A new role for Britain

It has taken a long time for the United Kingdom to shake off its empire. The obsessions with the Great Game, of keeping secure the shipping routes, and imposing British will in matters of trade have been forgotten. But the habit of sending in the military to solve problems  has been hard to break. 

Until 29th August 2013 the normal position for Britain and its allies was to use armed force to deal with some foreign problems. Even though it was clear that western military intervention frequently failed, disastrously so in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the automatic way of dealing with Syria's crisis has been seen as military. This means an attack by missiles and not infantry, because the physical and psychiatric post-war suffered by soldiers has become unacceptable.

Until the Iraq invasion of 2003 the Royal Prerogative to launch a war was exercised by the Queen's Prime Minister. Blair, his government and the elected Members of Parliament ignored the very clear public disquiet, and what may have been the largest popular demonstration in British history. The frightening thing about David Cameron's recent attempt to join in an attack led by the USA was that it was so reminiscent of the 2003 process. The style may have been different, but the spinning of information, with the government saying clearly that the government of Syria, by Bashar al Asad's will, ordered a chemical attack of real ferocity in the Ghouta of Damascus beyond doubt. There are considerable doubts, and this should have been admitted, but some politicians were too lazy to do any research.

Although in theory from now on a Prime Minister could order British forces to war without recourse to parliamentary approval, the suffering of Iraq due partly to Blair's foolishness in 2003 has led to a new way of exercising the Royal Prerogative. In the British Constitution, Parliament is sovereign. And now a sovereign parliament has made clear to the Ministers of the Crown that war cannot be waged without the approval of the democratically elected house.

I have no idea how future parliaments will view war, but this new constitutional arrangement suggests that war will not now be the first and often only option.

I have been urging that the backers of the combatants in Syria (Russia and Iran backing the Government, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey supporting different factions of the rebels) should be put under political pressure to stop funding the civil war, and draw their clients to peace talks. Britain, having finally shaken off the default imperialist position of war as the solution could join most of its European partners in seeing negotiation as the mature response to a crisis. As a country capable of launching an attack, but choosing to seek negotiation, Britain could have a far better place among the nations.

Father: a sermon on the Lord's Prayer

I preached this sermon on 28 July at Christ Church East Sheen. The reading was Luke 11.1-13

There are spectacular stories of great saints who in their prayers had wonderful mystical experiences, and an abundance of ways in which God seemed to become very real to them. I used to read lots of books about prayer, and the more I read the more depressed I got. I felt a total failure and I really liked praying. I just used to say my prayers, used to go to church, and never had wonderful moments of transcendence. Maybe I should have followed the herd and taken LSD.

So it is something of a relief when we read today this little discussion between Jesus and his students,  ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. . .'

And we do, don’t we? Throughout the ages, in vast cathedrals, at the bedside of millions of children, in prison camps in Siberia, and holiday camps on Barry Island, said simply at Morning and Evening Prayer or sung with great beauty at Coronations, the church has prayer the Lord’s Prayer.

St Luke records a shorter version than the one in St Matthew, and it is worth thinking about it.

Father, hallowed be your name.   Your kingdom come.    Give us each day our daily bread.    And forgive us our sins,     for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.   And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

Prayer begins with God: with his name and his authority. God’s reign is at the beginning of Christian life, of our prayer and hopefully our deeds. The first thing we do is glorify him: that’s why, of course the Gloria is at the beginning of the eucharist  We glorify God’s name, praying, hoping for his kingdom.

And then we get down to our bit. As far as we know most of  the people among whom Jesus moved in those days were desperate. Time and time again we come across them hungry, lost, hopeless. So the prayer Jesus teaches is the prayer of the desperate. Give us, we are taught, give us. Not give me, give us. Just enough to survive: our daily ration of bread. This is not the prayer of those churches preaching prosperity: Give me a big bank balance, a grand house, fame and worldly success. Give us just enough. Help us survive.

And then there is this picture of indebtedness. We want to be forgiven our debts, and our failure to hit the target. The word sin means missing the target. We aim, Father, but sometimes we miss.

And this version ends simply: don’t bring us to the time of testing.  For those first Christians it could have meant anything: war, starvation, persecution. Our testings may not be so grand, but they are all the things which prevent us in our relationship with the Father.

Father. Jesus revolutionised Jewish thought by calling God Father, Abba. It strikes me as odd how we use all sorts of titles for God, Lord, Almighty. But when we pray it may be to the unknowable, all-powerful creator of all, but as far as we Christians are concerned, it is ‘Father.’

Which is why before the Lord’s Prayer we have space to remember what sort of bread we need, how we have missed the mark and whose debts we have forgiven, and what really scares us about the future.

And then we can say, Abba, Father.  

The Kidnapping of Bishops in Syria and what it means

Having been following the Syrian crisis from the very first day, and having lived in Syria for 5 years, one of my worst days was last Monday when two Bishops, my friend Yohanna Ibrahim of the Syrian Orthodox Church and Bishop Boulos Yaziji were reported kidnapped.

The reporting of it was unclear about what happened, and where they had been. It may be that no one really knows, outside of the immediate actors but it is an incident whose uncertainty allows different schools to interpret in wildly different ways.

The position of the Turkish Republic in this narrative should not be ignored. Turkey, as a Muslim state committed to the democratic process rapidly moved from a position of amity with the Syrian government to that of active opponent. It could not accept the violence of the Syrian state against its (mainly Sunni Muslim) people when they demonstrated peacefully in search of a society governed by the rule of law. This rapid about turn put Bashar al Assad and his circle on the offensive, which is the only position they know. It seems that they bought PKK mercenaries to protect pro-government areas in Aleppo, and maybe other areas in the north, thus funding an upsurge in PKK terrorist activity in south-east Turkey. Turkey's response was to work on a resolution of the Turkey/PKK conflict which is developing positively at present. I am not suggesting that the Turkish government is perfect, but its reaction to opposition in this case was negotiation, leading to a happy peace.

Furthermore the Turkish government has seen the Syriac Christian minority in Syria as an opportunity. Despite inconsistent messages about the monastery of Mor Gabriel in southeast Turkey, the government has been relaxed in allowing Syriac Christians to enter Turkey informally, and now has established a refugee camp in Tur Abdin. Tur Abdin is the heartland of the Syriac Christians, and in locating the camp there the Turkish government is making a statement to the Syriacs that they are welcome, and will be protected. Bishop Yohanna must have been aware of this, and whatever he had been doing on the border or in Turkey (which may be unclear) his capture in an area under government control suggests to me that the Syrian government is warning him to stay away from Turkey. This is ironic because Bishop Yohanna has consistently sought reconciliation between the government and its various opponents, and if anything could have been criticised for being too pro-regime.

What should be the reaction of Christians in the West to this?
Firstly there are men of violence on both sides, and the innocent protesters who began this crisis are nowhere to be heard. Bishop Yohanna was consistently seeking negotiation. We should still be encouraging the backers of the two sides, Russia and Iran on the one and Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other, to stop the arms race and seek a negotiated end to the bloodbath.
Secondly Christians need to recognise that every community has been damaged. Even the Druze, who seem to have remained aloof, will have seen their sons killed in battle as they fought in the army. The destruction of the great Mosque of Aleppo is a terrible symbol of how Sunni Muslims have suffered across Syria, and their culture demolished. Syrian Islam has tended towards the mystical, and Syrians when I lived there generally despised the Saudi version as barbaric and uncultured. That Sufi tradition is under terrible threat as extreme Salafist forms make inroads: Sufis do not have the fanaticism to win battles in the way the Salafists do. Christians flourished in Syria because people got on with their neighbours. The tendency for some western backed charities to fund projects only caring for Christians is one more jab of the bayonet of sectarianism.

Next week is Holy Week for the Orthodox Christians of Syria. Their crucifixion needs Christlike responses, and not the call to arms sought by so many.

Christianity was designed to be persecuted. It is in its genes

Rupert Shortt has spent a lot of time thinking and writing about Christians being persecuted. His recent book Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack, may become an important text and I have not yet read it. But an article on 2 January made me think about the context of Christian suffering in the Near East. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2013/jan/02/middle-east-arab-spring-christian-winter)
I think it is mistaken to picture Christians as being the prime victims in much of the growing chaos and violence which can be found from Pakistan to Syria, or even into North Africa. My experience of reporting on the Syriac Christians in northern Mesopotamia, now divided between Iraq, Turkey and Syria, showed that the patterns of violence and oppression are complex. For instance in Mardin province of Turkey, the oppression of non-Sunni Muslims has led to the total disappearance of the Yezidis, an ancient native religious group which still survives in northern Iraq. Patterns of oppression in Syria seem to be against anyone who rejects the vicious puritanism of the Salafists: and this means 'normal' Sunni Muslims as much as Christians, or Shia Muslims. So, while Christians are having a hard time of it across the region, it is not simply because they are Christians: it is because they are part of the old mosaic of religious and ethnic identities which made the Ottoman Empire so interesting.
So I tweeted to @Syrianews (http://newsfromsyria.com/) the little idea: Christianity was designed to be persecuted. It is in its genes. 

I am not talking about contemporary Christianity, but I want to think for a while on where Christianity's roots are, as well as Islam's. It is clear to anyone who has to preach from the New Testament with any frequency that an underlying assumption of the Christian Scriptures is that Christians can expect persecution. The writers lived in a time when the tiny Christian community was being attacked by its fellow Jews, and later by the Roman power. Christianity's problem, particularly west where it has been in political power since Constantine in much of Europe, is that it has been forced to exercise authority, with all the coercion of brutal state power while reading texts in the liturgy urging the love of enemies, the turning of the cheek, and endurance under persecution at all costs. Where Christians have been oppressed, such as as slaves, or under Nazism and Soviet rule, the Scriptures fed a spirituality which flourished under persecution. To be a martyr is what Christ expects from those who follow him. As I used to say to my pupils in a comfortable school: you do not attain holiness eating tea at the Savoy.

Islam, meanwhile, seems to have a text and a method of reading it which clearly sees it as existing to rule. The Qur'an and Sunna are well designed to be used as a source of jurisprudence. Whatever the origins of Islam (and on this I have very little knowledge) imperial rule and the Qur'an go together. So for Sunni Muslims living in a society where Islam is not the law poses serious questions. I have a feeling that this is the clash of civilisations which the crazed killers feel most deeply. Their failure to take on board the subtleties of Islamic Law is in some ways a sign of the problem of Islamic rule in a world which does not accept it. Their ignorance of legal decisions against suicide (and therefore suicide bombings) shows what has happened in some places where Islam has been sidelined from being the ruling narrative.

Sunni Islam flourishes where it is in power. The glories of Muslim Empires are glorious because power and Islam go together. It must be remembered that under the different Caliphates non-Muslims flourished: In Spain the Jews and Christians did well under the rule of Islam. The same must be said when the Ottoman Empire flourished.

Christian imperial power led to the expulsion of the Jews, forced conversions, burnings of heretics. Even under the generally inclusive Elizabeth I it was tough being a Catholic. Maybe that is why so much of the Church of England today values inclusion, because although it is in theory the Church of the Realm, it has lost all power and must serve the whole community in order to survive. 

I realise there are huge exceptions to the cases I have suggested, but Christianity flourishes when it is not in political power, and Islam is at its most inclusive when it is clearly in power.