglican Youthworks" was until fairly recently known by the much plainer but eminently more understandable name of the "Anglican Department of Youth and Education"). Anyway, I digress. This "anti-jargon" view, commonly held by many younger Anglican evangelicals (baby boomers and younger), might be considered just another part of what has been called the "worship wars" as those with a desire for more "contemporary" forms of worship inevitably come into conflict with those who prefer more "traditional" forms. But in my view such an explanation would be inadequate for explaining the "de-jargonning" movement, the prime example of which is arguably the suppression of the word "sermon" and its replacement with the word "talk" [or "Bible talk"]: on this view of things it is no longer a "preacher" "preaching" a "sermon" but a "speaker" "giving" a "[Bible] talk".

Now much of the tension between proponents of contemporary and traditional forms of worship can be viewed as largely ideologically (or perhaps doctrinally) neutral. In other words it is cultural and external. For instance it is understandable that a generation brought up on rock and pop music as well as television and the internet would feel much more at home with "contemporary" forms of worship incorporating those aspects of the culture rather than more "traditional" forms of worship based on less "popular" forms of musical expression as well as liturgical books and formality. A very significant part of these so-called "worship wars" is largely due to differences in culture and the church coming to terms with the fact that the Christian faith is expressed in a particular cultural context.

It is worth noting some parallels with Christianity brought by Western missionaries to non-Western cultures. African churches tended to adopt Western cultural forms (particularly in music, liturgy and clergy vestments) but there has been a move to indigenise much of the African church to the point where African forms of music are now more the rule rather than the exception in their churches. This is understandable in the case of Christianity coming to a culture for the first time. When the missionaries first arrived there simply wouldn't have been any hymns in the indigenous musical style because there weren't any Christians of that culture to write them! Over time, however, things changed and the African church now has a rich tradition of indigenous African church music on which to draw. And thanks be to God. I'm all for different nations expressing the Christian faith within their own cultural context. If I walk into an Anglican cathedral in most of Africa the music might be very different from what I'm used to hearing and singing in church but doctrinally speaking I would be on pretty much the same page as the local Christians. The fact that they sing African music and I sing Western music is completely beside the point. (And in actual fact I think I would very much like to sing African music in church -- at least when in Africa.) And to an extent it is like that with the differences between the older and younger generations in the so-called "worship wars" in many Western cultures. You can have the older generation and the younger generation agreed in doctrine but preferring different external forms. One person happens to like traditional hymns, choirs, organs, liturgy from a book and robed clergy while another happens to like modern songs, solo vocalists, bands, LCD projectors and service leaders in casual clothes. On this view both are different cultural expressions of the Christian faith, but equal in validity.

But when it comes to the modern evangelical church in the West and particularly the linguistic changes afoot I don't actually think the picture I have just painted holds for the most part. That would be a most charitable reading of the motives of those who have implemented change in our churches. Ideologically neutral cultural shift of the I-like-electric-guitars-while-you-like-pipe-organs-but-I-guess-that-both-are-cool-in-their-own-way kind is certainly part of the picture, but only a small part. Of course culture is not monolithic and different people like different things and over time the younger generation as a whole will tend to prefer certain alternatives to what the older generation did and so we should expect some change. But such change you would expect to come about naturally and progressively rather than being forced on us from above. The "de-jargonning" movement hasn't arisen because younger generations stopped using what to them were obsolete words. No, an entire young generation is consciously being reeducated by those in authority to think in a different way. The change has actually been ideologically driven and I would suggest that a more accurate analysis would therefore be to view this as a revolution. We might therefore more approproately call this an anti-church revolution.

As may already be apparent I oppose that revolution. Let me first be clear on what I am not opposed to. I am not against the church naturally finding different legitimate cultural expressions of universal Christian truth. Whether we use electric guitars or pipe organs (or both!) in church is for the most part irrelevant in the scheme of things. That's not what I'm on about. For what it's worth I actually play both of those instruments and enjoy playing both but definitely prefer pipe organs to electric guitars in church. But that's largely a personal preference. If you prefer electric guitars to pipe organs in church that's your prerogative (although we may at some stage need to have a discussion on aesthetics!). What I am opposed to is this ideological revolution whereby a group of people impose the view that Christians should no longer go to church to hear a "preacher" "preach" a "sermon" but rather hear a "speaker" "give" a "talk" etc (this is just one of several examples).

This is not a question of obsolete words being replaced by newer ones. McNeill is therefore wrong to imply that this is the case when he says in relation to his yachting analogy that club members "are not willing to change the terminology to reflect modern usage" (emphasis mine). But the debate is not about modern versus obsolete usage. All the sailing terms McNeill lists are not by any stretch of the imagination obsolete but reflect thoroughly modern usage among sailors. The debate is about specilised versus generalist usage and group identity. If it were just about obsolete vs modern usage we wouldn't even be having a debate. As an example consider Genesis 32:15 in an old translation such as the AV with more modern translations such as the ESV. The AV uses the obsolete "kine" for the plural of "cow" while modern versions say "cows". Even Christians who continue to use the Authorised Version of the Scriptures would still say "cows" rather then "kine" unless they were directly quoting from the text. No-one is saying that Christians should use obsolete words. This is not a debate remotely concerned with current versus obsolete usage. Rather, it's a debate about stripping Christians as the gathered people of God of their specialised vocabulary and forcing them to adopt more general terminology. It is my contention that this strips Christians of a part of their unique identity which distinguishes them from the world.

What the "de-jargonners" fail to grasp is that language is inextricably bound together with identity. In other words, language is not purely functional. This is an important point to grasp. McNeill's example of "yachties" and their unique terminology actually proves the point I am making. He made the point that "yachties" have separate words for all kinds of things where there are "ordinary" English equivalents that will do the job just as well. Well, for an outsider maybe. But not for an insider. Indeed, the use of this distinctive language is part and parcel of what it means to be a "yachtie"! Take this away and you are stripping them of their distinctive identity. Yes of course it places a sort of a "barrier" between insiders and outsiders, but if you remove that barrier then you have abolished their own unique identity: in other words "yachties" are no more (or at best a mere shadow of their former selves).

I suspect that one reason most of the the "de-jargonners" fail to get this point is due to the fact that -- like most people in English speaking countries -- the majority of them are hopelessly monolingual. If you speak several languages well (fluently even) then there will still be one that is dearest to you -- that is your "heart language". It is a core part of your identity and communicating in language B or C rather than your heart language A is not the same. As an example of this I lived and went to university in Germany and I speak fluent German (after learning it for several years). Now obviously when speaking with Germans I would speak German. But at times I even spoke German with fellow native English speakers in Germany -- typically in a group setting where not everyone in the group was a native English speaker. And at times there was even the odd Australian in the group! If you're reading this and can't speak anything but English then I can tell you that the idea of two true blue Aussies speaking anything but Strine to one another is rather odd (as is the idea of an Australian and an Englishman speaking German to one another). Even if both parties speak fluent German and can communicate effortlessly in that language it just doesn't feel "right". Why is this? Because language is such an important part of our identity. It is part and parcel of who we are as Australians (or any other particular culture).

If you visit foreign shores and label their language as mere "gobbledygook" because you don't understand it you would be both ignorant and offensive. I don't speak Chinese but I don't think Chinese people speak "gobbledygook" and nor do I as an outsider to Chinese culture think that they should stop speaking their language (with which their Chinese identity is bound up) and start speaking mine. No, they speak Chinese with one another in their own country (or culture) -- and rightly so. It is their birthright and if for whatever reason I want to go and live in China then I should learn to speak their language. Now none of that prevents a Chinese person speaking English (or another language I happen to understand such as French or German) with me so that we can effectively communicate (perhaps even thereby promoting Chinese culture and language) or perhaps speaking a simpler form of Chinese in order to help the poor foreigner whose broken Chinese is not up to standard. Those things can and should take place. BUT the fact remains that it is right and proper for Chinese people in China to speak Chinese and it is wrong to expect them to speak anything else. It is simply risible to suggest that the Chinese should somehow carte blanche abandon their own language and start speaking a foreign language because there are people who don't speak Chinese. No, an integral part of what it means to be Chinese is to speak Chinese. If they stop doing that then they have lost an important part of their identity.

And yet that is the equivalent of what the (so-called) "de-jargonners" are telling us to do in the church. As Christians we have our own unique vocabulary. Although there are similarities between what we call a "sermon" and what the world calls a "talk" or a "lecture", for us they are not the same thing. Using these words are part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian and what it means to belong to the church as distinct from the world. Rightly understood these words are not "jargon" but rather part of our own native language as Christians. Now I think I should point out that even for the "de-jargonners" there are words that they refuse to "de-jargonise". For example they have not (yet at any rate) "de-jargonised" the word "sacrament" which is arguably far less intelligible to an outsider than the word "sermon" (which nearly everyone understands!). And even if they eventually do "de-jargonise" this word -- again robbing Christians of something that is their birthright -- I do not think they will ever be able to "de-jargonise" the word "God" for instance. Like a deconstructionist who is happy to deconstruct the received wisdom but refuses to deconstruct his own commitment to deconstructionism, the de-jargonners' ideology is shown up as bankrupt by the fact that if carried through consistently the project would collapse under its own weight.

Now of course Christians should be welcoming to those outside of the group and that means using language they understand. So when explaining the faith to a non-believer I am careful to make sure I am using language that he can understand. And sometimes that will mean substituting one "regular" English word for another more specifically "Christian" one. But other times when explaining the faith to an outsider I think we are better served by using an "insider's" word but then being careful to explain what is meant by it (for example I think it's counterproductive to attempt to avoid the word "sin" altogether in our evangelism, instead using it and explaining carefully what is meant). But the fundamental mistake the "de-jargonners" make is then to apply this to our own church gatherings. What they fail to grasp is that church is a thoroughly Christian phenomenon. Theologically speaking, church is the gathering of God's covenant people. In brief, church is for Christians and not for non-believers. That might sound like heresy to many evangelicals but I would submit it is they who have departed from sound Biblical theology at this point. Church is fundamentally a "family gathering" of God's people and it is right and proper that Christians speak their own native language in such a setting. Now I share the evangelical concern that non-believers become believers and that the church has to reach out to such people. I certainly hope and pray that we all welcome non-believers in our midst and do our best to present Christ to them and explain anything they don't understand. But their presence is not the raison d'être for our church gatherings. Continuing the metaphor, the aim is that outsiders join the family and not the family destroys its own identity and becomes indistinguishable from the world around it. So of course we should explain and interpret things to those in our midst who don't understand; but the church should not do so at the expense of abandoning its own unique vocabulary and identity. So hopefully it should be clear this whole movement for "de-jargonising" our church gatherings (as I have said evangelism is a slightly different kettle of fish than church gatherings) is a mistake predicated on a faulty theology of the church. Moreover, it is profoundly ignorant and offensive to even call Christians' distinctive language "jargon" in the first place.

One final point to mention is that most of the "de-jargonners" are actually quite patronising in their approach towards non-believers. In my experience people are not as stupid as the de-jargonners assume. To take McNeill's example, I'm not a "yachtie" and yet I know my port from my starboard, my bow from my stern and my aft from my fore. Sure, at one stage I didn't, but some time between the ages of about 5 and 15 I came to know what all these words meant (port, starboard, bow and stern at a very early age -- there is after all a well known children's game based on these and other nautical terms -- aft and fore a little bit later as these weren't a part of the game). As an outsider there will still be some words with which I'm not au fait, but I already understand quite a bit and can get the gist of what they're saying. And I suspect most people are like me in that regard. Even though as a non-"yachtie" I don't regularly use these words in everyday conversation (I don't have any reason to), I still know what most of them mean. And even though they don't have the same (positive) connotation of group identity for me as they do for a "yachtie" for whom they are part and parcel of his identity, I still appreciate the fact that for "yachties" these words do have such a meaning and I would never dream of taking that away from them or expecting them to give up on their specialised vocabulary for the sake of people like me. If I was impressed by yachting and wanted to become a "yachtie" then I would in time adopt their unique vocabulary and embrace it as my own because I know that that is part and parcel of being a "yachtie". Most non-Christians, I suspect, are exactly like that when it comes to Christianity. They know that Christians have their unique practices and unique words to describe them and that Christians -- indeed like any group -- will use words not normally used outside of their particular group setting. After all, that's a characteristic of any group. People know that a "sermon" is something a Christian hears at church and they don't expect Christians to give up on using the word "sermon" because they as non-believers don't have any reason to use it in their everyday lives and that a Christian sermon has some similarities with a secular "talk" or "lecture". It's quite patronising when Christians assume that non-Christians are a bunch of dolts who have no idea about anything whatsoever. Of course it is possible that a few may not know but most already have a good idea what a "sermon" is and are not made uncomfortable by Christians' use of specialised vocabulary such as this. One thing that is going to be different for non-believers is the connotation (as opposed to the denotation) of the word. Unlike the case with non-believers, for us Christians, hearing a "sermon" should have a positive connotation and one of a wholly different kind than hearing a mere "talk" or "lecture".

Grand Slam

2009-10-30T14:57:00.024Z

The Wallabies' 2009 gra nd slam tour of the British Isles is about to get underway. This will be the first time that the Australian national rugby team has undertaken a tour with test matches against all four home nations (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales) since 1984 when Australia successfully completed the grand slam for the first time (Australia was previously unsuccessful in 1927/8, 1947/8, 1957/1958, 1966/7, 1975/6 and 1981/2 and even has the ignomy of being the only Southern Hemisphere team to have suffered a grand slam of defeats against all four home nations in 1957/8). Until the grand slam of 1984, Australia was not considered a rugby union heavyweight, with rugby league being a much more popular form of rugby football in Australia than the globally dominant rugby union (something which is still the case), very low public exposure of the game and patchy international form. The 1984 tour changed that, marking the beginning of a new era of Australian rugby union success. Many of the young players on that tour would go on to become household names of Australian rugby, even enjoying future world cup success.

What are Australia's prospects for a 2009 grand slam? It's hard to say since Australian rugby finds itself in a difficult period. After the successes of the 1990s and early 2000s (Australia won the world cup in 1991 and 1999, and were runners up at the 2003 world cup and has also enjoyed success against the Lions in 2001 as well as an unprecedented period of dominance in the Bled isloe Cup [1998-2002] and also winning the Tri-Nations tournament [2000 and 2001]), Australian rugby has been in a state of steady decline, arguably raching its nadir at the 2007 world cup. Since then Australian rugby has been rebuilding. After a relatively promising 2008 tour to the British Isles just over a year after the 2007 world cup debacle, the team performed below expectations in the 2009 Tri-Nations (with really only one good performance at home against South Africa in Brisbane). This time around, Australia should be expected to chalk up wins against England and Scotland who are also below their best, but the matches against Ireland and Wales will be tighter affairs. Ireland at home will be a tough prospect and in my view the crucial match of the tour. This match will make or break the grand slam for Australia. Assuming that Australia wins against both England and Scotland as expected and also goes into the final match against Wales already having beaten Ireland then I think they will carry on and beat the Welsh for the grand slam. If, not, well it's all fairly academic anyway.

So seeing an Australian grand slam in 2009 is far from a certainty. It would be nice but I'm not banking on it. Anyway, here are some highlights of the last Australian grand slam in 1984 for you to enjoy.

1. England vs Australia (3 November 1984, Twickenham)

2. Ireland v Australia (10 November 1984, Lansdowne Road)

3. Wales vs Australia (24 November 1984, Cardiff Arms Park)

4. Scotland vs Australia (8 December 1984, Murrayfield)

Stirring the evangelical pot

2009-10-30T11:20:00.026Z

The Ugley Vicar has written a piece which will no doubt ruffle a few evangelical feathers. But he's right in what he has to say so he has my permission to ruffle away. Essentially he makes the point that being "evangelical" is not enough and has called on "evangelicals" in the Church of England (and I think by extension Anglican churches in other parts of the world as well) to start being Anglican, even ahead of being evangelical. And Amen to that say I. That being evangelical is not enough is something I have come to appreciate over the last ten years. I haven't stopped being evangelical, but I have come to realise that "evangelicalism" is not the sum total -- or even necessarily the focus -- of my Christian identity and I think it is a grave mistake when we aim to make it that. Of course to most evangelical Anglicans (or perhaps that should be Anglican evangelicals!) of the kind where I grew up (and no doubt in many other places as well) that statement is bordering on the heretical so I will have to explain and defend myself. There is of course a right concern in the "evangelical first, Anglican second" position but ultimately is premised on a flawed understanding of "evangelicalism", "tradition" and "denominations".

Fundamentally, I think the mistake that most of the "evangelical first, Anglican second" type Anglicans make is to conflate "evangelicalism" with "the gospel" and even "Christianity". It is often said that "evangelicalism" is "gospel Christianity". So, the thinking goes, of course we should be "evangelical" first and "Anglican" second. What's wrong with this, you ask? Well, nothing if all you are implying is that the gospel takes priority over Anglicanism or indeed any particular historical and cultural expression of the visible church. Of course it does and Anglicanism -- and indeed all of Protestantism -- is predicated on that important truth. The reasons the churches of the Reformation (including the Church fo England) split from Rome was because of the gospel. Given a choice between faithfulness to the gospel and faithfulness to the Bishop of Rome the Reformers chose the former and several paid for that decision with their lives. The gospel should be at the heart of our churches and if it's not then we need to call our churches to repentance and reformation. As Article 20 of the 39 Articles puts it (the point is on faithfulness to Scripture generally which obviously includes the gospel):

The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.

The Anglican Church's own standards state that Scripture (which includes the gospel) takes precedence over what the Church says. If the church ordains anything contrary to Scripture or requires a Christian to believe something not in Scripture then it has exceeded its rightful authority. And amen to that. In that sense I am a "gospel" Christian before I am an Anglican (or whatever particular denomination we're talking about).

But the devil, as they say, is in the detail and that little word "evangelical" carries a lot of extra baggage. The word's root meaning is of course simply the adjectival form of the noun gospel (Gk. εὐαγγέλιον, euangelion): "Of or pertaining to the gospel" would probably be a the first definition of the word evangelical in any good English dictionary. But that's not the only definition of the word. All of the definitions have some connexion with the "gospel" and no doubt everyone who claims to be "evangelical" is no doubt sincere in his belief that he is being faithful to the "gospel" (although not all who claim to be are in fact). But for English speaking people of the present day, the word "evangelical" has particular connotations and it's not quite correct to say that all that that word means is "a gospel Christian" as if we are starting with a tabula rasa and simply taking "believing in the gospel" will inextricably result in a full-blown theology of all kinds of things that Christians believe and do. The word's meaning and connotations are rooted in history -- obviously in the apostolic era as the apostles took the gospel to the world, particularly in the Reformation of the 16th Century and subsequently in various "evangelical" movements (revivals, awakenings etc) of the 18th and 19th centuries. And then it is a word whose meaning has been shaped by further events in the 19th and 20th centuries, for example the impact of theological "liberalism", "fundamentalism" and -- of particular importance for Anglicans -- tractarianism/ritualism on the church. And from the latter third of the Twentienth Century the term has come to be shaped by particular approaches to gathered worship which differ from more "traditional" forms known to virtually all Christians (including "evangelicals") of previous generations. So it's not quite right to say that an "evangelical" Christian is simply a "gospel Christian". There's a lot more to it than that. Now I'm not saying these other things are bad or even that they don't flow out of a concern for fidelity to the "gospel" (although I don't think all of them do; the link between the last development I mentioned and the gospel is tenuous at best but then perhaps many evangelicals would want to deny that their "evangelicalism" entails this) but my point is that "evangelicalism" is not some form of naked "gospel Christianity", pure and simple. It's a form of Christianity that has been shaped by history and tradition. There is, quite simply, an evangelical tradition. So the first thing we need to do is recognise this fact. No-one in the 21st Century is a "gospel Christian" pure and simple. If we are gospel Christians then we are gospel Christians of a particualr culture, standing in a particular tradition. The second thing flowing from this is that once we realise that evangelicalism is itself a tradition, we need to understand it, appreciate it and of course critique it. It is my view that once we understand it on its own terms we shall see that it is not Christianity in its fullness and nor is it to be equated with "the church". "Evangelicalism" is an emphasis within Christianity -- and a right emphasis at that -- but it is a mistake to equate it with the church or Christianity itself. The gospel should of course lie at the heart of our churches and of us as individual Christians and that is what I mean by saying that evangelicalism is a (right) theological emphasis. But an emphasis is not the whole thing. I do not think that evangelicalism is enough. And (personifying things), nor do I think that evangelicalism would want us to think that of it.

I could come at this from a number of different angles and each would be legitimate. The Ugley Vicar has come at it from a perceived crisis of evangelical identity within the Church of England. So-called "evangelicals" who you would think should have everything in common and would get on like a house on fire quite plainly do not and are not. There are deep divides among those in the Church of England (and the Anglican communion more generally) who call themselves evangelical. The Ugley Vicar's very sensible suggestion is that perhaps we ought to be committed to making our "Anglicanness" our unifying feature. Take the theology and liturgy (or perhaps the liturgical approach if not the liturgy itself) of the Book of Common Prayer 1662, the 39 Articles and the Ordinal as our starting point rather than some commitment to an amorphous "evangelicalism". A good point, but one I fear will largely fall on deaf ears. While (as the saying has it) it may be hard to teach an old dog new tricks, in actual fact (as the saying doesn't have it) I suspect it's much harder to teach a new evangelical dog old tricks. Most modern evangelicals have a strong aversion to anything that was already in existence before they happened to be born which means getting them enthusiastic about authentic Anglicanism will be a tall order.

But the point I wish to raise in this essay is this:
Evangelicalism as we know it is a kind of "lowest common denominator" Christianity. Rightly understood and applied there is a useful and God-honouring place for this but it is a grave mistake to make the lowest common denominator the norm. As a tradition, evangelicalism is dependent on other traditions, particularly Christian "denominations".

First, "the good". The right place for this kind of lowest common denominator Christianity is where Christians of different denominations and traditions come together, enjoy genuine fellowship with one another and learn from God's word and one another. I rejoice in my involvement in the AFES, UCCF and SMD during my time at university (many years now after a double undergraduate degree, a couple of Masters degree and now a doctorate!) and my fellowship and united mission there with fellow believers from different Christian denominations (and cultures even, particularly with the SMD when I was at uni in Germany). As Psalm 133:1 says, "Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell [together] in unity!" And Amen to that! I loved the fact that I could meet with Christians from differing Christian and cultural backgrounds, agreed in the essentials but differing (or with different emphasis) in some points and still "dwell together in unity". Through my involvement I have learnt many valuable things from Christians coming from markedly different backgrounds from me. And I have very much benefitted from interdenominational evangelical events and conferences such as the Katoomba Christian Convention. I support these kinds of minstries and want to see them thrive. So this kind of non-denominational "lowest common denominator" evangelical Christianity definitely can and should be done. In its proper place it is a wonderful blessing, not to be shirked. And yet ...

While it's a wonderful thing in its proper place, when elevated beyond that it can become a dangerous thing. We should not think that lowest common denominator Chistianity is Christianity in its fulness. Let's take doctrine as an example (although this point doesn't just apply to doctrine as well -- it also applies to other things such as liturgy as well). For instance, the IFES doctrinal statement is a wonderful statement of Christian truth, and it truly does provide a basis for brothers to "dwell together in unity" but to state the obvious it is lacking in some important points. Here are just a few which should drive the point home: although it mentions salvation, it expresses no view on the doctrines of predestination and election; although it mentions the unity of the three persons of the Godhead it doesn't really have anything else to say on the subject of Trinitarian theology; it expresses a very thin view on ecclesiology; and there is no mention at all of the sacraments. This doctrinal statement is fine in so far as it goes, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. That's not a criticism of the statement or its authors. It serves a distinct purpose and serves it well, viz. enabling Christians from different traditions (which are assumed to have highly developed positions on the kinds of questions which the IFES doctrinal statement doesn't address and are often questions on which various Christians disagree) to dwell together in unity in the particular context of university ministry. But if my local church had a doctrinal statement like that then something would be seriously amiss. And if thoughtful Christians in a local church have a set of statements like that as the end product of their theological reflexion then again something is seriously amiss. There are whole swathes of things missing.

Now perhaps more controversial among evangelicals is the way we conduct our public gatherings. I'm talking the liturgy of gathered worship here. I've already mentioned that I have benefited enormously from interdenominational evangelical minsitries such as IFES in its various national incarnations (in my case AFES, UCCF and SMD having been to uni in three different countries!) and the Katoomba Christian Convention. When Christians of various traditions meet together in settings like this then it would be silly (and quite insensitve) to impose a particular denominational (eg Baptist, Anglican etc) liturgy on such a group made up of Christians from various denominations/liturgical traditions. No, there is a way that Christians of various liturgical traditions can gather together in common worship. And again, I'm all for it in its proper context. But it's a mistake to think that this is the most edifying way and what we should be aiming for when we meet in our local (denominational) churches on a Sunday. Should we be satisfied with a lowest common denominator approach to the liturgy of public worship? I think not. So it is a mistake in my view to water down our Anglican distinctives as a seeming majority of evangelical Anglicans want to do. There is a kind of evangelical Anglican who does everything in his power to deny all Anglican distinctives. In part it comes from good intentions (only in part -- in part I think it also springs from a number of bad intentions) but in any event it is a deeply mistaken approach.

This kind of lowest common denominator evangelical Christianity is in my view an inadequate expression of the Christian faith -- both in terms of doctrine and our theology and practice of gathered worship. The various Christian denominations have their own approaches to gathered worship which are theologically and historically informed and much richer than any "lowest common denominator" approach. If I attend an Anglican service then I think it fair to expect it to be recognisably "Anglican". And if I attend a Baptist service the same would apply in it being recognisably "Baptist". And not only is it fair to expect that, it is actually a good thing. These various liturgical traditions are themselves a good thing. Now obviously we should expect a degree of overlap here. Both are Christian churches, and both are churches which have been shaped by the Reformation, and if they are evangelical congregations I would think that each would be shaped by a particular concern not only for the proclamation of the gospel but also for a personal response. But although there should be many similarities, there should also be some noticeable differences in praxis reflecting not only differences in theology but also history and culture. (And it's not just with fellow Protestants that there are similarities; there are also similarities -- but also some very important differences -- between Anglican and Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox forms).

Anglicanism (or any denomination or particular Christian tradition really) is not just one of several "boats" for evangelicals to "fish" from (as it is often put by or to people considering full time gospel/pastoral ministry). In an important sense it is a "boat to fish from": Anglicanism and Anglican forms are not ends in themselves; they serve a higher purpose. Of course you can be a faithful gospel minister in an Anglican context and you can be a faithful gospel minister in a Baptist context etc so there is in this sense a choice of "boats" from which Christians can "fish". But there's more to it than that. Much more. These respective "boats" come with a whole history of theological and liturgical practice and reflexion. Generation upon generation of faithful Christians have thought long and hard about theology, liturgy etc and in the Anglican tradition this finds its expression particularly in the Book of Common Prayer of 1662. As well as being a great "boat to fish from", there is a particularly Anglican way of "doing" church to which Anglicans ought to be committed (subject of course to Scripture -- if we are doing what Scripture forbids or not doing what it commands then of course we need to change our ways: but that thankfully is built into the Anglican way, at least in theory anyway). And I would say the same about other Christian denominations/traditions as well. Of course we always need to be faithful to Scripture and let Scripture guide and shape both our doctrine and our praxis (or put another way our theology and our liturgy). But we should do so conscious of our place in the overall scheme of things. When we understand this we will come to appreciate that we are not the first generation of Christians, that we have much to learn from generations past, and that we are standing in a particular tradition.

One of the sad developments I see among evangelical Anglicans is that we have produced a whole generation of Anglicans (and the way things are going will continue to produce them) who know nothing of and care little for Anglicanism. Look, I realise that Anglicanism came into existence at a certain point in time and it may very well disappear again. I for one readily accept that the gospel is far more important and the church far bigger than Anglicanism. BUT, my point is that you can't actually "do" church in some kind of tabula rasa "just the Bible" way and that what we are now doing in many Anglican churches is an impoverished way of doing church in comparison with more traditional Anglican forms. We are not tapping into the stream of our tradition as we ought and individual Christians are missing out on so much it has to offer. Most evangelical Anglicans in Sydney my age and younger (I'm 30) have next to no knowledge of -- let alone appreciation for -- traditional Anglican forms of worship. That is a scandal and it should not be. This stuff should be in our spiritual DNA so that even if we are going to deviate from these forms we are going to do so in a theologically and liturgically informed way. It's like musical improvisation. You can't just sit in front of a piano having no knowledge of how to play, what music people have already composed, and what "works" musically and expect to play brilliant improvisation. No, the best improvisational artists have actually studied a lot of music and can play from memory the classics which they had to learn by hard slog. They have been reared on the classics and music theory. They know where they stand in the great stream of musical history. They have the classics in their fingers before they even start to improvise. And when they do improvise it will sound so much better as a result. What's more, when it's done really well the informed listener will even be able to recognise where the improvisational artist has taken the classics and given them a little creative twist.

So how can we call ourselves Anglican -- let alone evangelical Anglicans -- and not be infused by the theology and liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, particularly the central Anglican liturgies of Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and the Lord's Supper? I'm not saying that all our services need to follow the prayer book by the letter. But like our improvisational artist at the piano we need to know where we've come from, know where we stand in the wider scheme of things, know what "works" and what doesn't "work", know what is edifying, and then do all this in a way that draws on and is faithful to the wider tradition (be it liturgical or musical) in which we find ourselves. As Anglicans the theology and liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer should be part of our spiritual DNA. But sadly for a whole generation of younger Anglicans this is not the case. I can remember being greatly saddened by the fact that my fellow young adults at church (who by the way had been brought up their entire lives in Anglican churches) did not even know what a "choral evensong" was (yes I'm a chorister and I do sing in my fair share of choral evensongs but that's besides the point). Anyone who knows anything about Anglicanism should know what a choral evensong is. And not even after explaining it to them did they get it. When I informed them that it was a sung service of Evening Prayer typically from the Book of Common Prayer 1662 (although you can of course do it to more modern liturgies) their reaction was "what, you mean like hymns and stuff?"!!! Most of them didn't know what the Order for Evening Prayer was, most of them couldn't imagine a service where you would actually hold a book and say/sing a set liturgy as well as hymns and a Psalm and most of them certainly couldn't imagine the type of music that you would hear there (which is not surprising if all you ever listen to is CCM and the only other form of church music you are vaguley familiar with is traditional hymns). I wasn't expecting these people to like it let alone want to do it. What I was expecting was either for them to know what it was or at least what the Order for Evening Prayer in the Anglican Prayer Book was. But most of them didn't even know that. It's pretty much the equivalent of talking to a grown adult native English speaker about Shakespeare and then getting the reply "Who's Shakespeare?". Even if Shakespeare doesn't float your boat as a writer, if you're a native English speaker you really ought to know who he is and why he's so important and probably read some of his works. You may be surprised. You may learn a thing or two and even come to appreciate him.

We actually learn by doing and saying (or singing) so much better than we do by just listening or reading and this is one of the prime reasons liturgy should be responsive and one of the prime reasons modern evangelical services -- which on the whole are stupefying, passive affairs with the congregation just sitting there listening to what the "service leader" (or "worship leader" depending on your particular dialect of evangelicalese) tells them -- are so impoverished. If you want to get people to really know ("mark, learn and inwardly digest" to use a gem of a prayer book phrase!) Scripture, then get them saying -- or better yet singing -- it (the Psalms are great in this respect). If you want people to learn good theology then get them saying or singing it in church in the form of responsive liturgy. Most Christians who have been brought up on responsive liturgy internalise it even without making a conscious effort to memorise it. And the parts of Scripture I know best are the Psalms, most of which I haven't made a conscious effort to memorise but know from having regulary sung them as a chorister in services of choral evensong. If you say (or sing) something enough times you'll learn it without trying. I did a little Anglican liturgy experiement among some of the young adults at my current (Anglican) church which is quite non-liturgical (OK, I know all church is "liturgical" in a sense, even those such as my current church which has largely abandoned traditional forms of liturgy; but I'm sure you catch my drift). Now we don't say the sursum corda in our litugy for the Lord's Supper even though it's in all or most of the authorised Anglican liturgies for the Holy Communion and it's something common (with a few variances in wording) to just about every Christian tradition. We do a fairly minimal liturgy for the Lord's Supper, usually starting with the prayer of humble access ("We do not presume ...") but skip all the stuff before that, perhaps to save time and perhaps because the powers that be don't really like formal liturgy but think the congregation should at least say something and not just sit there passively before receiving the bread and the wine. My experiment was as follows: I would go round to people after church and would say the opening line to the sursum corda (i.e. what the Minister would say in the liturgy) and see how people responded. "Lift up your hearts!" Sadly, most of them didn't have a clue what I was on about but a few people replied "We lift them up unto the Lord" (or the modern equivalent "We lift them to the Lord").

Now don't hear me wrong. I am most certainly not saying that all our services should necessarily be from the 1662 Prayer Book or that clergy should always be robed or that we should always sing old hymns or even that services alway have to follow a set liturgy etc, etc, etc. Not at all. On a personal level I quite like many of those things but I'm certainly not saying we have to do things like that. What I am saying is that there is actually much advantage in many of those things and at any rate we all need to know where we have come from and where we fit in the scheme of things which means understanding our particular Christian tradition's way of doing things and knowing when and why we deviate from that if in fact we are going to do so. When you have an entire generation of so-called Anglicans which neither knows nor cares about any of this stuff which is fairly central to Anglicanism you have a big problem on your hands. And to make matters worse, even many of our younger clergy suffer from this problem. If we're going to be Anglicans then the Book of Common Prayer -- its theology and liturgy -- needs to be in our blood, whether or not we actually use it in our Sunday services. It has been suggested elsewhere (again I have read this at the Ugley Vicar but I don't think he's the only one saying it) that Anglican ordinands should return to using the 1662 Prayer Book at chapel services during their theological training precisely because it is almost never used in parish settings any more. The 1662 Prayer Book is not just an old liturgy to be replaced by more modern forms at our whim; it is also our official doctrinal standard. So for that reason alone (and there are others as well) clergy ought to be familiar with it. And I mean really familiar (in the sense of marking, learning and inwardly digesting). In the past when everyone used the 1662 prayer book in Sunday services ordinands coming to college came with prior knowledge. They had already internalised the prayer book's liturgy through regular use and their theological education could add flesh to the bones already there. But now that we no longer use it in regular services ordinands come to collge without these bones and as a result we get a bunch of limp clergy who don't really know what they're doing or why they are doing it. It's vital that Anglican ordinands get the theology and liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer 1662 into their blood. Reading it through once as an academic textbook won't do this. You really have to use it to become familiar with it and that's the reason why it has been suggested -- and why I agree -- that ordinands return to the old 1662 book for chapel services while they are at theological college. This way, when they return back into the "real world" where services are no longer run by the old book they can still do church in a way that is true to the vision of the Prayer Book and, as the Act of Uniformity of 1558/9 put it, "as may be most for the advancement of God's glory, the edifying of His Church, and the due reverence of Christ's holy mysteries and sacraments". In most settings it probably won't be most edifying in modern times to run services in Elizabethan English. But our services should still reflect the sound theology and liturgical approach of the 1662 book and of course still be recognisable as standing within the broader "Anglican" tradition. Sadly this is something we've lost sight of and our gathered worship is all the more impoverished for it.

Magnifique!

2009-08-23T15:40:00.028+01:00

For those of you who have had the plaisir of learning French (or perhaps any foreign language), All Things Nice has posted some funny videos. They're all pretty good (OK I'll be honest: I'm not the biggest fan of Friends and its style of humour so of the four videos here the scene from Friends was my least favourite), but I particularly enjoyed the following from Kiwi comedy duo Flight of the Conchords:

This video captures the mood of so many people's high school language learning experience incredibly well: Reciting stock text book words and phrases (particularly good is the opening scene in the café and the the trip to the supermarché at 0:45 - 1:05 with a particularly nice comedic touch at 1:02); engaging in contrived set-piece conversations (the "conversation" in the parc at 1:03 - 1:25 is pure gold!!!), incredibly dated impressions of local life -- whether in text books or slide shows from the teacher's personal collection (the text books were always out of date in this respect and, moreover, although I went to high school in the 1990s my French teacher had spent a year working in a French lycée in the early 1970s so our impression of French life was based on his slide shows set in 1972!) -- the choice of a late 60s/early 70s motif for this video captures this aspect of the typical high school language learning experience oh so well; and last but not least the experience of discovering that your rudimentary knowledge of text book French doesn't "work" in the "real world" -- you can't understand the locals and they can't understand you (see 1:47 - 2:07).

Magnifique!

Copyright Stupidity

2009-08-23T13:45:00.022+01:00

"The Law is a[n] ass". So quipped Mr. Bumble is Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. True, sometimes the law is an ass. But more often than not it's persons insisting on their legal rights who are the true asses. And copyright infringement is all too often a fine example of this. While I think many aspects of the law on copyright are asinine (such as the tendency for ever increasing length of copyright protection), I actually think the legal recognition of some form of copyright is a sensible thing. Given a choice, I'd much rather live in a world with copyright protection (albeit often far too asinine in its particulars) than in a world with no copyright protection whatsoever.

But how often have you clicked on a link to a youtube video only to find the video replaced with a copyright infringement notice? And how frustrating is this? As an example of this consider my earlier blog post on rugby's "bloodgate" scandal. When I originally composed that essay I posted a link to a video of the incident with commentary in French. After posting that I came across a better video of the incident (this time with commentary in English). Now, however, the second video (the one with commentary in English) has been removed by youtube at the request of the copyright holder. If you click on that link you will get the following message: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by British Sky Broadcasting, Ltd."

In a sense that's fair enough. If someone has posted a video containing copyrighted material and done so without the copyright holder's consent then (subject to exceptions in the law about fair dealing / fair use) the copyright holder undoubtedly has the legal right to have it removed. So of course I'm not denying a copyright holder the right to insist that youtube remove videos posted there without the copyright holder's consent. What I am objecting to is the point of the exercise of this (undoubted) legal right. Just because you're free to take a particular course of action doesn't mean you should. There are lots of things we are free to do but which we don't because they would be dumb things to do. And in many (if not most) instances copyright holders insisting that youtube remove videos on the grounds of copyright infringement is a dumb thing to do.

Look, I can understand that the presence of a video on youtube can translate into a potential loss of income for the copyright holder. If instead of going and buying the latest hit single you can watch it for free on youtube then that's potentially lost revenue for the copyright holder. So I can understand why copyright holders might object to people uploading videos containing their songs etc without their permission. But on the other hand think of all the free publicity a youtube video can grant. I (along with most people) had never even heard of the song Forever by Chris Brown (I didn't even know who the artist was) but thanks to this video which has gone viral, an awful lot of people who otherwise wouldn't now do. Thanks to a youtube copyright violation this song has once again become a huge hit (and a financial windfall for the copyright holder). As a result of this "violation" of his (or perhaps more accurately his record company's) copyright, the copyright holder is now a lot wealthier for it since many people have now gone out and bought this song having heard it on a video in violation of copyright. Thousands if not millions of people who would never otherwise have bought the song because they wouldn't otherwise have known it existed have gone out and spent money on it.

Most copyright holders -- and particularly those whose copyright is going to be a source of potential income -- would generally like the added publicity that comes through a copyright violation on youtube. What they don't like is the potential loss of income (eg through lost royalties) that comes with it. In many cases I would suggest that from a commercial point of view it would make sense to allow copyright violations (at least some of them) to take place on account of the free publicity they generate. Ultimately that's something for copyright holders to weigh up in making a commercial decision. They are free to insist on their copyright and ask youtube to remove the offending video (or at least kill the sound to the video if it's a song we're talking about). But whether this is a decision that is in their overall interest is another matter entirely. Sometimes it will be, sometimes it won't be. And in any event I'm not really criticising copyright holders for insisting on their rights in situations like this.

Altogether different, however, are videos in breach of copyright but the presence of which on youtube does not involve any potential loss of income (through royalties or otherwise) for the copyright holder. And the rugby video I posted is exactly that kind of video. Sky Television was not losing any potential revenue from this video being on youtube. The fact that someone posted a video of an isolated incident of public interest compiled from Sky television footage is not going to cause any loss of revenue for Sky Television. People who subscribe to Sky Sports do so in order to watch matches in their entirety and in a timely manner (i.e. usually live). The appearance several months after the event on youtube of a few minutes of Sky's footage of a single and highly unusual incident (which caused a scandal in the rugby world and led to lengthy bans and large fines for those involved) -- we're not even talking match highlights here people -- is not in any way, shape or form damaging to Sky's commercial interests in the copyright of their television footage. So why do they insist on the video's removal? Are they nothing more than mindless automatons who don't actually think about the effects of the presence of a particular video on youtube and the potential effects of its removal but instead just automatically fire off lawyers' letters the moment they spot a copyright infringement? Here's a lesson for you: Copyright infringement is not always a bad thing for the copyright holder. Sometimes it's in your interests to allow it to take place. So for goodness' sake THINK before you act. And here's another lesson for you: Even if a particular copyright infringement doesn't have a positive effect, that doesn't necessarily mean it has a negative effect. It can be entirely neutral (as I think the presence of the rugby video in question was). BUT your insistence on its removal can have a negative effect on your public image.

British Sky Broadcasting, you've just gone down a lot in my estimation. As a result of what you have done here I am a lot less likely now to hand over to you my hard earned money in subscription fees because of your mindless decision to insist on the removal of a video from youtube in a situation which wasn't costing you any potential revenue. While it's undoubtedly your right as copyright holder to insist on this course of action it's equally my right as a consumer to point out what a stupid move it was on your part and in protest to refrain from subscribing to your television channel. In this case it is not so much the law of copyright that is the ass but British Sky Broadcasting Ltd for insisting on the video's removal.

Twenty-First Century Cathedral Evangelicals

2009-08-15T19:08:00.065+01:00

As an all too often solitary dissenting voice in the "church buildings are just rain shelters" evangelical wilderness (for a while I once described my religious affiliation on F acebook as "Cathedral Calvinist"!) I found the following video inspiring (HT: the Internet Monk). In an era when evangelical Christianity is just about synonymous with meg achurch-inspired "worshiptainment" here is a group of 21st Century evangelical Christians (in Nashville of all places which would have a good claim to being the spiritual home of evangelical worshiptainment!) building a great cathedral-like structure for worship to the glory of God -- an act so outré as to be be a near heresy in today's evangelicalism.

A common catch-cry among many evangelicals, including those in my own denomination of Anglicanism -- particularly those from my home Diocese of Sydney, not least of whom the current Dean Phill ip Jensen -- is that "church buildings are just rain shelters" (or words to that effect). Now Phillip Jensen has his detractors but as someone who has benefited immensely from his ministry I certainly wouldn't want to class myself as one. The man is a very gifted evangelist, preacher and ex pounder of the Wo rd and his ministry proved immensely influential in my undergraduate student days when I was a young Christian. I thank God for the work of Phillip Jensen and feel privileged to count him as a brother in Christ. And, moreover, I am in many respects deeply grateful that a man of his spiritual gifting has been appointed Dean of an influential cathedral in world Anglicanism (much like John Donne was of St Paul's in London from 1621 to 1631). Would that more cathedrals across the Anglican Communion had faithful evangelists and preachers of this calibre in their pulpits (and available to evangelise and disciple the myriads of spiritually blind or confused tourists who pass through their doors). But although no detractor of the man, I am certainly no "fanboy" either (although to put this in context I wouldn't really consider myself a "fanboy" of any particular preacher, church leader etc -- cf 1 Corinthians 3:1-9). I have my points of disagreement with Phillip Jensen and his stated views on church buildings being nothing more than "rain shelters" is one of them.

Of course no doubt arguments could be made about what exactly he and others like him mean by such a statement and that's certainly a fair point to raise. A statement like that can certainly be seen as a kind of "shorthand" for a broader, more nuanced view. And I would certainly agree with many of the sentiments behind such a statement. The New Testament does not have anything to say on church buildings (although that in itself doesn't settle the matter; a full theological response would also need to consider what the Old Testament has said on the matter). In the greater scheme of things I think it is fairly safe for us to conclude that church buildings are not what is important. Good Protestants will know that theologically speaking "the church" is not a building but the people. It's quite clear that a nice building (or even any building) is neither necessary nor sufficient for true worship to take place. False worship can take place in a grand building and true worship can take place in a humble building, a tent or even in the open air. Moreover, after his resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus explicitly gave the following command to his disciples:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18-20)

I think the clear implication from this passage is that priority should clearly be given to evangelism and discipleship. Again, the church is not "about" buildings but evangelism and discipleship. But it is a mistake to take the reductionist path and conclude from this that all the church is to do is evangelise and disciple. Important as these tasks are, that's not all we are to do. Priority? Yes. Sufficiency? No. I would hate to think that a group of Christians' commitment to building a new cathedral-like structure complete with pipe organ and interior decoration would come at the expense of discipleship and evangelism. Building these kinds of structures is not (ultimately) what the church is "about". And indeed such a criticism would be a typical response from many evangelicals: "Think of how all that money could be spent on Bibles and missions" &c. Agreed. But while you're at it think about how all that money you spend on modern auditoriums complete with child care centres, coffee shops, bookshops (if people still read books in this "visual" age as we are so often told -- they probably prefer to buy CDs and DVDs), professional sound and lighting system, digital projection, expensive musical instruments such as keyboards, electric guitars, drum kits etc etc could be spent on "Bibles and missions". Physician, heal thyself! For the most part evangelical arguments against cathedral-like trappings because the money could be "better spent" elsewhere are pure cant. I've heard them all before. For instance when asking the rector and parish council at my home church (an Anglican church which runs a range of Sunday services from traditional "robes and prayer book" with organ and occasional volunteer choir in a 19th century traditional sandstone church building to "contemporary" services with LCD projection, band and "~~worship~~ song leader" meeting in a decidedly modern "ministry centre") whether it would be possible to replace our rather humble electric organ in the church building with a proper pipe organ I was given exactly this kind of response -- which on one level is fair enough. I agree that in the greater scheme of things evangelism and discipleship are more important than pipe organs and nice proper choir robes etc. And yet the same people seem to have no pangs of conscience spending money on laptops and LCD projectors, (because liturgy and hymns from a book are so passé daahlings), electronic keyboards (you know, because an electric organ manual is unfit for modern fingers), microphones (choirs, the unamplified human voice or even the congregation singing without prompting from people who refuse to sing in anything but chest voice are so outmoded that we now need a wannabe Australian Idol "leading the ~~worsh~~ip singing"), amps (so that the instruments and the "~~worship~~ song leader" can drown out the congregation's ~~worship~~ singing), mixing desks (do I have to give a reason? I'm sure you get the idea by now) and all the other paraphernalia of modern day ~~worshiptainment~~ evangelicalism. Again, I say, Physician, heal thyself. Modern day Western evangelicals should be the last of all people to point the finger at Christians of a prior age or those more traditionally minded Christians today who would spend money on things like cathedrals, organs, and choirs when they themselves have no compunction about spending it on a whole host of more modern (and arguably less beautiful -- although I realise this a point of contention) equivalents.

I agree 100% (and more if that were possible!) with the view that the church should prioritise evangelism and discipleship over buildings, organs, choirs etc. I'm a committed evangelical on this basic point. Forced to make a choice, I'll take a church that faithfully evangelises and disciples and yet worships in a tent with God's people singing God's praises to a single strummed unamplified guitar (or for that matter a church that does so in a modern auditorium, with LCD projector, amplified electric music "led" by a I-don't-know-what-head-voice-is Australian Idol wannabe) over beautifully ornate and moving liturgical cathedral worship with a professional director of music, professional organists and professional choristers but which doesn't take evangelism and discipleship seriously, thank you very much. But I hope you see that such a dichotomy is not -- inherently at least -- necessary. To insist that such a choice is inherently necessary is to engage in a false dichotomy -- and a flaw of much modern day evangelicalism (particularly of the Western Anglican variety given its wonderful liturgical and musical heritage and the utter disdain in which it is held by most modern Anglican evangelicals). Sadly, however, for most modern evangelicals the dichotomy is all too real. Far too many evangelicals adopt a mantra akin to the bastardised version of Animalism: "four legs good, two legs bad". Translated into modern day evangelicalese we get "non-churchy auditorium, amplified band and soloist "worship leader", LCD projector, minister wearing casual clothes etc": good; "traditional church building, organ/ensemble and choir, printed liturgy and hymn books, robed minister etc": bad.

And another thing on which I agree 100% (or more if that were again possible) is that there are plenty of people in churches (especially in Anglican churches) whose thinking is in need of some serious correction about the priority of evangelism and discipleship over cathedrals, organs and choirs etc. As a professional church musician (of the traditional Anglican choral kind -- as both an evangelical Anglican and a traditional church musician I inhabit two very different Anglican worlds) I know plenty of people like this. Many of these people are dedicated churchgoers but a good number of them probably are not even converted (although ultimately that kind of judgement is not for me to make). So yes, there are many people in Anglican churches who idolise church architecture, organs, choirs etc and also for whom evangelism and discipleship are not a priority. This needs to change. And to such people I might provocatively say something like a church building is a "rain shelter". Why? Because (a) it is (first and foremost church buildings are functional and let us never forget that important truth) and (b) they probably need to hear this message. In their love of traditional church architecture and choral music they have lost sight of what the church is about (or at least a VERY important and substantial part of what it's about).

But a "rain shelter" (I would submit) is not all a church building is. This kind of reductionism does a great disservice to our God who is to be glorified in all that we do. While church buildings are primarily functional, that is not all they are (or can be). Granted, there is nothing in the Bible that requires us to own or even use a church building. We are free to proclaim the word, administer the sacraments and sing God's praises etc in the open air (in fact I have done so -- and joyfully so -- both with my current church in Oxford which every year conducts an open air baptism service in/by the River Thames and also with one of the chapel choirs I have sung with in Oxford which every Ascension Day takes part in an open air service of worship) or in rented premises such as a school hall or gymnasium. When done in spirit and truth such worship is pleasing to God. Whether or not we meet in a building, or if we do what kind of building we meet in (eg a "dedicated" church building or another kind of building such as a school hall), is not ultimately what counts. But -- and this is a big but -- it is a mistake to take the reductionist path and then say that Christians shouldn't build grand cathedrals or beautiful church buildings etc. Scripture plainly tells us "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). I take it that that applies to the act of building church buildings as well. So Christians, if you are going to build a church building (and you don't have to) then make sure you do so to the glory of God (or clory of Cod to amateur choristers :-Þ ).

Now of course what exactly a church building that is built "to the glory of God" (and public worship that is conducted to the glory of God) will look like will depend on a lot of factors. You can't take a one size fits all approach here. In some circumstances meeting in someone's house with music sung to a single strummed guitar will be the most glorifying option. In another it may be building a cathedral and conducting public worship with all the attendant trappings. And again I think most modern day evangelicals err here by taking a one-size-fits-all approach in suggesting that the auditorium/amplified band/"worship leader" model of church is the way to do it. At the very least I think building church buildings and conducting public worship to the glory of God certainly can include a cathedral-like structure and cathedral-style worship -- so modern evangelicals are wrong to criticise Christians (whether of the past or the present) for building them and engaging in this style of public worship. But I would be inclined to go a step further and argue that it can also do so to the exclusion of other kinds of buildings (and styles of public worship). Given that our God is a God of majesty, awe, beauty etc I think that has something to say about the kinds of church buildings we are to build (assuming of course we do choose to build them -- and before you ask: no, I don't believe that God "lives" in our church buildings) and the style of public worship we conduct. Other things being equal I think that a grand cathedral filled with dulcet polyphonous tones is a better testament to the character of our God than a bland megachurch auditorium filled with amplified monophony. In saying this am I implying that it's somehow "wrong" for Christians to build a megachurch auditorium and conduct public worship in the manner I have just described? No, not really. Not "wrong" per se. But not necessarily "right" either.

Now at this point I can imagine a lot of people reading this blog thinking something along the lines of "well he would say that, wouldn't he? He's just some high-falutin' liturgy-loving chorister stuck in a modern-day evangelical shell." Well, that's inescapably true. There is a degree of personal taste in all of this and that's inescapable. No-one comes to this topic as a purely neutral participant. We all have tastes and preferences and I would be the first to admit that. But if you're going to make this kind of criticism of me then again I would remind people of the proverb "Physician heal thyself". You should equally admit that it applies to you just as much as it does to me. Your desire for "informal" mini megachurch style worship is just as much (if not more so) a matter of personal taste and not necessarily the missiologically-driven (or even driven out of a concern for God's greater glory) thing you claim it to be.

For all the "natural critics" of "cathedral evangelicalism" out there I would encourage you to ponder the words of the Internet Monk. He is very much one of you (his background is classic American evangelicalism -- from the revivalist strand of the Southern Baptists) and yet on reflection thinks there is a place for this. He doesn't see it as by any means normative (and nor do I really -- most churches probably don't have the gifting or financial resources to make this kind of undertaking work; if you're going to do it then be sure to do it well -- unison congregational singing to a single strummed guitar done well is far better than polyphonic "cathedral music" done poorly) but nevertheless sees it as appropriate in certain circumstances. Listen to what he says:

Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville is a new church (1990) with an incredible worship center [sic].

Jesus didn’t build cathedrals – or impressive temples – on earth. The New Covenant is explicit: the old temple worship and ALL its externals are gone.

I don’t believe God wants most churches to build cathedrals to worship in. Most churches, as I see the cross cultural church planting task, should consider whether they even need a building, at least for a very long time. There’s a lot of reasons not to do this.

The resources spent on a Gothic Cathedral like this are mind-boggling. The economics of Jesus seem plain enough. The commitment to upkeep is massive. Such expenditures could fund missionary church planting efforts of monumental significance, print millions of Bibles, eradicate vast hordes of poverty and revolutionize the mission of the church in many places. (I have no idea what CPC’s resulting commitment to missions is, by the way, and I’d like to know. [Ed: To which I, Apodeictic, would add a hearty 'Amen'.])

But I have changed my mind a bit on this subject, so stand by and take notes if you are tracking my inconsistencies.

I think some churches – and CPC Nashville seems to be one of them – should build beautiful gothic cathedrals if they can.

You see, God gifts us creatively and artistically. He gives some people the means and the gifts to express art to the glory of God in ways few others can.

In music. In stained glass. In architecture. In construction. In design and in the resulting worship and liturgy.

Some churches need to release those gifts into the culture, so that a city can see a gothic cathedral and experience worship sacramentally (aha!) [Ed: for the background on this see the following two posts] in the glory of a physical worship center [sic] and all that can happen there. Some churches. Not all.
[Emphasis in original]

Personally, I think the Internet Monk has hit the nail right on the head. In modern evangelicalism's one-size-fits-all approach which effectively dictates that in our style of public worship we must all be the teen fellowship group that refuses to grow up and that in our design of church buildings we must all be megachurches (whether actual megachurches or megachurches in miniature) we are not witnessing to the glory of God -- and indeed the gospel -- as much as we could be. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people in this day and age who would never in a million years attend your typical evangelical church service (and I know oodles of them) but who would attend a traditional "cathedral" style of service (done well of course). In saying that I am suggesting that these people are not put off not so much by the message (and of course Scripture teaches us that a non-believing world does take offence at the gospel message) but by the "packaging" of modern day evangelicalism. Many modern day evangelicals are quick to suggest that non-believers don't "connect" with traditional church buildings and forms of Christian worship. Well, guess what? That kind of criticism applies equally to your preferred style of church too! Building a grand cathedral and conducting public worship in a manner befitting that kind of building can be a powerful witness to the glory of God -- and indeed the gospel of salvation -- before an unbelieving world. If God has given the people of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville the gifts and the resources to do this then they should do so gladly and to the glory of the triune God -- all the while evangelising and discipling the people of their community.

Now this of course raises some uncomfortable questions for the rest of us: How are we using the resources and gifts which is God has given us? Is God calling us to something bigger and better than what we are currently doing? In my own church circles I can think of ways in which we could adopt the same kind of attitude as CPC Nashville (although not necessarily leading to the same result) for the better. I'm most certainly not saying that we should bulldoze all the modern auditoriums and replace them with grand cathedrals or get rid of all the "informal" styles of service and go back to everyone doing a very "traditional" form of Anglican worship (which is all too often done very poorly IMHO). What I am saying is that Anglican evangelicals really need to re-examine what they're doing in light of a concern for God's glory in everything we do and the gifts and resources he has so richly bestowed upon us. For the most part, we Anglicans already have the buildings -- unlike CPC in Nashville we don't need to go out and build them from scratch. But how are we using what we already have? Are we really glorifying God by simply running generic megachurch-style services in them? All too often evangelical Anglican churches have either completely abandoned traditional forms of worship or only retain them begrudgingly as a favour to the older generations who can't relate to more "modern" forms and will probably abandon them completely once the older generation is no longer with us. In a lot of modern day evangelical "Anglican" services there is virtually nothing identifiably Anglican at all. I can think of a number of churches (my own included) which should probably be doing a lot more with what they've been given. Every time we want to "plant" a new congregation we automatically assume it has to be of the bland generic modern evangelical style. But why? Why are evangelical Anglican churches trying so hard to be de facto non-conformists (and decidedly modern non-conformists at that) in everything they do? (In saying that I am not disparaging non-conformity; my criticism is against Anglicans who take the name Anglican but then refuse to be Anglican in any meaningful sense of the word; I welcome my non-conformist brothers and sisters as full members of the Church of Christ and as full partners in the gospel; Anglican forms are not by any means essential.) Why can't we be evangelical and Anglican? As a trained chorister and someone committed to evangelism and discipleship one desire of mine would (God willing) be to plant an "evangelistic" service of choral evensong. In many areas there are lots of artsy people -- very much into classical music (and often with children) -- who are not themselves committed Christians but would be attracted to this style of worship if done well and who are not at all attracted to most modern evangelical forms of worship. You could get a professionally trained musician (who is a committed Christian and on board with the mission of the church plant) in to start up a choir with local kids and train them up to sing to a professional standard (this is not your average school or even church choir -- we're talking the standard of the best cathedral and Oxbridge college choirs). With the right people to train and conduct, this can be done. I know -- I experienced it as a boy chorister, albeit in a liberal and largely unbelieving environment. (It is my firm conviction that as evangelical Anglicans we should not be conceding this ground to the liberals and ritualists/tractarians. But sadly that is exactly what we evangelical Anglicans have done and are doing. Sydney aside, hearing a clear exposition of the gospel with a call to exercise faith and repentance is almost unheard of in any major Anglican cathedral in the Western world. Why? Well one reason -- among several no doubt -- is because evangelical Anglicans have retreated from a commitment to this style of Anglicanism. Simply put, they either don't see the value in it or if they do they are unable to engage with it because it is completely foreign to them.) Anyway, once you've got the choir together, get some committed Christians (ideally with kids if you're going to have the kids of non-believers in the choir) to commit to the service as well, and preach the gospel and teach the Scriptures faithfully to the non-believing parents of the children in the choir and other non-believers who come along for the music and /or the atmosphere. It wouldn't have to be a Sunday service; in fact I think a day other than Sunday would be better (perhaps early Saturday evening would be ideal). As an early evening service you could have a regular fellowship meal afterwards. That way friendships would be formed which would of course facilitate the sharing of the gospel. And of course you would also run evangelistic and discipleship courses outside of the regular service (such as Christianity Explored and later on perhaps more detailed courses based on the theology of the liturgy that is being sung) for the congregants as well. Good liturgy and good music can be used in the service of evangelism and discipleship and (it should go without saying) to the glory of God. So why aren't we doing it, people?

The utter folly of the Lords (on assisted suicide)

2009-07-31T17:00:00.047+01:00

In what will be one of the final decisions of the House of Lords in its judicial capacity before the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom takes over, the Law Lords have overturned the decision of the lower courts in the case of Debbie Purdy (you can read the full decision of the court here). Briefly the facts are as follows. Mrs Purdy is suffering from multiple sclerosis and would like the option of killing herself with the assistance of others (probably by travelling to the so-called "Dignitas" ~~slaughterhouse~~ clinic in Switzerland). Under section 2(1) of the Suicide Act 1961, assisting suicide is a crime in England and Wales and subject to (up to) 14 years' imprisonment. But as a matter of law there is some uncertainty whether and to what extent this applies to conduct outside of England and Wales. And, more importantly, as the case revealed there is some possible tension (unresolved on the Lordships' analysis -- see this post for a good analysis of this point with which I am not really concerning myself here) between this and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which protects the right to private life.

Although Mrs Purdy "won" her case, it has not had the (direct) effect of legalising assisted suicide. As a matter of law that was not the case was about, although that is probably what she and those backing her were really seeking, and inevitably as these things go it may end up having precisely that effect (although George Pilcher seems to think it may have the opposite effect). But judges have to answer the legal questions set before them and not avoid answering them out of a sense of political expedience. The rule of law demands that much. But the rule of law does not require the court to answer every question put to it by the plaintiff (or applicant). If the law says it's not the task of the courts to answer such a question then the rule of law requires courts to keep silent and send the plaintiff packing. In the English way of doing law there is a general understanding that advisory opinions are not part of the judicial function (although this position is coming under increasing stress). So if, for example, Parliament passes an amendment to the tax laws and there is some room for doubt over its correct interpretation and I can see the tax authorities taking a different view of its meaning from what I myself would like it to mean then very obviously there is some advantage in my knowing in advance what construction the courts will adopt. Will the courts side with my interpretation of the law (according to which I'll pay less tax) or the tax authorities' interpretation (according to which I'll pay more tax)? I'd like to know so that I can start planning and structuring my assets and income in such a way as to minimise my tax bill. If the courts are going to side with the taxman's interpretation then I might want to start shifting my assets and income offshore. If not then I can leave them as is. However, the fact that courts may not give advisory opinions puts an end to this wishful thinking. In the absence of an actual dispute, courts will not make hypothetical rulings on a point of law. Generally speaking you can't (in England and Wales) just go to court and ask the court to clarify the law for you because you'd like to know what the courts would rule in a real live case. No, it is not the court's job to give legal advice. If you want legal advice then go and see a lawyer. If, however, there is a real case and the parties to a dispute think the law means different things then the court will have to give an interpretation on the meaning of the law. So if the taxman has calculated and sent you your tax bill for the year based on his interpretation of the law and you think that interpretation is wrong and that under your interpretation of the law you should pay a different (lesser) amount then you can go to court and get the court to authoritatively interpret the law. But not beforehand. Courts are not there to give out legal advice. They are there to settle real legal disputes.

So what does all this have to do with Mrs Purdy's case? Well at first glance there are some very worrying statements by the Law Lords. Take for instance Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers:

It must be emphasised at the outset that it is no part of our function to change the law in order to decriminalise assisted suicide. If changes are to be made, as to which I express no opinion, this must be a matter for Parliament. No-one who listened to the recent debate in the House of Lords on Lord Falconer of Thoroton’s amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill, in which he sought to define in law acts which were not capable of encouraging or assisting suicide, or has read the report of the debate in Hansard (HL Debates, vol 712, 7 July 2009, cols 595-634) can be in any doubt as to the strength of feeling on either side or the difficulties that such a change in the law might give rise to. We do not venture into that arena, nor would it be right for us to do so. Our function as judges is to say what the law is and, if it is uncertain, to do what we can to clarify it.

(R (on the application of Purdy) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2009] UKHL 45 at [26] per Lord Phillips, emphasis added)

Well, yes that's their function if it's a necessary part of resolving an actual disputed claim of legal right. But no (and that's an emphatic no) it's not their function if it's a purely hypothetical situation we're talking about -- i.e. the applicant is asking for an advisory opinion. What crime has Mrs Purdy or one of her relations been accused of that would require the court to "clarify" the criminal law relating to assisted suicide? None. Neither Mrs Purdy nor any relation of hers has been accused of any crime. In such a case then you would think the courts would simply keep silent about the law relating to assisted suicide since it is not the function of English courts to give advisory opinions on the law. Now obviously if Mrs Purdy had already gone to Switzerland (as she is considering doing in the future), committed suicide with the assistance of others (including her husband in helping her travel to Switzerland) and her husband was then tried in England for assisting in her suicide then there would be a real live legal dispute involving actual rights in a concrete case. In that case the court would be required to say whether a crime had been committed (and thereby "clarify" the law in relation to the kind of conduct engaged in by the defendant). But short of that what role does the court have in "clarifying" the law on assisted suicide for the sake of would-be offenders such as the family members of Mrs Purdy (or the staff of the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland)? If Mrs Purdy and her relations are uncertain about the meaning of the law in relation to assisted suicide then they should go and see a lawyer and get some legal advice about their rights and obligations under the law.

At this stage we need to consider some fundamentals of the criminal law. In order for a defendant to be found guilty in a criminal case the there are (at least) two things that need to happen: the prosecution must (1) prove a certain set of facts beyond reasonable doubt and (2) show that that particular set of facts amounts to a crime under the law. Assuming the defendant wishes to controvert the prosecution's case (i.e. plead not guilty) the defendant can argue either (1) that the prosecution has not proved the alleged facts beyond reasonable doubt (i.e. dispute the prosecution's allegations of fact) or (2) regardless of whether the prosecution has proved the alleged facts beyond reasonable doubt, that they do not amount to a crime under the law (i.e. dispute the the prosecution's allegations of law). Most criminal trials are purely factual disputes. The meaning of the law of murder (say) is usually not in dispute. Here the defendant agrees with the prosecution that if someone did what the prosecution was alleging that he would be guilty of murder. Rather, what is in issue here is whether the accused did engage in the conduct as alleged. That is a purely factual dispute. No-one in the case disagrees as to what the law means in the alleged factual scenario. But sometimes legal disputes also arise where the the prosecution and the accused disagree whether a particular factual scenario (let's call it X) is against the law or not. Here the prosecution and the defendant do not agree on whether someone who engaged in the kind of conduct alleged by the prosecution would actually be guilty of a crime. And here it would be necessary for a court to "clarify" the criminal law. And what's more, it would entirely appropriate for the court to clarify the law in this kind of case since no merely hypothetical situation but a real live case.

At first glance, aspects of Mrs Purdy's case appear to fall into the category of a case where she seeking a merely advisory "clarification" of the law. She hasn't yet committed suicide or travelled to Switzerland for this purpose and for all we know it is possible that she never will (although she's on record as saying she wants the option of doing it in the future). Although she has not (yet -- so far as we know) engaged in any conduct that could be called criminal and has not been arrested and charged with a criminal offence she appears to be asking the court to "clarify" the criminal law for her sake. What makes her case different from the cases of all the other people out there thinking of engaging in conduct which may be criminal and which may attract the attention of the police and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)? Ignoring all the emotion about whether you think assisted suicide should be a criminal offence, the fact of the matter is that unless or until Parliament changes the law it is a criminal offence in England and Wales. There is no doubt that anyone who "assists" (whatever that means as a matter of law) someone commit suicide in those parts of Her Majesty's realms would be committing a crime pursuant to the provisions of the Suicide Act. Again, what is so special about Mrs Purdy's case that the court should break their silence and want to "clarify" the criminal law for someone who has not been charged with any crime?

In Mrs Purdy's case there is some doubt about whether a certain course of conduct she and her husband are contemplating committing in the future would amount to (a) the crime of murder, (b) the crime of assisting suicide or (c) no crime at all. Well if that is what she was asking then that would be a clear example of an English court being asked to give an advisory opinion in a hypothetical case. And that is something English courts do not do under the English understanding of judicial power. If you want this kind of legal advice then go and see a lawyer and plan your conduct on the basis of the advice he gives you as well as the risk that he is wrong in his advice.

Now it's important to stress that this is not what Mrs Purdy asked the court to do. I say all that by way of introduction to consideration of the point she did ask the court to consider. Her case was somewhat different in form but by a happy accident of the ECHR she came quite close to asking the court this -- and the court granted her request. Was it right to do so? Now rather than ask the court to rule on whether her planned course of future conduct would be criminal, what Mrs Purdy did was ask the court to force the DPP to reveal his hand and say under what circumstances he would bring prosecutions in cases involving the kind of (allegedly criminal) conduct Mrs Purdy and her husband were planning on engaging in. Their Lordships were unanimous in their answer. The distinction between asking the court to rule in advance of a potential crime whether the conduct is criminal and asking the court to force the DPP to say in advance of a crime whether he will bring a prosecution for this kind of conduct is an important one. Obviously there is a difference. But is it a difference worthy of their Lordships' answer? If it wasn't for Article 8 of the ECHR then in my view the answer would clearly be 'no'.

There have already been a number of instances of people from England and Wales travelling abroad to clinics such as Dignitas for the purposes of committing suicide. In several of these instances family members of the deceased have subsequently been questioned by police in a criminal investigation into whether they criminally assisted the suicide of the deceased. None of these cases has gone to trial. In several of them the DPP refused to bring a case on the basis of his opinion that there was insufficient evidence to secure a conviction. Without going into the details of the individual cases (which I do not know) that in theory is not objectionable. While public prosecutors have a duty to enforce the law, they also have a duty to do so responsibly by not bringing cases that they know will not succeed because there is insufficient evidence for the prosecution to prove the alleged criminal conduct beyond reasonable doubt. But in another high profile case the DPP decided not to prosecute on a very different ground. Here the stated basis was that prosecution would not be "in the public interest". This is a vague discretion that the DPP has (and some would argue that he should not have such a discretion) and like most discretionary powers is subject to the rules of administrative law which create various (vague?) rights in public law such as that the official upon whom the discretion is conferred must not use the discretion "unreasonably" or for an "improper purpose" (and several other limitations as well). And with the Human Rights Act 1998 now subjecting public authorities to the ECHR that provides another potential limitation on how the DPP can exercise his discretion.

Now in the case where the DPP decided not to prosecute on the basis of "public interest" the DPP published his reasons for his decision and they are available for anyone (including Mrs Purdy and her relations) to read. So the public can arguably draw its own conclusion as to whether he exercised this discretion "reasonably" or not. But his decision and the reasons he proffered were limited to that particular case and said nothing to other people contemplating this kind of conduct (such as Mrs Purdy and her relations).

Mrs Purdy's argument was that she had a right to know the kinds of circumstances in which the DPP would prosecute cases of assisting a suicide. Now her case was very closely tied to the rights granted under the ECHR and we will consider those later. But before we do let us consider the point more generally.

Strip this case of all the emotion generated by whether you think assisted suicide should be legal or illegal (and that is obviously a controversial question and one for Parliament -- although ~~those who would rather we lived under a judicial dictatorship than a Parliamentary democracy~~ human rights lawyers and judges may eventually have something to say on that particular question) and consider it from the angle of the existing criminal law and the deterrence effect of the criminal law. If, say, a frail elderly and impecunious woman is thinking of robbing a bank, committing fraud or even murdering her husband for the life insurance (conduct which is clearly illegal and should never be encouraged -- even in the case of frail, elderly and impecunious women) should she be told in advance by the DPP that she won't be prosecuted for her crimes if she commits them according to his stated guidelines of how to avoid prosecution? I certainly hope not! That is not the rule of law but a state of lawlessness. While there is room for having compassion on people after the event, if the criminal law is to do its job then you can't have the DPP go telling would-be criminals in advance of their crimes that they won't be prosecuted as long as they commit their crimes the "right" way (i.e. do it like this rather than that as I so helpfully lay out for all would-be offenders in my 73 point policy document on prosecution practice). And if that's not bad enough, the idea of a would-be offender going to court and arguing that she has a legal right to force the DPP to reveal his hand and tell her the circumstances under which she won't be prosecuted for her malefactions is simply risible.

Yet that is exactly what the Lords decided in what is potentially their last decision before their translation to the new and improved Supreme ~~Laughing Stock~~ Court of the United Kingdom. I cannot stress enough the enormity of the point. We have here a unanimous decision of the appellate division of the House of Lords ordering the DPP to tell would-be criminals the circumstances under which their allegedly criminal behaviour won't be prosecuted. That is a most perverse outcome. People planning on committing a crime should not have a legal "right" to be told in advance of their crime the circumstances under which they can avoid prosecution for criminal conduct. It undermines the entire deterrent effect of the criminal law. It is an abandonment of the rule of law for a state of lawlessness. If you know in advance of committing a crime that you're not going to be prosecuted then it's an open invitation to go out and commit it. It's as simple as that. The fact that some people in society happen to think (many rather strongly in fact) that assisted suicide should not be a crime is completely beside the point.

Now of course, the form the case took in law was an argument under the Human Rights Act and the ECHR. Does the ECHR require such utter folly on the part of judges? Well the unanimous decision of their Lordships is yes. The case involved an alleged breach of her "right" to respect to her "private life" under Article 8 of the ECHR (incorporated for some respects into English law by way of the Human Rights Act).

But, as we have seen, at least as a matter of principle this would appear to be folly. Telling would-be criminals the circumstances under which their criminal behaviour is to be prosecuted seems to undermine the rule of law and promote lawlessness. What right does her husband (the one who will be committing the crime) have to be told of the circumstances under which he can avoid prosecution for criminal behaviour? Well, thanks to ~~New Labour's demolition job on the English constitution~~ the Human Rights Act and some creative results-oriented jurisprudence in interpreting the rights of the ECHR such perversity is now a real possibility. "Public authorities" (of which the DPP is one) are subject to the ECHR. If the DPP was not subject to the strictures of Article 8 ECHR as a matter of English law (or if he was but the courts adopted a more sensible and faithful reading of Article 8 where the Suicide Act was not considered to touch on Art 8 rights) then it's unlikely the case could ever have taken the form it did. And while there's room for argument that the decision is right as a matter of law (although I would strongly dissent on this point and would refer you to the analysis of Head of Legal), as a matter of principle the decision is utterly perverse and that is what I am mainly concerned with in this post.

The context of Mrs Purdy's case is that because Mrs Purdy enjoys a right to terminate her life under Art 8(1) ECHR, Art 8(2) then limits the way in which the DPP can exercise his discretion to bring a prosecution for assisting a suicide. The Lords did not go so far as to say that Mrs Purdy has an absolute right to die when, where and how she likes and that the provisions of the Suicide Act which criminalise the assisting of suicide are thereby a violation of her convention right. Rather what it held was that the provisions of the Suicide Act are an interference with her right to die, that the state may only interfere with this right in accordance with the provisions of the ECHR and that the DPP's lack of a clear prosecution policy did not satisfy the burdens placed by the Convention on "public authorities" in this regard. That is the source of our would-be criminal's right to know instances of illegality which will not be prosecuted.

Consider what Article 8 ECHR says:

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

There are several problems with the Lords' decision. First, Art 8(1) guarantees the right to respect for "private and family life, ... home and ... correspondence". Nowhere does it guarantee a right to death. In fact the House of Lords previously agreed (rather sensibly) with this interpretation in the case of Pretty v DPP [2001] UKHL 61 but this was overturned -- quite wrongly in my view -- by their Strasbourg masters in the case of Pretty v UK (2002) 35 EHRR 1. The European Court of Human ~~Wrongs~~ Rights has engaged in some blatant eisegesis here. The context of Art 8(1) is "private and family life", "home" and "correspondence". The juxtaposition of these terms would clearly suggest that this Article is concerned with intrusions of the state into the privacy of how their citizens live their lives. Nowhere does it grant, however, a right to non-state interference in terminating one's life and such an interpretation would have been far removed from the minds of those who originally drafted the ECHR. But these things tend to take on a life their own, aided by an army of human rights lawyers, and tyranny ensues. The second interesting point is that the conduct criminalised by the Suicide Act is not any conduct which can be permitted by Mrs Purdy herself. So what relevance does her convention right have to a crime committed by another person against her (say her husband)? On the court's view, even assuming Mrs Purdy has a "right" to end her life free of of state interference under Article 8(1) (which is highly dubious given the context and history of Art 8), criminalising the assistance of suicide does not deny her from exercising her "right" to kill herself. At most it impacts on her "right" to end her life in a particular way of her choosing -- viz. by asking someone else such as her husband to "assist" her. But again where does the "right" to private and family life, home and correspondence include a "right" to ask your husband to murder you (or assist you in murdering yourself which is effectively the same thing)? And arguably Article 2(1) on the right to life ("Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law") might have some bearing on this situation. A state could argue that since assisting suicide is a form of murder by the person assisting in the suicide that the criminalisation of this conduct is required under Article 2(1) ECHR to protect Mrs Purdy's life by law. Anyway that was not something the British Government tried to argue here (which is not surprising given its record or poorly arguing cases in Human Rights Act challenges)..

Now assuming that Mrs Purdy's Art 8(1) right to "respect for [her] private life" &c. does includes the right to terminate her life then Art 8(2) would seem to require that that right shall not be interfered with by a 'public authority' (of which the DPP is one) except (1) as is necessary in a democratic society "for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals" &c and (2) in accordance with the law. No doubt the right-to-death industry would argue that the criminalisation of assisting suicide violates this first principle but the courts haven't gone so far as to hold that and probably wouldn't -- at least not yet. So the validity of the Suicide Act under the ECHR is not (yet) in question. And from a purely legal standpoint this arguably shows the greatest folly of their Lordships' decision (as I will now explain). It's one thing to argue that in criminalising the assisting of suicide section 2(1) of the Suicide Act improperly interferes with a person's Art 8(1) Convention right to terminate one's life ("improper" in the sense that although it was done "in accordance with the law" it was not "necessary in a democratic society ... for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others"). But that wasn't the issue here. The case was not argued on the basis that s 2(1) of the Suicide Act was not necessary for the ends stated in Art 8(2) ECHR. The important point to grasp is this: once the British Parliament enacted section 2(1) of the Suicide Act in a manner consistent with its obligations under Art 8(2) then individuals no longer have the legal right under Art 8(1) to terminate their life with the assistance of others. Once you grasp this point it should be clear that the DPP's prosecution practice in relation to this criminal statute cannot be said to "interfere" with such a "right" for the simple reason that the "right" no longer exists in law. Any such right under Art 8 has already been abolished by Parliament in a manner completely consistent with the state's obligations under Art 8(2) ECHR. If section 2(1) of the Suicide Act is consistent with Art 8(1) ECHR (and the contrary was not argued in this case) then Mrs Purdy (and every other person subject to English law) no longer has any legal right under Art 8(1) ECHR to commit suicide with the assistance of another person. So as a matter of simple logic the DPP's conduct in bringing prosecutions (or not) under s 2(1) of the Suicide Act cannot be said to "interfere" with a person's Art 8(1) Convention right for the simple reason that such a right no longer exists in law. Mrs Purdy (and everyone else for that matter) no longer has a right under Art 8(1) with which the DPP's conduct in bringing a prosecution under s 2(1) of the Suicide Act could possible "interfere". And yet their Lordships unanimously held the opposite! Apparently the logically impossible is no hurdle too great for their Lordships.

Now having said that, the broad argument that there should be some consistency in the way the DPP brings prosecutions is a claim to which I am not entirely unsympathetic. Consistency in the law's application is a good end to aim at in a legal system. Prima facie the rule of law would require laws to be consistently applied. But as the above analysis has indicated that's not really what this case is about. I still find the whole case troublesome. Telling would-be criminals the circumstances under which they won't be prosecuted for their crimes seems perverse and a negation of the rule of law. Yes, the law in regard of assisted suicide in England is a bit of a mess. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to state that the application of the law in England is a bit if a mess. Ignoring the real legal dispute over whether, say, the Dignitas staff in Switzerland would be committing a crime under English law (and if so whether it is the crime of assisting suicide or murder), the law on assisting suicide in England and Wales is quite clear. Yet its enforcement isn't. For the most part this problem has arisen because the DPP has refused to do his job and bring prosecutions. If the DPP had been doing his job and consistently enforcing the law then arguably Mrs Purdy would not have been able to succeed in her claim under Art 8 ECHR.

The rule of law certainly requires that people such as Mrs Purdy and her husband be able to know what kind of conduct is criminal and to plan their lives accordingly. If a person in England or Wales is thinking of assisting someone travel to Switzerland to commit suicide then he should be able to find out in advance of that conduct if it is a crime against the laws of England and Wales. But Mrs Purdy and her family already have that opportunity. All they have to do is turn to section 2(1) of the Suicide Act 1961 (and possibly also the law on murder) for the answer to that question. It's right there in black and white for all the world to see and if she or anyone else is not sure about what it means or whether a precise factual scenario would likely offend against the law then she can go to a member of the legal profession for some professional advice.

What the rule of law does not require is for the DPP to tell would-be offenders whether he will prosecute them or whether they can commit a crime and not be prosecuted for it. Such a requirement would completely nullify the deterrent effect of the criminal law. And yet that is precisely what the House of Lords required of the DPP in the case of Mrs Purdy! Again, the mind boggles. Now, of course it was a slightly more sophisticated and intricate version of that point which entertained their Lordships' consideration. Mrs Purdy was not asking for a personal guarantee of immunity from prosecution and their Lordships were right to point out that that is not theirs (or the DPP's) to give. And nor was she claiming that all would-be criminals enjoy this right (just people like her who want to commit suicide and their friends and relatives who may assist them and thereby commit a criminal offence). What she was asking for was a precise formulation by the DPP as to when prosecutions would or would not be brought so that she and her aiders and abettors could then find an instance of otherwise criminal conduct which would not be prosecuted and then seek to commit exactly that kind of conduct and thereby evade prosecution for criminal behaviour.

In my view this is nothing short of an abuse of the court's power by Mrs Purdy and her legal advisors and an undermining of the rule of law by their Lordships. In a previous era Mrs Purdy and her lawyers would have been given short shrift for wasting the court's valuable time. Yet nowadays we encourage and label as virtuous exactly this kind of conduct by way of the ~~Villains' Charter~~ Human Rights Act of 1998.

Buffy vs Edward

2009-07-23T19:02:00.012+01:00

OK, being one the world's biggest fans of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series (I started watching from episode 1 of season 1 when it first aired on TV and now own all the DVDs along with those of the spin-off series Angel) I thought this was brilliant (HT: Chera).

Rugby: Blood and ... Theatrics?

2009-07-21T21:00:00.037+01:00

Update: In addition to the original video I posted with commentary in French, I have now located another video of the incident with English commentary. The second video shows much of the same footage as the first but also shows some interesting footage not seen in the first video.

There's an old adage that soccer is a game for gentlemen played by thugs and that rugby is a game for thugs played by gentlemen. Without wanting to be disparaging of either sport I think there is more than a grain of truth in this. The point of the adage (as I understand it) is not to say that one form of football (eg rugby football) is better than the other (eg association football) but rather to express the following paradox: Soccer is basically a "non-contact" (or perhaps a "light contact") sport and yet aspects of play can be very rough (eg a dive tackle from behind) and players' tempers can boil over and games get out of control. Rugby, on the other hand, is what you might call a "full contact" sport and despite the higher level of allowable violence, serious injuries are relatively few, there is usually very little animosity between opposing players and there is (arguably) more or a culture in rugby of playing within the letter and spirit of the law. Perhaps the higher level of allowable violence in the contact means that rugby players don't need to resort to conduct outside the law and engage in personal vendettas against opposition players -- they can just tackle the next opposition player hard but fair.

Anyway, one thing soccer has sadly become known for over the last few years is its lack of sportsmanlike behaviour, particularly manifested in the theatrics of its players. Diving to win a free kick or penalty, or feigning an injury in an attempt to influence the referee's decision are lamentably part and parcel of the game of Association Football. It didn't have to be like that, but the game has developed that way and the combination of letting things progress to such a point, as well as the massive amounts of money involved in the sport means we've passed the point of no return. It's become a part of the culture of the game and people accept it -- not just the players, fans and administrators but more worryingly the next generation of players. Younger players (eg kids playing the game) see this going on by more senior players (eg their heroes on TV) and adopt this culture as well.

For a long time these kind of "theatrics" were considered unthinkable in rugby, something you see on the soccer field but not on the rugby field. The game, has, however, been changing over recent years. The move from amateurism to professionalism has slowly been changing the game's ethos in more ways than one and for some time I had been wondering how long it would be until a team attempted to abuse the blood replacement rule and if so whether anyone would ever be caught doing it.

I don't know the exact answer to the first question. It's possible that it's been going on for some time without anyone being caught but the answer to the second question is now. Tom Williams of the Harlequins club has just been banned for 12 months for faking a blood injury and his club fined for its involvement in the incident (although the medical staff who attended to his "injury" got off scot free). For those of you unfamiliar with the intricacies of rugby's blood replacement rule something by way of explanation is in order. In the "good old days" there was no such thing as replacements. An injured player would either play on or leave the field without replacement, leaving his team a man down. At some point in time this rule was changed so that an injured player could be replaced so that injuries would not require a team to a team to play with less than a full team. However, the number of replacements was limited so that if the number of injuries exceeded the number of permissible replacements a team would still be forced to play with less than a full team of players. Importantly, tactical substitutions were not allowed and the only reason a player could leave the field and be replaced by another was an injury. Was this system ever abused? I honestly don't know. But the game was amateur at this point in time so perhaps the incentive to cheat wasn't as great and the overall ethos was one of playing within the spirit of the game. Eventually, however, a change to the rules was made so that both tactical substitutions and substitutions for injury are allowed. But once a player has left the field and been replaced by another the substitution is permanent. With a very few exceptions in unusual circumstances (which I will explain shortly) a substituted player may not take any further part in the match. The number of named substitute players ("reserves") and substitutions permissible during a match is limited which means that once a team has made its full number of allowable substitutions if a player then becomes injured and can no longer take part in the match he cannot be replaced by another player. Instead, his team will be forced to play without a full team of players. The result of this is that coaches/team management have to weigh the risks of making tactical substitutions against the possibility of a future need to for a substitution due to injury. If a team makes all of its available substitutions and then a player is forced to leave the field due to injury it has no choice but to play "a man down" (i.e. with one fewer player). This is a relatively rare occurrence as coaches are careful not to make too many tactical substitutions too early to leave themselves in this undesirable situation.

One further complicating factor in all of this is the blood replacement rule. This says that a player who has a "blood injury" can be replaced temporarily and then retake the field once the flow of blood has been stopped (but not after a certain time -- which I think is ten minutes -- after which the replacement becomes a permanent substitution). Blood replacements do not count in the number of permanent substitutions and in theory their allowable number is unlimited. The reason for the blood replacement rule is player safety. In the "good old days" when there was no such thing as player replacement a lightly bleeding player would just continue to play the game and more heavily bleeding players would either be "bandaged up" on the field to continue playing or would leave the field, leaving his team a man down until such time as the flow of blood had been controlled and he could retake the field. However, with the scare of AIDS and other blood-born diseases having bleeding players on the field coming into contact with other players was considered a health risk. As a result of this the blood replacement rule was introduced which not only permits a bleeding player whose flow of blood cannot be stemmed to leave the field until the blood wound has been cleaned (and sealed -- eg bandaged), it actually mandates it: Bleeding players whose blood wound cannot be cleaned must leave the field. Normally bleeding players do not want to leave the field (it is quite disruptive to the team's rhythm to have to temporarily replace a player for this reason) and medical staff are able to clean and seal the wound on the field and play continues. However, sometimes this is not possible and players do need to leave the field to have the wound attended to. If this happens the player is temporarily replaced and may subsequently rejoin the game.

People familiar with rugby (and perhaps other attentive readers) will recognise a potential conflict of rules in all of this. If substitutions are permanent and substituted players may not rejoin the game what happens if a team is forced to make a mandatory blood replacement after it has made all of its allowable substitutions? In this case there are no reserves available to take the field for the (mandatory) temporary blood replacement to be made. In this exceptional case a previously substituted player may rejoin the game. This is one of the few very rare exceptions to the rule that substitutions are permanent. It should be noted that the need for a previously substituted player to retake the field on account of a mandatory blood replacement is an exceedingly exceptional situation. First of all, players don't have blood wounds that often. Secondly, even when they do a blood replacement is usually not necessary since the wound can usually be cleared up and sealed by medical staff on the field. And thirdly, given that coaches are reluctant to leave themselves in a situation where they made all of their permissible substitutions until very late in the match (if ever), the chances of this situation arising are very rare indeed. It requires a player to (a) get a blood injury which (b) necessitates replacement and with (c) both of those occurring after all permissible substitutions have been made. But although unlikely such situations can and do arise from time to time. And importantly they can happen at a crucial time in a crucial match at a crucial point of the season.

And this is what happened in the case of Tom Williams -- or so it initially seemed. The match was a Heineken Cup quarter final between Leinster (who after winning the quarter final went on to win their semi-final and then the final) and Harlequins -- a knock-out match, the winner of which would proceed to the semi-final (and possibly on to the final), the loser of which would be eliminated. The match was drawing to a close and the score was very close. Harlequins were trailing 5-6. A drop goal or a penalty goal (each worth 3 points) would put them in the lead and potentially win them the match. Nick Evans -- their fly-half and regular goal kicker (who in a very tense match earlier in the season had kicked a drop goal at the death to bring his team from behind to beat Stade Français Paris) -- had already been replaced injured. Evans' substitute Chris Malone (also a recognised goal kicker) was subsequently injured. Harlequins found themselves within a kick of winning the match but without a recognised kicker. Then Williams -- who himself had come off the bench as a substitute -- appears to suffer a blood injury and is replaced by none other than recognised goal kicker (and the previously substituted) Nick Evans. Now watch the following video and see what you make of it. The commentary is in French -- I've not been able to find a good video of this incident with English commentary; also it's not the commentary of the match commentators but a discussion which took place after the match, after allegations of Williams "faking" his blood injury had been raised.

UPDATE: I originally posted a video woth post-match discussion of the incident in French. I have now located a video of the incident with live match commentary in English. For the most part it shows the same footage as the original French video but it also shows some footage not seen in the first video (specifically the trainer attending to Williams' "injury"). I have changed the references in the text below to refer to the new (English) video. The French video is still worth a look if you understand French.

And the original video in French:

At 1:11 [1:07 in the French video] onwards Williams has something red around his mouth and proceeds to leave the field with the trainer. The fourth official can then be seen talking to the referee as to whether a blood replacement can be made given that the team has used up all its substitutions. The referee tells the fourth official that if Williams has to go off as a result of a blood injury then a previously substituted player (in this case Evans) may rejoin the match. Within the letter of the law? Well if Williams really did suffer a blood injury then yes. Within the spirit of the game? Well if he really did suffer a blood injury and the flow of blood couldn't be stemmed on the field then again yes. But if the flow of blood could have been stemmed on the field then such a replacement is in effect a tactical substitution and against the spirit of the game. Bringing on a previously substituted recognised goal kicker (albeit one who was injured and therefore not as effective as he otherwise might have been) back on in an attempt to kick the winning drop goal is a most unsportsmanlike act. And in the almost unthinkable event that Williams didn't really have a blood injury but somehow "faked" it then his actions (and the actions of all others involved in this incident) are against both the spirit of the game and the letter of the law.

Interestingly at 0:37 on the video [1:43 on the French video] Williams appears to give himself up with a wry wink. Of course that in itself is not proof of wrongdoing that would satisfy a court or a properly conducted disciplinary committee. But the disciplinary committee's finding that he faked the blood injury seems right. From 0:27-0:41 [0:49-1:00 on the French video] he is walking towards the sideline with the trainer in tow, and no signs of a blood injury which would mandate his replacement. And then at 1:12 [1:07 on the French video] (and closer to the touchline) he suddenly has a red substance in and around his mouth which he then spits out of his mouth. Although red, what you see in and around his mouth doesn't have the appearance of human blood (see the photo at the start of this post; you can enlarge it by clicking on it). In both videos the commentators are sceptical. In the English video which has the live match commentary, Stuart Barnes (one of the commentators) asks sarcastically at 0:51: "Who punched Tom Williams in the mouth? Tom Williams?" while in the French video (which has post-match discussion of the event) the commentators suggest that Williams has either taken some kind of capsule (1:13) to make it look like he was bleeding from the mouth or that the trainer has given him tomato juice (1:50)!

One can only conclude that the trainer has given Williams something to make it look like he has a blood injury and needs replacing so that a previously substituted player can return to the field in an attempt to kick the winning drop goal. This is a very worrying development indeed. When I said earlier above that I was wondering how long it would be before someone tried to abuse the blood replacement rule I thought they would have at least had the nous to cut himself or use real human blood. That would be much harder to prove. But Williams and Harlequins didn't even bother to do that. And they were caught -- red-mouthed so to speak.

Now as it happens, Evans who had previously left the field with an injury was unable to kick the winning drop goal with his attempt going well wide, probably attributable to the injury he was carrying. Poetic justice? For Leinster (who went on to win the tournament) perhaps but for his part in this incident Williams subsequently received a 12 month ban (although word is he's thinking of appealing the decision). Now assuming that Williams and Harlequins did indeed fake the blood injury (and that's the only thing I can conclude from the video) what is a fair sanction in all of this? Professional Rugby Players' Association (akin to a players' "trade union") chief executive Damian Hopley was highly critical of the sanction meted out to Williams, calling it "extraordinary" and "entirely disproportionate", highlighting that Schalk Burger's recent eye-gouge only received a punishment of 8 weeks and Justin Harrison's use of an illegal recreational drug (after the season had ended) earned him an 8 month ban.

Does Hopely have a point here? In my view, not really. Personally I don't think 12 months for this kind of offence is excessive (although I also happen to think that Burger should have got more than a yellow card and an 8 week suspension for his efforts -- and I say that as a neutral observer; I didn't support either of the teams playing in that match and witnessed the event as a neutral observer). In looking at acts of foul play such as eye gouging or off-field incidents such as illegal drug use we're not comparing like with like when we try to compare those kind of events to the faking of a blood injury to make a de facto illegal tactical substitution in an attempt to win an important knock-out match. By all means make arguments that various acts of foul play are treated disproportionately -- eg why does one act of eye-gouging receive 12 weeks while a seemingly worse incidence receives only 8 weeks? Or why does an eye-gouge receive 8 weeks when a reckless and dangerous tackle receives 2 weeks? Those are reasonable questions to ask and when judging various acts of foul play we are right to accept that punishments meted out be in proportion to other offences. Acts of foul play should be punished. They are a blight on the game. But that's hardly what we're talking about here. We're dealing with an unprecedented and extremely cynical act of cheating not just by an individual player but also team management which was antithetical to the ethos of the game. This was not something reckless done in the heat of battle such as a high tackle or a shoulder charge but was a calculated and premeditated act of perfidious behaviour by a player and his club officials against the spirit of the game. It was nothing short of an act of treason against the laws of the game and the legitimate officials who make and enforce them. What Williams and Harlequins did was in my book indefensible and not at all comparable with an act of foul play. If he really was guilty as charged then I don't think a 12 month ban was too severe a sentence. I think it is about right for a first offence of this kind. The only thing about it all was how Williams was punished when the other individuals involved in this got off scot free. It is unthinkable that a young replacement player such as Williams acted alone in all of this. Chances are he was acting under instructions and those instructions came from the very top. If this is the case then not only the medical staff but also team management and the head coach were involved in this. The problem of course lies in proving it. We have television pictures which demonstrate Williams' guilt. But assuming he's unwilling to point the finger and everyone else keeps shtum how do you prove the case against the other individuals involved? The capsule (or was it tomato juice in a water bottle?) had to come from somewhere -- but where? And who put it there? And on whose instructions? The trainer? The doctor? The coach? The club board? Assuming we could adequately prove the allegations I say throw the book at the lot of them. Everyone involved in this incident should both receive a whopping fine and be banned from all levels of rugby for at least 12 months in my book. And if it could be shown that it came from the coach or the club board then ban them for life I say. They are a disgrace to the game they claim to serve.

It's important that we uphold the authority of both the laws of the game (and those that make and enforce them) as well as the ethos of the game. Importantly this may look different in the case of a punishment handed down for an act of foul play as opposed to an act of treason as we witnessed in the Williams/Harlequins incident. Rugby is and should be a game for "thugs" played by "gentlemen". By this I mean that roughness is an inherent part of the game but people are expected to play fairly and within the ethos of the game. Acts of violence (like Burger's eye gouge against the Lions) which exceed the allowable limits of contact between players should be punished. There is no place in the game for eye-gouging, tripping, stomping, biting etc and I'm not certainly one for going soft on these things. And if it's a sufficiently serious offence then I'm all for lengthy -- even life -- bans. But let us not forget that rugby is a contact sport and in a contact sport like rugby you are always going to get acts which exceed the limits of allowable contact. In a "game for thugs" -- even one played by "gentlemen" -- they are unavoidable. It's the nature of a contact sport such as rugby. When these acts of foul play happen they should not be tolerated and we should punish them appropriately.

But altogether different is the kind of offence we just witnessed in the Williams/Harlequins saga. That is not an act of violence that has exceeded allowable limits. Rather, it is an act directly attacking the laws and ethos -- and the continued existence -- of the game. What Williams and Harlequins did was not just cheating (and it was that), it was also an act of treason. There was no niggle, no hot-headed reaction of a player taking things a bit too far to a bit of provocation from an opponent. It was a calculated cynical act of defiance by a team against the entire game of rugby football in order to win a game using underhanded methods. What they did was an attack on the game of rugby itself. Rugby's reputation is of a hard and physical game which is played fairly and in good faith. Incidents such as we witnessed here with Tom Williams of Harlequins undermine all that rugby is and can be. On that day rugby stooped to the level of soccer and its shameful ham theatrics. Such a culture cannot be allowed to develop in rugby and a stop must be put to it -- now.

When Tetzel comes a-knockin'

2009-07-14T21:52:00.042+01:00

One of the theological emphases of the Reformed branch of Christianity (and perhaps one of the reasons why I would broadly classify myself as a Reformed Christian) is the notion that all of life is "religious". This is not a thesis I wish to defend at any length in this blog post (although I may blog on it at some stage in the future) but assuming for the sake of argument that it is true then the implication for those who claim to be Christian is obvious: those who profess to follow the triune God are to serve him and seek his glory in every area of life. If all of life is a life of service to God then the division of life into the "religious" (eg going to church, praying etc) and the "areligious" (eg going to work, grocery shopping, playing football etc) is ultimately a false dichotomy. On this view the true dichotomy is not between "religious" and "areligious" but rather between "true religion" and "false religion". One less obvious implication of this thesis is what it has to say about those who do not profess to follow God or be "religious" in any way. If this thesis is correct (and I believe it is although I'm not attempting to argue it here) then such people are indeed "religious" people, living "religious" lives. On this view even self-professed atheists and agnostics are, despite their protestations to the contrary, deeply "religious" people, thinking "religious" thoughts, doing "religious" things -- in other words living thoroughly "religious" lives. What's more, many Reformed thinkers would take this idea a step further beyond individuals to societies. Even self-professed "atheistic" or "secular" societies are on this view deeply "religious". Interestingly in Australia we often joke about the fact that sport is a "religion" for some people -- and perhaps even the nation as a whole -- but such remarks arguably reveal a much deeper (and more uncomfortable) truth than many are willing to admit.

Anyway, with that introduction I want to move on to the main point of this post. Doug Wilson has written a brief but insightful comment here. The words of Wilson are worth pondering:

One area of secular blindness (one of many) is their inability to see how religious they are being. Having defined religion quite narrowly as church buildings and altars, they are utterly incapable of seeing the all-pervasive and quite religious nature of their frenzies and crusades. The problem with invisible religions like this is that one cannot watch them to see if they are going bad. And so they don't.

They do not see Tetzel in carbon offsets. They do not see shun[n]ing in the treatment the neighbo[u]rhood gives the guy who doesn't sort his garbage according to the dictates of the regulatory bishops. They don't see a fierce imposition of morality in their crusades for the sake of saving us all from climate change. They do not see blasphemy laws in thought crimes legislation. They do not see their religion in ever[y]thing they do, and this is because idolaters are blind.

Wilson's post raises many implications (particularly in his final paragraph which I did not quote and which I do not wish to discuss at this time), many of which weren't new to me. But what he did say is very topical in light of a number of present day "debates" going on in society. The question of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is one such debate. It's an important question which should be addressed. For present purposes I don't take a view on the rights or wrongs of the scientific theories and economic analysis behind it all (I do have something of a view but it's irrelevant to the point I'm making here so I hold my tongue) but whether or not you accept the view that the earth is getting warmer as a result of human activity and that this is something we can and should act to avert, the highly "religious" nature of the whole affair is inescapable. And that is what I'm commenting on (and criticising) here. It is entirely possible for the scientists to be right as a matter of science (and the economists right as a matter of economics etc) and yet for us still to be wrong as a matter of religion. (Of course it's also possible that the scientists are wrong as a matter of science etc but as I said that's not a debate I want to get into here).

A number of recent stories in the press and events in the blogopshere serve to confirm these observations about the "religious" nature of the whole AGW thing. James Delingpole recently interviewed Professor Ian Plimer for The Spectator about the publication of his recent book Heaven And Earth which is critical of much of the theory of AGW (although not the general notion of climate change which I know of no-one in the scientific community denying) and which set off a train of angry responses in the press and the blogosphere. I haven't read Plimer's book so I'm not going to embarrass myself by pontificating on a book I haven't read (a practice which many of Plimer's detractors would do well to adopt) but having read much of the reaction in the press and the blogopshere I do feel able to comment on that. (In actual fact I'm not completely ignorant about Plimer's book: as well as the interview in The Spectator I have read the following piece by Plimer in The Australian outlining his argument). Following the interview with Plimer he published in the Spectator, Delingpole blogged on the topic here which sparked a for-the-most-part-predictable response by George Monbiot here (predictable in the sense that Monbiot is a left-of-centre environmentalist writing for the left-of-centre Grauniad so obviously he's going be critical of anything written (a) by the right-of-centre Delingpole, (b) in the the right-of-centre Spectator, and (c) giving credence to critics of AGW who are generally hated with a passion by avowed left-of-centre environmentalists such as Monbiot). What was less predictable, however was the off-handed way in which Monbiot discounted those whom he classed as climate change deniers as essentially religious fanatics: "What this story shows is that climate change denial is a matter of religious conviction". (In making that claim Monbiot linked to the following story in the Grauniad).

In a sense that's a fair enough point to raise. Maybe "climate change denial" is a matter of "religious conviction" rather than a scientific opinion based on evidence (but then again maybe it's not). But if you're going to argue that then there is an equally strong point to be made that the pro-AGW position is also held as a matter of "religious conviction". What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and all that.

Of course I suspect Monbiot and his fellow "environmentalists" and AGW-enthusiasts would vehemently resist such a categorisation, arguing that while the views of "climate change deniers" might be held as a matter of religious conviction, their own views are nothing of the sort, instead being the result of enlightened scientific enquiry. But are they -- at least in their entirety? My view as a Christian is that the answer to that is a very clear no. In the thesis I am advancing there is no straightforward divide between "science" and "religion". It's not a question of one group being on the side of benighted religion and the other group being on the side of enlightened science. That would be too simple when all of life is in fact "religious". Even assuming that the scientific theory of AGW is correct as a matter of science (and again I stress that I take no view one way or the other on that question here), on the view I outlined above that all of life is religious, it should be obvious that there is a real danger of us making an idol of this, setting up a false religion around it. Someone can be right as a matter of science on the theory of AGW (either pro or con) and still hold views as a matter of (idolatrous) "religious conviction". The two are not mutually exclusive.

(Incidentally, what are we to make of Monbiot's use of the phrase "climate change denial"? Is it a kind of lazy shorthand for AGW-denial? Or is it itself evidence of the fact of Monbiot's own religious position? I suspect the latter. I can't stress enough that as a matter of science AGW is a specific theory about the general phenomenon of climate change and that people such as Plimer are not denying the phenomenon of "climate change". What they are denying is the theory of AGW as an adequate scientific explanation for the observable phenomenon of "climate change". They may be right or they may be wrong in their views on the adequacy of AGW as a scientific theory. But one thing they are not is "climate change" deniers. And yet Monbiot can't -- or won't -- recognise that simple distinction. If Monbiot was deliberate in his use of this phrase then to me this is evidence of the "religious" nature of his own position.)

From what I have read and observed coming out of the camp of AGW-affirmers I cannot but conclude that whatever the merits of the scientific and economic arguments, theirs is a position of deeply held religious conviction. The question then for those of who see this as a false religion is this: What are we going to do when Tetzel comes a-knocking?

On the Babylonian Captivity of the Episcopal Church

2009-07-13T13:11:00.053+01:00

Update: Al Mohler has written an insightful comment, to which I'd like to draw your attention, on the irony-cum-tragedy of the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church discovering the notion of heresy.

But what saith it [sc. the Scripture]? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:8-9 AV).

Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, has recently labelled the notion "that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God" as "the great Western heresy". The sad thing is I'm not at all shocked that she (or several other bishops of that church) would say something like this. The Episcopal Church has been going down this road for some time. That it has now arrived at this point is hardly a surprise. Now lest I be accused of taking her words out of context, here they are in their immediate context (you can read the entire speech here):

The crisis of this moment has several parts, and like Episcopalians, particularly ones in Mississippi, they’re all related. The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center [sic] of existence, as the ground of all being. (emphasis mine)

I honestly wasn't sure to begin with this one. I could have taken the view that what she said is so obviously wrong and that any response I could offer would seem so basic that it would hardly be worth responding. Or I could have taken the view that since a statement like this is just another example of a modernist theologian denying historic Christian orthodoxy that it's hardly worth singling out from among the rest of the modernist theological doublespeak. Although simple, such approaches would be as mistaken as Dr. Jefferts Schori's views. This is not a theological debate on the periphery of the Christian faith (eg traditional versus modernist views on authorship of the individual books of the Bible) but goes to the heart of the Christian faith. What does it mean to be a Christian? Who is (and importantly who is not) one? And how does one become a Christian? We can't treat this issue as inconsequential.

If Dr. Jefferts Schori were merely arguing that in living out their faith many Western Christians neglect the corporate and communal nature of Christianity then there would be nothing objectionable in that. I would agree that much of modern Western Protestantism (and Western Christianity more generally) is overly individualistic. Or if she were making the more abstract theological point that it is impossible to be individually saved but not a member of the Church (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus) again this would be unobjectionable. But that is manifestly not what she was saying. She specifically talked about individual salvation being a heresy. Moreover she argues that the 'individualist focus' is a form of idolatry!

For those of you familiar with the Bible and church history the title of this post should resonate with you as alluding not only to the "Babylonian Captivity" of Israel in the Bible and the so-called "Babylonian captivity" of the papacy (1305-77) but also to Martin Luther's great work On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520). Luther's argument was that the Church of his day was in captivity and was desperately in need of liberation. The parallels with the current state of the Episcopal Church in the United States are striking. Luther's tract focused on the seven sacraments of the Roman Church, examining them in light of the Bible. Although important, the problem Luther faced in his day seems to pale into insignificance compared to the current problem facing the Episcopal Church in the United States (and Western Christianity more generally) at the present moment. In brief, the Episcopal Church has lost sight of the gospel of salvation -- yea, even individual salvation (something the Roman Church of the 16th Century did not deny). The Episcopal Church has lost sight of its mission.

This is what the apostle Paul says:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.' (Romans 1:16-17 ESV; emphasis added)

That word 'everyone' combines the concept of 'the one' and 'the many'. It is simultaneously both universal and individual. And so is the gospel (and salvation). It is universal in the sense that it is good news for all human beings at all times and in all places. Salvation is not for the Jew alone or for the Gentile alone but for everyone. And elsewhere (Matthew 28:19) Jesus explicitly says that the gospel is to be preached to all nations. Not just to individuals from different nations but to all nations. So yes it is a mistake to view the gospel and salvation through a purely individualist lens. But the Bible is clear that not everyone will be saved. The gospel is the power of salvation for everyone who believes (or 'puts his trust therein'). The gospel offer of salvation demands an individual response. In other words, the Bible clearly talks about individual salvation as the following passages make clear:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I [the Greek pronoun is singular] do to be saved?" And they said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you [the Greek pronoun is singular] will be saved, you and your household." And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God. (Acts 16:25-32 ESV; emphasis added)

And:

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) or "'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you [the Gk. pronoun is singular], in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you [the Gk. pronoun is singular] confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you [the Gk. pronoun is singular] will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:4-13 ESV; emphasis added)

I have made reference to but a handful of passages of Scripture, but the Scriptures are full of similar examples. Of course, as I have already said -- and as the passage cited from Acts intimates -- an individualist paradigm is far from exhaustive. God is not just interested in the salvation and transformation of individuals but also of families, communities, nations and ultimately the entire world. Moreover, the Christian life is not just a life of individual salvation but a life of fellowship with God and with brothers and sisters in Christ. But none of this detracts from the simple truths that salvation is individual and that as a result of the finished work of Christ and the promises made to us in Christ Jesus we as individuals can humbly but confidently lay hold of that salvation.

Far from being "heretical", the notion of "individual" salvation is at the heart of the gospel. Of course like any revealed divine truth it can be misunderstood and distorted. Dr. Jefferts Schori is right to point out the danger in insisting on a particular formulation of words. But far from being "idolatrous" by putting "me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center [sic] of existence, as the ground of all being", rightly understood and applied the notion of individual salvation is essential to true worship (i.e. the opposite of idolatry). God "commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). Again, this is both universal and individual. It is universal in the sense that all are under the obligation to repent. But it is individual in the sense that it is a command for every single human being (Gk. ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos) in an individual capacity. When an individual repents and believes the gospel she is not engaging in idolatry but in an act of true worship for this is exactly what God requires. And for an individual humbly but confidently to acknowledge that he is "saved" not by the works of his own hands but by the finished work of Christ on the cross and and the promises of salvation made to him in Christ Jesus is not to engage in idolatry but an act of true worship.

The views of Dr. Jefferts Schori cannot be countenanced. They are a denunciation of the gospel which is the power of salvation for everyone who believes.

Sauce for the Goose

2009-07-13T12:48:00.002+01:00

At a time when the British Government is hell-bent on removing all traces of Christianity from the British Constitution and public life in those islands, this just in: As Archbishop Cranmer reports, the British Government in 2009 has imposed an explicitly Christian Constitution on the Cayman Islands. Ironic?

On Being Gay

2009-07-08T22:46:00.008+01:00

I posted this as a comment over on another blog so I thought I'd share it here. (I have edited it ever so slightly.)

Update: After posting this I received a message from someone who misunderstood my intented meaning. To avoid any similar confusion you may want to read the little descriptive labels at the bottom.

**********

Some time ago I was pretty sure that I was gay but then one day my feelings changed. As much as I tried, I no longer felt gay. I had all these conflicting thoughts and feelings and yet the message I kept on was hearing was that one is born gay and that change is impossible. While I certainly enjoyed being gay, at times I would have to admit that I haven’t always felt that way. In fact at times I have felt the opposite pull very strongly in my life (although on reflection I think I prefer being gay).

So what is the case? Am I actually gay and the contrary feelings I experience a denial of my true gay self? Or is my feeling gay just a chimera or a phase I'm going through -- a passing fad if you will -- and a denial of my true non-gay self? Or perhaps things are in actual fact more complex than saying one is simply born gay and that change is not possible. Perhaps in addition to genetics, environment and human behaviour have something to do with the fact of whether or not one is gay after all. Then again, perhaps my self-diagnosis of gaiety was mistaken to begin with. What I thought was gaiety might actually have been something altogether different such as “glee”, “jollity”, “merriment”, or “mirth”.

Confused,
Apodeictic

Humpty Dumpty on the BNP

2009-06-10T12:23:00.046+01:00

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone,"it means just what I choose it to mean --- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice,"whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

Anyone who has been following news out of the UK recently will be aware that two British National Party (BNP) candidates were recently elected to the Europe an Parliament in Strasbourg (or is that Brussels? Or Luxembourg even? In the labyrinthine EU one is never quite sure of these things). Moreover, most people will be familiar with this party (and others) being described by its detractors and supposedly neutral reporters alike as "nationalist", "far right", "racist" or even "fascist". The BNP may be some or all of these things (or then again it may not) but this raises the fundamental point inherent in our opening exchange between Humpty Dumpty and Alice: What do these words mean and who says what they mean? Can we use words such as "racist" and "fascist" any which way we please? This is particularly troublesome in a field such as politics where terms such as these can be used both descriptively and pejoratively. While it's one thing to call someone a "fascist" as a term of abuse (as Marxist-Leninists will of just about anyone who doesn't agree with their view of things -- even rival subgroupings of Marxist-Leninists), it's another thing entirely for a supposedly detached and disinterested observer to call that same person a "fascist". Over 60 years ago George Orwell was right to point out the fluidities in the use of the term "fascist" (HT: The Ugley Vicar). Nothing much has changed in the intervening years. In fact today we have not one but two F-words we drop when we want to ostracise someone from the bounds of civilised society: fascism and fundamentalism. While serving a purpose as political and theological "swear words", do they serve any purpose as useful descriptors of political or religious views? I think the answer is in theory yes but in practice no (or almost no). While it is probably not impossible to come up with a useful working definition of these terms, the common pejorative use of terms like these and the ideologically charged nature of politics have clouded most people's ability to make rational judgments in this regard.

At this point I want to state two things: First this blog post is not an apology (in the sense of a defence) for the BNP; second (and perhaps more importantly), nor is it an apology for my own (critical) views of the BNP. On the first point, as far as I'm concerned it is up to the BNP (along with every political party) to make its own case. I'm not a member of that (or any) political party so it's not really up to me to propagate or defend its views. Moreover, I doubt the BNP would want me to defend them for the simple reason that I don't actually agree with their platform. But this brings me to the second point: Although I don't agree with the BNP's platform you're not going to hear a self-righteous monologue from me on (as James Delingpole put it) how "utterly disgusted" I am at "this victory for the racist 'far right.'" This is so for several reasons:
(1) While I do believe that the BNP is "racist" (although to what extent is a matter for debate, which of course is made all the more difficult by the fact that you can never be quite sure that the "public face" of the party is its true face), it is far from being a party of the far right. The BNP may be many things (including nationalist in addition to racist), but one thing it is not is "far right". This has to be one of the most significant -- and potentially dangerous -- mischaracterisations in modern politics. I'm not sure if it's deliberate or not. Do the opinion makers and chattering classes who slap the BNP with the label "far right" really believe that to be the case (in which case they are profoundly stupid -- which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest) or do they really see the BNP for what it is (a ragbag of populist ideas from the political right and left with leftist ideas actually predominating) but then in a calculated move to discredit the party or mislead the public label it as being "far right"? In fact I think it's probably a bit of both. Some of our opinion makers probably are intelligent enough to see the BNP for what it really is but then in an effort to undermine the party and/or shore up their own leftist ideology/agenda deliberately mischaracterise it as belonging to the "far right". In addition to this, however, is the majority of opinion makers and those belonging to the chattering classes who really are blinded by their own political ideology. In short their own leftist political ideology teaches them to view the BNP as "far right" so they do.

(2) In actual fact I'm not really "disgusted" at the election of two BNP caindidates to Strasbourg/Brussels -- well, at least no more "disgusted" at the election of two BNP candidates with whose views I strongly disagree than I am with the election of hundreds of representatives from the so-called "mainstream" parties (in the UK which is not home but is where I am currently residing that's the Labour Party, the Conservative and Unionist Party and the Liberal Democrats -- although in my view the Liberal Democrats are now a spent force in British politics and are in a state of terminal decline) with equally objectionable views. The racism of the BNP is no worse (although I'm far from claiming it's any better) than some of the ways the "mainstream" parties call evil good and good evil. I don't particularly want to vote for individuals (or in the European Elections parties since we're forbidden from voting for individuals and are forced to vote for a party on a list system) with racist views; but then again I certainly don't want to vote for individuals who espouse misanthropic views such as my local Oxford MP Dr Evan Harris of the (so-called) Liberal Democrats who is in favour of the wholesale slaughter of millions of innocents on a scale that far surpasses the Hitlers, Stalins and Pol Pots of this world. So if we're going to point the finger at the two BNP MEPs' objectionable views on race let's also have a look at the views of other supposedly more "mainstream" politicians who champion evil and injustice.

(3) Even assuming arguendo that I did believe the BNP to be a party of the "far right" and, moreover, that I was "disgusted" by the election of two of its candidates I still wouldn't engage in the kind of self-righteous preening on display by our opinion makers and the chattering classes for the simple reason that it is counter-productive (assuming of course you don't want people to vote BNP!). It is exactly this kind of behaviour by "political elites" which drives a wedge between them and people of the working classes, causing the latter to become increasingly disenchanted with the politically correct agenda of the elite and to go out and vote for parties like the BNP.

II.

So is the BNP a "nationalist", "racist", "fascist", party of the "far right" as is commonly claimed (and as Humpty Dumpty might want to say)? Well, let's look at these one by one, bearing in mind that we've already partially addressed the applicability of some of these descriptors above.

*"Nationalist"? I think yes, although of course it will depend on how we define "nationalism". Nationalism as a political movement can probably be defined as a kind of collectivism that focuses on the nation, perhaps even elevating it above all other forms of identity. To that extent then, I think the BNP is "nationalist".

*Racist"? Again, I think yes, but it will depend on what we mean by "racist". The BNP certainly espouses policies which are racially discriminatory -- i.e. treating people differently on the basis of race -- but then they would hardly deny the fact of that. The all important question is what we make of the fact of their racially discriminatory policies. Does the fact of racial discrimination ipso facto amount to racism or do we also need to look at the effects and motivation in a given case (distinguishing some instances of racial discrimination from others)? As it so happens, Britain (along with most Western societies) is currently full of officially sanctioned racial discrimination. Majorities are racially discriminated against in favour of minorities with the full blessing of the law and the "mainstream" political parties. Now whether this is good, bad or indifferent is a debate we need to have (and perhaps the presence of parties such as the BNP will enable us to have a proper debate on issues such as these which has previously been impossible under a strict regimen of political correctness imposed on us by the progressive liberal establishment). But simply calling the BNP "racist" because it espouses policies which are racially discriminatory doesn't prove the point. If you want to criticise the BNP for being "racist" you either have to (1) make the argument that some forms of racial discrimination (eg anti-majoritarian racial discrimination as is currently practised in several Western countries) are legitimate while others (eg anti-minoritarian racial discrimination) are illegitimate or (2) argue that the BNP is "racist" in some deeper and inherently objectionable sense of that word (eg that its racially discriminatory policies are based on a belief in the "superiority" of one race over another).

* "Fascist"? This is probably the hardest question to answer. "Fascism" as a political movement (as opposed to a term of abuse hurled by many leftists at their opponents) is hard to define. Mussolini said the following:

Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and heroism; that is to say, actions determined by no economic motive. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact of being the majority, are to direct human society... and it affirms the immutable, beneficial and fruitful inequality of mankind.

Fascism conceives of the state as an an absolute, in comparison to which all individuals and groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the state. It seeks to influence the state not merely by words or majority vote but by action, holiness and heroism.

If this is what we mean by fascism (and of course it would be possible to come up with other definitions) then the BNP is far from being a classic or central case of a "fascist" party (although it would certainly display some elements of fascism).

* "Far right"? I've already commented on this above and believe that this is clearly not the case. The BNP cannot be easily placed on the political spectrum. (In fact most parties can't easlily be placed on the political spectrum; but I think the BNP is harder to place than most). It is (as things currently stand) clearly populist and espouses a ragbag of ideas from the political right and left with leftist ideas predominating in my view. It is probably best characterised as espousing some form of "national" (as opposed to "international") socialism (although certainly not Hitler's or the NSDAP's "National Socialism" from whence we get our word Nazism -- Nationalsozialismus in German) and best belongs to the extremities of the political left.

III.

Possibly the most ridiculous thing I heard on the BBC's Election night coverage tracking the results of the European Parliament elections in the UK was consternation among the so-called experts (mostly what I would refer to as members of the liberal progressive establishment, a prime example of which is Polly Toynbee of the Grauniad) as to why in this present "crisis of capitalism" we are currently seeing the electorate swinging to the "far right" to vote for parties such as the BNP when you would naturally expect people to swing to the left and vote for anti-capitalist parties. At the time I couldn't believe the profound ignorance of what I was hearing but on reflection this confirmed my suspicion that many of our opinion makers are profoundly stupid, blinded by their own ideology. They misunderstand everything: the nature of "capitalism" and "free markets", the nature of the current economic crisis, the nature of the BNP and most importantly what causes people to vote for the BNP. Whatever the BNP is, at least on economic matters it is not a "right wing" party in the sense of being in favour of the free market. The BNP is highly protectionist -- well to the economic left of all the "mainstream" UK parties (including Labour and the Lib Dems) and finds its place economically with good old fashioned socialists and communists. Moreover, people were not predominantly motivated by a crisis of capitalism to go out and vote for the BNP. The BNP hasn't actually picked up any more votes than 5 years ago when the country was in an economic boom. What changed this time was that under the form of proportional representation used for the European Parliament they secured a high enough proportion of the overall vote in two post-industrial and traditionally Labour Euro-regions (because the turn-out was lower and far fewer people voted for other parties, most notably Labour and the Liberal Democrats).

It is interesting to note where the BNP won its seats (post-industrial Labour heartland) and also who its core voters are (disaffected white working class Labour voters). It is predominantly people whom the major party of the left has claimed as its core constituents who are now voting for the BNP. Now the causes for this are no doubt many and varied, but if we were to distil it down to its essence the rise of parties such as the BNP is a reaction by the traditional (in Britain, white) working class against a sense of abandonment by the "mainstream" parties (especially the Labour party). Now obviously some of this has to do with inevitable change. Economies don't stand still but are forever evolving and many of the industries and jobs that existed in Britain 30, 40 or 50 years ago don't exist any more. Much of it, however, has to do with factors very much within the control of the mainstream political parties. Over the past 40 years or so, Western societies have undergone enormous social change only some of which was inevitable. Much of it was a conscious choice on the part of the progressive liberal establishment and the effects of this change have hit the traditional working class the hardest. It is they who have borne the brunt of the effects of mass immigration without assimilation in the name of "multiculturalism". It is the less skilled and educated of the white majority who have been hit the hardest by policies of "affirmative action" or "positive discrimination". Well-to-do white Britons can still get good jobs even if preference is officially given to people of ethnic minorities. It is the less educated and lower skilled working class white Britons who are passed over in favour of people from ethnic minorities. And the destruction of traditional forms of family and social life based on stable marriages has hit traditional working class people the hardest. All of these changes -- and several others -- have been an unmitigated disaster for the traditional working class. Most importantly these changes didn't "just happen" but were planned and positively encouraged by the progressive liberal establishment who wanted to replace the old society with their own new utopian vision. In voting BNP people are voting against the major parties -- most notably (although not exclusively) Labour -- who have sacrificed them on the altar of the god of their brave new world. The people who are voting BNP are realising that something is rotten in the state of Denmark (well Britain really) and are reacting against it. They are feeling that despite all the rhetoric about how the parties are listening to their concerns and working for them that they've been abandoned for something else. And the truth is they have. The question now is whether we will listen and act.

Second Ladies?

2009-04-05T18:09:00.007+01:00

Over at one of the Daily Telegraph blogs, Gerald Warner has written a piece in reaction to the spouses of G20 leaders meeting in London at the same time as the G20 summit. Although I don't quite agree with everything Mr Warner says (for example the marginal cost of Mrs Obama occupying a seat on her husband's USAF flight or Mrs Rudd's seat on an RAAF jet is virtually nothing), he's got a point. I left a comment there which I will basically reproduce here as a post of my own. My comment there (and this post) really takes issue with the tendency to bestow quasi-aristocratic titles on the spouse of a constitutional office holder such as calling the U.S. President's wife "first lady" and the tendency of other countries (including the French who refer to Mrs Sarko as "la Première Dame") to ape them in their aristocratic ways. Anyway, here 'tis:

-------------------------------

Yet another American fad we unquestioningly adopt -- the need to come up with an office and a ridiculous title for the spouse of a president or prime minister.

Does anyone else see the irony in a so-called Republic such as the United States treating the wife of its President as a de facto queen consort? In a republic like the U.S. there shouldn't be anything such as a "first lady" for the simple reason that there is no "first" or "last" in that kind of society. There are just constitutional offices occupied by equals. Mrs Obama's husband happens to occupy an important constitutional office; but he does so as primus inter pares and his occupancy of that office doesn't change her status or role one iota. Simply put, the president's spouse has no constitutional role. So let's stop pretending s/he does as the monarch's spouse does in a monarchy.

The President's wife is not crowned queen consort at the time of the President's inauguration. And yet that's what people and the press turn her into. No, she is Mrs Obama, wife of a U.S. citizen who happens to occupy the constitutional office of President of the U.S. Her husband's occupancy of the office of president does not have any effect on her. She is still Mrs Obama -- not Queen Michelle.

And these views have nothing to do with the fact that most of the presidential and prime-ministerial spouses happen to be women. If Mrs Obama were president then I would be saying exactly the same thing about Mr Obama. His wife's election to the presidency would have no effect on him and he would still be Mr Obama and not the "first dude" or whatever other quasi-monarchical title you want to come up with.

As far as I'm concerned these WAGs and HABs can be seen and heard in public as much as any other person as long as we don't start treating them as if they occupy a special office by virtue of the fact that they are married to someone who does. But they really shouldn't be travelling around the world at public expense behaving as if they are queen consort or prince consort.

If I as an employee of a corporation need to travel abroad on a business trip should I expect my employer to pay to fly my wife out when she is not an employee of the company with a legitimate business need to make the trip? Of course not. But she is perfectly free to fly out at her (or my) own expense. By all means, take a trip to London at the same time that your HAB or WAG is there on business. But don't expect to be flown out or put up at the company's expense, turn up at business meetings or be treated any differently from the millions of other HABs and WAGs in London. You're not there representing the company, just coincidentally present at the same time as your own HAB or WAG is there on official business. And so it should be for presidential and prime-ministerial WAGs and HABs.

Baptism and human obligation

2009-04-05T09:39:00.012+01:00

In the last post I blogged on the idea of baptism and the inheritance of God's promises made to us in Christ Jesus. There I argued that the person who has come to faith and repentance is already -- and can rightfully call himself -- a Christian. In legal parlance the "right" (or the act of inheriting the promises) is already and fully vested.

If we consider the notion of a "right" or a "promise" for a moment it will become apparent that for every right there is a correlative "obligation" or "duty". If you have a legal right to X it means that someone else (or perhaps everyone) has a legal obligation (or duty) to give you X. You can't have a legal right to X without someone else having an obligation to give you X. In other words if no-one has a legal obligation to give you X you cannot be said to have a legal right to X. So if a society creates (for instance) a legal "right to life" it also creates a correpsonding duty. Ipso facto your right to life implies a legal obligation on others to let you live. Or if I have a legal right to receive $1000 under a contract with you for services rendered then ipso facto you have a legal obligation to pay me $1000. Your right is my obligation and my right is your obligation.

Now talking about our relationship with God in terms of "rights" (and obligations) is somewhat artificial and in a very important sense wrong. No-one approaches God by way of "right". It is all of grace. The only basis on which we can have any fellowship with God is his grace. No-one is worthy to approach God. That said, however, there is still a place for a consideration of "rights" and "obligations" in our relationship with God. Why? Well the last post in a sense covered God's "obligation" towards humans. We talked about the fact that God makes promises to us in Christ Jesus. In a sense those promises impose "obligations" upon God in the sense that if God were to renege on his promises then his conduct would be blameworthy. By making a promise, God has an "obligation" to the beneficiaries of that promise. But it is a self-imposed obligation. No-one or nothing else can impose an obligation on God. His "obligations" arise solely because he is a God who makes promises and whose nature is such that not keeping them would be blameworthy. The last post concerned the question of at what point God's promises accrue to us. By the time of our baptism, assuming we have come to faith and repentance, then the inheritance of God's promises to us has already accrued. God is not "obliged" by his promise to give us any more forgiveness or any more of the Holy Spirit or make us any "more" a Christian than we were on account of the regeneration which wrought in us upon faith and repentance. On account of God having fulfilled his promises to us you already are a Christian if you have been born again of the Holy Spirit upon faith and repentance. Now while baptism does indeed speak to God's relationship to us as humans (and perhaps chiefly speaks this way: in baptism God signs and seals the fact that the person who has exercised faith and repentance has already inherited God's promises to him) it doesn't just speak to this. Baptism also speaks to our relationship to God and this is where the idea of human obligation towards God comes in. Such obligations can be said to arise on two levels:
(1) because God as sovereign creator is King and rightful ruler over us he can (and rightly does) make laws for his subjects which create a general obligation on all human beings;
(2) because God and human beings can and do make promises to one another -- specific obligations can arise out of promises made between two parties.

In both of these there are clear analogues in human law. Examples of the former (general obligations) are the criminal law and the law of tort; an example of the latter (specific obligations) is the law of contracts. The law which says it is a criminal offence to commit murder or to steal or to rape etc are general obligations. I have an obligation not to murder (etc) you regardless of whether we've ever crossed paths before and regardless of whether we make promises to one another about how we will behave towards one another. When the law makes parties to a contract keep to their contractual promises then that is an example of specific obligations. If A enters into a contract with B, with A promising to buy goods from B for the price of $100 then A and B each have rights and obligations under the contract. One such example is that A has a specific obligation to pay $100 to B. But this is a specific obligation between A and B only which exists solely on account of the contractual promise between them. A does not have a general obligation to C, D, E etc (or the world at large) to pay $100. Were it not for the promises they made to one another in the form of a contract A would not have any obligation to pay B $100.

What's more, these general and specific obligations can interact and sometimes overlap. I can enter into a contract and thereby create a specific obligation to myself for something which I already had a general obligation to do. For example I am already obliged not to murder you but I also make a contractual promise with you not to murder you. One does not rule out the other. (But importantly the general obligation not to murder does rule out a specific contractual contract to murder; "contracts" for the murder of someone are not legal contracts; they are by their nature void!). But if for example I do enter into a contract which has the effect of replicating a general duty I already have and then breach that duty (eg I contractually agree not to assault you and then I assault you) I will have breached both a general obligation (in the case of assault an obligation imposed both by the criminal law and the law of tort) and a specific obligation (the obligation not to assault you which arose by virtue of the fact that I contractually promised this to you and contractual promises are legally enforceable -- i.e. give rse to rights and obligations). If you wanted to take me to court you could equally raise either my general obligation or my specific obligation. In actual fact you could (and would) raise both and I would be fully liable on both counts. In both cases the conduct in question (assaulting you) is objectively the same. A witness to the event would say exactly the same thing in a case for breach of contract as he would in a case for a breach of my obligation to you under the law of tort. Moreover, in both cases I would be liable to pay you damages for my wrongdoing. But in another sense there is an important difference between these two cases. The second example is in a sense worse. Why? Well because I specifically promised not to assault you (which I wasn't allowed to anyway) and still did. In the second example I am not just in breach of a general obligation imposed on me whether I like it or not; I am also in breach of a specific obligation I have consciously and voluntarily taken upon myself. I am not just breaking the law; I am also breaking my word. As well as a breach of the law which applies to all and sundry, my conduct here is also a breach of trust between you and me.

Well what does this have to do with God and us, and indeed baptism? Well quite clearly there is a general obligation on every single human being to seek and obey God. God "commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). This applies to everyone -- whether Christian or not, whether baptised or not. Baptised and unbaptised alike who have not repented of their sins and trusted in Jesus are in breach of this general obligation. However, baptism also creates a specific obligation. In your baptism you promise that you have repented and trusted in Jesus. The baptised person who has not repented and trusted in Jesus is not just guilty of a breach of God's general command to repent and believe in Jesus. He is also guilty of a breach of his own specifc undertaking (i.e. his word) that he has repented and trusted in Jesus.

Coming back to our coronation example and the analogy with baptism: As far as the inheritance of the promises is concerned the king's coronation doesn't change anything. He is already king before his coronation. The coronation is an outward and public sign and seal of the fact that he is already really king (i.e. already has inhereited the promises). Before his coronation he was already king and by virtue of that fact he had all the rights and obligations of kingship according to law. However, at his coronation a king also makes certain promises -- personally repeating under oath many of the obligations imposed on him by the constitution. As a matter of constitutional law the king is already obliged to uphold the Protestant Reformed religion and if he he didn't then his conduct would be blameworthy solely on account of that. Such a king would be a law-breaker. But at his coronation he also personally promises to do this and other things. This means that if he didn't do them then he wouldn't just be in breach of a general obligation imposed on him by the law (i.e. a law-breaker) but moreover that he would also be in breach of a specific obligation arising ouit of his promise. In addition to being a law-breaker he would also be a promise-breaker.

And again, so I would submit, it is with baptism.

Baptism and the inheritance of God's promises

2009-04-04T20:50:00.033+01:00

Update: I have now written a second post on baptism expanding on the views expressed here.

Over at Ad Trinitatem a discussion has arisen relating in part to the effects of baptism. By way of background, the author of that illustrious blog is desirous of writing an evangelistic tract that includes mention of the need to be baptised. Most (almost all?) modern evangelistic tracts make no mention of baptism. While they invite people to repent of their sin and submit to Christ as Lord they make next to no mention of the requirement of baptism. The author therefore wanted to say a word or two in his proposed tract about baptism -- an aim to which I am sympathetic. I firmly believe that God commands Christians not only to repent of their sin and turn to Christ but also to be baptised (cf Acts 2:38), and that "unbaptised Christians" are an anomaly. I certainly agree that a person who believes in the Triune God and has repented of his sin and submitted to Christ as Lord ought to be baptised. What's more I am also sympathetic to the view that in explaining the gospel we should mention the requirement of being baptised alongside repentance and faith in Christ.

But of course the devil is always in the detail. What is the exact nature and effect of baptism? What is baptism for? And what does it do? Most readers will be aware that among Christians there are differing views on baptism. One difference of opinion concerns the question of who baptism is for. Is baptism only for those who have professed faith in Christ or is it for them and their household (including infants who have not yet professed faith)? The former is the Baptist position while the latter is the position of most other Christians (including other Protestant groups such as Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans as well as Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians). This is not a debate that concerns us here (but for what it's worth as an Anglican Christian I adopt the latter view). A second -- and arguably more important -- difference of opinion concerns the question of what baptism is for. The divide here is partly on denominational lines but not exclusively. We can make a broad distinction between Roman Catholic and Protestant views of the effects of baptism, but then there are also differences within Protestantism and these don't always neatly fall along denominational lines.

Anyway, back to the comments on Ad Trinitatem. The original wording the author was proposing for his tract was this:

Baptism is the ceremony in which the gifts of forgiveness and the Holy Spirit are officially given to you and you officially become a Christian.

Perhaps due to the fact that I'm a lawyer this raised all kinds of questions in my mind. I thought that his statement about the gifts being "officially" given in baptism here was imprecise. It wasn't clear to me what this meant (for reasons which I will go into below). So I asked a series of questions in order to help clarify what he meant by this statement:

What do you mean here by “officially”? And is the implication that after you repent but before you are baptised the gifts are unofficially given to you and you unofficially become a Christian? Can you answer me the following two questions:
(1) What happens when someone repents of his sin and submits to Jesus as Lord? Is he given the gift of forgiveness? Has he received the Holy Spirit? If so, in what way? If not, why not?
(2) What happens when someone is baptised (in/ with water) in the name of the triune God after repenting and professing faith? (In other words we’re talking about plain ol’ adult “credo-baptism”.) Is he given the gift of forgiveness at his baptism? Does he received the Holy Spirit at his baptism? Yes/how, no/why not?

The author responded as follows:

By “officially” I mean “officially”.

When someone repents of his sins and submits to Jesus as Lord he is given the gift of forgiveness and has received the Holy Spirit. If he dies there and then, without being baptised then he will be raised up on the last day. They are his, he enjoys them, but they are not officially and formally made over to him.

I certainly agree with the notion that someone who has repented of his sins and submitted to Jesus Christ as Lord is given the gift of forgiveness and has received the Holy Spirit (indeed that was the motivation behind asking my clarificatory questions). The outcome for the unbaptised person who has repented and submitted to Christ is the same as the outcome for the baptised person who as repented and submitted to Christ. Both enjoy forgiveness and the Holy Spirit now and both will be raised up on the last day. So what is baptism for, you ask? Well the author says that while the unbaptised person who has repented and submitted to Christ has and enjoys these gifts, they have never been "officially and formally made over" to him. The clear implication of this is that baptism is for (or at least one of the things it is for -- bearing in mind that this was an answer to a specific question of mine and was not purporting to be exhaustive) 'formally and officially making over' the promises of forgiveness and the Holy Spirit.

To my mind it still wasn't perfectly clear what he meant by this and the author was considerate enough to add the examples of a student/graduate and a person involved in non-marital cohabitation:

It’s like the gap between passing exams and graduating. Having passed the exams, one demonstrated the knowledge and skills appropriate to that degree. The graduation confers no new knowledge and skills (although it brings many benefits). People can even informally refer to one by the style to which that degree entitles one. But until the ceremony, you are not admitted to that degree and cannot enter into the privileges it confers or call yourself by that title.

So I don’t think people should call themselves Christians if they haven’t been baptised. If they do, it’s like calling yourself a husband when you live with a woman but you’re not married. [...]

With this I cannot agree (well at least if by 'should not' he means 'cannot' or 'may not'!). I would say that the unbaptised person who has repented and submitted to Christ is and can call himself a Christian: one does not need to undergo baptism either to be or call oneself a Christian. Now obviously in saying this my position differs from the author of Ad Trinitatem's. Within the framework we are working in I really only see two alternatives to my view (correct me if I'm wrong) and to my mind it's not entirely clear to me from these examples which of these the author of Ad Trinitatem believes (although from his marriage example I would be more likely to go with the second possibility): either (1) such a person is but cannot call himself a Christian (because he hasn't gone through the official ceremony) or (2) such a person is not and cannot call himself a Christian but is (at least in some respects) still treated as one on account of God's promises (i.e. because God promises forgiveness, the Holy Spirit and being raised on the last day to all who have repented and put their faith in Christ regardless of whether they have undergone the ceremony of baptism).

What's the difference you ask? Well, interestingly the author of the blog himself suggested a different example in a subsequent comment. He suggested the Queen's coronation. To my mind that is actually a fundamentally different example from the graduation or marriage examples he initially cited and one which illustrates well what is really going on with baptism. The student who has passed his final exams but not yet gone through the graduation ceremony is not and cannot (formally) call himself a graduate. The man who is living together with a woman he is not married to is not and cannot (formally) call himself a husband. Unlike these two examples a monarch (at least the sovereign of the sixteen Commonwealth Realms -- since succession and coronation practices can differ according to the laws and customs of each particular monarchy) is and can (formally) call himself king before his coronation. Under the law of succession for the Commonwealth Realms there is no such thing as an interregnum. As soon as one king dies someone else (the heir apparent) takes his place on account of the rights he enjoys under (or expressed slightly differently the promises made to him in) the law of succession. Queen Elizabeth II "legally" and "formally" became queen regnant upon the death of her late father King George VI. She was not "informally" queen between the death of her father and the date of her coronation. She really was already queen. The coronation ceremony is exactly that: a coronation -- i.e. a crowning of what is already the case. But graduation and marriage ceremonies don't work like that. Each of those makes a real and formal difference to someone's status. The coronation ceremony, however, seals and publicly declares what is already the case. That is a rather important difference which I hope to explain in terms of the law and how that then applies to baptism.

For those who are familiar with legal concepts the difference is that between vested and non-vested rights. The difference is this: a non-vested right is something you're entitled to (or expressed slightly differently something you have been promised) but which has not yet accrued. A vested right on the other hand is something you're entitled to (or again in less legalistic language something you have been promised) and which has already accrued. The position of the student before his graduation ceremony (or a man and a woman before their marriage) and the Queen before her coronation are clear examples of the difference between these.

In the graduation example, the student who has passed his final exams indeed has a "right" to to be recognised as a graduate (i.e. it has been promised to him by the university -- and what's more this is a legally enforceable promise) but this right is non-vested. In other words, it has not yet accrued to him and something has to happen before it does accrue. That "something" is having the degree conferred at a graduation ceremony. Unless and until he undergoes the ceremony of graduation he is not and cannot call himself a graduate. In other words, while the university has promised to make him a graduate it has not yet come good on that promise and until it does he is not and cannot call himself a graduate. In the event that the university refuses to perform the ceremony the student could take the university to court and have it order the university to perform the ceremony. But the court cannot admit the student to his degree or confer on him the status of "graduate". Only the university can do that. All a court can do is order the university (under threat of imprisonment to university officials for contempt of court) to come good on its promise, to give the student what it promised it would give him (i.e. admission to a degree and the status of graduate). Unless or until that happens he is not a graduate. Similarly if a student dies without having undergone the ceremony he dies a student (or graduand) and not a graduate. (Of course the university can, and and as a rule does, confer degrees post-mortem on those who have fulfilled all formal requirements but die before graduation.)

In the coronation example, the person first in line to the throne has a "right" to become (and call himself) king (i.e. it has been promised to him in the law of succession). While his father is still alive this right is "non-vested", in other words he has a right to become (and call himself) king at some time in the future but that right has not yet accrued to him. He is not yet king (and cannot call himself such) but one day he will be. Something first has to happen before he is king (and can call himself such) and that something is the death (or exceptionally the abdication) of his father the king. That is the occasion whereupon the heir apparent's right to be (and call himself) king "vests". As soon as that happens there is nothing he has to do to become king. From that point in time he is king on account of inheriting the promise made to him in the law of succession by virtue of his father's death. The coronation ceremony (if there is one -- and there normally is) takes place after he has inherited the promise (and thereby become king). By the time of the coronation the right og the heir apparent to be and call himself king has already vested. At his coronation he is already really, fully and worthy of the name king. The coronation ceremony doesn't turn the heir apparent into the king. Nor does it make the king "any more" king than he already was (if such a thing were indeed possible). No, what it does is "crown" "the king". It is a ceremony which takes a man who is already king by virtue of the fact that he has already inherited the promise to him that he would be king and then seals and publicly declares the fact that the right of the heir apparent to be and call himself king has vested. Unlike the graduation ceremony, the coronation ceremony does not vest the right; rather, it is a sign and seal of the fact that the right has already vested. In the coronation ceremony the promises made in the law of succession to once-heir-apparent-now-king are formally declared and "brought home" in both word and deed. And these words and deeds speak to (1) the king himself, (2) the people of his own realm and (3) foreign powers and other people not subject to him. It speaks to the entire world -- himself, his subjects and aliens -- that he is the king of the realm. But importantly he was already king (anc could call himself such) before his corontation. The right had already vested. An uncrowned king is still king with all rights and privileges (and obligations under the law) thereunto appertaining (including the name and title of king). The uncrowned king is still "officially" -- and in an important sense "formally" -- king. In the sense that he already is king and already has the kingdom, he does not need a coronation ceremony to "officially" or "formally" give it to him. For example King Edward VIII abdicated before he was crowned as king but was nevertheless fully, legally, "officially" and "formally" king from the moment of his father's death until the time of his abdication. He never underwent a formal ceremony of coronation but he really was (and had the right to call himself and be called) king.

In the graduation example the ceremony effects the change in status (from student to graduate); in the coronation example the ceremony seals and publicly declares a change in status which has already taken place. At a graduation ceremony you turn up as a graduand and leave as a graduate. At a coronation one person turns up as a king (albeit an uncrowned king) and leaves as a king (albeit a crowned king). Both before and after the coronation he was and is king. Coronation doesn't change that. Coronation rather is the outward sign and symbol of the inward reality of his already being king. The reason Elizabeth II is and can call herself queen regnant is not (causally speaking) because she was crowned as Queen at her coronation. Rather it is (causally speaking) because she is the heir to the promises made in the law of succession. If she (like her uncle Edward VIII) never happened to be crowned she would still be queen and could rightfully call herself such. And, moreover, if someone other than the rightful heir to the promises in the law of succession were to turn up at Westminster Abbey and have the Archbishop of Canterbury "crown" him as "king" he would not thereby be king. No, he would be a crowned impostor.

And so, I would submit, it is with baptism. Someone who has repented of his sin and put his faith in Jesus Christ has already inherited the promises made to him in Christ Jesus. He is and can call himself a Christian on account of these. But he is an unbaptised Christian -- similar to an uncrowned king. He has not yet undergone the sign and seal -- the public declaration, and crowning glory if you will -- of the fact that he is already the rightful inheritor of these promises. The unbaptised person who has repented and put his faith in christ has inherited the promises made to him in Christ Jesus and baptism doesn't speak to that.

Coming back to our distinction between "vested" and "non-vested" rights, a person's right to inherit the promises including the right to call oneself a Christian "vests" (at least humanly speaking) upon the exercise of faith and repentance. At the time of one's baptism this "right" has already "vested". The ceremony does not "vest" the right. Rather it is a sign and seal of the fact that the right already has vested. And like the king's coronation baptism speaks to (1) the baptised Christian, (2) the body of Christian believers and (3) non-Christians. It is an outward sign and seal which speaks to each of those three categories of persons that the baptised person person has undergone the inward and spiritual reality of regeneration by the Holy Spirit and is thereby an inheritor of the promises made to him in Christ Jesus. Like the king's coronation, the Christian's baptism does not give him any greater claim to the inheritance of the promises that are his; if he has come to repentance and faith then these promises are his and fully his. But like the king's coronation baptism is the public declaration and crowning glory of the fact that the Christian is the inheritor these promises. And just as the king who one day wakes up and asks himself "Am I really King? Have I really inherited the promise of kingship?" can look back to his coronation and answer "My coronation declares it so" the Christian who doubts whether he really has inherited the promises that are made to him in Christ Jesus can look back to his baptism and answer just as confidently "My baptism declares it so".

Successive Discrimination? (Part two of three)

2009-03-29T11:15:00.033+01:00

This is the second in a series of three posts.
The first can be found here and the third is still to come.

In the first post we mentioned the fact that some people are claiming that three things in the law of succession are unacceptably "discriminatory": (1) male preference in the law of primogeniture, (2) the bar on the sovereign being a Roman Catholic and (3) the bar on the sovereign marrying a Roman Catholic. In this second post I want to consider these claims in more depth.

In recent years cries of "discrimination" have taken on an almost mantric effect in society. You don't like your lot in life? Cry 'discrimination'! Sue someone for a breach of your 'right' not to be 'discriminated against'! Countless "rights" movements over the course of the last century have perpetrated the pernicious idea that 'discrimination' is an evil to be eliminated from society. But on closer reflexion it should be apparent that discrimination as such is neither inherently good nor bad. Pretty much every law is "discriminatory" in some way or another. In other words just about every law treats one group of people differently from another. The real issue is not whether a law is discriminatory, but how it is discriminatory and whether such discrimination is justifiable (acceptable) or not. 'Thou shalt do no murder' is a discriminatory law; it discriminates against murderers in favour of their intended victims and the rest of society and (no surprises here) I'm all for it. Let's continue to discriminate against murderers, rapists, thieves and the like and say that murder, rape, thievery etc are not valid lifestyle choices and moreover that those who engage in such conduct will face the full force of the law.

So quite clearly the question is not whether the law discriminates, but whether it unjustifiably discriminates. When someone cries 'discrimination' what she really means is this: 'you have treated me differently than you ought to have'. Pointing out differences between the way you and someone else were treated is not enough. You also have to argue that the person oughtn't to have treated you differently -- in other words that he had no legitimate grounds for discrimination. Simply put, the assumption is that (as a matter of justice) like cases should be treated alike.

Now the law of succession does not criminalise anything so it is not like the laws against murder, rape, theft etc above. Just because the law of succession gives preference to male over female heirs or prevents the sovereign from being or marrying a Roman Catholic it is most definitely not saying that being female or Roman Catholic (or marring one) are not valid lifestyle choices in our society. No, it is saying something rather different. But what exactly?

Before we can answer the question as to whether any discrimination is justified we first have to be clear on how it is discriminatory (i.e. what exactly does the law of succession prevent and for whom?). It will become clear that the law of succession does not prevent anyone in society (including members of the royal family) from being female, Roman Catholic or marrying a Roman Catholic. It does not outlaw these things. But being female or Roman Catholic (or marrying one) can have consequences for members of the royal family. What are they? And what does all of this have to say about whether any discrimination in the law of succession is justified?

The first point we need to make is the rather obvious -- but all too often overlooked -- one that a hereditary monarchy is inherently discriminatory and this renders a lot of the objections against male preference in primogeniture and the restriction on the sovereign being a Roman Catholic nugatory. In a hereditary monarchy the choice of King or Queen is, well, hereditary and discriminatory in a number of ways. How so? Well one way is that by its very nature a hereditary monarchy discriminates against everyone who is not a member of the royal family. Only members of the royal family can become King or Queen. That law of succession 'discriminates' against everyone in society who is not a member of the royal family. Is this discrimination acceptable? Assuming we're not members of the royal family then you or I can never become King or Queen and all arguments about "discrimination" on the grounds of sex or religion are irrelevant as far as your or my claim to become King or Queen is concerned. Because we weren't born into the right family we simply do not have any claim to be King or Queen regardless of our sex or religion. A second way in which a hereditary monarchy is inherently discriminatory is that it discriminates against some members of the royal family in favour of others. Only one member of the royal family can be King or Queen at a time and there have to be rules for determining which member of the royal family is to be King or Queen. Simply put, these rules "discriminate" against all those members of the royal family who don't become King or Queen. Is this discrimination acceptable? One common way (and that chosen by the UK and the other Commonwealth realms) is the law of primogeniture. This 'discriminates' against younger in favour of older siblings. (Ed. - The shame of it says he as the youngest of three!)

These two kinds of "discrimination" are inherent to the nature of a hereditary monarchy and if they irk you then arguments about whether you should have male-preference in the law of primogeniture or not or indeed whether the sovereign can be or marry a Roman Catholic would seem to be mere bagatelles in comparison. If this is your view then the only real solution is to abolish the monarchy in favour of some other form of government (eg a republic, or anarchy etc -- but even in most republics access to office is is some ways "discriminatory", eg the office of President being limited on grounds of citizenship and age.) So to such people I would say: What are you really opposed to? Are you really opposed to male preference in the law of primogeniture? Or are you in actual fact opposed to the idea of hereditary monarchy (with or without primogeniture) altogether? Arguments about male preference in the law of primogeniture and religious tests for an office that is not open to the general public (including yourself) anyway are relatively trifling matters in the scheme of things. If you really don't like the idea of a hereditary monarchy and primogeniture then be honest and argue the case against hereditary monarchy and primogeniture in general. Arguments from Republicans about the "discriminatory" nature of male preference in primogeniture or religious tests are for the most part canards (even more so in places such as Australia and Canada than in Britain if that were indeed possible). Even if we abolished the three things currently under consideration, Republicans would still think the whole system stinks. I suspect that most of the people making the calls for change (including many members of the Labour Party in the UK) in actual fact object to the very principles of a hereditary monarchy and the law of primogeniture themselves but for political reasons can't win this debate and so settle short by tinkering with the monarch around the edges. So why not be honest and say what you really think instead of playing trendy (underhanded?) games about male-preference and religious tests within a system you deeply despise?

Secondly, when we come to two of the three things which people are talking about changing in the current law of succession, viz. male preference in the law of primogeniture and the restriction on the sovereign being a Roman Catholic (NB I will hold off talking about the restriction on the sovereign marrying a Roman Catholic until later), we need to be careful not to engage in a category mistake. In brief, it is a fundamental mistake to claim that male preference primogeniture discriminates against 'women' or that the restriction on the sovereign being a Roman Catholic discriminates against 'Roman Catholics'. No, the fact that we have a hereditary monarchy and the principle of primogeniture to begin with is the cause of most of the "discrimination" in who can and can't become King or Queen. The basic question is this: who do these rules discriminate against? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is not "women" or "Roman Catholics". At most these two rules discriminate against a very small subset of women (viz. female members of the royal family) and against a very small subset of Roman Catholics, or potential Roman Catholics (viz. members of the Royal family who are or would like to be Roman Catholic).

Male preference in the law of primogeniture does not discriminate against 'women' for the simple reason that most women can't become Queen anyway. The fact that we have a hereditary monarchy at all means that well over 99% of women in a monarchy can never become Queen (and here I am talking of a queen regnant not a queen consort). And that situation has absolutely nothing to do with male preference in the law of primogeniture. It is simply wrong to suggest therefore that male preference primogeniture discriminates against women. If you are a woman reading this then unless you are a member of the royal family the law of male preference in primogeniture does not affect you one iota. You (along with all the other women of the realm outside of the royal family) are not discriminated against by male preference in the law of primogeniture. Similarly with Roman Catholics (or potential Roman Catholics): If you are a Roman Catholic (or potential Roman Catholic) reading this then unless you are a member of the royal family the law barring Roman Catholics from acceding the throne does not affect you one iota. You (along with all the other actual and potential Roman Catholics of the realm outside of the royal family) are not discriminated against by this law. So don't falsely argue that the law of succession discriminates against 'women' or 'Roman Catholics'. Unless you are a member of the royal family, then arguments about sexual or religious discrimination in the law of succession are irrelevant as far as your rights are concerned.

What's more, for all practical purposes the group of people affected by these laws is actually smaller than what I have just suggested. Take the law of male preference in primogeniture as an example. If the sovereign has four children, two female and two male (F1,F2, M3, and M4 in their order of birth) then who does the principle of male preference in primogeniture affect? In one sense all of them: under the principle of male preference the order of accession would be M3 M4, F1, F2. If, however, male preference were abolished and we had a system of simple primogeniture the order would be F1, F2, M3 and M4. So with this we can begin to answer the question of who it is that is "discriminated against" by male preference in the law of primogeniture. Well very clearly F1 is discriminated against. Without male preference she would be first in line, with it third. That is the difference between being queen regnant and remaining a princess. Now while it is true that in a sense male preference "discriminates against" F2 (with it she is fourth in line, without it second), in both cases someone has a better claim to the throne than her. In other words under both systems F2 remains a princess with no claim to the throne. It is important to note that in neither case is it male preference which is preventing F2 from becoming Queen and a change in the law to abolish male preference would not alter that fact. What is stopping F2 becoming Queen is not male preference but another principle -- that of simple primogeniture. If F2 wants to become Queen then tinkering with the law of male preference makes no difference to her so long as F1 is alive. At most it changes her claim from fourth best to second best and while F1 is alive there is no substantive difference between having the second and fourth best claim to the throne. In both cases she remains a 'mere' princess.

So simple primogeniture and not male preference is the real villain of the piece for F2 (and in fact all women in the royal family apart from F1). That is what I mean by the fact that for all practical purposes the law of male preference (or mutatis mutandis the bar on the sovereign being a Roman Catholic) at most only "discriminates" against one person: either a first-born female in the case of male preference or the heir apparent in the case of the bar on the sovereign being a Roman Catholic. In all other cases it is a different principle (viz. simple primogeniture) which prevents a member of the royal family from becoming King or Queen.

Now as it happens the current heir apparent (Prince Charles) is a non-Roman Catholic first-born male so no-one is discriminated against by either of these two principles. Changing the law wouldn't change who the heir apparent is.

II.

Now that we have seen that (a) hereditary monarchy and primogeniture are inherently discriminatory and (b) that the bits about male preference and Roman Catholicism in the law of succession don't actually discriminate against women or Roman Catholics but only against a very few female and Roman Catholic members of the royal family (and arguably a maximum of one at at time) we can turn to the next question. Is such "discrimination" a bad thing? Ought we to change it? Why or or why not? And how?

There is an argument that although no-one is currently discriminated against by any of the principles currently under attack (i.e. none of them is preventing anyone who would otherwise be King or Queen from becoming so), we still ought to change the system so that the rules won't prevent anyone in the future from becoming King or Queen who otherwise would.

One reply to this would be to argue that since the whole system of a hereditary monarchy based on primogeniture is discriminatory anyway you can hardly say on principle that it is legitimate to discriminate between members of the royal family and the rest of society in general on the basis of heredity or among members of the royal family on the basis of age but that it is illegitimate to discriminate among members of the royal family on the basis of sex or religion. At the very least proponents for change would have to argue why the former kinds of discrimination are legitimate and why the latter are not.

A second reply would be to ask what concern it is of ours anyway. Regardless of what we happen to think it could be argued that it really is no business of ours anyway since our rights are not affected anyway. Since the proposed changes to the law of succession make no real difference to anyone outside of the royal family, we commoners should leave it to the possible victims of the discrimination (i.e. members of the royal family in general and those affected by any potential changes in particular) to initiate the calls for change. If the female or Roman Catholic members of the royal family have a problem with it we should let them raise the point -- at least initially. But if they don't have a problem with the system then why should we if changing the rules wouldn't affect us one way or the other? Have those clamouring for change thought to ask Princess Anne and the other female members of the royal family whether they actually want to be bumped up the order of preference? Maybe they would like to be. But then again maybe they wouldn't. For all we know Princess Anne might prefer being below her younger brothers Andrew and Edward in the pecking order and being spared the burden of becoming Queen regnant. If so, then who are we to force her up the pecking order against her will?

Contrary to these stated objections, however, people might argue one of two things: first that justice requires an abolition of the law of male preference within hereditary primogeniture (or the bar on Roman Catholics being or being married to the monarch) and secondly that while justice may not require such a change, in a democratic constitutional monarchy the people are free to change the law of succession according to their conception of the good, regardless of the wishes of the members of the royal family affected by any change.

This first claim (i.e. that justice requires change) is difficult (but not impossible) to make for two reasons:
First, it is hard to argue that 'justice' requires non-discrimination with regard to sex and religion within the royal family while nevertheless defending the very existence of a hereditary monarchy which discriminates between members of the royal family and all others or primogeniture within the royal family. How can you argue that it is 'unjust' for a younger male sibling to get preference over an older female sibling but that it is not 'unjust' for an older sibling to get preference over a younger sibling, or indeed that it is not 'unjust' for members of one family (the royal family) to get exclusive preference over accession to the throne? At most we could argue that the current system is less just (perhaps infinitesimally so) than the proposed new system. In other words, the proposed new system is not itself just, just a little bit less unjust than the current system. Now such an argument can certainly be made, but once you make it you abandon the strength of arguing from the position of justice. Arguments that the whole system of a hereditary monarchy are unjust and should therefore be abolished resonate much more loudly than saying the system is itself unjust but we need to make it a little bit less unjust! And, more importantly, once you abandon the high ground you open the possibility of people countering your claims with a kind of a cost-benefit argument. Why replace one unjust system with another? Even if we grant for the sake of argument that the proposed changes would be less unjust than the current system, why change them if they are not in themselves just? Can we (indeed should we?) weigh up other possible considerations in choosing to replace one unjust system with another (perhaps marginally less) unjust system? Is there a legitimate argument to be had about the costs and benefits of marginal justice?

The second reason why arguments from justice are hard to make is that the necessity of a connection between law and justice is assumed but never demonstrated. Ought our laws (including the constitution) to aspire to justice? If so why? This is a perennial problem in the philosophy of law. I believe the answer to be yes, but with some important qualifications. I shan't go into this debate in detail here. But I shall pose a few questions to consider. Even if we agree that in an ideal world our laws should be perfectly just (which is not necessarily something everyone would agree with, but let's go with it for the sake of argument), given that we don't live in an ideal world what kinds of imperfections of justice are acceptable in our laws? Is there an obligation to make our laws more just when the changes wouldn't be perfectly just? Is there a cost-benefit analysis to all of this? Does having our laws reflect justice come at a price? And what kind of price is acceptable? You might agree that a hereditary monarchy with simple primogeniture is not (perfectly) just but is still more just than one with male preference primogeniture. Fine, but so what? Is there an obligation to replace an unjust law with a marginally less unjust one? Why? And does cost-benefit come into this at all? Can you say that outcome B although not perfectly just would be less unjust than outcome A but still say the "cost" of the change outweighs the benefits? These are difficult questions we need to face if you are going to try to make arguments from "justice" for a change to the law of succession.

The second claim (i.e. that in a democratic constitutional monarchy the people are free to change the law of succession according to their conception of the good, regardless of the wishes of the members of the royal family) brings us, in my view, to the very heart of the matter under consideration. For reasons I don't want to go into here I think the answer is yes: Such a society is free to change the law of succession according to its conception of the good and this in my view is the real point of contention here.

The argument is not about individual claims of right against discrimination but about our conception of the collective good in a political society. There is a fundamental difference between laws (and claims of right) under a constitution and the act of making a constitution itself. Make no mistake about it: these calls are calls to change the constitution. It is a category error to argue this in terms of the "legal rights" of female and Roman Catholic members of the royal family to non-discrimination. What you are in fact saying is this (and strictly speaking this description only applies to the UK and not the other Commonwealth realms; for the others you would have to phrase it slightly differently but the broad point is the same): "We as a people want to re-constitute our society moving from a Protestant Reformed (Church of England/ Church of Scotland) hereditary monarchy based on male-preference primogeniture to a non-denominational hereditary monarchy based on simple primogeniture" -- or something to that effect.

Arguments about the "rights" of individual members of the royal family aren't really relevant. People are not calling for change because the (legal) "rights" of female and Roman Catholic members of the royal family are being violated. No, they are calling for change because they want to reconstitute political society from one form of government to another (perhaps out of aspiration towards some kind of a perceived 'natural' right of older sisters in the royal family not to be 'discriminated against' in favour of their younger brothers, or perhaps for different reasons entirely). Society is making a choice between constituting itself as one form of hereditary constitutional monarchy as opposed to another. Questions about the (legal) "rights" of members of the royal family aren't what we're talking about here. Any legal rights they have only arise according to law after society has decided how it wants to constitute itself (eg the choice between a Protestant Reformed (Anglican) hereditary monarchy based on male-preference primogeniture and a non-denominational hereditary monarchy based on simple primogeniture). Briefly put, in a Protestant male preference primogenitary monarchy Roman Catholics and elder sisters cannot complain that the system violates their legal "rights". All they can do is attempt to change the system from one form of political organisation to another.

So that's the choice we're faced with. And it is a political choice for society to make. Questions of individual legal right simply don't enter into the equation. They come later, once we have made the fundamental political choice about the kind of society we will create. In the case of the UK it needs to ask itself what kind of society it wants to constitute itself as. Do you want yourselves to be a Protestant Reformed (Church of England/ Church of Scotland) hereditary monarchy based on male-preference primogeniture? Or do you want to be a non-denominational hereditary monarchy based on simple primogeniture? Or do you want to be something else entirely (eg a secular Judeo-Christian republic, a Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat, an elective Roman Catholic monarchy, an anarchy etc)? That's the real question. What do you as a nation want to be?

Of course in answering that question you will have to ask yourselves some questions about sex and religion and whether it is right that they play a role in determining which member of the royal family occupies the throne. What is the point of male preference in the law of primogeniture? What is the point of being a Protestant monarchy (albeit one which guarantees freedom of religion to all subjects -- including members of the royal family)? Is the current form of monarchy in accordance with "the good"? Or would a different one be better for us as a society?

Seen in this light the question is not really about the individual "rights" of members of the royal family not to be "discriminated" against but rather the constitutional nature of the political society we are constructing and whether in constituting ourselves as a society there is a role for sex and religion in our choice of who occupies the throne. As things stand, a female or Roman Catholic member of the royal family can't go to court and claim a violation of a legal right not to be subjected to sexual or religious discrimination. Why? Well for the simple reason that no such legal right exists -- even if the constitution or law otherwise contains such a legal right (for instance the Canadian Constitution's Charter of Rights and Freedoms). The law of succession including its "discriminatory" provisions is the constitution and trumps all laws made under the constitution and also cannot be "trumped" by any other constitutional provision against non-discrimination in matters of sex and religion (eg the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

In saying the law of succession is "discriminatory" you are not saying "female and Roman Catholic members of the royal family have a legal right to non-discrimination". What you are in fact saying is "we want to re-constitute our society moving from a Protestant Reformed (Church of England/ Church of Scotland) hereditary monarchy based on male-preference primogeniture to a non-denominational hereditary monarchy based on simple primogeniture because we do not believe it is acceptable to let sex or religion play any role in the selection of our king or queen".

So in this light we can finally turn to the three questions Brown and others are saying need to be addressed. Is it "acceptable" in the 21st Century for sex or religion to play a role in the selction of king or queen? If so what role? And if not, why not? Coming back to the specific calls for change can we offer reasons in justification of (1) male preference in the law of primogeniture, (2) the bar on Roman Catholics acceding the throne and (3) the bar on the sovereign marrying or being married to a Roman Catholic as the advocates of change want to deny? And can their opponents offer better reasons for their alternative vision?

If the people of the UK choose to constitute themselves as a Protestant hereditary monarchy or if the people of the Vatican choose to constitute themselves as a Roman Catholic elective monarchy or if the people of the United States of America choose to constitute themselves as a secular democratic republic based on Judeo-Christian values or if the people of China choose to constitute themselves as an atheist socialist democratic (Marxist-Leninist) republic, then no-one can claim that her legal "rights" are violated by that. This is a question of sovereignty which precedes questions of legal right. A descendant of the last Chinese emperor (if there are any -- I have no idea) can't go to court in China and claim his legal right to be King of China has been violated because the Chinese nation (rightly or wrongly) has constituted itself as a Marxist-Leninist people's republic. A Protestant in the Vatican can't claim he is legally discriminated against because he is excluded from being head of state on the basis of his religion because (rightly or wrongly) the Vatican has constituted itself as a Roman Catholic elective monarchy. And likewise a Roman Catholic member of the royal family in Britain. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is (rightly or wrongly) a Protestant constitutional hereditary monarchy (albeit one which guarantees freedom of religion to all subjects).

Those kinds of choices -- what kind of society you want to constitute yourself as -- are fundamental questions of sovereignty and not questions of legal right. These are questions of making constitutions and not questions that arise under a constitution. Such questions precede questions of legal right. That is why claims of "discrimination" in the law of succession must necessarily fail before the courts (as they did in Canada). At most, cries of "discrimination" in the law of succession are a call to say that although no Roman Catholic member of the Royal family (or a first-born female) currently enjoys a right under the constitution to be king or queen, we want to change the constitution in order that he or she does. In other words although s/he doesn't have such a right, as a nation we think s/he ought and we want to reconstitute the nation accordingly. Not surprisingly, this desire reflects an underlying difference in values. What it boils down to is this: those calling for change do not agree with the values underlying the current constitutional settlement and are espousing a different set of values. Out with the value of a Protestant monarchy with freedom of religion (as the UK currently is) and in with a secular non-denominational monarchy (as the advocates for change want it to be).

So the question for our consideration is this: What was the value in a society such as the UK having constituted itself in the past as a Protestant monarchy on the basis of male-preference primogeniture? And what (if any) is its continued value today? Opposed to this, what is the value of the UK reconstituting itself as a simple primogenitary secular/ a-religious monarchy (or perhaps some half-way house such as a Protestant monarchy based on simple primogeniture)? Specific arguments on these points will be addressed in the third post (still to come!).

Successive Discrimination? (Part one of three)

2009-03-28T19:52:00.054Z

This is the first in a series of three posts.
The second can be found here and the third is still to come.

Once again there is talk of changing the more than three-hundred-year old law of succession which applies to the monarchy in the UK and the 15 other Commonwealth realms, ostensibly on the grounds that it is 'discriminatory'. There are three things that some people are calling for to be changed: (1) male preference in the law of primogeniture (i.e. the situation that a younger male gets preference over an elder female in the direct line of succession) , (2) the bar on a Roman Catholic acceding the throne and (3) a similar bar on a person married to a Roman Catholic acceding the throne.

From the press reports I have read, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would appear to be in favour of changing the law in relation to all three of these points of contention (but still somehow retaining the established Church of England -- more on this later). He is reported as saying:

"There are clearly issues about the exclusion of people from the rights of succession, and there are clearly issues that have got to be dealt with."

and further:

"This is not an easy set of answers but I think in the 21st century people do expect discrimination to be removed and they expect us to be looking at these issues."

British Opposition leader David Cameron is also reported to be in support of change, but apparently only with respect to (1) and (3) (his silence on the question of (2) is notable):

"I would like [the law of succession] to change. It does not make sense in the 21st Century to say that men have priority over women when it comes to inheriting the throne. It does not make sense to say that the king cannot marry a [Roman] Catholic."

Of course talk of changing the the law of succession is hardly new and nor are claims that male preference in the law of primogeniture and the bars on Roman Catholics acceding the throne or marrying the sovereign are 'discriminatory'. Brown was talking about this at the time he became PM. What's more, anyone familiar with the republican movements in Commonwealth realms such as Australia and Canada will know that the issue of "sexual and religious discrimination" in the law of succession has long been a favourite canard for republicans. And of course the law of succession has been changed before. While male preference in the law of primogeniture might be there for no better reason than "we've always done it that way", the bar on the monarch being or marrying a Roman Catholic is not in that category. At one time it was not a part of the law and the law was specifically changed (as part of the Glorious Revolution settlement) to bar Roman Catholics or persons married to a Roman Catholic from becoming King or Queen. Obviously then, the people who made this change to the law had their reasons for doing so. So any examination of the whole matter will at some stage have to consider the 17th century justification for excluding Roman Catholics from the offices of sovereign and consort and whether those justifications still hold today. The sad part of all this is that most people just assume they don't. Enlightened 21st Century people obviously know better than benighted 17th Century people.

What's interesting is that the people making the calls for change are not Roman Catholics crying 'discrimination'. For the most part the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the UK and prominent Roman Catholic journalists are very suspicious of the British Government's motives for announcing the proposed changes.

And I am too. The timing of the announcement is highly suspect. A favourite trick of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating was to play the Republic card whenever the Government came under criticism for other more pressing issues. By raising the Republic issue Keating would divert public -- and media -- attention away from more pressing problems and the Government's performance on more concrete issues. To my ears Brown's recent announcement has all the hallmarks of Keating's favourite parlour trick. The UK (along with most if not all of the world) is entering a very serious recession. The country is highly indebted and the Government is coming under sustained criticism for its spend-spend-spend response to the recession. By raising the issue of the 'discriminatory' law of succession now it could be argued that Brown is engaging in a crude attempt to divert public and media attention away from real and far more pressing problems such as the recession and arguably unsustainable levels of public debt in the UK. What's more, Damian Thompson makes a very good point when he argues that Brown's plan to amend the law of sucession is "an attempt to pacify Catholic public opinion, which is increasingly horrified by the actions of the most anti-Catholic cabinet in living memory." In fact many prominent Roman Catholics in Britain (including Thompson) argue outright for the continued establishment of the Church of England and the bar on the sovereign being or marrying a Roman Catholic. Why? In brief they believe that Roman Catholics (and by extension people of all faiths, including non-Christian faiths) are better off under a system with an established Protestant church with a monarch who is constitutionally bound to be a Protestant Reformed Christian in Communion with the Church of England than they would be under a constitutionally areligious system. This is not a universal argument for having a constitutionally established religion in all countries but simply one for the UK arguing that as a matter of historical development the continued establishment of the Church of England does more to protect the right to religious expression in general and in particular Christian religious expression than a constituionally areligious Britain. I think that is certainly true in the case of the UK. But as informed readers would know, while sharing the same monarchy (and law of succession) other Commonwealth realms do not have a constitutionally established religion.

Political smokescreens and cynical attempts at Roman Catholic pacification aside, that's not all there is to this episode. Yes, the timing of the announcement is highly suspect. And yes, there is a certain irony in a Government whose policies are outright hostile to Roman Catholicism (and Christianity in general) claiming to occupy the moral highground on issues of religious freedom but it certainly appears that Brown and others in the British Labour Party probably believe in what they are saying as a a matter of principle. (With regard to David Cameron it's hard to tell whether he really believes in change as a matter of principle or whether he's attempting to sound in tune with public opinion).

Interestingly, Cameron made no reference to a need to change (2) and in the article Brown is reported as having admitted that changing (2) would raise particularly difficult issues with respect to establishment of the Church of England. The split in opinion over (2) is interesting. Brown says he wants to maintain the established Church of England (although whether this is a view held by conviction or simply political pragmatism we don't know) and remove the bar on the monarch being a Roman Catholic. He seems to think that a (suitable) solution can be found to this conundrum. Cameron on the other hand completely skipped over mentioning point (2). He seems to assume that it is too hard (perhaps impossible) to come up with a satisfactory solution whereby the state has an established Protestant church and the sovereign is a professing Roman Catholic. As a constitutional lawyer my take on this is that while it would indeed be possible to come up with a solution whereby you can have both an established Protestant church and a Roman Catholic monarch, this change would amount to a fundamentally different kind of establishment. You would be changing the establishment of the Church of England from one form of establishment to another. It would indeed be legally possible to have a Roman Catholic swear an oath to uphold the Protestant Reformed religion as established by law. And he or she could do it in one sense. The situation is analogous to an MP or a minister (even a Prime Minister) with republican convictions swearing allegiance to the Crown. How can he both be a republican who by conviction supports the abolition of the monarchy and at the same time swear allegiance to the monarchy he opposes as a matter of principle? One view would be that he can't really and that any talk of allegiance is in reality dissemblance. Another view, however, is that it is entirely possible both to be in favour of a republic (i.e. the abolition of the monarchy) and to swear allegiance to that monarchy and faithfully carry out one's duties under the Crown. How so? You can really only adopt this kind of view if you argue that bearing true allegiance to the Crown according to law includes the possibility of working towards the abolition of the monarchy by lawful (as opposed to unlawful or revolutionary) means. Mutatis mutandis we could say that a Roman Catholic monarch could also swear to uphold the position of the Church of England established according to law. That is, like a republican Prime Minister in a monarchy, a Roman Catholic monarch in Britain couldn't be said to support the Church of England "in an overarching sense". When pressed he would be forced to say that he disagrees with the raison d'être of Protestantism (and a Protestant Church of England) and wishes that the Church of England were ideally under the authority of the Bishop of Rome (as all loyal Roman Catholics should believe). However, he could promise to "work within the system" so to speak, accepting the status quo, only seeking to change it by lawful (as opposed to unlawful, underhanded or revolutionary) means.

Such a situation would certainly be possible with regard to establishment of the Church of England but it would (a) be a fundamentally different kind of establishment than there has been for the past few hundred years and (b) decidely sub-optimal for anyone who is in favour of Protestant establishmentarianism as a matter of conviction (more on that later). A convinced Protestant and establishmentarian could indeed in theory accept that a Roman Catholic monarch would be capable of faithfully upholding the established Protestant religion according to law, but this situation is not ideal. The difference is this. Having both an established Protestant Church and a Roman Catholic monarch means the monarch's promise to uphold the established religion is purely negative. He doesn't like the system but he promises to respect the rules of the game while possibly working towards changing them. The undeniable fact is that in such a situation the monarch is as a matter of personal conviction opposed to the system and only promises not underhandedly to undermine it. With a Protestant monarch, however, the monarch's promis to uphold the sustem is a positive one. Unlike the Roman Catholic monarch who merely promises not to bring down the system in an underhanded way, the Protestant monarch actually believes in the good of the system. So if we believe that Protestantism is true (which I do) and that having an established Protestant Church of England is good for England, the rest of the UK and indeed the other Commonwealth realms (which I do) then the situation of having a Roman Catholic monarch who as a matter of deep conviction stands opposed to the raison d'être of an established Protestant church but nevertheless promises to uphold the system "according to law" is indeed possible but less optimal than having a Protestant monarch who believes in thesystem and wants to see it continue.

So in brief, changing (2) would effectively mean either the disestablishment of the Church of England or introducing a fundamentally new kind of establishment which is far from optimal for people by conviction who are both Protestant and support establishment. But (1) and (3) would certainly be possible without changing the nature of establishment and that is probably why David Cameron mentioned his support for those but was notably silent on the issue of (2). (In saying this I have no idea whether David Cameron is a Christian, a Protestant or establishmentarian by conviction or whether his hesitation to change (2) is explicable on purely pragmatic grounds).

Of course none of this answers the question of whether the bar on Roman Catholics acceding the throne is "discriminatory" or indeed justifiable. All I have argued here is that it is a better outcome for the person (or nation collectively) who believes that Protestantism is true and that having an established Protestant church is good for society (both of which I have not attempted to argue here but may return to at a later point). The following posts will consider the claims of "discrimination" in more detail and if there is any "discrimination" whether it is "justified" or not.