Us & Them On So Many Levels

June really hasn't been a good month.

This is a picture of Stanford rapist Brock Turner: white, wealthy, privileged. When he found an unconscious women rather than helping her he began to rape her.

Some people came along and caught him so technically I suppose he is an 'attempted rapist', but he got far enough that the woman reportedly had dirt and grass inside her when they treated her in hospital.

He was sentenced to just six months in prison, reportedly reduced to four, by a judge who shared his background, and he and his family are appealing that as too harsh. His victim, once she had been treated, was articulate enough to ensure the case came to wider notice: a shocking example of 'them & us' in US society.

Melissa Etheridge's song, at the top of this post, was written in response to the mass murder at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando this month.

A deeply homophobic man shot dead 49 people and wounded 53 others. Behind him lay a deeply homophobic family, living in a deeply homophobic culture, surrounded by deeply homophobic churches (and presumably mosques).

Homosexuality has been a divisive issue across the world in recent years. My question on such things is "where are the haters?" Those who spread hatred of others are not God's people; and those who would divide Christ's body are nothing to do with Jesus.

Then we come to the UK's EU referendum campaign. The picture shown was probably the low point of a generally negative campaign. 

Both the Leave and Remain official campaigns focused on fear-mongering and negative propaganda. Both the official and unofficial Leave groups hammered away relentlessly at immigration and at people's fear and resentment of 'the other'.

Now the result is out and it seems the Leave campaigns worked - at least among older voters. The picture below, in many variations, is widely shared on social media by younger people angry at what they see as a betrayal of their future by those who won't have to live with the consequences. I suppose 'us & them' across generations is nothing new, but the anger is real.

I was going to put up picture of those utterly stupid politicians whose response to a crisis is to play politics and ignore the needs of the country. In many ways it was the Conservative party's internal politics, especially the ambition of Boris Johnson, which created the crisis, now Labour's MPs have decided they'd rather play leadership games than help rebuild the unity this country desperately needs to face a challenging future. The us & them of a broken political system.

In my view the most apposite comment was used as a headline by the Guardian newspaper: "If you've got money, you vote in ... if you haven't got money, you vote out." Subheading: "Brexit is about more than the EU: it’s about class, inequality, and voters feeling excluded from politics. So how do we even begin to put Britain the right way up?"

So much of the anger, so many of the divisions, arise from the deep and increasing inequalities within our society. A lot of the Remain campaign was based around fear of losing what we have got; to many that means nothing. A lot of the resentment of immigrants and minorities flows from insecurity, uncertainty, and a feeling someone must be to blame.

I'd like to come up with a nice 'Christian' solution to all this: "love one another," perhaps, "then everything will be wonderful." Meaningless! If we loved one another we wouldn't have the problems anyway. "Jesus Christ died to bring reconciliation," is at least apposite, but lacking in how and when.

At the moment my feelings are more in line with Habakkuk: how long, O Lord, is this unholy mess going to continue? When will there be justice and peace and cleansing?

12 Years A Slave

Quite a moving story, but I'm not sure what the point of the film really is.

12 Years A Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York State, who, in 1841,  is kidnapped and sold as a slave in the Southern USA. He's beaten and abused then, after 12 years, he is set free again (given the title, I don't think that counts as a spoiler). There is a lot of whipping, dwelt on in a manner reminiscent of Mel Gibson's Passion, and a certain amount of abusive sex. Quite why it only has a 15 certificate is a bit of a mystery.

The movie is based on a true story: one that happened in the 1840's, which was a very important story to tell back then. Even after 1865, when slavery was legally abolished in the USA, the story would still have been important in showing why abolition was necessary. But why at the beginning of the 21st century? Does anyone seriously still think that slavery was a good and reasonable institution? If they did, would they watch this film?

I am part of a housegroup which will be looking at this film over the next few weeks, so maybe I'll have better ideas after that. In the meantime, a few thoughts:-

The first point is that it makes a powerful and dramatic story. Not much happens, but it still paints a vivid and painful picture. A picture of long ago, but a truthful picture nonetheless.

The second is that, like the Holocaust and the First World War, slavery in the USA remains a painful but vital part of a people's history, which should not be forgotten. The original book was a very important historical document which dovetailed well with other accounts of slavery at the time, written from the perspective of an educated man who was 'on the inside'.

Thirdly, although legalised slavery has been abolished in the West (Pakistan and other countries still practise forms of indentured labour, which is essentially the same), illegal slavery still continues. The slavers may not comfort themselves with dubiously interpreted religious texts any more, but they are still active. Also, the underlying racism and dehumanising of 'the other' are far from over. In the USA racism around their black president is explicit; here in the UK it tends to hide behind other masks.

I guess the biggest take-home message of the film is that a human being is a human being, made in the image of God, never 'property', never disposable, always to be respected, always to be treated according to the Golden Rule: how would you want someone to behave if the situation were the other way around.

Utoeya: Is This How Muslims Feel?

Yesterday evening, as early reports came through of a bomb attack in Oslo, followed by young people killed on Utoeya Island, my initial horror and sympathy was modulated by a 'twitch' as the suspect arrested was described as a 'Christian Fundamentalist'. No true Christian would do such a thing, I thought. On reflection, and as the official death toll moves from the horrible to the near-unthinkable, and as details of the sheer evil of the man's actions are told, I find myself wondering if that is how ordinary British Muslims feel every time there is some atrocity, somewhere in the world, put down to 'Muslim Fundamentalists'. No true Muslim would do such a thing - is that their thought?

It has long been true, of course, that different ethnic groups use a cultural Christian label in self-description: 'Christian militias' in Lebanon, 'Protestants' and 'Catholics' in N. Ireland, 'Catholic', 'Orthodox' and 'Muslim' in the Balkans, and so on. But this is less a cultural label - although the young murderer does seem to have been a far-right racist - and more of an aggressive statement: 'Christian' in the sense of 'anti-Muslim'. Much as some hard-line 'Muslim' groups seem to define themselves more in terms of anti-Western feelings than in any positive religious sense.

Far-right, neo-Nazi groups calling themselves 'Christian' seems a very odd thing from a UK perspective. Yet it is commonplace in the US, it seems, and apparently not uncommon in parts of Continental Europe. Here all major parties have Christian elements in their roots, in particular the left-leaning Labour Party. Indeed when Margaret Thatcher's right-wing Conservatives were trying to dismantle civil society in the 80's, it sometimes seemed that the only major group standing up to her was the Church of England.

I'm two-thirds of the way through Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy (the final book arrived yesterday); Larsson was known as something of an expert on the Scandinavian far-right, founding an anti-racist, anti-extremist publication called Expo to try to counter its influence. Since his time it seems that the Swedish far-right has calmed down a little, whilst the Norwegian far-right has grown and become more organised. To me it is very sad that a group of countries with a long-held reputation for tolerance and openness - Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands - are instead becoming known for intolerant, racist minorities.

An appalling act, then, and a senseless waste of life. But also a reminder that labels are misleading and damaging, whether the label is 'Christian', 'Muslim', 'immigrant' or 'patriot'. We are all human beings, good, bad, and mixed-up, and we should all be treated as such: never dehumanised, never reduced to 'them'.

A final comment from Lars Helle, editor of the daily Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, which I rather like. He said: "we must avoid being preoccupied by fear, like the US was after 11 September 2001. Rather, we must look to Spain and England and how the people of those nations recovered their freedom after the horrible terrorist acts of 2004 and 2005". Amen to that.