A Birthday Appeal

It’s my birthday soon, my seventieth. It will fall just inside* the Easter season, so modest rejoicing will be permitted (but no partying), alongside the inevitable reflection on attaining this personal milestone. 

Cue introspection? Not now: this blog isn’t about me. I’m writing because this special birthday falls right in the middle of this terrible Coronavirus emergency as it’s hitting us here in the UK. We are holding so many people in our hearts during this crisis: the sick, the dying, the dead, the bereaved, all who are caring for others in these times, our leaders, those who maintain the fabric of our society. 

But we also know that this pandemic is global. Many communities are exposed to very great risks in places where healthcare is so much less developed than here in the UK. So to mark my three score years and ten, I’d like to ask you to join me in helping Oxfam respond to Covid19 across the world. 

Oxfam is deeply involved in helping to contain the spread of the virus worldwide, and in supporting victims and communities that have been badly hit by it. As many of you know, I volunteer each week in the Oxfam bookshop in Hexham here in North East England. I love this involvement for so many reasons, but the principal one is that it helps Oxfam make a difference to some of the neediest people in the world. So perhaps I can appeal particularly to people who support the charity by visiting Oxfam shops and who are missing them (as I am) during this lockdown? If I single out book-lovers especially, well, you’ll understand why as one of them myself.

We all share anxieties about how Covid19 is affecting everyone whether they are far away, closer to home or among our own families and friends. The impact is being felt across the world, especially where people are living through conflict, disaster and poverty. What could happen once the virus takes hold in less developed countries hardly bears thinking about. Bangladesh, for instance, about which I saw a report recently, where critical population densities in towns and cities make any prospect of social distancing, let alone isolation, impossible. In time there will be antiviral drugs and wholesale testing. But by then it will be far too late for many, many people.

Oxfam’s humanitarian staff and partners are working hard to help stop the spread of Covid19 by providing vital support like handwashing facilities, clean water, toilets and soap in many of the world’s most vulnerable communities.Work like this has helped contain deadly disease outbreaks in the past such as Ebola and cholera. It will help protect people against this virus too. 

Oxfam is also able to provide vital equipment in some places to healthcare facilities and hospitals that urgently need support. And it’s helping people who are losing income or at greater risk of domestic abuse because of restrictions on movement. Supporting the world's poorest communities is more important than ever right now.

You don’t need me to explain all this. One of the good things to come out of this emergency is that it’s heightening our awareness that we are one human family. Locally, we are learning how to look after one another better, love our sick, elderly or vulnerable neighbour in practical ways that make a difference. 

But my neighbour is every man, woman and child in every part of God’s world. At times of crisis when it’s tempting to look inwards, I need to make a conscious effort to think about people far away who are facing threats I can barely imagine. Each of them is my neighbour too. I know that in theory. But loving my neighbour isn’t a matter of theory but of developing a feeling for humanity that’s summed up in words like sympathy and compassion. They both have at their core the idea of suffering-with. In my last two blogs I explored what this might mean in this season of the year when we reflect on the Passion and cross of Jesus. For me, the thought that he continues to suffer in every suffering human child is at the heart of what Holy Week and Good Friday mean.

Which is why I’m asking if you’d be willing to join me in being part of this great effort if you can. I’ve made Oxfam’s Coronavirus appeal my birthday fundraiser on Facebook. You can give via my Facebook page. Please use this if possible. The post is public so you don’t have to be a member. But if you prefer, you can give directly to Oxfam though it won’t be included in the total raised by my personal appeal. You can find Oxfam’s Coronavirus giving page here.

Thank you. Stay safe and well. I hope and pray that this season of Holy Week and Easter brings health, peace and blessing. 

*To clarify, because some have speculated, my birthday falls on the Ides of April.

Having Your Cake and Eating It: Advent thoughts

I'm trying hard not to be grumpy this Advent.

It's not the usual clergy preoccupation with Christmas trees, carolling and commercialism before November is even out. It doesn't become us to be pressing the dislike button too much. I used to be quite fierce about keeping a rigorously blue (or violet) Advent until Christmas Eve. Indeed, I still want to honour Advent in its entirety as a matter of personal spiritual discipline: this is a wonderful liturgical season. But my internalised Pharisee doesn't take much awakening at this time of year. So I'm learning to be more relaxed about it. In the grand scheme of things there are bigger worries to preoccupy us.

And it's these bigger things that are making me grumpy. More accurately, the bigger things in which I'm directly implicated and have to take some responsibility for. 2016 has been particularly prolific in this respect.

Take this morning's news for instance. A Government aide has been photographed in Downing Street making very free with her spiral-bound notebook. "Who is Julia? What is she?" Schubert might have sung. A quick photographer with a long lense captures her scribblings for all to see. "What's the model? Have your cake and eat it." And then: "French likely to be the most difficult." (What is it with these people who are caught more often than they should be with their literary pants down in one of the world's most scrutinised streets? You have to wonder if they are under instruction to reveal tantalising glimpses of what's going on behind closed doors.)

Yes, I'm tempted to be exceedingly grumpy about this. My parents taught me about having my cake and eating it early on in life. How it used to irritate me when they trotted out this proverb!  They said it meant trying to achieve the impossible, and always for selfish ends. As I've learned from the New York Times (http://nyti.ms/1HbHN6q), in Germany you would say that you can't dance at two weddings at once, and in Russia that you can't sit on two chairs at the same time. 

If ever a phrase captured the spirit of the Brexiters' referendum campaign it is this. It seems that we Remainers were right when we said that the mantra "Give us our country back" was utterly and unscrupulously self-regarding. In a series of blogs earlier this year, I asked (possibly a trifle grumpily) where, in the Brexit campaign, we could find real concern for the welfare of other nations, for social justice, for the project of creating a more peaceable world, for the pursuit of the common good. (The answer is that there were a few Brexit voices that called for a more just world order such as Giles Fraser's, but they were all but drowned in the shrill chorus that echoed David Cameron's negotiating stance at the Brussels summit in February: "what matters is what's best for Britain". Not the EU, not Europe, not our allies, not the poor and neglected, not a world facing irreversible climate change, not the human family as a whole. Just us here in Britain.)

It's going back to an old question to ask where this leaves the Hebrew and Christian commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves. Jesus did not say that we should have our cake and eat it. He taught us that if someone demands the cloak on our back, we must give them our shirt as well; if we are asked to travel a mile with a person who needs our help, we must go the next mile too. He taught us that in the kingdom of God, it is open-handedness and generosity that count, because that is how God is towards us. I hesitate to invoke the word surely because somehow that suggests a rhetorical cover-up for a weak argument. But surely the gospel's logic is that the love-command applies to every level of human life, corporate, national and global as well as personal. Doesn't it? 

Advent refocuses our gaze on what belongs to God's kingdom. It lifts our spirits because we believe that God has a destiny for the human race that transcends our best efforts to serve our own ends - efforts that will usually end badly. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, as an Advent gesture, our leaders started talking seriously about the role our nation could play in constructing a world characterised by generosity rather than self-interest? I may be naïve but I believe - or want to believe - that the British people are far better than the dreadful slogans so many found themselves mouthing during the Referendum. Who would not hear the knock on the door and gladly open it to someone who needed us? Who would give their child a stone when they asked for a fish? 

So have we seen an ugly truth in a spiral-bound notebook? Is having your cake and eating it now the official ethic of a virtuous Christian nation? Is it the political version of the acquisitive "must-have" slogans that fill our TV screens in Advent? Or is it just a piece of nonsense we shouldn't pay too much attention to? After all, it's just another way of saying that you can't do the impossible and square the circle. (Maybe "Julia" is even deconstructing rather cleverly the illogic of her Brexit lords and masters by making sure we notice the non-sense of their position - wanting the benefits of the Single Market but not the free movement of people that inevitably goes with it?) 

What's the antidote to feeling grumpy about all this? I think it's to focus on the Advent hope and on the more excellent way of love that the gospel invites us to walk in. It's to practise thankfulness as the fundamental Christian virtue, because it is the only possible response we can make to the generous Love that calls us to say yes to it. Having your cake and eating it just sounds feeble and pathetic when you set it alongside the Advent themes of ultimate destiny: death, judgment, hell and heaven. 

There. I'm done with it. Away with grumpiness. It has no place in this season of expectancy and joy. 

The Referendum: in defence of campaigning with conviction

In the 1980s the broadcaster Bernard Levin wrote a booked called Enthusiasms. It gave him an excuse to write about all the things he loved in life: music, landscapes, food, cities, books, friends... In it he writes: "To be passionate in a cause provokes widespread embarrassment...[which is] to set off the squealing and tittering of those whose motto is 'surtout, Messieurs, point de zèle'."

In today's Guardian*, Jackie Ashley laments the lack of passion on the part of those campaigning to keep the UK in the European Union. She accuses them (us) of being lacklustre, taking our cue from a Prime Minister who has famously said that he doesn't "love Brussels". "The repetition of the very vague 'safer in' message isn't cutting through. It's too bland; frankly too boring." 

She is not wholly correct, but right enough. The Remain message has largely fallen into the trap set for it at the Brussels summit (how long ago that seems). The renegotiation of the UK's membership was hailed as a game-changing triumph, but of course its scope was pretty narrow. All along the message of the UK's special status was: "what's best for Britain, what's best for you the voter". That was an invitation to pander to self-interest. And those have largely been the rules of engagement in this campaign: will we be better or worse off as a result of Brexit? will our global trading position, our employment prospects, the security of our borders be disadvantaged one way of the other? The discourse has been largely utilitarian and pragmatic. What's been lacking is real conviction that the EU project could be a Good Thing with ideals that are worth believing in for their own sake. 

This very English (rather than Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish) way of thinking is not altogether unworthy: self-interest is natural enough, and best of all when it is enlightened and not merely self-serving. The PM's issues are important and aren't to be dismissed as of no consequence. We all know that there is a lot wrong with the EU. But a utilitarian politics can lack vision and ambition. Laodicean luke-warmness doesn't touch the imagination or fire the soul; it doesn't stimulate our aspiration to help build a better world. It doesn't have anything to say about the huge challenges that face the human race such as climate change, terrorism, peace-making and the global economy. It doesn't raise questions about governance and democratic participation. And it risks falling at the first hurdle for people of faith which is: how shall we build a more compassionate and socially just world where we ask "who is my neighbour?" - or, as Jesus turns it round in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, "to whom am I required to be a good neighbour?"

Well, I am one of those who wants to campaign for Remain with conviction and, yes, enthusiasm. It's partly a political and cultural conviction that I have. For as long as I've been alive, I've felt European in my bones. I owe a lot of it to my German-born mother and grandmother who had both suffered under the Nazis, and instilled in me a mistrust of thinking merely nationally about my identity. They taught me to love Bach and Rembrandt and Voltaire and Dante as much as Virgil and Shakespeare because they all belonged to my birthright. They encouraged me to learn foreign languages. They helped me travel and see the world. So now, when I am in continental Europe, I feel virtually as at home as I do in my native country. Because that's what it is to me, my native country. I'm proud that my passport has European Union emblazoned on the floppy Burgundy cover. I don't want my European identity to be stolen from me against my will.

But the other side of my conviction about the EU is related to my Christian faith. Religious belief is not just a matter of cognitive assent. The heart matters as much as the head. I am a Christian because I have been touched by something that is bigger than I am, that has transformative, life-changing power. Therefore, what flows out of my Christianity - its intellectual, ethical, social and political consequences - is also a matter of conviction. I believe we should do the right thing, or the best thing, out of loyalty to our faith. And in the case of the EU, that means for me the appeal to our nation to participate for the sake of the common good, take a lead in a community of peoples whose aim is the betterment of life for its members. This includes solidarity with the disempowered, voiceless and needy. It includes our resolve to be part of a family whose achievements in peace-seeking, reconciliation and environmental change have given real hope that together some inroads against these challenges can be made. And it has to be together. To revert to pragmatism, there's no room in today's world for nations to go it alone when the threats we face cross every national frontier. We can't afford to be without the EU and other alliances that will help safeguard us all. 

Our movement "Christians for Europe" believes that the tag #StrongerIn reflects not a depressing preoccupation with self-preservation so much as what the EU as a family of peoples can become, and the contribution our nation can make to the EU. It's heartening to be told by our EU partners that our country is the second most influential member of the Union after Germany. We shouldn't underestimate what our membership means to them, and the possibly catastrophic effects a #Brexit might lead to across the continent, maybe its eventual dissolution. The ill-feeling and resentment would last for decades. But Britain is famed for its fairness, its neighbourliness, its care of those who most need help, its kindness, its breadth of outlook, its tolerance and generosity of spirit. And its perseverance in not walking out on commitments when things get tough. These are virtues we can be proud of because they can and do make a real difference to our friends with whom we share our common European home. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Britain that has nurtured these qualities is an historically Christian nation.

What are the rewards for the UK if we vote #Remain, as I hope we do? I won't rehearse the material or cultural benefits, though I think they are real enough. No, for me, as an IN-thusiast, the best reward will be to think that we are committed to being a leading player in a unique family of nations. It will be the recognition that we have as much to give as to receive. It will be the reassurance that we the British people have once again understood what is required of us as respected players on the world stage. It will be a sense of gratitude that once again, we have found it in ourselves to love our neighbour.

That's my fervent prayer. Hence my determination to do what I can to support #Remain. Yeats sounds a warning note in his poem "The Second Coming": "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are filled with passionate intensity." As to the first, we must raise our game and learn from the best Brexiteers how conviction should play a part in what we are doing. As to the second, we must eschew sloganising, vacuous rhetoric and demonising those who differ from us, and try to cultivate, not passionate intensity but an intelligence and wisdom that is both passionate yet courteous. We need good information and reliable evidence. We need rigorous argument. But let them be undergirded by conviction. Let's not be afraid to campaign not just in prose but in poetry. Brexit doesn't have all the best tunes. We don't have to commit the mortal sin of being boring.

Alors mes amis. Bon courage! Et beaucoup de zèle svp! 

*http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/29/remain-campaign-failing-brexiters-wrong-but-passion

The Syrian Refugees and the EU Referendum

Two things have prompted me to write this blog. The first is a series of portraits in today's Guardian by photographer Muhammed Muheisen. They show faces of Syrian refugee children in a makeshift tent camp in the north of Jordan. You never saw such hopelessness written into human eyes. Such faces can no doubt be seen by the thousand in the desperate communities of refugees that are huddled in the eastern borderlands of Europe. 

Human faces are always beautiful, even when disfigured, scarred physically or emotionally by tragedy. The pathos of these portraits somehow added to their beauty. My response to them was complex, hard to put into words. First, a terrible sadness for these forlorn kids. I guessed that these children had done with weeping; probably they were utterly cried-out. For me looking on helplessly, there was not much I could do except try to put myself in their world and say my prayers. 

I've thought about how the photographer has given back to these children their identity. They have names. They have unique faces; each one tells a story. They share their personal thoughts about their homeland in the brief captions. We usually speak about "migrants", "refugees" and "asylum seekers" as collectives. They soon become a crowd - or worse: witness the language of "swarms" used not long ago by someone who should have known better. These are abstractions. The images tell us that they faces belong to persons who are made in the image of God. And if their eyes are filled with blank despair, maybe even God despairs too? That's what I found myself wondering.

The other prompt came in some words I saw quoted in the same paper. A Greek migration officer was commenting on the EU summit that has been trying to address this humanitarian crisis. "My big hope is that Europe will decide to behave like Europeans" he said. There is a common acceptance that Europe's failure so far to respond adequately has been "an insult to our values and civilisation" - this from the EU's top immigration official who was struggling to find the words.

"Behave like Europeans". It's a bitter sarcasm on the virtues we have prized on our continent, among them care, pity (in the best sense of that word), compassion and charity. You could sum these up in the word "humane". One of the founding values of the EU is "solidarity" which means our capacity to see ourselves as part of the human family in its entirety, especially its poor, voiceless, needy and suffering members. This is why Europe's agonised and so far unsuccessful attempts to agree a concerted response to the refugees who arrive on our shores feels so shameful to us who care about being "Europeans". That honoured identity isn't simply a privilege. It comes with a cost, the outward-turned generosity that is necessary if others in our community are to flourish as we do. 

I've constantly pressed in these EU-blogs the absolute priority we must give to loving our neighbour. It's basic to the Judaeo-Christian tradition whose social teaching so inspired the founders of the European project. If ever we were called to do this in practical ways, it's now. I would place a copy of these photographs on the desk of every member of the European Council, the Commission and the Parliament and insist that they contemplated them at the start of every working day. An image speaks more than a thousand words. These tragic faces plead with us not just to feel something but to do something. And that means everyone in affluent Europe. None of us is exempt from making whatever personal response we can even if it can't be more than giving to charities who are supporting refugees. 

As Christian Aid has said pointedly, the European Union has to act together if there is to be any strategic way forward. Now we learn that at the leaders' summit, the EU and Turkey have reached agreement, a "landmark deal". I hope this is good news, but we shall have to wait for the small print to make sure that it is a real breakthrough (and a legal and adequate one), and not simply another cobbled-together compromise. There's been much criticism of the basic idea underlying the proposal, exchanging genuine refugees for those whose asylum applications are turned down and who will be sent back. But even if this is ethical and workable, there still needs to be a bigger plan such as David Miliband has proposed, the opening up of legal routes to bring refugees into Europe without endangering lives through a dangerous sea-voyage and unscrupulous people traffickers. 

Meanwhile, we in Britain who are shortly to vote in the EU referendum are bound to be asking how the migrant crisis will affect both the debate and the outcome. It would be deplorable if a humanitarian catastrophe were used for point-scoring for or against. But at the same time it wold be just as deplorable if our EU debates just sailed on oblivious to this disaster happening on our continent. Not many contributions I've seen on either side have had much to say about the refugees in relation to the referendum. Maybe that's a respectful silence when faced with holy ground. More likely it reflects how difficult it is to know what to say about it. That's forgivable. What would be much worse would be a silence that suggested a shoulder-shrugging attitude that it's not a British problem. After all, didn't the PM remind the summit that the UK has "special status" in the EU? - a statement I have to say I am profoundly uncomfortable with as I've said elsewhere.

My worry is that the terms set for the referendum debate are so circumscribed by "what's good for Britain, what's best for us" that the plight of the needy has been banished out of sight. If so, we should loudly insist that it's brought back into our conversation. A campaign based on self-interest only would be a campaign without a conscience. The Archbishop of Canterbury has been vocal in drawing attention to the refugees, and in this he is in tune with all the churches. I should like to see the referendum debate focus much more on what kind of society we believe the EU could be, and what values we ourselves hold to in the UK. Here's where the migrant crisis is an acid test of our capacity to be human. The referendum is not about abstract issues. It's about people and communities: we who are so privileged, and the many who are not. 

A final thought. Suppose the electorate concluded that the EU's failure to bring its peoples together to act humanely towards its refugees was a conclusive argument for Brexit. Well, I would understand and respect that because it would have been informed in a principled way. It would be a much stronger argument than the (to me) xenophobic fear of "migrant invasion" that tabloid reportage talks up. Similarly, I would find it hard to sympathise with those whose case for Remain is based solely on what's in our own national or personal interests. That wouldn't demonstrate the conscience and compassion we must have when human beings are suffering in our midst. It would fly in the face of what I believe are the best reasons for staying in. I happen to think that when we act together we are in a stronger position to make a difference to desperate human lives. Time will tell if I'm right.

I hope voters are listening out for indicators that humanitarian care is featuring in the way we talk about the referendum and are preparing to vote. We should take the images of those Syrian children with us in our memories when we go into the ballot-box. We must not forget them. If we do, they may never forgive us.